Grand Wargaming Strategy, Part the Second
Is it too early for a New Year’s Resolution?
While deep in the throes of last post’s naval gazing, my subconscious maundering was given a second kick in the short pants by Oldben1. Over on a thread he started on the Lead Adventure Forums he asked for ideas on how to get more use out of his existing stash of painted figures. My last post focused on how actual play isn’t all that important to me right now, but a plan beyond “buy whatever tickles my fancy at the moment” will help keep my paint brush focused and my mind on what I could be playing if there weren’t other things on my To Do list. You know, minor items like stay employed, raise the kids, keep the house from falling apart.
With the book closed on building the Big Medieval Box, I’ve been revisiting my generic sci-fi skirmish collection and looking at ways to expand the inventory while narrowing down the focus of the game. This has always been about a more modern version of Necromunda that is a more personalized, more narrative, and more kitchen-sink style game of small teams and big stories.
The plan for 2016 is to find a game where you’ve got one small team running up against a changing roster of opposing forces in a series of linked missions. Sort of a “Captain Mal and His Sci-Fi Friends Power Hour”. That way I can get a narrative campaign going, but still have an excuse to use a lot of different miniatures. For example, I have a number of different teams of security forces (Sharkmen from Khurasan, Space Mercs from GZG, NBC suits from Rebel, and Octopods from 15mm.co.uk), not to mention a growing pile of random characters, civilians, and general ne’er-do-wells.
Last year the boy and I tried Five Parsecs From Home, but it just didn’t grab us. It’s a fun game, but the forces are limited, and the in-game choices felt constrained. So this next year’s plan is to give Osprey’s Black Ops a shot. While I do have a delivery of vehicles on the way, there isn’t much more that can be done with the small city-scape terrain set. Sure, more scatter terrain is always welcome, but a stealth style game like Black Ops calls for a special set of terrain just for those secret missions and cloak and dagger infiltrations.
So that’s where this blog is heading. At least as far as wargaming is concerned, it’s going to be small unit sci-fi, and a fun and cool terrain set unlike anything that I could find on the internet.