Thinking About Axanar and the Four Years War

I'm doing a good bit of research relating to the Four Years War  (a federation and Klingon War predating Star Trek TOS) from the FASA universe, how that's been expanded on by fans and other parties, and am surprised that it hasn't been more flushed out.  Even within FASA's own development, there seem to be some contradictions or omissions from one source to another.

In my case, I'm trying to adapt it to the Star Fleet Battles game system, which involves some heavy compromises with respect to ship classes and whatnot.  I know the rules inside out, and while I may be the exception to the rule, I've always preferred them to the FASA starship combat simulator. It may simply be a mater of having played SFB first.

I am also pulling in as much of the Prelude to Axanar fanfilm as I can, given that I simply like the ships and the quality of the film is quite inspiring.  Studio Bergstrom makes similar Federation ship models that are quite attractive, and given that I was not a fan of many of the FASA Klingon ship designs in particular, I will be looking to fill some of those slots soon.

I may have to bite the bullet, and scratch-build/cast some of my own models for this, but I hope to keep that to a minimum.

My campaign start out with the FASA version of the war, the events surrounding Axanar and the attack on Arcanis IV (? I think it was), etc., and I intend to start out with a very FASA looking version of a piece of the TFG/StarFleet Games Federation & Empire map.

And currently, the this map is my sticking point.  Trying to adapt the "landmark" planetary systems and bases to the F&E map requires a lot more hexes, a more granular map.  This will also require a different scale of movement than I'm used to in the SFB and F&E game systems.

I'm hoping to rough out a map this weekend, and next week, look at whether any of the SFB Early Years Module ship types can be adapted/adopted for this campaign.

Another consideration is making counters for some of these ships for when the scope of a battle is too broad, or due to the simple lack of certain miniature ships, to play the battles in miniature.  But now I'm getting a few steps ahead of myself.

In any event, that's where I'm at right now in my own little star trek.

Stay safe out there!

Making Headway at Warp Speed

This weekend, I completed 17 Klingon, Romulan, and Federation ships, 10 Federation fighters, and made progress on a few more Kzinti, Gorn, and Orion Pirate ships for SFB.  

The Romulans are almost complete at 33 ships, and I placed an order for an additional 6 more Gorn, and 26 Hydran Ships, which will more or less complete my purchases for those fleets. 

I will still need to scratch build several larger Gorn ships; CAs, DN, Tugs, etc. as I have a couple of the older Gorn Heavies and don't like the engine treatment that they game to the newer sculpts for these ships, so will sculpt masters that are closer to the older models.

Recently I received orders from Brigade Models and GZG for fighters to use with Star Fleet Battles, and have started working on those.  Service from both companies was fast and exceptionally good, and the miniatures are beautiful.

I can see a dot of light at the end of the galactic wormhole with respect to my SFB project.  Having made a huge amount of progress this year, and am looking forward to getting the game table cleared off to blow up some of these ships.

I have gotten the new computer up and running, but discovered yesterday that my old photo editing software will finally no longer load on a new computer, so will attempt to fix that tonight after which I will start uploading a lot more photos.  For now, here are just a couple to give an idea of the scope of what I've been doing.

The Romulan Fleet as of Saturday,

It gained another 10 ships Sunday, mostly,

 older War Eagles and a Battlehawk.

All models from Task Force Games/StarFleet 

Games. 

The Klingon and Federation Fleets a few weeks back, I've added

 about a dozen ships to each since.  Ship models from 

Task Force Games/StarFleet Games, Lou Zocchi, FASA, 

Studio Bergstrom and a couple of sources through Shapeways.

Origins and a June Update

 So, about a month ago, I got the bug to go to Origins.  Despite it being only 30 miles away, I hadn't been there since before covid, and on a lark, I asked a non-gamer friend if she would like to go.   Much to my surprise, she said that she'd love to.  So I got a couple of tickets and we spent this past Saturday at Origins.

The last time I went, we were pre-regged, and it still took like 45 minutes to get in, parking ended up being rough, and I was generally let down by the miniatures events, where for the first time, I saw unassembled figures being used in a game, i.e., little piles of parts being moved around on the table.

Well, this past Saturday was a blast, getting both our badges took about 45 seconds, and we were off.  

The miniatures events were minimal with respect to the size of the convention, many being more of what I consider boardgames, with a printed game board using miniature tokens as playing pieces, more than miniatures as armies in the way I consider them.  Still there were some nice looking games, including beautiful sailing ships, various airplane games, some fantastic sci-fi stuff, etc.

The venders hall was huge as always, and had a lot of art dealers, costume venders that I hadn't seen in my prior visits, lots a dice sellers, and the typical sellers of games, cards, figs, and rule books.

In the evening, we went into the hall that had open gaming, and I have to say that it was an impressive sight.  So many tables, so many games, and so many people in that one big room.  Despite having been to over a hundred conventions including maybe ten prior Origins, it impressed me in a way that I hadn't been before.  

My friend was introduced to the hobby in a big way, bought some art, and played her first game, an introduction to D&D using miniatures.  This was my first D&D game since about 1985, and the game went  really well.  The GM did a great job, and we both had a fantastic time.

She enjoyed the game tremendously and really just loved every second of the convention.  We walked over nine and half miles at the con that day, looking at all that there was to see, and would have been hard pressed to have a better time.  

The only glitch was that we tried to sign up for a second event just after registration had closed, but we couldn't get the web site to accept either of our credit cards through either of our accounts.  Despite that, I really can't complain, I had a blast, she had a blast, and asked me if we could go for three days next year.  I'll have to see if I can't get her into a proper miniatures game next year.

Outside of Origins, May and early June continued to be a "Star Trek", with  more Klingon and Federation ships joining the fleet, and also touching up of six of my old (circa 1982-83) Romulans and thirteen new Romulan ships added to the fleet.

I also bought a new computer about three weeks ago, but just haven't had time to switch over and set it up.  So, I will be able to start posting pics again soon.  

Until then, stay safe and happy gaming.

April Hobby Summary (Mostly Star Trek Related)

I'm still limping along with a crippled computer, a problem that I'm likey to fix next week given that all of my work travel cancelled for next week.  So, still no pictures for the time being.

Towards the end of April, I played my first game of the year.  A Starfleet Battles game of sorts, but using my own interpretations of ships from the Axanar "universe".  I started working on gaming some form of Axanar a year or so ago, picked up ships, primarliy from Studio Bergstrom, and finally got around to creating ship system displays for most of them. 

The game/battle wasn't from FASA or the Axanar movie timeline, but more of a check for "balance" in the conversion of the ships into the Star Fleet Battles "language".  Weapon types, quantity of weapons, and ship systems were translated into the mechanics of SFB, and this was the first game to test them out.

We both had a variety of ships amounting to about half a dozen per side, wit the Federation taking more than they gave, but managing with some expert maneuver to not lose any vessels.  The Federation ships not being designed for war, were either under-armed, under powered, or both, while the Klingons vessels were clearly warships from the foundation up. 

The game was a good time, with the new ships working pretty much as intended, and ending with the Federation doing what they do best; running away!

Regarding the Axanar project, I picked up the old FASA "The Four Years War" booklet, and plan to build some sort of campaign for the war eventually.  I also will bring together campaign notes and all of the ship compositions for use in the SFB system and make them available for anyone who might want them once I get a real computer.

I am bringing together elements from independent sources and dissimilar game systems, so "purests" of any particular canon will likely be unhappy.  My goal is to bring together a sort of fluid and "believeable" timeline, featuring a "logical" progression in ship design. 

This means picking and choosing bits from other peoples ideas, and blending them into my own version of a pre-TOS universe.  Ironic, given my distaste for re-inventing Star Trek, that I'm now part of the "problem".

Ultimately, all of this was made possible by the mniatures offerred by Studio Bergstrom, who offers a range of ship models with many being a sort of not-Axanar range of designs.  The models are beautiful, I mean just absolutely beautiful, and service has been fantastic,  If you like Axanar, Star Trek, or just magnificent starship models, you need to check them out.

In other news, I painted over a hundred miniatures in April, with my total for the year climbing to 473 completed, mostly cold war micro-armor.  My Federation and Klingon fleets both expanded to forty some vessels each (and continue to grow a little this month).  Surprisingly, this has been a great year for figure painting, and is likely to be my most productive since 2019.

That's about all I have for now.  I do have a backlog of posts with associated photos waiting to be shared, and expect to start catching up soon.  Stay safe out there!

I've Been Keeping Busy

I've been pretty active with hobby stuff over the last couple of months, just not keeping up with the blog unfortunately.  All of my computers are having problems posting pics to my blog.  Sometimes the pics just never show up, other times I get error messages, but never any photos.  I have actually written about half a dozen posts, before being stifled by the photo gremlin.

In any event, I've been busy planning, researching, ordering miniatures, and painting. Studio Bergstrom has been supplying me with starships, and the shipyards have turned out dozens of ships for Star Trek/Star Fleet Battles gaming.

My Federation and Klingon fleets both number around 45 ships and a few more arrived a couple days ago.  Plans involve an Axanar-ish campaign built around the Klingon/Four Years War, as well as adapting the Axanar type ships into the SFB universe as earlier ships/classes within those mechanics.

I've also been painting some odds and ends additions for 6mm Barbarossa.  Just things that I've managed to pick up to round out units a little better.  Finally got some Valentines for the Soviets!

Additionally, quite a number of 6mm miniatures for my eventual 1982 NATO-WarPac campaign  had been collecting and setting around, so I started painting a bunch of those to get them down and put away.

Lastly, I started cleaning and basing a platoon of Elhiem 20mm PAVN for Vietnam, which will probably hit the painting table this weekend.

I will continue to try to get photos posted, and when I figure it out, I should have a bunch of posts in short order.

Stay safe out there!

Reflecting on 2024 and Considering the New Year

Hey everybody, hope all is well and that your holidays were wonderful.  This past year was a bit of an anomaly for me.  I basically stepped away from gaming altogether for 8 months.  It was like a switch was flipped.  After the last few years of nearly total immersion in my free time, I just didn't "feel" it for quite a while.

I stepped away in every capacity, painting, building, playing, researching, stopped reading histoy and sci-fi, stopped blogging, almost completely stopped reading blogs and forums.  I don't have an explanation.  

Outside of gaming, life was good, though a lot of things changed, lie eating and sleeping habits.  I started getting up at 4:00 am, often starting the day by doing walks in the park as the sun came up. Did a lot of hiking, little bit of bike riding, and a touch of weight lifting.  Dropped forty pounds, actually a little more, but put some back on as muscle.  I'm not down to fighting weight yet, but feel better than I've felt in decades.  

Anyway, back to gaming.  So my gaming year ended the first week in February, and really didn't pick up again with any gusto until the weekend before Thanksgiving (mid-November), really gaining steam in the last three weeks, despite a 77 hour work week in there somewhere.

Gaming accomplishments for the year are way down, finishing 15 projects in January and adding none since (that's like 6 months of an average year).  I played four games for the year, painted 123 figs in January/February, and received 176 over the year, so lost a little ground in figure painting. I completed my year long Barbarossa game in December, and spent a ton of time the last couple of weeks reconstituting weapons cards for Cold War and WWII gaming that were lost in an encryption error/failure.  Lost multiple copies all files dating back through June of 2021 and many as far back as 2001.

The glass half full part of this, is that I finally got a bunch of errors, ommisions, and incomplete bits that had ben collecting for years fixed.  And I feel really excited about all of this.  This week at work involves a bunch of travel and testing, so the week is lost with respect to gaming, but I'm looking forward to setting up and starting the next Barbarossa campaign game next weekend.

Additionally, as soon as a have time to finish sorting through and editing pics, I'll get that last Barbarossa AAR posted (sorry Im so slow).

I just want to thank those following my blog for hanging with me over this last year.  I think the hobby has changed a little for me, but given where I'm at right now, I once again feel the fire for gaming and am making time for it, so the blog should be coming back to life a little.

Stay safe out there, and hope everyone has a fantastic new year.

The Battle Raged To An End

It is hard to believe that more than two months has passed since my last post.  I had just started back into my Barbarossa battle, a German attack near Przemysl, when a bunch of stuff came up for work, and I had to do a lot of travelling, which kind of threw everything in life into chaos again.

I finally got back to the battle the weekend before Thanksgiving, and had time to really get back into the game for several hours, playing roughly 40 turns, reaching the tipping point in the battle as I ran out of time.  

This weekend, I got  to finish the battle, with the Germans finally destroying Soviet resistence. 

The Soviets again took a beating from German artillery, though did inflict notable casualties on the German recce forces and an infantry company.  A company of Stug IIIs made it into the battle, the first time in the campaign that we have seen any real armor elements, though they did little more than mop up a Soviet 76mm gun unit that had already been ravaged by German artillery.

I'm working on a full after action report now, and expect to post it by next weekend.  After which I think I will finally be able to get back to some regular gaming. 

Stay safe out there, and I hope you have a great holiday season.