First the good news. For those playing my Stargate Ship Combat game, Armoury Toys and Hobbies is continuing to expand their line of Stargate ships. They have just released the Ori fighter http://armouryhobbies.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5

As I have not seen any other Stargate ship combat game, does this mean I have a hit on my hands? That someone is making minis for a non-commercial game?

Now thew Bad News. At the end of this month, Mongoose Publishing will stop taking orders for Babylon 5 ship minis. So this means if you play any B5 ship combat system (mine, AoG's or Mongooses) then you need to order any missing ships right now. http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/miniature/series.php?qsSeries=28

Back to Stargate, I just finished watching the season ender for Atlantis and the SG1 Movie "The Ark or Truth". 
That will help in dealing with these ships in game terms a great deal,

Scott

Yup! I'm a Nerd!



And Yes that is all of them to date. (DS9 is on a nearby table). The tree was done with LED lights. Except for a very small string of mini-lights to power the Hallmark Ornaments. The house is done in all LED lights as well. Along with a live tree to be replanted in our new yard, it's looking to be a pretty green Yule Tide Season

Scott

The art of kit bashing is an old and venerable one for miniatures gaming. It is often that you do not have the mini you need and it has either never been produced or is no longer produced. So using elements (thus the bash) from other mini's you build a new one (thus the kit).

My goal is to build the covert armed transports used by Psi Corp in the forth season of B5 (Episode name "Epiphanies"). Now Mongoose Publishing has released a PSI Corp Fighter Carrier, but this was not the one seen in the show (and I think I have already covered the whole what is cannon issue before). So my plan is to build my own.

The first problem is that neither Mongoose Publishing nor Agents of Gaming before them, have produced a Earth Alliance crew shuttle that this ship is based on. However Micro machines did. And it is close enough in scale for our purposes. Now these micro machines are no longer produced 9nor any micro machine for that matter). But they can still be found on eBay. Either as singles or as a part of Babylon 5 micro machines set number four. (and while you are at it, look for the Narn transport, Centuary Transport and liner, the Marie Celeste  and Earth Force One. These have not been produced for gaming either).

Now they cost too much and are too rare to use in any sort of numbers in gaming. But pull a mold off the micro machine, and as long as it is for your own use make as many resin copies as you like. So that is step one, make a resin crew shuttle.

Step two is to get scale Starfurys to attach to the bottom of the crew shuttle. You need four. If you have access to some of AoG's Fleet Action scale fighter minis, that will do. And Mongoose publishing is still using the same scale. So fighters are not a problem. Once again they are close enough to scale for our purposes. And the post on the mini puts in the correct orientation for mounting to the the shuttle. So this is one pretty easy kit bash.

The hard part will be painting the little, tiny Omega symbols on the tiny fighters.

I'll post a photo of the results here. I'll also modify the ship control sheet to match what is seen on the screen (four fighters per squadron, not six).

Pardon me while I break from gaming, for some gaming.


In other words I'll be back after I finish Halo 3  :)

So here we sit with a plethora of ships offered by the Star Fleet Battles Game, pretty much setting the standard for space gaming for some time to come.

Time passes.........

TV and film Technology changes.............

Science Fiction returns to the big and small screen better then ever. Space gaming is reborn.

In the mean time several small gaming company's have kept the space gaming genera alive with offering not linked to any SciFi Property. Whole original worlds in which to play. And being original, there is no argument about what is canon. Three cheers for boundless creativity! But the stage is now set. Players are used to large fleet lists now.

However now new SciFi Properties abound and of course folks what to play in those properties. Images of ships battling it out on the big and small screen, inspire players and modelers alike.

Star Wars
Many new versions of Star Trek
Babylon 5
Farscape
Stargate
FireFly

And lets not sweeping space battles in books like those by David Weber.

However, Canon once again becomes an issue when wanting to game in these worlds that are another persons creation.


More in Part III

Canon is a term you may hear tossed about in miniatures gaming. It is usually meant to state that something is true or not true to the original source material. In historic miniatures gaming this is pretty straight forward. The prototype for a miniature is either found in the historic record or not. And there usually are a large number of different  historic prototype to chose from.

However fantasy or science fiction gaming is ofter not so blessed. First off, most fictional worlds are not complete. So you often do not have  large selection of units to model in a game. This is especially true of supporting units. In a fictional setting, the focus is often on a small number of important characters and machines. And in the case of movie or television fiction, the cost of bringing a character or machine to the screen compounds this.

Then there are other issues. If it appears in a novelization of  movie or tv show, is that canon? What about fan fiction? What about the animated sequel?

In space gaming this can be the worse. Science fiction fans are creative bunch. They want more ships to play with. And thee can be great argument on what makes a canon ship.

A great deal of this started way back in the days after the original Star Trek series. That show face major issues getting ships on screen. At the time it was very expensive to do the miniature work to build a ship model and film it. So Star Trek TOS had very few ships. Then came a very important miniatures game, Star Fleet Battles. And with it an army of ships never seen on screen. For many gamers their first taste of space gaming.

More in Part II

Well I found an old backup of some of my web files on my wifes computer. So I was able to restore the section of my gaming page dealing with the Babylon 5 Earth Force Source Book (EFSB) Miniatures game.

The EFSB was a supplement for the short lived Babylon Project Role playing game. It it was a ship combat system written by John Tuffley, the author of the Full Thrust space miniatures game. But being written during  the filming of season two of B5, there was a lot of material in later seasons not accounted for. As well as ships seen on screen prior to that (like the league ships in Deathwalker).

Many folks tried to "fix" the game by adding new rules and ships to fill it out. http://www.geocities.com/sjaqua/efsb.html was only my attempt to do so. I played with these rules and ships at several gaming cons. And I think they work pretty well.

Now that I have restored what was. And with new material in the form of Babylon 5 The Lost Tales. And with new Miniatures available from Mongoose Publishing. It's time to revisit this system with new ship control sheets and new ship stats, at least. Maybe some new (read better photos) of the ship minis with the painting tips. The old photos were taken with a film camera and prints scanned in on flat bed scanner several years ago. I think I can do better now.

Scott

Some of you may know this already. But as a result of the move and changing primary email addresses, my Yahoo Geocities gaming page got hosed. As a result it had to be completely reset, loosing what was there. And what was there was a lot of files I did not have on my home computer. The games and gaming page was most written during my off time on my work computer at my old job (which involved a lot of waiting for things to go wrong and then working like crazy to fix them).

So with the Yahoo page now working again but empty, it has been a battle rebuild it.

It still has big gaps and lots of missing files. but thanks to one of my readers, it once again has the most current revision of my Stargate Fleet Combat Game. This game is lots of fun. While it remains a work in progress the current version is fully playable. The rules file (pdf format) contains everything you need to play except a table a tape measure and some dice. It comes complete with ship control ships with just about all the ships seen in the two Stargate shows. It also has counter sheets to for you to print out, paste to card stock and cut out. So don't worry if you don't have any Stargate ship minis (however there is a firm on-line making them as we speak. I just got my first shipment. More on that in another post.

Head on over to http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Nebula/1520/stargate.html to check the game out. Future posts to this journal will cover the revisions to that game as well as others.

Scott

Two Games I have been know to work on from time to time are based on TV Science Fiction Series.

The First was Babylon 5. There I only added on to the out of print Babylon 5 RPG; Earth Forces Source Book, rules for ship combat. These rules were created very early in the series. So my changes were to correct things based on later info in the series. Like new or changed ships (some in the game were on the drawing board before they made it on screen and changed in the process).

Well even if the show has been off the air for some time there is new material in the form of the Direct to DVD B5 the Lost Tales. With a new ship class shown there, well that have prompted me to return to these rules yet again.

Then there is a series end for Stargate SG1. The end of the final series presented several new classes and filled information for some existing ship classes. So my ground up gaming systems for Stargate ship combat is slatted for yet another revision. And that doesn't even count the new season of Stargate Atlantis scheduled to start up later this month.

Oh well, "a monsters work is never done...oh my aching hemorrhoids .... curse you Flesh Gordon!"


Scott

If you are interested in science fiction miniatures gaming, then this live journal may be for you.

Over the years I have run games of Full Thrust and my home grown space ship combat systems at a number of gaming conventions. Having recently taken an early retirement from a 9-5 5 day work week. i would like to get active in gaming again. So that is the purpose of this live journal.

I don't believe in keeping a personal journal. The few times I have made personal posts in other live journals of mine I have kept them friends only so as not to detract from the topic driven content that I hope others are stopping by to look at. So with gaming re-entering my life (I hope!), it's time for a new journal.

As with my other journals, this one has a few rules. Please keep comments on a hobby topic of this journal. Comments will be screened, because I will not allow hate speech, foul language, or adult content to see the light of day. This will be a family friendly journal.

Scott