Manitou and Mech Scenarios

Not too much progress in the past couple of weeks as I was away again, but looking forward I should be at home a fair bit now so hopefully get some projects finished :)
I did manage to paint up some Kremlin miniatures Red Banner Manitou before I left, they came out ok but I was hoping for a more sinister finish, perhaps black helmets and a darker colour scheme overall may have done the job.


While away I was able to finish off a set of 5 Mech Scenarios that I have been working on to go alongside the Fubar Mech rules I have been playing with, they are lightweight scenarios loosely based on 90's arcade games....sounds a little goofy but I wanted some fast paced action and was trying out some different ideas. The scenarios could easily be adapted to another ruleset. The full set in pdf can be found here while the first scenario is below. Still on the scenario subject does anyone know any good map making software? I have been using inkscape to produce them but with little knowledge of it they are coming out pretty basic.

Scenario 1: Greased Pig Scientist

Background:

An unhinged genius from one of the big corporations has made a breakthrough in the development of a high performance chemical fuel that could be worth untold riches. The scientist and corporation are understandably cagey regarding the discover and information being leaked to the other big corporations…..which works well for you as they have paid a number of Mercenary teams to discretely enter the site and kidnap the scientist.
Which might be easier said than done!

Turns: 5

Recommended Forces:
As the Terrain layout is expected to be fairly dense the two teams should be made up of a small number of Mechs. I.e. three to each side to cover the centre and sides while the scientist runs wild and the Mechs try to take each other out.

Victory Conditions:
At the end of the 5th turn the player with a Mech within 2” of the scientist wins. If both players have a Mech within 2” then they draw. If neither player has a Mech within 2” of the scientist then they both lose and the scientist scarpers!

Special Rules:
The Scientist cannot be killed under any circumstances. On each players turn roll two different coloured D6, one for direction and one for his movement. Then move him in the direction indicated below. If the scientist reaches the table edge or another obstacle (buildings, trees, Mech) he immediately turns and moves in the opposite direction using any remaining moves.

15mm PMC Games building terrain review

Self made or never made....this is the way I have been working for quite a while now, building my own terrain, creating my own ruleset and even looking into sculpting my own miniatures but these all take time and unfortunately with travel commitments and other things I have found it hard to keep up with any of these, let alone painting!

So, I was on the lookout for some price friendly ready made buildings and terrain to fill in some gaps on my boards and just get me down to the gaming quicker. I had heard of PMC games before but had little luck finding them until I came across this ebay seller in the UK who appeared to be selling their terrain. I purchased 4 tunisian/arab 15mm ruined buildings from them for the great price of £7.99 including postage, they looked about right to fit in with some future desert worlds. The buildings took four days to arrive and were really well packed, they appear to be made from some type of hard plaster (lots of bubbling on the underside of the buildings) and come pre painted and textured. The painting is simple with details like doors etc blocked in, I might do a little bit more drybrushing on them but they can really just go straight on the board. The largest building has a removeable roof as seen in the pic below:


Overall I really like these buildings, the one negative point I would say is that they don't quite appear to be fully 15mm in scale, not sure if this is due to some shrinkage in the plaster when drying but the doors seem to only measure up to 12mm in height. It makes some models look pretty big but when you put this into perspective with troops expecting to be taller than the average human and some manufacturers playing loose with the 15mm scale it fits, once on the table it's not too noticeable.


To sum up I am really happy with the purchase, the price is great (£2 per building! which taking into account just how long it took me to make my own buildings is a bargain) and I will definitely be getting more as the quality was perfect for gaming with. I could fill a 2x2 board for under £30 with a mixture of the PMC games buildings, and I keep checking back with the seller I got them from as they keep adding new building sets and other terrain.

Mopping up and baking rulebooks

Well, with my Khurasan and oldglory orders still not arriving this week I spent the time catching up. I managed to base up all the Kremlin mini's from last week but I am waiting to before basing and spraying them. I have been using a plasti coat matt black but the coverage is pretty awful and I have to black coat everything twice, going back to Helfords matt black car spray which I got pretty used to in the past.

I still have a pile of Rebel Mini's Mechs to paint up but keep putting them off as I don't like painting vehicles....

....so I got stuck in to some mini's that have been in my box for a while, first up are some Cyborg Enslavers from 15mm.co.uk, they came free with an order I made a while back but I have not found a place to put them yet. The details are really soft on these and I was not too sure just how to paint them but they might fit in somewhere:

The other mini's I finished this week were a pack of GZG UNSC SAW Gunners, I had a go at speed painting these (all done in 2 hours including bases) by using base/wash/highlight and they look okish, alright for gaming on the table but not fantastic close up:

Elsewhere I received a copy of TooFatLardies Sharp Practice in print form, I dallied a while over whether to get a pdf copy but I figured I could never get a better quality printout (and I don't think I could get away with printing it out at work!), the book was a really nice gloss paper edition and I was glad I bought it..... until I dropped it in the bath!!!! bollocks! so then I baked it in the oven to dry it out......I now have a crinkly and crispy copy of the rulebook....lesson learnt. Only had a brief read through the rules but what I read inspired me to get the game to the table, the original idea was to get the terrible sharp sword supplement and game ACW but sharp Practice got me reading up on the Napoleonic Wars (of which I was VERY ignorant of) and I am keen to get hold of some miniatures and paint them up.

Which got me a little lost, when did 18mm become 15mm??? seems some of best 15mm Napoleonics are not 15mm at all such as Blue Moon, but they do look good. So I got a little lost as to where I was going to get some from but it looks like I might go for the Blue Moon mini's depending on how long it takes my last oldglory order to reach me. To be honest I weighed it up this way, just how many opponents was I likely to face with these? zip diddly....so I have to buy and paint up both sides which makes it a moot point if they are a little bigger than other 15mm models.

Work continues on the Fubar Mech Scenarios and the new rules ideas but at a slow pace, I only get an hour or two each night and cramming everything in takes time! Also I have to hit the road again next week so things will slow down again, but it's ok as I think I need a break between painting to keep things fresh. Also I have found a few wargaming groups near to me, within a 45 minute drive which might be worth getting in touch with....

Mechs, Buildings and oh my!

Another really productive week, managed to get the foam core buildings from last week painted up:

I sprayed them using a brown stone textured spray that went on ok, it did create some bubbling on the buildings but that died down once they were dry. To finish them I drybrushed on Graveyard earth, desert yellow followed by bleached bone, they look alright, a little brown maybe. Lesson learnt as well, spray the insides of the buildings black before starting the outsides otherwise the white really shows through the windows!

Painting wise I got a fair bit done this week, an Em4 miniatures plastic Mech ready to game with:

A squad of crusty heavy infantry:

and a couple of oddities:

The last two are the controller from the 15mm SHM range and a little familiar from GW's Huron Blackheart kit (I have a few of these from repeatedly being sent failed casts from the finecast range, in the end they were never able to deliver a complete kit, but that's another story...), he looked like he would fit right in somewhere in 15mm :).

Elsewhere I managed to spend a night play testing Fubar Mech:

.... and it never really hung together very well so i've made some more changes to try and streamline the rules and hopefully make it more fun to play.

I managed to order those mini's I mentioned last week, still waiting for a few packs to arrive to get stuck in and sods law I go and order from Khurasan only for them to release a huge number of new releases a few days after!! ah well, just going to have to juggle a few buys and hide the packets coming through the post from my wife...

What did arrive today though was my order from Kremlin miniatures, had a mail a couple of days ago from Russ that they had been cast and were ready to ship and here they are:

I'm really impressed with the detail on these, I initially dismissed them a while back after seeing the pics on the site but i'm so glad I ordered as I can't wait to get these based and on the table.

Rule-wise this week I am still very slowly sketching out the ideas I had for a new rule set that will fill a bit of a niche, it's getting there and I should have something to show in a month, hopefully.

Still working on the Gruntz cards too, particularly the Specialists.

With all that I did this week I will be easing off a little over the next couple of weeks, I can feel the strain when trying to commit to painting/doing so much and it feels like i'm spreading myself a little thin so with a weeks holiday coming up I am going to sit back and relax and probably read through a rule book or two. That does sound a little odd, relaxing by reading through some stringent rulebooks? but I think that's the steady niche of nerd i've been easing myself in to for a while now, you see I am just fascinated with the whole concept of GAME. How people can present concepts in boardgames and role play and wargames whether they are abstract or really marry to the theme that's being played out, it's these play mechanics and different ways of thinking that repeatedly surprise me and drive me onwards to turn my own thoughts into some written form that someone can read as a schematic and then just GAME with......

Easing back in

Really hectic last couple of weeks with travelling and an unbelievably stressful work week this week (had to put some 12 hour days as well) have taken a big bite out of any scheduled time I had to get cracking hobby wise, although I still found the odd hour to get a few bits done....in between I managed to paint up a couple of GZG Cyclops Heavy Battlesuits, went for a slightly different colour scheme with these and played with some lighter yellows/browns, yellows being a colour I have shied away from due to the paints i've used being very watery but I used a foundation paint with looked pretty good. Looking at the pics blown up though I really need to water down some of the paints as it's looking a little heavy handed.

I popped into the range to pick up some household bits last weekend and was surprised to Foam Core boards for sale! I've been checking on their website but never found it. Picked up 5 A3 boards for £7.99 and just went for it, no major scale measurements just went for roughly 2.80 cm per floor and went a building. I made up three north African/Tunisian esque builds that I figured could be used in a host of scenarios/eras, I managed to pollyfilla the cracks today and should sand them down and texture spray them tomorrow:

While I was travelling I took the gruntz sheets with me and started sketching out the stats for the mini's in my collection, i've started making the profile cards up and putting the jpegs on the Gruntz forum here, the pdf I was creating were really crisp but they are coming in around 8megs so i'll have to see if I can make them smaller.

Elsewhere I got lost in flights of fantasy, I have been meaning to playtest the Fubar Mech rules once a few mini's were painted and to even get a few games of Fubar in but time has not been on my side, perhaps next week....also while I was away I took my notebook and outlines for a new ruleset/background I wanted to work on having had a large number of ideas sketched out I want to get some structure in place but again once back in my room I just needed to crash. :( I will get my ass in gear and get this ALL done next week! (note to self).

Having bought a pile of miniatures back before last December the idea was to get them all painted before buying any more and I cannot stress how hard this has been! There is SO much quality being released in 15mm at the moment and so fast it's hard to keep up, so I am going to have to focus and expand on what I already have. Looking at the Cultists I was trying to find an APC/Tank that would really suit the theme and came across these fench WW1 tanks from Blue Moon via old glory in the uk:

I think with a little conversion work these would make some great Cultist Steampunk APC/Tanks. To lead them it has to be Comrade Vortan from Kremlin miniatures with some armoured support via the Cyberian Death commandos, but they also need some kind of big hitters i.e a mega construction of the disciples....mm I do have a few dollars in paypal for my first Khurasan order. :)

There's also been this scratch I have been wanting to itch for a while, I having a passing interest in the ACW and have been recently reading/learning the history so want to explore the wargaming side, only it's a little awkward. I don't feel I know the history enough to do full scale or even the painting schemes justice but I want to get stuck in and since no one has published "Wargaming: for people who don't know much about history but like the cool uniforms and the loud guns." I thought I would start on the small skirmish level. The 15mm.co.uk potomac mini's caught my eye a while back (a nice paint job goes a long way) so might be a good start, rule wise I have been edging towards getting Too Fat Lardies Terrible Sharp Sword along with the original sharp Practice rules. Seems a bit of a pain in the ass having to buy both to get the full rules but hey. I was looking at Fire and Fury Regimental, but with the International postage/import tax/UK postage handling charge etc it's a bit too much to ask just to tip my toe in.

Coming up I am tempted to visit my FIRST wargames show! Exeter Legionary show 2012 is on May 5th (I think, they've neglected to put the date on the actual show site...) and there are a few interesting traders going, be good to see Angel Barracks and the 6mm mini's in person. It's a long shot i'll be able to make it but you never know :)

Anyway, feel like i'm just brain dumping now so best to sign off. Probably best to try and update a more regularly that one big weaving conversation, :/ Cya's.

Into the Heart of things

Right, i'm getting to the point now where I have based up all my minis and have painted quite a few, got some terrain made up etc but i'm at a bit of a crossroads as to where to head of to next? Do I keep painting up war-bands for skirmish or start to pull in new elements and begin building up some forces for larger scale combats..I think i'm going to start pulling in some more troops and armour to match up with what I've already painted up and to hopefully start to get some cohesive paint schemes together.

Terrain wise I still need plenty more! I realized what I was missing during my last game and that's some kind of sense of height/verticle perspective with buildings etc, I want to start off with a north African or mudisley esque set of buildings so this week I have been researching these from buying pre painted through to casting my own.

Painting this week has been pretty good, managed to finish off all the GZG Mercenaries, love these sculpts so painting them was no chore. I think i'm going to use these at a couple of squads of Guln/Nerg for Gruntz as they fit the fluff pretty well. Definitely going to pick up the other Mercenary pack GZG sell as well to bolster this lot up.

To paint these I used the following for the basecoat (over black spray):

Skin: Enchanted Blue

Boots: Scorched Brown

Armour: Boltgun Metal

Leather: Bestial Brown

Trousers: Adeptus Battlegrey

Then washed the skin using Leviathan Purple and the rest of the model with Devlan Mud.

To highlight I mixed some bleached bone with the base colours and used some Mithril silver for the armour plates.

It's a pretty basic scheme but it was fairly quick to paint and I think it looks pretty effective, if I was going to change anything I wouldn't have used quite such a heavy mud wash on them as they dried quite dark.

Had a bit of a bargain turn up in the post this week from ebay :

A mixture of 12 Tom CATS and Wild CATS along with 16 Bio Soldiers from Rebel Minis, they need a little bit of work and I have started to re-base them but they should provide a substantial force! :)

Also this week to stop me getting too drained with the painting I got a bit of time to update the Fubar Mech one page rules with a few small changes such as:

- removed the mount points limits.
- removed limit on jump packs.
- Added restriction to Evasive actions for Heavy Mechs.
- Added some additional modifiers to the Damage charts depending on Mech class.
- Edited the layout of the document to provide more space for further work.

With some great input from Chris from the Basement Gaming Bunker (these changes were his ideas and I agree they fit well), the latest version can be found here. Hoping to get some play testing on this under way in the next few weeks once I have finished painting up some of these Mechs on my table.

Got cracking making some new pics of my mini's ready to create some cards for Gruntz, I used Gimp to format the images and then Inkscape to read in the PDF templates and alter the details. Looking pretty good so far, will get these printed/carded and ready to roll soon. :)

All in all a fairly productive week, got some travelling to do next week but it's pay day as well so I am eyeing up some big hitters! Enjoy. :)

This weeks show is sponsored by the color red.

Really productive this week! the cold weather still meant I can't get to the garage but...I created a super small paint tray out of an old place mat and brought my lamp up to sit on the edge of the sofa and hey presto, way more time to get painting. My pics are a little dark this week at I took my mini's down to the garage where my photo setup was only to discover it had vanished! My father in law had mistaken my empty box light box as an empty box and had promptly folded it up and thrown it away, apparently he did find it odd that a lamp was poking inside it....

On the left is one of the Chronotopia mechs I picked up earlier that I want to use as a droid attachment for skirmish games, the other two are EM4 miniature plastic Mechs, the green one I am a little unsure about, I like the scheme but I think it needs a spot color somewhere? .I got a box of 5 for £2.50 and to be honest they are great, once based and painted they look good on the table. I based them on two penny pieces to give them more weight and I have no complaints with any soft details etc, they look good after a coat and wash.

A couple of the Mechs I finished a few weeks ago but this week I managed to paint up 20 15mm.co.uk cultists, painting them all in one go in a kind of production line I was able to get them all finished for the tabletop pretty quick but still need to do some extra details to single out leaders. Really like these, the sculpts have just enough detail (some of the hands and feet are a little flat) but are still easy to paint.

These pics made me realize that i'm probably using way too much red in my minis, so hands off it for a while. I'm painting up some GZG Mercenary aliens at the mo so plenty of blue :).

I also bought and printed a copy of the Gruntz rules this week, really liking what i've read so far and I'm planning to get a few plays in before reviewing it fully but in the meantime it has got me in the mood for some armour so i'm scouting to pick up some sci fi tank minis. :)