Actual. Gaming.

 

Believe it or not; my fun hobby is NOT painting miniatures to an acceptable wargaming tabletop standard but is actually playing miniature wargames with said miniatures.  Go figure.

A Pic heavy post and kinda wordy.  Like ALL GOOD blog posts.  

Games Actually Played

I did good in March and actually got to play in 3 games.  Cup. Runneth. Over.  

Maybe this year I can redeem myself and actually get to call myself a miniature warGAMER.

The Old Standard

Early in the month I was able to attend a game at the club hosted by good friend Mr. AS of Brigade Fire and Fury with his 10mm troops.  ACW with Fire and Fury?  Playing almost all day on a Saturday while the wife is stuck at home with the kids?   Kinda my old Gold standard of a good time.

I was assigned as the Union CiC (as is only proper) who were attacking some CSA (who else?).  I took the largest force with 3 divisions stating that as the CiC it was required and because I know the rules really well I could handle it but really it was because I am GREEDY gamer and wanted a lot of troops to command.

My 3 divisions are tasked with pushing some CSA off the wooded ridgeline.
My cunning plan; to run right at them.
Though as seen by the arrows I would also use my extra men to wrap around the flank.

The DOOMED troops of the CSA lining the ridge.
I really like the look of BFF in 10mm.

I didn't take any more good pictures.  I was busy playing and talking, and also I tend to act as a second GM (with permission) so when I should be taking pictures when it's not my turn I'm actually helping the other guy run through the rules.  

I did have the classic Fire and Fury charge result, that some people loathe but I actually think is awesome.  Charge combat is an opposed roll off with D10s.  My roll is  +5, his roll is -3.  I look at him and say "just don't roll a 10."  He rolls a 10 and the whole table erupts in laughter (making his total 7).  I look at my die and say "anything but a 1."  I roll a 1 (making my total 6, he wins) and the whole table erupts again with added Rebel Yells.  It's awesome when that happens, even if it happens to me of all people.  

The Experiments

Later on in the month I was able to do some experimenting.  Not like the crazy experimenting I did in my youth with drugs and sex; so don't get too excited.  No, this is grown up serious wargaming experiments.  

First experiment- Meeting:  I had Mr. Lasgunpacker himself -David,  from the fun Lazgunpacker blog, over for a face-to-face game, meeting for the first time in person.  A very low risk experiment as David and I have been commenting on each others blogs for YEARS now and he didn't really feel like a stranger anymore, despite starting out as just some guy on the internet.  Perhaps some of you out there would feel the same about me?.....perhaps not but keep it to yourself.  

Second Experiment- Playing Outside:  I decided to host the game outside (bleh!) for 2 reasons.  COVID precautions being one of them of course but more because we were playing on a Sunday and the wife and kids would be around and I was trying to be considerate to the wife.  Not that the wife and kids can't come say hi which they did (a little too often in the case of the children).  More so that the wife wouldn't feel like she HAD to take the kids somewhere and if they all stayed home  the kids could run around the house being noisy and messy and destructive (as they usually are) and David and I would be safely out of the tornado's path in the backyard.  

My sneaky wife took this picture from the window.
The backyard set up.
That's David's handsome back and my average front.

The set up.  You can see that I was hogging all the snacks on my half of the table.

Third Experiment - SPACESHIP gaming!:   I recently had an interest in starting up some spaceship gaming in Star Trek and was eager to try it out (you can see this post HERE if so inclined).  David came over with a printed out hex mat and some painted ships we could play Klingon Armada.  

You can see better pictures of David's ships on his post HERE.

I took the Federation of Planets, otherwise known as 'The good guys' and David played the Klingons otherwise known as 'Alien scum lords.'  

My Constitution class starship (Ie, Enterprise) being chased by a missile.

Another one of my ships in BIG trouble.

Piloting and tracking damage and power of 4 ships was not too taxing.
We did have to tape the sheets down though so the wind wouldn't take them.

Experiments Results - Successful to Terrible:

Meeting David: brilliant success.  Nice man, very polite and rolls average dice.  Gonna do more gaming with him.  Seriously nice to meet you in  a real life face to face.

Gaming outside: tolerable success.  Despite my huge preference for being inside versus outside, it was a nice day and gaming outside was pleasant.  The set up to provide shade seemed was successful and wasn't too much work to set up.

Spaceship Gaming:  Terrible!  because I really liked it and now want all my own stuff! Yet another genre to pursue. 

Side Discussion: The SFU

Klingon Armada is an adaptation of the Starmada rules to be used in the Star Fleet Universe (SFU) which is best described as David puts it on his blog, as Star Trek Adjacent.  It's like it's own version of Star Trek with it's own timeline and such, and it's not the one we know from the TV shows.   It's the same universe that games of federation Commander and Star fleet Battles take place in.   Klingon Armada tries real hard to be like Federation commander.   In the SFU ships tend to fire a bunch of missiles at each other as well as the standard phasers / disruptors and photon torpedoes. The missiles by themselves are alright  but there's other stuff in there that's kinda wacky like loading up shuttle craft with explosives, setting the auto pilot, and launching it at the bad guys like a suicide shuttle. 

I did though like the game play and the core rules of Starmada are REALLY good.

 

The New Favorite

Finally, during the week I had Mr AS over again to play Clash of Spears, my new favorite skirmish game.  Playing inside this time as there were less children around.

The scene is a quiet Saxon village...

But the people are in distress...

...because a T-Rex has come to the village.

Son#2 wanted to put some of his toys on the table with my 'toys.'
He assured me that the T-Rex was friendly.
(and might even be pretty close to scale)

The REAL scenario is that some Normans have come creeping up in the dawn
to slug it out with the Saxons who are being churlish about who the new king of England is.
In the patrol phase above; Normans come in from the right corner
while Saxons spill out of the Great Hall entrance.

Side Discussion (another one??):  4ground

I heard that 4ground would be closing, specifically will stop taking orders June 30th.  As all my dark ages buildings are from 4ground, I decided for this game to get them all on the table to see how my collection was coming along (it consists of the Great Hall and 5 buildings).  I think it could use another 4 buildings, so I might have to order these just so that everything on the table will be consistent.  I mean I have too right? Even if it means the buildings will likely sit around unopened for weeks/months/years before I get around to putting them together.

Back to the game now.  By the way, the mat is my homemade wargaming matt that is 6x10.  The table is only 5x6 but the matt hasn't been unrolled in about 4 years so I wanted to see how it was holding up.  

Saxons line up to defend their homes

The Normans are confident with a mix of Spearmen, crossbows, and Cav

the mat seems to be doing alright.  A little wrinkled in places.
In any case, all my tokens for CoS continue to look the Biz-ness so I am pleased.

One of these days I'm gonna have to do a VERY detailed AAR of Clash of Spears game just to show you all how awesome it is.  I mean SUPER detailed, like the AARs that The Tactical Painter writes on his blog.  

Let's all hold our breathe until that happens;  shouldn't be too long given that I've never written a good AAR.

Fare Thee Well

Is how fancy people like me say goodbye.  Till next time.

Thanks for reading.  Double Thanks for writing a comment.

039/100

 Why are they called the Dark Ages? 

Because there were so many Knights!

LOLOLs, you know you can't touch this.

It's for Ages with the Dark Ages 

That joke would work better if I had some Norman cavalry to display but alas; I am not that cool.

What I do have is more Dark Ages infantry types as I continue my goal to paint 100 of these mean little men.  In the largest batch to date I painted 16 of them; all with bristle beards or macho mustaches, strong spears and swift swords, and dainty delicate daisies on their underwear.  

Bringing the total of painted miniatures to 39 out of 100. 

Here they are; Heroes just for one day.  A mix of Saxons and Vikings.

 

Here are a few close ups of a few Saxons, so you can see the absolutely GORGEOUS display of my average painting.  

(I think the Bayeux Tapestry memes are funny)

And some Vikings made it into the mix this time.

What the difference between a Generic Viking dark age warrior miniature and a Generic Saxon dark age warrior miniature?  Mostly the smell.  Saxons smell like cinnamon and Vikings smell like suntan lotion.  I duuno why.

Actually not much.  I try to give Saxons a cross on their shield somewhere and heads with mustaches while the Vikings get more blonde hair in braids and shields that have...ah... anything that's not a cross.

Those were some thrilling pictures of miniatures are they not? 

I'll stop with the memes soon.  Proommiissse.

My Turn!

A lot of miniature wargaming blogs that I follow will occasionally post pics of their adventures away from the wargaming table; like pretty landscapes and wildlife.  I nod along appreciatively but I'm well documented for being an inside person.  I like being inside.  Outside is lame and filled with terrible things like bright sunlight and people walking their dogs (the horror).

But my wife likes the outside and I like my wife, and moreover I like what she does for me after we go outside if you know what I mean....

(she let's me play miniature wargames inside while she takes the kids outside; what were you thinking of?)

For Valentines Day I gave my wife a weekend trip to one of here favorite spots; Muir Woods.  We went last weekend.  Muir Woods is a tourist trap on the West Coast in the San Francisco Bay Area and is basically a National Park that is full of really OLD, really BIG, really TALL Ca. Redwoods trees.

We dropped off  Daughter #1 and Son #2 at their grandparents house for the weekend but took Son #3 (barely over a year old) with us to the forest ,because the grandparents (my inlaws) can't watch all 3 of the surviving children at once; especially since Son #3 still needs diaper changes and like to CLIMB on everything.  Bless their hearts they'll tell you they can watch all 3 of them but I know better.  I'm 30 years younger than they are and I can just barely watch all 3 of them. 

I won't barrage you with pics because it's mostly just, you know, trees.  Muir Woods has 1 main trail loop that is wide and flat and suitable for strollers and such, and a couple other trails branching  off that are more rugged.  Most of the trees there are hundreds of years old and some are even over a thousand years old.  

Told you he climbs on everything

I hiked around 4 miles with 20 odd pounds of toddler strapped to my chest.
Guess I can't be that old and out of shape.

Us inside the trunk of giant tree

Bye

And now it's time for me to make like a tree.....and leave.  But before I go:

Last Bayeux Tapestry meme.

Thanks for reading.

Double Thanks for writing a comment.

Till next time.

023/100

Enough dickin around with Star Trek (see previous post), though there will be more dickin around in space in future posts.  Now though; back to the task at hand.  

On The Way

February has turned out to be a productive month, as I completed 13 more Dark Ages warrior types.  I'm gonna try and paint in larger batches than 10, otherwise I'll be doing this all year before I get to 100 miniatures.

I have a vague notion that if I can get these done by late August I can go to Pacificon in early September with a mass dark ages battle to put on.  Gives me about 6 months. It's good to have goals.

Any-hooters, here are the proud 13.

The heroes of the hour.
A mix of plastic and metal figures.

Here are some close ups so you can see the AH-mazing paint jobs.

That is said tongue in cheek, it's just average paint jobs, like everything I paint.

This guys has a hair cut like he could be an extra in a
Planet of the Apes movie.

This metal miniature is going to eventually drop his spear.
no amount of super glue will keep it in place.
It's gonna happen because the hand is not big enough to hold it.
I understand his pain, because I also have small  delicate hands.

10 guys go onto the big battle base (fancy phrase for a movement tray),
which I already had done so no extra points there.
The other 3 will have to wait their turn.

That's a total of 23 done towards the goal of 100.  Solidly on the way now.

Bonus:

As an extra bonus, I finished up the last of my tiny dice counters, because they were sitting on my painting desk and I was already in the process of painting bases brown and gluing on flock...

Miniature in there just for scale.
I now have 50 of these things, which is plenty for anything I could use them for;
basically any game mechanic that require tracking as long as it's 1-6.

I know!  I am a burst of activity these days. if by activity you mean sitting at a desk and fussing around with glue and paint.  Doesn't really increase the heart rate or make me sweat; I'm not THAT out of shape. 

Hubby Points

I have been earning buco-mucho hubby points lately for all manner of things.  My Valentines Day gift to the wife was that  I planned a weekend away in March to one of her favorite places.  Cha-ching.  

Also all manner of activities I have done.  One that was quite different; preparing ginger bread houses for the girl scouts that the little kids could decorate.  

One can buy gingerbread house kits, but that starts to get expensive for 13 girls.  To save costs we got regular gingerbread crackers and hot glued them together.  But first, to get the house shape the tops of the crackers had to be to cut at a roughly 45 degree angle..

With the skill of surgeon, I took a serrated knife and cut out top corners of the crackers,
 making an inverted V.
It took many, many, many crackers as they would constantly break.
So not a very good surgeon.

Here We Are, At the End

I got in 3 thrilling posts in Feb, the shortest month of the year.  I could be getting good at this blogging business.  Took long enough.

Till Next time.

Thanks for reading.  Double thanks for leaving a comment, I do like those. 

Wargamer's Wandering Minds to Space Ships (part 1)

 Naturally while I am painting Dark Ages Saxons and Vikings, I started thinking about Star Trek.  One follows the other like a sunrise after the cold night.....

Prologue:

On my birthday last December, I was supposed to get together with my friend Mr. PC and play this old chestnut of a board game..

10 years old this game is, and still awesome.

We ended up cancelling because my whole family got sick (not COVID, but some other virus) and life is dumb.  Then some time later while BORED at work I was thinking about the game and Star trek in general (because I was REALLY bored), and how come I don't have any Star trek miniatures? On a whim I typed into google "Star Trek Miniature Wargame" and found a new rabbit hole to go down.  

Or you could call it a black hole.

Because it's a hole...(announcer voice) IIINNNN SSPPAAAAACE.

"Engage"

What follows will mainly be the journey down that black hole.  Mostly to serve for my own online storage.  I'll also advertise it as a guide for others.  It might be amusing, especially from the POV of someone who is not a trekkie (like myself).  I'm primarily a historical gamer, but I've always said that I like Sci-Fy and Fantasy as long as it's Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings.  I've played starship games at conventions and had fun.  The main difference is that instead of making "boom! boom! vroom!" noises while moving tanks you make "pew! pew! Bzzzzt" noises while moving starships.  You DO make sound effect noises while playing miniature games don't you?  It can't be just me.

But If I am gonna do some spaceship gaming it's gotta be Star Wars or Star Trek because I cannot be bothered to learn some other setting.  You should see the way that my eyes glaze over when I start to read some other version of the galaxy...."These are the bloopbloop aliens they come from  the planet megabloop and their culture revolves around the concern for bloopiness" and I feel asleep because it soooo boring.

I think Trek beats out StarWars for ship to ship combat because Starwars is usually about fighters zipping around.  Think about every cool space scene in Star Wars and what you're following are characters in fighters, not the big ships.  Star Trek is more about crewed ships slugging it out and barely ever uses fighters, which is more to my taste.  I kinda want Age of Sail ships of the line...but in space. And Trek has been described as Horatio Hornblower.....but in space.   

Also; According to my research, I'm about 20 years late to the party of wanting to do starship combat with Star trek style ships.  WAAAAY behind the curve.  Once again I demonstrate that I have my fingers on the pulse of the wargaming community...  

I had to learn a lot of new vocabulary.  I was helped by poking around the internet, posting on TMP,  and by internet best friend David from the Lasgunpacker Blog.  

First question: Which Trek?

TOS vs TNG

TOS stands for The Original Series which aired on TV from 1966 through 1969 and then onto syndication.  Apparently, it only got real popular after syndication.   It's Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and Bones.  TNG stands for The Next Generation that aired on TV from 1987 to 1994.  Picard, Riker, Data, and Crusher.  It's the endless Kirk vs Picard debate.  Pick your side now.  These represent the two subgenres of Star trek as they cover different time periods / tech levels.  You could of course mix them together because it's ALL MADE UP ANYHOW but the historical gamer in me thinks that's too much like putting WWII tanks on an AWI battlefield.  

Things to think about while choosing: 

Ship appearances: 

Everyone loves the Classic Enterprise.

I love the classic Enterprise.  Turns out this is called a Constitution Class starship.  I didn't know that starships had types/classes but I suppose that makes sense.   

I even don't mind that every ship in the Star fleet kinda looks like this one, but with more Rocket-thingys stuck to it, or stuck on in different places. 

 

"Need More Rocket-Thingys Please!"

 

OK, the rocket-thingys are actually called Nacelles, I had to learn that to figure which miniatures to buy, and more on that later.  While researching fictional starships you come across a lot of 'made up' words.  (OK, 'nacelle' is not a made up word and it actually means "streamlined body sized according to what it contains",  But it SOUNDS made up) 

What is true for the TOS is true for TNG, The Federation had an aesthetic and went all in.
You're gonna get saucers and rocke... nacelles.  

I was always partial to the conflicts between Starfleet and the Klingons, and these two factions are kinda everyone's favorite anyway.  You don't see a lot of people going to Star Trek conventions dressed as Romulans, because Romulans are Boring.  (at least that's what I guess, I've never been to ST convention.  I'm not judging, I go to miniature wargame conventions so I don't really have the moral high ground).  

This is the classic Klingon ship from TOS.
I hate this ship.

This ship looks like a snapping turtle wearing a bad hat.  It's awful.  And the Torpedo tube in the front gives it an "OOOHH my gOOOOSh" expression. 

and trust me: every Klingon ship looks like this one.  You would think that for a show about the future and space they would have more imagination.  Apparently what they didn't have was a good enough budget for different ships.

Klingons from TNG and later times just have cooler ships.
This thing just looks menacing.

It's not till later on in the franchise, like Star trek III and after that you start to get cool Klingon ships like the famous Birds of Prey ships.  

Of course all these ship types exist simply because the TV show or movie script required one, "the bad guys need a ship and make it look cool."  The same type of ship even gets bigger or smaller depending on what the script calls for.  I find it hi-larious that there are 4 types of Bird of Prey star ships that all look the same but are different sizes, because during the TV shows and movies they used the same model over and over and just made it look bigger or smaller for the story arc.  

Nostalgia:

For me; the Trek that hits the Nostalgia bone is Next Generation.  If yours is TOS then you're probably about 10/15/20 years older than I am and are firmly into 'older man' years while I am just middle aged.

I can remember when I was just barely a teenager and TNG came out on TV; and my family would gather 1 night a week to watch together; before we were all separated by time, death, and bitterness.  That's almost the very definition of Nostalgia.  

Moving on: Rules

This is a whole new genre for me and it's fun to explore virgin territory, so I have no idea what rules are good for Space Ships zooming around going pewpewpewBOOM.  And there is no official TNG miniatures game unless you count Star Trek Attack Wing (which is just like Xwing, but with Trek ships,.  But I already have Xwing so don't need to duplicate it.)

Poking around the internet there seems to be two rule sets that come up over and over again; Full Thrust and Starmada.  

Apparently Full Thrust has been around for ages and ages, and is now free online and can be found at Ground Zero Games.  However, it goes through a bunch of revisions from the core book through the fleet books and there are other versions besides.  Yet, I did come across this:

This version of Full Thrust seems to have everything combined
and was updated in 2021, so fairly recently.

You can find this version free HERE.  

As I read the rules, they seemed awfully familiar to rules used in a space game I played years and years ago that I enjoyed.  So I either have already played and liked these rules OR all space games are kinda same.  

Online there are numerous conversions of FT to Trek from people who got here waaaay before me (did I mention I'm decades late to this party).  Though most are for classic Trek / TOS style ships.  And part of the fun is the endless tinkering to make your own ship designs.  

I've been using some free time at work to design ships for the eventual playtest.
Here is a rough and ready Ship Status Display (SSD) that I threw together.
That's right; I go to work in order to have free time.
There is no such thing at home.

 

The other rule set is available on Wargame vault for like $10, so I did an impulse purchase as the price was less than a pack of cigarettes...

There are about a hundred different versions of Starmada,
but the UNITY rulebook seems to be the latest and bestest.

Starmada is about 2 steps up in complexity from FT.  The gameplay is not super complex (though the ship construction rules are looking to be a real exercise in maths) but did require some extra reading.  

Starmada does have a Trek source book but it's for TOS era, but I might pick it up anyway just to see what they do, how they make the ships.  

I Know a Filler Post When I See One

This project is in it's infancy.  This post is mostly filler because I can't crank out painted Dark Age warriors as fast as I would like, but gotta post something or you all will forget about me.  But it's funny how a new genre can really spark the imagination and take us by surprise.  It's a special kind of excitement; researching about rules and miniatures, thinking about scenarios, and how this is or that.  Seeing what's been done before and how I would do it now.  I don't think board gamers get this kind of rush.  It's the rush of antici..........pation.

More on this as it develops.  I can hear you groaning from here.