City of the Future (War Commander)

Just a quick post to get back into the blogging habit.  This is a detail shot from da Baron's setup for his Future War Commander game at Chimaera Con.  It was the ultimate objective of the ground portion of our joint scenario, and it was defended with shields, laser towers, and sensors.  Note the use of buildings from Epic 40K, Warmachine, and Monsterpocalypse, as well as OGRE laser towers (not pictured).

Starship combat non-critical hit table

A lot of starship battle simulations ultimately boil down to a war of attrition: your phasers burning through the other guy's shields before his missles pierce your armor.  However, many space combat games have some sort of critical hit system as well--either integral to the game mechanics, like the threshhold checks in Full Thrust, or bolted on as an afterthought like the Galactic Knights optional critical hit table.  This is also known as the Golden BB rule--meaning a one-in-a-million lucky shot can get through and take out your flagship.

Most of the time, though, your shots simply amount to ticking off armor boxes or crossing off systems on your ship diagram.  But there's more to a starship than gun emplacements, engines, and electronics.  When I run my convention scenarios, I like to describe to the players what happens with the non-critical hits, or when someone takes out a cargo space on a transport.  However, it's tough coming up with something on the fly, so I whipped up this table for future reference.

NON-CRITICAL STARSHIP DAMAGE TABLE (d%)
Die roll     Result                                      
01-02        Forward dry cleaners
03-06        Starbord pizza oven
07-11        Arcturan pornography library
12-13        Holodeck
14-16        Shuffleboard deck
17-19        Paint locker (d10: 1-7 gray; 8-9 white; 10 plaid)
20-23        Chief engineer's still
24-29        Video arcade
30-34        Spare dress uniforms
35-37        Septic tank
38-41        Petting zoo
42-47        Swimming pool
49-52        Captain's disco lounge
53-58        Stormtrooper target range
59-63        Aft car rental kiosk
64-69        Are you really reading this far?
70-72        Port sauna
73-76        EVA window cleaning equipment
77-80        Dune buggy garage (lose 1-6 dune buggies)
81-82        Satellite TV dish
83-86        Intellectual property cloakers
87-88        Political officer's quarters
89-92        Internet connection wait, that's critical-roll again
93-94        Make it up your own damn self
95-97        Roll again twice on this table
98-99        Disc golf course
 00          Rulebook destroyed: game ends

Let me know if you end up using this, and how it works out for you.

Scene from a space battle

Here's a sample of what you missed at ChimaeraCon.  I had over 20 warships on the table--plus fighters and another dozen transports--a planet, a moon, and an asteroid outpost.  Maybe because there were fewer players (3 instead of 8), we got through a lot more turns than in my Millennium Con game. 

Terran warships turn to protect their transports from an enemy battlecruiser emerging from the moon.

I wanted to share some more pictures without doing a full-length battle report.  It was a fun game for the participants, and I had a blast running it.  As always, I learned lessons that will hopefully make my next game even more entertaining.

New moon

What started as a styrofoam hemisphere became a new piece of terrain (pictured above) for my Galactic Knights scenario at ChimaearaCon.  So instead of talking about the game, I'm going to procrastinate and post a step-by-step tutorial for painting a natural satellite for my planet.  First, I primed it gray.

Next, I gave it a black wash to bring out the shadows in the indentations to simulate craters.

It was a little too dark after that, so I drybrushed it various shades of gray.

Then it was too light, so I gave it another wash, this time dark gray, followed by light gray drybrushing.

As seen at the top of the page, the new moon looks pretty good on the table, although it didn't play much of a role once the scenario began.  I'm out of time now, but I'll blog more about the actual game later, I promise.

ChimaeraCon pictures

So I went to ChimaeraCon this weekend.  In addition to running my Galactic Knights game (pictured above) in tandem with Chip's Future War Commander game (pictured below), I played in some fun games and observed some cool setups.  I will get around to a detailed report later, but for now here are some pics from the game convention:

 

There was a massive Lego setup right as you walked in the door to the con.

Friday night I played dwarves against the orcs in this 15mm HotT big battle.

This board for Circus Maximus in 28mm scale must have been 12 feet long.

This was a very nice looking board for the fantasy skirmish game Malifeaux.

There was a huge Battletech game using Heroscape hexes for terrain.

The publisher of All Things Zombie ran a scenario using a Hanna Montana mall gameboard.

Sunday was a mass Napoleonics battle using modified DBA.

Everybody Gets A Trophy Day

I'm proud to announce Super Galactic Dreadnought has received a prestigious* award** for blogging***.



Granted, the judging is a little suspect--I tied for second place--but given the obvious mental instability of the referee, as shown by this person's own ramblings, I have to cut the officiating some slack.  I'm sure with a little effort I will surpass the competition in every way for next year's award.

*and by "prestigious" I mean "obscure"

**and by "award" I mean "obscene gesture"

***and by "blogging" I mean "colossal waste of time"

ChimaeraCon reminder

Don't forget, this weekend is ChimaeraCon in San Antonio.  It's not on the schedule yet, but I will be running a Galactic Knights scenario (crosslinked with a Future War Commander battle) Saturday evening.  Not only that, someone has a Firestorm Armada tournament on the schedule as well. 

Oh, and there will be Hordes of the Things too--including the Texas HotTHammer championship!  I'll be bringing my Nightmare Legion and the Sons of Muspel.  I'm looking forward to it, and I hope you get a chance to swing by.