Quick paint jobs

Following my playtesters' advice, I decided to add some escort ships to the defending forces for my Millennium Con game.  Unfortunately, that meant painting them.  As I was running out of time and black spray paint, the ships got just one coat of primer, and just on the upper surface of the minis.  The craft in the center above is an Avarian Hawk-class Destroyer.

Above are three Armored Pursuit Ships (recognition name: Kitten class) for the Carnivorans.  Not sure what they'll be proxying for just yet.



Here we have two Louse-class Armored Pursuit Ships and a Wasp-class Destroyer for the Entomolians.  They'll probably be subbing for a Terran breakaway faction.


P.S.  To all my fellow gamers who served in the military, thank you for your service!

Sizing things up

Dean over at Starship Combat News mentioned in this thread that he has put together a page devoted to the size of starship miniatures.  I noticed he had a few Galactic Knights/Starfleet Wars ships listed, but only from a couple of factions. 

Back in January, someone on the GK Yahoo Group asked about the size of the minis, so I whipped out the ruler and measured all the starships in my collection.  I have a few more measurements that Dean is welcome to use for his page, which spurred me to repost my measurements for anyone who's interested.  So here are measurements for all the Galactic Knights ship types in my collection:

Fighters

• up to 3/4 of an inch (20mm)

Aquarians 

• Destroyer: 1 & 5/8 inches (40mm) by 13/16 of an inch (20mm)
• Cruiser: 2 & 5/16 inches (57mm) by 1 & 1/16 inches (28mm)
• Battlecruiser: 3 & 7/16 inches (88mm) by 1 & 3/8 inches (34mm)
• Carrier: 3 & 5/8 inches (93mm) by 2 inches (50mm)

  

Avarians

• Destroyer: 1 & 3/4 inches (44mm) by 15/16 of an inch (24mm)
• Destroyer Leader: 1 & 7/8 inches (48mm) by 1 & 1/8 inches (27mm)
• Cruiser: 2 & 5/8 inches (60mm) by 1 & 1/8 (28mm)
• Battlecruiser: 2 & 3/4 inches (69mm) by 1 & 15/16 inches (48mm)
• Carrier: 4 & 1/8 inches (104mm) by 2 & 1/16 inches (51mm)
• Dreadnought: 3 & 7/8 inches (98mm) by 1 & 3/4 inches (44mm)
• Super Galactic Dreadnought: 5 & 5/8 inches (142mm) by 2 & 11/16 inches (70mm)

Carnivorans

• Destroyer: 1 & 13/16 inches (46mm) by 1 & 1/2 inches (38mm)
• Cruiser: 2 & 3/16 inches (55mm) by 1 & 5/8 inches (42mm)
• Battlecruiser: 3 & 1/4 inches (82mm) by 2 & 1/16 inches (52mm)
• Carrier: 4 inches (103mm) by 2 & 1/16 inches (52mm)
• Super Galactic Dreadnought: 5 & 3/8 inches (137mm) by 2 & 13/16 inches (70mm)

Entomolians

• Destroyer: 1 & 11/16 inches (45mm) by 1 & 5/8 inches (42mm)
• Cruiser: 2 & 3/16 inches (57mm) by 1 & 7/8 inches (47mm)
• Battlecruiser: 3 & 5/16 inches (85mm) by 1 & 15/16 inches (49mm)
• Carrier: 3 & 7/7 inches (97mm) by 2 & 1/16 inches (51mm)
• Super Galactic Dreadnought: 5 & 9/16 inches (141mm) by 2 & 15/16 inches (73mm)

Terrans

• Destroyer: 2 & 1/16 inches (50mm) by 1 inch (25mm)
• Destroyer Leader: 2 & 3/4 inches (70mm) by by 1 inch (25mm)
• Cruiser: 2 & 9/16 inches (66mm) by 1 & 5/8 inches (40mm)
• Battlecruiser: 3 & 5/8 inches (92mm) by 2 inches (50mm)
• Carrier: 3 & 3/4 inches (98mm) by 2 & 5/16 inches (58mm)
• Dreadnought: 4 & 1/16 inches (102mm) by 2 & 7/16 inches (63mm)
• Galactic Dreadnought: 4 & 1/8 inches (104mm) by 2 & 1/2 inches (64mm)
• Super Galactic Dreadnought: 6 inches (152mm)! by 2 & 1/2 inches (64mm)

The terraforming process

As you may know, I'm running a Galactic Knights game at Millennium Con.  It's a planetary invasion scenario, so I needed something on the table to represent Regulus IV.  After I blogged about the completed project, people have asked me how I went about painting it.  Here's the shorthand version of how I detailed my planet:

Step 0: Dry Foam Hemisphere

Step 8: Planet

For the longer version of how I did it, see after the jump:

Steps 1-7: ???????

October HotT Tournament

We had a light turnout for our quarterly Hordes of the Things tournament this week, just five players counting yours truly.  We met up at Dragon's Lair-San Antonio on Saturday for a 24 AP tournament.

Johnny, who has enough Romans to conquer Gaul, decided to play with an all-mounted force.  He took on Brian's Mouse Guard army:

Chip brought his toolbox full of miniatures--unfortunately, they were his 15mm armies, and we were playing 28mm.  Luckily, after a night of gluing in the wake of the Gread Lead Avalanche of 2010, I had reassembled all my armies and brought them to the store in case anyone needed a loaner army.  Chip borrowed my fire giants army and played his first game against me and my skeletons:

Although I have trouble winning with the fire giants, Chip proved the fault was with the commander and not the troops.  He cheated by using smart deployment and superior tactics, and quickly brought his beasts and a behemoth around my flank.  The main force of my army was unable to reach them in time, and my Magician couldn't frighten off the behemoth.  After an unsuccessful attempt with the beasts, Chip used the behemoth to take my stronghold:

For my next game, I faced off against Mark's Empire troops.  This was the first game I played in which my magician had another magician opposing him.  The Empire spell caster didn't even try to ensorcell my necromancer, however.  There was no need--I kept trying and failing to zap his hero general, and eventually rolled a second '1,' frogging myself and losing the game.

Meanwhile, on the other board, Brian's mice took on the fire giants, eventually bringing them down:

I just like the size difference between the fire giant behemoths and the Mouse Guard blades in this photo.  Although the behemoth is facing to the mice's right, it's because the two fire giants are too big to sit side-by-side facing the same direction, and it's considered facing forward:

Next game, I battled Johnny's Romans, which consisted of a lot of riders, a few knights, one stand of beasts, and a hero general.  I wore him down and won on points:

Meanwhile, on the other board, Brian took on Mark.  I can't remember who won this game:

My final game was against Brian's Mouse Guard.  We battled back and forth till time ran out, so it was a draw.  However, Brian destroyed more of my elements than I did of his.  Below, you can see my lurker spring up in an unsuccessful attack on his sneaker:

Chip took on Johnny in their final game.  Johnny said afterward he's going back to his traditional Roman force, which is mainly foot units.

Brian ended up winning the tournament.  I came in pretty far down--if Mark hadn't missed two games because he sat out the first round and had to leave early, he would have beat me on points.  It was a long day, but I got in a lot of gaming, so it counts as a win in my book.

Starfleet Wars 100mm figures

Historical note: A few years ago, I found an interesting auction on ebay: a series of figures of each of the five races in Starfleet Wars.  The seller had lead miniatures from Superior Models, (makers of the ships for Starfleet Wars) of a Terran, Aquarian, Avarian, Entomalian, and Carnivoran.  They were priced a little out of my range, but I thought it was interesting.  Oh, and they were all about 4-and-a-half inches tall.  I posted something to the Galactic Knights mailing list, and a couple of people remembered these figures when they came out.

Turns out the sculpts were by Ron Spicer, the artist who designed the spaceships for the game and drew the illustrations in the Observer's Directory & Identification Manual.  This publication, in turn, had drawing of each of the five races.  I'm guessing the pictures in the Manual came from or served as his concept sketches for the figs.



Judging from that long-ago auction, and the fact that I hadn't seen them since, I figured these models were long out of production.  I was pleased, then, to find at least some of them still available.

Perth Pewter evidently took up the mantle (or was spun off) from Superior and kept casting the 100mm figures, as well as versions of some of the larger Starfleet Wars ships, for the collectables market.  I didn't find any Starfleet Wars merchandise on Perth Pewter's website, but Armik's Fine Collectables still has some in stock.

You can find the Terran, Carnivoran, Avarian, and Aquarian figures at Armik's (but I didn't see an Entomalian).  In addition, they sell some of the old range of spaceships--mostly dreadnoughts and larger--but it looks like they're cast with bases attached--and the bases have some funky shapes, as you can see.  It looks like they're selling these as pewter collectables, instead of toys to game with.  According to the website, they're limited to the stock on hand, so if you want some of these figures, better get over there pretty quickly.

Terraforming complete!

I spent the afternoon and evening getting my planet (Regulus IV, for my MilCon game) to look like an actual planet instead of a styrofoam hemisphere, and I'm done!  At first I was worried that it looked more like a desktop globe than a planet, but after following my wife's suggestion of adding clouds over the ocean, it seemed to bring the piece to life.  It's pictured abouve with a couple of destroyers and small transports in orbit.

I took plenty of pics during the terraforming process, and I will post those later, as blogger doesn't seem to want to let me upload any more photos right now.

MilCon scenario playtest

OK, it took a whole week, but I finally got around to posting the playtest of my Galactic Knights scenario for Millennium Con.  I took my game to Dragon's Lair in San Antonio last Tuesday for the Lone Star Historical Miniatures weekly get-together.

Although the scenario is designed for eight players, I was only able to talk two gamers into taking it for a spin (my thanks to playtesters John and Mark).  I had each playtester double up on ships, so we had the equivalent of four players' worth of minis on the table (half what I had planned for) and four transports to fight over.  I also put my planet (still unpainted) out as an objective with four defense installations (I forgot the pushpins, so I used pieces of paper to mark them) strung along the equator.

 

The defenders started out orbiting the planet as the invasion force came in from one of the close edges of the map.  The attackers' main goal was to land the transports and get as much cargo (troops and armor) on the planet as possible.  The defenders' goal was to prevent this.

The defenders broke from orbit, and everybody launched fighters.  While the attackers launched their strike fighters, the defenders launched their interceptors, and took out most of the oncoming attack fighters.

The forces then closed to short range, and the particle beams flew.  The defender took out the engines on one of the transports, leaving it on a collision course with the planet.  However, the attackers' superior size and numbers started to take a toll on the defenders.

The defenders finished off the drifting transport and concentrated on the next one in line.  By this time, fire from the attackers' ships and fighters had taken out the defenders' battlecruiser.

The defenders finished off the second transport, but got eaten up by the attackers' batteries.

At the end of two turns, my playtesters had to take off.  Although the defenders had vaporized two transports, the other two were intact.  Meanwhile, the defenders had lost their capital ship and were about to lose two cruisers.  The attackers ships had taken moderate to light damage, but they still had to worry about the planetary defenses, which they could only attack from orbit.  Alas, at that point the game ended.

I probably need to give the defenders more ships and less planetary defenses, to keep things interesting up above.  I'm also thinking about reducing the size of the ships, so they go "boom" more quickly and the scenario plays faster.  The playtesters gave me some valuable suggestions.  I'm glad I playtested this before the con.