More Alien Worlds with the 7 year old

Alien Worlds has been a BIG hit with my daughter. We've played a few games now.  This evening, the Dwarf raiding party struck the chapel of Clonrickert, there to sample the magic waters of its Crystal Pool, but of course a patrol has been alerted, and a group of soldiers are there to ensure the sacred waters are not defiled...

I've built on the original 'Quick Start Sample Game' from the book, and developed a few embellishments straight from there, on the fly. I'm intending to slightly revise and make reference to the rest of the book as we move forward, but at the moment we're playing that very simple version with the following tweaks:

• ranges are halved. We're playing with 28mm figures on a 2'x2' board with a movement range of 10cm
• we're calling movement range 'short' and shooting range 'long'
• close combat is an opposed roll. Models who look more heavily armoured get to roll 2 dice and pick the higher. Draws are rerolled. I made this tweak because it feels more like a fight to us, and because she remembered it from another game we played a while back, so it was instinctive. I suspect it makes the game a little less tactical, but that's not a concern for us yet.
• one model on each side is the Leader. He isn't better at fighting, but when he dies, every other model in his band rolls a D6, and flees on a 1. It's a very basic introduction to morale as an idea and my opponent grasped it quickly, and it's made for some moments of high drama!
• MAGIC! At my opponent's suggestion, I devised the following rules for wizards and an attendant magic system:

This was judged a great success by my opponent. We had a wizard each. She used all of her spells, and it caused much hilarity. including this sequence:

First, she decided against cravenly skulking behind obstacles, and moved her Leader (who her warband are pleased to call Sir Lord) boldly to the top of a pillar.

I thought to punish his hubris, and chose to use TELEPORT, and promptly moved Sir Lord to the very top of the Tree of Woe.

I used my second activation to begin climbing my own leader, King Krum, up the tree to meet him in single combat.

In retaliation, She used her own turn to cast TELEPORT also, and hoisted King Krum into the sky- but where should she set him down?

On the chapel roof of course. The sight of the two leaders' dignity so compromised was too much- evil cackling ensued...

I suspect we shall be fighting more battles very soon...

Review- Echidna Games' Alien Worlds

I've done quite a lot of stuff in the past months that I've neglected to record here. Today, my daughter and I played a simple skirmish game using Echidna Games' ruleset 'Alien Worlds', which is billed as 'fast paced miniatures rules you can enjoy with your children'. I'm happy to report we both enjoyed them as advertised!

I set out a simple scenario. A raiding party of dwarfs have heard a rumour that the fabled jewel- the Dragon's Eye- had been hidden at a crofter's cottage and they attempt to retrieve it, only to run into a band of soldiers who have anticipated their attack. My daughter took the Humans and I took the Dwarfs.

Her humans consisted of 4 archers (one of whom was absent for this picture!), a warrior and the leader.

To keep things simple, my Dwarfs functioned identically, but I had two fewer shooters and two extra warriors.

We played a slightly modified version of the super-simple introductory game.  Each player chooses two figures which move up to 'short' (10cm) and either fight if in base contact with an enemy or shoot if within 'long' (20cm) of a target. Shooting is a single D6, with some extremely simple modifiers, and a success is a kill- this game is quick and bloody! If the leader of either band is killed, I decided, the other models in his band should immediately roll a D6 and flee on a 1.

I tweaked combat to make it a basic opposed roll but with more heavily armoured warriors always rolling two dice and picking the higher.

These rules gave us a very decisive result within about 20 minutes. My opponent won, saving the Dragon's Eye from the greedy dwarfs, and she is keen to play again soon. I'm already thinking about ways the two sides can be differentiated and made more interesting. Alien Worlds is a simple and solid set of rules which does what it sets out to do and can be built on and expanded easily- heartily recommended if you want a game you can play with young children, or if you just like very simple rules.

Lionheart!

I've acquired a couple of boxes of the old 1997 Parker Brothers boardgame Lionheart, and, therefore, I now have about 180 chunky plastic figures in a pleasing "Hollywood Medieval" style which I like very much. I have plans to paint up an army which will work for Dragon Rampant and for Kings of War which I'm playing again and very much enjoying.

Some of the figures (particularly the cavalry) are very similar to the ones from Battle Masters, so I'm planning to add in some BM bits too .

The dragon is a modern kit from Tehnolog, but the style seems to fit.

I've gone for a very simple toy-like paint job which seems appropriate.

The Calcium Crew

Having fun with ancient plastic GW Skeletons. These are being made with Dragon Rampant in mind .

Mk 1 Land Raider

Resurrected some late-'80s plastic goodness!

this week's additions

Really pleased to have been revisiting this army. More to come soon I hope!

Mk1 Land Speeder

"anywhere here on the left is fine"

An absolute pig to assemble, this lad's got more pins inside it than Evel Knievel. I've wanted one of these since I was 10.

let me through, I'm a doctor!

A Rogue Trader era sawbones for the shinymarines. I like that he sort of looks like an ambulance!

LOTR dwarves so far

Really enjoying these!

Games Workshop LOTR Dwarves

I found I had some of these in my collection, and decided to paint them up. They're lovely sculpts by the Perrys, and dating as they do to before the newer Hobbit films, they were sculpted with comparatively little movie context for how Dwarves should look, besides Gimli and that old dwarf who hangs around at the Council of Elrond. Being plastic one-piece minis, some of the detail is a little bit smooth, due to the sculpt having to deal with undercuts, so I decided to use a blacklining technique to paint some missing detail in myself. I really like the graphic quality that gives, which ties it in further to the inspiration for the colour scheme- the original Hobbit cover by JRR himself!

Peg-top Warriors for Saga

There's a new edition of Saga out very soon. Saga is a lovely game, and I bought all the special dice for it and the books when they came out, but never played it enough. I'm hoping to correct that for the new edition by getting a couple of warbands done in good time. I've decided to use wood craft peg-tops as the basis for the minis. I used these ones from eBay. They're 30mm tall and 15mm wide so they're a good size for 28mm, more or less. I used brass thumbtacks for shields and kebab sticks for spears. The banner was made by cutting up a plastic tiddlywink-type counter.

Family Photo

Here are my marines so far (less two tac marines that have seemingly gone AWOL), representing their chapter, the Stormwatch. I've plans to swell their ranks in the coming year, and possibly even add a scratchbuilt Imperial Knight...

Stormhawk Interceptor

I wanted to add a flyer to my Space Marines, and I liked the sound of the Stormhawk Interceptor. I started with a kit from Daemonscape, which was originally sold in the 90s by GZG. You can find it here as 'VTOL Gunship A' for £9.99. It was a reasonably close match for size and shape to the proper model. The kit comes with two main hill parts which stick together, top onto bottom, with a flat join. I cut a piece of 3mm plasticard to be neatly sandwiched between the halves, adding wings and fins to bring it closer to the GW kit and give it some size.

The weaponry on the Stormhawk consists of a lascannon type thing, assault cannon and missile launcher. Luckily these are probably the easiest weapons to scratchbuild recognisably. I used pen lids, plastic cake-pop sticks and a piece of Lego to make those. I'm quite pleased with it- let's see how quickly it gets shot off the table!

Oathmark Goblin

I picked up some of the new plastic Oathmark Goblins from Osprey/Northstar over Christmas. The kits is excellent.

It's been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere but one thing I knew I wanted to do something about was the integral basing. Each mini stands on a little lozenge of plastic, which presents a modelling problem if you use the thin little Renedra bases included in the box, so I used some recessed 25mm square bases. This allows the model to beglued in place without trimming the plastic, and the base is then easily filled to foot level with sand.

I gave the model a bit more of a modern paintjob than usual, and enjoyed it very much. The shield is a brass drawing pin- I like the included shields, but wanted a smooth surface for the freehand insignia.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle 2nd edition

I've just taken delivery of a little eBay bargain- a copy of the second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle from 1984. I didn't know much about it before now. I have the 3rd edition from 1988 already and that's the one that the Oldhammer lads usually rave about. First impressions are that is a more slight production than 3rd (that book really is visual and lore feast), and the Old World is less crystallised than in future editions, but several things have already piqued my interest. It has a more laissez-faire approach to army building and a formula for costing just about troops or monsters you might have minis for. The army lists are very vague. Later on the Ravening Hordes supplement brought the army lists closer to what we'd recognise, but I quite like the fuzziness of the lore at this stage in Warhammer history. I'm going to have a closer look and see if it's something I'll look at playing, or whether it's just a nostalgic curio for the shelf. 

RTB01 Sternguard

A squad of Sternguard Veterans made using the original 1987 RTB01 space marine plastic kit. Such a pleasure to build and paint.

scouts and devastators

More for my marines- a squad of scouts and some Devastators with Lascannon and Plasma cannon, made from the old '90s Grenadier plastic Space Rangers, still available at a bargain price from EM4!

Toybashed Retro Dreadnought

I wanted to add a Dreadnought to my old fashioned Space Marine army, and I wanted it to be vaguely reminiscent of the old Rogue Trader ones sculpted back in the 80s by Bob Naismith- or at least to look as through they might conceivably have been designed in the same solar system, within the same millennium!

I started keeping an eye out for bits, and found an old broken toy that I liked the look of, and worked out was one of these (on the right)

The size was good, the face looked suitably robotic and '80s-looking and it had overtones of M.A.S.K., which was no bad thing.

I nicked the legs from one of these (in the middle) that I'd found on eBay very cheaply from Singapore.

I stuck them together with a pelvis made from two 25mm hex bases, and added two Assault Cannon barrels left over from when I converted my Space Crusade marines to Lascannons.

After the usual quick paint job and varnish, I'm pretty pleased!

Some new bits for my old-fashioned Space Marines

I've added some bits to my 40k army. An original Rhino:

A squad of Devastators made from old Space Crusade minis. Two were armed with assault cannons, which I don't think are game legal, so I converted them into lascannons.

And a Vindicator. Based on an old GZG APC, now available from Daemonscape (under the name Snow Cat) for a very reasonable £8.99. I added a marker pen cap for the demolisher cannon.

A plastic Middlehammer warband for AoS Skirmish

Continuing my current enthusiasm for chunky GW monopose plastic from the early to mid '90s, here's a small 'Free Peoples' warband ready for a little Age of Sigmar Skirmish campaign. A mix of Battlemasters, Warhammer, Talisman and Advanenced Heroquest. All lovely to paint, and all looking good on those rounded bases, particularly the knight I think- really shows off a cavalry figure well.

As ever, bright and shiny is the order of the day! I used a different varnish this time though: Ronseal Ultra Tough Hardglaze Clear Varnish. Cheaper per 100ml than Humbrol Glosscote by a huge margin, and gives a subtle shading/warming effect to the colours, without staining or muddying like Quickshade.

Colours used (for my reference really!):
White spray
Averland Sunset spray
AP Daemonic yellow spray
AP Black
Mournfang Brown
Zandri Dust
Pallid Wych Flesh
AP Plate Mail Metal
AP Flesh
Reikland Fleshshade
Warboss Green
Averland Sunset
Celestra Grey
Dryad Bark
AP Ultramarine Blue