Who you gonna call?

Mantic is just one of many companies that have used Kickstarter to bring out games.  A very successful game funded by Kickstarter was Ghostbusters The Board Game by Crytptozoic.  It was just a little one, only doing a bit over a million and a half dollars with almost 8400 backers.

My son picked up a copy (neither of us did the kickstarter - and we are both kicking ourselves a little bit over that).  We gave it a try a bit ago, and it was a fun, and turned out pretty challenging game. We tried the slimer campaign, and did well until the last scenario, when we lost hard.  One bit of advice to anyone trying it - spend a little extra time on the earlier scenarios to level your ghostbusters ALL the way up.

We had a lot of fun, but my son mentioned that they might make a cool night stalker army - after all they were ghosts.  But since he didn't do the kickstarter he didn't have enough to make one.

Challenge accepted!  I looked at the game contents, and was able to come up with a 1000 pt Night Stalker army from the game.  I figure I can use this as a demo army until Mantic makes one.

I had actually done a bit of the playtesting for Night Stalkers.  I have to admit, I never actually won a playtest game with them.  Similar to Ratkin, the big monsters and heroes were so cool, but ground troops are more critical.  For smaller games this doesn't matter as much, and being limited to the contents of the game did mean I didn't have much to choose from.

The game comes with the following ghost miniatures from which I planned to make the army:

• 20 Galloping Ghouls
• 12 Gruesom Twosome
• 8 Boogaloo Manifestaion
• Idulnas
• Slimer
• Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man

So first off was a regiment of dopplegangers.  These creepies have the ability to use their opponents ME, AT and CS against them - great to run up against your opponents best unit.  The galloping ghouls seemed perfect, and the only figures I had enough of for a regiment.

Dopplegangers / Galloping Ghouls

It wasn't until I went to take pictures that I found out that the bases for all the figures were 25mm (I knew they were round).  While I am multibasing them (of course), I'll have to decide if I want to trim down the bases or simply go for MMC.

The plan for painting all of them is a wash for shading, then a light drybrush of white for highlight, and pick out some spot colors (eyes, teeth, etc).  Then for basing, all of the translucent figures are units with stealthy, so I want them to be in cloudlike environment - much like Dan Payne did with his Night Stalkers at the Gem City Massacre.

Dan Payne's Nightstalkers

Next was a troop of reapers, a good melee unit with CS(1).  These would be the Gruesome Twosome models

Reapers / Gruesome Twosome

Then the last models would be a horde of butchers - using the Boogaloo Manifestations.  These actually have LOTS of room on their bases, as Large Infantry uses 40mm.

Butchers / Boogaloo Manifestation

At this point I had three models left - so picked a hero - A horror would be good to surge the butchers, and give him Bane Chant(2) to help out as well.  The Idulnas figure would do nicely for this.

Horror / Idulnas

Of course, it wouldn't be ghostbusters without Slimer, would it?  Looking at the list, he seemed to fit the idea of a screamer - and having Lightning Bolt(5) for a little bit of ranged attack wouldn't hurt (I want every army to have some type of shooting).  Since he is height 2 (though still on a 50mm base as it is a monster) I may need to build up his base a little.

Slimer / Screamer

Then to top off the list, who else but the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man - who I though made an excellent Terror.  His regeneration 4+ would help as his DE was only 3+, but 15 attacks with 3+ ME and CS(1) would make him pretty nasty - and really fit the theme well.

This unit DOES NOT have stealthy, so it fits even better that it is solid and not translucent - and will have a solid basing as opposed to the 'cloudy' style for the rest.

Terror / Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man

So there is the entire 1000 pt army - Ghost Stalkers or Night Busters or something.  It should actually paint up extremely quickly (especially after what I've learned with my TWD:AoW minis).

Night Stalkers / Ghost Busters

And with the magic of time (ok, so I wrote up the first half of this post the week after Christmas, and the second half the middle of February, though it may not go up for a while) you can now see the finished army. (and yes, I have upgraded my background since I took the original pictures).

First up are the dopplegangers - made from galloping ghouls.  Once I got started, I decided to go ahead and do full regiments and trip the bases to fit - if I want to play the game I can play my son's copy.  The blue wash didn't go quite as well as I wanted, I should have probably used the translucent blue airbrush paint (that I used for my Walking Dead minis) for the wash instead.  However it is just a 'temporary' demo army until Mantic makes an official one, so I can live with it.  Yellow for the eyes, white for the teeth and red for the tongue, then a wide black line on the eye to finish it off.  The bases were all painted white, then cotton was added to give them a cloud effect.

regiment of Dopplegangers

The Gruesome Twosomes are a troop of reapers. I like how they are stacked - really giving double the models.  They would really end up looking awesome if there were a way to take a horde or legion of these.

troop of Reapers

The Boogaloo Manifestations actually have the smallest heads of the troops, so not much to really do on them.  Plus they were a bit small for the height 2 butchers - so I built up the individual bases before multibasing them.  Painted white and wrapped with cotton, and they are now closer to a proper height.

Horde of Butchers

I painted the spikes on Idulnas to make his stand out a bit more, as well as painting red whatever it is for/coming out of his mouth.  Still, he works as a Horror, which is a mage anyway.

Horror

Slimer was also a bit short - so I also added bases under his (warpath bases were perfect for this).  He actually needed more than the butchers (he has a stack of 6) to bring him up to their height since he is also height 2.

Screamer

The Stay-Puft Marshmallow man was pretty simple - paint the face and the outfit, leaving most of it the natural white it already was (as I did with the other models).

Terror

And the final "money shot" of the whole painted army.

1000 pts of NightStalkers

Will it play well?  I don't know.  But I like it, I had fun making it, and it should be fun to put out there.  So who knows where you next army idea might come from.

Because it is all fun and games . . .