The Future of Jovian Chronicles - Interview with Robert Dubois of DP9

Today I have a treat for you, dear cosmonuts! With new releases being announced for Jovian Chronicles/Lightning Strike I contacted Robert Dubois, the CEO of Dream Pod 9, to see what the future might hold for the game(s). It turns out that there are a number of exciting developments in store and I have started prepping my ship models for battle.

Before we move on I'll just mention that we are mostly refering to Jovian Chronicles in the interview which, if you want to get technical, is the rpg (which has tactical rules that use miniatures) while Lightning Strike is the dedicated miniatures game. However what we are really talking about is Lightning Strike or a future version of Lightning Strike, although it may end up with a different name.

Alright, so lets just get to it!


Fire Broadside: Hi Robert, I'm glad to have you hear to talk about what's going on with Jovian Chronicles and what the future might bring. But before we get into that could you just tell us briefly who you are and perhaps a quick recap of the Jovian Chronicles game?

Robert Dubois: Hi Martin. Well, I'm Robert Dubois, the president of Dream Pod 9. The company has been around since 1995 when we published our first Heavy Gear book, the roleplaying and tactical game. Since then the company went on to team up with Activision for a couple of computer games based on Heavy Gear and made a tv-series together with Sony.

When we go back even further into our history we were actually a company called IANUS Publications who published the Protoculture Addicts and Mecha Press magazines, that were all about anime and manga. We started working with R. Talsorian Games back in the early nineties to publish some Mekton books and that's how Jovian Chronicles came into being. We were doing some Cyberpunk stuff for them, and then we published Jovian Chronicles which was our tribute to Gundam, giant robots and all that stuff.

Later, after Heavy Gear was published, we decided to re-do it with our own system - the Silhouette core system. We came out with a bunch of books and miniatures for Jovian Chronicles and one thing that did very well for us was Lightning Strike, which was a tabletop miniatures game based on the Jovian Chronicles setting. You had fleets of ships and exo-armors fighting it out on the table and now we're actually working on an updated version of that that will allow you to field smaller scale, about 15mm tall, exo-armors instead of the old large scale ones.



FB: Yes, this announcement really put me over the moon! I remember coming across the first edition from DP9, back in 1997, and flicking through it realized I had to have it. While I hadn't really seen much Gundam at this time I was familiar with Macross and loved the mecha. However, what really amazed me was the solid hard scifi, adhering to proper physics (most of the time), and the both deep and broad background setting for the game!

RD: Yeah, our team from way back then, like Marc A. Vezina, all come from an engineering background. They really like to have the hard science, with the ships designed properly with gravity only coming from thrust or through centrifuges or actually spinning the ship. There is no gravity plating like you see in Star Trek.

FB: Exactly, there is no space magic. And I love that especially as it feels lite something that's fairly rare, not only in roleplaying games, but in movies, books and on tv as well. There's usually some handwaving going on to explain all the "unrealistic" things.

RD: That's the beauty of Star Trek - technobabble explains everything! Somebody sneezed and they go back in time; "Yeah, we'll just write something around that. Physics, no no, we don't need that.". But with Jovian Chronicles we tried to have the physics working, which is also true of course, for Heavy Gear. We wanted to have the hard science as that was the background of the guys in our company. We had just got out of college and we loved tabletop games so we decided to start our own company!

FB: And you're still here! So, focusing on the Jovian Chronicles and the miniatures for a bit, I got the impression that one reason for having the larger 30mm exo-armors in the beginning was connected to the tactical game in the rpg that was much more of a skirmish experience than Lightning Strike.

RD: Yes, the original tactical rules in the first edition of the rpg was written for maybe five exo-armors per side and it has the full 3D combat, it has vectored thrust and it has the X, Y and Z axis. So you had to either raise your miniature up into the air or use a lot of counters! Lightning Strike simplified this to a 2D plane and streamlined version of vectored thrust and in the future edition we would aim to streamline it further. In the old tactical rules you could run your exo of the table if you didn't apply counter-thrust properly!

FB: Hehe! That actually happened to me the other day as I was doing some solo tests of the tactical rules in preparation of running our rpg campaign - one of the exo-armors simply wooshed off the table as I realized I didn't have enough thrust to turn in time. Still, I think it brings a certain something to the game, even with the much simplified "vector tokens" that are used in Lightning Strike. Do you think we might see something like that in the updated rules?

RD: I think we’ll try and remove as many counters and tokens from the tabletop as possible in a new ruleset as they tend to slow down the game. So I don’t see full vectored thrust rules like in the rpg, as for keeping the thrust arrow from Lightning Strike, we’ll have to look at that. New rules will have to go through alpha and beta versions, where we get feedback from the players before they are locked down.

You got to be careful with the hard science, going to the extreme. In fact, back when Wunji Lau, who wrote the Europa Incident (among other stuff), started working on Lightning Strike we decided to make it more for selling miniatures than for selling an rpg. There are two different dynamics between the two types. In an rpg you want a lot of background and fluff that people can really get engrossed in - technical flaws like, the players find out that there's something wrong with a particular model; if you push it too hard it might explode or something like that!

But in a miniatures game people just want to know, "ok the miniatures look cool, there are cool rules that allow you to fight against one another in a balanced battle", so there has to be a point system for how to build your fleets and all that. Sometimes you can't take what's in the fluff of the rpg and translate it since a player might go "well, why would I ever buy this miniature if it has this major defect?!".

FB: Making a balanced miniatures game is certainly a very different experience from an rpg. Will the new version basically be a smaller update to the current Lightning Strike rules, mainly taking into account the switch of one exo per stand to three, or will it be a major overhaul, like what you have done with Heavy Gear?

RD: It's going to be a little bit different. What Wunji and I are talking about right now is how to update it and bring it to the level people expect of a miniatures game these days. Like I said, less counters to keep track of stuff and so on. One thing we realized is the way we wrote Lightning Strike and the way we abstracted things back then is not ideal in todays gaming climate. We had the exo-armors as these 35mm tall miniatures and the ships being maybe 60mm long so it was not exactly to scale. 1/500 scale for the exos and fighters and 1/5000 for the ships.

We explained that in Lightning Strike by saying that you are actually the admiral on the bridge looking at this projection of the battle, and of course the projection is not going to show a pinprick of light that was your exo-armor but a blown up image to make it easy to grasp. What we're saying now is that instead of just one exo-armor what we have is an entire squad of exo-armors. We'll go and redo the rules and get feedback from the players to streamline it down. You'll have squads of exos and you'll have ace exo flights, and when we come about doing the Dragonstriker or the Stormrider we'll have just one big model representing it.

We can't really have them to exact scale as even with 15mm exos the ships would become very big and too expensive for the regular player. Having players shill out $50 for one ship just to have it in scale isn't worth it, sometimes you have to abstract it.

Anyway, we did some massive changes to Heavy Gear with the latest rules (downloadable for free here), and we will probably do something similar to this with Lightning Strike. We want to get it to the point where it's easier to built your fleets and have faster dice rolling mechanics so we can speed up the gameplay just like we did with Heavy Gear. That's not to say that it will be exactly like those rules, we'll likely throw in some different stuff to try out and get peoples feedback on. We want to make sure that every weapon upgrade or every pack of exos are viable in the game - "what does this pack bring that the other doesn't?".

FB: So probably some major changes incoming. Will the process be similar to how you are handling the latest iteration of Heavy Gear, with beta testing etc?

RD: We'll be sure to do alpha tests and beta tests to get some good feedback. As game designers you can have this idea in your head and you think it'll work perfectly and then someone out there goes and says "but what if you do this?" and you realize it completely breaks the game.

Mechanics are far from nailed down but we're probably going to have a dice pool similar to Heavy Gear where you add or subtract the number of dice in the pool rather than applying modifiers to the actual roll. Basically we want to keep the positives and get rid of any negatives and defects. For example if you have a ship in the old rules which doesn't have the range to hit the enemy ships at the other side of the table, it's going to get somthing that can do that. Since battles are usually between ships firing at each other and some exos trying outmaneuver and outgun each other to get to the enemy ships.

FB: Well, having units that can actually do stuff is usually more fun. And as far as the scale goes, I think having exos and fighters at 15mm and ships staying at the scale they are now will be just fine. Yes, it's still out of scale but it's close enough that our brain can have you look past it and it feels like it makes sense on the tabletop.

RD: Exactly. Right now we're trying it out, first releasing the Jovian and CEGA fighters and we just released images of the new exo-armors, the Pathfinder and Hector for the Jovians and the Wyvern and Syreen for CEGA. Our sculptor, Tony Baltera, is working on some other things in the background now so we're getting some more Jovian and CEGA exos and eventually he's even going to work on some of the Venus stuff like the Ryu and the Brunhilde fighter. We basically want to get what we had in the old 1/500 scale, all the fighters and exos, into the new fleetscale. Then after that we're going to look into how we can actually pay for maybe doing new ship designs and all that. We've talked about the possibility of doing it as a kickstarter, you never know. There are a lot of ship designs out there that we never sculpted.

FB: Yes, the ships in the Fleet books are among some of the best hard scifi designs I've come across in any medium. Not only that, but they also look very sleek and cool so that people who might not be all that interested in the physics can appreciate them for their looks alone. I think they're beautifull and I'm sure they would sell like hotcakes!

RD: Right now it's all about making sure there's a market for it and building up a new fan base, as we haven't had anything new come out for the game for a while. Our main focus has been Heavy Gear as that is our main product line. There's a new computer game in the works for Heavy Gear as well...

FB: And a new rpg!

RD: Yepp, and a new rpg. There is some other stuff in the background we can't mention yet. A lot of people have been asking us "are you ever going to do anything more for Jovian Chronicles? What happened to the fleetscale fighters you showed us back in 2006?" and at one point we actually looked for them and finally dug them us as they were in a box, buried in another box in storage. So we thought "ok, let's put it out there before Christmas and see if people are interested" and we got a lot of positive responses!

Alexander class Destroyer from Fleet Book 1. Beautiful stuff!

FB: That doesn't surprise me. I have read a lot of positive reactions and comments to the new fleetscale stuff. People seem really excited for it and not only old JC fans, but also people who become interested mostly because of the Gundam connection or because of the simple fact that there are almost no fleet scale mecha fighter miniatures out there.

RD: Tony has been learning over the last year how to actually do 3D models that will cast well.

You'll notice, when you zoom in on the pictures of the new exos, that we've actually pushed the arms into the body. Because when you cast these as one piece miniatures you can't have undercuts, so it's learning how big you can make the detail to make it show up nicely. Since doing a 3D model and having one that can be rapid prototyped and look good as an actual miniature are two different things. You can put the most insane amount of detail on a 3D model, and many kickstarters do this, but it just makes me think "you can't do that. It won't show up on the model".

We're going to see how far we can push the limit with Jovian Chronicles. Some guns might give us trouble depending on how they are pointed and in that case we might have to do some exos as two piece miniatures. We use Maya to create the actual 3D model which can be exported as an object file that can then be sent to a company like Shapeways for rapid prototyping. But it's actually when you get the model back that the real skillfull jobb actually happens as you have to take that and turn it into a miniature. You can't simply cast the prototype but you have to first seal it, as it's porous, and often you need to sand it to get rid of print lines. We then do silicon moulds, running a specialized resin that can survive the vulcanization process, and we take those parts that are then cleaned up again and we make a vulcanized rubber moulds to run pewter. It's not as expensive as doing plastic but it still costs a bit to do each one. You got to pay for the mould being cut and test runs, but you still get away with $400 or $500 in cost to get stuff into production. Compared to the moulds for the plastic models in the Heavy Gear kickstarter where each one is about $15,000!

FB: That is quite big chunk of change indeed! But apart from the plastics you will be doing for Heavy Gear, the pewter and resin casting is all done in-house, right?

RD: Yeah, we do everything in-house. We're working with Fusion Models who actually handles the making of the silicon moulds and Alain Gadbois, who runs that company, was actually our original sculptor back when we started the company. Fusion Models do our large scale Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles kits, but Alain is a WW2 buff and does mostly historical stuff, although there are some sci-fi stuff there as well - he's a geek like the rest of us. He's also very experienced with this, not only doing models but everything from race car steering wheels to hearing-aids to parts for military aircraft. Still, we have both resin casting and pewter spin casting set up in the office so it can be done by us with full control. With the plastics we're having a company just north of Indianapolis who are going to run the plastics for us. That way we can control the chain of command much better.

FB: Seems like a good idea considering how often companies have trouble when doing the casting in China.

RD: Yes, just being able to call up and ask them to print 500 more of something and then having it shipped by UPS a week later is a big difference compared to the slow boat from China.

FB: Alright, getting back to Jovian Chronicles for a bit and the new exo-armors. How did the idea of having stands of three exos come about?

RD: We liked the idea of having three to a stand and one of them being the leader or ace and being marked in a cool way, like with the plasma lance or the axe.

FB: Love the axe! Very Zaku!

RD: Yeah, that's the idea. The guns change as well for the leaders with the Pathfinder getting a larger one while the Wyvern gets a smaller mass-driver. The Syreen was more difficult as there's no differences in how it is equipped. So we tried sweeping the wings back and giving it a kind of forward motion which I think works.

The stands are actually moulded from piano wire which gives them this ribbing that allows them to flex without breaking easily. There is also a ball joint at each end that match up with the ball sockets at the back of the exos. So you have a lot of freedom in how you pose them. We did have to remove the Hector's fourth thruster leg to make room for the ball socket, otherwise it would have been impossible to get out of the mould.

As I mentioned earlier we're hoping to convert most of the fighters and exos to fleet scale during the course of this year and then see if there's enough demand for more spaceships and updated rules. Possibly there would be a kickstarter or doing our own crowd funding just using the website and make sure we get a certain number of pre-orders to pay for all the models, the rapid prototyping, making the moulds and so on. We get enough orders and it happens.

FB: I know it's way too early to talk timeframes here, but I expect any kind of crowd funding would happen next year?

RD: Yes, it wouldn't be this year. Now we're focused on fulfilling our kickstarter for Heavy Gear. We're getting the moulds back from China some time in April and they'll get run late April or early May and when we get all the plastics we'll be packing up orders for the next month and a half. We want to have all the stuff out for backers by the end of June and then we'll have one month to prepare all the stuff we want to take to Gencon. The plan is to have the retail version of Heavy Gear ready until then.

FB: I think a lot  of backers will be interested to hear this, of which I am one of course. Nice to hear the retail box will be at Gencon - plastics should certainly open up for a larger audience. But... getting back into space again! While they are quite small at 15mm have you considered doing some kind of equipment or conversion pack for the exos, similar to the Weapons and Drones pack that is available in the old scale?

RD: It's possible, but we don't want to get too specifik on things. If we go and say that you have to represent your miniature 100% WYSIWYG like we do with Heavy Gear we limit ourselves, because we force people to buy an insane amount of different models. We want to do something more similar to, for example, Star Wars: X-Wing where you have one X-Wing model but then you equip it with different cards and upgrades. So something similar to this, perhaps having some kind of datacard, so that you get more use out of each model. We might do some of the variants if they're different enough and depending on how they need to be cast.

We basically want to look at the parts that we have and see if we can allow people to swap or upgrade things. If we did some variants like, for example, the Wyvern Marine or Bomber that might be just a single exo-armor that you put in place of the leader to show that this squad is a squad of Marines etc.

FB: Right. So instead of a pack of conversion pieces there might be a pack of specialists or something?

RD: Yeah, probably something similar to what we did with the Heavy Gear infantry where you have basic infantrymen and one specialist in the middle of the base to show its type. That way people don't have to shell out a lof of extra money for a number of completely different squads and if you're creative you could probably magnetize the specialists so they can be swapped out as needed.

FB: I'm one of those magnet aficionados. With the new exo-armors I want to be able to use them one and one for the tactical game in the rpg as well so I'll see if I can't magnetize each mech so I can swap them around.

As we're starting to wind down, I've just got to ask about the name. We have mostly been talking about Jovian Chronicles, although the current miniature game in that setting is called Lightning Strike. Will the new/updated game be called Jovian Chronicles rather than Lightning Strike, considering it is perhaps more widely known?

RD: The final name for a new edition has not been decided yet. We’ll have to brainstorm that once work gets started on a new rule set using the new small Fleet Scale exo-armors and fighters along with the existing Jovian Chronicles spaceship miniatures. For now players will continue using the Lightning Strike rules with the small Fleet Scale exo and fighter squads representing the older individual exos and fighters. The future game may end up being call Lightning Strike 3rd Edition, Jovian Chronicles Fleet Scale, or something else entirely that we dream up.

FB: Ok. I think we've covered the new releases and the future of Jovian Chronicles pretty well by now. As a parting gift, can you tell us what is on the horizon? The Retaliator perhaps?

RD: The Retaliator and all of the other exos are queued up for Tony to work on. We do have the Fury and the Cerberus pretty much done so those might be next. And I can show you a screen capture of the Fury Fleet Scale exo armor for the CEGA faction that our 3d modeller, Tony Baltera, has been working on for a future Fleet Scale miniature release. Of course, the actual model will be tiny at 15mm so keep that in mind with regards to details.

FB: Cool, I have always liked the look of the Fury and the Syreen! Well, it has been lots of fun talking to you Robert. I hope we can do it again when we get the new rules or if there's a kickstarter in the future.

RD: Sounds like a plan. Pleasure talking to you, Martin.


And there you have it, dear readers! The lastest info on everything Jovian Chronicles/Lightning Strike. We have six new packs up for order or pre-order right now and more will be added to this line-up during the year. Rules later on and maybe a kickstarter next year. Exciting stuff indeed! Right now I'm just looking forward to using the new exos with the current Lightning Strike rules as I think they're brilliant in many ways. It will be interesting to see what the future holds in regard to the rules.

The models will also find use in the rpg campaign as I think we'll try to incorporate the tactical rules at certain times at least. Here's what I'm looking at right now, standing in front of the monitor. You might notice there are some exo-armors missing. Well... not for long now...

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The Return of Jovian Chronicles!

Hello all! As I mentioned in my last post about the gaming year 2016, it's time to finally get Jovian Chronicles to the table. Both the roleplaying game and the miniatures game. My spark was well and truly rekindled when DP9 announced the release of the new fleet scale fighters for the game and then continued to tease about possible upcoming fleet scale EXO armors as well. Initially I thought it was finally time to play some Lightning Strike, but then I got more and more into the idea of playing through the Odyssey Seed campaign that is an updated version of the Odyssey presented in the first green book when JC was still a part of Mekton. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time and 2016 will be the year it actually happens!

Of course there's no guarantee that we will actually play through the entire thing, but later this month we'll at least have our first session where we create characters and play a short intro scenario. Exciting stuff! I've put together a shared cloud folder full of different kinds of text and video that serves as good inspiration for JC. Gundam is of course a huge influence, but so is proper hard scifi as well. In fact The Expanse works great as inspiration with the very hard scifi feel and political intrigue.

Since the Odyssey is a very broad campaign that incorporates many different milieus it can be tough (although perhaps a fun challenge!) to go through it all with just a single set of characters so I think we'll take more of an ansemble cast approach to it. Each player will have have two characters or one main character and one or more side characters. I'm leaning toward the first option, but the second could be interesting as well. We'll start off simple though, with the players making a Jovian Armed Forces EXO pilot each - the gundam influences simply are too strong to ignore and I think we all want to have fun with it. For later sessions the focus will probably shift to other types of charaters with more interpersonal and investigative skills instead. Still first thing's first - pilots and mecha!

For the most part we'll use the abstract rpg rules for everything, including space combat, but I'm toying with the idea of using the tactical rules for larger or more "important" battles. They are fairly detailed and would definitely take up the lion's share of a play session but a tactical battle now and then might be a nice change of pace and work well to remind the players of how different space is as well as creating more of a feeling of actually controlling a vehicle. We'll at least give it a try and see how we feel about it.

I don't have enough EXO miniatures to properly represent everything on the tabletop as my collection is rather eclectic, so instead we'll use the standies that come with the demo game. Should work well enough with my large hex space mat. If we ever see the fleet scale EXOs from DP9 I expect this to change though. I actually don't mind the big scale difference between EXOs and ships, and larger EXOs would look better while playing the rpg anyway, but at the moment there's no room in the budget to spend on the amount og 28mm EXOs I would need for us to play.

As for the rpg rules, I actually think Silhouette/Core Command is a pretty solid system. The basics are quite easy and intuitive (yes, you do have to do some simple arithmetic) so we'll be playing it pretty much as written when we start out. My biggest worries are its lethality and the many skills built into it. Skills are easy to cut down on though, so shouldn't be a problem if we feel the need for it. As for the lethality factor... we'll wait and see... :D

And that's about it for this update. I will be writing more about Jovian Chronicles soon, but from a miniature game perspective. I'm prepping a bunch of ships for painting and DP9 have some interesting ideas for the future of the game that I really hope will come to fruition!

Until next time.

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Heavy Gear Blitz - War for Terra Nova

Hello there! As I mentioned in my Future - 2015 post I jumped on the Heavy Gear Blitz - War for Terra Nova - Miniatures Starter Set kickstarter in November and I thought I might talk a little bit more about it.

Although my first contact with Dream Pod 9 was when I saw and fell in love with the cover of the first edition of the Jovian Chronicles rpg, I soon also discovered their Heavy Gear line of games as well. I hadn't seen Armored Trooper VOTOMS at that time, but I had seen Robotech/Macross and Gundam so although I thought Heavy Gear looked cool (and bought a bunch of the rpg books - the setting is awesome!) JC was what I was really aiming for - both the roleplaying game and the miniature game, Lightning Strike.


Still as time went on it became more and more clear that Heavy Gear was the DP9 flagship and although there was for a long time murmurs of a rebooted Jovian Chronicles/Lightning Strike (colloquially known as Lightning Strike Blitz), that would either unify the the scale of the ships and EXOs or get rid of the ships altogether, it never materialized and a couple of years ago the Lightning Strike line of miniatures was officially retired. The molds do come out of storage once every six months so real enthusiasts can still get the minis, but it doesn't seem like we'll have a new edition in the foreseeable future. Still, I recommend checking out the original Lightning Strik for some very cool space combat. Delta Vector has a nice introduction to the game.

When I realized that JC was in stasis back in 2009 I decided to go ahead and get myself an army for Heavy Gear instead. I painted most of it but as I didn't have anyone to play against it kind of stalled and even though I was planning to get a Southern force as well, so I could actually play the game, something else always popped up to throw my money at instead. It has also been a matter of correctly scaled terrain and not wanting to take up valuable storage space with terrain for only a single game. This has now changed since I've decided to invest in Dropzone Commander which uses the same 10mm scale. And if I ever decide to get into Robotech RPG Tactics after all the 10mm terrain will work for that as well, even though it's actually 6mm. You might remember me giving up the Robotech kickstarter in favour of Deadzone a couple of years ago, but now that the game is out and I read peoples thoughts on it I kind of wish I had done it the other way around. Oh, well...

My recon squad and some infantry. Considered rebasing the infantry for the new system, but I don't think I'll bother.

Anyway, fast forward to 2014 and Heavy Gear is getting a great big overhaul and preparations are made for a kickstarter to produce a proper two player starter box with plastic minis. I mostly like what I see of the rules changes and even though I'm used to working with metal minis, having plastic gears will make assembly, magnetizing and converting a lot easier (and cheaper!) so good stuff there to! I hesitated for a while but in the end I felt the deal was simply to good to pass up for an old gear enthusiast like myself. Not only will I get a substantial reinforcement to my existing Northern army (tripling my current gear stable), but I will also get that Southern army I've been clamoring for (including a King Cobra!) plus starter forces for CEF and Caprice!

Having two main armies in the North and South and then two smaller forces to able to lend to friends and allow myself to try something different is something I'm really looking forward to as it means I will finally be able to properly play the game! The rules, that have gone through small-ish revisions over the past decade, is now up for an almost complete reboot. While I liked the old rules in theory I could definitely see how they would seem off-putting to some players, probably several in my group included. However it seems like the new edition is not only aiming for making a smoother game for the same old crowd, but also making sure it's modern and flexible enough to actually attract new players. Although this is me mostly speculating, I think that DP9 has got most of their income from pretty much the same small group of people for the past ten years or so. Having a loyal and invested fan base is great, but it can also lead to shortsightedness and vicious feedback loops. The kickstarter has certainly helped the company get the name Heavy Gear out there and the great rush of new players who are confounded by many of the quirks in the rules that are leftovers from the old rpg days. Getting fresh eyes and fresh feedback I think is a great thing and the beta rulebook (that can be downloaded for free here), which is already quite different from the old Blitz rules, is going through additional revisions based on this new feedback and a new living rulebook should be made available within the next few weeks.

I've read through the Beta rulebook and I liked what I saw. While things have changed most of them seem to be for the better and I'm optimistic about the gameplay. There are of course more changes on the way as head designer Dave McLeod has stated that the release of the Living Rulebook Beta will be pretty much a complete re-write. While I do think the game needed a revision to bring it up modern gaming standards I really hope what make Heavy Gear unique - margins of success, combined arms, electronic warfare and a high-ish level of detail - remain in the game. I really don't think I need to worry, but it's still a balance act that need to be performed, keeping the unique gameplay while making the rules smoother. You can follow Dave's designer diaries over at the DP9 site.

Bottom line, I'm happy to see the game evolving and look forward to getting my hands on the miniatures later on. While DP9 has November as the stated shipping date, miniature and board game kickstarters are always (in my experience) delayed so I'm not really expecting to get my stuff this year, although... there's a first time for everything. Hehe! By then I'll have my Dropzone Commander battle board from Games & Gears ready, hopefully with additional cheap N scale terrain for extra detailing. Although the badlands is the classic setting for a Heavy Gear showdown, I'll make due with an old dilapidated cityscape until I actually decide to make an extra table.

For those of you who find this intriguing and curse yourself for missing the kickstarter in November, fear not! You can still get in on it by way of the pledge manager. You can get the basic core box for $80 CAD but I highly recommend going for the $115 CAD level which also gives you all the stretch goals, meaning the miniature count suddenly jumps from 16 to 51 and includes a bunch of extra conversion parts. While there are certainly kickstarters out there where you get more minis for your buck, but seeing as these are multi part poseable plastics I'm satisfied. Also, for about the same price as three Infinity starters I get 51 minis instead of 15. The next stretch goal is the Northern Kodiak (see left) in plastic at $160k CAD which I dearly hope gets unlocked as it's one of my favourite Heavy Gear models.

Well, those are some of my thoughts on the matter. I'm really happy to finally have pulled the trigger and invested in that second army I've thought about for so long. That it comes with a bunch of extra minis is of course a great bonus! Now I just need some tanks and striders...

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A Delayed Update

Twilight Imperium in full swing!

Hello out there! Sorry for the lack of updates recently. You might remember I said I'd post a tactics article on how to play the with the Rebel fleet in X-Wing. Unfortunately I chose to type it out in Word for some reason and I ended up deleting it by mistake when it was pretty much finished. This made me a bit frustrated and I couldn't find the energy to blog for a while. Plus I'm simply lazy. Haha! Don't worry though, the tactics article will make a re-appearence further on once I've absorbed the new Wave 2 ships. I have been busy playing games though so I thought I'd post a quick round-up of my gaming and geeking activities this past month.

First off, Ed from Two Hour Wargames sent me a review copy of the recently released 5150 Star Navy and I've managed to get a couple of games in. It's been an interesting experience since it's quite different from your run of the mill Full Thrust-esque game. It's more about the big scale stuff and just as much about what happens between battles as what happens during them. Some more games are needed before I feel ready to write a proper review though.

I realised that I had forgotten my GZG ships so we used figures from Twilight Imperium instead. 

Worked great!

Not only was it fun to play Star Navy it also resparked my dormant passion for spaceship gaming! I've been come to the conclusion that what I'm lacking the most right now is carriers and fighter craft, so my next order from Jon at GZG will include some for both the FSE and the UNSC. I have also been looking through my collection of Babylon 5 Earth Alliance ships and managed to get hold of some old Starfury fighters for them (although I think I might use them for my UNSC as well) so there might be some B5 in the future as well.

Great haul but... sad. 

In more spaceship news I got a whole box full of Lightning Strike/Jovian Chronicles models from DP9. Awesome... yes, but it was a bitter-sweet package to get as they've now discontinued their JC line of miniatures. Jovian Chronicles have been one of my great sci-fi/RPG inspirations since I got hold of the first edition book back in the late nineties. I've always wanted put together two proper fleets of Jovian and CEGA forces, but the large scale difference between the ships and the EXOs (mecha) and the price of the models you need most of have meant I kept postponing it. Now, in this final order I only bought ships as I couldn't afford enough EXOs to fill out a fleet.

Instead I'm planning to get fleet scale mecha from different sources. There are the Japanese fighters from GZG and there's a whole bunch of different variants on Shapeways (like these), besides Eli's sculpts available from 15mm.co.uk. I've even considered doing my own 3D models of Jovian Chronicles EXOs in fleet scale and print using Shapeways. I've always wanted to learn 3D modelling so this might be a good way to start. Expect to read more about Jovian Chronicles going forward, I'm not letting it go that easily!

Oh, and being inspired by both this thread on TMP and by watching the altoghether excellent remake of the original Space Battleship Yamato / Starblazers (Yamato 2199) I painted one of my Earthforce cruisers and have started working on other ships as well. I've just been using simple block colouring as it gives the model a bit more of a cartoon feel.

Hopefully the first of many.

As for the new anime series, I really can't recommend it enough! It's nothing like the absolutely awful live action film released a couple of years ago. Yamato 2199 simply modernises the original series and have made it more logical and removed some of the over the top sillyness. There are some additional characters as well and the space battles are gorgeous! Check it out!

Turn one. My fleet is lined up in formation to take over the galaxy!

Next up we played a six player game of Twilight Imperium which was a lot of fun! We haven't played it for close to a year I think as we burned out a little on it last time. I got to play the Yssaril tribes who are generally considered to be the best race, with their ability to skip turns and hoard action cards. It was a fairly close game with only the Mentak player lagging seriously behind. After having been at it for about nine hours we decided to end the game as if the Game Over card had been drawn. There were three of us sharing first place at eight victory points - me, Letnev and Sarr - but since I had the most completed objectives I was the victor. Yay! Now, don't let the nine hour play time scare you off. We take it very slow and this includes breaks for eating and lots of talking on the side. We do have another game lined up for next week that I'm looking forward to!

Finally... I've payed my first Infinity campaign game! You all probably know that I hold Infinity in very high regard, but the excellent rules and the beautiful models have sometimes feel wasted on simple deathmatch games like we've been playing up until now. Sure, there are loads of fan made scenarios, but having an official scenario/campaign book like Paradiso feels like the final piece of the puzzle being slotted in!

That's no Pangguling, I hear you say. Well, that T/O marker IS a ninja so... ha!

We (of course) played the first scenario, Data Recovery, and my opponent was the mercenary heavy Qapu Khalqi. He fielded a group of Kaplan Tactical Service, a group of Odalisques sprinkled with some specialists and a remote. I had a very diverse list featuring several different hackers (going from a Shang Ji to a Ninja) some light infantry, a couple of remotes, an Engineer and finally a Tiger Soldier and a Daofei to lay down the hurt.

My opponent seized the initiative early and analyzed the first alien tech which revealed where the relevant data was located. Unfortunately for me my opponent had that area well covered by a Odalisque with a Spitfire. He dropped two Yuan Yuan who threw smoke all over the place and allowed his engineer to get close to the alien tech. The tide turned when I brought in my Tiger Soldier armed with a HMG though! With the greater range of the HMG and the Mimetism to make him harder to hit the Tiger Soldier pretty much cleaned house on my left flank, allowing my engineer to make her way to the alien tech and download the data. She made it back to the Pangguling remote but failed the upload roll. Grrr!

On the right flank my Shang Ji charged forward and torched a couple of KTS operatives. That meant my opponent was in retreat and his last few models ran off the table. This of course meant that I didn't have any more chances to try and upload the data and I won with a measly two points! Sometimes it doesn't pay to kill your opponent!

It was a fun game and playing a detailed scenario like this really shows off all the cool stuff in Infinity that you normally don't see in tournament style games. In most of these scenarios Baggage Remotes are either mandatory or helps you greatly if you bring them and although I've got a couple of Pangguling I hadn't managed to assemble them in time for the game. This weekend I took time to put them together and magnetise them though and they certainly are cute little buggers!

The total reaction version.

I need to put together my spec-ops model as well and then it's time for painting!

That's most of what I've been up to. Expect another post going through the new Infinity releases I missed last month as well as the new ones for February (Bao troops!!) tomorrow or so...

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Wanted: More Spaceship Gaming!

Yepp, writing that Firestorm: Armada review got me thinking about other systems out there and my desire to play more spaceship combat games made itself known again. Well, it never went away but it grew even stronger! So here are some random thoughts on different systems, models and gaming mats.There are several systems that I have never tried but would like to as well as a few that I'd like to play again.

Full Thrust

There's only one way to start this article and that's with Full Thrust from GZG that I simply want to play more of. While I've played it a few times I don't think it's enough to form a firm opinion on how the system really works. It's a little clunky with all the order writing, but on the other hand I really like the kind of thinking ahead it forces you to do. In many ways it feels like the game you compare other games to - it has that kind of grandfather feel to it. In a good way! Sometime in the future we'll hopefully see a proper second edition of Full Thrust, but I know how busy Jon is and even though he wants to there is simply no time right now.

As for models, well... you've seen my UNSC and FSE fleets. I really like the GZG models in general and would love to expand my UNSC fleet. Unfortunately they're still out of production and waiting for new moulds to be made. In the meantime I've been thinking about getting some more ships for my FSE instead, or perhaps make a small pirate fleet and of course you can never have too many civilian/support vessels!

Lightning Strike

Another oldie is Lightning Strike from DP9. While you can still buy the models and the books there is no active support of the game from DP9 at this time. I really love the setting of Jovian Chronicles and the rules are interesting as well. The real stars of the show are the EXO armours that are supported by a small number of ships, however I think the system is stable enough to play without the mechs as well if that's more your thing. I would like to try it both ways, although my selection of models is very limited. I like the submarines in space vibe you get from the game and the fact that ECM plays a large part.

Right now I have a handful of Jovian and CEGA EXOs but no ships. Some of my favourite ship designs are made by DP9 though and I'm have no idea why I still haven't ordered a Valiant-class strike carrier - it's such a beautiful design! While the ships aren't to expensive, getting enough EXO's in your fleet can get a bit pricey since they're relatively cheap in points but not in dollars. Now, if only I could find some more great eBay bargains...

Starmada

Recently I've been looking a lot at Starmada from Majestic 12 Games. Whenever you see a thread on TMP or SCN where someone asks what system to go with Starmada is one of two titles that always come up (the other being Full Thrust). From what I understand it has a pretty much unbreakable ship creation system which sounds cool! It's (primarily) hex based but I don't have a problem with that nowadays. I probably would have discounted the game for this reason alone when I was younger but now I actually see it as a plus. Sure the mat won't look quite as pretty, but neither will you have to do all that measuring and careful turning of models. In any case it's nice to have it as an alternative (double-sided mat anyone?)! The picture above is from Mike Wikan's excellent blog The Redoubt. See the rest of the pictures here!

MJ12 is coming out with a new edition of Starmada soon and I've been reading some of the designer's notes on the forums (Attack Dice, Vector Movement, Defense & Damage) and so far I like what I see. It seems like Dan is going for a more streamlined version with more "built-in" dice rolls but without sacrificing granularity (which is what I think is missing from Firestorm: Armada). I will certainly pick up the new edition when it's released in... February(?) but I think I will get the current edition as well to compare. Besides it's cheap from DriveThru RPG!

There are no specific models for use with Starmada and I'll probably use my Full Thrust minis for it. I did also order a few Deisho ships from Chris at Ravenstar which will hopefully be the start of a new fleet so there are those as well. Really love the Deisho design! There is a clear Sulaco vibe to the ships and they simply look sleek and brutal at the same time. Starmada also lends itself exceedingly well to stating out ships from your favourite fictional universes, and if I ever manage to dig up some proper Babylon 5 miniatures I might use them with this game.

AV:T, Squadron Strike and Voidstriker

I would also like to try a game with more realistic Newtonian movement. The ones I have in mind are Attack Vector: Tactical and Squadron Strike, both from Ken Burnside at Ad Astra games as well as Voidstriker from Irrational Designs. Of the three AV:T seems to be the more complex one so I'm thinking Squadron Strike might be better as an introduction as they are of a similar design but Squadron Strike allows for a few more ships in play. It also allows to choose how many of Newtons rules you want to obey when it comes to movement. Versatility! There is a demo available for Voidstriker and it seems to be the least complex, eschewing 3D movement for ease of play for example. Like Starmada it's hex based which is nice. In the end I think I would like to try all three of them, starting with the Voidstriker demo.

There are miniatures available for all three of these games and I must say they are all great looking! Going from very realistic (AV:T) to fairly realistic but with "extra flair" (Voidstriker). They're all fleet scale so bit smaller and more delicate than my Full Thrust minis. The Ad Astra miniatures are fairly pricey and anything from Shapeways is as well, so getting specific fleets for any of these games is not a priority. However, I really do love the belters for Voidstriker and the British for Squadron Strike. Hmm...

There are many more games out there than this of course, I've heard good things about Babylon 5: A Call to Arms, but it's out of print these days. Might hunt it down on eBay though. I also haven't mentioned Victory by any Means (VBAM) which is a spaceship combat campaign system that has been applied to several different game systems and settings (including Jovian Chronicles and Starmada!). I haven't delved deeper into it but from what I've heard it's good! Definitely on the list of stuff to investigate further.

Battlefleet Gothic

I mentioned Battlefleet Gothic in my last post and I do think it would be fun to play it again, just to see what it feels like. It's not something I'm interested in pursuing in the long run, but doing a quick revisit could be interesting. I still have a bunch of ships stored away - a large Chaos fleet, a smallish Imperial fleet and a very small Ork raider fleet.

Gaming Mats

Something else you need when playing with spaceship minis is a nice looking space! So far I've simply used some black cloth but I really need to upgrade. My friend Anders have a mat from Hotz (the regular, not the enhanced) and it's decent looking but to be honest I thought it would look better than it did. There are also mats available from Terrain Mats and Monday Knight Productions. I don't really like the look of the one from Terrain Mats. The mat from Monday Knight looks better, although a bit plain, but I would like to see more pictures of it. It's the cheapest of the bunch though, so there is that!

The best looking mats, in my opinion, are the ones available from CorSec Engineering (who also make really good flight stands that you can disassemble). My personal favourite is the Blue Stars mat as it's still fairly dark and "spacey". The CorSec mats are also made from fabric instead of felt which most other mats are made from. This should make them more resistant to damage in the long run which is a nice bonus. However, they are also the most expensive which of course is a factor in deciding what to get. User neghvar on the SCN forums made an interesting post on the prices of different space mats as a price per inch chart. Check it out!

Right now I'm leaning towards getting a double sided enhanced mat from Hotz. It's not the best looking and the hexes that are printed on one side look like they might be a bit brittle, but it does look nice and the price is affordable. I would like to get a CorSec mat later on though.


I'm sure there are many of my readers who have other games to recommend or more nice miniatures or mats that I haven't mentioned (I'm especially curious about Colonial Battlefleet). Let me know in the comments! :)

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Jovian Diaspora: Alexander-class Destroyer

Image from http://www.fritzwork.de

Ever since I got Diaspora back when it was first released I've been toying with the idea of bringing the ships from Dream Pod 9's Jovian Chronicles into it. Jovian Chronicles was actually my first introduction to DP9 and although I've never managed to play in it I absolutely love the setting! Basically it's hard sci-fi in our own solar system with one caveat, there are exo-armours (think Gundam) and they play a large part in space warfare.

While I quite like the mecha part of the setting, what really got me was the ships, especially when I read the Ships of the Fleet series of books! They might be broken from a rules perspective, but damn, those are some great looking and well thought out ships! Especially the Jovian ones, but I really like the CEGA designs as well. If you're into space ships in general and hard(ish) sci-fi in particular I really can't recommend these books enough. While there are some rules pages in there they are far outnumbered by the pages simply bringing the ships alive! Each book describes three ships in exquisite detail and even includes interviews with crewmembers about their experience aboard. Great fuel for your imagination!

Although the JC vessels are a bit more visually stylized than the ships in Diaspora, mechanically they both adhere to a certain level of realism; exclusive use of reaction mass engines, no artificial gravity (besides, acceleration or spinning modules), actually caring about fuel etc. Basically it felt like a natural fit! So as we're gearing up for Diaspora, and inspired by Mike's excellent work over at The Redoubt, I thought I'd make up some stats for the different ships and use them as the navy for some T:3 system. First up we have the Alexander-class Destroyer.

Image from Ships of the Fleet Volume 1: Jovian Confederation.

T3, Alexander-class Destroyer

The Alexander-class is a fairly new and its main tasks are to help patrol trade routes and act as an escort. It is using a new modular design concept, making it easier to manufacture and maintain. As part of the design a spinning habitat module is included so the crew can enjoy some form of gravity no matter the acceleration.

Main features include wing mounted area defence lasers capable of creating a kind of "laser umbrella" protecting nearby ships from incoming missiles and a powerful spinal mounted particle accelerator. This makes the Alexander a versatile class of ships, being able to both defend against smaller "missile boats" as well as pose a threat to more heavily armoured vessels. (Of course there's a lot more information available in the actual book, 22 pages on the Alexander alone!)

V-shift 3, Beam 5, Torpedo 2, EW 2, Trade 0
Frame OOO OO
Data OOO
Heat OOO OO

Overwatch: May use its beam in defense of friendly vessels.
Slipdrive: Can traverse slipstreams.
Interface Vehicle: has a separate vehicle capable of landing on planet surfaces.

Defender
Trigger happy marines
Spinal mounted particle accelerator of death!
Modular, easy to understand components
Pirates beware


What do you think? A bit too vanilla? Would love to hear your ideas in the comments! I actually came up with a stunt for modelling the particle accelerator at first, giving you +2 to Beam when firing on a "stationary" (a relative term) target. But it seemed unnecessary as you could just cover it with a high Beam score and a fitting Aspect instead. Got to love FATE! If the inspirational juices keep flowing I'll work my way through the Fleet Books and make stats for the different ships.

And lets end the post with another lovely render from Fritzwork...

More later!

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15mm Mecha

I feel some more 15mm musings coming on...

I have a three Warbots from Micropanzer Studio that fit the mech-profile very well, but I would also like to have some kind of power armour/exo-suit/walker type soldiers in my army. Something humanoid but maybe twice the size of an infantryman.

My first thought was to simply get some more Gears from Dream Pod 9 since they're arguably the best looking humanoid mechs in the market today. But, for me at least, they're too intrinsically linked to Terra Nova and the Heavy Gear game and I don't think it would feel right in some weird way. The Valkyrie walkers from Art Crime Productions are another option that also have that specific kind of look that I'm going for. They're a bit pricey, but then again, so is DP9. As you can see here and here, size wise they're slightly smaller than a DP9 Gear but still substantially larger than an infantryman. I quite like their chuknyness as well.



Of course the perfect solution would be if I could find a Scopedog model (see top picture) in the right scale! It's like the grand daddy of realistic mecha (yes, you could argue Gundam here, but I don't agree) and the design is almost ageless. Unfortunately the models produced so far has either been too large (1/12, 1/20, 1/48, 1/35 etc) or too small (1/144). Hopefully one day...

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LPL Sunday: Round 6! And round 5 recap

See! My gears aren't forgotten!

After last round's narrow victory I went back to loosing again this week. Hehe! The theme for round 5 was Africa and I had nothing. I really don't want to get any models that I won't be able to use for gaming later and since I'm mostly a sci fi guy this made things kind of hard. However, I came up with the pretty cool idea to get "Crusties" from GZG and make a District 9 themed entry. However, just as I was about to order I realized it was March 1st and Jon had closed the store for the upcoming update. Arhg!!

So... to at least make a nod to the theme I decided to base my gears as I'd always planned to make them deserty anyway and then snap a picture with the Pyramids in the background. It felt bit plain though so I sat down and painted a squad of infantry as well, and they really pulled the whole thing together. Also I'm really satisfied with them and I'm definitely going to paint the rest in the near future. Then it's only the last two Cheetah's and my small army is done! This is the cool thing about LPL; it makes you finish all that old stuff you have lying around.

Anyway, I went up against Bugsda, one of the true LPL heavyweights, and his "Prof Witchheimer up the Jungle". Although there were several positive comments aimed at my mechs (like Plynke's "this is the first time for me where a Bugsda entry isn't the automatic winner." which I thought was pretty funny) it was soon clear that I was going to loose. Bugsda's entry is very well painted and more importantly he stuck to the theme so I'm just glad I managed to put up a decent fight. In the end the votes were 161 vs 101.

Some other great entries this round:

• Lion Hunt - Frank's best entry so far I think. Just look at those lions! Probably my favourite entry this round.
• The Dawn of Man - Who can resist a 2001 reference? Not me.
• Meat's back on the menu - This entry was well painted but for me it was the composition that did it. It's very simple with only a white background, but I can definitely see the natives sneaking up on the intrepid explorers. Hehe!
• District 9 - Well, it seems like Pil had the same idea as me, although he converted his own 28mm prawns instead. Unfortunately the picture obscures the minis quite a bit, but for me it works anyway thanks to the concept. And the mech is awesome!

For round 6 I've finally painted some opponents for my Earth Sectorial Army; a squad Mars rebels, aka Reds, with some walker support. I'm reasonably happy with how they turned out but I don't think they "pop" in the same way my EarthSec soldiers does. Oh well, we'll see how it turns out. See my entry and all the other great stuff over at the Lead Adventure Forum. And don't forget to vote!

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Infantry of all sizes!

I was working on basing my recently acquired  UNSC marines when I realized that I had a nice three-scales-of-infantry thing going on at my workspace and felt it deserved a mention. Two squads of 15mm UNSC marines from GZG, a section of 10mm Northern Guard infantry from DP9 and some 6mm Eldar Dire Avengers from GW.

As you might have seen on the Twitter I've started working on my Heavy Gear infantry (at long last) but I'm kind of mixing it up with other stuff to keep my motivation up. The UNSC stuff is mostly just basing, but they might show up in the LPL, I'm not quite sure yet. I dug out my old Eldar a few days ago after talking Epic with my friend Martin. It's one of my favourite miniature games (whatever version, but preferably Armageddon) and it was actually the first miniature game I got into, and my first army was Eldar.

That was back in the old Space Marine days, and I've since repurposed my Eldar minis, clipping them off their old square bases and put them on the better looking rectangular bases. You might also remember one of the Titans I mentioned in an earlier post. I've been talking about Dystopian Wars recently, but I think I might actually get my epic Eldar ready for play instead. I'm thinking... Saim-Hann!

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