Last Saturday, twelve of us got together for a day of Pulp Alley gaming at Geek Retreat, Harrogate. It was the first time that we had put on a Pulp Alley gaming day. I think that everyone had a lot of fun!

Six different scenarios were available to be played, on very different gaming boards. The scenarios came from a number of different sources, the Pulp Alley Scenario Book, Perilous Island Campaign, Vice Alley Campaign and a special scenario ‘Lair of the Worm‘ that Dave kindly wrote to go with our Viking release, that can be downloaded here!

This is ‘The Raid’ from Vice Alley. In this scenario one side is the defender and has control of all the plot points and the other side is the attacker who needs to take them off you. I played this with my ‘Dr Who’ league as the defenders which was just about the worse league ever you could use as The Dr has the harmless trait, so can not shoot or brawl… but is very good at solving puzzles… an ability he did not need in this scenario!

The Venice board was used to play ‘At Deaths Door’ from Perilous Island.

The canals could be crossed by bridges, or there was some floating debris and Gondolas that could be jumped between… extremely perilous, of course.

The game mats being used for the Chicago, Venice & Swamp tables are from Sally 4th’s Game Mat range and they are designed to join together to form a continuous gaming area when needed!

Mike is seen here fielding his British Naval Intelligence league against Glen’s Lucky Dundee league.

The Swamp table was used to play ‘Lair of the Worm’. This is a semi co-operative scenario using the horror rules.

Eddie & Ben contemplate there next moves. In this scenario, each league fields two characters, typically leader & sidekick. Any isolated character (6″ away from any other characters) triggers a scenario event when they activate. This could be a horror check inducing ‘inhuman scream’, the discovery of a grizzly clue or if you are really unlucky the big monster appearing behind you!

I played this scenario with my Dr Who league.

The Dr wandered off by himself and the monster appeared. I’m not sure what the Dr said to it…

… but latter in the game it appeared that the monster had possessed the Dr and the Dr transformed into the monster and attacked his comrades.

Keith kindly brought his English Village board for us to play on which included some beautiful scratch built buildings. The Four Faces of Dr Fang scenario was played on this table, which is one of my favourite scenarios.

At the stat of the game, leagues are searching for clues to some vicious murders that have taken place in the village.

Care needs to be taken as the leagues themselves are under suspicion.

A dilapidated plantation house, surrounded by creepy trees was the setting for Escape from Ormuz scenario.

The final scenario was ‘Crossroads Showdown’ This is another great scenario from the ‘Scenario Book’, and a great example of the versatility and the variety of different scenarios that can be played with Pulp Alley. This was a straight shoot out with no plot points at all. Victory points were awarded to the league in control of the central terrain objective at the end of each turn.

Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves and are looking forward to the next Pulp Alley gaming day, hopefully in February, however if we get a chance we will meet up for some gaming before then.