I love collecting, painting, converting and scratch building terrain. I even get to play a game once in a while. I'm a big fan of gamification as part of teaching - I'm an elementary school teacher.
This blog covers my hobby work and 'teaching through gaming'.
Showing posts with label This Is Not A Test. Show all posts
Showing posts with label This Is Not A Test. Show all posts
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.
You can read the first battle report here. In which the caravanner gang of Mama Stirling takes on a family of mutant cannibals. Mama Stirling has gotten a lot of clues and found the lair of the huge Dungerdon.
In this battle the caravanners have come to take down the beast and try an recover a lot of loot from it (the Dungerdon will eat, but not digest, anything). But the crew has been followed by the Peacekeepers of the Common Order. They two have been hunting the Dungerdon - but unlike the greedy caravanners, they will not keep (all) the rescued loot for themselves.
For this setup we decided to move from the desert border town into the real desert. Lots of cliffs in the area, some old trash. This is the Dungerdons lair. And as seen on the setup shot here, the beast is freaking huge!
This is the prize, this is what the teams are after (mostly its loot filled poop though) - but there's gonna be some good experience and caps in bringing down the monster itself.
The entire fire base of my warband setup close. All waiting to use the motivator skill of the leader, get those 2 action points, stay hidden behind the cliff (to not let the caravanners shoot at me) and start blasting the Dungerdon to meat pieces.
Seeing as there's always new criminals (we make the law!), there's always new sacrificial lambs for the team. You get them back for free if they die. So the plan was simple. Use a single prisoner at a time, to tie up the Dungerdon in melee, while blasting it with all the other guys!
Those huge behemoth class monsters, can do a lot of damage. And this big but could vomit large blasts of half digested food at our guys and hit multiple enemies in close combat. So the tactic was to fan out the troopers, to avoid this, while staying hidden from the enemy team.
The caravanners had a lot of luck in their hunt for clues to the Dungerdon lair. Finding both a depend-o-bot and extra plasma weaponry for the team - so they were all ready for the hunt. Having spread out more evenly across the board, they start making the way towards the target.
We used small chits, to determine random actions for the behemoth. And from the start, with lots of hit points, it has a lot of actions. The big monster crashed right ahead, stomping stuff under foot and got straight into combat with one of my sacrificial lambs.
By the start of this scenario, there's already some look on the board. Trashed, semi digested loot that has been a trip through a dungerdon. The caravanners didn't setup all members for a fight with the monster, but set people forth for looting an attacking the peace keepers in the rear.
Being fairly safe, the caravanners where able to start blasting plasma bolts at the dungerdon, that was already occupied trying to eat and stump my guys.
An experienced hunter, having gotten a few kills against the Wastebog Family, a caravanner sniper takes up a secure position. She'll be able to take shots at the monster and my troops equally.
Choosing to let cover be cover Mama Stirling and the mutant envoy most into the open, the dungerdon is tied up in combat, but there's loot to be gained in the open.
My peace keeper leader is armed with a laser carbine and he's getting support by an officer with a shotgun, they move forward staying in cover, also trying to gain some look.
A sacrificial lamb moving into combat with the behemoth. Plan is to fight, perhaps die, then blow them up and hopefully wounding the behemoth some more. It's a huge beast with tough skin and lots of armor. It's taking a lot of shots (even plasma) and simply shaking it off. It's damn hard to wound this monster.
As part of the scenario rules, the behemoth might drop even more loot during the game, all manner of stuff. Since the monster is closest to me, it's not that hard to move some troops around it and gather up these supplies for some easy and sage victory points and caps.
My guys were in combat with the behemoth for most of the game and I've never rolled more lucky for defense in my life. The behemoth simply couldn't crush my guys, despite attacking all of them each single turn. They didn't cause any wounds in return, but nevermind that. The behemoth was slowly wounded by incoming fire and the ground troopers stood their ground.
While all my attention is on the dungerdon fight, three sneaky caravanners are getting close to my lines, taking some loot on the way.
While moving forward, they are sticking close to the rocks and staying out of lines of fire.
After a ton of turns, we finally manage to take down the behemoth. You'll get victory points for wounding the beast, and some extra for taking it down. There's no doubt that the caravanners plasma has given it a lot of damage - but in the end the peace keepers manage to bring it down. As my guys have stayed close to the edge of the board, all warband members carrying loot quickly escape the area.
Now, my sniper outrider has not done a lot this game. He's been hugging cover and takin pot shots at the enemy. But one of my prisoners manage to take down the big mutant envoy and a bit of revenge is in order. So running up close and personal a caravanners empties his hand guns into the outrider, taking him out.
The sacrificial lamb who had the strength to take down a mutant, he does not do as well against the depend-o-bot, but he does prevent it from taking some of the loot.
The game ends with a bang, as with the last shots fired takes out a prisoner and he explodes out in the desert. The battle is over, the dungerdon has been slain.
As the smell of burning plasma fried fur and meat fill the desert air, the winners of this encounter is clear. The common order peace keepers managed to secure far mor treasure than the caravanners, so despite doing roughly equal wound to the behemoth, they win.
It wasn't a bad game for the caravanners. The didn't take any bad hits or losses during the game. The just didn't get rich.
The peace keepers on the other hand get a decent amount of caps from the encounter - enough to hire on a new officer for the team. But the outrider is badly wounded and will have to sit out the next mission for the warband.
In this battle of This Is Not A Test. Two old enemy warbands clash together. The peace keepers of the common order and the khan slavers have both been hired to clear out zombie nests in an old prison. Rad zombies are a recurring problem in the wasteland. Somehow multiplying and banding together in huge underground nests. Good caps are paid for destroying nests and killing rad zombies.
Setup
We used all the wasteland terrain to setup an old prison setup, added some zombie spawn points and a ton of scatter. All the wasteland terrain can be seen here. We put a spawn point inside the prison. This would allow a lot of zombies to spawn, and force us into nasty close quarter combat.
A look inside the abandoned prison.
My warband set up in two teams for the game. A strong fire team in one side, going to shoot down one spawn point and have the line breaker move in an destroy it. The outrider (sniper) was down with injuries in this game, otherwise he would have climbed the guard tower.
On another flank the prisoners / sacrificial lambs took up position. They were left on their own to try and take out a spawn point (or get blown up for a success instead).
The two zombie nests on the outside of the prison are potentially very dangerous - with bad rolls this will turn into a huge horde. And that'll be tough to battle through.
This seems to be the perfect job for the old construction depend-o-bot that the slavers found in the wasteland recently. Armed with a flamer and a drill it moves in to take out the first zombie nest. It's unable to do so in one round, but he does start the wreckage well.
At the other central zombie nest my tough melee oriented line breaker has moved in. But not being good enough at breaking stuff, new rad zombies spawn. So the newest officer on the team is moved in as support, though only armed with a bayonet.
The plan for clearing out the zombie nest farthest from me isn't going exactly to plan. The prisoners are on point quickly, but they don't succeed in breaking down the sever pipe - so new zombies will spawn and they'll have to deal with them. End plan is to just blow up all three and hoping that'll score me some victory points.
The inside of the prison is slowly getting more zombies. They crawl out in the central room, brainless scrambling first towards the bared windows. It's some easy kills for the slavers armed with guns on the other side.
Go for the brain! Bring it down!
My LMG trooper is in a good and covered position, with lots of fire he brings down the depend-o-bot, before it's able to finish the zombie nest.
The slaver gang has been taking it slow. Staying in cover, shooting down zombies and taking shots at my guys. The death of the depend-o-bot force them to move closer. And that new up-armed maniac of a girl starts blasting RPGs at my peace keepers - who's too close to one another. That is quickly clear.
This is around the turning point, where the battle starts to turn ugly and fighters start to fall. In the center, going for the points, two officers are moving towards the prison main doors - to clear some rad zombies inside.
Nice and open, it should be no trouble to stay in cover and take out a bunch of these small ghouls.
Having taken out the first of the zombies nests, my guys get now opportunity to move towards the one where the depend-o-bot was. Because that bazooka armed slaver fires a huge rocket, that forces a couple of officers to the ground, crawling for cover.
At the far side of the mpa, the prisoners are still trying to close the zombie nest, but even being three guys, they are having trouble taking out all the spawning zombies. One prisoner is down, bassicaly a remote controlled corpse bomb - waiting to be triggered.
On the inside of the prison, the slavers have made their the way through the prison. A line breaker, slaves with bomb collars and dogs. This is the time for them to start bringing down rad zombies and getting some victory points for the team.
The annoying blast of that RPG7 has forced my leaders supporters to the ground. And despite being a good fighter he's brought down by a rad zombie. This in turn force the guys already on the ground to take even another morale test. ...
And they fail... Crawling even longer away from the action, towards the table edge where the entered the board. away from the action and the enemies.
A least the line breaker gets up in time to smash another zombie on the head.
The rest of the battle is about getting as many victory points as possible. In the prison the sacrificial lambs fall and blow up, same goes for mine near the zombie nest. The slavers have not taken a lot of casualties, but the peace keepers has. There's only two guys left on the table by the last round.
And this game is super close. In the end, the last dice to be rolled, a 50/50 dice will determine if the game ends as a draw or a lose for the slavers. They fail and the peace keepers steals the win.
After battle rolls are okay for both teams. The depend-o-bot is killed in action and only saw a few battles. But money and loot are okay on both sides. As seems to be tradition my peace keepers doesn't roll too good on wasteland exploration, a couple of new injuries. But the crew does managed to rescue three small critters for the team. So time to paint up some small nasties for them to take care off.
One of the joys of campaign skirmish gaming is getting new models into the team. I rarely reuse models that have died in a game as well. It's such a good reason to paint up new models for warbands, when models die in game.
These models are made for two different TNT warbands. First is some heavy support for The Khans - slaver gang.
This is an up-armed soldier using the peace keeper list. She's armed with an smg and a rocket launcher. The model is all Warlord Games bits from the zombie line of survivors and bikers.
Second new model is for my peace keeper warband 'Common Order'. This team has had a rought start, lots of wounds, banged-up characters and few caps found for new troopers. This old veteran is a regular Officer. He's made from the Terminator resistance soldiers with extra bits from Warlord Games modern soliders and zombie survivors. The head is from a WW2 Russian soldier.
