Guess who's back, back again? Doc V's back, tell a friend!

Well that didn't quite go according to plan now, did it?

Where oh where to begin?

2016 saw an almost catastrophic collapse of my gaming hobby due to a variety of factors.  My primary gaming oppo and hermano de otra madre Jonesy has had a lot less free time due to family commitments (which I can't fault in the slightest) resulting in the end of the old Sunday game crafting day and more planned game nights being cancelled than played.  He's also sadly turned into a crotchety old git on the subject of game rules (or rather even more of a crotchety old git than he normally is) and is unwilling to tolerate rule sets that don't meet his ideals.  At the end of an unpleasant game of Bolt Action Modern a couple of months back he announced that the very worst of the rules' many sins was that it used different ranges for different weapons.  Unfortunately that criteria rules out about 75% of the wargames rules I play or own, including my beloved G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.

I think I mentioned that I was starting a new job in January and that not only cut down on the free time for hobby matters but also brought to light an ongoing medical problem I'd been bumbling along with.  After being told I was falling asleep at work, I was diagnosed with Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea.  Go Google it!  But if you don't have time, basically while asleep I stop breathing about 87 times a minute meaning I'd not had a refreshing night's sleep since 2012.  This results in a massive lack of energy and motivation, daytime sleepiness and can contribute to depression and other fun symptoms.  This meant that a lot of potential hobby time on evenings and weekends was lost either due to not having the energy to do anything or just simply falling asleep after meals and waking, five hours later, still feeling exhausted.  Skipping ahead in the narrative, I've just started treatment for this, which promises to cure the symptoms and restore energy levels to normal, which is actually one of the reasons I'm posting this today.

Anyway the overall result of this is that gaming activity dwindled to almost zero during the first half of 2016.  On the rare occasion I could whip up the enthusiasm I kept doing little bits of work on terrain and figures for the San Paradiso project, but much less than last year. And that's why I stopped posting updates to this blog.. Honestly I had nothing to talk about. (I also stopped most of my PC gaming activities, including my YouTube channel, which is similarly on hiatus)

So over the last couple of months I've tried a couple of strategies to get some wargames happening.  Over the last year a small group of friends had started coming by on a Monday night, ostensibly to play Imperial Assault but in practice between cancellations and people turning up but not feeling like playing anything most nights turned into "YouTube and chill" sessions.  So a couple of months back I cleared off the Big Table and basically bullied them into doing some actual miniature wargaming.  We had a couple of really enjoyable games of Bolt Action Modern (this was prior to the revelation detailed above), after which it was decided we'd do a couple of sessions of RPGs, alternating between the two game types for variety.  (Incidently that was 2 months ago and we're still waiting for the second RPG session to happen.  See above re: cancellations, not feeling like playing etc)

Culo Raton MI-2s carrying airborne commandos attempt to flank the
airfield's defensive positions.  Moments later one helo touched down but
the other was hit by San Paradiso gunfire and crashed.. right on top of
the landed helo!

 In spite of this, in my own mind at least, the San Paradiso "campaign" continued to develop, with the this year's Big Birthday Bash (actually a modest 4 player affair) being the attempt by a joint rebel/Culo Raton force to capture the airfield Los Anilcamino.  Had they succeeded, I'd decided that would have ended the current phase of the campaign including the Culo Raton intervention, with a UN mediated cease-fire granting unspecified concessions to Culo Raton and the rebel farmers getting financial aid packages and limited autonomy in the region.

Unfortunately it was not to be, as the dug-in San Paradisan defenders managed to blunt the insurgents' assault and after some fierce close-quarter fighting around the terminal building still held the ground.

In terms of campaign continuity (remember DrV's Slightly Derivative Universal Mapless Campaign Rules?" The rebel farmers/Culo Raton had won the previous two battles and taken the initiative making this game a Raid and giving them a greater chance of capturing this particular resource if they won the battle.  Since San Paradiso won, they get to attempt to shift a resource as normal.  I decided they were going to use this airfield to launch a series of interdiction strikes to try to cut off support from Culo Raton, or in rules terms make their "Secure supply of food and materiel" Resouce Uncontrolled.  Unfortunately I rolled a 1 for them (needing 3+) meaning the resources remain unchanged as follows.

Farmers - Control of the Foothills of Monto Blanko. The Bridge at El Humber. The Goodwill Of The People, Secure supply of food and materiel.
Army - Secure base of operations at Verdaville. The Airfield at Los Anillcamino. The Sunrise Corp Processing Plant
Uncontrolled - Foreign media interest. The fertile Piso River valley. Support from the Church.

It doesn't end there...

In my quixotic quest to model all aspects of modern warfare and include it in the San Paradiso campaign results, I've been looking for an ultra-simple, Beer & Pretzels level air-combat game to be played as a possible adjunct to land wargames.  It was in this search that I came across "Bommaz over da Sulphur River", an old Games Workshop game in their Warhammer 40K setting, which portrayed an airstrike by Orkish "fighta-bommaz" against an Imperial position.  It used to be available as a free download on GW's Specialist Games website (alas no more) and I'd read somewhere about someone re-skinning the game to a Cold War setting, with Harriers attacking vs Mig-21 defenders.  So last Monday when the planned RPG session didn't happen (again!), I decided to whip this out and try re-skinning it on the fly to the San Paradiso setting.

The Orks became Culo Ratonese Shenyang F-6s and the defending Imperial Interceptors became San Paradisan F5e Tigers.  The gameboard represented a pass through the Monto Blonko mountain ranges with Flak and Rock Spire hazards remaining unchanged and the Laser Cannon morphed into a SAM battery.  The two other players present, CrazyEddy and Amy took the attackers and I ran the defences.

"Bommaz" is a ridiculously simple ruleset verging on a single page, with movement from space to space on the board and combats generally being opposed D6 rolls.  But there's enough subtlety built in to make it worth further investigation and although we were actually getting a couple of fundamental rules wrong for much of the game, and everyone enjoyed it.  In the end a lone bomma... ahem sorry a lone F6 from the first attack wave managed to take out both targets successfully, for a Culo Raton major victory.  I'm going to develop this game a little further, with rules for different aircraft from the San Paradisan theatre of war and maybe some different but still simple combat mechanics.

So what does that do to the campaign.  Yes, I'm going to include the results of a semi-improvised pickup beer & pretzels game into the campaign narrative.  Sue me already!.

Well the Culo Raton Ariale Patrole's sorties up the Monto Blanko valley against San Paradisan positions were designed to undermine the "Secure base of operations at Verdaville".  But the dice gods laughed as I rolled yet another 1 (again needing a 3+) so the campaign situation remains unchanged..

That's it for this update.  I'm going to try to get back to regular posting here, with both the ongoing efforts to administer CPR to my wargaming hobby and catch-ups on the little bits and pieces I've been managing over the past 9 months.

Tell a friend!

Metal under tension

A quickie update.

This past weekend Mi Hermano Chofer Jonesy and I popped over the Pennines into the Land of Mordor for a day of gaming with an assorted band of reprobates, including T'uther Chris, Marvin the Arvn and No-Nickname Tony.  In addition to assorted card/board games, I persuaded the guys to have a go at AirWar C21.

The scenario was an obvious continuation of the last Paradiso game - with both sides stalemated on the ground, both sides sent ground attack aircraft with fighter escorts to try to break the deadlock.  A beermat-sized target area was placed in the centre of the table, and any damage points caused by ground attacks made in that zone counted as victory points.  Culo Raton sent four Shenyang F6s loaded for ground strikes with rocket pods, with an escort of four Mig-21s, while the Paradisan Air Force rolled up with their four Super Tucanos escorted by a flight of four F5E Tiger IIs.

To reflect the relatively small numbers of aircraft available to third-world/developing airforces, I ruled that the loss of any jet aircraft would equate to -5 victory points - in a situation where a single aircraft might represent 10% or more of a nation's air force, it makes sense to encourage players to conserve their forces and avoid "banzai attacks".  Because they are much cheaper and easily replaced, I ruled that the Super Tucano turboprops only cost -1 victory point if lost (which I thought slightly compensated for their slower speed and inferior air-to-air combat capability.

It's always interesting to watch other people play a game for the first time and form their own opinions about how to do things.  The Paradiso players both decided to try out Special Manoeuvres in the second turn of the game before the opposing sides had made contact.  Unfortunately a bad run of dice rolls meant that all the F5Es failed.  Two immediately went into stalls which took several turns to recover from, and one of the other two presented its tailpipe to an oncoming Culo Raton Mig-21, who took advantage of the situation and scored the first kill of the game.

As expected a large cluster of airplanes converged on the target area, but it was at this point that the Culo Raton players revealed their fiendish strategy.  They chose to forgo ground attacks with their Shenyang F6s which instead used their guns to join in the air-to-air combat.  The Tucanos all managed to reach the target area and unload their rockets, but two of them fell to the combined gunfire of the Culo Raton planes.  Ironically, the remaining two Tucanos had a Mig-21 fly right in front of them and even with their puny .30 cal machine guns were able to cripple the jet, which limped home.

The battle devolved into a big hairy furball, but the Paradisans never quite got back into the game and withdrew once the Tiger IIEs had expended their Sidewinders.  This left the Culo Raton aircraft free to bombard the target area unopposed.  Having splashed one Tiger and two Tucanos at the cost of only one Mig21 damaged, they were easily the clear victors.

Everyone had a good time, except possibly No-Nickname Tony, whose lower lip may have been wobbling a bit on losing his F5E so early on.  Being only the first proper game we'd played with the rules, we got a few key points wrong - we had planes doing Special Manoeuvres at Low Altitude and making attacks while doing "Break Turn" manoeuvres, both of which are no-nos.  The consensus of the other players was that Special Manoeuvres were on the whole a waste of time, a conclusion they reached after the disasterous Paradisan second turn.  Personally I'm inclined to disagree: I think a successful manoeuvre can win you a killing shot, just as a failed manoeuvre at the wrong time can leave you stranded in someone's sights.  Jonesy favoured doing nothing but Break Turns (a relatively easy move which let you make 75 degree turns instead of 45 degree ones, without too excessive a penalty for failure) but that was before we realised that you couldn't use weapons in the phase you did a Break Turn.

Everyone agreed that the Paradisan's had brought a knife to a gun fight with their Super Tucanos.  While they may be great counter-insurgency ground attack craft, they were a positive liability in an air-combat environment.  The sooner that Paradiso takes delivery of those ex-Israeli A4 Skyhawks, the better!

We also agreed that the ex-Soviet gear seemed to have all the advantages - The Mig-21bis carries four missiles compared to the F5E's two (according to the standard load), just as the F6s carried twice as many rockets as the Tucano.  I'd tried to equip all sides with weapons dating from around the mid-80s, and in the case of the Paradisan Sidewinders I'd made them the export-model Sidewinder-Ps rather than the much more powerful domestic Sidewinder-Ms available in that era.  I'd done so deliberately because I wanted both sides to be using rear-180 aspect missiles.  I'm going to have to go back to the airplane stats and do a bit more balancing work in setting up furture scenarios.

One last thing that I found strange - during my solo games I'd used a pair of set-squares (visible in the photos in the last post) for measuring angles - the angles you most need to use are 30, 45 and 60 degrees, all represented by corners on the set-squares, while a high-mobility Break Turn can be measured by putting a 45 degree and 30 degree corner next to eachother.  For the game this Sunday I went to the trouble of printing off copies of the turning circle from the rules.

For some reason though, the players did not get along with these at all.  And we're talking a relatively clever bunch of people here.  But despite it being as simple as "High mobility planes normally turn H, if doing a Break Turn they turn HBT", the turn circles fell by the wayside to be replaced by some truly dubious "eyeballing" of turns.  Then someone hit upon the idea of using a square D6 as a sort of 45 degree turn indicator (if you line it up with the flat front of the flying base, then the corners are pointing 45 degrees)  I'm beginning to think that I might be better off picking up half a dozen cheap "back to school" geometry sets for use with this game.

Applying the Culo Raton victory (on behalf of the Farmers' Revolt) to our ongoing campaign rules, I think the capture of the fuel depot from the previous land battle will give them control of a Secure Supply of Food and Materiel.  That leaves the campaign status as follows.

Farmers - Control of the Foothills of Monto Blanko. The Bridge at El Humber. The Goodwill Of The People, Secure supply of food and materiel.

Army - Secure base of operations at Verdaville. The Airfield at Los Anillcamino. The Sunrise Corp Processing Plant

Uncontrolled - Foreign media interest. The fertile Piso River valley. Support from the Church.  

I think I'm going to fight this particular campaign thread until one side has just twice as many resources as their opponent, before having a UN enforced ceasefire reset the situation.  Now that Culo Raton has become involved I don't want things to escalate into all-out war too quickly!

Anyhoo, this post has taken far longer than I'd planned, and I've not even managed to mention the care package I received from Carl of SoloWargamingInTheUK.  More of that in a future post.

Gonna take a ride into the danger zone.

With the escalation of tensions between the Caribbean island nations of San Paradiso and Culo Raton, both nations have placed their respective Air Forces on high states of alert.

The Fuerza Ariale de Republico Paradiso is small and poorly equipped by western military standards, however compared to other Caribbean nations it represents a significant force to be reckoned with.  For its primary air-superiority fighter, Paradiso operates a dozen or so of the venerable Northrop F5E Tiger II, a 50 year old design which thanks to a series of avionics upgrades and modernisation refits remains a capable and credible threat well into the 21st century.  Although normally utilised as an interceptor/air superiority fighter, the Tiger II can be equipped with Paveway II and Mk82 bombs for a ground attack role.

Regular ground attack, counter insurgency and border patrol duties normally fall upon the Embraer EMB314 Super Tucanos.  The Brazilian turboprop trainer/light attack aircraft excels at close ground support, with it's acrobatic agility and long loiter times compared to jet fighters.  They may be no match for jet fighters in air-to-air combat, but since they are mostly employed against local insurgents and narco-traffickers.

Bringing up the rear of the formation are four A4 Skyhawks, recently purchased from Israel and not yeat operational.  Another veteran airframe that's still effective on today's battlefield, the A4s will represent a significant improvement in Paradiso's surface attack capabilities (including anti-shipping strikes) in an aircraft that can actually hold its own in a dogfight.

As a whole, the Paradiso air forces are in dire need of modernisation.  Countermeasures like chaff and flares are not universally fitted, and the standard air-to-air missile is the older, less capable AIM-9P model. Ground attack weapons are mostly unguideded bombs and rockets, with a handful of laser-guided Paveway bombs available for the F5Es.  And of course, the small size of the air force means that any aircraft losses are felt keenly.  The loss of two airframes might represent 10% or more of the available fleet.

Meanwhile the forces of the Culo Raton Ariale Patrole are equally ready to repel their Imperialist neighbours.

Like any good Communist dictatorship, Culo Raton operates mostly ex-Warsaw Pact or Chinese built equipment, often buying third or fourth-hand hand-me-downs from former Soviet client states.  Their fleet of MiG-21s have been extensively modernised and brought up to the MiG-21bis standard.  Primarily used as interceptors and air-superiority fighters, they can be equipped with an austere ground-attack capability.

The air force also has a handful of ancient Sukhoi SU-7 Fitter fighter/bombers.  Considered hopelessly obsolete everywhere else in the world, they still offer Culo Raton a significant ground-strike capability.

The Chinese built Shenyang F6, extensively modernised copies of the MiG-19, make up Culo Raton's primary ground attack capabilities.  Munitions are limited to unguided rockets and bombs, but a nation under as many arms embargos as Culu Raton has to make do with what it can acquire.  In a pinch, the F6 can be equipped for air-to-air combat, but would most likely be outclassed in that role.

So those are the aerial forces I've assembled for the modern Imagi-Nation action between San Paradiso and Culo Raton.  I've deliberately gone in most cases for out of date kit nearing the end of its operational lifetime (apart from the Super Tucanos, which are modern but inexpensive) but apart from the SU-7s I believe all these aircraft are still in active service with at least one nation in the real world.  Mig21 workhorses are still everywhere, Argentina is getting its fleet of A4s a brand new refit from Lockheed with avionics lifted from the F16, while the F5E remains the primary aircraft of the Swiss air force.

After looking at some of the options available, the rules I'm leaning towards are Air War C21 by Wessex Games (available as PDF from Wargame Vault).  I've had a couple of solitaire games and the rules look very good, doing a good job of abstracting the third dimension.  In a dogfight, you have the choice between moving normally, which is a simple half-move/turn/half move/turn based on your aircraft's manoeuvrability rating.  Alternatively you can attempt a Special Manoeuvre, pushing the flight envelope and theoretically involving the third dimension and either a loss or gain in speed.  For example an Immelman manoeuvre, which in real life resolves a half loop upwards followed by a roll to bring the aircraft upright again, in AW:C21 this allows you to make a half move then turn to face any direction, with a drop in speed.  The downside is that these manoeuvres require a roll to complete successfully and a failure can result in unexpected movement, greater than normal speed gains/losses and place you at a disadvantage against incoming fire.  If the results of a manoeuvre, success or fail, takes you over your airframe's maximum speed you take damage as the plane tears itself apart.  If  you drop below the minimum speed, you go into a stall and are no longer flying, but fighting to recover control of your aircraft as you plummet towards the ground.  At best this makes you easy prey to enemy aircraft, at worst you run the risk of fireballing into the ground.

The Special Manoeuvres are definitely the game winners/losers.  You can fly around doing normal moves in perfect safety and will probably find it quite difficult to get into firing position against your enemy.  Or you can take a chance on a Special Manoeuvre which might put you on your enemy's six, or if you fail leave you hanging in his gunsights.  Energy Management, a key feature of Air Combat Manoeuvering (or "dogfighting" to you and me) is also represented as you need to carefully manage the speed gains and losses from manoeuvring in order to keep within the flight envelope.  Too many fancy manoeuvres might leave you slow and energy-deficient just at the time you need to manoeuvre to avoid incoming fire.

In summary of all the air combat games I've played over the years, this one comes the closest to feeling like real flight, without tracking the third dimension.  I'm looking forward to trying out the rules on a live human opponent .

Meanwhile work on the air forces' 1/72 counterparts continues apace.  While I just about managed to hand-paint roundels and flags on the 1/300th aircraft, I think I'm going to try making some decals for the 1/72 aircraft.  I've also settled on a flight stand design that I'm very happy with, and as I'd expected, the 1/72 aircraft look absolutely fine flying over 28mm troops on the ground.  Pictures and more reports to follow.

I was born in a crossfire hurricane

So this weekend was the forty-fifth anniversary of my being dragged, kicking and screaming into this world.  Attempts to organise a true Big Birthday Bash fell apart as one friend after another made their excuses until we were left with an expected attendance of just four of us.  So on the day I decided to just throw down the green sheet, lay out a Paradiso terrain and just have at it with the new toys I'd been collecting over the past two years using the FUBAR one-page rules.

The result looked a little something like this..

The scenario was a relatively simple one - Driven by their recent failures, the Paradisan Revolutionary Farmers had taken control of a fuel supply depot.  The local Army commander had decided to make a show of force and sent in a full platoon in APCs to clear them out.  Unfortunately El Capitan was in for a surprise.  In addition to their ramshackle technicals, one with a 50 cal, one with a recoilless rifle, the guerillas had managed to acquire a battered old T55 along with a crew of "advisors" to drive it.

The second surprise, and a major escalation of the situation in Paradiso, was that the leaders of neighbouring commnist state Culo Raton had decided to support the rebel farmers and had sent an infantry platoon reinforced with two more T55s across the border to take advantage of the confusion and secure the fuel depot for themselves.  In turn, the Paradisan Army was able to call for reinforcements in the form of a couple of M60 tanks.

Due to the jungle terrain being largely impassable to vehicles, most of the action was focussed along the road on one side of the field.  The rebels kicked things off with an ambush on one of the Paradisan APCs that knocked out its 30mm cannon.  But sadly due to a failed activation roll they were unable to pull back and relocate before the infantry piled out and assaulted the ambush position, killing the whole squad.

Meanwhile the other two army APCs entered the small built-up area (well... there was a diner and a garage, at least) and the remaining infantry debussed and cleared the area, setting up a command post in the diner.  The army plan was for a "hammer and anvil", with one squad engaging the rebels from one side while the other two squads swept in from the flank.  It was a great plan, except the "anvil" was delayed by the ambush just described, while the "hammer" just managed to get the buildings secured when they found themselves outflanked by the arriving Culo Raton APCs.

Things got a little confusing from there.  The guerillas' T55 trundled into action but had its weapons knocked out by cannon fire from an APC.  They then made good use of the weaponless hulk by parking it across the road, blocking the advance of the army's M60s. The arriving Culo Raton forces took out one of the Paradisan APCs with a shot to the rear, debussed their own infantry, then spent several turns brassing up the diner with their cannons, turning it into a smoking ruin and driving the occupants out.  The "hammer" suddenly found themselves under serious threat from the rear and started pulling back towards the facility (ironcally retreating *towards* their original objective.).

By the end of the game, the original rebel farmers had pretty much been wiped out apart from one technical that fled after scoring a mobility kill on one of the M60s.  The Culo Raton forces had gotten one squad to the edge of the fuel depot, along with one T55 that had managed to find a path through the jungle.  The Paradisan Army had managed to get a squad and a half of infantry to the edge of the depot, but its armoured support was cut off and unable to reach them and the rest of the platoon was falling back in disarray.

So let's see, Here we have the guerilla's T55 (a chinese die cast - £6.99 from Ebay) blocking the road for a Paradisan APC (an Old Crow sci-fi model, pretending to be an M113 like real-world APC) and two M60s (Academy 1/48 kits).  Side by side with the T55, the Academy kits are all way overscale, being closer to 1/41, but on the table they don't look too bad.  Since Paradiso is an imaginary nation, I have no qualms about using toys or fictional sci-fi wheeled and tracked vehicles to represent "real world" vehicles, as long as they look the part.

The Culo Raton APCs are the old Marbeth Designs "Hann'Mag" SF APCS that I bought about 20 years ago and have *finally* gotten on the wargames table :-).  They're lacking in details, but they were cheap at the time and do for a sort of BMP/BTR hybrid.  The turrets were an interesting find - on Amazon.co.uk I saw a "Combat Mission" set of 8 vehicle kits and 30 toy soldiers for the princely sum of £2.80.  When I bought one just to see what it was like, the soldiers turned out to be the worst examples of "green army men" I'd ever seen, and the vehicle kits turned out to be tiny cartoonish "pull back and go" toys, the sort of thing you might get with a Happy Meal.  But the turrets!  The turrets for the "M1 tank" kit were perfect for the Hann-Mags, and even buying six whole sets and just using the one turret from each, it still worked out cheaper than getting a similar turret sculpted and 3d printed by Shapeways.  Plus the rest of those kits make great Bits Box fodder (I've already got plans to use some of the other turrets on other APC models I have)

   

This was the debut for the Culo Raton army, which I originally bought a couple of years ago.  Looking for a fairly generic set of figures with Warsaw Pact equipment, I went for the Iraqi army from the Assault Group.  As I explained to the other players, I'd grown up on a steady diet of WWII movies, so naturally in my mind, bad guys wear grey uniforms.  So it was a natural choice when I came to paint my "OPFOR" for Paradiso.

All in all I was very happy with the look of the game.  As I've said before on an individual basis nothing is particularly well painted or modelled, but put together as a whole the effect is quite attractive and "realistic".  I think I've even won over Mi Hermano Philestino Jonesy, who has been known to argue at length against wargaming aesthetics in favour of pure practicality.  I like to think we're walking a sensible middle ground and still managing to end up with an attractive looking tabletop.

Ruleswise, FUBAR worked incredibly well.  Apart from the farmers who were largely wiped out, there were very few casualties in the game, but overall things felt right.  It was noted that concentration of fire was required to overload a units capacity for suppressions in order to cause significant casualties.  Simply trading fire between two squads/fireteams would likely just result in suppressions on both sides and a stalemate.  As an aside, we also found it best to break the 9 man Paradisan squads (modelled after US Army) into 2 fireteams for activations, while keeping the 6 man Culo Raton squads (modelled after Warsaw Pact) as single units.  I think that reflects the differences between Western and ex-Soviet infantry doctrines quite well.  You could argue that splitting the 9 man squad into two seperate units allows them to absorb twice as many suppressions as if they were a single unit, but I think things balance out overall.

The vehicle rules, always a bit of an afterthought for a primarily infantry based game like FUBAR,  were OK but felt a little lacking.  I'm looking at some of the many FUBAR variants for inspiration, and we're either going to wind up adopting one of them, or otherwise simply lifting out the vehicle combat rules from another wargame to give us the right flavour.

This was basically the sort of wargame I've been wanting to play for a long time - modernish equipment, lots of toys on the tabletop and a fun battle game with a nod to realism but not excessively constrained by it.  The Flying Lead/Pulp Alley/7TV "warband" type skirmish games are all good fun, but sometimes a chap has a need to command more men than he has fingers (and toes), sending armoured columns swooshing up the table, and occasionally stretching to reach a far corner of the tabletop.

As for the final result of the battle.... weeeeeeeeeel everyone on the day agreed that the point where we were forced to finish the game would almost make a good start for another wargame, with both sides having troops arriving adjacent to the objective.  But although the sides are still relatively equal, looking at the table in the cold light of day the Culo Raton forces are much better positioned for an attack on the depot from two sides, while the Paradisans don't have a solid defensive position and will be struggling to bring their supporting tanks to bear on the enemy.  So reluctantly, as I was the commander of the Paradisan "Anvil", I'd have to call this battle a victory for Culo Raton (if not the rebel farmers).

Putting this into the perspective of the ongoing mini campaign that I've documented on this blog previously, the Culo Raton intervention has threatened the Army's control of Secure supply of food and materiel.  A role of 5 on D6 means that campaign resource is sent back to the "uncontrolled" pool, leaving the campaign status as follows.

Farmers - Control of the Foothills of Monto Blanko. The Bridge at El Humber. The Goodwill Of The People.

Army - Secure base of operations at Verdaville. The Airfield at Los Anillcamino. The Sunrise Corp Processing Plant

Uncontrolled - Foreign media interest. The fertile Piso River valley. Support from the Church.  Secure supply of food and materiel.

Since this breaks the Army's winning streak, they've lost the ability to declare a raid on a specific campaign target.  So the next battle is totally up for grabs.  I have an idea to try something very different for a change. 

This must be just like livin' in Paradise.

GOTCHA!
REBEL LEADER CAPTURED IN FIERCE GUN BATTLE WITH GOVERNMENT TROOPS
RUINED FACTORY SCENE OF CONTINUAL FIGHTING

The ongoing unrest in the Western Foothills spilled over into the industrial district of Puerto Brum.  Earlier in the week, the ruined and abandoned Milk Duds factory was the scene of clashes between the Policia Municipale and assorted gang members and foreign mercenaries in a chaotic four-way gun battle.  Unfortunately the brave men of the Policia were driven off and the site left in the hands of the criminals and anarchists.

Yesterday however, the Army sent in a squad of troops to clear and secure the site.  They quickly encountered a sizeable force of the rebel farmers led by the notorious revolutionary El Porco Verde.  In a long gun battle, two soldiers were killed and several wounded, however our brave boys in green finally managed to capture the rebel leader and several of his henchmen.

A spokesman for El Presidente has stated "We believe that the rebels were at the site to pick up a supply shipment of arms, smuggled to them by one of the city's criminal gangs.  In smashing this operation, we've dealt a crippling blow to this illegal revolt against our just rule."

Thus is the tale of two wargames recently fought in my Imagi-Nation of San Paradiso.

The first was a quickly thrown together game of Pulp Alley for the Old Farts gaming evening, who graced me with their presence last week.  Since I don't have any proper pulp-era figures painted, it was a toss-up between digging out the Victoriana/Steampunk figures, or going for a modern "Action Movie" style game.  In the end we had the Police, the biker gang, the "urban" gang and "The Z-Team" all clashing over a table representing a ruined factory complex.

As a fun game, I can't praise Pulp Alley highly enough.  It's designed to reproduce the feel of dashing pulp serials, with lots of back and forth and a fairly low body count.  The rules could work without modification for pretty much any period from early gunpowder to sci-fi.  However you'll always have that highly cinematic feel, which might not suit the tone of game you're aiming for.  Personally I'm happy to add Pulp Alley to my "toolbox" of rulesets, as the go-to rules for "fun" multiplayer skirmish games, alongside Flying Lead and Chain Reaction (in increasing order of seriousness).

Anyway the multiplayer Pulp Alley game proved inconclusive, with the Police the only clear losers (the other three sides each had secured one "Plot point", and while the Bikers looked about to gain the upper hand, we basically ran out of time).  So I left the terrain set up on the table and today decided to send in an Army squad to clear the area, using Two Hour Wargames' Chain Reaction in a solo game.  It was the first time I'd used the current PEF rules (Possible Enemy Forces), and I was looking forward to seeing how they'd work for an impromptu solo game.

It was an exciting battle.  The squad entered at the front gate and after ensuring the gatehouse was empty, split into two fireteams.  Alpha team, accompanied by the squad leader, peeled to the right, towards one PEF, while Bravo team peeled to the right, toward two PEFs.

Bravo encountered the enemy first, revealing a rebel foot patrol.  It was here I ran into the first and only real headscratcher of the game.  In Chain Reaction, PEFs are resolved as either nothing, or a number of troops relative to the player's "Group".  While the rules seem to be written with the assumption of a single player group, it wasn't clear what happens in the case of a squad split into two tactical groups operating independantly, like the two fireteams.  Do you base the number of troop in the PEF on the number of troops in the fireteam encountering them, or on the number in the whole squad?  At first I assumed the latter, but seeing the overwhelming odds that produced, switched to the former (basing the numbers on the encountering groups).  I think this aspect of the game bears tinkering with, maybe using the subgroup size, but increasing the number of PEFs on table based on the number of subgroups in play.

Anyway Bravo team ran headlong into that patrol (which eventually had four members) and paid for it with the loss of the fireteam leader.  The survivors deployed into the ruined buildings for cover, revealing the second PEF which fortunately turned out to be a false alarm.  The SAW gunner managed to take out the rebel patrol's leader and a second rebel, sending the two survivors diving for cover.

Meanwhile Alpha team had similarly spread out and encountered the third PEF, which turned out to be the main rebel force of 8 men, including their leader El Porco Verde (from the jungle ambush game).  An exchange of fire between the REP 5 squad leader and the REP 5 rebel left the soldier sprawling in the dust, having rapidly burned through his "Star Power" points in an attempt to cancel his injuries.  The two sides settled down for what looked like it would be an extended firefight of attrition.

Bravo team lost a second man but managed to take out the rest of the patrol facing them.  They then quickly moved towards the sound of gunfire, hoping to catch the main rebel force in the flank.

It was at this point that I made a mistake, or perhaps got a little greedy with the Rebel actions.  The initiative dice came up Gov 6, Reb 2, which meant that though the Government troops nominally won, they could only activate units with a REP 6 or higher (of which they had none), while the rebels could activate anything with a REP 2 or higher.  I tried to send two men in a mad dash across the open towards a flanking position on Alpha team.  Although they were spotted as soon as they reached the open, I was banking on winning the resulting In Sight Test, using El Porco's REP of 5 vs the leaderless soldiers' 4.

In a statistically unlikely but not impossible result, the Soldiers rolled more successes and were able to shoot first, gaining a few easy kills.  The following turn saw Bravo team arrive at a flanking position and pour fire into the rebels.  El Porco was gunned down, surviving through Star Power, while the rest of his group were whittled away until only he remained, at which point I called an end to the scenario.

It really had felt like the rebels had the upper hand, up until the arrival of Bravo on the flank.  Had the rebels taken an extra turn to properly suppress Alpha team (with Duckbacks) before attempting the dash across open ground, things might have gone differently.. then again Bravo team might have arrived before they'd been able to capitalise on that.  But all in all it was just a really fun little solo game.

From a campaign perspective: linking the rebels to the hardcore criminal gangs served to undermine their popularity amongst the more conservative elements.  Thus the following Sunday, more than one church pulpit saw a sermon condemning the farm rebels as "traitors against society, San Paradiso and the Will of God". (i.e. Attempt to undermine "Support from the Church", requires 3+, rolled 3)

This leaves the campaign status as follows.

Farmers - Control of the Foothills of Monto Blanko, The Bridge at El Humber, The Goodwill Of The People.

Army - Secure base of operations at Verdaville. Secure supply of food and supplies, The Airfield at Los Anillcamino

Uncontrolled - Foreign media interest. The fertile Piso River valley. The Sunrise Corp Processing Plant, Support from the Church.

In the Jungle, the Quiet Jungle...

Memo to Self: When wanting to post pictures to the blog, remember that the camera card reader will only be found immediately after you've written it off as lost and ordered its replacement from Amazon.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Lesser Spotted Paradisan Turkey-Vulture has landed.

Or put another way, we have finally fought the inaugural wargame in the San Paradiso imagi-nation setting.  Talking to mi hermano disponible Jonesy during our regular Sunday terrain crafting & mini painting session, it transpired that his regular Monday D&D session would be cancelled.  So I suggested he and any other loose players might come over here for a coffee-table skirmish game to actually use some of the stuff we'd been working on these last few months.

I came up with a scenario that just happened to be the opening shots of the Paradiso farmer's revolt campaign I outlined in the last blog post, and so we settled down to a very enjoyable evening trying to get to grips with the latest iteration of Two Hour Wargames' "Chain Reaction".

I've been a fan of 2HW for years.  In fact back in the day I ran a very successful demo for Amazon Miniatures back when Chain Reaction was branded "Guns & Girls" to tie in with their range of figures inspired by the gun-fetish porn site of the same name.  (For the record, this was not the demo game that got Amazon and MAWS perma-banned from the Partizan wargames show for miniature nudity.  I meticulously greenstuffed little bikinis, crop tops and hot pants onto every figure, much to the bemusement of the AM staff, and ran a scenario with them fighting off against the faceless corporation of "the Man".  My figures may still have been slutty, but by the gods they were Empowered Sluts!)

Anyway Chain Reaction and the 2HW mechanics have gone through several iterations since I last played them so I was looking forward to seeing if they still kept the same back & forth firefight feel as the earlier editions (Spoiler alert: They do).

The terrain was my living room coffee table, which is just a shade smaller than 4ft by 3ft.  Since the urban terrain is still nearing completion on the workbench I decided to use the trees & jungle vegetation scenery that I've been working on in parallel.

The Scenario:

The Free Farmers' Collective have so far been limiting their actions to civil disobedience and peaceful protest.  They have however procured a supply of automatic weapons and other material necessary to escalate their campaign to a full armed revolt.  Word has reached the ear of El Jefe De Policidad in Verdaville that the rebels are picking up a supply drop located at a remote roadside stop up in the heavily forested foothills of Monto Blanko.  El Jefe immediately rushes out with three of his most loyal constables to go and interrupt those naughty rascals.  Despite his utter confidence in his own abilities and the ultimate authority of Law & Order which he represents, El Jefe is persuaded to pause at the local army barracks and bring along some regular army troops in support.

Government Forces
El Jefe - REP 5 Star, Shotgun
Three Constabulos Municipales - REP 3, one with shotgun, two with pistols

Four soldiers - REP 4, Squad leader and rifleman with M16s, grenadier with M203 and gunner with SAW.

Rebel Forces
Rebel Leader El Porco Verde - REP 5 Star, Assault Rifle
Seven rebels - REP 3, One with a SAW, the rest with Assault Rifles.

The terrain was mainly thick vegetation, with a road running roughly diagonally across the table.  At the centre is the roadside stop (maybe a rural bus stop or possibly a roadside food stall?) where the Rebel's truck is being loaded up.  The rebels could setup two figures up to 18 inches away from the truck as sentries, the rest would have to be within 4" in the middle of loading up.

The Government forces had a choice on how they entered - they could drive in hard and fast and pile out of their vehicles guns blazing, or park up some way up the road out of sight and proceed in on foot with a little more stealth.  (in the end, I wound up playing El Jefe, so I wound up dicing for it, resulting in the police skidding to a halt at close range, Sweeney style).

The police car had barely skidded to a halt when one of the alert rebel sentries opened fire on it from the bushes, putting one of the constables out of the fight right away.  A couple more rebels brassed up the car, leaving it rather the worse for wear and suppressing the occupants (i.e. duckback results), while the rest of the rebels scrambled for their weapons and cover.

El Jefe and the Constabulos crawled out of the riddled patrol car on the side away from the rebels and tried returning fire.  El Jefe's shotgun succeeded in taking out one rebel, but the poor constables found themselves totally outgunned by the rebels' AKs.  Meanwhile the fireteam of soldiers moved into the woods and started trying to move up the road to a flanking position.  They came under fire from across the road, and in diving to cover almost stumbled over another rebel hiding in the vegetation, who they gunned down in a vicious close-range fight.

While the army traded shots across the road, El Porco Verde led half his men in an almost mirroring manoeuvre, successfully flanking the police behind the car.  The two constables scurried round the back of the car seeking cover, while El Jefe successfully fended off El Porco Verde while he dived for the nearby bushes.

In the end however, El Porco Verde used his men's fire to pin down El Jefe (duckback) before charging in himself to finish off the Government Pig.  It was a vicious, drag-em-down-in-the-mud fight, but eventually the filfy rebel scum beat the valiant police hero to death with his rifle butt.

(It was actually at this point where we struggled with the rules.  Technically it's debateable whether El Porco would have been able to make a charge, since El Jefe had suffered a Knocked Down result and was presumably out of sight.  However common sense suggested that he ought to be able to, so I handwaved it.  Then we carried out the Charge Into Melee test.  The results were that the defender (El Jefe) could fire and the charger (El Porco) could melee, no reaction tests.  But the rules weren't clear on what that meant or the exact order of events.  We resolved El Jefe's fire and got a Knocked Down result.  Did the "No Reaction Tests" mean that El Porco shouldn't take the usual Recovery Test?  If I'd not scored a hit, would it have meant he didn't take the usual Under Fire test (I'd assume yes to the latter, not sure about the former).  And most importantly, did the fire take place before the melee, and did the Knocked Down result prevent El Porco from getting his planned melee attack?

My assumption was that the fire happened as the charger was moving up, and a result from that should stop the melee from happening.  However my esteemed opponent didn't share that assumption and so we went on to resolve the melee with the egregious results for law and order.

I should point out however that had the charger been a normal figure, El Jefe's shotgun blast would have cut him in half, since El Porco had used the Star Power rules to reduce the damage down from a double-kill to a mere knockdown.  The Star Power rules actually worked very well I felt, much better than I'd expected them to. Both El Jefe and El Porco took otherwise lethal hits prior to the melee and
were able to barter them down with Star Power points.  It struck the right balance of keeping heroic characters alive without them becoming unstoppable killing machines.

So anyway the honours went to the Rebels, and putting my campaign-managers hat back on, I'm going to say that they used their success to take control of the uncontrolled "Goodwill of the People" resource.  The ordinary people of the foothills of Monto Blanko and the Piso valley are buoyed by news of the rebels success, and are beginning to believe they have a chance of success.  In mechanics terms, with 4 resources to the Government's 3, it means any hope the government had of quickly suppressing the revolt is now gone.

The next game can now be anything that follows on logically from the first.  It could be another skirmish like this, or it could be a larger scale battle, maybe fought in 15mm using AK47 rules.  Or if you have a game with suitable air-to-ground rules, you could play out a fairly one-sided game of an airstrike on a rebel stronghold (The government would at most have light attack aircraft like the Super Tucano, the AH-6 Little Bird helicopter or an obsolete MiG, the rebels won't have any aircraft, but could conceivably have some man-portable SAMs just to keep things interesting..  hmm I'm tempted to dig out Mercenary Air Squadron and see if that couldn't handle that scenario as a neat little solitaire game.)

In narrative terms, the fall of the vainglorious El Jefe means that the local Commandante will now take full control of the situation and be prepared to commit regular army forces to the suppression of the farmers revolt which now has to be taken seriously...
====

The jungle terrain is largely made up of that old familiar standby - aquarium plants, mounted on CDs or irregularly cut MDF bases (bought from Wargames Tournaments).  The smaller, light green trees are actually from a Toys R Us dinosaur bucket.  I've had them for ages, but basing them properly really gave them a new lease of life.  The taller trees are from eBay, from one of the many Chinese importers selling plastic doodads on there (Possibly Everest Models, though I can't be sure).  So far I've used about a quarter of the plants & trees I'd collected over the years, but judging by the way what I've got covered a 3'x4' table, I think just doubling what I've got ought to be enough for most purposes.

 And lastly, a fun piece.  With all those Plasticville buldings I acquired three of the Plasticville cars.  They're very primitive, just a plastic bodyshell and clip-on wheels (like the very cheapest plastic toys) and a shade smaller than the 1/43 scale I use for cars with 28mm.  Since they would not be usable as cars, I copied something I'd seen a couple of times on the internet and turned one into an abandoned, overgrown and rusted wreck.

Little Boxes Made Out Of Ticky Tacky

Memo to self
1 Update the blog on a more regular basis
2 Once a year is not regular

Work on the not so snappily titled "Modern Imagi-Nation Project" has been proceeding apace, albeit a lot slower than I'd hoped.  To recap, a couple of months back we looked at that table full of Plasticville buildings, picked out about a dozen of them, picked out a handful of figures for each of three factions (motorcycle gangers, "hip-hop" gangstas and police) and decided to prepare these for a smallish skirmish scenario to act as a starting point for San Paradiso.

To be fair, Mi Hermano Constructor, Jonesy has been joining me pretty much every Sunday for a few hours crafting session and while he's been doing the bulk of the work on most of the Plasticville buildings, I've found myself distractedly working on a hundred and one other minor terrain details, such as palm trees, scatter terrain and signage.  This could be why progress has been slower than anticipated, however I think we are going to wind up with a more attractive scenery when the buildings are completed.  We've even had one visit from our friend Crazy Eddy, who started painting all of the bikers and gangstas (thus making finishing them his job)

We've also discovered another source for a couple of small but interesting buildings.  In Japan, the "Tomica City" range of toys  allows you to create a very impressive cityscape of buildings, roads and railways in 1/64 scale.  While only a very limited subset of the range is available in the UK, several useful items have been on sale recently on Amazon..

The buildings are all basically "little boxes" like this pizza shop.  Being scaled for the inch-high toy figures as seen in this photo, they're visually a very good fit for 28mm figures, although the building footprints are a bit on the small side.  However compared to the Plasticville commercial buildings, these make quite acceptable "mini-units".  And let's face it, the pizza-delivery trike is worth the box price on its own!

Anyway outside of the project's assigned Sunday sessions, I've taken to painting figures while (half-)watching films and TV shows in the evenings.  I've found I can get through quite a lot of figures this way (not to mention quite a lot of video).  For highly individual figures, like the gangers, I can easily manage between six and ten figures in an evening.  For more uniform figures, like soldiers or boiler-suited minion guards, the bulk of the figures' paint job comes from the Army Painter colour primer and all I need to do is pick out necessary details (flesh, boots, weapon, belts and any other details that are appropriate).  These I've found I can rattle through at an alarming rate - one evening I think I managed over forty such figures in one, admittedly long sitting.

As a result, when the original planned project terrain and figures are completed, we'll immediately have a wide selection of other figures ready to play out a range of conflict types, from further urban gang violence on the streets of Port-au-Nice, to rebel farmers in armed revolt in San Paradiso's interior, all the way up to an outbreak of hostilities with Paradiso's belligerent neighbour (whose troops' uniform and equipment may or may not bear an uncanny resemblance to the Iraqi Army.)

At the moment though, the project is all about the journey, not the destination.  I'm hoping we'll be past that stage and in a place to roll dice and play with all these new toys before the end of the year.

***

While the overall plan is for San Paradiso to be a campaign backdrop for an ongoing narrative, I was thinking it would be nice to have some form of campaign mechanics, if only to give some structure to any sub-campaigns that might arise.  Take the farmers' revolt mentioned above.  We could simply play out a number of skirmish games, arbitrarily evaluating how individual game results affect the overall flow of the conflict.

But one night of insomnia-driven web surfing later, and I think I've found the perfect Universal Mapless Campaign system.  It's a synthesis of Rick Priestly's Warmaster Ancients campaign system, and the political system used by Kaptain Kobold in his Alto Peru campaign rules.  Having shamelessly stolen, mangled, mutilated, folded and regurgitated these ideas, I present them below for your amusement and edification.

Dr V's Slightly Derivative Universal Mapless Campaign Rules.

Each battle in the campaign is fought between full "armies" balanced according to the scenario (so for an encounter battle, the forces should be roughly even, for an attack/defence the points/numbers might go up to 2:1 or even 3:1)

Success or failure in the campaign is measured by the acquisition and loss of Resources.  A Resource can be absolutely anything, appropriate to the scale of the campaign.  It could be something substantial like control of a territorial region or access to a supply of some commodity, or it could be an entirely abstract thing, like political support from a particular group, or entirely nebulous like "The Goodwill Of The People".   The campaign mechanics can work with entirely generic, unnamed Resources, but naming them does add considerable colour and will help build the campaign's narrative.

Each force in the campaign starts with a number (suggested 3) Resources.  In addition, a pool of resources start's the campaign Uncontrolled.

After every game where there is a clear winner, they may do one of the following.

1) Take control of an Uncontrolled Resource.  This is automatically successful.
2) Attempt to steal control of a Resource controlled by the defeated enemy.  This is successful on a roll of 5+ on D6
3) Undermine the enemy's control of one of their Resources, making it Uncontrolled.  This is successful on a roll of 3+ on D6

The campaign continues until...
a) one side is left with no controlled resources
b) one side has three times the number of resources held by their opponent
c) an agreed number of games have been played
d) everyone involved is bored.

The winner is the side holding the most resources at the end of the campaign.


Using this system, you have complete freedom when it comes to the individual battles.  One game might be a 28mm skirmish using Flying Lead or Chain Reaction, another might be a larger scale operation played in 6mm using micro-armour rules.  Yet another might be an air-to-air battle using C21 or Check Your Six.  Whatever games the participants feel like playing and can be worked into the campaign narrative.

Example setup - Farmers' Revolt

A small number of landholders in the Western Foothills region of San Paradiso have been protesting against what they say are unfairly high levies against their crop production.  What began as a civil disobedience campaign has escalated into a minor insurrection, with bands of armed farmers clashing with patrols from the San Paradiso Army sent to maintain the peace.

Resources

Farmers - Control of the Foothills of Monto Blanko, The Bridge at El Humber, Support from the Church

Army - Secure base of operations at Verdaville.  Secure supply of food and supplies, The Airfield at Los Anillcamino

Uncontrolled - Foreign media interest. The fertile Piso River valley.  The Goodwill Of The People. The Sunrise Corp Processing Plant.


As you can see, that's quite a mix of traditional territories and abstract concepts, all of which can be seen as contributing to victory or defeat by either side.  For an urban street-crime mini-campaign, Resources might be control of individual streets or buildings, support from a corrupt cop or a supplier of contraband goods.  For a galaxy-spanning sci-fi campaign, Resources might be whole worlds, Support from an Alien Race, or The Force.

The rules would work exactly the same if you simply said

Farmers - 2 Resources
Army - 2 Resources
Uncontrolled - 4 Resources

... but actually giving each resource point an in-world identifier is much more colourful.

There you have it.  Not entirely original, but an amalgamation of a couple of good ideas by clever people that I think would work quite well.  |I can already think of some variations and optional rules that would add variety at the cost of the system's current extreme simplicity, but this is where the idea stands for now.

Thoughts anyone?

In my Imagi-nation, there is no complication

Yesterday I christened the new man cave by settling down to paint the first squad of the Paradiso National Army.

I went for a super-simple paint scheme - spray primed with Army Painter Desert Yellow, faces and hands picked out in various shades of brown, guns black with just enough grey drybrush to pick out some detail, and any packs, holsters or slings etc painted a golden yellow that was just enough different from the primer to be noticeable with a second look.  Everything else was left as primed and I relied entirely on the Quickshade to pick out all the detailing and distinguish belts, boots & buttons.  The whole squad (plus two command figures) only took a couple of hours from primed to Quickshade.

Given the speed of the painting (and my notorious fumble-fingeredness) I'm happy with the way these have come out.  Unlike my Victorian figures I probably will give them a blast of matt varnish/anti-shine spray as the glossy "toy soldier" look doesn't work as well with modern figures, to my eye at least.

You'll notice that I said I painted the faces and hands various shades of brown.  I honestly hemmed and hawed over that choice for some time.  On a Carribean island like Paradiso, the vast majority of the population should be black or hispanic, with a minority descended from indigenous tribes.  But honestly I was a little reluctant to reflect that in the figure painting.

For one thing, I've got a good selection of caucasian fleshes that work well with the Army Painter Quickshade system and was worried that the browns I had wouldn't work convincingly as skin.  That concern was misplaced - I used a light brown labelled "Taupe" for the lightest skin and Burnt Umber for the darkest and mixed a range in-between.  The Quickshade was still able to work its magic.

The other issue was that I didn't want to lock down these figures to this single project.  I want to be able to use these figures for as many modern-day/near future settings as possible.  For these soldiers though, they're most likely to pull double duty as soldiers from one of the other Imagi-Nations I have rattling around the backburner - one African (in true AK47/Bongolesian style) and one pseudo middle-eastern. The other role they might be called on to play would be as The Army in a Zombie Apocalypse game  Assuming like most such games, our Zed game will take place in America, an all-ethnic minority platoon is probably more accurate than an all-white one would be.  So I decided to take the plunge, and I'm glad I did.

The civilians are going to be a slightly different matter.  The figures I have put aside as "Rebel Forces" will probably get the same treatment as the army.  The rest of the civilian "Street Violence" figures will probably get a more "conventional" wargame ethnic mix i.e. predominently caucasian, though I'll make a conscious effort to include a little more variation than I might otherwise do.

Yes I know, for some of us this might seem a silly thing to worry about, smacking a little of the old "Political correctness gone mad!" chiche.  But for other people I know this is a real hot-button topic, how seemingly inconsequential examples like this all add up to both reflect and indeed shape racial prejudices.  Personally I have no such stake in that particular issue - for me it's simply a matter of balancing aesthetics, verisimilitude and practicality, no different from the question of what colour to paint my zombie skin (I'm leaning towards green right now)

Anyhoo, I now have a painted squad, enough for one side of an interesting Flying Lead game.  Moving away from the hardware of the game, I've been thinking a little more about how Paradiso is organised and the factions available.  These soldiers, as I mentioned, will be representing the Paradiso National Army.  They will make up the bulk of Paradiso's armed forces.  Later, there will also be a smaller, lighter armed Internal Security force, under the control of the Interior Minister.  This would give plenty of scope for some "Junta" style factional infighting.

The forces of opposition will include (1) a communist-backed rebel group, based up in the mountains (2) the forces of a criminal cartel, which can fortunately use the same figures as the rebels and (3) a belligerent neighboring country - details to be determined.

Add in a civilian police force, assorted petty criminal gangs, Private Military Contractors protecting the interests of a huge western corporation and.. hey just for fun let's throw a cult in there as well.

Anyway, we have our first army squad, next up will be a similar sized group of rebels for them to face off against.

WELCOME TO PARADISE! PLEASE CHECK YOUR WEAPONS AT THE DOOR.

The island nation of Paradiso has a long and chequered history. Sitting in the crystal blue waters of the Carribean, it was once a haven for pirates, escaped slaves and ne'er-do-wells of every stripe. It repeatedly changed hands between British, French and Spanish rule up until the late 19th century when it declared independence. Immediately the island was thrown into protracted civil war, resulting in the island being divided into two nations, Paradiso in the western half and the slightly less prosperas Culo Raton in the eastern half. Since the US invasion in the mid 1980s to oust a military dictatorship, Paradiso has been a constitutional democracy, whereas Culo Raton remains under military government with a decidedly Marxist bent and Cuban backing. The two nations coexist on the island in a state of uneasy detente.

While Paradiso is a very popular tourist destination, all is not sweetness and light. El Presidente has the delicate job of balancing between the various factions - the Opposition, the Military and the Church, not to mention keeping Los Americanos and the United Nations on-side.

Most visitors to the island generally stick to the resort of Soleilville, or the capital city of Port-Au-Nice. Although relatively safe and secure by Paradiso standards, both cities do have high crime rates, and the occasional flare up of street violence (which is usually blamed on British tourists). High in the mountains, far out of sight of the resort beaches, a small but dedicated army of rebels carry out a low-intensity campaign against the government. Similarly hidden from general view, the Cartel operates a significant narcotics industry, resisting any attempt to shut them down with deadly force. Some might say they're not that different from the US-based Sunbeam Enterprises, which operates a major pharmaceutical plant and mining operation on Paradiso, both of which are guarded by a heavily armed private security company. Cynics point out the only difference between Sunbeam and the Cartels is that Sunbeam pays more taxes.

So that's the first leg of the Axis of Naughtiness tripod. Paradiso is set up to try to cram in as many Latin American/Banana Republic clichés as possible. It exists in the "vaguely now" that I think works best for modern Imagi-Nations. Its armed forces will be using slightly outdated gear, anything back to Vietnam-era kit might still be in-service, but as Port-Au-Nice is a relatively developed, modernised city (thanks to an influx of US money) I can do street violence games on US-style urban terrain (I figure if the TV series "Chaos" can get away with passing off the back streets of Vancouver as Hong Kong, I can get away with this!) or counter-insurgency/counter narcotics games further out into the rural areas.

At the moment I'm working on the Port-Au-Nice Police Department in 15mm, using Rebel Miniatures figures. They're great minis, three different poses with pistols, one with shotgun and a bareheaded "chief" figure. I'm also mixing in Rebel's Mall Cops figures, who are generally chunkier sculpts and with very large nightsticks (which the regular cops are strangely lacking). The uniforms look generally compatible, so I'm painting them all up as regular police and using the Mall Cops as veterans, sergeants etc.

Vehicles for the PNPD are going to be a bit tricky. I've decided not to use Hot Wheels sized die-cast cars with 15mm figures. I know some people do quite happily, but I find the scale difference too jarring. Instead I've got some nominally 1/87 cheap model railway vehicles from eBay. I think they fit perfectly with 15mm figures, but the selection only includes civilian cars & people movers. Rather than spend stupid money getting die-cast 1/87 police cars (which are way, way more expensive than Hot Wheels despite being half the size) I think I'm going to order another batch of eBay cars so I've got enough suitable spares to do some police car conversions.