Category Archives: Sci-Fi

SAD Dredd League kicked off and going strong

The SAD Dredd League kicked off with 7 players managing between 2 and 3 games each.

The second meet took place last week but turned into a large multiplayer game of judges against the undesirables.  John Alpha and his cutie mob joined forced with Ma Balls and her Ape posse.  Against them were ranged the Judicial might of Simon and Allan.

Allans forces were soon put out of action with my Apes following after the demise of Ma Balls.  Simons Judges looked to be in the winning position until the true nature of Johny Alpha was determined and he slowly whittled Simons forces down with the assistance of the few remaining apes.

Eventually it was a close thing but Alpha eventually killed Dredd and the remnants fled the field.

It was a great game and I am looking forward to having a few more large multi-player Dredd games in the future.

SAD 2015 – Judge Dredd Campaign

The second and final day of the Judge Dredd campaign took place on Wednesday (25th February).  Again we had 10 players continuing to battle it out over two or three games in the evening.

At the end of the evening the champion was identified as Simon with his zombie horde.  The prize was a great Judges badge to commemorate the event.  Andy came in a very close second with his Klegg Invasion force.

I think that the two day event worked well with most people getting either 4 or 5 games in over the two days.  It is a very quick game and lends itself to short campaigns very well.

Rules and figures can be obtained from Warlord Games and Mongoose, though most sci-fi figures will work.

 

Kickstarter Update – New Wargames and Boardgames outlook

This is just a round up of some of the wargames and game stuff on Kickstarter which caught my attention this week.

 

Spartan Games: Universal Modular Wargames Terrain

On the wargames front there is a new terrain system from Spartan Games (of Dystopian Wars fame).  This is a modular scenery system using plastic bases and up-rights which have printed card inserts slotted in to make the floors and walls (and doorways etc.)  The designs cover a variety of themes including medieval, sci-fi, modern,  and a ‘woodeny’ western/mine theme.  Prices don’t looks like they will break the bank.  Coupled with resin and acrylic upgrades as well as the ability to stack these units into multi-level features looks like this will offer a wide modular system.  My reservations were the look of the modular up-rights but Spartan seem to be responding to this feedback and the final solutions will be a lot more discrete and aesthetically pleasing.  My other concern was the amount of time it would take to set up the terrain for an evening  club game.  If you have appropriate storage I suppose most of the set-up could be prepared in advance.  Worth a look with basic sets really starting at £50 for 3′ by 3′ and £70 for 4′ by 4′.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/921886974/spartan-games-universal-modular-wargames-terrain

 

Space Cadets Away Missions

This is a miniature heavy retro sci-fi game with the players taking on the role of ships crew exploring space. The game has a starting entry of $60 which also seems to cover worldwide shipping as well.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strongholdgames/space-cadets-away-missions?ref=category_popular

From the Kickstarter page;

Space Cadets: Away Missions is a cooperative, scenario-based, tactical action game set in the Golden Age of science fiction. In this game, the third standalone title in the Space Cadets franchise of cooperative/team space-themed games from Stronghold Games, players take on the roles of adventurous human spacemen (“Rocketeers”) who explore UFOs, acquire alien technology and fight hordes of hostile extraterrestrials.’

 

Don’t Turn Your Back

This is a worker placement/deck building card game based in the Don’t Rest Your Head roleplaying game world.  Anticipate a cost of $70 ($40 for the game and $30 postage!)  there is also an ink-intensive Pn’P for $10.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evilhat/dont-turn-your-back?ref=category_popular

This looks to be a very intriguing game and the Print and Play may be worth a look if you live outside the USA.

 

Among the Stars: Revival

This is an expansion game for the previously successful ‘Among the Stars’ game.  Whilst the funding arrangements do allow you to get the original game for $140 (along with a host of expansions and stretch goals) you can play the Revival expansion as a stand-alone game and only need to find $40.  Being European the postage is already included which is always a pleasant surprise given the horrific uplift which the US projects usually apply to their postage to the UK.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/241478362/among-the-stars-revival?ref=category_popular

From the Kickstarter page

Players use a card drafting mechanism, select location cards, place them on their station, and score victory points according to where in the station they place them. Construction lasts 4 rounds and the player with the most points in the end wins the game.

The rules can be taught in less than 5 minutes and each game lasts approximately 30 minutes.

 

The Great War

This is a a new venture by The Plastic Soldier Company along with Richard Borg to produce a World War One boardgame based upon the Memoir’44 game engine (also see Battle Cry – ACW, Commands and Colors Ancients, Command and Colors Napoleonics, and possibly Battle Lore).  The game should be sound as it’s been tried and tested in multiple formats already, and the figures will be coming from The Plastic Soldier Company so the components should be of a high standard.

Funding really starts at around £60 for the game (you can fund a host of T-Shirts and miniatures for less).  The stretch goals don’t look particularly sexy and I’m unsure how the £60 fares against what the final commercial price will be but worth a look all the same.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1992455033/the-great-war-0?ref=category_popular

 

 

Judge Dredd Campaign – SAD 2015

I am running a very short Judge Dredd campaign at the SAD Wargamers over two Wednesdays in February.  Given the nature of the game players should be able to get between 2 or 3 games in an evening.

The first day kicked off well with 12 participants playing across 6 tables of ruined urban, Cursed Earth, and Industrial.  The mix of gangs was fairly wide with nine different flavours being taken. Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos during the evening so will try and remedy that next time.

  • 1 x Renegade Robots
  • 1 x East Meg Invasion force
  • 2 x Justice Department
  • 1 x Ape Gang
  • 1 x Street Gang
  • 2 x Apocalypse War Resistance Unit
  • 2 x City-Def
  • 1 x Klegg Invasion force
  • 1 x Zombie Horde

the majority of the players were fairly new to the rules (and one completely fresh to miniature wargaming all together).  I tried to split the new comers up so that they were either sitting beside or playing against someone who had a basic grasp of the rules.  A few of us have played quite a bit in the past but were a bit rusty so the first games were slow.  Fortunately subsequent games speeded up significantly as well moved into the campaign.

I do enjoy the games and recommend it to anyone who wants a game which has minimal outlay on figures (many use old Necromunda and Dark Future figures to supplement to Mongoose figures) and most of what you need is contained in the core rules.  The new rulebook is a lovely piece of work incorporating both of the old Mongoose JD Miniatures rules and Block War supplement into one hardback book.  The presentation is fantastic, I’m just disappointed that the spelling mistakes and awful grammar errors are still present and carried over into the new rulebook.

Print Your Own Cargo Containers

I needed a reasonably large amount of scenery in very short order a while ago so made up a template for some steel cargo containers.  These aren’t anything clever and definitely very simple to put together – it is just simply a long box.

The attached template is a simple Powerpoint slide in black and white.  To add colour simply print out the slides onto coloured card.

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2015-02-10 13.46.27

I needed my containers for a Judge Dredd campaign so I decorated them with appropriate adverts etc. relevant to Megacity One.  The containers have seen a fair amount of use so I probably should have straightened out some of the containers before photographing them.

Vid Reporters capture the Judges arrest of the Ape Gang.

2015-02-10 13.58.56

Click on attachment here for powerpoint slides.

Cargo Container lite

 

 

Mars Attacks – Hardback Rulebook Arrives

I’ve just received my hardback book for the Mars Attacks miniatures game.  I’d originally backed this through the Kickstarter campaign run by Mantic games last year as as part of this I got a free copy of the hardback rulebook when it was eventually completed.

So what’s it like?  From a quick view it’s slightly smaller than A4.  It seems to combine all of the previously released soft back rulebooks;

  • Mars Attacks – (core box set rules – 44 pages)
  • Humanity Resists (28 pages),
  • Extermination (28 pages),
  • World War (84 pages),
  • Compendium (35 pages)

This isn’t really a fair or comprehensive review of the game system, but rather simply on the hardback book.  Whilst it is great to have all of these rule books in one place there is one annoying aspect.  All of the books retain their original page structure which I can understand for consistency and rules referencing.  Unfortunately there is no simple table of contents to the main book, or an index.  These were less of an issue in the smaller books but now due to the size of this manual it can be a bit of a challenge remembering where about within the book specific rules or stats are.

In summary though, this is a really glossy gorgeous book which is a nice addition, but not critically necessary if you have the other soft back books already.

SAD 2015 Judge Dredd Campaign

I’m running a short two week Judge Dredd campaign at the club over the two Wednesdays 11th & 18th February.  So far I’ve got 7 players signed up but am hoping for a few more if possible.

We’re using the rules from Warlord Games (as were Mongoose), which offer some very fast thematic games from the Judge Dredd Megacity One universe.  There are a whole host of different factions available including;

  • The Justice Department (The Judges)
  • Brit-Cit Justice Department (the British version of the Megacity One Judges)
  • The City-Def (cliche futuristic national guard weekend soldier types)
  • Street Gang (classic dark future types),
  • Ape Gang (gorillas, chimps and orangutangs – you gotta love it),
  • Mobsters (Mafia and such like),
  • a  Fattie Stampede (the faddishly super fat of the future on the rampage),
  • Cursed Earth Desperadoes (muties from the radiated wastelands),
  • East Meg Invasion Force (cold war future soviet stereotypes)
  • Apocalypse War Resistance Unit (Megacity one mishmash),
  • Sky Surfer Gang (street gangs on flying surfboards!),
  • Lone Vigilante (gadgetted up super-hero ala Batman type with sidekick),
  • Chief Judge Cal’s Retinue (a parody of Caligula Caesar in the future),
  • Zombie Horde (future undead types),
  • Renegade Robots (Robot rebellion),
  • the Angel Gang (badass gang from the wastelands)
  • the Dark Judges  (seriously messed up Judges from another universe)
  • and even a Demonic Cabal (as if what already existed in Megacity One wasn’t enough someone wants to add even more demonic madness to the mix!)

I’ve limited the campaign by restricting the Angel Gang, the Dark Judges, and the Demonic Cabal, but I believe that there should be enough of a choice for most people to be satisfied.

We’ll be starting with 500 point gangs and I’m hoping that we’ll get three games in on the first Wednesday, and likely only 2 games in on the second day due to the gangs growing (hopefully).

Whilst you can probably pick up most of the official stuff cheaper on eBay you can often get fairly good deals on Warlords site;

http://store.warlordgames.com/collections/judge-dredd/

Alternatively check out Mongoose

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/miniatures/judge-dredd.html

Of course you’re not constrained to the official figures and there are a lot of lovely alternatives which could be co-opted into your gangs.   I may revisit this in a future posting.