Another project :P

I ordered an EIR army to Baccus and it arrived in no time and so, before I had time to regret having spent some money in the hobby again, I was cleaning and painting these little bugs.

They are very well sculpted and easy to paint for being 6 mm, but as they are literally hundreds, I thought about a fast method to paint them and so I did a test.
What you have here is my first test and I am quite happy with the result in quality and speed, so I will probably paint the whole army this way.

Pics clickable.



The recipe is priming in white, then spraying them with Tamiya TS-42 Light Gun Metal, after that block painting red for tunics, flesh and leather, and finally covering them with a home made magic wash and lastly some lights where needed.

The decals are really tiny and need some finesse. You can notice that my first are the ones to the left.

AE Bounty first game.

Today we finally tried the ruleset AE Bounty by Darkson Designs, the Mordheim game set in sci-fi context.
The best part of this ruleset is the designing of a warband or crew. For this first occasion I wen for a simple group with few models (only six) and all of them human and with similar gears. One sergeant hero unkillable, 2 Old Guard veterans, one hitter with rocket launcher and two regular hired guns, all armed with a variety of range weapons to experiment with.
My buddy chose a bit more exotic pirate crew with half of their members specialized in hand to hand combat.

We played the unplanned scenario Ambush with me being the attacker. I deployed his troops in the middle and then deployed mine on the right border and a unit behind the bunker's wall in hidden deployment thanks to the dirty trick Scout.

My buddy thought range weapons were not so deadly at long range and risked all his hand to hand troops in the open, which resulted into a slaughter. None of his hand to hand troops reached melee, but the rest wearing medium armour killed most of my men. In the end there were only left my sergeant against his captain. The game was a bit boring as the objective was simply to kill or rout each other.

It was our first game and lasted about one hour, so we decided to play a new scenario called Hostage situation (there are 18 scenarios plus 12 secondary objectives). This time I was defender with three hostages (innocent nuns) that I had to take out of the table whereas my buddy had to stopped me from doing it. The game lasted six turns and I started in the centre of the table.

As the hostages could escape if nobody within six inches was to controlled them, I chose to put my toughest unit next to them, my Sergeant. Again I surprised my opponent with my Old Guard veteran squad with three activations, who blasted away all his melee troops. The rest were too slow to catch me and although I suffered a few casualties I could easily escape with the hostages and win the game.

This time there was a more specific objective and the game was fun, and faster. Generally speaking, we liked the game as it is easy and fast to play yet it has a lot of flavour. It has many many possibilities in order to design your crew, a good number of scenarios, experience and rewards and campaigns, some inside starships as well!

Next weekend we will run a few games inside a starship and see how it goes.

Destroy that cruiser!

Today I am only testing bombers, torpedoes and attacking Capital ships. I decided to confront two light fighters and two bombers armed with two torpedoes each, attacking a Battle Cruiser Capital ship.

The cruiser must reach the buoy to hyper-jump and escape. The game begins with the attacking flight sighting the cruiser coming out from an asteroid field. They activate first and all hit Afterburners; the cruiser start to accelerate and launches two light fighters.

On turn two the light fighters hit Afterburners again and fire all their weapons and missiles, destroying one enemy light fighter and making the other one to use his Afterburners to avoid destruction. The bombers move normally towards the cruiser and reduce speed to star locking on torpedoes next turn.

Now fighters are in the cruiser's Flak defensive fire range and one of the bomber is forced to chance course. The cruiser launches his last two light fighters.

A fierce dogfight ensues and one bomber launches his torpedo towards the cruiser.

Another enemy light cruiser is down and the other bomber launches another torpedo while the fighter locks on a FF missile on the cruiser as well. The pilot of one of the attacking light fighters fall unconscious by enemy fire and the ship drifts forward uncontrolled.

Enemy fighters tail drifting ship and blow it away with a Heat Seeker missile, but then another enemy fighter is down and the cruiser receives another torpedo hit, with the bridge being smashed!

A third torpedo hits home and the heavily damaged cruiser is rendered without shields. He then fires all his Flak turrets against one bomber who reacts firing back with all his guns, hitting several times the unprotected cruiser and destroying it.

The explosion of the ship catches one of the bombers and destroys it as well while the enemy light fighter and the two remaining attacking ships go unscathed. In the end the Capital ship resulted destroyed by gunfire after three torpedoes making impact.

Many corrections had to be taken as usual but the game is running smooth in general. Although after talking to Joey Beutel I am thinking of changing the normal THW activation order, but this is something I still have to think about and test.

Micro Mythic Greece

This morning I felt in the mood and painted some more 10mm. miniatures for my project of adventuring in the mythic Greece. The Centaurs are from Pendraken and the Harpies from GW's Warmaster range. I have not found yet nothing so good in that scale as some of the Warmaster ranges; a pity they never made something similar with Historics.

Pics clickable as usual.

The Harpies are not individually based because I will probably based them in the future for Warmaster.

DBN 2.1

We bought the rules in 2008 but until today we did not have the opportunity to try them, thanks to a friend who based his old H&R Napoleonics in DBX bases. So we hastily assembled one French and one Russian armies of 12 points each and started a game using the rules of Attrition.

The game first already started and with the French HC having suffered one hit by the Russian artillery

On this occasion I commanded the French and easily beat my Russian opponent by finishing all his cavalry one by one (I was a bit lucky).

End of the game, with several units damaged.

In the end the game was a bit boring and disappointing, and we felt the attrition rules added nothing really interesting to the game. Also, my friend was totally against the rules and role the authors gave to light infantry, stating they had no idea about it.

For the second game I commanded the Russians as attackers, this time without the attrition rules, and the game was faster, more tactical and fun. Actually, the more the game closed to its original form (DBA) the better it was.

Initial deployment with Russians at the bottom

My cunning plan of attack was ruined by a series of catastrophic rolls and I lose miserably to the French.

Russian forces about to charge French line.

Two things we liked of the rules were the compulsory move of the attacker and the two extra pips it has in the first turn. I did not find the ruleset so bad as my two friends did, but I liked much more DBA than DBN for sure.

In the end I was happy with this result as it saved me of buying and painting a Napoleonic army! :D

5150WC

Well, here it is the second testing of 5150WC. This time the Confederation is on an attack mission of two Nav points. Killrathi are controlling.
Investment level of Confederation is 4 and of Killrathi is 3. Good intel for the Confederation.

The Confederation started the mission with two new Rapier medium fighters, a fast and manoeuvrable fighter with a big payload of guns and missiles. Both pilots with Rep 4.

I rolled for terrain and got some gas and dust clouds on the right and no asteroids at all. There is a jump buoy next to Nav point 1 and two PEFs with Rep 2, one in the upper left square and the other in the centre of the table, behind a dust cloud.

The Rapiers accelerated towards the first PEF and soon resolved it. There were two Dralthi light fighters hiding behind the dust cloud. Both Rapiers bank to starboard and fire all their guns and 2 Friend of Foe missiles. Both Dralthi returned fire and one pilot of the Rapiers (Rapier A) got unconscious for the following four turns.

In the next turn one of the FF missiles detonated on a Dralthi with its shields depleted and was destroyed, forcing the other one to leave the battlefield.

Rapier A advanced uncontrolled at maximum speed, banking right and left randomly, with Rapier B behind and trying to get contact by radio.

The other PEF never moved during the mission but it was resolved as the Rapiers got near, resulting to be a Killrathi outpost. As soon as it is discovered, it started to fire with its Flank cannons.

On the next turn, the pilot finally regained consciousness in the border of the table, he tried to execute an Immelman but failed and exited the game. He would meet with Rapier B in Nav point 2 if the it survived to the outpost!

Rapier B turned around and fired its last FF missile, and then its two Dart DF missiles but without any remarkable effect on the phase shield of the outpost. But he destroyed all Flak cannons with its laser and particle guns instead.

The outpost launched one Dralthi but it was blasted away by Rapier B after its In Sight test.

Then the outpost launched its last Dralthi. A Rep 3 who managed to get behind Rapier B and place a Claw Heat Seeker missile on it. Rapier B successfully reacted and launched Chaff pods, but the missile guidance rating smarted the pilot and made direct hit. BOOOM!

The pilot could safely eject on time but as he was in Killrathi sector he was practically doomed. Game over.
Next time I will try to test bombers with torpedoes attacking Capital ships.

Wing Commander 5150

I loved the PC game Wing Commander and I played all its sequels. I loved it so much that since then I wondered about the possibility of playing it with miniatures on a board. I wanted to play it solo as with the PC game, but I never could find an appropriate ruleset for this.
But then 5150SA was released, and I bought it and played it, and I realised that its campaign system was so good and robust, that I could easily adapt it for anything.
Well, I have adapted it for Wing Commander and here is the first official test:
All pics clickable.

THE BRIEFING:

Moral of the Confederation is 3. The Killrathi is 3 as well.
The Confed is contesting a Killrathi sector. Confed Investment level is 2 and Killrathi is 4.
There are no solar flares or radiation bursts (weather) but even so, the pre mission intel went bad.
The mission is a patrol with two Navigation points to recon.
For the mission I counted with a wing of two Arrow light fighters. I rolled for their Reps and got 4 and 5. The Arrow has a maximum speed of 6, an acceleration of 3 and a turn rate of 3. It is armed with 2 laser cannons and 2 ion cannons, plus 2 Pilum Friend or Foe and 2 Dart Dumb Fire missiles.

Then I rolled to generate the terrain and placed the 2 PEFs (Possible Enemy Forces) per Nav point. At the bottom right you can see the Arrows, with the two PEFs in the middle, and Nav point 1 (the white dot) and a jump buoy at the top. There are also several gas clouds spread on the table.

On turn 1 one PEF moved directly towards the Arrows while they headed for the first objective.

On turn 2 I resolved the first PEF which resulted to be a false alarm. Also there weren't any surprises with the bad intel and it was a normal mission in the end. The other PEF didn't move.

On turn 3 and 4 the Arrows kept advancing towards Nav point 1 and the enemy PEF didn't move (it had Rep 3).

On turn 4 the PEF split into two.

On turn 7 the Arrows were very close to their objective when I rolled doubles on the activation. A random event happened and it was a Rep 6 Killrathi ace pilot hunting in the sector, who suddenly dashed out from the dust clouds, hitting afterburners and blazing its laser cannons against the two surprised Arrows.

The Dralthi's laser cannons failed to penetrate the Arrow's light shields, but in the next turn the Killrathi ace turned around and locked on a Stalker Heat Seeker missile on one of the arrows. Fortunately he could react on time, and hitting his afterburners he left the board and the missile behind him. The other Arrow did the same in his activation and was out from the board as well, heading to the next Nav point.

For Nav point 2 I rolled again in the terrain generation table. Then I deployed my Arrows and placed the new PEFs. Nav point 2 was in the far upper right corner of the board (the white dot) and I put my Arrows in front of it, thus leaving the two asteroid fields to port.

On turn three one PEF got near enough to be resolved and it turned into a Killrathi military transport Dorkati class with an escort wing of two Jalkethi heavy fighters, all of them Rep 4. I quickly turned starboard to avoid the dangerous Dorkati's defense Flak cannons and tried to barrel roll, but only one did it.

On turn 4 I rolled doubles again, and again it was a Rep 6 Killrathi ace piloting a Dralthi light fighter (this is because I haven't thought of any more random events in space! I'd appreciate any ideas from imaginative readers). This time it appeared in front of the Arrows and immediately hit afterburners and opened fire on them. He made many hits but none penetrated the Arrow's shield. Then the Arrow returned fire and collapsed Dralthi's shields, seriously damaging its hull as well.

The Dorkathi's Flak cannons fired at the other Arrow, damaging its engine and leaving the pilot unconscious for one turn.

On the next turn the Confed activated first and the unharmed arrow turned around and fired the unshielded Dralthi in the back, shredding it into pieces.

Chalk up another one!

The Arrows' armament was too weak to damage the Dorkathi Phase shields, therefore they were trying to surround it and its escort, to safely reach Nav point 2 and complete the mission.

One of the Arrows reached Nav point 2 whereas the other was with its shields down and moved backwards to avoid the lethal Dorkathi's Flak cannons, thus dangerously approaching to the border of the board.
The Arrow near Nav point 2 took the opportunity to try to destroy one of the escorts by locking on it a Pilum Friend of Foe missile. The Jalkethi released a Chaff pod but the decoy was launched too late, with the missile detonating nearby and producing half damage. The impact overloaded the Killrathi heavy fighter and forced it to flee forward using its afterburners.

On the next turn the Arrow near the border tried to hard brake but it failed, damaging the ion drive and exiting the game. The other Arrow was so heavily hit by the Flak cannons that his pilot went unconscious, flying straight ahead for five turns and suffering such a punishment by the Dorkathi during all its flight that it was finally destroyed.

Well, the mission was completed so it was a success although one of the fighters was destroyed and its pilot killed as he couldn't eject because he was knocked down.

The test was a success as well as everything went smooth and I only had to make a few tweaks here and there. I'm having a lot of fun with this home ruleset so I will keep working on it for a while.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did :)