Andy curates this week’s roundup of members painting and modelling activities.
We’ll start off with some offerings from Tony F this week, above we have the start on some Brigade Models 15mm Yenpalo infantry for Xenos Rampant. They comprise two units each of heavy infantry and light infantry/scouts, plus mortar and railgun teams. The scouts are on open order bases to reflect their Hard to Target rule, with the heavies in closer order. The weapons teams are based with two man crews, while the additional command figure allows the removal of single casualties.
Also from Tony are some 25 lbr guns for his 20mm WW2 Belgian project.
Next up we have some of Eric’s work, an Alien Bounty Hunter inspired by the recent Dead or Alive supplement for Stargrave. This is a Kroot Carnivore figure.
Continuing the Stargrave theme we have some Necrons:
And some Baby Bugs:
Finally we come to my meagre offerings. Firstly some simple markers for Lion Rampant, “Wall of Spears” and “Shieldwall”. Printed labels, PVA glue and some surplus cavalry “pill” bases.
I’ve finished off some Arab Light Cavalry (apart from their shields, which I can’t find!)
Marcus fesses up to his Stargrave woes and how he’s gone about recruiting a new crew.
I’ve had some problems playing Stargrave. It’s not the game. I am sure it isn’t perfect, but we love playing it at the club. It’s not even my club-mates, who keep shooting me. It’s my crew. Well, that’s not fair. I do like my crew. But they look quite…similar. Too similar. And it hasn’t helped that I used the original Stargrave roster from the book, downloading it from the Osprey site. In the middle of a game I would find myself shuffling and flipping over sheets trying to work out which character was being fired at, or acting, and not exactly sure which one I was looking out without checking.
The concept of that crew was something like the Bynars from Star Trek: The Next Generation (the episode 1.15 “11001001”) with an added dose of psionics. The crew comprised some small Copplestone Grey’s, the brains, and the mean looking, vat-grown “Big Greys”, which were from the now defunct Griffin Miniatures. I had never managed to get around to using these before. It took me long enough to get around to painting the mean Greys, although I really like them.
The Old Crew. Left to Right: 101, or is that 110..?
I might use them in Xenos Rampant in the future, although we have been using 15mm figures for that so far. But I digress.
In an effort to solve the problems in my personal organizational abilities I needed two things:
Firstly, a one page roster so that all that stats were right in front of me. I had tried looking at creating roster cards, but they just didn’t seem to work for me. I wanted everything, the whole crew, on one side of A4. Fortunately club members, noticing my travails, kindly offered me a selection.
(Editor’s note: If you print this roster, make sure you open the “More Settings” option in the print preview screen and have “Fit to Printable Area” selected.)
Secondly, I needed to recruit a new crew. A more individual crew of characters.
And it really isn’t that hard to stat a crew up, at least not if you can be decisive about it! In a nutshell, recruit a Captain and First Mate from the various specialities (akin to schools of magic in Frostgrave) available and spend 400 Cr. on recruiting the rest of your eight crew.
The specialities I referred to are “abilities”. The Captain chooses five, with three of four from the characters background e.g. psionics as i referred to for my first crew, or veteran. There is quite a range with new backgrounds being added in the inevitable supplements to the core rules. It makes for an interesting comparison with Five Parsecs from Home, which regular readers of the blog will know I have also been playing solo (I should really complete another episode soon!) However, in Five Parsecs the choice of crew characteristics is all based on random rolls reminiscent of the old school Traveller RPG. It’s much more about the whole crew even if the Captain is the first among equals. In Stargrave it is very much about the Captain and a little about the First Mate. In truth, everyone else is disposable to a greater or lesser extent. The First Mate chooses four abilities, with two or three from their background. Previously I chose two Psionicists, but this time I chose a Cyborg Captain and a Veteran First Mate.
Why did I make this choice? I am not entirely sure. I was looking through the core rules on character creation with the intent of choosing a new crew but the process became influenced by the models I had available or fancied using and the narrative that began to create in my head. I think that is a good thing!
I initially had the idea that I would use figures from a Kick-Starter project that I had received: Star-Schlock. This at least started out rooted in influences of the pulpy Sci-Fi TV of the 80’s. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century crossed with Star Trek and maybe a dose of Star Wars and 80’s Flash Gordon, in particular.
Gillian Grey and Willard White
Some similarity occurred to me between the Star Trek: TNG era and Buck Rogers slightly more campy second season. Something akin to the rescued Borg Seven Of Nine in Star Trek Voyager. I had the idea of using some unused cyborg miniatures which I had from the old Scotia Grendel Urban War range, the VOID Syntha biomechs, making them a kind of Star Trek Borg analogue.
I had already started painting some of these after a long time in the lead pile. I was intending to put them to use in Spy-Fi games as some kind of, well, Fembot for want of a better word. Yeah Baby!
Then I hit a problem.
A diminutive “White Rat” with Willard
It was only when I compared the completed Syntha miniatures to the Star Schlock figures I noticed a considerable size discrepancy! That was pretty much the deal breaker although at this point I realized that I was in some danger of repeating the same folly using some Star Schlock rank and file figures; a lack of clear characterisation.
Repeating the same problem. Do they look a bit similar?
I was now fixed on using the Syntha as Borg analogues but the sizing discrepancy made me think about using at least some more old school miniatures. Hence a look at EM-4’s range of early Grenadier sculpts. It was a chance to pick up some older, characterful miniatures that I had regularly seen pictures of, or seen new versions of older sculpts, but had never quite managed to add to my collection. Since i was basing this crew around the escaped cyborgs I wanted a crew that at least in part were themed around interconnection, robotics and coordinated firepower. At least that was the plan.
The White Rat and the Black Rat – They escaped a lab based programme where they were literally lab rats, sent out to do some exotic missions at the behest of the ailing Authority, until those orders ceased.
The Black Rat
Also known as Six of Seven, Black Rat is to be my captain. She had somehow managed to escape some Authority “black-ops” experiment as government broke down. She has very little knowledge of her origins, but is on a quest to know more.
I chose to give her:
Camouflage (she is wearing a stealth suit)
Target lock (allowing her or another member of the crew to automatically hit the target of a grenade/grenade launcher attack, even if not in line of sight.)
An energy shield (absorbing some shooting damage)
Control robot (interface with a robot and take control)
Drone. I am rather partial to using drones, not that they have done me much good so far. (Draw line of sight from the drone)
She also has a carbine (2 spaces), a pistol, light armour, a deck for hacking and a filter mask.
Harriet “Harry” Barber
I originally had a figure in a beret picked out for this role, but Harry has grown on me. I first saw the figure many years ago. It normally has a truncheon and I think is supposed to be a “space police” figure. I removed the truncheon and added a small pouch in its place. In my mind there is a similarity to Glynis Barber in the 80’s series “Dempsey and Makepeace” where her character was called Harriet Makepeace. She is some kind of ex-security figure (the kind of security that doesn’t use a truncheon or wear a uniform) who along the way helped the Black Rat escape from her captors.
Fortune. (She is a bit of a Han Solo and you might call her lucky, or perhaps it is her roguish charm?)
Armoury (Harry has a way with weapons and can field power armour without the upkeep cost or increase the damage on one standard firearm)
Remote Firing (Can select a robot in the crew to make a +3 line of sight shooting attack)
Repair Robot (Yes, Harry is good with robots too)
Harry also has a filter mask (always handy), light armour, a carbine taking up two spaces and picks for breaking into physical objects.
Harriet “Harry” Barber
Moving on to the Standard and Specialist figures, these are much easier to select as they are very much modular, “plug in” selections.
The “White Rat” (Three of Seven) – Commando
Naturally, also being a cyborg and a comrade of Six (or part of the same hive mind), the White Rat needed to pack a bit of a punch. They were specialist operatives after all.
Ratchet the Robot
Picked up from some abandoned facility and reprogrammed by Harriet, Ratchet is an armoured trooper. Thanks to Harry’s Armoury skill she can offset the upkeep cost. Originally I costed out Ratchet as a grenadier, making that rather large gun a grenade launcher of some kind. I changed to admittedly costly power armour as a result of choosing the armoury skill for the First Mate.
Ratchet the Robot
Troopers (3)
There have been various iterations of this crew, but they always seemed to revolve around having three troopers. These are Viridian, (with the green skin and yellow jacket), Sal Buco (long green coat and pistol) and Cy An (Blue skinned alien). At the outset they all have a carbine, heavy armour and a knife. Yes, I know Sal appears to have a pistol. Does anyone remember the pistols in the original “Man From Uncle”? Well Sal has picked up something like one of those. He can attach an extended barrel, long magazine and collapsible stock. Hey presto: a carbine. Originally Sal was going to be a simple recruit, but I had another idea…
Sal and Cy
Hacker – Zero One
A nod to my old crew. Zero One now stands out in a crowd. It is my hacker equipped with a pistol, light armour, a deck for hacking (of course) and a knife.
Viridian and Zero
Recruits (2)
Finally, my two recruits. Originally I was going to fit in a guard dog, but the dog cost 10 credits and frankly can do less. I am not a min/maxer, but when you want to fit in certain options the free figures give more flexibility. And a bit of colour. These miniatures came from the Hydra “Retro Ray-Gun” range. It is a nice range although the figures tend to be a little larger overall. But these two are I think teenagers. I painted them up with no clear objective for using them. I watched Firefly again recently and it occurred to me that these two, the “Citrus Kids” could be analogues to Simon and River Tam (except he isn’t a doctor and she isn’t a psychic killing machine). That points to the one thing which might be slightly dissatisfying with the rules. As I pointed out earlier, if you aren’t a Captain or First Mate, there isn’t going to be much progression, beyond adding a better bit of kit. That said, I don’t think that is what this game is for and is why I like a bit of solo Five Parsecs.
Recruits have a pistol, light armour and a knife.
Recruits – The Citrus Kids
So that is the crew of the “Dirty Rat”. I’m looking forward to seeing how they do in an outing at the club mysteriously entitled “Oubliette”, very soon. I am sure there will be a report.
Jeremey’s otherwise engaged for the next couple of weeks, so compiling the WIP Wednesday roundup falls to Andy.
After helping Phil with basing figures for the WW2 game he and Tony put on at the Open Day, Phil’s youngest son decided he wanted to do some painting.
So as a start from him we have a GW wolf (above). He is now moving onto some Space Marines.
Marcus has been continuing work on a variety of projects, this week he has completed a couple of Pulp Figures.
Does the one on the left remind you of a character from a certain “motherly” film franchise?
Eric has started a new project, a 15mm force for Xenos Rampant, he’s assembled them, but no paint has been applied yet
I’ll finish off with some of my own work.
I’ve been experimenting with a home made wet palette (a Chinese takeaway container, thick kitchen towel and some greaseproof paper) and a vortex mixer.
The wet palette certainly keeps paint useable for a couple of days, and the vortex mixer seems to work well. We tried it out on some “problem” paints at the open day.
On to the figures, I’m nearing the end of the Arab Light Horse, just some washing and varnishing to do. And the shields. When I find them! Here are four of the twelve.
I’ve also been working on some Footsore slingers while I’ve been painting the Arab horse.
That’s all for this week, we’ll be back next Wednesday.
Tony F reports on the further adventures of Frodo and the rest of the Hobbits as he and Phil, along with guests Jon and Andy, play through the Quest of the Ringbearer. You can read his report of the first two scenarios here.
Scenario 3 – Buckleberry Ferry “Two steps on the water”
Scenario three saw the Hobbits attempting to cross the Brandywine at the Buckleberry Ferry. They had to race three ringwraiths to the ferry to cross the river. The game went encouragingly well for the Good side initially, with one wraith despatched in short order (we were discovering that at this point in the Quest they were, if not feeble, then certainly not as frightening as we expected in combat, even to hobbits).
But then our game took a rather odd twist. In a move probably not foreseen by the scenario writer, Andy had one of the ringwraiths jump on the ferry before the hobbits reached it and take it to the other bank, leaving them stranded. The four hobbits managed to gang up and take down the remaining wraith on their side of the river, but we were left with a bit of a standoff. The hobbits were on the wrong side of the river, with the vital ferry on the other bank guarded by the single remaining ringwraith. Their only option would be to swim, but the swimming rules and the hobbits’ fear of water meant doing that would probably allow the wraith to pick them off one at a time as they emerged. So in the end we called it a draw, as neither side could see a way ahead.
The hobbits find themselves on the wrong side of the Brandywine facing a lone ringwraith – but with no way across apart from swimming…
Scenario 4 – The Old Forest “See those trees, bend in the wind, I feel they’ve got a lot more sense than me”
The final scenario of our first session was a bit unusual, with the hobbits trying to cross the Old Forest in the face of – er – nothing. Just trees. Instead of orcs or wraiths, the trees of the Old Forest came alive and tried to hem them in and trap them – the trees couldn’t kill the hobbits, merely capture them.
Our game ended quite quickly, with all four hobbits rapidly overwhelmed, and hoping desperately for rescue. In hindsight, the scenario setup wasn’t particularly specific about how many trees should be placed on table, and we we may have overdone it, leaving the hobbits little chance of getting to safety – Jon and I barely made it halfway across the table.
So this one went evil’s way, leaving the score at
Good 2-1 Evil
The Quest will resume at the club’s Christmas meeting, where we hope to get through another 3-4 scenarios.
It’s Wednesday again and the members are keeping up a steady pace on their projects.
We start with Felix and a US 57mm AT gun fighting in the snow.
Sticking with WW2 and Tony F has started on some 20mm Belgium’s. I’ll let Tony explain what they are: “I’ve made a slightly random start – two S-Model Dingos for the recce troop and a Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) 25pdr and limber. I haven’t made any PSC kits before and was very impressed with these – they fit together perfectly and I had both built in 15 minutes.”
Change of scene now and Stephen has scratched an itch he’s had for a while to paint up some Quar.And Stephen has started on some terrain he is calling ‘Bad going’.
Marcus continues to add to his Stargrave miniatures, the first two adventurers.
A rather tooled up alien.
And finally a robot and potential hacker with data pad.
Next up we have Andy’s long running (no pun intended) Arab cavalry.
And finally for this week I’ve continued painting up some more of my 3mm sci-fi miniatures. This time some medium grave tanks.
As we near the end of our Wars of the Roses campaign we find ourselves at the Battle of Tewkesbury. As with the other games in the campaign we looked for anything of historical note. For Tewkesbury we decided the Lancastrian player would set up the terrain to represent the fact that the ground was of their choosing.
This was a standard 800 point battle with Stephen commanding the Lancastrians left with Charlotte acting as second in command on the right. Assisting me with the Yorkists, Tony F made a return to the field facing Charlottes forces while I took the field opposite Stephen.
This was the battlefield as setup by the Lancastrians. They formed their battles between two sets of walled fields with some marshland just in front to further impede movement. Their right was made up of a mix of archers and billmen, but on the left Stephen had formed up no less than four units of mounted men at arms, and two units of dismounted men at arms in the centre.
The Lancastrian right flank was protected by some archers, while on the left were two units of hand gunners using the walls as a fortified position.
Seeing the Lancastrian deployment, I took some bold choices with how the Yorkists would deploy.
I placed my mounted men at arms in the middle of the field since no Lancastrian flank was on offer. I also felt there was no point trying to face the mass mounted Lancastrian units. I was convinced Stephen had placed those there to perform a mass charge against my forces. I wanted to provoke the Lancastrians into moving rather than wait until my Yorkist forces had advanced between the two walled areas.
Fearing the Lancastrian mounted units I was determined not to leave my infantry behind the advancing archers. So used my commanders to keep the units moving. Although I had some men at arms and retinue billmen, the second line should it be needed were only militia billmen.
But the Lancastrian cavalry didn’t move and it was clear that they were waiting for the Yorkists to advance past the hand gunners in their protected position or to spend time trying to dislodge them.
Trying again to goad the Lancastrians out of position I advanced my mounted men at arms to within charge range, and suggested to Tony he should do the same out on our left flank.
Still no reaction from the Lancastrians cavalry, so I had no choice but to advance my archers and use a few bonus dice to get a speculative flight of arrows in against the mounted units.
And in a result that shocked everyone the archers volley managed to destroy the flower of Lancastrian nobility!
That got the Lancastrians moving but only piecemeal. Stephen sent a lone unit against some advancing men at arms, who managed to blunt the charge and hold up the cavalry.
But the Yorkists didn’t have it all their own way. Tony’s mounted men at arms suffered at the hands of the Lancastrian archers placed behind the marshland. Tony decided the best counter to the loss of the knights was to advance his archers and billmen and take the fight to the enemy, but took some early casualties from the Lancastrian archers.
With my cavalry in the middle of the field still threatening to charge, Stephen decided to advance both his units of dismounted knights. The activation dice where in my favour and although Stephen had stacked the bonus dice onto his men at arms, it was my cavalry unit that got to charge first, however they failed to destroy the men at arms and got bogged down into melee.
Having managed to destroy the first mounted unit sent against the Yorkist right flank, Stephen sent another into the fight, this time he also managed to get off a volley from the hand gunners but to no effect.
The clash in the centre of the field reached a climax with the destruction of the Yorkist cavalry but not before managing to take one of the Lancastrians dismounted men at arms with them.
Over on the Yorkist left flank, despite the Lancastrian archers favourable position behind the marsh, the rest of the Lancastrian line was starting to take casualties with Tony’s archers punching holes in their ranks.
On came the last of the Lancastrian mounted men at arms, but despite giving his cavalry a bonus dice the Yorkist men at arms again refused to budge and the two sides were locked in battle.
At this point the loses for the Lancastrians pushed them over their first morale check. The test saw a number of key Lancastrian units quit the field adding to their misery.
Over on the Lancastrian right flank Tony was still on the offensive. Having dispatched most of the enemy archers he was advancing his men at arms into the fray.
With one last desperate charge Stephen sent his billmen in against my archers. These were actually my Militia archers and I gave them all the dice I could spare for the fight. The militia took the most damage but it wasn’t quite enough to destroy either of the units.
The final stroke came when my men at arms finally got the better of the last Lancastrian cavalry which pushed them over their break point and handed victory to the Yorkists.
The Lancastrians were left scratching their heads at the end of the battle, asking for clues as to what went wrong. The difference in losses suggested a rout, despite their forces having started in a defensive position.
Maybe the Lancastrians can take heart while marching towards the Yorkists greatest defeat on the fields of Bosworth.
Yorkist Loses 2 Units of Mounted Men at Arms (8 points)
2 Units of Longbows (6 points)
1 Unit of Spearmen (4 points) Total loses 18 points (Army break point 46)
Lancastrian Loses
2 Units of Dismounted Men at Arms (8 points)
6 Units of Longbows (18 points)
4 Units of Mounted Men at Arms (16 points) Total loses 42 points (Army break point 40)
It’s Wednesday and we have a bumper crop of progress this week. Much of it because of our Open Day this Saturday.
First up Tony F has been painting up more scenery for the WW2 game he is running at the Open Day. Above we have an impressive looking statue and below a walled church.
Next up and Phil has been busy painting up the British opposition for the WW2 game. Here we have a batch of Cromwells to be painted.
And some Humber armoured cars.
A switch of genres now and Stephen has done some conversion work on a Hot Wheels truck to turn it into a hover vehicle. I believe this is for a future game of Xenos Rampant.
On more familiar grounds he has also painted up a certain Castilian hero of old.
Moving back to WW2 and Felix has been painting up a Sherman and Greyhound.
And in answer Mark J has painted up some Volksgrenadier’s.
Lastly for this week we have Marcus and some more scratchbuilt sci-fi terrain.
That’s it for this week, see you on the next Wednesday.
It’s Work in Progress Wednesday again and we start this week with a bumper crop from Eric. Above is a GW Necron flanked by some Harvesters from Wargames Atlantic.
Below are some side hustle objective markers, a monolith and broken robot.
Eric has also been painting up some scenery, this time some GW gothic sci-fi buildings.
Complete with customary skulls.
And lastly from Eric, he has painted up some crates and barrels to act as potential loot.
Now we turn to something from me, I’ve been painting up my 3mm sci-fi miniatures. I’m trying some Vallejo Xpress Color for the first time.
I didn’t paint over a white background but rather a base colour then applied the Vallejo Xpress Color. I’m quite pleased with the results, just need a bit of highlighting.
I’ve also been working on another tree unit for the Open Day, there will be 6 Ents forming the Wild Wood.
And sticking with the Open Day and Tony F has finished some buildings for his upcoming WW2 Open Day game.
I’ll let Tony explain what they are: “I’ve made a slightly random start – two S-Model Dingos for the recce troop and a Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) 25pdr and limber. I haven’t made any PSC kits before and was very impressed with these – they fit together perfectly and I had both built in 15 minutes.”
And Stephen has started on some terrain he is calling ‘Bad going’.
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