Customised Claustrophobia

I waffled on about the Claustrophobia boardgame a few weeks ago, here.  Seeing as I have an affliction with regard to customising boardgames I inevitably did a little bit of that with my copy.

In my defence, the changes that I made to these were actually quite quick, easy and most importantly practical and useful.  In comparison with the usual purely cosmetic stuff (colouring in the edges of the board sections with a marker for example) these are functional rather than simply aesthetic changes.  Not that I didnt colour in the edges of the board and counter sections in my copy of Claustrophobia you understand, I did that too (of course).

Customised Claustrophobia Contingent

In an average game of Claustrophobia the human player will control either the majority or all of the figures shown above.  Some of the characters will also have “Object” cards assigned to them.

Six Objects feature in the Claustrophobia box: Blessed Hammer, Sceptre of Command, Blunderbuss (x2), Shield of Steel (x2).  Some of these can be carried only by select members of the force and only one character can end up with any of them (the Redeemer).

I found that I regularly forgot which of the almost identical Condemned Blade figures had the Blunderbuss or whatever during the game.  I decided to add magnetised Objects to the figures to function as a memory aid.  A cute, painted, magnetised memory aid.  Its a long time since I played with them as a kid but I still reckon that magnets are cool.

The Redeemer with his Sceptre of Command strapped to his back.

The Redeemer can carry any of the objects so the main concern was to ensure that all of the objects could be attached to this figure.  Although there isnt any visible strapping or anything, the objects can attach to his back, over his cloak.  This is of particular note when attaching his huuuge Blessed Hammer.

The Sceptre of Command ended up looking more like a Staff of Command in the end, mostly so that it was long enough to be attached to his back without looking too weird.  The staff is made from part of a Mordheim lantern with a ribbon and crescent moon thing from a High Elf sprue attached to the end to gussy it up a bit.

Condemned Blades with Blunderbusses

The Blunderbusses can be carried by either the Redeemer or the Condemned Blades.  Again, their isnt a visible piece of strapping or anything that could be holding the weapons on the Blades backs.  You will just have to use your imagination.  The Blunderbusses themselves come from the same Mordheim sprue that contributed the piece that became the Sceptre of Command.

The blonde Condemned Blade game card (courtesy of BoardGameGeek_

The Condemned Blade figures are distinguished by their hair colour only, even though the art on the fair haired Blades card depicts that character as wearing a blue scarf.  A quick lick of blue paint sorted that out.

Note that the figures from Claustrophobia are prepainted to a decent enough standard but mostly flat colour.  As a result I didnt go to town painting the Objects or the Blades scarf.  I didnt want those pieces to be highlighted or shaded or anything as then they would have looked a little odd in comparison with the figures themselves.

Condemned Brutes with Shield of Steel and Blessed Hammer.

Finally the Condemned Brutes.  These are my favorite figures in the set, which is full of cool figures anyway.  I like the leather butchers aprons, the lethal looking combination pick/hammer and the Hannibal Lecter bite mask.

The shields and hammer come from Terminator sprues.  The Maltese Cross look of the shields is very in keeping with the crusading feel of the game.

Claustrophobia

Claustrophobia is a dungeoncrawl boardgame that I bought last January.  I decided a few weeks ago that I like it a lot more than I initially thought that I did.

Claustrophobia

Although the theme is similar to any other game that concerns itself with monster bashing in confined spaces, the mechanics of Claustrophobia are a little different to games like Descent or Heroquest or Space Hulk and the like.

Obviously there are similarities, but movement in particular is abstracted quite a bit in comparison.  This abstraction isnt so much as to make the player feel removed from the action, but Claustrophobia isnt the Action Point management game that the other examples are.

I wont go into details further here but check Claustrophobia out on BoardGameGeek for a number of more detailed run downs of how it plays.

I played Claustrophobia a couple of times in the Spring and while I didnt hate it or anything, it didnt really set me alight for some reason.  I got a lot more fun from it the last session though.

Troglodytes swarm around, eating convicts and priests alive in an effort to protect hell from religious property developers.

I had long time gaming co-conspirator PB down for a weekend long geekfest recently and we had a few boozy games of Claustrophobia which were a hoot.

The game is supplied with pre-painted figures.  Using prepaints means that I dont get that sense of ownership that comes with hand painting my own stuff. On the other hand however it does mean that I dont have yet another unfinished project staring at me from a box on a shelf in the man-cave.

Demon top left, Troglodytes bottom right and humans spread alarmingly thinly in between.

Naturally I cant just leave it at that though.  In an effort to get the worst of both worlds I plan to add six magnetised weapon and equipment pieces to the human models, each of which represent specific equipment that can be used in the various scenarios.  I will post those up at a later date.

The bottom line is that Claustrophobia is a nice slant on the familiar dungeoncrawl theme.  I recommend it to fans of the genre.  It would likely work out well with some players who generally dont like dungeoncrawls too I reckon.