Heading underground again...

 o/

These are the coolest gaming pieces that I have never used.

After painting the last couple of cavern tiles that Nick printed for me, I thought I'd take the whole collection out of the box and see just how big of  a tunnel system I could create. As you can see it is fairly substantial. I forgot how much of a puzzle these are to assemble without leaving any gaping holes without a finished edge. 

Same as the above, just a different angle. 

I have 4 total entrances, and did my best to spread them out towards the four corners. 

All of the painted tiles by themselves. 

They never go together the same way twice, but as of today they cover somewhere between half to two thirds of my gaming table. I still have 25 or so pieces left to paint. However being a quick case of drybrushing followed by a few random tufts representing alien plants/molds/mosses  (presumably there are openings in the roof to let in sunlight pollen and seeds. 

My 20mm Starship Troopers patrolling the depths, in search of the little gribblies. 

Not that I have any little Gribblies. I suppose I need to get some Tyranid Rippers and put on individual 20mm bases. While a nuisance in 40k, they would be terrifying to some 20mm scaled infantry!

I still do not know what game system to use with these, but Nick said that they are nothing to print and was quite impressed with the above photos. So hopefully, one day I will be able to achieve my goal of having enough cave hexes to fill my entire table. 

Dual caverns, one painted & one not. 

These are not the droids that they were looking for.

 o/

Beep Boop.

Just a quick post to show that I am still alive. I've been on a bit of a battletech kick here again of late, though am looking to get in a game of Star Wars Legion this week. So hopefully I'll have a bettle report, or at least a highlight reel of that game some time soon. 

In all honesty, decorating the base takes longer than painting the droid istelf.

With this second assembled and painted Dwarf Spider Droid, I can now field a 600 point recon list for the separatist alliance. By themselves these two aren't much, but in support of the usual zerg swarm of Roger Roger bots, hopefully they will do alright. We will see I guess...

They're not quite twins, but close...

The Empire is taking hold...

o/

I have only the best backdrops for The Empire...

I painted this squad up this week and am fairly pleased with them. I  didn't like the rocket launcher, so converted that guy to have the left over RT-97C from the Dewback I used to have. 

He looked good...until paint was added.

However after the application of contrast paint & sepia wash, he was looking pretty rough in the areas that got chopped. As such I used him for a guinea pig for my usual slathering of AK streaking grime and he ended up looking worse than a remnant trooper from the Mandalorian series. So he isn't included in the squad above. I have another type of AK Grime that I have yet to try, so his base will be the test subject for that. 

The photo is straight from the eBay auction!

I picked up these two Speeder Bikes off of eBay for a bargain and they're nice enough that I'll leave them as is for the foreseeable future. I may hit them with a light sepia wash to blend them in with the squad above at some point, but can't see myself doing anymore than that. 

Plot armor for the win?

 

Uti...nn...(gulp). 

I played Jake at the FLGS (The Gamer's Guild SC) this past week in another recon sized game, which is all I can muster currently. The mission was close the pocket, surface scan and we didn't add any advantages.

My army with Juan Solo & the speeder just out of frame. 

My Rebels were lead once again by Juan Solo. I also had two super squads of rebel troopers with Z-6 gunners, The Jawas (Ewok slingers), the AT-RT with a laser cannon and my new T47 Landspeeder.

The FLGS owner in his natural habitat.

Jake had Vader, two squads of Stormtoopers, one with Del Miko, a squad of Scouts plus a sniper team, and the AT-ST with mortars. 

Here is how the game went to the best of my recollection:

The battlefield with my Jawas already on the board.

Even with low profile, cover, a dodge and surge tokens, the arrival of the AT-ST killed two of the little guys!

Jake's scouts moved up aggressively, and my first rebel squad to arrived, rolled a bucket of dice and deleted the scouts out of existance!

The AT-RT & T-47 meanwhile took a good chunk out of the AT-ST, forcing Del Meeko's squad to move up allowing him to repair 2 of the walker's wounds. 

Juan along with my second squad of Rebel troopers overload the right flank...

Rolling the same bucket o' dice as their sister squad and they wiped out the Scout sniper team. 

...and things were going so well. 

My Rebels dumped into Vader inflicting a few wounds. The T-47 hammered Vader as well, but he shrugged off all of the speeder's shots. 

Vader moves into engage the Rebels, killing about half of them. 

As Vader mauls the one squad, the other hoses down the Stormtroopers on the other side of the wrecked AT-AT, reducing the squad to two. 

Who are summarily finished of by the Jawas!

Vader uses the Force to pick up & slam down the first Rebel squad, killing one. He then moves into engage both squads. 

The AT-RT whiffs when shooting the AT-ST which returns fire, crippling the little walker. Del Meeko & friends meanwhile wipe out the infernal Jawas. 

Juan moves up to get into potential scoring position while Vader continues to grind thru Rebel troopers. Meanwhile the Speeder bootlegs around and finishes off the AT-ST. With only 3 models still alive (while reaping an awful toll, Vader was down to 2 wounds remaining), Jake ran up the white flag and the Rebels win!

*****

Well that was fun, if a bit lopsided. The 10-strong trooper squads, even without aim tokens were brutal. Rolling 15 dice each due to the Z-6, left Jake's smaller squads with little hope of survival in the face of such onslaughts. The T-47 did well, and probably deserves to be painted, having almost single handedly taken down the AT-ST. We didn't do a great job of scoring the mission. 

On turn 2, I think it was 4-3 in my favor. Jake lost both of his scanners, and...well, with both of us being newer players we focused more on killing each other rather than scoring. 

My post game impulse buy. 

20mm gaming and more cavern terrain

o/

They're a little bobbleheadish, but still pretty cool looking.

A few years back I looked into 15mm scale 40K due to the ever increasing costs of 40K minis and...I literally got laughed at. Skipping forward to the present and I have zero interest in playing anything GW as the costs of fielding something competitive are simply astronomical ($45 for a Lysander resculpt, seriously?). 

No packs, just their body armor. These are simple enough for generic sci-fi/near future troopers.

Anyways, I stumbled across some 20mm 3D printed Starship trooper minis, and ordered 30 for $33 including shipping & tax. The Etsy seller instead sent me 55! They all have rifles only, a variety of heavy weapons troopers are available and I may order some of those as well. 

Heading underground and looking for trouble. The guy with the striped base is the squad leader.

They also make a variety of 40K armies so the small scale and (gasp: affordable) 40K option is still there. We haven't settled on a system to use these with yet, but we are looking (possibly Down Range). As I received double what I was expecting, I gave half of the minis to my buddy Nick. 

Speaking of Nick...

He 3D printed up some more cavern tiles for me. 

Back when I first started buying my caves terrain, 3D printers were still a fairly new thing, and had not proliferated as they have by this point in time. As such, my originally purchased cavern tiles cost me a pretty penny. That said, they were still quite reasonable given the number I had purchased, and especially in comparison to say, any GW terrain. 

The nook is clear, move out.

The site I had previously gotten my cave tiles from went out of business at some point and no longer exists. However, I found the cave STLs on thingverse and bought them for a mere $20. I passed them on to Nick who has a few 3D printers. He printed up a small test batch (now painted) that you see above. I told him that I wanted to be able to fill my whole game table with these and he thought that was a cool idea saying (quote): 'I'll start cranking them out.' 

So look for more on the caverns front here in the future. 

*****

In regards to my last post and the stupid number of page hits: by the time that this post publishes, it will have crested 3,000 'views'. 

Who is really reading this?

o/

Here's a preview of a new project.

Recently (as in the last two posts on both of my blogs), my page hits have gone thru the roof. My previous post on this blog crested 1000 views just this week! Yet no one comments. So where are these views coming from? Bots, Ai queries, or actual hobbyist views? I am sure that there are at least a few of the latter. 

Personally, I am thinking that this has something to do with blogger's new search link suggestions (which were declined for this post). According to my blog stats, a large chunk of views are coming from google as always, yet an extraordinary number of views are coming from a non-descript 'other' that is primarily US based (or so their VPNs say) and using the Microsoft operating system. 

Curiously, the old Faeit 212 is still a strong contributor of what I would call legitimate page views, but those are a mere pittance compared to this recent onslaught. So please, comment below and let me know:

Who are you?

You just murdered a child. WELL YOU KILLED MY TEDDY BEARS!

This post's title was a mid-game exchange from my most recent Rebels vs. Rebels game of Star Wars Legion. It begs the question: with Rebels like these, who needs the Empire?

40K isn't the only game to devolve into a big ol' scrum in the middle of the field!

This time around I played vs Anthony who is also learning the game, which put us more or less on the same level. Only a game or two ahead of me, Anthony's grasp of the rules were a little better than mine, but overall it was a fairly smooth running game. Well, aside from the need to keep looking up my keywords as I kept forgetting what they meant. Anthony was finding these answers online faster than I was looking thru the rulebook. Speaking of, what does Lethal 1 mean again? (I asked that at least 3 times.)

So here is how the game went...well sorta. I realized in hindsight that a good portion of the game went unphotographed. 

My Rebel Force lead by none other than Juan Solo. Note the Jawas are proxies for Ewok Slingers.

Anthony's force lead by Princess Leia who was none to impressed by the scroundrel wannabe on my side of the table...

The Battlefiled during the opening moves. The mission was Bunker Assault, I got cunning deployment, and Anthony had fortified positions, giving him several barricades for additional cover.

Anthony confidently sending his Wookies right up the middle.

My forces start to build heavily on my left flank, and summarily hit the deck as a T-47 Snowspeeder comes blazing in!

Juan, leading from the rear joins the vacation squad in taking the wrecked AT-AT's foot. Unwisely, I put the trooper squad with the astromech as far from my AT-RT as it could get.

Anthony's Rebels concentrated on the middle of the field for the most part, with the Bad Batch keeping in close to the landing pad.

The T-47 manages to wound the Mandalorian, while the Bad Batch pops out to hose down the Jawas (killing all but the leader) before falling back into cover.

My Ewok skirmishers meanwhile ran up the sloped hull side of the downed AT-AT and charged over the top into the rather surprised Bad Batch!

I believe I took 2 of them down with pointy sticks when the Wookies came roaring into the fray!

Ewoks vs. Wookies is not a Furry fair fight. 

The Ewoks persisted somehow though for as long as they could...

Disengaging from the Ewoks to let the Bad Batch to finish off the last of them, the Wookies proceeded to charge Din Djarin. They inflicted something like 6+ wounds which he simply shrugged off with his plot beskar armor. 

Just as the Bad Batch finished off the last Ewok, the AT-RT clambers over the AT-AT wreckage and charges in, killing the juvenile member of the squad, prompting the exchange that lead to this post's title. 

The Wookies disengage Mando and summarily obliterate the nearby Rebel trooper squad! Shortly thereafter, Din shoots with his pistol and flame projector, followed by Grogu doing 'the hand thing'. Between the two, the surviving Wookies are hit with so many tokens that I had a flashback of the old X-Wing game!

On the other side of the board, I had a lone Duros squad leader and the AT-RT left when Anthony's troops blew up one of my bunkers at the game's end.

In total, I believe that victory points were somewhere in the realm of 13-3, in Anthony's favor. A thorough ass kicking, though unlike my last SWL game, this one was far more enjoyable & I am looking forward to another game soon. 

Edit: Blogger likes to add links in all over now. This is a new feature, though I am not sure if I like it or not. If they want to add features in, how about showing typos in drafts again? That was a great feature that disappeared at some point.