A Storm's Brewing

Last week I mentioned that I was in a summer lull. Fortunately I feel that the lull is going to break soon. I haven't played any games yet but I have started some ancillary actions.

• I got back into painting my latest project. Still some work to do but made progress this weekend. (I'd do some painting now but there is a cat sleeping next to me so I can't get up.)

• I have a 4-day weekend coming up and I'm planning a game. Last Independence Day I played out a fictional American Revolution battle set in my home state. Thinking about a sequel!

From a PBS program about Florida in the Revolution
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-in-florida-hfcu7l/

• I should finish the War of the Emperor's Balls using Simplicity in Hexes, which I started last month.

• Finally, I have a hankering for some fantasy action. Thought about HoTT but just not feeling it. I toyed with the idea of creating a Simplicity in Hexes variant. That is still a possibility but I started looking at One Hour Wargames. One of my issues with those rules was tracking 15 hits but I thought of a variant where units take 4 hits. I would like to try it out. I may even pull my 3mm fantasy armies out of mothballs.

3mm Fantasy - Evil vs. Good

The Purge Returns

Recently I have been cleaning out the garage, which got me started on organizing my wargaming collection.

The first thing I did was to clean up my painting area. I had a little fold-up table in the garage which served as a painting table. However, it tended to impede movement around the garage. I decided to put it away. I took the jumble of supplies that was sitting on the table and boxed them. The most crucial elements are in a single box, which I intend to use as a portable painting area.

I also tried minimize the amount of stuff I had lying around in odd places. Instead, I gathered everything of current use into boxes. Each box has basic components for game-play, including miniatures/tokens, markers, dice, and (mostly) erasable battle-mats. I now have the following boxes:

• The Air & Space box - 1930s era aircraft minis (like this)  plus a few sci-fi pulp rockets
• The Sea box - age of sail ship tokens, and some WW2 coastal forces.
• The Land box - block armies for ancients to horse & musket battles, 2mm sci-fi, and some post-apocalyptic cars.
• The RPG box - 10mm fantasy figures for dungeon crawls

Last year, I began a process of gleaning out some miniatures that I did not expect to use anymore. I now have more in the pile (I added my 2mm forces - they just don't show up well on blog photos). I am ready to part with them and will be posting them in the near future (free + shipping).

You may have noticed that I now only have blocks for ancients to horse & musket eras. This does not mean that I am eschewing miniatures entirely for those periods. I am thinking of a new 3mm generic army project. More on that later.

Thinking Instead of Playing

I mentioned last week that I am experiencing some GADD (gamer's attention deficit disorder) and want to play some Slipstream. I just don't have figures. While I shrugged off my GADD last week and played a Spandau and Lewis scenario, this week I ended up contemplating game design ( I also spent some time preparing for this month's LARP scenario, but that's another topic).

Anyway, here are some ideas that popped into my head, some of them admittedly crazy.

Very Quick Play
While I already tend to play short games (usually 30 - 45 minutes), sometimes I want something even quicker - say 15 minutes.

Very Quick Set-Up
My experiments with a boxed game (below) have provided a quick set-up.

There are also other steps I can take to expedite set-up (e.g. fewer units and simpler terrain)

Multi-Genre
Sometimes it's frustrating when I have an itch to play a game set in a genre but I don't have minis. Instead, I don't play. I'm thinking of putting together a set with generic tokens that can stand in when I don't have actual miniatures.

Universal Rules System
I want one box that can handle nearly any genre (a tall order, I know). It seems to me that a set of light, universal rules, perhaps along the line of a matrix game or narrative RPG, would work. To this end, I ended up downloading the Freeform Universal (FU, pronounced foo) RPG and have been reading through it.

I have some game ideas running through my head; we'll see where they take me.

Status Update

Well, January has ended and it has been very productive.

Six by Six
One month in and I have completed 7 games (complete list here), far more than I expected.
(Note that Kaptain Kobold's list is missing my latest 4AD adventure, which I posted on Tales of the Templars)

I'm not going to get too excited. I have a history of starting strong in January then petering out, as shown by this graph of average blog posts per month.

I'm not sure why there is such a lull in August. Summer in South Florida is when one wants to be inside, away from the heat and humidity. I would think that the weather would promote more games.

Portable Wargame
One reason for my success in playing games is my boxed portable wargame project. Inspired by Bob Cordery, I am endeavoring to put together games that can fit into a plastic box. I have found that I often will not play a game, even if I have time, because I don't feel like setting it up. A portable wargame makes set-up a snap, so I am more motivated to pull one out.

To fit it all in a box, I had to shrink down the battlefield (along with the armies, terrain, etc.). In a fit of madness, I made 4 boards - grass, desert, sea, and space. I'm still compiling components so I don't have one completed one yet. Still, I have made progress.

New Forces
I was concerned that I would not have room in the box for my current 3mm armies so I decided to put together some new forces specifically for my box.

I started by ordering some Irregular 2mm. Here are the (rather blurry) new armies:

A medieval fantasy one for the southern kingdom of Presteria (inspired by Prester John).

Ironically, I had the idea for the Presterian army but shelved it. Then Kaptain Kobold posted about his HoTT version which piqued my interest again. Then, when I decided to go with 2mm, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to create my own Prester John army.

And here is their sworn enemies, the desert barbarians of Swartheria.

I still have some touch-up to do and there are some archers still on the painting table. But these armies are close to done.

As I waited for these troops to arrive, I began building my battle boards. I made ones for sea and space, even though I didn't have miniatures that would fit the smaller board. I decided to rectify that situation, starting with my space fleets. Here is the result so far (another bad picture):

The blue ships are from the Federation fleet (the good guys). I chose to use the same paint scheme as their ground forces. The big ship (bottom of the picture) was meant to be a battleship but now I'm calling it a cruiser. It is about an inch long. I had some small wooden circles and ended up making some flaying saucers (with the help of some lentils). The smaller saucers are just lentils. I also started an Imperial fleet (the red ship). I recently got these ships into action and will post the report tomorrow.

On Holiday!

I am off work all next week and I'm not going anywhere so I'll have more time to post. However, I'm not sure if I'll get in much mini gaming. You see, I've developed a tradition of playing a video game hard core during my holiday down time. Over the past few Christmases, I restored the Twilight Princess to her realm, helped stave off the Oblivion Crisis, defeated Alduin the World_Eater, and brought down the Enclave (i.e. I completed Legend of Zelda:Twilight Princess, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Fallout 3). So what's in store for this year?

Yeah, it's an old game, but it's one I never finished. There's been a lot of buzz lately about the Dragon Age: Inquisition, the latest game in the series. I kept saying to myself that I should complete the first game (which I started in 2011) so I decided to make it my holiday game of 2014.

I do plan to make regular posts. I have a year-end review in the works (it's pretty wordy so it will end up 2 parts) and my predictions for 2015. In addition, I am starting a new series of posts called RETROSPECTIVE.

Ponderings

Starfighters
I've been thinking a lot about my starfighter Eindekker variant. In Eindekker, turn management is crucial because you have only 10 turns to complete the mission and return to base before your fuel runs out. I tried a similar rule with my starfighter rules but it just doesn't seem to fit. I just think that -starfighters would have more than enough fuel for their missions so that running out is not a concern. However, if I remove the fuel restrictions, I will essentially remove all decision making by the player. Instead, the game will become a dice-rolling exercise (combat is simply opposed die rolls). While I don't mind rolling dice, I would like to have some tactical decision making.

So what is the solution to my quandary? I'm thinking of adding maneuvers to the combat. For example, perhaps I could add maneuver cards a la Down in Flames. The player would have a hand of cards; he would then play one for each of his starfighters in the turn. I would probably simply program the enemy responses. Adding cards would add more physical components to the game, making it harder to play on a virtual board.

Another idea is to make combat into a multiple round die rolling game (kind of like Yahtzee in space). The player would roll, then choose which dice to keep.

Anyway, I'm kind of stuck on this problem now. I'll need some more thinking.

Sports
I've been toying around with some different quick play sports games.

I created a simple dice-rolling football game. Each team gets 2 "possessions" per quarter, rolling 2D6 per possession (modified by Offensive and Defensive ratings). Results are as follows:

2-3 Turnover
4-6 Punt or end of possession
7-8 Field goal
9-12 Touchdown

I have since added additional rules. A roll of 2 or 4 give a +1 to the opponent's next roll (they gained good field position). One can opt to eschew the field goal and go for it (roll again with a -1 mod). I even have 2-point conversions.

Star League has also been getting my attention. I am in the middle of season 3. I created a spreadsheet to track the League's history but it made me want to finish seasons even quicker. I experimented with a game where each team rolls 1 die to determine the number of goals scored per half. I created a spreadsheet that can actually play an entire season in a second. OK, that's a little too fast. I'm now thinking of creating a new league. I would control one team; its games would be played using the Star League rules. Games for the other teams would use the season in a second rules. The only problem is that season in a second results in a higher score than Star League. I haven't progressed any further.

Some Inspiration

While thinking about making troop type distinctions in my board-less wargame, I recalled a post in David Cook's A Wargaming Odyssey about a grand tactical game. The idea was that multiple troop types could inhabit a hex and that combat between troops in a hex would be resolved in steps, skirmishers first, then artillery, then infantry and cavalry. At the time, I commented that the process sounded very much like that used in the board game Viktory II.

I think that such a system could work for my boardless game. Combat would stretch out more, which is what I want (my original experiment actually seemed too short). I have experimented with Viktory inspired rules before but they seemed too bloody. For a super quick-play set of rules, bloody is good. I may have to experiment.

On another note, I am thinking of playing an occasional board-less wargame on a board, I would use a stand to represent a morale point. Terrain would be fairly abstract. I may pull out some of my 2mm stands. I then recalled some battle reports on A Wargaming Odyssey where the poster used blocks (e.g. this report). I may make up some blocks of my own, although I may use some Junior General top-down paper minis.

Board-less Wargaming

Lately, I’ve been playing quite a bit of Quick Play “Soccer” (although I’m calling it gravball). I put the tables in Excel, created a dice roller, and have been playing it almost exclusively on the computer. I noticed that I will pop in and play a game or two in odd spare moments when I would not have time to set up a board game. This got me thinking – I wonder if I can create a board-less wargame.

I have experimented with “board-less” gaming before; actually it was more like a virtual board. I created my virtual board in Excel, using shapes as units and shading the squares to indicate terrain. The idea just never went anywhere. I guess that moving shapes was not as much fun as pushing miniatures on a board.

Now, however, I am thinking of developing an extremely quick-playing, board-less wargame that can be played using dice or on the computer. This will allow me to get some gaming in during the brief windows of spare time.

Here are my ideas so far:

• Each army is formed of 3 wings (right, left, center).
• It is assumed that the wings consist of combined arms.
• The game assumes that the armies have completed their maneuvering and have come to grips. 
• The 3 wings will engage (right vs. left, center vs. center, and left vs. right).
• Each engagement will be resolved via dice – probably using De Bellis Antiquitatis style opposed die rolls.
• Each wing has a combat value which is added to the die roll
• Each wing has a certain number of morale points (typically 3).
• Losing an engagement reduces morale points.
• The wing routs if morale is reduced to 0.
• Each army will have a certain number of Reserve Points. These can be used to re-do a die roll (simulating the arrival of reserves at a critical point).
• An army loses when 2 of the 3 wings are routed.
• Terrain:
• I will probably add some pre-battle “maneuvering rolls” to determine if one side or the other receives favorable terrain
• Attacking an enemy in defensible terrain will result in a negative modifier to the die roll.

A Sneak Peak

I have a bit of a list of topics about which I plan to post. I don't want to inundate this blog all at once, so I will be be spreading out my posts. Nevertheless, I wanted to give people a sense of what is on tap.

Here is my list:

1. An introduction to my Francesia miniatures campaign.
2. Reports and reviews of a few games:
    a. Eindekker from Minden Games
    b. Down in Flames from DVG
    c. Dread Pirate
3. Some random wargame thoughts, such as:
    a. Turning Ace of Aces into a board game
    b. Gaming websites I like

I hope this whets your appetite. Stay tuned!

It Begins

It's not pretty yet, but we have lift off. I have started my new war-gaming blog. Over time, I'll learn how to spruce it up.

Why a war-gaming blog? I have been inspired by the many cool Imagi-nations blogs at the Emperor vs Elector site and I'd like to do something similar as I embark on a new phase in my war-gaming life.

I have been a life long gamer. I remember playing Afrika Korps and other Avalon Hill games with my Dad as a kid. From there I branched out into role-playing and miniatures in addition to board games. Recently, I have been playing a lot of computer and video games. World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls in particular have absorbed a lot of my gaming time over the past few years.

Lately, I have become a bit jaded with computer and video games (sorry Elizabeth ;)). While they are enjoyable, they lack a certain something that board games and pen and paper games seem to have. So I have decided to get back into some old school gaming. I picked up some board games for both solo play and for play with my wife Elizabeth. I even ordered some miniatures and plan to start a campaign with them.

In this blog, I'll be posting updates on my projects and battle reports from games that I play, Stay tuned!