Blade Traps

Any trap good enough to scare Indiana Jones is good enough for Castle Meatgrinder.  Obviously, these little gems won't make an appearance until they are triggered or disabled.

I debated with myself over whether markers for traps were even necessary for Castle Meatgrinder.  They are, after all, single events that can just be described as is.  Either you find it and avoid it or trigger it, take HP damage, and then move on.  Why waste time on a 3D terrain piece for something so transitory?  Two reasons:

1.  They look pretty cool.  They help to make the 3D version of Castle Meatgrinder look as deadly in person as it does in your head.

2.  Making a terrain piece and putting it on the table changes the way the game is played.  These go from forgettable eye-blink damages to real and lasting features of the dungeon by marking an area always and forever as "Here Be Pain and Dismemberment".  In an empty room, they are no big deal, but in a room where the characters might face a squad of orcs?  Or one they might have to flee through?  Now you've added another variable for the players to have to juggle.  Maybe your thief, in order to get into position to gank the enemy spellcaster, has to deal with hiding in shadows and risking a leap over the whirling blades of death.  That's the something added by building physical markers of the blade traps.

Towards a Unified Theory of Wargaming Complexity

Put on your thinking man's cap, because today we're talking math.

Earlier this week, Delta Vector (you know Delta, he runs the excellent Delta Vector blog) posted the latest installment of his in-depth analysis of wargame design, this one on the perfect number of units.   The entire series is well worth your time, as he devotes each post to a detailed look at different ways of managing wargames with copious examples from around the genre.  In this installment he comes to the conclusion that the right number of units is between 5 and 12.  

This particular post hit home, because on the exact same day that Delta posted his analysis, your humble blogger posted a summary of One Hour Wargames in which he came to almost the exact same conclusion.  Ain't that a kick in the serendipity pants.

Shrodinger's To Hit Roll

Continuing on from yesterday's discussion on suppressing fire in Black Ops, but the same sort of thing happens in a number of wargames where the condition of a model is left ambiguous until that model next activates.

So there you are, staring at the table where your opponent has just laid down a barrage of suppression fire on the fire team that represents the tip of your spear.  Four hits total, which results in your squad...well, being suppressed.

In Black Ops you have a couple of choices.  You can take the fire, which means those suppression markers become actual hits - roll to wound.  You can pull back into the nearest cover directly away from the shooter, which means those markers just disappear.  Or you can do nothing until that fire team's next activation.  If they do nothing, the markers disappear.  That last choice effectively results in that fire team losing a turn.

Here's where it gets interesting.  The fire team doesn't have to choose which one they do until their next activation.  Given that this is a card driven activation system, that could be a while.  The rest of your platoon could be off running about, shooting up the place, tossing grenades, and generally having a grand old time as the tip of your spear sits there, hovering in that not-quite-hit-not-quite-run-off state.

At least until their card comes up and they have to make a decision.  Then everything snaps back into focus as we open the box and find out whether the cat is dead, suppressed or run off.  It's like a mini cliffhanger built right into the middle of the game.

Well written, Guy.

Shooting Around Corners in Black Ops

When somebody uses suppression fire at my table,
they always announce it like this.

Osprey's Black Ops uses a card driven activation system.  It's a randomized IGOUGO system broken up by held actions, orders, and suppression fire.  As can be imagined, suppressing fire is more likely to have an effect, but less likely to cause casualties.  Each hit forces the target to choose one of three bad options: do nothing for the next activation, duck back into cover, or take the hit and make a wound roll.

Where it gets interesting, is that suppression fire can be targeted at a visible model...or at a point on the ground.  The suppression markers sit there like a big fat landmine daring the opponent to move anywhere within three inches of the area being suppressed.  It's a great way to force your opponent to make sub-optimal choices.  If you need that squad to get across the street, you're going to have to risk the hits.

The photo on the right shows just such a situation.  The three green beads represent three suppression 'hits' laid down by the hazmat suit's opponent.  Since the hazmat guys cannot be seen, they cannot be targeted, but the opposing heavy can still force them to keep their heads down.  If they move out from behind the corner, they will be exposed to that gunfire.

Where it gets interesting is when just one of those hazmat models is visible to the shooter.  In Black Ops hits are spread around the squad in equal numbers, meaning that the shooter is actually targeting all three models, even though only one can be seen.  That sounds crazy until you think about it for a bit.

This tabletop pretend gunfight is a simulation of a crazy simultaneous charlie foxtrot.  Although our little dudes move specific distances in discrete little hops and jumps one after another, that's just a crude representation of the swirling and fluid chaos of battle.  So what really happens in a case like that is the squad dashing up to the corner, taking a couple steps out into the road, and then being forced to duck back into cover.  Maybe they make it in time, maybe they take a few hits.  Either way, the place they end their movement isn't always indicative of a snapshot in time, but like the location of an electron around an atomic nucleus, their exact position at any given moment is...somewhere in or around a general point centered on this model.

Quantum wargaming, people.

You think that's something? Wait for tomorrow's post on Shrodinger's To Hit Roll.

Song of Guns and Tedium

Man, I have got to find some decent scenarios for Flying Lead.  The boy and I lined up 450 points worth of evenly matched forces against each other and just did a shoot-em-til-they're-dead match.  This time it was his space mercs (GZG) attacking my police force.  After more than 2 hours, it was clear I was going to lose, but that it would take another couple of hours.

Pictures!

Alley firefight!

We really need to chase down some escort missions, or grab and runs, or something.  Maybe I'll peruse the Necormunda rules or make up a deck of mission cards for the next match.

The view from the winning side.

We also found that having lots of cool skills (me) is just as expensive as having decent activation, but doesn't do nearly as much good at the table.  His mooks outperformed my skill laden specialists dramatically.  Next fight we'll use a couple of heroes on each side supported by more easy to run mooks.

Beautiful Asymmetry

Yesterday we talked about the three different styles of stairs.  Today I want to talk about why I didn't just use one template.  It all comes down to asymmetry.

Asymmetry is important from a gamesmanship perspective.  If all three sides of the rocket are identical, that limits the tactical possibilities.  You need to give players those choices between alternate routes, some faster than others, some with more cover than others, to keep them on their toes.  When there's no difference between right and left, the choices don't matter as much.  If the right path is more direct, but heavily guarded, now you've got to balance factors.

This also gives you more scope when it comes to designing scenarios.  If you place that goal point behind a choke point, you get a different game than when you put it somewhere with multiple routes of entry.

In the case of the stairs, the solid staircase blocks off a potential ladder down to the ground floor of the rocket (in this case, the engine room).  There won't be a ladder down on the right hand side of this picture, either.  That forces the little dudes to cross over to the back side of the rocket if they want to get into the bottom room on this picture.

Note also that there's one door on the top level shown in the photo.  There's a great big hole in the floor blocking the front room from the back left.  To get to that room in the back left, you've either got to run around through the door on the right and the back right room, or climb down to the small landing on the left, around the wall, and back up the ladder on the other side.  Going left takes longer.  Going right exposes you to enemy fire while you sprint around the level.  Those are choices that matter, and those are the kind of choices you want players to have to make.

The solid staircase also makes a nice little hidey-hole for tribbles, and you only really need one of those.

FUBAR Ruminations

Woah, four posts in four days, this blog just might be back.  It's amazing how much more time a guy has when he's not coaching his daughter's soccer team to a league championship.  That's right, I know how to coach soccer - the secret is inheriting kids from other coaches who know what the heck they are doing.

Same scenario. Different rules.  Different results.

This weekend, our first game of FUBAR pit two evenly matched forces in a fight for the mining station.  The humans consisted of roughly 25 Veteran troops backed up by three 2-man HMGs and a sniper team.  The lizardfolk had 20 infantry and 5 cavalry at their disposal.  For the purposes of learning the game, we classified the cavalry as vehicles armed only with a single HMG.  In both cases, we used units of roughly 5 men/lizards with the snipers operating alone, and the cavalry split into two units of 2 and 3 lizards.  Aaaaand, fight!

We spent a fair few minutes hashing out what the rules mean by ‘unit’.  In retrospect, it doesn’t really matter from a balance perspective.  Large units means more guys sitting around when they fail to activate. Small units mean that you always have at least a few guys doing something, even if they aren’t as effective as the big groups when they do act.

To big for infantry, too small for vehicles.  Time for Rule One!

We treated the cavalry as vehicles, but it felt wrong.  They were too tough to bring down, and the idea that they have more armor in front is a bit silly.  In retrospect, I’d treat them as vehicles except that every hit should be classified as against the rear armor (roll twice and take the higher result).  That makes them more fragile than tanks, but keeps them fast and dangerous.

We also had a talk about what the lizard-mounted guys were armed with on a personal basis.  He sweet talked me into allowing them to have assault rifles, when I figured the little blue shlubs would be hard pressed to work a big cannon with one strapped to their back.  Not a big deal, but something that should be worked out on both sides before the game starts.

Space-bug-angel-demons!

With this experience under our belts, we're amped up to try the bug rules from the "Generic Sci-Fi" one page supplement.  It looks like they'll handle very different from standard troops.  That's another thing that felt off with our test run - the lizards didn't feel alien enough - but that's a function of using the rules in as vanilla a fashion as possible to get a handle of things.

Next time will be different.

These Rules Are FUBAR

Last night, the boy and I headed down to the weekly game night and threw together a quick test drive of the FUBAR rules.

For those of you who don’t know, FUBAR is a free, one-page, sci-fi set of rules from Gawd ‘Elp Us Games. As a one page set of rules they are reasonably complete, with all the standard rules for initiative, activation, movement, firing, melee, and morale. It uses a bit of a hybrid game turn with elements of IGO-UGO and action-reaction. Whoever wins initiative activates units by beating a target number based on troop quality – better troops are more likely to activate. When a unit fails its activation, that unit goes onto overwatch, and play passes to the opposite player.

Like this, only bigger.

Firepower is resolved in the standard manner – roll dice for each little man (with extra dice added for squad support weapons), and each die that beats a target number (modified by things like aiming, troop quality, and cover), hits a figure.  Any hit figure that doesn’t make an armor save is hurt.  Sort of.  The first few wounds suppress a figure and left over ouchies eliminate a figure.

The deal here is that each suppressed figure in a unit makes it harder to activate on their next turn.  If your unit fails to activate, your suppressed figures stand back up, but that unit is stuck on overwatch for the turn.  As a result, choosing between suppression and casualties gives you the choice protecting your men and making it more likely that your unit does what you want them to do.

As a one-page rule set, there were a number of issues that cropped up during play for which we had no real answers.  All we could do was use common sense and roll a die.  Although, to be honest, I wound up giving the boy the benefit of the doubt more often than not cause I’m just that kind of Dad.

Let’s leave more detailed discussion of the rules for another day.  The take home message here is that the rules are light, quick, and easy, and we’re looking forward to more games.  Now that we’ve resolved the bulk of the drudgery of the rules, we’re eager to put them to use with more sophisticated scenarios and asymmetric forces.

Next time, I’ll bore you with the stuff that won’t make a lot of sense if you’re not familiar with the rules.  Promise.

Tactical Terrain

Last time you saw the first of what should be several outdoor terrain tiles.  These open up the field of play, but if you're going to have an open field, you might as well just use gridded paper.  The whole point of the tiles is to present a 3D play experience, and the point of that should be to enhance the game.  A great way to enhance the game is to limit the players in some ways and give them choices in other ways - to force them to make decisions.

This just needs individual trees and rocks and other obstacles.
Man there's a lot of stuff to build for this game.

That brings us to the design of this first outdoor tile.  The foamcore let us carve a stream channel which forces the players into the decision making process.  They can jump into the channel and fight at a disadvantage, or they can fight for one of the crossings.  The danger is creating a piece like this is giving the players too few options.  With one bridge crossing the game devolves into a fight for that one square; that makes things dull and repetitive.

In this case, the tile gives them three different crossings, a bridge, a narrows they can jump across, and a ford they can wade across.  I may paint a nice road leading to the bridge, but that's one more feature to have to align when more tiles are in play, so that might not happen.

That's just enough choices.

In other news...the sewers look a lot better with black primer.  They'll be darker, but the tiles will jump out a lot better once painted.  

Next stops: Drybrushing, Detailing, and KOO-ka-mung-Ah!
Probably needs some movable bridges for those trenches, too.