Space Rangers - Lost in Space

Apologies to all my readers for the lack of posts over the past few months. I have been doing stuff - not much - and will start to post again more regularly - I hope.

Following on from my post in June on the Space Ranger air support the toys went on sale so I got some more 😁 . This one I decided to turn into some terrain. This was done a month ago but I was prompted to post it as my daughter bought me a light box from Aldi. Thanks Alex!

Not all Space Rangers get to make it home. This one crash landed somewhere and his emergency beacon was never activated as his energy source was empty.

Softer light

Brighter light

You can take phots from the top too!

Hollywood white teeth.

and a out of focus different view.

I did not try much painting as I would probably make it worse. Just a simple job with some rocks from a nearby car park. The figure comes with the plane and the skull came from my 28mm skeleton bits.

After the Third Apocalypse - Albion Advances

February 2500 - After their victory at the landing site perfidious Albion quickly follows the retreating French forces.

The French leave a few units to hopefully delay the British advance.  OHW scenario 20- Fighting Retreat.

The French have 4 units and the British have 6.

I am using the One Hour Wargame Rules with the addition of Gatling Gun units that move like infantry and roll a D4 when firing. Some of the units carry over some casualties from the previous game.

Starting positions - the French retreating across the river. The objective for both sides is to hold the cross roads on the hill at the rear of the table. To go with the background of the campaign I have substituted a ruined city for the swamp in the OHW scenario.

End of turn 1. The British have two infantry units and two gatling guns on the right and one infantry unit and gatling gun on the left.

End of turn 2. The french have deployed on the far side of the river. The English have deployed to fire at the French, leaving one infantry unit in column to press the attack.

End of turn 3. Despite casualties the English push across the river on the right. There the French have taken a lot of hits from the English gatling guns and supporting infantry

End of turn 4. The French artillery is deployed but the French infantry on the right have broken and are retreating. On the left the French make a slow retreat.

End of turn 5. The English have crossed the bridges on both sides of the ruined city.

End of turn 6. One of the French infantry units has left the field of battle. But this has been offset by the destruction of the leading English Infantry unit on the right that is broken and retreating. however the French artillery needs to fight off two gatling guns and another company of infantry. On the left the French infantry are racing to support the artillery, leaving the gatling gun to hold the line.

End of turn 7.  The french have not rolled well and the English continue to advance.

End of turn 8. things are looking grim for the French. Can they hold on to turn 15?

End of turn 9. The French have broken the English infantry on the left and they are retreating. On the right the French infantry have come to the aid of the artillery but maybe too late.

End of turn 10. Both the French artillery and infantry have broken. Overwhelming fire from the English infantry and gatling guns.

End of turn 11. The French gatling gun tries the impossible. To hold on. But elan can only do so much and they must retreat to avoid capture.

Round up.  A good fun game and it lived up the the name as it was all over in one hour. I think the French should have deployed further from the river so they could have fired more at the British one by one.

Onto the next game in the campaign. Can the British make it all the way to New Paris?  I think I will do scenario 11 Surprise Attack as the British continue their lightning assault.

I have added a twist for the campaign. Each unit that suffered casualties during the current battle may still carry some of them over to the next battle. Each campaign turn a unit of English will remove one dice of casualties and a unit of the French will remove two dice - as they are closer to their supplies.

In one of the blogs I follow, Norm over at Battlefields and Warriors Link uses the OHW scenarios but adds additional terrain that does not have any game effect to make the battlefield look better.  I think I will follow his lead as otherwise the table can look a bit bare.

Evil Minions (no, not those ones)

 Inspired years ago by the James Bond film You Only Live Twice. I have always wanted to have an underground volcano base. But first I would have to get some minions.

The great thing about 10mm is that all these silly terrain building dreams can actually be made and the cost of creating the forces is not that much and storage is not such a big issue either.

Here is what I am talking about.

Minions in different coloured uniforms racing to battle.  The underground lair is very open with plenty of space.

First up I needed to get the minions.  I hunted around the Pendraken website until I chanced upon the North Koreans.  They fit perfectly, both in uniform design and in their general background.

The whole team. White for Operations, Red for Engineering, Blue for Transport, and Grey for Security.  A bit of my old 15mm sci-fi terrain and a new NASA launch pad for background.

Engineering in Red are always ready for a fight (ha ha). Even though they will be easy targets.

Transport got to be blue as I did not have any yellow primer. They got two WW2 German DAK staff cars whose drivers wear a cap. Ready to move quickly.

Operations staff. Manning the computers.  To precious to risk in a fire fight so unarmed - if you don't count the nuclear missiles in the background.

Security troops in a unobtrusive grey. Each squad has rifles and a LMG.  Also they get their own car with an automatic cannon in the back for that extra firepower when you need it.
 

All minions need an evil overlord.  Here is Number One and his Number Twos (head of each division), all striking that classic leadership pose!
On the back of the base is a radioman for each division, waiting to transmit orders.

So all I need to do now is create the underground base. Which will take a while as I am painting a whole lot of figures at the moment.

Part of the design process will be to make it multi purpose.  In addition to a launch site I am thinking of a submarine base, underground moon base, nuclear missile site, and post apocalyptic vault. Anyway, it will keep me occupied for a bit planning and then building.

Thanks for reading.

 

After the (Third) Apocalypse - VSF

TL:DR    Ben needs an excuse to use his post apocalyptic terrain and play VSF battles.

______________________________________________________________________

1st January 2500 and it is the dawn of a new century and Europe is starting to recover two centuries after the Third Apocalypse. To be fair it was not much of a apocalypse. Just a shadow of the first one and less than a quarter of the second one.  The Third Apocalypse only had a gigaton of nukes and no chemical or biological weapons. 

The First Apocalypse in the late 20th century pummelled Europe, Russia and North America with the rest of the world just getting a smattering of nukes plus a good dose of biological weapons.

The Second Apocalypse in the 21st century pummelled China, India and Japan with once again the rest of the world getting a few nukes here and there. The USA and Russia also got a good pasting again as scores were settled and just because.

The Third Apocalypse in the 23rd century mostly hit Africa and South America with 500 megatons of ICBMs each with a few hundred tactical nukes spread around the rest of the world for good measure - to make sure no one else got too far ahead in the subsequent recovery.

So the new setting for my wargames is a recovering France - still in battle with the English and three quarters of the way through their Thousand Year War.

A shattered Europe with ruined cities, mutants and monsters, wild gangs, forbidden zones, secret lairs, lost libraries and technology, strange tribes, potential allies and probable foes, and always the scheming English. All these have to be navigated by the fledgling French empire as it struggles towards the future - hopefully apocalypse free.

The first few battles will be against the hated English - who have once again invaded a peaceful France that only wishes for Liberty, Fraternity, Justice and the complete domination of Europe.

England Invades

Protagonists     An invasion force from England consisting of five companies of infantry and four Gatling Guns.

                        A quick reaction defence force from France of three companies of infantry, three Gatling guns, two artillery pieces and a squadron of cavalry,

Situation    A small coastal town in Brittany. The evil English have launched another invasion of peaceful France. What evil designs do the English have this time?

Toys    Figures all from Pendraken. Ships are Bedford Whalers and a conversion for the gun ship. Fort is a DIY effort modelled on Fort Macquarie. Town and other buildings from Outland Models.

Rules    Neil Thomas's One Hour Wargames.  Impressed by Peter's work over at   https://gridbasedwargaming.blogspot.com/ I thought I would purchase the rules and I am very happy.  While simple, they still have a lot of flavour and can be easily adapted to different situations and genres. My first few games will play the rules as written (except see postscript) with the addition only of Gatling guns.

Opening situation. The evil English appearing out of the sea mist, have landed at the small port town and destroyed the defending fort, top left hand corner, and three companies are now moving to reinforce the defence against the French counter attack. From the bottom you can see the French forces. Three infantry companies with attached Gatling guns, a squadron of Cuirassiers and two artillery pieces.

Turn two and the French start to deploy while the English reinforcements rush to assist.

First blood is drawn as the French companies come under fire.

The French deploy for their assault. The English continue to hammer the French infantry companies.

The English on the hill have retreated due to the French cavalry attack and supporting infantry. One French company has reached its limits and is withdrawing. The English race to create a line.

On the right the French artillery and Gatling guns are decimating the infantry in the building. However, on the left their attack is faltering against the English defence. Outnumbered it looks bad for them.

On the right one English company has had enough and withdraws. However another company arrives to fill the gap. On the left the French assault falters as a the cavalry retreat.

The French retreat. Out numbered and out gunned even the fabled French Elan cannot close the gap between the forces. Nonetheless they have given the English a bloody nose.

Will the English be able to widen their beach head to land a force capable of defeating the French? Onto the next battle.

Postscript.  Well the rules are simple but so am I so I forgot a few things. Like adding two to the hit roll for rifles, dividing hits by two for units in cover.  But other than that it worked fine.

Anyway, I enjoyed myself and the game played very quickly over three nights. Much faster than the other rules I have used.

Two Bumps and a How To Guide

 A belated post - I meant to post in July to keep up to my two posts a month standard but failed once again.

I am sure I am probably preaching to the converted but I would like to recommend to my 16 followers (up 60% this year!)  two wargame blogs that I follow.

Norm over at /http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/

and

Stew's blog "A Terrible loss of Lead and Wealth" over at  https://tllw.blogspot.com/   

Both of these blogs are very well written and their authors obviously spend a lot of time writing each post (or are very talented)  By well written, I mean that even though you may not be that interested in the particular topic, you are able to enjoyably read the post. Just like you would for an article in a wargames magazine. They both post regularly and answer any comments that you leave -  even the lame ones from me.

So I recommend that you add them to your "Blogs I follow" list.

Now, I hear you ask, "when I follow a blog it does not update when there is a new post. So why bother?"  Well Norm has written an excellent  post on "how to get your blog roll to update automatically when a new post is made".

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2022/07/fixing-followers-on-blogger.html

Just follow his instructions and the blogs you follow will be updating all the time! See I told you they were great blogs!

Rangers of the Apocalypse

 A new faction for my VSF forces and battles. Rangers of the Apocalypse! 

Guarding the fringes of the civilised areas against the men of the wastes and other undesirables such as mutants and monsters. The Rangers are the first line of defence, holding the line until the main army can arrive.

The Rangers often travel through the wastes to see what is out there or guarding expeditions that search through the rubble of the cities of yesteryear looking for advanced technology and lost knowledge.

Anyway something else to add to the painted pile.

Moving through the trees

A slightly different angle

And again

Painted to my usual standard.  The PVA I use to glue them to the bases looks very shiny in the photos but much less so in reality. 

All figures are Pendraken from their AWI range.

40K Space Rangers - Air Support

 The 40K Space Rangers army continues to grow. One day, maybe, I will actually play a game with them.

A new Buzz Lightyear movie is coming out and this time I am ready to snap up any appropriate toys when they are released, rather than try and find them when they are well out of stock.

I have been really lucky and have found they have released a range of planes whose pilots are 30mm high!  Just the right size. I have been sensible and only bought two of the possible four planes.

At $22 each they are a bargain compared to the GW versions at $80 plus. Also, the Disney versions are made, painted and have retractable landing gear and opening cockpits! Awesome.

Side on view showing their landing gear and open cockpits with some Space Rangers for scale

Front on view

Screaming through the skies adding some morale boosting noise.

I think I will play (whenever I get around to it) the 07 plane as a Storm Eagle ground attack plane and 15 as either a Ravenwing Dark Talon or a Nephilim Jetfighter air superiority fighter.

Unfortunately the 40K rules I have are from 20 years ago and do not have any aircraft in them so I will have to get the latest version to get rules for aircraft. Luckily the core rules are free so maybe I can get away with them :)

Men of the wastes!

 A new faction for my VSF forces and battles. Men of the Wastes! 

People who live well outside the civilised areas of a post apocalyptic VSF setting. 

Mostly armed with home made muskets and some just have swords and shields. No doubt they will appear suddenly on a field of battle as a supply train is going through a ruined city.

The wastelands horde - 24 bases

Close up from the front

Close up from an angle

Mounted Infantry

 A short post on a new unit of mounted infantry for my VSF games.

I have been unhappy with my other mounted rifles as they don't have dismounted bases to use when they enter buildings so decided to try this out. It seems to look OK so I will back fill for any mounted rifle/infantry I already have when I next order from Pendraken. I think it will look much better on the table.

All the figures. Mounted, dismounted and mounts standing by

Mounted up as usual three to a base.

Dismounted or Mounted down one base of three for each mounted base. I will have these firing at 60% of an infantry base of five.

Horses waiting around, one horse for each base plus a couple of guards for colour..

My usual "enthusiastic level" of painting.

Episode Eight - A Walk in the Park - A Solar Travels Post

 Captain James T Cook and the HMSS Endeavour - VSF 1770

“Space the new frontier.  These are the voyages of the Her Majesty’s Star Ship Endeavour.  Its five year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilisations; to boldly go where no Englishman has gone before.”- Captain James T Cook

"Captain Cook! Ethergram from the Admiralty" shouted Cheerful Rodgers. "What now" thought Cook despondently.

 

"Well Cheerful, another rescue mission. Back to Venus to save the bacon of some of Her Maj's Disreputable Gentlemen whose ship's TriLithium Crystal has broken. We have a couple we can spare so off we go. Should be a walk in the park!"

See Episode 4 for our last Venus adventure posted in October 2018.

https://miniwarsyoumayhavemissed.blogspot.com/2018/10/episode-four-venus-lost-lands-and.html

With no room to land next to the Disreputable Gentlemen's ship the Endeavour's shuttle had to land on the opposite side of a short strip of jungle.

The Disreputable Gentlemen have been negotiating with a tribe of small green men. They were about to sign a one sided trade agreement when they realised their TriLithium Crystal had shattered and they would not be able to make a quick get away! They urgently called for backup before the green men realised what they were about to sign.

"Alright men! this doesn't look too bad!" said Cheerful

Two squads move into one bit of jungle and discover a Plant Eater! The Captain's team plus another squad move into the jungle and nothing is there.

The Plant Eater does not eat plants! "How interesting" says Dr Banks the Science Officer. Screams and gunfire inform everyone else that it is dangerous as well! Two Crew and two Marines are killed while they inflict a few wounds and shock on the Plant Eater

The Plant Eater is finished off by the Sargent and his Mini Gatling Gun. The Captain and his Marine squad move forward.

The Captain is blocked by impenetrable bamboo stands. They will need to go another way.

The Marines and remaining crew lead the way. There is a rustle in the underbrush and a Chomper appears!

"Fascinating!" says Dr Banks.  "Fire!" says the Marine Sargent. But too late and the Chomper chomps three red shirted marines before it is brought down. 

The crew bravely lead the way into another section of jungle. Luckily it is empty!

In the last section of jungle there is movement and everyone is about to fire when the Captain says "Cease fire! They are Lizard men!"  The Lizard men wave to the Captain, remembering that he and the crew of the Endeavour saved their village in Episode 4. They show the crew the way to the edge of the clearing.

The Captain and remaining crew make it through to the Disreputable Gentlemen with the replacement TriLithium Crystal. Except for one marine who was lost in the jungle. See if you can find him!

The Captain and crew gratefully accept a lift in the repaired ship back to the Endeavour's shuttle. They have gone off the jungle walk.

 

Well another successful mission for the Captain. As long as you don't count the seven dead crew and marines.

A fun game played over a couple of nights using Galactic Heroes and a made up encounter table.

Spelt Chomper wrong :(

The next mission is going to be exploring. No more rescues.