Star Wars Assimilated by the Borg…..

The Empire Strikes Back - Command and Colours style….

….and the back of the box

By way of a change of direction this post is firmly rooted in Science Fiction (or should that be Science Fantasy?), a gaming genre that I have enjoyed in many forms over the years.

Star Wars: Battle of Hoth is the latest offering from Mr Command and Colours himself, Richard Borg. When this was first announced some months ago I knew that resistance would be futile and so two copies of the game duly arrived earlier in the week. 

The game rules would be familiar to anyone that has played any of the Command and Colours series of games. Command cards dictate movement and combat and each side - Empire and Rebel - has their own set of 16 order cards. There are also nine leader cards for each side - there are three leaders, each with their own special abilities - and a deck of support cards to use with the two campaigns included. The leaders are Han, Luke and Leia for the Rebels and General Veers, Admiral Piett and Darth Vader for the Empire.

The rules and scenario book - 12 pages for the former and 20 for the latter

The biggest change from most C and C games with this edition is that the playing area is a modest 7 by 10 hexes so the action kicks off quickly. The map board is double sided with the reverse being able to join another board for epic style battles. There are eighteen scenarios, seventeen of these use a single map whilst the last one - Assault on Hoth - is the epic version requiring two copies of the game as it uses two maps for a playing area 15 by 10.

Countersheet front….

….and back

Map board deployed for scenarios 1 to 17

….and the flip side 

The two campaigns included - note each side has their own instructions. Also shown are the dice and assorted game aids.

Most of the key elements from the battle are present - AT-ATs, Snowspeeders, Probe Droids, Rebel Artillery, the Ion Cannon, Sheild Generators and of course, the infantry. In common with some of the Memoir ‘44 expansions, elite units or special weapon equipped squads have a counter to indicate their status. Imperial snow troopers are in 4s whilst the Rebels are in 3s. AT-ATs are singles, as is the Rebel Artillery. Probe Droids operate in 2s whilst the Snowspeeders are in 3s.

Rebels - artillery, a unit of Snowspeeders and infantry

An Imperial AT-AT, a pair of probe droids and a unit of snow troopers.

The AT-AT - All Terrain Armoured Transport. 

Due to the smaller sized board the action stats almost immediately and has that all important ‘feel’ - I defy anyone playing this to not have the soundtrack running through their head, if not actually playing it!

Originally I was a little undecided about this latest offering as I thought it might be a little restrictive but there is still plenty of tactical meat to get into, along with the Star Wars feel. I would have liked to have seen some other material available - AT-STs, leader figures, maybe some Rebels mounted on Tauntauns.

For all that, I am still going to enjoy this first instalment in the ‘Galactic Battles’ series - rumour has it that other battles will feature on a standalone basis but be prepared for a wait though! There are already a lot of fan made ideas for scenarios etc doing the rounds and the 3D printing fraternity have been having a field day. I am looking forward to taking my first steps into a galaxy far, far away….

“Lock S-Foils in attack mode!”

Hard on the heels of the Star Wars bundle came the latest offering from Osprey - Voidfighter: A Science Fiction Dogfighting Wargame. As soon as I saw this I was all over it like a cheap suit - gotta love some Sci Fi dogfights - as this is a gaming subject that has given me some cracking games over the years and long overdue for a revisit. Best of all, you really do not need a lot of material to get some games in.

Plenty of Sci Fi goodness to look forward to then- and I most certainly will!

Cleanse and Burn in the name of the Emperor!

That well known indefatigable painter of miniatures and all round good guy, Lee Gramson, has been a busier beaver than usual and has made a humongous amount of progress on my 1st edition Space Hulk and Advanced Space Crusade collection. If you recall, this came about as a kind of a swap deal in that a copy of the ACW boardgame Battle Cry and a complete set of the Time Life ACW books went from me to him in exchange for the 60 odd figures he is painting. Lee is currently two thirds of the way through the collection and so he sent me a selection of photos and a video from his YouTube channel which can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@legrambo

Both his blog and his YouTube channel are worth a visit if you need some inspiration as his painting covers a wide range of historical periods and scales. His work is quite simple, stunning!

I had opted for an old school look to the Genestealers and as for the terminator marines I chose green as the base colour - mainly as it looks a little more military rather than the usual GW schemes. I fully intend using the collection for other games beyond Space Hulk and the first of these will probably be Xenos Rampant or possibly Grimdark, maybe even the Portable Science Fiction Wargame if that is even a thing! Anyways, enough of the waffle and onto to the pictures 

Marine Command group, a power sword wielding Captain and a pair of Librarians

Chainfist equipped Sergeants

Assault Cannons - the only way to be sure! The two Sergeants, the Assault Cannons and the Captain were conversions I made from the base figure.

Ready to face the alien horde

24 Genestealers and the first two of the 6 Tyrannids

Bio weapons to the fore!

“Bugs Mr Rico, Zillions of ‘em - I’m ‘a Burning them down!”

I am really pleased with these and Lee has done a superb job. As it stands all that are left are a further four marines, four Tyrannids (one more with the bio weapon and three with bio swords) and fifteen scout marines.

All being well I shall be collecting the whole lot a little later in the year and am looking forward to getting them into action.

Lee has done a superb job on these and I am absolutely delighted!

Reaching for the Sky….and Beyond!

WW1, the Battle of Britain and ‘Over the Reich’ - perfect for my ‘cardboard aircraft’ aerial adventures

As part of my ongoing aerial project I wanted to get copies of the rules available from Tumbling Dice as part of their Wings at War range. Normally these include a selection of 1:600th scale aircraft but I only wanted the rules. A quick email to Paul at Tumbling Dice and I am now the proud owner of the trio of rule sets you see above. The incentive to crack on with the flying bases and counters has never been higher!

“Space Battles” was always going to get my attention…..

Another set of rules I have just acquired are set of starship combat rules penned by Rick Priestley. These are designed to be usable with whatever models you like although he does provide his own background for those that would prefer this. A couple of things that caught my eye with these rules is that they are grid based - a square grid no less although a hexed version would be perfectly usable - and use packs of normal playing cards for damage etc - no dice are involved.

I have only just skimmed through these rules but there are some interesting ideas therein - along with enough starship technobabble to appeal to most Sci Fi gamers. Needless to say I am thinking about using the painted Red Alert fleets to give them a spin.

In the meantime though, I need to get organised for the Portable Ironclads Wargame taking place at the club this evening.

Lots to do then!

More on Red Alert

The (in)complete collection. All the models are there but some of the tokens are missing along with all but one of the terrain tiles. My other unpainted set is fully complete. The hexes are 4” across the flat sides.

The Confederation fleet - from the top we have 6 battleships, 12 cruisers, 12 destroyers, a flagship (with its 3 fighter CAP) and 12 fighters….

….the Commonwealth fleet has the same composition but the ships of each fleet are of a different design

Assorted game paraphernalia

The opposing fighters….

….flagships….

….destroyers….

….cruisers….

….and battleships.

I finally finished the repair work on the models from my painted edition of Red Alert and so wanted to show them, along with the rest of the collection, by way of a review. There is a lot of ‘kit’ in the base game as you can see. I shall be repainting these in due course, only because I want to ensure that the as yet unpainted base game models are in a similar colour scheme. I suspect that I will stick with the red and green colour scheme - only because the these colours are reflected in some of the other game components. 

I did a little digging on BoardGameGeek about the game and made some progress in finding out about the card imbalance in the base game. Essentially there are more right sector command cards than left. Originally this was thought to be a mistake but apparently it was done deliberately as a follow up expansion launching a new alien fleet that would include additional command cards that would address the left hand shortfall. Sadly this has not seen the light of day although it was demonstrated as one of the US gaming events some years ago. Whether or not this expansion will be picked up in due course remains to be seen - it also included a big battle two mat variant - but it would be a shame if it never surfaced.

So what does this all mean for me then? Well, in the short term I have the wherewithal to fight some decent sized space battles using a straightforward and familiar system - straight out of the box. Longer term this can be expanded to include the other set I have - which of course means the repaint will be needed - as well as the expansion sets available from PSC. I have a number of sets of grid and non grid based sets of space combat rules that could be readily used so there is plenty of mileage with the game for sure. 

For the time being I am content to use the painted set as is but I will look to redo it at some point but this will be to offload it. I will get the other set painted first though!

”Red Alert!” - Space Fleet Battles, Command and Colours Style

Been a while since I acquired this so, in a spare hour or so, I finally got around to the restoration job!

It has been a pretty productive day so far, with work on the ironclads and aerial bases (applying the protective sealer prior to undercoating and painting) moving along and also something else that has been lurking in the background of the man cave for sometime.

Red Alert is a Richard Borg designed Command and Colours game that was produced in conjunction with the Plastic Soldier Company. I recall seeing this being demonstrated by Dan Mersey at Salute some years ago - I have a picture on an earlier blog post - and remember thinking “This looks like a LOT of fun!”.

Anyways, fast forward to a couple of years ago I went all out for the base game and all the expansions as a long term project idea.  Fast forward again to last year and I spotted on Facebook that someone was selling a painted copy of the base game for a price that was difficult to resist and so I didn’t!

The painted version was not without a few issues. To begin with it is missing a few counters (nothing major, they are of the marker variety main that there are plenty of them) and the ‘terrain’ overlays - planets and similar. Also, around a third of the painted models were in various states of disassembly - mainly off their bases but more significantly, the supporting poles on a fair few have broken off with the central spigot still glued in the locating hole on the underside. Nothing that a couple of hours with a file and a small drill could not fix though - and that is what I did whilst the protective sealer on the ironclads and aerial bases was drying.

The game itself includes 92 plastic ships ranging from battleships down to fighters. These are moulded in green and red for either side - each side has a different design of starship - and have been painted in these colours. The paint job is not bad but is a little ragged around the edges and so in due course I will repaint them - along with the starships from my original set and the various expansions. I actually enjoy painting starships and remember having a lot of fun painting those for Battlefleet Gothic - the sadly defunct GW space battle game.

As befits a Command and Colours game the action takes place on a 13 x 11 hexed star field cloth which will obviously be used for other space type games. The game uses command cards (60 of them) and combat cards (50 of these) and all the usual starship type ‘chrome’ features - cloaking devices, asteroid fields and the ubiquitous “Red Alert” of the title. In the game a “Red Alert” is a combat dice roll result, similar to a ‘Flag’ and represents the usual starship-in-combat-dramas - collateral damage, shields down, warp core breach, engineering issues (all usually accompanied by dramatic music and film quotes!). The usual Combat and Colours use of symbols on a cube for combat is also present. A nice idea is the use of Star Tokens. These can be used or retained for special situations as well as being the cost to use certain tactic cards - they are described as being the fuel for special actions so need to be used to best effect.

The two forces in the game are described as the Confederation and the Commonwealth - there is no detailed background history per se, just a summary of how the two forces came into being and featuring some of their ‘historical’ engagements as scenarios.

So far I have fixed the red fleet - by far the worst affected of the two - meaning that the greens are next. The game, missing parts notwithstanding (all the models are present though), will then be ready to roll. Again, this will be handy to have available straight out of the box.

Next though, will be the undercoating required on the ironclads and aerial bases.

A Tale of Two Assault Cannons

Two types of Assault Cannon to inflict the Emperor’s vengeance upon his enemies. The unmounted version looks more business like in my opinion.

Whilst the latest paint on the ironclads is drying I took the opportunity to take a look at the Terminator Assault Cannons I had recently acquired for use with my copy of Space Hulk. As you can see there are a number of differences between the two types. The model I converted uses a simpler looking AC whilst the newer version has rather more detail. I have opted to use the latter for a number of reasons. To begin with, the weapon looks better balanced with several millimetres of the weapon effectively behind the marine. It is also a couple of millimetres shorter so will not stick out quite as far as the first version. Finally, the weapon has a better muzzle finish - the ring that the barrels are mounted in is missing from the first version - and so looks more business-like.

The same conversion technique will be used to fashion the three models I need and I am hoping that I shall be able to re-convert the original model to the new standard. 

I also plan to convert some sergeants and a captain figure so as to round the selection off. 

Assaulting a Cannon

Enough to strike fear into the Emperor’s enemies!

WARNING….INCOMING GW POST….WARNING….INCOMING GW POST….

For the sheer joy of blasting assorted gribblies to atoms the venerable Games Workship board and miniatures game Space Hulk has a lot to commend it. It is one of my favourite games and as you might expect, I have a long and rather convoluted history with it - but I will save you from the tawdry details!

Anyways, I have a copy of the 1st edition of Space Hulk (released in 1989) along with Death Wing and Genestealer - the two expansions - and a copy of the campaigns book (courtesy of the esteemed Mr Fox). The figures are a mixture of assembled and unpainted, partially assembled, partially painted and unassembled and none of the above. The base game include the Terminator marines with the option to make a flamer (two figures out of the ten) but it was not until the expansions came out (as well as articles in White Dwarf) that other weaponry became available, sadly not in plastic for this version of the game. 

Purely for the sheer mayhem they can cause - think ‘Ol Painless’ from the film Predator - I wanted some assault cannons and badly!

In my previous set up I converted a few using weaponry from the original version of Adeptus Titanicus which sufficed but I now wanted something a little more aesthetically pleasing. The problem was that the original model did not lend itself to heavy duty conversion, simply because the pose was quite ‘compact’ - no limbs to easily reposition or amputate. I decided that this was not going too stop me, especially as I had seen the latest version of a terminator assault cannon on eBay and reckoned that with some careful pruning I could just about get it to work. I will let the pictures do the talking….

The base model and the soon to be added assault cannon

The finished model

The view from the front….

….and from the side

I was quite pleased with how he turned out so now only have to think about painting him and the fifteen others I have, a further two of which (possibly three) will be similarly attired. Painting troops in power armour is well within my modest artistic ability so I will enjoy tackling these in due course. I realise that the weapon is suitably oversized, as befits a GW miniature, but it does mean that there will be no confusion over what he is carrying!

Space Hulk is great fun to play in an ‘Aliens’ kind of way - the game can be played using any suitable figures if GW are not to one’s taste - and over the years I have had some truly memorable sessions. It has a good balance of tension and suspense, especially if using the first edition and a timer. It really puts the pressure on the Marine player in respect of their decision making in the face of an alien onslaught!

“Busy little creatures….”

On the left is the next expansion - containing Spunkmeyer and Ferro, the drop ship crew,  along with four ‘specialist’ aliens - whilst the two on the right are reboxed scenery items including alien eggs, facehuggers, crates, very 1980s looking computer terminals and best of all - sentry guns! The Alien warrior box contains a dozen of them - eight ordinary aliens and four of the specialist featured in the rules expansion. It now means I have all the characters and 32 aliens.

I will be completely honest in that I did have a bit of a wobble with this particular project and at one point was looking at ‘outing’ it, given the vast array of GW 40K Space Marines and Tyranids I have to work through. In many ways I think I looked at it from the wrong direction - initially I had discounted using the Aliens collection for Xenos Rampant simply because the actual troop composition is limited to just over a dozen figures. This would limit it to a succession f endless refights of the film - not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with that! However, a closer reading of the Xenos rules has revealed some useful information in that I could easily make up a force using them. With this startling piece of information I decided to persevere (not that I needed much persuading!) and so acquired that which you see above. 

As it stands at present I now have everything I need for this project - of course an APC might be nice (and yes, you can get them 3D printed from somewhere!) but for now I will content myself with what I have.

The plastic mountain is growing….

Warhammer 40K Revisited

A sumptuously produced hardback containing a copy of the 10th edition rules for 40K, a history of the Tyrannical War, a very nice showcase of models etc, scenarios and the Crusade narrative driven rules - which you can rest assured will inevitably used for something GW may never have thought of!

A short while ago I posted about having acquired a copy of the GW Leviathan boxed set containing some 72 models - 25 Space Marines (including a rather large Dreadnought) and 47 Tyranids. I have since added to that by acquiring the ‘Ultimate Starter Set’ which includes a further 12 Marines and 32 Tyranids. I then took to eBay to obtain a further five man squad of Marines to round out the set up. The Ultimate Starter Set includes some rather nice terrain pieces along with a copy of the core rules, a bag of D6, a sheet of transfers for the Marines, a 40K Handbook and a couple of plastic measuring sticks aka rulers to the uninitiated! Just to complete the line up I also invested in a copy of the book you see above in order to flesh out the back story of the table top action.

The handbook and core rule book from the Ultimate starter set. 

Am I insane? No, but I am not averse to making use of stuff in a variety of ways above and beyond that which the designers intended! Seriously though, I will happily play 40K or Space Hulk or Combat Patrol but I have plenty of other rules available for the genre - man versus insect-like alien.

On the face of it the expense for this may seem daunting but when you sit and think about what you have got for what you laid out money wise there is an awful lot of material that compares favourably with more mainstream historical topics. Figure wise I probably have rather more than I will need but no matter - the excess can be readily disposed of. For now though I have to shoehorn this into the project list and therein lies my problem. Time - or lack of it!

I am looking at a kind of ‘Starship Troopers meets the Zulu War’ kind of thing with this lot, featuring elements of the book and the film with that of the ‘historicity’ of the Zulu War. 

In the words of the song “Its my party and I’ll try if I want to”

Many a gaming project has embarked on far shakier foundations….

 

Of Warhammer 40K, Space Hulk and Xenos Rampant

“Cleanse and Burn….In the name of the Emperor!”

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…. I was really excited when Games Workshop first launched Warhammer 40K, essentially fantasy in space, and had many great games with a very nice painted collection of metal figures featuring Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks and even Squats (40K Dwarves for the uninitiated). For the record these were painted for me by the late Mike Bush, a supremely talented figure painter and professional artist and all of this would have been during the mid 1980s. 

When the Aliens inspired game Space Hulk came out, followed by Space Crusade and Advanced Space Crusade and ultimately Epic 40K and Adeptus Titanicus (we have not even gotten to Battlefleet Gothic yet!) my interest in the original game fired off in various directions which certainly served to dissipate my efforts in due course. Space Hulk was always a favourite and so by the time the dust had settled in the early 1990s it was pretty much all I was playing from the 40K universe and even then my enthusiasm had paled substantially.

For me the endless upgrade of units and the increasing choice of models etc - not to mention the cost - kind of put me off the whole thing. It became a chore trying to keep up with it all and so in the end I didn’t bother. I always rather liked the 40K universe background though.

Fast forward to now and things on a Sci Fi front have been making rather unexpected but welcome progress, My acquisition of assorted bits and pieces for Another Glorious Day in the Corps will serve to satisfy my Aliens fixation, even more so now that I have a copy of the Aliens Space Hulk variant found in an early issue of the Ragnarok - the journal of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers (SFSFW) - courtesy of Steve Blease (many thanks Steve!). This will enable me to play Space Hulk, Aliens style should I want to. 

Enough of the rather rambling background and on to the main course.

That is a whole of models to be going on with. 

Warhammer 40K Leviathan is a rather large box set that contains 72 Citadel models (including some BIG pieces, not just ‘man-sized’ figures), a 392 hardback rules and background book and a deck of cards specific for the rules. There is also a booklet containing assembly instructions for the models (it reminded me of a Lego instruction booklet) and a sheet of decals representing a number of Marine chapters should you wish to use them. There are no dice, templates or measuring devices included - essentially it a large box of figures with a hardback rule book.

The hardback rule book. This really is a thing of beauty. A full background to the 40K universe and its assorted denizens, the main rules and also for Combat Patrol, a surprisingly brief introduction to the “Warhammer 40K Hobby, lots of model pictures and plenty of suitably doom-laden artwork, as befits the “grim darkness of the far future (where) there is only war.”

I looked long and hard at this over the course of a couple of weeks and did a whole pile of research and cost comparisons. Last night, at Wayland Games in Hockley, the home of SEEMS - the South East Essex Military Society, aka my occasional club - I pulled the trigger and bashed the debit card to the tune of £120. On the scale of GW this is a bargain and I was not the only one to think so as whilst last week there were no fewer than a dozen or so copies of this set on display - NOT on the website I might add - yesterday evening saw but four copies remaining. 

The cunning plan - at least part of it….

Why? The reasons are many and varied but what it all boils down to is that I wanted two forces for use with Xenos Rampant. I am happy to use GW figures and background with non GW rules but they are there if I need them. There is sufficient variety of core troops for each force - Marine and Tyrannid - to field a couple of armies for Xenos Rampant - sadly there are not enough figures from Another Glorious Day in the Corps to be able to do this successfully - as well as being able to tackle a Space Hulk or three. There is a certain degree of irony in the fact that I will be using GW figures on the map boards from Another Glorious Day in the Corps to play Space Hulk missions and using Colonial Marines to fight them as well!

Certainly a great way to restock my sprue supply….

Of the figures themselves there is little to say other than that they are simply incredible to look at. There are some that are very ‘GW-ish’ which for me means over the top in terms of  detailing - usually an excess of ornate trappings, cloaks, purity seals and all manner of ‘bling’ - but the main bulk of the collection is, and I use this term carefully, ‘Sci Fi generic normal’. That is the main thing for me, the figures are GW but suit my rather more restrained take on the 40K universe!

True to form I shall be painting the models in anything but ‘official’ colour schemes - for the marines with over a thousand chapters I have pretty much Carte Blanche in this respect - and to be honest, I have always enjoyed painting Sci Fi stuff, albeit not very well!

Previously I had looked long and hard at Adeptus Titanicus but never did anything about it. I think I have missed the boat on this to be honest and the after market for anything for this game is ruinously expensive.

I almost left it too late to get into Aeronautica Imperialis but luckily managed to secure a copy of the base game. Luckily the extra models appear to be relatively plentiful so topping up the collection should not be too painful - it is quite a self contained item in any event.

Of course we have the knew version of Epic 40K to look forward to at some point this year which is something I shall take a look at with my well known open mind and mastery of objectivity….

“In space, no-one can hear you get the debit card out….!”

“Get Away From Her, You B***h!”

Once again the box lid….

….and the back. Note the fearsome looking Alien Queen.

The final part of my Aliens adventure arrived this morning, titled as it is from the iconic showdown scene between Riley in her power loader and the Alien Queen. Contained in this expansion are extra double sided game boards, more cards and counters and of course, the last of the figures.

I now have all I need to kick the whole Aliens thing off but first of all the models need assembling. The humans are quite straightforward but the Aliens need a little more work. The tails have been identified as being a bit of a weak point which will need to addressed with some pinning. 

I was pleased to see that the power loader can be assembled with or without the Ripley figure - this is useful as the power loader in the game can be used by any character. Ripley in the driving seat would be more appropriate though.

I have no fears over the assembly of the models but I will need to think about the painting and so some research will be needed and I think you can guess what that might be!

Ultimate Badasses

The customary front of the box shot….

….and the back. Apone doing what he does best - pointing and shouting!

The first of two expansions to Another Glorious Day in the Corps arrived yesterday morning which means that the cast of character models is nearly complete. The set contains 6 models including Apone, Drake, Crowe, Wierzbowski, Dietrich and for some unfathomable reason, the company bad guy, Carter Burke. Also included are the character cards, a deck of cards for equipment etc, more special marine dice and the additional rules which are geared mainly towards character development.

The next arrival will be the “Get away from her you Bitch!” Set which, as mentioned previously, includes Ripley in a power loader, Bishop - whole and in half, Ripley carrying Newt and the Alien Queen.Most importantly it also has a campaign system so that the whole LV 426 experience can be gamed.

The figures are really nice and are instantly recognisable as to who they are. The bases have the character name and feature a piece of metal flooring, appropriate for the colony complex of Hadley’s Hope. I need to think about these as they are a little restrictive in use - how many games would you fight in a colony complex? I may look to use something more generic but will need to thinks about it.

As an aside I have been looking at the models with a view to using them with Xenos Rampant - the Sci Fi Rampant series rules but would certainly need to expand the forces somewhat first.  

“Ready to get it on!”