Danger Close - Another Test-Run

Howdy folks,

I hope all is going well on your sides of the internets. Well, as the title says, this is another play test of the Danger Close rules from Empress Miniatures. This time out, I had a little help from Duncan…I wanted to get his thoughts on the flow and mechanics of the game. So,we both squared off against each other and gave the rules a try. Spoiler Alert, it was another successful go with the rules, I think they are nice and simple, and yes, I am horrible at rolling the dice…Duncan soundly trounced all over my team.

So with that, here are the main details of the game and some pics to enjoy…take care.

The details: 

The crew: Duncan and I each had a fireteam of 5 personnel, fairly standard armament - carbines and one SAW (squad automatic weapons, ala C9, M249, etc.), I think we included optics (give a modification on spotting and shooting), and body armour of some type. 

Objective: again, I didn’t really think of any going into this…I ended up dropping a bag of weapons in the middle of the table and each crew was tasked with retrieving it.

Thoughts: again, fairly straightforward, but it was really good to get the perspectives from Duncan. There is a little bit of administration that goes into the game, token keeping stuff and whatnot. There were some ‘holes’ in the rules, but again nothing that some improv couldn’t fix. I think the biggest thing is that the tables can be a little problematic and confusing…I didn’t notice that too much the first time, but it was definitely a factor in our game.

And now, the pics:

The layout, kit bag of guns (blue bag) in the centre of the table. Duncan at the top, deployed and moved in behind some barricades. I’m ingress in from the bottom of the pic, between the two buildings on the right.

Slowly making my way up the table.

I made my way into the building…and Duncan made some pretty great rolls to snipe my guys on the inside.

Outside, I am having success spotting Duncan’s crew, but my die rolls suck hard…

Another one bites the dust…sniped..and down. 

And the rest of the team is feeling the pain.

Team Yankee/ Red Dawn - Canadian Iltis

Howdy everyone,

I hope all is well. Just a quick post to show off one of the new units that you can get with the latest NATO book…a Canadian Airborne Regiment Iltis patrol as part of the continental Canadian Army and Force Mobile Command (FMC). The patrol comes as a 4 vehicle blister with 2 x TOW mounted vehicles and 2 x MG vehicles.

I’m not going to lie, I had been waiting for these little delights for some time. At one point, I had been trying to find a suitable maker until Battlefront caught up and made these as part of their NATO release. These were in service with the Canadian Army from the 1980’s up until early 2000’s (03-04 if I remember correctly). These vehicles just seemed to takes constant beating and yet, kept on ticking.

Anywho, in the context of Red Dawn/Team Yankee, these patrols are available to the Canadian commander as part of FMC and the Canadian Airborne Regiment. 

The vehicles were fun to paint up…the only con that sticks to mind, is the finickiness of the figures and trying to work my brush around them to get them painted up. Otherwise, pretty quick build and paint. In my case, I went with the NATO standard camo pattern, and dropped the khaki tones only using green and faded black/grey.

I hope you enjoy the pics. Cheers.

Journey up Lead/Plastic Mountain

Painted

15mm         27, +14 (4 x Iltis and crew)  

28mm+         7 

Bought         8

Progress   +26

Spectre Miniatures - Ops re-boot and Kill Team

Howdy folks,

I hope all is well on your respective ends. For anyone familiar with Spectre Operations, you may be familiar with the Spectre Miniatures website as well. I’m not sure which came first, the minis or the ‘operations’…I’m sure someone knows, but this feels somewhat like chicken vs. egg. Regardless, at the end of the day, Spectre Miniatures have been focused on modern to ultra-modern figures and wargaming. 

They have tried other ventures/elements of their ‘brand’ to varying success, but one thing I did not know was that they had a license on Spectre Operations the ruleset. Now, if I remember it all correctly (apologies if I do not), they did not extend their license on the ruleset over a year ago an instead went into partnership with another gaming provider/studio. The next thing they did was announce a pre-order for an updated version of Spectre Operations mid-last year, which is what brings me here today. As an assisted birthday gift to myself, I opted in on that piece of the action, securing a very spiffy looking pre-order carrot (the Nomad), also picked up a Kill Team pack of 6 figs. I have finally gotten the time to finish up those 7 figures and post them up.

The Kill Team was an interesting pack, and definitely perfect for anything NBC Warfare related…or any slick heist movie or some such. I took a long look at google and found some really good pics of Soviet Cold War era suits and masks that were rather inspirational. I tried my hand at 3 different colours, the blue-green definitely standing out from the others (brown violet/olive drab and Russian uniform).

The Nomad figure was a very clean sculpt and the figure came out of the box in great shape.There was an annoying sculpt line from the 3d print, but otherwise, was a very smooth figure. I settled on a mix of colours for this guy…camo pattern trousers, straight Russian Uniform green for the tunic, and a quick pattern on his carbine. All in all, a very enjoyable figure to paint up and I have no doubt that they would fit very well in a variety of rulesets and settings. 

And in the modern theme, I also happened to drop by my LGS and snag an African Squad box for INCOUNTRY and the folks at Enemy Spotted Studios (I’ll be posting this squad in a few posts).

Enjoy the pics!

The group shot…Nomad on the right.

Kill Team

The Nomad.

Journey up Lead/Plastic Mountain

Painted

15mm         13         

28mm+        7 (6 x Kill Team, 1 x Nomad)

Bought         8 (ESS Squad box) 

Progress   +12