Enter ... the Enterprise

I recently grabbed a Star Trek Deep Cuts mini by WizKids: The Enterprise herself--or at least a Constitution-class Federation heavy cruiser. Of course, this is the refurbished ship from the movies, not the vessel from the original series.

Even though the miniature came primed but unpainted, I gave it a base coat of flat black before drybrushing with medium gray, light gray, and titanium white. While the paint job may not be up to Starfleet specifications, I think it came out great for my gaming purposes.

You see, back in the '70s, there was this awesome vector graphics arcade game called Space Wars. It was a player-versus-player setup, where each person controlled a spaceship. One was a triangular craft (which I decided was from the Vega system), and the other had a familiar shape, as seen in the lower center.

Image from this page at Biltronix.

I decided I can use the Trek ship to play a tabletop version of Space Wars. And I already have a suitable black-and-white mini for the Big E's opponent, one of my Terran stellar destroyers from Galactic Knights (and before that, Starfleet Wars).

As you can see, the two ships provide a reasonable approximation of their electronic counterparts on the game mat. Now I just figure out what rules to use for a one-on-one spaceship battle. It needs to use vector movement, to emulate how the ships moved in the arcade game.

Or maybe I will just use it as a special ship in my Galactic Knights scenarios. It might be fun to see this Federation ship boldly go through a battle between the Terrans and Entomalians.

Ghost Archipelago locations

Here are a few setups for Ghost Archipelago games that we've used. These all involved homebrew scenarios.

Islands

River and waterfall

Lake

Temple

More islands

I'm curious; do any of y'all make up your own scenarios for GA, or do you use the ones from the book?

Ogre? Ogre

Here are some pics of my Ogre game from a couple months back, including a wide shot of the map.

Lots of GEV-on-GEV action in this game.

There was very little urban terrain for the GEVs to hide in.

That Ogre with the yellow stripes belongs to another player; these games are starting to see more minis from people besides me.

What to do when your Ogre wants to avoid being shot at by the other guy's Ogre?

The answer? Submerge! And let your superheavies try to inflict some damage.

Speaking of damage, there was lots of it collaterally, as spillover set some forests on fire. Also, note all the death pennies marking casualties.

See? More minis from other folks--in this case, the blue tanks.

Will numbers overwhelm the cybertank?

More like the other way around.

So ...

... guess what game I'm going to start playing?

More Ghost Archipelago

Another game of Ghost Archipelago from a few months back. The scenario involved another volcano, so the island must be somewhere not too far from the realm of Muspelheim.

My Heritor and crew were quick to find the central treasure, surrounded by several smaller treasures.

Did I mention that the volcano was active, and belching lava what seemed like every turn?

To be fair, the scenario also provided for fissures in the ground opening up, as well as a tsunamis to mess with our boats.

Meanwhile, the crew that entered a cavern in the volcano was fighting some sort of demonic ... demon?

And my guys just kept getting splatted with lava, thanks to a location die that I think was unbalanced--how else to explain the molten rock always landing on my side of the table?

I mean seriously, we ran out of lava to place. You can see a fissure in this photo as well.

At the end of the game, the once-green island was ablaze with smoking lava fields.

At least some of the other crews got a taste.

There was even a tsunami that pushed some boats around.

This was a scenario that made us work for our treasures.

Some Ghost Archipelago for you

These pics are from a Ghost Archipelago game back in April. I took my Lizardman Heritor and the rest of his crew back into the jungle.

Sorry; I don't remember any specifics about the scenario. I do know my Heritor got into it with an opposing Heritor, but both of us escaped serious damage.

There was also evidently some native fauna to deal with. Whatever happened to reptilian solidarity?

Due to vacations and other obligations, we haven't played GA in over a month. Perhaps as a means of relief from the heat, we're probably gonna start a new Frostgrave campaign.

WIP: Huge transports for Ogre

I found a resin Kracken hovercraft meant for Dropzone Commander that will work great for my Ogre games. Even though DZ is in a larger scale than Ogre, this hovercraft is just big enough (with the loading ramp down) to fit a Mark V Ogre.

Note that this hovercraft will only fit a more modern, SJ Games version of the Mark V. I tried it with an older Ral Partha model, and the RP sculpt was slightly too wide.

I also came across this futuristic Hot Wheels aircraft at the supermarket. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the model and I threw away the packaging. I plan on using this as an aerial transport of some sort.

Right now it's been disassembled, and I've removed that large fan in the middle. I may replace it with an acrylic disc--which will better represent the blades at 6 mm scale--or I may jus leave that well open.

I will repaint the underside (while keeping the dorsal paint scheme at my wife's suggestion) and remove the large gray protrusions (weapons, I guess) on the port side.

Since I already have plenty of smaller, conventional units, these larger vehicles will help balance out the tiny-to-huge vehicle ratio.