Hellboy Miniature Game

The school year is back in full swing, and seeing as my day job is teaching, that leaves me with very little time or mental capacity for the physical aspects of my hobbies. Not to say that I don't engage in any hobby-related stuff anymore, but the projects I do take on tend to be more portable, and ones I can pick up and put down at a moment's notice. It's difficult to find the time of day to sculpt or paint, as those require sitting down with materials that have a fixed point where they become unusable and blocking out a chunk of time to work with them (though I have had some painting inspiration lately and plan to pick up some more primer and dive in as soon as my school routine settles).

Writing, on the other hand, is easy to find time for. I can do a bit here and there between classes, on breaks, and in the afternoon and evening, and while ideas might get fuzzy if I wait too long without getting them down, writing projects themselves aren't at risk of drying out in the same way as paint or green stuff (literally speaking, at least; metaphorically, it's another matter).

All that to say, I've been writing.

I've been writing some rules for a Hellboy miniature game. Not an entire ruleset, of course; I know better than to take that on right now. I'm basing it off of Knight Models's Batman Miniature Game, because I felt it was a good thematic fit more than anything else: the principal hero, the cast of extraordinary characters, the adventures that range from grim and gritty to wild and unpredictable. I've never played BMG, mind you, I just think it's cool, and all the rules were available online. I've watched it played plenty on Guerrilla Miniature Games, but I wouldn't say I have a practical understanding of it by any stretch. Reputation Points and Funding, for example, elude me: while I understand in theory how a crew is put together based on these values, I have no idea how the developers came to the point and dollar values they did. To a certain extent, it doesn't matter to me; I can just label it a "narrative wargame" and leave it at that, but it would be interesting to really balance it out.

I'm rambling a bit though. The idea itself came from Mantic Games's excellent Hellboy: The Board Game, which I'm unashamed to say I went all-in for on Kickstarter. Hellboy and its derivative series have to be my favourite comics out there, and while I enjoy the board game itself quite a bit, as soon as I saw the miniatures, the wargamer in me thought they would be great for a skirmish. I wasn't able to dig up any rules for an existing Hellboy miniature game, but I believe in the philosophy that if something you want doesn't exist, you should make it for yourself. So I did. Sort of.

To date, I've created cards for a Hellboy Miniature Game (HMG, I suppose), almost exclusively using rules that already exist in Knight Models's BMG, to represent everything from the core Kickstarter box. I've written up a few traits and rules of my own on the way, but for the most part I've found BMG to be extremely versatile and well-suited to the task. The art is all drawn from the comics, and for the cards themselves I used an interesting HTML template from another blog, SoulSamurai, which I stumbled across as I looked for relatively easy ways to mock-up my custom cards. The template works well, and looks crisp and clean. I haven't mastered working with it yet, but I'll keep practicing to streamline creation for when the expansions arrive.

I've interspersed some of the cards with this post, but here's the link to a dropbox file with all of them so far. They're in as final of a form as I feel capable of making right now, and should be adequate for narrative play. Each card has a placeholder Reputation value, but without a strong sense of how the developers balanced their cards, and lacking the time right now to work it out for myself, I'm leaving them as they are and saving the balancing act for a rainy day. I've deliberately focused on content from the board game, as my main goal is to have all of those miniatures be playable, but profiles for characters from the comics who don't yet exist in the game are already cooking in the back of my mind.

For now, it's just the cards, but I'm working on improving my understanding of BMG to inform my writing for HMG. The main major component I want to tackle next is team composition, but signature spells for magic-using characters are on my radar too. The different crews I have in mind are as follows:

B.P.R.D. (Who use the BMG Team rules, with some distinct special rules for a B.P.R.D. Field Team)

Ogdru Cult (Who use the BMG Cult rules, again with their own flavour)

Nazis (Who use standard Crew building rules)

Witches (Who use unique rules for building what I'm calling a Coven, a magic-focused Crew composition)

Baba Yaga's Realm (Standard Crew)

I also anticipate having Vampire and Fey Crews once I've picked through the expansions, possibly more down the line.

As always, if you have an opinion, let me know what you think, and hopefully someone gets some enjoyment out of this besides just me.

(For good measure, here's the Dropbox link again in case you missed it.)