Chicago Skirmish Wargames

Soon after joining the Chicago Skirmish Wargames I was introduced to Ganesha Games’ Song of Blades and Heroes. I loved the fairly simple rules system. (Really simple compared to many of the G.W. rules systems.) I then looked into the other Ganesha Games products and found Mutants and Death Ray Guns. I love post-apocalyptic gaming so I bought the softcover version of the game. Since the basic SOBH rules engine was there it was very easy to learn how to play MDRG. Even though I owned the game for a couple of years or so I only just played my first game a number of weeks ago. The following pictures show the game in progress by my brother’s house.

I put together and painted all of the scenery and figures except for the river and the dead tree. The river comes as you see it. The tree I bought around Halloween a year or so ago. Except for a Dust Quonset hut the other buildings are from a wonderful set of miniatures made by Plasticville called the hobo jungle. Instead of just putting buildings down on the tabletop I like to base them and add small bits of scenic items. The fall tree is a miniature train tree that I added to a round planter base, I than added rocks and flock. The other scenic items come from a number of companies, many of them from Armorcast. I bought some green fabric from Hobby Lobby which I had them cut to the standard three feet by three feet for most of the Ganesha Games’ rules systems to place everything on.

One of the three gangs I created for the game is Genestealer hybrids that I painted years ago. One of the figures is a plastic guardsman on an old metal G.W. space-marine bike that I slightly converted. Another gang is made up of the G.W. chaos cultists, which is something I felt G.W. should have come out with years ago. The other figures include a Necromunda converted figure and heroclix figures.

I love the HeroClix and HorrorClix figures! I have bought a number of then over the years from comic book / game stores. The ones I bought came from sets which the stores would be selling separately sometimes for as little as 25 cents. What a bargain! I try to carefully as possible cut them from the clix base. I then sand down the feet or in some cases the models base, which is part of the figure after removing from the clix base. I wash them up and superglue them to new bases. I than complete the bases like I would do with my other miniatures, adding some gravel painting them and sometimes adding flock depending on the effect I want.

I always like to tie my games together with accessories if I can. For MDRG, and also my other post-apocalyptic gaming, I bought some card protectors which had the biohazard symbol on them. I also found a great set of dice with the biohazard symbol on them too. For MDRG it is suggested that if you have more than two players you use cards, one for each player, that are shuffled and drawn showing who moves  first, second and so on. I printed out on cardstock the names of each gang I created as well as the symbol for radioactive materials and put them in the card protectors.

You can see both the front and back of the cards in some of the pictures I took of the game. It was a great game and I would suggest it for our group to try sometime.