Black Tree Design Nightlings

After a long hiatus, I am proud to announce that I have completed the nine BTD Nightlings I have bought for the purpose of creating another unit of squig herders, which will serve as Maw Beasts under the Kings of War rules.

I really love the facial expressions and the animation in these figures, as well as the little details like earrings and bangles the goblins are wearing.

As you can see in the picture above, a similar colour scheme allows them to blend in with the GW figures. The Maw Beasts are supposed to be on cavalry-sized bases, but in KOW, it is only the unit footprint that is important, so I am using a 6 x 5 20mm figures, which have the same footprint.

The GW goblins have different skin tones because they came from different lots I bought on ebay. But we don't discriminate in this army.

In this picture you can see the dice holders which I have added to the movement tray, as well as the green dice I bought especially for this army, which will be used as casualty trackers.

Next on the painting list are 12 War Haggises followed by a unit of 21 BTD dwarf warriors.

Savage Worlds Space Opera Campaign

Picture largely unrelated, but it's the least sexist picture of a spaceship crew I can find...

Welcome to this page. If you have arrived here via the D&D Meetup page, read on. If you have not... well, make yourself feel at home anyway.

Background

One of the biggest difficulties with running an RPG campaign is getting everyone together - scheduling conflicts prevent me from GMing as often as I would like to. As a result, I have decided to try a different way of running a campaign: the players for each session will be gathered from a pool, with the party for the session being the players who can make that particular session. The adventures will take place in the same continuity, and PCs will gain experience and level up, but the players for each session (and therefore the composition of the crew for the session) will likely be different. This is still a campaign and not a series of one-shots.

System and Setting

The rules used will be Savage Worlds core rules plus the Science Fiction Companion, and the setting will be an as-yet-undecided a loosely-detailed space opera world (see Gazetteer here). The PCs are all registered members of the Galactic Teamsters Guild. Each session represents a mission subcontracted out by the Guild to its members: the players who sign up for the session.

The fundamentals of the Savage Worlds rules can be found here.

Character Creation

In the interest of time we will create the characters via email or messaging on Meetup (hopefully) way in advance.

The characters will be semi-pregenerated: you let me know what type of character you would like to play, and I will stat up the character for you within the parameters of the rules. The information required are:

• Name

• Species - You can invent your own or stick to the stock humans, aquarian, feline/leonid, canine/lupine, robot/android, plant-based, space-elf, reptilian/saurian, hairy brute/space gorilla, or rubber forehead alien. Let's try to avoid avian/ornith and insectoid/bug aliens - they creep me out.

• Species characteristics - If you want your character's species to have certain special strengths or weaknesses, you can propose them, or I can apply the stock characteristic. I prefer no psionics, but if you want to make a case for it, go ahead.

• Gender - Binary, or as appropriate to your species. No space bimbo please.

• Profession/Archetype - Your character's job on the crew and which sci-fi trope he or she belongs to. Professions will include navigation, engineer, security, medical, etc. Archetypes would be things like: ace pilot, gunslinger, brawler, rogue/grifter. It is preferable for your character to have a primary expertise and secondary one. Again, no space bimbo please.

• Gear - Your character will have all the gear that he or she is expected to have to do the job - I am not too fussy about inventory as a GM, but if you want to have anything specific, let me know too.

• Weapons - Each character will have a standard-issue blaster and a "utility" knife. You can have an additional signature weapon that is appropriate for your profession/species/archetype.

• Backstory - A brief backstory of how your character gained his or her skills and how he or she came to join the Teamsters Guild. Please also list an enemy and an ally from the character's past, and the character's short-term and long-term goals.

Sessions, Signing-up, and AAR

Sessions are on a Monday evening, from 7pm to 10pm or so. There will be 3 to 5 places per session.

I will post the session date and synopsis on Meetup, and players who can make that session can respond on the page with their character's name and profession/archetype (so other players know which roles are needed and which are already filled). I will try to post as early as I can so you can plan your schedules.

Generally, places will be given on a first-come, first-serve basis, but if a player has played in the last two consecutive sessions, I may give the spot to another player who has not.

I want to respect everybody's time and confirm the player list for each session as early as I can, so please only sign up for a session if you can make it.

Players can earn extra XPs by writing up an after-action report on the Meetup page; I hope to create a community feel in our pool of players.

Logistics

The games will be played on Mondays, from 7pm to 10pm or so, at my place in Bukit Batok. We typically meet at West Mall for dinner at 6pm, and then make our way to my place afterwards. You can meet the group at my place if you do not join us for dinner.

Dice and stationery are provided. You may bring your own dice but if I think they are not balanced I will ask that you use mine instead.

Bottled water and snacks are provided - we only allow plain water at the table for... historical reasons (don't ask).

My GMing style and Important Caveat

I tend to play fast and loose with the rules, preferring to focus on the narrative rather than the rules. As I mentioned earlier, inventory is not tracked closely, nor ammunition (you run short when the plot demands it) and money (you are assumed to be able to afford things that a space trucker can reasonably afford, and you are up to your neck in debt when the plot calls for it). The word encumbrance is never used at my table.

The tone of this campaign is space opera. More Guardians of the Galaxy than Star Wars or Star Trek. There will be violence, and you will encounter societies which hold views on politics, religion, and human/alien rights which are different from your own.

As befitting a space opera, PCs will generally not die; but if your character is incapacitated in a fight, he or she may not get XPs for the encounter. I will track XPs for this campaign (I don't for my other campaigns) as I want a bit of competitiveness between players.

As each adventure has to be completed in a single session of three hours or so, the plot will inevitably be a bit rail-roady. This means that an adventure can sometimes consist of a series of problems presented to the party, but I will not make it such that there is only one way to solve the problems (sometimes I don't even have a solution myself...), or that they have to be tackled in a particular order.

Combat will be played on battle-maps with figurines. You may bring your own figurine if you wish to.

Finally, I would like to state upfront that players who feel that they don't enjoy my games (either because of the way I run games or who I am as a person) should feel free to leave - just let me know so I can offer a spot to other members on Meetup. Likewise, if I feel that a player is not a match for me or the group, I will ask him or her to leave the group.

Thanks for taking the time to read through all this. If you still want to sign up, please do so on the Meetup page, and I will get in touch with you soon.

Horizon Wars Game 2

Martin and I played our second game of Horizon Wars this afternoon.

I fielded my Heavy Gear Caprice mechs. As Martin had more points in models, I picked the Failed Ambush scenario, where my force, harbouring in a village in the centre of the table, is surprised by a superior enemy force coming at it from (potentially) all sides.

While Martin had the advantage in points, I had the advantage in numbers and of starting in cover.

Most of my mechs stayed in cover while a couple tried to make a break for it to the foreground in this photo. Martin committed his mechs to this corner of the table and managed to destroy one of my mechs and cripple a couple others. My mechs then conducted a fighting retreat to the opposite side of the table. Martin then threw in his off-table mobile artillery to try to stem this retreat, and managed to destroy another mech before it was destroyed by my artillery.

With one table edge open and most of my mechs still mobile, we decided to call the game.

We certainly had a better grip of the rules in this game, and I even performed the Recover action a couple of times. As with the previous game, I find that having more elements of the table confers a significant advantage.

We have yet to try out the aircraft rules, so perhaps in our next game we will do so.

Warzone 2nd Edition Imperial Regulars

A quick shot of the 40 Warzone Imperial Regulars that came in the 2nd Edition box set I got, plus a Trencher Hero. It took me a while to get everything assembled and primed, but I managed to power through 30 of the figures in the past 3 days once I developed a system of painting them quickly.

They are painted in a WW1 British colour scheme, which I think turned out OK. There are just enough colours to give the impression of an infantryman at tabletop distance.

The figures took the block-and-wash method well. I am particularly impressed by the detail on the bayonet, which looks more WW1 than sci-fi.

I am planning to add a heraldry decal on the left shoulder pads of these fellows, but apart from that they are done. I am tempted to add a mortar with 3 crew to the force though, if I can find the appropriate figures.

I still have the 40 Bauhaus Hussars that came in the box which I don't think I will use - let me know if you are interested, and perhaps we can arrange a trade.

Thanks.

Kings of War Hits Tracker

One of the nice things about Kings of War is that you do not remove figures from a unit to represent casualty, but at the same time this obliges you to track hits on a unit somehow. I looked at the many ways other gamers have used, and decided I wanted a system that kept the markers within the footprint of the unit. As my figures are all currently mostly singly-based and used with movement trays, I figured it was simply a matter of replacing one or two figures with Hits Tracker base occupying the same area.

As I had several dice holders left over from a purchase from Warbases, I decided to make use of them for this little project. It was simply a matter of gluing one of these dice cells onto a cavalry base and adding some battlefield litter and scenic tufts to blend the base to the unit.

The 3-cell frame is a little too large for one or even two infantry bases though, so I had to remove the the divisions between the outline and also one end of the frame.

The result is a precise fit for three dice, although in retrospect having two cells would actually be sufficient for most infantry units, and would have allowed me to add stuff on the base for decoration.

I made enough bases for my WOTR army, so the next question is whether I should do the same for my Night Goblin army, which I am planning to expand (just by 90 or so figures, nothing much...) to make up a 2000 points KOW army. And whether I should get fancy coloured dice for each of my two armies...

Battle Systems Shanty Town and Zen Terrain Bridge and Conversion Kit

Here is the set-up using three of Battle Systems' Shanty Pack #2, a Zen Terrain Bridge, and two of  their Conversion Kits. The utility poles and cables are my scratch-builds. Not every bit from the sets are used (I probably could have gotten away with just one Conversion Kits pack), but it's a pretty good representation of what can be built using the above.

Here's a closer view of the buildings, showing the bridge and a ladder and rooftop turbine from Zen Terrain.With a coat of suitably drab spray paint and some weathering, they blend into the grungy Battle Systems buildings.

My favourite bits from the Conversion Kits are probably these console screens, which I attached to the walls of the buildings using Bostik sticki dots. They don't really pop out, but will be useful for scenario games.

Over all I am very satisfied with my purchases. The set-up can be more cramped and littered, and when fg brings his stuff over we can probably make a better-looking table to play over.

Perry WOTR Light Cavalry and my entire WOTR/(The) Empire Army

The Perry WOTR Light Cavalry have been sitting in a tub for almost two years, but I finally started and finished painting them in the past three days.

I assembled them in two fashion, half of them as mounted crossbows.

And three with lances, and three as command figures.

The leader rides a horse from Claymore Castings. The glue is still drying on the base of the last figure.

With these figures done, I can say that I have completed my WOTR/Warhammer (The) Empire army.

The problem, of course, is that the Warhammer (The) Empire no longer exists. Nor does the whole Warhammer world. Not that that will prevent us from playing Warhammer 8th Edition, seeing how we already have figures for at least four armies. I do like the Warhammer rules, especially the fancy army lists, but on the whole I find them hard to remember, given how rarely we play them.

I have been looking at alternative sets of fantasy mass combat rules for a while, and last week I decided to order a copy of Mantic's Kings of War 2nd Edition rules. The reviews I have seen praise the rules for their simplicity, which is a plus for me, but I do worry if the army lists are different enough to distinguish each army. I guess we'll find out when the rules arrive in a week or two.

Black Hat Dwarf Town Guard Crossbow

Here are the Black Hat Miniatures dwarven crossbowmen I painted for Adrian. The bases are unflocked so he can do them in the same style as the rest of his army.

These are some of the easiest figures to paint. The crossbow and the hands come in a separate piece from the torso, so I was able to prime them in two colours: black for the torso with all the metal, and brown for the hands and crossbow. The torso was then dry-brushed with silver, the face, hair and beard, sleeves, belt and scabbard, and feet hand-primed with red-brown or just painted over with the shade of brown I chose to represent leather, then the face and hair done. For the hands and crossbow part the hands are painted over the brown paint, and the bow itself left as is, with the metal parts picked out in black primer and then silver. Once the parts are glued together, I washed the non-silver parts with brown wash.

They are a little too large for a 20mm square base, so to make them rank up I set the rear rank closer to the rear of the base - this shouldn't be an issue as missile troops are unlikely to be deployed deeper than two ranks.

Again, these are a breeze to paint, and if you need a ton of dwarven crossbows for your army, they are the guys for you. It's a pity the range is so small, or I would be tempted to buy more.

Mountain of lead, plastic, resin, and MDF

I haven't been posting to much this year, but I have been spending time prepping figures and models for painting.

These are what are on my painting desk right now: two packs of Zen Terrain Conversion Kit and a bridge pack. some sci-fi utility poles which I scratch-built using parts from suction wall hooks, inter-dental brush caps, plastic toy parts, and faux leather cords, a cheap plastic M1117 which I have converted with Tamiya and Kromlech bits, 20 Black Hat Miniatures dwarven crossbowmen, and a tub of (remianing) 37 Warzone Imperial Regulars.

Apart from the dwarves, these are all part of the sci-fi shanty town/Blast Pistol project which I plan to make the focus of the next few months. I have also ordered two more packs of Battle Systems' Shanty Town cardboard terrain.

I will post pictures of the stuff as they are completed, but here are some comments about them.

The Zen Terrain stuff are excellent, and come pre-cut and with clear instructions on assembly. They fit well and are easy to assemble with just some white glue, except for the turbines, which took a bit of fiddling. The bridge in particular is very well-designed, and fit perfectly with the Battle Systems buildings. I simply sprayed these with beige or grey paint, and will do some simple weathering and wash on them before spraying a matt varnish and calling it a day. I haven't got anything to put on the billboards though, so if you know of any appropriate posters and whatnot, do let me know.

The utility poles are the result of some scrounging around stores and drawers. There are commercially available sci-fi streetlights and such, but I wanted the messy, exposed cables - I believe the key to creating a cramped, shanty town feel to the tabletop is to introduce horizontal components to the terrain.

The M1117 came out of a bag of cheap toys. I drilled holes for the hook rings, added some grab bars using bent paperclips, and an antenna made of a length of thick wire and drilled-through plastic rods. The toy had the jerry cans on the sides sculpted on in low relief; I thought about filing them off or covering them up with stowage, but fortunately fg had some 1/35 Tamiya jerry cans which come in halves, and it was a simple job then of gluing half a jerry can to each and making a rack out of paperclip for them. The twin-mini-gun and the wheels come from Kromlech. The wheels come without a hub cap, so I used the landmines from my Tamiya M20 kit to cover up the holes in the centre. I have yet to decide which faction this vehicle will be assigned to, and what colour indeed to paint it. Suggestions are welcome.

The Black Hat dwarves are very nice, and come with separate hands-and-crossbow which will make the painting much easier. They do look like they will be hard to rank up in two rows on 20mm square bases though.

As you can see that's quite a lot of stuff and it will take me several weeks to complete. Stay tuned.

League of Legends: Mechs vs. Minions

Before yesterday's Shadowrun game, fg and I played League of Legends: Mechs vs. Minions, another one of the chibi boardgame kicksters that he backed.

The sheer size and engineering of the game is insane. For a start, Amazon lists the weight of the box at 12.8 pounds. Inside, the components all seem to be bigger than they need to be, with the individual trays for the components more luxurious than they need to be - I was reminded of sushi takeaway platters. There is a custom sand timer and metal ring markers, all of which functions could have been served by more generic, cheaper components. The scenarios, or missions, are presented in sealed envelops, each of which contain the set-up rules, the mission, as well as special upgrade and damage cards which are added to the game as you tackle each in turn.

The gameplay is, in essence, Robo Rally meets Zombiecide. Players play cartoon characters piloting primitive mechs (I am not familiar with the online game which this game is based on - sorry), whose actions are determined by cards the players assign to a dashboard. The cards represent movement, turning, or attack actions, and are divided into four suits of different colours; cards of the same suit can stack, making the action more potent.

Instead of just making a circuit around the race track, the mechs in this game have more varied missions, from collecting gems to killing minions to defeating the evil boss mech. The game is co-operative, which is something I don't usually enjoy, but in this instance the time pressure (that's what the timer is for, although we didn't use it) makes it hard for players to discuss their moves in detail.

Each turn, the minions will move either randomly or according to the scenario rules, and if a minion ends its turn adjacent to a mech, the mech takes a damage card, which can be once-off (resolve and discard), or it can be semi-permanent and placed over a command card, necessitating sacrificing an action card the next turn to remove, or moving over a healing square. Mechs can't actually die from damage, but presumably beyond a certain point the damage are too numerous to repair and it just moves randomly around the board.

We managed to play about 4 scenarios over the course of the afternoon. The missions are designed to slowly teach the players the rules, like the tutorials in a computer game, so the first one was a boring one about movement, the second one about killing minions, the third one being a more challenging one, and the fourth one a real struggle battling the boss mech (which has its own specially designed cardboard box within the main box!).

Not knowing anything about the computer game, I cannot say how closely the game replicates the original. As a boardgame, I get a sense that too much is going on and players do not have enough control over the action at times. In Robo Rally (which is my point of reference), the only randomness are the hand of action cards drawn, and the actions of the other players, which may sometimes be guessed at and overcome (that in itself being part of the fun); the board behaves in a predictable fashion, damage is applied in a fixed fashion, and there are no other unknowns. In Mechs vs. Minions, the random damage effects, the random movement and spawning of the minions and the random movement and attacks of the boss mech means there is a lot more unpredictability, which while fun from the fluff point of view, actually takes away from the depth of the game. It seems to me that the designers of the game has tried to bundle too many mechanics into a single game, and ended up with something that doesn't do anything too well.

Robogear T-Rex, Battle Systems Urban Apocalypse Terrain, and resin urban barricades

Marines prepare to take out an enemy walker.

Gaming activities have taken a back seat in the past few weeks, but today I managed to paint up the Robogear T-Rex models I bought years ago, and posed it with some of my recent purchases.

The three buildings in the picture above are from the Battle Systems Urban Apocalypse range. These are punch-out cardboard buildings assembled with plastic clips. The surfaces are printed on both sides, and the windows and doors can also be punched out. I am sufficiently pleased with what I got (the Shanty Pack 2) that I will probably buy more of it. I have ordered some HDF terrain bits from Zen Terrain, which I hope I can paint to match this stuff so the buildings will have a more 3D, realistic look.

The Robogear T-Rex is of course a classic and a favourite of Imperial Guard players who want a proxy for the Sentinel.I have painted this as a support walker for my Warzone Imperial Regulars, which will be painted in the same colour. I only mounted one of the weapons provided (the hard-points for the other weapons are poorly filled in with epoxy) and the exhausts come from another of the Tehnolog kits which I bought for bits - I used them as I wanted a vaguely WW1 look to go with the Warzone figures.

The kit came with two versions of the canopy: a 'solid' version where the 'glass' is moulded, and an 'open' version where only the frame is represented. I didn't want to procure and paint a pilot/driver for the kit, so I decided to use a wire mesh to represent some sort of anti-grenade barrier so I coud hide the interior. It still needs some decals for tactical insignia and numbers and a base, but the basic paintwork and weathering are done.

Finally, we have the resin barricades I bought off ebay. I had expected them to come unpainted, so it was a bit of a surprise when I opened the package and saw what was a reasonable paint-job on these guys - the oil barrels are rusted and even showed oil slicks. I may spray some beige paint at the bottom parts of these sections to help them blend to the tabletop. Or I may not.

What I have also done in the past few weeks was to slowly assemble the forty Warzone Imperial Regulars I bought. This was not an easy task as the figures are made of hard plastic, have some significant mould lines, and have arms (to be more precise: forearms) that need to be glued onto the main torso in a three-point contact. But done they are, and now sitting in a box of sand waiting for the glue on their bases to dry. Hopefully in the next week or two I can get them sprayed in their base colours, and then over the next month finish painting them.

Still on the sci-fi/Blast Pistol front, yesterday I finally bit the bullet and took advantage of Kromlech's 17% sale and bought some resin bits to convert the plastic M1117 toy I bought to a sci-fi APC/IFV. That's spending US$20 on parts to convert a toy that came in a US$9 bag-of-toys. With that kind of money I could have bought a second-hand GW 40K Chimera... but then where's the fun in that?

Frostgrave Barbarians and Shaman

Here are the Frostgrave barbarians from the box set plus the shaman from the Nickstarter. I started painting them in November or December, but only completed them when I powered through 9 figures in a single sitting yesterday, so I guess they count as the first completed project for the year.

I painted them with white-and-black body paint to represent Avvar barbarians in the Dragon Age world - the next arc of my RPG campaign will be set in The Frostback Mountains and feature the Avvars.

I am not quite sure the decision to paint them with the body paint was a correct one - the computer game version looked more striking because they had white-and-black clothing too; these just look like KISS fans or cast of a Chinese opera. Still, what's done is done, and at least they will be used in my Dragon Age RPG game, and can be used as a generic fantasy barbarian warband whenever I need one. Or Dunlending in fg's Middle Earth RPG.

With these done I can move on to the next project, which will be either the Warzone Imperial Regulars (40 plastic figures, one metal hero figure, a Robogear T-Rex walker, plus maybe a conversion project using the plastic M1117?) or the 20 Black Hat crossbow-armed dwarves which I ordered 5 weeks ago if they arrive in the next two weeks.

The Warzone project is set to become a major project for me this year as, despite the figure-count being only 41 plus one or two vehicles, the ancillary requirements in terms of terrain will be significant; already I have placed orders for card buildings, MDF building and building dressings, resin urban barricade sections, and bought other cheap toys and hardware bits to use for scratch-building purposes. Stay tuned.

2016 in Review and Looking Ahead

It's that time of the year again when I look back on the games we have played the year past and make inaccurate predictions of the ones we will play in the coming one.

Despite me working only part-time this year, we only managed to play a total of 16 sessions, with 9 of these involving miniatures wargaming. We tried a total of eleven new boardgames, mainly due to my brother passing some of his collection to me and us just being too lazy to set up miniatures games on some days.

However, the score card does not take into account the many Mondays I spent playing RPGs; in fact, taking GM prep into account, I probably had more gaming done in 2016 than before. I've enjoyed our Dragon Age RPG a lot - the characters have all developed over the course the campaign arc, and we have reached a good break in the narrative for the players to review their plans for the characters. I hope to continue Monday Night RPG in the coming year. Apart form the Dragon Age campaign, I hope also to run another Lone Wolf campaign, as a tribute to the late Joe Dever.

Chain of Command saw some love in the first half of the year, but we only managed to play halfway through each of the two campaigns we embarked on. Perhaps we can pick up where we left off in 2017.

The 'surprise' game of the year was Tribal, which I really enjoy and ought to play more of. Perhaps when the rest have painted up their Wargods of Olympus kickstarter figures my Trojans will have some opponents.

I painted a party for Malifaux, but fg and I only played one session of it. Perhaps the arrival of my Modular Underground Project in Oct 2017 will give us cause to dust off our VSF figures?

The Heavy Gear kickstarter arrived and I have painted my share of the booty. What surprised me was Martin coming on board with the Horizon Wars project and driving it. We will probably see more sci-fi action in 2017. Hopefully Martin's enthusiasm doesn't spark off a mecha arms race among us.

Still on the sci-fi front, in the 28mm scale we may be playing more Blast Pistol. I enjoyed our first game, and have already ordered a box of the old Warzone game for the 40 Imperial Regulars that will come in the box (not sure what I will do with the Bauhaus Hussars yet - if you are interested in them maybe we can do some sort of a trade later) and primed a Robogear T-Rex which I bought years ago. A Rogue Stars campaign is also a possibility.

On my painting table now are 20 Frostgrave barbarians, which I plan to paint as Avvars for the next arc of our RPG. In the mail are 20 Black Hat dwarven crossbowmen; I have always liked the way they look but Adrian, our dwarf player, had always resisted me painting a unit of them for him. He finally relented last month after a game and I sent the order off that same day. Maybe we will see some Warhammer action soon.

Blood Bowl may see a revival too if the buzz on the blogosphere infect us - already fg has ordered the new game components... At least I already have a few teams and dugouts painted.

Everything I painted this year

15mm Ancients:

20mm WW2:

28mm Fantasy/Bronze Age:

28mm VSF:

10mm Sci-fi:

Unboxing Toys: Warzone 2nd Edition Box Set and Random Police Playset

Two weeks ago, I placed an order for box of the 2nd Edition of Warzone.

This is just one of the projects I know I 'have to' do (the others being the Arab Revolt and a Third World/Banana Republic thingy with Toyota technicals). I have been thinking of painting up some unarmoured sci-fi troopers for a while using the cheap plastic Warzone Imperial figures, but have always held off. After playing Blast Pistol and finding it quite to my taste, I decided to take the plunge before they become unavailable.

In the chaos of the holiday season, the box somehow got delivered to me in less than two weeks, ahead of a few other orders I made earlier (which I hope are not lost somewhere...). The box came shrink-wrapped and is hefty.

Inside, the first thing to greet me was a bag of sprues.

The templates and counters are printed on thin card; some of the pieces have come off.

I also got three books and two d20s.

It took me a while to sort out the 80 spures: 40 of Imperial and 40 of Bauhaus. Placed in two piles, they look like this:

But they make me feel like this:

My interest in 28mm sci-fi also sent me to the local mall to look for cheap generic terrain and vehicles which can used, and I came across a bag of plastic toys for under US$9.

Say hello to more little friends!

As you can see, I got a plastic playmat, some streetlamps, signs, traffic lights, some barriers, and even road cones! There are 20 plastic cops, and a plastic chopper (perhaps 1:72 scale?). But what made me decide to grab the bag were the three vehicles: a Humvee, an M113, and an M1117, all in what appears to be 1/35 scale. They are all in moderately hard plastic, and have good surface details. A bit of googling suggests these are knock-offs from IMEX, but I am not certain.

The M113 is of course the inspiration and conversion kit of choice for the 40K Rhino APC. I have some Rhino parts left over from my conversion of the M8 Greyhound, so they will give me a start in converting the M113. The M1117 looks very impressive if a bit high-riding. I am planning to set the wheels a bit higher on the chassis, and perhaps switch the turret with a commercially-made conversion piece. The Humvee is rather recognisable, but hopefully I can convert it to a sci-fi police car.

My hope is to have enough buildings, scatter terrain, vehicles, and figures to create a sort of a sci-fi shanty town. It will take a while, and that's providing I don't run out of steam. Wish me luck, and send me your conversion ideas?

Blast Pistol and Rogue Stars

I'v been looking for a set of sci-fi skirmish rules for a while; I have a Space Marine force painted up, but I can't seem to get into the 40K rules.

After reading a few reviews, I decided to give Blast Pistol a try. Coincidentally, fg's Rogue Stars arrived soon after we decided to play a game of Blast Pistol, so we tried both sets of rules on Monday.

For the Blast Pistol game I used my marines (3 squads of Unity Banner Troops) and fg used the Imperial Guards he got on a trade (3 squads of Colonial Militia, 1 Unity Infantry squad, and a Unity Agent). The mission was simply to take and secure the shed in the middle of the table.

Shootout in Shantytown!

We started tentatively with some manoeuvring and shooting, before I realised that with their high Toughness, my marines could afford to take a more... blatant attitude. Once they got into the shed, there was little the Imperial Guards could do to dislodge them. Fg's squads took a more circumspect approach, and as a result did not manage to bring their numerical advantage to bear.

'And they shall know no fear."

I enjoyed the rules. It's got a straightforward mechanics, and the weapon characteristics give the rules a sci-fi flavour. The army list for each "race" is rather small, even with all the supplements purchased, but they cover about half a dozen of your sci-fi staples. Other than my marines, I am planning a Morkian platoon with support weapons based on the old plastic Warzone Imperial Regulars, which should be the main project for me in the first quarter of next year.

How did that crate take his weight?

After the Blast Pistol game, we used the same set-up for a game of Rogue Stars.

Fg and I picked two pre-generated crews from the rulebook. Fg took a squad of police, while I picked an ex-military character with a few droids, but tweaked the stats to make her a close-combat expert.

The game is more detailed and complicated, with detailed stats and traits for each of the figures, so instead of fielding around 20 figures each, we were using only 5 figures each this game.

The scenario involved fg's crew trying to reach a vehicle on the opposite table edge from his deployment zone, and my crew trying to stop them.

The cops soften the opposition with a hail of fire.

Rogue Stars was written by the author of the Song of Blades and Heroes series of games, but the only recognisable feature from that series is the activation roll mechanics. A figure can attempt to perform up to three actions during each activation, but must roll above a target number on a d20, and gains one Stress marker per action performed. A figure may activate multiple times per turn, but activation becomes increasingly less likely as it gains Stress markers; with each failure on the activation roll, your opponent gains a chance to react by attempting an activation himself. While a little cumbersome initially, this mechanic produces a rather cinematic feel of momentum grinding to a halt and the initiative passing to the other side.

The use of d20 produces rather wild results, and fg's crew leader was killed by the first shot from my droid early in the game, so we decided to re-roll that and carry on instead of restarting the game. Then the big droid on my side got one-shotted. The cops kept up a steady pressure and crept up on my position. Things were looking grim for my side.

Then looking at my leader's traits, I decided to take a gamble. Using her Fast trait, she dashed out of cover, double-moved to the enemy leader, and using her Weapon Master 2 advantage cut her down in two rounds of combat, and then dashed back into cover again. The sudden reversal of fortune caused one cop to flee off the table, and the remainder were no match for my leader when they got close enough to the vehicle.

The two games are of course very different. Blast Pistol is closer to the 40K style of game where the winning strategy seems to be bringing weapons to bear, while Rogue Stars has characters so detailed that it can actually serve as a set of combat rules for a role-playing game - the number of factions, types of weapons, armour and gear, and the number of traits you can assign to characters makes this look like a game that will reward the player who invests time and effort in the creation and development of his crew.

I can see myself reaching for Blast Pistol when I want to put a few dozen figures onto the table and fight a platoon-level action, and I can also see myself taking a crew through a campaign of Rogue Stars.

"Joe Dever: The Life of a Lone Wolf!"

By now most of us would have learnt of Joe Dever's passing on 29 November.

Even though I never owned or played most of the original Lone Wolf gamebooks, they definitely had an impact on me as a gamer. I remember my teenage friends and myself marveling at the Magnamund Companion and the many possibilities it promised. Decades after then, when I resumed GMing after a long break, I found myself gravitating back towards the rich lore and unique feel of the setting. Till today, I consider the Magnamund-based campaign I GM'd a few years ago my best work as a GM.

I never sought to find out more about the man behind the world until now, but I believe this video of an interview with him in 2013 gives a good picture of Mr Dever.

I see a man who was proud and confident of the legacy he has given to the RPGing world, and I think he had reason to be so.

A few months back, even as my current gaming group were discussing what other games to play in the future, I mooted the idea of a Lone Wolf game. I even began tweaking the Mongoose d20 rules to fit the Dragon Age engine, but has found it difficult. A few days back I thought about giving the Cubicle 7 version a try, and after watching this interview, I think it is the way to go.

Forbidden Stars again

Adrian, fg, Thomas and I met up for another game of Forbidden Stars on Sunday. We played the 4-player game with custom map set-up.

It was a vicious game which saw the Space Marines' ground troops eliminated, the Eldar cutting a swathe through six boards, and the winner not determined until the last round.

As it turned out we got some of the rules wrong; but we had a lot of fun nonetheless, and are looking forward to playing it again, this time with the rules right.

Forbidden Stars

Adrian, fg and I played a game of FFG's Forbidden Stars on Sunday.

I quite enjoyed the game, even though I came up last. The gameplay itself is a mix of 4X and "capture the flag": to win the game, you must capture a number of objective tokens equal to the number of players in the game - the catch is, each token is in a tile controlled by another player. It is easy to lose sight of the aim of the game and go on a traditional build-invade-conquer-build cycle, but while combat is necessary (and fun), in our game most of the time the objectives were captured because they were lightly-defended as the owning player had shifted his forces to invade another sector.

There are two noteworthy features to the game. One is the placement of the order counters. Players take turns placing order counters on the map sections to indicate the command they wish to execute during the turn; if there is already a tile on the section, you place your tile on top of that tile. The twist here is the orders are resolved from the top of the tile, so if you wish to gather resources from a sector and then build forces, you need to place the build tile *before* the gather tile! Also, as the tiles are resolved essentially in reverse order of placement, it is often better to place your order *after* your opponent has done so. For example, if you foresee an invasion on your sector and you wish to gather resources and then build up your forces, you should let the enemy place his invasion order counter *before* you place your tile - if you place your order before him, then the invasion order will be revealed and resolved, before you have a chance to build your forces.

The other interesting feature of the game is the combat, which utilises a combination of specialist dice and cards. Players draw a random hand of five combat cards and choose three to fight three rounds of combat, with each card played having some effect on the results. This adds strategy to the combat, making it more than just a dice fest.

As usual, the game components are excellent. The map art is especially impressive and captures the mood of 40K.

The game is excellent as it is, but I can easily imagine it being reskinned for a historical naval war, either for the age of sails, or even WW2. Hopefully we can get a 4-player game in in December.

Heavy Gear Caprice Mounts and Iron Wind and Reaper Chaos Warriors

I apologise for the scarcity of posts over the past few months, but I have been doing more RPGing than wargaming; but I have been painting.

These are the Caprice Mounts from the Heavy Gear kickstarter. They still need to be based, but the paint job is done. I painted them specifically with the mat that we are using for the game in mind, and I am quite pleased with the result.

These are the Chaos Warriors type I painted for our RPGs: twelve archers and twelve axemen from Iron Wind Metals, and two boss characters from Reaper. I shoot them on the 2D terrain tiles I use for RPGs because that was the main reason I bought and painted them. In our Dragon Age game they represented Hurlocks; in a Lone Wolf game they will likely represent Drakkarim. Of course they can be used in fantasy wargaming as generic Chaos Warriors too.

Continuing in the same theme, I am now painting twenty Frostgrave barbarians, with the short-term aim of using them as Avvar barbarians for the next arc in our Dragon Age campaign. I made the decision to paint them with white-and-black face and body paint as they are depicted in the computer game, which does make them a bit more specific and limit their use as historical figures. But the two test models I painted this weekend suggests that the white-and-black scheme does work in 28mm, so I will proceed as planned.

I will have a few months to paint the barbarians, because from the next session Jonn will take over as GM and continue our Shadowrun game, and after that fg will be making his GMing debut with Cubicle 7's Adventures in Middle Earth. I am pretty excited about both, and as much as I enjoy GMing, I welcome a break from having to do all the prep work before each session.

DC Comics Dice Masters

With a couple of hours to while away this afternoon, fg and I decided to play a quick game of DC Comics Dice Masters.

The game is a "deck building" game with a bit of placement mechanics. You start by recruiting heroes/villains, and then deciding how many much resources to assign to each of the characters (in terms of number of dice). There are a few versions of each character, some with different cost to field, and each with different abilities. Each turn, you roll four dice to see how many points or sidekicks you generate - with the points you can put characters into your reserve pool and field them later, and with the sidekicks you can attack your opponent or defend yourself against his attack. Once fielded, the characters bring their powers into the combats.

The game components are very nice, and I am sure there are subtleties to the game we did not appreciate in our three games, the mechanics are too abstract for my idea of a battle between super-heroes and super-villains.

After the game fg and I looked at Cubicle 7's Adventures in Middle Earth which he bought. A quick perusal of the rules got me quite excited, and we are now planning to play the game after the next arc of my Dragon Age campaign (or the one after, depending on when the Loremaster's Guide is released). My character concept is a dwarf from the Iron Hills who is obsessed with the reconquest of Moria, and will spend the next few decades gaining knowledge and allies for this quest; hopefully he eventually goes with Balin to Moria and dies there after a few years, murdered by goblins.