Showing posts with label Critical Mass Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Critical Mass Games. Show all posts

Monday, March 17, 2014

AAR: Gruntz 15mm Sci Fi

This weekend was a great one for miniature gaming.  Saturday I managed to get in a demo game of Force on Force which I will post an AAR of later this week.  Sunday I played a multiplayer game of Gruntz.


This is a game I have been following for a very long time.  I have collected a decent amount of 15mm Sci Fi miniatures over the years, but it has for the most part just been sitting and collecting dust.  Lately quite a few of my friends have been interested in 15mm Sci Fi so we started building our forces and designing our armies.  This is pretty much the 3rd time I have played the game and it was a blast.  We did make one change to the rules and that was to double all weapon ranges.  We felt like the current ranges were way too short for our tastes.  It made the game a much more enjoyable experience.

We paired up Aaron with Brian, and Kurt with me.  The forces looked like this:

Aaron (beige/sand): Caliphate Infiltration Battalion

Brian (Blue): Khanate Strike Force

Kurt (Yellow-Green): Principate Rangers

Nick (Bare Metal): UNSC Light Attack Force

Objectives: Destroy the opposition!



Aaron brought some terrain for us to fight over.  A few Gamecraft Miniatures buildings, a building from the HALO toy range and some esoteric crystals.

The first few turns were mainly just each force moving into position to get the best firing lanes and terrain.  Kurt and I were much more aggressive in our advance by double moving our APCs forward to attempt to take the buildings.


You can just see the barrel of the main gun on one of my Paladin tanks at the bottom middle of this next picture.  I had them keeping back and off to the flank to make use of their tremendous range.


There was some minor damage done here and there to the APCs.  My Paladin tanks were taking chunks out of Brian's Blue APCs and had him quite worried.  Forced him to start disembarking pretty early.


Aaron's sneaky sniper team was quite an annoyance.


Kurt and I disembark the bulk of our forces and take advantage of as much cover as possible.  I move my spider drones in a way that they can take advantage of Brian's infantry if they move out into the open.


At this point Brian had lost most of his vehicles.  My Paladins were racking up kills and big hits on his vehicles.  Kurt and Aaron were off blowing each other up.


My two MVPs the Paladin High Mobility Tank.  


Brian gets some Air support and takes out one of my APCs.  An acceptable casualty as it had already delivered it's cargo.


In the very far background you can see Aaron has deployed a unit in Kurt's rear and is causing massive casualties.  My spider droids had pretty much wiped out an infantry unit of Brian's and all of his vehicles were smoldering wrecks.


A nice giant bottleneck for the infantry.  Aaron had dealt a decent amount of casualties and Brian had killed an APC and 2 weapon teams of mine.


We called it shortly after this.  It was getting late in the day.  Brian's forces were looking small and Kurt had lost all his Vehicles and a good chunk of infantry.  Aaron had a few casualties, but was looking to be in a good position.  I had lost all my APCs and one of my Paladins was suffering from a critical hit to it's optics.  My infantry was firmly holding the buildings content on letting the enemy come to them.  

Aaron probably has some great pictures from his perspective and I am looking forward to that.  It was a fun game and we learned a lot.  Rules are pretty great and simple.  Now I need to get some paint on this force.  I'm thinking a Cobra Commander looking group :)



Friday, March 15, 2013

Post Human Republic for Dropzone Commander

So I have slowly been cleaning, building and magnetizing my PHR for Dropzone commander and even got in a demo game with Chris Ward at Collectormania in Parker, Colorado.

I need to take some more pictures, but here is a quick look at something I think it pretty sweet


I have magnetized the torso of all of my walkers so far, and magnetized the connection point on the dropships and top of the walker.  They are really small magnets and are drilled in so when the models are painted you won't be able to notice them.  I have removed the current bases from the walkers and will replace them with 30mm rounds later.  This however will make it to where I can't put 2 walkers on a dropship at the same time as their bases will collide, but I really enjoy based models.

I have also bought some MASKFX from Critical Mass games.  It is essentially a template for camo designs when you airbrush models.  I will be painting my PHR in a digital urban camo.  Hopefully I can get started on the actual painting relatively soon.

Maskfx from Critical Mass Games

Video Tutorial of Maskfx

That is it for today!

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Critical Mass Games Kickstarter

Hey guys... I haven't posted in a long time.  You know.. the usual.  Burnout, too much stress from work and etc.  No real good excuse.

Anyways, a company I have always admired, but never actually ordered from is doing a really sweet kickstarter.  For those of you who are interested in 15mm Science Fiction this is a company you should be well aware of.



Critical Mass Games is an independent company based out of England with one of the most beautifully sculpted miniature lines and even has a rule set to go with it.  I have been following them for a long time and have narrowly escaped spending way too much money on them for a while.

Their kickstarter is for a new line of miniatures (well new isn't entirely correct) called the ZAS mercenaries.


Basically they are expanding their 1 pack of ZAS mercs into a whole army.  More info about the kickstarter can be found here:

ZAS MERCS KICKSTARTER

Hope to blog more in the future.  Genghis Con is in 1 Week and I am running no less than 4 games of Ambush Alley Games "Force on Force."  Three games will be Cold War Gone Hot themed and one game will be Operation Enduring Freedom.

See you soon!

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Everyone Loves a Sale!

I have really been contemplating getting into 15mm Science Fiction and this just might push me over the edge.  Critical Mass Games is doing a Summer sale... what kind of a sale? 20% !!! That is quite insane especially since their prices are pretty modest in my opinion to start with.

For those of you who have never checked out Critical Mass Games this is their homepage with their sale info.  Critical Mass Games

There are also a number of amazing rule sets out there to play with your shiny 15mm models.  My two favorites are Gruntz and Tomorrow's War.  I am a little biased toward Tomorrow's War as I am a Force on Force fan and an AAG pointman :)

Anyways, thought I would share this awesome news with you guys.  As an update, I am running 3 games of Force on Force at Tacticon this year.  There will be 1 Friday Night, 1 Saturday Morning and 1 Saturday Night.  Each game can support up to 4 players.  I haven't pinned down an exact scenario that I want to run, but I really want to play with some vehicles.  Currently it will still be an Afghanistan based scenario as I do not have the time nor resources to work on my Cold War Gone Hot stuff.

I'll try to update this with some work in progress and scenario ideas.  I'm still here, just getting my butt kicked by work.