Rules tinkering, rambling, and game-space tinkering too. Also rambling...

 I experimented yesterday, all too briefly, with a "solo ECW" article from a volume of Wally Simon's essays. Unfortunately, it was a bit rambling; it reminds me distinctly of Donald Featherstone, in fact. Like Featherstone, Simon was a charming, friendly sort of writer, but also like Featherstone, he tended to ramble. The articles, while they are mostly about rules mechanisms and their modifications, are also  reminisces of who knows how many decades of play and camaraderie. Featherstone doesn't write much about his opponents, but in Simon's writing you can hear the banter across the table. And like Featherstone, the rules are often spread across a chapter, and missing important elements. 

I'm not saying he's a bad writer, but it's not always easy to follow the rulesets he writes. Mostly because he often focuses on specific elements, often of someone else's rulesets. Or an entire article will be on different methods of counting initiative (I'll come back to this one when I get around to my Picacho Peak game). Or a pleasant, but rules-lite recounting of crewing an X-class submarine made out of a batch of chairs in Paddy Griffith's living room, which reminds me of Jim Wallman's equally cramped Tank Duel. In that one, players sit or crouch together in the relative positions of a tank crew, and have to stay there while operating a tabletop tank. I intend to run it for my own group the moment the pandemic's over and I don't have to worry about infecting a bunch of gamers old enough to be my father. I think kids would get a real kick out of it too.

Like Simon and Featherstone, I ramble...

In this case the missing element was morale. The ruleset in question is for a relatively small game, with units represented by a single base. For my quick test run-through, I took two bases of pike, two of muskets, and one of cavalry a side, on a new 2x4 foot folding table I picked up to be able to isolate in the bedroom. I am considering further remote games, you see, and when one must wait for the players to send in their moves, leaving a table set with minis and terrain for days on end, one cannot leave the table vulnerable to pouncing cats.

This was all very well, except for the lighting. Something I hadn't realized about my play in the living room is that I have an overhead light there; I don't in the bedroom. This is not so bad, except that I want to be able to take pictures, or maybe even video (she said, envious of certain youtube channels. Seriously, check out the overhead camera in this guy's battle reports). And the lighting in the bedroom is poor, even in daylight with a window open - and I will be rarely playing in daytime as I'm a night owl.

Rambling again. Back to the playtest. So I ran through the rules. There are six elements to a turn, and more than a few interesting mechanisms in them:

- Active player tosses a D10. When cycle-upon-cycle throws add up to 15, the turn is over, and Victory Points are toted up.

- Active player moves both infantry and cavalry up to ten inches. No mention of terrain modifiers here, though the battle report is set among hills and manors.

- Non-active player fires, but draws a variable number of cards from a "fire deck" first, looking for pairs of Fire and Load cards - each pair allows a single unit to fire. There are also Misfire cards. I tossed a D12, but could have used, perhaps, three suits of cards (or two plus the Jokers). units with casualties roll for morale - losers retreat to a "Rally Zone." Interestingly, pike elements may also fire, on the assumption that they are typical regiments of the period with a 1:2 ratio of pikes to muskets, so the muskets are "concealed" among the pikes and actually fire with near the same chance of hitting as the musketeer elements.

- Active player chooses two units, which fire. (For some reason, he doesn't draw cards.) Confusion was attained by the fact this was also a battle report between the Active player, the Earl of Cratchett, and the non-Active player, Lord Flocke, and at this point the Earl is named as the non-Active player.

- Non-Active cavalry move ten inches. I like this, incidentally - it gives the non-active player another thing to do (something that Wally seems to approve in his other articles) at the same time that it enables the cavalry to move faster than infantry like it should. The entire turn cycle is intriguingly "semi-simultaneous."

- Melees are fought. Losing stands again retreat to the Rally Zone. At this point, all such units roll to see if they return to the field. This feels akin to the rallying mechanism in the Perrys' TravelBattle - losing units retreat to their baseline, then either fail to rally or are retrieved by a command figure. While Heavy and Light Cavalry are listed in the army writeups, as well as a unit armed with swords and bucklers, there is no comment on their impact in close combat - do cavalry roll higher, or get extra dice?

Now here's the problem. The morale-check mechanism for casualties from fire is not there.

And of course I didn't notice this until I needed to roll a morale check. This is, also of course, the reason I ran a hasty small game in the first place - to catch things like that. Or so I reassure myself.

The morale check mechanism for melees is there, but I'm not sure it would apply to the firing phase. Sides add up stands in combat and casualties inflicted (so one stand that inflicts one casualty on its opponent makes two) and multiply this number by a D10. Again akin to Featherstone, where survivors (not casualties) are multiplied by a D6, and the side with a lower number retreats.

In most rulesets, the side that takes casualties by fire rolls alone, against a set number. It didn't occur to me at the time to roll off between units in the same way as melee; at the time I think I felt the fired-on unit would be much likelier to lose (since the firer hasn't taken casualties yet), and this didn't seem realistic. In hindsight, though, I could see it, in part because the Active player gets to fire back, possibly with units that took casualties in the immediate-prior phase, thus enabling the opponent to roll higher. (Is this making any sense?)

See if you can figure out morale from fire-casualties from this!

An earlier article in the book, Encounter at Lennard Manor: Loss Threshold, describes a similar ruleset and melee-morale mechanic, but still does not describe how morale works when units are not in melee.

I may try again, using the same mechanic for firing-morale as for CC-morale. On a 2x4foot table with five bases a side, it goes quickly enough. There are the bones of an interesting and light system here, but as with Featherstone's, I'll have to build on them. Of course that's half the fun!

WoTR Paperboys

I finished assembling the Wofun Games War of the Roses starter set, and decided to try them out with the starter rules from the Paperboys book they're based on. The rules are gridded, so I tried out one of my new Melee Mats too - they're very nice, and the markings seem to come off easily, which is a good thing. Already wasted one of the four markers they came with, sadly, by leaving it uncapped. Since the bases are 30mm wide and the squares one inch (25.4mm), I marked the corners of two-inch squares in a 7x10 grid.

Setup and Turn 1. Each side has two men-at-arms bases (one of them the commander); four billmen bases, and six archer bases.

Turn 2 and 3. Shooting has short and long ranges - the caveat is that arrows are limited and if you shoot with more than one base in a turn you expend them. You have six "multi-volleys" per game - at this short table-width it turns out not to be a big deal as units will be in combat inside two turns and the game has a fair chance of ending in less than six.

End-game. Combat is basic; units have a variable number of attacks based on level, hitting on 5+. The side that scores more forces saving throws on the opponent. Fail and the base is removed; pass and it is pushed back. The goal is to remove half the opponent's "points" total, each type being worth a differing number; the total in this game is 20 a side. The command base is powerful enough, with four attack dice, for the player to want to use it. But lose it and you lose the game, like the King in chess, and that was what happened here. I put up the Red commander against a weaker billmen base, but lost the combat and failed one of his two saves.

I like this simple ruleset, which is a lead-in to the full rules and represents a single ward or battle of the three normally found in an army of the period. I'll need to play it through a few more times to internalize the rules, but I don't expect that to take long. It's very chess-like, but with different (yet not complex) combat resolution that rewards consideration of risk. I might try it at work when the library's chess club starts up again.

On a related note, I received some nice Lancashire Games unit markers I ordered on a tip from Jonathan Freitag, intending to use them for Test of Resolve with these same figures, in units of two bases. The slide-under bit is smaller than I feared, and is hidden completely under a 20mm-deep by 30mm-wide base. Well and good.

Unfortunately, they don't fit standard 12mm Chessex dice. Though they do fit these smaller ones I have ... but I only have a handful! I have lots of teensy but possibly-too-light plastic dice that may work.

Still More Stuff

 Back when I first started wargaming, I learned that you should NEVER buy a new box of miniatures until you'd finished building and painting what you already had. I don't think any wargamer can say they do that successfully.

I also took a seminar for work yesterday on organizing your work and avoiding procrastination. There were some tips surprisingly useful for gaming projects as well, including links to a book titled Eat That Frog. This basically means to break down your tasks by priority, and do the most crucial ones first. The problem is that gaming is never a priority - it's relaxation. I have plans for gaming at work, but the pandemic's interrupted that.

While I loved assembling Games Workshop's multipart kits back in the 3rd Edition era (They're not nearly as customizable today), I was not much of a painter. Honestly, I hated it, and you can probably tell already I'm easily distracted. The fact that I played Fighting Tigers Space Marines wasn't much help. Though I will admit, if I forced myself to work on a project regularly, it was possible to fall into a rhythm and get through dozens of figures in a sitting when I'd only intended a handful. I mean, I already had the paints out.

Peter Dennis' Paperboys make that easier - you don't have to paint them.

Wofun makes it still easier - you don't even have to cut them out.

That leads to difficulties.

Another wargamer maxim more honored in the breach than the observance is "Never start on a new project before you've finished the first one."

If you've read even a handful of my blog posts, you know that ain't happening either. There are five (count 'em) aborning projects in this photo alone.

1. A small English Civil War army, with which to try:
1. Peter Dennis' and Andy Callan's own beginner rules from his ECW Paperboys book.
2. Wally Simon's even shorter rules from Secrets of Wargame Design.
2. A small War of the Roses army, with which to try:
1. Test of Resolve.
2. Another Peter Dennis/Andy Callan set, played on a gridded board...
3. ...Like the one visible under the figures. There are actually three two-sided boards, 24"x36". Even marked up (with included pens) as two-inch squares to contain the 20mmx30mm bases, this is 12x18 squares, much bigger than the chess boards I initially used. This will enable me better to try some of Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame rules. They advertise as non-staining and easy to clean, which if true will work better than the vinyl I first tried to run DnD on back in the day.

(After a bit of trial and error - pikes are tricky to punch out of plexiglass!)

Here's most of the English Civil War starter set - assembling cannon from MDF is a challenge, and I may use guns from the other sets as "light" artillery. There are two extra New Army regiments unmade. I'll also have to pick up a couple more toolboxes from the hardware store to keep them in - luckily, the spaces are deep enough that the pikes won't rise past them.

That's two of the three deliveries I've received so far this week. The third is a copy of For Whom the Dice Rolls by Graham Evans of the Wargaming4Grownups blog. It's attractively designed and an enjoyable read so far. I know little about the war save some of the aviation and some of the folk music that came out of it, and I certainly have no minis. I had half a mind to run it for my club, which among them should have enough early-WWII models and figures to proxy, but one of the members kindly offered a small collection of Spanish Civil War figures I'm now waiting on. As a division level game where the smallest unit is a company represented by a handful of figures, that should be enough to play small games.

Well, with the day off, I know what I'm doing today...

Free Kriegspiel methods

I caught the tail-end of a discussion on Discord recently between several readers of Justin Alexander's Alexandrian blog. The topic was "how to run mass battles in your RPG."

Now, unremembered by many players, Dungeons and Dragons has miniature wargaming in its blood. The trouble is that the immediate forerunners of what became DnD were skirmish games. 

This:

Not this: 

Justin made the point that, in part because of this, players focus on the available rules for mass combat when a big battle comes up in-game, rather than on the singular characters they're running. In fact, a lot of games do. Justin spent a year at one point analyzing DnD 4th Edition for its flaws, chief among which was the "dissociated mechanic."

This refers to any mechanic that pulls you out of the game and makes you forget you're supposed to be roleplaying in a universe not your own. For example, if you know your unit has sixteen hit points and +2 in combat vs. goblins, you're counting those points and modifiers rather than focusing on the fact that your two hundred solders with rusty blades are hungry, tired, and probably would rather not be fighting goblins right now.

Wargaming does this to an RPG because, in the middle of your adventure, you suddenly stop to play a tabletop wargame. Cards do this in some games because you suddenly stop your wargame to play a card game. Magic does this in many roleplaying-game rulesets because, after 100 pages of explaining how ordinary characters do things in the game, you stop learning the rules for the game and spend 100 pages learning how magic-users follow completely different rules.

If you're going to break out the miniatures when your players are leading an army against hordes of the Evil Empire, well and good. But you don't need to change the rules you're playing under.

I used this pic in a previous post about playing wargames with RPG techniques. Let's consider it from the opposite perspective of an RPG using wargame techniques:

If you're playing an RPG set in the Napoleonic Wars, it's probably going to be more Sharpe than Waterloo. If you watch the otherwise excellent Sharpe series, you'll notice that the mass battles the episodes are set against are very much in the background, largely because unlike the producers of Waterloo, the producers of Sharpe never had an entire Russian army to work with. It is a rare episode where more than one hundred soldiers appear. By the same token, Zulu wouldn't have been as effective without an entire tribe of actual Zulu led by an actual descendant of Ceteshwayo, and Gettysburg wouldn't have been nearly as impressive without 5,000 reenactors on the original battlefield. 

So Sharpe, and the above page, represent a far more typical gamemaster who hasn't painted up more than a handful of miniatures, or as in Knights of the Dinner Table, is using M&Ms, cardboard chits, or whatever else he can find on short notice. What is he to do?

Well, he can read the above page, and wing it. That, to me, is pretty much the entire point of a GM.

"You lead your French regiment forward. [French are rapid marchers and change formation quickly] They respond well to your commands. [Landwehr are terrible] Your Prussian-militia allies are NOT looking happy at that [Russians are not very good, but there are lots of them and they don't break] stolid mass of Russians ahead."

"Where are the Cossacks?"

[Cossacks are chicken, but very fast] "Not attacking, but racing around your flanks towards your baggage."

[Cuirassiers are super] "We'll send our cuirassiers after them."

[Except when attacked from behind] They're so slow compared to the Cossacks it's like watching one of those movies where the big guy is telling the little one to 'Fight fair!' The Cossacks are circling behind them and hitting them in their unprotected backsides."

We've just spent thirty seconds using our common sense and knowledge of history, rather than counting modifiers, measuring ranges, and rolling dice for several turns of combat.

That's Free Kriegspiel.

Free Kriegspiel Revolution on the (remote) Tabletop

 Read this first:

Wally's reaction to this confusion and how to quantify it? "Don't ask me."

FKR's reaction? "Don't need to."

I've recently dipped my toe into Discord, a software platform popular with gamers. Invited by Michael Raston of the Lizardman Diaries blog, I wanted to try a wargame with miniatures rather than the entirely electronic "map" games he's been having success with. He runs a channel called KriegHammer, since its games are loosely inspired by Warhammer Fantasy. Having been away from 40K and Fantasy for a long while, I wanted to try historicals in this vein too.

Michael writes about and runs "Free Kriegspiel Revolution" games, mostly roleplaying but branching out into skirmish and even campaign wargames. FKR is named for the original Prussian Free Kriegspiel of 1862, but focuses on "lite" roleplaying games like these which have become increasingly popular in the last decade or so. The R sometimes stands for "revival" instead, denoting the simplicity of the very earliest RPGs played by Arneson, Gygax and company.

I turned out to be the only historical gamer in the group, but that didn't stop a few players from expressing interest in a new genre. Which was okay with me, since any games I play on the job will be focused as much on educating the players as on the rules. A fellow who calls himself Kir took the first slot.

I set up a table and two small armies, confined my gamer kitty to the bedroom, and signed on.

Here I learned that Discord has a voice function. I had intended to take photos and type up the results in a fluffy, gamemastery fashion that would allow other viewers to follow the game in Discord, with the fringe benefit of me not having to write as much of this battle report. Kir instead suggested the voice chat, and I'm glad he did, because this way I didn't have to move betwixt table and computer and back again. The game was conducted via my cell phone. It would be possible to do it with video as well, as Wargaming for Grown-ups has been doing with a variety of rulesets. In practice, and in part because I wanted the photos for Facebook and this blog post, we used the voice chat for communication and the camera for the "map".

Kir had not played historicals before and knew nothing of the period (1740s, since I was using my collection of '45 Wofun Paperboys). I linked him to Charles Grant's introductory Waterloo, available free via Archive.org. Two brief chapters provided useful and quick background on unit types and tactics, particularly the rock-paper-scissors feel of foot, horse, guns and their formation choices. However, Kir had to "unlearn" a bit when I explained that units forming square were not common or necessary before the Napoleonic Wars. I probably should have been ahistorical and used them anyway, but he was a willing pupil nonetheless. He was at least vaguely familiar with the Jacobite Wars and, in between turns, was apparently reading the Wikipedia entry on Culloden and gaining some inspiration from it. Even though none of the Scots on the table were of the Clans!

I also provided a basic ruleset (the Charge! variant I used in my first Battle of Sawmill Village), for guidance only. It provided the basic moves and an idea of relative capabilities and speeds. Instead of counting casualties, I determined to use the dice-comparing adjudication rule SCRUD (found in Wargames Illustrated 64 and a few other places) for any serious dice-rolling. In practice, I used it for a couple close combats, while the rest were either common sense or just a roll-off ("1-3 the cav stop and use their pistols, 4-6 they charge in.")

On to the report!

"Seventeen Forty-something, somewhere in Europe.."

British and French positions respectively: 

The British have (left to right) a dragoon regiment, a gun, grenadiers and Black Watch. The French have, in same order, Royal Ecossais, Dillon's Irish Regiment, a gun and French Horse (taken from the War of Spanish Succession collection). I explained to Kir that his cavalry might be unreliable, the grenadiers were his most elite and reliable troops, while the redcoat Highlanders didn't yet have the reputation they do now - they were "regular" but perhaps untried. Oh, and since most of the artillery-shifting was done by easily-terrified civilians at this time, he might have difficulty moving his gun once it got shot at. 

As for my chaps, the Irish and Ecossais had a long and valiant history and could be regarded as elite, while the rest were fairly solid "regulars." My memory failed me on the Ecossais, which I confused with the Swiss and French Guards; the Ecossais were formed long after the Irish Brigade and, while professional, were at this point elite only perhaps in comparison with the Highland clans they served with in the '45.

Then I offered him choice of where to place his general; he picked the grenadiers, with the intention of keeping them and the Highlanders together for leadership test purposes.

(Cumberland is pretty tiny beside his Life Guard, isn't he?)

Kir moved his cavalry around the field, moved his gun forward, and formed columns of his infantry, one of which headed for the hill to his right.

(Luckily, Kfira is not a gamer kitty. She observed with regal patience, and at one point tiptoed across the field without, to my surprise, knocking anything awry.)

My chaps marched straight forward, the Ecossais bunching up rather than go over the hill. This would prove a mistake. On the other hand, Kir was alarmed to see heavy horse coming his way...

And hastily formed into line, at which point he learned that infantry masks guns:

He was okay with this, however, and picked on the Irish regiment for the rest of the game. While I didn't know it yet, I was in trouble.

The Highlanders make it atop the hill. Though they're still in column, the grenadiers are still an easier, if pointy, target for the French Horse.

For the first time, Free Kriegspiel comes into play. Kir declared a charge on the still-forming Ecossais. I messed around with rulers doing quarter-moves to see if the infantry could fan out into line before the dragoons reached them, tossed a die (it came up a 1), and decided they were not ready to receive a charge. Even fame and status wouldn't help at this point.

I didn't even bother to roll after that. The dragoons burst through, shattering the expatriate Scots and causing severe casualties.

At this point, Kir learned that noble-born cavalry are a touch unreliable, and would take some time reforming. This was good for me, since the Irish would need time to turn their facing, and their cannon rolled another one and got stuck in the road whilst trying to point at the cavalry. Another roll to rally the Ecossais at this point failed and they disintegrated.

Meanwhile, my own charge against the stolid grenadiers and their general in command came to nothing. Since the French tended not to conclude charges in favor of using their pistols, I tossed a die with penalty and declared that they would swerve instead. Another die, for direction, decided "to the viewer's right." As they passed between the Highlanders on the hill and the hastily refusing flank of the grenadiers, they took musketry from both sides; I decided that range, lack of accuracy and the Highlanders firing downhill meant there was no chance of friendly fire. The cav, like their British counterparts, would also need time to turn around.

The British cavalry reformed, and made ready to attack the Irish. The gun still failed to fire; perhaps a rammer was stuck up the spout. Kir's own gun, incidentally, was continuing to fire at the Irish, disconcerting and slowing them if nothing else.

At the other end of the revolving door, my own cavalry prepared for another charge. It was here I explained to Kir that cavalry tired quickly, or at least their horses did. One more charge was all they could hope for at this point before exhaustion took its toll.

Kir asked at this point if the musketry smoke from his infantry was filling the low ground and blocking visibility between his units. I agreed, made a simple paper cloud, and cheerfully added that this only made his Highlanders' position worse - they couldn't even see their commander now, much less take direction from him. Said commander and his grenadiers were nicely refused now.

The British cavalry exchanged pistol fire with the Irish, who were still getting shot at by Kir's cannon.

Then, horrors - the French general got blown away by that annoying gun. If the Irish were disconcerted before...

(I rolled a lot of ones in this game. Next time I think I'll try the 2d6 method to provide a bell curve!)

The dragoons charged in, seeing their chance and daring the incompetent gun crew to blast them with canister. (They missed.) I used the SCRUD method for the second time in the game, rolling one die per base and comparing, and giving the dragoons an extra die.

Oddly, it didn't help, the Irish handily won almost all the matchups. Their elite status coming to the fore, perhaps.

I decided this meant a tie rather than an outright Irish victory; both sides would be nearing exhaustion, the one by getting incessantly shot at all game, the other by blown horseflesh and the strain of even a victorious charge.

Meanwhile, the French horse surged up the hill against the Highlanders, but their own tired horses balked at the end. After a desultory clash of sword on bayonet, the French swept away, back towards their baseline:

End game:

We ended the battle here. With one regiment destroyed, another exhausted, and a third retreating, I felt the French would fall back to fight another day. As for the British, they were mostly intact (save for their bloodied cavalry) and were sitting on the objective, the crossroads. So Kir won. Or, if we treat this as the roleplaying session it mostly was, he beat the scenario with me as GM.

Managing the game via Discord was far quicker and easier than I feared; I'd be happy to try it again, perhaps with more players. The course of the game still feels realistic to me, which is pretty much the point of a "lite" freestyle RPG; if the result makes sense, you don't really need the dice. More importantly, perhaps, the interaction allowed by voice chat was key to the session's success; Kir was a patient and eager opponent, and I really appreciate his playtesting help. I think he learned a lot, too, which is good from my perspective of wanting to use this style of game as a teaching tool for kids.

If you, too, would dare, please let me know:

Jennifer's Test Game Server

Happy INWarD!

Today is the birthday of Fred T. Jane, the father of naval wargaming and founder of Jane's Information Group. Naval wargamers have begun commemorating it as International Naval Wargames Day. My library system has a reprint collection of some of the early volumes, and I've had the 1906 volume (containing the original rules) in my office for years but never had the chance to try it. Or, more realistically, copy the ship drawings and use them for simpler games.

I was hoping to run Junior General's Hampton Roads scenario today at work, for two reasons:

a) it uses Jane's firing mechanism, AKA pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.

b) I constructed the ships for it on the library's own 3D printer.

Unfortunately, I had a busy and tiring day at work. So I didn't get a game in. On the other hand, by the time I got home I was totally ready to blow something up.

Honestly, sometimes, that's my entire motive for gaming.

I broke out my box of erasers and a basic ruleset I wrote in ten minutes last decade and went to sea.

With blue and red erasers, they could represent Japanese vs. Russian in 1905, British vs. German in 1916, or Japanese vs. American in 1942. Not able to think up Japanese, Russian or German names on the spur of the moment, I started a war in 1905 between the Arizona Republic and Generic Britain.

The gunboat Nogales, destroyer Tucson, and light cruiser Phoenix.

The torpedo boat River, destroyer Flower, and armoured cruiser Town.

Turn 1 - River fires a speculative shot and knocks out Tucson's aft turret. It is repaired at end of turn. All other salvos miss.

Turn 2 - Town takes a torpedo hit from Nogales, whilst Tucson sinks River with a waterline hit. Don't annoy bigger ships! I leave River afloat as a navigation hazard. Phoenix retaliates with two hits on Town, taking out her after turret and two inches of speed. Flower brackets Nogales and knocks out both her weapons systems!

Turn 3 - Tucson hits Town's bridge! She's out of control for a turn. Then Phoenix closes to within knife-range of Flower, and knocks her out of control too!

Turn 4 - Both British ships fail to repair their bridges, so Flower is going straight into the wallowing wreck of River. I decide to count this as a ram, so Flower loses a point of waterline damage and River finally goes to the bottom. The cruiser Town has no choice but to move 6" forward. At least Tucson finally takes a waterline hit, and Town's sailors patch the torpedo hit in their hull.

Turn 5 - Town, not wanting to run off the edge of Discworld the table, slews to the side and fires into Tucson, knocking out both her guns. In exchange, Phoenix crosses Flower's T and scores three hits - one of them on the waterline, so Flower finally goes down. (Having already lost one of her two hit points by ramming her own sister.)

Turn 6 - Town, now desperate to get something out of this fight, fires point-blank into the disarmed Tucson to little effect other than slowing her down a bit. Meanwhile, Phoenix coasts across Town's after end and reopens the torpedo hole with a fierce salvo. The Town fires a last pathetic parting shot at Tucson and flees the area.

A bad day for the Queen of the Seas. Or night, maybe - I had the flash on for some of these photos. Perhaps the five-minute thunderstorms of the Arizona desert put in an appearance to boost their side?

It was a fun game, won more by luck than tactics on the part of the blue side, but exciting none-the-less. I had a couple thoughts about changes. The American gunboat got hit several more times in the weapons bays, even though she'd already lost them. Perhaps rearranging the damage chart and forcing moves up and down it is in order - that would also allow for smaller vs. bigger ships, such as lighter ones taking a -1 on the chart and heavier ones a +1 to account for the penetration of their weapons. I also considered giving torpedoes the chance of more damage (double rolls on the chart) and did do that for hits on the gunboats from larger ships - when I remembered to!

Ultimately, I think it was a successful game, and the damage chart added significant interest. I think kids would have gotten a kick out of it.

Back at work tomorrow, and have been asked to demonstrate Dungeons and Dragons to the teens; then Sunday I have a special experiment to try - Remote Free Kriegspiel Napoleonics!

More new books

 Just got in three new books from Dennis Shorthouse at On Military Matters, plus a couple PDFs.

The Men Who Would Be Kings - One of Osprey's "blue" series which feature their illustrations and some innovative rules. This is actually a replacement copy - I lost my first and recently found it in my car - under an soaked umbrella I'd stuffed in there months ago, thus wrecked. I hadn't actually played it much, because the turn mechanism - passing a morale check to do anything at all - was frustrating in my test games. (There are default actions to fall back on, but if your default is "shoot" and you are out of range, well...) My regular group was also not enamored of the possibility of their units doing nothing for turns on end - but more importantly are wedded to The Sword and the Flame.

(The abbreviation - TMWWBK - also doesn't roll from the tongue as easily as TSATF!)

But I asked recently about alternative mechanisms on Facebook's Colonial Wargames group, and got some useful suggestions. One is to allow moves regardless on a failed roll, just at lesser effect - say, the unit halves its move, only half get to shoot, etc. I like this, especially as I am likely to play with easily disappointed kids.

I also like its solo mechanism, "Mr. Babbage's Instructions." Mr. Babbage (named after one of the inventors of the computer - I might rename this "Miss Lovelace's Instructions" in my own games) is not present at the club, but has left very clear instructions for his opponent. They're very straightforward, though are focused on fighting between a so-called civilized force on one side and a massive ill-equipped horde on the other, and can provide a fun game to my knowledge.

Test of Resolve - A newish game specifically on the War of the Roses, not too deep into it yet. I know almost nothing about those save what little I gleaned from reading Shakespeare and watching Blackadder. Oh, and from Peter Dennis' WotR Paperboys book which, if I ever do play this, will provide the miniatures. (My adult group has expressed enthusiasm for my Paperboys and willingness to play with them, and WotR would be atypical for our group and thus hopefully intriguing.) It's a card driven game, and would benefit from a bespoke set rather than xeroxed - or maybe I can use card sleeves. Reminds me of another thing - Dennis' WoTR and 1066 rules are both gridded, which may be easier to get by bosses at work (looks more gamelike); but the cards even without the mechanism may be useful in a Free Kriegspiel-style game. (Two interesting inclusions are a Flabbergasted card to "supercharge" the next card drawn, and a Flummoxed card that allows the inactive player to take the rest of the active player's move.) If I do ever try to run a full-fledged game, I'll probably buy the cards and one of the available scenario books to choose from - I haven't read far enough yet to see how "pickup" games work.

Glory 1861 - A wargame with significant solo and roleplaying potential. I bought it on the strength of an "author's notes" article in Wargames Illustrated. I've already spotted one repeated paragraph, but the concept seems sound. You build an ACW regiment, rolling it up in the same way as a bespoke character in Dungeons and Dragons. The field officers receive traits, as do all companies and their captains, and all of these have game effects. Might be tricky to keep track of on the battlefield! I spotted an interesting combo of dice-holder and identification slot in a demo game of Test of Resolve and am looking for them on Thingiverse - I have access to a 3D printer at work. With cats at home and kids at work, I am not enthusiastic about tracking hit points on units with easily jounced or stolen dice.

This would be so useful.

So far, I've only found the die-box, with no little Scrabble tray attached.

The illustrations are nice, except for the cover which has an "uncanny valley" effect to me. The figures used for illustration seem almost toylike, but the best thing is a handful of color illustrations by the late Bob Marriott. I was introduced to his characterful style by some of Charles S. Grant's books.

One thing that seems askance is that it is assumed regiments will fight two engagements per month. (Engagements, as in DnD, are how you gain experience.) Seems unlikely - for example, the average three-month regiment fought, at most, one engagement, then went home. There are mechanisms for reenlisting, though the reinforcement mechanic is another problem; very few regiments reinforced much at all during the ACW, their states preferring just to raise more (and thus provide more patronage to potential officers). That meant they got steadily smaller over the course of the war. But the creation phase looks quite engaging. I recently read two histories of the US Regular Infantry in the Civil War, and am considering an eight-company "new battalion." This might be considered a bit "gamey," since the regiment starts with fifty building points and spends four on each company; this would leave me with nearly twice as many points as normal to give skills and abilities to my officers and units. On the other hand, that's appropriate for Regulars, who even in the newly raised units would have a core of peacetime vets. I could in that case use the reinforcement mechanisms, as they did take new enlistments to cover casualties. But I'll have to weaken them, since from what I've read a lot of officers spent more time recruiting than they did in camp, to very little effect because volunteer regiments provided bounties!

I'll have to experiment (of course), but I wonder if this "regimental character-building" would work for the Napoleonic era as well. It also reminds me of a game by Jim Wallman I've been itching to try ever since I discovered it, Over the Hills and Far Away, which is set in the 1740s and has even more roleplaying to it. Players are colonels spending money and influence to run their own regiments, but while there are occasional "expeditions," the social life of an British officer is the focus, complete with balls, races and weddings to attend, and the temptation of pocketing the pay of more troops than you've actually enlisted. There is much jockeying for position, with a bidding mechanism that determines whether your political influence goes up or down compared to your fellows. The combat mechanism is very simple, with no more than four bases needed per regiment - but how much of your limited time and money you spent on discipline, drill and shooting practice will definitely come into play. I would love to run this for my adult group, but am not sure they would sit still for a glorified RPG session - even if it is historical.

Secrets of Wargame Design - The last two books are by Wally Simon, compilations of a wide variety of articles on rules-writing. There are around ten volumes. I ordered the first because I like tinkering with rules myself and thought I could get some ideas; I ordered the ninth because it focuses on the English Civil War and has a basic ruleset in it. Also, it was available in PDF so I could get it faster while waiting for my physical order to arrive. I'll have to see if there are more!

It was worth it; I'm glad I made the purchases. At $20 USD, $16 for the PDF, they're a touch pricey for forty pages apiece, but are A4 size and with large type. Each seems to have around thirteen assorted articles drawn mostly from an old publication called the Potomac Wargamer's Review. I was first introduced to Wally by favorable mentions of his rules mechanisms in the Paperboys books, which use an interesting "three-card" method of initiative akin to that of TSATF, and by a couple articles found in the Wargamers Digests I mentioned in my first post on this blog. His writing style is infectious, very enjoyable if a little caustic. That's probably to be expected in someone who seemingly spent his life critiquing and tinkering with rules! They are also scattered with sketchy illustrations apparently done by himself; I was reading one article at the computer the other day when the table and terrain used to illustrate a scenario caught the eye of a coworker who asked if I was going to build that. (I do a lot of crafting at work, and a lot of my projects for kids are inspired or guided by wargames books, especially Games Workshop terrain from the days when they built it from scratch.)

The first volume has articles on card movement systems and sequences of play. I can already say these will be useful, because I am planning an almost RPG-like ACW skirmish based on Picacho Pass, fought near my hometown of Tucson in 1862 between just a dozen men on each side - basically a large gunfight rather than a real battle. While there are plenty of Wild West rules that would serve, I've been struggling to work out how initiative should be handled, in part because I can't guarantee how many players I'll have when I run it for my group. It could have anywhere from four to a dozen players, meaning anywhere from two to six figures for players to handle. Wally is very much against making players wait in the UGOIGO system, and seems to like allowing them to "break" the sequence in consequence. I wonder if this is why Games Workshop is so enamored of armor saves, as they give the inactive player something to do? Another related element he clearly hates is "gotcha" rules, which bypass saves or otherwise "pin" and frustrate the inactive player, allowing him no chance to make a difference to the game. I can definitely remember that happening in my 40K games!

He has some card-driven systems, and one thing that comes up (in Test of Resolve, too) is the decisions about how many and what type of cards players should be allocated.

- In TSATF, it's one card per unit; turn over a red and the "civilized" player moves or fires a unit, on a black the native player moves or fires. It uses a standard 52-card deck.

- In Test of Resolve, the cards are specific to the game, with one that lets you move all three of your "battles" (the three main portions of your army), three that let you select just one battle to move, three that let your firing units fire or reform, etc. Each side has its own deck, they mix together, and initiative turns over when an opposing card appears.

- Wally tested a number of others, such as (in a Wild West skirmish) assigning each gunfighter a mix of shoot-n-move or blank cards, with more or less of each depending on their ability. You could go more granular than this, with very specific cards for movement, shooting and melee by specific characters, but then the players would get bored waiting for their card to turn up!

The main things I need to think about in my Picacho Pass scenario are initiative (who moves, fires and fights when) and not making players wait for their move. Luckily, there are numerous possible mechanisms suggested in these articles, and the volumes will reward careful rereading. I hope to run the game for my group around its 160th anniversary early next year, and expect to post more as I prepare it. In particular, I hope to playtest it at work, so mechanisms that don't bore or disappoint kids are a must!