Is there such a thing as Painters Block?

I think if there is, I had it.

And the culprit was this little feller.

This is a MT-90 Jackson Armoured Personnel Carrier from the Resistance faction of Dropzone Commander, parked in front of a suspiciously 1950s looking LiftHawk dropship. It looks a bit brighter than in real life - me being lazy and using a flash on my camera rather than get the light right. It is a strange vehicle, supposed to be a military leftover from before the alien Scourge invasion. As far as APCs go it is fine, however it is not used very often in the game, mainly because there are usually better ways for the Resistance to deliver their infantry to the battlefield. You get three of them in a Resistance Starter Army set. This is quite important in that I have two starter boxes of Resistance troops, meaning six in all. Having painted three up in fairly standard military colours I was searching around for inspiration on the other three and read in the fluff that the Jackson was also quite common in Police forces, particularly with SWAT units. So I decided to paint it up as a Police vehicle taken over by the Resistance.

And then it happened. Painters Block. I could not for the life of me finish the model. I got so frustrated that I put the damned thing away and left the Resistance stuff to gather dust as I fluttered to other projects. Then earlier this week I volunteered to loan out the Resistance to a friend who wanted to play Dropzone but had no suitable toys. I was a bit rash as I could not for the life of me remember what I had painted. When I checked I was relieved to discover I already had painted to one degree or another enough toys for now, but there, staring up at me like a lost grail. was the "Police" Jackson. How hard could it be? Actually not hard at all - whatever caused the block was gone and I ran up the little number in short order - and I was free! So I'm now looking forward to painting yet more Resistance - probably another blue & yellow M90, but also maybe a black SWAT version, then a Police LiftHawk and then....

Normal service will be resumed just as soon as we are sure what that is............

Dropfleet Commander Pre-Launch – Firestorm Games Cardiff 20th August

I arrived home just before Midnight having driven back from Cardiff (OK shared the drive -Paul & I took turns). This morning having had a night to think over the event, here’s my impressions. I should add I was there as a Talon – i.e. a Hawk Wargames volunteer and I was running a couple of demonstration games of Dropfleet using the Beta \ Admiral set of rules. 

The original plan was that this event would have been preceded by the Kickstarter release of Dropfleet Commander, so the public could have attended with their own fleets to take part. Due to some delays with the Kickstarter Hawk obviously thought it was necessary to change the format to more demo and painting tutorials.

I had volunteered rather rashly – we faced a five to six hour drive to Cardiff on a good day, and in the event the trip down from ‘t North was far from good – seven and a half hours in total to reach the venue. We arrived around six on Friday evening and had a good look around. I have to say we were impressed. I had attended an event several years ago in the old venue, but the new one is a quantum leap forward – massive gaming area, great facilities. Shortly after we arrived the Hawk team also came in, and we volunteered to help set up. That proved a mixed blessing as it took some time but I also got the chance to get the demo briefing so saved myself half an hour for tomorrow so we planned to have a “proper” breakfast rather than rush down to Firestorm. It was also great to catch up with some of the older Hawk hands such as Louis (fine chap) and also meet the new members of the team – particularly Liam who is now handling the Talon program.

Next morning started badly - the promised cooked breakfast at the pub was not to be as there was a power cut - so we ended up with a less than satisfying one at McDonalds. 

Arriving back at Firestorm everything went very smoothly, and it was clear to me that the Hawk Team have massively upped their game as far as organisation went. Hawk have always been good with the imagery and their presentation material, painted models, cabinets, banners etc. have always been first class, but in the past their organisation and engagement has sometimes been patchy as they were sometimes swamped by not having enough warm bodies to cover the conflicting demands on their time. This was very different. There were plenty of bodies available, and the briefing and general organisation (by James) was pretty damned impressive – dare I say professional. The demo games were tight and universally well received, and the painting and modelling sessions busy and fun. Dave Lewis gave a very good Q&A session on where they were with the game and dropped some big hints about the future direction of both DFC and DZC. The last part of the day was going to be a massive public participation game of both systems, with Dropfleet action affecting the Dropzone game, but mindful of the long drive home we left a little early, so I can’t say how everything went after that – well apparently from other reports. Sadly I was so busy I only got a chance to take a few pictures.

Was there a downside? Clearly the implications of the delay in the Kickstarter meant this was not the event originally envisaged, and the admirable insistence that no retail stock would be released before the KS backers got their pledges fulfilled meant there was no sales, however everyone was rewarded with a Frigate sprue and also anyone pre ordering more than £75 of Dropfleet through Firestorm got a Cruiser sprue as well. Firestorm Games was superb, but it did highlight the need for a similar venue more centrally located.

Final impressions. Dropfleet is going to be a winner. The rules are solid, gameplay interesting and the models beautiful. More than that, I got the impression that Hawk Wargames has finally steadied itself and grown into something more than Dave and his friends trying valiantly to cope with the runaway success that was DZC. They now have an organisation that has the capacity to deliver the product without the problems of the past, and plans and capacity to support it in games stores and clubs. Looking good for the future.

I suppose the name should have warned me - Dropzone Commander Resistance Leviathan Hovercraft

Names are not a reliable indicator. Take this as an example

This is the Douglas TBD "Devastator" torpedo bomber of WW2 vintage. It was never really going to live up to the name - partly because US torpedos were generally awful at the time, but mostly because it was pretty crap. 41 attacked the Japanese fleet at Midway, only 6 survived and they achieved no hits. To be fair they were so easy to shoot down the Japanese fighters were all drawn down to the turkey shoot and the US dive-bombers got a free run in and changed the direction the war in the Pacific was heading. Incidentally the pic is of the cover of the Airix box - nostalgia strikes again :-)

So when I saw the Leviathan hovercraft from Hawk Wargames I was not immediately overawed. This is the stock shop pic and it doesn't give much of an impression of size

Sure it looks a bit bigger than this - the Kraken, which is the other hovercraft the Resistance use

Then I stuck one together, and frankly it is HUGE! Pictures say a thousand words etc so here is my latest addition after being stuck together, posed artistically with a Hannibal Heavy Tank, and a Kraken. I'll try and get a better lit shot later but this gives a reasonable impression of the size of the thing!

For such a big model it went together very well. The resin parts needed careful cleaning and trimming but the fit on the whole was pretty tight. I may use some Greenstuff on some of the joints, then again I may get away without it. Dry runs before assembly are the order of the day - particularly as if you want to have the ramps operate you need to fit one hinge, then the door, then the other hinge in that order as the ramp itself will not clip in (as I first thought). The lack of instructions is probably the only minor point against this model, and even then it is self evident what goes where just by looking at the box. There are 21 parts in the model - technically 25 as you get alternate weapon options of AA guns or rocket launchers and all of them were clean cast with no bubbles and minimal flash, but you do need to take care cleaning the areas where the pour hole or vent has been. Luckily the resin is easy to work with, a sharp knife and emery board (stolen from Mrs R) were enough. Detail is phenomenal, which is pretty much what we have come to expect from Hawk.

If there is a problem with the Leviathan, it's the price. as one will set you back £35 RRP, which is a reasonable chunk. I wouldn't get one if I were just starting out, but then again if you are starting out your Resistance army wont have either 24 Technicals or 12 Trucks to move around, so you wont need one. Actually that may be a fairly big restriction on the Leviathan, as most Resistance armies I have seen don't go for big truck or technical units, but rather prefer to use the more resilient ex military stuff.

Ok there is another problem too - at just about six inches wide you may find some streets too narrow to get the damned thing down! On the plus side the Leviathan offers Resistance players a great way to move a lot of otherwise vulnerable units at reasonable speed, and also comes with some pretty serious AA or artillery support functions too. Great model - can't wait to get it painted.

More on Dropzone Buildings

Part 2 – with some added text - and a disclaimer. I'm not associated with Waugh Games other than as a user of the shop - just in case you were wondering.

OK a bit of background. Brian Waugh is the owner operator of Waugh Games, which is a gaming shop on the outskirts of Middlesbrough. I’ve used the facilities he provides to organise local gaming tournaments, initially for Impetus, and more recently for Dropzone Commander.

Brian saw some of the mdf buildings available to DZC, and decided he could do better. He made a couple of prototypes but I was not very impressed, basically just boxes with squares cut in them. He then got Jez Evans to do some more interesting designs, and this is what we have here. Jez said he looked for real world buildings and then tried to get them into Dropzone friendly dimensions, and I think this has really paid off.

All the range is laser cut mdf, supplied unassembled and unpainted. They’re simple to assemble, as most are still just “boxes” although some have some internal inserts to blank out some of the larger openings, or external panels to give some relief. Interestingly, they all come with some small roof detailing – fans, vents and ducts, which adds something to the basic models. The level of detail is on the whole good

As you can see from the pics they paint up well – again Jez did the paintwork.

These will certainly fill out the table with some nice looking buildings. I’m getting that Cinema to use as my Resistance HQ building so am already looking for Rocky XXII posters to stick on the walls J.

I think the real question will be pricing. The webshop is being revamped as part of the move to the new (larger) Gaming Centre, but as soon as they are done I’ll report back, but they seem to hit a reasonable balance of price to detail.

Here is the demo layout.

The base board was just pained green, roads were printed from the Hawk downloads site and stuck down, then a metric sh*tload of mixed flock was applied. Finally the whole lot was sealed. I have played on it three times now and it really enhances the experience*

*Or something like that

New Dropzone Buildings from Waugh Games

As I mentioned in the post over the weekend, Waugh Games have a new range of laser cut mdf buildings for Dropzone Commander or any similar 10mm scale game. I tried to get some photos at the Teesside Wargames Convention but the lighting was pretty poor, so I have arranged with the owner Brian to drop in to their new Gaming Centre to get some better pics.

They say a picture says a thousand words so I'll just leave it up to the pics :-)

Show Report - Teesside Wargames Convention - New DZC layout & Buildings

Just returned from Teesside Wargames Convention. The organisers were aiming for a low key local affair and I think they got it just about right. It was fairly busy through the morning and tailed off after 3pm. I was there doing a demo of Dropzone Commander, and to be honest I was so busy I never got a chance to have a proper look at the rest of the demos (sorry guys) but the 1945 what if game from Redcar did catch my eye, as well as the Mantic and Spartan demos.

The Dropzone demo was on a new terrain layout which was put together to be used in Waugh Games new Gaming Centre. They're moving to a much bigger venue and so will have more space, so they are having a some semi permanent layouts to play on (and run demos), one of which will be Dropzone Commander.

I have to say it was a treat to see and play on. All the buildings are from Waugh Games new mdf buildings range and they are just about in the sweet spot for detail and price. Not sure if they are on the website yet but hopefully some time next week.

Only problem is the klutz with the camera (me) couldn't get the settings right and the light in the hall was a horrible yellow which has pretty much screwed up the pics, however here are some of the better ones.

 
The building designer (Jez Evans) has tried to copy some real life buildings and some of them are particularly good - the cinema for one

There is also a rather nice US style Town Hall shown in this sadly yellow pic

Here's another of the whole table

I'm hoping to get a chance to take some pics of the layout once it is installed in the new centre next week, so keep an eye on the Blog :-)

Brigade to the Rescue! DZC Bunkers (3)

Happy to report my search for a budget bunker for DZC has finally borne fruit.

Tony Francis and Brigade Models are one of the more established companies in the fringe of sci fi wargaming. They have quietly and reliably been producing their ranges for over a decade and have a large fleet scale "Full Trust" compatible starship range, a rather nice line in 15mm and 6mm sci fi, and they were doing the whole Victorian SF thing years before all these Johnny come latelys with their glossy books and expensive boxed sets. 

Tony & co have recently been dabbling in 3d printing and have started to digitally remaster some of their 15mm designs, and damned impressive they are too.

When I started playing Dropzone I was eyeing up their 6mm buildings and wondering if they would work for DZC, but they were just a bit too small. Needless to say I (and I'm sure many others) dropped some hints, and Tony has just obliged with some 10mm scaled versions of their 6mm Sci Fi  Desert Buildings range. Initial releases follow the 6mm range quite closely, so what you get are fairly low buildings reminiscent of Tatoine, but with some modern \ sci fi touches. Of the initial releases one immediately caught my eye - a building going by the modest title "Small Dwelling #1"  . This seemed to fit most of my requirements and was priced at the princely sum of £1.75 ($2.62USD) each. I ordered five on a whim to see what they were like "in the flesh" . After all, they could always be used as other buildings if they turned out to be unsuitable for bunkers, and the whole order including p&p came to £10.75. A few days later they arrived, and I'm a happy little troglodyte!

The first thing I should mention about them is the size. You get a fair brick of resin for your £1.75. Detail is simple but sharpe. They are styled as a simple building with one fairly heavy duty door, no windows and a domed roof. The squat shape and buttressed walls all combine to give them a no nonsense ferro-concrete feel. I was not so certain about the dome, but I can live with it.

As I said I have five, so there are plenty of options to think about paint schemes. For the first I have settled on a weathered concrete \ grey scheme, which I think helps enhance the "bunker-y-ness". I'm planning on picking up some decals at York next week to number them up and add to the sci fi feel, and I suspect these will also benefit from some urban style graffiti in due course. Here is Bunker 1 with a Bear to give an idea of size.

I'm rather happy with these, so much so that I am ordering some more from the range in the near future. The real treat will be if Tony decides it is worth continuing to reproduce the 6mm range in 10mm I will be first in the queue for a 10 mm version of the Vtol Airfield and the Docking Bay  to name a few

DZC Bunkers (2) Wall to Wall

My search for affordable bunkers for DZC continued.

One early option was simply to use a card marker to show where the entrance was. The problem with this is it can easily get lost in the general clutter of the table, and looks naff. I discounted that.

So my next idea was to buy some more affordable 10mm wargames bunkers. This idea immediately floundered on the sad fact that I couldn't find any! Or rather the ones I could find were not to dissimilar in price to the ones from Hawk. Most of the available ones I could find either were too "Atlantik Wall" or didn't fit the bill in other ways, including the actual price. Hawk's set of five bunkers are £35, ie £7 each. I was looking for a significant saving, otherwise you may as well buy the Hawk version, so buying something for £5 that wasn't quite right wouldn't work.

One option would be to have a massive self build session. I thought about this - after all the shape I was looking for would be reasonably simple to cut from 10mm or 15mm hard foam. Possibly? In the mean time I stumbled on what has proven to be a reasonable interim solution - AT43 wall sections.

AT 43 was a 28mm Sci Fi miniatures and rules system by the French company Rackham. The hook was pre painted miniatures. In truth they were not bad at all, but Rackham had some production and supply issues and ended up choking themselves into receivership. They sold the infantry in units of 6-8, with vehicles (usually walkers) etc in singles. Most units were packaged with a piece of terrain, a shipping container (incidentally these are brilliant and now command silly prices on ebay) or some wall sections - a bit like Armco barriers about 2" long and an inch high, with two firing slits in them. I ended up with a fair few of these lying around. One of them was sat on the work table when the "bunker" mood was on me, and it got me thinking.......... in another scale, would it work as a bunker?

This seemed to be a possible winner, but it would need some doors. I quickly grabbed some pictures of blast door type doors I have on the rather spiffing "7TV Set Creator" and shrunk them down to the required size, printed them on stickers and stuck them to the walls. The results were (are) I think not too bad - or at least usable - this one has a radar dish added from the spares box.

A long way from perfect, but not bad for minimal outlay, and I do have quite a few available. At least until I find a better solution..........

Duck and Cover, Protect & Survive. Bunkers for Dropzone Commander (1)

I love Dropzone Commander. I love the dynamics, the mainly urban setting, the way each unit has a function. Well, almost. There is usually one unit that sits sad and alone in the box while the rest of the army is out there strutting it's stuff - the flamethrowers. Whether it is Mechits, Tormentors , Flameblades, or FireWagons, the specialist flamethrowers are, well, just too specialist. Yes they are the bees knees at clearing buildings, in fact my Tormentors have yet to fire a shot in anger as the enemy has always abandoned any building when they saw them approaching - pretty much the same effect Churchill Crocodiles were often reported to have had in WW2. The problem is that nine times out of ten the same overall result can be achieved by pounding the target building with standard weapons, or demo capable weapons, until it just collapses. The big advantage of this approach being the units involved can also do their normal stuff. Even against hardened targets, you are usually better off shooting them with tanks rather than including the specialist flamethrowers who are pretty useless at anything else.

Except for the Bunker Assault Mission. One of the missions in the Resistance expansion involves assaulting and holding five key bunkers. The name sometimes confuses players because they think of them as fixed defensive positions that units can fire out from, something like the bunkers on Omaha Beach,  when in reality they are simply the extra hardened entrances to deep underground facilities - think Cheyenne Mountain, MIB HQ or Der Fuhrerbunker. Troops in these cannot be targeted by normal weapons, you either assault them at bayonet point, or use those over-specialised flame units to kill defenders by filling the tunnels with your particular flavour of insidious death - acid, napalm, gas or whatever (Fort Drum Redux).

The Bunker Assault mission is very different from normal missions, and gives a refreshingly different style of game, particularly at tournaments and games days. The problem is you need 5 bunkers. Hawk do a Bunker scenario pack, One of our local players has a set, and I had a good chance to fondle them  and very nice it is too, containing 5 identical bunker entrances.

Like all Hawk products they are exquisitely detailed, but the set is £35. That is a large expenditure on something only used rarely. Worse, if you are organising a games day you need a set of 5 per table, so even a small event with 8 players would require 20 bunkers, or £150 expense. No Tournament Organiser can do that without official support, so the Bunker Assault mission gets rarely played.

I like Bunker Assault, so I have been looking for cheaper ways to allow it to be played on a budget. Next post will show some options.........

  

London Transport Bright Red Painted 97 Horsepower Personnel Carrier

When Hawk showed their Battlebus set for the Resistance Faction I was a little bit disappointed because it was a bit too, well American. True the School Bus and Greyhound look great, but I wanted something a bit more at home

I came across an N Scale British Red Double Decker on ebay. After a bit of work and some bits from the spares box - a gattling gun from a spare Wolverine fitted to the gunshield from a 15mm Sdkfz 251, plus a couple of .50cal gunners from Pendrakens new 10 mm Falklands War range, and heres the final result

They're supposed to come in pairs , so I bought this to be the second half, but with hindsight I suspect it may be too small to carry 20 armed men :-)

More Buildings for your Apocalypse - Outland Models

As you probably know, Blotz is currently shading my favourite N scale \ 1 1:44 \ 10mm building supplier. Their buildings are reasonably priced and detailed and their range is expanding rapidly. However they may have a contender from an unexpected source.

I was browsing ebay in a spare moment when I spotted some N scale building kits being sold Outland Models. Out of interest I picked one up. It arrived this morning and I was mightily impressed.

Basically this is an ABS plastic kit that arrives flat packed

Assembly was very quick and easy - there was 1 minor glitch with a tab which tbh I'm not even sure was a glitch and may just be my hamfists. The model clicked together with no trimming or sanding or even glue in about 5 minutes - and it is solid, stable, and light, although I will go back and glue it together later. It is also pre coloured and unlike the S4 "prepainted" buildings needs no further work.

Pretty damned impressive - particularly for £9.99 including P&P!! The range is not too bad either  big thumbs up to Outland Models!