A Surprise Heavy Gear Fandom Retrospective!

Recently I've been working on posing and tweaking a Hunter 3d model from the defunct and incomplete Heavy Gear Assault game and the effort has surprisingly made me nostalgic again for the IP.   I've been both constructive (with my Heavy Gear Flash! house rules) and critical in the past on the blog but never really explained why I became interested in the game initially and still am despite their efforts to the contrary.

When the game came out in 1994, my only real experience in gaming was basically limited to a small handful of games.  The Rifts and Robotech rpgs by Palladium books were my gateway into the hobby and on the minis side I mainly played a very niche hand typed and bound historical/fantasy ruleset called Spear and Shield along with the FASA Star Trek ship combat game.  I had some minor experience with other big name systems like D&D 2nd edition, Gurps, and Warhammer (both FB and 40k) but they were typically one time experiences like demos that didn't catch my permanent interest.  I was familiar though with Dream Pod 9 from their work on Palladium's Macross 2 RPG supplements as well as their Mecha Press magazine.  I really liked their overall style and modern (for its time) art filled desktop publishing layout which was a huge break from the simple typed hand layout with the occasional single piece of art per column or page style that was the baseline in 1980's RPGs.

In the spring of 1994, I started seeing advertisements for a clearly VOTOM inspired RPG and miniatures game called Heavy Gear by the same company.  Being a fan of VOTOMS (or more specifically the Scope Dog designs), I was really excited for it.  Better yet, it was premiering that year at GenCon and I was already planning on going to the convention for the first time!  I signed up for multiple sessions of the game and enjoyed them all.  The RAFM lead miniatures used were both affordable and a great representation of the consistently great art by Ghislain Barbe.  The RPG and tactical rules were a single purpose built ground up coherent system that was a breath of fresh air from the typical core D&D style fantasy systems with scifi elements crudely bolted on that I was used to.   It really was the perfect combination for a cashed strapped part time employed student gamer who was into mech-based anime as well as both tabletop and RPG games!  I was hooked that weekend and picked up every book for several years and most minis for my chosen faction (the North) as well as a smattering for the South.

It may not seem special nowadays but it really did feel revolutionary at the time for me compared with what I was used to.  Something as simple as the paratrooper gears (like the Hunter Commando above) excited me to no end.  I'd look at the miniature and see cool things like roll bars, padding, and air brakes that made a design I already liked different but varied!  When I looked at the rules, they actually reflected those changes in a coherent way both in the miniatures and RPG game via rules like the airdroppable and rugged movement system perks that were developed long BEFORE they were needed.  This wasn't just another throwaway line in a random piece of equipment but rather something practical that seamlessly meshed both with the backstory and mechanics.  It was clear that alot of effort went into building all this way before the first product came out and it showed.  It's been that initial love of the game and the world that has kept me periodically coming back in for over 25 years.

State of the Blog Address (2019 in Review)

I have to say that this year passed by quickly!  It's basically a blog tradition that I go over what I did and didn't accomplish over the past 12 months and this year is yet again a bit of a mixed bag.  I'm the traditional hobby front, 2019 wasn't unfortunately much different than the prior year.  I managed to finish what I thought would be my final Winged Hussar (link here) as well as four figs for basically the same rpg character idea.  Why so many?  Well, the character changed as well as my ideas of how to portray him.   The first fig (link here) was printed on shapeways for a previous defunct campaign attempt whereas the others were done at home on my only big hobby project purchase, the Elegoo Mars 3d printer.

I had previously thought I was done with my hussar project but the upcoming release of Master Lazarus for 40k as well as a free 3d model from Artel W might convince me to dip my toes back into that pool later this year.  In the meantime, I've taken a stab at samurai inspired space marines instead with some success (link here) that I have yet to paint as well as a Space Wolf that at least I finished (link here).

Too big...too small...just right!

On the Star Trek front, I made a few entries to my SHIELD UP! house rules section.  While I didn't end up revising my Fasa STSTCS ship manual, I revised the existing D-15 FASA ship (link here) as well as added the Atlas dreadnought to my STA house rules (link here).  I also decided to test out a theory regarding whether you could noticeably improve prepainted heroclix minis with a quick wash and/or drybrush (link here).    Finally, I  came up with some more nuanced rules for playing STA in the Enterprise/NX era of trek (link here).  In that same update, I previewed a 3d version of my old NXL ship design which later got a test print or two (link here) but I never did more with them.  It's not alot but I suppose an optimistic way to look at it would be that I put out at least quarterly trek updates if averaged out for the year.  I don't have any ambitious plans for the trek side of the hobby but I do hope to revisit printing my NXL design now that I'm more experienced with supporting prints as well as coming out with a short Klingon D-7 update for FASA.  I generally need a direct motivation for my hobby work and the lack of any real chance of playing anything trek related locally unfortunately hampers that.

 Cactus Trek!

Ending the recap on a positive note, I was finally able to find a relatively stable rpg group this past year.  While I'm not enamored particularly with the ruleset (review link), it works for me as a player and we've been managing a monthly game since the summer.  It's because of that campaign that I've been focused more on my Krogan miniatures than the others.  I'd love it if we were playing longer than the 3-4 hours per session we average as well as playing every two weeks as originally planned instead of monthly but it's a good group of easy going players and I'm glad to have them.  With that, my yearly TL;DR hobby therapy session post is over and I wish everyone a happy 2020!

 

Another upcoming Krogan RPG character mini!

Dialing in the size and resolution... Rising Son V3.0!

I had some time this weekend and decided to asymetrically resize the same pose and support structure and reprint the model at 50 microns.  I fully admit that this was the easy way out but I figured I'd give it a shot to check out the proportions as well as the more typical 50 micron layer height that I normally print at.  At about 6 1/2 hours print time, I'd personally say that the detail and the proportions compared with the official primaris marine are both pretty good though there is a softness on certain parts of the face and aquilla on the more recent print compared with the previous one.  We still didn't have any real direct sunshine to speak of with another pair of rainy days so the resin remains a bit rubbery (and wet from the water rinse in the case of the newest print as I took the pics right after!) so it's still a bit hard to make out the details in the pics.  After some post curing, it'll be off to painting for the smaller RPG scale and correct scale marine but I think I'll leave the primarch scale print as is.  Now I just need to find out what paint scheme I intend to use.  I'll definitely do a base of gloss black but I'm not sure of what color highlights and details that I'll end up using.