VSF Battle Report, Jockeying for Position

Kaptain Kneemo and his American Allies engaged a Belgain and Native force, natives here after refered to Lilshiztens (bastardized form of little shooters)

Left picture shows starting positions, the honorable and courageous Kneemoites and Americans in the lower part of the picture and the scurrilous Lilshiztens and all around no-goodnik Belgians in the upper area. While the natives wasted no time in surging forward, the Belgians remained true to tradition and had difficulty in putting down their hot chocolate and schnapps to get moving forward. Right side picture has Kneemo's much feared walker chugging out shells and the infantry and robotic infantry forming line for battle. The Belgian Heavy tank took a pounding from the Walkers shelling, suffering its gun being bent sideways and the crew determined not to lose the vehicle by driving off the battlefield.

Next photo show the Belgians finally showing up in the battle zone and opening fire. The Americans decide to utilize their bayonets to save ammo for the real fighting, to mixed results, having one unit thrown back and the left flank most, with the aid of a Walker driving the Lilshiztens before them. Meanwhile the Robotic Infantry on the extreme right flank engaged in a long drawn out fire fight with the Belgians Askari Zulu unit.

The battle ground down with the Belgians teetering on their army break point and a Walker that was totally out of control careening across the battle field. The Americans were hammering the fleeing Lilshiztens while the Elite Guard of same were holding the central Jungle feature and feeling pretty dang superior to their brethren.

New Bad Thing

From the Dreamblade line of figures...a new badie;

Have to work up an good base for ... him.. it.... thing...

VSF Battle Report (Non campaign battle)

Kaptain Kneemo's scouting force encountered a similar sized force of Belgains. (600pts) As neither side was interested in speaking to each other shots were quickly fired. On Kneemo's left a unit of Line Infantry Sailors and a Medium Walker. Center forces and on to the right were five Askari Line Infantry units. Across from them, the Belgians, from right to left (their view) were a unit of Heavy Infantry, 2 units of Line Infantry and a Medium tank. Both sides opted for a single officer.

Have to fix the bases of the Belgian Askari Infantry as their shields tended to overbalance the figures... Overall the battle was shaping up to be a slug fest shoot out. Belgians won Initative and opeted to move first in the game.

Kneemo's Robotic (Askari) Infantry advanced and fire was exchanged with the Zulu Askaris getting shot up and failed their moral roll, fleeing off the field. Their Heavy Infantry also took hits from the Walker and failed their moral check, twice, on 2 different turns and fled the field. Their Tank fired and an Askari units moral broke and fled, another took the fire and clanked on. The walker suffered a confusion hit, mis reading the results and failed to make an un jamming roll at the end of the turn that their gun jammed. The sailors made 5 command rolls, so marching down the field, they changed formation, opened ranks and fired into the back of the Belgian Line Infantry scoring a massive zero hits....

On the last turn of fire the Belgian Line took 50% Casualties, failed their moral and fled the field. The Tank Crew declarded a Mechanical victory and drove of the field stage left.... :)  Belgians suffered from the Terrible Dice God.....

Prototype Lunar Alien

Toying around with ideas while taking a break from painting my VSF officers I hit upon an idea and put hot glue gun to work shaping my new alien prototype for Lunar adventures in VSF. Everyone is in a rush to get to Mars and Venus, possibly even Ganymede…. yet the moon is right on the way.

Venus Structures

For our about to launch campaign on Venus I was chatting with the GM to be and learned we had no real concept on what type of buildings might be there. Terrain overall has be decided to be swampy with limited "plains" areas and to have massive Plateau's where landing sites would be established and fortified. So the idea of native villages or towns came up.... hmmmmm I offered to throw something together and decided that square and rectangular were out.  So cruising some dollar stores I came up with an item to form the basic "building".

The basic idea is that they are alien, strange shaped and visually "different". Access is via underground tunnel ?  Earthlings are still trying to figure them out, but that is a low priority in the land grab rush that is breaking out at the outset of the campaign. I used flower holders for outdoor tombstones.... somehow that seems to fit in with the death and carnage that will surround them! Up ended with their plastic spikes removed, I sprayed them with a base dark brown coat and then, from a distance, sprayed them with varying colors here and there.

Being in a jungle setting I went for the creepers and other jungle plants to be up and around the towers. The base material is from plastic florescent light cover sheets. They come in a variety of smoothness, smooth to rough, I use the rough as it hold glue a lot better. It breaks un evenly but that works too. Towers are affixed with hot glue globs on the inner lip and then smeared around the base where tower meets plastic base. Had to be careful not to melt the plastic of the tower.

Have to love the hot glue gun, with lots of glue sticks to put creeper vines on the side of the towers. You can add many or few, up to you, easy to do. Do not worry about getting a nice thick line at first, it will tend to want to warp the plastic. So I applied several coats of glue, one over the other, filling in here and there, branching out on some. Adding a bit of the Styrofoam balls here and there brings the creepers more to life. I plan to head back over and get two more holders to convert into fallen and crumbled tower ruins.

And there you have it.

Kaptain Kneemo Skirmishing with the Swedish Forces

Last pre campaign battle took place between Kaptain Kneemo's forces and the Swedish Expeditionary forces.

Left shot is about 5 turns into the battle. 4 Companies of Infantry and Sailors, Lt Walker, Hv Walker and a unit of Heavy Infantry head towards the Swedish force on the top of the picture.  The Swede's comprised a Guards unit, 2 line units, 1 militia unit, 2 units of Cavalry, A Gatling artillery unit and a Clockwork unit of tiny tanks. For several of the turns, the Kneemo right flank, commanded by Kenny and Bucky, was either confused, bogged down in the mucky terrain or lost, (possibly a combination of all of them) and moved next to no where. Stanley command the left flank Lt tank and a unit of Line Infantry and did a marvelous job shooting apart a cavalry unit, remnants are seen in the upper left corner of the left picture after their removal. Next the massive cavalry unit prepared to charge. In the mean time the heavy walker damaged the Gatling artillery and sent it back to get ammo or some assistance, though they returned later.

Right picture shows the result of the massive cavalry units charge (massive as in the size of the mounts), though they charged and contacted the shipboard Marines front, they died in 2 rounds of hand to hand combat. The light tank went down to the fire of the Clockwork Tiny Tanks unit. The right flank of Kneemo's forces finally got moving and started pouring fire into the Swede's, taking out the Gatling gun crew as it had finally moved back up to the line.

Continued fire into the Swede's left flank takes out a company of troops, the Militia unit breaks from the fire of the heavy walker on it. At this point the surviving line unit, Clockwork Tiny Tanks and command structure orders a retreat. Stanley's surviving command shot away the Guards unit to his front and was about to face off with the Clockwork Tiny Tanks.

The game lent itself to covering all aspects of the rules system, Martian Empires, with some slight modifications, mainly in adding more types of troops.  Next stop, VENUS!

Unusal Picture

Saw this painting at an Ikea store. Its about 5x6 feet.

New Venusian Creatures

With a campaign starting on Venus shortly, I thought since its a rushed land grab by various colonial powers there has been little exploration of native creatures that might include humans into Their food chain. So searching about I located some star wars miniatures that fit the bill, and only around 50cents each.

So these critters should be hungry enough to figure that the soldiers are some sort of Take Out..Fast Food. Still have to put some colors on them, dry brush here and there. I did procure at least 4 each of them, as they might be the kind of creatures that hunt in packs!

New Demonic Allies

Got some Dreamblade mini's finally to add to my Evil Sorcerers army. Pretty much used their original base colors as the dark prime coat to dry brush multiple layers onto except for the second from the right in the bright maroon color. Otherwise a tiny bit of flash was cleaned and I started painting.

Muzzel Blasts

So, during a VSF battle last week, there lumbered the mighty behemoth tanks and walkers, firing for all they were worth... and it looked.. dull. No Bang, No Flash, bah. On the to hobby table to tackle the problem of no muzzel flashes. First was the problem of how to make it removable since there would be times the big gun would not be firing.

So on the left is a half inch of plastic tube, into which I hot glued with a glob of hot glue, a piece of bamboo skewer. I small glass of water was near by which sped the cooling time of the glue by dipping it into the water. I had to be really carefull with this first step so that the skewer and plastic tube were aligned properly and not pointing off at some angle. On the right is the first build up of hot glue, on went lots of glue, then dip to cool and repeat.

Next 2 photo's show the continued build up. I reshaped the areas that were "wrong" to the eye by holding the tip of the hot glue gun to the spot in question till it softened, then shoved it around.

Having gotten the hot glue on and cooled, I then proceeded to give it a paint wash and bit of dry brush. Hmmm still not right, so on went some Cotton for smoke out of which the flash comes. Still, not to bad but the remaining problem that became apparent when I put it on the end of the tanks cannon was that the plastic tube was larger than the diameter of the end of the cannon and that the flash drooped down in a not satisfactory direction. I solved that by adding a bit of Plasticine modeling clay into the end of the plastic pipe so that when its placed on the end of the cannon, it acts as a temporary stabilizing tacky glue.
And there you have it, fast and easy to make.