Forum Newsletter 15

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Ruckdog

Greetings fellow Naval Gamers!

There are many things to catch you up on; the past month has been very active on both the forums and the blog!

Let’s start with the forums. First, I would like to announce the creation of two new boards. With all the information that has been coming out regarding the new Halo miniatures games, it seemed like the time was right to give these games their own sub-forum in the Spartan Games boards:

http://www.manbattlestations.com/forum/index.php?board=41.0

Next up, the new PC game World Of Warships has been consuming not only a lot of my free time, but the free time of several other members. There has been some interest in getting a MBS clan going, so I have also created a new sub-forum for the game. If you are interested in what WoWS is about or are interested in joining the clan, please check it out:

http://www.manbattlestations.com/forum/index.php?board=42.0

There has also been a few active threads recently. Lots of new pics showing the models for Dropfleet, the spaceship game set in the DZC universe, have been released. Very pretty models!

http://www.manbattlestations.com/forum/index.php?topic=816.0

Forum member Stephan has also been working to organize a MBS contingent for next year’s Adepticon trip, so take a look if interested!

http://www.manbattlestations.com/forum/index.php?topic=932.0
In case you might have missed it, Major McNichol did a great write-up for a recent DW game that we played:

http://www.manbattlestations.com/forum/index.php?topic=929.0
There have been several good reades in the Firestorm Armada forums as well, including ones discussing some rules for Planetfall, the value of the Veydreth as a faction, and an interesting article on Terran cruiser development:

http://www.manbattlestations.com/forum/index.php?board=34.0

In the Showecase, Landlubber has posted a few shots of some islands he painted for DW, and I’ve put up some pictures for some FA ships I just finished:

http://www.manbattlestations.com/forum/index.php?board=10.0

There has been quite a lot going on with the blog, as well! In addition to several in-depth articles on unit types for DW and FA cruisers, I’ve also been adding a few features to the blog. For example, there is now a blog roll so that I can showcase links to some other really great websites and blogs (if you know of one to add, let me know!). Also, I have adjusted the Archives to take up less space on the screen. Check out the new features and see what you think!

And, finally, the Man Battlestations Facebook page is now live. Please stop buy and give a Like!

https://www.facebook.com/manbattlestations

I will be posting thinks from the forums and blog on the FB page, so you now have another way of keeping up with the happenings on MBS. If you are not a fan of FB, though, don’t worry; no “new” content will be put up on FB without first being posted on the blog or forums.

Until next month!

Ruckdog & The Man Battlestations Forum Team.

Posted in Monthly Newsletter | Leave a comment

Bombs Away! – DW Heavy Bombers

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Ruckdog

Introduction

April was an exciting month for Dystopian Wars, as the game received its first new unit type in quite some time. I’m referring, of course, to the Heavy Bombers that were included in the Bombardment Groups that were released for the 7 core factions! Given that these models represent an expansion of the already large range of model types within the game, I thought it might be fun to take a look at the type as a whole, as well as each individual model. This is similar to the methodology I recently used to discuss the Battlecruisers, which makes this post a sequel of sorts, I suppose. I am modifying my methods somewhat, though. I will say upfront that this post is focused only on a technical analysis and comparison of the stats. I will “keep my powder dry” for a discussion on tactics and employment for a later article. On with it, then! Continue reading →

Posted in Dystopian Wars | Tagged COA, DW 2.0, Dystopian Wars, EotBS, FSA, KoB, PE, RoF, Russian Coalition | 1 Comment

Dystopian Wars Battle Report: Russians vs. Prussians

Posted on May 19, 2015 by Ruckdog

Ian, aka MajorMcNicol, has put up a great post about our last gaming session on his blog:

https://andygomez.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/dystopian-wars-two-battles-pictures-including-special-scenario/

I was going to do my own write-up, but he did such a good job, I think I’ll just link to his ;). This was the inagural meeting of BANG: Boston Area Naval Gamers. I really enjoyed the game, and I appreciate him having me over. In regards to the scenario he game up with, I think a 300 point intervention force would be fine. After the fact, I realized that we had screwed up the deployment requirements….we placed squadrons willy-nilly, instead of in descending size order. However, I would love to try a similar scenario again sometime!

Posted in Dystopian Wars, Event Report | Tagged BANG, DW 2.0, Dystopian Wars, PE, Russian Coalition | Leave a comment

DW Battlecruisers Part 4

Posted on May 17, 2015 by Ruckdog

Hello again! If you remember from last time, I discussed all 7 battlecruisers from the core factions. This time, I’m going to be taking a look at the battlecruisers from the various minor powers and supporting factions. As a slight modification, I’m going to be relying on excerpts from the applicable fleet guides vice the custom cards I used last time, since there have been new ORBATS released since the last time the cards were updated. Here we go! Continue reading →

Posted in Dystopian Wars | Tagged Black Wolf, CF, DW 2.0, LoIS | Leave a comment

Navy of the Terran Satellite Charter: Main Cruiser Variants

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Ruckdog

Hello again fellow naval gamers! I have for you here an excellent article by Ian Cross (Major McNicol on the forums) that provides a fictional discussion and history to the development of the NTSC cruiser designs in Firestorm Armada. Ian does an excellent job laying out a case for how and why the various cruiser variants came to be. This sort of stuff really gets my naval geek juices flowing! Anyway, you can find a PDF of his article in the Downloads section:

Terran Cruiser Variants

Posted in Space Naval Gaming | Tagged Background, Firestorm Armada, Terran | Leave a comment

DW Battlecruisers Part 3

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Ruckdog

Greetings!

So, it’s been over two years since I’ve discussed this topic, and since then Spartan has released battlecruisers for all 7 core factions. I thought it might be interesting to take a brief look at this ship type and evaluate their capabilities and what roles they might play in their faction’s forces. In the process, I will be referencing the stats for each ship, which I am providing here in the form of YouLookLikeANail’s stat cards for convenience. (Editor’s Note: The stat cards used in this article are outdated. I’ve made notes where there have been changes. Thanks to the aptly-named Watchdog on the SG forums for catching my error!) Continue reading →

Posted in Dystopian Wars | Tagged Battlecruiser, COA, DW 2.0, Dystopian Wars, EotBS, FSA, KoB, PE, RoF, Russian Coalition | 2 Comments

War At Sea Battle Report: IJN vs USN

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Ruckdog

I recently played my first War at Sea game in a long time. The game was with my friend Seth (wargamer55), and it was a classic Pacific War matchup: Japan vs United States!

Continue reading →

Posted in Battle Report, Historical Naval Games | Tagged Batrep, IJN, USN, War at Sea, WW II | 5 Comments

2015 Painting Contest Winners

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Ruckdog

The votes are all in, and I am proud to announce the winners of this year’s contest!

In first place, it’s Hetairoi’s Imperial Humans Kingfisher Class Heavy Cruiser:

In Second Place, it’s Grgbobe’s USS Ranger:

And in third place, it’s Last Rite’s Vengeance-class Submarines:

And last, but certainly not least, the inaugural Admiral’s Choice award goes to:

Andrewchristlieb’s Oroshan Armageddon-class Dreadnought!

Great job to not just our winners, but all the participants in this year’s contest! You can see all of our participants in the gallery below:

Posted in Painting Contest | Tagged Dystopian Wars, Firestorm Armada, Painting Contest, Uncharted Seas, War at Sea | Leave a comment

Star Trek Armada III Review

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Ruckdog

I originally posted this review over on my personal blog, but since the mod mostly deals with ships of various kinds, I figured it would be worthwhile to post here as well!

The Basics

So, what is STA3? Well, to start at the beginning, back in the early 2000s there were a series of Star Trek real time strategy (RTS) games published as Star Trek Armada and Star Trek Armada II. However, after the bottom fell out of the Star Trek market, this series was shelved, apparently forever. That is until about 10 years later, when a dedicated team of volunteers started work on a mod project. Put simply, STA3 it is a “total conversion mod” for the PC strategy game Sins of a Solar Empire. That means that while STA3 shares the same basic interface, engine, and gameplay of SoaSE, all of the ships, races, symbols, sounds, etc. have been lovingly converted to a Star Trek theme. There has been some truly impressive work done by the team of folks that have put STA3 together; the SoaSE framework is barely recognizable under all the Trek glory, at least visually! Continue reading →

Posted in Video Games | Tagged Star Trek, Video Games | Leave a comment

Man Battlestations Blog

Bombs Away! – DW Heavy Bombers

Introduction

Dystopian Wars Battle Report: Russians vs. Prussians

DW Battlecruisers Part 4

Navy of the Terran Satellite Charter: Main Cruiser Variants

DW Battlecruisers Part 3

War At Sea Battle Report: IJN vs USN

Continue reading →

2015 Painting Contest Winners

Star Trek Armada III Review

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