January Update: Anne's Miniature Assembly Challenge Results

I joined Anne's 2026 Miniature Assembly Challenge near the beginning of January with the aim of building enough Frostgrave gnolls for the second mission, converting some MESBG Rangers of Gondor into Dunedain, and possibly building a couple more minis. 

How did I do?

Assemble miniatures, gnolls, a ranger, and two different rangers

Well I managed ten more gnolls, more than enough, but it finished off the sprues. 

I also built an extra Ranger, nominally for T'Other One to use when we tackle the second mission.

Dunedain

The Dunedain were less successful; I finished two, but they were more work than I anticipated. 

Two converted Dunedain

both with backpacks

I wanted them to look sufficiently different to the Rangers of Gondor, so I decided to do away with any masks, shift the quiver to the hip, remove the sort of tabard thing and add extra equipment.  This was inspired by the official miniatures from GW. 

Alas I didn't take any pictures of them prior to converting them, but you can find plenty of pictures online if you're interested. 

The masked head on the firing ranger was removed with a razor saw and replaced with a bare head from (I think) the Frostgrave Soldiers sprue. I used quivers from the Oathmark Human Infantry sprue and concealed the mess made by removing the back quivers with Frostgrave backpacks etc.

I filled in the gaps with a 50-50 greenstuff and milliput mix, and made some attempt at showing the straps, but it's not perfect. 

I didn't complete the required nine Dunedain, and never started on the Dark Emissary I'll need for Boðvoc's Dark Shadows campaign, but even so I'm pleased.  I've got plenty to paint in February for Dave Stone's Paint What You Got Challenge. 

I missed the target for several reasons.  The Rangers were far trickier than anticipated (and I realised that I was short of four minis anyway). I've also been busy playing a lot of music, which has been glorious (Renaissance town bands and verse anthems among others), but hasn't helped assemble anything. 

If Anne runs the challenge again next year,  I certainly want to take part. 

And a Show

I did manage to get to York Wargames Society's Vapnatak on 1st February.  

My haul was modest, but useful. 

Vapnatak haul

I picked up five more Rangers of Gondor, so that's one excuse gone (see above). Seven monotone Skaven,  in case I ever get around to Vengeance of the Lichemaster (the seller threw in a skeleton missing it's slotta base,  but that's not a problem. 

I also got a selection of the old WotC prepainted Star Wars minis. 

Apart from the second hand stuff I got some more d10 dice for games of Warlords of Erehwon. 

Trying 7TV

Introduction 

T'Other One has been busy painting and modelling his 7TV 'Beneath the Mountains of Madness' kickstarter stuff. As a keen fan of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and his story At the Mountains of Madness,  this was sure to appeal to him. He's currently covering his terrain builds on his blog, I recommend you give it a read. 

The minis and accessories look great, but we'd never tried the actual game,  so we tried a quick game using Star Wars minis and Deadzone terrain. How does it play,  and do we like it?

The cast of the show (do you really need me to name them?)

What is 7TV?

7TV is produced by Crooked Dice. It's currently in it's second edition. At it's heart,  the game is a skirmish game that can be set in just about any background, from real world history to fantasy or science fiction.  But the game's conceit is that the players are directing casts of actors performing in an action packed TV show of the sort that seemed to fill the screens back in my youth. 

So the game has two aims; to provide a good skirmish system (otherwise it would be no fun to play) and to feel like TV show (otherwise why not just play any one of several excellent rule sets?). 

Skirmish in the Deadzone 

For a first game we both had small casts,  as a players' minis are known.  I dug out some of my WotC pre-painted Star Wars minis and we used the generic stats from the main rules,  although there are Star Wars specific cast cards available. We each had a Star,  a Co-Star and a bunch of Extras. 

The studio set ready for filming

T'Other One played the Rebels, he had Han Solo (a Loveable  Scoundrel), Chewy (Loyal Sidekick), Leia (Commander ) and four rebel troopers (Freedom Fighters). As the Imperial player I had Darth Vader (Dark Overlord, but we ignored his magic for our first game and gave him the light sabre from the unofficial cards), IG-86 (Ruthless Nemesis) and five Stormtroopers (Imperial Troopers).

The Rebel cast assemble

and the Imperials face them

This was a Pitched Battle, victory points were gained by taking objectives as well as by wiping out the opposition.

I'll not give a blow by blow account, but here are a few pictures followed by comments regarding how the game plays.

The Stormtroopers and Han in a firefight. Chewy is just beneath the gantry.

The Imperial view down towards the wookie.

Leia and IG-86 battle it out. Despite Leia being a mere extra, it ended badly for the droid.

Leia and Vader fight it out. The Sith was triumphant.

The last shot of the game. Fittingly the stormtrooper missed Han hiding behind the girders.

The action can quite rightly be described as cinematic. High points included IG-86 using a Grappling Hook to reach the objective on the highest tower. But he didn't have the action required to claim it. Then next turn the script allowed T'Other One to swap two minis positions. Of course, he swapped the droid for one of his Rebel fighters who duly claimed the objective.

Imperial shooting was better than expected, by the time the credits rolled, I'd lost IG-86 and two Stormtroopers, only Han survived out of the Rebels cast.

The Rebels won a minor victory, down to them claiming four out of five objectives. I'll admit that I hadn't appreciated how important they were. 

Thoughts about 7TV

Firstly, I have to say that the game played very well. Despite us being new to it, we quickly got the hang of things. Play is smooth, and various mechanics, like using Plot Points as an overall currency to activate minis, gain extra Stretch Dice and power certain abilities, are first rate. Script Cards regulate the pace of the game and add extra events. It was such a card, Script Editing, that allowed T'Other One to swap a rebel trooper with IG-86, denying me an objective. Set Change allowed me to move one entire piece of scenery, and I was able to use Action Packed in the final turn giving three of my cast bonus activations, which allowed Vader to take out Leia. Many of these can be rationalised as part of the skirmish, some, however, such as the aforementioned swapping of minis and shifting scenery belong squarely in the TV show 'meta'.

We noticed that Strikes (combat) can be pretty swift, as befits action TV shows, and deciding how to spend Plot Points is an interesting tactical challenge. 

Strikes covers three forms of combat, shooting, melee and 'Presence' attacks.  The latter are the quips, puns, put-downs and one liners that you would expect for the cinematic feel (we actually used very few of these in our first game) these add Status conditions such as Immobilised, Dominated or On Fire,  rather than damage Health (although one of the script cards we drew, 18 Certificate, meant all 0 damage strikes did one health for that turn), any mini taking two of the same condition loses 1 Health. 

Plot points can be spent to add Stretch Dice. These are rolled along the one defence or attack dice, but the way they work is nicely done. The highest die is added to a stat such as defence or strike, any remaining dice scoring 4+ add +1 to this rather than their actual score. This gives the players a chance to improve a score rather than a guaranteed bonus and the potential improvement is never so great as to make their use a no brainer.  And yes, we did forget to begin with, and add the score on the Stretch Dice, but we soon go the hang of it.

Conclusions?

This was a great fun game. The rules flow well, so my first point from earlier, is it a good skirmish system, is well answered. It certainly is.

I think Crooked Dice have done a great job capturing the feel of a certain sort of TV show. So that's a tick for my second point as well.

And yet, the game, fun though it was, felt like a fun game of 7TV, it didn't feel like a fun game of Star Wars.

Now this is partly due to the naming conventions, one could easily swap Hero, Champion and Soldier for Star, Co-star and Extra. Some things are harder to obscure, such as Script Cards moving terrain or transposing models. I can't see a place for them in, say a game set in Middle Earth or even, despite the fun I had, in the Star Wars universe. I appreciate this is a very personal matter, YVMV. There's no right or wrong answer here, it depends on the individual.

There are many changes that could be made to 'de-TV' 7TV, but I think this is being dishonest to the game. Play it because you want to play a game where you play a TV show of a skirmish, not because you are looking for a good universal skirmish system (although it is very good). 

Personally, I'd absolutely play 7TV again, and we discussed further potential games for the future, quite apart from the Beneath the Mountains of Madness. I've even been thinking about a few Sherwood Forest games, with Robin Hood and his Merry Men battling the Sheriff of Nottingham, Guy of Gisborne and numerous soldiery. I think 7TV would nicely fit for the style of TV programmes I remember as a kid, or even the lower budget Hollywood attempts at English history. 

Ambushing the tax collector, archery contests, rescuing Maid Marion, the inevitable capture and the final showdown all seem like great episodes, I'd even suggest deliberately stopping the final game part way through to be finished the following week.

Now should I craft castle walls from cardboard with the lines obviously painted on? Perhaps this could be another use for some of my Rangers, or should I look for some of the old Airfix Robin Hood and Sheriff of Nottingham minis?

Final Notes

I should mention that the production values are very high.  The rulebook is nicely illustrated with full colour diagrams an photos of Crooked Dice's own range of (excellent) minis.  A special mention to the index.  It never once let us down, despite frequent recourse to it.

The various tokens and templates are nicely colour printed on MDF.

If you want to take a look at the rules, Crooked Dice have a Download what you need to play section on their website.  It's free.  Go on, you won't regret just looking.  And while your there, check out their minis range.

Now where's my megaphone?

"ACTION!!!"

FfoL Galactic Heroes - Jawa Hunting

Andy and I had a great fun game of Star Wars Galactic Heroes recently. We are still using my 20mm Micromachines minis and (sadly still largely unpainted) terrain.

We came up with a quick scenario, both sides were hunting Jawas in a small Tatooine town. Perhaps one of them has a stolen power converter?  Maybe a certain Sith wanted to recreate his glory days on the pod-racing circuit?  Regardless of the reasons, victory would go to the side who had escorted the most Jawas off the board.

Both sides deploy, eying up the Jawas. The Imps are just off the shot, to the left of the sand dune 

Vader surges ahead, as does Luke. The rest of the troops lag somewhat behind. 

(We both made use of the extra action for our heroes on the relevant colour card).

The Rebel leader 'persuades' a Jawa to accompany him.

Behind the large building Luke has befriended one Jawa, and uses the power of The Force to bring another one to him off the roof of the building

The Rebel M25 (heavy blaster) wounds Lord Vader, then a sandstorm hits the area, preventing further shooting

The Sith Lord tries to use The Force against the Rebel M25, but his injury is too distracting. He ducks back into cover

The wounded Vader falls over, releasing the Jawa he had captured

The Stormtrooper's BlasTech DLT - 20 runs out of ammo, that Rebel M25 is safe for now

The Heavy Stormtrooper takes two wounds from the Rebel.  He is just able to crawl to safety where he reloads (I used a Joker to Reload, but this triggered anther sandstorm, if I'd used it earlier I'd have lost the Reload, but he wouldn't have been a target)

A Rebel wounds a Stormtrooper.  He hopes that Lord Vader will Heal him.  No such luck.  Meanwhile, another Stormtrooper captures a Jawa, and in the distance another Jawa is tempted by a Rebel

Stepping up to the Rebel trooper, Lord Vader slices him in half with his light sabre.  (Vader used the Queen of Hearts to remove his wound)

Vader charges his son, it ends badly for Luke

Vader moves to try and intercept more Rebels, but it's too late, the Rebels have taken the bulk of the Jawas to safety

The final tally. The Rebels have lost two men, including Luke, but have captured five Jawas, giving them the victory

This was a great fun game. We were pretty much making the scenario up as we went, for instance, deciding that a model with a captured Jawa would have to release it if wounded, and the Jawa would randomly scatter.  It didn't matter as we both had a lot of fun.  Vader cutting down Luke was very dramatic.  I rolled a 12 for Vader's melee roll, and given that he had a Light Sabre (a Deadly weapon), that was it for Luke, but he has the Nine Lives trait, allowing him to ignore his first Out of Action result and take a Wound instead.  
Sadly, Vader had another two actions, and rolled a natural 12 again, so it was off to the Bacta tanks for young Skywalker.

This was our second game with Heroes, and as before, we thought the rules worked very well.  I struggled to use any effective Force Powers with Vader, he routinely failed his Force Choke, and the few times that he was shot at and missed, he failed to deflect the shot back.  He was, however, a monster with his Light Sabre, attacking three times, and rolling a 12 each time.  Luke, on the other hand, used his Force Powers very intelligently to Grab a Jawa and bring it close.  Shame he fell to his father's blade.  I'm sure that he has simply lost another appendage and will be back, more bionic than before.

If there's any interest I'll post up the details of the scenario separately.

FfoL Galactic Heroes: A Family Quarrel

**WARNING** This post contains images of unpainted and unfinished terrain which some hobbyists may find distressing.  

There were only two of us for a recent Monday evening game, so we decided to play Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes. We used my 20mm Star Wars stuff and quickly came up with a storyline where Luke, aware that Vader *Spoilers* was his father, was trying to find one of his uncle's friends to discover more. Unfortunately Vader learnt about this and set a trap. Maybe not the best background, and it doesn't quite fit canon, but it worked for us.

We each had a crew of Leader, Specialist and three Regulars, plus the relevant Galactic Hero

This was the first time we'd tried using Heroes, how well would they work for Star Wars?

Brave Rebel heroes (or scum)

Imperial forces no doubt giving the residents a hard time 

Luke leads his Rebel crew in from the dunes, while Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers occupy the town 

The Rebels cautiously advance, trying to make the most of the cover.  The Imps are even more hesitant, Lord Vader directs them from atop one of the buildings.

Early Imperial shooting takes out one of the Rebels!

Luke uses the Force to heal his companion's wound 

Vader (near centre) uses The Force to shield himself and 'Force chokes' the recently healed rebel trooper 

Luke charges in to fight Vader. Vader is Shaken by his assault, then Luke cuts him down

Another great fun game, and an interesting experiment using two iconic characters.   Shooting was a bit lack-lustre on both sides, though the Imps got the first kill.  There were a couple of times the Rebs took wounds or were shaken, but I was able to use the relevant cards to remove these conditions, or have Luke use his Healing.  The only successful Rebel shooting was the PLX - 1 which took out two Stormtroopers with one rocket in the same turn as Luke's heroic charge against his father.

As we have seen before, the FfoL Galactic Heroes rules certainly work well for run-of-the-mill Star Wars style skirmishes, but how did they work with Luke, Vader and the Force? 

The Heroes rules essentially build another Leader. We added Psychic (Force) Powers as well (so one more Trait than strictly allowed, but we wanted really impressive heroes). The Psychic Powers did feel like the Force, and we saw them used to good effect. Luke Healed one of the Rebels and Vader used Force Choke on the same poor Reb. Vader also Shielded himself to dissuade the Rebels from shooting at him and goad Luke into fighting him. We didn't get any deflection of blaster bolts, largely because any firing against the heroes was from too far away; once we got closer, neither of us wanted to risk it.

The game was quickly put together, given more time I'd adjust the traits slightly, but they seemed to work fine.  Also, unpainted terrain.  This was some stuff I threw together last time we were playing, and it never got finished.  I should complete it, but I've been thinking about doing some 28mm stuff to use the greater variety of the old WotC pre-painted stuff.

Rebel Fleet Troopers for Fistful of Lead/Galactic Heroes

 My next mini project is another Star Wars crew for Galactic Heroes.  This time I've gone straight for the original trilogy and a crew of the Rebel Fleet Troopers as seen most famously in the battle in the corridors of the 'Tantive IV' trying to defend Princess Leia.

Internet image from Star Wars a New Hope.

The minis have actually taken rather a long time for such a simple colour scheme. I've been busy on other things, amongst which was finally getting my garage set up with a work space for terrain building and other messy hobby stuff. The other reason was my repainting them part way through as I didn't like the colours I originally picked. 

The minis are pretty standard for the WotC.  There was quite a bit of flash, and some awkward fill between the arms of a couple of the troopers.   I deliberately chose a slightly different colour scheme for the uniforms, khaki trousers and light blue grey shirts.  There are lots of images online, and the colours range from grey shirts and trousers, as per the photo above, or white or blue shirts and black or khaki trousers. The mini with the blaster pistol had a different colour scheme anyway, and I wanted them all to match.

Painting wise, the trousers were all basecoated VGC Khaki, washed with a 50:50 mix of Army Painter Strong and Soft tone washes, and highlighted with Vallejo Game Colour Bonewhite.

The shirts were basecoated with a mix of VGC Steelgrey and VGC Wolf Grey, washed with watered down VGC Sombre Grey and highlighted with a drybrush of VGC Wolf Grey.

The jackets and boots were basecoated with a mix of VEO Heavy Charcoal and VGC Black, washed with VGC Black wash and drybrushed with a mix of Charcoal and VGC Cold Grey.

The helmets had the various lines painted VGC Wold Grey then the 'plates' were painted white, the visor black.

A few extra details were added, such as the holsters and belts in VMC Mahogany and silver for buckles and parts of the blasters.  

After varnishing the helmets were given a coat of Vallejo Silk Varnish and the visor was given a gloss varnish coat.  The matt varnish came out much more matt than usual, I don't know why.  It seems to have obscured some of the highlights.

Another mini project I'm pleased with.  They should make a good crew for Galactic Heroes.  I hope they last longer than they did at the beginning of 'A New Hope' or indeed the end of 'Rogue One'.  There are some nice additional minis I'll look out for, such as the officer in khaki uniform and sleeved jacket who gets aggressively 'questioned' by Darth Vader in the film, but these will do for now.

If you're interested, my first paint job had darker blue shirts from a basecoat of VGC Sombre Grey and the trousers were more brown. The original WotC painting had khaki trousers and the blue shirts seem common in the Star Wars: Legion community.

I've got at least a crew's worth of Hoth troopers as well, and I'm trying to get enough of the Rebel Commandoes, as seen on Endor, to make a crew of those too. 

MDF Generators in 20mm

A quick addendum to the previous post; here are a couple of the generators with two of my 20mm Star Wars minis.

I think they work just as well in this scale as in 10mm or 28mm.  Partly because there is nothing on the models themselves to indicate scale.  So that's a definite win for this terrain set.  I'll build the other set soon.

Chillcon 2022, and MDF Generators

I recently went to Chillcon in Sheffield. It's a great show, and it was good to see it back after several years absence.

I got Clash of Kings 2022 (Mantic's annual update and re-jig for King's of War, notable this year for the brand new army lists for Halflings and Riftforged, lightning themed orcs).  I'm certainly not looking for a new army at the moment (I've still got those Trident Realm minis to paint, for one thing) but it's always nice to see the game growing.

Otherwise I got little else apart from some MDF terrain from Blotz.  A pack of 28mm Generators and a 28mm Turbine/10mm Shield Generator.  I'm planning on using both sets for several games.  They will make great terrain/objectives in the 10mm Sci Fi games and also in Star Wars skirmishes.  They do rather resemble a certain Shield Generator on Hoth.  They may even look good on a Deadzone table or in a Firefight battle.

In the past I've been disappointed with some MDF terrain.  It can be a bit flat looking; blocky and lacking in depth and detail.  Well the generators certainly don't look flat.  They are simple to build (the instructions are on the website) and they've made the most of the materials to give a nice chunky piece that certainly doesn't look like sheet materials.

They've also been designed so that none of the little tabs left from where pieces attach to the frame are on surfaces that show.  They can easily be removed with a light sanding, but it's a nice touch all the same.

The finished generators 

147mm x 197mm of Generator goodness

I couldn't find my Gorilla Woodworking glue, but Strong Craft glue seems to have done the trick.  I used clips to hold the various sub-assemblies together while the glue dried, and I found that I could work on the fin section while the arch section was drying.  If I get another set I'll work on all four at once, indeed, I built the last two together, which saved a lot on drying time.

Painting wise I mostly copied the suggestion in the instructions, black undercoat, heavy drybrush of Vallejo Game Color Gunmetal Metal, followed by highlights of VGC Chainmail Silver.  I picked out details with, and painted the various 'power' bits with Vallejo Model Color Dark Prussian Blue highlighted with Vallejo Game Color Magic Blue and finally VGC Glacier Blue.  I added a little drybrush of a mix of the Magic blue and Glacier Blue around the vents to look like a glow from the power coils, or whatever they are.

The examples on the website have gold or bronze to accent the fins and other raised details, I chose red for this, simply VGC Red Gore with a highlight of VGC Blood Red and just a touch of VGC Fiery Orange.

I'm sure that many other colour schemes would look good; Hoth style white for instance, and I may get another pack and experiment.

Next to a 28mm Star Wars mini...

...and with some 10mm Sci Fi minis.

I think they work well for both scales, and, although I didn't have any to hand, I'm confident that the 20mm Star Wars minis will look good too.

Building and painting these was a pleasure, I recommend these for very useful Sci Fi scatter terrain.  Excellent value, and all round nice pieces of scenery.

EDIT; you can see these terrain pieces with some 20mm minis here.

Building Tatooine in 20mm Part 3

Last night I had another game of Star Wars Galactic Heroes. It was very much a last minute thing, but I was determined to have more terrain on the table.

I quickly cut some XPS blocks, and even had time to stick some half polystyrene balls onto one of them for domes, but there was an awful lot of pink on the table.

A lot of pink foam, which looks a pale buff or orange in the photo.  This is a much better amount of terrain than the last game.

Today I decided to work on one of them, since the dwarven stone cabin was drying prior to painting.  I've now got it to the stage of needing texture and 'greeblies', then painting.

The arches are cut on the Proxon using a Shifting Lands arch template.  I got one as a freebie when I ordered my Guider Pro. Very useful, though I still need some practice with them. 

Building front

Building back, looking at it I might replace the buttresses with thicker ones.

I'll probably put this away until I've finished the SITC - BH, but I certainly want to get those pink blocks turned into Tatooine terrain.

And then when I've got a box of 20mm terrain done, time to start on the 28mm stuff.

These ARE the Droids We Are Looking For

I got in a game of Fistful of Lead Galactic Heroes last night with my good mate Andy. It was his first game of FfoL, so we played the first game in the book.

We had great fun, and Andy coped very well with both a completely new set of rules and the legendary Imperial marksmanship (or lack of). 

I've played this scenario before with Bodvoc, and then we had the advantage of his terrain collection as well.  I added a Sandcrawler, the couple of bits of Combatzone scatter terrain I painted for May the Fourth, and some wooden blocks that could be storage crates. More scenery would have been better for this game, but we managed.

We also measured in centimetres, doubling the distances in inches, to reflect the smaller scale.  I printed off stat cards with the adjusted values, this seemed to work very well.

A desert planet a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away

Some of the Imps lurk behind an abandoned Sandcrawler

The Rebels advance towards a protocol droid

Imperial marksmanship is better than the rumours say...a rebel is wounded

The action hots up around the moisture vaporator

In the end it was a Rebel victory.  I took out the Stormtrooper specialist early on, but the Imps were remarkably good at shooting (for Stormtroopers), taking out two of my Rebels, and their officer slew a third in melee.  I managed to find the droid with the second half of the plans while loosing control of the first one.  By the end though, Rebel shooting put all the Imps out of action.

Great fun.  I'll add a couple of tweaks to the scenario for the future; use both jokers in the pack to get the droids moving more, (in this game they moved three times, the previous time I played it they only moved once).  Add +2 to subsequent attempts to find the correct droid, so it it less likely to be the last one searched.  This may make the game shorter, and (perhaps) be more about finding the droids and less about just shooting your way to victory.

I'll also print out definitions of the relevant traits to assist players, perhaps on a sheet with the stat cards for the crew.  I currently print out individual cards, these could all go on one sheet.

One of my stat cards

This all makes me want to build more Tatooine terrain and paint up more Star Wars minis.  I'm trying to stick to orcs for this month though, perhaps some Gamorreans?