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Post by mpc2163 on Jul 13, 2012 11:20:40 GMT -5
I didn't see my name on the list.
MPC2163 - Chicago, IL
And yes, I actually live in the city down by the University of Chicago.
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Post by mpc2163 on May 25, 2012 9:49:07 GMT -5
I have never told players about the smoke rule but making them fire blind through smoke makes a lot of sense. Personally, I don't like using smoke because it seems too much like cheating. The only real game of War at Sea I played devolved into one giant smoke screen with the Americans moving in a perfect formation masked by smoke. The Japanese players, including me, could only shoot at the destroyers making the smoke and it took the whole game to pick them off. Once we did, the game would have been ours but we ran out of time. That's why I don't even let smoke screens enter into my games.
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Post by mpc2163 on May 18, 2012 11:36:16 GMT -5
I have a large number of his ships and probably have some pictures up in one of my other threads. I mostly have his British and Japanese cruisers with a few battleships and carriers thrown in. His stuff is cheaper than Navwar or Skytrex but not as good in quality. The guns are sometimes impossibly to make out clearly and forget about the secondaries. But at a couple feet away it works on the gaming table. And he has a lot of weird ships that no one else has. I have some really odd ships that I could only get from him and they always start a conversation when I bring one of them out.
If you want to get anything from him, make sure that every ship in that class comes from him. His stuff will not mix with Navwar or Skytrex and two ships that should look identical will look rather different. I would recommend getting some destroyers from him. They are really cheap and his Town (4 stacker USA DD), Fabuki, Navigatori, Narvik, and Tribal are pretty decent. His Fletcher is okay if you don't have them from anyone else. I haven't brought any of his merchant ships but they'd probably be okay since they don't have little parts.
The bottom line is that his stuff is cheaper than anyone else but the quality is not as good. He has stuff no one else has and it is really easy to order from him. My stuff has always been shipped quickly as well. And he is the only one expanding his line at all. I hope that helps a bit.
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Post by mpc2163 on May 10, 2012 23:10:20 GMT -5
Yup. They are glued down to the flat head of the pin. I don't really see the point in taking them off the base. Instead, I have about 400 very tiny dice that can sit on the base to count casualties. And I also have to print off labels for every single one of them, but I'll do that when I get them painted up.
And speaking of painting, what specific colors have you guys used for BSG fighters? I know the older Colonials should be basically white with a bit of red while the Cylons are a very light grey. But I'm trying to pick out good shades for the new Cylons, the Raptors, and the Mk VIIs. I always have issues with picking good colors and it has caused major problems with my naval ships. I have almost 100 ships that are a very shiny grey which annoys me every single time I look at them.
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Post by mpc2163 on May 9, 2012 22:04:48 GMT -5
I picked up a massive number of fighters at Little Wars and finished basing up most of them. I really like this method as it is relatively easy and is super cheap. I'm actually not sure how much it costs, but I spent around $25 to all of them, and I have lots of material left. I just ran out of the pins. so I can't get all my Cylons based. There is a 7/8" steel washer, a equal sized piece of plywood from Litko on top of that, and each fighter is mounted on a 3.2mm round bead that is all glued down. The post is a head pin that can fit though the bead and the flat top is attached to the fighter. But with larger fighters/shuttles, I just cut off the flat top and use two beads. No one is going to see the bottoms of these things. A closeup of how I base them. The whole lot I have done so far. Some of my colonials. I primed a few of them yesterday to see how it would work.
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Post by mpc2163 on Apr 26, 2012 11:30:34 GMT -5
I thought I'd add a picture of how I'm storing all my finished ships. I brought a number of storage boxes at Target and glued down some flexible magnetic sheets I got from Joanna Fabric. Every base has a steel washer in the bottom of it and they stay pretty stable. The green and white fleet is one a friend of mine made out of bass wood back in college and is based on Wing Commander. The only problem I've come across so far is that some of my ships, especially the Battlefleet Gothic Imperials, were a bit too tall and had to be trimmed down a bit.
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Post by mpc2163 on Apr 25, 2012 19:42:59 GMT -5
Those are American Republic ships from Brigade Miniatures in the UK. They aren't as expensive as GZG ships but shipping is still a major pain. They are also really good models and I didn't have a lot of cleaning on them. I think they are what I will paint next because I don't have very many of them.
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Post by mpc2163 on Apr 25, 2012 15:26:41 GMT -5
I really don't like painting things and it took me 5 years or more to get around to painting all these Colonial ships. And if you look closely, you can see even more ships lurking that have only been primed black. I believe this is just two of Ravenstar's dock sets and it finally came together very nicely. I need to expand it at some point. These are the big battlestars from the modern side of my fleet. They are from just about all the guys who make BSG stuff. My modern gun line. Again, they are pretty varied in origin. Some of the older ships from the 1st Cylon War. I think I have more modern ships but I'm really not sure. And finally, the whole gang in one picture. A Cylon Worldstar from Ravenstar is lurking on the edge of the shot. I'm really not sure yet how to paint it or my new Basestars up. But I am not going to use grey again for such a large fleet. I have no fighters for either the Colonials or the Cylons yet. I just ordered bases from Litko for a few hundred squadrons and might pick up some fighters at Little Wars this weekend if anyone is around to sell them.
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Post by mpc2163 on Apr 22, 2012 16:13:19 GMT -5
That looks pretty close to what I came up with. The only change I would suggest if using these would be a house rule that they don't get affected by extra splash markers when shooting. After all, they had rapid fire 8" guns.
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 28, 2012 11:48:34 GMT -5
I use clear acrylic bases from Litko and have always good positive reviews from them whenever they come out to play. As for measuring, I tell my players to measure from the 1st mast to 1st mast. That is usually bridge to bridge, but as long as you are using the same point on each ship it works out fine. With moving, my bases are now at least 6 different sizes but again, it really doesn't matter. We never have problems with moving or measuring shots. The only real problem occurs when we try to figure out the arc of fire, but as GM I usually have last call on that.
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 24, 2012 22:43:42 GMT -5
When I have run games the two hardest things for players to get is the penetration rules. They can usually figure out moving and shooting very quickly, but getting the penetration and damage down is a bit harder. I try to explain it in terms of actual combat and wrote up a reference sheet to make everything easier and limit page turning, but it is still the hardest part of the game.
Everyone seems to get confused with the rules about weapons that can't penetrate at all. It gets worse when they can penetrate at certain ranges but not others. While running a Sink the Bismarck scenario the player running Prinz Eugen got so confused he was glad when his ship sunk due to fire and flooding. Once it was just between the heavies everything suddenly made more sense.
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 10, 2012 0:16:43 GMT -5
Those bases look really nice and I want some for myself now. Where did you get them from?
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 7, 2012 18:06:01 GMT -5
That sounded like a really amazing battle and I wish I could have been there to see it and/or take part in it. I'm a bit surprised at how well an old US battleship did against a modern German one, but I suppose the radar advantage can be pretty good. Also, it seemed that the American dice were rather lucky...
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 6, 2012 15:12:18 GMT -5
Since I'm still on the high of posting my first pictures online aside from Facebook, I took a whole bunch of extra pictures of my fleets. ;D I made sure to take some pictures of the really odd ones that I love so much. A bunch of Washington Treaty Ships. The Names should give most away although the two American battlecruisers are the different versions of the Lexington. I had to give them new names. My German Z-Plan Ships. I wonder if we could get stats for my H-44 in Naval Thunder. I tried to make some, but they seem rather ridiculous. Then again, the ship is pretty ridiculous. My fleet of really weird ships. The ships are from pretty much every manufacturer of 1/3000 scale stuff. The big carrier is from Shapeways, CVA-01 is from Denian, the CVL is from MY Miniatures, the Iowa Mod is from Skytrex, and both H-44 and the Russian Project 85/V Carrier are from Navwar.
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 6, 2012 11:40:56 GMT -5
They are all 1/3000 and most are Skytrex or Navwar with a few Mick Yarrow Miniatures thrown in. There are also a few modern ships from Shapeways mixed in as well. Oh and there are a handful of Denian modern ships in my British fleet. The two CVA-01's are from him.
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 5, 2012 21:03:18 GMT -5
Here's a picture of my German carriers. Graf Zepplin is from Navwar or Skytrex. I forget which. The others are all from Mick Yarrow Miniatures and are iffy in terms of detail, but they work pretty well for me. I actually have quite a few ships from him and some aren't worth the slightly cheaper price versus Navwar/Skytrex. The names from top to bottom are: Graf Zepplin, Seydlitz, Europa, Odin, Pommern, Posen, Graf Fitti, and Peter Strasser. I have a bunch of additional pictures of my fleets that I need to put up at some point. I'll work on getting them all up this week and next week.
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 5, 2012 20:05:13 GMT -5
I finally managed to take pictures of my fleets of ships that were all on one table at the same time. I think I have around 675 ships from different eras stretching over 100 years or so. So, here are a few of my ships. All of my ships on two 30"x6' tables. Just my Americans. I have a lot of battleships for them. The Soviet fleet from WWII to the 80s. My German fleet from both WWI and WWII includes 9 aircraft carriers. And yes, the Germans never really had any aircraft carriers...
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 3, 2012 14:16:57 GMT -5
I tried to follow what Dreadnought used to design the game and cards but ended up redoing just about every single ship. I liked his designs, but I made my own elaborate history of the Colonial Fleet and Cylons years ago and decided to stick with that. I suppose I'll have to post it up somewhere at some point.
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 2, 2012 0:36:08 GMT -5
It was hidden behind a warehouse when I walked up to it and it was awesome to suddenly see it. Although if you had asked that question you might have gotten a confusing answer since two carriers are home ported there. Sadly, neither were around when I got there.
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Post by mpc2163 on Mar 1, 2012 19:57:50 GMT -5
I just went to see the USS Midway today in San Diego and it was amazing. The ship is huge and they have a few sections of the ship open and cleaned up. There were a few squadron ready rooms which were really cool to see. Walking the hanger deck and flight deck really brought home how big the ship really is. If any of you ever visit San Diego, make sure you see the Midway as it is totally worth it.
And as an aside, is there any chance of getting this beast into Naval Thunder. Despite the fact that I have yet to use any aircraft in one of my games, the ship did miss the end of the war by a few weeks and we now have ships in the game that were never even built.
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