Painting and Planes

 A bit of recent painting made its way through the queue this week. First up are agents Scully and Mulder, from X-Files of course. These are 28mm 3d prints purchased via Etsy. I hated the models. Heads are cast separately from the bodies, as are the hands. The way the right hands are attached to the sprues is miserable. Both of mine broke. I had to use less interesting alternatives donated by other minis. Frustrating.

They painted up nicely and will fun characters to add to my modern What a Cowboy games.

 The other painting I did during the week was on some 1/600 aircraft. The pictures are off-the cuff but get the point across.

Swedish J35s, F-105s and MiG-15s.

And then some F9F Panthers and more MiG-15s.

I've also spent a few hours in the last couple weeks re-basing the other planes in my collection, getting rid of the magnets. I'm very close to being done! I also put together a couple of Check Your 6 Jet Age scenarios for the next time the group gets together for a game.

New Rules Playtesting

 Good Morning! I should have a boatload of newly painted miniatures coming up later this week. I'm very close on a second lot of Afghans and some other things. But while I wait for mother nature to get a bit more cooperative from a humidity standpoint, my mind and the dice have been active. I've been thinking about taking a couple of games to Southern Front in Raleigh, NC in September. I've already signed up to take my modern What A cowboy conversion but am considering a second. I came up with some fairly simple 3rd World combat rules to re-purpose my AK47 collection. Nothing wrong with AK47R, for sure, but it's not conducive to a multi-player convention game.

Ziggy came by yesterday afternoon for a test of version 1.0 of the rules. It was a very productive couple of hours.

No real AAR to speak of, although my government forces were soundly thumped by Zig's rebel fighters. A handful of rules were altered, tweaked or otherwise re-created during and after the session. The game is now to point where it's a solid set of rules on it's own. I just might take it to Raleigh! Be well everyone.
 

A Bit of Gaming

 The crew got together for a Saturday of gaming yesterday. It started as just a Check Your 6 Jet Age game but Mike and I threw a Battletech Alpha Strike game in giving us a full day with two games.

Wayne set up the first game, an air battle set over Kashmir 1971. The Indians (Wayne, Mike and David) flew Mystere IVs and MiG-21s while the Pakis (me and Ziggy) had Sabres and Starfighters. There was also a bit of AA on the table that was ultimately nothing more than a distraction. 

My F-86es (nearest in the frame) hooked in to go dance with whatever they'd find in the center of the table. The Indian Mystere IVs were being played by Hawker Hunter models. 

And boy, howdy, they found it! Some real fortune maneuvering resulted in my Sabres catching Wayne's pair in a vice.

And one goes down in a hail of .50 caliber bullets!

A turn later a were were in a conga-line of DOOM. More gunfire resulted in me losing an F-86 and Wayne losing his second aircraft!

Adding insult to injury, Ziggy loosed Sidewinders from his F-104s way in the distance and managed a hit on one of Mike's MiG-21s, sending it into the ground below! In no time, things had gone south for the Indians.

A few more turns of maneuvering and we wrapped up. The Pakistani air force had clearly won the day.

I set the table up quickly for the Battletech scenario. I GM'ed and supplied the attacking force of Steel Viper Clan mechs. Mike supplied the Inner Sphere Davion defenders. 

The defenders start with about 40% of their force on the table, defending four objectives which the attacker must destroy. For a complete victory, the attacker must destroy all objectives and at least half his force (5 mechs) must exit the table edge from which they entered (the far upper left in the picture above).

David's very fast mechs made haste and got things going in no time.

Another conga line of DOOM!

The IS force was fortunate to get reserves in the clan backfield. They certainly had their hands full with Ziggy's Stone Rhino!

David made easy work of the objectives. It would be a clan minor victory for sure. Now they had to get out of Dodge!

Mechs started dying left and right! There are three smoke puffs in this picture. The Davion force gritted their collective teeth and managed to keep the Steel Vipers from escaping!  An excellent job of minimizing the loss. The scenario worked very well for something I threw together in a few minutes while on a 90-minute waste of time Teams call at work last week. I'll keep those scenario notes around for sure.

Last Week's Gaming

 Wayne hosted some gaming last Sunday, at his office again. Nice guy, that Wayne. He was keen to put CY6:JA back on the table, particularly with the new planes I'd painted up for him recently. Oh yeah, those planes... I STUPIDLY took the commission work, did what I thought was a terrific job worthy of the commission and FORGOT TO TAKE PICTURES for the blog. Three Tomcats, six F-5 Aggressors and some Libyan Gulf of Sidra planes. Wayne set up a Top Gun movie scenario featuring very skilled F-14s against a boatload of crap "MiG-28s."

David and I flew the MiGs; being more experienced players, we we slightly better suited to  handling more planes. Mike and Mark each drove one F-14 to start. After a few turns, additional MiGs would arrive followed shortly by Maverick.

Good Golly Miss Molly, those are some SHARP looking planes! They're 6mm. Can't remember the manufacturer.

And our Aggressors

A few turns in and Hollywood gets popped by one of our missiles. I think it was mine from the "white" MiG. The Tomcat only suffered engine damage. No kill for us!

But in no time, that hoodlum Iceman knocks out one of ours!

Another MiG down!

That cocky Yankee Mav shows up and takes out a third MiG. We did manage to knock out Hollywood though!

In no time another Sparrow takes out a fourth bogey and we're done. As it turned out, a result very similar to the movie! The scenario was a blast and although the bad guys are clearly overmatched, it was worthwhile and close to being well-balanced in terms of victory conditions. Better AAMs on the MiGs would probably even things right out.

After Check Your 6: Jet Age we moved on to Rubber and Lead. Wayne had never played my home-brewed game of combat automobile racing. Interestingly I finished my game right when Gaslands was released. My game was not influenced at all by GL. Having played Gaslands, all I can say is my game is better.

This was the first time I'd tried R&L with five cars. It played just fine with an extra car on the track.

Early into the proceedings. From left to right it's Mark in the purple truck, me in the dark green/gold car, Wayne in the green/purple convertible, David in the yellow./red truck and Mike in the Greased Lightning Mini.

Mike makes quick work of the first lap. I'm in HOT PURSUIT! Lap two is always a dicey affair though with loads of oil, mines and wrecks on the track.

The other three however have miscalculated the final 90-degree turn and have to slow things down a lot. Wayne was victimized and put out of the race just moments after this photo was taken.

I managed to catch up with Mike and nudged him going into the home stretch. David's gone waaay the fuck off course, cruising around through the infield.

Friends... whatcha gonna do? Both our cars had but a single Body point left. Any more damage would seal the deal. 

And of course Mike nudges me on the approach to the finish line. Of course it kills off both our cars! NOOOOOOOOO!

And the King of the Skulkers, Mark J wins the race! He putzed around in last place for 90% of the race and only showed out at the end. David survived and was first-place loser. 

A nice blurry of the players

A great afternoon of gaming. I'm going to try out some Megablitz with James this weekend. Haven't played in ages. Be well!

July Update

Happy weekend. Just posting a few pics of things I've been working on recently. 

I churned through 40 pikemen for the Ventians and Spanish over the last couple weeks. I've been painting very sporadically. These guys probably spent three weeks on the popsicle sticks. They're being based today. Finally.

On that note, my wife and I tested some massed combat rules I put together last weekend. Just a simple mechanical play test and the end result proved that the basic rule mechanics are sound. Now comes the challenge of codifying it all. 

I ordered these two Infinity models after our last game of Infinity. They're for the Starco mercs, a TAG (heavy armored mecha) with the red shoulder bits and a Mobile Brigada heavy infantry (with the yellow) who can lead the group. Frankly, that troop type is the only lieutenant option available to the Starco mercenaries that is even remotely threatening. The other options are cheap chumps that don't deliver a lot of "oomph" whereas the Mobile Brigada is a real threat.

I also picked up a couple of boats for Blood and Plunder a little while back. 

Just a dugout Canoa for the natives and a Piragua for whomever needs it. It purposefully left it very neutral, no flags or other markings so it will fit in with any operator. The sails are 1/8 inch flexible hobby foam sheet from Michaels. It's easy to cut to size, stays in shape and takes superglue well. Some thread loops and done. Rigging is for display pieces, not game pieces. I have a Sloop incoming as well, but it's a preorder and I don't think it'll arrive before September. 

I've also taken possession of some 1/300 planes for some commission painting for Wayne.

These Su-22s have some miscast noses, but they'll paint up fine. Wayne really enjoyed CY6:JA and ordered a handful of Cold War-era planes. Certainly enough to keep me busy a while. I'm looking forward to working on them. 

Check Your 6 - Falklands Flying

 David and I got together last Sunday for a refresher game of Check Your 6 Jet Age. We're going to play CY6 on Memorial Day weekend and it's been a little while. Never happy to play a scenario twice, I quickly painted up some Sea Harriers in RN colors and chose the Malvinas 1 scenario out of the MRB. 

David chose the RN Sea Harriers, I was graced with two lovely Mirage IIIs of the Argentine Air Force.

The foes approach. My flight was high and fast. David's Harriers were low and slow.

Danger Zone!

Harry the Harrier

Laying the trap. Our flights pass eachother, though we're pretty far apart altitude-wise. I have a plan.

Perfect! My planes each perform a S-Turn, dropping three levels of altitude and both have the red Harrier's 6 in their front arc! Two R550s are loosed and one connects, damaging the British fighter.

A moment later, one of my planes is hit by cannon-fire, but the damaged Harrier is hit by heavy shells as well and spirals into the landscape below! Score one for the buys from America Sud!

My joy is short-lived as ol' Amarillo gets nailed by a Sidewinder and into the ground she careens!

My remaining plane hits the gas and runs for home. A near-miss from the Harrier's last missile damages the Mirage but it makes good its escape.

A damn fine 2v2 dogfight. The planes were closely matched, although David's Harriers had a noticeable agility advantage over my older speed-demons. I was able to use my speed to good advantage early on, scoring a very fortunate kill. Once the fight became a close-in brawl, I was in big trouble and it was too tough to get out and try another fast pass. The low missile count made it interesting and neither one of us was going to risk taking low-odds shots. Looking forward to the next game in a few weeks!

A Bigger Than Typical Post

 Ye olde multi-topic post here, so get your notepad and pen ready.

Those of you who have been reading for any period of time may remember my adventures with luthier-ing which I posted about at least once. Well, during March and April I put together a new axe. I present you with The Green Monster.

Plays well, stays in tune. What more can you ask for? It was a lot of fun and did a passable job of keeping my off the streets.

On to actual game-related activity. I painted up a handful of minis quickly this week, a couple Bones Undead and some 15mm moderns.

The Undead are specifically for Mantic's Vanguard Fantasy skirmish game that I came across a couple weeks ago. They have a free basic rules and army lists for 15 or so various typical fantasy factions. Glancing through the rules, it's pretty close to what I've been after for many years - simple enough, small enough and generic enough. Since my 28mm Undead are mostly Ghouls and Skeletons, I figured some variety wouldn't be the worst thing. They were an easy distraction from the Infinity stuff I've been working on recently.

The 15mm are for my modern skirmish game I've featured on the blog a few times, SKIrmish. Those games have often featured the X-Files crew and space aliens, although I've got plenty of Army guys, zombies, nuts with guns and cultists to go around. My wife and I love the TV show Supernatural, so I whipped up some statlines for Sam and Dean (the two on the right) and more typical Hunters. I even found a suitable toy car for them which of course I forgot to take a picture of this morning. They'll be a fun addition to that game for sure! The models are Rebel Minis, and I ended up with 20+ extras who'll make great gangsters, thugs, etc.

I did get an opportunity to test out Vanguard last evening with my 14-year-old. It was a pretty straightforward Orcs vs. Humans affair with three objectives to control / fight over.

No full AAR, but a few pics.

I quickly noticed that my Troll was the fastest thing on the table and he bee-lined it towards the enemy!

Mister Troll gets jumped by a Halfling! Try as I might, I was unable to golf-ball the little runt off the battlefield!

A broad shot of the fight

The Halfling gets by with a little help from her friends. Mister T is taken down!

The offensive on my left is going well.

But as time ran out, the score was tied at six, each of us controlling an objective on the wing and neither of us ever able to gain control of the center point long enough to really claim it.

I like the game and it's passed my test. If you have a collection of fantasy minis and don't have a go-to game system, Kings of War Vanguard is worth a look. Although it does require some special "power dice" you could easily replicate their function with playing cards and about 2 minutes of effort.