Into the Zone - meet the team (1)

So I've decided to play a solo campaign of Zona Alfa over December's lockdown and will be using the dining room table as the playing area. I have a 8x6 gaming table in the loft but this is so full of "junk" (or irreplaceable gaming stuff - it's a coin toss) that it will be easier to play downstairs - also the loft is hard to keep heated in winter so......

I did a first look review in January on ZA - details here . Since then I've played a couple of games before lockdown kicked in and found them solid and interesting.

Each Crew in ZA starts off as a group defined by their level, or Khrabrost (K) roughly translated as "Balls" ranging from 1 (Rookie) to 3 (Veteran). The crew will have a total K of 12 with the value being set by the K level. This Crew is going to be from the Independents Faction, not particularly aligned to anyone just in it for the money. I'm going for a Vet leader (3K) one other Vet (3K) and three experienced team mates (2K each). Each will have a specialist role. Here they are:

Fat Arkady (Leader) - Too old for this shit but needs the Rubles. Also will be doubling up as the team cook on this one. Prone to relying on weight of fire to keep the target down rather than accuracy.

Skills: Leader, Unload

Equipment. Military Body Armour, Medkit,

Weapons Battle Rifle & Shotgun, 2 Frag Grenades 

Little Pawel (Veteran Scout). A slightly shifty Pole with a habit of going off and doing his own thing, leaving the Team to dig themselves out of whatever hole they're in, but good when he is doing his stuff.

Skills: Scrounger, Hussle

Equipment. Military Body Armour, Med Kit, Binos, Giger Counter\Detector 

Weapons Assault Rifle & Pistol, 2 Smoke Grenades

Big Pavel (Experienced Heavy Weapons \ Demo guy) Solid and reliable, but uncommunicative and a bit prone to forgetting he is on a team, particularly when in a firefight. This may be due to deafness caused by the noise of his favourite weapons.

Skills: Hard

Equipment. Body Armour, Medkit, Hot Load (Thermobaric warheads for his RPG) 

Weapons Assault Rifle, RPG with 5 rounds, 1 Satchel Charge, 1 Frag

Fifi (Experienced Medic) Looks after everyone, but prefers to avoid getting close to the enemy.

Skills: Bone Doc

Equipment. Body Armour, Gas Mask, 2x Medkit

Weapons SMG, 2 Smoke Grenades

Kaz (Experienced mechanic \ fixer) Great when sober but prone to hitting the bottle. 

Skills: Wrench

Equipment. Body Armour, Gas Mask, Med Kit

Weapons Assault Rifle & Pistol, 1 Frag, 1 Molotov

The gang pooled some spare equipment and bartered it away before entering the Zone to start their first run so has 1130 script (cash) available.   

Resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental - honest!    

I was tempted to throw in a couple of Rookies to give the Gang some expendables but I decided to stick with some guys who could be relied on if \ when it all goes pear shaped. 

So now I need to find suitable figures and make a start!

December Lockdown Project (1) Pick your Dystopian Apocalypse

I suspect Boris may be telling Porkies when he says he will lift the national lockdown in the UK on Dec 2nd. Ok he may well rename it, but I don't see much changing. This will mean I need a December hobby lockdown project. My November project is to paint 30 "engines" worth of Blood Red Skies aircraft, and I'm on 28 with a week to go, so I'm hopeful.

So assuming our PM is going to run true to his record I'm going to need a project for December. This time I'm going to plan to actually play some games, which will mean solo. There are two options I'm looking at - Fallout Wasteland Warfare, and Zona Alfa.

Fallout Wasteland Warfare (FWW) by Modiphius Games has a lot going for it. Interesting game mechanics, brilliant and detailed background, cool models, an integral solo game mode to name a few. FWW is set in a future alternate history where the US has been devastated by a nuclear war with China. You play as a band of survivors who have grown up there or have just emerged from a "Vault" (nuclear shelter) 200 years after the bombs have dropped into a world changed forever and inhabited by radiation mutated ghouls, super mutants and all manner of mutated creatures and you need to explore, survive and rebuild. It is based on the popular Fallout series of computer games and although it looks quite daunting with all manner of cards and different dice it plays very well and feels authentic to the original source material. I probably have enough models to play but will need to do some crash painting before I can really start. 

Zona Alfa (ZA) is about a gang of unsavoury individuals entering the forbidden Zone - it's unspoken but it is clearly based on an alternate Chernobyl. You enter to explore and loot, particularly looking for the highly prized "artifacts" created by the radiation then escape out to get rich selling your ill gotten gains. Like FWW the Zone is inhabited by strange mutated creatures and zombies, not to mention other gangs similarly trying to make a quick buck who may or may not be hostile.  The rules (by Osprey) are much less developed than FWW but have a very strong Alt - Soviet era theme very similar to the STALKER computer game series, and are workmanlike and relatively brief. Unlike FWW there is no specific solo play rules or campaign system, but the creatures in the Zone operate on a form of artificial intelligence that should mean solo games are possible. I already have plenty of suitable painted figures so this is also a bonus. 

I realise both these games are a wee bit dystopian but they fit my requirements well at the moment. I suspect I will end up going for ZA as it will require (I hope) less effort at start up. Also I get to drink Vodka to get in the mood.

Me 262s The Last Stand - seemed like a good idea at the time

I'm trying to make the current 30 day lockdown a little bit more productive by painting 30 "engines" worth of Blood Red Skies planes. So far I have completed 8 Bf109F, 6 Il2 Sturmovics, and now 7 Me262s.

The 109Fs are 3d printed from RoC-Works stl files - beautiful models and I painted them as 3/JG27 in North Africa, including Hans Jochim Marsaille as the Ace. I has a bit of a problem as i decided to try and use a clay wash. These are popular on The Ready Room - lots of praise for Florry washes. I had a similar clay wash and decided to give it a try. Basically you apply a generous coat of the clay wash, let it dry then clean the model with a damp cloth or cotton bud. This should remove the wash except in the panel lines. In theory. In my case this was not a success - I just got a muddy model (doh). In the end I cleaned up the models and went for the tried and trusted Agrax \ Soft-tone pin wash. I like the Bf109F. It is probably the best and most balanced 109 in BRS, before the added weight starts to impact performance.  Decals from Misc Minis.

The Sturmoviks are 3d printed from the Plane Printer patreon. I subscribed for £6 a month. So far it has been well worth my investment as he has produced a fair few models I will be printing in due course.  I decided to try and paint the squadron in whitewashed winter camouflage. This seemed a good idea at the time. In the end it got a bit complicated as I decided to do them all as individuals rather than all the same scheme, reasoning that the whitewash would wear off differently in each case. The whitewash was a bit challenging but after using a fair amount of sponging I was happy enough with the result. These are the early single seat versions which I confidently expect to suffer just as much as the real world versions did from rear attacks.  Decals from the spares box.

Which brings me to the Me262s. Something about doing the Sturmoviks as individuals must have stuck in my mind, because when it came to the 262s I thought I would give it another go. This isn't as strange as it seems as when I was looking through the various on-line sources it became clear that there was little consistency in colour schemes. This was partly due to the rapidly changing war situation, but mostly because the supply of paint was getting erratic as the war moved into it's final stages. The scheme that most caught my fancy was a real "End of Days" one - aircraft were delivered to units and flown in combat with no camo at all. You know it wont end well when your planes are delivered without paint! In the end I painted up seven different camo styles ALL of which were used at one time or another by 3/JG7. They look a bit strange to my usually more bureaucratic mind but they will be fine I'm sure. Models by Warlord - and I have to say they were a pleasure to paint, decals Misc Minis and the spares box.

OK the more BRS aware will know that seven Me262s is a big "chunk" of points in the game. In fact if you are playing the current recommended restrictions on tournaments you can have (and indeed must have) only four of them, all with rubbish pilots. I have seven because I bought a Squadron and an Ace set, and before I had did the maths properly had ordered a foam transport tray from Just Lasered to hold them all, so I was committed (Doh!)

So that brings my total up to 28 "engines" with a fortnight or so to go. No idea what will be next, but I have plenty to choose from.

Cheers!     

The 3d Print Gods favour me - for now - my Thuribles are Cleansed!

I've mentioned before how hit and miss my adventures in 3d printing have been. Recently I've experienced more miss than hit, with holes and miss prints happening with alarming regularity. Consulting the experts on various support groups (Cults?) it was divined that I was having an LCD failure. I was mortified - partly because it sounded serious (it is) and partly because the cure sounded both complicated and expensive. Happily it wasn't (phew).

I ordered a new LCD screen which cost less than £25. Before fitting I watched a couple of Youtube videos and took a deep breath, then launched into it. It was simple but not exactly easy, but it was completed in under an hour. 

I've levelled the machine, levelled the bed, chanted the relevant incantations and "Praise the Machine God" it is running perfectly. Phew!

What this experience has taught me while searching for advice and videos is that there is a large number of after market upgrade kits that you can apply to a printer to make your machine more efficient. You can replace the print plate holder to make levelling easier, or the single rail with a twin which will make printing smoother for instance. I think I will have a dabble over Christmas with some upgrades - the Gods willing.

Have I changed my mind about the impact home 3d printing will have on gaming companies? Not really. The process is still fussy, messy and far from guaranteed at the moment. On the other hand the technology will mature at an increasing rate - the new mono LCD printers are faster and more capable and I suspect these will be a step change in capability. 

Anyway here are my rather beautiful Fairy Swordfish fresh off the printer yesterday. These models are from the RoC-Works stable and were trouble free to print. I think these models show the potential of 3d printing. No other process could make a one piece model at this scale, and the idea of trying to assemble a traditional model biplane in this scale six times would just be too much to consider. 

Next off the printer hopefully will be some early single seat Sturmoviks from the Plane Printer Patreon. I joined this subscription service and for a couple of quid a month they provide some nice STL files. So far I've not printed anything from them, and of course they don't come "pre supported" as the RoC-Works models do, introducing another level of uncertainty into the process. Time to start the chanting again!

Links

Planeprinter        

RoC-Works

Historical players - We should take 40K (a bit) more seriously!

Seriously! 

As a fully paid up member of the Historical Wargaming Master Race I am guilty on occasion of looking down my fine aquiline nose at the 40K crowd milling around below. Ok there are a lot of them, and tbh they can be a bit fragrant, but their games are "made up" and lack none of the authority and validation "our" games have, because we have HISTORY!! How can they compete with the vast span, scope depth and detail that historical games have? Space Pixies (or whatever) didn't exist. Winged Hussars, Persian Immortals, The Imperial Guard*, these all existed, Space Marines, not so much.

Except......................

40k does have a lot of background material. Since release in 1987 they have regularly updated rules and background, plus hundreds of Codex (army lists) novels and whatever. There is an awful lot of "stuff" built up over 33 years. I built a Dutch Marine force for Chain of Command and they fought for less than 6 days so there is probably more available info on Space Wolves than Dutch Marines. What I think I'm saying is there is now a depth of "lore" and info in 40K that probably outweighs the available info on something like Persian Immortals. OK the 40K info gets "retconned" regularly, but historical interpretation also changes - who remembers the Immortal figures from the 1980s with the viola shields and domed hats? 

OK - it's not the same. But then again we should maybe recognise some 40k players spend a lot of time researching their armies just like the historical players do. There is more that connects us than sets us apart.

  *Napoleon's, not the made up ones 

Defining Advantage in Blood Red Skies

One of the regular questions that comes up in Blood Red Skies is "what is Advantage?"

If you don't play this may seem a bit cryptic, so I'll do a quick explanation. At the core of Blood Red Skies is the Advantage system. Planes have one of three states, Advantaged, Neutral, or Disadvantaged. Your status changes due to your own and enemy actions. 

Advantage status is EVERYTHING in BRS. It decides initiative, and also who can shoot at what - you can only target a plane at a lower Advantage level, and can only be shot down if you are disadvantaged. 

Status is indicated by the tilting model stands - tilted back - climbing, for Advantaged, nose down - diving, for Disadvantaged. 

Advantage in some ways replaces the concept of altitude. OK in a game about air warfare not specifically representing altitude may seem a bit strange, but in BRS it works very well. Gone are the tall stands that are impossible to move and topple over at the slightest touch, or counters and dials and all that, instead replaced by a simple three status system. The problem is of course that when we use terms like "Advantage level" and "climbing for Advantage" (a Pilot choice in BRS) and we point the nose of the model up, we tend to reinforce the idea that Advantage = Altitude. And it doesn't. Not always anyway.

Actually the best way to explain Advantage is to use the other end of the Advantage curve - Disadvantage. Disadvantage is the thing that gets you shot down. It can be anything that allows that. Energy state, speed, lack of awareness, and yes, sometimes altitude. 

There is a famous incident during the Battle of Britain that helps illustrate "Advantage" in action. On 15th September 1940 Ginger Lacey in a Hurricane of of 501 Squadron ran into a group of 12 Me109s. Lacey is an Ace, flying below them on a reciprocal course, however he is unseen, so Advantaged. The 109s are Neutral. Lacey has the initiative and "burns Advantage" with a climbing half loop to attack them from behind. Both are now Neutral (and that would normally prevent Lacey shooting) however he is now tailing the target which drops it to Disadvantaged and he shoots it down. He proceeded to claim a second before disengaging into some nearby clouds.

James Harry "Ginger" Lacey, the Ace we should of got instead of Bader in BRS!

The other point to make is Advantage is situational and can change as the game turn flows. You can start Advantaged, fly into a cloud (becoming Neutral) then come out the other side and climb for Advantage - back to Advantaged. Later you can be subject to an enemy Outmanoeuvre and become Neutral, or worse get tailed and become Disadvantaged - and vulnerable, all in one turn. It is this constant changing status that helps make BRS such a fun and fluid game that feels like a dogfight not a battle between sailing ships in 2 dimensions.

Cheers

Walking less trodden paths in Blood Red Skies 2 - the most useful bit of kit is.................

One of these

This is a Hawk "Widget". 

It's a small clear plastic connector designed for use with Hawk Wargames Dropzone Commander \ Dropfleet Commander games. You can glue one of these to your spaceship model and it will then slip snugly over the "flying" base giving a convenient method of attaching the spaceship to the base that can be easily removed for storage etc. Having spent several decades fighting with models that keep getting detached from their bases I can say it is a work of sheer genius. The real beauty is that by pure coincidence the triangular post on a BRS base also perfectly fits the socket on a Hawk Widget. The result is that you can use ANY third party model, drill a hole and attach a widget, and it will fit a BRS Advantage base. Suddenly one of the issues with third party models - that they don't fit the BRS bases, has gone! I've also heard of people who are struggling with Warlord metal models fitting them too, just to improve how they sit on the base. 

I would love to claim credit for this discovery, but it was Paul Davison who as far as I know first suggested it. Well done mate!

Fitting widgets isn't that difficult either. Rather than go into it in depth I would refer you to this blog post here by Chris Jarrett (hi Chris!)  https://spitsandschmitts.blogspot.com/2019/02/converting-3rd-party-planes-to-brs.html who explains the process with panache.

So how do you get them? Easy - bug your FLGS or send for them direct from TT Combat who now control the Dropzone line. There are 64 in a blister and they cost £8 here - TT Combat - that should keep you going for a fair few squadrons.

So now when you are looking to build a BRS Squadron from a minor nation and Warlord don't do the model, but someone else does, you can quickly convert them to fit BRS bases. 

Cheers!