A Bit of Scatter Terrain

Terrain Concepts, I’ve been playing with ideas for terrain rules.

Initially I conceived of a dichotomy with hard terrain, such as ruined buildings and concrete rubble, versus soft terrain, such as bushes and grass. Hard terrain would have better protection over the softer variety against such things as incoming small arms fire.

Concepts evolve, though, and I gradually struck on the idea of scrapping the relative cover density for a more fundamental terrain dichotomy: area vs linear.

Esentially this: If your troops are in a piece of area terrain, such as bushes, they get a moderate level of cover. If they are behind a bit of linear terrain, like a rock or wall,  they get a more substantial cover bonus.

Area terrain is easier to accomplish. It is easier to get a squad into area terrain. If half or more models in a squad are in the area terrain, then they get the area cover bonus.

Linear terrain requires more deliberate positioning. The models in a squad must be behind the linear terrain relative to the firing unit before the linear cover bonus applies. 

Linear cover depends on the position of the firing squad. Linear can be flanked, where area cannot. The linear cover bonus can make the target rather difficult to hit, which promotes flanking moves and a more dynamic game.

A linear position can degrade, once flanked, to area or open, depending on how the terrain is modeled and where the models are positioned. Which is to say that a bit of area terrain can be modeled with a stretch of linear terrain within it, but not all linear terrain is within area.

The infantry man is Clearhorizon Miniatures, for scale. Some of the boxes and crates are from a mold I picked up from Jason Moore over at Micropanzer. All the air bubbles in the crates are my own miscasts. Jason will hook you up with some serious high quality crates for a small, small fee. The barrels are electronic bits I have been evangelizing about for a while now, and the tanks... can you guess?

Regards,
Tom

Co-Mil Scout Cars

These are some colonial militia scout cars I finished up a little while ago. They represent a two‑seater field car, basically the same as the colony civilians drive; unarmored, ultra‑compact, and, in typical colonist fashion, loaded down with all kinds of gear. They are atmo‑sealed and have air reserves, so if a storm comes along they can provide a safe haven, but they have no air‑lock, so you better have your respo gear, if you plan on unbuttoning these babies.

In keeping with the militia’s emphasis on technical support to the republic colonists and maintaining the long term terraforming facilities, over offensive military capability, the cars don’t have any weapons mounted to fire directly from the vehicle. They can carry deployable equipment that they drop off around the table, remote missile packs, comm transmitters, or even ammo reloads for the battle mechs. And of course, they are tied in to the battle‑net, so they can spot for indirect fire and paint targets for missiles. All of which will hopefully require some thoughtful tactics to use the cars effectively.

They are kit‑bashed from a toy called ‘nano-speed’, the kind of car you pull back and let it zip across the floor. I carefully picked out the biggest models they had and they are still right at the bottom edge of being too small. Some would say they are over the edge, but what, me worry?

The stowage consists of capacitors, resistors and diodes harvested from circuit boards, a technique I am very happy to have discovered as it solves all my sci‑fi barrel and box requirements, and which you will be seeing a lot more of in the future. I spent about a month of hobby time taking apart every circuit board I could get my hands on, and now I have what I’m calling a lifetime supply of stowage and supply containers, of course I always want more.

I had a problem with some wash that I tried out on these guys. I’m always looking for an easier faster way to paint, but this one didn’t turn out too well. I probably didn’t use it right, but for the life of me I couldn’t find any guides online that show how it should be done. I basically drenched the model in the wash and let it go. I put it on over a dull coat, as opposed to gloss, which may have contributed to the trouble. But as you can see the dark tones of the wash migrated up to the raised areas, where you want your highlights, rather than settle into the crevices like a good dog –er wash, a good wash. If you have any advice regarding this product please share it, because otherwise this stuff is going on the shelf. I opted out of the pizza camo for the re-paint.

Here's a Colonial Militia task force with  a C-Def mech in support. The Civilian Defense League is an ally of the CoMil... usually.

And just for fun, Here's my full Colonial Militia Force so far. They have some kit bashed blower tanks in the pipeline, but otherwise they are done for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for looking,
Tom Kelley