ACW with John Michael

Its far from the biggest or fanciest ACW game I've played but what is important is this is the first one where my son is truly getting down and dirty with the rules and the concepts of ACW warfare. JRII rules in use which means they aren't the simplest but they do give a good period feel.

Of course the condition of terrain show the neglect my 15mm collection has had in recent years. Turkey day hopefully will be a father son repair day.

selling off the detritus

So many failed projects, so I'm clearing out a few.

15mm ECW ($25)
Stone Mountain (still in pack)
Medium Pike advancing
Infantry command
Musketeers
loose, out of packs, (no idea of maker)
24 Pikemen
8 cavalry
6 dismounted dragoons Possibly essex
24 Musketeers shooting
2 guns

Old D&D Battlesystem gnolls

Musing on skirmish rules

Of late I have been musing on skirmish rules, not about mechanics per se but about how I want a game to play.

• A game should be about more than charging! Or shooting! Or maybe it doesn't, but there needs to be some decision points to keep my interest. This is where the gimicky aspect of Malifaux becomes more engaging than the simple LotOW/LotR system. The resource issues in many games also help do this but they aren't what I'm looking for.
• Vehicles need to do more than move and shoot. Unless it's a WWI tank or a steamroller I want vehicles to have more zip. Rather than simply moving a lot and then doing something I'd love to see vehicles have a slow speed but have to move everytime any unit activates with penalties or skill checks for cornering, going through things, bogging down, etc. Maybe not for all games but at least for interwar and Pulp games. Imagine everytime any unit activates three or four vehicles lurching forward, unable to change speed (except by breaking to a complete stop) until their turn. Even a 1" speed suddenly becomes fast if you have to move it eight times with who knows what moving out in front of you in the meantime.
• Heroes and Units  Sharp's Practice does this well. Heroes should have plenty of effect on a game, not just in giving units better combat bonuses but in making things happen.

Two games of late (I've been on a nostalgia kick) keep coming to mind as I think of great games I have played. The first is Bloodbowl. Almost every game was tense and the teams tended to be balanced in that the better a team or player was at achieving the goal the worse it was at violence. Thus every model was usually better than its opposite at something.

In most skirmish games that balance breaks down. Combat is the only thing of value and the better model or unit is, well, better. Some would argue this is historically true, but it makes for a poor game. Plus factors other than a shooting or h-t-h skill do matter in real life. How to counter balance this? Honestly, I don't know yet.

The other game is Johnny Reb II - our games of yore tended to be epic in size and rather slow slugfests, but the shear number of die rolls could trigger some impressive cascading events as could the variability of the charges. Part of this variability also stemmed from the orders that were assigned at the start of a turn. in contrast most skirmish games allow figures/units to wander willy nilly on their turn/activation, fully responding to what has just happened.

It would be nice to see some sort of system where units had to strive for a goal regardless of the bedlam. One thought is initial goals such as defend this point or sieze that house where units get a bonus to move and morale as long as they don't move or keep moving, according to their initial orders.

Chase cards revisited - again

I loved the concept of the chase rules as first presented in Pathfinder but using them in play left me feeling that they were too linear - just a sequence of tests without any real decisions to make on the part of the participants.

My first attempts to rectify got too complicated all too quickly as I created cards that tracked the pursuit in 3 levels, street, balcony/low roof, and roof tops.

The more recent set of cards I am using rely on 4 decks; Streets, alleys, encounters, and rooftops. The street cards have a few intersections (3 of 24 cards), more crowds, and more blank cards. The advantage with these lies with faster participants and those with ranged weapons.

The alleys have more encounters (4 of  32), a lot more corners (6 of 32), and more intersections (8 of 32) as well as a larger range of specialty cards like dead ends.

The rooftop deck is intended to allow for the sneaky folks who want to go up - there is always a one in any group. The rooftop cards have a lot of Acrobat and Ref checks as well as some opportunity cards that allow for shortcuts or delays. On the flip side are some rules regarding crossing streets and alleys - rooftop cards are placed next to the normal cards and are interrupted by branching alleys or streets.

The encounter deck has a wide variety of chance encounters that can be used to help or hinder the chase.

Finally I included some options on a few of the cards - alleys for example may include additional checks for large creatures or folks on horseback.

The last thing I did was to print the cards out at a 3x5 size and use over sized card protectors - this makes them easier to read and more able to accommodate any miniatures being used.

In response to a TMP question, I am putting up a size comparison photo of some swashbuckling/TYW figs.
As always please ignore the crappy photo and painting.

left to right
Warlord -Rengade - Ral Partha - Redoubt - Tercio Creativo - Brigade

Except for the Tercio Creativo these all had integral bases that were glued to the washer.

More ZAMB

While it's on my mind here's some of Bryce's ad hoc artwork from this year's game that I mentioned in the last post.

Also, among the house rules I've been working on is a change in how the zombie attack works, rules for zombies affecting hunting pressure, allowing hunting of zombies instead of game to bring down the zed level, and possibly allowing the theft of victory points by allowing a player to skip the procreation phase and attempt to bond with an existing child. Player would need to roll 16 or higher on 3d6, +2 for watching the child, +1 for each other player attempting to lure the poor child away from its parent.

Miscon and Zombies Ate My Baby

Another Miscon ended with us playing ZAMB. Ten weeks later I still need to sort out some of the house rules, but a few things were immediately apparent;

• The rolls for crafters need to be changed to 3d6 instead of 1d6 for consistency
• We have tried several different ways for crafters to "cure" food - there needs to be a consistant method that doesn't vary too much. For next time it will be allocate 18 food and roll 3d6 the roll determines how many rations convert to non perishable, the rest are destroyed/lost.
• Bryce needs to do more drawings for the cards - they're great.
• Change the events table to 1 large one to be rolled and individual events that occur on doubles.
• Better zombie v tribe rules.
• Poker chips for food tokens. The record keeping system is sketchy and lends itself to  communal play while chips would make players feel they own what's in front of them.

Returning to the ACW2

After a several month long hiatus from miniature gaming I'm getting back into the swing of things.

First up will be a new mini ACW2 campaign, an alternate history civil war in 1930s US. Inspired by a plethora of period figures, the popular AVBCW games, and Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, and some other sources this is a tongue in cheek chance to use interwar equipment and all of the 1930s gangsters we've painted up..

 To get players back into this period here is a quick Newsreel cobbled together from real ones.

Another ship