WITH LASER AND CHAINSAW

FOR EMPIRE OR ANARCHY

Groundside combat in a far flung future

GROUND COMBAT WITH DIRTSIDE II

     "TARGET ACQUIRED"           

      "MISSILE HOMING"                                       

  "PENETRATION ACHIEVED"        CATALOGUE 

                              "DEAD 'UN! NEW TARGET"   

                                                   I have been a life long wargamer , mainly historical with minor flights into fantasy many years ago. That old interest in sc-fi lingered on however. I enjoyed the 40k fluff but warhammer 40k never really interested me. It was just too much for me to get to grips with what seems skirmishing with nuclear weapons.. The model designs however were superb, particularly the space marines. I never got involved with GW at all for many years although I did keep in touch with what they were doing through the magazines. At the same time I was heavily into ultra modern gaming with 1/300 or 6mm figures. As a result of some untimely wars in which real people die and sometimes are known personally or even friends, the ultra modern scene can start to be uncomfortable.. At least that's how it affected me. Then one fine day an impulse buy found me as the proud owner of Adeptus Titanicus. Now this was a well thought out game in which huge fighting machines crewed by intrepid operators fought across the landscape of ruined planets 40,000 years from now.. Ok people still died but it felt much more remote. I liked it. Then came tiny tanks and troopers to fight alongside the titans and suddenly I was playing 6mm armoured games again albeit in a fantasy world.. Very satisfying. I never unfortunately came to terms with Games workshops alien cultures so my games remained strictly human and involved imperial troopers and marines against rebel troopers. Basically the route that Golgotha would take. Gradually other interests came and went and somewhere in the process I moved from England to Spain. In the move a box full of figures found its way to the store in the garage,   

                          Golgotha had just gotten underway when I realised I needed some rules for settling planetary combats so armed with a torch and a feather duster I attacked the spider ridden shelves in the corner of the garage, looking for that elusive box with the rules sets that I just knew had to be there.. After several hours of oohs and ahhs opening boxes of figures I had totally forgotten I owned , I opened a box and there they were. My titans!! I suppose its what you call a Condor moment.  I knew that abstract solutions were no longer possible.  The fate of planets would be settled by these tiny terrors . Out came the box. Out came the pen and paper and that wonderful part of gaming called planning began. Strange isn't it ??. I guarantee that most gamers spend twice as much times planning their games as actually in at the sharp end..    

                          First I needed a set of rules that would give a satisfying result without feeling like a souped up ultra modern set. Epic was tried and discarded. Not detailed but to complicated.. Hard to explain just the way it felt.. Anyway to cut a long story short, whilst visiting a wargames show in the UK I spotted a set of rules written by Jon Tuffley and Mike Elliot. Now Mike I knew from way back in the days of wargaming with Airfix figures.. Yeah that long. He had always been an inventive sort so I picked up a set to read.. The rule set was Dirtside II and my problem was solved. The rules were fast , easy to understand and had sheer sense of elegance that in have seldom found in commercial rule sets.

                         Next I worked on unit organisation.. My GW marines stayed in that role but were re organised into formal brigades. The imperial guard became planetary defence forces. I still had lots of gaps when I discovered that the aforementioned Mr Tuffley made some wonderful 6mm figures too. I spent a bit on separate packs and mixed and matched . I also did lots of weapon and head swapping too . Finally the Ground Zero Games figures became the Imperial guard grunts. One of the packs included some remarkable figs that I quickly earmarked for the naval marine and that was that. My armies were organised and equipped and the battles began.. The following pages include the unit organisations, pictures of the troops and some shots of their equipment.