Fanticide Revisited, Evil Bob's Figure Painting and Express service...

Throughout the craziness of my life, I added a move...

Fanticide the game was a collaboration between Rick Priestly, Alessio Cavatore, E. Skye Chaney and Ernest Baker. Now, long out of print and defunct, like a Creep it lurks in my collection waiting to leap out into the light and deliver a bite!!!

My teenage son, a former wargamer, stumbled across the Fanticide rule book in the process of moving. Surprisingly, he expressed an interest in playing a game. Imagine my shock and pleasure...

The game was written in 2012 and is a large skirmish game for battles between opposing homicidal warbands. It is very whimsical but also quite grim and does have some PG-13 elements. The system is a card driven sequence including random events. As it's card driven and not I-GO-U-GO, command & control choices for determining what units can move and act keep the players engaged throughout. A card is assigned to each unit, character and monster in the game and also includes random events which produce random outcomes like killer unicorns enraged by the ‘Rainbow’ Event. While not a mass battle game it is also not a skirmish game. The "typical" battle is 30 to 40 figures per side.

The universe is friendly to all miniatures and genres. There are very clear guidelines for building four of the Fanticide specific war bands with some guidance for use of any figures including SciFi and Historical collections. The four starting bands were the Liberi (Native American themed centaurs), The Fae (Faeries and Forest creatures), Creeps (a bizarre race of skin eating Cylops that run from the very small to the terrifying grotesque), and Flying Monkeys (think of Wizard of Oz with guns and dung bombs).

Is there a downside?

Although open to inclusion of any genre of figures, there is no large list of special abilities with balanced point costs. I am not a fan of points based games; but, some guidance would have been nice. You will have to make things up and balance them yourself to add something not covered. We plan to play it a bunch... in the mean time.  I do suspect to ultimately end up back playing the excellent go-to fantasy rules for me: Dragon Rampant for the large skirmishes; and, Song of Blades and Heroes for the smaller skirmishes.

Where to get the rules and figures?

Architects of War created the game under its Alien Dungeon line.  Unfortunately the company is no longer. I am told that many of the figures they used were made by other manufacturers like Eureka so you can still find them. Sadly, the pieces they made specifically for their game are gone. Evil Bob tells me purchaser of the liquidation  did not save all of the molds so some are now lost. Let's hope the the others may resurface some day. The figures and terrain were all sculpted by Mike Broadbent, Alan Marsh, Paul Clarke, and Ernest Baker

Here is a list of 28mm manufacturers that might provide some forces:

Brigade Games

Bronze Age Miniatures

D&D Miniatures

Eureka

Foundry Fantasy & Greek Mythology

Iron Wind

Iron Wind Kickstarter

Noble Knight Games

Northstar

Pathfinder Battles

Reaper Miniatures

Rebel Miniatures

Where to get the rules?

Amazon, MiniatureMarket.com and Noble Knight Games all have copies. At time of publishing, there were twelve or more copies available. Make sure you get the cards with the rules.

What does a force look like?

If you can't find the time to paint, then you can always hire from the list of painters I have used: Battledress Studios, Evil Bob, Glenbrook Games or Stan Johansen. All are excellent!

I have been sorting out the Fanticide collection from my unpainted and painter figures. I do not seem to be able to find the time to paint; thus, I asked Evil Bob to paint my Fae army. He agreed as an experiment to cycle it into his New and VERY popular Express service. You can see all of the pictures and read his post at his BLOG.

Enough typing...here are images of a recently completed Fae army and a few extras by Evil Bob for the game Fanticide:

Satyr Legend and Unicorn

The Satyr legend may appear at battle and are stronger, faster and quite a threat on the battlefields

The unicorn is NOT part of the Fae army and are a much feared, deadly and CARNIVOROUS random event which disrupt and otherwise ordered(?) battle.

Satyr Infantry & Satyr Master with club.

The most common types are shootists (missile troops) and stickers (spears). Additionally, a much tougher type (Female Thumper--which I do not yet have a unit of figures...yet) can be added if the army has Sprytes who are required to urge them to come forth from the forests and do battle.

A Spryte Swarm which can be used as swarms or to attach to units to provide magical defense. They do have a soul-searing scream which can cause insanity. Sometimes hidden in the swarm is a Spryte Master that have magic and are destined to become a May Queen or Faery.

Brownie Heroes on snails (heavy cavalry?!?) and Heroes on squirrels and Swarms can be a nasty force to overwhelm much larger opponents.

Forest Fathers and Bogies are large immensely strong tree spirits which can be infested with Sprytes to give them magic resistance.

Dryads which are not part of the Fae army, nor do they appear in the book. I will have to stat them up or possibly use them as a "counts-as" the very rare and tough female Satyr unit.

Fungal Herd is not actually part of the Fae army. They shoot spores and feast upon dead flesh. Only the Creeps are immune.

Lastly, the Iron Wind Kickstarter has plenty of figures usable in the Fanticide universe. and is closing soon...check it out.