Time for a Sunday evening update on what I’ve been up to hobby-wise.
The answer is actually very similar to how my work updates have been going – a lot of different things going on but not all of them have things I can show off. This week was a pretty bad one for both work and brain state so there wasn’t much writing going on. I’m pretty annoyed at this – I want to get the Ubique post out, but still finding the exact words to get my details across. I’ve also started writing more ChargeReal lore – this week there was plenty of combat planning, working out both the chain of scenarios I’ll be covering in detail for the Zanvult Incursion and the specific elements of each battle – I’ve also been looking at similar operations to finally get my head around the scale of such activities (I initially underplanned and sent a platoon to do what a company should be up to).
Something else I want to mention from this week is Combat Octopus’s Gothic Serpent campaign. There are still 10 days on the clock but I feel that not everyone who might be excited for it has seen it or understood the possibilities you can get from even the initial pack. The stretch goals are definitely more spread out than I’d personally like and I’d have been tempted to put core equipment (such as machine gunners) even earlier but it’s easy for me to shout from the cheap seats without understanding the situation that the one man sculpting show is. All that said, I’m very excited about the possibilities from this campaign – with most figures, a simple headswap is as far as you can get but with the modular aspects, it’s easy to make a wide variety of forces. I also think posing wise, these are some of the best figures that CO has produced – even the less Hero figures (such as the Ranger holding his rifle low as looks around the corner) are still packed full of character. With 10 days left on the clock, there is still plenty of time to jump in – especially as you get the core set immediatly. If you’re interested, you can find it over on MMF at https://www.myminifactory.com/frontier/gothic-serpent-modular-wargaming-miniatures-3175
Speaking of the Gothic Serpent campaign, I’ve actually been playing around with the parts from it. After printing the Rangers last week, I printed off the Somalis this week. Well, Somali bodies which I then added the MENA Civilian heads onto in order to make some real bottom-of-the-barrel Bazi militia fighters. These are still using the pre-assembled bodies – I need to sit down and get the Blender scene setup for these guys so I can make some real custom jobs using all the parts (as well as add more G3s). I can see plenty of crossover with these guys and the other figures I have, as well as the potential of the bodies for other weapons in the CO arsenal. Now I just need some MGs and RPGs to make these guys slightly more practical.
You can also see in the background Modern Miniatures’s LandRover Pickup, available now on MMF. This was a fun little vehicle to print, a nice change from the usual modern SUVs and pickups. I can see me printing more for the local population of northern Shyluz and the bordering Tsarist region, as it fits the vibe I’m going for. The pickup version is especially suitable for the Farmer feel (or may end up with a PK or DSHK mount in the back). I’m going to get it painted up soon, along with the pile of other vehicles sitting on the shelf.
Finally, and I already posted about it yesterday, but I managed to get out and play a game or two of Open Combat with the Dastardly Regular Opponent in York. I wrote a whole SITREP about it but it was a good time – it’s always fun to get the dice rolling. We’re going to try and aim for one game a month ideally, with a Big Game every two months to get the gang together. Personally, I’d like to up my own game playing as well – seeing as I now have the space for it, I may as well get a board up and roll some dice.
Also yeah, I may have mentioned scribbling a few rule ideas down. I’m finding that nothing I’m looking at is really hitting the spot, as well as the sinking feeling as I write Platoons for ChargeReal that I need to tie it to a ruleset. For the moment, there isn’t much to announce, I’m still in that early stage of nailing down all the core parts to make sure the thing will actually flow. You may spot a few references to it as I start development (in the background to the pure lore writing) especially if I start writing down the games for that sweet sweet content. On the other hand, I am reading the FM 3-21.8 more than is healthy and “Find, Fix, Finish” is burnt into my notebook.
That’s it for this week, with a new update coming next Sunday.
