BATTLE REPORT Fear of the Dark Weird WW2 edition NIGHT RAID

When I was developing Fear of the Dark rules I used to play a lot of ww2 and weird ww2 scenarios. 

I really like to play ww2 but as a Call of Cthulhu enthusiastic, it wasn't strange that evil creatures and paranormal entities appear on the battlefield. 

Of course, the weird part of the scenario is optional, as many of my games were strictly ww2 skirmish scenarios without a weird component.  But for me to turn towards a weird version of ww2 was the most natural thing. 

I want to show you a weird ww2 scenario that I played using Fear of the Dark rules. Well, not exactly the same rules as it is more combat oriented, so, it had a few rules to make it more tactic. Those rules weren't included in the game system as the idea was to make it a more narrative oriented game. 

The scenario: Night Raid

This time I wanted to test a patrol and stealth system, and the truth is that I really like how it worked, with a few tweaks I can adapt it to the way I play (or the way I like games to be). 

So I designed a scenario in which our men have to make a night stealth raid into a Nazi-occupied town, in order to locate an experimental tank and blow it up.

First I will make a battle report telling you how everything went, and at the end I will make a small comment about how I made the scenario.

So, we return to weird ww2 along with Sergeant Reickhart and his squad of brave men fighting nazis and monsters trying to make it alive to fight another day. 

Sergeant Reickhart is summoned by a captain in the command tent, there he sees several maps and photos of a town, as soon as he enters he sees how one of the present command hides several photos that were on the table in a folder.

"Sergeant, come in and take a seat... I know things are being difficult, but I am afraid that they may become even more difficult... We have had access to information by which a nazi force is being strengthened in the town of Ladon. It seems that they have a new experimental armored light tank brought from the very heart of Germany... We have maps of the town and thanks to members of the French resistance we will be able to make your way to the town itself... "

"your mission will be to make a stealth night raid, locate the experimental light tank, place several explosive charges on it and make it explode before it can even be tested on the battlefield... the lives of many allied soldiers depend on that light tank does not get to be used"

Once the mission is assigned, the sergeant and his men are given bags with explosive charges, and they are taken to the surroundings of the enemy lines, where, hidden in a french resistance truck, they go inside Ladon itself.

Once in the town, the experimental light tank seems to be in the industrial warehouse or in the courtyard nearby, two guards patrol the area; In the darkness of the night I decide to deploy my six men force in three blocks (three blocks of 2 men each), one of them with a sniper, whom I will try to put in a high position.

My men advance taking positions while avoiding the two guards, and after several attempts I get my sniper to take a privileged position to protect the advance of my group.

After several turns of waiting, the guards who patrol the area, turn the corner and one of the streets where the warehouse is located is unprotected, so two of my men advance in the dark to the door of the warehouse... to discover that inside there are four German soldiers talking while smoking a cigarette.

Fortunately, my men go unnoticed and are not seen by the Nazi soldiers. 

I decide that I better go around the warehouse, but the guards who are patrolling have different ideas, and while one continues to advance, the other remains in his place, making that my men cannot advance without revealing their position.

Until finally, after so much waiting, a guard appears behind my men, seeing them in the distance and asking aloud "Who goes there?"... So the only option I have is just let all hell break loose...

I advance towards the guard who has been standing for several turns smoking a cigarette to kill him, and it is my second man who shoots him down, killing him and revealing the light tank standing in the yard next to the warehouse, although perhaps it is not the kind of light tank that they expected.

Once the gunfire has started, the sniper kills the guard who has discovered my men, and Sergeant Reickhart runs towards the light "tank" to place the explosive charges, and once next to it, he finds a harmless technician making minor adjustments to the "light tank".

The sergeant decides that he will take that German technician alive with him, since his knowledge will be of great help to the high command about these experimental "armor".

As Sergeant Reickhart places the explosive charges, all hell breaks loose in the street, German soldiers come out from the warehouse, shooting down two of our paratroopers, and only being stopped by our sniper.

More Nazi soldiers come out from the surrounding buildings, who are stopped by our two men (hiding behind some boxes) and the sniper.

Finally, the sergeant manages to place the explosive charges in the "light tank"and runs off with the nazi technician. In his flee he finds two nazi soldiers who are killed by the sergeant. While fleeing from the place, the roar of the explosion is heard behind...

Once the "light tank" has been blown up and the technician has been taken from the place by the sergeant, the rest of the team decides to flee away, and our beloved sniper plays a very important role,  freeing the way out for our men.

Once almost all of our team is off the game board, the sniper leaves his position and flees from the table the best he can, to meet later at a designated point with the rest of the unit.

I have no words to express my gratitude to this loyal man, who will be entitled to a medal for his actions today.

Once outside the town of Ladon, hidden under a bridge waiting to be picked up by the French resistance truck, the Nazi technician starts to talk about the new situation that the world is living...

As he explains, some months ago there was some kind of experiment going on in Berlin, but something went wrong... 

It seems that nazi scientists opened a "door" or torned a "veil", he doesn't know how to explain it properly, but since then nothing is as it used to be... 

Monsters, creatures, paranormal entities... Call them what you want... Things are fucked up, as if it weren't enough with the horror of war... 

Since the Reich started studying the occult in order to win the war nothing is certain, and we just live until the next dawn...

While the technician pronounces these words, Sergeant Reickhart sees the sun rise over the horizon, while he listens as the French resistance truck approaches to get them out of there...

HOW TO MAKE THE SCENARIO 

Well, the first thing is to determine our warband, in this case it was a Hero (Sergeant Reickhart), an Ally and 4 Extras (one of them with a sniper rifle), the characters work right the same as in Fear of the Dark. 

After that we have to set the gaming table, for this we must place Objective points, Plot points and the guards...

As Objective points we have the experimental light tank, which will be in one of two possible locations: the warehouse or the patio next to the warehouse (they will be revealed when they are in line of sight of a miniature), we will also place six Plot points that the players can check during the game (they must spend an action to check them).

When a character has LOS with any Objective point we will roll in a table with 1d6 (1-3 4 nazi smoking a cigarette, 4-6 the light tank, and if the first Objective point are the nazi guards, you won't roll a die for the second Objective point, it will be de light tank. 

When a character checks a Plot point you make a roll die on a chart made for the scenario that tells you what your men find in that plot point... 

(in red the Objective points and in green the Plot points)

The area will be guarded by two soldiers who will patrol the area, circling the warehouse and the yard. When they reach the end of the street (A) we will place them at the beginning of the other street (B) , as if they had turned around.

Each turn we will roll a die for each guard, with even he will advance 5", with odd he will remain in the same place without moving...

And we will deploy our forces on the opposite edges to where the warehouse and the patio are located, choosing the deployment zones at random, there are four deployment zones, for each group in which we decide to divide our men we will roll one die (if they roll the same result, they will deploy together).

In my case, I divided my men into three groups and I got a 1 and two 4, that's why I deployed that way.

And when the alarm is raised, I predetermined a few buildings from which enemies may appear (most of the buildings, in fact), and every turn I rolled on a table that states how many enemies, appear and the buildings they appear from. 

This would be a general overview on how the scenario is made and how it is played. 

I hope it helps on how to organize things when thinking on playing solo. 

See you in the battlefield, my friends... 

Stay safe... 

WARGAMING INSIDE BUILDINGS

Most of Lovecraftian stories involve an abandoned house, a crypt, an old church...

To play Fear of the Dark scenarios I always wanted to play inside buildings: Haunted houses, crypts, museums, dark dungeons, old libraries... And I wanted to take those places to Fear of the Dark scenarios.  

Most of the wargames we play (no matter if scifi, ww2, fantasy, pulp...) take place in an outdoor area: a town attacked by the enemy, a Harbour that is sieged, an ambush in a crossroad... 

That's why, when dealing with Fear of the Dark, I started to think on how to move those wargames inside of houses and buildings. 

I had many available options, but they usually were expensive or occupy a lot of room at home, and I needed it to be cheap and easily storable, and I think I have found a solution that works for me.

Making folding cardboard houses to be easier to store was quite simple, the problem comes when you want to play inside those houses and you want it also to be foldable or easily storable.

I declare myself an unconditional fan of papercraft terrain for many reasons: price, accessibility, possibilities and soooooo easy to store (I already made a post on foldable papercraft terrain that you can read clicking HERE). 

After testing several systems I found the Battlesystem one, the same modular wall and floor system that I used in a Weird ww2 scenario based on an allied raid on a nazi bunker. 

They are hard, really high quality and are storable in very little space ... in short, they are very good for our purposes.

They only have one problem... although they are not really expensive they are not really cheap.

One of the basics that motivates me in the world of wargames is to do everything as cheap as possible because cheap means accessible to anyone... And maybe not everyone can afford to spend 90€ on modular walls and floors to fill 90x90 cms...

So starting from the modular system of battlesystem I decided to do something similar from a cardboard set of worldworks games (quite cheap on their online store).

After a few hours working with Photoshop I managed to emulate the modular system of battlesystem but using floor, walls and doors taken from the papercraft terrain of worldworks games.

To fit these walls together, I took pieces of foam cardboard (10 millimeter thick) to make bases and connectors between the different parts of the houses.

So I printed the walls, floors and doors and windows on cardboard of 200 grams at a cost of approximately 8€, and I also printed a few pieces of furniture to decorate the houses also on the same cardboard.

And finally, after a few hours of cutting, gluing and mounting this is the result ...

This is the result...

Nice looking, right? and as always, low cost...

And most important, disassembled takes up very little storage space, most of the above takes just this small space:

Another good option was done by Room17 with their tenfold dungeon system (if you want a review, click HERE to see a review by Beasts of War).

The idea of tenfold dungeon is to have several "boxes" of different sizes to represent rooms or houses with their interiors, and once you have finished playing you can fit them one inside the others, so that they are stored taking no room at all.

It would be nice to make some designs of 20's house rooms with this system that could be arranged as you like to play with them... Maybe I'll try in a future to do something like that, but I would do some roofs that could be removed to play inside. 

Last option that I see (and the cheapest one) is to use 2D maps, they are not so inmmersive as 3D terrain, but they are affordable and really easy to store. 

We can use Mansions of Madness tiles (if we have them), and there are a lot of 2D maps for free on the internet used for role-playing games. 

I have used 2D maps from Heroic Maps to represent the inside of an egyptian tomb in a pulp game and the result is really good (cheap, highly detailed and easy to store). 

And this is it... 

What's your opinion? 

Which choice do you prefer? 

Do you know other options? 

And as I want this subject to move forward, and I want YOU to start working on this, so... next free  scenario that I'll be making will be played inside a house and it's surroundings, and you'll need a house with at least 4 rooms. 

BATTLE REPORT Fear of the Dark Weird WW2 edition LAST TRAIN

When I started developing Fear of the Dark rules, I used to play weird ww2, fighting with my allied paratroopers against Nazis and monster through an Europe devastated by war.

In that setting, which I love, is where the rules of Fear of the Dark were made.

Last night I wanted to go back to that setting and play a weird ww2 scenario using Fear of the Dark rules.

The AI did it very well managing the Nazi soldiers in a defensive position, and was difficult to beat. 

I want to show you this battle report because I would like (in a future) to make a weird ww2 edition of Fear of the Dark. There may be people interested in that version...

SCENARIO: LAST TRAIN

Our squad has to make a stealth raid on a train station where they have been informed that many POW (prisoners of war) are going to be taken to a concentration camp. 

They have to make an assault, kill the nazi soldiers and free the POW. 

In this scenario, I have an allied paratrooper squad made up of Sargent Reickhart (a hero) and 7 extras.

As it is a night stealth mission, I may deploy in the opposite side of the train and move freely until I have a figure in Line of Sight of a Nazi miniature.

There are three plot points, one of them is in the train and has to be checked to free the POW.

This is the game table, I deploy in the opposite side from the train side, forming four couples.

One of the soldiers climbs to the roof of a building to have a better position to cover his friends.

A soldier checks one Point of Interest revealing a Nazi sniper in the top of a building.

The Sargeant Reickhart checks another Point of Interest finding a panzershreck (a Nazi AntiTank gun similar to a bazooka) that is given to the soldier that is besides him.

And getting into Line of Sight my paratroopers start the fight!

As it is a surprise attack, the first turn they are the only attackers, and the nazi won't fight back.

This first turn is really important, and many Nazi soldiers fall under the bullets of the paratroopers.

The Sargeant runs toward the enemy taking two down in a single turn, while the paratrooper that is on the roof kills the Nazi sniper before he can react.

In a couple turns, the Nazi soldiers are killed, and just one of my paratroopers has fallen...

The soldiers get to the train and free the POW...

And then, suddenly, from the open doors of the train appear a group of soldiers that look like reanimated corpses and a huge monster made up of parts of dead bodies, that crawl out of the train to attack the soldiers...

Many of the zombies attack our paratroopers, killing two of them and the abomination makes an injury to Sargent Reickhart.

The soldiers fall back shooting the zombies and the monster, and the soldier with the AT gun shoots the abomination, hitting it, but not killing it.

The monster advances towards the soldiers, with one of them quite close to it and then...

A moral dilemma... I draw an event card that gives one of my soldiers an extra attack... 

I could use it with the soldier with the AT gun, but another soldier is too close and could die because of the blast...

Or waste it with the soldier that is close to the abomination so that it moves far from it...

In the end I decide that it is a risk that I have to take, crossing my fingers so that the soldier is not killed by the blast...

Two AT shots take down the monster, but the soldiers receives part of the shot, dying at the moment. 

It was risky, but I couldn't loose the opportunity.

From 8 men that made up my squad, only 5 are still standing, afraid, exhausted... 

But alive to fight another day...

So... 

Would you be interested in a Fear of the Dark Weird WW2 edition? 

BACK OF THE CARDS

I have been asked a few times about the back of the cards because you didn´t want them to be white. 

So I put the rulebook cover as the back of the cards trying to make them more appealing.

CARDS WITH BACK

CARTAS CON PARTE TRASERA

FREE SCENARIO - MOTHER´S LOVE

I told you in the last post that "Don´t open that door" was not going to be the last free scenario...

A new free scenario has been added to Fear of the Dark skirmish wargame: Mother´s Love.

A fine rain falls behind the windscreen of the car as the characters drive through the night across a lost road.

In the distance, illuminated by the headlights of the vehicle, they can glimpse a white figure that is motionless on the shoulder.

As they approach the figure, they see her more clearly, seeing a woman dressed in white, with blood all over her hands and face, staring at the ground.

When they are only a few meters away, the woman suddenly raises her head and looks at them with empty eyes, rushing towards them in the middle of the road...

This is the introduction for this scenario, to get it for free just log in your wargamevault profile and look in the Fear of the Dark folder, you may download and enjoy it.

and as always...

THANKS FOR SUPPORTING THIS PROJECT!