Life Mocks Me

At times, things can seem overpowering. There is a wall of stuff to do. My energy levels are through the floor. My daughter has left me with a pile of stuff to do on top of the pile of stuff I have to do. Then it's the seventy two hour TB cough making me rock so hard my ribs hurt. Just for giggles I get a dose of the runs that burn so hot that I think I have been living off vindaloos for a month. These seem to spring to life every time I have a coughing fit. Not quite every hour on the hour all night. Which is more often than I would like. So as I am laid up in bed with a bottle of water, a stock of immodium and my metaphorical running shoes on I contemplate my fate.

Coughing fit and short sprint later. So when life mocks you, mock the mockers.

On the plus side I need to stay near the toilet. The nearest place I can sit is the chair next to my painting bench so after my last dash that's where I am. My daughter should just be getting off the plane. I hope she is ok. I am not ready for painting but at least I can watch the TV.

I have made a little progress. The background for my Stargrave game had a Roman inspired culture. Imperial by nature, as you might expect, but very much in decline. They had created a servitor race, who fought in their armies and when they failed their masters, fought in their arenas. These were the gnollar. They were bred for combat. Genetically fast and strong with enough intelligence to be a good soldier. From childhood thy were taught the art of war and conditioned to respect the Imperial colours. I know that they are supposed to be some form of hyaena, but I am not sure that they are limited to that, and I am still thinking about skin/fur tones.

Part of me looks at them as tells me that they scream Traveller Vargr. Maybe not the sophisticated Imperium Vargr but maybe the Corsair kind. I have heard hints that Wargames Atlantic might be thinking about Traveller minis. The trouble with Traveller for me is I run games with minis and as far as I can make out there have been about half a dozen Vargr minis in 25mm. GW did some in 15mm. I have all of these. I know Martian Metals made some during the 1980s but we are talking unicorn poop. This is all better than the Hiver which as far as I can tell there is only one one.

The rest of the plan is looking at stuff for the week are from the Post Apocalypse range from Crusader Miniatures. Some nice characters that are a little wacky in places but many of them fit right in with my plans,

I am hoping I am going to the UK Games Expo in a couple of days. Fortunately I am not driving. I have taken the liberty of marking the toilets on the map and packing a bottle of water, some rehydration sachets and some Imodium already.😟

The Work (In Pogress) Continues

When I got up this morning I decided that I was going to paint ten of the old Grenadier (now Mirliton) trooper figures. Nice simple figures with an almost standard uniform that even if I do give certain aspects of it a camouflage pattern, should be done by the end of the week.

 Then I picked up the two D&D mimic figures I picked up last week. Then I thought what the hell, I'll do these first. So I did. When you have a small number of essentially similar figures, they are quick and easy to do so I just got on with them. I guess each of them took about an hour to an hour and a half to finish. In the round, and certainly on the tabletop, the look pretty good.

When they were done I went back to the troopers. They have progressed a little bit. All the boots, equipment and uniform are finished. To be honest I haven't made up my mind what I am going to do with the armour and helmet yet although I have an idea (does anyone remember Aliens). Given that a lot of what I am doing is vaguely desert, I think I will go for something like MTP/Multicam. I do like the Copplestone vibe.

These figures have all sorts of potential uses for me. Aside from the standard sci-fi, 2300, Stargrunt, Titansgrave Tomorrow's War ad Traveller, I can see a use for them in other genres. The armour would look pretty good for combat armour for Fallout. They have planned uses in some post apocalypse stuff as well. Maybe even as soldiers in a super hero game.

This is more for my benefit so I can go back and remember what colours I used if I decide to do any more

2300: More Trouble On Beowulf

The referee is having a laugh. Did somebody say "Kobayashi Maru"? If I wanted to put myself in situations where no matter what I was going to do, I was going to get screwed, I'd go back to working for the local council.

Seriously, it was a lot of fun.

Who is not going to love dealing with a corporate lawyer who has their own personal ED 209 security droid in tow.  Give them a cheesy corporate vice principle to add on to that. The mass eviction of a load of British locals in the middle of a massive storm. Did I mention that the corporation has a history of genetic slavery? Good solid people right? The kind you trust every day. Well if your American and you vote Republican. Or Democrat.

The locals a great. Really welcoming. The second one we meet is insistent on using a neural whip on one of the workers he employs in his brothel. Luckily for us, we find out after my security tem leaser knocks him out cold and leaves him with a few missing teeth that he is the local leader and everyone in town, well pretty much, is related to him. Said employee is a pleasure bot so  not really human. Except that somehow, she is the first bot to develop true artificial intelligence. This is largely due to her employer using a neural whip on her.

Said neural whip was removed from the local businessman by the head of security. Just for comic effect, he decides to toss it to the engineer. The engineer now knows that attempting to juggle a live neural whip does not always end well and that there is no ice cream or medals afterwards.

So, after finding that there is a fortune "In them there hills" just before the corporates move in, we get some orders (after defeating the corporates attempts to jam our single) from the ESA to ensure that the corporation stay out of the town. I'm not sure if this is the ESA doing the right thing by it's citizens or just wanting to make sure that it secures a vitally important strategic resource.

Anyway, we have a drop ship on it's way with six marines and thirty locals. we may get some guys i battledress too.

Anyway, there will be lots of poop to be in next week. We don't play nice with our friends, I suspect we are not going to play nice with the corporates wither.

2300: Tour The Universe And Kill Things or In Space No One Can Hear You. It's Physics

Another night of 2300 on Monday. This is the first time I've played a space combat in a while. I did some 2300 many years ago and remember that the ship combat was pretty deadly. So obviously this was the day the players with the ship skill set were not going to turn up. Can't blame them, it was Easter Monday after all. So all the more dice rolling for me as the other players were all grunts. One of them had the ability to pilot drones but had stratospherically bad luck and probably managed to melt a little paint.

So the story goes we are taking the new ship on a bit of a shakedown and we pick up a jammed message, well just about. It turns out that it's a distress signal so our attention was peeked. What we find is two, old, surplus Chinese ships chasing down a merchant ship. This is a bad thing. The ref tells us that loads of these were sold as surplus so no one knows who they belong to.

So, mainly due to a lot of luck I draw bead on one of the bad guys. This did not work out well for the enemy. Six hits later and it goes boom.

Then the next one goes boom. this was followed by a boarding action. It seems thta the Kafer had gotten control of the ships. Sadly the boarding party (my character doesn't do vac suits or floating around in zero gravity, yet) didn't manage to take any of the Kafer alive. What's next ref?

2300: Trouble On Beowulf

Three posts in one day. I must be doing something wrong. Last night was Mark's 2300 at the club and an enjoyable bash it was.

One of the things I like about hard science fiction is that the planets, even the habitable ones, are pretty unpleasant places to be. Beowulf is probably not a place to go on holiday. I don't see many all inclusive package deals being set up. Assuming the resident life forms which are big and lethal, don't eat you, the weather, including twelve meter high tides don't drown you, it will be the five day, days that send you barking.

The ESA have sent us there and we are waiting for our ride. Just whilst we happen to be at a lose end we are sent into the middle of nowhere to go and look at something that crashed there. We are not the only ones. The French (bad guys in 2300, but not as bad as the Chinese, or was it the Americans? Things are a little ambiguous from the point of view of a Brit) in the form of some militia, who are not local and in British territory, have come looking for what we are looking for. Which is a French, Military surveillance satellite. These are illegal after a planetary treaty. When we found it, it had a bomb in it and some unknown alien technology, probably Kafer (the real enemy).

Anyway, we come to blows with the French and an APC. So whilst me and and the rest of the team start shooting at the enemy Dave's character (an Anglo Danish Marine Lieutenant with the same level of education as a tapioca root) jumps on top of the APC and shoots the gunner and causes the driver to crash.

All in all a good firefight, I've nominated the marine for a medal and of course we have managed to annoy a lot of people despite saving the day, again. Thanks to my huge medical skill, everyone made it through and get some damage back.

Next week, our ship will arrive to pick us up and we will see where that takes us.  

2300: A New Character

Last night was character generation. I will be playing Senior Scout Andy Smith. It took all evening for the ref to work this through with four players. I think that is more down to the players than the referee. The game will be done in 15mm.

Well the world (of the future, present or past) seldom changes. Random character generation makes for much more entertaining characters. Traveller is perhaps the most chaotic generation system it seems to be possible to create with a series of specific rules. Chaos theory will be proven right every time.


We are playing the crew of an E.S.A. ship so there will be a lot of national boundaries. In the chaos of character generation, my character ended up as a bigot with no social skills. He is however, a kick arse scout, with an obscene level of medical skill who can do just about anything on a planet (except drive or ride) \and can fly a star ship or system ship reasonably well. Did I also mention that he is a little on the stocky side? No he is 5'6" and 104kg. Just for giggles I looked up his BMI and it was 37. That is just a little past the end of the line on the obese axis (literally of the scale). His daily calorie requirement would be sufficiently met by a couple of standard British Army ration packs or any medium sized mammal.

I imagine it will be fun trying to find him a vac suit. Funnier still for the French and German characters, who the character does not like and out ranks. It has already been suggested that my character needs to go on an equality and diversity course and a diet. Still, he is tough, smart, well educated and just lucky enough to make it through. I think.

Sol Stellar Survey Service - A First Look

I was looking for some 28mm figures that could be used as a quasi military force. I wasn't after anything too military or too Star Trek but something more like the Scout Service in Traveller. In For All Mankind I have a group called the Sol Stellar Survey Service. They are part astronaut, part geologist, part xenologist, part explorer and part scientist. They also double as a reconnaissance  force in times of trouble. In my game.
After a lot of digging around the only thing I could find were the Spacefarers from Victory Force (not the old Citadel ones). I was a bit reticent to order them as I couldn't find out much about scale or quality on the web and the pics on the web site were just a bit too indistinct. Well I ended up ordering them.

As well as what's in the pictures below I have some vac suited figures and some aliens but I will post pictures of these another time. I ended up paying  £30 tax and handling which came as a real shock. I will make sure that anything else U get is made up from smaller orders in future.

I have fairly mixed feelings about them. They are exactly what I wanted but with a few niggles. Some of the hair styles lack anything but the most basic sculpting.  Big hair with no texture. The figures have a wide range of sizes which is a plus and a negative in my book. They seem to do a lot of zombies of a similar quality which end up a lot cheaper.

My bet is that they will paint up alright. The faces are better than some even if some of the hair is a bit off. They have the advantage of being exactly what I want. I am guessing that my main gripe now is that the day after the arrived Victory Force announce a mammoth sale on this range only. Timing the secret of great...

Federal Navy Almost Done

 
I had a look at the picture on the Babylon 5 post I did earlier today and it made me feel a little bit glum. I took the picture late yesterday and have worked on them last night and this morning. I need to put some insignia on them but otherwise they are done. I am pretty pleased with them.
I haven't painted any Mongoose figures before (I think they were Mongoose anyway) and I was a little disappointedwith the miniatures. The poses are fine but the lips seem to have been welded on as an afterthought. I have put some iris' and eyebrows on and played around with the faces a bit. It is a fine line between accuracy, putting on something that people can see and recognise as a face and kabuki make up.

Vac Suits And Some Odds And Sods

Another quick post. I have another 15mm character figure to put on. It has been sat on the bench foe a few weeks so thought I should put a picture on here. This is supposed to be a US marine officer figure. I'm not sure it's as good as the Navy Officer I did a few weeks ago but it's not too bad. I think it's a GZG figure mainly because it's on a round base.
 
These are some very old 25mm Grenadier Traveller miniatures. They were painted when I got them and I didn't fancy going to the efoort of stripping as the pait job was ok. So I have really only tarted them up. This meant ink, some bits of colour and a few bits of highlighting.  They are a little short but with the base don't look out of scale. I'll have to make sure whatever I use as flocking covers up all the sins.

Rant, Referees Should Read the $%*ing Rules and Apply Them Fairly and a Picture of the Workbench

The workbench is still looking busy but is now at least a little tidier. I still feel pretty chaotic when I look at it as there are over a dozen different projects that I can see. As ever there are too many unfinished projects on the table. I might need to do something about that. Then again maybe not. I am in a completer finisher mood at the moment. So a lot of stuff has now been cleared away. I have a few bits to finish off and even more to put away. I have a couple of 28m figures which I intend to use for role playing. One needs to be finished for Monday.

Speaking of role playing I am still in mourning for a playing character I lost this week in a Traveller game.  I am not going to mention the name of the referee but I will say that I will never be involved in a game with this guy ever again. :-)

My main gripe is that most of the damage was done that killed me  came from one of three shots. This shot was at the end of a six second turn in which the npc had decided to jump, jumped, moved 150m (which was a difficult second action in a system that only allows one significant action), landed, acquired a target which would theoretically be prone with some cover, in the dark, firing an ACR, in microgravity, shot and hit. The NPC doing the shooting had a low level of skill. If the referee had thrown a twelve and not a six and not specifically prohibited me from doing the same thing two or three combat rounds previously. 

This was of course all done when the referee had made a scenario for 12 PCs/NPCs harder that it was in the book and when two of the players had already dropped out.

Moving "Swiftly" On

Well it's been a busy week gaming, well for me at least.  Having played some Traveller on Monday my gaming juices have been going all week. Trouble is my other half picked up a chest infection and this means that I have been coughing  all week too. It's been so bad I have lost two nights sleep. I  could have modeled for some zombie miniatures around Friday and no one would have known I was alive.

I was involved in a 15mm fantasy wargame the other day. I had a lot of fun but didn't seem to do any appreciable damage to the enemy. For once I wasn't on the losing side although I think it was a no score draw (well there were a few casualties but nothing significant). For some reason (it was one of those you had to be there moments I'm told) they use Tercio as the rules. They a a set of renaissance rules by tabletop games I think. Not sure why these rules but they seem to work. I think there are other sets of rules that could be used to accomplish the same sort of outcomes much quicker but the guys at the club seem to like them and I don't want to upset the apple cart too much. I know old school is popular right now. Retro might be hip but maths isn't and there is a lot of maths in this.

I have the urge to do some more buildings. I am running a scifi game in a few months and want to do some stuff for that but couldn't quite run up enough enthusiasm for it today. I did do some more work on the cowboys which are now more or less done. I need to put some pupils on the eyes and varnish them and they are done (well further progress will be abandoned).

I am having problems with Blogger or my PC. Not sure which but I am habing problems posting pictures.(Cured this now, obviously). They are there, they just don't seem to be showing up.

I kept picking stuff up and putting it back down again. I have really forgotten how involved 28mm figures are. I tend to be quite basic and they still seem take an eternity to get them done. I don't much like the absence of variety either. I need some vac suited figures for my up coming game. There are few manufacturers in 28mm and to get what I want will cost about £70. In 15mm there still is a massive number of manufacturers but there are at least 25 different poses in several different styles. I might get a few more before the game (as of I need an excuse)

Pound Shop Find #1

Well in this instance I guess it is not technically a pound shop as what is on display actually cost £4. They are cheap made in China mouldings. I have had better but then never mind the quality feel the width. Some of it is junk. There are a couple of jeeps that I can see no use for at the moment but I might be able to make something usable when I have had time to think. The traffic cones are massively over size. There is even a plastic wheel barrow. I can see this going into the junk box and staying there for a while.

 

The first thing that caught my eye were the lorries. There is very little out there that can be used for articulated lorries. Khurasan do one that is a little bit car wars but there is nothing really suitable for modern.variable but more or less.   

 This is a sporting looking car and I am not really sure what it is doing in a construction set but there you go. The pick up it's next to is from Peter Pig. It looks a little long but the height, which is normally the bigger problem is about okay.

I could see this in a car wars setting. Some of the classic counters don't look too different.  That said I think I am going to take the wheels off and turn it into a Traveller style grav-speeder. One of the 15mm figures have bases which give them a little of a height rise but it kind of works.

I was less sure about these. they are definately out of scale for what they are. The one on the right could be turned into some sort of G truck or maybe a transit style can. The one on the left kind of looks like a candidate for the bits box. Behind it is a skip that came with the set. I have skips from TheScene so suspect that is heading for the bits box too.

I got two mixer trucks for my money. I can see one being dismantled. Next to some older style WW2 vehicles they look a little taller but that is to be expected.

Another articulated lorry. The storage container on the rig is pretty good. It could be detached with a little effort. The set it came from cost a pound so it would still work out cheaper than buying something from a mini manufacturer.

The last of the articulated trucks. I'm not sure what they were thinking in the trailer design team but I guess there is plenty that can be made out of what's here. Compared to the other big trucks I have seen, I'd take these.

Last but not least a couple more trucks. The ecovery truck is an odd construction but I guess it will turn into something if you think about it long enough. For £4 I thought this was a pretty good deal.

Toys....Yey!!!

The first money I have spent for a while has been on some miniatures from Ground Zero Games on some more 15mm stuff. GZG have been one of my favorites over the years. One of the things that has been missing from my sci fi tabletop was vehicles. Be it Hummvees or family cars, everywhere and every when has a lot of vehicles in my mind. Streets look empty without them. Apart from shopping centres, most street have moe cars on them than people at any given moment. Sci fi is where it's at for me at the moment so I have got few vehicles to make the tabletop look a bit more interesting and maybe something for the troops to use. It's a big chunk of lead. Most of it looks like it will work well together. The wheels for most of the vehicles are fairly modular and only really vary in scale. Some of the larger APCs could well double as Traveller ATVs. The longest one does look a lot like an old school ATV which is not something I have ever seen before. Whilst they are not contemporary vehicles they don't look all that different from modern vehicles and I guess they have some uses in Force on Force as well as Tomorrow's War. 

 It took a little while to get the vehicles put together but it had to be done. They look like something now do I feel better.There was a little bit of flash but it was not excessive. The bits seem to fit together okay and there are no major gaps when the sections are fitted together. I am feeling the urge to do some painting but I think till I get my new compressor at Christmas. There was a fair bit of other stuff including two new mecha and some infantry and even a few Christmas freebies as well. They look pretty good I think.

I wanted to do something along the lines of Aliens could want to replicate some elements of it in my games. Instead of doing the blasted planet of LV-426 I have been working on the desert terrain. So now I need something to make it look right. Big wheel raised above the ground was the look I was going for. Painted in the right colours I think these Bulldog trucks from GZG (below) should do the trick.

It is gradually taking longer and longer to work my way around blogger. It is one of the reasons I have been posting less. Getting things into place without the format changing itself is becoming a major ordeal. I would have liked to posted this yesterday but I have spent so much time getting the pictures in the right place and not disappearing or duplicating themselves. There should hopefully be a few more posts over the next few days.

GZG Humanoid Robots

Robots. Who doesn't need more robots and Jon at GZG managed to produce some more. They fit in quite nicely with the not Traveller stuff from RAFM that I love so much. 

These big fellas would make nice opponents or intimidating allies. Nice time I have need of some robots for sale all I will need is a handful of Jawas.

These are female humanoid miniatures. Like a lot of manufacturers they had enhanced female qualities if you get my meaning. this almost put me off buying them. I guess the "sizing" says a lot about gamers? Anyone up for a flame war? The 25mm minis were much the same. I did some selective editing with a knife and now they look a little Kryten-esque.

The male robots looking like a smaller version of Gort. Nice minis with no enhanced characteristics.

Got A Little Distracted

I spent most of the day yesterday working on zombies. A bit of a labour of love but still not finished. I have taken some pics which will get posted in the next few days. I was browsing at the pics I have taken already and I found a few I hadn't posted. I was working on Traveller stuff a while back and didn't get round to posting these.

I love this old stuff. It was the old GW traveller minis that first got me thinking about 15mm gaming. When Rafm got the rights to make them I was made up. I probably have more figures in vac suits than I need (about 30) but I am sure that they will get used. I will have to work them into a scenario. 

Back to the zombies.....

Painting Time Again

I have had the impulse to pick up a paint brush again which is one of the reasons I haven't posted much in the last weeks. To paint some actual figures.  I got some stuff from Rebel Minis last week and I think that was the impetus I needed. Funnily enough it wasn't their minis that I picked up first. I had started some Khurasan "Police or Security Guards." I like these minis and have some immediate use for them unlike the fifty or so zombies that arrived.

There are two sets of five miniatures that have been painted up. I have varnished them but then realised that I still need to ink the faces and of course the bases still need to be flocked.

Nice miniatures. They have a kind of cyberpunk look (Cyberpunk? Remember that? It's like Shadowrun without the stupidity and a bit more plausible) which I kind of like. Now that I look at them again I can also see a hint of Rebel Troopers from the opening scene of Star wars although that may be wish fulfilment on my part. I figured that they would do for starship crew who were repelling pirates for Traveller as well.

Continuing the Diversion

As I said the other day I wasn't very happy with how the crew compartment turned out so I have ripped it out and started again. I wanted to be able to get a penny sized base in there as well as be able to get my big fingers in there to move figures around. I also realised that I had made a mistake with the computer room which has been put right. If you enlarge the pictures you will see that I have started adding small details such as pipes, around the ship.

The crew compartment

I wanted the drive room to look busy but still have some  space to move figures around. The bits and pieces were largely stuff I had hanging around, empty pots and some bits from GZGand Ainsty Casting. I haven't fixed most of them in yet as I want to paint the crew compartment grey first.

The drive room

The plan was to paint the hull gold which I have started since I took these pictures. I have some spray paint that has been hanging around for a few years so I might as well use it.

More Work on the Scoutship. The Diversion Continues

So I have a day to myself. Swimbo is over at her mothers. I have done the housework and there is nothing to distract me.

So I have had a go at doing some more work on the Traveller Scoutship. The first thing I noticed was that I had actually missed out a bulkhead so I put that in.

Traveller Type S Scoutship

I wanted to cover up the void areas where the machinery and fuel tanks would be so I used some card to do this. If I have learnt one thing from this process it is work from the top down. I would make more sense to cut the covering card out first and used that as a template. I am also thinking that the central corridor is too narrow and the staterooms are too big. It seems like a lot of effort to put this right but I doubt I will be making one of these again (unless I management to sell it, all reasonable offers considered) so I think I will go back and do something about it. 

I was originally going to go with 15mm squares rather than 20mm. It's a coin toss really. 20mm squares make it easier to move figures around but then throw the scale out a bit. On balance I think I would go back to 15mm squares and drop the wall height a bit.

I have had a bit of a play about doing a 20ton launch as well. This was originally going to be the test bed model but I got carried away.

GZG vac suits

I dragged these out on a whim yesterday. I painted these a while back and was going to paint up the new figures I got at Triples the other month.

I put them back because I want to order some more. I figured that these would do for bad guys and that if I get another couple of packs and some heavy suits I could paint them in a range of colours, so I put the new figures back in storage.
 
These are fairly high tech suits compared to the ones I have from RAFM. I would guess that the are about traveller TL12 or TL13. I originally painted them up as two teams.

I plan to get some more of these and paint them up a bit more randomly for civilians. I will also get a couple of packs of the Survey Team in vac suits to pad out the figures I have already painted and give the additional figures a bit more variety. I may even get some of the heavier vac suits that might work as hostile environment suits if I ever run a Traveller campaign again.

A Slight Diversion or a Traveller Scout Ship

I have a few days off and I thought I would do a few things that have been on my mind to do. The two ideas I have were a small town hospital and a traveller ship. The hospital was in theory for a zombie game. I had been thinking about a few traveller ship for a while. Then I saw something about Traveller ships on The Miniatures Page talking about the idea.

The problem is that even a small hospital was is a large project. I had a look at the resources I had in the house and decided that I didn't have enough to do the hospital.

So the Traveller ship it is. I have used up a lot of foam core and pins the morning but I now have the super structure done.

I had a look for a deck plan and found a scout ship for Mongoose Traveller. The plan is is not my own work so I thought you might want to look at where it came from. Not quite the same as the classic Traveller ship but I thought it would do. I am not sure that I want to do the lower deck because it will involve doing the underside. I already have an old nozzle that I think will make a great turret.

I wanted a big objective fr Tomorrow's War and thought that this would be a nice addition to the starport that is on the way. I am worried now that I have bitten off more than I can chew.

This is the biggest and most complicated foam core project I have undertaken. There is a lot of foam core, glue and pins in this. I will see where it end up.

I did a few small craft templates as well. These will get done as well in time. Maybe I should have started with one of them.