The Procrastinator in the 31st Century!

Recently there has been a resurgence of Battletech. It is a storied franchise with lore that spans over 30 years. I stopped playing just before the clans story line dropped, but it wasn't related to Battletech at all. Rather it was because I was focusing on other aspects of my life. But my love of Battletech has never waned. The game by HBS that came out a few years ago is directly responsible for bringing me back to Battletech. Not just because it was a fun and oft time challenging game, but because the community went nuts adding fan content which even ended up being supported by the game devs.

So I started playing and, so did it turns out, a lot of other people too! Fans that had gone missing for decades. Suddenly there was interest in the game again and it created an appetite to start pushing mechs around like the good old days. Turns out about a dozen people in my area felt the same so we formed a Facebook group and started planning events. Finally, I had an excuse to dig out my old mechs and start force building. Now don't get me wrong, there is no right or wrong way to play Battletech, but I gravitate towards the hexless way to play because it appeals to the miniature gamer in me. Turns out this group felt the same way so I started planning events with them. But, first we needed to decide if we want to use classic rules or the more recently released Alpha Strike rules which attempts to streamline the system and allow for larger forces that don't require a weekend to play.

I immediately started building some units. I started with pirates. Specifically Redjack Ryan's nefarious pirates! My friend had already started on his Eridani Light Horse unit so we threw together a scenario to try out the Alpha Strike rules. A company of Redjack Ryan's Pirates vs a company of ELH's 50th Battalion. My friend and I met up at a local game store for our first game of Alpha Strike. So without further adieu may I present...

ELH v Pirates in How Redjack Almost Stole Christmas. A Comstar Christmas Special.

Redjack Ryan seizes any opportunity to oppress and steal joy. A veritable Grinch he eyes the three grey warehouses that hold his prize. Just a few militia boys to contend with (or so he though).

A mech-eye-view of the three toy filled warehouses.

I am aware that the Pheonix Hawk has its jets on backward. This game took place in December 2018 and they have since been fixed.

These trees stand were a WIP at the time but have since been completed and will be the subject of a future post. I have a few more to make so i'll be doing a tutorial and possible other Battletech terrain guides.

Into the woods we go! Not playing with the advanced rules this time around, or my Firestarter would have lived up to his name.

Alerting command of the situation those ELH boys call in reinforcements while advancing to intercept the enemy force. There in the break between the woods, a Crusader. No real paint to speak of (gasp, lazy gamer, yup that's me) must be pirates!

ELH Rifleman and Pirate Crusader mix it up with the Rifleman coming out on top. The pirate is to busy spotting for indirect fire and gets hammered. Unfortunately, return missile fire is ineffective.

Oh no!? Is that a Behemoth? This is no militia unit! Eridian Light Horse!!! Hey, Roman. Your contact that told us about this opportunity better have a knife in his back by the end of the day, Snarled Redjack to his XO.

A pirate Phoenix Hawk jumps out of the southern woods landing between a warehouse and SRM Carrier. I should have gotten a face full of SRM's, not to mention fire from the ELH Kyudo and the other two vehicles. Luckily, very luckily, Lady luck was smiling at that pilot. Only the Kyudo managed to get in a hit. (Just a note: I jumped there with the intent of shooting the further SRM Carrier and kicking the adjacent one. Today, I learned you can't make a physical attack after making a weapon attack. Oops. You live you learn.

Gotta say this game was amazing.

Uh oh. These ELH boys are good. A medium recon lance comes to support the defenders. Caught between the new arrivals and the seasoned ELH defenders things turned south fast. One good bit of news, I finally got a pirate Shadow Hawk adjacent to a warehouse. Let the looting begin!

The pirate Shadow Hawk makes his get away (loot was worth the carrying mechs PV), while a pirate Hermes and Thunderbolt begin looting themselves. It's all men for themselves as only moments before fire from the Kyudo, behemoth, and Archer bring down Redjack Ryan's Warhammer. Ironically, it was just as Redjack's PPC's slammed into the ELH company commanders own Warhammer. War, war never changes. But, no one will shed a tear for Ol' Redjack Ryan, scource of the Periphery!

By this point, turn 6, it's clear under the given victory conditions I can not win. ELH 145 v Pirates 121. Pretty close, really. Okay, gotta say I got mad love for Alpha Strike. 100% converted. Company v company 4 hrs start to finish. Which mean with 6 players you could easily run battalion size games!!!

Yup we greatly enjoyed this game. I was an impatient, sloppy and unlucky player. Which made my tactics suffer and I lost far more games than I ever won. I am learning, and I am having fun doing it. During our unfortunately short group campaign, with six players, I went 2-1 before the campaign ended. Its also possible, as I wrote the scenario, that the scenario I lost was ill conceived, but I don't really know. Speaking of campaigns, I will be discussing our groups campaign and posting the batreps from our group as well as the rules I wrote. They aren't complete but they are a starting point. So tune back in next time. Meanwhile, stay safe out there!

The Return of the Procrastinator!

Greetings! It feels like a million years since my last post and a lot has transpired in my time away. I got married, went back to school and got my degree, abandoned games, picked up new games, got more heavily into roleplaying games again and started an ebay business. Okay, I guess not that much has happened if you considers its be seven years since my last post, but still some significant events. I feel like enough has happened I'll probably do a followup post or two about those events.

I am going to make some changes to the blog. The primary change will be bi-weekly posts, possibly more depending on time constrains and life events getting in the way. I have changed the name of the blog because the focus will no longer be on miniature wargaming. I will also be talking about my adventures in roleplaying, terrain building and game design. I'm no expert in any of these things, but I think talking about my experiences, failures and successes will hopefully inspire others that doubt themselves as I sometimes do.

What have I been up to gaming-wise since my last post you say? Well let me start by talking about miniatures. I have sold off a number of my collections. Stuff that I have either never played or has fallen out of favor. What I have remaining is the following:

Warmaster - Orcs & Goblins, Dwarves, Empire and Chaos.
* no progress since my last warmaster post. here.

Full Thrust - Phalon, Kra'vak, FSE, ORC, UNSC fleets and civilian crafts.
* painted Kra'vak fleet. I also finished the storage for my fleets and I'll post something about that later on. Lastly, I finished the Full Impulse Chaos Campaign a couple years ago.. More on that later as well.

Battletech - 15th Dracon (Liao), 11th Legion of Vega (Kurita), Redjack Ryan (Pirates), Blackwidow Company (Merc).
* I created my first unit for a campaign I started for a local Battletech group. Still painting because I always go to far when I am making anything. Painting a regiment is daunting work. I have also built some terrain for Battletech so some of those will get a mention and others a full post.

Legends of the Old West - Outlaw, Lawman, Cowboy and Native Posses.
*I sold all my old west buildings a while back so I'll need to scratch build some or print some. Otherwise no progress.

Malifaux - Neverborn, Resurrectionist, Arcanist Crews.
*This is a lost cause to me. I had fun with it before my big move but no one plays it here that I have found and with the release of the 2nd edition i'm only getting further behind the curve as it were. But, I love the mechanics and so I have not yet given up on it. It is after all a game my wife has shown some interest in.

Crossfire - American, US Marine, German, Russian and Japanese Companies.
* no progress.

Alien Squad Leader (ASQL) - "Stargate System Lord", Alien Greys, "Harkonnen" Armies.
* no progress.

Frostgrave - Witch Warband.
*They are partially painted so that deserves its own post in time.

That catches you up on my recent work on miniatures. I'll go into a bit more detail as work progresses on these. My current focus is on Battletech so that will be my starting point next time I do a minis post. My next post, however, will be about what I have been working on with RPGs. So tune in next time, if that's your jam! Be safe out there!

We Struck Soulstone!

So in my continued quest to churn out Malifaux terrain I have completed a dual use terrain piece - the Soulstone Vein/Magic Nexus. So far most all of my Malifaux terrain has been designed with two games in mind... Malifaux, for obvious reasons, and my other favorite game Legends of the Old West. This is my first piece that can't be used for either game and I'm ok with that. I think its simple but effective. However, I did discover a great way to make my ground crack for when I am doing parched desert or "dead zone" terrain pieces. Here are the pictures of the new terrain and you'll see how much more cracked the ground looks than my previous terrain.

So I had used an old batch of my "ground" mix what I was calling porridge before and it was several months old and dried out. I poured some water in the container and stirred it up and applied it to my CD as a base. When I woke up the next morning it was cracked like this. At first I was thinking it was ruined but then I realized I could add some desert life around the stones and it would look if not magical, life giving at least. Which played in to both of the aspects of the terrain piece well. But, I was stumped for a while as to why it cracked like that.

While I was drybrushing the piece some small chunks fell out (I'm a heavy handed painter), which is the only downside to the dried cracked look. But it hit me the reason it cracked was because I had thrown off the water to glue ratio or at least that is my theory. I'm planning to test that out on some future terrain. Probably something more desert-like with cacti and such. Anyway, I'll be planning another terrain piece in the next few days and I'll try to do a more step-by-step entry for it. Thanks for stopping by.

Return To The Blog And More Malifaux Terrain

So haven't had a lot of miniature activity of late but a visit with my friend Paul has lit the miniature bug fire under my butt. So the first order of business is to get some terrain so I can teach some of my friends this great game Malifaux. So, I made a list of specific Malifaux terrain pieces and I'll be working on them as time allows. This entry is for the Campsite which I tried to keep simple while still making it obvious what it is. So enjoy...

I am particularly fond of how the fire pit turned out! I actually repainted it at the suggestion of my Fiancee.

Next up is my Magic Nexus/Soulstone Vein terrain piece which I am pretty excited to get together. Then I'll be working on a few hills and should be ready to work on a few models after that. I am really looking forward to working on my Red Chapel Gang!

To Conquer the Stars Part IV

So previously I mentioned that I purchased some of the photon torpedo markers from Amarillo Design Bureau. I'm not sure if they still sell them. Nice sculpts, not very clean however. But after painting them up I like how they look and I think they will look great on the table. I have included a few pics I have taken of them so far

These should look really great flying around the table blowing stuff up!

This is my favorite shot!

Large Photon Torpedo/Plasma Marker - Close Up

Medium Photon Torpedo/Plasma Marker - Close Up

Small Photon Torpedo/Plasma Marker - Close Up

More news on the Full Impulse (Star Trek Variant) campaign that we will be kicking off soon. I have started to adapt the Battletech Chaos Campaign rules over for use with Full Thrust. So far so good. I have nine generic tracks written out and have plans for six story arc tracks (three to a side) as well as adapted rules for ship repairs/refit/upgrades and crew advancement.

Once I get them full adapted I'll post them somewhere to make them available for other to use (and of course modify as they see fit). It is a work in progress however so I figure it will require some playtesting during our own campaign to make sure they are balanced. Looks like we are up to five players so far - Chris, Paul, Josh, Emmi and myself. I'd love to find at least one other player to balance out the sides. More news as it develops!

To Conquer the Stars Part III

I have been pretty busy the last week so my progress has slowed a bit. I did manage to finish up the Phalon fleet before i got swamped with real life. I have been wanting to get a post done with pics of the finished Phalons. I also got all of my Kra'Vak assembled as well as the Plasma Bolt tokens for the Phalons. I just need to prime them and slap some paint on them...

The Kra'Vak looking menacing as always!

The are the Amarillo Design Group Photon Torpedo markers I will be using for the Phalons.

I have been wrestling with a question of how to handle my fighters as well. They are not such a big factor in the style of games we plan to play - being Star Trek is fighter light. However I would like to get them all finished at the same time as the fleets if at all possible. A while back I participated in a Full Thrust campaign and it was so easy to come by resources that before to long we had huge fleets with twenty plus ships and thirty plus fighter groups. I happened to just be getting my Full Thrust models at the same time so I actually based my fighters on little wooden discs. One fighter per disc with enough room to stick a d6 behind it to keep track of fighter group losses. My question is this... Should I keep them that way, or should I get some GZG fighter bases and base them properly? My inclination is to do the later because I think they would look better, but what do you think. Here is what they currently look like and here is what a properly based group looks like...

Originally based to make swarms of fighter groups... now I'm not so sure.

This image is from Laughing Ferret Lab well worth taking a peek at and the other idea I am thinking of using for the fighter groups. Your opinions are welcome though I am leaning towards this idea.

Here are some pictures of my completed Phalon fleet...

Yay! My first fleet is completed (minus the fighters and plasma markers but still).

Front view closeup with the Macro setting...

and the view from the rear where you can see the thruster glow!

To Conquer the Stars Part II

I've made some progress on the fleets this last few days. I am about half done with my Phalon fleet with all of the base coating and wash being finished. I am about halfway through the dry brushing and then I just want to go back over them and add a few small details. Engine glow mostly. Here are the picks of the Phalon fleet WIP.

Shades of blue - I thought about doing green but not only were my color choices limited but I thought they would look to much like Zentradi ships.

Close up of a Light Cruiser... I can't wait to see these boys in action!

So Chris continues to be pretty excited by the whole idea of running this as a Star Trek style fleet battle game so I did some research and found that there was a great conversion done by W. Scott Field which I think really capture the spirit of Star Trek using the Full Thrust rules called Full Trek, he also has a few other sci-fi setting conversions on his site. For those of you unaware the Full Thrust rules (all four books) are now free to download off the designers website, Ground Zero Games, there is also a link to their store where you can buy models of all the ships (and then some) found in the book.

I have also decided on a paint scheme for the Kra'Vak. I will be doing a light grey with a charcoal wash with a grey drybrush. I will be painting the rail guns and engine glow red. I also plan to add tiger striping in white. I "should" be finished with the Phalons within the next days and then I'll start cracking on Kra'vak.