Map of Titania City and Station 42 Region at present.

I finally finished a region map for our Station 42 war campaign.  I haven't added the battle location markers yet but I'll be doing that in a few days.

Battle of the Martian Sector: A 2000 point battle report for the Station 42 War!

January 4th 3033.  Earlier this afternoon the Hell Knights Mercenary company engaged forces of the Titania Militia and the Martian Soviet Socialist Republic near the Martian Military base just a few kilometers south southeast of Station 42.  The Martians released this recording of audio communications between their commander and the mercenary commander prior the the start of hostilities:

Martian Commander:  Attention intruders this is Commander Igor Kovalevsky of the Martian Soviet Socialist Republic.  You have entered into sovereign territory of M.S.S.R.  Turn back now or we will be forced to engage you.

Hell Knights Commander:  This is Lieutenant Domingo Gomez of the Hell Knights mercenary company.  You are harboring the fugitive militia leader Ivar "Bear" Belyakov.  He is wanted by the Titania government for numerous crimes and we have a legal contract to apprehend him.  Remand him to our custody and we will be more than happy to depart.

 Martian Commander:  Lieutenant I am afraid you are not understanding me.  This is sovereign territory of M.S.S.R. and is governed by our laws!  Mr. Belyakov has requested asylum and we have granted it.  You must turn back now or we will fire on you!

Hell Knights Commander:  Get back to your base and leave this to us or we'll kick your Marski ass!

End transmission......  

 The Hell Knights force consisted of one Incubus light mech piloted my Lt. Gomez, two light infantry squads mounted in two LAGAREV hovercraft, one Hobelar light hover tank, and three Douglas medium hover tanks.  The Martian force consisted of one heavy infantry squad and two light infantry squads with two Dragunov Battlesuits, and two Degtyaryov Battlesuits.  Bear's militia units consisted of his own squad of light militia, two improvised armored vehicles, and two snipers.

Both of the mercenary light transports were destroyed in the first few shots and several mercenaries were kill when one of them exploded.

 A Dragunov Battlesuit was taken out of action by the combined firepower of three Douglas hover tanks.  The sturdy armored suit took quite a bit of punishment before going down.
 

 On the Mercenary left flank Lt. Gomez engaged two Martian Battlesuits in his light mech and although he damaged the other Dragunov his Incubus was shredded by the twin heavy machine guns of the Degtyaryov.

 In the center of the field a Militia technical fired a fragmentation missile at a mercenary rifle squad.  Three members of the squad were knocked prone but not injured.  The squad returned fire at Bear's unit and a squad of Soviets inflicting several casualties on both units.

 On the mercenary left flank Hell Knight tanks and the Martian Battlesuits engaged each other.  The other Dragunov was destroyed and the Degtyaryov traded fire with tanks suffering light damage and inflicting the same to the tanks.

 Although initially successful the mercenaries holding the hill in the center of the field began to take casualties from the combined fire of the militia and martian light infantry.

 The unit was all but destroyed when it was outflanked by one of the Degtyaryov Battlesuits.  All but the Sargent were killed by heavy machine gun fire.

 Two members of the Martian Heavy Infantry Squad were gunned down by the Hobelar light hover tank's pulse laser as if sped past their position.

 Despite being surrounded and damaged by enemy armor the Degtyaryov Battlesuit on the mercenary left flank fought on.  Two of the Douglas tanks were badly damaged in the exchange.

 Eventually however the Battlesuit was brought down by the mercenary tanks who then surged forward to engage the final Degtyaryov.

 The remaining Martian Battlesuit opened up at point blank range at one of the Douglas tanks damaging it further but not destroying it.  The mercenary tanks lightly damaged the Battlesuit and it took more damage when the remaining member of the Hell Knights squad from the transport that exploded shot it with his plasma carbine.  Bear killed the mercenary Sargent on the hill with his assault rifle.  

As the whine of Martian repulserlift engines were heard approaching from the base the mercenary tanks made a last ditch effort to kill Bear rather than capture him.  His two remaining comrades were cut down by the Hobelar as it flanked their position and the Douglas hover tanks reduced the rocky outcropping to gravel with their railguns but the militia leader survived.

The mercenary forces retreated just moments before Martian Gunships and Dropships arrived on scene.

Notes:  This was a nasty 2000 point No Limits battle between my mercenaries and My wife's militia and Martians.  Those Martian Battlesuits survived a heck of the lot of punishment and did quite a bit of damage to my forces.  After they wrecked my transports and nearly wiped out one of my squads I focused on taking them down which kept me for focusing on my objective of capturing Bear.  They slippery militia leader also survived my best attempts to kill him at the end of the battle.  
We had decided that this would be a six turn battle and I would have needed to be in clear control of the field for a total victory or kill Bear for a minor victory.  Unfortunately I did neither.  All I had left at the end of the battle were four damaged tanks and one trooper with a plasma carbine.   
One funny thing about the battle is that my wife forgot to deploy here field cannon so we decided it was held in reserve.  She then forgot to bring it on the board until the fourth turn.  
It was a pretty good battle and we had a lot of fun with it.  Both sides did some heavy damage to each other and we introduced another faction to the conflict.  

Looking ahead to 2014 Projects Part 1

 We plan to work on two terrain projects for 2014.  The first one is "Titania City" which is the capital city of Titania the moon of Uranus and the planet our current "Station 42 War" is set on.  Unlike the station and surrounding areas which are very hardscrabble, dirty, frontier style locations Titania City will be a beautiful domed city full of elegant buildings and green spaces.

 There are several serious challenges to this project.  It is much easier to do hardscrabble, frontier, futuristic buildings and terrain than the slick and polished futuristic look.  Another issue is that while we want the city to look beautiful and clean we also want it to look lived in and established.  That will be a kind of hard thing to pull off.  The buildings need to show a bit of age and usage but not be heavily weathered like the station and other locations on Titania.

 Also building multi story buildings always brings problems of scale and playability.  Too many tall buildings can make it very difficult to play around as you tent to knock things over and damage them as you try and reach across the table to move models.  

 All of our current Titania based terrain is as fully playable as we can make it.  That is the roofs come off the buildings and the doors and windows work.  We feel this is very important with certain scenarios especially with role playing games.  Doing multi story buildings is not as simple as it might seem and dealing with them in play can be a hassle.  When you have to pick up upper stories to move miniatures around you can end up jostling the furnishings and miniatures in the upper levels and on the top which can lead to lost game time and even damage.
We will probably limit the number of stories in most buildings to three or four but make the stories a bit higher than usual and design  some of the buildings to have non playable spacers between some of the stories.  We will also probably make some "Space Needle" style buildings where the elevator shafts aren't playable.  

 The other project will be a very dirty and industrial city on the dwarf planet Ceres.  In fact in our "Solar Empires" setting Ceres is covered in one huge city similar to Coruscant or Nar Shaddaa from the Star Wars setting although not quite as overbuilt as either of those settings.  Although it is part of the Martian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ceres is the commercial port of Martian held territories similar to Hong Kong or Vladivostok and it is very commercialized by comparison.    

 Many of the same problems exist for this project as for the Titania City project.  Many of the structures will need to be taller than the ones that we have built and will require multiple stories to pull off correctly.  The good thing is that the dirty/industrial look is much easier to pull off and several of those larger structures can be purely industrial in nature.

One of the solutions I have considered is to make a multi-level table using milk crates or smaller storage crates to support each level than having smaller buildings on each level that are only one or two stories tall.  then having a cloud layer similar to the New York scenes from The Fifth Element and then making underground complexes for the lower levels.

Both of these projects are huge undertakings compared to Station 42 and I don't plan to finish either in one year.  In fact both settings will hopefully consist of several tables of terrain covering the points of interest in each city rather than attempts to do the entire city on one table.  Obviously that would be impossible for Ceres and would make Titania City unrealistically confined.

We are hoping to make at least enough to cover a 4x8 foot table for each project rather than trying to cover the 5x12 foot table that Station 42 sits on.  That table is already more complicated to reach across and we doubt it would be possible to put really large structures on it and still make the thing playable.

This may be more project than we can realistically handle but we are planning on setting our next campaign on Ceres and we have really been wanting to do Titania City for role playing games.