Two Hour Supers!

Graham over at the Pairadice Saloon has been working on a set of supers rules using the Two Hour Wargames reaction system as its base.

This is exciting stuff indeed.  The THW reaction system isn’t for everybody and it does take some getting used to but once '”you get it” then you’ll never look back.

A supers game is perfect for this system for a few reasons:

1. The reaction system works best with fewer miniatures so a supers game of 4-6 miniatures a side is just right for a fast game with a lot of interaction.
2. The way the reaction system flows back and forth until a character is knocked down, out of the fight or runs away should replicate the short and intense bouts between heroes.
3. The reputation system (defined in Chain Reaction as “represents a combination of training, experience, morale, and motivation and is an expression of a characters overall fighting quality”) is a simple but effective scale of a heroes power that also allows for improvement, which brings me to…
4. All THW systems are perfect for campaign play.  Why play one game when you can play 5 or 6.  And let your heroes gain (or lose) skills and abilities on the way.
5. Solo game play.  This is great for a gamer that doesn’t get to play as much as he’d like, I can set up on the kitchen table and play with myself… by myself… a game on my own.  Or better still…
6. Same side play.  I can play a game with my kids, not against them.  This is important on so many levels but it makes it so much easier for my five year old to handle losing a game if Dad lost too.  “We’ll get them next time mate just you see!”

I’m very keen to see how Graham goes with this and the timing is perfect with my recent search for some good supers rules, maybe I’ve just found them.

Aren’t You A Little Short For A Gladiator?

I’ve had these Museum 15mm minis laying around for a while now and I thought they would be good to practice on before the Eureka Miniatures 15mm Naps turn up.

The paintjobs are simple but effective.  The photos bring out every blemish and missed brush stroke so you’ll just have to trust me they look better in person.

 

 

 

The obligatory “comparison shot”.

I bought these way back when I picked up a copy “Red Sand Blue Sky” from Two Hour Wargames.  I’ll have to drag it out and have another game or three, once I finish the skirmish table that is.

More Grand Fleets and some Nuts!

After reading through the rulebook for Grand Fleets I decided to pick up the first supplement King and Kaiser. 

For a 64 page supplement it's a little light on the scenarios, only having 6, but it does have around 10 pages of introductory material before all the scenarios that would allow players to expand on the scenarios presented.  To be fair though most scenarios are quite large with anything from 20-60 ships on the table so most scenarios will take up an evening.  So around 6 evenings worth of play for $11AUS is pretty good value if you ask me.  The rest of the book is 26 pages of ship data cards which makes the scenarios easier to just print and play.

Conclusion
I'm pretty happy with what I got.  Production quality is right where you want it with a pdf, nice layout and photos where needed but nothing that will hurt your printer.

My second purchase (third actually as I haven't got More Drums and Shakos in my inbox yet) was the Nuts! supplement The Big Hurt.

For $14US you get around 47 pages (the pdf comes with the maps in a seperate file) and contains 21 linked scenarios.  The book is intended for you to play the US forces and use the Nuts! system to manage the Germans.  However it does make note of how to play both sides if you so wish.  The book follows an unnamed US squad from September 1944 through to February 1945 during their attempt to take and secure the Hϋrtgen forest.  The layout is pretty much what you'd expect from any of the newer Two Hour Wargames publications, the books look sparse and the lack of artwork does make the book a bit of a drudge to read.  But!  The the important thing to remember here is that it's a scenario book.  You read it once and refer to it often.  More importantly is that it's printer friendly.

As for the scenarios themselves they are friendly to 28mm gamers with most scenarios only requiring a few squads aside.  The ctach here though is the reinforcements and the fact that most if not all of the German forces are determined randomly.  My only concern here is that I don't own a lot of vehicles and in the US case alone there is a 50% chance of a vehicle being rolled when determining reinforcements.  I can see a lot of proxies being used in these games.

The maps are probably where this scenario book improves over many of the books I've seen.  They're laid out on a grid and the terrain is labeled... thank you Darby, thank you.  There is nothing more frustrating than having to flip back to a map legend to work out what "white circles on a black background" represents on a map.

Conclusion
Another great Nuts! supplement that I'll be playing for sure.  Well... as soon as I finish my terrain, and finish painting the Germans... and start painting the US troops.  OK it'll probably be a while before I get this on the table.  But if you do have the miniatures painted then I'd recommend you pick this up.  Especially if you're a solo wargamer.

Nuts Second Edition Is Here... Almost

Just ordered Nuts Second Edition from Two Hour Wargames, it's not out until Wednesday so I have a little bit of a wait. I'm really keen to give it a go this weekend but I still haven't managed to get much scenery sorted. So unless Nuts 2 is less lethal than the first edition, very unlikley, then terrain and lot's of it is needed.

So Ed, is it Wednesday over there yet? Is it... huh?

Whitewash City - First Town Test

With the first lot of Whitewash City buildings completed I thought I should get them all out on the table to get a better idea of how many, if any, more I should be putting together. And here's the results. The blanket is the only sandy/desert one I could find in the laundry and it did not want to lay flat.

I'm pretty chuffed with the look of the table. Maybe a couple more buildings to help fill out the bigger tables at BADGA. With a bigger table I'd go for a layout where the main street branches off to the left and right in a Y shape. Yes it would get rid of the classic western main street look but it would add a few more places to hide.

Now I really should put the cardstock away and pick up the paintbrush, them lawmen and varmints ain't gunna paint themselves now are they.

Whitewash City - Bakery and Cafe

Continuing the trend, I've completed another two buildings for Whitewash City. This time the bakery and cafe.

I've also started work on the water tower for the train station, it's mostly done I only have to add the water pipe on the side. I'm not sure I like the way the design has the pipe sticking out in a gooseneck type fashion so I'll have a think about it and see if I can come up with my own implementation.

I've probably got enough buildings for some small games so I'll put them all out on the table tomorrow and work out how many more, if any, I need to put together.

Whitewash City - Bank and Ranch House

Two more Whitewash buildings tonight, well... actually it was just the one building tonight (the bank) while the ranch house was done earlier this morning. Around 5pm in fact. I woke up extra early and had to choose between this and cleaning up the kitchen... nuff said.

The ranch house was probably the trickiest building to put together so far. The fact that it's three seperate boxes that attach to each other means that if you get one edge wrong then everything that hangs off it is wrong as well. A slower setting glue helped here as it gave me time to jostle the pieces into position.

I'm really starting to get through the buildings now and it just begs the question: where am I going to put them all? I'm really not sure, where I am putting them right now is here:

And up here.

Another solution is needed, I'm thinking of a couple of those 20L plastic storage bins with some form of shelfing. What and how eludes me at the moment, a project for the weekend I think.

I want to get these all out on the table this weekend and run through the Six Gun Sound rules a few times to get a better grasp of the rules before I try to teach everyone else how to play. I'll post photos and an AAR.

Whitewash City - Sheriff's Office and Some More Shacks

Only one building tonight, still haven't gotten over the worst of this cough. Should provide a focal point for many Six Gun Sound scenarios.

With only a couple buildings left in the Whitewash City sets I picked up Set 9 and Set 4 which should give me enough to make a nice looking table. It's not that Six Gun Sound actually needs a lot of terrain but the more cover you have then the longer your characters will live.

I also picked up two sets of Precis Intermedia's Disposable Heroes standees: Western Statix 1 and Critters Statix 2: Domestic Animals. Some cardstock townsfolk and animals should help the town come alive, and you can't go past them at $4.72 a set for 30 standees. The quality is excellent and they offer all the standees in flat, triangle and token formats. They also offer army versions where each character is repeated on a single page and each one is numbered. Should be very useful for my When Chickens Go Bad and Cows With Guns scenarios.

Em4 Tokens and Dice

I found my order from Em4 waiting for me in the mailbox tonight. These should be rather useful for Bag the Hun and the reaction based games from Two Hour Wargames (Nuts!, Six Gun Sound and so on).

The 7mm blue dice will be rather used as altitude markers in Bag the Hun.


The coloured tokens are also the right size to be used as a reputation marker in the Two Hour Wargames systems. This should make games of Nuts pretty much record sheet free.

Also some of the coloured discs will be used for Bag the Hun as squadron markers.

I just need to find a case/caddy big enough to sort these out, another trip to the thrift/hardware store methinks.

Whitewash City - Train Station and Tool Sheds

Not a large update tonight but I managed to get the train station and some tool sheds finished.

With only 5 buildings, a few smaller sheds and a sheet or two of tents left to go I may have to order those other sets sooner rather than later.

Whitewash City - Grand Hotel and Dry Goods

It's been a few days since I worked on these, work and a cough so rough that it would be just plain foolish to put a sharp blade anywhere near my fingers. With my coughing fits becoming fairly predictable I decided to finish off the Grand Hotel that I started a few nights ago. The veranda on this model is fairly tricky and the whole building took me close to 2 hours this time. The Dry Goods took on 15 minutes this time though as I've worked out a few construction tricks, especially with attaching the roof. I even attempted to attach the chimney to the Grand Hotel. I think I've thrown out the chimney cap with the offcuts from the other night so I'll have to print another one out.

The veranda on the hotel is strong, it took six metal miniatures with no visible sagging or bending.

The bending you can see in the hotel veranda is due to me bending the tabs too short and in turn making the upright struts too long, the uprights are really eye candy and offer little to no real support to the veranda.

I should easily get through both sets of the buildings before the next Badga meet in under a fortnight, I may even grab another set or two and try for a really impressive table.

Whitewash City - Pioneer Hotel & Bath House

Really should have gone to bed hours ago but stayed up and got two more of the Whitewash City buildings completed, the Pioneer Hotel and the Bath House. The railings on the hotel are pretty thin compared to the others I've done. Usually they're a mirror image folded over and glued to give it some strength, these ones however are just one layer of card. I may look at fixing this up in the near future but right now I don't want to waste time fixing something that isn't necessarily broken.

Even the privvy is included, sans the flies thankfully.

Ok now I'll go get some sleep.

Whitewash City - Freight Office & Saloon

Put together some more of the Whitewash City buildings tonight and none of them were the ones I planned to do. Instead I put together the Overland Freight Office and the Gold Star Saloon.

These ones took maybe 40-45 minutes each with a few interruptions from the kids. The saloon in particular took the longest as there are a lot of cuts in the veranda. Very slow going.

I'm happy so far with the progress, two buildings per night with a bit of an all-nighter on Friday should result in 12-15 buildings, just need to find some time to paint the miniatures and re-read the rules.

Hmmmm Saturday doesn't look that far away at all. I'll keep going and reevaluate things on Wednesday night.

Whitewash City - First Buildings

I started out with the tents as some practice as it had been a while since I'd put anything like this together (I really should get the rest of that zombie infested shopping mall done).


All full of confidence I started on the Mail Express building, it took maybe 20 minutes to cut out and glue. The hardware store took a little longer, maybe 30-40 minutes as the veranda was pretty fiddly.

Looks good though, and the miniatures fit nicely too. I had heard some people were having trouble getting miniatures to fit that were based on the industry standard (ie GW) 25mm round bases).

I haven't tried putting on the chimney of either building yet as it looks fiddly, I'll get some more buildings under my belt first. I'm undecided if I'll leave the buildings as is or if I'll mount them onto foam card or MDF bases. Either way will be a bit of work but should add a little heft to the buildings and help them sit on the table better.

Tomorrow night: Sheriff's Office and the Hotel.

Whitewash City

I've had the starter set for Whitewash City from Hotz Stuff for a little while now and haven't had the time to start it. With my Artizan Cowboys getting some attention on the painting table I decided to splash out and grab set 8 and actually start putting them together.

I needed to go down to the thrift store to pick up some stuff for Bag the Hun (pipecleaner smoketrails) so I added some glue and cardstock to the list.


A quick spray of glue onto the paper and the cardstock, wait 30-40 seconds and then stick together. Once dried it should make a nice sturdy card-laminate-type-of-thing that should make a pretty strong cardstock building (with internal floorplans too boot).

And after 30 minutes of fumes I ended up with this:

I'll put some heavy books on top and give them a few hours to dry then later tonight I'll start putting some of them together. With around 15-20 buildings (if you count the tents) I'm aiming to put a couple together each night and I should be done and all ready by this Saturday.

But you know that old saying: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Wargamers...

Tiddlywhatsits and Teeny Tiny Dice

I just ordered around 240 odd of these things from EM4 Miniatures . The idea is to use them under the clear base of my flight stands for Bag the Hun and they, at 22mm, should fit nicely under the base of my 28mm minis for Nuts! and Six Gun Sound. The concept is to use colours to mark flights/schwarms in Bag the Hun and for Nuts!/Six Gun Sound the colours will represent the reputation value of the miniature (eg none for rep 3, White for 4, Red for 5 and Yellow for 6).

I also ordered 40 7mm six sided dice to use as altitude markers in Bag the Hun. Should stop them getting mixed up with the hand fulls of combat dice getting thrown around. At that size they could possibly stuck on the base with be blutac.

It's all great in theory... more info and photos after they arrive, which fingers crossed, if before

Artizan Wins!

My Artizan cowbows arrived today and they were definatley worth the wait. The casting is nice and sharp with little to no flash. The only complain is a minor one and that's that the bases of some of the minis are quite small, may 10mm around for the smallest. This made it a little tricky to mount them onto washers. I was tempted to drag out some of the 20mm GW round bases but the height of those just looks wrong now that I've switched to washers.

One pleasant surprise is that the miniatures all came in blister packs. This is a rarity amongst Internet based suppliers but it mean that all the miniatures came nice and safe in their original packing.

I'm keen to get some games of Six Gun Sound going this week so I think I'll have to get the paints out and get started on a couple of these.

Artizan Update

3 hours after I placed my order with Artizan it was confirmed that the miniatures would be shipping that afternoon. That is hands down the best service I've had from any online miniatures store, even the local ones here on Oz. So to Nick and everyone at Artizan: I tip my hat to you all.

So with a little luck I should have these early to mid next week. Hmmm if I start building some terrain now then I could run a few games of Six Gun Sound at the next Badga meet.

Artizan Cowboys

I actually went online to buy an airbrush and ended up getting these... how do I explain this one to my wife?

Each pack has three minis which should give me more than enough for most Six Gun Sound scenarios.

The Good
AWW009 Lawmen II, The Earps
AWW016 Doc Holliday & Wild Bill Hickock

The Bad
AWW007 Bandito's I
AWW012 Bandito's II
AWW008 Desperadoes

The Misunderstood ?
AWW001 Ill Buono, Ill Brutto, Ill Cattivo (which translates to... ah I'm sure you can work it out)
AWW002 Gunmen I

So the race is on, my Black Tree Design order has got a little over a week head start on this one so it'll be interesting to see which gets here first. I'll post pics of the winner when they arrive.

Nuts! AAR

The scenario was simple enough, the British were to defend the two house "village" from theattacking Germans. Two 10 man squads a piece with 2 Brens for the British and 4 Mp-42's for the Germans.

I forgot to take photos of the setup and the first two turns but you can see below is the game as of turn three. A German squad with 2 MG-42 have moved into the woods in the top left of the photo and a team in the woods to the top right. Another team is about to come over the hill to the middle right.

Half of the first British squad on the left has already fallen to the MG42's in the treeline. The rectangles in the middle of the table are fields and the remaining British are making an attempt to come around them and get the LMG's within SMG range.



It didn't turn out too well.




No sooner than we would hit the gunner than another would take his place. There's no official rule in Nuts (at least that I could find in the rulebook) for someone to take over as the gunner of a LMG/MMG but we later found some in the Pieper At The Gates supplement.

This is what was left of the British after 3 LMG's and a squad came over the hill. The Bren gun stationed at the corner of the field did an excellent job outgunning and pushing most of the Germans back over the hill but the damage had already been done.

This team spent most of the game getting knocked down, standing up, knocked down, standi... you get the idea.

After this photo was taken the British laid down their weapons and waved the white flag.

Two hours of gaming (and chatting) from start to finish so the rules live up their companies name. To be fair we spent a little bit of time looking for rules (some that weren't actually in the book) and towards the end of the game we were referring to the QRS only sparingly.

A few things we learned from this game:

• LMG's have just as much potential in controlling the enemies movement than they do as outright killing machines.
• Terrain... you need lot's of it in a Nuts! game. Open areas like you see in the photos above are difficult if not impossible to cross without casualties.
• Anyone in cover is dang hard to take down by a Rep 3 with a rifle (read that as not possible), I'll believe the guys on the Yahoo group have addressed this so I'll have to look that up.
• You need a good scenario to keep things moving. In our battle it would have made no sense for the Germans to leave the saftey of the woods unless there was a strong motivation to do so. Eg take the town by tun 5. Simple scenarios like I'm defending and you're attacking isn't really enough. A quick flip through Peiper At The Gates just shows how a game can be enriched with a little background fluff and some key objectives.

I don't know if we'll play Peiper as is but we're going to use it as the watermark by which we play all our future games. Although it probably won't be too hard to just substitute US troops for British and play as is.

I'm very curious to see if the "Focus" test from Chain Reaction 3 makes it's way into the new Nuts! rulebook. Not being able to just pick the most tactically advantageous target every turn will make the games way more interesting and unpredictable. And let's face it: that's why we play Nuts! right? Otherwise we'd just play some *cough*hammer based system.