[Idle Doodler]

Yeah, the Blood Red speed paint is a favourite – strikes the right balance of vibrant colour without losing any of the layers underneath.

Runic Grey speed paint has also become one I regularly reach for, though it’s pretty underwhelming as a grey layer over white/zenithal. It does, however, work really nicely over silver. It shades enough around the detail without obscuring the metallic, and seems to offset the loss of shine when everything’s covered in matt varnish.

[Idle Doodler]

Also painted up some Unity Enforcers:

[Idle Doodler]

Cheers, folks!

Ran through Campaign Turn 2 – relatively quick what with it just being a fight to escape the invaded planet. A write up can be found here, but here are the pictures:

 

[Idle Doodler]

Oh, yes – 5 Parsecs does have rules for invasions. I’d just never needed them before, and had completely overlooked them when creating my custom rulebook

[Idle Doodler]

Funnily enough I’ve managed to go six or seven campaigns without every rolling up an invasion. Found myself scrabbling for Invasion Battle rules

[Idle Doodler]

Played with the crew above, left the journal unused while just using some printed crew and ship sheets to note progress, and ran out of steam after four missions.

So rolled up a new crew, and this time am actually putting in a bit more effort to record things down in an old exercise book we unearthed from storage. Ended up with a pair of Bounty Hunters and their Bot picking up a Hopeful Rookie from a planet under threat of invasion.

Their first job was an Eliminate mission with an extra Priority Target, which suited the bounty hunting theme nicely.

Pictures are below; if you’re interested in a written account of the hunt, you can find it here.

 

 

[Idle Doodler]

Did some quick nefarious zealots for 5 Parsecs’ various religious and/or secretive organisations, little more than a drybrush then coating of speed / contrast paints. Didn’t want to find myself procrastinating over them as long as I did with the bots.

[Idle Doodler]

I’d say in fairness to Nordic Weasel that the rules for playing the tabletop game itself occupy a pretty small page count. My quick reference doc for use at the table (primarily because I never grok rules until I’ve written them out in my own words) is a spread of two A5 sheets in a comfortably large font. And in fact looking back through the rulebook the ‘official’ quick reference fits very comfortably onto an A4 page with an illustration and loads of white space.

The flicking backwards and forwards are for the campaign elements which are what I view as the real strength of these 5 X from Y rulesets (if I could get myself to map the many tables onto the Legends of the Old West mechanics, I can’t see myself needing much else for sci fi gaming going forward). The campaign procedure for the core game requires relatively little flicking to multiple pages – it works pretty well as a step-by-step process. It’s just my greed and wish to fit in all the little extras that introduces the inefficiency. If only Ivan would stop promising new things…

[Idle Doodler]

Confession: I’ve yet to actually play the campaign with the aforeposted crew.

Resolution: I will play the campaign with the aforeposted crew before Planetfall comes out and distracts me further.

In the meantime, I slowly slogged my way through some unarmed androids to stand in for both war and non-war bots. It seems that tackling any non-human, even though humanoid, conjures the same feeling as when I try painting horses and vehicles: it’s just not my thing.

madman wrote:

If this is the expansion which adds more “cinematic feel” to the game do some serious thinking. I have been following a discussion on board game geek in which a guy asked others opinions (I seconded that for myself). Those with definite thoughts feel it slows the flow of the play down very badly . Those who have not but have considerations (such as the original poster) seem to be talking themselves into similar conclusions. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3194907/five-parsecs-home-original-vs-dramatic-combat-rule

I think that may have been the first expansion which came out. I do use the Dramatic Weapons option since it distinguishes a bit more between short and long range fire. I also use the Duck Back option because it feels nice to have the target respond to being fired at (though I prefer the Pulp Alley option between returning fire or hunkering down), but I use it after a character has been fired at rather than at the end of a phase. Allows for more tactical shooting.

Lunge is one I haven’t ever implemented fully. I don’t know why I forget it and not Duck Back, but I do. I do, however, use house ruled combat which protects melee characters a bit more from ranged weapons: essentially, it’s from GW’s Lord of the Rings where the combat round happens at the end of the turn, and once a miniature is engaged in melee combat it can no longer be targeted in shooting.

The one I’d recently got was the expansion which gives options for faction play and stealth scenarios and the like. Fun, but we’re definitely getting to the stage where I’ve got to flick between too many different books and pages even outside of gameplay. I usually type up my own reference sheets to alleviate this, but haven’t yet incorporated all of the expansion additions.

[Idle Doodler]

Success, at long last! We’d had the refund shown as pending in our account for about two weeks; presumably he needed to sign off on it.

Good luck to him on the business going forward, but I don’t think I’ll be taking him up on the offer of 50% the next order.

[Idle Doodler]

I’ve got a brand new notebook ‘specially for it

Though Ivan has thrown a spanner in the works with a new expansion which, of course, must be tried out, and with expendable crews only…

[Idle Doodler]

Don’t usually paint mins for a specific scenario in mind, so decided to switch things up a little and rolled up a 5 Parsecs crew and rummaged around for some suitable figures from the pile accumulated from various webstores and ebay job lots.

Of course, the minis themselves were fun to paint and didn’t take much time at all, but the simple basecoat and drybrush for the bases took weeks…

With just the one pistol and two close-combat weapons between them, they’ll be looking to keep well clear of their opponents.

[Idle Doodler]

Back from some remote cat sitting, and still no sign (though I did get a refund from the train company within 48 hours for a delayed arrival, so it can happen!). What was the nature of your comments on his posts? I might have to go down that route.

[Idle Doodler]

Certainly not the first time it’s happened, and I’m glad it’s not involving minis I’m desperate for – primarily duplicates, though I suspect they’re accompanied by some minis from Alternative Armies and other manufactures (I’m sure there’s a multitude of female photographers in there whose manufacturer I’ve not found) from an ebay job lot. I look forward to rediscovering them, though I can’t think where I haven’t looked around my hobby desk and there’s a slight chance they got lumped into storage, and I haven’t the heart to tackle that Big Yellow box any time soon…

Andrew Beasley wrote:

Congrats on the progress – I have two figure bases to do and keep putting them off! If I leave them till I have a few more figures to do and I feel its worth getting all the bits out I’m then faced with a pile and less liable to do them… Maybe I should try putting rugby on?

I seem incapable of making small batches of terrain mix, so it feels wasteful not to have a sizeable number of minis to do at once. But, by golly, it’s a tedious process. I’ve some mix left, and a gang of Copplestone barbarians which one of my D&D players painted up for me which I’ve prepped for basing, but I can’t face tackling them after these fellows.

After four excellent quarter finals and some time making use of my Nebula subscription, though, I just about got the minis all based in time for an upcoming house sitting fortnight. If the painting mood takes me I may give them a drybrush and colour the rims (and touch up some more chipped paintwork the process revealed). Otherwise I’ll be quite happy gaming with them. Just couldn’t face those bare metal base edges on the travel board!

I’ll seal the terrain mix up and see if it’s still usable when we get back.

[Idle Doodler]

Unfortunately still waiting for the refund too. It’s a shame that the people losing out seems to have been the ones giving him the benefit of the doubt over shipping issues and health.

It’s taking quite a bit of figurative tongue-biting to keep the largely one-way correspondence courteous, especially when the (still unfulfilled) promise of a refund came with an offer of a discount to reorder the items “when they do arrive” and “which are expected soon”. They’re still available on the website with a note that they’re hoping to be in stock again from June 2023…

[Idle Doodler]

Regrettably I too have left some of my GZG minis in storage for too long – more specificably the duplicate civilians and ravagers are stashed away somewhere very safe, too safe for me to know where. In my wisdom, I evidently decided to separate them from the rest of the reserves…

Sluggish pace on the basing. Got some done across the two rugby matches yesterday. Here’s hoping the basing mix is still good for today’s quarter finals.

[Idle Doodler]

Logain wrote:

That looks like the original pack of snake men in Critical Mass’ line of Mercenaries. They were so popular a few of them were made into separate full lines – but Ral still has the first sets in with the mercs.

Ah, great – I thought I’d seen them on the site. Just hadn’t scrolled through enough of the merc line.

ian pillay wrote:

That’s a cracking painted collection of 15mm goodness. I like the silver cybermen looking guys and the SG1 team. where are those tins from?

Thanks! Tins just came from Amazon. They’ve withstood pretty well being crammed into any available luggage space and, speaking as someone who’s sworn off borrowing other folks’ books for fear of property damage, if they can survive my hamfisted packing, they’re pretty well made!

[Idle Doodler]

It takes a lot for me to get over my sheer distaste for basing, but yeah, not having to cover up the chips and scratches from a journey will fall under that umbrella.

My 6mm stuff has yet to require any paint reapplication despite suffering the whims of public transport. These tins are just wonderful and, with 21mm depth, can accommodate most of my 15mm minis. Any particularly tall ones should be able to clip to the sides instead.

[Idle Doodler]

Thanks!

The majority of them are Ground Zero Games (the Crusties and all the humans/bots, largely from the civilian and human characters lists) but a few are from an ebay job lot. The first three alien photos come from Alternative Armies. I thought the snakemen were from Ral Partha but having just looked to check, the minis look quite different. Maybe they’ve updated their Critical Mass range? If not, I’ve no idea where they’re from!

[Idle Doodler]

I miss the days of working in an office with ready access to a Xerox printer.

Lacking a binding machine, and not having much in the way of space to have one of my own, I often use these clips and a hole punch. Three or four to a book/booklet usually works well enough. They’re not the hardiest solution if they face any challenge to their structure other than lying in a neat pile, but they work for rules with a few too many pages to work for staples, and they lie nice and flat in the middle of a game.

I also like display books. They require a bit more effort to slip pages into the plastic sleeves (and it’s very easy to miss a sleeve and have to undo a lot of previously slipped sheets) but they’re very durable, and make flipping between pages a doddle during gameplay.

[Idle Doodler]

Many thanks, Paul – I finally heard from him on Facebook on Thursday saying he’d refund. I’m waiting to see if the money came through

[Idle Doodler]

Oh, thank you – much obliged!

[Idle Doodler]

Which method did he eventually respond to? I’m in a similar boat with an order from December last year, got one email in June promising further correspondence and nothing in response to my queries either side of that. I can see that he’s updating Instagram and Facebook very regularly (am not particularly happy at having to resort to the latter after a decade of ignoring it). I’m just trying to get the money refunded – not fussed about the minis anymore.

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