Pijlie´s Wargames Blog

Monday, November 11, 2019

Last bits of Modern: Taliban and North African insurgents

Figures by Empress Miniatures and Spectre Miniatures

Thursday, October 31, 2019

The Bob's Bargain Bullets Siege: a Spectre scenario

The scenario:

A central building has been the target of a robbery. It could be a bank or as in this case a gun store. 5 gangsters (militia) and their leader (professional ) are locked in and have taken two personnel postage. They are armed with a variety of sidearms and other firearms, like SMGs, a shotgun or 2 and perhaps an assault rifle.

A Police Force has arrived to end the situation. It is made up of 6 Trained officers with sidearms, 6 professional SWAT officers with SMGs and flashbangs and 3 Trained inspectors with sidearms and a SMG in case of the SWAT leader. Force Leader is a Professional (ex-Marine) Commisioner with a pistol.

We had the police starting deployed around the building, but it might actually be more fun to have them arrive by car and/or motorbike and have them deploy as desired. When doing that, give them at least two or three Moves (or entire turns) to do that before the gangsters notice something is wrong.

About 20 civilians are watching the events from the surrounding area. 4 of those are secretly nominated to be 3 more Militia gangsters and their Professional leader, the second man of the gang. Write down a description of the civilian next to a short description of the gangster the figure is suposed to represent. Show the paper upon revealing the gangster. The hidden gangsters always win Initiative. They may be found aka revealed by being Scanned by police.

Whenever the gangster player activates them to give a command, move or attack in some way, the gangster is revealed.

The gangsters need to flee the table by car. The Police must prevent this and save the hostages. The gangsters may use the hostages for cover but may not shoot them.

Using hostages for cover is done by placing them in base contact with the covering gangster(s). Shooting at a covering gangster yields a -1 modifier. Covering gangsters may move Tactically as well. A missed shot will hit a hostage. Work out the hit as normal. Hostages need not be in the line of fire to risk being bit by a missed shot, just in base contact with the covering gangster.

How it played for us:

The gangsters omitted to block the windows hence the police shot quite a few through the windows in the first barrage. The hidden gangsters outside took out 4(!) officers but when their leader was put down by a uniformed officer with a pistol at long range the rest lost heart.

The remaining gangsters in the store decided on a last-ditch attempt to storm out for a car but were gunned down (partly due to lacking hiding-behind-hostages rules, amended above) by the SWAT team and the hostages were freed.

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Sculpting project: Elder Things

For my Mythos Wars project, a few Elder Things were of course essential. Failing to find miniatures I was pleased with, I rashly decided to sculpt them myself. Starting with a description from "At the mountains of Madness":

Six feet end to end, three and five-tenths feet central diameter, tapering to one foot at each end. Like a barrel with five bulging ridges in place of staves. Lateral breakages, as of thinnish stalks, are at equator in middle of these ridges. In furrows between ridges are curious growths – combs or wings that fold up and spread out like fans. . . which gives almost seven-foot wing spread. Arrangement reminds one of certain monsters of primal myth, especially fabled Elder Things in [the]

and some illustrations:

I decided to make the bodies from FIMO clay, as this can be baked and would be hard enough to attach the rest of the parts to.

The next part was the undercarriage, made up of greenstuff and shaped into 5 tentacles ending in a triangular footpad. 28mm figure for size.

Then the bodies were glued to the tentacle bases and I sculpted the 5-point star-shaped heads from green stuff, adding these to the body.

The arms were a challenge, being described as tentacles ending in thin tendrils. I made them from unbraided electrical wire and greenstuff.

I kinda cheated with the wings, using some parts clipped from old MageKnight miniatures. Not quite satisfied with them, but the greenstuff needed to harden before I could continue.

The next day I found better wings in the Mageknight bitbox.

Added eyes, some more body structure. Tried to add more details to the heads but sculpting is HARD people! SO I threw the gauntlet and primed them with spraypaint primer.