Tales from Terra Nova Issue 1

A while back, I posted a comic book style report of my last Heavy Gear game (which occured a while before the post too!) and mentioned that I was trying to figure out how to publish a PDF version of the complete report instead of the more disjointed single images.  In the intervening years, I've figured out how to do that thanks to my efforts with my SHIELDS UP! Star Trek house rules so I figured I'd finally post the full pdf version of my battle report.  Please note that the game took place prior to the release of the current rules so may reference mechanics no longer used in Heavy Gear in addition to my own FLASH! house rules.

Tales From Terra Nova PDF Link

Tales from Terra Nova! Battle Report

I recently ran a demo game for a couple of new players at the FLGS and figured I'd try to document it with a new style of battle report.  Here you have a 600TV roughly game on a 3'x4' urban table using the standard Heavy Gear Blitz rules but my Flash! smaller combat groups.  Hopefully this won't break blogspot!  :)

Edit:  It took a few years but I finally figured out and got around to converting the Tales from Terra Nova Issue #1 Battle Report to a single downloadable pdf.   You can find it here.

My Visigoths (and entire Army) are now finished!

Well, I've gone and done it.. I've finally finished my southern army yet again. I finished up the tanks this weekend and taken a few glamour shots (hey, might as well call it like it is!) of the whole force. I ran out of my Ogryn Flesh Wash on my gears just before I decided to buy the Visigoths and had to get a pot of the new replacement, Reikland Fleshshade. I've used GW's new washes over the past year while finishing my Space Marine army and I can say without a doubt that I don't like the new formulations. They don't "flow" properly (or at least how I am used to washes doing) and dry on flat surfaces as splotchy messes. I've tried three colors over the past year and had the same issue, including with the Visigoth tanks. I had to do light but heavy dry brushing to cover up some of the splotches (very little paint but with alot of brush pressure) and I'm okay overall with the results.

With these two tanks, I've officially run out of space in my Heavy Gear carrying case. Barring some drastic change in the future like another army book coming out for the South, my army is pretty much done. I've still got an allied NuCoal force still NIB that I'll start if I ever find a local opponent to play against. In the meantime, here is the re-finished army on a part of the city scape terrain. It's just shy of 4000TV that can be fielded as a PL3 Spec Ops Regiment and a PL4 Gear Regiment.

Paratrooper Cadre, General Purpose Cadre, and Fire Support Cadre along with one of the Visigoths and an HRP Support Option Turret

Two Strike Squads, Airstrike markers, and a Fire Support Cadre

Second General Purpose and Fire Support Cadres, Visigoth and HRP Turret along with a Black Ops Cadre

Finished my King Cobras and DZC Cityscape Terrain Review

Finished my triple King Cobras (one regular, two hooded variants) along with the airstrike markers and some additional stragglers (Jaeger Gunner and Chatterbox Iguana). I broke down and finally bought the snakeyes blister I need to make my Black Ops squad legal (which will allow me to use my paratrooper cadre as well) but the ebay seller is taking his/her sweet time shipping them despite marking them shipped with tracking a week ago (with no actual info on the tracking)... grumble... grumble... I've also got some Visigoths that I got a great deal on supposedly on the way as well so hopefully both will arrive next week. As always, the pics below are hosted on dakka so you can click on them to be taken to their gallery page for all your zooming in needs.

I've also been assembling the Dropzone Commander Cityscape set I picked up a few weeks ago and am very happy with my purchase. It's solid cardstock that is preglued and somewhat scored so it's very easy to put together. You just bend into the rectangular shape and then glue down the roof ledges and roof floor into their proper positions. Technically, you don't have to glue either as the tight roof fit is good enough to keep the building in the correct shape via friction and not gluing would allow you to disassemble the building for easy storage/transport as well. The only thing is that I would *NOT* put any models on the rooftop if you don't glue it except maybe 6mm-12mm plastic or light resin infantry as a metal model can cause the roof to fold back down. With superglue, the roof is strong enough to even support a relatively heavy metal model like the King Cobras above (I tried!). A surprising tidbit is that putting the buildings together used up ALOT of superglue; I had 5 of the smaller 0.7oz tubes and still needed to make a run for more to finish the last couple.

The set retails at $45 USD and includes 20 buildings (4 of each of 5 sizes) as well as 24 double sided 1'x1' tiles (enough to make a 4x6' game table). I tend to use 3x4' tables for my Heavy Gear Flash games (see my blog link in my sig) and that is how I built the city above. I took one of each building and made it into two separate "damaged" and rubble states which is why the buildings on the right are so dark compared to the others. As you can see, the 20 buildings populate a 3x4' table quite nicely without any other terrain. If you've got additional terrain, it's probably a good idea to use it on a 4x6' space using all the tiles as the building density you see above would be exactly half. That's not, btw, a complaint as I think the value you get for your $45 purchase is incredible with this set but rather an opinion that a 4x6' table made up to be a true city needs about 1 1/2 sets of buildings and some additional terrain (cars, roadblocks, forests, statues, etc) to feel full.

Here's a close up of the second largest building along with some common and not so common minis for scale. The DZC scale is technically 10mm and I think the building work well for both Heavy Gear (12mm) and Robotech (6mm), the two main games I intend to use this with. The HG King Cobra is obviously the official version (albeit converted a bit in pose) but the Robotech minis are plastic and metal kits from long ago which are a bit bigger than the ones coming out soon (fingers crossed!) from the Palladium Robotech Tactics kickstarter. I've included a tape measure taped to the building as well to give you a measurement of the scale (metric just like the ones shown in the robotech kickstarter pics). Also pictured above are two papercraft buildings created on my upper end of medium grade printer on the best settings using the heaviest cardstock I can with my printer. While I'm admittedly comparing apples to oranges (the DP9 colors are more pastel than the darker DZC pdf files), the quality of what I built doesn't compare to that of the Cityscape buildings.

I definitely recommend the set for anyone looking for a high quality yet cheap and easy to assemble urban terrain set. If the set were a movie, I'd give it 3 1/2 stars out of 4 with points taken off only for a slightly low building density (25 buildings for $50 would have been better IMO) and the strange lack of simple road curves on the tiles (only straight pieces and intersections... no turns). All in all, I'm very happy with my purchase.

New King Cobra squad is progressing slowly but surely...

Well, it's been a while since I did a substantial update but I finally got around to updating my army back to 100% WYSIWIG legal after the Forged in Fire field guide changes. As previously stated, my standard build under Locked and Loaded only had 20 of the 36 figures come through unscathed and playable as is.

As for new figs/units, I picked up the some extra King Cobras (since I'm going with a heavy Cobra theme for the army) and got an xmas iggy that I'll be turning into my new Chatterbox AC as well. Also, I built two free turrets for support options as well using dried out GW paint pots and left over bits both from 40k as well as HG.  Here we have the built and base coated Heavy Strike Squad King/Hooded Cobras as well as my AC Chatterbox Iguana and a spare Jaeger that I need as filler due to the 5 gear squad change.

 I tried adding a bit more dynamic poses to the King Cobras as I'm not a fan of the "come at me, bro!" standard gorilla pose. One model is done up in a simple firing position (like my original King Cobra model) whereas another is running and the third is in a resting Captain Morgan pose. The Iggy is the kneeling xmas Iguana that I converted to a chatterbox. I kept body and shield but replaced the baton with a vibrorapier and added the Chatterbox head and sensor equipment.  I've gotten as far as doing the main colors on the models as well as the primary wash. GW changed their washes and I had to mix a bit of the Reikland Fleshwash into my remaining supply of Ogryn Flesh in order to try and match the army colors a bit more closely. The models below still need multiple details like sensors eyes, rocket tips, and power cords done but they're at least half way done! One of the two turrets with both its weapon options also is shown below. It's nothing spectacular but it was also pretty much free except for the minimal cost of the glue and paint to put it together.

I've still got to finish the models above (some painting, decals, basing, and then overcoating) as well as start work on my Green Mamba for my Black Ops squad (which when finished will also allow me to field my paratrooper squad as well). After that, the only forseeable work for the army that I'm considering at the moment working on terrain and possibly buying a model to use as my airstrike counter. I'm not a fan of the super tiny official airstrike counter and am considering something a bit larger to use for airstrikes. The top contender at the moment is the Seraphim Dropzone Commander model (bottom pic) as it slightly reminds me of the Azrael HG Southern Bomber (top pic) from the Heavy Gear RPG. I think I'd have to round out some of the corners to make the model look a bit more southern but otherwise I think it'll make a good model. I'm still not set though on the idea as it sort of feels like a bit of a waste of time and money to use on something that only appears for a single turn (assuming you even take the option with your support points!).

Dropzone Commander Seraphim Strike Fighter

The terrain I mentioned above consists of a few roadblock highway dividers made from old Forgeworld sprues as well as putting together the Dropzone Commander Cityscape cardstock set that I just got. When the army is finished and the buildings constructed, I'll take a group shot in the southern metropolis!

Finally...some movement of the figure front!!

This July 4th holiday weekend (and extending into the week) I finally got some work done with my ignored SRA Southern HG force.  Unfortunately, my standard build under Locked and Loaded only had 20 of the 36 figures come through unscathed and playable as is.  Some whole units are unusable (largely due to the switch to 5 gear squads) like my Op Sec/Black Ops Cadre whereas I'm able to salvage others by folding them into other squads that need a fifth (like my recon squad that *poof* just became CGL for other 4 gear cadres).  That leaves me with 10 gears that need bits swaps to be legal and WYSIWIG again in addition stealth and paratrooper gears that need another model to ever be used on the tabletop.  What needs changing?

2 Brawler Razorfang Mambas:  No more brawler + razorfang so the heads must be swapped and uplinks must be removed (and bare metal spots patched of course)

2 Sidewinders:  Only can use them in 2 special squads for SRA and I only have the other models for one so they're getting folded into the Republican Heavy Strike cadre.  One stays the same but the other must lose its head, rocketpod, and weapon to become a Command Sidewinder.

3 Striking Cobras:  All striking cobras lost their HRPs so that needs to go and the third model that used to be my commander (a Brahmin ECM Striking Cobra variant) needs to lose his satellite dish, uplink, and AC vibrorapier.  Technically he should have a head swap but I can't find the normal bunny ears for the remaining spare cobra head.

1 Hooded King Cobra:  The LLC swap now makes you lose the HRP and LAC (although there are conflicting rulebook entries on that).  Instead of losing both, I just decided instead to switch it back to a normal King Cobra and use the weapon bit on one of the 3 extra Kings I picked up for the Republican Cadre.  Also, since this will no longer be my alternate AC, it needs to lose the vibrorapier and pick up a chainsword.

2 Paratrooper Jaegers:  Need to lose the LGM as they're now only halfway through the model swap to Longbow.  I considered replacing the guns instead but decided to go the cheaper TV route instead.  The paratrooper squad in general is no longer legal though and pretty useless because I can *ONLY* use it with my collection in a spec ops regiment which I can't currently take because they're only at 4 models.


What do I have new or previously unbuilt that I can add to the mix?  I still have a blister of Desert Vipers but they're of limited use for me as I can only downgrade brawler mambas to get them and I had two brawlers already.   Over the Xmas holidays, I picked up the southern book and got an xmas iggy that I'll be turning into my new AC as well as two more Black Adders and three King Cobras.  In a later fit of buying, I picked up the NuCoal PDF as well as three Fusilier tanks and a Chasseur MkII GP squad as well.  While I can't use either in the SRA, I can use my force as an ESE with HAPF ties to bring them into the mix with most of my other figs.  I can't use the Republican Cadre with them but I can always split up my King Cobras between the various Strike and Fire Support squads instead.

UPDATE: I finally took some pics this weekend of my new additions to the army.  Below are the two Hooded Cobras, King Cobra, Chatterbox Iggy Army Commander, and stock Jaeger to fill holes in squads and the single empty spot in my figure case.   :)