Buck's Blog

Attendance at Fall In 2011 was hampered by sleet and snow that began early Saturday morning, which kept away many of the “day trip” attendees.  There were many good games to play that got no players and had to be taken down, because there weren’t enough players.  In the HAWKs room, we rarely have a game that doesn’t get enough players to “go.”  In most cases, we are turning people away.  At Fall In 2011, about a third of the HAWKs games had to be torn down without having been played.

The game above was a post-Civil War train robbery using Blood and Swash.  By the hollering, laughing, and number of dead men and horses around the train, it appears to have been a success.

Saturday morning I ran a Look, Sarge, No Charts: World War II game.  Each side had three battalions, two infantry and one armor.  The Germans had one infantry battalion on the French side of the river.  Their objective was to capture the town and surrounding hills.  The French objective was to push the Germans back across the river.  The scenario requires both sides to attack, instead of sitting in a static defense.  I’ve run variations of this scenario several times, but this run was the most fun.  Both sides were aggressive.

I had planned to run a sneak-preview game of Look, Sarge, No Charts: Napoleonic Wars on Sunday morning.  Chris, JJ, and I drove up Thursday night after work.  Friday morning there were few games available to play, so we decided to put some of my 10mm Napoleonics on the table for a four-player, friendly game.  There were so many people who wandered by who wanted to play that I put enough figures on the table for eight players.  We had a good time, and I think the players enjoyed the rules.

My Sunday morning game was meant to be pseudo-Auerstaedt.  I set up the battlefield approximately correctly, but to disguise the battle, I used Austrians as substitutes for the Prussians.  The game went well.  As we are stressing the rules, we are uncovering small issues that have to be modified, but in general, the rules are working well.  Napoleonics are more complicated than the Civil War, so this version of the Look, Sarge family of rules is more complex.   I think they are coming along nicely and should be ready in about a year.

I had a good time at Fall In, despite the low attendance.  I also bought much more stuff than I should have.  My schedule was a little light.  Because of the bad weather, my wife couldn’t bring the kids up on Saturday.  Time I had set aside to game with them on Saturday I used to hit the flea market (where I found a few small odds and ends), rest for an hour in my room, and play a game of Duncan’s “Charted Seas” game.  Dave, JJ, and I even had time to run to Six Feet Under Games (in New Holland, PA) to look for the latest supplement for Red Dragon Inn by Slugfest Games.

Charted Seas is an adaptation of the mechanics from the Uncharted Seas fantasy naval game.  Duncan has adapted it for WWII naval actions.  It works well, but like Uncharted Seas, the outcome seems very sensitive to the result of the initiative rolls.  What I like from Uncharted Seas is the firing and damage mechanic.  Charted Seas might be better on a hex map with an order based movement system and simultaneous firing.

Some of the HAWKs went to Fuddruckers for lunch.  JJ and I couldn’t stay long, because I needed to get him to the airport.  After unpacking the car and putting all my stuff away, I settled down to watch some old episodes of Man From UNCLE and relax before another thrilling week.  A bad wargaming convention is better than a good day at work.

This year is the 100th anniversary of a number of key events, including the first outboard motor, the discovery of the South Pole, the first car race across the Texas desert, and an early balloon race.  This convention also saw the 1000th convention game run by the HAWKs in the past 10 years.  We decided, as a club project, to run a GASLIGHT-based race game.

The game involved four legs: a boat race in the Amazon involving pygmies, pirates, dinosaurs, and pirates; a dog sled race involving yetis, the Terror of the Yukon, polar bears, troublesome penguins, a VERY hungry walrus, and lots of action; an aerial race involving two-man zeppelins racing between mountain peaks; and a car race through the desert, involving a crazed hermit, the fountain of youth, and an archeological dig.

In the picture on the right, my daughter and I made the mountains from poster board and paper mache.  The blue dots you see show the heights of the mountains, between 1 and 6.  I think the look of the mountains and the cotton batting was an effective representation of a race through high mountains.

In each leg of the race, first place earned five points, second place earned three points, and third place earned one point.  In addition, there were a number of additional objectives that were worth points.  In the zeppelin game, for instance, rescuing one of the lost mountain climbers was worth a point.  In my dog sled game, capturing the Terror of the Yukon was also worth a point.  In this way, vehicles that got a late start could still earn points and stay competitive in the overall race.

Each round lasted 75 minutes.  After each round, points were awarded — in the form of poker chips.  The players carried their points with them as they rotated between tables with the different legs of the race.   After the fourth round, after each leg was completed, the player with the highest total number of points was awarded a GASLIGHT Compendium T-shirt.

What’s not to like about pirates, motor boats, pygmies, dinosaurs, and alligators battling along a jungle river?  This was Todd Harland-White’s scenario.  This scenario involved a LOT of shooting.  In iteration I had a chance to watch, the lone crew member of the lead boat was shot in the back by a long range rifle shot, just inches from the finish line.  The players were racing to be the first to reach one of the waiting gunboats.

In my arctic dog sled race, the participants weren’t allow to shoot at each other until they got out of line of sight of the event judge.  Once out of sight, the shooting began in earnest.  In one of the iterations of the race, two sleds were damaged and rolled 20’s for results — the sleds fell apart and the dogs ran off.  The racers continued on foot.  In one case, two sleds bumped and were locked together three inches from the finish line.  On the next card, the driver of one of the locked sleds sprinted across the finish line to win the race.

In the last iteration of this leg of the race, the winner was on foot.  The second-to-last player knocked out was eaten by a polar bear.  The third-to-last player knocked out was shot by the player on foot.  It was quite bloody.

In all of the legs of the race, players were issued small cards with dirty tricks and other misfortunes they could play on the other players at any time.  These included things like “your engine conks out,” “you are attacked by yetis,” or “desert tribesmen attack you.”  There were also some “good” cards, like an extra burst of speed (an extra 1d6 of movement).

In GASLIGHT, maximum movement in a turn is a fixed amount, depending on the Speed attribute of the vehicle. For this race game, we borrowed a couple of ideas from Jamie Davis’ excellent Future Race game.  We first made movement partially random.  In the dog sled race, for instance, the base speed was 2 inches per remaining dog in the team.

To this, the players added the roll on zero, one, or two six-sided dice, at the player’s discretion.  The player could choose how many dice to roll; however, once they decided, they had to move the full amount rolled.  This often resulted in sleds crashing into cliff walls, trees, rocks, flocks of penguins, or each other.

In GASLIGHT, vehicles turn up to their Spin attribute and then travel in a straight line up to their Speed number of inches.  For the race game, once the movement distance was determined, the players had move at least half their total movement allowance before turning up to 45 degrees.  This too resulted in crashes and other mishaps.

Finally, when vehicles bumped into each other, they had to roll on a bump table to determine if either (or both) vehicles were damaged.  Between the dirty tricks cards, many obstacles, and requirement to move up to half before turning, there were many bumps, crashes, flips, and other mishaps.  This is what made the games so much fun.

One of the games I ran at Fall In this weekend was Captain America by GASLIGHT, in which Captain America and his strike team conduct a raid to blow up many of Hydra’s advanced weapons.  These tanks came from Indiana Jones play sets that were available at Disney World a few years ago.

In this picture you can see some of the German defenders.  In the distance you can see a flying wing that also came from the Indiana Jones play sets from Disney World.

This is a long shot of the compound, showing the Hydra flying saucer and another small compound with a robot inside.  In the foreground is a hangar that hold an experimental rocket plane.

Captain America’s strike force entered from the top and right of this picture.  Their mission was to blow up as much of the Hydra equipment as possible.  Unfortunately, Captain America was shot on turn 1 and rolled a 20 for his Save — and should have died.  I had his girlfriend Peggy jump in front of the bullet instead.  It was an inauspicious beginning.

Another squad in the strike force couldn’t manage to cut a hole int he fence to get to the giant robot for three turns, but eventually blew it up.  Another squad found the map with the locations of all the Hydra bases.  I wouldn’t let them drive off the table immediately.  Eventually some German cavalry on horseback and motorcycles caught up with the men with the map trying to escape in a truck.  After two rounds of melee, the Germans recaptured it.  The Americans blew up a plane, the robot, and two tanks — earning four points.  Because the Germans got the map away from the allies, they earned five points.  The game was a very narrow German victory.

I think all the players had a good time.  I may run it again at Cold Wars.

Every year a bunch of us — mostly buddies from high school — get together in North Carolina to game for a weekend.  It’s like the old days.  We game all day and into the wee hours.  Then we get up and do it again.  This weekend we played 14 games between Friday morning and Sunday morning.

One of the games we played was a test of my Look, Sarge, No Charts: Napoleonic Wars scenario for Fall In.  The scenario involved an Austrian attack by two corps on a French corps acting as an advanced guard.  For most of the players, this was their first exposure to the under-development Napoleonic rules; although, they had all played the WWII version in the past.

Two major differences between A Union So Tested: Look, Sarge, No Charts: American Civil War and the Napoleonic version are formations and skirmishers.  In the picture above you can see some French units in columns and others in line.  You can also see some skirmishers.  (I had just finished painting the figures the night before departing for JJ Con, so I hadn’t flocked the bases yet.)

The game went well.  After two Austrian brigades retreated due to morale failures, the Austrian players failed their player morale checks and we called the game a French victory.  I’ve tweaked the scenario a bit for Fall In based on this play test.  Dave Wood and I also worked out a few of the nagging details about the rules during the long car ride home.  I’m pretty happy with how the rules are working out.  We need a few more play tests before we can begin writing the rules into book form.

Come see the game at Fall In on Sunday.

I’ve been continuing to build up my Austrian army for Fall In.  This weekend, I finished painting five battalions of Austrian Grenzers.

Like most of my 10mm collection, these are Old Glory.  Most of the Old Glory figures come in five-figure strips.  I like that.  Jaegers and Grezners are individually mounted.  In this case, I wanted units of Grenzers, so the five-figure strips would have been better for me.  I plan to keep some of the jaegers I’ve purchased individually mounted to use for skirmishers.

Old Glory also sells a French “skirmisher” pack.  There are probably similar packs for other countries.  The skirmisher packs are also individually mounted.  I ordered a couple packs of the French skirmisher packs to make individually-mounted skirmishers for LSNC: Napoleonics.  I haven’t received them yet.

You’ll notice that I haven’t flocked the bases.  I plan to do so eventually, but as the game is under development, I keep changing out the labels on the bases. I’m only tacking down the labels with a little bit of white glue.  Once I’m not changing them very often, I’ll flock the bases and more permanently mount the base labels.

I am running 10mm Napoleonics at Fall In in late October.  I am hoping the convention response will be as positive as the play test sessions with the HAWKs.  I am getting excited about these rules.

We’ll be working on LSNC: GASLIGHT and LSNC: Fantasy next.  I’ve already begun buying 10mm fantasy figures from Copplestone, GW, and others.

For Fall In! 2011 the HAWKs are running a GASLIGHT race game to celebrate our 1000th convention game in 10 years.  The HAWKs 1000 will involve a series of short, 1-hour race games:  arctic dogsled race, Amazonian boat race, desert car race, and mountain aerial race.  The players with the most points after four rounds will play in the HAWKs 1000, a car race around a circular track.

For race games, we’ve modified GASLIGHT with a few small additions from Jamie Davis’ “Future Race.”  (Future Race was inspired by Star Wars CRAPisode I and is probably the only good thing about the Star Wars prequel trilogy.  Get a copy today!!!)  Here’s what we borrowed from Future Race:

• Movement speed has a random component.  For the dogsled race, sleds moved 1d6″ + 2″ per remaining dog.  We let players opt to NOT use the 1d6″; however, they had to move the 2″ per dog.  As a result of the play test, we decided to let the sleds move 2d6″ plus the dog inches.  BEFORE rolling their movement dice, players can elect to use two, one, or none of the six-sided dice.
• Sleds had to move the entire movement distance.
• In GASLIGHT vehicles turn up to their Spin and then move in a straight line.  For the dogsled race, sleds MUST move at least half their full movement distance and then can turn up to Spin to finish the move.  They can only turn once.  If a sled is going to hit an obstacle, the player may Save to try to turn early.
• When sleds hit obstacles, the driver of the sled rolls his Shoot number to try to aim the sled away from the obstacle.  If unsuccessful, the player rolls on the Sled Vehicle Damage Chart for each inch the sled would move through the obstacle.  For instance if the movement would take the sled three inches into the side of a cliff, the player would roll three times for damage.
• If a sled moved through another sled, there was a chance of a bump.  The moving sled rolled a Shoot to see if he could avoid or hit, whichever he was trying to do.  If a bump occurred, the “defender” rolled Save to avoid.  If that failed, the moving player rolled on the Bump Table to determine the result, which could be things like “attacker rolls on Sled Vehicle Damage Chart” or “defender rolls on Sled Vehicle Damage Chart.”

Each sled began the game with a driver (with a pistol), gunner (with a rifle), and five dogs.

Each player drew three cards at the beginning of the game.  These cards could be played on themselves or other players during the game.  A few of these were good things (like an extra burst of speed that gave the sled an additional 1d6″ of movement).  Most were bad things, like being attacked by Eskimos, walruses, or “The Northland Marauder.”  These cards help self regulate the race, because players tend to play these cards against the current leader.  In the picture above, my sled slipped on a patch of ice (played by Geoff) and flipped, killing my gunner.

Points were awarded as follows:

• 5 points for first place; 3 points for second place; and 1 point for third place.
• -1 point for driving a sled through one of the Eskimo villages
• 3 points for rescuing a lost explorer
• 3 points for capturing the Northland Marauder

Dave’s lead sled dog dart off after an arctic rabbit (a card played by Duncan) and went off the course, up the side of a rocky hill, across the rocks, and back onto the course, taking the lead.  He earned five points.  Chris left his gunner behind to battle a Yeti, and his driver was shot in the back.  Greg drove off the course and was later shot in the back as well.  Geoff came in second and had rescued a lost explorer, but he lost a point for losing his camping gear along the course, so he earned five points.  Sam’s sled had been stopped by a Mountie for questioning, but her gunner rand on foot for the finish line.  Duncan’s sled passed her to attain third place and earn one point.

When we play the full extravaganza at Fall In!, each player would carry their points to the next game with them.

It was a very fun game.  I’m looking forward to testing the other four scenarios.

Yesterday we had another test of the Wizard Battle game.  This time we had six players.  The last play test only included four players.  This was a good chance to get some more opinions on the game.  The action was frenetic.  The “standard” 162-card deck had enough cards for all six players to keep going.

I need to make special morale check dice for the Wizard Battle game.  There were a few suggestions on how to improve the readability of the cards.  (Notice that in the picture above, the cards are small.  I printed them that size, but the original files are full size playing cards.  I’ve been using the template for Superior POD.)  Other than a few small things, the game is pretty solid.

We spent much of the weekend traveling, but Monday was relaxing.  I finished some Hungarian troops for my Austrian army and then continued work on remounting some of the painted figures I had purchased a couple of years ago.

For my Fall In convention G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. game, I needed some igloos as part of the obstacles.  Sam and I made these.  We sawed the bottom half of some styrofoam eggs.  The entrances were made from craft foam sheets.   I think they turned out well enough.

Individually 10mm (or 12mm) Napoleonic figures don’t look impressive, but in large groups, on the table, I think they look great.  In anticipation of the Look, Sarge, No Charts: Napoleonic Wars, I had been purchasing some sets of 10mm Napoleonic figures, mostly painted, on Ebay.  Since beginning this project in earnest after the release of The GASLIGHT Compendium, I’ve been going through what I have, mounting it for LSNC: Napoleonics, and purchasing bits to flesh out full units.

For over a week I’ve been working on four battalions of French light infantry.  I finally finished them this weekend.

In other versions of LSNC (World War II and American Civil War) a base is 1.5″x3″.  In WWII this represents a platoon.  In ACW, this represents a regiment.  In the Napoleonic version, a “base” is still 1.5″x3″, but it is made of two 1.5″x1.5″ stands.  This allows them to be arranged into a column, line, or square.  For three-rank infantry, the figures are arranged as shown in the picture above, in three ranks.  When I get around to painting British (two-rank infantry), they’ll have just two ranks of figures on a base.

I also painted some Austrian Landwehr.  These are interesting, because they are in grey uniforms, so they’ll stand out on the table.  I have also begun painting another few bases of Austrian infantry.  I’ll paint these as Hungarian infantry with light blue trousers, since all my current infantry is wearing the white trousers of the German infantry.

A couple of years ago I wrote (and published as a .pdf download) a set of rules for PT boat actions based on Kurt Schlegel’s unpublished Fire at Will rules.  The rules, The Quick and the Dead, is a wild and wooly game, with no turns.  Players each command two PT boats.  They play action cards from their hands at their own pace (usually frenetic), make morale checks for each of their boats, draw more cards, and keep going until one side wins.  Games take about 30 minutes, after which players drop into their seats, exhausted.  In that sense, I think the rules do a good job of portraying the 20 minutes of action that punctuate PT patrols and actions.

A few weeks ago, at a HAWKs night, Chris and I began talking about modifying the basic system for a wizard duel.  We thought it would be neat to have a set of FAST rules that would allow players to recreate things like the fight in the Ministry of Magic in the the Harry Potter book.  Then I moved, went on vacation, and started a new (killer) job.  We finally got back to it.  We had our first play test on Saturday, as we awaited the arrival of Hurricane Irene.  Play testers were Chris, Dave Wood, my son, and me.

The rules worked really well.  We took a bunch of notes through four play test games for additional cards to add to the game deck.  We were all happy about how the game played — especially my son who won three out of four.  We played two exterior games (in an area with woods, rocks, a ruined building, etc.) and two interior games (in a wizards laboratory).  We even played a game in which each wizard had an elemental to support them.  We hope to eventually be able to get these printed by Superior POD, so I’m making the cards on their template.  It looks like a four-to-six player game will require three 54-card decks.

I’ll publish updates later, along with pictures.  The next play test is likely to be on the 17th of September.