A Variety Pack of 15mm

I recently painted up some 15mm figures, from Alternative Armies.  A long time ago I received a sample pack of sci-fi and fantasy figures.  I finally decided to paint them up.  Here they are.  Descriptions are from their website.  First up, Laserburn 15mm Sci-fi Sampler:

From L to R:  119 Law Officer (standing); 114 Adventurer (Laser Rifle); 206 Spacesuit (Rifle); 322 Guard (Power Armor); 300 Imperial Trooper (Bolt Gun).

From L to R:  501 Mercenary (Assault Rifle); 108 Thug (Knife); 602 Law Module Mk III; 111 Female Civilian; 118 Guard Dog.

Next we have the Alternative Armies 15mm Tabletop Fantasy Sampler:

From L to R:  549 Giant Slug; 552 Ape; 550 Manticore Young; 553 Centaur (Spears); 506F Human Assassin.

A closer look at the Slug, Manticore and Centaur.

From L to R:  510F Female Magic User; 513 Female Fighter (Chainmail); 507F Human Bard; 511F Female Cleric; 509F Human Fighter in Plate.

I then ordered their Octopods for my 15mm battles.  Here they are:

Infantry:  three poses of humanoid infantry with rifles.  Advancing rifle level, standing, loading.

Command figures:  Octopod Officer with Rifle, pointing.  Octopod Psyker with energy orb.  Octopod Medic with apron and cleaver.  Octopod Communications with radio and gear.

Support Weapons with Energy Bazooka, Octopod with Heavy Laser Rifle, Octopod with Gauss Rifle.

Seer Guard advancing, standard and duelling; all with energy poles.

Assault Troops armed with pistols, swords, knives and a chainsaw.

Racers.  The Racer is a step up from their jetbike featuring a pilot's pod as well as a single exhaust engine which propels the racer at massive velocity.  Fuel tanks and storage are under the hull and two lasers are forward fixed mounted.

Jetbike.  Little more than a saddle attached to rockets, tremendous speed and little control.

These last photos are of a metal obelisk that came in a box of stuff, I think, from The Mysterious Package Company.  Not really 15mm per se, but useable with any size miniatures.  Sorry, I just realized I should have included a miniature in the picture for scale.

Thanks for looking!

Blasters & Bulkheads yet again!

I played a second game with my son.  The first is reported here.  This was again a scenario of his devising.  I kind of like him coming up with the ideas.  It makes it fresh for me, good practice for him, and fun for both of us.

As before, the Jedi were the attackers, but it was not a straight grab-the-MacGuffin objective.  Apparently, the Empire has hired a rather evil bounty hunter, in the form of the blue female Twi'lek Leeloo (who, as I created her character, is more of a shooter than purely a bounty hunter, but it really doesn't matter).  She was reportedly worshiping at her evil monster shrine and had just sacrificed a poor, defenseless Rebel trooper to her dark god, when the Good Guys show up (consisting of the Jedi Zar Bee, his Bounty Hunter Fofa Bett and a squad of Rebel troopers).  To protect her, she had two squads of Stormtroopers and her big red friend Murg the Devaronian (a melee specialist).  These are the same characters I've been using for every game so far, but we/I haven't been using the campaign rules yet, so each game is standalone.

Here are some pictures snapped with my phone during the game.  I remembered to take a few more than the previous game.

This is the lay of the table.  The monstrous evil shrine with the sacrifice is at the bottom left, while the Jedi and friends enter from screen right.

The first Stormtrooper squad advances, but doesn't have line of sight to the Rebels.

The Jedi swoops into the middle of the squad and cuts down three of the Stormtroopers!

Over on the left, Murg starts moving closer, and the Stormtroopers...

...are able to pick off a couple of Rebels!  Hooray for the Bad Guys!

Meanwhile, Leeloo used the free time to climb to the top of the nearby bunker, where (she hoped) she could pick off the enemy with her blaster rifle.

Murg and Fofa Bett met in the center of the battlefield.  Their confrontation resulted in a stalemate.  At the top of the picture, Zar Bee edges his way closer, utilizing cover when he can.  The Rebels' shooting has eliminated many more Stormtroopers, too, despite them having good cover.  Dice rolls, man!

Zar Bee runs closer still.  Leeloo does shoot at him, both now and in the previous photo, but he deflects it both times.

An overview of the situation, mid-game.

Zar Bee, instead of heading directly for the bunker with Leeloo in it to capture her, decides to take out the few remaining Stormtroopers, while Murg and Fofa Bett continue to slug it out, ineffectively.  I shouldn't say, "Ineffectively."  They have actually wounded each other, but not enough to K.O. them.

Zar Bee easily dispatches the Stormtroopers, and the 5-man Rebel squad takes position behind Murg.  Murg, wounded and realizing he's in trouble as well as is Leeloo, whom he is supposed to be protecting, withdraws from Melee...

...but it's too late, as Zar Bee Force-jumps to the top of the bunker and confronts Leeloo in person!

Murg runs as fast as he can, taking a hit from Fofa Bett as he leaves...

...but, again, it is too late.  Zar Bee easily K.O.'s Leeloo (many, many Fate dice were rolled to attempt to stop him, but to no avail).

And so, we called the game at that point.  Was it a balanced scenario?  Not really.  Did we have fun?  Yes.  I think the Bad Guys were at a disadvantage by facing a Jedi without having their Sith available.  Although, I really thought Murg, who is usually a murder-machine, would do much better against Fofa Bett, but a series of poor dice rolls on my part, combined with good rolls on my son's part, stymied his chances.  If he had managed to dispatch the Bounty Hunter sooner, Murg might have been able to get to the top of the bunker in time to assist in the melee against Zar Bee.  But alas, I stuck him around too long, hoping he could prevail in his own fight.  As it was, he survived with only one life point remaining, while Fofa Bett had four (out of six)!

Thanks for reading!

Blasters & Bulkheads yet again, but not solo!

I played a non-solo Star Wars game with my 12 year old son.  He set up the table and designed the scenario.  I'm afraid I didn't take enough pictures, because I was "living in the moment," but when I mentioned that I would need to write a blog about our game, he suddenly started reminding me to take pictures!

The scenario was:  he was the attacking Jedi with Rebel henchmen, and I was the defending Sith with Stormtroopers.  He wanted to steal the glowy macguffin and I wanted to stop him.  However, the hitch in his idea was that I started the game with two squads of Stormtroopers on the table and no Characters, while he got all of his, and he wanted to do a sneak mission.  Wellll, the game and the rules don't really lend themselves to sneaking (I mean, it's a combat game) but they do have rules for hiding, so we used those until my Stormtroopers spotted his men and sounded the alarm.

My son doesn't have a ton of experience playing these types of games (my own fault, I know, and I'm trying to rectify that) but it's interesting watching him develop the tactical thinking necessary to Play-A-Game, rather than just play with some miniature figures and go "pew pew pew."  As the game progressed I could see a few points at which, if I hadn't "taken one for the team" he might have gotten a little more down than I wanted.  Don't get me wrong, he's not a sulker, or one to throw a tantrum and give up, but I didn't want to just smash him on his first outing on a new rule-set he'd never played before.  That doesn't lend itself well to repeat play, which is what I want.

Anyway, here are a few pictures taken from my phone.  These are all the same 15mm figures that I've shown in my previous posts.

This is several turns into the game.  The glowy macguffin is the red Lego piece on the pentagram.  Also, my Stormtrooper squad has been decimated by rather accurate blaster fire, which you can see where it came from in the next picture.

Five of his Rebels absolutely mowed down my Stormtroopers with crazy-accurate shooting, but after that he was "scared" to advance.  I kept telling him, you have to go get the thing, you can't just kill everyone and not go get it!  This is what I'm talking about, watching him learn to think tactically.

Part of his scenario was for my main characters to arrive after the alarm had been sounded.  After he wiped out both of my Stormtrooper squads, I figured the alarm had been sounded.  We decided that my characters and one squad of Troopers would arrive via a roll of the die:  I numbered the buildings that you can see here 1, 2, 3, 4, and the far table edge was 5, and 6 was roll again.  I rolled a 5.  So this photo is of a few turns after they came in on the far table edge.  Meanwhile, he had only just now gotten his Jedi in contact with the macguffin.

A few more turns have passed, and I knew the only one who could catch his Jedi (with his Force-speed) was my Sith, and even then he would only be able to stay even with him.  So my Sith used a Force-pull and snatched the macguffin out of the Jedi's hands, and then he was going to run away, but this is where I "took a dive."  I knew that no one on his side could catch my Sith (because he had been so hesitant to advance anyone, most of his Rebels were still in their original positions), so instead of running away, my Sith decided to be reckless (hey, it's a Sith trait!) and stood his ground to destroy the pathetic Jedi.  (Yes, there was a lot of fun smack-talk at the table!)

Here is the aftermath of my decision.  His Jedi legitimately (and fairly) K.O.'ed my Sith, getting the macguffin back.  I had one last chance, and I decided to let the dice fall where they may.  He was O.K. with it, too.

My last chance was for my brute of a close combat monster to charge into melee and kill the Jedi.  I was actually pretty worried I would win, but like I said, he was O.K. with the chance.  He was definitely getting into the spirit of the game by this point.

As a side-bar, some of his Rebels were finally moving closer, and my Droid had scared off his other gunman character.

This is simply a close-up of the dramatic final confrontation.  Who will win?

Well, if you haven't figured it out from all the clues I've given so far, you're not paying attention.  His Jedi won in melee (again, legitimately; I rolled so poorly) and then took off running at super-speed, and we called the game.  He was happy he won, and I was happy he played.

There were a few rules questions that came up, mainly because I had never used them in my solo games; such as hiding, and certain Force powers.  One House Rule we used was that both Jedi and Sith could use any of the Force powers listed in the book, so long as they had sufficient Essence/Fate dice to power it.  This greatly broadened the abilities of the characters without, in my opinion, too greatly weakening the system.

Thanks for reading!