Gruntz, Pike and Shotte, SAGA, and Mutant Future Weekend Gaming 11-8-12

Had a great weekend at the BArons gaming Thurs-Fir-Sat.

Thursday was a mega Gruntz game. We had 8 players and 35 units a side. And it was the first time we have played it. It was a lot of fun. We played for 2 1/2 hours and with one more turn we would have had a full conclusion. It was a simple meeting engagement. armor, ifv's, mechs, specialists, power armor, infantry. On one side, the Aliens fron the Korden Quadrant, a hegemony of vicisious mercenary worlds. On the other, The Quick Reaction Force of the Humanist Protectorate. Lots of carnage. Pics below:

A lot of fun was had and Gruntz got a lot of positive reviews from the BG's. We will definately be playing more. And based on how monster a game this was, compared to all the other examples and battle reports I've read, I was impressed that by putting gruntz on a single base speeds up play. I am based on Flames of War bases so no individual bases for us. I can't fathom moving single 15's in a game this big. No way. Figs are a mix of GZG, CMG, and DP9. Terrain is homemade, Kato, and AT-43.

Next up was Friday Night. Just me and the BAron. That never happens. It was pretty fun. We played a game of Pike and Shotte with his gorgeous Italian Wars stuff. It was quick and deadly. And fun.Pics:

Pike and Shotte is quick like Black powder so you need a ton of troops. The BAron has a ton, but we didn't want to go crazy just yet. HE is also in the middle of the great rebasing, so no finished bases.

Once we finished Pike and Shotte, we broke out SAGA to give it a whirl. Honestly I had never read the rules, didn't understand them very well, although the booze at this point may have been clouding my judgement. I think they are a good set, I need to read them. They seem like a set that rewards you mightily for knowing your troops, the rules, and the game boards. Not a pick up and go sort of game for multiple people, or those who haven't read the rules. It was fun to see my horde of Vikings finally get on the field. Couple of Pics:

Finally, on Saturday we played Mutant Future. It is the Retro-Clone RPG of Gamma World nuttiness. We had a couple of new players, so we had to fold them into the story. Hope they enjoyed the chaos. I know that most of you are not interested in tales of RPG gaming, so I won't digress too far. In summary, the group, consisting of a Mutant Anteater, A Mutant Wolf-Eagle hybrid, A Mutant Sunflower who is a badass, a mutant human, and a Pure Strain Human, rescued a Mutant Bat-Fox hybrid and released a deactivated Combat Engineering Synthetic from his slumber since the 'big one'. They detroyed a hungry, floating, gamma ray shooting, Gamma Eye that was hunting them for food. Also they got further dragged into the territorial disputes of the goose stepping, jack boot wearing, facist, hated Pig Men Cabals. Fun was had by all. 

For me, as much as I love classic D&D(red cover basic, blue cover expert, or Labrynth Lord), I find myself falling back into easy tropes while game mastering. Mutant Future keeps me on my toes. And my great love and the vision I have in my head of the Post Apocalyptic setting really forces me to be creative. Its a lot of fun if you give yourself over to it. My style is no-prep. Everything is on thefly, with maybe a few whispy plot threads dangling around. A sandbox. Go play.

So it was a fun weekend. Much gaming. I am off gaming this week and next, until schedules for basketball settle down and the rhythn of the holidays is in full force. Happy Gaming.

Heavy Gear...An aside.

As I have mentioned before, I have been collecting Heavy Gear for years. I collected every RAFM 1/87 HG I could get my hands on when the line was yanked from RAFM's hand. When the product on the store shelves went on clearance here, it was all mine. I love those sculpts. They are big, chunky, and fit amazingly well at their scale, as well as for 28mm, as large power armor. I have a couple hundred of them, and tanks and striders, infantry and artillery. A collection of toys I am very proud of.

I also have been collecting the new scale(that DP9 has been doing for at least 10-15 years now) at 1/144, or 10-12mm.

I will fully admit, the recent sculpts are amazing on detail, movement and convenience. Man, those RAFM minis are big and heavy. The DP9 one are much more manageable, and are so much better cast. And the new stuff they are coming out with is crazy good.

Anyway, I have been using the DP9 gears for 15mm Sci Fi because I don't think the HG rules at any stage of their development represent anything close to as good or playable as their models are. So I haven't dove in to painting units because I don't have a game to play with them.

But, I decided, afer a quick exchange with Agis on Lead Adventure Forum, and hoping that he can do a full HG treatment with his Victory Decision rules, I broke out some stuff I had built and primed and started throwing some quick paint down. Here it is:



A south Visigoth super tank. A big model in this scale.



Front view



The new Visigoth with the first complements of a Gear squad. Brawler Black Mamba, A Para Iguana, and a standard Iguana



A shot of the Hunn light tank to show the massive scale of the Visigoth 



Two new gears ready for detailing, Brawler Black Mamba, Jager Para



Also in the on deck circle, The Hunn Light Tank, another Visigoth, A Naga Strider, A King Cobra, and a standard load out Jager.

I have a nice selcetion of northern and southern gears. So, I may flesh a few units out on both sides so we can play some home growns with them. Or even mod Scott Pyle's Robofire to work for them.

I just can't work up the steam to paint the Spanish Nappies yet, so I am doing other stuff till the fever strikes me again.


Reminisce Part II - Eye Candy

So what caused me to reminisce about Heavy Gear? Well I was on Miniature Review and saw a refence to Frontline Gamer's blog about the new NuCoal army boxed sets that DP9 has put out. At this point DP9 has the same delusions of grandeur that GW, Reaper, Foundry etc. have regarding their pricing. It's silly really. It's one of the things that has opened the door for a lot of the 15mm sci companies to come in and take market share away from these established companies. It is what it is. But they have caused me to ignore them because I am not going to pay those prices. Even so, these are some great figs. Check this out:

I would surely like to get these figs. and the infantry finally looks good (not a big fan of the current Northern and Southern infantry). So if you don't mind the pricing, and want some terrifically designed figs in 1/144 scale, or use for almost any scale really, go check out DP9 and their gear lines. It makes me yearn for a great set of rules.(and no, Blitz!, whichever version you have, is not a great set of rules).

BTW, I have not switched on my gamer ADD. I am still chomping at the bit to find a day to finish my British Guards. Maybe this weekend.

And I had a friend randomly mention GHQ's Terrain Maker 4" hex system for small scale 15mm sckirmish gaming. I have some in the package. Got me thinking, that and some Gears and Robofire, may be a good combination.

Reminisce

there's this thing that I have never quite been able to shake off. It started about 12-15 years ago when I found a strange blister of miniatures at my FLGS. It was what looked like a giant robot. Oh cool. Fun. I hadn't been interested in anime robots in years. Back when we played Robotech the roleplaying game all the time in my early teens. I had gotten the GW bug 5 years before, and by this time was starting my love aaffair with Napoleonics and Historicals in general.

Anyway, the mini was heavy and chunky, but really looked like a lot of good design had gone in to the actual mechanics of the robot. OH look there are two factions. One has squared armor, one has rounded. Simple but effective at showing different styling and sides of a conflict. Just look at the difference between the US M1 and the Russian T-80. OK I like where this is going. And there is ARMOR! At this scale? and theres infantry!!! OK so now I know how big these guys are. And they are big, but not Johnny Socko big.

I spent about an hour looking at the blisters. I had no money at the time(well a little) so I only bought about 6 blisters 2 each side and 1 infantry each side. I love a ground pounder, even when there's robots.

I checked out and our FLGS Owner, ever helpful to sell product, directed me to the other isle and showed me the complete line of RPG material, and the then super thick Miniatures Rules. OK so I purt a little more on my credit card. I was so curious I wanted to devour the psuedo-history and background of this game (I was an avid GW guy for a while so fluff meant everything at the time). I bought the RPG game. I also bought the Miniatures Rules.

Care to guess?





Well it was Heavy Gear, and the Minis were the RAFM big scale (1/87) minis and the first editions of the RPG and the Mini rules. I devoured this game. Read everything. I was painting and gaming other stuff at the time, but behind the scenes of reading Chandler, Haithornthwaite, and Ospreys by the truckload, I was reading this stuff. I bided my time and soon the RAFM and DP9 thing fell apart. I had gotten about 10 gears at this point, but soon the RAFM stuff went on clearance everywhere. And then they went into my storage boxes. I got some crazy deals on stuff on ebay, and cleared everyone out here. As it sits now I have about a 100-150 of the Rafm ones, almost all makes(someday I'll actually look for the one's I am missing), including unopened boxes of tanks, apc's, striders, etc. I love the look and style of them and even thought RAFM quality control was spotty on a few models, overall they are fantastic. They look great with 15mm as huge walkers, they look even better with 28mm as walkers and heavy power armor.

I have so far only repurposed them for other stuff, cause as good as the designs and figs are, the rules are horrible and unplayable. It always broke my heart. How could a cinematic game of such speed and destruction be so slow, plodding and not-fun? I still look for the perfect set of rules to use for these guys. I thought a Crossfire! variant would work because of its dynamic initiative system, but after several plays I am not so sure. Scott Pyle's Robofire system(which we(the BAsement Generals) are playtesting) has nmuch promise to fill the role. I hope so.

fin

Oh wait, no I'm not. Since I was so heavily invested in the Rafm scale figs, I resisted for many years the new scale. I bought the orignal new scale rules boxed set, which came with a cople of new minis, I continued to buy army kists and background, but never bought the minis. Then on a whim I saw a box in the clearance bin of my FLGS and picked it up. Sculpts were better, figs had some movement, they were better metal, detail was crisp. Pricey, but nice. I continue to pick up stuff when I see it on clearance, building my forces randomly. I have about 50-60 of the current scale. I use them for 15mm walkers and they are perfect. You can see a couple below. 15mm GZG Alien Mercs and their Commander's Power Suit. And CMG Scouts with Robot support units. But I still yearn for a game where I can use the figs as gears.

What brought all this nostalgia up? See the next post...