Holiday Musings

Sometimes it seems like everything in life is set on "fast forward".  I've been in that mode for months, always hoping that there would be a day when I was decompressed enough to stop and think about things for a while.  Today, it seems, is finally that day...

I unloaded the notebook in which I keep the current log of my miniatures games from my briefcase in  late March, so I spent some time this morning combing through photos, notes, and posts on the Reaper Forums to reconstruct the games I've been in lately.  I was a little surprised to find that I have managed to be in 24 miniatures games so far this year, despite the frantic pace of things.  I won't get anywhere near the usual annual goal of 52, but it looks like I shouldn't have any trouble meeting my minimum goal of 26, given that a Ghost Archipelago game is scheduled in two weeks, and the HAWKs will be running our Barrage mini-convention at the end of the month.

William was in for a visit (from grad school at the University of Michigan) two weeks ago in conjunction with a friend's wedding, and I took a day off from work to spend some time with him.  Because we are moving relatively soon, he was digging through his stock of possessions remaining here, including his 1/72 plastic Hordes of the Things armies.  Between that and the couple of stands I had recently finished off during a business trip, we decided to unpack some scenery and play a couple of games.  I was using my Airfix Robin Hood-based medievals, and William was using a mixed bag of El Cid figures and Arabian Nights.

William deploys some troops

Outflanked by the flying carpet

We split the two games one and one, with the flying carpet resulting in the destruction of my new nights in one game, and being ignominiously blown out of the sky by a spell in the other.  It was good to get the figures on the table, but we did discover that we were a bit rusty on rules mechanics, especially when it came to what to do with blocks of spears two elements deep.

Some test figures from Hero Forge

After Gencon, I started playing around with the custom figure design systems at Hero Forge.  I picked up a free sample figure last year, which looked pretty good, so I wanted to try something.  I have been reading an urban fantasy series called Bordertown recently, and decided that I would work on some fantasy-flavored moderns.  Here are the two samples I ordered, as received, a modern bard (with a violin) and a suit-wearing spell caster with an umbrella. (Actually an umbrella sword, but concealed...) I have no idea what I am going to use for rules, so I have been resisting the temptation to order any more until I actually have a game of some sort organized.  I'll post a picture when I have them painted.

Revell Saxon horseman as a Cold Islander hero for Hordes of the Things

I also recently finished up a single 1/72 scale figure as a hero stand for my Portable Fantasy Campaign Cold Islander army.  1/72 plastic is, of course, very practical for a variety of reasons, but I'm not always inspired to paint it.  I don't like to disrespect the Muse, though, and since that's what she led me to last week, I just said "works for me" and carried on.

It would be easy to argue that I have too many projects going on at the moment, but I don't really want to address that right now, so I am trying to just paint and play some games rather than spend too much time on "should" and "ought to".

Alpha Gaming Table

In pursuit of that, I have also recently invested in an Alpha Game Table, a 4x6 foot single piece unit which folds up into a 48" by 18" by 9" package.  I don't know how durable it is going to provide to be, but I will post a full review once I've lived with it for a while.

Frontier Raid fought

Click on the pictures to view them properly; my blog management software is acting up with respect to the thumbnails.

As mentioned in the teaser shot yesterday, we set up and fought a battle using our developmental old school fantasy rules yesterday. Ross has posted the most recent version of the test rules. For the purposes of yesterday's test, we tried using personalities. Basically, they stayed attached to units. If two units with attached personalities were in melee, the personalities could fight. Personalities did not generally affect the unit level combat except by spells, or if they were a mid-sized monster like the wyvern, which gave a unit an extra die in combat. What they did have were skills/attributes, which modified how the units worked. This didn't turn out to have quite the flavor we were looking for, so revision 2 will make them more powerful/important.

Here are the orders of battle, with the numbers being, in order, combat strenght front/flank, armor roll, hits per stand, and movement in increments. For personalities, they just have a single Combat rating, used against other personalities. Each magician had a list of spells, each of which took the whole turn to cast and was then used up. We ended up using two inch increments, but the plan is to make movement sticks with the increments equal to the base width.

Empire of the Great City and Allies

1xGeneral Constantius and bodyguards 5/3, A:2, H:4, M:5
3xArmored Cavalry 5/3, A:3, H:4, M:5
1xArmored Cavalry Archers 4/3, A:3, H:4, M:5
1xAllied Horse 5/3, A:2, H:4, M:5
4xSpearmen (City and allied) 3/3, A:2, H:4, M:3
1xFoot Guards 4/2, A:2, H:4, M:3 (Reduces armor by 1)
4xSkirmishers 2/1, A:0, H:2, M:4
2xFrontier Guards (Archers) 3/1, A:0, H:4, M:3
1xTreemen 4/4, A:4, H:4, M:3

Cyrus Ironhoof, Inspirational C:3, A:3, H:2, M:6
Elar Autumnleaf, Cunning C:2, A:1, H:2, M:5
Aralon Longspear, Prepared C:2, A:0, H:2, M:4
Earaina, Magician C:2, A:3, H:1, M:4
Spells: Restore, Restore, Ward, Ward, Hurry


Orcs and Allies

1xWarlord Snarg and Bodyguards 4/2, A:3, H:4, M:3
4xShock Orcs 4/2, A:2, H:4, M:3
2xOrc Archers 3/2, A:1, H:4, M:3
3xGreater Goblins 3/2, A:1, H:4, M:3
6xLesser Goblins 3/2, A:0, H:4, M:4
3xWargs and Riders 4/2, A:1, H:4, M:6
2xLizard rider archers 3/2, A:1, H:4, M:6
1xGremlins (flying) 3/2, A:0, H:4, M:6
1*xWater Demon 4/4, A:3, H:6, M:3

Wraith of Khan, Inspirational C:2, A:3, H:1, M:4
Gorlak the Assassin, Stealthy C:3, A:0, H:2, M:4
Wyvern, Monstrous C:4, A:1, H:2, M:6 (flying)
Raffem and Tiny, Magician C:2, A:2, H:2, M:4
Spells: Frenzy, Frenzy, Restore, Summon


The personality skills were used as follows:

Inspirational: Add a movement increment to the unit when attached
Stealthy: Can move through enemy units and opponent can't refuse a fight
Monstrous: Big enough to add a die to unit combat
Cunning: Add 1 to the unit's attack factor
Prepared: Add 1 to the unit's armor rating.

The spells:

Frenzy: Add 1 to the unit's attack factor for 1d3 full turns
Restore: Recover lost hits for roll of 1-4, 4 dice worth
Ward: Add 1 to the unit's armor rating for 1d3 turns
Hurry: Double a unit's speed for 1d3 turns
Summon: Cause the Water Demon to appear in the river





Above is a shot of the board again. The Imperial forces had three garrisoned locations, two walled hamlets and the watch tower. The Orcs, approaching from the left (north), were attempting to seize those strongpoints, before they reached break point of 2/3rds of their army out of action. (So 7 units remaining was below strength). The orcish units were individually not as good as the Imperials, but there were more of them, and the Imperials had a 50% break point (9 units).

My son William was recruited to play the orc general, and Ross commanded the Imperials, with me acting as the mostly impartial referee and as Ross's hands and eyes. I recently broke my tablet stand, so Ross was forced to put up with a somewhat unsteady handheld view, and I got my exercise panning and zooming by hand.





William's plan was to use his mounted and fast forces on his left to grab the tower quickly, and to bore up the middle with the great mass of greenskin infantry to take the first hamlet. Ross is represented in the shot above by the iPad propped up with a Magic card box. The tower garrison inflicted a few hits on the approaching wolves and lizard riders.





On the orcish right, allied elves and treemen left the woods to assist the hamlet.





As the battle developed on the orcish left flank, the first assault wave rolled up to the hamlet in the center. The frontier guard archers had given a good account of themselves, shooting down a probing attack by the flying gremlins and wyvern, but orcish numbers began to wear them down. General Constantius threw a company of regular spearmen into the hamlet to assist the hard-pressed frontier guard, and a long, grinding melee ensued.




The surviving lesser goblins eventually withdrew from the fight, and were replaced by the heavy shock orcs, encouraged by a frenzy spell. Imperial luck finally ran out, and the regulars were ground down and eliminated.




On the orcish left, the coup de main against the tower was unsuccessful, and the survivors of the fast troops were all driven off. Snarg threw his last reserve, the greater goblins and orc archers, into the fray on his left, hoping to salvage the situation.





Constantius, sensing that the orcs were wavering, impetuosly charged the advancing reserves, hoping to tip the balance and drive the entire army from the field.





Unfortunately for him, the orcish archers were far tougher than he imagined, and he fell to a goblin sword as reinforcements entered the fray. The goblins threw themselves on the remaining cavalry, and Cyrus Ironhoof, the centaur hero, as senior officer on the imperial side, sounded the retreat.




Just as the battle was concluding, Earaina was confronted and slain by the assassin Gorlak, so it was a grim day for the Imperials.






Overall, it took us about three hours to fight this out, including a certain amount of telecommunication friction time and rules discussions. Heroes/personalities will probably have a more significant effect on the game in the next playtest, and, as far as scenario specifics went, Ross noted that it would have made sense to have the objectives count against the Imperial break point. William's commander morale almost broke at one point, as he had little luck in attacking the town, but Ross's early amazing die rolls eventually averaged out. The 40 stands we had on the table were about a third of my current fantasy total, and about half the total of the pre-1980 vintage figures (although the orcs are not part of the pre-1980 collection), so scaling up to scenarios for 6x10 convention games next year shouldn't be a problem.

Cold Wars 2014 After Action Report

Cold Wars has come and gone again. At least I was able to make it this year; last year's convention was pre-empted by an unavoidable business trip.

Things were still uncertain at the time that games needed to be scheduled, though, so I was conservative in what I signed myself up to do. I booked two sessions of the same scenario, a Dark Ages Saxon/Viking skirmish. This was an extended version of the one I ran as a solo game last summer. I elected to do one session at 2:00 on Friday, thinking that would give me a shot at doing my shopping first, and probably time to do a turn through the flea market as well, even if I had to drive up on Friday morning. I set the second session for 2:00 on Satuday.

Due to procrastination, and influenced by the work/school schedules of my sons, I didn't end up booking a room. I commuted up by myself on Friday, and then drove up with both sons on Saturday. Sunday is pretty quiet at HMGS conventions, so it wasn't worth going up for one game in the morning.

Anyway, I had my three scenery boxes and three figure boxes (two humans, one farm animals) stacked and ready to go, so I was able to be on my way at a reasonable time in the morning. After dealing with an issue about my badge and membership status, I set my game up.





I'm not quite finished in that shot, still needed to put out the two main farm buildings. After completing the setup, I hit the dealer's room for some serious shopping. I was a little disappointed to find that only one of the three or four possible dealers in 1/72 plastic attended, as my main objective was to fill out all the Greeks and Persians I want for my next project. I gave it my best shot, though, and came home with all but a few boxes, as well as several boxes of assorted 1/72 fantasy figures for the current small project. I placed an order after the convention to finish things off, and was a little distressed to find that HaT Persians are apparently not currently in production.

My first game of Athelric's farm went well. I had five players rather than the eight I had room for. Possibly this was due to the timing; 2:00 turned out to be the opening time for the flea market, always a large crowd draw. After much ferocious fighting, the Viking players eventually carried off the livestock, though at the cost of two of the three Viking leaders. Given that I had to drive home, I didn't really want to play an evening game. My Saturday game was the next game on the same table, so I packed the troops and left the scenery set up and headed home to meet the kids.

I remarked to them on the light crowd, wondering if I was started to exhibit the grumpy old man syndrome of thinking that things had always been better in the past. I will take this opportunity to say that I don't think that I am. Saturday was as crowded as one might wish, and we had a hard time finding a parking space at 9:30. I was glad that my scenery was already in place. I dropped off a box of flea market goodies which one of the other HAWKs agreed to set out on his table, and took my soldiers back down to the HAWKs room to set up.

Norman also had a 2:00 Saturday game, one of his award-winning Bronze Age chariot scuffles, as described in his blog. When we had things squared away, we took a look at the flea market. My best find was not miniatures related, but a nice crisp copy of 1st edition Gamma World. I have been having some fun with 1970s RPGs lately, and my copy had gone astray some time ago. Of the 1970s games I used to have, Gamma World has the dubious distinction of being the only one not legally available in a .pdf edition, so I was glad to scratch that itch at a reasonable price.

I didn't take very many pictures this convention, so I've only got one shot of my Saturday game worth posting:





Here the Saxons, aided by a few continental mercenaries hired by the local lord (generally to the right) defend their shaggy cattle against the Vikings. This game went better for the Saxons, who managed to kill the Viking leader and evacuate most of the livestock. I filled this game, and turned one walk-up player away, so the player/game ratio seemed a lot tighter on Saturday. I also found that I had somehow been listed in the program as a "kid friendly" game. I was using Knights and Magick, an old rules set that my group started playing when I was a teenager, so they aren't especially kid-unfriendly, but "kid" here means middle-schooler, or surpervised late elementary schooler, not pre-numerate five-year-old. After some discussion, I was also compelled to suggest that the game would not work for the aforementioned five-year-old and his father. I will need to look into this in the future and see what the algorithm for making this determination might be. I used to be on the other side of that conversation, so I would prefer that correct information is out there. But the kids do grow up eventually...





Overall, it was a good convention, and we all came home energized for our projects...

Pre-D&D painting

In anticipation of a holiday revival game, the kids helped me paint a few Bones for characters we'll be using. I finished the Bathalian on the left while we were at at, but the other three, left to right, were done by me, Norman, and William, respectively, all start to finish since last night.

Scuffle at the Elven Tower -- A Knights and Magick Battle Report

After the completion of the household move and the recent business trip to Korea, both of my sons were home last weekend for a combination of a slightly belated birthday celebration and Easter. We took the opportunity to set up a small fantasy skirmish game using Knights and Magick. K&M was recently rereleased in pdf; the original was published by Heritage in 1980. I have a full review posted elsewhere on the blog.





The table included a river and ford, the tower, a small settlement of human serfs (who prudently fled and were not represented on the table), a small patch of woods and a couple of hills. The decadence of the elves was suggested by the fallen pillar at the tower approach...





We started by pulling out all of the individually mounted orcs in my collection, adding a warlord and a couple of ogres, and calculating a point value using K&Ms Book 3. This orcish force consisted of 27 figures in total. They were deemed to be investing the tower. An elvish force of equal point value was created, starting with a group of 6 assorted mounted figures, followed by a bow-armed hero and 6 archers as a tower garrison, and then filling in with a mix of sword elves in chain with shields (6) and unarmored spear elves (10). The elf cavalry and hero were rated at morale level A, and the balance of the elves were morale level B. A few better orcs and the ogres were morale B, with the balance of the orcs being morale C. The elvish force was tasked with clearing the table of orcs. We elected to use the small game rules, which meant that morale was checked only for individuals. This probably had the effect of reducing the penalty associated with the C class orcs, who could not be induced to flee en masse.

Norman took the orcs and William took the elves. Norman deployed a detachment of sword orcs near Lone Tree Hill, a detachment of spear orcs, an ogre, and the two wolf riders in a covered position between the woods and the human building, and the balance of his force across the ford in the hedged field.




Here the orcs await the approach of any elves...



The game opened with the appearance of the elvish horse on the edge of the table on the road at the far right in the overview picture. This placed them almost on top of the orcs guarding Lone Tree Hill. Seeing their hated enemies appear, they bellowed an orcish war cry and plunged into the mass of the riders. Caught off guard, not all of the elves were able to countercharge, and a desperate melee ensued. When the dust settled, all seven orcs were dead, but they had taken three of the elite elvish riders with them.



Meanwhile, across the ford, the elvish foot patrol, led by the spears, approached along the other road. They, too, seemed surprised to find the orcs almost on top of them. The elves' skill with the spear turned out to be insufficient to deal with the armor of the orcs, and the spear elves were rapidly cut down.




This fracas highlighted a bit of bad planning on my part, as it clumped up in one corner of the board. The bows of the tower garrison could almost reach the ford at long range, so it was too dangerous to move within line of sight of the tower. Norman's ogre found this out the hard way, by attempting to intervene in the fight against the cavalry, which necessitated leaving the shelter of the woods.




Meanwhile, back at the bloody road, the elvish swords made a valiant effort to force their way through to the ford. Although their armor and shields were a great help, and they gave better than they got, they too were cut down or forced to flee.



The surviving riders, upon looking over the field and realizing that they were heavily outnumbered by the remaining orcs, spurred up the road to the tower to join the garrison. Thus, the standoff continued, as both sides sent for further reinforcements to try to alter the situation on a later day. The orcs had not been driven off, and were held to be victorious, at least for the moment.

The whole game took about 12 turns and was played in a little under two hours. Norman was pleased to not have his troops swept from the field in a contagious rout. William was shaken to find that his troops were more fragile than he was accustomed to after years of playing Medieval Mayhem, and I was glad of an opportunity to remind myself of these rules. As expected, the game flowed fairly quickly. I did all the chart lookups since I neglected to copy the charts in advance. K&M is, as I wrote in my review, a little fussy to my streamlined current tastes, but not by any means unmanageable. I look forward to running another game, perhaps a little larger, soon.

However, the next thing on the schedule will be a return to the Not Quite Seven Years War, with a game on the 6th to allow several participants to field some new recruits.

Transitions

This past Saturday I dropped William off at school. It's an easy drive of an hour or an hour and a half away, so I can get more stuff to him in a pinch. However, until we do, that stack is all of his worldly possessions. There is a painting kit buried in there, but I don't really expect to see much painting in the near term.




His last pre-departure project was this steampunk mad scientist. It is a Reaper Savage Worlds/Deadlands figure, one of several samples I picked up the other week pursuant to the Reaper Bones Kickstarter project. He was inspired to paint it, so I thought it best to get out of the way and let him do that.
Norman is due to be home this weekend. We hope to get some NQSYW casting done. The recent game has stirred some demand for additional figures.
As time permitted this weekend, I worked on my storage box upgrade. I'm working on getting everything into the 4 and 9 liter sizes of "Really Useful Boxes". Most figures up to the 40s will fit in the 4 liter model, and the 9, which has the same footprint for easy stacking, will take the tallest figures I routinely use, 40mm Renaissance pikemen.




Thinking ahead to the Reaper-based fantasy skirmish makeover, I printed out a sample card building from MicroTactix yesterday (obtained from DriveThruRPG). Building it was my lunch project today. I haven't done much card modeling lately, but the necessary skills came back quickly. I am thinking that a) I should try the free models before investing in any PDFs, and b) if my miniatures are going to be plastic, it would be nice to keep the haul weight of the whole project down. I also had time to work on a stick of Bones kobolds, which I'll post when they are closer to being completed.

A Busy Day

View of the computer at the conclusion of our second Skype game

My work schedule and the federal holiday schedule have combined to give me a four day weekend this week, so there has been some time to devote to hobby pursuits.  In fact, today has been quite a busy day across the household.

I reported recently on a playtest of the latest revision of the Rough Wooing simple Renaissance rules that Ross hosted over Skype.  We came back for a second try today, with a scenario built from the "black book", Programmed Wargames Scenarios, by C. S. Grant.  Ross graciously agreed to host the game again earlier in the week, when it was uncertain as to whether we would have the time to set the gaming table back up at this end.  The situation (#10 from the black book) involved up to four players with individual interests, so both of my sons agreed to take a hand.  As it turned out, I ran the attackers against a defending coalition of Norman, William and Ross.  Today was the day for my luck to turn; most of my rolls, for a change, approached the expected value, and the kids were unusually cold, so I managed a rare victory in about two and a half hours.  Ross and I hope that we will be putting on some Renaissance games at Huzzah in Maine in a couple of months, so it was good to feel that the rules were working more or less as intended.  I hope that he'll have a battle report with some pictures shortly...

William's new personal Medieval Mayhem figure

William working on a mounted standard bearer, composited from two Accurate figures

William has working on a personal figure for Medieval Mayhem, which was finally finished today.  He's following it up with a standard bearer, hoping to have it finished by Cold Wars, now just three weeks away.  Personally, I like these low pressure projects: it'd be nice to have, but it won't break the scenario if it hasn't been finished in time.  High pressure projects tend to make me freeze up.

After a couple of months without the table, it's good to have it back.  We got it set up Friday, cleared it enough to lay the ground cloth back on it yesterday, and then re-cleared it today.

Somewhere in France, a quiet village is blissfully unaware of the approaching storm

Having gotten that far, it wasn't hard to find the inspiration to put down the scenery for what I hope will be tomorrow's game.

Here are a few more detail shots from the layout.  I didn't dig out my close-up supplemental lenses or a tripod, so they are all still rather broad.  Perhaps tomorrow ...

The scenery, mostly assembled in haste in 2003, seems to be holding up.  A scenery upgrade is on the agenda as a possible emphasis for this year.