Fallout Wasteland Warfare - Heroes of Sanctuary Hills

I've been interested in trying my hand at painting some of the Fallout Wasteland Warfare figures for a while now. I'm a big fan of the Fallout 4 PC game and the figures are right out of the game. I don't plan on playing the game, so the figure cost was a significant deterrent on trying the figures out. In came my friend Gordon to the rescue. He offered me a chance to paint a box of his figures for him. I chose the Heroes of Sanctuary hills. 

I'm not completely thrilled with the sole survivor's jumpsuit, but Dogmeat and Cogsworth came out great. I don't think I'll make a steady diet of these figures, but they were a fun diversion from the hundreds of ancients figures I've been painting lately. Three figures added to my annual painting totals.

X-Wing Quad Jumper Re-Paint

This was a quick project tonight that I painted mostly while watching Luke's stream from the Gold Squadron Paintcast.

This is a simple re-paint of the Quad Jumper. There's a blue stripe on the side of the hull, so re-painting the accent panels to match is a pretty easy choice. This will be my Unkar Plutt ship for my scum squadrons where I fly Unkar and a generic Quad Jumper.

Below are some additional photos showing the re-paint next to an original version. Total painting time was about 90 minutes, although I wasn't really rushing as I was enjoying watching Luke's stream almost as much as I was painting.

Star Wars X-Wing Ground Forces - Play Test #3

Last Friday the 'usual crew' got together at Ralph's to do another play test on Bob's Star Wars X-Wing Ground Forces house rules. Bob made a bunch of GREAT changes in this version, streamlining several previous friction points. 

For the game Rob gave my heavy armor some serious trouble with anti-tank missiles from his AT-ST walkers, stripping away my squad's commander. I returned the favor dropping one of his walkers. Steve had a devastating bomb run on Earl's storm troopers killing four stands. Charlie added an additional storm trooper kill from his infantry. With the heavy Imperial infantry losses we called the game and discussed next steps for the rules. All in all an excellent step forward and a fun evening.

Here's another video. I'm still learning how to take video, so apologies for the poor quality.

Star Wars X-Wing Ground Forces - Play Test #2

Last Friday Bob hosted the 2nd play test of his Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Ground Forces rules. These are a series of house rules to extend Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures from outer space down to the planet's surface. The game uses available and previously-available licensed Star Wars toys and miniatures into a 6-10mm ground game. Combat and movement mechanisms are all similar or compatible with the core game, so familiar to new players.

The scenario was an Imperial attack on a Rebel base. The Imperials came in hot and heavy with AT-ATs and smaller walkers. The Rebels defended with their own walkers, heavy and light tanks and a few land speeders.

Mike's land speeders suffered dearly in their run at the AT-ATs. One did attempt a harpoon snare attack, but missed before being taken out. As the battle slugged on the Imperial forces kept the upper hand. The smaller walkers being just as effective as the larter AT-ATs. In the end the rebels did manage to take down one of the Goliaths, but the writing was on the wall for them.

This is a fun diversion and has great toys. Bob's rules have taken a huge step forward since the first play test and the game was big fun. Below is a small video of the battlefield during opening instructions.

The Force Is Strong With This One

Last game night Ralph ran a Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures game. Our club doesn't play a lot of Science Fiction, but who can resist pre-painted Star Wars miniatures that also have a fun rule set to play with? Not me, that's for sure.

Recently I've saved up a bit of 'mad money' income from my side-business selling R/C glider kits that I design and make. With the strong temptation of pre-painted miniatures, I hit up a couple large lots on Ebay and augmented that with a few singles auctions to fill out the lot. Above is my Rebel collection: 4 A-wing wings, 4 B-wings, 2 E-wings, 3 T65 X-wings, 4 T-70 X-wings, 2 Y-wings, 2 T-95s, one YT-1200, one YT-2400 and one Arc-170.

 For the Empire, I have 8 Tie fighters, 2 Tie/FOs, 2 Tie interceptors, aTie Defender, a Tie advanced, a Tie Adv. Prototype, a Tie bomber, a Tie Striker and a Tie punisher.

Since we're playing for fun locally and not doing any 'official' tournaments, I was able to pick up many of these ships cheaply because they came without the upgrade cards that were originally packaged with them. For casual play I can use proxy prints of the cards. I doubt I'll ever play in any tournaments, so no worries on that.

Northern Conspiracy March 2017 Game Night

Tonight was our club's monthly game night. Although our club usually has mostly historical games, tonight I played in a rare Science-Fiction game - Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures hosted by Ralph. Something in this game must have scratched an itch because it was very popular as you can see by the Imperial players at the table in the photo to the left.

Ralph set this up as a series of small introductory games with the first being with 'vanilla' pilots without upgrades - your basic X-wing on Tie Fighter duel with two tables of 4 Ties vs. 2 X-wings. After that we played a second game with each player getting some upgrades and a final game with upgrades and 'Ace' pilots with pilot skills. The games were fun and fast. Everyone seemed to pick up on the rules quickly.

Some close-up of the game and models which come pre-painted are below.

Mike ran a dark ages skirmish game using Saga rules. These are relatively new to our club and the game looked quite fun. I'm looking forward to giving Saga a try.

John ran a 15mm ACW game. Apologies to John as his game was in the dark end of the room and my camera had trouble getting good photos of his table. 

Sorry for the brief report, I'm heading out of town tomorrow for a week's vacation so I wanted to get this out before I left. Thanks to everyone who ran great games.

Dropzone Commander - UCM Force

The guys down at Adler Hobby have been starting up playing an interesting science fiction game - Dropzone Commander.  While I don't usually game non-historical miniatures, I like everyone in the Dropzone group and the painting effort for the 10mm scale looked like it would be minimal so I decided to give it a shot. After going full ADD on the figures including a two-color airbrush paint scheme the project ended up taking much longer than I expected. Still here it is, at least a good first swing at a workable UCM force.

I don't plan on doing much more painting for Dropzone Commander as far as figures go, so I'm going to lump these in with my 15mm painting totals: 22 vehicles and 60 infantry. 

These are two Falcon gunships. They are based on the UCM Raven light drop ship - one of my two favorite models in the UCM force. I've maximized the number of them in my force - purely for aesthetic reasons. Who knows if it's a good idea or not as far as game play goes.

 These are three Condor drop ships. The work horse of the UCM transportation fleet. These carry my Bear APCs, and my main combat tanks.

 Two Raven-A drop ships to carry infantry and two Raven-B drop ships to carry my Wolverine reconnaissance buggies.

 Wolverine scout buggies and Praetorian elite infantry. 10mm infantry are pretty fiddly to paint, but once done and put on a terrained base they look nice enough.

 Kodiak command vehicle including its orbital satellite communication dish used to call in orbital bombardment strikes.

Three Sabre main battle tanks (rear left), three Rapier anti-aircraft tanks (rear right), two Bear APCs and six stands of UCM Colonial Legionaries (standard UCM infantry).

10mm Modern Buildings

Apologies to my readers that follow this blog for the historical gaming content. These are two 10mm modern buildings that I designed and built using the assistance of my laser engraver. They could be used for modern era historical gaming, but as you can see by the drop ship in the photos that I'm using for scale, my intention for these is for science fiction gaming for the game Dropzone Commander.

The large blue tower is modeled loosely after Boston's John Hancock tower (although mine is significantly shorter) and the left one is a residential apartment building. Both will later be adorned with vegetation to emulate an abandoned city.

10mm Oil Storage Facility

10mm scale fuel oil storage depot for science fiction or modern gaming. This is all scratch built. The large oil drums are pill bottles the small ones are desiccant containers from the pill bottles (contents removed). The piping is plastic tubing from the hobby store bent over heat. I will probably add a cinder block wall, but wanted to paint most of this before adding it.