TNT: Snipe Hunt 1

Time for another TNT AAR. This was the second game I played against a mate using the s.t.a.l.k.e.r. inspired crew. I brought my team of Cannibal Mutants - still hoping for them to actually work out. ... they always seem to ahve a hard time.

The battlefield
We played a scenario with various hotspots, these hot spots had to be cleared of loot - gaining more caps and gear after the game. For the game we decided to setup a board with an old industrial harbor. We placed an old cargo ship, silos and similar terrain.

The hotspots were chosen to be evenly split on the board after setting it up.

This skirmish fight quickly seemed to be split on two fronts. Both the warbands were split evenly between the ship on one side and the road on the other. Knowing the the stalkers had the superior firepower (from our clash with a zombie infestation), my plan was to hug the cover, get close, take down the enemies with ganging up on them.

The Game
Four stalkers (not a stand in for their new elite) are clearing the cargo ship, loot being scattered in some of the old containers.

Quickly finding some potential gold in an old container.

The degenerates in the family, have really poor stats, and the campaigning haven't started good for them. Skulking through cover, they tried to get close and pin the ranged heavy stalkers down, prevent them from getting away with loot.

Staying close together the plan for my opponent was to take on the degenerates in melee, when they got close. Try and soften them up with a few shotgun shells and a molotov cocktail.

On the other flank of the battlefield my plan was the same. My tiny (a big brute) and mongrel would hug the cover, get close and deny the enemey their superier firepower. The less stupid youngins would take hold of the loot and carry it away.

A crossbow armed youngin getting into combat with a strong stronger, fighting over some potential loot.

A picture of the battlefield. Most of the terrain is made from scrap materials and have step-by-step guides here.

Moving slowly up the highway. The obese maw-maw can't move as quick, so she's taking it slow with her sons. A few steps and then fire some (super ineffective) shots at he enemy. The enemy carrying amongst other stuff a plasma rifle - a lot more dangerous than arrows and black powder.

A degenerate on the harbor, breaking from cover, getting ready for the sprint towards the enemy. A dangerous trip over open land.

We marked out the searchable areas with a concrete block on top. Here you can see their something to find in the excavators and the green shed.

Armed with an old black powder rifle a younging managed to get some good shots in on the stalker leader - eventually taking him down. Very nice to take the plasma rifle out of the equation.

The entire battlefield shown from another angle.

The stalkers, wanting to use their better skills in shooting and better weapons, took up position in one end of the road. Then a melee expert skulked forward to claim loot in front of me. In the end (absolutly against all odds) the mutant cannibals one the firefight and made it into melee with some of the stalkers.

On the other side of the board, near the harbor area, the stalkers did way better. Easily taking out the mutant degenerates and claiming the loot in this area of the board.

Aftermath
This was the second game for the team of stalkers and again they did good. In the first game the managed to get a hold of both a plasma rifle and a minigun - and enough cash to bring in another elite soldier.

After this game they got a bunch of caps for other upgrades - and found a wounded wasteland critter. With good a good dice roll, the stalkers now have four wasteland dogs to help out. A huge benefit - free cannon fodder to run forward and tie up enemies in combat.

On the other hand the mutant cannibals, for the first game yet, managed to not have anoyong die. For once the little family got a few caps in the bank, gained some good expereince points and didn't end up with a loss. Unfortunately the managed to fail all mettle rolls on the explorations rolls - despite drawing three picture cards.

Not a bad day - just not the best...

Anvil Industry - Black Friday bit bag

Anvil Industry run a nice black friday sale of miscast bit frames. I got one last year and it was full of absolutely amazing bits (many of which I haven't used yet).

So this year I got another bag, for the fun of it, I feel lucky. These bags (and Anvils bits in general) are super popular, so their new website broke down from all the black friday traffic. I managed to get through though - so yeah me!

I do have a feeling that there were more bits in the bag I got last year - but that might just be sweet memories as I didn't weigh them last year. And last year I got 10 complete (legs, arms, torso, heads) models in the bag (that's sweet).

This year it was 6 model, if I get some old space marine arms and heads and some feet greenstuff fixed on one body.

Here's all the goodies I got this year. Let's take a closer look. 

Super happy to have more bergen backpacks (was running low) and the assault shields I didn't have. These are perfect as I want to do some Spetsnaz types for Zona Alfa, inspired by the Order in Metro 2034.

The shotgun is huge, have to go on a big guy, like a marauder body or something. I might still have one of those, so he'll join my v8 cult. One of the arms is wielding a knife, that's a damn cool pose for a model someday.

Got some sweet modern military heads, that I don't have yet. These are nice to have for a lot of things. Some resin candles will come in handy for my dungeon terrain. And there's even three weapons for Gaslands conversions.

I don't play Warhammer 40k. But that big exo lord is super cool! I like his size. I think I'll be using him as a true scale deathwatch marine for an inquisitor someday.

These two are cool. One will become a neat cyberpunk drone. The smaller one will need repairs or it'll become an objective marker, return the broken drone thing.

Is the bit bag worth the money this year? Yes, I think it is. Great fun for me as I play so many different systems. I was hoping for a bit more of their modern stuff, as those ranges have expanded so much over the last year.

Crossing my fingers for the next time they do a sale.

2019 is over - 2020 is coming

This is a 2019 hobby write - looking back over the year to see if I have completed my overall goals. 

Two for one

This year´I jumped on a 2-for-1 challenge. I had to paint two models for each model I bought, making sure the pile of unpainted models would become smaller. 

The consequence of not reaching the goal, would be to sell stuff from the collection to make it fit. 

2-for-1 has been excellent for me! I've skipped a bunch of kickstarters that would (most likely) have ended in storage anyway. I've only jumped on a few auctions, to get great bulks of miniatures and bits - often with reselling in mind. Reselling a lot of the aquired bits and models to in the end sit back with some almost free stuff.

I have bought the awesome Dunkeldorf Miniatures. First and foremost to support an excellent project a dream of fellow Danish hobbyists. And I could see use for most models when pledging. And even before getting the models, I was sure of backing a second kickstarter as well.

Only other kickstarter is Terrain Crate 2, that'll add so much to my modern and post apocalypse tables. And some of that will be resold instantly as well, to bring down the price.

I won't go into all the boring numbers. But this year I've accuired some free Killteam and Necromunda gangs (for some day) forexample. I also cleared out the rest of the models, I don't have concrete plans for. So when I went over the collection in november I couldn't find more than 35 models to get rid off - all the rest is planned for something (even if that something doesn't get made into anything). 

So all in all (here start December) my collection haven't grown this year - the last sell made me hit 0. And I sold all my Dreadball (breaking even on it, so it's been sitting here for free). So actually my collection is now 184 model lesser than when the year started. 

Opposed to this I've managed to paint 258 models so far this year - that's a lot. A bunch of these were for my Roman Risk project. But for my own collection, for 28mm gaming, I've painted 180 miniatures. So I consider 2-for-1 a very huge success. And I will probably try and do it next year as well. 

Terrain

I love building terrain and complete boards. And with the super cheap MDF kits out there, it's both affordable and fast to make cool thematic boards. We always play on completed, densely packed boards, with a common theme. 

2019 saw me finish a lot of new settings for different games I wanted to play. I build a huge wasteland board during a weeks break from work. Having a cool time with my 5 year old kid. It's all in the wasteland page. 

2019 was also the year I finally intered the Ghost Archipelago. For that I made a bunch of jungle terrain, enough to cover a 3'x4' and make different setups. All in the jungle terrain hub. 

The last 'new' board this year have been making a huge amount of cyberpunk upgrades. New buildings, scatter and details to turn my modern stuff into a full cyberpunk layout for Reality's Edge. I'm not done posting blogs about all the stuff I've build - but it's all going here.

Gaming
I had a plan when the year started, to play more different people. I don't get out to conventions and have no club nearby. So this year I've been inviting old friends (wargamers or roleplayers no longer in the community). I've been building and painting warbands and let them choose the game system.

It's been great. Catching up with some pals from the old days and getting more games in this way. So that's some nice This Is Not A Test done this way. Overall it's been a year of skirmish gaming. With Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago, Last Days and Reality's Edge also taking up some game time.

The blogging

I still blog for my own enjoyment. I've never intended to make money, do advertisement or spend any time on it other than my hobby time. That being said, it does fill me with joy the interaction I get from other gamers. 

There's some super great communities on Facebook, and it's nice when people find inspiration in some of the cheap scratch build stuff I do. It motivates me to do other stuff. 

I've also tried this year, to do some review writing - it's hard to do right. But each review have gotten around 1000 reads - and that pretty darn cool. 

Osprey Games reached out, and asked if I wanted to guest blog on their page. Since I do the blogs anyways, it's a cool recognition of the work I do. I've written a few for them and I have plans for a lot of content for 2020. 

Social media

I'm no expert on social media. But I do spend time on it, sharing my stuff around. The facebook page have grown nicely. Got to 500 likes when 2019 started and moving towards 900 now. It's good, never spend any money on getting bigger reach. 

I've also started a twitter and instagram page, but those platforms is harder for me to get - perhaps it's due to there not beeing groups like on Facebook. I would however like a bigger reach there, especially for the review part of the blogging. So I'll look into it in 2020. And if anyone want to help out, please drop a follow on Twitter or Instagram. Or perhaps drop a follow on the blogger page - link on the right side of the page.

2020 - the year of solo gaming

My hobby goal for 2020 is to try out solo gaming. I want to game more and I don't around to playing enough games with my friends. So the 2020 hobby goal is:

Play at least two solo miniatures games every month

This should provide a good amount of motivation for me. I'll be trying out multible new games, I'll need to plan terrain and model painting for specific scenarios. It's gonna be awesome.

In 2020 I'll be flying solo in:
Rangers of Shadow Deep (classic fantasy), Frostgrave: Perilous Dark (frozen fantasy), Zona Alfa (russian survival horror), Hardwired (cyberpunk) and The Walking Dead (zombies!).

And then the super important Frostgrave 2nd edition! Wuhhuu! That's gonna be awesome. I've already ordered three high tower like buildings for my board - it needed som more height.

Suggestions?

There's a nice amount of followers of this blog. Do you have any suggestions? Anything I should focus on? Change around? Any good ideas? Please let me know, I want to expand my skills in this blogging thing - it's good fun.

Thank you for follwing, commenting, liking, sharing and so on. Happy holidays and have a great new year.

Ghost Archipelago: Snake-Men

Another part of the core book bestiary is the snakemen. You won't roll up many at a time with the core rules, a lot more when you get around to one of the expansions.

I think the snakemen are a very weird kit, proportions on the models seem super weird - I'm not really a fan of these sculpts. I got them to see if they looked better as bits than they did on the photos.

I managed to get the snake men as part of a sale and resell 10 of the 20 models in the box. This will have me covered for the entries needed (or a complete warband) and the resell made my own models really cheap.

So fair deal. I've added some old GW lizardman shield to the models, as the shields form the kit are way to small for my taste. Been using blue as the color on the clothing parts. To make a contrast to the other cultures on the islands.

My Tribals are black and red. My Dricheans are purple.

For the skin tone on the snakemen I plan to use different nuances of red and green on all of them.

Terrain: Torii and Machiya

One of the things that make a cyberpunk board right is mixing in some asian pieces. As always the lovely TT Combat will provide cheap little pieces for something like that. So these are going into most Reality's Edge setups.

Torii Gates
These come two gates to a set. Originally these should be with round poles and you can finde those one the market - just not as cheap at these.

I base coated the gates with red and black spray before assemble. Then used a fine marker to draw up random 'asian' symbols - non of these are real. I just scirbbled randoms signs.

I also used my Posca markers to make some grafitti on the gates, a quick gang tag and a dragon pieces. Then used a few printed posters from the RE Facebook group.

Machiya Shops
A machiya is a traditional Japanese town house made of wood. I looked around on the internet for some inspirational photos and found that must are actually a dark brown wood. So I base coated mine dark brown outside, then made the inside grey.

These pieces come with a few sliding doors (that have to be glued in place). There's enough to make an open entry on the front and use the last to add detail on the back. There's also some banners with a logo on, made sure to use these in different places.

This is some nice little pieces to put next to the larger brick buildings for the mixed urban sprawl.

As with all my cyberpunk terrain I've added grafitti and posters to the buildings.

Reality's Edge - Electronic Redundancy 1

Originally posted on Osprey Games blog. 

Finished my first game of Reality's Edge. It was a good game, happy that I knew the simpler TNT rules beforehand. The only thing really slowing down the game was remembering the different apps out Console Cowboys, shadow backers and a griefer avatar had. A very good choice would have been to make a quick reference card for the griefer avatar.

I'll try here to write up an AAR on our first game and how it went.

The crews
My first crew is an Enforcer show runner with a band og rag tag gangers. There's background info and bit lists on them here.

From left to right is: Console Cowboy 'Circuit', Sprawl Ronin 'Glitch', Enforcer 'Cliff', Gangers Hogger and Ina.

My opponent runs a team lead by a Masque, with a console cowboy, drone commander, sprawl ronin and a few gangers. Also shown with the gang is their apps. A Lemmy Iduro, a guardian angel (robotic monkey) and shadow backer.

Setup

The board is a 3'x3' setup with a lot of terrain made for the setting and some updated pieces of modern terrain. There's pretty much step-by-step blogs on all the pieces on the terrain hub. We didn't really have any specific theme in mind for this setup. So we just slapped on a lot of pieces and place 4 C.A.Ts around the board. We quickly figured out that the large crowds would have trouble moving about.

So we added a rules that the random movement of crowds would move vehicles forward on the roads.

Surveillance drone fly over
A quick little video showing off more details of the board, flying over the terrain.

The game
We played the Electronic Redundancy, a JOBOP for hacking and then controlling most terminals. For the scenario we had the lockdown hitch (all doors and windows locked), White ICE on all terminals and a Griefer Avatar doing trouble on the board.

My crew setup close, within the 9" motivate range of the showrunner Enforcer. My plan was pretty straight forward. Get my hacker to a nice covered terminal. Get the shadow backer to another with the remainder of the crew. Make sure the Street Ronin could chop down some enemies for their Big Media backers - get some more cash.

Unfortunately my showrunner could not seek and kill an enemy for his personal motivation as all the enemies were lower costed than himself.

 Opposite my enemies setup. We were both covered from each other before getting closer to the middle of the board, where a sort of open area was possible to enter. My opponent chose to split his gang in two, keeping both halves in cover.

We both chose to let our shadow backer remain stationary and use all available action points for weakening the White ICE guarding the C.A.T.s - and we were immediately surprised how much of a different that higher Firewall is going to make.

We had some trouble figuring out how the White Ice would be dangerous when they only attack hacking in contact with their C.A.T. - but after turn one we knew. They spend both their AP using buffing apps. We would get traces for attacking when and take damage if failing Slice attacks.

Here's my hacker 'Circuit' moving towards a White Ice - staying covered from any possible enemies.

One White ICE is the form of a protective knight in shining blue armor.

Moving towards the open center of the board with a lot of muscle. I want to seek a bloody confrontation for the extra REP it'll bring in for the crew.

Taking control of the center open area, trying to find some cover. The enemy is moving around on both sides of the red brick building in front of my guys. 

'

A bystander waiting for the bus. The crowds and bystanders turned out to be very cool - even when all the bullets started flying around. We really didn't see a lot of panic, even with a lot of gunfire.

My opponent was quick to get rid of the White ICE, breaking it with hard attacks from both shadow backer and console cowgirl. My gang is just around the corner - confrontation is imminent.

Having gone another route, aiming for another terminal is the showrunner Masque, a drone jockey and the shadow backer. The drone jockey is armed with a helo fire support drone, that flies quickly around a building. I takes cover in some trash and have a nice firing lane towards my gangers and sprawl ronin. The Ronin is not yet within cover and is wounded. She doesn't fail her grazed test - which would have been nice actually.

A lurking gun drone.

 My crew had the rotten luck of getting a Griefer Avatar close to them, entering from their own entry point on the map. I was dead terrified of the possible damage the griefer could do me - as he has to spend AP on bad stuff each turn. Only my own crew would be within range. So for the first three turns of the game, my console cowboy and shadow backer spend all the combined hacking power to bring the Griefer offline.

In the end they were succesful without getting damaged too badly - but wasted valuable time, Breaking down the White Ice and getting control of the two C.A.T.s near me would be hard.

The center battlefield. An open space with bystanders and two visible C.A.T.s - blood would be spilled here.

Not wanting to disappoint my Big Media backers, my ronin 'Glitch' charged forward attacked my opponents own ronin. 'Glitch' came out on top, scoring a critical hit with her sword causing a lot of damaged - those chrome arms bringing in some extra bang.

I've been lucky rolling 'against all odds' skills for my ronin and the ganger Hogger, so they don't mind being outnumbered - in fact it's a bonus for them. But it even turned out that models block line of sight, so all those gangers in cover near the wall couldn't charge around their partner.

And then failing some activation roles and only getting 1 AP, they couldn't help much.

Sitting at different ends of an alley my ganger Ina first brought down the gun drone and started shooting at the jockey. She was backed up with a few shotgun blasts from her enforcer leader. But at the other end the showrunner masque and drone commander fired back - bringing down Ina after a few rounds of shooting.

Moving away from the wall and into cover of a hovering noodle shop, my opponents gangers started firing at my guys on the square. And I was getting afraid of getting caught in a crossfire situation. The female ganger in a red tanktop rushed in to support her sprawl ronin friend.

In return my ganger Hogger rushed in and smacked her to the ground with a cybernetic punch. And 'Glitch' managed to down her enemy as well.

Now the enemy console cowgirl (having control of a terminal) overheated 'Glitch' chrome legs giving her a lot of damage. Then green haired ganger 'Animal' fired a hand cannon and 'Glitch' bringing her down to a single wound.

Mean while my console cowboy and shadow backer had finally taken their White ICE offline and still had a few turns left to hack and take control of their two C.A.T.s. At the moment my opponent controlled one.

The enemy shadow avatar had access to a terminal as well and quickly got control of the system. The enemy now had control of two C.A.T.s in the area - and I was still trying to hack into one.

Feeling the situation under control and knowing my console cowboy was busy working his deck, the enemy showrunner tried to stop him. Running around the monorail station, he climbed a car and started shooting at the hacker 'Circuit'. Luckily for me he was hard to hit from hard cover - and continued working.

The fight kind off went out of our guys at this point and the game was ending. My ganger Ina was down and a few of the enemies guys as well. My showrunner climbed a food stall, to stay in cover and safe, maybe take out a few enemies. My sprawl ronin hid, nursing here wound trying to not go out of action.

 Showing off the enemy console cowgirl uploaded her guardian angel to the grid, but otherwise stayed our of more fighting - not having brought a ranged weapon to the battle.

The gangers Hogger and Animal ended in a fist fight, no one getting the upper hand. The only backed off from one another when the showrunners called them. The battle was over. Corp Security was inbound, they were out of time. Too much shooting and hacking activity on this part of the grid.

Aftermath

That was a brilliant and fun game. It all felt very cyberpunk and it was nice playing a mission with a critical focus on hacking. 

My opponent got out on top. He got a REP from two hacked terminals, taking two ICE offline and received extra crypto currency from his Unshackle AI master. There was also a lot of nice XP for him. The injuries all turned out to be minor and no crew members would miss the next JOBOP. All in all he came out with a lot of INFO and 70CC. 

It didn't go badly for my own crew - as in there was no permanent injuries to the team. But my failed hacking attempts did bring a lot of trace on me. My own shadow backer will be offline for two turns in my next game. And I failed to hack any of the terminals spending all that energy on the griefer. My income roles were bad as well - 30CC brought from that fight. 

Maybe it was the fight (or not offering enough cash), but my attempt at bringing the sprawl ronin 'Glitch' on as a permahire failed as well.

A few money in the bank, that's okay - I'll take those other scumbags next time.