VSF Mech Walkers finished

Painted, and added rivets and smokestacks.

And they they are with an infantry escort / comparison.

VSF Mech Walker Conversion

Couldn't pass up this great and simple conversion:

Star Wars miniature walker, on the right is the untouched original version. Quick head swap for pith helmets on the right. Some repainting of uniforms to do but there you have the simple swap.

Killer Robot Update

Thought to up the detailing on the robots just recently constructed. So with dremel in hand it was time to add some details.

First was to extend the "guns" barrels, way to short, did not much look like guns. Thin plastic rod with "seed" beads added. I drilled into the ends of the knobs that were to be the guns and pre assembled the new barrels. Having counter drilled out the mounting spots made it go easier. Picture on the right shows the mounted barrels.

Then added some Antenna's, did think about rivets but the nice smooth shell look of the tops seemed to not need them for a change. Mounted 2 to a base for Martian Empires machines, each base is a support weapons unit.

New Robots

Was browsing in a large office supply store when I happened upon some fancy plastic paper clips that can also be pinned to the wall. So digging around in the bits box I dug out some old mageknight three mech legged cyborgs, I clipped and shaped the trunk. Next was mounting a plastic tube to lift the top mount up as it was to low in my opinion.

So here are some shots, the left shows the various stages, cyborg cut, stem mounted to paper clip and unpainted complete. To the right is the robot with a flat black spray coat primer. I will dry brush them in either dark metal or perhaps brass for VSF gaming.

ACW2 Final Battle Report

We organized the time, troops and place: Mayhem ensued:

The board looking from the Nationalist side, to the right is the onslaught of the Constitutionalists.

Armor engagement as Consti's push their vehicles thru the town. The Waves of nationalist forces surge forward.

Consti side with the Immigrant reinforcements pushing in to the town. To the right is the result of air attack!

A shot of the waves piling into the town where the action was called for time. You decide.

Martain Empire Battle Report

So another battle was fought English lead by Mark and Don vs Prussians lead by Nils and Alan. Starting forces:

English on the Left side of the picture. Near ground is several companies of Kreigsmarines and a Light armored Hanson Cab AFV, center is several guard companies supported by Light AFVs and in the far left flank are 2 large units of red martians.

On the right side of the picture are the Prussians, in the near ground are Marines, and Sailors supported by a unit of Mechanized Klanks, middle ground 2 companies of regular infantry supported by another unit of Mechanized Klanks, in the far right flank 4 companies of regular companies and a field piece.

The battle quickly became a head on collision, here is the Prussian right flank engaged in hand to hand fighting as the red martians wasted no time in closing in and going to swords. Initially they drove back the companies of regulars but in turn were flanked by the reserve company. In the fighting that followed the red martians were broken and driven from the field.

On the Prussian left flank I (Alan) pushed forward and started a rifle exchange with the British units. My sailors proved quiet capable of getting off some really serious shooting and inflicted significant casualties, driving the British units to their front back, as seen by the lack of opposition in the picture. The Hanson AFV was not scoring hits, perhaps their gun was jammed in an upward position? ;)

Prussian right flank closes in and takes out the Brits far left AFV in close assault. Central units are exchanging fire, men dropping everywhere. Martians continue to flee the field, in the foreground my Prussian Marines are forced to retire as combined arms take out the British sailors unit and begin to push in the British right flank.

With the British left flank gone and the left center collapsing, a retreat was sounded and the field left to the Prussians.

Game flow was pretty good. Artillery was found to be a bit weak for the points cost. I figure the GM will do a small bit of tweaking, probably to the moral for "under artillery fire" or some such. Martian Empires rules will, I suspect, be our base set for the January VSF Venus campaign launch.

Venus Must Fall!

Finished purchasing the rest of Kaptain Kneemo's sailors and marines, all cleaned, primed and painting is under way. Jan 2nd, new VSF campaign with the local gamers is to be launched, and Kaptain Kneemo will have his invincible forces ready!

To the left are the sailors, in whites, black shoes and a different hat band color to eventually differentiate sections. To the right are the Marines, Whit pants, Green coats, khaki pith helmets. 120 figures all told.

Prehistoric Reinforcements

Bargin Bin find!

So, the 2 dinosaurs were 49 pennies each! The little cuthlu fig is for size comparison. I was given the Tezla robotic figure was a hand me down to my Kneemo collection from Black Cavalier. I have quiet a pile of dinosaurs and plastic.. oh, 50mm cavemen that we sometimes pull and and smash around on the game table with. Rules do not allow for spoken words between team players or opponents, only grunts and pointing are allowed to formulate battle plans. Meat eaters are of course very dangerous, plant eaters less so unless you get to close or they stampede from a Meat Eater....very dangerous then!

New Dollar Monster

Found a new monster from The Goodwill. A Lego's monster probably from their Atlantis line. Missing a couple of tentacles but I moved some around. Lego block spots on the critter will have to be removed but this creature might just fill the bill for the Cloud Krakens of Venus!

Tail tip to mouth is about 8 inches, tentacles add another 8 inches in length. Needs paint job, and in the roll of the Cloud Kraken, Im figureing on blue's and grey's to flesh it out, so to speak.

Warmaster Battle Report...of sorts

Tried out Warmaster for my first time:

Bretonian vs Chaos. I and Skrapwelder commanded the Bretonians vs Black Cavaliers evil nasty Chaos .. guys.. yah.  Learned about command and control, make the dice roll, equal move, with decreasing chance, fail means end of all moves so roll wisely. I found that fairly standard tactics apply to this game. Missile fire did a bit but not much, its rather difficult to a mass enough damage potential to destroy an enemy element out right. There is no firing in support unless I read wrongly, possibly missile casualties carry into combat, have to read up on that.  In the far back is what turned out to be my, strategic reserve. I let them dally to long and then they were at such a penalty to activate that they sat there till the last turn of the game, then boldly advanced to grab loot. The Knights with blue are Skrapwelders beating on the remaining Chaos Knights, who were in the progress of killing the last stand to their front of my Knights.  Battle was see sawed back and forth till chaos reached their break point. The command range penalty for moving to far afield does prevent the ZOOM across the board with mounted forces that would probably totally unbalance the game by tossing strategy out the window.

Martian Empire Games

We took a break from the ACW2 campaign and tried out the Martian Empire rule set;

Here is the battle field start in the upper left, which has some of Nils red martians on the left of the shot and Marks British on the right. Next shot is included just to show my "never went anywhere" mounted Giant Martians (tharks) and my  giant martian infantry. Last shot is the red martians about to get left behind, while my infantry zoom across and attack the artillery. I destroyed one of the artillery pieces in the end and the other routed, causing the only real lose to the brits. The rules are Very much like Warmaster, roll to move, keep moving till you fail if you want. Adjustments to the movement for 25mm figures will slow down some of the zooming around. The Brits made some consecutive rolls and met their victory conditions by exiting the board edge but lost the artillery when they didn't make their 4th (?) consecutive activation roll. All in all, got to explore the rules, which is always better when pushing figs at the same time than just reading them like a book.

The Dragon of Redwood City

My brother has way to much creative talent sometimes. For Halloween he has created his own roof top dragon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0n8xPuRjzc

ACW2 Action Report

So the scenario is, all the players have a truck load of troops heading home late at night from the bars, gambling or what ever diversion they were involved in. The trucks are coming down different roads to a cross road encounter, in the dark with ranges cut in half with the lack of clear visibility. Going off road with the truck means a spot check to not stall out or get stuck.

Here come the trucks, Constitutionalists on the upper road, nationalists on the lower road. Brakes squeal and people start shouting, rather incoherently, but with gusto.

The small truck of Nationals swerves around the bend successfully but the truck of saki loaded berry pickers rams them head on, proving in conclusion that their big truck was a foreign import of low quality.... Firing breaks out between the Consti's and National Dockworkers in the right side picture.

And you think rush hour traffic is bad....   On the right, a late arriving National truck swerves around the dockworkers and heads into close action with the Consti's.

 Everyone out of the Truck!  The Berry Pickers International squad chase the National officer and his driver into the woods. The lead truck of the Consti's come under fire from all directions and decides to hit the road once again. Skrapwelder and Leadfool look into the Cauldron of Death as every ones firing intensifies. The dockworkers fall back to their truck and start down the back of the hill, claiming "were flanking them"....
Below, the National Officer rushs back to the fight with his 2 machine pistols and cuts down 4 of the Berry Pickers International unit, then turns about and fled into the night.

Do to the crappy change to the Blog spot posting system, These pictures refuse to align as I want them so on with the narrative.

As the consti truck in the last picture, the yellow one, edges down the hill back edge they are cut off by the dockworkers truck of smg toting gun men who riddle the truck and chase the surviving troops off in all directions.  The late arrived truck in the center, above the red action chip go hand to hand and are finally dispersed. The Nationalists retread, suffering their first loss.

Call of Cthulhu Explained in Under 2 Minutes

Some of you have probably seen this but its really good at laying out the whole mythos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amCxbVG8QUs

And there you have it.

ACW2 Engagement

Defender; protect the town from evil doers, Attackers, Rob the Bank.

 So, here's the town, all nice and peaceful, a few civilians wandering about in the early morning light, going about their business. Photo to the right  shows the brown bank building behind the black and red truck. In the lower corner is an ever vigilant truck with 50 cal machine gun helping "keep the peace". Across the street from the bank in the white building is Madam's House of Comfort for Wayward Soldiers of the Revolution.  Scattered about town were various defending nationalist units on R&R.

 The bank robbers occupied the house next to the bank and sent in 20 thugs to "aquire funding for the cause".  A teller came running out of the bank screaming it was being robbed. Not clear on who was who , the nationalist troops did not open fire immediately, until 1 squad exited the back of the bank and the other came out the front.  The front came under fire from the truck mounted machine gun but they kept on running down the street. In the back, part of the robbers unit was gunned down from an Armored car, a daring do officer wielded his 2 machine pistols and blazed away, at least one of the heavy machine guns on the armored car fired at the bank, cutting down a teller...ooops.

 The police had placed a machine gun in the upstairs building seen here in the lower right of the right side picture. It opened fire on the robbers tracked truck, scoring multiple hits in its engine, setting it on fire. The remaining robbers figure to beat feet and sprinted down the road, encumbered by bags of looted cash. One of them was picked off by a well placed rifle shot, the shooter casually added another notch to the stock of his rifle.  In the mean time the front door robbers sprinted down the street past the cat house, where the alerted (by all the gun fire) nationalist forces that had been attempting to raise the moral of the local girls, rushed to the windows and opened fire on the fleeing robbers.

Here, just when the front door gang thought they were in the clear, the rest of the cathouse brigade of liberation came out the back of the building and opened fire with sub machine guns, with deadly results, all of the remaining robbers were cut down. The transport of the robbers followed down the street and over the bodies of the fallen, though they claimed that they had tried to grab the hands of the wounded to pull them into the truck...

The remaining survivors of the escape out the back group came under some terribly inaccurate rifle fire from a police unit but suffered no effects other than to hasten their efforts to get away, which they did with a considerable amount of cash.

Cat Grenade

New Style Explosion

I have done many of the standard Smoke columns for explosions. Recently I saw one done on the Lead Adventure Forums by Hammers that I really liked. Copying it has proven a bit tricky but I'm giving it a shot.

Basic materials, old aluminium disks, bamboo skewers, styrafoam, coarse chopped foilage from woodland scenics and assorted glues and hot glue gun. I tried out some spray addhesive along the way.... it was not to successful. So, Styrafoam chunk was hot glued to the disk as in the right picture.

Next, pieces of skewers were hot glued and stuck into the foam pieces. Spray on adhesives was sprayed all over it... very messy process, the the whole thing was put in a large container of the crumbled foliage. Next I used fingers to press foliage onto the rods and base area. More spray adhesive, then more pressing.... not very efficient. Coverage was hap hazard.

Next step was to take it outside, and spray on diluted pva glue and let it dry. I soaked parts of it to help the foliage stay on. When dried I sprayed it heavily with flat black spray paint, from all angles. Then fogged it with white from about a foot away. Took the black back in very close and spot shot here and there for the picture on the left. Things I learned to make it faster and easier. Cut, mount, and spray tack, or spread glue and coat the Styrofoam first. Then Cut the skewers into the lengths you want. Coat them with glue or hot glue and then press on the foliage. Let both dry.  Hot glue the skewers into the foam base. Spray with black and white to color it. You can easily go back and fill in any small spots that do not have enough. I think I will put traces of brown paint on the outer most bits of smoke, along with bits of grass color, not much, just a touch here and there to add some visual "depth" to the look of the piece.

Basing Problem

So, working towards my permanent bases for my Fantasy Rules! armies I hit a snag. Flocking the bases with the woodland scenics flock on prepared metal bases works fine, except... I then used a 1 inch brush to put diluted PVA glue onto the dried flock to help keep it from rubbing off on the edges.Picture on the left shows how I used the brush to pat on the diluted white glue.

After soaking the base, I set them on wax paper to dry, the waxy surface making the white glue not glue it to the surface that I set it on to dry in the first place. One of the bases that I did not get good coverage on is pictured on the right. The lighter area is the surface I want, the dark areas, the glued areas. SO, with some double work I reapplied white glue to the darker areas to get the grass to the final look I want before I add battlefield bits, rocks, grass tufts etc.

I am thinking that the reinforced glue / grass underneath with keep the metal base from showing if there is excessive wear on the edges. Then again, with the remaining base work ahead of me, I will add the diluted white glue to a narrow edge around the base instead of so thoroughly over the entire base, so as to reduce the amount of "touch up" to the base grass surface.