6mm SF -An impulse buy.

Nearly finished pulp plane, haven't got started on the game yet... but...

Wandering around a local garden-centre-come-shopping-precinct spotted something that looked interesting.

Golf cleats. £11.99 for 18 of the things - 6mm tank size crawlers(?) at a bit over 60p each.

They fit in quite nicely with my other forces - possibly as either transports or personnel carriers? Not even going to repaint them.

Here they are matched against 6mm Garrison SF hovertanks. Not sure that they would want to be in this particular situation though.

Checked on ebay - can get them a lot cheaper so worth a look...

Swarm Wars initial rules.

 For the last few days I've trying to put my MS Publisher initial version of the Swarm Wars  onto the blog - with little success. This is about my 4th attempt and it's still not going to plan! I finally had to save the tables in jpeg form and insert them as pictures.

Movement

Infantry                              2”

Light Armour                    6”

Medium Armour                4”      Medium armour includes standard troop and missiles GEVs

Heavy Armour                   3”       Heavy armour are tracked

Swarms                              6”

Rocket/saucer                     -        Assumed to just take off and land

Aircraft etc                                  To be arranged

Weapons (to hit, includes initial save)

1) Human—note swarms count as Light Armour, Troop and Missile GEVs as Medium Armour. A single cell artillery vehicle also has a 4/5/6 saving throw—only half as many firing!

2) Swarms

3) Weapons Range

Saving Throws

Some saving throws are already   included in the hit factors—for example, it might be easy for  infantry weapons to hit heavy armour, but the hit would have no effect so what’s he point in going through an extra saving throw routine?

Standard Missile GEVs are double celled weapons. However, models are available for single celled GEV units or single cell missile units. As these only fire half the missiles, an initial saving throw of 4/5/6 on single units allows for any hits to have been made by the ‘missing’ cell. This roll is made as part of the ,to hit’ phase.

Saving throw in all cases is 4/5.

For units in hard cover saving throw is 3/4/5

Morale

Human units are usually formed in 3s—Infantry 2 infantry plus 1 A/T, GEVs and tracked vehicles in squadrons of 3.

Therefore morale is rolled for each third lost.

1/3 lost  1 = retreat/rout,  2 hold, 3/4/5/6 obey orders

2/3 lost 1 rout and don’t stop, 2/3 retreat, 4/5 hold, 6 obey orders

3/3 lost you’re dead...

Players have the option to reroll in any subsequent move except on the ’don’t stop’ result—they’ve gone. Thus at the start of any move a unit retreating can attempt to rally on the same basis as the original retreat.

Notes

These rules are, firstly, a work in progress and will be both extended and amended in future. They are also rump rules, intended for personal use so subject to random interpretations!

The continuing battle

Trouble with covering 3 moves is that things start getting complicated. So, mostly letting the pictures tell the story.

Overview as left two swarms continue their advance. Both swarms kept 'passing' morale tests and wouldn't stop.

Right flank swarm did retreat back to their saucer after getting hammered.

More from the Martian left flank...

Tanks passing burning war machines

Another overview picture as things get serious.

Starting to form a new line.

This bit caught me out a bit - hadn't sorted rules for taking out saucers. Finally decided on 5 or 6 to hit, but with 3 or more saving throw when it tried to take off - it survived and eventually left.

Getting very close up and personal. The battle certainly finished up at close quarters - which tends to favour the swarms.

Last of the Martians finally die (apart from the one that ran...)

Casualty list. Actually one too many tanks here - an intact vehicle was put in the photo by mistake! More human casualties then I would normally expect - dice rolls and the effect of starting in quite close so that the Martians didn't take as many casualties while out of range. All three saucers got away safely though one was damaged.

The Martians Phase 2

Phase 2 sounds less like a game and more like a 'real' battle...

Overview of second move before shooting starts. Being a solo battle the swarms movements have to be determined by a set formula - in this case, nearest enemy to take priority. Hence the middle swarm heads for their left flank rather than into the city. Meanwhile the human forces are taking up positions to meet the various threats.

Again, shooting priorities - shooting will concentrate on that front tank!

Meanwhile the Martian right flank swarm charges headlong towards the city - but shorter ranged weapons mean they will be receiving fire without being able to return fire for this move.

This time the missile barrage works, taking out 3 war machines. The tanks score a further 2 kills but...which ones the missiles kill is based on a dice roll - dice roll for every machine, lowest scores are the kills, in this case meant one war machine was killed twice! (ie, once by tank, once by missiles)

Meanwhile, all the machines concentrate on one of the tanks and it 'dies' 3 times. A lot of the swarm shots 'missed'. 1 war machine is killed by the tanks and another is taken out by the tanks advancing down the road.

 So, interesting how the rules are working at the moment - basically, against swarms missile barrage best tactic, swarm tactic mechanism also seems to be working as planned. Looking promising.

The Martians start their attack.

Basically they just charge for the nearest humans...

The initial landing sites were very close to the outer defences of the humans.

This picture shows the Martian charge as the three swarms head for their targets.

The Martian right flank soon swarmed round the exposed human defences in this area... fire support from advancing tanks and artillery were never likely to help here!

They didn't really stand much chance...

Humans on the Martian left likewise soon got in close as the gravtanks turned to meet the threat.

One problem the humans had - lousy shooting (dice rolls). Loss of two infantry sections while the Martians suffered little in return.

Apart from poor shooting by the human forces this section of the game worked well. Starting close in, the Martian swarms meant lots of firepower on only a few targets so they were certain to cause major human casualties. Having said that, they should have taken far more casualties in reply... however, the next stage should show the weakness of the Martians. Light armour and short ranged weapons against heavy armour and long ranged weapons. It will take the Martians three moves to reach the next line, two moves before their weapons are in range - all the time while taking fire.

A short note on how 'lucky' the swarms were. I treat missile barrages from the support missile launchers quite simply - everything in the zone is hit on a dice roll of 6. For infantry and light armour there is no saving throw. So, firing on a swarm of 6 Martian war machines with 3 missile launchers gives 3 x 6 or 18 chances of a 6 - on average, 3 machines should have gone up in smoke. They lost 1! And it was like that across the board!

The Martians are coming....

At least, they could be Martians and, well, there's not really a lot of them, more of a recon rather than a full,scale invasion...

And it gives me a chance to set up a totally unrealistic city as well as giving those flying saucers a run out.

So firstly set up a 'city', then gave it a garrison. Basically an armoured battalion, infantry battalion and supports. Except that I haven't finished painting the infantry so they've been represented by light GEVs. Which is why they are sitting on the top of skyscrapers.

The Martians started off with 6 saucers. Dice roll of 3 or more for each saucer to 'arrive' meant should average 4 arriving, 3 did. It's assumed the others were shot down or something. Originally I was going to have them arrive randomly over the whole table but decided later on to just have them arrive on the front  - two stage method, 1,2 left of board, 3,4 middle, 5,6 right for each group of 2 saucers (one group didn't arrive!) then split that segment into 6 to see where in each segment they landed.

Overview of the table - the blue saucer is just off picture on the bottom right side.

Main initial battle area showing where the saucers landed in relation to the first line. I will dice to see where that second  green swarm attacks - follow friends or head for the tanks.

Not sure that this infantry squad is happy about the landing site...

This one should be interesting.

View of the second/main line - doubt that they will see much action...

6mm Flying Saucers

Picked up from the Range. 60mm diameter, cost £1.49 each. So the rockets I have are pens, the flying saucers are pencil sharpeners...

Love office supplies.

6mm Swarms finished

Quick paint jobs so soon finished - though not varnished yet.

The other thing needed to go with them is a transport system, so sort of sorted that as well...

Swarms plus transport.

4 swarms, 2 of each type. Should be enough(?)

Transport was bought a long time ago. Sadly, I only bought 3 of them so 1 short...  Actually they're not models. They're pens I bought on the off-chance they would come in useful some day.

6mm Alien attack overview.

Garrison had quite a nice (if now old fashioned) range of sf tanks. The first lot I painted up were loosely based on German WW2 schemes, recently I started painting up more of these but in a more British scheme. Then I spotted a load of 15mm Stargrunt 'spider drones' on the Ground Zero stand at Salute and thought they would make good 6mm alien machines. The idea is that they are fast-moving lightly armoured swarms that like to swamp their enemies - a bit like fast zombies in zombie games.

The result is a very quickly painted set of sf models... more spider drones on order, human infantry there's a load of Brigade Models infantry on order, still thinking about a source for suitable alien infantry.

The 'British' armoured division as it stands at the moment.

It nominally harks back to WW2 so the first/Senior Regiment has red markings, first squadron triangle on turret, 2nd square and 3rd circle. However, the HQ I've gone for 'R' instead of a diamond - so closer to German WW2 in that respect. Vehicles are 'standard' grav tanks and I may add a second Regiment of these.

The second Regiment is a heavy regiment - 2 squadrons of tracked heavies and an 'anti-tank' squadron of grav tanks with missile capability.

Artillery support - lots of missiles on a grav chassis.

Scout Regiment but liable to be used as infantry carriers until I get that lot sorted.

The only non-Garrison element - some Ground Zero walkers. In 'this' universe they would have been designed and produced as a partial response to the swarms.

Two different swarms of Ground Zero Spider Drones. Each swarm includes 15 vehicles - not really drones of course, but might as well still call them that - quite simply painted.

This lot are quite weird - I'm using them as basically support/assault with an anti-infantry Gatling type gun plus a very short range weapon capable of taking out the heaviest armour - if it can get close enough.

 

General purpose swarm. Two guns with limited anti infantry capability and not really able to defeat the heavy tracked tanks... think Sherman 75 against Tiger...

(While typing this the post arrived bringing with it the next two swarms...)

6mm Empires at War buildings

Over the last few years one of my 'neglected' projects has been 6mm SciFi. Garrison had a nice range of hover tanks, etc, and I did did get round to painting some. Last year I bought some infantry (still haven't done anything with them) and during my current spending spree I got some of the 6mm and 20mm buildings by Empires at War.

They do a couple of packs that contain 4 buildings for £10 and today I thought... why not try one...

So I did. Took, ooohh... several minutes...

They don't cost much, are easy to put together, look OK - think I'll be adding a few more.

The kits themselves are a simple 7 part 'frame.

Over this frame you then glue odd bits of detail including 'ready painted' frontages. A bit rough on close up, but fine on the table. This one is just under 7cm wide.

 

Scale-wise, I think they're a bit underscale - 5mm rather than 6mm - but they'll more than do the job.

 

Meanwhile, as I was writing this up I built another one.