Everything I painted this Year

 25mm Sci-fi

6mm Sci-fi

1/1200 Sci-fi

A Trio of Titans

Not surprisingly, my group is planning to play some Epic sacle 40K games in the near future. Rick came into possession of several Epic 40K armies this year, and had passed some of the models out to be painted. My share of this assignment are a few titans from the earlier editions of the game. Here you can see the Reaver titan and a pair of Warhound titans I have painted. They are done in a simple scheme, and the bases are rather minimal.

They are a bit of a rush job as we are hoping to get a game in next month, and I may return to them to add some banners and scenic elements on the bases.

Savage Gamma World #12

Stronskey battles the HR's titan

For a few weeks afterwards our mutants busied themselves extracting and processing the yellow lava from the mining facility so they could refill Stronskey's circulation system, but they were no closer to reanimating the titan.

Things looked worse when Mama Clay arrived at the village one day, bringing them news that HR had indeed found a larger titan and are working to reanimate it. At the same time, news arrived that the mutants in the surrounding villages were being attacked by drones which injected the mutants with an agent that caused them to de-mutate. The mutants in these villages who did not de-mutate were captured by HR troopers and taken away. Ah Meng sent several of the mutants from the village to the surrounding ones, hoping to provide some protection against further attacks.

But then Dreadnought arrived soon after, bringing at last some good news. The AI-in-a-battlesuit had been traveling around the lands and had learned about HR and their attacks on mutants. To repay our mutants for freeing him from the facility, Dreadnought had come to help them reanimate Stronskey, to reactivate his weapon systems, and to convert the controls so they could be used by mutants. But all these would take time, and to reduce the chance that HR will be able to attack them with their titan before the work is complete, Ah Meng decided to send Batte, Kong, Ranggup, and Rex (see PC profiles here) to HR's titan to sabotage its repair.

Accompanied by Mama Clay, our heroes journeyed to the site where HR's titan was, buried in a hillside with only its head and right arm exposed. Dozens of tents were set up near its head - our mutants estimated some 500 HR troopers, along with many mutants, were encamped there. It would be impossible to enter the titan via its head, but Mama Clay knew a secret entrance located at the base of the hill, through the titan's left foot.

Our mutants entered the opening at the titan's foot, where they had to fight off a giant worm that had taken up residence there. After some exploration, they learned that a gravitic platform in the leg of the titan led from the foot to the hips of the titan, which appeared to be an assembly point for troops. From the hips a lift led to the upper levels of the titan.

Making their way to the titan's torso, our mutants reached the troop quarters, which was being made ready for occupation by mutants taken as slaves by HR. Our heroes overcame the troopers quickly, and were thanked by the dozens of mutants there. The mutants told our heroes that HR had killed all the mutants whom they thought had dangerous powers, and put leg shackles on the rest and forced them to help restore the titan. About a hundred mutants were enslaved by HR, and they were made to work to restore its controls, its engines, and its weapon and shield generators.

Knowing that they had little time before HR realised their presence, our mutants decided to disable the titan's weapon and shield generator. Traveling to the titan's shoulders using the lift, they split up, with Ranggup and Batte working to sabotage the weapon system, and Kong and Tom working to sabotage the shield generator.

Ranggup managed to sneak into the weapon arm of the titan and cut through several cables connecting the machines he found there. Kong and Tom made their way to the shield generator arm, but were discovered by HR troopers. In desperation Kong fired the anti-tank weapon he found at Dreadnought's facility at the shield generator. The resulting explosion killed all the HR troopers and technicians around the generator, and severely wounded Kong and Tom.

Batte, Ranggup and the other mutants rushed to drag Kong and Tom's unconscious bodies into the lift, and together they exited the titan through its foot again. But with leg shackles still around their ankles, the mutants knew they could not outrun the HR troops who will be sent to find them. In an act of self-sacrifice, the rescued mutants decided to split up and deliberately travel towards where the pursuing troopers would come from, hoping to lure them away from our heroes.

Two stronger mutants helped carry Kong and Tom away from the titan. Kong had lost his right arm in the explosion, and Tom suffered a leg injury that would make him lame, but they party managed to make it back to the village.

Our heroes' mission worked, for when HR's titan was spotted moving towards the village weeks later, it was missing its left forearm and hand. The weeks had given enough time for Dreadnought to complete his work, and Stronskey, piloted and crewed by our mutants, marched out to face the larger titan.

After a great battle, Stronskey managed to take the larger titan down at the river, and shot it through the stump of its forearm, bypassing its armour. The resulting explosion blew the upper part of the titan off. Hundreds of HR troopers who tried to escape the titan via its foot drowned in the river as they emerged. But Proteus' body was not among the dead counted by the mutants.

A few days later word would reach our mutants that the remaining HR troopers at their base camp dispersed, allowing the enslaved mutants to return to their homes. The threat of HR had been eliminated for now, but our heroes knew that as long as Proteus may still be out there, he would remain a threat to the zone...

Prepping and Running the Game

The plot for this session came organically from the sessions that came before. I knew my players wanted a titan vs. titan fight, but to make that the whole session would mean a very short game. I decided that a mission to sabotage the titan would allow a more traditional exploration format, while having an impact on the final confrontation.

The interior of the titan was based on The Fallen Titan.

I enjoyed running this campaign, but the format of the typical MCC module does get a but repetitive after a while. If we do return to the setting again, which I hope to, I will probably want to try a different style.

We will be taking break from our sessions until next year, when I hope to start running a Fantasy Age 2nd Edition campaign. Have a good year-end season.

Savage Gamma World #11

One late summer night the sky north of our mutants' village was lit up by a shooting star, and for the next three days a fire burned in the forest where it landed. A few weeks afterwards, a hunter from a village near the forest came to our heroes, telling a tale of cave entrances that appeared on the side of the crater made by the shooting star, and strange green mutants who attacked him.

Realising that the "cave entrances" may in fact be entrances to underground facilities of the Ancients exposed by the meteor strike, Ah Meng tasked our heroes to journey there and to learn where they lead to, and about the strange green mutants.

Ranggup, Rex, and Tom (see PC profiles here) followed the hunter to the crater in the forest. The crater was a quarter of a mile across. below the lip, almost directly across from each other, were two openings that lead into the earth. At both entrances were HR troopers, standing guard. Above the entrance across the crater from our mutants, they HR troopers have set up some sort of a hoist, and were lifting barrels that were being brought out of the entrance. 

Our mutants overcame the HR troopers guarding the entrance, and followed the passage that led from there to the ground below. It soon became clear that the facility was once a mining complex of sorts. While exploring the living quarters of the miners, our mutants noticed the strange green mutants whom the hunter spoke of, but managed to hide from them while they passed them, traveling in the opposite direction from our mutants.

Descending deeper into the complex, our mutants came across what must been the processing plant of the mining facility. A passage led deeper into the earth, and our mutants could feel heated air coming from there. Our mutants donned the protective gear that were in the processing plant (cutting holes in them to accommodate wings and large ears...), and entered the passage.

The passage opened into a large cavern whose floor was covered in a yellow lava. Across the pool of lava was a steel platform. A pipe connected to a pump on the platform was drawing the lava from the pool below. Standing next to the pump were several HR troopers, and a man Rex recognised: Proteus!

Proteus ordered the troopers to kill the mutants, then turned and left. Tom flew up across the pool of lava to attack the troopers, but was shot and fell into the lava. Rex and Ranggup made their way to the platform, and climbed up, all the while under enemy fire, and after a hard fight managed to take out the HR troopers.

But as they stood on the platform mourning the loss of Tom, the lava began to glow even brighter, and from the surface of the lava Tom emerged, his body shining. Reunited, our mutants chased after Proteus, but found that he and the HR troopers have left the complex.

Our mutants returned to complex and studied the processing plant more carefully. They soon realised that the plant processed the yellow lava into the yellow liquid that flowed in their dormant titan - with this source of yellow liquid, perhaps they can reactivate Stronskey the titan? Yet amidst their excitement, our mutants also had a worrying question: why was Proteus extracting the yellow lava?

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was based on the MCC module A Fallen Star for All. Once again I stripped most of the plot out and just used the basic premise and the maps for our game.

The death and resurrection of Tom was a railroaded event, as I wanted to give the character a new mutation to replace the one which he lost in the previous session. Once again I had the player draw a random mutation card, and the new power of Light Bearer just happened to fit the narrative.

The reappearance of Proteus and the hint of HR having a titan of their own sets up the next session of the campaign, which is the finale session.

Savage Gamma World #10

Once again, our mutants receive a call for help from another village. Pyr, a mutant groundhog, had come to seek the help of our heroes to find a cure for a deadly disease that had afflicted his village. The symptoms of the disease was documented in the records of the village, along with where the cure might be found. Seekers from the village had gone to search for a cure, but none had return.

At Pyr's advice our heroes followed him to the site mentioned in the record instead of heading to the village, to avoid catching the infection themselves.

When they arrived at the site, they saw only a field of tall grass and no building. Flying overhead, Tom (see PC profiles here) saw the dead body of a mutant goat (which they later identified as Koln, a seeker from the village), but was attacked by a giant owl, which our heroes managed to chase off. Exploring further, they found a hatch which led to an long flight of stairs that led deep underground. Leaving Pyr at the surface, our heroes ventured in.

At the foot of the stairs our heroes came upon an open door. Beside the door was a plan of the facility, although our mutants could not understand the symbols on the plan. Entering the facility, they saw two sets of footprints: one reptilian and one crustacean, corresponding to Prokk and Voov, the crab and alligator mutants from the village. They decided to make a systematic search of the facility to find the cure for the disease, which the records would bear certain symbols (a copy of which was given to them by Pyr)

They followed the footprints to a door, and realised that while two sets of footprints entered the room, on one set (the reptilian one) exited it. The room turned out to be a cryogenic chamber holding a number of mutants. One of the cryogenic chambers had broken open, and a large black slime organism hiding on the ceiling dropped down on Batte and began to digest him. Rex and Tom attacked the slime with fire, driving it off Batte, before the trio beat a hasty retreat out of the room.

Exploring further, our mutants found a lab containing several glass-fronted storage cupboard full of chemicals, including one with the symbol Pyr had shown them! Stuffing their bags full of the chemical, our heroes continued exploring the facility, following the reptilian footprint, they found that it led to a place in the corridor where there were signs of a struggle, and from there on the footprint appeared different.

The altered footprints led the quarters of the staff who once lived there. There, they found a dead alligator on one of the beds. The alligator was in animal form, but was clad in humanoid clothing that obviously did not fit it. Searching through the clothing, our mutants realised that the alligator was Voov, but "demutated".

The mystery of what attacked Voov and demutated him was soon solved, as our heroes were attacked by a security droid that grabbed Tom and injected him with a solution. Our mutants disabled the droid and broke it open, and found that the needle which the droid used to inject Tom was connected to a vial that bore the same symbols - DNAX - as the cure Pyr told them to find! At the same time, Tom realised that he had lost his mental mutation power!

Our heroes went on to explore the final room in the facility, which turned out to be the infirmary. Here, they encountered a medical droid, and questioned it. It turned out that the facility was a medical research lab, and DNAX was one of the compounds created by the scientists to reverse mutation. Our heroes described the symptoms of the illness to the droid, who told them that no cure to the disease had been made yet, but the droid was able to isolate the virus from Voov's body and synthesise a cure.

Our heroes emerged from the infirmary to see another security droid headed their way. The fled back to the lab, and for a while considered destroying the stock of DNAX in case they fell into the wrong hands, but eventually decided against it.

Returning to the surface, they were met by an eager Pyr, who was overjoyed that they had found DNAX, and asked that they be handed to him so he could teleport back to the village to save lives immediately. Our mutants were suspicious of Pyr by now, and when Pyr became agitated Batte injected him with a vial of DNAX. Pyr turned into a groundhog before their eyes, and scurried into the tall grass.

Our mutants made their way to the village, and found that there had indeed been an infection, which the medicine they brought cured. Their mission completed, our heroes reevaluated the situation, and decided to return to the facility and destroy the remaining stock of DNAX. But when they arrived, they found that someone else had been there and taken away a number of vials while they were away. Dejected, they destroyed the remaining samples, and then concealed the entrance to the facility as best they could, and returned home.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was based on the MCC module Phage from Below.

As with the other modules, the original plot was too complicated for me. I decided to substitute it with one of my own that would link the other NPCs and the villain of the series to a plot that will culminate in the finale.

Jaffar, as it turned out, was hired by Proteus - the villain from our previous season and now head of "Humanity's Restoration"- to recover DNAX from a the facility. Jaffar then colluded with Pyr to release a virus into the village to compel them to send their seekers to go into the facility - the bit about the ancient records were all made up by Pyr. When the seekers all died in their quest, Jaffar suggested that Pyr approach our PCs to get the job done. I imagined that Jaffar was waiting nearby when the PCs had their confrontation with Pyr, and that he afterwards sneaked into the facility and grabbed whatever DNAX he could carry.

I am not sure why my players decided against destroying all the DNAX once they realised something was off, but it does allow me to use that as a plot point for the finale.

Grid-based Napoleonics and Undaunted: Battle of Britain

For our November session we managed to get five players for another grid-based Napoleonic Game.

We played the action of the Austrian left flank at the Battle of Sacile.

FG, Adrian, and I, playing the Franco-Italian force, slogged through the forests and marshes surrounding the Austrian-held towns of Palse and Porcia instead of approaching them in the open; as a result our attacks went in piecemeal, and the Austrians were able to hold on to Porcia by the time the clock ran down, winning the game.

After the main game Adrian took us through a game of Undaunted: Battle of Britain.

I thought the flow of the game didn't really resemble aerial dogfighting, but it did give me an appreciation of the Undaunted game mechanics, and make me want to give the original Undaunted game a try.

For our December game we are planning a game of the second edition of Conquerors & Kings, so stay tuned.