Call to Arms 2018 — Borthwick Family Site

Every year the Wellington Warlords runs a convention in August, with over 100 gamers. Typically multiple tournaments and this past year we had 3 major tournaments for 40K, AOS and DBMM (i think).

I am done with tournament gaming but like to attend, check out the bring and buy table and be part of the event. Inspired by the UK events that are almost entirely demo games, and seeing some amazing demos a previous Call to Arms i decided i wanted to set up and run an entire game on my own, with an aim to being as visually eye catching as possible.

This is the story of how i planned it out, and how it all looked (its a bit long sorry).

The end - here is a shot of how it all looked on the day. one thing i was terrible at was remembering to take photos and i think i took 3 or 4 in total. oops.

The Beginning.

I decided to do this in early April, giving me 4 months to get it all sorted, and i decided to do a zombie game. i was going to use Walking dead all out war for the rules, but with two specific gangs from my own minis. i was originally going to do a biker gang (the Warlord games one) vs army guys (warlord games again), and i had planned out rules for motorbikes and also Trukks. i made a list of all the models i thought i would need and rules i would need, i had plans for different types of zombies, random civilians, werewolves , feral animals and random events (outside of the Walking dead ones, like a Predator showing up!).

As i got closer to the event, i scaled back and back and back to make it work, and in the end i grabbed 20 of my walking dead models and just did a variant of the walking dead for the game.

The Table:

I was going to build a table up, but decided to go with a battlemat instead, and i used the Deepcut Studio Walking Dead Town one.

What i did was take the terrain i had and lay it out over the mat and plan out the board i wanted. I bought two 3x4 MDF sheets, and changed up part of my already small workshop (its even smaller with a 6x4 table in it) so i could visualise everything.

For things like the forests i put down cardboard i had in teh right shape, and the same for some of the bigger cars and buildings etc. I moved stuff around, until i was happy with the general layout. The key was that most of the terrain should be in the middle, as we would not spend ages on the edges.

And then i just worked through the terrain, i would take a set of terrain, eg teh Barrels etc, undercoat them, take them upstairs and work on them. once done i would place them on the table and take the next one and so on. I had most of the terrain already, though i did buy the trees and i ordered a bunch of stuff from TT Combat, but it did not arrive till after CTA (3 months to arrive), but i probably would not have gotten it done anyway.

to speed things up i blocked out the windows of all the vehicles and did a mass matt varnishing in one go so i could paint them in a block. i had also dissasembled some of them where the insides were visible.

You will see posts on a lot of the terrain from the game in previous posts, and i need to go back and take photos of the stuff i have not done a post on yet.

The Story:

The eventual story for the game was Ricks group were lookign for a bunch of the kids who had gone missing, and came across the abandoned town, and unfortunately the Governor and his mates where already there.

The key to this was that the table had to make sense and be a story as well. i did not want to just have random terrain thrown down, like a tournament game, but have the table tell a story or a series of stories as to why it was all there.

from this shot below, it looks like a strip mall on two busy highways, near and industrial area, with a lot of traffic.

The zombie apocalypse does not happen in one go, so i wanted to make it look like different events have occured.

The mini events were:

Car crash:

two cars crashed into each other, police cars have arrived, the crash is blocked off and the ambulance is there, as well as a tow truck. Clearly one of the car occupants had turned and attacked the first responders etc.

Industrial zone:

A pile of work gear, behind fences, and a very dirty site office, this is beside the Water tower, that has a car crashed into it.

First settlement:

A series of tents, surrounded by barricades, clearly the first set of survivors in the area, who thought that they would be safe. you cannot see it but some of the tents have blood on them, and some of the barricades are missing (looted for later survivors).

Second Settlement:

A second set of survivors tried again in the carpark for the comic store and the ruined brick building. this time they build shacks and used cars as well as barricades. it clearly did not work as one of the shacks as collapsed and the barricades are gone.

Looted Truck:

A large truck, that jackknifed and dropped cargo. i did not finish this trailer, which comes off and i was magnetising it, so people could get into it.

Ruined building barricade:

A building that collapsed, possibly after the car crashed into it, but has been used by a survivor with the makeshift couch barricade. the other ruined building had similar blockages set up with garbage cans, wheelie bins etc.

Rescue that went nowhere:

An Army truck with some coffins that fell open. clearly an attempt to clear some of the dead, maybe some of their own soldiers. it clearly did not work.

Barricaded comic shop:

The comic shop, has barricades in front of the doors, so that people could hide out there, but no food, so they need to live off the vending machine.

Garbage behind the Dairy:

the garbage truck has shown up to grab garbage from behind the dairy as normal, but it probably contained a surprise.

Last stand at the Metro Sandwich:

i expected the game to climax here (and it did), and its where the kids were hiding out. this is a restaurant that people would have holed up in to try and survive, and so all the windows have stuff to blockade them, tables, barrels etc. A truck has crashed into the corner that was trying to grab some loot, and the open door shows that the driver tried to get away.

In the middle of the game you probably dont really see this, but i think it all helps.

below, some more photos of it all as i was building it. the last things finished were the trees so there are few photos of these. I am lucky to have these pics, i took them to remind myself where it all went when i set up on the day.

The Day:

On the day i got to the event, set up the table (which took a while). the hardest bit was packing everything up to go, i did not have specialised boxes so i had to pack stuff as best i could.

Once it was set up, i dug out all the models and made up the gangs, and waited for John to arrive.

It turned out that one of the event sponsors Battle Kiwi, had some vouchers and they decided to do prizes for the best demo games. i got a prize straight away, before i had any models on the table, just the terrain!

The game went really well, we had the Threat rais Alle at half rate as it was a bigger game, and i added a search function, where any enclosed item, car, wheelie bin, rubbish bin etc, basically anything someone could die in. you roll the shield dice and on a shield you find a supply card, on a blank you get attacked by a lurker. this made it fun but a bit of a risk to search.

it was a close game, i was doing ok and had gotten to the hostages first, and we had a great shoot out between the red pickup truck and the red car, but unfortunately Michonne went berserk and killed everyone!. i got her down to one wound, but then she killed the governor and one of his followers in one turn.

On the Sunday we played some Last Days, as we had just gotten the rules and played over a smaller part of the table.