Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Rod's Big Adventure!

Hello friends!

I'm very excited to say that Rod's Big Adventure begins tomorrow.  



I'm headed to Beijing, China to study Kung Fu for two weeks.  10 full days of training basically from dawn til dusk.  My wife and I are headed there a few days early to get in some shopping and see some of the sites.  I'm very excited to get to see The Great Wall in person!

As for the training, I'll be studying 4 different styles: Baguazhang, Tong Bei Quan, Six Harmonies Praying Mantis, and a Shaolin long staff style called "mad demon staff".  Two weeks really isn't a long enough time to master anything obviously, but it is a great opportunity to learn from different Chinese Masters.  Just seeing them go through the movements should be educational in itself. It will be some grueling training, but a very exciting opportunity.

Anyway, I'm not sure what all is blocked in China (Facebook, Google+, etc...) so I'll probably not see any of your posts for about 3 weeks.  In that time, stay well friends!  I look forward to catching up on all your hobby accomplishments when I return.

Rod


Sunday, July 17, 2016

Patrol Angis - An AAR and Thoughts on the Game

I have gotten several games of Patrol Angis played through now.  4 solo games and 1 with my buddy Darby using the miniatures from the starter set I bought a while back.  First I'll let you have a look at the game I played this evening.


Scenario:  The Prydian Forces (Red/White) are planning to break through a defensive position setup by the League of Yordan (Green/Yellow).

League of Yordan starting positions...




The Prydian Assault.

For the first turn of the scenario, I gave the Prydian forces the initiative.  They did a normal die roll to determine the number of activation tokens to be issued out to the two sides.  The Prydian forces move up one of their assault rifle teams and hit the enemy team on the hill.  The fire is devastating, killing over half the enemy team.  They fail morale and lost their activation token.  A good start for the Prydians!

The League of Yordan troops send in the Duxis battlesuits and hit the assault rifle team pretty hard.  This takes up their one activation for the turn.  The Prydians had put 2 activations on their support weapon team, so they moved up and on the second activation hit the Duxis battlesuits managing to put down the suit with the howitzer.  Things are looking even better!

During the 2nd turn, using a their jump jets the Prydian close assault team gets in a close as they can to hit the support weapon team on the hill.  Sadly their fire is pretty ineffective (only 1 casualty) due to having to snap-shot on the run.

The 3rd turn is a hard swing in favor of the League.  They have too much fire power.  Especially with the Espaten team on the far hill.  The large mounted lasers rip the assault team to shreds leaving only 1 survivor.

The remaining Duxis have also been doing some cleanup work on their end.  Finishing off the Prydian support weapons team and the assault rifle team.

The Prydian leader calls for the retreat.

Meanwhile, the poor soldier left on the hill offers the enemy a chance of surrender...

Patrol Angis Thoughts...

I have to say I really like this game.  It definitely holds to it's claim of being a One-Hour Wargame.  The action is fast and brutal.  Cover is very important for survival, but it basically comes down to the fact that if you can shoot someone, they can shoot you back.  So if you don't like taking heavy casualties, this game will be tough  for you!

Another thing that's pretty important in this game is winning initiative.  Not only do you get an extra activation.  But you get to pick all the casualties that a both sides take during that turn.  As in the case of the first round when the Prydian support unit managed a total of 5 wounds on the 3 Duxis battlesuits.  Each Duxis has a total of 5 damage points it can take before being destroyed.  If the Yordan player had the initiative, they could have distributed the 5 wounds between the 3 Duxis figures and kept them all in action.  Instead the Prydian player had initiative and was able to put them all on one Duxis, and also picked the one with the indirect fire weapon (that ignores cover bonuses)!

There's quite a bit of flexibility in how you can create your forces.  It certainly lends itself to a space opera feel.  One thing I have noticed with the starter though, is that it's pretty easy for this game to get imbalanced.  5 games so far and the Prydians have lost every game.  I think I can even it up pretty soon with a few tweaks once I get some new troops painted up.  But the warning here is if you don't have friends that like a gentlemanly game, it could be very frustrating.

I'm looking forward to tweaking my armies and getting some more games in.  I also picked up the new vehicle rules so I'm sure there will be some more heavy hitters appearing on the battlefield as well.

Have a good week friends!

Rod

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Kh'Erian & Kh'Erasin MBTs

These are some 15mm Sci-Fi tanks I picked up from a Darkest Star Games kick-starter a while back. These will be part of my forces for the hard-core military sci-fi gaming.  For some reason I've always planned for this to be on a desert style planet, so with that in mind I wanted some desert style camouflage patterns.  These painted up pretty quick with the help of my trusty airbrush.  Added some desert sand pigments and washes to give them a nice dirty used look.  And here they are...


There were two choices of turrets, so I gave 3 of them the smaller barrel.  The one in the back has a longer barrel.  I'm not sure which is which as far as the names go.

Anyway, quick post today.  Hope you all are enjoying your week!

Rod

Monday, July 4, 2016

And now for something completely different... Warbands

Several years ago I wanted to experiment with 10mm figures for WWII.  I ordered up some troops and vehicles from Pendraken Minatures and got to painting.  I was liking how it was going, but none of my buddies were willing to jump on board.  They were too invested in 15mm.  So I ended up scrapping the idea and sticking with 15mm.  Later I realized I may have had better success if I'd picked a diffent time period.  Then Pendraken Miniatures released their fantasy mass battle rules called Warband and I thought I'd give it a try.  I bought the rules last November at a convention and then started looking at the starter kits.  I later ordered a Hill Dwarf and Undead starter.

Taking a look at some of what other gamers were doing I then decided to buy some extra figures to spice up my units.  The first to finally hit the gaming table was my Hill Dwarf command stand.  It came with about five figures, so I add some wizards AND... a piper.  Yes, I saw a bag piper on their site for Dwarves and ordered several.  One can be seen below!


Since they are kind of small I decided to have color schemes to match up my armies.  The main colors for my Dwarves will be red and blue.  The king in the middle was given purple.  Some things I noticed while experimenting with 10mm is that your really need bright colors to make them stand out on the table.  Also, metal paints don't work so well in 10mm.  So you may notice that for all my metal parts like swords and armor I took a basic non-metalic metals approach.

Anyway, the 10mm experiment is pretty fun and fast.  I like the results and figures are full of character.  I look forward to finishing up these armies and having some big fantasy battles.

Rod