Gangsters and Pete's Meat Shop

Bruce hosted a gangster game, using Chain Reaction 2.0 rules. The gang was trying to move a bunch of bootlegged booze out of its warehouse and off the left side of the board, using a truck.

The more booze Ethel and the boys got off the board, the higher the points for the gangster. Facing them, was the town's corrupt police force, who got points of killing gangsters and capturing booze. The coppers set up on the left side of the table, mounted in a squad car and motorcycle.

As Ethel frantically carried booze out to the truck, the cops put the pedal to the metal. One of the motorcycle riders jumped off and ran after he took some fire from Vinnie while the rest eventually cranked up on a nasty turn ("too fast!"). Sergeant O'Furniture (driving the paddy wagon)  misjudged the movement of the street car!

A miraculous control roll saw him slew the wagon around, parallel to the street car and coppers bailed out to engage Vinnie. O'Toole, O'Shea, and O'Leary opened up on hapless Vinnie.

Other coppers advanced in the shadow of the street car only to get caught in the open in a nasty back-and-forth firefight with gangsters in the warehouse windows. Eventually, the gangsters withdrew from the fight but they had bought Ethel lots of time.

She jammed the old truck into gear and started to end run the cops. Sergeant O'Furniture jumped back in the wagon and tried to block her path with the rest of the boys peppering the truck with rounds.

Ethel managed to avoid losing control and just barely squeezed past the cops for a victory.

I've also been doing a bit of painting. I took the best building I picked up at the model train swap meet, did some detail work and dry brushing and then washed and sealed it.

Pete's Meat appears to cater to a speciality crowd! Only the finest cuts.

Up next: A huge rancor and some more buildings are underway. And it is club night on Tuesday.

Gaming at the club

We had 7 guys out at the club this week with three games on deck. Jonathan and Scott played some Commands and Colors Machine Guns.

I think this was the Verdun scenario, with the Germans advancing over the Meusse River? I left before it was done, but it looks like the Germans were just running out of troops.

Dan hosted Terry and Richard in a game of Strange Aeons. RCMP and heroes versus cultists.

The cultists were selling some naked townies for meat to some little guys with big teeth. Gravel Road Cowboys had to rescue them.

I left before this game reached conclusion. At that point, the body count looked like it was favouring Sergeant Preston and his kung-fu fighters.

A very pretty game that Dan did a nice job of putting on.

Chen and I played Battlestar Galactica with Newtonian movement. BSG is basically the same as Wings of War (movement on cards, simultaneous selection) and you can play it with cinematic movement or with Newtonian rules.

Newtonian movement allows you to pivot your ship away from your direction of travel to change your firing arc. I have tried to illustrate this using the arrows to show direction of travel. The picture above saw the viper rush towards the camera and the raider rush away. As the ships passed one another, they pivoted (the raider more successfully) and the raider got to fire.

Once your facing is not the same as your direction of travel, your movement becomes restricted (you can drift on momentum or pivot and move (which may also have some drift). With good planning, this can allow you extended firing opportunities but also leaves you vulnerable to your opponent making a sharp turn and sneaking out of your arc (see above).

The effect of the Newtonian rules were interesting (rewards planning and good spatial skills) but hard to get used to. I'm still not sure I fully understood the movement rules by the end--there were some interactions between acceleration and kinetic energy I couldn't keep straight. I tend to prefer simpler game mechanics (a la X-wing) but the designer(s) made a good effort to incorporate complex concepts into (relatively) simple add-on rules.

Last of the Imperial Assault figures

I finished off the last of the Imperial Assault commission I took on (except there may be a few replacement figures left to arrive).

These guys were from a Hoth set. I'm now going to shift to rebasing some 1812 figures and painting up some of the railway buildings I picked up this past weekend. With spring upon us, I'm also going to start shifting to one post per week (from two) for the summer.

Model railway swap meet

I haven't had a lot of chance to game these past few weeks with competing demands and a nasty cold. Jess and I did get in a game of Memoir 44. It was an Operation Cobra scenario and she pulled out a win in a tight game.

This morning was the bi-annual model railway swap meet. I picked up a few terrain items for cheap. First up was a $5 HO-scale factory. This needs a coat of spray primer and then some painting.

I also got a meat shop. Nothing special about it except my Gotham lacks buildings that suggest people live there so a food shop was a good deal. Needs dusting, a wash, and some sealing. This was $5?

I got a pair of HO-scale street cars. They need painting but offer an alternative to cars and buses for eco-conscious super villains. They were $5.

This factory was $15. It was a bit pricy but still a deal. Needs a wash and seal. maybe some detailing on the fire escape on the back side. Irritatingly, it was not constructed square (left section needed filing that was not done).

Finally, I got these bits and pieces for $12. The cars are great and a oil tank and coal pile are useful pieces.

Overall, a great haul for $42. I still have three Star Wars figures I'm finishing, some 1812 figures being rebased, and then I'm onto these buildings. There is also a club night this week.

Some HO-scale vehicles

I ordered some additional cars with which to clog the streets of Gotham. There were from China and at least one is 3-D printed.

The most interesting aspect of these is how the lines from the 3-D printing are so much more visible in a picture than in real life.

The blue beetle (bah-dum-bum) is the best example. You can only see the printing layers if you look for them. But they jump off the screen as soon as you put a camera on them. Obviously, a wash was not the correct technique!

Up next: Maybe some gaming with Bruce and the end of the Imperial Assault figures. Then on to rebasing some 1812 1/72-figures.

More Hoth-y goodness

I was a bit under the weather this week, so I missed our club night. I finished some more figures from the Return to Hoth expansion (with various basing requests).

Some more snow troopers, this time on a rubble base.

A couple of assassin droids of some persuasion, on sand, rubble and indoor bases.

And a second Wampa, on a rubble base. I think I have three more heroes left to do--just need to wash, seal and base them.

Up next: Some 3-D printed vehicles for Gotham.

Return to Hoth

I worked up some more Imperial Assault figures this week. These have been painted for awhile but I struggled to get a decent snow base for them.

We'd originally discussed and then discarded model railway supplies as too costly. The owner then found a baking soda technique he liked.

That created a lovely finish that was too brittle for gaming (crust broke off as soon as figure was handled). My efforts to strengthen the crust using various sealers were were unsuccessful so I eventually painted over it with thick craft paint to try and get some snow effect.

The figures themselves were nice. The trooper in the hover tank is slightly smaller than his foot-bound friends.

The wampa is nice enough but could may be a touch larger?

I've got a few more figures with different basing underway before bringing this commission to a close.

En Garde and Tribal

I dropped in on Bruce for gaming on Tuesday. We played another pair of skirmish games, pitting Osprey's En Garde against Tribal.

Bruce hauled out some 28mm musketeers for the evening. Both games were "get the Queen across the board" scenarios.

En Garde (basically Rohan) was fun but deadly. There are some interesting planning mechanisms (selected number of attack and defence moves) but the rules are such that the specific moves one uses in combat are almost always the same.

In the end, the musketeers managed to get enough double teams to grind the cardinal's goons to dust.

We then played the same scenario with Tribal (but with a better grasp of the combat mechanics). The game was much more fun, with each round of combat being a mini card game.

The result was a victory for the cardinal's troops. I was so engrossed I the game that I forgot to take pictures. The different is the decisions required by the mechanics in Tribal are way more interesting than in En Garde.

The one down side is that the table get cluttered with cards. That could be reduced by using smaller cards. It is also really at two person game (four players would yield a lot of sitting and waiting while melees were resolved. Both were good games but Tribal was the winner.