Trouble at New Hamburg

We played a game of Gruntz on Thursday night. The setting was our custom M67 background (https://sites.google.com/site/system15mm/).

We were pretty engrossed in the game so didn't manage to take enough pictures for a cohesive battle report. However, I've posted the scenario and outcome here as it played well and may be of use to others.

Background

New Hamburg was a major city in an independent ark colony. The city had grown quickly for a small independent, making its fortune as a shipping hub due to its host planet’s prime location. Although not an immediate threat to some of the larger corporate powers, it was becoming a nuisance to someone. Five years ago it was extensively bombed by unknown agents. The bombing was enough to effectively destroy the city, ending the colony. It since became no man’s land, open for the taking.

The Anarcho Communist Commonality (ACC) recently began clearing debris from the ruins using nano-cloud technology. In doing so, they have discovered evidence about who bombed the city. Before the ACC engineers could get the evidence off-world, their craft was (conveniently) shot down by a combined force made up of Lone Star Mercenaries and BlitzKreig AG who wish to contest the land.

A small force of ACC Guardians of the Revolution arrive to help the engineers escape.

Game

The game takes place on a 4 x 4 table, ideally covered with dense urban ruins. The crashed engineering craft is between 12 and 24 inches of the Lone Star/BlitzKreig edge. Three engineers are noted in secret as being somewhere along this same strip (i.e. 12 to 24 inches of Lone Star/BlirzKreig edge).

Both forces (400 points each) are set up no more than 6” onto the table.

Lone Star and BlitzKreig units can scan an area 6 + d6” in radius (centered on themselves) with an action. If an engineer is in this area, they are revealed. If the engineers move position, they are instantly revealed and placed on the table. They carry small arms but should be fairly easy to hit and kill.

Each engineer carries an encrypted device that may contain evidence about the illegal bombing. One is a dummy, the other two are actual pieces of evidence. Neither side knows which until the end of the game. If an engineer is killed, they drop their device and it can be retrieved by infantry of either side (using an action to pick it up).

The ACC mission is to get both pieces of evidence off their table edge. If they extract one device the game is a draw. If they retrieve neither of the genuine objectives, then Lone Star/BlitzKreig win.

Early on, a Che Guevara MBT takes up a commanding position atop a building.

Lone Star detect an engineer (directly below the satellite dish). They kill the civilian and take his evidence. The Goblin walker sets up in the building to defend their retreat.

Lone Star as they enter the building.

GoR powered armour cross the street to enter the building and take the data back from Lone Star. They are shot down by the Goblin but recover due to nano-tech. Ultimately they change course away from the camera to defend another fleeing engineer who appears between the crashed ship and the large gas cylinder.

Slain powered armour can be seen below the dish. The engineer they go to defend is killed by cylinder 7 but they pick up the evidence and escape through the C-shaped building to the left. Lone Star had taken the other data as far as the distant block by the green truck. They were taken out by a lucky missile strike, leaving the damaged grav APC (far left) to go and retrieve the device.

The third engineer escaped down the left flank (wrecked brick buildings) fairly unmolested.

 I was worried that I would only retrieve two of the devices and, should one of those be the dummy, the game would end in a draw. There was plenty of other action not covered above. BlitzKreig AG committed to my right flank which I managed to counter by moving the engineer around the tall cylinders. This commitment to the wrong area also left one of my Che Guevara tanks unchallenged. In turn, that allowed the lucky shot that stopped Lone Star from escaping with evidence that I had all but given up on.

If you are thinking of using the scenario, something to be aware of is how easy it is to kill the engineers. Luckily, this is offset by the dense terrain providing them opportunities to hide and the ability for troops to pick up the evidence. I'm not sure the scenario would work as well in a ugo-igo system - the attackers might kill all the engineers in one turn. With alternating activations or similar, it is difficult to commit units to a headlong search as they will require support.

Rogue 7rader

7TV by Crooked Dice is amazing. Although its default setting is cult spy-fi, the system is so well designed it can be used for any sort of modern or science fiction skirmish.

On Saturday we used it to play a Rogue Trader-esque game and it worked a treat. The forces involved are Ian's Rogue Trader Stannilas Laird (Underworld Boss) and crew set against my Illuminati band.

I think this is set to become our go-to skirmish ruleset. It's hugely fun and full of character. The main book and its supplements also include a generous range of scenarios that can easily be adapted to the setting at hand.

Illuminati Band (L-R)
Slymenstra (Ninja)
Short Connery (Cultist)
Crispin Quentz (Navigator/Inhuman Servitor)
Nook Hackard (Security Guard)
Malloway (Tech-Priest)
Larith Graziel (Eldar Merc/Lackey)
Luthor Reborn (Unhinged Toff)
Jeramo Groon (Security Gaurd)

Molloway the Tech-Priest advances under the leadership of Luthor Reborn.

Luthor is aware of dog-things to the left as the crew advance on the objective in the hangar.

Woof woof gragghh!

The "dogs" attack Larith and Quentin

Darryl Black the Astropath and Arena Girl take position on the landing pad

As Luthor is ambushed by Gene Zymmonds, Molloway announces he has been bought by the opposition.

Following Luthor's death and an ungodly number of his team being bought out by Rogue Trader Laird, we conceded. Only the Navigator Crispsin Quentz was left alive and he had a terrible headache.

How to train your Mangler Squigs

This post is similar to my Giant Saving post, where I converted a £1 toy wrestler into a giant for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Unfortunately, Andre the giant wasn't as good in-game as I'd hoped (lucky I didn't buy a real one) so I thought I'd try out a couple of Mangler Squigs.

The thing is, again, GW are charging a ridiculous price (£36) for a figure that I really don't like the look of. Regarding their giant, I just simply don't like the design but can see why some people do; Mangler Squigs, however, are a daft-looking pair of monsters. GW Orcs are comedic enough but I'm certainly not paying over £70 for what is effectively a childish, mass produced monster.

Especially when it seems you can buy childish, mass produced monsters for £1 a pair.

Why they are in Italian is anybody's guess. Maybe that's why they were £1 a pack.

The toy has holes where a pair of wings are supposed to go. I'm sure they'll be used for something else...the wings; not the holes.

I had some jeweller's chain kicking around that I'd originally bought to decorate my Dark Eldar. I put this use as the chain binding the brutes together and acting a leash for their poor snotling handlers. Wire threaded through the chain allows it to be posed and doesn't look too intrusive.

There's some Milliput filler in their chops.

Fetch!

A little bit of painting, inking, highlighting (you know the drill) later and here are the completed not-really-Mangler Squigs. Total saving = £70.

Games Workshop, I love you dearly - you got me into the wargaming hobby and have given me lots of fun over the years. I appreciate you are a business with shareholders to appease, however, I'm really not going pay over-the-odds prices for your products. You might possibly have taken £40 in revenue for a couple of sensibly priced squigs. Instead you've taken £0 revenue from me instead.

Things I want to Steal from My 4 Year Old Son

My son has more toys than me (maybe). I look at some of them with envy as I can see their wargaming potential. Here's the top 6 toys I want to steal from him (most of them from the Tomica Thomas the Tank Engine range):

Health and Safety laws dictate that more footbridges are needed in Redemption City

This is clearly a 15mm scale bridge. The Fat Controller will just have to find another route around Sodor.

Looks garish and plastic but with a little work, this is some sort of Rogue Trader-esque building in 28mm. It's got separate rooms and everything inside.

15mm Air Traffic Control Tower for our long-overdue Gruntz spaceport game.

Remove the chassis and you have a 15mm shed. Ollie has several of these (at the moment).

And finally, my favourite, a limo for my Genestealer Cult Magus.

A Giant Saving

I decided a while ago that I wanted a giant in my Warhammer Orcs and Goblins army. Whether or not they are any good is beside the point; I wanted one.

Now, given that a Citadel giant costs £32.50...and that I have recently wasted £50 on the white elephant that is 7th edition 40k...and that I really don't like how that figure looks, did I?:

a. Spend £32.50 on a giant from Games Workshop

b. Go on eBay and look for what would, no doubt, have cost me even more but possibly looks better (maybe the old Marauder giant)

c. Go to Poundland and spend but £1 on a brandless "wrestler" toy that was made in China

The wrestler as purchased

Limb joints given a thorough dowsing with superglue to fix their position 

Miliput added to seal gaps and a loin cloth made from  paper towel and an Orc banner. Pendant is a skeletal horse head. 

Painted. I added a tankard made from a powder keg and a snotling with the same pose.  Perhaps the snotling is controlling the brute. 

My friend Ross pointed out that a giant wrestler should be called Andre, hence the tattoo. I guess he's from Brettonia!

Co-Operative Buildings Part 1

The Co-Operative produce fair trade coffee. I've been buying this for the last few months; partly because I'm a bit of a leftie but also because of the jar lids. The moment I saw them I knew they would make excellent 15mm sci fi buildings. How fitting that, in our group's game universe, I run the Anarcho Communist Collective.

To date I have collected six lids. There would have been more if we hadn't had all that flooding here in the south (I'm a highway engineer and was sent to a different office to help out with things). Anyway, this is what they look like. They stand 25mm tall.

The buildings will be small, mass produced (well, six is a good start) dwellings for my ongoing Redemption City project. In planning for these little units, as well as drinking lots of coffee, I put Antenocities Workshop GOT doors and windows on my buy list for Salute.

They will probably need a few other odds and ends to bring them to life and I've had some air con units by The Scene sitting around for a while.

So, here's a couple of Blu Tack mock ups of what I'm looking to produce with some figures for scale. I'll show the finished articles in Part 2 (whenever that might be!).

Terrorformed

A couple of years back Khurasan released the Gutter Gophers. I loved them and immediately bought a batch. As we all know, such impulse buys end up on the lead (and plastic and resin) mountain.

I finally painted them up last year and decided they would be the "Terrorformed"; creatures made accidentally as a by-product of terraforming.

Now, I knew that the poor chaps would struggle to open up vehicles or take on the likes of my buddy's alien queen. It was around the time of Salute and I knew that GCT Studios would be attending. I had already been eyeing up The Nian from their Bushido range as a candidate for a big daddy Terrorformed.

He just needed conversion:

Each of the back legs was put on the "wrong" side to give that back-to-front look of the Khurasan figures. I also added a Milliput tail and then cleaned my thumbnail.

The Nian's single eye was covered over. I added a couple of new eyes (although his single eye would be more appropriate given the phallic overtones). I then crimped the chain around his neck and added some Milliput foreskin (for want of a better word) to his penile head. 

Here his is, ready to paint.

And, finally a couple of shots of the big old fella with some of his pack. I think they work well together. My modelling skills are nothing special but the similarities in the figures made this a simple job.

Oldhammer World Zone Mortalis

Yesterday, 6 of us went to Warhammer World in Nottingham. We had booked the Zone Mortalis table to play a game of 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000 using kill team rules with 400 points forces.

18 objectives were scattered around table and, upon finding one of these, the controlling player would roll d3 to establish its points value and roll on an event table which contained wandering monsters, random events such as teleportation and  items that the carrying figure could use.

The Space Hulk (kitted out with Ross's fantastic scatter terrain). 

Adam's Imperial Guard abhumans (Squats and Beastmen).  

My Genestealer cult had a lucky deployment where they could quickly get to objectives, unmolested. 

Ross's old school Imperial Guard. 

James's Inquisitorial band attacked the abhumans but later allied with them (not sure which band contained the most mutants to be honest!). 

Dave surprised us all as we were expecting his Nurgle warband. Ross was the first to discover that he'd brought a gaggle of Eldar instead. 

Simon's Necrons. We rib him constantly that they're not a "real" force. 

It comes to something when your purestrains are rooting round in bins for cigarette butts and discarded burgers.

This is where James and Adam joined forces and turned on me.  My Magus got got lucky and killed most of those beastmen. James's fickle Inquisitor then killed the rest!  

In the end, my Genestealer cult won with 11 objective points. I took a lot of casualties once I'd spread my band thin and advanced. Ross came second with 8 points but took delight in the fact that Colonel Bogey kicked a purestrain and my Patriarch to death in close combat (bloody conversion fields!). 

An awesome game.