Telegaming

I don't have an specific software or hardware set up for long-distance gaming, but I did manage to play a game of Axis & Allies with my brother using laptop videoconferencing software earlier this month. He set up the board, moved the pieces, and rolled the dice as I viewed from afar. The opposite end of the board was a little hard to make out from this angle, but the occasional top-down pic of the board (sent via text) helped me (even though I failed to notice that I had no troops in Souther Europe, leaving me open to an Allied invasion). It was fun, and a nice way to game with someone I haven't seen in person in month, although I wasn't able to play the Axis countries as well as I should have. 

A couple of weeks later, we played a little of Steve Jackson Games' Melee, this time with me running it. Instead of setting up a board with counters or figures, I imported the map into PowerPoint, drew some simple counters, and used the share screen function to let him see the board and tell me how to move his figures (note that I numbered and lettered all the hexes to make that easier). I also set up a spreadsheet using Excel's RANDBETWEEN function to simulate dice rolls. Another fun game, even if he did kill all my guys.

I'm hoping for more gaming in the new year, whether in person or through screens. Either way, here's to finally ending this shitshow of a year. Hope the upcoming one is a whole lot better.

Battle of Five Armies for HotT

Greetings in the time of pandemic! I'm still around, doing little gaming or miniatures painting, but I am thinking about gaming and miniatures painting.

My latest thoughts are on the Battle of Five Armies from The Hobbit (the book, not the movie) and how to game that using Hordes of the Things. After getting inspired by the maps in The Atlas of Middle Earth and rereading the novel, I am considering assembling forces, not in the traditional 24-point HotT armies, but in numbers proportionate to the figures chronicled in the novel and the map collection. Oh, and because of the size of the armies, I think it would be cool to do this in 6mm scale.

First you have the armies of Dwarfs, Elves, and Men. Durin's folk are listed at about 500 troops, clad in mail and wielding two-handed mattocks--so maybe four stands of Blades, plus Thorin and Company as a Hero. The Wood Elves include spearmen and some archers, numbering about twice as much as the Dwarfs--let's say six stands of Spears and two stands of Shooters. That leaves the Men of Laketown with a couple hundred warriors--call them two stands of Warband. That's 32 AP total.

Don't forget: the Eagles are coming! (as late-game reinforcements)--four stands of Flyers. And Beorne arrives as well, enlarged to near giant-size--sounds like a behemoth. And that makes 12 more AP.

Then you have the Goblins and the Wargs, which vastly outnumber their foes. The latter forces are easy--eight stands of Beasts. As for the former, you have Goblins riding wolves--eight stands of Riders--and the sword-carrying Goblins with their numerous black and read banners--a dozen Hordes! Finally, you have their general, Bolg, and his bodyguard of huge Goblins with scimitars as a Warband. Tolkien also mentions bats attacking or obstructing the defenders, so a couple stands of Flyers as well. In all, 50 AP.

Not balanced armies, but they feel pretty true to the book. This was a fun little thought experiment; now to source a bunch of 6mm fantasy figures ...

Mech-tacular!

 

I found a whole bunch of stompy mecha clix minis for cheap on eBay, so I bought a dozen or so. Even though I'm a Battletech fan, I'm not gonna use them for that. Instead, I plan on using these as killer robots in games of Mutants and Death Ray Guns, the post-apocalyptic version of Song of Blades and Heroes. I like the choppy-smashy bits and the shooty bits; and size-wise, these will go great with the 28-32mm prepaints I'm using. Or I may just come up with my own skirmish rules; we'll see.

As a bonus, I scored some recovery vehicles that will see action in my Monopolis scenarios for OGRE/GEV, once I can start playing games with other people in person. Speaking of, is anyone back to regular gaming? I miss that.

Ten years and a thousand posts

Ten years ago today, Super Galactic Dreadnought saw its very first blog post, a nostalgia trip back to my youth and the influences that would shape my gaming. As you can tell from the name of this blog, I was enamored of the Starfleet Wars line of miniature spaceships that I saw in a magazine ad way back when. 

When I started this blog, I was a couple of years into my personal gaming renaissance--a return to regular miniatures and roleplaying after a decades-long drought caused by work, various moves, personal issues, and then law school. Those were great times, as I started playing D&D in a local campaign, met regularly at the local game store for some wargaming, and was in the middle of amassing my collection of spaceship minis.

This was reflected in my blogging--I had posts about games, posts about miniatures, posts about sci fi and fantasy. The output was pretty steady the first couple of years, with 200+ posts when I was in the zone. My posting frequency eventually dropped off, however, to just a few dozen a year for the past few years. That infrequency isn't for a lack of gaming, though--up until the pandemic, I was gaming weekly with a group of local players and running games at MillenniumCon on a regular basis. A lot changed over the years, with moves and job switching, but I think the main thing was that playing so often filled the void that blogging previously had done.

The year 2010 was a much different time, and back then I couldn't have imagined the current events we're living through in 2020. Now, with COVID-19 closing game stores and cancelling conventions, I'm reflecting on my blogging. The numbers worked out nice, and I was able to make sure that my 1,000th post occurred on the 10-year anniversary of starting Super Galactic Dreadnought. I have more than 220 followers, and this blog has over 2,500 comments (not counting spam). I want to thank all of y'all for reading and commenting. I'm thrilled that I can provide inspiration to other gamers, just as so many have inspired me. Here's to more blogging and more gaming in the years ahead!

Ace space base Mace in place

I finally painted this Mace-class space station that I purchased some time ago. It had been sitting on the work table for awhile, so it was nice to get something done.

This Terran base is from Monday Knight Productions' Galactic Knights range (originally the Starfleet Wars line from Superior Models). It was a simple paint job: Spray black, drybrush in metallic black, metallic gunmetal gray, and metallic silver. If you look close, you can spot a dab or two of color here and there.

You can never have too many space miniatures, right?

Ogre hulk (work in progress)

I decided to try my hand at modding an Ogre into a hulk, for use as an objective or eye candy. I had some fun drilling, cutting, and melting a plastic Mark V to give it some battle damage. I know, it's sacrilege to do that to one of the glow-in-the-dark minis, but it was all I had.

Once I had that destructive work done, I sprayed it in a tan color, then dusted it over with flat black to give it that burned out look. It still needs some work--a wash maybe, and then picking out some of the impact points in a metallic color--and possibly adding some steel wool for smoke, and then I'm done.

I would never do this to one of my metal minis, but since I have an abundance of these plastic models, I didn't mind sacrificing one for the cause of gaming. Anyone else have second thoughts about cutting up their miniatures, or is it just me?

Dungeon decor

I picked up Artifacts Set 2 for Mage Knight Dungeons on the secondary market, and I really like the look of these prepainted pieces. I plan on using them for terrain and/or objectives for Melee/Wizard, Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago, and similar games. 

You can never have too much scatter terrain in your skirmish games, and this set even came with some rules for special game effects that I will try to port over to my own scenarios.

As you can see from my Warhammer Saurus hero (used as a Heritor for Ghost Archipelago), these castings are the right scale and style for dungeon crawls. I hope to see them in action soon.