Ramblings on the state of tabletop wargames

As a tabletop wargamer, there has never been a better time to avoid Games Workshop. Here is my personal list of superior game companies who make awesome games. None of these are publicly traded companies, which is probably why they can stick to their own ethics pretty closely. Will Games Workshop always suck at tabletop wargames? Let’s say, by mad happenstance, James Workshop stumbled on the unicorn perfect tabletop wargame ruleset. One that is clearly written yet …

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Five Parsecs from Home – Opponent generator

I built another generator for Five Parsecs from Home. It is super easy to modify; so go ahead! The reason is that I want to be able to add my own custom stuff without needing to modify the die ranges. The statistical changes of different things is super easy with Perchance. What makes this one different is that it pulls data from a Google Spreadsheet of opponent attributes. Obviously, looking things up in the book is actually …

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Crashed Cargo Hauler for Terrain Competition Season 2 “Hidden Places”

I can see why people enter competitions. It helps you focus and finish! This is for TerrainBuilding on Reddit. You can see the all the entries at https://www.reddit.com/r/TerrainBuilding/comments/qlal6x/terrain_competition_season_2_hidden_places/. It would be cool if I won but I am just excited that I finished this ambitious project! I got stuck and I wasn’t sure if I was going to finish it. The project was intimidating and made me try a lot of new techniques! I don’t have a …

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Five Parsecs Loot Generator

Five Parsecs from Home – Loot generator

I adapted the loot generator tables to work in Perchance because I can customize the output easily. In fact, anyone can.The url is at https://perchance.org/five-parsecs-loot-safe. This can be forked with your own custom items or have tweaks to the chances of different items showing up. It is intentionally slowed down so that you are not tempted to cheat! If you are interested in extracting percent chances or generating your own ranges for custom tables, this is the …

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Five Parsecs from Home – Campaign turns 2 and 3

I thought things were going well until my one of my rivals came after my crew; the Mutants of clan Null God.The mutants outnumbered my crew on a battlefield that was gloomy (battlefield condition), so they ran from the fight instead. I made sure they stayed the two round minimum, so that at least my crew could gain experience points. Glen was downed but used a Stim pack to save himself. In this game, even if you …

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Five Parsecs From Home 3e Play Aids v1

Five Parsecs from Home 3e Play Aids v1

Player sheets and rules summaries are extremely important for enjoyable gameplay. I don’t have the tidiest of handwriting and I want to be able to pick up a game I haven’t played in while. Otherwise, I could get completely lost! It is nice when play sheets also convey the mood and theme of their respective game in their design. Five Parsecs has a really good Play Aid for the 2nd edition. Unfortunately, the original author never updated …

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Miniatures for Stargrave and Five Parsecs now have oil paints!

The further you are along on a project, the more nerve-wracking it can be to make drastic changes. This is true for many projects but for tiny nerdy things, this is especially true. Stargrave miniatures have a tendency to be “too clean”. It’s the wide areas and the faces. I spent a lot of time with ink washes and highlights and was pretty happy with the results. I even played a few games with them, and they …

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scifi building final

Scifi building – (part 3 of 3)

Hey I finally finished it. It felt stuck for some time because after step 2, it looked terrible. I didn’t even use it in any games. The solution, it turned out, was to reduce the chipping paint contrast with a filter effect. I used an airbrush for this. I just added some white ink and some extra shadows with raw sienna inks. After that, it looked much better. The oil paints were messy but satisfying. It looked …

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Five Parsecs from Home – First encounter

Last weekend I completed my first encounter in Five Parsecs from Home! My crew suffered no causalities; even though my strategy was pretty weak haha. Lucky roll of the dice meant the opposition was outnumbered. Which is great because I didn’t want to have to bail on my first encounter! My crew encountered a rival Brat Gang. They all have body armor, which proved a bit tricky to overcome with my basic weapons. I did learn that, …

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Crashed Spaceship – Terrain Competition Season 2 “Hidden Places” – WIP

I am starting with the papercraft Ebbles Miniatures Utility Shuttle as a base for my build. It is available for free here ( https://www.genetmodels.com/ebbles-miniatures-2009-2010-models/ ). Its going to be broken somehow. Looks like I will need a larger base! I was imagining it crashed into an alien jungle with cargo all over the place. Decades old. Lots of moss and vines. (The miniatures for scale are from Core Space). My spaceship crash site needs some trees! These …

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