Update: March 2024

As one might guess, the past few months have had me pretty busy and blogging is pretty low on my priority list. I think I'm realizing that I can't remember having played a miniatures wargame since October. While nothing happened game-wise, there was some other hobby progress made.

New Hobby Space

Until now, I've been building/painting at the kitchen table or on the couch with a 14"x14" wooden tray. This tray was getting quite filled up as I would have two or three little things going on it at a given time. After finishing the spaceships featured in the last post, I still had some half-painted fantasy minis, a die-cast car I had started a surgery on, and the beginnings of an idea for making Aeronef ships out of bread tags. Of course, the three projects going at the same time meant the board was also cluttered with cutting tools, paints, brushes, glue, and random bits of wood, metal, and plastic.

When getting the board down (ever so carefully so as not to spill anything) to work on something, I might stare at the three projects and fiddle with each for a couple of minutes, then sit and stare at it all. On top of that, because I had no real dedicated space for my stuff (except the paint, I had a place for the paint), it started getting dispersed throughout the house and I was losing track of things so that it was more difficult to actually do whatever it was in my mind to do. In other word, the negative inertia acting on me was mounting. I was also feeling a growing itch to try using my airbrush again, which had even more negative inertia attached to it than my board.

So it all went on hold as I devoted time to looking at peoples' hobby desks. About a week of that and I decided on a general plan, found useful stuff in my modest salvaged wood pile, and cut the main pieces. Then, on a night in late November, the wife and kids gone somewhere, I built a little hobby desk.

And here it is, all cluttered like every other one I saw:

Definitely needs something on the wall to help with organization, I think. The airbrush is now so much more accessible, I've used it more in the past couple months than all the years previous that I've owned it.

Painting of Blacklist: Fantasy Series 1

I got a bunch of these minis primed in the fall so that they'd be ready for painting at any time, but it took a long time to feel like I had the time to paint again. Only a few models got done, though some were done with the help of one of my daughters.

A dwarf warrior. Will probably put a wash on him still.

My daughter helped me paint these kobalds.

Giant spiders, too!

Aeronef Shipyard

We keep plastic bread tags for some reason or another and I've always had the thought I should do something with them, so I made an airship and plan to make more. I also made some using the handles of plastic forks.

Aeronef airships.

So that's been what I've been working on when given the chance, plus one other thing that will be posted about when it's done.

Guns into spaceships

As quite a few of my posts seem to begin, some time ago I bought a bag of random stuff at a thrift store. It contained little army men, sandbag piles, and a few large action figure-sized guns. Don't think I'd never use them in as they were. Well, I pulled a couple out to ponder what I could do with them and got the idea that if they were cut in strategic places, some of the resulting pieces - if painted up - would work quite well as spaceships. So here's some before and after:

Before. Though I did start sawing apart that big green one before thinking of a picture.

Pieces selected for transformation.

Three painted to match, perhaps to serve in the same faction or group.

Two more chosen to join one of my already existing painting themes.

And finally, the ones that I didn't really try to make fit anything.

Not too bad for simply cutting and painting, eh! Someday I'll play a game with these. Someday.

Aeronef: Attack over the Falkland Islands

Rules Doctoring

Maybe I'll get this out of the way first: I only have the core rules for Aeronef. Realizing I said I'd play the rules as written, I just couldn't get past some items that I felt needed tweaking, so tweak I did. There is another book out there with additional rules and it may cover some of the things I added, but I don't have that book and am currently in a "don't spend money if you don't have to" mode of thinking and haven't looked into buying it.

So my tweaking included two things:

1) Air torpedoes - I built some of my models with the memory of having read about them in the rules. They are not actually there. So I made up my own that I will, perhaps, post later.

2) I was a little more specific about how many gun dice could be used when firing, taking into account the number of guns I placed on each model and where it looked like they could be pointed. For example, Ansaldo is a round platform with guns positioned so they could all fire forward, but only two turrets could fire out either side or the rear, so full gun dice used for forward fire, and half for the other three arcs.

Reinforcements were rolled for at the end of each turn - 1d6 vs. 1d8. If the d6 beat the d8, reinforcements arrive. For each try after the first, +1 was added to the d6.

On to the scenario...

September 19, 1889

The Falkland Islands have been under British rule for over 60 years. A small force of British air ships is stationed at the archipelago to reinforce British claims over the islands, which are disputed by Argentina.

One of the richest countries on the South American continent, Argentina is still far less wealthy than England. Yet, the Argentine government has bided its time and saved up a reserve which they have started to dip into. They have acquired two airships, which now make their way towards the contested islands. First, the Almirante, a Class 2 airship commissioned of a German builder is accompanied by a small contingent of craft. Second, the Ansaldo, a Class 1 vessel purchased in secret from Russia for a very affordable sum, likely because the Russians didn't tell them about the propulsion problems they were having with it...

The British Admiralty, having known about the Almirante for some time, have sent a second Class 3 airship and torpedo dirigible to beef up their presence in the area. They thought this would be enough to keep Argentina at bay. They didn't know about a second deal with Russia, and the Ansaldo has rounded the Andes and is on course to rendezvous with the other Argentine airships at Islas Malvinas (the Argentine name for the islands), intending to send the English packing.

Set Up

Layed out four islands on the play area (mine was 3' x 3').

British set up their ships (minus one Class 3 and the torpedo dirigible) in any configuration around the isles. All but one start at speed 0. The ships not set up are en route from England (or Canada, perhaps) and come in as reinforcements from the N, NE, or E table edge.

Argentina sets up all of their ships, except Ansaldo, in their choice of NW, W, or SW edge of the table. Ships start at top speed of the slowest airship, probably Almirante. The Ansaldo has experienced propulsion issues en route and arrives late as reinforcements.

Victory conditions

Major Victory, England - Accomplish minor victory conditions and bring down Ansaldo

Minor Victory, England - Inflict 1/2 of total hull points damage to the Argentine force or bring down Almirante

Minor Victory, Argentina - Inflict 1/2 of total hull points damage to British force

Major Victory, Argentina - Down both British Class 3 airships

Battle continues until one of these conditions is met.

The Play (in pictures)

Three British ships sit "at anchor" next to one of the islands. To the north, a fourth, meanders through.

Argentine fleet incoming! Ansaldo waiting to arrive (on table edge).

Turn 2 sees the two groups coming into range and each side fires a torpedo. The white peg torpedo will hit the larger dirigible with minimum damage.

More torpedoes flying in turn 4. The nearer one (friendly fire) misses Almirante and will continue on with no further targets along its path. So far as guns are concerned, small amounts of damage done to either side. In the distance, reinforcements arrive for the Brits.

Ansaldo finally arrives in turn 6 and immediately starts hammering a British Class 3.

Then the larger Argentine dig runs into a torpedo and the damage is too much. Blast that friendly fire!

Ansaldo finishes off that Class 3 in turn 7...

... and gets hit by British air torpedoes! It's only minor damage for a Class 1 ship, but it's enough to trigger the condition for a minor British victory.

So Argentina retreats, saving a badly damaged Almirante from a doom that was too close for comfort. Surely, the Brits will take the Argentine threat quite a bit more seriously and try to send a more beefy support for the islands before another attempt on them is made. But there are rumblings that friction between England and Germany could lead to war, which might limit a response from England. However, other South American countries have been participating in this localized arms race and may see this as their time to make a move. Time will only tell.

Aeronef?

Another set of rules I've had downloaded for some time because I really like the theme is Aeronef, the game of Victorian sci-fi airship battles. The other inspiring thing about the book version I downloaded is that a number of the miniatures pictured on its pages seem to be scratch built. I first came across mention of this game while perusing the pages of the blog The Stronghold Rebuilt. The concept just struck me as so neat (link to posts tagged "aeronef"). All of Stronghold's Aeronef posts were put up in 2012 where he builds a couple of fleets from scratch.

There are a number of airship models that can be purchased. I've spent some time admiring the ones on the Brigade Models website, produced for their airship game called Imperial Skies. So, with this idea ruminating all these years and aptly inspired by Brigade Models, I finally set myself to building some airships over the summer. Aeronef construction, in my shipyard at least, is mainly accomplished using popsicle sticks, doweling, bread tags, large gauge copper wire, and paper clips.

I currently have two factions created, which I shall be using soon (hopefully) to actually play the game. One side represents, I think, a well-ordered and standardized faction: comprising of two airships from each of three classes. This, I would offer, might be one of the well-established, wealthy nations like England, France, or Germany. In my mind, the second task force is reminiscent of some nation that is less able to produce their own vessels, opting instead to buy what they can. Thus, it is a collection of one-offs, some of which look unconventional, like prototypes of designs considered unfit by the more wealthy nations. I think of the South American countries who tried to get in on the arms race of the historical pre-dreadnaught period, like Brazil or Argentina. It's why I ended up painting it the colours of the Argentine flag. I'm considering the first battle I play be related to some kind of Falkland Islands dispute.

And now... the pictures!

In going with my scenario idea, this will be the British force. In back are two cruisers, on the right are two destroyers, and in front are some dirigibles with air torpedoes mounted on them.

The Argentine ships. At back could be a battleship or battle cruiser (it has torpedo tubes), the big round one could be a battleship purchased from Russia, then a destroyer with torpedoes, then two dirigibles in the foreground (one a little bigger and better armed than the other).

Also of note, I have mounted these all on Heroclix bases for flying supers; removing the dial stickers and filing off the paint. I have ideas about using the dials to keep track of airspeed.

Granted, in reading up on other people's writings about playing this game, they find it rather lackluster. Perhaps I will too, but I intend to play according to the written rules first then start implementing ideas I've already been having about what to change. Wish me luck.

Where did the summer go?

This summer has been quite busy: multiple camping trips, Jenni working on a graduate degree, kids in musical theater and volleyball camps, and outings to the local reservoir to swim meant not much time was spent on gaming-related stuff. And any gaming I did do, I took no notes as writing it up here wasn't even close to the priority list.

What I have done, in summary:

1) One of the unplayed rulesets lurking in my collection is Aeronef. I like the steampunk/alt. history setting and have often thought of playing. I could play using my 1/3000 battleships, but I want to push fantastical soaring cruisers and destroyers around the table. So I've started making some.

2) Have I written about making American Civil War stands using figures printed from Junior General? Well, I put together some cavalry to go with them. Also made 3 buildings and a bunch of zigzag fences. But looking at army lists for historic battles, now I feel like I need more infantry to play anything larger than Blackburn's Ford.

3) Painted some more figures from my Blacklist Games Fantasy order: spiders, rats, boars, and wolves.

4) Made two simple hills for terrain.

5) Introduced a couple of my son's friends to wargaming.

I've also been thinking about what I post to this blog. Kind of feeling like I should do fewer "after-action reports". Maybe. Or do I want to change format and start a new blog. Or maybe I just needed the break. Even now, I'm fighting sleep at 11:46 pm, having started 40 minutes ago to just write this little bit.

How about for now, I'm not posting anything unless I include some images.

"Aaas yyooouuu wiiisshh!"

 One of the one hundred Heroclix I received those years ago had modification written all over it from the moment I saw it. Looking at it, I know without any reservation, exactly who I wanted this figure to become. It's just taken me this long to actually get to work on making the transformation happen.

The original was called Swordsman. He's arrayed in a purple costume with a mask and swashbuckler's boots, sword drawn and raised, pointing out from his shoulder. A moustache and jaw line to match that of Neville Sinclair in the Disney production of The Rocketeer.

Using pictures from the film, I made a few add-ons: shaved-down some parts of Swordsman's suit then adding head covering, belt, lapels, poofy-ness in the shirt sleeves, and fly-out parts of the gloves out of green stuff. A 97% black repaint would turn this sculpt into Wesley, aka: "the man in black" or the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Of course he's wearing all black, so I tried to differentiate some things to try and make his appearance a little less boring. First up was a zenithal highlight on the black primer. Then, after painting all the black, I chose some elements to be "less black" like his belt, boots, gloves, and headband. These were dark grey mixed with black. I works slightly better for viewing in real life than for these pictures.

Just need to base it now, but I couldn't wait to get some pictures on here.

Renegade Legion: Leviathan - Planetary Defence

 To try out my scenario generator, I decided on three cards each for the belligerents. So here's what I drew:

Terran Overlord Government:

1 frigate (3 fighter flights)

1 destroyer

5 corvettes

5 missile platforms

4 fighter groups

Renegade Legion:

1 cruiser (1 fighter group)

1 carrier frigate (5 fighter groups)

1 destroyer (1 fighter squadron)

From scenario cards I pulled planetary defence and from special conditions it was asteroid belt.

So after some random and some deliberate placement of terrain and units, the map looked something like this:

Note: I don't use the stat sheets that come with the game. Instead, I favour the ones produced by Jape77 on Boardgamegeek (visible at top right). I like the changes the author made, but I also find them more visually pleasing than the originals. The fighter groups sheet comes from my own Excel tool (which I uploaded to BGG as well). Bottom right are some sheets I made up for small craft, like corvettes, based on some discussions I read in different forums that discussed this very thing (I'll likely post these to BGG as well).

My feeling was that the RL force would have a pretty easy go of things. The cruiser's stats alone look very intimidating compared to the entire TOG force. Then again, doesn't a commander want every possible advantage when they are attacking?

I fashioned the following narrative from my card picks. 

RL forces sent a decoy group through the TOG planet's sensor range. Having succeeded in drawing of a number of the vessels stationed there into a pursuit, the RL command sent a small carrier force to raid the planet with the mission of destroying the orbital defences - five missile platforms capable of firing 2 F-class missile salvos each - as a precursor to a full planetary invasion (or liberation, as the RL prefers to call it). 

The Legion ships approached the planet from behind the nearby asteroid belt to hide their signals. But the interference is a double edged sword and they will have to traverse the belt in order to target anything with the capital ships' weapons. This means they will be in range of TOG missiles from the orbital platforms.

Turn 1: 

Fighters deploy. Everyone closing. The first losses are to the fighters that met in the middle, both dishing out exactly what they received. I found a more planety-looking planet to replace the pail lid.

I had trouble trying to figure out how fighters were supposed to do damage to each other, I came up with a simplified process for dogfight attrition. Thinking on my younger days of playing Chuck Yeager's Air Combat on PC, my hit accuracy with that game's WWII fighters averaged around 20% (unless I was shooting down bombers). Based on that, I decided to roll a d3 for each group and multiply the result by 10 for a percentage (10%, 20%, 30%). Multiplied a group's CRA (or LRA) value by the percentage, using the result rounded down as how many boxes to cross off the enemy group's strength boxes, and vice-versa, treating it as simultaneous fire. 

Example: Red Group A (CRA 108) vs Blue Group B (CRA 122). 

Red rolls a 2. 108 x 0.2 = 21.6. Blue Group B crosses off 21 boxes.

Blue rolls a 3. 122 x 0.3 = 36.6. Red Group A crosses off 36 boxes.

Each side then crosses out CRA values if reduction thresholds were reached.

If fighters have a choice between fighter opposition or targets for their missiles, they could only chose one line of attack. In this case, if fighters wanted to target an orbital missile platform, they could not impose casualties on any attacking interceptors. Missile strength is also reduced in to CRA values as they decline with attrition.

Turn 2:

The heavies are still too far away to do much of anything. Fighters meet and start start duking it out with each other. I should have had the RL fighters (red) attack the platforms right away... Also, I didn't realize the RL cruiser is in range of one of the platforms (both to fire missiles and to be fired on).

Turn 3:

The RL cruiser is now in range to fire missiles at the platforms, but they are in range to fire on her as well, so she takes some damage, losing a large portion of her fore and forward right armour sections. Lucky missile placement destroys her silos so the cruiser's second salvo cannot be fired. The two left-most platforms were hit and destroyed by the RL cruiser and destroyer salvos. We start to see some fighter groups go missing. The RL destroyer races in to launch missiles at the topmost platforms.

I couldn't find any info on orbital installations having missiles, so I made up my own stats: shield factor 3, 50 armour, 8 systems that could get damaged (rolled a d10 for each hit past the armour to damage systems, no systems hit on 9 or 0). 

Turn 4:

Realizing her vulnerability to the platform attacks, the cruiser slows and turns to stay out of missile range and just try to weaken their shields for fighter attacks. The bottom platform's reactor is hit; I decide it can explode if I roll a 1 and it does! I roll a d3 to take out percentages of the near-by fighters. Red fighters also take out the right-most platform. The RL Ajax destroyer (sitting between the cruiser and the planet) is crippled, having lost its left-side thrusters last turn, she is also now out of missiles. Only the top-most platform remains and it's up to the fighters beside it to take it down next turn.

Turn 5:

More red fighter groups are eliminated as they try to make their way back to the carrier. The cruiser is flipped around to put armour on the side of the TOG destroyer bearing down. The small TOG ship fires its spinal mount and does a little damage to armour, same as the Ajax destroyer aiming at the TOG frigate. Most importantly, the RL fighters can send just enough missiles into the final platform (already weakened by the cruiser's long range shots) to put it out of commission.

Unfortunately, I cleaned everything up after that turn, figuring there couldn't be much more done to the RL force, totally forgetting about the fact that the TOG fighters that remained all had missiles. It's possible that some of them might have been able to get close enough to retaliate somewhat effectively, and the RL ships could have come away a little worse off than they were. Even so, I think they took more damage than I was expecting, having lost practically all their fighters and two salvos hitting the cruiser with enough punch to damage systems.

The two most heavily damaged ships of the game.

Leviathan is perhaps the most complex game of any type that I own and while I do like it, it takes a lot out of me to play it solo. This was the largest number of units I've fielded in a game. The turns averaged an hour each, setup was a couple of hours (including making the corvette sheets and statting missile platforms).

Take-aways:

1) Check better for firing opportunities - a missed chance at firing could be crucial

2) Stay on target with fighters - RL wasted a turn dogfighting when they could have been firing missiles at the platforms and getting out of Dodge.

3) More spinal mount attacks? - I played with the thinking that only one spinal weapon attack was possible in a game, but can't find that limitation in the book. If more can be fired, one might use maneuverability of destroyers to stay in front or rear arcs of larger ships and come at them with spinal mount attacks (and missiles, of course). 

4) I really should try getting Full Thrust to the table.