Miniature Wars you may have missed: March 2021

With a new army, new rules and a terrain board all set up I decided to use all three at once.

Planet Mercenary's First Adventure

Colonel Farnsworth called the team together. "Good news everyone, I have a perfect first mission for you! 20 years ago in the battle to reconquer Asbestos City I accidently found myself in the strong room of a bank and discovered 1000 gold bars just laying on the floor. So I decided to hide them for safe keeping and return them to the rightful owners as soon as I could.

I am going to land near the centre of the city and you will go out and find the gold bars and return with them to the ship. Easy in and easy out with a big payday for all!"

"Will there be anything dangerous there Colonel?" ask Leena.

"No way, the whole place is as dead as the moon."

The drop ship landed in the bottom right hand corner. "The gold is in one of the buildings on the cross roads in the centre of the city" said Farnsworth. The green blips are where the non existent dangers are.

The non existent dangers will appear if the appropriate card in Hearts is drawn Ace =1 to King =13. lots of robots, some zombies, some generic thugs and some Martians.

Anyway off went the team and it didn't take long for me to realise that I had way to many robots, zombies, etc. In fact after two turns I changed the team's objective from getting the gold to just make it back to the ship.

Luckily I had added to the team a set of three of Amy's clones.

The team sets off with the clones at the front

The team made it just past the overhead roadway before it was time to turn back.

WallE Bots attack from behind

Zombies are drawn to the action

Some thugs see away to get off this planet, capture the ship!

But they are attacked by zombies and lose one of their team before the zombies are all killed. Then some WallE bots appear!

Tiny Tanks (remnants of the last war) block the way forward.

The team is surrounded! There are even Drones above.

The RoBro finally started to shoot things at this stage. The team is backing away from the hordes.

The last thug pushes away a WallE bot and is about to make a run for the ship.

More robots and drones are destroyed but more are on the way! Worse Leena is out of Ammo!

Leena is put out of action! Fry carriers her back towards the ship while RoBro holds off the enemy.

Everyone races towards the ship

The ships lifts off from this cursed place while zombies and drones watch it go.

Wrap up.

the game worked really well. Even though it was solo the card activation made it unpredictable and fun.

I did forget some of the rules (when a figure gets a wound it should be knock down but I have decided to ignore this) and I had too many toys in the game.

It was very frustrating at the start as RoBro, despite having the most powerful gun and best shooting dice managed to miss everything and then later redeem itself by killing 4 drones and WallE bots in one turn.

The MVP were Amy's clones who managed to shoot a few drones and soak up a lot of fire power. Pity they all died.

A nice side story developed with the thugs. First I decided they would try to get to the ship. Then when they had been attacked move the last remaining thug towards the team to join them but then he was shot by a Tiny Tank..

Lots of fun. I have bought some miniature cards to be able to put them closer to the figures while playing.

A new set of armies to collect - Cold War .

As usual, it started with an project semi-dormant for years that had been ticking slowly along that is the suddenly ignited by a new model or range of minis.

In this case a 1/144th scale model of the Caspian Sea Monster - or that was what the US called the strange radar contact that was not a plane but which would cross the Caspian Sea at very high speed. It was in fact an ekranoplan - a type of ground effect aircraft that could carry 100 troops or some light vehicles.

Anyway seeing this got me interested and I immediately purchased it before it disappeared. As Christmas was coming up it was a perfect excuse to get what I wanted and save my wife the bother of searching for something.

Of course, once I got my ekranoplan I needed some troops. I discovered after some internet searching Plastic Soldier Company sold a 10mm Soviet Motor Rifle Company with 10 T62, 10 BTR60 100 troops and two recce vehicles.

So I purchased them and realised I needed some helicopters as well. So off to the internet again and luckily Mighty Ape was having a sale and I got 2 1/144 scale Hinds.

I still need to get a few more HQ troops for the infantry and 1 or 2 ZSU-4 AA vehicles.

Over the past few years I have collected 5 JS-2 tanks as well as 3 T-54s.

So now I will be able to field :

Class 1 Motor Rifle company, T-62s & BTR60s to take the fight to the west

Class 2 Motor Rifle company, T-54s & BTR60s for the second wave of attacks

Class 3 Motor Rifle company, JS2s & trucks to counter attack a Marine landing near Leningrad or the BOAR somewhere in the steppes.

I already have the BOAR troops, (currently battling TOOT in the 22nd Century) 10 M48 Patton Tanks, 4 Abrams and 8 Marine AAVP-7, the 1034th Super Duper Heavy Panzer Company (Rattes and Mauses) and 10 early West German APCs.

I will need to buy some 1960s US Army troops, to battle Soviet attacks on the US using their ekranoplan as well as to battle any aliens that may choose to attack Washington DC.

Below are the Plastic Soldier Company Troops

Every thing seems to scale well with the Pendraken figures so that is good.