Gangsters and WWI games

On Friday evening, Lisa, Arthur and I had our first playtest of Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles.  The game was inspired by Lisa's research into the Kerensky Offensive on the Eastern Front in 1917, where a squadron of Royal Navy Air Service armoured cars reinforced the Russian Army.

The battle featured the Russians and their British allies attacking German trenches.

Lisa included a few special rules, most importantly that when a joker was dealt, one of the Russian infantry units would gain a 1d6 red markers, representing Bolshevik propaganda.  The idea was that any unit that ended up with more markers than troops would be persuaded by the propaganda and leave the battlefield.  As it happened, none of the Russian units reached that break point, but it was fun to pile those markers onto units.

German forces man the trenches.  There was a pre-game bombardment that ended up wiping out the German light machine guns (a Lewis gun team and a MG-08 gun team), and left most of the other units with some shock.

RNAS armoured cars prep for battle: 3 Rolls Royce and 1 Lanchester.

Russian Maxim Gun moves onto the table.

Russian cavalry advances, supported by infantry following up behind.

Russians used this cover to good effect to close with the German infantry.

Russian cavalry charge the German trench.

And then clear the trench!  We used smoke markers to represent shock - as you can see, there is more shock than surviving Germans.  The Germans routed the next time their card came up.

Elsewhere on the line, German defenders attempt an unsuccessful close assault on a RNAS Roller.

However, their assault failed, and then the Germans routed.

In the end, the Russians captured the German trenches.

The verdict is that Bigger Battles gives a good, fun, fast-paced game.  Complexity is similar to a Dan Mersey Rampant-style game.  I had thought that morale might have been an issue, but it wasn't.  Due to the way shock works in this game, a unit that is battered is most likely to fall back and eventually rout off the table.

And then on Sunday, we had our monthly gangsters gaming day.  I got to represent the South Side gang as Moe's Diamondbacks attempted to cut through their territory.  Moe rolled to see how many South Siders were on the street, and ended up with 17 various gangsters ready to stop his single red truck transporting 6 Diamondbacks.

Southsiders open fire on the truck.

They blew out a tire, causing the truck to careen into a nanny pushing a pram.  Morale outrage was assured!

The Diamondbacks, in trench coats, abandon their truck and set off on foot, pursued by angry Southsiders.

After gunning down a Southsider, the Diamondbacks hijack another truck.

But they don't get far - the Southsiders shoot up the hijacked truck and swarm the Diamondbacks as they pile out.

At this point, we pulled the dreaded back-to-back jokers, which is the trigger for the cops to arrive.  Only two of the Diamondbacks clear the table in time, the remainder are arrested.  Most likely, being arrested saved them from rough justice at the hands of the outraged Southsiders!

As a result of this battle, there weren't enough Diamondbacks left to raid my Docksiders' gin joint.  This left me free to bully another business in my neighbourhood into accepting my 'protection'!

Monitor vs Merrimack

 Last night, Doug invited Arthur and me to play his What a Tanker variant for the famous ACW battle of the ironclads at Hampton Roads between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (aka Merrimack).  

To begin with, here are Doug's homemade models of the Monitor:

And the Merrimack:

The game uses the WaT system of command dice, with slightly different effects than in WaT - for example, there is no spotting but there are different dice for movement and steering.  Monitor gets 6 command dice, and Merrimack gets 6 normal dice plus an extra 6 that can only be used for the guns, to allow for Merrimack's full broadside versus Monitor's two guns in a rotating turret.

The ship profiles are a bit different from WaT again, with characteristics for steam (aka speed) and rudder setting.

Our ships started at opposite ends of the muddy-looking Hampton Roads.  Turn gauges are visible in the lower left corner, with different gauges depending on the rudder angle.

Monitor speeds ahead at full steam.

Merrimack uses the turn gauge to bring a broadside to bear on Monitor.

Doug created some creative critical hit effects, including effects such as additional damage points or more specific effects inspired by actual incidents in the battle such as when the Monitor's captain was injured by a hit on the pilot house.


In last night's game, Monitor managed to inflict some damage on Merrimack, but under Arthur's command, Merrimack battered Monitor.  Once I was down to 3 command dice, I decided it was time to exercise the better of valour and fled the battlefield, leaving the Confederate Navy in command of Hampton Roads.

Doug has done a great job with this WaT variant.  Hopefully he'll take my advice and get it into print!

Bolt Action - WWI Eastern Front

 We picked up the new (3rd) edition of Bolt Action for Christmas and this weekend we finally managed a game.  I say "we" but this game was all due to Arthur's planning.  Arthur made a couple of 500-point lists, and built the scenario using info from the main rulebook.  Arthur's main change was to use early WWI armies rather than WWII.  The Russian army had three groups of 12 regular infantry, a squad of 5 cavalry, a Maxim MMG, a nurse and an officer, while the Germans had three groups of 10 infantry, 10 Uhlans, a field gun and a command group.  Here's a snap of the German force, and of course I didn't get one of the Russians!

We invited Sam and Doug to join us.  Sam is our Bolt Action expert, and took on the referee role to make sure we got up to speed with rules changes for the new edition.  This was Doug's first BA game, and he took the Germans to learn the rules on the fly.  Arthur took the Russians and I managed the refreshments.

Arthur rolled for terrain and ended up with this.

As Arthur won the dice roll for choice of deployment, he chose to deploy in the village in the upper right, leaving the Germans to deploy in the open ground in the lower left.  It's not quite as bad as it looks for the Germans as there are a few hills that created a few areas of dead ground that they could exploit, but the openness certainly gave the Germans motivation to get moving.

The first Russian infantry squad set up in the village, in cover behind the stone wall.  I didn't have any markers for 'hidden' so we used 'overwatch' markers instead.  In the background you can see my DIY BA order dice!  The Maxim gun is just barely visible at the right end of the stone wall.

Germans deploy, ready to advance quickly on the Russian positions.

The German field gun deploys on a hill in the table corner where it can blast just about any target on the table.

The scenario starts with a bombardment, which means that most units on the table begin the game with shock markers.  This meant that each unit needed to pass a command roll before it could act, with the unfortunate result that the Uhlans were stuck for a couple of turns before they passed an order check!

To win the scenario, each player wins points for both destroying their opponents' units as well as occupying table quarters.  Here a Russian squad advances into one of the neutral table quarters, but note also the small forest of shock markers it's earned from German fire.  The nurse in the background was able to help save casualties from time to time but not the shock markers.

The Russians took a turn to rally, and were able to shake off the shock markers.  The German field gun kept bashing them, though, and managed to destroy this squad.

Elsewhere the German advance in the centre failed.

Action instead moved to the lower right table quarter with a standoff between Russian and German cavalry.

Alas, the grand cavalry battle never happened.  The German Uhans took too many shock markers, and then rolled poorly on a morale check and fled the table.  We did see the Russian cavalry successfully charge the German infantry.

Much bloodshed happened, the Russians depleted the Germans but were wiped out in the charge.

Bolt Action scenarios mostly have a limit of 6 turns.  The result was after six turns, each side had eliminated 3 of the opposing sides forces (out of an original 6 for the Germans and 7 for the Russians).  However, the Germans had active units in their own original quarter plus the two neutral quarters, while the Russians were only in their own quarter.  This result gave the Germans the win with 5 points to 3.  Doug appreciated his Pyrrhic victory.  Despite losing, Arthur still appreciated the game.  Thanks Sam for keeping the game on track and evaluating the rules for us!

Playing with WWI forces still gave a good game even though the rules are written for WWII.  After all, these forces are pretty similar, they just have fewer troop types to select from.

A boarding action, plus update on spaceship interior.

 Last night was the monthly Trumpeter meeting at Bonsor, so I took my WIP spaceship interior for a test game.

The scenario was a boarding action using Wiley Games' Galactic Heroes (aka Fistful of Lead in Spaaaace!).  I set up four teams.  The spaceship crew were divided into the engineering team and the bridge crew, and against them were a team of greenskinned aliens and a team of human attackers.  Each team had four figures, which seemed to be a good number.  I kept traits to a minimum, just one per leader.  The aliens ended up a bit overpowered, so that will need to be fixed in the next go 'round.  And this game will appear again, as I am planning to put it on at the Trumpeters' Salute gaming convention in April.

Here is the game table.  Engineering is on the left, bridge is on the right, and everyone starts in the cargo hold in the centre.

In terms of pinning the walls to the floor, I found that longer quilting pins work much better than the shorter finishing nails.  Generally, the walls were stable enough that they stayed in place as the game went on.  In this photo, the finishing nail is circled in blue, and the quilting pins are shown in red.  So the big head of the pin is more visible than the head of the nail, but it doesn't interfere with gaming, so no biggie as far as I'm concerned.  The pins are more useful.

I came up with a few house rules for the boarding action scenario.  First, I had fun with the doors.  Each door must be activated to open it.  A figure must pass a 3+ roll to open a door, which will remain open until the end of the turn, when it automatically closes.  The boarding parties managed to get the door codes, and the ship crew doesn't have time to reprogram them in the timeframe of the scenario.  We adjusted that rule during the game to allow the ship crew to lock all the doors three turns after getting control of the bridge and/or engineering department.  There was lots of fun with the number of times the door test was failed.  In my mind, this represented someone under huge pressure trying to type in the passcode, screwing up and then retyping.  As each figure gets two actions per turn, it meant they had two tries to open the door. Failing the first attempt meant that they wasted time trying again instead of actually going through the door.  This will need some refinement for the next game.  I suppose that the doors can be moved perpendicular to the walls to show they are open.  Maybe opening and closing doors can be competitive with boarders and defenders both doing skill tests to open and close the doors, with different challenge levels when right at the door versus remotely operating them from the bridge or from engineering.

Here is a big door. There is an identical door on the other side of the wall facing the cargo hold.

This photo shows the engineering team holding off the boarders in the corridor between the cargo hold and engineering.  As a bit of fun, the yellow slippery floor sign was intended to be a mini-trap. Anyone moving quickly would need to pass a test or else fall down (take one shock and require an action to stand up again).  Regrettably, I wasn't able to spring this on anyone.  Next time it will be in the cargo hold so that I'll be likelier to trip someone up!

There was a ferocious battle between the bridge crew and the aliens in the corridor leading to the bridge.

My smoke and wound markers filled up the corridor quickly, but the attackers were held off long enough to allow the pilot in the red dress to get the ship airborne.

Meanwhile the engineers are chilling by their control panel, wondering what the fuss is at the other end of the ship :)

Despite getting the ship into the air, the aliens still gained the bridge.

We finished the first play through early enough to try a second time.  Players swapped teams, and we increased the challenge for the attackers by starting them outside the ship, and put more barricades inside to provide cover for both attackers and defenders.

Despite the need to refine the scenario, all the players enjoyed the game.  I'll adjust things before Salute, including allowing for 6 players, contested tests to open and close doors, better define the victory conditions for attackers and defenders.  The aliens were a bit nerfed, so they will either be toned down or simply replaced with human spacers.

Almost all the spacers wear space suits (vacc suits to us Traveller grognards!), which I rated as light armour.  That choice is good, but some of the weapon choices are a bit fussy.  I like the idea that blasters are powerful but inaccurate - very Star Warsy!  In practice though, if everyone has a blaster it's a bit silly to be applying modifiers to the shoot and wound rolls.  So I probably will use the weapons rules straight, assuming everyone has a blaster.  The aliens had AP1 lasers, though, which i'll reclassify for the next playthrough.

I'll write up the revised scenario before the next playtest, including the profiles for each of the teams, objectives, house rules and anything else I can think of.    

Spaceship Interior WIP part 2

 Work is slowly progressing on the spaceship interior scenery.  

Getting a smooth cut on the walls continues to be a challenge.  I picked up a couple more packs of floor mats, and will cut some new ones, this time with a brand new, sharp blade, so that the cuts are not all ragged.

Meanwhile, I've painted a few new bits of scatter terrain.  These next few pieces I picked up at the Imperial Hobbies Boxing Day sale.  This thingy is supposed to be some sort of micro-scale spaceship from a monster battle game, but for me it will be part of the engine room for the spaceship.  Beside it is a Terrain Crate motor.

These computery pieces will be used on the ship's bridge.

Two piles of materials will be cargo in the ship, and can of course be used in 20th century wargames, too!

I finished up the Terrain Crate doors.

As well as some other Terrain Crate scatter pieces.

I have some more wall cutting to do.  Walls will be pinned in place with these little finishing nails.  This will hold them in place for a game and prevent accidental relocation when they are inevitably bumped, but will be easy to lift and move around to make a new layout.

One of the tricks to getting a clean cut (just like with foamcore) is to use a new, sharp blade. I redid the walls and this lot are smoother.  I tried using my hot wire foam cutter - it can cut the foam but it's nearly impossible to get a straight cut, and as these foam mats are much denser than insulation foam, cutting is a lot slower.  So a new cutting blade makes a big difference.

Next, I am going to come up with a few possible spaceship interior floor plans, and then cut wall pieces to match.