Fortified Positions

I've been doing a bit of painting recently with no specific goal in mind. I have lots of little scenery bits that've been sitting around half-finished for a while, so I've been working on odds & ends that need completed.

My friend Rick got a large eBay lot and gave me some fortified positions. They're a little small to be used for 40k/Infinity/Star Wars, but work perfectly with my Battlefield Evolution lot (which are more 25mm scale than 28mm-32mm).

I should be receiving a set of Pedion modular terrain soon, some of which is temperate grasslands and some is desert terrain, so I painted the fortified positions up with the intention to use them in either. With this in mind I went for a stony, muddy look, as if the earth's been dug out. I might put some grassy tufts dotted about on them, but I'm not very good at making convincing grass-cover/foliage, so I'm a bit wary about ruining them.

I also got a couple of industrial scenery kits from Ainsty Castings at a wargames show in Leeds recently. I've been eyeing up the Ainsty kits for a while now - I like resin scenery, it feels nice and solid, plus the Ainsty stuff in particular reminds me of terrain I used to see a lot from the 90s and I like that aesthetic.

I started painting up the Observation Post kit, but only got as far as the undercoat. I used my airbrush and my new Vallejo Air Black paint. I've got the Citadel Air Black as well, and the Vallejo one is a lot smoother and easier to use. I do generally prefer Citadel paints, but not for airbrushing it seems.

My plan is to drybrush a light grey on the main structure of the building, and a dark grey on the window-ports. I'll use a metal (probably leadbelcher) on any floorplates I find.

I think I can probably achieve a decent look with just drybrushing, so it should be fairly quick from here.

I had some paint left in the airbrush, so gave some 6mm scale civilian vehicles an undercoat as well - these will be used for Battletech.

The Defence of Sador - Mission 1

I managed to get in a quick game of FUBAR with Laura on Sunday and decided to run it as the first  mission in the sci-fi campaign. I briefly described the campaign outline, but didn't go into any specific mechanics for progression - mostly because I haven't come up with any yet, but also because it was being played as a test of the FUBAR rules to see if they'd fit the sorta narrative I'm going for.

The campaign is set in the universe of Warhammer 40000, but is intended to be more like the old style of 40k where anything goes, and the Imperium is so huge and diverse that it has every different style of architecture, fashion and society imaginable within the human populations. So if you're wondering where all the skulls and grim misery are, there's the answer.

Here's the campaign brief I created (I didn't actually give this to Laura in the end, and opted to simply summarise the basics instead):

The planet Sador lies in the Ultima Segmentum, an area of the galaxy with comparatively few conflicts and a high quality of life for the Imperial citizens who reside there. Sador is the capital of the small Vigilon system, and the other Vigilonian colonies look to it for protection and governance.

Sador
	Type	Class M - Temperate
	Location	Vigilon-II
	Grade	Civilised

Tyrian
	Type	Class H - Badlands
	Location	Vigilon-IV
	Grade	Feudal

Canaan
	Type	Class M2 – Temperate Moon
	Location	Vigilon-IVb
	Grade	Nomadic

The Uprisings

Sador was once known as Echeni, named after the 22^nd Millenium vessel which brought the original settlers to the planet. The inhabitants of the planet resisted Imperial rule at first, but were dominated soon enough. Imperial accounts record that every few hundred years small seditions occur on the planet, usually rebelling against the harsh taxation of soldiers, food and minerals.Recently, civil protests and riots have been breaking out around the planet. The protest movement, who call themselves ‘The Echen’, state that they want better representation in government, and are dissatisfied with what they refer to as ‘Terrans and Terran-centrics’ holding office. The protests have been deemed illegal, and many have been arrested and fined for their actions. Riots have since become more commonplace, and the Echen have reformed into something of an organised rebellion.

One of the loosely affiliated groups which make up the Echeni rebels is made up of gang-members from The River Pikes, a slum-gang from the capital city of Sador - Æthelhwicce. Laura commands a Special Response group of police officers tasked with handling organised (and dangerous) criminals such as these.

One of the city's satellite communication Data-Centres was taken by a small group of River Pikes, armed with suspiciously high-tech weaponry (ex-military looking weaponry, mostly), and they'd taken hostages of the people working in the Data-Centre at the time. The Pikes had threatened to kill any hostages if they were interrupted while attempting to hijack the communications system, so the Special Response were called in.

The game was set over 5 turns, with the rebels seditious messages being transmitted if the police failed to retake the building by the end of the 5th turn.

The Special Response made their way across the city from the landing pad at a local precinct, and the rebels attempted to murder a hostage or two to let the police know they mean business. However the hostages managed to resist their captors enough to only be injured from the scuffle, and the Special Response made short work of the gangers, picking them off carefully from behind their defensive barricades.

The game was very short, and it ended in a win for Laura, although it was her last action on the final turn of the game which decided it, so it was a very close call!

My feelings on FUBAR are mixed. I really like the simplicity of it, and I like the idea of the suppression and generic squad 'experience' levels especially. However the chances of activating were very low, and the chances to hit were middling, but the rules mean they are affected negatively by cover. So a 4+ to hit becomes a 6+ to hit (on a D6) if the target is in medium cover. This meant that a lot of nothing happened the first few turns.

Eventually we decided to use D10s instead of D6s (but with the same basic stats), and this alleviated the problems a lot, but we still felt like it was missing something, and while I'd hoped the activations would mean more interesting dynamics would occur, it ended up just resulting in frustration when half your team sits around for the turn, and it spoilt the narrative.

I think I'll try to modify Frostgrave into a squad-based sci-fi game for the next outing in the Sador Campaign. Hopefully it'll feel something like Infinity, but with squads instead of individual activations.

In conclusion, FUBAR was okay, but I think it's made more for larger scale engagements, and doesn't really work for small skirmishes of a couple of fireteams. It's definitely worth a shot though - it's free and it does feel surprisingly complete for a 1-page set of rules.

Prince Bishops Wargames Club

Laura and I attended our old wargames club on Thursday - The Prince Bishops Wargames Club. We brought along my modified Frostgrave warbands and lots of my 4Ground terrain (although in my haste to pack I forgot to bring any scatter terrain, resulting in a somewhat bare board unfortunately).

I'd created 4 complete warbands for the game, as well as partially made a 5th (goblin) warband. The warbands were:

- Sir Roderick's Retinue (medieval soldiers in blue livery)

- Lady Petra's Coterie (medieval soldiers in red livery with black & yellow shields)

- Lord Athelas' Company of Free Elves (pre-painted high elves from em4 Miniatures)

- Kasumi no kimi's Warband (Feudal Japanese miniatures - mixture of pre-painted em4 miniatures and some Bad Squiddo female warriors)

- Grizzlesnot's Gang (goblins)

I didn't get around to fully statting the goblin warband, so after I'd set up the terrain I decided it would be fun if I adjudicated, as well as controlled a randomly placed group of marauding goblins.

Laura played with her Japanese warband, and one of the newer regulars to the club called Mark played with Lady Petra's Coterie. This meant that Sir Roderick's Retinue wasn't actually fielded in the end so Captain Dimi never made an appearance! On the plus side at least he's well on the way to being painted now for future games.

The objective for each warband was to secure as much treasure as possible (represented by plastic gems). Once a miniature leaves the board with a treasure token, then they can't return to the field so choosing who to collect the treasure was an important decision.

The goblin marauders started roughly in the middle of the board, and proceeded to run around harassing both sides.

Lady Petra valiantly charged a group of goblins, but quickly found herself overrun and her horse suffered a cruel death at the end of many goblin spears.

Elsewhere in the town, a shinobi fights for her life against a particularly tough goblin archer. After many rounds of combat, the goblin tore out her throat with a nasty bite and that was the end of the ninja!

Kasumi no kimi's warriors make their way through town, searching for treasure while Lady Petra is distracted by the green menace.

Petra held the goblins off bravely, and was eventually aided by her soldiers in defeating the gang of vicious goblins.

Laura commanding her troops through the battlefield.

Captain Nanako throws shuriken from cover, attempting to elimate the European warriors.

The archers fire back!

Captain Hans Capon attempts to sneak into a cottage to steal from treasure, but is intercepted by a goblin raider and an ashigaru armed with a katana! The battle was fierce and Sir Hans was wounded and had to retreat, but a man-at-arms was able to sneak past and take the treasure during the kerfuffle.

The spearman sneaks off with the treasure.

Nanako surveys the bloody battlefield. The Japanese won the battle in terms of attrition, but the Europeans took the most treasure in the end (each slain goblin counted as 1 treasure as well as each token - so Lady Petra's charge turned out to be worth it!).

Tom Kedik - goblin warlord.

Captain Dimi

The Frostgrave game was fast approaching, and I'd had an unusually busy week, so hadn't managed to get any paint to the Captain of one of my Frostgrave Warbands. I had plenty of painted backup models I could use if I got desperate, but it's always nice to tick another model off the backlog, so I thought I'd have a go at painting one (relatively simple) model in just an hour or so.

Usually I like to undercoat my miniatures in black or white using spraypaints. I do them in a bulk of whatever I think I'll be likely to paint up in the near future, but I don't get time to spraypaint very often due to weather patterns and daylight (especially at this time of year).

My birthday was recent, and I received an airbrush set from Laura, which is great! As the brush allows for much more precise spraying, I realised that I could use it for undercoating individual models when the need arises. I decided to undercoat one of Laura's models too - an unarmoured ronin/ashigaru.

The air compressor. It's pretty great and has an adjustable air-flow regulator to help with precision.

I decided to spray the models in white, and used the Citadel Air White Scar paint I have. One thing I've noticed about the Citadel Air range is that it's noticeably thicker than the Vallejo equivalent range. It tends to clog up the airbrush more frequently, and seems to require mixing with a tiny drop of thinner to make it usable. Getting the right quantity of thinner for the amount of Citadel Air paint is a bit of a nightmare, so I think I'm going to just get Vallejo Air paints in future, or just mix my own using regular Citadel acrylics + thinner.

The airbrush that came with the compressor has a double-action lever, meaning that I can turn the airflow on/off as well as adjust the needle during use to allow for finer painting where required. It seems like a good starter brush, but I think I'll get an Iwata Neo in the near future, as I've heard such good things about them.

I sprayed the ronin model first, and got a nice smooth coat of white on the model. Unfortunately I couldn't replicate that smoothness with the knight model, but I'm unsure why. It's possible that the blobby Citadel paint is to blame, or perhaps it's that the knight is plastic and may have some residual elements of release agent on it still. Whatever the cause is, the result was that the knight has a slightly runny looking coat to it, although luckily it doesn't seem to have obscured any detail.

Captain Dimi and his Japanese friend ready to be painted.

I decided to paint Dimi's surcoat in blue so it matched with the rest of Sir Roderick's warband, but I wanted it to be a slightly different shade to distinguish him from the regular soldiery. To this end I decided to use Citadel's Kantor Blue, which has a slightly greyish/green tone to it. The first coat that I applied was very uneven and I was disappointed (especially as it's a Base colour). But after that had dried I went over it again in a slightly watered down second coat and that seemed to neaten it up a lot.

Time was running out, and I had other things to pack for the game (such as lots of 4Ground terrain!), but thankfully Laura was there to assist, and she took over the painting of Captain Dimi. She used Leadbelcher for the mail, and Stormhost Silver for the great helm & sword. She also applied some Zandri Dust to the poleyns (with the knee cops painted Stormhost Silver).

I then returned and slapped some Nuln Oil on the entire model, and decided that would have to do as I'd run out of time. The model is looking tabletop-ready in my opinion (although the shield could definitely do with some colour), but I will add more detail for sure. I think I'll give his great helm a golden cross (perhaps P3 Burnished Gold) and I'll paint the sword's crossguard & pommel in black. I might just leave the belt as it is, but I'll see how I feel at the time. As for the shield, I think I'll go for white & blue stripes.

The Defence of Sador

I've been planning a sci-fi campaign to run with my partner Laura.

The campaign will be sort of inspired by the XCOM computer games. Laura will be in charge of a small police precinct in the capital city of a planet, and mostly dealing with gangs and rebellions. But the threat will grow exponentially, and an outside force will decimate the defenses of the star system, causing the plucky police precinct to pick up the pieces.

Gameplay will mostly consist of picking from a variety of mission choices, each of which will have a different reward, as well as their own objectives (i.e. steal supplies/assassinate HVT/rescue civilians). Eventually surviving members of the solar defence force will rally to her cause and the final mission will be the ragtag army taking the fight to the invading threat.

FUBAR
(https://fubarwargames.wordpress.com/)

I'll be using FUBAR for the rules, at least for the first game to try it out.

FUBAR is a free 1-page wargame system. I used it once before as a trial and actually really liked it (I do like simplicity in games design!). It's geared towards small unit skirmishes from what I can tell, which is ideal. It also has some vehicle rules, although I haven't tried those before.

The only real downside I can think of is that the rules are so cut down that different weapons don't really feel that unique to one another. An assault rifle will be 24" range and 2FP for example (FP is Fire Points - essentially how many shots that weapon has), so a soldier at Expertise 4+ would get two 4+ shots in a turn. However, his squadmate with a rocket launcher (48", 5FP), would get five 4+ shots in a turn. What this amounts to is that you roll 7 dice with your two-man fireteam. And nothing distinguishes between the assault rifle fire and the rocket, the enemy won't notice the difference!

So it would probably require a bit of customisation to the rules to make some of the weapons feel a bit different (maybe I'll just add warhammer templates for appropriate weapons and cut down their FP?).

***

Here's some of the models I'll be using for the campaign:

River Pikes gangers, part of the insidious 'Echen Rebellion'. These are em4 Ganger miniatures which I painted to be as colourful as possible. I wanted them to be multi-coloured punk rebels to stand in contrast against their natural enemy - the uniformed police officer. 

The River Pikes gang will be the villains of the first 'intro' mission of the campaign. They'll have taken control of a broadcast building and planning on using it to broadcast their seditious messages. They'll have innocent hostages too in order to ensure no-one feels sympathy for them. I made minor modifications to them to add some 40k weapons so that I could use them in games of Necromunda/40k if I wanted some dirty gang types.

I painted one of the gangers to have similiar coloured armour/clothing to those of the police officers (maybe he killed one, or maybe he's a traitor?), and I gave him a baton-type weapon to add to that image.

Vigilon Police Defence Force troopers. These are em4 Trooper miniatures with the Command upgrade pack applied on some of them. I didn't like the dorky faces under the helmets, so I stuffed a bunch of greenstuff over them and attempted to cut them into vaguely visor-like shapes. I went with a simple blue & grey colour scheme to give the clear impression of them being a police or security force, rather than sci-fi marines.

These will be used for the police forces spearheading the heroic defence of the planet Sador. A small variety of these troopers will be available in the first mission, probably 3 (they'll have better stats and armour than the gangers).

The other 7 police officers will be made available from the second mission, but won't ever be replaced. If one of these police officers is KIA, that's it (although other types of units will be added to the available forces in later missions).

Police Interceptor/Patrol Car. This is from Old Crow Models. Their webstore is down but you can still get the models if you e-mail Jez and ask nicely. The models are more 25mm scale than 28mm, but they work perfectly well in my opinion. I decided this model looked like it could be an armoured patrol car of some kind, so painted it to fit in with my police trooper models.

I figure this could probably fit two officers, one behind the other (one driving, the other looking up information on the perps - I have no idea how actual police do things but I thought that sounded reasonable).

In terms of game rules, I'll probably just have it as placeable terrain for the start of the mission for the police force, at least in the first few city-based games. If there's any missions on larger maps it'll be useful for scouting/transporting important characters.

***

In other news, my friend Rick has a miniatures hobby blog too and it's great. I've been reading it for a while now and he's built up quite a large LOTR army (well, two - good guys & bad guys). Impressive stuff.

Check it out here:
https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/