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.  

Tanksgiving Update. Wolfhound Super Heavies painting WIP

Here is my first Tanksgiving update!  I've got the basic paint job finished on this two super heavies I am doing for the Wolfhound Friekorps.  I found some heavy machine guns to add to the turret for some additional fire power.
Next step is to put a wash on them then do the weathering.

Tanksgiving Marathon! Pass the armored pie.

As Tanksgiving approaches we take this time to reflect on all the armor projects we have collected and have yet to build.  Yes it's time to think about how tankfull we are and how tankfull we hope to be in the coming year.
The wargaming wife and I get a 5 day break for Thanksgiving this year so I have decided to do a tank and AFV building marathon from now until December 1st which is the last day of our break.  Hopefully we will be able to get in a large tank battle to wrap the project up.
I don't know if I will get all of these done in that amount of time but hopefully I will be able to finish a few of them.
Wish me luck!

Station 42 Phase 2: Tarmac complete!

 I finished painting the tarmac today.  I think it came out really well.  This is probably the easiest terrain project I have ever done but certainly not the cheapest.  I went through about 6 packs of cork tile and 5 cans of spray paint.

 I actually forgot one section.  I intended to make a piece to sit under the refinery behind the Venture Star offices but I can knock that out easily enough tomorrow.

 I added triangle pieces to the landing pads to make them look more interesting and I think it also helps delineate the roads.

Station 42 Phase 2

We never really have been happy with the layout of Station 42.  It always felt a bit too linear and didn't really feel like it had enough buildings.  Another issue it had was that there were really no places to land space ships except the edges of the board and a few random spaces in the middle which also served as roadways.  The roadways themselves were very open and long creating long and wide lanes of fire which didn't feel very "urban" in nature.

One of the ideas we had when we did the initial set up was that since most of the building were on stilts they could be easily moved with cranes or VTOLs and placed in other configurations.  Another idea we had was that the station could be expanded on with more buildings and other structures.

So this is the rough layout of what we are doing now in phase 2 of the project.  We now have three large landing pads made from cork tile that I am going to spray pain black dusted with grey to make an asphalt look.  Each landing pad will get a warehouse/office which are shown here using some random buildings from our other terrain sets.  We will be building custom buildings for this purpose ASAP.  We will also be adding 2-3 inch high modular walls around each of the landing pads as we have time to produce them.

We also added some tarmac under many of the buildings to give it a more finished look and make the roadways more apparent.  The smaller adobe buildings will be used as small shops and will get removable signs.  I'm considering making all new shops but I already have these and their construction style ties them into many of the surrounding locations.  I also like the variety they give the station.  

There are also three smaller landing pads.  One in front of Rosie's workshop.  One at the Venture Star complex and one that you can see in the upper right on the table.  We may also add one in the lower right of the table but for now that is going to be the Hell Knights occupation base.

The base will start as a camp but be expanded into something more substantial.  The Hell Knights will also be occupying Rosie's workshop as well as making use of the landing pad in the lower left corner of the table.

We may also remove the NOVA security station and replace it with civilian parking spaces or simply convert it into another business.

I think this layout is far superior to the one we have been using for the station.  It is not only more visually appealing it should provide more interesting play.  
 
In story the idea behind these changes is that Smith and Wilson Agriculture have purchased Station 42 and have made several upgrades to the facility.  The Hell Knights have also become the new security contractors for the station.  NOVA Securities has been fired by the new owners and Rosie has fled the station after she aided the rogue Planetary Guard forces that were defeated in the "Battle of Station 42".  Smith and Wilson began making these changes shortly after the battle.



 

Reflecting on "game night".

We had another Forgotten Islands Hyborian game last night.  It was the final session to our "Tomb of Voltannox" adventure.  Unfortunately I am two games behind on doing reports for this campaign but I am taking a break while another player from this game runs a Star Wars game for the next few sessions.  I hope this will give me the time to not only get caught up on the reports but also to get caught up on a few of the projects.

Sometimes I wonder why I have been putting so much effort into my games.  I've been playing with painted miniatures and finished terrain in my current games and I've been trying to do a "good" job of it.  Not only that I've been doing my best to do reports for almost every session.  All of this requires a lot of effort that a lot of gamers don't bother with
 
Of course there are people out there doing a far better job of it than I am.  I've seen some pretty amazing games out there with nicer terrain and miniatures than I have.  There are times when I think I should push myself a bit more and try and up the quality of my work but I really think I have found a good balance between what is reasonable and what I can afford and have time to produce.

I usually don't sit down and really try and do my "best" on miniatures these days but I also don't play with unpainted figures and terrain.  I have found over the years that what I enjoy most about this hobby is playing games with finished miniatures.  I don't enjoy playing with unpainted figures and I don't enjoy just painting miniatures to display so I have had to find a balance that works.

I think I'm finally getting to the point that I feel like I am playing the kind of games I have always wanted to play.  I have had the ability to do these kinds of games for a long time but what I lacked was the focus and commitment to see projects through.  I had a lot of nice miniatures but not much in usable collections.  I had some nice terrain as well but not enough of any one type to put a good board together for any kind of game.  I had to decide what I really wanted to do with my games before I could get organized enough to get these kinds of things done.  Doing so has not only made the hobby far more enjoyable for me but more affordable and easier.  

Solar Empires

I've finally settled on a name for the Sci-fi setting we have been playing our "Station 42 War" and "Maxed Out" games in.  I'm going with "Solar Empires".  I had previously called the setting "3031" and "Moon Miners and Terraformers".  I didn't like the first choice because it seemed silly to name a setting for a single date and I didn't like the second one because it was a mouth full and sounded dated.  I Google searched "Solar Empires" to check for conflicts and found that there was a video game named "Sins of a Solar Empire" but no game or anything titled just "Solar Empires"  Although this is merely a personal setting for my home games I would like to have an original title if possible in case I decide to develop it in the future.

I feel this name reflects the various different factions well.  Governments, corporations, and criminal enterprises can often be called "Empires" and since my setting is based on the Solar System it seemed like the best choice.  

I have some basic setting notes that we have actually been using for a couple of years now that I have not published because I was never satisfied with the setting name.  I have now created a new page for those notes on this blog here:   http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/p/solarempires-nathan-miller-2013.html
I plan to add some artwork to the page as soon as we create some.  As it stands it is just a big block of text and I want to make it more interesting to read.