Monday, 9 December 2024

Flight Of The Clontarf

I played a couple of quick games of Galleys & Galleons on Sunday, running the Blockade Runner scenario and setting it around the post-ECW Isles of Scilly. And Irish privateer, Clontarf, is attempting to escape an anchorage in the Isles, and three government vessels are poised to intercept.

The ship stats:

Clontarf - Q3 C1 - Lateen Rig, Yare, Razee, Shallow Draft, Swashbucklers

Verity, Providence - Q3 C3 - Galleon Rigged
Abigail - Q3 C1 - Lateen Rig, Yare, Razee, Shallow Draft

Here's the Clontarf, ready to make her run for safety.


An early shift of wind disadvantaged the Irish vessel. Here's the line of government ships - Verity, Providence and Abigail


Clontarf tried to dodge past Providence.


Providence opened fire with a steady long-range broadside. Clontarf was damaged and holed. The hole severely restricted the ship's ability to turn.


However Clontarf was past Providence, who would now have to make a slow turn to resume pursuit.


But Abigail was coming up fast and even Verity added in some long-range fire. Clontarf was taking a battering.


Unable to manuever easily Clontarf fell to a stern-rake from Abigail, and sank.



I set it up again. However tis time I increased Clontarf's Q to 2, and dropped the Swashbucklers trait as improved boarding isn't really much use in a scenario that involves trying to run away.

Here's the line of blockaders.


Clontarf made an initial run for some rocks, hoping to cut down the ability of the opposing vessels to manuever.


Abigail cut the Irish vessel off and Providence was coming up rather too fast as well.


Some swift sailing from Clontarf saw it inflict a damaging rake on Abigail, which shot away her tiller.


But a broadside from Providence inflicted the same damage on Clontarf.


Abigail moved to cut Clontarf off from escaping.


Clontarf tried to slip past but was grappled and boarded, losing the first round of combat.


Clontarf cut grapples, but the delay had allowed Providence to turn back into action, and another shot from the larger vessel saw Clontarf holed and seriously damaged.


A final shot from Abigail sank the Irish privateer.


To be honest the low C value of Clontarf meant that it was very vulnerable to being shot at, making it's task fairly difficult. You really do have to avoid the two larger ships and a rake from the nimble Abigail is always a possibility as well. Giving Clontarf a Q of 2 for the second run certainly helped though.

It was good to get toys on the table at home though. It's something I've not, for a variety of reasons, done for a while.

Sunday, 1 December 2024

Gaslands!

Gaslands is really a victim of its own success at our club. Whenever we schedule a game it is often well-subscribed with people wanting to play, which means we have potential problems with finishing the game. Really anything over four players is inviting issues for a normal evening's play.

Our usual solution is to play a smaller game; one vehicle and a limited number of points. That's what we did this week when we had seven people wanting to play. We went with sponsors but limited everybody to one vehicle and only 25 cans. To be fair this made some sponsors unviable.

We got a race. Here's everyone on the start-line. Left to right we have:

Graham - Warden car
June - Slime car (first time our group has used Slime in a very long time)
Craig - Scarlett van
Me - Miyazaki performance car
Caesar - Rutherford performance car
Daniel - Rutherford car
Stuart - Verney car


And the course - up the left side, down the middle and then back up the right.


June got out into an early lead thanks to her vehicle's Pinball ability, that gave her an extra move.


Mind you, bouncing off my car gave me an extra move too. Everybody else was moving up to the first gate but things were going to get congested pretty fast.


Some deft driving from Caesar.


Some less deft driving from Craig, who still somehow got away with this (despite a few bumps).


Vehicles were now passing the first gate. I had my car (Red Barchetta) out in front, but had wiped out thanks to taking too many hazards evading the harpoon on June's vehicle.


Graham nearly rammed me. But there's a whisker of daylight there.


I got moving again, and avoided the awesome front-mounted artillery of  Daniel's Clockwork Angel only to fall foul of the crew's accurately applied handguns. Clockwork Angel was wrecked just after that, leaving June and Graham heading through Gate 2 towards a pile of wrecks and obstacles.


June described what happened next:

"I pivoted into Daniel's car with my rear drive, wrecking that car, causing it to skid into another wreck, clearing both. Then I placed some mines and shot Graham with my harpoon, doing 9 hits, reeling him into my side. We both smash attacked and both got brought down to 1 hull point. Then I wiped out and flipped, rammed into the gate, and exploded. The explosion hit Graham and wrecked him, making him skid forward into my mines."

In a couple of moves four of the seven vehicles were wrecked and destroyed.



The green car is Graham's wreck, replaced with a proxy because of the footprint and fragility of the original vehicle.


A new turn and a lot of people got to respawn, creating another traffic jam.


Craig contrived to park his bus across the next gate.


At that stage, with things still an entertainingly chaotic mess, we ran out of time. 



I think some decisions were made as to who was in the best position. I couldn't tell and it certainly wasn't me (I'd wrecked again).

What we did conclude was that seven vehicles with full sponsor rules, was still too much for an evening's play. To be fair we did have one Slime car and two performance cars, both of which get extra moves under certain circumstances. so they tended to add extra time. But a race tends to be one of the longer scenarios anyway, and we simply didn't have enough time for it. We now have at least three people who are confident enough to put on and run a game, though, so I think in future we may consider splitting anything over five players into two smaller games.

Some additional pictures - first from Caesar.




And then from June











Wednesday, 27 November 2024

Midgard Heroic Battles

Last Thursday Dave and Gary played a game of the new Midgard fantasy rules, whilst others of us spectated. Dave Brown has written this excellent survey/review of the rules. I took a few pictures of the game, which was between Dwarves and Undead. 

"So what’s with this new Midgard thing?

The ‘Midgard, Heroic Battles’ rules come from the Two Fat Lardies' stable / Reisswitz press, authored by James Morris being a rank-and-flank set covering – as per the sub-title - ‘Historical, Legendary and Fantasy Battles in the age of heroic deeds’.

Legendary’ as described by the author has overlap with what I call ‘semi-historical’, where an army has via myth accreted a few fictional elements while otherwise being true to historical sources. An example being the Alexander romances where his army contains what you would expect in a 4th-3rd Century Makedonian force but adds Amazon riders, Roman archers and an eagle-powered vehicle.

It’s not clear to me what should or should not be called a review of a set of rules, but the following may fit your definition. For such a new set, released less than a week ago, I clearly have limited experience to draw upon.

Firstly the author and supporters have produced a series of you-tube clips walking through a game and a website spells out various basic data such as base sizes and so on.

Form and Content

As to form, the rules are 131 pages available in hard copy or a PDF. The author has flagged on-line support for things like army-builder spreadsheets, extra scenarios and army lists. A Facebook page and the Lardies forum can be scouted for more support and discussion.

The rules are superbly produced with original artwork, well-executed page design, crisp and clear diagrams to explain rules and photos of units. At the back of the rules are a two-page QRS.

To quibble, I reckon 10-20 pages could have been knocked out and the presentation quality maintained (and therefore print and post cost reduced) and some captions describing the photographed units would have been a nice edition. The units and figs are actually for the game – it’s surprising how many rules include pics that are not.

Any set of rules has three audiences; people thinking about purchase, players learning the rules and experienced players.

For the first group, the book has enough ‘shelf presence’ to attract buyers, not that I know if it will be available in bricks and mortar shops or how on-line sample pages will manifest.

A significant positive is the commitment to being model-agnostic and pragmatic on basing. I, like a number of my playing group, change rules not basing.

The suggested basing for 25-32mm figs is units all on a 12cm frontage (so 2 x DBx). A wise choice to go large here, if nothing else for the simple reason that you can use existing armies based narrower and put troops on movement trays, spacer bases and so on – but going in the other direction may be an impossible deal-breaker.

It seems the rules have already been something of a bridge to players of the various fantasy / historic skirmish games, that use singly-based figs, to try a rank-and-flank game by putting such figs on unit bases – temporarily or otherwise.

The number of figs per base is not relevant, to further remove a barrier to entry.

For learning players, the clarity of writing, superb presentation and examples mean that it’s easy to comprehend and play. I found that one read-through and a watch of the You-tube clips was enough to play out a game with no major confusions or errors. It has an index and table of contents.

Will experienced players find the game has enough depth, balance, challenge and ‘re-playability’ – ask me in a year or so or charge up your crystal ball. However, the published and proposed scenarios are a good start to cultivating long-term interest, albeit they are not my priority cup of tea.

Content

Rules are best judged against their design philosophy and Midgard makes a clear statement about emphasising the roles of ‘Heroes’ being the troop leaders / generals / magicians.


Early chatter on-line suggests a significant proportion of players intend to play historical armies, where the detail on generals’ / heroes’ traits would presumably be dialled down.

The game is presented as a roughly 10-15 unit army + 3-4 heroes and options to expand force size. Units are bunched in a "Contingent', commanded by a particular hero.


The rules suggest an ‘evening’s’ game-time at 300-400 points (reflecting roughly the unit number noted above) A good rule of thumb is to add 30-60 minutes to rules authors’ projected game length – so compute that any way you like.

Troops are classified into five broad troop types and some sub-types;

Warriors, - Heavy Infantry – Heavy Infantry with missiles – Formed Archers - Horde
Skirmishers, - Shooters - Light Infantry
Heavy riders, - Knights - Medium Cavalry
Light riders, - Scouts – Nobles & Light Chariots
Monstrosities, - Giant - Elephant & Mammoth – Dragon – Flying Beast - Artillery

The rules have a dozen or so sample army lists and an open-points system (with type limitations on traits), and notes on mutually exclusive traits, for you to build your own forces.

Heroes / commanders are markers that can join units and have limited individual combat capacity – but they can challenge others to single combat.

Units and Heroes can have a variety of traits, either by virtue of their type (all light riders Evade etc) or added for flavour. Indeed the traits drive unit and army flavour. Troop quality is pushed into traits rather than a simple numerical value for elite to raw, or whatever.

Only Pikes appear as a non-missile weapon-trait and armour sits as a separate quality on a 2-5 rating, high being good, 3 sorta average.

Limited access to magical weapons and missiles are catered for but not heroes’ magical armour for some reason.

Units have typically 2-4 Stamina ie hit points and heroes 1-4. Unlike say the ADLG ancients rules, with similar hit strengths, hits can not be generally recovered. Troops at half lost strength take significant negatives.

Shooting is less likely to cause stamina loss while combat can see units lose several in a single round – or all of them if outmatched.

The game sequence is a reasonably simple u-go / i-go. Command is via unit tests, often not required early in the game, some functions such as 2nd moves, tests to stay in place having been shot at and so on require a 3-6 command test dice throw.

The game is largely bucket-of-dice, all being D6, for combat and shooting. Measuring is in ‘Spear-throws’, being base widths. You can pre-measure.

A key part of the game is ‘Mighty deeds’ effectively action / commands of hero /generals which broadly speaking can be spent to buy re-rolls of command / morale throws.

Thus a unit failing to make a 2nd move can be prompted by spending a mighty deed and dicing again.
Generals / heroes have 1-4 mighty deeds, which are replenished each turn, they can also be used to trigger some traits, add dice to a combat where the hero is leading a unit and a variety of other things such as casting magic or avoiding hits.

Armies / ‘forces’ fight within a global morale system known as Reputation. A force’s reputation total is a function of the reputation value of its component units and leaders – when these die the army reputation is reduced by their value.

A force with no reputation left has lost the battle. Unlike many similar systems for global morale you can gain reputation / morale by your heroes doing bold things such as leading charges.

The units ‘grouped’ under a hero do not have a separate morale / reputation limit or test. I wonder if the rules developers were tempted to telescope Reputation and Mighty deeds into one thing.

How Does It Play?

The first observation is it feels and plays as a unit game not an element game. While units are best advised to support and co-operate they don’t do so in such a direct way as per an element game. And with a relatively small unit count you lose some of the higher-order features of a multi-element game.
There are enough here-and-there exceptions to broad rules that you may well be tripped up from time to time. And it’s not immediately clear why some of the exemptions are needed, why can’t troops evade more than once in a turn, why does turning to face preclude a further move.

The author has stated the rules are not intended for competition games – which is usually a red flag for a set being underdone in some areas – however the rules do look solid and well drafted enough that competition / pickup games will not be a problem within some parameters.

(There are a few sections that look like they need clarification but I’ll put those in a separate post once I double check. Some typos are rearing their inevitable heads.)

The relatively limited command system, no hidden troops and a max of only a second move per unit per turn (with no options for ‘brigade’ moves to keep troops together for important early turns) suggest sweeping manoeuvre and wrong-footing the other side will be limited. All the games I’ve seen depicted look a shade predictable - you can see where the troops will likely go and where they will form a battle line.

The multi-step turn sequence, combat sequences and command tests by individual units means the projected 6-turn game nominated in scenarios is on the money and frontal slogs look common.
That’s not so say the game is over-predictable, it’s just that the decision points will be risk / reward of timing of matchups and exposing heroes, and Mighty deed management.

I suspect the value in the game is that it will generate a player-base and that it is really intuitive to pick up and play.

The optimum appears to be playing at the higher points cost to allow greater troop diversity and army differentiation via specialist troops - and to maximise where the player decision points are – in the scrum of attack risk / reward, supporting unit deployment, hero and mighty deed management. 
Do I recommend them, yes. Will I play more games and cook up army compositions, also yes.
Are they ‘better’ than competing rules – that might depend on your use for historical or legend / fantasy and frankly it’s too early for my view on that.


I had no involvement in the rules development or previous contact with the author. The publisher / distributor sent me and many other non-UK early purchasers our copy with a partial postage subsidy – many thanks again for that."

Wednesday, 20 November 2024

Tracking Things In Atteint!

Sometimes I have shower-thoughts on things that weren't even on my radar when I got into the shower.

Probably too much information, but this post is the result of one. The other day I started thinking about my jousting game Atteint! in the shower, and was reminded that I hadn't really got a way to track the bits of in-game information that I liked. I've tried using a sheet for each player with counters that track various values, and I've tried simply doing it by writing on a piece of paper. The latter works best, but some statuses - the Marshal, Favours of the Ladies' Court and the knight's current Focus - change in a way that's awkward to track.

Anyway, my shower-thought was that I should go all Euro game on the problem, and use a ton of counters. I made a few counters for tracking some of the stuff and then switched to my coloured counters for the rest. A couple of days ago I tried it all out, and this is the setup:


White counters are Aim, blue are Balance and black are Force. Each knight starts a pass with one of each. As they add to the values they add counters to their pile. There are card counters marked 'Aim', 'Balance' and 'Force'. They are used to show the knight's current focus. The counter with the heart on it is the Favour From The Ladies' Court. You can only ever have one of these at a time. I also added a track for the Marshal; that starts at 0 and then slides one way or the other as knights gain points,

The above picture shows a pass at the start. This next picture shows a pass a couple of turns in. The White Knight already has a Force of 4, whilst the Purple Knight has 3, but has Aim and Balance of 2 as well.


This shot shows the first pass of a joust. White has nothing but Force to show for it, whilst Purple has 3 in each of Aim, Balance and Force, as well as a Favour.

That said, both knights missed and no points were scored.


The second pass. Both knights had good scored in their attributes, and Purple still has a Favour. You can also see that White has one point in his favour with the Marshal.

Purple has two yellow tokens. I use those to show points. In the second pass White missed again, but Purple scored a hit and managed to break his lance too.


The third pass. Purple piled on the speed hoping to force the pass as quickly as possible. With two points in hand he could afford to miss so long as White did as well. White didn't really get his act together. Both knights missed, so Purple won the joust 2-0.

On the whole this wasn't an exciting joust, but it did show off how the markers work. Yes, it's a lot of clutter but it was straightforward to use and a lot easier than moving stuff around on a chart or crossing things out on a piece of paper.

I ran a few more jousts afterwards, some using skills, and they did manage to be more exciting. And all ran smoothly thanks to the counters.

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