Nation Building the Nordic Weasel Games Way

About a month ago, I got Nordic Weasel Games' Nation Generator for 20th Bush Wars and Not Just a Bush War. Turns out that the same nation generator is in both publications...oh well. This is a combination test run/review of them.

In addition to the nation generator, Not Just a Bush War has a lot of fun stuff for creating an army for the country you rolled up. This is what I ended up with. I've added some comments throughout. Warning, its a long post!

Nation Generator
You need a D10 and percentile dice for all of the charts. The numbers in parentheses are what I rolled for each category. 

Size
(4) Small: between 1 and 5 million citizens

Natural Resources
(4) Building Materials
Er-r-r...Okay?

Urbanization

(7) Somewhat urban

Technological Standards

11-7 = 4

Four years behind the most modern technology, so 2011.

Heavy Industry

(10) Extensive Heavy Industry

Political System

(44) Secular Military State

Government Legitimacy

(7) Viewed as reasonably legitimate

Government Popularity

(3) Very unpopular

Religious Standing

(3) Follows dominant religion in region

Rule of Law

(7) Corruption is accepted but infrequent

Cultural Coherence

(8) Moderate coherency

Allegiances

(4) Ancestral ties

Pressing Concerns

1. Very unpopular government (scored a “3” in government popularity)

2. (62) Civil rights issues

3. (46) Inequality

Army Generator

I used the Army Generator found in Brigade Commander (BC) and Military Generator in Not Just a Bush War (NJBW). I am not sure if I used the generator correctly in BC, particularly for the manpower units, but this is what I got: 

It’s a small country, but because its currently under military rule, the army is beefed up more than it was under royal rule, so I rolled for three brigades.

2 Infantry brigades

1 Specialized brigade

For specialized brigade, rolled under Elite Units (NJBW) and got a 2: Marines

I decided an average force to generate manpower units (BC). I am not sure if I did this right in terms of separating out the manpower units into battalions and their companies, but this is what I got:

1^st Infantry Brigade

For main units, I rolled a 44 and got 6 main units, so

1 infantry battalion consisting of 4 companies

The extra company will be stationed as some sort of border unit

For secondary I rolled a 61

3 armored companies

Consists of Armored Cars (NJBW)

1st Brigade Attachements and Fire Support (BC)
3 Attachements
2 Fire Support Packets 

2^nd Infantry Brigade

Main units: Rolled a 47 equaling 7 main units

1 infantry battalion with 3 companies

1 infantry battalion with 2 companies

Secondary

2 armored companies

Consist of MBTs (NJBW)

2nd Brigade Attachments & Fire Support

3 Attachments
2  Fire Support Packets

1^st Marine Brigade

1st air assault battalion with 2 companies

1^st Marine landing battalion with 3 companies

2^nd Marine landing battalion with 2 companies

4 attachments

Air Force (NJBW)

Focus Air Superiority

Status: Limited

How Modern? Rolled a 5 so 2011 – 5 = 2006 +1 (for heavy industry) = 2002
So, aircraft can can be no newer than what was out in 2002. That's fine by me. 

Navy

Gotta have a navy! Especially if you have a marines brigade. Not in either booklet, so I modified Air Force generator in NJBW:

	Focus		Status
1	Humanitarian/Disaster Response	1-2	Bare Bones
2-3	Maritime security	3-4	Very Limited
4-6	Deterrence	5-7	Limited
7-8	Sea Lane Control	8-9	Moderate
9	Forward Presence	10	Extensive
10	Power Projection

I ordered the Focus at increasing levels of ambition. I assume that under Focus, the number rolled is the primary focus, or that which the nation is striving for, with those below its being secondary. Status still works because what their ambitions are and what reality is are two different things. If the nation has the very grandiose focus of Power Projection but has limited or very limited status, that would mean that the higher ups might waste all of their very limited resources on larger warships.

Modifications on Focus:

+1 if rolled a 9 or 10 on the Natural Resources category.

+1 if rolled a Dictatorship, Secular Military State, or Fascist Military state

under Political System

Modifications on Status:

+1 if maritime-oriented nation

Focus: Deterrence

Status: Moderate

How Modern? Used the same as for Air Force

Rolled 9, so 2011 – 9 = 2002 + 1 (for heavy industry) = 2003

Overall Training Level

I rolled this for all of the armed forces, with the Marines maybe being a little better.
6 (after modifications): Acceptable training but lacking practical experience.

Overall Morale Level

Again, applies to all armed forces.
16 (after modifications): Willing.

Sources of Weapons

Primary: USA

Secondary: Germany
Germany? That will be a stretch, but that is the fun of the whole thing!

Putting it all together

Now comes the interpretation of the rolls. 

Country Name: Aquor-Ornur

From: http://nine.frenchboys.net/country.html

Capital: Janwalli

Population: 4 million

Percent population urban: 60%

Economy: timber, building industry products, and furniture.

Technological standards: at 2011 levels.

Government: Secular Military State

Religion: 80% Buddhist, 15% Muslim, 5% Other.

Aquor-Ornur is a small nation located along the coast of South-East Asia, between Burma and Thailand. It gets its name from the two main tribes that make up the nation. Historically agriculture, mainly in the form of timber, was the main economic driver, but with the reduction of the rain forests, the economy shifted to timber products for the building industry and as well a growing furniture industry. This growth in heavy industry has caused a major migration to the urban centers. Many foreign industries have set up manufacturing centers because of the relatively cheap labor.
Until the late 1990s, Aquor-Ornur was ruled by a monarchy. Attempts to institute democratic reforms led to a crackdown of dissidents. In 1998, a military coup backed by pro-democracy citizenry removed the monarchy. Promises to hold elections have yet to materialize and have made the military government increasingly unpopular. Persecution of religious and ethnic minorities has also been on the rise. Recently, there has been growing nostalgia for the monarchy

Traditionally, Aquor-Ornur had strong ties with both Burma and Thailand, but these have been weakened.  The monarchy is currently in exile. It is secretly building an army to retake the nation.

Armed Forces of Aquor-Ornur
Rising suspicions of both their neighbors has given cause for the military to increase spending. Aquor-Ornur does not have any real ties to either the USA or Germany, so most of their major weaponry is second hand. I need to flesh this out more, but this is what I have come up with.

All infantry and marines are issued the Heckler & Koch weapons. TheArmbrust light anti-tank launcher is the principle LAW.

Armored cars:
When I think of modern armored cars, neither the USA nor Germany springs to mind. I decided to arm the three armored car companies with M8 armored cars, with one of the companies having the turrets swapped with South African Ratel turret with the 90mm low pressure gun. 

Tanks:
I thought about the Leopard 1A1, but decided to go with US M48A3 MBTs. Since the US is the main arms supplier, it would make sense that their MBT is American.

Transport:
The infantry ride to war on trucks.

Aircraft:
The air force was easy. I decided on F5E Tiger II as its fighter jet. Its a common export fighter for US allies throughout the years. For ground attack and other roles, they use the BO 105 helicopter.

Navy:
I'm still working on that. Of all the armed forces, the navy will probably the most modern. Historically, ship-building nations built "tailor-made" warships for nations willing to pay for them. Today is no exception. There are plenty of shipbuilding firms that use modular construction to build ships. The results are shorter building time, potentially cheaper ships, and ships are specific to the needs of the buyer. An example of this is the MEKO class of ships built by the G
erman companyBlohm+Voss. Here is a short article on the subject of modular ship design.

Thoughts about Nation Generator
Overall, its fun to use and produces some interesting results. There are a few things that I found sort of odd. The biggest one is that it doesn't generate an overall economy. Is it a rich or poor country? It is hard to say based on the rolls I got. A country can be highly industrialized but the country be by-in-large poor. Some rolls seemed contradictory. For example, if its a country that relies extensively on heavy industry, I would thing it would have a higher urban population than what I rolled.  I suppose I could have modified things, but I wanted a country that was solely based on the die rolls.

I liked the army builder in Brigade Commander, though I am not sure if I used it right. Its general enough so that I could come up with my own units. Not Just a Bush War fleshed out what I created in Brigade Commander. Not Just a Bush War had a lot more added "fluff" (and "fluff" in the best sense!) to really give your units a lot of personality, but I was content for now. If you like pre-game parts of the first edition AK-47 rules, you will really love this!

Both Nation Generator for 20th Bush Wars and Not Just a Bush War are worth the price.

Dirt Road Gas Station

I'm still sort of burnt out from making dirt roads, but still haven't jumped into the water and started making rivers. So, I made a few curves (bor-ing!), and a little roadside scene: a gas station.

The station and its roof were made from a block of Polymer clay. For the roof, I flattened out some clay and then pressed it onto the bottom of the small metal mitre box. The bottom is corrugated, and seemed to be of the right scale. I peeled the clay up and then baked. I was pretty happy with the effect. The main body of the station was roughly cut out of clay and the door and windows gouged out.

The gas pumps, the little tank on the side of the building, and the sign were made out of styrene plastic. The word GAS on the sign is not centered; I should not have used superglue to attach it. Its probably hard to tell, but on the other side of the building I have two metal drums from Heroics & Ros against the wall and a tire that I made out of a styrene tube, which was a lot more work than it was worth.

The station is mounted on a sheet of styrene that was covered over with latex caulk. The roadside scene is to connect up with the other road pieces.

This going to be the last road piece for awhile. I want to get started on my rivers.

An Apology for Comments not Posted

I want to apologize to Jim Casey and the other folks who made comments on my blog but never appeared! Your comments are valuable and I always greatly appreciate them!

My blog is set up to send an email saying that you have made a comment. A bunch of them never did get sent to my email.  They also didn't seem to initially make it to the "comments awaiting approval: until I clicked on a previous post and then all of a sudden they showed up like gangbusters.  I don't understand the selectivity of this.

I'll admit, I don't have a lot of time to get on Blogger and check things beyond just throwing up my post, hence the numerous typos and such. I still can't seem to figure out how to take a MS Word document and paste it into Blogger without all the formatting junk that I have to manually edit out, but that's another story.

I promise that I will diligently check more often to see if this happens again.

Again, I apologize to those who commented but didn't see their comments up on my blog.

Rangers of the North Part 3

I have not painted the entire pile of rangers, but enough to get an idea of how I want them to look like when painted and based. Pardon the obvious flash photography.  Its hit or miss with my phone camera in terms of getting the minis in focus. Flash guarantees it but the colors seem a little off and you get shadows in the background. After a lot of back and forth, I decided to base them two to a stand. Everyone was more or less compatible size-wise except for the Demonworld figures.

Demonworld minis

Left : Chariot Right: Peter Pig 

Left: Splintered Light, Right: Rank and File

More Rank and File

Splintered Light

I put the last two Splintered  Light rangers on separate stands. They seemed somewhat unique  compared to the others. They guy on the left looked like an old veteran, hence the grey beard. The guy on the right I call "The Dude." I gave him a grey cloak rather than a green or brown one. The lower part of The Dude's bow didn't  seem to be completely cast. But he's  cool with that; it is what it is.

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.

Late Night Thoughts

I just spent the last 3+ hours working on my taxes. If you live in the USA, you know what a "joy" they are. I think I can wrap them up tomorrow.  This is the latest I've ever got them done.

Two reasons for this post. First,  this is my first post made using my phone.  If there are more typos than usual,  blame it on the tiny keyboard.  Second, I've been dwelling on rules a lot. I've also been invited to play test a few. What bothers me is that I have to say no to the offers. I would love to but the way things are,  I can't promise that I would be able to actually play a game using them. Its rather depressing.