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

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.