Archive for the ‘ a fistful of kung fu ’ Category

A Fistful Of Kung Fu for Origins

Each year the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design (AAGAD), presents the Origins Awards at the Origins Game Fair in June. The purpose of the Origins Awards is to reward excellence in game design. The Top 5 products in each category, as determined by the Academy Jury, are announced after the GAMA Trade Show in March. The Top 5 nominees are voted on by all members of the Academy. The Academy vote determines the winner of the Origins Award. The Top 5 products are also voted on by attendees of the Origins Game Fair for a chance to win the Fan Favorite award in each category. The winners are announced at the Origins Awards ceremony during Origins in June.

Do you know what and who is nominated in the category of:
Best Miniature Figure Rules?

□ Battletech: Alpha Strike Companion, edited by Catalyst Game Labs, designed by Ray Arrastia & Herbert A. Beas II

A Fistful of Kung Fu, edited by Osprey Publishing, designed by Andrea Sfiligoi

□ Golem Arcana, edited by Harebrained Schemes, designed by Jordan Weisman, Mike Mulvihill & Brian Poel

□ Marvel HeroClix: Guardians of the Galaxy Starter Set, edited by WizKids Games, designed by WizKids Games

□ Warhammer 40000, edited by Games Workshop, designed by Games Workshop Design Studio

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I want to add more 28mm Chinese miniatures after the past proposal for adequate pieces to play with A Fistful of Kung Fu, published by Osprey this February. Around there are some beautiful minis that maybe you don’t know. Let’s start with NorthStar again. For their In His Majesty Name, always by Osprey, a tong is ready to be adapted to our game.

In the world of pulp fiction some exotic stories are setted in the far Orient. Pulp Figures produce YangZee Gangs, with henchmen, masters of evil and city life.



A range by Hasslefree Miniatures is dedicated to Chinese and Japanese martial arts, ancient and contemporary, with some incursions in fantasy. Who needs a gun when his fists and kicks are weapons?


More traditional are these Chinese pirates by Eureka Miniatures, useful to add hordes of yelling warriors to your wargaming table.



A good source for Chinese miniatures is the Boxer Rebellion. Traditional, exotic and pseudo-military dresses, and the use of guns, swords and lances are ideal to create particular armies. These are part of the Redoubt Enterprises range.


If you want bags of figures of the Boxer Rebellion can buy tons of lead by Old Glory Miniatures UK.

So you have the rules and you can have even a large choice for your miniatures. The only thing to do is to buy what you need and start to play.

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A Fistful of Kung Fu is out!

A Fistful of Kung Fu brings the hyper-kinetic, bullet-spraying, demon-slaying, kung-fu-fighting action of Hong Kong movies and Asian cinema to the wargames tabletop. In a modern world walking a precarious line between the advances of next-generation technology and the tradition and mysticism of ancient cultures, Kung Fu schools face off in no-holds-barred tournaments, corporations hire agents and spies to steal each other’s secrets, overworked SWAT teams respond to gunfights between feuding Triad and Yakuza clans, and ancient artefacts are sought by hopping vampires, demon sorcerers and cyborgs alike. Combining the gunfights of John Woo’s Hard Boiled, the hand-to-hand combat of Enter the Dragon, the sheer mystical weirdness of Big Trouble in Little China, the wuxia action of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and everything in-between, A Fistful of Kung Fu is a skirmish wargame unlike any other.
Available by Osprey publishing in paper and digital format.

To play with adequate miniatures you can choose the official new range by Northstar miniatures! Here a gallery of all the 4 ready to play squads.



Black Hat miniatures, manufactures a full range of wuxia miniatures as wizards, zombie, phantasms, evil followers, dragons, human monkeys, warriors and so on! I cannot put here all the figures, they are a range with lots of sets.



For Ancient China, and lots of suitable henchmen, peruse the ranges made by Curteys miniatures. Various historical periods of the ancient China are available.

Do you want an huge crowd of modern Chinese civilians? And modern Hong Kong buildings? Pardulon makes 3 different sets with a total of 12 figures in civilian clothes. And modern fixtures building structures as doors, windows, drainpipes or air-conditioning units.

Ancient buildings in resin and MDF are available by various vendors. Look around for them. And play with A Fistful of Kung Fu!

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-1 to A Fistful of Kung Fu

Tomorrow is the release day for A Fistful of Kung Fu. More photos from a playtest session. At that time I was trying to create thematic squads to kill my enemies, but in vain because misfortune struck my dice rolling. We tweaked the rules but I lost 4 games that day!

We were in the ARSM headquarters. And this one is my jade mummy, moving slowly towards enemies. Too slowly, damn! Years ago I saw a real jade mummy in an exhibit in Rome. Very impressive.

You can recreate scenes from action movies like Enter the Dragon, Kill Bill, Big Trouble in Little China, Crouching Tiger – Hidden Dragon, and Hard Boiled. Here we try a mixture of ancient China tales and HK police stories. As the Osprey blurb says, “A Fistful of Kung Fu is set in a modern world walking a precarious line between the advances of next-generation technology and the tradition and mysticism of ancient cultures. Kung Fu schools face off in no-holds barred martial arts tournaments. Evil corporations hire hitmen and infiltrators to steal each other’s secrets. Overworked SWAT teams respond to street-level gunfights between feuding Triad and Yakuza clans. Ancient artefacts are sought by hopping vampires and cyborgs alike, each seeking to harness the power of the Four Dragon Kings and control the world. Bullets, punches, kicks and throwing stars fly in slow motion as martial arts heroes and gun-wielding cops defeat enemy after enemy in the pursuit of evil masterminds”.

In this game we created a scenario with a small bamboo grove. Characters can walk over them, use them as trampolines or as weapons.

Possible factions range from Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza to Ninja clans, martial arts schools, the men and women of the Hong Kong Police Department, demons, secret societies and almost anything else you can imagine! All struggle for supremacy – destroying the surroundings in the process.

Here the final struggle among our two rival groups. I didn’t score severe wounds to my opponents. Oh at least I tried.

Another game and another setting: more storeys for our houses and a venerated Buddha statue (bought on the same day in a local Chinese trinkets shop…) with an ancient treasure at its feet.

When we develop a game we never have the right miniatures or appropriate terrain. We use what we find because we have too many projects and we don’t have the time to build a pretty scenery. When we publish something we are just in the middle of another new project and another new setting. So no Chinese houses or modern urban hells but some ruined buildings instead.

In A Fistful of Kung Fu, mooks and supporting cast are swatted like flies, but can still be dangerous when given the advantage of numbers or automatic weaponry. Based on the popular Ganesha Games rules system, these rules introduce martial arts combat with manoeuvres that have different outcomes depending on the degree of success, and which allow for counter-attacks when they fail, giving a flowing, appropriate combat system. The game also includes rules for challenges and “gun-fu” stunts. And this hero cop moves forward to glory with his automatic weapons.

A pile of corpse after his passage. At the end of the day the cops won the fight. Only the hero still standing on the battle scene. Just like the style of an HK film.

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-2 to A Fistful of Kung Fu

Only two days to the official release of A Fistful of Kung Fu. So let’s go on with the countdown. Here are some more photos of our playtests. Here we are in Diego’s house on the kitchen table. And on blue ground!

Here a scenario with ghosts, sorcerers, and corporate thugs. While bodyguards defend the clan chief, a walk on the roof prepares a rear assault.

The miniatures are from my collection built before we imagined we would play this setting. Now official figures are sold by Northstar. I’m still happy with mine. I guess the message is, just buy miniatures, sooner or later you will find what to do with them!

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-3 to A Fistful of Kung Fu

Although it’s been more than a week that Northstar began to mail the copies of A Fistful of Kung Fu to customers, the official release date is the 18th of this month. Now I start a short countdown showing some photos about the playtest sessions happened more than a year ago.

This time an adventure among Chinese restaurant dishes. It was occurred in a pause of a more canonic playtest with miniatures and terrain. Playing a Kung Fu ruleset, what could be better than eating Chinese?

Unfortunately a form of food poisoning emerged from this playtest session. A specific ingredient used in this restaurant (maybe a preservative?) sends my immune system into haywire. My body was covered with a rash and an extreme itch impeded my normal activities. I needed more than a week, and lots of medication, to restore my skin to normality.

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