The Portable Impact Xenos Rampant Wargame

Only kidding, there is no such animal as the title would suggest but in my defence I tend to view just about type of wargame imaginable through the lens of the Portable Wargame! For the future a Portable Wargame Sci Fi Skirmish set of rules may be an option - not from me though as I have way too many other things on the go!

Anyway, I mentioned in my previous post about Xenos Rampant - the latest addition to the ‘Rampant’ stable - and about how I had in mind to tackle a refurbishment of some pre painted figures to use with the rules, or with Galactic Heroes, the set from the ‘Fistful of…’ series. There is of course Stargrave and Five Parsecs from Home - the latter I do not currently have but have the great advantage of being designed for solo use.

The figures I am planning on refurbishing will in fact serve several purposes. Not only will they enable me to game some Sci Fi actions but more importantly it will give me some much needed figure painting practise. 

The figure game Impact was originally published by Drummond Park and was released in two sets. There was the first version and then a standalone set call Impact: The Battle for Wolf Ridge. Both featured two set of figures - humans and sentient reptilian/dinosaur types - with heavy weapons that fired small plastic missiles - ideal for Little Wars if you were so inclined. The figures are made of a kind of rubbery substance that reminds me of the material used to make the ships in Axis and Allies: War at Sea except for being ‘shiny’ to the touch. As you can see in the pictures, the paint job is fairly basic, and so for me to say that I could do better than that means that we operating from a very low level of artistic interpretation! 

Various devices. The model on the left could be used as some kind of armed engineering droid whilst that in the centre could be a combat model. The models on the right could serve as a patrol drone or sentry gun style robot. Note the firing buttons - I shall be removing these.

The selection available. I will probably pick up another set (cheaply available on eBay) to round up the number but it is worth pointing out that everything I have for this collection has cost me so far around £2.50!

A closer look at the figure selection. The chap on the bottom right of the picture reminded me of a Byzantine greek fire operator! All suitably heroic looking but they could certainly use a better paint job.

In the next post I shall show the reptilian types - they are quite nice but incredibly garish looking so my plan will be to dial this down a notch or two.

In terms of terrain I am currently torn between a dry, arid, desert-like set up or something swamp and jungle like. I need to think about this carefully, mainly because it will Impact (no pun intended….oh alright then, yes it was!) on the selected colour scheme for the human force.

I also need to think about the best way to prepare theses figures for painting.