30 November 2020

TNT: Hunt for the Dungerdon part 1

It's time for another game of This Is Not A Test. In this game my mutant cannibals are taking on a group of caravanners. This guy is played with Mr. Malcontent from the Miniatorium painters twitch. Torben is a super good guy, that I've gotten to know through the Discord community. Go check out his stuff, it's awesome. 

This game was the first time meeting in real life after Covid closed down Denmark. And we wanted to play a quick TNT mini campaign. In this first scenario the groups are hunting for clues to a lair of a huge behemoth class monster - a Dungerdon! 

On one side is a group of mutant cannibals, on a hunting mission to get some fresh meat for the winter. The other side is Mama Stirling and her band of caravanners - they're just in it for the money. 




We setup a board to look like a small dusty town at the edge of a desert. Lots of rusty scrap around, brown, dead colors. It's a nice looking board. The objective is to collect clue tokens that will both give some extra caps and clues to where the big Dungerdon is located


My small family of mutant cannibals setup in a couple of groups. On one side the first born and he mongrel dogs would run ahead and eat the enemy from one flank. At the center MawMaw would protect the psycho Tiny and two degenerates, full on attack. On the right flank the youngins with ranged weapons would take up position. 


On the board from the start was three smaller Dungers, offspring from the big one we were hunting. These monsters wasted no time charging ahead and trying to stomp the caravanners. 


It's part of the mechanics, that they charge the nearest enemies. And the caravan crew got the first go and went full steam ahead, so dungers incoming for them.


The enemy, being rich from all the trade, is armed with a lot of shooters - no pure melee fighters on that team. So all my melee oriented troopers tried to stay in cover, sneak ahead, until it was time to attack. ... unfortunately a lot of them are raged filled psychos that might just storm ahead of the group and attack random things. 


A crossbow armed youngin taking cover near a building, in a nice position to shoot a both Mama Stirling the enemy leader and their sniper taking position on a roof opposite the road. 


This caravan sniper spend the first couple of turns getting into the perfect shooting position on top of a building, in cover behiv a giant billboard. 


Having been distracted by the straight on dunger charge, my plan to attack the flank works and a mongrel makes it across the board and into melee combat. Quickly forcing a young rank and file caravanner to the ground.


The big dude, a mutant from a local clan, has moved in and done quick work of a small dunger - smashing it to pulp and gore.


This little youngin doesn't want to leave cover, but he's the only family member close to some of the loot and clues, so he takes a trip into the open. ... a dangerous one. 


Tiny showing respect for all the enemy guns is moving ahead slowly, staying out of sight or at least in cover. There's a lot of open ground to cover.


The crazy degenerates are not as safe playing, and they have to stay in the open, in hopes of getting anywhere really. Otherwise they were never gonna make it into combat with the enemy.


Mama Stirling herself, armed with a deadly plasma pistol, staying in cover but getting out to delivery some deadly heated death.


A generate little brother has made it across the board, hoping to bring down the caravan leader, in cover from the sniper on the roof. ... he doesn't make it and is cooked by the deadly plasma. The black die if the clue marker we are trying to get.


Having bashed down that dunger, the big mutant envoy and a generate reach one of the clues at the same time. It turns out to be a fairly uneven math-up and the tiny degenerate is crushed into the ground.


The first mongrel is killed of by the caravanners and it's even without taking out the girl it attacked. The next mongrel, staying in cover is also trying to get across, but he's hit pretty badly from all the opposing firepower.


Meanwhile the firstborn is trying to get across, he's a beast in melee combat - but not worth much if blown apart on the way to his objective. 


The sniper on the roof and MawMaw is in a shootout, taking turns firing at each other. MawMaw despite having a bad rifle and not being a very good shot, gives a few good hits - but doesn't cause any damage.


Now Tiny has made it across the road and into combat with the big mutant. This is a much more even fight and filled with rage from losing his little brother, Tiny is able to bring down the mutant with his heavy poisoned clever.


And then it happens that the first borns loses his temper, he's crazed and rampages across the board. So close and having stayed in cover most of the time. A bad roll, he rushes forward and is in the open - so close to making it into melee combat. Now he's target practice.

Good Xp for the caravanners, blasting the poor first born child of MawMaw to pieces.


And that's it for the game... lots of shooting. The mutant cannibal family is blown apart, MawMaw is hiding, staying safe. Looking at all her children wounded on the battlefield. The caravanners take up the clues to the Dungerdon lair and moves away. MawMaw can then go and check the wounds of her children.


Aftermath
The caravanners roll good on the few injury rolls they have to make, nothing bad happens to them. They make off with a good amount of caps and even find some new plasma weapon relics for the warband. A very strong start for Mama Stirling and here crew. 

My mutant cannibals roll terribly. I never really got around to figuring out this team. ... and I roll so many dead characters, left and right. The family is decimated, there's no way to come back from all the dead guys on the team. MawMaw returns to the wasted. But the family will again become a thread to anybody in state. 

This is the permanent end of the Wastebog Family. Even after playing four games with the team, they never once had enough money to expand their crew. Always only able to cover their losses - no more. With Tiny the Psycho, the Firstborn and even some youngins dead - there's no way back.


26 November 2020

Garage Talks - Ash Barker

 



We're joined by Ash Barker known from Guerrilla Miniature Games or GMG for short.


Ash Barker has a huge following on his YouTube channel and knows indie games inside and out.

In this podcast we're picking his brain about GMG in general and his two Osprey publications Gamma Wolves and Last Days.

Joining this talk as well is Torben from Miniatorium, who's been following GMG since it's beginning. 



Guerrilla Miniature Games: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbO4Vs1vlAA9hz7Ad7IMgug

Miniatorium: https://www.twitch.tv/miniatorium

Producer: Trolle

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24 November 2020

Review: Oathmark - Oathbreakers

Oathbreakers is out, the second expansion for Osprey Games fantasy battle game Oathmark. After reading the expansion a couple of times, here's my initial thoughts on it - it's a review. 

This expansion has a lots of goods in it, real heavy matter. We get

  • Undead Armies
  • Ledendary Heroes
  • Military Expeditions - campaigns
Setup and artwork
The book is setup as we know it from the core book and the first expansion, so we're not gonna spend time on that. One of the things I was missing in the first expansion was new photos of all the units North Star has been bringing out - and more original artwork. 

We've probably all seen the amazing North Star skeletons and metal miniatures released. These models are not in the book. But as we've learned from talking to multible Osprey authors, there's almost a 2 year release time on these book. So as the series go we'll see more and more different miniatures in them. 

So no skeletons in the book, but light elves, heavy dwarf and goblin wolf riders. All in all that makes for a much more interesting book. 

And then there's the art! Woop! A ton of new pieces of original artwork - many centered around the undead theme. I think the art is amazing. It shows a kind of undead fitting for the dark ages fantasy, not too evil or doomy. It sends a good old school fantasy vibe. Take your time and really look at the art, 
there's lots of stories told in those pieces. 




Undead Armies
This is a major expansion to the Oathmark game bringing in a full new faction. A pretty detailed faction as well. The army is primarily made up from two things: skeletons and revenants. 

The skeletons is your classic fantasy minions, cheap, not too good a fighting. Then there's the revenants - making me thinks of Skyrims Daugr. Soldiers laid to rest, kind of mummified, raised to fight again. Skeleton are obviously raised by death magic and necromancers. Revenants are raised in part from still clinging to the oaths they've sworn in life. And that angle fits really well with the story of The Marches. 

Revenants are good soldiers, hard hitting. A revenant cavalry miniatures is 70 points and a chariot is 150 points. So they're elite units. 

Oathbreakers doesn't bring rules for using chariots in other armies. That is yet to come - perhaps in Bane of Kings. The undead faction is described as bronze age (vs Oathmark iron age) - so that also explains the lack of war chariots (from a historical perspective at least). 



Leaders
An undead force will be lead either by a Revenant King (his army serving him in death through oaths sworn) or a high level Necromancer. A powerful necromancer will never follow a king, he'll raise and lead an army of his own. So there's two different leader types, and it's interesting to see a spell casting leader. 

The necromancers know all the right tricks, classic death magic, leading my thoughts to old editions of Warhammer. He'll steal health and raise more troops for his units. 

Mixing races and units is a key part of the Oathmark army system and anybody will be able to use undead units (if you build the new undead territories in your kingdom). Nothing stopping you there, but living races have penalties. It's not inspiring for morale to work under an undead king and along side dead things - so no morale or activation bonus. 

Special rules
There's a bunch of special rules in place to make the undead unique. Undead and uncaring will make undead harder to kill with shooting attacks and prevent them from breaking due to morale. But they will take damage when failing morale. Classic undead. 

For skeletons it further goes that they are harder to activate (rolling only one dice, unless close to a commander) and the only work with a spellcaster in the army. No friendly spellcaster on the table and all skeltons are removed as casualties. 

Legendary Heroes
Battlesworn gave us simple rules for elite units. That's already been covered in a previous review and the rules were fairly simple. Keep the game running smooth. Oathbreakers make similar rules for heroes (commanders and champions), but with some more depth. 

Any army can include 1 legendary hero at a time (unless you agree on more with the opponent). You create a legendary hero by paying regular point cost + 30 points. The hero get to choose 1 heroic ability (there's 24 to choose from). I really like this mechanic, as you can add some really good tricks to your army. Making deadlier warriors, better commanders, more effective spellcasters. For 30 points, some tricks can be pretty good. Like in Rangers of Shadow Deep all the heroic abilities can only be used once pr game - so choose and use them wisely. 

Experience
This system is new, and I quite like it. A legendary hero will gain experience from each game they participate in and depending on how well they do. The XP needed to level up and gain a new heroic ability is the point cost of the model. So a king being really expensive (with 30 points already added) will need many XP to gain a second heroic trait. After that his point cost goes up by 30 again, and he needs to reach the limit again (starting from scratch in XP). So champions with multible abilities will be rare and super expensive. 


Injury and death
Should a legendary hero die in battle or flee, you roll on an injury table. This can see the hero having to skip next battle (or battles) from wounds, die completely or be captured. The captured result is really funny, as the ransom will be adding extra points to the opponent next game. 

The hero system adds a lot to Oathmark, without breaking anything. It's much more detailed and fleshed out than the battle honors system. And since heroes will only have one or two - one-use tricks, it's not gonna drag things down. 

Military Expeditions
A great way to make an expansion worth it is by adding these mini campaign. Special connected scenarios, with a story and consequences for winning and losing battles. The book contains three missions, with three scenarios each. All centered around part of The Marches with lots of undead activity. 

Even without the the campaign element, nine new scenarios is a good amount of game time to get through.

There's 13 new territories (not adding units, but having other effects on the Kingdom), some are unique and can only be acquired through playing the military expeditions. 



Final thoughts
I really like Oathbreakers, it's a great expansion and it adds good solid chunks to the Oathmark game. I hope this is the level of material we'll see in the future expansion. Not only a few units here and there, but huge gameplay expansions. 

It'll be really good to see which kits North Star brings out - especially how they plan to do revenant kits. And with even more kits, we'll see even better photos in the future books. Overall the artwork and miniature shots is much higher in quality and diversity now, than be the release of the core book. 

If you need to get only one expansion for Oathmark, you should go with this one over Battlesworn. Oathbreakers is really good.

I'm still hoping to see some siege rules for the game. Let that be an expansion after Bane of Kings. And some fleshing out the campaign for multiplayer is needed, as it's worded towards a war between two kinggoms now (with occupying territories etc). 

23 November 2020

Let's Play. The Walking Dead - Days Gone By chapter 6

It's time for the conclusion of the first narrative campaign for The Walking Dead - Days Gone By. This scenario is a bit different, as it's actaully written as a PvP scenario. But this one was played streamed live on Twitch, and I tried including the viewer to take control of Shane, while I controlled Rick and Carl. 

The setup was fairly simple. A 20"x20" board with lots of wood and forrest pieces on it. 



18 November 2020

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.


15 November 2020

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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14 November 2020

Garage Talks - Joseph McGuire

 Recently we had the awesome Joseph McGuire over visiting us on the Discord server. We had a nice and long chat about lots of different hobby stuff. 

We're getting around This Is Not A Test - and future plans for it. Expansions, talking second edition and other stuff. 

Reality's Edge and some of all the ideas Joseph has for that system, including expanding hacking and solo rules. 

And we're getting around Blaster Magazine, the work on it, new mini games and 'killing your darlings'. 

A very interesting talk. Thanks for joining us! 

The episode is uploaded on both Youtube and Anchor (and other podcast services). 




Check McGuires site: https://worldsendpublishing.com/

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12 November 2020

Hardwired: How To Play

I've made a short 'how to play' video for Hardwired: Cyberpunk Skirmish Gaming. In the video, I quickly go over the core mechanics of the game covering: 

  • Agent types
  • Dice pools
  • Using skills and abilities
  • Shooting and cover
Very quick basics video, but my be of use to some people. I really enjoy playing Hardwired, the games are quick and easy to setup. So it's a great little solo game. 

Remember you can hear Patrick Todoroff (the author) talk about Hardwired and design philosophy in this podcast. 

Enjoy. 




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9 November 2020

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.


6 November 2020

Let's Play: Hardwired - Expedited Delivery

 First time playing some Hardwired on the stream. Recorded live and uploaded to Youtube. The Let's Play is also embedded below. In this scenario the four agents Brick, Gator, Conduit and Spotless are going into a market to deliver some stolen data. The contact is a member of the Purple Hands gang. 

Setup

Took out a bunch of terrain from the collection and tried building a buzzing neon lighted market place. All my cyberpunk terrain stuff is collected here





Let's Play
Here's the gameplay video showing the game.


2 November 2020

Men-at-arms and Blood Vulture

A couple of miniatures painted to play the first scenario in the Tor Varden series of Rangers of Shadow Deep. First there needed to be a blood vulture - a vulture with wing tips painted red. Corrupted servants of the Shadow Deep.

I found an old Deadzone Plague bird, lovely model I've been saving for the right thing. Painted asphalt dark grey (nearly black) and a super dark blue. The wing tips have been painted with a bright red. Then the entire model have been painted with either a blue or red wash. I think the result is nice. Though he's not really a vulture.



The scenario at the river crossing has a chance to free a men-at-arms from the Lorenthia. The country having been swallowed by the Shadow Deep. I painted up one of my Dunkeldorf Miniatures for the occasion. I added an old GW empire soldier shield to the miniature, fit perfectly.