Captains Log...

It was just a matter of time.  I finally got my grubby little hands on some Star Trek minis and of course I decided the way to break them in was for the Enterprise to investigate a planet in the midst of a Zombie epidemic.  I'm really sorry that I have not had the time to batrep this, but I thought I would throw up a few pics anyway.  Rest assured, there will be many, many more adventures with the crew of the Starship Enterprise in the LTL Universe.  There is nothing so idiotic that I won't find a way to game it.  This was my first Saturday completely off of work in like 4 months and we had a blast.

Herrodadog set up a nice table I think.

The players were from left to right:  Chekov/Herrodadog, Kirk/George, Scottie/Nick, Sulu/Mark, Spock/LTL Dad.  Uhura didn't make the pic but she was played by LTL Mom.  With this crew of pro Zombie players the crew was operating too efficiently.  From now on I am switching to cheetah-fast Dawn of the Dead type Zeds as well as some specialty Zombies to make these players sweat a bit.

The crew beamed down to the surface in a random location.  Bones stayed aboard the ship.

Because of some Federation treaty malarky, the crew had to beam down without phasers so the first job was to scramble for some weapons.  It was also determined that the epidemic was contagious and Bones informed the crew they could not return to the ship without stopping the epidemic first.

About this time Sulu confirms that Zeds are not a friendly species.

So off to loot some buildings and search for answers.

The crew stays together and plows through the building fighting off Zeds at every turn.

On one of the upper floors the crew meats a group of survivors who agree to join the crew for the duration of the mission.

So back out on the streets the crew makes its way to the industrial sector.  Sulu went down but luckily regained consciousness.  Bones was brought down shortly beforehand when the crew had another close call.  With the doctor around, the chances of a crew member surviving a bad combat increase greatly.

Starting to attract attention while scampering across the parking lot.

Quick discussion on strategy while catching their breath from the last Zed attacks.

The crew decides to enter the warehouse through the upper story window.

The only trouble is that they discover there is no firestep inside the building and after some discussion we decide not to take the chance of getting hurt while dropping to the ground.  Not being able to fast move could prove disastrous.  Meanwhile, Zeds have been closing in.

So they are off to find another way in.

Carefully trying to avoid detection.

So of course a barking dog decides to roll up bringing Zeds and attracting attention.

The rather large group finally gets into the warehouse.  By the way, they picked up a couple more survivors along the way.

The small army clears the warehouse.

And discovers a mysterious control center.  Spock seems to think it could be key to this epidemic.  There are several choices of controls to monkey with, and Scottie doesn't pass enough dice to figure it all out, so the crew finally decides to just start pushing buttons.

Zeds are still milling about all over town.

One of the controls opened a secret tunnel and the crew goes down and makes there way underground.  Since I don't have a tunnel system, just use your imagination.

The crew evacuated just in time as the warehouse is now filling up with Zeds.

Holy Moly!  When Kirk pokes his head out the tunnel he sees that the streets are now covered with hordes of Zeds.  It turns out that one of the controls released several shipping containers full of these hungry zombies!

This is simply turning out to be a very bad situation.  Zeds are crawling everywhere, and the tunnel is blocked by a fairly large crowd of Zeds back in the warehouse as well.

About this time Kirk decides to abort the mission and call to be beamed up to the ship.  Since Bones is now on the surface with the rest of the desperate crew he decides that it wouldn't be so bad to take their chances with the contagion after all!  So the first mission of the Enterprise in the LTL Universe is a failure and Kirk will have to submit a damned depressing Captains log entry.  But on the bright side nobody died!  Oh, and take a look at that beautiful VW Beetle.  I've been dieing to get that puppy on a table for some time so the mission was a total success for me!

 

 

A New LTL City

I've finally started on a project that I have been wanting to do for a couple of years now.  After acquiring some Mech Warrior type stuff I decided that the first thing to do is get the scenery down.  One of these days I will get off my horrible work schedule and start the bat reps again, and that means the terrain needs to be spiff.
I Googled for these puppies and found some good links to some nice little building pdf files that several guys have generously made available.  They are roughly 6mm scale and look quite nice.  Best of all, they are small, don't take a lot of room, and are easy to build.  What else could you ask for?
When Herrodadog comes back from his work trip we plan to pit my alien mech cultures against his modern microarmor and see if they can save the Earth!

Here is my work station with the only necessary materials.  Ruler, blade, markers, and glue.  Oh, and a cutting mat is really nice as well.

With the crazy cost of resin buildings, and the fact that I can't paint buildings worth a damn, this is a no brainer solution for me.

All the buildings and road pieces in these pictures took me about 3 hours to print, cut out, and build.  I can't even imagine what this would have cost in resin, and how long it would have taken.  So if you need small scale terrain, once again, paper to the rescue.

Italians to the Rescue!

Yes, I did say Italians, and yes, I'm talking about WW2!  My work is still keeping me away from my normal gaming levels so to keep me going I have been sneaking in quite a bit of board gaming the past couple of months.  I had a chance to grab both the Europe 1940 and Pacific 1940 offerings from the Axis and Allies board games very cheap, so I did it finally.  These two games can be put together to play the entire war on all fronts.  We are actually having a lot of fun with this game.  It is quite easy to play, but the big strategic decisions are real brain breakers.  I highly recommend these games.  Anyway, back to the Italians!  During the course of my Europe game with Herrodadog, my Italians went nuts and ran roughshod over everyone.  At first I was thinking "what the hey!?!?", but in reflection, if you really think about it, the only reason they had a troubled start in N. Africa was lousy leadership and organization.  They were definitely poised to be in the driver seat otherwise.  So in this alternate universe they can shine.  Here's some shots from our game so far.  The Yanks have just entered the war and had their first taste of the action.

The A&A game board is rather appealing to the eye and what I like is the little miniature tokens are actually different for each nation for the most part.

Early on my Germans grabbed up all the stuff they were supposed to, and as a bonus they managed to pull off a successful operation Sealion!  I almost miscalculated, but barely got England in a real nail biter.  My Luftwaffe actually had some fighter support by the way.  So at this point the Germans were looking pretty good.

But soon afterwards we launched Barbarossa and dove into the USSR where things didn't move so fast, or so well.  I think I played this too conservatively and allowed the Russkies to get a solid front together.  I took a lot of my resource to grab England, and I was afraid of stretching too thinly into the Russian steppe.  Finally, one of my major battles very strongly resembled Kursk where I got my arse seriously handed to me and lost a bunch of Panzer Divsions.  OUCH!  So the end result is a stalemate in the East.

While all this was going on, the Italians made an early strike at Egypt shutting down the Suez canal and they never looked back.  They overran all of Africa removing all traces of the UK from the continent.  I addition they grabbed Greece and all the islands in the Mediterranean including Malta.  Italian production levels are now quite serious and they have a relatively secure base of operations to work from.

This translates to the Italians being able to go out and cause some mischief elsewhere.  Here we can see them driving through the Middle East and threatening the Russian oil fields from the South.  This will be a great boon for the Germans as now the Soviets must expend resources to defend the second front and thin their defenses in the North.

The Italians also managed to grab Gibralter from a napping Herrodadog which was really driving him nuts.  So now instead of the Yanks entering the war and making an easy landing in N. Africa, they had to fight their way into Gibralter before the Italians dug in too well.  The Yanks managed to take it back, but it was very costly.  In addition, the Italians have a tremendous amount of very mobile air assets available to counterattack and make another try to get it back quickly.  If they manage to take it back, things will look very bleak for the Allies indeed.

All UK assets and production are now coming from Canada and it will be a slow process of getting back into the war.

Good Games for Busy Gamers 3

Here is another great little game that can be played in short sessions and is a lot of fun.  It is called "It is Warm Work".  It can be purchased at the pdf download sites and there is an active yahoo group. 
We play it on the cheap using old Pirates pocket models.  The great thing about this game is you can put 30 or 40 models on the table and finish a game in a couple of hours easily.  Even though it is simple to play, it provides for the main "flavor" items needed in any age of sail game.  Wind, tacking, wrecks and hulks etc. and the fighting power of the ships goes down as they take damage which is tracked on a simple record sheet that is easy on the eyes.
An important feature of this game is that record keeping is very minimal and very simple.  The thing about sail ship games is that there are a lot of great rules sets but they come in a wide variety of complexity.  Over time this set has become one of my favorites because I can get it out and start playing with very little prep.  Here are some pics from a recent game we played.

More Beer and Pretzels Punch Ups

Here are some shots from our "home brew" big battle skirmish rules we have been working on.  It is coming along pretty well and hopefully we will have it sussed out in another couple of months.  We've been on this project for a while but I am determined to get it done.  As with many insane gamers, we have way more figures than we can actually use in normal rules sets and I want to see lots of toys on the table!  These rules are also designed to allow a pretty wide variation of adversaries which is something we like because we have no issues with putting up odd match ups.
This was a King of the Hill game we threw down just to test some mechanics.

My Samurai.  These are actually Heroscape minis.  I like them a lot; they look decent and I didn't have to paint them!

Mike's Vikings start to appear through the trees.

Jil brought skeletons and Goblins.

Nick (my 12 year old) came with Orcs and Demons.  More Heroscape stuff here as well.

Mike's Vikings are pretty darned cool looking.  Right away he grabbed some cover and formed a battle line to keep an eye on my Samurai.

I sent my Ashigaru and Ninjas into the woods to scout the Viking position.

Nick played like a girlie man and kept dancing around behind the hills.  He couldn't decide who to go after and so his guys just marched around like morons.

Jil's awesome dark minions didn't waste any time getting down to business.  He grabbed the high ground and started harassing everyone with his archery.

Here's Nick's Orcs working up for a charge, but he chickened out when he saw my Samurai form a battle line.

Jil's Goblins being very annoying with ranged attacks in the center.

Caught between Jil's ranged attacks and the threat of my Samurai, Mike decided to close up and fortify.

My Samu line advancing!

Jil managed to get some Goblins around the rear of the Viking position and makes a charge from the woods.

About the same time my Samus start to assault the Viking laager.

Here are my Samus taking it to the Vikings in a sudden charge.  The initial impact was going well for the Samus.

The Samus were kicking some Viking butt!

The Samus were handily thrashing the Vikings in the open but things started to change as they attempted to eject them from cover.  Here are my lads trying to go over the walls.  BANZAI!

Jil took this opportunity to bum rush the Viking laager from the other side with his Goblins.  Those nasty little guys were quite formidable as well.

My Samus did a lot of damage but the Vikings have finally stabilized the situation at the walls.  They've managed to throw my attack back and my lads are milling around trying to gather their courage for another go.

Nick is still trotting back and forth indecisvely.  All he's managed to do is fire a few arrows in Jil's direction.

Vikings and Goblins are still locked in combat at the laager.

The battle is locked and neither side is backing down.  The Vikings have proven to be some tough hombres.  They took the assault from both the Samurai and the Goblins and are still standing.

My Samus and the Vikings have both blown their wad and are now just milling about skirmishing.  At this point I retire to regroup which gives the Vikings a chance to do the same.

And now the Vikings are on the move!  I think they want some payback on the Goblin King.

While the Samu/Viking battle was cooling down, Jil's skeletons with Goblin archer support have gone on the offensive and are assaulting the Demons.

Skeletons fear nothing, and they are very nasty adversaries in our games for that reason.  Our rules put a lot of emphasis on morale and the mental state of the troops.  Skellies have a huge advantage here.

My Samus are back in good order and getting ready for another go at being King of the Hill.

The Viking horde makes a mad dash through the trees in the center.  Where are they going?

Yep, I was right.  Mike is after some payback on Jil.  While Jil's Goblins and skellies are taking it to the Demons, the Vikings make a mad charge to their rear!  At this point the Vikings, Goblins, and Demons were all mangled and my Samus arrived in good order.  We didn't bother finishing it.