Tag Archives: Tabletop

Idea!

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So I came up with a campaign idea for Five Parsecs From Home.

Mando’s Mission.

With just a crew (clan) of 2, I’ll have the Mandalorian go after Imperial warlords in the Outer Rim.

Though technically I can have Zeb along for missions.

Colonel Ward and the New Republic will be his patron, giving him missions.  I’m hoping Skullforge Studios will create some new character minis from the movie.

And of course I’ll use my Star Wars Legion miniatures, though I did just print up another Zeb, I’ll paint him like he is in the movie.

Stand by!

Guards! Guards!

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Yet another game joins the ranks of the Soon to be Played™

1-4 player skirmish game where you control a Guard captain and his squad, while attempting to keep the peace in a medieval town.

Ahead of receiving the game from overseas (England) I’ve ordered an extra set of guards from the miniatures manufacturer, Wargames Atlantic, so I can assemble and paint up some guards.

Some of the paint schemes I’ve seen have inspired me to simply use team colors from various English football (soccer) squads, like there’s a blue/white scheme that can represent Tottenham, or gold/black for Wolverhampton Wanderers.

And there’s like 20+ civilian miniatures in the game who can be suspects for crimes from the plot cards played during a scenario.

Stand by!

This Is The Way

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“I swear on my name and the names of the ancestors… That I shall walk the Way of the Mand’alor… And the words of the Creed shall be forever forged in my heart. This is the Way.“

The real reason I’m getting back into Star Wars Legion?

Along with choosing from 4 clans (Clan Wren, Clan Kryze, Deathwatch/Super Commandos, Children of the Watch) there’s an option where you can create YOUR OWN CLAN.

Clan Pepsi and the Pepsimandalorians will live!

Stand by!

Legion

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As I printed up a squad of Security Troops from “Maul: Shadow Lord” (or ‘Maul Cops’ as I call them), I thought about what it would cost to dive back into Star Wars Legion, now in it’s 2.0 format.

I’ve been very reluctant to do this since I have a smaller area to play in my apartment, along with the cost of a new army or armies.

After reviewing a couple of videos on YouTube, I discovered that it wouldn’t cost me anything except color printer ink.

I was afraid that I’d have to grab a new Starter Box, but since I have all of my Legion miniatures (Rebellion and Empire) in a few boxes/cases, the only things missing were the unit/command cards and the measuring/movement tools and dice.

Past me must have anticipated this, because I found that I had downloaded all the updated print and play unit cards from the Atomic Mass Games site, even for units I don’t have (but could 3D print proxies for, like Daimyo Boba Fett).

I also found that I there are ‘Recon’ rules for play in a smaller area, 3ft x 3ft instead of 6ft x 3ft.  And I do have a double sided 3ft x 3ft play mat.

I’ll need to grab some stuff out of storage soon, specifically the 3D terrain I had printed, and the core box with the measuring/movement tools and dice.

Stand by!

Star Wars

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… Nothing but Star Wars, Give me those Star Wars, Dont let them end. Oh Star Wars, If they should bar wars, Please let these Star Wars Stay.

I gotta say, I am a sucker for most Star Wars tabletop games.

I got into X-Wing, Armada and Imperial Assault, al of which have been discontinued.

And now I hear that Star Wars Shatterpoint is the next in line to go that way.

To be fair, I did like the look of the Shatterpoint miniatures more than Star Wars Legion, and I believe I only bought a couple of expansions (Clone Wars Era) before shelving that game in storage.

For Legion, on the other hand, I bought more than a few extra squad boxes for both the Rebellion and the Empire.  And then the main game went into storage, while the miniatures found their way to my apartment.

I have a couple of miniature agnostic games that allow me to use them, A Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes Edition and Five Parsecs from Home.

It does make me wonder if I should get a new Starter Set for Legion, since it appears that they pivoted toward Shatterpoint for a while and left Legion to flounder and then shifting back to Legion, but looking at the contents of the Rebellion Starter Set, I have pretty much all the miniatures it includes except for the Wookiees.

Now if they came out with a Scum and Villainy Starter set…

Play

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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!

Beginnings Revisited

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Star Trek Adventures has a new sourcebook, The 23rd Century Campaign Guide, and per usual, they included a new career path option:

NOW I can recreate my original FASA Trek trader captain, Mackenzie Decker, if I so choose.

I’m actually thinking of having Decker as an NPC, and maybe pull a nuBSG and do a gender swap on Mackenzie Decker?

File:Big Wow 2013 - Indiana Jones (8845876192).jpg

I’ve met this cosplayer, Abby Darkstar, and her partner, Keith Zen, both are really nice people.

Anyways.

Decisions, decisions.

Observations

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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!