Nathan "Ironworker" Miller's Miniature Games

2 New Games: Infinity and Star Trek Tactics!

2012-02-08T16:35:00.001-06:00

I picked up two new game recently. Two very different games. Infinity is a skirmish level 28mm game that I have been looking into for some time. The figures are very nice and the setting seems very compelling. We picked up three factions: Ariandna for myself, Nomads for my wife, and Pan Oceania for our daughter. We are starting out with just the boxed set and then if we like the game we are going to build from there.

I normally don't play clicks games and I'm not a big Star Trek fan but this game actually looks fun and my wife and daughter both like Star Trek so it might be a good game for them. The Starter set comes with four ships. for the Federation you get; The U.S.S. Enterprise - A, and The U.S.S. Rhode Island. For the Klingons you get; The I.K.S. Bortas, and The I.K.S. Rorarran. Hopefully this will be a fun game to just set up and play without much hassle.

Station 42 "Outskirts" update!

2012-01-29T23:52:00.000-06:00

We've been working on several projects for the outlying points of interest around Station 42. I've been working on "houses" for Hardscrabble and Ramshackle. I made several buildings out of cork tile to serve as basic residential houses for the two villages. I wanted to do a simple roof treatment for some of them so I chose to make it look like they had tar paper roofs.
First thing I did was take a paper grocery bag and cut it up. Then I crumpled the paper and soaked in water. I then used an Iron set on "cotton" to flatten and dry it.

After that I cut rectangles out and glued them to the cardboard roofs with a slight over lap. This way it would look like it was rolled out over the roof.

I spray panted the roofs black after I got the paper glued down then drybrushed each roof with grey to bring out the texture.

Here are the six buildings I finished with simple roofs. The com station in the back row has a more complicated roof which I plan to use on some of the other buildings.

Another project we are doing for the outskirts of Station 42 is this farmstead. In fact we plan to build a few farms that can be re-arranged to represent several different farms. This farm is a small subsistence farm. The building in the foreground will be a pig barn. The small building is a utility shed. The painted building in the center is the farm house and the building in the upper right corner is going to be the hydroponics lab. There are also water tanks a silos. We also have a garage for this set that isn't pictured.

For the hydroponics lab we are building little container gardens. The containers here are made from water bottle caps. We then glued a cardboard disk in them then glued sand over that for the "soil".

We picked up a number of different fake plants from Hobby Lobby for the "crops". We tried to pick ones that looked like they would make good scale crops. We figured with genetically modified crops we didn't have to make them look like anything specific.

Here were the first three I made as test subjects. The one on the right is the most exotic. If I ever make an alien jungle I'm using these extensively.

We had nine caps made up so here are the results of a couple of hours of clipping and gluing. I really like the way these came out and this seems like a reasonable number of containers for the Hydroponics lab. Of course we will be making more for other farms.

My wife has built most of the buildings for the Station 42 project. Here she is adding detail to the hydroponics lab.

Just for fun I thought I would include this "Bag of Cthulhu" I picked up at a local game store. I can't wait to build a temple for my Call of Cthulhu games.

Finally I picked up a copy of Tomorrow's War by Ambush Alley. We plan to use this rule set for larger scale battles in our 3031 setting that Station 42 is part of. I've barely looked through the rules but they look interesting so far.

"Maxed Out" Episode 2:

2012-01-22T00:06:00.014-06:00

New Vladivistock on Ceres, M.S.S.R. After their first attempt to work their way to Ceres aboard the heavy freighter "Ugly Betty" Jennie and Rocky decided to take a commercial transport to New Vladivistock to avoid trouble. They planned to find an used ship dealer there named Tommy "8 Toes" who they had purchased a "Skysweeper" attack craft from that they planned to use for their bounty hunting career. They were to meet their contact Johnny Walker at a pub called the "Red October".
New Vladivistock on Ceres is the most open city in the Martian Soviet Socialist Republic and is the most important trade city in the Republic. It is much easier to do business in the city for foreigners but it is still a tightly controlled city.
Upon their arrival Rocky and Jennie head to the "Red October" but their contact is no where to be seen. They wait for a couple of hours but he still does not show up or answer his com. After doing some investigating they find out where Johnny lives. Rocky also discoverers there is a small bounty out for him. On their way to Johnny's apartment they are stalked by a man in a long coat but aren't able to discover who he is.
After trying to contact Johnny a few more times Rocky and Jennie decide to break into his apartment. As they are investigating his apartment a number of his friends come in and hold them at gun point. Johnny eventually shows up and after some negotiation decided to help them get ahold of Tommy. He helps them acquire guns and forged papers to get them outside the city to where Tommy's business is.

After a little trouble getting out of the city they arrive at Tommy's place of business.

Jennie and Rocky investigate the office with Johnny and Trisha his girlfriend. They find the office door forced open and the office ransacked. Even Tommy's dog 'Scraps' is missing.

As they are investigating Tommy's office three vehicles pull up and a number of armed thugs get out.

A shootout takes place around the office area. Trisha is badly wounded and Johnny takes here back to the city for medical help. Rocky and Jenny question one of the wounded thugs that attacked them and find out that Tommy was taken by a local crime boss named "Bad Boris" for failing to pay his protection money. Boris had sent some of his goons back to Tommy's office to find the access codes to the ships on Tommy's lot. After searching the office and a ship that Tommy was working on they find a data terminal on the ship that is powered on. After a couple attempts to hack it they try using "Scraps" as the password and gain access to the information. On the terminal are the access codes to the ships on Tommy's lot. After fixing up the ship they had purchased using parts from some of the other Skysweepers on the lot they call up Victor "Bluetooth" Jones the illegal arms dealer Johnny had sent them to so they could purchase guns to find out if he had any ammunition for the 40mm cannons on their ship. After about an hour Victor showed up with about 100 rounds for the ships guns. Not a lot but it would have to do.

Rocky and Jennie loaded up the ship and took off to the location they had got from the thug they captured. When they got their the found an old Martian style military bunker that had a communications array on top. Rocky opened a channel and demanded that they release Tommy or she would level their bunker.

The gangsters called her bluff so she swung around behind the bunker and destroyed one of their vehicles with a burst of 40mm cannon fire.

Undeterred the gangsters fired back with assault rifles and a light machine guns. Their ship took a hit and Rocky lost control. Fortunately Jennie managed to help her re-gain control before they crashed.

All the fire they received had come from the top level of the bunker so Rocky hovered their craft just high enough to target that level. Jennie then used the cannon to start shooting the gangsters inside.

Their ship took a few more hits but nothing substantial. Rocky kept hovering the craft around the bunker as Jennie fired the cannon.

Eventually Boris and his gangsters decided that they weren't going to win the fight especially after loosing their light machine gunner.

They released Tommy and Scraps. Tommy was very happy to be released and he helped Rocky and Jennie do further repairs to their ship which they decided to name "Maxed Out".

Note: This was the 2nd episode in my home RPG campaign "Maxed Out". This is set in our 3031 setting. We used the "Savage Worlds" roleplaying system for this game but we also used other rule systems for games in this setting. This is also the setting for our "Station 42" project which will frequently be used in this campaign.

Station 42 Outskirts project.

2012-01-17T02:07:00.005-06:00

Now that we have Station 42 in a playable state as far as the buildings are concerned we have started working on some of the points of interest that are near the station. I outlined the various points of interest in this post http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/2011/06/klancys-general-store-wip-and-station.html.
The buildings above are some I've been working on for the villages of Hardscrabble and Ramshackle. Most of these are basic houses but I have a com station (the finished one) and a light industrial building. I did the com station about a week ago but the other 10 buildings I knocked out a couple of days ago in one building session. I'm also going to build some more "ramshackle" buildings to fill out the villages. There will also be a large crater filled with water that will separate the two villages. This set will be designed to be played on a 4'x8' table. There will actually be more buildings than station 42 but they will be much smaller and more residential.

Here is a closeup of the com station. The buildings are made out of cork tile. You can find some great ideas and tips for building with cork at Matakishi's Tea House: http://www.matakishi.com/makingbuildings.htm

The roof is made from scraps of card from various cardboard food packages. The detail bits come from; model kits, bottle caps, toys, disposable razors and other things. I still need to make the doors for this building.

We've also been working on the pirate based. These are the main buildings. The Pirate base is suppose to be an old abandoned military bunker complex. We decided to base the complex on this bunker: http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/2011/06/quick-and-dirty-bunker.html we made a few months ago. We will be buildings an underground complex to go with the bunkers based on our "Simple Complex" project: http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/2009/06/simple-complex.html

We will probably simply expand on this project with some more specific rooms for the pirates who use the base.

Last up is a simple farm house. We hope to build 3-6 farms that can be set up in various configurations to represent the various hydroponic and livestock farms surrounding Station 42. My wife made this building and I think she did a great job getting both the futuristic and farm house feel.

Station 42: Phase 1 Complete!

2012-01-02T18:12:00.007-06:00

Well we have the Station 42 project to the first phase of completion. The buildings are all done and we have about 7 ships and a number of vehicles ready for the table as well as a number of miniatures. We still have a lot to do not only on the Station itself but also on a number of the surrounding locations. We have already made good headway on the pirate base and we should have some updated for that soon. Here are some pics of the Station as it is:

Shadowrun: Orcs in progress.....

2011-12-31T15:18:00.005-06:00

Got on a pretty big converting kick for my Shadowrun project. Yesterday I went to my FLGS and picked up some figures to make Orc conversions. I already had a couple done. The two primed figures are converted from Reaper orc heads and other bodied. The one on the far left is Jäger in his combat gear. I used the same head from the Reaper 1/2 orc monk that I used for the business suit version from my previous post.

I used various Reaper heads and a few Games Workshop Beastman heads with their horns cut off for the most part. The beastman heads will also get tusk added. The Foundry Street Violence fig on the far right makes a pretty good orc as is but I'm going to add tusk to his face as well. Other than that he is good to go. I'm particularly proud of the orc with the minigun 2nd one from the right. He came together quite well.

I still have quite a bit of green stuff work to do on these but I feel they are coming along nicely. I'm also looking at some conversion ideas for five more female orcs.

2012 Project "Shadowrun" in miniature.

2011-12-29T15:01:00.006-06:00

Our big project for 2012 is going to be "Shadowrun". I think it's pretty fitting because the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 marks the beginning of the 6th world. I've been playing in a consistent Shadowrun campaign since 2008 and for the first few years we either didn't use miniatures or we used the GMs 1990s style Ral Partha Shadowrun figures. In the last year I've started working on a few Shadowrun minis in 28/30mm scale by converting minis from existing modern and sci-fi lines.

Here are some runners I converted and painted in the last year. Most of these are from our team although not all are current.

From left to right:

Brass: Female Elf "Face". This is simply a Foundry miniature from their Street Violence line with elf ears sculpted from green stuff.

Edward: Male Elf "Technomancer". This figure is is made from the body of a Militia miniature from the Void miniature game and a plastic head from the old Games Workshop Dark Eldar line. He has red skin because the character had to have his natural skin replaced with synthetic skin after being engulfed by a Spirit of Fire.

Bear: Male Human "Street Samurai". This figure is made from various Games Workshop plastic kits and an AK-47 from Reaper's modern weapons pack. Bear is actually an NPC dependent.

Jo: Female Orc "Street Samurai". Joe is made from a Reaper Half Orc. The AK-47 comes from a RAFM figure and the extra gear on her belt came from a Games Workshop plastic kit. Jo is my wife's character.

Jäger: Male Orc "Street Samurai". Jäger is made using the body from a Foundry Street Violence miniature and a Reaper Half Orc monk. His machine pistol is from the Malifaux modern weapons pack. Jäger is my character.

Parker: Female Orc "Face". This figure is made from the body of a RAFM USX miniature and the head of a Reaper half orc.

Elf female: This figure is made from a Foundry Street Violence figure with some elf ears made from green stuff. She is currently serving as a stand in for a player character until we find something better.

Squirle: Male Elf "Technomancer". This figure is made from a Militia figure from the Void miniature game with elf ears made from green stuff.

We are also planning to build; more runners, security forces, organized crime factions, gangs, spirits, drones, awakened critters, civilians, vehicles, and sprawl terrain.

Of course we already have a large number of modern and sci-fi humans which we will be making extensive use of.

Station 42: Works in Progress

2011-12-04T23:10:00.002-06:00

We worked on quite a few projects today for the Station 42 setting. This is a simple stage I made from a Platformer kit from Pegasus Hobbies http://pegasushobbies.net/catalog/. The kit is not as easy to put together as it appears and the schematics are really poor but it's a neat kit with lots of potential and it's not too expensive for what you get. This is only a small test piece and it took some time for me to put it together. Also the kit is suppose to be able to be assembled without glue so you can tear it apart and use it for whatever design you want. In theory that makes sense but I'm gluing mine into permanent models. This stage will be useful for a number of scenarios. I primarily designed it for slave auction Seniors in "Junktown".

Also I converted a sniper for my Wolfhound Freikorps mercenary unit using a sniper rifle out of the Malifaux Modern Weapons pack from Wyrd Games http://wyrd-games.net/. It took a lot of cutting to get the rifle to fit but I'm pretty happy with it. I just need to seal up a couple gaps where his arm meet his torso in the back and I'll be ready to start painting him.

Over the Thanksgiving break I also finished three more pirates for my "Bloodborn" pirate gang who have already been involved in a number of encounters in the setting. This makes 11 pirates painted and about 9 more ready to be painted. I still have more on the way. I plan to have at least 30-50 pirates for this force. These are entirely kitbashed from various GW kits.

This is a work in progress shot of the main command bunker that will make up the Bloodborn Pirates main base of operations. In addition to this larger bunker there will be three smaller bunkers and perhaps a few outbuildings and landing pads. We will also be using our underground facility which we plan to expand on in conjunction with these bunkers for the base complex. It should work very nicely when we are finished.

Here is a top down shot of the command bunker. We are considering adding a floor using window screen and a supporting structure. This is going to be a nicely playable piece that is going to be heavily weathered and trashy looking. Should make a great base for pirates!

for some reason blogger is screwing up and I can't highlight txt to create hyperlinks. I'll fix this

M.S.S.R. short range patrol unit

2011-11-25T00:21:00.002-06:00

I picked up a few Pig Iron Productions Kolony militia from The Warstore just a few days ago. I've been eyeballing these guys for quite some time for my spaceport project. In my 3031 Sci-Fi setting the M.S.S.R. have a base near Station 42 on Titania. These guys will represent a unit of garrisoned troops at the base.

I really like the comblock look of these figures which was clearly what the folks at Pig Iron were going for. They have really expanded their Kolony range as well so I have several options for expanding this force. The figures were cast really cleanly. Very light mold lines and no serious miscast. They are sculpted in a very nice "English" style. Simple but very nice looking figures that really have a lot of character similar to figures from Wargames Foundry, Copplestone Casting, or older Games Workshop figures.

I based these figures on Renedra 25mm plastic bases. I also got these from The Warstore a few months ago. 50 bases for $4.00 was a deal I couldn't pass up. The bases are perfect for minis with cast bases since they are only half the height of a standard "slotta" base. I simply used some Elmer's Carpenter's Wood Filler to blend them in.

"Maxed Out" Episode 1: Shipjacked

2011-11-24T14:47:00.006-06:00

The heavy freighter "Ugly Betty" on route to Ceres was passing dangerously close to the Hilda region of the asteroid belt. The Hilda's were thick with pirates but Captain Matambo consoled himself with the fact they were not actually passing through the cluster and an old freighter like his wouldn't draw much attention. The "Ugly Betty" was a General Space Systems G47 "Durango" class Heavy Freighter. Part of the forward section of the ship had been converted to carry passengers and there were about 30 aboard at the moment. Jennie D. Tam and Roxann "Rocky" Tomson had signed on with the "Ugly Betty" on Titania but they weren't planning on becoming permanent members of the crew. The were working their way to Ceres and back to pick up a very used "Skysweeper" patrol craft they had purchased with their combined savings. The ship was in terrible shape but Jennie was a decent mechanic and was certain they could get it space worthy again. The two had big plans to used the ship for bounty hunting jobs. Rocky was a licensed bounty hunter in the; Confederacy, Empire, and M.S.S.R. Jennie was working aboard the "Ugly Betty" as an assistant to Chief Engineer Wilson and Rocky was part of the two person security team along with another new hire named Joe Smith.

Just as they were passing the Hilda region of the belt Chief Wilson asked Jennie to check out one of the air filtration units located in Cargo Hold 2. He was getting funny readings from it. He also suggested that she take a security officer with her so she called her friend Rocky to meet her to investigate.

When they got there they found Joe Smith looking over the unit. They though it was odd that he was wearing a full face respirator. He waved them over claiming that he as found some evidence of sabotage. They came over to investigate but Joe surprised them with a blast of knock out gas. Rocky hit the deck first as she took the full blast straight into her face. Jennie took a swing at Joe with her wrench but failed to connect. Joe shot Jennie with his tazer and she fell to the deck next to Rocky. Joe then hooked his tank of knock out gas to the air filtration unit. Within a few minutes the crew and passengers of the "Ugly Betty" had all been knocked out by the gas.

When Jennie and Rocky came to they found themselves locked in a large shipping container full of boxes of junk. Some time after that one end of the container opened up. Joe was standing there with three other armed men. The red warpaint and black and red clothing they were wearing indicated that they were member of the "Bloodborn" pirates. The "Bloodborn" were a band of pirates well known to Jennie and Rocky because they were also based on Titania not far from "Station 42" where the two had met. "Sorry Ladies looks like you will be headed back home to sweet Titania". Joe laughed then threw the pair a few packs of MREs just before shutting the door.

When they arrived back on Titania the pirates had landed their ship in a remote part of the Wastelands neither of them recognized. They were loaded onto a truck with 6 other hostages. The rest of the crew were no where to be seen. On board the truck was Karl Mason one of the Geologist who worked at the Venture Star Mining company office on Titania. He knew them both from the bar "Close Encounters" at "Station 42" where they all hung out. The rest of the hostages were unknown to them and kept to themselves.

They were transported several kilometers and unloaded at an abandoned bunker. There were several such bunkers all over Titania from the war between the Empire and the Confederacy. They were popular safe houses for pirates and smugglers. The bunker concealed a small underground facility where the hostages were locked into a small room. Jennie and Rocky began plotting their escape but most of the other hostages other than Karl were not too interested. They were certain they would be ransomed.

On the second day of their captivity Karl was removed from the room for several hours. When he was returned he told them that the pirates had asked him to appraise the value of some gems they had looted on their last couple of jobs. He also told them there were about a dozen pirates at this facility.

On the third day Jennie was taken by the pirates and ordered to repair several small mechanical and electrical parts scavenged for various ships. Rocky was also taken and ordered to clean up the pirates bunk room. Both of them were guarded by a pair of pirates.

While going through the parts Jennie found a small cooling unit that still has a great deal of pressurized coolant she rigged it so that she could spray the coolant out at the pirates if she got a chance.

Ass Rocky was cleaning the bunk room she noticed that the male pirate guarding her was hitting on his female partner. Rocky pretended to ignore them as she cleaned and began searching for something that she could use to help her escape. While cleaning she noticed one of the lockers was open slightly. She saw Jennies tool kit inside the locker. She remembered Jennie used to hide a .44 Derringer inside the kit for protection. She waited until the pirates were distracted with their conversation then she quickly grabbed the kit from inside the locker. Using one of the bunks as cover as she pretended to clean underneath it she searched for the pistol in the kit. Sure enough it was right where she expected it. She took the tiny pistol and carefully moved closer to the pirates. Knowing that the weapon would only be effective at a short range she slowly made her was up next to her guards. As she got up next to the male pirate he turned to her and said "Are you done already?" then she shot him in the face. The female pirate screamed and ducked as she was splattered with blood and brains. She opened fire with her SMG but fired wildly and missed Rocky who quickly dispatched her with the Derringer's final round.

Hearing the shots Jennie decided it was time to act. She unleashed the pressurized coolant and sprayed both pirates guards in the face. The guards went down clutching their frozen faces and screaming. Jennie then picked up one of their guns ad finished them off.

Confused as to what was going on the rest of the pirates in the facility ran out into the hall way. Jennie and Rocky were in rooms at opposite ends of the hall. They both peaked out from their doorways and opened fire on the pirates.

Caught in the crossfire the pirates were gunned down in short order. Jennie took a round to the shoulder during the fire fight but Rocky managed to come out unscathed. The two quickly disarmed the pirate bodies and went to free the other prisoner's.

Only Karl and one of the other prisoners agreed to help them. Jennie and Rocky gave them both a pirate SMG and they quickly moved to the ladder to the bunker upstairs.

The combat in the underground facility had ended so quickly that the pirates up in the bunker were not aware of the escaped prisoners.

Rocky and Jennie burst out of the hatch and engaged the pirates. Rocky got hit twice in the close counter engagement but the managed to gun down the other pirates.

Rocky then used one of the pirates communicators to call the Nova Securities office at Station 42. Nova Securities sent out a squad and a medic to assist them.

Jennie and Rocky received a hefty bounty for the pirates they had killed or captured and the other prisoners also rewarded them for their lives. They were both taken to the Hospital in Titania City to have their wounds tended to. They had managed to escape from the pirates but their ship was still on Ceres. This time however they would be able to afford much safer passage than as crew aboard a tramp freighter.

Note: This was my first episode of my new campaign "Maxed Out" which is set in my home brew science fiction setting "3031". The "Station 42" spaceport project I've been working on for the past couple of years will be featured in the game quite a bit. We used the Savage Worlds role playing game for this adventure but we also use the setting for other Sci-Fi games like AE Bounty. My wife and daughter were the PCs for this adveture. Further episodes of "Maxed Out" will follow their bounty hunting adventures across the solar system.

Wolfhound Friekorps painted!

2011-11-24T12:47:00.005-06:00

Way back in August 2010 I put together a group of Wargames Factory Shock Troopers as my "first" crew for AE bounty. Then they set on my shelf for over a year. We played several games of AE bounty and we even painted up crews for the game but I didn't get these guys painted up until a couple days ago. I painted them up with combination of drybrushing and washes mostly. I wanted them to look dark and germanic. I decided to muddy up their boots and coats which I think worked pretty well to add some interest to an otherwise grey/green paintjob. Over all these arn't fantastic paintjobs but they get the job done and I think they make a decent looking crew.

New Project: "Underworld" game

2011-11-12T19:14:00.004-06:00

I'm starting a new project and RPG campaign based on the Underworld series of movies. Underworld Revolution will focus on the time period just after the events in "Rise of the Lycans". I will be using the Savage Worlds Deluxe edition rules. The player characters will be a party of "Death Dealers" the warrior cast of the Vampires. "Revolution" will be the first chapter of what I hope becomes a Death Dealer campaign that will run up to and beyond the events portrayed in "Evolution".

I'm pretty excited that I will be able to use so many different historic miniatures with of course some fantasy, science fiction, steam punk, and pulp adventure thrown in.

Orcs rule Elves drool!

2011-09-25T14:15:00.003-05:00

I've taken to playing Orcs or Half Orcs quite frequently in RPGs that allow them as playable character races. This has prompted some of the people I've been playing with to ask me why I play Orcs so often. Granted these are the people who play elves pretty much whenever they can as if the advantages to playing an elf should be obvious. In fact when I come back with "well why do you play elves all the time" they always seem confused and taken off guard.

To me nothing says Fantasy RPG Munchkin like someone who always plays Elves and what makes it worse is that these players always consider themselves great roleplayers. Typically they play their elves haughty and roll their eyes when other players initiate combat but then try to kill steal and out damage every one else in the party usually from somewhere in the back ranks either with magic or absurd elf only archery bonuses. Elf players almost always play against elven type. Their characters are never wise or polite nor peaceful. Orcs aren't either but the elf players never sees their characters as; brash, rude, and violent. They always still think of their characters as typical elves.

I tend to play my Orcs typical. Brash, rude, and violent. To me that is an Orc. It's fine to go against type now and again and play an Orc who is an articulate negotiator, or an artist, or a magic user but typically Orcs are tanks. The Orc is usually one of the tougher and stronger of the races in any fantasy setting. Usually the toughest race that doesn't need specialty; clothing, armor, and weapons. They also fit through the same doors as most people and can use the same furniture. If you want to play an Orc fighter/warrior type you dump your "points" into things they are naturally good at like being tough and strong. If you want to play anything else you dump your points into the needed stat then count on your natural toughness and strength that still make you tougher and stronger than the average human and much more than the average elf since those are always their weak points.

A good way to set up as well rounded Orc character is to choose to be a fighter type and bump up your; strength, toughness, and quickness but still leave a few points for other things. When choosing skills and talents (feats ect) choose to be really good at one type of fighting and competent at one or two others but don't forget some points for other things. Your natural attributes will boost up lower skill numbers to make your an above average fighter while still leaving you points to be good at other things like tracking or knowledge or poetry or what have you. You can have skills the party can use while still being the anvil your foes break upon.

If your a non fighter type make sure you have at least as much armor as you are allowed and a weapon that takes advantage of your Orc advantages. That way you can still do what you do but use your natural fighting abilities to kick butt when you need to. That fire ball that nukes the Elf wizard will still certainly hurt the Orc shaman but he'll get back up more quickly and if he's unable to use his magic he can still smack people around with his staff or even bare hands.

And remember anything that drops your Orc in one shot will drop three of the parties elves in the next round. I'm sure Orcish heaven if more fun too.

Making the best of cheap Battlemechs!

2011-07-25T20:51:00.005-05:00

A couple of months ago I picked up the new Battletech Introductory Boxed set for Classic Battletech produced by Catalyst Games. Now I have Battletech "Total Warfare" and a number of my own Mechs but the boxed set came with really nice board game style map sheets made from heavy cardboard as well as 26 Battlemechs. 24 Inner Sphere mechs (that's two companies) and 2 Clan Omnimechs. It also came with a slimmed down rulebook and even some quick start rules as well as record sheets and some other odds and ends.
The Mechs in the boxed set are really poorly made. They are cast out of cheap plastic. I'm talking toy army soldier cheap. This is nothing new. The plastic mechs that came with the old boxed set put out by FASA were pretty much the same quality and I would much rather have 3D plastic mechs than 2D cardstock flats that FASA used in a few versions on the introductory set.
Still they are pretty bad so I've come up with a way to paint them quickly and make them look nice. Nothing stellar but nice enough for my table.
I've chosen to paint all my mechs in camo paint schemes. The box comes with two companies so I'm going to paint the two companies in two different camo patterns although I am going to paint all of the mechs to represent units of the Hanseatic Leauge Regional Defense Forces. That's really not that important. I chose to do a camo paint job because not only are they fast and easy they also look the best on these crappy mechs. The camouflage pattern mask the flaws in casting and the fact that I did a rather hasty job of cleaning these mechs up before painting. The soft plastic also makes removing lines a pain. As you can see in the picture I started by painting this Assualt Lance with primer grey then I added a simple brown camo pattern.

Next I took some light sand colored paint and drybrushed the entire mech. This is a great way to paint figures using camo quickly and easily. I've even used this technique on 28mm military figs.

Next I painted in markings and added some weathering using some dark metallic paint to add damage to the mechs paint jobs.

Next up I added a wash of Burnt Umber with some Dark Blue mixed with water and Future Floor Wax. This was done to add detail to the recessed areas and tone down and blend the drybrushing.

After the Wash dried I detailed the Mechs adding cockpits and bringing out some of the scratches in the paint job with a bright silver. After that I finished the bases and gave the lance a matte varnish. These Mechs only took a few hours to paint a good hour of that was waiting for the wash to dry. I think they are a pretty effective looking unit despite the fact that the minis themselves are pretty poor in quality.

Quick and Dirty Power Generator and Miners

2011-06-29T23:46:00.004-05:00

A couple weeks ago I posted some quick and dirty com stations where I used the tops of cheap razor handles for the arms supporting the dish. Well I took the rest of the handles glued them together and sanded the bottoms flush then mounted that on a soda bottle cap to make this small power generator.

Here it is painted up. I think this will make a nice power generator for small farm or outpost. The project took less than two hours to complete and went together fairly simply.

I also finished the Venture Star miners. These minis were giving me trouble due to a bad primer job but I'm fairly happy with the way they turned out especially since they are basically NPC types.

Ork Shadowrunners WIP

2011-06-17T17:39:00.003-05:00

I've been working today on some Ork Shadowrunners. The frist two are the characters my wife and I have been playing in our Shadowrun group for the past 3 years. The last one is just one I did for fun.
The first one is Jager my Street Samurai depicted here in his "business" suit wielding his Ceska Black Scorpion submachinepistol. I'm planning on making another combat version of this character. This figure was made using the head of a Reaper Halforc Monk with the body of one of Juno's Crew from the Foundry Street Violence line. The gun is from the Malifaux Modern Weapons pack.
The lovely image of beauty on Jager's right is Jo my wife's Ork Street Samurai. The figure is a Halforc Pirate figure from reaper with an AK-47 taken from a RAFM terrorist. I need to do a fair amount of putty work in the back of this figure where we cut the cutlass that the figure was holding away. The hand will need some touch up as well.
The final guy is just some Ork. I have an Ork character in limbo named Bulldog who this mini would work well for but I have no idea if I'm ever going to play in that game again so for now he's just a spare Ork. He's made by swapping a Reaper halforc barbarian head with a Starship Trooper Mobile Infantry body. When I get these guys a bit further along I'll show them compared to some typical height sci-fi humans. These are all big minis perfect for Orks.

Klancy's General Store WIP and Station 42 setting notes.

2011-06-14T18:37:00.002-05:00

We haven't posted any WIP shots of the spaceport project buildings lately because they are all in a state of progress. Here's a shot of Klancy's General Store and fuel station. The Clinic and bar are pretty far along as well but the security station still has a ways to go. Hopefully we can finish up the smaller buildings soon then put our full focus on the security station. With any luck we will have all the main buildings done enough to used for games as soon as the end of the month.

In addition to the main spaceport we are also looking at what kinds of things exist in the surrounding area. We plan to expand into other settlements and locations as soon as we get the main station playable. This will be a long term project.

Station 42 Overview

This is an overview of some of the locations surrounding Station 42 which is a part of my 3031 science fiction setting.

Station 42: The station itself is on Titania the largest moon of Uranus. It is a small space port servicing mostly shuttles and light freighters. The station has only been running for about 10 years although it looks like it has been around longer due to general neglect and the fact that most of the buildings have been transported to the site from other locations as is common on the outlying planets. There is no real government for the station. It is not a township but there is a Nova Corp. security station which has been contracted by the government of Titania to provide security at the station. The Station consist of a Klancy's fuel station and general store, a clinic, a bar called “The Close Encounter”, The Nova Corp security station, Rosie's repair shop, and an office of the Venture Star prospecting company.

Pleasant Valley: “The Valley” as it is often called is a small village consisting of about 20 homes with a small school and a couple of light industrial companies that lies about a kilometer Northwest of Station 42. It is also home to Billings construction company. There is a marshal's station and the militia group “Boon's Irregulars” also consider it part of their territory as some of their members live there.

Rat Trap Junction: A small station that lies 5 kilometers north of Station 42. Rat Trap Junction consist of only two businesses. The local MFA Biodiesel station which serves the many hydroponic and livestock farms in the region and Clifford's Farm and Home which sells farming equipment and supplies as well as used vehicles.

Ramshackle and Hardscrabble: These two tiny villages lie on the banks of the Westson Reservoir which is a small reservoir created from filling an impact crater with water. Many of the people who live here work either at Station 42 or in Pleasant Valley or as farm hands. Most of the buildings are built from the native stone although they have some modern amenities. Boon's Irregulars patrol the area and draw several members from the population. The reservoir lies 3 kilometers northeast of Station 42.

Boon's Outpost: Carson Boon has a small garage and junk yard about 6 kilometers northeast of Station 42. About 3 years ago Boon became disgruntled with the Titania government because of their constant failure to provide security for the farmers and other settlers who live in the region around Station 42 so he formed “Boon Irregulars” a militia group who patrol the region looking for pirates, raiders, and other trouble makers. The outpost consist of Boon's garage and a few shipping containers that have been converted into a “base” for his militia group.

The Pit: “The Pit” doesn't even put on the pretense of being a “gentleman's club”. This strip joint and bar lies about a half a kilometer east of Station 42. The clientele consist of biker gangs, raiders, and the roughest spacers in the region. Almost anything illegal can be bought and sold here. Nova Corp and Boon Irregulars regularly raid the club looking to cut down on illegal activity but neither group seems to be able to shut the place down.

The Bloodborn Compound: The Bloodborn Pirates use an abandoned military base as their “hideout” although everyone in the region knows where it is. Built years ago during a war between the Confederacy and the Jovian Empire the base is more of a fort consisting of several hardened bunkers and low defensive walls. The compound is defended by several light artillery pieces and anti aircraft guns as well as a few aerospace fighters, a couple of armed shuttles, and usually several dozen pirates. The compound lies 10 kilometers east of Station 42.

Junktown: This shanty town lies only a few hundred meters from the Bloodborn compound. Home to some of the most desperate settlers on Titania the people of Junktown live here mostly because they can't live anywhere else although a few depraved individuals thrive here. Junktown is controlled by gangs of raiders and the Bloodborn pirates. More dangerous even than “The Pit” very few people would dare to venture here without the protection of either the pirates or one of the local gangs.

The M.S.S.R. Base: During the last war between the Confederacy and the Jovian Empire the M.S.S.R. Allied itself with the Confederacy as an such they have been allowed to maintain a small military presence on a number of Confederate worlds to deter Jovian aggression. The base is small and houses only about a platoon of soldiers but it is heavily fortified and well defended with weapons emplacements and attack craft. The base lies about 8 kilometers South Southeast of Station 42 and not too far from the Bloodborn Compound. Patrols from the base frequently engage pirate and raider patrols. No one really knows what goes on at the base and the M.S.S.R. Isn't advertising it's activities but many locals have noted that there is are an awful lot of Martian transport shuttles frequenting the base. More than would be expected for a small outpost.

The Colony: Over a century ago when Titania was still in the process of early teraforming a massive colony ship crash landed about 20 kilometers Northeast of the location Station 42 occupies. Of the thousands of colonist aboard only a few hundred survived. Life on a moon that barely had more than a sustainable atmosphere was harsh and many of the survivors perished in a few short months. Those that did survive slowly turned more and more savage over the years. Now the decedents of those survivors live in the wreckage of the massive ship as cannibal raiders. It is rumored that there are untold riches to be found among the wreckage of the ship which is scattered across the wasteland for several miles but the “colonist” seem to hold these areas as sacred and fiercely attack any intruders.

AE Bounty Battle Report "Valkyrie Ambush"

2011-06-13T00:38:00.004-05:00

The Bloodborn pirates under the command of Captain Cyclopse had been causing problems for the citizens of Station 42 and the surrounding area. Eventually their victims decided to do something about it. Pooling their resources they hired the well known bounty hunting team known as "The Valkyrie".

The
Valkyrie

(Standard Crew)

Valarie (Gunsel Individual Elite
Hero)

M/3 RC/3+ CC/3 A/3(4) S/2 DR/6 W/4

Equipment: LRF Slugthrower, Shock
Grenades, Light Armored Suit

Abilities: *Solo *Hunter (Human)

Hero Type:Unkillable

Traits: Impervious (5+), Unstoppable

Action Points: 4

Kara (Bounty Killer Individual
Regular)

M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/3(4) S/3 DR/5 W/3

Equipment: LRF Slugthrower, Adrenal
Booster, Light Armored Suit

Abilities: *Solo *Hunter (Human)

Traits: Berserk

Action Points: 2

Vera (Bounty Killer Individual
Regular)

M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/3(4) S/2 DR/5 W/2

Equipment: LRF Slugthrower, AP rounds,
Light Armored Suit

Abilities: *Solo *Hunter (Human)

Action Points: 2

Alecia (Lurker Individual
Regular)

M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/3 S/2 DR/5 W/2

Equipment: Shock Gloves, Electrolaser
Pistol, Cloaking Field

Abilities: *Solo *Hidden Deployment
*Hunter (Human)

Action Points: 2

The Bloodborn Pirates

Standard Crew

Captain Cyclopes (Human Veteran
Blooded Warrior Hero)

M/3 RC/3+ CC4 A/5(7) S/3 DR/5 W/3

Equipment: Particle Beam Rifle, Light
Armored Suit, Personal Magnetic Field

Ability: Apathetic, Command, Get up and
shoot!

Quartermaster Grimm (Human
Regular Individual)

M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/5(7) S/2 DR/4 W/2

Equipment: Particle Beam Rifle, Light
Armored Suit, Personal Magnetic Field

Ability: Apathetic, Issue Equipment

Quartermaster Vinnie (Human
Regular Individual)

M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/5(7) S/2 DR/4 W/2

Equipment: Particle Beam Rifle, Light
Armored Suit, Personal Magnetic Field

Ability: Apathetic, Issue Equipment

The Ductrats (Human Green Squad)

M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1

Equipment: LFR Slugthrower, Light
Armored Suit

Ability: Apathetic, Random Equipment

Da Gurlz (Human Green Squad)

M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1

Equipment: Slugthrower Pistol, Light
Armored Suit

Ability: Apathetic, Random Equipment

Knowing that pirates can't pass up a free ship the Valkyrie use their own ship as a decoy to draw out Captain Cyclopes and his gang. The pirates close in to inspect their new prize.

The Valkyrie spring their trap. Early in the fighting one of "Da Gurlz" is shot down by Valarie's LRF slugthrower. Grim and Vinnie take cover in a rocky outcropping while the Captain and the Ductrats make a long flanking maneuver.

The fighting gets serious. Da Gurlz rush forward and shoot at Vera on the hill but they are gunned down in turn by the Valkyrie. Captain Cyclops, completely unfazed takes two shots at Vera on the hill and she falls. Kara and Alecia trade shots with Vinnie and Grimm the two pirate quartermasters. Kara takes a would and the Valkrie quickly discover that both pirates have personal magnetic fields. "That's going to make them hard as hell to kill in that position! Flank em!" shouts Valarie.

Captain Cyclopse takes up a positon in the rock after his own personal magnetic field fizzled out and he took two wounds. Valarie fires a hail of lead into his position and the Captain goes down. "Die Scum!" she exclaims.

Kara and The Duct Rats shoot it out on the other side of the hill. "I'm hit...again" Kara says as the she guns down the last of the crewmen. Vinnie and Grimm snap off several shots with their particle beam rifles but for the most part miss their targets. "Guess we shouldn't have drank the Captain's rum eh Grimm!" says Vinnie.

Vinnie and Grimm attempt to move into better positions seeing that they are getting flanked. Kara and Alecia charge Vinnie who puts up a stronger than expected defense. Alecia is wounded in the exchange but they take the pirate down. "Take that Sucka'" Alicia stays as she kicks Vinnie in the head.

Kara then moves up to get in a better position to take out Grimm but Valarie shoots the last pirate down with a barrage of fully automatic fire.

"Damn that was a hard win" says Valarie. "Those people better pay up" replies Kara.

Note: I ran the Bloodborn Pirates who suffered their first loss in this fight. My wife and Daughter ran the Valkyrie. This is the first time we have played with the Bounty Hunter crew and it's a nasty crew to face. The scenario was "Ambush". The Pirates has Tertiary objective as a dirty trick with Assassination and Delaying action as their secondary objectives. The achieved both of these objectives by Assassinating Vera and lasting for over 6 rounds. The Valkyrie had "Faulty Technology" as a dirty trick which they used on Captain Cyclopes's Personal Magnetic Field and their secondary objective was also delaying action. The Valkyrie won the primary objective as well and their faction objective and their secondary objective. A clear victory for this bounty hunting crew.

AE Bounty Battle Report " Boon's Irregulars assault a smuggler's hideout

2011-06-11T10:45:00.005-05:00

A truck pulls up outside the hideout of the crew of the "Hotrod Pricess"

Whisper the crew's hacker points out the window. "Hey boss these must be the guys my contact back at Statin 42 told me about". Vincent the crews pilot looks out the window "Alright Lisa and I will go see what they want You guys stay here and cover us". "Hey it's going to be hard for us to cover you with this storm blowing in" replies Tommy.

Several men and women get out of the truck and spread out. They seem to be armed and they start making their way towards the old abandoned com bunker that the smugglers are using as a base. Vincent and Lisa take cover behind some rocks. "They don't look friendly" Lisa says.

The Storm is making it hard to see very far ahead. Redjack scans the field in front of him and sees some movement over near some old fuel barrels. "Got you" he says under his breath. A shot rings out and Lisa is struck in the arm by a high caliber bullet. Moments later another shot hits Vincent in the leg.

Vincent and Lisa flee away from the sniper. "Damn that guy is good!" Vincent says as he ducks behind an old crate.

Vincent hears the sound of boots splashing through the mud behind him. He spins around and brings his boosted particle beam pistol "Betty" to bear on a large target. Chuck goes down screaming and clutching his leg as the beam burns through his thigh.

Vincent and Lisa reach the bunker as the intruders close in. Tommy and Mike spot Carson Boon the leader of the militia group "Boon's Irregulars" moving up along the edge of an old crater. The pair opens fire and several shots ping off Boon's personal magnetic field although one shot gets through. "Damn it!" Whisper yells. "I was trying to hack that idiot's field but it's defense software kicked in and gave me a virus!"

From inside the bunker the smugglers put up a strong defense as the militia members move in. The bunker was built for a full scale war and most of the militia members shots are in vain. Whisper continues to try and hack Carson Boon's personal magnetic field. "I got it!" he exclaims.

At almost that exact moment Boon appears in the doorway of the bunker and open fires on the first target he sees. Whisper goes down in a hail of fire before he is even aware of his attacker. Tommy and Mike are both gunned down moments later by Redjack.

The fight turns desperate. Boon and Vincent tangle briefly in hand to hand but Vincent give boon the slip and makes a break for the door. He turns and snaps off another shot which hits Boon in the shoulder. Lisa guns down two militia members hiding near some rocks but more close in.

Vincent takes another shot at Boon and hits him in the arm then turns and runs but Red lifts his rifle and takes a whot. Vincent goes down shot in the back by a green militia member. "That's for Chuck you bastard!" Red yells. Bleeding from several wounds Boon opens up on Lisa and takes the last smuggler down. Bonnie walks into the bunker and looks around at the carnage. "Hey Boon isn't that the hacker we were suppose to capture?" Boon just shrugs.

Note: This is the first game of AE bounty I have run with my home brew smugglers list. Even though they were wiped out to the man I felt the list did exactly what it was suppose to do. I did forget that Vincent the crew's pilot has a personal magnetic field which would have helped him resist the wounds he took but I don't think that would have changed things in the end. I'll be posting the crew stats for the smugglers and my rules for this in the next day or so. We were afraid that the hacker rules would be too powerful but they seemed quite balanced. The hacker got two viruses trying to hack and only managed to hack one piece of gear although he did fry Boon's field.

I think we are about ready to begin an actual AE Bounty campaign based in our Spaceport setting. We just need to finish a couple more projects and play a few more practice games.

Holy Gamer Pals Batman!

2011-06-09T11:29:00.003-05:00

Apparently the gods want me to play Warhammer 40K. Or at least my friends do. Anyhow one of my gamer friends came up with a brand new 5th edition rule book that he couldn't account for. He also had a Terminator Assault Squad with Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield and a spare Librarian so he just gave them to me. Over a hundred bucks worth of stuff for nothing.

So the same friends girlfriend also paints minis and she gave me a great tip for mold line removal. This is an electric manicure tool and it's like a dremmil with a very low power motor. It's perfect for removing mold lines and light flash without damaging the figure you are working on. It was about $7.00 at Walmart.

Got Fist?

2011-06-08T09:52:00.003-05:00

Well I've done it. I've started painting Warhammer 40K figs again. Here are some Marines from the "Assault of Black Reach" boxed set I'm painting up as the Crimson Fist chapter. I'm in the process of heavily weathering them at the moment. I used a lot of drybrushing and cheap craft paints. Suck it GW! I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out.

Here's a shot of them prior to the weather and wash.

Quick and Dirty Com Stations

2011-06-07T14:55:00.005-05:00

Here's another "Evening Project". These actually took me a couple of nights but that's mostly because I dropped one during basecoating and had to put it back together. I also started them late the first night I built them. These only took a couple hours to build none the less and they are made almost entirely from junk.

Here you can see the parts. The antena are made from a couple of wooden beads and a toothpick. The dish is from the guts of a deodorant dispenser. The arm holding the dish up is the top of a plastic disposable shaving razor handle. The white part is a soda bottle cap and the clear part is a tub from a powdered drink mix container. The hardest part was using a razor saw to cut the plastic razor handles down. Very simple.

Quick and Dirty Bunker

2011-06-05T09:26:00.003-05:00

We needed a bunker for the AE Bounty Scenario "Hold the Fort" and despite 20+ years of miniature gaming I didn't really have one. My wife made this one out of foam core and I painted it. It only took a couple hours most of which as waiting for glue and washes to dry.

A lot of the time I will sit around thinking that I need to build some piece of terrain for a game or scenario I'd like to run but then I start over thinking the project and it doesn't even get started. A lot of the time these are simple projects that I just need to get stuck in on and do start to finish in a few hours like we did with this bunker.

I've decided I want to try a new project called "Evening Projects" based on simple terrain projects that can be finished in a few hours. Hopefully I will have at least one of these projects a week so keep an eye out.

AE Bounty Battle Report "Pirate Raid"

2011-05-28T10:17:00.018-05:00

We played our second game of AE Bounty Thursday night playing with pretty much the same crews as we did in our first report. The only major change in the list was that the green squads in Boon's Irregulars replaced their grenades with AP rounds.

We randomly selected the "Robbery" scenario from the book. The pirates has the secondary objective "Assassination" and the militia had the secondary objective "Capture".

I was playing the pirates and my objective was steeling loot from the militia's warehouse in the center of the table. The dirty trick I had selected for the battle was "scouts" which allowed me to set up the "Duct Rats" in hidden deployment. In the last battle this served me having three pirates with sub machineguns gunning down militia from turn one however the battlefield condition we rolled was "darkness" so they needed a 6 on a d6 to hit anything. Still with a rate of fire of 3 it seemed like a good idea.

Rolling 9 dice helped the "Duct Rats" score hits but their targets all had medium cover which added quit a bit to their armor saves. Redjack the militia sniper has the "Hunter" ability with "human" chosen as the target race. That gave him +1 strength to his shots. He was also a crack shot and he also had the "Crack Shot" ability which allowed him to ignore up to 2 points of cover. With two shots and a better ranged combat skill than the pirates he quickly started eliminating them.

By the 2nd turn Captain Cyclopes had managed to pick up a bag of loot and head for the table edge. I had to get two bags of loot off the table to achieve the primary objective of the battle. I chose to use my captain and my two quarter masters to be my looters because they had more action points than my crew and just picking up a bag of loot cost an action point.

Things just kept getting nastier for the "Duct Rats". My wife moved two militia around to flank me and I managed to shoot one down but Redjack dropped another pirate.

By the third turn Carson Boon had got into the fight. Fortunately for the pirates Vinnie the Quartermaster had picked up another bag of loot and was heading off with it. Grim was not so lucky and ended up in hand to hand with the militia leader so "Da Gurlz" charged down the hill to help him. Boon was wounded in the first turn due to being highly outnumbered.

By the end of the third turn Captain Cyclopes had made it off the tabled edge. Vinnie looked close behind with the 2nd bag.

By the fourth turn militia members Smith and Jones charged into the combat at the warehouse. During the fighting "Da Gurlz" were wiped out but Grimm the quartermaster managed to put another wound of Boon.

By the end of the 4th turn Vinnie was right at the tables edge with the 2nd bag of loot but it would be another turn before he could get off the table with it.

Grim managed to hold off the militia with some amazing hand to hand combat rolls. He even managed to take Jones down. What really helped him was that Quartermasters get a natural 4 armor value and he had a light armor suit with made his armor value 5. Since no one in the fight had any hand to hand combat weapons it was pretty easy for him to resist strength 2 attacks.

At the end of the battle the pirates had achieved the primary objective of getting two bags of loot off the table. The militia had achieved their faction objective of 1000 creds due largely to the 500 cred bonus for wiping out two thirds of the pirates. According to the rules it was a tie. Playing this scenario was quite a bit of fun and I think you could easily add it into a story or map based campaign. We will hopefully be starting some kind of AE Bounty campaign soon in our "Station 42" setting.

Perils of the Warp?

2011-05-23T15:56:00.004-05:00

Way back about 14-16 years ago I was an avid Warhammer 40k player. My primary army was Space Marines and my wife's primary army was Orks although we dabbled in most of the other armies that were part of 2nd edition. I had a 500 space marines with over 150 painted and My wife probably had 500 Orks with even more painted. Then 3rd edition came out and we sold off everything after about 4 games. Well almost everything. Stuff lingers. I still had a formitable force of Battle sisters and some odds and ends. Anyway we've barely touched the stuff since we 3rd edition came out. I think I could count the number of games of 40K I've played since then on one hand. We have played fantasy off and on for year but we were done with 40K.

We picked up Assault on Black Reach when it came out before the rediculas price hike. I probably also got a discount on it from my FLGS. Anyhow I played one battle with my Sisters over a year ago and put together five of the Marines. A friend of ours who we use to play 40K with quite a bit has kept playing this entire time and ammased more figures than any 12 players need to play the game. Quite a bit of it was our old stuff. He finally convinced me to play a couple 1000 point games last night and I felt they weren't bad. The new eddition of the game is better although still not as interesting as 2nd edition. It seems to run ok and of course there are t0ns of local players for it.

For mostly social gaming reasons we've decided to give it another try. I have a pretty good Sisters army and we have enough Space Marines and Orks to get started. I've got two tactical squads of marines, a scout squad, and three terminator squads, plus two drednaughts and the captain from the boxed set. My wife has the Orks from the boxed set plus hundereds of fantasy Orks and Goblins that could be converted for 40K easily. So our plan is to build slowly and smartly on these three armies only for at least a year before we start "buying" new stuff. Almost all the OrK vehicles and a lot of troops will be scratch built or converted from toys and junk. The only thing I'm buying for the Space Marines will be vehicles and a perhaps and Assault and Devistator squad. The Sisters are only getting vehicles and in fact we may even paint up what imperial vehicles we get with a generic scheme so they can do double duty.

That's my plan for not getting bent over the barrel by GW prices. We plan to play games mostly at home with friends to avoid the asshat fanboys and tournament mentality that makes a game with a decent setting no fun to play. Basically I refuse to pay $33.00 for an Ork truck when I can convert one from a $2.00 toy and some plastic junk.

Statio 42: More Venture Star Vehicles

2011-05-22T19:11:00.003-05:00

Just making a quick post to show off a couple new vehicles for the Venture Star prospecting company from my space station project. First up is the company shuttle which is a G.I. Joe Shark Tooth submarine toy. It's basically just a re-paint. I did basically nothing to the model in terms of conversion. There was already a plastic ridge in the canopy that was about where I would have put one to re-scale it so all I really did was paint it up. I'm really quite happy with the way it turned out and I'll likely be picking up a few more Shark Tooth toys for the project.

Next up is this flying car I picked up at Wal-Mart. It's a Hot Wheels kit car that is about 1/43rd scale I would assume. I think it makes an awesome air speeder/flying car. Check out my previous post for more details.

This car will be the personal vehicle of Mr. John J. Biggs the CEO of Venture Star. It is pictured here with two Copplestone "Babes"

Station 42 Mr. Biggs gets a flying car!

2011-05-21T13:03:00.004-05:00

I picked up this Hotwheels "Custom Motors" flying car today while at Wal-Mart. I'm using it as the personal vehicle of Mr. Biggs the CEO of the Venture Star corporation. It looked like the kind of over the top ride a CEO going through a mid life crisis would call his dream car. The scale of the car itself is closer to 1/43rd so it's a bit large but it is after all a "flying car" so I suppose eyeball scale is good enough. I look at it more like an air speeder than a sports car anyway.

Here's the packaging it came in. There are a couple spots on the roof that need some putty work because they are places you could attach customizable bits. This set cost about $9.00 with tax and there were several other kits that could work for 28mm vehicles. Some of the larger sets cost about $16.00 but I didn't want to try them out until I had worked with a smaller kit.

Station 42 a couple of painted War Droids

2011-05-13T13:50:00.004-05:00

I finished a couple of my cheap war droids! The one above is for my "Bloodborn" space pirates.

This is one I painted up in a generic cammo to use as a mercenary war droid. I'm going to be doing another in this cammo scheme. I've got all the rest of the droids primed and ready to paint up so stay tuned!

Station 42 BIG STOMPY ROBOTS!!!!

2011-05-11T18:50:00.000-05:00

Anyone who follows this blog has probably figured out that I spend way too much time browsing the toy isles at the local stores. I love toys. I think most miniature gamers are just big kids anyway playing with big kid toys. The best thing about toys though is that they are cheap. Or at least cheap when compared to miniatures. My budget for miniature gaming is tight. Really damn tight. I barely have the money to buy the minis and that leaves almost nothing for terrain and vehicles and larger models. Fortunately I have toys.
Take a look at these guys. I found these packs of robots at a local Dollar General. They stand 3.5 inches tall (9cm) and cost $5.00 (not a lot of money in your currency either) a pack. That's right $5.00 for three "BIG STOMPY ROBOTS". That's about $1.66 each. I can't remember when I last paid under $2.00 for a brand new 28mm mini. Space Marine Dreadnoughts cost $45.00 each. I can get 27 of these guys for $45.00. That's a lot of bang for the buck. I can't think of that many sci-fi settings where you couldn't use these guys as heavy war droids. They are a bit small to be mecha but my next project is to track down some larger cheap robot toys for that purpose.

Here are three of the droids and some 28mm miniatures from various companies for a scale reference.

Here's another three with the miniatures. You can't see the green droids arms but they are a pair of Gatling cannons. I plan to use this model for my M.S.S.R. force. It just has that Commie Tech look to it.

These droids are all possible because they are constructed with ball joints. As toys these joints are really loose. The legs come apart at the knees way too easily. However I'll be gluing these guys into static poses. The nice thing is that if I get other copies of these droids no two will have to be in the same pose.

Here's a shot of the same droid in another pose. The detail on these are very nice. Fairly crisp and deep which should really come out with a better paint job.

Here's another shot of a more dynamic pose. I think I'm going to use this pose for this guy when I set him up. I also think he's going to be part of my N.O.V.A. security company. He just has a nice clean "cop" look to him and I think he will look great with the Reaper minis I'm using.

Here's the really cool thing about them. Not only are they multi poseable but they also come apart. In fact you can use any part from any one of the models on any other model. All the weapons and wargear are interchangeable too! That makes for quite a few combinations. These guys are a kit bashers dream.

Here's a shot of the scenic bases that come with the droids and some extra weapons and wargear. It's almost like the people who designed these things were wargamers themselves.

I'm going to work these guys into the forces of several of the factions in my sci-fi setting. I'm even planning on converting a few as industrial droids since you can remove the weapons from them and add other tools.

I've made a lot of high value toy purchases for wargaming but I thing these are some of the best. Not only are these going to make great war droids but they could just as easily be made into objective markers and terrain bits. Big robots are found in all kinds of science fiction settings and these guys can be converted into many variations quite easily!

Station 42 more vehicles

2011-05-10T08:20:00.004-05:00

I'm always on the lookout for things I can use to improve the realism of my spaceport. One of the things that is important to making any type of city or village or what have you look realistic is the extra details. Having great buildings just isn't enough. You have to have all kinds of other things that would exist in any settlement anywhere at any time. Having Vehicles is a very important part of my spaceport project. Not just vehicles for people to drive around in but utility vehicles as well.
The vehicles pictured above are examples of utility vehicles. One is a tractor toy I picked up at Dollar General and the other is a dump truck I picked up at Walmart. The tractor will be part of my fuel station. I'll probably be picking up a few of them. The idea is that not all shuttles and ships will be able to land at the fuel stations so these tractors would be able to service other ships at and outside the spaceport. With the truck I'll probably modify the bed and make it look like a regular truck and less like a dump truck. I'll be doing a heavily weathered pant job on both of these vehicles.

Station 42 building layout!

2011-04-18T08:23:00.004-05:00

Well we managed to finish building all the buildings for the main part of the station. Of course we still have a lot of detailing to do. In stead of setting them up on a 4x4' or 4x8' table we used four of our 2.5x6' tables which make a 5x12' playing surface. This will allow us to put some other things on the outskirts of the buildings. At the moment we've got some larger ships set up on the extra space but we are talking about adding some residential buildings to at least one side. of the station but we may build them on another section entirely.

Here's a shot of the Venture Star base on the left and Rosie's Workshop on the right. We've used this section for a game of A.E. bounty already.

Here's another shot of the Venture Star base. This facility is the most complete of the buildings in the space port so far. Venture Star has these three mining vehicles as well as a small shuttle and a flat bed truck. I also plan to add a prospecting vehicle or two and 14-20 employees.

Here's the shot of some of the newer buildings. The black on in the foreground is going to be the new clinic. The building directly across from it will be a cantina and the building the the two attached platforms will be the fuel station. The platforms will have fuel tanks on them.

The other new building is the Nova Corp Security Station up in the top right of this picture. There are two landing pads for Skysweeper Patrol Ships and they will have four light patrol vehicles as well as a riot APC and some sort of paddy wagon.

Nova Corp's "Skysweeper" class patrol craft

2011-03-25T19:07:00.005-05:00

I've been working on converting and painting the two "Skysweeper" jets for my Nova Security Company that I'm building for my spaceport project. I've pretty much followed the same method for converting this ship that I used on my original Skysweeper project. The only difference is that I have left the Missile and bomb pylons in place because I intend to fully arm the Nova ships with missiles and bombs.
I've tried to evoke the idea of the "Black and White" look of a Police car with my paint job. I'm pretty satisfied with the results. I will be adding a light bar and some Police decals as well as soon as I find something that will work.

Here is the ship sitting on one of the two landing pads I'm creating for my Nova Corp. base. I've got a lot of detailing left to do on the landing pad but the project is moving along nicely.

Nova Corp hired for Station 42 security!

2011-03-23T09:43:00.004-05:00

I've started working on a new security company project for my space port. The project is based around the Nova Corp miniatures from Reaper's Chronoscope line. These minis have a great look for a futuristic security company. These first five troopers are ones I purchased when they first came out and Reaper only had two poses available. I've had them base coated for a while now but I only just started painting them yesterday.
I'm also working on some vehicles. The "Hummer" based vehicles behind the troopers are 1/43rd scale toys I picked up at a local Dollar General. They are from a company called Burago and I think they scale quite nicely with the minis. I plan to eventually paint them as black and whites and add light bars to them to give them a "police" look.
The flying craft in the background are a pair of G.I. Joe "Skysweeper" jets. I plan to turn these into aerospace patrol craft for the company. Just like the ground patrol vehicles I plan to paint these up as black and whites and add light bars to the tops. I've already finished one of these craft for the project. That project can be found here. For these security ships I may add back some of the missiles and bombs that came with the jets since a security company would be able to have the license for such ordinance.

Here are some new trooper blisters I picked up recently of all the new sculpts. This will bring my total number of troopers up to 12 which I think is a good number for the spaceport. I also plan to add a "chief" and a couple of detective teams as well as a few civilian personnel. That should bring the total number of employees to about 20.
I will also be building a station for the security company with landing pads for the ships and holding cells for prisoners.

Stargate Stuff!

2011-03-21T15:14:00.005-05:00

I'm running a short Stargate game for my regular gaming group using the Savage Worlds rules system. I put together this "flying saucer" spaceship for that game. The ship is made from two microwavable plates glued together. I put a deck on the top made from matt board and plaster then I covered that with bits from a couple star wars model kits. I would like to have added more detail but time did not allow. I'm fairly happy with this as I was going for a cross between a retro flying saucer look and a more modern concept of a space ship. I think it came out well enough to use in a number of sci-fi settings.

Here you can see a closeup of the detailing on the ship. Most of the bits came from the "Battledroid on STAP" and a large X-wing model but a couple parts came from the "Anakin's Podracer" model.

This is a group of as yet unidentified "Aliens" that the SG teams in my game have encountered. They have found them extremely hard to kill but oddly armed with unusual sub machine guns that fire rounds marked "9 Luger". They seem to be the owners of the space ship. The figures come from East Riding Miniatures . They are nice little minis but not over detailed. I speed painted the whole group up in about an hour.

Here are some SG members made up of swat and militia minis from Wargames Foundry. I have 7 players in my Stargate game divided into two SG teams of four with on of the teams rounded out with an NPC.

Just thought I would show off the furniture I've finished lately. Unfortunately I'm not sure who made any of these pieces as the packaging got away from me. The lockers and containers are from a different company than the beds.

Another closeup shot of these pretty nice pieces. If I can find out who made them I'll make a post about it.

3 new ships for the spaceport project!

2011-02-09T14:29:00.002-06:00

I just got three new ships for the spaceport project on Monday. These are all G.I. Joe toys I picked up off Amazon. The big dark blue one is a Cobra "Night Raven". The smaller white one is a G.I. Joe "Sharc Tooth" and it's suppose to be a submarine but I think it looks an awful lot like a small shuttle. The grey one is a Cobra "Gunship". I've already converted and nearly finished my first Cobra "Gunship" in the "Black Dog" project. This one I will probably tramp up a bit more. The "Night Raven" and "Gunship" both cost me about $18.00 each which is much lower than the retail price for either ship. The "Sharc Tooth" only cost about $8.00 so I think I got a great deal on all these ships.

Here are a couple close up shots of the "Sharc Tooth". As you can see the landing gear consist of really simple pegs. As I've said before I'm not a bit fan of scratch building landing gear and the gear on this ship does at least hold it level really nicely. I may still decide to add some simple runners to the pegs probably made out of plastic cloths pins but I'm not going to go crazy and do something complex.

Here's a couple shots of the "Night Raven". It's a pretty cool ship and a good size for RPGs. Large enough to look impressive and also large enough to be a party ship for an RPG but not so huge as to take up too much space on the table. It's landing gear are fine for this project but the little grey gun handle thing near the back of the ship has got to go. All in all I think it will be a pretty easy ship to convert and fix up for 28mm miniature games.

I didn't take any additional pics of the "Gunship" because I've already show it extensively in my "Black Dog" project.

AE Bounty Battle Report "Bloodborn Pirates vs Boons Irregulars"

2011-02-05T02:35:00.006-06:00

We tried out first game of AE Bounty and we used out new spaceport terrain for the first time tonight. The game pitted Boon's Irregulars against the Bloodborn Pirates. Boon's men were trying to destroy a pirate starfighter which had been repaired at Rosie's workshop. The pirates were attempting to save their ship.

The Bloodborn Pirates
Standard Crew

Captain Cyclopes (Human Veteran Blooded Warrior Hero)
M/3 RC/3+ CC4 A/5(7) S/3 DR/5 W/3
Equipment: Particle Beam Rifle, Light Armored Suit, Personal Magnetic Field
Ability: Apathetic, Command, Get up and shoot!

Quartermaster Grimm (Human Regular Individual)
M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/5(7) S/2 DR/4 W/2
Equipment: Particle Beam Rifle, Light Armored Suit, Personal Magnetic Field
Ability: Apathetic, Issue Equipment

Quartermaster Vinnie (Human Regular Individual)
M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/5(7) S/2 DR/4 W/2
Equipment: Particle Beam Rifle, Light Armored Suit, Personal Magnetic Field
Ability: Apathetic, Issue Equipment

The Ductrats (Human Green Squad)
M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: LFR Slugthrower, Light Armored Suit
Ability: Apathetic, Random Equipment

Da Gurlz (Human Green Squad)
M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: Slugthrower Pistol, Light Armored Suit
Ability: Apathetic, Random Equipment

Dirty Trick: Scouts

Boon's Irregulars
Mercenary Large Crew

Sargent Carson Boon (Human Veteran Unkillable Hero)
M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/4(6) S/2 DR/6 W/4
Equipment: LRF Slugthrower, Personal Magnetic Field, Cybernetic Eyes
Abilities: Inspiring, Command, Get up and shoot!, Impervious (5+), Unstoppable, Night Vision, Aim

Redjack Unit Sniper (Human Regular Sniper Individual)
M/3 RC/3+ CC/3 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/2
Equipment: Slugthrower Long Rifle, AP Rounds, Cloaking Field
Abilities: Hunter (Human), Crack Shot

Smith and Jones Hired Guns (Human Regular Squad)
M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: LRF Slugthrower, Fragmentation Grenades
Abilities: Inspiring

Frank and Jessie Fresh Meat (Human Green Squad)
M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: Slugtrower Rifle, Fragmentation Grenades
Abilities: Inspiring

Bonnie and Mr. X Fresh Meat (Human Green Squad)
M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: Slugtrower Rifle, Fragmentation Grenades
Abilities: Inspiring

Chuck and Red Fresh Meat (Human Green Squad)
M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: Slugtrower Rifle, Fragmentation Grenades
Abilities: Inspiring

Dirty Trick: Satchel Charges

The pirates set up the Duct Rats as scouts. Armed with LRF Slugthrowers these guys did some nasty damage to the approaching mercenaries.

The fighting started to heat up around the objective. Early on it looked as if Boon's men might over run the pirates and end the battle quickly.

Things started to get nasty. Both the group leaders were trading shots and both sides were taking wounds and casualties. The particle rifles that the pirate captain and quartermasters started taking their tole on Boon's crew.

In the end the pirates prevailed pretty handily. The particle weapons and the personal magnetic fields made the pirate individuals very nasty to deal with. Vinnie the quartermaster was able to get to the fighter and fly it to safety although most of the mercenaries had been taken out of action by then.

Venture Star Prospecting Main Office

2011-02-03T22:42:00.002-06:00

We managed to finish up the exteriors of the main office for the "Venture Star Prospecting Company" and their excavation machine. The "Venture Star" office is for our spaceport project. My wife made the two main buildings and I made the refinery station and converted and painted the vehicles.
We still need to make a couple access ramps for the buildings and a small landing pad. We have a small G.I. Joe shuttle coming that we are going to use for the company shuttle and I plan to add a semi truck with a flat bed to the company vehicle fleet and hopefully some kind of van or truck for the manager and science staff.
I've already got one mining crew of four half painted for the vehicles. We are also working on four scientist and a manager and assistant. We will probably also add a couple shuttle pilots and a couple of mechanics bringing the total staff to about 14.

The $1.00 Pirate Starfighter

2011-02-02T18:00:00.003-06:00

Several years ago I purchased several little plastic starfighters at a $1.00 shop because they looked like they would scale well with 28mm ship. I think I bought 6 or more. After all they were only a dollar each.

They each had one of those pull back motorized gear boxes to make them roll on little wheels. I've never understood why you would make aircraft/spaceships with this kind of thing but I've found it's pretty common especially with cheaper toys. Anyway I took the wheels and motors off and messed around with a failed landing gear idea and them boxed them for over a decade.

I think they sat around that long mostly because they were too cheap for me to feel the need to put much effort into. They aren't exactly stunning looking either but they seemed like too good a deal to pass up. Well I decided yesterday to start digging them out and putting some landing gear on them so I could paint them.

I know I make a lot of ships out of cheap toys but I suck at making landing gear. In fact the gear on this ship is scratched from: some wooden stir sticks, wooden beads, a toothpick, and some plastic clothespins. They are simple and the hold the ship up and don't look too awful. I'm not a scale modeler and I'm not building these things for display.

Here is a shot of the new pirate starfighter along side two other ships in my collection also modeled from toys. I'm pretty happy with the way it looks considering it's cost in time and money. I've got another of these set up right now with landing gear but my daughter has claimed it. I'll post a pic when or if she finishes it.

The Ships of Station 42

2011-02-01T12:55:00.004-06:00

I decided I should put up a new pic of my fleet of space ships for my space port project. I have a few others but this pic represents the ones I'm sure are going to be finished as functioning ships A lot of the others I have may end up as wrecks or junkers.

I'm going to try and get some of these ships ready to prime today and hopefully work on finishing up the "Black Dog" (the gold and black ships in the front row).

My goal for Febuary is to try and finish up at least one ship a week. A couple of these ships are going to take a lot more than a weeks work but there are several that won't need that much work and I need to make myself a deadline.

TMNT Spaceship!

2010-12-15T16:25:00.004-06:00

Well today I was at a local junk shop and I ran across a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle space ship. It was a great size for converting into a game ship. The biggest problem I have with coming up with ships for my space port and sci-fi games is that toy space ships are usually no bigger than a large shuttle and only suitable for very small parties. The TMNT ship is larger. At least light freighter in scale and reasonable enough in size for most RPG parties.

Here's a few shots with some of my other ships. As you can see it's larger but not so large as to make it unplayable. I can wait to get started fixing it up.

Battletech Rio Jihad Campaign:3076 Raid on the Artillery Convoy

2010-12-12T22:42:00.005-06:00

Tonights Battletech campaign game was quite a bit closer than a lot of the previous battles. Stone's mercenaries were ordered to capture a number of "Long Tom" artillery pieces from a convoy being supported by six battlemechs and a number of Arrow IV carriers. The Word of Blake forces fought a hard battle against the mercenaries supported by their artillery which had a devastating effect on the mercs.
Three of the mercs battlemechs were destroyed in the battle but they did manage to capture several artillery pieces.

Battletech Rio Jihad Campaign 3076: Supply Raid

2010-12-06T09:22:00.003-06:00

We had another campaign battle for the Rio Jihad Campaign yesterday. Again I was playing the Opp. Force for the players with the help of my friend Mike. The senerio called for Stone's Mercenaries (the players) to break through the lines of the local militia and intercept a supply convoy. The militia consisted entirely of super heavy LRM carriers and infantry spotters.
Although Sone's Merchs had several mechs damaged in the fight they lost no mechs or pilots and were able to intercept the convoy.

Battletech Rio Jihad Campaign 3076: Assault on the Repair Base

2010-11-28T21:37:00.003-06:00

I played the Opp Force in another Jihad campaign game for the local Battletech group. This battle was a Manei Domini assault on Stone's mercenaries repair facility. The mercs had just received a airdrop of supplies (the little white rectangles) and were in the process of moving them into the base. Additionally a group of pirates called Grimm's Anarchist had heard of the assault via a contact. They planned to raid the base for some of the supplies.

The Manei Domini brought 8 celestial omnimechs and the pirates brought 6 assorted mechs. Stone's mercs had a company of heavy mechs and a few vehicles. The mercs defended the base well suffering only a single mech out of action. Some of their other mechs were damaged including a Black Knight who lost his targeting computer half was through the battle. The pirates suffered the loss of a Locust who ran into a mine field at the start of the battle. The Manei Domini suffered at least 50% losses due to the fact that the defenders chose to concentrate on them.

This is a map of the Blake Protectorate. Rio is in that eastern peninsula near Tikonov.

Battletech Basic Training Training Scenario #1: First Run

2010-11-25T09:32:00.005-06:00

I've been playing Battletech again at my FLGS for a couple months. It's been almost ten years since I was a regular Battletech player. My wife use to play Battletech before our daughter was born 14 years ago so we are both very rusty players. Since I've been playing with a local group I've dug out my old mechs and started painting and re-painting them. I've also started purchasing new mechs. My wife and daughter are both gamers so when my daughter expressed an interest in learning the game my wife decided she would start playing again as well. I've got the newest rule book "Total Warfare" but most of my mechs and record sheets are classic Inner Sphere so I turned to my 3rd edition boxed set for training scenarios. Fortunately Battletech has changed very little in 30 years compared to other games so this worked out just fine.
The scenario calls for Wasp and a Griffin as the Defenders and a Stinger and a Wolverine as the attackers. The first side to score a kill wins the simulation. I chose to run the defending mechs. My wife chose the Stinger and my daughter chose the Wolverine.

Early on the Wolverine took several hits but it's tough armor held out quite well. I chose to keep my mechs mobile through jumping and running. This also made it harder for me to hit but not that hard. My wife jumped the stinger quite a bit too but the Wolverine had no jump jets so it ran quite a bit which it why it took some damage.

Later on in the game all that jumping and shooting was really starting to overhead my Griffin. The old 3025 mechs have very poor heat management. Usually they have only single heat sinks and more fire power than they have heat dissipation. The 3025 Griffin-1N is notorious for it's heat problems since it carries a PPC and a LRM 10 launcher which generate 14 heat alone. With only 12 heat sinks you can't walk and fire for more than a couple turns without starting to take overheating penalties. Another problem is the PPC has a minimum range of 3 hexes and the LRMs are even worse with a minimum range of 6 hexes. This ment that I had to stay mobile to stay at range especially since my wife and daughter were doing the best they could to stay inside my minimum ranges. Eventually I had to start walking and firing only one weapon at a time but I was still having heat issues.

With my Griffin overheating I decided to try and get my Wasp into the fight a bit more. The Wolverine had taken some heavy armor damage at this point but had lost no internal systems. My Griffin's heat was going down but I was still taking movement and heat penalties. I tried to jump my wasp behind the Stinger to get in a physical attack and some close range back shots. Unfortunately I miscalculated the Wolverine's run and was able to get into physical attack range with me. The Wasp managed to shoot the Stinger but only managed to hit a leg. The Griffin missed entirely due to the fact that the Stinger had jumped the the Griffin was still suffering a +1 to hit due to heat. To make matters worse the Wolverine blew the Wasp's arm off in the firing phase. I missed my kick on the Stinger during the physical attack phase but the Wolverine connected sending the left leg of the Wasp flying off and knocking it on it's back.

On the last turn my Wasp managed to stand back up but it's SRM 2 pack did minimal damage to the sturdy Wolerine. I decided to fire both the Griffin's weapons at the Stinger in an attempt to get a draw. One good shot on the Stinger with the PPC could easily take it out and the LRM 1os can do massive damage to a light mech too. Unfortunately despite being at perfect range for the LRMs neither shot hit. The Wolverine completely opened up on the poor Wasp with everything it had blowing the 20 ton mech into several pieces.

The simulation was over with a solid victory for my wife and daughter.

Battletech Rio Jihad Campaign 3076: Battle of the Com Station

2010-11-22T12:25:00.004-06:00

I played the opposition force again for the local Battletech campaign. This time I got the low down on more of the campaign details. The campaign is taking place on the planet Rio. Devilin Stone has hired mercenaries (the campaign players) to take Rio from Word of Blake forces. So far Stone's mercenaries have fought mostly mercenaries hired by the Blakest.
This particular battle took place near Orinoko City.
The Word of Blake had a com station outside the city they were using to jam communications. The facility was defended by four lances of the "Shark Hunters" mercenary company and some infantry. Stone's mercenaries brought about a company to assault the facility.

Again Stone's mercenaries pretty crushed the "Shark Hunters" effectively wiping out the mercenaries as far as the campaign is concerned. To add insult to injury the Word of Black sent an entire bomber wing to indiscriminately bomb the battleground. The bombers of course did more damage to the defending forces than the attackers. In the End Stones mercenaries took the facility with no casualties.

Classic Battletech "Battle at Wilson's Farm"

2010-11-15T00:55:00.003-06:00

I'm still playing the opposition forces for one of the local Battletech groups. This week I was put in command of a force of 6 Manei Domini mechwarriors and battlemechs. We were stationed at the Wilson farm. Wilson was the leader of the local Blakest militia. A force of Inner Sphere invaders approached the far and met with Wilson. Unfortunately the Manei Domini commander observed the farmer and the invader's diplomats shaking hands at the end of the meeting. Traitors cannot be tolerated so the closest Manei Domini battlemech was ordered to fire on Wilson's truck vaporizing it instantly.

The Manei Domini sprung the trap and at first it looked like things were going perfectly. The Blakest Militia and Manei Domini were surrounding a single lance of Inner Sphere mechs and the other Inner Sphere lance was some distance away from the fight. One Inner Sphere mech, a Clint IIC was damaged badly in the opening salvo. However the Manei Domini commander noticed that the Blakest Militia did not fire nor did they make any moves to engage the invaders. A Militia Crab mech moved up to the road and appeared to be scanning the area where Wilson's truck had be destroyed.

Shortly after determining that Wilson was actually dead the Militia units changed sides which infuriated the Manei Domini commander. Unfortunately it left the Manei Domini battlemechs outnumbered over two to one. The Manei Domini concentrated their fire on the traitors virtually ignoring the Inner Sphere lances. The Clint IIC was forced to withdraw and the Crab mech of the traitor militia was destroyed. Some of the other militia mechs were heavily damaged and a few of the Inner Sphere mechs were damaged but the Manei Domini suffered the loss of a Malak and several of the mechs took critical damage. In the end what looked like an easy victory for the Word of Blake turned into a shameful loss.

Classic Battletech: Infantry Battle!

2010-11-08T09:41:00.003-06:00

Some Battletech players at my local FLGS have been running a Battletech campaign set during the Blakest Jihad. I've been extremely busy with school so I wasn't able to dedicate every Sunday afternoon to the campaign but I've been playing the Word of Blake units during some of the games.
This last game we played a large scale infantry battle set in a city. The Blakest were hiding some weapons grade Uranium in the city and the allied forces were sent to investigate. The Allies expected light resistance but they were mistaken. An entire regiment of elite Word of Blake infantry were defending the city. The fighting was hard. The Blakest forces shot down two VTOL troop transports and immobilized 8 tanks armored vehicles. Most of the Allied forces were turned back but they did manage to infiltrate one of the facilities and achieve some of their objectives.
I've never played such a large infantry battle in Battletech before but it was a lot of fun.

Classic Battletech "Snord's Irregulars" 3025

2010-10-27T23:46:00.003-05:00

I've been getting back into Classic Battletech a bit which is a great wargame for anyone pressed for time since the setup is minimal for a basic game. For the most part I've been using my friends mechs because I've been playing with them at the FLGS and their homes but I decided to dig out my old mechs to see what I had. I found I had about 32 Inner Sphere 3025 era mechs mostly old sculpts and also mostly plastic from the various box sets that have come out over the years.
Having no particular loyalty to any of the great houses I decided I wanted to paint my mechs as mercenaries and pirates. A friend of mine had ummm "found" several Battletech pdfs on line and a file folder with said pdfs just happened to end up on one of my portable drives. I set down to do a little "research" on existing mercenary and pirate units to decide if I wanted to use and existing unit or make up my own. After a bit of reading I started to remember just how in depth the Battletech Universe was and how hard it would be to write a decent back story for a new unit with my sketchy knowledge of the setting. I opted to pick and existing unit or rather units to pattern my mechs on.

The unit I chose to re-create was "Cranston Snord's Irregulars". This unit as written in their sourcebook was made up of a single company of mechs. 12 figures seemed like a reasonable painting project and a company sized game is a fairly large battle in "Classic" Btech. Another thing that made the unit a good match is that I owned all the mechs required to build the unit as they were written for 3025 and they were all in old sculpts which matched the artwork in the sourcebook. One of the things that really burns me out when painting up "armies" is that painting the same uniform color scheme gets dull for me really quickly. That often causes me to bounce around from project to project which makes painting armies a painfully slow process for me. Fortunately "Snord's Irregulars" have no set color scheme on their mechs. Each mech is unique and the unit has three alternate badges as well so that's a lot of variation I can bring to the mechs. Also from the artwork and background it seems that the mechwarriors of the unit do quite a bit of customization to their mechs paint slogans and such on their machines. I think this will be a fun unit to paint.

From the back cover of the sourcebook:

"Cranston Snord's Irregulars have widely different reputations, depending on who you ask. Katrina Steiner thinks of the unit as one of the most effective, if unorthodox, units in her employ. House Marik would like to rid the Inner Sphere of the unit and has been trying for many years. Jaime Wolf sees the unit as a band of looters who have made good. One way or the other, the Irregulars are probably best known for their ability to get into and out of tight spots created by their never-ending quest for the lost artifacts and/or treasures of Mankind's past. Whether called looters or not, they are still a unit to be reckoned with."

Processing plant primed and more

2010-08-23T11:22:00.003-05:00

Well I did a little more work on my spaceports refinery/processing plant. Here is a shot of the primed model. It's always nice to get to this stage so you can see how thing thing holds together. I'm planning on doing a lot of weathering on this project. Most of the Venture Star equipment is going to look heavily used.

I'm also pretty sure I'm going to change the name of my setting. The setting as a whole will be called 3031 A.D. and this outpost will be called Station 42. I decided Star port 69 sounded a bit too "swinging" for how the project is turning out. Don't be alarmed though because I still plan to do a seedy dive of a bar with pole dancers and the like for part of the project. Eventually I might put in a fancy star port but for now I'm going for more of a truck stop kind of feel.

As I said in previous post I'm planning on making this a kind of "living" setting and I'm building it and developing the setting for various games and game types. I've been considering various different role playing system to try out first including Savage Worlds and Traveler but I decided on D20 Future which is based on the D20 Modern system.

I chose this system for a few reasons. For one thing I own the books. D20 Modern, D20 Future, and D20 Modern "Future Tech". I don't own Traveler although I do have a somewhat questionable digital copy of the rules I'd rather have a book to sit down and work the game out. Savage Worlds is a great game system but it's pretty basic when it comes down to it. Pretty good for beer and pretzels but I wanted something with space combat rules in it so I didn't have to do all that work myself.

Pretty much everyone in my group has played some kind of D20 game so it will also be easier to pick up especially since I'm not using any kind of magic or psyonics in this setting. I'm also tired of buying new books at the moment and it is unlikely that anything new will be published for this system. So I have just enough of the work done for me to get me going, a familiar system, and some decent rules to expand with new equipment and vehicles.

Ore processing plant for spaceport WIP

2010-08-17T09:32:00.002-05:00

I'm trying to wrap up this little ore processing plant for my spaceport. I've added a couple small details since I took this picture but this is pretty much what it looks like. I've got a couple more details to add and then it will be ready for a base cote. Scratch builds like this always look like a mess until you get the base cote on them. I think it's going to look pretty good.

I tried not to go overboard with the detailing but I wanted to change the shape of the containers I used a bit because so much scratch built terrain out there is made up of easily recognized containers. Sometime this produces good results but a lot of times the tables end up looking like they are covered with nothing but painted soda cans and food containers. Of course those items are good for terrain building but it helps to dress them up a bit so they don't look so mundane.

Star Port 69 "You'll never find a more yadda, yadda"

2010-08-15T18:07:00.003-05:00

We've finally got enough buildings far enough along to set them up and a table and see how they look together. We decided to elevate many of the buildings so we could easily place them in any kind of terrain without having to worry if the bases matched. Also I think it helps lend a more sci-fi feel to the project.

I have to credit my wife for making all the building pictured except for the ore processing platform in the upper left of the table. Most of the building pictured are a work in progress. The only "finished" building is the small workshop in the lower right corner of the table.

I'll be adding more post soon with construction details on the individual projects. I'm really happy with the progress so far.

Rectangular cargo containers from disposable razor guards.

2010-08-14T21:46:00.002-05:00

Ever since I did my cargo containers from coke bottle caps (pictured in the back) I've been looking for a super cheap way to make rectangular containers. Round containers are fine for chemicals but most items are not shipped in barrels. I've searched high and low for something cheap and easy but with little luck until I happened on these. I was needing a shave and I was out of razors and low on money so I ran into my local Dollar General store and picked up a 12 pack of Dollar General brand razors for $1.00.

To say the least it wasn't my best shave but I did discover that the blade guards for the DG brand razors would make great little cargo containers with a little work. The little U shaped divots you see in the containers were voids in the plastic guard. I knew I would have to deal with these open spaces to make effective containers. My solution was to super glue short lengths of round toothpicks on the back side of the guard before I glued two guards together to make the container.

After putting them together I simply base coated them with some primer and painted them up. Not quite as simple as the coke cap project but cheaper when you think about it. I got six crates for a dollar and the plastic handles of the razors will also make nice bits for terrain projects.

After buying the first pack I went back and and picked up two more packs. I'm sure I'll be picking up more in the future. I'll have a whole hold full of these things for just a few dollars. If you have a Dollar General in your town you might want to give it a try. I wouldn't bother using the razors for shaving. Between the containers and other useful terrain bits I think it's a pretty good value as is.

"Spaceport 69" the plan so far.

2010-08-12T12:44:00.002-05:00

Well I've gotten pretty stuck in on my space colony project. I've got a few ships done and more in progress. We've finished one of the buildings and have another on the way. I've started some of the dedicated minis and other vehicles for the project so I thought I would lay out some of my ideas on the project and where I'm heading. Mostly because I'm away from the house right now and I have time to kill. :)

The major inspirations for this project come from Skank Games "Zombie Town" and Matakishi's "Off World Colony". I liked the playability and completeness of Zombie Town and the repetitive forms of the Off World Colony and the fact that I've been wanting to do a space colony for some time. I wanted to make something of a combination of both projects. I want my outpost spaceport to be as playable as Zombie Town yet simple and futuristic looking like the Off World Colony. Another inspiration from Zombie Town is that every building has a purpose. My idea for the spaceport is that not only will every building have a purpose but a population of citizens and employees. That is every business will have employees and every house an owner. Of course there will be cross over.

Another major concept I'm going for is that the spaceport will be a living setting for multiple games. What happens at the spaceport and surrounding area in games will effect the development of the project. As I add new buildings and colonist they will become part of the story line. This way the project will expand in a hopefully logical or at least interesting manner.

As far as the setting goes I'm doing the spaceport set somewhere in our solar system some time in the 31st century. Like 3031. I don't have a lot of background on the setting done yet but man has basically been colonizing the solar system for 1000 years. The colony will be on one of the moons in the outer solar system but I haven't decided which one yet. There is no FTL but there are several terraformed planets (mostly moons actually). Imagine the Firefly/Serenity setting but in our solar system instead. Most of the "planets" probably won't be as heavily developed and the colonies will be a little less "down home" and more self sufficient. Less trees ect than in Firefly. Mars is a communist state. The Jovian system is a monarchy. Earth and the other planets have a loose "Alliance". The Vatican has moved from Rome to a massive space station near the asteroid belt.

Although they colony will grow and develop during game play I am going to start with a few established facilities. One will be the "Venture Star Prospecting" base. Another will be "Rosie's Scrapyard and Repair". The third will be an as yet unnamed fuel station which will be set up kinda like a truck stop in space. There will also be a few "habs" mostly for the fuel depot and prospecting employees. Outside the colony I will be adding a pirate base, Martian outpost, and some ruins of failed colonies complete with "wasteland" scavengers. I will probably start using the outpost for games after I get the facilities of the outpost itself done and then I will try to get some of the surrounding stuff like the pirate base done shortly after that.

Anyway that's the plan so far. I've been wanting to do this kind of thing for a while. Wish me luck. :)

Venture Star Prospecting: Team 1's excavator.

2010-08-09T21:55:00.003-05:00

Another piece of Venture Star's heavy equipment is done for the spaceport project. This is team one's excavator. This little piece of machinery came from the same Dollar General toy set as the dump truck I just finished.

Here is a shot of it with the dump truck. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It's a little more in scale than the truck itself and the weathering turned out pretty good. I didn't put as much into this one as the dump truck because I didn't name this vehicle. Still I think it stands up nicely with the truck.

I used approximately the same formula for the rust spots on the excavator as I did the dump truck but they of course came out much more orange looking on the lighter colored excavator. I don't think it looks bad but if I could do it over again I'd darken it down a bit more.

I'm planning to start working on the mole machine tonight and get the buildings for the Venture Star base cut out at least. My wife is working hard on the scrap yard. She finished the first building for that project last night. I'll probably post it tomorrow.

I did a bit of work on the team 1 minis today. Not much but I have some time to work on them tomorrow. I was planning on working on them tonight but it's getting pretty late and with the other parts of the project I'm planning to work on I'm just not sure if it would be worth while.

Venture Star's "Big Blue" Finished

2010-08-08T15:42:00.005-05:00

I finished up "Big Blue" this afternoon. I'm very happy with the results. I think I spent a little more time on this project than I intended but to overly much. I'm not going to go as all out of the excavator but I'm sure the mole machine will get at least this much detail in the painting.

Here's a shot from the side. As you can see the cab door doesn't look too bad when compared to a 28mm mini.

Another final shot with the bed raised. I don't know why but it seems the cheaper the toy the quicker I finish the project. I guess that makes sense. I'm also far more open to experimenting on them as well. Next up I guess will probably be part of team 1 or an update on Rosie's Workshop.

Venture Star's "Big Blue"

2010-08-08T09:38:00.003-05:00

I started working yesterday on the vehicles for the Venture Star Prospecting Company. This is Big Blue the dump truck for team 1. This is a WIP shot. I still have to do the weathering. I plan to have the truck finished tonight along with at least one or two of team 1.

Here's another shot from the back with the bed up. In truth this truck is a bit under scale but I think it will work out nicely. The door on the drivers side and the seat and wheel seem pretty close to scale but if your a scale nut it might bother you. I think it makes a fine game prop.

Here is a shot of the dump truck and the excavator torn down for painting. The excavator is going to be tricky to paint. Hopefully I'll get started today.

Here is a shot of the mole machine taken down. It's going to require a lot more work but I think it's going to be worth the effort.

I'm pretty happy with the way things are progressing on the Venture Star project. I also need to get started on their base soon.

Rosie's Workshop

2010-08-06T09:38:00.004-05:00

We have finally started working on the building for our space colony/shuttle port. This "Rosie's Workshop" a building my wife is working on. In addition to making as many of the building for the project as playable as possible we are also populating the colony with citizens as we build it. This work shop is part of "Rosie's Repair and Salvage" which will be owned and operated by Rosie and her small army of robotic servitors. We are using "Rosie: Chronotechnition" from Reapers miniatures and several Toolbots and other robots for this particular location.

Here is a shot of the building without miniatures. The structure is made from 1/8th inch white foamcore. The roof is made from a meat package and the pylon supports are made from parts from plastic hair curlers. We're going to make extensive use of these on many of the buildings in this project as support pylons to help achieve that "Space Colony" look.

Here you can see some windows we cut in the roof. We will be adding some clear plastic cut from the package of one of the G.I. Joe vehicles we have purchased recently to glaze them.

We decided to add a little detailing inside the roof that you would be able to see through the windows. The concept behind our colony type buildings is that they are somewhat self sustaining. In addition to heating and cooling they also have water reclamation systems and power generation systems. We will probably be adding a solar power array to the roof as we will be doing to several other buildings. These details are made from the cheapest plastic junk we had and we didn't go all out on them since they will only be a subtle detail. They will be painted up a bit nicer before we put the roof together.

Here you can see a shot of the inside. Again we detailed it with cheap junk. This is a small workshop Rosie will also be using as her house. We will be adding furniture which will mostly consist of worktables and robot parts but will also include a small sleeping space. My wife rigged a simple door system that will slide back and forth on rails.

The outside of the workshop will be covered in "thermal shielding" which was inspired by the Firefly Episode "Heart of Gold". I think there are actually other episodes with similar set treatments but it was very predominate in this episode. We will be using aluminum foil squares to create this effect. I have used this technique before when I made a building for a "Firefly" game I ran. You can see a pic of that building here.

Yeah I was going to say something clever about this being a close up shot of the building but I'm really only showing it because it features the lovely and talented Melinda Clark who played a major role in the episode. Rawr!

The Wolfhound Legion Freikorps

2010-08-05T18:49:00.003-05:00

I put together 6 of my Wargames Factory Shock Troopers as a crew for AE Bounty. These are the Wolfhound Legion Freikorps or at least one of their veteran crews. The Shock Troop figures went together fairly well. I used Testors Liquid Cement to put them together. They went together fairly well. Not as nicely as I would have liked. The flame thrower armed trooper was a particular problem because in order to get his left hand under the weapon I had to rotate both arms so far forward that I'll have to fill in the gaps with green stuff but some of the other multi part plastics I have assembled have similar problems. Also the necks really need to be cut down a bit to sit flush and not be too tall. That's easily dealt with. These guys ended up costing me less than a buck a piece from the Warstore so I feel I got an amazing value. I've mounted them on GW bases because that is what I had laying around.

Here is a shot of their backs. As you can see they come with some nice gear options. I've use the daggers to designate my veteran level units. I thought it would be a nice subtle way to show their status without having to give them markings. It seems sensible that a large mercenary force might award ceremonial "swords" to it's veteran fighters.

Here is how I have set the crew up for AE Bounty:

The Wolfhound Legion Freikorps

Squad 4 Company C 4th Battalion
Veteran Crew

Sergeant: Lars (Human Individual Blooded Warrior Hero)
Experience Level: Veteran
Composition: 1 Mercenary
Equipment: Particle Beam Long Rifle, Light Armored Suit, Slugthrower Pistol
M/3 RC/3+ CC/4 A/4(5) S/2 DR/6 W/3
Abilities:
*Command
*Get up and Shoot!
*Inspiring

Old Guard: Otto and Heinrich (Human Squad)
Experience Level: Veteran
Composition: 2 Mercenaries
Equipment: Slugthrower Rifle, Light Armored Suit
M/3 RC/3+ CC/3 A/3(4) S/2 DR/4 W/1
Abilities:
*Apathetic

Heavy Hitter: Fritz (Human Individual)
Experience Level: Regular
Composition: 1 Mercenary
Equipment: Flamethrower, Light Armored Suit
M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/3(4) S/2 DR/3 W/2
Abilities:
*Apathetic

Hired Guns: Manfred and Reinhard (Human Squad)
Experience Level: Regular
Composition: 2 Mercenaries
Equipment: Slugthrower Rifle, Light Armored Suit
M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/3(4) S/2 DR/3 W/1
Abilities:
*Apathetic

I have no idea how these guys are going to preform on the battlefield and I plan to make up several other crews so I can demo the game locally. I will also be working up crews from the pirate army I've been working on as well as several of the Sci-Fi minis I own.

It's like Christmas in August!

2010-08-04T11:54:00.004-05:00

So today the delivery guy dropped off what may be must last serious game purchase in a while. My shiny new copy of AE Bounty and a box of Wargames Factory Shock Troopers. I'm not normally one to pick up things brand new to the market but like many burnt out fans of a certain company and game who will remain nameless I was eager for some new Sci-Fi gaming alternatives. Something less Gothic and more space opera. :) Although you could argue that the Shock Troopers are kinda Gothic at least they aren't dripping with spiky bits and skulls.

The first thing I did was un-box the Shock Troopers. The pictures on the web do not do them justice. They are solidly in the 28-30mm category. Not too big or too small. Just about average in size and they look quite compatible with many of the other Sci-Fi lines. I was concerned about this because I had picked up a package of Wargames Factory Zombies a while back and felt they were under scale compared to most of the lines I use. The box comes with six sprues that each have three troopers and a ton of options.

Just check out all these heads. A couple of helmet options, several gas mask heads. A sergeant head with a side cap and even one head with just hair. There is also the alien head option which looks very Cthulhu inspired.

Here is a shot of two sprues from both sides. I like the level of detail Wargames Factory achieved on this set. Seems pretty crisp and comparable with some of the better multi part plastics out there.

I haven't really had a chance to read the AE Bounty book. I'm writing this blog entry perhaps 45 minutes after the box hit my door step. The book however looks nice. It's got full color illustrations and several nice shots of miniatures from the AE Bounty line although the game makers stress that you can use these rules with any minis and any setting. Darkson Designs do provide a setting for the rules and their miniatures which seems interesting and well thought out but the rules are designed to be generic. I've very excited to see how this game plays out and I hope to have a battle report and better review in a couple of days.

Venture Star Prospecting Company: Team 1 painting WIP

2010-08-03T12:53:00.002-05:00

I started painting up Team 1 last night and I think they are turning out pretty good despite the crappy base cote. These guys are basically NPC mooks so they aren't getting my best painting effort. In fact I'm going try a new speed painting technique with these guys. I plan to give them a light wash of medium brown after I finish highlighting them and then I'm going to do a dark glaze in the deepest recesses by hand to add some contrast.

Stupid painting mistakes or how to ruin hours of converting.

2010-08-02T12:39:00.003-05:00

This is Missouri in August. The heat index today is suppose to hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity is insanely high. My garage is even hotter and more humid than the outside. These are not good conditions to spray paint in. In fact they are almost the worst. So after spending a good deal of my Sunday converting these guys I managed to just about ruin them in less than an hour trying to base cote them in really bad conditions. To top it off I grabbed a can a paint I only use for terrain. Although in my defense the terrain I painted with it yesterday came out dead smooth. I thought "hey this will be fine for painting some NPC type minis I don't plan to go all out on anyway".

Man was I wrong. These guys came out really rough. Almost unpaintable and there really isn't much I can do about it. With the kind of converting I did they would be hard to strip and I'm not a big fan of stripping plastics. I feel like and idiot since I've been painting for almost 25 year and this is a pretty newb type mistake.

I'm going to try using some GW foundation paint and probably put it on a little thicker as a base cote than I normally would. Hopefully that will salvage these guys enough to be playable. I've done similar things in the past when I had this issue. It's not ideal but these aren't the most important figs on my table and I didn't expect them to look top notch.

I guess we'll find out.

Venture Star Prospecting Company: Team 1

2010-08-01T15:19:00.004-05:00

I started working on crew members for the Venture Star Prospecting company. This is Team 1 most converted from Game Workshop plastics. It is kind of hard to make military looking miniatures look like civilian workers but I'm going to paint these guys up in bright orange pants and jackets with blue t-shirts which should help sell the fact. I went ahead and decided to give them weapons because as prospectors and not regular miners they are more likely to be in dangerous and contested areas.
Ideally I would rather have specialized miniatures for this project but I don't really have the money at the moment to go out and buy whatever I want so I'm trying to make due with what I have.

Black Dog Nose Art

2010-07-31T10:48:00.002-05:00

Last night I finished the "nose art" for the Black Dog. I chose a cartoon Doberman because I felt the long narrow nose of the ship reminded me of a Doberman muzzle.

Next I'll be painting the name of the ship either under the cockpit or just above and to the right of the nose art.

Venture Star Prospecting Company

2010-07-30T21:14:00.003-05:00

One of the first things I'm going to build for my spaceport/colony project is a prospecting facility. My first thought was to do a full blown mining operation but I decided that would be far too involved and costly at this stage. A small prospecting company doesn't need nearly as much equipment or crew members to be viable.

Here are a few of their vehicles. The large mole machine is a G.I. Joe “Cobra Mole Pod” which I picked up at Wal-mart for about $15.00. I've seen them on-line for a bit cheaper than that but of course you have to pay shipping. I also don't mind spending a bit more on the mole machine because it will be kind of the centerpiece for the whole operation.

The dump truck and excavator are from a “construction” set I picked up at the Dollar General store for about $8.00. It also came with a flat bed semi truck and a couple smaller bobcat type machines. These are not particularly exotic or sci-fi looking but the background of my space colony project is based on our solar system and a future Earth so it's somewhat more practical. I plan to have some hover vehicles but the wheel works quite nicely especially for heavy equipment like this. I feel future Earth style sci-fi should have familiar elements and these will also be able to do double duty in zombie games or other modern games. The cab on the dump truck is a bit smaller than I like but I think it will work out. I plan to pick up one more construction set so I will have two trucks and excavators.

I plan to build a base facility with an office/lab, barracks, a vehicle garage, and small smelting facility. The employees will consist of 10-12 people including crew, administration, and scientist.

Finished Shots of the "Sky Sweeper" and some other stuff.

2010-07-29T12:03:00.006-05:00

I put the finishing touched on the "Sky Sweeper" a couple of days ago. Here is a shot of it in a Star Wars setting. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It is converted from a 3 inch scale G.I. Joe toy if you missed my previous postings about it.

Here is another shot with a couple of my other finished toy ship conversions. This terrain is some stuff I made years ago for a Star Wars skirmish game I was working on with a friend based on the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars RPG rules and Necromundia.

I just thought it might be a good time for me to post a pic of my current ship collection; finished, unfinished, and work in progress. I have a few others that will be set up as wrecks and junk ships.

Black Dog painting WIP more "Accents"

2010-07-28T20:10:00.002-05:00

I got the yellow accent marks highlighted. They appear pretty chalky here but when I do the wash they will blend better. I still have some details to paint them weathering. I think I'm going to go dig through my old model kits looking for decals I can use.

More Black Dog painting WIP

2010-07-28T14:21:00.001-05:00

I finished the first coat of the yellow accents. I think I like the way they turned out. Now I just have to touch them up and weather them a bit.

Black Dog painting WIP "Accents"

2010-07-28T11:19:00.002-05:00

I started painting the accent markings on the "Black Dog" today. Took me a while to figure out what I was going to do with them. I didn't want the ship to be all black or look like a regular military ship so I wanted a little brighter color scheme. I've decided to go with Yellow for my main accent lines and will probably use Red for some of the smaller accents. After I get the accents down I'm going to add the markings and the name and "nose art" which will probably end up somewhere on the side of the ship and not the nose.

I'm pretty happy with the way things are progressing.

Sky Sweeper painting WIP 2

2010-07-11T20:31:00.002-05:00

Here is a shot of the weathering on the Sky Sweeper. I kinda feel like I got the wash a little heavy but there's not much I can do about that now. Over all I think it's still going to turn out looking good. I don't think I'm actually going to name this one.

The only thing I have left on this is to finish the canopy and touch it up a bit.

Sky Sweeper painting WIP 2

2010-07-11T12:08:00.003-05:00

I've made some progress today on the Sky Sweeper paint job. I think it's coming along nicely. Unfortunately the "Black Dog" is still at the same place it was last update but I think I'm having trouble deciding on the details for that ship so getting something done on this one is actually helping.

I still have to come up with a name for this ship so I can finish it up. I've still got detailing and weathering to do as well. Hopefully I'll get more done on both ships before the end of the day.

Sky Sweeper painting WIP

2010-07-10T12:11:00.003-05:00

I decided to take a break from the Black Dog for a bit to think about the rest of the paint job. I used some plastic card from a "For Sale" sign to cover some places where I cut off the missile pylons. I also made a hatch although I'm not totally satisfied with it. I think it will work though.

The I took the ship apart so I could paint it. The engines are just too complicated to try and paint around.

Here is a shot of the project my wife is working on. A Valkyrie drop ship from Games Workshop. This thing cost about $60.00 but it is a real nice model. We might pick up a couple for general sci-fi games but at that cost we can't buy a lot. That's why I like toys. They are usually much cheaper.

Here is a shot of the ship with the base cote. I think it's going to look pretty cool painted up. I haven't decided what I'm going to name this ship yet. Guess I better get that figured out since I'm going to try and get it painted over the next couple days.

Black Dog painting WIP

2010-07-10T01:50:00.002-05:00

I just finished doing the basic hull paint job on the "Black Dog". I did two layers of dry brushing to create the highlights. I tried to make the ship look black but heavily weathered. I think it came out pretty good.

Of course I plan to do a lot more weather and detail painting. I'll be painting in scrapes in the paint job that expose the metal hull and I have a lot of details to paint in as well. I'll also have markings and nose art which may or may not actually go on the nose depending on the design.

Here is a shot with the hatches open. I really like the contrast of the green interior with the black exterior. I think things are progressing nicely and I still expect to be finished by this Sunday. The crew pictured here are just a stand in crew. I chose them out of my collection because they each represent a different major company. I don't know that I'm going to make a specific crew for this ship straight away. It may change hands over the course of the campaign I am working on.

The Black Dog WIP finished interior!

2010-07-08T20:20:00.002-05:00

I managed to get the interior of the Black Dog finished today and the ship re-assembled. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out.

One thing I am eventually going to change is the extendable ramp. This one is just too long. For now though it will serve it's purpose.

I feel the cockpit re-scaled fairly well and that the ship looks reasonable as a 28mm ship. The engine compartments also turned out nice although they were a bear to paint.

Here is a nice closeup shot of the interior of the hold. I painted it green to give it contrast from the black hull. It also hints at an earlier military use.

Over all I'm really happy with other than the ramp but that's something I can fix later on. I'm also happy with my progress since I just purchased this ship a couple days ago and I've already got quite a bit of work done on it. I've still got some detailing to do and quite a bit of painting but if I keep up this pace I might have it finished by Sunday night.

Cockpit of the Black Dog.

2010-07-08T14:21:00.002-05:00

I don't think it was all that clear in my earlier post but the white strip of plastic I glued to the cockpit was to make the cockpit appear more in scale with the rest of the ship.

Here is a shot of the cockpit painted with the first layer. The painting is rough. I will be cleaning it up on the finished model. I just wanted to make it clear for further WIP shots.

Finishing touches on the Black Dog conversion.

2010-07-08T08:37:00.003-05:00

I was able to wrap up conversion on the "Cobra Gunship" last night using parts from the Platformer and Hexagon sets from Pegasus Hobbies. This turned out to be one of the easier conversion I've done of a toy to a game model because of the flexibility of those kits. Granted if I didn't already have these kits the cost of this conversion would have been a lot more but I've had they laying around for a while so I used them on this project. I could have probably scratch built what I needed out of cheaper material but this also gives me the advantage of being able to convert another gunship with exactly the same look.

Now on to the painting.

Work in progress on some spaceships.

2010-07-07T18:26:00.005-05:00

Today I did some work on two space ships for various sci-fi games. Both are based on G.I. Joe toys currently available at several stores. I feel like I got quite a bit done on both of these ships in just a few hours.
I thought I would go ahead on show the method I use for gluing down the strips of plastic I use to re-scale cockpit canopies. The easiest way to do it is to just glue it in place on one side and let the glue set. Then I glue the rest of it in place. It's much easier to bend the plastic over the curve if you use this method.

Here is a shot of the cockpit after re-scaling. This may not be the "best" way to do this or the way a modeler would do it but it's just for gaming so I'm happy with the results.

I also worked on the "Black Dog" I'm converting from the "Cobra Gunship". Nicer toys like these are often held together with screws which make working on them much easier. Normally I don't go crazy and work on interiors on small ship models but this one was set up really nicely for that kind of thing so I went ahead and decided to detail the hold area and re-scale it for 28mm.

The cockpit on this toy was even easier to convert because of it's boxy construction. Here I've just added some straight strips to reduce the canopy scale.

The open area on the side of the ship had a boxy bench seat where you could set a couple of three inch figures. Of course this took up a lot of space so I cut it out and covered the holes with these pieces from the Pegasus Hobbies Platformer kit.

Here is a shot of what the hold area looks like after conversion. I should be able to stand several miniatures in the opening or put some light cargo inside. My next big hurdle is the side hatch. You can't see it in this pic but there is a lip on the end of the hatch which looks odd for 28mm scale figures. I plan to make a pull out ramp out of platformer bits that will extend to the ground and look a lot nicer.

The Black Dog

2010-07-06T16:50:00.003-05:00

Well I picked up another G.I. Joe toy aircraft today at the local Wally World. This one is the "Cobra Gunship" and it cost me about $25.00 which is more than a lot of the toy ships and aircraft I've acquired for conversion but still much cheaper than most wargame models. In fact you could triple the price before you found anything close from Games Workshop and this model is a good deal bulkier than the Valkryie for instance.

I plan to use only the front half of the cockpit as this ships cockpit and I plan to add a strip of plastic half way down the side windows so that only the top part of the front will be the models cockpit when the conversion is complete. This should scale the model nicely for 28mm which is the scale I use for sci-fi roleplaying and miniature games.

A lot of G.I. Joe "aircraft" actually look a lot more like space ships than airplanes. There are no wings on this ship and the tale is minimal which suggest a lot of the same design elements of various sci-fi dropships and shuttles.

This ship has a lot of elements that are missing on a lot of toy ships. For one thing it has landing skids which is a major bonus if your not an expert modeler. I hate making landing gear and even though these aren't elaborate they look good enough for my purposes. I have a pet peeve about gamers who try and turn all their vehicles into realistic scale models. We aren't building dioramas after all we are building game pieces that are going to be handled sometimes roughly. Building fiddly bits like "realistic" landing gear is just a sure way to have those landing gear snapped off during a game. It's not a matter of if it will happen but when.

Another cool features of this ship is the big hatch on the side and the interior. I'm going to try and cut the bench seat out and put a new floor in so I can get a bit of a cargo hold in there. The hatch itself will also require a bit of modification to bring it to ground level but I think it will be worth while.

There are also compartments that open and show engine detail which will be cool for "repair scenarios" and the extra detail it provides. Also should I pick up another version of this ship I can strip the hatches off to make the ship seem more "used" and run down. Perhaps a ship that requires so much repair that whoever owns it decided to just remove the panels. Kind of like the Y-wing starfighters exposed engines for those of you who are uber Star Wars geeks.

I plan to paint the ship black with yellow or orange accents. I'll also paint a moon on the nose with a black dog head as the nose art. I plan to name the ship "The Black Dog" which is a double reference to the Led Zepplin song and the character Jet Black from Cowboy Be-Bop. I'm not a big Anime fan but Cowboy Be-Bop is just great sci-fi especially if your a tramp freighter fan like me.

I hope to have this ship together soon along with the Sky Sweeper Jet conversion.

100th blog post!

2010-07-03T13:59:00.003-05:00

Well here I am at my 100th post and there isn't that much to post about. My gaming this year has been spotty. Either I'm playing 4 our more sessions a week or I'm going a month without a game. Unfortunately I've made very little progress on the miniature game front. Just a few days ago I assembled 8 Bretonian Men at Arms for Wahammer and Warhammer Roleplaying but that was the first time I've touched any of my miniature tools since January.
The biggest problem is that even though I've moved into a somewhat larger house there isn't a good spot to set up a painting station. I need to get some AC in the garage so I can start working on terrain but I need to get approval from the land lord to remove a window because all the windows in this place open sideways. The other problem is that my son is now 18 months old and toddleing around the house like a whirling dervish so it's hard to work on things while he is awake and I can't leave them out when I'm at a stopping point. Like all kids he loves the “little people” and would like nothing more than to get them out and play with them. I've considered retreating to my local game store to work on things but since I live out of town now that's a major trip.
Anyway enough boring excuses. One way or the other I need to get back at it. I am of course still buying minis because as you know it's an addiction so I really need to start working on them again. My plan is to try and get back on track with some of my running projects especially the space port. Hopefully I'll finish unpacking and get the rest of my stuff up and running.
Wish me luck.

2010-03-23T10:51:00.004-05:00

I picked up this Sky Sweeper Jet from the current G.I. Joe toy line to convert into a futuristic jet for the Shadowrun setting. I figured I could use it as a transport type vehicle with limited VTOL capabilities. This is a neat little model that comes with landing skids which is a big bonus. Of course the cockpit will need to be re-scaled. I'll use the same method I used on the Skip Tracker model of using a plastic strip forward on the canopy to denote the size of the cockpit then I'll paint the rest of the canopy as the hull.

This is the spot I'm going to place the plastic strip which should make the entire model look appropriately scaled for 28mm miniatures. I'm also planning on adding some door/hatches to make the model look even more to scale.

Here's the shot of the model with a few modern and sci-fi miniatures from various lines. From left to right those lines are; Foundry, Void, Reaper, Copplestone Casting, and Games Workshop. I think it scales nicely out of the box. It might also make a pretty good shuttle or small craft for a sci-fi space setting although I feel the wings are a bit too long wide for that. Perhaps a drop ship type craft as well.

Another shot from the front with a Void militia model. The engines are a little tweaked because the support pieces are made from a softer plastic but I think I can fix that.
A 3/4 view from the other side with a Reaper Chronoscope miniature. I can't express enough how nice it is to find this kind of toy with landing skids. Making any kind of landing gear from scratch is a nightmare and really taxes my feeble scratch building skills.

A shot from the back with a Games Workshop Necromundia figure. I think it's going to make a nice little vehicle for Shadowrun and other futuristic games. It only cost about $15.00 so I may be able to afford a few more painted in other colors or with different role variations.

Shadowrun in Miniature

2010-03-22T14:33:00.006-05:00

Well I've decided to start a new project doing a set of miniatures for Shadowrun since I'm currently playing in two long term Shadowrun games. I've already got quite a few human modern and Sci-Fi style minis so I'm not going to spend any extra time on human minis unless they are security types or gangers or other NPCs.

My plan is to focus on the meta-human races. My short term goal is to do several of each race and do male and females. Because some races are going to be harder and more expensive to convert and aren't played that often anyway I'm not going to have the same goals for each.

I plan to build 10 Elves evenly split between males and females and spread pretty evenly between archetypes. Elves are probably second only to humans in popularity and they are somewhat versatile. I'll probably avoid doing a heavily armored street samurai type but I'm going to try and cover the other common runner types. Obviously I'm going to be using lithe minis for most of these figs and either doing head swaps or sculpting ears.

I plan to do at least 8 Orcs. Orcs are a fairly common race especially for combat characters and hackers. I'll probably lean more heavily on the combat side with the orcs. I want to do at least three females but I might do four if I can find good figs for conversions. I'm going to have to look for some big human minis for these guys.

For starters I'm only going with 4 Dwarves. They aren't that common as runners. Obviously I'll probably do at least two riggers and a female shaman. The fourth will probably just be a generic runner. It's going to be hard to find good dwarf minis. I'll probably have to look at Warmachine for the mechanic types.

Trolls are going to be hard. I'll probably use Ogres for base minis and I'm only planning on making 3-4. Hopefully I can find at least one suitable female fig. These are also probably going to take more sculpting than the other conversions.

Of course another part of the project will be doing vehicles and drones. Fortunately I have a lot of options out there. The Infinity game has some nice combat bots and there are some other lines out there with some good stuff. Even some of the constructs from D&D could make exotic drones. Very small scale tanks can be turned into tracked drones as well.

Well hopefully I will be able to get some good stuff together. At the moment I just plan to add post to this blog but if things get going I might do a blog just for the project.

Brethern of the Belt: Growing Crew.

2010-01-19T23:23:00.003-06:00

Well I finished three of Axel's Lads tonight. These are minis for my "Brethren of the Belt" space pirate army project. These guys are fron the crew of the "Bloodborn" like Vinnie's Duct Rats I did earlier.

These minis were kitbashed from various GW parts. The one in the center has; the head of a Chaos Marauder Horseman, Torso and Backpack of a Tau Firewarrior, Legs from a Catacan Jungle Guard, arms from the Empire Militia set, and a Dark Eldar rifle.

Here they are standing in with "Vinnie's Duct Rats" who are all from the Urban War militia box. The Urban War minis are slightly smaller scale but that's ok because Vinnie's guys represent younger new recruits and Axel's lads represent regular crew.

New Ships for the Spaceport!

2010-01-18T11:13:00.004-06:00

Well I picked up a couple more ships for my "Spaceport 69" project. The red one is another Marauder Attack Fighter from "The Corps" line of toys. I used the same toy to create "The Skip Tracker" last year. I've been able to find these fairly consistently at Wal-Mart. They cost about $7.00 making them cheaper than some standard 28mm miniatures.

The blue ship is "Argost's Jet" from "The Secret Saturdays" toy line by Matel. I assume it is from a cartoon since it has the Cartoon Network logo. I picked this one up on clearance for $11.00 but I think it was originally about $16.00.

I'm basically going to use the same method to convert the Marauder Attack Fighter that I used on the Skip Tracker so I'm not going to go into that here. As you can see there are no landing gear on the Argost Jet. This is the typical problem when dealing with toy space ships and jets.

For some unknown reason there is an odd shaped hole in the back of the starboard side engine. I can't figure out why since there is not extra piece in the box that would fit there and it doesn't look like anything would attach to the ship here either. I'm just going to have to fill it in or cover it up or put something back there that will look logical. Fortunately the ship has an asymmetrical design so that should help make it look better.

As you can see the figures that came with the ship are basically in the 28mm scale range. With those big cannons on the front this ship will be a heavy attack fighter with a crew of 2-3. I'm thinking of adding it to my space pirate force because it looks kinda menacing but my daughter likes it a lot so I may let here use it for her own character in the setting.

Axel's Lads

2010-01-07T04:39:00.002-06:00

Well it's been two years since I made any progress on my space pirate army but I'm finally starting to get some more things done for it. Axel's Lads here are more of your regular pirate crew type miniatures. I made these guys entirely out of Games Workshop plastic kits. I think there are parts from the; Catacan Jungle Guard, Caidian Shock Troops, Empire Militia, Knights of the White Wolf sprue, Tau Firewarriors, Dark Eldar, Eldar weapon sprue, Chaos Marauder Horseman, and Caidian heavy weapons sprue.

I'm pretty happy with the way they are turning out considering they were made from left over kits. Keep watching this space for more progress.

"Resident Evil Hunters" Episode 3 "Unfettered"

2010-01-02T15:28:00.020-06:00

July 24th 1998 Raccoon City. Anya Fields and Meredith Hartwick of “Hartwick and Fields Investigations” are at their downtown office. It's mid morning when a woman walks in. She introduces herself as Victoria Sanchez a reporter from the “Raccoon City Times”. Sanchez explains that she had received a package from Eddy Williams about dangerous and illegal experiments being conducted by the Umbrella Corporation. She also says that Eddy told here than the investigators had helped him get the information. Unfortunately her editor wanted more if he were going to risk going up against Umbrella. Miss Sanchez found another lead. An Umbrella employee who claimed to have solid information about seriously illegal activities by Umbrella. His name was Tyler Norton and he was hiding in a family hunting cabin in the Arklay Mountains. Miss Sanchez offers the investigators $3000.00 if they will help her find Norton's cabin and get the information. Hartwick and Fields agree.

After a flat tire and making a few wrong turns Hartwick, Fields, and Sanchez finally find the cabin. Unfortunately it took much longer to find than expected and it's almost nightfall when they arrive. They cautiously approach the small cabin.

Sanchez knocks on the door and a young man with an automatic rifle opens it. The man looks frightened. “Are you Sanchez?” the man ask. Sanchez introduces herself as well as the investigators. The man introduces himself as Tyler Norton an employee of the Umbrella Corporation. Norton explains that he was hired by Umbrella as a dog handler. He took the job thinking he would be doing security work but after signing a non disclosure agreement he found out it was for another reason. Umbrella began experimenting on dogs by administering them something called the T-virus which cause the dogs to mutate into larger killing machines. They called these creatures MA-39 Cerberus. Norton was frightened by this work but more frightened of what would happen to him if he tried to quit his job after seeing what he had see. He had also heard rumors that Umbrella has experimented on humans with the virus which turned them into mindless “zombies”. A few weeks ago the Umbrella Corporation managed to secure a timber wolf from Alaska. They named the wolf Fenrir and it was their intention to infect it with the t-virus and turn it into a super Cerberus. Norton decided he had to do something. He gathered all the information he could about the Cerberus project and broke Fenrir out of the kennels and hid him at the cabin.
Norton continues to explain that last night the cabin was attacked by “zombies”. Fenrir broke his chains and attacked them. Though he killed several it appeared he became infected. Fenrir attacked the cabin but ran off after hearing some howling coming from the surrounding hills. Norton fears the zombies and Fenrir might come back at any time.
Sanchez looks over the evidence that Norton recovered from the Umbrella labs. She's excited that it look like good evidence.

The group prepares to leave the cabin but when they look outside they see several groups of individuals who appear to be stumbling towards the cabin. Norton says "Damn they are back. Kill them!".

The creatures approach the cabin in four group from several different directions. One group seems to be cutting the humans off from their car. Everyone inside the cabin readies their weapons and takes up positions at the windows. After dealing with the creatures at the farm and Kruger's lab Hartwick and Fields have packed a formidable arsenal. Fields readies her AK-47, Hartwick loads her 12 gauge pump action shotgun with slugs, Norton takes up a position with his rifle and even Sanchez is given a Colt 1911.

Hartwick takes up a position at the door. Fields and Norton take up positions at the window. Everyone starts shooting at the creatures.

Several of the creatures fall but other simply shrug off the shots. Fields seems to be having the most luck with her AK.

Despite several creatures being shot down the rest stumble on oblivious of the fates of the others. Sanchez gets into the fight shooting out the back window at a group of zombies but her shots are wild and untrained so she has no luck.

Eventually some of the creatures reach the cabins front door and back window. Hartwick tries to fend them off with her shotgun but finds it harder to hit with the creatures clawing and biting at her. The creatures at the back window attack Sanchez but have a hard time reaching her through the window.

Fields and Norton manage to take out the rest of the creatures converging on the cabin with well placed rifle shots. Hartwick at Sanchez manage to avoid injury fighting off the creatures but do little damage themselves.

A maddening howl is heard even above the gunfire and fighting. It seems Fenrir has found his way back to the cabin. Fenrir charges towards the cabin and unlike the creatures he is very fast.

With the help of Norton and Fields, Hartwick managed to kill several of the creatures attacking her.

Fenrir charges past Sanchez's car and into the open. Norton and Fields pour fire into the infected wolf and score some impressive hits but the beast just keep coming.

Fenrir closes the distance between the car and the cabin with astounding speed but just as it looks like he will make it Fields hits the beast right between his eyes nearly blowing it's head clean off. The massive wolf falls just one leap from the window that Fields and Norton had been shooting from.

With Fenrir destroyed Hartwick, Fields, and Norton manage to clean up the rest of the creatures attacking the cabin in short order. Sanchez runs over and starts taking pictures of the dead wolf.

After finishing off the last zombie Fields is the last to emmerge from the cabin her AK smoking from the barrel and foregrip with a nearly empty magazine.

With all the creatures dead the survivors are able to get to Sanchez's car safely. Sanchez is confident that her editors will finally let here write a story exposing Umbrella's illegal activities.

Note: This was the third episode of my Resident Evil campaign usign the Savage Worlds rules.

Family Zombie Painting

2009-12-26T23:25:00.005-06:00

The family that paints zombies together stays together. We decided to get some zombies painted over the holiday break.

My daughter is really getting into the spirit of things.

While we were painting I heard a weird noise outside. I went out and found a sheet of 3/4 inch styrofoam insulation laying in the front yard. Aparantly the gods were pleased with out painting and decided to gift us with terrain making materials. I let it set for about an hour then decided to put it in the garrage.

And here is out little zombie hoard. Just a small group so far to add to what we already have for our Resident Evil campaign. Four of these are from RAFM's modern Cuthulu line and three of them are from Reaper's Chronoscope line.