Star Fighter Battle - Full Thrust Style

I just found a set of rules I want to try out for starfighter minis - particularly the Star Wars fighters I have available to me. What has me most pleasantly impressed is that they are based on the Full Thrust system, which I am somewhat familiar with having played the fighting sail off-shoot, Full Sail. Now, this rule set doesn't seem to have an official name, but it is found at this link (choose the Keith Jordan set), along with a bunch of other Full Thrust related stuff!

I dug out four A-wings and six TIE fighters for a simple skirmish.

The Battle

I think this is more or less how I set up a similar scenario to try out the Silent Death rules. Both sides are travelling with velocity 6.

The contestants close for battle!

I think the camera is catching up to the massive amount of acceleration as the A-wings and TIEs come at each other head on. Of all the shots fired, only the one TIE fighter was hit.

Every one flies past each other and nobody is in anybody's sights.

But the A-wings are able to come about to take some shots at one of the Imperial fighter groups, scoring some hits with each shot.

Again, no shots fired as the fighter groups try to gain favourable positions.

All fighters at this point have decelerated in order to make tighter turns. Some real damage is done to one of the TIE fighters as it has to make a threshold check and it loses fire control and both engines. One of the A-wings receives a hit, but it's minor.

TIE fighters in score some hits, but nothing major. And only one hit on that defenseless TIE as the other A-wing group avoids his wingmen.

Another all-too-brief respite with no-one in position to fire.

The Rebels catch two TIEs in an inescapable arc of fire and, through a series of lucky rolls, manage to eliminate one and severely damage the other, leaving him just one HP away from exploding, one laser cannon inoperable and one engine dead. He uses what control he has left to flee the battle. Meanwhile his remaining wingman on the far right will drift off the battle area after three unsuccessful attempts at damage control.

With one TIE squadron broken up and running, the other Imperials turn in for revenge. The targeted A-wing at the bottom of the image lost its shields and fire control system.

Oops, forgot to indicate hits on those A-wings.

A picture missing here, but no worries, not much happened!
But then:

Final round of fire sees two A-wings and two TIE fighters eliminated!

The last Imperial pilot in the battle decides to head for home as fast as he can, increasing velocity to the maximum gets him just out of range of the Rebel ships. This dogfight is over. 

The winner? Tough to say. Both sides lost 50% of their fighters. I guess I could say the Rebels win it by forcing the retreat of Imperial fighters by loss of control (thrust points).

Final Thoughts

Like I said, I'm already somewhat familiar with the Full Thrust ruleset, so outside of the changes made specifically for dogfights, I spent very little time in the rules. I could have streamlined turns by measuring movement for squadron leaders, then moving wingmen into formation positions, instead of measuring movement for each fighter individually as I did.

I did misunderstand the rules for dice rolled when firing for the first few turns. Don't know if it would have affected the outcome much. Fighters seemed to disappear quicker once I started playing it correctly. Another thing I may or may not have done correctly is to carry over the turning rule I am used to from Full Sail, that being to make a 30 degree turn takes 2 thrust points. Still think it worked well this way regardless. I guess I should still try out one thrust point per 30 degree turn, which would give the A-wing the possibility of a 270 degree turn in one move. Maybe a minimum speed should be required; one MU per 30 degrees.

I was also wondering if I had balanced the opposing forces well enough. The A-wings have more HP, shields, and an extra thrust point when engines are fully functional. This outcome would suggest that a 3:2 ratio is a close match, at least with A-wings and common TIE fighters. Though, probably would have been different had I played with rotating guns on the A-wings, which comes up in the Star Wars lore and in the Silent Death: Star Wars rules, which I might write a comparison about since I keep thinking about the differences between the two rule sets.

My son (6) came in during the last couple of moves and was very interested in the game. I'm thinking next time I'll try teaching him the rules. Should be simple enough for him to grasp, I think.

Update:

Due to feedback received, here are the SSDs I used:

These come with the rules modification document at the link provided above at the start of the post. It also includes SSDs for the X-wing, Y-wing, B-wing, Millennium Falcon, TIE Interceptor, TIE bomber, Lambda shuttle, Slave-1, TIE Advanced, and a stock freighter. Also included is a Cylon fighter.
Actually, the download does not include the SSD for the vanilla TIE fighter, so I altered the TIE Interceptor to create one. Also, the images come in .sh2 format, but a google search will yield links to online converters.
To download right now: Fighter Rules and records sheets for FT

Heroclix Mod: Rocketeer

Growing up, I had a few favourite movies that I watched so many times I could almost quote them from beginning to end, word for word. As might be guessed when looking at the Heroclix mods I've been producing so far, the Star Wars trilogy was included in that list; despite the fact that most of the characters I've made are not from the original trilogy.

Another of those favourites was The Rocketeer, produced by Disney in the early '90s. I've since learned that the show is based on some graphic novel or comic book series or something, but I've not read it.

Ever since I started being interested in sculpting my own minis, and especially as I have been modding Heroclix, I knew that at some point I was going to want to sculpt the Rocketeer. Well, a modification will do for now:

That gun sure looks big at this angle!

And the donor is...the Red Hood:

The original sculpt I modded. (Pic from Herominis.com)

I finally took the plunge and started chopping plastic. So here's some more of the finished product!

Interesting adhesive solution for the base swap: I melted the top of the base a bit and pressed the figure directly to it.

As I really like the design from the movie, I'm especially pleased with how the rocket pack came out. I tried out a Bergman machine pistol in his right hand to replace the sword, not terrible.

SW:ED - Anakin and Padme

My latest modding attempt was...interesting.

Padme Amidala was rather easy, started with Contessa Valentina:

The Contessa

Some minimal shaving and then repaint. I had my eldest daughter pick which outfit I should paint from a choice of Naboo pilot uniform, white Geonosis visit. She went with the white one.

Post-promotion pic.

Anakin was tougher.

I started with Mano and Firebrand.

What do you get when you cross Mano...

...with Firebrand?

Using green stuff and a snipping of paperclip, I fused Mano's legs to Firebrand's upper body and shaved down the head chest and arms. I tried to make him a little taller by filling his mid-section with green stuff between the two parts. After painting, I realized that some more shaving could have made him look better: arms are still too beefy and the face came out too large in the chin region, but that was difficult for me to see until I had it painted. So he's a little comical.

You get this guy.

 Though I think I did a nice job on his hair.

A more flattering view angle!

"Cheap as Free" Basing

While I've been working on a bunch of Heroclix mods, there are some clix that I've set aside for use just as they are. I figure they might be useful without making any modifications.

Last year I picked up a bunch of plastic siding stuff made to look like a rock facing. My idea at the time was to use the stuff for making terrain. Haven't gotten around to that yet, but I had another idea. Since I'm running low on the last bunch of bases I made, what if I cut circles out of it to use for bases?

Using a 1-1/4" hole saw on a drill produces a 1" disc. Although, normally one would end up with what would look like a washer because the mandrel for hole saws has a drill bit guide on it. I mounted mine on a 3/8" bolt with washers, a nut, and some very careful placement to get the saw centered in relation to the drill.

Here's the piece I started on. Lots faster than turning a plastic shaft on a lathe!

Drilling out the discs, which I recommend be started on the backside or the side you aren't using as the visible surface, leaves a thin bit of plastic to trim with a good blade.

There's probably lots of ways to mount minis to these discs, I chose to carve off the existing base from the mini, leaving it below the feet. Line up and drill holes where the feet will go, I actually carved little studs out of the plastic below the feet so they would fit in drilled holes without having to cut weird shapes in the bases. Haven't been able to find my glue, so I used green stuff to adhere the model to its new base.

My first three re-based Heroclix. Not too shabby.

I think it worked pretty good, and gives a somewhat interesting surface without having to do much at all. I may glue them to a cork layer so the bottoms are more flat, if I start to feel like it's necessary.

Full Sail: The Battle of Lissa

I did this up in July, but I apparently missed posting it:

Looking for a smallish naval engagement from history to try with the Full Sail rule set, I came across the Battle of Lissa (read about it here). It was a turning point battle during the Napoleonic War. Four British ships effectively held off a force of seven French and Venetian ships who were attempting to take over a garrison on the Isle of Lissa in the Adriatic Sea.

This was a perfect scenario for my PotSM collection as they battle was fought by fifth-rate ships and smaller. So I sorted out the ships I needed and printed up some ship status displays (SSD). Using only the larger ships, I arranged them as they appear on the map at the blog I linked to. The blog takes the reader step by step through the battle with little drawn illustrations to ship movements. Since I'm doing this solo and hidden movements are not possible, I decided to loosely follow the actual ship movements as explained.

So here is the setup:

The Brits are the four ships protecting the island, Lissa. They are faced by a larger French and Venetian fleet coming straight at them. One may notice that even though the British ships are outnumbered, they will have the advantage of likely being able to fire two broadsides before the oncoming enemy turns to use their broadsides. This means that the French/Venetian forces will be subject to the raking fire rule for those two turns. The rule is that a broadside fired into the front (or rear) arc of the target ship causes damage to the next available row of damage boxes. If the ship is required to make a threshold check, there is a higher possibility of losing cannon and sails.

Turn 1:

Movements made, firing starts. French forces can only fire using chasers and cause minimal damage to their targets. Birkenhead (lower right corner), fires into Leon (leading bottom column). The other three Brits fire broadsides into St. Michel. They trigger a threshold check and a fire.

Turn 2:

Leon turns, firing chasers at Birkenhead and a broadside at Guy Fawkes. The rest of the Frenchies fire chasers, again with little effect. Birkenhead and Guy Fawkes fire broadsides into Leon and trigger a threshold check that takes out a third of her cannons. The crew remaining on St. Michel attempt to put out the fire and can't. A fire damage roll results in a ship-board explosion, causing minor damage to her compatriots and starting a fire on Silverback (far ship in the English column). Scratch one French ship.

Turn 3:

Now the French ships are close enough to start turning broadsides towards the English ships. Threshold checks on Birkenhead and Guy Fawkes result in minimal loss of firepower. Hangman's Joke (the two-masted Brit), on the other hand, loses half her cannon. Silverback's crew manages to put out the fire as she turns to engage the remaining two ships on the far line. The other three English vessels start turning and speeding up to bring themselves about. Birkenhead and Guy Fawkes target Leon again and put her entire port-side array of cannon out of commission, knock out a mast, and start a fire. Leon is likely out of the picture at this point.

Turn 4

Some bad rolls for the Brits and some really good ones for the French!

Raking fire from Freedom, combined with fire from Leon II and Plata, and Silverback slides beneath the waves. Leon II also does a number on Birkenhead, triggering a threshold check. The Guy Fawkes, Birkenhead, and Hangman's Joke concentrate fire on Leon II and barely trigger a threshold check. after these checks, the Birkenhead lost much of her firepower, Leon II only lost a couple of guns.

The Leon started turning away from the action. She also had to check for fire damage and rolled an explosion, which did enough damage to Guy Fawkes to trigger a threshold check, which left her in as bad shape as Birkenhead.

I think I'm going to call the game as the remaining Brithish ships, in the condition they are in, have pretty well no hope of winning out over the remaining French ships, which are still in near-perfect condition. They would have to hit with every roll and the French would have to miss every roll.

On the other hand, the French did lose their flag ship with the Leon. Birkenhead is the British flag ship. Maybe the British can board some of the French ships...

Update:

Nope, I played out one more turn the next day: the British ships had not a prayer of surviving even long enough to try and board the other ships.

I still wonder if the British ships have enough of an advantage off the start for this scenario to end in a British victory. Maybe the use of morale checks with modifiers for crew losses and/or loss of flagship along with making the Brits would be more resilient to loss of morale. Something to think about.

SW:ED - Tusken Raiders

The first two sets of cards I printed off for playing Epic Duels were for team Ahsoka/Rex and for Tusken Raiders. I've got minis for Ahsoka and Captain Rex done. But at roughly the same time that I was finishing Ahsoka, I was starting on some Tusken Raiders. They've been a work in progress for this long. And since I seem to have misplaced one of the sculpts I had going, I guess they still are!

The Heroclix Candidates

So, the team consists of two raiders on foot and one riding a bantha. I chose three minis to convert: two Nova Corps Centurions and a really ugly looking Cyclops, as follows.

Nova Corps Centurion (hcrealms.com)

Cyclops (hcrealms.com)

I started with removing the arms from all three models. Cyclops' arms were attached to one of the Nova Corps Centurion in order to create the iconic "sandperson holding a gaffi stick over his head" pose made famous by our first introduction to sand people in A New Hope. Two arms were modified and reattached to the second Centurion to give the look of holding a rifle, which I assembled from a paper clip and a piece carved from a popsicle stick. I also took off and reattached #2's head to be looking at where he is aiming.

This is probably the most green stuff I've ever used on a single figure modification. It's the sniper on the left that, along with being a WIP, is now MIA.

The bantha was part of the issue that kept these guys in limbo for so long. I just didn't know what I wanted to do to create one. I didn't want to make it entirely out of green stuff, too many $$$. I kept my eyes open for a toy hippo or elephant I might modify, but they were always too small, with a couple of exceptions, which were too big. At one point I even searched the Interwebs for a bantha I could just buy.

One day I was playing with our three year old and she got out some playdough. It only took about five minutes of playing with her for the light bulb in my head to turn on. Could I make a somewhat reasonably convincing sculpt of a bantha out of playdough? Challenge accepted!

There was a bit of reasoning to go through first.

1) I wanted a convincing sculpt, but I had chosen playdough as my medium. Could I make something that looked hairy despite the limitations of playdough? How much would it shrink as it dries? Would it be crumbly when dry? All these questions! Well, you won't know until you try...

2) I wanted a playable sculpt. When compared to the sand people, a bantha is rather large. I learned that Ol' George cast elephants as the banthas, so we're looking at that kind of scale. So while the scale might be good for other miniatures rules, I felt like that was too big for Epic Duels, my primary motive for all of this. I decided to forgo proper scaling for the sake of playability.

Then I dug in, sculpted a bantha and planted a rider.

Then I put it up to dry. After three weeks, I checked on it, and it still seemed soft. Maybe my imagination, but I put it back up for a while longer just in case. A few weeks later, it looked ready! I glued some arms to the rider and added a cloak, head covering, and rifle with green stuff and other items. That was two, maybe three months ago.

Yesterday, our oldest daughter wanted to try repainting a miniature, so I decided to paint the two Tusken Raiders alongside her. So here they are!

Here comes the rider!

No licking the camera please!

Good day, all!

A Mobile Reworking

So just a small posting today. I reworked a broken mobile.

We the mobile used when our eldest child was a baby. It was already broken at that time; the support arm that curves over the crib to hold the mobile up had been snapped and taped together with packing tape. It held up for her, as well as the next two kids. Jenni took it out again to set up for our 5(ish) month old little one.

It's one of the cross types with little dangling plush thingies on the ends. Well, one of the crossing parts got broken.

This little one really likes the mobile. We didn't want to buy another one, so we set out to make a new one using the pieces from the old. We bought a roll of wire and I was away.

This is what I built:

Instead of a four arm thing, I went with a ring. Three wires act as spokes to provide a hanging point in the middle and the three stuffed animals hang from the spoke ends. The stuffed flower hangs from the middle. The pink fluffy stuff around the ring is three of the four sleeves that covered the plastic arms of the previous mobile.

I was having trouble getting the spokes to sit still so I could wrap them with wire, so I broke out the spot welder for my first use and made them stay put. What fun!

While I was at it, I also took the time to super glue the support arm, add wire to it for more support, and wrap it all up with hockey tape to keep everything together.

Oh, and here's a random picture of the two oldest in the middle of a game of Klondike we played on Sunday. Jeanette totally won, having found the mother lode and the rich claim ($150,000 total) and both the $40,000 finds. Lawrence and I just kept pulling up all the bad cards and fool's gold.

Hard to get a good picture when the kids are moving and you are holding a squirmy baby!

SW:ED - Han and Chewie

I couldn't hold out any longer! I had to add some original trilogy characters to my little collection. And who better than everyone's favourite smuggler and his walking carpet sidekick?

Han Solo
Han starts out as Heroclix sculpt Human Target.

Human Target (pic from HeroMinis.com)

Pre-paint prep work was to shave down the pants to make the almost knee-high boots and to shorten the bottom hem of the jacket. I liked the Empire Strikes Back clothing ensemble as depicted on a display figure I came across on Google images, so that's what I used for my colour scheme. I left the original paint on face and hands. 

The finished product! Well, except for filling in and painting over the basing.

Chewbacca

Now, Chewie was a little more work. There were a couple of notably taller sculpts in my available selection. I chose the S.H.I.E.L.D. Bodyguard.

S.H.I.E.L.D. Bodyguard (pic from PopularCollections.com)

The transformation began with the removal of his folded arms. Then came the full-body layer of green stuff that I pushed, prodded, poked and otherwise pestered into a hairy humanoid...without arms.

I didn't remedy the missing limbs for a few weeks, trying to decide on how I wanted him to look. In the end I went for a casual stance holding his bowcaster. The new forearms consist of toothpick 'bones' glued to the figure and covered in green stuff. For my first foray into sculpting a mass of hair, I think he turned out rather well. The bowcaster is a shaved-down piece of bamboo skewer and bits of a paperclip with green stuff accents.

Painting consisted of a black primer, a dark brown base coat, two to three lighter brown highlighting layers to try and match the way the dominant hair colour changes in certain locations of his body. It almost worked, though the pictures here don't see it.

Han's most trusted friend.

In the end, there were two things I felt I couldn't do at my current skill level: sculpt their faces right. I did try to make a more pronounced "floof" of hair for Han, but that didn't really work. I think the point at which I could change Chewie's face to more resemble the face we all know is not too far off and I may put in another attempt.

Han Solo and Chewie: wary in the Arena of the Planeswalkers.

Side note: Yes, I purchased MtG: Arena of the Planeswalkers. I figured for $15, if I don't like the game, I got a bunch of minis for cheap. I'm already thinking of painting them up.

SW:ED - Captain Rex

Yep, I'm still here. Just being busy with things that are not hobby-related lately.

I've had my Captain Rex figure primed and ready to paint for a month or more now. I finally painted it a couple of days ago and put a clear coat on today. So, yay!

Captain Rex with his Epic Duels partner, Ahsoka Tano.

Not much to say except that I decided to go for the next gen clone helmet this time.

More pics:

Apologies for the horrible dark background that completely swallows up his darker features. I'll do better next time! Can't even show you which Heroclix figure Rex started out as; can't remember the name, can't find an empty clix base that I can't account for.