Play Test

Today, I went along to the Prince Rupert's gaming day and took along my Clone wars project. Obviously, being a bit of a niche project it was very different from the usual WWII games, but I did manage to get two willing players have a crack.

It was nice to have a big table to spread out on and to measure maximum weapon ranges for a change. After explaining the Tactical dice throws at the start, the game quickly fell into play.

Everything was going swimmingly until with my eyes zooming back and forth from table to notebook, I got my nemesis...a vertigo attack. These attacks have plagued me for the past year and a bad one can put me in bed or even hospital. Vistibola Migraine is the scientific name and it's starting to become a life changing pain in the arse.

For a moment I dreaded packing the game away and getting back home in the car with the world spinning. Luckily for me the anti sickness tablet kicked in and I slowly started to recover.  I was pleased to see the players had picked up the easy routine of the game and had cracked on.

It was good to see someone else play through the rules and enjoy the figures.

The scenario evolved around rescuing an injured Jedi in a crashed shuttle. The Droids reached him first and eliminated the surviving Clones. Securing the Jedi they set off for their base line. There now followed a mad dash to catch and destroy the Droids and rescue the Jedi.

Finally after a long and drawn out running firefight, the Clones caught up and got him to safety. It could of been a scene straight out of the Clone wars cartoon, which made me happy.

Dwarf spider droids crawl over the research lab in search of their next quarry.

I didn't go too mad with the units, it was hard not putting everything on the table.

The players actually enjoyed themselves which was nice to see and there was some good feedback at the end, which was useful. The main one being that when units loose health, their ability to fight should also go down too  So when they reach two pips on their health, maybe take two dice off their attacks. The same for vehicles too, this is a good point and I'll write it in.

The Homing spider droid using its beam weapon never gets old.

The downed Jedi with what's left of his company.

 I'm glad I took it all along to try it out on a big table, it's a shame about the vertigo attack but to be honest, I don't think the players noticed so all's well that ends well.

AT-RT walkers

Time to break out the light cavalry for the Clones.

 

Interesting to see the walkers in 501st livery.

Okay, so breaking these out and basing them up on 40mm bases. A few need larger bases due to their running poses.

I plan to create companies of Five models, this gives me enough for three units. I think these sculpts are the best in the whole Clone wars range. There are eight different poses and all of them are great, I think they are my favourite units in terms of what they look like.

The next step will be to colour them in Republic armour grey... Tamiya grey primer.

The actual designs differ slightly but are close enough as to not to worry. The aerials have been thickened and packs have been added to them. I set about to remove these and add my own ones using brush bristles. However, on seeing them again, I thought they looked really good, so I left them along. I did put aerials on one that had broken in the packet though, just to see what it looked like.

One thing I did do on these models which worked well, was to grind their bases down with a Dremel. I have a few models where this wasn't done and I can tell. The Dremel worked wonders at just knocking off the sharp edges of the printed base, this will be so much better when it comes to basing them.

Being 'All Terrain Recon Transports', I thought it proper to put in some rough terrain for them to run over. For this I used pebbles from the driveway and bits of tree bark.

So as to not get overwhelmed by these detailed models, I plan to paint five at a time. I might even do different legion colours for one of the companies.

Even I was surprised at the amount of resin that came off these bases.

AT-TE 15mm

The very last thing to do was to add some static dry grass to the base. This is a hay colour and just adds a little bit more detail to the terrain.

As I had added grass I thought it only right to put a bit of burnt grass around the impact craters. This was done by using a dark earth flock.

 

I have a couple more of these vehicles to do but I might leave them for a bit. These models look great when finished but are quite a build. I used a lot of new techniques and honed some old ones. However, a build like this does take it out of you, time to do something easier for a bit. The nice thing about these 15mm figures is as a rule, they are nice and quick to do.

Heavy Metal War

All based and ready for deployment.

The E5-22 units look massive next to the clones, they dwarf their B2 brethren next to them.

Some outdoor shots in better light.

The oil wash really gives these giant droids the right finish. Using super gel to raise the eye lenses worked well and is so much more effective than just painting on red dots.

"Ooolaaaaaa" what are the chances of anything coming from Mars?...

UPDATE:

I thought I'd better make a scatter dice for the mortar company. I had purchased some blank D12 earlier in the year and this was perfect.

 I put two hit and two misfire icons on it. The rest of the sides I put on random direction arrows. This works a treat, I threw a few dice and the results are below. I finally got a direct hit. I imagine the hit template will be about 80mm or there abouts.

I enjoyed making this dice, makes me want to make more custom dice for black powder like games.

The Recon troopers man their mortars to rain down hell on the Clankers. These bases will be classed as having vehicle strength weapons (6D12), so they will use the vehicle icon on the dice to score bonus attack dice.

Misfire, unit fails to fire this turn.

Direct hit! All six dice can be rolled to score hits on the intended target.

Direction indicator, another D12 is rolled with this dice indicating the distance shots travel. This arrows points in which direction the shells fall.

There is a risk that another enemy or indeed a friendly unit could be hit if the distance dice is high.

Quite a motley bunch of dice for the game.

Direct hit about time!

A slight drift in the salvo but probably still a hit with only two inches in it. As long as the template is over part of the unit, damage dice can be rolled against it.

Now on to something quite exciting, the walkers have finally been flocked.

The milliput craters are blackened with paint to give them a blasted and burnt look.

I added some European dust weathering powder to the feet. It's nice to try different things on models, I think it works okay, I didn't go too crazy with it.

Mortar crews work feverishly to lay down a barrage of EMP shells. Their armoured support takes a short range shot from a Homing spider droid and explodes. These heavy walkers have thick armour (4 saving dice) but shots do get through.

Double trouble, the nice thing about these walkers is with all the multiple parts, you can pose them in different positions, making each one unique.

I also used the black paint to put scorched ground marks on the ground. These aren't craters but it still looks good for explosion damage. Watering down the black allows it to spread and gives a nice scorched effect.