Laser Squad Nemesis Marines WIP.

Laser Squad Nemesis was a fantastic computer turn-based tactical game developed by the creators of UFO-XCom, now sadly defunct although still played by some die hard players (me among them). The game was great and its community even greater and I played it for several years.

Old promo video

I liked it so much that I thought about doing something similar with miniatures. Here is my first try with the Marines, the race I usually played with. I tried to paint them exactly as they were in the game but I am not convinced with the result, especially with the parts in blue, and I probably end painting them in full white, like the Star Wars's Storm Troopers.

All pics clickable.

From left to right: Grenadier, Commander, Medic, Grunt, Sniper.

I already have miniatures for three of the four species you could find in the game: Marines, Machina, Greys and Spawn (I'm having difficulties to find suitable proxies for the last one).

I also have an unfinished 60 x 60 board, walls, doors and furniture and I even wrote a draft to play it.

By the way, what could I use as proxie for the ammo depot?

A meeting of corruptions.

After the last Breakthrough mission in my ITEN campaign that I played using Combat Cards, I am playing a new Breakthrough mission called a meeting of corruptions; this time using the just released free downloadable Chain Reaction Final Version from Two Hour Wargames.

"An enemy agent is meeting with a traitor contact from the Administratorum. Capture them both.

THE ENEMY: Roll up a force of 200 points (EAL 3) from a secondary Enemy retinue (Chaos Marines this time!). The agent and traitor who are meeting will remain stationary until player forces come within LOS. At that point, each will then begin moving to opposite ends of the table and will try to exit. The traitor will flee and will not fight, while the Enemy Agent will only fight when cornered; he will try to exit the board as fast as possible. The main enemy force will cover them.

OBJECTIVE: The player forces (me) must incapacitate and capture both the enemy agent and the traitor. Once each is defeated and knocked down, the player must move a model in base contact to capture each. Each must then be moved off the table by a player model. While carrying an enemy prisoner, each player model cannot run or engage in ranged combat.

The player will receive 1 Victory point for capturing one of the two Enemy targets, but 5 Victory points for capturing both. The Enemy forces will try to prevent this by protecting the agents’ escape or by recovering them and removing them off-board if they have been captured.

As I had to approach cautiously I decided to leave the Rhino at the base. My team was the same as the previous mission: 1 Librarian (Star Rep 5), 4 Tactical Marines (Rep 4, PA + Bolters) and 1 Devastator with Missile Launcher.
I deployed them just before triggering the first In Sight and rolled for activation from there."

As usual all pictures are clickable.

Marines deployed in two sections (forest and hill), traitors in the centre and three PEFs (traitor's bodyguard) at the bottom.

The enemy agent got glimpse of the Librarian and a marine coming out from the forest and they rolled for In Sight (this In Sight test being totally new and evolved from past CR versions).

The enemy agent reacted last and could not do anything to avoid being killed by the Marine with his Bolter. Seeing the agent down, the traitor contact ducked down in the nearby rocks. The PEFs then moved forward towards the gun firing.

After that, all marines dashed forward to hunt down both traitors before they could escape. One of the Tacticals picked up the enemy agent corpse whereas the Librarian reduced the traitor in hand to hand combat. Another Tactical moved to pick the unconscious traitor up and the rest took covering positions.

Two of the PEFs came out from the forests and resulted a false alarm, being all the enemy forces concentrated in one group in the centre. They went through the mountain and there was contact. New In Sight Test.

The Chaos Sorcerer was the first to react and tried a powerful spell (I did it with the THW's Mass Battle Magic from Warrior Heroes and Adventurers) on the Marine squad but the Librarian tried to interrupt him. This battle of wills lasted three rounds in which the Sorcerer finally triumphed, but he got too weak after the struggle with the Librarian and his spell did not affect the Space Marines in the end.

After that, one Chaos Marine and another with Heavy Bolter opened fire at the same time than one Tactical Marine. Two Marines and one Chaos Marine fell down stunned but the rest held ground (both sides passed Man Down and Cohesion Test respectively).

Immediately after that, two Chaos Marines and the Devastator opened fire at each other. This time one Tactical and the Librarian resulted stunned (they survived thanks to their Power Armours), but then the Devastator made a direct hit on the Chaos Sorcerer, killing him and most of his retinue, and only surviving a stunned Chaos Marine with Heavy Bolter.
When the smoke dissipated everybody was lying on the ground moaning in pain or just flat dead!

In the following turns all the Marines recovered and moved back to the exit, carrying with them both prisoners while the Devastator gave them covering fire. The Chaos Marine tried to stop them for two consecutive times, but every time he popped up to fire he had to dive for cover due to the incoming missiles from the Devastator (Outgunning is a powerful tool).

So this is it, another glorious victory for the Emperor's finest. Another five victory points that allow me to go straight to the End Missions!

As expected, the new In Sight test worked wonderfully and I had a blast playing this mission with Chain Reaction Final Version.

Cachatan

After my last skirmish game from my ITEN campaign in 6mm I felt the itch of painting some more 6 mm minis, so I picked up these pseudo Cachatan minis from Dark Realm that my friend SpaceJacker generously gave me and here is the result.

Pics clickable.

Normally I prime in black for such smaller figures to get a greater contrast, but my eyesight has worsened with the age and now I cannot distinguish a thing if I undercoat in black. So I primed in white, block coloured, then washed them with GW's Badab Black and finally highlighted with the original base colours.

They do not turned up to bright as with black undercoat but at least I could paint them.

In the Emperor's name with Combat Cards.

Although my buddy and usual wargaming opponent thinks CCs are shit (literally), I decided to give them another opportunity. Mainly because I felt like playing my itEn campaign so long abandoned but whose combat rules I had forgotten and I did not feel like reading them again in that moment, lazy me.

So I would sacrife saucy details from itEn in favour of a more generic and easy to go system as it is CC.

Nonetheless, as I felt Space Marines are better than normal infantry but different to the next category which is Mechanized units, I made some new units to play itEn with CC:

Space Marines (New unit - Heavy Infantry)
Fire Power - Light
Range - Medium
Protection - Light
Close Combat - Very Heavy
Points Value - 2

Devastator (Anti-Armour)
Fire Power - Heavy
Range - Long
Protection - Light
Close Combat - Moderate
Points Value - 3

Librarian (Fire Support* + Trained)
Fire Power - Light
Range - Medium
Protection - Light
Close Combat - Moderate
Points Value - 4x2 = 8

* Every Situation of Fire Support would allow him to use his psiquic power Path of Shadows (teletransporting at Rapid Move distance).

I spent my earned victory point from the last mission to buy a Rhino: a Mechanized Unit with transport ability (infantry can enter and exit from it as if moving in cover area, and received cover area bonus while they are in it).

I rolled on the Breakthrought mission chart and scored four:
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY.
A traitor in the Enemy’s camp has signalled a willingness to betray them into your hands. The informant has had to flee, though, with the Enemy close at his heels. Find the informant before the Enemy does and escort him off the board.

SETUP: The encounter would take place in an abandoned and long time radioactivity poisoned city. Mark ten terrain features that are possible hiding spots of the informant, none of which is closer than 4” to another. The two deployment zones must be at least 15” apart.

OBJECTIVE: The player must search each marked terrain feature by moving a model into base contact with it and rolling 1d6. On a roll of 6, the player’s model has recovered the informant and must now move him off the table. The model carrying the informant cannot fire ranged weapons or run. On successfully moving the informant off-table, the player’s team will earn 5 Victory points.

Then I rolled for secondary force list and got Squats.

My Space Marines costed a total of 27 army points and the Squats 20 points. The Squat forces were composed of 1 Command, 1 Infiltrator, 1 Mechanized, 1 Heavy Weapon and 4 Infantry.

I played with Epic miniatures on a 60 X 60 cm. board. The game took me two hours but I played both sides and took pictures as well.

All pictures are clickable.

Space Marines in the left and Squats in the right. At the beginning there were a lot of Confusion Situations. The Rhino was the first target for Confusion and all the infantry inside would have to move out walking or wait until the driver recovered. In the end they all waited except the Librarian who teletransported himself to the building in front of him.

Black dice mark Confused

However, Marines quickly reached the first three buildings but they did not find the traitor there. Squats more slowly were exploring the nearest buildigns but they neither could not find anybody.

In the following turns the Marines explored the buildings in the middle of the board except the big one which was registered first by an Squad Infiltrator

-Hullo!

After exploring all the building except the last one in the bottom left of the board, it was clear where it was going to be hiding the traitor. As the Squats were next to that building they discovered him and tried to exit the board with him.

The traitor is the Squat with blue helmet

The Marines were about to lose the mission but then good cards arrived all together. In the following turn the Rhino made two Rapid Moves and disembarked some infantry who shot and forced to Fall Back the Mechanized Squat out of the board. Then the Librarian teleported in the target building and shot to the Squat escorting the traitor, forcing them to take shelter in the same building.
Squats discarded several times and scarcely moved. Their Command unit was supressed by the Devastator fire.

Green dice mark Shaken

When the Squat with the traitor tried to escape again, the Librarian made Opportunity Fire and left him Shaken. Then one Space Marine tried to Assault him by the back but was stopped by Opportunity fire from the Command Squat who had recovered the turn before.

The Squat between two wooden sticks is Dig in and Hidden

Then it came the Rhino and the Squat Command desperately Assaulted it, resulting Shaken and Out of Action after two consecutive melee rounds.
The other Space Marines who came in the Rhino shot the Squat with the traitor and killed him.

Red dice mark Out of Action

The Command Squad finally died and the Rhino picked up the traitor

The Squats were decimated and could not stop the Marines. The Rhino moved to its border at full speed while the rest gave it cover.

In the last turn of the game the Devastator was shot at the back and assasinated by the Squat Infiltrator, but the Rhino finally moved out of the board thus winning the mission and earning five Victory Points.

The last turns of the game were very tense as the Marines snatched victory from Squat's hands in the very last moment, and it was exciting to draw new cards from the deck every turn in the hope of getting the right one to give the decisive blow.
Combat Cards game changes positively when you add objectives and victory points to the games.

I'm seeing CC is not so bad after all but I still think that games like itEn, FUBAR, SBH and especially CR 3.0, which use dice and charts and no cards, and with similar scope, are faster and more fun to play than CC. Also, it was a bit cumbersome to play both sides at the same time as I had two hands to play with.

On the other hand, the game was set up very quickly and the cards gave a very welcome level of uncertainty to solo playing.

All in all I will probably finished my itEn campaign using CC system, but after that I will rarely use it again and rather play other types of rulesets instead.

Pendraken Painting Competition 2012!

I just finished painting these ten Orcs for the Pendraken Competition of 2012. I love these little critters as they have a lot of character and the look I have always thought Orcs should have. They remind me of those GW's Orcs from the eighties.
They are on individual bases instead of a big one forming a diorama, because I want them for my 10 mm skirmishes.

All pictures are clickable.

Apart from these Orcs I have also presented some other models for the Comp but I do not expect to win in any of the categories as the level of past year was already too high and I am sure this year will be even higher.

The Comp has been an excellent excuse to finish these tiny Orcs who have been waiting in the painting queue for two years. Visit the forum of Pendraken and do not let pass the occasion to see some great painting on such tiny miniatures. Good luck to all the participants!