Mongoose Publishing, you are SO cheeky!

There’s some vague hints of an Ipad app coming soon from no less than Mongoose Publishing, the folks who did Starship Troopers and Judge Dredd Miniatures games. I like them for a robust set of naval rules they publish called Victory at Sea. VaS is a very straightforward set of naval rules that models WWII naval combat in all theaters (with a separately published WWI variant).

Well, it had to happen.. they just released a statement about an impending Kickstarter for Victory at Sea for the Ipad. The developer is going to be a company I haven’t heard of called iEvilGames. iEvilGames is a UK company whose output so far appears to be cutesy Anime style games, a resume that should fill a hardcore naval gamer with dread. Still, one must hope. There’s not much written anywhere about what the app will look like or is supposed to do. Will it play an arcade version of WWII Naval combat? Will it be a helper app for the Miniatures game. Will it be some bastardized arcade version of Naval Combat that entered into a pact with the folks at Mongoose to use their miniature game’s name? It’s hard to say at this point in the process. We’ll see more once the Kickstarter Kicks Off.

The iEvilGames website isn’t revealing much:

What is Victory at Sea?

VICTORY AT SEA is a naval combat game for iOS and Android where players take command of fleets in a desperate attempt to win the overall victory in World War 2.

Navigate your fleets around the Atlantic, Pacific and the Mediterranean theatres of war and engage in real time epic naval combat. Victory at Sea combines a simple touch control system with a large and detailed campaign that contains vast numbers of historically accurate ship variants, the likes of which have never been seen before on a mobile device. Victory at Sea will be easy to play but difficult to master and will be one of the largest and most engaging war combat games ever.

Our team here at Evil Twin Artworks have been developing games for mobile devices since the beginning of the app store. We are gamers with a penchant for strategic games and are disappointed with the current lack of in depth games in this genre on mobile devices. We want Victory at Sea to become the massive, immersive combat game all mobile devices deserve, taking full advantage of it’s intuitive touch control system.

Victory at Sea is a highly successful table top game made by Mongoose Publishing, the company behind the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game, A Call to Arms: Star Fleet and Babylon 5: A Call to Arms games. The mobile game will encapsulate the vast amounts of information behind the table top game which will create a massive video game. The iOS / Android versions will also inherit the fast flowing rules that allows novices and veteran gamers alike to enjoy recreating the epic struggles between the mighty fleets of the era.

Couple things jump out here. Real Time. Massive and Immersive. That hints at real time play on a massive scale. Hard to say. If I can see more about what their intentions are, I’ll know if I want to fund it or not. It could be the second miniatures game helper app to get published (after Ironclads). That’s an exciting idea.

So far, the graphics are not wowing me.

I am intrigued enough to check back. Victory at Sea is my favorite game from Mongoose.

Why I’m all in on an Ironclads Helper App

As long term readers will agree with an eye-rolling and a faint “no-duh” faintly escaping their lips, I like miniature wargames. I also like Civil War and later naval games, particularly featuring Ironclads– as in the new class of armored, steam powered ships that changed naval warfare forever during the American Civil War. 1861-1865 was a period of naval change that was no less than revolutionary. In less than a year, the Navy went from a polyglot, all wooden service that still used sail as the primary motive power for vessels to a multi-faceted technologically innovative force, capable of engaging in very modern combined force operations all over the Confederate coastline. As the role of the Navy expanded exponentially, it had to expand its technologies to meet a host of challenges– blockading the sprawling Confederate coastline, intercepting blockade runners. Patrolling rivers in the Western Theater. Bombarding shore positions. Landing Troops. Most importantly, meeting the nascent Confederate Navy on the water wherever it could be found. It was an exciting time in naval history, and I love it.

Naval combat in this age was a risky endeavor. The steam engines of the era were relatively new and almost always underpowered for the iron beasts they were propelling across the water. The ships of the day faced all sorts of perils from all quarters– Wind and rain and sickness and occasionally an enemy ship. The occasions when ships of the two fleets engaged in a shooting contest were relatively rare after 1863, sadly, but always a moment of high drama for both sides. Ironclads, and warships in general, were an expensive, labor and resource intensive item for this time period. Would they smash the enemy? Or would the engine blow up and the bow stave in? Even for the technologically advanced Union Navy, success was not always certain. Things… critical things.. could go wrong or be overlooked, often with disastrous outcomes.

Gaming the naval Civil War can be a ticklish proposition, depending on who your audience is. Do you go for a quick set of rules that emphasize maneuver and contact, like Beer and Pretzels Ironclads? Or something more abstract, like Hammerin’ Iron? Or do you try to get the best historical experience available. For my money, the game that simulated real, actual naval combat better than most others was the original IRONCLADS, by Yaquinto games, published way back in the 80s. This was a game that accounted for all those crazy factors in an ironclad fight– Armor slope and thickness and the position of the ships and the weather and the crew levels… etc., etc. A lot of people agree with me.. IRONCLADS was (and is) maybe the best historical treatment of ship to ship combat during the Civil War, even if it did start life as a boardgame. Converting it to miniatures never was a huge problem– I’ve played many games of Ironclads without hex grids.

The big problem I’ve always had with Ironclads, however, was the multi-stepped combat and the large number of chart lookups just to achieve some positive result. Ironclads can be a slow game– and it’s not a set of game rules I would currently use for a convention game. Why not? Mostly a combat resolution that takes several steps to resolve something simple, like “What happens when I fire my Parrot gun at that Casemate over there?” Most games I’ve played at cons have gone pretty slow as a result of the level of granularity. That’s the price you pay for playing a game with a fair degree of historical accuracy. You young whippersnappers don’t appreciate this at all, I know, but that’s what wargame design was like in the early 80s. Wargames were like fine sippin’ whiskey… you took your time and you savored the experience.

The Ironclad boardgame was in a limbo for a while. It got acquired by Excalibre, a reprint house, and they did an okay job on the components, but not stellar. The rulebook, which was pretty dense in the original, was now twice as dense as it was shrunk down to about 80% of the original size and the fonts were hard to make out (can you tell this is the version I own?). Somewhere along the way, Toby Barrett of Thoroughbred Miniatures picked up the rights to the system from the original designer. If you know anything about 1:600 Ironclad miniatures, you know there’s three main vendors, and Thoroughbred is the best of them, based on detail, casting quality and the depth of the line. (Though to be fair I think Bay Area Yards would be a serious contender if they expanded their selection a bit). Toby appreciates the complexity of the original Ironclads game; a game helper application has been lurking on the back burner for years. With the advent of Ipads, it appears he found the right platform. I agree. That’s why I think I’ll be taking advantage of the Kickstarter going on to make IRONCLADS into a game helper app. I’m not sure where they’re going with the helper app concept..will it play the game from start to finish? Hard to say, but it appears that they are creating something like SHIPBASE III for Ironclads, and that could be very useful for an Ironclads geek like me.

So I’m all in, even though I’ve got a lot of Ironclad minis already. I’ve been running Hammerin’ Iron 2 and BAPS Ironclads at conventions, for the speed, not the depth of the rules. I think it would be really neat to run a game of Ironclads to the finish with just an Ipad and some dice.

Here’s the link to the Kickstarter, Enjoy:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/293087222/the-ironclads-app

15mm SF update: Earth Force painting, Scenics acquired

So, my latest addiction is 15mm SF, as you can see by prior postings. My intention is to build a small mixed tech/medium tech village inhabited by farmers and miners, with a central administration building and a few outlying higher tech structures, then a hodgepodge collection of structures built out of whatever material is close to hand. My vision is that shipping containers would get a lot of reuse as structures, as well as a few mud huts (with high tech add ons like satellite dishes). As there is a distinct rebellious and religious element in the populace of the campaign I’m developing, I’m adding MBA’s 15mm mosque and maybe a few Mediterranean 15mm buildings. I’ve also added Blue Moon’s higher tech buildings (two of them) as the central complex. The rest of the structures are going to be kitbashed out of electrical utility boxes (about a dollar each), pencil boxes, and Papier-mâché style craft boxes from arts and craft stores. Since the colony does skirmish with native fauna on occassion there are some defense pillboxes on the perimeter near the agriculture fields to keep larger predators away. Other than that what troops there are are ad hoc levy types. I haven’t bought and painted them yet but I’m contemplating the Sahad by Rebel Miniatures. They match the arid landscape I’m creating. This week I painted most of the Earth Force group I’m using as the attacking force (well, base coat, anyway… pictures when they are done and I’m not too embarassed to show them). Overall color scheme is dark olive uniform with light grey highlights, black leather boots and gloves, green helmet and black googles. Support weapons get a blue helmet and armored troops metallic gunmetal shoulder and helmet pieces. Command/squad leader types will get some form of insignia.

Two great low cost finds this week:

A relatively modern looking Elevated Water tank for the settlement from Rix Products:

Rix Modern Elevated Tank

Water collection and storage would be one of those important tasks for my fictional settlement, and I can see this as being a victory objective for the attacking force. I could have gone with a HO scaled water tank with the classical cone top, but this strikes me as looking more science-fictional. Pretty cheap, too, I got it for about 8 bucks on Ebay.

Alternative energy sources:

The settlement would be challenged in its early years to create power cheaply and efficiently. There probably would be a range of technologies in evidence that seem positively 20th century for a SF setting, but if you think on it, they probably would be the easiest and most cost effective choices available for a struggling colony. Using that assumption as a baseline, I went with a lot of wind turbines and solar panels to generate basic electricity, supplemented with methane collecting and burning, water wheels, etc. I don’t want to go TOO deep in the weeds here so I’m representing the basic concept of homegrown power by adding a forest of wind turbines and solar panels. My go-to set is from Woodland Scenics Scene-a-Rama Alternative Energy Scene Setters (item WLS-4348). These are about 10 bucks from Woodland Scenics and you get two solar panels (for rooftops) and two wind turbines with each kit. I ordered 3, for 7 each, from Ebay.

Woodland Scenics Scen-a-rama Alternative Energy set

These scale very well against 15mm scale buildings.

I also picked up 3 OKI Wind Power Turbines. They are constructed for 6mm SF sets but scale very nicely to 15mm:

All this extra detail (alternative energy, water storage, soon– agrictulral plots) may seem extraneous but I think it’s the little details that make a game setting more memorable and tell a story.

Old Stuff Day: Singlehanded Admiral Repost

Apparently Bleaseworld has declared “Old Stuff Day” to be March 2nd. Old Stuff Day is a day for bloggers to bring out their old posts of note and republish them for the blogosphere at large. Had I but known! I’ve been blogging for almost a decade, I have plenty to trundle out.

One especially GOOD Old Stuff Day post was from the Singlehanded Admiral, a blog on Naval Gaming I follow. He and some of his mates decided to break out a game of Fletcher Pratt‘s naval rules at some point in the past. If you know anything at all about Fletcher Pratt’s naval game, it doesn’t play well in a confined space, to put it mildly. Pratt’s wargames were played in gymnasiums with 1:1200 scale ships. Lacking a gymnasium, these chaps decided to play the game outside, in a field, in the dead of Winter.

Quote from the post itself:
I had two USN battleships (USS Colorado and Arizona, based on neither ship being at Pearl Harbour on the 7th) while Curt fielded the Kongo and Ise for the IJN, with Sylvain acting as GM. After about 35 minutes of game time (about an hour and a bit of real time) we traded some hits with my eyesight proving superior to Curt’s. He decided to cut and run, which was quite alright with me. I did my running sprinting across King’s Road park chasing down ship logs and turning circles blown away by the gale force winds.

One of the pictures illustrating the blogpost. Visibility must have been a bear in that dead grass.

I’ll let the post finish it up, see the link below– I just got a big kick out of this “blast from the past” and the dedication of these fellows towards good old Fletcher. Well done, lads!

Original Post: Old Stuff Day.

SAGA: More than one way to skin a cat, if that’s your idea of a good time.

You know, sometimes a solution to a problem will stare you right in the face, and you can’t see it. When I mentioned my DIY attempts to make dice for SAGA to a fellow SAGA fan, he pointed out I was taking too direct an approach to the problem. “Oh? What do YOU do?”, I asked. I won’t go to far into the details, lest I anger the good people at Tomahawk studios, but I will let a picture tell a thousand words or something to that effect.

No, I won’t go into how and I’m not going to distribute this. I own SAGA outright and these modifications are my own for my personal use only. Just throwing out an idea here…

Hmmmm… glad I didn’t go overboard in making my own custom dice too much, eh?

Related articles

• repost: DIY Saga Dice
• New SAGA Viking Warband

Olympica Test at FALL IN! 2012

I have been working on an OLYMPICA game since the Summer, off and on, mostly off because of FALL IN! Prep work. See the previous Fall IN! post about the game I ran on Friday night at the convention. I had a team of about 6 players run through the basic Nix Olympica scenario, which entails hidden Web units (and Web Generator), customizable defense and a strong mechanized U.N. attack.

Your intrepid GM has a (Diet) Coke and a smile.

The rules, for reference, are here. I designed this on the fly for a gaming camp last Summer so it’s not a profound work of genius, but it does have some interesting notions that I like, such as dice pools, which allow an attacker and a defender to choose different dice that do different things to resolve an attack. In essence, red=attack, blue=defense, green=leadership, white=maneuver, yellow=”special”, e.g. Psychic Attack. Each player selects FIVE dice in the basic mechanic, and they can add in any combination of red,blue,white,green,yellow. They both roll at once and then you see what happens. I have made a chart (seen here, but this version has been modified, I just haven’t posted it yet).

Screen “Story” on Photobucket (Fall IN 2012 Playtest):

Other elements that I like:

The webbies have hidden tunnel movement. Before the game begins, I give them a small white board and they draw the tunnel complex, then put tunnel mouths on the board (numbered) in a layout that matches the whiteboard. The BOAR drill can collapse a single tunnel in the complex, killing everyone inside it. That part worked.

Web Players building Tunnel Complex, Fall IN! 2012

The U.N. has air drop rules and in an attempt to emulate the original OLYMPICA rules, can crash if they fly too close to the Web Generator during a drop. Great idea, though nobody has managed to try it yet.

U.N. Lifters lining up an air drop, Summer Camp Playtest, 2012

The U.N. can fire by platoon, illustrating their superior equipment and training. That means they get the basic five dice and 2 more from each extra squad, making 9 dice total. The Webbies fire by squad, which puts them at a disadvantage in a fire fight. The Web players did not like that.

1 Webbie SQUAD vs. 1 Light Infantry PLATOON, Summer Playtest, 2012

The Webbies have STRONG POINTS (bunkers) that have various forms of SF-y style artillery– rail guns that fire in a long ranged arc, but require an observer, Gauss Guns, which fire in a flat arc, AAMs, which are designed only to take out Landers, Tac Missiles, which can hit air and ground units, and Direct Firing artillery. In the game I ran, I had three DF artillery up close in the Strong points, a Rail gun and a TAC missile. This provided overlapping defense all over the battlefield. The actual firepower wasn’t as deadly as I would have liked.

Combined Arms attack on Webbie Strongpoint with supporting Webbie Infantry Squads. Fall In 2012 game

The Webbies have hidden placement (using orange “?” markers). Everything except their strong points is hidden at first. Worked very well for the Webbies but the U.N. didn’t like it much.

here’s the sequence of events:

Pre-Game: Webbies make tunnel map, put down tunnel mouths to match map, put ? markers on terrain to hide troops. SOME of those are dummies. U.N. allocates troops to drop ships, and prepares ground forces for advance to the Nix Olympica crater, where the Web Generator is reported to be.

I had the players roll for activation each turn, but I blew that off.. I just roll once and that’s the number for the rest of the game.

PRE-GAME DROP: the players may attempt to start the game with a drop on the map, and the Lifter above the unit.

1. ACTION SEGMENTS — in Activation sequence, players conduct actions — Move, Move 1/2 and Fire, or just FIRE with a bonus. Combat happens. Once a unit has activated, I put a marker on it and it can’t activate again (unless defending in combat) until all markers are pulled off.

Where fire hits (on the ground), a dust cloud happens. You can’t see or fire through one of these.

2. MORALE EFFECTS — if the UN unit has taken a hit, one rolls versus MOR rating to retreat. If it fails, they move back 10″ and keep checking every turn. If the unit is a Gold Stripe (leader unit) or is in a platoon with a Gold Stripe, it roles against LEADERSHIP (green dice).

3. WEB PULSE — The Web Generator fires a web pulse withing 15″ of its’ location. If there is a Lander in the radius of the pulse, it is likely to crash. U.N. infantry are subject to conversion for three turns.

4. REMOVE SMOKE CLOUDS –

REPEAT, until all units have “I’ve moved” markers on them. Then pull markers and start all over again.

BIG pileup in the center, mid-game. The U.N. got stalled here, and it cost them the game.

OLYMPICA at FALL IN 2012:

This was a great chance to get feedback from players that are a bit more critical than then the kids at game camp. The results of (more or less) the rules you see above, slightly modified to make the U.N. more speedy and lethal, ended in a game that was a massive stalemate in the center of the board, and the Webbies easily achieved their victory conditions of keeping the U.N. from reaching Nix Olympica (and securing or destroying the web generator).

I’ve noticed this in all games run so far. The U.N. player is not NEARLY lethal enough. The Webbie player loses people, a lot of them, but usually wins– that is not how the boardgame played! I’ve increased the stats on the U.N. recently and that is what we played with at FALL IN. What happened was the U.N. got bogged down in the center, held back by guns that could only face forward, when they should have advanced into the crater. There’s also a big problem with sequencing, I think. SEVERAL U.N. units can pile on to a webbie infantry unit and he can continue to roll a fresh defense every time he is fire upon, and can, under the current rules, fire back. I had players complain about this giving the Webbie almost continuous fire, and they have a point. I may have to come up with something to address that.

Also, the Webbies didn’t like not being able to fire by platoon, like the UN can. My observation is that this leads to a very powerful Webbie tactical firepower.. which isn’t in the spirit of their attack and defense. I might allow it with some thematic mechanic, like they can fire by platoon if there’s a special web pulse that allows the generator to be visual. Or something. I’m working on it.

In any event, I’m still dissatisfied, it’s not quite right yet. Any suggestions are welcome. Can’t guarantee I’ll act on them, but I’ll read them, that’s for sure.

Fall-In! 2012 AAR and apologies

First of all, I apologize for the decline in blogging output from August to now. I haven’t had a lot of free time in the evenings. My daughter went off to college with all the attendant angst that represents, and I have been FALL IN! 2012 events coordinator for this past convention. For better or worse, it’s a time sink, and I haven’t had a lot of energy or creativity to blog much. More on this later. In any event, that’s trend that’s going to change starting right now. I actually have a draft battle report in the hopper that dates back to August. I’m going to have to get on the stick and move out.

(Here’s the obligatory SLIDE SHOW, on Photobucket.. I shy away from adding tons of pictures to these things because I’m not a great photographer and almost never take pictures of what people want to see anyway. If Flash isn’t working on this browser, click on the picture of the Aether Battleship to move on to Photobucket)

CLICK THE AETHER SHIP TO SEE SLIDESHOW if the link above isn’t displaying correctly

So, right, on to one of my favorite kinds of posts, the semi-obligatory convention recap I’ve been writing since… hmmm.. 1996? So here we go– FALL IN. The Autumnal convention for HMGS. The red-haired stepchild made good. The cash cow, nowadays. The least worrisome convention in the HMGS pantheon. This was held the first weekend in November, 2012, at the current venue of choice the Lancaster Host. The Host has its detractors and its proponents; it is a bit worn down, it’s not particularly handicapped friendly and it is laid out in a manner that is somewhat confusing to new people. For me, a convention at the Lancaster Host is like an old Roman soldier putting his feet into his army sandals; not the most plush footwear but he’s familiar with every inch of it and it can continue to provide service for many many more miles. Dan Murawski was convention director for FALL IN!– and I have to say that he did a great job. Being a CD can be very challenging, not just with the job on the face of it, which requires many, many hours of work, but also the back-channel considerations that come with handling the delicate diplomacy of HMGS. I’m sure it was an eye-opener for Dan! Poor sap! Har har har har! Seriously, he done good and we owe him a big “attaboy”, a couple of Michelob tall boys, and thank you for his efforts. I worked very closely with Dan during that time and can attest that he was engaged with everything from start to finish, and he was outstanding in helping me resolve problems with the Event Management system.

And speaking of events: I wish I could say I am satisfied with the job I did, but I really can’t. Communication stunk, and it was often my fault. I would miss an email embedded in GMAIL’s “message tree” format, or just not have a lot of time to be on email or TMP or the loathsome Yahoo groups. For that, I can only apologize if you experienced a problem with game scheduling. I had some real life events in my life, mostly work related, which would have me getting home at 7 or 8 at night, most nights, in September. Not a good time to be sitting down to do FALL IN EVENTS at night, starting, say, at 10 or 11 PM. Mistakes creep in when you get to sleep around 2 AM, night after night. This is all fixable. I have told Dan that I would recommend someone else for next year.
For all that being said, we had a ton of events scheduled. Lead got on tables, games got played, and people were happy. That part I am proud of. It was a great show!

The typical stream of consciousness that I usually write in to do an AAR will be a little curtailed in this post, although it will follow my usual time narrative– Thursday I was concerned with sorting out the Addendum pages for the Program Booklet and marking tables with special purpose neon green duct tape. The experience put events in sharper focus for me. People claimed that one of the tables in my Distelfink layout had vanished and that was a mystery to me. The layout matched table for table on Thursday, but was all a hooey by Saturday. The missing table had been consumed by someone making some layout changes on their own without consulting the GM desk. Again, this is fixable but it might require a lot more proactive monitoring by the events people. Like, for instance, if an events shift hits a slow moment, it wouldn’t hurt to audit the Distelfink’s current table setup against what is published in the program book. Just thinking out loud here.

“Yeah, sure, like, we don’t have much going on here, why not add another job to what we do already…”

So I had a beer or two Thursday night and some good conversation with friends in the bar, and finished table marking in the wee hours. The next day was Friday, which I spent doing the Flea Market, kibbitzing and Shopping… I found some minis I needed for my 7PM Olympica game in the Flea, which helped a lot. I also broke down and invested hard currency on a game I have been tracking since HISTORICON 2012– FANTACIDE by Alien Dungeon. Fanticide was definitely part of “the hotness” at this convention. The Alien Dungeon people were demoing it regularly and had all the battle packs packaged up for sale.

Now, I’m probably going to review it in depth in a later, non-AAR post, but I like the looks of Fanticide. It’s reasonably generic in terms of mechanics and isn’t going to give anyone wrinkles. Basically it’s a small unit fantasy skirmish game in a very unusual setting (a flat earth with a wormhole of sorts in the center). I dropped about 100 bones on the starter box Friday, which features the Fae (little woodland critters) versus the Libari (American Indian style centaurs). Not my two first choices (I like the Creeps and Flying Monkeys more) but that’s what they had in a starter box.

You can see a a little unboxing video here. Since WordPress doesn’t like the OBJECT or EMBED tags, just go to Photobucket to view it. Sorry!

What I like in this game is that it is goofy, fast playing and very customizable. You don’t HAVE to buy the miniatures they make– you can make a war band based on almost anything, as long as you have the basic elements (stickers, shooters, legends, masters, etc.). Personally, I would be hard put to NOT get “the Creeps” (eventually) and Flying Monkeys. Just because. Oh well, I guess that means I’ll be getting everything then.

There was some empty space at the back of the dealer hall, so it’s clear we didn’t get a full house, but the standard vendors were there.

The Dealer Room, left to right (on Sunday, click to embiggen):

Other big games in Evidence were Fireball Forward (many new product demos), Command Decision (being played), Carnage and Glory 2 (being played), and Combat Action Command.   The dealer room had some new product, but for the most part, FALL IN isn’t the big con for product releases, and first tier vendors aren’t there in force.  So we saw more resellers than manufacturers present.

Friday night, I ran Olympica, which is a miniatures version of a very old paper microgame from 1978.  I have run this before but mostly for a kid crowd.  So the rules are far from perfect.   The game design includes customizable dice pools that do different things– attacking, defending, maneuvering, leadership, and a mixture of all or any of the above depending on the color dice you choose.  It’s an interesting place to start from, but my audience on Friday, being gaming geeks and tinkerers like me, soon had a bunch of suggestions for improvements, all of which I’m going to playtest.  In general, my feeling is that the game isn’t nearly as bloody as it needs to be to achieve the flavor of the original paper game, and I need to either shorten the map or increase the ground speed and lethality of the units involved.  Most games played so far involve bloody stalemates in the center as the heavily  armored UN heavy force punches its way through the Webbie line.

I’m going to save the OLYMPICA replay and design notes for a follow on post.  In the meantime, here’s a few pictures:

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I’ll be rewriting the rules again, not drastically, but I’ll post on here what I come up with.

Moving on! Friday night! I packed up the game easily enough and put it away, then sat down on the edge of the bed in my room “just for a second”.. and ended up waking up at five in the morning. Exhaustian had set in. So, Saturday morning dawned. I actually had a big breakfast, which even though I had paid for it in cash, was mysteriously charged to my room. How they knew it was me, I don’t know. I wanted to play at least two games on Saturday, as I had been doing a lot of socializing, but not a lot of playing. Which is okay, by the by, some cons are like that. I signed up for JUTLAND 1914 at 11AM and Martian game run by Bob Charette in the evening.

JUTLAND 1914 SATURDAY 1PM to 5PM

If you’ve read this blog for a while you already know I was going to probably get into at least one Naval game. Jutland 14 was a hypothetical scenario that hypothesizes what would happen if the German High Seas fleet sailed out in 14 instead of 16. The rules were “Victory at Sea” which was published in a very old issue of Strategy and Tactics. We were fighting the middle part of a much larger hypothetical event, with the Super-Dreadnoughts of 1914 being engaged North of us, and the creaky, older pre-dreads being just South of us in the battle space. So we were fielding Ships of the 1906-to-1910 variety in my neck of the woods. Indeed, Dreadnought herself was in my division.

The British Line was comprised of these ships:

Vanguard, St. Vincent, Collingwood and Superb (division A)
Neptune, Colossus, Hercules (division B)
Dreadnought, Bellerophon, and Temeraire (division C, which I commanded, though Dreadnought was at the end of divison B)

At start of battle, the three British divisions are approaching the German line in 3 perpendicular lines, A to the North, B in the center and C at the bottom. The German line is heading North and the British lines to the East, with the intention of wheeling North and forming a line to engage with the Germans.

The Germans had these ships which were handled in two divisions. Oldenburg, Helgoland, Thoringian, Rheinland, Westphalian, Posen and Nassau.

The two fleets at start of the engagement.

Ships moving at start

Almost immediately, the lead ship of the division A (Vanguard) ran into some trouble, and a control room hit affected his steering grievously. So we were trying to turn into line just dodging the now very slowly moving Vanguard

The Admiralty is NOT amused by your shenanigans, Captain.

From the vantage point of division C, this battle was a mix.. my lead ship was the Dreadnought, attached to division B, and that was a ship that was targetted routinely but suffered very little damage until we were all in a line. The Bellerophon suffered many more hits but not enough damage to really degrade performance. The Temeraire.. well, we’ll discuss that one shortly.

From the untrammeled view of division C, this was easy to avoid.

Things looked bad for the Vanguard, things looked WORSE for the Neptune, which went up with a critical hit and died a nasty and quick death… before we were in range to fire a shot in anger!
When we got into a line abreast, sort of, the battle changed rapidly.

Eventually we straggled into something resembling a line a’breast. We were badly spaced out but finally in a position to support each other with gunfire.

My division C was now at the tail end of a long line of gunnery that was firing at each of the ships in the German line in turn. As the Huns had a bit of a lead on us for most of the game only the Dreadnought (tailing division B) and Bellerophon (heading division C) could fire back. The combat system penalized ships with battle damage so it would move slower and not fire as quick. Gradually, the tailing German ships started slowing down, and that was when they were under the guns of the Temeraire. At that point, the tailing Germans (Posen and Nassau) were getting struck by 5 or 6 British ships in one turn. The result of this punishment should be obvious.. German ships were going to start going down. Temeraire, now that she was hitting, put both the Posen and the Nassau under the waves.

Farewell, HMS Neptune!

The Germans made a run for it out of the battle zone, as they couldn’t match that kind of firepower, and it was clear our tactic would be to roll the line up from the bottom. As each German ship was overtaken by the end of the line it would be under the fire of 4 to 6 ships. They were already battered.

Gott im Himmel, let’s vamoose!

At this point we had about an hour or less left, but the Ref called it a draw, as the Germans were clearly on the run, two ships down. We had lost one ship (Neptune) and were shot up here and there, but not as bad as the Germans. The Ref said due to the nature of the British losses, and where we were in the larger, hypothetical battle he had in his mind, he would say the RN wouldn’t have been dancing with glee over the results of this one, but not unhappy either.

The German High Admiral gets his chust rewards, ja!

The German High Admiral was adjudicated the “best player” and awarded the prize, a fat binder of technical data on the German High Seas Fleet. Great game!

Rest of Saturday…

I had a few hours before the evening game, so I schmoozed the Flea market a bit, and bumped into John Montrie and chatted a bit. He does the odd painting job for me when I want to trade time and quality for $$. He had completed a job for a game that I have been working on, a 54mm Napoleonic Skirmish game of my own design. I NOW have enough decently painted 54mm British Riflemen and Lights and French Voltigeurs to run this game, woo hoo!

Victrix 54mm Light Infantry. Nice job, Chort!

I was pleased, I sense you are picking up on that.

On the down side of things, I was shooting the breeze a bit with my friends Art and Derek from my gaming group in Northern Virginia during the day.   Derek and Art had been playing the new FFG X-Wing game (which is great, btw, I need to do a review of this).  Derek, having disposable income, had jumped in with both feet and bought a ton of it– two starter sets and several onesie and twosie ships.  He and Art had run a pick up game of X-Wing in the open gaming area and when they set to packing it up, noticed that someone had walked off with two of Derek’s ships!    Theft happens, even theft at cons (in the dealer room, I suppose) but it’s a rare event someone steals directly from someone running a game.  What a villainous scumbag.

The What Would Patton Do Podcast chaps were setting up in the main lobby. Their task was to inflict a live broadcast starting right after dinner. I’ve never listened to their podcast but I hear it’s fairly FLAMES OF WAR-centric.

WHAT WOULD PATTON DO? Drink beer and pontificate!

I’m not a huge Flames of War fan, it just doesn’t interest me much at all. However, it’s very popular (obviously) and the kids love it. So I would recommend it. The WWPD guys seemed like nice fellows, albeit loud! I didn’t stick around too long as the live ‘cast seemed to be geared towards giving away a lot of door prizes, which is always a good thing if you like FLAMES OF WAR. I did conduct a hard hitting interview with a WWPD observer which can be viewed HERE as WordPress doesn’t like the Embed or Object tag.

I wonder if there’s enough interest in a general, no specific-game miniatures podcast? WWPD seems popular and I know there’s a couple more, like parts of D6 Generation and such, but nothing that I would call a “generalist miniature gaming” podcast. Bookmark that.

WWPD Hijinks.. setting up

After watching the WWPD gang for a bit I got an urgent request from Dan to take his ticket for dinner. Free food? How’s a man supposed to turn that down? I had a nice meal, idly gossiping with Scott Landis and watching Eric Turner hoover down prime rib and mashed potatoes so quickly that I was a little nervous putting my hands anywhere near his plate. It was a jolly repast, for all of that! Sadly, that did put me over the deadline for my 7 PM game, but that’s life. It went on without my humble contributions:

Sigh.. I hate missing out on a great Steampunk game.. and Bob Charrette puts on a great Steampunk game.

So I slouched over to the Distelfink to schmooze a bit and noticed if I had whined a little I could have gotten into Eric Turner (he of the speedy appetite)’s THEME game about the Battle of Queenstown Heights. It looked great!

Shucks, that’s purdy.. and historically, thematically accurate! It deserves an award!

Hey, whaddya know. It DID get an award.. The award for best HISTORICAL THEME GAME of FALL IN!
Way to go, Eric!

He does seem quite taken with it, doesn’t he?

Pssssst… word is that he sleeps with it…

Well done to MAJ Turner, but what we aren’t seeing is the OTHER side of the story… One of his players, Scott Landis, had to run the game for half an hour as Eric had been called away to do National Guard stuff that mercifully had been called off as he was halfway up 222.

Needless to say, Scott felt like he was left… holding the bag.

It’s funny, because he’s actually holding a bag.

Nearby, Bob and Cleo Leibel had received the Soup Plate of Honor for their gigantic Colonial themed game!

Proving once again that “it’s not the silly hat, it’s the game BEHIND the silly hat that matters”

The Awards program was managed and executed by Ms. Christin Sciulli who put in a lot of effort to make it happen. Given that the Hurricane had happened that week, it’s a nine days wonder that most things happened, let alone the Awards event. WTG Christin

Saturday evening devolved into the normal beery, boozy yammering and socializing that one expects at these things. I was kind of disappointed I didn’t get in a pickup game or two, but I had a good time anyway. And thus, off to the land of Nod, and blissful sleep.

Sunday morning dawned, and I did my last trips around the Flea Market (disappointing) and the Vendor area (to by more Fantacide figures). And thence, headed homeward. It was a great FALL IN!, somewhat hampered in attendance from Hurricane Sandy earlier in the week– lots of cancellations to contend with. Attendance was lower than we would like but everyone seemed to have a good time. I’m glad I went! Cheers to Dan M. and his intrepid staff for putting on FALL IN! 2012 and doing a splendid job of it.

I’ll See you all at COLD WARS!

HISTORICON 2012: Thursday into Friday, Saturday, and Snippet of Sunday

Continuing from my first post.  HISTORICON 2012 recapped…  So much goes on at these things that it’s hard to put it all in one post.  So this is the second half of my Convention AAR of HISTORICON 2012, in Fredericksburg VA last weekend.

The rest of Thursday went well, we played some games, I got off shift around 12 and ended up napping a little bit.  I woke up at a knock at the door, and it was the concierge with a large fruit basket.  “We’re sorry, Mr. Osbourne, really” and handed me a fruit basket.  Now, this is interesting on a couple of levels.  For one thing, I am not Mr. Osborne (I presume, Mitch Osborne), and he wasn’t sharing a room with me.  A little later, I walked down and tried to give it back, saying “I’m not Mitch Osborne, this is mistake.”  “No, it’s quite alright, keep the basket. Really.  KEEP THE BASKET. “  Well, okay then.  A little fruit never hurt anyone.  Thanks, Mitch!

I returned to the Convention Center and tried to get into something, anything, for the evening. Here’s where I had a problem with some of the decisions leading into HISTORICON 2012. It was the decision of leadership to allow anyone to pre-reg TWO games vice the usual ONE game. As a result there wasn’t squat left for the walkups or people getting off staff duty who just wanted to grab a ticket to something interesting that evening– and pretty much all that was left was Battletech and a few Science Fiction games. I was a little disappointed.. then I noticed Chuck Stocky was running a FIRESTORM ARMADA game in the main hall and beelined for it. I have some experience with UNCHARTED SEAS (which Firestorm is based upon) and kind of knew how to play it already, even if it was my official first time playing. I had a good time, I played the Terran Alliance versus the Sorilyian Collective… At best I’d consider this a draw. I had an unscathed battleship, but some shot up Cruisers (lost one) and 2 corvettes left. The Soryllians had a shot up battleship, some damaged cruisers and NO corvettes left. I think I could have taken him in the end, but it would have gone to the wire. He had to leave early.

FIRESTORM ARMADA GAME, HUMANS VERSUS SORYLIANS, Click on picture to go to Slideshow on ImageShack(TM)

Friday was okay, worked like a fanatic until noon, then things slowed down a lot. I finally got some shopping in. I bought SAGA (rules only) and a box of Saxon Thegns and Viking Bondi (plastic). I didn’t get into anything special, just hung out and shot the breeze with some folks. I noticed that Miniatures Building Authority had once again set up a series of terrain tables as set pieces for GMs to play on and that Jim Stanton was there running his Gnome Wars thing. Lon Weiss from Brigade Games and I talked for a bit and he mentioned that Jim is active in something called WARTV.TV, which broadcasts live streaming broadcasts of wargaming topics (sadly, mostly 40K) on the internet. Jim apparently has been streaming his Gnome games live as they happen at cons and he also was wandering around the convention interviewing people for WarTV.TV. I love this idea. This hobby could use that sort of exposure and wider audience, especially as it broadcasts on Ustream.com.

Check out: A Walk around HISTORICON and WARTV.TV Historicon Footage on Ustream Archive

I might be inclined to try this in the future.

After dinner, I headed for one of the breakout rooms. I was fortunate to have obtained a ticket to the remake of Frank Chadwick‘s Space 1889rewrite

Space: 1889 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

demo game, what appears to be the reconstruction of the Soldier’s Companion rules (which were pretty danged good to begin with, in my opinion).  I have a long history with S: 1889 and wouldn’t miss this for the world.  This was a gigantic, sprawling scenario where the forces of JUSTICE (UK, GERMANY, RUSSIA, etc.) were fighting the forces of FREEDOM (U.S., Japan?, Fenians, Martians..) for control of an artifact rich area.  It was  a hoot.  It was, also, a bit of a slaughter.  For me, anyway.  I was stuck on a boat at the start and that just screamed TARGET to the despicable Russians, the treacherous Prussians with their Aerial Corvette, and Traitorous, Waffle Eating Belgians.  I was shot to pieces, but I had fun doing it.

The Noble Freedom Loving Americans (run by your humble narrator) come under fire from the treacherous Justice loving Belgians, Russians and Prussians. We were doomed out on that river, I tell you!!! (Click to see a slideshow of 30 pictures, some blurry).

I’m not sure what the new rules are going to be called, really, but I can report they play very fast and the salient information I needed to play was on one piece of paper, front and back. Not bad!  Thanks to Frank Chadwick, Christian Sciulli and Thomas Harris for a visual feast.

Various Other Impressions:

There was a lot of Old Become New at this convention. This is an amateur remake of an old TSR Dungeon Crawl game with a big facelift.

Tiny Pearl Harbor… a great looking game on Saturday

I wanted to be good Friday night and get to bed earlier than 3 AM as I had the past two nights but of course, that didn’t happen. I ended up oversleeping and dashing off to make the morning shift just in time. Saturday morning was once again, and in a very puzzling fashion, a busy day. Walkins were very brisk for the day, and continued until 4 that afternoon. No, I’m not overstating it.

I stopped by Jeff Wasilewski’s table on an errand and he commented that he was starting at 12 and would be happy to include me in GOODBYE TO GUNS OR ALL’S QUIET ON THE RURITANIAN FRONT, 1918. I think Jeff’s a grand GM with a brilliant imagination and a knack for making toys out of junk and found objects. Check out the giant bomber and Tsar Tank he made for this game. My brave Ruritanian troops attack with the Allies and even did very well for themselves. The Tsar Tank got to the first German trench and had a malfunction directly over the trench. I dropped a naval brigade right down on top of the Germans and they broke and ran for it. We still had a bitter fight ahead but resistance crumbled. Of course, the military element of the game was kind of meaningless in the face of storyline: “Amidst the chaos of the Great War in the Balkans, a brash young American ambulance driver (Ernest Hummingberg) attempts to rescue his true love, a downed Ruritanian aviatrix. But standing in his way is not only the might of the Central Powers but also numerous rivals for this popular lady’s affections. It’s a love story.. with poison gas”. And so it proved to be.. as the doting elderly king, the game ended for me when Ludmila was carried off the board. So it goes. Still, it was fun and funny and I’d play it again!

Jeff’s game in Slideshow:

More Saturday going into Sunday pictures:

Antietam: the Cornfield– Confederate Side

Yay! Bob and Cleo win an HMGS award thingie for their big three table Sudan game!

Brian DeWitt’s great 54mm Chariot race. I haven’t played this in maybe a decade. I know my daughter was in grade school at the time, because she rolled the dice for me.

Bob Charette’s Sky Runners Race Game.

That night, Saturday Evening, Garrett managed to drop in to hang out with me for an evening (that’s my son, for those of you who don’t know me well). Gar and I sleezed our way into Howard Whitehouse’s annual Saturday night pulp extravaganza, where we played members of the Osiris society, whose chief concern was keeping the sarcophagus of a long-dead Pharaoh in the Cairo Museum. It was the typical fun crowd, Full of hams. I had to play a beautiful assassin, just like in real life. My son Garrett played an Egyptian labor gang, also spies for the Osiris society and he led a successful labor strike that became a full fledged riot!! I’m so proud! And our faction won! This game mightily impressed Garrett, who thought it was simply hilarious.

CHAOS IN CAIRO! by Howard Whitehouse and 30 of his closest friends!

Corrupt Egyptian police shake down some foreigners.

A particularly hairy moment towards the denouement of… CHAOS IN CAIRO!!!

Garrett inherits the old Irish penchant for labor relations.

Lots of other things were going on that night, including a live broadcast of the podcast WHAT WOULD PATTON DO?

Setting up to broadcast WHAT WOULD PATTON DO LIVE FROM HISTORICON 2012

The crowd gathers in the lobby

Sunday, we got breakies and I had to do some minimal duty in the morning. Then it was off to shop a bit while Garrett played in Nancy Ott’s marvelous miniature version of the old Avalon Hill game MYSTIC WOOD. Another great board game converted into miniatures–

Mystic Wood set up

Garrett in the middle of Mystic Wood, all blase about victory and stuff…

I saw a few boardgame conversions.. including one of my favorite microgames, OLYMPICA, run by Steve Johnson, and OGRE, redone as BORG..

So with that done (Garrett won! woo hoo!) off we went home, and I have to say I loved HISTORICON. It was fun to hang out and be at a convention with friends, not worrying about the imminent demise of HMGS, just enjoying a great convention and having fun. I saw a lot of cool new stuff– maybe the standouts for me were SAGA, FIREBALL FORWARD, the new SPACE: 1889, and FANTICIDE. I am glad I went, glad it worked out and I hope we had a decent attendance. It looked a little light, but that is hardly surprising at a new place and with all the people determined to not come because it wasn’t in a state they approved of. I do know, because I saw it with my own eyes, there were TONS of walkins, and they went very late every day. Congratulations and thanks for another fine convention, HMGS.
Okay, all that gaming, wacky anecdotes, and logistics stuff is over.

LET’S TALK LESSONS LEARNED

There’s been some negative jabber from various folks who delight in being overly critical here and there and some terms have been thrown out like “the convention was held in the middle of nowhere” and “it was in a shopping mall” or “the hotels are separate from the conference center, that sucks!”

Let’s talk a few facts. I was there. This is what I saw.

Fredericksburg, VA (really, the outlying suburbs of) is not exactly the middle of nowhere. It is midway between Washington DC and Richmond, the capital of Virginia. It’s not exactly a bustling burg, but it isn’t any smaller than Lancaster PA, and probably larger. What’s more, the convention center was less than a mile as the crow flies from I-95, the busiest traffic corridor on the East Coast. Fredericksburg is a LOT easier to get to than Lancaster PA, which probably deserves the appellation “middle of nowhere” more if you look at it objectively (don’t like that statement? Where’s the nearest Interstate to Lancaster? Look at a map). I will caveat my statements with the admission that this location was absurdly easy to get to; but I live in Northern Virginia, so I absolutely admit I’m not sharing the pain of my New Jersey brethren (and also from parts farther North). Sorry. That’s the way the chips fell this time. Think of it like this; the many, many Virginian wargamers have been perfectly happy to go North to a convention when they had to, and they will be happy to do it when the next one moves. Then we’ll be the ones complaining. Except that we won’t be. Cuz we’re like that.

Front of Fredericksburg Convention Center. “Big Fred”

Also, this wasn’t a “Convention Center inside a shopping mall”, as has been stated. It’s a Convention Center located about 1 mile off of a main road (Route 3) that passes through a light commercial area, which is festooned with (primarily) restaurants of all kinds. If you think that’s a detriment, go get your head examined. There were three primary hotels located a very short distance from the main building. Don’t take my word for it, here’s a picture:

Homewood Suites, adjacent to parking lot

The much talked about Wegmans is right next door. Their marketplace cafe is worth a visit.

I’ve been accused of cheer-leading before, so I’ll start off with some brutal objectivity. Were there problems with this site and this convention? There sure are and sure were.   My observations follow.

Let’s start with the one people will no doubt mention first. Noise abatement in the large ballroom. My WORD, this was loud. I’m 40% deaf in one ear, a result of a misadventure in my youth. I could barely hear. Something has to be done.

See the large, uncovered concrete walls? Imagine the echo when the space fills up with people. It’s intense!

One hopes there is something we can (or the center can) do to alleviate this.

Next, and most acute, I counted three men’s rooms working on the entire site. And of these, two were two-holers and one was a three-holer. After the, ahem, usual appetites of this crowd of hungry gamers went to work and the inevitable happened, you can just imagine the wretchedness by Saturday. And in one bathroom, the toilet seat broke after some generously proportioned gentleman used it. As I had hit upon that dark moment when a man has to make a decision… back to the hotel room or tough it out right here? on Saturday, the calls of nature forced the decision upon me and the only one available was the one with the broken seat. I had to assume a posture worthy of a yogi to conduct the proper response, all the while praying that gravity wouldn’t take over… “Sweet Jesu, hold…HOLD!….”

That’s a problem; and the impetus is upon the convention center to fix it.

Show specific things that bugged me were the choice of the registration location (small, hot and stuffy, very cramped)

The Registration system was the sure-fire winner it always has been, but I know I have to be fatalistic about it; it’s the one we have and the one that isn’t going to be replaced any time soon.

The dealer’s area seemed smaller and certainly had fewer vendors– not sure if there was some desire to stay away on purpose or not but many vendors were missed, so the ones that were there (and had the scratch) could spread out a bit. My favorites were there; Architects of War, The War Store, Brigade Games, etc. So I didn’t mind unduly.

Pre-registration allowed TWO games a day for people who pre-registered; this was a bald faced grab at attendance.. That works both ways. Sure, people were eager to snap up two events a day but that didn’t leave a lot for the rest of us at the convention. And that sucked!

People were kvetching (at a distance, mind you) about the air conditioning. It seemed perfectly adequate the entire time to me.

So, that’s about all I can think about to address various gripes and happy to glads. No, it’s not perfect. And attendance was not where it could be. But it was still a great time and for once, it was fun to be happy and not cynical and gloomy, just hanging out with friends and playing games. Why not?

Video streaming by Ustream

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Dudley can have the final word here.

Review — British Napoleonic Peninsular War Flank Company [VX5401]

See previous review of Victrix Napoleonic Voltigeurs 1805-1812

This is a follow up purchase to the Victrix Voltigeurs I picked up last month.  I have been acquiring and painting up 54mm Skirmisher figures for an ancient game I idea I had about man to man skirmishing in the Napoleonic era.   For the game to see fruition I’m going to need a relatively small group of figures from each side (8-10 maximum).  I want to ultimately pit Riflemen versus Voltigeurs from the late war era.  I own and have painted up about 10 of the Italieri 95th Rifles but they are a little largish compared to the Victrix Voltigeurs.  So I picked the British Peninsular Infantry Flank Company box as well.  This makes sense.  The flank company is sculpted and detailed to be a set of light infantry troops, which are sufficiently animated that they would make great skirmish troops.  I would have liked at least a couple of crouching/firing poses but these are probably sculpted to be deployed in formations, not as skirmishers.   No matter.  There’s enough variation in the basic body types that they look pretty animated to me.

Box Cover

As before there are five or so sprues of various body parts and bodies to create customization with. From what I’m seeing here you can create a maximum of 16 figures from the sprues included. There are two officer figures and a drummer boy as well as several infantry in action or marching.

Group of 5 sample figs: Drummer, Officer, and 3 Infantrymen

Closer: Drummer, Officer, Infantryman

3 infantry poses

I’m going to use the basic redcoat/grey trousers/black shako paint scheme for these guys, as generic late war period infantry British infantry types. Here’s a picture of the Victrix site’s suggested paint scheme:

Suggested Paint Scheme

The figures out of the box are made of a durable hard style plastic that assembles very quickly with styrene glue (Testors, in this case), which bonds quickly and holds well. Out of the box they are slightly oily, which is probably mold release spray residue. Recommend an overnight soak before painting. Flashing is minimal. There were some mold lines on the sides of the shakos that needed trimming but I found nothing else that required a lot of work– some poses require a little attention while the plastic cement welds are curing.

Though they aren’t exactly cheap (say, compared to Italieri’s molded plastic figures, at about 15 dollars more on average, US retail prices), they are wondrously flexible in their approach to customization. I really like these releases and I certainly plan on buying and building more. I won’t be fielding large armies of these, ever, but they are great value for the money and I enjoy the detail, sculpting and utility of Victrix 54mm scale figures. If this is a scale and period you are interested in, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Civil War: Battle of Fredericksburg First Look for the IPad

I got a tipoff today from the fellas over at THE BITSTREAMERS about their upcoming Battle of Fredericksburg game.   As I have waxed enthusiastic about several times on this blog, I’ve been waiting for a REAL wargame for the Ipad for a while.  There’s been a few candidates so far that are definitely in that category but the real traditional hex-based simulation of moving cardboard pieces on a map seems to have eluded us.  So far.

The Bitstreamers’ new release, THE BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG, is retro AND historical, being a two dimensional overhead look of a battlefield, where the user maneuvers units around and combats enemy units.  E.G., a real wargame of the old school.

I like the look of this product, quite a bit. The Battle of Fredericksburg is, alas, not a historical event renown for tactical genius displayed on either side. Essentially, the Army of the Potomac was being pressured from without to do something, anything positive to further the Union war aims. General Burnside marched his men to Fredericksburg with the vague intention of flanking the Army of Northern VA to the South and pushing on towards Richmond. Amazingly, if everything had been in place, Burnside might have managed something decisive.  The Army of Northern Virginia was not present in strength when the Union Army arrived.  Unfortunately, as the long, sad story of the AotP attests to, nothing seems to have gone right. Again. The pontoon bridges didn’t show up until a day later, so the AotP kicked its heels on the banks of the Rappahanock, watching the Army of Northern Va. file in at St. Mary’s Heights as they took up an almost impregnable position behind a rock wall. A more inspired commander might have tried something else. Burnside was not that kind of commander, and he just sent his men forward in a series of ill-timed and ill-considered frontal assaults on the works at Saint Mary’s heights. If you know your civil war history, you’ll know this didn’t go well for the AotP. COL Joshua Chamberlain, of the 20th Maine, future hero of Gettysburg, had to shelter under a breastwork of corpses of previously slaughtered assault waves, as the bullets whistled around him all night.

What kind of game will this historical scenario create?

I imagine we will see a game that will be simulating a series of frontal assaults. There’s potential for a balanced game there, maybe, if you allow the odds to shift a little bit to help out the attacker. It is not impossible to imagine the Union breaking through… somewhere. The ANV couldn’t be everywhere at once. So if the Union player works his attack right, and doesn’t rely solely on assaults, perhaps moves his attack to the South a little, he might have a chance. Or perhaps there will be a campaign layer to this game, with other scenarios and battlefields.. maybe Burnside can adopt a less suicidal strategy. Whatever.

For what it appears to be, I’m enthusiastic about the idea.

My only quibbles: Why the cutesie unit interface? Why the cartoonish units? There was hardly anything cutesie about the Battle of Fredericksburg. Why pretend that Civil War soldiers are anime or little kids?  What is UP with that graphic trend?  Don’t adults fight wars any more?  Other than that, I like the flat 2D aspect of the game, and I like the town, hex, and strategic layer (from what I can see of it) of the game map.  However, I think the buildings are far too large and not in scale on the map, I don’t think the battle map is big enough and doesn’t display the area around the town.. where other possible crossing areas would be, etc.   If the game is simply “the Union goes into the meat grinder without much chance of winning” and nothing else, it’s going to have very limited game play.  One can see (briefly) a map that shows a much wider scope of the campaign than just the city of Fredericksburg on the Bitstreamers website, and that makes me think that there will be more grand tactical maneuvering to this game than is immediately evident in their Youtube presentation above.  We’ll see!

So, yep, I’m looking forward to this one a lot. I will have a more substantive review when I get a chance to give it a try.

Cold Wars 12 Friday-Sunday: The Treachery of the Ralgard

When we last left our intrepid correspondent, he was starting his Friday shift at the HMGS Cold Wars 2012 Registration area.  First off, a few words on the general state of things viz a viz Registration.  There’s nobody out there that’s a huge fan of the HMGS registration process, and that includes your humble narrator.  Still, the decision was made, the (ruinous) price was paid, and we are doing our best to make it work for us.  When I first started working with it (HISTORICON 2010, if I’m remember it rightly), I thought it was horrendous, poorly designed, glacially slow and and incredibly inefficient for the basic task of quickly moving people through a registration line.  At Cold Wars 2012, I have to admit, it was better– I didn’t feel lost at all and managed to get through most reg tasks quickly.  It still isn’t horrendously intuitive and requires way too many clicks to get basic tasks done, but is getting better.  I must commend Paul Trani for the diligent effort he puts into making this software somewhat workable.  It’s a hard task and a bit of a raw deal for him– he is cast in the role of defending a software I’m not even sure he likes all that much, but he cheerfully is doing his best to make it workable.  Well done, sir.
Friday saw tremendous crowds.  I worked from 0930 to 1430 and it was almost non-stop.  For the most part, everyone was happy to be there and very civil.  There was the typical “can I get in for free just to shop” banter from time to time. I got a very intense young gentleman at the front desk virtually demanding that I give him a free badge.  When I told him we didn’t have a free badge, he got a little melodramatic.  “I’m sure it’s not YOUR decision, your just enforcing policy.. but I want to speak to someone RIGHT NOW who made that policy.  Right now.  I’m going home to blog about your stupid decision…”  Mollifying him in polite fashion, I steered him over to Michelle, stating.. “Heavens, we wouldn’t wish to be blogged about.  There you go, sir.  That lady there. she’s on the board of directors, and she’s as gentle as a lamb.. that’s someone with authority to speak to you, for sure”.   Michelle stuck to her guns, he wasn’t happy, and he departed, shaking his fist, exclaiming “I’ll blog about this! You’ll be sooorrrrrryyyy (evil cackle)” POOF! (sound effect as he dashes out, whirling his cape around himself and twirling his mustachios).   You get this kind of thing from time to time.  The argument is made that “we should just let shoppers in for free, to help out dealers, and in this economy why wouldn’t we make it easier on folks who are struggling to get by to have access to vendors,” etc…  (this is what the young blogging man brought up as a criticism of the day badge policy).  In response to that, I would point out that A) if times are that tough, what in the world are you doing spending your rent money at a convention, anyway?  If 20 bucks is a make or break threshold for you, maybe it’s time to start thinking about a cheaper, stay at home hobby, like going to the library, or something.  I don’t mean to sound heartless when I say that, I certainly am not, but I am concerned with anyone who has to make a choice between eating and painting lead..  that’s someone who needs to prioritize.  and B) People want an organization putting on a convention to “support small vendors by making it easy to go shopping at their booths”, but never seem to want to support the organization that uses its own money, time, effort and considerable expense to rent the facility, draw up the layout and plan the convention.  If you think HMGS is making oodles of cash on these events, you need to make a hard reality check and review the financials.  I’ve been a convention director, and I have a little experience here, so I’m being a realist, not a cheerleader for HMGS.  Income to put on these shows come from two sources: vendor booths and general admissions.  If you raise the price too high, less people will show up.  If you raise the price for vendor tables too high, less vendors will show up.  It’s a balancing act.  One thing’s for certain, there’s no show if we can’t pay for it, and everyone loses.  Not a bad thing to kick in a measly 20 bucks for, I hope?

Anyway, the rest of the shift went fairly easily, except for a net outage that nobody was very patient with.  We tried to implement a paper backup solution, which was just okay.  Fortunately it didn’t last that long, so maybe only a dozen transactions total will have to be keyed in.

Friday, I did a Flea Market and Dealer’s Room run after my shift.  I was hitting JOHN CARTER that night, and didn’t have time for a game, but I had time to shop.  I got a great deal directly from Richard Borg for COMMAND AND COLORS: NAPOLEONICS The Spanish Army Expansion.   I also got a pin vice and a few other assorted tiny things from Jeff and Monica Hobbe’s booth before heading up to see JOHN CARTER.

(for a review on John Carter, the movie, see the previous post. Aside from taking up a big chunk of my Friday evening, it didn’t have much to do with Cold Wars).

Had to go directly to work the next day and it was another grinder.  You are probably less interested in the volunteering bit than I am, so I’ll just say it went well.  I did a little more shopping and caught a few games.  Sadly, I couldn’t get in to the one I wanted to, because it started at 2 and ended at 8, when I was scheduled to start my game.  I did take a few pictures of dubious quality here and there with an Ipad2.  My camera is broken so I had to use what was on hand. Sorry about the fuzziness, the Host isn’t particularly well lit.

From the Battletech room.

The Battletech room had a nice range of activities for beginners and experienced players.

One of Ben “the Iron Man” Fornshell’s many tiny format games that he ran over the weekend.

Ben Fornshell and Del Stover put on, no kidding, something like 19 games at COLD WARS 2012. Before you start counting your fingers, realize that they were mostly 1 hour games designed to be changed out or run on the same set of terrain tables. Genius! I complimented them on their insane dedication to GMing in the bar Saturday night. They were pretty modest about the whole thing, and went into their idea of modular terrain tables that are designed for small, short discrete wargames for less than four players. They are getting it down to an art.

Shucks, it was nothing!

Cog Wars, run by Brian Whitaker, demonstrating that there’s never enough time or money to do all the historical periods and scales one would like.

Giant multiplayer Tralfalgar

Spraying terrain with liquid from an atomizer. That’s a first.

Rollerball, a game I’d like to play but have yet to enjoy, usually from mundane scheduling conflicts.

Scenes from the HAWKS room. They had the usual Paradise Room space and were pimping their new BARRAGE convention (which has moved, apparently) to anyone who would listen.

That’s about it for usable pictures. I strongly advise visiting Richard Mataka’s websiteto view his Cold Wars gallery when you get a chance (and when it is complete). Richard gets a press badge to HMGS events for the express purpose of photographing miniatures events, so you might as well check it out– you kind of paid for part of it. In any event he took 600 or so pictures so pretty much everything you could imagine is in there. Or will be.

I did another run through the dealer’s room with a lot more leisure time on my hands this time. I bought some quickset glue and DullCoate, got an obscenely good show special on the boardgame STRIKE OF THE EAGLE from Academy games, picked up some Old Glory 15mm ancients (Windsword distributors), Some resin boats from Merrimac/Old Glory and Foxhole Terrain, various miniatures from Splintered Light and Rebel Minis, and maybe my favorite discovery of the convention, these neat little plastic tanks with a very steampunky look from a new vendor, Proxie Models. They are clean, dirt cheap, and 100% made in the USA. SUPPORT THIS VENDOR!!! He’s working on expanding the line and will take suggestions.

Convention food was no better or worse than always, so I wolfed a meal down on top of my setup for the 2000 hrs. game I was running, THE BATTLE OF THE STEAM PLUME. This was scheduled for 8 PM on table D-25 in the Distelfink. I arrived to discover that the fellows playing on the surrounding tables (D 26, D 15 and D 16) had essentially dismantled D 25 without asking anyone and added the tables to their setups. Worse, they were games that were in full swing and difficult to interrupt to reconstitute my space. I was pretty angry about this, it was a blatant discourtesy, but you can’t dwell on it– I’m not going to be a bigger jerk than these guys and destroy their games out of pique. Fortunately the Events guy, Bob Van Der Kamp, gave me a great solution that worked out just fine– I set up in the lobby area. This set me back timewise, and kind of ruffled my feathers a bit. I was off my game a little, but did my best. Fortunately my errant players who signed up for the game found me and I picked up a couple of walkups.

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Which Brings us to…

THE BATTLE OF THE STEAM PLUME: TREACHERY OF THE RALGARD!

I had four players, Jeff Ewing, Jim Arnold, a guy named George, Harry Kogelshatz and another player whose name I did not record. As someone had to play the Dwarves to balance things, I picked up the Dwarf fleet. I prefer to either run it or play it, but we had to make do.

The map above represents the basic dispositions at start and the general route of sailing. The wind was coming from the general direction of the bottom right corner and blowing upward and slightly to the right, which favored almost nobody except for maybe the Elves, and hindered the Ralgard movement something fierce.

The Scenario: The Western Coalition, led by the Humans, is allied with a somewhat reluctant Dwarf fleet and even more reluctant Elf fleet. They are attempting to colonize a very lightly held island that is very rich in iron and nickel ores in the Darnok cluster. Even though the Dragon Lords do not have a colony there, they will not stand for the impudence of these younger races and sail to meet them in the lee of the Fist of God, a local (very active) volcano. Along with them come their client race, the Shroud Mages, and surprisingly, a mercenary fleet of Ralgard ships towing their signature huge Jarak Balloon battery. The Humans have a largish convoy of troop and provisioning ships that are going to be the bulk of the invasion force. The Coalition Fleet’s victory condition is to get them past a point on the board. The Dragon Lord Force is there to block victory.

View from the Ralgard perspective at onset of battle

The Dragon Lord Admiral commands the Ralgard Mercenaries to take station on his starboard flank. They bridle a bit under his imperious treatment.

Humans sail for the center passage between many rocky islands, perhaps unwisely as it turned out, as this would be the convergent point for three hostile fleets.

The Elves were lagging behind the Humans and did not contribute to the battle in any substantive fashion. They had too much ground (water) to cover to get to the fracas.

Meanwhile, the Iron Dwarf Admiral was hampered by the weight of his iron fleet, furiously churning sea water in an attempt to catch up with the swiftly sprinting Human fleet. It is one thing to have some of the most powerful ships on the table, but not much use if you can’t come to grips with the enemy.

The Troop Convoy of the Western Coalition

The Eagle (battleship) of the Human Fleet took station to block the swiftly advancing Dragon Lords. Bringing his mighty port broadside into play, he would show the Dragon Lords that these upstart races know how to fight.

The frigate screens suffered terrible loss on all sides, as their plucky crews attempted to disable and stem the advance of the opposing forces.

Somewhat typically, the Dragon Lords allow the hired hands and subject races (Ralgard and Shroud Mages) the chance to gain a little glory early as they maneuver their forces for the “Hammer Blow”. The Ralgard, in particular, object to being used as speed bumps, but move in to engage at a distance with the Dwarves. The Dwarven admiral, seeing the opportunity, slips a squadron of frigates in to tail the Ralgard squadron and rake from behind.

The results are inconsequential.. those Ralgard fleets are TOUGH. When the Ralgard returned fire from their Battleship, the end frigate blew up in a critical hit that really rattled the Ralgard squadron (to say nothing of the Dwarves).

The Dwarven Admiral was finally in a position to affect the battle; he took advantage of Dwarven strengths and positioned his airship to broadside into the Ralgard fleet, bringing down a frigate, while the bulk of his fleet remained untouched behind a rocky outcrop.

The Dragon Lord Admiral again urges the Ralgard mercenary admiral to step up his attack, this time in words less charitable and increased use of the phrase “beheaded”. The Ralgard is a bit fed up at this point.

Help arrives from the Elves at last, but it is too little and too late. The Humans are greatly beleaguered in the center, facing a Whirlpool Spell by the Shroud Mages, and losing frigates right and left. The Eagle, which had masked the convoy, is now shot up and gradually taking on water.

The Dragon Lord “crosses the T” of the Human Fleet, but doesn’t have the fire power to do much but continue battering the Eagle and destroy a few frigates. To add to the chaos, the Volcano belches out a Steam plume right on the tail end of the Dragon Lord fleet, sending an entire cruiser to the bottom!

At this stage, the long suffering Ralgard fleet had had enough. They savagely turn on their Dragon Lord employers, launching broadside after broadside into the Dragon Lord capital ships!!! The Dwarves, who have engaged the Ralgard on the starboard flank, are speechless. The Dwarven admiral chews his beard in puzzlement. The Human Admiral, much beset on the Eagle, cheers at this assistance from an unexpected quarter!!

The Dragon Lord Admiral cannot contain his fury, and he signals to the captain of the Dragon Carrier, keeping station on his port quarter: “Launch all Nogdras! LAUNCH! REND THEM TO PIECES!!!!”

With the Dragon Lord Cruiser squadron shattered and drifting (or at the bottom of the ocean), the two capital ships and some frigates are the soul remnant of this once proud fleet. The Ralgard launch into their weakened one-time employers with a vengeance. The Nogdra dragons launch at the Jarak Balloon, creating a swirling melee of Ralgard Airmen and Nagdra Dragons 100 feet above the battle.

At last, the noble Iron Dwarves meet their detestable cousins, the Lizard-eating Shroud Mages, in battle. It is only a skirmish between the Shroud Mage battleship and the Dwarven War Zeppelin, but the demands of honor have been met.

The Nogdra dragon launch is ineffectual as one of them gets shot to pieces in Defensive Fire.

At this stage of the battle we had gone more than four hours and were chugging through the fifth hour. It was still not decisive.. The Humans had lost much in defending themselves and were losing the Eagle to the constant battering. Due to the Ralgard defection, the Western coalition suddenly had a very powerful ally in place that was blocking the Dragon Lords spoiler attacks. The Shroud Mages were very effective and almost unscathed. The Dragon Lords had borne the brunt of the fighting in the center and were now chewed up pretty bad. The Ralgard had only lost a couple of frigates and one cruiser, and then only after hard fighting. The Iron Dwarves had lost some frigates but for the most part their capital ships had held firm in the face of a pounding from the Ralgard. The Elves were (suspiciously) untouched, and arriving in time to shout victory.

DECISION: This had to go to the Western Coalition fleet and particularly the Humans, who managed to get their convoy past the choke point by the end of the battle. It wasn’t a decisive victory in retrospect; the Humans could manage a landing but would not have had the capital ships to protect their settlement had they decided to make a fight for it.

OBSERVATIONS: I was a little angry and rattled about having to drop back and punt over setup after my tables got stolen, so setup was rushed and frankly I could have done a better job of GMing. My instructions about combat confused people and we had to constantly describe the combat process, which was a surprise because I don’t consider Uncharted Seas too heinous to pick up. I’ll try to be more clear the next time I run a Uncharted Seas game, which will probably be Historicon 2012. Thanks to Harry Kogelshatz for helping out on a few key points. Thanks to all the players, too, this was a great game!

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SUNDAY: well, not much to say here. I did a final run around the dealer room, picked up a few items from Harmony House, a couple of Ironclads from Thoroughbred Figures and a new copy of Shipbase III in the flea market (only to discover it had 5.25 and 3.5 inch diskettes!! YARGH!), and not much else. I said my goodbyes to everyone, pointed my car Southward and bid Cold Wars Adieu until 2013.

A very decent COLD WARS 2012, I thought. It went by far too quickly for me. I didn’t get in all the gaming I wanted to, and it seems like I did more drinking and BSing with people than gaming this time, but some conventions are just like that. Thanks to Frank and Michelle for putting so much work into Cold Wars 2012, and thanks to all their staff, especially Bob Van Der Kamp, the events wallah. He helped me get my stuff together to make the GUIDEBOOK thing happen. And for the first time since I started doing guidebooks, we had it out well in advance of the convention. Good job, sir!

In closing….

“Poor soul. He was just overwrought.”

Related articles

• COLD WARS 2012 Thursday: He Man Woman-Haters club (misternizz.wordpress.com)
• HISTORICON 2012: THU nite, Friday much of the day (misternizz.wordpress.com)
• HISTORICON 2012 Guidebook App is now available (misternizz.wordpress.com)

Williamsburg Muster Weekend 2012

Gar and I pointed the van southward last Saturday for a visit to the Williamsburg Muster, a great little convention that we’ve become fans of in recent years.  The Muster is a mixed format gaming convention, with heavy representation among boardgamers, roleplayers, and miniature hobbyists.  Unlike HMGS conventions the ODMS (Old Dominion Military Society) doesn’t ostensibly limit the content of cons, so the subjects are all over the place.  The Muster (and the ODMS summer convention, Guns of August) takes place at the Holiday Inn Patriot Center, an aging Holiday Inn on the outskirts of downtown Williamsburg.  The Muster takes up three large rooms, space wise, and about a dozen vendors attend from a variety of areas– mostly game stores, but also some publishers and manufacturers like Lock and Load Games and Thoroughbred Figures.

We arrived around noon of Saturday, experiencing no traffic on the way down.  We had reservations at the local Day’s Inn but didn’t bother checking in immediately.  Instead we went directly to the muster and said hi to some people, and then sleezed our way into a game of SPACE:1889.  Man, I was glad I did!

My Command, a Wooden Pirate “Kite”

This was a game of SKY GALLEONS OF MARS, done in 25mm using a mix of miniatures and lightweight ships made out of some rigid styrofoam material (apparently) and covered with veneer to look like wood.  Very lightweight and durable stuff.

Garrett’s Russian Ironclad

I played a disreputable pirate, Garrett played a small Ironclad steamer.  Another chap played a Japanese patrol frigate, and young Lindsey and her beau, whom I’ve worked staff with at HMGS conventions, played the roles of A British Aphid class patrol frigate and a slightly more up-gunned Privateer.

The Privateer (left) and the British Aphid (right) with Lindsey to the right

my Pirate Kite in foreground and Gar

I love Frank Chadwick‘s Space: 1889 universe and was an avid player back in the day.  I’ve wanted to play the 25mm scaled Sky Galleons games that I often see on the PEL at HMGS cons but they are never at a good time for me.  I was very pleased to get a slot and thankful that the GM put it on.

The battle was fast and resolved well.  Gar and I signaled a little diplomacy at the outset, which is allowed (and it gives the signalman something to do).  I suggested that Gar fire his machine guns at my kite so that the other players would think we were not allies.  Predictably it did nothing.  Gar fired at the Privateer with some long ranged shots and scored some hits, but didn’t unship the guns or kill a lot of crew.  I took a long ranged shot at the British kite and blew up the biggest gun they had.  This earned me a hard stare from Miss Lindsey.

Sorry, Lindsey. I was just looking for something to do.

Hey, I’m a pirate, not a diplomat, right? So we fired at each other long distance and Gar did the same with the Privateer AND the British. I took an unlucky hull hit which caused me to lose some liftwood, and it dropped me a level. Now I couldn’t shoot UP, and the guys above me had a hard time shooting DOWN. I bided my time and soon enough the Aphid dropped down to my level, as did the Russian. While Gar kept her distracted with brisk fire, I managed to get some grappling lines on that held.

Approaching..

Borders AWAY!!

Sadly, those Jolly Jack Tars were made of stern stuff. And there were more of them after my Marines manfully got shot up on the approach. So the first boarding was repulsed. We went in for another try, all or nothing… and..

Boarding gone awry.

… we got repulsed with heavy casualties. Oh dear. We beat feet to get back on board the Kite at a fortuitous moment. The Japanese were finally in the game and were taking long ranged shots at everyone, which had started a double sized fire on the Aphid. Time to break off and run for it!

“He who fights and runs away…”

Runnnnn Awaaay! We were down to 2 guys, on a shot up kite, but we lived and weren’t captured. Somedays, all you can do is all you can do in the pirate trade.

FOR A SLIDESHOW OF THE ACTION, visit my Photobucket Account. I don’t want to make this AAR too crowded..

The game called at about 3 PM. We did a walk around and poked our noses into some other events, but we needed to get our UNCHARTED SEAS: BATTLE OF THE STEAM PLUME game ready so couldn’t sit down for even a quick game. We went out for some chicken and got the sheets ready. We had planned to go with a laminated card and dry erase approach, but some of the sheets didn’t get printed. So I used the tried and true method of Spartan Games’ fleet composition sheets. I had to hand it to the lady working the front desk, Molli. She believes in customer service. I went online with my Ipad, found the downloadable from the Spartan Games site, downloaded to my Ipad, forwarded to her personal email, and she printed them out on her fax machine. A Gadget enabled happy ending!

There were tons of great games in both big rooms during Saturday. I liked the 1:600 Ironclads CSS Virginia vs. the USS Monitor scenario being run in the main room, but a fellow can’t be in two places at once. It looked fun!

Monitor vs Virginia

Other standouts were constant demonstrations being put on for ADVANCED SQUAD LEADER (Avalon Hill/Multiman Publishing), BATTLE OF WESTEROS (Days of Wonder), Most LOCK AND LOAD games and other fun activities.

The DYSTOPIAN WARS game was very tempting, but naturally it didn’t synch with my schedule, and it went very long..

One of the vendors was running a mix of Battletech game and FIRESTORM ARMADA Demos, and they had some sharp looking stuff out.

Again, tons of fun things to do, not enough time to do ALL of them…

Mark Walker from Lock and Load Games

Saturday Night, we got our sheets filled out and got back an hour ahead of our start time for the UNCHARTED SEAS game we were throwing for the convention. The scenario was a tad more complex than normal, as I was working with strict alliances (firm between Dragon Lords and Shroud Mages, loosely allied between Iron Dwarves and Men). That meant that there wouldn’t be a lot of chaos and deal brokering. This game would also have more fliers than past games, as the Elves now had an Elder Dragon, the Humans had Da Vinci glider assault launchers, the Dragon Lords had their Naugras, and the Dwarves had their Zeppelin. We made a big effort to pay attention to the DEFENSIVE FIRE, AERIAL ATTACK and DIVING Rules for this game, as everyone had a “death from above” weapon. To further complicate matters, I added a live volcano that randomly spouted a gout of lava, which had the potential for wreaking havoc with the fleets sailing around it.

The map looked roughly like this, not to scale of course.

The Battle of The Steam Plume

THE BATTLE OF THE STEAM PLUME AFTER ACTION REPORT

A Strong coalition of Allied nations approached the Demon’s Forge Archipelago to force passage for the Colonization fleet moving into the Darnak Cluster.  The Imperials were anxious to set up a strongly defended trading post in the vicinity as the islands had proven to have high concentrations of iron, nickel and sulfur.  Unfortunately, local volcanic activity is high and the straits approaching the proposed landfall are dominated by an active volcano… which should makes things lively for any fleet venturing through the area.

The Battle of the Steam Plumes began with fleets from the Elves, Orcs, Bone Griffons, Dragon Lords, Shroud Mages, Humans and Dwarves on the table, but we quickly pulled the Orcs out (for balance) and then the Bone Griffons and Elves.  The Elves fit in the scenario better than the Bone Griffons, but we didn’t have enough players.  I played the Imperial Human fleet with 1 battleship, 3 cruisers, 6 regular frigates, 4 martyr frigates, and 5 cargo ships whose function was really just as victory points.  In addition, I had two assault glider launcher balloons at my disposal, which were hidden on a cruiser and one of the cargo ships.  The Iron Dwarves were run by my rather loose “Ally” Dewey LaRochelle, who had a Battleship, 3 cruisers, 2 heavy cruisers, 2 submarines, 6 frigates and a zeppelin.  The Dragon Lords (run by a player named Derek)  were more firmly allied with a client fleet, the Shroud Mages (run by Garrett), and they had a battleship, 3 cruisers, 2 Celestial Heavy cruisers, 1 Dragon carrier (that launches two flights of Naugra dragons), and 6 frigates.  The Shroud Mages have a hodgepodge of units, including a battleship, three cruisers, 3 infiltrator destroyers, 6 frigates, and 3 other destroyers.   Of the two opposing fleets, the Shroud Mages hit harder but the Dragon Lords are more versatile.  As you can see in the graphic above the Humans encountered the Mages and the Dwarves encountered the Dragon Lords.  I had the Eagle battleship out in the Van of the attack to bring its devastating broadside to bear.  In no time whatsoever, The Eagle destroyed a Shroud Mage Cruiser and two frigates.  Similarly, the Iron Dwarves conducted a massive frigate attack with combined fire on the Cruiser van of the Dragon Lord fleet, and they started loosing ships immediately.  The Shroud Mages lost another cruiser to gunfire but the Eagle got into a bad spot where she couldn’t retreat to a distance and use her amazing broadside, and she caught a lot of fire.  The Humans lost a cruiser in the counterattack and some frigates.  The Humans brought up the Martyr frigates and they sailed in to another Shroud mage Cruiser squadron.  The explosion did for the cruiser and two frigates, to much rejoicing.  Alas, the Shroud battleship maneuvered into a position to take the stricken Eagle under fire and sank her.  Meanwhile the Dragon Lord Celestials had gone down and the Dwarven Zeppelin was poised to bomb the Dragon Lord Battleship.  The Dragon lords launched the Naugra dragons at the Zeppelin and it went down hard, ripped to shreads by repeated clawing and ripping attacks by the tiny dragons.    That was not enough to stem the tide of victory on the Dwarf side, but it did slow him down a bit.  Meanwhile the Humans tried the best trick in their arsenal, secretly launching one Da Vinci assault wing from  the balloon platform.  The Assault group was 16 crew strong and descended on to the banged up Shroud Mage battleship, wiping out the crew inside.  A substantial prize!

CHAOS! On the Uncharted Seas!

The Dragon Lord fleet was now decimated, but so was the Human fleet, being down to just a cruiser, a few frigates and a collection of valuable cargo ships. The Dwarf fleet steamed (slowly) to support the humans, who captured another cruiser to glider assault. At this point we called it, as an obvious Allied (Human/Dwarf) victory, with an individual victory by Dewey LaRochelle on points.

Things that went well: The Balloon Assault ships. Dwarven Frigates attacking combined. Naugra Dragons. The Shroud Mages have a great Destroyer in the Infiltrator, which is essentially a giant pointed ram. Ramming was the big tactic of the Shroudies, and it worked well. The Humans had to rely on gimmicks, like the Martyrs and the Da Vinci glider assault. Hey, it worked great. The Dwarves had their enormous firepower and armor but lacked speed. This was the game that the Shroud Mages came into their own, and even the Humans impressed me if I do say so, with using their assets wisely– the Battleship pounded from a distance (until it couldn’t maneuver). The cruisers held off and fired from the edges. The Dragon Lords were recently beefed up with some heavy cruisers and I am hoping it will give that fleet greater legs in a long fight. The Volcano surprise was fairly wimpy and didn’t go as planned. We will remedy that for the next time I run it, which will be Cold Wars 2012.

Garrett can be seen in this video example of gunnery combat, tending to the demise of the Imperial Human Battleship, the Eagle.

Dewey LaRochelle took many pictures, all of which can be seen in this slideshow.

Sunday dawned with no major stress. We were out of our hotel (Days Inn downtown) in no time and popped in to the convention again for the morning. We HAD planned to run Ironclads on Sunday but the crowd was minimal and we had been strongly encouraged (let’s say) to get home for some Super Bowl party action. We did have enough to time to sit in on a remake of Circus Maximus (Avalon Hill boardgame) as a large scale miniatures game.

This was a lot of fun– the GM, Cliff Creech, had streamlined the old Circus Maximus game to a one page set of rules. Presentation was excellent and Cliff is a good and patient GM. Sadly, I took a light chariot to see if I could break out of the pack to win in a sprint, and my own son Garrett rammed me to cause wheel damage. The inevitable happened– I risked it, I failed, I flipped. Fortunately I had revenge two turns later when Garrett ALSO risked it, failed and flipped! Bwa ha ha ha haaaaa! For a look at this game, see the smallish slide show on Photobucket.

We hung around and did some last minute shopping before heading North again, and played a few light games, notably my new Pyramids game from Looney Labs and Martian Invaders.

Martian Invaders is a big hit, the way Zombie Dice was a big hit. We played it all weekend long.

So, in conclusion, we both had a wonderful time this year. Thank you, Old Dominion Military Society, for running this great small scale Mid-Atlantic convention. We always have a grand old time at the ODMS cons and we find their philosophy of “no politics, no stress, just fun” to be very agreeable. Definitely a gamer’s convention!!

Related:  Hobby Game Recce: Williamsburg Muster

Conflict of Heroes on the Ipad. Hey, Uwe, check it out!

I saw this mentioned on Facebook the other day and immediately got excited by the idea. Here’s another REAL WARGAME on the Ipad. Conflict of Heroes is a tactical wargame system set primarily in World War 2, in the close tactical scale. The game is amazingly simple to play but has many interesting, almost Euro like touches. CoH is a great candidate to be an Ipad Wargame due to the introductory nature of the design.

I certainly hope that Uwe Eikert takes notice of this app and considers releasing it as a commercial product. There’s money in them thar hills, Uwe!

Command and Colors Napoleonics Scenario: The Bridge at Almarez

What, another free Command and Colors: Napoleonics Scenario so soon?

In honor of discovering http://www.ccnapoleonics.net, I dusted off a Command and Colors: Napoleonics  scenario I had tested a while back and took another look at it.  This was not created using the Vassal tool that is used on the CCNapoleonics portal, instead it was created entirely with other open source tools: Hexographer, using their free online Java version of their map builder, and Open Office for the text.  This scenario was based upon an article from The Napoleon Series.

The Bridge at Almaraz is a good old fashioned raid with a deadline.  The British start on the map on one side of it and have to negotiate the terrain and hostile French forces that could delay them in their rear at Castle Mirabete.  Their task is to clear Forts Ragusa and Napoleon to blow a bridge across the Tagus.  If they can accomplish this, the two French armies in Portugal will face serious delay in combining against Wellington.

Map for "The Bridge at Almaraz"

Related Material

• Command and Colors Napoleonics Support website (misternizz.wordpress.com)
• Scenario Card for The Bridge at Almaraz
• Larger Map Graphic File

GMT Games has created a fun game with a lot of tinkering potential in Command and Colors: Napoleonics. I hope you enjoy this tinkering.

Hammerin’ Iron 2 rules review

At the recent GUNS OF AUGUST convention in Williamsburg, VA, I was fortunate to experience a game of HAMMERIN’ IRON 2 demonstrated by the chaps at the Rules for the Common Man branch? subsidiary? of Peter Pig miniatures, namely Martin Goddard, Andy Barnett, Ralph and Sam Ashdown. The RFCM was demonstrating Hammerin’ Iron in rapid rotation all weekend long for whomever wanted to sit down and play, either a full up game or smaller demos. I have to commend Mr. Goddard for his patience, grace and good cheer as he managed to rapidly move his players through several back to back games of civil war naval mayhem.

Martin Goddard (center) explaining the finer points of hammering iron, and we don’t mean a blacksmith demonstration.

RFCM games tend to boil down and strip away mechanics until they arrive at what they consider the essence of the historical experience they are trying to portray with the game. AK-47 Republic, for example, is all about unit-building & army creation, patrolling, and surprise encounters with a range of exotic force types. Square Bashing is World War One trench warfare at it’s most abstract, in a design where the the grid terrain becomes the core mechanic of the game. So, too, have the RFCM team reduced the civil war naval gaming experience to a very narrow look at riverine combat.

“Narrow” is one of those words that is often misconstrued as a negative descriptor, as in lacking options or not possessing sufficient breadth.  In the instance of Hammerin’ Iron 2, ‘narrow’ is not meant as a negative, just to describe the fact that the rules are a treatment of a randomly created, generic, somewhat ahistorical instance of river combat during the American Civil War.  The game system can possibly recreate historical scenarios from the war, but I would not recommend it for reasons that I will touch upon later in this post.   With that said, for what it does, it does very well indeed and is a very entertaining game experience– just don’t expect  a very historical setup or outcome.

Hammerin’ Iron 2 is a game that recreates a generic clash between ships on an unnamed river sometime during the American Civil War.  The river should be represented by a cloth, preferably overlaid with a hex grid of about 3 inches in size if one is playing with 1:600 scale miniatures.

Hex size from Peter Pig’s specialized game mat, showing a sinking ship Wreck marker in it for scale.

Ships use hexes for movement and firing, and there are a few options that a perspective player might take for that.  One is the use of a blank (presumably blue) sheet of cloth, and to make a series of independent hexes of the same general size (the rulebook states a hexagon made from an inscribed 5″ circle, which seems roughly 3″ between vertices).  The ship is placed in the center of the hexagon, pointing 90 degrees perpendicular to a hexagon’s edge and the broadsides of the ship square on to the hex’s side points as it turns and/or fires.  This is a fairly elegant visual for determining line of sight, broadsides and a simple resolution for facing.  When the ship moves and turns, free hexes are placed on the side of the hexagon the ship is moving towards or turning into.  The rules refer to this system of placing hexes as the “Free Hex system”.  I find this charming and simple and I can’t believe I never thought of it.. it’s so straightforward and easy!

Free Hex Movment Example: on the left, an ironclad in a free hex, aligned properly. On the right, an ironclad executing a turn (speed 3) and moving two hexes (pink) laid directly in the line of movement.

The rules tend to favor the hex cloth style of movement first and foremost and the Free Hex system is edited in where the movement systems diverge from each other (which isn’t often).    The three inch (ish) hexagons seem suited for the 1: 600 range of ACW naval miniatures that Peter Pig sells (Range 7 from their catalog).  Most of them are small enough to float in the center of a hex with no overlap– the only exceptions being (perhaps) truly mammoth boats like the Hartford, Blackhawk and New Ironsides.

Terrain is  quite important for Hammerin’ Iron 2, because the same terrain bits are used in this game, over and over again.  They are:

A 5′ x 3′ Sheet to represent a river– either printed with 3″ hexagons (as stated above, and for sale from Peter Pig, obviously)

Peter Pig's Official River Mat, marked with terrain on the sides to put "Land" on.

Failing that, you must use a blank sheet (blue) with the Free Hex System described above and reserve about a half-hex worth of space on either side with suitable terrain to depict the shoreline on both sides of the river.

A Fort– small, medium or large– is placed by the Defender. Like the game mat and ship models, the fort is available in a few variations from Peter Pig or their distributors.

Fort from the Guns of August Demo

2 Islands– created by tracing the hex in a five hexagon pattern. There should be two, one flat (ideal for forts) and one slightly overgrown. The islands are placed semi-randomly during the setup portion of the game, but the defender has some influence over the process (so he can point his fort weapons strategically). You can see the flat island in the picture of the fort, above.

Land Objective (a series of scale buildings located in one of the shoreline hexes). These should be placed where they can be reached by naval bombardment, as they are a victory condition of the game. The attacker is tasked with reducing these.

As the Onandago takes on the Ablemarle, the Ships on the right flank reduce the Transports Objective.

3 Sandbar hexes.  You will have three hexes that play the role of Sandbars in the game.. Sandbars can be placed by the Defender to channel the movement of the Attacker (say, towards the fort guns). In the picture below, An island (center, with fort) has three sandbar hexes placed next to it (right) to channel movement of the Union (attacking) fleet directly in front of the Fort Guns. Hexes must be placed contiguous to each other.. somehow.

Island, center. Sandbar, top right, 3 hexes worth.

The Shoreline Terrain to cover about half a hex worth on either side, all the it way up and down the river terrain mat (or sheet).

Note that these are part of the rules.. you can’t, for instance, add volcanoes or waterspouts or giant octopods– this game uses placement of the same terrain pieces to custom build a unique scenario every time.   The rules describe the process of setting up the generic river in some depth and are quite thorough on the subject.

Of course, there’s ship models.  Peter Pig has a nice range of ACW era naval ship models in their Hammerin’ Iron line (range 7), but one should not hesitate to add ships to the mix from other manufacturers or scales.  I have no idea what the hex size would be for 1:1200 scale, for instance, but I know there are some very nice miniatures lines in that scale.  Bay Area Yards and Thoroughbred Models make ships compatible with the Peter Pig resin models, so they should also be considered.  The prospective player should realize that there are very strict procedures for defining the point values for ships based on a complex formula that encompasses tonnage, gunnery type, and armor.  Each ship is assigned a hit point value not to exceed 50 points a ship and each side, attacker and defender, must start with a fleet no more or less than six ships– a restriction that enforces play balance and discourages designing one or two very tough ships that are almost impossible to sink (a phenomena the RFCM refer to as “The Yamato Syndrome”).  The point value of the ships in range 7 are available online in the files section of the RFCM Yahoo Group– which is pretty handy as it can save you a few steps. Fleet composition is further modified by removing a random ship from the defender side to compensate for the fort and also to determine what turn the the defender’s ships will enter the battle space.  It is possible for a battle to conclude without every ship committed to the battle to actually be present because they haven’t arrived yet.

Once you have defined a ship the pertinent information (especially the hit points) are recorded on the ship chart (available as a PDF download)  and ship hits and damage are recorded as the occur in combat.

Building a six-ship fleet.  Ship Status Sheets under the ships.

Movement is a matter of moving 0,1,2,3 or 4 hexes, which is a factor of speed.  A ship can be rated fast or normal– most ships are rated normal, and the fastest (four hex speed) ships are blockade runners.   Players are given an allotment of little order cards that are placed face down next to their ships– order cards are either SMOKE (which are mostly movement oriented) or GUN PORTS (which are mostly firing orders).   When it is their ship’s turn the card is revealed and the ship moves and/or fires.

Order Cards deployed.

I think fire combat in HI2 is fairly straightforward.  Since every ship is always pointing towards a flat side of a hex, firing a broadside becomes very easy to figure out– a ship is either at an angle to be hit or not, and it’s very obvious.  The front and rear arcs are described by the width of the hex side you are facing.   The standard restrictions for line of sight etc. apply.  Since most combat takes place withing 3 hexes it’s pretty easy to figure out at a glance.  Resolution occurs via the big modified bucket of D6 method.

USS Onandaga (piloted by the author) executing a GUN PORT card Fire order on the Shore Objective, four warehouse buildings.

Ramming is also straightforward, and follows a series of steps which checks the angle of approach,  allows the targeted ship a change to fire a reaction broadside, then the ram goes home.  Resolution by giant bucket of six siders.

Damage reminded me a little bit of SILENT DEATH in that the player maintains a ship status chart and most importantly a record of damage “hit” points.  As the ship takes damage, the points are checked off.  When the player hits or passes a multiple of five (5, 10, 15, 20, etc.), he checks for critical hits on a standard “bad things happen” chart.  When the points go below a threshold the ship enters into the “Battered” state and a marker is placed on the sheet.  The ship’s performance becomes quite degraded in a battered state.  When the ship runs out of points, it sinks and a wreck marker is placed where the ship was.

The Defender can deploy Mines, a form of Asset that is purchased during Scenario Build. Mines can be quite nasty.

Combat has some other nuances beyond moving and firing and ramming– there are Assets that are part of the scenario build part of the game. These are “extras” like submarines, army support, torpedo boats and mines. Asset combat — such as it is, is really handled like a random event on a chart. Still, they can be quite nasty when deployed. In the game I played, A submarine took out the CSS Arkansas (see below) and mines took out a union Ironclad.

A Union submarine asset (The USS Alligator?) takes out the CSS Arkansas

Hammerin’ Iron 2 rules have many elegant elements– victory conditions are perhaps the most noticeable of them. HI2 is a game recreating a very inequal historical contest. The Confederates were operating under severe disadvantages– they didn’t have an industrial base broad enough to create ships with the same level of technological advances as the Union. In a toe-to-toe fight, ship to ship, the Confederates will likely lose more often than not. Thus, the designers added in elements that balance the game in other ways so the Rebs have a chance at victory. In summary, I would certainly recommend Hammerin Iron 2 to both novice and experienced wargamers. It is very easy to follow and pick up. There will be some setup costs associated with the game outside of just buying ships– terrain, especially. I don’t consider them to be especially egregious. The mechanics will probably be criticized for being ‘too gamey’ by lovers of games like IRONCLADS by Yaquinto. The balancing elements– delayed arrival of ships, victory conditions, restrictions on six ships only in both fleets– these do seem artificial when you are reading about them before playing the game. In practice, I found HI2 to be very enjoyable to play and quite engrossing right up to the end. I was impressed enough to purchase the rules right then and there and plan on running this game myself in the future– it may become my “go to” game for conventions for ACW riverine scenarios. I will still run other ironclads rules when I want something more historical, but for a great game, with a lot of excitement and fun associated with it, I’m going to turn to Hammerin’ Iron 2. Strongly recommended for clarity, simplicity and entertainment.

Related:
Peter Pig Website’s HI2 Page
RFCM Yahoo Group (contains spreadsheets, PDFs for the game)
Thoroughbred Models (ships)
Bay Area Yards (ships)

Supplemental Post on 1:1200 scale ACW information