Birthday Weekend Part 2

After Friday night's WWW2 game, I set out to help with the local Sacramento club's playtest of their massive 15mm pirate game the club will be running at 2 upcoming local conventions: Conquest Sacramento, March 16-18 & Pacificon Game Expo in Santa Clara Labor Day weekend.

One of our more insane members has decided to organize a game on 2 24'x6' boards, complete with 4 national towns (Dutch, French, British & Spanish), a pirate island, 2 native island, a volcano, & lots of minor islands & lagoons to expore.

The organizer has his own blog showing construction & progress of the game called the Carob Bean Sea.

Here is a picture looking out from my Dutch town with my main 30 gun frigate in the foreview. Every national town has 3 ships (frigate, merchant & privateer) with 50 crew each. Plus in the town are 2 50 figure forces for the colonial Govenor & the military Commander. So each national town has about 250 15mm figures. With there being 4 towns, that's 1000 figures just for the different nations.


Here is 1 full 24'x6' board. You can see the 2nd board in the background to the right. The boats are able to move between the 2 boards, but the boards are separated so players can walk between them.


Here are a number of ships ready to sail. In addition to the 3 ships each nation has, the Pirates have 4 ships, for a total of 16 ships on the board. Plus the natives have lots of canoes & the 2 land forces in the national towns each have their own smaller boats.


Here's one of the towns with its land forces deployed. I have built 6 sets of the defensive works & stakes seen in the top left corner of the picture as my meager contribution to the club effort.


& another town.


Some ships mixing it up off the coast of one of the native islands (you can see their huts in the top right corner).


This is the sacraficing natives' island, as opposed to the cannibal natives' island that you will see in a moment.


Here is the view of the cannibal natives's island after I bombarded the shrine to their pagan god. One of my objectives was to "chastise" the sacraficing natives. Unfortnately, I got confused & bombarded the wrong native island. While my crew was focusing on the bombardment, native canoes paddled up to my ship & climbed over the railing. They surprised the on-board Marines & killed 4 stands of them before disappearing back into the sea.


The game will support 32 players, with each player having their own objectives. My objectives were to: 1) Trade with the Spanish, 2) Raid the French, 3) Chastise the sacraficing natives & 4) Explore & find treasure. But my Dutch force of 3 ships & 2 land forces would be split up between 5 separate players in the big game, so those objectives would be split up too. The natives even had their own objectives of crossing the ocean to a lagoon to go pearl diving.

The playtest went well, if very chaotic. The rules were homebrew & this was their first outing. The games was as much to teach the GMs the rules as it was to try to has out any issues.

Birthday weekend Part 1

With Sunday being my birthday, I'm trying to stuff as much gaming as I can get away with into the weekend. So on Friday, I attended our Friday Night Irregulars Weird World War 2 game.

I faced off against Skrapwelder borrowing his US Infantry with British armored support vs his Germans. We were short on trees, so the large flat flocked sheets are supposed to be full woods.

My right flank consisted of 2 walkers with a scout car & a Comet tank escorted by an infantry squad in a half track.


My left flank consisted 2 squadrons of a Comet & infantry squad.


The German force were from left to right: 2 PZ IVs with an infantry squad in the truck behind, a Tiger I in the center, & 2 Stugs with another Stug & what turned out to be an anti-tank squad in the prime mover to the rear.


We both amazingly went about 4 turns shooting & missing everything possible. Finally, my 2 walkers were brewed up & the fight shifted to the center.

Here my Comet was able to fire twice because it was stationary & take out both the infantry squad truck & the Pz IV escorting it.


There was a big infantry battle in the central forest. My 2 squads caught his anti-tank squad setting up inches from most of my vehicles. I was able to cause enough casualties to drive them off. But his Tiger, Tiger Firing Bright fired HE in support suppressed my guys, so his infantry could slink off to greener pastures.


Even though I had a few turns where all of my units went & only a few of his went (we used card activation with a Turn End card in the deck so not all units go every turn), he slowly picked off my big armor leaving my infantry to fall back.

Overall, it was a fun & somewhat close game. We're using a version of the Screaming GIs rules that Skrapwelder added weirdness to. I believe the rules are mostly ironed out (except for getting all the anti-tank rifles listed), so some sort of campaign is imminent.

CALVINBALL!!!

Other kids' games are all such a bore!
They've gotta have rules and they gotta keep score!
Calvinball is better by far!
It's never the same! It's always bizarre!
You don't need a team or a referee!
You know that it's great, 'cause it's named after me!
—The Calvinball theme song

I ran some Calvinball games last Friday night. The rules were developed by Mardaddy on The Miniatures Page.

For those of you that don't know what Calvinball is (shame on you), it's from the classic Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. It's a "sport" that Calvin and Hobbes played frequently which moshes all sports into one game with ever changing rules. Mardaddy's excellent rules imposed just enough order to create a playable game while incorporating the key concept of making up the rules as you go along.

All 4 players (Calvin, Hobbes, Susie Derkins & Moe the Bully) start at home base. Each player is assigned a "calvinball", one of many different types of sports balls (golf ball, soccer, basket, foot, etc) which are spread across the playing field. The players must then run to pick up their calvinball, & then touch the ball to 1st base.

Once the calvin ball is "based", they then throw their calvinball as far as they can away from themselves & pick a new type of calvinball. (Note that they throw their current ball before they pick a new ball which could be the same type of ball.) They also draw a "rules change card" which could be anything from being forced to all run backwards, gaining Spaceman Spiff's Zorgomatic Shield, or being required to climb a tree and recite a poem in praise of tigers (the players actually have to come up with a poem on the spot).

The play continues as the players each try to base their balls at 1st, 2nd, 3rd & home base, randomly picking a new calvin ball & rule change every time. Of course there's other things you can pick up along the way like hockey sticks, football helmets & water ballons that will help you "interact" with the other players.

The key conflict of the games was when Moe the Bully stole Calvin's Little Red Wagon from Hobbes. They continued to fight over the wagon for many turns, but finally Hobbes decided to one up Moe by just winning the game.

Here are a few pictures from the games. Not much to look at, I know. The game pieces are cut out clip art with the "figures" just tri-fold standee types.


I think Mardaddy lost his copy of the rules, & I only have hard copies. But if there's enough interest, I might be able to transcribe them to a Word file.

Song of Portuguese & Payroll

Today, I ran my 1st game of Ganesha Games' Song of Drums and Shakos, their skirmish Napoleonic game. The scenario was Blunt's Payroll, published in the company's free newsletter. It's heavily based on the payroll dispute at the beginning of Sharpe's Rifles.

The French, with more but lesser quality troops, must defend the army's payroll chests, from the Portuguese who have fewer but higher quality troops. The French set up in & around the ruined inn where they'd camped the previous night. The Portuguese come on from a random edge of the board. I didn't have any British troops, so Portuguese were used as stand-ins.

Here is the board layout with the French deployed around the inn and sentries thrown forward.

The Portuguese came in from the far side of this picture (behind the French standard). The French Ensign noticed them sneaking through the woods just as a Portuguese rifleman drew a bead on Capitan Pierre Rouge and blew him off his horse, giving Sgt Henri a field promotion.

The death of a leader forces a morale check which almost all of the French troops failed. Luckily, when failing morale, having a standard allows troops to use it as a rallying point, running towards the standard, instead of running away. And this actually moved most of the French into cover and a better position to defend the pay chests.

Sgt Henri quickly called for his new command to regroup and take up a position behind the stone wall.

With both sides now ensconced behind stone walls, desultory fire was exchanged.

The Portuguese decided to move things along by moving behind the trees and occupying the inn where the French had just had breakfast. The Portuguese, recognizing they were being flanked, repositioned themselves behind the cover of the pay chests.

The accurate fire from the inn windows finally broke the French morale (they took more than 50% casualties requiring a morale test). In the flight, the French Ensign dropped his standard. A daring Portuguese rifleman dashed out to try to capture an Eagle. But Sgt Henri refused to let his 1st command end so ignobly. So he charged the rifleman, quickly dispatching his opponent.

Encouraged by his Sgt's valorous display of courage, a Voltigeur rushes up to retrieve the standard.

But this was to be their last acts as they were shot down by accurate rifle fire, thus ending the game.


I was very pleased with how well the game ran. It took about 2 hours, but that included setup & rules explanation. Unfortunately, the French player rolled badly throughout the game while the Portuguese players continued to roll well. Otherwise it might not have been so one sided.

Lemax Lakes

Lemax, who makes lots of small holiday village houses, etc, also make blue water mat for use in their displays. I picked one up cheap during Michael's after holiday sale, I think about 70% off, with plans to use it to make rivers & lakes out of.

So far, I've only done 1 test piece, but since someone on TMP asked about them, I figured I'd show what I've done so far. Here is the lake I made.

I spray painted some heavy plastic sheet a light blue color & then used spray adhesive to stick the mat down.

I decided to spray the plastic blue 1st because the mat directly over the white plastic seemed a bit too stark in contrast between the white & blue. Here's a picture of the mat over some white plastic.

Since the mat isn't flat against the plastic, the contrast between the blue & white might be hard to see. But hopefully you can get the idea compared to the other picture.

The blue mat over the light blue color seems to work well. For rivers, I might try to vary the amount of paint sprayed along the plastic to get more variation of the color that shows through.

I just need to figure out how to add some sort of green flock/edging around the lake. I'm guessing any basing material or flock won't stick well to the mat.

PanzerRex

After my 8 yr old daughter saw the very cool Lego army that Rebel Minis posted on their blog, she wanted to do the same thing with Lego knights.

But while we waited to find deals on lego people, I remembered I had bought some 2.5D tanks & dinosaur models recently. They're made out of styrene pieces that you punch out of a card like the Wizkids' Pirates of the Spanish Main ships. Here are scans of the inserts that came in the packs. There's quite a range of model types.



Unfortunately, the website listed on the packs (www.z-cardz.com) goes to an Asian language site with no English info at all. So I can't help track down any of the models.


I had 5 packs of tanks & 1 pack of dinosaurs which I quickly snapped together & came up with some rules off the top of my head.

Here's the inital board lay out, & the yellow vs green forces (2 dinos, 2 tanks & 2 smaller tank destroyer vehicles each).


Here's a closeups of my daughter's force

& my force


The rules were very simple, but it did include measuring for movement & ranged fire (the dinos had a very short but very powerful fire breath), opposed die rolls to resolve combat, & different sized dice for the different figure types (tank destroyers = d6, tanks = d10, dinos = d20).

She started off very well with her forces hidden behind the woods. She asked if we could move or see through the woods & I said no to make it simple. She also told me which of the dinos were meat eaters & which were plant eaters, & that the meat eaters should be better fighters. I suggested we have all the dinos be the same for now.

She did make the very good tactical move all on her own. She ran her speedy tank destroyers up to hide behind a hill on my flank so I couldn't shoot them. Next turn she had them come over the hill so they'd be in range to shoot my tank, but was smart enough to also keep them far enough back from my forces so I couldn't shoot back (tank destroyers shot 12", but tanks shot 8" just to give the tank destroyers better survivability).

She ended up wiping out all my vehicles at one point. Here is a picture of her forces converging on my 2 remaining dinosaurs.


& another of her TRex coming over the hill to flank my dinos.


Unfortunately, the dino attack die of d20 was just too much for the tanks' d10 & tank destroyers' d6 & my dinos started quickly knocking off her vehicles. Seeing that she was getting disappointed, I "accidently" started rolling a d12 for the dinos instead of a d20, & allowed her to roll 2d6 for her tank destroyers when they fired at the same target.

She finally (luckily) beat me & ran off to tell Mom about her glorious victory. I was very happy she enjoyed it & was very active in wanting to play the game, doing her own measuring & making her own tactical decisions.

At the end of the game, she asked me if I could "put the game on Facebook". I was quite surprised since she's never mentioned Facebook before & only uses computers to play cartoon games like on Disney & Nick Jr. But this blog is as close as I get to Facebook, so it'll have to do. Now I need to go write down the rules I came up since I know she'll start correcting me next time we play if I don't.

General SmoothieFace reviewing her victorious forces

Overcoming Ennui: Warmaster Terrain

Been unable to get myself motivated to work on any wargaming project for a long time. So, I used a recent Warmaster campaign day as impetus to finally get something done.

I dug out the Warmaster terrain pieces that I'd had for years since they'd be a quick & simple project. I ended up finishing the pieces themselves in about 9 hours. & then about another 2.5 hours to do the bases.

The buildings are all from JR Miniatures 10mm Ancient/Medieval range.


I primed them white and block painted them, with a bit of drybrushing, & finished them off with the Minwax Miracle Dip method.


The buildings are mounted on a variety of hotel card keys, used gift cards, etc. Unfortunately, some are already starting to flex & the basing material is lifting off.


These stones are actually bluish. I wanted them to look a bit more magical than just grey standing stones.


Now I just need to make a river for these bridges to go over.