That's What I Was Up To

 I've completed the commission work for Wayne. A boatload of Epic Eldar requested in Yme Loc craftworld colors. It's taken me 3-4 weeks to work through the lot and that includes a one week pause when I "hit the wall" of not knowing what to do. A quick change of technique and turning it into an assembly line helped a lot. 

So, a total of fifty models. Quite an unusual palette but they look as neat as a pin. The purple alien grass is an awesome offset to the orange and gray. Goes to show that any uniform looks nice if you keep things uniform! I hope Wayne likes them.

This Week's Work!

 So, a bit of a mix this week. First up are some 15mm Space Marines. Pretty sure the minis are from Khurasan. I had enough to make a full Assault Squad and three small-based special characters. This assortment will add a lot of Space Marine flavor to my Stardust: Ground Space Marine force. 

A group shot, sans light box. 

And close ups. These are the pictures that will end up on the game cards.

A stand of Assault Marines

A Librarian (psyker). The mini was customized with a cape and Force Staff, removing the chainsword.

A Chaplain

And a Veteran Sergeant to round out the squad.

So, if you're at all familiar with GW Space Marines you'll be immediately familiar with those titles and their functions. I'll have their cards together in no time... I've already done all the formatting, I just need to insert the pictures.

Next up, and I started these late yesterday afternoon, so I've made quick progress...

Some huts for the pulp game I'm hosting in North Carolina in two weeks! Main construction material is cashew and almond cans with cereal box cardstock roofs. One of the minis I need for the scenario is posed in front for scale. She's a 32mm Bombshell Miniatures explorer who's already been named Dora.

Construction of the three huts nearly done. Room thatching is simply white paper but with a frilly edge. I spackled the outsides of the walls to add texture.

And after a couple blasts of spray paint. More pictures to follow later, plus the minis I need to finish with the quickness.

Oh, since Brigade Games fouled up my order, I ordered suitable replacements directly from Bombshell Minis. Everything is of course in stock and shipping was quick. Thanks so much Bombshell!

Creepies

 I've been looking to get Insurgent Earth on the tabletop. It's a relatively new game from Stalker7, the same company that published the excellent Nightwatch. IE is of similar build and uses similar mechanics. The set up is that the player/players control a small band of surviving humans during an alien occupation of earth. The alien occupiers are handled by automatic behavior rules. 

Anyway... I wanted some suitable alien grunts and found some perfect inexpensive Bones models. Six should be plenty I think.

Of some small interest is the fact that these are the first minis I've painted in the last 12+ years that I haven't used ANY Vallejo paint. It wasn't by design, but that's just how it turned out. 

Game Necromancy - Dystopian Wars!

I checked in with Zig on Friday to see if he was up for a game Saturday.When he said he was, he asked which game. For some reason Dystopian Wars popped into my head and he was up for it. It's been over a year since we played so it was great to put it back on the table. Our last outing was a land battle, so we of course wanted a naval affair this time around. I put together a force of Empire of the Blazing Sun (Japanese) and Zig brought out the British - our original fleets.

Ziggy's fleet looks much the same way it did nine years ago. No new paint recently! We did a straightforward 1200-point free-for-all battle.

Some first turn maneuvering.

My Armored Cruisers get things going early with a massive salvo of rockets at the British carrier! The flattop is hit hit hard and loses four hull points. It's halfway to the bottom of the channel already and we're just getting started.

One of my little destroyers was wrecked by cruisers opposite them. My cruisers steam in a line, launching rockets at the armored cruisers in the back corner while my massive War Gyro floats steadily forward.

Towards the left, the Magnate Battleship and Hood Battlecruiser combined to sink one of my Armored Cruisers and damaged my carrier! The heavy destryers, obscured by Zig's hand damaged one of the light gyros.

We went out for wings and beer between turns two and three. When we came back, the scrum began in earnest with massive close-range salvos going both ways across the waves. My frigate squadron off to the far left got the better of their British counterparts. My light cruisers on the right had a terrific round of shooting, wrecking their opposite numbers!

In the middle of turn three, my War Gyro drove in the nail. If drifted right into the middle of the Britsh fleet, dropping bombs on a cruiser, rocketing a distant cruiser off to the right, and smashing the carrier with gunfire killing three capital ships in a single round of fire. Now that's getting it done! 

We played out the rest of the turn but Zig threw in the towel. We tallied up the scores it was 26-20 in favor of the Japanese. A tough battle a it felt good to get one in the W column! We're hoping to get DW back on the gaming table a bit more in 2021. It's always a fun time that doesn't require much of a rules refresher at all.

Space Marine Vehicles

I have been painting, I promise I have. I picked up some additions for the StarDust Salamanders Space Marine army. Two "Rhino" APCs and two "Dreadnought" walkers, courtesy of Rebel Minis.

Nothing earth-shattering, but I'm very pleased with the outcome. Who says orange is a stupid color for armored vehicles? I think it looks amazing.

Wrapping up a Good Week

I had a great week from a gaming perspective. Completed loads of painting, began a mechanical overhaul of Stardust: Ground and got in two quick playtest session of those changes!

First are those Aquan Prime walkers for Planetfall. I went with the camo legs. I think it came out looking pretty cool.

And then we've got the 15mm Space Marines I did up for SDG. I rather like the final result, although it looks like some of the Terminators could use a shave! I'll tidy them up soon enough😉

So... getting bitten by some bug that made me re-think how SDG played, I spent a lot of thought cycles re-considering game play. The only thing that ever bothered me about SDG was speed of play / turn length. The problem is endemic to alternate unit activation games - Dystopian Wars has a similar issue. With the new activation system (closely tied to morale), it also means fewer markers on the tabletop which I know some gamers strive for.

My first test of the new activation system was actually with 28mm sci fi models last Sunday during some solo playtesting.

After 45-60 minutes, it was apparent that the system was quite useable (although my skirmish system needs some tweaking). I wedged it into SDG during the week on paper and Saturday morning I completely re-designed my QRS, now version 2-compliant.

My nine-year-old, Cameron, agreed to help test. He's still a bit "flighty" for gaming so it was a weird parenting and gaming experience but in general, the game worked very well.

Sniper no sniping!  *blam blam*

As usual, the Khan's tanks are complete death machines.

I rather liked this die-rolling action shot. Cameron won the scenario.

We had dinner, then my bride and I played a second game. Same forces, same setup.

She thought the sniper looked cool up there.

It didn't take long for her to start killing my stuff - witness that one of the stands on the elevated highway is missing already, even with all of her crap still back in the deployment zone.  :/

My grav armor pummeled the enemy troops capturing one of the strategic points, but had a terrible time scoring kills.

A cool brawl under the highway. The Dawgs - who are quite nasty in close combat - kicked the Red Guards' asses. You can just see the sniper on the road above, still plugging away, kept alive by his stealth and cover.
So, two nice runs through involving infantry, special weapons and vehicles. Vehicle Close Combat is on the list of items to be addressed, then the dreaded rulebook re-write. Whaaaaa! I also need to re-visit the Robot and Bugs special rules and make required adjustments as they pertain to the new morale and activation system. Maybe next game the sweet Orange Marines will get a baptism of fire.

More Space Marine Goodness

Major progress with the Salamanders in the last couple of days. The Terminators are done and the lot is based.

Step 1 - add bits of balsa to the bases so they aren't just flat slabs. I also spackled in the Battlefront "idiot holes."

Steps 2 and 3 - hose down the bases with some dark brown paint and superglue "Humanity's Finest" to their new homes. The Termies can be seen on the left with white(ish) helmets as befits their veteran status.

Step 4 - Apply Liquitex glop to the bases being very careful not to slop up the models.

The new glop takes a while to dry... my test wasn't solid to my satisfaction for 12 or more hours, so I'm going to let these idle for a while before hitting them with maybe some fine sand in places, then paint, flock, etc.

Oh, and after 25 years, I did it:

Instant Win! Too bad my pop wasn't there to see it - he really liked that game.

15mm Space Marines - Progress!

The work on my Khurasan "Space Marines" is done. I had a rather productive Sunday evening of painting.

Next up is of course basing them. I'm going to try out Liquitex Modeling Paste to texture the bases instead of the usual wall-patch spackle on the advice of one of the Spearhead guys. There are also five "terminator armor" guys still queued up, but they'll be easy to churn through while basing the others.