The War of Sidalis IV

Sidalis IV was a colony funded by Nova Corporation. Like many other prospection colonies, the corporation had an agreement with the Terra Federation where they would sponsor colonization efforts in exchange for the rights of exploring the planet before other companies. The agreement, however, did not include alien artifacts which were discovered on that colony.

When it was found that Nova Corporation was hiding the discovery from the Federation and was smuggling the artifacts to new facilities within the Hectrim Empire, things went sour. This was considered an act of high treason by the federation council, and soon Terraforce military were sent to take control of Sidalis IV.

Eventually, the Earth Military Forces would arrive in massive numbers and end the conflict but the first few months of the war saw a much smaller contingent of Terraforce troops fighting the highly-trained NovaCorp military personnel, in an attempt to control key facilities and stop the smuggling of alien artifacts.

In this first battle report, an assault group of Terraforce (TF) soldiers meets a NovaCorp (NC) patrol near a research facility. The game was played with the USE ME rules. The Terraforce group consists of a small command squad (Elan 5, Move 6", leader with side arm and two soldiers with heavy weapons) and two four-man teams (Elan 4, Move 6", standard rifles.)

The NovaCorp patrol consists of one Power Armor (light vehicle, Elan 4, Move 4", auto weapon, armoured) and two five-man squads (Elan 4, Move 6", superior rifles.)

A few new paper miniatures

I've printed a few miniatures from new sets that I got recently. Here you can see the beholder from the Monsters of the Game Mat series (from Cerberus Illustrations) and the mameluke from the Arabian Knights set (from Jabbro Jones Miniatures). I've also put the wizard from One Monk's Adventurers set (which I had built before) for comparison of scale. The remaining miniature is a test print of the native american woman that I created for the Cardboard Warriors Forum Hoard.

While the models from Cerberus look good on the screen, they have to be printed and cut to be truly appreciated -- the shading on the beholder makes it look like it has real volume on the table. In Song of Blades and Heroes, I would stat this beholder like this:

Beholder (128 points - Personality) Q3+ C3 Assassin, Flying, Huge, Magic-User, Shooter (Medium)

Grey City - Campaign Summary

This is a summary with links to each of the posts describing the Grey City campaign for Fear and Faith.

Campaign description and rules

Episode 1 - Chance Meeting is a scenario that splits the Good warband against a large number of zombies.

Episode 2 - Heavy Metal involves an objective that has to be retrieved from a building, while avoiding a number of grouped walking dead.

Episode 3 - Scavenger Hunt is the "classic" treasure hunt against a large number of oponents, including a house rule that creates a new type of zombie.

Episode 4 - Survive to Fight Another Day closes the campaign. Once again the warband is split, this time having to perform two different tasks at the same time.

Grey City ep. 4 - Survive to Fight Another Day

In the fourth and last game of the Grey City campaign, the huge mobs of zombies that the bikers had previously encountered have reached Grey City. Now, the survivors must defend their base while at the same time finish the works on the rigged armored short bus.

Rules for the scenario

The Good party
This scenario is built for a 300-point warband, which will be split into two groups. If you use the same warband continuing from the campaign and it has 280 points or less, you may spend all victory points that you may have remaining and and add up to three models with the survivor profiles listed in the campaign rules, respecting the 300 point limit. For instance, if your warband has 250 points, you may add one survivor with shotgun and one survivor with pistol (or any other combination of two survivors.)

Zombies
In this scenario there are fourteen Walking Dead. When you first activate a zombie, roll a die. On a 6, it is actually a Twitcher, unless there are already five Twitchers on the board. As with other scenarios, zombies activate with only one die unless they are in a position where they can move in and attack in the same turn, in which case they roll two dice.

Robots and Raiders

Here's the report of a quick battle I ran with the USE ME rules. In this post-apocalyptic confrontation, a group of raiders comes across an old military base that is being protected by a squad of robots.

Grey City ep. 3 - Scavenger Hunt

Continuing the Grey City campaign, the survivors venture out to look for supplies, while the work to convert the short bus into an armored car continues.

Rules for the scenario
This scenario introduces two new house rules:
Lunge - cost 3 points
A model with this special rule may perform a longer movement action if that will bring it into base contact with an enemy model. A model with Short movement can perform one Medium move, and a model with Medium movement can perform one Long move. Models with Long movement cannot use this rule. Lunge cannot be used if the model, its target or both are on difficult terrain.
Sniper Rifle - cost 8 points
A sniper rifle has long range and grants +2 to combat. For targets at least one Medium away, it can only be used for aimed shots, but in this case the range penalties are reduced by 1. For closer targets, it can only be used for normal shots and suffers a -1 penalty to attack. Aimed shots using a sniper rifle are Lethal against zombies.

More modern/sci-fi skirmish!

My order from 15mm.co.uk has arrived, including the USEME001 rules booklet and two sets of minis (HOF rim mercenaries and apocalyptic warriors.) I've done a first reading of the rules and the system looks good. I particularly like the simple rule for squad movement, I guess it will keep the game going fast even with larger numbers of miniatures.

Since I know it will take me forever to paint those nice miniatures, I've started building some modern/sci-fi paper minis to use with this game system, as well as other modern skirmish rules. Here is a picture of the Wolverine tank from OneMonk (built at 50% scale in 80gsm paper) and one NCC trooper from Slick's Miniatures.

Using thin paper makes folding very easy, but it's also harder to properly align edges, as it buckles all the time. Even though the tank ended up looking nice and it feels reasonably solid (being made of several closed box shapes that sustain themselves,) I'll have to try 120gsm paper.

Grey City ep. 2 - Heavy Metal

In the second game of the Grey City campaign, the zombie survivors try to find the car parts they need to fix a short bus that they will use to escape.

Rules for the scenario
Mission Objective: the Auto Repair Shop
The survivors need to find and carry away the parts to fix the short bus in an abandoned car repair shop. The door to the shop is locked. To break in, a character needs to stand adjacent to it, spend one action and roll 5-6 on a die. The character gains +1 if carrying a heavy weapon or shotgun, and +1 if another character is adjacent.
After the door is open, characters may spend one action to enter or exit the shop. No more than four characters can be inside the shop at one time. On each turn of the survivors that ends with at least one character inside, roll a die. On a 6, they find the car parts. Each additional character inside the shop grants a +1 (for instance, if there are three characters inside, roll a die and add 2 to the result.)
Once the car parts are found, they have to be taken back to the starting edge of the board. There are two backpacks full of parts, each requires one character to carry. If a character with a backpack is defeated, place a marker on the ground. Another character may spend one action to pick it up.
Zombies do not enter the shop but they may gather around the entrance. When survivors exit the building, push the zombies back just enough to place the new model between them.
The Good warband
This scenario was run with a 300-point warband, ideally the one that survived the previous scenario.

FUBAR: Urban Warfare Drill

I've run a quick solo game to get the hang of the rules for FUBAR 3.0, a set of sci-fi skirmish rules that fit in a single page. I used RPTools with quickly built tokens (from OneMonk Terraforce troops) to simulate a urban warfare drill between two teams (Red and Purple) each with two units of seasoned soldiers. The grey blocks are buildings that serve as cover (some time, I've got to make some decent maps to use in RPTools so that these battle reports don't look so bland.)

Grey City ep. 1 - Chance Meeting

This is the first game of the Grey City campaign, where the two groups of survivors meet and start a plan to leave the city. I'll present the rules for the scenario first, followed by the battle report.

Rules for the Scenario
The Good warband
This scenario is meant for a 300-point warband of zombie survivors. Use the profiles from the book as a starting point. Given the amount of zombies, it is advisable to have 6-10 models instead of just a few high quality ones. Since this is the beginning of the campaign, no survivors should have grenades or chainsaws.

Zombies
The zombies in this scenario are regular Walking Dead. There are a total of 15 of them, but only part of these will be initially deployed. When playing solo, all zombies activate with only one die, except if there is a target that can be contacted in a single move. In that case, they activate with two dice in order to try to engage in close combat and attack in the same round. Activate all zombies that will roll one die first, then activate the ones with two dice. Their tactics are simple: pursue the closest targets, surround and overwhelm.

Setup
Deploy the Good warband in two groups, within one Short of opposing sides of the board. Each should be about the same amount of points. Place five zombies one Long away from each group of survivors. The remaining five zombies will show up using the rules from the Zombie Infestation scenario from the book. They will enter from the other two edges of the board (roll a die to choose.)

You may place 4-6 obstacles on the board, however they must be at least 1 Medium away from the zombies and survivors. Besides that, a circle of one Medium radius on the center of the table should be kept free of obstacles. The following picture shows an example of setup. In this case, the extra zombies may appear from the north and south edges.

Important: in this scenario, the Good warband always has the initiative (i.e. it has the first turn.) Also, ignore time of day for this scenario.

Post-apocalyptic Playground

I've spent Sunday afternoon building terrain pieces for my set of post-apocalyptic figures. This caused a change in my plans of running the first Grey City game but the results were good. It still takes me a considerable time to build the pieces (about 1 hour for each of the ruined buildings, for instance.) but I'm improving. The following pictures show the models I've built: Dave Graffam's Ruined Plaza, World War Ruins, and Crosspieces (from both sets), two Slagtown Watchtowers from Finger and Toe and a large shanty building from Tommygun.

After building these pieces, the Slagtown: Eden set by Finger and Toe Models has entered my shopping list. The sample watchtower model is so open to customization that I can only imagine what I could build with that set.

Bunkers in Armor Grid

After I built a bunker model from Dave Graffam in the same small scale as the other ruins, I was left wondering how much more fun it would have been if I could fit the models inside... long story short, I'll be building new pieces at a larger scale. As for the smaller ruins I had already built, turns out they look just right (and this time, on the proper scale) with the Armor Grid: Mech Attack miniatures. In this picture, besides Dave's World War ruins and bunker, it's also possible to see the structure, crate and barrel that come from the Slagtown: Watchtower free sample from Finger and Toe Models.

And now, even if I can't physically fit the ground troops inside the bunker, I can still use the optional destructible building rules with them, simply removing the infantry base when it enters the bunker and placing it back when it leaves.

Grey City - a Fear and Faith Campaign

I've finally completed building the necessary pieces to run my short solo campaign for Fear and Faith. In Grey City, a group of survivors from a zombie apocalypse try to escape from a deserted small town that will soon be overrun by a horde of the undead.

The Good Guys
The survivors form a 300-point warband that should have no more than 10 models. All firearms are allowed but no grenades or chainsaws. The warband I used to play the campaign has a total of  298 points and is comprised of seven characters with the following stats:

More post-apoc, in another scale

Here are the first figures of my "second generation" of paper models. They are 28mm figures printed at 66% scale, resulting in models that are around 20mm tall and fit on 20mm round bases -- good enough for Mutants and Death Ray Guns in 15mm scale or so. Instead of leaving a white border, I simply covered it with a black marker pen -- an idea I got from the OneMonk forums.

The bases are circles printed with the OneMonk stone texture, glued to 2mm thick EVA foam. The ruins are from Dave Graffam's sets once more, printed at around 50% scale (actually, I print them at 4 pages per page and Acrobat actually fits the pages, so I don't really have exact control of the scale in use.)

[Edit: replaced the photos with better ones]