AVP: upgrading my miniature collection with exclusive kickstarter miniatures.

I am not dead. Not at all. Thanks to private life my time for the hobby was limited to Sunday afternoons of playing.

Anyway, here is an update of the things to come:

I am one of those that pledged on the AVP kickstarter that was released last year by Prodos Games. I have now completed my survey and placed my order, based upon my pledge level and additional free items. Here is what should arrive in May:

Pledge: Real aliens ain't from mars
Included & Free items ( showing amount )
A Royal Guard x1 ( 1 )
KS P Berserker ( 1 )
AVP Game (Box) ( 1 )
Facehuggers x7 ( 1 )

Picked 100k stretch item/s:
Stalkers ("Pet Hybrids") x5

Picked 155k stretch item/s:
Predator Hellhound x1

Picked 310k stretch item/s:
Half synthetic (Obj. Marker of a cut-in-half Bishop character) x4

Add ons
Extra bits (3heads, 4 guns) ( 1 )
Predator Hellhounds x2 ( 1 ) 
Female Predator  Warrior x1 ( 1 )
Crusher Alien x1 ( 1 )
Predalien x1 ( 1 )
Royal Guard x1 ( 1 )
Weyland-Yutani Commandos (whole five men squad) ( 2 )
Power Loader x1 ( 1 )

The pic above shows a pre-production test piece of how the game board will look like

Predator Warriors, Stalkers, Marines, Crusher Alien (the large one), Royal Guard and Predator as well as Predator Hellhounds unpainted.

Together with my existing Aliens, Marines and Predators, my Drop Ship and APC this should one day lead to a fantastic tabletop wargame of AvP.
I also couldn't resist in ordering these:

http://www.rogueminiatures.co.uk/index.php/gun-miniatures/dogs-of-war-7set-miniature.html

I can already hear somebody crying "Get to tha choppa!" ;-)

Tomorrow's War meets Battletech: House Kurita's "Stalker" arrived

Finally... the Beast has arrived! 85 ton "Stalker". I got four copies of this huge Mech, this one goes into line with my 1st Sword Of Light Kurita forces, one will be 3rd Crucis Lancers RCT (Davion), one 1st TYR Regiment of Rasalhague and one is going into House Steiner's service. *evil grin*

More Alpha Strike!

Me and the best mates were meeting again today to have our usual Sunday-afternoon battle. Since Alpha Strike was well received, we picked to play with our Mechs again.
One of my friends hasn't played AS yet so he was eager to give it a try. I decided to let the boys handle my two painted armies and acted as advisor/referee - in other words, I had to flick through the rules if we didn't know something :-)
Anyway, the same figures as last time were used and Kurita once again kicked Davion's a$$. I did not take pictures throughout the whole match but here are some for fun anyways:

Alpha Strike!

Kurita vs. Davion, bringing all IS units that have been finished so far

Best mate and myself have enjoyed our first game of Alpha Strike today. We love it. We already like CBT very much but this is just awesome. Alpha Strike enables us to play with large quantities of Mechs (even in our bigger scale) without too much book keeping.

We brought all units that I had painted up so far, in total 135 vs 136 points.

Kurita:

Kanazuchi Battle Armor
Locust
Stinger
Wasp
Mongoose
Hatamoto Chi
Dragon
Archer
Scorpion
Rifleman
Longbow
Warhammer
Atlas

Davion:

Stinger
Raven
Locust
Wasp
Banshee
Zeus
Archer
Crusader
Goliath
Warhammer
Longbow
Rifleman

 

 

After two or so rounds: both sides closing in on each other

Davion's Raven spotting for Longbow indirect LRM attack: my Kurita Locust gets a shower of high explosive love :-(

My Warhammer gets if from all sides. Banshee, Goliath and a recon lance pounding it with fire.

Zeus and Warhammer get into position to await my Atlas' assault on the center frontline.

A Davion Stinger jumped over the building in an attempt to kill the Whammy (one inner structure point remaining) but missed its shot! My Warhammer returns the favour and blasts it to pieces.

My attempt to stop the LRM fire attacks of the Crusader end with my recon Locust being shot to a burning wreck.

My assault and heavy mechs keep up the pressure, steadily advancing.

The city turns into a scrapyard: my Rifleman gets shot by the Banshee but in turn headshots (rolled 12 on critical hits!) the Zeus :-)  A little later the Banshee gets wasted by the Atlas.

Having taken out the Banshee and Zeus on the right flank, my center force is backed up by Hatamoto and Atlas. Ready to steam roller attack the Davions.

Kanazuchi Battle Armor got casualties by Raven fire and is wiped out by Crusader missile strike.

The Atlas walks through the Davion line and leaves behind burning hulks of twisted metal. My Archer got missile bombed by Longbow and Crusader and killed with the final shot: by a Locust!

The game ended with a Kurita victory. Last Mechs standing on my side: Atlas (nearly fresh), Longbow (heavily dented), Warhammer (only held together by sheer willpower), Stinger (only one point of structure). Mechs on Davion side still standing: none.

Can't wait for the next weekend for another match!

AVP: the colonists' last stand figures have arrived

Lucky me - some of the original Leading Edge Games figures (20+ years old) salvaged from ebay for less than 30 Euro, unpainted in their original and undamaged box:

Got to find out how to rebase them without damaging the feet. :-/

AVP: random terrain (1)

I started to paint up some scatter terrain pieces to block lines of sight and give some cover. There is more of these to come.

GW base with biohazard containers from Fenris Games

Size comparison

Biohazard containers? What is Weyland-Yutani up to??

AVP: ..but who is laying all those eggs?

more Alien eggs, some still enclosed, some semi-open with the hugger ready to spring its ambush, some already open with the Facehugger out and two, shot up with a dead hugger.

Alien goo - I know Michi is going to like that :-)

Next in line: some small terrain pieces. Stay tuned.

AVP: eggs, terrain and APC

So, the next stuff on the to-do-list: paint up an APC, paint some more Alien eggs and some pieces of random terrain to block some lines of sight.

Galoob Action Fleet APC from Aliens. Perfect size for 28mm.

more Alien eggs and first pieces of battlefield clutter - I must have had those GW pieces in my cabinet for at least 7 years.

AVP: Pvt. Rogers, smart-gunner

Starting with the charactes for my second squad, entirely based upon the cards available for the Colonial Marines faction in the old Harper Prism Collectible Card Game "Aliens Predator"

First one finshed: Pvt. Rogers, one of the smart-gunners

"He talks to his gun... and says that it answers. You wanna argue with him?"

Hasslefree 28mm Sci-Fi figure named "Akkie", perfect for Colonial Marines and mix well with my Woodbine miniatues in size.

AVP: "The Reactor Room" - our first test game

Today I revealed my "Aliens" board game conversion (into a tabletop game) to my best mates. I brought all miniatures, markers, quick reference sheets and stats cards, we set up our 4' by 4' table and played the first scenario, called "the reactor room".

The idea behind it is the movie scene in which the Marines lead by Gunnery Sergeant Apone are going into the reactor room. Since they are ordered by their commanding officer Gorman to remove the clips of their pulse rifles, most of the soldiers only bear pistols. Some of them brought flamethrowes, while Drake and Vasquez secretly kept their mighty smart guns operational.

About half way in they are suddenly attacked by xenomorphs and the mission turns into a run for their lives as they try to cross the table and reach the safety of the APC waiting there.

We played the scenario two times. First time I dropped yellow, red and blue markers that indicate totally random spawn points for up to two aliens per turn. We did not use ammo capacity rules, no friendly fire and we did not make use of the "bonus bug" rule as I had in mind. I was wary that the humans might not stand a chance. To keep things short: the Marines made it through with all of their comrades, only one of them being wounded.

That lead to the conclusion that I need to treat the blue spawn point markes like regular spawn points (so, that's three new aliens each turn), adding the "bonus bug" rule if you roll a 0 and re-roll any further zeros that might occur, giving you a minimum of 3 xenomorphs per turn or a maximum of 6.

We then used the ammo expenditure rules and "friendly fire" if LOS runs over the base of a friendly model. Now, that was more of a challenge. We had A LOT OF FUN. This was truly awesome.

Now here are some pics (no real Aliens terrain yet) and random thoughts on them:

Marines starting position, the door on the upper right is the exit they have to reach. QRS and self made stats cards in front of the table. The "black hole" is supposed to be a stairwell (LOS possible but impassable terrain for models).

The coloured markers are spawn points, rolled for with a die in the same colour. A roll of 1-9 represent the appropriate marker, a roll of 0 results in an additional alien that is going to spawn randomly.

Marines, we are leaving. The first steps into the reactor room and the beasts are popping up everywhere.

Checking how far the Aliens are away to prevent them from being able to get into contact next turn.

Apone ,blasting his way through the enemy with his flamethrower.

The unfortunate Pvt. Frost is attacked by an Alien in close combat. Lucky guy - survives the Acid Splash that was caused when Drake killed the Xenomorph with his smart gun and 2 actions of careful aiming.

Apone and Vasquez running like hell to escpae the horde that follows their fellow Marines.

Drake is cornered so much that he needs to fire and fire again thus being un-able to keep up with his mates and slowly falls behind.

Apone turns around and gets ready to put his flamethrower into good use to cover the rush for the APC of the other Marines.

Into safety: the first Marines reach the APC...Apone stays outside, grilling everything non-human that is coming too close.

Almost over, the last miniatures are moved to the exit.

 

Game two, this time with more aliens spawning per turn and all extra rules. The Marines are under preassure right away as the first aliens are just around the corner when they are about to set their feet into the reactor room.

This game is going to be Vasquez' time of heroic stands...

"LET'S ROCK!!!"- Vasquez, putting the machine gun special ability into use and turning a whole bunch of xenos into pulp at once.

That lady survived two Acid Splashes unharmed, kicked two Aliens' butts in Melee when they tried to grab her and killed 3 xenomorphs with only one action shooting (machine gun special ability). Wo-hoo!! What an unbelievable amount of lucky die rolls.

Vasquez, facing her heroic end. She killed about everything thrown at her for the entire game until she finally was ovewhelmed by the sheer mass of xenos coming at her like a steamroller.