Snapdragon Studio 6mm SF Scenery

We're having a bit of a move round in Bleaseworld which has led to the discovery of certain "lost" items in the loft including some of the display boards from when Wessex Games took Snapdragon Studio's 6mm SF range around shows in the nineties. These were stuck to black wooden boards but I have managed to prise them off and they can now be use for gaming.

It seems that photos of the range - which as you can see is high quality and stands the test of time - are quite rare, so here are the items I have rediscovered so far (there are some larger pieces that I will photograph when I find them).

Fire Direction Centre

Guard Tower

Trench

Ambush Position

Ambush Position (rear)

VTOL Landing Pad

Enclosed Hard Shelter

ICBM Site

I decide to add a bit of variety to the trade stand by painting a few items up in non temperate schemes such as these desert pieces...

Light Weapons Casemate

Small Bunker with Razorwire

Light Weapons Bunker

Tank Position

...and these snowy ones.

Firebay

Command Post 

Light Weapons Bunker

These two pieces were sat in a filing cabinet and had no identifying codes or descriptions on. I think the top one is a mortar team bunker but may be mistaken.

Iron Cow 2136AD: FIBUA

I was having a bit of a tidy up today and found an unmade box of Hawk Wargames Cityscape cardboard city terrain sat in a box, one of those impulse eBay purchases I used to make. Although scaled for 10mm I thought it would work well enough for 6mm when taking into account bases and the larger size of SF vehciles compared to historical ones etc, so bought it for Iron Cow (and maybe some Epic, found a few boxes of that as well).

HAving a good look at it today, the card looks pretty good and the buildings are designed as one piece fold together constructions that even just folded they are pretty rigid, though they will a dab of glue to make them gaming friendly. You also get several double sided one foot square streets to place the buildings on, which also look pretty good. Overall, even for the RRP of £30, this is a good purchase for 6/10mm SF wargamers - it would look awesome with Mechs walking down the street!

I have noticed Hawk do a Ruinscape set, not quite the blasted ruins I expected, but possibly a useful secondary purchase, in some respects it looks better than the more pristine Cityscape.

Back to the Future?

Today I was extremely productive! Thirty 20mm Romanian infantry are now painted and awaiting a coat of dip, along with a regiment of 28mm ACW Union infantry also waiting some dip. Unfortunately a business trip "oop norf" this week will curtail any further work until Friday, so the hobby will be restricted to reading, playing in the iPad and perusing the online wares of various wargames retailers...

6mm SF scenery from Angel Barracks (photo from their site)

One of these who will probably be getting an order pretty is soon is Angel Barracks. I saw their 6mm SF scenery "in the flesh" at Reveille last year and have been meaning to order some items up for my Iron Cow collection. The old grey cells got a kick today by their release of a force field fence that looks wonderful, I also like the solar panels. Just a case of working out an affordable order now...

A Schoolboy Error...

Feeling moderately chuffed with my work on a points system for Iron Cow, Mark Bevis and Davd Stuckey pointed out I had made something of a schoolboy error (although they were much politer in doing so), as, to quote Mark, I was "using a linear system for calculating points."

He added "as you found in the initial go with an infantry squad being only half the value of a MBT. Take those numbers, cube them, divide by a 1000. That way you will get your correct 3.5 Shermans to a Tiger ratio, or nearer than the traditional 1.5 Shermans to a Tiger you get with traditional liniear systems."

Armed with this insight I went back to Excel!

Assuming my original baseline vehicle design approach balance that speed, weapon and armour are all roughly equal (in the case of our M82 Boyd MBT) I followed yesterday's first costing attempt, tweaking the speed divider to 5 from 10 giving me numbers of Speed 56, Weapon 55, Armour 60. Add in AA and Morale (Marine +6 this time) I got to 181. Cube that and divide by 1,000 I got to 5,881! Dividing it instead by 100,000 it becomes a more manageable 59 points for one Boyd tank.

With this formula I did the remaining AmRep Marine Corps vehicles:

M90 Curtis heavy tank: 93 points
M41 Baumann IFV: 30 points
M88 Doherty SPG: 69 points
AH604 Martindale VTOL: 57 points

But what of the infantry you ask? Well they came in at a paltry 3 points.

As David pointed out; "one has to recall that infantry have other advantages over tanks - they can or should be able to hold ground, enter and control buildings and such and therefore are useful in games where vehicles are not". This is of course perfectly correct and this is the major failing of the points system when it comes to anything other than a straight forward encounter game with no varying factors like terrain, weather etc., and how realistic (or entertaining) are straight forward encounter games?

However, despite this a points system of sorts does have a potential use as a campaign tool in the likes of Iron Cow as well as giving players some idea of the relative value of their own AFV designs. Consequently I think I am going to start using this with Iron Cow and will now give some thought on how to produce a spreadsheet that other gamers can use to cost their forces as well as design their own vehicles.

Incidentally, that Am Rep Marine Armored Regiment is now 2,886 points!

What's The Point?

During the daily commute my mind often wanders onto matters wargaming. There is no real pattern to this and today for some unknown reason I started pondering a points system for Iron Cow (my SF armour rules).

Now I have no desire to play so-called balanced games using points, indeed my original train of thought started mentally bemoaning how Bolt Action army lists put (IMHO) too much emphasis on points as opposed to historical accuracy. However, I know lots of people like them as they (erroneously) believe this gives a fair and balanced game (which it doesn't, if you want fair and balanced play chess). That said if points systems is what people want, who am I to argue?

So how do you go about constructing a points system? An interesting question as you need to make a decision on what factors are more important than others when it comes to the game.

Taking Iron Cow for example each vehicle or base of infantry has stats for speed, weapon accuracy at six range bands, weapon penetration rating at six range bands, three armour ratings (front, side and rear) and an AA rating. It also struck me that the units Morale modifier also needed including...

So what is more important and therefore warranting more points cost? The trade offs between firepower, speed and protection are as old as time and certainly befuddle real life tank designers.

My initial thoughts were to rate each of the core aspects as roughly similar ie. speed = range/penetration = armour.

With this in mind I took the speed and divided that by 10, added the range accuracy percentages and divided them by ten, added the six weapon penetration ratings and divided that by two and added the armour ratings and multiplied them by two.

Applying this to the M82 Boyd MBT this gave me 28 + 22 + 33 + 38. Additionally I took the AA rating and multiplied that by five and the morale factor also multiplied by five. In total this gives the Boyd a points cost of 151. All seems very sensible.

Then I applied the same process to a base of infantry. The speed bumps came up at 72 points. So a tank costs little more than two bases of infantry? Ummm....

I decided to put some more weighting on firepower, dividing range accuracy by 5 not 10 and dividing penetration by 1.5 not 2. This took the Boyd up to 183 points but the infantry were now 96. More ummm...

Take three. Rather than add the range accuracy and weapon penetration, how about applying a sliding scale with better range and penetration at distance costing more?

So, splitting the six ranges into three blocks; short, medium and long, I divided the range accuracy per band by 5, 2.5 and 1 respectively, and then multiplied the weapon penetration ratings by 1. 1.5 or 2 whether short, medium or long. Additionally I reduced the speed division from 10 to 5.

The Boyd now costs 305, the infantry 102. Better...

However this fix has resulted in firepower costing around three times what speed and protection do (on the Boyd 159 points against 56 and 60). Ideally the three factors need to be balanced, so...

I changed the speed division factor to 2, speed now costing 140 points not 56.

For armour I increased the multiplier to 6, so the tanks armour costs 180 points.

Adding in the AA and Morale points, this takes the Boyd to 514 points. The infantry 170. This is much better, almost sensible...

Split down the difference between the tank and infantry are speed 140 against 60, firepower 159 against 62 and armour 180 against 6. Speed bumps indeed...

The only issue now was that the totals were quite large numbers and given Iron Cow units have lots of tanks and stuff an AmRep Marine Armored Regiment. for example, would cost something around 26,000 points!

Whilst I liked the sound of 25,000 point a side battles, logic dictated that the element points total is divided by ten at the end to produce a more sensible looking number! This means a Boyd would now cost 52 points, an infantry base 19 and a Marine Armored Regiment about 2,620 points, which all seems about right.

Of course this is all based on an assumption that my Excel formulas are correct (and cleverer people than me have got them wrong!) and subject to a sanity check against the other nations and their tanks...

Will this give a balanced game? Of course not, there is no such thing, but if it keeps people happy who am I to argue?

ONESS Jetkopter Fliegen!

Following on from the ONESS Panzers and Panzergreandiers I painted for Iron Cow, I finished off some air support in the form of a flight of Adler VTOL's yesterday. I love VTOL's in Iron Cow, short life spans but they zip across the board bringing death and destruction to the enemy!

The models are GZG and I must say I was very disappointed with some awful mould lines down the centre of the models which made two almost unusable. Normally I would return them for replacements but I attacked them with file and scalpel and the end result was passable. Given the normally high standards from GZG I'm not going to bitch about it and I know Jon would have had replacements in the post the same day if I'd have contacted him.

The models are painted in the same colours as the ground forces, albeit with a red "Von Richthofen" stripe and some old Skytex Maltese Cross decals I have had for donkeys years. They are not perfect but do the job here.

Not quite sure whether these qualify for "Plane Month" back to the Western Front next I think...

PacFed Mechanised Infantry Platoon

You may have seen that Brigade are currently releasing a new range of 15mm Pacific Federation (PacFed) armour. My 6mm PacFed force (with a LOT of tanks) resurfaced the other day whilst rummaging for something else. These models were originally used in an Iron Cow participation game at Salute many moons ago called "The Battle of the Mouths of the Fly River", a riverine inspired game with PacFed and Indonesian grav armour fighting over land and sea in C22nd Papua New Guinea.

Originally I used Heroics and Ros C20th Rebel Insurgent infantry for my PacFed infantry but I decided to paint up some old NavWar SF infantry to replace them as they fitted in better with the newer figures from GZG and Brigade that I have used with other forces.

The APC's are old Copeland's Models, which should now be available from GZG. Paul Copeland had a great eye for SF vehicles and he produced some great models.

I'll dust off the tanks soon and take some photos as they are nice models.

Power Armour Troopers

Finishing off the half painted batch of 6mm SF models I re-discovered hiding on my workbench is this small unit of Brigade Models Power Armour Troopers!

I haven't decided to attach them to any specific nation so painted them a generic military green.

Unlike regular infantry, I have mounted them one model to a tiddlywink base. This is because the models are slightly bulkier than normally armoured troopers and to make it easier to identify them at a glance on the tabletop.

ONESS Panzergrenadier Marsch!

Following on from the Panzers I went on a bit of a 6mm roll and finished off the Panzergrenadiers with the Lynx APC's.

The AFV's are from Brigade Models, the infantry (IIRC) from Ground Zero Games.

With the HQ unit and Artillery finished in 2010 this completes the ONESS German Regiment though some VTOL support would be useful...

ONESS Panzer Marsch!

Bleaseworld, Tuesday, 18 May 2010: "I only have the Germans left to paint to enable the PDF of Iron Cow to be released, so I have commenced painting operations!" And then silence...

I have no idea what black hole the Iron Cow Germans dropped into in May 2010 but they have reappeared on my workbench so with a slight feeling of guilt I dug out the paint and cracked on with them, finishing this tank squadron of 6mm Brigade Models Thor MBT's last night.

Hopefully the Panzergrenadiers and their APC's will be next...

ONESS Artillery & Brigade Command

A certain clamour on the Brigade Models forum reminded me that I only have the Germans left to paint to enable the PDF of Iron Cow to be released, so I have commenced painting operations! The intention was that I would paint them in the same camo pattern as my old Scotia 2300AD Germans but black undercoat technique and colours available meant this wasn't possible, so I've settled on this green and brown camo pattern.

I still need to do a little more work on the Brigade Command Unit and Artillery Battery pictured here, but I am pleased with the overall look. The miniatures are from the Brigade Models Iron Cow line.

On an unrelated note I picked up an interesting toy from the local Entertainer shop on Saturday that looks like it'll make a great VSF vehicle. It's currently drying after being undercoated but hopefully as it'll be predominantly dark grey/black I may get this finished by the weekend (though I am working away for a couple of nights this week). More on this soon...

CDSU Guards Tank Squadron

I've managed to finish my CDSU Guards Armoured Regiment with the addition of this squadron of Zhu De tanks from Brigade. Nice enough little models, if a somewhat blocky design they paint up quite nicely and look suitably communist in appearance! Just the ONESS Germans to do now and then it's a well earned break from 6mm and onto the 1/144th aeroplanes...

CDSU Guards Armoured Regiment

Despite the finger I managed to finish a good part of the CDSU Guards Armoured Regiment with only the tank squadron left to do (ok, some models need decals but I am still not trusted with scissors!)

For the most part the unit comprises of Brigade miniatures. The mechanised infantry platoon has eight Xie Fang APC's with one command and eight sections of infantry. The Xie Fang is a nice model, but I am not sure that the exit method for the infantry is very sensible! (out the top). Nice model though. 

The infantry are GZG Islamic Federation infantry. Whilst half the platoon pack has troops in kefiahs (and will be used for Islamic troops in Iron Cow), the others have a very flat helmet which for some reason put me in mind of the coolie rice hats, hence their use as CDSU mechanised infantry...

The artillery battery comprises of four Mao Zehdong SPG's, really nice models on a flat GEV bed. In retrospect I perhaps should have gone for the heavy rocket launcher variant for a more Soviet feel, but the SPG is a good looking model so I'm not sure.

The HQ unit comprises of six Xie Fang Command APC's and three Zhu De support tanks. The Zhu De's are very rectangular in look, but again are very nice models (I really like the basic MBT).  I might get some AA variants to provide some vital air defence ability as you don't want to lose your HQ unit to a well executed enemy aerospace strike!

Finally I painted up a Kim Chaek VTOL flight. As previously mentioned Brigade are so somewhat light on the VTOL front and these are GZG AV-6 troop transports. The rectangular look fits in nicely with the Brigade CDSU models. I need to put the decals on the hull sides when I get five minutes and the use of ten fingers back. Looking at the GZG listings there are some nice generic trucks that might be useful in a CDSU army so I might see how the finances are after pay day and avail myself of some.