Crocodiles in the Congo!

I had hoped to post a full and detailed account of Dr. Jones' adventure in the Congo, but with the end of the long summer holiday and the start of the academic year, time just seemed to evaporate. That said, I am determined to keep some sort of momentum going even if that is just stumbling through the occasional month in order to clear a backlog of half finished posts that I have built up.  

Back to the game in hand and rather than post a step by step report, I thought I would summarise the encounter, detailing some of my thought processes before sharing the photographs of the day.  The adventure was to be a homebrewed affair, sandwiching two of the given scenarios together - The Sanctuary and A River Runs through It.  This was to be played using the Forest Tribes and White Men Expeditions factions, using roughly equal points.  The teams were fairly standard in their make up, but for the sake of the narrative sailors replaced soldiers.  

Our story revolves around an artifact said to possess significant power; the holder of which is believed to be the rightful ruler of the jungle.  This has seen the rise of a truly fearsome tribe whose belief in their own invincibility has corrupted their moral sensibilities to the point where they take human sacrifice.  Of unknown origin, the artifact is the stuff of myth and legend and so not surprisingly Dr. Llewellyn Jones has been tasked with securing it for the British Museum.  Local scouts report that the cannibal shine, home to a great many artifacts and fetishes, is through the next clearing.  Dr. Jones and his column need to locate it and make their escape, through the swamp, to where they hope the paddle steamer will be waiting for them.  

As far as gameplay was concerned the Forest Tribes got to place six totems in their area of the table, these could be out in the open or hidden within the 'Dangerous Terrain'.   Each of the totems was numbered on the base, although not visible to the opposing player, before a D6 was rolled to establish which of these is to be considered the fabled artefact.  As soon as the explorers locate the artefact they can make a break for the river, but this will inevitably take them through the swamp.  When entering the swamp, and at the start of each following turn if still bogged down in it a D6 is rolled.  Depending on outcome the result could be inconsequential, stressful or an attack by one or a group of hungry crocodiles.  

The joy of the Congo ruleset is its unpredictability and even though Dr. Jones' column is carrying signifiant firepower the overwhelming numbers of the pygmy archers, who instantly win on the roll of any double, can turn a game in the flash of a poisoned dart.  Dr. Jones, unsurprisingly split his column into three teams with the scouts roaming ahead as a possible screen.   Ably assisted by another scientist, Dr. Jones headed off with the trained Askaris and a couple of bearers and immediately came across a totem, seemingly abandoned  in a clearing; alas it wasn't the one they were looking for.  Alerted to the presence of the Forest Tribes by the rustling of the undergrowth the party headed off in search of the fabled artifact.  Any slight advantage now nullified, it wasn't long before the local inhabitants closed with the famed explorer and in a frenzied assault the Askaris were cut to pieces, Dr. Jones forced to flee for his life.  Meanwhile, Lady Marion, escorted by a Royal Navy landing party, decided to risk exploring some dangerous terrain and as luck would have it located the artefact at her first attempt!  The chase was now very much on as Lady Marion and her team race towards to swamp and the hope of retrieval by the paddle steamer.  The Forest Tribes abandoned their toying of Dr. Jones, much to his relief and looked to close the gap as quickly as possible.  Dr. Jones, not one to give up gracefully made a series of daring, harrying attacks that gave the good Lady just the time she needed to make it to the swamp.  The comparative safety of cover was short lived as the surface of the swamp erupted with the thrashing of scaled tail and gnashing jaws - a crocodile attack!  Several good men were lost to this encounter, before the good Lady managed to extricate herself from the unforgiving terrain and started the swim for the steamer.  With the artifact no longer in the possession the Forest Tribes also succumbed to a reptilian ravishing allowing Marion the chance to pull herself up and onto the deck of the boat.

This effectively ended the game, a fast paced romp through the jungle with a movie like narrative and hugely entertaining fun.  Ideally we would run through the scenario a second time with the opposing players changing sides, but it had taken us a little longer than expected to remember the rules and so time was called.  Fabulous fun and always lovely to get this collection on the table, but I was also thrilled with the addition of the swamp mechanic that just seemed to ramp up the excitement at the end of the scenario.

I have an elephant fetish!

Now there is a title to solicit all manner of casual browser!  By way of explanation, the planned scenario for the Congo game was based on a couple of adventures sandwiched together from the rule book.  The premise is that a mysterious artifact has to be located and taken somewhere else.  I already had my ape totems, but needed a total of six items and so set about creating some new fetishes.  Having had success with the playmobil monkeys, I had hoped that they may yield a suitable alternative but nothing seemed to fit the bill and so an extensive trawl of the infoweb followed.  With some considerable luck, I stumbled across these cheap metal pendants from a buyer on Etsy and simply trimmed of the hoop at the top and stuck them to some chunks of foam.  

These were, in turn, fixed to some MDF bases that were textured with pumice paste and small stones.  Once everything was dry some fine gauge chain was wrapped around both and made to look as if the chains had cut and eroded into the stone over time.  A few touches of superglue were required to keep everything in place and stop the chains slipping. 

The build was effectively done at this stage, but I have seen African Fetish sculptures and had a lasting memory of the nails, driven into them; dark, truly terrifying items.  So I did what any rational minded hobbyist would do and unearthed a bag of plastic skulls and cut lengths of floristry wire into tiddly, tiny pieces - the descent into madness was complete. 

I made painting far too difficult for myself as I was worried that my trusty rattle can primer would melt the foam.  Instead, I chose to paint the rocks separately and then applied a coat of matt varnish to the metal pendant before  giving it a series of heavy washes.  I allowed the rust to colour the rock and everything was flocked to show that these were very much part of the jungle.

On to the game!

My previous monkey totems can be seen here.

The Swamp!

 

With the game day fast approaching, I needed to turn my attention to terrain.  The scenario I was working on called for our intrepid explorers to try to escape the attentions of the Forest Tribes and make it safely back to their paddle steamer; to do this they would have to pass through the swamp!  

Congo has various different terrain classifications, one of the most exciting being the Dangerous Terrain.  When a group enters this terrain it most 'explore' the area which can throw up all manner of twists and turns.  I wanted to create some pieces of large terrain that our explorers had to pass through in order to reach the river, but also wanted to make the distinction that this was now a swamp area as opposed to the dense jungle previously encountered.  The results of that earlier build can be seen here:

Dangerous Jungle Terrain

Having thrown down a couple of printed mats to get a feel for the lay out, I was able to see how many pieces I would need, essentially three large areas to pass through and some blocking terrain to make the swim to the boats a little more tortuous.  I was fortunate in that I had some MDF terrain bases left over from the jungle build, I believe from East Riding Miniatures, but can highly recommend 'Wargames Tournaments' and 'Charlie Foxtrot Models' who also do similar packs and have excellent customer service.

I had a vision in my mind's eye of a dense, overhanging, verdant swamp but wasn't sure how to achieve it until I spied some bog wood, long abandoned, lying in our garden.  Bog wood, when immersed in water becomes incredibly heavy and forms an amazing, natural aquascape for the aquarium.  The twisted contorted shapes were just what I was looking for, but it is expensive.  This piece had formed the centrepiece of our aquarium, but the Saintly Mrs. Awdry's fishy friends kept growing and so had to be removed to allow more space for them.  Given its initial cost, I couldn't bring myself to throw it away and so it had been placed outside from where I was happy to recycle it for the build.

I cut the decoration down into three smaller sections, apportioning each piece to one of the irregular shaped bases I had chosen. Using off cut foam, I decided where I would have a way through the swamp and then braced the bog wood trunks in place with chopped down toffee apple sticks. This was a 'Eureka!' moment for me as I knew then exactly how I was going to realise my ideas!

The toffee apple stick braces had two purposes, structural integrity and to sell the mangrove swamp aesthetic.  Balance was key and I needed to consider carefully where the bog wood branches hung in relation to base profile, the sticks were key to support this.  They also allowed me to form the mangrove swamp roots that I was hoping to achieve.  Initially the stick itself was covered in milliput and given some simple texture before I added lengths of milliput rolled into tapered coils to represent the probing tendrils.  The joins were smoothed into the existing branches and allowed to set before given a quick blast of colour with the airbrush. 

Whilst absolutely thrilled with the progress so far, I felt that two of the larger bases needed some more branches in order to add more depth.  To achieve this, I took some thin willow branches cut to lengths and pinned them to the trunk before applying milliput to conceal the join and added additional tendrils.  Once everything was in place and set it was just a case of adding colour with a dry brush, the natural texture of the bog wood creating some wonderful effects. 

With the main structures completed, I just needed to add the hanging moss.  This is essentially teddy bear filling soaked in PVA glue and coloured ink with some basing turf sprinked in for good measure.  A ridiculously messy process, but one I had had some success with before in another swamp build.  See here: Through the Swamp

To complete the bases, self adhesive tufts, flock and some leave litter were all added.

The three main swamp bases were now complete and I just needed to fashion the remaining two blocking islands.  These were designed to form obstacles for our hapless adventurers to swim around and so were not to be considered explorable.  I had a couple of smaller MDF bases to hand and just added some foam as a base, using up the last of the milliput to smoothen the edges.  

Added to this were some aquarium plants that I had left over from the jungle build, but I wanted to achieve something more akin to the dense reeds that we see Charlie Allnut try to navigate the hapless African Queen through.  For this I sourced Long Reed lengths from the incredibly helpful 'War Paint Figures' and simply pressed them into the foam having first dipped the ends into some PVA glue.  I had hoped to give these stems some paper leaves, but time got the better of me and so had to make do with loading the base with various basing materials to finish the illusion. 

A fun and rewarding build, I was genuinely stoked at how well they had turned out using mostly found materials at my disposal.  I now had treacherous swamp terrain that my adventures would have to pass through in order to make it safely back to their boats.  That should have been everything completed for the game, but of course there was just one more thing I felt I needed!

Crocs and Hippos

 With my mind set on having a waterborne adventure for our game, I turned to the scenarios included in the Congo rule book for inspiration.  Luckily for me there were a number of possibilities that would work, especially if I combined a couple of the scenarios together.  Ultimately this was going to be a chase across the board hampered by pursuing tribesmen and, of course, crocodiles!  I had a number of these ruthless reptiles that needed to be painted, but what I was really after were some waterline variants to patrol the swamps.  So it was that I found myself wrapping 'Wargames Foundry' crocodiles in something called mini-mold from 'TT-Combat'.

This was always going to have a limited success, especially given the low relief of the details on my small crocodiles, but I just need to sell the illusion of this toothsome predator lurking just below the surface of the brackish water.  So once the impression was made, I packed it full of green stuff and et voilà, swimming crocodiles!  

After a little bit of trimming they were affixed to small pill like bases and then painted to match the others in the collection.  I also experimented with some water texture around the edges, but I am not entirely sure this has worked as well as I had hoped and might have proven more effective if I just painted the edges to represent water, which is exactly what I did with the hippos!

"What talk of river horse?" I hear you cry.  Well good reader it would appear that my shame of unpainted soldery has now exploded into the digiverse with the unfathomable need to purchase STL files for 3D printing.  Nothing new in this, but I don't even own a digital printer and yet I have amassed a vast assortment of files that would potentially see me print models from dinosaurs to Dooku all at the click of a button.    'The Dark Templar', a chap that has thoroughly embraced this hobby departure very kindly offered to print some hippopotami as a contribution to the game and so when the beasts arrived in the post, ahead of the big day, I was absolutely thrilled.  I am afraid, I can't tell you what resin was used or even the width of the layers, but I was instantly aware of just how light they were compared to the weight of a metal piece.  The fun, dynamic poses were just what I wanted and immediately set about them with some grey undercoat.  In fact the undercoat was so effective that I only had to pick out a few details and dry brush some scarring to their backs and they were done!  So with characters and menagerie finished, I just had one more piece to add - the swamp! 

Congo teams assembled

Just the briefest of posts from me this morning to detail the additional forces that were required to host the game of Congo last summer.  I have been trying to reign in the hobby expenditure of late, at least a tad, and so made a determined effort to use miniatures that had been left abandoned in the drawers of despair as a first port of call.  As part of the adventure was going to involve a rush back to the paddle steamer, I decided to have the a nautical theme for the Adventurers' Party and was fortunate to fall upon some wonderful 'Empress Miniatures' Naval Brigade troops that had even been prepped.  The rules allow options to field a group of soldiers, well trained men armed with rifles that can ignore stress tokens.  So for soldiers read sailors, similarly well trained and with hearts of oak, ably commanded by officers who, for this scenario, were designated as adventurers.  

The final two adventurer slots went to a certain rugged archaeologist and his somewhat taller leading lady.  Dr. Jones, who in this adventure is now Welsh and working for the British Museum, was originally bought from 'Studio Miniatures', but is still available at 'Hayland Terrain'.  Her ladyship, Beatrix, who hails from the Potteries is inexplicably drawn to gentlemen in blue jackets with silver buttons, particularly if their name was Peter, and is another 'Empress' sculpt. 

I already had a well established 'Forest Tribes' team from our previous encounters, but needed to move things around to gain parity across both teams.  This created a vacancy for some scouts and provided me with an opportunity to indulge in some rather fanciful war paint, inspired by the artwork in the rule book, on some 'Foundry' miniatures.  With the teams now assembled was little terrain and some extras, but here, dear reader, is where the mission creep set in.