A few more projects & game highlights

 o/

We had another rain sodden weekend which lead to a bevy of painting time. So see below at what all crossed the finish line: 

First up: I completed the last three mechs, a Shadow Hawk IIC, Crab/Night Chanter and a Lancelot for my Fire Mandrill Kindraa Mattila-Carrol (gosh that's an awful thing to both type and have to say!) star. This star is a fast moving glass cannon. 

Brightly colored and bordering on obnoxious!

I almost took this for a game eariler this week, but couldn't squeeze them down to 6k BV without running prettymuch all 4/5 pilots which is not at all in the flavor of the clans, not even for the crappy solahma units that I tend to favor. I still plan to paint up a point of Elementals to hitch a ride on the Night Chanter, but nothing is currently planned to expand them beyond that. 

One of these is frightening, and it is not the one you are thinking it is...

Next up: An armor lance for Corey's Cavaliers. In my recent game where the Cavaliers & Turtles took the bridges from the Capellans, The Cavaliers couldn't help but note that the tanks had largely carried the day. Unable to convince the Turtles to join their ranks (the tankers simply took their payment and left), the Cavaliers sought to purchase and outfit their own assault armor lance. 

I tried to tie in the brown accents on the mech's lower limbs by adding it to the lower and rear hulls.

They started off with the Shrek which killed their budget for this project, and corners had to be cut to flesh out the lance. Two Scorpions and a Vedette round out the force. That said, in another recent training skirmish scrum with Anthony & Aiden where my Cavaliers were woefully outgunned, my new armor lance suffered 75% casualties. 

You know how this worked out...

I used the Armor Scorpions which, in both cases required an extra turn of shooting to finish them off. In the interim they landed a few AC-5 slugs before expiring. 

After his other Mad Cat was crippled by Anthony's forces, my Vedette scored a glorious SRM hit that caused Aiden to run up the white flag! This also saved my (by-then armless) Rifleman from certain destruction.

My armor lance's MVP was AC-2 Vedette that plinked an AC-2 round into a Highlander IIC's cockpit, and later put an SRM into a Mad Cat's side with a snake eyes crit yielding 2 XL engine hits! It took a few good licks in return, but survived the game! It has thus been promoted to the lance's lead tank. 

And last but not the least:

I mean seriously, why would it be any other number?

An old custom decal from Fallout Hobbies (they no longer offer this service).

Lastly, I finally put the decals on my Canopian Pleasure Circus' dropship. Sadly, it does not feature in games at the FLGS as the last time I brought it there to use as terrain, one of the landing gear's 'feet' broke. Thus, it is only used here at the house. 

Urban gridlock

 o/

Nick and I got together for another game this week. Here was the scenario of his creation: 

3500 BV, Units are limited to infantry, combat vehicles and Mechs of no more than 30tons. It will be a very small city map, the objective is to have the infantry occupy a specific structure to gain VPs. For each unit more than your opponent occupying the structure at the end of the round you gain a point. For each enemy unit destroyed you gain a point. We play to 10 points, first one there win's. Only infantry can enter the structure and only by (2) possible entry points. Only units inside the building can fight each other with a +1 to hit modifier.

Here is how it all went down....

My 'Skittles' Force: (2) ML Scorpions, (2) RL Galleons, (2) SRM Wheeled APCs, (2) Command Van, Q-Variant, (2) Warrior H7A VTOLs, (4) Assault Hover Mechanized Platoons, (1) Motorized MG Platoon, and (2) Ballistic Rifle Foot Platoons, and my 'official' job title. 

Nick's Force: (2) Standard Scorpions, (2) Standard J. Edgar Hovertanks, (2) UM-R60s, (1) Warrior H7A VTOL, and (7) foot platoons of various types. 

Baxter helping set the table up. 

Small and dense city indeed, the large grey building next to Dunkin Davions was the objective. 

We set up 10 hexes out from the objective building. 

Nick curved his force around the city at the same distance. 

Neeka checking on Nick's math. 

She had her game face on and even 'helped' smack my dice around a bit. 

Early on Nick realized his error as his foot sloggers had no transports and my mechanized platoons moved 4 hexes a turn. 

His Warrior swoops in to gun down my lead hover platoon with it's machine gun. Due to modifiers, their return fire was ineffectual. 

With light tanks on both sides, they make for fairly equal adversaries. That said the SWAT APC was immobilized here. 

My warrior puts an AC-5 slug into the Urbie which turns and cores the VTOL in 1 shot! I lost both of my VTOLs this round.  

Nick's Warrior did it's job and Nick took an early 3 point lead. 

Next turn and my tan hover platoon platoon made it inside the objective and no doubt was recreating the Blues Brothers' mall scene! Meanwhile the other two platoons were right on the doorstep. Desptite being suicide, Nick's VTOL simply rotated in place to gun down another platoon, as his foot sloggers were still 8 hexes out. 

The flame platoon would die before the VTOL met a similar fate, but the grey platoon underneath made it in fine. 

This is chopper 5 traffic, looks like we have gridlock on the west side of town...

The J. Edgar and and Galleon blaze away while the scorpion's AC-5 was unable to hit at point blank range. Out of rockets, the Galleon would not survive this fight. 

The Cavaliers'  Wheeled APC lost it's SRM to a lucky crit on turn one. Rather than retreat, it went hunting for infantry and some vehicular manslaughter. Here it would kill 8 troopers while suffering a shotgun blast of damage all around and a motive hit (or was that just bodies stuck in the wheel wells?). 

A short distance later it would run into another platoon, killing 8 more before succumbing to the collective fire of an outraged infantry company!

Nick's J. Edger was immobilized and the grey Scorpion right next to it would spend a few turns in a static, point blank range fire fight! Still intent on the objective my motorized infantry finally was able to join into the fray.  

The Urbie put an AC-10 slug into the front of the as yet untouched Scorpion, which returned fire and scored an engine hit and jump jet loss on the previously softened up Urbie. 

The Motorized platoon dumps into the beleagered J. Edgar and puts it out of it's misery!

My second Galleon, all out of rockets, zipped by the other Urbie and gunned down another  platoon with it's twin MGs.. 

Yes I will bloody up the Cavalier's APC in recognition of it's war crimes. 

In the end I won, 10-6. While I lost more units than Nick, my hover platoons quickly getting inside the objective won me the game. Despite the force marching, his infantry never got anywhere near the objective (nor did my foot slogging platoons). This was a fun little scenario, that needs some tweaking (or transports) for the infantry. 

It was also fun to have all light tanks and mechs duking it out. Usually they just show up and die quickly, but against equalish opponents, light tanks and mechs quickly find themselves in the rare, lightweight slugging matches. 

Project: Recovery

 o/

Covid recovery always involves working on minis for me. 

The past week good ol' Covid decided to stop by & ruin my week for a third time. While I powered thru the best I could at work (I work remotely, so can still push buttons on a keyboard despite feeling like death warmed over). Luckily the fam didn't get it, though they did get...something. The Mrs. was none too happy as my telehealth visit got me some really good drugs whereas hers, not so much.

Anyways, despite the glorious weather outside this past weekend, I didn't do a whole lot out there aside from chilling in our adirondack chairs. When in post covid recovery you tend to get really tired, really fast as so many folks know. That said, I did do a fair bit of painting as you can see above and below. 

You'll note that several photos were taken out in the yard. Why yes, I did lay down in the backyard to take these as any, self respecting 49 year old gamer would. The Mrs. rolled her eyes and the teenager ignored me outright & the dog thought THIS IS GREAT! Or rather he did right up until he got yelled at for stepping on my toys. Clear coat for the win!

A Patton/Rommel for my generic Desert Force that is sucking in units like some sort of fucking black hole!

A second Patton/Rommel as well as a Drillson for my 1st Chisholm's Raiders which is once again a home or my orphaned units and random paint jobs (as the Raiders lacked a coherent color scheme). 

A point of Elementals for the Desert force in case I run my lance of  old Star League mechs as a 2nd line star. Likely as Nova Cats as all of their Galaxies always use appropriate camouflage. 

The Raiders' mech lance made up of survivors from my defunct Comstar/Wobblies and St. Ives formations. I opted to try and tie them together with repainted base edging and a shitload of decals!

40K Ork checker and triangle stripe decals work GREAT on mechs!

Hit 'em Hard The motto of most any Hunchback variant. The Space Wolves paw looks nice on there too. 

Vulcan, not seen in this pic though you can see it above, are the checker stripes across the tops of the shoulders. Also on the MG arm is says Buzzsaw in the same script as the Hunchback's Hit 'em Hard. 

This mini was actively on eBay when is was saved after performing admirably in a game where it was used as a primitive Archer. The decals came out great on this one!

Holy Camouflage Batman! It is a good thing this has blue markings & a brightly colored base, otherwise it would disappear into the background!

Three more models are also in-progress, but I'll save them and whatever else for a fututre post. I'm also hoping to reschedule a campaign game this week coming after cancelling last week due to my case of the black death. 

More little guys

 o/

This bunch is a mix of very new and a few not so old paint jobs. All have been painted within the past 2 months or so, though none were really worthy of a singular post in their own right. 

1st Royal Cavaliers WASP-WSP-1D 

Generic 10 Ton Tracked APC for no one in particular. Basically it is local militia/PDF

Like all of my 10 Ton APCs, this will be a filler model for when I don't feel like fielding infantry, or rather a horde of infantry. 

1st Royal Cavaliers' 10 Ton Wheeled APC, for when I don't want to spend 1400 points on a Sturmfeur, yet still want to field a lance of armor (and I use that term loosely in this particular case).

 

Wolf's Dragoons' Alpha Regiment Wasp WSP-1A

This is not this mini's first appearance on this blog. Rather that debut was in my last post where it was my Dragoons' sole survivor.

Yes, this is what surviving light mechs look like: Running away!

10 Ton Hover, Wheeled & Tracked APCs. I couldn't resist making a blue 'SWAT' APC to again add to my generic filler forces. The tracked APC is painted to match my Capellan Homeguard, because why wouldn't they have one of these? 

With the teeny tiny skull decal, this hover APC will go to my Dark Caste Bandits, though it would work in a pirate force as well.

Scorpion Light Tank ML/LAC variant(s). This was originally supposed to go to my snowballing out of control desert force. 

On a whim, it got shunted into the 1-off/geneic category after I wanted to try my hand at the old, US Desert Storm era 'chocolate chip' desert camo. 

While I may not have been entirely successful in that endeavor, it looks decent enough.