Merry Xmas

Antenna for AT-43. Final Version

Some time ago I posted about a small project for AT-43, a communication antenna for satellite broad casting.

The original idea was to use the antenna for civilian use, mainly the Ava Frontline News Network (AFNN), a News Agency of the Frontline conceived by me, but I was (I am) having problems with the logo.

In the other post, there were two antennas, one was for me, as Red Block player and the second one was for a friend of me which usually plays UNA and who upon seeing the antenna suggested to use a camouflage pattern to paint it.

This Final Version of my antenna is based on his idea.

Hope you like it :D

 

  

 

UNA wiped out

Today we play the mission 5 of the Rule Book of AT-43, called Landing !

This picture is not from our game, but from the net. I put it here only to be able to show you the sep up of the game.

The defender gets to deploy in the blue indicated zone and the attacker arrives to the battlefield by the opposite side which constitutes the access zone.

The Victory Points for the attacker are 2 VPs for every AFV unit which cross the battlefield and 5 VPs for every infantry unit.

The defender gets 1 VP for controlling the points A, B, D, E and 2 VPs by controlling the points C, F, G.

There are also two neutral access zones on the side of the defender, just on the border of the battlefield behind points F and G. Also two drop points are present, one between the points A and B and the other one between the points D and E, both of them on the deployment zone of the defender.

The attacker gets 1500 APs as assault force and 500 APs as reinforcement and the defender 1000 APs assault and 1000 APs reinforcement.

The reinforcement points are given by controlling the containers and nano generators (both players) and to the attacker also for capturing them.

This mission can be played in the context of the Damocles campaign as secondary mission for the Phase 1 of the operation. In that case, the Karmans and the Red Block are the attacker and the UNA and the Therians are the defender.

It was our first contact with Damocles and the results were a bit disappointing as my UNA opponent was not really able to prepare the game in advance due to professional obligations and his army list was not suited for the battle.

The Red Block Army List was Frontline:

Assault (1500 APs)

8 RPG Soldaty (Colonel, Medic, Engineer, MGauss) [225 APS]

3 RPG Kolossus (Sergeant) [435 APs]

1 Molot (Sergeant) [240 APS]

1 Molot (Sergeant) [240 APS]

1 Sierp [200 APS]

Propaganda

Reinforcement (500 RPs)

6 Spetsnatz Kommandos (2 Medics, Rocket launcher) [175 RPs]

3 Dragonov Groupa A (3 ATGauss Gun) [125 RPS]

1 Sierp [200 APS]

I do not have the UNA list but it was M.Ind, with Stark as Colonel in an infantry unit of Steel Troopers, a Lancelot, a Defender Kobra, 2 Snippers and a support unit with 2 Volcano MG in the assault force.

Red Block authority was 7, UNA authority was 5.

Before we determined anything, we rolled a dice for cosmic hazards but neither Magnetic Disturbances nor Meteor Shower. Damocles started without Special Effects :D

UNA decides to use 6 LPs to increase his roll for initiative, but gets twice a 1, wherein Red Block gets a 5, and therefore it is a tie. As far as we know the situation is not defined in the rules, but we always ruled that the higher authority wins, in this case the Red Block which decides to let UNA move first.

Round 1

1.- The 8 Steel Troopers with Colonel Stark leading them deploy close to the central nanogenerator, controlling it, together with the container and the victory point C, taking cover and over watching the movements of the enemy.

1.- A Red Block Molot enters the battlefield and fires its flamers on Stark and his boys. The quick intervention of the Medics is not enough to avoid the dead of one soldier. Its presence contests the control of victory point C.

2.- A UNA Lancelot deploys and moves between points B and C to try to avoid the future movement of the Red Block AFVs into the UNA controlled area and over watch the Red Block further movements.

2.- Another Molot enters the fight and moving close to its brother calls dead on the Steel Troopers, only 3 of the original imperialist fighters survive; one of them, Colonel Stark.

3.- UNA decides to mobilise its biggest AFV of the evening and a Kobra Defender try to block the other access to the UNA side of the battle and fires its missiles on the Molots, without any effect.

3.- The RPG Kolossus blitz into the action and the Lancelot decides to fire its grenade launchers on them. Their thick armour protects them from the salvo but the lack of gyroscopes send them to the ground. However the two salvos of their RPGs manage to destroy the Defender in a big explosion of fire and molten metal.

4.- Two snipers take position on the victory point G and shoot the Sergeant of the RPG Kolossus dead !

4.- The Molot Sergeant calls an Artillery Strike over the Lancelot which does not seems to do any damage to the enemy AFV. Upon arrival, a Sierp opens fire and kills the two snipers. Together with the two Molots, they deny the defender the control of the victory point C.

5.- The two Star Troopers of the Volcano MG support team are deployed on victory point F.

5.- The Red Block Propaganda helps the RPG Kolossus to come back to their feet.

6.- The RPG Soldaty move behind the container, on the further side of the battlefield.

UNA concedes the game and we spent the next half hour discussing the game ;D

My opponent was of the opinion that the scenario is a bit unfair for the defender, specially as the UNA is not able to control objectives with its AFVs and therefore they need infantry, a lot of infantry, which on the other side is expensive and quite weak. 1000 APs as assault force for the defender is maybe not enough for the UNA to have anything really good on the board.

The true is that the Red Block was having the supremacy directly since the beginning of the battle, maybe due to a good Army List (I hope so) and the lack of preparation of the UNA, but also maybe to those 500 APs point difference as after the destruction of the Defender, there was nothing on the board able to stop my RPG Kolossus and my AFVs.

Next time I would like to play the defender, I think the Red Block cloud probably do better than the UNA as Frontline allows the AFVs to control objectives and even if some Red Block infantry units are not so expensive but also very week, the Kolossus have a very good armour and are still affordable.

Note on Artillery Strike: before the battle we got the impression that Artillery Strikes in Damocles were quite powerful, but as it was called only once and targeted not into an infantry unit but into a AFV, I can not give a honest opinion about the particular. Maybe next time.

Easy tokens for AT-43

For AT-43 there are some tokens needed to indicate either the special status of your units (disorganised) or the fact that they are performing a "combat drill" (for example, take cover). Also the Leadership Points (LPs), Victory Points (VPs) and Reinforcement Points (RPs) are represented by tokens.

As far as I know the only company which produces tokens with the "official" symbols of the game to represent this situations is GF9.
However, the list of tokens provided with one box is quite limited as some tokens are barely present and others can be over expressed:

AT-43 Token Set
1 – “Knee to the ground!” drill marker
2 – “Take cover!” drill markers
2 - “Overwatch!” drill markers
2 - “Split fire!” drill markers
1 - “Disorganized” status marker
10 - Leadership point markers
1 - Reinforcement points marker “25”
1 - Reinforcement points marker “50”
1 - Reinforcement points marker “100”
1 - Victory point marker “1”
1 - Victory points marker “3”
1 - Victory points marker “5”

For this reason, a lot of people are producing their own tokens.

This is the way I did it.

First I printed the official tokens on white paper with a colour printer.

Then I cut 2.1 cm squares of hard plastic sheet, the one which is used as first hard cover in office bounded reports or memoranda.

Then I glued the squares on the white paper sheet on the printed tokens with normal transparent glue (on the centre of the picture).

Then I just cut the circles with scissors and for the base I used this self adhesive black protectors for the bottom part of the legs of chairs and sofas (on the right side of the picture). They are 2 cm big, soft in one side and adhesive on the other.

The tricky part was to cut the circles with the scissor as any deviation is very easy to spot and ruins the effect.

The final tokens are on the left side of the picture.

They look great, oder?

Communication Antenna for AT-43

My first experiment of creating some element for our AT-43 games :D

The idea came to my thinking about the civil engineers introduced with the Frostbite Campaign. I was thinking that those guys needed for sure a way to transmit information to the base station when they were there, outside, exploring that frozen planet.

The materials I used are very simple:

A bottle of Evian water (will the surface of the antenna), a pair of plastic spoons for coffee, and an office clip.

The clip will become the supporting legs of the antenna, the coffee spoons the tip of the antenna and that is pretty much everything.

From the lower part of the plastic bottle and with the help of a cutter, we remove the oval shape. The ergonomic profile looks very nice once you take it out of context as antenna shape.

We also cut the lower part of the two coffee spoons to make out the tip of the antenna.

Now we glue the two white plastic pieces together and to the oval shape and the antenna is becoming more evident.

After removing the black metallic piece of the office clip, we glue the two silver pieces together with a bunch of liquid hot glue, the kind you easily burn your fingers with ;D

And finally, we glue the antenna on top of the supporting legs with more liquid hot glue.

In the picture you can see one example without black primer and another one already with it.

The final painting is not yet available as I still did not decide how to do it ;)
Mi actual options are some Red Block emblems, or just military camouflage pattern.