Category: tabletop games

February Painting

More miniatures.

Doomguy is from Klukva Miniatures. Very clean resin casting, quite easy to paint.

The two ‘Elite Guard’ Nazi ladies are from Thrilling Tales’ She-Wolf characters pack. The models had a lot of flash but they’re old school in design and quite fun to paint.

Caleb and Corzo are from Wargames Foundry and their cowboy line – one of the only lines that has a cowboy wearing a poncho. There are plenty of good Calebs out there, but they’re all part of bundles, and none of those bundles have a passable Corzo in them.

Stuff I’ve Been Painting

 – Nazi Supersoldier on the left is from Dust Tactics, a convention exclusive so I’m told. Dust fans pls don’t REEE at me for ripping him off his exclusive base. I’m not sure how to use him in Konflikt 47 but in FRAG he’ll be an Uber-Mutant personality.

 – YOU HAVE TAKEN THE LEAD is a Warzone Capitol Airborne Ranger with the shoulder logos filed off.

– Waffen-SS Officer is made by Warlord Games. He’s wearing a late war spring pattern jacket over a dark grey uniform. He will be seeing use in Bolt Action, Konflikt 47 and FRAG as a platoon leader.

 – Nayla Erdogan is a former New Ottoman officer turned mercenary star ship officer (actually it’s a figure from the Infinity RPG miniatures range, but a buddy mentioned that it looked like one of his characters from a space setting he’s been talking about).

Ranger was tricky and I made a lot of mistakes. Getting the yellow right was hard. Quake Champions has such muddy colours most yellow paint is too bright. After an attempt at mixing darker yellows and dry brushing the breastplate I had to go back and give him a dark ink wash around the curves of the armour. The shoulder pads also didn’t look right when I tried to give them a worn metallic edge; I guess my mind sees reddish brown and just thinks ‘leather’.

He was also supposed be holding the dire orb but I was halfway through priming him before I noticed that I forgot to green stuff his hand. I really can’t explain how that happened.

Mutant Chronicles RP: Welcome to Alma City

(Mutant Chronicles homebrew – Alma City only exists as a brief couple of sentences in the “Luna and Freelancers” sourcebook – a lost ruin in an endless wasteland. In my ‘Fall of Technology’ game Alma City is at the height of its’ power and needed several pages of new fluff. The players are driving there in the hope of meeting the charismatic “Mystery Man” who might have the key to banishing a deadly alien warrior…)

Luna is the heart of humanity’s new home among the stars. Billions live in Luna City, working and consuming in bliss. Yet inside that tightly packed hive of human activity the most brilliant minds struggle to flower.

Face it, Luna City is crowded. The most gifted can’t shine their brightest there. Alma City is the answer – it’s Luna’s second city, its’ best kept secret. A haven for the most worthy and elite; a technological utopia created by the best and brightest FOR the best and brightest – and for the right price, YOU can join!

There is no starport to Alma City. There are no buses. it is 9 hours drive down the megaway from the Geoffrey R Hazeltine spaceport outside Luna City, so private VTOL is recommended.

Established in 2433 as a luxury resort, Alma has expanded rapidly since then. It is unique among human cities in that it requires annual  ‘membership fees’ from home and business owners.  This allows the City Office to offer high end services to its’ wealthy, deserving members.

When you enter Alma City, the first thing you will see is the neon soaked skyline dominated by the imposing Ziggurat. From here, the City Office plans the development of the City and the arranges special services to all city members. The Ziggurat also contains the processing core for TIAMAT, the city’s own Tier 1 artificial intelligence. A wonder of Corporate technology, TIAMAT can effortlessly process over two hundred million tasks simultaneously.

Alma City is built upon four artificial islands and surrounded by a gorgeous red tinged body of water colourfully known as the Dead Man’s Ocean. Dating back to the initial terraforming of Luna, the ocean sparkles with reddish wonder – a mixture of imported clay and exotic terraforming agents. Luxury cruises are available – a chance to view sights of un-terraformed Luna, something unimaginable from Luna City.

Similar to Luna City, Alma is divided into Megacorporate and Micro-corporate sectors. Capitol, Bauhaus, Imperial and Mishima do business here in addition to a dizzing range of smaller corporate entities. From the Bank of Mars, and BauForce to Argen Electric Power and Mannerheim Nanotronics – executives from every imaginable sphere are rushing to Alma City!

See Mishima’s Silicon Shogunate – a vast complex of research and development approved by the Chairman himself.

Visit Imperial’s famed breweries and the newly re-furnished Paladine Library.

See the wonders of Capitol’s San Teresa Avenue – or try to catch a glimpse of the latest JANE model being shipped at Dead Man’s Docks.

Visit the outstanding Temple Casino or sample the finest of Alma City at the Llewellyn Hotel.

Alma City is a city of your deepest, darkest dreams. TIAMAT is waiting to process your applications – unleash your true potential with Alma and get a one step closer to Heaven.

Painting Germans for Bolt Action / Konflikt 47 / FRAG

I started a Bolt Action & Konflikt 47 army on the weekend and the first models are coming off the assembly line. I’ll be running mechanized Waffen-SS with veteran troops and SdKz251′s for everybody.Konflikt 47 is Warlord Games and Clockwork Goblin’s “Weird War” gaming system descended from their historical WW2 game Bolt Action. The non-weird stuff doubles as a fairly effective late war historical army.

Of course since FRAG includes a faction inspired by Wolfenstein 3D and Rise of the Triad, these gents will also be great for testing out the team weapon rules.

FRAG Update

I’m still writing a miniatures game. In fact all of the actual rules are in place, I just need to finalize the vehicle rules and the stuff that’s going in the ‘expansion pack’. Everything after that is balance tweaks and points cost adjustments.
FRAG is a tabletop battle game that adapts 90s FPS games into a nominally 28mm (actually scale neutral) mass combat system where armies of combatants clash in huge engagements.

Let’s have a look at how the factions of FRAG have turned out:

The Lost Battalion – An army of dimension jumping bad asses founded by the damned survivors of a Hellish incursion. Elite troops, very mobile, devastating heavy weapons.

Hell – The baddies from Doom. More demons inspired by other sources will appear in the expansion. Large hordes, strong characters, lots of spells. Character have a lot of options with bionics, spells, and hellish upgrades.

The Sidhe – A non-human race of mystical adventurers and knightly orders, dedicated to fighting demons. Hard to pin down in melee and able to use a variety of sneaky gadgets (including a Tome of Power analogue).

The New Order – Regular humans that fight alongside super-science and necromancy. They come from an alternate reality where European fascists made a pact with “the endless dark”. Weak regular troops but powerful special options.Nazi zombies are DLC only, sorry.

Earth Defense Force – Earth is backwards and repressive compared to the newly independent colonies, but it outnumbers them millions to one. The EDF are the people in charge of keeping it safe. They need to carefully deploy heavy weapon teams to get the most out of their firepower.

SHAMAN – A rogue AI turned bio-mechanical horror. Mixture of System Shock / Quake 2 influence. Most SHAMAN troops have a chance to self-resurrect. Can take special packs of screaming Kamikaze.

Personalities – Various ‘hero’ characters for use with certain armies.
Various characters based on popular mods like High Noon Drifter and Project MSX, also Shadow Warrior, Duke Nukem 3D, DUSK, Chasm: The Rift, the Doom movie, Doom 4 and Id Software’s D&D campaign.

Currently working on
 – Vehicle Rules
 – Better scenario rules (optional rolling for mission types, not just extermination missions)
 – More equipment (weird rocket weapons for the New Order, better artillery and air strike rules for the EDF)
– More Personalities
– Indoors skirmish system (working prototype)

Stuff being considered
  – Whether to add more elite units to the Sidhe and SHAMAN lists
  – Mini-Factions and sub-factions like Kage Corp (corporate samurai!), the Church of the Old Blood (cultists!), the Colonial Union (the high tech space humans), and a skeleton themed Hell faction
 – Balance issues
 – Rules readability

Conan the Barbarian (2d20)

“Long ago in a distant land, between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, an unspeakable evil was unleashed onto the land! But a mighty thew’d Cimmerian warrior wearing the jeweled crown of Aquilonia stepped forth to oppose it. Before the final blow was struck, the wizard Thoth-Amon summoned a creature from the Outer Dark, where the Great Old Ones’ evil is law. Now the king wishes to return to the glories of the past, and undo the future that is the 2011 Conan reboot.“
– Akiro the Wizard, circa 10,000BC

Hey so guess what arrived today.

Modiphius’ Conan RPG uses the 2d20 system, which is also used in my current tabletop group’s campaign, Mutant Chronicles 3rd Edition. There are, however, isome small but important differences. Generally it is clearer, with small changes made because of extensive playtesting since the release of Mutant Chronicles; other changes are due to genre (from schlocky science-fantasy to Weird Tales pulp fantasy).Changes include an overhauled character creation, abstract damage systems (you take temporary ‘stress’ damage and can take up to five levels of ‘harm’ damage, instead of tracking hit points), and a surprisingly elaborate number of special “Displays” which attack enemy morale. I also feel that some re-wordings of the skill success system put the default emphasis on players making up cool details instead of just buffing their attack (which was the case in Mutant Chronicles).

2d20 is a weird beast; compared to D&D, it’s more narrative driven with some interesting unique concepts like Fortune (points that let the players do good stuff), Doom (that let the GM do all sorts of nasty stuff) and Momentum (spend your skill test successes on fun stuff). Conan does a better job of explaining these than Mutant Chronicles. I’m looking forward to trying it.

There’s clearly a lot of love for Conan among the writing staff, but I’ve only just gotten this so I can’t judge it in-depth yet.

Klukva Miniatures

Look what finally arrived from Russia!

I was surprised by the quality of it. The package came in a sealed padded envelope and is a sturdy MDF box. It took two and a half months to arrive, but it was dispatched fairly promptly so that’s not the sellers fault. The miniature is resin and the detail is extremely crisp. I had the option of giving Doomguy (sorry, “Hell Crusader”) a pistol or have him flip off his opponent. I choose the latter option.

Klukva Miniatures sell him for 9 euros, they also do some not!Overwatch miniatures.

Giant demon lord and Minotaur Queen are not included.

Warhammer 40k 15mm: Tusculum Nova Winter Infantry

Next to a 15mm Battle Robots from The Scene

Look what arrived today! Some 15mm riflemen from the gothic far-future.

These guardsmen are “Tusculum Nova winter infantry“ from Troublemaker games. I’m new to 15mm, but these are some of the most cleanly detailed sculpts I’ve seen in this scale! Looking at the close up shot you could be forgiven for thinking it was 28mm scale. The pictures are the miniatures straight out of the bag with no clean up or snipping. All things considered, not unreasonable amounts of flash and in easy to snip locations.

They’re 15mm from boot to eye, ~17mm to the top of the helmet, and scale excellently with both my Slap Miniatures space knights and my battle robots from The Scene. I have a simplified d6 game that functions as a 40k heartbreaker, and I’ll be using these guys for it.

FRAG Update – Faction Five

FRAG is a tabletop game about mass battles in a universe inspired by 90s FPS games. This update concerns a new faction, development of lore, and a small piece on future plans.

The EDF Are Back
After a short time on the cutting room floor, the Earth Defence Force made it back into FRAG. Development was interesting in that a lot of unique ideas were tried but ultimately taken out. Psychic powers, robot ninjas, freeze rays, an Imperial Guard-esque order system, all things that were taken away. Despite some cyberpunk influences, the EDF remain an army of Poor Bloody Infantry.

This brings the current factions up to five:
 – The Lost Battalion, MIA space marines too angry to die or be corrupted. Doom with some other influences. Their units include marines, drones, power armoured cyborgs and the blood-crazed Slayers.
 – Hell. Represents the standard Doom enemy roster although the cybernetic upgrades and Hell magic lists enable some extra stuff.
 – The Sidhe. An agile faction inspired by Raven Software’s games. Warriors, wizards, giant stone golems, and weapons that summon flesh-eating ghosts.
– The New Order. Evil humans from a universe where Germany, Italy, and Spain won the Second World War. A very varied army where squishy soldiers fight alongside mutants, cyborgs, and necromancers.
– The EDF. The basic humans. Slower, squishier, and less flashy than the Lost Battalion or the New Order, they’re Earth’s soldiers and police with some commando and armoured support. They can take a lot of support equipment and their elite soldiers can receive cybernetic augmentation.

Lore & Game Origins
This game started off as a passion project to keep my mind off work. I added some little story details for each army as I wrote their lists, but these were not intended to be taken seriously. Recently though, I’ve found bits of the story lines coming together nicely.

There’s some lore developing as I add little blurbs to each unit profile, involving an oppressive Earth, rebel space colonies, the rise and fall of different ruling castes of Hell, and the possibility that the New Order aren’t really from a ‘Nazi victory’ alt-Earth…

If any proper lore gets written, it won’t be from the perspective of the marines, but probably some kind of Mulder & Scully duo that pick through everyone else’s mess. Just to highlight the absolute absurdity of a world of 90s FPS tropes.

Future Plans & Cut Content
I’d like to finish up the faction list with a sixth faction I’m currently calling SHAMAN. A robot / cyborg faction with a strong Quake 2 / System Shock 2 vibes, currently named after the evil AI mentioned in Doom Community Chest 4′s rather fantastic Interstellar Sickness / Shaman’s Device maps.

SHAMAN will feature cyborgs resembling SS2′s hybrids / Quake 2′s light troopers, backed up by walking tanks, and some units will have a self-revive mechanic similar to the old “We’ll Be Back” save from Warhammer 40k.

After the cyborg faction is done, the game will enter a new phase of balancing, tweaking and polish.

There are expansion plans, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Maybe work will kick my ass and everything will get put on hold. Maybe nobody else will care about this pet project and I’ll shelve it to try other interests. Maybe I’ll actually be able to play test and publish this thing and it’ll all  work out great. Who knows?

Expansion plans are: unique personalities, vehicle rules, enhanced army options / variant army lists, and an expansion for interior close quarter combat.

Currently, this is envisioned as three supplements: one book with personalities and new units, another with armoured vehicles and advanced rules (air strikes, teleportation, etc), and a third book much later with rules for interior combats / sci-fi dungeon crawls much closer to the source material (as opposed to the large scale open battles currently represented).

Variant lists including Hell cultists, demonic sorcerers, and rebel humans are being considered, plus new equipment and abilities like wacky missile launchers and tunneling enemies. There’s a huge Lovecraft inspired army list mostly finished but cut from the main rules because it became too bloated. I’m currently not sure if the “Children of the Old Ones” will have their own stream-lined list in an expansion or if they’ll be chopped up and split between the other lists.

Maybe it’ll depend on where the lore takes me.