Summer Summary

Computer problems and then summer business kept me from posting since May. But I did get a couple of games in and do a couple of crafts. 

Full Sail

I made up a scenario for Full Sail involving three pirate hunters pouncing on five pirate ships anchored in a small bay; again using ships from the Pirates of the Spanish Main game. I'm experimenting with translating thrust and movement rules written for spaceships to suit sailing ships. Haven't quite hit something that I feel works, but I think I'm on the right track.

Anyway, the pirate hunters consisted of a single-mast, a two-mast, and a three-mast headed to the mouth of the bay with the wind advantage (entry side, wind direction and speed was set randomly). Pirates were arranged at random with random facings inside the bay, all starting at anchor (4 two-mast and one single-mast). I rolled for each to see if they notice the hunters coming in, three succeed and try to get underway. Hunters have to capture or sink as many ships as possible. Pirates just have to get away.

Mid-game (the only picture I took). The three-mast hunter is about to fully engage and board one of the pirates (background). During the previous turn, the small hunter in the middle had just dropped off a boarding party to that capsized ship behind it, which was immediately sunk by the dark-sailed schooner making its getaway.

Of the five pirate ships, one is captured, one is sunk, three get away. One of the escaped ships loses almost all of its crew while repelling boarders, before breaking away from the grapple.

5 Parsecs: Bug Hunt (2nd mission)

Nik and Gwisom (Treen is in the infirmary) led a fire team and science team out to investigate an abandoned cargo ship and an alien plant causing problems in a storage compound. Nothing incredible happened, the mission was low priority so razor lizards came at the troopers in easily manageable intervals and numbers. Only near the end did one one of the fire team soldiers fall prey to the aliens.

Some razor lizards eye up the party of troopers and scientists trying to get to the extraction zone.

Full Thrust: Star Wars fighter craft

I got to introduce my two brothers to Full Thrust via the Star Wars fighters modification. They enjoyed it. They took Imperial TIE fighters (2 each) and I had an X-wing and a B-wing. Scattered a bunch of asteroids to make things interesting. They slaughtered me in 5 rounds.

ACW gaming

I used the paper American Civil War soldier stands I made for a simple battle using rules found in One Hour Wargames. The battle over a bridge ended in a stalemate after heavy casualties on both sides. I still want to try playing using more detailed rules. I'll get there.

Miniatures

My D&D group is starting a new adventure and I'm trying a halfling cleric. Modded a Heroclix Puck sculpt to represent the character.

Painted some more Tyranids and a Tusken raider I located after a couple years of being lost. Also started painting some computer kiosks for terrain/objective markers. Also there were some other minis prepped for painting. Pictures likely to show up later.

Not game related

I volunteered my time to make a wooden sign for our local village-owned ice cream parlour. Used a found piece of plywood. It had two coats of paint on it; a kind of cream over a really light blue. Sanding revealed some of the bottom coat.

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

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!

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!

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.

SW:ED Project - Asajj Ventress and more clones

I first saw Asajj Ventress in some Clone Wars episodes. I wanted to get a Sith figure in and I thought she'd make a good addition, especially since she is often fighting against Ahsoka Tano, whom I have already modded a figure for.

Looking through my box of candidates, I came across a sculpt of Elektra.

Image from hcrealms.com

I find this sculpt to be rather ugly. So many things just look so wrong with it. One thing that's good about it is that it is a good pose for someone holding a lightsaber or two!

Looking for images of the character, there are a number of different interpretations of what Ventress looks like. Of all the ones I scrolled through, I liked this one the best: Link to Asajj. I based the look and much of the colour scheme on this image. And the result:

Still debating how much I want to her face in the way of coloured lines.

One might notice that the base is black. That's because I broke down and bought a primer. How glad I am that I did. Paint goes on so much smoother and stays on better. I primed the bases with the models.

The Epic Duels deck I downloaded combines Ventress with a couple of battle droids. However, I'm not yet sure how I want to model battle droids with their skinny legs and arms, thus the posting of just the main character.

Bring in the clones

I also got the three other Punisher sculpts turned into clones. I'm not as happy with how the minigun-wielding one turned out, mainly because he was a little larger scale than the others, but it'll work for the table top and that's all I need!

Here they are:

Athos, Porthos, and Aramis

She's all like, "Seriously?"