The Red Baron

I believe it is the 'slang' word for the power plant...?

"...any friendly model in their squad." You're right. I get caught by the differences in the Strike Operations and Armoured Might rules. 😇

A Recon squad has one unique ability that can be very impactful. The Recon squad can once per turn decide to put a just revealed initiative card on the bottom of the deck forcing the players to draw another. This can let you influence the tempo of the game. Sometime going first is great other times you don't want to go first. They are used in tournament play for sure. [It just occurred to me that @CAVBOSS worked on an newer initiative system. I can't recall if he ever made it official so take the above with a grain of salt.] Fyi, the effect of APA is force wide so long as the models are in it's range. Recon units are rarely powerful enough to get into the middle of the fight but they are good at sniping wounded models and making indirect fire units unhappy. I picked 3 Duelists because they are expensive in bulk. That squad is a little over 2000 points and has some flaws - see the CONs section. Tournament games are 4500 - 5000 points normally. Casual games whatever you want to play but rarely much more than the tournament games in my experience. About having the largest squads... Having more squads allows you more opportunities in the initiative system so sometimes volume is good. One of my favorite things about CAV is that there are a lot of ways to build and play a force. The Haunt is a great looking model and perfectly fine in a force with a plan to use it. That said indirect fire (IDF) models are, imo, hard to build a force around. They are great supplements but their flaws are exploitable. You'll want a good screening force for sure. Problem with me giving this kind of advice is that the scenarios you'll find yourself in are all over the place. When it comes to IDF the very best have both SA: Chain Fire Pod and SA: Fire Control System - the cream of the crop also include SA: Counter-Battery. 🙂 Take a look at the Outlaw an IDF tank and work your way through what it's Special Abilities do. Happy to help!

Let's make an attack squad. You'll want 1 Recon unit with the SA: EST. This can be the Spartan or the Shadow. I'd take the Shadow but either will work. Role: move, hide and give your squad mates EST or APA2 as needed. Pros APA2 makes squad mates hit extra hard. EST allows them to TARGET LOCK for free SA: Chameleon makes you harder to hit at LONG+ ranges SA Superior Mobility lets you get to those hiding spots faster Cons You are a high priority target! Your weapons have a huge minimum range. No SA: ECM to fight against enemy ECM. After that you'll take anywhere from 3-5 models with the attack role depending on how many points you want to spend - we'll go fewer points. Personally, I'd take 3 Duelists. Role: Shoot stuff early and often, roll crits, do so from cover if possible. Pros They are very versatile - with their 6 light MACs they can customize their fire to suit the target. Take 6 separate shots when facing a model with low/damaged armor. SALVO them together when you need to punch through armor or hit something buried in cover. They crit on an 11 or 12 rather than the standard 12. You have 6 shots to fish for crits. 🙂 Cons Their defenses are very 'mid' and they will go down after a few hard hits. Their offense is very dice dependent. If your dice are even a little above average they are great below and they are a little impotent. They CANNOT damage soft targets at all in anyway. Their weapons have an 8" min range. This squad is a bit of a glass cannon. They want to go first and they don't like being shot at. Use terrain to limit your enemies ability to shoot you and enhance your ability to shoot them. They do not like enemy models that can 'rush' them and do damage. They hate soft targets - aircraft are their bane. The really advanced player will use the Shadow as bait to feed enemy models to the Duelists. It is very high risk so caveat emptor. 🙂 Happy to answer questions if you have any.

Quad CAVs often have the SA: Superior Mobility.

You can make your own 3d models any time you want... Just create your own CAVs from scratch. 🙂

"Also and this is key: Because we dont play with infantry that is the same scale, or "in scale" we can print our own infantry AT THE SIZE we want or THE SIZE THAT WORKS. eg. CAV are mostly 10mm or close to it; the infantry is too small. So we printed up 15 to 18mm size infantry, artillery, anti-tank guns, missile batteries, tanks you name it. Ergo the game is WAY WAY BETTER with larger infantry and in fact looks better than 10mm infantry. But it looks better because we can print COLONIAL MARINES from the film Aliens, StarWars troopers and more." I disagree with a lot of ideas in your post. Which isn't a bad thing - its not a I'm right you're wrong kind of thing. I love the combined arms part of CAV. Amongst my CAV friends I'm known to prefer vehicles over CAVs. 🙂 That said, there are a lot of ways to play CAV. You can get in a great game in an hour using CAVs/Vehicles. Once you start to broaden the range and use infantry, transports, aircraft etc... then it becomes more of an old school war game where you need an afternoon or day to set up, play and tear down the game. Both are fun and valid ways to play. Most of my games are of the hour long variety just because life is busy. I'm honestly jealous of two regular players in Tennessee who get to play those big CAV games that use all of the rules. I love it when they post. As for the size of CAV infantry... I think the production pieces are perfect. They are scaled to fit the size of CAVs. When you make 15-18mm infantry you change CAVS from Walking Tanks to giant powered armor. But you do you... 🙂 As for 3d printing... not my favorite subject. I prefer to support the companies by buying their products. Again, its a you do you kind of thing. I don't know you nor your situation. I just want to say that there are different approaches and philosophies to buying, playing, and supporting. Thanks for your post.

No game related reason to not glue them in. As @Syagrius said it can make painting easier - depends on your style. :)

I almost never think of infantry. I have a ton of old Hedgehogs that would fit perfectly here. I'll expand them to include a mechanized infantry squad or 2? Thanks!

@Savage Coyote has a Rach force where every unit is painted differently (and awesomely). Truth be told, I had almost your exact idea in mind. I thought about doing a black and white Jolly roger scheme on half the models and then something individual for the remaining space. Just some early thoughts. I need to see what models I need to order so I can get started on this. Thanks for the kind words.

I'm in the mood to make a new list and I want to play pirates. Just some small time thugs who are doing a bit better than just surviving. They are small enough that they have to work the fringes and can't really face any serious forces. Consequently, they pick their targets carefully and switch areas often to avoid attracting attention. I decided to go for 2500 points so I could play them in smaller pick-up games. In my mind, this unit is a 'cult of personality'. The leader and his/her right hand person are the center of the band - each has their crew which operate around them. In game, based on the points, I see this as couple of attack squads. Attack squads because they don't really have a better plan. They are very much a one trick pony, a smash and grab unit with violence as their main and only tactic. I decided that the leaders pilot the only CAV models in the unit. The rest of the crew operate vehicles - remember these are small time thugs. I opened the CAV store and scrolled through looking for models I liked the look of. Specifically, I wanted CAVs I'd never used/painted before. I settled on a Warhawk for the second in command and a Voodoo for the Captain of these scurvy pirates. 🙂 I don't really like kit-bashing models, @TigerWraith is more 'that guy'. So I looked hard at the available vehicles and the remaining points and ended up with these squads: Given the limitation that I needed cheap vehicles that didn't require kit-bashing to create I didn't have a ton of options. Ideally, to represent the 'rag tag' nature of the pirate band I'd love each model to be unique but... we just don't have enough models in the lower points zone yet - keep the faith. 🙂 The Warhawk squad belongs to the second in command - fancy names coming soon 'TM'. The Warhawk itself is probably the best 'fighting model' in the band. The long range MACs and Guided Missiles allow it to stand back and engage at traditional CAV range. The 2 chieftains I think of as Harpoons. They rush forward and try to harass and harm the enemy all the while drawing attention (and fire to them). The Ashigaru is an odd bird. Its main job is to provide ECM support for its brethren. However, any model it shares a Target Lock for allow it to fire it's Guided Missiles. If it dares to show it's head. 🙂 The Voodoo squad works in a similar fashion to the Warhawk squad but, because it is the Captain's squad, it has a few extra luxuries. The Banshees fulfill a similar role to the Chieftains. They move forward and harass the enemy with the threat of their powerful PBGs. The Captain - being the VIP they are - splits the electronic warfare role across 2 models - the Black Mamba and the Sabre. Together, they fulfill an almost identical role to the Ashigaru except they can be in 2 different place and losing one of them doesn't lose all of your EW abilities. This unit really wants to fight other squads and doesn't do it very well. Most of its firepower is very short ranged. If it gets caught in open terrain it'll suffer from an enemy force with longer range firepower - likely a loss. If it can leverage terrain and cover long enough to get its PBGs into the battle it can be a problem for similar pointed squads. Honestly, this unit is me creating a story in my head about a Pirate Force and then making them a unit in CAV. It wouldn't be hard to create a MUCH nastier force at the same points level and wipe these guys and gals off the board. My point isn't to build a winning force but to build a fun unit. Something I like the story behind. The kind of story that grows and twists with each battle the Small Fry face. As a quick side note about 'non-optimal forces' like the Small Fry. You can win without min-maxed models. I won the the 2022 CAVCon tournament using a force whose highest strength weapon was 5. I encourage you to make forces that fit the story of CAV and make your unit a chapter in the grand game. Have fun!

@Lord RebelX CAV is a great game with a great community. The owner Jon is easily the most approachable and responsive game designer I've ever encountered. On multiple occasions I've seen him acknowledge that rules or designs needed tweaking and adjust the game to be better based on reasoned and logical feedback from the community. I'm sorry your experience wasn't what you wanted. Some people like McDonalds and want their food asap. Others enjoy the smell of smoking BBQ and are willing to wait for the good stuff. To each their own. I hope you find something that makes you happy.

This is the hard part because the player with the 'killy' list is having fun and deservedly so. We don't want to eliminate attrition as a viable strategy. Instead, we need to provide alternative ways to win that can 'race' the attrition strategy. This makes list construction much more interesting. You have to consider that your opponent might try and score out on VPs rather than win a straight up fight. If we could standardize the types of scenario VPs into 2 or 3 general categories and then create units/SAs that are advantaged when interacting with different categories while still allowing all units to interact with them too. That would be a good foundation. Then of course you have to balance scenarios so that attrition and scoring VPs are both valid win conditions. In my mind, I can see the 'control aka non-attrition' player being more of an escort force where they try to protect the models that are advantaged at scoring. The problem with this vision is that CAV is a '3rd Person Shooter' and there isn't much in the way of defensive tech, nor repair. In order to make this work CAV would have to add some ability to defend the models that are there to score points. Otherwise, the attrition player just shoots up your 'research' units. I think the big problem for the research units is indirect fire. On game boards that don't have terrain shadows the research units are too easily attacked. This is a huge conversation probably best had in person. I think there is a lot of potential here. I also think Marvel Crisis Protocol is a good example of how to balance this attrition versus control play style via game mechanics.

Love the sound of these scenarios but if killing the enemy force remains a valid win condition then most of these scenarios won't matter. Instead of making a force that plays the scenario a 'likes to win' player will just make a 'killy' force and ignore the scenario in favor of killing the enemy. Or, they'll kill the enemy just enough so that they can mop up the scenario points mostly unopposed. The best way I know to handle that is to remove killing the foe as a way to win the scenario. Instead, when one side is eliminated then you immediately end the game and score victory points. It can be hard to imagine playing a game which ostensibly simulates military conflict yet discourages you from killing the enemy force - but I think that makes a better game, maybe a worse simulation, but still a better game.

Trees look fantastic! I think the original scale of trees can work too. Keep posting excited to see what you do.

Very nice! Are they part of a unit?

Bumping this to remind everyone to Join us on Discord Saturday night around 7pm CST. Hangout and hobby, talk CAV, have fun! 🙂

@CAVBOSS makes some MDF tokens... not sure if they are ready for sale yet but they might be. [edit] I asked and Jon says the MDF tokens are not quite ready.

I'm organizing a CAV virtual paint session on Discord Saturday 11/26/22 @ 7pm CST. Nothing special, just gonna work on some CAV models and chat with anyone who has time. https://www.discord.gg/vmrTrxU

I'm organizing a CAV virtual paint session on Discord Saturday 11/5/22 @ 7pm CST. Nothing special, just gonna work on some CAV models and chat with anyone who has time. https://discord.gg/UBKq5zSSGz

I'm organizing a CAV virtual paint session on Discord Saturday 10/29/22 @ 7pm CST. Nothing special, just gonna work on some CAV models and chat with anyone who has time. Hope to do this a couple of times a month going forward. https://discord.gg/UBKq5zSSGz

I have some Tamiya tape and use it when I need a stripe of some kind - mine is pretty narrow. Painters tape is cheap and works well for me. Great tip on the sculpting tool I'll try that next time. I also try and plan the division of colors to take advantage of the model layout - minimizing the number of times I need to split the colors on a wide open surface. Humans see straight lines very well and its easy to pick out the smallest mistakes when they are out in the open - ime.

You need a mixture of cover and Line of Sight blocking terrain. In CAV, you typically get cover from terrain that is elevation 1 or 2. CAVs are elevation 3. The 2 pieces in your picture both look like LoS blocking terrain to me. From a size perspective, those 2 pieces can both work as is. CAVs are about 3 stories tall I believe. So those terrain pieces are still good size. I think scale becomes a question when the terrain has elements that interact with people. Are the doors sized right for standard infantry? Grab one and stand it next to the door. I could see those 2 pieces as a small research facility nestled in some dense jungle. That said, I'd upscale future prints.

For these models I used painters tape and an air-brush. It does a pretty good job. Where the line was uneven I used a brush to very carefully straighten it out. If you could see them in person you could pick out the flaws. 🙂 That said, when the paint and my air-brush are cooperative I can paint surprisingly tiny details with it. Thanks for the kind words.