First Minis

So I thought that I'd start off my projects by picking up some 1/600th scale minis for Action Stations!, but I got a bit sidetracked.

Rattlehead Games announced that they were going to be raising prices on their imports so that their prices would better reflect the amazing disparity between the dollar and the pound. For some time now, I've been really interested in doing up a bunch of Spugs from Spriggan Miniatures. Spugs are insectile humanoid aliens. They've got a lot of nice clean poses and they're really interesting. I figure I can use them for SuperSystem and 5150.

Anyway, they have an Army deal where you get 3 squads of troopers, a squad of "jump spugs", a commander, and the terrifying Spugnaut. You get 28 figs and Rattlehead was offering it for $60 (with free shipping). It's a complete steal when you realize that it should go for around $70-75. So I snapped it up.

Now I have to paint them. Luckily I've got a lot of inspiration from this guy here. I'll have to get paints/brushes and get going on these guys. But I'm moving into my new home (the first home I ever bought actually). So it may be a bit of a slog in June. I'm considering taking my stuff down to Pandemonium as they have mini painting nights (Danger Planet might also).

The minis themselves? Fantastic. Very clean, crisp molds with only a little bit of flash here and there. Most of the models are one piece models. Some of the drones are 2-parters, but my test fittings show that they go together extremely well. The Jumpspugs will be a little more complex and the Spugnaut will have to wait until the end until I feel a little more confident in my skills.

I'll keep you posted on my progress here.

Rulesets

The first thing to do is decide what kind of games I’m going to be playing. As the title of the blog suggests, I’m mostly interested in skirmish gaming. Probably my favorite miniatures wargame is Charlie Company which only has maybe 50 figures on a side (and usually much less than that). Platoon and squad sized combat is my deal. In part because fewer figures means less painting and prep and more gaming, but mainly because I’m more interested in war at the level of an individual. Grand strategic games are perfectly fine, but I like my combat to be a little grittier and more personal. I feel it gives me a better sense of being at the sharp end rather than sitting back and ordering men into it.

So here are the rulesets and periods I’m interested in doing:

• Supersystem (2nd Ed.): This slick little set of rules for playing out comic book superhero fights is a lot of fun. You can play for cheap using the HeroClix plastic minis (which is what I did when I was trying it out), but SuperFigs makes a very nice line of Superhero minis that don’t look like licensed characters. It’s ideal for “gaming in a bin” since 10 figures are enough to field two teams with 50 you’d have the crossover event of the decade. It does mean there’s a lot of urban terrain to put together, but a lot of that can be reused for other games.
• Action Stations!: Small boat action in WWII. I got a chance to play this at GenCon last year and it was a total hoot. Small torpedo boats darting in to sink merchant ships before larger destroyers and escorts can blow you out of the water. A fast playing game that’s a lot of fun. Again, you only need a small number of models for each side. A common pool of merchant ships provides the targets and the terrain couldn’t be simpler. It’s very probably the first “bin” I’ll complete.
• 5150: This is the Sci-Fi version of the Chain Reaction System by Two Hour Wargames. I got to try out the Chain Reaction System at Havoc earlier this year (thought I played the All Things Zombie variant). Again, it’s a nice system well suited to small skirmish actions. Aside from using it as a good sci-fi system, I’m planning on adapting it for use as a modern-day African conflict ruleset. Post-colonial warfare in Africa has been an interest of mine for awhile now. The classic AK-47 is fun, but the scale (of warfare) is a bit too large. Since the end of the Cold War, the various conflicts in Africa have become more skirmish oriented with gangs, rebels and warlords all fighting small, savage battles over resources. I think 5150 will be an ideal ruleset to play out these smaller battles with. Terrain may be a bit of a problem here. The urban stuff from Supersystem can easily be reused, but fighting in jungles and forests might require more terrain than can easily fit. I guess we’ll just have to experiment a bit and find out.
• Legions of Steel: Techicnally, I already have a “bin” for this game. It’s a boardgame/miniature game mixture that plays a lot like Space Hulk, but (in my opinion) is far superior to it. The terrain is nothing more than interlocking tiles used to build up the game board and you play it out by moving on the grid. It’s been awhile since I’ve pulled this game out to play, but it’s still one of my favorites.

So those are games that I’ve played and definitely want a bin for. There are a couple of other rulesets that I’m interested in but I really want to try them out at a convention first before I commit a bin to them:

• Hostile Aircraft: I picked up a copy of this on eBay. Goblintooth, the publisher, is no longer a going concern which is too bad because their 1/285th scale models were supposed to be fantastic. I’m considering adapting the game to 1/72nd scale models (which are fairly easy to find from a wide range of manufacturers). Luckily, the terrain for the game is incredibly basic. The planes and their stands will quickly amass quite a bit of space though.
• Crossfire: Crossfire is a WWII skirmish game that show a lot of promise, but the 15mm scale really threw me off. I started to put a project together for this, but got completely discouraged by the size of the figures and eventually bailed on it. I would like to try out the system and either take another stab at it or adapt the rules to something a little bigger.
• Pig Wars: The problem with gaming anything before WWI is that most battles were fought by large formations of men. Smash and grab raids by Vikings put the focus squarely back on the individual warrior. I’ve heard good things about this ruleset and the battle reports have been pretty entertaining. So I’ll have to investigate it. But I’ll still need a pretty large number of figures (mostly hapless villagers) and terrain will be a complete bear. But I’m still interested in having some Dark Ages fun.
• Charlie Company: A fantastic ruleset for Vietnam gaming and one of the better rulesets out there period. I credit Charlie Company with getting me interested in historical gaming and teaching me a lot about the period. I don’t really need to build a bin for this game though since my friend Haywire has pretty much all the figures and terrain you could want. I feel like he’s still short a few helicopters and I really want to do “brown water” combats with Riverine forces. I might contribute a few vehicles.

The overarching goal

I want to have a clear goal in mind as I put together my various miniature projects. This makes it more likely that I will complete these projects and gives me a yardstick by which I can judge when and how to start new projects or improve older ones. I don’t want to turn into one of those wargamers who has tons of unpainted minis and half-finished terrain and thousands of rulebooks for games they’ve never played sitting around. On that last score, I’m especially guilty. I tend to collect rulebooks for games I’m pretty sure I’ll never play. So it’s important to have a goal that keeps me going and keeps me getting actual playtime out of the things I’m doing.

There may be several sub-gaols, but I’d like to have a “big picture” goal, a “mission statement” if you will. For me, I think the big picture goal will be the following:

I will produce “in the box” miniature gaming projects. The figures, rules, terrain, and all other play aids that I need to play a game with other people will all fit completely inside a standard 18 gal. plastic bin.

That seems like a pretty big box, but the terrain requirements mean that there’s a bit less space than you might imagine. In my head, I figure that this means no more that 100 figures (total for all sides in the game). This keeps the painting and prep work to a minimum and it means I can just pull a box any time I feel like it and go to a gaming event with something ready to put out on the table right away. By being able to field both sides of a fight, people can just drop in and play with me (but it also encourages them to paint up a few items of their own to if they get interested in playing regular games with me). These restrictions also allow me to indulge a variety of gaming genres.

So, gaming in a bin, that’s the goal. Let’s see how well I can stick to it.

Welcome to Small Skirmishes!

My name is Tom and I’ve been interested in miniature wargaming since I started out with green army guys as a kid. Over the years I’ve gone from green army guys to brave dungeon explorers to space marines and genestealers to Necromunda gangs to Legions of Steel to Flintloque to Charlie Company and Heavy Gear. For a number of years though, my activity in miniatures was pretty minimal. This stemmed from a number of causes. Mostly I was never a terribly good painter, and I was spoiled rotten by gaming with a guy who won Golden Demon awards. His figures were excellent and he could always be bribed into painting up a few more of my guys when I needed it. With him doing all the heavy lifting all I had to do was show up and game.

And really, that’s mostly what I really want to do anyway. I know lots of people who really get into the painting and the modeling. I have nothing but respect for the people who put so much time and effort into that end of things. The links on the right to “Old School” Wargammers and their impressive battalions of figures, make that clear, but really, I’m mostly here for the gaming.

I suppose I could hire a painting service, but aside from the increased cost, it’s kind of dodging the issue. I have painted up a small crop of figures and while they’re no prize winners, they certainly aren’t as bad as Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Red, etc. So I feel like if I put a little effort into it,I could certainly churn out perfectly good figures.

So the blog is here mainly to help me chart my progress at getting my various miniature projects done. It’s other purpose is to help organize the various miniature games/campaigns I want to play and make sure that I spend at least as much time playing games as I do preparing for them.