Road Rage

Late last year I tried some experiments with Machinas. I found it to be a bit slower than I wanted (and there were other quibbles I had). So I jotted down a few ideas. Last weekend I decided to try some out.

Movement is greatly simplified, although it retains a degree of relative movement that is the main characteristic of Machinas. In my rules, each vehicle rolls one D6. If it rolls greater or equal to its speed (or handling on turns), it can move forward one space (sideways movement is free). This means that I can roll movement for all vehicles at one time, which speeds up the game turn immensely.

For this experiment, I pulled out some 6mm scale vehicles I purchased from Microworld. I am a bit disappointed that the vehicles from the Denizens pack (like the orange car below) are out of scale compared with the Hot Rods and Cars pack. As you can see, I haven't finished painting.

Below I set up a chase (the orange car is not involved). Three raiders (red) are chasing a Courier (blue). The raiders have (from front to back) a car, hot rod, and trike

The Courier pulls out ahead of the trike and hot rod, but the car keeps pace. It rams the Courier, who just manages to maintain control.

Ramming involves a simple opposed die roll. The loser then rolls on a results table, with the possibility of a momentary loss of speed, damage to the vehicle, or a crash.

The raider car pulls up next to the Courier, who sideswipes him. The raider temporarily loses control.

And returns the favor.

By this time, the Courier reached the end of the board. I moved him back to the middle of the board and all other vehicles the same amount of spaces back. Any vehicles that got pushed off the board as a result dropped out from the chase.

This only left the car. Throughout the chase it had also been taking shots at the Courier, causing damage. Gunfire was a simple D6 roll. In this final turn, the Courier reached its damage limit and crashed.

Overall, it was enjoyable, although it needs some tweaks. I liked the movement system - quick and easy. However, the trike and hot rod fell back early and were never in the fight. I'm thinking of adding a turbo boost rule. Perhaps a bonus roll if you roll a 6. So there would be a potential to move 2 spaces a turn.

I'll have to try some more games, and finish painting the cars.

Look to the Skies

Now that my Horse & Musket and Age of Sail rules are coalescing into something coherent, I find my attention wandering. Today, I decided to look to the skies; I ran a quick space dogfight.

Two Federation fighters (silver and blue) take on three Imperials.

First blood. Silver (an ace) destroys an enemy while Blue causes damage.

Silver would bag another kill.

And then Blue scores the last one.

A while back I mentioned that I ordered some rockets from Shapeways. Below is one that I painted and based on a Litko clear base.

The size is perfect but I am a little disappointed by my purchase. The tail fins on about half the rockets broke off when I was trying to detach them. I may look for other alternatives.

The Flood Gates Are Open

We played a rather eventful game of Forbidden Island last night.

First, there was a literal flood when I spilled a glass of water all over the tiles and cards. We dried up as best we could and continued the game. 

As you can see from the following picture, the game itself was a near run thing. Most of the island had sunk when we found the last treasure. If the waters rose any more, we would be goners. Fortunately, the helicopter arrived in the nick of time.

To make our escape even more dramatic, Hurricane Onyx bore down on us. Fortunately,we got away just in time.

Storms of War at Sea

I did a little Age of Sail experimentation today. I didn't bother recording all the action, but I'll give you a brief synopsis.

First was a moderate sized (for me at least) battle with 4 ships a side. One Blue (bottom, with a white marker on it) and two Red ships (also with white markers) were forced to strike.

The I tried a smaller action to see if my rules would be too simplistic with few ships. I thought they worked fine. Here we say one Red frigate (bottom right) trying to overhaul two Blue merchants. One of the merchants is trying a long range shot (it missed).

 Eventually, the frigate caught one of the merchants and severely damaged it, although it took some damage too. The other merchant would escape.

I used the rules as-is for the frigate (i.e. 2D6 in combat). Obviously, a frigate does not have the same firepower as a ship of the line, but I essentially adjusted the scale accordingly. The merchants fired with a single die.

All-in-all, I have been pleased with the rules. Here is the latest incarnation.

One issue is that collisions were very frequent when one ship tried to cross another's T. The target ship had to move forward 1 space, crashing into the enemy. I may allow the target a chance to turn before movement.

Come Sail Away

Earlier this week I performed a couple of Age of Sail experiments.

Previous experiments utilized my scratch built ships (which I made in the early 1990s!)

Because of their masts, these ships don't fit well into my portable wargame boxes. I've been thinking about creating some counters, like Fantalonia's. I don't have a functioning color printer at home, so these counters have been shelved for the moment. However, I have some pieces of craft wood. A little snipping and painting later and I have 2 fleets.

I also dabbled with rules today.

First, I used an idea from Aelred Glidden's As Per Margin rules (in MWAN 109). Roll 2 dice to determine movement. Use the higher die if moving with the wind or the lower if against. Because my board is small, I halved the movement rates (e.g. a roll of 5 or 6 = 3 squares). To speed the process, I rolled per squadron instead of per ship. Overall, I felt that this was a positive experiment. It gave some variability to movement that made things interesting.

For combat, I rolled 2 dice per ship, needing a 4+ (5+ at long range) to hit. Given that ships could only take 3 hits before striking, this could get bloody fast. Thus, I added a couple of rules to lessen damage. First, ships could make repair rolls; for each hit roll 4+ remove a hit. Then halve the number of hits to determine permanent damage.

Here is a shot of my ships in action.

This was after several turns of battle (half of the Blue navy has sailed off the board without damage). Black markers indicate hits and orange represent permanent damage. After repairs, these 4 hits translated into 2 points of damage. At the end of the game, Blue had no damaged ships while Red had 3 (one seriously with 2 damage). These changes seem to be working.

Once again I had a game partner. This time Onyx watched without disturbing the pieces (although he sat on my box).

Tweenwater War - Assault on Blancport

The Final Battle of the Tweenwater War Eastern Front

Due to the failure of the Imperial navy to maintain the blockade on Blancport, General Whittelspoon has no choice but to assault the city. He unleashes an artillery bombardment intended to destroy the city walls. The guns breach the wall and Whittelspoon sends in his troops.

Grenadiers lead the way, clearing out the breach. Redgravian reinforcements rush in from the east (top).

The Imperial Grenadiers engage enemy infantry supported by artillery. General Spengler himself leads a unit of infantry toward the breach, which is guarded by some Imperial riflemen.

Battles rage while Redgravian cavalry seeks to flank the grenadiers.

The cavalry flank attack repulses the Grenadiers. More reinforcement arrive from the west (bottom)

One unit of Imperial infantry routs back through the crossing.

Sustained Redgravian counterattacks on all fronts rout three more Imperial units.

Whittelspoon's assault has failed. Unable to sustain the siege, he withdraws. Blancport remains in Redgravian hands!

Game Notes

• I modified scenario #5 - Bridgehead from Neil Thomas's One Hour Wargames. The original scenario involves a river crossing. I changed the bridge to a breach in the city walls. Otherwise, the scenario remained unchanged.
• Technically, the Redgravians hadn't secured victory per Thomas's scenario objectives (the Empire still had 2 functioning units) but I called it because the Empire was wildly outnumbered and I doubt they would be able to force the breach.
• This battle closes out my eastern Tweenwater War campaign. The Empire had claimed a 2-1 advantage but were defeated in the last 2 battles. Thus, Redgrave emerges with a 3-2 battles victory.
• I finally received my copy of Twilight of the Sun King from the Pike & Shot Society, however I have kind of lost interest in them. Instead, I used my incredibly stripped down version from a few weeks ago. The rules play OK, albeit a bit bloody. Not really an issue from my perspective but it could affect the use of the OHW scenarios.
• This marked the first outing of my new 2mm armies. I was concerned that they would look odd in conjunction with hand-drawn terrain, however I did not notice the disparity while I played.

In other news, we tried to play Dead of Winter last weekend but had to end the game prematurely.