GCPS Finished

Three posts in three days.

I finished my GCPS for Firefight all at once, mainly because things were almost done and just waiting for completion.

So here they are. 1250 points ready to put on the table. I do have more that I can do and I plan to add a couple of other bits and pieces to bring up the points value to 1500 (and eventually 2000).

Edit: I decided on a name change to the Ganymede/Io Mining Pact - Security  Division (GIMP Sec).
The black suits sort of influenced the name (although the are really a very, very dark blue).

Lead by Colonel Fank Phraxus. Cool & ruthless.

One of These...

I only posted my newest Firefight stuff yesterday and I'm already making another post, because now I have one of these.

I's an Mule Transport, which is just a fancy name for an APC (that's an Armoured Personnel Carrier for the uninitiated). The model is a laser-cut MDF kit made by Miniature Scenery. It looks the part and was easy to build and, for the cost, is perfect.

I had a pleasant surprise last Sunday morning when this was hand delivered to me by Tim, who runs Miniature Scenery. It seems that he lives not far from me and was dropping his daughter at a friends house near by. Nice chap and he threw in an extra sheet of doodads (sci-fi doors, grates, windows etc). I'll be ordering more of his stuff.

Anyway, here it is:

With some crew (they look a bit large due to perspective)

And here it is with a Laser Cannon.

Almost Finished

I've been plugging away at my GCPS force for Firefight and I'm almost finished a 1250 point battlegroup. But just for today, I'll add a couple of photos of my finished heavy weapons and mortars (I did post a pic of the heavy stuff a couple of weeks back but now I've finished the crews for them).

I did the mortars with the same urban cam pattern that I've used for the other stuff. It looks a bit odd on the little models but it's consistent with the rest of the force. And again, the mortars and crew are from the Beyond the Gates of Antarese range.

Another Game of Firefight

As the title says, today I had another game of Firefight. I'm still enjoying the game and slowly getting to know the rules better. Spending a couple of weeks between games makes it hard to get a solid handle on all aspects and nuances. Hopefully more games and an actual hard copy of the rules will help with this.

Anyway, today's game was once agian against Brent and his Forge Fathers - The Fire Beard Clan. My Asterians are pretty good when it comes to shooting and they can lay down an  impressive amount of firepower but the Forge Fathers, whilst they lay down less actual shots, have better "to hit" stats and most of their weapons have the dual bonus' of armour penetration and suppression.

For instance: In one activation my a depleted Marionette unit laid down 16 shots at the dwarf leader, hit him 9 times and none of the shots caused damage. In my next activation I managed to refresh the same unit and activate it again - Another 16 shots (only 5 hits this time) and still no damage. That was 32 dice all to no effect.

On the other hand much of my other shooting was pretty effective and I destroyed 3 full units in this manner.

There's the lucky little swine in the right of this picture.

Also today I used some new terrain that I made during the week. I combined in with the previous terrain I made and set up a table that I described as: A new facility set down near a derelict communications array in readiness for repairs. Seemed to work okay.

A highlight for me was the destruction of this 200pt unit in the jungle below. I used a Move, 

Move, Move order (triple movement) to charge my close combat unit into them out of cover.

They were wiped out before they knew what hit them.

My Pulse Bombard drone didn't star this game. I used it incorrectly and 

put it in harms way. Unsurprisingly it was blown up.

See that thing in the photo above? That's an Iron Ancestor - A big suit of armour with a space dwarf in it. It was causing me problems so I sent my Spectra Gunship Drone against it. T'was a duel to the death in the center of the table.

You can just feel those twitching trigger fingers...

During three rounds of shooting at the damn thing (I re-activated it once) I managed to cause 1 single point of damage to it. I just couldn't hit the side of a bloody barn. In the end the Iron Monster blasted the gunship into pieces of hot flying rubble.

All in all, although my battle group was pretty well shot up, I managed to win the game on Victory Points, mainly because I managed to dominate the tops of the buildings which were my objectives. I was saved by the bell when we ran out of turns. The Dwarves wen't in very good shape either but I had nothing that could counter their remaining heavy units. I'll need to be sneakier and use my faster maneuverability to deal with them in the future.

Some Heavy Stuff

I'm still on my Firefight jag and getting my GCPS battlegroup together.

I want to give this group a name and I'm thinking along the lines of an interstellar mining corporation with the wherewithal to have their own private army. I've been thinking Ganymede Minerals & Gas but that will most likely change.

Anyway, I've put together a couple of heavy weapon platform. The weapons are the left over weapon options from my Asterian anti-grav drone & the bases are made from 30mm round-lipped bases, buttons and plastic card. They look off center because they are. And they are because I wanted them to look a bit different to expectations.

The paint job is my attempt at an urban cam pattern.

The crews are on their way and I'll post some more pics after they're ready.

I guess they're supposed to be a laser-cannon and a missile launcher. But then again... Who knows?

I also got an actual Warpath model from Mantic Games. Surprisingly, this model is resin. I was expecting it to be plastic. The casting is okay but not quite sharp in some areas and mold lines needed to be removed from some areas. Overall it's a nice model and it goes together reasonably easily. However, the lack of instructions made it a bit frustrating when trying to work out what part went where.

This is a Strider and once again it's painted in my urban camo pattern. He is pretty much the heaviest unit that I have in this little force which is heavy on tactical infantry squads with some support. I might add another one later.

Every tough guy needs a tattoo on his shoulder.

Facing the Plague Hordes

I played another game of Firefight today at the club and I find that I'm really enjoying this game. It came at me as an unexpected and enjoyable surprise to be able to play a sci-fi game without all the bullshit that comes with 40k.

So, to day I took on James' Plague - Cosmic Undead.

My Astarians have been rejigged since I last used them and I found them to be a bit better as a result. I did away with the Rifle Cyphers re-designating them as Marionettes with a camo drone and a weapon drone added to each unit. I also did away with my Assassin Drone and replaced it with the gunship model that I just finished.


And so...

I knew that the Plague were going to be difficult. They are tough and plentiful. They don't shoot well and rely on close combat. So my tactic was to try and shoot the hell out of them before they managed to get close to me. In some cases this worked and in some it didn't. James set up his urban table and as we deployed I was looking for fire lanes.

Now, despite being a close-quarters undead style army the Plague do have heavy weapons available to them including tanks and Striders (a mech type thing) as well as shooting units. They also have things called Abominations... But more about them anon.

The center piece of the table. A big comms tower.

The first moves were, as can be expected pretty straight forward with little action. One of the Zombie meat-shield units moved out and I fired all the weapons of my new grav-tank drone at them but missed 4 times. Was this an omen of things to come?

The rest of the turn involved each of us moving into position or trying to draw each other out.
On my left flank James moved his Strider forward a double move and I managed to reactivate my grav-tank which allowed me to move it into position to take a couple of shots at it. It did some damage but failed to destroy the vile, rust encrusted beast.

In the center, the Plague tank moved out and I go a couple of good shot into it with one of my heavy weapon drones. It took two hit off the rotting behemoth but, again, failed to destroy it.

Also in the center, a zombie unit moved out and I blasted it good and proper (so no, there was no curse on my dace this day). My Pluse Bombard was responsible for this and, once again, proved to be a formidable piece of kit.

On my right I had moved my Warden Cyphers up hoping to tempt the zombie horde into charging them. James had other ideas and shot them up instead. Luckily, their shields held up and reduced the casualty count to a single model. However, if they just stood there they would slowly get picked off, so they charged into the Astro-Zombies. The fight was short and sharp. Four zombies fell but so did 2 Cyphers. There were 10 zombies to start with and although my Cyphers won there were only 3 of them left. They retreated into an alley which was soon to become quite a mess place.

"Shoot over there my mighty Drone of Death."

A new turn and the Strider on my left took out on of my heavy weapon drones and the grave-tank once again landed a decent shot in return. But, again, not enough to destroy it.

A bit of photoshopping makes for a nice looking anti-grav image.

Much shooting and killing ensued all over. In the center a group of Plague troops had occupied a building and they were proving hard to root out. No doubt the building would require heavy fumigation after they vacated it anyhow.

The grav-tank-drone moved & finaly took out the Strider but then, in turn, one of the Aberration's charged it an tore it to shreds in a single round of combat. Following that the unit of marionettes (see above) took up position on top of a building and pulverised the Aberration with some serious firepower (16 shots!).

What Happened in Gore Alley...

My Warden Cyphers were taking cover in an alley following their close-quarter combat with the zombies in the previous turn. In this turn they activated and again took on the zombies, this time killing all of them without taking any casualties themselves.

However, another Aberration tore into them and ripped them apart. Bits of robot and dead zombie were everywhere. Unseen by the Aberration was a heavy plasma vortex drone on the roof of the adjacent building. This little drone floated down behind the vile, rotty beast and blasted it into chunks of infected meat.

Unfortunately for the heroic little drone the Plague Commander (Colonel 'Merca) came rushing in around the corner and, seeing the mess that use to be his once ferocious beast, proceeded to pick up the drone & smashing it into pieces in a fit of rage,

While all this was happening my invaluable Pulse Bombard drone lined up on the Plague Lancer Tank, took careful aim and blasted it into a smoking hulk.

The battle was drawing to a close and the Colonel 'Merca dealt his final card- Murder Birds.

They swooped down out of the sky. took stock of the situation and moved in, to destroy my Pulse Bombard. And failed & retreated. This defence by the lone drone allowed my Overseer (commander) to move into a more defensible position. But the Murder Birds came again and moved in for the kill.

This time the drone was taken down and my forces, consisting of a depleted Marionette squad, a heavy drone and my commander, only controlled the bottom right hand side of the battle field.

I the dying moments of the battle the Murder Birds moved in again, to take out my Overseer. In a desperate move the Overseer took out her pistol and fired off two shots. One of which was enough to throw the Bird's back to their starting point and send them to ground.

Time to teleport out of this place. No doubt.

Outcome...

Another great game with much slaughter on each side that I really enjoyed. Mistakes were probably made but we're still learning the rules. And what better way to learn than by rolling dice and destroying each other.

Unfortunately the Asterian's were unsuccessful in stemming the tide of the Plague this time around. A summing up of Victory Points in the aftermath found them 15VP to 18VP.

The Infection moves ever onward...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We both had nice looking troops on a nice looking table which attracted plenty of inquiries. Hopefully we can get a few other players into playing Firefight. As far as I'm concerned, the more the merrier. It isn't always the number of different factions available but how different players interpret and play them.

Saying that, I'm hoping that we can get enough players involved before the various factions are given a particular dogma that they invariably get stuck with. I'm already beginning to see this happen where everything is being compared to its 40K counterpart. I too, can see the comparisons but I'm trying to steer as clear of them as I can. I'd prefer to not have my imagination stifled in this way for as long as possible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P.S. A few more pics from my friend Robin. He's a far better photographer than I.

This is actually a photo of my dead-pile early in the game.