My kids have been on a big Star Wars kick lately, and I've bought them some of the Collectible Miniatures. You may recall that I bought a bunch of these a while back. There is now a fixed Obi-Wan in a starter, so I picked that up, too. Well, my son got a Reek in his pack and was about to wet himself wanting to play with it, so I sat down and rumbled with my 7 year old son.

We ran through the starter's introductory game, with Obi-Wan and two rebels vs. Darth Vader and two stormtroopers. I played the rebels, and got beat.

So, for game two, we built our own 100 point forces. My son took the Reek, a Vornskr and a Dark Trooper Phase III. I took Obi-Wan, a Rebel Captain, a Rebel Heavy Gunner, and Elite Rebel Soldier, and Wookie Soldier and a Twi'lek Bodyguard.

I felt bad for the poor kid as I didn't take it easy on him. I set my Captain and my heavy gunner up at the end of a long hallway to take twin fire from both on the Reek as he turned the corner into to melee with Obi-Wan. The Reek was tough, though, killing the Wookie and with 200 HP, soaked up a lot of damage until the Dark Trooper could emerge halfway through the hallway the heavy gunner was shooting down. Again, my tactically poor son killed his own Reek by using missles against Obi-Wan-- which did damage to Obi-Wan and killed the Elite Rebel Trooper. Hmmm...maybe those tactics weren't so poor... The Dark Trooper then killed the Captain, depriving the Heavy Gunner of his Twin Attack. The Heavy Gunner managed a Critical hit, but couldn't stop the Dark Trooper before going down himself.

That left Obi-Wan and the Twi'lek! Hang on, I could still pull this out. They double-teamed the Vornskr as the Dark Trooper Crited Obi-Wan! The Twi'lek bodyguard valiantly through herself in front of Obi-Wan, saving him, and he had both the Vornskr and the Dark Trooper on the edge before going down himself to the Vornskr. Junior wins again!

I didn't think the CMG rules were that bad, really. I had fun playing. There was probably a bit more reading and math than my son could do and really have fun, but I helped him along and he enjoyed whipping his old man two games in a row.

I picked up the recently released Mutants and Death Ray Guns from Ganesha Games. It's a real beer and pretzels Gamma World-style post-apocalypse game. Plus, it includes rules for something I have absolutely no figures for-- mutant plants. So, I had to whip some up.

They're almost trivial to make. I used the "twisted wire" method you often see suggested for making trees (you can find a description here, although that's way over the top). I used the rule of thumb from the Osprey Terrain Modelling book that you should cut 9 wires at 2.5x the length you want the tree to be. Fold the wires in half and twist them. The "eye" where you bent them becomes the roots (after you cut the eye open) and the other end becomes the branches. After posing, I covered the armature with floral tape, and coated that with Elmer's/PVA glue to set it. When I epoxied the tree to a metal washer, I also used epoxy to cover up any big holes I had missed. I then sculpted a face onto the tree using green stuff.

After painting, I used Woodland Scenics Hob-E-Tac to adhere WS foliage of various types (I found that clump foliage, my favorite, once again looked best-- the brown trunk with green foliage). After drying a day, I sealed them extremely well to try and keep the foliage on.

I have made figures matching some plants I rolled up...a Big plant that causes Terror, two Humanoid plants, and one plant that fronts an '80s big hair tribute band.

Okay, here is a batch of stuff that I've finished lately and finally got around to photographing. They're a tad underexposed, but not too bad.

My 40mm AWI Grenadiers from Trident/MSC. These are really nice figures. I should go back and touch up a few of the eyes, but I'm pretty pleased with these. I'm looking forward to doing the rest of my militiamen, although I might wait until after I get the spare hands packs, just to see what I can do with that.

Zeppelin Troops from Bob Murch's Pulp Figures. I've had these and the US Rocketmen for about a year or so, but the .45 Adventures rules got me excited about them again. Plus, you can get started playing with just a few figures.

One of the things I was really looking forward to buying with my Old Glory Army discount was some Cobalt 1 Palansi. I love these guys! Well, of course West Wind discontinued the line right before I got my membership. I still managed to find some seriously discounted at Historicon last year.

SWAT teams. I got 20 painted up, 10 West Wind and 10 Wargames Foundry. They're both nice, although god forbid the US starts arming their SWAT teams with SAWs!

These have turned out to be some of my favorite figures of all time, my Genestealer Cult. I've had these figures for ages, and in fact, I remember starting the Ogryn hybrid at a place I haven't lived at for ten years, so it counts and the figure it has taken me the longest to complete! The robot is a TALOS unit from Kryomek. I tried to make him very weathered and rusty. The effect didn't really turn out that well, the rust looks like some sort of camo pattern to me, but he still looks good in general.

Superfigs! I got almost all of these at Historicon last year (although there's a power armor girl in there from VOID). I love these figures, really nice, lots of character.

As I mentioned, Mik and I played Necromunda last night. It was a fun game, as always. I managed to pull out two wins last night-- I barely scraped by in a Gang Fight, and then dominated a Shootout, despite losing my nerve.

It was my Hive Lords, a 1951 point Orlock gang, taking on Mik's Soul Crows, a 2355 point Ratskin gang.

Our first fight was a straight up Gang Fight. My main force of close combat guys and short range "combat" shooters tried to move en masse up the right flank of the table, covered by my leader, Gunk, and my backup sniper, Blondie. I threw one semi-chump out to the far left to try and tie some guys up there, but he went down quickly. Outnumbered as I was, I was soon enveloped and started taking some pretty bad casualties, and Mik had only one guy down.

It was indeed looking grim. I was down to three guys-- Hardcore, my chief CC guy, a new 50 point scrub Gunfighter down to one autogun, and Blondie, my backup sniper. However, I did manage to get the Ratskins taking bottle tests, and their Leader was out. That meant they were testing against a 7 and me a 9, so even though I was looking at some, uh, serious Serious Injury rolls, I held out. Plus, I was anxious to get Hardcore in a fight.

It wasn't long before the scrub Gunfighter was down, and soon out. Hardcore got jumped by three Ratskins while Blondie kept Odin, the big Ratskin, pinned. It took two turns and one of his three wounds, but Hardcore stomped the Ratskins with his Power Sword and Chain Sword. Then came Odin, the ST 4 bionic arm massive sword wielding Ratskin, braving Hardcore's Horrible Scars, and-- HE WENT DOWN! The Ratskins soon involuntarily bottled out, leaving me in control of the table with just two guys.

The after party went well. I had one of my mid-tier Gunfighters lose the rest of the fingers on one hand, but with a Medic, I rerolled a full recovery. My Ratskin scout Runs Like A Girl died, coincidentally enough the same day I had finished painting my new Ratskin scout, Rabid Millosaur.

We ran a Gunfight next, and time was short. I didn't pull any of my high end guys, but it worked out. We lost our nerve by one point, but my Gunfighter with the saved hand slapped leather and pinned two of the four opposing Ratskins, and my next guy took another one down. My Frenzied head wound guy, Rico, charged in, and it was soon just coup de grâces on Down Ratskins. Ugly.

Again, the after party went really well. I actually had ganger to work territories and get money, and two to send to the Trading Post. I wound up buying an Infra-Red Scope and TWO, count them, TWO more Power Swords, for a gang total of three!! They are currently sitting in my STASH! until I can figure out how I want to use them.

Here are some pictures from our 5150 Star Wars games last night. We're working on some rules we'll put out soon.

Game one, with the Rebels with just pistols, which I was assured was correct but which left the Rebels hideously outgunned (12" range vs. 24" for the Stormtroopers meant just about any time the Rebels were shot at, they Ducked Back). The Stars, since they couldn't really get any supporting fire, just got creamed in a two way crossfire.

In the second game, we gave the Rebels a 24" range (although I think we'll just do custom weapons and give them an 18" range). It went much better. We also closed down a couple of very open fire lanes. The Rebels were able to keep the Stormtroopers heads down (making a squad run away in the first turn and flee the table on their Recovery attempt!) The stormtroopes just didn't have much luck this game...one tried to throw a thermal detanator around a corner, fumbled it, and Obviously Deaded his squad leader!

Really, if we were able to look at the sales across all the pre-painted manufacturers, they may well dominate already, and here's why. For just over $100.00, I bought a substantial amount of figures, had them shipped to me, and will be running a game with them tomorrow. From purchase to play in about a week for about $1.00 a figure. You just can not beat that. I don't think they're going to drive the unpainted market out of business, as it certainly does not provide the same feeling of accomplishment or enjoyment that I get from painting and creating. However, considering it would have taken me, realistically, two years to have painted all these by myself, assuming I even finished, it opens up areas of marginal interest, like Star Wars for me. I would never have devoted the amount of time it would have taken to paint all these figures up, I'm just not that interested in Star Wars. But, hey, if $115.00 buys me enough figures to sit down and play with my son and my friends, who like Star Wars more than me, well, I'm going to do that.

I'll be running a 5150 game with these tonight. It probably will be an Imperial ambush. Leia et al. start in the middle and have to exit off either "short" edge. Imperials start on the short edges. On activation rolls of 7, reinforcements for the Imperials show up-- probably bounty hunters or even Darth Vader. I'm working up some 5150 rules for Star Wars, I'll post them here when they're done.

I really need to work on some terrain. That table just looks sad...

I bought some more Star Wars singles (PRE 10/1, of course) from Dragon Justice. They had good prices, cheap shipping and great service. Recommended.

A buddy and I had a quick little pick up game last night. We decided to try out Two Hour Wargames new Sci-Fi rules, 5150.

I'm not a THW rules expert, although I've fooled around with some of their older games like Chain Reaction and Muskets & Mohawks in the past. These rules are faily similar to Chain Reaction in their core mechanisms, but include a campaign system (something other THW rulesets have received a lot of praise for).

I am NOT one for lawyerly rules, and can't make it through three pages of most board (or, perhaps, BORED) games rule sets, but in the past, I have found THW rulesets to be too imprecise and poorly worded for me. I've had a hard time figuring out what the real intentions of the rules were, although I kept fooling around with them because there seemed to be some interesting concepts in the rules. 5150 is the best I have seen from them in this regard. They could still use some improvement, but I would call them of average clarity and after one quick read-through, I felt ready to try the rules. There was one subtle wording I found that I missed out on by reading the incredibly active Yahoo group (only inactive players make an In Sight test, a change from CR2).

We ran just two identical squads, a Rep 5 leader and four Rep 4 squaddies, all with Range 48" Targets 1 Impact 3 weapons. He ran figures from his Ratskins Necromunda gang, and I used my Superfigs G.U.A.R.D. Tac Team.

He immediately got three turns of unanswered movement, sending two squaddies up either flank and his leader up the middle. I finally got active, and shot up his left flank, taking one of his guys Out of the Fight, and leaving each of us with one figure Hunkered Down.

My Hunkered Down guy rallied, and I tried to finish his off but only drove him into the central building, where he Rallied and took up position in a high window. In the mean time, the guys on my right flank show up, shooting one of my squaddies out in the open. The Ratskins leader gets Knocked Down a couple of times, but is still okay.

I sprint for the central building and my leader gets Obviously Dead from the Ratskin in the window, and a lot of fire is exchanged, leaving him Hunkered Down.

One of my squaddies gets into the central building and makes it to the Hunkered Down ratskin. Reports differ on what happened next, but he wasn't heard from again. In the meantime, the Ratskin leader is behind the same building, waiting to make his move.

My squaddies have the front door covered, but the sneaky Ratskin leader Fast Moves through the back door and into combat! Unfortunately for him, he gets the worse of it. One of the last braves makes a move on my other squaddie, and goes down, too. The remaining Ratskins (or Ratskin) fail their morale and Go.

Yesterday was Necromundacon 2006! For a buddy's birthday, we got together four guys (three of which still play regularly) from our Necromunda league 10+ years ago, along with two others, and played sixteen games of Necromunda over about thirteen hours yesterday.

We voted for best painted gang and best terrain feature, and I won both. You can see them below, along with trophies the host made. There was also a top gang award, but I was well out of the running for that!

I came in with a Leader, two Heavies, four Gangers and four Juves. My theory was that given we would play all day, the Juves would develop quickly into Gangers and I would be set. However, in reality, two Juves got shot and in at least two games, I had every single Ganger go out of action, leaving me with no income. Plus, I lost two territories early-- one two losing a shootout, and another to a Hivequake. I was pretty much hamstrung then (max 30 credits of income, after taxes), but we all had fun.

I've been playing some Necromunda lately, and we decided we would all make a one foot square piece of terrain to represent one of our territories. I decided to do Vents, and here are some in-progress shots.

Last night, we played some old school 1st ed Gamma World, and I saw a buddy's Drinking Hole. It looked great!

A couple of buddies came over Tuesday night. We were planning to play some PKowboys. We had previously discussed doing something similar to Warhammer Quest, which we have been playing lately, with starship crews. I had written up some rules which we looked over and wound up playing.

I didn't keep notes, but here's pretty much how it went.

Both guys made a small, unarmed ship with four crew and set out to salvage. They got stopped by a government warship, but their papers checked out and they were sent on their way. They got lost, but working together, managed to get back on track without too much trouble. Finally, they found a derelict ship they decided to try and loot. We played out the tabletop using PKombat (playtest Sci-Fi rules based on PKowboys by Nick Hawkins).

Upon exiting the airlocks, they found the corridors covered with a secreted resin-- sure signs it was Infested (think aliens/genestealers). They ventured down a long corridor, with Mik's "scruffy female Engineer" leading far out in front.

They found several security rooms, and as the Engineer was searching one, a fire broke out and started to spread. Leaving the room, three "hatchlings" (Tyranid Rippers mounted individually) rounded the end of the hall and attacked. With a little help from the rest of Mik's away team and some of Chris's, they killed all of them.

However, as soon as things settled down, a "juvenile" (Tyranid gaunt) dropped from the ceiling, slicing into one of Chris's crew and taking him down. The lights went out on the ship, and a giant "adult" emerged from a darkened Security room.

Mik's two-gun blonde locked the door on the adult, grabbed Chris's down character and ran him back to his airlock, but in the ensuing melee, Mik's Engineer went down and was cut off by the juvenile. The adult muscled open the Security door, but Mik's captain Heroically hooked it with his axe and closed it again. One of Chris's crew grabbed the engineer and began to haul her the length of the corridor under they scything arms of the Infestations.

Mik's captain, in the meantime, was bound and determined that nothing would stop him from searching the Hydroponics bay and grabbing some equipment for his ship. Chris's character, having roused Mik's Engineer, decided he'd done his bit and beat his way back to the airlock. The Engineer was soon to follow, leaving Mik's captain rumaging through hydro tubing while the big nasties closed in on the only way out...

We called it at this point, it was 1:30 AM and everybody had work or school the next day. We actually felt Mik's captain had a better than even chance of getting out if he left right then, as the juvenile was wounded and the adult had to get the door open again.

All in all, everybody seemed to have fun with it. The biggest problem was the battlemat, which was a parting gift from our old RPG GM when he left town, and I ruined it by using Dry Erase markers on it!

Since I had the light tent out, I took some pictures of some Sci-Fi figures I hadn't yet.

First are some Copplestone Castings Future Wars Hunter Aliens.

Next, I'll show how I accidentally painted a Tyranid army! I always liked the Hormagaunts, and bought a "Gaunt" box to paint some up as generic slashy-type alien monsters.

Well, since I was at it, I also had a bunch of old Space Hulk Genestealers I'd never painted, so I got them out and painted a bunch of them up.

That was it for a while, then I thought, what the heck, I'll paint the rest of the Gaunt pack. I don't like the "meat guns," but I'll use them. Plus, I based the Rippers singly to use as face huggers.

I was in Memphis celebrating my tenth wedding anniversary this August, and visted the Games Workshop factory store, the Battle Bunker, there. I wanted to buy something game-related, but every game store I knew of in Memphis had shut down. Plus, the new Carnifex looked really appealing to me, so what the heck, I bought it plus some Warriors and Ravenors.

The Carnifex is big, beautiful and expensive, which for me typically means he sits in a box for several years before I do anything with him. However, I painted these figures "Aliens" style, which pretty much means black with lots of grey drybrushing. It's an easy, quick paint job which gets the job done but still looks good. I think they turned out pretty well, and I didn't spend much time at all on them.