HOTT The Purge

[Terry37]

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.

[mmcv]

I reckon this will be a very fun project. Looking forward to seeing it develop!

[Terry37]

Although the bad guys are going to be more fun to paint, I decided to start with one of the Hero elements of the survivors - Leo and the four people he helped to save. I was able to find near matching figures in my extra bag of modern civilians and zombies to make these guys from. Of course all but the figure for Leo require some conversion, and only one  will need some green stuff added (to make he girl with her plaid shirttail hanging out. I am closing on getting them ready to paint and it shouldn't be much to paint them so hope to have them done shortly.



More to follow,

Terry

[fsn]

Good gritty stuff! Enjoying this tremendously.

[Terry37]

Been plodding away on this project, and have finished converting, cleaning and sanding,  and have ready to prime the first hero element (Leo and company), and the Shooter element (Carmelo Jones and his resistance fighters) for the civilian/survivors army, and for the Purgers I've finished the conversions for the cheerleader and baseball player element, the clowns element, the 16th/17th century physicians and the biker on his hog with his biker honey added to the back. This completes most of the conversion work, as the rest will just be cleaning away molding seams and sanding. Then I'll glue everything to painting sticks, prime them and start the fun! 

More to follow,

Terry

[petercooman]

Have you thought about making a truck with a minigun sticking out the back for the governement forces ? Would be cool and straight from the movie!!! 

[Terry37]

Peter, I may do that actually, as I have decided to make my bad guys Purger army as a standard HOTT amry that I can use with a few additoinal elements. One will be he government troops being played as a Behemoth, and might use the truck or a portion of it as the Stronghold.

Terry

[Terry37]

Took a few pics of some of the Purge figures I've been working on. Most some form of conversion done to them. Sorry for the two blurry pictures, but they'll still give you an idea.


This first picture is of the Leon Barnes/Sergeant Hero element which required a lot of conversion work to achieve the dress the characters are depicted in.  As in the picture posted previously, they are from left to right – Leo, Cali, Eva, Liz and Dwayne. Only thing done to Leo was to add his black bag of weapons over his shoulder. Cali was holding a purse and wearing what looked like a sweater, so I removed the purse, added a pistol, made the sweater into her un-tucked in plaid shirt, and shortened her shoulder length hair. Eva, was also a bit involved. The figure came holding a pistol which I left, but she was also wearing a barn like coat, so I shortened it to have her wearing a zip up hoodie so added the hood in the back. Liz was made from a zombie holding a phone, which I removed, and have her wearing her black dress and leggings, light blue denim jacket. Her left arm was positioned so she would be holding on Dwayne's right arm, and I added a pistol. Dwayne was another fun conversion, converting his coat to a padded vest and adding a semi-automatic weapon. Each character did carry/use the weapons I have them holding, and I wanted them to all be holding weapons so they wouldn't be confused with being a Horde since this element has five figures.


This is the civilian/Shooter element and represents Carmelo Jones and his Purge Resistance fighters. The figure in the center is Carmelo, made from one of Rebel Minis Post Apocalyptic Raiders. I did a head swap adding a Peter Pig British tanker head wearing a beret, and added a clip to his weapon to make it look more like a semi-automatic. I still have to figure out how to add glasses, but have a thought that I am going to try. On the right is Dante Bishop who appeared as the same character in all of the first three movies. The figure on the left is a hooded resistance fighter who was unnamed in the movie, but is seen during the attack on the hunting party near the end – you get a glimpse of him as the resistance fighters advance with guns a-blazing.


This is one of my bad guy elements, or Purgers. I was going to call it the Cheerleaders, but instead of using three of the same cheerleader figure I made the third figure as a baseball player wearing the uniform of the Atlanta Braves. He was a chubby figure that I slimmed down, converted his trousers to baseball pants and socks and made his tee shirt into a baseball uniform top. Made the bat from a piece of a lance (which I always remove and add wire ones). My basic concept for this element was the "Candy Girl" in The Purge Election year.   Since the picture I have modified the hair on the cheerleaders, so one has two buns a la the "Candy Girl" and the other is wearing a blonde wig.


This was a fun conversion using one of Rebel Minis biker gang figures, which is unchanged. The girl on the back with the shotgun is also a Rebel Mini, removing the pack on her back and the base, then adjusting her legs to let her fit behind the guy on the bike.


Note much conversion work here. These are the Peter Pig 16th century physicians. I only got them so I could have another element with unique costumes. I did convert their staffs into weapons, and will probably give them a dark red robe with a darker red hat and a black mask and beak.

I have others near finished and will share an update after I get some painting done. Still proving to be a fun project.

Terry

[mmcv]

Looking excellent so far!

[Steve J]

Always really impressed with your conversions and the range of figures you use. Looking forward to more updates.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

I await the results with great anticipation, as you work is top.

[Techno]

Yep...Looking forward to seeing the results ! 

Cheers - Phil

[lowlylowlycook]

For a while I didn't click on this thread because people getting rid of armies isn't that interesting.   

However, this indeed is going places.

[Terry37]

Haven't gotten much done the past two days as we are dealing with a very sick bunny, and that has consumed us. But I am closing on on cleaning the remaining figures and I think all conversions are done so the remaining are just some arm and leg adjustments, filing and sanding and then glue them to painting sticks and priming. I am really enjoying doing the bad guys the most due to their costuming look!

I also need to finish up the last two elements for my Muscovite army so I can sculpt the bases and get it into action.

No other news for now, but more to follow,

Terry

[Techno]

Hope the bun gets better, really soon, Terry !

Cheers - Phil