I have pulled together a selection of photos from the GW (Games Workshop) Battlecars range. Battlecars is a tabletop board game which can be played with 6mm scale miniatures, which are sadly no longer produced by Games Workshop. It was an 80’s classic game from Ian Livingstone and has stood up to the test of time. The models can be picked up on ebay at over £1 a model and often fetch a lot more, I spotted one auction at around $30 for only 5 of the tiny cars. Big money for the size of each 6mm model! You can also usually find the rules on ebay which can cost up to £40.
Games Workshop also produced a car game called Dark Future which was released with plastic cars in Matchbox scale (20mm). Dark Future was based on a track rather than a free-form city area used in Battlecars. I prefer the smaller scale and mechanics of Battlecars but Dark Future was a fun game to play and allowed for more detail of weapons on the cars.
There are alternatives to using the sweet little 6mm cars and you can use Micromachines, Hotwheels and Matchbox cars. This will require you to scale up the game board which would be easy to do with a few bits of cardboard and a steady hand. Battlecars had an expansion called Battlebikes and some of these are pictured in the gallery images. The trucks were released as models but no rules where ever put together for them, which is something our group in Crawley are now working on and we have the prototype rules ready for testing.
The game itself is great fun with simple rules for the use of a mix of weapons and templates to cover your damage and the location of ammo. Ramming is great fun and a well played game can lead you into some fun scenes of auto-carnage. You can read about the board game in detail here Battlecars at Boardgamegeek .
To view the full collection of painted models in full painted colour click here: Gallery of Battlecars
One of our local gamers Kevin has pulled together a quick reference sheet for a Necromunda ganger squad in Excel. You can easily update cells with WS (Weapon Skill) and all other game stats. Please feel free to download a copy and use for your house gang. File is a Zip file containing an XLS sheet.
Download: Necromunda Gang XLS Sheet (594)
I have recently finished painting a Hasslefree 28mm Miniature called Sebastian. I like his old stance which is stooped and makes for an interesting character. I am currently using him as a Paladin figure in a D&D game and he matches my 55 year old character well. The figure itself was very clean and needed only very minor work to clip and sand off any extra bits of flash.
I started with a base of black undercoat and then used new Games Workshop foundation paints for the initial colour layers. The sqaure base is a metal one from Freebooter and the Shield is from a Confrontation set which I added to match my D&D character who uses a shield. I mounted Sebastian in the metal base with Green Stuff and used sand to texture the base before painting.
The armor is painted to look old in grey and I rushed it a bit so the result is not exactly a “fine blend”. It looks good enough to game with and I finished the model with an enamel gloss varnish followed by a matte dull coat of varnish.
Follow this link to view more close up photos.
You can find the Sebastian Knight figure to purchase on the Hasslefree web site.
Dusted off my old copy of Games Workshop Necromunda for a game this last week. Managed a short skirmish between a Delaque (sneaky guys in long jackets) and Escher gang (Punk Girlz) . Both local gamers Agent of Ping and Kevin joined the game and discovered quickly how easy it is to start jamming the unreliable weapons used in the Underhive. It was interesting how, even with a Heavy Plasma carried by the Escher Ganger “Candy” it was difficult for the house to bring any arms to bear on the sneaky Delaque.
You can view more pictures of the game over in the gallery here: Necromunda Game May 2007.