Author: Buck

Yesterday the Harford Area Weekly Kreigspeilers (HAWKS) ran our annual gaming day, Barrage, in the Havre de Grace community center.  Above is a picture of the team that put together this very successful gaming event.  At it’s peak we had about 130 participants, and we presented 42 miniatures events along with a Flames of War tournament.

We all converged on the community center Friday evening to set up tables and chairs.  After we were all set up, Chris ran an “all comers” fantasy game, using Bear Yourselves Valiantly.  At the same time, Russ from On Military Matters ran several six- to eight-player X Wing Fighter games.  The community center is a 60-90 minute drive for me.  We wrapped up around 2200 and needed to converge again by 0800 Saturday morning.  As I didn’t relish the long drives or short night, so I had determined in advance that I would camp out Friday night in the community center, which has both a full kitchen and a shower.  Geoff elected to remain overnight as well.  After all the HAWKs had departed we watched an episode of Man from UNCLE on my Mac and a few other short videos before going to sleep.  The next morning he cooked sausage and eggs from his chickens for breakfast.  By the time the HAWKS began to arrive again, we were reasonably well rested, clean, and fed.

Don and Geoff manned the registration desk in the morning.  Don manned the desk most of the day.  Dealers and game masters began arriving at 0800, with gamers arriving a little before 0900.    HAWKS ladies ran the food concession throughout the day, offering hot dogs, snacks, drinks, and (later) pizza.  Food was inexpensively priced and allowed folks to stay and game rather than wander around town looking for food.

We had several dealers.  Steve, from Age of Glory, has been supporting Barrage for 13 years.  For the past two years, Russ, from On Military Matters, has been coming to Barrage.  In addition we had several other folks selling books, games, and figures.  The dealers told me that they did well.  We even had a couple of folks come to Barrage just to spend money with our vendors.  Barrage is an “old school” convention with the dealers arranged around the outside of the gaming area.  This allows players to slip over and sample their wares between turns and in many cases allowed vendors to participate in a game or two while still watching their tables.  Russ had an X Wing Fighter game going most of the day, and Steve got to participate in a Force on Force modern Afghanistan scenario.  Bob from the I-95 gamers hosted the second annual Barrage Flames of War tournament.  By all accounts the tournament was very successful, despite another Flames of War tournament being scheduled on top of ours elsewhere in Pennsylvania, which sucked away at least five participants.

Above and below are samples of some of the excellent games we had on offer at Barrage.

The game pictures above used some ‘beer and pretzels” rules from Bill Molyneau.  This was the first tabletop gaming experience for the three young men in the center of the picture.  They got to play in three games (Dr. Who by GASLIGHT, Aerodrome, and this ACW battle), and they expressed interest in coming to a HAWKs club meeting.

Bill and William ran this very interesting War of 1812 game of a battle in which Bill had two ancestors.  He used John Bull and Patriots for the game.

Once again, Mark and Sean, the authors of Fireball Forward, supported Barrage.  The game looked great, and the players were engaged the whole time.

Brian Cantwell ran this beautiful ancient naval game.  The ships are paper models with 15mm figures deployed on them.  I think Brian had 10 players, and the game seemed to go very well.

In addition to several kid-friendly game, the HAWKs normally dedicate one table to games designed for kids.  We didn’t have very many kids this year compared to other years, but here is one youngster who enjoyed Geoff’s Lego pirate game with his aunt.

I think this game was a play test for Fall In.  Chris said the game was “intense” and went down to the wire.  I never did find out who won, but the players all had a great time and left the game looking like they had survived a real battle — in a good way!

Above is a small piece of a Dr. Who game using GASLIGHT, featuring an elaborate tunnel system and lots of chaotic action.  This table was a source of lots of whooping and hollering during the morning.

For the second year in a row, Bendan Watts ran his Eat Hitler game, in which Nazis in their time machine hunt for dinosaurs to help with their war effort.  In this case, all the Nazis became dino-snacks.

The last couple of years we had a monotonically increasing number of gamers and games.  While the trend continued, the increase this year was very modest, which was a bit disappointing.   Attendance was impacted by a huge accident on I-95 that affected the Philadelphia and New Jersey gamers.  It was also affected by a competing Flames of War tournament that siphoned off 5 to 8 of the players we expected.  Despite the lower than expected attendance, all but three of our scheduled games were run (as a policy we try to push folks into the guest game master gamers, so the three games that didn’t run would have been put on by HAWKs), the dealers did well, and all the participants had a great time.

If you didn’t make it this year, and you live between DC, Frederick, and Philly, you really need to make Barrage 2014 part of your plans next September.

I started work last weekend on eight battalions of 10mm Russian Jaegers.  It was the first time I’ve picked up a brush since May.  Between the move to a new house, Summer vacations, and other events, I just haven’t had time to paint.  I have been trying to fill out my Russian forces IAW the order of battle and labels that Sam Fuson prepared for Fate of Battle (available as a free download from the LSNC Yahoo Group).  I bought eight battalions of jaegers at Historicon, but this is the first chance I’ve had to paint them.  I will have some time off the last week in September, and I hope to finish them, along with 24 batteries of artillery.

Last weekend, Dave, Chris, and I travelled to War Horse Farm in Gettysburg to run some games for Sam Fuson and folks from his work.  There were 16 gamers, plus the three GMs, including several kids.  We ran two morning games and two afternoon games.

In the afternoon, Chris ran his Nijmegen WWII Look, Sarge, No Charts game that he will be running at Fall In.

In the morning, Dave helped me run a Fate of Battle game from our upcoming 1814 Campaign book.  This was also a play test for Fall In.  The scenario was really quite good, and the players had an excellent time.

In the afternoon I ran a multi-sided GASLIGHT undersea game.

Various international factions were competing to get secrets off of the Nautilus, which had recently been discovered.  The native denizens, the local fauna, and Nemo’s crew had other plans.

The game was a good time and a nice, light change of pace after the more serious, four hour Napoleonic game.

It was also the first time I had had a chance to get these underwater figures on the table.

In the end, I think only Dave and the weird fish were able to accomplish their mission — killing and eating one soldier from each of the five attacking factions.

It was another successful outing at War Horse Farm.  Sam says that the folks he works with are getting ready to start buying and painting their own figures.

I have updated all the action cards based on comments I’ve made in the previous four posts.  I think I am ready for another play test before taking on indirect fire, HE, and tanks.

During yesterday’s run, I came up with what I thought was a solution to my morale dilemma.  After a few minutes with Excel, I think it will work.

What I envision is that the card will have a target number, between -3 and 4.  When making a morale check, the player will subtract the number of morale pips from the Guts # of the unit.  If this difference is greater than the target number, the unit passes.  Otherwise the result of the morale break will be found on the card.

This will allow a single card draw for the morale check, rather than one card draw per morale pip as currently envisioned.  It gives about the right percentage of pass and fail results.  I think I’m ready to give this a try.

My thinking on these rules continues to evolve.  It gives me something to do while running in the mornings.  🙂

In the play test we had a couple of weeks ago, I was generally pleased with the way it worked, but still thought it could be faster without any loss of accuracy.  There were two areas I thought were an opportunity for improvement.  The first was determining whether a body part was protected by cover, and the second was morale testing.

Recall from my previous post that when you draw a card to determine hit location, that body part may be protected by cover.  I had originally envisioned that the cover would be on the back of the single chart card (4×6) that you would need for the game and that eventually player wouldn’t need to refer to it any more.  I found that even toward the end of the play test, there were still questions about whether a piece of cover protected a body part.  I decided that I could add that right on the chart card.

This accomplished two things.  First, it put the information right on the card that you were already looking at, and second, it allowed me to have greater variance.  I wanted a wall, for instance, to usually block a torso hit, but not always.  You can see in the figure above that now I’ve added small icons that indicate when a piece of cover protects the body part.  You still have to compare weapon penetration against cover protection as described earlier.

This figure shows all ten hit location and cover possibilities.  These are repeated five times on a total of 50 cards.  For cards 51 and 52, I think I am going to make body hits, but instead of the five circles used to determine which figure was hit, they will indicate the soldier with a crew-served weapon was hit.  I figure folks will try to knock out the machine-gun, so this will provide a slightly higher chance of hitting it than a rifleman.

The original morale resolution process was copied from LSNC, replacing special dice with special cards.  This requires you to draw a card for each morale pip accrues since you last activation.  Interestingly, this process seems slower with cards than with dice, even though the information was almost identical.  So, I thought about a system that requires only one card draw but takes into account the number of morale pips accrued.  As it looks like math, I’m sure anyone who plays the game will complain.

An example is:

Difference = (2x # morale pips) – Guts#

If Difference > 0, then…

Let’s say a half squad had accrued three morale pips.  In the formula above, Difference would be 6 – Guts#.  The Guts# is 3 for green, 5 for regular, and 7 for elite — the same as the minimum movement distances for those Guts ratings.  In this case, a green unit would fail, but a regular or elite unit would pass.  I haven’t thought through all the implications of this change yet, and in the back of my head I think it may make shot-up units more difficult to break than fresh ones, but I’m still working on it.  There are also some cases, under this new scheme in which units are guaranteed to break.  That’s not what I’m looking for.  Somehow, I need to compare number of pips with morale level and also take into account cover.  It’s a vexing issue.

In my first post, I described movement and briefly addressed activation.  The activation system is very similar to the Look, Sarge, No Charts family of rules; however, there are more cards in the activation deck.

Units activate and fire by half squad.  After all shots are declared, the firing player begins flipping cards.  The series of symbols at the top of the card are used to determine whether the shot hits.  Start in “column” zero and shift right as indicated in the green, rounded rectangle.  If the result is a green check, flip the next card to determine which figure was hit and where the figure was hit.  Once the hit is resolved, flip the next card for the next shot.  Keep going until all shots are resolved.

When a hit is scored and you flip the next card to determine where the figure was hit, the figure may be protected by cover.  The type of cover determines which body parts are protected as indicated below.

If the body part is protected, compare the penetration of the firing weapon with the protection level of the cover.  For instance, most rifles and light machine guns have a penetration of two.  Trees, for instance, have a protection of one.  If the protection is greater than penetration, the shot is blocked, and the target soldier gets a “duck back” or “stun” result instead.  If the penetration is greater than the protection, the wound type goes down a level:  incapacitate is reduced to wound, and wound is reduced to wound(-).  Wound(-) means that if the wound hits an area previously wounded, the wound has no effect.

A wound reduces a figures endurance by one.  Incapacitate reduces endurance by three.  When endurance is reduced to zero, the figure is out of the game.

Note that some weapons get to fire more than once per activation, as indicated in the “dice” column.

For several weeks, while running, I’ve been thinking hard about some new ideas for WWII skirmish gaming.  If these ideas work out, I can see applying them to multiple “modern” skirmishes, such as cowboys and sci fi.    I’m trying to get at a number of important issues:

1. I wanted to avoid having individual soldiers target individual soldiers across the table.  That slows a game, leads to gaminess, and provides unrealistically good control of distribution of fire.
2. I wanted cover to act as cover.  In most games cover reduces your chance of hitting a target.  While this is mathematically indistinguishable from what I’ve decided to do, it didn’t quite seem right at the skirmish level.
3. I wanted fire to be at areas, rather than individual soldiers, but I wanted team leaders and squad leaders to have an impact on distribution of fire by restricting the size of the target area.
4. I wanted activation to be randomized, but I didn’t want only one person playing at a time.
5. I wanted movement distances to be somewhat randomized.
6. I wanted the game to work for either a “realistic” skirmish game or something more cinematic.
7. I wanted it to be quick and fun without becoming simplistic.

So, lets start by defining the attributes of each figure.  These attributes are indicated by the acronym GAMER:

• Guts:  the “morale” of the figure.  This can either be a unit attribute or different for each figure.  Ratings are green (worst), regular, and elite (best).
• Accuracy:  the ability to hit a target with a firearm or thrown object.  Ratings are trained (worst), veteran, and expert (best).
• Melee or Might:  the ability to damage an enemy in hand-to-gland combat.  Ratings are trained (worst), veteran, and expert (best).
• Endurance: the ability to take damage before being incapacitate.  In a “realistic” game Endurance is three, but for more cinematic games Endurance can range from two to eight.
• Reaction:  the ability to react first or more quickly than an opponent.  Ratings are slothful (worst), average, and cat-like (best).

Activation and movement are based on Guts.  When a unit activates, a d10 is rolled for its movement speed, but there are minimum distances depending on Guts:

• Green: 3:
• Regular: 5″
• Elite: 7″

Movement over linear obstacles costs 2″.  Movement through rough terrain halves the movement speed.

Activation is done by rolling cards and looking for your Guts.  Cards have Green, Regular, and Elite on them as well as being numbered from 1 to 6.  There are several of each of the 1 – 6 cards.  Two in each color are black.  Up to three in each color are red.  All of the red cards and black cards are usable by elite units.  Only two (of three) red cards and both black cards are useable by regular units.  Only one red card and two black cards are usable by green units.  There are additional activations cards for close air support, indirect fire, heroes (in a cinematic game), and other events.

In my next post, I will discuss how fire combat is resolved.  We played it last Friday night, and the players seemed to think it worked pretty well.

This weekend five of the HAWKs got together for another play test of Bear Yourselves Valiantly.  In particular, we have been going back and forth about how many units can participate in a melee, when units get credit for overlapping another, when they get credit for a flank attack, etc.

In addition, we needed to test the rules for a different historical period — in this case the War of the Roses.  We assembled a small subset of the HAWKs — those who have been involved in the rules development beyond play testing — because this kind of play testing works better with a small group.

Chris hasn’t painted all his figures yet, and I haven’t begun painting my 100 Years Wars figures.  He made bases with the correct labels that we used in place of bases with figures.  While not aesthetically pleasing, it worked just fine.

We spent 45 minutes discussing outstanding rules issues, then began.  About 90 minutes into the first game, it was obvious that what we had discussed about overlapping units wasn’t working.  So we stopped and discussed it some more.  After another half hour, Duncan came up with the answer.

The challenge has been that we’ve restricted unit movement in the ancient version, so the rules for matching up units in melee from the other rules in the family didn’t work.  We need units to get credit for overlapping around the edge of enemy units when multiple units were attacking without breaking the overall systems.  In the end, we decided that only one unit may attack each face of an enemy base. If more than one unit is attacking the same face, only one attacking unit rolls, but it applies a +1 “overlap” modifier to the die roll.  While this may sound a little goofy, it works really well on the table.

After we completed the War of the Roses game we set up a Romans vs. Carthaginians game and played again.

Not only did we get a lot of work done on finicky aspects of the rules design, but we had a good time.