Chaos in Cairo (CiC) and .45 Adventures (45A) are both pulp skirmish rules aimed at similar periods.
Chaos in Cairo
CiC is focused on battles in the streets of Cairo between four different types of warbands. It features archaeologists and mummies, both of which are pretty much self-explanatory. Then there are the Servants of Set, evil humans that are often twisted caricatures of humanity as they have meddled with That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know. Finally there are the Swords of Ra, a group of Bedouin-like warriors, who seek to prevent the secret knowledge of ancient Egypt from being taken by anyone (think the black-clad types that fight the Set warriors in The Mummy Returns). Each warband consists of characters (the heroes) and henchmen (groups of lesser humans). You can also recruit special characters, some of which are unique. Typically a warband consist of around 5 - 10 characters and henchmen.
The system uses goal rolls to determine success or failure. Each character has stats and skills that tell you how many dice to roll when testing. Each roll of 4+ is a success (a goal). You are either rolling to beat a task number, or another character's goals. In the former case, you succeed by scoring as many goals as the task number or more. In the latter case, the player with the most goals wins. The system is simple and elegant, using around 3 to 7 d6s for each roll. This system is used for everything from combat to jumping ravines.
Speaking of combat, characters in CiC do not get killed directly in combat. They can be knocked out once they run out of hits, in which case a doctor or character with medical skills can revive them. Once knocked out, you can administer the coup de grace to them, which renders them permanently out of the fight. Character death is dealt with in the post-battle phase. You roll to see what effect being knocked out has on a character. There are penalties on this roll if they have suffered a coup de grace, so it is more likely that they will die permanently in this case. This is only really relevant to the campaign game.
The game is geared towards campaign play and warbands are designed with that in mind. You can easily play one-off games if you want by agreeing how much to spend on each warband and rolling for or deciding on a scenario, but some of the skills that characters have are more suited to campaign play. Six scenarios are provided in the rules and each has three sub-plots that can be used with it. In campaign play you roll for scenario and sub-plot, play the game, roll to see the effect of being knocked out after the battle and pay for the upkeep of your warband. Characters can gain experience and become better or they can die and be lost permanently. You can earn more money and recruit new characters or henchmen during this phase.
Chaos in Cairo provides all the rules you need to get started with a campaign. The scenarios are given a little flavour by the sub-plots but are fairly generic. On the other hand, preparation is kept to a minimum, which gives you more time for playing.
.45 Adventures
45A is a rules set of another colour. Characters in 45A are graded according to their skill level. There are 3 grades of character, with Grade 1 characters being the spear-carriers. Grade 2 characters are the sidekicks, while Grade 3 characters are the heroes. Each character has skills, as with CiC and a set of stats but there the resemblance ends. Characters in 45A have hit locations, unlike CiC, and each hit on a location degrades the stats associated with that location. Thus, head hits reduce your Brains score. This means that characters slowly become less able as they take damage, until they are knocked out, while in CiC, characters are at full ability until they are knocked out. Typically, you will field 3-6 characters in 45A.
Instead of a handful of d6s, 45A uses 1d10 to resolve tasks. You are either trying to beat a standard target number of 10 or your opponent's die roll. You add your stat and skills to the 1d10 roll to see if you succeed.
45A generally uses more detailed scenarios than CiC. Instead of generic scenarios, the rules include a number of more detailed and specific scenarios. This really points up the major difference between the two rules sets. CiC encourages a more generic style of play, while 45A encourages you to write and develop scenarios that are suited to the characters you have created. The basic 45A rules do not include campaign rules, but these do appear in the later supplements, providing a framework for stringing your scenarios together and a system for improving your characters.
Conclusions
In my opinion, both games are great and each plays sufficiently different that I am happy to play either. So, that leaves me wondering which I should recommend. Well, that depends upon what style of play you want. Both systems work well but in different ways and both really have a different ethos behind them.
CiC offers a single package that gives you four warbands, six generic scenarios and a campaign system. It is focused on 1920s Cairo so you need to be interested in that if you want to play the game as written. If you want to play using this system but with different character types or warbands, then you will have to put a bit of work into your games.
45A offers a broader framework with more character types and greater freedom for creating your group. It does offer most of the pulp archetypes so you could play gangsters or archaeologists, but there are no supernatural elements in the core rulebook. 45A also focuses more on tailor-made scenarios and it encourages this style of creative approach. I have always felt that 45A wants you to put time and effort into making your terrain before the game and rewards a more creative approach.
When coming down to choosing between the two, I am hard-pressed to specify a preference. Both rules sets offer fun games with a different flavour. Each is simple to get into because of the low number of figures required. Really it will come down to what sort of game you want to play. CiC is slightly more generic in approach, like a more typical skirmish wargame, while 45A feels more like a light RPG in scope. Personally, I shall continue to play both for the different experience that each provides. If you prefer a single rules set with a generic approach then I think CiC will suit you better. If you want ot put a little more effort into your games and adopt the light RPG approach then 45A should suit you better. Or maybe, like me, you should just get and play both. After all, you can use the same figures with each.
Showing posts with label rules. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rules. Show all posts
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Monday, 6 July 2009
Vikings versus Greenies - Song of Blades and Heroes
When my brother dropped by at the weekend, we played a couple of games of Song of Blades and Heroes. I fielded my totally unsuccessful Viking force, while my brother took to the field with his Orcs and Goblins. The games were interesting but highlighted how random the commands can be. My force consisted of 5 Vikings with a mix of missile and hand weapons, and a heroic leader. My brother's force consisted of about eight or so Orcs and goblins with a mix of archers and melee troops, led by a tough leader.
Game 1 - Set-up
The first scenario included a place of magic on the board with bonus victory points for occupying it with a magic-user. Neither of us had a magic-user so the game came down to driving the enemy from the field. I felt sure that the Orcs would win by weight of numbers. As it happened, poor command rolls led to the Orcs being driven screaming from the field.
Game 1 - Orcs being driven screaming from the field
The second game was an all-out battle to kill the enemy. It had the same result for the same reasons. Patrick (my brother) had real problems with his command rolls, which resulted in the Orcs being outmanoeuvred by the more tactically astute Vikings. The Orcs were not able to bring their greater numbers to bear effectively and so they lost.
I felt that the second game more than the first was lost by the Orcs through poor command rolls rather than won by me through tactical genius. However, in both cases the better quality troops won by virtue of failing fewer command rolls. So, why have my Vikings always lost to Steve's Teutonic Knights? :-)
Game 1 - Set-up
The first scenario included a place of magic on the board with bonus victory points for occupying it with a magic-user. Neither of us had a magic-user so the game came down to driving the enemy from the field. I felt sure that the Orcs would win by weight of numbers. As it happened, poor command rolls led to the Orcs being driven screaming from the field.
Game 1 - Orcs being driven screaming from the field
The second game was an all-out battle to kill the enemy. It had the same result for the same reasons. Patrick (my brother) had real problems with his command rolls, which resulted in the Orcs being outmanoeuvred by the more tactically astute Vikings. The Orcs were not able to bring their greater numbers to bear effectively and so they lost.
I felt that the second game more than the first was lost by the Orcs through poor command rolls rather than won by me through tactical genius. However, in both cases the better quality troops won by virtue of failing fewer command rolls. So, why have my Vikings always lost to Steve's Teutonic Knights? :-)
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Tusk - A Review
Tusk: Mammoth hunting from 12,000BC to 1914 is a set of rules by Matthew Hartley and published by Irregular Miniatures. The rules cost £3.00 for a 16 page A5 card-covered booklet. The art-work is amusing, though amateurish compared to more modern, glossy rules sets. On the other hand, it is also amusing and there are a couple of really bad jokes in the pictures that I appreciated (I have a terrible sense of humour!).
The basic rules deal with how to hunt with cavemen. There is a points system that allows you to buy your hunters. These can consist of hunters with hand weapons, hunters with missile weapons, fire-makers (they can set fire to things!), Og the Hero (a character) and dog packs. Once you have bought your hunters it is time to set out and catch some dinner.
Irregular Miniatures 6mm Caveman pack (click the pictures for a larger image)
The system uses Action Points , much like DBA PIPs, and you roll 1d6 each turn to see how many you have. You then use these points to move your hunters and set fire to things. You can move hunters more than once per turn by spending multiple Action Points on them.
Fires, once lit, have their own place in the turn sequence and can spread across the table if you are not careful. They are useful for herding mammoths over cliffs, but you could also wind up getting burnt yourself.
Combat occurs when hunters with missiles are in range or hunters are within 2cm of their target. 2d6 are rolled and if the roll is high enough the target is dead.
The basic beast in the rules is a mammoth and the first two scenarios deal with hunting mammoths. Beasts do not have their own turn per se. Instead, their reactions are controlled by a reaction table. Each turn, each beast tests its reaction according to the most serious circumstance that pertains to its situation. Circumstances include: being near to a fire; being attacked in close combat; being near dogs; being attacked by missile fire; and a couple of circumstances determined by how close they are to humans. The reaction table will tell you what to do with the beasts, which could include running away, attacking or just simply grazing, among other possibilities.
A herd of Irregular Miniatures 6mm Mammoths
So, that is the basic system. It is simple and elegant and finishes with two scenarios. The first scenario is a solo mammoth hunting one. It is really a training scenario. You place a mammoth in the centre of the table and try to kill it. I played this through a few times and it was amusing, but began to pall after a while because there is a technique to mammoth hunting and once you sort that out, then you can win most of the time, subject to the luck of the dice.
The second scenario is a competitive game. The king is dead and the players are vying to become the new king. To prove their worth, the players must hunt mammoths successfully. The player that kills the most mammoths wins. The number of mammoths in the herd is determined by the number of players, so there should always be plenty of mammoths for you to hunt. I have not played this scenario yet, but my experience of one of the later ones suggests that it could easily descend into the most enjoyable chaos as players try to kill mammoths, drive mammoths over their rivals and generally disport themselves disgracefully.
The appendix then deals with Victorian hunters and also adds dinosaurs to the mix, specifically Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex. Instead of hunters, the Victorian party will consist of Adventurers, Stalwarts (regular soldiers, etc) and Rabble (porters and similar ilk). You also have the option of recruiting Sir Harry (hero) and Artillery! Now, it may seem unsporting to use artillery against dinosaurs, but sometimes needs must.
Irregular Miniatures 6mm Sir Harry Pack
The appendix finishes with two scenarios using the new troops types. The first is a solo game where you try to capture specimen dinosaurs, much like the mammoth hunting scenario, by driving them into pits you have dug. I have not tried this one yet, but suspect that it could get nasty if you try capturing Tyrannosaurs. Mr Hartley recommends starting gently with Brontosaurs.
The second scenario is one that I remember fondly from many years ago. We had a most enjoyable evening's gaming as we tried to escape from Island X before the volcano on it erupted. Unfortunately, between us and our boat was a herd of Tyrannosaurs. Eek! The players must try to get from one side of the table to the other, past the Tyrannosaurs, and the winner is the one who gets the most of his group off onto the ship before the dice roll indicates that the volcano explodes and wipes the island out. This is a scenario where you try to position your troops so that they drive the Tyrannosaurs into your opponents and then gloat as your opponent gets eaten, and I highly recommend it.
Figure Packs
As you will have seen above, Irregular Miniatures also supports these rules with a number of packs of figures, both in 15mm and 6mm. I can only comment on the 6mm offerings because that is all I have bought. I received four dinosaurs in each of my packs and bought my mammoths separately.
The packs give you around 25 points or so of troops, which is enough for the scenarios in the rule book. You also get two pits (actually shell crater models) for capturing beasts. The figures are typical Irregular Miniatures fare. Some are a bit rough in the lead but they all paint up well. Personally I think that the weakest sculpts are the Stegosaurus, but even they are not too bad once painted and on the table, despite my paint job. The main problem I see with the packs is that both come with dinosaurs. It would have been more useful to get mammoths with my cavemen and Tyrannosaurs and Brontosaurs with the Sir Harry pack, because the Tusk rulebook does not specifically include Triceratops and Stegosaurus. Still, you can treat these latter as Brontosaurs for the purposes of your games and all will be fine.
Conclusion
I like these rules. I am not sure how much longevity they really have because they are a beer and pretzels rules set but they are fun to haul out every so often. They take no time at all to learn, so everyone can play and enjoy themselves from the off, even if they have not played before. I would recommend Tusk to anyone wanting a game that they can haul from the shelf whenever they do not feel like playing a "serious" game.
I like the figure packs that Irregular produces for Tusk too, despite my reservations above. The figures were easy to paint up and you get enough for one player in each pack. For the price, it is definitely worth investing in the 6mm sets. I am currently working on the Piedmontese International Scientific Survey and will add them to my set. After all, the game is fun and is worth playing every so often.
On a final note, there are two supplements for Tusk: Tusk II The Wrath of Kong and Steel Tusk III: Apocalypse Soon. I plan to review Tusk II once I have tried the rules in that supplement, but do not have Tusk III yet. As a taster, I can tell you that Tusk II includes rules for Raptors, Giant Wolves and Triceratops. It also adds rules for attacking other players, trained beasts and various new figure types and weapons. I am looking forward to trying this one out too.
The basic rules deal with how to hunt with cavemen. There is a points system that allows you to buy your hunters. These can consist of hunters with hand weapons, hunters with missile weapons, fire-makers (they can set fire to things!), Og the Hero (a character) and dog packs. Once you have bought your hunters it is time to set out and catch some dinner.
Irregular Miniatures 6mm Caveman pack (click the pictures for a larger image)
The system uses Action Points , much like DBA PIPs, and you roll 1d6 each turn to see how many you have. You then use these points to move your hunters and set fire to things. You can move hunters more than once per turn by spending multiple Action Points on them.
Fires, once lit, have their own place in the turn sequence and can spread across the table if you are not careful. They are useful for herding mammoths over cliffs, but you could also wind up getting burnt yourself.
Combat occurs when hunters with missiles are in range or hunters are within 2cm of their target. 2d6 are rolled and if the roll is high enough the target is dead.
The basic beast in the rules is a mammoth and the first two scenarios deal with hunting mammoths. Beasts do not have their own turn per se. Instead, their reactions are controlled by a reaction table. Each turn, each beast tests its reaction according to the most serious circumstance that pertains to its situation. Circumstances include: being near to a fire; being attacked in close combat; being near dogs; being attacked by missile fire; and a couple of circumstances determined by how close they are to humans. The reaction table will tell you what to do with the beasts, which could include running away, attacking or just simply grazing, among other possibilities.
A herd of Irregular Miniatures 6mm Mammoths
So, that is the basic system. It is simple and elegant and finishes with two scenarios. The first scenario is a solo mammoth hunting one. It is really a training scenario. You place a mammoth in the centre of the table and try to kill it. I played this through a few times and it was amusing, but began to pall after a while because there is a technique to mammoth hunting and once you sort that out, then you can win most of the time, subject to the luck of the dice.
The second scenario is a competitive game. The king is dead and the players are vying to become the new king. To prove their worth, the players must hunt mammoths successfully. The player that kills the most mammoths wins. The number of mammoths in the herd is determined by the number of players, so there should always be plenty of mammoths for you to hunt. I have not played this scenario yet, but my experience of one of the later ones suggests that it could easily descend into the most enjoyable chaos as players try to kill mammoths, drive mammoths over their rivals and generally disport themselves disgracefully.
The appendix then deals with Victorian hunters and also adds dinosaurs to the mix, specifically Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex. Instead of hunters, the Victorian party will consist of Adventurers, Stalwarts (regular soldiers, etc) and Rabble (porters and similar ilk). You also have the option of recruiting Sir Harry (hero) and Artillery! Now, it may seem unsporting to use artillery against dinosaurs, but sometimes needs must.
Irregular Miniatures 6mm Sir Harry Pack
The appendix finishes with two scenarios using the new troops types. The first is a solo game where you try to capture specimen dinosaurs, much like the mammoth hunting scenario, by driving them into pits you have dug. I have not tried this one yet, but suspect that it could get nasty if you try capturing Tyrannosaurs. Mr Hartley recommends starting gently with Brontosaurs.
The second scenario is one that I remember fondly from many years ago. We had a most enjoyable evening's gaming as we tried to escape from Island X before the volcano on it erupted. Unfortunately, between us and our boat was a herd of Tyrannosaurs. Eek! The players must try to get from one side of the table to the other, past the Tyrannosaurs, and the winner is the one who gets the most of his group off onto the ship before the dice roll indicates that the volcano explodes and wipes the island out. This is a scenario where you try to position your troops so that they drive the Tyrannosaurs into your opponents and then gloat as your opponent gets eaten, and I highly recommend it.
Figure Packs
As you will have seen above, Irregular Miniatures also supports these rules with a number of packs of figures, both in 15mm and 6mm. I can only comment on the 6mm offerings because that is all I have bought. I received four dinosaurs in each of my packs and bought my mammoths separately.
The packs give you around 25 points or so of troops, which is enough for the scenarios in the rule book. You also get two pits (actually shell crater models) for capturing beasts. The figures are typical Irregular Miniatures fare. Some are a bit rough in the lead but they all paint up well. Personally I think that the weakest sculpts are the Stegosaurus, but even they are not too bad once painted and on the table, despite my paint job. The main problem I see with the packs is that both come with dinosaurs. It would have been more useful to get mammoths with my cavemen and Tyrannosaurs and Brontosaurs with the Sir Harry pack, because the Tusk rulebook does not specifically include Triceratops and Stegosaurus. Still, you can treat these latter as Brontosaurs for the purposes of your games and all will be fine.
Conclusion
I like these rules. I am not sure how much longevity they really have because they are a beer and pretzels rules set but they are fun to haul out every so often. They take no time at all to learn, so everyone can play and enjoy themselves from the off, even if they have not played before. I would recommend Tusk to anyone wanting a game that they can haul from the shelf whenever they do not feel like playing a "serious" game.
I like the figure packs that Irregular produces for Tusk too, despite my reservations above. The figures were easy to paint up and you get enough for one player in each pack. For the price, it is definitely worth investing in the 6mm sets. I am currently working on the Piedmontese International Scientific Survey and will add them to my set. After all, the game is fun and is worth playing every so often.
On a final note, there are two supplements for Tusk: Tusk II The Wrath of Kong and Steel Tusk III: Apocalypse Soon. I plan to review Tusk II once I have tried the rules in that supplement, but do not have Tusk III yet. As a taster, I can tell you that Tusk II includes rules for Raptors, Giant Wolves and Triceratops. It also adds rules for attacking other players, trained beasts and various new figure types and weapons. I am looking forward to trying this one out too.
Saturday, 6 June 2009
Beamstrike - Battle Summary
We played Beamstrike using our 15mm sci-fi figures from April's challenge this week. Beamstrike is a set of rules inspired by Imperial Commander. The original intention had been to approach Richard Halliwell and Brian Ansell for the rights to produce a second edition of Imperial Commander, but that went nowhere, so Beamstrike was born. Beamstrike is more complete than Imperial Commander and includes additional rules for vehicles, tanks and aircraft that are not in Imperial Commander. It still plays similarly, but I am not sure that is enough to get past my Imperial Commander Nostalgia (tm).
For our game, we decided on a Patrol action. This is a simple meeting engagement set up with a view to both sides driving each other off. Our forces comprised 500 points of troops and we both had similar forces. The Bwendi patrol consisted of two tracked APCs, each carrying a section of Men-at-Arms, and led by Lord Knight Gladiolus himself. The rules do include heroes, but the heroes are not overpowering. The Albion Defence Force also had two squads, each in a hover APC, and led by their high commander, whose name is not really significant. The main difference was that the ADF had one Veteran squad and one Regular squad, while all my troops bar my hero were Regular. The game began well. My Anti-Matter Beamer nailed an ADF trooper, while my Heavy Gyrobolt Gun wounded another. That was the limit of my success. My troops advanced. Steve's troops advanced. My troops got shot up. Steve's troops did not. The APCs came into range of each other and I blasted his gun off the turret, but he brewed up my APC. My second APC advanced and was nailed with a single shot from a bolt rifle and brewed up too. It took Steve three shots to kill both of my APCs. I fired a dozen shots at his and completely failed to kill anything except the driver of one of them. Ouch! With my left flank shot to pieces, Steve ran his second APC behind me to try to take out my other squad. Meanwhile, his Veteran squad was advancing on my troops. With the death of my second APC, my army was 'shaken'. I only needed to roll a 7 or higher on 2d6 for them to be 'broken'. That did not happen before we surrendered. Still, being 'shaken' is a right pain. You cannot advance, so your only option is to hold the ground you already have, or to retreat. This means that the game is effectively over at this point unless there is a chance that your opponent will break shortly. Steve was nowhere near breaking.
Close to the end of our game (click picture for a larger image):
This was a good fun game, and will be helped when we work up a better QRS to suit us. Poor QRSes is a recurring problem we have had with games. They slow play up by being poorly organised and do not always include the information that you really need for the game.
We plan to play again, but I did not think it really felt like Imperial Commander enough to benefit from my nostalgia. That may change as I become more familiar with the changes. I look forward to finding out.
For our game, we decided on a Patrol action. This is a simple meeting engagement set up with a view to both sides driving each other off. Our forces comprised 500 points of troops and we both had similar forces. The Bwendi patrol consisted of two tracked APCs, each carrying a section of Men-at-Arms, and led by Lord Knight Gladiolus himself. The rules do include heroes, but the heroes are not overpowering. The Albion Defence Force also had two squads, each in a hover APC, and led by their high commander, whose name is not really significant. The main difference was that the ADF had one Veteran squad and one Regular squad, while all my troops bar my hero were Regular. The game began well. My Anti-Matter Beamer nailed an ADF trooper, while my Heavy Gyrobolt Gun wounded another. That was the limit of my success. My troops advanced. Steve's troops advanced. My troops got shot up. Steve's troops did not. The APCs came into range of each other and I blasted his gun off the turret, but he brewed up my APC. My second APC advanced and was nailed with a single shot from a bolt rifle and brewed up too. It took Steve three shots to kill both of my APCs. I fired a dozen shots at his and completely failed to kill anything except the driver of one of them. Ouch! With my left flank shot to pieces, Steve ran his second APC behind me to try to take out my other squad. Meanwhile, his Veteran squad was advancing on my troops. With the death of my second APC, my army was 'shaken'. I only needed to roll a 7 or higher on 2d6 for them to be 'broken'. That did not happen before we surrendered. Still, being 'shaken' is a right pain. You cannot advance, so your only option is to hold the ground you already have, or to retreat. This means that the game is effectively over at this point unless there is a chance that your opponent will break shortly. Steve was nowhere near breaking.
Close to the end of our game (click picture for a larger image):
This was a good fun game, and will be helped when we work up a better QRS to suit us. Poor QRSes is a recurring problem we have had with games. They slow play up by being poorly organised and do not always include the information that you really need for the game.
We plan to play again, but I did not think it really felt like Imperial Commander enough to benefit from my nostalgia. That may change as I become more familiar with the changes. I look forward to finding out.
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Imperial Commander Nostalgia-fest
Last night we played Imperial Commander. It was a total nostalgia-fest as I have not played IC in 10 years or more but we played it all through my university days in the mid-eighties. In this game my Bwendi army was busily trying to duff up Steve's Albion Defence Force and doing a rather good job of it too.
We chose 750 points of troops each and played a straight encounter battle with the aim of driving off the enemy force. We each had a heroic leader in overall command of our force, but neither of our heroic leaders actually did more than wander around in their impervious energy shields. So much for being heroic. I had equipped my troops with jumpacks, so they were bounding forward like so many demented grasshoppers, while the Albion Defence Force trudged forward through the mud. This meant that I was able to occupy the buildings in the centre of table while Steve was still advancing through the woods on his side. Nevertheless, he still scored first blood, while my return fire resulted in a broken weapon that never got fixed for the rest of the game.
A brave man-at-arms jumps into melee with the enemy's elite bodyguard
At this point the Bwendi Knights flew forward in their jetcopter and deployed by aerial assault (jumpack deployment from a hovering jetcopter) to win the battle for my side. Steve's leader had rallied two of his troops, who would therefore continue to fight normally. The Knights piled in and killed these two in no time at all. At this point we called it a day and the Bwendi Knights retired undefeated once more and returned home for tea and medals all round.
The Rules
Imperial Commander is a set of rules for massed skirmishes of around 50 figures per side. IC is the big brother of Laserburn and is also the rules set that grew into the monster known as 40K. In these rules your figures are organised into squads, usually of around 5 troopers. You can have heroes and leaders in the game and there is some room for vehicles too, but it is primarily an infantry-based game. Most of the vehicles that feature in the game will be APCs and possibly the odd jetcopter or two. The action is fast and furious with troopers being killed fairly easily if they get hit. Pity the guys with no armour at all!
Imperial Commander is a set of rules for massed skirmishes of around 50 figures per side. IC is the big brother of Laserburn and is also the rules set that grew into the monster known as 40K. In these rules your figures are organised into squads, usually of around 5 troopers. You can have heroes and leaders in the game and there is some room for vehicles too, but it is primarily an infantry-based game. Most of the vehicles that feature in the game will be APCs and possibly the odd jetcopter or two. The action is fast and furious with troopers being killed fairly easily if they get hit. Pity the guys with no armour at all!
The rules are simple to read through and easy to understand. It is a shame that they do not include the points costs for all the weapons described, but they can be worked out. Likewise, the points value of some of the units in the army lists is inaccurate. Another problem is that some rules, such as unit coherency, are hidden away in places that you would not expect them. Still, overall, there are few problems understanding the rules and the mechanisms are simple enough to follow.
IC uses d6s and d10s.
The turn sequence in Imperial Commander is fairly standard:
First player moves
First player moves
Both players fire
First player moves again
First player moves again
First player conducts close combat
First player tests morale if the casualty threshold is reached.
First player tests morale if the casualty threshold is reached.
Second player then follows the same sequence.
Shooting is done by rolling to hit for each figure firing and then rolling for the effect of the hit. The to hit roll is also used to determine if a trooper runs out of ammo / breaks their gun. You can fix guns / reload but that takes an action and you have to roll to succeed.
Hand-to-hand combat is even more deadly than shooting. Each player rolls 1d10, modified by weapons and troop quality. The loser dies. In cases of a tie, the attacker dies. Don't get into hand-to-hand unless you are confident that you will win!
Morale is only ever tested by a force that reaches 50% of its morale strength (shaken status), which is calculated based on the number and type of troops, number of leaders and number of vehicles in the force. Tip: picking off the leaders will reduce your opponent's army to shaken status really quickly!
Our Game
Set-up (my troops on the left, Steve's on the right)
We chose 750 points of troops each and played a straight encounter battle with the aim of driving off the enemy force. We each had a heroic leader in overall command of our force, but neither of our heroic leaders actually did more than wander around in their impervious energy shields. So much for being heroic. I had equipped my troops with jumpacks, so they were bounding forward like so many demented grasshoppers, while the Albion Defence Force trudged forward through the mud. This meant that I was able to occupy the buildings in the centre of table while Steve was still advancing through the woods on his side. Nevertheless, he still scored first blood, while my return fire resulted in a broken weapon that never got fixed for the rest of the game.
With my blood up after losing some of my heroic men-at-arms, I flew my jetcopter into position behind one of his squads and dropped a missile pod on their collective backsides, killing all bar one of them. From this point onwards, Steve's troops started forming circles at the end of each of his moves. Although my jetcopter only actually fired once more at another of his squads, and this from long range, it still managed to kill most of that squad too. What I found was that just having it on the table was enough to make Steve wary and helped me tremendously in directing the flow of the game.
A brave man-at-arms jumps into melee with the enemy's elite bodyguard
With Steve's entire right flank in tatters, and with my soldiers having picked off a lot of Steve's leaders, his morale was looking shaky. That said, my troops on my right flank were also looking rather poorly by now.
My right flank with only three surviving troopers in the building and one chap with a broken gun (he broke it with his first shot of the game and never fixed it before he was shot towards the end of the game)
So, I played a cheesy move and targeted what I thought was a leader in one of his squads. Killing this figure, and the figure's leadership status being confirmed, was enough to push his troops into shaken status. Steve needed to avoid rolling a 7 or more on 2d6 or his army would break. He rolled a 7. His men now had to spend at least one movement action retreating in each of his turns, which meant no advancing any further than the line he currently held. The game was effectively over.
Bwendi Knights deploy straight into close combat from their jetcopter. They have never been defeated!
At this point the Bwendi Knights flew forward in their jetcopter and deployed by aerial assault (jumpack deployment from a hovering jetcopter) to win the battle for my side. Steve's leader had rallied two of his troops, who would therefore continue to fight normally. The Knights piled in and killed these two in no time at all. At this point we called it a day and the Bwendi Knights retired undefeated once more and returned home for tea and medals all round.
Final Thoughts
Although this system was first published in 1981, it still works well. The rules are simple and can be expanded to fill the gaps as needed. With all the dice rolls for shooting, the system ought to be clunky, but our game flowed really well. I like the fact that both sides get to shoot each turn and that all shooting is simultaneous (with the exception of concealed troops breaking cover to fire). The split movement phase works well too. The only thing that seems a little slow is infantry movement. We might have done better to start closer together because the basic infantry foot-slogging movement is only 8cm per move, which is not very much.
It is a shame that it has never been updated for the errata but Richard Halliwell and Brian Ansell went on to do other stuff instead. Still, a free rules set based on Imperial Commander is available from Neil Cooper, so if you feel like trying these rules out, you could download them instead. You can also buy Imperial Commander from 15mm.co.uk, along with the range of figures that it was designed to accompany. You don't have to use the "official" figures, but they are still very nice sculpts, even nearly thirty years after they were first produced.
In our game, my figures were all Laserburn figures, while Steve was using figures from Ground Zero Games.
Friday, 15 May 2009
The Empty Battlefield - A Stargrunt 2 Report
We played Stargrunt 2 (SG2) last night. Last month's project was to complete a 15mm sci-fi force for this game and we were pleased to get around to playing the game at last. SG2 is available free as a download from Ground Zero Games. It is a small unit skirmish game using individual figures and is geared towards platoon level games really. I can imagine people fielding companies in the game, but I suspect you would need all day to play such a game through to completion.
The rules are fairly simple. Each player takes turns in activating a unit, which then gets two actions, such as move twice, move and fire, dig in and fire, etc. By alternating activation, both players are kept involved all the time. Your overall commander is important in this game, because he is the only one that can rally your troops, and he can also pass off actions to units so that they can activate more than once in a turn.
The system itself is based on opposed dice rolls for most combat actions and dice rolls versus a target number for other actions, such as morale tests and attempts to communicate by radio. Combat seemed to involve a lot of dice rolls. There was a dice roll to hit, a dice roll to convert a hit to a wound by beating the opponent's armour and a dice roll to determine who in the squad had been hit. This was fairly clunky, but it was not particularly slow, once we got to know our own forces and the rules better.
Instead of dice roll modifiers, SG2 uses different die types. Thus, if you suffer a penalty on an action, you use a worse die type, while a bonus gives you a better die type. The dice used range from 4-sided to 12-sided with a d8 being the average. Rolling high in this game is good.
So, enough about the system, and on with the game. We began by randomly drawing troop quality and leader markers to determine how good our troops were. I drew two good leaders and two average leaders, with one elite squad, two regular squads and one green squad. Not too shabby at all. Steve's leaders were all average, but he received one elite squad, one veteran squad, one average squad and one green squad. This was shaping up to be interesting.
The modern battlefield is an empty place
This photograph shows the situation at the end of turn 1. We played the Recon in Force scenario from the rulebook. Each side gets a platoon and is tasked with scouting out the enemy and driving them from the field. At the start of the game we deployed our troops using markers. Mine were red, while Steve's were white. The goal is to reveal all of your opponent's markers and then shoot them to bits. Before the game began we both rolled 1d8 to determine how many dummy markers each of us got. We then moved all of our markers onto the table on Turn 1, at which point, each of us was allowed to nominate three of our opponent's markers for removal. I chose three on my right flank, which cleared it of markers, leaving me free to advance. Steve chose a selection from across the table. We were not allowed to know which of our opponent's markers we had removed, so there was some serious uncertainty going on. All that time painting figures and we began using markers instead! As it turned out, Steve had managed to remove two dummy markers and my green squad, while I removed one dummy marker, his elite squad and his regular squad! Now that was good luck.
As we manoeuvred, it became easier in some cases to identify dummy markers, but neither of us was willing to drop cover so that we could start making observation rolls to spot the enemy. Well, not for a while anyway. Then Steve revealed a marker to try to spot some troops in a building. He failed, moved on and tried again successfully. He told me afterwards that he had genuinely thought it was a dummy!
First blood
He spotted my regular combat squad and his command squad was caught at point blank range out in the open. It was going to be an absolute massacre. How could I fail? Well, I did. I managed to suppress his command squad, who promptly recovered and shot back. I lost one trooper wounded and one killed despite being in hard cover. Aargh! Still, I got my own back fairly quickly as my troops kept their morale and kept shooting. We started to whittle his command squad down slowly. Then I revealed my own command squad in the fields behind his, who started up a crossfire that eventually annihilated his troops.
In the meantime, our other markers had been busily manoeuvring some more. I revealed my elite squad and spent ages trying to spot his markers with them. Obviously my elite troops were too busy posing to spot anything because it took them more than several goes at everything. I think these guys could not have spotted the broad side of a barn from the inside. In fact, they were not very effective at anything much in this game.
With his command squad dead, Steve revealed his green squad and came to do battle with my already battered regulars. We took out his SAW gunner, but were quickly reduced to a single stand, who understandably started running away. My command squad then started plinking away at his greenies and failed to hit anything. I swear that most of my troops were firing blanks in this game. On the other hand, his greenies had their eyes in and were shooting straight. I lost a man killed from the command squad and their morale went down a little. In the meantime, my elite troops had finally spotted and removed the last of Steve's markers. They turned around and started strolling back to the main fight.
The End
The game finished with my command squad plinking away at the remnants of Steve's green squad, who were holed up in a ruined building. There were bodies all around that area and it looked a bit like Rorke's Drift. There were four green troopers in the building doing a very good job of fighting off my own soldiers as we called time on the game. I think that weight of numbers must have told eventually, but given the way my dice were rolling, I am not actually convinced that would have happened. Hopefully my elites would have sorted out the greenies, but who knows?
Final Thoughts
The system worked well and actually flowed better than the rulebook reads. There were few rules questions or problems with interpreting them. The only problem we had was time. We had played for two and a half hours when we called it a night. That is really the time slot we have available for gaming and we had not reached a proper conclusion by that point. Still, the game was great fun and we both had a good laugh, so we shall try SG2 again some time. First, however, I need to introduce Steve to Imperial Commander and Beamstrike.
The rules are fairly simple. Each player takes turns in activating a unit, which then gets two actions, such as move twice, move and fire, dig in and fire, etc. By alternating activation, both players are kept involved all the time. Your overall commander is important in this game, because he is the only one that can rally your troops, and he can also pass off actions to units so that they can activate more than once in a turn.
The system itself is based on opposed dice rolls for most combat actions and dice rolls versus a target number for other actions, such as morale tests and attempts to communicate by radio. Combat seemed to involve a lot of dice rolls. There was a dice roll to hit, a dice roll to convert a hit to a wound by beating the opponent's armour and a dice roll to determine who in the squad had been hit. This was fairly clunky, but it was not particularly slow, once we got to know our own forces and the rules better.
Instead of dice roll modifiers, SG2 uses different die types. Thus, if you suffer a penalty on an action, you use a worse die type, while a bonus gives you a better die type. The dice used range from 4-sided to 12-sided with a d8 being the average. Rolling high in this game is good.
So, enough about the system, and on with the game. We began by randomly drawing troop quality and leader markers to determine how good our troops were. I drew two good leaders and two average leaders, with one elite squad, two regular squads and one green squad. Not too shabby at all. Steve's leaders were all average, but he received one elite squad, one veteran squad, one average squad and one green squad. This was shaping up to be interesting.
The modern battlefield is an empty place
This photograph shows the situation at the end of turn 1. We played the Recon in Force scenario from the rulebook. Each side gets a platoon and is tasked with scouting out the enemy and driving them from the field. At the start of the game we deployed our troops using markers. Mine were red, while Steve's were white. The goal is to reveal all of your opponent's markers and then shoot them to bits. Before the game began we both rolled 1d8 to determine how many dummy markers each of us got. We then moved all of our markers onto the table on Turn 1, at which point, each of us was allowed to nominate three of our opponent's markers for removal. I chose three on my right flank, which cleared it of markers, leaving me free to advance. Steve chose a selection from across the table. We were not allowed to know which of our opponent's markers we had removed, so there was some serious uncertainty going on. All that time painting figures and we began using markers instead! As it turned out, Steve had managed to remove two dummy markers and my green squad, while I removed one dummy marker, his elite squad and his regular squad! Now that was good luck.
As we manoeuvred, it became easier in some cases to identify dummy markers, but neither of us was willing to drop cover so that we could start making observation rolls to spot the enemy. Well, not for a while anyway. Then Steve revealed a marker to try to spot some troops in a building. He failed, moved on and tried again successfully. He told me afterwards that he had genuinely thought it was a dummy!
First blood
He spotted my regular combat squad and his command squad was caught at point blank range out in the open. It was going to be an absolute massacre. How could I fail? Well, I did. I managed to suppress his command squad, who promptly recovered and shot back. I lost one trooper wounded and one killed despite being in hard cover. Aargh! Still, I got my own back fairly quickly as my troops kept their morale and kept shooting. We started to whittle his command squad down slowly. Then I revealed my own command squad in the fields behind his, who started up a crossfire that eventually annihilated his troops.
In the meantime, our other markers had been busily manoeuvring some more. I revealed my elite squad and spent ages trying to spot his markers with them. Obviously my elite troops were too busy posing to spot anything because it took them more than several goes at everything. I think these guys could not have spotted the broad side of a barn from the inside. In fact, they were not very effective at anything much in this game.
With his command squad dead, Steve revealed his green squad and came to do battle with my already battered regulars. We took out his SAW gunner, but were quickly reduced to a single stand, who understandably started running away. My command squad then started plinking away at his greenies and failed to hit anything. I swear that most of my troops were firing blanks in this game. On the other hand, his greenies had their eyes in and were shooting straight. I lost a man killed from the command squad and their morale went down a little. In the meantime, my elite troops had finally spotted and removed the last of Steve's markers. They turned around and started strolling back to the main fight.
The End
The game finished with my command squad plinking away at the remnants of Steve's green squad, who were holed up in a ruined building. There were bodies all around that area and it looked a bit like Rorke's Drift. There were four green troopers in the building doing a very good job of fighting off my own soldiers as we called time on the game. I think that weight of numbers must have told eventually, but given the way my dice were rolling, I am not actually convinced that would have happened. Hopefully my elites would have sorted out the greenies, but who knows?
Final Thoughts
The system worked well and actually flowed better than the rulebook reads. There were few rules questions or problems with interpreting them. The only problem we had was time. We had played for two and a half hours when we called it a night. That is really the time slot we have available for gaming and we had not reached a proper conclusion by that point. Still, the game was great fun and we both had a good laugh, so we shall try SG2 again some time. First, however, I need to introduce Steve to Imperial Commander and Beamstrike.
Monday, 11 May 2009
The Affair of the Feathered Fetish
Following on from my review of Larger than Life, I have now set up a sister blog to record the adventures of Colonel Throckmorton P. Gladiolus. The blog will function as a journal for my main Larger than Life character and also a means to test the systems in Larger than Life better.
http://ctpgxi.blogspot.com/
The cast of characters and opening scenes have now been posted with daily updates to follow until the scenario is completed. Depending upon the results of this test, available time and my own personal inclinations, I may continue these adventures with more stories.
http://ctpgxi.blogspot.com/
The cast of characters and opening scenes have now been posted with daily updates to follow until the scenario is completed. Depending upon the results of this test, available time and my own personal inclinations, I may continue these adventures with more stories.
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Larger than Life - Pulp rules
Larger than Life is a set of rules for pulp gaming from TwoHourWargames. The rules cover all kinds of pulp action, allowing for gritty tales of gumshoes, invading aliens and lost worlds.
Content
There are effectively three parts to the rules.
The first part of the rules deals with character creation. All characters are defined by their Reputation (Rep), which may range from 1 to 7. For a look at Rep and how it works, check out Chain Reaction 3.0 from TwoHourWargames, which you can freely download from their website. In addition to this, Larger than Life adds three skill areas; Brains, Brawn and Bravado. One of these will be your primary attribute and any skills you have will be at full Rep, while skills in other areas will be tested at half Rep. This takes your characters further into role-playing territory than most other TwoHourWargames rules go.
Your group will be led by a Star, representing you. The Star has a number of advantages that other characters do not have. These include:
The villains get their own versions of this and rules are included for creating the chief villain, his femme fatale and henchmen as needed.
The second part of the rules covers campaign play. The Star starts at home and is given a task, which might involve rescuing someone or recovering an object or just plain thwarting the villain. Like a film, the action moves from scene to scene with the Star and his loyal cohorts trying to extract the information they need to find the villain and beard him in his lair. You roll to see where you need to go and how you get there. Then you find out if an encounter occurs en route and resolve it of there is one. Then you try to find the clue and extract the information. This last process involves rolling against a randomly determined difficulty factor. It is possible that the villain can turn up and corner you while you are looking for clues, or that you can have other encounters with the locals along the way. There are army lists in the rules that cover a variety of different types of encounters and others are downloadable from the TwoHourWargames Yahoo group. Successfully completing each scene leads to you eventually finding the villain and going to the final showdown. The final showdown is the only time that you are guaranteed a figure game.
The final part of the rules covers setting up figure games and playing them out. It includes rules for generating the basic terrain of the area, the number of opponents that your group faces based on the total Rep of your group and the combat rules. These systems are fairly standard for TwoHourWargames and you can get an idea of how they play out by looking at Chain Reaction 3.0 or Chain Reaction: Swordplay. The basic mechanic involves rolling a number of dice equal to your combat skill, modified by circumstances, and trying to score more successes than your opponent. As I wrote earlier, check out the free rules from TwoHourWargames to see how these systems work.
That covers what the rules contain to some extent. So, the question is: how do they play?
Our Game
We started a story tonight. I umpired the game and made all the non-player character rolls, while my friend, Steve, took the part of the good guys. His star was a PI employed by a wealthy benefactor, who was sent in search of an object. The rules did not specify what this object was, but we worked out that the villain was a Native, so it was probably a tribal artefact. Presumably the PI's wealthy benefactor is a collector of such things. The PI set out in search of information. He was chasing a variety of people that might be able to tell him where to find what he was looking for and his Interrogate skill came into its own throughout this. We went through twelve such encounters with varying success. By the end of the evening, the PI had found 4 clues, not nearly enough to find the villain. His final encounter was a failed attempt to find someone that could tell him where to look. He ran into a young lady with three soldiers in tow, who shot him and his friends up before capturing them all. The rules include a section that abstracts the escape process. We rolled this and all of the good guys escaped to continue their search. We finished the session at that point.
Our Thoughts
Characters in this game are interesting. I like the need to choose primary and secondary skill areas. It gives figures different areas that they excel in, so even your Star can be outshone by his Co-Star at times. The character creation process is fairly simple, although I had to search a bit in the rulebook to follow the process through. Still, it worked and with the characters created the game play can get moving.
The campaign system is quite heavily abstracted and requires a fair bit of imagination and input to flesh out the encounters. By making them into rolls against a difficulty factor, the basic elements of the campaign have a fairly plain flavour. This process can also drag on a lot if you follow the system slavishly as written. This does not necessarily make for a good face-to-face system. On the other hand, if you have the time to invest in it, and want to write up the story as it progresses, this system will work very well for solo play. I certainly intend to try solo games to see if the campaign system has more interest. It will probably work quite well for me in that regard because I enjoy creating the story. However, we did not find it that engrossing for our face-to-face game.
The miniatures system is typical of TwoHourWargames and I like it. I like their rules and the way they work anyway, and this system does not disappoint. I particularly like the idea and implementation of Star Power. It gives a cinematic quality to the action that makes me want to quote Monty Python's Black Knight. You can try the system for yourself with the free rules I have mentioned before, so I shall not comment too much on this aspect of the rules. I like it and it works for me.
Conclusions
The rules are put together and written quite well. We had to flick through the rules quite a bit to check some things, but overall they work well. A few points were not particularly clear (e.g. how you resolve finding a clue with people; the table is under the objects section) but overall it was clear enough. Having a fair bit of familiarity with the TwoHourWargames paradigm probably helped too.
The system has a lot of potential. I think that the campaign system in the rulebook is likely to work best for solo play. I also think that the numbers needed to reach the final showdown are too high based on how our game worked. As it stood, we needed ten successful clues to stand a chance of reaching the villain with the Rep4 PI. Given that we had played through twelve attempts to find clues and only obtained four of them in the space of two hours, the game would have dragged on a bit too long. Reducing the numbers by about 5 would probably be a suitable solution for us. That would mean a minimum of five clues and an average of eight to reach the final showdown.
Another, probably better, approach for face-to-face play would be for one player to script the story, including encounters and deciding the results of success and failure. This might work well using a system where the player has to win a set number of games to reach the showdown. While this is more like a traditional wargame, I think that Larger than Life could benefit from such an approach under some circumstances. I think you could use the system in the book to help generate these games but I am not yet convinced that it will work for competitive play.
Leaving aside my concerns about the campaign system, once you get to a figure game, the system works really well. Battles are fast and furious and great fun. You can get quite a few played in a typical session and characters do not always react the way you would want them to. This makes them act more like real people, which I really like.
Overall, I don't think this is the best system from TwoHourWargames. The battles are great fun but the campaign system lets it down a bit for competitive play, although it is good for solo play. If you are going to play solo, I would recommend these rules to you. If you want to play games against your mates, then the campaign system can be used to generate games, but I would not use it exactly as written. As such, I would recommend the rules, but with reservations.
I shall certainly be playing Larger than Life again and experimenting with what works best for me. The beauty of them is that the system is simple enough that you can tinker with it without breaking it. There is also fantastic support from Ed at TwoHourWargames on the Yahoo group, which is a major advantage. Ed responds to all rules queries quite quickly, which is brilliant and really helps.
You can buy Larger than Life from TwoHourWargames and it is the Featured Game for May 2009, so you can get it a bit cheaper right now. It is certainly worth a try, despite my reservations. I shall certainly do so, and I shall write up my experiences on this blog when I do so to see if my opinions have changed.
Content
There are effectively three parts to the rules.
The first part of the rules deals with character creation. All characters are defined by their Reputation (Rep), which may range from 1 to 7. For a look at Rep and how it works, check out Chain Reaction 3.0 from TwoHourWargames, which you can freely download from their website. In addition to this, Larger than Life adds three skill areas; Brains, Brawn and Bravado. One of these will be your primary attribute and any skills you have will be at full Rep, while skills in other areas will be tested at half Rep. This takes your characters further into role-playing territory than most other TwoHourWargames rules go.
Your group will be led by a Star, representing you. The Star has a number of advantages that other characters do not have. These include:
- Free Will - the Star may choose how he reacts under certain circumstances (other figures must roll);
- Star Power - the Star uses this to try to reduce any damage received, making Stars much tougher than others;
- Cheating Death - the Star may cheat death, although this does reduce his Rep for future games; and
- Larger than Life - the Star may not be killed by figures of lower Rep than them.
The villains get their own versions of this and rules are included for creating the chief villain, his femme fatale and henchmen as needed.
The second part of the rules covers campaign play. The Star starts at home and is given a task, which might involve rescuing someone or recovering an object or just plain thwarting the villain. Like a film, the action moves from scene to scene with the Star and his loyal cohorts trying to extract the information they need to find the villain and beard him in his lair. You roll to see where you need to go and how you get there. Then you find out if an encounter occurs en route and resolve it of there is one. Then you try to find the clue and extract the information. This last process involves rolling against a randomly determined difficulty factor. It is possible that the villain can turn up and corner you while you are looking for clues, or that you can have other encounters with the locals along the way. There are army lists in the rules that cover a variety of different types of encounters and others are downloadable from the TwoHourWargames Yahoo group. Successfully completing each scene leads to you eventually finding the villain and going to the final showdown. The final showdown is the only time that you are guaranteed a figure game.
The final part of the rules covers setting up figure games and playing them out. It includes rules for generating the basic terrain of the area, the number of opponents that your group faces based on the total Rep of your group and the combat rules. These systems are fairly standard for TwoHourWargames and you can get an idea of how they play out by looking at Chain Reaction 3.0 or Chain Reaction: Swordplay. The basic mechanic involves rolling a number of dice equal to your combat skill, modified by circumstances, and trying to score more successes than your opponent. As I wrote earlier, check out the free rules from TwoHourWargames to see how these systems work.
That covers what the rules contain to some extent. So, the question is: how do they play?
Our Game
We started a story tonight. I umpired the game and made all the non-player character rolls, while my friend, Steve, took the part of the good guys. His star was a PI employed by a wealthy benefactor, who was sent in search of an object. The rules did not specify what this object was, but we worked out that the villain was a Native, so it was probably a tribal artefact. Presumably the PI's wealthy benefactor is a collector of such things. The PI set out in search of information. He was chasing a variety of people that might be able to tell him where to find what he was looking for and his Interrogate skill came into its own throughout this. We went through twelve such encounters with varying success. By the end of the evening, the PI had found 4 clues, not nearly enough to find the villain. His final encounter was a failed attempt to find someone that could tell him where to look. He ran into a young lady with three soldiers in tow, who shot him and his friends up before capturing them all. The rules include a section that abstracts the escape process. We rolled this and all of the good guys escaped to continue their search. We finished the session at that point.
Our Thoughts
Characters in this game are interesting. I like the need to choose primary and secondary skill areas. It gives figures different areas that they excel in, so even your Star can be outshone by his Co-Star at times. The character creation process is fairly simple, although I had to search a bit in the rulebook to follow the process through. Still, it worked and with the characters created the game play can get moving.
The campaign system is quite heavily abstracted and requires a fair bit of imagination and input to flesh out the encounters. By making them into rolls against a difficulty factor, the basic elements of the campaign have a fairly plain flavour. This process can also drag on a lot if you follow the system slavishly as written. This does not necessarily make for a good face-to-face system. On the other hand, if you have the time to invest in it, and want to write up the story as it progresses, this system will work very well for solo play. I certainly intend to try solo games to see if the campaign system has more interest. It will probably work quite well for me in that regard because I enjoy creating the story. However, we did not find it that engrossing for our face-to-face game.
The miniatures system is typical of TwoHourWargames and I like it. I like their rules and the way they work anyway, and this system does not disappoint. I particularly like the idea and implementation of Star Power. It gives a cinematic quality to the action that makes me want to quote Monty Python's Black Knight. You can try the system for yourself with the free rules I have mentioned before, so I shall not comment too much on this aspect of the rules. I like it and it works for me.
Conclusions
The rules are put together and written quite well. We had to flick through the rules quite a bit to check some things, but overall they work well. A few points were not particularly clear (e.g. how you resolve finding a clue with people; the table is under the objects section) but overall it was clear enough. Having a fair bit of familiarity with the TwoHourWargames paradigm probably helped too.
The system has a lot of potential. I think that the campaign system in the rulebook is likely to work best for solo play. I also think that the numbers needed to reach the final showdown are too high based on how our game worked. As it stood, we needed ten successful clues to stand a chance of reaching the villain with the Rep4 PI. Given that we had played through twelve attempts to find clues and only obtained four of them in the space of two hours, the game would have dragged on a bit too long. Reducing the numbers by about 5 would probably be a suitable solution for us. That would mean a minimum of five clues and an average of eight to reach the final showdown.
Another, probably better, approach for face-to-face play would be for one player to script the story, including encounters and deciding the results of success and failure. This might work well using a system where the player has to win a set number of games to reach the showdown. While this is more like a traditional wargame, I think that Larger than Life could benefit from such an approach under some circumstances. I think you could use the system in the book to help generate these games but I am not yet convinced that it will work for competitive play.
Leaving aside my concerns about the campaign system, once you get to a figure game, the system works really well. Battles are fast and furious and great fun. You can get quite a few played in a typical session and characters do not always react the way you would want them to. This makes them act more like real people, which I really like.
Overall, I don't think this is the best system from TwoHourWargames. The battles are great fun but the campaign system lets it down a bit for competitive play, although it is good for solo play. If you are going to play solo, I would recommend these rules to you. If you want to play games against your mates, then the campaign system can be used to generate games, but I would not use it exactly as written. As such, I would recommend the rules, but with reservations.
I shall certainly be playing Larger than Life again and experimenting with what works best for me. The beauty of them is that the system is simple enough that you can tinker with it without breaking it. There is also fantastic support from Ed at TwoHourWargames on the Yahoo group, which is a major advantage. Ed responds to all rules queries quite quickly, which is brilliant and really helps.
You can buy Larger than Life from TwoHourWargames and it is the Featured Game for May 2009, so you can get it a bit cheaper right now. It is certainly worth a try, despite my reservations. I shall certainly do so, and I shall write up my experiences on this blog when I do so to see if my opinions have changed.
Saturday, 14 March 2009
Song of Blades and Heroes - First Fight and Comparison with WHAA
When the search for Griselda ended rather abruptly with the capture of two of our stalwart heroes, we decided to try Song of Blades and Heroes. We both created a 300 point warband, set up our figures and set to.
I had a Viking warband with a hero and a magic user. Most of my troops were Q3 but three of them were Q4, which was a major disadvantage without a figure with the Leader characteristic, as I was to find out. Steve had a warband of mixed Elves, Humans and a Dwarf. The early part of the game saw him using his leader to move his troops forward as a group. His archers managed to knock my Magic User down with some shooting but did not hurt anyone more than that. My archers either refused to activate or did no damage when they did activate.
I did not have the option of moving as a group, so had to move my troops individually. My hero and a couple of the main warriors charged forward, with Sunniva the Valkyrie knocking two of her opponents down.
Unfortunately Sunniva's opponents then promptly stood back up and killed her. My other warriors consistently failed their Quality rolls and just stood there while Steve's troops swarmed all over them. He was able to isolate my troops and kill them off piecemeal. The magic user tried some spells but never scored well enough for them to have any effect. The end result saw me surrendering with three of my figures killed, including my hero and my two best warriors. Even when outnumbering the enemy, and with him on the floor my troops failed to score a kill. Aargh
This was a good fun game and felt different from Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures in many ways. Both rules provide a good game, both have army lists and a campaign system, and both are designed primarily around skirmish games. WHAA does provide for larger, unit-based battles, but it still feels more like a skirmish game than a big battle game.
Where they differ is in their approach to command and control problems. WHAA uses reaction tables and you read off the results, which can see your troops charging uncontrollably or just halting in place rather than advancing towards the enemy. You also roll for initiative at the start of each turn with the number you roll indicating which of your troops you will be able to move. SoBH uses a Quality number that you have to roll over to activate your troops individually. Thus, in WHAA you know which of your troops you will be able to activate this turn, while in SoBH you will only find out when you try to activate each figure. You also do not know if you will be able activate all of your troops because the turn can end if you fail to activate a figure. Both approaches work and both are quite elegant in the way that they take total control away from the player.
Combat in WHAA uses the reaction system too. You can wind up rolling half a dozen dice and counting up your successes to compare with your opponents successes. The more successes you beat your opponent by, the worse the damage to his figure. SoBH uses a single die mechanism for combat (roll a die and add your combat score); you are trying to score double your opponent's score to kill him. Combat results for WHAA include being pushed back, out of the fight or dead. SoBH includes pushed back, fall down or dead. Both systems work well enough. Where SoBH falls down in my opinion is the lack of more detail in this stage. The combat score represents your weapons, armour and training. Some skills can be used to represent additional armour or possibly bigger weapons but there is no provision for a broadsword doing more damage than a dagger. WHAA allows you to outfit your figure with armour, which affects how badly you are damaged, and weapons, which affect how much damage you can inflict on your opponent. I prefer the WHAA system for this, because I like the idea of outfitting the figures. On the other hand, the SoBH system is very simple and makes for considerably fewer dice rolls during combat, which speeds the game up a lot.
Morale is dealt with similarly in both rules sets with rolls versus Quality / REP, and the tests are taken at similar times.
SoBH includes attributes for your figures, which WHAA does not, although WHAA Book Two is supposed to be including those when it is produced. I like the attributes in SoBH. They can add character to your figures beyond the basic weapons and armour.
SoBH is cheaper for the first book than WHAA, but you can quickly spend just as much if you buy the additional supplements. I have not read these yet and so this comparison is based on the first book in the SoBH series.
Overall, I like both rules sets a lot. Each brings something different to the table and can be played in a short space of time, which gives you the chance to get a couple of games played in an evening, or even to play a mini-campaign in a day. One thing that SoBH lacks, which WHAA has is a system for generating enemy troops randomly. This is very useful for solo play and I would like to see something like that for SoBH. We shall certainly continue to play both rules sets, but I suspect that I shall stick to WHAA for solo play because of the ability to randomly generate enemies.
I had a Viking warband with a hero and a magic user. Most of my troops were Q3 but three of them were Q4, which was a major disadvantage without a figure with the Leader characteristic, as I was to find out. Steve had a warband of mixed Elves, Humans and a Dwarf. The early part of the game saw him using his leader to move his troops forward as a group. His archers managed to knock my Magic User down with some shooting but did not hurt anyone more than that. My archers either refused to activate or did no damage when they did activate.
I did not have the option of moving as a group, so had to move my troops individually. My hero and a couple of the main warriors charged forward, with Sunniva the Valkyrie knocking two of her opponents down.
Unfortunately Sunniva's opponents then promptly stood back up and killed her. My other warriors consistently failed their Quality rolls and just stood there while Steve's troops swarmed all over them. He was able to isolate my troops and kill them off piecemeal. The magic user tried some spells but never scored well enough for them to have any effect. The end result saw me surrendering with three of my figures killed, including my hero and my two best warriors. Even when outnumbering the enemy, and with him on the floor my troops failed to score a kill. Aargh
This was a good fun game and felt different from Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures in many ways. Both rules provide a good game, both have army lists and a campaign system, and both are designed primarily around skirmish games. WHAA does provide for larger, unit-based battles, but it still feels more like a skirmish game than a big battle game.
Where they differ is in their approach to command and control problems. WHAA uses reaction tables and you read off the results, which can see your troops charging uncontrollably or just halting in place rather than advancing towards the enemy. You also roll for initiative at the start of each turn with the number you roll indicating which of your troops you will be able to move. SoBH uses a Quality number that you have to roll over to activate your troops individually. Thus, in WHAA you know which of your troops you will be able to activate this turn, while in SoBH you will only find out when you try to activate each figure. You also do not know if you will be able activate all of your troops because the turn can end if you fail to activate a figure. Both approaches work and both are quite elegant in the way that they take total control away from the player.
Combat in WHAA uses the reaction system too. You can wind up rolling half a dozen dice and counting up your successes to compare with your opponents successes. The more successes you beat your opponent by, the worse the damage to his figure. SoBH uses a single die mechanism for combat (roll a die and add your combat score); you are trying to score double your opponent's score to kill him. Combat results for WHAA include being pushed back, out of the fight or dead. SoBH includes pushed back, fall down or dead. Both systems work well enough. Where SoBH falls down in my opinion is the lack of more detail in this stage. The combat score represents your weapons, armour and training. Some skills can be used to represent additional armour or possibly bigger weapons but there is no provision for a broadsword doing more damage than a dagger. WHAA allows you to outfit your figure with armour, which affects how badly you are damaged, and weapons, which affect how much damage you can inflict on your opponent. I prefer the WHAA system for this, because I like the idea of outfitting the figures. On the other hand, the SoBH system is very simple and makes for considerably fewer dice rolls during combat, which speeds the game up a lot.
Morale is dealt with similarly in both rules sets with rolls versus Quality / REP, and the tests are taken at similar times.
SoBH includes attributes for your figures, which WHAA does not, although WHAA Book Two is supposed to be including those when it is produced. I like the attributes in SoBH. They can add character to your figures beyond the basic weapons and armour.
SoBH is cheaper for the first book than WHAA, but you can quickly spend just as much if you buy the additional supplements. I have not read these yet and so this comparison is based on the first book in the SoBH series.
Overall, I like both rules sets a lot. Each brings something different to the table and can be played in a short space of time, which gives you the chance to get a couple of games played in an evening, or even to play a mini-campaign in a day. One thing that SoBH lacks, which WHAA has is a system for generating enemy troops randomly. This is very useful for solo play and I would like to see something like that for SoBH. We shall certainly continue to play both rules sets, but I suspect that I shall stick to WHAA for solo play because of the ability to randomly generate enemies.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
The Red Menace
Last month I painted Martians to fight Steve's British troops. We actually managed to play the game last week, but my battle report has been delayed by various Real Life(tm) problems. We used the Soldier's Companion rules from GDW that are aimed at supporting Space 1889.
The Martian Messiah, Itaba Sootaman, has been rabble-rousing in the provinces around Shastapsh. His goal is to foment rebellion against the British occupying Syrtis Major and to drive the invaders from Martian soil. When it was reported that Sootaman was largely unaccompanied, the British sent a platoon of infantry to arrest him. His general area was known, but not his exact whereabouts, so the patrol headed out to investigate the villages in that area. As they advanced through the village of Paraam, which still lay partially devastated by a recent British assault, the area was quiet. The locals had obviously heard that the British were coming and had evacuated the area. This worried the British commander.
He ordered his troops to advance on the next village, Irshash. As they approached the village, a ragged volley of fire erupted from the woods line in front of them. It was all sound and fury for the Martian marksmanship was terrible and there were no British casualties. The two sides traded fire for a while, but neither side took any casualties. The Martian marksmanship was terrible, but their use of cover was brilliant.
Suddenly another troop of Martians erupted from the brush behind the British. Ambush! The attack was perfectly executed and, but for the Martian accuracy, might have seen the British ending their days on that spot. Unfortunately for the Martians, their smoothbore muskets were not very accurate. Caught in a pincer movement, the British fixed bayonets and charged the Martians in front of them. They drove the Martians all the way out of the woods and back to the next village along, sniping at the Martians' heels as they went. The other Martian warriors could do little now but pursue the British. Fortunately, they caught them and were able to break their nerve. The British regrouped back at Paraam and returned to the fray, and the fight continued swirling around the woods from which the Martians had first emerged. The British now held their nerve and started causing significant casualties to the Martians. One Martian troop was nearly wiped out, while the other was suffering badly.
Seeing the chance to break the Martians' nerve forever, the British commander ordered a charge. His men bravely tore into the Martian force and a bloody combat ensued with no quarter given. Then it happened. The British officer fell in the melee. The Martian warriors howled as one of their number took his head. This was too much for the British soldiers and they broke and ran. The Martians were too exhausted to pursue, but this was still a great victory for them. Inspired by this act, the whole of Shastapsh would soon be in ferment.
This was a great game that could have gone either way. The Martian ambush was perfectly executed, but my dice were not favouring me in this game. For some reason I have real problems rolling sixes! The rules worked well, although we could envisage situations where the Martian player might be sitting for ages waiting to win an initiative roll. Since your only option when you fail to win the initiative is to shoot or charge and you do not get to manoeuvre, a good British leader could easily win the initiative every turn and march circles around a poor Martian leader, leaving the Martian player with nothing to do. I suspect that we will institute a die roll modifier of +1 for every turn in which you have not won the initiative. This modifier is cumulative until you win the initiative, at which point it resets to 0. That would ensure that both sides at least get to do something and stay involved in the game. I am now looking forward to painting and using the rest of my Martians in a bigger game. I also need to get around to making some better Martian terrain.
The Martian Messiah, Itaba Sootaman, has been rabble-rousing in the provinces around Shastapsh. His goal is to foment rebellion against the British occupying Syrtis Major and to drive the invaders from Martian soil. When it was reported that Sootaman was largely unaccompanied, the British sent a platoon of infantry to arrest him. His general area was known, but not his exact whereabouts, so the patrol headed out to investigate the villages in that area. As they advanced through the village of Paraam, which still lay partially devastated by a recent British assault, the area was quiet. The locals had obviously heard that the British were coming and had evacuated the area. This worried the British commander.
He ordered his troops to advance on the next village, Irshash. As they approached the village, a ragged volley of fire erupted from the woods line in front of them. It was all sound and fury for the Martian marksmanship was terrible and there were no British casualties. The two sides traded fire for a while, but neither side took any casualties. The Martian marksmanship was terrible, but their use of cover was brilliant.
Suddenly another troop of Martians erupted from the brush behind the British. Ambush! The attack was perfectly executed and, but for the Martian accuracy, might have seen the British ending their days on that spot. Unfortunately for the Martians, their smoothbore muskets were not very accurate. Caught in a pincer movement, the British fixed bayonets and charged the Martians in front of them. They drove the Martians all the way out of the woods and back to the next village along, sniping at the Martians' heels as they went. The other Martian warriors could do little now but pursue the British. Fortunately, they caught them and were able to break their nerve. The British regrouped back at Paraam and returned to the fray, and the fight continued swirling around the woods from which the Martians had first emerged. The British now held their nerve and started causing significant casualties to the Martians. One Martian troop was nearly wiped out, while the other was suffering badly.
Seeing the chance to break the Martians' nerve forever, the British commander ordered a charge. His men bravely tore into the Martian force and a bloody combat ensued with no quarter given. Then it happened. The British officer fell in the melee. The Martian warriors howled as one of their number took his head. This was too much for the British soldiers and they broke and ran. The Martians were too exhausted to pursue, but this was still a great victory for them. Inspired by this act, the whole of Shastapsh would soon be in ferment.
This was a great game that could have gone either way. The Martian ambush was perfectly executed, but my dice were not favouring me in this game. For some reason I have real problems rolling sixes! The rules worked well, although we could envisage situations where the Martian player might be sitting for ages waiting to win an initiative roll. Since your only option when you fail to win the initiative is to shoot or charge and you do not get to manoeuvre, a good British leader could easily win the initiative every turn and march circles around a poor Martian leader, leaving the Martian player with nothing to do. I suspect that we will institute a die roll modifier of +1 for every turn in which you have not won the initiative. This modifier is cumulative until you win the initiative, at which point it resets to 0. That would ensure that both sides at least get to do something and stay involved in the game. I am now looking forward to painting and using the rest of my Martians in a bigger game. I also need to get around to making some better Martian terrain.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures
We finally played Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures (WHAA) last night. February has been a poor month for gaming due to work, so it was good to roll some dice and talk some shite.
We have been planning to play WHAA for a while now. I have played it solo before and have described the events of my solo campaign on my wiki, but I was keen to see how it played head-to-head. I am pleased to report that it went well. The rules are by TwoHourWargames (THW) and use their reaction system to dictate how troops respond to the action in the battle. If you want to know more about this system, a number of free downloads are available from THW on their web-page, including the newly released Chain Reaction 3.0. Download it and try a game. I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised.
Returning to WHAA, the rules are a fantasy set for skirmish gaming. Rules are included for larger battles, which resemble grand skirmish rules (units and characters) more than big battle rules; think Warhammer Ancient Battles rather than Field of Glory. At least, that is how they feel to me. The key to the system is the distinction between Stars and Grunts. The Star is your personal figure and has much more freedom to choose its actions, while the Grunts will react according to dice rolls on the reaction tables. This could mean that they refuse to charge home when you order them to, or they might charge when you want them to hold the line. This lack of control is not excessive but certainly enhances the game and creates an air of immediacy that many wargames lack.
In addition to the skirmish and big battle rules, the rulebook includes a campaign and scenario generation system that permits your characters to improve and recruit more members to your force. The scenario generation system bases the forces that oppose you on how large and powerful your own force is. There is no guarantee that a battle will be even, and you will have to learn when to call it a day to preserve your own troops.
As part of the campaign system, the rules include 31 army lists, and encounter tables for the various nations described. These are mainly lists with historical analogues or are fairly standard fantasy races such as dwarves and elves but they make a good starting point for playing a game. You can either play these lists straight or construct your own based on what you have, using these lists as a guide.
Overall, this is a really good package. The rules themselves feel a little untidy in terms of structure, but they are still easy enough to use. There is no requirement to use specific figures and there is plenty of room for working up your own lists if what you want is not present. For example, there is no Viking analogue in these rules, so I worked my own up, which can be found on my wiki.
One thing I have not tried yet is the magic rules. I shall comment on them once I have done so. That covers the rules and so, without further ado, I present the battle report (words by Steve, pictures by me).
The Scenario
The local baker's daughter, Griselda, has been kidnapped by a goblin warband that raided the village of Harbottle on the borders of the Border Kingdoms. Arngrim the Baker is unable to keep up with his workload without his only daughter's help. Brother Cedric is concerned that attendance at the preceptory's afternoon teas will fall off without doughnuts from the bakery to supplement the beverages, but no doughnuts have been baked in days. Therefore, Brother Cedric embarks on a quest to find and rescue Griselda. He is sure that she will not be dead yet, because her doughnut baking skills will make her more valuable alive than dead to the sweet-toothed goblins.
This scenario uses the quest rules from WHAA. Brother Cedric must travel into Goblin territory and search for Griselda. Each campaign turn he dices to see if he has found the object of his quest. If this fails then he must dice to see if he has an ordinary encounter. As it turned out, he did not find her on the first campaign turn, but he did find a goblin village, which he raided. On the second turn, he found her. The dice result called for a pitched battle to fend off the goblins, followed by a raid to recover Griselda. We did not have time to fight out the raid, but we shall do so as soon as possible.
The Search for the Baker’s Daughter
Chapter 1
Brother Cedric reined in his horse, Brothers Konrad and Sigismund drew up either side of him. Ahead over a small bridge lay the Goblin village. He signalled to Hans and Herman his spearmen and Urk and Ogg the archers, to head towards the woods to the right of the village. In the centre of the village four goblins had come out to watch them.
Chapter 1
Brother Cedric reined in his horse, Brothers Konrad and Sigismund drew up either side of him. Ahead over a small bridge lay the Goblin village. He signalled to Hans and Herman his spearmen and Urk and Ogg the archers, to head towards the woods to the right of the village. In the centre of the village four goblins had come out to watch them.
“Maybe we can find information, about the kidnapped Baker’s daughter here,” thought Cedric. It had been a cold trail before they had been informed of the crime.
With a glance to either side Brother Cedric touched the side of his horse with his spurs and charged towards the village with a hymn in his heart. At the sight of the Brethren in full charge heading their way the goblins screamed and ran off into the distance. Meanwhile Urk and Ogg spotted another goblin amongst a patch of trees, both drew arrows and within a moment the goblin slumped to the ground.
The Brother Knights dismounted and headed into the huts to check for more goblins. Nothing was found, but a small box of silver coins. The other four were now heading towards the village, Herman ran ahead to inform Brother Cedric of the other goblin.
He had just reached Cedric when out of the fields a goblin appeared mounted on a ripper beast. Herman froze to the spot, but Sigismund charged to meet the goblin, only to be struck by an arrow and fall to the ground. The goblin continued on to Herman, who put up a brave fight, but he too fell wounded. Another goblin rider appeared and then another. Ogg shot at one, but took and arrow through the heart for his trouble. Brothers Cedric and Konrad with Hans and Ogg eventually killed the remaining goblin riders, but it had been a costly engagement. Brother Sigismund had merely been knocked unconscious; Herman was injured and would have to return to the border fort; Ogg however was dead. They helped Urk bury him and Brother Cedric read a fine sermon over the grave.
Chapter 2
For a month the five travelled into the Goblin Kingdom. They found snippets of information to the Baker's daughter’s location along the way. All seemed to point in direction they now travelled, into the heartland of the Goblin Kingdom. Travelling was becoming more dangerous and several times they had been forced to hide from large Goblin warbands. Up until now they had been lucky to have spotted them in time to hide. Unfortunately for them their luck had just run out and they had been spotted by a Goblin raiding party.
Two Goblin riders headed to meet them and they rode to them. Brother Konrad’s horse shied and the goblin knocked him from his steed and he lay motionless on the ground. Another Goblin rider fired an arrow, which caught Hans and spun him around before he fell to the ground. The Goblin chariot charged in to attack Cedric with another Goblin rider. Urk too fell to an arrow from one of the goblins.
The battle was going badly for the Brethren and there seemed nothing that either Cedric or Sigismund could do. They looked at each other and with grim smiles and a battle hymn on their lips turned to take on the numerous foes. This seemed to unnerve the goblins as within a few moments the tide had turned. Brother Sigismund had slain both his opponents and this had caused the archers creeping up the nearby hill to flee the scene. Brother Cedric despatched the rider he fought against and the two turned on the chariot. Soon the chariot lay destroyed and the goblins were running for cover.
As Cedric and Sigismund returned to the others, Konrad rose gingerly to his feet and rubbed his head. After burying Hans and Urk, the three Brother Knights again mounted their horses and rode off deeper into the Goblin Lands in search of Griselda.
Conclusions
We played two games in under two hours, which fits well with the THW paradigm. Both games were close with the advantage switching between sides as the game progressed. In both cases the Brethren won in the end, but it was by no means an easy feat, especially in the second game where they were outnumbered at the start. This kept our interest going in the games, and neither of us was stuck waiting for the other to finish a large move with nothing to do. This constant engagement in the game is a positive thing and we are both looking forward to finishing this quest.
Overall, I would highly recommend these rules to anyone looking for a fast play fantasy skirmish rules set. The rules themselves work well, and support on the THW Yahoo Group is absolutely first class, should you have any problems.
The only question that remains is, can Brother Cedric rescue Griselda in time? I, for one, can't wait to find out.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Polemos: Great Northern War Review
We played Polemos:GNW for the first time yesterday. I have had the rules for a long time but have never yet managed to play them. One of the things that has put me off is difficulty in reading and understanding the rules. Normally I am very good at learning rules from the rules and do not need someone to demonstrate them first. However, I have really struggled with Polemos:GNW. There seems to be a lot of assumed knowledge on the part of the rules' author, which makes understanding the rules difficult. For this reason I have not previously got around to playing them. So, we steeled ourselves, girded our loins and set to.
The Rules
The rules themselves are fairly standard in many respects, with attack and defence values for each unit and opposed die rolls to see if you succeed. You then consult a table to see what result your attacks have had. The effects of combat see your units gaining levels of "shaken", possibly recoiling back from their enemy, or even being driven back. Casualties per se are not removed. Instead, when a unit reaches three or more levels of "shaken" it will rout. Under some circumstances it can be rallied, but otherwise it is removed from the game. This is how units are destroyed.
The really new idea that they present is in tempo bidding. Tempo is initiative. Each side gets a fixed number of tempo points each turn and add the score of a six-sided die roll to that. Then both players decide how many points they can afford to bid to win the initiative and still do what they need to do in that turn. The bids are compared and the higher bidder wins the initiative. Both players deduct their bids from their total tempo points and that is how many points you have left to do things. These points are used a bit like PIPs in the DBx series of games, but the person that lost the initiative has to spend more points to act with their units, which means that they could wind up unable to do as much as the player with the initiative can. One problem with the tempo bidding was allocating points to commands. This can take a little time as you try to work out what you need to do where.The Game
So, how did they play? We set up a small battle on a 4'x3' table with two Baccus starter armies. I took the Swedes and Steve took the Saxons. The figures were set up 2' apart for an encounter battle as recommended in the rules.
Our game took four hours, before Steve had to leave, and the game had not reached a conclusion, although it seemed to be favouring me, because Steve's right wing had all routed from the table. This left my left wing able to regroup and then they could have fallen on the enemy flank. However, this would have taken time that my centre and right wing might not have had. At this point we decided to call it a draw.
Conclusions
The game was fun to play despite our difficulties with actually reading the rules. More than any other rule set I have played these rules required game play to show how they worked. I would say that they are not for beginners purely because of the way they are written.
The tempo bidding was good fun and a great way of determining who would be able to act first and how much they would be able to do. Both Steve and I like this type of mechanism where you are trying to second-guess your opponent all the time.
Combat was simple enough with the opposed rolls, although the long list of modifiers might put some off. There were a number of situations that cropped up in our game, which did not appear to be covered in the rules but we were able to come up with solutions easily enough and I have now asked about them on the Polemos Yahoo Group, so I hope to have answers soon.
One thing that the rules really need is a coherent quick reference sheet. The QRS that comes with the rules seems to have bits put in wherever they fit rather than putting all the firing tables together, the close combat tables together, etc. This did cause us a few delays in game play as we tried to work out where the relevant tables were.
Overall, we enjoyed the game a lot and will be trying the rules again. We hope to significantly reduce the amount of time that the game took to play as we become more familiar with the game and its mechanisms. Producing a better QRS could help with this. We shall see how it works out.
If you have the time and patience to work through the rules then the game play is ultimately rewarding and I would recommend these rules to you. If you need everything served up in bite-sized chunks then these rules are not for you, unless you can find someone to teach you.
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