Quick Inifinity Post

 Zig and I got in a game of Infinity last evening. I didn't take many pictures, mainly because the game was moving along pretty quickly and I didn't have time to get distracted by other things. The pairing was of course Zig's Pan Oceania force (sort of an expectation by now) and my Combined Morat Aggression Force. I used some mins that had not yet seen the tabletop. Impressively, the "Curse of New Paint" did not affect those models!

The battlefield.

The freshest paint on the table, my unit of "Hungries." A pure HTH unit, I struggled early on figuring out how I'd get them into the fray. I was hoping to run them through the yellow building but it turns out the hallway did NOT go straight through to the other side!

But Zig did me a favor and pushed his unit forward a bit, and on turn 2, the crazy unit's "Impetuous" order saw them jump 12" forward, applying a lot of pressure to the Pan O troops. My armor saves were nothing less than miraculous.

 

The lovely beasties performed very well. I was very happy with them.

At the end of the evening though, my force had been all but wiped out; at the end of turn 2 I had but a Hacker, Dr. Worm and a Droid left. It had been a blood bath, but as usual, Zig's super-unit of Knights had been hiding/cowering and taking long-ranged shots with their big guns, picking off my courageous warriors as they sought to conduct battle in an honorable fashion. 

Maybe I'm not being objective? 

It was a very enjoyable game and as always, Infinity delivered on the entertainment. Be well and Happy Halloween!

Saturday Night Stardust

  Zig and I dusted off Stardust, my first set of complete tabletop wargame rules which I put wrote about seven years ago. It's a starship a battle game set in a generic, non-specific universe that allows players to use whatever starship models they have in their collections. Stardust has always delivered an entertaining game and it was nice to see it back on the dining room table.

I commanded the Elip fleet - the tan and teal, while Ziggy pushed the Khans in red.

My starting units were much stronger than Ziggy's but he had reinforcements on the way. I needed to do some real damage quick before I'd be at a disadvantage.

Some opening moves and some idea of which ships are which.

Things start heating up. Khan frigates start disappearing at an alarming rate. Rather than sending both heavy cruisers into the middle and risk them both getting chewed up, I send one back around the asteroids to be intact for the reinforcements.

And there they are, at the earliest opportunity. I send one heavy and one light cruiser to deal with the new threat as the other pair and the interceptors hang back to mop up the carrier group. I was starting to lose interceptors, in part due to "ACD" or "Asteroid Collision Death."

 

And there they are. two destroyers, two frigates and a heavy cruiser.

The Khan fleet moves to consolidate whilst I look for early opportunities to do some damage to the new arrivals.

Allowing the reds to consolidate wouldn't be prudent, so I figured it would be wise to focus on removing the carrier which I had a real beef with at this stage of the game. I hammered it hard and a lucky hit from a torpedo sent it to the space graveyard. You can't tell it, but I also lost one of my light cruisers at the same time. :(  

Setting up for the final exchanges.

My cruisers brace! It's going to be nasty.

Loads of damage is dealt. I lost a heavy cruiser to just one destroyer killed. The carrier's escort began fleeing, having had enough of battle for a day.

The intervening 10 minutes since the previous photograph was rather eventful as I lost another heavy cruiser, the Khan heavy cruiser was sent packing as were the red frigates. The escort regained its composure and rejoined the fight. 

The remnants of the fleets savage one another.

And all that's left is a couple Elip interceptors and the fighters from the carrier. An utter bloodbath with no real winner except for Death himself!

Well that was a blast! I wasn't sure about game and strength balance when I put the scenario together, I was just hoping for something "sort of close." That was VERY CLOSE! Of course, ZIggy's miserable dice rolls helped balance things a bit - there was one point where he rolled 12 eight-siders needing 6+ to hit and landed exactly { 0 }. The only regular success he had was shooting down my torpedoes. All in all though, it was a well-fought affair and we both had a really fun time.

Just a Couple Critters

 I painted up these Monsterpocalypse minis for StarDust Ground during the week. I like how they turned out. Quite eye-catching, much like the rest of the Bug Army. 

These will be known as Parasites and will fulfill the role of Forward Observer / UAV. The whole exercise began as a deep-dive into Special Actions that were available to the various armies / factions. The Bugs were heavily restricted on what they could use in a meaningful fashion. Calling in artillery wasn't really an option for them since they had no FOs, so I gave them a couple of new single-stand units with that ability. Other armies don't have single-stand FO units, typically it's a function of a platoon leader, so this is a bit of unique flavor for this army. The other new unit that can act as a Forward Observer is that Brain Bug, featured here many months so. 

Of course, the BB fill a different niche and is more of a leader and coordinator, to be kept in with the herd.

I added quite a few new troop types to the Bug list many months ago and have finally started collecting minis for them. Expect to see more new SDG units here in the near future.

I Need One

 Holy cow this is impressive. 

Now, can this thing be adjusted to paint battalions of miniatures at a time?

More 18th Century Americans

 And by Americans, I mean "occupants of the Americas." I sailed through the rest of the 28mm FIW minis I had - eight more Coureur des Bois and Militiamen as well as eight native Americans. The first nations guys were a hell of a lot more fun to paint up that I'd been anticipating. Once I did a bit of research into the look and feel, the war paint jumped out at me and turned the models from a "study in browns" to "hot damn these are scary."

I think my work on these and posting these pictures among my gaming group means they might see the tabletop sooner rather than later. Mark and Mike were both very eager for chance to put B&P back in action. Now if they'd only get their brushes moving!