TMNT Spaceship!

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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!

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

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

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

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"

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.

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.

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.

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

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"

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

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

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.