Five Parsecs From Home - Turn 10: Secure the cargo.

With half the crew recovering in the medbay Augustus Holmes, Lars Nicolau and Oslan Baratski decided to take on a job from the interstellar Dockworkers Guild. Having worked with them before there was an existing relationship there which would on occasion lead to some jobs. 

A carrier transporting some important cargo was lost in a storm a few days ago. The storm had only just passed and the Guild were hoping to secure the cargo and any survivors asap, before any scavengers or other organisations made a claim. 

It was too late though - bunch of tech gangers were also interested in the cargo! It must have been some pretty interesting gear that was being transported for this bunch to venture out so far into the storm regions.

The plan was for Lars to cover from the rear, hugging cover, while Holmes and Baratski were going to move as quickly as they could up the gap made by the crashed carrier as it tore through the forest.

Moving in onto their target was simple, but they saw movement and began being more cautious.

The tech gangers split into two groups. The left team was armed with a blast rifle, a grenade launcher, and a high tech laser. The other team had two blast rifles and a grenade launcher. They were armed to the teeth. 

Lars moved into a cluster of trees to hunker down and snipe. Holmes and Baratski took cover and slowed their advance.

Seizing some initiative Holmes and Lars opened fire on the left fire team, knocking back two of them forcing them to find cover. 

The team leader of one fire team managed to get line of site to Holmes and launched a grenade at him. Luckily he was in enough cover to avoid any harm.

Baratski pumped out a few rounds at the grenade launcher carrying ganger, ripping his modified body open. She made note of where he fell, looking to secure that grenade launcher for herself later. One of the gangers decided enough was enough and took off back into the forest.

Holmes laid down some fire again sending the ganger scrambling for cover again. 

Kaboom! With Holmes concentrating on the gangers in front of him, he had neglected to watch his flanks. The other team had managed to sneak around and get behind the crew of The Pelican. A few grenades launched over and managed to take him down. 

Quite a firefight broke out. Baratski trying to hold down her left flank against the grenade launcher ganger, Lars plugging away at the remainder of the other fire team. Inaccurate fire was flying everywhere.

Lars got sent scrambling for further cover! That was too close.

Baratski managed to rush up to the crashed carrier and get some shots off at her targets. The ganger with the grenade launcher fell while the other dived for cover. That cover didn't help though as Lars got a bead on him and took him down with a well placed shot.

With one ganger remaining Baratski decided to poke her head around the engine and shoot him. He fell never to get up again. 

With the crashsite secured Lars came over to provide overwatch. A disheveled survivor exited the wreckage as a Dockworker Guild crew arrived to check out and salvage the cargo. 

In the end the crew got paid, picked up a grenade launcher and Holmes' injuries were minor. 

When back on The Pelican an emergency broadcast came on - UCS were ordering all ships in the sector to be grounded as there was a threat of invasion from The Collective. It looked like this was going to be a longer stay than anticipated. 

A few days later Mao recieved a communication from home - it looked like there were rumblings of invasion and the UCS grounding of ships was warranted. 

5 Parsecs from Home - Turn 9: The Moon of Tarnicus

 Tarnicus - a giant ball of frozen methane, uninhabitable, lucrative. Tarnicus has a single, small moon dotted with various megacorp complexes set up in order to maximise access to the resources on the primary planet. The crew of The Pelican have landed here to lay low for a little while. While in port they heard about another crew who were trying to steal some sensitive information from Centcon Energies to sell to the highest bidder. They decided to try and get in before the other crew and make some quick cash.

The grav train stopped at the warehouse. It was not an official stop but a few credits into the driver's palm convinced him make an extra stop.

The scavenger crew approached the warehouse in two groups, cautious in case there were any security around. 

The four members of The Pelican crew who were not in medbay hopped off the train and took up positions. Lars was ready to cover the rest of them from behind while Brenko, Holmes and Mao would attempt to beat the others to the warehouse and get the files.

The scavengers must have been quite good at what they did, they were all armed with pretty high tech, long range weaponry, energy weapons included. They had some seriously military grade equipment. Long range pot shots were taken while Aralay Brenko attempted to hook around behind the warehouse.

After some back and forth Lars struck home. The leader of the scavenger crew fell to a well placed shot to the abdomen. 

Unfortunately one of the scavenger groups hooked around and opened up on Augustus Holmes who took a few hits and went down. He would be out of action trying to dress his wounds. 

Brenko opened up with her hand cannon, missing wildly, but the scav also missed. 

Seizing initiative Brenko charged at a scav and sliced through her. At the same time Lars took out the enemy sniper. 

Things were looking great...until they weren't. A scav opened up with his infantry laser. At close range it was devastating, Brenko's flak vest somehow managing to disrupt the worst of the energy. She was still going to be needing a stay in medbay though. Mao also took some shots, knocking him down and putting some serious damage on him. He would need emergency surgery but would pull through.

Alone and outgunned, about to be surrounded, Lars decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Parlaying with the other scavengers he was able to hotwire a van, load the rest of the team in and rush them back to The Pelican but not before picking up one of the lasers from a dead scavenger.

I had never lost a battle. It was a strange feeling. Then I realised I had been playing it wrong! I had not been adding the combat score to the attack rolls. This meant there was a lot of back and forth, ineffective shooting where people were unable to roll a hit. I also forgot that Mao had a luck point - meaning he shouldn't have been a casualty. 

Due to this I downgraded Mao's stay in medbay to just one turn. They would return to fight another day.

The rules also say you can't take weapons from dead enemies, but I happened to roll an infantry laser on the loot chart so made it fit into the narrative. Of all the rules I got wrong, this is not one of them.

Five Parsecs from Home: Turn 8 - A Quest ends...

So I hadn't played in just over two years... Reviewing my Google sheet I discovered I somehow had enough quest rumours to get a final quest mission...even though you are meant to move planet between each quest mission. From a narrative perspective it actually worked because it looked like the local governor making a last ditch attempt to off my crew. I ran with it and decided that I would revise the rules and carry on on a new planet as it makes sense from a narrative perspective to get out of dodge. 

A rabble quietly approached The Pelican, attempting to remain in the cover of some shipping containers.

The crew of The Pelican warily stocked up in preparation for a hasty departure from this rock. They had obviously outstayed their welcome and needed to get out of dodge. Lars had set up to cover as the rest of the crew shifted various containers into the cargo hold.

Seeing movement Aralay Brenko and Estelle Phillips moved into more covered positions. Phillips saw an opportunity to open fire and got off a few shotgun blasts taking out one of the shifty figures. Unknown to her he was one of the rabble rousers. The rest of them faltered right away, then decided to keep going.

One of the rabble swung to the left and opened fire with his rifle. Out of cover, moving cargo Oslan Baratski was hit, a dark patch spreading across her leg. Mao also took some fire and was lucky enough to be able to scamper to the relative safety of the shadows under The Pelican and the cargo crates.

Estelle Phillips also had to duck for cover under a hail of rifle rounds.

Seeing movement Lars opened up, his rattle gun tearing chunks out of a storage garage and also one of the attackers.

This death forced the attackers to take cover, retreat and regroup, they took some ineffective fire but nothing happened for a little bit.

Augustus Holmes managed to get a bead on another person taking a shot and putting a hole in him.

Then disaster stuck as a brave attacker ran up and sprayed wild fire at Estelle Phillips. She crumpled and fell under the fire! Meanwhile Lars and Mao were taking inaccurate fire.

Augustus Holmes and Mao exchanged fire with other figuresn, taking them out. This was helping keep this side safe and was forcing the rest of the attackers to advance around the containers...where Aralay Brenko was lying in wait.

Aralay stuck! Running out of cover she swung her blade at one of the attackers, his head flying away from his body.

Caught in the open the other attackers panicked, fell back a little then regrouped. Aralay managed to pin one of them.

She then charged in and in the desperate grapple both she and the attacker fell back from each other, tired, and worried.

Before she could recover a hail of bullets slammed into her sending her to the floor.  

Augustus Holmes charged around opening fire on the remaining attackers, knocking one to ground.

Holmes, Lars and Mao caught the remaining person in a pincer and while Mao took the fire Holmes closed in for the kill. Upon investigation one of the final people killed was the governor himself! He had been determined to witness the job being done and see it through. It did not go well for him unfortunately. They managed to find a purse on him with enough credits to probably look at upgrading some weaponry at some point. 

 And with that it was time to leave. Holmes, Lars and Mao carefully carried Brenko, Baratski and Phillips back to The Pelican and got them into the medbay. It turned out none of the wounds were going to leave any permanent damage. The only thing left to do was to hightail it out of there. 

Germans on the move!

 I finished a group of late war German transport vehicles! I wanted them to be able to mount FHQ units, infantry squads and other small units in vehicles if needed, thus I painted up a load of Sdkfz 251s, Opel Blitzes, Kübelwagons and some other vehicle that I ordered and I think counts as a "Heavy car" in Battlegroup language. 

One thing I decided was to not bother doing any sort of camo job on the Opel Blitzes, Kübelwagons and the "Heavy car". It just wasn't worth it. You can see from the picture that they all look totally fine. They will do and are very obviously German.

I tried to do some camo on the Sdkfz 251s but gave up. I am definitely unhappy with how the couple turned out - the stripes are just too thick for my liking, and the handful of stripes I liked I struggled to replicate - I think I just need very little paint on the brush...or a thinner brush? Hard to find one that thin though.

This Sdkfz 222 has a little camo. It is okay. Servicable. I think I would rather it have some camo than not. 

I am mostly pleased with how these all turned out though and am looking forward to getting them into action. 

Camo vs. generic nation colours in 6mm.

 This blog contains images I took from google searching. I don't own these images.

Reflecting on my choice to not give my WW2 German support vehicles any camoflauge I had the thought about how it looks a bit like the old game Sudden Strike 2, which was a game I sank a lot of hours into but gave up on when it got too hard.

Below you can see the Russian forces. They are all this bright green colour, so you can spot them in the green of the grass. There is no variation.

Below you can see the late war Comet fighting what must be a late war Tiger...that is grey. I remember finding it a little jarring seeing all German units as grey, infantry included, but it worked for the game's internal consistency. The British forces all had this vaguely desert colour as their journey started in Africa.

From the distance the player is playing, the generic colours really helped identify which unit belonged to which faction. I can live with that in 6mm - although do take issue with all German being grey. 

My USA, British and Soviet forces - the vehicles will all be a generic green, infantry will be painted as accurately as I can. Germans - early war grey, later war midstone with camo if I can make it look non awful.

Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics. US 6mm

 Here are a few more vehicles, that I finished over the course of this week. If you paid any attention to my previous post then you will see my musings on paint jobs. I went with US Dark Green. The soft tops and tilts are British Uniform - a generic canvas sort of colour. 

I like the cartoony look of having blue windows at this scale. With the jeeps and trucks I worried about how they have no doors and are open sided, but due to molding needs they are filled in. How would I paint them then? I think it worked decently to be honest. 

These Chaffees are the new mold. They are pretty gorgeous. I had fun painting them and look forward to them dying quickly to some Panthers...

Painting up some 6mm WW2 British infantry and armour.

 After allowing myself to dilly-dally and not bother doing much, I finally have a platoon plus some support of British infantry. I also have some armour. I was basically unsure about what colour to paint the armour and exactly what to paint on the infantry because I felt like the soldiers would just blend in with their bases, which is kind of what happened. 

I found this link from A Bridge to War blog which gave some interesting tips on painting 6mm WW2 infantry and armour. It goes very much down the "it can all look the same when looking down at a table" route and does enough to make the figures look different while also being simple to paint. 

Infantry

The infantry were essentially primed in a light grey. This differs from that link, but it is all I have for now. I then used all Vallejo paints and painted them in the following order:

Flesh - Light flesh.

Uniform - British Uniform

Helmets - US Dark Green

Weapons - Beige Brown, then Black

Washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade

Gear - Russian Green (I only painted canteens and a pouch or two)

Light drybrush of Sand.

The original link just paints weapons black. It also primed with brown, which made the need for British Uniform paint layer unnecessary. 

I am pleased with how they turned out. I should have probably painted boots also, but couldn't be bothered. I would have painted them black if I had thought about it.

Armour

I convinced myself I needed Bronze Green to paint my armour, but ended up just painting them US Dark Green, washing with Citadel Nuln Oil, drybrush with Desert Yellow. They look fine to be honest. I have painted up some KV1s and a KV2 using Russian Green, which is noticeably lighter, but after washing with Nuln Oil I literally can't tell the difference between the two colours! 

The link above has inspired me to paint up some Waffen SS though. I had always thought they were too difficult to paint up in 6mm and was just never going to play them. 

Next up, some US logistical vehicles. Then some German trucks and half tracks - they are just waiting for some more colours and a flocking. 

Slow progress - WW2 Brits, US gaps filled, Wehrmacht gaps filled

 Finally putting paint to these German softskins. I want my infantry to be motorised, so need to get these off the bench!

I also want trucks. Trucks to use for goodness knows what. Convoy objectives, supply columns for tanks that carry low ammo. There is also the M20 command vehicle which looks pretty cool.

I have put flesh onto the Brits. I hope to get them painted as quick as I can now that I am painting again. I don't have the correct colours for my British armour to be honest. 

February Game Night

 Hi all,

Another month goes by with little movement on my miniature painting. I don't have "Bronze Green" so feel I can't make progress on my British armour. The US, Soviet and German armour can all be finished, I just can't be bothered. My British infantry are languishing unpainted, even though I have the colours for them. I feel like I have played games with people and need to figure out the next step for playing Battlegroup with another person again. I love this game. 

I also got distracted with painting of another kind. My lounge was in desperate need of a paint. So we spent a few evenings sorting that out...which took hobby time away.

Anyhow, I went to the February meet up of the game group and it was great. I messaged ahead to try and make sure I could play Cascadia and someone said they had it and would play it with me. I won, although kept forgetting to take photos of my setup. 

Another game was Quacks of Quedlinburg. It was a hilarious game of making potions, trying not to let them explode on me. I lost soundly, but it was really fun. A great theme, and it actually felt thematic.