Sigur in Space! - Update: GM Command Space Type!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@YPU: Thanks very much!

@Daeothar: oooh, nice. I got the HG GM Sniper II here, still in box. It's the one kit I still have unbuilt. I was considering getting an MG kit, simply to try it, but my dirty, filthy wargamer mind makes me cautious about "getting the same thing in another scale". Somehow I'd like to try wargaming with these 1/144th scale things (which might prove to be a very slippery slope). I attended Vienna Comic Con this weekend, along with my close personal friends and fellow celebrities Michael "Guy who makes noises with his mouth" Winslow of Police Academy fame and Commander Ivanova from Babylon 5. (and some other people from marvel and star wars films I don't know). It was a lot of fun and extremely busy. This year I was much more restrictive on keeping within times on the painting workshops (last year I was pretty much sitting with somepeople and showed them somepainting 2 days straight, now I restricted it to 2 hour units with each group, one before and one after noon.) for my own well-being's sake. It still was very busy. Several people I know came up, and also people who I'd shown figure painting last year and who returned for another go. Which is rather nice to see. I never got away from my table (because it run it all myself) throughout the weekend, but after day#1 I managed to cross the hall we were in to meet the newly founded Gundam Society of Austria. They were complimentary of the ones I had on display and I got to see some kits I'd only seen on the internet in person, which is cool. Like the "The Origin" HG Zaku II, which is just SO well detailled. I already got Char's, but a regular green one I should get as well. At the moment I feel very at home with the nicer of the HG kits. They strike a good balance of detail, price and choice I think. But that's me, never having had a 1/100th scale kit. For display reasons of course bigger ones are more impressive.

 

[YPU]

What Comicon was that? I visited Dutch Comicon yesterday with my daughter and friends and had an absolute blast 

And also, because I've long been thinking of it, some rather inspiring Youtube videos and your work posted here, I bought a Master Grade GM Sniper II to dive right off the deep end... 

Welcome to the club!

I got the HG GM Sniper II here, still in box. It's the one kit I still have unbuilt. I was considering getting an MG kit, simply to try it, but my dirty, filthy wargamer mind makes me cautious about "getting the same thing in another scale". Somehow I'd like to try wargaming with these 1/144th scale things (which might prove to be a very slippery slope)... Snipped for lenght

You wouldnt be the first to use them in wargaming, thats for sure. I saw a 1/60 rx-78 used on a 28mm table at CRISIS, and I'm in at least two discord servers dedicated to wargaming with gunpla. I've got some 1/400 gashapon ones to use with 6mm figures myself, cause anything worth doing is worth doing in tiny scales. For gunpla I'm a HG guy as well, just because I can't leave well enough alone maybe finished one kit without doing any modifications to it, most are kitbashed beyond recognition.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Yeah, I read about the 1/400th scale ones in the Mobile Suit Skirmish rules (I even signed up for their FB group, which sadly happens to be set to 'public' for some reason), and even the forums, which require an admin to confirm your account, which takes about a week or so so I could just look up the 'army books'. The rules read very utilitaristic in that they're of the sort you'd see in some modern naval wargames, which are more about depicting different tech vs. different sets of hull armour rather than any sort of clever Command&Control mechanics or gimmick rules. Just something to get the action on the table whilst letting players depict all the gubbinz they love about the mobile suits. But I'm kinda tempted to give them a try. And then probably try to adapt some other set of rules like What a Tanker (which we already tried to turn into a Battletech game a few years ago: http://tabletopstories.net/language/en/?s=what+a++mecher).

Fort that sort of stuff it would be interesting to know what makes Gundam fightin' different to two dudes running at each other with swords. It could be turned into a sort of fire team vs. fire team sort of thing. Somehow I keep defaulting back to Ronin or something Ganesha Games for that. Has anyone of you tried Gamma Wolves or what it was called by Osprey?
 

Either way, I still suggest having a look at Mobile Suit Skirmish. It's well presented and the rules are at the very least interesting to look at. ALso IIRC it's got a good timeline of the One Year War, which is handy. https://donkusgaming.wordpress.com/category/mobile-suit-gundam-skirmish-2/

[YPU]

I think most of the gundam skirmish activity has moved to the discord, but i haven't checked in there in a while. There is also a group more inspired by the gundam build fighters/divers series, focusing on 1v1 games played online, using GM judging of models to determine your point level for your build.

Beyond that there are a lot of games that could work with gundams. Hypersteel nightmare was playtested with 1/144 gunpla for one. Ganesha wise, there is "super robot samurai" or some such, which is interesting but feels a bit too clunky to me. You are correct though, depending on what universe and show you go by, gundam can be anything from ww2 infantry fights but 10x as large. ww2 but the tanks walk, or wuxia with lightsabers in space.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

I am surprised no one has suggested FFOL Battle Suit Alpha which has Gundam adjacent example suits.

[beefcake]

All amazing. I love the Zodgrot's hair. You've done a great job on that. Gundam's are great too. The weathering is superb.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@YPU: Cheers! Yeah, with Battletech overheating/cooling is a big thing (I was told ), in the Gundam background material I consumed so far, combat seems to be highly centred around repeating your opponent's name a lot and where the heck they are at the moment. Once you found them, you start discussing the boons and sins of humanity on the whole as you shoot and hack at each other. Which I have absolutely no problem with, mind you. I was secretly hoping somebody was familiar with Super Robot Samurais and could give a quick estimation, so thank you!

@Ultravanillasmurf: Cool, thanks for the suggestion. I don't think I heard of those rules before, and will certainly check them out!

@beefcake: Thanks very much! Yeah, the hair had to stand out. I didn't want to go full-on blue, but Zodgrot's got to have at least steel blue-ish hair. He's also the only figure in that army with those green slate like looking blades on his grabba. Not sure what made me do it this way, but I felt he needed something special (apart from his luscious head of hair) to show his status and him being deeply rooted in the Snakebites clan rather than the Goffs, without breaking the colour scheme up too badly.

[YPU]

@YPU: Cheers! Yeah, with Battletech overheating/cooling is a big thing (I was told ), in the Gundam background material I consumed so far, combat seems to be highly centred around repeating your opponent's name a lot and where the heck they are at the moment. Once you found them, you start discussing the boons and sins of humanity on the whole as you shoot and hack at each other. Which I have absolutely no problem with, mind you. I was secretly hoping somebody was familiar with Super Robot Samurais and could give a quick estimation, so thank you!

Samurai robots battle royale, thats the name of the ganesha game!

I own it and have used it, basically its your good old songs of blades system, but each body part becomes its own "character" and there is a more involved damage system. I enjoy it but it didn't really fit Gundam to me no. It has a Kaiju counterpart that I do quite like, but with godzilla it makes a lot more sense to be thinking about blasting some oversized moth with your atomic breath while flattening a nuclear reactor with your tail at the same time. It makes the monster feel big and lumbering, not really what gundam is about.

I do own Gamma Wolves, I'm a fan of the artists of the interior art so that was reason enough to get it but have not played it yet.


And you are right about what gundam is all about! If we aren't debating how mankinds soul is held down by gravity on earth, it aint right. Notable exception being Iron blooded orphans, where the antagonists will fanatically start this discusion and the protagonist pilot will happily exploit this opening in their defense and smack them up. Mind that series still ends with the death of a few dozen child soldiers... all for the cause of mars being permitted to export some minerals on its own terms. 

[Battle Brush Sigur]

The concept of SEBR with each limb being a separate activation sounds intriguing, but you make a very good case as to why this might not be the best fit for Gundam fightin'. However, it's a pretty rad idea for boss battles in SoBH or Sellswords & Spellslingers!

I bought Battle Suit Alpha. High time I familiarize myself with the "Fistful of [xyz]" family of rules.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

@Ultravanillasmurf: Cool, thanks for the suggestion. I don't think I heard of those rules before, and will certainly check them out!

I picked up a set at Warfare last year.

https://wiley-games.myshopify.com/collections/galactic-heroes/products/battle-suit-alpha-mech-battles-printed

[Macrossmartin]

I owe you an apology, Sigur, if you've had any trouble getting into the MSSk forum, given I'm the Admin... 

If you have ANY questions, or I can help in any way to lure you down the wormhole of Gunpla gaming, just say the word! 

I've recently gotten the Gunpla 'itch' once again, and I'm debating if next year will finally be the year I grit my teeth and get Version 3.0 of the MSSk rulebook done... No small task, though!

[Mellal]

Nice job for Orktober but... You're gundam stole my heart, they're awesome 

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Ultravanillasmurf: Yup, thanks for the suggestion. Have you played them yet?

@Macrossmartin: Don't worry, I was just eager to get my hands on those "Army books". It took a good few days for me to be admitted to the Facebook group as well, and somehow I can't download files off of facebook any more. Now I'm on the forum and I hope to post as well! I just prefer a forum over a social media website. I bet that another version of those rules isn't a small task. I was really impressed with the production of those rules, given this is a fan project bascially. Very impressive work.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Heyhey, here I am again. Happy second Sunday in Advent!

Just like last year, there won't be a real report from the Vienna Comic Con, because there's just nothing really exciting to report about in terms of tabletop gaming. I didn't get away from my table at all on either of the 2 days. There was just so much going on. I had a great place as a figurehead (or bait) for the lovely WoW/Keepers of Dice Club Vienna. They also had very lovely tables, especially the Dungeonbow table was great. But between chatting and painting workshops, I didn't have time to do anything really (let alone drinking or eating).

Setting up and dismantling went extremely nicely too. Which isn't exciting news to many people, but as an exhibitor, it's just so valuable. The evening before, I was at least able to take a short walk around after the set-up, but I didn't see much really. Except for the Knight Industries 2000, which was pretty cool. The only thing I found a bit creepy was that they put a Michael Knight cardboard stand-up in there. Apart from that, I caught a few seconds of the Smash tournament here and there over the weekend as I walked past. It's so crazy that this one video game is the undisputed king at these events, and that's Smash Bros. I certainly haven't played it in 4 or 5 years, but my brother and his buddies were way into those games up to a short while ago. Good game.

If the people at these cons are exhausted from all the Smashing, they play Mario Kart or even Street Fighter for a short time, but then it's usually back to Smash. Which is all fine, because allof these are cool games.


Oh, one very pleasant thing happened, and it happened several times: people showed up who had already taken part in painting last year and wanted to join in again. That was very nice.


Apart from that, there's not much else new to report. I'm swirling around in the end-of-year maelstrom, but slowly there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And I've got the RGM-79 SP “GM” Sniper II into a state that I consider “finished enough”.













A slightly later, performance-enhanced version of the gray guy from 2 weeks ago. Funnily enough, an older kit (think 2012?), and a little less glorious, but also very nice. I've tinkered with it a bit again and added a few details and so on. Basically at this point I just want to get a few models ready to play with. Because I'm not just doing this for fun, there's a PURPOSE behind all of this!

Not even sure if wargaming with these 14cm monsters (which also aresupposed to be pretty mobile, as the name suggests) makes any sense at all. But I have to try it. For this I also need terrain, of course. The extremely inexpensive Cityscape from Dropzone Commander caught my eye. Maybe that's a nice compromise. Possibly reinforced with a few MDF buildings from TTCombat. Who knows.


Well, so much for the news. Hope you like the robot toy!

[HerbertTarkel]

Wow! That’s just next level awesome!