News from the Dark Country: A Battle Looms

1395 has been a year of battles. Two already have been fought between the forces of Man and the forces of the White Lady - in fact I was in the middle of describing one of those campaigns - and two more between the forces of Bishop Notker and Arnawald of Waldheim.

Now this evening, a greater battle will be fought - or at least one of more numinous importance: a battle for the soul of Christmastide! Even as I write a coven of hags, led by the infamous Goody Gallows, has aligned itself with Yimsleyite rebels and the forces of the White Lady. Their goal: to awaken a terrifying and vengeful aspect of Father Winter that they believe will freeze all, saving only truehearted pagans.

Even as they do this the Howling Kommandos make ready for war! They prepare to leave for the Fog-bound Forest to do battle at the very foot of the Tomb of Father Winter itself. Can they stop the long winter? Which of the forces truly represents the will of St Santa Claus?  Will it finally be a Merry Christmas in the Dark Country?

I'm Surrounded By Idiots

Dammit! I told him to hold!

This is a wargaming idea I've been musing on for a couple of years that crystallized in my head during a shower today.  It would likely work for a variety of scales and periods but my intention is for horse and musket games in Ruritania-style imagi-nations where the characters of the generals, colonels, and units are considered important for flavor reasons. The goal is to simulate the vagaries of command and control situations in countries where generalship is based on hereditary position. It draws from the game fantasy warriors and is hopefully a sort of spiritual cousin to Fleet Captain.

Units in the game are grouped under brigadiers and those units may only perform moves and actions based on their brigadier's current orders. There are three potential orders:

1. Assault - units must make moves that move them closer to an enemy, fire upon that enemy (in close range if possible), and charge that enemy. If the enemy appears as though it is not likely to stand, a charge is always required.
2. Oppose - units may make moves that take them closer to an enemy and fire upon that enemy, but may not move within close range and must fall back if the enemy comes within close range.
3. Hold - units may not take any move but may fire at enemies that come within range. Units will only move if forced to retreat.

Brigadiers have a rating between 1 and 5, 5 being the best. They also have one of the characteristics described below:

• Brash - wants to Assault.
• Unsure - wants to Oppose.
• Cautious - wants to Hold.
• Cowardly - wants to retreat a full move and Hold; however, may instead desire to save his reputation and Assault.

In the course of a battle, the CinC (which stands in for the player and has neither a rating nor a characteristic) will want to issue new orders to brigadiers in accordance with the shape of the battle. If the CinC does not have troops they command directly, they may move into base to base contact with a brigadier and change their orders. No roll is required if orders are changed in this way as the presence of the CinC makes sure these orders are carried out.

If the CinC cannot make base to base contact, or if they have personal troops who they cannot leave, they must send a runner who arrives at the brigadier in the same number of turns it would've taken the CinC to reach base to base contact in the turn they were sent out.  A CinC may send out any number of runners but only one runner may be sent per brigadier.

When a runner arrives with new orders, a die is rolled. If the result is less than the brigadier's rating, the brigadier adopts the new orders and acts accordingly. If the result is greater than the brigadier's rating, the brigadier is willful and adopts new orders in accordance with his characteristic.  If the scenario should impose modifiers to this roll, a 1 is always a success and a 6 is always a failure. A cowardly commander may never have a rating above 4 and a will always Assault on a result of 6.

If this is the first scenario using a brigadier in question, they must be named and their character and rating established. To determine their rating, roll a die.  A result of 1 OR 6 means the brigadier's rating is 1, with all other results being equal to the brigadier's rating. A separate die is then rolled for character, with the result determined per the table below.

1. Cowardly
2. Cautious
3. Cautious
4. Unsure
5. Unsure
6. Brash

If the brigadier has appeared in a scenario before, or it is part of a longer campaign, the character and rating from that scenario are generally kept.  However, if at the end of a scenario the brigadier has disobeyed orders AND his units were routed, a die is rolled.  If the die is equal to or less than his rating, the general's rating improves by one (never higher than 5). As an optional rule, if a Brash brigadier disobeyed orders and routed the units of the enemy, a roll may be made as above.  If the roll is GREATER THAN his rating, his rating decreases by 1.

Another optional rule is for elite units which are determined to have ratings greater than their commanders, such as grenadiers or horse guards. These are given a rating by the scenario (usually a 3,4, or 5) and if the brigadier disobeys orders then a separate roll is made for the unit.  If the die is less than or equal to the unit's rating, they perform the intended order of the CinC and not the brigadier.

Disaster!

I apologize for the uncouth presentation of my largely unpainted minis and table below,  but I generated that this battle was going to happen this month two years ago and got distracted since then. The various dramatis personae described in this post are described here.  The rules used were Chris Kutalik's By This Axe.

The initial positions at the Battle of Vollage

A small company of Badder's Boys, apparently the last, has come this dawn to announce terrible news.  The Bishop's army has been defeated in the field by the White Lady, and the chaos and famine that reigned many years ago is likely to return!

Elves overlook the ruins from a nearby hill, where once a church to St Gax stood

The Two armies drew themselves up around the ruins of Vollage, which was burned years ago during the last pig-men invasion.  The Badger Men (as Badder's Boys are often called), heard clarion calls in the dead of night and the thundering of hooves and realized the battle was upon them.  There had been no time for Bishop Notker to give any man unction or even a prayer.  They said that he had planned to shave his head in deference to the God of Law that night, but no one knows if that was completed when the attack began.

Badder and his Boys

Badder's Boys were tasked with taking a small area of ruins on the army's left flank and prevent the elves on the hill from coming down and joining the battle.  Unfortunately, the elves provide withering fire that ultimately forced the Badger Men to retreat from the field without their leader.

The White Lady and her Groans

The center of the White Lady's Army was  made up of pig-men and monstrous groans.  The groans proved to hit hard but the levy of the Bishop was able to hold them off and eventually slay them with their spears.  The few remaining knights who the Bishop had called up attempted to hold off the pig-men, and did so admirably.  However, the tide of battle turned when the White Lady struck out with her vile magic and Bishop Notker buckled in his armor.  Some attendants were able to escort him off the field, but no man knows what happened to cause the Bishop such pain that he would quit such an important battle.

Badder Faces the White Lady alone, his boys flee in the distance

Attempting to rally the troops, Badder himself rushed ahead to challenge the White Lady to single combat.  She blunted his sword with magic, causing it to do no damage to her, and then struck out with her own attack which knocked him to the ground.  Pig-men rushed to grab him and take him captive.  That is the last his remaining boys ever saw of Badder.

The knights are captured

By the light of the Haunted Moon, the company could see the few remaining knights on the field surrender to the White Lady, who took them captive before her entire army seemed to disappear into darkness.  Sir Albrecht, the Lord of Nightwick, was their leader and is either among the captured or the slain.  It is safe to say he is unlikely to return to his demesne in this life.

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Battletech Scenario: Advance Guard Action

Just in time for Halloween here's... a Battletech scenario?  Whatever.

This scenario is a conversion of one of Charles Grant's Tabletop Teasers (specifically the Advance Guard Action).

An earlier game my wife and I played using a different scenario

SITUATION
Alexandria is a planet devastated by war.  Once one of the jewels of the Star League, its position on the border between the Lyran Commonwealth and Draconis Combine has meant it is subject to constant raiding.  In November of 3029, these raids came to a head when the Draconis Combine deployed elements of the 2nd Legion of Vega to capture some valuable lostech believed to be on the planet.  House Steiner quickly deployed elements of the 15th Arcturan Guards to intercept.

Both sides planned on engaging in ground north of the ruined city where the lostech lay.  Believing the Legion of Vega to be in control of a factory their, the commander of the Arcturan Guards deployed a recon lance to move north and seize a nearby bridge to use in assaulting the factory.  The commander of the Legion of Vega, believing the Guards hold the bridge, similarly sent a light lance to take the factory.  When the two lances arrived they found that neither position was occupied...

GAME SETUP
Use the Battleforce 2 and Open Terrain 2 maps as shown.  The attacker places 4 buildings within two hexes of Hex 1312 on Open Terrain 2.  These buildings count as being 1 level and indestructible for the purposes of this scenario.

They line up better with my physical maps.

DEFENDER

The defender consists of a recon lance of the Arcturan Guards

Lt. Eudora Hale (Piloting 5, Gunnery 4), CN9-A Centurion

WO. Rahman Bugti (Piloting 5, Gunnery 4), ASN-21 Assassin

Mechwarrior Jake Estrada (Piloting 5, Gunnery 4), WLF-1 Wolfhound

Mechwarrior Venkatesha Taska (Piloting 5, Gunnery 4) COM-2D Commando

Deployment

The defender deploys their forces along the southern edge of the map.

ATTACKER

The attacker consists of a pursuit lance of the Legion of Vega.

Talon Sergeant Van Matias (Piloting 5, Gunnery 4), WTH-1 Whitworth

Sergeant Harumi Higashida (Piloting 5, Gunnery 4), HER-2S Hermes II

Mechwarrior Francisca Akajima (Piloting 5, Gunnery 4), SDR-5V Spider

Mechwarrior Hilda Larsen (Piloting 5, Gunnery 4), FS9-H Firestarter

Deployment

The attacker deploys their forces along the northern edge of the map.

VICTORY CONDITIONS

The defender's goal is to secure the bridge as planned with a secondary goal of securing the factory.  The attacker's goals are the inverse.  To secure an area, the player must have a mech within two hexes of its central square and their opponent must not have a mech in the same vicinity.  The scenario ends after 10 turns.

Draw

Both sides each hold their respective objectives at the end of 10 turns OR neither side holds its objective at the end of 10 turns.  Note: the second condition includes holding the enemies objective but not your own. 

Minor Victory

One side holds their respective objective while the other side's is contested.

Major Victory

One side holds both objectives.

SPECIAL RULES

At the beginning of turn 5 there is a chance that reinforcements will arrive for either or both sides.  When that turn begins, both players should roll 1d6 and consult the chart below.

1	2 medium mechs (no more than 100 tons total)
2	1 assault and one heavy mech (no more than 165 tons total)
3	1 assault mech
4	1 heavy mech
5	No reinforcements this turn.  Roll again next turn.
6	Reinforcements are pinned down and will not arrive.

If reinforcements arrive, deploy them along the player's home edge.

Thoughts on D&D and Wargaming

When I was in high school, I was in a club called the Military History Society, which was really a euphemism for a wargaming club.  We met in the library about once a month to fight battles from various conflicts - though the only scenario I can remember that didn't involve American soldiers was set during Operation Barbarosa - using the teacher/organizer's miniatures.  Most of these were, due to the nature of his collection, horse and musket era affairs and I usually try to convince everyone to let me be a cavalry commander.  I only succeeded in doing this one time, and then only because there were so few participants that even the teacher had to double as referee and general.  In my crowning moment of glory, I ordered a charge into a number of disorganized blue-belly reinforcements that had just gotten off of a train, pinned them against it, and destroyed them.  It was a good day.

But I didn't decide to write this post in order to wax nostalgic about playing wargames.*  What I remember about those games is that the organizer almost always brought a photocopied set of rules with a number of marginal notes and house rules that anyone used to the tournament environments of post-Games Workshop wargames would balk at.  It occurred to me several months ago, during one of the infamous Hill Cantons after-session-bull-sessions, that these documents must have been very much like the wargaming climate that created OD&D.  The rules were more of a set of suggestions for the individual clubs, like primitive roleplaying groups, used to create their own scenarios.

Recently I've been reading a number of "old school" wargaming books - Charge! Or How to Play Wargames by Peter Young, The War Game Rules and The Wolfenbuttel War by Charles S Grant, and Napoleonic Wargaming by the original Charles Grant - as part of my ongoing imagi-nations project. One thing I have observed in them is the fact that they fully expect the rules to be modified and often say so, much like one sees in the text of OD&D.  Napoleonic Wargaming is almost a set of guidelines for making a wargame than a complete game, though a "summary of the rules" section does present something that is somewhat coherent as a game.

Another thing that I noticed was the similarities between these various rules, but also their tiny differences.  It is not unlike, at least to my mind, the differences between Holmes, Moldvay/Cook, and Mentzer, even if those products came at a time when D&D was designed to be much more uniform from table to table.

I say all this because I believe that if the OSR has really "won," a phrase I have seen in a strangely high number of places, it is because so many groups have returned to this model of gaming.  One only has to look at the blog list over to your right to see several examples of this sort of thing in action - DMs and their groups customizing a very similar set of rules to achieve different experiences.

*Actually, I totally did, but I have another point too.