Against the Ungeheuer - A Broadsword Adventures AAR

Carmen, the buxom daughter of the landlord at the Fang and Flagon had been captured by Ungeheuer! The regulars at the Fang and Flagon were horrified but endowed too well with a sense of self-preservation to go up against such fearsome monsters, so it was up to the newly arrived adventurers in town. Two of them looked fresh out of the warriors guild, while the other two were battle-hardened and scarred, clearly veterans of many fights. The promise of gold and free ale was enough to pique their interest, so they set out on the trail of the monsters and soon arrived at the entrance to a large cave. (click the pictures for larger images)

The area was strewn with chewed bones and remnants of equipment from previous adventurers that had dared to enter this place. It stank too, foetid and warm. Bravely they moved into the gloom within, pausing only to light their lanterns. All was quiet to start with, but as they explored the caves either side of the entrance, a shuffling gait was heard coming from deeper within. Soon a shaggy monstrosity was sighted by one of the younger warriors. He grasped his spear more firmly, sweat breaking out on his forehead in his nervousness at his first fight.

As the monster came towards him, he cold see that it was still drowsy from its last meal and sleep, but that did not stop it from letting out a howl of fury at this intrusion. The warrior, undaunted, charged forward, thrusting with his spear. The point took the monster in its eye and travelled on up into its brain. It stared disbelievingly at the puny-looking warrior, before slumping to the floor in a pool of blood and brains, dead.

More howling was heard from deeper with the cave and a new threat could be seen lumbering towards the adventurers. The monster's mate was furious at the treatment meted out to her companion and was clearly out for revenge, her gaze focused on the gore-encrusted spear of the young warrior.

As she attacked, the warrior was able to fend her off, and then he counter-attacked, deftly manoeuvring her around so that his companions were now able to surround and attack her too. She roared in pain as weapons stabbed at her and flailed around, desperately trying to hurt her tormentors, but the end was not in doubt. Soon she fell with a dozen cuts to her body and a sword in her head.

With the monsters dead, the adventurers were able to search the caves in peace and soon found Carmen alive and unharmed. They returned home in triumph.

This was a fun little scenario from the rulebook that went particularly easily for Steve's adventurers. He had two Grade 2 characters and two Grade 1s. In Broadsword Adventures, there are three grades of character available. Grade 3 is a bona fide hero, Grade 2 is a stalwart adventurer and Grade 1 is cannon fodder. Imagine my chagrin then when my first mighty monster was attacked by a Grade 1 spearman and slain instantly with a blow to the head! Bah!! Well, thought I, the second monster will at least take one of them out. I shall be revenged!!!!! With the first monster spotting the adventurers, the second one was no free to act. I rushed her to one of the interior cave mouths, thinking to use the narrow opening as a way to hinder the adventurers. Unfortunately the same devilish spearman as killed the first monster won the melee round by a large margin and was able to use his skills to swap places with her, turning her around and getting her surrounded by the enemy. In Broadsword adventures, certain skills give you combat manoeuvres like this that you can use. I then proceeded to try to hit the adventurers and failed miserably, while they cut holes in the monster's hide. The end was really not in doubt. Steve's dice were hot, and mine were ice cold. All in all, it was a great game. The scenario was simple but we wanted to learn the differences between BA and our more usual fare of 45 Adventures, so that was not a problem. We both had fun and Steve went home with a huge grin on his face, having won a game, so we can definitely account this one a success. Time to prepare the next scenario.

If you want to check out Broadsword Adventures, you can download the demo rules free from the Rattrap Productions Speakeasy. The download is in the Broadsword Adventures download section and includes the scenario that we played plus some characters for it.

Basic Impetus

Steve and I played Basic Impetus last night using our 6mm Wars of the Roses forces. It was an interesting game and the battlefield looked huge with the small forces on it. Unfortunately I did not get any pictures of the game, but I shall do so next time we play. The game went very smoothly for a first-time playing and we had few questions about the rules, although we did forget half the rules for half the game. We shall get it right next time around! What was important was that the game flowed nicely and that we both felt like we had a chance to win.

Steve's Lancastrians (boo, hiss!) were the attackers, brutally assaulting my poor, heroic Yorkists. We both deployed in proper fashion with archers to the fore and billmen/men-at-arms behind the archers. I had a unit of mounted knights on my left flank and a unit of handgunners on my right. My plan was to pin his troops in the centre with my archers while the more mobile troops went around his flanks. Steve had chosen to dismount his knights and had two units of border spears, so he had the advantage in heavy infantry, while I had more archers than he did. My left flank was on a gentle hill, while Steve's right flank was anchored on a pond.

So, the battle began. We advanced towards each other until we got to archery range, at which point we began to exchange arrows. My knights and handgunners began their move around Steve's flanks. Feeling threatened by this, Steve pushed his billmen forward too quickly. My men-at-arms and billmen charged forward to counter their advance and routed them in short order. "Ha!" thought I, "He has let himself get sucked in and will pay for that mistake." I promptly charged my heavy foot forwards and suffered the same fate as Steve had. Oops! meanwhile, his spears were marching around my flank and trying to engage my archers from the flank. They did not quite manage this and were soon suffering as they took a couple of volleys of arrows and then found that the archers were actually a match for them in the melee too. Blimey! My handgunners were now causing problems by harassing the flanks of the rest of Steve's formation, but in return my men-at-arms were getting the worst of the melee in the centre. Then my knights finally finished poncing around on the flank and charged home against Steve's archers, driving them from the field in short order. They promptly turned around and charged home against the rear of Steve's dismounted knights. Caught between two of my units, his knights chose discretion rather than valour and fled the field. Game over.

The game took around an hour and a half to play through including time spent scratching our heads wondering what the rules meant, and was very good fun. There are some gaps in the rules, but that is hardly surprising because they are a stripped out version of Impetus, but they worked well, so I would recommend them to anyone else. I also like the smallish size of the armies in the game. It makes it easier to collect several different armies, which appeals to me. The armies are larger than DBA armies and the games are slightly longer, but I preferred the game play to DBA, which is the nearest equivalent style of game I can think of. So, which army shall I put together next?

A 2009 Retrospective

Well, 2009 has been and gone and I have had a year of supposedly thrifty gaming. It has not been an easy year all round, beginning poorly and getting worse as the year progressed. As a result of the problems faced throughout the year, I seem to have spent most of it as a bit of a psychological train-wreck. Still, that is not the real issue. The question is whether I have succeeded or not, I suppose. So, what were my goals for the year?

1. Finish pre-existing projects;
2. Play newly finished projects; and
3. Spend my money more wisely.

Finishing pre-existing projects
Well, this worked to a certain extent. I began the year well by picking an old project and painting figures for it. Unfortunately, everything sort of fell away at the back end of the year. I managed to work on and complete a project for each month up to July. I skipped August because of university coursework that demanded my full time attention, but did manage a new project for September. After that, though, I did not allocate any new projects. I must only score a partial success for this part of the mission

Play newly-finished projects
Yes. Full marks for this. Each project that I completed was used in the following month. We also played a bunch of other games in addition to the project-based games, so this aspect of the mission was a success, in my opinion.

Spend the budget more wisely
I think I did manage to spend my gaming budget more wisely this year. I certainly spent much less on figures than I have in previous years and the lead mountain has decreased a bit in size. I think I would have accounted this part of the mission a total success had I managed to spend nothing on new figures, but I did buy a bunch of stuff. On the other hand, I also managed to paint most of what I bought, so it is not all bad. A quick glance at my progress log leaves me feeling relatively satisfied with progress but also feeling that I could have done better.

Final Score = Moderate Success

How did it go?
Well, I know that I could have done better at my goals, but I also know that I probably achieved more than I might otherwise have done in any given year. According to BoardGameGeek I managed to play 58 games throughout the year, which is pretty good going. My most-played games were Warrior Heroes, Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures and Wargods of Aegyptus. I managed to paint thousands of figures (literally, even though most were 6mm and therefore quick to paint). I managed to reduce my spending considerably too. I am happy with that for now.

By focusing on one game to paint and play each month, I was encouraged to keep going. Playing the game immediately after painting the figures made sure that I got some quick pleasure from the painting pain, so I was encouraged to keep going with the next project. I admit that I did not set myself arduous goals, but that was intentional. If completing each project was too difficult I might have given up. I also found myself painting more figures for non-mission projects, because I felt like it. Achieving the mission goals encouraged me to keep going in those other areas too.

Overall, I would say that the approach I took worked, and I would recommend it to others. Completing a series of smaller projects is easier than completing one large project and encourages you to keep going.

What is in store for 2010?
Rather stupidly I came up with the idea of putting on a 6mm Battle of Towton game in 2011, 650 years after the original battle was fought. Throughout 2010 I shall be painting figures for this project. I shall need to buy quite a few more figures for it, so my spending this year will be focused on that. Fortunately, this project is being supported by Peter at Baccus Miniatures, so I am getting a good discount on the figures I buy, which numbs some of the pain. However, it does mean that I shall have to think very hard before buying figures for other projects. To keep us going on the project, we shall be refighting some of the battles that were fought in the build-up to Towton, starting with Blore Heath (1459) at Triples. The idea will be to do games at three or four shows this year to give us practice of running show games and to also keep us enthused about painting our figures.

In addition to the show games, I have quite a lot of rules sets that cover the Wars of the Roses, so I am hoping that Steve and I can play one game a month using our Towton figures. This should keep us enthused for the project and also hopefully keep us painting.

With regard to other games, we are considering picking half a dozen rules sets, or possibly periods and focusing on those as our main projects for the year. This should hopefully provide some light relief from the Wars of the Roses stuff, while also not intruding too much on it. We shall see ...

The Prussians Are Coming

I should be painting 6mm Wars of the Roses figures. Naturally this led to me getting distracted and gave me a desire to paint some Seven Years War Prussians that have been lying around for ages. Upon looking through my collection of unpainted lead, I realised that I had enough figures to produce a small Prussian force for Volley and Bayonet: Road to Glory. This is the start of that force.

Prussian infantry with a converged grenadier battalion at the back.


Prussian field artillery.

The figures are all Baccus 6mm and I still need to paint a few more battalions of infantry and several brigades of cavalry for the force, but it is more than half way there now. I am back to painting Wars of the Roses figures for the time being, but will return to these later this year. I really want to try out the new Volley and Bayonet rules but have other projects on my plate at the moment too. Once the Prussians are done, I plan to do a Swedish force for the Seven Years War too. It will look very similar to my Great Northern War army, but I think there are enough noticeable differences even in 6mm for it to be worth my while doing a paint-job conversion on the figures.

Maelynn, an Elven Mage

My brother used to like Confrontation. I don't know if he still does, but he never talks about it now. While he was still enthusiastic, I picked up some Cynwall Elves, thinking that I could use them in skirmish gaming and also try Confrontation against him. That never happened, but I finally got around to painting one of them: Maelynn, an Elven mage with some kind of construct on her back. I am not completely convinced by my painting, but at least she is coloured in so I can use her. The only problem is that she towers over all my other ordinary elves that I plan to use for games of Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures, so I may have to relegate her to ebay or to the display cupboard. The same problem applies to the other Cynwall Elves I have. Perhaps I need to rethink how I plan to use them. One thought that occurs is to use them on their own as a Song of Blades and Heroes warband. I have enough figures for that with a couple of extras for reinforcements.

Maelynn:

Chaos in Cairo - My Warbands

I have intended to play Chaos in Cairo since I picked up the first edition rules a few years ago, but never got around to it. The rules looked like fun but I was not entirely sure about the approach to the game taken in them. With the release of the second edition, I find all my reservations removed. As a result of this sudden burst of enthusiasm, I dug out my pulp figures to see what I could do. I had enough figures already painted to produce a full Servants of Set warband, with plenty left over for reinforcements.

Servants of Set warband:


I had some figures ready for the Archaeologists, but needed to paint a couple more (the chap in the fez and the Connell look-alike):


It also spurred me on to paint some of my Wargods Eater of the Dead figures as well as their human accomplice. Here is the Mummy warband:


I am now looking forward to playing Chaos in Cairo and will report on our games as and when we get around to playing. Steve is also very keen to do a BlackPowderPunk version of Chaos in Carpathia, so I am working on a warband for that too. More on that at a later date.

Using all your figures at once - well, sort of

Over on the Lead Adventures Forum someone mooted the idea of basing a game in the same universe as the comic Grimjack. I read it back in the eighties and have a complete set of the originals tucked away in the cupboard. I drank this comic up and could not get enough of it. Grimjack is actually set in the city of Cynosure at the centre of all the dimensions. The city actually consists of the intersections of many dimensions. Thus, you can cross the street and the rules of reality will change. Some dimensions are more stable than others, which means that you can be fairly sure of not getting stuck in some of the dimensions, while others might move off and drag you with them if you stay too long.

In some areas of Cynosure magic works but guns don't and vice versa. Occasionally both work together. In some areas people are gods, while they are just ordinary winos when they are in other areas. Worse still, some dimensions are totally inimical to most life forms. Better stay out of those. Still, it does provide plenty of variety.

So, what does this have to do with using all your figures at once? Actually, very little. What it really has to do with is using all of your figures in the same game setting. You see, and most of you will be way ahead of me on this, in a world where all the dimensions eventually meet, any type of figure could find its way there. So, your Conan figure could fight alongside your Space Womble figure in an epic battle to save the multiverse, or just a squalid fight to earn a few Creds and buy more beer. The question, though, is which rules to use. The setting is hard-boiled detective fiction; think Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. However, it also introduces science fiction and fantasy into the mix. So, the rules need to support the hard-boiled feel of the comic, while also permitting pure fantasy games, pure science fiction games, science fantasy games, the occasional superhero and a god or two. Not much to ask, eh?

My current thinking is that the core rules should be something like 45 Adventures. The narrative approach to the games and their small size would suit the episodic nature of a comic. You also have the other rules by Rattrap Productions, which use the same system and cover different genres: swashbuckling, Conan-esque fantasy and pulp science fiction. With a little work, these cover most of the bases, especially when you add in the Weird War Two and mad science supplements. The only problem I foresee is the need to work up some character archetypes that suit the core setting specifically rather than peripheral dimensions. Another alternative would be GURPS. Although it is a role-playing game, GURPS has at its core a solid skirmish game for its combat system. There are also zillions of supplements covering most genres that you could want. The only problem with that is the sheer expense of getting all the supplements you might want. Similarly, TwoHourWargames has several rules sets that could be combined to fit the setting and their Rep system makes characters easily portable between sets too.

My question to the audience is, what other rules might handle this well and have good flavour? Have any of you done anything like this before? Could this be the future of my skirmish gaming?