Ars Victor - Command & Colors 40K

If you read this blog, you probably know Memoir' 44 scratch quite a few of my itches... Friction (the card activation), unambiguous movement/line of sight system (large hexes), simple rules yet deep tactics... Only I'm not too found of historical games. I've already considered Quar infantry + All Quiet on the Martian Front steam tanks + Memoir'44 rules...

Picture from editor website.

Monday, while procrastinating on the internet, I came across Ars Victor... The rules are free to download (in fact the entire game material - except for the dices you have to kitbash and two deck of regular playing cards - can be downloaded if you sign in on the website) but here are some details (I'm assuming you're somewhat familiar with the C&C system)...

Gunners Painting Service

What it says on the lid: Gunners from Gunners Wargaming is launching his painting service! And his having a give away comp to stimulate us blogger talking about it!

GZG Crusties, painted by Gunners

So here's my part... 

I found out about Gunners during the Titanium Dropship Painting Competition I ran on Dropship Horizon last year and nearly refused his entry for being 28mm (DH has a strict "15mm only" policy!), then I had a second look and saw that his Blood Angels termies and his Leman Russ tank actually where insanely talented 15mm scratchbuilt models! I went on browsing his blog and found out he had entire scratchbuilt and painted entire armies of 15mm Space Marines, Death Corps of Krieg, Tau, Orks, Plague Marines... To mention only his not-40K products (or 20K as I call half-scaled 40K minis)!

15mm? You bet!

Pricing looks fair enough but Gunners is located in N.S.W. (Northern Southern Western?) Australia so shipping will probably make it unfordable for me... But check it:

Gunner Painting Services

And if you're blogging too, let the world now and try to win a free paint job!

All Quiet on the Quar Front - TO&E

Having figured out I needed (yes, needed; funny I can't find unpainted lead in Maslow's pyramid) an army of Quars mounted in All Quiet on the Martian Front tanks, I now need to write down a shopping list...

Infantry:

I'm still trying to find the perfect ruleset for my 15mm sci fi gaming...  But a couple of things I've nailed so far are: I want reinforced platoon sized combined arms forces, and I want them based in fireteam sized elements!

My rule of a thumb to figure out how many such elements I need for the infantry core of a force gives me 12 teams of low tech level average troop quality quars. The actual number of "men" per team/base is loosely on TL too: the lower the TL, the bigger the fire teams. 

Looking at the TO&E from This Quar War I see companies made of two "sections" (platoons) each one made of two 10-quars squads. I intend to have 5 quars on each base so that company would be made of 8 teams. I'll add another "section"/platoon to make the 12 teams I need, I'll either use it as a third platoon added/detached to the company or use its squads to bulk out the 2 "official" "sections" with a third squad. Not sure yet. 

Quar Company (reinforced with a sniper and a cavalry "troop") by Jay White from Jay's Wargaming Madness.

The Crusader Light Infantry Company also fields a Weapon Squad (reporting directly to the Company CO) made of a HQ team, 2 LMG teams and 2 light mortars teams.

A pack of 2 snipers is also available. You can never go wrong with snipers!

Shopping List:

• Company HQ: Officer, NCO, Standard Bearer, Comms Guy (with message carrying squirels!), Musician, Cook
• 3 x Platoon HQ: 3 x Officer w/ Shotgun
• 6 x Squads: 6 x (NCO w/ Assault Rifle, 6 x Assault Rifles, 3 x Heavy Rifles)
• 1 x Weapon Squad HQ:  NCO w/ Assault Rifle, Assault Rifle
• 2 x LMG Teams: 2 x (LMG, Assault Rifle)
• 2 x Light Mortar Teams: 2 (Mortar w/ Operator, Assault Rifle)
• 2 x Snipers
• Total: 4 officers, 8 NCO, 41 Assault Rifles, 18 Heavy Rifles, 2 LMG, 2 Mortars, 2 Mortar Operators, 2 snipers, 1 Standard Bearer, 1 Squirel Messenger, 1 Musician, 1 Cook

All Quiet on the Quar Front - Infantry

Following up on my All Quiet on the Martian Front vehicles post... Some thoughts about what to use for infantry for 15mm not-Imperial Guard.

When talking about 15mm not-Imperial Guard, one usually thinks one of three options...

1. You have maddening modelling/sculpting/converting skills and/or will settle for nothing but a perfect homothety of the GW models! I haven't anything like those skills and actually prefer more approximate proxies. 

15mm Death Korps of Krieg by Dan from Gunners Wargaming... Along the same lines,
have a look at his Titanium Dropship 2014 entry or at his current 15mm not-40K project...

All Quiet on the Quar Front - Tanks

Like most of you, I read about the All Quiet on the Martian Front (AQotMF) Kickstarter back in the day. While I recognized the "H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds Miniatures Game" as a good idea, I've never been a big fan of retro sci fi, VSF and the like... Until a few weeks ago when, with the models release getting closer (the KS should be shipping next month and the rest of us can pre-order them since yesterday) a comment by JBR on TMP (too many TLA?) got me looking back at some of the model. He was eagerly looking forward to the plastic US tanks that he qualified as great conversion fodder for 15mm not-40K Imperial Guard...

All pictures in this post are from Alien Dungeon's (AQotMF manufacturer) blog or Kickstarter page.