Adepticon 2015 part 1, I finally have time to sit down and write about my experiences. I finally got to be a con attendee and just spend time walking around talking to people who allow us to experience events like this.
I did a lot over the four days of the con so this is going to be broken up in to two or three articles, there was way too much to do for me to fit it all in one article.
I’ve been working on a few terrain pieces the last couple of weeks in preparation for Conquest 2015 where I’m running a tournament. One of the scenarios I’m planning on running is Moving Target which require a monorail/train to act as the moving target. Hawk Wargames sell a Monorail that fits in perfectly with the Art Deco vibe of the buildings. I wanted something fairly modern looking and not too bright – public transport is usually fairly subtly coloured. I spent a bit of time browsing various real world liveries and eventually settled on a two-tone grey scheme with red accents. A bit of time with the airbrush, masking tape and brush provided me with the following.
I’m running a Dropzone Commander tournament on the 5-APR-2015. If you’re in Melbourne (Australia) and interested in a game of Dropzone Commander then head on down to Melbourne High School and participate in Melbourne’s inaugural Dropzone Commander tournament. More details can are on a dedicated Reconquest 2015 page. Signup is available at the Conquest website. … Read more
One of my Cancon acquisitions was a couple of 4Ground’s new buildings for Dropzone Commander. These were a prize supplied by War & Peace Games. These kits come flat packed in a zip-lock bag and are made up from pre-painted MDF and thick card. 4Ground have used a number of different thicknesses and colours to provide some texture and depth to these buildings. Something that is noticeably lacking from most MDF kits, which have a habit of looking very flat.
I didn’t take many pictures this year, mainly as I was playing. While the playing didn’t go too well I had a blast – mainly destroying buildings which won me a couple of 4Grounds 10mm Art-Deco buildings as a prize. These will feature in a later blog, as they’re pretty sweet. Now, however it’s just a handful of pictures.
Things have been a little quiet here: mainly due to the holiday season and the extra-curricular activities that entails. However, the other big event here is Cancon, which is Australia’s largest gaming convention. While it has not yet occurred, I’m playing 2 days of Dropzone Commander and I have needed to finish painting my Scourge. As a result it’s been a fair bit of painting and organising things and not so much blog posting.
However, I figured to put something up I’d throw up a picture of my forces and the list. First the picture:
Just a quick couple of pictures that give an idea of the scale of a couple of the smaller Dropzone Commander units next to a few different 3mm miniatures. The two DzC miniatures are the Prowler (orange/green coloured) and a stand of 3 Destroyers (Grey coloured).
Not a huge amount of progress at the moment. It’s coming to a pretty busy period with a lot of work and also a lot of social activities. Both of these combine to mean not a lot of miniature progress. However I have some Dropzone Commander minis that I’m quite happy with.
The Destroyers are a race of cuddly teddy bears that the Scourge took over at one point and turned into massive, cuddly, weapons of destruction. I personally think they’re just misunderstood – not all 10′ tall creatures with guns in both hands, big teeth and scary eyes are dangerous. Anyway I’m quite happy with how they’ve come out: the bright colours of the weapons help to make them a bit more interesting than just grey and brown.
Unfortunately I’ve been sick all week so there’s been no painting. Next week is also going to be lousy for painting as works sending me to NZ. However, I’ve been doing some more playing with Dropzone Commander unit statistics. This time, I’ve compared the core AA units for each faction: the UCM Rapier, the PHR Phobos, the Scourge Reaper and the Shaltari Kukri.
In a previous life I did a lot of mathematics, and sometimes I turn this to productive use. Other times I turn it towards miniature gaming. Now, when a lot of people try to analyse games they typically calculate the expectation for an outcome and compare that. Expectation is one way of looking at probability, particularly if you run a casino or lottery. However, if your experience of the probability is going to be a couple of hundred events (like in a game of something) then it’s awful. As guess what – the expectation is unlikely to come true. Some examples of the failure of expectation: a dice roll gives you 3.5, your pay-off from the lottery is about 50c for every $ you put in and everyone has 1 testicle. What we’re going to look at is the probability of what you want happening, which is harder to calculate, but much more useful.
The last week has seen quite a bit of painting progress, with a couple of partially completed pieces put aside until after the Dust had settled. One of these projects was a chunk of Dropzone Commander stuff. The unit I’ll feature today is some Prowlers. These lovely little fellas are a small close combat walker that’s supposed to get nice and close to a target tank and inject hot plasma through a proboscis that it spikes through the armour. Really, they just want to get nice and close and cuddle with tanks – they’re just misunderstood.
My chosen Dropzone Commander faction, The Scourge, use skimmers. According to the fluff these sit about 2-3 feet above the ground levitated by some advanced alien technology that no one really understands (Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”). As Dropzone Commander vehicles are not based I have, like most others, … Read more
Dropzone Commander, produced by Hawk Wargames, has been around for a while. The game is in an odd little scale – 10mm – that’s not particularly popular (6mm and 15mm on either side are quite popular). This game has created quite a bit of debate: it’s not cheap, it looks spectacular and is not the … Read more
