A few months ago I picked up a cheap copy of AVP second edition (mostly so I could paint some colonial Marines), but during a gaming sesh with my group, myself and my friend Iain, started chatting about how cool it would be to mix up some Xenomorphs in IA. Cue a few weeks later and a mad creative weekend where I took the idea and ran with it, I finally came up with a horde mode mixing the 2 games and Minis.

We finally got to play a few weeks ago, and now I've found the time to throw up the assets and images of the game we played. The group all found it more or less balanced and really enjoyed themselves, so I will be looking at creating a few more scenarios down the line.

The basic set-up is a walk through the map to the "wave trigger". Once going, I set 6 waves of escalating difficulty and an upgrade and XP system for the 4 Trooper heroes after each wave. The standard mechanic for 1 strain for movement remains as well as a 1 strain for "Knock-back" (knock back an enemy figure one space - VERY handy to avoid that horrible acid blood when a Xeno dies!).

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Horde Mission 1: "The Vector"
(Full narrative open office file attached to post)

“The Imperial Light Crusier Vector went dark 6 days ago after intercepting an adrift cargo freighter in the far outer rim, near unknown space. All attempts to contact the ship have failed. We might have just lost crew of over two hundred, so your
squad will be going in to recon the situation before we launch a full boarding party.

Get to the bridge, get the ship operational again and find out what the **** is going on. gear up and get moving troopers!”

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Alpha Squad:

Classes: Leader, Elite, Heavy and Medic

Turret takes one action to set-up

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The Aliens:

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The Map:

Figures icons indicate hostile population on map at start. Alien icons indicate rough wave placements as waves start (which can vary due to player movement through map as necessary).

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The Waves:

Waves increase once all aliens in a wave are killed, each wave will activate as a "round" until all units (alien and trooper) have activated. (Trooper > alien group > Trooper and so on). All aliens will move in and engage, all aliens must be killed or penalties for slowplay (i.e. leaving one alien alive to get out early). Once a wave is killed an upgrade / XP skill buy stage is given to the troopers.

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The Upgrades:

Tier 1:

Tier 2:



Our Playthrough:

Having boarded and searched the ship (obtaining caches of useful items and a deploy-able turret sentry), the troopers reach the bridge and start the Vectors engines, here come the Xenos...


The Xenos strike the bridge with frightening speed and agility.


The troopers having fought back the initial wave at the bridge head through the upper corridor back the the hangar, the Xenos pouncing and emerging from air vents with the leading Heavy taking considerable damage and then falling back to his comrades with the sentry covering him.

The troopers having regrouped start dealing some heavy damage and pushing back the Xeno menace. The medic dishing out some much needed healing.


One of the between wave upgrade stages, the choice of spending xp on weapon upgrades or character skills


The heavy now healed up pushes forward again to set-up the sentry in a new position.


The sentry now set-up in a better position, starts dealing an impressive amount of damage to the swarming horde in the corridor but finally gets destroyed in the process, but buying time for the group to form up and push the Xenos back


Time to go! The heavily wounded troops make a break for extraction under cover from the shuttles guards (NPCs).

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So overall, fairly well balanced, and everyone had fun, I kept the enemy of the game secret as best as possible (only Iain knowing what was coming) and was met with grins by all (all massive Alien and Star Wars fans). Great fun, a lil bit of DMing here and there to keep things going, hope to play again at some point, and create some more missions. But first I wanna get Return to Hoth going. Hope you enjoyed reading about my mad creation. Rough narrative attachment is below.

HORDE NARRATIVE.odt

Really nice! great idea. I remember having an Alien turn up in a Cyberpung RPG once but this is alot more visual!

Thanks, we all nerded out hard and had a good time with this

Just thought I'd try some random stuff while my group tries to find a good sync with one of our friends new work schedule, so created a couple of things to fill the gap before next main campaign.

Chopper:
HotE turned up yesterday, so I thought I better have at least a crack at my backlog, been a busy few months, but had time to paint up Chopper lastnight. He's become one of my favourite rebels characters, he's a total d*ck, and occasional basass!

- Hoth campaign is set for next weekend, my lil brother coming down to fill one of the spots.
- Looking forward to painting Maul, gonna be a challenge, but bring it on.
- Less looking forward to painting and inking another walker (so much mess last time!)

Chooper looks good - are you planning on adding a few scratches and subtle grimy streaks, because these would give the mini a lot of character.

I may go back at some point, but felt a grimy nuln wash would do for now

I really wanna crack on with Maul today, but the weather is saying no (to priming outside).

Great work on the miniatures as well as your custom mash/up!

I really love the custom cards you have made up for your troops as well as the rewards cards. Where did you get the templates, if you don't mind me asking.

Your Chopper is top notch. I posted some new pics on my thread. I did an X-Wing paint scheme on an Alliance Smuggler that converts nicely to a Wedge Antilles and I gave Biv a piece of Scarif Trooper armor.

2 hours ago, C3POFETT said:

Great work on the miniatures as well as your custom mash/up!

I really love the custom cards you have made up for your troops as well as the rewards cards. Where did you get the templates, if you don't mind me asking.

Your Chopper is top notch. I posted some new pics on my thread. I did an X-Wing paint scheme on an Alliance Smuggler that converts nicely to a Wedge Antilles and I gave Biv a piece of Scarif Trooper armor.

I cut them up from Hero cards, colour corrected where necessary, and found some suitable stormtrooper illustrations online. Same or similar fonts and just went for it.
I'm a graphic designer by trade, so I don't do things be halfs! ha.

I can pass you on some layered psd files if they would come in handy

oh yes that would come in handy. I wanted to do large character cards for Boss Fixer Scorch and Sev from Republic Commando. I was working on a story line based on the Death Trooper novel. Zombie plague on abandoned Space Station. That would fit in my Death Star 3-D map I am building.

The Emperor :
I finally painted something! It's been a mad few months with work and helping my other half set-up her business, (plus Battlefront 2 took over my free time for a good month or 2!), but finally got round to finishing off my first figure from Heart of Empire. I base coated ole Palps a couple of months ago, but got the painting bug this weekend and finished him off. Thought I'd try to capture his fingers summoning lighting and give it some OSL to help give it some colour.

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- Hoth campaign is still in progress (due to work commitment / scheduling with players), but hoping to crack on again soon).

(UPDATE: Image reshot with new backdrop)

Nice! Love your minis! Any chance that you might be getting legion?

Cheers Jabby.

I did think about getting Legion, but I'm not so interested in competitive gaming these days, I was BIG into Armada back in 2016, but IA took over due to its narratives / campaigns (which my gaming group can all get in on and enjoy).

Was tempted (by Legion) just for the minis, but I've got enough of a queue built up due to my months long painting hiatus!

Woohoo, some impulse buys arrived today (Bossk and General Sorin (who I intend to turn into "Zero Hour"ground invasion style Thrawn, which I have seen done before, and loved).

- Also bought some Infinity decals to add some markings, as well as some inkjet decal paper to create custom Imperial and Rebel markings and logos, and just ordered a set of 1-10mm hollow hole punches to make cutting out the circular markings a bit easier.

- I sat down the other day to do the HotE riot troopers, but couldn't feel the drive to factory line yet more stormtroopers! So think I will try to do Sorin/Thrawn this saturday arvo (who I intend to use to replace Sorin's place in the Hoth campaign - picking back up on Saturday eve - as he's a lot more of an interesting character!)

General Sorin / Grand Admiral Thrawn :
Sorin arrived this week, so spent this afternoon painting him up in the style of Grand Admiral Thrawn in ground assault gear (ala "Rebels - Zero Hour Part 2"). So I now have an early career (Elite officer) and Grand Admiral version of Thrawn . Decided to go or light grey body armour and dark grey helmet (instead of white) as it feels a bit more interesting than just white all over. Still need to varnish and then gloss the google visor, but wanted to snap a pic before I pack him up for tonight game (picking up RtoH in a couple of hours, first IA campaign game since - checks - November! game on!).

(UPDATE: Photo Re-shot (on a Star Destroyer bridge, had to!).

Wow. He's really cool looking. Great work sanchez, once again.

On 1/17/2018 at 11:42 AM, 54NCH32 said:

Cheers Jabby.

I did think about getting Legion, but I'm not so interested in competitive gaming these days, I was BIG into Armada back in 2016, but IA took over due to its narratives / campaigns (which my gaming group can all get in on and enjoy).

Was tempted (by Legion) just for the minis, but I've got enough of a queue built up due to my months long painting hiatus!

Great job as always. Your backgrounds really make your figures stand out. I can totally understand about Battlefront 2 taking precedence over painting.

I bought 2 sets of HotE and thought of painting 8 more Stormtroopers has put me off as well.

I actually have given in to the idea of buying Legion as I have enjoyed building 3-D maps for Imperial Assault custom skirmishes and I really like the idea of taking the "grid" off the map. Of course my biggest reason was to finally have a "Bespin" Luke Skywalker. Unfortunately he is too large to just purchase second hand and add to Imperial Assault.

At first my thought was to buy just the movement templates and create a rule set using the Imperial Assault figures because I already own over 200 Imperial Assault figures not including over 40 WotC figures I brought into the fold and adjusting the movement traits for them to work with the templates. I guess creating a Legion/Imperial Assault hybrid taking full advantage of open movement in a 3-D environment.

Nice, and cheers. Battlefront is now on a bit of a back burner, as I've got the painting bug back now.

I finished off my 4 Riots last night, used a new wash mix to speed things up, but still keep them looking clean, with minimal
highlighting, came out well, and they were fairly fun to do, no hidden chest areas etc, like the core set troopers! (argh).
Also threw on a few transfers (although my homemade ones, failed).

Just weighing up how I wanna do the Sentries at the mo, (with a primed Darth Maul staring at me from the paint queue). Printed a few new backdrops off today, so I'm gonna reshoot Emperor, Thrawn and these guys.

Riot Troopers:
Ok, so these guys weren't as bad as I thought they'd be, they were much easier than the core troopers (no tricky to get to areas). I used a new mix wash mix of 50/50 Nuln /Lahmain, so they were quick and came out fairly clean and uniform. I washed straight over white primer, then went back over in places with a pin wash on some of the helmet and armour lines.

My homemade transfer unfortunately failed, don't think I sealed them well enough, and the paper was quite weak, so ended up using some Infinity tranfers I bought. Would have been nice to have the Empire cog on there, but I found and used some that looked like they would fit (and my fluff rationale is its some kind of Coruscant City Guard symbol) Also added an additional marking for the Elites.

Some blaster and riot marks (flicks, dry brushing and actual scalpel cuts) here and there to add some battle damage. Plus some subtle fading on the riot batons.

Really happy how these guys came out, and I'm of the mind that I don't want to gloss these guys, I may even go back and matt varnish spray my previous troopers.

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- Sentry Droids are in final stages
- Reshot some images (Emperor, Thrawn and HK's) and updated links in previous posts.
- Bad weather today (so no priming on the rest of my queue), so looks like maul will be up next! Or Hera! Argh

These look very cool. I like the detail of the orange afterglow on some of the blastermarks on their shields! These new sculpts they use for troopers since Terro are clean at last and so much more fun to paint compared to the troopers in the core box or in the Stormtrooper Villain Pack, both of which need a lot of cleaning-up, smoothening surfaces etc...

Great work!

11 minutes ago, Fourtytwo said:

These look very cool. I like the detail of the orange afterglow on some of the blastermarks on their shields! These new sculpts they use for troopers since Terro are clean at last and so much more fun to paint compared to the troopers in the core box or in the Stormtrooper Villain Pack, both of which need a lot of cleaning-up, smoothening surfaces etc...

Great work!

Cheers! Yes, the sculpts are definitely a lot cleaner and more defined now, I had one of my core troopers for reference as I was painting and the difference is miles apart (in sculpt, as well as my painting ha!)

Update:

Reshot some of my images this morning, I printed out some new backdrops at work to replace the ones I used - I had just grabbed what I had to hand at home.

Updated the links on:

- Emperor (Throne Room)
- Thrawn (Star Destroyer bridge)
- HKs(from a while ago (was never happy with their final shot, have relinked below).

Sentry Droids:
These guys were fun. Was going to just go all metal, but did a quick mock up in photoshop to see how I could apply some black in there and went with it. Took a while, but really pleased how they came out. I ummed and arred about doing some full on highlight, but they're ready for the table so thats good enough for me, highlighting I'll leave for heros!

Those droids look fantastic! Hopefully you don't mind that I'll probably be coming back here to crib some ideas when it comes time to do my own

1 hour ago, ManateeX said:

Those droids look fantastic! Hopefully you don't mind that I'll probably be coming back here to crib some ideas when it comes time to do my own

cheers, no worries, crib away mate

Bossk :
Picked this guy up a few weeks ago (had to make a £20 order, so grabbed him to make the total), but a fun one to paint, the yellow wash was very satisfying ha!, and took my time trying to pin wash his straps. Made him a bit greener than usual, as I wanted a real contrast to the yellow jump suit. Picked up Jabbas Realm recently, so may run him and the Grand Inquisitor in a Nemesis deck.



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- Currently working on Jarrod today. More fun with some bright lush oranges on his sash.
- Picked some of these up this week, only £14, but worth every penny so far...