As promised, here’s the first fleet list from our final playtest in PDF format. It’s the one for the Eldar fleet, and you should be able to match up the ships to models, as I didn’t change the class names that were given to them by Games Workshop way back when.
Observant readers will spot that the game’s working title was Jump War.
I’m alive, and actually reading the reviews folks are leaving on Wargame Vault. Thanks for the nice words, and I hear your desire for more ship examples. Amazingly enough, I still have the fleet lists that I used for the final playtest, so I’m going to upload those as I scan them in.
Since there have been a zillion updates to WordPress since the last time I’ve done this, I expect this to take a little longer than usual. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a couple of links.
The first is about the EM drive: it looks like it was, indeed, a really cool way to fool test equipment. The team at the University of Dresden that’s been working on this for the last couple of years finally has a definitive explanation: In a Comprehensive Test, The ‘Impossible’ EM Drive Has Failed to Produce Thrust… Again
On the positive side, there has been some useful progress on Alcubierre’s warp drive theories. A Swedish team calling itself APL (which stands for Applied Physics in Swedish) re-examined Alcubierre’s and White’s work, and removed the need for exotic matter. The down side is that the resulting warp is sub-luminal, but it would be a propellant-less drive in the manner than the EM drive promised: NEW WARP DRIVE MODEL REQUIRES NO ‘EXOTIC MATTER,’ SCIENTISTS SAY WE CAN BUILD IT
Lastly, there does sound like there’s some progress in freezing anti-matter, which would make it useful as a fuel, and feeds into rumors that SpaceX is thinking about using it as such.
You’re not going nuts, if you remember this site having a bunch of Amazon links. Well, I went and got distracted, didn’t update for a while, and Jeff Bezos’s daemons got cranky. (My own fault, really.)
So I’ve pulled out of the Affiliates program and yanked all those links.
Masada-class destroyers on the workbench.
Longtime readers of the blog will remember a bunch of battle reports for Starships PFM-01 that included Cold Navy miniatures. The designs by those minis currently reside with Ravenstar Studios, but they minis we used in the reports were the original pewter casts from Xtreme Hobby. In this workbench article, I paint one of Ravenstar’s versions of the models: a Terran Republic Navy Masasda-class destroyer.
As usual, click on the thumbnail for a larger picture (assuming there is one).
When I laid eyes on the Directorate models for Firestorm Armada, I decided I absolutely needed to own a fleet of them. We play a lot of spaceship games in this house, so I knew they’d be useful no matter what system we used. There was only one problem. Firestorm Armada fleets don’t come with fighters. Tragedy! That sure put a dent in my plans to dominate the Starships and Battlefleet Gothic field with them.
Luckily for me and my plans for interstellar domination, Studio Bergstrom makes a fine set of fighters that blends perfectly with the Directorate force. The Seth fighters are roughly 10x10mm (a little less than .5″ x .5″), which makes them just the right chunky size to fit in with the rest of the beefy Directorate ships.
A screen cap of the mini design.
Hero Forge is a custom miniature service associated with Shapeways, and no review of any of their models is complete without a quick overview of the service itself. Simply put, Hero Forge is a computer-aided design app that will let you assemble a miniature from provided options and print that miniature on demand through Shapeways.
So …
You know how it was a year since the last post? It had been that long since the last time I painted anything, so here’s a quick review on how well the paints survived.
Anything that was in a dropper bottle survived. A small paper clip cleared the nozzle, and we were off and running again. In my collection: Reaper Miniatures and Army Painter.
The Citadel Paints didn’t hold up quite as well, which had been a complaint of the previous incarnation of their flip-top bottles. They’re great for quick work — when you need only one drop of paint — but their seals don’t hold perfectly. There’s also something different about Citadel’s formulation that dooms a paint when it separates; I ended up discarding some because the pigment had turned into rubber, and I couldn’t get it stirred back into the emulsion. I lost about a third of the base and layer paints, and all of the textures and dries.
I also had four bottles of Testors acrylics, specifically their rosy flesh tones that I hadn’t otherwise been able to find locally. They were all dead — those old-school bottles still don’t work for long-term storage.
Lastly, I had one lonely bottle of Tamiya Smoke. Leanne swears by this for certain effects — it’s a smokey glaze that she puts over other paint to give it that ‘behind glass’ look that you’ll see on some of her models. It survived, but I’m pretty sure one bottle is the very definition of ‘small sample size.’
Until next time!
So it’s been a year since the site’s last update, but now we’re back. One of the things that’s true is that most of the traffic that’s come to the site (even without updates!) has been to the review pages, so we’re re-launching as a place that primarily does reviews, and occasionally produces rules.
If you like the reviews, you can pick up a copy of PFM-01 Starships at WargameVault.
We’ll see you next with a review of a Hero Forge model that’s on my work bench.
So, if the news can be believed, the EmDrive has triggered some re-thinking about how the universe works. Obviously, this all supposes that the engine actually works. Today’s related link comes fromYahoo! News:
EmDrive: UK scientist claims ‘new physics’ explains galaxy rotation and theoretical space propulsion
The original article is from IB Times UK, who blocks you if you’ve got an Ad Blocker on.
(And, yes, I’m alive. The day job is still really busy. In retrospect, it’s amazing that I made any conventions at all last year.)
So I’ve got more information: we’re going to be in Room 15AB this year. That’s in the main hall, on the Mezzanine level. We’re officially there from 1 to 5 on Friday and Saturday, and from 1 to 4 Sunday — but there will be some bleed both directions, as we’ll be setting up and tearing down every day. (The Comic-Con page is here.)
The games and what we’ll be doing:
Starships: I’ll be running the usual demo that can accommodate up to four players. The quickest I’ve run it has been about 15 minutes. We’ll be using Lego this year instead of painted minis. I’ll also be passing out SDCC discount codes for the PDF. (More details on the game here.)
Aliens Built My Hot Rod: We’ll be running the demo. We’re still using the prototype decks, without art. (See my post here for why.) The game will support up to six players, and takes longer to explain than play. (It was the game designed to be played while waiting for Hall H.)
The Skating Dead: Zombies playing hockey. It’s for two players, and we’ll be running a playtest. Teaching the rules should take a couple of turns and 10-15 minutes. Finishing a game will take longer, and I’ll be asking folks to fill out surveys.
And because no post is complete without a picture, here’s how badly I ground down my stick blade before I replaced it recently (I play roller on concrete):
Blade Wear from playing on Concrete
Leanne
Mark