Fallout Sandbox: The Ant-enna

Elara stepped out, blinking  into the dazzling light, her eyes adjusting to it's tone, so different to that created by the luminescent strips of the vault.

She gazed down upon the wide open space before her and her head span. Of course she knew that the surface would have open skies and and no walls, but knowing and comprehending were very different.

She had lived her entire life in the close confines of the vault and now the whole world lay in front of her.

The intercom of her pipboy buzzed into life with the crackling voice of the Overseer, "Elara, if you head to the southeast you'll find the antenna. It should be easy to spot."

Elara could see the dish. It was easy to spot. However, the familiar shapes moving around its base might mean getting to it was not so easy.

"Damn. I knew ants live in colonies."

Welcome back to the second part of my sandbox campaign for Fallout Wasteland Warfare.

Having cleared several intrusive pests from the top level of the vault, Elara Vance (Sole Survivor: Day One) must now venture out onto the surface to repair the faulty antenna which had caused the vault door to open.

She is equipped with her trusty 10mm pistol, a pair of binoculars and is wearing a damaged hazmat suit, which given the nature of the mission, might prove crucial.

She also has a couple of items she picked up in the vault that might be worth something to someone at a later date. I intend to use items with a caps value as a method of levelling up, purchasing items and hiring companions. However, narratively, none of that made sense right now.

Unfortunately for Elara; there is a giant ant colony living around the base of the antenna.

I'm using the Radroach Swarm unit card to represent the ants and I've put four of them in play as it's a roughly equivalent caps cost to Elara.

I randomised the location of their starting points and placed three searchables should Elara feel like getting distracted, although that seems unlikely.

I decided to put a six turn limit on this mission based on the fact that my adventure in the vault dragged a bit due to having no pressure to keep moving. Also, it made sense that Elara would want to get the job done quickly and get back home.

Turn 1

As Elara surveyed the area she had a creeping feeling she was being watched. Glancing round, she couldn't spot anybody, but if there was a hidden observer, she knew that her bright yellow hazmat suit would make her easy to spot.

Turning back to the problem at hand, she saw that she had three viable routes to take. To the left there were pools of liquid that her pipboy was telling were radioactive, and through the ruined building was direct, but she wouldn't have clear lines of fire on the ants that were sure to swarm at her.

The third option, the road, seemed the wisest. The ants would surely still attack her, but at least she'd see them coming.

Sure enough, a six-legged shape came scuttling towards her as she moved past the side of the building, its pincer clacking together feverishly.

I should note that during the vault mission I was incorrectly using the armour values printed on the Sole Survivor: Day One card, which were changed in an update some time ago. To be honest, Elara would have died in her first encounter with a Feral Ghoul if I hadn't, so I look at it as the tutorial mission. In this fight, she only has the hazmat suit, which is convenient as the Giant Ants (Radroaches) only do radiation damage.

Turn 2

Elara reeled backwards as the creature scurried at her, desperately trying to bring her pistol to bear.

Her first shot went wide echoing through the silent landscape, giving the impression of distant gunfire and almost certainly alerting the rest of the colony.

Elara's second shot found it's mark, blasting the ant's head from its body, but as it slumped to the ground she looked up towards the ruins in horror.

The creeping forms of ants were crawling all over the rubble and rushing directly for her.

Turn 3

The eeire quiet of the creatures was only matched by that of her environment and, for a moment, the world seemed almost frozen.

Then they were on her, claws and manbiles scratching and scraping, Elara trying desperately to get a clear shot, but to no avail.

In retrospect, it would have made sense to adjust the Radroach Swarm Bite attack to be a single attack worth 2 damage, rather than 2 weaker attacks. In not sure it would have made any difference, but these are so ngle creatures, not swarms.

Turn 4

In the midst of her struggle, Elara saw that a neutral party had entered the battlefield. Has this been the hidden observer? Would he help her?

Before she could call out to him, the man had clearly seen danger she was in and started to withdraw. Whatever he wanted, he wasn't willing to risk the ants for it.

Even though Elara didn't interact with the stranger, I drew the card to reveal a Wandering Merchant. This Scavenger had clearly been drawn by the prospect of loot. He clearly thought better of it as the random movement on turn five took him back off the table.

With no help in sight, Elara decided to make a break for it. She may get overrun by these things, but she had to complete her mission to protect everyone in the vault from suffering a similar fate.

She could feel sharp bites in her calves as she ran from the ants towards the antenna, but to her horror, more of the creatures scuttled at her from that direction.

Surrounded, Elara began to realise with a heavy heart that she wasn't going to make it back to the vault.

Even if she fixed the antenna, there were just too many ants.

She was going to die here.

Turn 5

Whether it was the weight of this realisation, the emanations from the clearly radioactive pool to her right or the unbearable heat of trying to run and fight in a hazmat suit, Elara felt sluggish and slowed.

Once again, she dragged herself forwards, using every ounce of her strength to try to reach her goal. All the while, giant ants nipping at her heels.

Turn 6

As she scrambled to the antenna and flipped open the circuit box she found that one of the wires had corroded beyond use. Aware of the ants closing in behind her, she quickly replaced the wire with one she'd pulled from the desk fan and in lieu of a soldering iron, used Wonderglue to fix it in place. 

As the ants reached her, she pulled the switch...

"Elara? Elara? Are you there? The system is working, at least partially. Well done...There's a problem, though. The door still won't close because the system is saying that a vault dweller is outside and alive. That's you...Elara, please respond...Elara, I'm sorry. We can't risk the radiation and those creatures you reported. I need to purge you from our system so that the doors can close...Vault 26 appreciats your sacrifice...I'm sorry Elara."

***

Yep, she failed the skill test to fix the antenna and then was brought down by the ants. A catastrophic failure.

Don't worry. She's not dead, and I'm not just going to reload a previous save point and play through the mission again. If the Courier can survive being shot and buried alive, Elara can get out of this scrape, but there will be a cost.

More details next time.

Dressing Appropriately

Much as I like the 3d printed model I began with, when the heroine of my new solo campaign of Fallout Wasteland Warfare picked up a damaged hazmat suit, I knew I wanted to represent this in the tabletop.

Whilst Modiphius do have a hazmat suit available in their Institute core set, having not played Fallout 4, I currently have no interest in that collecting that faction.

Fortunately, I did have an alternative solution available.

As I've mentioned previously, I've had a copy of Star Saga from Mantic Games kicking around that I'd picked up cheap a couple of years ago, and I've already painted up the terrain from to furnish my vault.

The models are a little bit chunkier than the Modiphius Fallout range, but not offensively so, and I have already stated my intention to use some of them to supplement my Fallout collection where appropriate.

I had already thought about using the lab technician models from the game as proxy Enclave Scientists, and when I picked up the damaged hazmat suit, the thought struck me that, with the right paint job, the female lab technician could also work as Elara in my campaign.

I gave the model a hand swap to give her a pistol and put a hammer head on the stick that the lab technician was holding to make it look like a recognisable weapon.

Although not massively similar to the radiation suit that turns up in Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, the lab technician is not a million miles away from the prototype hazmat suit in Fallout 4, just with the helmet down.

There are versions of this suit that are different colours, but I definitely wanted this one to be bright yellow to at least evoke the Fallout 3 suit.

Painting was fairly straightforward. I began with a Ghoul Grey (Colour Forge's Grey Seer equivalent) undercoat and then dry brushed the model white before hitting the suit with a wash of Cassandora Yellow, which works really well as a yellow speedpaint over white. 

After tidying up where the bits I didn't want yellow, I gave them a coat of Basilicanum Grey contrast paint, which it turns out is a fantastic base for silver, which was learned when I picked out the metal bits of the suit.

A few colourful details on the belt, the weapons and the head were then finished off. I'm least happy with the face and hair, partly because Mantic models tend to have very shallow details in these areas, and so may revisit them.

Whilst I was painting her up, I added a small piece to my collection of post-apocalpyse scatter terrain, by cobbling together a few leftover bits from the Mars Attacks terrain I built for the same purpose years ago.

Here's where I need to be careful, because this is where my Lead Mountain accounting went wrong last year. The terrain pieces were not counted in my tally of unpainted miniatures, and so I need to make sure I only take one model off the Lead Mountain total, despite having painted two things.

It's exciting, isn't it?

Acquired: 6

Painted: 47

Lead Mountain: 721

Fallout: Sandbox - Pest Control

The elevator's speakers crackled back into life to life, repeating the message that had sent the Vault's population into a panic:

“CONTSINMENT BREACHED. UNKOWN LIFEFORMS DETECTED ON UPPER LEVELS.”

The elevator door opens onto the topmost level for the first time in generations.

As Elara stepped into the darkened corridor, Vault alarms continue to blare. She was here because there was no option. If something had entered the Vault, that meant that either the door had been opened or...well...something more catastrophic.

She hoped it was the former.

She had been equipped with a trusty 10mm pistol and tasked with three goals: clear out whatever had entered the Vault, ascertain their means of entrance, and fix it, ensuring the integrity of the Vault.

Elara briefly wondered why she had been chosen. The Overseer has been most insistent it was her.

Yes. I've decided to start a Fallout Wasteland Warfare campaign, and this time, I'm not rooting it in published scenarios (although I may adapt some), I'm being a bit more creative.

I say more creative, but I'm taking the traditional starting point of a character leaving a Vault. I'm not sure where this is heading, but I'm going to be using a variety of tools to come up with ideas and build my world.

For now though, I'm beginning with a very simple scenario. Elara Vance (Sole Survivor - Day One) must clear and unknown number of unknown creatures (the blue tokens) out of the top level of the Vault before heading to inspect the door.

Initially, I had laid out a number of searchables (the orange tokens) to help Elara get equipped, but as the game went on the Event 'deck' (the Vault chart from the Capital expansion) I was using three out several more searchables, and so you'll notice that most of the preset ones disappear towards the end as I didn't want her to be too tooled up.

As soon as Elara stepped out of the elevator, she could make out some movement in the darkness. Drawing her pistol, she advance cautiously.

In the gloom she could make out an imaciated form. Elara called to the figure, which turned and began to lumber in her direction and into the torchlight.

It's withered skin, spuless eyes and absent no's gave the figure a ghoulish appearance. A wave of sympathy wash over Elara. This poor person was clearly a victim of the irradiated wasteland outside, and was clearly a threat to the integrity and wellbeing of the Vault.

She opened fire.

The bullets didn't stop the creature, but they did slow it down as it advanced on Elara, its teeth bared. It made two powerful lunges at her and Elara though she was done for, but somehow she evaded its clutches and managed to pump two 10mm rounds into its skull, dropping it to the floor.

As she looked down on the poor wretch who has clearly once been human, her pipboy gave out the telltale click of radiation. Her suspicions had been correct. The creature was radioactive and she had been exposed to it.

(I actually forgot to apply the radiation damage at this point, but I did remember later. You will spot when.)

Pushing on in her search for more intruders, Elara wandered through rooms filled with equipment she had no clue as to the purpose of. What had Vault-Tec intended for this?

Amongst the debris she came across items that might be helpful should she have to mend or replace elements connected to the Vault door: an electric fan and a tube of Wonderglue.

Elara also stumbled upon an unused packet of Med-X. It looked like the painkillers had been dropped years before, when all the critical supplies were being moved down below.

She hoped she wouldn't need them and could just drop them off in the infirmary.

The eerie stillness was unsettling. These rooms must have been passed through by those first inhabitants of the Vault, who had descended below the Earth turning their backs on everything they knew which was about to be destroyed.

Elara wondered how that had felt, how frightened they must have been to shut themselves away.

She was grateful they had. She owed them her very existence.

Suddenly she heard something behind her.

Spinning around and shining a light into the darkness, Elara was shocked to see a six-legged from scuttling towards her.

She was momentarily baffled. She had seen pictures of these insects, 'ants', in books, but as far as she could remember they were usually tiny.

This one was massive!

(I used the Radroach Swarm profile for the Giant Ant, which is sadly lacking from the game.)

Again she fired, chipping its carapace, and she kept firing as it came on, taking chunks out of it until it stopped moving.

She paused for breath.

Didn't ants live in colonies? That was a worrying thought.

Pressing on, Elara found herself in some sort of crew office or storage room. On the shelves she found a pair of binoculars and a hazmat suit.

Although the hazmat suit was slightly damaged, she reasoned that both items would be more than useful if she were required to venture outside.

A sudden noise out in the corridor brought Elara back to the mission at hand. She needed to clear out the Vault.

Creeping out into darkness, Elara spotted another emaciated figure lurching towards her. Were these things common in the irradiated world? Had they 'survived' since the bombs dropped? Or were people living some sort of life out there?

The lurching figure bearing down on her brought Elara back to her senses. Fortunately this one seemed weaker and slower and seemed to missing limbs.

She opened fire, dropping the creature quickly, more quickly than the last one.

As the echo of the shots faded, Elara realised that the alarms had stopped. Standing in the darkness and silence, she realised that the first part of her mission was over.

As Elara moved towards the final door before the main entrance chamber, the intercom suddenly cracked into life with the distorted voice of Overseer:

"Elara, we've run diagnostics and determined that the fault is with the external sensors. A failsafe has tripped and opened the Vault door. You need to got out to fix them."

She had feared as much.

Reloading her pistol before struggling into the hazmat suit, Elara braced herself for the unknown outside world.

Well, that was fun. I learned a little about not putting too many searchables on the table and that I should also glance through the events table during set up to ensure that they won't unbalance the scenario.

I might also pick up the Into The Wasteland expansion which is designed to enhance solo play.

Anyway, expect more of this.

Furnishing The Future

At the start of the year I revealed a massive increase in the amount of models I still had to paint. A large chunk of this number comes from the Mantic Games sci-fi dungeon crawler Star Saga, which I'd picked up for £15 at a show.

The game is fine, but I had intended to sell it on and so never counted the contents of the game until it occured to me that the terrain that came in the game might look appropriate in a Fallout vault.

And so that's what I've done with it.

The terrain is basically the contents of two of the Mantic Terrain Crates, the Sci-Fi Doors and Sci-Fi Furniture sets.

As ever, these are always a mixed bag as they are robust and well detailed, but are prone to warping which sometimes cannot be fixed with hot water, as was the case with several of these pieces.

However, the doors set is pretty good. Made from hard plastic rather than the rubbery stuff that Terrain Crates usually come in, these are 10 totally useable doors with zero issues.

To save discussing this further, most of what passes for painting on all of these models is a sprayed undercoat of silver followed by a wash of Nuln Oil. Partly this is for expediency and partly to capture the brushed steel/aluminium look from Fallout Vaults.

The tables, crates and gun racks are similarly dull in their presentation, with only a few other details being picked out.

Here's where the warping and mould issues start to kick in. The table legs were sorted out with the hot water trick, although it remains to be seen if this holds.

However, one of the gun racks has a curve in it, which I've straightened out a little, but still isn't fjat as the other one, and one if the boxes is just frankly warped in it's moulding. I've used a knife to trim it down a touch so that it just looks damaged.

I had fun with the computer screens as I was able to use white on black washed with Hexwraith Flame technical paint to create the effect of the monochrome monitors that appear in Fallout.

To be honest, it's these screens that convinced me to use this set of terrain as I knew I could create this effect easily.

The lab equipment is a bit more involved, with books, test tubes, papers and other bits and pieces to pick out. The fluid tanks were painted white and given a coat of Nihilakh Oxide technical paint, before painting this section with gloss varnish to suggest glass.

Sadly, one of the desks is really warped with the desktop sitting at an angle on the drawers and this it a mould issue rather than anything that can be fixed.

This sort of thing is the reason that I probably would avoid picking up any more Mantic Terrain Crates, especially given their price. Having got the whole game massively discounted, I don't mind. But if I'd spent £25 on the Sci-Fi Furniture set to discover three unfixable issues, I'd be somewhat annoyed.

However, I do now have a range of scatter terrain for any Vault-based shenanigans in games of Fallout Wasteland Warfare, and I'm also expecting the new Five Clones From Alpha Complex book to arrive any day, and I feel this terrain will also work well in games of Paranoia.

After painting these 36 pieces of terrain, I still have to decide what to do with the 36 other miniatures from Star Saga. Some of them might find their way into Fallout Wasteland Warfare as proxy Enclave troops, some are almost certainly destined for Alpha Complex as well, and the rest will find themselves drafted into a range of other projects as I see fit.

There is certainly some work to do.

Acquired: 6

Painted: 45

Lead Mountain: 722

Predictable Developments

It was easy to foresee that that when TTCombat announced that they were releasing a new starter set for Carnevale, World's Faire After-Party, that I would pick it up.

It was probably also somewhat predictable that they would eventually dip their toes into manufacturing plastic miniatures, as they have done with the two factions in the box, the Patricians and, the focus of this post, the Doctors.

I genuinely never intended to collect the Doctors. Partly this was because with my Guild, Rashaar and Patricians, combined with my proxy Strigoi and Vatican, I had enough going on. I also didn't really respond to the miniatures. The animals were cool, but I found the combination of black robed physicians and lunatics a bit dull.

However, when released turned in a more steampunky direction, I was more fired up, and, pleasingly, the Doctors miniatures in World's Faire After-Party follow in that trend.

The Doctor of Divine Probabilities (Carlotta on the background text) is the leader of this little band, although only a Hero in the game. I suspect that she's meant to be some sort of astrologer, divining future events, but I like the idea that she's battling the horrors and murderers of Venice using the terrifying power of maths.

She was surprisingly quick to paint, despite me thinking that she would be the most complex. The model responded really well to contrast paints and there weren't to many details to pick out when I came to her.

Backing up the Doctor is an Electron Cannoneer, Nicci, bringing ranged fire support. She's actually the second model I have with this profile and along with a few other ranged models, turns my Doctors faction into a little bit of a gunline.

Contrary to what happened with the Doctor, this model took much longer than expected as there was a surprising number of straps and buckles that not only needed picking out, but also divided up other sections of colour.

The handle on the contraption at her side is perhaps the most obvious example of a detail that wouldn't have been included prior to the switch to plastic. If it was made of resin, it would be at risk of snapping off almost immediately.

The design and construction of the models is excellent, certainly equal to anything you might expect from Games Workshop.

The third member of what is rapidly turning into a girls' night out is the Carrion. As a transformed patient from the asylum, she doesn't get a name, but she does get mechanical devices strapped to her head and arms that make her a skilled climber and a repository of Will Points for the Doctor to use.

She was perhaps the easiest to paint, using only a handful of colours. The speed was helped by not being terrified of the claws snapping when I was drubrushing at the end as would be the case with resin. In fact, it was the case, as this is the second Carrion model I own and I was much more careful with the first.

The final member of this quartet is a Monstrosity, a word that serves as both a name and a description. A stitched together golem remiscent of what would happen if Victor Frankenstein hadn't known when to stopp adding bits. The Monstrosity has four arms, three heads and two torsos.

I had a bit of a battle with this model as I initially went for my usual zombie skin recipe, but I think that the the depth of the detail on the model meant that I didn't get the same outcome as I would on a painter model and the skin was too dark.

I therefore went back with some more drybrushing and washes to achieve a more flesh colour, suggesting that although stitched together, the different parts were somehow still alive and have some degree of consciousness of what gas happened to them.

And here are the new models added to my existing forces. I'm really pleased with how this faction is turning out and it's rapidly becoming my favourite.

I'm also pleased that given my initial misgivings regarding some of the representations in the early models (notably the Rashaar Slaves) this collection of scientists is primarily led by women with only minimal objectification in the miniature design.

Well played TTCombat.

Acquired: 6

Painted: 9

Lead Mountain: 758

What Can Men Do Against Such Reckless Numbers?

So, a new year and a new assault on the Lead Mountain, only this time, there's a slight problem.

More on that later.

For now, look! Men of Rohan!

Not an especially exciting start to the new year, but I'm still taking part in Arbitor Ian's Tale of Four Hobbits and these are more of my pseudo Men of the West list that currently includes Aragorn. Legolas and these five.

Mind you, that does make over 400 points out of 500 because Aragorn the King is a beefy boy.

I've gone with Men of Rohan as that's what I had lying around after my second hand purchases several years ago. I still have a few more archers from those lots as there always seemed to be more archers than were necessary...or allowed, with a 33% limit.

I've stuck with the same rather uninspiring colour palette I originally used simply to make these models fit in with the rest.

One of the reasons these models were likely out was due to damage. Both of these two required a bit of fixing up to deal with a bent sword and a broken spear.

Unfortunately, was not able to do anything about the somewhat static poses and large flat areas where the spear meets the cloak.

I have, however, done something about the lack of a banner in my Rohirrim with this very simple conversion: a hand swap, a metal spear and a Wood Elf pennant did the trick.

I have had a go at free-handing a sun motif on the banner. It's not amazing, but it's not awful either. I'm never fond of free-handing, but this is fine.

Anyway, onto the other issue.

I mentioned before Christmas that I wanted to do a recount of my unpainted miniatures as I was sure that over the last couple of years, there have almost certainly been accounting errors and I wanted to see how realistic my running total of 240 actually is.

And so I got everything out. All of it. We'll apart from some Carnevale miniatures I was undercoating and some Dropzone Commander models I forgot about, but almost all of it.

It turns out my numbers were wrong.

Quite a bit wrong.

My current total is, minus the Rohirrim I've painted, 756.

There are several reasons for this disparity:

1) I've included boardgames like Star Saga, which contains 71 minis, that I had intended to sell but have recently changed my mind about.

2) I actually counted things in my bits box which I didn't last time, and I think I've been deducting painted models from bits box from the overall total.

3) When I received the motherload from Will, there are things that were up for sale that aren't now.

4) I've counted things like Flames of War tank crew that aren't getting used unless I buy more tanks...which I won't.

5) I clearly can't count.

Despite the shock this has induced, I have actually been able to tidy things up and get a better handle on what I have. I already have plans for how to use models, and I've tacitly decided to part company with a fair chunk of it.

Let's see how we get on.

Acquired: 0

Painted: 5

Lead Mountain: 756...good grief!