Adventuring Party for Hordes of the Things

When I posted my Against the Giants army lists for Hordes of the Things, I mentioned they needed an opposing army comprised of your standard Dungeons & Dragons adventuring party. 

One person on the HotT mailing list suggested the original characters from the original Lake Geneva campaign (Mordenkainen, Robilar, Tenser, et al.).  Another player suggested two heroes, a magician, shooters (elven archers) and blades (dwarven warriors), and someone else came up with magician, cleric, sneaker, shooters, knights, and warband.

Here's my own take on an adventuring party for Hordes of the Things, based on the high-level D&D characters that would take on the giants:

Lord & henchman              Hero General    4

Wizard & familiar            Magician        4

High Priest & acolytes       Cleric          3

Master Thief                 Lurker          1

Ranger Lord & bear           Warband         2

Lord's troops                Knights x 2     4

Summoned djinn or elemental  Flyer           2

High Priest's followers      Spears x 2      4

Of course, after the giants are vanquished, the party can begin its Descent into the Depths of the Earth ...

Basing spaceships

I've been asked how I base my spaceship miniatures.  It's a fairly simple process using wooden disks from a craft store, fender washers, regular wire nails and superglue:

First, I remove the backing from the disk and attach the washer.  Even though the disk has adhesive on it, I still apply super glue, because I've had the assembly come apart when I didn't glue it first.

I hold it together for several seconds, then I drive a nail through it from the bottom.  Note the use of a magazine to prevent holes in my kitchen table:

 

The finished product looks like this:

And here you have it with the mini attached:

Easy and cheap, which is how I like my miniatures gaming.

Another good day of gaming

Another great day for spaceship action, as I got in two lengthy games this afternoon.  Sting52jb from the Star Ranger message boards had contacted me about playing some games while he was in town, so we spent Friday and Saturday pushing around our models at Dragon's Lair.  We weren't able to play Colonial Battlefleet like we had planned because we didn't have the printouts we needed, so instead we tried another set of rules--Kill Radius, by yours truly.  It was fun, and I'll share more details at a later date.

We also got in a large game of Full Thrust, about 3200 points per side.  Of course my camera battery died, so I thought I was out of luck, until I remembered my phone can take pictures.  The photos aren't as good as with a regular camera, but I'm just happy I had something to get pics.  I had a blast playing FT, and I really dig the concept of damage threshold checks and rolling buckets o' dice.  Again, I'll post additional pics and a writeup in the near future. 

All in all, another good time down at the local game store--and a fitting subject for my 100th blog post!  Thanks for reading, everyone.

Good gaming

Today was a long but productive day, spaceship gaming-wise.  I got in two battles using different rulesets: one Galactic Knights match and then a quick intro game of Full Thrust, which I had never played before (quickie review: it was fun!).  And I even remembered my camera this time, so no crappy cell phone photos. 

I'm kind of tired right now, so I'm just posting one photo as a teaser.  Look for a full report in the next few days.  We're set to play some more starship battles tomorrow as well.  Next game on the menu: Colonial Battlefleet!

Storage and transport

I've got a big weekend of gaming planned (and hopefully I will remember to take my camera this time), so I thought I'd share some of my storage/transport boxes for my starship miniatures. 

My method is fairly straightforward: plastic hardware storage containers with some removable dividers with magnetic sheeting attached to the bottom.  All my ships are mounted on wooden disks glued to steel washers, so the magnets (sold in office supply stores as tape or as backing for business cards) keep the minis from sliding around when I'm moving, and they stack up nicely when I'm done.  I also have some bigger boxes for some of the larger ships, but the principle's the same.

So how do you transport your spaceships?  Do you store them in the same box you use to tote them around?

That's no moon ...

... but it will be, once I get around to painting it.  I'm thinking the traditional grey and off-white of an airless, rocky, crater-pocked worldlet.

I found this styrofoam hemisphere for floral arrangements at a local craft store, but once I'm done with it, this will be a natural satellite orbiting the planet I made.  In addition to looking cool, this should make the tactical situation that much more interesting for my Galactic Knights games. 

I'm not an astronomer, but I think maybe such a moon could fit on the same table as its primary at the GK scale of 1,000 miles to the hex without coming within the Roche limit and breaking apart. 

So has anyone played a space game with more than a single celestial body on the playing surface?  Did the extra planetoids make the game more interesting, or just bog it down?

New MAATAC on the way?

Heard an interesting tidbit over on the Galactic Knights Yahoo! group:  Seems like GK publisher Monday Knight Productions has a new edition of the venerable sci-fi ground combat game MAATAC* in the works. 

In this message regarding MKP's schedule for this year's wargame convention Enfilade!, Monday Knight honcho William Thompson tells us one of the events he plans to run at the con is a beta version of Galactic Knights: MAATAC.  According to Will, this is going to be the

First showing (in public) of the new MAATAC ground combat rules that link ground forces into the Galactic Knight Universe (Giving you a reason to actually PUT cargo holds in your ships :-) )

As you know, MKP already sells the old MAATAC rules, along with 1:285 scale miniatures for all five powers for that universe (the same setting as Starfleet Wars).  However, the original version of the futuristic warfare rulebook isn't really compatible with the Galactic Knights starship combat game (or at least the two games' backgrounds aren't exactly the same).  It sounds like the new book is meant to go hand-in-hand with GK, and I can't wait to learn more about it.

*Multi-functional Armed & Armored Tactical Attack Computer, in case you were wondering.  Gotta love the retro-futuristic vibe you get from that acronym--shades of ENIAC and UNIVAC!