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Managed to get my third Force on Force game in. Once again I get to play the irregular forces. On a positive note the Chechens are actually better than the Russian regulars that they are facing. Its still an asymmetrical battle though which puts my partner and I a bit behind the curve. Rob and I are playing against Kirk and Nick this time with Matt running the game. This is a playtest for Tacticon (coming up on Labor Day weekend) so there was a lot of ongoing discussion to make sure it was a good game for both sides.

Turn 1 goes very well for the Chechens as one of Rob's squads lights up a BMP with their RPG and took out a good chunk of the squad and the crew right away. The T80s split each slowly moving down the two main streets to the ministry of defense and the local government buildings. Russian return fire was pretty devastating taking out all but one of the Chechen defenders.

Turn 2 is kind of a stalemate with Chechen units using hot spot movement to shift positions. Two of these moves are key to slowing down the Russian advance. One squad manages a hot spot move into the corner of the streets threatening both the flank of the T80 and the advancing infantry trying to cross the street. Another hot spot move puts a Chechen squad behind the T80, which fires reactively doing considerable damage. The Chechen BMP 1 opens up with its Sagger ATGM  on that T80 but misses. The T80's return fire fails to hit as well.

Turn 3 sees a lot of Russian firepower pouring into the Chechen squad at the corner and with the Chechen returning fire with the RPG at the T80 (as an irregular unit I can't split my fire so my choice is the T80's flank or advancing infantry. I go for the armor, probably a poor choice, and my RPG bounces off. Russian reinforcements start to arrive

Turn 4 sees much the same. Russian reinforcements start to whittle down the Chechens at the corner. BMPs and infantry pour in fire along with the T80 main gun and MGs. The T80 also misses a shot at the BMP again, while the BMP manages to score a hit and immobilize it. The other T80 continues down the street pretty much unimpeded at this point with the Chechen BRDM running for cover. Russian infantry assault the shaken Chechen squad and despite a serious advantage in numbers and firepower is wiped out by the shaken squad.

Turn 5 sees the T80 finally scoring a hit and destroying the Chechen BMP. The other T80 turns the corner and prepares to fire on the last Chechen squad, two RPGs hit it but fail to penetrate the frontal armor. Its return fire is ineffective. Chechen reinforcements finally arrive and fortunately show up in just the right place.

Turn 6 becomes the final turn as we have to clean up before the game can really end. A round of terribly ineffective fire sees more RPGs bounce off the T80s, including shots from the rear and against the top deck. We had a quite a bit of discussion on play balance on this one, it would have been nice to finish it off, but we had a good time with it.

At the start

Turn 1 Results



















Turn 2




 Turn 3

Turn 4 and Beyond

I had a chance to really take a good look at this kit from Monster Model and Laserworks and pull the parts out of the box and work my way through the assembly and painting instructions. Translate this to I remembered my paints but left the miniatures I was going to work on at home. However, this is something that I have wanted to do since I got the kit. First thing was to inventory the parts against the listed parts in the assembly instructions. No problems everything there and was either clearly labeled or pretty darn obvious based on the pictures in the instructions. Bonus, everything is there! I actually figured it would all be there so I didn't anticipate any problems. I'm very pleased with the detail on this kit, especially the brickwork. This one will be right up in front of everyone when you are looking at the layout. I think this will be the stand in for Commonwealth Steel  on my version of the "Patch".

Next up step through the instructions, identify the parts for each step and make sure that everything made sense so I wouldn't run into any problems when I had the glue and clamps out for the real assembly. All the major components (the walls and roof) fit together beautifully as you can see in the pictures below.

It was at this point that I did kind of stumble through the Instruction Manual, and this is a pretty minor quibble on my part, but a bit irritating. The Instruction Manual clearly indicates it will be indicate when you should paint certain parts in which case you would refer to the details in the painting and weathering instructions. So far so good. My issue is that the painting and weathering instructions also contain the assembly instructions for a number of the sub assemblies like the windows and concrete loading platform on the rail side of the building. On top of that there are two #5 steps in those instructions, one for assembling and painting the rear platform and another one for painting and weathering the roof. Plus the the instructions in the painting and weathering booklet are not really in order. It would have been much easier for them to match up with the Instruction Manual.

Let me emphasis though that the instructions are well written, clear and include very good pictures of the kit being assembled. I followed through them without any problems. The painting and weathering instructions include some techniques that I haven't tried before and I'm eager to give them a try and see how they work out. I think this kit is going to pretty much fall together, if I had my clamps and wood glue with me I would have started to assemble this one today.

I have some pictures below of the kit "dry-fitted" together and it together very well since it uses a tab and slot construction that is kind of a hallmark of laser cut kits now. I have included a half inch die for my wargaming friends to get a better sense of scale. I did pre-order this kit and received the clerestory for the top but I didn't have that kit with me today.

This is the freight truck side of the building and will be the portion that visitors will be seeing on the "Patch"


 Here we see the long brick side wall and the rail side of the building. This will probably only ever be visible in photographs once its installed on the layout.

I have been painting this week and I have finished off the next batch of Ground Zero Games miniatures for the Traveller Campaign. I'm not really happy with the paint work on these but for gaming purposes they will get the job done. I have three more sets of GZG miniatures left to go, they are armed civilian packs and hopefully they will come out better than these.

SG15-V01 - Civilians/Colonists Pack A

Since there was a sale at GZG, I figured I should get another line of miniatures just, you know, to compare. My order from Khurasan Miniatures arrived today. I'm really happy with these miniatures.There are a couple of packs that are just fantastic sculpts and I'm looking forward to painting them. Overall, the mold lines are pretty light so clean up should be pretty easy. So when I finish off the ones I received from GZG, I'm really looking forward to getting started on these.

TTC-3002; 15mm Citizens or Commercial Freighter Crew, Male and Female
I think this a Not-Nostromo crew

TTC-2501 15mm Small Spaceship Crew (x5)
I think these are Not-Star Wars episode IV personalities
 TTC-1403 Sci Fi Superhero and Spirited Sidekick
The 11th guy appears to lying down on the job.
 TTC-2700 15mm Defense Force Squad