One last project day!

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

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

Browncoats Insurrection

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

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

Hover Tank Finished!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

Hover Tank!

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

Moving house at the end of March!

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

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

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

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

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

2 New Games: Infinity and Star Trek Tactics!

 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!

 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:

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.