By Matt Plonski
My friend Mike came over last night and helped me set up
Vassal on my computer. Vassal is a program that allows you to play a virtual
table-top wargame on your computer against an opponent on their computer over
the internet. They support a wide variety of games. We played 40k, but Mike
said he had only used War Machine before.
You start the program
and connect to the server on the internet. One player creates a 'room' and
then, once in the room, starts a game by picking a 'table' by size and terrain.
Both players can build their virtual armies in a scratchpad area. A model is
represented by a small picture, called a sprite, which is a top-down view of
the model. The sheer amount of sprites available is impressive.
I was playing Dark
Angels so I selected the category "Space Marine" then sub-category
"Dark Angels." Under that sub-category there are the normal HQ,
Troop, Elite, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support. Choose Troop and Dark Angel, and
Dark Angel Specialist gives you a guy with a meltagun. Using the right-click
context menu you can switch through all of the legal combinations of special
weapons, so I choose Plasma gun. The sprite's weapon changed accordingly.
Repeat until you have all of your army's models in the scratchpad area.
We then proceeded to
play 40k as if we were at a table. You'd think, since the purpose of the
program is to play over the internet, you'd have to trust your opponent to tell
you what his dice results were. The creators have thought of that. They have a
text chat system similar to an instant messenger. Built into the chat is a
whole series of dice rolling schemes. They have straight-up dice (D6, 2D6, 3D6,
... , D3, and others), To-hit & Wound (enter # of shots, to-hit number,
whether you can re-roll one hit, all hits, or none, and the to-wound number),
To-hit & Penetrate (same as previous, but with armor values), and several
more.
The user interface is
a lot of fun. Simply select a model or group of models, rotate it using
keyboard shortcuts or the context menu, then move it forward one inch at a time
using keyboard commands. Measuring range is accomplished with a very simple
drag line, but you can also put a 'range circle' around most models to see, for
example, what is within 24" of your model.
Figure 2 Vindicator checking range to objective
All templates,
scatter dice, and other tools are included. My favorite is the scatter die. You
place the sprite of the correct template or Deep Striking center model where
you are aiming and drop the scatter die right on the center-most point.
Right-click "roll die" and either a 'Hit' appears or an arrow
pointing in a random direction. If it is an arrow, roll your 2D6 in the chat
window, select the die again, and move it 'forward' the correct number of
inches. 'Forward' is the direction the arrow is pointing. Then move the blast
marker or teleporter to the new location of the scatter die and continue from
there.
Figure 3: Plasma Cannon scatters 3"
Figure 4: New Template Location
Figure 5: Two dead Orks!
Another very powerful
ability is the basic 'undo' function. Don't like where you put that
Landspeeder? Hit undo until it is back where it started and move it again.
Once we got over the
basic learning curve we were cranking through turns much faster than we could
have in real life. Clean-up is non-existent. You simply save the game to your
hard drive and you are done. You can also have the computer keep a log of the
game so you can go back and re-play it. It is a perfect way to generate battle
reports. I'm wondering if you could edit the steps into some sort of video.
That would be great.
The next thing we are
going to try is to create our own sprites so we can make our own units and
tables. I'd love to change the Eldar to fit my paint scheme, for example, and
it would be a fantastic way to design huge Apocalypse tables and see how
deployment would work.
Google Vassal 40k to
find out more.
One side note, you
can save the game and game log, which enables you to go back and re-watch your
game. After you are done with the
log and try to exit the Vassal engine you must make sure you save it again
otherwise Vassal will delete both the game and the log. I’m glad my opponent saved the game as
well. Oops!
