Frostgrave Minis, Part II

Here are the other three I mentioned in the last post.

 A Bones Friar. I thought he'd make a great Apothecary for my band. he's got a barrel of "confidence" hanging over his shoulder.

A Bones Knight. He'll make a nice high-end fighter, festooned with weapons. 

A Warmachine mercenary assassin. Good looking model for a rogue / thief.

I've got four more on the painting table that need a few nights worth of attention before they're done and I have a few more on order. As usual, I'm picking up enough stuff for two people to play so I can con my wife or kid into playing on a Friday or Saturday night.

Recently Painted - Frostgrave Guys

I've been working on 28mm fantasy minis recently. I picked up Frostgrave and want to give it a go but am lean on miniatures. I'll be using some figures from Anima Tactics and Relic Knights, but I've also picked up a handful of Bones, Warmachine and other miniatures to fill out the ranks. Basically, I'm just looking for interesting models to paint.

In the process, I also dug through the collection and scavenged some Warhammer minis and painted them up.

My first batch follows:

That's a Warmachine sneaky assassin-y looking guy and a Bones "Gravedigger" which I just loved and will be a wonderful "treasure hunter."

Three old Warhammer Chaos Marauders, refurbed and repainted. They'll make great rank-and-file close combat troops.

I'm basing everything on the very vogue 30mm bases. I like them and they're relatively inexpensive for my purposes. I've got three others that I'll post tomorrow, time permitting. They got blasted with Dullcote this evening, but now there's no daylight for pictures.

Be well!

August Star Fleet Battles - Fortune Hunting or... Thar She Glows!

The Space Cadets met again at the McDonald's at exit 36 in Brunswick on Sunday afternoon for another riveting game of Star Fleet Battles! This makes it a year now that we've been convening to do battle in the vast vastness of spaaaaaaace! I have to admit, I didn't think it would last this long! I'm very pleased that it has though.

This month's mission: raiding the wreck of the Titanic IV. Rumor is that there is a McGuffin* on the wreck of the Titanic IV worth zillions of space bucks. As soon as the wreck was spotted a few days ago, every scumbag within spitting distance was ready to go loot it. The four ships that arrived first are the Battle Wagon, the Rattlesnake, the Black Sun and the Final Elvis - four Orion ships crewed by men who care very little for other pirates.

The ships:
Battle Wagon (James) -  Battle Raider w/ 2 Photons, 1 A-Rack, 2 Ph-1 and a Stinger-F replacing a shuttle.

Rattlesnake (Mike) - Heavy Raider w/ 2 Plas-F, 2 Ph-1 and two F-16s replacing two shuttles.

Black Sun (David) - Double Raider w/ 2 C-Racks, 3 Disruptors, a F-20 and Z-V replacing shuttles.

Final Elvis (Me) - Medium Raider w/ 2 Plas-D Racks, 1 ESG, 1 Ph-1 and a Gladiator FSF replacing a shuttle.

The ships are a real mixed bag. The Double Raider is the joke of the bunch, having paper shields. I had a blast putting the ships together. There were seven to select from and all were randomly assigned, as were starting positions on the map, which leads me to...

To start with, me, Mike and David plotted pretty conservative speeds - in the 12-16 range. Mike had his two F-16s out and tractored - lots of gatling phasers for defense. James however popped off with a speed 27! Obviously he'd get to the wreck first and get dibs on what part of it to search first.

I skulked out to the right edge, wary of Mike's F-torps and really bothered by the damn F-16s that would neuter my little D's before they could do their work. His ship > my ship. I play better as a skulking sneak anyway... no sense rushing towards my death!

Mike and James sandwiched the Black Sun and caused considerable damage with phasers and photons.

Mike and I tentatively agreed not to wreck each others' ships - this is about boarding and grabbing the Coure de Mer or whatever it is we're all after.

It should be obvious that James succeeded in landing three BPs on the Titanic long before anyone else got to it.

It's officially a mess. Mike is closing in on the wreck, James is running as fast as he can from plasma and drones and I've decided that skulking is still a worthwhile tactic.

A bit further in, Mike sends a short-lived shuttle** to the Titanic. I've left the shadows and turned towards the target. James continues his long hook maneuver in the interest of staying alive.

 The scrum hits its stride. I've launched my fighter, hoping to bag the Stinger. Mike and I manage to not shoot each other - it wasn't easy to restrain. The Stinger manages to stay alive due to some truly miserable shooting by David's Z-V pilot.

The Black Sun approaches Battle Wagon's Stinger and slaps a tractor on it. Comedy ensues. Mike and I beg him to pull it into the shuttle bay, repair and rearm it, then send it back out to give James a taste of his own medicine. As GM, I ruled that this was perfectly legal since everyone is a shady sell-sword anyway. David however wanted to death-drag the thing, so he kept it in tow.

The Captain of Battle Wagon fired defensive phasers at the Stinger to keep it out of enemy hands. Typical pirate scum move.

 Turn three quickly degenerated from this...

To this. I'd popped my ESG on impulse 28 of turn 2 so it was ready to rock! Time to go whump something! Unfortunately, me being a novice ESG user hit the Titanic and Battle Wagon at the same time, spreading the damage and only bonking James' ship for 7 damage. I also launched two Plasma Torpedoes (Ds) at James and unloaded five phasers into him. James' Battle Raider took a bunch of internals. He returned the favor, downing my #1 shield and getting one internal - a PHASER! Dammit!

Another shuttle bravely launches from a ship. It is quickly obliterated. I don't have a picture of my shuttle also being dispatched, by the Rattlesnake, the crook!

At the end of turn 4, this is where we were. Mike and I had landed 9 boarding parties each onto the Titanic, Dave had placed 7 and James, a lowly 3. David's and James' ship were pretty heavily damaged, I was without my #1 and a phaser and Mike was effectively unscathed, the bum.

The game was a lot of fun. It was great being stuck with unfamiliar ships and weapons. The addition of scavenged fighters was well-received. We like using them and for Orions having one or two in the hangar makes sense. The next game will begin with the boarding party combat and search for the treasure item. After that, it becomes a matter of getting away with the item. It should be wild!


* McGuffin
** no shuttles successfully landed on the Titanic.

Recent Paintings

I topped off the first of my Dystopian Wars French land forces yesterday. They were as much a color trial as anything and I'm taken with them. Yeah, they're similar to the Firestorm Armada ships I painted up a month and a half ago, but I like how it looks! 10 Hotch FT-12s...

I got a bit more adventurous with the basing on these than I usually do with DW, as you can tell. All in the name of visual interest! I joked about doing red, white and blue forces when I first got going on my French blue ships last summer or fall - now the joke is on me!

Dystopian Wars - Friday Night Fights!

We're back from sunny (and occasionally rainy) Florida! We had a wonderful time but vacations can't last forever. I've been jonesing for a game of anything so my wife humored me and agreed to a game of Dystopian Wars Friday evening. I put together two small armies - my Blazing Suns would square off against the robotic horde that is the Scandinavian Teutonic Order. The lists, for those of you interested:

Empire of the Blazing Sun (625 pts)
Taka Ashi w/ Shield
3 Chi-Ri tanks
3 Myobu light tanks
4 Bansan walkers
4 Ke Ho small tanks

Scandinavian Teutonic Order (630 pts)
Metzger ausf B
2 Schildtrager walkers
2 x 3 Faust walkers
2 Recke heavy tanks

Disclaimer: my wife isn't a lifelong gamer. She enjoys playing toy soldiers from time to time, but we take a pretty relaxed approach to the rules.

My deployment. I had the Chi-Ris and Myobus set to run up the flanks.

And my wife's...

 Some early action - my Taka Ashi blasts a Schildtrager

And the Myobus plink the Metzger

The Reckes get in on the action, killing a Bansan and damaging the Taka Ashi.

A Chi-Ri gets blasted by the Schildtragers.

A turn on, and I didn't get a picture, sadly... but my Taka Ashi leveled its main guns at a Schildtrager and scored a double-crit, destroying it, the knee guns damaged a Recke and its rockets damaged a Faust way in the back.

The Ke-Hos pounce and wreck a Recke, damaging its engines.

The Reckes push forward, into my forces, their considerable broadside weaponry dealing terrific damage to the Japanese.

They then launch an assault against my big walker. All boarding parties are wiped out and the Taka Ashi is sabotaged!

We have a visitor.

My Chi-Ris take advantage and return the favor, prizing a Recke!

The Metzger waded forward but had a miserable round of shooting. The Ke-Hos make a stab at the other Recke and leave it derelict!

The Schildtrager on the hill smashed into a Chi-Ri and tore it to shreds. The Taka Ashi fired its weapons at the Metzger and other targets but couldn't land a hit.

The Metzger catches up with Stampy. 

 One great set of attack rolls...

And Stampy is demolished. Between Crushing Impact and Hull Breaker, six damage was caused to the Taka Ashi, easily killing it.

The Teutonic Order forces began mopping up.The Myobus were wiped out in quick order.

And eventually the Bansans were eliminated. 

We could have ended the game earlier but my wife wasn't content to "let me quit," she tends to be bloodthirsty and wanted to try to wipe me out. She was left with a heavily damaged Metzger (4 damage) and two Fausts.

It was a fun evening and was good to put DW back on the tabletop. I like the STO list, now that I can field it properly since getting the Fausts. I've owned that Metzger for two and a half years and it has done nothing but die like a punk every time it has been on the table. Even though I was on the business end, it was awesome to see it go Full Megatron Mode for once! I'm looking forward to fielding the STO myself some time - I would love to get one of their airships, but that'll have to wait until I'm done with the four lots of minis currently in the queue!

The other half of those newly painted minis, plus some others

Here are the rest of the Relic Knights minis (minus two). OK, so they aren't done. I've also had some Epic minis lounging around on the painting table for a couple weeks, just needing to be based, so I cleared them out of the queue.

The lot

 Space Ork Warbuggies, in classic "Go Fasta Red"

Dark Angel and Space Wolf Land Speeders

Doctrine Wizard trainees

 How'd that guy get in there? A Warmachine something-or-other that I've had for about 10 years. I picked up the Frostgrave rules this week and he'll make a fine medium construct. I've got a handful of suitable 28mm minis that'll work for Frostgrave, so many have made their way onto the painting table for overhauls.

 More wizards

One last shot of ol' Copper-Crotch

Newly Painted and a Milestone

I noticed this morning that's I'd passed 50,000 site hits. Thank you to all of my human readers, and to all of the Russian bots that keep those numbers rising! I really do enjoy maintaining this blog - especially the after action reports. Generally, they're my favorite thing to read on others' blogs so I do my best to keep plenty of reading material out there.

I have worked on some Relic Knights minis the past few days. I bought them back around November or December, assembled them and then they kind of sat for months and months. With a bit of renewed effort, I completed about half of them and the others (not pictured) are about 80% done. They're not going to win any awards - I'm just glad to see them get done.

The gray guys and little purple cat are from the Black Diamond faction while the big dog is from the Doctrine group. As I mentioned, more are on the way. The other models are less uniform and require more individual attention. I like the models a lot, they capture the Anime aesthetic very nicely.

Off to sunny and hot Florida this weekend and much of next week - you be well!

Shipwreck AAR - North Atlantic 1963

James and I got together for a Cold War era battle on Sunday afternoon. He'd put together a cool scenario featuring a US carrier group being attacked by a huge group of Soviet bombers laden with cruise missiles. Not your typical Shipwreck game, that's for sure! I ended up with the Americans, commanding the Enterprise and it's escorts. I was in for a tense ride.

My initial deployment. Each inch was 5 miles, as opposed to the typical 1 mile. I had a VERY widely dispersed group, but appropriate for missile defense. My CAP was out wide, each token representing two fighters - F-4Bs and F-8s. 

James' very nice ships.

Early in, the Reds make their presence known. My group pushes hard to port to get as many SAM mounts to bear as possible. CAP moves out to engage.

Another very pretty model.

Gah! Two subs appear behind the group! They've surfaced which can only mean one thing... cruise missiles are on the way.

Phantoms get the jump on an EW plane and take it out with Sparrows.

My other fighters get into contact as EW Badgers begin to drop walls of chaff ahead of their bomber squadrons.

More fighters are scrambled from the Enterprise and two helos head out to the subs.

The guns on the Crusaders are very reliable and shred another EW Badger.

The great wall is up! Recon and EW planes are gone and now I await the arrival of the bombers.

And there they are! 18 bombers with EW escorts. That's potentially 36 inbound AS-5! The interceptors better get to work.

Very nice...

Crusaders gonna do what Crusaders gonna do. Splash two Badgers!

The bomber group further north releases its payload as the fighters engage. I really start to hate using missiles.

Not to be outdone, the Juliets launch eight "Fivers" at the carrier group. The helicopters were too late.

The bombers behind the chaff take a beating, losing three of their group and the EW plane.

The northern bomber group gets away with only one loss. Crusaders and Phantoms pursue the cruise missiles and knock a few down with Sidewinders!

Three missiles from the subs get into my group! Guns knock one down. Two others... BOOM BOOM! Misses! They both missed their targets!

The missiles from the bombers close but the SAM network is remarkably effective and accounts for all vampires! The battle war over - a stunning victory for the US air defenses! 

That was a cool game - quite different from the usual. It was neat to see the Badgers, Bisons and Crusaders out there, mixing it up.

My only issue with it, and we discussed it after the game, was that James' modified plane and missile movement rules created too many shot opportunities for me. I feel that I had too many shots at his missiles and that with the rules as played, it was too easy for the American player. If we sped up jets and cruise missiles to double their current rate, I'd have had half the shots and things would have gotten ugly. I know that the AS-5s are basically pretty dumb but it seems that out of 20 launched, more than one should have reached the ships. My fighters and SAMs accounted for 19, and 6 of the missiles from the subs! The three missiles that reached their targets all missed. The to-hit ratings for the Tatar, Terrier and Talos missiles I had available are abyssmal (3s and 4s), but terrific rolls at the right moments saved my bacon.

In any event, it was a blast and it was good to play Shipwreck again after a bit of a lay off.