Starmada - back in action

This past weekend, Stew, of the excellent blog A Terrible Loss of Lead and Wealth, again invited a couple of fellows and myself over for a large game of Starmada- TNG style.  As with the last game, Stew provided the space to play in, a lovely star mat, ship stats. a QRF, lunch, and drinks.  And of course two extremely well painted fleets (seriously, look at those ships!). 

This time we got to pick our fleets by victory points, and I decided to bring out the big guns and selected the Sovereign class Atlantic, backed up with three comparatively obsolete Excelsior class ships.  Stew selected the Galaxy class Freitag (which was portrayed by the Galaxy class Endeavor half way through the game after a magnet failure), as well as a Defiant class, an Akira class, and another Excelsior.  The dastardly Klingons went with a fleet that utilized all the available Vor'Cha models.  In game terms, this meant that the Federation had two big battlewagons, a cruiser,  and what amounted to heavy destroyers, which the Klingons had all cruisers (and a couple of warbirds that barely figured in the game). 

As is typical, I did not take as many pictures as I could have, but here are a few. 

Federation fleet selection

First turn, as the fleets are probing for advantage

The big ships make their appearance

Excelsior classes take a pounding  The flat hex is a cloaked ship

Battlewagons eliminate everything between then (two Klingons cloaked to retreat, er tactically redeploy)

Federation victory, and another great game!

Since Stew indicated that he was running out of ships to paint, and needed another very large project, I printed something to bring along for him...

(In the event that you are not a Trek fan, that is a 1/7000 scale model of DS9 printed in two halves, which I primed before I brought it over.  A bit over 200mm wide)

Marching forward

I have been quite busy lately with dealing with my uncle's estate issues, so I have had little time for painting and other hobby activities.

I did recently receive a very generous gift from Dai, a whole British platoon for Chain of Command, painted and with extras. (such as the MMG teams in the bag on the right).  With just a bit of work on the bases they will match up with my Americans and Germans very nicely, and since I have a pack of Motorized British somewhere, I can add a few more extra items.

So you would think that painting more figures for Chain of Command and its related terrain would be in the forefront of my mind, and indeed it has been largely so.

However, I also recently got this for a hefty discount...

Yet more Eldar (and chaos bound for Ebay)

Starmada - The Next Generation

This past weekend Stew of the excellent blog A Terrible loss of Lead and Wealth, invited a few other fellows and myself over to his place to playtest his modifications of Starmada for Star Trek the Next Generation era play.  I believe that he intends to run the game at a convention, and he selected a few "experts" to try it out.  In addition to some rule modifications, Stew also generated the ship stats, made QRFs, and selected the scenario, on top of painting two top notch fleets, hosting, and supplying lunch! 

After some introductory milling about, I was assigned one of the two Klingon fleets and battle commenced! 

The game was pretty exciting and I had to pay attention to what was going on and the ship stats, but I did manage a few pictures. 

Photo one:
Initial fleet placement for the good guys, and the various gaming ephemera we were issued.

Photo Two:

I think this is two turns in.  I cloaked all my little ships and they were working their way up the side undetected.

Photo Three:

The flagship mixes it up with an Excelsior class, while the Galaxy class drives by.  (following this round, the Excelsior class was crippled, and drifted off the playing area)

Photo Four:

Little ships uncloak and help to delete the Excelsior class directly in front of them.

The important part here is that the true warriors won, and pushed those milk toast Federation scientists back to their star base with their tails between their legs. 

Now Stew may claim that he is just a "table top quality" painter, or some such, but look at this Galaxy Class starship and you will see otherwise. 

So no surprise, Starmada is fun, playing games is fun, and I even had a bit of a thought about making my own 1/7000 TNG era fleets.

Pardon the messy, desk, but that is three Galors and a Excelsior class on the slipways

Well, maybe more than a bit of a thought. 

Holidaze 2022

 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you dear reader(s).  I hope that you had a lovely festive season.

Santa (or my family) was very kind to me this year with a nice stack of gaming related items.  Most surprising was that my sister ordered Chain of Command direct from Too Fat Lardies. which coincides nicely with my desire to work on 15mm WWII again this year. 

9th Edition Eldar Codex, Chain of Command, Random Encounters, Agon, and Banshees.

This year, like last, I managed to get away from work for a whole week. Little was accomplished, but I did mange to prepare and prime a few more Battletech figures on one of our few dry days.

Wintertime expedient of a portable heater

Most of these are intended to go with the gift set I started preparing back in the fall, including this Phoenix Hawk painted for my buddy who is a major Robotech fan:

This is a poor picture that somehow enhances all of the flaws of the figure, but hey, Jolly Roger on a PHX-1

We did get away to the mountains with cousins again, and we played a few more sessions of the very long running D&D game.  This time there were at least a few calls of "we should finish the main quest before doing these other things!"  They then promptly went on a new side quest, after ordering equipment for another one. 

The kid managed to get enough new space marines to basically double his current level of space marines, which would worry me more if he managed to also paint them... he did already build them all though, which was shocking, so we could see some progress on that front.

Hopefully 2023 treats everyone well.