Lord Ipsqueek's Adventures: family trip

Hello beloved followers of the adventures in my young life.

I know it took a wee bit longer then usual before I wrote to you again, but I have been visiting all my families the past week, and it was so tiring and busy I fell asleep playing... I mean typing!

But it have been very cool ans awesome weeks indeed!  Let me start out by telling you something spectacular: last week when I went to visit the mall, I saw my first explosion in real life!

But there are some nicer things that went on as well, like mommy and daddy dressing up my room with these awesome posters!

But fieldtrips, as I went to visit both my godfather AND godmother, and brought a late birthday gift for Auntie Shefaly as I couldn`t see her before due to the nasty Covid-19 virus.

The rest of the week was calm, though I apparently gave daddy a stomach ache by watching this cool coloured cartoon called Knights of the Zodiac.  I just don`t know why he was constantly moaning and groaning though...

I also made a new friend, who I can see in the window in daddy's selfproclaimed "Interstellar Junkyard".

But now, it's time to take a good rest, because me, mommy and daddy are preparing for something really big next weekend...

I`ll make sure to tell all about it afterwards, so keep an eye on this place!

What I Painted in June 2020

Another month has gone by, and all in all a decent turnout remains this month.

And the benefit being, some things are starting to get rounded out...

The first being the commander for my Star wars Legion Skirmish force, Jyn Erso

I actually managed to finish some Middle-earth as well with this Barrow Wight

I also painted up the Vesper Class spaceship for my Federation fleet, a printed model from Thingiverse:

For "Project Far Side", a lot of things have been printed and painted, starting with these 15 asteroids

But that is far from all that has been finished for the, in the end, scenery for 9 !!!! tables I`m going to print and paint.

For Tatooine, the first dwellings have been completed:

For the Warhammer 40k style table:

For the generic scifi table:

Naboo:

Necron / Jungle table:

The demonworld:

And finally the cyberpukish one:

But I also have been growing my forces for the games of course, first off being these Bizon MBT's for the Neo-Soviets / Zeon force.

On a different 6mm era note, I painted up more Sun King's War regiments this month as well.

So that is another 136 models to the tally for the year, nice going if I say so myself!

The 2020 goals halfway status

What a first part of the year...

Starting strong with the AHPC10, life then suddenly got turned upside down with the Corvid-19 pandemic.  This caused clublife to drop stone dead, but that made the plans for hosting DnD again come to fruition.

And of course, the birth of my little gemstone, baby Thorin, has been a severe impact on our lives for the better.

But all that meant that the plans, well, didn`t go as planned so far.  Add to that the "regiment tiredness" I experience for months now (check this post for more on that) and well, goals have been reached that weren`t a priority, while others will not come to fruition as I can already say now...  because, well, no more models bought, or sold off what was done, or no intrest... a variety of things.

So looking at the sidebar, let's overview the status of all the different goals as they currently stand:

Starting as always with the AHPC this year, I succesfully completed that one for the third year in a row... I just might have better focussed on finishing things towards my goals.

On the front of getting all the Crisis figures painted up, I`m going smoothly and with sadly no new model coming this year, because, no Crisis show due to Corona, I`m really going to finish them all.

For the Rohan force, not much progress has been made... yet.  But the forces are being assembled and undercoated, and soon the first ones should be hitting the painting desk, so that will start rising exponentially.

The Rivendell force, which Noshi will command, has seen increase and I estimate it will soon be actually at it's target number.

But then we enter disaster area.  Of all the three next entries, aka the Tau force, the Chaos Dwarf force and for the moment the 6mm desert force, barely anything has been added anymore, and the first two are on the verge of getting sold, or at least parts of it.  This is due to the club being closed, but also for the reasons in the link at the beginning of this post.  That are going to be three straight failures, though the italians *might* be going in the first week of a new AHPC in december depending the themes and get some boostings, or benefit from my as told earlier this year switch to godscale for whom I now really pikced up painting pace.

The scenery goal is making good progress, as larger pieces are getting printed up and actually painted, so that shall be a success as well by the end of the year.  Especially with the larger pieces from Project Far Side.

The same goes for the Battle Companies.  While I won`t be able to finish all 38, as I already said when stating my goals for this year, the numbers are being boosted upwards as more and more companies roll off the finished line.

On the book reading front, I`m about right where I was last year, so that should turn out alright, though the anime watching is down more then planned.  This is partly due to Noshi not "feeling like it" the past months, and instead "regular" television series got binged.  Nevertheless, I`m only slightly behind schedule around the halfway mark for them.

As a result, that goal was already achieved in the first half of may, even though I had put a low target for it due to not much peeking my intrest when I set my goals.  So that one is going to go heavily in the green this year for sure.  The movies for that matter won't be much of an issue either, as slowly and steadily they are tallying upwards.

And the final goal... well, I hope in these pandemic days there actually WILL be enough events taking place to get to that score...
 

So, so far the halfway mark of the goals for this year, looks like some might actually be achievable without any problems, some will cause a bit of managing and focussing... while a few are already virtually dead and buried...

The Haul Report 235

So another good week of stuffsies has passed by, and of course most of it has been printing for Project Far Side.

Though not quite everything for that has been printed stuff, as I braved IKEA on a saturday... in a covid period... for an extra shelf to go in my closet and store the terrain on for now.

Once a table is "done" it'll be stored in a carry container, but for now it's all open.  But IKEA for now... never again.

But of course, a hefty amount of prints have been done as well, I think I`ll do an update on the newest painted terrain pieces one of these days.

Though I also printed something else, for a more far away project, in the form of a 1/300 scale Monitor for the ACW.  This is an upscaled 1/600 stl actually, but it is not that the famous ship was known for large details anyways...

A good week as such, without anything to uber spectacular...

On the Painting Desk 149

Woopie, I managed to actually finish those flyers, so they'll be showing up on the blog in the coming week.

But that is about it really, as a combination of a heatwave and baby Thorin deciding to learn to roll over (and as a consequence, standing all day next to his parc to roll him back to prevent him burrying his face) meant very little painting time.

Though I did get some work done on "paintstation Beta" aka the living room table when he took his short naps, in the form of some drybrushing on Project Far Side buildings.

Let's hope the weather and Ipsqueek will be a bit more calmer next week ;-)

River Wars

The latest rulebook I've been reading is River Wars, written by Bob Johnson and published by Scott L. Mingus sr.

These rules aim for games of 1/600 ACW ships on the Western Rivers in 1861-63.

Covering the fall of New Orleans as part of Operation Anaconda, and the fight for survival by the Confederates against the Union blockade.

It starts out with a brief outline of the naval warfare of the era, as it tells in short the strenghts of the fleets and the flow of battle between the North and the South as they fought on the rivers, and which where the major battles.

This translates in relatively easy to learn rules that include most of the ship types of the era, and scenarios for the leading actions on the western rivers, excluding the infantry support ones like at Shiloh.  Written for 1/600 scale, they are easily adaptable for other ones (I for one aim at 1/300 to go with my 6mm Union army).

The game sequence consists of 9 phases: Determine Initiative, Crew Assignments, Unfouling Attempts, Repairs and Fire Fighting, Moving, Ramming, Firing, Spar Torpedoes and finally Boarding Actions.  As you can see here, there is some things to do before you actually move a vessel as is normally happening in "land based" games.

Crew quality is random, and you need a certain amount of them to remain operational, the rest serving for example as firemen.  Initiative is a double edged sword, the attacker always has it, but this gives the option to move half, then the defender moves, and then the attacker moves his second half.  But as guns can fire in either half, do you wait until after the defender to try and get a better position, or do you fire from perhaps a less optimal range...

Weapons are classed by a table, and this allows you to add your own ships to the game.  One can research a vessel and his armament and construct it as such, allowing you with a bit of tinkering to make your own scenarios and games.

The scenarios itself are fom a wide range, including a shelling of a fort, to troop landings, to a game of ramming...

The fleet lists not only give the name and classes of all the vessels, but also their commission dates and final fates (and no, USS Monitor and CSS Virginia are not on there; those where "ocean fairing" types by planning, not river boats).

There is then a large section with all the data for the ships, like hit charts, their speed, etc... as well as some art to identify the ships.

The final part of the book is the reference sheet, as well as manufacturers and resources for use zith the rules, and an appendice of more historical data.

A great looking set of rules, and if anyone is ever up for those at the club, count me in!

War Fleets BatRep: Federation vs Space Battleship Yamato

Another solo wargame battle report today, and this time I'm going into the darkest reaches of space in search of a "spiritual follow up" for A Call to Arms that we played to high heaven and back with the Far Side a decade ago.

The rules used are something Andy found on the internet, a free 2 pageside system called War Fleets (edition 2.2).

I went for equal forces, in that the Federation intercepts a massive vessel from Space Battleship Yamato (some old model kit I build years ago, without some fins etc that where sourced back then into terrain), and I try and build the vessels to represent "what they could do".

Both Federation vessels are destroyer class at 60 points each, and equipped with three components each.  Obviously, that means a Warp Drive and Torpedoes for each, but the Vesper class gets Shields compared to Armored Plating for the NX class.  The admiral is on the Vesper class.

For the Yamato universe vessel, whom I dubbed Murusame for no reason except it sounds cool, the Battleship of 120 points was selected.  For it's six components I went for Cannon, Giga Cannon, Rail Cannon, Barracks, Reinforced Ram and finally a Tsunami Gun.

That megaweapon will fire on a predetermined point in the game, aka either on turn 4 (I plan to play 4 turns for this try-out), OR the moment the vessel goes down to it's final 2 hit points (aka last component, which will be this weapon obviously).

 I needed to think out a sort of 'AI' for the Murusame, and it will behave according to this simple flow chart:
1. Target the closest vessel to it
2. If both are equal, target the most heavily damaged.
3. If that is also equal, target the NX class

This has all to do with the morale rules so I can try those out if needed.  Should the admiral fall, you autobreak, but otherwise if you go to 50 or below, you take morale tests to see if you stay in the game.   This would allow the Vesper class a chance to remain in battle should the NX be swiftly dispatched off.

Note: I did forget the changing "goes first" rules in the rulesets during this test, as while the Federation got the first turn, the Murusame would have been going first in turns 2 to 4.  However, this would have resulted in a single extra Giga Cannon shot, and at best an extra damage (and knocking out the NX class one component) would have been done then.

The Battle

The fleets deployed each near an asteroid field, the Federation putting the NX a bit closer then the Vesper class.

Turn 1

The NX class moves forward but misses with it's torpedoes, as does the Vesper class.  Murusame moves down the centre, guns blazing, and both it's Cannon (ACC bonus of 4 goes a long way) and Railgun strike home on the NX, knocking 2 points of the Armour Plating.

Turn 2

While the NX engages, the Vesper class tries to flank the Murusame with the help of it's Warp Drive for an additional 9" of movement.  However, Federation fire remains ineffective, either missing the target or failing to damage the big battleship.
Murusame retaliates by closing the gap to the NX further and knocking out it's complete Armour Plating.

Turn 3

As the NX passes by the Murusame, it's torpedoes strike home doing a point of damage to the Barracks, before warping out of range of it's Giga Cannon.  The Vesper tries to move to take cover of the asteroids, but fails again to hit home, as Murusame pivots and damages the NX's torpedo module.

Turn 4

The NX class strikes true again, taking down the Barracks component of the battleship, before trying to hide behind the asteroid field but not making it.  The Vesper class moves in to shield her but once again misses.  Not a single shot of the vessel had stricken home, and now she faced the charged Tsunami Gun.  Locking on to the Vesper now, the Murusame blazes with all it's in range weapons, knocking out the Shield Rig and damaging the Torpedoes on the Vesper class.  Though with the 1 point of damage rule, one can perhaps better fire the Tsunami Gun every other turn against destroyer class vessels...

And so the battle reached it's time limit, and the Federation had to return to their Starbase blood nosed, and having to report they couldn`t stop the big, strange vessel they encountered in the sector...


The Conclusion

I must say I`m still in doubt on these rules.  Granted, I played below the 300pts size and build vessels 'in character' but this means it was hard to damage the opponent on 4 turns.  Though should I played one turn more, I think the Federation would crumble.
Hitting seems to be the hardest, so weapons with an ACC bonus are the way to go.  On a full game, taking fighters and destroyers with only Cannon modules and nothing else give me the feel that this is "the way to go" to do serious damage,  but that seems a pity for all the other characterful components in the rules, though I will probably revisit the rules in the future with 300pts and smaller vessels to check this out, though I will still build them in flavor of whatever models I`ll be using then.  Depends what I print up mostly I guess.
But for a "meta universe crossover" style game, I think it might be a tat to simple to play, it's great as the (intended) Beer & Pretzels game, but to use it for, let's say, the space component of a space / land campaign, I fear that one rulesgamer might dislodge the balance so hard the game breaks.

It wasn`t bad in the end, but I guess it's fine for just what it is supposed to be: a quick game to play on an evening for sheer laughs.