New plastic buildings from Proxie Models

Continuing my habit of working on projects with no bearing on the club's current games, I recently acquired and assembled a couple of the new plastic buildings produced by Proxie Models. Though originally designed for 15mm scale miniatures, I will be using them for our 10mm scale sci-fi battles and have made a few modifications to that end. All the models in the review are 10mm (aka N scale or 1/144 scale).

Proxie Models is an impressive one-man operation that -- from a garage workshop -- designs, masters and casts an extremely affordable range of injection molded bases, buildings and vehicles. You can see the entire range here, and in our earlier review of some of their miniature bases.

Gothic Walls
This kit contains four walls and two sets of front stairs that combine to build a 3-story building. Each wall comes with tabs to make it easy to install a floor at each level. I trimmed these away and glued a bit of painted card behind the windows instead. Here's how it scales with a 10mm mech, tank and troopers. I was pleased to see how good the doors scale with 10mm figures. The colors are based loosely on a Greek Orthodox cathedral. 

For the roof, I wanted something that would complete the Orthodox look. The roof is made from the following items (bottom to top):

• A piece of plastic card
• The bottom section of a Mechwarrior clix mech base with alternating tabs trimmed
• The inside section of a standard clix base
• A slightly shortened EM4 flight base
• A small cross bit from the depths of my bits box

Factory or Office Walls
This kit is a set of 6 walls. Two have windows, wwo have windows and doors, and two have a pair of garage doors.

Unlike the Gothic kit, the windows and doors needed a bit of work to make them more suitable for 10mm. I shaved off the door handles and used a bit of scrap plastic to divide the doors into double doors.

To make the windows look a smaller in scale I put some window screening behind each.

The details such as loading dock lights, dumpster and AC unit are mostly parts from cut-up Mechwarrior vehicles. The roof is just plastic card that's been sprayed with sandstone textured spraypaint.

Like the Gothic building it scales well with 10mm, but I did end up wishing I'd also bought the second story kit sold by Proxie. At $9 for both kits (they're $4.50 each) it's a pretty reasonable price for a large 4-story building, which would provide full concealment for even large 10mm scale mechs.

I'm very pleased with these buildings. There aren't many cheap N-scale buildings out there, and these are nicely, if simply done. The addition of roofs would have been welcome, but if it keeps the cost down then I'm certainly willing to make my own. Though not complete building kits, I can confidently recommend these to the gamer who doesn't mind just a bit of DIY.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

From the workbench: Converted plastic mechs

A number of months ago I sat down one evening and hacked out a bunch of conversions of the inexpensive plastic mechs sold by EM-4 Miniatures, and this week I finally got around to photographing them. These are by no means finished, but I thought I'd share some of the possibilities hidden in these 20-year-old miniatures.

Formerly packaged and marketed as "Steel Warriors" and distributed by several other companies, these remain some of the most affordable figures that are near the the Battletech scale (1/300 or 1/285). The 5-figure box sells for about $4 on the EM-4 website.

For a review of them, check out this article from Reviewing Wargames, from which I've borrowed a couple of photos. Each box contains sprues with parts to build 5 mechs using 3 basic chassis (small, large, and chicken walker) and a variety of arms. Bases are also included.

Though there are many options for assembly, here's what they might look like when built "stock."

Nice enough, but there's even more potential there. Here's what I came up with and how I got there.


Small Body Mech 1

• Fins removed from both shoulders 
• Gun removed from hand/wrist of right hand 
• Gun elongated on the left hand 

Small Body Mech 2

• Shaved cockpit canopy off; upper torso rotated 180 degrees. 
• Upper barrel removed from each arm (formerly double barrel arms) 

Large Body Mech 1

• Shortened the barrel of each cannon arm to look more like a cannon and less like a laser.

Large Body Mech 2 

• File away cockpit 
• Cut body at waist and rotate 180 degrees
• Instead of mounting missiles on regular pegs, I moved them back a bit

Here's a shot of the "back" of the mech showing where I filed the cockpit away. I'll probably find some little greeble to glue on there, though it's not terribly bad looking.

Large Body Mech 3 

I'm particularly fond of this one, as it is very reminicent of the classic Rifleman mech design from old school BattleTech.

• File away cockpit, cut at waist and rotate 180 degrees

Large Chicken Walker 1 
This mech's torso is interesting because either end looks like it could be the cockpit.

• Cut off cockpit 
• Reverse body section so rear faces forward 
• Shorten cannon arm a bit for variety 

Large Chicken Walker 2 

• Cut off rear protruding section (the part used as a cockpit in the mech above) 
• Glue two random bits on that area (in this case the shoulder part of a double cannon arm)
• Saw off the rear pegs where the legs are usually attached 
• Attach legs to forward pegs where arms are usually attached 
• Attach two barrels to flat front of leg shoulder area 

Though the mechs come with either 25mm round or hex bases, I prefer the look of the battletech-style lipped 30mm hex bases. These are also available from EM-4 for the ridiculously low price of £1 GBP for 10 bases. The larger size is nice, and the lipped edge makes your basing/ballast/flock look very tidy. The mechs have little pegs in their feet, and it's easy to carve or drill an appropriately sized hole in the base. Just keep the feet elevated a bit so they will rest nicely on your basing material. Here's a view seen from the bottom of the base.

These miniatures were easy to cut, file and assemble. The plastic is a bit harder than regular polystyrene, but it glues just fine with superglue or my favorite plastic cement (Plastruct Plastic Weld). Even though I don't play BattleTech, I had such a good time with these, that I'll probably come back and convert another batch. Maybe someday they'll even be painted!

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Days Gone By: Post-Apocalyptic Campaign Kicks Off

Chicago Skirmish Wargames' post-apocalyptic campaign, tentatively titled "Days Gone By," kicked off last week with our first session at Games Plus. We set up three games, though I only managed to gather photos from a couple. For the rules, we're using This Is Not A Test (TNT), a ruleset under development right now and hopefully coming to a game store shelf near you sometime later this year.

In the first game, Terrence and I set up a scenario set at Installation JX-7, an abandoned military outpost on the edge of the wastelands. My bloodthirsty raiders had captured Captain Mal, the leader of Terrence's warband (a clique of big damn heroes modeled in no small part on a certain starship's plucky crew). He was tasked with infiltrating the raiders' base (centered around this fantastic bunker that Josh acquired on ebay) and springing his gang's leader from captivity before my gang made him into stew.

I set up my raiders (mostly converted Necromunda figures, though that big butcher at the top of this post is from Reaper's Chronoscope line) within 12 inches of the bunker, as per the scenario deployment rules. Terrence's heroes (a custom force designed by picking and choosing figure profiles from several different force lists in the TNT rulebook) moved onto the opposite board edge. Here they are, looking remarkably under-equipped compared to my raiders and their oversized guns.

The scenario rules meant that my raiders couldn't easily spot the heroes as they made their approach. I basically had visual range equal to 1d10 inches per turn...sometimes I'd roll well and be able to spot several targets, but other times I'd roll poorly and my big ol' machinegun-wielding raider in the bunker would just sort of stare at his feet for a turn or two.

Anyway, Terrence sent his more heavily armed heroes on a flanking mission through some ruins. Jayne, Zoe and Kaylee (sound familiar?) were met by a raider with a shotgun. The surprise encounter resulted in a brief firefight, then the raider realized he was in over his head and decided to wait for support.

Luckily there was another raider nearby, along with a mongrel. In TNT, mongrels are clearly meant to be feral dogs kept chained up and unleashed right before battle. As I didn't have any dog miniatures, my mongrel was ... a wild boar! Alas, I don't have a clear photo of him, but you can see him in the background of this photo. Close up, he looks like he belongs on the cover of a heavy metal album.

Anyway, the two warbands exchanged fire a few turns, with casualties mounting among the big damn heroes. Suddenly, the door to the bunker flew open and out sprang Captain Mal, prisoner no more!

Actually, the scenario rules said that Captain Mal could free himself at any point in the battle. He was sort of the x-factor to the game...I kept a close guard on that bunker for several turns, waiting for Terrence to have Mal break out, but in the end he got loose anyway. Alas, Captain Mal got within a few short inches of rejoining his crew when he was felled by a close-range shotgun blast. Several other members of his crew were casualties, too, and the raiders emerged victorious after 6 turns.

Afterward we spent about 15 minutes going through the post-game campaign bookkeeping. TNT has a well developed campaign system with individual steps that will be familiar to many gamers. First you roll to see what happens to your casualties, then you roll for income, then you pay your warband upkeep (based on how experienced they are), then you draw a card from the exploration deck. This last step is completely optional and can result in fantastic riches, lost tech, or your dudes getting eaten by rad muties. It was so much fun -- Terrence rolled quite well and ended up with a nice income haul. And even better -- none of his team (those big damn heroes) were permanently taken out of action. In fact, Captain Mal rolled so well on the casualty table that he actually received extra experience points to boot.

Across the table, Mike and Josh were playing through another scenario. Mike's mercenaries were tasked with escorting a prisoner through the Pestilent Expanse, a windswept wasteland of rock and scrub brush punctuated by the burnt-out shells of blackened buildings. Josh's Preservers were trying to intercept the prisoner, or kill him if necessary. Josh snapped two photos of his warband and Mike's, at the start of the game. Unfortunately that's all we ended up with. Too much time spent gaming!

And then, as these two games were taking place, something was happening on the third game table, where Tim and Karl were squaring off for their game. What was going on? Had some new threat emerged to menace the wastelands? Preliminary intel indicated a mutant incursion! Karl's forces were able to transmit one grainy scanner photo of the unknown threat before contact was lost....

Stay tuned -- we'll have more reliable info in future games!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member, with additional photos by Josh

Chicago Skirmish Wargames Goes Mainstream, Plays 40k!

You read it right, folks: We temporarily sidestepped our passion for independent, affordable gaming and spent some time in that grimdark universe where war is constant, money flows like water and cranial embellishments never go out of style.

This weekend, Karl and I got in a 1500 point game of the glorious carnage that is 6th edition 40k. My Dark Angels tried to take out Karl's Imperial Guard. Throwing caution to the wind, we both brought lists inspired by the fluff of our chosen factions. I brought an all-Ravenwing army full of new models and a brand new codex. Ravenwing is the mobile assault arm of the Dark Angel's Space Marine army, and nearly all units come from the fast attack category.

Sammael, Master of the Ravenwing, rode in on his jetbike, accompanied by:

• 1 Ravenwing Black Knight command squad with 1 grenade launcher
• 1 Ravenwing Champion, and a banner bearer 
• 1 Ravenwing attack squad (3 bikes) 
• 1 Ravenwing attack squad (6 bikes) 
• 1 Land Speeder Typhoon (dual missile launcher) 
• 1 Land Speeder with an assault cannon 
• 1 Attack bike with a multimelta 
• 1 Lascannon/missile launcher venerable dreadnought 
• 1 Deathwing terminator squad with storm bolters and a plasma cannon (started in reserves) 
• 1 Nephilim support jetfighter (started in reserves) 
• 1 Ravenwing darkshroud (a large land speeder that confers stealth to units in a 6-inch radius) 

Karl's Imperial Guard was a much larger force. Putting 80 figures and 5 vehicles on the table, he brought:

• 1 Command Squad with a Master of Ordinance 
• 2 Platoons with 3 infantry squads in each, half with a lascannon and half with an autocannon 
• 1 squadron of 3 Basilisk mobile artillery 
• 1 standard Leman Russ Battle Tank 
• 1 Leman Russ Demolisher 
• 1 squad of 5 ratlings 

Putting aside the random terrain rules in the rulebook, we setup a table thematically with the Imperial Guard holding the line against the Dark Angels, who were advancing through the remains of a village and a boulder field. We were playing a modified version of the "Purge The Alien" mission from the 6th edition rule book. Karl's army started in and around various buildings and ruins (including his new Mine Entrance terrain piece).

Most of the Dark Angels circled around the darkshroud unit in order to take advantage of the stealth feature. In hindsight, this may not have been the most tactically sound decision, but it looked awesome on the board as they rode up in style.

Turn 1 
Dark Angels seized the the initiative, and the bulk of them moved along the road and behind some rocks for cover. The attack bike and land speeders circled to the right to take the enemy by surprise while the dreadnought moved to cover in the backfield. Dark Angel fire shot up some of the Imperial Guard infantry, and took a hull point from a Leman Russ Demolisher. The attack bike and land speeder killed all but one ratling. The remaining ratling ran away, never to be heard from again.

The Imperial Guard immediately started dropping the pie plates, taking out Sammael and one of the command squad members who missed ALL cover save rolls. The dice were NOT with me! Shooting continued, resulting in another lost command squad bike, 4 bikes from one attack squad, and 2 from the other. It was a brutal start to the game.

Turn 2
Deathwing Terminators dropped in on one of the remaining bike's teleport homers, and the Nephilim jetfighter zoomed in from reserves. The terminators and jetfighter massacred 2 full infantry squads in the shooting phase. The terminator's plasma cannon took a hull point from one of the Leman Russ tanks. The attack bike went further to the right side of the field, staying behind cover.

Predictably, the Imperial Guard's turn began with more pie plates, killing one of the attack squad bikes and immobilizing a land speeder. Concentrated fire from plasma cannons and lascannons destroyed the entire terminator squad.

Turn 3
Another squad was decimated by the jetfighter's dakka, and the dreadnought took out one of the Leman Russ tanks. The remaining bike and landspeeder boosted forward and shot into one of the bunkers, taking out some troops. The attack bike came around the side and multimelta'd the other Leman Russ. It exploded, taking out the attack bike, and most of one platoon command squad.

The Imperial Guard shooting phase took out the last bike and land speeder and a lucky snap shot took a hull point from the Nephalim fighter.

Turn 4
At the start of turn 4, the Dark Angels' only remaining units were the flyer and the dreadnought. The flyer zoomed along the Imperial Guard deployment zone and took out some more troops. The dreadnought also took out a couple more. The three Basilisks dropped some indirect barrage shots over the lonely dreadnought and managed to take a hull point and immobilize it. At this point, it was facing into cover, and would be useless for the rest of the game.

Turn 5

Little happened in this turn. The jetfighter zoomed off the board, into ongoing reserves. Imperial Guard troops on the right flank started moving forward, and another round of Artillery fire failed to further damage the dreadnought. We rolled to see if the battle was over, but it continued for another turn.

Turn 6 
The Nephilim flyer zoomed back onto the field, and took out some more troops. In a repeat of the previous turn, the dreadnought stared at the wall but was again unharmed by the Artillery barrage that rained down on (or should we say "near") his position. The flyer again remained unharmed.

We rolled to see if the game would continue, and the dice decided that the game was over! We tallied up the score, and the Dark Angels lost 8 to 10, only a minor victory for the Guard. I am surprised the score was so close, as it really felt like a massacre to me!

It was a great epic battle. I am looking forward to playing with this army list again. I am sure I can use the Ravenwing more effectively. I suspect that if I had turbo boosted the bike squadrons, I could have assaulted in the first round, and kept the bikes alive for at least another turn or two.

The Nephilim jetfighter looks awesome on the table, and was very useful in this game, but it costs a lot of points that may be better spent elsewhere. No matter what anyone says on the internets, my las/missile dread is one of the best performing units I have (plus, he has dangling skulls). I will always try to fit him into my lists.

Next time I fight Karl's Imperial Guard, I'll try fielding an all-Deathwing terminator army.

Here are some thoughts from Karl about the game: "This was a lot of fun, and reminded me of why I liked 40k. It was only my second game with the 6th edition rules, and Josh was patient through quite a bit of rule-checking, but they didn't seem overly complicated. I definitely saw the advantage of lascannons over autocannons against tough enemies. I've got the parts to do it, so maybe I'll go ahead and make lascannon teams for the rest of my infantry squads. The flyer rules really seem to add a new dimension to the game. One aircraft isn't a game changer, but if one player were to show up with two or more, and the other player didn't have any aircraft or any ground units with the "skyfire" ability, it could drastically tilt the game. I'm not sure whether this is a new and interesting addition to the game that will encourage balance between air and ground units or a cynical plot by Games Workshop to make players buy expensive new units. Perhaps it's both, but I look forward to seeing how it shakes out. It has definitely given me the desire to someday build and paint up the Hydra Anti-Aircraft Flak Turret decks (can be switched with my basilisks) and Valkyrie flyer that I have in storage."

-- Josh, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

More Mech Attack and Panzer 8 Gaming

Towards the end of last month, the club gathered again to play Mech Attack and Panzer 8, two rulesets we've been enjoying recently for 10mm scale sci-fi mass combat games. We had played these games two weeks prior, but we decided to give them one more evening of play before jumping into our winter post-apocalyptic campaign.

There were four of us present, so both games ended up being multiplayer affairs. For the first game, Terrence put on a nice Mech Attack game using a few home-brew rules and the Solaris 7 game map from the Mechwarrior CMG. Each player was given an entry point and a light mech. When that mech was destroyed, the player received a medium mech from the same entry point. When that was destroyed, the player received a heavy mech, and when that was destroyed, the player was out of the game.

I had previously run a similar game where each player started with a light mech, but had to "earn" heavier equipment by making a kill and returning to their entry point. My scenario went on for quite a long time and resulted in many folks repeatedly dying, and lots of time spent just running back to the entry points.

Terrence's scenario was more fun, as it was faster playing and there was ample opportunity for sweet revenge when a defeated player quickly returned with a tougher mech.

The game moved pretty quickly. It didn't take long for every player to have lost his light mech. As you can see from the pictures, we are using Mechwarrior CMG prepainted plastic figures that have not been rebased. This, combined with the hex map, felt a bit odd for a game club that makes a point of playing on real terrain. However, the mechs did have some great stock paintjobs, and Terrence had prepared all the requisite stat cards for us.

 A few bad dice rolls, and Terrence ended up getting eliminated from the game first. The game quickly wrapped up from there. We had a rarity in the game when one mech managed to take full damage to every single location before finally succumbing to a critical hit. You can see its mangled stat card in this photo.

The game came to a dramatic end when my mech managed to take down its nearly-undamaged enemy with a ridiculously lucky double laser hit. The shot immediately burned through the target's armor and resulted in a mech-destroying explosion. Folks seemed to really enjoy the scenario and I look forward to playing it again. The jury was mixed, however, on the virtues of playing on a printed hex map as opposed to a traditional miniatures wargame tabletop. On the one hand, counting hexes for movement (one hex equals 2 inches of movement) and using hex sides for shooting is an extremely fast and time-saving method that allows you to dispense with rulers. On the other hand, no map, however nice, is as pretty as real 3D terrain.

The group seemed to be evenly split, with half the players favoring the map and the other half wanting 3D terrain instead. For me, playing on the hex map may prove to be the impetus to someday paint up some of the Battletech figures I have in my collection so I can use them on their hex-maps as an ultra-portable Mech Attack game that could be played on a a smaller tabletop.

We were running a bit short on time, so for our game of Panzer 8 sci-fi, we each fielded just a couple of platoons of armor and a few mechs (no infantry) in a two-vs-two game. Tim and I controlled the grey force, and we set up in cover preparing to ambush two columns of tan force armor controlled by Mike and Terrence.

The tan force was relentless, sending its lead elements veering off the roads to engage the ambushers.

The ambushers were cut up piecemeal as they attempted to waylay the tan force, which used the movement bonuses granted by the roads to quickly move into position.

The tan force's Mad Cat was particularly fearsome, ripping into the enemy's armor with ease. Likewise, the tan force's jet bikes had incredible speed, which allowed them to be remarkably effective against much heavier opponents.

The battle quickly became a rout. By the time grey team ceded the field, it had lost 70 percent of its forces, compared to about 25 percent casualties on the tan team.

It was a fun game. I only wish we had time to run a larger game with infantry. Panzer 8 is such an enjoyable and fast-moving game that it really inspires large-scale engagements. I prefer the game without clicky bases, but one of our members who has a lot of based units wasn't able to make it, so we had to use minis that had not been rebased yet.

I've also put the finishing touches on a slight modification of the games rules. Among the main changes:

• Shooting and movement modifications to better accommodate 10mm scale units on bases, which comprise the bulk of our collection. 
•  Slightly more specific rules for indirect fire artillery. 
•  Moving all the unit guidelines and other extraneous info to the end of the rules, resulting in a ruleset where the game rules fit on one page! 
• A full list of ready-made units with corresponding point values. 

These modifications will be available for download shortly on our Yahoo group, and also at the Panzer 8 Yahoo group.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member