Post by terry37 on Apr 29, 2019 22:08:25 GMT
HOTT The Purge
I must admit I am a fan of both The Purge movies and The Purge TV series, but fully accept that the concept is truly heinous, and unfathomable. Besides, the concept is to reduce crime and reduce government spending. Truth be told, such a concept would have the reverse effects on both of those. Bad guys will bad guys year-round, not just for one 12-hour period, and those who never have, but think they might find delight or vengeance in killing someone would truly suffer serious PTSD. As far as saving money, the clean up after such a 12-hour period of rampant atrocities would far exceed any expense they think they might save. So, with this disclaimer let’s proceed.
The appeal to me is not the killing, but the opportunity to paint up some really fun and unique figures due to the “Halloween” aspect of the event. Of course, this would only apply to the “Purgers” and not the civilians just trying to survive. If you seen any of the movies or the TV series you will understand what I mean. And why HOTT, when a skirmish type game might be a more adaptable approach – for me it’s simple, I love HOTT and that is primarily what I play. For those who enjoy a skirmish game it could be easily adapted, but I’m not familiar enough with skirmish type rules to recommend any.
Basically, to do The Purge with HOTT I feel a few changes need to be made to make it work more to the theme. The first change will be the layout or battlefield. My approach is that the entire board area is a park, think Central Park in New York as an example. Within the park you can have wooded areas, creeks running through it with bridges, walkways (roads), hills, areas of bad going or other such terrain features that might be appropriate to a park setting. Then around the perimeter buildings with doors indicated. The buildings can be represented by flat pieces of cardboard laid along the board edge and marked off with doors at various locations. This is a cheap easy way to represent them because they don’t really play in the game except as will be described later. So, this is not really a variance from the normal game of HOTT, with the exception of the buildings lining the boarder. I will say that another option could be to inset some buildings say on one board edge so you could have alleys, but I wouldn’t make them too deep.
Now, as for the elements. Only a few seem reasonable to keep to the theme, but even then, I see it necessary to alter the number of figures on the element, again to capture the theme. I think the best element types would be Warband, Shooters, Beasts and Riders for the Purgers, but also maybe a Behemoth or Blade for the government forces who take part, and maybe a Flyer if you wanted to add a government helicopter. For the civilians I see heroes (probably limited to no more than two), maybe a Shooter or two, and numerous Hordes. Now that we’ve identified the element types, I see the suggested number of troops per element be completely ignored. For example, you may have one or two guys or gals on a base of Shooters or Warband, and as another say two or three civilians on a Horde element. In other words, make it like the movies, with a few folks doing bad or trying to survive. They would however, still be based on the standard base sizes for their element type in the rules, and would play exactly as the rules define.
Let’s talk about figures next. I game in 15 MM and have had no trouble coming up with lots of figures to choose from for both sides. There are enough civilian figures to easily do the survivors and a few armed survivors or appropriately armed guys for Heroes. Just as a side note on the subject of Heroes, I plan on two. The first will be Leo Barnes with the five survivors he tried to save, but my other will be my favorite characters from The Walking Dead - Michonne, Daryl, Carol and Judith.
For the Purgers you really have to have no boundaries and have fun. I currently have planned some clowns, some cheerleaders, some basic thugs and gangers, and some guys using modified 17th century plague physicians using the figures from Peter Pig’s ECW range. Most of the figures for here are coming from various zombie figures and just need a weapon of some sort added. I like the Rebel Minis figures best for this as he offers a really good selection, but also am using other makers zombie figures. The main thing when doing these bad guys is to think of some sort of costume or at least a mask or scary face paint.
OK, so now we’ve covered the set up and the figures what would a typical army be. I am thinking as a first blush to have 16-point armies which keeps the park from being too crowded. The basic list being:
Survivors
2 x Hero @ 4 AP 8 pts
4 x Horde @ 1 AP 4 pts
2 x Shooters @ 2 AP 4 pts
Options would be more Hordes and less Shooters.
Purgers
4 x Warband @ 2 AP 8 Pts
2 x Shooter @ 2 AP 4 pts
1 x Rider @ 2 AP 2 pts
1 x Beast @ 2 AP 2 pts
Options can be any of the elements listed above.
No Stronghold for either side.
OK, why no Stronghold? Because the objective is to get the survivors to a Safe House, and the Purgers try to destroy the Survivors before they can get there. Yeah, seems easy enough doesn’t it! Weeeell, not exactly, because before you deploy troops a set of random markers or cards are placed under each building face down. Only one of the markers says “Door Unlocked” all of the others say Door Locked” This means the survivors have to find the one door that is unlocked and get as many as possible in that building.
Standard set up is used with the survivors always being the Defenders. The game winner is determined by the following. The survivors win if they can get more than eight points to the safe house. The Purgers win if they destroy eight or more of the survivors. One point to clarify. The survivors must stop at a door into a building and may enter on their next move. This represents them trying the door to see if it is locked. Only the survivors may see the marker stating if the door is locked or unlocked.
I am now in the process of cleaning and starting to paint up the figures and hope to be giving it a go soon. In the meantime, I welcome any and all questions, suggestions, or knock-offs.
Terry
I must admit I am a fan of both The Purge movies and The Purge TV series, but fully accept that the concept is truly heinous, and unfathomable. Besides, the concept is to reduce crime and reduce government spending. Truth be told, such a concept would have the reverse effects on both of those. Bad guys will bad guys year-round, not just for one 12-hour period, and those who never have, but think they might find delight or vengeance in killing someone would truly suffer serious PTSD. As far as saving money, the clean up after such a 12-hour period of rampant atrocities would far exceed any expense they think they might save. So, with this disclaimer let’s proceed.
The appeal to me is not the killing, but the opportunity to paint up some really fun and unique figures due to the “Halloween” aspect of the event. Of course, this would only apply to the “Purgers” and not the civilians just trying to survive. If you seen any of the movies or the TV series you will understand what I mean. And why HOTT, when a skirmish type game might be a more adaptable approach – for me it’s simple, I love HOTT and that is primarily what I play. For those who enjoy a skirmish game it could be easily adapted, but I’m not familiar enough with skirmish type rules to recommend any.
Basically, to do The Purge with HOTT I feel a few changes need to be made to make it work more to the theme. The first change will be the layout or battlefield. My approach is that the entire board area is a park, think Central Park in New York as an example. Within the park you can have wooded areas, creeks running through it with bridges, walkways (roads), hills, areas of bad going or other such terrain features that might be appropriate to a park setting. Then around the perimeter buildings with doors indicated. The buildings can be represented by flat pieces of cardboard laid along the board edge and marked off with doors at various locations. This is a cheap easy way to represent them because they don’t really play in the game except as will be described later. So, this is not really a variance from the normal game of HOTT, with the exception of the buildings lining the boarder. I will say that another option could be to inset some buildings say on one board edge so you could have alleys, but I wouldn’t make them too deep.
Now, as for the elements. Only a few seem reasonable to keep to the theme, but even then, I see it necessary to alter the number of figures on the element, again to capture the theme. I think the best element types would be Warband, Shooters, Beasts and Riders for the Purgers, but also maybe a Behemoth or Blade for the government forces who take part, and maybe a Flyer if you wanted to add a government helicopter. For the civilians I see heroes (probably limited to no more than two), maybe a Shooter or two, and numerous Hordes. Now that we’ve identified the element types, I see the suggested number of troops per element be completely ignored. For example, you may have one or two guys or gals on a base of Shooters or Warband, and as another say two or three civilians on a Horde element. In other words, make it like the movies, with a few folks doing bad or trying to survive. They would however, still be based on the standard base sizes for their element type in the rules, and would play exactly as the rules define.
Let’s talk about figures next. I game in 15 MM and have had no trouble coming up with lots of figures to choose from for both sides. There are enough civilian figures to easily do the survivors and a few armed survivors or appropriately armed guys for Heroes. Just as a side note on the subject of Heroes, I plan on two. The first will be Leo Barnes with the five survivors he tried to save, but my other will be my favorite characters from The Walking Dead - Michonne, Daryl, Carol and Judith.
For the Purgers you really have to have no boundaries and have fun. I currently have planned some clowns, some cheerleaders, some basic thugs and gangers, and some guys using modified 17th century plague physicians using the figures from Peter Pig’s ECW range. Most of the figures for here are coming from various zombie figures and just need a weapon of some sort added. I like the Rebel Minis figures best for this as he offers a really good selection, but also am using other makers zombie figures. The main thing when doing these bad guys is to think of some sort of costume or at least a mask or scary face paint.
OK, so now we’ve covered the set up and the figures what would a typical army be. I am thinking as a first blush to have 16-point armies which keeps the park from being too crowded. The basic list being:
Survivors
2 x Hero @ 4 AP 8 pts
4 x Horde @ 1 AP 4 pts
2 x Shooters @ 2 AP 4 pts
Options would be more Hordes and less Shooters.
Purgers
4 x Warband @ 2 AP 8 Pts
2 x Shooter @ 2 AP 4 pts
1 x Rider @ 2 AP 2 pts
1 x Beast @ 2 AP 2 pts
Options can be any of the elements listed above.
No Stronghold for either side.
OK, why no Stronghold? Because the objective is to get the survivors to a Safe House, and the Purgers try to destroy the Survivors before they can get there. Yeah, seems easy enough doesn’t it! Weeeell, not exactly, because before you deploy troops a set of random markers or cards are placed under each building face down. Only one of the markers says “Door Unlocked” all of the others say Door Locked” This means the survivors have to find the one door that is unlocked and get as many as possible in that building.
Standard set up is used with the survivors always being the Defenders. The game winner is determined by the following. The survivors win if they can get more than eight points to the safe house. The Purgers win if they destroy eight or more of the survivors. One point to clarify. The survivors must stop at a door into a building and may enter on their next move. This represents them trying the door to see if it is locked. Only the survivors may see the marker stating if the door is locked or unlocked.
I am now in the process of cleaning and starting to paint up the figures and hope to be giving it a go soon. In the meantime, I welcome any and all questions, suggestions, or knock-offs.
Terry
