Five Parsecs from Home: Turn 24 - The Moon of Biitas 12

 The Moon of Biitas 12 was an interesting place. Heavily urbanized, it had no right to be as important as it was. It was small but powerful, straddling an important trade route. Decades ago UCS had seen fit to garrison it, in order to keep clear it of pirates. This small garrison eventually evolved into quite a large hub for UCS military forces and became a major trade port. 

The Pelican crew needed to talk to a ship broker who would be able to match the settlers with someone selling a suitable ship. He tended to make himself available at Brunard airbase - a well defended military installation. Luckily, out on the rim, even at UCS outposts they could let you pass with the right fistful of credits finding its way into the right fist. 

As the crew approached the trading post they were waved on through. The Pelican was quite a normal sight in these parts and the grunts on duty knew them well enough.

Brenko and Holmes discussed getting a ship for the settlers while Carrick chatted away to some other travellers. 

Phillips was talking all things engineering with some techs who were running diagnostics on the atmospheric intercepter. A couple of others went to the supply shed. 

Suddenly out burst three horrifying creatures! Two technicians were torn apart immediately, the rest began running for their lives. 

With lightning reflexes Phillips pulled out a grenade and lobbed it over to the shed, not killing anything but disrupting the creatures enough that the others could get involved in the fight.

Mao and Brenko opened fire on two of the creatures, unloading shells and magazines at them, eventually causing them to collapse into piles of steaming, hissing blood and body parts. 

Earl launched a grenade to the top of the shed, making things even harder for the creature to orient itself. It actually fell from the roof, out of line of sight .

The gunshots and explosions drew the immediate attention of the guards. The dismounted infantry ran over, while the sentry vehicles spun around and drove their way into firing positions. 

Before anyone else could do anything, Phillips unloaded with her shotgun, taking down the third creature. 

As the guards approached, Phillips filled them in on what had just happened. Was it some kind of escaped bio-experiment? Who knows. The guards told everyone to evacuate, called in some more civilian transports to remove any other people from the area. They were going to need to go into quarentine, in order to secure the area. 

As the Pelican crew drove away they saw more of those creatures burst out of the shed. There must be a subterrainean nest or something. Soldiers, civilians and vehicles were torn apart. 

Well, this was a problem. No-one was going to get off of this moon for a while. The local UCS governer called for a sector wide quarentine - spaceports were shut down. Reinforcements were arriving. This infestation would need to be eliminated. 

MDF Ruins

 As previously mentioned I bought a Normandy farm in MDF. I also bought a pack of assorted ruins. This week I put them together. I am over all pretty pleased. You can see from below that some of them are literally a corner of a building. I will base those on a rough shape and add more rubble when the time comes. I mean they are pretty simple, I wasn't expecting much. I have other corner parts of buildings that are better - things I bought ages ago but have lived, unbuilt in a box since 2013. 

Below is some kind of workshop. It has doors for the front that I will put on at some point. I quite like it. Again, it will end up on a little base with some rubble. I am trying to work out how to make a tub of rubble that I can just pour onto the table when and where I need it. I have seen stuff you can buy but feel that is a waste. I have cat litter somewhere...

The frustrating thing about the below ruin is that the two walls don't fit together. Look, the longer wall extends out beyond where is should go. This complaint is minor. But it really does annoy me. 

Below looks like it is meant to be a flat topped building. I will probably just use it anyway in Normandy.

Below is one step up from a corner ruin. It reminds me a little of the Airfix Forward Command Post kit (which I have). I should dig that out and improve it. I built up a  bank around it to create a courtyard type area. I might add some bocage or something to it. This building will just go on as small a footprint as possible. 

What you can't see is the one ruin section where the first storey floor doesn't fit into the slots. It is frustrating because it is one of the coolest looking ruined sections. I will see what I can do with it, I might just leave the floor out of it. 

For the cost, these are a high recommend from me. They will certainly do the job I need them to do. 

I went to UK Games Expo 2025

Two years ago I took my eldest two - daughters then aged 8 and 6. Last year I was double booked and went camping instead. This year I was set to take my daughters again - 10 and 8 but the 8 year old decided not to go. Last minute my 6 year old son wanted to come - I was worried about it. He struggles to regulate his emotions at times, and is being a PITA at bed times. I am proud of him though. He did so well. More on that later. 

Thursday. Day 1: Drive up to Birmingham. I arrived at my brother's place around 6:30pm, we ate, the kids played in the garden, we tried to get the younger ones off to bed , played Circle the Wagons with my eldest, then when she was in bed I played it with my brother, then the adults played Forest Shuffle. 

Circle the Wagons was a surprisingly fun small card game, the kind of which I really enjoy. I looked it up immediately and it is going on my watch list. 2 players only though. Quick, however.

Forest Shuffle is annoying. The name in English is nonsense. The original German name Mischwald is very clever. Wald  is forest. Misch comes from the word to mix/shuffle. The compound noun Mischwald is literally a forest composed of many varieties of trees, including deciduous and coniferous. The game itself is brilliant, and have I mentioned I am a sucker for an animal theme? I was thinking about how you could replace the trees with mercenaries, and the animals/other vegitation with weapons, abilities, armour, gear and probably have the same sort of game play. But the animal theme is just pleasant. The game has enough interaction that you aren't just building your own tableau in front of you. You do need to watch out for what others are doing, and try to remove, take cards they might want/need.  I managed to score over 100 which is 40points better than last time. I still lost though.

After that game I went to bed, exhausted, but I ended up going through the preview game list and taking screenshots of games I would like to go and check out. I hadn't cared enough about that before, but my brother got me thinking. Spoilers; i didn't buy any new games at all, but did try a couple out and had a good time.

Friday. Day 2: We got there quickly. Went in at pretty much 9am on the dot - no queues because they had already gone in. We signed the 4 kids up for the junior DnD at 10am. I ended up having to sit with them this time because my 6 year old was unsure what to do and needed me there as a comfort. It seemed like he didn't enjoy it, but by the end, when he rolled a naturaly 20 he suddenly loved it. He kept asking if he could do it again later or the next day. We went for signing up for the next day. I didn't have to stay that time. 

That chest turned into a mimic. We then saw a bunch of mimics - this one was the first I saw but is the least cool looking.

We ate out on the grass and watched part of the viking battle at lunch. That battle - I could probably retell the story myself now having heard it 4 times. We left before the kids could fight them though because we were booked into the giant Battle for Hoth demo game. We played a few rounds and it was a blast. Playing the real game will likely be a disappointment as it won't have the giant figures and dice. Killing AT-ATs was perhaps easier than it should have been, but actually more difficult than just tracking hit points. I will probably not buy the game for a while though, as I can't justfy £40 on a game...unless it is a rule book?? Strange.

I took a photo of this Dune game. I love miniatures.

This table just looked so good. 

We found two tables that offered miniature painting where you can keep the miniature for free. One was trying out a bunch of marker pens that painted miniatures - they were pretty cool but didn't work too well for getting into small gaps. We painted a strange miniature there. Then walking around there was the Vallejo stand where you could use paint and brushes to paint what looked like Star Wars Shatterpoint figures. I painted a Magna-Guard droid, as did my son. My daughter was not interested in painting at that point. 

They found a table that had a bunch of 3D printed toys on it. My son loved it so much he wanted to buy something there. I tried to teach him the idea that we should look at everything before committing to buy something first thing on the first day. He spent the day asking me about when we were going back. Right at the end we found another stand selling 3d printed toys but they cost way more! So we went straight back to the first table and bought him a Stegasaurus skeleton toy. It is pretty cool I have to admit. 

By about 3pm it was time to chill out in the free gaming zone. My son ended up spending most of that time playing with the miniatures he had painted and the stegasaurus. I love watching him play. 

I played Fritanga but went out after two turns. I just got unlucky. Not a game I will buy to be honest. I don't really like player elimination.

The Crew Family Adventure (I think). That was a pretty cool game. You played short challenges about how many cards you could lay to match the board there. While kind of interesting, and each round offered a different puzzle, I will not get that myself. 

After eating and returning home we played more games. 

One was Alibis - I helped my daughter who couldn't connect China with Fish or something. I came up with Prawn. We lost the game. It is a team co-op game. I liked it and came close to buying it.

Another game was CubeMelt. It was a blast, but again, the excitement of opening a new game probably made me like it more than I otherwise would have. If I see it for £5 I will pick it up probably. You are an ice cube trying to experience love and life before melting. Lots of dice rolling. It was a fun 20 minutes. 

8 of us then played Team 7 Wonders. That was a fun time. Quite a good game really. It filled the huge table right up though!

Saturday. Day 3: This day was mainly talking to vendors, painting another couple of miniatures, my trip to the Bring and Buy. The kids fought the vikings and won. We left at around 3pm, bought stuff from The Works and then drove home. All in all a great weekend away. I have come away with probably about £20-£30 worth of free miniatures. 

In the end here is my haul. I have a dice tray that folds down, which I have been on the look-out for for a little while and thought I would get one at the expo to support a non-amazon business. I also picked up the two boxes of D6s from the same vendor. I want those mainly for Chain of Command, but will use them for other wargames. You can buy 100 D6s online for the cost of one of those boxes, but they don't come in those nice little boxes. So I splurged a little. Race for the Galaxy was bought via the Facebook groups (where no-one wanted to buy any of my games). Cartographers was my Bring and Buy purchase, I checked it had a full pad of maps. Air, Land & Sea was from my brother who had picked it up for free somewhere and knew I wanted it. I saw it on Actualol's channel and like the look of it. The cards were a free pick up when entering Hall 4 on Saturday morning. I don't know what they are. The magazine is the free DnD thing for entering, and I also have two small map tiles. 

I don't tend to buy much, but I genuinely like being there and experiencing the whole thing. Already planning for next year.

I hosted a games night!

 I decided to host a games night at a local venue to see what would happen. I didn't have to pay rent or anything. About 10 people game, small time stuff, but a good time was had by all. One person had come really unenthusiastiacally and went away having had a great time. 

I played Snake Oil with some people, which was a success. I have yet to play that game and have a bad experience with it. 

People started leaving a bit early, which was frustrating but I stayed on with a friend playing Dominion until he got a phone call saying he had to come home. Classic. Now I haven't played Dominion since Pre-Covid. It was beautiful to get that out on the table again. I need to make sure it is played more. I think I will be hosting something like this on a more regular basis. We played just the standard starter deck. I have Seaside and Intrigue expansions but don't ever use them. If I play more, I want to be able to do more decks. Last night I actually looked on BGA to see if Dominion is there but it isn't. I do remember playing it online though at some point so will look into that further.

I was one turn away from attempting to end the game as I was 90% sure I had more victory points saved up. I was correct. I played through my turn and would have had the correct cards to buy what I needed in order to end it so I count it as a win.

JB MDF Farm - mostly painted

After putting the farm together it sat on the top of my Billy bookcase for a couple of weeks. This weekend I primed it and then put a lot of paint onto the buildings. I am pretty happy with the result to be honest. I would actually be happy popping this onto the table as is to be fair. 

To aid this, currently I am popping into B&Q every week to check their "free wood and offcuts" box to see whether they have any hardboard. I want the hardboard to use as a loosely okay cobblestone-esque section of the table. I want to be able to put the buildings on top of it. I found one to pay for: £8 for a big piece. £12 for a piece double the size but I would need to store it. I want to be efficient with costs but also have limited space for storing large sheets of wood. Bonus - I did find a section of MDF that is a good thickness for walls and is actually the perfect size to just cut into strips to make a variety of both man-height obstacles, and low obstacles for a little light cover. 

To paint these I took Vallejo Red Brown (I use it for leather) and watered it down then let it flow over the roof. You can see where I watered it down too much and too little.

The walls are simply a white heavy mix of white and a little black from generic craft paints from The Works. Doors are either Vallejo Beige brown, or Citadel Staken green. Windows are that same green. The black parts are just black. The door knobs are just dots of paint. 

The gaps between the roof and the wall is starting to bother me a little, but hopefully won't matter once on a table. I like the almost cartoony nature of the door - but this isn't 6mm so once the bullets start flying and my 20mm Brits are taking cover, I might get annoyed by it. Then I will give it a wash!

I still can't decide what to do with the doors on the end of the barn. Glue them open or closed. I will probably go with closed. 

I am pretty happy with this set of buildings though. Looking forward to putting the ruins together. I will have to break out my cat litter to make rubble. 

MDF Farm - JB MDF Products - a review of sorts

 I spent a few days looking for sensible, cost effective options to quickly get some 20mm terrain onto the table ASAP. Across Ebay I was finding options where the cheapest looked to be about £10 for a single ruined building - 3D printed. In tact buildings were a little more. Then I came across this. A four building farm for £15 and a whole load or ruins for £11 all from 2mm MDF. I have put the farm together so far and wanted to give some initial thoughts. 

1. These buildings are meant to be thatched, but the thatching material looks better as hedges I think, and the roofs have a tiled pattern so I will be leaving them as they are. 

2. They came with access to online instructions - these basically said what parts go with which building. The instructions were fine, I didn't really use them mutch.

3. The windows came with an outer frame and an inner pattern. Both pretty cool and I reckon you could get away without the inner pattern.

Part 1: Walls. I put each building together in two pieces. I thought it would be easier to pop those two corner parts together once dry. I also put one or 2 of the corner strengtheners into each corner. The corner strengtheners were game changers. Very good idea. What I should have done is plan further ahead and attach the other corner strengtheners to the unconnected sides so I could just slot the two pieces together. As it stood, I was impatient and ended up not waiting that long. A few buildings fell apart a little. but in the end I had them all fully connected. 

You can just about see the single story farmhouse at the back. You can also see how the wall is bent outwards from the lintel on the door frame. That was annoying, but it was a natural weak point. I can't remember if I broke it or if it broke in transit. 

When the farmouse was fully glued together the damage is not noticeable and has absolutely no impact on the building. With a door in the frame it is even stronger. Phew. 

The rooves look good. There are also more doors than I need. Saving those for later.

Part 2: Windows and Doors. The doors and windows look pretty good to be honest. I am pleased with them. On my previous scratch built building the windows and doors were the thing that really let it down. A guy at the club scratch builds buildings but 3D prints windows and doors. Clever.

Step 3: The roof. The roof sections glue onto triangular sections that slot onto the top of the side walls. They fit pretty well. Any of mine that don't fit well are down to my poor gluing skills or lack of patience. I honestly don't care that they sit a bit strangely. I am just chuffed with the price and simplicity of these. It will be nice to have some 20mm buildings that look better than the awful creations I have knocking around.

I am unsure how I will do the doors on the below building. Closed or open. Closed means I don't have to paint it... Open might look better. 

Overall I am pleased with these buildings. I would recommend picking them up on Ebay for sure. I hope the guy comes out with more 20mm buildings. He has quite a lot available for 15 mm and 28mm. 

I have also picked up a large sheet of MDF from the free offcuts bin at B&Q that is perfect to make some walls. These will be simple walls, man height and lower that probably can stand on their own with no base. 

Chain of Command pick-up game: Brits vs German infantry

Last week I witnessed the sad destruction of some Panzer Grenadiere caught in a ditch of death. This week the campaign was not on so I asked for a pick-up game so I can concentrate on learning the rules. There were three of us. I also got to use my own Germans. My miniatures don't see a huge amount of use (e.g. none basically) so it was really cool seeing them on the table. 

Let's be real: I got my butt kicked. I am pretty sure I made a few tactical errors from the offset, but by the end of the night I was just trying things out to try and get to grips with the rules.

Now I am well aware that Chain of Command 2.0 is being released in "Spring 2025" and find it ironic that I waited until now to finally take the plunge. I recall it being 2013 as I was slowly getting back into miniature painting and wargaming (even though I didn't actually play a wargame for a long time) and I heard about Chain of Command. I was shopping around for a rule set to get into. Battlegroup, Bolt Action, Chain of Command. I also had Crossfire from ages ago, and still haven't played those rules. I eventually settled on Bolt Action and played a couple of games of it but decided it was too gamey. Then I went for Battlegroup and bought the rules, then did not play them for six years as I committed to 6mm Sci Fi. Chain of Command I rejected because it was 28mm, 6x4 table, and had less emphasis on vehicles. 

Discovering a local wargames club really helped, and having sat through some games I am convinced that these rules are pretty fun. The guys here also try not to play it in a too gamey way - so while leaders technically have a leadership radius, if you can't see a squad, you can't command them according to the guys here.

One aspect of the game that is different/interesting/infuriating is the Patrol Move phase. Games can be lost in this part. We both managed to get three half decent jump off points. Working out where these go has convinced me to buy one of those Army Painter laser pointers that lays down a red straight line along the board, showing line of sight. 

We sort of made up a scenario where the objective was to get one unit off the enemy side of the table. Alex concentrated on flooding the village and was going to storm through the woods to get to the edge. I was going to flank around the village with two squads and try to gun it across the fields. 

This is the squad I was using to lead the charge around the village. They performed well at first. I actualyl managed to roll 3 double phases in a row which was cool, but led to my downfall.

I lined a squad up in the woods, far enough in to not be visable but they also couldn't shoot out of them. I was just going to camp them there. I should have probably put them at the edge of the woods to fire out or maybe should have tried to advance to the village. 

The brits spent most of the time laying down smoke over my squad in the woods. I had them on overwatch for most of the game.

I loaded my final squad into the Hanomag and ran it up the road and across the field to try and support my other squad. But I also used my three double phases in a row to charge my squad up to try and take over the enemy drop point. I took no pictures of it but they didn't move enough and ended up JUST short of the drop point, leaving them exposed in the open while Alex deployed a squad behind the hedge. I had a CoC point so used it to interrupt him firing on me by charging into close combat and prompty had my entire squad wiped out. The game was over at that point basically. 

Soon after his PIAT team caused my Hanomag to have 2 shock, my senior leader was wounded and Alex then charged into the woods with two squads. I did a lot of damage to his squads and caused them to retreat, but my entire right flank was very vulnerable and Alex was about to run his Universal Carrier up the road and off the table for the win. 

I learnt a lot about the rules with this play through. I enjoyed it immensely. I actually liked not having tanks on the table. I am pretty happy with the idea that I actually have quite a lot of what I actually need to play this game. I will wait until the new version comes out and try to get a bundle with Chain of Command dice and the tactical/overwatch markers, maybe even shock trackers. 

The buildings are all scratch built by Andy. I cannot even begin to say how cool they are. He inspired me to look into how to make my own. 

Chain of Command - Diving in

Image taken from https://www.brigadegames.com/assets/images/rules/wr-tflcoc.jpg

 Last night I went to the club. I almost didn't go as the guy I played Memoir 44 with last time hadn't responded to my late in the day message asking if he was coming. I arrived late and almost walked off as I couldn't see an obviously WW2 table. But then I saw it, 7 guys around a table. They asked if I wanted to be Poles or Germans. I explained I have a German name so they kicked me to the other side with the Germans. 

It was Chain of Command again. I was not annoyed, but I was still undecided whether to jump into those rules or not. I had a PDF of them that I procured last year but I had not read it. I struggled to keep up a little with the command dice, but decided I would buy the book, only to find that Too Fat Lardies are working to release Chain of Command 2.0 this Spring and have taken the first book down from the website. Luckily I have the PDF.

I had walked into the second game of a short campaign - Polish airborne in Market Garden defending against a hasty attack by the SS. The crazy thing is that the campaign is that it takes place over the space of a few hours - probably shorter than it takes to play one of the games!! A platoon of Poles were going to occupy these buildings. The Germans were tasked with advancing over open, boggy ground. Ground overlooked by three buildings. It was going to be a bloodbath probably. The brown straight bits represent drainage ditches and provide light cover. The hedges provide light cover and do not block LOS.

We thought it would be good to put the half tracks on first and use their MGs to keep the defenders pinned while we tried to advance the two remaining infantry sections up the drainage ditch. The polish sniper in the attic of a building shot at one half track, causing the crew to bail and abandon it. Just ridiculous. Throughout the course of the game the remaining half track would keep pretty steady fire on the defenders though.

In the end, this is how far we advanced. The squads just got massacred in the ditch and our command points(??) slowly deteriorated until it hit 0 and we lost the game. We inflicted 7 casualties on the Poles and killed one junior officer, all of which were replaced immediately in the campaign. I think they will start the next game with one casualty and a slightly worse new junior officer. The Germans start with a brand new platoon but have no other reserves. 

So here we are. I decided to print out a copy of the PDF and bind it up for now. I will be reading it over Easter. My understanding is that the 2.0 rules are largely the same. I am committing. I am joining my fellow club members.