A recent trip to my local GW netted me a graphic compendium worth commenting on.
Tales of Hellbrandt Grimm
Michael Scanlon and the Sharp brothers
GW: Black Library
Having taken up GM'ing WFRP2 in recent months, I have decided that it's time I read a bit more widely about the background than the 7 Gotrek and Felix novels I've read. Looking at the Black Library (BL) shelf in my local GW, I saw several interesting looking omnibus editions of other well-known series of novels. Then I caught sight of this little number: a pocketbook-sized TPB anthologising stories first published in the now defunct Warhammer Monthly (WM). Result!
I remember reading the first few episodes of this story in the special 1st birthday issue of WM, the first couple of dozen of issues of which I collected. Those first issues were a real mixed bag IMO. Some of the strips were pretty good, others were really quite bad. (This opinion of mine wasn't widely shared: WM won the 'Best New Comic' award in the National Comics Awards in 1999).
The first WM monthly strip that really caught my attention was 'The Redeemer', by the legendary Pat Mills, of 2000AD and 'Judge Dredd' fame. This strip captured the full zealous insanity of the world of the Dark Millenium, which has long been my main interest in the sphere of GW ttg's. It was the first strip that I felt really achieved this, presenting the setting and its characters with the requisite whacked-out humour and proper comicbook stylings. This is hardly surprising really. 2000AD was a major influence on the GW crew that gave us WFB and 40K, so it is hardly surprising that a leading light from that classic British comic should be the first to get properly under the skin of the Dark Millenium in WM.
All the same, I can still remember the first of the 'Tales of Hellbrandt Grimm' in the 1st birthday special issue of WM given away with the White Dwarf. As with all the other Warhammer strips in WM, this had little impact on me because of my interest in 40K et al.
So it has been with some pleasure that I have been discovering what I had missed.
The first thing I liked about Tales of Hellbrandt Grimm (ToHG) was its pocketbook size. This is neat and portable, which is just nice IMO. It also reminds me of the Commando Comics I used to read as a kid: WW2 action comics published by the infamous DC Thompson, best known for The Beano, The Dandy, and the inimitable The Sunday Post.
The next thing I liked about ToHG was, well pretty much everything else. A hardbitten and ruthless- not to mention surely downright evil- mercenary, Grimm is kind of a 'man with no name' of the Warhammer Old World. Most of his adventures are recounted by some storyteller or other, most notably some 'hapless' prisoner of a dungeon.
Grim and gritty, with evocative titles like 'A Long Way of Dying', or 'Some Swift and Brutal Hand', these are classic 'sting-in-the-tail' stories that really get to the heart of the unique feel of the Warhammer Old World. Backing them up are tales of 'Liliana Falcone: Bird of Prey'- which shows the range of stories that can fit into the Old World; a taster and script for 'Wolf Country'- which would've been Grimm's experience of the Storm of Chaos event that underpins the revived WFRP setting; and a one-off crossover quirk featuring 'Inquisitor Hellbrandt Grimm'.
These stories are well written, nicely drawn, and an atmospheric evocation of the Old World just chock full of characters and plot ideas for WFRP GM's. My only complaint about it is that, in the reduction from standard comicbook to pocketbook size, the lettering has become difficult to read, to the point of almost giving this reader eyestrain.
That old fart's gripe aside, I cannot recommend Tales of Hellbrandt Grimm too highly, for lovers of comics, dark fantasy, and WFRP alike. Good reading everyone.
And yes, I know ToHG is black and white, so not strictly 4-colour. Please direct your complaints to a certain H. Grimm, esquire, care of the Black Library. ;)
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Friday, September 09, 2005
Meanwhile...
Tony came round yesterday for another session brainstorming our future roleplaying campaigns.
We're still working up the key NPC's for the new superhero campaign we want to put together. We now know who they are, and where they come from. We got as far as putting together a HERO species package deal for Tony's character.
After that, we turned to our copies of the D&D PHB and tried out rolling up a couple of characters. I'd done this once before several years ago, but this was my first go with v3.5. Tony had never seen the d20 D&D in action before. I ended up with a fairly decent fighter. Tony got a slightly less noteworthy rogue. Nostalgia buzzes aside (for Tony, it had been a long time since he had generated any kind of D&D characters at all), we both agreed that the new system looks very good.
We liked the addition of proper skills lists, which was particularly notable with the rogue, who had nearly twice as many skill points as the fighter- a nice piece of balance we thought. For my part, I was delighted to discover that a 1st level human fighter starts with 3 feats; all the more so when I saw the list of feats from which I could choose. I ended up with power attack, and 15HP- 15HP at 1st level?- woot!
Overall, we were both favourably impressed with the logic and coherence of the new core mechanics. Also, working as we were from a v3 and a v3.5 PHB, we began to get some idea of the differences between the 2 editions. Aside from the improved layout to the various character creation tables, we noticed a few small but significant changes to the skills lists. At the end of the day, on the strength of just the generation of a single character each, we both knew that we were looking forward to visiting roleplaying haunts old and new using the d20 system.
Later I passed a pleasant couple of hours watching the 1963 romantic thriller Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The cast also features a growling Walter Matthau and the young James Coburn and George Kennedy.
This is fine wee movie. The dialogue is sharp, witty, and amusing; the plot full of neat twists that can survive multiple viewings. And no matter how soppy the romance got it didn't matter for me, because with Hepburn as the female romantic lead- in a role that would be very difficult to write today (if not outright impossible?); well, I just couldn't resist seeing her getting her happy ending, even in the face of cloying saccharine sweetness. Although, truth to tell, it's not all that bad sometimes in any case.
It was also nice watching much younger versions of movie actors I have enjoyed in many other films.
Most striking for me though probably was seeing Cary Grant playing another light action-hero. As was explained to me many years ago: although better known for his light romantic comedies, Grant was a very credible light action-hero, by virtue of his being a stage acrobat in his early career. Consider him in Hitchcock's classic North by Northwest. There is something convincing about the way he moves that- in a way similar to the young Sean Connery as James Bond- makes Grant look right for the part (though he doesn't have Connery's air of barely subdued violent menace).
These same qualities are on dsplay in Charade, especially when he's sprinting about to rescue the delightful Hepburn from peril. Watch the way he uses the objects around him, grabbing hold of railings and the like to redirect his movements say. Little touches like these mean that you can easily believe that, beneath the familiar debonair leading man who is so justly famous, there lurks a steely core that could credibly survive the classic 'ordinary people in extraordinary situations' thriller subgenre of which Charade is a fine example.
From a gamer's point-of-view? Well, there is a nice mystery plot to lift- although I would expect your average group of PC's to be the bad guys from this movie! More than that, it strikes me that this kind of light thriller is perfect fodder for a one-off or mini-series using a rules-light system. Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes (the modern-era version of the venerable Tunnels and Trolls) is a game I know was written largely for this purpose. I wonder what's been done in this vein in the subsequent 2 decades?
We're still working up the key NPC's for the new superhero campaign we want to put together. We now know who they are, and where they come from. We got as far as putting together a HERO species package deal for Tony's character.
After that, we turned to our copies of the D&D PHB and tried out rolling up a couple of characters. I'd done this once before several years ago, but this was my first go with v3.5. Tony had never seen the d20 D&D in action before. I ended up with a fairly decent fighter. Tony got a slightly less noteworthy rogue. Nostalgia buzzes aside (for Tony, it had been a long time since he had generated any kind of D&D characters at all), we both agreed that the new system looks very good.
We liked the addition of proper skills lists, which was particularly notable with the rogue, who had nearly twice as many skill points as the fighter- a nice piece of balance we thought. For my part, I was delighted to discover that a 1st level human fighter starts with 3 feats; all the more so when I saw the list of feats from which I could choose. I ended up with power attack, and 15HP- 15HP at 1st level?- woot!
Overall, we were both favourably impressed with the logic and coherence of the new core mechanics. Also, working as we were from a v3 and a v3.5 PHB, we began to get some idea of the differences between the 2 editions. Aside from the improved layout to the various character creation tables, we noticed a few small but significant changes to the skills lists. At the end of the day, on the strength of just the generation of a single character each, we both knew that we were looking forward to visiting roleplaying haunts old and new using the d20 system.
Later I passed a pleasant couple of hours watching the 1963 romantic thriller Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The cast also features a growling Walter Matthau and the young James Coburn and George Kennedy.
This is fine wee movie. The dialogue is sharp, witty, and amusing; the plot full of neat twists that can survive multiple viewings. And no matter how soppy the romance got it didn't matter for me, because with Hepburn as the female romantic lead- in a role that would be very difficult to write today (if not outright impossible?); well, I just couldn't resist seeing her getting her happy ending, even in the face of cloying saccharine sweetness. Although, truth to tell, it's not all that bad sometimes in any case.
It was also nice watching much younger versions of movie actors I have enjoyed in many other films.
Most striking for me though probably was seeing Cary Grant playing another light action-hero. As was explained to me many years ago: although better known for his light romantic comedies, Grant was a very credible light action-hero, by virtue of his being a stage acrobat in his early career. Consider him in Hitchcock's classic North by Northwest. There is something convincing about the way he moves that- in a way similar to the young Sean Connery as James Bond- makes Grant look right for the part (though he doesn't have Connery's air of barely subdued violent menace).
These same qualities are on dsplay in Charade, especially when he's sprinting about to rescue the delightful Hepburn from peril. Watch the way he uses the objects around him, grabbing hold of railings and the like to redirect his movements say. Little touches like these mean that you can easily believe that, beneath the familiar debonair leading man who is so justly famous, there lurks a steely core that could credibly survive the classic 'ordinary people in extraordinary situations' thriller subgenre of which Charade is a fine example.
From a gamer's point-of-view? Well, there is a nice mystery plot to lift- although I would expect your average group of PC's to be the bad guys from this movie! More than that, it strikes me that this kind of light thriller is perfect fodder for a one-off or mini-series using a rules-light system. Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes (the modern-era version of the venerable Tunnels and Trolls) is a game I know was written largely for this purpose. I wonder what's been done in this vein in the subsequent 2 decades?
Thursday, September 08, 2005
A rash of enthusiasm...
... For Memoir'44
Part 2: The Elements of Fire and Movement
Basic fire and movement of tanks and infantry
Disregarding terrain effects for the moment, the basic fire and movement rules for tanks and infantry can be summed-up as follows:
All of which contrasts nicely with tanks' ability to zip around much faster, always able to bring their full firepower to bear, because they have cannons.
It is obviously technically inaccurate that there is nothing in the rules to reflect the effect of range on the accuracy of tanks' guns, but the point here is to represent the relative prowess of these 2 fundamental arms of fire and movement on the WW2 battlefield.
The smoothly modelled expression of these relative strengths is deepened by the simple fact that infantry units have 4 models, while tanks have only 3. This means that, all things being equal, it will take any unit a minimum of 2 turns of good shooting to destroy an enemy infantry unit. Tanks, on the other hand, always face the chance of being destroyed by a single good turn's shooting by any unit firing with full firepower.
In addition to this, there are 3/6 kill results on a battle dice against infantry, as opposed to 2/6 versus tanks.
So, without even considering the effects of range and cover, the basic structures of Borg's system of fire and movement give a nice feel for:
In a rule that will be familiar to grognards everywhere, if a battle at 1-hex range (a.k.a. 'close assault') results in the target hex being empty for any reason, the firing unit may advance into the vacated hex. More than that, if the advancing unit is a tank unit, it might well be able to conduct an overrun attack, which is another attack at an eligible target (which could be the same or a different unit according to circumstances).
This rule is the key to tank tactics in M44, and it is the rule which most neatly conveys how dangerous massed armour is in open country. If you can get several tank units in among the enemy, you can wreak utter havoc in no time at all. Or you can have them cut off, surrounded, and destroyed. The effects of this on play are just plain brilliant, everything would-be Rommels and Pattons could wish for.
Already then we can see that, with rules that could literally be written on the back of an envelope, Borg has given a finely nuanuced rendering of the fundamental aspects of fire and movement of tanks and infantry on the WW2 battlefield. His approach isn't to present each in painstaking detail. Instead he presents the distinguishing features of each relative to the other in a form appropriate to the fast and fluid game he wants us to play.
Terrain effects on movement
One thing that is missing from M44 is that mechanism familiar from so many other simulationist boardgames: a table of terrain effects on movement expressed in terms of various deductions from movement factors according to unit and terrain types.
M44's approach to this is much simpler. In M44, terrain typically either:
The point here is that the M44 player represents anything from a company to a divisional commander depending on the scenario, though I would suggest that most games put you in the seat of a brigade/regimental commander. What I mean to say is that, at that level of command and degree of remove from the sharp end, the tactical details of terrain effects on movement are quite irrelevant. What would be important are the general effects of the different terrain features on your manoeuvre elements. This is what the above-noted effects do: terrain either having no effect on your units; slowing them down; or really slowing them down and requiring a potentially risky approach march.
A neat feature of these rules is the effect of terrain like towns and woods. These allow any unit to enter such terrain while moving at full tilt, only to be reduced to a 1-hex/turn crawl thereafter. This gives a great feel for cover beckoning to and welcoming your units, but bogging them down thereafter.
It also has to be noted that these rules for terrain effects on movement are more or less essential in a game in which the regulation infantry move is 2 hexes. Cut it no matter how you will, traditional mechanics for dealing with this decisive feature of warfare couldn't've worked. But that's not a matter of authenticity as such, so I won't be pursuing this point here.
Terrain effects on combat
This subject falls into 3 categories:
Moving fire
The M44 rules for terrain effects on the fire of moving units are quite simple: some terrain types - eg. towns and woods- prohibit fire the same turn that a unit enters those terrain features; others - eg. hills - don't. At first sight I guess some might find this overly constraining. I know I did, at first sight. It could be argued that it allows for a measure of opportunity fire by the enemy as your units take up their firing positions. I wouldn't find this persuasive though, because the same cannot be said of moving in the open, a situation in which this kind of enemy fire would be all the more likely.
For me, this is once again all a matter of enforcing the POV offered by the cardplay command and control. The effect of these rules on play is that you typically have to plan at least 2 turns in advance to get the full effect of advancing to a covered firing position - the best such positions at least. That is:
LOS
The M44 LOS rules are a simple variant of the Squad Leader hex-centre to hex-centre rules. Most terrain features, and all units, block LOS traced through their hexes. The authenticity lies in the fact that this enforces careful disposition of your units to avoid them getting in each others' way. The simplicity lies in the fact that the short ranges over which LOS is traced mean that you can eyeball this without ever actually having to trace a line from centrepoint to centrepoint.
Cover
Though it's not unique, perhaps the most striking feature of terrain as cover in M44 is that each terrain type's cover is defined according to the firer's unit type, not the target's unit type. This is striking because it is in some sense counter-intuitive, or so it would seem from the simple fact that these rules are those which have caused the most confusion among the people I have introduced to the game. That's still not very much confusion at all, but it has been enough to be notable.
Terrain as cover in M44 takes 2 forms:
Firepower reductions can be summed up as: always a reduction of 1; unless you've got tanks firing into certain types of 'dense' terrain- eg. towns and woods- in which case it's 2.
The effect of this is to cap the basic structure of fire and movement with rules that make tanks pretty useless against those 'dense' terrain types, where their impressive 3 firepower will always be 1. Infantry, on the other hand, can close in for a respectable 2. What we have then is a smooth rendering of the reality that, in close terrain, you really need to send your infantry in to winkle out the enemy.
Add in such things as the need for infantry to close to medium range (ie. 2 hexes) to have any effect at all on units in cover, or the still juicy 2 firepower tanks enjoy against more open terrain types, eg. hills, and you can see that M44's 3 simple layers of rules: basic fire and movement, terrain effects on movement, and terrain effects on combat; all unite to give a rendering of its subject matter in which all the distinctive elements interact to give a degree of authentic detail that belies the game's simplicity.
All of which is enhanced by a degree of sheer playability which I believe is itself an aspect of the game's simulationist credentials, but that's for another day. ;)
Related@RD/KA!
- Part 1: Another hymn of praise to cardplay
- Part 3: A few little details
- Part 4: The authenticity of sheer playability
Part 2: The Elements of Fire and Movement
Basic fire and movement of tanks and infantry
Disregarding terrain effects for the moment, the basic fire and movement rules for tanks and infantry can be summed-up as follows:- Infantry can move 1 hex and fire ('battle' in Borg's terms), or 2 and not.
- Infantry firepower ('battle dice' in Borg's terms) is 3/2/1 at ranges 1/2/3, respectively.
- Tanks can move up to 3 hexes and still fire, and always with their full 3 firepower.
All of which contrasts nicely with tanks' ability to zip around much faster, always able to bring their full firepower to bear, because they have cannons.
It is obviously technically inaccurate that there is nothing in the rules to reflect the effect of range on the accuracy of tanks' guns, but the point here is to represent the relative prowess of these 2 fundamental arms of fire and movement on the WW2 battlefield.
The smoothly modelled expression of these relative strengths is deepened by the simple fact that infantry units have 4 models, while tanks have only 3. This means that, all things being equal, it will take any unit a minimum of 2 turns of good shooting to destroy an enemy infantry unit. Tanks, on the other hand, always face the chance of being destroyed by a single good turn's shooting by any unit firing with full firepower.
In addition to this, there are 3/6 kill results on a battle dice against infantry, as opposed to 2/6 versus tanks.
So, without even considering the effects of range and cover, the basic structures of Borg's system of fire and movement give a nice feel for:
- The vulnerability of the infantryman on the battlefield relative to the armoured tank;
- The survivability of infantry units, by virtue of their numbers; which tank units don't enjoy because their numbers are always smaller.
In a rule that will be familiar to grognards everywhere, if a battle at 1-hex range (a.k.a. 'close assault') results in the target hex being empty for any reason, the firing unit may advance into the vacated hex. More than that, if the advancing unit is a tank unit, it might well be able to conduct an overrun attack, which is another attack at an eligible target (which could be the same or a different unit according to circumstances).
This rule is the key to tank tactics in M44, and it is the rule which most neatly conveys how dangerous massed armour is in open country. If you can get several tank units in among the enemy, you can wreak utter havoc in no time at all. Or you can have them cut off, surrounded, and destroyed. The effects of this on play are just plain brilliant, everything would-be Rommels and Pattons could wish for.
Already then we can see that, with rules that could literally be written on the back of an envelope, Borg has given a finely nuanuced rendering of the fundamental aspects of fire and movement of tanks and infantry on the WW2 battlefield. His approach isn't to present each in painstaking detail. Instead he presents the distinguishing features of each relative to the other in a form appropriate to the fast and fluid game he wants us to play.
Terrain effects on movement
One thing that is missing from M44 is that mechanism familiar from so many other simulationist boardgames: a table of terrain effects on movement expressed in terms of various deductions from movement factors according to unit and terrain types.
M44's approach to this is much simpler. In M44, terrain typically either:
- Has no effect on movement at all, eg. hills.
- Stops further movement upon entry, eg. towns and woods.
- As above, plus you must start adjacent to the feature to enter it at all, and/or may only exit it to an adjacent hex, eg. hedgerows.
The point here is that the M44 player represents anything from a company to a divisional commander depending on the scenario, though I would suggest that most games put you in the seat of a brigade/regimental commander. What I mean to say is that, at that level of command and degree of remove from the sharp end, the tactical details of terrain effects on movement are quite irrelevant. What would be important are the general effects of the different terrain features on your manoeuvre elements. This is what the above-noted effects do: terrain either having no effect on your units; slowing them down; or really slowing them down and requiring a potentially risky approach march.
A neat feature of these rules is the effect of terrain like towns and woods. These allow any unit to enter such terrain while moving at full tilt, only to be reduced to a 1-hex/turn crawl thereafter. This gives a great feel for cover beckoning to and welcoming your units, but bogging them down thereafter.
It also has to be noted that these rules for terrain effects on movement are more or less essential in a game in which the regulation infantry move is 2 hexes. Cut it no matter how you will, traditional mechanics for dealing with this decisive feature of warfare couldn't've worked. But that's not a matter of authenticity as such, so I won't be pursuing this point here.
Terrain effects on combat
This subject falls into 3 categories:
- Moving fire.
- LOS.
- Cover.
Moving fire
The M44 rules for terrain effects on the fire of moving units are quite simple: some terrain types - eg. towns and woods- prohibit fire the same turn that a unit enters those terrain features; others - eg. hills - don't. At first sight I guess some might find this overly constraining. I know I did, at first sight. It could be argued that it allows for a measure of opportunity fire by the enemy as your units take up their firing positions. I wouldn't find this persuasive though, because the same cannot be said of moving in the open, a situation in which this kind of enemy fire would be all the more likely.
For me, this is once again all a matter of enforcing the POV offered by the cardplay command and control. The effect of these rules on play is that you typically have to plan at least 2 turns in advance to get the full effect of advancing to a covered firing position - the best such positions at least. That is:
- An order to get into position.
- Another order to open fire.
LOS
The M44 LOS rules are a simple variant of the Squad Leader hex-centre to hex-centre rules. Most terrain features, and all units, block LOS traced through their hexes. The authenticity lies in the fact that this enforces careful disposition of your units to avoid them getting in each others' way. The simplicity lies in the fact that the short ranges over which LOS is traced mean that you can eyeball this without ever actually having to trace a line from centrepoint to centrepoint.
Cover
Though it's not unique, perhaps the most striking feature of terrain as cover in M44 is that each terrain type's cover is defined according to the firer's unit type, not the target's unit type. This is striking because it is in some sense counter-intuitive, or so it would seem from the simple fact that these rules are those which have caused the most confusion among the people I have introduced to the game. That's still not very much confusion at all, but it has been enough to be notable.
Terrain as cover in M44 takes 2 forms:
- Firepower reductions.
- Ignoring the 1st flag result in combat (the flag results are retreats).
Firepower reductions can be summed up as: always a reduction of 1; unless you've got tanks firing into certain types of 'dense' terrain- eg. towns and woods- in which case it's 2.
The effect of this is to cap the basic structure of fire and movement with rules that make tanks pretty useless against those 'dense' terrain types, where their impressive 3 firepower will always be 1. Infantry, on the other hand, can close in for a respectable 2. What we have then is a smooth rendering of the reality that, in close terrain, you really need to send your infantry in to winkle out the enemy.
Add in such things as the need for infantry to close to medium range (ie. 2 hexes) to have any effect at all on units in cover, or the still juicy 2 firepower tanks enjoy against more open terrain types, eg. hills, and you can see that M44's 3 simple layers of rules: basic fire and movement, terrain effects on movement, and terrain effects on combat; all unite to give a rendering of its subject matter in which all the distinctive elements interact to give a degree of authentic detail that belies the game's simplicity.
All of which is enhanced by a degree of sheer playability which I believe is itself an aspect of the game's simulationist credentials, but that's for another day. ;)
Related@RD/KA!
- Part 1: Another hymn of praise to cardplay
- Part 3: A few little details
- Part 4: The authenticity of sheer playability
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Got game
'Gamer mauled by badger!'
A bumper week's gaming for yours truly last week. I invited a couple of other friends to the session with Antony already recounted. Neither could make it. So I was pleased when one of them got in touch to see if he could come round Friday. He could. He did.
Badger is a natural-born gamer. Roleplaying doesn't interest him in the slightest, but give him a tactical conundrum, and look out! In fact he is, in this respect, very much like his namesake: a genial appearance concealing a vicious streak (at the table I mean of course!).
So, first thing on the agenda was to try out my new freebie...
Anachronism
What can I say about this wee game, produced by TriKing? Well, I can say that it is very nicely produced; that the website is very nice (I wouldn't recommend the Flash version myself though); and that I am just so utterly impressed at their chutzpah in getting a sponsorship deal from The History Channel. How on earth did they manage this I wonder?
But what about the game itself?
It is a game of arena duelling, played on a 4x4 square-gridded arena. The rules are simple and can be picked up in 10 minutes or less. Each player has a warrior- a card that is their playing piece, which enters and moves about the arena; and 4 support cards- these can be weapons, powers, special equipment, and so on.
Apart from that each warrior has some simple stats: wounds; actions/turn; an experience rating for tie-breaking; and damage (ie. how hard they hit). Each warrior (and any weapons they might have among their support cards) also has a combat grid. This shows the 8 squares that surround the warrior, if they can attack into those squares, and what the modifier to attacks made into those squares is (combat is attacker's 2d6 plus grid mod against defender's 2d6; other modifiers from support cards might apply).
To set the game up you put your warrior in his start grid (any 1 of the 4 squares on your side of the arena), and put your 4 support cards face down from left to right. This is a key part of the game: each bout lasts 5 turns; turns 1-4 begin with a new card being revealed. Some cards have immediate and/or once only effects; some can be used essentially whenever you wish; and others can be reused but can only be used once per turn. The order in which you choose to reveal your warrior's support cards to avail yourself of their abilities is therefore crucial.
That's about it. Except: you win by having the most wounds left at the end of the game (ie. this isn't a 'reach 0 and die' game). And so off we went.
Long story short: I took Beowulf to start with against Badger's Miyamoto Musashi. Got whipped. We swapped sides and fought to a draw. Badger thought that he had won this one, but I pointed out that there are no death rules in the game, and so was able to fight him to 0 wounds for the tie. Then we mixed up the support cards to bring a bit of variation for another. Badger wins again, with Miyamoto again.
This is a really neat little game. It is fast, furious, and tactical. The range of support cards is logical (if they are obvious things like weapons) and interesting (all the other stuff). The combos they offer make for sneaky tricks and tense dice rolling both. And they certainly make you want to buy more packs, because it has to be said that the replay value of just 2 warriors with a mere 4 support cards each is about as low as it can be without being nil. Unsurprisingly TriKing offer a wide range of other warriors from the classic warrior peoples of old, some of which had Badger enthusing loudly.
If that's the good stuff, do I have any complaints? Yes. Small ones, but complaints they are nonetheless.
0-2
Memoir'44
Woot! More M44! Badger is very good at this game. AFAIK this was his introduction to wargames (as opposed to Eurogames that is). We already have an ongoing rivalry. So we both approached Friday's games ready for a hard fight, and hoping for crushing victories for the sake of maximum gloating rights.
Random selection of scenario and sides left me playing the Germans against Badger's Americans in #14: Arracourt. Lovely I thought: lots and lots of tanks (all of them in fact). Against my 8 tank and 6 infantry units Badger's Yanks had arrayed: 6 tank, 5 infantry, and 3 artillery units (ie. all of them). These last in particular could range in on my forces as soon as they crossed their start line. Two American tank units and 1 infantry unit could fire on my lads even before they moved.
I was going to have fun then, but I was going to suffer too. And I did.
For me these games were all about tank tactics. With their manoeuvrability, firepower, and the overrun rules, tanks in M44 are units that you can throw forward and use to rip great holes in your enemy's lines at a moment's notice. But these flexible armoured spearheads only work in open country, and if their attacks fail, or peter out, they can get caught in the open and destroyed equally quickly.
And that's what happened in the first game. My armoured spearhead formed up, went in, and Badger's units simply refused to die at the mopping-up stage. Units of 1 or 2 models would suffer hails of 4, 5, 6 or even more dice and just sit there, mocking me. And then he pulled out some perfect ripostes, to devestating effect.
Just after my tanks had crashed into Badger's left flank and done what they were supposed to do, I remember grinning evilly at him and pronouncing him doomed. My words proved hollow. Badger's lads held the line and pipped me at the post for final victory. I maintain that fortune favoured him overall in this game, but, well...
There was only one thing to do: try again. This time everything went right, and my tanks did their job. It was still damn close though.
1-3.
Up Front
Badger had his introduction to UF last year, winning 2 very creditable victories against me (the 2nd was all his own work btw). So I felt I had a point to prove last Friday. As ever with a beginner for an opponent, I suggested the basic Patrol, expecting Badger to plump for the Germans again.
Nope, he went for the Japanese, who have the hardest hand to master of the 5 nationalities with which I am familiar (I never did manage to get my hands on Desert War). Brave? Foolish? Time would tell. Myself, I briefly pondered taking the Russians, but no, I wanted solid and dependable firepower for the sake of a sure victory, so I took the British.
Off we went.
Badger's firebase got stuck in wire early deck 1, where they stayed for some 2 decks in all. But he cleverly advanced his manoeuvre group to range chit 3 which brought them to RR3 to my own firebase, from where they could support his hapless machine gun team. As a result of this the game went into an unexpected 2nd deck.
Having retrieved this situation, Badger then went on to throw his assault group forward for a range chit 4 positional victory. The veteran sergeant Vasey was ready for this though: I slapped down 3 movement cards to infiltrate my own 'assault' group to stave off defeat. A combination of hefty firepower from my firebase and good close combat finished off the Japanese bayonet men, and I was sure the game was in the bag at that point.
Still, the game had gone into an even more unexpected 3rd deck(?!). The finale was brutal, and colourful: a wounded Okimoto and a MG-wielding Togo did the Butch and Sundance thing, and just up and charged. Cue hail of gunfire and a broken Japanese squad.
This was a great game, full of incident and tension. Badger's instinctively smart play and coolheadedness under fire also suggests to me that a certain Mr. Lumsden might have to look to his laurels when it comes to being the king of the Japanese in UF.
Final score on the night:
2-3.
OUCH!
Final note: thanks again to Gary, from Highlander Games in Dundee for providing me with my copy of Anachronism.
A bumper week's gaming for yours truly last week. I invited a couple of other friends to the session with Antony already recounted. Neither could make it. So I was pleased when one of them got in touch to see if he could come round Friday. He could. He did.
Badger is a natural-born gamer. Roleplaying doesn't interest him in the slightest, but give him a tactical conundrum, and look out! In fact he is, in this respect, very much like his namesake: a genial appearance concealing a vicious streak (at the table I mean of course!).
So, first thing on the agenda was to try out my new freebie...
Anachronism
What can I say about this wee game, produced by TriKing? Well, I can say that it is very nicely produced; that the website is very nice (I wouldn't recommend the Flash version myself though); and that I am just so utterly impressed at their chutzpah in getting a sponsorship deal from The History Channel. How on earth did they manage this I wonder?But what about the game itself?
It is a game of arena duelling, played on a 4x4 square-gridded arena. The rules are simple and can be picked up in 10 minutes or less. Each player has a warrior- a card that is their playing piece, which enters and moves about the arena; and 4 support cards- these can be weapons, powers, special equipment, and so on.
Apart from that each warrior has some simple stats: wounds; actions/turn; an experience rating for tie-breaking; and damage (ie. how hard they hit). Each warrior (and any weapons they might have among their support cards) also has a combat grid. This shows the 8 squares that surround the warrior, if they can attack into those squares, and what the modifier to attacks made into those squares is (combat is attacker's 2d6 plus grid mod against defender's 2d6; other modifiers from support cards might apply).
To set the game up you put your warrior in his start grid (any 1 of the 4 squares on your side of the arena), and put your 4 support cards face down from left to right. This is a key part of the game: each bout lasts 5 turns; turns 1-4 begin with a new card being revealed. Some cards have immediate and/or once only effects; some can be used essentially whenever you wish; and others can be reused but can only be used once per turn. The order in which you choose to reveal your warrior's support cards to avail yourself of their abilities is therefore crucial.
That's about it. Except: you win by having the most wounds left at the end of the game (ie. this isn't a 'reach 0 and die' game). And so off we went.
Long story short: I took Beowulf to start with against Badger's Miyamoto Musashi. Got whipped. We swapped sides and fought to a draw. Badger thought that he had won this one, but I pointed out that there are no death rules in the game, and so was able to fight him to 0 wounds for the tie. Then we mixed up the support cards to bring a bit of variation for another. Badger wins again, with Miyamoto again.
This is a really neat little game. It is fast, furious, and tactical. The range of support cards is logical (if they are obvious things like weapons) and interesting (all the other stuff). The combos they offer make for sneaky tricks and tense dice rolling both. And they certainly make you want to buy more packs, because it has to be said that the replay value of just 2 warriors with a mere 4 support cards each is about as low as it can be without being nil. Unsurprisingly TriKing offer a wide range of other warriors from the classic warrior peoples of old, some of which had Badger enthusing loudly.
If that's the good stuff, do I have any complaints? Yes. Small ones, but complaints they are nonetheless.
- Some of the printing on the cards makes key stats hard to read- graphic design that is a bit too flash for its own good if you like.
- The no-death thing isn't explained. At one point in our games Badger thought I was dead and the game was over. I explained that there are no death rules in this game, so that I was still standing. We got on OK with this, but I can imagine how fraught a moment this might've been elsewhere. Not good IMO.
0-2
Memoir'44
Woot! More M44! Badger is very good at this game. AFAIK this was his introduction to wargames (as opposed to Eurogames that is). We already have an ongoing rivalry. So we both approached Friday's games ready for a hard fight, and hoping for crushing victories for the sake of maximum gloating rights.Random selection of scenario and sides left me playing the Germans against Badger's Americans in #14: Arracourt. Lovely I thought: lots and lots of tanks (all of them in fact). Against my 8 tank and 6 infantry units Badger's Yanks had arrayed: 6 tank, 5 infantry, and 3 artillery units (ie. all of them). These last in particular could range in on my forces as soon as they crossed their start line. Two American tank units and 1 infantry unit could fire on my lads even before they moved.
I was going to have fun then, but I was going to suffer too. And I did.
For me these games were all about tank tactics. With their manoeuvrability, firepower, and the overrun rules, tanks in M44 are units that you can throw forward and use to rip great holes in your enemy's lines at a moment's notice. But these flexible armoured spearheads only work in open country, and if their attacks fail, or peter out, they can get caught in the open and destroyed equally quickly.
And that's what happened in the first game. My armoured spearhead formed up, went in, and Badger's units simply refused to die at the mopping-up stage. Units of 1 or 2 models would suffer hails of 4, 5, 6 or even more dice and just sit there, mocking me. And then he pulled out some perfect ripostes, to devestating effect.
Just after my tanks had crashed into Badger's left flank and done what they were supposed to do, I remember grinning evilly at him and pronouncing him doomed. My words proved hollow. Badger's lads held the line and pipped me at the post for final victory. I maintain that fortune favoured him overall in this game, but, well...
There was only one thing to do: try again. This time everything went right, and my tanks did their job. It was still damn close though.
1-3.
Up Front
Badger had his introduction to UF last year, winning 2 very creditable victories against me (the 2nd was all his own work btw). So I felt I had a point to prove last Friday. As ever with a beginner for an opponent, I suggested the basic Patrol, expecting Badger to plump for the Germans again.Nope, he went for the Japanese, who have the hardest hand to master of the 5 nationalities with which I am familiar (I never did manage to get my hands on Desert War). Brave? Foolish? Time would tell. Myself, I briefly pondered taking the Russians, but no, I wanted solid and dependable firepower for the sake of a sure victory, so I took the British.
Off we went.
Badger's firebase got stuck in wire early deck 1, where they stayed for some 2 decks in all. But he cleverly advanced his manoeuvre group to range chit 3 which brought them to RR3 to my own firebase, from where they could support his hapless machine gun team. As a result of this the game went into an unexpected 2nd deck.
Having retrieved this situation, Badger then went on to throw his assault group forward for a range chit 4 positional victory. The veteran sergeant Vasey was ready for this though: I slapped down 3 movement cards to infiltrate my own 'assault' group to stave off defeat. A combination of hefty firepower from my firebase and good close combat finished off the Japanese bayonet men, and I was sure the game was in the bag at that point.
Still, the game had gone into an even more unexpected 3rd deck(?!). The finale was brutal, and colourful: a wounded Okimoto and a MG-wielding Togo did the Butch and Sundance thing, and just up and charged. Cue hail of gunfire and a broken Japanese squad.
This was a great game, full of incident and tension. Badger's instinctively smart play and coolheadedness under fire also suggests to me that a certain Mr. Lumsden might have to look to his laurels when it comes to being the king of the Japanese in UF.
Final score on the night:
2-3.
OUCH!
Final note: thanks again to Gary, from Highlander Games in Dundee for providing me with my copy of Anachronism.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
My little Old World
We strike a bum note
Well, it just had to happen- in fact a friend warned me that it would: sooner or later a session would fall flat, leaving most if not all of us dissatisfied and frustrated. And that's what happened Sunday last, by unanimous consensus. Striving for a note of levity as we broke up to go our separate ways on Sunday evening, I suggested that the session could be titled 'Poor Marching Ordure'. If anyone was amused they didn't show it. I guess the painful experience was just too fresh.
To tell the truth I guess I'm relieved to have got that particular moment out of the way. I mean to say, it being essentially inevitable, then the sooner we- as a group- suffered and recovered from a bad session, the better, it would seem to me. All the same, I do really rather wish that it hadn't happened Sunday past, at the climax of the Morten murder case, and during my first ever session GM'ing a party through the legendary sewers of the Empire in the Warhammer Old World.
I'm not going to bother here conducting a detailed post-mortem of all the mistakes I made. Sufficeth to say that they fell under the following categories:
1. Poor time management: having made sure that I was ready to run when my players arrived, I then forced the prompt players to wait yet another 2 hours or so for the laggards before we got rolling. I will not be repeating this mistake in future.
2. Unreflective snap judgements: when rules issues came up I didn't pause for thought in order to give a reasoned judgement; instead, I just gave snap judgements, enough of which were sufficiently poor that they could only be sustained by the worst of all possible devices: the "let's just get on with things" consensus I and the other players formed against the questioning voice.
3. Unwillingness to exploit a ready and willing suspension of disbelief and thence to do a bit of railroading about which nobody would've complained.
The upshot of all this was as follows:
1. I enabled the emergence of a degree of frustration which gave rise to a classic 'bicker-field'.
2. I forced when I shouldn't've (thus exacerbating the bicker-field) while not forcing when I could've (thus deepening the frustration, which then fed back into the bicker)
3. The players didn't get the climactic confrontation with the vile ratmen that had been so well set up by the previous 2 sessions.
Ah well. What can I say?
Well, I can say that there remain certain things that I would always have done the same. But that's neither here nor there. In the end, I had my players in the palm of my hands, and I fluffed it. It is a testament to their merits as roleplayers that they'll all be back next week to pursue the vile ratmen from pretty much exactly the point from where they had set out.
And, well, I guess I can also add that- all this tale of grief aside- the session did have its moments. I mean: Grundi did get to fire his blunderbuss with spectacular effect; and it was entertaining to see Berthold fall full length into the liquid shit of the sewer!
Related@RD/KA!
In the Sewers of Middenheim
- #1 Fury, fear, and flying fur
- #2 Reports, retorts, and last resorts
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim
Well, it just had to happen- in fact a friend warned me that it would: sooner or later a session would fall flat, leaving most if not all of us dissatisfied and frustrated. And that's what happened Sunday last, by unanimous consensus. Striving for a note of levity as we broke up to go our separate ways on Sunday evening, I suggested that the session could be titled 'Poor Marching Ordure'. If anyone was amused they didn't show it. I guess the painful experience was just too fresh.
To tell the truth I guess I'm relieved to have got that particular moment out of the way. I mean to say, it being essentially inevitable, then the sooner we- as a group- suffered and recovered from a bad session, the better, it would seem to me. All the same, I do really rather wish that it hadn't happened Sunday past, at the climax of the Morten murder case, and during my first ever session GM'ing a party through the legendary sewers of the Empire in the Warhammer Old World.
I'm not going to bother here conducting a detailed post-mortem of all the mistakes I made. Sufficeth to say that they fell under the following categories:
1. Poor time management: having made sure that I was ready to run when my players arrived, I then forced the prompt players to wait yet another 2 hours or so for the laggards before we got rolling. I will not be repeating this mistake in future.
2. Unreflective snap judgements: when rules issues came up I didn't pause for thought in order to give a reasoned judgement; instead, I just gave snap judgements, enough of which were sufficiently poor that they could only be sustained by the worst of all possible devices: the "let's just get on with things" consensus I and the other players formed against the questioning voice.
3. Unwillingness to exploit a ready and willing suspension of disbelief and thence to do a bit of railroading about which nobody would've complained.
The upshot of all this was as follows:
1. I enabled the emergence of a degree of frustration which gave rise to a classic 'bicker-field'.
2. I forced when I shouldn't've (thus exacerbating the bicker-field) while not forcing when I could've (thus deepening the frustration, which then fed back into the bicker)
3. The players didn't get the climactic confrontation with the vile ratmen that had been so well set up by the previous 2 sessions.
Ah well. What can I say?
Well, I can say that there remain certain things that I would always have done the same. But that's neither here nor there. In the end, I had my players in the palm of my hands, and I fluffed it. It is a testament to their merits as roleplayers that they'll all be back next week to pursue the vile ratmen from pretty much exactly the point from where they had set out.
And, well, I guess I can also add that- all this tale of grief aside- the session did have its moments. I mean: Grundi did get to fire his blunderbuss with spectacular effect; and it was entertaining to see Berthold fall full length into the liquid shit of the sewer!
Related@RD/KA!
In the Sewers of Middenheim
- #1 Fury, fear, and flying fur
- #2 Reports, retorts, and last resorts
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim
Monday, September 05, 2005
Incoming!
Another big day for JMcL63: RD/KA!'s first reader's letter!
Well I've finally received email comment from a reader on a previous article. This might or might not be a good thing. Eh? What I mean is that I'm not sure whether Antony's letter constitutes special pleading; a valuable different perspective on a shocking moment in my little Old World; or a step in a process of rehabilitation. Read on and decide for yourself.
And why was this? Simple: this bedraggled bunch of adventurers destroyed what authority their warrant gave them by talking all over each other and making blatantly self-contradictory statements. It was when Karl pointed this out that IIRC, Grundi's nark moved from simmer to boil.
Still, that brief exchange between Grundi and Siegfreid was a neat touch in the heat of a genuinely shocking moment.
Thanks for your comments Antony. For any other readers who would like to make their own comments, I will be trying to put up an email link just asap. In the meantime, if you don't already have my email address, you can always get through to me here
http://www.trollslayer.net/
Check out 'Authorised' (aka 'Blogslayer') or head for the forum, and you should soon enough be able to find a way of getting a message to me.
Well I've finally received email comment from a reader on a previous article. This might or might not be a good thing. Eh? What I mean is that I'm not sure whether Antony's letter constitutes special pleading; a valuable different perspective on a shocking moment in my little Old World; or a step in a process of rehabilitation. Read on and decide for yourself.
...I thought I'd give Grundis' take on the fateful smiting a harmless librarian...A reasonable enough account of the events in question I have to say. What Antony has left out though is what it was that really narked the hapless Karl (the librarian) in the first place. Or, to put it another way: why Grundi felt it needful to impose the party's authority at all.
First of all the party entered the library and Siegfried, our oftentimes talented orator, blew his fellowship roll. From Grundi's edgy (and somewhat bloodlustful) perspective the guy was all together being a narky dick. No excuse for a hardened dwarven warrior to rain down fury of course, however, Grudi was clealy being a bit of a narky dick also. He reached boiling point when his attempt to impose the parties authority by saying something along the lines of "We're here on official business and have a warrant, so it would be appreciated if you cooperate," was met with a scornful response... Grundi pented up his rage...
...Momentarily after the blast Grundi blanched! Taking just a moment to heal his victim (success, one wound healed,) [a success Grundi rarely enjoys when using his heal skill on his fellow PC's btw, chortle. JMcL63] he fled the archive, "Siegfried! Siegfried!... I've done somethign really bad Seigfried... I've done something really, really bad,"
"Just... keep... walking... and... don't... turn... round"
Uh Oh!
And why was this? Simple: this bedraggled bunch of adventurers destroyed what authority their warrant gave them by talking all over each other and making blatantly self-contradictory statements. It was when Karl pointed this out that IIRC, Grundi's nark moved from simmer to boil.
Still, that brief exchange between Grundi and Siegfreid was a neat touch in the heat of a genuinely shocking moment.
Thanks for your comments Antony. For any other readers who would like to make their own comments, I will be trying to put up an email link just asap. In the meantime, if you don't already have my email address, you can always get through to me here
http://www.trollslayer.net/
Check out 'Authorised' (aka 'Blogslayer') or head for the forum, and you should soon enough be able to find a way of getting a message to me.
A Big Day for JMcL63: next filler
Well, it was a busy week last week and I don't have the energy to get something new ready for today. So here is the report I wrote about my first ever Official GW 40K tournament. I posted this to a few efora at the time.
Following on from the roaring success of last year's first ever Scottish event, GW's Edinburgh tournament of their Conflict- Regional 2002 series was staged last Sunday, May 19th. Some 200+ assorted Warhammer and 40K players assembled to test their skills and show off their armies. Your humble scribe has attended several Games Days, but this was his first official tournament.
The first good thing about this day struck me some 45 minutes after our 7.30am departure from outside GW Glasgow- we arrived at our venue. Not having to suffer the rigours of the 24-hour redeye to B'rum for Games Day was great. I was finally able to attend a GW event feeling civilised! There followed the obligatory hanging around in droves for half an hour or so before the doors opened. Fortunately the day was fair.
Once in, we queued again to register. This, as with all the bureaucratic business of the day, was done efficiently and with no problems (for your humble scribe at least). Then we had time to take stock and look around a bit more. The Ingliston Exhibition Centre looks for all the world like an old hangar. Half of it was filled ranks of tables set out for Warhammer and 40K, some 200 in all at a guess. There were stalls for the Black Library, Forgeworld, and other GW stuff (I got myself a plastic Dreadnought, and a Forgeworld kit for the new Vindicator assault tank), and also tables set up with various games for non-competing attendees.
The 40K tables were all done out as desert boards, with minimal terrain, mostly ruins and walls with no wooded areas. Although much sparser than anything I'm familiar with from club games, this terrain did prove enough for an interesting game. I guess you can't expect lavish terrain layouts when 200 tables are being laid on. The tables were all numbered, so as the time advanced, we all headed for our allocated tables for our first of the day's three games.
My first opponent were Dark Angels in the standard table-quarter grabbing Cleanse. This was quite neat, since my DIY Penumbra's Talons are Dark Angels successors. I guess there's been a bit of a grudge since the Talons were founded in a direct response to the discovery of the Dark Angels' treachery during the Heresy. The setup established a pattern for the day: losing table edge and first turn. I was massacred to a man in a game whose 'high-point' was firing just one weapon in turn 1 (my first ever in a GW event), and missing. I was in with a shout till halfway through or so, but the dice just didn't give me what I needed to recover the situation.
Then followed Ultramarines in Take and Hold. This too was nice, seeing as how Belon (the Talons' homeworld) is located on the imperial fringes, to the 'southeast' of Ultramar. I ended up defending, and announced I was using drop pods. This meant that I started with one unit on the table, holding the objective. The rest of my army arrived as reserves in suborbital drop-pods I could place largely at will. This is the game I won. I just had to keep dropping my reserves as close to the objective as possible while keeping my opponent from advancing. I was helped by the good fortune of accidentally landing a squad right smack bang on the objective (fortunate scatter roll!). My highpoint was using my assault squad to advantage to pin down my opponent's units who might otherwise have threatened the objective.
My final game was a straight shootout based on Recon, against Blood Angels. The Talons have always been meant to be a codex (vanilla) chapter with a close combat leaning, and I've got plans to field them as Blood Angels for the sake of lots of jump-packs, so this was quite fluffy too. This game was another wipe-out, although I managed to scrape 3 points for having killed enough of the red frothers to avoid humiliating utter defeat. These were, in fact, the only 3 points my opponent lost all day. So I felt that was not bad.
So what's my verdict? Overall, I enjoyed myself in the preparation for this event, and on the day. My space marines attracted some very positive comments, and I felt that I had put on a good show. The event was well-organised, and the GW staffers worked hard to make sure that everything went smoothly. At £33 (including return fare on coach) for a day's gaming, this isn't necessarily the cheapest way to play GW games, but definitely worth it if you're a fan who'd think little or nothing of lashing out that kind of dosh for a new unit for your favourite army. If I have one complaint, then it's the choice of venue: last year's Caledonian Conflict was held in the Meadowbank stadium familiar to many veterans of the Scottish gaming scene. This was actually in Edinburgh, easily accessible for casual visitors, and close to obvious amenities. Compared to this, the Ingliston venue is inaccessible, spartan, and unappealing. I'll be back for another dose next year wherever we go though. ;)
As it turned out, I haven't been able to make a single subsequent Conflict for one reason and another. Which is a pity, since it has sinced moved to a more congenial city centre venue of the sort I'd advocated here. 2006 maybe? Fingers crossed I guess.
*************************************************
Conflict- Edinburgh 2002Following on from the roaring success of last year's first ever Scottish event, GW's Edinburgh tournament of their Conflict- Regional 2002 series was staged last Sunday, May 19th. Some 200+ assorted Warhammer and 40K players assembled to test their skills and show off their armies. Your humble scribe has attended several Games Days, but this was his first official tournament.
The first good thing about this day struck me some 45 minutes after our 7.30am departure from outside GW Glasgow- we arrived at our venue. Not having to suffer the rigours of the 24-hour redeye to B'rum for Games Day was great. I was finally able to attend a GW event feeling civilised! There followed the obligatory hanging around in droves for half an hour or so before the doors opened. Fortunately the day was fair.
Once in, we queued again to register. This, as with all the bureaucratic business of the day, was done efficiently and with no problems (for your humble scribe at least). Then we had time to take stock and look around a bit more. The Ingliston Exhibition Centre looks for all the world like an old hangar. Half of it was filled ranks of tables set out for Warhammer and 40K, some 200 in all at a guess. There were stalls for the Black Library, Forgeworld, and other GW stuff (I got myself a plastic Dreadnought, and a Forgeworld kit for the new Vindicator assault tank), and also tables set up with various games for non-competing attendees.
The 40K tables were all done out as desert boards, with minimal terrain, mostly ruins and walls with no wooded areas. Although much sparser than anything I'm familiar with from club games, this terrain did prove enough for an interesting game. I guess you can't expect lavish terrain layouts when 200 tables are being laid on. The tables were all numbered, so as the time advanced, we all headed for our allocated tables for our first of the day's three games.
My first opponent were Dark Angels in the standard table-quarter grabbing Cleanse. This was quite neat, since my DIY Penumbra's Talons are Dark Angels successors. I guess there's been a bit of a grudge since the Talons were founded in a direct response to the discovery of the Dark Angels' treachery during the Heresy. The setup established a pattern for the day: losing table edge and first turn. I was massacred to a man in a game whose 'high-point' was firing just one weapon in turn 1 (my first ever in a GW event), and missing. I was in with a shout till halfway through or so, but the dice just didn't give me what I needed to recover the situation.
Then followed Ultramarines in Take and Hold. This too was nice, seeing as how Belon (the Talons' homeworld) is located on the imperial fringes, to the 'southeast' of Ultramar. I ended up defending, and announced I was using drop pods. This meant that I started with one unit on the table, holding the objective. The rest of my army arrived as reserves in suborbital drop-pods I could place largely at will. This is the game I won. I just had to keep dropping my reserves as close to the objective as possible while keeping my opponent from advancing. I was helped by the good fortune of accidentally landing a squad right smack bang on the objective (fortunate scatter roll!). My highpoint was using my assault squad to advantage to pin down my opponent's units who might otherwise have threatened the objective.
My final game was a straight shootout based on Recon, against Blood Angels. The Talons have always been meant to be a codex (vanilla) chapter with a close combat leaning, and I've got plans to field them as Blood Angels for the sake of lots of jump-packs, so this was quite fluffy too. This game was another wipe-out, although I managed to scrape 3 points for having killed enough of the red frothers to avoid humiliating utter defeat. These were, in fact, the only 3 points my opponent lost all day. So I felt that was not bad.
So what's my verdict? Overall, I enjoyed myself in the preparation for this event, and on the day. My space marines attracted some very positive comments, and I felt that I had put on a good show. The event was well-organised, and the GW staffers worked hard to make sure that everything went smoothly. At £33 (including return fare on coach) for a day's gaming, this isn't necessarily the cheapest way to play GW games, but definitely worth it if you're a fan who'd think little or nothing of lashing out that kind of dosh for a new unit for your favourite army. If I have one complaint, then it's the choice of venue: last year's Caledonian Conflict was held in the Meadowbank stadium familiar to many veterans of the Scottish gaming scene. This was actually in Edinburgh, easily accessible for casual visitors, and close to obvious amenities. Compared to this, the Ingliston venue is inaccessible, spartan, and unappealing. I'll be back for another dose next year wherever we go though. ;)
*************************************************
My showing in this event turned out to be a lot better than those games might've led you to believe. I was 29th out of 96 overall, including 2 votes from 3 for Most Sporting Opponent (from the guys who beat me I've always imagined). No one got 3/3 on the day btw. More exciting still: my army scored 33/36 (and I didn't even make an effort for those other 3pts, which were for banners), making it first equal in a pack of 11. I was well pleased with this first outing.As it turned out, I haven't been able to make a single subsequent Conflict for one reason and another. Which is a pity, since it has sinced moved to a more congenial city centre venue of the sort I'd advocated here. 2006 maybe? Fingers crossed I guess.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
A rash of enthusiasm...
... for Memoir'44
Part 1: Another hymn of praise to cardplay
Every so often a geek comes across something big in the history of that which floats their boat, something which in some meaningful sense changes their lives: D&D; the works of Philip K. Dick; Howard Chaykin's American Flagg; Up Front; 40K and Lawrence Block's Scudder novels being significant examples of my own down the years. I guess it's not hyperbole to say that Days of Wonder's Memoir'44 has had that kind of impact on me, it being the most exciting WW2 boardgame I've played since I first encountered UF over 20 years ago.
Designed by Richard Borg from his earlier ACW game Battlecry!, the pre-release buzz for and early reviews of Memoir'44 (M44) were among the most enthusiastic I've ever seen, for any product. It got rave reviews all round (check them out on the DoW site), all of which were fully deserved, but none of which could, for all that, capture just how damn exciting this game is. I mean, I'd played it a few times before I finally got my own copy (I only had to wait a few weeks, but it seemed longer), but that first night me and an oldtime gaming buddy played it over a dozen times in a single sitting lasting well beyond sunrise.
I won't bother rehashing everyone else's positive reviews. What I'm going to try to do with this piece is to get under the skin of the system, to explain why, for all its apparent beer'n'pretzel simplicity, M44 is a simulation of some serious authenticity.
The essential authenticity of Memoir'44
To begin to pin this down, I would have to identify the following elements:
The card-driven command system
It'll come as no surprise to my regular readers that this is a part of M44 that I really like.
The definitive merit of this approach to command and control is its creation of a plausible model of the fog of war in a format that is easy to handle because it doesn't rely on cumbersome double-blind or similar rules. Cardplay command and control systems are also very good at putting the players in the head of the leader they're supposed to be, instead of creating some generic viewpoint that simply cannot relate to any single individual that could really exist.
Sure, the credibility of this kind of cardplay requires players to get their heads round a certain level of abstraction. That is to say: it entails a certain 'willing suspension of disbelief' if you are to understand it as a simulation.
This might seem an odd thing to say. 'Willing suspension of disbelief' is - after all - a term most associated with dramatic narrative, with movies in particular AFAIK. That said, even the very notion that a traditional wargame's Combat Results Table (CRT) is a plausible simulation; well, anyone who has played games using that venerable old mechanic has already enacted that same willing suspension.
This matters because of what cardplay command and control systems bring to wargames, which is the utter frustration of watching your forces just sit there and get humped because you didn't draw the right cards.
In the old counter-pushing games, this same thing could happen, if you rolled crap dice. But at least your forces could always do something, even if their efforts proved laughable. It's the sitting there like numpties... Well, frankly, it is the willing suspension entailed by the sheer frustration of this that remains at the very heart of why cardplay command and control systems might not immediately appeal to some grognards in search of a game that simulates the experience of generalship at least as well as it does the minutae of the actions of that general's armies.
To say any more on this matter at this point would be idle wittering unless it simply repeated what I've already said in this respect in my piece on Up Front.
What immediately marks M44 out from UF is that it is a company or higher level game (to UF's squad level), and that it resorts to the familiar old hexmap and counters. What Borg has achieved with this format though is really quite something. To get to the heart of the matter, I would have to say that not only does M44 recreate the immediate perspective of the commanders grappling with the uncertain disposition of their forces across the battlefield; but that he also recreates the learning curve whereby the same commanders come to grips with the capabilities of those same forces.
UF does this too to be sure. It's all a matter of just playing the game as often as possible, as ever. Borg's genius lies in the utter simplicity- not only of his game's cardplay, but also in his rendition of fire and movement and all the aspects pertaining thereto. It is to this, and to the consequent unparelleled playability- for a game with such high simulationist credentials- that I will return just as soon as I can. ;)
Related@RD/KA!
- A rash of enthusiasm for Up Front
A rash of enthusiasm for Memoir'44:
- Part 2: The Elements of Fire and Movement
- Part 3: A few little details
- Part 4: The authenticity of sheer playability
Part 1: Another hymn of praise to cardplay
Every so often a geek comes across something big in the history of that which floats their boat, something which in some meaningful sense changes their lives: D&D; the works of Philip K. Dick; Howard Chaykin's American Flagg; Up Front; 40K and Lawrence Block's Scudder novels being significant examples of my own down the years. I guess it's not hyperbole to say that Days of Wonder's Memoir'44 has had that kind of impact on me, it being the most exciting WW2 boardgame I've played since I first encountered UF over 20 years ago.
Designed by Richard Borg from his earlier ACW game Battlecry!, the pre-release buzz for and early reviews of Memoir'44 (M44) were among the most enthusiastic I've ever seen, for any product. It got rave reviews all round (check them out on the DoW site), all of which were fully deserved, but none of which could, for all that, capture just how damn exciting this game is. I mean, I'd played it a few times before I finally got my own copy (I only had to wait a few weeks, but it seemed longer), but that first night me and an oldtime gaming buddy played it over a dozen times in a single sitting lasting well beyond sunrise.
I won't bother rehashing everyone else's positive reviews. What I'm going to try to do with this piece is to get under the skin of the system, to explain why, for all its apparent beer'n'pretzel simplicity, M44 is a simulation of some serious authenticity.
The essential authenticity of Memoir'44
To begin to pin this down, I would have to identify the following elements:
- The card-driven command system
- The subtle interaction of the elements of fire and movement
- The sheer playability
The card-driven command system
It'll come as no surprise to my regular readers that this is a part of M44 that I really like.
The definitive merit of this approach to command and control is its creation of a plausible model of the fog of war in a format that is easy to handle because it doesn't rely on cumbersome double-blind or similar rules. Cardplay command and control systems are also very good at putting the players in the head of the leader they're supposed to be, instead of creating some generic viewpoint that simply cannot relate to any single individual that could really exist.
Sure, the credibility of this kind of cardplay requires players to get their heads round a certain level of abstraction. That is to say: it entails a certain 'willing suspension of disbelief' if you are to understand it as a simulation.
This might seem an odd thing to say. 'Willing suspension of disbelief' is - after all - a term most associated with dramatic narrative, with movies in particular AFAIK. That said, even the very notion that a traditional wargame's Combat Results Table (CRT) is a plausible simulation; well, anyone who has played games using that venerable old mechanic has already enacted that same willing suspension.
This matters because of what cardplay command and control systems bring to wargames, which is the utter frustration of watching your forces just sit there and get humped because you didn't draw the right cards.
In the old counter-pushing games, this same thing could happen, if you rolled crap dice. But at least your forces could always do something, even if their efforts proved laughable. It's the sitting there like numpties... Well, frankly, it is the willing suspension entailed by the sheer frustration of this that remains at the very heart of why cardplay command and control systems might not immediately appeal to some grognards in search of a game that simulates the experience of generalship at least as well as it does the minutae of the actions of that general's armies.
To say any more on this matter at this point would be idle wittering unless it simply repeated what I've already said in this respect in my piece on Up Front.
What immediately marks M44 out from UF is that it is a company or higher level game (to UF's squad level), and that it resorts to the familiar old hexmap and counters. What Borg has achieved with this format though is really quite something. To get to the heart of the matter, I would have to say that not only does M44 recreate the immediate perspective of the commanders grappling with the uncertain disposition of their forces across the battlefield; but that he also recreates the learning curve whereby the same commanders come to grips with the capabilities of those same forces.
UF does this too to be sure. It's all a matter of just playing the game as often as possible, as ever. Borg's genius lies in the utter simplicity- not only of his game's cardplay, but also in his rendition of fire and movement and all the aspects pertaining thereto. It is to this, and to the consequent unparelleled playability- for a game with such high simulationist credentials- that I will return just as soon as I can. ;)
Related@RD/KA!
- A rash of enthusiasm for Up Front
A rash of enthusiasm for Memoir'44:
- Part 2: The Elements of Fire and Movement
- Part 3: A few little details
- Part 4: The authenticity of sheer playability
Saturday, September 03, 2005
My little Old World: Grundi Smites Again #2
Bitter dregs of Ulric's Fury!
So, oaths sworn, Schutzmann takes the PC's into the basement of the Watch HQ, where the full horror of Morten's death is revealed to them. Pledging to pursue the matter to its inevitable conclusion, the PC's end up back at the warehouse where they're staying in their capacity as guards of the citizens of Untergard. They bed down for the night.
Cue an uneventful watch with the twitchy Otwin.
It all got a bit confused the next day. I was tired, the PC's insisted on splitting up all the time, and I'd fiddled with the plot:
1. with 2 dwarfs in the party and a dwarf murder victim, well I'm sure you get my drift...
2. the missing person turned out to be a member of the Untergard party- young Gismore- who hadn't returned after setting out to "get some more bread," the previous day.
Confusion led to complication. Choosing to investigate the death of Gismore, Alane and Berthold headed for the Temple of Morr, where they met mad mortician Abelard, to whom they generously paid a tidy sum for Gismore's funeral. Returning to the warehouse they confirm the bad news to Schiller. Cue weeping mother, etc. Unfortunately, when Schiller's party arrived for the dead son of Untergard, they found that he had already been buried... by a bunch of mysterious strangers who just turned up, got the job done- "no questions asked, OK...?" and left.
At first rebuffed by the dwarfs of the Engineers' Guild, Grundi and Mordrin somehow or other managed to get themselves into the position of being able to inspect the dead dwarf- in the same Temple of Morr IIRC. Unluckily the plague of disappearing corpses struck the dwarfs too. Even as they were gaining permission to conduct their morbid examination, the dead dwarf's keepers came to collect their kin for burial. All our dwarfs saw of their quarry was a funeral carriage carrying another clue into the wide blue yonder.
In the end though, the PC's found Gismore's grave, and lo and behold- Berthold recognised the symbol of the Ordo Fidelis. This led them back to Schutzmann for another briefing, from where they made their way to the scene of the murder of the unfortunate Gerhard Gismore Croen, who had fallen prey to something that had ruined his life already.
Quickly finding the sewer, the PC's took one long look down into its murky depths. It was night. They had none of the necessary equipment for the task at all. Fortune points were out or low, having been lavished on holding the investigation together. Time for bed they thought.
Even Grundi, axe-wielding maniac with a taste for Ulric's Fury and a lust for Skaven blood was content not to charge down into the depths in blind heroism. But then Grundi had at least smote with Ulric's Fury and poleaxed a young librarian of the Collegium Theologica. An unprovoked vicious attack.
Antony had been really spoiling for a fight all day, just like last week, so at some point I'd just quipped, "You can always just walk up to someone and hit them, y'know." I then forgot all about it. I never really expected that he would. Or, I mean, I never thought the mighty slayer of wolfs and mutants, righter of wrongs, defender of women and children, would work out his frustrations by cold-cocking an innocent young librarian. It's just too funny for words.
It all started off with a simple failed Gossip test. Pursuing a lead late in the day, the roll to get the information the easy way failed. The PC's had to get the information the hard way, which narked the poor librarian, who narked back. Then:
1. Grundi waits till the other PC's get out of sight...
2. "Thank you for your 'cooperation'."
3. Smack!
Just like that, just like a frustrated pig.
I gave the guy an Ag test to react and defend himself. Instead he went down KO'ed at 0 wounds as brave Grundi smote him with Ulric's Fury, just right out and punched him. Since Grundi had been sensible enough to lurk behind at that point none of the other PC's actually saw anything: although some did hear the sounds of violence; Alane did run back into the Temple of Morr (to use her healing potion on the poor sap naturally enough) after Grundi had exited; and Grundi did confess in vague terms to some great misdeed.
The talkative Antony and Grundi both were strangely quiet after that.
The other PC's started keeping their distance.
The delicious irony is that Antony had been doing really well up till then. I mean to say, the youngest and least experienced in a group of longtime gamers all much more immediately at home in the Old World than himself, he faces the problem of being the oldest character by far, and that against a true dwarf. But as they were drawn into planning their moves, he was able to develop his character's authority because he's no numpty, and a good roleplayer to boot.
I was beginning to notice how well this was working, when he went and hit someone for the sake of sheer mindless violence, pure and simple- and rolled his second Ulric's Fury! All his good work, shattered with a single moment's stupidity and 'lucky' dice.
Oh how we roasted Antony about that. How we laughed! Slayer material indeed!
Meanwhile, I wonder how our hapless heroes will fare tomorrow:
Marktag 18th Erntezeit 2522 I.C.?
Time- and the dice- will tell I guess. Mwah hah ha, etc. ;)
Related@RD/KA!
Grundi Smites Again
- #1 "You're in"
- On the perils of 'splitting the party'?
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim
EDITS (6/9/05)
1. I'd written 'Mordrin' a couple of times where I meant Grundi. This just had to be corrected.
2. GM's snafu on the dates: the next session began on Konigstag 13th, not Marktag 18th as I'd noted.
So, oaths sworn, Schutzmann takes the PC's into the basement of the Watch HQ, where the full horror of Morten's death is revealed to them. Pledging to pursue the matter to its inevitable conclusion, the PC's end up back at the warehouse where they're staying in their capacity as guards of the citizens of Untergard. They bed down for the night.
Cue an uneventful watch with the twitchy Otwin.
It all got a bit confused the next day. I was tired, the PC's insisted on splitting up all the time, and I'd fiddled with the plot:
1. with 2 dwarfs in the party and a dwarf murder victim, well I'm sure you get my drift...
2. the missing person turned out to be a member of the Untergard party- young Gismore- who hadn't returned after setting out to "get some more bread," the previous day.
Confusion led to complication. Choosing to investigate the death of Gismore, Alane and Berthold headed for the Temple of Morr, where they met mad mortician Abelard, to whom they generously paid a tidy sum for Gismore's funeral. Returning to the warehouse they confirm the bad news to Schiller. Cue weeping mother, etc. Unfortunately, when Schiller's party arrived for the dead son of Untergard, they found that he had already been buried... by a bunch of mysterious strangers who just turned up, got the job done- "no questions asked, OK...?" and left.
At first rebuffed by the dwarfs of the Engineers' Guild, Grundi and Mordrin somehow or other managed to get themselves into the position of being able to inspect the dead dwarf- in the same Temple of Morr IIRC. Unluckily the plague of disappearing corpses struck the dwarfs too. Even as they were gaining permission to conduct their morbid examination, the dead dwarf's keepers came to collect their kin for burial. All our dwarfs saw of their quarry was a funeral carriage carrying another clue into the wide blue yonder.
In the end though, the PC's found Gismore's grave, and lo and behold- Berthold recognised the symbol of the Ordo Fidelis. This led them back to Schutzmann for another briefing, from where they made their way to the scene of the murder of the unfortunate Gerhard Gismore Croen, who had fallen prey to something that had ruined his life already.
Quickly finding the sewer, the PC's took one long look down into its murky depths. It was night. They had none of the necessary equipment for the task at all. Fortune points were out or low, having been lavished on holding the investigation together. Time for bed they thought.
Even Grundi, axe-wielding maniac with a taste for Ulric's Fury and a lust for Skaven blood was content not to charge down into the depths in blind heroism. But then Grundi had at least smote with Ulric's Fury and poleaxed a young librarian of the Collegium Theologica. An unprovoked vicious attack.
Antony had been really spoiling for a fight all day, just like last week, so at some point I'd just quipped, "You can always just walk up to someone and hit them, y'know." I then forgot all about it. I never really expected that he would. Or, I mean, I never thought the mighty slayer of wolfs and mutants, righter of wrongs, defender of women and children, would work out his frustrations by cold-cocking an innocent young librarian. It's just too funny for words.
It all started off with a simple failed Gossip test. Pursuing a lead late in the day, the roll to get the information the easy way failed. The PC's had to get the information the hard way, which narked the poor librarian, who narked back. Then:
1. Grundi waits till the other PC's get out of sight...
2. "Thank you for your 'cooperation'."
3. Smack!
Just like that, just like a frustrated pig.
I gave the guy an Ag test to react and defend himself. Instead he went down KO'ed at 0 wounds as brave Grundi smote him with Ulric's Fury, just right out and punched him. Since Grundi had been sensible enough to lurk behind at that point none of the other PC's actually saw anything: although some did hear the sounds of violence; Alane did run back into the Temple of Morr (to use her healing potion on the poor sap naturally enough) after Grundi had exited; and Grundi did confess in vague terms to some great misdeed.
The talkative Antony and Grundi both were strangely quiet after that.
The other PC's started keeping their distance.
The delicious irony is that Antony had been doing really well up till then. I mean to say, the youngest and least experienced in a group of longtime gamers all much more immediately at home in the Old World than himself, he faces the problem of being the oldest character by far, and that against a true dwarf. But as they were drawn into planning their moves, he was able to develop his character's authority because he's no numpty, and a good roleplayer to boot.
I was beginning to notice how well this was working, when he went and hit someone for the sake of sheer mindless violence, pure and simple- and rolled his second Ulric's Fury! All his good work, shattered with a single moment's stupidity and 'lucky' dice.
Oh how we roasted Antony about that. How we laughed! Slayer material indeed!
Meanwhile, I wonder how our hapless heroes will fare tomorrow:
Marktag 18th Erntezeit 2522 I.C.?
Time- and the dice- will tell I guess. Mwah hah ha, etc. ;)
Related@RD/KA!
Grundi Smites Again
- #1 "You're in"
- On the perils of 'splitting the party'?
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim
EDITS (6/9/05)
1. I'd written 'Mordrin' a couple of times where I meant Grundi. This just had to be corrected.
2. GM's snafu on the dates: the next session began on Konigstag 13th, not Marktag 18th as I'd noted.
Friday, September 02, 2005
My little Old World
On the perils of 'splitting the party'?
I know I've thrown my veteran gamer status around in this blog a bit so far, but the truth is, for some half the time since my first AD&D, I've been out of touch with roleplaying. That's why I was so excited about getting this new group going with WFRP, and about the fact that yes, I can hack all this stuff.
Yet, even with a growing sense of confidence based on 7 sessions, it was with some disquiet that I witnessed the party starting to split up as soon as they hit Middenheim.
It all began with Siegfreid (IIRC), who immediately set about pursuing his own agendas- which involve trying to get back in touch with all his shady old pals. It continued when Berthold was left to fulfil Father Dietrich's dying wish himself while Mordrin went off to make contact with his brother's smuggling operation. Meantime the rest of the party were on a shopping trip that turned out to be more of a cover for Siegfried looking for a likely mark for a quick dip.
I managed to hold everything together, thanks to the simple plot and my players' essential good sense.
Then as the investigation into Father Morten's murder really took off, they went and organised a 3-way split which made perfect sense because there were 3 more murders to follow up in a plot where they were hot on the trail of Skaven, of all things. There was no way I was going to railroad them out of this, so off they went in their separate directions.
It's easy for me to say that I held everything together, but I reckon that that sequence was one of the most dynamic non-combat sequences I've GM'ed so far in this campaign. Most of the reasons why it worked weren't down to me. One of those reasons was precisely that the party split up when it was the most intelligent thing to do, risk or no risk.
I'll come back to this another time. But... that old saw about not splitting the party? Just like every single other rule in roleplaying:- system, plotting, etiquette, you name it: it's there to be broken. Just break it right is all!
Related@RD/KA!
Grundi Smites Again
- #1 "You're in"
- #2 Bitter dregs of Ulric's Fury!
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim
I know I've thrown my veteran gamer status around in this blog a bit so far, but the truth is, for some half the time since my first AD&D, I've been out of touch with roleplaying. That's why I was so excited about getting this new group going with WFRP, and about the fact that yes, I can hack all this stuff.
Yet, even with a growing sense of confidence based on 7 sessions, it was with some disquiet that I witnessed the party starting to split up as soon as they hit Middenheim.
It all began with Siegfreid (IIRC), who immediately set about pursuing his own agendas- which involve trying to get back in touch with all his shady old pals. It continued when Berthold was left to fulfil Father Dietrich's dying wish himself while Mordrin went off to make contact with his brother's smuggling operation. Meantime the rest of the party were on a shopping trip that turned out to be more of a cover for Siegfried looking for a likely mark for a quick dip.
I managed to hold everything together, thanks to the simple plot and my players' essential good sense.
Then as the investigation into Father Morten's murder really took off, they went and organised a 3-way split which made perfect sense because there were 3 more murders to follow up in a plot where they were hot on the trail of Skaven, of all things. There was no way I was going to railroad them out of this, so off they went in their separate directions.
It's easy for me to say that I held everything together, but I reckon that that sequence was one of the most dynamic non-combat sequences I've GM'ed so far in this campaign. Most of the reasons why it worked weren't down to me. One of those reasons was precisely that the party split up when it was the most intelligent thing to do, risk or no risk.
I'll come back to this another time. But... that old saw about not splitting the party? Just like every single other rule in roleplaying:- system, plotting, etiquette, you name it: it's there to be broken. Just break it right is all!
Related@RD/KA!
Grundi Smites Again
- #1 "You're in"
- #2 Bitter dregs of Ulric's Fury!
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Got game
Antony (a.k.a. Grundi) came round the other night, and we played some games. First off was a quick game of Fluxx a simple family card game of the modern school that has the most perfect set of rules I have ever seen. I've played this a couple of dozen times at most, and already I defy anyone to find a glitch. It's also one of these games that has the depth that gives great replay value, and cardplay tactics that demand real mastery.
1-0 me at that point IIRC.
Next up was Antony's introduction to Gladiator, an old school AH tacsim of the Roman arena. Antony floundered around with the pre-plotted movement notations for a wee while but began to get into the swing of things even as my Crassius Maximus was giving his Achilles the benefits of superior experience. All of which was as nothing when Achilles got through Crassius' defences and killed him outright with an instantly fatal critcial. OUCH!
1-1.
1-0 me at that point IIRC.
Next up was Antony's introduction to Gladiator, an old school AH tacsim of the Roman arena. Antony floundered around with the pre-plotted movement notations for a wee while but began to get into the swing of things even as my Crassius Maximus was giving his Achilles the benefits of superior experience. All of which was as nothing when Achilles got through Crassius' defences and killed him outright with an instantly fatal critcial. OUCH!
1-1.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Meanwhile...
Tony came round again yesterday. I was far too tired to be my usual sparkling self, but we managed to get some more work done on our idea for a new superhero campaign. This one's been simmering away now for a long time, and today we finally started putting some flesh on the bones of our existing concepts.
We didn't get a huge amount done. It was, however, more than enough for the pair of us to realise that the characters behind this new campaign we're working up are surely going to need investors, if not actual partners. This thing is bigger than both of them!
Another thing we got out of the way was a small tweak to Alane. Tony finally got his head around Alane's background a couple of weeks ago, writing up her background on the spot. It eventually struck me sometime Sunday night that an elf brought up from birth in Altdorf would have no common knowledge of her native culture. So Alane's CK: Elves became CK: the Empire.
I did also think about Alane not being able to speak Eltharin, but ruled against this idea. First off, Alane's knowledge of Eltharin had already been a crucial element of a key encounter during 'Through the Drakwald'. And anyway, an elf who is a stranger to her own kind is one thing, but an elf who can't even speak to her own kind? That's just plain dull.
We didn't get a huge amount done. It was, however, more than enough for the pair of us to realise that the characters behind this new campaign we're working up are surely going to need investors, if not actual partners. This thing is bigger than both of them!
Another thing we got out of the way was a small tweak to Alane. Tony finally got his head around Alane's background a couple of weeks ago, writing up her background on the spot. It eventually struck me sometime Sunday night that an elf brought up from birth in Altdorf would have no common knowledge of her native culture. So Alane's CK: Elves became CK: the Empire.
I did also think about Alane not being able to speak Eltharin, but ruled against this idea. First off, Alane's knowledge of Eltharin had already been a crucial element of a key encounter during 'Through the Drakwald'. And anyway, an elf who is a stranger to her own kind is one thing, but an elf who can't even speak to her own kind? That's just plain dull.
My little Old World: Grundi Smites Again #1
"You're in"
Greimold feared his last moment was upon him when his door burst open amid a clamour of Khazalid curses. The attack he dreaded did not come.
These... adventurers?! Running around with a warrant from Schutzman deputising them to the Middenheim City Watch, to pursue an 'investigation' into Morten's murder? What could the man be thinking of?
By the time Greimold had let them shout themselves down and tell their story, the priest wished the dreaded attack had come after all. Motley and battleworn- well... freaks, frankly- they might've been, but proof of their words was all too horrifyingly easy to come by. The least he could do was make them comfortable while he arranged to accompany them when they reported to Schutzmann soon thereafter.
And so it was that the party returned to make their first report to Captain Ulrich Schutzmann, Midden Marshal of the Middenguard City Watch conveyed by Gunter Greimold, Anointed Priest of Sigmar at the Temple of Middenheim, in the #1 spangly coach-and-pair newly at his personal disposal. Intent on the case's prospect of righteous carnage as they were, I think the PC's barely noticed how much they'd just come up in the world.
Bertholdt certainly felt a lot better in the hands of a competent healer with magic to boot that's for sure.
Schutzmann was inevitably busy when the lowly PC's arrived to report, so they waited with Greimold. Some interaction ensued. They were joined by a famililar face from the Untergard refugee party, one Otwin Beshlager (AoM, p.93) whose backstory slotted him in perfectly. Recovered from his wounds, he'd volunteered for the militia, ended up filling the vacancy for Sergeant of the Watch in Schutzmann's command. Plainly barmy, not much of a conversationalist in the continuing wait IIRC.
Eventually Schutzmann arrives, and the PC's are questioned. Lots of talking in and out of character. Schutzmann testifies with battle scars picked up fighting Skaven during Archeon's siege and even Siegfried- the last holdout- has to agree: Skaven do exist, and they surely murdered Father Morten.
The scent of blood fills PC's nostrils again: they naturally want to hunt these vermin down and kill them. Schutzmann and Greimold are gratified. But first, they insist, the PC's must swear a holy oath not to reveal the horrors they witness, nor to spread loose talk to panic the unwary in this time of ranters, madmen and miracle-hunters. The PC's agree. Alane, Bertholdt, Mordrin and Siegfried all swear an appropriate vow. Grundi just effs and blinds about how much he wants to kill the feckin' Skaven.
Hmm, thinks Schutzmann, a slayer in the making? That's fine he announces. You're in.
Related@RD/KA!
Grundi Smites Again
- #2 Bitter dregs of Ulric's Fury!
- On the perils of 'splitting the party'?
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim
Greimold feared his last moment was upon him when his door burst open amid a clamour of Khazalid curses. The attack he dreaded did not come.
These... adventurers?! Running around with a warrant from Schutzman deputising them to the Middenheim City Watch, to pursue an 'investigation' into Morten's murder? What could the man be thinking of?
By the time Greimold had let them shout themselves down and tell their story, the priest wished the dreaded attack had come after all. Motley and battleworn- well... freaks, frankly- they might've been, but proof of their words was all too horrifyingly easy to come by. The least he could do was make them comfortable while he arranged to accompany them when they reported to Schutzmann soon thereafter.
And so it was that the party returned to make their first report to Captain Ulrich Schutzmann, Midden Marshal of the Middenguard City Watch conveyed by Gunter Greimold, Anointed Priest of Sigmar at the Temple of Middenheim, in the #1 spangly coach-and-pair newly at his personal disposal. Intent on the case's prospect of righteous carnage as they were, I think the PC's barely noticed how much they'd just come up in the world.
Bertholdt certainly felt a lot better in the hands of a competent healer with magic to boot that's for sure.
Schutzmann was inevitably busy when the lowly PC's arrived to report, so they waited with Greimold. Some interaction ensued. They were joined by a famililar face from the Untergard refugee party, one Otwin Beshlager (AoM, p.93) whose backstory slotted him in perfectly. Recovered from his wounds, he'd volunteered for the militia, ended up filling the vacancy for Sergeant of the Watch in Schutzmann's command. Plainly barmy, not much of a conversationalist in the continuing wait IIRC.
Eventually Schutzmann arrives, and the PC's are questioned. Lots of talking in and out of character. Schutzmann testifies with battle scars picked up fighting Skaven during Archeon's siege and even Siegfried- the last holdout- has to agree: Skaven do exist, and they surely murdered Father Morten.
The scent of blood fills PC's nostrils again: they naturally want to hunt these vermin down and kill them. Schutzmann and Greimold are gratified. But first, they insist, the PC's must swear a holy oath not to reveal the horrors they witness, nor to spread loose talk to panic the unwary in this time of ranters, madmen and miracle-hunters. The PC's agree. Alane, Bertholdt, Mordrin and Siegfried all swear an appropriate vow. Grundi just effs and blinds about how much he wants to kill the feckin' Skaven.
Hmm, thinks Schutzmann, a slayer in the making? That's fine he announces. You're in.
Related@RD/KA!
Grundi Smites Again
- #2 Bitter dregs of Ulric's Fury!
- On the perils of 'splitting the party'?
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
A rash of enthusiasm...
... for Up Front
Readers who know me might be surprised that I haven't already filled page after page about this great game (or about, y'know... No, no, he's another story).
Up Front (UF), designed by Courtney Allen and published by Avalon Hill in its pre-Hasbro days back in 1983 is, in my opinion, the greatest wargame since chess. Such (possible?) hyperbole aside, it is certainly my desert-island game of choice. With the possible exception of backgammon it is the single game I have played more than any other, ever.
So having announced my fondess for UF in such grandiloquent terms, how can I explain what it is about this game that makes it the WW2 tacsim which comes closest to giving me the same buzz that I get from a good roleplaying session with a favourite PC in the hands of a class GM?
I think I can make a stab at a start by summing up its appeal as:
Well I've already said that this is the most played game ever in my adventure games collection; which amounts to some thousand and more games, most of them over a period of 5/6 years' intensive play right after I'd got it.
This is the game that, back in the days when none of us had day-jobs to worry about, we would literally play for 24 hours or more at a stretch. And that's a gang of us playing winner-stays-on round robin with a single set. Just how many boardgames can you think of that are so compelling that more than half of a group of hardcore gamers there assembled would be willing to sit out all that time just for their game? (Not unlike playing pool in a pub.)
UF is also the only boardgame that's ever reduced me to a heap of hysterical laughter rolling on the floor due to the sheer madness of the play.
More objectively, UF is a game that a smart player can learn in less than half an hour with the help of a good teacher; which you can play in 45-90 minutes once you've mastered the rules- allowing several games in a reasonable evening's gaming. UF was also the first game that gave us what we came to call the 'arcade game' effect - that irresistable desire to have another go because you just know you can do it next time.
You don't have to be a grognard - let alone a WW2 buff - to enjoy UF; you just have to enjoy a supreme tactical challenge and the experience of increasing mastery of a vivid recreation of the problems of squad-level combat in WW2.
Superb authenticity
Sheer damn good fun aside, the authenticity of UF as a simulation of its chosen subject is the single issue that most strongly divides its fans from its detractors (and the latter most certainly outnumber the former I'd have to admit I guess). It's the cardplay that is the kicker here, with the opinions of the nay-sayers most often summed-up under terms like 'floating terrain'.
This arises because everything that happens in a game of UF is driven by an action deck. That's not just doing the obvious things like issing orders, eg. movement, firing and rallying; nor even the use of card-draw action resolution; but also determining the very shape of the battlefield itself, eg. that building out there you're looking for?- well you don't know where it is until you draw a building card from the action deck; and you can't get there without a movement card.
The M:tG generation might find this unexceptional, but I can assure you that those aging fans of hexmaps, CRT's, ZoC's of the 70's school of SPI, GDW, and so on, well a lot of them just didn't get it, so that UF has basically taken on geek cult status amongst grognards. All the same it remains my contention that precisely what UF lacks - ie. the omniscient overview and the omnipotentence of the turn-by-turn counter pushing; well, this is what gives the game its unique feel for that old chestnut of wargames design - the fog of war.
In UF, you know your enemy - your opponent's squad; and you know your mission - the victory conditions; otherwise, well you can have a pretty good idea of what's out there, but you're not sure where it is, how long it'll take you to get there, nor even how well-prepared the enemy will be in the face of your plan. And even if you do figure that out, you can't be sure how well your men will perform, if their morale will hold, or if there'll be enough of them left once you've closed with the enemy for you to be able to achieve your objective.
On top of this psychology provided by the action deck, UF also enjoys some neat games mechanics demonstrating a painstaking study of its subject. The best features of the mechanics aside from the cardplay are the morale and shooting rules.
Morale is handled by the by now familiar 2-state: good order and pinned. Pinned men can't move or fire, which hampers and slows down the rest of their group (fireteam).
Firepower works as volume fire against morale instead of individual direct fire conducted man-to-man, which was the typical mechanic back in UF's day. Basic infantry weapons are richly rendered, with simple rules reflecting the differences between rifles, SMG, and MG's, and between, say, the bolt-action, semi-automatic and fully automatic versions of the former. Actual fire attacks are executed via action card draws, with some simple and neat mechanics which work out to give an excellent feel for the effects of cover, and for the difference between sporadic fire that keeps your men's heads down, and sustained bursts that gun them down in droves.
Around this core of fire and movement are many other neat rules: infiltration and close combat; weapons malfunctions and repairs; special weapons, eg. the dreaded flamethrower; pillboxes, minefields, ordnance, and tanks.
The tank rules are really nice, smoothly presenting them in a form appropriate to their power at this level of combat, which includes their vulnerablities too naturally enough. Even something as complex as the difference between solid and shaped-charge AT munitions is presented with rules so subtle that you might not even notice what's going on.
All in all then, I would be very surprised if someone could present a sustainable case that UF is a poor simulation of its chosen subject, even if the game was to remain not to their taste.
Groundbreaking design conception
The use of cardplay to control and to resolve actions wasn't pioneered by UF. Avalon Hill's Gunslinger is but one example of a game that uses cards for both these purposes. What marks UF out from the other examples with which I am familiar is the integration of these functions into a single deck (Gunslinger gives each player their own - fixed - set of action cards, and uses a separate resolution deck). More than that too is the integration of the battlefield itself into the very same deck (Gunslinger uses the familar board and counters).
It is this integration of space and time on the battlefield into a seamless whole via the medium of the action deck that was unique to UF. The overall effect was to give the game a definite viewpoint analagous to that of a PC in an rpg. I mean, tabletop military simulation games had hitherto presented a viewpoint that was, by and large, totally unreal: that of the top-down map view.
This is something that was just about credible in the days of Napoleon and hilltop generalship on the field of battle. Even then the lie of the land would typically give the lie to this perspective. In the 20th century this viewpoint basically could and did not exist. What UF confronted then was a deeply rooted trend in simulationist gaming where the players' viewpoints in practice represented some nebulous notion of the staff and the command structure, not the generals themselves as so fondly imagined by grognards everywhere.
In UF, the players represent the platoon commanders (they have to: if they were actually on the table, then their death would be an immediate defeat, surely?), located somewhere just off the table. The effect of the cards is to distill into an easy playable form the way in which they would receive information and give orders about a situation they basically cannot see, and over which they have limited control.
It has to be said that Allen himself wasn't completely responsible for the design innovations that he was using here. The simple fact that UF was billed as the "Squad Leader card game" tells us that he owed a debt to John Hill's trailblazing work on the idea of modelling the effects of a given thing (or set of things if those things all have the same overall effect) instead of modelling each particular way in which that effect is delivered. I happen to believe that Hill's work also influenced George MacDonald and Steve Peterson - whose similarly groundbreaking rpg Champions used the same approach to the modelling of comicbook superpowers.
I also happen to believe that this posited parallel influence is more than merely fortuitous. What I mean here is that what underpins the levels of abstraction that make the UF action deck such a joyous gaming engine is exactly the principle Allen developed from Hill's work, ie. model effect and not mechanism.
In this case though Allen went further than just reducing the effects of a variety of different weapons to a single unified mechanic, as had Hill. In UF, Allen went on to model the 'effect' of the squad level action on the platoon leader existing in a location separate from the action the game actually plays out, and vice versa. In other words the uncertainties of the action deck are a mechanism to model the effects of the distance between leader and led, with the resultant communications lag and general lack of specific information.
What made this so exciting at the time was the sense that this was a design concern - that of adequately modelling a single and definite viewpoint - which we were all convinced was a direct product of the advent, in the preceding decade, of the rpg.
And that's it:- Up Front: great game; fine simulation; and tacsim schwerpunkt of the post-D&D history of adventure gaming.
"Take fire 10!"
Related@RD/KA!
- A rash of enthusiasm for Memoir'44, Part 1: Another hymn of praise to cardplay
Readers who know me might be surprised that I haven't already filled page after page about this great game (or about, y'know... No, no, he's another story).Up Front (UF), designed by Courtney Allen and published by Avalon Hill in its pre-Hasbro days back in 1983 is, in my opinion, the greatest wargame since chess. Such (possible?) hyperbole aside, it is certainly my desert-island game of choice. With the possible exception of backgammon it is the single game I have played more than any other, ever.
So having announced my fondess for UF in such grandiloquent terms, how can I explain what it is about this game that makes it the WW2 tacsim which comes closest to giving me the same buzz that I get from a good roleplaying session with a favourite PC in the hands of a class GM?
I think I can make a stab at a start by summing up its appeal as:
- Sheer playability
- Superb authenticity
- Groundbreaking design conception
Well I've already said that this is the most played game ever in my adventure games collection; which amounts to some thousand and more games, most of them over a period of 5/6 years' intensive play right after I'd got it.
This is the game that, back in the days when none of us had day-jobs to worry about, we would literally play for 24 hours or more at a stretch. And that's a gang of us playing winner-stays-on round robin with a single set. Just how many boardgames can you think of that are so compelling that more than half of a group of hardcore gamers there assembled would be willing to sit out all that time just for their game? (Not unlike playing pool in a pub.)
UF is also the only boardgame that's ever reduced me to a heap of hysterical laughter rolling on the floor due to the sheer madness of the play.
More objectively, UF is a game that a smart player can learn in less than half an hour with the help of a good teacher; which you can play in 45-90 minutes once you've mastered the rules- allowing several games in a reasonable evening's gaming. UF was also the first game that gave us what we came to call the 'arcade game' effect - that irresistable desire to have another go because you just know you can do it next time.
You don't have to be a grognard - let alone a WW2 buff - to enjoy UF; you just have to enjoy a supreme tactical challenge and the experience of increasing mastery of a vivid recreation of the problems of squad-level combat in WW2.
Superb authenticity
Sheer damn good fun aside, the authenticity of UF as a simulation of its chosen subject is the single issue that most strongly divides its fans from its detractors (and the latter most certainly outnumber the former I'd have to admit I guess). It's the cardplay that is the kicker here, with the opinions of the nay-sayers most often summed-up under terms like 'floating terrain'.
This arises because everything that happens in a game of UF is driven by an action deck. That's not just doing the obvious things like issing orders, eg. movement, firing and rallying; nor even the use of card-draw action resolution; but also determining the very shape of the battlefield itself, eg. that building out there you're looking for?- well you don't know where it is until you draw a building card from the action deck; and you can't get there without a movement card.
The M:tG generation might find this unexceptional, but I can assure you that those aging fans of hexmaps, CRT's, ZoC's of the 70's school of SPI, GDW, and so on, well a lot of them just didn't get it, so that UF has basically taken on geek cult status amongst grognards. All the same it remains my contention that precisely what UF lacks - ie. the omniscient overview and the omnipotentence of the turn-by-turn counter pushing; well, this is what gives the game its unique feel for that old chestnut of wargames design - the fog of war.
In UF, you know your enemy - your opponent's squad; and you know your mission - the victory conditions; otherwise, well you can have a pretty good idea of what's out there, but you're not sure where it is, how long it'll take you to get there, nor even how well-prepared the enemy will be in the face of your plan. And even if you do figure that out, you can't be sure how well your men will perform, if their morale will hold, or if there'll be enough of them left once you've closed with the enemy for you to be able to achieve your objective.
On top of this psychology provided by the action deck, UF also enjoys some neat games mechanics demonstrating a painstaking study of its subject. The best features of the mechanics aside from the cardplay are the morale and shooting rules.
Morale is handled by the by now familiar 2-state: good order and pinned. Pinned men can't move or fire, which hampers and slows down the rest of their group (fireteam).
Firepower works as volume fire against morale instead of individual direct fire conducted man-to-man, which was the typical mechanic back in UF's day. Basic infantry weapons are richly rendered, with simple rules reflecting the differences between rifles, SMG, and MG's, and between, say, the bolt-action, semi-automatic and fully automatic versions of the former. Actual fire attacks are executed via action card draws, with some simple and neat mechanics which work out to give an excellent feel for the effects of cover, and for the difference between sporadic fire that keeps your men's heads down, and sustained bursts that gun them down in droves.
Around this core of fire and movement are many other neat rules: infiltration and close combat; weapons malfunctions and repairs; special weapons, eg. the dreaded flamethrower; pillboxes, minefields, ordnance, and tanks.
The tank rules are really nice, smoothly presenting them in a form appropriate to their power at this level of combat, which includes their vulnerablities too naturally enough. Even something as complex as the difference between solid and shaped-charge AT munitions is presented with rules so subtle that you might not even notice what's going on.
All in all then, I would be very surprised if someone could present a sustainable case that UF is a poor simulation of its chosen subject, even if the game was to remain not to their taste.
Groundbreaking design conception
The use of cardplay to control and to resolve actions wasn't pioneered by UF. Avalon Hill's Gunslinger is but one example of a game that uses cards for both these purposes. What marks UF out from the other examples with which I am familiar is the integration of these functions into a single deck (Gunslinger gives each player their own - fixed - set of action cards, and uses a separate resolution deck). More than that too is the integration of the battlefield itself into the very same deck (Gunslinger uses the familar board and counters).
It is this integration of space and time on the battlefield into a seamless whole via the medium of the action deck that was unique to UF. The overall effect was to give the game a definite viewpoint analagous to that of a PC in an rpg. I mean, tabletop military simulation games had hitherto presented a viewpoint that was, by and large, totally unreal: that of the top-down map view.
This is something that was just about credible in the days of Napoleon and hilltop generalship on the field of battle. Even then the lie of the land would typically give the lie to this perspective. In the 20th century this viewpoint basically could and did not exist. What UF confronted then was a deeply rooted trend in simulationist gaming where the players' viewpoints in practice represented some nebulous notion of the staff and the command structure, not the generals themselves as so fondly imagined by grognards everywhere.
In UF, the players represent the platoon commanders (they have to: if they were actually on the table, then their death would be an immediate defeat, surely?), located somewhere just off the table. The effect of the cards is to distill into an easy playable form the way in which they would receive information and give orders about a situation they basically cannot see, and over which they have limited control.
It has to be said that Allen himself wasn't completely responsible for the design innovations that he was using here. The simple fact that UF was billed as the "Squad Leader card game" tells us that he owed a debt to John Hill's trailblazing work on the idea of modelling the effects of a given thing (or set of things if those things all have the same overall effect) instead of modelling each particular way in which that effect is delivered. I happen to believe that Hill's work also influenced George MacDonald and Steve Peterson - whose similarly groundbreaking rpg Champions used the same approach to the modelling of comicbook superpowers.
I also happen to believe that this posited parallel influence is more than merely fortuitous. What I mean here is that what underpins the levels of abstraction that make the UF action deck such a joyous gaming engine is exactly the principle Allen developed from Hill's work, ie. model effect and not mechanism.
In this case though Allen went further than just reducing the effects of a variety of different weapons to a single unified mechanic, as had Hill. In UF, Allen went on to model the 'effect' of the squad level action on the platoon leader existing in a location separate from the action the game actually plays out, and vice versa. In other words the uncertainties of the action deck are a mechanism to model the effects of the distance between leader and led, with the resultant communications lag and general lack of specific information.
What made this so exciting at the time was the sense that this was a design concern - that of adequately modelling a single and definite viewpoint - which we were all convinced was a direct product of the advent, in the preceding decade, of the rpg.
And that's it:- Up Front: great game; fine simulation; and tacsim schwerpunkt of the post-D&D history of adventure gaming.
"Take fire 10!"
Related@RD/KA!
- A rash of enthusiasm for Memoir'44, Part 1: Another hymn of praise to cardplay
Monday, August 29, 2005
My little Old World: clearing the cludge
And so it continues: less GM's crunch for the sake of Andy's 4th wall; more story! Well I worked bloody hard getting this session ready, and harder even keeping it rolling, so I'm a bit reluctant to write a narrative that makes the PC's the sole heroes of the day. The GM's gloats must be heard!
I guess I would have to start with my satisfaction at the way my cast of characters just sprang to life. I've run the party through 'Pretty Things', 'A Rough Night at the Leaping Frog', 'Through the Drakwald'- 6 sessions; and 2 days in the 'Ashes of Middenheim- 2 sessions. The game has become a murder mystery with no comb... no: no real combat [eh! ;)] since they hit the big city. The pace is really hotting up, as witness the way the passage of time has become very much more compressed.
The basic play aids provided by the GM's pack has made this easy: with some photocopying and a bit of paperwork, I have all the NPC's, goonsquads and other assorted riff-raff written up on the NPC and combat record sheets, so that they can be called on at a moment's notice- that's outlaws, greenskins, wolves, and mutants to consider just those found in the GM's pack. The cast of pre-generated NPC's from those past scenarios must run to a couple of dozen at least, and I've barely scratched the surface of those yet.
All of this effort brought us to last-week's cliffhanger, in which a hardened and somewhat ruthless party of adventures better known for the inter-species spectacle they present than for their exploits charged into the chamber of Father Greimold, Priest of Sigmar.
Thrust unexpectedly into the Middenheim Anointment succession by the untimely death of old Morten, Greimold is only the 2nd NPC I've had to create from scratch, and the first was just the inevitable trial run. Doing the whole dice thing, working out his career path, and toting up those advances was time consuming, but it proved well worthwhile- giving me an NPC whose real depth added a whole new dimension to the already rich material hiding behind the deceptively simple plot of the opening of AoM.
One thing I can say with confidence about the new careers system is that it in no way constrains the richness of WFRP. It strikes me that a lot of talk about this ignores the first great merit of the WFRP careers system- that is, the very first thing your first ever game gives that you never forget: how amazingly quickly and easily you got great characters who just leapt up at you demanding to be played; whose sheer diversity moreover focussed everyone's attention perfectly on exploring the Old World, if only to find out why such misbegotten wretches, maniacs, shill merchants, thugs and well-heeled riff-raff, or what have you, would've spent more than 5 minutes in each others' company in the first place!
Just as with every other revision for the new edition, the careers system in WFRP2 does everything 1st ed. did and does it better, faster, and more systematically. Not only has WFRP2 already leapt up the ranks of most successful GW 2nd editions of all time, but the big crunch of the Storm of Chaos is just such a great backdrop against which to play the revival of this classic rpg.
And the support looks a lot better to me than it seems to to quite a lot of other people. The thing about these new releases is that they are not being produced for the sake of the old fans, but to succeed among a whole new generation of roleplayers, who approach this geek we do from across the gulf of the roleplaying wasteland of the 90's. It has to be said that from this point of view, the WFRP line looks very good.
The books are accessible by virtue of good writing; of not being weighty tomes; of having well laid out contents, and enjoy working indexes. They are well-designed playaids too. I mean, after 8 weeks of play, I still have AoM, most of PV and the imminent Spires of Altdorf at my disposal; all the monstrous diversions a rich bestiary can provide; not to mention all the hooks I can dig out from past sessions and the PC's backstories...
And the beauty of this? It's all pregenerated (well, OK, not the PC's relatives, though those could be found pregenerated if you wanted). All those NPC's and goons plus all of the monsters: with a bit of paperwork all there to be used straight out of the books- which look like they can easily just keep on coming; and a new 3-volume megascenario rolling out? This is epic fantasy roleplaying the way WFRP does best. ;)
Related@RD/KA!
Prologue: Getting to Middenheim
- A Rash of Enthusiasm...: the colour of Magic!
- Blogging my WFRP campaign: introducing the party.
- My little Old World: at the gates of Middenheim.
- My little Old World: mission accomplished?
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim
I guess I would have to start with my satisfaction at the way my cast of characters just sprang to life. I've run the party through 'Pretty Things', 'A Rough Night at the Leaping Frog', 'Through the Drakwald'- 6 sessions; and 2 days in the 'Ashes of Middenheim- 2 sessions. The game has become a murder mystery with no comb... no: no real combat [eh! ;)] since they hit the big city. The pace is really hotting up, as witness the way the passage of time has become very much more compressed.
The basic play aids provided by the GM's pack has made this easy: with some photocopying and a bit of paperwork, I have all the NPC's, goonsquads and other assorted riff-raff written up on the NPC and combat record sheets, so that they can be called on at a moment's notice- that's outlaws, greenskins, wolves, and mutants to consider just those found in the GM's pack. The cast of pre-generated NPC's from those past scenarios must run to a couple of dozen at least, and I've barely scratched the surface of those yet.
All of this effort brought us to last-week's cliffhanger, in which a hardened and somewhat ruthless party of adventures better known for the inter-species spectacle they present than for their exploits charged into the chamber of Father Greimold, Priest of Sigmar.
Thrust unexpectedly into the Middenheim Anointment succession by the untimely death of old Morten, Greimold is only the 2nd NPC I've had to create from scratch, and the first was just the inevitable trial run. Doing the whole dice thing, working out his career path, and toting up those advances was time consuming, but it proved well worthwhile- giving me an NPC whose real depth added a whole new dimension to the already rich material hiding behind the deceptively simple plot of the opening of AoM.
One thing I can say with confidence about the new careers system is that it in no way constrains the richness of WFRP. It strikes me that a lot of talk about this ignores the first great merit of the WFRP careers system- that is, the very first thing your first ever game gives that you never forget: how amazingly quickly and easily you got great characters who just leapt up at you demanding to be played; whose sheer diversity moreover focussed everyone's attention perfectly on exploring the Old World, if only to find out why such misbegotten wretches, maniacs, shill merchants, thugs and well-heeled riff-raff, or what have you, would've spent more than 5 minutes in each others' company in the first place!
Just as with every other revision for the new edition, the careers system in WFRP2 does everything 1st ed. did and does it better, faster, and more systematically. Not only has WFRP2 already leapt up the ranks of most successful GW 2nd editions of all time, but the big crunch of the Storm of Chaos is just such a great backdrop against which to play the revival of this classic rpg.
And the support looks a lot better to me than it seems to to quite a lot of other people. The thing about these new releases is that they are not being produced for the sake of the old fans, but to succeed among a whole new generation of roleplayers, who approach this geek we do from across the gulf of the roleplaying wasteland of the 90's. It has to be said that from this point of view, the WFRP line looks very good.
The books are accessible by virtue of good writing; of not being weighty tomes; of having well laid out contents, and enjoy working indexes. They are well-designed playaids too. I mean, after 8 weeks of play, I still have AoM, most of PV and the imminent Spires of Altdorf at my disposal; all the monstrous diversions a rich bestiary can provide; not to mention all the hooks I can dig out from past sessions and the PC's backstories...
And the beauty of this? It's all pregenerated (well, OK, not the PC's relatives, though those could be found pregenerated if you wanted). All those NPC's and goons plus all of the monsters: with a bit of paperwork all there to be used straight out of the books- which look like they can easily just keep on coming; and a new 3-volume megascenario rolling out? This is epic fantasy roleplaying the way WFRP does best. ;)
Related@RD/KA!
Prologue: Getting to Middenheim
- A Rash of Enthusiasm...: the colour of Magic!
- Blogging my WFRP campaign: introducing the party.
- My little Old World: at the gates of Middenheim.
- My little Old World: mission accomplished?
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim
My little Old World: The PC's
Here is the party that has stuck together since the Strutting Cock.
1. Tony
Alane: elven witch born under the Witchling Star and with the unusual background of having been brought up in Altdorf by a human wizard who couldn't save the mother from her horrible fate. A bit nutso with the winds of magic already. A 1 FP PC.
2. Andy
Bertholdt: puny mincing scribe from yokel-land with an untranslated dwarven chapbook and a taste for not suffering from old injuries so much of the time. Gotten close to too many FP for comfort.
3. Donald
Mordrin: dwarven runerunner with a shady family, a taste for the pipe, and a much cooler temperament than he first gave reason to expect.
4. Antony
Grundi: aging coachman whose life changed forever the day he first smote with Ulric's Fury and clove a mutant near in two. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Also owns a blunderbuss. Another 1 FP PC.
5. Brian
Siegfried: murdering lowlife trash with pretentions to the petty nobility. Has a heart of gold though, big girl's blouse that he is. The 'Greased Goat'. Lost the first FP.
Some of the highpoints of the previous games include:
1. That "party of adventurers?!" spending the first Geheimnisnacht since the Storm of Chaos passed camped out in the wild near Sylvania, surrounded by outlaws, greenskins, wolfs, and who knows what else?
2. Bertholdt missing his birthday during a troubled night of bloody multiple murder at the Leaping Frog.
3. The magic system.
4. Fortune points.
1. Tony
Alane: elven witch born under the Witchling Star and with the unusual background of having been brought up in Altdorf by a human wizard who couldn't save the mother from her horrible fate. A bit nutso with the winds of magic already. A 1 FP PC.
2. Andy
Bertholdt: puny mincing scribe from yokel-land with an untranslated dwarven chapbook and a taste for not suffering from old injuries so much of the time. Gotten close to too many FP for comfort.
3. Donald
Mordrin: dwarven runerunner with a shady family, a taste for the pipe, and a much cooler temperament than he first gave reason to expect.
4. Antony
Grundi: aging coachman whose life changed forever the day he first smote with Ulric's Fury and clove a mutant near in two. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Also owns a blunderbuss. Another 1 FP PC.
5. Brian
Siegfried: murdering lowlife trash with pretentions to the petty nobility. Has a heart of gold though, big girl's blouse that he is. The 'Greased Goat'. Lost the first FP.
Some of the highpoints of the previous games include:
1. That "party of adventurers?!" spending the first Geheimnisnacht since the Storm of Chaos passed camped out in the wild near Sylvania, surrounded by outlaws, greenskins, wolfs, and who knows what else?
2. Bertholdt missing his birthday during a troubled night of bloody multiple murder at the Leaping Frog.
3. The magic system.
4. Fortune points.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
On reflection...
Here's another one I prepared earlier since today is the WFRP game (and some Flashing Blades too perhaps; we'll see eh?).
A train-journey back west yesterday gave me time to read HERO:GC more thoroughly, so I just thought I'd put up some remarks beyond first impressions.
Where to start, where to start? Seriously: I have comments to make about several aspects of this book, and faced with the choice between knitting the different ideas together into a coherent exposition, or ravelling them up into an even greater fankle, I find myself wondering which thread to lay down first.
At the beginning then. For all my gripes (does HERO have more gripes/GM than other rpg's I wonder?), HERO remains one of my favourite rpgs, and without doubt still the best rpg system out there. When all is said and done, this game has never looked better than it does in this edition. I have more HERO5 product on my gaming shelves than any other rpg; more, in fact, than any game ever except 40K (that's 15 books at 27cm wide btw).
Galactic Champions is definitely one of the more disappointing HERO5 supplements I have bought. What are my reasons for this? I think in essence they are twofold:
1. As much as I like superheroing in HERO, I'm not at all sure that I think that HERO is the best system for playing cosmic level games.
2. I'm not a great fan of HERO background material- the Champions 3000 universe in this case.
I'll take each in turn.
Cosmic-powered HEROes?
The underlying coherence of the HERO system means that one thing that cannot be said is that cosmic power levels break the system per se. No, my criticism is not directed there. Ironically enough it is directed at one of my favourite features of the 1d6/5pts core of the mechanics- big handfuls of dice. I have long been a fan of the idea that big dice pools are a good way of giving players a feel for high powered characters.
I mean, faced with a choice, and all things being equal, I'd always rather roll to hit then roll 14d6 for a martial strike, than roll 1d20 to resolve everything in one handy dice roll. I like that particular crunch. The problem with cosmic powered HEROes is, well consider Bulletproof, from the Champions 3000 team (HERO:GC, pp.47-50). With 70rPD/ED, this guy can soak 20 average Nd6 (23 SE Nd6). So we're talking about 30d6 before your attacks can start troubling this guy.
This makes perfect sense at the power level in question, but well: I know for sure that I'd always rather roll a 30d6 megapool for CC in 40K than for effect in HERO, especially GM'ing. This is a simple matter of how the different piles of dice generate results. This dicepool overload leads to, IMO, one of the poorer design decisions in the crunchy part of HERO:GC- Firedancer (op. cit, pp.52-54), an energy projector with 6 (count them- 6!) RKA (2-6d6), a 2d6KA damage shield, no normal attacks at all and... a 15pt (common, strong) CVK. WTF?!
OK, OK. It has to be said that this howler aside, Firedancer is a fine example of rpg superhero design that showcases nicely the strengths of HERO, those same old virtues of the days of yore. I could go on about this CVK thing with all the invective at my disposal, but it all boils down to this: as GM, I doubt I would consider ever letting a PC with nothing but KA take any CVK at all. It's just plain dumb, because the 'exceptional circumstances' which such a player would've had to plead to try to get this by me would inevitably have a habit of turning up all the damn time, or I wouldn't be doing my job properly as GM.
Looking at Firedancer as an NPC then, I have to conclude that all her KA are there to make life easier for the GM, by shrinking her dice pool, and also perhaps to make her, well, a bit more, erm... frightening? I mean, at this level, PC's expect to soak 20-30 normal BOD on a bad day, so that KA keep them honest, so to speak.
What I am describing here is a situation in which the system's logic is fine, but the dice required to exercise it in practice just get silly, so silly that, well, Firedancer has a CVK... No, to be more precise: a 4-colour cosmic energy projector with CVK (a perfectly reasonable character conception) is designed with a suite of RKA because this is:
1. easier for the GM to manage in play
2. a more genuine challenge to the PC's according to the system's logic in any case.
Cosmically powered superheroics, in other words, would seem to pose serious challenges to HERO's longstanding and justly maintained claim to be the genre simulation non pareil on its home turf- the comicbook superhero genre.
The Champions Universe
This is a place I've never 'been'. I joined an existing, and ongoing superhero universe when I first took to Champions, and as GM have always most liked the game because it gave me the system with which I could most thoroughly design my own universes. So what I know of the Champions universe I am essentially learning from HERO5.
And it seems a perfectly good universe to me. It has all the classic elements I've enjoyed adventuring in in other GM's universes, or designing into my own. It shows all the signs of being lovingly developed through years of actual play, as opposed, that is, to being sucked out of someone's thumb for the sake of another new setting.
Now at this point I could get all litcrit on Darren Watt's ass, but that would be to mis-state my point entirely. Meantime, any readers who are able could do worse than test what I'm on about by comparing the colour text in WFRP2:OWB and HERO5:HSB. The WFRP stuff strikes me as being better written frankly. More importantly though, its structure and layout make it, well, much more vivid and accessible, therefore a better bestiary, score it how you will.
Forget systems snobbery here: you can strip out all the mechanics crunch from the 2 bestiaries not to mention any lingering nonsense about generic versus particular in terms of setting, all of that conceptual nonsense. Grammer, clarity of exposition, lah-de-bloody dah, all of that can be ignored, all the commonplaces of effective technical exposition, etc, etc. At the end of the day, the Old World Bestiary snaps, crackles, pops, rocks and freakin' rolls; the HERO System Bestiary?- HERO's best yet for sure, but colour... honestly?- a good chunterin' fizz.
With which I certainly intend monstrously to smack my PC's just asap mark you! ;)
A train-journey back west yesterday gave me time to read HERO:GC more thoroughly, so I just thought I'd put up some remarks beyond first impressions.
Where to start, where to start? Seriously: I have comments to make about several aspects of this book, and faced with the choice between knitting the different ideas together into a coherent exposition, or ravelling them up into an even greater fankle, I find myself wondering which thread to lay down first.
At the beginning then. For all my gripes (does HERO have more gripes/GM than other rpg's I wonder?), HERO remains one of my favourite rpgs, and without doubt still the best rpg system out there. When all is said and done, this game has never looked better than it does in this edition. I have more HERO5 product on my gaming shelves than any other rpg; more, in fact, than any game ever except 40K (that's 15 books at 27cm wide btw).
Galactic Champions is definitely one of the more disappointing HERO5 supplements I have bought. What are my reasons for this? I think in essence they are twofold:
1. As much as I like superheroing in HERO, I'm not at all sure that I think that HERO is the best system for playing cosmic level games.
2. I'm not a great fan of HERO background material- the Champions 3000 universe in this case.
I'll take each in turn.
Cosmic-powered HEROes?
The underlying coherence of the HERO system means that one thing that cannot be said is that cosmic power levels break the system per se. No, my criticism is not directed there. Ironically enough it is directed at one of my favourite features of the 1d6/5pts core of the mechanics- big handfuls of dice. I have long been a fan of the idea that big dice pools are a good way of giving players a feel for high powered characters.
I mean, faced with a choice, and all things being equal, I'd always rather roll to hit then roll 14d6 for a martial strike, than roll 1d20 to resolve everything in one handy dice roll. I like that particular crunch. The problem with cosmic powered HEROes is, well consider Bulletproof, from the Champions 3000 team (HERO:GC, pp.47-50). With 70rPD/ED, this guy can soak 20 average Nd6 (23 SE Nd6). So we're talking about 30d6 before your attacks can start troubling this guy.
This makes perfect sense at the power level in question, but well: I know for sure that I'd always rather roll a 30d6 megapool for CC in 40K than for effect in HERO, especially GM'ing. This is a simple matter of how the different piles of dice generate results. This dicepool overload leads to, IMO, one of the poorer design decisions in the crunchy part of HERO:GC- Firedancer (op. cit, pp.52-54), an energy projector with 6 (count them- 6!) RKA (2-6d6), a 2d6KA damage shield, no normal attacks at all and... a 15pt (common, strong) CVK. WTF?!
OK, OK. It has to be said that this howler aside, Firedancer is a fine example of rpg superhero design that showcases nicely the strengths of HERO, those same old virtues of the days of yore. I could go on about this CVK thing with all the invective at my disposal, but it all boils down to this: as GM, I doubt I would consider ever letting a PC with nothing but KA take any CVK at all. It's just plain dumb, because the 'exceptional circumstances' which such a player would've had to plead to try to get this by me would inevitably have a habit of turning up all the damn time, or I wouldn't be doing my job properly as GM.
Looking at Firedancer as an NPC then, I have to conclude that all her KA are there to make life easier for the GM, by shrinking her dice pool, and also perhaps to make her, well, a bit more, erm... frightening? I mean, at this level, PC's expect to soak 20-30 normal BOD on a bad day, so that KA keep them honest, so to speak.
What I am describing here is a situation in which the system's logic is fine, but the dice required to exercise it in practice just get silly, so silly that, well, Firedancer has a CVK... No, to be more precise: a 4-colour cosmic energy projector with CVK (a perfectly reasonable character conception) is designed with a suite of RKA because this is:
1. easier for the GM to manage in play
2. a more genuine challenge to the PC's according to the system's logic in any case.
Cosmically powered superheroics, in other words, would seem to pose serious challenges to HERO's longstanding and justly maintained claim to be the genre simulation non pareil on its home turf- the comicbook superhero genre.
The Champions Universe
This is a place I've never 'been'. I joined an existing, and ongoing superhero universe when I first took to Champions, and as GM have always most liked the game because it gave me the system with which I could most thoroughly design my own universes. So what I know of the Champions universe I am essentially learning from HERO5.
And it seems a perfectly good universe to me. It has all the classic elements I've enjoyed adventuring in in other GM's universes, or designing into my own. It shows all the signs of being lovingly developed through years of actual play, as opposed, that is, to being sucked out of someone's thumb for the sake of another new setting.
Now at this point I could get all litcrit on Darren Watt's ass, but that would be to mis-state my point entirely. Meantime, any readers who are able could do worse than test what I'm on about by comparing the colour text in WFRP2:OWB and HERO5:HSB. The WFRP stuff strikes me as being better written frankly. More importantly though, its structure and layout make it, well, much more vivid and accessible, therefore a better bestiary, score it how you will.
Forget systems snobbery here: you can strip out all the mechanics crunch from the 2 bestiaries not to mention any lingering nonsense about generic versus particular in terms of setting, all of that conceptual nonsense. Grammer, clarity of exposition, lah-de-bloody dah, all of that can be ignored, all the commonplaces of effective technical exposition, etc, etc. At the end of the day, the Old World Bestiary snaps, crackles, pops, rocks and freakin' rolls; the HERO System Bestiary?- HERO's best yet for sure, but colour... honestly?- a good chunterin' fizz.
With which I certainly intend monstrously to smack my PC's just asap mark you! ;)
Saturday, August 27, 2005
A sensible decision
I've taken to hanging out on the BI forums since I started GM'ing WFRP, and by and large I've found it to be an enjoyable and helpful place. It's been hell getting into them for a couple of weeks though, with server timeouts stopping access perhaps as much as 50% of time. Not good.
So, it is with some satisfaction that I tried to visit the forums yesterday only to find the following message:
So, it is with some satisfaction that I tried to visit the forums yesterday only to find the following message:
Due to the problems our forum has been experiencing of late, caused by sheer level of traffic, we are temporarily disabling it.
We will be investigating either fixing the system or installing a newer more reliable system.
Please accept our apologies for the break in service and we thankyou for your patience.
The Black Industries Team
Good choice lads. Far better IMO to irk us for a wee while as we wait for a more servicable forum, than irritate us constantly with a forum we can't get to regularly. And given the great success of WFRP2, this is a problem we would all have 'hoped' would get worse. Just in case anyone associated with the decision-making process at play here might be reading this (if only, eh?!), I would recommend 2 formats both of which I have found to be ideal for games-related efora:
1. Invision Power Board
- as used by the Bolter and Chainsword.
2. vBulletin
- as used by HERO.
If someone at BI to whom this information might be useful is reading this, then you probably don't need me to tell you this anyway! Just thought I'd put it up anyhoo, because those are my favourite bulletin board formats at the moment in any case.
1. Invision Power Board
- as used by the Bolter and Chainsword.
2. vBulletin
- as used by HERO.
If someone at BI to whom this information might be useful is reading this, then you probably don't need me to tell you this anyway! Just thought I'd put it up anyhoo, because those are my favourite bulletin board formats at the moment in any case.
Meanwhile…
Well, like I said, I spent the afternoon in Dundee having a pleasant time just hanging around.
Various minor chores notwithstanding, as ever my first port of call was the local GW. This has become something of a ritual of mine in recent years- visiting the GW store wherever go, just to see what the locals are up to, and maybe to have an excuse to shell out some mullah on yet more product from the good old money-suckers.
Today’s visit started off pleasantly enough, espying as I did on my entry a familiar face from the Glasgow store. We said hello and, as I was informed of the various staff reshuffles of late, I found myself thinking that I was listening to the ‘last week’ prologue of an over-the-top soap. I even got a laugh as I aired this notion, which was gratifying.
I lashed out on the new White Dwarf, and a copy of Darkness Rising: A complete history of the Storm of Chaos. This last product is truly amazing, the sort of thing that serves to confirm the wisdom of my long-standing faith in the essential merits of GW as a games company. I will say no more just now because I intend to prepare a proper review just as soon as I can.
My next port of call thereafter was the pub next door (coffee and orange juice I can assure you!), where I began to digest my purchases, and where I began to form the already intimated high opinion of DR. This place is called The Old Horseshoe Inn, and what a place it is! What I mean to say is that it could be a set from the Old World, from Dumas’ France, or from anywhere similar. Not only does it have a balcony level around the walls, but it even has a chandelier from which you could swing during the brawl that any GM would inevitably want to stage in such a place should he introduce a group of PC’s to it as regulars. Maybe I’ll go back sometime with a camera and take pictures.
From the Old Horseshoe I headed up to Highlander Games (98 Annfield Place). I’d been there once before, and was looking forward to another visit.
Highlander Games is what you might call a FLGS from the ‘old school’: small enough to be cramped, especially when you consider the 2 gaming tables set out in the middle of the narrow floor space. At the same time though, it carries a stock of games of all kinds which, while small in keeping with the size of the shop itself, is sufficiently wide to ensure that there will be something there to satisfy all but the most esoteric of gaming tastes.
I reintroduced myself to Gary, the proprietor, and we had a nice chat. Still buzzing from his recent trip to GenCon, Gary proved to be a fund of interesting information. I would think that, if he proves to be as good a businessman as he is obviously a passionate gamer, then the future of the gaming community in this particular neck of the Scottish woods is bright indeed.
Of course, I spent some money, getting hold of a copy of the HERO supplement Galactic Champions, by Darren Watts. Exactly as I said about HERO:UM, this is a systematic and detailed treatment of its subject- in this case, hi-powered cosmic superheroes. Although a much shorter book (a ‘mere’ 150 pages), this book strikes me as being immediately more useful to a HERO superhero GM. Why? Simply because it at least has some pre-generated heroes and villains. OK, so these are all in the range that makes them hi-powered or invincible in the face of the average HERO superhero, but then that’s the power-level that this book is about.
In the same curate’s egg are the illustrations. As ever with HERO, an unkind reviewer could call these ‘workmanlike’. Me, I think that a lot of them suffer from the same overly generic nature that made me feel unhappy with HERO:UM. At the same time, there are many images in this book that any GM could find inspirational for individual characters, or as prototypes for xeno-species. Good material in other words.
All of which brings me to my major gripe about this product, one which is true of pretty much any HERO product I have ever seen, namely the presentation of characters, and other systems material. What you get with HERO:GC is a set of characters presented as a bastard fusion of design and playing information; points values and playing information in the same specs sheets in other words. I don’t like this.
HERO being the kind of system that it is, I have long believed that material of this kind should be presented in 2 distinct formats:
1. Points-crunching design specs to reveal the inner workings of the objects presented
2. GM-friendly playsheets presenting the ‘delivery end’ of the same objects in a format appropriate to easy reference in the heat of play.
It is my opinion that, by presenting a hybrid of these 2 formats, HERO books, as they are currently designed, give us the worst of both worlds. That is to say: the design specs are less than fully detailed, while the numbers needed for play are less than adequately accessible.
Still, as ever with HERO product, HERO:GC is a superior treatise on its subject the perusal of which should be of value to players of any game embracing this topic.
More than just giving me this product at a small discount, Gary also gave me a freebie: Anachronism: The Greatest Game in History, a sample of a new game he’d picked up at GenCon. Published by TriKing, and sponsored by the History Channel(!), this is a game of man-to-man combat between heroic characters from real history- Myamoto Musashi and Beowulf in the sample Gary gave me.
At first glance, this game combines the best elements of cardplay mechanics introduced by CCG’s, without the burden of the marketing device (I must here note that, any merits of the particular games aside, I regard the collectible marketing device as the single biggest scourge on the gaming industry today; but that‘s just my opinion). Basically you buy ‘warrior packs’, each containing a warrior card and 4 support cards. Buy more packs, and you have more support cards with which to customise your warriors. The big ‘but’ is that these packs are not random.
Anyhoo, without trying it out a few times, there is really nothing more that I can say about this game other than that the cards are very nice (“best elements of card play”), and that this game really ought to be a nice little tactical nugget to fill in the odd gap in between other games, if not becoming a serious challenge in its own right.
So, my second visit to Highlander Games proved to be very enjoyable. I hope to be able to report on an actual game played there sometime soon. In the meantime, if you are in the area, pop in and say hello. You should find yourself made welcome.
Various minor chores notwithstanding, as ever my first port of call was the local GW. This has become something of a ritual of mine in recent years- visiting the GW store wherever go, just to see what the locals are up to, and maybe to have an excuse to shell out some mullah on yet more product from the good old money-suckers.
Today’s visit started off pleasantly enough, espying as I did on my entry a familiar face from the Glasgow store. We said hello and, as I was informed of the various staff reshuffles of late, I found myself thinking that I was listening to the ‘last week’ prologue of an over-the-top soap. I even got a laugh as I aired this notion, which was gratifying.
I lashed out on the new White Dwarf, and a copy of Darkness Rising: A complete history of the Storm of Chaos. This last product is truly amazing, the sort of thing that serves to confirm the wisdom of my long-standing faith in the essential merits of GW as a games company. I will say no more just now because I intend to prepare a proper review just as soon as I can.
My next port of call thereafter was the pub next door (coffee and orange juice I can assure you!), where I began to digest my purchases, and where I began to form the already intimated high opinion of DR. This place is called The Old Horseshoe Inn, and what a place it is! What I mean to say is that it could be a set from the Old World, from Dumas’ France, or from anywhere similar. Not only does it have a balcony level around the walls, but it even has a chandelier from which you could swing during the brawl that any GM would inevitably want to stage in such a place should he introduce a group of PC’s to it as regulars. Maybe I’ll go back sometime with a camera and take pictures.
From the Old Horseshoe I headed up to Highlander Games (98 Annfield Place). I’d been there once before, and was looking forward to another visit.
Highlander Games is what you might call a FLGS from the ‘old school’: small enough to be cramped, especially when you consider the 2 gaming tables set out in the middle of the narrow floor space. At the same time though, it carries a stock of games of all kinds which, while small in keeping with the size of the shop itself, is sufficiently wide to ensure that there will be something there to satisfy all but the most esoteric of gaming tastes.
I reintroduced myself to Gary, the proprietor, and we had a nice chat. Still buzzing from his recent trip to GenCon, Gary proved to be a fund of interesting information. I would think that, if he proves to be as good a businessman as he is obviously a passionate gamer, then the future of the gaming community in this particular neck of the Scottish woods is bright indeed.
Of course, I spent some money, getting hold of a copy of the HERO supplement Galactic Champions, by Darren Watts. Exactly as I said about HERO:UM, this is a systematic and detailed treatment of its subject- in this case, hi-powered cosmic superheroes. Although a much shorter book (a ‘mere’ 150 pages), this book strikes me as being immediately more useful to a HERO superhero GM. Why? Simply because it at least has some pre-generated heroes and villains. OK, so these are all in the range that makes them hi-powered or invincible in the face of the average HERO superhero, but then that’s the power-level that this book is about.
In the same curate’s egg are the illustrations. As ever with HERO, an unkind reviewer could call these ‘workmanlike’. Me, I think that a lot of them suffer from the same overly generic nature that made me feel unhappy with HERO:UM. At the same time, there are many images in this book that any GM could find inspirational for individual characters, or as prototypes for xeno-species. Good material in other words.
All of which brings me to my major gripe about this product, one which is true of pretty much any HERO product I have ever seen, namely the presentation of characters, and other systems material. What you get with HERO:GC is a set of characters presented as a bastard fusion of design and playing information; points values and playing information in the same specs sheets in other words. I don’t like this.
HERO being the kind of system that it is, I have long believed that material of this kind should be presented in 2 distinct formats:
1. Points-crunching design specs to reveal the inner workings of the objects presented
2. GM-friendly playsheets presenting the ‘delivery end’ of the same objects in a format appropriate to easy reference in the heat of play.
It is my opinion that, by presenting a hybrid of these 2 formats, HERO books, as they are currently designed, give us the worst of both worlds. That is to say: the design specs are less than fully detailed, while the numbers needed for play are less than adequately accessible.
Still, as ever with HERO product, HERO:GC is a superior treatise on its subject the perusal of which should be of value to players of any game embracing this topic.
More than just giving me this product at a small discount, Gary also gave me a freebie: Anachronism: The Greatest Game in History, a sample of a new game he’d picked up at GenCon. Published by TriKing, and sponsored by the History Channel(!), this is a game of man-to-man combat between heroic characters from real history- Myamoto Musashi and Beowulf in the sample Gary gave me.
At first glance, this game combines the best elements of cardplay mechanics introduced by CCG’s, without the burden of the marketing device (I must here note that, any merits of the particular games aside, I regard the collectible marketing device as the single biggest scourge on the gaming industry today; but that‘s just my opinion). Basically you buy ‘warrior packs’, each containing a warrior card and 4 support cards. Buy more packs, and you have more support cards with which to customise your warriors. The big ‘but’ is that these packs are not random.
Anyhoo, without trying it out a few times, there is really nothing more that I can say about this game other than that the cards are very nice (“best elements of card play”), and that this game really ought to be a nice little tactical nugget to fill in the odd gap in between other games, if not becoming a serious challenge in its own right.
So, my second visit to Highlander Games proved to be very enjoyable. I hope to be able to report on an actual game played there sometime soon. In the meantime, if you are in the area, pop in and say hello. You should find yourself made welcome.
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