Project Iowa, Ep. 5: The Lighthouse Door

Moab Daily News Special Report: Rex-Avis Tech Stolen!

The wave-o-scopes in the office crackled with news from the Kingdom of Colores and the reporters at the Logansport daily struggled to process what had happened; to put together a headline and what few facts they knew in a way that helped to inform the citizens of their isolated world of the gravity of the situation without creating a frenzy for war. But there were adverts to sell and deadlines to meet. Mistakes are sometimes made in the news business, and when they are we might all pay the price. But not this time. This time . . .

Project Iowa, Episode 5

Colorado Rex-Avis and her team race back to the RACT Enhance and rendezvous with their escort, the command cruiser TFS Alecto.

While Inquisitor Guimar and his companions make their escape to the Imperial Attack Transport Furribundus.

"That's a big damn ship," Guimar says to his helmsman. "And they've cut us off from our route out of here."

"Yes. Yes it is," the ensign replies. "But we won't need to fight, since we can outrun them. And I assure you, sir, our own forces are more than a match for such as these. They can't block every path. While you dealt with the heretics I scouted around the system and I believe I've isolated the spinward end of the route they must have used to get here. If we travel along it, we can break out in the Tartarus Rim and run through coreward towards Holy Terra. If I'm right about where we emerge, it will be almost due south." 

Meanwhile, on the bridge of the Enhance . . .

"What will we do, Colorado? They're getting away with the imploder. That thing might be the one advantage we have if the Terrans decide to come knocking around."

"Oh, Sir Stanley! Don't you worry too much. Arthur and I didn't leave the back door unguarded like a couple of newbs! There's a plan. Those poor saps won't know what hit them."

Sir Stanley felt inwardly relieved at her smile, but quietly wondered precisely what she and Arthur had cooked up.

Meanwhile on the opposite end of Red Route 1 . . .

"Splendid!" cried Captain Sieghimmel. "The helsman was precisely correct! We've emerged into the Blanding System. Three jumps will take us to Anesidora. From there I think I can navigate to the Erinyes Stars and thus avoid the major checkpoints at Proserpine, Tartarus Gate, and Kerberos. And see? There's a Rim merchant in the distance we've just identified! We can stay in her shadow for a while, so long as she doesn't do anything crazy."

"What's that contact off the port bow?" asked Guimar.

"That? A modular launch. It's a small merchant on an old standard plan. There're still quite a number of them out this way. Nothing alarming. It's squawking a Helvetic ID . . . Golf Bravo Alpha Foxtrot Mike . . . Nelson? Come over here. Have a look at this. I need you to check it out stat!"

"Sir, it's not maneuvering and it's on something very close to a collision course. We received a somewhat garbled transmission saying they needed to bring their thrusters online and it would take a moment . . . Sir? Oh sh . . . "

To be continued

 . . .

The saga starts with Episode 1: New Friends from the Tartarus Rim from the Governor General of Sector Six. My own more journalistic and less complete telling begins with Moab Daily News: Rex Avis to Sector Six.

Sincerely,
The Composer

Continued in Episode 6: Snow Drop.

2016 in Review

So it's time to look back and reflect on 2016 and plan ahead a little for 2017. Early in the year I made a modest intercity move. While not a huge distance, it threw my routine into chaos for some time. And some later complications conspired to make this one of my less productive years. Still . . . I got a few dozen miniatures done of different sorts. And absolutely zero games, I think. I aim to fix this part. One of the advantages of the new place was supposed to be more space to game. However, the newfound lack of proximity to my usual gaming friends didn't really help much. Sure, I've gaming friends in the new town as well, but . . . it takes time to settle in and sort out schedules. And crawl out from under the rock my own peculiar psychoses dispatched me to. So resolution number one for 2017: play games. That's what all this junk is for.

It's almost painful to analyze what I did relative to my goals, but here goes. Here's what I laid out in the planning phase of 2016:

A. Work on assorted miniatures backlogs before you buy new stuff . . . 

I bought new stuff, but not huge shedloads of it. Relatively little, all told. So maybe A wasn't a total catastrophe.

B. A 1/2400 city would be pretty sweet.

 Fail

C. Still want that temple and that brothel and maybe a bar. You need more buildings.

A bit more mixed here. I didn't build a brothel or bar, or the specific temple I had in mind, but I did build new buildings, one of which is indeed religious. (And will get some sci-fi signage eventually.)

D. Still need a ship for the gang.

Made a little quiet progress here, actually, but not enough to show. I bought some "materials" and began hacking things apart, but I haven't started welding anything back together yet. All still pieces.

E. And a rock.

Yeah, another fail. Kind of shoved that to the side.

And here's the meager 2016 output:

In 1:2400 . . . 

Three freighters. Yep. That's the whole year.

But I did get more than a few 28 mm sci-fi folk and fauna done. No flora this year, but . . . I've an idea or two. It's on the list.

1, 2, 3, and 4

5 (left goat only)

6

7, 8, 9, 10

11

12

13, 14

15, 16 (the two eldar)

17

18

19

20

21 (left) and 22 (right)

23 (right)

24

25 and 26 (Ignore the orange blur in the foreground for now.) 

27

28

29

and 30

And of course there were the obligatory few set pieces:

A control tower

A religious building

And a barn.

The overgrown lizard poking his head out is a temporary resident. He doesn't usually stay there. Just came to visit for Christmas. Incidentally, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year . . .

What, you say? Is that an oddly post-apocalyptic outpost beneath the tree and surrounded by a mix of anachronistically earthy looking trains? Why yes. Yes it is. Have a look.

So my 2016 output was about half my 2015 and 14 output. Which is rather ironic, in a way. But . . . it makes sense. On that note, let's set some goals for this lovely new year:

A. Please do try to get a little more done in 1/2400. Your navy felt neglected, what with no review and little new tonnage.
B. Some non-human civilians would be mighty nice.
C. Moab needs "entertainment." And maybe more religion. (There's plenty of lost souls to go around.)
D. Ships. Multiple now, and not just one. For the Lace Rock kinder and others. You have materials. Ues them.
E. Additional Space Port facilities.
F. Some more dense urban stuff might be a nice change.
G. A rock. The gang really does need their hidey-hole.

Thanks for joining me.

Sincerely,
The Composer

2015 Year in Review

Time for the second annual installment of the miniature year in review over on the Tartarus Rim. It's been a middling year. Neither the best, nor the worst. Had some good months, but hit a couple of snags as life got in the way. Didn't accomplish as much of what I set out to do on the last review as I'd like, but more than none.

To wit, last year I put forward a series of goals:

A. Paint my backlog of 1/2400 ships. This is unlikely, but I have only HAD a backlog for about a year and a half now. I don't like having broken my new rule (don't buy new ships until the old ones are painted) but a fire sale with unbeatable prices weakened me. I want very much to fix that.

Well, I painted some of them. Didn't get through the whole backlog, but didn't expect that, really. And I didn't buy any new ships to make it larger. So progress.

B. I'd like a few new buildings for Logansport. A bar would be good. Maybe also a temple. Quite possibly a brothel.

No brothel, no temple, but progress. New buildings, however small, did in fact appear.

C. The Lace Rock Gang needs a spaceship. A small one, to be sure, but a useful one.

Yeah, nope. No spaceship yet. Still need to do that.

D. The Lace Rock Gang needs a rock. Which is to say they need a home operating base.

Also no rock.

E. A little further progress on the genestealer and elf armies would be nice.

But a solid win here. I did, in fact, make progress on both armies. Not done, but progress generally made. Just means I need to keep plugging at it, I suppose. So here's what I did accomplish . . . 

28 mm Terrain . . .

Characters and critters . . . 

1, 2, 3

4, 5

6, 7

A rather large 8

9-12

13, 14, 15

16

An iconic 17

18 atop her steed

19, 20

21-25 (25 is the obscured "Colorado" Rex-Avis)

26, 27, 28

29, 30

31, 32, 33

34, 35, 36

37, 38, 39

40

41

42

43, 44

45

46

47, 48

49

50, 51

52 takes flight . . .

53

54 and 55

56

57

58, 59 (a pair of commissions)

60, and 61 (two more commissions)

Vehicles . . .

1

2

3

4

1/2400

1

2

3, 4 (the merchies fore and aft)

5 (the oiler)

6, 7 (also the merchies)

8

9, 10

11

a VERY small 12

13 not much bigger . . .

14, 15, and 16

So that's the year, it would seem. 

In sum we have:

A shedload of small trees and a two small terrain pieces

61 28 mm miniatures

5 28 mm vehicles

16 1/2400 ships.

Not record breaking, but tolerable enough, given that it's been a busy year in other ways. Not as many ships nor as much terrain as last year, but more sci-fi kids. Actually, almost the same number of miniatures all told, just arranged differently. And . . . what with the large number of small terrain pieces this year it's really hard to compare. So for next year (carrying some forward from last year)

A. Work on assorted miniatures backlogs before you buy new stuff . . . 

B. A 1/2400 city would be pretty sweet.

C. Still want that temple and that brothel and maybe a bar. You need more buildings.

D. Still need a ship for the gang.

E. And a rock.

Thanks for joining me. See you in 2016.

Sincerely,

The Compser