More Engaging

It was Star Trek night again at the Berkeley Vale club last night. We played through a couple of scenarios. In the first a Federation task group was dispatched to rescue a team of research scientists on a disabled science vessel, whilst the Klingons sought to grab them for themselves. A short battle this one, with the Feds beaming off one team only to have the rescuing ship destroyed, then the second team nabbed by the Klingons - only for Alan to blast the Klingon ship that carried them to atoms (his special orders were to ensure that no scientists were left in Klingon hands, and in this he was ruthlessly effective!)

The second battle was a slugfest with the simple aim to give the other side a darned good kicking, and to practice more with the rules. Great fun, and interesting to see tactics developing (especially the use of warp drive for hit and run attacks), as well as a growing appreciation for why damage control and shifting power is something to think about.

I'm really enjoying "Engage". its such a simple set of rules to play, but its simplicity belies a finesse that allows many variations in play and ship design, and it really captures the Star Trek feel very nicely As usual we've identified a few modifications and house rules that we think will make it work even better for us and which better reflect some of the aspects of the TV and film episodes, including changes to the rules for teleports and transporters (both ships should have shields lowered), restricted firing arcs for torpedoes, allowing rear firing weapons and tighter arcs needed to gain the shooting bonus for firing at the targets rear. With luck we'll give those mods a spin in a couple of weeks.

Engage!

Just back from the Berkeley Vale club at the local pub where we've been giving "Engage" from Red Wyvern games a run through. I picked up a copy at Blast Tastic earlier in the month after having a quick play against the designers. Tonight's game was the first proper outing with the club

My original plan was to break out my old collection of FASA Star Trek models but unfortunately the upheaval caused by various bouts of building and other works at home meant I couldn't extract the models I needed, so instead we used a whole heap of Star Trek micro machines.

There was no particular scenario, just a "training exercise" featuring a collection of Federation and Klingon ships, the Feds eventually claiming a narrow victory as the last Klingon Vor'Cha blew up. being typical wargamers the emphasis was on "shoot, shoot and shoot", whereas sometimes reallocating power to reinforce the shields, or conducting damage control might have been a good idea, but to be honest that was no surprise :)

We found the rules to be quite a bit of fun, very simple and straightforward to play but with plenty of scope for added detail with the various optional and extra rules, and also simple enough to be house-ruled if necessary (for example the chaps didn't like the initiative rules so we may use a random draw to determine the order of ship activations). the best bit of feedback though was a resounding "more please", so I'll be looking to put together some more interesting scenarios in the coming weeks. All in all a very nice set of rules.

Stormbirds

In another classic example of "drift" the latest completions here at the Cambridge Shipyards  are a trio of Romulan D-7 Stormbirds. Again, finishing off a project from several years ago. I had a pile of the Konami (or were they Furuta? probably Furuta) large-ish Star Trek models wherein it was curious that they never released a Klingon D-7. Or if they did I never saw it. Anyway a US company (Johnny Lightning?) produced a D7 whhich was slightly too small but which looked great with the Japanese models anyway so I bought a squadron of those, and then decided to get another three and paint them up as Rom birds. Of course this was a project that stalled and the models languished in a box for a few years. A happy coincidence of watching the fan-made Star Trek: Phase II episodes on Youtube (they really are rather good) and digging out the box of models promoted them to "top of the list" just to get them finished.

I probably rushed them and the detailing isn't as good as it could be, so I may well end up giving them some additional paintwork in the future, but for now I'm very pleased with the way that these ships came out.

And, after all, the D-7 really is a lovely design. Much more businesslike that that namby pamby Federation stuff :)

War Rocket

Like many UK wargamers of my age I used to love watching reruns of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers on TV during the school holidays, and the camp 1980s "remakes". So it was no great surprise to me to find that I splurged on a box of War Rocket Galacteer  miniatures from Hydra at the Reveille show in November 2011. Of course they then went into the "lead pile" and were forgotten until June last year. At that time I came across them again and, with a trip to the US coming up, I ordered the rules and some more ships (Imperial and pirates this time) and had them delivered to a chum in Manassas for me to collect. As before, after a good read through of the rules the models ended up "in the pile". My interest was piqued for a third time at Salute when I decided I did like the look of the Valkeeri ships and was going to shell out on a fleet but, alas, all sold out. Mail order was my friend, the models arrived a few weeks back and this time the assemblage stayed on mt games table. Last week I took the plunge, starting the Galacteers, Imperials and Pirates, and today I finished them and the Valkeeri, which I started during the week.

I must say i do love the retro look of these models. A classic blend of 1930s with more "modern" lines from SF movies and illustrations form the 50s, and a touch (especially with the Imperials) of the 80s - you can almost hear the Queen soundtrack whilst you are painting them!

So, Imperials first and it wouldn't be right to paint them in anything other than a classic red and gold detail scheme. These are my favourites form the bunch and I'm thinking of either converting one of the Class III ships into a closer representation of the "Ajax", or perhaps scratch building one (unless some clever soul on Shapeways does one, of course)

Next up the Galacteers. I went for something similar to the "official" scheme, but was looking at a model of Gerry Andreson's "Stingray" at the time I worked out the details and that has obviously had an influence.

Latecomers to the party were the Valkeeri. There is something very aquatic about these, and I may end up with a few more for my planned "Stingray" game (which has been "planned" for about 6 years now). Anyway, I went for something completely different for these, virginal white with shocking pink trim. Ideal to lull their enemies into a false sense of security, as these are no fluffy bunnies in combat! Paint scheme I guess influenced by "Girls und Panzer" - which I think would make an ideal subject for an SFSFW parti game....

Finally, those pesky pirates. A smaller "fleet" this time, as befits their irregular status. They have rather nice, menacing lines. And the red bridge windows help the effect I think

So there we are. Another painting project completed - although not one that was on my plan from the beginning of the year (I'm sooo easily distracted!!) With luck these will be pitching up at the Berkeley Vale  club sometime soonish.

Once I've found the rulebook.

Which is in "the pile".

Somewhere........

X Wing

 If you saw my post from Warfare a couple of weeks back you'll know that I came back with a copy of the new X Wing miniatures game. Now I've always loved Star Wars (at least the "original" three movies) and I've had a collection of Micro Machines and other SW models stashed away with various plans for them that never came to fruition. Anyway, I liked what I read in the game and splurged on a  few more starter sets and some extra fighters (a TIE Advanced and a couple of Y Wings) - for the standard ship types - X Wings and TIES - it is FAR cheaper to buy them in the boxed sets as the models are retailing for about £11 each, plus of course you get extra sets of dice (which cost around a fiver for a set, and you really need at least 2 sets) manoeuvre templates, markers, etc.

Official minis with my a small part of my existing SW collection

So, this Wednesday the local Wings of War group met at my place, our regular meeting place at the Mall in Cribbs causeway being closed. And a few of the guys decided they'd like to give the new game a spin (its been slagged off by some WoW/WoG fans as being a "clone" of the WW1 and WW2 aerial game). So the biplanes stayed under the table this time, the starfighters came out and the room was suddenly full of Star Wars quotes, made all the more humorous when Laura burst in to moan about something and we realised she shared more than a few characteristics with Chewbacca (don't tell her!). We didn't think too much about the scenario as it was a training mission, and we didn't use the optional extras, so my poor Y Wing was rather undergunned and only narrowly survived the game as Chris' X Wing charged about fending off the attacking TIEs.

The verdict? - Excellent! Everyone wanted to play again and Chris is looking to pick up a few sets himself. On the "clone" issue, and as seasoned WoW/WoG players, we came down on the side of "not". Yes, there are similarities in packaging and basing, but then again there didn't appear to be any sensible alternatives. The game system itself is different and far better suited to the setting than I think a game based on WoW would be (I know there are some variants out there and they are good ones, but I think this works better). Movement actually feels a bit smoother than WoW, certainly easier to adjudicate and without some of those physics defying manoeuvres that WoW is famous for (although physics is hardly a pre-requisite for a good SF game). The combat system is great. At first reading it sounds like a handful with all sorts of modifiers to numbers of dice thrown, modifying results for this and that, but its really very effective and extremely quick to pick up. Good use of game-specific dice (they seem to be all the rage these days) and nice variation in the fighter stats depending in the pilot, a feature that WoW misses unless you get some of the optional extra ace skill cards. Oh, and the models are lovely. I hope they keep the standard up in later releases and don't end up with more "toy"ish models as the later WoW models tended towards. The only thing we felt it missed was a "tailing" rule. Aww well, something to think about for a house rule :)

Anyway, it was a big hit. We agreed that games need to be mission based (as WoW games) to give them focus, and what was needed were ships to escort or intercept, targets to recce, mines to clear etc. and as luck would have it I uncovered my old box of Micro Machines yesterday so we now have TIE bombers and interceptors, A and B Wings, Lambda Shuttles, the Millennium Falcon and Slave 1 (the official minis are delayed until February), and a rebel transport and Correllian Corvette (the latter is about a foot long and will be familiar to players of James Clay's Star Wars game from a decade or so back)

Micro Machines vs. Official. The quality of the latter shines through. But for games with younger or less dextrous players the bendy MM machines might be a better bet. Size wise - pretty good.

"The first transport is away!" Obvious scale issues here, but it'll do for now. Also the B Wing could be bigger, and I'm guessing the official model will be quite a beast!