Tag Archives: Gruntz

Rules and more Rules

So many rules, so little time.booksFrom top to bottom:

  • SAGA – The base rules plus all the expansions in the folder that came with expansion #4. I play this a lot recently.  I have a six point Anglo-Dane warband.
  • Dreadball Season 2
  • Dreadball  – Base rules.  I love Dreadball.  I play the base game only so far.  I have a season 2 team, unpainted.  It will get painted soon.  Dreadball is a ton of fun.
  • Monster Hunter International – The RPG based on the novels.  I GM a campaign.  Lots of fun.  Humans with guns fight monsters – werewolves, zombies, etc…
  • Star Wars Edge Of Empire –  RPG. I do not currently play.  It seems like a fun game.  Unique dice mechanic.
  • Eclipse Phase –  RPG. I am a player in a campaign.  Great game, and the most high quality rulebook here.  Very unique sci-fi setting. The printed book is well worth it’s price, however, the rules are also available for free.  Creative Commons rules!
  • Chain Of Command – Just released (Fall 2013) WWII platoon level rules from Too Fat Lardies.  I’ve not played them yet, but they seem really nice.
  • Gruntz – 15mm Sci-Fi rules.  A great introductory set of rules, and you can add complexity later.  I’ve played them a few times.  Fun.
  • Tomorrows War – Another 15mm Sci-Fi ruleset.  Well reviewed, but overly complex and, frankly, the book is hard to read.  Black text on a busy background.
  • Traveller – I have so many great memories of playing Traveller as a kid in the ’80s.  Sci-Fi RPG.
  • Traveller 5  – Not the “final” Traveller I’d hoped for.  Overly complex.

So, that’s my physical rules collection.  In digital, I’ve got a bunch more, but the only digital rules that are not also here in physical form that I play / want to play are:

  • Quadrant 13 – Company level 15mm Sci-Fi rules.  Seems like a great game.  I’d love to play some day.
  • Full Thrust: Cross Dimensions – Super fun space fleet combat game.  I’ve got two full fleets of minis painted up for this game.  Quick, deadly, tactical space combat.  Free rules, too.

Barbed Wire Barriers

I made some barbed wire barriers, and it was pretty easy.

I used:

  • toothpicks – from my local grocery store
  • steel wire – from my local hardware store
  • rectangular wooden bases – from my local craft store
  • super glue / paint / basing material – the usual stuff

in_production

Take a 3 foot long piece of wire, and fold it in half around a pen or pencil.  Hold both parts of the wire and spin the pen in such a way that one strand wraps around the other strand.  So one stays straight while the other wraps around it.  When this is done, cut the loose ends off, and wrap the whole thing around the pen to make the spiral shape shown above.

Cut 3 sections of toothpick.  I cut the tapered ends off and kept the middle part.  Wire cutters work fine for this.  Take 3 sections and glue them to make the “tank trap” shape show in the picture above.

Glue 2 of the tank traps to each base.  Prime and paint the base and tank traps.  Put your basing material on the base.

Once the whole thing is painted and based, glue on the barbed wire.  Paint some rust / blood on it.

 

wargame barbed wire

There ya go. Cheap and easy.  Fairly quick, too.

I use these to play Gruntz, and I make them impassable to vehicles, and infantry has to stop, and take an extra action to cross them.

Identifying Squads with Magnet Attached Flags

Before I started this blog, I used Imgur.com to post my projects – pictures with brief captions.  There are several albums over there that I’ll be “porting” over to this blog, a kind of catching up when I don’t have a current project to report.

Right now I’m in the middle of painting 12 of GZG’s Spider Drones, and it’s taking a bit longer than I thought, plus the bases for them are on order, so it will probably be another week before I can show you the results of that.  In the meantime, here’s “Magnet Flags” :

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One of the things I love about 15mm Sci-Fi wargames is how generic everything is.  This means my figures have multiple uses.  Not only can I use them for multiple rulesets, but I can split my force in two for a smaller battle with just my own figures, or use the whole army against someone else’s army, or use them for RPGs like Traveller or Eclipse Phase.

Because of this, I need to keep my forces flexible.  In a game like Gruntz, it’s convenient to identify the squad leader, and, by extension, the squad. In one game, a particular figure might be a squad leader, in another, just a grunt.  To facilitate this flexibility, I use magnets on the base of certain figures to attach a flag that identifies the squad.

package

I bought a magnet starter kit. It comes with 50 magnets and the drill bit for $8.99 at TheWarStore.com

 

base

I added the magnet to the mini’s base. I drilled out the plaster part of the base and super-glued the magnet in. Make sure you have the same polarity on all your bases.

 

flag

Then I glued a magnet to a toothpick flagpole. I used epoxy to glue the magnet, because the superglue didn’t hold. Make sure you have the right polarity, or the magnet will not stick to the base magnet.

 

flag_on_base

And here’s the result.

 

strength

It’s a pretty strong hold.  As you can see, you can pick the mini up by the flag with no problem.

 

flags

Here’s the flags in progress.  I have black and green flags for when I want to divide my minis into two forces.

Thanks for reading!

How I Got Into Wargaming (Again)

I’m somewhat new to miniature wargaming. I say “somewhat” because I dabbled in wargaming as a teen in the 1980’s, and I am only now getting back to it. (That’s the “Again” part of the title). As you can imagine, things have changed a lot since then.

I read a lot of Sci-Fi, and I was working my way through David Webber’s Honor Harrington series, which contains a crap-load of space battles. I thought that might be a fun genre for a computer game. I was searching the web for a good computer space battle game, and not having a whole lot of luck, when I came across the rules for Full Thrust.

Wow, I thought. Space battle miniatures. Sounds cool. I bought Ground Zero Game’s Full Thrust Intro Fleet Double – 2 sets of 8 ships, from different factions. I painted them and played a few games with a friend. Super fun.

That led to 15mm Sci-Fi ground combat. I read the free Stargrunt II rules, and heard a lot about Gruntz, and ended up buying that and getting a bunch of minis from GZG, Rebel Miniatures and Khurasan.

Now I’m painting up a storm, making terrain, etc.

Here’s the very first 15mm Sci-Fi I ever painted, before and after.  These were painted in February, 2013.

GZG and Rebel Mini's size comparison GZG and Rebel Mini's size comparison

So, I guess you can blame David Webber for writing those books, and my co-worker Matt who turned me on to them, for getting me back into miniature wargaming after all these years. 🙂