Jupiter City's Newest S.E.n.T.R.I. Response Team

Sunday, September 18, 2046 

Jupiter Gazetteer

Jupiter City's superfits S.E.n.T.R.I. RaReTe in Glasston 

Hardesich Enterprises protecting tomorrow

By: SANDRA THOMPSON and MARTIN FALLSWAY

Captain

Yesterday, at the entry gate to the Hardesich Enterprises complex, Mayor Mason presented the latest in the S.E.n.T.R.I. defense system for Jupiter City. A new S.E.n.T.R.I Rapid Response Team (RaReTe) to provide a more advanced tactical response and force protection was activated in Jupiter City's Glasston area. The team is loaded with the latest technologies from Hardesich Enterprises.

According to Mayor Mason, "This team will bring merge the latest in defense capabilities from Hardesich and communications integration by NexTek to ensure rapid, focused, integrated response to any emergency." While it was clear that the unit is part of S.E.n.T.R.I., Commissioner Browning indicated that his staff were fully integrated into the response system and would have access to this team as a new resource to better protect the city and greater metropolitan area. S.E.n.T.R.I staff did not make comments or take any questions at the event.   Following the announcement, RaReTe loaded into a set of custom trucks and departed for the S.E.n.T.R.I. operations center.

CONTINUED AFTER THE BREAK


Jupiter City Sparks Sign A Prospect  - The Sparks offered a development deal to baseball superstar, Noah Layfield, this week signing him right after his 2015 Fall season debut with Lake Shore Blue Bombers. Noah skills were on display as he went 2-2 with 2 runs and 2 RBIs. Not a one-sided player and definitely a sign of confidence, he excelled at multiple positions on the Sunday afternoon game. He started at center field, played catcher, and finished up as the game's closer. The Blue Bombers played the Blue Blast in what turned out to be a hitters duel ending in a 30-30 tie after five innings.

READ MORE IN SPORTS C-2.

Making of RaReTe  

Sergeant

The RaReTe team is composed of a six-man strike force, that will be supplemented and grown to meet the current needs of Jupiter City. So let's talk about how this team was assembled. I previously provided the base model information in the Defending the Pacific Northwest from Jupiter City...S.E.n.T.R.I forces article. These figures have also been used for almost all of the This Is Not A Test games as my Gardia force.

All of the models wear a base uniform, which was painted up with Reaper MSP HD Military Grey. These tactical uniforms are designed to keep the body cool with a composite polymer which includes a Kevlar-like fabric to protect against bullets and blades. All of the officers are equipped with some amount of armor. For the standard officers, the armor is a lighter body armor, suitable for most engagements. The tactical officer equipped with the flamethrower has some armor which is supplemented by sets of flame retardant pads to protect against heat and fire. The sergeant of team is equipped with similar light weight gear, but has his helmet clipped to his belt. The last of the unit, is the Captain, who is geared up completely with heavy tactical armor. The armor base is a Vallejo Model Color Black Grey. This armor was washed with Secret Weapon Soft Body Black to add depth.

Flamethrower

All of the weapons had a base coat of Reaper MSP HD Midnight Black which has a purplish color to it. This works well with the black weapons. I went back over them with some Vallejo Gunmetal Grey to add some weathering. For the flamethrower, some Vallejo Model Color Gunmetal Blue was also dry brushed onto the ends to give it the look of metal that has reached very high temperatures.

The helmets were painted up with Reaper MSP HD Ash Grey.
These were washed with Vallejo Dark Grey Wash.The googles/visors of the helmets were painted first with Vallejo Grey Blue then hit with a highlight of Reaper MSP HD Concrete Grey. The trim on the lenses and other trim was painted with the Gunmetal Grey to give a metallic look.

Officer

The Captain and Officers have backpacks with some equipment. The air canisters were painted up with Citadel Chainmail as were the badges on the chests. The main part of the backpack was painted with Reaper MSP HD Field Grey as were the ties on what look to be sleeping bags or something similar. These were painted Reaper MSP HD Woodland Brown.

The tanks on the flamethrower's back were painted with Citadel Fiery Red. These tanks have highlights of Citadel Chainmail. All of the backpacks has some little lighted screens/buttons which were painted Citadel Mechrite Red or Citadel Enchanted Blue. Touches of ammunition and other things were painted up with various

All of the models were based on the Techtonic Craft Studios TekDech base crowns. I wrote up how these were painted and give a review of these base crowns in the I'm all about that base, bout that base, it's Techtonic article.

Officer

For This Is Not A Test, these officers represent Road Marshal O'Halihan's Gardia, a Peacekeeper warband. What is labeled as Captain above is Road Marshal O'Halihan who is a rough and tumble character, but with all the best intentions. He is motivated as a protector and one who wants to get back to the ancient times. In other circumstances, he would have been a Preservationist. But when the need was greatest he stepped up and to protect those who needed it most.

The Sergeant figure is what I use as my K-9 Handler, Mutt. This is a great figure and gives the appropriate look of a specialist for the police. Mutt is in charge of two K-9 units, Dawg and Cagney. Dawg is a Reaper BONES miniature which was previously discussed in the Marshal's Report: The Night Has Eyes. I have a slew of additional dogs from various manufacturers that will be added to the unit as I can get them painted, but the first to get done is a representation of Cagney.

Officer

The last three that are used are regularly are the officers. These are the Rank & File Officers of This Is Not A Test. These officers are your typical group and I have a cadres, named Flynn, Murphy, O'Brien. I usually use the flamethrower officer for Officer Scullin, but this won't work much longer. Officer Scullin uses a shotgun, but recently I picked up a flamethrower and will be adding a tactical officer to the mix soon.

New BONES will be painted up soon to grow the Gardia/RaReTe units. Protecting the wasteland or future Marvel city take tenacity and guns and these guys have both.

Defending the Pacific Northwest from Jupiter City...S.E.n.T.R.I forces

Marvel Role Playing Game

With the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is hard not to be excited about superheroes, but in all honesty; I've always been a geek for superheroes. If use the way back button we can all remember a time when superheros were the fodder of Saturday morning cartoons and later the introduction of the Marvel Superheros RPG. Unfortunately this was not a great system. This was an RPG that suffered mainly because it had to deal with everything from the weakest to the infinite and mechanically that is a beast especially when trying to play the game...I mean what do you do if a player character can run 50 miles in one turn or use a laser to cut a building in half? Even when you played a rather weak-sided set of heroes there was the issue of frustrated players because it was so difficult to increase a power or to adapt a power to a new use. Though my and my Nerdherd friends tried many times to make a go of it, but never made it very far...well super speed up to today and we have matured, are more learned, and have tons of superhero stuff as fodder. Add to that the universe of other middle-aged geeks who were in a similar situation, but now have the internet to share everything they have done and boom updated and hopefully workable Marvel campaign setting.

Jupiter City

My very good friend, Rob McDonald, has been hard at work building the Marvel campaign setting when he takes time away from The Fall of the House of Usher. We will be based in a place called Jupiter City in the Pacific Northwest. This started as the dream child of a well-known architect and the heart of the old city has a retro-futuristic design to it. This has since been eclipsed by all of the other modern parts of the city. I'll check with Rob to see if I can release more of his materials on here for people to read and be inspired.

S.E.n.T.R.I

S.E.n.T.R.I unit

Our home is protected by a sub-unit of S.H.I.E.L.D, called S.E.n.T.R.I. This unit is responsible for managing all of the superheroes in and around Jupiter City as well maintaining intelligence on all of the nefarious villains. As with all good police units, S.E.n.T.R.I needs some police, especially advanced looking tactical units. To fill this need, I quickly combed through the Reaper BONES Kickstarter sets and starting identifying and pulling figures.

I was able to quickly identify 10 suitable figures that had the right mix of futuristic armor and weapons to look appropriate in a Marvel campaign. The base models are the IMEF troopers and NOVA Corp BONES. Top Row: NOVA Corp Rifleman, Jazz Jenkins; Second Row: Garvin Marcus,  Torch McHough; Bottom Row: NOVA Corp. Sgt, NOVA Corp. Guard.

Pictured so far are the group with some basic color blocking. The base clothing is Reaper MSP HSD Military Grey. The body armor is Vallejo Model Color Black Grey.

Transportation is always a priority. I was out at RiteAid getting a couple of things and noticed a rack of cars. The vehicles looked to be pretty close to scale, but of course I didn't have a miniature in my pocket and they weren't labeled with the scale information. I looked up the company online and found out that these vehicles are in 1:39 scale, so not too far off the mark. Also the cost was pretty appealing at $4.99 each it was a minor investment.

Vehicles with models for scale

I picked up a couple of these Chevy Suburbans as a test. The picture here shows that they are pretty close  to the right scale. Would be a little better at 1:43, but this will work. The close figure is Torch McHough sitting on top of a Tectonic Studios Base Crown (review), but without the base that will also be added. The far figure is my Wasteland Hulk. You can see that these figures are not at full height and both are a bit squatted, so the scale works rather well. Also since the Marvel campaign is a role playing game and not a skirmish/wargame, everything is for representative purposes only so all of this works well. This will also work for future use in any This Is Not A Test games, though perhaps not if used with other O-scale terrain.

Geek Nation Tours - Day 1

Geek Nation Tours - AdeptiCon 2015

Day 1, Wednesday March 18 - Welcome to Schaumburg, IL

Teras Cassidy and Me

This was my first trip to AdeptiCon, but luckily I was joining some friends who have been multiple times and was facilitated by Geek Nation Tours (facebook). This was also my first experience with Geek Nation Tours and it was excellent. Teras Cassidy has put together a fantastic tour organization and helps with all arrangements including hotel stay, food, transfers from/to the airport, flights, Adepticon registration, and meeting lots of great people in the industry. 

I was lucky enough to have some sage advice from friends and since I was flying, I didn't pack everything I owned for the weekend. This, as it turns out is a really good thing, because what I did pack was too much. I packed up some of my Victorian Guard, which I had plans to paint, but then never did. I packed up my Star Wars stuff, but then never played. In fact, I ended up only playing two games, but more on that later.

I got to AdeptiCon (hosted in the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel) the day before the convention. While watching my Facebook and Twitter feeds, I noticed requests for help setting up some of the vendor booths. Now, as a reminder, AdeptiCon is very small even with the recent years of growth. I wandered down to see if Secret Weapon Miniatures needed help, but they were pretty much set. Then I wandered around to get a feel for where everyone was going to be stationed and when I went around the corner, there were all the good volunteers packing AdeptiCon swag bags. I figured, I was going to get one, so I could pitch in a bit. 

After about 10 minutes of packing, this cheery English bloke pops up next to me to pitch in as well. That bloke was Andy Chambers. We finished up the packing, received an incentive for our hard work ($5 off DSG games miniatures and a $10 voucher for concessions) and when all the bags were packed just stood there. Now I knew that later in the week, Andy was to be having dinner with us as one of the Geek Nation Tours events, but I am an opportunist. I asked Andy what he was doing and then we went to the bar to meet up with the rest of the group. 

Ironheart Artisans Blast Template

Well here are some other benefits to booking with Geek Nations, we got our registration done by Teras and that meant that we didn't have to wait in line for registration. You can order drinks from Sal's Beverage World and they miraculously are waiting at the hotel when you get there. I picked a case of Murphy's Irish Stout and a case of water. We also received some great Geek Nation Tours swag, including a branded long-sleeve tee, an Ironheart Artisans 2"inch blast template with markings for a 1" blast as well. Alex has done lots of other branded templates and objective markers, if interested definitely check them out. The latest and greatest is the add-on sets for Mantic's deadzone Kickstarter. 

That evening, we had our first Geek Nation's dinners. This was in the hotel and was, overall, pretty good fare. Following dinner and a plethora of announcements, we played some Warhammer 40,000 RPG. I had the honor of playing with some great folk in a Horus Heresy setting with guest GM Adam Fasoldt of Masters of the Forge (facebook). While the original idea was we would be a dinner and during the evening become acolytes, it turns out that an untrained psycher can easily unleash enough craziness that we were clearly heretics. The game was lots of fun and especially heretical, but in the end we all managed to escape alive though barely and I'm not really sure actually alive.

Final AdeptiCon haul

During the 40k RPG event, we also received our AdeptiCon swag, which included an AdeptiCon pint glass, AdeptiCon t-shirt, 10 tickets for the AdeptiCon Charity Army Raffle, and a load of armies and other gaming pieces.I'll have plenty of additional log posts to cover all of the loot I got as I get through assembly and painting.

How could it get any better than beers with Andy Chambers, well the convention hasn't even started (and we had lots of beers with Andy Chambers).

Hope to you see you at the next AdeptiCon,
Chris

Basing your fantasy miniatures with the new work by Dragon Forge Studios

Dragon Forge Studios 

The folks at Dragon Forge Studios have a great looking new Kickstarter that could be useful for anyone who plays #Warhammer Fantasy Battles, #D&D, or other role-playing games with a fantasy or even Greek/Roman time frame.

The bases are available in all sorts of sizes (25mm, 40mm, and 60mm round bases, and 120mm x 95mm oval). There are also sets of bike bases available (25mm x 75mm and 40mm x 70m). Bases will be available with a beveled edge or with round lips.

Additional options include pillars, objective markers (ammunition, monolith, altar), hidden objective marker (broken pillar) plus an great Pillar Kit for scenery or diorama building.

Check them out at Ancient Ruins II Base Series and get on board while you can. I've joined in and will post follow-up posts when I have them and start using them up.


There are plenty of options for getting into this Kickstarter campaign and looks like the key point of entry with the most flexibility and power is at the current $55 pledge level. At this level you get the Hero exclusive set plus five additional sets of bases. This level also qualifies for any of the stretch goals (where free to those pledging over $50).

Look for more to come as the campaign continues over the remaining 9 days.

Kickstarter stuff update

Kickstarter ...or that's where my money goes (continued)

Mantic Games - Dungeon Saga Dwarf King's Quest

So this Kickstarter is going gang busters and looks like it will top out as the best of the Mantic Games campaigns to date. The Dungeon Master pledge level, really the only pledge level, now contains the basic game and a load of bonus materials. There is enough now to play the game with friends or to play alone. There are bonus advanced rules plus rules for undead, orcs, and goblins. There are also a bunch of Kickstarter exlcusives. 

So let's take a look at the future for this one... bonus materials for the Warlord of Galihir add-on. The Warlord of Galihir is a $25 add-on level for an expansion pack. This includes goblin warriors, archers, orclings, and maw beasts. This includes the dungeon tiles, scenario rulebook, cards, and counters.

Some of the parts included with the Warlord of Galihir will also be added to Dungeon Master level pledge, which really makes that an even more fantastic level. 

There are still a whopping 17 days left in the campaign, which means we could have a rather heft set of materials coming when everything closes. Looks like potentially a fun way to play with the kids or with your fellow gamers. 

Hyground Games - 3D Terrain Tiles

The folks over at Yeti Militia have just started a new Kickstarter campaign and one that could be of potential use to lots of people. These look like some high quality gaming tiles that are comprised of a hex base system with interchangeable covers. This allows you to create custom configurations for any #tabletop system and for any gaming environment. One significant feature in the design of these is the ability to keep a 28mm figure on the hex even with there is a tree or other object present. There is some great video examples on the Kickstarter page which shows you how to build different layers and interchange the tops. 

Here are some examples of the terrain pieces. You can see that some are designed to occupy the entire space and some are designed to have a figure in addition to the design feature. In the picture above you can see how figures can do battle in a wooded/forest plot. These really changes the look/feel of any campaign and would allow you to make changes quickly for a #RPG setting. 

Since this is the beginning of what potentially could be a long series of custom tiles, there are plenty of areas for expansion. They have already designed and have ready for production nearly anything you might need for exterior play, there is nothing yet posted for underground or interior play. There are also limited to know creations for buildings or objects that would occupy multiple hexes. No doubt there could be plans for these in the future, currently noting exists. 

I don't know how this would translate for all games, such as Dungeons and Dragons which uses a 9-block design for battle or for Warhammer which is a straight distance skirmish game, but both could easily be adapted. All in all this looks like a solid project and the materials look fantastic with great adaptability to whatever gaming system you play. I'll be watching this closely to see how it goes and encourage you to check it out as well.

Next blog post will be about a freebie I got from Mantic Games, friends who are off to GenCon and eventually I'll post updates to the half-a-million projects I've already started.

Cheers,

Chris