Super-fast 10mm Fantasy armies and Orcs vs. Barbarians

I've lured my two nephews into 10mm Fantasy gaming with a couple of games of Mighty Armies recently. It plays quickly, the rules are simple, and it doesn't take loads of room.

They both expressed a desire to get their own armies after a few games, so I decided to pick them up some Pendraken figures to make up around 80AP of mixed troops for each of them as Christmas presents.

The figures arrived on 21st December, but I had to go away on holiday with the in-laws, so didn't get a chance to put paint to figure until Christmas eve.

AGW (Amazing Geek Wife - she insisted I change it from AGG) pitched in, and between us we painted, based, flocked and varnished about 80 stands in just over 7 hours, including a couple of periods of drying time for paint, glue and varnish.

One army was Undead, almost entirely Skeletons, and AGW had a dry brushing production line going of black undercoat, old GW bleached bone and new GW ceramite white. She was really impressed by the contrast and how effectively the bone and white picked out the detail on the skeletons. I picked out weapons and wood on the skellies whilst she started in on the other army - Barbarians. They got an airbrushed Tamiya Flat Brown undercoat, GW Talarn Flesh drybrush and then GW Dwarf Flesh drybrush. I then picked out loincloths, hair, wood and weapons. They then got a generous wash of Devlan Mud.

I lucked out when looking at my D&D Miniatures for a couple of Monsters for their armies (monsters are powerful units in Mighty Armies) - I had a suitable dire wolf for the barbarians and a dire wolf skeleton for the undead - ideal!

We started painting at just before 5pm and I got the final mist of Testors dullcoat on at about 2am, ready to let them air out overnight.

The nephews came over last week and we had a game with one of the armies (Goblin had misplaced his army - temporarily, I'm hoping), the Barbarians, facing off against my Orcs of the Red Hand (Orcs at the bottom, Barbarians at the top).

On the first turn both armies started to move into position. On the left flank the Barbarian hero and heavy cav moved up and began to circle to the left of the woods. The dire wolf and the archers moved into the centre of the board and the Shaman moved up with them. On the right flank the Barbarian King moved forward, the archers moved up to just behind the hill and the catapult slowly ground forward.

The Orcs were hampered by bad rolls for manoeuvre points, meaning they could move fewer units. On the left, the catapults moved forward and wheeled slightly towards the centre and the archers moved up towards the hill and wheeled left. The Shaman moved forward to gain line of sight past the archers. On the right the furthest flying monster flew towards the town and the General and his infantry block marched forwards.

Bison Cavalry move around the woods.

Hero and his infantry (with Dwarf support) move ahead of the flying monster.

The hero, archers and flying monsters and shaman (actually trolls)

Turn 2 saw more manoeuvres  The barbarians edged past the woods on the left, the archers mounted the hill on the right and various suspicions parties ambled forward in the centre.

Dire wolf says "Bark! Bark!"

Turn 3 saw the Orcs flying monster make an attack on the archers isolated on the hill. With strength 5, plus aerial charging bonus, the monster expected an easy victory. However, the Orcs abysmal dice rolling struck again....

Monster charges archers....

Archers defeat monster.

On the left flank the (not) Troll shaman tried a risky spell, bind unit, hoping to hold the Bison cavalry in place.  An opposed roll, with the bison getting +2 as the Shaman was trying to effect all of the unit, not just one stand, but he succeeded and the Bison riders were mired in place.

Stuck!

The Orcs took advantage of this and one of the flying monsters charged the mired bison riders. 

The Orcs Flying Monster tears into the Bison cavalry

Unable to effectively fight back (their dice roll is halved if mired), they were recoiled, losing a unit. But, a unit that recoils whilst bound is instead destroyed. A harsh lesson for us all in how powerful the bind spell is ( this was the first time we had used magic) 

In the centre the Barbarians flying monster moved up to threaten the phalanx of Orc wolf riders. Behind it the Barbarian heavy infantry shuffled around to protect their flanks, and the lone bison rider on the right and the hawk-men moved up towards the village.

At this point I made a big mistake. I forgot to shoot the catapults. They were well in range of the dragon, who was unengaged, and they'd have 3 shots at 5+ to kill the dragon (who gets a 5+ save as he's a monster). This was shortly to prove my undoing... 

The Dragon charges behind the Orc lines and engages the catapults that were apparently having a tea break..

To great effect.

Long view downtable. 

In the next turn the Orcs split the generals command on the right into two, and prepared to send two stands off into the village to meet the bison/hawk-man combo. The remaining units, along with the wolf riders, moved up, preparing to engage the Barbarian hero and his infantry support (which included a stand of Dwarf mercenaries, as we ran short of Barbarian infantry). The Dragon continued his rampage behind the lines by engaging the Orc archers who had turned to face him, causing a casualty and recoiling them back nearly into their own hero. The Barbarian archers fired on the Orc General, causing two casualties.

Preparing to charge the hero.

The next turn saw the final conflict of the fight. The Barbarian archers moved down off the hill. The Barbarian shaman tried, and failed, to pin the wolf riders and the hero wheeled to let the archers cover his left flank The wolf riders and the giant spider then charged the Barbarian hero and the Orc general and his last remaining stand of infantry charged the Bison Cavalry in the village. 

Archers move down off the hill and the Orcs charge.

CHARGE!!!!

The Orc charge smashed into the Barbarian line, but the light cavalry, even with monster support, weren't enough to break the Barbarian lines. The unit was recoiled, losing one stand straight away. Monsters don't recoil, so the spider stayed put, but the unfortunate Orc wolf riders had to retreat straight back a full move, sending one of them straight into the lava pits.

In the village the Orc General recoiled the Bison cav and the barbarians lost the supporting hawk-man.

The next turn was the final one. The retreating Orc cavalry were blasted by a lightning bolt from the barbarian shaman and the giant spider was shot to bits by the archers (who had had a good day).

On the left flank, the two Orc flying monsters ganged up on the dragon and managed to destroy it. With the end of the 6th turn the game was over, and the Barbarians claimed a very credible victory over the Orcs.

Kitbash Part 6 and MaskFX

A little while ago I posted a picture of the £1 hovercraft I picked up from Poundland that was awaiting it's main paint scheme:

I've now completed two of the hovercraft, and have another two waiting to be painted with a slightly different weapons fit. Originally I was going to paint them in some sort of desert scheme, tans and browns and so on, but, as I posted a little while ago, I picked up some of the Armies Armies NeoSov and had painted them in a red/grey/black scheme as my generic evil bad guy faction.

The hovers Seemed like a good fit for bad guys, the windows at the front looked quite sinister in my opinion, so they got the same red/grey/black makeover. 

I firstly added some mesh to the large side windows, as these seemed to be just too big an expanse of glass for a combat vehicle. The mesh is aluminium car repair body mesh from Halfords, which I find all sorts of uses for. It makes great fencing and floor panels and you can make a very good, if a little fragile, 28mm barbed wire by clipping along one of the diagonal strands to get a single long strand with snipped off edges of the cross pieces.

The Red is GW Foundation Mechrite red, the Grey is adeptus battlegrey and the black is Chaos Black. Hover skirts were painted with Charadon Granite and metallics with Chainmail. Windows were Necron Abyss which I shaded up into Mordian Blue whilst still wet. I then applied some Windsor and Newton gloss varnish to the areas that I wanted to add transfers to, and once dry added various transfers from GW Tau sheets and some Fighting Piranha warning signs. I used Microsol and Microset solutions to make sure that the transfers adhered to the lines of the model, and the gloss varnish base meant that there was no "silvering" from trapped air. Once the transfers were dry I put more gloss varnish over the top, then two coats of GW Hardcoat to seal and protect and a final coat of Testors Dullcoat to take the shine off.

Here are the results (lightbox is still out of action, so apologies once again for the shadowy pictures) 

I have two more that I've filed off the fin on top of the raised area on the roof and added a GZG remote auto cannon turret. These are undecorated and awaiting their main painting at the moment.

I also showed off this conversion of another Poundland bargain, a 6x6 not-VAB, a little while ago.
I was never totally happy with the paint job, as it looked amateurish and rushed (which it was) in my opinion.

A little while ago Critical Mass Games announced their release of their MaskFX range, a set of airbrush masks for various different types of camouflage. I picked up a couple of sets and decided to re-paint the VAB and give them a try. I first base coated all the modes in Tamiya XF12 JN Grey (which is actually a sort of light blue). When airbrushing with Tamiya paints I usually dilute them 2:1 with paint/thinners, using Tamiya XF20 thinners. This sometimes leaves a slightly grainy texture which I have been advised is because the paint is drying in the air as it leaves the airbrush. On this occasion I upped the amount of thinners I used to a 1:1 ration, 50% thinner, 50% paint. The results were that each layer of paint was more transparent and had less coverage, so I had to apply more layers than normal. With the higher paint ratio you get quicker coverage, but less definition, with the lower paint ratio you can blend colours much more effectively and no grainy texture.

Once this layer was dry I applied some of the Splinter Pattern masks to each of the vehicles, trying to mix them up in size and position to create a variety of camo patterns. I then applied a coat of XF65 Field Grey, more masking and then a final coat of XF20 Medium Grey. I left it all to dry thoroughly and then started to peel off the masking strips:

I'm pretty pleased with the results. One slight downside is that the plastic bottom half of the model didn't take the paint well, so as I removed the masking it tended to lift the paint to expose the plastic beneath. It's black plastic, though, so once it's weathered and had transfers and so on added, I don't think you'll notice the difference from the Field Grey.

The MaskFX sheets are an excellent way of adding complex camo schemes in my opinion, but a couple of things I learned whilst applying them:

1. The masks are individually quite small, and the smallest ones have a low stick-to-flex ratio. By that I mean if you try to bend a small mask around an edge or bump, the natural flex in the mask is higher than the stick, so it can un-stick and flap up. This ie especially annoying when you notice it just after you have applied a thrid coat of paint. keep the small ones for flat areas or gentle curves.

2. The paint layers need to be totally dry before you apply more masks. Adding them too early will mean that the paint hasn't bonded to the layer below and will instead bond to the sticky on the mask. If you are an impatient painter (like me) then some real self control is required here.

I used up more or less an entire sheet of the Shatter patterns on these minis, and the density of masking wasn't super high. I have some of the Amoeba patterns which I plan to use on some Brigade Models Montsabert tanks and Tassigny APC's to go for a sort of early WW2 French camouflage, and some Digital which I plan to use on my other kitbash project, the Matchbox Personnel Carrier.

Wargaming 20 questions

I've seen these 20 questions on a couple of other blogs, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and have a crack myself:

1. Favourite Wargaming period and why?
Sci-fi. I'm a rocketships and robots nerd.

2. Next period, money no object?
I'm not really much of a period hopper. Because my interests are mostly fantasy and Sci-fi, I can be a bit more creative with my minis. An 18th century Line fusilier can't be used as a Waffen SS panzer grenadier, but a guy in a space suit can be used in all sorts of differing sci-fi settings. I do like the look of some of those Saga dark ages figures, but that does seem to have a steepish start up. So, if money no object we'll say 28mm Dark ages skirmish.

3. Favourite 5 films?
Blade Runner, Point Break, Alien, Shawshank Redemption, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Empire Strikes Back (I get +1 for advantageous position)

4. Favourite 5 TV series?
Game of Thrones, West Wing, Big Bang Theory, Eureka, Farscape

5. Favourite book and author?
One? Just one? I like to many books and authors to pick one. Put a gun to my head and I'd probably go for either Lord of the Rings or Mort.

6.Greatest General? Can’t count yourself!!
Ghengis Khan seems to have done rather well. Plus that Hannibal chap.

7. Favourite Wargames rules?
Blitzkrieg/Cold War/Future War Commander. Simple, fast and intuitive. You get outstanding responses from the author on the forum and he's happy to take suggestions and criticism.

8. Favourite Sport and team?
Rugby, England

9. If you had a only use once time machine, when and where would you go?
Assuming I could take the Mrs along, the far future, so that medical science had evolved to the point where they could sort me out!

10. Last meal on Death Row?
Traditional Christmas dinner, turkey, roasties, stuffing, pigs-in-blankets and so on, with Christmas pud and cream for dessert.

11. Fantasy relationship and why?
Angelina Jolie. I think the reason is obvious.

12. If your life were a movie, who would play you?
In my minds eye, John Cusack, but he'd probably need to put on a few pounds and lose the hair.

13. Favourite Comic  Superhero?
Iron Man.

14. Favourite Military quote?
Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: "Do not march on Moscow". Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule. I do not know whether your Lordships will know Rule 2 of war. It is: "Do not go fighting with your land armies in China". It is a vast country, with no clearly defined objectives.." - Bernard Law Montgomery

15. Historical destination to visit?
I'm very much interested in experimental aviation - X-planes and so on, so I think being able to hear that first sonic boom over Edwards a Chuck Yeager busted the sound barrier in the X-1 would be quite something.

16. Biggest Wargaming regret?
I don't get to play as much as I'd like. My previous bunch of regular gamers have dispersed, so it's quite infrequent to get a game in now.

17. Favourite Fantasy job?
The man that gets to slap George Lucas with a wet fish every time he has a stupid idea. I'd be good at that.

18. Favourite Song Top 5?
See Q.5 - just 5? I've got thousands of tracks on my MP3 player that I love.

19. Favourite Wargaming Moment?
I was playing in a week long WW2 megagame in Cornwall - Fall of France 1940 using Spearhead. Possibly the geekiest thing I've ever done - a wargaming holiday. Anyway, I was playing the Germans and I'd spent pretty much all of the week so far trying to achieve an opposed crossing over a canal outside Brussels. My units were getting chewed up and every day I'd make a small bridgehead, to be told by HQ that they couldn't support it and I'd have to retreat back under cover of dark. 

On the 4th day the British defenders flanks collapsed on another part of the table and I get to exploit my position and move inland. At the end of the day I was looking at defending against a British counter attack the next day over an adjacent river. During the planning phase that evening I was standing surveying the terrain with the CO and 2IC of the German forces and they suggested troop placements for me, in a few nearby villages and hamlets that would cover a fording point. Thinking back to the last four days of river crossings, I thought that the ford was the last place I would want to cross - an obvious target, overlooked from 4 easily fortified positions and with no cover once you got feet dry on the other side. 

Instead, I'd want to cross upstream, near some woods that looked onto the rear aspects of two of the hamlets, with good opportunity to work round through the woods to flank. The CO and 2IC were skeptical - bearing in mind this was the first time I had ever played Spearpoint ("What's a battlegroup?") or even WW2 -  but let me deploy one token force in the buildings by the ford, one in the woods near the river and a reserve in the other woods that could be exploited. I plotted my pre-planned artillery to fire on the place that I though was the likely crossing point and then on the rally points nearby once the troops were over the river.

Next day, British counter-attack starts and not a sausage arrives at the ford. Instead two battalions cross the river at exactly the point I predicted. My pre-planned arty dropped right where I wanted it, my PAK line was in just the right place and my HMG's had perfect lines of sight. The targeting was so spot on that the British CO requested that the Umpire confirm the pre-planned matched the plans I had submitted the night before - and I can't say I blamed him or held a grudge for him asking. It was a perfect ambush, and I'd based it all on the experience gained from the pounding the Brits had given me over the last few days. The infantry assault faltered and then routed and a planned tank breakthrough was blunted as a reserve Panzer division made itself known (although I felt sure I could have held off the tanks too). 

20. The miserable Git question, what upsets you?
Small mindedness. Bigotry. I also get quite annoyed by those wargamers who think that their period/ruleset is the only "real" wargame - "Fantasy/spaceships/horror - that's not real wargaming"

10mm Fantasy Part 2 - Orcs of the Red Hand

I picked up some 10mm Orcs and Dwarves from Kallistra last year at Salute (or possibly SELWG). Discussion about a fantasy version of the excellent Blitzkreig/Cold War/Future War Commander rules on the Specialist Military Publishing forum prompted me to drag them out and give them a coat of paint. If you aren't familiar with BKC/CWC/FWC then I can heartily recommend them as very enjoyable rulesets that have become our go-to WW2-modern and beyond rules since we fell out of love with Flames of War.

The orcs are made up of 6 packs of the Kallistra Hordes and Heroes figures. I base the strips for infantry and archers singly so they go twice as far, instead of the two ranks that Kallistra suggest. This means I do have to snip the archers apart to get single figures, but with the Orcs this wasn't a problem.

Two packs of advancing spears, one pack of archers, one pack of cavalry (three to a base leaving me four figures for command stands) flyers and catapults all came to just £30, taking advantage of the excellent 5 for the price of 6 deal.

The orcs were undecorated black and then dry brushed with GW Waaagh Flesh, then Warpstone Glow and finally Straken Green. Wood was picked out in Bestial Brown, metal in Leadbelcher, fur in Adeptus Battlegrey, leather and cloth in various browns and tans and finally the red hand insignia and various trims in Mechrite Red with a Red Gore highlight. The eyes were also picked out in Red Gore. The whole thing then got a generous wash of Ogre Flesh. Bases were done with Woodland Scenic mid brown ballast, coarse granite ballast and fine mixed turf over a burnt sienna base coat. Everything then got two coats of GW Hardcoat varnish.

The flying units are a Mechrite Red drybrush with Red Gore highlight straight over the black undercoat, but applied in reverse, so I left the leading edges and raised joints of the wings black, which I think looks quite good.

The pictures were taken in bright sunlight, so my infill lamps have done very little and there are some very strong shadows, but I think you can get a feel for the figures.

The whole army

Infantry block

Command units made from spare cavalry and catapult crew

Shield and banner detail on command units.

Wolf Rider cavalry

Archers. These had to be snipped apart as they were standing one behind the other.

Catapults.

Infantry standard bearer. Can also be used as a command stand

I've yet to play it, but I estimate that there are enough units here to make 2 or 3 good 40pt armies in Mighty Armies, which means I'll have the same for the Dwarves and Dark Elves, and even more for the Lizardmen that I've already painted. Dwarves are next, and I've already started on the infantry blocks for those. More news as I finish them.

Kitbash Part 5

Long time without a post, so you get a great big one now. The lightbox is also still kaput, so apologies for the murky photos.

First of all, a couple of kit bashes for my 15mm Scifi. I was recently inspired by the Khurasan Miniatures soon to be released Doe Gunship to try and build a squad lifter for my NKDF forces. A number of threads on TMP suggested various donor vehicles, but I eventually settled on a Revell 1/72 model of a Revell Kamov Ka-29 "Helix" helicopter:

The model itself is quite nice, with good detail on the various kit parts. It fits together well, even the spindly support struts for the rocket pods and under carriage.

To convert this from a helicopter to a VTOL shuttle I used several additional parts, engines from an Revell Easykit A-10, a LONGBOW radome from a Revell Easykit Apache, a Twin Gun turret from Old Crow and two side mounted thruster pods from Combat Wombat/Micropanzer (although I can't seem to find the thruster pods on either Combat Wombat or Micropanzer's sites now).

The conversion was fairly straightforward. I built up the model to the point where the hull was sealed but no external fixtures added. I then cut down the A-10 engine pods and attached them upside down on either side of the top rear fuselage. There was a handy rail on one side above the large crew door that acted as a brace, but nothing on the other side. In Hindsight, I could have added a piece of scrap styrene here to make my life easier, but ho hum. I then  glued the Micropanzer thrusters to either side between the locating lugs for the weapon wings. I then cut the middle braces out of the weapon wings and glued them over the top of the thruster pods. The wheels and undercarriage was then added, as were the various nose sensor devices. Remembering that this is going to be a gaming model and not a display piece, I left of the various fiddly and delicate aerials and grab handles (bitz box fodder). The final addition was the large Old Crow turret added to the bottom as a kind of remote bombardment turret for fire support, a bit like the AC130 gunship.

Once complete it was given an all-over undercoat of Army Painter Army Green - a very versatile green base coat that covers well - that tied all the parts together nicely. Next step is to paint it up to match the rest of my NKDF vehicles, so darker green stripes with grey and black offset "chocolate chip" patterns.

The next kitbash is of the old Matchbox Personnel Carrier inspired by the updates done over on Mini Metal Mayhem of the old Matchbox Stoat armoured car 

I had one of these from my childhood, and managed to pick up three more, all in pretty bad states of repair. I disassembled them, binned the two rows of seated passengers and the bendy plastic guns and dunked them in a pot of nail varnish remover for a week to try and get rid of the worst of the grime and old, flaky paint. It didn't totally work - when they painted something in the 1970's it was designed to stay painted, dammit! A lot of the paint did come off, but some of it is so welded on, I'm just going to paint over it.

Originally I was going to keep them wheeled, but swap out the big slicks for something a bit more rugged. However, when I saw the grav engines from Micropanzer, I decided to give them a go. You can see the engines on this thread at TMP (you can also see the thruster pods that I used on the Helix conversion on the shuttle in that same thread).

The wheel wells were filled in with some strip styrene and the grav engines glued in place. More strip styrene adds a few gubbins details besides the engines and the top deck was selaed over with sheet styrene. Details were added with half-round and tread plate styrene and a top hatch was also added. The bendy plastic gun was replaced by a spare from a GZG 6mm hovertank (The Rommel)

I've only completed one so far, and it's yet to be painted, but I'm really pleased with the progress.

Finally we have another 15mm Scifi piece, not a kit bash this time. This is a Khurasan Miniatures PA-3 Python Powered Armour Suit. This is again for my NKDF forces, to give them some light mecha support to compliment their big stompy robot.

Simple green/tan camo this time, as the green/dark green didn't totally work on the last NKDF Mecha. These are very nice little robots with a selection of arm poses. I have 3 more to finish off which will make a nice little strike team, or allow them to split up to add a bit of punch to individual platoons.

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.