Today I dropped by Hobby Bunker to participate in an English Civil War game put on by Boston Trained Bands. There were some amazing figures in 15mm -- I can't believe how well-painted they were. I can barely get a base coat on a hulking warjack in 30mm.
I opted for the Royalist side (seriously, the King was dumb but endearing, while Parliament was dour and grumpy -- not to be confused with the band Parliament who are funky and freaky). The situation was early in the war. Prince Rupert had just won a victory but fell back to the town of Aylesbury to repulse the Parliamentarian reprisals (involving a complex series of motions and amendments and points of order no doubt). Our job was to take command of the forces and defend the town.
Each side got 2 regiments of infantry (musket and pike) along with a regiment of cavalry. My confederates said that the cavalry was exciting and fun while the infantry were just plodders, but since the ruleset was new to me (Regiment of Foot by Peter Pig) and because I feared botching the vital charge and losing the game, I opted to take one of the infantry regiments and stand fast against the on-rushing hordes.
I spread out along the east side of the village facing south towards the river that bisected the table. The other infantry regiment continued the line to the west and the cavalry stet up ahead and to the west a bit. I thought this was a mistake and that he should've put his cavalry in column to charge over the sole bridge. This would dissuade the enemy from rushing the bridge, but still give him options to peel off to the west if necessary.
Once set-up, we wandered off into the shop while the Parliamentarians got set up along the southern half of the board. When we came back, things looked rough. Their cavalry were primed to charge over the bridge and right into the center of town. Meanwhile, two huge blocks of infantry were poised on the east and west sides to come marching down and surround us. The block on the west had a fairly open approach and easy access to a road to come curving in on us.
Things did not go well for us early on. Our cavalry rushed out and then charged a column of infantry in the flank -- who promptly about faced and blasted half our cavalry from the saddle. The only good news is that it encouraged the enemy cavalry to chase after them rather than barrel into town as they were poised to do. Some bad motivation rolls meant that the infantry on the west side was slow to re-deploy. Meanwhile, my guys mostly hunkered down behind their hedges and watched the steady approach of a mass of men. I felt like we were getting pulled apart and with our cavalry so depleted, things didn't look good. When the rest of our cavalry was run down by theirs I was pretty sure things were going bad. I was redeploying my reserve trying to figure out which gap to plug, until I was advised to just hang tight, I'd need them once the eastern wing of the enemy hit my line.
I was also advised that I should try to stay behind hedges because they were like pillboxes in a WWII game. This was very, very true. A line of enemy infantry formed up and rushed my guys. The Regiment of Foot system uses a bucket-o-dice resolution system where you roll a *lot* of d6s and pick out the high rolls as hits (followed by a saving throw). The very first time a unit fights in melee during the game it gets 5 bonus dice (on top of the 19+ dice it's already rolling for a full-strength unit). However -- if you attack a unit behind a hedge, you lose 6 dice. So he was already at a disadvantage to start with and it only got worse with each round of combat after that. In two turns I shredded his unit. I was down to only 3 stands, but I got some good motivation rolls and deftly slid the injured unit to the side to fend off a potential column charge while my reserve unit replaced them in their spot.
Meanwhile two other units had engaged the other part of my line. I say line, but really I had more of a zig-zag shape. The enemy forged across the river in two columns, but couldn't readily charge through the hedge (he'd only be attacking with his lead element and get clobbered, so he turned one line and started sniping at me. Now another rule came to my aid. If an enemy unit moves or shoots within 4 inches of you, you automatically get defensive fire. Since he was wedged between two of my units every one of his shots drew two in return. This was a war of attrition he couldn't win and so he charged by unit in the open (again drawing defensive fire and losing stands). He pretty much shattered against my line.
The other unit now formed up and prepared to assault through the hedges against my unit that had been reduced to 3 stands from his first assaults against me. Since melee is between single units only, I couldn't bring any of my larger units in to help and things looked bad for my guys. But he only had enough action points to redeploy into line not actually charge. My unit in the open got a good motivation roll and promptly rushed in to attack. He failed to react to my charge and the resulting melee swept his entire unit from the field. His commander was isolated and I had two full-strength units compared to his one. He declared the flank lost and that was pretty much the game.
While I'd been dealing with all of this, the other flank had done pretty well. Our cavalry hadn't gone out without a fight and one brave line of infantry managed to gun down the rest of the enemy's cavalry. That meant it was down to another clash of infantry regiments on the west side of the board as well and some aggressive redeployment forced the Parliamentarians to move very cautiously. Only a few desultory shots had been exchanged on either side, but the enemy hadn't forced the issue and now faced the choice of assaulting through hedges (which as you'll recall is a very bad idea in this game) or marching down the road and taking lots of defensive fire from units sheltering behind the hedges. In either case, he'd given us too much time to set up and with the eastern flank a loss, he called it quits too.
All-in-all the game was very interesting. Bucket-o-dice games are kinda weird. The GM said it was mostly done to ensure consistent averages over the course of the game, but in that case, just figure out what the "average" is going to be for a given situation and then use FUDGE dice to adjust the average up or down (or not at all as is most likely). The "average hits" could even factor in the saving throw and the whole thing would speed up immensely. But I'm always trying to speed up combat resolution in that way.
Also, those "hedges of steel" really saved my bacon. The town had any number of hedge-lined fields surrounding it and I'm not sure how I would've forced my way past them if I was on the attack. I suppose the ideal situation would be to bring both infantry blocks in together on the same wing and then feint with a couple of units to force the defenders into a location and then strike with the others. Alternatively, try to catch the units as they're repositioning although that's best done with cavalry. Probably the attackers needed some light reinforcements to provide reserves that could exploit a breakthrough. Or maybe we just had tons of great rolls.
Overall, though, a fun game (course it was, I won didn't I?). They tried to talk me into buying a DBA army for their tournament next week. Yeah...DBA is a weird game. The problem isn't the rules (although their writing style is most charitably described as "opaque") or the slightly chess-like way the game runs. The problem is that it's built for tournaments and rather than almost every other wargaming period where historical opponents fight one another, you're allowed to throw armies separated by 3-4,000 years at each other. When my ancient Egyptians take on your Japanese samurai there's a problem. Still, they said they had loaners so I might check it out just to say I played it.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Border Reivers and Battling Robots
Did a fair amount of war gaming this weekend.
Started off on Saturday with a skirmish game set in Scotland during the 16th Century. The local tenants weren't coming across with their protection money having switched to a rival family so we rolled into town to show them the error of their ways.
The rules were based off of Spear Song, a set designed for Medieval warfare and adapted for the crude firearms available. I took two squads of four men each, most armed with muskets, but the leaders hefting melee weapons. The defenders were scattered between the two villages but we were allowed to enter along any edge, so we positioned ourselves to fall on one hamlet while our cavalry set up just in charge range of the enemy.
It was a fairly lopsided affair. We outnumbered the defenders and once our cavalry got stuck in, there was no help from that quarter. I spent most of my time holding the line and firing (somewhat ineffectively) at the enemy. Eventually, he rushed me with a couple of his men, but my line held (mostly) firm and I brought down his close combat troopers. After that, the ending was a given. All told it took about two hours to play.
The umpire was fairly upfront that this was a test of the rules and a new scenario so he solicited a fair amount of advice. Clearly the defenders needed more troops or the attackers needed a time limit or tougher victory conditions. The rules were pretty simple and didn't take much to pick up. I was amused to note that while our muskets took a full round to reload, the enemy trooper with the crossbow (normally a slow reloading weapon) could fire each and every turn.
So it was a bit of a cakewalk, but I did have fun (well, of course I did, I was on the overbearing side wasn't I?). Afterwords I helped a gentleman and his wife make their way from the hobby shop to the nearby model railroad store. Apparently he lives in Western MA and had made the trip special to find stuff to expand his WWII model railroad layout. The hobby store had a bunch, but he was also looking for DCC equipment and that he was only going to find at the model railroad shop. So I had him follow me over in his car (I was going over to torture myself with G-scale trains anyway).
I like being helpful. Rarely do I do something helpful for an older man and get a huge hug for my efforts. I fear I've rather enabled his addiction, but I'm sure he'll enjoy having DCC on his layout.
Anyway, today I played some Warmachine. I'm picking up a few models for this because there's a bunch of people playing it on a semi-regular basis. Since I haven't finished painting up the small force I've got, I played with the Khador "loaner" set they've got. For those in the know, it's Sacha and her Heavy Jacks. For everyone else, it's a Russian Commissar and her stompy iron men of the revolution. I went up against a nice young woman playing the necrotic forces of evil. She gave her minis names, it was awesome.
In the first game, I managed to tie up her heavy warjack with my melee jack. I got in some good early punches but failed to account for my opponent's Crushing Claw. Khador mechs are noted for their heavy armor but the claw just opened me up like a tin foil can. Luckily, on my right flack, my other heavy jack and Sacha closed in on the enemy warcaster and in a hail of mortar fire and bullets managed to put her down.
We were supposed to switch off with the other two people playing, but their fight got a lot more protracted. We hung out for awhile and then decided to play a quick second round with just a caster and two heavy jacks apiece. In this second round, I decided to ignore the advice of the rulebook and took a defensive stand. As one of her jacks moved through the trees, I blasted them with more firepower until it was scrap. Then I moved up to fall upon the last jack, but it rushed me instead. Luckily, I took the hit and both my heavy jacks ganged up on it and chopped it down pretty quick. A second win to me.
So I won both games, but I mostly got lucky. Her warcaster was really set up to mow down hordes of troopers and I mostly had robots. Still, we went out to eat afterwords so no hard feelings I guess.
I'm going to be pretty rigorous on this game. I've got just enough stuff to play a basic game and I might eventually decide to graduate from a 15 to a 25 point army, but just from watching the other game I can see that it's a game I don't want a super deep investment in. It's enough to be able to have something around to play on a semi-regular basis.
Started off on Saturday with a skirmish game set in Scotland during the 16th Century. The local tenants weren't coming across with their protection money having switched to a rival family so we rolled into town to show them the error of their ways.
The rules were based off of Spear Song, a set designed for Medieval warfare and adapted for the crude firearms available. I took two squads of four men each, most armed with muskets, but the leaders hefting melee weapons. The defenders were scattered between the two villages but we were allowed to enter along any edge, so we positioned ourselves to fall on one hamlet while our cavalry set up just in charge range of the enemy.
It was a fairly lopsided affair. We outnumbered the defenders and once our cavalry got stuck in, there was no help from that quarter. I spent most of my time holding the line and firing (somewhat ineffectively) at the enemy. Eventually, he rushed me with a couple of his men, but my line held (mostly) firm and I brought down his close combat troopers. After that, the ending was a given. All told it took about two hours to play.
The umpire was fairly upfront that this was a test of the rules and a new scenario so he solicited a fair amount of advice. Clearly the defenders needed more troops or the attackers needed a time limit or tougher victory conditions. The rules were pretty simple and didn't take much to pick up. I was amused to note that while our muskets took a full round to reload, the enemy trooper with the crossbow (normally a slow reloading weapon) could fire each and every turn.
So it was a bit of a cakewalk, but I did have fun (well, of course I did, I was on the overbearing side wasn't I?). Afterwords I helped a gentleman and his wife make their way from the hobby shop to the nearby model railroad store. Apparently he lives in Western MA and had made the trip special to find stuff to expand his WWII model railroad layout. The hobby store had a bunch, but he was also looking for DCC equipment and that he was only going to find at the model railroad shop. So I had him follow me over in his car (I was going over to torture myself with G-scale trains anyway).
I like being helpful. Rarely do I do something helpful for an older man and get a huge hug for my efforts. I fear I've rather enabled his addiction, but I'm sure he'll enjoy having DCC on his layout.
Anyway, today I played some Warmachine. I'm picking up a few models for this because there's a bunch of people playing it on a semi-regular basis. Since I haven't finished painting up the small force I've got, I played with the Khador "loaner" set they've got. For those in the know, it's Sacha and her Heavy Jacks. For everyone else, it's a Russian Commissar and her stompy iron men of the revolution. I went up against a nice young woman playing the necrotic forces of evil. She gave her minis names, it was awesome.
In the first game, I managed to tie up her heavy warjack with my melee jack. I got in some good early punches but failed to account for my opponent's Crushing Claw. Khador mechs are noted for their heavy armor but the claw just opened me up like a tin foil can. Luckily, on my right flack, my other heavy jack and Sacha closed in on the enemy warcaster and in a hail of mortar fire and bullets managed to put her down.
We were supposed to switch off with the other two people playing, but their fight got a lot more protracted. We hung out for awhile and then decided to play a quick second round with just a caster and two heavy jacks apiece. In this second round, I decided to ignore the advice of the rulebook and took a defensive stand. As one of her jacks moved through the trees, I blasted them with more firepower until it was scrap. Then I moved up to fall upon the last jack, but it rushed me instead. Luckily, I took the hit and both my heavy jacks ganged up on it and chopped it down pretty quick. A second win to me.
So I won both games, but I mostly got lucky. Her warcaster was really set up to mow down hordes of troopers and I mostly had robots. Still, we went out to eat afterwords so no hard feelings I guess.
I'm going to be pretty rigorous on this game. I've got just enough stuff to play a basic game and I might eventually decide to graduate from a 15 to a 25 point army, but just from watching the other game I can see that it's a game I don't want a super deep investment in. It's enough to be able to have something around to play on a semi-regular basis.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Odin save us from the fury of Saxon Archers!
Hi,
So when I was in Rochester about a month ago and I picked up a copy of Strandhogg -- a set of Viking Age Skirmish Rules. Tonight I gave the rules a little bit of a playtest.
An overview of the rules
So, like the rules say, it's a Viking Age Skirmish game. Small groups of men (under 50 per side) go at it tooth and claw wherever the longships land. The game has a focus on Viking vs. Saxons or Normans on the English shore, but the rules can easily accommodate other Viking foes (which includes just about everyone in Europe and a few Native Americans). The rules handle this by recognizing that a guy with a sword is a guy with a sword no matter who he swears allegiance to and that it's largely a matter of training and experience that determines a warrior's effectiveness. The rules also recognize that in the rough-and-tumble warfare of the period, a good leader can really swing the tide.
Players create an "army" consisting of a noble and up to three warbands who follow him. There's a point system and like all such systems it's a little bit suspect, but in my playtest the values seemed pretty good. There's a worksheet that includes important rules and lets you quickly work out what your forces are. Your warbands are made up of warriors of several types -- Warriors, Levy, Archers, or Peasants -- you can mix and match if you like, but it will increase the bookkeeping a bit.
Once you've got you armies, you set out the terrain, discuss any special rules and draw a fate card for each warband in your army. Fate cards are a set of lucky events you can call on to help you out in different situations. You also set up activation cards. Using a standard playing deck, each warband gets a card and you shuffle this mini-deck together to determine the order of warband activation. I really like these randomized activation systems. It adds a bit of uncertainty and forces a bit of careful planning that's lacking from UGO-IGO activation systems.
When one of your warbands is up to go, it tests for morale (usually caused by casualties). Failed morale checks cause your warriors to flee and makes you that much more vulnerable. As your warband gets smaller, the leader has a harder time keeping things together.
After morale, comes missile fire. Missile fire is handled really well in this game. Each figure takes an individual shot against an individual target that it can see. There are clear acetone templates that you center over the target. Roll low and your target is hit. Roll too high and the shot misses, but there are other numbered zones on the template. If another figure falls under the zone you rolled, it gets hit instead. So you can shoot into melee, but there's a chance you'll hit your friends. It also means that unless your warband is in a Shieldwall formation, it doesn't want to clump up too much. Targets who are hit make a saving throw and if they fail they're probably dead.
The next phase is movement. As long as your warband stays in the command radius of your leader, this is pretty simple. Move your commander up to 6" and then arrange the warband around the commander within the command radius. Things get a bit tricker when a group goes out of command, but you'll try hard to avoid that since they'll be weaker in combat. There are simple rules for dealing with obstacles and rough terrain and it moves along pretty swiftly. If you want to close with an enemy target, you have to test against the moving figure's courage.
Finally, it's melee time. It's an opposed die roll so both sides get to participate. After working out the various modifiers (mostly based on a figure's troop type), the high roll wins and the margin of success determines the result. I'm a big fan of opposed die rolls that resolve a round of combat in one go so this is a big plus for the game in my book.
Once all the warbands have gone, you shuffle the activation deck and go again until one side or the other achieves it's objectives. Pretty simple really.
One fine day on the English coastline
So I decided to set up some figures and have a little fight. I don't actually have a selection of Viking miniatures so I raided my AT-43 collection for some proxy figures. The Vikings were played by the Therians and the Saxon defenders were Red Blok troopers. I didn't do anything too fancy. The Vikings consisted of two warbands made up Warriors bearing sword and shield. The Saxons had two large groups of Levy troops and a smaller warband of Archers. I set up a couple of cargo containers and walls to rough out a couple of beach-side huts and turned them loose.
At first, the Vikings had things all their own way. Good activation card draws let them rush up to the wall before the Archers could draw a good bead on them and started tearing through the Saxon levies. With a +2 modifier to their rolls, the Vikings were hacking them down mercilessly. But once they cleared the wall, they were within close range of the archers who started peppering them with fire and picking them off one by one. On the Viking right, the advance was stalled as the Vikings' courage failed them and they refused to advance into close combat. This let the Saxons gang up on the one or two who made it into contact with them and they managed to hold them up or kill them outright.
Between the archery and the swarms of levies, the Viking Left lost heart and soon it was just the Viking Jarl facing off against some angry levies. The Viking right did better and wiped out their opposing warband, but they were exposed to the archers who were slowly whittling them down. Then the Viking Jarl fell to one of the Saxon commanders and I called the game at that point.
Final thoughts
So what did I think? The game played pretty fast. I didn't use mounted troops so I didn't get a chance to cover that and I mostly ignored my Fate cards so that didn't have much impact, but in a game where you're paying attention, it could be a lifesaver.
The Vikings lost pretty badly, but I put that down to poor tactics on my part and not getting stuck in with the Archers sooner (or at all really). The Archers would break pretty easily if the Vikings had concentrated on it and once they were out of the fight, they could probably handle the levies pretty handily. Certainly there was a pretty big pile of levy casualties when the game was called.
Commanders and Nobles (leader types) are really tough to take out. They've got monstrous combat scores and they've got a small track of hit points. In addition, you can't have more than 2 figures gang up on any one figure. So the best way to take down a leader (if you can't snipe him out with an arrow) is to go up with one of your leaders and grunt. Have the grunt take the first swing and you'll have a small bonus on the follow-up attack with your leader. Still, it's a lot of ties and no-effect hits and even when you do succeed, you haven't taken him out of the fight.
Missile fire seems pretty deadly since if you don't make the save you're dead and the best save is 50% in the open, but it just means that you really have to close fast since there's a minimum range for missile weapons and an Archer's hand-to-hand score is terrible.
The game is certainly a good candidate for convention games since the rules are pretty simple and easy to pick up. You could also multiple nobles on a side, each leading their own warband. This allows you to have slightly more complex games than simple line battles by giving each noble separate (and possibly conflicting) goals to achieve.
All in all, a pretty interesting little game.
later
Tom
So when I was in Rochester about a month ago and I picked up a copy of Strandhogg -- a set of Viking Age Skirmish Rules. Tonight I gave the rules a little bit of a playtest.
An overview of the rules
So, like the rules say, it's a Viking Age Skirmish game. Small groups of men (under 50 per side) go at it tooth and claw wherever the longships land. The game has a focus on Viking vs. Saxons or Normans on the English shore, but the rules can easily accommodate other Viking foes (which includes just about everyone in Europe and a few Native Americans). The rules handle this by recognizing that a guy with a sword is a guy with a sword no matter who he swears allegiance to and that it's largely a matter of training and experience that determines a warrior's effectiveness. The rules also recognize that in the rough-and-tumble warfare of the period, a good leader can really swing the tide.
Players create an "army" consisting of a noble and up to three warbands who follow him. There's a point system and like all such systems it's a little bit suspect, but in my playtest the values seemed pretty good. There's a worksheet that includes important rules and lets you quickly work out what your forces are. Your warbands are made up of warriors of several types -- Warriors, Levy, Archers, or Peasants -- you can mix and match if you like, but it will increase the bookkeeping a bit.
Once you've got you armies, you set out the terrain, discuss any special rules and draw a fate card for each warband in your army. Fate cards are a set of lucky events you can call on to help you out in different situations. You also set up activation cards. Using a standard playing deck, each warband gets a card and you shuffle this mini-deck together to determine the order of warband activation. I really like these randomized activation systems. It adds a bit of uncertainty and forces a bit of careful planning that's lacking from UGO-IGO activation systems.
When one of your warbands is up to go, it tests for morale (usually caused by casualties). Failed morale checks cause your warriors to flee and makes you that much more vulnerable. As your warband gets smaller, the leader has a harder time keeping things together.
After morale, comes missile fire. Missile fire is handled really well in this game. Each figure takes an individual shot against an individual target that it can see. There are clear acetone templates that you center over the target. Roll low and your target is hit. Roll too high and the shot misses, but there are other numbered zones on the template. If another figure falls under the zone you rolled, it gets hit instead. So you can shoot into melee, but there's a chance you'll hit your friends. It also means that unless your warband is in a Shieldwall formation, it doesn't want to clump up too much. Targets who are hit make a saving throw and if they fail they're probably dead.
The next phase is movement. As long as your warband stays in the command radius of your leader, this is pretty simple. Move your commander up to 6" and then arrange the warband around the commander within the command radius. Things get a bit tricker when a group goes out of command, but you'll try hard to avoid that since they'll be weaker in combat. There are simple rules for dealing with obstacles and rough terrain and it moves along pretty swiftly. If you want to close with an enemy target, you have to test against the moving figure's courage.
Finally, it's melee time. It's an opposed die roll so both sides get to participate. After working out the various modifiers (mostly based on a figure's troop type), the high roll wins and the margin of success determines the result. I'm a big fan of opposed die rolls that resolve a round of combat in one go so this is a big plus for the game in my book.
Once all the warbands have gone, you shuffle the activation deck and go again until one side or the other achieves it's objectives. Pretty simple really.
One fine day on the English coastline
So I decided to set up some figures and have a little fight. I don't actually have a selection of Viking miniatures so I raided my AT-43 collection for some proxy figures. The Vikings were played by the Therians and the Saxon defenders were Red Blok troopers. I didn't do anything too fancy. The Vikings consisted of two warbands made up Warriors bearing sword and shield. The Saxons had two large groups of Levy troops and a smaller warband of Archers. I set up a couple of cargo containers and walls to rough out a couple of beach-side huts and turned them loose.
At first, the Vikings had things all their own way. Good activation card draws let them rush up to the wall before the Archers could draw a good bead on them and started tearing through the Saxon levies. With a +2 modifier to their rolls, the Vikings were hacking them down mercilessly. But once they cleared the wall, they were within close range of the archers who started peppering them with fire and picking them off one by one. On the Viking right, the advance was stalled as the Vikings' courage failed them and they refused to advance into close combat. This let the Saxons gang up on the one or two who made it into contact with them and they managed to hold them up or kill them outright.
Between the archery and the swarms of levies, the Viking Left lost heart and soon it was just the Viking Jarl facing off against some angry levies. The Viking right did better and wiped out their opposing warband, but they were exposed to the archers who were slowly whittling them down. Then the Viking Jarl fell to one of the Saxon commanders and I called the game at that point.
Final thoughts
So what did I think? The game played pretty fast. I didn't use mounted troops so I didn't get a chance to cover that and I mostly ignored my Fate cards so that didn't have much impact, but in a game where you're paying attention, it could be a lifesaver.
The Vikings lost pretty badly, but I put that down to poor tactics on my part and not getting stuck in with the Archers sooner (or at all really). The Archers would break pretty easily if the Vikings had concentrated on it and once they were out of the fight, they could probably handle the levies pretty handily. Certainly there was a pretty big pile of levy casualties when the game was called.
Commanders and Nobles (leader types) are really tough to take out. They've got monstrous combat scores and they've got a small track of hit points. In addition, you can't have more than 2 figures gang up on any one figure. So the best way to take down a leader (if you can't snipe him out with an arrow) is to go up with one of your leaders and grunt. Have the grunt take the first swing and you'll have a small bonus on the follow-up attack with your leader. Still, it's a lot of ties and no-effect hits and even when you do succeed, you haven't taken him out of the fight.
Missile fire seems pretty deadly since if you don't make the save you're dead and the best save is 50% in the open, but it just means that you really have to close fast since there's a minimum range for missile weapons and an Archer's hand-to-hand score is terrible.
The game is certainly a good candidate for convention games since the rules are pretty simple and easy to pick up. You could also multiple nobles on a side, each leading their own warband. This allows you to have slightly more complex games than simple line battles by giving each noble separate (and possibly conflicting) goals to achieve.
All in all, a pretty interesting little game.
later
Tom
Friday, April 2, 2010
Hey,
This past weekend, I went to HAVOC. HAVOC is a historical miniatures convention held in Shrewsbury MA. This year I played in two games, both set in WWII at a very low tactical level.
The first game, on Friday night, was Cat Hunt -- our band of brothers was being sent out to blow up a pesky German Tiger that had been giving command fits. The game ran on "Behind Enemy Lines" a quasi-RPG system for WWII that had originally been published by FASA and which was then taken over by a smaller outfit which has since gone out of business. So it was quirky throwback time. Our mission was to take out a German Tiger tank that had been giving command fits.
There were only 4 of us, so we each took two characters. I took both the corporals. One of them had a BAR and the other had a satchel charge to be used on the Tiger. The plan was that the guy with the bazooka would immobilize the tank (the odds of us actually killing it being kind of low) and then my guy would run up and satchel charge the thing. We had a set of open fields marked off with boccage that we had to make our way through in order to set up a flank/rear shot on the tank. About the only thing we knew for sure was the rough location of the tank and that darkness was falling. Beyond that it was anyone's guess.
The character sheets were kind of awesome. You had a collection of stats that included things like Hearing and Smell (and a catch-all Perception stat) all of which were based off of good ol' 3d6 (although they said 13 was average so it was tweaked a bit). Then you had a suite of skills which covered your shooting/stabbing/etc. There were two different types of resolution in effect. Sometimes (like when sighting an enemy), you would roll 3d6 and add it to your relevant stat (sight...or maybe perception). High rolls (north of 25-28) were usually successes. When you tried to shoot someone, you would roll 3d6, subtract your skill and try to get under your relevant stat (I believe you had a shooting things stat). Luckily, that was about as complex as the system ever got so despite the divergent sub-systems, it wasn't too hard to work with. The only other weird thing was the movement. You could crawl 2" but run up to 12" and there were no fatigue rules so you could run for as long as you wanted. So it only made sense to run. But once darkness hit, you'd be checking vs. your Agility not to fall down (and maybe hurt yourself). So it was a real slow push near the end.
We made our way forward without too much difficulty (although it got very slow as I mentioned earlier). We all froze when an officer pulled up in his kubelwagen and scanned the area. But he didn't spot us and left. Once we reached the final line of boccage next to the tank, we could hear some digging going on. My two guys got there early and pushed into the hedge. The guy with the charge spotted one of the digging Germans and decided to creep out to give the bazooka guy a chance to get in and find the tank, but he slipped going through and alerted the digger. The German came over (under the watchful gun of my other guy hidden in the boccage). He called over another soldier to help him search the corner where my first guy was pretending to be dirt.
Just then another player stepped through the boccage and calmly slit the first German's throat. Here's how great close combat is in this game: the character's body weight vs. that of his opponent forms a modifier. The second soldier, realizing too late that his buddy had just been replaced with an American whipped out a pistol and shot at him. That's when I opened up. The German went reeling back and the American caught a bullet, but it wasn't enough to keep him down and he followed up with a second lethal attack.
While all of this had been going on, a couple soldiers had worked their way down the boccage and had located the tank. One of the troopers had a rifle grenade and it was his intention to try and use it like a mortar to bring down a grenade on the engine deck and perhaps get the tank. This caused a bit of an argument about how it would give away our position which was true, but in games like this, you kinda have to let people do their own thing. Anyway, he held off until the stabbing started and then decided it wasn't going to get any better. So he makes a perfect shot and while it doesn't do any real damage to the tank, it completely disorients all the Germans who'd been taking cover on/near the tank.
At this point the bazooka guy takes his shot. It goes right through the side of the tank and sets it alight. At this point, my two guys consider it mission accomplished and we book out of there. The bazooka guy takes a second shot at the half-track into which the Germans had fled, but he missed and it drove off into the night. Still, it was a mission success.
Other highlights included:
* The soldier with super stealth and knife killing skills who wasn't very strong, or agile, or perceptive. It wasn't clear how he was supposed to be able to find targets to stealthily sneak up on them.
* Only a minor war crime. The Sgt. used his Thompson to gun down a line of guys...who turned out to be Eastern European labor conscripts. Oops.
Overall it was a fun game. I had a good time.
The second game was "The Rule of LGOPs". LGOP = Little Groups of Paratroopers. The ruleset was a home-brew system called point blank. Here we commanded a squad of men rather than an individual trooper. The real interesting bit here was the chit-draw activation. The GM draws a chit. If it's American, we get to activate two guys. There are two leader types in each squad and so if you activate them, they can auto-activate guys within an inch. Great for moving groups of men, terrible when a grenade hits. I like chit-pull better than "you go - I go" systems, but it does mean you can have weird set-ups where you go and go and go, and it also means there are times when you just sit there while they go and go and go. I got caught out by that twice and it can really suck. I think the real problem is that I don't normally play a lot of games with that system so I forget about covering my butt for bad runs of luck.
In this scenario, we arrived on random board edges and our job was to take three bridges, a manor-house and neutralize an 88cm flak gun. Well, it was Sicily and we were facing a lot of Italians. The dicing meant that we mostly wound up on the same half of the board, so that was convenient. Only one team was radically out of place and it had a good view of the house. My guys started out near a small building overlooking the south bridge point. We trotted up to the back of the building (again, maximum movement was 4" per impulse and even though we got 5 impulses a turn, it seemed really slow). This is when we noticed the Italian half-squad and machine gun in the yard taking a shot at another team moving through the fields. Since they failed to spot us, we rolled in a couple of hand grenades and bayoneted the ones who were left. Meanwhile, we dumped another grenade into the building (where the Italians and conspicuously failed to notice us). We took a few pot shots, but only manged to suppress them. At this point, half of my team went around to the front to storm the building through the front door and take them out. This is when the chit system bit me the first time. In my haste, I had not noticed the two Italians behind the stone wall across the road. They threw their own grenades and then blasted the rear guy with a shotgun. Then they got a second chit and did it to me all over again. Luckily, their grenades and shooting were for crap and only one guy was really incapacitated. The other half of my squad got into position and blew them away with the heavy machine gun. Finally, I went inside and mopped up.
Leaving the wounded guy behind to cover the bridge, the rest of the squad pushed on to try and help take the house or the far bridge. We made good time and I was headed towards some vineyards. I knew I was going to have to spend a lot of time slowly pushing through the vineyards (I'd be in rough terrain and that would slow us to about 2"/impulse). Luckily, I didn't have to worry about it too much because a tough, veteran German squad had been crawling through the other way and were there to intercept us when we arrived. The grenade didn't do much, but it did stun most of us and when they drew another chit the next turn, they just cut the squad down to a man.
Obviously, I preferred the first game over the latter because I "won", but the second game seemed a little more "fiddly" for some reason and less engaging. I really liked the chit-pull system, but that was about it. Shooting was kind of complex (you roll some d10s in groups, first group you check to see if you jam, subsequent groups get penalties so you're looking for different target numbers all the time). It just didn't seem to flow as well (although close combat vs. stunned guys was a lot easier than in the first game -- no idea how a straight up melee fight goes). But it wasn't a terrible experience and up until I died, I was really doing pretty well.
So that was HAVOC for me.
This past weekend, I went to HAVOC. HAVOC is a historical miniatures convention held in Shrewsbury MA. This year I played in two games, both set in WWII at a very low tactical level.
The first game, on Friday night, was Cat Hunt -- our band of brothers was being sent out to blow up a pesky German Tiger that had been giving command fits. The game ran on "Behind Enemy Lines" a quasi-RPG system for WWII that had originally been published by FASA and which was then taken over by a smaller outfit which has since gone out of business. So it was quirky throwback time. Our mission was to take out a German Tiger tank that had been giving command fits.
There were only 4 of us, so we each took two characters. I took both the corporals. One of them had a BAR and the other had a satchel charge to be used on the Tiger. The plan was that the guy with the bazooka would immobilize the tank (the odds of us actually killing it being kind of low) and then my guy would run up and satchel charge the thing. We had a set of open fields marked off with boccage that we had to make our way through in order to set up a flank/rear shot on the tank. About the only thing we knew for sure was the rough location of the tank and that darkness was falling. Beyond that it was anyone's guess.
The character sheets were kind of awesome. You had a collection of stats that included things like Hearing and Smell (and a catch-all Perception stat) all of which were based off of good ol' 3d6 (although they said 13 was average so it was tweaked a bit). Then you had a suite of skills which covered your shooting/stabbing/etc. There were two different types of resolution in effect. Sometimes (like when sighting an enemy), you would roll 3d6 and add it to your relevant stat (sight...or maybe perception). High rolls (north of 25-28) were usually successes. When you tried to shoot someone, you would roll 3d6, subtract your skill and try to get under your relevant stat (I believe you had a shooting things stat). Luckily, that was about as complex as the system ever got so despite the divergent sub-systems, it wasn't too hard to work with. The only other weird thing was the movement. You could crawl 2" but run up to 12" and there were no fatigue rules so you could run for as long as you wanted. So it only made sense to run. But once darkness hit, you'd be checking vs. your Agility not to fall down (and maybe hurt yourself). So it was a real slow push near the end.
We made our way forward without too much difficulty (although it got very slow as I mentioned earlier). We all froze when an officer pulled up in his kubelwagen and scanned the area. But he didn't spot us and left. Once we reached the final line of boccage next to the tank, we could hear some digging going on. My two guys got there early and pushed into the hedge. The guy with the charge spotted one of the digging Germans and decided to creep out to give the bazooka guy a chance to get in and find the tank, but he slipped going through and alerted the digger. The German came over (under the watchful gun of my other guy hidden in the boccage). He called over another soldier to help him search the corner where my first guy was pretending to be dirt.
Just then another player stepped through the boccage and calmly slit the first German's throat. Here's how great close combat is in this game: the character's body weight vs. that of his opponent forms a modifier. The second soldier, realizing too late that his buddy had just been replaced with an American whipped out a pistol and shot at him. That's when I opened up. The German went reeling back and the American caught a bullet, but it wasn't enough to keep him down and he followed up with a second lethal attack.
While all of this had been going on, a couple soldiers had worked their way down the boccage and had located the tank. One of the troopers had a rifle grenade and it was his intention to try and use it like a mortar to bring down a grenade on the engine deck and perhaps get the tank. This caused a bit of an argument about how it would give away our position which was true, but in games like this, you kinda have to let people do their own thing. Anyway, he held off until the stabbing started and then decided it wasn't going to get any better. So he makes a perfect shot and while it doesn't do any real damage to the tank, it completely disorients all the Germans who'd been taking cover on/near the tank.
At this point the bazooka guy takes his shot. It goes right through the side of the tank and sets it alight. At this point, my two guys consider it mission accomplished and we book out of there. The bazooka guy takes a second shot at the half-track into which the Germans had fled, but he missed and it drove off into the night. Still, it was a mission success.
Other highlights included:
* The soldier with super stealth and knife killing skills who wasn't very strong, or agile, or perceptive. It wasn't clear how he was supposed to be able to find targets to stealthily sneak up on them.
* Only a minor war crime. The Sgt. used his Thompson to gun down a line of guys...who turned out to be Eastern European labor conscripts. Oops.
Overall it was a fun game. I had a good time.
The second game was "The Rule of LGOPs". LGOP = Little Groups of Paratroopers. The ruleset was a home-brew system called point blank. Here we commanded a squad of men rather than an individual trooper. The real interesting bit here was the chit-draw activation. The GM draws a chit. If it's American, we get to activate two guys. There are two leader types in each squad and so if you activate them, they can auto-activate guys within an inch. Great for moving groups of men, terrible when a grenade hits. I like chit-pull better than "you go - I go" systems, but it does mean you can have weird set-ups where you go and go and go, and it also means there are times when you just sit there while they go and go and go. I got caught out by that twice and it can really suck. I think the real problem is that I don't normally play a lot of games with that system so I forget about covering my butt for bad runs of luck.
In this scenario, we arrived on random board edges and our job was to take three bridges, a manor-house and neutralize an 88cm flak gun. Well, it was Sicily and we were facing a lot of Italians. The dicing meant that we mostly wound up on the same half of the board, so that was convenient. Only one team was radically out of place and it had a good view of the house. My guys started out near a small building overlooking the south bridge point. We trotted up to the back of the building (again, maximum movement was 4" per impulse and even though we got 5 impulses a turn, it seemed really slow). This is when we noticed the Italian half-squad and machine gun in the yard taking a shot at another team moving through the fields. Since they failed to spot us, we rolled in a couple of hand grenades and bayoneted the ones who were left. Meanwhile, we dumped another grenade into the building (where the Italians and conspicuously failed to notice us). We took a few pot shots, but only manged to suppress them. At this point, half of my team went around to the front to storm the building through the front door and take them out. This is when the chit system bit me the first time. In my haste, I had not noticed the two Italians behind the stone wall across the road. They threw their own grenades and then blasted the rear guy with a shotgun. Then they got a second chit and did it to me all over again. Luckily, their grenades and shooting were for crap and only one guy was really incapacitated. The other half of my squad got into position and blew them away with the heavy machine gun. Finally, I went inside and mopped up.
Leaving the wounded guy behind to cover the bridge, the rest of the squad pushed on to try and help take the house or the far bridge. We made good time and I was headed towards some vineyards. I knew I was going to have to spend a lot of time slowly pushing through the vineyards (I'd be in rough terrain and that would slow us to about 2"/impulse). Luckily, I didn't have to worry about it too much because a tough, veteran German squad had been crawling through the other way and were there to intercept us when we arrived. The grenade didn't do much, but it did stun most of us and when they drew another chit the next turn, they just cut the squad down to a man.
Obviously, I preferred the first game over the latter because I "won", but the second game seemed a little more "fiddly" for some reason and less engaging. I really liked the chit-pull system, but that was about it. Shooting was kind of complex (you roll some d10s in groups, first group you check to see if you jam, subsequent groups get penalties so you're looking for different target numbers all the time). It just didn't seem to flow as well (although close combat vs. stunned guys was a lot easier than in the first game -- no idea how a straight up melee fight goes). But it wasn't a terrible experience and up until I died, I was really doing pretty well.
So that was HAVOC for me.
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