15 mm Mercs

I had nothing else to paint in 15mil sci-fi except these guys I bought on Ebay one or two years ago to make a quick force for Gruntz, but as I never got an opponent I forgot about them until now.

They are quite hard plastic 15 mil. miniatures and I payed only €10 including P&P for 50 of them. Later I realised they apparently were a rip off from GZG miniatures.

They are not very good quality plastic minis and a rip-off, so I decided to give them a quick paint treatment without much care. I gave them a coat of diluted water based bitumen of Judea and then a quick drybrush only to armour and weapons, plus a highlight to visors. I neither touched clothes nor boots.

I made two teams of five mercs; each with a leader with pistol, a heavy weapon and three riflemen.

A view of their backs. 

Power armour!

Power armour troops are so cool that I had to own some, so I order these ones from Khurasan. I love their heavy and bulky aspect. Soon they will be exterminating some foul aliens!

I didn't mean to paint them with that scheme. It simply came out like that as I was painting them; and looking at them now I think I'm going to call them the "Crimsom Claws".

The original miniatures come with their weapons attached on their shoulders but they looked to me a bit akward so I glued them to their hands and backpacks instead and I think they look better now.

The commander.

Reinforcements for my Roman army

I finished four bases or units that I had half done time ago for my Roman army, though I don't know why I'd  bother as I cannot find anyone to have a game. I would happily play Art of war, Hail Caesar, to the strongest or even Impetus with them, but no one will show up.

Anyway, here you have two units of Cretan archers and two of Gallic cavalry, all from Magister Militum.

X-Com base attack

Continuing with the testing of my home rules today I played an alien assault to an X-Com base. 

The base has seven regulars armed with MARSEC rifles, hand grenades and kevlar armour, one with missile launcher and another with a SAW, plus one mobile platform and six veterans in battle armour with MARSEC rifles and one automatic missile launcher.

The attacking aliens are 30+ random Sectoids, Snakemen, Chryssalids and Mutons.

 The X-Com base.

First turn and aliens broke through into the base, taking X-Com by surprise. First blood is one man down and another stunned from a Sectoid Psi-attack.

A snakemen sneaks behind and kills another soldier.

The tank fired in reaction and missed all its shots but then the Muton didn't with his plasma rifle.

The commander attacked by two Sectoids and a leader but he shrugged off all mental attacks. Behind him, Another man fell down by a grenade.

The SAW man  killed one snake and made first alien blood.

Another grunt fell by a fearsome Chryssalid.

The Muton who destroyed the mobile platform is received by two reaction fires and is wounded.

The commander killed four Sectoids single handle! Odds started to balance a bit.

The already wounded Muton finally died by a direct missile hit.

The SAW again in action, shooting at their backs, killing one and wounding another.

The soldier who fell down, recovered thanks to his automedikit and slaughthered and bunch of aliens with one well put missile.

The commander is inoculated by a Chryssalid and turned into a zombie!

And another Chryssalid turned one more into a zombie!

 - It's a zombie, shoot him!

Last stand.

The X-Com base fell in the hands of the aliens but their defenders managed to kill thirty of them and only four more survived.
In the beginning many regulars died but then veterans with better armour and combat skills stopped the aliens and almost win the day.

Snakemen!

You may have noticed that I haven't written anything on my blog in a while. Well, this is because now I'm working on a different island and I'm flying back home every weekend to see my children so I don't have time for the hobby; just two or three hours per week that I'm using to paint. So, up to July you can expect a low number of publications here.

Well, with that little time I have painted these five Snakemen for my X-Com project, and I hope I'll be able to play a solo game next week taking advantage of Carnivals.

From left to right: Muton, Snakemen, Chryssalid, Sector, X-Com soldier. Now I need to paint flyers and soldier in heavy armour to finish this little project.

To the strongest!

Time ago I finished a 10mm Roman army to play The Art of War, that ruleset so awfully translated into Spanish language, but I never got to play it with them though I have played Art of War with friends' armies a few times.

Today me and a friend tried To the strongest! an intelligent ruleset, easy to remember and fun and fast to play, which also gives you realistic feel of how ancient armies fought, or so I think.

We played and introductory game of 100 points armies on a plain. Gallic vs. Marian Roman. We made a few mistakes, some of them in designing our own armies, but the game went smooth, we loved it and we are planning of playing it as often as possible.

Here you can see some pictures of the game. Romans are from Magister Militum and Gauls from Pendraken (the old range).

Gauls attacking the Roman line

Romans waited for the clash and successfuly rejected the attack, disordering some warbands.

Here the Gallic army had already lost a pair of warbands and its camp had been taken by Numidian light cavalry, plus all its left flank was being threatened by drilled legionnaires. The Gallic player did not buy any cavarly unit and dearly paid for that, quickly loosing his camp and left flank.

The warband with the Gallic general was already disordered and then I charged with my general on its flank but picked up and ace. Being the general I could pick up another card but it was an ace again!

We lost a lot of time setting up the battle so we run out of time and could not finish the game, but the Gauls were doomed. Hopefully they will claim for vengeance next week.

By the way, this will be the last post for this year, so let me wish you all fellow wargamers Happy New Year and many battles to play!

Cleanse and Burn

Another testing of ZoG. This time I chose the mission "Cleanse and Burn" from the original Space Hulk board game from Games Workshop as I wanted to try some fighting in the tunnels. The objectives are burning the last two rooms with flamethrowers. No turn limit.

Instead of using Marines and Genestealers I deployed marines and aliens with profiles for the film "Aliens". Also, as I did not have figures to represent them, I used missile launchers as proxy for flamethrowers.

Turn zero with the two squads ready to rumble.

Troops used their two actions to rush forward, passing the first crossroads but leaving the two SAWs on opportunity fire to cover those corners.

The two groups generated no enemies so far.

But in turn three things changed and I lost my first soldier.

These two critters could not reach hand to hand combat and took cover behind the barrels...

 And they were fried afterwards.

Turn 5 of the game and bugs kept coming.

With the new rule of "gregarious enemies" they were piling up fast

The marine with the SAW had the option to fall back to break line of sight but did not want to risk more creatures disappearing and later joining to newer groups so he stepped forward and fired, killing three of them on automatic fire.

 Things were getting rough for both squads.

But they could break contact and fire back with good results.

First room burned.

SAW guy with supporting opportunity fire from two comrades down the aisle and out of the picture, managed to kill all the swarm except one. This is turn 7 and the last of the game.

Burning the second room. I lost three marines in total, and achieved objectives on turn 7.

 

After that, I played again the same mission but this time changing the Aliens fixed generation points for hot zones (they raise the enemy threat level when your soldiers are close) and it turned nastier and I lost seven marines but I could burn both rooms in turn 7 again. 

All in all good gaming and testing with a lot of tweaking of the rules afterwards.