I noticed in my prior post I forgot to post pictures of the PHR light ship sprue; I like to include it because I think if anyone is interested in the specifics of a model it’s good to have a reference of it available online somewhere:
Originally I was going to put off painting them until later, but they’re pretty quick to get done so I pushed out the destroyers and cutters in a weekend. Went with the energy glaive variants for the destroyers, as that’s the one unique to the sprue, and the cutters have the high calibre gun for the same reason, though they’re friction fitted so could be swapped later if I cared to paint up the alternate options:
Didn’t bother with the Harpocrates or Echoes, because 1) I have six of each already and doubt I’d ever play with more so I have no motivation to paint them at the moment and 2) the plastic Echoes look like trash compared to the resin ones due to their 90° rotation.
As for some terrain:
Quite a while ago, I picked up 10mm scaled versions of Lazy Forger’s industrial terrain. It’s designed to be modular, with the pipes slotting in and out of each other and the larger structures, but I found it finicky at best and decided to permanently assemble four specific layouts.
Part of the reason was that some warping in the prints meant that trying to assemble them in a modular fashion meant the angling from the warping would compound together across multiple pieces, resulting in nonsense like this. I was able to do a bit of heat bending, and acceptance of pipes not perfectly aligning when glued together to reduce them from horribly obvious like seen above to just a bit off level. At time of writing I’ve got them mostly painted up but need to add overgrowth to get them on theme.
Finishing off the light behemoth collection! With Dropzone v3 on the horizon at time of purchase, and no idea of how it would impact model availability, I decided to grab Shaltari and Resistance in order to get the second variant of each of them. Notable thing is that they came in a mixture of 3D printed parts and cast resin:
The Resistance print was somewhat trash in a few sections: note the details on the front of the Cerberus in comparison to that of the cast resin Avernus below. They’re either shallower or completely lost. I probably could have gotten a replacement if I wanted, but I had already painted it up before I noticed just how impactful the print quality was on the final appearance, and couldn’t be bothered to do that again.
Additionally, 3D printed parts not being able to heat bend readily like cast resin makes the components that slot into the back of the main body to hold up the gun nigh impossible to fit. When I built the Avernus, I was able to bend the protruding parts on the rear open to slot the joint pieces in, then heat bend it back closed. With the 3D printed body, that would be impossible. Luckily the joint bits here were cast resin, so I was able to heat them to the point of just soft enough to be able to jam into the slots without significant bending, but if they were similarly brittle 3D prints, I’m not sure if it would even be possible to build this. There’s also quite a few visible layer lines, which is not ideal.
Did send them an email complaining about how the 3D print sucks in both quality and design here at least so they’re aware of why this model isn’t working at all. Who knows if the feedback will be taken into consideration when it’s re-released. The Shaltari 3D prints have no issues, at least.
I broke one of my personal rules and played with unpainted models! Had just picked up the Scourge battlecruisers and then a chance to get a game in shortly after, so primed-only it was. Both ships used the Infestation Bastion, and it worked quite well. It’s certainly the most interesting of the three feature options. The specifics of the game are lost to my memory, but I also tried out mines, and they were much more interesting than the PHR ones thanks to Corrupter making them a potent area denial tool.
Continuing the choice of one medium and one heavy feature carrier per box, a Nixie and a Fossegrim. Not many options for Scourge in terms of what to build, but for the heavy I went with the Fossegrim as it seemed better suited for brawling over a dropsite and I didn’t feel like having yet another heavy with fighters and bombers. Notably, didn’t build it with the ridiculous looking torpedo launcher hat. Let’s just say it shits out the torpedo from the gap.
I am quite happy to see said gap return, the model is a lot more interesting with it than without.
The gripper bits and the section on the features that make contact each got a single coat of gloss varnish just to keep the paint from scraping off, as it’s naturally a much tighter fit than the other faction’s battlecruisers have been.
And lastly, tried out Dropzone v3 for the first time. We decided on a 1500 point game, no command cards to keep it simpler, and a ‘basic’ seeming scenario in Command and Control. I brought out my Resistance, trying a mostly tanks-and-folks list with a little bit of seasoning mixed in:
2x Patton w/ railgun
4x Fighters
Lifthawk w/AA
2x Veteran
2x Veteran
2x Sentinel Sentry
Strikehawk w/ AA missiles
2x Fighters
Swifthawk
2x Fighters
Swifthawk
2x Hannibal
1x Zhukov
1x Constantine
2x Lifthawk w/AA
2x Mehmed
Lifthawk w/AA
Alexander w/ level 4 commander
Lifthawk w/AA
Cortez
Hellhog
Zeus/Odin
2x Phobos
2x Phobos
2x Helios
2x Apollo
2x Siren
2x Immortal
2x Immortal
Hades
Athena
And associated transports.
End of Round 1:
End of Round 5:
We did the full 6, I just didn’t take a good picture of it then.
I downed the objective building on the left by end of round 2 with solid hits from the Cortez and Mehmeds, then finished it off with the Hellhog, destroying that object in the process. Since I had more infantry, I wanted to force the opposing infantry into the other two objective buildings so I could position myself to have a choice of which would get more Fighters dumped in. It worked well enough; the central point became a CQB morass throughout the game, and was the source of the only rules mistake we can tell we made: it should have swapped from my controlling it to a jointly contested building after the first major CQB, so I was at more of an advantage throughout than I should have been. He still found the object, but I managed to snag it off him via a failed bravery check.
Took infantry to the walls a few times; Veterans twice, failing to damage anything and taking a point of damage themselves from retaliatory miniguns before retreating from the windows, and Fighters blasting apart a Phobos with their RPGs then heading back to the safety of the interior prior to having any chance to be shot back at.
Lost control of my secure point for the final round 6 scoring thanks to the Hades killing off my commander, and my last surviving standard tank dying in a crash when its dropship was destroyed, leaving me without any other vehicles nearby to score. I was nearly completely wiped off the board, but won 8-6 thanks to reassigning a troopship over to some object carrying Fighters who had lost their APCs and extracting them out just under the nose of the Athena.
The only thing that felt bad to us was how CQB was playing out, but that was due to the aforementioned mistake concerning how control of zones works.
I ended up spending the rest of the day mulling over in my head the different things I could have done, how units performed and what I should have done differently, how other scenarios might impact how I’d use the units, and so on. I think a game that causes you to dwell on it like that, rather than just casually moving on, is a good sign of something you can sink your teeth into and get some satisfaction out of. While I’d definitely like to try out a few more scenarios with the command cards to properly assess the game as it is now, I definitely got more out of it than any game of v2 I played in the past. Granted, it’s been over two years since I played a proper game of v2, but I know at that point I felt like I had hit the limits of what I could get out of or engage with in that system mechanically and was simply collecting the models.
As for my opponent, they were a v1 player who hadn’t touched it since shortly after v2 was released, and came out feeling quite positive and nostalgic on the game, interested in playing more.
Also, one of the people in the store who came over to check out what we were playing commented “This is the scale the Starcraft game should have been.” and yes, that is absolutely correct.