Rock-Con Game Report: Clash of Starfleets

Once again, I made the drive out to Rockford to run a game at Rock-Con earlier this month. It's a nice little gaming convention that I've been going to for a few years now. The past few times I've gone, I've decided to run a WWII naval combat game, but this time I opted to break out part of my massive spaceship collection.

The gaming system I chose to use was Colonial Battlefleet by Steel Dreadnought Games. It's a great system that has just enough flexibility to come up with some great ship designs, but not so much that it can easily be broken. I'll get to that in another post.

For now though, here's the recap of the game I ran. The scenario was one I came up with myself. A team of archaeologists in a backwater system found a really old and powerful device. They brought it back to a research station to study and of course, word leaked out. This brings all of our players and their small flotillas onto the gaming board to fight for the artifact.

Because I have so many different fleets, I picked my fleet action scale ships from the Babylon 5, Star Trek, Star Wars, and StarGate SG-1 universes.

The whole collection was painted and ready to go, so I spent a great deal of time designing the fleets and attempting to balance them somewhat. After all, some fleets used fighters while others didn't, some had shields, some had massive armor, some had missiles, etc. And that's probably a whole other blog post, so I won't get into it here.

With all the fleets assembled, let's get to the game! I had three players signed up and despite an amazing looking setup, no one else jumped in. But I had three really excited players, so it worked out just fine. It took about 15 minutes to go over the basic rules and then the game started.

The first couple turned didn't involve much excitement. No one was really in range of each other or the small research station in the middle of the board. It took everyone a little while to get used to the movement system and I think the Klingon player never really got it, but everything still ran quite smoothly.

On turn three, the action really started. The Empire launched a salvo of cluster missiles from the star destroyer, the Klingons tried to shoot the space station and missed, and Starfleet knocked down the shields so they could beam aboard the seven toughest squads of redshirts ever collected in one place. Those marines knocked out almost all of the station security forces and looked ready to grab the artifact.

Turn four saw the Empire launch TIE fighters and bombers which charged off to swarm the Klingon Birds of Prey. Starfleet destroyed one of two Birds of Prey and annihilated the stormtroopers who made it onto the station.

By turn five, the Imperial missiles began hitting targets and took out the last Bird of Prey and a Starfleet light cruiser. The Klingons damaged two Imperial cruisers, boarded the station, and were slaughtered by those utterly fearless Starfleet marines. The marines managed to take out a total of five Klingon squads, three more station security squads, and two more stormtrooper squads.

Turn six proved to be the decisive turn of the game. The swarms of Imperial fighters kept doing damage to the Federation and Klingon ships. But the Klingons blew up one Imperial ship in retaliation and managed to kill the fresh squads of stormtroopers who had just wiped out the toughest redshirts in the galaxy.

With the artifact in their hands, the victorious Klingons beamed back onto a D-7 warbird.

Turn seven was the final turn and the most tense of the game. Everyone knew which ship had the artifact and they were gunning for it. Starfleet moved to cut off the likely escape routes, while the Empire tried to ram the warbird, but missed.

The D-7 then proceeded to speed off in the opposite direction everyone expected while the other Klingon ships provided a screen. Imperial fighters swarmed around the Klingons but couldn't destroy any of them. In their rage, the Imperial star destroyer fired a full salvo of turbolasers at the research station and destroyed it as the Klingons warped away for home.

All the players seemed to enjoy themselves a great deal. They quickly got the hang of the system and I found myself providing assistance less and less as the game went on. The Klingon player did feel he had too many ships to watch out for and he did have the largest fleet with six ships. Fighters proved to be a nuisance to the two Star Trek fleets, both of which fielded none, but they weren't an overwhelming advantage. The big star destroyer seemed almost invulnerable but it didn't have enough weapons to capitalize on this.

I have a few changes to make for the next time I run it, but not many. All the work I put into the designs before the game paid off on the table.

-- Mike, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club  member

Exploring the Underworld with Dwarven Forge Game Tiles

I backed the Dwarven Forge Game Tiles Kickstarter earlier this year, and last week my pledge awards arrived: three sets of basic tiles plus all the extras that were unlocked during the (extremely) successful campaign. I was literally awash in rectangular dungeon walls and floors, and I immediately set about painting my dungeon tiles in preparation for last week's game night.

The appeal of dungeon tiles is that they paint up fast and easy. They're made of a hard PVC-type plastic material that is dark green/brown right out of the box, and they don't require any sort of priming or undercoating, so I was literally able to paint about half of my loot (20 pounds or so) in about two days of casual work. My formula (shamelessly borrowed from the Dwarven Forge guys) was to pick out one or two bricks per wall with a detail color like brown or green, then drybrush the whole thing with gray. An individual piece could be completed in about two minutes at this rate.

Anyway, I set up a serviceable dungeon layout using my available tiles. I've got future plans to drastically increase the potential floor space of my layouts by using vinyl flooring tiles from the home improvement store, instead of the little 2x2 floor pieces that shipped with the Dwarven Forge Kickstarter, but for now I just used whatever I had managed to paint up. Here's the layout I came up with.

We decided to run a quick game of Song of Blades & Heroes, our go-to fantasy ruleset, to put these new dungeon tiles through their paces. I put together a warband of ratmen led by a pair of fearsome gnoll warriors and backed up by a shambling sewer monster. Josh fielded a band of werewolves that he painted up for our fantasy campaign. And with that, we were off!

Josh's werewolves loped forward from their deployment zone, seeking parcels of treasure that were scattered around the dungeon. 

Ganesha Games publishes an excellent dungeon-crawling supplement called Song of Gold & Darkness, but we didn't opt to use that this time -- we just used straight-up SBH.

Across the board, my ratmen hissed and skittered through the dungeon. 

We didn't distribute the treasure parcels quite right, so Josh was able to pounce on the scenario objectives and get in position to win the game, but that didn't stop us from having a good old-fashioned dungeon brawl in the damp, gloomy depths.

So, are you sick of the color gray yet? You better not be -- I've got another 20 pounds of this stuff to paint up! My plan is to go back and paint some little details in the halls and corridors: slime puddles, blood splatters, maybe throw in a few discarded weapons or armor or bones. What you see in the pics above is just a starting point for my dungeon odyssey.

But in all seriousness, I've got to say that I had a fantastic experience as a backer of this Dwarven Forge Kickstarter. They are consummate professionals and kept up communication with their backers throughout the entire journey. Everything was delivered on time (no easy feat considering there were more than 5,000 individual backers on this KS) and reports of missing pieces are rare. I'll definitely consider pledging again if they do a follow-up efforts to make more dungeon tiles.

I'll leave you with this awesome pic, showing three of my ratmen squaring off against Josh's monster bird creature. So awesome!

Stay tuned for more dungeon delves featuring this fun new terrain!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

SuperSystem Game Report and Review

One of the best things about the Chicago Skirmish Club is the way we find new life for figures from other miniatures systems. HeroClix is a superhero collectible miniature game using a combat dial system that I have played off and on since its debut in 2002. For the past five or so years I have drifted away from the game as the rules got more complicated, the figures got more and more convoluted, and the release schedules accelerated. But I still liked the idea of playing out comic book battles!

When Tim mentioned wanting to try out the SuperSystem for some super miniature battles, I bought the 3rd edition of the game. I liked the clear rules and the variety of powers included in the system -- but I knew it was the game for me when I realized not only would I be able to give my HeroClix figures a new life, but I'd also be able to break out my old Monsterpocalypse dice.

In SuperSystem, any d6 roll of 4 or 5 counts as a success and a 6 as a double success, just like the white Action Dice that are used in Monsterpocalypse. Four Color Figures has a product line of more than 100 superhero figures, but it's too easy to gather up some old HeroClix figures and rebase them.

Tim had already rebased a large assortment of figures from various comic book universes when we sat down to try out SuperSystem last week, so we had a large selection of heroes to choose from. In the SuperSystem, each character has four traits: Strength, Agility, Mind, and Resolve. They have a number of Action Points for how much they can do in a given round.

Their traits and powers go into creating the seven dice pools: Physical Attacks, Mental Attacks, Damage, Physical Defense, Physical Resistance, Mental Defense, and Mental Resistance. As attacks land, characters lose Vitality, and when they lose all their Vitality they are knocked out of the game.

Various feats are unopposed rolls where the character rolls against a target number. Combat rolls are opposed rolls. The attacker rolls their Attack dice, physical or mental, while the defender rolls the appropriate defense dice. If the attacker rolls as many successes, or more, the attack hits. Then the attacker and defender roll for damage. If the attacker rolls more successes, the difference is taken from the defender's Vitality.

Of course, what makes the characters in any super miniature rules are the superpowers. The bulk of the 84-page rule book is dedicated to the various powers characters can be given.

In our game, Tim and I squared off in a simple scenario to try out the rules and see how the combat system worked. For our introductory scenario, I pulled four super archetypes from an appendix in the rulebook: Brawler (Captain America), Blaster (Hawkeye), Brick (Hulk), and Speedster (Quicksilver). The rules suggest using characters worth 85 points for balance. For this scenario, I wanted to see what the difference would be, so I set the Hulk for 91 points and the other three from 58 to 69 points and set those three heroes against the Green Goliath.

This disparity was clear in close combat, as the Hulk was rolling his nine dice for attacks and defense against three to six dice for the other heroes. But, since you are both rolling dice against each other, a bad roll for Hulk opened the door for the other heroes to hit him. Of course, even if they managed to hit him, there was another contested roll for damage. So any attack would take two good rolls. This does a nice job of keeping one exceptional roll from ruining a scenario.

I took the Green Goliath while Tim ran the other three figures. My plan was to move around the map and wait for one of Tim’s heroes to hurt the Hulk and then go after that hero. I moved to the top of the largest building on the battlefield and waited. I didn’t have to wait too long as Tim moved up and Hawkeye connected on his second shot.

Using Hulk’s Super Leap, it was easy to move in on my next turn to attack Hawkeye. Then the other two heroes closed in on the Hulk. While Hawkeye and Captain America were able to hit the Hulk regularly, only Hawkeye was able make the second die roll to land any damage. This just enraged the Hulk, and he went after the puny archer for hurting him.

The way the game played out made sense, the Hulk was easy to hit, but hard to actually hurt. On the other hand, Hawkeye kept dodging the Hulk's attacks, but when they did land, they did a lot of damage. On the third hit, Hawkeye was out of Vitality points.

Once nice touch in the rules is that even when a character loses all their Vitality, they get a second chance to make a KO Check and stay in the fight a little longer. In our game, when Hulk knocked out Hawkeye on that third hit. But the archer made his KO Check and got off one last shot on the Hulk before getting knocked out of the game next turn.

After Hawkeye went down, Tim and I felt like we had learned what wanted to learn about the combat system, had fun with the scenario, and decided to end the battle there. This scenario was a great way to try out the system. The characters were straightforward, it was easy to get them into combat, and it was fun to see how the mismatches played out in the game.

If you are interested in playing Supersytem, I highly recommend finding some Monsterpocalypse dice. It's just easier to count the hits on the dice rather than figuring out if the die is a success and then tally them. Just like when I first started playing HeroClix, I am looking forward to recreating some of my favorite comic book battles using these rules. Next time it will be a more in-depth scenario where flight and more powers come into play.

Now I just have to decide which of my HeroClix figures I want to keep for playing HeroClix and which figures I want to rebase for future SuperSystem scenarios!

-- Terrence, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Warriors of Chaos Against the Rising Sun in Kings of War

A couple weeks ago Jon and I got together to play Kings of War. This was Jon's first Kings of War game, and my third, though we played a few games of Warpath 1.0 in the past and the rulesets are extremely similar. Here's the pre-battle setup.

We both fielded about 1500 points per side, with no magic items. The battle was played for Victory Points and Objectives, which is one of the three basic scenarios in the Kings of War rulebook. The three Objectives were the Woods, the Ruins and the Spring. We also house-ruled an extra two inches of movement to any unit that spent the majority of its move at least partially over the road.

Jon took one look at the number of figures involved and quickly made some unit trays out of cardboard, which turned out to be a brilliant idea. I can't imagine moving blocks of troops across a fabric landscape without them.

On the right side were my Marauding Hordes of Chaos. I use a combination of units from the Kingdoms of Man and Undead lists.

On the left were the human and terra cotta soldiers of the Rising Sun, as well as their Dark Elf allies. These units were drawn from the Kindoms of Man and Twilight Kin army lists.

For our opening moves, both players embarked upon a general advance that was broken up by the terrain, which forced us to decide early in the game where to deploy our forces.

The Dark Elf Griffon seized the ruins objective early, but his position ensured he would be drawn into the fray soon enough.

On the far flank, the Chaos Dragon (using stats for the Vampire Lord on Pegasus) advanced on a unit of archers.

On the near flank, the Dark Crown Knights wheeled about to face a pike phalanx regiment.

In the center of the battlefield, a band of werewolves unsurprisingly cast caution to the wind and ranged out ahead of the main line.

Battle was fully joined as the two forces clashed all across the board.

Jon's pike phalanx was an effective unit versus mounted and flying units, but it couldn't prevail against a unit of charging knights combined with a attack flank from a flying Vampire Lord.

An attempted flank by the Dark Elf Griffon forced the werewolves to reverse course and expose their rear to an advancing Rising Sun regiment.

Unfortunately the Griffon was taken down in a flurry of claws and fangs. The werewolves took a beating from the human warriors, but still survived and wiped them out in the next turn.

A unit of foot guard from each side traded blows for a turn, but the Chaos commander charged the flank of the terra cotta warriors and tipped the scales in favor of Chaos in the following combat.

The forces of the Rising Sun got a small bit of good news as their hydra made short work of a band of beastmen. Though not entirely destroyed, the beasts were mauled severely.

The nearly undamaged hydra followed up this attack with a charge against the werewolves. The werewolves took some damage, but give as good as they got. In the following turn, a flank by an ogre and a rear attack on the hydra by the Chaos dragon spelled the end of the great multi-headed beast.

The battle would carry on for one more turn, but it was clear by this point which way the battle was going. The Warriors of Chaos continued to defeat one unit after the other, though the werewolves were eventually killed.

Jon and I both agreed that we enjoyed the game. As in past games, it was clear that the werewolves are a really hard unit that can only be effectively countered by other equally hard units. Having a couple of small mobile units that could flank (even within the confines of tight terrain) really helped me in several instances.

As someone who has played almost exclusively sci-fi and fantasy skirmish games, Kings of War is my first experience with a game that really rewards maneuvering of units with respect to flanks and rear, and I'm really enjoying that tactical aspect. I credit maneuvering and some bad luck in dice rolling on Jon's part for most of my victory.

Given our time and table size, 1500 points made for a good game. I'm not sure that there would be much benefit to fitting more units on the table. However, I definitely want to expand the size of most of my units and expect to top out around 2000 points. I've already purchased the necessary figures, I just have to get up the desire to paint another 50 miniatures. Stay tuned for another blog post showcasing all the units presently in the army.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Tomorrow's War: Skirmish at Evac Zone Fulcrum

Here's the battle report from the second of two games of Tomorrow's War we played last weekend. My opponent in this game was Josh, who fielded his Dark Angels space marines as heavily armored shock troops against my platoon of mercenary soldiers from Col. Markham's Thunderbolts.

In my previous game, these mercenaries had been badly mauled by Karl's Ventaurans, forcing them to withdraw from their defended positions deep inside Geirrod City. In this game, Josh's Dark Angels were attempting to exploit the general disarray of the Thunderbolts by taking out a key casualty evac site (the titular "Evac Zone Fulcrum") that the mercenaries were using to process and evacuate their wounded. Here's how the battlefield looked at the outset.

As this was a learning game for Josh, we proceeded slowly and didn't worry too much about the scenario objectives until we both got a handle on the rules. Josh took the initiative early and sent his space marines into the crumbling rubble of Geirrod City.

My Thunderbolts had stats that were pretty average for Tomorrow's War. To differentiate the Dark Angels, we decided that they had better troop quality, improved morale and better armor (power armor, actually, which turned out to be quite a force multiplier). To balance this, we capped his fireteams at 3 figures each, so he didn't have nearly as many troopers on the table compared to my side.

It definitely made the game feel like an elite group of shock troopers (Josh's Dark Angels) squaring off against a "regular" army of rank-and-file troopers (my Thunderbolts).

For my part, I began the game with three fireteams on the table and two more in reserve. As Josh advanced, my guys hunkered down and opened fire from cover, trying to slow the advance of the implacable space marines.

Josh adjusted his tactics as his fireteams were quickly met by intense firepower. He was still figuring out the flow of the game, but he was also learning the value of power armor. It's really potent, especially when combined with higher-quality troopers!

My reserves were arriving, but my on-table fireteams were under pressure from Josh's advancing space marines.

This sector of Geirrod City was a sort of high-tech shantytown, packed with tumbledown slums and shacks. As my mercenaries fell back through the city, my command fireteam holed up inside one reinforced building and tried to direct the defense.

Unfortunately, this is what they saw across the battlefield: Dark Angels fireteams advancing amid a hail of gunfire, most sparking off the heavy plates of their power armor.

I never managed to muster quite the critical mass of firepower to stop his power armored marines. My mercs fought valiantly but were overrun by the end of the final turn, when Josh sent his marines charging into my casualty evac site.

Josh definitely liked the game, though he remarked that quite a few of the rules ran counter to similar rules in games like Warhammer 40k. For example, in 40k some units get a defensive bonus for moving quickly across the battlefield -- the logic is that they're harder to hit when running. The exact opposite is true in Tomorrow's War -- units that move rapidly suffer a defense penalty because they're assumed to be hauling ass in haphazard fashion. It's always interesting to see how different games handle these situations.

There's already interest in more games of Tomorrow's War, so look for more battle reports soon!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Tomorrow's War: Block by Block in Geirrod City

I had the chance to play not one, but two games of Tomorrow's War this weekend, against two different opponents. It's amazing how much gaming you can get in when the wife is out of town! Chicago Skirmish Wargames hasn't played Tomorrow's War in quite a while, almost two years actually. I've been painting up some urban skirmish terrain, so this was a perfect chance to get it all on the table (plus a few extra pieces borrowed from Josh).

In both games, my mercenary army (represented by Pig Iron Heavy Infantry figures) squared off against two invading forces: Karl's Ventaurans and Josh's Space Marines.

In this battle report, Karl's Ventaurans (comprised of Denizen Miniatures' excellent 25mm sci-fi infantry) launched a probing assault against my entrenched mercenary army. The setting was Geirrod City, a war-ravaged urban expanse on Fornacis V, itself a hotly contested planet that is part of my homebrew sci-fi setting. What can I say, I like having a little bit of backstory in my games!

Here are the Ventaurans at their jumping-off point: a line of trenches running about a quarter the length of the table. Karl had five fireteams each consisting of 4 figures each (typically a fireteam leader, a support weapon and two regular foot soldiers).

Take a look at the detail in these 25-year-old sculpts. They're really fantastic!

Across the shattered cityscape, Markham's Thunderbolts (my mercenary army) dug in against the coming storm. I had 4 fireteams on the table and two in reserve. (The basic unit in Tomorrow's War is the fireteam.) The reserves would deploy starting on turn 2 from a designated command post in the rear of the battlefield.

Tomorrow's War (which lacks an official point system and encourages players to develop their own army lists and scenarios) plays best when both players start with units "in contact," that is, in line of sight. And since the game assumes that all weapons can see and shoot the entire length of the battlefield (which makes perfect sense given the "hard" sci-fi setting) there's no time wasted trying to get into a firefight.

TW also features an unusual turn system. One player is the "initiative player," which means he spends the entire turn moving and attacking with his fireteams. The opposing player spends his turn trying to react to the initiative player's maneuvers. This is accomplished by the reaction test, a feature of Tomorrow's War that is used to determine who gets to act first in each round of fire. It's not uncommon for the initiative player's carefully laid plans to be ruined by a string of good luck for the savvy reacting player.

Karl began the game by sending his Ventaurans fireteams hustling through the ruins, trying to find a route through the murderous network of alleys and rubble piles. Here they go! That trench line is the main line of fortifications in this sector of Geirrod City, probably laid down months ago when the siege began.

I had four Thunderbolt mercenary fireteams on the battlefield, mostly deployed in safe, defensible areas. But I tried to counter Karl's maneuvers by flanking toward his fortified deployment area. 

Our early firefights resulted in some casualties, and I decided to fall back and yield some of the city center to the advancing Ventaurans. This had mixed results -- I was able to gather together some survivors later in the game, but Karl moved into some fortified buildings that he would occupy for the rest of the game.

Here's a look at one of my fireteams that commanded a defended rooftop for most of the game. They endured some pretty incredible firepower throughout the game from Karl's Ventaurans, but he eventually wiped them out. Because they had such an advantageous field of view, they were able to participate in all sorts of reactions and crossfires.

As the game unfolded, my reserves arrived. By this point, Karl's forces occupied a pair of key buildings, so I set up my reserves so they would have a clear line of sight to the dug-in Ventaurans. Here's what they saw when they arrived at their firebase.

Across the city, the Ventaurans gained momentum by virtue of their improved positions.

Alas, my guys were cut to pieces by the Ventaurans' deadly firepower. Karl's troops held two key advantages that helped him throughout the game: they were Tech Level 3 (compared to Tech Level 2 for my guys) and they had advanced healing systems built into their armor, which greatly improved their survival when making first aid checks.

And special mention should be made about Karl's fireteam that never actually moved from their deployment zone -- these guys seized the upper level of a warehouse and sniped across the battlefield for the entire game, supporting their advancing comrades and harassing my guys incessantly.

Tomorrow's War gave us a much better game this time around. I'm not sure if that was because were were only playing a 1-on-1 game (as opposed to our earlier games, which were almost all multiplayer affairs) or because I'd brushed up on my rulebook comprehension in preparation for this weekend of gaming. For whatever reason, Tomorrow's War really "clicked" for us this time, and I think we've laid the foundation for some fun games. 

So the Ventaurans overran the mercenaries' command post, sending the survivors fleeing to the outskirts of Geirrod City. But the trouble wasn't over for the mercenaries, because a surgical strike team of space marines was en route to finish what the Ventaurans had started! Stay tuned for the battle report from my Tomorrow's War game versus Josh!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member