Sunday, November 04, 2007
Halloween 2007 Game
Every year, I run a horror themed game on one of the weekends close to Halloween. This year’s scenario involved groups of monster hunters—a strike force from Zenda, a squad of WolfenJager and the Vatican Hit Team—who have descended on a central European town that has been overrun with monsters. To stop the infestation, the teams needed to find six books of spells that have been stashed throughout the town.
For this game, I used the Rippers miniatures rules from Pinnacle. They are uncomplicated and have and RPG feel (not surprising, considering they’re a subset of that company’s Savage Worlds RPG). You can find a free version of the basic rules, called Savage Showdown.
The game was run somewhat like an old school dungeon crawl. As the game master, I played all the monsters. The players moved through the town, entering and exploring buildings like rooms in a dungeons, fighting monsters and picking up useful items.
Each turn, there was a chance of a wandering monster appearing. These were pulled from a deck of monster cards, and then randomly assigned to a starting position. During the monster turn, I rolled a GW scatter die to determine the direction that they travelled. When the wandering monsters had a line of sight to a group of good guys, they rolled a skill check to determine if they noticed. If the good guys were spotted, the monsters would make a bee-line toward them.
As it turns out, the monster hunters had little difficulty in finding the books and destroying them. I had bad luck rolling for wandering monsters, and when they did arrive, they always seemed to head away from the players. In games past, the wandering monsters were very effective in slowing down the players and picking off the occasional figure. If the players did not move toward their goals quickly enough, the monsters would reach a critical mass and the players would have no chance.
This time, I just couldn’t get a break.
A modification that I’ll make in the future is to have an increasing chance of a wandering monster with each failed roll. My base has always been a 1-3 on a six sided die. In the future, if one doesn’t appear, on the next roll a monster will appear on a 1-4, then a 1-5, etc. Once a monster appears, the chance falls back to 50%.
A few notes on the terrain: All of the buildings, and the castle walls are home made from foam core. The town houses were coated with colored gesso; the half-timbers are balsa. The wood siding on the buildings is made from strips of cardboard, glued in rows. Roofs are either made from strips of cardboard, cut to resemble shingles, or from a plaster casting.
The castle walls are made from foam core, painted with black latex paint, into which sand was mixed. They then were drybrushed. The stone effect was made by randomly gluing rectangles of cardboard onto the surface before painting. The brick houses are made from foam core. I used Corel Photo Paint to make sheets of brick patterns, which were printed and glued to the surface.
The panes on the windows were made by cutting plastic canvas of the sort used for needlework.
Figures are from a large variety of manufacturers, including West Wind, Ral Parthal, Grenadier, Heritage, and a few others I can’t remember. I’ve been collecting them for twenty years now.
You can see more photos of the 2007 Halloween game in the gallery.
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Sunday, September 23, 2007
Disposable Heroes Review, Battle Report and Photos
This past weekend, I played my first game of Disposable Heroes, Iron Ivan Games’ rules for World War II skirmish. You can see some photos here.
I’ve been looking for some years for a rules set that strikes the right balance between “realism” and playability; in Disposable Heroes, I think I’ve found it.
Disposable Heroes’ rules are simple and a great deal is abstracted, but actual play is quite complex. Each turn involves involved a great deal of thinking about the proper order in which to activate squads, and how best to use them.
The game is played by alternating the activation of squads. As each squad is activated, the player may move, fire and conduct Close Combat.
Movement is conducted by moving a single figure to a new location and then arranging the others in the unit within command range. There are no terrain modifiers for movement of foot troops. In keeping with the streamlined nature of the rules, if one figure in a unit can make it into a terrain feature, they all can.
Firing is conducted on a unit to unit basis and is resolved with two die rolls: one for accuracy and one to kill. A weapon’s rate of fire determines how many dice are rolled.
Snap fire can be conducted if an enemy unit maneuvers within 12 inches. Modifiers to the rate of fire and accuracy roll reflect the
Units that receive fire must make a Morale Check. A first failure results in a pin; a second requires the unit to fall back; a third forces a rout. Pinned units cannot fire or maneuver until they rally.
Continued...
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Squad Leader in 3D
Some years ago, I had a conversation with John Hill, the designer of Squad Leader, about how to convert the board game rules to a miniatures game. To my surprise, Hill told me that the game had originally been designed as a miniatures game, and that he had pitched it to Avalon Hill as such. He was told that, while AH had no interest in a miniatures game, if he converted it to a board game, they would buy it. So he did, and they did, and the rest is history.
Hill’s advice was to simply use the rules as-is, converting measurements from hexes to inches. He suggested a straight one hex to one inch conversion, but I think that’s because he envisioned using micro armor. Our group decided that a two- or three- inch to one hex conversion was better for 15mm figures, and we have played it that way off and on for a couple of years.
Then recently, the owner of the WWII figures (I had painted them for him several years ago) bought a couple of Hotz Artworks hex mats. This past Saturday night was our first using hexes instead of rulers.
And what a difference it made! Squad Leader played fairly well with rulers, but is a delight with hexes. Having the hexes sped up things considerably, taking measurement out of the equation, and leaving us to concentrate on the other aspects of the game.
The scenario involved a group of Germans defending a fortified position and a collective farm, separated by eight hexes. A large force of Russians was dispatched to clear them out.
After the Germans deployed, the Russians entered on the opposite side of the board. The initial strategy was to concentrate the entire attack on the fort and ignore the collective. The Russians would mass in a wood close to the fort, shoot to attempt to disorder the Germans, and then close assault.
The plan didn’t work. As the Russians attempted to take positions in the wood, they were slaughtered by massed German firepower, both from the fort, and at long range, from the collective. An assault finally was attempted, but by then there were far too few Soviets left.
Since the game took just an hour and a half, we set up again and restarted. This time, the Russians sent a smaller contingent to keep the Collective busy. Again, the horde moved up to the woods. This time, the Germans were far less effective in their fire. Part of that was that their dice had gone cold; part was that the troops in the collective now had their own problems and could not fire with impunity.
The Russians facing the collective farm then got lucky and rolled snake eyes on a low odds shot. The German leader in the hex failed his morale check, as did the rest of the unit. The second round of morale checks eliminated a third of the German flank.
The Russians facing the fortification got a similar break and were able to force their way in for a Russian victory.
Squad Leader turns out to be a terrific system for miniatures when using printed hex mats. The basic game is elegant and relatively simple. While ASL has moved on to Multi-Man publishing, I’d really like to see basic Squad Leader re-released as a purely miniatures set.
You can see more photos here.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Memorial Day War of 1812 Skirmish
Over Memorial Day weekend, our group played a War of 1812 game using 28mm figures and a set of homebrew rules written by Dave Dalton.
The War of 1812 is a favorite period of our host, who when he’s not playing miniatures, does War of 1812 re-enactments. And in truth, it’s a fun period to game. The uniforms are colorful and varied—generally Napoleonic, with quite a bit of frontier American thrown in. And the battles, while not the epic clash of nations in the European wars, were often brutal skirmishes.
Dalton’s rules, I think, do a good job of capturing the unpredictability of frontier warfare. Each turn, the players draw from a deck one card for each unit on their side. The commander then assigns one of the cards to each unit. A joker or ace gives a unit three actions; a face card, two; any other card, one. Actions are move, fire or reload. Each side has the option of reshuffling at the end of any turn, or continuing to exhaust the deck.
Drawing and assigning cards gives the players a series of critical decisions each turn, regarding which units need to take multiple actions, and which can get by with just one. The cards also tend to result in short, unpredictable bursts of action. It’s not unusual for one side to get their high cards in bunches, allowing them to move energetically, only to be shut down by a series of low cards.
Combat is decided in a fashion reminiscent of the Warhammer rules. Ten disded dice are rolled to hit, and the hits are re-rolled to determine casualties. Melee is resolved on a stand-by-stand basis. Morale is checked as units take damage and are reduced in size.
Our particular battle was a generic meeting engagement as British and American forces were arrayed across a field in roughly equal numbers. The objective was simple: drive the enemy from the field.
Most of the games that we’ve played with this rules set have been near-run things, with the outcome not being decided until late in the game. This, however, wasn’t one of those times. The British players got a run of good cards early, and kept reshuffling to get those cards back in the deck, only to come up with another good run.. Their luck with cards continued throughout the night. The Americans (my side) on the other hand, had rotten luck with the cards, never drawing more than one face at a time. That simply wasn’t enough to get anything going.
Our luck with the dice was just bad as we did minimal damage to the enemy. Worse, we failed easy morale tests and watched nearly full strength units flee the field. First our left collapsed, then the right. As units were destroyed or driven from the field, the number of cards in the draw also were reduced, cutting back on the chances of getting multiple actions with any unit.
Even a deus ex gamemaster set of reinforcements couldn’t save the day. The Americans couldn’t get enough face cards to get them into combat before the the rest of the army was vaporized.
You can see some photos of the game here.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Space Hulk After Action Report
Genestealers mass for a final assault. More photos here.
We recently played a game of Space Hulk, the excellent Games Workshop miniatures/board game that sadly went out of print a decade ago. The game’s basic premise has squads of Space Marines conducting operations on board huge space “hulks” that are unfortunately infested by an alien race of “Genestealers.”
The playing surface consists of a bunch of interchangeable, interlocking corridors and rooms, all of which are marked with a square grid. The pieces are plastic (and in some cases, lead) miniatures that represent individual Marines and GeneStealers.
Continued...
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Tekumel Miniatures
Professor M.A.R.Barker’s Tekumel has been lauded over the years as being the most original—and one of the most detailed—fantasy worlds ever conceived. It’s had a small, but rabid following extending back to the publicaiton of Empire of the Petal Throne by TSR in 1975. The main attraction of the world is that it is not based on the standard european fantasy archetypes.
I recall that there were some miniatures out for the game many years ago—and that they had a vaguely meso-american look—but I never picked any up.
Now, Eureka Miniatures of Australia is in the process of releasing a new line of Tekumel miniatures. They look fabulous—and unlike any fantasy figure you’ve yet seen. They would make a great army for HOTT or other generic fantasy system.
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About the Miniature Wargaming Hobby
Miniature Wargaming is part of the "adventure games" hobby, which includes r ole p laying and board games. Wargamers recreate battles on the tabletop with toy soldiers, like a more complicated game of chess. Models range in height from 6mm to 28mm tall, with 15mm and 25mm being the most popular. There also is a growing interest in toy soldiers and military models, such as the 1/32 and 1/35 scale plastic soldiers from Conte, and Marx.
The most popular miniature wargames are fantasy and science fiction based, such as Warhammer, Warhammer 40K, Warmachine and The Lord of the Rings. World War II games such as Flames of War and Axis and Allies are new favorites. Other favorite historical periods include Napoleonics, the American Civil War, and ancients, such as Romans or Greeks. Other gamers enjoy miniature naval wargames, recreating battles like Trafalgar, Jutland and the Coral Sea.
Hobbyists research historical periods and paint their tiny soldiers in accurate uniforms. Others develop "historically realistic" rules sets or build scale battlefield terrain using model railroad techniques.
For pictures, visit the gallery.
Some of the bigger hobby companies are Games Workshop, which produces Warhammer, Wargames Foundry and Old Glory Miniatures. Wizards of the Coast produces several lines of pre-painted miniatures games, such as the Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons miniatures games, and a historical game with pre-painted miniatures: The new Axis and Allies game. Wizkids produces a fantasy collectable miniatures game, such as the Mage Knight and Heroclick fantasy games, the science fiction games MechWarrior and Rocketmen, as well as the quasi-historical Pirates of the Spanish Main.
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