I just posted the latest free supplement to Combat Patrol here: http://www.bucksurdu.com/Buck_Surdu/Combat_Patrol.html
Like nearly all the supplements, this one is free.
This supplement includes optional rules to add to your Combat Patrol games for this theater. We have had a lot of fun play testing this supplement through a variety of Moro games. You can see examples on my blog if you search for “Moro.”
These have been sitting on my project table for a while, and I finally got around to finishing them this morning.
The first one if made from a Denny’s kid’s meal cup. I sprayed it gold about three years ago. Today I painted the red fin, attached the rocket gun in the nose, and printed the door and other bits. Like this, it looks very similar to the ships in the comics and the 1930’s serials.
This second ship was also spay painted gold three years ago. This began life as a promotional sales item for Bic pens. Those are the pens that look like this.
Now that I’ve shown you this picture, the resemblance to the space ship is pretty clear. With a few doo dads and some stuff from the printer, this is a reasonably effective looking pulp-era space ship.
I have a lot of pulp-era space ships. One of these days I’ll figure out how to get them into a game.
Over the weekend and this week I finished my Drantakh force. The Drantakhs are figures manufactured by Badger Games. They are science fiction figures with dinosaur-like heads. The sculpting is nice, and the molding is almost without any flash.
In a previous post I showed the headquarters personnel and the heavy weapons. This weekend I completed the rifle squads. Most of my science fiction figures are organized like the US Army in squads of two fire teams. I decided that the Drantakhs would be organized more on the US Marines model of a squad leader and three fire teams. Without grenade launchers and light machine-guns in each team, this really doesn’t have much effect except that in Combat Patrol the squad will have four command dice instead of three, which should provide more flexibility and guard against those turns when no cards are drawn for any part of the squad. It is subtle and doesn’t show up very well in these pictures, but the small arms on each of the three teams is a slightly different color to make it possible to tell the three teams apart on the table.
Lat night I completed two hover tanks to round out the Drantakh force. These required no filing or sanding; they were very clean. Some of the parts were on sprues and had to be cut off and trimmed a bit. The figures and machine-guns are separate purchases. The hatches can be glued open or closed.
The the Drantakh infantry wear’s sliver, Lost-in-Space-style suits, I decided that the tanks needed some sort of camouflage pattern. (I came ver close to painting them silver too.) I like the swoopy, almost Naboo look to the tanks. While I’m not sure how you would manufacture such a vehicle, the shape of the hull would probably be very effective on the battlefield. The pronounced turret ring means they probably lose a lot of turrets and tank commanders, but maybe they have a lot of turrets stockpiled to get the serviceable hulls back into the fight.
As suggested earlier, I’ll be using these with Combat Patrol(TM): WWII. The rules work just fine for science fiction skirmish games.
Last club night, Dave Wood ran a play test of his Look, Sarge, No Charts: Science Fiction scenario fo Historicon 2018. The rules have been under development, on and off, for a few years, and some aspects are starting to shape up. In particular the cyber phase is working well. I am not quite happy with the spotting rules; the issue of sensors and signatures makes things a little complicated for my tastes.
We haven’t gotten past the spotting stuff to start on RF spotting and RF-guided munitions.
The second play test game yesterday was a game Duncan will run at Historicon with the Napoleonic supplement to Combat Patrol(TM). The scenario involved a supply convoy getting ambushed by Spanish guerrillas and Portuguese troops in a small town.
Though my Portuguese and Crazy Dave’s Spanish were just about wiped out, the arrival of two fresh units of Cacadores caused the French to break player morale and concede victory. It was a fun scenario with lots of action.
I have been away for work quite a bit lately, so I haven’t had a chance to play test my scenarios for Historicon at regular club nights. I invited a few folks over to play test one of Greg’s and my Sea Lion games and Duncan’s Combat Patrol(TM) Napoleonic games.
In this scenario, a German bomber has crashed near Little Basely by the Sea (a name I took from an old Avenger’s television show episode). This bomber, however, wasn’t headed to London. It’s mission was to secretly land some Fallschirmjaegers to cause trouble. Since the German Navy and Luftwaffe don’t like each other, the Fallschirmjaegers were unaware that the Kriegsmarine was also landing a squad of soldiers near the coast to conduct reconnaissance. In the meantime, the Home Guard was out on maneuvers and hears the bomber crash.
The units closest to the bomber crew were some Women’s Land Army girls out in the fields (two five-girl teams). The bomber crew began the game stunned. The bomber crew immediately dashed to the waiting petrol truck, but the Land Girls were in hot pursuit.
At this point, we stopped the game to make sure we had time to test Duncan’s Napoleonic game. I will make a few small adjustments to the scenario before the convention, but in general it worked well.
Badger Games (https://shop.badgergames.com/category.sc?categoryId=87) carries these really neat Drantakh troops. Greg suggested that I paint them with the original Lost in Space silver jump suits.
I completed the heavy weapons and command group figures. I will begin working on the rank-and-file riflemen soon.
I also recently ordered the tanks for the Drantakh. I really like these figures and plan to pit them against my Pig Iron troops soon using Combat Patrol(TM): WWII.
We didn’t have time for a long vacation this year, so we decided to spend a few days on a dude ranch in Arkansas. It was a terrific vacation!
We traveled to Diamond Horseshoe Ranch in Arkansas. We arrived on Sunday afternoon in time for dinner in the mess hall, a little time in the game room, and some time in the pool.
The first day began with a large breakfast. Then we went to the barn to meet our horses for the week. Candy had Jon Snow. Sam had Butterbean. I had Scout. Tom had Dramamine. After a short trail ride to get familiar with our horses, we walked over to the range where we shot bows, rifles, and pistols and threw axes.
After lunch we did some rock climbing.
We even had time for a game of frisbee golf in the evening. The course was quite challenging, and we had to actually search for the holes at times.
After another terrific dinner meal (the food was universally terrific), we went to the barn for some games for an hour or so.
On the second day we split up in the morning. Tom, Sam, and Candy went for more rock climbing.
I had only been on a horse a few times before, and I was enjoying getting more comfortable and learning how to actually control the horse, so I went for another trail ride with some other campers.
After lunch we suited up for the adventure course. This involved rock climbing through a cave, around cliffs, and one of the top five zip lines in North America.
There were portions of the cave that were very tight. There were also portions that dropped pretty deeply. It was an interesting experience.
In the evening, during the camp fire and s’mores, we went back to the barn so the kids could work their way through the cave simulator. It was narrow, winding, and dark.
Day 3 began with a trail ride to a secluded location where we ate breakfast cooked over an open fire by the ranch staff.
In the afternoon while Tom and Sam did more rock climbing, Candy and I went down to the Buffalo river to lounge in the water and hiked to the twin falls.
We travelled home. It was a really good trip. When we planned this short vacation, I was worried that just three days would be too short. It was a very physical vacation, so after three days we were ready to go home. A fourth day might have been fun, but more than four days would have been too many.
Yes, more ducks!
A few weeks back I ordered more ducks int he mail. They have been sitting on my painting desk for a while. I primed them in Krylon silver, washed them in Citadel Agrax Earthshade, and then painted in the details. I am pretty happy with how they turned out.
My buddy Dave can’t get enough skeletons, but there is something about ducks that I think are fun and quirky in a game. I have space ducks and fantasy ducks. If I could find a couple of Pulp ones, I would add them to my collection as well.
I have accumulated a sizable collection of ducks from various manufacturers. It is becoming a sizable force.
I have been trying to talk Star Hat Miniatures, who make some really nice duck figures, into selling a sprue of assorted duck heads so that I can use them to convert other figures to ducks. Some assorted duck feet would be cool too!
As a result of Saturday’s developmental event, I updated the spreadsheets that we use to create units in LSNC: SciFi. It is a big Excel spreadsheet with a bunch of formulas and lookup tables. Players select some attributes about their units. The formulas then derive other attributes and determine the cost of the unit. Using these tables, average-ish tank battalions with some battalion-level support assets cost about 1500 points. I’ve asked Dave to re-work some of his battalions with these new sheets to see how his turn out.