Another Game of Scifi Carnage

 My wife went for a few weeks in February to visit family in China, so the boy and I had time to ourselves. This meant lots of eating out a restaurants and watching cartoons and Disney+. 

We managed to get a game. As usual, it was a scifi battle. I really wanted to use all the fantasy and medieval figures I've been individually basing for Dragon Rampant rules. But it was scifi or no game at all. 

The battle consisted of opposing sides rushing each other. There was a loose objective where I had to protect the president of the Galactic Union from the bad guys. Here are a few pictures I took.

Machine gun armed recon vehicle makes an appearance.

The president of the Galactic Union and his
bodyguard await the impending doom

As usual, the cyborgs and their xenomorph "pets" managed to overwhelm the combined efforts of the Galactic Union alliance. Even the mysterious alien Rocky with is powerful laser beam eye could not make ad difference. He went down fighting with all the rest. Perhaps a mecha on the good guys side rather than a small scout vehicle might have turned the tide. 

As a change of pace, I used the felt game mat that I bought years ago. It added a little touch to the battlefield and removed the need for measurement. 

Corrupting the Youth of America, One Miniature Game at a Time!

 Anything I can do to get the young'ins to play something other than computer games, I will:

First Battle of the New Year

Nope, it wasn't my test game. It was a battle with my son. It wasn't nearly as organized at the first time we played, but the scenery was better. It was the Corporate Marines and the Space Bears (now named the 2nd Amendment Gang by someone on the Facebook 15mm Sci-fi gaming group), versus a coalition of terminators, space lizardmen, space tigers, the blue powerarmor warriors of Benadryl Prime, and red non-Alien xenos. Only one picture taken.

The marines and bears were overwhelmed, but the bears particularly gave a good account of themselves before going down. They took the high ground and picked off the xenos as they tried to attack them.

Happy New Year!

Battle with a 6 Year Old

Almost seven years ago, I had game with my daughter, who was six. Today, I had a battle with my 6-year old son. To keep the tradition going, I dusted off my 15mm science fiction miniatures. It was a battle between the gray corporate troopers and the shiny sliver cyborgs with their pet red xenomorphs. The cyborgs had the advantage in numbers, so to even things up, the Corporates had a large, missile armed mecha thing. I was too lazy to find my sci-fi terrain, so we just put some brik-a-brac in the middle of the table.

Rules
I used the same rules as the original game back in 2011, but I added a few extra updates:

Movement:
To speed things up:
Humans & Cyborgs: 4"
Xenomorphs and mecha: 6"

Running is still 1D6 added to movement, but xenos can fight after movement.

Shooting:
Same ranges as before.
Mecha's rockets are same range as RPG but gets bast radius of 3"
The mecha gets to shoot twice.

Saving throws:
I added saving throws to the rules.
Cyborgs get a saving throw of a 1 or 2 if hit.
Mecha gets a saving throw of 1, 2, or 3 if hit

Mecha damage:
My son thought this up and I tweaked it:
All mechas have 6 points of damage.
If it fails above saving throw, roll a D6:
1-3 takes 1 point of general damage
4, missile launcher knocked out, in addition to 1 point  of damage
5, a gun is knocked out, in addition to 1 point of damage
6, cockpit is hit, pilot wounded, mecha can't move or fire next turn; 1 point of damage
When damage reaches 6, mecha is destroyed.

Xenomorph control:
These rules don't really have any morale checks, but later in the game, I imposed some for my troops. There was a pre-game "discussion" with my son about the xenomorphs. According to my son, the cyborgs have control over the xenos. I respectfully disagreed. I came up with this rule for control of the xenomorphs, but it was never used.
 During each cyborg turn, roll a D6:
1-5, Xenomorphs obey cyborg orders.
6, Cyborgs loose control.

The bugs will: 1-2, do nothing; 3-4, continue to attack the opposition; 5-6, turn on the cyborgs.

The cyborgs can only regain control on the next turn with a roll of a 6.

The Battle

My opponent holding some of his troops and getting his game face on. T-shirt seems to be apropos for this game:

Starting positions:

Objectives:
There really weren't much. Mine was to recapture the plastic bead storage facility. The cyborgs were to just kill all the humans. The corporate troops split up into two squads that were to go around the storage facility. The mecha was to engage the cyborgs on top of the facility.

Most of the cyborgs were arrayed on top of the plastic bead storage facility:

Cyborg general making his moves:

First squad engages with cyborgs who have a large missile-armed robot with them:

Second squad is attacked by fast-moving xenos. They managed to knock off a few at longer range before being overwhelmed:

Hand to tongue combat begins...

...*nom, nom, nom*...

Not looking good here, either:

Two surviving corporate troops decide its time to scram:

The mecha covers their retreat:

Cyborg general looking pleased. Couldn't quite knock out the mecha despite a hit to the cockpit and the missile rack, but game clearly goes to the bad guys:

15mm Sci Fi

Here are a few 15s that I painted a while back. I happened upon them while deleting a bunch of pictures on my phone. The first two are from GZG.

I  think they are supposed to be  human colonists. I painted then up to look like state troopers. I think the second one is a woman, but I'm not 100% sure.

The next one is from Rebel Miniatures  zombie survivors  line.

I think he turned out pretty well. I christened him Brother Leon while having a test game of Five Core Skirmish rules. Sadly, he rolled poorly during a fire fight against some corporate body guards. 

New Minis

I think its been over a month since my last post. I've been terribly busy with end-of-school activities and family activities. Plus my allergies have been the worst since forever. They have really wiped me out. Its a vicious cycle of not being able to sleep at night followed by being dead tired the next day. I have not enough energy to do anything at night, which is my usual time to work on stuff. It doesn't help that I've gotten hooked on Netflix's DareDevil series! It takes very little brain power to veg in front of a TV screen at night waiting for the Benadryl to kick in.  I did base a bunch of those 15mm rangers that I have been working on and will post those soon.

I ordered some stuff including some rules, and some miniatures from Splintered Light. They have commissioned a special China collection to help with a foster home in China that they are adopting a son through. I thought that its a very worthwhile cause, so I ordered one. I also ordered their space crew, but realized that I already have them. I should have ordered more of their orcs, but oh well.

Space Crew:

Several of the characters look very familiar to a Joss Weldon TV show that Fox television foolishly cancelled. Ground Zero Games also makes a version of said crew. I have a few painted up and should do a side-by-side comparison.

China Collection:

These are the three humanoid characters. Depending how I paint her, the princess would make a great female fantasy magic user. The Hu Hsien is a fox spirit or shape changer. You can read a little about them here. There are a bunch of mythological creatures included

Above are Fu Dogs that guard temples. They have special meaning to me. My father loved them. My parents had a bunch of them and he sculpted some abstract ones out of concrete that now sit in my mother's garden.

What collection would be complete without a Chinese dragon? You also get a Kirin and a Kung Fu Panda. The thing sticking off the Kirin's tail is its antlers that need to be attached.

Last, but not least are two adorable pandas.

I have been thinking about having my daughter paint everyone but the humanoids. She done some work on a few Reaper Bones figures with mixed results, but I think the Young One will enjoy painting these.

Could These be the One?

After reading a couple of posts, two notably from Spacejacker Zero (formerly just Spacejacker), about FiveCore Skirmishing and Five Parsecs From Home, I took the plunge and bought them.

These rules have been hitting the internet, particularly TMP, but usually I am not drawn to new rule sets. But when Spacejacker endorsed them, I thought I'd get them. I have followed his blog for some time, and I trust his opinions on rules.

So far, I've only had a chance to scan the core skirmishing rules. They look fairly straight forward in terms of how they are written, but that is all I can say right now. Looking over my 15mm sci-fi, most of what I have are small teams of figures of between five and six. This seems to be the perfect number per side for these rules. I sneak in a test run this week.

Red Faction

I decided to increase the size of my xenomorph hoards. I ordered more from Khurasan Miniatures. This time I got two packs of their Space Demon Infiltrator Warriors. They have smooth heads, rather than ribbed heads, otherwise they have the same bodies as the ribbed ones. I am not sure what makes them "infiltrators" but who cares. Along with different heads, I decided to paint them a different color.  I was going to paint them the same way as the other guys, but rather than nail polish, I decided to use a shiny enamel.  Testors Red Flake looked like a winner:

I should have stuck to nail polish. It was not very flaky. It did have tiny flecks of gold, and I did my best to shake up the flecks, but I really couldn't see them once brushed them on. As an experiment, I diluted some gold paint and dry brushed it on some of the larger highlights, particularly the top of their heads. Here are the results of my work.

I am not quite as happy with these guys as I was with their gun-metal colored brethern, but they will do. Are they a different species of xenomorphs? Are they a sub-species? Do they work together or do they fight amongst themselves? The plucky citizens of Yogurt Town will have more to worry about.

Stop the Xeno-on-Xeno violence!

6mm Scifi

Every so often, I run across another blog or website whose work really blows me away with their terrain. Here is one of those: 6mm Wargaming. Kieran, the owner of the site, has been around for awhile and his work has always amazed me. His latest is 6mm scifi. For the longest time, I went back and forth between 6mm and 15mm for scifi gaming. Maybe I should have gone 6mm! Anyway, check out all his work and be impressed.

Sci-Fi Building from Paper Mache Packaging

I started this project back in November, and now finally I am finally finished. I was going to do a series of work-in-progress posts, but then decided to post it all at once. I thought I had took some pictures of my progress from the very beginning, but I can't to find their files, or maybe I thought I had took them, but didn't.

We seem to keep a lot of those paper mache packing containers. I am not sure why we do. I blame my wife, who can't seem to throw anything out. I don't really know what they are officially called, but those are the things that a lot of electronic devices are stuck into to keep them from banging around and getting damaged. The one I picked jumped out at me as a good candidate. It looked like a dwelling or research station made of some sort of earthen structure such as adobe. Maybe its a homestead on a backwater planet.

Prepping the Container
I sealed the container, both the exterior (the side that will be seen) and the interior, with Mod Podge. I suppose I could have used watered down PVC glue but I wanted to bring out my Inner Hippie. Plus, its fairly cheap and is consistent in viscosity. It never warped the paper mache, made it stronger, and sealed it up nicely for later painting.

Making a Base
I bought some cheap, thin, acrylic sheets at Lowes and cut a base. I cut it to size so it just fit the container. I then sanded it so that glue would take to it. The container was strong enough that I didn't need to fill it with water putty like I had done with the previous sci-fi dwelling I made. I glued the container to the base with some superglue gel.

Adding the Windows, Doors and Decorative Do-Dads
I used the mold for my previous sci-fi building to make more doors. The windows were made from piece of plastic embroidery mesh. This time, I used square styrene strips to frame the windows. They looked a lot nicer.

Front of building before painting

 I really wanted a skylight, but didn't want to just put another flat, framed window on the roof.  Embroidery mesh is a pretty soft plastic--a lot like 1/72 scale plastic miniatures. I cut out a piece and kept bending it to a point were it would not flex back all the way into its original flattened state. I built a frame out of styrene and fit the mesh into the frame. The natural tendency of wanting to go back to a more flat shape make it lock into the frame and was held there by adding superglue. The sides were kind of tricky. They don't look that nice, but they will do.

Close up of skylight

I then added a bunch of do-dads. I added some vents from The Source, some soda bottle caps for air conditioning units, and one or two other items to decrease the empty spaces around the structure.

Back of building

Due to the folds and crenulations on the surface of the container, some of the doors and windows had really obvious gaps between them and the walls. I filled them in using glue-soaked tissue paper.The last thing I did before painting it was to put some acrylic pumice texture gel on the small part of the base that was exposed. I thought about leaving it as is, but it was already frosted.


Painting
I primed it with gesso. I don't like using gesso on figures, but I figured it would work well on a building like this. Plus I have a huge bottle of the stuff and I don't want to waste it.

 Thinking about it, I could have left the structure unpainted in is natural color, which was a light brown, but I was not sure what color I wanted it to be. Well, I ended up painted it a light brown that pretty much matched its original color! I then washed the whole thing in my patented wash of Future floor wax (or whatever its now called) and black india ink. To reduce the shine, I then finished it with a clear flat.


 The last step was to add a little extra touch to the skylight: glass. I made the glass of the skylight using this stuff from Testors that is for gluing canopies to aircraft models.

Applying Testors glass making glue to the skylight with brush

Finished Building
Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. The front door and two of the windows look a little wonky, but its fine for gaming purposes. After I had put in a number of windows, it seemed to need two more. Being lazy, I made another mold using one of the windows that was already glued to the building. It turned out OK, but didn't have the depth that the actual embroidery mesh had. 

Front

Right side

Left side and rear

A Grey Alien pays a call

More Painted Minis

I managed to finish some more miniatures that I started in March. I wouldn't call what I did multitasking, but I went back and forth between scale and genres during each painting session. Some were ones that I had started awhile ago and never finished. As usual, forgive my crappy photography.

I finished up more of my Splintered Light Orcs, but didn't finish the command, so no new photos of them, yet.

First up is Khurasan Miniatures DIMOG Amoursuit Mk 1, or is it Mk 2? I don't know. I bought it a long time ago, I can't tell the difference based on their website pictures. This is the miniature where I lost the driver's door, but my aunt-in-law's granddaughter found it. I went with the autocannon and  missile launcher configuration. The missile launcher really looks more like a big recoilless rifle:

You probably can't tell, but in addition to using the old Future floor wax and black ink wash, I also gave its lower end a wash using brown. For highlighting, I did some with silver to simulate wear and tear on it. Its mounted on a large washer.The barrel of the autocannon is very bendy. I am not sure how long it will last before breaking.

Next up, a 15mm Mastodon with howdah:

 I can't remember who made it. I want to say its an old Grenadier, but I am not sure. They came with some dudes to put in the howdah; one archer and one spearman. I have to figure out what fantasy army this guy belongs to.  I am not quite finished with it. I still need to paint the shields that are on the howdah and put him on a base.

Last, but not least, some microarmor.
First, is an tractor-trailer from Shapeways:

The number of shops that make micro scale figures on Shapeways seems to be growing. I can't remember who specifically made this. Shapeways, IMHO has a lousy website. I find it hard to find things, or to go back to specific shops that I liked.  So far, I have purchased a few items, mostly aircraft. I have yet to be impressed my miniatures made by 3D printing. Its not so much the detail, or lack of it, but I don't like that fuzzy texture (frosted ultra-detail) that I get on a lot of models. Plus, I think the price is still too high, especially for the quality. I didn't bother to prime this truck. Normally, I would have given it a wash, but the fuzzy texture would really show up on it.

Next, is another in my line of technicals:

I have not painted it yet because I want to use a spray-on primer, and its that its been raining more often than not. High humidity/rain and outdoor aerosol spraying is not a good combination. I can't remember who made the truck, but the gun is a WW2 German 20mm Flakvierling 38 made by Heroics & Ros. I would prefer a Soviet ZPU-4 Quad 14.5mm AA gun, but I've read on Micro Armour Mayhem that GHQ's model is awful to build, plus I don't feel like paying $10 for it. Scotia-Grendel has one, but its HUGE! It would definitely not fit on this tiny truck.  I have three more of these little trucks of unknown origin. Heroics & Ros does make a reasonable ZPU-23 that I have put on another truck. I will probably stick one on one of these little trucks.

Last, is a WW2 BK1125 Soviet armored gunboat:

This is also made by Heroics & Ros. It is a pretty simple model. As part of the Northern Chalupistan river fleet, I plan to modernize it. I will build a tripod mast to hold a radar dish, but I am not clear what else I will do to it. The small machine gun turrets will probably go. I will keep the T-34 turret. I tried fitting some other spare turrets, but they were too long in the back and rammed into the pilot house.

  

15mm Sci-Fi Small Dwelling

I slapped together a small dwelling for my sci-fi adventures in Yogurt Town.

I used the container from a Kraft Foods Lunchable. It is made from styrene, so plastic modelling glue works well on it. One lunchable will give about three separate containers once you cut them out. The door was cast from Durham's Water Putty and featured in a  previous post. The air conditioning unit, or whatever it is on the roof is a juice bottle lid. I made the poorly-squared window by cutting out the frame from sheet styrene and then inserting a piece of plastic embroidery mesh for the bars of the window. I couldn't decide what to paint the dwelling, so I just did it in grey. I have not decided on whether or not to base it. One thing about the lunchable container is that its walls are very thin. It is easy to move around on the gaming table, and anything you glue on it may pop off if the walls are flexed. So before I started on the outside, I filled the container with Durham's Water Putty. It took a few days because I did it in layers. To reduce the amount of putty I needed, I waded up some aluminum foil into a ball and stuck it in before filling it up with the putty. When dried, the walls no longer flexed and it is heavy enough to stay put on the gaming table.

The Case of the Missing Model Piece

One of my recent purchases was Khurasan's 15mm Federal Army DIMOG Armorsuit Mk 2. I wanted to beef up Yogurt Town's militia. The model consists of a number of pieces, one of which is the door shield that makes up the front of the driver's compartment:

 When I was ready to spray it with primer, I couldn't find that door shield.  I looked everywhere. After giving up the search, I tried making one out of thin styrene plastic. It wasn't great, but it was serviceable. I took the model, along with some other minis, outside to spray, sprayed them, and then put them in a small box I use to transport minis to and from where I spray. Last night, I sat down to paint and assemble the Armorsuit. Guess what? The home made door shield is now missing! Tiny, individual 6mm infantrymen that were sprayed along with it were all accounted for, but a 12mm x 7mm bent piece of plastic is not. I could have sworn I put it in the box along with the other figures I sprayed. I'm not really in the mood to make another one. I spent a lot of time putting the thing together, particularly pinning the arms and legs to to the body.  I'll take a look outside where I did the spraying, but I wouldn't surprised if I don't find it. Is this some sort of sign?  *GRUMBLE*