Bewitching witches for Devilry Afoot

Fair is foul, and foul is fair;

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 1

As I mentioned last Halloween, I have been working on Devilry Afoot, a new, gritty, 16th-17th century skirmish/rpg-lite game pitching player-controlled monster hunters against assorted creatures of the night controlled by the game mechanics.

We already have quite a number of test games under our belts and have a tidy set of core mechanics almost ready to be unleashed on a wider pool of playtesters. The scope of testing so far has been driven by the miniatures we had at hand, or have picked up for the system and, to date, the playtesting has mostly be done us unpainted miniatures (how uncivilised!).

With witches being one of the core antagonists in Devilry Afoot, I thought it was maybe time to run through my thinking around how to represent them on the tabletop. The game uses a randomised activation order system and when it comes time for the 'monsters' to activate, their actions are determined by a d10 roll against a situation chart. Depending on the situation, they have a greater or lesser chance of performing a range of different actions including simple moves or attacks, to casting spells and summoning imps, or they may transfigure into a hare and flee into the night.

Aesthetically, I rambled through period woodcuts (including the famous 1647 Discovery of Witches by Matthew Hopkins above), on to local folklore, and beyond to more recent cinematic depictions to try to find something that really fit the bill.

The 1996 film adaptation of Arthur Millar's The Crucible was a logical first thought. The false-witches are just girls wearing their normal clothing with nothing to distinguish them from anybody else. This is realistically the best approach to depicting witches on the tabletop, but at the end of the day it's not overly fun and doesn't distinguish between innocent humans and those nasty witches.

I wanted to have a standard coven of witches consist of three individuals - traditionally the maiden, matron and crone. The 2015 film adaptation of Macbeth did a good job of depicting its witches of different ages, but that was not something that you find much in 28mm miniatures. Of course I could select models from different ranges, but I wanted them to have a uniform aesthetic on the table.

Disney's Hocus Pocus (1993) is not a film I've seen, but the stills from it are arguably pretty good at capturing the ageless kookiness that I feel could come across from a good miniature witch. That said, they also conform a bit too well to the stereotypical crazy-lady witchiness and I'd rather be a bit more subversive.

The Wicked Witch of the West from the 1939 film adaptation of the Wizard of Oz ... too green.

And that brings us to the aesthetically wonderful folk-horror movie, Midsommar (2019). Here we have something very unsettling that subverts expectations with beautiful, flower-bedecked women in crisp white shifts. There is something in the visuals that belie dark secrets that really appealed to me, and for no other reason, that's the direction I took.

My flawed protagonists come from a 17th century setting and much of their clothing will be drab - lots of blacks, greys and browns. That allows - nay, encourages - me to have very contrasting creatures of 'evil'. These witches may have made a pact with the devil, but perhaps that was only to give them agency and a voice in a highly repressive patriarchal society? Why should they not dress in pure white and dance below the moonlight? Afterall, fair is foul and foul is fair... I ordered these lovely figures from Crooked Dice. In lieu of maiden/matron/crone, I went with the Charlie's Angels tripple threat of brunette, blonde and redhead to help distinguish them on the table. 

The standing stone is to be used as a 'pagan altar', a terrain piece that can be used as an objective marker, but also weakens the resolve of characters when they are nearby. It is just a piece of blue stone from a mountain walking path, but real stone never looks real on a gaming table, so it had to be painted up anyway!

And of course, what is a witch without her imps and familiars? In Devilry Afoot, the witch's arsenal includes a spell to summon imps who are fast and aggressive, but are usually more of a nuisance than a major threat. There are a wide number of miniature manufacturers who do wee figures appropriate for these, but I went with the familiars from Foundry's Undead range.