Redshirts versus Stormtroopers: Battle Report

Having found laurels quite singularly uncomfortable for resting on I was struck by some random inspiration on Discord.

So, what I plan to do in this projects is:

Print and paint a bunch of Star Trek and Star Wars minis,

Come up with a mildly ridiculous scenario, something about retrieving some plans on a droid, R2-Data.

Using my Grinning Gargoyle facility box set, create an enclosed  indoor gaming area, almost like a dungeon 😉 , and paint up some set dressing.

Finish off with a battle report and then  home in time for space tea with lashings of Romulan Ale/Blue Milk depending on who wins

Set phasers to fun.

Just a quick WIP photo, these are surprisingly fiddly to paint given the simplicity of the uniforms

Having suffered and recovered from a motivational slump at the end of the week I set about fixing the printer and rattling off a bunch of stormtroopers. They’re a bit out of scale relative to the Star Trek guys, but not enough to worry me.

So painting something mostly white is new territory. I try and avoid using black or white on minis as it is extremely rare for something to be absolutely black or white in reality.

I did a bit of research and decided to follow Duncan Rhodes’ tutorial, he’s quite good at painting.

Progress on the stormtroopers, will probably do another pass with an even lighter grey

I’m done with the stormtroopers, a bit rough and ready but they’ll do.

There’s probably way more than I need, but they might come in handy for a cyberpunk game or something ?

So having printed and painted the miniatures I wanted a fitting environment to have the battle in, plus something than can be used for Stargrave/5 Parsecs et al. Most of my existing sci fi terrain is kind of grimy and run down looking. I wanted I something with a cleaner look.  Then I saw this…..

In 2023 Games Workshop invented the ‘wall’ , which united humanity and brought harmony to the universe. I figured they could be quite nifty to add to the spaceship in a box I had purchased, then I decide further greebling  is required and I order some bits. It occurs to me this could potentially be an opportunity to join in with Dungeonalia.

Two days after Dungeonalia finished my parts finally arrived…

These are slow going, it would be so much easier to grimdark it all. This may turn into a project in between projects

This is the first chance I have had to use these walls, I purchased them after watching a weekender

I broke the map layout into different galleries to make up for the project systems’ shortcomings

The last gallery of the game set up!

I worked on a little more scenery and decided to try Space Weirdos as the ruleset.

I made profiles for basic stormtroopers and for a couple of squad leaders.

For the Federation, I made Kirk, Spock , Nurse Chapel and the redshirts.

My guess is the stormtroopers could win this if they can get up close and personal, however the Redshirts have a faster rate of fire and are more effective at short range.

The two stormtrooper leaders have autocannon which will hurt if they actually hit.

I tried a 12-14 model game but the Space Weirdos rules are definitely not built for that many models.

The next day my hobby buddy Hunterturtle came round and tried with 6 a side. The command point system really started to shine at this model count. Command points allow you to do nifty things, like upgrading dice rolls. Eg you are rolling 2d6 , but you really want to make the roll, spend a command point and now you’re rolling 2d8. You can also boost move or put a figure on overwatch. You get 3 command points a turn.

The Redshirts won the game handily. To the point where they needed a tweak. So we dropped their defence stats further and went again 3v3.

Again a really fun game. For the cost Space Weirdos is a no brainer. I set up this thematic game as maybe something to demo at Chillcon or Peachcon, but you can grab any old sci fi miniatures and have a blast with it.