Tracks, Turrets, & Tokamaks: Virtual Playtest and Filecards

I have not abandoned my goal to get Super Mission Force (2nd Edition) to the table.  In fact, I've made progress in that regard by completing one of the six figures needing paint.  I plan to post the full complement of six when I get them all done.

Life is getting very full recently so I've found it efficient to combine hobby time.  My bi-weekly AD&D (1st Edition) game was yesterday and since it was via Discord, I got five hours of miniature painting in, getting base coats on two more minis!  Shhhh...don't tell my DM.

Macro uses one of two templates

On to the topic of this post.  I've run a few virtual playtests of my future tank game, Tracks, Turrets, & Tokamaks (TTT) in order to find all the bugs.  Since the rules are solidified enough for a rough draft, I'm confident enough to put a some effort into actual play materials and do a full (virtual) playtest.  

During TV time with the Missus I was able to knock out a filecard maker on MS Excel using Visual Basic.  Now I can just fill in the information on the spreadsheet, tell the program how many sheets I want and for which force, press "Go" and watch it spit out entire platoons.

I've photographed one example each of my "table-legal" (i.e. painted) tank types in both planform and profile views, placing the pics on the card template.  Then using the "Selection Pane" feature of MS Office, I can simply cycle through the pics to assign the correct miniature to the filecard. 

The sheets are 5.5 inch by 4.25 inch, designed to be printed four to a sheet on standard piece of US Letter sized paper and cut twice.

I have no terrain built (and super-heroes are supposed to be the next game) but I just had to start this playtest.

The first game will be a 6v6 brawl with no special objectives other than smash the enemy force.  The blue force has two three tank platoons of the same medium tank type.  Opposing them is the red force, with two different medium tank designs, three per platoon.  

Virtual Playtest: Start of Turn 1

Support elements make up a big part of TTT; most of the 30 different available options are simple die rolls impacting the opposing force, therefore reducing the number of extra required miniatures.  

Too Fat Lardies' game Chain of Command inspired the (presumably) heavy influence of support elements in TTT.  Although I've not played CoC myself, I've watched heaps of actual play videos on the Tabletop CP YouTube channel.  I like how although CoC is an infantry game, and ultimately the game is won or lost on infantry tactics and performance, the support elements are often game changers.

So, for this first game of TTT I've drawn the support element cards (cards and dice are used in my game), indicating quite the support element advantage for the red force.  Red team has five support effects: a Full Mission Rehearsal, 2x Orbital Bombardments (!), an Artillery Strike, and Jamming Support.  Poor blue team ended up with only Heavy Jamming and Reinforcements (1-4 Light Tanks).  The red force puts one of the Orbital Bombardments On Call, while the blue force opts for On Call Heavy Jamming.  We'll see if the liberal use of support elements "over-flavors" the game.

The tank types:

Scratchbuild Future Micro-armor: Heavy Tank (Complete)

I finally finished assembling and painting the platoon of four heavy tanks I fabricated (sculpt, mold, cast) last January (2019!).  I'm not planning on any micro-armor games, I just want to clear off the workbench of these unfinished projects.

I only show one tank here because as I experimented as I applied the various dry brush layers.  It wasn't until I got to this fourth tank that I was happy with the results.  Or maybe not happy, more like tired and beaten, resigned to accept the crap job and just call it done.

About 35mm long

I started out with a bad-ass futuristic turquoise tone but as I piled on the paint it slowly evolved into a pretty mundane looking drab green.

I still love this sculpt though, especially the little touches like the notches in the main-cannon muzzles.  The turrets are removable and feature a small disc (not shown: forgot to photo) that sits perfectly in the central ring on the hull.

Two 6mm Scratchbuild Future Tank Platoons: Finished

I completed two platoons of future tanks last night, finally finishing up the detailing.

Overall I'm pleased with all aspects of these except the tracks: I dry brushed so sloppy that in general I obscured the detail I painstakingly sculpted.  Oh well, that's learning.  Next time I'll paint a lighter base color on the tracks/wheels and then hit it with a heavy wash.

(WIP) 6mm Scratchbuild Future Tanks: Painted

Got the base coat, wash, and drybrushing on two platoons of future tanks.  Managed to get some details on one tank, shown here.

I'll put a few more details on this little guy and then hopefully finish the other seven in a similar manner by the end of the week.

EDIT: Thanks for the kind words guys!  I tried to reply the normal way but for some reason Blogger isn't allowing me to comment on my own posts.  Weird.

(WIP) 6mm Scratchbuild Future Tanks: Heavy Tank

I finished a new sculpt a few days ago, this time a heavy tank, and have been steadily creating copies since then.

The first pic below is a full life cycle shot from sculpt to duplicate cast.

I've managed to create a full four-tank unit as shown next.  I still need to clean the flash off of these and add the barrels but I think they turned out well.  I really like this design.

Scratchbuild 6mm Future Tanks: WIP Update

 I'm hoping to post more this year and I figured today's the best day to get a good start.

Holiday break's almost over so I'm trying to crank out as many new tank designs as I can.  In the meantime, here's some pics showing the tanks in various stages of completion.

The first shot shows almost all the components I produce when making a new design, from left to right.  First there's the initial shape, created in Sculpey (Firm and Super Sculpey mix).  Then there's the master pattern, a plaster casting of the initial shape with additional details added via impression molding (as explained here).  Next is the silicone mold of the master pattern from which I can make duplicates; cast parts of duplicates are the last things shown on the right.  One of my old tank designs and an X-Acto #11 blade are included for scale.  I'm still using pasta for all sorts of applications you can also see...

As shown in the last two pictures below, the new tank designs feature rotating turrets.  I look forward to finishing these up so I can start on some terrain.  I'm thinking moonscape.

UPDATE: One four-tank unit assembled and ready for paint.  A sensible color scheme would be camouflage or neutral but I think since these are space-age tanks I'll paint them in some Chris Foss-inspired garish yellow or blue scheme with checkerboards.

I'm also playing around with a new technique for tracks using pasta and bits of staples.  I like the results of this proof-of-concept shown here; I'll make a cleaner, sharper version and mold it in silicone.

  

6mm Future Tank Scratchbuilds: WIP

I really wanted to get something, anything, creative done over the holiday respite from work.  Elaborating further, when I say done I mean I really wanted to finish any of my multitude of incomplete projects.  

So, of course, I started a new project.  I'm glad I did however because it's helped me refine my methods for producing small batches of tank miniatures based off a scratchbuilt original.

The pic above shows my first new design while the next two images show the design's original sculpt (hull and turret) sitting next to the silicone rubber mold used for producing duplicates, and a cast in progress respectively.

I still need to sand the edges sharper and add a gun barrel but overall I'm happy with the design.

I've produced more designs than just the first one shown.  The next few shots show the original Sculpey buck, followed by the detailed sculpt of a second design.  As one can see, the tanks are all about 33 mm long.  

I'll pour the silicone mold over this sculpt today, as well as crank out some more copies of the first new design.  I make the tracks out of polymer clay; in order to increase efficiency however I will glue a set of tracks to the slab shown to the right, therefore capturing the tracks in the mold as well.  This means each tank copy will be cast with its own tracks.

Along with the tanks I made some years ago, I hope to have roughly four platoons (~14-16 tanks) before the holiday ends.  Then I can test out some solo rules I've been thinking about.  Of course, I'll need to make terrain as well but I have ideas for that.

Terrain from Food Trays

Food packaging from the grocery store comes in all sorts of interesting shapes.  And despite my age, whenever we go shopping all I can think is "wow, that tomato container would make a perfect University Annex building for my 1/300 tank game".

I've had this idea kicking around in the back of my head on how to use the transparent attribute of the packaging to really make the shapes look like buildings.  I tried it out today and it seems to have worked.  Pictures of my experiment are below; you be the judge.

Take a piece of transparent food packaging that has an interesting shape and paint the inside of it.  The inside, not the outside.  To replicate a blue sky reflecting off the windows use blue like I did here.  I think a dull green or gold would work as well.  I used spray paint for this experiment but later I airbrushed cheap acrylic craft paint thinned with Future floor polish on a second food package (not shown) and it worked well.  I'm sticking with the airbrush in the future so I can avoid the nasty solvents in the spray paints as well as mix any color I want.  The packaging in both my experiments was PETE ("Number 1") type plastic by the way.

OK, so when the inner paint dries, place masking tape on the outside where you want the windows.  On a real piece I would have made many more windows that were smaller, to capture the scale but this was just a proof-of-concept.

Once the masking tape is on, spray the outside with your color of choice.  I just went with cheap gray primer here.  When the outer color dries, peel the masking tape off and viola: you have windows.  The outer "wall" color is a dull matte but the window area retains its plastic shine, giving it a realistic glass effect.

I've been playtesting my futuristic micro-armor game using a virtual gameboard; the first few sessions seem to be promising.  Maybe now I can finish the terrain I started so long ago and make some more tanks.  

Proof-of-concept; not a finished piece

6mm Sci-Fi Micro Armor Terrain: The Seven Dollar City

I'm taking a break from some online games of Mythos to get back to scratch building.  I've neglected my 6mm sci-fi tank platoons for a long time, but I got some inspiration from a couple of excellent library books and my homebrew tank v tank solitaire rules are coming together again.

The only way these solo rules will be any fun is if the table features a lot of cover.  I came up with a way of making cylindrical towers from polystyrene cups that takes just a matter of hours.  After getting a proof-of-concept design 70% complete and learning a number of valuable lessons, I rushed off to the dollar store to get more supplies.  The total cost of materials was just under  $7.00 US, not counting things already on hand like glues, paints and bits for details.  I should be be able to get about 7 to 10 buildings from this purchase.

Below are some pics of the proof-of-concept building.  The tower proper is not yet complete, nor is it based.  I'm very happy with the roof detailing, but the ground floor needs some definite work to really make it look like a real structure (like a door perhaps...)  I'll finish up this building and then start mass-producing the others, based on the lessons-learned from this first one.  I'll take pictures of these subsequent towers and post a tutorial.

Scratchbuilt tank is 31mm long

Detailing on the roof really makes the building

Need to base and add ground-level details

Song of Tracks and Turrets?

All my homebrew rules start out as justifications for my scratchbuilding habit.  I get most of my satisfaction by building terrain and miniatures from nothing, but inevitably my girlfriend asks "but what do you use them for?"  So, like everyone else with a blog, I'm constantly producing my own game rules.

My spaceship game Greater Space Battles surprised me with how much fun it turned out to be, and I thought to replicate that in other genres.  So far lightning hasn't struck twice; ideas that seem great on paper fall apart on the game table.  In particular I just can't seem to nail down a fun and simple micro-armor game to go with my new scratchbuilds.  Well, I've decided to start with a published game known for being simple, fun, and solo-friendly.

Ganesha Game's Song of Blades and Heroes is a super-cool little miniatures game with a neat little activation mechanic that forms the basis of a number of derivative rulesets.  The author maintains a constant presence on the game's Yahoo group, patiently answering questions and providing updates.  One update I'm interested in is the 6mm spin-off of SoB&H that he's currently writing.  Unfortunately it won't be out for some time, and I want my tanks fighting now... so I'm trying to figure out how to adapt Song of Blades and Heroes for tank v. tank combat.

It turns out I'm not alone, in fact check out these cool 6mm forces on Space Cow Smith's blog, which he pitted against old Battletech 'mechs using the SoB&H rules.

One thing about Song of Blades and Heroes is the combat is very simple, just an opposed die roll with modifiers.  While great for modelling two swordsmen dueling, to me this just isn't the right flavor for hi-tech vehicular combat with large energy and ballistic weapons.  I'm trying to come up with modified shooting rules for SoB&H, but so far am a bit stuck.  So I'm reaching out to the gaming blogging community since I know this ruleset is popular with solo gamers.

Who else out there is using Song of Blades and Heroes to game sci-fi micro-armor combat?  How are you doing it?  

Atomic Tank Platoon: Vehicle Construction Rules

I've been tweeking my micro-armor game Atomic Tank Platoon.  I've simplified the action resolution rules, using both bonus and penalty dice to define a tank's mobility and its weapons' capabilities.  More importantly the rules have expanded onto a second page featuring vehicle construction rules. 

The vehicle design rules make extensive use of dice rolling.  While the player still has plenty of decision making during the design process, the dice add quite a bit of randomness.  I realize that some people may not like this, but I see a number of advantages.  First, as a solo player I'm always interested in adding "unknowns" to my gaming experience.  Second, the dice rolling allows the rapid creation of new designs without having to pour over charts or use computer spreadsheets.  The randomization of the dice prevents (as long as the player doesn't fudge any rolls) the design system from being "broken" to create super-vehicles.  Finally, I think the dice rolling nicely simulates either those flashes of genius and innovation in vehicle design, or more commonly, those unexpected flaws that appear during testing, resulting in size creep and cost overruns.  And besides, like with rolling up a character in your favorite role playing game, it's just fun to see what the dice give you; you never know what you're going to get.

The second page also features a consolidated example of vehicle design and an associated vehicle readout for the sample tank.  The readout is in the shape of a 120 degree arc, which can be used for measuring turns and firing arcs in addition to its function as quick reference of the vehicle's capabilities.

Finally, hello to Andy, whose new blog features some incredible looking 15mm figures and terrain.  Check it out.

Move, Shoot, Communicate; Simple Sci-Fi Micro-Armor Rules

Posted to my downloads page is a set of solo-friendly micro-armor rules I'm calling Move, Shoot Communicate: Atomic Tank Platoon.  Really the game is fairly generic and could be used for almost any setting or era where combatants fight in small teams using firearms.

As the title implies, the focus is on moving, shooting and communicating, and the basic mechanic is rolling "situational awareness dice" to see if a unit can earn actions.  The game is d6 only and the typical amount of situational awareness dice is 4d6.  Earning an action requires rolling greater than a threshold established by the unit's quality, a`la Song of Blades and Heroes or Chain Reaction 3.0.  My game has a couple twists to hopefully set it apart from those great games and keep the spirit of fire team operations.  First, the activating figure is randomly chosen from only among those figures which can see the enemy (unless of course no unit on a side can see any opponents).  This represents the chaos on the battlefield that erupts upon contact with the enemy.  Second more significant is the communication mechanic.  After a side activates a unit and rolls situational awareness dice to earn and execute actions, that side may activate more units.  Subsequent units get one less situational awareness die each however (from 4d6 to 3d6 to 2d6 to 1d6 for example).  Spending one earned action on communication instead of moving or shooting however prevents the dice degradation.  So if each unit burns an action on communication an entire force may be able to act, each rolling 4d6 to determine actions.  Alternately units may eschew spending time talking on the radio, making only a small number of nonetheless dramatic attacks or movement.

I've playtested the game and it's decent fun.  It works better with larger numbers of units (~8 to10 minimum) and the token and marker requirement is minimal.  Give it a try.

EDIT- Although I haven't playtested it with new dice, I'm convinced the game will work better with d10s vice d6s.  This will allow seven different levels of armor, resulting in Defense Thresholds of 1 to 9 when coupled with a technology bonus to represent active defenses for contemporary and advanced units.  Of course, this requires reducing the move increment to 4cm versus 5cm. 

Proper Micro-Armor Scratchbuild

My rules suck.  Well, at least the tank vs. tank game I recently posted does.  I tried it out with a few proxy figures and found them to be clunk-tastic.  I tried to use my infantry skirmish game (which I've had a lot of fun with) as the basis for the fighting vehicle rules.  The action token mechanic works great emulating an individual trooper choosing between keeping his head down and returning fire or dashing around.  It just didn't work for vehicles though.

So I've scrapped those rules and come up with new ones.  My thoughts about communication being the most important aspect of the tank platoon still influenced my design, but the mechanics are fairly different.  I need to test these before I post them however, and that brings me to the point of tonight's post: I made proper micro-armor scratchbuilds.

I used the same techniques detailed last post to make the putty masters of the components, but this time didn't mess around with crappy molding or casting materials.  I applied the silicone mold last night and demolded after 16-17 hours.  I usually wait 24 hours but got excited; the molds didn't seem any less cured however, probably due to their small size.   I mixed and poured the resin, demolded the cast parts, trimmed them up, and assembled two tanks in about two hours.

At about an hour per tank this is a big time investment for a 34mm long miniature.  Luckily my new rules are based around an individual platoon of three to six vehicles, so the number of models is low.  And since I'm using something like 0.4 cubic centimeters of resin per component, I know my financial cost per miniature is miniscule.