Hotwheels Batman "Bat" toy

I picked up this Hotwheels "Bat" speeder from Batman to use as an air speeder for my Hell Knights army.  The cockpit area is just barely large enough to be considered for a 28mm scale pilot but I may paint over it anyway and just use this thing as a kind of drone.  I think either would work reasonably well for this design.  One weird thing about the toy is that the army mounts are positioned asymmetrically which isn't so bad because they are clearly designed to be able to sweep back and forth to track targets.  It does come with a flying stand which is nice but it is awfully short for an air speeder type craft.  I will probably upgrade it eventually.

 Another thing about that model that is kind of strange are these roto blades on the bottom.  They are however made of soft plastic so they were easy to clip off.

This is a pretty good model as is.  It's a bit on the Iconic side of things but I think painting it up in Hell Knights cammo will make look different enough to make it work.  I may add a missile launcher above the cockpit areas to change it up a bit and add a bit of fire power but that's something I can do anytime or even as an upgrade.

Hell Knights Armored Assault Squad "Troop" selection

A Hell Knights Armored Assault Squad engages a squad of N.O.V.A. Securities troopers on Titania during the Station 42 War

Armored Assault Squad

Trooper: AC 9/ RA 6/ CC 5/ ST 4/ T 4/ W 1/ CO 7/ AR 5 (+47)

Sargent: AC 9/ RA 6/ CC 6/ ST 4/ T 4/ W 1/ CO 8/ AR 5 (+52)

Composition: 1 Sargent and 4-9 Troopers

Equipment: Medium Carapace Armor, Heavy Blaster, Pistol

Options:

*The squad may be equipped with fragmentation grenades for +8 points per member.

*The squad may be equipped with thermal grenades for +9 points per member.

*The squad may be equipped with nova bombs for +11 points per member.

*One in five members of the squad may exchange their light laser rifle for one of the following options:

*Plasma Carbine +6 points

*Flamer +3 points

*Frag Grenade Launcher +14 points

*The squad may be assigned a heavy transport from the motor pool.

Notes:  Another troop selection for my Hell Knights Mercenary Company army list for the No Limits free wargame rules.  

Hell Knights Scout Squad "Troop" selection.

Two Hell Knights Scout Squads prepare to assault a communications bunker defended by renegade Titania Planetary Guard members during the Station 42 War

Scout Squad

Scout: AC 8/ RA 5/ CC 4/ ST 4/ T 4/ W 1/ CO 6/ AR 2 (+29)

Sargent: AC 8/ RA 5/ CC 5/ ST 4/ T 4/ W 1/ CO 7/ AR 2 (+33)

Composition: 1 Sargent and 3-5 Scouts

Abilities: Infiltrate

Equipment: Battle Uniform, Light Laser rifle.

Options:

*The squad may be equipped with fragmentation grenades for +8 points per member.

*The squad may be equipped with thermal grenades for +9 points per member.

*The squad may be equipped with nova bombs for +11 points per member.

*One member of the squad may exchange their light laser rifle for one of the following options:

*Heavy Blaster +3 points

*Plasma Carbine +6 points

*Flamer +3 points

*Frag Grenade Launcher +14 points

*The squad may be assigned a transport from the motor pool.

Notes:  Another entry for my Hell Knights army list for our home setting using the No Limits free wargame rules.  Squads with the "infiltrate" ability may only have a maximum of 6 members.  

Hell Knights Veteran Rifle Squad "Troop" selection

A Hell Knights Veteran Rifle Squad defends a supply depot from and insurgent attack during the Station 42 war on Titania

Veteran Rifle Squad

Trooper: AC 9/ RC 6/ CC 5/ S 4/ T 4/ W 1/ CO 7/ AR 3 (+35)

Sargent: AC 9/ RC 6/ CC 6/ S 4/ T 4/ W 1/ CO 8/ AR 3 (+41)

Composition: 1 Sargent and 4-9 Troopers

Equipment: Flack Armor, Light Laser Rifle

Options:

*The squad may be equipped with fragmentation grenades for +8 points per member.

*The squad may be equipped with thermal grenades for +9 points per member.

*The squad may be equipped with nova bombs for +11 points per member.

*One in five members of the squad may exchange their light laser rifle for one of the following options:

*Heavy Blaster +3 points

*Plasma Carbine +6 points

*Flamer +3 points

*Frag Grenade Launcher +14 points

*The squad may be equipped with bayonets for +2 points per model.

*The squad may be assigned a transport from the motor pool.

*The squad may be assigned a single detachment from the detachment list.

Hell Knights Regular Rifle Squad "Troop" selection

A Hell Knights Regular Rifle Squad secures a militia compound on Titania during the Station 42 War

Regular Rifle Squad

Trooper: AC 8/ RA 5/ CC 4/ ST 4/ T 4/ W 1/ CO 6/ AR 3 (+25)

Sargent: AC 8/ RA 5/ CC 5/ ST 4/ T 4/ W 1/ CO 7/ AR 3 (+29)

Composition: 1 Sargent and 4-9 Troopers

Equipment: Flack Armor, Light Laser Rifle

Options:

*The squad may be equipped with fragmentation grenades for +8 points per member.

*The squad may be equipped with thermal grenades for +9 points per member.

*The squad may be equipped with nova bombs for +11 points per member.

*One in five members of the squad may exchange their light laser rifle for one of the following options:

*Heavy Blaster +3 points

*Plasma Carbine +6 points

*Flamer +3 points

*Frag Grenade Launcher +14 points

*The squad may be equipped with bayonets for +2 points per model.

*The squad may be assigned a transport from the motor pool.

*The squad may be assigned a single detachment from the detachment list.

Notes:  This is the first entry my my Hell Knights Mercenary Company army list using the No Limits free wargame rules set.  The Regular Rifle Squads form the core of most Hell Knights armies.  

X-WING "Courier Escort" game report

We picked up a copy of Fantasy Flight's X-WING game a few months ago but never got around to playing it despite the fact that we have been buying ships for it.  After going down to the FLGS today for a quick demo I purchased 5 more ships then came home unboxed all my ships and painted up a star field table.

My wife and I decided to play a 75 point escort mission.  The Rebel goal was to escort a Y-wing courier off the far corner of the sector.  The Imperial goals was to stop them.  My wife played the Rebels and I played the Imperials.

The Imperial force consisted of:
Two TIE Fighters from Black Squadron
One TIE Interceptor from Alpha Squadron
Maarek Stele in a TIE Advanced with "Swarm Tactics"

The Rebel force consisted of:
Two X-wing Starfighters from Red Squadron.  Red 2 had R5-K6 astromech droid and Red 3 had R2-F2.
One Y-wing Starfighter from Gold squadron with an Ion Canon Turret and R2 Astromech.

  By turn 3 we were already in a heavy furball.  The Alpha Squadron Interceptor was hit by the Y-wings Ion Canon.  Red 2 lost it's shields to combined fire from the Black Squadron TIEs and Maarek Stele.

As the Interceptor drifted the Black Squadron TIEs and Stele took out the Y-wing's shields.  The Y-wing scored another Ion hit on the Interceptor.  The X-wings ended up completely outmaneuvered.

As the Rebel ships came about Red 2 destroyed Black 27 scoring three hits against no evades.  The Y-wing took a couple hits this turn as well.

The Interceptor preformed Koiogran Turn (Immelman?) and scored an impressive long range critical hit on the Y-wing doing double damage.

 The Y-wing scored an Ion hit against Stele after taking another hit from the Black Squadron TIE who had preformed another Koiogran.

Black 26 scored the final hit against the Gold Squadron Y-wing dashing the Rebels hope for victory.

This game ran very smoothly and all the ships preformed as expected.  The Rebel ships were hard to damage with their shields while the imperials were weaker but highly maneuverable and evasive.  The Imperials scored a lot of critical hits that only served to weaken the Rebel shields.  We played this game in just a couple of hours and I had only played one session of the game if that gives you any indication of how simple the rules are and yet they did not seem all that simplistic.

Hell Knights Army Book coming soon for No Limits

Hey folks I'm working on getting a Hell Knights army book written for the No Limits free war game rules system.  As we have been playing the Station 42 War campaign I have been developing this army and I have enough material to star putting together a more formal book.  I not only be including the army list but also pictures of every unit in the book as well as information about how I built and painted the miniatures and models.  I hope to release the book as a free PDF on the No Limits web site.
This will be a major undertaking so I plan to provide samples of the content here as I put the army list together.

Battletech Terrain

 Hey guys sorry for the lack of updates recently.  I've been playing a lot of Battletech but I didn't really want to post much here because it has all be map based until now.  We've finally managed to get some good terrain together.

Also myself and a friend of mine have started a new campaign for our local group.  It is set on the planet Antallos during the 2nd Succession War.  I have a blog for it up here:  http://antallosshadowfeed.blogspot.com/

Anyhow I just wanted to post some pics of what we are using in the next game.  Most of it is scratch built from junk except the buildings in the top photo.

Ancient Ruins WIP

Hey it's been a while since I posted anything but I have been working on a lot of projects.  This is a set of generic "Ancient" ruins I'm working on for my Conan project but really they could be used for a number of settings.  I'm sure they will get used in Call of Cthulhu and other fantasy and pulp games as well.  As you can see we have mostly covered a 4x4' table with ruined building made from cork tile.  Cork is a great material for making ruins.  If you want a comprehensive guild to building with cork check out Matakishi's Tea House.

I'm really looking to add at least one centerpiece building to the set.  Probably a temple of some sort.  We are also going to be adding some more ruins.  We are planning on making some jungle bases to add to the table including some to add to the buildings to look overgrown.  The buildings will probably be painted dark stone and we will use flocking and turf for moss.

Hyborian Adventurers

I've been going through my miniature collection looking for miniatures to use for the Conan game we are putting together.  I've been so focused on Sci-Fi and Pulp over the last few years that my fantasy collection has really suffered and only some of what I have painted is really good for a Hyborian setting.  I did manage to pull quite a few unpainted minis out of my collection that I though would work well.  This is the first batch I have painted up so far.  All four of these are from Reaper's Dark Heaven line.  

Cthulhu and Conan

I work nights and it's really hard to get in gaming time because weekends tent to be catch up on family time and even though we are a gaming family there are sometimes other things that need doing.  To that end I have contacted some gaming friends who have Friday afternoon off and we have decided to try and have a game session from noon to four on Fridays.  We've rolled up characters and decided to alternate between Call of Cthulhu and Conan adventures which is cool because we can use a lot of the same miniature resources.  Even though the settings are very different since Lovecraft and Howard influenced each other so much the two settings work well together. 

Another good thing about these settings is that the protagonist are all humans and that makes it easier to have a flexible miniature collection for each setting.  I've already got a nice collection of "Pulp" era protagonist painted and a large number prepped and ready to be painted.  As far as the Conan stuff I have a fair amount of that in my collection too although not as much of that is painted at the moment.

So I will likely be post a lot of new projects based on these two settings in the near future.  

Pegasus Sandbags and my Improvised Military Base

I picked up a couple packs of Pegasus Hobbies Sandbag packs to create an improvised military base for an Episode of Maxed Out my science fiction Savage Worlds game.  I picked up a set of "Straights" and a set of "Corners".  Each set was $20.00 a piece.  I really like these.  They are nicely detailed and finished and they are ready to use out of the box.  I think they worked well in this situation.

Infinity Terrain Challenge: Apartment Building WIP

Last night I glued corrugated cardboard rectangles inside two of the plastic crates then I glued the crates together to make one apartment building.  I used Aleen's Tacky Glue which seems to have bonded fairly well.  I would suggest a tacky craft glue over a regular PVA glue or perhaps some wood glue for this.  The cardboard will provide a base for me to glue details on like doors, windows, and tech bits.  Normally I would try and make a building like this playable and use clear plastic for windows and add floors and doors but this is suppose to be a simple and cheap terrain project aimed at new players so I decided that would be too complicated.    

 I picked up a few more supplies at Dollar Tree.  Six plastic crates, some floral wire, and two packages of plastic hair curlers for bits.  This cost another $5.41 so I am now up to a grand total of $53.49 on the project so far.  I still want to pick up a package or two of ping pong balls but after this I think the rest of my budget will be paint.

 I glued some rectangles of poster board inside the green crates.  This will be a penthouse or equipment storage area on the roof of the apartment.

 I constructed the roof from the foamcore I picked up at Dollar Tree.  I left enough of the lip so I could position miniatures on the roof and give them some cover.

 Here is a shot of the whole building as it is right now.  I only have 3-4 hours of work in it so far and since this is my prototype I expect the others to go much faster.

Here is a closeup shot of the roof with my Ariadna.  I got a little close on the sides but they still fit just fine.  My goal is to get this building done tomorrow and also get the other apartment buildings to this level.

Infinity "How low can you go?" terrain challenge: Layout and stuff

 I'm working on the Layout of my main buildings for my infinity terrain challenge table.  I think I'm going to go with two factories instead of the strip mall The boxes I'm using just as a general guideline.  There will be streets and the factory yards will be fenced in and there will be a lot of things in them.  I'm also going to fence in a "parking area behind the workers dormitories and I'm going to have advertisements and planters running down the middle of the streets to break up those large kill zones.
 

Here is a shot of some of my minis next to the crates to show their scale.  Not all of the openings will be windows.  I'm going to block some of them off and add some tech bits and doors of course.

I picked up a couple packages of cheap razors and plastic cloths pins at the Dollar General for adding details.  They were each a dollar so it was about $4.20 with tax which brings my total up to $48.08.  That's almost half of my target goal and I still have some other expenses to look at.  Hopefully I'll stay on target.  

Infinity "How low can you go" terrain challenge. Supplies!

I've started my Infinity Terrain “How low can you go?” challenge and I'm already at $43.88 US For my supply cost. I do however have most of the things I plan to use for the table that I am not going to make from recycled junk. I'm trying to keep the terrain set under $100.00 and I hope to go lower if I can manage it. I'm going to need to leave some budget for some more paint and a few other bits.

I went to three stores today and this is how it broke down:

Lowe's: I picked up a 4'x8' sheet of 3/16^th inch masonite (MDF) board which they cut into two 4'x4' sections for $13.99. I am planning on using one section for my table top and one section for basing some of my other terrain elements and possibly for streets.

Walmart: I picked up four cans of cheap store brand spray paint. Two cans of primer grey cost $1.38 each and two cans of flat black cost $0.96 each. I also bought a package of cork tiles that cost $5.94 and some plastic canvas “Granny Grating” for $2.97. The total at Walmart with tax was $14.76.

Dollar Tree: Everything at Dollar Tree cost a dollar except the two sheets of poster board that cost $0.50 each so I'm not going to break down the prices. I picked up two sheets of poster board, two packets of alphabet and number stickers, eight plastic crates, and four sheets of foamcore even though I was only charged for three. My total cost was $15.13.

I'm going to use the foamcore to build a small factory or two and a three or four building strip mall as well as using it for other details on the crate buildings. If I can work it in I'm going to go for a small park as well.

As I pointed out I'm going for an Ariadna industrial city look. I'll probably draw from Russian sources for my inspiration.       

Infinity Terrain Challenge "How low can you go?"

I posted this terrain challenge on the Infinity terrain forum just a little bit ago.
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I was thinking about the recent thread “Terrain as a hindrance to new players?” which is about how hard it is to set up an economical table full of terrain and I was thinking that making a simple 4'x4' table full of terrain that is as economical as possible would be a good forum challenge.

If you would like to participate here are the rules:

Contest ends on the last day of November.

You must start with nothing. Not even a table surface. Pretend you are not a miniature gamer. No finished buildings or even a finished table top. No finished hills ect.

Track the cost of everything you spend putting the table together. You can use existing materials and bits if you can show the cost of those materials and bits.

Using free bits like recycled junk from packaging is perfectly acceptable and encouraged.

Use simple techniques. Please no resin casting or techniques requiring complicated tools. Exacto knives, rulers, tape, glues, paints and other easy to find and use tools are encouraged.

At the end of the challenge the table must be finished. Everything must be painted and ready to play on.

Post pics of your progress in this thread or link your progress thread or blog.

Starting Now! Good luck!

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Here is a link to my thread if you wish to participate:

http://www.infinitythegame.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=13786

The City of Tomorrow

I don't hate Warhammer 40,000 but I do hate what it has done to 28mm science fiction gaming.  Everywhere I look on line I see the "Dark Gothic" aesthetic passed off as futuristic or sci-fi.  To me there is nothing less futuristic than a 12th century design style.  I'm planning on starting a new category on this blog where I feature actually futuristic looking 28mm gaming products and gamer projects that I plan to call "The City of Tomorrow".

Primitive Tech Buildings

 We finished up some of our primitive tech buildings this weekend.  We plan to use them for several locations around Station 42.  We have been using them in some of our Station 42 War games but they weren't done yet.  We added doors and finished the "tech" bits.  We have at least four more of the hose size buildings and a larger factory sized building for this set that still have quite a bit left to be done.  We also plan to make more tech bits to go on the outside and on top of the buildings.  The idea is that we can switch the bits up and get some good variety out of the set up.

Danzig Daily News: Colonel Müller Rescued by Hel's Huscarls

 Colonel Lars Müller commander of the Regional Defense Force units charged with defending Danzig was one of the only survivors of the initial encounter with what is looking like a large force of pirates that landed just two days ago near Avendorf.  Colonel Müller attempted to retreat from the field with his heavily damaged Atlas AS7-S assault class Battlemech.  A Lance of pirates managed to cut him off before he could reach the capitol city of Tenewald.  The Hel's Huscarls mercenaries, recently contracted by the government of Danzig, landed a rapid response Lance of Battlemechs to attempt a rescue.

 The mercenaries engaged the pirates as they closed in on the Colonel's Atlas destroying a "Locust" light mech early in the engagement.  The Colonel also fought bravely with what few weapon systems he had in tact.

 The pirate mechs had also been damaged in the previous engagement but they were still dangerous adversaries.  Of note was the hulking 75 ton Marauder MAD-3D which led the pirate force.

By the end of the fighting three of the pirate mechs including the Marauder were either destroyed or out of commission.  Surrounded and with no where to run the pilot of the pirate Centurion CN9-AL surrendered.  All four of the pirate mechwarriors survived and where arrested by local authorities.

Notes:  This is the first of what we hope turns into a simple little Classic Battletech home campaign.  The Campaign is set on the Planet Danzig in the Hanseatic League deep in the Periphery.  This first encounter was suppose to be a simple rescue operation for the Mercenaries played by my wife and daughter.  It ended up being a total victory.  The Atlas was heavily damaged and low on ammunition and the pirates all had some damage as well but nothing too serious.  Due to bad rolls on my part and a lot of concentrated damage on their part the battle ended very badly for the pirates who were about to bug out anyway.  I'm not really sure how far we are going with this campaign.  Hopefully it will be less labor intensive than our Station 42 campaign which we are still playing.  We may be switching back and forth between map based and terrain on this campaign.  Whatever works out best in the long run.  

Titania City perhaps?

I hate to keep posting pics of things I'm going to work on but here are some simple crates I picked up at the Dollar Tree store a couple of days ago.  I think we are going to use them for some of the buildings in Titania City.  They aren't big enough for sky scrapers but they might make good shops and apartment buildings.  Right now we are trying to decide how to make interiors for them to make them playable.  The packing trays on top are ideas for roofs.  These are the same things we used for roofs on Station 42 and a number of other buildings in the setting. I think it will help tie them in with the other projects.