Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice-

Years ago I saw Starship Troopers in the cinema. It struck me as a very funny film, and it retains a lot of that comic gold today. Some time afterwards Mongoose got the rights to produce a game based sort of in that universe. I think it was to do with an animated TV show, but whatever the reason, there were now "Bugs" available for comic refights. I never did get round to playing the game itself, as folks at uni were generally a bit too into their 40K, and I never did get round to finishing painting them. But I still have the boxed set with its 20 Warrior Bugs, plus a Flame Bug I picked up as well. Some day I'll finish them all off, add a few grey Cadians, and have a laugh. So arguably I'm partly to blame for the fact that Mongoose dropped the game.

However, at the time I was less sympathetic to their position, and decided not to trust them in the future. They subsequently produced a game set 20 minutes into the future, with a variety of Modern factions, called Battlefield Evolution. I remember hearing it had died, but you can still buy four units from Mongoose, so it's still staggering on, half-dead, and without the models to produce even one faction's units. Two things put me off investing in that. First, Mongoose's history with Starship Troopers. Second, contemporary warfare is a bit too close to the bone for my tastes. We've all got our red lines when it comes to gaming, and that's one of mine.

So two games dead, and possibly more I hadn't heard about. Then the other year I discovered that Mongoose had allied with some American company (Amarillo Design Bureau - whom I'd never heard of in my life) to produce some Star Trek models. That turned out not to be quite the case, as the Star Fleet Universe isn't really in line with Star Trek as we know it. There are some serious divergences which I won't go into here. Suffice it to say that fans of TNG shouldn't expect to see Ferengi or Cardassians turn up. For me, however, the important thing was seeing the Enterprise in model form. A friend of mine got me a pair of squadron boxes (Klingon and Federation) and the rulebook as a present, and soon Phasers were firing, Disruptors lancing and Photon Torpedoes impacting. This time I didn't stop at the introductory set, and bought more and more. It's an addiction familiar to all of my 'gaming readers! So far I have ended up with slightly north of ninety hulls, in addition to those Star Destroyers I knocked up the other month.

The rules were pretty good, being a new iteration of a system in use for some time. Mongoose had once had the rights to a Babylon 5 game. There were a few problems and unclear elements in the rules, but nothing one couldn't work around in a friendly way. Since every game thus far has been with my brother we've been able to do that, and introduce the odd house rule to make things more to our liking. I noticed early on that the best tactic against the Klingons is to charge straight down their throats, while their best tactic is to maintain a distance and whittle their enemies' shields down from a distance. The wider gaming community, consisting of a lot of folk who have played games produced by ADB in the past, and who were fielding distinct empires which used different weapons, started reporting problems. The initial resin models - which were simplicity itself to trim and assemble - had too many flaws, and were replaced by metal ones.

There's a certain amount of book-keeping, and ship cards are very useful for this. Mongoose said they'd produce some for all the ships, never did, despite putting them on "pre-order", and eventually started releasing some for individual factions. That went down well. Some models were released without rules, but a promise that rules would appear in a little while: a month, next month, by Christmas. Deadlines fell by the wayside. Then there were problems with production, and the metal models started to dry up. The "Fleet" packs, which let one make a considerable saving on buying individual models, started to disappear. I wandered over to another supplier, Wayland Games, and ordered one through them back in September. They have very handsomely said that if they can't get the whole "Fleet" pack they will acquire the individual models from Mongoose, and send them on to me. That's good customer service.

Recently, there was a much-heralded announcement. The upshot can be summarised as follows. ADB are taking back control of the line of models, which will now only be available through them. The rules will remain broadly the same, but will be revised after much playtesting so as to eliminate some perceived problems. There will be a new rulebook, probably in PDF or black and white paper. The ships that should have been released in the first book, but weren't, should be with us soon. The relaunch is in six months or so.

Generally speaking, I'd say this is a good idea. I'm looking forward to a relaunch, albeit with a little trepidation about Drones. In the source games these were launched in such volleys as to slow things to a crawl, I understand, as they tracked targets over multiple turns. In the Mongoose variant they became direct-fire weapons. If one failed to shoot them down, one could be in serious danger. There's talk of making them more like the original. Alarming. That said, everything else looks promising. The chap revising the rules is making use of lots of play-testing. The American company seems more helpfully communicative than Mongoose. To be fair to Mongoose, joint ventures such as this can have serious problems: the time-zones aren't in sync, so conversations are troublesome; if something needs to be checked at one end, but that particular company is focused on another project, it can delay things a lot; and so on.

I'm not prone to making grandiose declarations, so I'm not going to angrily denounce Mongoose, damning them to fire and brimstone. They have had problems with materials, with the supply of models, with getting work done when they said it would be done, and with keeping both private customers and other businesses in the know. They have been disappointing, even before this recent mess. The only reason I decided to start buying stuff from them now was because I wanted an Enterprise. I was wary of engaging with them before. I am yet warier now. They'll probably have to acquire a Disney licence to sell a Star Wars game before I'd be sucked back into their orbit by insuperable desire. The sad thing is that these are some lovely models, and the rules haven't majorly disappointed me in any sense. I just cannot trust the company to see a product range through to the end. That is a shame.

Once upon a time a friend of mine was having some romantic troubles, and having observed them, I told him that the problems were largely rooted in his desire for a "Happy Ending". We don't get those, I said, because they are a storytelling convention. We have to find joy in what is, because if we reject everything that isn't perfect we just end up doing ourselves out of any joy at all. He's a lot happier now than he was then. In that vein, I am distinctly looking forward to whatever Amarillo Design Bureau do with A Call To Arms: Star Fleet. I'm also hungry for new models! Of course, the fly in that ointment is that I am flat broke!

The Post With No Name

So called because I seem to have failed to slap a title on this before posting it. I was not even aware that was possible. Now read on!


Blind Date, a film starring Bruce Willis (pre-Die Hard) and Kim Basinger, begins very, very slowly. There wasn't anything to laugh at for a considerable amount of time, and then it devolved into a true slapstick farce. I think there were about four car crashes, all involving the same car. I am rather a fan of slapstick, so that sits well. Quite why the first half of the film didn't contain any jokes is beyond me, but the latter half is full to bursting. In the last two minutes of viewing, Bruce Willis has smashed the back window of his brother's car, and broken a bed by kicking it.

The Arachnids are going well. I've undercoated the lot of them, and have begun a test paint-scheme on a single model. Some Iyanden Darksun to catch the bits I missed with the spray, then some repeated, diluted layers of Bad Moon Yellow to get the acid yellow colour of the movie monsters, Ruby Red for the, er, red bits, and then Vallejo black. That's my thinking so far. I'll probably throw a wash or two in somewhere. Here's how the beasties look at present.

The trumpet calls us to the breach!

I think I have mentioned that I'm trundling through our film library. I've fallen happily on Branagh's Henry V, which is something of a surprise, given how unhappily I was smothered by Shakespeare's seeming tedium in school. Perhaps you presume I was bored by those tedious classroom readings when disinterested teenagers stumble through forgotten and unknown words. In fairness, who doesn't blink the first time they read floccinaucinihilipilification? No, that was not all. We had a few school trips to unedifying plays, too. I do not damn all plays as worthless. Some foolish opinion I read on IMDB the other day said they were good for nothing other than training actors for the screen. Anyway, this is a very pleasant business, although I have just sat in mute bafflement through a scene of McEwan and Thompson addressing one another almost solely in French rather too swiftly for my mind to comprehend, so distanced is it from the days of GCSE French.

On the wargaming front, I have two avenues of progress to report. First, I have been at work still on those 1/72 ACW chaps, Confederate and Union both. The Rebels have received a varied appearance, perhaps too much so. You may judge below. They've had a variety of colours and then a variety of washes served on them. Still none is yet finished, but much is done on about 85 models, half for either side, so conflict may soon be joined to restore the Union or, if you're so inclined, fight for the Bonny Blue Flag. I think Westerns as a child inclined me much toward the Union: dark blue jackets and pale blue trousers: why it's John Wayne in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon! Of course, one later on picks up rather more details - that whole reprehensible slavery business, for instance.

Second, and on a lighter note, I've also been at work on Arachnids. Years and years ago, I invested in the Starship Troopers game, but owing to an accident never got anywhere with the assembly. Two problems presented themselves: I lacked both superglue and the will to invest in it, the plastic being no lover of polystyrene cement. Next, I sat down with a friend to poke at the box, and he attempted to help me. Unfortunately, we had opposite approaches to these things. He detached everything from the sprues for ease of assembly. My face was a picture of horror when I saw it. I didn't and don't attach blame to him for doing it. Everyone has their different way of doing things. Because mine's different, the poor models ended up living in my attic until just the other day. Very little has gone missing from the monsters: just the lower jaw of an Arachnid. Nineteen of the twenty in the set are whole, though.

I did undercoat everything in black years ago, which was a silly idea. I couldn't paint yellow atop it, and gave up. Given everything was falling apart because poly cement was ineffective on that plastic, this was probably for the best! So tomorrow I shall venture forth and fetch myself some yellow paint from Halford's, so I can just paint the black and red atop it. Much more sensible a plan! Until then, dear readers, have a gander!