Wrapping up the Indians

Tonight I finished my first figures of the new year.  The remaining 22 Indian figures are done.  I'm going to be moving on to the RAFM Martian askaris.  These are nice, if very tall, figures.  They were the first of the post-Bob Murch sculpts for the range and a worthy addition.  It would be great if there. 

The Old Glory figures are pretty simple and generic.  Nice sculpts and cleanly molded.  There are three different turban types, though none of them are super.  I wish the rifles had bayonets.  Anyway, I put them in khaki with some color distinctions to tell the difference.  I have the unit with red turbans inspired by pictures of Madras infantry in the 1890's.  I gave one unit a green turban tassle and green cuffs, inspired by an Osprey plate.  The last is a group with the tall turban/fez which I colored blue with blue turban tassle-simply out of my imagination.  These were fun and fairly quick to paint.  I especially liked painting the distinctive officers.  Two of them come out of the RAFM Victorian Adventurers pack.  The other is a Parroom Station officer.

I really like the Martian colonial figures.  There are two different figures plus a Martian NCO.  I've painted them up in rifle green for the Parhoon Rifles.  Still a ways to go on them. The officer is a colonial artillery officer by Old Glory.  He'll be in red trousers with red facings.  Color, ya gotta love color.

I have a second unit of the askaris, but am short a couple of figures.  This, of course, prompted my first miniature order of the year--two more askaris and ten sword wielding Martians to serve as tribesmen types.  Probably my last figures for this genre for a while.  I still have more Space 1889 figures to paint, but I'll continue to whittle away at them in 2011.

Every Man a Food Source!!

On Saturday I choogled down to Olympia for an all day game fest at Scott Murphy's house. Scott hosted a potluck and some garage gaming, which would have been perfect except for some unseasonal ridiculous rain.

This was a showcase for a couple of Mark Waddington's games. He's been wanting to run a Zulu War game in which each of the players has a stake in overall victory, but each of the commands has competing objectives. I had three specific commands. The first was a light horse unit in which I had to visit more terrain features than the other light horse unit in our army. I also had a martinet captain that could chirp at each of the units of the 24th (I believe there were six,) and could improve their movement and shooting, but gave a -1 to morale. The bonus was that I could also be shot by my own troops. Finally, I also had the Naval Brigade unit, clearly an elite shipboard force, but not so much on dry land. They couldn't shoot straight, melee properly or form square, but you should see them row a longboat.

Things got off to a super start with Whitehall's cavalry heading off to their first terrain feature, Snosworthy barking at whichever poor Welshmen could hear him, and the sailors dutifully covering the rear of the baggage train. By turn two, however, Zulu signs began to pop up. Where would the impi arrive, and would those we see simply be part of a feint. On turn four Whitehall's horsemen made it's high water mark, and encountered the right flank of the Zulu advance. The rest of the game would be spent running for their lives, shooting at the Zulus and keeping the unit intact (averaging two kills per turn shooting over their shoulders.) Snosworthy was an albatross around the neck of all those redcoats he could find, sticking too close to them to be shot in the back by his fellows. The sailors tried to form part of a brigade square, but couldn't form up in close order. Sent into a hole in the British center, it looked like they would play the heroic martyrs against an advancing Zulu regiment, but got the last laugh when they ran away instead. Well, I laughed anyway.

We played out the game for four hours until the food was officially cooked. I don't quite know what the status of the game was at the end. The Zulus seemed to be moving pretty handily through the center, while British troops were just beginning to flow to fill in the gaps. It certainly looked dicey for the Brits, I only know that my cavalry and sailors were quite prepared to run away the fastest.


After some great eats we settled down to game two--colonial adventures on Venus!! The Brits were on a mission tramping around the marshes of Venus to rescue some missing archaeologists. Yes, you're right the archaeologists were actually were in the evil clutches of the meddling Germans, mwahahahahaa!! The Germans were meddling in the affairs of the Skinks, the slimy little reptiliad Venusian lowlifes that inhabit most of the stinking swamps of the "morning star." You might be wondering what my command was during this episode of "My Venusian Vacation." Was it the 1st battalion Grenadier Guards? No! How about the Kings Royal Rifle Corps? Be real, they are so effete. Perhaps a squadron of Royal Marine Light Infantry, with all their expertise in boats and all? Nah, in fact I was a commander of the corps of Venusian lowlifes tasked with making life miserable for the Brits.

And I must say I did my best. I swamped about shooting tiny little Skink arrows at the Brits in their boats, and those slogging through the swamp. I heroically made 5 to 1 attacks on shot up British units. We made life pretty miserable for them, and by the end of the game, things were looking pretty bad for the redcoats.

It was a fun, fun day, and thanks to Mark for putting on the games and Scott and Dale for hosting the party.

Mechanical Madness

Yesterday we had another Martian get together out at Game Matrix. Mark Waddington and I have been hosting these games for the last several months. We have two games we're hosting at ConQuest, and we wanted to play test them with live bodies before we actually host them with strangers. The first scenario-A Sea of Enemies-involves the relief of a British hill fort, surrounded by hostiles in the Martian wastes. We've run that twice, and it's turned out well.

This second game is called "Mechanical Madness." Mark has his full compliment of amazing scratchbuilt goodies in the game. There were three of the eight-legged walkers, conversions of the Wild West Burger King toy. British walkers, of course. The Brits also had a pair of steam tanks, and two armored suits. They also had the beautiful Zepplin Mark converted and were reinforced by the piece de resistance, the scratchbuilt Aphid gunboat. Martians had mainly foot troops with some entrenchments and fortified artillery. They also had Mark's gorgeous Ranger gunboat, a conversion from the Star Wars Tatooine Skiff, and were reinforced by a pair of Merrimac walkers and a unit of German allies.

This was the first time we'd played mechanicals vs. mechanicals and with their more deadly firepower we noticed some potential for catastrophic damage. One of the British walkers suffered a catastrophic penetration and explosion from a medium gun. The Aphid likewise suffered a crippling hit that forced it out of the game, and expedited the British decision to retire from the battle on its first turn of entry.

All in all we learned a lot about how the mechanicals work in a game, the need to tweak a few rules, and that Space 1889 is a real crowd pleaser.