Twilight 2000/ Post Apocalypse Soldiers.

Growing up, as I did, at the tail end of the Cold War one of RPGs that really drew me in was Twilight 2000; a game that I’m sure most of you are familiar with too. I never played many games of it: the combination of modern weaponary and 19th century medical care meant that and wounded characters didn’t last that long… I keep thinking of returning to it but as a battling warlord skirmish campaign type thing rather than a straight RPG. Nonetheless in the meantime I keep collecting bits for it as and when, in fact my earliest modern figures started of being collected for Twilight 2000.

 

Elhiem Figures have released a very nice set of mounted (ex)soldiers suitable for the game. Even better, due to the modular design of the figures you can have the same figure mounted and dismounted.

To give them a ragtag look I mixed in bits on non- camouflaged clothing. They have a nice mix of weaponary too. I think it would be worth making them up as a special group of NPCs for the player characters to encounter if you were running a campaign.

First up with have a guy in a black T-shirt carrying a shotgun.

Next we have a guy in the earlier M1 helmet talking on the radio.

Man waving pistol about- there is a slung rifle on his horse.

One man carrying M16 and binoculars- probably my favourite one.

Bareheaded with an M16.M203 combination.

Floppy bush hat with an M249 Minimi Squad Automatic Weapon.

The horses have the legs of the riders suclpted on them- the torso fits in with a plug, a sperate set of legs are available for the dismounted figures so you can mix and match until you are happy with poses. It is nice to have this much flexibility when putting together the minis. If some more were to be released but with Soviet/ Russian weaponary I’d be very happy as they’d complement this set immensely.

Cheers,

 

Pete.

 

 

Fast and dirty crowds.

On a whim I bought some railway modellers’ pre painted OO scale  civilians from ebay;  they were very  cheap and I’d seen someone use the O scale ones well on Lead Adventure forum. When I got them they were worse than I expected if I’m being trueful but decided to base up a few any way and see how they looked.

Firstly I textured some ply hex bases with homemade textured paint. I glued the figures on, gave them a heavy all over wash of Army Painter, drybrushed the base and then hit them with some matt varnish.

If you look at an individual stand you can tell how awful they are.

That said I think the mass effect works and they should be useful for some modern city based games. When the rest of the packet of a hundred are done it should make quite a crows.. The same ebay seller has civilians in arab dress so I may pick up a packet of those too.

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Whoop, Whoop: das Geräusch der Polizei.

(With apologies to KRS-One)

Elhiem Figures has recently released two version of the (in)famous East German Trabant car: one civilian, one police. These are 3D prints and are rather nice, much better than the Shapeways ones I bought several years back.

The pair of little Trabants.

Believe it or not over 3 million of them were made.

This Police one should really have lettering on it but I didn’t fancy trying out my freehand on it so left it off.

Both were painted in acyrlics before being weathered with oil paints. The blue police lights were done with Games Workshops range of gem paints; they look OK but I don’t think they were really worth the extra effort. Still given how little paint I used they should last for years.

 

They make a nice little pair and should be some nice set dressing if I ever set a Cold War game in East as opposed to West Germany.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Megagmunda: The megagame.

Back in the mid nineties when I was doing my A levels I used to play a lot of Games Workshop’s Necromunda game and over the years I’ve read a bit of Judge Dredd, although I’ve never been a massive 2000AD fan, so when the mash up of both of these SF universes was added to the Pennine Megagames Calendar I definately wanted to play.

Megamunda, a mining planet,  was divded up into four citi tables over which the gangs fought for control of the seedier parts of the economy whilst the miners were in town to spend their hard earned cash. The five gangs (Troggies, Neon Knights, Cosmic Punks, Van Der Saars and Bandidos) had a representative in each citi who had to fight for control on a hex map my placing countrol counters down and fighting for turf. There were a large group of judges who tried to keep law and order on each of the citi tables, above them were the Governor and planatary wide level. To complicate matters further the mysterious Inquisitions were present doing secret things.

 

I was asked by Philip, the game designer, if I minded being put with a group of first time gamers to give them a bit of help if they needed it. I didn’t mind at all so was given the role of the deputy gang boss for the Bandidos. At this point you may have noticed that some megagames have adressing up element to them, something that I’ve never really gon for myself but given my miss-spent you as a goth/ rivet head/ industral fan dressing as a SF gangmember was something I could easily do. Sadly most of my clothes from 20 years ago no longer fitted but I still had all my spiked arm bits and what not so I dug them out. I also got a friend of mine to shave my head into a mowhawk  and dye it yellow (The bandidos gang colour), I figured it would be getting into the spirit of things.

The game went really well. As deputy gang boss I wasn’t fixed to a single table but could chat/ scheme/ form alliances with the other gangs as well as sort out the money for the Bandidos. This meant I collect was the citi level bosses took each turn and then bought resources, different cards, for them to use in the game. These cards were sent through the central hub and there was a chance of them being intercepted by the judges and anything illegal confiscated. Gang members in each different citi could also trade cards this way too. The gang bosses could also hangout in the wastelands and play gamble for game cash. I’m not the betting sort, at least not with games of chance, but when introduced to Liar’s Dice a game of bluff and deception I took to it straight away and found I was quite good at it. I won 2/3rds of my games and got some good stuff for my gang.

The game cards were fun and you could set up some good combinations with them. We were planning an offensive against the Troggies in one of the citis so used card to spy on the assets and steal the best ones before we launched our, successful, attack against them.

We entered an alliance fairly early with the Van Der Saars; we agreed to not fight each other and help out in fights if needed as well as passing along any items that the other side wanted. I’ve read enough H P Lovecraft to be suspicious when they asked for any old books that we came across…. I did get pulled in by the Inquisition for an interrogation to see if I knew anything about the missing governor, any heretic or any xenos on the planets. I didn’t voice my suspicions about the Van Der Saars but after I was let go I wrote down my accusation on a piece of paper. I kept it handy, if I ever felt that we were being betrayed by the Van der Saars I would have slipped it to the Inquisitors.

The team I was with for the most part really enjoyed their day and they wee agreat bunch too. Only one of them seemed not so keen. At the end of the day we had achieve 2 out of the 3 (and probably the 3rd to be fair) objectives we had been given as a gang which was as much as others so that was pretty succesful.

It was a great day, and a nice change to get to play a game too. For a first game it worked very well. A few tweaks could be made to the design but they’d mostly be nitpicking.

 

Apologies for the paucity of pics- my phone camera isn’t the best and most came out blurry.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

 

 

 

The Great War: The French Expansion Kickstarter has arrived.

The Great War is a game inthe Command and Colours family by Richard Borg which I got into when it was first kickstartered (is that a verb now? I kickstarter, you kickstarter, we all kickstarter?) a few years ago. The Great war as a conflict can be tricky to game, especially the Western Front in its trench warfare phase; whilst low level games of trench raiding may work gaming the actual attacks across the no man’s land can be problematical.*

Richard Borg has made a very fun game that uses managing two hands of cards to allow you to ‘enjoy’ the frustrations of the war. It is very difficult to set up a good run of things, tanks break down all the time and you never have enough artillery but when you can coordinate everything it is very satisfying. As a result when the 3rd, French, expansion (based around the battle of Verdun, was announced I backed it straight away.

I picked it up from the Post Office on Saturday and got it opened up.

The main box with the modest extras I got, I managed to restrain myself and not go overboard with buying everything this time.

The back of the box telling you what you get.

The contents- lots of scenarios, a full set of figures for the French and extras for the Germans and British.

The figures again separated by type.

One nice feature is that this exapansion adds loads of specialists to the mix (spotters, officers, extra ammo carriers, flamethrowers… that kind of thing) as well as rules to add them into the previously published scenarios. By using a list to see how many to add into each game and then cross referencing a table to see what was available in each year of the war you have, for the first time, a personal choice in the make up of your force in a scenario.

Talking of scenarios: I’ve played this game at least 20 times now and am yet to repeat a game. Now with this expansion bringing the number of different scenarios up to 62 I reckon I’ve still got about a hundred game left at least before I repeat myself (I’m counting playing the same scenario from different sides as different games).

In other news, and featured here because she sat in the box the game expansion came in, I’d like to introduce my new cat: Ticker.

I had been with out a pet for a couple of years after my last cat Mickey (huge b&w Tom) had to be euthanised after developing tumours and was waiting until a cat needed a home came along. Ticker was the cat of a friend of a friend of my Mu7m’s who sadly passed away and she needed rehoming. She has been a little timid and standoffish but she is partly, or probably mostly, siamese and I’ve heard they can be like that and take a long time to bond so I’m giving her plenty of space and affections while she settles in.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

 

*Though not impossible see Martin Rapier’s work here: http://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2018/08/amiens-1918-2.html

A little bridge.

I’ve recently bought this useful bridge from Anyscale models (they have a great range and are very reasonably priced, check them out here ) it is listed in their 28mm section but I’m planning to use it for my 20mm toys as well.

It’s not the most interesting piece of terrain but it really will be useful.

It is a nice size to fit over my resin stream sections.

One of the Airfix trucks from my previous post negoiates the roadway.

One nice touch is that the kit comes with enough parts to do a ruined version… in case there is a well placed artillery/ bomb strike or someone tries to drive too heavy a tank across it.

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Bargain price game mats.

Given the quality job Pix Art Printing clicky did with the game maps for my recent Case Blue megagame I decide that I put some more business their way. Several years ago I bought a few game maps from Wargames Vault clicky with the intention of printing them out onto paper and assembling them as a jigsaw. This didn’t work so well for various reason… but now there is Pix Art I decided to send them there to be printed. Using MS Publisher I added all the images together into one massive file and then waited for a special offer to be on to maximise my savings.

In the End I got a 130cm by 350cm vinyl at printed for £30 including delivery from Italy.

I got a 120cm square wasteland mat that will be ideal for any game set in the Middle East/ North Africa, as a point of comparison the going rate for a comparable sized mat by itself seems to be about £25.

This 120cm by 60cm costal strip will be great for ampibious landing be it in WW2 or the Dark Ages, the textures should work for both 20 and 28mm sized figures.

I added a few maps from my Print and Play board game collection- here we have maps for the Russo- Japanese War, WW1, fictional WW3 and right up to date with the War in Donbass.

 

A slightly smaller urban mat- should be useful for some of the 40K figures I’ve painting recently.

Finally I printed the map for use in Brian Train’s free urban COIN game: Maracas clicky

 

All in all I’m really pleased with this. They should last for ages and as they are easy to roll storage isn’t a problem either.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.