One last project day!

 Well we are moving out at the end of the week so we are packing everything in sight.  Today we packed up most of our game stuff but we also decided to finish up a couple last minute projects.  In truth we should have been packing but I've been wanting to paint really bad so I decided to knock out this astronaut from Reaper.  I'm pretty pleased with him.  Unfortunately most of my photo equipment is also packed so this is just a quick snap shot.  I'm using him as the company pilot for "Venture Star Prospecting" from Station 42.   

We also painted up some generic chemical storage tanks.  I painted the ones in the middle marked; 1,2, and, 3.  My wife painted the ones on the ends.  These are all scratch built from household junk. 

Browncoats Insurrection

I'm starting a new Savage Worlds campaign called "Browncoats" based on the Firefly setting created by Joss Whedon.  The first story arc will be titled "Insurrection.  Some of the characters from my short lived "Midnight Rider" campaign will be in this campaign.  This campaign will be set just after the Miranda broadcast from the Serenity film. 

I will be using quite a few of the generic sci-fi miniatures and buildings from our collection but I will also be adding new projects for this campaign.  I will have an in character blog for the game but the behind the scenes projects will be posted here.   

Hover Tank Finished!

 Well this was a fast and dirty project so it got a fast and dirty paint job.  I'm really happy with the way it turned out since I didn't really put all that much into it.  I think it looks a lot better with paint.  It was just hard to see how it would look without it.  We got a lot done today.  We even assembled some terrain I haven't posted yet. 

Assault on the Redwing Farm (AE Bounty game report for Station 42)

 An unknown group of mercenaries have been attacking farms near Station 42.  Marshal, Malcom Reed of Pleasant Valley decided to gather a posse (large mercenary crew) to defend the farms from these mysterious attackers.  From left to right the posse consisted of; Scott and Marian Redwing (Fresh Meat), Marshal Reed (Sergent), Randall Donne (Sniper), Miles Anders (Fresh Meat), Remi Boutin (Fresh Meat), on the top row, and, Ludia Donne (Sniper), Ivar (Fresh Meat), and Cleatus (Fresh Meat), on the bottom row. 
 

 The 285th Mobile Infantry "Hell Knights" are one of the best equipped and best trained mercenary armies in the Solar System.  This private military company is usually retained by governments to engage in wars or serious police actions.  They will however work for anyone with the cash.  "No Conflict Too Large, No Operation Too Small" is their motto.  Several units of the Hell Knights elite heavy infantry had been hired to harass farmers on Titania by an anonymous employers.  They didn't know why they were there and they didn't care.  As long as the pay came through.  They had even been ensured that the government of Titania would turn a blind eye during the course of the operation and no Confederate troops would be involved.  Their mission was to make life "uncomfortable" for the farmers of Titania.  They were not to use excessive force unless met with organized resistance.  Two elite fire teams (veteran mercenary crew consisting of two elite old guard units) had been deployed to attack the Redwing Farmstead and kill the militia who had gathered to defend it.  They were also instructed to capture Marshal Reed who was leading the defenders.  This was to be a show of force to convince the locals to back down. 

 The mercenaries advanced on the farmhouse where they believed the Marshal was located.  One team took up a position behind the garage and the other behind the pig barn. 

 The squad behind the garage then moved into position inside one of the garage doors.  One of the mercs took a pop shot Marian Redwing but he was out of range.  Randall Donne stepped up into the open doorway of the farmhouse and quickly shot down one of the attackers despite the mercs armored suit and cover. 

 The other merc squad moved into position near the door of the pig barn.  One merc taking cover inside the door while another crouched behind the ramp.  The merc inside the door took a pop shot at Miles Anders who was taking cover behind one of the steel supports holding up the farm house.  The support was hit and absorbed the shot.  Lydia Doone took aim at the merc crouched behind the metal ramp to the pig barn and dropped him just as easily as her husband had.  Marshal Reed was beginning to wonder just who these people were.  Suddenly it seemed to make perfect sense to him that they showed up kitted out in full military gear. 

 Marshal Reed stepped up to the farmhouse window with his boosted light rapid fire particle beam pistol and snapped up a couple of burst at one of the last merc in the garage.  The merc slid down the door jam onto the floor apparently dead or too wounded to keep fighting. 

 Things were looking bad for the mercs.  Scott and Marian Redwing moved up to a position behind one of the supports to their house.  Unfortunately the last remaining merc gunned Scott down.  Marian fired back but missed. 

The merc inside the barn was surrounded but continued to fight.  Several shots were traded back and forth between the merc and the posse members.  Finally Randall Donne stepped into the doorway and dropped the last merc. 

Marshal Reed's posse had managed to stop the mercs without much of a fight.  Even they couldn't believe their luck.  Scott Redwing had been their only casualty and his wounds were serious but not life threatening.  One merc had been killed so Marshal Reed took the wounded mercs into custody. 

Notes:  Well that was perhaps the shortest battle of AE Bounty we have had.  It only lasted three turns.  For both forces we used the mercenaries crew.  I ran the mercs and I chose to build them using the veteran crew.  I chose two old guard squads and used my regular choices to make them "elite" grade.  This gave them four action points each turn which I figured would help negate the fact that I gave them Armored Suits which reduced their movement by 1 per turn.  I also armed them with powerful but short ranged particle beam rifles.  I figured when they got in range they would rain death down on their enemies.  Not so much. 


For the posse we used a large mercenary crew with; a sergent, two snipers, and three units of fresh meat.  Everyone except the marshal were armed with slugthrower rifles and armor piercing ammunition.  The Marshal had a boosted LRF particle beam and a personal energy screen.  What made the posse so deadly was that both the snipers had the ability "Hunter: human".  The Hunter X ability is extremely powerful in an all human setting.  Because of this we have decided as a house rule to restrict it to individuals only for this setting.  The snipers were able to completely negate the merc's cover and reduce their armor by 1 point with the AP rounds.  My wife also managed to roll an insane number of 6s.  In fact every sniper shot that hit was a 6 followed by a 6 damage roll.  Three of my guys went down by round two like chumps. 


It was fun to see the difference between a tweaked out veteran crew and a large crew.  Even with the amazing rolls I think this would have been a hard fight for the mercs.   

Hover Tank!

 A while back I picked up a military play set that scaled about right with 28mm.  One of the vehicles I got in the set was a simple little tank.  It is about the size as a Games Workshop Predator tank and I considered just painting it up as is.  Then I decided to make it look more futuristic so I added some bits from a 1/35 scale X-wing starfighter kit.  That looked ok but it still wasn't right. 
Then I decided to turn it into a hover tank by cutting the tracks off and adding some hover drives made from cheap razor handles.  I think this looks much better.  There are some areas I could cover up like the fact you can still see some wheels and track but I don't think it will look to bad with paint.  For a cheapo toy with some junk added to it I'm pretty happy with it as is. 

Moving house at the end of March!

We are moving house at the end of the month to a new location that is much closer to our work and babysitter and just about everything else.  Right now we live about 6 miles outside the town where we work is a pretty nice community but gas prices are going up here and it's getting difficult for us to afford to stay.  The rent at the new place is only a bit more and we will have about twice as much house including some really cool options for gaming space. 

We plan to finish up a couple more projects tomorrow and play a game or two of AE Bounty while we pack but that will be the last game and set of projects that we plan on doing until we move so I will have perhaps a post or two more between now and the end of the month.  I also have one more "Maxed Out" game report to write which I hope to get done soon. 

We are all really excited about the new location and our new game space!

Old MacSpacey had a farm, ee i ee i oh!

 I just wanted to show off a brilliant space farm that was made almost entirely by my wargaming wife.  We built this for our generic and as yet unnamed sci-fi game setting.  It represents a farm in the area surrounding Station 42 and is part of that setting although this farm could be used in just about any sci-fi setting even the "Grim and Dark" ones I suppose.  Here are the buildings from left to right.  The pig barn, the hydroponics lab, a fuel tank, a com station, the farm house, a water tank, the garage, and the tool shed.  Below are some close up shots with several 28mm miniatures for scale.

Modular Tables Made Stupid Easy

I haven't made a productive post here in a bit so I thought I would share with you my stupid easy solution for modular game tables.  The only materials you need for this project is cold hard cash, or credit, or debit, or checks I guess.  That's because the perfect modular game table has already been made for you in the form of 2'x4' folding tables you can get from hardware or department stores. 

 These are "Lifetime" brand folding tables we picked up at Lowe's.  Several years ago we picked up two similar folding tables from Walmart but they are slightly different heights so they need to be shimmed up to work with these.  We wanted to have four tables so we could make up to a 4'x8' table without this hassle.  However we can put up three 4'x4' tables at this point which is pretty handy for RPGs or Wargame night.  The best solution is to try and get the same brand so that the heights will match up.  Each table cost us roughly $35.00 so it's not the cheapest solution but it's not too bad either. 

 Here are two of the tables put together to create a 4'x4'x table.  We have a number of different table tops for 4'x4' tables made from Masonite.  Another nice thing about these tables is that they can be used for project tables when you aren't using them for games.  They are plastic and clean up easily but you don't even need to bother cleaning them really since you will be putting some kind of top on them or some kind of cloth surface down to game on. 

 Here are three tables put together to create a 4'x6' table.  It's nice that these tables fold up so you can store them easily in a corner so you can put up or take down a good size table quickly and store them quickly if you have limited space to game in. 

Here are all four tables we have put together to make a 4'x8' table.  I'll note here that these tables make for a less sturdy surface than a dedicated game table but of course if you build up a large table it's hard to move.  You pretty much need a dedicated playing room to make a permanent 4'x8' game table and even a 4'x4' table will get in the way unless you have a special area for it.  These are more sturdy than slapping a 4'x8' piece of plywood on some saw horses but they are not jostle proof. 

We also have four 2.5'x5' tables so we can make a massive 5'x10' game table which we use for for our space port but it takes up most of the space in a two car garage and because the tables aren't the same brands we have to shim some of them up a bit to make them match. 

As I said this isn't a very cheap solution but it's super easy to deal with and store away when we don't need them.  We've tried other types of game table solutions but this is the one we favor because it's so easy to deal with.