Jungle Fever (A MERCS Three-Way)

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MERCS - After my regular Malifaux Demo night, a few of the guys stuck around to play some MERCS. Since I already had a swamp board set up we decided to play a three-way game in the swamps.

Prior to the game starting we set-up some ground rules so the game didn't devolve into shooting from your deployment zone.

• No shooting from your deployment zone turn one

• Plants are infinitely high tubes originating from the base

• Set-up is as close to an equilateral triangle as possible

• Last man standing wins

I chose to play my KemVar, leaving the sniper on the bench. My opponents played Keizai Waza and sefadu. For the deployment I set-up two groups of two MERCS and the Heavy holding my deployment zone, in what I thought was the perfect spot to cover the board. (having forgotten the ground rules we set-up during deployment, it wasn't as sweet as I thought).

he game played hard and fast with the Waza player spreading out over the board, and sefadu coming at both opponents with a two pronged attack. I was able to neutralize the Waza sniper with my demo. Once my Heavy was set and overwatching things got interesting. I unloaded with him and killed (2) sefadu, (1) Waza and my assassin because of his sweet position. This also triggered two overwatches from the sefadu and Waza players which finished off the carnage my Heavy started.

The sefadu Demo took out my Leader and Monkey Wrench with several salvos of Fire grenades. After another crazy Overwatch trigger fest the sefadu player was eliminated and I just had my Heavy and Demo left. The cagey Waza player creeped up taking advantage of the tree cover (which I forgot blocked LOS completely) and was able to pick me off for the win.

The more I play this game the more I love it. I can't really see it as a competitive game, but as something to play just to relax and have fun it's really worth the low cost of entry. We were discussing this after the game and realized that for the amount that I paid (several price increases ago, remember when Rhinos were less than $30) for the transports in my Space Marine company, you can have all the factions, battlefoam bag, terrain mats, GF9 Tokens and rule book for this game. Think about that for a minute. 

 

On the painting table ... Kemvar

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MERCS – After prepping my station, I sat down and evaluated the Kemvar minis I have to finish. This projects is pretty simple because most of the base colors and shading have already been laid out when I was supper geeked about this game last year. Of course I just got them into table top condition so I could use them. 

Now that I'm not carting around the models back and forth to the game store I want to get them into a final state. During the transport they experienced some minor wear since I don't seal unfinished models. 

Step one is to touch up any bare areas with some brush on primer. Even with minor repairs if you don't put down primer the paint doesn't adhere properly and you'll be fixing the same problem down the road. Years of experience have taught me to do it right the first time.

Luckily there wasn't much repair work needed for these so I could jump right into doing the final details and highlights. 

After the paint dried on the final details I finished the bases. For these models I used my 30mm Rock Bases after adding some flock and vegetation I feel like these are a good representation of the jungles in Brazil. For MERCS I decided to based each faction based on their location on the Globe. Usually I like to keep my bases consistent throughout a line (ie skull bases for all Helldorado, desert bases for 40K to match my primary table etc) but for this game I think unique bases for each Megacon makes more sense.

Welcome to the Cause

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MERCS – I recently started assembling and painting my KemVar squad for MERCS. The Miniatures are really nice and easy to assemble. There are very few pieces to glue in place and the parts that do need to be glued are easy to pin. I'm not a huge fan of the dreadlock head as it seems out of place for the look of the rest of the troopers. Luckily the assault trooper comes with two heads, so it was a simple matter of swapping them.

I was amazed at how little flash and mold lines there were on the models I put together. The quality is impressive. My only real issue was a bent gun barrel on the sniper, but that was easily fixable. To base the models I'm using the Rock Bases I recently created. The background info on KemVar lists them as being based in South America, so I'm going to use the Rock Bases to create a jungle feel for them. Which also seems appropriate since they have Predator style stealth suits.

For color choice I chose to stick with something very similar to the scheme pictured in the book. I like the green and white as it stands out on the tabletop and will tie in with the base once it's finished. Since I used black primer I'm working with the GW Foundation paints for the base colors. They offer excellent coverage and a quick wash will get them tabletop ready fairly quickly. From there it will be a matter of painting the highlights and upping the overall quality of the models. 

The nice thing about the game is you only have six models per faction so it's easy to take the extra time to get them right and still get the models on the tabletop quickly. I'll be posting more photos as I progress. The CCC is next on the list as soon as I can finish my "Imported from Detroit" base set (asphault, tires and bullets shells).