Playtesting with PowerPoint

After reading an interesting post on The Miniatures Page, I decided to try and create my own PowerPoint playtest. The idea is to create a slide in P.P. and use it as your map, with images that you can drag around to serve as your units. You can keep notes all in the same frame, too. The screenshot below is of a playtest for an Okinawa game for a scenario pack I'm putting together for A Sergeant's War. Some more after the bump.

Rail Gun: Fire Combat

I will continue talking up my space combat game Rail Gun with a post today about how the rules handle fire combat.  Short version---Rail Gun dispenses with numerous categories of weapons to focus the rules down to two main types, Guns and Missiles, and a sub-type, "ship killers."  More after the bump. Thanks for reading!

Carrier, by Andy Nelson.

Rail Gun: Crew Quality and a ship's data card

Playtesting for Rail Gun has ramped up in the last week or two, with numerous games played testing out the overhauled system. I'll start discussing aspects of the game with this post, which will examine Crew Quality and look at the "data card" for a destroyer.

Speed	Type DESTROYER I.D. ANTIETAM Damage OO			CQ 3	Stress
	Acc 4	Man 2		Def 2
	Pro F/S/R  -2/+0/+1
	Weapon	Arc	Rng	Str
	Mssl	FLR	20	3
	Guns	F	3	2

15mm sci-fi forces for Millennium Con

These will be the human forces for my game at Millennium Con this year: a mix of California militia, United Nations of Earth and Mars Special Forces, combat droids, and vehicles.  Lots of manufacturers here: Matchbox (the tracked APCs, modified); Darkest Star (several of the droids and the wheeled tank); Khurasan (power armor, a few militia) and some of the droids); Rebel Minis (a few of the insurgents); and Oddzial Osmy (most of the militia).

More pics and some gamer-fluff below. Thanks for looking!

Playtesting A Sergeant's War scenarios and Rail Gun spaceship gaming

Hey all, some playtesting updates here.  I'm currently working on a new scenario book for A Sergeant's War, tentatively titled 24 Hours on Okinawa, and a near total overhaul of my in-development spaceship game Rail Gun. Some general notes after the bump.

Gunship, art by Andy Nelson

American Revolution game

I got to play a fun American Revolution game, using Black Powder and my uncle's large 28mm AWI collection and his fantastic frontier terrain. A game description and beaucoup pics after the bump.

Skorne

I have painted up my first ever Hordes minis, a Skorne starter set my uncle gave me (thanks a lot, another game is all I need...) The minis were a bit of pain to assemble, reminding me of mis-fitted GW models of yesteryear, but they made up for the rough assembly by being a breeze to paint. Several more pics after the bump.