Native Americans. From Russia.

As you will have seen, our rulebooks and website include images of 54mm models made by the Russian company Tehnolog.  Even though the people at Tehnolog were happy to give us permission to use their models, I personally still know very little about them.  That said, I was recently able to pick up a set of their figures that I hadn't previously seen available - this bunch:

Tehnolog's "Sci Fi Indians"

As seems to be the way with Tehnolog (with one or two exceptions) these guys come as a bundle of five and are all one-piece castings.  They are obviously inspired by Hollywood's "injuns" from less politically-correct times, with a slight modern twist.



Braves

These two braves are the most conventional figures in the set.  Armed with tomahawks, they're obvious close combat fighters but I reckon their shields might just give them the defence they need to get eye-to-eye with their enemy.  They're joined by, surprisingly given the theme, a single archer.

Missing something?

And as you can see from the above, he's accompanied by a comrade packing some more serious firepower.  Now, the idea of a native American with a space-age machinegun might bother some.  Not me.  I think he's great.  What bothers me is that the archer is missing an arrow.  He's clearly posed holding something in his left hand, and the bow is curved like it's under strain, but nope, he's completely arrowless.  Once you see it, you can't unsee it.  It's one of those things that'll have to be fixed in the painting stage, somehow.  In game terms, I wonder if the archer might make a good scout.  The other guy, well, he's got a big machine gun so I wouldn't be surprised to see him with rapid fire and/or heavy weapon.  Last of all, we've got the chief.

The Chief - front and back

This man means business.  One of the coolest details about him is the thing on his back with the little hose connected to the gun on his belt.  I reckon this has to be some sort of stolen alien technology, meaning he was tough enough to go and get it in the first place!  In my book he's a commander who's useful at long range and up close.  And I reckon that gizmo on his back maybe projects some sort of disruption field that makes him hard to hit and/or provides some impressive armour.

Size comparison - Warhammer figure on the left, Star Wars Command on the right.  Brave rested on a 50mm base.

Honestly, I love these guys.  The arrowless archer annoys me, but the rest more than make up for it.  You could field an all-native team or mix these in with other humans to form a cool ragtag bunch.  I paid US$10 including shipping for these and I am very pleased with them for that price.  They have that chunky look to them that may not be to everyone's tastes but I quite like it. Painted pics and maybe even a battle report to follow.

Star Wars rules - part 1

Today at Echidna Games HQ, we had two Star Wars-inspired games of Laserblade using the excellent (but now sadly cancelled) Star Wars Command toys from Hasbro.  The first game was a simple toe-to-toe fight in which the Rebels barely came out on top and the second was a retrieval mission using a frozen Han Solo figure as the token in which the Empire won out.  This second was an extremely close game and if Yoda had just held out until the end of the turn he'd have secured bonus points for his team and a strong win, but alas he was blasted by a stormtrooper in the nick of time!

Sorry, I should have taken pictures...

Anyway, this got me back onto thinking about how best to stat out the famous faces from a galaxy far, far away and I've come up with a couple of new abilities which I hope will add a bit of flavour for the supporting cast.

Guard
Cost - 2CP
Description - if this character is in base contact with an elite character, the difficulty to hit that elite character is increased by +1 (this bonus is cumulative).

I thought this would be a good way to represent Chewbacca's protective nature or the security services of a bunch of gamorrean guards.

Lucky (E)
Cost - 4CP
Description - once per round, this character's owner may choose to have any die roll affecting this character re-rolled.  The re-rolled outcome is final.

This one is inspired by Han Solo's ability to survive close scrapes.  It's an elite ability so its use is limited, and of course by no means guaranteed.

Please try both of these out and let us know what you think.  Coming soon, ancient weapon and hokey religion special abilities...

We're in the pipe five by five

I'm always on the lookout for models that can be used in our games and last weekend, this arrived at Echidna Games HQ:

These figures were released by a company called Tree House Kids - not an organisation I'd even heard of until very recently - back in about 2004.  This box is actually one of several "blind bag" style sets released at the  time.  As I understand it, the idea was that you bought a sealed box not knowing what was inside but this one, bought second hand on ebay, had already been opened and the seller was quite upfront about that and the contents.  I thought two Colonial Marines and two Alien Warriors looked like a good way too start my collection.  Close up, the figures look like this (1:32 Airfix Space Warrior for size comparison):

The Marine, for a human-sized model, is taller than your average 1:32 or 54mm figure, and disproportionately slimmer too to the point that he looks like a normal figure reflected in a funhouse mirror.  The Alien Warrior, however, looks very cool and towers over even the lanky Marine.  A handful of those would look great on your tabletop.

That said, I paid about £8 for these including postage and for that same money, I could but a pack of at least nine Star Wars Command figures so I don't think these are great value as far as toys go.  For collectors that want to pay a premium, fine, but frankly I'd be happier with a big bag of Galaxy Laser Team.  Horses for courses though and all that.  And if you are in the mood for spending money on these, this set has got to be top of your list:

So anyway, how can we use these in our games?  Well, I'm thinking they're a good option for Laserblade.  The marines are pretty standard.  Probably something like this:

Colonial Marine (15CP)
Ranged Combat - 5+
Close Combat - 6+
Abilities - armour (9+), marksman

You'd probably want a Sergeant in charge of your squad.  They'd be the same as above but with the commander special ability for a total 20CP.  For a marine with smartgun (and it looks like they made models of both Vasquez and Drake), add rapid fire to the template above for a total 20CP.  You could get one sergeant, one smartgunner and four marines for 100CP.  Probably quite competitive.

The aliens are a little different and have prompted me to introduce a new ability:
Acid Splash
Cost - 3CP
Description - when this character is destroyed, it explodes into a shower of acid.  Each character in base contact with it is immediately attacked with a 6+ close combat attack.  Characters that are hit are destroyed.  Characters make armour saves as normal but any character that makes a successful armour save may not make armour saves for the rest of the game (this represents the fact that the armour is damaged by the acid).  Other chracters with acid splash are not affected by acid splash.

Alien Warrior (15CP)
Ranged Combat - none
Close Combat - 5+
Abilities - acid splash, armour (10+), brawler, close combat fighter, hard to hit

A squad of six aliens would cost you 90CP.  That prompted me to come up with another ability but this time one that applies to the whole team.

Hive Mind
Cost - 10CP
This rule applies to your whole team.  While your team consists of at least two characters, and your characters are in cohesion, your team is treated as having a commander.

This, rather neatly, brings the cost of that alien squad up to 100CP.  Six marines versus six alien warriors?  Will it be a successful bug hunt or will it be game over, man?  Looks like I'm going to need to find some more figures!

 

It's been a while!

Yeah, sorry about that.  The day job has been taking over a bit recently and while it's good to be busy, my other projects have had to take a bit of a back seat but here I am and with plenty on my hobby table to keep me occupied.

Firstly, a confession.  Whether I've turned to the dark side or taken my first steps into a larger world, I'm not sure, but I've only gone and spent my hard-earned money in Games Workshop!  In fairness, the new version of Warhammer is so far proving to be a lot of fun (prompting this review from yours truly) and right now, my hobby desk looks like this:

Also this week, something of a modern-day holy grail arrived at my door.  This:

As I have said before, these figures are great for games of Laserblade and Alien Worlds and just as we all thought the toy line had died (thanks to an over-confidence from Hasbro that the Emperor himself would have found a bit unfounded) this set emerged.  Whether it was meant to be released or whether it made it's way to the UK by accident after the line was cancelled, I don't know.  Fun figures though and that's what counts.  Laserblade stats for Jabba and Co. coming soon!

Lastly, I have to express my thanks to Thor Shiel, Army Men collector extraordinaire, for kindly taking the time to review Laserblade on his blog.  You can find his review here.  I am, as ever, grateful for any feedback I receive and it is all the more satisfying when that feedback is positive.  I will take all of Thor's thoughts on board - watch for special rules updates here and on the main site in the near future!

Review Alert and Charity News

Laserblade has received its first review and it's on Board Game Geek, the one-stop-shop for all things board game related.  The BGG page for Laserblade along with review can be found here.  The reviewer, a chap called Brett, was even kind enough to contact me by email and give me some positive feedback on the game.  If you're reading this; thank you, Brett!

As some readers will know, our first game - Alien Worlds - was released as a charity venture.  While we may not be contributing much to our chosen cause, there's a brief article on the main Echidna Games website all the same detailing our performance which can be found here.

No other news for now but watch this space for updates our next ebook release!

Neil

Workbench update and match report

Well, the blue lady from the Airfix Space Warriors set now looks like this:

Not too shabby, if I say so myself.  The black hair could have looked better with a bit of a highlight but I still like it.  I've had some fun ideas for back story for her too.  That thing round her head is the  source of her people's power and she stole it.  As she wrestled its rightful owner for possession of it, he/she forced her back through time.  Trapped in her planet's past and her with her dreams of usurping the crown dashed, she now turns her attention to using the powers of the jewel to carve out an existence for herself...

I have some ideas for whom she might be going into battle alongside and will add them here as we go.

In other news, we had a game of Laserblade at Echidna Games HQ this week, my own Evil Overlord (more Space Warriors figures) versus Daniel's Star Wars Command team made up of two jedi and four ewoks.  Playing a scratch game in a short space of time, we opted for a three foot table and I think this was to Daniel's advantage as all six of his figures were close combat fighters.  I killed one jedi and a couple of ewoks but once they made contact with my goons, they made short work of them.  When he eventually had to take a valour check, all of Daniel's models stood firm.  When it came my turn to do the same, my last couple of characters lost their bottle.  Notch up another win for Daniel's ewoks!

Before I go, one last thing.  We now have our first review on www.boardgamegeek.com from a chap called Brett Christensen and you can find it on the Laserblade page here.  Thank you, Brett!

The Echidna Games blog is now live!

After a couple of false starts, Echidna Games are proud to present to you the first instalment of what will probably be a fairly occasional blog.  Our aim will be to not only bring you news about our titles but also to share general hobby stuff that we think might  be of interest.  Hopefully that'll go down alright with the great gaming public but we'll just have to see.

Just in case you don't know who we are or what we do, Echidna Games is a small, independent publisher of wargaming rules.  Heard of Games Workshop?  Well, if Games Workshop is an elephant, we're the benign, slightly sweet-tasting fungus under one of its toenails.  We have two titles in our inventory so far and both are available to download for Kindle.  There will be flashy-looking links for them somewhere on this blog page eventually but for now:

Laserblade - fast play science fiction skirmish rules

Alien Worlds - miniatures rules you can enjoy with your children

As far as future titles go, we had originally planned to release a fantasy-themed game based on the  Laserblade mechanics at some point this year.  As it stands, Battleblade will still be released but first up will be a "modern warfare" game, currently called Iron Sights.  It's early days yet but it's likely this will borrow heavily from the Laserblade mechanic but carry a more "realistic" feel - at least as realistic as pushing toy soldiers goes anyway.

So that's that.  True to our word, we also wanted to share a bit of hobby stuff and show what's on the Echidna Games workbench right now.  That would be this little lady:

She comes from an old Airfix kit called Space Warriors from way back in the 80s.  Interesting piece of trivia (which may or may not be true); she is the only female figure released by Airfix in 1:32 scale.  We decided she looked suitably otherworldly to not be painted in a conventional flesh tone so instead opted for blue.  The hair is a bit of an experiment that failed, using blue ink over a white basecoat in an attempt to make a light blue shade.  The first order of business is to fix that, then get her inked and based, ready for battle.

We reckon that thing on her head must grant her some special powers.  But what?