USPSA 2014 Handgun National Championship

I had the opportunity to compete in the USPSA 2014 Handgun National Championship at the end of September.  The match was held just outside of St. George, Utah and consisted of 27 stages.

Stage 27

I shot my normal competition gun (a Springfield Armory XDM 9mm) and have a C classification.  The match was a ton of fun and I'm glad about that because I did not shoot very well.

Here is a video of the match.

Here are a few stats regarding my performance at the match.

2014 Production Nationals
Overall Production Finish:  141st place
C Class Production Finish:  15th place
Match Percentage:  51.14%
Points shot less penalties (3,135 possible):  2,447 or 78.05% of possible
Total Time:  658.17 seconds  (166% of 1st place)
Alpha %:  66.99%
Mikes:  14
No Shoots:  4
Prprocedurals:  1

Not bad for me, but certainly not great.  I've got a lot of areas to improve on.

I also shot the Production Nationals last year and comparatively I did a slightly better job this year.  There were more shooters at last year's Production Nationals match.

2013 Production Nationals
Overall Production Finish:  222nd place
C Class Production Finish:  17th place
Match Percentage:  46.03%
Points shot less penalties (1,830 possible):  1,386 or 75.74% of possible
Total Time:  357.30 seconds  (174% of 1st place)
Alpha %;  58.47%
Mikes:  6
No Shoots:  1
Procedurals:  0

I can see improvement over last year, but I had hoped for more improvement.  I am going to continue to work on losing weight and becoming more active and know that will help with my shooting ability.  I also plan to start a training program that will include dry fire drills and live fire practice.  Let's see if I can have an even better showing at next year's match.

The drive out and back was long, but the scenery was beautiful.  I had never been out to that part of the country and I'm glad I went.  Here are a few pictures from my visit to Zion National Park.

Nebraska State Steel Challenge Championship

I spent the day in Grand Island, Nebraska at the Heartland Public Shooting Park competing in the Nebraska State Steel Challenge Championship.

The match consisted of all 8 official stages.

I shot in two divisions; rim fire iron sight pistol and rim fire iron sight rifle.

I used a Beretta Neos pistol and a Ruger 10/22 rifle.

This was my first match shooting the rifle.  I made a few mistakes, but I feel like I shot pretty well with it.  I did well with my pistol, too.  I have shot it at several steel challenge matches and continue to improve withit.  I need to spend some time in actual practice so I can get better.

My time with the pistol was 149.19 seconds.

My time with the rifle was 133.78 seconds.

I finished in second place in both division and was happy with my results.

Hills for the battlefield

What battlefield doesn't have hills?  Okay, I'm guessing there are a few.

Why do we need hills?  Many of the games we play benefit from having hills to block lines of sight, provide elevated firing positions, and to just provide more visual detail to our tables.  Hills are a staple for most people's terrain collections and can be easily constructed from relatively inexpensive material.  Some people put lots of work and detail into their hills and others go for a very basic design.  I've kind of hit the middle ground with my latest addition to my terrain collection.

I will be running a BattleTech game using the new-ish Alpha Strike rules.  These rules are a simplified system with less record keeping and fewer to hit rolls.  It makes the game play much faster and allows for large battles to be played within a few hours.

For this game, I needed some hills.  I usually play at my local game store, Gauntlet Games, and they have plenty of hills for me to use.  Since I'm traveling for this convention, I need my own hills.  I've got some that I made years ago, but I really didn't want to put those on a table at a convention because it would be too embarrassing.  So time for a new project.

I started with pink foam.  This is used for house insulation and can be found at home improvement stores.  I used 1" thick foam because for BattleTech, levels are measured in 1" increments.  I will do some 1" and 2" high hills.  At some point I might add some 3" high hills, but for now, I can stack them if I want that.

You can adjust the thickness to whatever scale you want and that fits your game.  I will use these hills for most of my games and they should transfer well from scale to scale.

I drew out some rough shapes on the foam and used my trusty hot-wire foam cutter to cut them out.  I decided to cut them with the sides pretty much vertical.  Some people like to slope the edges of the hills to make them look more realistic.  Either works, just pick which one you want to go with.

After cutting the shapes out, I used some caulk to texture the sides.  I started texturing the sides and tops, but decided I didn't need to texture the tops as I would be flocking that area.  I squirted some caulk onto the hills and used my finger to spread it around.  This is kind of messy so make sure you have some paper towels handy to clean up with.

After letting the caulk dry, it was time to start the painting.  I enlisted my wife to help with this.  (Thanks, Amy!!)  We used a pot of cheap dark brown acrylic paint from walmart.  It took two coats to cover the sides.  I just did one coat on the top as it would be covered with flock.  I wanted a brown undercoat so the pink wouldn't show through, but it doesn't need to be a perfect on the top.

Next I used a light tan acrylic paint to dry brush the sides of the hills.  This shows off the texture a bit more and gives a good look to the finished product.

The next step was to flock the hills.  I picked up some bulk woodland scenics flock for projects like this.  I have a yellow fine grain flock and a green fine grain flock.  The multiple colors adds texture and breaks up the area a little.

To apply the flock, I mixed up some wood glue with some water and a little bit of liquid dish soap.  I usually do about 2 parts glue and 1 part water and then just a small drop of soap.  You can use white glue, but I think the bond from wood glue is stronger and holds up better over time.  The soap helps the glue to spread better and keeps it from clumping up when spreading it over large areas.

After spreading the glue I sprinkled on a little bit of the yellow flock and then covered the rest of the area with the green flock.  I lightly tap it down with my finger and then tap off the excess.  Let that dry and you will have this.

I sprayed the hills with a polyurethane dull coat to help hold the flock on.

For not a lot of money and only a little bit of time you can have some pretty nice hills that will work well for several games.

 Here are a few pictures from the convention game that inspired me to put these together.

In the Emperor's Name - First Game AAR

I have played a few games of In Her Majesty's Name and enjoyed it.  Then I heard about In the Emperor's Name.  It is pretty much the same game (with a few tweeks) just themed for the Warhammer 40K universe.  I like the fluff of 40K, but the rules don't interest me anymore.

However, their models are very impressive, if a bit pricey.  I already have lots of stuff that would work and even if they are pricey, this game is based around an army of 5-10 models so you can get what you need for a pretty reasonable amount if you don't have something in the cabinet that will already work.

The rules for In the Emperor's Name are a free download.  Can't beat that.  Their layout leaves a little to be desired, IMHO, but since they are free I can forgive that.  I think a quick start sheet and/or summary sheet would be a useful addition.  I might put one together myself if my friends start playing this with me on a regular basis.

For our first game, we didn't play a scenario.  Just a straight up fight to the death.  Ultimately, I'm most interested in using this system for scenario based games that may or may not include balanced forces, but to learn the rules a basic fight works.

I brought out a Mob of orks.  These brutes have been trading with the local Imperial Guard forces.  Basically providing additional weapons to the poorly supplied grunts.

Madruk's Mob

Warboss with slugga and choppa
Nob with slugga and power klaw
5 'ard boyz with slugga and choppa
2 'ard boyz with big shoota and choppa


 My opponent for the game was my friend Nathan.  His inquisitor had heard about our orks and was concerned about where our supply of imperial weaponry was coming from.  He brought his retinue out to get some information and ended up in a fire fight with the orks.

Sorry, but I don't have the specifics of his force.  Here is my description based upon my memory of the game.  (This is probably way off.)

Inquisitor
Interrogator - Techpriest
Stormtrooper
Interrogator - Psychic
Interrogator - Servo skull
Death Cult Assassin

Our battle took place on the outskirts of a battle worn city.  The buildings have been raveged by artillery and most of them are in ruins.  This is a great place for my orks to conduct their business, and also a great place for the Inquisition to interrogate us.

The game started with my orks deploying on the right and the inquisition on the left.  We decided that the stream would be soft cover and the buildings would count as hard cover.  We decided that the base of each building would all count as hard cover.  In hind sight, I'm not sure that was a great idea.

My orks set up with most of the boyz joining the Boss and Nob ready to rush across the board and engage with the hummies.  The two boyz with big shootas took up position in a building with a good view so they could rain down fire on the enemy.

In the first turn I got a lucky shot off on the enemy's inquisitor and hit with a 6.  He failed his grit with a 1 and suddenly their leader was dead.

The inquisitor psychic promptly failed his test to use a power and then after more bad rolls was turned into a demon under my control.  Bad for the inquisition.  Thus is the danger of the warp.

Not a great start for them.  Really it was a hole that they wouldn't be able to dig themselves out of, but not wanting to fail the Emperor, the rest of the unit advanced hoping to achieve their objective and hope the Inquisitor would recover from his wounds.

The assassin ran around a building and with its stealth ability avoided my fire while it got up close and personal with my boyz and warboss.

I sent a contingent of boyz forward along the stream to engage the techpriest and Sergeant.  The real stinker was that sergeant.  He was here just last week buying up half of my supply.  Now he is here attacking me with my own product.

The Techpriest opened up with his flamer and killed a boy and my nob.  Them things are scary.  

 My boyz with their big shootas took some shots at the sergeant on the bridge.  They didn't have much luck hitting him though as he got cover from the bridge railings.

The Warboss and his boyz got into it with the assassin.  Well eventually.  Since we counted the bases of the buildings as hard cover, Movement in hard cover removed 3" from your movement, and since we counted the bases of the buildings as hard cover, I was having some trouble actually getting to the assassin.  Finally we got there and started beating on each other.

Close combat is much more brutal than shooting with the orks as no modifiers are applied to the target for speed.  This made the assassin a lot easier to hit.  The orks were able to knock the assassin down and then it got up and ran away in its next turn (without any free shots by the orks because of some skill).

In the end, the orks held their ground and sent that pesky 'Quisitor packing.  I'm sure the lucky shot killing the Inquisitor in the first round and then the psychic turning into a demon on turn two helped a lot.

As a whole, I like this game.  I think I will make a few adjustments, but want to get a few more games in before I change too much.

This will be a fun game that plays pretty quickly.  It will work well for scenarios as well as pick up kind of games if I can get enough guys interested.  It is a good use for all of those 40K models that I have.

Have you played this?  What did you think?

ENPS Monthly USPSA match

I spent most of the day yesterday in Louisville, NE at the Eastern Nebraska Practical Shooter's monthly USPSA match.  It was a great day for shooting.  I didn't do all that well, but still had a good time.

I did play around a little with setting a camera on a tri-pod down range so there is a little extra footage of the stages there.

I had a few hiccups and there are a couple of times that I guess I forgot I was shooting production division and didn't reload when I needed to.  Stage 4 was my worst stage.  I just couldn't hit the steel.

I finished 10th in Production (2nd C class) and 34th overall.

Big Shots Practical Shooters - September 3, 2014

We started the practical shooting league at Big Shots Indoor Range again last night.  Matches will be held each Wednesday evening with set-up at 7:00 pm and shooting starting around 7:30 pm.

The stage had 12 paper targets for a total round count of 24.  The stage description required that you engage at least 1 target from each side of the barricade and then you could either go prone and shoot the 4 targets from there or there was another shooting box at the back corner of the range that you could shoot those targets from if you didn't want (or weren't able) to go prone.

I think it was a good stage, but then I designed it so I am probably biased.  I shot quickly but ended up with 5 mikes.  I apparently need to practice my prone position shooting.

If you get a chance come on out and join us some night.  It is lots of fun and we would love to have you.

BattleTech: Alpha Strike - Hold the Line scenario

I am going to be running a game of Alpha Strike at the Recruits Convention in Lee's Summit, MO.  I wanted to have a test run of the scenario before I took it to the convention.

The scenario:  The Haematite Guard of the Free World’s League has made planet fall on a Draconis Combine planet.  The 2^nd Sword of Light was dispatched to bolster the planetary defenses, but by the time they arrived on planet, the Guard had decimated the defending forces.

The Director’s most precious niece, Yugi Kurita, was vacationing on the planet and went into hiding when the attacks started.  Now that it looks like the planet will be lost, the 2^nd Sword of Light has been given new orders.  They must hold off the attackers and prevent them from reaching the space port so that the young Yugi can be evacuated off world.  

Forces:  Both forces included 12 mechs.  The defenders have 25% more points than the attackers.  All mechs were 3025 era, using introductory rules only, with pilot skill of 2.  This is a con game so I want it to play quickly without having to reference lots of rules or answer lots of question about special rules.

Here is the table we played on.

Stardard terrain.  The plowed fields counted as rough.  We played with the attackers coming in on the short edge on the left.  After playing through the game, it was decided that forcing the attackers to go across the length of the table was a bit much.  I have adjusted the scenario and will have the attackers going the other way in the next game.

Deployment:  The defenders set up all their forces within 2" of the center line of the table.  The attacker set up 12" back from the defender deployment zone.

Some pictures from the game.

The game moved well and we finished it within about 2 hours 30 minutes.  Not bad.  The defenders held the line and only let a single mech cross the table.

I will be adjusting a few details to try to balance the game a bit more.  Primarily this will come from having the forces only needing to cross the 4 feet instead of 6 feet by changing the direction the battle moves.  I will also have one of the defending lances set up at the back of the table instead of the middle.

If you haven't played Alpha Strike, I encourage you to give it a try.  It is a simplified version of BattleTech with much less record keeping.  I think it still has the feel of BattleTech, but it allows larger games to be played in much less time.  You can play Lance vs Lance battles with Alpha Strike and they will take even less time.

Have you played Alpha Strike?  What did you think?