21 years to 21st Century

To say it has been a while since I painted any OGRE game miniatures would be like saying that dinosaurs ruled the Earth a long time ago. I've been playing OGRE/GEV since the first edition of the bagged micro game.

Back in the early eighties I acquired a Grenadier Models Mark 5, which is still my pride and joy, but I've painted nothing for the game for 10 years. You have seen those here. With the impending release of the Kickstarter edition of Ogre I was moved to dust off a tray of miniatures and start working on them, as you can see above.

And here is them all painted green ready for the camo scheme.

I had a light bulb moment when I realised that I should just re-label my Pan European forces as the 7th Demi Brigade Légion Etrangère, rather than keep calling all my North American Combine vehicles that, especially as I have a whole load of Combine OGREs also on the bench being painted.

Why the title for this piece you may ask yourselves? 

Quite simple really. I bought all these miniatures when they were first released back by Ral-Partha back in 1992, which means that they have been maturing for 21 years.

Freedom Army of Mummerset Infantry

  

Back last year I wrote a post on infantry with no pictures, just saying pictures later. A year has passed and now there are pictures. First is some Power Armour troops using MechWarrior Dark Age miniatures. These are rather nice models, and what I found interesting was that there were at least two sculpt made, or two separate moulds, as there are some slight variations between figures.

And the second platoon that I finished recently are the motorised, à la BattleTech definition of same, infantry. These are quad bikes with what looks like some sort of rotary machine gun mounted on it. Too big to mount in pairs, hence individual basing.

Finally, the FAM company. I still need to paint up a command (two figure) base for the foot infantry (serves no actual command function, it's just useful to be able to remove figures in different combinations during the game).
 

House Steiner Infantry

Previously, I gave an update on the things on my wargame bench awaiting further work to finish, for definitions of finish that include expanding army's as needed, and wrote about basing them here.

So above and below are some of the resulting figures from my post here, now based and painted.

I sorted the MechWarrior Dark Age figures  by weapon types, and then made mixes to give each platoon variety and add flavour to the game. These are flamethrower figures being used to represent a combat engineer platoon. All I have to do now is make some flame markers like Sidney did.

By having a couple of bases with one figure, and a base with two figures, it's really easy to add and remove casualties to keep track of the platoon's strength.

And here are four platoons acting as a Company. I've still got to paint up two more platoons; one to replace the combat engineers, and the other to add a motorised scout platoon to the TO&E of the player's force.

Kuratas

   

Okay, it's the Japanese and they are mad about mecha and all, but here is a genuine battlemech.

Post excitement, now I have time to comment properly as an addition....

This most reminds me of the Tachikomas in Ghost in the Shell, but I can imagine that pretty soon someone will take the next step and have working legs too. Then the mech will be very much like the Scope Dog in VOTOMs.

Look through the video to check out he different colour schemes they are offering the Kuratas in too. Finally, how soon until we see a miniature from someone?

Technical details for this mech appear on Advanced Dungeons & Parenting, citing it weighs about 4,500kg (4-tons), ultra light mech, that stands 4m-high (13 feet), 3m-wide and 4m-long. The Kuratas seems to have gone global.
  

BattleTech Canon 2

 

In Part 1 I laid out the idea of rules as being canonical and playing games as liturgy, or service to the rules. This time I want to look at the books that make up the BattleTech bible, so as to compare and contrast them in order of canonicity. From this we can ask what books are apocryphal and what this means to the BattleTech universe?

Starting with the easily categorisable books, which are all the various editions of the rules found in the boxed sets that have been released over the years; BattleTech, CityTech, AeroTech, BattleForce, Solaris VII, BattleTech Reinforcements I & II etc. After this are the Technical Read Outs starting with the original 3025 and now up to 3085, plus and XTRO Prototypes.

All of these were written as part of the rules and therefore are part of the primary canonical sources for the game.

Now we can move on to those books that add to the background, but are not rules, or catalogues of things that are made using the rules for playing games of BattleTech. Here things become less clear, because there has been a move to categorise information in some of the books as rumours, or beliefs held by the in-universe narrator. I think that this is rather a slippery slope, which is further developed as the novels are now described as the characters point of view and is not necessarily totally true i.e.: they are biased.

For me the end sum of this stance is to make such books Apocryphal, and therefore no longer canonical. If you agree it means that large swathes of the BattleTech universe history are now just one point of view of what happened, but not necessarily facts, or even for that matter true.

Perhaps the whole history is a conspiracy to hide the truth that the Wolverines are holding back the alien hordes from over running the Inner Shere.

How's that for a thought?
   

BattleTech Canon 1

Canon comes from the history of the Romans and the Catholic church and the idea of rules and law to govern. It is literally a "need" for society to function. In this case BattleTech Canon is needed to play a game of BattleTech.

The BattleTech canon is quite interesting if you look at it as a liturgical process. By this I mean I am equating being a fan of the game as "worship", and that "service" is following the rules of the game. There is no implication of religious idolatry here, just a functional behavioural comparison that sees both as being a similar process.

Liturgy derives from the ancient Greek concept of service to the state, and carried with it a financial burden taken on by the citizen. Using this we would see that buying BattleTech products as the financial burden undertaken so as to be able to follow the rules of the game; the "service".

As you can tell this post was driven by my previous post about citizenship brings service.

Rules are generally written down in books, and law is the literal enforcement of the rules. So, when we play a game of BattleTech (or for that matter any other game with a set of rules) we are engaged in a lawful act (thereby being good citizens). No wonder people get involved with arguing the finer points of the rules, because otherwise they would be seen as acting unlawfully (this is probably worth a post all of its own, and again I find myself inspired by my recent experience as a juror).

The first canon, now redacted, were those rules found in the BattleDroids game from FASA. Unfortunately, I no longer have a copy of this book, because as soon at the second edition of the game came out I moved to using those rules, because they were expanded and had clarified, or changed how things happened. For instance the sequence of actions within a turn were changed, and the construction rules for making battlemechs were also changed, as just two examples.

From this canon came the first Technical Read Out, or TRO as I will now refer to these works.

The famous and much loved TRO:3025. I will now suggest that a TRO is a catalogue of legal things that the rules allow you to use. This is a bit like "case law" under the British legal system. Case law is known as common law from precedent, which means quite simply if something has been agreed on before that it is only fair to apply the same ruling when it happens again. So if a battlemech designed under the rules appears in a TRO it is part of the canon of BattleTech.

So by extension all books that are based on the game canon, become canonical, which means it is the normal standard one plays by. However, just to remind you, I am not talking about BattleTech being a religion whereby errors and omissions become heresy, but a game where the terms and conditions are that errors and omissions will be corrected in later errata, which is more like British case law that I mentioned earlier. To be continued...
   

Citizenship Brings Service

Heinlein's Starship Troopers has the line that "service brings citizenship". Having just completed two weeks jury service for the Crown Court, I suggest to my learned readership that citizenship requires service. What was interesting to me about the whole experience was the emphasis that the defendant was innocent until proven guilty by the prosecution, but the important part of the process was deciding beyond reasonable doubt that you were sure, based upon your experience and interpretation of the evidence; not the prosecutors, or defense advocates, but your judgement as a juror.

Needless to say that the retiring debates were interesting, and reminded me of the times I've been witness to debates about game rules when something one player does appears to contradict the rules, or interprets the rules in a way that the other player of the game disagrees with.

Observing the advocates presenting their respective cases I noticed the similarity of approach, the pedantic observation of detail, and way of questioning that suggested that the witness had remembered events wrongly. The judge was interesting because his role was made very clear to us by both sides; he was the law (images of Judge Dredd now racing through everyone of a certain age I guess?).

It strikes me that having an umpire in any game is a bit like having a judge, with the players as advocates, and the game being the process of advancing to one's objectives by following the rules of "law" aka the rules of the game. No wonder players get so het-up about rule perceived rule infractions, it is about the playing a game within the "law" of the game, because generally people want to not break the law/rules, unless they think they can get away with it of course.

And there is the rub of it.

People in general will behave in a lawful fashion until either they become over aroused and angry, or see a chance to gain advantage with no cost to themselves. I think it is a measure of civilisation that people can sit down and largely play games by following the rules. With the caveat that I mentioned.

PS: Totally stoked about the new Starship Troopers animated film that is set for release this August.
   

Marik Marauders: 2 Additions

To see some updated photos of my House Marik mechs go here, and when you come back you can see the new additions to the force below.

The Cicada is one of those nothing to write home about mechs, as it is a bit too fast for its size, which in game terms means it's not able to carry what I would consider a good combat load. Mine are all therefore refits that fix this problem by changing out the stuff it carries and slowing it down.

I never liked the original sculpt of the Jenner, but this one for the Clans looks nice, so I use it as an Inner Sphere captured mech now under House Marik care.

Above is a left leg forward repose of the classic Locust model, which was a tad tricky to do, and I think I can do an even better version now that I've got this one under my belt.

I like Locusts, they are one of my favourite mechs in the game, and I tend to do well with them when playing. This is my interpretation of an LRM5 version.

House Steiner Über Alles: 2 Additions

As part of getting back into doing regular updates on this blog, I've been going through all the old posts and deleting some photos, which some of my readers may have noticed? I've also been updating photos where I have better pictures too. Part of this is to make sure I don't over run my Blogger picture limit, though I have a Plan B for when I do. :-)

Anyway, to see the first House Steiner mechs I painted up go here, and when you come back you can see the new additions below.

The Zeus is  minor repose of the basic IWM miniature, done up in a variant of the dazzle camo seen on the four legged mechs I have shown previously. What I did was change the scheme slightly by adding a differential colour break between the upper and lower body. This was done by simply making the colours darker, or choosing an alternative colour.

The Commando is just a straight out the blister pack model painted in the new scheme. My plan is that each lance will have its own variant of the dazzle camo, which will hopefully be recognisable as all being from the same school of thought, but subtly different enough to add interest to the unit.

As far as this blog goes, I'm not going to be using it for intensive photo essays, but more for talking about what I'm doing. 

Mummerset: Battle of South Boring Aftermath

   
It's been a while since I posted an update on my Mummerset campaign, which has been down to the intrusion of Real Life (TM). To remind you all where we are see 1st Battle and 2nd Battle for South Boring, or review the whole campaign so far by going here.

Unfortunately, Blogger takes you to the newest post, rather than the first post, so you will have to scroll down to the beginning.

Anyway, the last battle of the campaign had to be split into two games, one for each wing of the of the engagement. The first battle went very well for my players. The second was a bloodbath, and a draw of sorts, as both sides could claim victory for legitimate reasons.

The next game session was our usual RPG after action review and intelligence briefing.

Three of the four players battlemechs had taken damage, which meant that they would not have been in a good position if the enemy had the resources to have staged a counter attack.

Fortunately for the players this was not the case, so Dan didn't have to go out and face anyone without the benefit of having any armour on the cockpit of his Zeus. Susan's Scorpion though damaged, was combat ready, while Clive's Commando had come through unscathed.

The same could not be said for Trevor's Firestarter that was a total wreck, with the added problem of him taking two wounds in the process (calculated as a broken arm and leg with him recovering from being unconscious occurring during the session as we got updates from the field hospital medics).

On the up side the players had manged to capture an Awesome, with no armour to speak of, but otherwise fixable, and a Blackjack that was shot up and missing an arm. The third enemy mech, a Hornet, was really only good for spares that could be salvaged off it, as it had both legs blown off it after being shot up by Dan's Zeus.

The first order was to secure the battle area and retrieve personnel and material, and then to consolidate the defensive positions as best they could.

Afterwards the players had to list the repair priorities for the unit.

They decided  that getting the Zeus combat worthy was the first order of business, followed by the Scorpion. Due to diplomatic demands from their ally General Whales, the Awesome also need to be be repaired and given over to him, so as to bolster his force of industrial mechs.

After that, then the Blackjack would also be fixed up and given to him, which meant that the Firestarter was going to be the last in line for TLC.

This kept them busy for most of a day (in game time).

We then forwarded the campaign by four days, describing the what happened to their dropship the Northern Lights, the retreat of General Spencer's Republican Guard back to Clear Water Boring, and the arrival of General Whales' convoy at South Boring, bringing much needed men and material.

We then played out the propaganda part of the game, with the Democratic Republic of Mummerset making the most of the virtual destruction of the Firestarter from forces under the command Major Alexander Mercia who then was publically promoted to Lt. Colonel for his efforts.

Arriving in system were a House Steiner jumpship, and the dropship arrived on Mummerset at about the same time as the Awesome was finished being refitted.

The good news was that there were two Goliath battlemechs and four more platoons of infantry. The bad news was that the mech pilots were rookies, and there was no organic transport assets for the infantry, who would therefore have to rely on what was already available.

As things unfolded, more evidence came that the Freedom Army of Mummerset (FAOM) were operating out of Cromwell and that they appeared to have links to the Circinus Federation.

The latter group were a former Word of Blake ally that were thought to have been eliminated when their homeworld was glassed by nukes during the Jihad, which is about fifty years ago as far as the campaign timeline goes (this was a bit like finding Nazis operating out of a secret Antarctic base today).

Also, due to House Steiner's success at propping up General Whales' Royalist faction, the Marion Hegemony and Rimworld Coalition were now both supporting the Republican Guard, with six unarmed industrial mechs being seen with the one remaining Firefly that didn't see action due to being out of service.

Over the next three weeks of campaign time, the players sent special forces teams to recon Clear Water Boring and Cromwell, gaining valuable intelligence in the process.

The Democratic Republic of Mummerset was mounting a fierce propaganda campaign to bolster support for their regime, Meanwhile, the Mummerset Freedom Party came up with the catchy slogan of "Born in the South to die in the North."

Leading the players to decide that they were a bit unstable, and could not be negotiated with in any meaningful way.

The session ended with the players finding out from their Combat Engineers (one of the new platoons that had arrived as reinforcements) that the spaceport facilities at Landfall had been extensively mined, and that there was evidence that this mining was a focused strategy on the part of the Southern Federation and FAOM.

As a result security around the players dropship was stepped up, as it would appear that the enemy are making this one of their prime targets.

Finally, Counter Insurgency Operations began on the Fork River Basin, which is just West of South Boring, against FAOM forces infiltrating the area. This appears to be part of preparations for a big offensive.

This concluded the session, with the game now at week 59, for what was initially touted as a short three month Fly-the-Flag operation.

Players Plan

Is to make it look as if they will take off with the battlemechs in their dropship when the enemy jumpship is next due to arrive in system, thereby appearing to repeat their tactics of keeping the mechs as a mobile force that can be dropped anywhere as necessary.

The players suspect that the enemies plan is to lure their dropship to the spaceport at Landfall and destroy it with mines, or failing that use their dropship to play a game of cat-and-mouse, figuring that this would remove the Steiner battlemechs from the ground engagement as they would be unable to be deployed in time.

Therefore, the players plan to hide their mechs in hidden prepared positions to mask them from being scanned, and wait for the attack by FAoM against General Whales' forces that are in South Boring.