Red Alert Again... And Progress On The Valk

My buddy Jake came over for a game of Red Alert. Two large star fleets in open space, ripping into each other in the icy vacuum. Definitely a game I want to continue playing: there's potential there for a campaign system, and to mix in Warhammer 40,000 for boarding actions and planetary assaults / evacuations. Yessss... Campaignssssss... *Begins furiously scribbling notes*

Confederation battleships break the Commonwealth line

But for a game set up with identical, larger-than-recommended fleets, fought to the last ship (literally: it wound up being his flagship scuppering my flagship, and nothing else left on the board) it only took two hours. Considering it was Jake's first encounter with the ruleset and mine with teaching this particular game, I think that's reasonable. The pace was rapid, but not frantic. The special actions cards hold potential for shenanigans and just plain meanness, but some serious karma kicked me in the rear eventually. Jake did win, after all!

It feels a bit weird for a game that supports line tactics to punish refusing the flank, but them's the breaks. These days, I'm just happy to get a game in.

The fearsome Rebel Confederation fleet in all of its unpainted glory. Within two hours, all but one would be debris...

I definitely need to get these models painted. If possible, by someone with an airbrush and a yen for starships. Jake indicated he might be willing to do so.

Pictured: pain.

If I ever do another light-up Valkyrie, I'm going to just do a light in the nose. Nothing else. Running all of these wires through the aircraft is a bloody nightmare. But it works!

And the interior looks good in red, if I do say so myself... Which I do.

Neat, clean, and pristine: like no military vehicle I've ever seen! 

 Work on the gunners continues... Slowly. I find low motivation to finish these guys. The Valkyrie crew models are just ugly, even with third-party heads. I mean, look at this stumpy little guy:

Port-side gunner. Call-sign: "Stubby".

How is that a natural pose..? Oddly enough, a GW head from the Scions' box looks better:

Tail-gunner. Callsign: "Four-eyes".

Still not a pose that I'd strike if I were a gunner on a helicopter. Blast shield and the four-legged mount is from the Cadian Heavy Weapons Squad sprue. Works well, though a bit fiddly to splice together.

As a kid, my dad gave me a close-quarters facemask. Basically a hard-kevlar shield for the lower half of the face. It looks remarkably similar to this dude's respirator, and they're usually seen on US air crew, particularly crew chiefs and gunners. This Valkyrie is still the last open-bay bird I'm going to do.

Quote For The Day: “This war will not be over until the last of us is dragged, biting and kicking from the last trench or the last hole after we have expended the last round of ammunition.” -General Mühlenkampf, from Watch on the Rhine, by John Ringo & Tom Kratman.

-Six out.