Author: Buck

This is a test of the new automation software we are using to automatically update our club blog from our individual blogs.

Over the weekend, I found a little time to begin work on eight battalions of 10mm Austrian infantry.  These will be used to complete my Austrian order of battle.  When I finish these eight battalions I’ll still be short a battalion or two of Grenzers and two regiments of hussars.

In parallel I’ve been working on some Scooby Doo figures from Hasslefree.  I hope to post pictures of finished products after this coming weekend.

 

Dave Wood and I have been plugging away at an 1814 scenario book for Fate of Battle for over a year.  Dave has put in a lot of hours over the past month to try to get this completed.  We wanted to release the book in 2014, and we’re just about done.  Earlier in the week I printed all the scenarios and went through them with a red pen.  Saturday Dave and I spent five or six hours in an interactive editing session on my computer.  We think the content of the book is pretty solid now and are just looking for little inconsistencies and Ebonics.

The introduction is about half done.  Dave is working on a brief campaign description.  Then I’ll finish the table of contents and the cover.  Our goal is to hand a hard copy to Dennis of On Military Matters at Cold Wars for his review to see if he wants to print and distribute the book.  If Dennis is not interested, we’ll put it on RPGNow for pdf download, so stay tuned.

The book has 10 battles from the campaign, focusing on the invasion of France by the Armies of Bohemia and Selesia.  The Battle of La Rothiere is actually three scenarios:  the main battle, the French left flank, and the entire battle.  We will be running the whole battle at Cold Wars in March.

There were three other invasion armies, including Wellington over the Pyrenees.  We are thinking of completing the Wellington battles (three of them) and posting them to our Web page or posting them for $2 each on RPGNow.  More to follow.

Watch for the book to hit the streets in the next few weeks.

Today the whole Baltimore-Washington area was blanketed by sleet and snow.  As a result, work was closed.  That gave me time to spend four hours on my consulting job and to shovel a ton of snow.  I also had time to finish a couple of small projects I started after I finished painting 16 battalions of 10mm Russian grenadiers for Fate of Battle.

 

I only watch about three or four hours of television a week.  I consistently struggle to find things that we can all watch as a family without worrying about excessive language or people yanking off their clothes.  Netflix has been a godsend.  Lately we’ve been having fun watching old episodes of the A-Team.  The first four seasons are fun.  The fifth season isn’t nearly as good.

I got the bug to find the van and paint figures to use in my town of Granville for pulp-style games.  The van I found by Ertl on Ebay.  The figures are from Foundry.  They were fun to paint and a nice diversion after all those white belts and red turn backs.

I’ve also begun picking away at some of the larger Bones figures from Reaper.  It was these large figures that enticed me into the Kickstarter project.  Many of the regular fantasy figures I ended up selling in the flea market at Historicon.  I wanted the larger creatures to work into my GASLIGHT games.  This tree monster didn’t take a lot of time or finesse, but I think it turned out okay.

After finishing up scads of Russians this weekend, getting them based, flocked, organized, and boxed, I was looking for something that would take a little less effort.  The figures I really wanted from the Bones Kickstarter were the large creatures.  I’ll be working on the hydra, rock creature, and other large figures later, but for now, I wanted to show the flame creatures I painted this weekend.

I think I bought two sets of these.  They come in translucent red plastic, so all I did was dry brush them with orange, yellow, and white paint.  I think they turned out okay.

…So this morning I was thinking about how to handle snipers in my under-development WWII skirmish game.  (You know the rules are almost done when you start thinking about snipers and vehicles getting stuck in the mud.)  I implemented snipers in Beer and Pretzels Skirmish (BAPS) many, many years ago.  (There are still some very unique aspects of BAPS that I think are superior to many popular sets of WWII skirmish rules.)  There really are two kinds of snipers.  The first is the good marksman who was handed an improved rifle (or the same rifle but with a scope) and was designated the squad or platoon sniper.  Often these snipers were not given significantly different training than any other infantryman.  The second was the specially trained sniper who not only had a better weapon but also had greater skills in marksmanship and camouflage.

The first case is easily handled by giving the squad or platoon sniper an “elite” accuracy attribute and increasing the range on his rifle.  The second case is a little more difficult to address without a lot of goofy rules.  These are not fully-developed thoughts but just a laundry list of some ideas.  Some are a rehash of things from BAPS, but others are new.  Here are some ideas I’ve been considering:

• Snipers don’t flip a card to determine which figure they hit.  They get to designate their target — before shooting.  They do have to flip a card to determine the hit location and severity.
• In contrast to the previous bullet, maybe a really good sniper just flips a card for wound severity and not for hit location.  In this way, the sniper would essentially negate any cover benefit the target soldier might be using.
• When a sniper fires, he flips an additional card after resolving the shot.  If any explosion marker (used for HE) shows on the card, the sniper must displace (move) at least 24 inches before firing again as a sniper.  If during this displacement he shoots at someone, it is merely as an “elite” accuracy rifleman.  A key to a sniper’s longevity is to fire a few shots and move before the enemy pinpoints their location.  Most rules don’t enforce this tactic, so snipers can become overly powerful in a game.
• Once a snipe reaches his new location, it takes some number of activations (TBD) to establish himself.  This means set up a good firing position, emplacing camouflage, etc.  This cannot be done in the open.  Once established, the sniper position should be difficult to spot.  This would require the use of the optional spotting rules, which are a modification of those in Look, Sarge, No Charts: WWII.

So what are some other things I need to think about?

• Blowing holes in walls,
• Refining modifications to spotting,
• Dog mines,
• Land mines,
• Medics,
• Calling for off-board artillery, and
• Close air support.

As these rules are for me and not for publication, I don’t need to make a comprehensive list, but at some point, I need to come up with the attributes (armor, reliability, etc.) for the vehicles I have in my collection.

 

For the WWII rules I’ve been developing, I’ve been thinking about how to determine when a vehicle bogs down or throws track.  I didn’t want to create a new system or add yet more symbols to the action cards.  Duncan suggested that instead of this being the vehicle rolling to NOT throw track that perhaps rough terrain could “attack” the vehicle to try to throw track.  It’s an interesting notion that I’ve thought about quite a bit over the last two weeks.

What are the key things that would determine whether a vehicle throws track?  First would be rough terrain.  Tanks generally throw track when traversing deep mud or going across hillsides and then trying to turn.  Tanks don’t generally throw track when traveling across rolling terrain and making gentle turns.  Second would be the training of the crew.  Better crews would ensure that the track tension is inspected and maintained regularly.  Of tertiary importance, I think is the characteristics of the vehicle itself.  Most sets of rules start with this third factor, rarely tanking into account crew quality.

So the thinking was something like this:  The terrain has an “accuracy,” like personnel, graded Elite, Regular, and Green.  This is where the terrain would start on the action card in the top “bubble” area.  Swamp, with its deep muck and hidden, subsurface obstacles, would be “elite,” but a low stone wall would be “green.”  The vehicle would have a “defense” value associated with its innate reliability and whether it is tracked or wheeled.  Wheeled vehicles don’t “throw track,” but until very, very recently, they were more likely to get stuck in rough terrain than were tracked vehicles.  This defensive value would be a “column shift,” impacting the chance of the terrain getting a “hit.”  I haven’t thought about how to incorporate the training of the crew, but I thought about making that a column shift as well:  green crews shift one to the left and elite crews shift one to the right.  In any event, if you got a bogging down “hit,” you wouldn’t flip the next card to determine the impact as you would with a rifle hit on a soldier.  A “hit” would indicate that the vehicle is stuck, essentially a mobility kill.

I’ll need to look at the numbers a bit and make sure that it isn’t too easy to throw track or bog down, but for gaming purposes I’m likely to make the odds favor the terrain to discourage players from racing through swamps.

Test of reposting automation.

This weekend I finally completed the 16 battalions of Russian grenadiers I have been plodding through for a month.  This gave me a chance to finally organize my Russian forces into the two corps of Bagration’s western army that I have been building toward.  This consists of the VII and VIII infantry corps, a cavalry “corps,” and reserve artillery.

I used the labels that Sam Fuson assembled.  They are posted in the files section of the Look, Sarge, No Charts Yahoo group.

It feels good to have these painted, assembled, and properly labeled.  I think many of them will make it to the table in March for Cold Wars.

This weekend a bunch of us got together for a comparative play test of three sets of rules for Dark Ages skirmishes.  The three sets were Saga, Battle Troll, and Songs of Blades and Heroes.  We set up the same scenario on three different boards and ran the scenario with each set of rules three times.   The players mostly moved from game to game in order to try the different rules.  Because we only had a few people who could GM some of the rules, not everyone had a chance to try all three sets.

The scenario involved roughly equal forces.  The raiding force was to enter the table, cross the stream at the ford, steal livestock, and exit off the other end of the table.  The defending force was to retain control of their livestock and exit the table where the raiding force entered.  The two forces had to cross through each other with a bunch of animals, usually cows.

There were too many simultaneous games to detail any blow-by-blow coherent battle reports.   Instead I will attempt to record the various players’ impressions and comments on the different rules sets.  The intent of this report is not vote on which was the best rule set for Dark Ages gaming; rather, the intent is to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the various rules.

Focus of the Rules:

• Saga:  Saga is a tournament-oriented Dark Ages skirmish system.  It involved the largest forces of any of the games and resolves combat very quickly.  Neither the combat nor activation mechanisms are particularly innovative; however, the use of a “battle board” to customize the various armies.  An army might have 30 or more figures.
• Battle Troll:  Battle Troll is focused on recreating man-to-man fights like those of Norse legends.  There are three kinds of figures. Heroes are the focus of the game.  They have reputation points that are accumulated for heroic actions.  Heroes are usually assisted by some number of huskarls and karls.  The karls are designed to die in droves, but the effective use of them to assist the heroes and huskarls during a melee can be decisive.  In general our impression is that you wouldn’t have a player control more than about ten figures with these rules.
• Songs of Blades and Heroes:  Like Battle Troll, Songs of Blades and Heroes seems best with about 10-15 figures per player.  Forces consist of heroes, warriors, and other minions.  For this play test, in order to compare apples with apples, we “blandified” the game from its intent by removing all fantasy elements.  The combination of attributes enables the most customization of figures and forces and seems to be the most flexible of the rules.  This impression is validated by the number of sets of rules in the Songs of… family of rules.

Activation and Movement:

• Saga:  Saga is turn based.  One side goes and then the other side goes.  There are opportunities to interrupt or affect the other player’s actions.  The gimmick in Saga is the battle board, which customizes the various armies by giving them special “tricks” or abilities during the game.  At the beginning of a player’s activation, he rolls a certain number of Saga dice and places them on his battle board to be used during the turn to activate units, perform special actions, etc.  For instance, the Vikings have an ability to modify the armor value of a unit when attacked by missile weapons.  The battle board makes each army feel different, but in turn, success is highly dependent on being able to effectively manipulate the battle board, relegating maneuver on the table to secondary importance.  When a unit activates, generally all of the figures in the unit may either fire or move, but not both.  A unit may activate more than once in a player’s turn, accruing a fatigue marker as a result.  Movement is generally up to six inches.
• Battle Troll:  Forces or sides in Battle Troll are divided into up to four bands, each led by a hero, his huskarls, and karls.  Battle Troll uses a card-based activation mechanic with a twist.  The twist is that there are two kinds of cards.  The first allows everyone in a bad to activate.  The second allows a hero and any figures within four inches of him to activate.  A figure may move, conduct moving fire with a javelin, fire a bow or other missile weapon, move, or move into contact and conduct hand-to-hand combat.  Movement is either at a walk (2d6”) or at a run (3d6”).  There is no notion of fatigue.
• Songs of Blades and Heroes:  These rules have the most interesting activation system of the three sets.  Each figure may roll 1, 2, or 3 dice for activation, trying to beat its activation number.  The player may choose the order in which he attempts to activate his figures.  If a player fails two activations, initiative switches to the other player.  More than one success on the activation roll allows a figure to perform more than one action, including a “powerful blow,” which can cause more damage.  There are nuances and strategy to how many dice you roll and the order in which figures are activated.  I’m not sure what exactly this mechanic is simulating, but it is interesting and fun and can cause violent shifts of momentum and swings in the fortunes of battle.

Combat Resolution:

• Saga:  Combat resolution in Saga felt very much like something from Games Workshop.  One player rolls to determine hits, and the other side rolls to “save” based on armor.  A unit gets to roll a certain number of six-sided dice for combat based on the quality of the troops.  Heroes roll five dice.  Warriors roll two dice for each figure.  Levies roll one die for every three figures.  In this sense, it felt a little like the very first release of The Sword and the Flame.  As mentioned earlier, a unit’s activity can be modified by “tricks” from the battle board.  The combat system was largely unremarkable, but there was one interesting nuance.  When an opposing unit has fatigue, a player can spend the enemy’s fatigue to increase his own armor value for that combat.  This was an interesting way to have fatigue effect combat.  When a figure is hit and does not save, it is killed.
• Battle Troll:  Battle Troll has a really interesting and fun combat mechanism; although, since it is more involved than that of the others, I think it really limits the number of figures a player can handle without bogging down.  There are five attack cards and five defense cards, each depicting a different type of attack or defense, such as cut, swing, or jest.  Heroes choose a maneuver.  Other figures randomly pick one of the five.  Then the attack and defense maneuver is revealed.  They are cross-indexed on a small chart that results in a number of dice rolled by the attacker and the defender.  Some attacks and defenses actually result in the defender getting more dice than the attacker.  The number of dice can then be modified if one side outnumbers the other, if one figure’s social status is better than the other, etc.  The combatants compare the high die each rolls.  If one side’s high die is a four and the other side’s high die is a two, that side wins by two.  That difference then modifies the result of a damage roll.  A figure can have many wounds before being killed.  The effect of wounds is to allow the other player to reroll some number of his attack dice.  There is an interesting attack, called a “jest.”  When an attacker jests and the defender chooses certain defensive maneuvers, the defender can lose reputation points.
• Songs of Blades and Heroes:  Combat in Songs of Blades and Heroes uses opposed die rolls.  Each figure has a combat value that is added to the roll on a six-sided die.  These die rolls are modified by having extra combatants, special abilities, or terrain.   The highest roll wins.  If the high roll is even, the loser is forced back a short distance.  If the high roll is odd, the loser is knocked down.  If the high roll is double opponent’s roll, the loser is killed.  A high roll that is triple that of the defender indicates a gruesome kill, and models nearby must take morale test.

General Impressions:

• Saga:  Even though the rules were the most complex of the ones we tried, the Quick Start sheets were great, and variables were limited. Most players found themselves not needing the GM’s assistance after maybe 3 turns.   The players liked the interesting game mechanic of the battle boards (described later) and the individuality between the armies.  The rules had great period feel and were the quickest pace.  Of the rules we tried, these were by far the most expensive, particularly if you want the special six-sided dice.  The battle boards were difficult to master.  Saga had the most mainstream feel of the lot, not quite Games Workshop, but a player can exploit rules to “math-hammer” their less experienced opponent.
• Battle Troll:  Several players felt that Battle Troll was the lightest hearted and creative set of rules.  It is a fun and creative set of rules.  The notion of social classes and reputation is interesting and provides a somewhat different twist from a straight up battle game.  The rules are based on Viking vs. Viking lore, so the sides were very similar and didn’t provide much variation.  There are a number of charts and variation and optional rules for handling karls.  Many players found themselves paging through the book and referring to the charts frequently, but others found the rules easy to learn.
• Songs of Blades and Heroes:  Of the rules we tried these were the least expensive and required the fewest figures to get started.  They were easily learned and highly customizable.  While individuals were customizable, the players felt that the rules provided little individuality or flavor between the armies.  Also, there was a feeling that there wasn’t much difference between armored and unarmored troops.

My personal impression is that for a game using just a few figures per side, I think I’d like to use the Songs of Blades and Heroes activation mechanism with the Battle Troll combat resolution mechanism.  I found the Songs of Blades and Heroes activation mechanism to be unique, fun, and dramatic.  I found the paper/scissors/rock aspect of comparing attacks and defenses in the Battle Troll combat resolution to feel like fighting with swords and shields.