FictionalReality-MAGAZINE-22, Fictional Reality Gaming -Magazine

FictionalReality-MAGAZINE-22

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FictionalReality-MAGAZINE-22, Fictional Reality Gaming -Magazine

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BATTLE REPORTS
Starship Troopers
2
Hello Everyone,
orders that are placed on their website
with a military address as their destina-
tion. There is no end date to this pro-
motion and it’s Mongoose’s way of
giving something back to those that are
willing to put everything on the line so
we can enjoy the freedoms that we
do...including playing war with little
toy men. Mongoose should be ap-
plauded for this and they are definitely
among the “good guys” out there!
Warmachine
9
Glad to have you with us for the DEC
2005 issue of Fictional Reality. In this
issue we get to look at a bunch of new
ga mes. They range fro m mi niature
ga mes to card games (that are more of
a miniature game) to board games with
a sprinkling of rpg stuff thrown in for
good measure.
20 QUESTIONS
Hasslefree Miniatures
14
GAME REVIEWS
Dungeon Clash 17
Battleground: Fantasy Warfare 19
Space Station Assault
21
Succession
23
Sigmar’s Heirs
23
Wizard Kings
24
On the miniature review side of things
we have several new faces
(companies) in this issue including
Darkson Designs, Corvus Belli, Aber-
rant Games, Alpha Forge, and Crunch
Waffle. Many of the Corvus Belli fig-
ures that we got to look at are from
their upcoming sci-fi game called In-
finity and we’re hoping to bring you a
battle report of it in the next issue of
FR.
Fires of War
27
That’s about it for now. Hope you all
have a Merry Christmas and a Happy
New Year! Enjoy this issue of FR and
we’ll be looking for you in March with
a new one.
MINIATURE RE VIEWS
Mongoose Publishing
28
Darkson Designs
29
WarCrow
35
Privateer Press
36
Mark Theurer and Clay Richmond
Hasslefree
38
Urban Mammoth
41
Thunderbolt Mountain
43
Reaper Miniatures
44
Aberrant Games
53
20 Questions is back and this time
we’re talking to Sally White from Has-
slefree Miniatures. We’re hoping to
bring this back as a regular feature so
let us know who you’d like us to do an
interview with for future issues.
Alpha Forge
57
Magnificent Egos
61
TERRAIN WORKSHOP
Paper Buildings
64
PAINTING WORKSHOP
Confro ntatio n Fia nna
66
The Painting Workshop feature is still
going strong and this time we have
painting mistress Julie Goodwin (AKA
Death Angel) sho wi ng off her tale nts
wit h a Confro ntatio n Fia nna. Check
out her personal website at...
www.brush-with-death.com
BOOK REVIEWS
Demon Download
Junktion
74
AD VERTISERS INDEX
Great Canadian Wargames IFC,63
Dark Basement Miniatures 4,20,72
Mongoose Publishing 5
Blue Table Painting 8,14,36,76
Privateer Press 11
Hasslefree Miniatures 16,39,65,73
Reaper Miniatures 18,49
Your Move Games 22
Cyclopes Forge 24
Columbia Games 25
RPG Objects 28,63
Brigade Models 31
Alpha Forge Miniatures 38,76
Urban Mammoth
End of the Line
76
Twilight Zone
76
Many thanks to Covrus Belli for providing
this issue’s cover artwork!
www.corvusbelli.com
Battle reports for this issue center
around small unit action with Starship
Troopers and Warmachine. War-
machine is no stranger to the pages of
FR, but we were finally able to sit
down and play a game of Starship
Troopers. If you’re contemplating get-
ting into the game and want a peek at
how the game mechanics work you’ll
want to check out the report that starts
on the next page. Speaking of Starship
Troopers you should also know of a
new policy that has gone into practice
over at Mongoose Publishing. They
are now offering 25% cash back to all
43
Thunderbolt Mountain
53
Magnificent Egos
61
Brush With Death
72
Whitewash City
78
1
Infinity
31
Crunch Waffle
54
75
Fantization
69
Clay and I decided to hammer out a Starship Troopers bat-
tle report for a few reasons. First, I'd had the game for a
few mo nt hs no w a nd fi nally got t he models assembled and
really needed an excuse to play with them. Second, we've
read over the rules but have not had a chance to play yet so
we really needed an introductory game to get familiar with
the rules. We decided to play this game as a battle report
and as a learning experience for both of us. If you're a vet-
eran of the Mobile Infantry then you might find this report
a bit basic, but if you're fresh in to the game like we are or
you're thinking about getting in but haven't had much expo-
sure to how the game works this should be right up your
alley.
where they shouldn't be. The bottom part of the torso
comes in two pieces and all four legs fit into it easily and
then you can add the top part of the bottom torso and glue it
all together. The plastic cement bonds fairly quickly but
you will be holding the legs spread out in place for at least
a few seconds. Once this step, bottom torso and four legs)
was complete on ten bugs I moved on and put together the
top half of the creatures. Everything on the top half went
together easily but you have fewer options when putting
this half together. With the legs you can have them sticking
out in all sorts of directions and as long as three of the four
legs are touching the ground you should be fine. On the top
half you can rotate the little pierces around and open/close
the mouth a little but that's about it. Once I got ten top
halves together I glued them to the bottoms and started on
anot her batch of te n. The second group of te n we nt i n t he
same fashion and the most tedious part was clipping parts
off of the sprues.
The Mobile Infantry started off the same way with me clip-
ping parts into piles and then getting to work gluing them
together. I started by securing all of the legs/lower torso to
the bases. I did this in batches of eight troopers at a time,
again trying to feel good about getting a whole squad done
before moving on. The top halves are somewhat poseable
in being able to choose how they are holding their guns.
The standard way is to have the guy cradling the gun across
his chest, but not all of them have to look like that. The
infantry come with clear yellow plastic face plates that
you'll want to leave off until you're done painting the guys
or just choose to put them on and then paint over them, los-
ing the cool effect of having clear face plates. Some good
friends of mine recently gave me some flak for having lots
of unpainted models in our Rag'narok battle report last is-
sue so I decided to get some paint on, at least, the Mobile
Infantry.
BEFORE THE GAME
In addition to our actual game of Starship Troopers I
wanted to quickly discuss my experience in putting to-
gether all of the figures. I had not built a box-game plastic
army since the second edition of Warhammer 40K came
out. That's the one that spawned Dark Millennium and the
psychic powers on cards. Actually, I don't think I did much
plastic assembly there as I was playing Eldar and Chaos
back them and probably parted out the armies that came in
the box. Anyway, it's been a long time since I put together
this many plastic models.
I decided to start with the bugs as they were the most nu-
merous and I was hoping for a sense of accomplishment
after finishing them. Each bug is made up of eleven parts
and there is quite a bit of range of motion allowed during
assembly and there are extra legs thrown in so you're not
locked into the same post with any of them. You can, and
probably will, end up with an army of bugs with each one
of them in a unique pose. I used the liquid (paint on type)
of plastic cement and was able to assemble the whole batch
without gluing myself to anything. I started a makeshift
assembly line where I would clip off everything and them
organize all of the like parts into piles. Once done with that
I would quickly scrape off any excess plastic from the
molding process. I did not make this part of the process any
longer than absolutely necessary. I was going for a set of
assembled bugs first and foremost and just wanted to make
sure that no unsightly bits of plastic were sticking out
I have recently read articles on-line about dipping base
coated models into wood stain and having them come out
to really decent table-top gaming quality in like no time at
all. That's for me! So, I gave it a go and tried out the dip-
ping method and can't say that my results are really that
impressive at all. I have no doubt that I probably did some-
thing wrong during the process and very likely was using
too light of a wood stain color. The next dip that these guys
get will be in a vat of Simple Green to hopefully strip eve-
rything off without ruining the figures, but at least I tried.
The bugs, however, will be a nice shade of single-color
urban camo for this game. Yes, that means plain grey plas-
tic just like when they came off of the sprues.
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GAME PREPARATION
To determining deployment areas in Starship Troopers you
pick a tactic for your army. These are Attack, Defend and
Probe. After looking at the number, and size when com-
pared to a MI model, of bugs that I had and seeing that I
almost outnumbered him 3 to 1 he took the defend tactic
and I went with probe. Since Clay had defend as his tactic
he was allowed to pick which side he wanted to deploy in
and, no bug mystery here, he took the side with the terrain
and set up on top of it. Since I was probing I could choose
to keep up to half of my units off board for the deployment
phase. I decided to do this, but it ended up not being such a
good move as you'll see later. Since we had the same PL
we had to roll off to see who went first and it was Clay.
Since this was a first game, and a learning one, for both
myself and Clay I decided to use just what comes in the
basic box game. After pointing up what comes in the box I
discovered that I would have to adjust that plan just a bit.
Both squads (total of 16 guys) of Mobile Infantry will point
up to just over 600 points. The two units of bugs (total of
20 models) will get you to 300 points. The easy answer,
and the one that we went with, was to use a single unit of
Moblie Infantry (8 men) against all twenty bugs that were
split into two units of ten bugs each. We set up the board
with some defendable positions for the MI (courtesy of the
great terrain that you can pick up from Urban Mammoth
www.urbanmammoth.com
) and left the rest of the board
clear.
THE GAME
In Starship Troopers play progresses back and forth with
each player using all of his units/troops and then the other
player getting to do the same. Each unit can perform up to
two actions per turn. These consist of...
FORCES AND SET UP
The MI force consisted of eight men in M-1A4 Power
Suits, one of them being a Sergeant. All are armed with
TW-203-a Morita Assault Rifles with XW-110-G1 under
slung grenade launchers. The arachnid force was made up
of two units of ten warrior bugs.
Move – Up to your Move characteristic in inches. You are
slowed by difficult terrain and generally have to go
around impassable terrain. There are special move
types, like jumping, climbing and tunneling, that allow
you to, well, jump, climb and tunnel.
Since these are both Priority Level (PL) 1 forces we were
both restricted from taking some of the cooler options that
area available in larger games but that was probably for the
best since we're just learning the game and need to concen-
trate on the basics first.
Shoot – The launching of hot lead or plasma at your en-
emy.
Charge – Rushing in to pierce the soft flesh of humans or
the last stand of an MI hero before he gets his face
eaten by a bug, of course!
The mission generator matrix indicated that we would be
playing a Hold mission. This meant that were would get
victory points in full value for enemy units reduced below
half strength and also get full value of any of our own units
that survives the game above half strength. However, we
would lose points equal to the full value of any unit that is
within our deployment area at the end of the game, regard-
less of how much of the unit is left.
Ready – Prepare for the firing of a heavy weapon, piece of
equipment or using a special movement mode.
During your opponent's move your models are in a state of
readiness that allows them to react to enemy actions when
they complete said action within 10” of one of your
models. It's sort of like being on a persistent state
of Overwatch if you're an old-school Warhammer
40K player, but you can react multiple times if the
right circumstances present themselves. This as-
pect of the game means that you are almost always
participating, or on the verge of participating, even
during your opponent’s turn. It should keep even
very large games from bogging down and having
one player just sitting there waiting for you to get
all of your moves done.
The length of the game is determined by adding
three to the higher of the two army Priority Levels
that are represented on the board. Since we're both
PL1 armies we'll be playing for four turns.
DEPLOYMENT
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