This Quar's War take 2

The shop is closed this week as well, but Mrs. Rabbitman is back to work, so I spent Monday indulgently rolling dice and pushing Quar around to do another playtest of This Quar's War.

Pretty much the same table as last time. Objectives remained the same; capture more buildings than the other side.

New tractors needed to be on the table. So both sides got two to try out the tractor rules better.

I also decided to try the Aerocraft rules, because why not?

Royalist set up. Both sides put their tractors on this more open side of the table

Crusader squad advancing 

PPCLI on the Royalist left

Coftyrans get into the village

Long range duel between tractors. Hopefully I gave some good input. I found the damage tables a bit too crunchy and inconsequential. After multiple hits with the same damage result, I decided that the tractor in the foreground would have bailed out.

M3b HMG team locks down the right flank. I'm still trying to figure out how the Zone of Effect rules work.

Lunch break!

The Coftyran HMG chewed up a Crusader squad advancing on the village, so I brought in an airstrike, because I could. 

I let the HMG do AA fire, damaging the Kite, but still taking a casualty

Baeliog drops some HE on a squad

Squad with attached LMG team gets chopped up badly by some good rhyfle fire from across the street

The Kite is dropping a bomb on the Royalists sheltering in the Huvi pen. Meanwhile the Baeliog finally blows up a Chyweetl

So that's my 21st (?) game of the year. Hopefully my feedback will be useful to the game writers.

The Holiday Plague made a counterattack today. So no painting or dice rolling. Midgard finally arrived and too sick to do anything with it.

Boo.

Baeliog Heavy Gun Tractors

They're big. They're goofy looking.

They're lumbering, inelegant bricks that look like a cross between a KV-2 and an Excavator. 

And they're very iconic to the Quar aesthetic. I didn't really like them at first, and if I'd had to chose for reasons of economy, I would have stuck with the Alitheans. But like a lot of Quar things, they start to grow on you, and thanks to Don's printer, I don't have to chose.

So now I have a troop of three. I tell myself it is so I can run games of What A Tractor! at conventions. Or maybe that's just the megalomania. 

I mean, I may as well get my money's worth out of the Tribe subscription. Right?

I also have nine dismounted crew. Three sets each of three figures. One with a wrench. One with a pistol, and one with a Bogen automatic rifle. 

The Baeliog has a crew of seven.  Hopefully I won't have too many bailed out at the same time. 

The decals are from the Tiger tank model that provided the chassis for the Iron Keep. 

The big exposed engine puzzled me at first. But that's me thinking like a 21st century human, with ideas of efficiency, and progress, and Maneuver Warfare and Main Battle Tanks.

I think Quar built their gun tractors with siege warfare in mind, not maneuver warfare. The Baeliog certainly started service during the Long War, when sieges were more common. The vehicle is an armoured conveyance to get a gun within range of the enemy's fortifications. Fire power, not Shock Action.

Disengaging the drive to rotate the turret is fine, if you're parked in an entrenchment and firing at a fortress. The guns being high in the turrets also fits that too. They aren't taking hull down on reverse slopes so much as poking up above walls of sandbags. And if you're in a dug out pit, then the engine being exposed isn't an issue, you've got the tractor pit to protect it. You need the armour at the front.

These are the last pieces for 2024. Everything else is waiting to be assembled and primed.

2024 Retrospective: the Year of the Quar, and 3d Printing

First pieces of the year. 3d printed haystacks. An innocuous foreshadowing of the year to come!

This year started like any other. Grand ideas to paint more and play more. I certainly painted a lot of Quar. Which was my only real goal according to last year's recap. So, yay me!

Photo highlights follow in chronological order, rather than thematically grouped.

3d printed Toonkrieg Centurion as a Baeliog proxy

Crusader cavalry 

I love their goofy mounts

Spontaneously made a bunch of WW1 themed terrain for them. Easy enough, old CDs, hot glue, broken sticks, sand.

Coftyran cavalry 

Metal character 

Metal characters 

3d printed Tractors. Italian Fiat 2000 tanks repurposed for Quar

The miracle of 3d printing is that a lot of obscure experimental or interwar designs are available now. Within 30 minutes of me seeing this, Don had sourced an stl and had two printing.

Last metal Quar painted in April

I just like the character of the metal sculpts more.

Using "Cocking Up the Mud & the Blood"

Plastic Quar arrived in May. The Medic was probably my best conversion.

Coftyran "bombers"

Spalgen Anti-tractor torpedoes, which can be rifle grenade proxies for WW1.

Crusader "bombers"

Made him an NCO by the gesturing 

Some Napoleonics while waiting for more Quar 

1950s Mantovia took off too 3d printed

Tartarian armour. The project is over 90% 3d printed.

 

A THIRD Quar army, because why not? The PPCLI (Princess P'trysha of Collysh's Lifeguard Infantry). Really leaned into the whimsical part of Quar with this mob.

Coftyran Trench Raiders 

A FOURTH Quar army! Because scratch building some Partisans was goofy fun.

Proper Quar Tractors arrive too, bumping the proxies out of the way.

Even the goofy football shaped Chyweethl has gotten my affection 

Quar Master-Yawdryl running on anger, caffeine, and sarcasm. 

RAFM priest to inspire the troops in Sharp Practice 

More Sharp Practice inspiration. The last metal figures painted in the year. Ironically, metal castings of 3d prints. But everything painted in the last half of the year was either plastic or 3d printed.

Mantovia and Tartaria get infantry. Again 3d printed. I spray primed these olive green, so I felt like I was painting my old Airfix figures! 

Trenches were on the table a lot. Sometimes the fighting even got into them.

I tried reskinning Brecourt Manor with Quar. Played it twice. Once with Chain of Command and once with Xenos Rampant. 

Brequar Manor, 1st playtest. Added another gun position for the 2nd.

Misprinted turrets get disguised with camouflage netting

Took my Quar on a couple of road trips too.

Big game with the boys at Rico's in June

The cavalry finally charged each other at the Mad Padre's house in August. A nice swirling melee that took three turns to resolve. 

Oldest friend Chris came for a game in October

Seven Days to the River Rhine. Centurions didn't fair so well against T72s.

Quar terrain and farm animals 

More Cold War. Solo I Ain't Been Shot Mum!

Playtesting a draft of This Quar's War 

So, yeah, it's been a very Quar-centric year. I did play other games. General d'Armee, and some Seven Years War using General d'Armee with Scott. Finally played some Blücher at KEGSCon. Some more SYW using Honours of War, and some Longstreet, and even a hex and counter game with the Mad Padre. Finishing and then starting another Play By E-Mail Napoleonic campaign. A couple of Dan's games set in odd corners of history. The new Centurions and T54s got two games in using two different rules. The Quar went on 3 road trips, including their first convention appearance. I've run the Quar with five different rules: Xenos Rampant, Chain of Command, Quar of Command (Quar activation with CoC mechanics), Mud & the Blood (for Chain of Command), and This Quar's War. So 20 games of various kinds all told. Not bad, more than 1 a month. And more than last year! Again, yay me!

I've got the parts to assemble a FIFTH Quar faction. The Crusade aligned Toulmoreans. Their hats make me think of Australian bush hats for some reason, so I'm going to try and build them as a dedicated opponent for the SIXTH Quar faction, the bayou dwelling Gloam-Hyyn (who are being printed by Don at time of writing). Perhaps with these I'll scratch my occasional itch for Burma and Pacific campaign games.

Since having no real plan seemed to work this year, I'll do it again next year! Wargames Atlantic and Zombiesmith are naturally being very close mouthed about plans, except that a plastic set for every faction is supposed to be out by the end of 2025. (So read, summer-fall 2026.) And plans are underway to expand to the big battle This Quar's War. Plastic Crusader and Coftyran Command and "Specialist" sets are already announced and in development. Although what they mean by "Specialist" is anyone's guess. So it's hard to make plans for building forces really. 

So I'll work on Toulmore, finish up the PPCLI (the Quar in the pink, wearing bicornes), and work on the Gloam-Hyyn when they arrive, and then see what's next. The desert dwelling Kryst, and Partisans would be fun. Other established factions don't excite me (yet). So unless something really cool comes out for an as yet undeveloped country on the map of Alwyd, my friends might be seeing me painting more of other things. I have some more vehicles and infantry for Mantovia and Tartaria to work on. And once Midgard arrives, I'll start playing that, and probably get excited to finally finish my Conqueror Model Dwarves.

We'll see. 

As always, watch this space!