The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

The frontier world listed in the Epirian Foundation directory as PG-4215 [designation pending] is a barely-habitable planet on the outer fringe of populated space. At the time the Maelstrom approached the system, PG-4215 possessed a single official settlement, known as 'Research & Terraforming Implementation Facility Alpha' by the Foundation and as 'Hamilton' by those unfortunate enough to have been posted there.

With PG-4215's few small, equatorial landmasses being hot, dry, and generally unpleasant, Hamilton's small population very early on had committed themselves to paving over and urbanising as much of it as possible.


Oblivious to impending conflict, an Epirian cargo drone shunts shipping containers for unloading.

Hamilton is the first table setup that I've finished off so far for my own Maelstrom's Edge games. I've used it somewhat as a test-bed for trying out different ideas, with the end result being a bit of a hodge-podge of styles.


Taking up position on the roof of the refectory, the squad watches an automated uplink relay trundle down the laneway.

Buildings have been constructed from a range of different materials, with the components from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue helping to tie it all together into a more-or-less coherent whole. The building above is made from a cardboard giftbox with the lid flipped upside down.


In the distance, past the plantation dome, a squad of heavy armoured Karists approaches, weapons at the ready.

The plantation dome was constructed from a plastic salad bowl, with foamcore used for the enclosed area at the front. You can see how this was put together in the walkthrough here.


A Warden conducts a routine maintenance check on the exterior of the planation dome.

Trimmed-down and repainted aquarium plants were used for the plantation beds inside the dome. In the background is one of my first foamcore constructions.


A Hunter warmech on patrol.

Cover is extremely important in Maelstrom's Edge, so wherever possible I have tried to include protruding elements for models to potentially hide behind, as can be seen in the buttressing on the building behind the Hunter.


A Scorpion drone lurks in the courtyard, awaiting instructions from its Handler.

Of course, some details aren't particularly useful for cover, and are just there to look pretty.


On the other side of town, a Hunter on loan from the Swamp Research Team surveys the laneway.

Painting has mostly been kept fairly simple, with the buildings all painted white with some salt weathering to make them look like they've been exposed to the elements on an unfriendly world. I wanted a unified colour scheme to help tie the disparate buildings together, so they would look like the town was cobbled together from various sources, but would still look like it was purpose built for a single organisation.


Lieutenant Bob takes up position on the balcony.

Variations on a basic design can help create a 'kit-home' look, with some different buildings that all clearly belong together. The above building was constructed using a similar template to the first foamcore structure, but with the courtyard removed and a balcony added. You can see the construction of this building in a short video here.


The Karists advance.

If you're aiming for an urban-themed board, it's a good idea to add in some area terrain elements rather than just having a table filled with solid buildings, as this mixes things up a bit for movement and cover. The same template used for Lieutenant Bob's balcony building was used to create a ruin, just by cutting off the roof, bashing things up a bit and adding some rubble on the base.


A lone Karist trooper lurks between the buildings.

In the background above you can see another building made from a plastic storage tray. Check out the build video here.


Scarecrows move to intercept the intruders.

Playing on a themed table is a great way to bring your games to life, as it helps to create the illusion of an actual battlefield, rather than just having a random assortment of different terrain.


Despite imminent conflict, Bob can't resist trying out his new camera drone...

Still to do: I have several more buildings still on the workbench for this board, including a bot storage building and some more small multi-purpose buildings. I'd also like to add some sort of water-treatment pond. This will help to expand out from 4'x4' to a more rounded 4'x6', which is better for standard games. It would also benefit from the addition of more scatter terrain to break up the firelanes a little, which will be my next terrain project:




All of the decorative elements on the buildings shown here are from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. You can find this in a handy two-pack in the Maelstrom's Edge online store here. You can share your terrain creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

- by Iain Wilson

The dependence on robotic units and information warfare means that the Epirian Foundation relies on electronic communication to function as an effective fighting force. When pursuing conflicts outside of its zone of control, the Foundation uses portable uplinks that link to orbital satellites and airborne recon, providing battlefield intelligence about enemy positions and weaknesses and allowing Bot Handlers to remotely interface with Epirian drones on the ground.

The Maelstrom's Edge rules include an automated uplink relay as a faction-specific objective for the Epirian forces. The uplink itself is represented with a cardboard standee, as it represents a physical object that moves around the board, but I thought it might be nice to have an actual model to represent it. And so, I came up with this:






My kitbash differs a bit from the artwork on the card - the artwork was done while the game was still in its early design stages, before the models were finalised. As a result, the drone chassis that forms the basis of the upper body of the uplink is really too small for the job. The card version also wound up with only a single gun, while the finished version of the uplink, ruleswise, is supposed to have two flakk batteries.

So after initially looking at various ideas using a drone chassis, I went with a Hunter torso instead.

The track unit was purloined from a Counterblast Mekkus Defender robot. Quick and easy to assemble - just two track units and a central hub to which they both attach.



I then took a Hunter torso and cut it off at the waist joint.



A new waist joint was constructed from plastic tubing, to slot neatly into the waiting cavity in the top of the track unit's central hub.



The flakk batteries were constructed from the flakk guns on the drone sprue. I took the two weapon mount parts and joined them together, glued a flakk gun onto each mount and added a third flakk gun, slightly shaved down on either side, inset between the other two. These were then attached to the forearm magazine piece from the hunter to create something reminiscent of the boxy 'shoulders' of the drone chassis from the original uplink artwork.



One of the big, obvious details in the artwork is the big satellite dish mounted on the uplink's left shoulder. I didn't have anything suitably rounded to hand, but in a flash of inspiration grabbed the flakk cannon from the Hunter sprue and chopped through the exposed parts of the cannon barrels. The shield section was then attached at a jaunty angle to the muzzle end of the cannon, and an antenna made from the coaxial barrel from the Hunter's chaingun.



The shoulder sockets were trimmed at an angle so that the weapon arms would sit horizontal. The weapon arms were then glued in place, and the satellite dish and an auxiliary antenna made from the 'spare' weapon on the drone sprue attached to the left shoulder. I also added a square of plasticard to the front of each shoulder to cover over the original weapon attachment sockets. These have an 'X' shape scribed into them to once again tie back to the drone shoulder design. As a final nod to the drone chassis (although this is a detail on the final drone model that is absent from the uplink illustration) I added a pair of rails running along the top of the head, cut from thin plasticard.







I decided to paint this one up to match my original Epirian colour scheme, using Vallejo Yellow Green with a wash of Army Painter Green Tone, and the metal parts painted Vallejo Basalt Grey with a couple of coats of Army Painter Dark Tone.



The tracks were given a light drybrush with Citadel Boltgun Metal (aka Leadbelcher) and then another wash, this time with Army Painter Strong Tone.



The base was urban-ised with a basecoat of Vallejo Neutral Grey and a drybrush of Vallejo Light Grey. Some oil stains splotched on with Army Painter Strong Tone, some chipping, and some yellow line markings complete the scene.



And so there it is: One Automated Uplink Relay. Size-wise, it comes in as a perfect match height=wise for the card version. A little more sideways bulk, but that suits it with the size of the base anyway.

It's not a perfect match for the artwork, but I think it's close enough to be recognisable for what it's supposed to be, and is a really easy conversion.

If you would like to have a go at this yourself, you'll need the track unit from Counterblast (or something else like it - there are a fair few options out there for small, tracked weapon units), and a Maelstrom's Edge Hunter (which will also give you the base for the uplink) and two Drone sprues - You'll have enough parts left over to still build complete drones from those sprues with the other weapon options. You can find the Maelstrom's Edge sprues in the online store here.

Be sure to share your version of the completed uplink relay on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

- by Iain Wilson

A few weeks back, I built an Epirian Stockyard, just to get an idea of how some more rustic styling would fit into the Maelstrom's Edge universe. So it was with a fairly large amount of delight that I stumbled this week upon some fantastic, inexpensive, western-styled building kits from a company called Plast Craft Games. These are made from die-cut PVC sheets, and make a perfect base for customisation - in this case, with the addition of some parts from the Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue to make a scifi frontier-town building.

The original kit comes as a single PVC sheet, with the cut panels attached with a few lugs. The PVC is soft enough to cut easily, and while there was some warping of some of the panels (I'm assuming from the pressure of the cutting process) they bend back into shape readily enough. The fact that the woodgrain shown in the store pics of the kit was actually embossed onto the parts was a nice surprise - I had been assuming that was just painted detail.



So, the first step was to remove all of the panels from the sheet and clean off the attachment lugs. I was a little surprised to find printing on the outer facings of the building pieces - as I inadvertently discovered three-quarters of the way through assembly, this is actually a sheet of protective film that peels off, once you know about it... It's not mentioned in the mostly-pictorial assembly instructions.



The opening for the door on the front wall turned out to be exactly the right height for the terrain sprue door, although I had to widen it a little. This was the work of a moment with a steel ruler and an exacto knife, and then I did the same for the window, which needed to be widened just a fraction and lengthened a bit. These parts could then be glued in with superglue.



The back wall of the building doesn't have any openings, but I decided to add a second door for in-game versatility. This was done by tracing around the door frame and cutting out a hole for it with the exacto knife and ruler again.



From there, the rest of the building could be assembled. There are some timber braces that run vertically up the edges of each all to disguise the panel joins. I left these on the front and back wall, but flipped them over to hide the woodgrain so that they could be painted as metal to match the terrain sprue parts. Then I added the terrain sprue reinforcing pieces on the side walls and roof, and added a railing to the front porch using a trimmed-down ladder.





(The porch roof and rails are still unglued at this point, to make painting the front of the building easier.)

Time to paint!

I started with a spray of grey undercoat all over.



Parts that I wanted to be metal were then given a coat of Vallejo Beasty Brown.



This was followed with a light drybrush of Citadel Boltgun Metal (Leadbelcher, for the newcomers)



Then the whole building was given a generous wash with Army Painter Strong Tone.



Once dry, the wash was cleaned up a little in a few places where it hadn't covered quite right, and then the wood areas were drybrushed with P3 Jack Bone, with some white mixed in for some lighter areas - this was intended to give the wood an uneven, weathered appearance. The metal parts were also given a light drybrush with the Boltgun Metal again.



At that point, all that was left was to paint up the lights on top of the doors (Citadel Ice Blue with a drybrush of white) and the green-orange-red lights on the door lock panels, give the moving parts of the door locks a coat of Boltgun Metal to make them stand out from the rest of the weathered metal parts, and to paint the sign on the front wall.













So while Lieutenant Bob there takes up his sniping position on the roof, and I go off to make up a town's-worth of these and track down some models for the Serenity crew, we mosey off into the sunset once more.

If you're feeling a similar urge to misbehave, you can find the Plast Craft Games range in various hobby stores and through their own webstore and you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue 2-pack from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here.

As always, we'd love to see what you come up with, so feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

- by Iain Wilson

On many frontier worlds, terraforming is still underway when colonists move in and start trying to install some sort of civilisation on everything. Where conditions are less favourable, this can require mean that non-native vegetation can need a little help getting established.

One of my very early ideas when the Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue was first released into my eager little hands was for a small bio-dome-style structure where food or other useful plants would be grown during the process of making the planet fully habitable. It's taken a while to get back to it, but this is what I eventually came up with:

The foundation for this building was a plastic salad bowl, found at a local discount store.



I built a 'gateway' building, to be installed into the side of the dome. This would form a sort of airlock, to allow for environment control inside the dome, and also function as a storeroom for whatever tools or drones were used to maintain the plantlife inside.



To install the airlock, I carefully cut a square hole into the side of the bowl. Apparently I wasn't quite careful enough, as the fairly brittle plastic cracked just as I was almost finished cutting. (Note for next time - use a razor saw rather than trying to get clever with an exacto knife!) I decided to go with it anyway, as a little damage on battlefield terrain obviously isn't the end of the world.



The gateway building was prettied up with doors, control panels and some reinforcing from the terrain sprue.



The hole in the side of the bowl is 5mm too short for the gateway. That allows me to add a foamcore rim around the base of the dome, with another ring of foamcore running on top, sealing in the edge of the bowl.



I wanted some detail for the top of the dome, to disguise the bowl's flat bottom. So I took some shutter windows and used a razor saw to cut the backs of the frames so that the windows sit on an angle.



These were then glued to a circle of plasticard cut slightly smaller than the base of the bowl. A square hatch in the middle forms a hub, where I imagine the machinery that controls the shutters would be located.



On the inside of the bowl, I added some large pipe fittings, positioned to sit directly underneath each of the shutter windows. This forms a venting system, to allow the atmosphere inside the dome to be vented in an emergency, or to allow controlled amounts of the outside air into the dome.



A bunch of reinforcing strips from the terrain sprue were hacked up and glued into planter boxes to go inside the dome.



To these, I added a control unit using a control panel and two trapezoid windows glued together with a small piece of foamcore sandwiched between them. This would control the environment inside the dome, administer fertilisers or other chemicals to the plants, or activate the dome's resident drones.



After marking out the inside circumference of the dome on a sheet of masonite, the planters and control unit were glued in place.



For the plants themselves, I cut appropriately-sized pieces from a few different aquarium plants. These were lightly sprayed with a matt green paint to dull them down a little and make them look slightly less plastic. These would be glued into the planter boxes and the boxes then half-filled with clear craft glue (water effects would be better, but I was in a hurry and craft glue was what I had to hand).



To add a little extra detail to the overall terrain piece, I built a water tank from some foamcore and a beverage mix tin. The ends of the tin are nested into circles cut into the inner sheets of foamcore, for extra strength.



A pipe made from a piece of sprue cut from the terrain sprue and some plastic tube joins the water tank to the dome. I built a support for the pipe from a trapezoid window and another piece of tube, and added small pipe fittings from the terrain sprue to the inside and outside of the dome. The drone tasked with watering the plants would connect to the interior fitting and syphon off as much water as required.



The last thing to do then before painting and assembling everything was to paint any exposed edges of the foamcore with some PVA glue, to protect it from the spraypaint.



My original batch of buildings for Maelstrom's Edge were painted white with green detailing, and since the gateway building for this one was constructed in a similar style, I went with a matching colour scheme.



The gateway was sprayed with a grey undercoat, and then a spray of matt white, with salt weathering to give it a nicely aged appearance.



The water tank was painted brown, drybrushed with Citadel Boltgun Metal and washed with Army Painter Strong Tone before being sprayed with a coat of green.



Again, salt weathering adds some age and experience. The end pieces, along with the base board and the dome rim, were painted with Vallejo Basalt Grey and then drybrushed with Vallejo Light Grey.



A few touches of Vallejo Beasty Brown add some dirt around the place, and some signs created in Gimp, printed out and glued in place add some character touches.



The interior needed to be all painted and the plants glued in place before the dome could be glued down.





I considered leaving the gateway unglued, so that it could be pulled out to put models inside the dome, but figured that as cool as that might look, there was little actual point in being able to do so in-game, so for a gaming terrain piece that was an unnecessary bit of fiddliness.



A yellow guideline adds a little extra detail to the broad expance of base. The base was deliberately large - the dome and water tank make for a fairly hefty line of sight blocker, so I wanted to leave plenty of free space around it. Where a little more cover is required, scatter terrain (barriers, crates, industrial bins, and the like) can easily be added to the open front corner.



And that's it - another terrain piece just waiting for a battle to spring up around it.

To build your own plantation dome, or a transport hub, or whatever other round thing strikes your fancy, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue from the online store (in a handy 2-pack!) here.

As always, please feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

- by Iain Wilson

Terraforming planets is hard work, particularly on those worlds where conditions are less than favourable to begin with. Equipment has to contend with a huge range of different environments and, particularly once the Maelstrom come close, maintenance schedules can be somewhat less rigorously clung to than they might be on more 'civilised' worlds. This gives a bit of scope for painting terrain and models with a less polished finish, so this week, I thought I'd share an easy little method that I use to paint weathered metal. My guinea pig here is an Epirian Hunter Warmech.

This all starts with a red undercoat - Here I've used Army Painter Pure Red. Just a light coat, as it doesn't have to be super-bright. Going straight over the grey plastic dulls the red down a little as well.



Over the red, paint a coat of a medium brown colour. I've used Vallejo Beasty Brown. This doesn't need to be perfectly even - If a bit of the red tint shows through, all the better. It will look a little odd to begin with, but it all pulls together at the end.



Next, paint a light coat of a medium metal tone. I've used P3 Pig Iron, which is roughly equivalent to the old Boltgun Metal/Leadbelcher. Again, you don't want to completely cover the brown. For a more rusted, dirty look, just lightly drybrush the metal on. For a more lightly weathered look, use a heavier coat of metal while leaving the brown in the creases. And as with the red, if a little brown tint shows through the coat of metal, that's excellent for our purposes here.



Now the magic step: Give the model a liberal coat of brown ink. The below is done with Army Painter Strong Tone, which is more or less identical to the old Citadel Devlan Mud. (Agrax Nightshade replaced this in the Citadel range. It's probably close enough for these purposes, but I haven't tried it.)



Once the ink is dry, it's time for final detailing. You can highlight with a little silver to pick out raised edges, just to brighten things up a little bit. I also like to go over weapons and working parts with a coat or two of black ink, to make them stand out a little more. You can also paint over the top with a patchy layer of colour to show worn paint with the metal showing through.



Here's the same technique on a different model, this time a slightly converted Epirian Scarecrow.



This is also a great way to pick out metal detail on buildings or ruins. Below is an example with a more dirty effect, achieved by just lightly drybrushing the metal over the brown before washing, as described above.



You can also add extra weathering by drybrushing brown or rusty red over the top, wherever looks like an appropriate place for rust or dirt to gather, or experiment with different coloured washes to create different metal effects.

You can pick up the models shown in this article from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here. As always, we'd love to see what you're working on, so feel free to swing by the Comm Guild Facebook page!

- by Iain Wilson

In my continuing quest to turn every interesting thing I encounter into wargaming terrain, I often find myself wandering up and down the plumbing aisle of the local hardware store. The result of the latest meanderings, once combined with some foamcore and an assortment of parts from the Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue, looks like this:

This started out life as a section of plastic drainage channel, that looks like this:



There are a whole bunch of variations on these, in different sizes and with different detailing on the undersides, which become the buildings' roofs. I chose this particular one through the arcane process of just buying the cheapest one (which was around AU$15).

Clearly having designed this product with wargamers in mind, the manufacturer has quite helpfully broken the length of channel into 5 sections.



Taking to those dividing lines with a hacksaw results in 5 equal lengths, just the perfect size for a building.



Rough edges on the cut ends can be sanded or trimmed with a sharp knife.

To fill in the ends, I used foamcore. You could also use plasticard, cardboard or corrugated plastic signboard, but I like foamcore for its ease of use.

To get the shape right, sit the building shell end-wise on the foamcore, and trace around the inside with a pencil.



Cut out the resultant shape with a sharp knife.



Once your end piece is cut out, check the fit against the shell, and trim wherever necessary to get a neat fit. Then add details from the terrain sprue components. I'm starting with a garage door - these are designed to be inset, so cut out a hole for it by tracing around the frame and then cutting out. Check for fit, and then glue the door in place.



The end panel can then be glued in place in the end of the building shell. Recessing the wall a little, rather than having it flush with the end of the shell, will provide a nice little nook for models to take cover in.



A note on glue - Skip this part if you've read any of my previous articles on gluing things to random assorted plastic objects: Plastics used for plumbing fittings are not generally designed with gamers in mind, but you can usually get away with a good quality superglue. For gluing plastic to plastic, you can buy specialised 'all plastic' glues, some of which are a two-part system (a tube of superglue, and a 'primer' that helps the glue stick better) and some that are just really sticky glue. For foamcore, you can use superglue if you're just gluing onto the cardboard outer shell, but superglue will melt the interior foam, so for gluing to the edges of the foamcore you'll need a good PVA glue or a specialist Foam glue, which you should be able to get from any craft store.

Repeat for the other end, using whatever detail components seem appropriate.



Each section of this channel has a raised, rectangular detail midway down each side, which I believe is to help keep it in place in the ground, for those rare situations where you might feel inclined to buy these for their actual, intended purpose. These are turned into windows by adding a panel of foamcore with a shutter window inset into the middle. On this section, there is also a small hole below the window where the grating clipped in. This is also covered over with a little foamcore.



The back on some of the sections also needs filling in with a little more foamcore.



A couple of reinforcing struts from the terrain sprue add a little extra detail down the sides of the building shell.



On the roof, errant text or (in this case) batch symbols can be covered over with hatches or extra reinforcing.



With detailing complete, the building winds up looking something like this:



There are some differences between the separate sections of this channel. The above was from the middle section. The next section along is almost the same, but with a raised ridge down the middle.



The sections on either end have a circular detail in the middle, for attaching downpipes.



This turned out to be a perfect spot to place an old PC fan.



Over this, I added a section of mosquito barrier, intended for insertion into guttering downpipes. This had some text around the outside, which I removed with a bit of sanding.



Once clipped in place over the fan and with a section of ladder glued onto the outside for access, this creates a nice visual detail, and a functional watch platform.



So the resultant building looks like this:





Construction complete, the end result is three different buildings that all look similar enough to represent mass-produced structures with slight variations for specific roles.



Astute readers may realise that this leaves two sections of the original channel. The only logical thing to do with them was, of course, to combine them and make a two-story version:



On the upper story, I recessed the end walls even further in and added a floor from foamcore, to create a good-sized balcony on either end of the building. The railing was made from two ladders.



From there, all that's left is to paint them!

I used a Killrust Satin Black spray as a basecoat - a decent quality spray is a good idea, as cheaper sprays may not stick as well to the plastic used for these channels. This was followed up with a coat of Rustoleum 'Oil Rubbed Bronze', which I thought would make a nice, dark, weathered metal layer to show through for the weathering. A coat of sealer and a sprinkle of salt (there's a tutorial on salt-weathering coming in the very near future), and then a top coat with Army Painter 'Army Green', before scrubbing off the salt. Then some final detailing, and the buildings are ready for the table.













If you're feeling the urge to head on out to the hardware store to recreate these yourself, you can pick up a two-pack of the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues from the online store here. As always, feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

- by Iain Wilson

Scarecrows are a mainstay of Foundation design, originally created to protect the wide-open swathes of agricultural assets on newly terraformed worlds, but since reimagined into a deadly military asset. Here, we take a look at the scarecrow kit, and some of the various ways that you can hack it up and get all creative on its shiny, robot posterior.





The Scarecrow sprue builds the regular Scarecrow, and also includes a variant head and command unit for the model's back to upgrade to the Scarecrow command variant, which lets you take an entire army of assorted Epirian robots.


Studio Scarecrow Models

This kit was designed specifically to allow as much poseability as possible, with joints at the elbows, knees and ankles.



This allows you to assemble the Scarecrow into anything from a stationary pose, to walking, running, or even kneeling down (for that extra sniper-y feeling!)


This model had some slight trimming done on the left elbow joint to allow it to bend a little further than normal, but the legs are completely unmodified

The maglock railrifle that makes up the Scarecrow's long-range firepower is designed to sit horizontally on the top of the shoulder pad. Thanks to the flat planes of the shoulder pad, however, it's easy to raise the railrifle up into a 'standby' position by simply gluing it onto the back of the pad instead of the top.



Alternatively, you can substitute the railrifle for the left forearm by cutting the elbow joint off the forearm and gluing it onto the back end of the railrifle.



For a slightly more complicated variant, the below model has the railrifle substituted in for the right arm weapon. The right shoulder was trimmed up slightly to allow the shoulder pad to swing around a little further than normal, the right elbow bent in slightly, and the left wrist sliced through and the hand rotated to support the rifle. The chemtech sprayer is on standby on the robot's back, where I would assume some handy mechanism allows him to swap out the two weapons as required.



A variant of the Scarecrow bot swaps out the railrifle in favour of two linked clingfire sprayers. Each sprue only comes with one of each weapon, so you'll need to steal the second from another Scarecrow sprue, but the weapons are designed to fit onto either arm.

This variant is also useable as a Subjugator bot, an assault mech used by Epirian Suppression squads. While there's no particular need to do anything to make a Subjugator visually different to a regular Scarecrow, why let that stop you?

The below model (which I'm calling a 'tiki-bot') is a stock standard Scarecrow with the command unit trimmed up a little and glued over the face.



If you prefer your crowd control to be more mobile, you can remove the legs entirely and replace them with a handy flight unit, made from scavenged turbines from a Firefly drone (which you'll have left over if you went with Spider drones instead).



For a slightly less out-of-the-box option, you can use a grenade launcher from the Bot Handler sprue and a force rod from the Faction Expansion sprue to make a closer-quarters version of the Subjugator.



And finally, the up-close-and-personal variant, made by swapping out the arms for legs taken from a second kit (this gives the shoulders a slightly wider range of movement) and adding some chainsaw blades taken from a Games Workshop Space Marine kit.



There are no rules for these last two options - I just thought they would be fun to build. I'd love to see what people come up with for them, though!

If you're feeling the urge to create some killer robots of your own, you can pick up the Scarecrow in a pack of two from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here. And as always, feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

Originally posted on DakkaDakka by Sgt. Oddball.

Fluff bits are in italics, game bits in plain text.

Introduction

Bacaro wasn’t quite sure if his last outing had been success or failure, really. Two things were now becoming clear to him though. First of all that this conflict would not be won or lost by military supremacy. The Karist Enclave, though they had struck a severe blow with their surprise offensive, were severely outnumbered by the Epirian forces on Asper and could not hope to hold out for all that long. This conflict would be decided by the people. The Karists clearly counted on both gaining enough support from the people themselves and also, perhaps more importantly, on the Broken causing major havoc. The Broken had already become more then an annoyance before the Karist assault, but they had taken this opportunity to increase their efforts to claim what they thought was theirs. The shock of the early Karist successes and the fear of being abandoned by the Foundation had already caused many to flock to the Broken cause. If order could not be restored quickly, Asper would be lost. Bacaro’s second epiphany concerned his own person. He’d always thought himself a Handler of status. The jobs he was assigned and the meagre forces supplied to him now showed that the head honchos did not in fact think of Bacaro very highly, or, indeed, at all. Take his current mission. He was to take and hold some backwater energy station that never did matter and never would, and he was to do it with a frankly depressing ‘ force’. “Well”, thought Bacaro, “this might be as good a time as any to start making my own plans” as he hopped out of his prowler.

Mission and objectives

I’m trying to develop a sort of ‘introductory mission’, using small forces and a smaller play area. This mission uses the Territories and Decimation objectives (and the faction objectives).

Terrain

Backwater energy station.

The board is 3’ by 5’. All terrain was assigned cover value 2. The woods are area terrain, the buildings, crates & barrels and the walls are obstacles. We didn’t use the actual building rules, so units couldn’t enter.

Kaddar Nova Myro strongly felt the absence of Elyssa, the Shadow Walker. She’d always made sure there were no surprises, no open ends. Now, Myro felt he was going in blind-folded. The Enclave needed more Cybel energy though, desperately so, there was no holding back.

Deployment

Pitched deployment was rolled for. The Karists bid 3STs to be attackers. Deployment is as shown.

Epirian Deployment left, Karists right. The Territories objectives are three energy terminal markers spread in a line across the board. All Karists are deployed on the move, all Epirians are deployed pinned.

Karist force (49 pts)

• Kaddar Nova Myro;
• 4 Troopers with a Ripper Grenade Launcher;
• 2 Tempest Elites with Ravager Vulcan Pulse Cannons (with 3 deployment STs);
• 4 Angel Minnows.

Epirian force (90 pts)

• Journeyman Bot Handler Bacaro;
• 4 Contractors with 1 grenade launcher;
• 5 Firefly Drones;
• 4 Spider Drones with Cutter light machine guns and an apprentice handler;
• Scarecrow with Maglock Railrifle and Clingfire sprayer.

Turn 1

Note that I’ll be ignoring the Epirian Automated Uplink Relay activations: it contributed its victory point the first couple of turns and added some command points later on. Also, my flash trigger battery was empty so the pics are a bit sub par, and also I didn't take any notes so the report as a whole is a bit iffy.

Myro wasn’t going to waste any time. “Fly, my pretties” he thought as he watched his flock of Minnows descend upon the Epirian unbelievers.



1st activation: The Minnows charge into the lone Scarecrow. After defensive fire, CQ fighting and reactive CQ fighting, the Minnows are 1 down and have gained a pile of STs, whilst the Scarecrow has suffered an injury and has also taken some STs.

Always putting faith in his bots first, Bacaro had sent his Scarecrow ahead to oversee the field. Immediately he was flocked by aliens, but Bacaro linked his mind with the bot and doused them in clingfire.



2nd activation: The Scarecrow gets his bot protocols activated and moves away from the Minnows to get a clear shot with the clingfire sprayer. All but one Minnow go down.

Having taken care of this first threat, Bacaro immediately had his Contractors take up position in the woods. Previous experiences had taught him to put these guys where they felt most secure, or else they’d probably run off at the first whiff of pink smoke.



3rd activation: The Contractors take the objective near the woods and loose some shots at the Nova’s shielded unit.

Myro observed coolly how the robot’s flamethrower engulfed his Minnows. Without the need to order them, he saw his Elites advance and utterly destroy the machine with Vulcan Pulse fire.



4th activation: The Tempests advance and fire at the Scarecrow, destroying it.

A Scarecrow against a flock of aliens, that’s a fair exchange, thought Bacaro. Meanwhile, his ever eager subordinate Kasero had advanced his Spider Drones up the center and was laying down a veritable rain of fire on the enemy position. Good.



5th activation: The Spider Drones Advance & Fire at the Nova unit. The dice are on fire, generating a bunch of extra hits through the Cutter machine gun’s burst ability. A Trooper snuffs it and the unit gets a pile of STs.

Bacaro figured he could end this here and now and called in the one favour Epirian Command still granted him: an aerial drone strike. Moments later the hated foe was peppered from above.



6th activation: The Journeyman launches his air strike at the Nova’s unit, to some but not too great effect: the Nova takes an injury. Myro cringed at the stabbing pain in his shoulder. He was surprised at the intensity of fire coming his way. If only Elyssa were here, he’d surely have had a better idea of what to expect from the opposition. His reactor shield kept his brothers mostly safe though, only Mai-Lo seemed like she’d better return to base. The rest of his squad he led up to the central building housing the refinery controls. The Cybel must flow.



7th activation: The Nova has enough willpower not to be too impressed by the pile of STs on his unit. He advances to the secret cache objective, switches his reactor to gauntlet overload and returns fire at the Contractors, taking one down. He then shakes off some of his suppression, whilst overload suppress sprinkles STs on the nearby Epirian units.

Turn 1 ends with 2 points for the Epirians, claiming one objective and utilising the uplink relay, and zero for the Karists. Note that this is the first time we used the Territories objective and we forgot that you keep getting points even after you move away from an objective. Not sure if this impacted the game much, but we’ll need to get it right next time . The Karist player destroyed the depleted Minnow unit.

Turn 2

The Epirians get priority and generate 4 command points, whilst the Karists generate 3 CPs. Both bring back a unit: the Minnows and the Scarecrow.

Bacaro cursed the shimmering field protecting the enemy commander and ordered his men to keep pouring their fire into it. It wouldn’t hold forever.



1st activation: The depleted contractors lob a grenade shell at the Nova and fire their assault rifles, trying to render the unit ineffective through suppression.

The Tempest Elites, recognising the greatest threat, walked up to the corner of the central building and unleashed their Ravagers at the location of the Spider Drones and the Epirian commander, only to see them hide effectively behind the remains of a thick wall.





2nd activation: the Tempests advance and fire at the Journeyman, who is lucky to escape without a scratch.

Sensing an opportunity to swing the battle as his Tempests were keeping down the soulless drones, Myro directed another flock of Minnows at the enemy’s position in the forest, hoping to drive them away from the refinery controls.



3rd activation: the Minnows Dash back in to contest the objective.

Bacaro immediately recognised that the enemy murder machines on the left flank had to be subdued if he was to take the field. Another Scarecrow bot was sent up the left flank to target the foe’s heavy armour.



4th activation: The new Scarecrow came on the board and fired at the Tempests to very little effect. Which is as well, because we forgot the Scarecrow had to fire wild due to the Railrifle’s ‘heavy’ ability.

Again putting faith in his Drones over his people, Bacaro shouted to Kasero to advance into the woods and fix the alien situation before they scared off his Contractors.



5th activation: The Spider Drones take an order and dig in in the woods, shooting the Minnows as they go, piling on STs.

Bacaro then sought the security of the big wall. He was no coward, but there were limits to how much he was willing to risk for this dump.



6th activation: The Journeyman executes a tactical retreat to get into order range of the Scarecrow.

Somewhere in this turn the Nova unit probably shot some Epirians, I think the Drones?

At the end of turn 2 the Epirians take a point for their uplink relay and the Karists a point for their secret cache.

Turn 3

Epirians get priority.

Again acting to get rid of the Tempest threat, Bacaro linked his mind with the next Scarecrow bot and found a kink in the enemy armour with the powerful Railrifle. Good, but was it too little, too late?



1st activation: the Scarecrow gets an order and with hold and fire manages to put an injury on one of the Tempests.

As his Tempests were now having issues, it was time to roll the Epirian flank. Myro again directed his fire at the forest, targeting the little Drones.



2nd activation: The Nova unit spreads out a bit and attacks the drones, piling on the STs. One Drone turns into scrap.

With the Minnows ahead and the enemy commander firing at his flank, apprentice Kasero thought it wise to reconsider his next move.



3rd activation: With a bunch of STs and the Minnows near, the Spiders are forced to retreat to the board edge.

As Myro forced the Drones to retreat, the Minnows went with their instincts and charged the Contractors in their now very uncomfortable position in the woods. Sure enough, they perished.



4th activation: The Minnows fail their discipline check, but due to ‘bloodthirsty’ they get to charge the Contractors, who die.

The Tempests and Journeyman obviously did something as well this turn which I can’t quite recall, probably fire into the Drones or Contractors and Minnows respectively.

At the end of turn 3 the Epirians take a point for their uplink relay and the Karists a point for their secret cache (the Minnows cannot score objectives due to their ‘kill mission’).

Turn 4

The Epirians bring back the Contractor unit as a reinforcement.

Sensing victory, Kaddar Nova Myro orders his elites to advance and secure their flank, containing the last energy terminal in danger of being disabled by the Epirians.



1st activation: (this shot was taken later): Tempests dash to the objective and probably fired wild at the scarecrow. This was just as he expected, damn Contractors couldn’t even hold off a flock of angry baby angels and Kasero once again overstretched himself and then chickened out. No more of this, Bacaro thought. An angry shout to Kasero brought them back to the woods at least, pouring more fire into the stubborn Minnows.



2nd activation: The Spider Drones are given an order and their protocols are enabled, after which they dig in in the woods, firing wild at the minnows.

A second group of useless Contractors then finally arrived at the left flank, asking for orders. Resisting his urge to tell them to just take a hike, Bacaro ordered them to support his precious Scarecrow and keep the Tempests occupied.



3rd activation: Contractor reinforcements Dash ahead and put some STs on the Tempests.

Myro saw the bots return to the fray and wasted no time in jumping across the low wall, reaching the central terminal with a few strides. Lead from the front had always been his motto, that’s where you get the best view.



4th activation: The Kaddar Nova leaves his unit to claim an objective.

Once again linking with the Scarecrow, Bacaro put the heat on the Tempests at the terminal. With his Railrifle and the Contractors In support, he’d take this flank and then circle round. It was all or nothing now.



5th activation: The Scarecrow is ordered and puts more pressure on the Tempests.

A warning cry then pulled Bacaro’s attention away to the right. The Minnows were threatening Kasero. Bacaro loosed a few shots with his Dominator pistol, but the Minnows didn’t seem to care. He could then only watch…



6th activation: The Journeyman puts more STs on the minnows.

The Minnows’ rage ever increasing, they now descended on the little drones that had returned to the woods. They never had a chance.

7th activation: (same image) The Minnows get another charge in and destroy the remaining bots and Handler.

Myro became ever more confident. The more his little angels came under fire, the bigger a threat they became. He motioned to his unit to go and help out the Tempests on the other flank. The threat on this side was gone.



8th activation: The Troopers take position in order to fire at the Contractors. They are well dispersed and hidden beyond the crates, so the damage is limited.

At the end of turn 4 the Epirians score 0, whilst the Karists get three: two terminals and the secret cache.

Turn 5

The Epirians bid 6 command tokens to bring back the Spider Drones, but the Karists counter with 7. The Epirians are now really outnumbered.

Bacaro weighed his options as he loosed another shot at the Tempests with his Scarecrow. This campaign had brought nothing but misery, and why? It was all pointless…



1st activation: The Scarecrow keeps shooting the Tempests, who are now properly suppressed. With the constant sniper fire from the distant bot and a full squad of Contractors advancing on their position, the Tempest Tetrarch decided to retreat and form a new front with the Troopers coming up on their rear. They’d retake the objective together.



2nd activation: The amount of STs and proximity of the Contractors now forces the Tempests to retreat.

The minnows are unstoppable. Myro watches as they move on from the broken bots and fly behind the wall, where he knows the Epirian commander is located. This battle would end now.



3rd activation: The minnows keep taking advantage of their bloodthirsty ability to attack new targets. This time, the Journeyman falls to their Cybel maws.

Team Leader Fiennes got nothing but static on his earpiece. He’d advanced up to the terminal as ordered and was awaiting new orders, but he got no response from commander Bacaro and had no line of sight to his position. Was he dead? Gone? A glance over his shoulder told him the Scarecrow was still around. Bacaro never showed any love for his human troops, but his bots… was he just too taken by guiding the bots? The Scarecrow didn’t move…



4th activation: The Contractors take an objective.

Myro surveyed the field. He felt the Minnows had done their job, what remained of the Epirians would soon be gone. A few quick orders put the Tempests on defense whilst his Troopers could start to enter the refinery building and gather what energy there was left to get here.



5th activation: The Troopers move to claim the center objective.

Myro switched his reactor to boost mode and ran off towards the far terminal himself to coordinate with his Troopers. He half expected to come under fire still, but nothing happened. Another sweet victory for the cause.



6th activation: The Nova Dashes to the objective. Final image.

The Karists get more points for having over half the territories at the end of the game and for having taken out one third of the Epirian forces, making them the clear winner. “What happened to Bacaro?!” barked command over the holo-link. “I’m not sure sir, our uplink was right near his position when we… moved out, it must have imagery of what happened.” Without another word, the holo shut down, leaving Fiennes in confusion. At the other end sat a pensive Epirian commander. They had seen the data from the uplink, but the last of it was weirdly scrambled and the thing itself was nowhere to be found. Destroyed by the Karists no doubt, but what had happened to that data…? Was Bacaro dead?

With a few modifications to the points given out by the objectives and a little more terrain I think this will do nicely for an intro mission. The forces are only small, but with the reinforcements mechanic the players need never be out of stuff to work with, and the game should about fit on a normal sized table.

I recall when I first read the rules how I worried Maelstrom’s Edge would give a limited gaming experience, given the max of 5 turns and smaller forces. I could not have been more wrong. Every game you immediately get into the thick of it and every activation is interesting. 5 turns is plenty. A handful of models is plenty. Just make sure you have enough terrain on the table.

Having played a couple games now and seen a few more, the rules are starting to click nicely. The big thing with this type of game is always the special unit and weapon abilities. To get a good idea in your head of what units can do just reading the rules is never enough, you need to see them work to really get that feel. In this game the Minnows’ bloodthirsty ability was a bit of an eye-opener. I never thought of it as a big thing, but it means they are a threat even when utterly suppressed because they keep coming at you and have a big charge range. Cool stuff.

- by Iain Wilson

Although nobody doubts a Karist Trooper’s battlefield effectiveness, a Tempest Elite is a far more intimidating sight. Veterans of many campaigns of enlightenment, entrusted with the Enclave’s heaviest man-portable weaponry and advanced armoured suits, each one is a genuine hero of the Karist cause, capable of single-handedly devastating the enemy with staggering levels of firepower from their Ravager Pulse Cannons and Coriolis Energy Launchers. Here, we have a play with the models for these formiddable warriors.




One of the first units designed for Maelstrom's Edge, Tempest Elites are a multi-part plastic kit, with each sprue building two troopers armed with either pulse cannon or energy launcher.


Tempest with pulse cannon.


Tempest with energy launcher.

The energy launcher doubles for both the Corialis Energy Launcher and the rather more deadly Hellstorm Energy Mortar, with the difference being down to the way the Cybel charge is fired.


Studio Models

The two models on the sprue have different leg poses and arm positions, and thanks to the versatility of plastic, can be easily modified if you want to alter poses or equipment.

For a break from the standard weapon grip, this model was altered using regular Karist Trooper arms to carry the weapon over the shoulder:



To fit onto the shoulder pad, the Tempest's hands were sliced off the weapon and a hollow cut into the back left of the weapons' frame. The trigger hand was attached onto the Trooper forearm, with the wrist trimmed at an angle so the top of the hand would sit flush against the bottom of the weapon.



The same process works for the pulse cannon.



For something a little more off-the-beaten-track, this Tetrarch was equipped with a Cybel Glaive from the Faction Expansion Sprue. This isn't an option allowed by the rules, but looks so very pretty!



The head and loincloth were taken from the Kaddar Nova sprue (which comes with extras, just perfect for this sort of converting!) and the pointing arm also comes from the Faction Expansion Sprue.

And for those situations where having a great, big gun isn't quite enough, why not have two?



Assembled using arms liberated from the Epirian Handler sprue, and a head from the Shadow Walker sprue.

He probably won't spend a lot of time on the table... but it had to be done.



Tempest Elites are a veritable storm of nastiness on the table, and are the backbone of many a Karist force. If you're feeling the lure of heavy firepower, you can pick up the Tempest Elite sprue from the Maelstrom's Edge online store, and as always feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

- by Iain Wilson

A lot of Epirian tech was originally developed for industrial or agricultural purposes and later modified and adapted for a military role. The Hunter warmech, however, was specifically designed for warfare. I thought it would be fun to see what might happen if the Hunter chassis was retrofitted back to more benign uses, and from that the Mule cargo drone was born.





One of the obvious changes is the removal of the integrated processor unit and replacement with a head formed from the core unit of a standard drone. This was intended to reflect the civilian adaptation of the robot, with the more advanced processor unit swapped out for a less robust, less advanced (and likely much cheaper) alternative. I envisage the Mule as being much less autonomous than the Hunter and more limited in function.

Adding a head ran the risk of making the rest of the robot look a little stumpy by comparison to the regular Hunter, and so I started out by bulking up the feet to give the legs the appearance of extra length.

This was done by adding some platforms under the heel and toe of each foot, and adding a kickplate on the front to help tie these into the shape of the foot. I also added some spikes to the heels, which I imagine being rammed into the ground and used to stabilise the robot when it is lifting something tricky.



For the head, I carefully removed the Hunter's original head unit with an exacto knife.



I then trimmed up a T-shaped piece cut from one of the Hunter's sprues to form the neck. This sits nicely inside the front of the torso.



Taking a drone, I cut off all of the extraneous bits, leaving just the central unit. The hole in the bottom for the Firefly flight stem was widened to the width of the neck shaft, and this was then glued in place.



At this point, the legs and torso were all assembled as normal.



A cargo drone needs lifty arms (yes, that's the offical terminology), and so I took two forearm pieces and cut them off flat on the 'wrist' ends.



Note: You only get one of these forearm pieces on the Hunter sprue. If you have built another Hunter with a ranged weapon on the left arm instead of the hand, you'll have a forearm piece left over just waiting to be used for something like this.

The parts for the forks were then cut from plasticard and glued together.



Once the glue on the forks was set they were attached to the forearms with plastic tubing, to create an assembly that looks capable of rotating, for fine control when toting those bales.



With the arms then glued in place, the Mule looks something like this:





All that's left to do then, of course, is to paint it.

A nice, bright, construction-site yellow was the only possible choice for painting my walking forklift. Metal parts were painted to be battered and weathered, and I added generous amounts of chipping and scratches to the yellow to show that this is a piece of hard-working machinery.









Game-wise, I picture this robot as an upgrade to a Spider drone unit, with minimal combat functionality but the ability to strip Victory Points from objectives at a more rapid rate than normal. It would also be fun to develop the design further and come up with other variants - perhaps a mining drone, an emergency response drone, or a construction unit.

Do you have ideas for your own drone variants? Grab some robot sprues from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore and see what you can come up with! And as always, feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

- by Iain Wilson

Someone once declared that there are no cows in space. Which would be disappointing, because then there would be no Space Cowboys... and then where would we all be?

Since I prefer to believe that there are cows in space (can't stop the signal!), I decided to have a bash at building somewhere to put them, using the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, some old guitar strings and some air-drying clay.






The aim here is for a terrain piece that will block movement in certain directions while still allowing fairly open fire lanes, just to mix things up a bit. To this end, rather than building a nice, neat yard, I decided to make it a bit of a beaten-up derelict - something that you would find on an old battlefield, rather than in the midst of a new settlement.



The first thing to do was to remove the doors from the doorframes. I cut as far down each side of the door as I could with a razor saw, and then scored around the top with an exacto knife until it was weak enough to snap the door out. This was repeated on the other door, and then the two door frames glued together back-to-back with a support strut running along the top joint and some fence posts on either side.



Next I traced a circle onto the base board using a bowl as a guide, and spaced out the doorway and the fence posts around the circumference. This would form the boundary of the yard.

I wanted the ground in the yard to look churned up by the constant stream of livestock that would have been going in and out when it was operational. To this end, I pressed a thin, rough layer of air-drying modeling clay over the interior of the circle and the area just outside the doorway.



Into this, I pressed hoof-prints with a piece of sprue trimmed off square and carved into a rough hoof shape.



While this was drying, I built a trough out of the corner pieces and the cut-down support struts. This was pushed into the clay beside the fence line, so that it would sit flat once the clay was dry.



Once the first lot of clay was dry, I prepared a second batch of clay by kneading in some fine sand/gravel mix for texture and a little PVA glue to help the gravel bond in. I pressed this around the area outside the fence, wearing rubber gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. To create some patches of slightly chunkier texture, I then pressed some scattered patches of gravel into the surface.



As this left me once again waiting for clay to dry, I built a condenser unit to fill the trough. This used the square hatch as a baseplate. On top sits an upside-down large pipe fitting, then two trapezoid windows butted up together along their bottom edges to create a hexagon shape, and then another large pipe fitting. A length of plastic pipe with some metal mesh wrapped around it over some spacers, capped off with the top of a knife blade cylinder, finished off the condenser itself, and then I added a control panel using a cut down display unit and a piece cut off the end of a lintel.

The condenser unit would sit on the outside of the fence, with a fill pipe running between the railings and over the trough.



At this point, it was time to add the fence. I ran lengths of guitar string around the perimeter, gluing the strings into the emitter forks on the fence posts.



To create a little extra detail and avoid only having a single entrance to the terrain piece, I put a break in the fence on the side opposite the trough.



From there, all that's left is to paint it.

The whole thing was sprayed with some matt red. I then basecoated the metal parts with Coat D'arms Hairy Brown, followed by a heavy drybrush with Citadel Boltgun Metal. The ground was painted with a coat of Vallejo Heavy Brown, slightly watered down so that the red tint would show through in patches. The whole thing was then doused in a liberal coat of Army Painter Strong Tone.



Once that dried, the metal was given another light drybrush with Boltgun Metal and the various panels and lights painted in. The ground was drybrushed with P3 'Jack Bone.

Some tufts of static grass were scattered around for some colour, and some longer grass tufts made from toothbrush bristles placed wherever seemed appropriate. I concentrated the grass patches a little around the condenser and trough, as the plan was for this to still be functional. To this end, I poured a small amount of Woodland Scenics water effect liquid into the trough, and stirred in a couple of drops of Strong Tone and Green Tone to make it look sufficiently ick.



You may notice a shiny patch in front of the trough in the above picture. This was the result of some messy pouring from the water effects bottle dripping onto the ground in front of the trough. Accidental, but I decided I liked the effect so made sure the shiny patch goes all the way up to the side of the trough where it is presumably leaking out through a hole or crack underneath somewhere.

With the first layer of water effects dry, I added just a touch extra on top to reduce the concave shape of the water surface. As a final touch, the toothbrush bristle grass tufts were given a wash of Strong Tone and a drybrush of Coat D'arms Putrid Green.

















If you would like to have a go at building your own stockyard, you can get the Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue (in a handy two-pack) from the online store here. If you don't happen to play a guitar, cultivate a friend who plays for their cast-off strings. Otherwise, stores that sell guitars will often have discount strings that they are clearing out (the quality of the string as an actual guitar string is irrelevant here, so cheap ones are just fine!) and may even have some broken strings laying around that they would be happy to get rid of.

As always, we would love to see what you come up with, so please feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page here!

- by Iain Wilson

A while back, we showed off a shipping container made from components from the Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue. This week, I'll be showing how to build it for yourself.






The terrain sprue is a fantastic source of interesting bits and pieces to spruce up your homemade terrain and, for the uninitiated, looks like this:



What you need:

You'll need four terrain sprues for this build, from which you will need:

• 4 x ladders
• 8 x corners
• 2 x heavy doors

(I will be going through some ideas for using the other sprue components in the coming weeks.)

You will also need:

• 3mm foamcore
• A sharp hobby knife
• A steel ruler
• A pencil
• Superglue
• PVA glue or Foam glue (more or less the same as PVA, but slightly faster setting and formulated specifically for gluing foam)

What you do:

Clean the mould lines off the components. Then from your sheet of foamcore, measure out and cut a strip that is 31mm wide.



From this strip, cut one piece that is 81mm long, and another 87mm long.



Using your PVA/foam glue, glue the 81mm strip bridging the tops of the two doors and sitting on top of the inset support that runs around the back of the door. The PVA is better than superglue for this initial assembly partly to avoid melting the edges of the foamcore (superglue melts expanded polystyrene) and partly to give some time to manipulate the structure as you build it, to ensure that it winds up square.



Once the glue has grabbed sufficiently to stop everything from falling apart when you move it, flip the structure over and glue the longer strip bridging the bottoms of the doors. The ends of the foamcore strip should be flush with the widest part of the bottom of the doors.



Using the superglue (or plastic glue if you prefer) glue two of the ladders together along their long edges. You can use the edge of the steel ruler to make sure that the ends are square. The do the same with the other two ladders.



Then, using the PVA/Foam glue again, glue the first pair of ladders into place along the side of the structure, with the raised-detail side outwards. You can lay the container on its side on a gridded cutting mat or use a set-square to make sure that the structure is all squared up at this point, and nudge it into shape off it doesn't all quite line up.



If you're building an open cage-style container like the one pictured at the start of the article, this is a good time to stop and let the glue set, and then paint the inside of the container - otherwise, it's going to be considerably harder to do once both sides are glued on.

Alternatively, you can cut a couple of pieces of foamcore or thin cardboard to glue to the inside of the ladder-walls to create an enclosed container.

Once you have painted the interior, or glued the interior panels in place, glue the second set of ladders on the other side. Then, using the hobby knife, trim off the bolts closest to the corners of the walls.



Take four of the corners, and glue them over the top corners of the container. Use superglue for this step, to give the structure some extra strength.



The other four corners will be going on the bottom. They need a little trimming so that they don't protrude over the bottom of the door - just bevel on corner off as below, and then opposing corner on the matching edge.



These can then be superglued in place around the bottom of the container. For this step, make sure you only get the superglue on the card side of the foamcore and on the plastic components where they touch - avoid getting glue on the foam edge of the base piece.



Once all your glue has set, the container is ready to paint! If you are intending to use spray paint, you will need to paint a thin layer of PVA or Foam glue over any remaining exposed edges of the foamcore first as, like superglue, most sprays will at least partially melt the polystyrene.



If you want to have a try at building your own containers, you can pick up the terrain sprue from the Maelstrom's Edge Online Store here. And as always, be sure to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/MaelstromsEdge)!

- by Iain Wilson

In my continuing quest to find all of the fun and cool ways to customise the range of Maelstrom's Edge plastic models, this week I'm having a look at enhancing the humble Epirian Contractor, through the addition of a gas mask or rebreather to help him to stay upright and functional in some of those less human-friendly environments that they might come across on frontier worlds.

What You Need:



Aside from your contractors, you'll need a little green stuff, some sculpting tools (something flat, and something rounded - I like silicon clay shapers (also sometimes sold as 'color shapers' for painting), as they don't stick to the putty the way metal tools do), a little 1mm plastic rod and you may also find a hobby knife and some superglue useful.

You're best off working with the heads before they have been glued on the model, as you have a little more room to maneouvre that way. I find just working with the head on the sprue works well for this.

Note: For those new to putty work, 'green stuff' is the common name for a product called 'Kneadatite', which is a two-part epoxy putty. You have a blue component and a yellow component that you mix together until they go green, at which point they are pliable for sculpting for an hour or two, after which they set to a slightly-rubbery-plastic consistency.

What You Do:

Roll a small ball of green stuff, and press it lightly onto the Contractor's lower face.



Tip: If you're trying to make a number of identical masks, roll out a long, thin sausage of green stuff, and cut off segments for each mask. This makes it much easier to get the same amount of putty for each mask.

Using a flat sculpting tool, press the front of the ball down flat, angling down towards the chin.



Using a rounded or conical tool, roll the sides of the ball down to meet up with the Contractor's earpieces on either side.



If necessary, use a sharp knife to cut the mask off just a fraction below the chin. If it juts down too far, you'll have problems getting the head to sit right without cutting off the front of the collar.



Then, cut yourself two 1-2mm lengths of plastic rod.



Press these into the 'cheeks' of the mask so that they protrude out diagonally downwards. It can help to add a small touch of superglue to the end of the rod that goes into the putty, to help it stick in place. Otherwise, they can work loose once the putty has set.



Leave for a couple of hours to let the putty set, and you're ready to glue the head in place and paint.

You can easily vary the design by modifying where you place the rebreather canister...



...using some guitar string instead if plastic rod, and running it down to a canister on the belt or armour harness...



...or leaving the canister off entirely and having an inset rebreather grill. This style also works well for converting a Karist Angel Keeper.





Working away at your own Contractor Squad? We'd love to see your work! Wander on over to the Comm Guild Facebook page to share your creations!

Originally posted on DakkaDakka by Sgt. Oddball.

Fluff bits are in italics, game bits in plain text.

Introduction

Dionne pressed a slip of paper in front of Bacaro. “Here, this is good as you’ll get. The centre lies here in the woods. The scientific crew is packing up their stuff as quick as they can, it’s up to you to get them out safely. The Karists have been spotted in the woods, so I hope you’re on time. Good luck!” With that, Dionne hopped back into the prowler that had just arrived and now blew up a cloud of dust as it tore away into the distance. The whole city was in chaos since the Karists had started their offensive on yesterday morning. Utilising the element of surprise, they had established a more or less coherent front, concentrating on key positions on the outskirts of town. The Director had issued orders for the evacuation of all northern districts and the securing of anything of importance, amongst them VIPs and technical equipment. Having been driven off from the Tusculi Compound at first contact with the Karist forces, Bacaro happened to come across this remote research centre en route to his rallying point. Apparently, the scientific crew here were taking their sweet time getting their stuff together and now risked becoming Karist hostages. Snatching up the bit of paper with the layout of the centre, Bacaro gave the order to advance, still not really sure what to expect. The idea was to help evacuate the entire centre, but priority was to be given to four apparently hot shot Cybel energy scientists, of whom he’d never heard. His only clue was: “look for people with garish outfits, they’re bound to be important scientists”. This would be another crappy day.

Mission and objectives

Here’s for our second game, still learning the rules and general flow of the game. The mission was Split Research, which means players got points for keeping an artifact safe, and also for capturing 4 VIPs running around the board.

Terrain

Dionne's doodle

All terrain was assigned cover value 2. The woods and craters are area terrain, the rocky outcrops, buildings, crates & barrels and the walls are obstacles. We didn’t use the actual building rules, so units couldn’t enter.

After his successful defence of the Tusculi Compound, Kaddar Nova Myro was tasked with grabbing whatever valuables the surrounding area had to offer. Elyssa, the enigmatic Shadow Walker, had pressed him to venture into this woods and capture some scientists. Myro didn’t see the point of taking home some people who probably did have valuable knowledge, but would just as probably not see the rightness of their cause and just be a general pain in the behind. He did, however, figure that a research centre such as this would harbour some useful supplies. It was with this dual purpose that he now peeked out from behind the treeline and ordered his troops to make a pincer move around the centre and allow no means of escape. They were just in time, from behind the further wall he could see activity of what was doubtless Epirian security forces attempting to beat them to the prize.



Big flank deployment was rolled for. The Karists bid to be attackers, deploying as shown after the Epirian defenders had turtled around the big rear wall.









The four VIPs deployed, waiting to be taken.



Epirian Deployment. The rusty generator is the Epirian Artifact.



Minnows and Shadow Walker.



Troopers and assault troopers.



The Karist Artifact is the set of blue storage tubes.



Half board overview.



Tempests with deployment STs.



Epirian commander has 3 CPs assigned, the Spiders are deployed pinned.



The Karist commander has two CPs, is on the move and has his reactor in kinetic boost mode (which would normally not be the best idea, but it doesn’t matter in this case as he’ll be the first activation).

Karist force (90 pts)

• Kaddar Nova Myro;
• 4 Troopers with a Radwave Emitter, deployed On the move;
• 5 Assault Troopers with 2 Ripper grenade launchers, deployed On the move;
• 3 Tempest Elites with Ravager Vulcan Pulse Cannons (with 3 deployment STs);
• 6 Angel Minnows, deployed On the move;
• Shadow Walker Elyssa.

Epirian force (90 pts)

• Journeyman Bot Handler Bacaro with a command micro drone and a grenade launcher;
• 5 Contractors with 2 grenade launchers;
• 5 Firefly Drones;
• 3 Spider Drones with Cutter light machine guns and an apprentice handler;
• 5 Contractors with 2 grenade launchers;
• Scarecrow with Maglock Railrifle and Clingfire sprayer.

Turn 1

The Epirians had just swarmed into the centre. Time for action. Myro engaged his reactor and dashed ahead to the nearest building, where one of the scientists had just ran out. He stopped dead in his tracks as Myro fixed a piercing stare at him, but he had no time to waste on these people now, a squad of Drones across the centre had just sprang into action and started peppering his troops…





1st activation: Kaddar Nova Dashes ahead into cover near one of the objectives.

Storms! The Karists had beat him to it and were swarming out of the woods just as he entered the compound. Bacaro linked his mind with his trusty Scarecrow and aimed to snipe the first Karist to show his face. The powerful railrifle gave off a deadly burst and a Karist Trooper dropped dead just as he emerged from the treeline.







2nd activation: The Scarecrow gets his bot protocols activated and shoots at the Assault Troopers just visible behind the woods, resulting in a kill and 4 STs.

Again eager to follow his mentor’s lead, Apprentice Bot Handler Kasero quickly typed commands on his bot interface, ordering his Drones to advance, but stay low and follow the Scarecrow’s lead. The small but powerful machine guns let loose at the treeline where the first Karist had fallen.





3rd activation: The Spider Drones Dig-In after having their bot protocols activated and shoot wild at the Assault Troopers. They all miss, but the Troopers suffer another ST.

First blood for the Epirians. Myro bit his lip. He couldn’t let the Epirians pick off his followers as they tried to herd the scientists their way. He shouted to his Tempest Tetrarch to secure the hidden supply cache planted here weeks ago by Elyssa and lay down covering fire. The lumbering armoured forms sprung into motion and unleashed their Vulcan cannons at the advancing Epirian Drones.





4th activation: The Tempests Dash to their faction objective and fire at the Spider Drones. The Epirian player avoids losing a Drone by taking the one penetrating hit on the Apprentice Handler whose MAS2 can take the DAM1 hit.

Bacaro watched with satisfaction as the enemy’s dreaded artillery was unable to harm the carefully dug-in Spider Drones, but was then distracted by a report of alien forms appearing on the left flank. Remembering the impact these aliens had at Tusculi, Bacaro wasted no time in calling down an aerial drone strike on the reported area. A cloud of smoke appearing from behind the centre wall and cheers heard across the comm link told Bacaro the strike was a success.



5th activation: The Journeyman Advance & Fires an aerial drone strike at the Minnows. Despite their high Evasion and on the move bonuses, 1 Minnow perishes and the unit takes 7 STs.

Meanwhile his Contractors were taking the enemy artillery under fire. He only hoped the untested engineers would keep their cool this time. The enemy was seen to duck into cover, so he’d chalk that up as a success anyway.



6th activation: One of the Contractor squads advances up to the building wall and fires at the Tempests, who take one damage despite their cover, resulting in 4 STs. The Contractors, however, are now dangerously bunched together. Quintarch Samuel was pained to have lost a brother to one of the enemy’s soulless machines, but rallied his team and ordered them to advance for the cause and avenge themselves upon the machines. The thumps of the Ripper Grenade launchers were followed shortly by an explosion and the sound of metal bits flying.





7th activation: The Assault Troopers fail their activation check and must perform a Shaken action. Firing wild at the Spider Drones, the small blast templates from the grenade launchers generate a lot of shots and, ignoring cover, manage to destroy a Drone and add 5 to the suppression total.

Elyssa, leading the advance on the flank, could only just duck into cover in time as a savage aerial barrage hit the area where she and the Angel Minnows were, she thought, advancing unnoticed around the centre. The remaining Minnows who emerged from the cloud of smoke had understandably lost their nerve and were flapping around in confusion, but then seemed to regain their resolve, luckily. Moments later they were in trouble again as Epirian Drones were appearing on the flank and shooting their lasers at the little angels.



8th activation: The Minnows fail their activation check and must take a Shaken action, but don’t need to retreat and fire wild at the Epirian artifact, but do no damage. They then shake off most of their suppression.

Following up the aerial drone strike on the approaching aliens, the Firefly Drones engaged their engines and took the Minnows under fire as they emerged from the smoke, two more of the horrible creatures dropped to the ground.





9th activation: The Fireflies Dash over to the Epirian artifact and fire their low power lasers at the Minnows, killing two and adding 3 STs.



10th activation: The automated relay does nothing (generating a victory point)

Elyssa decides there is no time to waste. She came here to capture some Epirian scientists known for their work on Cybel energy. If they could be made to see the truth about the Maelstrom, their knowledge would be of great value to the cause. The scientists, still in the midst of their evacuation preparations, were now caught in the crossfire and running around the centre in confusion. Elyssa spotted the research team leader taking cover behind the big silos in the middle of the centre and ran over to bind him.



11th activation: The Shadow Walker Dashes, making a dynamic move to the middle of the board to claim one of the objectives.

The Troopers under Elyssa’s charge saw her run over to one of the scientists, and followed her example. Loosing some shots for cover, they jumped across the concrete to where another one of the science crew was frantically trying to avoid getting shot and grabbed him.



12th activation: The Troopers Dash over to a second objective, with shooting adding 2 STs on one of the Contractor units.

Tromp, the Contractor Team leader on the left flank took a last glance at the photos he’d had pressed into his hands after his boss was tasked with evacuating this centre. He had a specific job: make sure certain storage containers did not fall into enemy hands. Securing them would be nice, but he needn’t waste an opportunity to destroy them instead. Nobody had told him what was in these containers, but he was now sure he saw them stacked at the other end of the centre. Their team had secured one of the scientists who was somehow acting quite hysterically, and now ordered his engineers to lob some grenades the way of the containers. Unfortunately, the range was too great for accurate fire and the pesky containers remained sitting there defiantly.



13th activation: The second team of Contractors Digs in, taking positions around the building, and try to damage the Karist artifact, but fail. (Image was taken after VIPs got moved.)

This ends turn 1. The Karists scored 13 VPs: 8 for their artifact being entirely undamaged, four for holding 2 VIPs and another for controlling their faction objective. The Epirians score 11, having one fewer VIP.







The VIPS were then moved 6” and turn 2 commenced.



Turn 1 end map: orange is movement, white is shooting. VIPs haven’t yet been moved.

Turn 2

The Epirians get priority and generate 4 command points, whilst the Karists generate 3 CPs.

Focusing all his attention on eliminating the aliens, Bacaro links his mind to the Firefly Drones, powers up their lasers and cuts down another alien, whilst the rest turn their tails under the fusillade of laser fire. With this threat taken care of, Bacaro can now focus on the silly scientists.



1st activation: The Fireflies get their evasive maneuvers protocols activated and Dash ahead, once more shooting at the Minnows, now with high power lasers, killing one and adding 3 more STs.

Myro was quite displeased with his Elites’ cowardly hiding amongst the trees. Frantic shouting saw them advance one more and rain fire on the opposite Epirians, who were horribly slaughtered. This was more like it. Much as he valued every life, Myro had his priorities right and didn’t hesitate to brutally propagate the Karist cause if need be.





2nd activation: The Tempests advance and fire at the Contractors opposite. Utilising the re-roll granted by their faction objective, 7 hits remain after applying cover, resulting in four penetrating hits of which two are explosive. Three Contractors fall and 6 STs are added.

Elyssa, distracted by the advancing Epirians on her flank, temporarily lost sight of her captive, who suddenly jumped and ran out into the crossfire. Moron. Elyssa figured a dead scientist was useless anyway and decided to fall upon the Contractors who were getting mauled by the Tempests’ Ravager cannons. As soon as she perceived the guns going silent, she ran out, drawing her Cybel blade and slipping it into the throat of one of the surprised engineers, then gutting the remaining Contractor before he had time to react.



3rd activation: The Shadow Walker charges the Contractor team and kills the remaining two, then shaking off the STs gained in the process.

Kasero was starting to regret his rash action, he’d already lost a Drone and was in the middle of a hail of fire, whilst to his left a whole team of Contractors was brutally slaughtered by combined fire from the enemy artillery and an assassin appearing out of nowhere. This was no place to stick around. Tapping new orders, he and his remaining drones hoofed it to the cover of a ruined wall behind them.



4th activation: The Spider Drones receive an order and have their protocols activated, but still fail their activation and must retreat. Pinned behind a wall, they shake off 8 STs, but are still left with 3.

This could not be happening again. Why was he again sent against the Karist offensive with inadequate forces on ridiculous missions? Fired up by his anger, he decided to go after the sinister figure that had come up and killed his engineers, only to then hide behind the low wall. Drawing his Dominator pistol, Bacaro fired at the assassin, but his nimble foe darted out of the way just in time.



5th activation: The Journeyman advances and fires at the Shadow Walker who isn’t harmed but does get suppressed. (Image taken after Nova’s next activation.)

Myro was eager to press his advantage. Elyssa and his Tempests had neatly cleared this flank. Now it was time to go after the supplies the Epirians were so eager to guard. Engaging his reactor, he dashed into the nearby crater with superhuman speed and fired his gauntlet at the Drones attempting to hide from his troops behind a ruined wall. Being attacked from two sides, they had nowhere left to hide.



6th activation: The Kaddar Nova advance and fires, piling more suppression on the Spider drones but failing to destroy any despite denying their cover from this angle.

Samuel and his Troopers dragged their hostage along, pressing up further into the science centre and loosing some shots at the enemy individual who was threatening to corner Elyssa.



7th activation: The troopers Dash forward to keep contact with their objective and fire wild at the Journeyman, missing him, but adding 1 ST.

Bacaro had to think fast. He had to deal with this assassin, but was now himself taken under fire by an enemy squad, and also witnessed his Spider Drones being cornered by what appeared to be the enemy leader, judging by the amount of shouting he was doing. Quickly prioritising, Bacaro linked with his Scarecrow and aimed at the enemy leader. He must not have been his normal calm self, however, as he failed to hit with his Scarecrow’s railrifle.



8th activation: The Scarecrow gets an order to activate his protocols and selects the Hold & Fire action. The robot gets a sniper hit on the Kaddar Nova, but then rolls a 1 to pen.

Team leader Tromp couldn’t believe his eyes. Here was one of the scientists awkwardly running out from the cover of the silos into open ground, risking his life for apparently no good reason. Then he saw the reason for the scientist’s silly walk, he was bound at the wrists. A quick shout saw his team emerge from cover to secure this brave man who had seemingly escaped from Karist custody. Cornering their building, Tromp saw the figure of the brutish assassin facing off against his commander. Taking aim, he shot his maglock rifle and grinned triumphantly as the enemy dropped to the ground.



9th activation: The Contractors Dash to claim the yellow VIP. We realised just after this shot that they can’t actually control both VIPs. Wild fire at the Shadow Walker does enough damage to drop her to FOR1.

The Assault Troopers, watching as an enemy team breaks cover and secures one of the scientists, run out themselves and fire their grenade launchers straight at them. Better to lose the scientists than to have their enemy keep them.



10th activation: The Assault Troopers Dash out, electing to be on the move, and fire wild at the Contractors. Again the blast templates cover many guys, resulting in 2 dead Contractors and 4 STs.

Meanwhile, the little angels, having taken so much fire, fly off to the cover of a stack of crates to recover their nerves.



11th activation: The Minnows have to retreat, but do shake off all their STs.

12th activation: The Relay does nothing.

This ends the second turn. The Karists score 10 points against the Epirians’ 11, making the score 23 for the Karists against 22 for the Epirians. Both sides have acquired the minimum number of points to win, so the first to lead his opponent by 3 will win the game. Points really add up fast in this mission as long as the artifacts remain unharmed.



This is after the VIPs have been moved.

Turn 3

The Karists claim priority, the Epirians spend 5 CPs to bring back the unit of Contractors.

Seeing their protectors diminished to just three engineers, the nearby scientists disperse and run for cover. The Karist Assault Troopers waste no time in advancing further into the centre, ready to capture their prizes. On their advance they again fire their Rippers and Pulse Carbines into the Contractor team, none survive.



1st activation: The Contractors are not in cover and not on the move (so as to be able to capture an objective) and do no survive the round of fire from the Assault Troopers, who capture an objective on the way.

Still determined to destroy the enemy leader, Bacaro again guides his Scarecrow’s fire. His increased focus pays off: the Karist priest drops behind the crater rim. Is he finished?

2nd activation: I have no image here, but the Scarecrow Holds and fires with activated protocols, but in the end only does enough damage to drop the Nova down 1 FOR.

Having braved the chaos around him long enough to shoot down the enemy leader, Bacaro now hunkers down and takes another quick shot at the enemy assassin, but again he misses.





3rd activation: The Journeyman fails its activation check and digs in, his shots put 2 STs on the Shadow Walker.

Elyssa and Myro exchange a quick look, which for these experienced friends is enough to understand each other’s plans and position. Although they are both wounded, they know they must now press on to finish the job. Elyssa turns to capture the scientist who just fled from her failing Epirian protectors. As she turns, she returns fire against the Epirian commander, but her aim suffers from the wound she took and her shots go wild.



4th activation: The Shadow Walker gets an order, removes 4 STs and advances towards an objective whilst firing at the bot handler for 2 STs.

The Tempest Elites, now well in control of their part of the field, loose another salvo at the drones hiding behind the wall, making sure they do not interfere with their wounded commanders’ efforts to seize their prizes.



5th activation: The Tempests Advance & Fire at the Spider Drones, who are not only pinned but make good use of their protocols and discard most hits. They do take 6 STs.

Freshly dropped off at the outskirts of the centre, only half understanding what’s going on, another team of Contractor Engineers arrives to assist Bacaro. They waste no time in laying fire on the Karist Priest hiding amongst the craters, but cannot confirm a definite kill.





6th activation: One unit of Contractors returns as reinforcements, Dashing on to the field and firing wild at the Kaddar Nova, only causing 2 STs due to the priest being in cover.

The Firefly Drones’ automated protocols instruct them to secure their flank, having driven off the small aliens. The little machines swoop over the wall and lock on their target: the Shadow Walker assassin. Engaging their high power laser, they bring down their foe and secure this position.



7th activation: The Fireflies Dash over here, in position to contest the objective, but manage to kill the Shadow Walker after taking 2STs from defensive fire.

Meanwhile, the Karist Trooper squad continues to advance into the centre, pinning down the Drone squad with their shooting.



8th activation: Karist Troopers advance and fire, keeping in touch with their objective.

Although the little Minnows were driven back and thought defeated by their foe, it is not in the nature of Angels to turn tail and run. The two surviving beasts, having licked their wounds behind the crates and barrels, again took to the air and made a run at a piece of machinery emitting a faint pink light strangely attractive to these angels…



9th activation: The remaining Minnows Dash and shoot at the Epirian artifact, managing to take it down 1 FOR.

Following the flow of the battle through the Epirian Automated Uplink Relay, sector command is weighing options. On the one hand, Bacaro seems to be able to secure at least some of the Epirian scientists, amongst whom Dasha Kryklyvy, the one command is really concerned about. Do they gamble and hope Bacaro can claim the others as well, or are they content with Dasha and give up both the valued machinery and containers and the other scientists, so that Bacaro’s force may retreat relatively intact and be sent to support the beleaguered forces of Shotan at Asperia? Decisions, decisions…



10th activation: The relay does nothing.

Kasero is relieved to see reinforcements enter the field. Choosing tact over valor, he retreats his Spiders to hook up with the reinforcements and take on the enemy together.

11th activation (no image): Spider Drones have to retreat, and shake off 7 STs.

Kaddar Nova Myro watched in horror as the pack of Fireflies suddenly raced across the wall and doused Elyssa in bright laser fire. She went down, and didn’t rise again. In his heart Myro knew she was done for. Feeling suddenly very weak, Myro clambered out of the crater and sought protection near his Tempests at the edge of the forest.



12th activation: Putting his reactor in Shield mode, the Kaddar Nova is forced to retreat and moves into the woods.

Suddenly, all Epirian forces appear to retreat from the area. What’s going on here? The Epirians were certainly not overpowering his brothers, but neither were they defeated. Well, reflected Myro, this gave them the perfect opportunity to seize whatever resources and scientists were left and, most urgently, see if anything was still to be done for Elyssa…

At the end of turn 3, the Karists score 13 points: an undamaged artifact for 8, two VIPs and the faction objective. The Epirians only score 4: a damaged but undestroyed artifact and the faction objective. This means the Karists take a decisive lead and win the game!

There were some interesting swings in this game, but in the end the Epirian’s failure to damage the Karist artifact and sometimes brutal consequences of forgetting to sufficiently disperse his troops brought defeat. It’s really cool to come to understand the importance of the various rules elements in MEdge that you can’t really get a feel for without playing some games. So far the Epirian player has a little more difficulty making the most of his forces. They lack some of the rock hard firepower of the Tempests and seem to need a little more finesse than we can display in these first two teaching games. As for this mission, the wandering VIPs really keep everyone moving which is neat, and the artifacts really need to be taken care of starting turn 1, considering the amount of points they give out each turn if left undamaged.