DBA Polybian Roman army II/33

I tried Vallejo Xpress paints on this army and I am not satisfied. It took me more or less the same time to paint it and the result is far worse that If I had painted it normally. 

Anyway, it is done and ready to roll.

Here you can see the results of these paints as everything except the point of the spears have been painted with Xpress colours. Some of the pigment got eaten by the varnish as the paints are a bit reactive. These units are 3Ax fast for DBA 3.0 and Ps.

I painted the brown horses traditionally as  Vallejo Xpress has only two browns, one for wood (spear staff) and one for leather (reigns).

Here you can see Hastati and Princeps (Bd) and Triarii (Sp) from Essex, good quality-price relation overall, but I wouldn't recommend ordering their plastic DBA bases.

Black colour from Xpress is useless so I painted the plumes with normal paint as well all the metallics.

Encounter at Spaghetti's Junction

"A running battle against city street gangs or organisation assassins across the lanes of a huge, immensely complex, megacity traffic junction. Fast moving traffic lanes; a good chance of getting crunched trying to get across. Pedestrian high speed moving pavements. Traffic robots programmed to capture jaywalkers. Shooting across traffic lanes will give a chance of hitting a vehicle; possibly causing a pile up, certainly briging D10 police with needle guns and gas grenades."

That is what Bryan Ansell wrote in 1980 in his ruleset Laserburn as a suggestion for a scenario. I always wanted to play it but never got the right moment, so now I'm playing it in an attack of nostalgia and also missing terribly my gaming buddy Paco with whom I played countless Laserburn games in the eighties.

On 2018 I solo played Assault on Bunker 17, and after this new one I'm planning to play at least a couple more: Sewerville shootout and for a few gonads more.

I'm not using Laserburn rules but a home-made set inspired in them. There are four street gangs fighting for territory. I will lead one, the A-pes, and the other three will be run by the AI:

A-pes

1 x Shooting 3 Melee 3 Guts 3 Armour 3. Leader. Armed with Big pistol, Frag grenade and medkit.

3 x S3 M2 G3 Ar4 armed with Assault rifle.

1 x Gorilla S2 M4 G2 A3 with Minigun.

Scavengers (red chits)

1 x S3 M2 G3 Ar 3. Leader. with Ar, Frag, Mdk.

2 x S2 M1 S2 Ar 3 with big pistol.

1 x S2 M1 S2 Ar 3 with SMG.

1 x S2 M1 S2 Ar 3 with Shotgun.

1 x S2 M1 S2 Ar 2 with rifle.

Vultures (gold chits)

1 x S3 M3 G3 Ar 3. Leader with pistol, sword, Mdk.

1 x  S3 M3 G3 Ar4. Thulgz wiht Bolt Pistol.

1 x S3 M3 G3 Ar2. Daemon with automatic grenade launcher.

3 x S2 M2 G2 Ar 3 with big pistol, pistol & axe and shotgun respectively.

Blades (blue chits)

1 x S3 M3 G3 Ar5. Leader with flamer and power sword.

1 x S2 M1 G2 Ar4 with laser pistol and power sword.

4 x S3 M2 G3 Ar3 with shotgun, big pistol and two pistols respectively.

Police

1x S3 M2 G3 Ar3. Leader with AR

Rest x S2 M1 G2 Ar3. AR.

Traffic robot

S2 M2 G5 Ar5.

Police hover vehicle

Medium Ar5 with HMG. Crew x2 S3 M2 G3 Ar3. 

Everytime a chit is sighted and revealed I roll 1d6: 1 police, 2-3 one ganger, 4-5 two gangers, 6 three gangers. A chit per turn will come out from the buildings until they are all gone. All the gangs activate in clockwise order.

One of the Vultures is knocked down by a car.

 I move all the Apes to the central building and go Overwatch.

 Three Blades leave the building and finish the Vulture.

Another Blade enters the building to his right and is wounded by the Gorilla and his Minigun. A new Vulture in the street fires his gun and forces one of the Blades to duckback behind some barrels.

Later another Vulture goes out and is shot down by some Scavengers who sneaked from their base. Their leader put him down with his assault rifle.

But now my Apes react and fire in Overwatch to two Scavengers trying to cross the street. One is down whereas the other is wounded and run back to the building in panic.

Gorilla fires in his activation and finally kills the Blade on the other building.

More Vultures show up and a firefight starts between them and the Scavegers. All the city is a firefight. Where is the police!?

A traffic robot takes action and tries to arrest some Apes but it is shot down. Some cars collide and a fire starts.

 

One Blade tries to cross the street but the Gorilla stops him. He controls all the street. On the left Vultures and Scavengers keep shooting at each other while some Blades approach.

I order my Apes to assault the Scavenger building and finish the wounded ganger.

The Vultures suppress the Scavengers and then turn to incoming Blades. Daemon fires his AGL but misses. The Thulg misses too and is also out of ammo!

A remaining member of the Scavengers gets my Apes by surprise, killing one and forcing Duckback another.

Police finally shows up and in style! A police hover vehicle shoots at the leader of the A-pes who miraculously escapes alive and hides in the building to lick his wounds.

Another Blade shoots at the Gorilla and is down by the Minigun. He alone has killed three Blades so far!

The leader of the Blades is a tank in Assault armour and equipped with flamer and energy sword, so he assaults and burns all the Vultures in one shot.

Then, the leader of the Vultures duels with his sword the leader of the Blades. He wins the first round but he cannot pierce his opponent's armour. The leader of the Blades wins the second round and his power sword smokes  the Vulture's innards in a flash. In the other building a wounded Blade kills the leader of the Scavengers.

 

More police coming, unaware they are being watched.

One of them enters the building and fires at the leader of the Blades who Duckbacks saved by his armour. The other two are gunned in the street by other Blades but they return fire and kill one of them.

A Vulture enters and shoot his shotgun (the template of the gun is the exact measure of the mouth depressor stick, 6") killing an agent but now he is out of ammo.

I needed all the monkey firepower to put down the police car. My leader used his only Frag grenade and the rest used their automatic rifles and minigun.

The power sword slices the last Scavenger like a hot knife through butter.

Police severely mauled and needing some back up. "Where is a Judge when you need one?"

 My apes advance and kill a Blade.

The last Blade is their leader and he tries to close to use his flamer and sword, but Gorilla and his minigun finish him when he's crossing the street. Gorilla has killed most of the Blades!

Babysitting

This mission is about escorting some nobles or VIPs on their first blood adventure. I have to get them into some action and then bring them back alive and unscathed. There is 1D3 VIPs to escort and I got two and I have to take them to the opposite side of the board and back.

After the last mission I upgraded all of my team's armour and now they all are wearing Full Combat Armour with Automed that allows the soldier to recover from an Out of Fight result. I also got an self-reloading portable missile launcher for my team (AML).

Starting point with my team and the two VIPs.

Going forward through some rubble.

Contact! Two Greys. The man with the missile laucher fires and hits them. Both result wounded and one has a panic attack and hides in the building, but the other recovers and fires back at one of my men who is also wounded and Ducks Back in the bushes. My leader and the VIPs rush forward. Suddenly, more Greys show from the building.

The team leader (me) with one man and the VIPs assault the building where all the Greys moved. They throw two HE grenades, killing one and wounding and concussing the rest.

Then one of the clients puts down a wounded alien with his pistol and the other two more with her shotgun; both shouting excitedly.

I advance with the clients to finish the mission before more enemies show up.

And then go back. One mercenary tries to fire but the missile launcher in overwatch stops it.

Now everybody run to accomplish mission before times out but more mercenaries are coming and fire us in the open. One of my men is fatally wounded but the Automed turns it into a wound in his right arm that will keep him out of action for three encounters but let him keep running and exit alive. My leader on the left, is hit and Ducks Back but when he recovers at the next turn he fires back covering his men and put all the enemies taking cover.

One down and three wounded and suppressed.

We exit the board right on the last turn so I got just 1 Victory Point for the mission, but also 3 VP for each client alive and 1 VP for each client having killed an enemy, so 9 VPs in total or 9.000 Galactic Credits.

Some of my men got experience and raise their Shooting and Guts skills so I am going to stick with these five mercenaries as a team and won't hire anybody else for now so I can save some money for our future retirement in Mars. Until next mission, out.

Strelets-R's Crusaders transport box

I wanted some non-fighting miniatures for my skirmishers and adventures as well as some wagons to either escort or rob them, so I found this box particularly interesting and useful.

One thing I like about these types of boxes from Strelets is that none of the miniatures are repeated; there is only one pose per model. On the other hand, something I didn't like was having to glue all the parts of the carts. Not having to build or glue a kit is one of the reasons why I like 1/72 scale so much.

The sculpting is a bit crude in my opinion, but the poses are very original. I especially like the guy picking his nose, but also the man with a boy on his shoulders or the wounded and dead people, who are very useful and rare to see.

First the wagons and mules:

The bases of the mules got a bit of frost from the matt varnish

 Second the people:

 

And finally the dead:

Vallejo Xpress Color

They arrived to town and I took the plunge and got them as a late Xmas present. I bought all the colours available, 20 for 60 €. 

 

Things I don't like from them:

-They only have two browns, one for leather and another for wood, and I missed at least a beige or a light brown; I also missed a medium grey. Moreover, the their black colour, Black Lotus, has a bluish finish I don't quite like much. 

-The paint is a bit reactive and when you varnish the miniature some colour is lost, but I've read somewhere that can be solved by letting them dry overnight, I'll try it next time. 

-It does bubbles and you have to be careful not to let them dry.

-The new bottles are thinner than original ones and it's difficult to squeeze the right amount of paint out of them. If you are not careful, you'll get more than you need.

However, believe or not, I'm quite excited about them as it takes me three times more to paint a miniature in the traditional manner than with Xpress colors and getting similar results. They are also very cheap when compared to Contrasts from GW. The paints are easy to control and move on the surface and they allow thinning and mixing. Hues are rich and appropriate for Fantasy, Sci-fi and also ancient or Napoleonic armies. Actually, I'm waiting for the arrival of two DBA armies, Republican Romans and Gauls, and I think I'll paint them with these paints. I just wish there were also a range for muted colours for WWII and modern military uniforms and vehicles.

I tested these paints with 1/72 medieval peasants from Zvezda. They turned out very colourful, more than they should be, but I wanted to test all colours. The only ones I didn't dare to on them use were Deep Purple and Gloomy Violet as they were too much for these poor peasants.

As commented above, you can observe how some colour has gone after varnish, especially on reds, blues and greens. Metallic parts are Black Lotus with Natural Steel drybrushed on.

 

And here there is a comparison between a Zvezda peasant painted with Xpress on the left, and an Emhar Anglo-Saxon painted with base colour, wash and two lights. Although the figure on the right is not very good painted, you can see there is no big difference in the final result, especially if you look at them from distance.