The Day after Tomorrow: Into Infinity

A bit of a diversion now. Not a single lead person in sight.


I turn 40 this year (in just a few days, in fact) and have been a science fiction fan for pretty much as long as I could make "pew pew pew" noises. For many years I've been searching for two TV shows that I saw in my yourth and have very vague memories of. After years of searching I've managed to track one of them down.

The first was s scifi film shown on TV. The only memories of it I had was that it was some kind of exploration mission in a spacecraft, the crew were givene a choice to continue of or return home at one point and that the special star drive malfunctioned and the ship accelerated to super fast speeds and threw one of the crew members to the back of the ship to land on a coloured glass wall. That's all I remembered. The image of the crewmember laying on the wall was one the especially stuck with me.

Yesterday I discovered Space 1970, a fabulous little website that covers exactly the kind of sciene fiction shows that I grew up with. The 1970's and 1980's were my formative science fiction years and show like the original Battlestar Galactica, Space:1999 and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century were staples of my TV viewing.

Whilst browsing therough the site, with a big grin on my face, I found this. It's the very film I've been looking for for 37 years. A quick google search turned up a flash video of the original as well. The sense of satisfaction in finding this is immense. I haven't viewed it all yet, but the description in the Space 1970 site is spot-on match.


The second long forgotten show was, I think, an import that was redubbed. I have vague memories of it being a sort of proto-steampunk adventure where one, pastoral, peace loving nation is trying to spy on their evil industrialised neighbours who are building weapons of mass destruction. I remember that the weapons had something to do with giant cannons and cryogenics, and the hero that was sent to spy on them had his hand bandaged up all the way through the spying mission, feigning an injury. It was revealed during his daring escape that actually he had a handgun concealed under the bandages. I have a sneaking feeling that this might be a mash-up of a couple of series, one of which might actually have been about spying during WW2, something like (but not) Operation Crossbow.

Gruntz AAR - Protolene Pirate Raid

Had a quick game of Gruntz today with MBB. 200 point (or thereabouts) on a 4' square board. It was the first run out of my new terrain tiles and most of the 15mm Scifi Scenery I've been working on recently, and I think it was also the first game in a while where every unit on the table was fully painted, which was nice.

We played the "what's mine is mine" scenario, where you have 3 objectives and have to take and hold them, with points gained each turn. and extra points for taking an objective from an enemy. The 3 objectives in this scenario were the comm tower on the northern hill, the grey shipping container in the centre and the small green building to the south. The terrain was a rough valley with a colony outpost in the centre. Protolene forces had been detected landing on the planet, and the colonial militia were racing to intercept them at the remote Epsilon outpost.

Table set-up. North towards the top.

The colonists lost the pre-game roll, so we set up first along the eastern edge. The colonists were able to muster 2 squads of colonial militia, 2 mounted gauss Gatling cannons, 2 Bobcat ATV's with mounted SAW's, 2 light mecha armed with missile and cannon, a medic, a commander and a light mortar.

Militia set up. Gruntz squads are mounted in the Bobcats

On the western flanks the Protolene bounded onto the board. They had three squads of pirates, one specialist proto-hound handler who could infiltrate, two light grav tanks with heavy plasma and missiles, a medium dropship with particle beam and missiles and a commander in an Ayame battlesuit. 

Protolene set up. One Gruntz squad is actually in the dropship, although the figures are still on the table. Protohounds and handler could infiltrate, so were deployed 18 inches forward.

The first turn was mainly uneventful, with lots of manoeuvring into position. The colonists got into position to claim all three next turn objectives, but didn't have the actions to do so yet. The pirates moved up through cover. There were a few rounds of ineffectual fire on each side.

End of turn 1

Militia disembark and take cover next to storage tank.

Colonists set up the mortar (guest starring a Sahadeen raider) in cover behind the hill, as the commander and medic move up. 

Protolene pirate squad led by Rin-Tin-Tin and pirate commander, Brian.

In the second turn the colonial forces moved up to all three objectives, but movement towards them meant they couldn't spend the actions needed to claim them. The mortar fired on one of the protolene squads for no effect and the mounted gauss Gatling did the same. 

End of colonists second turn.

The Protolene responded in force, however. To the south the Gruntz squad around the southern objective was close assaulted by one of the pirate squads, then the proto hounds and handler pitched in too. 

Start of the close assault...

"BARK BARK BARK CHOMP GNAW SCREAM GROWL"

End of the close assault...

The sounds of furious barking and screams echoed down the valley and the southern gruntz squad lost 5 men to the claws and jaws of the protolene and the protohounds....

To the north the dropship acted as spotter for the two grav tanks and they launched a salvo of missiles at the Gruntz contesting the centre objective and the northern gauss Gatling cannon:

Seconds after the twin missile strikes.

The lightly armoured Gruntz squad was devastated by the missile strike, and the bobcat and mech took some light splash damage. The dropship then opened fire on the damaged mech with it's particle beam and blew a glowing hole right through the chestplate and out the back.

At the end of the second turn the Colonists had lost one mecha and both Gruntz squads were combat ineffective. Reasoning that the pirates weren't going to hang around anyway, and 14 dead bodies was too high a price to pay, they elected to bug out and let the pirates ransack the outpost.

A couple of observations on the Gruntz rules. Firstly, I have to say that I really like Gruntz. It's fast paced, easy to learn and quick to pick up. The rulebook is laid out well, mostly, although the rules for indirect fire are located in three different places. We didn't use the optional overwatch rules - which might have helped the colonists had they been able to interrupt the charge and close assault to the south with the nearby gauss Gatling team. 

We also didn't use the newer 1.1 version of the assault rules. The original version of the assault rules leave a lot to be desired, as you get no chance to counter attack until it's your turn. The 1.1 version are an improvement, but still not what I'd like to see. My personal opinion is that an assault test should be an opposed roll, with opportunity for the assaulted unit to attack back and defend themselves. I'm working on a revised set of assault rules to submit to Robin for potential inclusion in the 1.1 update as optional rules. 

Finally, we also felt that the range bands were too short, and the penalty for extreme range too high. with most weapons having a 8-14 inch range, and -4 penalty for firing out to double range, it meant that you had to be more or less on top of your target to stand a chance of hitting them. It also meant that the missiles and mortar had a very small effective range band, as they can't fire within 1/2 of their range, and they get a -4 to hit at extreme range. We may implement a range band mechanic for the next game, whereby each increment of the range beyond the first applies a cumulative -2 penalty. This allows for longer ranges and less severe penalties.

Gruntz Barracks kickstarter

I'm a really big fan of Robin Fitton's Gruntz rules. I first saw them being demo'ed on his awesome urban terrain board at SELWG 2 or 3 years ago, and I've followed and contributed a bit to their development since then (there are a few pieces of my flavour fiction in the rulebook).

One of the things I especially like is the unit builders. You can essentially build any unit you like, from any background, any tech, any race, any figure line and stat it up. You could have ultra hi-tech GZG hardsuited New Israeli commandos fighting against Khurasan Miniatures Lhurgg tribesmen, or Rebel Minis Sahadeen fighting against CMG Kaamados. There have even been unit stats produced for British colonial troops - pith helmets and short chamber Boxer Henry point 45 calibre rifles, with a bayonet and some guts behind it.


Robin has started a kickstarter campaign on Indegogo to launch a computerised version of the army builder. The main goal has already been met, but there are a couple of interesting stretch goals set up, to include things like the addition of army management and giant monsters - Godzilla and laser armed frickin' dinosaurs, for instance. The funding options also let you pick up some nice bargains on the printed 1.1 rulebook when it comes out later this year.


You can find more information on Gruntz at Robin's website here - he's also got some very good painting tutorials and miniature review videos on there - and the Indegogo launchpad is here. 

3d Printing

For christmas this year I recieved a £25 voucher from a good friend of mine for Quick Forge, a 3D printing company. An awesome gift that got me excited straight away.

For those of you that aren't familiar with the concept, 3d-printing allows you to create a 3 dimensional object from layers of plastic or resin that are printed out by a special 3d printer. It works a bit like those puzzles that were popular a few years ago where you would stack different flat shapes on top of each other to reveal an image of Elvis's head. 3D printing works in a similar way, in that you upload a 3d model and a special printer lays down successive layers of plastic or resin to create the 3D object.

I have dabbled in 3D design and CGI for years, most recently using DOGA L3, a very easy to use Japanese program that lets you assemble objects from a library of parts and primitives. It doesn't have any of the advanced modelling tools you might find in more complex programs like TrueSpace or 3D Studio, but for knocking up a quick spaceship, it's great.

My first design was based on an old Micro Machines model that I always wanted multiple copies of to use a freighters in Silent Death, the Numiri ship:

I created a simple 3d-model in Doga that looked like it - I wanted to capture the essence of the ship rather than a copyright-shattering clone:

I then had to convert this to a type of file that Quick Forge will accept, in this case an .STL file. I also needed to make sure that the model was "watertight", that is that there were no "holes" into the interior, or orphaned parts - i.e. parts not attached to the rest of the mesh. The process to do this involved a couple of intermediary programs called MeshLab and NettFab.

Once complete, I uploaded my file to Quickforge and waited for the model to drop into my sweaty palms.
About a week later I received this:

The model is made from a fine beige resin and has pretty good resolution. It does have a pattern of lines all over it, an artefact of the layering method of printing I assume, which makes it look a bit like it's covered in Zimmerit.

Since then I have also uploaded a mesh to another 3d-printing site, Shapeways, the Stingray fighter, another one of my DOGA designs shown here in all it's textured glory:

Shapeways is a goldmine of all sorts of amazing objects. Unlike Quickforge, you can browse a catalogue of other peoples designs, and there ere literally thousands and thousands. I could spend all day looking at them.  These are the results of the Stingray printed at Shapeways, along with another ship generated using the very fun Shipwright:

You can choose from a variety of materials at Shapeways, and these were created in White, Strong and Flexible - the cheapest option. The result is very good, though. The detail is far greater than on the Quickforge model and the surface texture is different. Rather than smooth and glossy, this is slightly matt and grainy.

I can see that this could be a hobby that could get very addictive very fast. I'm already thinking how I could bulk up my fleets for Silent Death, and fill in the gaps in my Air War C:21 hangars too. The cost of larger models is high, if I were to reproduce the freighter above at Shapeways it'd be something like £13.

In the meantime, I've set up a Shapeways shop so you can see my designs as they get uploaded. My Shapeways Shop

Kitbash Part 4

A while ago I bought some dead cheap kits from Hobbylink Japan of the Land Booster Spirit and a couple of VOTOM action figures. The Land booster Spirit is some sort of transport aircraft that a giant Mecha hangs onto like some sort of crazy mecha hang glider.

At only £4 per kit, even with postage they were a bargain. I thought I could use them as aerofighters or dropships. The Spirit itself is quite a nice model, but it has these weird on-rails wings that stick out the back, for the mechas legs to clip into when it's flying along. I liked the kit better without them, so left them off.

The kit assembled is very nice, with movable swing wings and giant cannons underneath, and will do quite nicely as an atmospheric transport of some kind.

I was left with a bunch of parts, though. These included the odd rear wings and several optional parts that allow you to modify a Mecha kit so it's hanging off the Land Booster. I played about with these parts and came up with this:

The paint job is GW Mechrite red with Chaos Black and Skull white panels, plus decals from GW Tau sheet and warning stripes and signs from Fighting Pirahna. It's been raining non-stop here for the last 4 days (drought? what drought?) so I haven't had a chance to give it my usual GW hardcoat spray before doing the weathering yet, hence it's still glossy in a fe places from where I brushed on the Windsor and Newton gloss varnish to seal the Decals.

It started out as a carrier or cruiser for Silent Death, but then morphed into an attack speeder of some kind for my new nihilistic, evil villain group, a bit like COBRA from GI Joe, hence the evil red and black colour scheme. However, with the warning signs on it now looks more like some sort of grav racer to me, like something out of Wipeout. I'll varnish it when the weather clears up and hit it with some washes, scratches and pigments and see how it looks after that.

The figures used above are from the new Armiesarmy Neo Sov range and are very nice little sculpts in the same style as GZG - so slightly chunkier than, say, Khurusan or Critical Mass. They come 10 to a pack and are very reasonably priced. The chap in the middle is some kind of pulp Nazi figure that I have no idea where I got. These will be the footsoldiers for my new Villain group, and I have another couple of the Androidz mechs armed with nice Gatling launchers and big arm-blades that I can use as terror striders or dreadnoughts for them.

1/600 AirWar C:21

At the weekend we played a try out game of Wessex Games Air War C:21 fast play air combat rules with Tumbling Dice 1/600 aircraft. We had Four players, with me refereeing and acting as rules looker-upper. The scenario was loosely based on the attacks against HMS Coventry during the Falklands conflict in 1982, as I had the miniatures for Sea Harrier FRS1's (or SHAR's as they were known), IAI Daggers, A-4 Skyhawks and Mirage III's.

HMS Coventry was a Type 42 Guided Missile Destroyer. On the morning of 25th May 1982 she was stationed to the North of Falkland Sound with the Type 22 Frigate HMS Broadsword (a pairing known as a "Type 64"). The ships were there to draw air attacks away from the landings in the nearby San Carlos bay. The pairing of the type 42 with a type 22 had been quite sucessful, as the Type 42's Sea Dart was good at high-altitude, long range intercepts, and the Sea Wolf on the type 22 better at low-level, short range intercepts. Coventry was attacked by multiple waves of A4-Skyhawks, and was hit by at least three bombs, one of which failed to explode and destroyed her helicopter. Unfortunately two of the other bombs did explode and opened a massive hole in the side of the ship. She quickly flodded, began to list and then capsized in just 20 minutes.

The scenario here represents a modified version of those events, with Mirage and Daggers replacing some of the A-4 attackers, and no Type 22 to offer short range defence. Perhaps, if you prefer, you can instead imagine that this is an attack on the fictional Type 42 HMS Oxford.

The Ginger One and Orc were the attacking Argentine planes and Goblin and MBB (My Big Brother) were the plucky British defenders. The Argentine forces were arranged in 3 waves, 4 Daggers, 4 Mirages and 3 Skyhawks. The Mirages and Daggers were carrying Mk82 retarded bombs and the Skyhawks had 1000lb bombs. One of the Daggers and one of the Mirages each carried 2 R550 Magic IR AA missiles instead of bombs. The SHAR's each had 2 AIM-9L sidewinders and a full load of cannon rounds. Argentine pilots were average and British pilots were Good.

The AirWar rules include stats for all of the aircraft and the air-to air missiles, plus rules for bombing ground targets and SAM's - but nothing specifically for anti-ship action, nor were there stats for the Sea Dart missiles the Coventry carried. I used the SART-M (Sounds About Right To Me) method to figure out the stats (I would have used the alternative Feels About Right To Me, but there were children present). I gave the Sea Dart a 25" range, with damage of 2d6 and a hit number of 7+ (it wasn't terribly accurate). Lock-on was by Coventry's radar, which I gave as 4+/60". I gave Coventry 15 damage points and said it was a Medium target. She had 2 Oerlikon cannons, which are in the main rules, and I also gave her her 4.5" gun too, with stats similar to a Soviet 100mm AA gun, but with a range of just 12" and a hit of 8+ using the Radar and 10+ optically.

The game was played on a 6 x 4 table with Coventry being 8 inches from one end. The SHAR's had to remain outside of her missile envelope, or the Sea Dart would shut down and refuse to fire as it detected friendly IFF in the area (not strictly historically accurate, but there was a policy of strict air "boxes" and ship "boxes" to stop the ships shooting down the Harriers).

The first wave were the Mirages. The SHAR's moved to intercept after being advised of the incoming bogeys by the combat controller on HMS Brilliant. Each SHAR fired a Sidewinder at a Mirage in a head-on attack. The new AIM-9L lived up to it's reputation and two Mirages were downed . A third AAM Mirage swung wide and attempted to come in behind the SHAR's for a missile shot, as the other two Mirages ploughed on for a high-speed, head-on gun pass with the Harriers. The aircraft flashed past each other and one of the Mirages fell flaming into to the cold North Atlantic and the other was raked with gunfire, jamming it's controls. But, that was OK, as the Mirage had it's target in sight now. The SHAR's didn't get off scott free, one took a few hits, one of which jammed it's cannons. The other was more severely damaged, crippling the aircraft.

View downtable. The sea is an old blue velvet pub curtain.

The two remaining mirages were now split up, one trying to bring it's guns or cannon to bear on the turning Harriers and the damaged one pushing on towards Coventry. As the lead Mirage passed into Coventry's missile envelope the SHAR's broke off to engage the undamaged Mirage behind them:

Crippled SHAR to the left. Centre SHAR performs a Hi-G YoYo as the Mirage turns towards Coventry. 

The mirage tried to slip in behind the Crippled SHAR, but a minimum range Sidewinder shot from the Harrier with the jammed gun ripped the aircraft apart. Meanwhile Coventry locked onto the incoming Mirage with her Sea Dart and loosed of two salvos of two missiles, plus shots from her Oerlikon and 4.5 inch guns. All of them missed. The battered Mirage dropped down to low level and released it's retarded bombs, all of which sailed clean past the Coventry and into the Sea. The battered Mirage made it's escape off the board to an uncertain journey home.

The British player elected to have the damaged Sea Harriers return to their base on Invincible and a replacement pair fly out. However, the journey time to and from the carrier meant that there would be no CAP cover to oppose the next wave of Argentine aircraft - The Coventry was on her own for now.

Three A-4 Skyhawks with 1000lb bombs were next. Their run-in to Coventry was unopposed and they managed to drop 9 1000lb bombs without a single hit. The Sea Dart actually managed to engage two of the Skyhawks and blew them out of the sky almost directly over the ship.

 

 

With the last Skyhawk Racing for home, and pieces of burning aircraft raining down, the two fresh SHARs arrived on the scene at top speed, just in time to see an oblique line of Daggers arrowing for Coventry. The SHAR's both loosed Sidewinders and one tracked and destroyed a Dagger, but the other failed and veered off course.

The rearmost Dagger is about to have a Really Bad Day. The front one will fail it's break turn test, but still evade the missile to find it's gunsight suddenly full of Harrier....

  

A turn of failed maneauvers all round put one of the Harriers right in the gunsights of a bomb-carrying dagger and the other in a head-on pass with the AAM armed Dagger. The head-on pass resulted in damage to both aircraft, The SHAR also losing it's radar. The bomb carrying Dagger, however, ripped into the other SHAR and tore it to shreds. The aircarft tumbled into the sea without the pilot managing to eject. At the same time, the other Harrier had finished it's gun run and strayed inside Coventry's missile envelope, shutting down the Sea Dart just as it had launched it's first salvo against the incoming Dagger.

Sea Darts track the Dagger as the damaged Harrier begins to recover from the gun pass with the AAM Dagger (just out of picture to the right) 

The next two phases saw the last Harrier demostrate the maneauverability of the tiny plane as the pilot stood it on it's wingtip and pulled the nose around in an extreme break turn to bring his guns to bear on the Harrier-killing Dagger, A long, revenge filled burst swiss-cheesed the Dagger, although the pilot did manage to eject. The other dagger tried a high yo-yo to bring him behind the SHAR. However, the Harrier anticipated this (if you win the initiative you move second, allowing you to react to your opponents maneauvers) and a Split-S brought it into a perfect, if a little close, missile shot that took the back off the enemy plane off.

Meanwhile, the last Dagger made it's run in to Coventry. The Sea Dart reset itself after the SHAR moved out of range and fired off two more of the gigantic missiles. The Dagger managed to avoid all of them, plus the hail of cannon fire. It dropped down low to the sea and released 6 Mk 82 "Snakeye" retarded bombs, flashing over the Coventry and away to wards home. The retard fins on the bombs popped open, slowing them so the fuses could arm and the Dagger could clear the blast zone.

Bombing in AirWar C21 is quite hard. You'll routinely have a base number of 9-12 to hit on a d10, so getting as many +'s to hit as possible is a good thing. Flying low gives a bonus (but allows AA guns to shoot at you), bomb computers give a bonus. The Dagger needed 7+ to hit with the bombs....

Hit! The Harrier surveys the damage to Coventry (in her new "bare plastic" paint scheme).

The Coventry was hit, taking 7 points of damage in one attack, and knocking her radar out. The last Dagger sped off the Table to return to Argentina with news of a downed Sea Harrier and a hit on the Coventry. The British had won the scenario as Coventry was still afloat and combat effective at the end. However, with two Harriers damaged, one of them crippled and likely not going to be airworthy again soon, and one Harrier and pilot lost, it was a pyrhhic victory at best.

Overall this was a really fun and enjoyable game. Everybody commented on how well the rules worked, and the turns passed quickly for everybody. We got a real sense of speed and manoeuvrability in the planes and the combat was fast and fun. The miniatures were a lot of fun to paint, but I need to get some more of the Litko peg toppers, as I depleted my stock with this project. The Litko flight stands are the best I've come across in ages and are now distributed in the UK by Figures in Comfort, which really helps on the horrible postage from the US.

The missile markers were made from pipe cleaners I picked up at £2.75 for 50 from a tobacconists (AGG didn't realise they were called pipe cleaners because pipe smokers use them to clean their pipes...). I burnt off the bristles from one end with a lighter (MUCH quicker than trying to cut or pluck them), painted the exposed wire white with a black dot at the tip and then added a yellow flame on the remaining bristles. I can't claim the idea as my own as I've seen it in a couple of different places, and you can even buy pre-made ones somewhere. I'm going to try and source a few small rare earth magnets to glue to the underside of the aircraft so I can use some cut-up black chenile bumps to indicate smoke from a crippled aircraft.

15mm WW2

My local gaming group are in the process of moving from 15mm WW2 with Flames of War to 6mm WW2 with Blitzkrig Commander. As a result I'm selling all of my old 15mm stuff.

I bought a load of Peter Pig figures a while ago to make up a US rifle Company, but never got round to doing anything with them. With Salute on the horizon, and my gaming coffers somewhat depleted, I knuckled down and decided to paint and base all the US rifles to sell as a job lot.

Here are the results, three rifle platoons and an HQ section. 133 2nd world war US GI's in 15mm.

 I also repainted my 105mm field artillery battery at the same time:

All are currently for sale on Ebay:

Artillery

Infantry Company