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.

Station 42 Outskirts project.

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!

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.....

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.

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.