Empire of the Dead: my first try at it

West Wind Productions released a new game not long ago, a skirmish game in a Victorian Horror setting:

Empire of the Dead

I'm unashamed that I'm a sucker for skirmish games: I'm addicted to planning and starting, and occasionally finishing, small theme projects. If it wasn't for skirmish scale, I'd have 20 army scale projects, all unfinished.
I also like Victorian, classic horror, vsf, cthulhu, and such, so this sounded promising.  One of the guys in our Friday night group is going to run an event of this at an upcoming Con, so wanted to test it out.
You can check out more of his progress on the developing city at his site, Rot and Drivel.

The game has 4 main factions: Vampires, Werewolves, Holy Orders, and Gentlemen's Clubs.
The bats & wolves are pretty self explanatory, Holy Orders are the inheritors of the Templars (though nothing says you couldn't develop a theme around a different order or different religion), and Gentlemen's Clubs are subdivided into types such as explorers,cultists, military orders, etc. each with a slight different advantage and a few unique troops types: if you're familiar with how Mordheim treats the various human factions, you're not far off: all basically the same with a different bonus ability, like plus to leadership or combat or magic.

The warband creation is pretty simple.  Vamps & wolves are similar: 1 powerful leader, 1 secondary leader and two types of troops, though vampires can also have a bat swarm.  Werewolves are probably the most powerful in combat, but lack access to 'modern' firearms and the characters, and pure wolf troop types can't use weapons, so it balances.  The human groups can have an extra secondary leader, are cheaper and have access to more gear. Since no character has more than 2 wounds, this balances it just fine from what I could tell. Don't expect Warhammer Vampire Lords, you won't find them here.  The campaign system allows for gaining skills, to fine tune your list and see it increase in power. Since we only played the one game, I haven't experienced it yet, but it looks good.

On to the game!
We had 4 players: Werewolf, Vampire, & 2 explorer Gentlemen's Club.
I ran the wolves: a Main werewolf, secondary werewolf, 2 wolves and 3 humans, all with daggers, one with a bow and the other 2 with throwing knives.

The Vampires had the two vamps and 4 humans, a couple of the humans had rifles and the vampires had swords.

Both Gentlemen's clubs had a lot of firearms.  The one I faced had a personal gatling gun on one.

All the terrain and minis in these pictures are owned and painted by Rot & Drivel.  None are mine, I can't take credit for any of them, I just played, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not planning some teams!

I adjusted the photos I took to set the mood... enter a chill night in London, 1888....

Book st. with it's bookshop & papermill is quiet and peaceful.

A perfect night for a stealthy hunt. The packleader in center leads his pack into the city.

The local chapter of the Intrepid Chaps lead by Lord Blackstone take to the urban landscape for a night hunt

The still of Book Street is interrupted by the howl of a wolf

But the call is heard not just by man, but by creatures of the night, unfriendly to the wolfen: Vampires.

Spotting the Vampires and their human thralls, Clara stays behind as the wolves circle around the building and aims her bow at an unsuspecting thrall.

The wolves stalk around the building, but the smell from the coffee house masks the scent of their prey.

Her arrow having missed her mark, the thrall's attention is drawn to the wolf clan girl, he raises his rifle and kills her, the shot a small crack of thunder, which begins the storm of carnage to follow.

The first born vampire leads Ward and Spanner into the fight against the wolves.

Neither vampire nor wolf is able to get the better of each other, while further up the street the minions of both engage.

Blackstone's Chaps close in on the sounds of snarling combat.

Sensing the humans approach, the vampires call a truce with the wolves and head back to the woods, to circle around and hunt the other group of mankind that are trying to entrap them.

The wolves prepare to take down the explorers. Their guns reach the wolves first, wounding the secondary werewolf, who draws back momentarily, the rest rush the men.

Only the pack leader has the speed to reach them, but his ferocity is enough to give them pause as one of their number is brought down, his throat ripped out.

Hearing the snarls and cries of anguish in death, the other Gentlemen's Club is reluctant to close with the vampires they are tracking.  With the lateness of the night, the groups retreat back to their mansions and lairs

............................................................................

I enjoyed this game a lot. The combat mechanics are very straight forward and were very easy to pick up. 

The addition of campaign-earned skills will make it more complex, but that is a good way to do it in my opinion. I was surprised at how fragile the leaders are.  Though they are tougher and have 2 wounds, it is still just a 50% chance to wound the toughest vampire or werewolf with a hunting rifle, so facing several of them is anything but a sure thing.  The dice mechanics are on a d10, which I like- it gives a lot more granularity than a d6 system.  When a model is wounded, if it is their last wound you roll on the wound result: a 10% chance to just shrug it off, a small chance to just be pushed back momentarily, a decent chance at being knocked down, and a 30% chance to be taken out of action. If you're knocked down, you roll again on this chart at the beginning of each turn to see if you recover or are taken out. There is a far greater chance to be taken out than recover. My initial instinct is I'd like to see a better chance to recover, but time and more game play will tell.  There are also skills that can help this, so that might be all that is needed.  

Of course, my mind is racing with ideas for different teams. I have 3 ideas that are yelling at me to make them, and I think 2 of them I will. 2 ideas are different themes using the werewolf list, and I think I will make just 1 of the 2.. don't really need 2 different teams that use the same list.  I suspect werewolves will be tough to run: if someone has a lot of guns, that could be very tough to face, when you only have some human chumps with bows or crossbows for missile fire. But the theme idea I have is just so very fun, I must do it!  

But I will say no more on those plans until I have the minis to show you. 

I'm anxious to play this again.
If you like skirmish games and like the thematic setting, I'd recommend giving it a try.

Enjoy!