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Using 3/4″ Magnetic Bases for 15mm Miniatures

I’m musing over basing standards for 15mm miniatures for my future Traveller games, and I think I’m going to standardize on 3/4″ (20mm) flexible magnets for basing. I’ve been using 1/2″ flexible magnets on my bases since that works well for the Traveller maps I’ve been printing out (which have 0.5″ squares).

Magnetic bases are cool since you can transport them on metal surfaces like magnetic white boards or cookie tins. It also gives you the ability to base on magnets before you start painting and prime and paint the minis while sticking the minis on metal surfaces (removing the need to use sticky tack or other method).

[From the magigames.org blog]

Magnetic minis in a metal tin for transport.

You can buy 3/4″ bases here.

1/2″ has proved problematic in that they won’t stand up as well on textured terrain, and some minis (such as some of the Fallout minis Mason is using) simply don’t fit on 1/2″.

My goal is to build out a few platoons of minis for Player Character and NPCs so that you can quickly move into ground combat with 25-80 minis on the table and play out meaningful, tactical combat in an hour or less. I’d like to construct a platoon like you see on the Broken Stars and Burning Ships blog.

Photo from the 'Broken Stars and Burning Ships' blog

Photo from the ‘Broken Stars and Burning Ships’ blog

One thing I love about 15mm is the speed of painting. I painted up 10 Varstcheen bug NPCs for my last Traveller game in about 1 hour. That’s 6 minutes a mini — about 10x faster than painting the same figures in 28mm.

Also, 15mm is much cheaper and lets you do things like vehicles without breaking the bank. See this blog post on what $85 will buy you in 15mm!

Other reference art for my future platoons is below.

$85 worth of minis From the magigames.org blog.

[From the http://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2017/09/moongrunt-us-mobile-infantry-platoon.html blog]

A platoon of minis from the http://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com blog.

[From the http://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2017/09/moongrunt-us-mobile-infantry-platoon.html blog]

Nice red color scheme from the http://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com blog

Redmark Session 39: A Dwarf Goes Under a Mountain

Redmark Date: Third Age—April 19-20, 1331

Gnolls

Despite putting the ordeals of the [name of pocket dimension island] behind them, the parties island adventures are far from over. Now they find themselves on another one, albeit one in Redmark at least, seeking out ancient weapons of great power located beneath a dormant volcano.

Their safe journey through the jungles of of the island of Dasarria was rudely interrupted by some good for nothing Knolls. Fortunately, the party has mastered the art of turning things up to 11 and utterly destroyed…maybe dispatched would be a better way of putting it…and were soon safely on their way again.

At first, with steam bursting out of small crevasses all over its side and smoke spewing out of the top, the volcano appeared to be only mostly dormant. However, the parties surprisingly average intelligence was somehow able to figure out that the steam was all venting at the same time and at precisely 30 second increments. This could only mean one thing! Something else was creating the steam. Naturally, the most obvious answer was “There be dragons in that mountain”. So, with weapons drawn and spelunking hats dawned, they charged head first into a cave from witch steam belched out.

Annnd, no dragon. Just a dead end cave with a difficult to open hatch. Fortunately, traveling to pocket dimensions, fighting leach kobolds, talking down an angry mother dragon, and surviving a terrifying haunted house had girded their loins against fear and doubt. Thus they were undeterred by this mysterious and unexpected man-made hatch inside a volcano and continued on.

And again…no dragons. There was a gynosphinx, though. It seemed terribly bored with life. It told of a legendary ancient wizard from the 2nd age called Keraptis(he’s bad, apparently), who had built this strange underground bunker. Those wishing to pass the gynosphinx were first required to answer three riddles. Seemingly unaware of their not low but all together unimpressive intelligence, they confidently agreed to the challenge. And won with great ease! Hoozah!

Now, with loins still very well girded, they spelunk ever deeper into this cave. Which isn’t actually a cave, but a man made structure. Hmm…maybe they aren’t really spelunking after all. Just trespassing. Again.

Wargame: The Battle for the Crystals

We took the Grimdark Beta rules from onepagerules.com for a spin last Saturday, adding in a few house-ruled Fantasy special rules from One Page Rules Age of Fantasy game. We built out two 2,500 point armies.

We had a human army (7 units with a total of 70 models, with a total of 70 attacks) fighting a monster army (6 units with a total of 35 models, with a total of 60 attacks). That’s a total of 105 models and 130 attack rolls each round!

I timed how long it took. Not counting time to select our armies and set up the terrain, it took 10 minutes to take turns deploying our units. Each round took 40 minutes.

The goal was to end the fourth round with control of the most objectives out of four total objectives. Due to an RPG game we were running later that night, we decided the 3rd round would be our last. The Monsters won, but partly this was due to the player running the humans having a different understanding of the Charge rules. I’ll be posting on the One Page Rules forums to get clarity on that for next game.

My estimate is that next time we played, assuming our armies were already select and terrain was ready to place, that it would take about 20 minutes for setup, 40 minutes per round, and for 4 rounds that would be a 180 minute game (3 hours).

It was a fun time; I look forward to playing again!

Byzantine & Viking Army

Byzantine & Viking Army

The orc, gnoll, giant, ape-men forces

The orc, gnoll, giant, ape-men forces

Crystal cache objective

Crystal cache objective

The armies

The armies

Using Activation Markers from Litko

Using Activation Markers from Litko

Final Round: Capturing the Crystal

Final Round: Capturing the Crystal

Check out a full set of photos from the game.

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