Star Saga: Reinforcements

 The Star Saga Character & Mission creator expansion not only comes with information and cards to write your own missions, but also six new mercenaries to play with.

As with all the other Mercenaries these can also be used in Deadzone and some are tied to specific factions. 

Kizai is a support merc with a heal similar to Kira but not quite as good and an interesting ability which allows it to move a target model extra squares. Kizai's Feat heal has a larger range than Kira's and doesn't require a role, so it is more reliable.

Orion is in the same vein as Capt. Erika, a straight up ranged damage dealer. Rolling 4 defence dice and having no wounded state does make Orion tougher than the Capt. though. he does pay for that by being more expensive and only rolling 2 melee dice.

As a Teraton, Kur Keela is linked to the Reb faction and can be fielded in a Reb strike team. He has a teleport ability which is the same as Deadzone and what he lacks in shooting & melee he makes up for in tech and mobility.

Hund is another Reb faction merc and in common with other Rin he is a ranged specialist who makes use of his four arms to use multiple weapons. He always gets two attacks each turn which is no doubt handy for cleaning out minions. He also gets an upgraded Pew Pew Pew (Capt. Erik feat) in that he can fire three times and then take a move as well.

Shade is a Marauder who likes to get up close and personal, he can also be taken in a Marauder Strike Team for Deadzone. His critical hit special is nice but I'm not so sure about his feat, becoming crippled means he loses out on 10xp on any mission he uses the feat, also he cannot move once he has popped it.

Last up is Kr-Om3 a multi-stance defence robot. His ability to add extra defence dice onto adjacent mercenaries and lay down a decent ranged attack makes him an interesting support choice.

That's all the models for Star Saga painted up for the moment and ready to be deployed into a mission. We seem to have a good balanced team at present in our Sunday afternoon games so I'm not sure if any of these would muscle themselves into contention.

Star Saga: More Terror In The Deep

This week I completed the rest of the Terror in the Deep expansion for Star Saga with the models now ready to travel back to Cirencester to be ready for the next campaign.

The box included The Blight as a leader choice for the Nameless in Deadzone, presumably he/it is a boss for Star Saga. He comes equipped with what is effectively a range 3, AP1 flame thrower, which is rather nice. The Blight is also very handy in melee with a AP2 melee weapon and a Fight of 4+. His special is the ability to give any active model a range 2 free 'flamer thrower' attack, good for quick models looking to lock down the enemy at close range.

Terror on the left, Blight on the Right

The Terror is a specialist choice in Deadzone who again is a melee fighter with his Frenzy (1) special letting him reroll a failed fight dice and his Resilient (1) rule allowing him to reroll a failed survive dice. A speed of 2-3 also means it can get around the board quickly and would be the ideal partner for someone with the Triclinic shard special we saw last week. 

The Gunslinger is the third and final troop choice for the Nameless and as the name suggests is a ranged troop specialist. They do only have a range of 3 with their twin pistols and with costing 5 more points than the Inker/Scuttler they may not be a very popular choice in a list that probably wants to fit lots of specialists in.

The final specialist is the Assassin, a fast and mobile melee choice. It has the backpack which allows it to fall any distance without taking damage and also scale walls and jump one cube wide gaps. With AP2 and the ability to reroll 2 failed Fight dice (via Frenzy (2)) this fighter can cause some real issues once it gets into close combat.

Last up is the Goliath, I think they could have gone with a more scary name for what is a massive hunk of a gribbly. In Deadzone this is counted as a Vehicle choice so needs 3 Troop's to be taken to unlock. In Star Saga it probably needs a big room to operate in so you may want to stick to the corridors!

As you might expect the Goliath is going to take a lot of killing, he has 4 wounds and armour 2 as well as tough (ignore the first wound on each attack) and with a Fight of 3+ he is going to be a nightmare to deal with in melee. A survive of 4+ means it won't be easy to shoot on the way in and it also has a ranged capability if it pulls up just short when moving in. 

It really is a big model so took a fair bit of work to get painted, I ended up doing the top two thirds first and once that was varnished doing the rest. This gave me a way to hold the model without rubbing the paint off as I went along.

And that is the entire expansion done, the models are much nicer to work with than the Rebs from the Devil's Betrayal expansion, many of which I felt lacked sharp details.

Next up are the Mercenaries from this box and also from the Character Creator expansion so we have a bit more Star Saga yet to come.

Star Saga: Terror In The Deep

 One good thing about the ongoing pandemic was the decision to get some online gaming in as a means to keep playing wargames. From this was born a Sunday afternoon gaming session which initially saw myself, Stuart, & Sam playing a D&D board game with a few Napoleonic Zoom games thrown in as well. We recently completed the D&D and started playing Star Saga, a Mantic games sci-fi dungeon crawler. At present we are playing through the base game with pits the mercenaries against the forces of Mazon Labs. 
One of the expansion boxes is for the Nameless and as this was the only one that was in stock I purchased it and have started painting up the models. The good thing with these boxes is that you can also use the models in Deadzone, so you get double use from the models. The Terror in the Deep box also contains a couple of Asterian mercenaries so they can be used with the new Asterian models I got for Deadzone.

The first models out of the box are Scuttlers, a cheap Troop choice in Deadzone whose low profile should make them hard to shoot. I don't have the Star Saga cards for the models so have provided the Deadzone stats, I would imagine the Star Saga stats mirror those of Deadzone.

The Nameless have an aquatic feel and come in two varieties, the more crab like animalistic species and the squid-men who seem to be the brains of the faction.

I decided to try and differentiate the two sides by giving them contrasting colour schemes. Some of the models seem to blur the distinction so that allowed me to combine the two schemes to hopefully give a cohesive look to the faction.

Next up are the Inkers, again a cheap Troop choice for the Nameless. These are slightly worse at fighting than the Scuttlers but come with the Ink Sack special ability. 

This allows the Inker to deploy an ink cloud (smoke grenade) once whilst alive and automatically upon it's death. Ink clouds block line of sight through squares containing the cloud and give a -1 shoot dice penalty to shots passing through adjacent squares, very handy for getting your melee or close range shooters up the board.

The first Specialists I painted up are the Riflemen, it's worth noting that the names for the Nameless are those given to them by the GCPS (Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere) military forces who encountered them. Presumably they have their own name for each other, though maybe not.

The Riflemen come equipped with the long range Crystal Rifle which has the Triclinic Shard special ability. This can be used to mark the shooting target and then gives a +1 fight dice bonus for any model fighting the target for the rest of the turn. If you combined with this the Rapid Fire ability which allows you to try and Pin a model you would then get +2 fight bonus dice. This is because attacking a Pinned model itself gives a +1 fight dice bonus. Remembering that a basic attack is always 3 dice showing how good a bonus this could be.

Last up for this week are the Ogres who are sporting a crab-beast feel. As with the Scuttlers I went with a nice bright blue & pink theme to make them stand-out. With the bases I decided to base them up for Deadzone with the same basing scheme I've used for the Marauders and Rebs, I can see these chaps hitting the battlefield in the future (once we can play again).

The Ogre is a Specialist choice with high armour and wounds and the Defender Shield ability. This gives him +1 armour (to a total of 3) and also adds +1 armour to any models in the same area as him. As he is size 3 (max total of size 4 in one cube) he can look after one size 1 friend.

He also has Armour Piercing 2 claws which should help him with cutting up even the most hardy of foes.

I have a few more models to complete for the faction including the mighty Goliath who is a big old chunk of plastic.

The B(laine)-Team

This week I completed the roster of mercenaries for Star Saga and Deadzone. This means I can start work on the Rebs faction for Deadzone for my third faction I can field.

This group includes Blaine who is a Mantic special character who has the ability to travel between dimensions, this allows him to appear in multiple games such as the Zombie Blaine I painted last year.

In the world of Star Saga Blaine is the leader of the mercenary company and as such is the biggest bad-ass in space! He costs around 4 times as much as the other choices so may be a good character to take in a solo game. Also completed are Alyse a space wizard (possibly the best kind) and Kira a Sphyr medic / support character. Whilst Alyse drains the life from others Kira is a more traditional healer.

The other two mercenaries who I have cards for are Curby the flying robot and Halftail who I believe is also to be found in the Dreadball arena. Both are ranged fighters and whilst Curby packed a powerful EMP blast Halftail can plant bombs on scenery pieces.

I also got a model for Leesh'ma but no card so I will have to have a look around to see if I can get one, I'm not sure but she may have come with the Reb Alpha booster pack I bought a while back.

So that completes all the forces (and terrain) for Star Saga. The game comes with a solo mode so I may setup the table and play through some of the missions.

So onto the Rebs next, I have glued all the models together and now need to start getting some paint laid down, as long as I don't get distracted by anything else............

Talking of which I put a pre-order in for Clash of Spears, a new ancients large skirmish game. The game looks to use forces similar in size to Saga and initially is designed for battles around the time of the Punic Wars.

The A-Team

I've not gotten much done this week as I've been busy at work and then in a little hobby slump as far as painting is concerned. I'm still working my way through the Mercenaries for Star Saga and I've come to the conclusion I much prefer unit painting to painting lots of individuals at once.

But progress has been made and the first group of Mercs has been pretty much done, I will complete the bases of the whole group once the second batch are done.

In Star Saga the players each take control of one Merc who all come with different abilities, the GM who controls the opposition then gets troops based on the total cost of the Merc team.
This first group consists of Capt Dulinsky who is the leader of the Merc group and a long range shooting specialist. Then comes Wrath who is a melee specialist robot who has the ability to go on a rampage and Ogan the dwarf engineer who is a support specialist.

Francesco wields a flame thrower and is handy for clearing enemies who have grouped up and The Survivor rounds out this group with his close range shooting abilities.

All of these characters can also be fielded for Deadzone so have a double use which is very handy.

I also had the Pestilence section of my Undead out to take a quick picture for Facebook so I've included that as well to add a little something different for this post.

The Plague

Despite being under the weather and not really feeling like doing much for most of the week I have managed to complete a few more models and get a game in.

I now have both the leaders completed for the Mazon Labs faction so can field a legal strike team.
Neither is really a melee beast so would be happier hanging back and leading from the rear. Graves can be upgraded with a better ranged weapon so could for instance take the Range 4 AP2 Thermal Rifle to add some armour piercing into the team.

As with all leaders they come with a special ability with the Dr being able to raise dead friendly troops as Plague Victims and Graves being able to give some troops a free suppressing fire. Out of the two I like Grave's ability more as it can be used to pin an enemy to allow your melee orientated troops to close the distance.

The other addition for Mazon Labs is the Data Storage Unit which again is a ranged specialist. This unit has Psychic abilities which do not require line of sight to use meaning the enemy has no place to hide. It also has the Invigorate ability which allows you to reactivate a model that has already been activated that turn, very handy to use on a powerful model.

The last two models aren't for the Mazon Labs faction so are unlikely to be used other than in Star Saga. In Star Saga they are two of the bosses that the player Mercenaries have to defeat in the game.

I also had Stu over for a Blood & Plunder game on Saturday and we played the Control the Field scenario. This has only his third game and they have been spread out over several months so some learning was going on whilst we played.

The scenario involves both sides trying to control at least two of three objectives placed along the center line of the table. Both sides start in opposite corners giving them one close objective and generally leads to a scrum in the middle.

The English under Stu's leadership took up a good early position and soon started to score victory points.

This forced me to sacrifice one and then eventually another unit in the open to contest the middle objective and then the Spanish managed to wipe out a couple of English units in melee. The first unit was unlucky not to wipe out a Spanish unit lead down by the objective and was caught on the counter-charge by a supporting unit and the Lanceros for once got a charge in against a fatigued unit so they could not use defensive fire.

In the end I managed to just inflict enough casualties to win by one Strike Point after a bloody six turns.

I also took delivery of some adobe building from Fogou Miniatures, these where from a Kickstarter campaign I backed only 1 month ago, which is a nice quick turn around as these things go.

The models are cast from yellow resin so could be almost used straight from the box, I'm going to put some paint on them though. One big bonus is that no release agent was used in the casting process so the models can be painted without needed to be washed first.