This Is Not A Test: Super Mutant

 This Super Mutant is from the boardgame The Others - part of Wrath. Never played the game, I just got it for all the kicksass miniatures. After some auctioning off part of the game, I have a ton of free miniatures left. This guy had goat claw originally, so I made him some simple greenstuff military boots. 

This guy is painted with Speed Paint 1.0 and I did a bunch of pre-wash in the recessed areas. 

Since this guy will go into my Zona Alfa and This Is Not A Test game I used The Institute colors on one of his armor plates. The Institute is a faction in many of the the worlds I play. And that force is slowly growing over time. 

The miniature was painted as part of a big guy community challenge, we run those regularly over on the Discord community. You should come check it out. 

I really like how this guy turned out, it shows what speed paint can do pretty well (it's excellent for skin). And it's really nice to have a reason to use some of all those free minis just hanging out in the garage. 

Insurgent Earth: The Institute crew

 This is a crew I've painted for a community competition over on the Stalker7 facebook community, it's a nice place. Patrick Todoroff collects all his different systems in that one group, a brilliant idea not splitting everything up. He also runs fairly regular competitions. 

I found these miniatures in the boxes in the garage. They are from Endure The Stars and The Others, both kickstarters I've gotten cheap and broken even on by selling excess minis. These are for Insurgent Earth, a solo/coop system. 

They are three scientists from The Institute (that's also part on my Zona Alfa lore) and their two military guides. They're painted quickly with speed paint, with only prewashing on the skin parts. The institute has their regular yellow color scheme with blue details and the blue triangle. 

I haven't checked if the group is in anyway rules legal, but it was a nice excuse to use some of those models just living in a box. 

Here they group are with their t.r.o.l.l. suit done for a Zona Alfa competition. 

The conversion work on these was very minimal, it was just adding packs to all the characters and a few belt details. Super easy, but making them more tacticool. 

Why not check out the LinkTree and go see some other hobby SoMe? Linktree here. 

Big Stompy Robot

 Over on the Discord Community we run quarterly hobby challanges. The members decide us as theme to run and we all build, paint and enter something. For one of the previous challanges we rolled up random characters and had to make those. Then we used a random flag generator to come up with colors.

I rolled the following: A Mad Villain Arcanist, unarmed in heavy protection.

 Colors / symbol: Mostly White, secondary Yellow, with details in Blue and a crown.

I fairly quickly had an idea in mind for what project I wanted to do. A long time ago I bought a Big Stompy Robot for Mars Attacks by Mantic Games, I decided to to that. I wanted this made, to play with the behemoth rules for This Is Not A Test. 

I found some suitable tehnolog (russian made cheap terrain) in a box and a great mad scientist from Reichbursters by Mythic Games. 

The Bits

The biggest part is an old mantic martian robot. It was boringly put together, so I ripped it apart and made a better pose on legs and arms. The dome on his head is a tehnolog silo, I cut out the front. Had some random 40k building things, that I made into hydrolic hinges. Then also added some antennas and shouldpads made from a scavenged warship model kit.

I also took the heat and shrink ray arms and combined them into a single bigger gun!

Painting and basing

I basecoated the entire miniature with a gun metal color and gave it a lot of washes. Added the white and yellow from my flag on a few armor pieces. 

For the base I really wanted to go for 50s scifi stumpy robot. I made a street base with cork on a cd. Then I added a sidewalk with cardboard. Should have used a second layer of cork, as it would have raised the sidewalk better. 

I found a bit of pieces from the old Mantic Terrain Crate 2 kickstarter and added a smashed up motorcycle, a bike and a fire hydrant. 

Join the Discord

This little project was done as part of a Discord Cumminty Challange. Come join a lovely and supportive hangout community, get a microblog going and join in on future challanges. 

Join here: Discord Server. 

Unboxing: Endure The Stars 1.5 - some kickstarter stuff

 A big part of my hobby stuff comes from cheap and lucky auctions. Either kickstarter boardgames or huge lots of used models. I've become quite good at figuring out, the rough price of reselling stuff. 

I got a super cheap deal on an Endure The Stars kickstarter pledge - like super cheap. I know nothing about the game and have zero interest in playing it. 

But it does come with a bunch of miniatures useable for both scifi, cyberpunk and horror gaming. 

Lots of duplicate models here for reselling. After resell auctions, I managed to break even on the investment. Only sold a few of the miniatures, but the boards and tokens went for a good price. So! Free models! Yeah. Love it when a plan like that comes together. 

And there's still plenty of models left to resell or give away. Gonna give away a box of miniatures for the Discord birthday in 21st March. 

Full unboxing video is below, looking a quality of the models, details comparing scale on so on. 

Corp Security stage 2

After painting up my first batch of security forces for use in cyberpunk games - mostly thinking of Hardwired for these guys - I found a missing model. So I decided to paint him up, and with that guy I found some more models to paint up. Some of the missing Mazon Labs soldiers from Star Saga. So could as well paint those at the same time. 

So in the end I had 14 stage 2 security troopers more than before. More than enough. But I've also completed that part of the Star Saga core box. So that's cool. 

A single stage 1 trooper, regular security. This was the missing guy. But then I also found this robot with big guns and shields. He looks like a cool entry bot. He'll walk in front, entering buildings and taking all the fire. 

Next up was some more regular marines. Had only painted a few of these for use in Deadzone. Fairly simple models to paint, I like the scale - big and easy. So when they're all the same uniforms and only in three different poses - then only way to make difference is with skin colors. So been using lots of nuances here.

Last is the remaining rangers from Star Saga. Cool elite troopers. Also comes with three flamethrowers - so you know when these are deployed things are bad. Made for cleaning of research stations. But in the Hardwired expansion there's rules for teardrop template weapons.

And my completed Stage 1 and Stage 2 security foce - getting rather big. From lightly armored security troopers to fully armored rangers and big robots. And I even still have a tank and too hover police cars to paint up for them.

Review: Gamma Wolves - Post-Apocalyptic Mecha Warfare

 Hello wargamers and thanks for checking in. 

It's time to write a few words about Gamma Wolves - a game of post-apocalyptic mecha warfare. Osprey Games has been kind enough to send me a PDF version of the book, to have a look at it. So let's do that! 

Gamma Wolves will officially be released on November 24th. 

So what is Gamma Wolves? 

Humans build big robots, genetically engineered people and AI automatons. Then they blew up the Earth and turned it into a wasteland 'The Sea of Destruction'. Now only a few large archologies and smaller free stations exist. 

Wikipedia describes an archology like this: Arcology, a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology", is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated, ecologically low-impact human habitats.

In the game players control up to six mech units in various sizes, they fight for salvage and old tech in the wasteland - hoping to bring great stuff back to their archology. 

How's the review?

I've asked in the official Facebook group, if there was any questions. We'll try to answer those. And the review will then feature five sections, three inspired by the book. 

1. Art and editing
2. Assembling your crew
3. Playing the game - mechanics
4. Campaigning
5. My final thoughts

Art and editing

I've come to expect a lot by the art and setup in Osprey Games hardback rule books. Gamma Wolves feature nice graphics, a good table of contents (book is easy to get around in). There's plenty of examples throughout the book of how rules work. Where needed there's top down photos / diagrams of mechs for showing rules. All this is very good. 

Photos of mechs. There's some decent photos, showing some differently painted frames and warbands. Ash Barker does good painting and has a nice collection of miniatures. Not too many actions shots, but good photos of crews. 

There does however seem to be a disconnection between the miniature photos and the mech artwork. The book has some nice paintings of frames - and most look really post-apocalyptic. Scrapped, junkers, graffiti or clunky military. Where the photo of miniatures are more clean sci-fi in look. 

For me it creates a bit of an unbalance in the look shown in the book. And I'm really missing the artwork telling stories. Frostgrave, Zona Alfa, Last Days - the artwork is amazing. So many stories told in those photos. My imagination is running wild after seeing artwork like that.

Unfortunately Gamma Wolves doesn't have it. Give my artwork of the veteran crew members hanging out (not a human in sight in the book), the crawler base mech bay or the archology sending off a team. Give me art of a battle raging. But there's nothing like it. 

And to me that's disappointing, because reading through the book I didn't get the story hype I'm used to. Good craftsmanship, well written rules. But it's missing something in the art - for me at least. 

Assembling your crew - models needed

In Gamma Wolves each team has a base, a crawler. This base doesn't take part in the game, but it can hold a maximum of six mech units. Mechs come in three different sizes, based on different base size. 

Small frames: 2-3 meters high, 40-50mm base. Think of a heavy power armor suit. 

Medium frames: 3-4 meters high, 75-100mm bases. Dreadnought, Matrix Revolutions, Avatar sized mechs. 

Heavy frames: bigger yet, 125mm-150mm bases. Huge, heavily armored mech units.

Depending on your archology choice, there's some min-max you can choose of the different frames and pilot types. Small frames are cheaper to arm, quicker and easier to hide. Heavy frames can carry more stuff, are slow and heavily armed. 

You pick out 6 cool mech / robots / tanks for your team. Then you hire on some crew members. These come in rookie, trained and veteran. Better crew, have better stats for doing dice tests. You don't have enough resources to bring an all veteran crew. 

There's a huge list of weapons to chose from, covering all from projectile weapons over laser lances. You can WYSIWYG arm whatever mech model you come across really. 

The crawler

Your base is a high tech machine, able to recycle lots of stuff. So between missions you can freely rearm, change gear etc on your mechs - it's not like you need to buy something for weapon locker. You always have a 500 credit pile to equip you mechs with standard stuff. 

Arcologies

There's some different factions to choose from, with a bit of fluff. Continuation of Government north america types, AI robots from space, genetically enhanced clones from South Africa, Soviet style faction, feudal types from Mt. Fuji and the ronin warriors of free stations. All have different quirks. ... For my test crews I picked ronin - to have fitting models. 

And it's an interesting choice, making very distinct and described factions - instead of going more general like 'militaristic dictatorship', 'science enclave', 'communist regime', 'AI overlords' (and having the others as examples).

The list of weapons you can chose for your light frames. There's similar list for medium and large frames. These will mostly be the same types of weapons, but have different stats. 

A character sheet for a medium frame. We'll get back to this one later. But the lighter frame has fewer boxes for damage and fewer hardpoints for installing gear. Heavier frames have even more.

Playing the game - key mechanics

I'm no rules expert, and will not go into too much detail on rules. I will however try and list some of the key mechanics in the game. 

Dice mechanics

Shooting, evading and other actions all start with a dice pool of 3d6. Then dice are added for weapon bonus or skills. So you end up with a handful of dice. The target number to beat will often be your pilot's skill level (that's depending on experience level). Then there will be modifiers to your roll. 

A mech will be vulnerable if shot in the side of back for example. 

Setup and initiative

When setting up a game, you roll a dice to decide the type of battlefield. All various versions of wasteland, with the rolled scenario describing if you're playing amongst broken sky scrapers or on the flat wasteland with low cover. 

When setting up your force, you start by placing only a base in the correct size (and imagine a box with height equal to your model). The miniature remains hidden until an enemy 'base' is placed with line of sight. Then both models are set on the table. 

So when playing with lots of big ruins, you can end up the a mostly secret deployment. You even move the flat bases around until there's Line of Sight to an enemy. To represent fog of war. 

Pilot stress, reactor stress and war clock

This is one of the main things to stick out of these rules. And they are directly affecting the turn phases that we'll get into in a bit. 

Whenever a pilot fires weapons, maneuvers or evades, he'll get stressed. It's hard to steer a big mech. If he ever reaches maximum stress he is out for the round and can't do anymore. 

Same goes for the reactor in the mech. Some weapons are putting strain on the reactor (lasers and plasma), when the mech moves around or takes damage. If it's stressed enough, it's out for the turn. 

At the end of each turn, players roll some dice and can remove that much stress from their frame and pilots. So it's not guaranteed that a mechs reactor is completely cooled down by the next turn.

The war clock defines how much time the warband has in the Sea of Destruction. The size of the war clock is determined at the start of the game. When the war clock is empty, the warband has to redraw to their crawler - to refuel, reload, etc (they're out of resources for a field trip). Whenever you remove a reactor stress token on a mech, you remove a token from the war clock. This is a super interesting mechanic. 

The more you use your mechs be it movement or firing - the quicker your war clock will empty and you will have to leave the field of battle (letting the opponent claim the rest of the salvage, win if your objectives are not complete etc). 

So there's a real essence of resource management in the strategy here. The more you move around (do unnecessary movement) or the more mechs you field - the quicker the war clock will empty. You need to have a strategy. 

Phases

The game turn has three phases (moving, shooting, end phase). For each phase, the player with the least amount of frames on the table gets an amount of 'passes' equal to the difference. 

Movement

In this phase the players alternate moving their mech. Each mech has to activate once, but a mech can chose to do nothing and end its part in the phase. Mechs can't shuffle around on the spot and there's rules in place that movement will always force a mech to end up in a new position. 

Here's the kicker of the system - a mech can activate more than once! As long as it can still take the stress. That's why 'passes' are really important. You can stress the reactor to reach an objective or get into cover. But that will leave less reactor power for shooting. 

'Overwatch'. If moving into Line of Sight of an enemy - they can take a hasty shot. It's harder to hit shooting like this - but it can prevent an enemy from getting into cover. Taking these shots of opportunity also puts more stress on the firing pilot - so perhaps it's better to wait for the shooting phase. 

Shooting

Much like the previous phase. Players alternate firing a weapon from a mech, but can end up activating more than once - if they can take the stress. So a light frame will only have one or two weapons - but a rookie in here. Lots of movement and a single shot. 

A heavy frame will carry a ton of weapons - you need a pilot able to handle a lot of stress (a veteran). Because you want to be able to fire lots of weapons. And perhaps save on the movement. 

Whenever a mech is hit by damage, you roll to see which part is hit (and tick off boxes on the mech sheet). So weapons will end up broken, movement and shooting will be hard from destroyed legs or sensors. And the body will take damage. 

The campaign

What I love about all skirmish games is the campaign. I never really plan on one-off games. I always do warbands with campaigning in mind. And the campaign section for Gamma Wolves takes up a lot of the book. 

When running a campaign a crew will pick six frames and a crew of pilots. You'll rarely have enough pilots (some will be banged up in the infirmary) to deploy all your mechs (and some might be needing repairs). So you basically start by building your toolbox - and then bring tools for missions from what's available, but never using all. 

In campaigns your crew will get experience and injuries. The mechs will need constant repairing. A crew goes into the wasteland (there's 6 different scenarios, many with attacker / defender) in hunting for salvage (catch-all for money, repair and upgrade ressources) or valuable old-tech (special weapons and loadouts for mechs). 

As you play through a campaign your pilots gain new skills and better abilities and your mechs will get better armaments from the old tech. Depending on the status of the crew, they can either visit a free station - to sell salvage and buy special items. Or they can be forced to return to the archology. This is if they can't field enough frames (from damage or being completely lost after a fight) or having to hire new crew members. This will be really expensive - as an archology leadership demands tribute in old-tech! 

This is also the goal of the campaign, for the crew to successfully return home with a ton of technology. Freely paid technology that is (not the tribute paid for new frames). ... this means you have to return home with you best gear to get campaign points - the longer you use it in the field, the higher the chance it's blown off your mech. So decisions - decisions. 

So what do I think?

It wouldn't be much of a review without giving a few thoughts back. 

Rules

I really like the mechanics of stress and war clock. First it's fitting for the mech genre, pilots flat lining from neural feedback and mech frames overheating from getting off that extra shot. I love mech combat from Matrix to Pacific Rim. And the mechanics goes to show this. 

I haven't played a real game yet (only trying mechanics while reading), but it does seem like there's a fair amount of stuff to remember. Stress on pilot and frames. Debuffs depending on which areas are broken (small laminated sheets would be good for this, to place on the chart when relevant). It's a bit hard to tell. The rules seem pretty straight forward. But the management part might slow if down - at least until you get a real good hang of it. 

Mechs and frames

The game is obviously written for a love of big robots and those Gundam bots. And the game embraces both full sci-fi AI controlled robots and Soviet dieselpunk clankers. But for me at least it's hard to wrap my head around the size needed for the minis. 

I get the small size. 40 - 50 mm base. I can use space terminator marines, deadzone Mantic peace keeper enforcers, Dust Tactics soldiers. 

Medium sized is just a bit bigger. So I would go for dreadnaughts, Dust tactics walkers or the Reich Busters mech suits or Deadzone striders. I have all these and they could work on a 75mm base. 

Large frames... no idea. The height is unlimited (could be a crawler tank). But I have no models fitting that size. A 125mm base is huge (I'll be using CDs though they're only 120mm). 

So in the end I might go full post apocalypse on my builds. Not going for a clear style. But make scrap build robots - from Ramshackle Games bits, scrap material etc. And go for a Ronin crew or Soviet style clankers. And that might be the way I go for large frames. I have enough stuff for medium and light frames.

I'm also considering going 15mm scale for this. The game seems perfect for it. But I have no terrain for it and lots of wasteland terrain for 28mm. ... it'll be up to whatever opponents I end up with.

Ash Barker is pretty much up front about (with multiple mentions in the book) - this is your (the readers) game. Do as you want. That being said I'm going 40mm, 60mm and 120 mm (CDs) for my bases. There's some good photos in the book, but some photos with rulers would have been good. Side-by-side miniatures with height measured - to get a better feel of the intended range in light, medium and large frames. As an inspiration for the gamers.

What's the verdict?

Gamma Wolves is a nice book and the rules seem very solid. I like that the mechanics work to build the theme. The rules are tailored around getting a feel of mechs fighting. And it does a good job at that. The post apoc / scifi mix, seems a bit off for me as mentioned above.

Am I up for playing Gamma Wolves? Sure. Most likely in 28mm. Looking past the scifi part. And going full on diesel, scrap, Mortal Engines - post apocalypse. Build some crazy conversions with some magnetized weapon systems. Build some models working around the look of my This Is Not A Test warbands.

Will it work for fans of the pure sci-fi gundam mech fights? Sure it will. The rulebook has another kind of look (toned down colors, scrap mech artwork), but the rules sure make it possible - no doubt. 

I'm really looking forward to following the Facebook community on this one and seeing what builds people come up with. 

Last words

Thanks for reading this review of Gamma Wolves. If you enjoy this read or other like it. Please take a moment to help my bloggerverse. Share the review around (they're best when read). 

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Star Saga: Goliath, Scuttlers and Inkers

The Star Saga Goliath was a big mosnter (and expansion) unlocking way back at the very end of the kickstarter campaing. The model is a huge, nasty clunk of alien plastic - a really great monster I think. 

I've never really gotten around to playing Star Saga, but the miniatures are ace and I'm using them for all manner of stuff. I stille play Deadzone sometimes, so he goes in there as well. But this guy I decided to paint up for the This Is Not A Test expansion - It Came From The Waste. 

In this expansion the warbands need to fight giant monsters - all with the strength of an entire warband.

There's a battle report using the model right here.  

Painting

It was really quick for me to paint the beastie. I base coated the entire model alien purple with a spray can. The armored areas where done with a greyish bone color. Then the rest of the models was actually done with several layers of washes. The bone areas were washed with strong tone. 

The skin and tentacles were washed with purple and blue washes. Some areas got more layers for a darker color. I've also gone over some areas with gloss varnish for a wet look.

Critters

Can't really recall the members of these little guys. But there's some small quick looking things and a bunch of ink spurting things. I gave my Behemoth the spawn rule in TNT, so it had to have some offspring to let loose during battle. 

This small ones were done as the Goliath. Purple base coat and lots of washes. 

And a small family photo of the entire nasty gang.

Mass Effect: Commander Shephard and his team

Ever since I played through the Mass Effect games, I've wanted to make my favourite characters as models. There's a few different sets available from Shapeways - but with sufficient detail they are pretty expensive.

I once asked my good mate Matte from Admiralty Miniatures, if I could commission him to make some heads. He ended up making a set, have them cast and them put up for sale. 

This was a nice project of mixing and matching different bits and only using a bit of greenstuff, to add a bit of extra detail. There's photos of the finished and painted models at the buttom of this blogpost.

Urdnot Wrex, the Grogan: Mantic Enforcer arms, on a Peace Keeper body. Chopped up the foot to make the toes look right. Added some greenstuff details to give him the right shape on the back. Pistol from enforcer sprue as well.

Mordin Solus, the Salarian: For the body I've used an old restic Wrath model (from Deadzone), added some pouches from the Warlord Games zombie survivor kit. The omnitool is from a Dreadball female human and the pistol is from the enforcers. I added some shoulder pads from greenstuff, as there was some holes in the arms (for some fabric on the Wrath model). The 'claw' on his neck is from a Dreadball robot.

Garrus Vakarian, the Turian: A mantic enforcver model. I've cut the feet, to make them look like a turian. The spikes behind the knees are plastic sprue cut into shape. And to get the right shape on the armor, I've added some simple greenstuff details.

Thane Krios (drell), Tali'Zorah (qurian), Ashley Williams (human):
Thane is made from a Games Workshop dark eldar wytch, where I've cut off all the spikes. The gun arm is from a Mantic enforcer and the sniper is made from various gun bits.

Tali is also a dark eldar wytch. Her omni-tool is made from a Thermal Mine (enforcer) and the submachine gun is a cut up pathfinder tag rifle. I've also given her some utility pouches from the Warlord Games zombie survivors.

Ashleys is an almost vanilla Dreadball femail Void Sirene with an enforcer pistol hand added. I've repose her right arm with some hot water, as it was raised in the air before.

Urdnot Wrex (grodan), Commander Shephard (human), Legion (geth):
The Commander Shephard model is from Brother Vinnis. The only thing I've done with it, is to add a pistol to his back.

Legion is a Dreadball MVP model, perfect model for legion. I've reposed his arms with hot water and added a sniper rifle from the Enforcer Pathfinder sprue.

Garrus Vakarian (turian), Mordin Solus (salarian), Liara T'Soni (asari):
The model I've used for Liara is a cheap resin copy of an Infinity model. Found it on Ebay, not knowing it was a recast or an infinity model. But it has a nice pose. Model came with a sword, that I haven't used.

Painted strike team
For colours I've gone for a look as close to the colours used in the game (if not changed the standards).

I don't really know in which game these guys will see action. Perhaps in Star Saga with help from the Character Creation Expansion, maybe in a game of Scrappers as a scavenger team (using the aliens as mutants). They could also work well with Rogue Stars.

I think they can be run in Deadzone as well, as a reb team. Using Wrex as a Teraton, Mordin as a Judwan Medic, Legion and Thane as Reb Snipers.