Category: Wargaming

As my wife and kids are off visiting my mother in law, I invited a few buddies over for a small gaming session.  I find that early play testing rules is often better with a smaller group.  I am still refining the vehicle rules for GAMER and wanted to test some ideas with just three or four guys.  Only two could make it, Chris and Duncan.

I set up another tank-heavy scenario involving a scratch German force attacking an American position.  I was hoping to get a couple of close assaults and some bazooka fire.  I also wanted another test of the vehicle damage procedure.  All seemed to work well, but I still need to think a little about how vehicles interact with cover and vehicle movement speeds.

There Germans started with four tanks, while the Americans just had a Sherman and a Stuart.  The Americans also had two infantry squads, each with a bazooka.  The Germans had two tank hunter teams, one with a panzer faust and the other with a panzershreck.  Even though the Pz. IV fired first, the Sherman knocked out the Pz. IV.  The Germans never got much momentum, and the Americans gradually attritted them.  In the end, it was a convincing American victory.  I just need to clarify a few points with regard to the vehicle hit procedure.  Also, I think that vehicles are moving too slowly.  I also need to play with indirect fire.

After the WWII game, I cooked some hamburgers on the grill and we talked about game design a bit.  In particular we were trying to brainstorm ways to account for the drawbacks of card-based activation without going back to IGO-UGO.

A couple of years ago, Chris, Dave, and I were working on a set of rules for wizard battles.  After the WWII game, we pulled out the wizard game again and fiddled with it some more.  We came up with some good ideas.  When I finish with writing Bear Yourselves Valiantly and G.A.M.E.R., I’d like to resurrect the wizard battle game.

A couple of weeks ago Sammy ran her first convention game at Historicon.  She used my Eureka toy soldiers fighting the Eureka teddy bears.  That reminded me that I had 12 more toy soldiers in my ready-to-paint box.  This morning I knocked them out.  These are the last ones I purchased before they stopped updating the line.  The others were painted to resemble Britains grenadier guard figures, but for these I decided to vary the colors a bit.

 

 

It’s been a while, but I finally had time to do some light painting.  I took the opportunity to knock a couple of things off my painting queue.  The first was a batch of knights I got in a convention flea market.  I have been toying with the idea of a jousting game for some time.  I’ve played in several jousting games that have been fun, but they often get boring quickly as the number of decisions is quite small.  So, I have some ideas that I’ve been thinking about while pushing a bunch of flab around the streets for an hour in a vain attempt at weight control.  I’ve had some ideas for an opposed die roll dice progression mechanic that will be just right for jousting, I think.  The problem with dice progression systems (i.e., d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, etc.) is that they break down after d12.  Each die adds .5 to the expected value.  E(d4) = 2.5.  E(d6) = 3.5.  E(d8) = 4.5.  Etc.  But when you get to rolling two dice (say, d6 + d8) instead of a uniform distribution, you get a bell curve.  Recently I’ve seen that d14, d16, and d18 are readily available.  I think a die progression mechanic with a lot of variance (4-20 instead of 4-12) is finally feasible in a way that I can live with, mathematically.

Some weeks back I posted some pictures of some WWII Americans riding giant eagles and some Eureka Stukasauruses.  I traded something to Chris for his unpainted Stukasauruses.  After sitting on them for several months, I finally painted them.  I have Major Objective (the guys who custom made the Americans for my eagles) working on some Brits to ride on griffins.  I will pick them up at Fall In, so watch for a weird world war two game by Cold Wars.

Now that HISTORICON is behind us, the HAWKs will begin planning our annual gaming day, Barrage.  This year’s event will be 13 September.  If you would like to run an event, please contact surdu@acm.org.  Also, see the Barrage Web site:  http://www.bucksurdu.com/Buck_Surdu/Barrage.html

In addition to a full slate of games, we will also have a table running all day with games specifically suited for younger gamers.

Last weekend was HMGS East’s flagship convention, HISTORICON.  For the third year in a row it was held at the Expo Center in Fredericksburg, VA.  I had planned to take both Thursday and Friday off work to attend.  Since I hand’t committed to running any Thursday games, at the last minute I determined to go to work on Thursday and drive down later.  I was supposed to leave work at 1700, but didn’t get out until 1830.  I met my wife at Ikia just north of DC to pick up my son.  He and I made excellent time, finding a rare gap in the normally heinous traffic on I-95 south out of DC.  When we arrived and began unloading all my stuff into the HAWKs room, gaming had been underway for hours.

My first game was a GASLIGHT game in which teams of soldiers venture into a colony of giant ants to rescue some lost kids.  Despite a valiant effort the ants ate all the soldiers, and only one of three lost kids survived to tell the tale — and spend lots of money on therapy.

Bill ran this 54mm WWII game using my under-development G.A.M.E.R. rules.  (The acronym stands for the attributes of each figure:  guts, accuracy, melee, endurance, and reaction).  While one of the players thought that hand-to-hand shouldn’t carry over for multiple turns, in general the rules were well received.

See details of Chris’ Battle of Barnett here:  http://onemoregamingproject.blogspot.com/2014/07/battle-of-barnet-14-april-1471-game-at.html

I ran two 10mm Napoleonic Wars games with Fate of Battle:  Mincio River and Hanau.  Dave Wood ran another Napoleonic scenario, and he and Duncan ran the Battle of Vittoria on Saturday evening.  All seemed to go well, with the occasional rules lawyer or bad sport to dampen the event a little.  The rules seem to be slowly gaining some momentum; although, I did have one person sit through the rules briefing and then say he wasn’t interested and leave.

Sam ran her first convention game.  It was a battle between the Eureka teddy bear figures and the Eureka toy soldier figures.  It was set up as a kids game.  She built all the terrain herself.  She went with a candy land theme.  She was quite nervous at the start, but once the game got going, she did a good job.

Like many of our kids table games, she used Milk and Cookies Rules from Big Battles for Little Hands for this game.

The objective of the toy soldiers, who outnumbered the bears, was to capture the fort made of toy blocks.  While the toy soldiers killed most of the bears, they didn’t get to the fort, so it was a teddy bear victory.

Ed, who came down with Sam Fuson, ran his modern skirmish game set in Afghanistan.

It was quite successful.  The folks had a good time.  Sam ran a Sherlock Holmes inspired GASLIGHT game.

As usual, the HAWKs set aside a table for kids games.  Geoff ran his plastic pirate barroom brawl game twice.

I’m not sure what point Geoff was making, but it was hard to miss.  Geoff is really good as a GM for these kids games.

Eric ran the Armies for Kids giveaway game this year.  See Chris’ blog post for more details:  http://onemoregamingproject.blogspot.com/2014/07/hawks-2014-historicon-armies-for-kids.html

This is our fourth year of hosting a game for kids under 10, after which we pass out free, painted armies to the participants.  This is an outreach effort to try to grow the hobby.  There were two very nice threads about this on TMP.  The latter is from a dad.  His comments capture exactly why we do this every year.

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=353652

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=353643

It was really fun watching the kids’ faces as we passed out armies, terrain, dice, and rules at the end of the game.

This convention also marked the 20th anniversary of the HAWKs as a club.  To commemorate this, we cut a celebratory cake Saturday evening, which was shared with folks playing games in our room.  See Chris’ blog post for details:  http://onemoregamingproject.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-hawks-celebrate-their-20th.html

Bill and his son William ran this Helm’s Deep game with very large figures on Saturday night.

Friday night Don, Chris, and I ran a reprise of our HAWKs 1000 race game.  The original HAWKs 1000 game was organized by Todd Harland-White and had four races:  dog sleds, a desert car race, a zeppelin race, and an airboat race through the jungle.  Since Todd was unable to attend, we restructured the race with just three legs:  the dog sled and car races as well as a new hover skiffs on Mars game.  Each leg was an hour, after which the players rotated to the next table.  Each player raced in all three legs of the race, collecting points along the way to determine the overall winner.  See Chris’ post here:  http://onemoregamingproject.blogspot.com/2014/07/hawks-1000-race-game-at-historicon.html

My dog sled race was wild and woolly, as usual.  There were lots of flipped sleds and wounded dogs along the course.

The hover skiff race, a new addition, seemed to go very well.  The hover skiffs (shown above) were made from dispensers for rolls of chewing gum with some bits added.  The figures were a combination of manufacturers, from Blue Moon, scratch-built robots, Pulp Figures, Recreation Conflict, and others.

I ran a final event Sunday morning, my fifth of the convention.  It was a G.A.M.E.R. event.  It was mainly about getting feedback on the rules with a simple scenario in which commandos and partisans are trying to steal an enigma machine from the Germans.  I don’t know if I was just tired by the end of the weekend, but the game wasn’t nearly as enjoyable to me as the other times I’ve run the game.  There were also one or two people in the game who kept fighting the unique mechanics, kept waiting for me to resolve things for them, or wanted to argue about things.  They can’t all be great, I guess.

So, I ran five games, all of which filled, and most of which went well:

• Friday morning:  Them! (giant ants) (GASLIGHT)
• Friday afternoon:  played Stan Sunderworth’s WWI airplane game with my son
• Friday evening:  Battle of Mincio (Fate of Battle)
• Saturday morning:  Battle of Hanau (Fate of Battle)
• Saturday afternoon: did a little shopping and watched my kids play All Quiet on the Martian Front, which they enjoyed quite a bit.
• Saturday evening:  HAWKs 1000 race (GASLIGHT)
• Sunday morning:  Commandos Strike at Dawn (GAMER)

For several years, the Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers (HAWKs)  have been running a really neat event at Historicon.  In addition to the other games we run at the convention that are targeted toward younger gamers (we dedicate a table throughout Saturday of the con to only kids’ games) we run a special event.  This event, the Armies for Kids game, involves kids who are under 10 usually using Milk and Cookies Rules (from Big Battles for Little Hands).  After the event is over, each kid gets to take away two complete, painted armies and some other goodies.  In the past we’ve provided terrain pieces, rules, tape measures, etc.

This year’s project is 25/28mm Napoleonics.  Using a combination of figures from a number donors, including the NASHCON staff, we have pieced together six sets for this year.  Each kid who plays in the game will receive a French army and an army from one of the opposing powers.  There are a handful of painted figures that couldn’t be made into units and a box of unpainted lead as well.  During the game the game master (Eric Schlegel this year) will ask the kids some history questions.  If they answer correctly, they get to take something from these extras.

The picture at the top of this post shows some of the HAWKs working on Father’s Day to assemble the donations into armies, rebase many of the figures, and make small repairs.  The picture below shows one of the armies being assembled.

This year’s donations included some old Scruby figures and other rarities that are the “missing link” between the toy soldiers of Little Wars and modern wargaming figures.  Other donations include Calpe 28mm figures and some old “small 25’s.”  We tried to match up figures by size in each child’s army, but it’s not perfect.

Next year’s project will be 40mm ACW skirmish.  We are building around a very generous donation of painted 40mm Union troops.  If you have any 40mm Confederates you’d like to donate, or any other donations you’d like to consider, please contact me at surdu@acm.org.  The donations all go to kids.  In very rare cases we’ve sold or traded some of the donations in order to purchase missing items to build complete armies.  We think this is a really nice way to do something about the “graying of the hobby” beyond complaining about it.  When you see the look on the kids’ faces, it makes the many hours spent during the year well worth the effort.

I missed this Friday’s game night, because I was chaperoning an end-of-the-school-year part for 20+ teenagers (which by the way went very well and was uneventful).  While I was listening to teeny bopper music and watching the teens devour food, Duncan and Dave were play testing their Vittoria scenario for Historicon.  These are pictures of the game taken by Duncan and posted to our closed club newsgroup.

We’ve determined over the past couple of years that the HAWKs are not necessarily good barometers for convention games.  We tend to be more aggressive than the average convention game participants and often do things the GM did not expect.

Chris told me that Friday was no exception.  The French were supposed to be defending a ridge to keep the British away from the town.  In HAWKs fashion, Eric suggested that an attack down hill against the Brits would move the fight farther from the town and guarantee the Brits couldn’t get to the town before the scenario ended.

According to Chris, the plan worked.  The Brits didn’t reach the town; although, the French were decimated by the end of the game.  Duncan is reportedly looking to provide the Brits additional reinforcements on one of the flanks if the French do this during the convention game.

Dave and Duncan have put in a lot of time painting Brits and researching the scenario.  Duncan’s output of Brits has been impressive.  The game looks great.

 

Cigar Box Battle posted a nice writeup of our NASHCON GASLIGHT game.  See it here:  http://www.cigarboxbattle.com/the-h-a-w-ks-undersea-gaslight-game-at-nashcon/

 

This Saturday several HAWKs got together to run some play test games for Historicon.  The first was my 10mm Napoleonic game of the Battle of Hanau using Fate of Battle.

The battle occurred in October 1813, after Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig.  The combined Austrian and Bavarian army squared off against Napoleon.  We will make a few changes to the scenario as a result of this play test.  The game went well, but all the action moved to  one corner of the table.  We are going to move the map so that more of the action occurs in the middle of the table.

The HAWKs are continuing our tradition of running the Armies of Kids Giveaway again this year.  These games, for gamers younger than 10, end with us handing all the participants two fully painted armies, rules, and sometimes terrain.  Some of the figures we paint ourselves, and others are donated to us for this purpose.

This year’s project involves 25mm Napoleonic figures.  Eric will be running the game at Historicon, so we wanted to familiarize himself with Milk and Cookies Rules, which is the set we’ve been using for these games.  He ran a six-player game.  After two hours (the allotted time at the convention), the game was a marginal victory for the French.

This year’s donation included some nicely painted, classic wargaming figures.  It’s almost a shame to give these to kids who won’t appreciate the classic nature of the donated armies.  I may trade some of my Minifigs 25mm figures for these vintage figures.

The game went well, and Eric is ready for the convention.

The final game was an opportunity for Sammy to become more familiar with Milk and Cookies Rules.  She will be running this game, featuring the Eureka toy soldiers and teddy bears, at Historicon.  This will be her first convention game.

Sammy made all the terrain herself.  The game is quite attractive, and I’m sure it will attract attention.

We will make a few changes to how she runs this game as a result of the play test.  The attackers need more forces.

We had a good, full day of gaming.

A nice bonus was that Chase Guinn, who was a cadet when I was teaching at West Point, joined us for the day.  I hadn’t seen him since he graduated from West Point.  It was good to catch up and game with him again.

I returned from Nashcon and just HAD to do something gaming related while I was still excited.  I bought another 4Ground building from Age of Glory.  After filing, priming, and basing a bunch of 15mm fantasy figures I will be using with my 10mm fantasy collection, I assembled the log cabin.  These are very fun kits to assemble.