Super Galactic Dreadnought

Superior Models' Wargamers Forum

2012-03-07T21:35:00.001-06:00

A while back on this blog, THE HESSIAN asked about Wargamers Forum. This publication was a house organ put out by Superior Models in 1979. The magazine billed itself as addressing "space, naval and armor wargaming with miniatures." Issue No. 1 had a cover price of $1.75 and was dated October 1979.

Articles in Wargamers Forum No. 1 relevant to this blog included a Starfleet Wars background story "The Five Worlds-A History Part 1: Terran Contacts with the Entomalians and Avarians," pieces on starbombers and super galactic dreadnoughs identical to the rules in SfW Book 2, an article on kitbashing Terran and Carnivoran models to create a new starship, details about the Mantis and Leviathan classes of starships billed as "excerpts from a forthcoming starfleet recognition manual," and Starfleet Wars/MAATAC Q&A (intended to be a regular column to clarify or correct the game rules). The issue also had articles on historical naval wargaming.

As far as I can tell, there never was an issue No. 2 of Wargamers Forum. Too bad. I would have loved to see more details on the ships and background of the Starfleet Wars setting. Someone should start a 'zine ...

Another gaming bargain

2012-03-06T22:02:00.000-06:00

This time, it wasn't at Half-Price Books, but at Dragon's Lair in San Antonio, which has a clearance table with games, comics, and other merchandise marked 75% off the original price.

I don't actually play GURPS (the Generic Universal Role Playing System), but I'm a big fan of the Vorkosigan series of SF novels by Lois McMaster Bujold. So the chance to snag a $40 hardback detailing the setting of those books for ten bucks was one I had to grab. So I did.

The sourcebook from Steve Jackson Games has a lot of background on the novels' locations, characters, technology and history. It also contains a streamlined version of the game called GURPS Lite. I don't think I'll be starting a GURPS campaign anytime soon, but I'm enjoying reading this supplement.

I'm curious, has anyone else ever bought a game product just for the background material?

Happy Birthday, H.C.!

2012-03-04T22:36:00.000-06:00

So last week marked the third anniversary of the Hill Cantons campaign. To commemorate the event, my wife and I brought a cake to today's game session. Just for fun, we decided to adorn the cake with some plastic figures I happen to have laying around the house.

Also, since the grocery store decorates it for free, we got them to write "Happy Birthday H.C." on the pastry (we were in a hurry and figured "birthday" is easier and quicker to spell than "anniversary," and we didn't want to cause confusion by having them write out "Hill Cantons"). Here's a shot of the writing:

The session itself was fun, except that we got into a fight with a whole bunch of Eald who did not want to give up and rolled incredibly well, while every player at the table could have rolled a six-sider instead of a d20 and probably gotten better results. They wore us down, but we prevailed in the end, although it cost the NPC cleric his right foot.

By the way, that cheetah mini at the top is not to scale--it actually represents my magic-user character's familiar: a tabby cat named Steve. Yeah, those are the kinds of rolls we made. Anyway, Happy Birthday to the Hill Cantons, and thanks, Chris, for running the campaign.

New Blog (of Void and Stars)

2012-03-02T23:03:00.001-06:00

From the Void and Stars blog.

One of the creators of Song of Void and Stars, the upcoming starship combat rules from Ganesha Games, has started a blog to chronicle the game development.

Called, appropriately enough, Void and Stars, the blog only has a couple of entries so far. The introductory post describes the game as a "task force"-level set of rules, with one or two capital ships and several escorts on each side. Unlike most spaceship games, SoVaS also has character types (admirals, captains, engineers, and so on) that can affect play.

Of particular interest is this Song of Void and Stars playtest report. It describes ships with characteristics such as "superior" or "assault" (and also launch missiles and fighters--successive missile salvos have a cumulative negative affect on their target) and "legendary" characters that can ensure automatic successes. The game also has morale rules, so vessels will warp away to escape instead of fighting to the last ship. I look forward to learning more about this game.

The Lost Platoon (part 2)

2012-03-01T21:59:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I blogged about my WH40K army I converted for Hordes of the Things. As I stated in that post, I had plenty of additional figures, which I used to bring my Imperial Army (it's from back before it became the Imperial Guard) up to 48 AP.

At the time I was adding elements to this army, I had never played an army with a hero element. I figured an Imperial Kommissar would make a good hero, and based him with a medic figure for support:

I also had this great Ogryn mini that deserved some playing time, so I based him as another hero:

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I had a ratling (space halfling) figure that doesn't look like much. I based him as a lurker, and my opponents found out--you don't mess with him!

I still had some rank-and-file Imperial army troopers to fill out a few more shooters elements:

I still like these sculpts from the late 1980s.

And remember when the Emperor let beastmen serve in the Imperial Army?

My collection included a couple of cyborgs or mechanic-type figures, so I decided to base them as blades. The machine-men serve as bodyguards to the general:

Finally, I had some vehicles which, although they don't function as well in the HotT fantasy dimension as they did in their plane of origin, still perform on the tabletop. First is a pair of old jetbikes, which I use as elements of flyers:

Finally, I have an old Imperial Army landspeeder, which for my purposes makes a damn fine airboat:

I need to get this army on the table again. But first I need to repair it--pretty much every mini came off its base when I knocked the box on the floor. Something else for the to-do list ...

The Lost Platoon (part 1)

2012-02-29T21:19:00.001-06:00

Since February marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Warhammer 40,000, I thought I'd trot out some photos of my own Citadel Miniatures figures from that game. My force was the Imperial Army (that's right, Skippy, these figures predate the Imperial Guard!) back in the day.

I bought these miniatures back in the late '80s and played a few games of WH40K with them until I moved away for school. The figs sat gathering dust at my parents' house until a few years ago, when I rescued them from oblivion. Because I don't play 40K anymore, I rebased these minis for use with Hordes of the Things.

As you can see in the top picture, my initial HotT army started out as nine stands of shooters (troopers, including general with standard bearer) and two artillery elements (heavy weapons).

Most of the paint jobs on these figs are from the 1980s; I just touched them up a little and maybe added a wash.

My dudes are not painted as well as this guy's figures (go check them out here, here, here, and here), but they look decent enough on the tabletop.

The in-game backstory for this unit is that a shot from a warp cannon blasted the force into another dimension where their weapons don't work as well as they should.

That and the desire to conserve ammo explain the now-limited range of the technologically advanced weapons of the shooters and artillery.

I also salvaged from my childhood home my original Rhino APC, which I had painted in a weird camo scheme for use of my Rogue Trader mercenary force, known as Bastard Squad. I affixed it to a base to use as my Imperial Army's stronghold--it's out of fuel or the engine doesn't function in this reality, but even immobile it makes a good fortress. I even added a couple of figures to this stronghold to represent support personnel.

After assembling this 24AP army, I had plenty of minis left over--enough to bring the Lost Platoon up to 48AP--and field elements besides shooters and artillery. I'll show you those photos tomorrow.

One more vintage figure review found

2012-02-28T22:30:00.001-06:00

I stumbled across an eBay auction for a June 1980 issue of Military Modeler magazine, a now-defunct periodical. What articles did it contain?

Of relevance to this blog, among the World War II vehicles listed, one of the headlines on the cover mentions "alien and starship trooper 90mm figures." The seller's listing describes the article as "90mm Figure Review: Superior Models Alien & Starship Trooper." I'm assuming these are the Superior Models 100mm figures I've blogged about before.

I asked the seller for a fuller description, and he was kind enough to describe the article to me. He said the piece, headlined inside as "Shoot-Out in Space," is a five-page review (with two pages in color!) of an alien and a futuristic starship trooper. He said the article was by Jeff Jonas, who assembled and painted the figures.

I didn't feel comfortable asking the seller for scans or photos of the article, so that's all the info I have on the it. If anyone has this issue of the magazine, I'd love to hear more details.

My latest score from Half-Price

2012-02-27T23:02:00.000-06:00

You should have seen the ones I left behind: S2, I1, the Slavers series, and more.

Sunday Starships: Avarian capital ships

2012-02-26T21:13:00.000-06:00

I got some more Avarians painted today--this time, two galactic battlecruisers and a galactic dreadnought.

The pair of Eagle-class battlecruisers will see battle when we play out the next combat in the Chancellor campaign as part of a BC task force.

Before I painted this Condor-class dreadnought, I thought I might have a chance to get two Avarian DNs on the table at the same time.

Unfortunately, the other dread was destroyed in the Battle of Vertex, so you won't be seeing two Condors on the table at the same time.

Still, might as well get it painted while I have all my stuff out.

Still up on the to-paint list: another Nest-class galactic attack carrier and the Gryphon-class super galactic dreadnought.

OGRE 6th edition in 2012?

2012-02-25T10:13:00.000-06:00

Image from Steve Jackson Games

Steve Jackson Games recently released its annual Stakeholders Report on the company's performance in the previous year and goals for this year. No big surprise, the card game Munchkin, in all its incarnations, is driving the SJG bus (accounting for three-fourths of the game company's sales in 2011). But I want to talk about the long-proposed sixth edition of OGRE.

As you all know, the new version of this venerable sci-fi tank combat game was put on hold last year. Evil Stevie briefly mentions this in the report, under the Failures section listing "Things that didn't go as they should have..." He notes the reason was a bandwidth problem--as in his own bandwidth--and promises to get the game out in 2012. In fact, that's listed as #4 out of 5 in SJG's priorities for the current year: "Clean more out of the old pipeline. Make Ogre 6th Edition happen."

Sure, we've heard it all before. I'm not gonna hold my breath, but if OGRE 6E does show up on the game store shelf in 2012, I'm still gonna buy it.

Old campaign background detail

2012-02-24T22:20:00.001-06:00

I found some old notes from the last time I played Dungeons & Dragons prior to my return to RPGs in the Hill Cantons. During college some friends and I got together to play D&D, and I decided to help create some of the campaign background. I think we only played one session before moving on to other things. Although I rolled up a ranger for the campaign, I came up with some background for monks in the context of the AD&D game world. Without further ado, my handwritten notes typed up verbatim (including misspellings):

3 orders of monks in the land:

Red (LG), Yellow (LE), & Blue (LN)

Red: Devoted to law & order as best way to enlightenment

Yellow: Iron rule is best way to power, but must have honor

Blue: Ultimat harmony of multiverse is balance between good & bad

Red: works w/ LG church & paladins & good creatures

Yellow: hires/ trains w/ assassins guild & LE dieties & humanoids

Blue: associates w/ druids & theives guild & animals

Each order has 3 monastaries, headed by the three 8th lvl monks

each monastery has 2-5 monks of each level 1 thru 6

upon reaching 9th lvl, monks leave the monastery & go wandering

Monastery locations:

BlueL in human city, in dwarven city, in forest (druid grove)

Yellow: under human city, in badlands, on a ship

Red: in human city, in paladins' castle, on mountain peak

I had considered writing up how other institutions (assassins & thieves guilds, mercenaries, monsters etc.) implied by the Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide interacted, but the monasteries were as far as I got in our short-lived campaign.

Sunday Starships: More Avarians

2012-02-19T11:23:00.000-06:00

Before I got sick, I painted some more Avarian spaceships--a septet of starbombers and a pair of stellar cruisers for Starfleet Wars and/or Galactic Knights.

So far I haven't had a chance to use these Buzzard-class SBs in play.

The Avarian starbomber's outline reminds me of the U.S. Air Force's F-15 Eagle.

These Hawk-class stellar cruisers (along with their sister ships) saw action in the Battle of Vertex as part of the Homeworld Fleet.

I hope to get more ships finished and get in more gaming soon.

OGRE units for Hordes of the Things

2012-02-18T22:25:00.000-06:00

Over at The Stronghold Rebuilt, Kaptain Kobold has a post about basing Epic 40K models for Hordes of the Things. The philosophy is that "firing happens at fairly close ranges and the game scale is such that base to base contact can represent troops shooting at each other over such a range." It occurred to me that you could also use HotT for other 1/300 sci-fi minis, so I came up with this list for using OGRE/GEV units as Hordes of the Things elements.

OGRE unit HotT element # figs

MIL        Hordes        8-10 

INF        Blades         3

HW-INF     Spears         3 

LTK        Knights        2 

HVY        Knights        1

SHVY       Behemoth       1

GEV        Riders         2

LGEV       Riders        3-4

GEV-PC     Warband        2

MSL        Shooters       1

MHWZ Artillery 1

LAD        Artillery      2

OGRE Hero 1

Stronghold: Command post with laser towers and/or howitzers. One option not supported by the OGRE background would be an electronic countermeasures vehicle that would function as a Magician element in HotT.

I might have to give this a try sometime, just to see how the OGRE minis would look on HotT bases.

The return of The Stronghold

2012-02-17T09:04:00.004-06:00

For many years, Hordes of the Things players visited The Stronghold, a website by a British wargamer going by the name of Kaptain Kobold. The Stronghold held a great number of articles on the game's rules, strategies, alternate rules, army lists, and miniatures. Unfortunately, the author moved from the UK to Australia, and his site eventually went dark.

It was missed, and every few months some member of the Yahoo group would ask what happened to the Stronghold. Another list member posted some of the old Stronghold material, but the original site was still history.

Well now Kaptain Kobold has rebuilt the Stronghold, this time in the form of a blog. The Stronghold Rebuilt only has a few posts so far, but it looks to become a great resource for HotT, just like its predecessor. I'm adding the remodeled version of the Stronghold to my blogroll, and I look forward to seeing it grow.

I'm back!

2012-02-16T22:01:00.000-06:00

Up until last week, I was on a great blogging streak--a whole lotta posts in a row. Then, the flu (or its nasty cousin) came and kicked me in the ass. I was weak and feverish and missed work; at home I didn't even have the strength to work on the blog. My fever finally broke last Sunday, and I made work every day this week, but I was still too drained to feel like blogging. Now, I've finally regained the urge to start posting again.

To make this sort of geek-related, I thought I'd share one of my Valentine's Day gifts from my wife: a Battlestar Galactica (the 1978 version) ornament. This Cylon bad boy is about 100mm tall and when you press the button, it speaks one of several phrases in that old-school mechanical voice, including "By your command." Hearing that voice gives me flashbacks to watching that show when I was in grade school. It was a fun gift from a wife who indulges her husband's nerd habit.

Anyway, I'm feeling much better, so expect more blog posts from me in the near future. I also hope to get some painting in, and get back to work processing moves in the Chancellor campaign. It's great to be back in the blogging saddle again.

One last freebie

2012-02-09T22:27:00.001-06:00

I'm sick as a dog today, and went home early from work. I'm too weak to do much blogging, but I wanted to share one last free game: Chain Reaction 3.0, the latest and greatest version of Two Hour Wargames' combat engine.

This ruleset is the basis for THW products like All Things Zombie, NUTS!, and 5150. It's a unique departure from the I-go-you-go mechanics we're used to; your figures react to one another, and firefights are quick and deadly.

Kudos to Ed the THW Guy for releasing this free of charge to everyone.

Speaking of free games ...

2012-02-08T20:58:00.001-06:00

... it's worth mentioning again that the Hordes of the Things rulebook (sans army lists) is also available at no charge from the publisher, Wargames Research Group.

Not only that, but the publisher has uploaded two versions of De Bellis Antiquitatis, the historical game that was the basis for HotT. Those interested in game development can check out the first edition of DBA, and anyone who'd like to playtest it can obtain DBA version 3.0.

You can find plenty of other historical rulesets from WRG on their website. Have fun!

Another free game

2012-02-07T21:25:00.000-06:00

I'm not feeling well today. Here's a link to the free two-page OGRE Miniatures Lite PDF. When I blogged about free versions of some high-profile games, I can't believe I neglected to include this one.

This document has everything you need (except miniatures) to play the classic sci-fi tank combat game. It's a minis game, so you'll also need terrain. If you want to play on a hex mat, just divide the ranges and moves by two. The full version of OGRE Miniatures is more detailed, and it's available as a PDF as well.

Panoramic Starfleet Wars

2012-02-06T20:47:00.000-06:00

Holdfast, one of the players in the Battle of Vertex, posted some panoramic photographs he stitched together from multiple iPhone snapshots:

Check out the full-size photos and his blog post about the game. And check out the rest of his blog, too!

Sunday Starships: Battle of Vertex AAR

2012-02-05T13:42:00.001-06:00

The first battle of the Chancellor campaign, the Battle of Vertex, occurred last Thursday at my place, and the results were not what I was expecting. Three separate forces--an Avarian transport convoy, an Avarian military task force, and the Terran super galactic dreadnought--all crossed paths in the same sector of space (here's the roster of all the ships involved). We gamed the ensuing battle using the Starfleet Wars rules.

Gatherer Flight Green V, commanded from afar by dathbain and locally by longtime gamer and brand-new blogger Holdfast, entered from galactic south. The group included 10 small transports, 4 medium transports, and two large transports (played by various Star Frontiers and Stardate: 3000 models), along with a quartet of stellar destroyer escorts (the one at lower left proxied by an unpainted starbomber because I couldn't find my fourth SD before game time). The convoy's goal was to reach the other side of the map, and the safety of the friendly starfighters in the Vertex system, with as many transports as possible.

The super galactic dreadnought Chancellor, pride of the Terran armada, entered from the southeast at the bottom of the map. Under the strategic command of fellow space gaming blogger Matgc and the local control of gamer and artist Jason Braun, this gigantic vessel carried 30 Meteor-class starfighters to help it in its mission to destroy Avarian shipping.

Appro parallel to the Terran capital ship, but near the northern edge of the map, were elements of the Avarian Homeworld Flight, including the Flight Leader, a galactic dreadnought, and the Cruiser Wing of six stellar cruisers. Starfleet Wars aficionado Gonalvo directed this force from a distance, while fellow Hill Cantons campaigner Brad held tactical command.

As the battle began, the transports sped north at their top speed of 4 (military ships can all go 5), while the escorts interposed themselves between the civilians and the Chancellor.

The cruisers and their flagship also veered toward the Terran ship.

The super galactic dreadnought headed toward the vulnerable transports, but started shooting at the stellar destroyers, damaging two, while the Avarians combined fire against the Terran ship, inflicting moderate damage.

The Chancellor began launching fighters as the birds' cruisers and dreadnought headed toward the convoy.

Then, the Avarian dreadnought broke from the cruiser wing and bore down on the Terran warship.

The two capital ships exchanged fire as their respective attack craft engaged in a dogfight. Meanwhile, the transport ships fled toward the safety of the map's edge.

The remaining Terran fighters, wary of the cruisers' close-in defense systems, hung back from the Avarians.

Off the starboard of the flagship Phoenix, the Terran Meteors made short work of the Avarian Bluejay starfighters, losing some of their own in the process.

The two capital ships soared past each other as the Terrans attempted to capture the Avarian dreadnought. Such a prize would surely put to rest the unfounded claims that the Chancellor's commander got that position through nepotism!

By this time, the transports had almost reached the edge of the board. Once they left the map, they were safe.

Frustrated that he was unable to reel in the other dreadnought with his tractor beam, the Terran captain unleashes a full volley of lasers and neutron torpedoes into the Phoenix. The ship vaporizes with all hands!

Half of the Gatherer Flight has now left the battlefield. Those much-needed medical supplies will be put to good use in helping the Avarians against the Terrans.

One of the wounded Hawk-class stellar destroyers, unable to keep up with the transport convoy, gets ganged up on by fighters from the Chancellor.

The cruiser wing turns to escort the transports off the map.

The starfighters finish off the lone destroyer, but the transports are long-gone.

Finally, out of spite, the Chancellor fires all its batteries at the retreating cruisers, vaporizing the rearmost vessel as the rest of the wing flees for the Vertex system.

Final tally:

Avarians--galactic dreadnought Phoenix and 4 Bluejay attack craft, stellar cruiser Falcon Crest, stellar destroyer Stormcrow destroyed; stellar destroyer Tigermoth suffered major damage.
Terrans--nine Meteor attack craft destroyed; super galactic dreadnought Chancellor suffered significant damage including [CENSORED BY ORDER OF OFFICE OF GALACTIC INTELLIGENCE].

To me, it looks like the Battle of Vertex was a partial victory for the Avarians, who did lose some significant firepower but managed to get all their transports to safety, while the Terran SGDN took some damage that will follow it throughout the campaign. Interstellar observers, what do you think this battle will mean for the Chancellor campaign?

The Trees

2012-02-04T14:52:00.000-06:00

I added some flocking to the bases of the trees I converted from Christmas decorations. I think the vegetation really helps--and these look much better in person, from above the table, than they do in these photos.

I will use these as terrain Song of Blades and Heroes and Hordes of the Things.

GNN breaking news

2012-02-03T09:02:00.002-06:00

Galactic News Network has just received word of a battle near Vertex. Details are sketchy, but Avarian United Worlds inform GNN that a Gatherer convoy carrying food, religious texts, and medical supplies was ambushed just outside the Vertex system by the Terran Federation Super Galactic Dreadnought Chancellor. Details are sketchy, but AUW officials state ships of the Homeworld Flight shot down nine Terran fighters and inflicted moderate damage on the Chancellor before it fled.

GNN has learned that AUW forces have driven off the Terran starship at great loss. Homeworld Fleet command confirms the losses of the Stellar Destroyer Stormcrow and the Stellar Cruiser Falcon Crest. In addition, GNN has received unconfirmed reports that the Galactic Dreadnought Phoenix was destroyed in the battle. More details as they become available.

Yaaaaar!

2012-02-02T09:04:00.003-06:00

In case you're interested: Ed is working on a pirate game. It includes chase, ship-to-ship combat, and boarding rules, and plays very quickly. There are also campaign rules.

Space stations in Starfleet Wars

2012-02-01T09:02:00.002-06:00

Book 2 of Starfleet Wars added rules for modular star fortresses to the game. In addition to the Star Fortress (pictured above), each section with its own weapons and defenses, the Observer's Directory & Identification Manual listed space station classes (with stats) for each of the Five Powers:

Terran Federation: Morning Star (sometimes listed as Mace)
Entomalian Empire: Web
Avarian United Worlds: Egg
Aquarian Alliance: Wave
Carnivoran Republic: Rat

Superior Models released miniatures for the Mace/Morning Star and the Web space stations, as well as the various parts of the Star Fortress. You can see additional pictures of them in this old Galactic Knights price list on the Monday Knight Productions website. While I can't find the Mace or Web for sale anywhere on the MKP site, the components to the Star Fortress are still for sale as "Generic Space Station Parts."

However, I can't find any evidence (other than the ODIM) that space stations for the remaining powers ever existed. Has anyone ever heard of any additional space station models for Starfleet Wars? Or did the line get shut down before they could ever be produced?

More Avarians from Gonsalvo

2012-01-31T09:02:00.015-06:00

I'm always happy to link to photos of other peoples Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights miniatures, so without further ado, I present more of Gonsalvo's Avarian fleet. Of particular interest to me is this Vulture-class galactic attack carrier, a model I don't own. Go on over to Gonsalvo's blog and check out the rest of the photos.

Photo from Blunders on the Danube blog.

I should also mention that Gonsalvo is one of the players in my Chancellor campaign, and his stellar cruiser wing is about to take part in the Battle of Vertex, which we plan on gaming this week because we actually have enough players lined up. I'm looking forward to moderating this battle, the largest yet under the SfW rules, and it should be a good time.

My minis--not as pretty as Gonsalvo's.

Meanwhile, as you can see, I need to get my remaining Avarians painted up. I won't need them all for this battle, but I might need more of them in the future. These ship models are all based, but it was raining after work on Monday and I wasn't able to primer these bad boys like I'd hoped. I need to get a move on; I don't want the players getting wet paint on their fingers if they pick up one of my starship minis.

A small adventuring party

2012-01-30T09:02:00.001-06:00

We finally returned to the Hill Cantons this weekend, our first tabletop campaign session since before Thanksgiving. There were five player characters: a thief, magic-user, druid, amazon fighter and a "fighter" with some thiefly abilities. We also had two secondary characters (fighter and cleric), an animal companion (wolf as played by the leopard mini) for the druid, our longtime henchman, a newly hired man-at-arms, a new porter, a new and very nervous torchbearer, and our usual twin brother teamster team, along with seven horses and two mules (we had to leave the wagon when the trail got too rough). Seemed like we had a half-mile-long train when we had to go single file.

We had so many people, we actually ended up using one of the corridor dungeon tiles as a movement tray as we explored the cave complex we were searching for. We didn't know what to expect, so we brought lots of help.

Turns out we didn't need it. When we finally located the demon-guarded treasure we sought, only three of our party went to take on the infernal creature. We dispatched it relatively easily thanks to a Chime of Banishment, but the cold spirit that appeared when we tried to take the treasure literally froze one of our party members in his tracks. We still managed to get away with the loot and all our characters, so it was a successful, if crowded, run.

Sunday Starships: The Battle of Vertex

2012-01-29T11:53:00.001-06:00

The Chancellor campaign will soon see its first battle! In a sequence of events that couldn't have worked out better if I'd planned it, the eponymous Terran SGDN and part of the Avarian Homeworld Fleet both wandered into hex 0506, just as an Avarian supply convoy entered that same hex on its way to the safety of the nearby Vertex system in hex 0505.

Since I was unable to procure any captains to game out the battle on the tabletop this weekend, we'll try to play the scenario sometime this week. Meanwhile, I will share the order of battle. Kudos to Avarian admirals dathbain and Gonsalvo for some great spaceship names!

AVARIANS
Homeworld Flight Leader (Gonsalvo)
Condor-class Galactic Dreadnought Phoenix

Homeworld Cruiser Wing (Gonsalvo)
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser Millennium Falcon
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser Maltese Falcon
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser Falcon Crest
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser Atlanta Falcon
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser The Falcon
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser Peregrine Falcon

Gatherer Flight Escort Wing (dathbain)
Hawk-class Stellar Destroyer Tigermoth
Hawk-class Stellar Destroyer Warhawk
Hawk-class Stellar Destroyer Stormcrow
Hawk-class Stellar Destroyer Silverwing

Gatherer Flight Transport Wing (dathbain)
Ostrich-class Galactic Transport Lightclaw
Ostrich-class Galactic Transport Fleeting Star
Emu-class Galactic Transport EMU9712 (new from factory; no official name)
Emu-class Galactic Transport Red Gizzard
Emu-class Galactic Transport Broken Wing
Emu-class Galactic Transport Arrow IV
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Proud Strut
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Silent Runner
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Foul Haul
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Wiggly Waddle
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Star Gazer II
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Quiet Matron
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Payday
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Queen's Stash
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Quill
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Down Transit

TERRANS (Matcg)
Victory-class Super Galactic Dreadnought Chancellor

Traveller on your phone

2012-01-28T12:04:00.000-06:00

I don't usually post about electronic games, but because of the local connection and the game involved, I thought this was worth sharing. The Austin American-Statesman reports a pair of brothers has ported the Traveller role-playing game to the iPhone and iPad. From the article:

From Austin American-Statesman
When they were children, brothers Tony and Kieran Howlett were big fans of Traveller, a pen-and-paper game similar to Dungeons & Dragons that was released in the 1970s.

Thirty-five years and two attempts later, they've released their own version of the space-themed game for decidedly modern devices — the iPad and iPhone.

"Traveller AR" is a massively multiplayer online game, in which players can battle one another in flight combat. And like its old-school predecessor, there's a heavy choose-your-own-adventure element, with players able to explore, battle or trade virtual goods.

In an interesting take on crowdsourcing, the article states, the developers will allow players to create their own missions as a reward for exploring distant parts of the setting. I'm glad I don't have an iPhone--I'm already distracted enough with all my other toys--because I'm sure this game would become a huge time sink.

Old Starfleet Wars demographics & distributor info

2012-01-27T21:40:00.002-06:00

Between the eras of Superior Models and Monday Knight Productions, a business called Game Masters was selling the Starfleet Wars and MAATAC lines of models and rules. While that company's website is dead, the Internet Wayback Machine allows us to conjure up its ghost to tell us secrets of the past.

Here's the Game Masters web page aimed at retailers that this distributor had back in the day. I find the info on gamer demographics interesting:

The typical Starfleet Wars customer is a white male between ages 35 and 45, works in a technical field, earns an above-average income, and owns a computer. The customer will first acquire all ships within one of the five Starfleet Wars empires, then acquire a second or third empire's fleet. The median first-time Starfleet Wars order has been $133. Over 79% of these orders included one galactic dreadnought-2 (GD2) or super galactic dreadnought (SGD). Follow-on orders are common. The Terran ships sell best, followed by the Carnivorans and Entomalians.

It's also notable that Game Masters sold the models in what it called "kitted" and "finished" form. Kitted means it's your typical wargaming mini that needs basing and painting. "Finished miniatures are polished and mounted on heavy sculptured bases ..." For those of you wondering, there are still some of these "finished" Starfleet Wars models for sale by another company (along with 100mm figures of the five SfW species).

Also of interest on the old Game Masters website:

Starfleet Wars introduction: includes rulebook excerpt on the Five Powers
MAATAC introduction: includes rulebook excerpt on the Five Powers' land war tactics

Both those release schedules mention release dates that never happened. Still, I'm playing one of those games at present, and the other is still for sale, so I'm happy.

The Admiral's Avarians

2012-01-26T09:02:00.009-06:00

Photo from Blunders on the Danube blog.

These fine-looking starships don't belong to me--they're the property of Gonsalvo, author of the Napoleonics blog Blunders on the Danube, who's now one of the admirals in my Chancellor campaign. Turns out Gonsalvo already has the Starfleet Wars rules and, as shown in his post on Avarian starships, a working knowledge of the game and its setting. Check out his photos, he paints his Avarian starships in a colorful manner, and I really like the grid pattern he uses on some of the ships.

I encourage y'all to check out his blog--he promises to post more pictures of starship minis, and there's plenty of coverage of historicals/ancients gaming as well. I can't wait to see the remaining capital ships in his fleet, and I'm looking forward to more SfW posts from someone besides myself.

Heeeeeeere's Johnny!

2012-01-25T09:02:00.000-06:00

A Paladin in Citadel was getting rid of some of his prepainted Pathfinder figures, and I was able to procure the dozen goblin minis he didn't want. I have no idea what I'm gonna use them for--maybe Song of Blades and Heroes--but I thought they looked really cool, so I snagged them.

I'm not the only one who likes the Pathfinder goblins; my wife thinks they're cute, too. She said they look like the tooth fairy creatures from the second Hellboy movie. Does anyone else have any of the new Pathfinder prepainted miniatures? If so, what do you think?

Chancellor Campaign: Admirals appointed

2012-01-24T09:04:00.046-06:00

The players who signed up for the strategic portion of the Chancellor Campaign have chosen their commands. Here's who's playing what:

TERRANS

Matgc: Chancellor (super galactic dreadnought)
Prufrock: Noble Knight Prince (galactic dreadnought)

AVARIANS

Gonsalvo: Homeworld Flight (2 galactic dreadnoughts, 4 galactic battlecruisers, 6 stellar cruisers, 21 starbombers, 18 star armored pursuit ships)
Samulus: Interdiction Flight (4 galactic attack carriers, destroyer leader, 4 stellar destroyers)
Dathbain: Gatherer Flight(12 stellar destroyers, 45 galactic transports)

At the local level, we have representatives from the Hill Cantons, Skull Crushing for Great Justice, and Starbase Spartan (as well as some non-blogging games), whom I hope to see take charge of starships on the game board.

I hope to get the first few strategic turns played out by Friday, and I plan on gaming any battles this Saturday. And don't worry, you'll be seeing the battle reports on this blog.

Rounding out my new HotT armies

2012-01-23T09:04:00.002-06:00

My latest miniature figures purchase netted me a whole bunch of minis, but they were four groups of homogenous models, and the lack of variation left me wondering how to round them out while assembling my new Hordes of the Things armies. The folks in this thread on The Miniatures Page had some great suggestions regarding toy dinosaurs for the lizardmen, so I hied myself to the dollar store for some prehistoric goodness.

A TMP member suggested the small dinosaurs would be good as hordes elements when based with a skink beastmaster, so I could use them as hordes or beasts elements.

The two big dinos will make great mobile combat platforms for the skinks, behemoths per the rulebook army list. Here you can see them posing on a couple of 60mm square bases.

As you can see in this comparison shot, the skinks will fit in just fine on top of these critters. I'll use some bamboo skewers I have in the kitchen to make the fighting platform.

Interestingly, the smaller dinosaurs look like they might work as mounts for the Bretonnians if I were so inclined. Remember the saurus from the Quest for Glory computer games?

Speaking of knights, the TMPers suggested I use some of those Bretonnians to make a hero and/or paladin element for that army. I realized that I already had a figure that would fill that role:

This is a banaret from the wargame Ex Illis by Studio Figurines Bastion, out of Quebec.

I think he'll make a fine paladin to lead my Bretonnian army. Now, to get all these assembled and painted ...

Sunday Starships: Chancellor Campaign rules

2012-01-22T08:06:00.001-06:00

BACKGROUND
This campaign takes place at the outbreak of hostilities between the Terran Transsolar Federation and the Avarian United Worlds. The Terrans occupy the red star systems in hexes 0901 (Northworld) and 0907 (Roadstead). The Avarians control the yellow star systems at 0008 (Endpoint), 0202 (Median), 0505 (Vertex), and 0703 (Angle).

The Terrans are massing forces to invade Angle, an important population and industrial center, but their conflict with the Carnivorans on the Eridani Front has prevented the Terrans from making the push. The Avarians and their allies are shipping troops and war machines to fortify the system and make it too costly for the Terrans to attack. In order to halt this military buildup, the Terrans launch two of their newest and most powerful ships on a mission to destroy Avarian shipping. The Avarian Homeworld Fleet and Interdiction Fleet must hunt down these warships before they can devastate Avarian shipping.

HOW IT WORKS
Strategic players will email me their forces’ moves. Once the campaign begins, you are free to separate your ships into smaller groups or even deploy them individually—the commands listed above are just for starting out. Just tell me what ships you’re moving, and which hex those ships are entering. If other ships enter that hex, I will let each side know, and we will play out the battle on the tabletop locally. After the combat is over, I’ll email the commanders the results.

NOTE
I’m new to this, and I haven’t really playtested the strategic portion of this game. If it gets really boring or one-sided, I’m willing to tweak the rules to make the campaign more fun and start everything over.

STRATEGIC PLAYERS
The players for the strategic portion of the game may choose which command they want to have. Players will pick in the order in which they signed up:

Matgc
Prufrock
Gonsalvo
Samulus--I NEED YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
Dathbain

TACTICAL PLAYERS
Combat commanders will be local players, I will play one side if needed. We will try to have the same people (other than me) controlling the same forces in every game.

COMMANDS
Each player at the strategic level takes the role of an admiral with one command. Players will choose commands in the order in which they signed up for the campaign. For the pair of Terran players, each command consists of a single starship. The three Avarian players will each have multiple ships--none as individually powerful as the Terran vessels, but dangerous in groups. At the tactical level, commands will be allocated based on the availability of local players. I will try to keep the same players in tactical command of the same forces. If we’re short on players for the tabletop, I will take tactical command of the Avarian units. Most of the smaller vessels are unnamed. Extra credit for those strategic commanders who christen all their starships. Additionally, tactical commanders will get bonus points for assigning nicknames to the ships they control in combat.

Terran Excursion 1st Asset
Chancellor (Victory-class super galactic dreadnought)

Terran Excursion 2nd Asset
Noble Knight Prince (Valiant-class galactic dreadnought)

Avarian Homeworld Flight
Flight Leader
Phoenix (Condor-class galactic dreadnought)
Battle Cruiser Wing
Thunderbird (Condor-class galactic dreadnought)
4 Eagle-class galactic battlecruisers
Cruiser Wing
6 Falcon-class stellar cruisers
Sky Defense Wing (must remain within one hex of starting system)
21 Buzzard-class starbombers
18 Sparrow-class star armored pursuit ships

Avarian Interdiction Flight
Flight Leader
Cygnus (Vulture-class galactic attack carrier)
Attack Carrier Wing
3 Nest-class galactic attack carriers
Destroyer Wing
Screech Owl-class stellar destroyer leader
4 Hawk-class stellar destroyers

Avarian Gatherer Flight
Escort Wing
12 Hawk-class stellar destroyers
Transport Wing
5 Ostrich-class galactic transports (carry 40 supply points each)
10 Emu-class galactic transports (carry 20 supply points each)
30 Turkey-class galactic transports (carry 10 supply points each)

STRATEGIC TURNS
Each strategic turn represents about a week of game time. All strategic movement is conveyed via email. Strategic turns continue until opposing forces enter the same hex or hexes. Once that happens, I will email each side’s commander with a list of what ships have been spotted. All combats will be gamed locally using the Starfleet Wars rules. Once the battles are over, I will email the commanders of each force the results of the battle as seen from his perspective.

STARTING DEPLOYMENT

Terran Excursion Assets must begin in a Terran system or systems.
Avarian Homeworld Flight members must begin in an Avarian system or systems.
Avarian Interdiction Flight members cannot begin in an Avarian system or within three hexes of a Terran system. They may begin anywhere else on the map.
Avarian Gatherer Flight members must be split into at least three convoys that must begin in hexes 0003, 0008, and 0509. Convoys must have at least 10 ships and no more than 20 ships.

STRATEGIC MAP MOVEMENT

Terran ships: three hexes/turn
Avarian military ships: two hexes/turn
Avarian cargo ships: two hexes/turn in spacelane, one hex/turn otherwise

NOTE: A ship with a damaged hyperdrive will take three turns to move one hex.

RECON FLIGHTS
Any ship that carries starfighters may dispatch some or all of them to scout surrounding hexes (minimum of 3 starfighters per hex). Fighters automatically notify the mother ship of any enemies in that hex and may attack if they want (since these will be pretty straightforward number-crunching exercises, I will probably just game fighter-only encounters myself). Of course, this means the fighters will not be available if their base ship is attacked in that turn.

STAR SYSTEM HEXES
Any force entering a hex containing an enemy star system will face at least 60 short-range fighters (with damage adjudicated by the referee).

CAMPAIGN GOALS
This campaign is sort of open-ended; we’ll see how things look after 10 turns and maybe play a couple more. The Terrans’ overall objective is to destroy as much enemy shipping as possible; the Avarians’ goal is to destroy the Terran ships. Note that each individual commander may have additional (classified) objectives.

TACTICAL NOTES FOR STRATEGIC COMMANDERS
You don’t need to be familiar with Starfleet Wars to command at the strategic level; however, you do need to know some basic information about the ships you control and how they perform under the SfW rules:

Size: The larger Terran ship, the super galactic dreadnought, is nearly twice as powerful as the biggest Avarian craft available, the Condor-class galactic dreadnought (and the other Terran craft, the galactic dreadnought, is nearly one-and-a-half times as big). This means the Avarians will have to use their numbers as well as their brains.
Movement: On the tabletop, all warships have a maximum movement of 5 (fighters can move 6; I may change this if it makes them too powerful), but transports have a maximum movement of 4. So if they enter the same hex as a Terran, they will get caught.
Weapons: Starships have two types of weapons, beams (lasers) and particle weapons (torpedoes/missiles). Beams are stopped by a ship’s shields (force fields), while particle weapons are not. However, beams have a longer range. Because larger ships can devote more power to shields than smaller ships can overcome with their beams, it’s important to wear down a big ship with missile attacks. Be careful, though—while beams don’t need ammunition, a starship has a limited supply of missiles.

Thanks for playing, and let me know if you have any questions.

We interrupt this starship campaign ...

2012-01-21T08:00:00.000-06:00

... to bring you another miniatures bargain from Half-Price Books:

Last fall at the used bookstore, I started eying this Warhammer introductory boxed set as a source for Hordes of the Things miniatures, but I didn't snap it up at the time. It was still on the shelf around Thanksgiving, and I thought about snagging it during Half-Price's post-Turkey Day sale (an extra 40% off), but I didn't feel like leaving the house on Black Friday. There was another sale after Christmas, but the game was gone. So I was pleasantly surprised to stop by HPB on the way home from work yesterday and fine this box back among the merchandise. I didn't want to let opportunity slip away again, so I took it to the cash register.

But before I bought it, I went through the box with the cashier to make sure nothing was missing. As you can see, the package holds a lot of stuff, including dice, cardboard buildings, measuring sticks--and 88 miniature figures, the real reason I wanted this game. After sorting through everything with the helpful store employee, it turned out that while all the miniatures and dice were there, the game was missing a couple of booklets: the Warhammer Rulebook and the Warhammer Battle Book. Since the game was incomplete, the clerk was nice enough to knock the price down from $75 to $30. That's 34 cents per figure!

So now I've got enough figures for two complete HotT armies:

12 Bretonnian Knights
24 Bretonnian Bowmen
20 Lizardmen Saurus
32 Lizardment Skinks

More stuff to paint, but I'm not complaining. By the way, which elements should I base these as? The Bretonnians are easy: base the knights as Knights and mount the bowmen as Shooters. I'm thinking the Skinks would make good Hordes elements, but what about the Saurus? Blades, or Warband? Or something else? I also need to hit the dollar store for some toy dinosaurs to use as mounts. Add another project to the to-do list.

The Chancellor Campaign: Overview

2012-01-20T09:04:00.006-06:00

It looks like we have enough players, both long-distance and face-to-face, to run the Chancellor Campaign. Here's a printer-friendly version of the strategic map we'll refer to during this game. Red circles indicate star systems friendly to the forces of the Terran Federation; yellow stands for systems of the Avarian United Worlds and their allies. The dotted lines represent shipping lanes. I'll explain the significance of all this in a subsequent post.

I envision this campaign as running for about 10 or 12 turns. I'll post detailed rules this weekend, but in a nutshell, online admirals will direct their forces from hex to hex on this map via emailed orders to the referee (me). Admirals don't need to be familiar with the details of the combat rules, just have an idea of the general capabilities of their ships, which they will get from me. When opposing fleets end up in the same hex, local players will game the results on the tabletop using Starfleet Wars rules, and I'll inform the online players of what happened (as well as posting about it on this blog).

Each side will have political objectives it must meet in order to win the game, and each player will have his own goals as well. In addition, I reserve the right to reset the game and tweak things if my rules are broken and the players aren't having fun. My thanks to all those who will be participating in the Chancellor Campaign. I'm looking forward to see how all this plays out.

Alcatraz!

2012-01-19T09:02:00.002-06:00

I'm fortunate enough to live in the same town as a wargames publisher, Ed Teixeira of Two Hour Wargames, and we get together to play various THW rulesets on a semi-regular basis. This week, Ed broke out his Alcatraz island, which last saw action at MillenniumCon back in November.

Although Ed ran a zombie game using this game board at MillCon, this time he suggested we play After the Horsemen, a post-apocalyptic game from THW.

Ed took one character, and I took one main character and one sidekick. The premise was that once things started to go downhill, but before they totally went to hell, the California government became independent and decided to store gold as some sort of backing for its currency. The gold (or some of it anyway) ended up on Alcatraz Island, and our characters arrived in search of it.

As we searched building after building, we sometimes encountered natives who weren't too happy to see us. We used the In Sight process to determine which figures acted first (the better you did, the higher your score--shown by the dice--and the quicker you acted). THW combat is quick and deadly: In one gunfight, even though we had the drop on three bad guys, the flunkie failed his test and ran away, leaving the two of us against three enemy.

Even though we acted first, we still lost Ed's character (replaced by the flunky, who shamefacedly returned once the smoke cleared). Ed's second character died in a subsequent battle, as we went from building to building searching for the gold, which my character eventually found after shooting at another pair of bad guys, killing one and chasing off the other.

With the gold found, all he needs to do is figure out how to haul it all back to the mainland--with lots of hostiles between him and his boat...

It was a fun game and fantastic scenery. My thanks to Ed for all the gaming.

Latest Song of Void and Stars playtest

2012-01-18T09:04:00.011-06:00

From Mémoires d'un joueur

French gamer Arsenus has conducted another playtest of Song of Void and Stars, this time three versus three. You can read the French playtest report on his website, or go to Google's English translation of the playtest. From the translation of his summary:

Combat is very tactical and you have to manage as the inertia of vessels which, on my little table, is really strenuous exercise!

I'm looking forward to seeing the SoVaS rules. Thanks, Arsenus!

The Chancellor Campaign: Players wanted

2012-01-17T09:02:00.002-06:00

I've been kicking campaign ideas around in my head for some time now, and I've finally decided to run something.

Although I've covered similar ground in a previous scenario, The Chancellor Campaign is also inspired by Delta's look at the boardgame Sink the Bismark. Like the historical scenario it's based on, the idea is to have two powerful ships hunting supply convoys and in turn being hunted by a larger number of less powerful ships.

There will be two facets to this campaign: In the strategic component, participants will order ships from hex to hex on the map above. During the tactical portion, players will game out any ship-to-ship combat that results from enemy ships entering the same hex.

Since I'm not inclined to run massive play-by-email battles (like those I discovered here and here), I will conduct the starship combat on the tabletop, using my miniatures and the Starfleet Wars rules. I want to referee these games, and I welcome any San Antonio- and Austin-area players who want to participate. If I can't find enough players, I'll play one side myself.

For the strategic moves, however, I'd like to give my blog readers a chance to take part. Therefore, I'm looking for some online players to take the role of the starbase admirals and the various fleets via email. I need three players for the Alliance forces: one player will be in charge of Material Command and direct the various supply convoys, the next player will command the numerous yet relatively weaker ships of the Homeworld Fleet, and the last player will control the smaller number of powerful vessels of the Patrol Fleet. On the other side, I need one or two players to direct the massive Chancellor and its almost-as-powerful escort, the Noble Knight Prince.

So to sum it up: I need lots of local players who want to game starship combat, and I need four or five email players who will direct these fleets at the strategic level. Please leave a comment if you're interested in taking part, either in person or via email.

My new castle

2012-01-16T14:07:00.000-06:00

Over the weekend, I saw a kids castle playset on sale for half-price at the neighborhood drugstore. Ten bucks for some buildings/terrain for my 28mm skirmish gaming? I'm in!

Ok, it's pretty crude work--very soft plastic pieces with visible mold lines--but it does go well with heroic 28s like this Heroscape figure.

Not only that, but the castle came with a spring-loaded catapult that actually shoots plastic "rocks" (not pictured).

With a new paint job, some drybrushing, and a wash, these walls will look a lot better.

FYI, the set also includes two more walls (one with a working drawbridge) and corresponding towers, which I didn't feel like setting up for this photo shoot. It also has decals for the structure's windows, but I doubt I'll use them.

Sunday Starships: Vanguard Cruise

2012-01-15T11:45:00.000-06:00

After running the Deneb Clash play-by-email game, Dean Gunderson of Starship Combat News ran another Full Thrust conversion of Starfleet Wars. Not a direct sequel, the Vanguard Cruise scenario entailed a Terran super galactic dreadnought and its escorts getting ambushed by an Entomalian fleet that included a galactic attack carrier and three galactic dreadnoughts. (Again, links and images recovered via the Internet Wayback Machine, and a thank-you to Dean for giving me the OK to repost these.)

setup (turn 0)

From the introduction to this scenario:

The Entomalians have heard the rumors of the new SGDs and they need to know more. A large strike fleet has taken a round-about course but has penetrated the Terran front made it deep into Terran space to the backwater system where the 'Vanguard' has been conducting mock battles with her escorts. The Entomalians have brought along 3 Galactic Dreadnoughts to test this Terran super-ship and see if the rumors are true.....

Read on for a turn-by-turn of how the battle turned out (spoiler alert: it didn't go well for the Terrans):

My own private forest

2012-01-14T20:37:00.000-06:00

Do you think I have enough trees? :-)

I collected all my miniature trees in order to cover up the white flocking most of these Christmas decorations came with. (At lower left you can see the container for one of the potted shrubberies is broken from me knocking it onto the floor--don't worry; I glued it back together.)

However, almost half of the trees were very unbalanced, with a vary narrow wooden base making them easier to tip over. To fix that, I glued metal washers to the bottom of the stands, giving them a lower center of gravity and a wider base.

I then sprayed the trees with a light coating of a multicolor/textured brown paint, followed by an evergreen sort of color. They came out looking much less wintery, but I think I need to drybrush some additional shades to make them look more natural and less uniform.

I also need to paint and flock the bases. I'm not going to bother with any texturing--the bases will usually be unseen by players looking down onto the table, and why expend effort on something no one will see? Besides, I'd obsess too much and take too long getting it just right, so I'm heading that off by telling myself, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." I want to get these trees ready for the tabletop. What's everyone else working on this weekend?

Old SfW-FT minis comparison

2012-01-13T19:45:00.001-06:00

From the Game Masters Starfleet Wars-Full Thrust comparison on its now-defunct website.

Top row: Full Thrust Eurasian Solar Union (ESU) fleet containing two destroyers, light cruiser, medium cruiser, heavy cruiser, battle cruiser, battleship, battle dreadnought, super dreadnought, two groups of six fighters, and a fleet carrier.

Bottom row: Starfleet Wars Terran Federation fleet containing three star bombers, three stellar destroyers, two stellar cruisers, Mace space station, galactic battlecruiser, galactic dreadnought, galactic dreadnought-2, super galactic dreadnought, 9 star fighters (of 10 in a box), and a galactic attack carrier.

Does anyone mix and match their Full Thrust and Starfleet Wars models? Some of those ESU ships would fit in with the Carnivorans or Entomalians.

Speaking of OGRE ...

2012-01-12T09:40:00.005-06:00

... and that Martian Metals catalog I showed you yesterday, I found something interesting (and sort of related) on another page: miniatures for the game Rivets.

Rivets was another microgame, a humorous take on OGRE's premise of cybernetic tanks--except instead of big and scary, the automated armor units (called Boppers) were small and cute--cartoonish vehicles with names like Big Bopper, Tiny Bopper, and Dive Bopper. Like OGRE, it was a hex-and-counter wargame. Likewise, MM produced miniatures for this game, as you can see from the closeup of the ad below:

Since Rivets and OGRE both addressed the concept of robotic warfare, it was probably inevitable that someone would draw up rules for combining units from the two games. Mike Crane did just that in "Encounters of an Unlikely Kind" in issue 19 of Space Gamer (reprinted in the first OGRE Book).

I think I remember owning this game back in the day, but I never heard of the miniatures till 20 years later. Did anyone actually own any of these minis? If so, did you ever use them in play? I'd like to hear about it.

Old OGRE mini

2012-01-11T19:05:00.001-06:00

Photo from Martian Metals Ogre Mk Vb blog

One of this blog's readers, THE HESSIAN (all caps are his) asked in this comment about a miniature of an OGRE Mark Vb, and provided links to photos of the mini in question. He later created his own blog showing photos of the Mark Vb.

A quick history of OGRE minis: Martian Metals was the original producer of castings for this game, making figures based on Winchell Chung's game artwork (for the force now known as the Paneuropeans). Ral Partha later took over the line, adding North American Combine vehicles. Finally, for awhile, Steve Jackson Games produced its own miniatures for OGRE/GEV.

For those of you unfamiliar with the OGRE/GEV setting, the sci-fi tank game comes with giant cybertanks, increasing in size from the Mark I all the way to the Mark VI. The rules also have a Mark III-B, but nowhere could I find a mention of a Mark V-B. As you can see from the photos on THE HESSIAN's blog, the package for this model clearly lists the OGRE as a "Vb"--so there's some mystery about this miniature.

I did find this old Martian Metals catalog posted online. I've reproduced a page here for historical purposes:

Here's a closer look:

As you can see in the closeup, they clearly offered the Mark V, but there's no mention of a Vb. A commenter in this thread on the SJGames forums notes the mini carries all the weapons of a Mark V. I'm guessing the "Vb" is just a typo. Still, I appreciate THE HESSIAN bringing this to our attention.

Old Starfleet Wars flyer

2012-01-10T09:04:00.014-06:00

I found this image, from Superior Models' original advertising campaign, in a link on this defunct Stellar Games web page. It depicts the original models in the Starfleet Wars line, complete with creative paint jobs.

I dig the color schemes on these ships. Know what those paint jobs remind me of?

Anyone else see the stylistic influence, or is it just me? After all, it was the '70s...

My take on the newly announced edition of D&D

2012-01-09T20:36:00.000-06:00

Haters gonna hate.

Nerds gonna rage.

Players gonna play.

Fans gonna boy.

...

And that's all I have to say about that.

Sunday Starships: Galactic Knights game

2012-01-08T22:37:00.000-06:00

The week before Christmas, Spartan 117, the commander of Starbase Spartan as well as Firebase 6mike-mike, was kind enough to come over for an introductory game of Galactic Knights.

I took my Terrans--three destroyers and a battlecruiser--and Spartan commanded the (equivalent in points value) Avarian force of a cruiser, destroyer leader, and two destroyers.

I decided on a simple meeting engagement around an unnamed, lifeless moon.

We played using the basic rules for fighters and missiles, which treat them as essentially smaller ships, and the game went quickly.

Spartan seemed to like the game, and he did a good job commanding his squadron once he got GK's vector movement down.

I ended up winning, but not before getting cocky and letting my battlecruiser take some severe damage from missiles that bypassed the shields.

Next we get to play a space combat game of his choosing. I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks, Spartan, for trying out Galactic Knights.

Deneb Clash details

2012-01-07T09:15:00.001-06:00

Some more on Dean's Deneb Clash play-by-email game, a Full Thrust battle using the Starfleet Wars background and models. Here's the scenario background. Here's the special rules for the scenario. Here's the format for sending in moves via email.

For those who are interested, here are the individual maps Dean produced for the game. Click the captions for more details on each turn (working links via the Wayback Machine):

turn 10 (map not available)

endgame

My thanks again to Dean for allowing me to reproduce these maps.

Historic transmission: Deneb Clash

2012-01-06T09:02:00.005-06:00

The Dreadnought has recovered battlefield telemetry from a historic Terran-Entomalian clash near Deneb. Because of the great distance of Deneb, it took almost 15 years for the ultrawave transmission to reach Terran space. The information shows a Valiant-class galactic dreadnought leading a 15-ship Terran fleet in an attempt to wrest control of the Deneb star system from 20 Entomalian craft, including a pair of Mantis-class GDs:

The Office of Galactic Intelligence has converted the data into an animation showing the vectors of each ship and their fates during this harsh battle. As you can see, the Ents managed to chase the Terrans out of the system, but the bugs paid a heavy price in doing so:

(These images came from a play-by-email campaign that Dean of Starship Combat News ran back in 1997 and linked to on the SCN website. He created stats for using Starfleet Wars minis in games of Full Thrust. Although the link to the game reports and maps was long dead, I was able to recover them thanks to the Wayback Machine. My thanks also to Dean for graciously consenting to the reposting of these maps.)

Test-driving the Axe

2012-01-04T09:02:00.030-06:00

I think every wargame has tried to design a minis game at least once in his gaming career. As I had Monday off for the New Year's holiday, I paid a visit to Chris of the Hill Cantons to help playtest his own fantasy miniatures ruleset, By This Axe I Rule, which he refereed. My opponent was Brad of Skull Crushing for Great Justice.

ByTAIR uses individual miniatures grouped into units, where each figure represents either five men (or other creatures) or an individual hero-type character. Combat is resolved using the Games Workshop buckets of dice method, which can be viscerally satisfying.

The battlefield

Unfortunately, the battery on my new camera died before I could snap more than a handful of photos of the setup. Don't worry, though--ckutalik took plenty of pictures, and you can see them in his playtest report of By This Axe I Rule. You can also read his report for details about the game, which I thought played quickly and didn't really bog down anywhere (although we found the initial dueling rules too simple and repetitive, Chris quickly whipped up a new version of handling character-on-character fights).

Inspired by my house rule that all spaceships must be named, our host required us to name our generals and heroes (including magic-users and clerics). I christened my general Gump, with my two champions Bubba and Lt. Dan (I can't remember what I named the magic user or clerics). The army name was entirely Chris's, however, which I hadn't seen till I read his blog post (I do like it).

The Knights of Bradd

Since this was a game using lots of individual figures grouped in rank and file, it called out for movement trays. Although Chris didn't have any on hand, his improvised use of heavy cardstock dungeon tiles filled the role admirably, allowing us to quickly move our forces across the tabletop. I recommend this substitution if you don't want to spend money on dedicated movement trays.

Much like my Texas Aggies this season, I started off strong but ended up pissing it all away at the end of the game. My mistake was taking my toughest unit, the half-dozen giant snakes, and essentially removing them from the battle by sending them around impassable terrain toward the edge of the table. The snakes took out a champion and her wereleopard buddy and routed a unit of halflings off the board, but were unable to get back in the battle before my opponent had chased two of my other units off the board. Still, I don't blame the designer for my tactical errors.

The Scarlet Scribes of Set

ByTAIR is a fun set of rules that feels like Warhammer Fantasy but plays a lot quicker. I look forward to playing it again, perhaps in the context of a campaign (note to the designer: you might want to include a list of scenario objectives). Not only that, but it's inspired me to work on my own miniatures rules, a starship combat game. I'll share more details on my game soon.

Gaming goals for 2012

2012-01-03T09:08:00.003-06:00

I don't make New Year's resolutions on this blog--or anywhere else, for that matter--but I do feel like sharing some gaming-related objectives that I hope to accomplish over the next 12 months.

GAMING: Before I get into specifics, let me note that I plan to keep up the game playing in general. It's kind of difficult (and gasoline-intensive) when everyone else I game with lives 35-40 miles away, but I want to take part in more wargames, as well as continue to campaign in the Hill Cantons. Anyway, here are my specific gaming goals for 2012:

Attend at least two Texas gaming conventions
Run at least one starship combat scenario at a gaming convention (Starfleet Wars or Galactic Knights)
Run at least one local starship campaign (Starfleet Wars or Galactic Knights)
Help organize at least one local Hordes of the Things gameday
Release Kill Radius, the starship combat rules I'm working on

MINIS & TERRAIN: Like most gamers, I tend to purchase miniatures faster than I can paint them. I probably won't be able to break that habit. I am, however, going to set a realistic goal and get some projects finished (please note, the items on this list involve stuff I've already purchased):

EDIT: (Thanks, Chris for the reminder) Scratchbuild an entire 28mm scale game board for Search for the Emperor's Treasure
Base and paint at least one new fleet of spaceships
Base and paint at least one new Hordes of the Things army
Build a 3' x 4' battle board for use with HotT, Song of Blades and Heroes, and other games
Get all my new miniature trees ready for the tabletop
Scratch-build some structures for 1/300 (6mm) sci-fi armor games like OGRE/GEV or Future War Commander--if not, then throw away all the crap I collected for that purpose

I have more projects kicking around in my head, but I figure this list here is at least somewhat realistic, even though it may be overly optimistic. What's on your to-do list for 2012?

A couple of free games

2012-01-02T09:04:00.001-06:00

There are a multitude of free rulesets available for minis sci-fi gamers, but most of them are generic games such as Full Thrust or Hordes of the Things. Those are great games, but sometimes people want to play a set of rules that is intertwined with a particular setting. I recently became aware of two such rulesets, free downloads for a pair of specific, well-known intellectual properties.

First, and arguably the most recognizable to non-gamers, is Federation Commander: First Missions, based on the original Star Trek television series. Published by Amarillo Design Bureau, FC is actually a leaner version of the company's venerable Starfleet Battles, which although very popular takes a very long time to play.

The free version includes the basic rules at the Fleet Scale level, which is about half as detailed as the Squadron Scale rules. The download also comes with printable counters, two ship system displays (Federation Constitution-class heavy cruiser and Klingon D-7 battlecruiser), and a hex map. So for the cost of paper and ink for your printer, you have a quick-play version of the ship-on-ship battles like Kirk & Co. used to have. For people who gave up on SFB as too esoteric, this game might give you your Trek fix for a lot smaller time investment.

The second fictional offering is probably just as famous among gamers, probably less so to the non-wargaming public, although it also has a hefty background setting. I'm talking of course, about that original game of giant robots blowing each other up, BattleTech. In addition to the BattleTech Quick-Start Rules, which has 24 pages (8 taken up by in-game fiction), publisher Catalyst Game Labs also offers more free background material, the BattleTech Universe Book, which is twice as many pages as the game rulebook.

This version of the game includes the quick-start rules that cover battlemechs, tanks, and the poor bloody infantry (conventional and power-armored), the appropriate mech/vehicle/infantry record sheets, a color hex map, and lots of counters. If you've been out of the game awhile and want an easy way to get back into BT, I can't think of a better means than this.

So if you've always wanted to wargame in the Starfleet Battles universe or the BatteTech setting (or just want to sample some well-known rules), here's your chance to do at no cost.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T17:21:00.000-06:00

Prospero Año Nuevo from Super Galactic Dreadnought. I hope everyone had an enjoyable New Year's Eve, if you're into that sort of thing. Here at the Dreadnought, we had some beer, got out the telescope and gazed at the Moon, Jupiter, a nebula, Sirius and some other stars before watching a movie. Here's to further voyages and new discoveries in 2012.

The Victory flies past galaxy NGC 7331 (actually, it's the cover of my Astronomy magazine desk calendar).

2011: Year in Review

2011-12-31T13:28:00.001-06:00

Since I wrote a retrospective post last year, I thought I would once again take a look back at some of my blogging and gaming accomplishments for 2011.

On the blogging side, I had quite a few posts of which I'm proud. Continuing my obsession with the old Starfleet Wars game, I examined the scale of the Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights models; I conducted an in-depth review of the Starfleet Wars rules; I dug up some reviews of Starfleet Wars from the late 70s/early 80s; and I was fortunate enough to publish a retrospective by one of the Starfleet Wars sculptors. Regarding other games, I also took a detailed look at Galactic Knights; and I had fun designing my own dungeon using the Holmes D&D rules.

In addition, I wrote tutorials on painting Terran ships, painting an Entomalian cruiser, painting an Ent carrier, mounting spaceships on bases, and painting a moon for the tabletop. I also posted lots of photos of my painted spaceships, Hordes of the Things armies, my OGRE/GEV miniatures, and other minis.

On the spaceship gaming front, I was disappointed that I missed out on Millennium Con, which is just up the road in Round Rock (I did run a marathon instead, so the weekend wasn't a total waste). However, I did run a game at ChimaeraCon in San Antonio, a Galactic Knights scenario linked to a simultaneous ground battle. I also finally was able to play Starfleet Wars for the first time, as well as some Full Thrust.

My biggest gaming accomplishment (in conjunction with Chris from the Hill Cantons and Brad from Skull Crushing for Great Justice) was putting on a small game convention here in New Braunfels--the South Texas Mini-Con. It was a small event, but everyone had a good time. I even ran my first convention game of Starfleet Wars.

I also participated in plenty of other games: D&D in the Hill Cantons campaign on a semi-regular basis and a Conan one-shot; a game or two of Hordes of the Things; I also introduced a new player to Galactic Knights (and did it again a few weeks later); and even played Search for the Emporer's Treasure.

When I started out the year, I hoped to get a little painting done. I did complete a lot of miniatures: this blog's namesake SGDN, two other Terran ships, some Terran starbombers and star armored pursuit ships, Carnivoran starbombers, Entomalian starbombers, two different Entomalian battlecruisers, various starfighters, more starfighters, even more starfighters, a scratchbuilt asteriod base, Star Frontiers Federation battleship, frigates and destroyers and scouts and freighters, Star Frontiers pirate frigates, Star Frontiers privateers and more privateers, and Stardate: 3000 shuttles and fighters. I still have plenty to keep me busy, however, as I purchased more during the year.

All in all, 2011 was a pretty good year for me when it came to blogging, painting, and gaming. Here's to a better one in 2012!

The Starfleet Wars that never was

2011-12-30T17:26:00.000-06:00

Photo from stellargames.com (Game Masters) website via the Wayback Machine

Did you know that the original Starfleet Wars was once on the verge of re-release? Galactic Knights uses the same ship models, but the rules and setting are totally different from the older game. I thought the minis went out of production in the 1980s, but apparently not.

Sometime in the late 1990s, a San Francisco-area company called Game Masters (the distributor for Superior Models, which manufactured the castings and published the original rules) was offering the SfW miniatures for sale.* According to the old Starfleet Wars web page at stellargames.com,* Game Masters planned on publishing the SfW rulebooks:*

Starfleet Wars, Books 1 and 2, are being re-released after 18 years. We'll let you know when and where you can obtain the rules.

I don't think that company ever got around to releasing the Starfleet Wars books. Instead, it proceded to license the castings to Monday Knight Productions, which now sells the ships as its Galactic Knights line, with an eponymous combat game system. Too bad, as I've come to like the Starfleet Wars rules. It would be nice if they were more widely available.

*Links via the Wayback Machine, a great boon to internet archeology.

Forest for the trees

2011-12-29T17:51:00.000-06:00

Yes, Forest for the Trees is a good band name.

I picked up these miniature trees at Wal-Mart for fifty percent off as part of their Christmas clearance. The tiny trees went from 50 cents down to a quarter, the medium-sized evergreen was half of 75 cents, and the larger trees, originally a buck each, sold for 4 bits.

I plan on basing these trees (and my earlier vegetation acquisition) using washers and spackle, then spraypainting them with brown and again with green to cover up the white flocking. That way, they'll be all-season trees instead of just winter terrain. They will come in handy for army battles with Hordes of the Things and for skirmish gaming using Song of Blades and Heroes. I'm sure they'll see use in other games as well. Anyone else clean up on Christmas clearances for gaming material?

Another new mini

2011-12-28T18:18:00.001-06:00

Check out what I scored recently on ebay:

He's an Angel of Valor Legionnaire for the Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures game. Cool, huh?

I plan on using this figure in one of my Hordes of the Things armies--either Surtr and the Sons of Muspel, or a new army, theme undecided.

He's taller than your typical 28mm figure, and a lot more regal-looking, so I don't think I'll use him as a Fliers element. He looks powerful, so I don't see him as a unit of Blades, either.

I'm thinking Hero or Aerial Hero. Either way, a nice addition to my HotT army, whichever one I end up putting him in.

Gelatinous cubes

2011-12-27T23:12:00.001-06:00

Today I picked up a couple of gelatinous cube miniatures (pictured above with the thief Uma, one of the characters from the Hill Cantons campaign) for use in D&D games. Can you guess the manufacturer (of the cubes, not Uma--she's a Reaper figure in need of a touchup)?

Hint: they're not from the D&D Minis prepainted line. They're not Mage Knight figs, either.

Give up? OK, they're from the "Make It Christmas!" line.

Huh?

That's right, these are holiday decorations I found in the 2/3 off clearance section of Hobby Lobby (the back of the label reads "Description: Crystal Clear Ice Cubes x 2"). The package further describes these things as "Parts for Holiday Projects!!!" (triple exclamation points included). I guess people use them as ice scuptures or something to go with the little trees in their holiday villages? They also come in smaller sizes in packs of four, as well as a package of a dozen or so tiny, transparent cubes. Of course, when I saw them, I immediately knew their true purpose was to represent these dungeon scavengers on the tabletop.

OK, maybe they look a little small next to a 30mm figure, but at 80 cents per, who could pass them up? They're Item # 5848148 if you're interested.

Nitpicking AD&D: weaponless combat

2011-12-26T11:57:00.000-06:00

Over at Skull Crushing for Great Justice (awesome blog name, by the way), fellow Hill Cantons campaigner Brad has started examining the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules in order to run a campaign (see his posts on character generation, combat, spells and more spells, saves and alignments, and missile combat). In his ruminations about AD&D, Brad posits that while most of us end up playing a house-ruled, stripped-down version of the game that's closer to the Basic/Expert rules than it is to the Advanced game, AD&D is actually a pretty solid set of rules--unfortunately, those rules are spread randomly across several hardbacks instead of being organized coherently.

I agree--although it's better organized than the original version, AD&D is still scattered across three, four, or more titles (depending on which supplements you add to the game) and can seem a bit schizophrenic. The result, at least for the group I played with as a teenage Scribe, was that we ignored a lot of the rules that slowed the game down (I'm looking at you, weapon speeds!).

However, a fresh look at the Players Handbook shows that as teens, we ignored what should have been a major part of combat: pummelling, grappling, and overbearing. While the PH is short on mechanics of combat, leaving adjudication methods to the DM, it does have a short section that lays out various options for players, including turning undead, spells, missiles, and melee combat, which "includes the use of hand-held weapons, natural weaponry (claws, horns, teeth,etc.), grappling, and special or magical touch attacks, i.e. poison ... etc." (Emphasis added.) The section goes on to describe an example of combat in which adventurers surprise an illusionist with twenty orcs. From page 105 of the Players Handbook:

... The illusionist/orcs again win initiative and attack first, 5 orcs going after each fighter to grapple, 6 rushing the magic-user, and 3 heading for the cleric. The fighters are pulled down, as is the magic-user, but the cleric avoids their grasp. ... [T]he fighters and magic-user are held fast by orcs, so they can do nothing. ...

... It is now the orcs' turn, and as their leader is dead [slain by the theif in the previous round] and they still face 2 powerful opponents, they will check morale. It is probable that they will kill the pinned characters with dagger thrusts if their morale does not break, or that they will rleease the pinned characters and run away if their morale is bad.

(Emphasis added.) This example of combat (which I recently read for the first time in probably more than two decades) contains two rules which we pretty much ignored as kids: grappling and morale--and I only just now noticed the bit about a morale check. I won't describe the Dungeon Masters Guide rules for unarmed combat in detail (it involves a percentile dice to-hit roll against 10 x defender's armor class, adjusted by fiddly little 1%, 5%, and 10% modifiers and then a second percentile dice roll--with more modifiers--to see how much damage is scored, and a fraction of that damage is nonlethal and temporary, and ... oh, just read it for yourself). Morale rules are more straightforward, but still difficult to compute on the fly. I realize now there are alternative unarmed combat rules in Unearthed Arcana, but back in the day I never actually got to the end of that book.

Sorry, went off on a tangent. My point is, I guess, that in our version of AD&D combat, the characters and the monsters faced each other in static lines, exchanging blows like in the old 8-bit versions of the Final Fantasy videogames until one side or the other was eliminated. Gygax's example, on the other hand, is more reminiscent of those old sword & sorcery tales that inspired the game, where hordes of bad guys swarm the hero in order to capture him but run away if resistance is too fierce.

So does anyone actually use the unarmed combat rules from the DMG? Do you instead use one of the simpler versions in Unearthed Arcana? Or do you just have the two sides whacking each other until everyone's dead? And what about morale? Do enemies run away or fight until the bitter end?

Christmas gifts

2011-12-25T21:20:00.000-06:00

At first I thought I must have been very bad this year, because I found this in my stocking:

But then I unwrapped a package that turned out to be something I had asked for, a camera stand to help me improve my photography for this blog:

The Gorilla Pod was all I had asked for, but I received another photography-related gift:

That's right, a new camera, to replace my current model, which is a little worse for wear after four years of sharing my pocket with keys and cell phone. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

These are all my Christmas gifts which are even tangentially related to gaming. So what did Santa bring you this year?

The week in gaming

2011-12-24T19:10:00.000-06:00

I've been fortunate this holiday season. The past seven days were filled with gaming. I wanted do individual posts for each game, but who am I kidding? Instead, here are some pics.

More Song of Void and Stars

2011-12-23T13:35:00.001-06:00

Photo from Mémoires d'un joueur blog.

French wargamer Arsenus has posted a report of another playtest of the Song of Void and Stars rules to his blog. This time it was a two-on-two battle, using the same game stats for the vessels but with Star Trek ships. This report is in English as well as French, so no need for an online translation.

The report gives a few hints about rules for SoVaS. Tabletop effects such as nebulae and pulsars can subtract from a craft's combat value. Ships can attempt to repair damage. Some of the special abilities for starships include:

Evasive Maneuver
Point Defense Support
Target Painter
Missile
Light Fighter Hanger

In addition, publisher Andrea Sfiligoi gave a brief update in an email to the Song of Blades and Heroes mailing list:

It's a fast system where each player controls just a few ships (I have played with 4-5 although I'm certain you can play with more if you want a longer game). Target release date is first half of 2012 but I can't be more accurate at the moment, as we need a point system and there is a ton of special rules to playtest.

(For earlier reports on the spaceship game using the SoBaH engine, go here and here.)

Merci, Arsenus, for the battle report; and grazie, Andreas, for sharing more details.

Another old Starfleet Wars ad

2011-12-19T22:53:00.000-06:00

I found another magazine advertisement for Starfleet Wars from back in the day. This was was in the Best of Dragon Vol. 1, and it's another one of the reasons behind my obsession with the game and its associated miniatures. Who wouldn't be entranced by the five Super Galactic Dreadnoughts in this picture?

My apologies for the image, which is a scan of a water-damaged volume I actually own. I was thumbing through it recently when I saw the familiar ship outlines. You can find this Alnavco ad on page 23 of the compilation, beneath an ~~exercise in nerdery~~ article titled "How Heavy is My Giant?"

It's interesting that the magazine would sell advertisements in an issue that's reprinting older articles and presumably meant as a reference work. In addition to the copy for Alnavco, there are also ads for Ral Partha, the Dungeon Hobby Shop, Arduin, The Armory, Martian Metals, Chaosium and more.

The text in the Dragon advertisement goes into greater detail than the smaller Starfleet Wars ad in Boys Life, which I showed you last summer. The advertising copy is evocative of the game's setting:
Each [SGDN] is the flagship of a different starfleet consisting of galactic dreadnoughts, battlecruisers, cruisers, destroyers and transports. Each fleet has its own "air" force of starbombers and starfighters. And eadh fleet has different characteristics, tactics, etc., all explained in STARFLEET WARS, wargaming rules desined especially for this series.

There's more! Each fleet has its own Galactic Armor Corps...miniature futuristic fighting vehicles for surdace battles. The game MAATAC provides wargaming rules.
Not only that, but the Super Galactic Dreadnought models sold for just $15 apiece! No wonder I wanted one back then. It took me a few decades, but I finally got it.

Sunday Starships: Song of Void and Stars

2011-12-18T12:02:00.001-06:00

Photo from Mémoires d'un joueur blog.

Remember last spring when I mentioned that Ganesha Games, the publisher of Song of Blades and Heroes, was working on a spaceship game based on SoBaH? I didn't either, till just now when the game's author posted a link to a playtest report of the new game, called Song of Void and Stars. The blog, Mémoires d'un joueur (Memories of a player), is in French, so here's the blog post translated into English (courtesy Google translate).

Like all machine translations, this one's a little inexact, but apparently the game uses different colored tokens to track damaged and destroyed ship systems. I don't know if it's the playtester's idea or it's in the rules, but I do like the concept of using fighters to represent missiles in the game--let's face it, in most starship combat games, fighters are pretty much disposable ordnance.

In this particular playtest, damage to the Rebel ship knocked out its control systems, forcing it to fly through an asteroid field, making it easy for the Imperial vessel to finish it off. Seems like SoVaS will be a quick-playing game that would allow me to put a lot of ships on the table. I'm looking forward to learning more about Song of Void and Stars.

Sunday Starships: Sathar work in progress

2011-12-11T12:01:00.001-06:00

Some small progress on some of the Sathar vessels from last summer's Half-Price Books purchase: I have them primed and based.

As you can see, I used a new technique for basing the light cruiser--two 1-inch stands instead of a larger (1½-inch or more) single base. This provides a steady platform for these ships, which I may use for the larger Sathar models as well.

I plan on trying a new paint scheme on these, but I'm not sure exactly what colors I'll use just yet. In the meantime, I primered them a medium gray, which came out very bright in the photos because of the camera flash (as evident on the frigate below).

I'm not yet sure if I will use these models to represent a new species coming into contact with the Five Powers or just as noncombatants of some sort (those Sathar light cruisers would make good tankers, for example). Either way, if anyone has any suggestions for a color scheme, feel free to share.

WTF, Blogger?

2011-12-10T14:05:00.001-06:00

OK, I've tried several times, but I can't get my title picture to stretch all the way across the screen like it's supposed to. I unchecked the "shrink to fit" box when importing a photo for the title section of the blog, but it still shows up shrunken. I did this for my old photo, and I tried it with a new photo (visible in the wrong place above).

Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?

EDIT: OK, now the photo is behind the title, but the words in the title are now in a smaller area. What's going on?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ...

2011-12-06T22:30:00.000-06:00

... which means cheap sources for terrain are available at your local dollar stores and craft shops. I picked up a few miniature trees the other day, which normal people apparently use for purposes other than wargaming:

Note that in addition to the ubiquitous evergreens, I managed to snag a couple of deciduous trees for the gaming table, as you can see in the top row of the topmost photo. I just need to go over all these with some green spraypaint and get them onto bases, and presto: new forest ambiance for Hordes of the Things or Song of Blades and Heroes.

Sunday Starships: Galactic Knights edition

2011-12-04T22:14:00.001-06:00

I had a chance to teach Galactic Knights to a new player on Saturday, a friend's 10-year-old son. He and I have played Heroscape together for some time, but I told him I had a spaceship game he might be interested in instead. I showed him the miniatures and we practiced GK's vector movement before heading out for lunch.

When we returned from our meal, I set out a basic scenario for our first game: two cruisers (each a Ranger-class, but while I took a Terran craft, the other player picked an Entomalian ship for his vessel), starting on opposite sides of the planet. My friend, who has an inexplicable fondness for the University of Texas, christened his vessel the UT Rocks. As a good Aggie, I responded by naming my ship the Death to Longhorns. The first turn, we both accelerated toward each other, but missed with our long-range heavy particle beam batteries. We coasted past each other, turning to face so that our double-shielded fronts kept facing each other. We then circled around, with a few beams dinging each other's armor.

However, amid all the beam shooting, I neglected to launch any missiles, while my young opponent did fire off his first salvo, which detonated behind me, shredding my rear armor and taking out one medium battery. I did deploy missiles the next turn, striking the rear of the ship, but only two struck home. Of course, my enemy shot off his second batch of missiles, which chewed up the rest of my armor and took out my heavy battery and an engine. Subsequent beam fire eliminated more beams and my missile launcher. In response, I just scratched the paint on the other ship.

With my maneuverability cut from 9 to 5, I couldn't get away without exposing my unarmored backside to his beams. So I slowly attempted to back away from the planet and make my escape. I was just delaying the inevitable, however. Although we called the game because of time, it was obvious I was going to lose. We had a good time playing, and I seem to have made a convert to spaceship gaming--my youthful protege wants to play again, with more ships. And after seeing my homemade planet on the table, he even promised to construct a Mars-like planet for me, since he had made one of his own for a school report. A successful day of gaming.

Blue cat group

2011-11-30T09:08:00.001-06:00

Speaking of Carnivorans, take a look at this cat fleet by Don M of the Brazos Evil Empire:

Some time ago, Don had mentioned he had a Carnivore fleet, but at the time he didn't have any photos up. He was kind enough to bring his ships down to the South Texas Mini-Con last summer. He didn't get them on the gaming table, instead he demoed When the Navy Walked.

Now, he has pics up, and the space forces of the Terran Transsolar Navy stand ready to repel the invaders! Although the Carnies were originally Starfleet Wars minis, Don says he uses them when he plays Full Thrust. I, on the other hand, usually play Starfleet Wars or Galactic Knights. If we want our fleets to meet in battle, we're gonna have to chose a ruleset.

Either way, they're some nice looking ships. Be sure to check out the rest of the pics of Don's Carnivoran fleet.

More Superior Models copyrights

2011-11-29T09:07:00.001-06:00

In addition to copyrights for Superior Models printed materials, the company also registered several of its miniatures, including some of the 100mm Starfleet Wars figures:

Type of Work:	Visual Material
Registration Number / Date:	VA0000043007 / 1979-11-05
Title:	Keech : [no.] FA-37.
Description:	Figurine.
Notes:	Upright bird in armor.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1979
Date of Publication:	1979-05-29
Authorship on Application:	Ron Spicer.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.

Names:	Spicer, Ron, 1933-
	Superior Models, Inc.

Type of Work:	Visual Material
Registration Number / Date:	VA0000043005 / 1979-11-05
Application Title:	Lion warrior.
Title:	Scarr : [no.] FA-29.
Description:	Figurine.
Notes:	Upright lion in armor.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1979
Date of Publication:	1979-01-16
Date in Notice:	notice: 1978
Authorship on Application:	Ron Spicer.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.

Other Title:	Lion warrior
Names:	Spicer, Ron, 1933-
	Superior Models, Inc.

Type of Work:	Visual Material
Registration Number / Date:	VA0000043006 / 1979-11-05
Application Title:	Warrior lizard.
Title:	Torc : [no.] FA-34.
Description:	Figurine.
Notes:	Upright lizard in armor.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1979
Date of Publication:	1979-01-31
Authorship on Application:	Ron Spicer.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.

Other Title:	Warrior lizard
Names:	Spicer, Ron, 1933-
	Superior Models, Inc.

Sunday Starships (cont'd): second Starfleet Wars game

2011-11-28T09:04:00.001-06:00

After our first Starfleet Wars game of the day on Saturday, I was familiar with the fighter and starbomber rules, but I wanted to try them out with more ships on each side. Since Chris was here now, I relinquished my player's hat and oversaw the game as a referee. As you can see, I decided to use wisps from cotton balls to mark ships that had been hit.

The scenario I ~~pulled out of my ass~~ carefully put together involved the Carnivorans defending a moon against an incursion by the Avarians. The birdies' goal was to get their ships into orbit around the satellite; the kitties' job was to stop them.

The Carnies got pretty much my entire cat fleet: a Den-class galactic attack carrier, Lion-class galactic battlecruiser, two Panther-class stellar cruisers, a Cheetah-class stellar destroyer, three Kitten-class star armored pursuit ships, and three Snarl-class starbombers.

The Avarians were fewer in number, but the ships were more powerful and included a Nest-class GAC, an Eagle-class GB, a Screech Owl-class stellar destroyer leader, and three Hawk-class SDs.

I quickly realized the birds were outnumbered, so I had some transports (repurposed pirate frigates from Star Frontiers) enter on the following turn. If they could get to the moon, that would be good for the Avarians.

It took a couple of turns with no firing before the two fleets got into range. Long story short: the Carnivores concentrated all their fire onto the Avarian DL and vaporized it in a single turn (68 points of damage to a ship that starts with just 36 power units). The cats also launched fighters for two turns, so they had twice as many on the board as the birds, who just launched once. Avarian lasers quickly took out most of the Carnie SBs and SAPS.

All but one Avarian fighter was shot down, while the Carns had several survive to launch their high velocity implosion weapons at the Av ships. More deadly, however, were the high velocity implosion weapons on the larger ships--Carnivorans have a terrific rate of fire for their missiles, and their barrage overwhelmed the Avarian battlecruiser, even though it was twice as powerful as its cat counterpart. The birds did take out the enemy destroyer in return.

The Avarian carrier had kept out of the fight and escorted the transports into orbit around their objective. With two-thirds of its fighters remaining (and the Carnivorans missing more than half of their starfighters), the birds still posed a threat. It was about time to call it quits. I declared the game a tie.

This play experience taught me a couple of lessons about the rules. First, take care of all fighter/anti-fighter combat and get casualties off the board before allowing fighters to launch their missiles (but still apply fighter missile damage simultaneously at the end of the turn along with damage from ships' missiles and lasers). Second, even though the sides were about evenly matched in terms of total power units, numbers matter when it comes to defending against fighters. Since each ship gets 10 CIDS rolls (even if the percentage to hit is low), the more vessels you have to shoot down enemy planes, the better.

I'm grateful to Chris and Joe for coming over to play, and I apologize for not having a more balanced scenario--Joe had a lot less to work with than he needed. Thanks, guys, for being such good sports.

Sunday Starships: Starfleet Wars game

2011-11-27T11:36:00.000-06:00

Some holiday weekend gaming--I was fortunate enough to gather a couple of fellow starship captains for some Starfleet Wars action when Hill Cantons blogger Chris and Johnny Reb organizer Joe made it over on Saturday.

Chris got stuck in traffic, so the first match was between me and Joe. My previous games only involved large ships, so I wanted to try out the rules for starfighters, as well as the rules for starbombers and star armored pursuit ships this time around.

I took a Terran Invincible-class dreadnought (which carries four starfighters) with three Mars-class starbombers and a pair of Dauntless-class SAPS as escorts. I gave Joe two task forces: an Aquarian Stingray-class carrier accompanied by a couple of Piranha-class destroyers and an Entomalian Hive-class carrier escorted by a Wasp-class destroyer and two Louse-class star armored pursuit ships:

The idea in this scenario was for me to get the DN off the other side of the board with enough power to reach hyperspace. I started out behind a moon; Joe deployed his forces apart from each other hoping to get me to run the gauntlet between them.

I immediately headed to my right, around the outside of the water-breathers, for three turns. On my fourth turn, however, I juked back toward the opposite table edge, faking out Joe, who had anticipated me continuing in the same direction. (This is why I like simultaneous movement--it forces you to anticipate where your opponent is headed.)

While this was happening, the fish fighters quickly took out my three SBs, and the bug attack craft shot down my SAPS a couple of turns later. I managed to eliminate one of the fish destroyers and scratch the paint on the Aquarian carrier. The aliens in turn damaged my remaining ship by more than 10 percent--enough to reduce the amount of antiaircraft fire and give me some dilemmas in power allocation, but that's about it.

The final turn had me headed for the border with both forces in hot pursuit. The alien team-up failed to stop the lonely dreadnought from reaching the system's edge and escaping to lightspeed. By the time we finished, Chris had shown up. Now that we had the fighter rules down, I decided to run a larger game with carriers on both sides. I will share how that turned out in a later post. For now, enjoy your Sunday.

Starfleet Wars copyright info

2011-11-26T08:38:00.000-06:00

The author of the Zenopus Archives, whose devotion to the old blue box Dungeons & Dragons rules rivals my obsession with Starfleet Wars, recently scoured the United States Copyright Office website for publication information regarding the Holmes basic D&D set.

Since ZA's research proved so fruitful, I decided to follow in his footsteps and search the online catalog for similar details regarding the SfW games. I found three entries for Starfleet Wars (links are embedded in the Copyright Office entries and go to copyright searches for that name):

Type of Work:	Visual Material
Registration Number / Date:	TX0000621288 / 1980-06-16
Application Title:	Starships.
Title:	Starfleet wars.
Description:	Folder.
Notes:	Catalog sheet.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1978
Date of Publication:	1978-07-24
Authorship on Application:	Superior Models, Inc., employer for hire of Ron Spicer.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.

Names:	Spicer, Ron, 1937-
	Superior Models, Inc.

Type of Work:	Visual Material
Registration Number / Date:	TX0000621289 / 1980-06-16
Application Title:	Starfleet wars game board.
Title:	Starfleet wars.
Imprint:	Claymont, Del. : Superior Models, c1978.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1978
Date of Publication:	1978-07-24
Authorship on Application:	Superior Models, Inc., employer for hire of Ron Spicer.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.

Names:	Spicer, Ron, 1937-
	Superior Models, Inc.

Type of Work:	Text
Registration Number / Date:	TX0000509051 / 1980-04-29
Title:	Starfleet wars / [written by Wayne Smith ; designed & illustrated by Ron Spicer].
Imprint:	Claymont, DE : Superior Models, c1978.
Description:	16 p.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1978
Date of Publication:	1978-07-24
Authorship on Application:	Superior Models, Inc., employer for hire.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.

Names:	Smith, Wayne
	Spicer, Ron
	Superior Models, Inc.

I also found an entry for MAATAC (which is spelled with spaces in between the letters for some reason):

Type of Work:	Text
Registration Number / Date:	TX0000509050 / 1980-04-29
Title:	The Intergalactic wargame of great armored fighting machines : M A A T A C / [written by Wayne Smith ; designed & illustrated by Ron Spicer].
Imprint:	Claymont, DE : Superior Models, c1979.
Description:	16 p.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1979
Date of Publication:	1979-07-10
Authorship on Application:	Superior Models, Inc., employer for hire.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.

Other Title:	M A A T AC
Names:	Smith, Wayne
	Spicer, Ron
	Superior Models, Inc.

My thanks to Zenopus Archives for pointing me to this great resource!

Another vintage Starfleet Wars review

2011-11-25T09:04:00.006-06:00

I recently came across another old article on the Starfleet Wars line of miniature starships, which I had overlooked when I composed my original post on vintage SfW reviews. So here's one more take on this old range of spaceships from back in the day.

Dragon #51 (July 1981)

In the regular miniatures review column, "Figuratively Speaking," author Bill Fawcett notes the clean castings and amount of detail on the Starfleet Wars minis.

... The Terran ships are obviously drawn from Star Wars ship types, and these figures beg to be used with any rules which recreate the battles from those movies.

The other fleets (Entomalian, Avarian, Aquarian, and Carnivorian) have a great diversity in styling, making the members of each fleet stand out from one another.

The reviewer notes just one weakness--something I've touched upon as well--that the ships' undersides hold just as much detail as their topsides.

Bonus review: The same column examines the Stardate: 3000 line of miniatures, noting they're "generally original in design, with only a passing resemblance to the Star Trek and Star Wars-style ships. ... The detail is well-done, castings are generally clean, and the parts fit together properly."

Thanksgaming

2011-11-24T11:51:00.000-06:00

For those readers outside the United States, today is the day we in this country celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. It's a time for Americans to overeat to the point of discomfort, squabble with relatives, drink heavily while watching televised sports events, and get up extremely early the next morning to engage in full-tilt consumerism while sliding deeper into debt.

But it's also a time for us to reflect on the things for which we're grateful. In addition to the usual--food, shelter, family, no one shooting at me or any of my loved ones--I'm thankful for the many gaming opportunities I've had in recent years.

My teen years were the golden age of my gaming; time grew scarce as I got older, and my playing time slowly dwindled as I went to college and then out into the real world. Although I kept all my game materials (and occasionally found new items in secondhand bookstores and game shops), I stopped playing in the 1990s, dabbling in computer versions of AD&D to feed my habit. It wasn't till a decade later, thanks to the internet, that I returned to the gaming world. Since then, I've had a chance to play RPGs and minis games, attend cons, and made new friends through my gaming.

While living in San Antonio, I started wargaming on a regular basis with the Lone Star Historical Miniatures gang. I also started playing in the Hill Cantons campaign--and I even got my wife to come along with me. I've run games at conventions and even helped organize a small con myself. Not only that, but I've had a chance to give back a little to the community with this blog. So this Thanksgiving, I wanted to share my gratitude for all the gaming opportunities I currently have. It may be a frivolous pastime, but I enjoy it.

On a related note, when I was younger we'd all go to my aunt's or my cousins' house for dinner, and one of the post-meal traditions we had was playing the boardgame Risk. Nothing like grinding your relatives' armies into the ground while conquering the world! Does anyone else have a similar holiday gaming tradition?

Happy Turkey Day everyone!

Search for the Emperor's Treasure

2011-11-23T09:08:00.006-06:00

Weekend before last, I got together with Chris and Brad for a little retrogaming. Chris trotted out Search for the Emperor's Treasure, a nifty little game that originally appeared in issue 51 of Dragon Magazine.

It had been close to three decades since I'd played SftET, so it was like playing an entirely new game. The idea is to move your character around the map, acquiring treasures and resolving encounters. The game ends when a certain number of the emperor's treasures have been found. Whoever ends up with the most goodies wins the game.

The fun thing about the game is that if you draw an encounter that doesn't aply to the terrain you're in, you can play that encounter on another player who is in that terrain. A drawback is that a player can camp on certain locations and keep searching for treasure (that's how I ended up winning--you can see all my bling in the picture above). Still, we had a good time playing, and even talked about building a large game board for use with miniatures at the next South Texas Mini Con. Then Chris pointed out this giant version of the SftET board, and I decided I could never do as good a job.

UPDATE: Head on over to the Hill Cantons for Chris's take on the game.

The Broken Lands

2011-11-22T09:07:00.000-06:00

Riffing some more on Chris's post about a sense of place in your role-playing game settings, my recent trip out to far West Texas brought to mind the Broken Lands from B/X D&D's Known World setting.

For those of you not familiar with that milieu, when the D&D Expert Set came out, it included, along with the Expert rulebook, the adventure X1 Isle of Dread. That module contained a short gazeteer with descriptions of various areas in the game setting (called the Known World), including the Broken Lands, "an area of rocky badlands and old volcanic lava beds ... inhabited mainly by outcasts and monsters."

I wonder if the writer had this part of West Texas in mind when he came up with the Broken Lands. Looks like monster territory to me.

Opponent's army: Mouse Guard

2011-11-21T09:04:00.001-06:00

For your viewing pleasure, some pictures of a fellow Hordes of the Things player's army: Brian's Mouse Guard. It's based on the comic of the same name, and mounted on 60mm bases.

Hero

These miniatures are all (I think) Splintered Light figures, and the basing with craft store decorations gives the stands a very rustic feel.

Cleric

I'm not personally familiar with any of the characters from this series, so I can't tell you who each stand is supposed to represent, other than their HotT elements.

Blades

Also, this isn't Brian's entire army, just what he used for a game of HotT. It's been over a year since I took these photos, so I can't remember what else he might have added to this collection.

Spears

All in all, this is a very creative interpretation of the Mouse Guard characters. That's what I love about Hordes of the Things--you can put pretty much anything on the table as part of an army.

Shooters

In particular, this is an innovative way to model a swarm of bees--illustrations of the winged insects--until you can find the exact minis you need (the bit of paper there is supposed to be the beehive).

Horde

Sunday Starships: Privateers

2011-11-20T17:46:00.000-06:00

I finally painted up the last of the starships in the Star Frontiers privateers boxed set I scored in last summer's Half-Price Books miniatures find (you can find the rest of the painted privateers here).

These are about twice as large as the other spacecraft in the privateers set, but thematically they blend in just fine. The streamlining makes them suitable for atmospheric missions, while they have enough engine capacity to perform deep-space tasks as well.

These craft could probably serve as Class II or Class III vessels for War Rocket. In Galactic Knights or Starfleet Wars, I can use them as in-system defense or local police, or just civilian targets/objectives.

Now that I'm done with the privateers, I need to paint up the Sathar ships my wife picked up for me. Not sure what paint scheme, but I think I want to go multicolor. It will have to wait till after Thanksgiving, though.

Oh, and here's some pics of each ship by itself. First, the Condor Class:

Next, we have the Moonlight Stinger:

Finally, the Rollo's Revenge:

Hope you enjoyed these, and thanks for stopping by.

Texas HotT championship

2011-11-19T10:46:00.001-06:00

Photo courtesy Lone Star Historical Miniatures. Click here for more con pics.

Although I missed Millennium Con this year, I did want to share the results from the Hordes of the Things tournament that took place last weekend at the miniatures gaming convention in Round Rock. Here are the results, courtesy of tourney organizer Blake Radetzky:

This past weekend we held the Texas State Championship tournament for 40mm Hordes of the Things.

Our new Texas Champion is: Mark Leroux with his Sons of Liberty army

Tournament Shakedown
Mark Leroux - Sons of Liberty - 28 pts
Warren Jackson - Persian Epic - 25 pts
Cameron Radetsky - Orcs - 16 pts
Chip Aaron - Hobgoblins of Dragon Claw - 14 pts
The final round between Mark and Warren was a close run affair, the Sons of Liberty had destroyed 10pts worth of the Persian Epic army and was on the brink of winning the final game, however, a Persian Hero finally assualted the Sons of Liberty headquarters and captured it thus winning the game. But the bonus of +6 pts and winning the game was not enough points to pull ahead of Mark in total victory points.

Congratulations to everyone that participated.

Way to go, HotT gamers! I regret not being able to attend the game convention myself, but I at least survived the event I did participate in last weekend. Hopefully, I can make it to Millennium Con next year, or to ChimaeraCon this April. I want to play some Hordes of the Things!

The Giant's Flower Garden

2011-11-11T21:17:00.000-06:00

Here's a little something for you to drop in your sandbox game: The Giant's Flower Garden. This is a bit of scenery that can add a sense of the fantastic to an otherwise mundane, barren area.

Far to the southwest of the realm, in the arid wastelands of the border region, gargantuan plants sprout from the ground. Locals say that decades or centuries ago, a giant sowed seeds all along the ridgelines. The flowers that emerged grew straight and tall, looming 70 or 80 feet above the earth. The giant blossoms have three narrow petals, each half as long as the stem, emerging at equidistant intervals from the top of the plant. Sometimes the petals partially break off from the stem and rotate in the wind, like a strange windmill.

These flora sprout on the edge of windswept bluffs, rows upon rows, for miles and miles. The stems, hollow except for roots, are up to six feet wide at the base and made of some tough, strong material as tough as metal, yet as light as procelain. If cut with the proper tools, the stem makes decent armor. The roots of these plants are as thick as a man's wrist and stretch for miles across the dusty soil, connecting the blooms to one another and spreading out in all directions. The roots are covered in a tough, yet flexible, sheath that is easily cut with a sharp blade. The roots' interior consists of strands of pure copper, yet they remain mostly untouched by the area's inhabitants. After all, the titanic gardener could return at any time, and he wouldn't take kindly to those who dig up his prize flowers ...

Chris over at the Hill Cantons asked about what fuels your sense of place when it comes to your fantasy games. Well, the above vistas inspired me to come up with this flavor text as I drove through the empty expanses of West Texas on my way to a chili cookoff. The windmills are visible for miles on each side as you pass between Ozona and Fort Stockton on Interstate 10. Here's what the road itself looked like for a good part of the seven-hour drive:

Suddenly, my daily commute doesn't look quite as bad.

The castle and the glacier

2011-11-03T22:37:00.000-05:00

This is a pic of a Heroscape map I designed and built some three years ago. I decided to post it just because. I don't think I've played HS in over two years now.

Day of the Dead

2011-11-01T22:50:00.000-05:00

My wife put together an altar for Dia de los Muertos to commemorate her father, his parents, and her maternal grandfather. Like most traditional Mexican altars for the holiday, it includes pictures of the deceased, liquor, and candy. However, we neglected to pick up any of the calaveras (sugar skulls) to decorate the altar. So I was very flattered when my spouse asked if she could use some of my miniature skeletons to adorn it. Of course I said yes!

In addition to the skeletal drummer (above), a metal Warhammer figure, my beloved used several plastic skeletons (most holding scythes) and even a skeletal horse. I'm flattered I was able to contribute to the altar and share in this tradition with my wife.

Speaking of Day of the Dead, last year my wife and I made a skeletal hound for my sister-in-law, who had lost her dog some months before.

I created a frame by bending a wire coathanger with a pair of pliers, then mi esposa used air-drying modeling clay to build up the figure. She painted it white, I painted the black lines to denote the skeleton, and she touched it up and folded the miniature flowers from tissue paper.

For more on el Dia de los Muertos, check out the Wikipedia entry on Day of the Dead.

Gallery: HotT spider army

2011-10-31T22:18:00.000-05:00

Today's an appropriate day to share pictures of my spider army for Hordes of the Things (and to get my post count up to 3 for the month of October). Although this army doesn't play particularly well, I like to take it out for a spin every once in awhile.

The figures are a combination of toy spiders and plastic spider-shaped jewelry sold as party favors. I picked them up last year on sale the day after Halloween. The bases are cut from cardboard and painted and flocked normally. These minis can freak out arachnaphobes--I even had one player who saw this army and said he would never play against it because he can't stand spiders!

The main component of this army is 12 elements of Hordes on 60mm x 60mm bases.

The big spiders were various colors of plastic; I drybrushed them to bring out the details. The smaller spiders came in black or bright green plastic; I spray-painted them black and then drybrushed in idfferent hues.

I also used three of the big spiders as Sneakers elements. They're on 60mm x 40mm bases. These guys always underperform and usually just die too easily, counting 9 AP against my army total--and unlike Hordes or Lurkers, I can't bring these fellas back.

In addition, I placed three of the small spiders on 60x40 bases to serve as Lurkers elements. I always seem to get great mileage out of this element type. These particular critters, acting in combo, actually brought down a Behemoth in one game.

I also have a Stronghold, which consists of a plastic tree and the top of the container for the big spiders. It's encased in webs and swarming with the smaller arachnids.

Like I said, this army disappoints on the battlefield. With 12 Hordes, 3 Lurkers, and 3 Sneakers, it's not particularly combat effective--and once the Sneakers all die, it's a quick three points to losing half the army. Still, it makes for a challenging game.

Happy Halloween!

Missing out on MillCon

2011-10-30T22:33:00.001-05:00

Well, I'm not gonna make Millennium Con this year. I ran a Galactic Knights game at last year's con, and I had intentions of running one this November--a pretty good eight-player free-for-all--but time just got away from me. I got the reminder emails and kept telling myself I needed to register my game, but I never did.

I've been training for a marathon, and in addition to being physically tired (believe it or not, a marathon involves a lot of running!) I've been mentally drained as well. So tired that in the evenings, I haven't been able to summon the mental energy to blog. That's kind of evident from the lack of posts this month.

So anyway, thanks to my procrastination and outside life, I wasn't able to get together a scenario for the convention. Not only that, but because of the marathon (which is the Sunday of MillCon) and the fact that I'll be out of town the weekend before the con, I decided that I just have waaaay too much stuff going on. Therefore, I'm not even going to attend the con as a player. That's right, no gaming at all for me at MillCon.

I hate to miss out on such a great gaming opportunity, but I have to prioritize. Once the race is over, I hope to get some more spaceship gaming in (and some more blogging!). Meanwhile, if you do attend Millennium Con, have a good time.

Sunday Starships: Star Frontiers ships

2011-10-16T22:27:00.000-05:00

After a two-week silence, I at least have something to share with y'all: Some more completed Star Frontiers Knight Hawks ships.

These are all from my last Half-Price Books score, and include some pretty rare privateer spaceships from a boxed set, as well as some scouts and a freighter from a Federation boxed set and a blister pack.

I painted these guys metallic pearl white, which very bright, then toned down the brilliance with a wash of metallic gunmetal gray. The domes were done in gunmetal gray, and then details picked out in various colors I hadn't used before.

I really like these privateers--they look very sleek, like something out of a 1960s aerospace magazine. They'll find use in my games as racing vessels or luxury yachts, probably.

Of course, these scouts and freighter will join the Galactic Knighthawks stunt team, a/k/a the Flying Roadshow. I tried not to repeat any colors when painted the markings on the scouts. It's hard to tell from the photos because of the flash, but I didn't forget the markings for the scout at the top; it has silver/white stripes.

And, of course, I have another freighter. This is the GKHs' support ship, or possibly a tanker for in-flight refueling. You can see the details pretty well in these pictures.

Can't wait to get these on the tabletop, but I need to come up with some rules for them first. Back to the keyboard!

More maps from the archives

2011-09-30T21:58:00.001-05:00

Here's a couple more Dungeons & Dragons maps I found in my old Trapper Keeper. This is a castle and settlement I think I drew up for one of my characters for when he gained a domain:

I also sketched a detailed map of the fortress itself:

Anyone else still have their D&D creations from when they were kids?