Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Heavy Marine Support

This is Pendraken's new style for Marines with Heavy Weapons (SF3).  Those assistants might make decent noncoms or other officers.  Might have to assign a couple of regular troops to serve as assistant gunners are re-position these pointers as LTs.

Snipers!  This pack comes with five teams of snipers, but two will suffice for this force.  The other sets will be put to good use backing up another force.


About those armored marines; I painted the visors greenish, and gave their shoulder pads bright logos to help players discriminate between these guys and the regular troops.

Played another warm-up game of Tomorrow's War this past weekend.  I think I have a decent enough grasp of the rules and enough figures to put together a platoon sized force list.  It might be light on the anti-tank stuff, but that won't be a problem until I order up some tanks.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Next Up on the Block

More Pendraken boys for the Kitchen Sink sci-fi extravaganza.  Turns out Pendraken is revamping their sci-fi line.  This first batch of dudes is Marines is SF-1, Marines in Battle Armor.  Now, I was expecting something a little more like what's shown in this picture here.  What I got was something more like SF2, but with added faceplates and heavy shoulder pads:

New style SF-1.
I sent an email to Pendraken complaining that I got the wrong package, and their customer service asked me to double check.  Lo and behold, I went back to my already painted figures and realized...I'd already bought and painted a pack of SF-1, but never made the connection.  Here are the two types of figures next to each other for comparison:
SF-1 on the outside, SF-2 on the inside
Whoops.  The plan was to have one force of Imperial Guard style marines and one force of Space Marine style battle armored troops.  Not a big deal because I can use different caliber troops with Tomorrow's War - some have more armor than others.  But I'm going to have to go back and make it a little more obvious on the table which ones have armor and which ones don't.

Also, it turns out you can still get the old style heavy suited marines from Pendraken, but you have to shoot them an email.  It's like a secret menu just for the cool kids.

I also picked up some heavy weapon teams (SF3) to add some firepower.  These are some pretty solid turrets they pack - can't imagine them humping these into combat without some sort of transport, but they are easy to spot on the table.

And we'll round the whole thing off with some additional support in the form of two man sniper teams.  These are from the Falklands British line (FLB-15 to be exact).  At this scale, and given that they are wearing gillie suits, they'll blend in with the sci-fi types with no muss and no fuss.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Tomorrow's War AAR: Test Drive

Took the Tomorrow's War ruleset for a little test drive over the Labor Day Weekend, and figured what I haven't figured out.  Now I know what sections of the rulebook need a good re-reading.  Here are some quick notes on the game.

I have 20 each of the lizardmen and humans, so we set them up as two forces with Quality and Morale at d8 for everyone.  The lizards deployed in two squads of two fireteams plus a couple of 'platoon' leaders, while the humans went with three 'squads' of six men each with a couple of 'platoon' leaders.  Guess this battle was fought late in the war when attrition had reduced the number of effectives each side could put in the field.

The mission was simple for both sides, secure the perimeter of the mining station.  Whichever force had more men alive inside the perimeter at the end of turn six would be the winner.

End of Turn One - Positioning.  The lizards make straight for
the prize, and the humans begin a more
conservative pincer movement.
Middle of Turn Two - First Contact.  The marines get the drop
on the lizards.
End of Turn Two - Both sides have a unit inside the perimeter.
Red arrows indicate a firefight.  The humans get the better
of the first round of combat, trading one dead marine for
three seriously wounded lizards.
Middle of Turn Three - Turning Point.  The humans close assault
the larger lizard force and it goes horribly wrong.  The lizards can't
break the charge, but make up for in it melee.  The lizards
don't take a single casualty, and capture two POWs.
End of Turn Three.  The humans move up on the left and
keep up the suppression fire on the right.
End of Turn Four.  The marines on the right flank move into thicker cover,
to no avail.  They do nothing to the lizards, but receive three more
casualties.  The squad to their left falls back in response
to the overwhelming advance of the 2nd lizard squad.
End of Turn Five - the Better Part of Valor.  The humans quit
the field, rushing the casualties from squad one to
MEDEVAC.  Lizards victorious.
While the troop quality and numbers were even, the lizards had more and better support weapons.  In the end, they were simply able to put a lot more lead and lazer blasts in the air, and that made the critical difference.  If we play this again, I'll probably give the marines some sort of light armor to compensate and give them more stopping power.

Post game wrap-up.  Guess we'll have to put the
\terrain and figures back in the box later.