ChargeBlog

Well a little later than usual.

So going to say – September felt like a hard month. Generally low on energy and focus across all things, so naturally the painting suffered a touch. But at the same time, managed to get some game time in which is always a plus.

On the other hand, I’m really happy with having done the move from doing my hobby updates on Twitter/Facebook to centralising them here. I can more easily see people actually reading the stuff I’m working on, rather than just scrolling past.

Project 365

Lets take a look at the details.

So I picked up a couple of new things but again, the 3d printing is strong. I even managed to go back into my back catalogue to paint up some Northstar figures for fantasy. On the downside, I didn’t quite reach my target of painted this month. Luckily my excess covered most of the slack.

Project Moderns

Another month doing a lot of Moderns. I managed to fit in quite a variety of things, from printing out some vehicles to actually getting a game in!

First up, the game! First time playing in the ChargeReal, first time with the new version of Skirmish Sangin Version 2 and first time playing moderns against an actual person since July 2019. It was nice getting the tactical brain up and going, and proof nothing quite beats Skirmish Sangin as my favourite ruleset.

It was also fun actually introducing ChargeReal to the tabletop, setting up a game that uses the specific situation rather than just hanging names off real-world locations. I’ve already got few extra scenarios planned, looking into other areas of the world. I really need to keep updating the wiki, especially with some new ideas for just for the Albion Empire is up to along the border with the Bazi Emirate.

After rekindling my liking for the period, I decided it was time to expand the vehicle pool. I found a really good maker of 1/64 scale vehicles on Cults (an STL site) by the name of Guaro 3d. The models are not cheap but in comparison to the 1/100 files from Bergmann, a lot more detail is saved when you get them up to 1/50 (my preferred scale). I’ll do a full post on the files I’ve picked up at some point, but I think this guy is a gold mine for anyone 3d printing for ultramoderns.

One downside to 1/50 for vehicles it that I am rapidly reaching the maximum size my print bed can handle. It was a limitation I knew I’d run into when I started off but the trade-off was having the correct sized clean/cure station and the more reasonable price. However, next time I’ll know that printing 1/50 vehicles is definitely something I’m interested – for now, I can limit vehicle size or chat to friends about borrowing some print time (maybe).

This month also saw some new releases for Spectre. Two squad packs and an add-on, definitely leaning towards the near future/cinematic look.

For the agents range, we’re getting a much more fair weather looking team compared to the rest of the range. These boys (and girls) looks very similar to the agents in the Division 2, with an interesting mix of modern guns. I really like the backpack setup, covered in extra gear and seperate pieces to be played around with.

For the criminals, we have some masked high tech criminals with a collection of some High Speed looking AKs and ARs. There is a good mix of high end firearms, perfect for showing some well equipped operators. I’m seeing them in use as some special security agents, perfect for counter-intelligence and dealing with foreign special forces. I can already picture a mission with a mix of regular army and these over-equipped bad guys hunting down some low profile agents.

As for the VGB (or Very Good Boy), I’m far less interested. I can see what they are going for with it, taking design inspiration from the Boston Dynamics Spot with the addition of the RWS mount but frankly it looks a touch awkward. I much prefer the chunky designs of things like the Ranger from Battlefield 2042 for my ultramodern tech.

Project Fantasy

Fantasy was again quiet last month. I managed to get in one of the weekly games (a rather fun dungeon crawl with slowly revealed tiles) but had to delay a fortnight due to not having it sorted. Luckily my Wednesday evening games can be pushed back, rather than rushing to play something that isn’t fully finished.

Part of what I was finishing was these cultists from Northstar. They have been in my collection since 2018 (along with the rest of the original round of fantasy skirmish). They are really nice figures, with lots of lovely details on them. I’m planning to start cleaning out the North Star figures – they are fun to paint, plenty of detail without being too overwhelming.

Project Six (Ultra)Mil

Just at the tail end of last month, I got to talking to Lazy Forger about some of his rules he was working on for super small scale games. Having seen some of his great work on MMF and also having played his previous game Round of Fire, I decided to take a look into the idea of doing some games in 6mm. This is definitely something that I’ve been on the fence about – 28mm isn’t really that good for modern games feature more than one or two armoured vehicles and for world building sometimes you need larger scale battles. Using the Bergmann 1/100 models, as well as the other STLs I purchased, I’ve started assembling some forces. I’m going to be testing out the rules so expect some smaller scale conflicts coming soon.

That’s it for this month’s update, I’ll see you in a month!