frustratedpilot | Entries tagged with wargaming

Still very much a Team Yankee wanna-be...and still nowhere near having an army ready.

Partly, I'm trying to determine the "character" of my forces, and partly, I'm trying to get the best deal I can on the pieces. It used to be that diecast tanks in Team Yankee's scale were thick on the ground and you could buy them at just any dollar store toy department. Not any more. Now I have to try to scrounge them in antique and thrift stores--if they've got any.

I forget when it was, but I was in a heraldry group with somebody I'm somewhat distantly related to, and we got into a discussion about the symbols on his family coat of arms. They are called pheons and they are arrowheads as they were in the Middle Ages. Because of this being so definitive a weapon of war, the pheon has been a frequent symbol in military insignia, and it led me to look for insignia like these for one of my wargaming armies, in the interest of setting their character traits.

The two images above are courtesy of the Pentagon's Institute of Heraldry. The units are the 128th Aviation Brigade and the 158th Infantry Brigade of the U.S. Army. They are both training formations in the Deep South of the U.S. (Fort Rucker and Camp Shelby, respectively).

Looking through my archives here I realize that I've been a fan of Flames of War for almost ten years now but have only actually PLAYED it ONCE. (It was a demo of Team Yankee last year, as you might recall.)

I'd love to put together an army, but I'm more in sticker shock than I am enthused. That and I tend to think outside the limits of the rulebooks, if history gives me an excuse.

Last year in the After-Holidays Sales, I got a bunch of Phantom jets as "Air Support", and I'll give them a repaint soon. But that "special ingredient" set what I want to do with the companies I want to build:

* U.S. Army Reserve/National Guard Company (I haven't decided on Armor, Airborne or Airmobile, but I wanted them to be less modern than the regular forces--still stuck with battle bowler helmets and Vietnam-era equipment.)

* French D.O.T. [Defense Ops, Territorial Army] Armored Car Company (Found this in an old publication. A second-line, rapid reaction unit that would have been in action if the Warsaw Pact invaded the West.)

* Rest of the West Company (A scratch force of Dutch/Belgian/Luxembourger/Dane units.)

If I could stay awake 24 hours a day, I could grind on Gundam: Duel Company 40 times a day, and so earn the Gold for a FAZZ (Full-Armor Double Zeta Gundam) in 10 days. And then two weeks later, have the Gold for an Ex-S (Extreme Superior Gundam).

Why do I feel I'm already DONE with this game?

The standard objective marker in Flames of War is the same shape and size as a European-style poker plaque.

On Saturday I played the demo version of the new Team Yankee permutation of Flames of War and again I want to build an army in the worst way.

Years ago I could have gotten diecast tanks in the right size/scale for the game, but now they seem to be scarce, which means I'll probably troll every thrift store I can find in five or six counties for the things, if there are any to be found. Most of the ones I'd seek would have been made by Motormax or Polyfect, specifically the Cold War designs. (I'd bought the Motormax Sherman, Churchill and T34-85 for the WW2 version of Flames of War, but I since have gotten rid of those.)

Saw in my newsbox that the Hobby Lobby in Sevierville had their Grand Opening today so I went there and got this diecast Corsair, which I'd been hoping to find for quite a while. (They'd sold out at other area locations and I was seriously thinking about going to the one in the Tri-Cities.)

FP

1) I need to somehow tell my Troop to refrain from attacking Sinanjus, Kshatriyas, or any M.S. units piloted by Frontal (man, I hate that name) or Marida Cruz. They are impossible to kill.

2) Build Strike Gundams are impossible to fight. In my latest battle, one took out two of my M.S. units SIMULTANEOUSLY. I guess I should be glad they haven't released a Reiji Pilot card yet.

3) I lose more fights from my M.S. targeting fresh enemy when there are damaged enemy in play that could be finished off.

Thanks to me having a Bandai Channel account for years, I've been able to finagle a Bandai Namco account, which gives me the benefit of allowing me to play GUNDAM: DUEL COMPANY when the game still has yet to be released to the North American market.

This is my Troop's homescreen.

This is my card bank as it was yesterday. (There have been changes.) All my current cards are "Rental" cards, which means I got them for free but they aren't worth anything. I wish I could get codes for the Promo cards, but nobody who's got them is sharing.

This is a typical Formation screen, where you lay out your Troop cards to make Platoons for combat. It's good that everything's in English, else I'd be totally lost.

The results of my first practice battle the other day. I'm now in a multi-player Conquest campaign. Currently my Troop is #8 in a 32-Troop Army, with more than 100 kills so far.

Roughly 1/72nd scale, the fuselage is just a little over 6"/15 cm long.

With my last of my cash in pocket I bought two starter packs for the old Wizkids "clicky" Crimson Skies game yesterday. If you've been following my blog, you'd know that I'd been converting the clicky airplane miniatures for use in other games in recent months. I bought the starters in the mistaken idea that a couple miniatures were included, but they aren't at all.

No wonder this never actually caught on. It was expensive at launch, and for a collectable game, needlessly complex and lacking in avenues for creativity.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/457830

They've already made their first pledge goal and they're halfway to their first Stretch goal as I write this.

The miniatures will be roughly the same size as the old Battletech Unseen so could be collected by Battletech fans too.

FP

The current terrain scale for Battletech is 1/600. It used to be 1/400 but it changed in later editions.

The game Dropzone Commander has downloadable modern city building paper models in their scale of 1/150. So if I want a batch of buildings in Battletech scale I could print them out one-fourth their intended size...and pack SIXTEEN of them onto one sheet!

In my travels yesterday I saw that the second set of AXIS & ALLIES: AIR FORCE MINIATURES game, BANDITS HIGH, is already out. (The official street date is a few days from now, but some stores have them on the shelves and pegs.)

Nominally, I'd be all over it. Nowadays, with nobody to play against, it's hard to care all that much.

For the last while I've been attempting to port CRIMSON SKIES planes into AXIS AND ALLIES: AIR FORCE MINIATURES rules for no good reason.

I decided to go the route of invented factions with my wargame armies partly because of a general disgust with the purely historical paradigm (partly boredom and partly hatred for the horrors of the politics involved) and my ongoing need to do something creative and self-authentic. Besides, if I have pieces in, say, Nde Nation markings, they are far less likely to be stolen from a big convention as, for example, ones with Wehrmacht Afrika Korps colors.

Who Is What:
Balance Corps. Colors: Woodland/Temperate Brown. The "hero" faction of the Hackett Continuum, their insignia is intentionally based on the compass rose sigils of NATO and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Nde Nation. Colors: Grassland/Zebra-Tiger Stripes. This is a tongue-in-cheek concept from Hollywood and anime given a serious twist. The return of the Apache tribal nation as a modern militant force, with contemporary weapons and technology.

Royal Sealand Guards. Colors: Nocturnal Gray/Black/Deep Purple; Stealth. The shield is the same as in the actual micronation's coat-of-arms. The Royal Guards is a real organization; in the Hackett Continuum they are one of the main military forces backing Balance Corps.

Misfit Brigade. Colors: Arctic Gray/White. Based on the movie of the same name and the Weird War Two game concept that followed, these are renegade Germans in a WW2 or Cold War setting.

Trigon Federation. Colors: Forest/Jungle Green. The Aggressors from the Cold War U.S. Army exercizes.

Freikorps. Colors: Desert Tan. Real history given some steroids. The Nazis attempted to turn Allied P.O.W.'s to their cause, but never got enough of them to send them into combat. And worse, the Freikorps was easily penetrated with Allied double agents! See also Kurt Vonnegut's novels Slaughterhouse Five and Mother Night.

Metal Victory Army. Colors: Bare Metal and Black/Iron. Invented for the comic books I was writing in the 1990s, they would evolve into one of the antagonist forces in the Hackett Continuum.

Cuerpo Sangre. Colors: Marine/Blue. The other main antagonist force, they are co-belligerant competitors of the MVA.

White Army. Colors: Urban/Ghost Gray. Like the Misfit Brigade, only renegade Russians and Eastern Europeans rather than Germans.

Factional Insignia for some of my wargame armies in the making:

I reserve the right to return to this entry and explain these and add context. Needless to say, this doesn't reflect real-world politics or my personal philosophies.

( Awesome Trailer For Border Break Airburst Version 2.5 )

Wings of War.

I'm obsessing.

A part of me wants to buy up some LITKO bases and some HBM model planes to go on them.

Another part of me just goaded me into calculating how many Triple-Size bases can be made from a 24" by 48" sheet of Acrylite Plexiglas. (27, more than enough for my existing WW2 1/72nd scale airplane model aviary.)

I want to play.

I don't know anybody near me who plays.

I'll probably be stewing in my own juices for a while longer.

These are icons from MapSym and Mil Symbols font sets that I downloaded months ago. These were the last in my sets of military symbol icons that I hadn't yet identified...but tonight I found some answers by going to the Army Heritage Collection Online website and downloading a glossary Field Manual (FM 21-30) from the 1960s.

1) SBS = Special Boat Service/Squadron
2) MOD...possibly means Ministry of Defense
3) MAR...possibly Maritime forces
4) LAND...possibly Land forces (in what context?)
5) AIR...possibly Air forces (again, in what context?)
6) LOG = Logistics
7) NCC = National/Naval/Network Command Center, or possibly Non-Combatant Corps
8) dunno
9) Heavy Unit (German)
10) & 11) Gendarmerie (Belgian and French, respectively)
12) T = Traffic regulation (British)
13) dunno
14) RGR = Royal Ghurka Rifles, or possibly Rangers
15) DPU = Deep Penetration Unit, or possibly Depleted Uranium Ammo

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Stephen R Bierce

Frustrated Pilot

March 2022

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Pilot's Log

Where Very Little Happens

Entries tagged with wargaming

Wargaming Acquisition Weirdness

The Pheon Peons?

Armies of the Sort-Of Real

The Daily Grind?

Useless Fact

Tanks But No Tanks?

Corsair Correction

Duel Company

Mobile Enough To Suit?

Note To Myself

Skies Of A Different Color

Robotech Rises Again...On The Game Table

Useless Gamer Facts

Ace In The Hole

Spinning My Wheels And Propellers

Armies Of The Unreal, Explained

Armies Of The Unreal

Not Available In Any Store!

I Hate Having Nobody To Play With

Semi-Explained