[Spurious]

The Orks pretty much always get the worst of it in that scenario; they’re a good amount of points lower than the marines even before the defensive terrain advantage. I think a recommended fix is add something like a dreadnought for the Orks or a couple of buggies?

[Spurious]

I’ve had a few attempts at building terrain which allowed for changing it up during play:

In 6mm stuff I did a bunch of woods by using clump foliage on felt, and then had a second felt layer underneath with just flock on it for a woodland base, so that rather than trying to place troops in the otherwise awkward blobs you could just remove the lumpy layer. Also did orchards via individual trees glued on a stirring stick with tiny magnets on it/the base so an entire row could just be popped off. In 28mm I’ve built a load of urban terrain that was designed to easily come apart and slot back together. Windows at good heights, plenty of useful cover, big enough spaces to place stuff. People usually just stuck stuff on top or avoided moving into closed buildings anyway to avoid disassembling stuff.

Also as sort of related tangent; a lot of games are bad at letting you use verticality (or it becomes too much of an advantage due to various factors) so anything over a couple of levels above the ground often goes to waste, so it’s probably fine building intact buildings as completely open single level things instead of worrying about removable parts. Or just blocking off access to lower levels that would otherwise go unused and having an open top that can be accessed without removing anything.

 

[Spurious]

It’s interesting how much IGOUGO systems vary in how clunky they can feel, and how susceptible they are to other influences on the process. Looking at the Warhammer 40k (3rd edition onward though I hear they’re now on an alternating activation system), a lot of editions had a problem where it’s entirely possible for one side to gain a critical advantage in the very first turn, due to nothing being able to prevent one player just blasting half the other’s army off the table. Similar could happen with Warhammer Fantasy with both shooting and magic if either were overloaded on, and then the problem with both that due to the complexity of the rules (or at least the plethora of special circumstance stuff to track) turns could be very long to resolve, with a lot of gradually moving units and rolls after rolls after rolls to resolve stuff so the classic problem is the other player sitting there doing nout but rolling saves and removing casualties for large amounts of time.
But then one of my favourite systems, A Fistful of TOWs, also is IGOUGO but streamlined mechanics means it is actually possible to be alternating every 15 minutes, and it’s got plenty of stages that involve both players; units on overwatch for one (which can also involve movement) and then simultainious exchanges of fire for regular shooting and close combat stuff. Plus you’re encouraged to make use of enough terrain that not everything is always going to be attacking. That’s probably worth an essay all on it’s own – terrain and how it affects the game’s pace.

Going back to my own faffing about with trying to design a thing:

I think in the case of my system given it’s not got a lot going on in the ranged attacks department until units are close, an IGOUGO system would be somewhat tedious. There’s not really the place for quick reactions to things, and a lot of what goes on is simply moving units and attempting to get decent positioning on what’s likely to be quite lumpy terrain. So a faster, chaotic alternating by groups mechanic seems warrented.
In this case I think I will go with a system of drawing cards; namely each group commander should be marked on a card (could use their banner or just a colour or number) and then that can be put into a small deck, and when drawn that unit goes. But to make things interesting the deck could be bulked out with a few other event or even non-event cards. I think Sharp Practice and other systems by those authors do something like this (I have played it once but it was years ago)?
I could also try throwing in cards based on commander traits, like if there is an impetuous commander, maybe they get more cards in the deck to give them a better chance of acting quicker. Or if a commander is disloyal, they might be subject to all sorts of events that would cover them delaying action or only half-comitting to it, like reshuffling their card back into the deck when first drawn.
As for units in reserve or attempting a flank move, since I wouldn’t want them guarenteed to come on in the first turn, maybe having them pass some amount of command tests before they can act would be appropriate? That’d be roll an arbitrary amount of successes as compared to their rating (somewhere around 1 to 6), so that poor commanders shouldn’t be sent on flanking moves because they’ll need more turns to generate the required amount of successes to get on the board.

 

[Spurious]

Andrew Beasley wrote:

I’ve become enamoured of the dice bag / chit style.

I went into this somewhat biased against them but the amount of options you have to mix things up with adding in things that are not simply a unit activates token has swung me quite a lot in their favour for possibilities.

John D Salt wrote:

One rather obvious option that has not yet been mentioned is simultaneous movement.

I think it’s lack of popularity over the past couple of decades or so was why it completely passed me by as an option; I’ve simply not encountered it except in reference. Thinking of OODA loops, I did rather enjoy the game Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm which did have a major mechanic in the time lag between when you get to make commands plus lag for implementation. It certainly provides for a significant amount of tension in wondering if you made the correct choices before seeing them play out, and required a significant amount of planning before even hitting the start button. Also interesting was that it was asymetric so each side was operating on different turn lengths, which could vary significantly depending on conditions during the battle (especially losses in command units). I’ve seen the developers run it on tabletop so despite complexity doesn’t explicitly require a computer to manage all the factors to make it playable. Though it might help.

[Spurious]

Mike wrote:

I actually don’t mind traditional IGOUGO, as often when one player is not going, they can nip out and put the kettle on, or pop to the loo etc.

zippyfusenet wrote:

Ima agree with Mike, and add that some further advantages to IGOUGO turn structure are: [cut for brevity]

These are valid but don’t really apply for me. Large multiplayer games with time for any of that are not a luxury I’ve ever been afforded.

Darkest Star Games wrote:

I’m not a fan of pure IGOUGO, especially if the rules work where one side can lose a lot of his force before they can even participate in the game.

This tends to be a case with games where long range shooting attacks are more of a thing rather than where the back and forth of melee decides things, or ones that allow for a player to have two turns in a row (checking for initiative every turn types). I hate that too. It’s frustrating more than fun unless combined with a lot of reactions (like Force on Force) which I am not sure are appropriate for something partilarly large in scale.
The impulses system is one I forgot, unfortunately I associate it with Star Fleet Battles ugh. It would provide for some interesting alternation at the cost of a bunch of extra dice rolls and tracking. Still, not necesserily more so than some other options. And lends itself well to flavourful modifiers (impetuous leaders getting a bonus, cautions ones getting a malus and that kind of thing). Definitely going in the pile for consideration.

Sane Max wrote:

Neil Thomas makes a good point about IGUGO – that if you read a battle history, it’s always “Von Potater did THIS…. Du Plessiosaur did THAT…..But Von Tempi’s Hussars did THIS so De Iceur’s Dragooons did THAT….” IGOUGO rather neatly reflects this act-react process.

To me that just reads like alternating activations per unit :p

Phil Dutré wrote:

I feel that a classic IGO-UGO is more suited for large-scale games, with both movement and combat being more gradual, almost attrition-like. Unit-based activation is more suited for skirmish actions, in which you want sudden burst of activity on this side of the table, before zooming in on the other side etc.

Interresting, classic igougo (without some kind of limitation on control/actions) doesn’t feel like large scale battles to me as it’s more of a something continually happens with everything, where as from my readings historical battles have a large amount of not a lot going on and then there is a zoom in moment with decisive or at least attempts at decicive action.

[Spurious]

Those are some good rules changes. I do in particular rather like the removal of the always strikes last and the bonus for handweapon and shield to armour saves. The latter made it basically pointless to take anything like spears for low weaponskill/attacks units as they were just better not dying and counting numbers and rank bonus. The tweaks to magic and the effects of fear causing units is also very welcome, I remember many a frustration with all the things those cover. Adding some theme rules to armies is also quite nice, since it’s an army list based game having a little extra character input there is good. This is the kind of thing I wish 7th edition had tweaked.

Could do with adding the generic Dogs of War list though. There were some good takes on improving that back in the day as well with themed lists for different localities.
I am going to have to question the absurdly high WS/BS skills of elves though, what’s up with that?

To go even further (and more drastically mess with things so probably much further than you intend) I do wonder if the game would be improved by stealing heavily from 3rd edition and removing the attachment of strength to armour save modifier (and save modifier being more weapon-based or if suitably monstrous, giving some good reason for certain magic items and bringing some monsters) and purely attaching strength to the ‘to wound’ roll. Especially with 1+ saves largely out of the way. Save bloat in such a case could also be helped by removing the basic 6+ for being mounted.
This is largely because there’s a huge capability increase from strength 4 troops against typical toughness 3, 5+ save troops, especially as that ramps up with additional attacks and weapon skill, that was kinda at the core of problems of units being there to either fill a space and generate combat resolution points via numbers and stuff and units that actually did fighting for their victory. For example there was no point taking halberdiers in the Empire army as they couldn’t inflict enough casualties due to low skill and attacks, and would always take a lot of casualties, yet they were supposedly the core of the Empire’s military. Swordsmen though with WS4 and a 4+ save would generally do no damage but take few casualties, and spearmen were a mediocre in-between only really worth it going up against other strength 3/toughness 3 armies (and even there it was still largely better to just stick with the swordsmen).

[Spurious]

Well there’s a damned shame, always enjoyed working with their stuff. Was a cut above the competition for the longest time too.

[Spurious]

They do have hardwood hafts with a bamboo laminate over the top. I suspect that might help in the case that it’s difficult to get hold of suitable single lengths of hardwood (since growing straight and tall Ash was a huge industry over in Europe for the few places that could reliably do it), or to simply lighten the overall construction. There’s also short bladed heads, down to about 16cm. IIRC those are the ones mostly going to the ashigaru at least in the mid-1500s onward, cheaper to make, less fuss to train to use.

Re-checking more into Impetus 2’s way of doing it, the main difference between pike and longspear mechanically in it is that pike gets more bonus from large units, and does worse on Broken Ground. Otherwise they both do basically the same thing. And since they didn’t go forming massive, deep blocks of pike infantry over in Japan…
After all that I think in this case it may well be fair to call basically any ashigaru with yari of any length as longspear units entirely due to their battlefield role of being up front with the big pokey sticks. And then samurai on foot with them can be polearms still, suiting their breaking into a disrupted formation and taking heads role.

[Spurious]

Guy Farrish wrote:

What do you reckon Ashigaru were typically armed with in this period? Bows? Naginata had pretty much disappeared by then hadn’t they? Disappearing more or less as Ashigaru came in? And as you say, having units of bow armed Samurai at this period seems just wrong I suspect you’re going to have to spend a lot of time persuading people the lists ain’t right. Or play solo. :^)

Ashigaru throughout this period are largely using the yari and then the nagae-yari which is basically the same but longer. Naginata were more in the domain of Samurai at this point but even there the yari held more favour. There are a whole bunch of ashigaru still working as archers and they’re gradually but not fully replaced by guns up to a ratio of about 4 guns to 1 archer by the end of the timeframe (more or less, depends on the usual array of qualifiers). Though that really only gets going from about the 1560s on, really more like the 1580s and the invasion of Korea is where they went big on them, even though there’s records of firearms even back to 1467. Took a while to get a type that worked good and get around that whole how to make use of them without the user just getting shot/stabbed whilst they’re reloading thing. They keep the bows though to help solve that by providing covering fire for the guns whilst they reload, as well as some measure against the curse of damp powder.

Samurai, well, technically they can use whatever they want, and might well change armament during the course of a battle since they’re invariably accompanied by various retainers. But the use of the bow by them was becoming increasingly out of fashion, at least in field use despite it still being very much considered part of the skill set. Whole units is definitely out. Same with samurai with guns, they’re definitely in there with some notable figures using them, but not really in any amount worth dedicating entire units to outside of a small skirmish game.

[Spurious]

Not Connard Sage wrote:

The BI2 lists in general don’t work for me outside the ‘classic’ ancients. I haven’t really examined any other lists in Warbook 3, but the Kamakura, Muromachi and Sengoku Japanese are a bit off. Ashigaru of the period weren’t typically armed with long yari, but the options mean they make up the bulk of the foot troops.

If you mean the earlier ashigaru types then yes, not long spear or longer but the 5+ meter nagae yari of the 1570s+ says otherwise. That they were making them so long is peculiar in and of itself. But given the lists cover such a broad timespan with little structure… eh I really think it’d benefit from being split into at the very least 1467-1540s/1550s-80s/1580s+ to account for the shift in trends.

Not Connard Sage wrote:

And I’m sorry, but missile foot weren’t used mainly as skirmishers, the large bodies of formed foot with bow/arquebus in Japanese prints give a clue. I’m not sure samurai could be FL, given how their armour had evolved and the way they fought, but calling them FP isn’t correct either and there isn’t a medium foot classification in the rules.

The prints give a clue but the writings generally describe the missile troops not forming blocks for volleys as a European equivalent might, but being formed of multiple small groups, engaging in targeting individuals at short range, operating in front of the main infantry body then moving out to the sides as the formations closed and then continuing to harass from the sidelines. There’s some occasions where they might fit being deployed as a T type unit, but that’s mainly when holding a defensive position like a barricade or fortification.

I think samurai are counted as FL as it allows for them more freely to make use of interpenetration rules. Or maybe it’s just because they’re counting them akin to early warband stuff in that they’re equipped as heavy infantry but don’t operate in ordered formations, minus the impetuous bit that warbands get? I dunno, maybe they just read a couple of Osprey books that were probably already a decade+ old before they made 1st edition back in 2008 and called it good then 😛

[Spurious]

Not surprised the list isn’t exactly up-to-date, the Basic Impetus 2 list wasn’t either. I made a few stabs at a fix for that but got distracted writing my own system instead, as you do 😛

BI’s problem with the mid-1500s onward list was that for some reason there were 3 units of gunners and only 1 unit of Yari infantry. Also VBU 7 Impetus 4 heavy cavalry. In tweaking I was leaning towards VBU 6 I 3 medium cavalry (since high impetus heavy cavalry in the game really seems to generally be the domain of very armored, usually lance-equipped people in chunky formations), about 4 or 5 units of yari ashigaru, 2 samurai on foot, and all bows and guns being skirmishers. I was also leaning towards the yari ashigaru being changed to VBU4 Pike with no Large Unit option to distinguish them from earlier shorter yari equipped units without them turning into just a typical pike block.

[Spurious]

John D Salt wrote:

As a general rule, casualties happen because of morale failures, rather than morale failures happening because of casualties. The idea that morale breaks because of some specific number of casualties is a wargamerism of long standing, backed by practically no historical evidence.

This was actually a thing that really bothered me, all this reading of battles and finding that casualties are commonly only single digit percentages before units break lead me to looking into how to represent deterioration of combat ability of these large units through other methods.

Jim Webster wrote:

With a unit like you describe, 300-800 samurai, retainers and ashigaru, I’d suggest that going forward would be based on the morale of the Samurai. Similarly when firing and the early part of a fight, the presence of the Samurai should bolster the morale so that the troops perform to their best.

My bad; I should have covered that this is a single combined arms unit, a combination of pikemen, archers& gunners and with samurai as both heavy infantry and cavalry in small groupings within that. Command is typically from the center of the formation. There’s not much in the way of tracking individual components beyond rating if there’s more or less of them than an expected average.

Which rambling sort of leads me to a thought:
Are morale effects highly dependent on when the disruption is received? As in is it worth separating out the effects of casualties and disruption from missile attacks from those during a close combat engagement?
I suspect that shooting alone won’t break a unit (at such a point in time that I’m working on anyway) unless there’s some fairly extreme circumstances involved such as the unit under attack being trapped in a position where it can’t fight back, but close combat reliably should see one side break and run eventually.
Or is this a case of perhaps less of the immediate effects and rather the potential of  reorganization following the event, where there’s space and time to do so (potentially) when under missile attack versus the shock action of a unit in close combat?

 

[Spurious]

I still contest Epic Armageddon is the best written wargame GW ever released. It’s a gigantic improvement over the previous edition, which suffered from mechanics that work far better at a higher level of command than one where you’re still pushing about individual tanks and teams.

But EA brought back a suitable level of detail, kept it clean and quick, kept the good stuff like the blast markers (I dunno if Epic 40k was the first to do it but making a suppression marker an explosion is absolute genius move for giving a clear and involving interface for the battlefield). And even the basic scenario was smart, giving the players multiple paths to victory through different methods, so you could adapt given the armies in use.

[Spurious]

A few other things came up when we were playing around in a purely vehicle based game with 5 Ork buggies facing off against 6 Imperial Guard Sentinels.

Light vehicle rammed a walker; does this count as close combat? Can either side still shoot?

What we went with: The vehicle counted for moving quickly for the purposes of the gunner who we figured could still shoot, but as it supposedly halts when contacting we figured that it didn’t count for the can’t assault a vehicle moving quickly thing (not that the assaulting a vehicle specifies Walkers can, so I guess we made that call too).

Another thing was a driver got shot out of their buggy, the rules say it crashes automatically but we were not sure when since it already moved, if it should be immediately or in its next move.
What we did: randomised on its next move if it went forward and then crashed or stopped where it was. Result was that the buggy drove forward, hit terrain anyway, got thrown backwards and the remaining gunner was hurled out towards the Sentinel that shot it (but got krumped on impact with the ground).

Oh yeah and do vehicles that explode count as a Blast weapon for resolving the effect? We went with yes, came from trying to work out when a thing rammed and exploded if it could hit the exposed crew in what it was next to.

[Spurious]

Finally remembered what my favourite conversion was and it’s a fairly simple piece.

In short, built up armour on a Space-Marder and gave it a BMPT style turret. That’s all.

[Spurious]

Off the top of my head.. Battletech. That’s got a lot of time in my brain over the years. There’s a lot of guff in it, and oh boy was the Dark Age stuff a mess. But it’s got a lot going for it as it’s a big pool of fluff but not a deep one. Total Annihilation’s setting is also pretty cool though completely unusable outside of an RTS PC game, as it’s got a real sense of scale and Von Neumann Machines are innately terrifying, even without blasting each other with plasma guns. Alpha Centauri though, that one even got a GURPS supplement. Rather good as a setting for future civilisations that works on trying to not just recreate current or past Earth cultures/nations but IN SPACE!. It is pretty dull seeing yet another space-murrica or space-germany so Alpha Centauri was/is a really welcome break from that. There’s a definite character to each faction and a lot of implied detail to think about and build off of, even without the RPG.

The STALKER series has a wonderfully grim yet fascinating setting, plenty of opportunities for violence, horror and really weird stuff. Very characterful, distinct yet not over-the-top factions and monsters really help mix things up along with the frequently all too petty, selfish humans. Deus Ex, now that it’s gotten beyond the original game to expand upon (though that was also pretty solid if you get hold of some of the setting notes) has a pretty fun cyberpunk-but-not setting with approximately ALL the conspiracies. And if you’ve been paying attention to trends in tech and the like, far too believable in places too, which adds to it as a ‘proper’ sci-fi and not just being sci-fi because cyborgs are cool. There’s a lot to think about with it as game settings go.

Star Trek is also pretty neat.

[Spurious]

Angel Barracks wrote:

Sci-fi and camo and the old Mk One Eyeball… I can never decide if to do camo on my sci-fi vehicles or not. The RDF vehicles are an exception in that they do not want camo, being a sort of UN/Police force they will often intimidate the enemy by being bold and in your face, not hiding but advertising. It also makes it easier for the locals to see that help is coming. But for more techno forces, camo paint schemes? ECM, thermal masking? What would a future tank look like to the naked eye? Black, shimmery, unsee-able?

Given that future warfare of anything past the next few decades is massively unpredictable and highly reliant on which technologies mature first:

Yes.

And No.

But given sci-fi wargaming has tech that often looks outdated compared to stuff already in use/on the table for the next 20 years, well, I tend to just follow the trends of the setting. Which has lead to some camo, mostly just whatever looks cool. Plus I really like green, grey and blue which kinda becomes camo when used together…

 

[Spurious]

Does nothing for me.

Tanks and Mechs (and sometime spaceships) just look better than miniature people anyway.

[Spurious]

Finally I’ve managed to figure out a paint scheme for my Sagittare. This thing has been bothering me for years. Problem was that it’s a mech that deserves something a bit more bright and bold, but I didn’t want it to look out of place with the rest of the force for it to go with who probably wouldn’t have shared the same colours. It’s being attached to my Lyran force, who are well known for their assault mechs. Ok technically it’s a Federated Suns mech design but I’ve seen them in Lyran Guards colours, so it’s not inconceivable that a bunch were salvaged, bought or whatever. It happens a lot in Battletech’s setting.

Anyway, since I didn’t want to go with parade colours I worked on the idea of having a muted grey-blue rather than bright blue scheme. Which lead to putting the unit’s colours as a chunk of an arm panel or similar to give a coherent theme. Which lead to me thinking ‘hey, why not just add more stripes and stuff?’. I think It could do with another highlight pass but I am reasonably satisfied with the result and will do similar on the other Assault mechs for the force.

The Heavies and smaller are getting camo. Blue-grey became blue-grey plus green to break up the surprisingly plain form of the Thanatos, which shall have some additional bits of detailing thrown in. Technically another Fed. Suns mech but traded with a lot of people, it’s supposed to be a fast heavy, working to support lighter designs. Hence the big legs I guess. Has an interesting backstory in that it was supposed to be a modular design (hence the big chest bumps and blocky arms for room to install different weapon sets quickly) but because of reasons I can’t remember, it was only accepted as a design once nailed into a specific form. The old Archer on the right, being a support mech seemed like as good a candidate for the same colour scheme.

The Cappellan Confederation got to join in with a whole bunch of tanks and a couple of mechs, including the converted Cyclops from the intro box. They’re getting a solid green scheme, much brighter green than the tanks of the previous post in order to make them distinct, with pale yellow highlighty bits.

A Marauder and Thunderbolt (redesigns) are entering the mess of mechs too now. They took one hell of a lot of pinning, though I did enjoy the flexibility of poses because of that. A lot of the old designs suffer from looking way too static and some newer ones perhaps too dynamic, so being able to decide for myself is great.

 

[Spurious]

Mike wrote:

Has your blog broken Spurious? The link seems bad.

Ah, knew I’d forgotten something, fixed it.

[Spurious]

Whilst a certain amount of events and discussions of the past few years have made me lean away from the name, though that is because it’s a very generic title as well as certain clusters of rather disreputable folks that I would rather not be associated with branding themselves with the name ‘Gamer’, it does still seem to be very fitting for myself given the sheer amount of time I spend in some way related to games (in many forms) every single day.

Plus I don’t have any better ideas.

 

[Spurious]

Online order: doesn’t matter. Also I have to keep binning so many of those little plastic bags it’s kinda crazy.

At a show? Nice label at least makes it look more attractive so I’d bet there’s a minor bonus in attention gathering and product presentation to be had then.

[Spurious]

Robey Jenkins wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs5o7KewpE0 Playthrough video is up, just in time for the big pre-release at Salute this weekend! R.

Thanks for that, the vid certainly helped bring this to my attention. I quite like how that worked in action, the ticking down of stats is certainly more appreciable with a good lot of examples.

[Spurious]

Ok so it’s not all mechs…

Seen here with a mix of my own hastily carved buildings and the way, way nicer equivalent from Leven. I don’t think I even need to point out which is from where, given one set looks fairly terrible and the other doesn’t despite being unfinished. The buildings are technically under-scale for Battletech’s miniatures, who are only really 6mm in name, they’re really more into what I guess would be 8mm, since 10mm stuff is pretty huge next to them but they dwarf the 1:300 stuff of technically equivalent size from Heroics&Ros, GHQ’s 1:285 too unless it’s something monstrous like Namers/Merkava IVs. Either way I think having under-scale buildings works quite well for the small-scale stuff. There’s not so much of a requirement for having them accessible and usable by miniatures as there is with larger stuff, and they’re frequently representing an area of terrain more than they are being individual buildings.

My matt varnish decided to be far less matt than usual so I’ll have to dig out the old Testors can and give things a spray. I’ve gone over the models again but there’s still a surprising amount of glare getting picked up. I think I will have to put the tanks on bases as well, I mean the size difference is already pretty notable (Battletech has the problem that mechs and tanks both had to fit into the same hex map spaces, but the mechs have been inflating over time, increasing the disparity) so the base-boost will be handy. I think I need to get back to finishing off those conversions that I started so I can them painted up, and let myself move on to other conversions and stuff.

[Spurious]

Small update. Scrubbing miniatures is hard work. however I have decided I am in love with this shade of red for cockpit …well not glass because it’s Battletech, but what on something less sci-fi would be cockpit glass. Vallejo model colour Bermellon/Red.

I have literally no idea what colours the rest of this mech are going to be, though I think I’ll go with something Clan Hell’s Horses for the clan mechs. I like those idiots and their stupid vehicle designs and mixed forces. A few more tanks for the collection are here, couple of Myrmidons and Rommels.

Bert And Ernie have also been having a bit of a repaint. Sticking with their old mixed grey urban scheme but just making it a bit less terrible. Hunchbacks are a mech that’s pretty much always done me well, being weirdly durable for a slow medium (once they get CASE anyway to stop ammo explosions). I have a plastic one from the starter set, might have a go at making it into one of the ‘swayback’ versions, missing the big cannon and using the tonnage for other armaments. I think that maybe the laser-shotgun one with something like 9 medium lasers might be good.

[Spurious]

Tempting, might pick one up with the idea of converting it to the unproduced STROP II anti-air vehicle.

Northern Monkey wrote:

this is cool and something ive never seen before (though im not really into moderns), a 6mm version would work great for my sci-fi stuff, thanks for pointing it out

Heroics&Ros do one in 6mm. It’s not that sci-fi though, to my eyes at least.

 

[Spurious]

Angel Barracks wrote:

. Have you encountered any snobbery as a fantasy gamer from historical gamers, do you only play historicals but have zero issue with those that play fantasy?

I’ve honestly had more of a problem with people expecting intimate familiarity with a fantasy setting than the other way around.

Though it would be nice for me if people gave more of a damn about what they were using for the historical games I play so I didn’t have to be the one constantly reminding them of the basic squad composition of their own army. If that’s snobbery then please consider me an elitist git by all means.

[Spurious]

Alexander Wasberg wrote:

Nice collection you’ve got! I like the conversion bits, the cyclops in particular

Ta. The collection keeps quietly growing when I am not looking somehow… I found out I have most of a Maelstrom (minus an arm, one of those unfortunate 3058 designs) today from a box of guff I ended up with (mostly fantasy models from dead companies).

Angel Barracks wrote:

I wish I could get into mechs…

You could try sculpting some industrial mechs (quadruped, maybe hexapedal designs) for your own range and see if that helps?

[Spurious]

This is probably gonna sound stupid but I’ve often wondered on seeing such posts (as there’s a lot of them in 15mm sci-fi circles):

Do people actually use dropships in games much? As anything but scenery? It’s like helicopters in modern stuff to me (outside of 6mm anyway), they’re kinda there as an option but are almost always too big/fast/fragile to feature on a board rather than as an off-board asset or piece of terrain. As I see it anyway that is.

[Spurious]

Mr. Average wrote:

I’ve never found a Battletech-like system that doesn’t go too far in the other direction

This does seem to be a big problem. Well, big for me too. There’s a lot of focus out there on big units, combined arms warfare and grand manoeuvre tactics but yeah, Battletech fights without the individual mech characters kinda miss the point of the game I think.

I did take the opportunity to have a look at Alpha Strike, it has some flavour and does draw from a solid foundation but has the downside of needing two books to get all the basic rules covered (which I find annoying when referencing a game in play), it is thorough in covering stuff but still somewhat bland with that compression of all weapon systems on a mech or whatever into largely just a firepower/range number. Which just reminds me of how Epic: Armageddon was a game that learned from it’s predecessor doing exactly that and instead brought back individual weapon systems in a smart, fast-playing way.

 

[Spurious]

The end walls seem somewhat thick for terraced houses but these look nice for semi-detached. I guess you could also do a terraced section as either an extra long single piece for the walls, or only have end walls on every second building?

[Spurious]

Human sized powered exoskeletons with or without armour is the foreseeable future. Especially given that’s what is already in development.

Mechs though are too impractical. Something the size of a space marine dreadnought is really pushing it as far as a large suit might practically be. Battletech’s Battle Armours are in their own way one of the more reasonable interpretations (some of them anyway), following the tradition of Starship Trooper’s marauder suits but with drastically more limitations on mobility and armament. Quadruped or hexapod designs are probably the more realistic direction for anything not directly worn, given their advantages in stability and mobility over bipeds.

 

[Spurious]

I play some wargames with miniatures. Not as many as I’d like, not nearly enough of what I actually want to. Right now I’m on a bit of a microarmour bent with A Fistful of TOWs again, but only 1 other guy is. Everyone else seems to be leaning towards going for 28mm moderns skirmish, but I am pretty bored of that due to having done it for years plus am unimpressed by the chosen game system (it’s not No End In Sight). That happens a lot, my fault for being picky and wanting to spend my time with games I think are good, not just ‘ok’, which has lead to me missing out on a lot of WW2 gaming because everyone else wanted to do Bolt Action and I kinda want something more …historical. But I’m also a long-term believer in that not playing is not worse than having a bad game.

I play a lot of PC games with a wide but also kinda niche taste. In the past few months I have played Mordheim, Blood Bowl 2, Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, Doom, Shogun Total War (original and 2), Mechwarrior Online (surprised it’s taken me this long to get to it, was a bit of a mech-head back in the day), Eurotruck Simulator 2 (it was a bad week, ok?), Dropsy… other stuff too. It was sales season so there was (is still) a lot to get through.

[Spurious]

I honestly have no idea. My group bounces around between games so much I can’t think of anything I’ve been doing for even 4 years.

[Spurious]

Guy Farrish wrote:

Well, how about painting/building ‘my Union army’? playing ‘my Seleucid Campaign’? writing, refining, playtesting ‘my Thirty Years War Rules’?

Because I work on terrain, miniatures and games as a whole, and it’s just a better, more accurate use of the language to refer to the endeavour as a project.

[Spurious]

Short answer: Yes.

Longer Answer: Well what other term would I use to refer to the various different sets of armies, eras and systems that I work on?

[Spurious]

If it’s a travel guide, hit up the local history. Weird events, peculiar landmarks, strange happenings. Like one of the old local things for me is how the local breweries (all 5+ of them) reacted to the temperance movement coming in by organising mobs and breaking a lot of windows. Or how one unfortunate woman got buried alive. Twice. It’s that kind of detail that makes places interesting.

And some really weird stuff happens in reality so you can probably go proper crazy in places; like a time some guy tried to use gas to clear out his crop fields of local creatures but a peculiar reaction to the chemicals recently sprayed as fertiliser (plus general incompetence with regards to prevailing wind direction) lead to the locals intermittently tripping balls for the next week until a containment field was put over the source.

 

[Spurious]

The barriers built from keyboard keys is still one of the best bits of recycling I’ve seen. It’s really not something you see often/ever.

And I don’t even have any relevant projects I could steal it for either, despite a surfeit of old dead keyboards! Gah!

[Spurious]

I’ll go with this even though I want to pull a serious refit on it, My entry is the board itself, not the buildings or woods:

It’s probably kinda cheeky to pick an entire board (it’s a single piece of terrain to me) but if you want a specific section take the one with the dice pile on it in the second pic, I quite like the hills and roads on that one.

One of those things of needing a board, seeing a couple of other blogs out there with people having done them, and that wonderfully dangerous thought ‘oh, I could do that!’. It’s almost a ’nuff said at just that, though the sheer amount of time taken and weird problems encountered and tackled isn’t really conveyed. I’m most proud of the road network being suitably wiggly and the patchwork fields. Least proud of the towns still not being finished. The hills need standardising and possibly doubling in height, and the urban areas need approximately all the work… well I guess I know what I’m doing for my next project. Maybe I’ll even manage to take some better pictures… (and much like Northern Monkey’s pic, the buildings seen are largely from Leven as well :p)

 

[Spurious]

That right there is some damn fine attention to detail and layout.

[Author]

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