FKR Fantasy Wargaming ... in Action!

Today I ran a game at work. It was a bit messy, in part because it was done in a busy teen tech lab. At different times I had anywhere from two to five active players, plus a staff member taking photos!

The other reason was complaints about and hasty changes to the rules, but I'll come to that.

The rules were given me by Shawn Medero in a comment on my previous post. They're by Paul le Long, from Lone Warrior, the solo wargaming zine, and have much in common with FATE/FUDGE, to the extent that you roll four three-siders for each task. I only had three FATE dice handy, so stuck to regular dice rolling 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 to represent -, blank or + on the resolution chart.

The field of battle.

A halfling village and its defenders...

... are menaced by goblin skirmishers ...

... and a regiment of goblin warriors coming out of the forests.

The gobbos advance.

As the gobbos moved into range to shoot at the
buildings, one of the players asked if it had rained
recently. Good question! I tossed for it and declared
the crops and thatch were damp, thus harder to burn.

Approaching the village.

The badly-outnumbered halflings hide in their cropfield,
though some stay near the edge to shoot out.

Luckily, better armed and -armoured halfling militia
have mobilized and are heading for the hill. Horns
have been heard from potential allies...

Who appear on the edge of the battlespace.

The goblins split up; some to await the Men, the rest
to take the village.

After this, I failed to take photos for a while. Basically, the goblin archers and spearmen advanced to attempt burning the buildings; due to poor rolls they initially failed and had to get to close range before managing to burn a cabin. This enabled the defenders to fight them to a standstill, as some "No, and" and "Yes, but" results caused the gobbos to run out of ammo and have to resort to knives and teeth. The halflings also took a lot of casualties, though.

In the meantime, the Rangers, led by a Strider expy, approached and joined up with the rest of the halfling militia on the hill. The goblin warriors charged, scored a lot of pluses, and were busily winning when the last "good" player decided to give up.

He'd been rolling poorly, and was also frustrated and confused by the chart, which he felt should be more even. Our last roll of the Ranger/Goblin fight resorted to a twentysider:

... which rolled a 2.

So the Men and Halflings fled the smouldering village.

On the up side:

• The players were enthusiastic and engaged, asking pertinent questions and coming up with offbeat solutions.
• One at least was familiar with Warhammer Fantasy and understood the conventions of the genre.
• Two asked if they could play again tomorrow!

On the down side:

• One felt the chart was unfair; he thought it should be more even, or at least the results should be clearer. Not as interested in free-kriegspiel, I guess.
• He also felt the entire scenario was unbalanced, with the halflings badly outnumbered and having to wait a long while for their reinforcements. More even sides tomorrow, then.
• Finally, the terrain effects were unclear - for example, the forests are not obviously delineated. He was also unused to having to ask questions about the situation or to suggest effects on his own - so the use of the hill was not obvious. He did like that, when he asked if he could move faster, I offered him the option to force-march by taking a double move in exchange for not moving next turn while his militia rested.

So basically, more structure appears preferable. I will bring Dragon Rampant and see if it works better. FKR may not work as well as I hoped, at least not without more experienced players!

I'm also considering the Perrys' Travel Battle, a small gridded game that might seem more familiar and "gamist" to the teens.

So tomorrow, with luck, another round?

Free Kriegspiel Fantasy Wargaming

 I'm now actively planning some fantasy roleplay and figure-painting at work, with the help of the teen tech lab. While the programs won't be until summer, and I can't even advertise them until graphics sends me back some posters, I still intend to tease the game with some lite, impromptu gaming. Happily, Peter Dennis has published a small selection of fantasy figures to go with his Russian-fantasy mutants. I received a copy of Daniel Mersey's Dragon Rampant this week, which I will try with these figures. But for promotion with the teens, I'll make it simple and use some of the same rules as I'll be using in my Dungeons-and-Dragons pastiche.

A phalanx of goblins supported by skirmishers with spear and bow:

Will invade the Moot to face off against hobbits halflings:

Backed by Men of the Forest:

I haven't run fantasy battles with free-kriegspiel before, but I intend to do it as I did an 18th-century game last year, possibly with FUDGE dice. Another post will discuss the simple RPG rules I intend for my summer campaign.

My cat keeps stepping on the keyboard as I try to finish, so will stop here for now. Hopefully I will have a battle report next week!

More Colonial Reading

 I have not gamed at all for a while, whether work or home, fantasy or history. But I have been reading a lot, in several different periods. Here's the African colonial books I'm reading, three of them by Stephen Manning:

These are all relatively short but good overviews.

Britain at War With the Asante Nation covers the colonial presence in what is now Ghana from about 1600 on. The British and Dutch both had slaving stations there, and this is where the Asante (pronounced Ashanti) became a warrior nation - by dominating their neighbors. It wasn't until the early 1800s when the British began to actively suppress the slave trade that they came into conflict.

The 1823 war is the one that inspired the Brontes. Unlike their stories, there was never any substantial Western settlement beyond commercial (initially slaving stations), missionary and government elements which, as in India, accidentally grew rather than as part of a deliberate policy. The Asante were encouraged to take slaves from the surrounding tribes and then sell them to the white slavers, which of course led to a problem of the government's own making when it switched to anti-slavery. Treaties also caused trouble, as the Asante thought they were loaning or renting towns and fortresses that the British thought they held permanently. So the first war was a bit of a mess.

The second one was more deliberate, leading to the term "All Sir Garnet" after Wolseley's talent for organization. He gathered a ring of friends and proteges and prepared his expedition like his life depended on it - because it did. Thanks to extensive planning and acclimatization, there was little of the disease that had devastated earlier expeditions in the area (although the transport ships were barely seaworthy). Camps - what might have been called firebases a century later - were built along the road to reduce the load of the fighting troops, filled with food, water, and medical supplies. Even lighter, more comfortable uniforms were procured for the tropics.

Less successful was the attempt to form native regiments; part of the problem was that the locals couldn't protect themselves against the Asante, which is why the British were doing it for them. Against the wishes of the government, Wolseley demanded and got three battalions of British infantry. He took the Asante capital quickly and got out; the campaign lasted mere months and was carried out in the dry season, another cautious nod to the dangers of the tropics.

In the 1890s, they revolted, and their king was exiled. His mother was a strong woman who led the final revolt in 1900, which was entirely justified. The British governor demanded to sit on the Golden Stool of the Asante.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a throne, and he should have known that. It was the center of the Asante religion, and under the Queen Mother they rose. The rebellion was bloodily crushed, but the Golden Stool was never found, and is still kept by the Asante, still displayed on occasion but usually hidden.

The Brontes clearly didn't know this either. A wooden stool is a focal point of Pauline Clarke's The Twelve and the Genii, and the soldiers take it for their own with their kings standing on it. There are unspoken parallels here with the Boxer Rebellion, a war with which I'm completely unfamiliar and need to read up on.

Stephen Manning writes sympathetically, and is careful to quote Ghanaian historians and participants in the battles. A good short, if general, history, with many inspirations for The Sword in Africa.

Evelyn Wood, VC, covers the life of one of Wolseley's proteges, who gained important experience against the Asante. I first encountered him in Byron Farwell's Queen Victoria's Little Wars. There, it is pointed out that he was perhaps the unluckiest sod in the British Army, having been wounded, sickened or injured countless times in his career. These included falling down stairs twice, falling off and being trampled by a giraffe, and in Ashantiland being shot by a nail, and then left on an anthill by the stretcher bearers!

Wood's career stretched fifty years. He earned a VC in the Mutiny, and also served in Asante, India, Egypt and the Crimea. His role at the end of the First Boer War, however, scuttled his combat career. After three humiliating defeats and the death of another Asante veteran, Pomeroy Colley, Wood was sent out to take charge but ended up making peace with the Boers and returning their independence. Wolseley never forgave him, though openly he continued to support and assist Wood, who held several important posts in Britain - Aldershot, Quartermaster General and Adjutant General. These were actually his most far-reaching commands, as he was at the forefront of reorganization, the creation of reserve units, and the use of large-scale maneuvers on Salisbury Plain. So the British role in the First World War is down to him, perhaps as much as Kitchener.

His command in Ashantiland is useful for my hoped-for The Sword in Africa campaign. And while he saw no action in Egypt, he was at the forefront of the Egyptian Army's reorganization under British lines. His command of native units in Ghana was undistinguished, seemingly because he had very little time to train them. But two years in Egypt made his army what it needed to be to face the Mahdi, and provided useful background for his commands in Britain.

Despite his relative lack of combat experience later in his career, he retained an accident-prone tendency to "get out in front." Two instances are quoted of other officers pulling him out of the firing line and getting shot themselves, on the grounds that he wasn't supposed to be out in front. Reminds me of the Bill Mauldin cartoon where a GI asks his officer to get out of the open, "you're drawing enemy fire."

Overall a serviceable pair of books from Pen and Sword. I am working on the third, an overview of weapons improvements during the 19th century, as well as a short series of lectures by a Ghanaian professor on African responses to colonialism, to be discussed in a future post. And of course there are two more volumes of Wargaming in History, two 18th-century rulesets, and several books on Vietnam to be discussed! Gaming is falling well behind, but I am hoping to get in a couple small games in the next couple weeks, including my Picacho Pass scenario. See you then -

Lion Rampant

Been a while since I posted. I had two wisdom teeth out the other day, and my Dad is also visiting and he's not a gamer, so we have been watching TV and movies together and I've had less time for playing - though more for reading.

I last used these 1314 Paperboys with a Featherstone ruleset (happy belated birthday, Don!): Medieval Battle Report

Lion Rampant is a skirmish game, so multibases will be a little tricky. Luckily, all units are either of six or twelve men. I am leaving out Boasts and Commanders for the purpose of the test.

The sides are English and Scottish. The English get:

Two mounted Men at Arms

Two Foot Sergeants

One Archers

The Scots get:

One mounted Men at Arms

Three Foot Sergeants

One Crossbowmen

One Bidowers

The recommendation for Scots is for "Fierce Foot," which I don't have cut out. I would have liked to skip the Bidowers (light, elite archers) and give the Crossbowmen pavises, but lost the pavise strip some time ago. So here we are.

For the test game, I'm using the first scenario, Bloodbath, and no terrain. The table is about 5'x3'. I'm also experimenting with Google Photos, sending them straight from my phone to the computer. It works, but slowly...

Starting Positions

After a few abortive attempts at movement (kept rolling low to activate, which turns initiative over to the other side), the Scots shifted to the left and most of the English moved towards them (left photo). The Bidowers moved to the right to try shooting from the flank and one of the English MAA units went after them (right photo). The English archers to the rear are actually in range, but Bidowers cannot be shot at outside 12".

 

Turn 2: I "formed" the Scottish spears into schiltrons. They can't move now but are armour 4 against any charge from the English knights. On the right I tried to "skirmish" the Bidowers but failed. The knights charged them, but they successfully evaded - though they caused no casualties, needing four hits and scoring only three (with six dice at 6+!). 

The other English knights failed their move roll, so Scots turn again.

Turn 3: The Scottish knights move forward to challenge the English, but not in range to attack just yet at a move of 10". Then I recall they are required to Wild Charge the closer English spears:

They score five hits on the spearmen, causing one casualty; in exchange the spears score three hits, not enough to kill a knight. The spearmen test courage and pass - but having lost, retreat half distance, three inches. The Scots crossbows fail to shoot and initiative passes to the English.

English knights charge the Scottish knights, who fail to counter-charge so will be using their defense statistic (left). The Scots take one casualty, pass courage and retreat five inches. They are in range of an English MAA unit, which charges them for the heck of it (right); again they fail to countercharge. The knights take a second casualty.

 

Forgot about the second English knights, who must charge the Bidowers, who failed to cause any casualties and took three of their own. They fall back (not quite off the table) and are Battered.

Turn 4: Scots again, the knights back after the English spears who just beat them. They cause a casualty against the spearmen, but take two in return and retreat again! They're down to two men and Battered. The Bidowers, also Battered, fail their rally test and are eliminated. I'm assuming I only roll to rally the knights next turn.

Scottish foot sergeants attack English ones, but fail to score enough hits to cause casualties (and take one of their own; spears are better on the defense than on the attack). Scots crossbows try to shoot the English spears but fail, and initiative returns to the English.

The English knights fail to Wild Charge, but the spears follow up on their victory, both sides score five hits for a casualty apiece. The Scots retreat through their own units behind - not sure if they are supposed to roll for extra casualties in this case, or only if blocking units are enemy.

The English knights and archers on the left move towards the enemy before init changes again.

Turn 5: "Now the Scottish Lion rallies." Not that that will do the knights any good. A fresh Scottish spear unit charges the ten-man English spears for six hits (two kills), taking one casualty in return. The crossbows try to take a potshot at them as they run but fail.

On the English turn, their knights charge into the crossbowmen, scoring six hits for three casualties - the Scots retreat, battered.

The other English knights careen into a block of Scottish spears. They kill one spearman in exchange for one knight. Both pass courage tests, so the knights retreat. Turn ends when another English attack fails its roll.

Turn 6: The two surviving Scottish knights fail to rally and are removed from the board. I've mostly been ignoring leader rules, but under normal circumstances the leader would be in this unit and his loss would require all surviving units to test Courage. Only the crossbowmen fail - they lose another model and retreat. The Scots are down by 8 unit points of the 24 they started with. When I roll to rally the crossbows, they fail by enough to eliminate them from the board, so now the Scots are down to half their initial points - while the English, though a few units have taken casualties, are all still extant. I'll call that an English victory.

A good basic game, I think. As usual for me, I didn't play it all in one go, but took turns at intervals over several hours of multitasking. (I was actually surprised that my cats did not wreck the board while I was out shopping!) This could have easily been completed in half-an-hour of "normal" play. 

One thing I like in comparison with the same author's The Men Who Would Be Kings is that activation is not nearly as frustrating. It's easier to activate on two dice instead of one, and if a single activation is failed initiative instantly goes to the opponent, keeping the game exciting and active.

Things I left out or mistakenly missed:

• Leadership. The commander's unit and anyone within 12" of it gets +1 to dice rolls, and the unit also gets a random characteristic bonus. This is also done in TMWWBK, for characterfulness. I ignored these for simplicity's sake.
• I effed up on Attack characteristics, rolling one attack per figure. The correct way is that any unit over half strength gets twelve attacks, and any under half strength gets six. This made a serious difference in the effectiveness of the six-strong knightly units.
• Terrain, which could have helped the Bidowers and in fact all the shooting units; cover automatically evens everyone's fighting and wound characteristics, helping even Serfs survive.
• The shooters barely got a look in, mostly out of range or line of sight, and I don't think anyone took any casualties from shooting.

Overall, I would happily play again, though with Paperboys will need a way to tell similar units apart. The figures in a strip are so colorfully varied that it's hard to differentiate them; perhaps giving each one a single large banner instead of lots of little ones. I also had to pencil in casualties, but some of the Wofun individual-figure sets would do well with this game.

Paperboys at Work

 No home gaming this week, as expected, but I have built a few types of Paperboys. For our St. Patrick's Day display:

ACW Irish Brigade.

French Irish Brigade from the 
Revolutionary War, converted
from AWI Paperboys and a WSS flag.

And for International Women's Day:

A coworker builds his first Papergirls.

Girls on parade.

When I posted this one on FB, a couple replies
expressed terror on behalf of the small ACW guys.

Pretty well done by a teen and adult, both newbies to papercrafting.

Finally, a pirate ship I'm building for a coworker
as a possible summer craft.

The completed vessel.

Junior Generals at the Library, take one

 I've been talking and thinking about it for ages, but I finally got there: two days ago I ran a tabletop wargame at work.

Not that I haven't before, but that was years before I started this blog. Hopefully this will be the first of many.

I was lucky to have, on the one hand, a captive audience of interns who needed something to do that could be argued to be relevant to library programming, and on the other, a couple adult staff with particular expertise in teen programming - mostly the technical sort, but non-electronic activities fall under their purview too, so this was a useful experiment.

I had a choice between running a simple role-playing game (which I mentioned during a recent teen advisory board as a summer-program possibility) and a wargame. I ran the wargame after one of the interns expressed interest in the plastic soldiers I'd brought - a handful of the Black Powder frames I've been assembling.

Here we see one advantage of painting -  if I'd done it
the sides would be easier to tell apart despite the bad photo.

Again, I used Sawmill Village as the inspiration - for the units at any rate. Each side has three regiments, two guns and two generals - the contents of two frames apiece. The rules were a subset of Junior General's horse-and-musket scenarios. I counted each infantry base as two, so that each regiment of three or four bases counted as six or eight for the purposes of combat, with Paperboys casualties used to indicate loss of odd hitpoints. This created confusion, and in hindsight two regiments of five bases each would have worked.

Infantry move 6" in line, 12" in column. Guns may move 12", but may not fire in the same turn. Commanders move 12". Guns have a max range of 24", musketry 12". Above, the Union open their advance on the open brown plain of Tabletop.

Another issue was that there were two players a side (and a fifth turned up midway thru the game - he appointed himself strategic overseer of the Union). With an odd number of units each side, play had to be cooperative, and when rolling dice in particular the players each rolled half (this was their own idea). Two regiments, one to each player, would have been preferable. Fewer units also would have helped us get thru the game faster, as we only had an hour to work with.

Anyway, above you see turn one, in which we simply spread the units around 24 inches apart. The Union are moving forward.

Here the Union column has charged a Confederate line.
The Union artillery are classically deployed in the center.

After a charge, before end of the combat.
The paper casualty markers indicate half-a-base worth
of casualties. The rebel general has also been eliminated.

A wider view; the Union column lost the action and retreated.
Union guns fire thru the gap to hit the right-hand rebels.

From the rebel side of the table this time. I think
the rebels are trying to flank a Union unit here.
A casualty box is visible.

In what became the last turn, a Union regiment (center)
lost combat to a rebel regiment (right) and has retreated
backwards into a second rebel unit (left). The Rebs aren't aligned
to hit the Yankees in the back, but I'd still say the Union's in trouble.

We stopped here due to closing, but the kids (and staff) were enthusiastic enough to declare the game a success, with tentative honors going to the bad guys in grey. There was still confusion over the rules so I had to gamemaster, and with more time I'd have gone over them beforehand with the players rather than taking them on as they came up. I also don't think I'd do this on a regular basis, but with more planning it would work for "special events" like Fourth of July, etc. Overall it worked as the playtest I intended; at least I know what not to do next time!

Speaking of which, I hope next week to run Hampton Roads (with a different Junior General ruleset) on its 160th anniversary. This will enable us to talk up the 3D printer, too. Wish us luck...