Enter ... the Enterprise

I recently grabbed a Star Trek Deep Cuts mini by WizKids: The Enterprise herself--or at least a Constitution-class Federation heavy cruiser. Of course, this is the refurbished ship from the movies, not the vessel from the original series.

Even though the miniature came primed but unpainted, I gave it a base coat of flat black before drybrushing with medium gray, light gray, and titanium white. While the paint job may not be up to Starfleet specifications, I think it came out great for my gaming purposes.

You see, back in the '70s, there was this awesome vector graphics arcade game called Space Wars. It was a player-versus-player setup, where each person controlled a spaceship. One was a triangular craft (which I decided was from the Vega system), and the other had a familiar shape, as seen in the lower center.

Image from this page at Biltronix.

I decided I can use the Trek ship to play a tabletop version of Space Wars. And I already have a suitable black-and-white mini for the Big E's opponent, one of my Terran stellar destroyers from Galactic Knights (and before that, Starfleet Wars).

As you can see, the two ships provide a reasonable approximation of their electronic counterparts on the game mat. Now I just figure out what rules to use for a one-on-one spaceship battle. It needs to use vector movement, to emulate how the ships moved in the arcade game.

Or maybe I will just use it as a special ship in my Galactic Knights scenarios. It might be fun to see this Federation ship boldly go through a battle between the Terrans and Entomalians.

Off defending the Commonwealth

You might have noticed my blogging has been sparse lately. I blame my wife, who got me a videogame system for my birthday. I've been playing Fallout 4 over the past few weeks, and I'm having a (nuclear) blast.

(image from Wikipedia)

If you're a videogame fan, you know what I'm talking about. For you old-school analog gamers, it's pretty much a sandbox, slightly less gonzo, Gamma World-style exploration game, where you roam across a nuclear-ravaged Massachusetts some two centuries after an atomic war. You gain skills and levels while making alliances with various organizations. Or you can go around just shooting things. Just like when we played GW back in the day.

Either way, Fallout has me craving some post-apocalyptic tabletop minis gaming. For rules, I want something a little more rules-light than Gamma World and a lot more miniatures-focused. Something like Mutants and Death Ray Guns from Ganesha Games, or maybe something adopted from one of Ed's Two Hour Wargames rulesets, like After the Horsemen.

I already have plenty of prepainted Heroscape minis I can use for skirmishes, and I'm sure I can track down some Clix prepaints for various purposes as well. And Gunbird's blog 20mm And Then Some has lots of inspiration regarding terrain for Fallout games. 

Anyone else doing some After-the-Bomb gaming? If so, what rules do you recommend? Also, what minis?