Gaslands - A Few Thoughts On City Streets

 My Gaslands set up is a little unusual in that all my fights take place on the streets of Midville, USA.

This leads to two big differences between the games shown on The Joy of Wargaming and most other videos - two differences that largely balance each other out.  For one thing, driving on city-streets means that your car has a lot more opportunity to push its luck and re-roll skid dice.  Not always, but often enough that my games feature a lot more driving between Wipe Out checks than most other games.

Notice, however, that the existence of parking lots, sidewalks, and grassy areas means that enough areas remain "rough going" that players have to consider their routes a few moves head lest they lost that advantage of the free Luck Push.  Sometimes it makes sense to eat the roll to get a better line of attack, and that leads to significantly more interesting tactical choices than a dirt lot with a few obstacles.

On the other hand, this is balanced out by the necessarily narrow city streets.  The tight confines and limited drivable space makes all the Luck Pushing not just a luxury but a necessity.  If you want to get the right line at the right time, you're going to need both Spin and Slide results at the right time, and you're going to need to keep a tight lid on the number of hazard tokens on your car to keep those options available.

It's not exactly a different game, but it's a whole different way of playing the game.  And it's one rich with possibilites that I high recommend to any aficionado of the sweet science of vehicular mayhem.

 

Drivers and pedestrians alike!

Small Droppings

The littlest Gaslands project is just about ready to hit the road.  I traced the N-scale templates out onto heavy cardstock and cut out the appropriate sizes.  The thick cardstock can be bought at the local craft store cheap - the offcuts from the framing shop go for a dollar for an 8x10 piece.  They take paint like a champ, and a bit of brushed on varnish keep the edges from fraying during light use.  Probably not suitable for everyday use, but we're dilettantes here.  If Gaslands gets more than a dozen plays, that will put it in my top five games played of 2020.

Tiny Turns

 These N-scale turn templates from Litko should work fine for my 6mm Gaslands game.

It is a little bit, but we can make it work.

The Littlest Gaslands

Picked up a batch of the "Mad Ron" road warrior vehicles from Irregular Miniatures on a whim.  Just look at these tiny little knights of the road:

Still have to paint those motorcycles, and the big dang semi-trailer slash war-rig.  The good news is that terrain is already done.  I've got the little city all laid out and ready for some vehicular mayhem.  These are perfectly scaled to the terrain set-up that I've got for Riot!

The only issue that gives me pause is that the gauges I ordered are N-scale which maps to 18mm figures, and these little rugged adventurers are in 6mm scale.  Normally I'd be fine with this.  I use smaller scale figures all the time.  Most wargames use a very reduced ground-scale compared to the figure scale.  This should solve my biggest complaint with Gaslands - that even in sixth gear the cars only move about four carlengths per turn.  The speeds just don't feel right when you watch live plays, and don't get me started on the weapon ranges.

I'm also glad to make it harder to ram.  Tagging a vehicle that is actively dodging you at full speed isn't as easy as most rule-sets make it out to be.  This should reduce the numbers of collisions and make the game more about the racing and shooting and less about trying to notch that one big RAM attack.

But there are other considerations here, for sure.  I just don't know what they are, and won't until I get some lead on the table.

Stay tuned!  

In the meantime, enjoy some additional eye candy:

My cars are painted in considerably more day-glo colors than most of what you see on the YouTube reports.  Everyone favors a black matte coat, a bit of gray and metal and rust drybrushing, and then they call it done.  With vehicles this size, I don't have the luxury of a monochrome schema.    You need those colors to help identify the cars at a distance.

Also, it's just a lot more fun to play with colors.

Not sure you can see it, but that bike on the right is carrying three guys and a big-ol' cannon.

It's a Riot!

 Matt Hartley's Riot!  Revolting People from Watt Tyler to Watts is an interesting wargame.  It's a truly fourth-generational game in which mobs of outgunned citizens try to effect change against a far better armed, but outnumbered, army of the ruling class.

Enjoy some eye candy while I pontificate.  Alert readers will notice that I've put a grid over the tops of these buildings.  In Riot! the mobs can loot and burn structures, but each counter only affects one square inch at a time.  Mine are a little less regular than the rules stipulate, but they'll work just fine.

Definitely a beer-and-pretzels game, it uses a simple AI to maneuver the rioters about, and the player tries to limit the damage with his small number of security forces.  The first check on the player is an AP roll of 1d6, each pip of which allows one unit to move or attack.  That makes it harder to split your forces because it limits how many stands you'll be able to use from turn to turn.

Combat is a simple 2d6 roll off for each matched pair of bases, with a few modifiers for supporting units or flank attacks on the mob or for weapons hot.  It's quick and dirty, and the cops don't have nearly the advantage one might expect.

It turns out the better tactic for cops is to simply stand off and try to herd the mobs away from their targets.  You can exert some control over the AI - or at least influence outcomes - by staying close to a mob, but not directly engaging unless you really have to.

Which leads to a very fluid game, and from all I've seen on TV these days, pretty well mimics the ebb and flow of protests in the streets.

More to the point, the game is a lot of fun, and can provide some insights into a warfare of a very different sort.

Civic Improvements

It's the little things.  A little bit of Saturday evening traffic, a little bit of grass, a few scattered bits of terrain, and suddenly you're looking at a real city.

The Irregular Miniatures 6mm vehicle pack is a perfect start to things, and includes the entire front line shown above.  I think it comes with a total of ten figures, but given that I ordered a full pack alongside a bunch of other figures, I honestly can't sort out what came with what pack.  The two News Vans might have come with the riot pack, or might have come with the vehicle pack.

Where ever you see green grass in this shot, I first glued down a fine beach sand, painted it brown and dry-brushed a light tan.  Originally I had thought to make a hill out of the park, the better to add a bit of height to the city, but more height would have precluded easy storage, so it stays a nice little funnel for protesters.  The bases that attack that statue have room to work, but they can get bottled up pretty quick in there, so they'll need another mob running interference.

A couple of those buildings are only one story tall.  Do you think it is worth painting those roofs a darker gray or brown to break up the monotonous gray of the board?

Here's a close-up of the totally not 7-11 and Licker's Liquors.  You can see how the grass and earth gets a little choppy around the edges in some cases.  You can also see a little green trash can at the corner of the building on the left, and a red newspaper box in front of the store on the right.  No game effect, but just that little touch of scatter to liven things up.

City Construction

It's the little things.  With some doors and windows and signs painted onto the structures The City is really taking on a life of its own.

 A little ode to the bookshop that helped instill a love of gaming in ankle-biter me.

A smarter man than I would have pre-planned the traffic route through the parking lots and carved ramps up over the curbs.  But I'm not sure he would have had as much fun as me.

The whole place still looks a little gray even with some colorful paint on the walls.  Needs some greenery. Stay tuned...

City Planning

You can't take to the streets when you don't have any streets to which to take.  Before we can play the most cutting-edge and modern of wargames, Riot: From Watt Tyler to Watts we have to build a city worth peacefully burning to the ground.  Here's my quick and dirty and oh-so-effective way of whipping up a modular city perfect for modern, organically grown love-ins and the dastardly forces of peace and prosperity who oppose them.  Or vice-versa.

Masonite boards, cut to fit the transport box, painted black.  Layer up the curbs with matte board painted gray, then cut 1/2-inch thick lumber in a variety of sizes. A gray primer makes for a fine base coat.  Don't worry about the gray-on-gray.  It won't last long.

Note that I'll leave the tops gray - I've cut the z-axis of the board off at one story because the additional levels of the city won't factor into the game.  Not at the scale of conflict that we are modelling here.  This also allows for better access to the inner streets.  Maybe not suitable for mecha fights or big stompy monsters, but it works for what we're doing here.

Even just a quick painting of the walls of this city adds some variety to the proceedings.  You could almost play the game right now, but we're all about the visual appeal here, so we have a lot of work to do yet.  The buildings are dry fit for now - they need to have the walls fully painted and detailed, and some steps and curbs added, before the final fixation.

With a few blocks painted, and a bit of curbing in place, this city is already starting to feel safe enough to attack.  For my part, I eschew real-world politics and real world companies, preferring a more light-hearted touch.

 For example, in my city the big grocery chain is the Saferway.  Just like the original, only safer!  The building in the background was supposed to be a police station, but it didn't turn out as obvious as I'd hoped.  I need to figure out a few little details to add to really sell the idea.

 And Saint Drogo was the Patron saint of ugly people.  Seems fitting given the patchouli-scented losers who will be targetting this place with molotoc cocktails.

 You know, the sort of people who think nothing of spray-painting graffitti onto any flat surface that goes unwatched for ten minutes? 

This little convenience store still needs some gas pumps out front.  But I'm pretty pleased with the booze-shop across the way.  Licker's Liquors, serving Raccoon City the finest in alcoholic beverages since 1964.

Riot: A Game Twenty Five Years in the Waiting

One of the projects that has been on my 'to-do' list for over twenty-five years is a good old-fashioned, downtown riot.  Something about the asymmetric nature of the conflict, the confined corridors of battle, and the fluid nature of the fight just screams for a proper wargame.

Maybe it's the Pac-Man fan in me.

Whatever the reason, something in the air inspired me to finally quit with the wishing and get with the making.  About forty bucks and a Saturday afternoon later saw the early stages of a nice waffle-iron downtown set-up that fits into a neat little package.  

Irregular Miniatures sells a set of figures for about forty-five bucks, and a set of rules for five bucks.  The rules are twenty-five years old, and are very tongue-in-cheek, with scenarios suitable for Olde English tax protests, Napoleonic riots, Central American crackdowns, and modern American urban insurgencies.  Called Riot: From Watt Tyler to Watts, I gotta admit to needing a quick lookup to understand the first reference.  From the Infogalactic Entry:

Walter "Wat" Tyler was a leader of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England. He marched a group of protesters from Canterbury to the capital to oppose the institution of a poll tax. While the brief rebellion enjoyed early success, Tyler was killed by officers loyal to King Richard II during negotiations at Smithfield, London.

For the record, the other battle-packs available at Irregular Miniatures website are a lot cheaper, and they are built to provide just about everything you need to play one of the scenarios included in the Riot rules.  So if you want a cheaper entry, get the Poll Tax Rebels or the Revenge packs.  The Revenge one in particular contains a fun surprise, as does the scenario for which they serve.

Some advice for those whose interest I have piqued:  The rules call for square bases 25mm in size for everything, and roads of either 25mm, 50mm, or 75mm width.  The rules assume an invisible 25mm grid for the play area - invisible for the purposes of aesthetics - and call for movement only in the four cardinal directions.  No diagonals!

By building my city before cracking open the rules, I've already shanked my chances for playing RAW.  My roads are too wide, and it's not yet clear how that will affect game play.  It'll take some wiggling and house-ruling to figure out how to move mobs in a way that keeps within the spirit of the rules.  And in a way that diagonals won't wreck things, because...come on.  It's miniature wargaming, grids are for RPGs!  I might also forgo the square bases in favor of cheaper and more readily available washers.  I'm allowed to do that.

As usual, and as a wargamer with a limited capacity to remember things, I've thrown together a quick reference sheet (pic related).  You know, just in case anyone out there wants to give these somewhat obscure rules a shot.  It's not enough to play the game - you'll need point costs for forces, scenarios, and a lot of rules buried in the text before you can play - but if you've got 'em, you'll find this sheet very helpful during play.

Congratulations.  This post just about provides more information about this game than any other website out there.  You're almost an expert.

The Necromancer War, Chapter 3

When last we left the on-going saga of the Necromancer King's attempt to add the Targar Empire to his domain, Lady Hotfor M'Motherson successfully routed a flanking force of the Necromancer King.  Seeing an opportunity to deliver a smashing blow to the dark lord's forces, she quickly rounded up all the forces within a day's march, and set out to sever the Necromancer forces' supply lines.  Scrambling to plug the gap in his lines, the Necromancer King ordered a small screening force to slow down the Lady's forces...

The d30 for this battle resulted in a 25 - Infiltration.  Only one defending unit starts the game on a hill deep in the Targar side of the board.  Five other units wait just off board, with two entering on Turn 3 and the other 3 on Turn 6.  The Targar's four units all enter on the north in Turn 1, and have to get two units off the board in the south by the end of Turn 15.

Lady M'Motherson quickly ordered her men-at-arms to stall the levy left guarding the hill, while her three units of knights charged...

Tiny Little Ruins

The Fantasy Big Box for One Hour Wargames needed a little something extra, and with the long Thanksgiving weekend, there was plenty of time to goof off at the hobby bench.  (It's really more of a counter.)  So I slapped together a quick terrain piece to spruce up the battlefield.  The plan was for a circle of magic standing stones, but the junk box held enough bric-a-brac to bash together a small ruin on a low hill.

Rules-wise this will either be filler for empty space on the field, or it will be impassable to all troops types.  The rules we use don't actually allow for "impassable to all" other than ponds, but given the straight line movement and sweeping speed of mounted knights, having one or two no-go zones will require a little extra planning and thought.

Here is a shot of the unpainted piece.  The base consists of a small oblong piece of wood picked up at the local craft shop for half a buck.  The ground surface is spackle built up to suit with a couple pebbles, and a divot for an abandoned well.  Watch your step!  The square building is the bottom to a plastic fortification piece from the boardgame Shogun/Samurai Swords, and the rest is just thin balsa cut into bricks or very narrow gauge wooden dowels broken and glued into place.

The Necromancer War, Chapter 2

When last we left the good people of the Targan Empire, their border towns and forts had been over-run by a sudden invasion of the dark forces of the nearby kingdom of the Necromancer King.  The Patriarch of the Empire, High King Sisterbanger, quickly dispatched a small delaying force to buy enough time to scrape together an army that could repel the repellent invading host.  For their part, the Necromancer King's forces pushed deeper into the Targar Empire along a broad front, encountering only scattered resistance.  The two forces would meet along the road, screened from each other by the early dawn light and a small fortified farmstead straddling the dirt track.

Bucolic farm before the bloodening.

In game terms, we rolled a d30 to randomly determine the scenario and starting forces.  The scenario would be a sort of king-of-the-hill - whoever holds the farm after Turn 15 wins.  We each started the game with three knights, the Targar supplemented by two bows and a man-at-arms unit, the Necromancer King by two men-at-arms and a levy.  Both forces are unaware of each other and must move up the road until one hits the farm.

The Necromancer War, Chapter 1

Neil Thomas' book, One Hour Wargames, is worth buying for the scenarios if nothing else. It includes 30 different scenarios of all sorts - symmetric, asymmetric, full terrain, open field, delaying actions, you name it.  While they are written specifically for the rest of the rules in the book, they are presented in a format simple enough to use with any mass battle ruleset.  For this campaign, in the manner of our people, we simply rolled a d30 to choose an initial skirmish.

The dice indicated that the first battle fought in the Necromancer War was an assault by the Necromancer King's forces to secure two strongpoints just inside the Targar Kingdom (Scenario 21 - Twin Objectives).  The first objective consisted of a high hill in the center of the plains and an adjacent fortified farmstead.

The First Necromancer War, a 6mm Wargame Campaign

The completion of the latest big box presents a first chance at playing Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames the right way - fully based and painted figures, full color terrain, and every option in the book available to both players.  To kick things off, and help us stay motivated to play more battles, the boy and I decided to play a five fight narrative campaign using a random assortment of scenarios from the rulebook.

To remind those of you following along at home, we have to matched forces built to spec.  In the left corner,wearing the green and purple, and flying banners bearing a flaming eyed goat's head, are the forces of  the vile and demonic Necromancer King.

In the other corner, wearing red and gold and flying banners bearing theme and variation on the dragon head motif, are the knights, nobles, and freemen of the peace loving Targar Kingdom.

Guess which force your humble narrator controls.  Yeah, this is not going to be a terribly fair and biased history of the as-yet-unfolded Necromancer War.

First we diced off to decide who would be the aggressor and who the defender.  He won the toss and elected to invade the Kingdom of the Targars.  So there you have it - pick your forces, roll off for attacker, and you're ready for a campaign.  Easy peasey.

Next Time:  The Necromancer King Attacks!

Medieval Knights - The Good Guys Group Shot

That last post was getting a bit image heavy*.  So how about a second post with a nice group shot of all four units of hard charging knights ready for battle?

Now that's what a massed charge should look like.  None of this three-figures-per-stand nonsense you see from guys who game in a scale I can't afford.

* Also, two posts for one real update.  Ain't I a stinker?

Medieval Knights - The Good Guys

This post sure was a long time coming.  Four stands of 6mm medieval knights ready to roll for a game of Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames.  These are all Heroics and Ros figures mounted on basswood bases three inches wide by two inches deep.  These stands each have one bannerman and about 20 other knights in two poses.

 

Yeah, so this fantasy army wears red and yellow colors and flies dragon banners.  Any resemblance to an army from (for lack of a better word) literature is purely coincidental.

Look at that line-up.  Simple all-red horse gear, individual shields, this must be a force cobbled together from different houses within the kingdom.

Advancing line abreast, and with matching horse gear, but individual shields, these men must be retainers of a wealthy nobleman.

This well disciplined unit is charging in classic wedge formation.  Well drilled, and with matching uniforms and shields, it must be an elite guard unit.

Medieval Comparison Shot

One of the little challenges for old men like me who game with little men like these 6mm Heroics and Ros figures is finding a way to make it obvious from a distance which little horde is which.  One of my helpful solutions is to base the individual figures in easily recognizable patterns. They may not be historically accurate, but sometimes history takes a back seat to playability.

In the above shot you can see that the dismounted knights (left), the levies (center), and the archers (right) all stand in different patterns.  Three rows for the swordy dudes, four rows for the sharp sticks, and a checkerboard pattern for the the shooty guys.

Also, the edge of each base is painted a unified red to make it crystal clear which army they belong to.  Initially, with two armies, it shouldn't be necessary, but moving forward, if I can build up enough forces to play with more than two armies, that color code may come in handy.

Last Medieval Footies

Don't think I mentioned yet that this whole army is built from the fine medieval range of Heroics and Ros.  Today's offering is the poorly armed rabble called up from every mudhole village, handed a sharp stick, and pointed at the enemy.  What these levies lack in courage and training and armor and so on almost forever, they make up for in numbers and being too dumb to know when to run away.