Another reason I don’t go back into Star Wars Legion?
Required play area is 6 feet x 3 feet. I don’t have that kind of room anymore, as an apartment dweller.
Tag Archives: Skirmish
Play
If there’s one thing I’ve picked up from watching more Solo RPG videos, especially from The Grouch Couch, it’s that I should be playing more, not trying to write a novel.
There should be more dice rolling and less treating the play session as a creative writing exercise.
And that goes for any other tabletop games I’m trying to play, like Five Leagues and Five Parsecs.
I’ve found myself lost in simple things like trying to hard to come up with background details for a character I may or may not ever play, or trying to come up with names for regions/cities for my Five Leagues map.
And that’s probably one of the things that subconsciously prevents me from delving more into any of the Solo RPGs that i’ve already set up, all three of them.
I have one campaign underway (Star Trek Adventures/Captain’s Log), and two ready to start (Dragonbane, D&D 5E) but now I believe that the issue I was having was trying to describe events THAT HAVE NOT HAPPENED YET.
You can’t write a good story without an outline, so how can I describe how my adventure is going without playing out the situation?
For Star Trek: Excalibur, we’re about to continue our mission of exploration.
Irony: the last bit of storytelling for Star Trek: Excalibur was *totally* a creative writing exercise, no dice were rolled, just trying to advance the plot.
For Dragonbane, my character is about to delve into the unknown catacombs.
For D&D, my two-man party is about to enter the forest in search of a lost scouting party from a local town.
Other games will have some sort of after action report as they are played.
Don’t touch that dial!
Miniatures for War Stories
Observations
A couple of decades ago I dived back into Warhammer 40K, choosing to go that route because I still had some old armies from the 80s and saying that I felt better playing in a sci-fi world instead of the real world when it came to table top wargaming.
I tried to get into Flames of War, a 15mm World War II miniatures game, but that never got past the painting stage.
Eventually I grew tired of Games Workshop’s business model of new rules every 2-3 years with enough changes that you had to pick up some new toys to replace the now invalid ones. So I sold off almost my entire GW Warhammer 40K collection, saving a few units for possible Kill Team play.
And now even Kill Team has lost my interest, with Blood Bowl very close to the same level of general disinterest.
Some months back I decided to pick up one of the new starter sets for Bolt Action, a 28mm scale World War II game. For some reason the idea of US soldiers fighting Nazis appealed to me in a big way.
I put together the 2 dozen miniatures and painted them up, but of course my sense of… duty? (Patriotism? Attraction to the Pacific Theater?) led me to picking up a set of both Imperial Japanese and US Marines for Bolt Action. And they sat around untouched for about 3 months.
Two weeks ago I felt a surge of interest in World War II again, so I opened up the Marines and began assembling them. At the same time I caught a few videos on how to play Bolt Action, along with videos on it’s sister game, Blood Red Skies, which is a World War II air combat game.
Once again I picked up starter set, based on the Battle of Midway, so it contained a squadron of Japanese A6M Zeros, along with a squadron of my beloved F4F Wildcat, the first plane model I ever built, when I was maybe 10.
These games from Warlord are very easy to pick up, with fantastic miniatures to build and paint. So I’ve been jumping between assembling 28mm soldiers and painting 1:200 scale fighter planes.
And this past weekend I finally set up and played 4 of the scenarios in the Bolt Action Starter Set. The Americans won the first and fourth scenarios, the Germans won the second and third.
My interest in this game has increased so much that I’m planning to start a British Army, which would technically be my largest compared to the smaller US, German, and Japanese forces that I’ve already collected.
Soon the Germans will be dealing with the British Airborne and the SAS.
I know, it’s kind of shocking that I didn’t start with SAS in the first place, but they weren’t in the starter set.
And I suppose I can send in a small British commando force to steal some valuable intel from the Japanese?
I’ll have to look that last one up.
Oh, and I also picked up 3 additional squadrons for Blood Red Skies, Messerschmitt BF109Es, Supermarine Spitfire MkIIs, and F4U Corsairs, along with an Ace set for Pappy Boyington. Battle of Britain and Black Sheep Squadron on deck for tabletop play.
Stand By!
Saturday Morning Musings
I was browsing YouTube and came across videos about Bolt Action v3, a World War II tabletop miniatures wargame, which I’ve seen before, and went into a deep dive on how to play, what you need, and what’s in the starter box.
I eventually found myself searching for the starter set, along with US Marines and Imperial Japanese Army sets, since my interest lies more in the Pacific than the European front.
As I was searching for those, other products appeared, specifically Firelock Games’ Blood & Plunder.
Which made me stop looking for Bolt Action stuff, since I still hadn’t finished building/painting my various factions for that game.
I then remembered that if I really need to scratch that World War II itch, I do have Firelock Games’ War Stories, which is a WWII RPG, and the Pacific expansion that I pledged on Kickstarter will be coming out at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, I may create a small squad/warband based in post D-Day France, or use the pregenerated characters and try playing solo at some point soon.
I’ll probably spend some time with Blood & Plunder as well, as they’re starting their ‘Summer of Plunder 2025’ event this weekend.
Don’t touch that dial!
The Latest from the Trenches
Tabletop game wise, my scattered focus appears to be on:
- Port Royal
- Kill Team 2024
- 02 Hundred Hours
- Gaslands Refulled
- Battletech
- Steel Rift
Core Space
This has to be the most I’ve gotten hooked on a new game in quite a while.
In the two weeks since picking up the core box set, I’ve read the rules, set up the map, and painted almost all of the miniatures that came with my initial order.
I even played the example scenario and found the game pretty easy to pick up and play.
I managed to paint the extra crew set that I want to use in my campaign playthrough, they should be ready to go sometime this week.
I do wonder how this got past my radar on Kickstarter all those years ago, though. The Kickstarter ran in 2017, the game shipped in 2019.
Stand By!
To-Do List
A bunch of games came in recently, and I really want to play all of them as soon as possible.
But that’s not happening.
Links for the current bunch of games that came in:
Right now I’m focusing my time and energy on Core Space, reading the rule book, priming and painting the miniatures, and watching YouTube tutorials on how to play.
We’ll see if I can get a scenario in this weekend.
Stand by!
Senjutsu
While I’ve always been interested in Feudal Japan, I blame the recent Shogun series on FX for me looking for and finding this game.
This is a very quick play (20-30 minutes) deck building skirmish game representing duels between 2-4 rival samurai.
It comes with miniatures, cards, terrain, and map boards to play out the duels.
There’s also a solo campaign along with AI opponents for solo play.
This was a Kickstarter that I missed, and the base game is all that I was able to find on Amazon.com.
I did manage to find a couple of expansions that looked interesting, with other samurai/characters to play with.
And I’ve found a couple of 3D printer files for tokens and terrain for this game.
I hope to get to the solo campaign sooner rather than later.
Stand by!
New Game Table
Behold!
This was 3D printed and can be expanded if the need arises.
It’s currently 24″ x 32″, which is big enough for most of the games I currently play, sports and otherwise.
And in a IDGAF thought, any and all tabletop skirmish games will be played on this surface, regardless of the suggested playing area. Because 36″ x 36″ is a bit big, for me.
Stand by!