Closeup of Ghost Troopers and Wraith Battlesuit WIP: Solar Empires

I'm working on more stuff for my Earth Security Force.  This is a Wraith battlesuit.  It is made from a M.A.R.S. robot toy and is almost five inches tall.  The base is actually some kind of stop plate to keep doorknobs from breaking holes in drywall.  I picked it up at Lowels for two and a half dollars and it is takes paint just fine.  It's solid plastic and looks just like a large model base from GW when painted black.  They also had a larger diameter one that would be good for a larger mecha model.  

Here is a close up shot of one of the Ghost squads.  I'm only adding it here because I got a few request for a larger shot.

Earth Security Force Ghost Troopers

Probably the most feared unit in the entire Solar System the "Ghost Troopers" of the Earth Security Force are highly skilled special operations jump troopers and the only living members of the ESF.  Like everything else associated with the Earth the origins of the Ghost Troopers is a highly guarded secret.  Some speculate that they are all clones or highly advanced androids and it is almost certain that they are cybernetically and or genetically enhanced.  Each trooper wears a holographic suit and a helmet armed with a pair of mandible blasters for close combat.  Regular troopers carry a light rail gun and each squad is supported by a trooper armed with an advanced scatter laser.  Each trooper is also equipped with a jet pack and are trained to be experts in their use.

Solar Empires Blog Planned!

We've decided with a bit of reluctance to create a blog for our Solar Empires projects.  In the past I have tried different blogs for specific games and it hasn't really worked out very well.  Also I've asked for feedback on the subject and a lot of people have said they feel I should keep all content on this blog.  I know that makes sense from a certain point of view but I think We have good enough reasons to make a setting specific blog.
What we are looking at doing is making a kind of living blog for the setting.  More of a fluff resource.  The main page will be presented as a kind of System News site while I will have tabs detailing several locations and governments as well as other aspects about the setting.  It is likely that the Solar Empire specific game reports will move to that blog or at least news stories about them as well as other details about the blog.  Chances are RPG reports will remain on this site with news stories about them on the living blog while the wargame reports will likely exist on that site in basically the same form.  I may include galleries of images and the out of character game synopses on this site like the notes I post at the end of every report but more extensive.
Pretty much all of the production stuff for Solar Empires will remain on this blog.  All the; conversion and scratch building, painting and terrain, and planning about the site will remain here.
I am somewhat worried that we won't be able to maintain both blogs very well and that we will end up bringing all the content back to this site but we think this will be the best way to organize the content.
Anyway we will see if this works out.

Earth Security Force: Ghost Troopers

I've been working on a small Earth Security Force army this week for my Solar Empires setting.  The Earth Security Force consist of mostly drones and robotic troops but there are a few "human" troopers called Ghost.  Ghost are elite jump troopers who wear holographic armor that helps them blend into their background.

I made these troops from old Dark Eldar models from Warhammer 40,000.  I cut down their "spikey bits" and added some heads from Pig Iron Productions as well as jump packs I scratch built from small zip ties.

The Battle of MacIntyre Station: Trojan Uprising 2895 Memnon. A Solar Empires game report.

 March 18th 3033, 2895 Memnon, MacIntyre Station, Trojan camp of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.  Last Tuesday a force of Jovian Imperial Legionnaires engaged a group of communist insurgents at MacIntyre Station on 2895 Memnon.  The Jovians attacked with four squads of Legionnaires and a light mech.  The station was defended by almost forty insurgents as well as four improvised armored vehicles and two light field artillery pieces.  

 The insurgents took the fight to the Jovians attacking immediately with their light vehicles and inflicting some casualties on the Imperial forces.

 Two of the vehicles were quickly dispatched by the light mech and Jovian troopers who steadily advanced on the insurgent positions.

 The Jovians were reportedly after insurgent leader Curt Stillwell.  Early in the fighting he and his squad were cornered by the Jovian mech but they were able to find cover in a nearby building.

 The remaining two insurgent vehicles were destroyed by the Jovian mech but the insurgents kept fighting in an attempt to save their leader.

 Stillwell and his body guards engaged Jovian troopers in close quarters fighting inside a small building as the rest of the battle raged around them.

 After dispatching the insurgent vehicles they Jovian Mecha destroyed an insurgent field canon only to be gunned down as it tried to jump away my the insurgent's auto-cannon and combined small arms fire.

 Several insurgents units sought cover under elivated buildings in the middle of the station where they engaged a squad of Imperial troopers.  Many casualties were inflicted in the close quarters fighting.

 Curt Stillwell escaped the troopers inside the building he was hiding in only to be gunned down near the wreckage of the Jovian mech by another squad of troopers.

 After their leader was gunned down the rest of the insurgents decided to flee the station.  Although they had inflicted heavy casualties on the Imperial troopers they had lost all their heavy support.

 The remaining imperial troopers began to quickly secure the station and search for remaining insurgents.

Up to this point the communist uprising in the Trojan camp of the Jovian Trojan asteroids has consisted of largely of protest over the abuse of workers in the region it appears that the Emperor is not longer interested in ignoring the situation.  Two Imperial Legions have been stationed in the region as well as forces of the local household armies to put down this revolt.

March 24th 3033: Associated Press.

Notes:  We're about to draw our Titania campaign to a close and we are going to stat to work on another competitive campaign.  In addition to that we are working up a list of ongoing conflicts going on in our Solar Empire setting that we intend to use for one off battles in a kind of system wide narrative campaign.  This battle was fought between myself and Curtis a gamer friend of ours who put together a force for our campaign setting using the brilliant Dreamforge Games  Eisenkern Stromtroopers.  I'm really impressed with these modes and what Curtis did with them and the Gundam Zaku mecha he used to supoort them.  It's a really nice looking force he is putting together and I look forward to playing against him again.  
As far as the battle goes it seemed pretty close points wise however at the end I only had lightly armed and armored militia up against powered armored troopers with assault rifles.  I decided that since the Jovians achieved their objective of killing my commander and I had little chance of continuing the fight that the battle was a Jovian victory if an fairly expensive one.     

Matchbox Toy Drone for Solar Empires "Earth Security Forces"

I picked up this Matchbox toy drone today at Walmart for under $3.00.  It's a very high tech looking drone I plan to use for my Earth Security Force in my Solar Empires setting.  All I need to do it paint it up and add a flying base of some kind.  I love finding toys I can simply un-box and add to my forces with a simple paint job.  I'm working on a small but highly effective Earth Security Force and these drones will certainly be a good addition.

Solar Empires: Thoughts about the setting....

A pirate technician from the "Bloodborn" pirate band.

So if you have been following my blog and my sci-fi campaign "The Station 42 War" you might be slightly familiar with our home brew science fiction setting "Solar Empires".  Solar Empires is set in our own solar system a little over 1000 years in the futures.  The current year is 3033 to be precise.  For a very basic outline of the setting you can check the outline page here:http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/p/solarempires-nathan-miller-2013.html

We, well my wife and I and our friends, have been playing in this setting and developing it slowly for around three years now.  Actually a bit longer than that.  The project kind of grew out of our Station 42 terrain project and it has kind of taken on a life of it's own.  We wanted to develop a sci-fi setting we could use for both role playing games as well as table top miniature battle games.  While there are many sci-fi settings out there to choose from we decided to invent our own partly because we are old school gamers and that is what we do and partly because other settings had some issues that made it difficult to adapt to our miniature gaming style.

One of the biggest thing we wanted to avoid in our settings was aliens.  It's not that we don't like alien stories but each new alien race you add to a setting changes things quite a lot.  Then there is the factor of finding alien miniatures.  Most alien race miniatures out there are proprietary to their specific settings and the few that aren't are usually from limited lines.  One of the things we don't like about typical fantasy settings is the need to have; elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, humans, orcs, ect.... in large numbers to be able to have enough variety to run games in those settings.  Aliens have the same problems and more.  So we decided to stick with just humans because that way we could use just about any human miniatures for our games.

Another thing we wanted to do was keep things local so we choose to limit the setting to our own Solar System.  It is actually quite a big space after all and almost all existing galactic or universal settings based on our own history start out with the idea that man colonized the solar system first.  We just decided to keep things at that stage.  We haven't completely ruled out faster than light travel and exploration of the galaxy in the future but we felt there were plenty of options provided right here in our home system.  Not to mention a lot of the development work has been done for us.  We know where Mars is for instance.  It's the next rock out from the sun.  

The most similar setting to Solar Empires is the Battletech setting.  It's kind of like taking that setting and shrinking it down to a more manageable scale.  I love the Battletech setting but as a miniature gamer it is difficult to adapt.  Sure I have a bunch of mechs and 6mm terrain and all that and I can play all the Classic Battletech I want but I like to use 28mm minis for roleplaying and up to company sized miniature battles.  28mm Battletech mechs just aren't a very practical option.  You can find a few out there.  You can scratch build them or kitbash them but it is a major challenge and they are such an important element to the setting you really need them around to make for convincing encounters.  Solar Empires has mechs too but they can be any mecha model or adapted toy we can get our hands on.

Another influential setting is the Cowboy Be Bop setting.  It is a setting based on our own solar system with humans as the only real inhabitants of the setting.  It has Terra formed planets and multiple factions.  It is not a very well developed setting however and it is not as plausible.  There are a lot of weird cartoonish things about the setting that don't seem quite as hard sci-fi as we would like.  Still we are borrowing a lot of basic ideas from the setting.

The third most influential setting for Solar Empires is the Firefly "Verse".  I've run games in the Firefly setting.  I like the gritty pioneer feel of the setting.  The general outlook on humanity.  It is a solid setting but like Cowboy Be Bop it isn't really all that fleshed out.  There are really only two factions so while it works well as a roleplaying setting it isn't ideal for a larger scale war game setting.

Our plans are to get the setting a little more established soon.  We've really been working for the past few years on the outline and what is in our heads.  There is a lot of background information we need to get sorted out and written down so hopefully you will see some of that information posted.  I have a timeline for my Hell Knights mercenary company for instance but I haven't published it yet because I want to get a few more pictures taken for it.  We also have some other background stuff we are working on.  Some artwork and some photo illustration projects like the pirate pic above which is from an shoot I did for this setting.

We really want to turn this into a fully realized setting and perhaps get some more people to explore it.   One day we may even do something commercial with it but for now we are just using it as an open creative outlet so if you have any thought or comments about the setting we would love to hear them.