Future War Commander: Battle Report #3

Well, the plan for last night was to give Greg's beautiful 15mm sci-fi force its baptism of fire, but at the last moment it was not to be, as they are AWOL after Greg's house move.  What happened?  Skip drive failure, bad jump co-ordinates?  It's unclear, but I hope that we will see them out soon.

In any case, we were ready to go with a game so it was humans vs. Machines again.  In this scenario, the attackers (humans) are executing a schwerpunkt breakout against an inferior force of Machines.  The humans had to get 6 units off the machine table edge to claim a victory.

We lined up 3,000 points of humans against 1,500 of Machines.  The human cause was assisted by the addition of the Superfortress Colossus, all 600+ points of it...

The industrial complex continues to evolve with the addition of chainlink fences...

The humans split their force in three across their table edge, counting on numerical superiority to get at least some units through.  On the far left were two tanks and two AFVs with two infantry stands each on board, in the middle was the Superfortress, and on the right were three AFVs each with two infantry stands as well.  The Machines deployed on the human right and faced the AFVs directly!

The Superfortress moved up the middle (left of shot) and started plinking at the spider tanks while the three AFVs in front skedaddled towards table middle, and the tanks and AFVs on the left moved up.

The Superfortress didn't last long against combined Machine firepower but at least bought time for the AFVs on the left to escape off table - mission accomplished.

This kind of Command roll happened far too often for the Machines for it to be a coincidence - must've been the supercharged logic engines of their commander.  Of course in FWC a roll of double-one for Command means the formation can take two actions in that activation - which contributed significantly to the destruction of the Superfortress and the two heavy tanks.

"Where's all our guys gone, then??"  Well, they've either buggered off the table or been destroyed in flames.

Another fun 15mm battle - I'm enjoying this little lark.

15mm Sci-Fi Terrain Mini-Projects

A great deal of the enjoyment I get out of this hobby derives from simple projects that don't cost much at all in terms of time or treasure.  A few days ago I had in mind to do one of these projects - making some chainlink fences for 15mm gaming.  I love chainlink fences because they're ubiquitous, and add a cool verisimilitude to the table.  plus everyone's got something they need to keep behind a fence!

Components for the project were plasticard, thin styrene rod, door screen material, and basing compound.  Cut the plasticard into strips about 3-4" long and 3/4"-1" wide.  Take an X-acto knife and turn a small hole near each end of the strip, about the same diameter as the styrene rod.  Cut pieces of the rod to use as posts and friction fit these into the holes.  Seal up with a dab of superglue from the top side.
   

Cut pieces of screen material and superglue to the rod posts.  If you find you have problems with adhesion, you can take one of the "strands" of wire and wrap it through the fence and around the post to keep it secure.  Apply basing compound and let dry, then prime black.

Last step is to paint the posts and drybrush the fence with Boltgun Metal, and dab in rust spots with Dark Flesh.  I drybrushed the groundwork with Codex Grey and Fortress Grey, then applied static grass to taste.  Dullcote if desired and they are ready for the gaming table! 

Here's another piece of terrain that I made at the same time, it's a wooden thread spool with some bits box junk attached to it.  I also added some texture to the model with thin card, I cut out shapes for the door, the accent stripe near the top, and a panel on the back, and secured them with white glue.  The entire model was sprayed back and painted in grey tones with some rusty bits added.

Anyway, I enjoyed these small projects and I hope they provide inspiration for some projects of your own!

Future War Commander: Battle Report #2

After a drubbing for the humans at the hands (manipulators?) of Mike F.'s aliens, we teed up another battle, this time between my human force and the Machine Army I painted.  How could I lose??

The scenario was "Reconnaissance" from the FWC rulebook.  Basically the attackers deploy in the middle of the table, and have to send units to the table edges and back, gaining a Victory Point for each table edge reached, and double VPs if the unit that reaches the table edge makes it back to the deployment zone.  The defender gets VPs for preventing this, and for killing the attacker's forces.

The Machine Army was the attacking force and deployed from drop, in the middle of the table, near a small industrial complex.

Human tanks soon appeared to wreck the Machines' shizz.

Human troops deploy from their AFVs and prepare to light up the Machines.

Machine spider tanks and flyers accounted for several human casualties.

The Machine advance was inexorable!  In the end, the game was a marginal Machine victory.  Although the humans virtually wiped out the Machines (scoring 2 VPs for inflicting double the casualties they sustained), the Machines reached two table edges and scored 3 VPs total.  Another fun game with the new toys!

100,000 Page Views! Thanks Readers!

Today the blog passed 100,000 page views, and I want to thank all of our readers for making this possible!  Thank you for paying attention to our little corner of the web, and we will try to keep entertaining you with our painting and gaming antics as best as we can.  I have to admit feeling some small amount of pride for our group in achieving this milestone, and I know it wouldn't have been possible without my intermittent pimping on TMP, so thanks to TMP as well!

Future War Commander 15mm Sci-Fi Battle Report

Last Wednesday we played a game of "Future War Commander" in 15mm, supervised by our cat, Leonard.

We played a standard "kill 'em all"-type scenario from the FWC rulebook.  Conscript Mike F. brought out ~2,000 points of his Critical Mass aliens (top of picture) - some power-suit infantry on foot, two big tanks, and two APCs with mounted infantry.  I rolled out with six APCs (each with two stands of infantry aboard), two tanks, and two combat flatbeds as Scouts (just out of camera range to the left).

My two tanks took up a firing position in the ruins of the village, sighting in on Mike's two big tanks opposite.  Unfortunately my overall commander shat the bed rather continuously throughout the game, only making his command check once in six turns!

The APCs with mounted-up infantry moved forward towards the enemy lines... it didn't go well...

Mike's tanks and APCs moved up, firing on and destroying one of my tanks in the early turns.  Brian moved his infantry-laden APCs up to flank this group and had some success, blowing up a tank and an APC with shooting from his anti-tank stands and APCs.  His detachment were definitely the  Hobgoblins of the battle, achieving local success in a disastrous overall outing.

Mike's infantry looked good as they side-stepped into the cover of the woods.

Mike's heavy infantry were killers (5 attacks at range 60cm, 6 hits each with a 4+ save IIRC) but expensive at ~240 points per stand!

My Scouts ranged in on them with a heavy orbital strike that almost knocked them out...

Unfortunately "almost" was the operative word, as the heavy infantry lit up the APCs with three successive shooting actions that put all the vehicles and mounted infantry out of action.

That's my one beef with the "Commander" series of games (and we saw it in a previous Cold War Commander game too) - one unit, with some lucky command rolls, can shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot until nothing remains of its target but the proverbial smoking boots, and there is damn-all you can do about it.  To my mind this is a bit of a broken element in the command system.  At least with multiple move actions, the commanded element is moving farther away from the element issuing the orders, and therefore incurs further penalties for distance, making the lucky rolls more and more difficult.  With shooting, the penalty to command is only one pip per order (as long as you are within command range) and this can be pretty easy to make.  For example, Ld10: first shoot order on a 10 or less on 2d6; second on a 9 or less; third on an 8 or less (still very doable); fourth on a 7 or less (still a 58% chance of success!).   

And that was the story of the game - bad command rolls by me + great ones from Mike where needed = victory for Mike.  Our side ended up finally bailing out due to army morale breakage.  I guess this was due to the rules working as they were supposed to, and I shouldn't be a whiny little b!tch about it, but the end result felt a little one-sided to me.  Comments on this below please... but in the end, a fun game with pretty toys, so I can't complain too much!  We'll try FWC again this week.

40Kegger Tournament

On August 6 I participated in the 2nd annual 40Kegger. This was a beer-themed Warhammer 40K tournament: 1000 points, only 1 HQ, 90 minute games, and BEER! The venue was at the residence of Greg and J.P. (standing right, in the photo above), the tournament organizers, who reside in a large cabin at Bird's Hill Provincial Park.

The scenarios were beer themed. Game one, your forces had to try and seize beer kegs. Game two, your forces have already drunk from the kegs so are impaired; e.g. vehicles behaved as if in difficult terrain since their pilots were DUI. Game three, kegs of beer could revive an HQ figure who was reduced to even 0 wounds.

Our entry fees went towards the purchase of a (real) keg of beer, smokies, burgers and some gift certificates from Games Workshop.

Two pools of players competed for standing after the first two games, with the 1st place in each pool playing the 2nd place person of the other pool in the semi-finals. The winners of those games faced off in the finals. Tables were also available for open gaming during the playoffs. And, did I mention, BEER! All in all, a great way to spend time with those who share a love for 40K.

Congratulations to Chris Dart, who was the Tournament Winner with his Ork army, consisting of 70+ Boyz and assorted Killa Kanz. I managed to eke out 2nd place (or, "First Loser") with my Eldar - who really should have brought a Night Spinner artillery tank and some flamers to the party.

Batreps to follow, after my in-progress Las Vegas reports.

Thanks again to Greg and J.P. for a great time.

"Siler" tanks from Khurasan

I managed just a bit more progress on the 15mm sci-fi project this weekend, adding a pair of Khurasan's excellent "Siler" heavy tanks to support my Federal forces. I needed some serious firepower to deal with the UNE Superfortress Dallas has added to his Earth Force Marines. You can see from the the picture below that the Siler tank's main gun looks pretty serious.



The Silers are bigger than the tanks from Old Crow, and resemble a near-future version of a Leopard 2A6 with the sleek turret. At the same time, they are very, very low to the ground, almost resembling hovertanks or grav tanks. In fact, they sport four sets of treads, two on each side.



The tanks also sport some very cool anti-personnel cannons on the back corners of the turret. All around a very cool-looking model, and the quality from Khurasan was top notch.



I expect the Silers to play a role somewhat like that of the Shadowsword tanks in 40k - slow, ponderous vehicles out hunting for big game, preferably from a hull-down position, with some minor anti-infantry backup weapons to help out in case of immediate trouble.



I still have a big 15mm to-do pile - including some more vehicles, and much more infantry (Federal heavy weapon teams, another federal infantry platoon, and reinforcements from the "Control Battalion"). But real life is intruding. These were literally the last models I managed to finish before our pending move to a new house made hobbying untenable. The paints are now packed away, along with the figures, and I look forward to getting some more painting going in a couple of weeks!