Bloody Fields, Petty Kings

With the Game of Thrones campaign now at an end I am going forward with the rules as a more generic fantasy rules set, tentatively titled Bloody Fields, Petty Kings.

First - the focus; Like the GoT campaign, the rules will be for small level petty wars. Slightly larger than skirmish, but not mass battles. Too many fantasy rules try to include everything and I believe what is left out will be as important as what is left in. To that end it is assumed that;

1. The technology will be pre gunpowder, that sort of generic fantasy mish-mash time period.
2. The style of warfare is similar to all factions/races.
3. The battle rules should be able to play without campaign rules, but still be enhanced when they are included.

Also I need to remind myself of what I find engaging

1. The game should include both players at all times. Just rolling dice is not being included. There should be decision points at every stage of the turn and game.
2. All mechanisms should move the game forward and do so in a timely way.
3. Decisions should have meaning.
4. Tables are bad - I rely on them too much.

So what did I think worked last time?

1. The combat cards - I thought these worked well in concept (though bad in balance sometimes, ONSLAUGHT anybody?) because they allowed the player decision to be as important as the dice.
2. The surge - I still like the idea of limited command and control, even though I know it chaffed on others used to Warhammer.  For the initial move I want to go to what I discussed concerning an initial battle plan that has order chits - Hold, Take and Hold, Advance, and Withdraw probably. From there the game devolves into desperate measures to change the situation. To maintain this it is necessary for combat to be a tad bit less lethal.
3. Prebattle set up. It needs reworked for balance but the scouting and such seemed to flow smoothly.

And what didn't work?

• The combat was too lethal too fast and not very balanced.
• Army lists. These take a ton of balancing, so to help I would like to go with the broad asset method of selecting units.
• Rules on 3x5 cards. Sorry, this is purely a result of my distracted procrastination.
• Flying units - While the image of the charge of the Ghost Riders of Khos from Divine Right will forever be locked in my heart, flying is a powerful ability that has major implications for any game. Some brainstorming options to balance/hinder the ability include weaker units, can only fly once, easy to route,  hard to control, and high cost.
• Magic I am going to leave this one alone.
• Terrain needs to be better described in ability so that players are not too surprised.

As to new ideas;

1. Baggage
2. Unit cards
3. The storm of Doom

3d printed window

 I finally got a chance to use the Replicator II 3d printer the public library got. At some point soon this will be available to the general public, but for now you need to schedule a time.

Any way -the Replicator II at the library uses a hard PLA plastic. The good is that this is a hard plastic that should stand up well to gaming, downside is that hard plastics are harder to trim.

 

And as this super crappy picture shows, there can be a lot to trim. The fill is laid down in tiny ribbons of plastic at 45 degree angles. For some reason it left some over run in the window area - not on the file, but it still had to be removed.

 

After trimming I put a quick coat of grey craft paint on the window. As you can see there flat surfaces are not smooth and indeed show the 45 pattern of laying material down. Not a problem here but it didn't smooth out after I tried wiping it down with a dab of acetone.

 

Still it's good enough and I am going to get to work on the project and should be able to add some more baroque details.

 

File wise I did the project in Sketchup, scaled it down there, saved as a .dae file which then had to be converted to an .stl in meshlab and then made into a .x3g in makerware.

Forged in Blood playtest

As I get ready to playtest the TYW Forged in Blood from Mr. Boswell of http://shichitenhakki.wordpress.com/ I thought I'd post some inspirational movie scenes for the period for those not familiar with the period.

From Alatriste

From 1612

Looking at an old west town

 

 

While Missoula in the 1880's wasn't the roughest town in the west by any means, Front street was the center of a redlight district with a regional reputation. As I needed to track down some information and maps for another project I thought I would put this up here with some notes for Old West gamers as an example.

This isn't the most disreputable part of the street, I'll do that another day.

Remember that at this time and place brick is expensive while wood is cheap and readily available. By this point the town is nearing 20 years old and some of the original cabins and buildings have been moved back from the street and are being used as sheds or dwellings.


North side of Front Street from H.G. Wellges Birdseye view of Missoula, MT

In 1884 the north side of this block was along the Mullan trail and one block north of the Hellgate river and the original Missoula Mill that our town is named for.




1884 Sanborn Map of the same block

So to address some questions have come up lately on LAF -

Outhouses - these are marked W.C.
      1  Outside of the Kitchen of the Rodger's House
      2  In the shed complex (#4 1/2) behind the Rodger's House
      3  On the alley behind #37
      4  Attached to the Musical Storage building in the alley (#10 1/2)
      5  Behind the saloon at #30.
      6 The "Out HO." attached to the Law Office

Each building has a number denoting the number of stories (many of the "1"s look like 7) and an "x" denotes a shingle roof.

CL in a circle means the building had preprinted cloth wallpaper, nailed rather than glued.

The stone building at #2 Stevens and the cellar are the only two stone structures, the adobe saloon the only other non wood building.

Rules for the war

Part 1

Rather than using a purchased set of rules my inclination has been to write a set specific for our game. By write I mean borrow heavily from other sets. Here are some initial thoughts.

 

I     COMMAND

 

I enjoy rulesets where command is not automatic and players are not omniscient in regards to what their units can and will do. Plans must adapt to the flow of combat and must be able to adapt to do so.

 

The first part of this is changing the IGUGO turn framework some of our players are more used to for the now more fashionable sequence by card activation. To give the player some flexibility the cards will be generic to the one house or the other, not any specific unit.

The Breather card would be mixed in as well - it reshuffles the activation deck, so it is unlikely every unit would go in any one turn. It is possible to have a second random event deck to be triggered by the Breather card, but that would be down the road.

 

The cards are activating leaders, not units. Leaders then can lead or drive units under their command, inspire greatness, perform heroic acts, or simply dress their lines. In keeping with the nature of Game of Thrones and other such tales, it is the leaders that matter - the troops are instruments of their actions. By favoring leadership rather than combat I hope to avoid some of the pitfalls of the Herohammer complex. 

 

II      Combat

The card choice feature of the Game of Thrones board game has been popular with those of our group who have played it, so with that in mind my thought for combat is as follows;

 

1) Player Decisions - Charge into combat or slowly march then the defender decides to Stand and fight, counter charge, fall back, or even run away.

2) Each player plays a combat card from his hand, simultaneous reveal. I've included a couple of rough mock ups. 

3) Each player then rolls combat dice, losses are applied,

morale checked, then the winner drives the loser back.

Westeros in Montana

So it seems settled that the game will be a Westeros game inspired by Game of Thrones.


On the Lead Adventure Forum there has been much discussion of games using the Game of Thrones Westeros setting, and so as inspiration I put up a few of those threads

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=44719.0


http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=32433.0
http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=29561.0

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=41342.0

A low Fantasy Game

So last weeks Game of Thrones board game has given rise to the talk of a small miniatures campaign, either a GoT specific one or a broader low fantasy game.

It would be nice to play such a thing. I have several fantasy armies in various stages of completion that it would be nice to see on the table again, plus there have been some impressive displays on Lead Adventure Forum of adaptions of plastic minis to use for GoT.

For those who don't keep track of such things there has been a rash of plastic kits of late. Most of these come in boxes that cost only one or two dollars per figure, making a force a relatively cheap option compared to what some players are used to.

Conquest

Fireforge

Gripping Beast Dark Ages

Perry War of the Roses

Wargames Factory

Warlord

Using these and other figures as well as creative mixing of heads and arms a unique army can be built.

Rules wise there are many options, but there is much thinking to do on that subject.

Horror and the Thirty Years War

 

 

 

A bit of inspiration for the upcoming horror portion of the swashbuckling game day.

 

Forlorn Hope

A Swedish short film with Lovecraftian ties.

 

 

 

Devil's Blood

An English witch hunter and monster film

 

Also try to rent the Finnish movie Sauna

New church for Swashbuckling

To prove that I haven't been slacking, here are some work in progress photos of the church for the 1650 game in May.  The total thing is 7"x15" with a playable interior. I'm not sure I'll be able to get the bell tower finished in time, but the main building will be with the possible exception of a couple of icons on the front.

 

The confessional and an altar will probably be the only interior items - I had to exclude columns to make room for hands during gaming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll also do a new fountain for the Plaza and at least one other building. For scale, the minis in the second picture are a Reaper nun, Brigade lady De Winter, and Tercio Creativo swordsman.

Psycho?

Trying to verify if this fellow is the "Psycho" from the original pre rogue trader space pirates line.

2012 and 2013

Obligatory new year/past year respective - wish I'd gotten more done, hope to make next year better.

My new game room is working well, and I've found a lot of projects and missing bits as things have been cleaned and opened. That being said, I am hoping to game more this year and will try to more integrate preplanned games into my schedule.

On the to do list

More 28mm terrain for Morion wars, trying to finish off the 17th century village with all of those bits necessary for a good skirmish game

28mm French and Indian Wars, first up cabins and fields, which will also see double duty in February's Solomon Kane in Salem game

then indians for FIW if i can't find my others

15mm ACW and AWI need attention

Redo Zombies Ate my Babies before Miscon.

Possibly organize a minis table for Miscon, honestly a questionable venture if partners don't follow through. You know who you are so step up.

That'll take me through Spring