Happy Simian Saturday!

 Happy Simian Saturday Everyone!

Just some AI generated Lego Fun for your Saturday morning!

Planet of the Apes RPG Kickstarter (Minis and More)

 Apologies,

Due to work and family I'm behind on this Planet of the Apes RPG update.

The Kickstarter is Underway!!!!

Please note I am not affiliated with this project just a PotA fan. 

Also go check out my friend's blog RPG Overviews for a great  Ape RPG info video.

Have a great Simian Saturday, hope you get some gaming in, hang out with friends and family and be kind to each other! 

-B.B. 

The Official Planet of the Apes RPG Primer

 

No, it isn't Simian Saturday, BUT I didn't want to wait till Saturday to post about this.

Check out The Planet of the Apes RPG Primer over HERE

Good to see some D6 system options, and with Apes no less and classic POTA for the win!!! 

Gotta run! Watch out for those Gorilla Soldiers!  

Planet of the Apes RPG (a bit more info...)

 I mentioned yesterday about the upcoming Planet of the Apes RPG, I have a bit more information today.

"The game will use the Magnetic Variant system which is a variation of the D6 System created by West End Games for their licensed RPGs Ghostbusters and Star Wars in the 1980s."

It will have resin miniatures.  Here's some new pictures...

I'll be watching this one very closely.  I still have my copy of Apes Victorious, but this could be interesting.  Stay Tuned!

Simian Saturday: The Planet of the Apes RPG!!

 Hot off the press here is a big announcement just in time for Simian Saturday!

From Bleeding Cool News there will be a Planet of the Apes RPG! Including miniatures!  I'm not sure what scale, I hope 28mm but 32+ seems to be the new thing. No release date, but I'm excited to see classic Planet of the Apes getting some attention! 

Hope you all have a very Happy Simian Saturday!!

Simian Santa

 

For those who celebrate it, I wish you all a Merry Christmas! May God Bless you and your friends and family. Peace on Earth Good Will to Men.

Simian Samurai

 Happy Simian Saturday,

Hope you all are well. I've been quite sick of late. Negative for Covid but been rough.  Anyways, here is a bit of AI generated art for your Simian Saturday. 

Happy Simian Saturday

 Haven't done a Simian Saturday in ages, so to make up for that, I thought I would post some A.I. generated images I worked up recently for your enjoyment!

Need Lego to actually do these for real, I'm a sucker for Lego Minifigs!  Have a great Simian Saturday!! 

Carnage of the Apes!

I had a appointment today that took me near a comic shop I used to frequent.  I used to really get into comics "back in the day", but for various reasons (cost being one) I haven't bought much in the way of comics in quite some time.  Anyway, I had a few extra minutes so went into the comic shop.  I spotted the below issue on the shelf and got excited.

Unfortunately, the Apes were just on the cover and had nothing to do with the content.  I think this was a missed opportunity.  Apparently Marvel has the Planet of the Apes license again and are doing variant Ape related covers on their main comic lines to promote it.  Personally, I think it would be really cool to have Carnage "zapped" through a portal and end up in The Forbidden Zone!  Imagine the Cat (er I mean Carnage) and Mouse games of him hunting down Soldier Apes in the ruins! Would make for a fun and entertaining one shot story-line.  Maybe could adapt this to an Apes Victorious or Mutant Future game. Personally I love pulling in stuff from all kinds of sources for my games, that's one of the things I especially love about the OSR, you can really mix and match, tweak and adapt all kinds of things to make the sort of campaign you and your group really want.

Happy Simian Saturday!

 Haven't posted much lately, to be honest other than some occasional Instagram gaming posts, I've pretty much quit Social Media, News Media, I never had a Twitter account, and I deleted Facebook years ago etc... anyway, hope everyone is doing well.   We have a game tonite.  Should be fun, maybe I'll used my special D20 gifted to me by my wife...  

"Dismembered by Yeti!" now that's a solid roll!!!

Happy Simian Saturday, and for the curious, yes those are a couple of old toys from my childhood, seems I've been a fan of Apes since I was a little tyke. The Yeti is from classic (bearded) G. I. Joe, the gorilla may be as well or a Big Jim set, don't remember. 

The Monkey Militia

      It's been awhile, but long time followers of my blog will know that I am an AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego).  In particular I love the minifigs. Pictured above is the results of a rather long term project of picking up any of the Lego Chima Gorilla minifigures that I could find, while outfitting them with appropriate weapons and gear. Combat knives, Assault Rifles and Tactical Vests.  Not sure about the leader with the Katana and Owl, but we shall see.  Anyways, I present to you The Monkey Militia.  I should have waited till Saturday to post this, for a Simian Saturday post, but here it is early.  I'm hoping to work these into some Skirmish gaming soon. Maybe as a rival gang for Five Parsecs from Home, Space Weirdos, or something else?  Do any of you use lego Minifigs for your tabletop games? 

Hyperborean Great Ape for Simian Saturday

 Love that art!

I don't remember the 70's  Movie King Kong fight versus the giant snake looking this cool!

So this image got me to thinking about Hyperborea (AS&SH).  I went to my newly arrived Hyperborea Referee's Manual PDF for the latest edition of AS&SH and while the Bestiary does have a variety of apes, there aren't specific stats for a Giant Ape.  I remembered an old module from back in the day, Isle of the Ape.  But in looking at it that's an 18th level adventure. Yikes!  I've been gaming since '79 and have never DM'd or played in a game of that high of a level.  I don't want to recreate King Kong for my Hyperborea Campaign (just yet...), Kaiju is neat, but not what I'm looking for here... I'm thinking an ape of something more in line with the size of Classic Mighty Joe Young. Big, but not kaiju sized...

Which took me back to the awesome Hyperborea Referee's Manual.  Like I did with my recent write-up of the Pincer Tiger vs Crimson Maned Wolf why recreate the wheel when I can tweak and adapt what is already there.  So Hyperborea has the Mountain Ape, which is basically a reskinned ogre... they are up to 10' tall and can weigh 1000 pounds...ok now we are talking that is more the size range I am looking for... So adjusted the stats and a few other things, bring in the keen senses of the other Apes in the bestiary and voila...not perfect but gameable.

Hyperborean Great Ape

These rare, massive apes, resemble large gorillas, however, they are much larger and generally more intelligent than normal apes. Standing around 10' tall and weighing up to 1000 lbs.  They tend to be solitary, legend says in ages past Hyperboreans hunted the great beasts for sport, leading to their near extinction.  Some can still be found in lonely isolated lands and islands. They avoid civilized lands and humans, having a dim racial memory associating the smaller humans with danger and death.  Hyperborean Great Apes are generally not savage and chaotic creatures, there have been reports of them coming to the aid of injured or weaker creatures (although this tends to not be believed).  They are said to have shown an interest in human females, although the veracity of these tales is uncertain. 

Hyperborean Great Ape

#E 1 | AL N (a few NG) | SZ L | MV 40 DX 11 | AC 6 | HD 7 | #A  2/1 (pummel or hurled attack) D 1d10+3 (pummel) | SV 15 ML 10 | XP 200 | TC C| Special: Hurl Stone: Hurl a large stone or massive tree branch to a range of 60' for 1d10+3 hp damage. Acute senses: Chance to be surprised reduced by 1-in-6.

Happy Simian Saturday! 

Oh and the Hyperborea Referee's manual has perfect stats for the Giant Pythons! So the work there has already been done.

Operation Bigfoot Rescue!

 Happy Simian Saturday!

Today my buddy Patrick and I were able to meet up at the local hobby shop, first time we have been able to get together for gaming since the pandemic started. Masks were worn and proper social distancing occurred.

Prior to the Pandemic we had been regularly playing Zona Alfa.

 After 6+ months, I had about forgotten how to play, fortunately the rules are easy enough that we jumped back into it. I enjoy gaming with Patrick, he isn't a rules lawyer and neither am I, we are able to just go with what is fun and enjoy ourselves. I'm sure we did multiple things wrong, but we had a blast! I think it was one of our best games so far with Zona Alfa.

We randomly rolled up the mission from the tables in the book and then inserted our own spin on things.

Two teams were sent in to Retrieve/Rescue a rare Cryptozoological Speciman- Bigfoot! From the Zone.

Bigfoot had been located apparently trapped in the upper stories of a ruined building in the heart of a Yellow Zone, to make matters worse a Rad Storm was going to hit the place hard in 5 turns. So we only had 4 turns to get in, grab Bigfoot and get out!

My team was my squad of Sovietski Simians, led by the veteran chimp Nikolai! Their training runs into the outer zones had prepared them for this mission. Patrick had a group of Mercenaries, with some rookie rednecks tagged on for extra cannon fodder...er I mean support.

The Mercenaries move out into the Zone, a hot spot is nearby.

The target, Bigfoot, is deep in the heart of the Zone, who knows what dangers lurk within the ruins and rubble.

The Simians move out, they are determined to get to Bigfoot before the humans, Apes are superior to humans after all. 

The Mercenaries quickly run into trouble as a pack of vicious ghouls rush out of a deep crevasse.

Melee combat is brutal, the ghouls nasty claws and bite attacks wound several of the humans who valiantly attempt to fight off the ghouls with their mag pistols!

The simians move into the ruins heading carefully towards their objective, on the way the encounter a pack of feral dogs and obliterate the mangy hounds easily with their assault rifles. 

While the Mercenaries fight hand to hand with the ghouls, the simians reach the base of the ruined building, their objective is three stories above them. Another pack of feral dogs lurking in the ground floor of the structure is dispatched with the simians taking no injuries. The mercenaries, however, are getting badly bloodied by the ghouls.

The simians reach the objective, while the mercs, though badly hurt defeat the ghouls. Sergei one of the Hardened Chimps makes his way to Bigfoot, only to trigger an ANOMALY! The weird alien energies are apparently what was keeping Bigfoot trapped in the building. Sergei attempts to make a will save and FAILS!! His mind is melted by the alien energies and he dies!! At the same time the mercs searching the ruins near where the now dead ghouls emerged also trigger an ANOMALY! The Veteran Leader of the crew, fails his will save and dies from the alien energies erupting from the anomaly.  A rookie braves the energies, makes his save and scores 5,500 worth of loot and gains a permanent +1 bonus to his wisdom!!  The next turn (turn 4) remember the Rad Storm hits soon! The Hardened Chimp Brekov braves the anomaly, makes his save and pulls Bigfoot from the ruin, also finding 5000 in loot and gains a bonus to his armor.  Brekov, moves his max with Bigfoot, and hands off the creature to Nikolai the veteran leader of the team, who uses his enhanced move ability to race off the board with Bigfoot before the Rad Storm hits!!! 

All in all a great game! Please keep in mind we played fast and loose with the rules. Zona Alfa actually doesn't have bigfoot or simians! But why let that stop you! 

Hope everyone is safe and well. 

Good Gaming! -B.B.

Zona Alfa Simian Saturday Special Edition!!

Today I got to combine several of my favorite things into one great big concoction of awesome!
I recently picked up the tabletop skirmish game Zona Alfa.

A very cool, rules lite tabletop skirmish game. Set in the Exclusion Zone!  Imagine something along the lines of the Stalker video game and you are close!
So Post Apocalyptic = Check!, 28mm minis = Check!, Soviet Era weapons and gear = Check!
Next I decided to toss in another element that I am a huge fan of! That is where the SIMIAN part comes in!! While Simians aren't an official part of Zona Alfa, you can use whatever minis you think fit your game. So, I decided for my crew to be 28mm Soviet Simians! That's right I have a crew of AK-47 toting apes!
Here is the crew's veteran leader Nikolai on the edge of the Exclusion Zone getting his marching orders from an Elder Communist Party Orangutan.

Orders received, Nikolai gathers his crew and prepares to head into the Exclusion Zone! This will be a "light" mission, recover some data from a cargo crate hastily dropped from a transport aircraft. Near the edge of the Exclusion Zone...should be a piece of cake right?

So far so good...

This will be a test of the Soviet Simians abilities, as such they will be collaborating with another crew, a group of Russian Special Forces, an all female unit of experienced Zone Veterans.

Packs of vicious feral dogs are scattered in the mission operation area.

 Zombies surround the mission objective!

 

The zombies are quickly dispatched, as are most of the feral dogs, however, the veteran crew leader is injured! 

Thanks to the gun skills of the simians and Nikolai's leadership skills, the simians are able to assist the Russians into recovering the data.

However, upon withdrawing from the area, in a nearby ruin an Anomaly is triggered!! This could be bad!!

Two Simians are fried by the anomaly!! This is bad!!

Success! Usurov braves the energies of the anomaly, in spite of his two other ape comrades now "Out of Action" he finds a wealth of loot and the endeavor improves his Will to continue braving the dangers of the Exclusion Zone!
The collaboration between the veteran Russian Crew and the Soviet Simians proves successful, and good bit of loot is acquired and in spite of the two injured apes, the mission is considered a success!

 New tech and gear in hand, Nikolai is debriefed, and the intelligence gathered from this mission into the Exclusion Zone has provided leads for other opportunities. The collaboration with the Russian ladies, was helpful...but can the humans be trusted?? and more importantly should they be trusted?...only time will tell..

Space Apes!

Work has kept me busy of late, had to pause our SWN Campaign, and I missed Simian Saturday...but wanted to share this link. If you are looking for more 28mm Simians for your games this kickstarter is still currently underway. Hope everyone is having a great weekend/Mother's Day!

More Simian Minis for your games!

I know it is Sunday and not Simian Saturday..oops. But these look too cool to not post about.  Lucid Eye just posted about these soon to be released simians : The Curse of The Red Simians expansion for Savage Core!
I'm always on the hunt to add more apes to my miniature collection and these look great!  

Simian Saturday

Hope everyone had a nice first week of 2019.  I came across this awesome piece of art by Vincent Laik. Gotta love Space Apes!  Have a great Simian Saturday.

Simian Saturday

carl lundgren - invasion of the apes, probable science fiction cover, 1972