Using the elephant-carried Gatling gun.

Here is my take on how the elephant-carried Gatling gun would be used in Colonial Adventures 2.0 and The Sword and the Flame.  It is nowhere as quick as a limbered gun, but about the same as a mule-packed screw gun.

My feeling is that the elephants would need to be removed much farther than a horse limber or pack mule, since they are more intelligent.

RAFM makes an elephant-carried Gatling gun set, but it uses two elephants per Gatling, which is correct.  I find the elephants to be rather weird. I just use 1 elephant because they're expensive, and 1 figure represents more than 1 man...

Salvage Run 2005

This is a post of a game that I put up on Two Hour Wargames in 2005.  Unfortunately, the original photos are no longer available, so I had to print out the pages in color, scan them into Photoshop, and do what I could.  Therefore, the picture quality is abysmal.

Salvage Run

The following is a solo game using the Xenoform part of 5150, and various interpretations from earlier Two Hour Wargames rules.

Planet New Iberia is the scene of sporadic combat between humans and bugs.  All has been quiet for several months now.  The mining outpost of Wheel Leisure has been abandoned since bugs were found in the lower mines.  Everyone left in very hasty way, so lots of valuables were left behind.

Bailey Mull had talked to enough drunken miners at the spaceport bar to realize that there were lots of goods in Wheel Leisure ripe for the pickings.  Her good looks and free hand with drinks brought some very exact info as to what she could expect to find for salvage.

Her ship, Grifter, had lain on a rocky ledge for 3 days as she and her crew scouted out Wheel Leisure for any signs of bugs.  For 3 days, there was nothing but the wind to disturb the dirt streets.

She had six crew in three vehicles to head to the warehouses on the far side of town n The crew consists of :

Bailey Mull: Rep 5, Hard Armor, Assault Rifle, Stone Cold

Froggy Hunter:  Rep 5, Assault Rifle, Slow

Al Scramuzza:  Rep 4, Assault Rifle, Hard As Nails.

The Ferret: Rep 4, Flamethrower, Brawler

Izzy Knot:  Rep 4, Grenade Launcher, Medic

Natalie Goodbody: Rep 3, Pistol, Ambidex- terous

Juliette Street: Rep 2, Machine Pistol, Runt

They were in three vehicles.

The lead vehicle was a Teixeira T35, an armored half-track, with a heavy machine gun in an enclosed turret, and a flexible mount light machine gun.  The T35 was cobbled together on a mid-tech world, and due to being just good enough to do the job, and low cost, was as common as a Volkswagen beetle was in the 20^th century. The vehicle was driven by Natalie, with Al riding shotgun, and Bailey in the turret.

Next was a pickup truck, driven by Izzy, with The Ferret as co-pilot.

Tail-end Charley was occupied by Sadie,a Salvage Dog halftrack with a lightly-armored cab and a flexible mount light machine gun.  It’s driven by Juliette, with Froggy riding shotgun.

Bailey led the parade down the main (only) street in Wheel Leisure until a bug hole opened up and out poured a mix of Big Ones and Little Ones to the tune of one dozen.

Bailey immediately let rip with the HMG and killed one Big One.  More bugs filled the holes in the ranks, and Bailey kept shooting, knocking out a total of 2 Big Ones and 2 Little Ones.  And then 4 Big Ones jumped on the T35, blocking the driver’s vision, and too close for the turret gun to bear.  As the T35 came to a halt, Izzy gunned the pickup around the bugs and headed for the warehouse.  Sadie lumbered up, and Froggy hosed the T35 with LMG fire, taking care of 3 bugs.

Bailey hoses the bugs that didn’t make it to the T35, and takes out 2, and tells Natalie to run over another 2.  She misses.  A Big One charges Sadie, but Froggy guns him down.  Meanwhile the last Big One on the T35 strikes frantically at it, but can’t damage the T35.  Since the T35 is impervious to LMG fire, Froggy takes care of the last Big One on board.

Up the street, Izzy and The Ferret jump out of the pickup and enter the warehouse.

The T35 takes care of the last Little One, and heads up the street.  Sadie inexplicably hangs back.  (Juliette’s lousy Rep 2 plays havoc with continuing activation)

While Izzy and The Ferret start looting the warehouse, the T35 turns around and comes up next to Sadie.  Bailey opens the hatch and screams blue murder at Juliette, who lurches forward.  Natalie keeps the T35 fender to fender with Sadie, as Bailey makes interesting comments as to the family history of Juliette, while the 2 vehicles make their way to the warehouse.

Bailey leaps out of the T35, and jerks Juliette out of Sadie, and continues to chew on her, while everyone else loads Sadie, glad not to be Juliette.

Natalie goes to check the fuel tanks across the street, and the pickup starts back to the Grifter.

Sadie is loaded, and Natalie moves the T35 to the tanks to fuel up.

Suddenly 14 bugs pop up between the crews and the way out.  The pickup is long gone, and going faster.  Only Bailey sees them.  She jumps back into the T35, and yells at Natalie to get in and drive.  Sadie rounds the back of the abandoned hauler, and Froggy spots the bugs and takes out 1, and runs out of ammo 

Natalie spins the T35 and Bailey takes out 1 bug.  Froggy reloads.

Bailey fires again, and knocks 1 out.  Froggy takes out 2.

The T35 and Sadie move slowly forward and fires.  Bailey takes out 1, and click, click, is out of ammo.  Froggy misses and is out of ammo.

Natalie guns the engine as Bailey reloads and Sadie lumbers forward as Froggy reloads.  But while they are unloaded, a Little One leaps on the T35, and another jumps on the front of Sadie, and attempts to get Froggy, who gives him a haymaker on jaw, with no effect.

Both the T35 and Sadie move out, with bugs clinging to them.  Froggy and the bug spar ineffectively.

As they roll forward, a sudden lunge from the bug kills Froggy.  The bug continues to slice and dice, and Sadie rolls to a halt, as Juliette grabs for her machine pistol.  The T35 continues on, unaware of what is going on behind them.

Bailey opens the hatch and kills the bug on the T35 with her assault rifle.  Only then does she realize that Sadie is halted, and can only watch as the bug slips into Sadie’s hatch and kills Juliette.

The T35 spins around, with Bailey firing with her assault rifle, since the HMG is too low to have any chance of shooting down the hatch, and might damage Sadie. 

As they pull alongside, she finally pink mists the bug.  She sends Al to get Sadie running so they can get out of Dodge with all of the goodies.  Al cleans out enough goo in record time, and Sadie lurches forward.

As they pass the only 2 story building in town, the second story door swings open and a young voice yells, “Hey, don’t leave me, you salvage skanks,” and Niki the Twister sprints down the stairs, onto the T35, and into the co-pilot’s hatch that Al left open. 

Bailey screams at her, and Natalie says they can’t leave her; she’s just a kid.

Bailey groans, “And you thought the bugs were trouble?”

Even in a vehicle, bugs can give you trouble.  The bugs were very unfortunate in activation rolls, or the game might have gone differently.  There was also a bug activation 45” off the table, so it was ignored.  The humans were drawn with the ATZ NPC table, with appropriate weapons for the figures I had.

This game was played shortly after 5150 came out, and uses the original All Things Zombie for characters.  The buildings are from WorldWorks.  The T35 is a modified US WWI M8 that I got from Ed; the salvage vehicle is lead, and the transport is paper.

Elephants and Gatlings!

Since all gamers have short attention span, I decided to paint up two elephants with Gatling guns on their backs.  This is in tribute to Gunga din, of course!  I lost my two Ral Partha Gatling guns in Katrina, and haven't replaced them until last week, when I ordered a pack from Dave Kemper through Great Endeavours.  So without further delay, here they are.

Yes, Virginia, I did have two Redoubt Tiger Hunts.  In my defense, they were bought many years apart.  The platforms have craft plywood bases and coffee stirrer sides.  The nails were added with a disposable drafting pen.  The elephants were painted in a method described to me by Vince Clyant of The London War Room many years ago.  They are painted with metallic spray paint, and then dull-coated.

Although the Gatlings in the movie are disassembled, I didn't want to go to that much trouble, so you just pick them out of the boxes and set them on the ground.  They will be manned by two Highlanders each with their rifles cut away, and, of course, an officer.  They are in process!  Here's a picture of how they will be uniformed.

The assembled Gatlings can be removed and baggage substituted, or can provide an improvised howdah that can hold two figures (a little shakily).

Once again, thanks for looking, and comments are welcome!

Shanty Town, my Shanty Town, where the lights are ... non-exisitent!

Been a while since my last post.  Real life, as usual.

In a moment of insanity, I decided that it was time to paint about 150 - 200 Peter Pig AK-47 republic figures I bought as a hodgepodge about 10 years ago.  Then somewhere in the past, when Cannon Fodder Miniatures was still selling them, I bought a pack of his African irregulars, recently added to with Rebel Minis' Bongolesia box set.  All of these are, of course, 15mm.

So far, I've only painted Rebel Minis African regulars, close to the picture on his site.

But the recent release of a Shantytown by Finger & Toe decided me to do buildings first.  Originally I reduced the 28mm buildings to 55%, but that made them too small, so I ended up reducing them to 73%, to match up to the ones I had generated in Model Builder at 1/87.

I had found a pack of 50 new, unused Budweiser beer coasters at an Antique store and decided to use them as bases.

Here are the nine bases I made up.  The ground texture is from Finger & Toe.  The roofs with round ventilators on them are from Finger & Toe, as is the two-story hovel.  The fences and the rest of the buildings are my designs.  Finger & Toe's buildings are from a more advanced shanty town than mine, since they have electricity.

This shot is obviously from a passing UN helicopter, but gives you a better idea of the cluster.

And here's a panoramic view featuring the outhouses on the left!

One like this, and one like that.

There is also a need for a more modern town, so I designed these 2 buildings with Model Builder, with signs from PrintMaster.

I'll design more, and place them on some floor tiles Chris Swearingen gave me.

The picture quality is not up to my usual because I didn't use a tripod as I was getting ready to go to Texas and needed to get the buildings off the dining room table!

Oh, though I mentioned AK-47 Republic rules, I won't be using them.  I'll look at Rebel Minis' Modern Havok and Bongolesia, and do what he does; modify something from Two Hour Wargames.