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Washing Up A Whole Heap Of Resin.

Well its time for me to do something with the pile of resin sitting at the back of the shed.  As usual that means its washing up time.

Warm soapy water and a toothbrush (an old one is better than your daughters I am told).

These Scibor Snails were a gift and will one day be a dragon rampant army if they don’t get side tracked too soon.  The Ainsty boat will go with the harbour pieces for modern games.

The Steam boats I have as well as this Ironclad Submersible will do for our earlier periods and Steampunk games.

Either way, wrinkly fingers will be the result…

 

Steam Wars – Full Size Martian Tripods

I have showed you the majority of the Steam Wars Martian ground forces already.  The core of that force has to be its Tripods though.  Especially if I want to stay in HG Well’s world view.

The tripods on the market range from tin boxes on legs to huge insect like constructs.  Thankfully a cheap and easy source exists in the form of a little game called ‘All Quiet On The Martian Front’.

As far as I can tell AQOTMF has stopped being made.  It was up and running for a while, after its kickstarter was funded, but its parent company appears to have gone bankrupt, at least that’s what I think happened.

However, the AQOTMF Facebook chatter has the licence for the game being picked up by another manufacturer, so it may not be as dead as we thought…

Either way these tripods (originally designed for 15-18mm figures) work fine for my needs.  With the average tripod currently selling for £10 or less on eBay they are a steal as well.

 

Spending All My Time Building Stuff, Not Much Painting.

I have been stuck at home again due to this viral chesty ‘thing’.  That, somewhat unsurprisingly, means that I have been very bored.  So I have spent a few moments every couple of hours popping out to the shed to see if it is remaining dry with all this changeable weather we are having at the moment.

One of the jobs I still haven’t had a chance to get to is undercoating the growing collection of bits lined up in the shed…  Rain and spray cans I have learned don’t go well together.  It does mean that the painting queue is longer than ever.

More Steam Wars Naval stuff awaits.  Two more roller bots and a submarine.  A host of Scheltrum divers and an Ironclad transport.

Too many Martians.  My nice harbour and jetty pieces.  The Steam ship (and ironclad top) that those nice boys at Black Pyramid gave me.

Plenty of Horizon Wars tiny tanks and Mechs.

So, I have made a bit of a start by getting even more bits into the queue.  Slowly building stuff and then putting it back on a shelf to wait for a dry day…

One interesting point…  I have managed to mislay a couple of wheels from one of my Ironclad flyers already. So, unless I find them, the second flyer will have to have some skids made up for it instead.

When the weather dries up, the Martians are currently foremost in the queue (at this time anyhow. That may well change…)

Oh, and one more thing to add to the queue.  This nice big Reaper Bones bin!

Steam Wars – Big Game Weekend. 

A few weeks ago I managed to get a larger game of Steam Wars played over at Coronasan’s house.  It was odd not to play at the shed but as his family was away, and the cats were the only impediment to our game, we thought it would be a good opportunity for a larger and longer game to get played.

It was also nice to get a different table set, up as Coronasan has a vast collection of scenery and now owns a fancy rubble strewn mat for us to play on…

The scenery was a mix of old and new.  Armourcast resin buildings (from when it was an old US based affair and now long out of print I suspect), stood side by side with modern MDF buildings from TTcombat.  Add in a few resin trucks, and plenty of scatter terrain, and I was glad of the hover facility on my steam launch.

All the big guns found corridors to fire down fairly quickly.  This was also a chance to further playtest the base rules so we adjusted a few rules and profiles as we played. This did mean that my autocannon was over effective at the start of the game and more mediocre (but likely more balanced) at the end.

Vehicles crowded the larger cover and had to queue at times to get past some obstacles. Not recognising choke points may be my downfall in a number of games…

Infantry had an easier time when moving but jump troops and HMG’s can soon slow them down.

The rules for close combat have been tweaked again and it is a very decisive and easy to manage aspect of the game now.

Some tanks just don’t die…  This Pug took about 6 turns and 15 shots without me managing to get any notable damage on it.  My rolling never fails to be poor when I only have one dice to roll.

In the end Coronasan was in full command of my left flank, while the centre remained fairly empty of troops.

I held my right flank better and my infantry slowly moved further towards the rear of his centre.

All in all, a good game and made better by the full range of scenery options.

We are likely to get pulled back towards other games while Coronasan further updates the base rules after this game. That said, I for one cannot wait to get my teeth into another game soon.

Steam Wars – More Martians And More Navy

My Martian force has been enlarging slowly as I pick up more bits that will work for the force.  The Steam Wars rules favour small 5 man units that are supported by various specialists and vehicles.  My Small tripods are going to be used as light vehicles and the infantry will be some Ironclad Miniatures Sanwar.

I picked up these guys at Partizan and bought enough figures for me to have 4 units.  One will be a 6 man close combat squad and 3 will be 5 man gunmen units.  These will have short ranged weapons to represent their short barrelled guns.

Some big tripods have turned up now too.  More on these later…

Partizan also allowed me to pick up these new flyers from Ironclad Miniatures.  These are not in production yet but should be up on the site at some point soon. They come with open spoke wheels and a pilot with a selection of differing heads.

As it remains wet here I am continuing to build stuff but cannot get any undercoating done yet.  I will keep my eye on the weather and try to get a few batches done as it clears up…

Steam Wars – The Martians Are Coming 

I may have mentioned that I was looking to start a new project for our Steam Wars games.  Martians have been on my mind lately and I have now read a bit too much of HG Wells and Edgar Rice Burrows works.  My interests on the Martian front appear to be more bias towards the original Wells theme at this point… (With some poetic licence as needed to get a more balanced army list, I must add).

So, Triopds are the way forward…  To start with, smaller tripods appear to be my first purchases.  This example is a Miniature Figurines Tripod (available from Cavalier Books).  This blighter was a pain to build as it is an earlier sculpt of this design.  All three legs need to be pinned in place on this model.  Later models that I have picked up appear to be done with the front two legs already attached to the centre section, so I only had to pin the rear limb.

He works fine with 28mm and our new passion for 6mm forces…

When it comes to problematic builds the whole of the Martian force looks likely to try my patience.  This Cephalopod from Ironclad miniatures is a beautiful figure but was also a pain to put together. Tentacles do not stay put when not pinned!  This blighter took 3 attempts and left holes in my fingers as the pin sites were tiny spaces to drill into.  However I now have new skills (and a new set of pin size drill bits, direct from China again…  The drills that is, not the skills!)

Now all I need to do is get Coronasan to figure out some heat ray stats so these boys can light up his troopers.

I plan to have four of these finished in the next few days, so now I need to decide; are they a unit or individual vehicles..!

One of the smaller Tripods comes with grasping tentacles, not a heat ray, so this will be the first of my handling machines while the others are more likely to be the infamous Martian fighting machines.

Either way these guys take a lot of effort and fuss to build for such small tripods.

Sadly that long job only looks longer with everything so far having at least 4 tentacles…

It will be worth it in the end.

Horizon Wars – Planning Phase II

So after a few games of Horizon Wars I now know I need more tanks and mechs! Heavy Cavalry, Armoured Artillery and Mechs seem to be the only forces that can make a sizeable dent in the opponents forces so the arms race is now on…

First up the biggest 6mm model I now own…  (My Oathsworn robot is not really a 6mm figure now is it?)

This is Ral Partha’s large four legged mech, Thunder Stallion.  He is likely to join my Space Ork force as I now no longer have any massive Gargants in the collection…

He sits nicely within the set as a heavy or super heavy mech.

He also make my other new mechs seem quite small.  I picked up a Grendel and a Madcat as well so now have some medium mechs to add to the force.  A couple of older Epic artillery pieces are always easy to find to add some Armoured Artillery to any force.

My light tanks are due to have some bigger brothers added so they are not so easy to knock out in our games.  Usually these forge ahead alone and take the brunt of any counter attack.

All in all a nice little lot that should not take too much time to paint up (if only the weather would dry up enough to allow me to get them undercoated).

 

Horizon Wars – First Games And Thoughts

Almost a month has passed since I last ventured into this blog.  Work and family sometimes demand time that has to be taken from any pastimes.  I am sat at home now with a virus that has stopped me working and makes my family want to avoid me! So… I finally have time to update the blog.

We played our first game of Horizon Wars.  Damn the set missions are hard to achieve.  So hard in fact that I don’t think either of us has managed to win as the attacker in any game so far.

We are also now aware that the game calls for a specific selection of miniatures for your army to be effective as a force.  Either the force should be selected after the mission is decided, or the players are likely to only take tanks and drop troops, as movement is key to most of the missions.

My force is heavy on infantry, as that was the way I wanted the miniatures to be depicted.  These forces, lots of light infantry, haven’t been effective so far in games we have played.  Units can be very hard to destroy, so a tank may take shots on it for 4-5 turns before it is destroyed. This is usually due to the opponent placing all the damage it takes on anything but their armour stat.  I have failed to kill units when shooting with all my effective units on some occasions.

Don’t get me wrong I like this game.  I just find it very hard to win the missions.  We are going to try the Adventure style games next to see if they appear more balanced.  The fact they have options for both sides to have differing context and missions appeals to me but we will see if they remain very hard to achieve.

Another thing about Horizon Wars that has come up in our discussions is the fact that it is an odd scale for a game which uses such a small force to represent its armies.  We have compared this to a number of other popular 6mm games that we know and almost all I can name are using 6mm to represent huge armies on the table.  The benefit of such a small scale is in its ability to field hordes of tanks and troops and gain the feeling of massed battles.  I guess the author alone knows why this scale was his first choice.

All that musing aside I am happily adding to my scenery collection for this scale again.  China has again been my country of choice for models and items in this scale.  My cars are an older purchase but these busses are the newest addition to the collection.

If nothing else we are in the mood for more 6mm fun and who knows where that may lead us…

Horizon Wars – First Fully Finished Force. 

So, I now have a nice new Horizon Wars force all ready to go.  Newly varnished and ready for a game, that will probably have been played by the time you read this post.

30 units in total and definitely the quickest army I have ever painted. I will be expanding it further as, although I want to field primarily infantry forces, I do want a wider range of vehicle units to choose from.

I have almost every troop type covered at this point, with only one unit not represented.  I have a bucket load of old armoured artillery pieces in the Epic boxes but none that capture the feel of this force.  That will likely be my first upgrade to this force but I am in no hurry at this point.

So, what have we here?

The Heavy Mech will likely be fielded in every game I play, initially at least.  When we get to know the rules I may vary it’s size and stats a little but to me it will remain an assault framed Mech with that beefy claw and short barrelled weapon.

These two tanks are the only tracked units in the force so far.  I am thinking they could be Heavy or Light Cav at the moment.

These infantry support walkers are too small to be classed as a Light Mech so I will field them as Light or Heavy Cav for now.

Recon units offer guided fire for my artillery units (not that I have any Armoured Arty yet…) I wont be trying them out in the first game, as I suspect it will be our larger games that will benefit from these guys abilities.

Heavy Infantry. I did 4 of these guys as they seem to be overly cheap when combined with a Heavy Cav HQ. If I am playing infantry heavy I may need to have a few of these boys to combat enemy armour.

I made up 2 dedicated units of CHQ.  One using a Light Infantry figure and one with a Heavy Infantryman. This should offer me a couple of options when army building.

Airborne troops were a dilemma for me.  In the end I decided to represent their deep deployment ability with jump packs.  I could use them as Mobile infantry but think Airborne fits better.

Mobile infantry was also a sticking point.  I thought I might go with Transports and Troops on the same base, but disregarded that early on, as it might look odd along side the other units.  Therefore, I decided to go with bike mounted troops.  This would fit both the army, and the theme of infantry without the ability to dig-in.

Light Artillery could be field guns or troop carried AT/HE armaments. I went with the latter as I don’t have any field gun figures…

Special Forces should be armed and ready for any eventuality. A base with a mix of weapons and men fits nicely for this role.

Light Infantry get all the difficult jobs and I can see me possibly having to get a few extra bases made up. If I want them to be effective as a core unit choice for an infantry heavy force and large numbers of them may be required to make that effective in the end.

I know that transport airframes are an option in the game, but I don’t see clearly yet how or if that will benefit the my force.  This big flier will be a Heavy Aircraft with the hover ability to start with.

A small flight of Light Aircraft (again with the hover ability) will be useful. I don’t know if 4 will be a little excessive as yet, but we will see.

Overall a nice varied force with plenty of playability and variance.   Some room for expansion, especially in the form of Armoured Artillery, but a great start.  If all goes well I will get them in a game before the week is out.  Here’s hoping.

Suitable Reading Matter For A Holiday

Osprey have published a huge range of books over the years, on a wide number of topics.  Recently I discovered that they also do alternate histories as well.  Their Osprey Adventures range is, I suppose, aimed at RPG players and people who may be hoping to expand and flesh out the themes for their games. Whatever their purpose, this book was right up my ally, so to speak. A jolly good read it is as well.

As my Steam Wars Naval Force is nearing its completion, I have been looking for a new project and have dabbled with the idea of a Martian invasion force.  This book is just the sort of reference material for that project.  Martian invaders, tripod war machines, harvester machines, mind controlled servitors and human slaves.

Heat rays and black smoke launchers are just an added bonus after all that.

Now, if I can just get hold of some cheap tripods…