The Sci-Fi Table: Before

As we leave 2015 behind, let's look ahead to the coming year.  The blog's focus heading into the New Year is going to be stuffing as much scatter terrain into the sci-fi box as possible.  Right now the sci-fi table has the necessary big structure to it, but is woefully lacking in the minor bits and bobs to provide that all important cover in modern+ games. See for yourself.  This is the table set-up as it currently stands.

Not bad, a bit pulpy, and not the sort of thing to complain about, but here at the Abox household we've never been ones to rest on our to-scale laurels.  This year we're going to fill in a lot of gaps with benches, planters, sculptures, more vehicles, and whatever else will fit in the box.  Once we do, we can move those farm fields off the table and into the fantasy genre where they fit so much better.

Did I mention we'll be starting a fantasy table, too?  Unlike last year's total focus on a Big Box of fantasy mass battles, this year we are diversifying to start up a fantasy collection.  This will be a total package Big Box, with all the fittings.

Oh, and more playing of the games.  We'll squeeze that in, too.  At some point we'll take a shot of the updated sci-fi table so you can see the difference in aesthetics and playability that a lot of little touches can make.

It's going to be a busy year, so update your blog-rolls and RSS's and bookmarks.  Should be a lot of fun, too.

The Podcast We've Been Waiting For

If you're one of those poor bastards that grinds through a long commute on a daily basis, then you can't get enough decent podcasts.  There are a hot steaming pile of them for tabletop RPGs, a few of them are even worth a listen, but very very few for tabletop wargaming.  Those that exist for wargaming are mostly dedicated to the big production house games like 40k and...I don't know, Infiniti?  I'm a 15mm guy who loves himself the boutique publishers, so you'll have to find the big boys on your own google-time.

But if you are also a boutique style 15mm wargamer languishing in the wilds of a fairly obscure corner of this fairly obscure hobby, then there is finally a podcast just for you, for me, and the rest of our tiny little clique - In the Garage.  It's run by the guys at Clear Horizon Miniatures, but the first podcast takes a nice spin around the genre with positive mentions of Osprey rules, GZG, and a fair few others.

After one episode, I can't tell you the names of the two hosts off the top of my head, but they are fun guys who take things just as seriously as they deserve.  Wait a second, that's not entirely true; Mister Harold, who you may know around the net from the Lead-Adventure Forums is one of the hosts.  If you know him from around the net, then you know he is both knowledgeable, friendly, and enthusiastic.

You should give it a listen.  For my part, I'm looking forward to hearing more episodes in the future.

The Wargaming Triangle

Presenting Warren's General Theory of Wargaming Management!

This should be pretty self-explanatory.  For project management, restaurants, and life in general you generally have to balance between good, fast, and cheap.  McDonald's burgers are cheap and fast, but they ain't good.  The local high-end restaurant makes a good and fast burger, but it ain't cheap.  The best burgers on this island (Hello, Teddy's!) are cheap and good, but you're going to have to wait in line.

For wargaming that constant balance seems to be time, money, and space.  In high school, I had all the time in the world, but no money and no space.  When I started this blog, I had all the time and money needed, but no space - hence the "In A Box" theme making a virtue out of necessity.  Now that I have a crazy long commute there aren't enough hours in the day.

But that's okay.  There's no pressure, so I can build up a nice lead reserve for when the times get lean and the commute gets shorter.  When the kids go to college I'll have more time and space, and if I've invested in unpainted figures right won't need to spend quite so much money.

Which makes this all a 'round about way of justifying a large lead pile.  It's not frivolous impulse purchases or an addiction - it's an investment.  In the future!

From the Archive - One Gnarly Figure

Here he is, the Haunter in the Dark, the Black Pharoah himself, Nyarlathotep.  This old RAFM figure is somewhere around 15 years old, from way back when I still used those giant 25-mm figures.

Most folks paint that whole big tentacle as a bloody tongue, but I think it's creepier to have it just be one long tentacle that extends from the body.

Merry Christmas!

In this time of strife and conflict, it does a soul good to stop for a moment and reflect on God's blessings, and the supreme gift of His only begotten son: "And behold an Angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them, and they feared with a great fear. And the Angel said to them: Fear not; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people; for this day is born to you a Saviour, Who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God, and saying: Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to men of good will."

If his love can bring together the men shown in the photos above (which include Germans, Brits, Yanks, and Italians, too!), then surely it can do so for the rest of the world too.  Celebrate this day knowing that His kingdom will come.

On the more avaricious side of the holiday, here's hoping the floor creaks with the weight of all the lead and rulebooks sure to find their way under your Christmas Tree.

As for me, my presents are due to arrive in the mail any day now.  Saint USPS will be bringing me the start of a 15mm fantasy collection, and at some point in 2016 Osprey's En Garde! ruleset will showup.  In the meanwhile, I've got more than enough toys to keep me occupied.

Octopod Reinforcements

Quick and dirty update.  A few months ago, I added just a couple of 15mm.co.uk's octopods to the swelling ranks of my sci-fi forces to use as civilian types.  They looked a little lonely, so I ordered up a pack of the riflemen (blasterpods?) to give me a fourteen man fighting force.  That's a pretty good number for a smallish Black Ops game.

Only two poses, but these are cannon fodder, so no worries on that score.  Here are the older figures:

In Black Ops terms that looks like a leader, tech, heavy, and...tech cook?

Barbarian Prince, A Second Playthrough

Vassal is one of those tabletop simulators that is all the rage these days, and during the course of tinkering with it one thing led to another and the next thing I knew Cal Arath Junior had been usurped from his father's throne.  This time around he wound up being dumped by his loyal servant high in the mountains above the Tragoth River.

Junior had a much easier time getting across the river, and was smart enough to stop after a week in the foothills north of the Mountains of Zohr where he spent a week hunting, resting, and recovering from near starvation. 

One day he met a dwarf, but the surly miner cared nothing for the troubles of a lost barbarian prince and never paused in his journey.  Good riddance to bad rubbish so far as Cal was concerned.

Feeling much revived, he journeyed down to the Temple of Zohr where he fell in with a bad crowd.  His first night at the Temple, the convinced him to aid them in an attempt to steal a large sum of money from the poor box. 

Being the quick and clever sort, Cal Junior pulled down a cool 200gp, of which he kept 180.  (Ten percent to the thieves guild is only proper.)  He then hot-footed it south where the next day he wandered into a swarm of goblins patrolling the region around their keep.  Allies of the Temple, tipped off by the angry priests?  Unlikely, as Cal Junior fled back to the Temple, where no one was any the wiser.  After securing more provisions, he decided to head north.

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.

From the Archive - Lizard Bastard

This bastard love child of Godzilla and Grimace goes by the exotic name of Brah'knee.  He is yet another giant monster rampage figure.  Bought for a song from the lone dealer who worked the one gaming convention that I organized while still in grad school right around the turn of the century.

He's metal.  He's twice the size of a standard 28-mm figure.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

JJ Abrams un-raped my childhood.

Spoiler free alert: What follows are the thoughts of a middle-aged man reflecting life, film, and family more than they are thoughts on the new installment of the Star Wars franchise.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a movie.  It's a very good movie.  JJ Abrams successfully delivered a sprawling universe, one that gives you the sense there are hundreds of stories woven throughout it, and you are watching just one of them.  Those other stories weave in and out of the one you are watching, which provides a real sense of scale and the unknown.  It's been a long time since a movie left me feeling that literally anything could be lurking around the next corner, like anything could happen next, and this one delivers both in spades.

And yet...

Over the years my love for the franchise dimmed even as my appreciation of sci-fi deepened.  Which led to an odd feeling while watching Star Wars wherein I found myself more enthralled with the idea of an epic space-opera adventure.  Even more excited by that than by the experience of revisiting the characters and stories that played a central role in my childhood immersion in pop culture.

There was a time in my life when my spirit hungered for drama and excitement.  The younger version of me spent countless dollars chasing the ups and downs provided by the modern entertainment industry. He was as loud and obnoxious a sports fan as any other college guy.  He eagerly anticipated the next big blockbuster. He spent thousands of hours bent over innumerable tables thrilled by the results of ten thousand literal rolls of the dice.

And then he had a family.

The shadows on screen and echoes in the hall still pull on the same emotional strings, but their power has weakened as the ups and downs inherent in family life have taken center stage.  Listening to the silence of a room that should have been filled with the cries of your new born daughter.  Watching your son take a bone-jarring hit even as his stick fires off a last minute, game winning goal.  That brief moment after your daughter plugs her guitar into her amp, but before she shreds out that first technical riff - hoping against hope the audience hears it the way you hear it.  Opening the envelop containing the results of your wife's medical tests - because she can't bear to do it herself.  The thrill of starting a second career - the one you have dreamed of for decades.  Not even JJ Abrams' camera tricks and daddy-issue drama can compete with the roller coaster feeling of those everyday moments of personal drama.

All too soon my kids will move on, and I will be left rattling around an empty house, rediscovering my wife and previous passions.  When that happens no doubt my beloved Sooners, and their regular late November discussion in the playoff discussion, will once again dominate my fall Saturdays. Meaningful everyday drama will re-enter my life by way of a table littered with dice and rulebooks and paper and wargame figures.  Someday blockbusters will resonate in my chest they way they did for most everyone in the audience that watched Star Wars with me last night.

None of this is said to take anything away from Star Wars 7.  It was amazing. It touched my three sizes too small heart, and allowed me to forget my grown-up cynicism for a few hours.  I will always be grateful to JJ Abrams for his ability to revitalize the greatest space opera franchise in cinema history, and thereby guarantee another decade of excuses to make memories with something truly worth getting excited about - my family.

In the end, Star Wars 7 could have been any one of a dozen movies, it could have been as poorly realized as the prequels, or as irritating as the remastered original trilogy, and that would have been fine. It wouldn't have dimmed my enjoyment of the evening one jot. At the end of the day, the experience of the movie meant more to me than the movie itself.  Heading out late on opening night with my teenage son, sharing his excitement, talking too fast about our thoughts and theories while speeding down a dark highway way past our bedtime?  The fun of watching a new adventure with Han, Leia, and Luke, plays second fiddle to making new adventures with the members of my own personal Rebellion.

All that said, JJ Abrams plays one hell of a mean second fiddle.

Hump Day Dump Day #7: Short and Sweet

Started a second job, so things are busier than usual.  To free up some room in the schedule, I might have announce a few layoffs in the Children Department on the home front.

D&D Micro-Settings (The Dragon's Flagon): When I think of "settings" for D&D-type games, I think of two different sorts of products. One is the sort in which an entire campaign may take place, detailing in broad strokes a fairly large geographic area. Many settings of this type have been published, and you probably know at least a few of them by name if not more intimately: Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Known World (a.k.a. Mystara,) among many, many others. With this type of setting, you generally get a map, a description of the various regions, the nations and cultures, major NPCs and factions, history and legends, and probably some adventure hooks and a few new character classes or sub-classes. It's the second kind that I want to talk about today.

Black Ops (A Life in Miniature): We had an opportunity to try the new Osprey rule set "Black Ops" last Thursday at the Club. A high ranking diplomat had been kidnapped by local rebels some where in Central Asia. The rebels were a mix of poor quality militia, mercenaries and an FSB team on site to interrogate the prisoner. A special forces team supported by regular troops were despatched to rescue him.

Into the Dungeon (Wee Blokes):  The party step into the Dungeon. This is the start of the Never-ending Dungeon. For this first level they have a map in their possession, so can temper their main rescue mission with exploration with the hope of bolstering their experience and equipment for future levels.

One Hour Wargames: Further Thoughts

With multiple games of Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames under the belt, it's time to take a more solid look at the ruleset and see how it stacks up.

Spoiler alert: Pretty darn good!

What makes for a good tabletop game?  Enough units to have meaningful choices.  Enough variety to make each fight unique.  Enough balance that each game has the potential to come down to the wire with victory often decided in the final turn.  The medieval version of OHW passes all three tests.

From the Archive - Ogre Cyclops

Here's another blast from my college day past.  Just some bargain bin big old dude.  He is ostensibly a 28-mm scale figure, but he is a giant of a figure, standing close to 10-feet tall.  In scale, of course.  

Captain Hook One Eye here has also seen use stomping around a miniature city fighting next week's old time figure.  In fact, most of these archive figures have been bouncing around a box waiting for a decent monster rampage set of rules.  And a big old 6mm city.  That's somewhere on my list of somedays.

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.

Hump Day Dump Day #6

It's hump day, so I've got to include a picture of a camel...get it?  A sopwith camel?  Eh? EH?

Ahhh, who am I kidding, I was just looking for an excuse to post the cover of this great game. In high school, my game crew bought a cheap second hand copy of this and played the heck out of it for years.  Well worth a look if you ever cross paths with it.

Traveling Set (BattReps): Due to the popular request, I am presenting here my traveling wargaming set. If you are like me, and you spend better part of the week in hotels on business trips, out of home, you would like to take your hobby with you. Here is the way I am doing that.

Lost Mines of Phandelver (Dungeon of Signs): Forgotten Realms was the worst thing to happen to D&D, honestly, it's just a terrible setting that reeks of bathos and takes itself far to serious. It plunders everything cliched and overused from Tolkien but abandons all the strangeness and mythological references. It fills the land with huge civilized bastions of good like Waterdeep and exhaustively defines their systems of governance, but allows these nations to be plagued by trifling enemies like goblin tribes. Forgotten Realms embraces a pedantic faux-medievalism, but then uses a contemporary positivist understanding to explain magic that allows for cutesy magical technology to gloss over the inconvenient aspects of the pre-modern. Most offensively, most objectionably, Forgotten Realms is a dense, full world, so steeped in cliched lore and laid out so extensively in dull gazetteers that there is no room for a GM's creativity without excising some of the setting's existing lore and map.

Mixing Mass Combat with RPG D&D (ChicagoWiz's Games): I went back and forth through a number of mass combat systems - Chainmail, Battle System, the OD&D Swords & Spells supplement, HOTT/DBA... none of these really seemed to scratch all the itches I had. They all had their good sides, but the biggest downfall was how to realistically include the players into a combat situation where they weren't going to stride through the fields like Super Heroes (until they hit 8th to 10th level...) but they could make a meaningful contribution and have some chance of survival. Then enter David Collins of Delta's D&D Hotspot blog. In September of 2011, he released a small set of mass combat rules called "Book of War."

Star Wars, Gendered Sci-Fi, Slave Leia and Reiterating Why I’m Not Stoked for Star Wars (Cirsova): Now here’s a cultural Ouroboros. JJ Abrams is saying “Star Wars was always a boys thing,” because today’s culture is so obsessed with the notion that until the recent diversity push of today, entertainment was hopelessly gendered and probably really racist. Abrams is just saying what he’s being told, and what he’s saying is he’s trying to right the ancient wrongs of sci-fi past. Of course now he’s being dogpiled for suggesting that Star Wars was a ‘boys thing’. Look you guys, don’t you see, he’s just trying to make it less problematic for you! He’s got a boring looking lady in drab clothes to be the hero who will be teamed up with a non-threatening man who will not make aggressive passes or snark at her!

40K Bad Guys in 15mm (KJdidt on TheMiniaturesPage): Pic Heavy! 15mm Chaos – Iron Warriors, Cultists and Daemons (with a Reaver Titan to boot). Necrons, too.

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...

From the Archive - Hard and Blurry

Note much to say about this mind-1990s figure except that he has mainly seen use in a giant monster rampage style game.  Not even sure what manufacturer makes this guy.  RAFM?  He stands easily twice as tall as most 25mm-ish figures, so it's acutally a giant cyclops skeleton.

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.

Hump Day Dump Day #5: Eye Candy Edition

It really is a great time to be a wargamer, especially in 15mm.  I'd argue that we aren't so much in a Golden Age as a Platinum Age.  The shopping list in my head includes the names of at least ten manufacturers producing as wide a variety of figures and terrain and vehicles as you could hope for, and most those are of a quality that easily surpasses the 15mm figures of just 20 years ago.  You can easily find them, order them, and get them within a few weeks - again, a feature un-hoped for in my younger days.  Not only that, but you can meet, online if not in person, the guys sculpting and producing these great products and rules on a moment's notice.

So far as I'm concerned, the entire sweep of history and development of the internet has been dedicated to creating this wonderfully environment to be a wargamer.  Thanks, social media, for doing the heavy lifting.  We'll take it from here.

This edition of the humpadump is heavy on the eye-candy, so you may want to wait to go a-clicking until you've got a nice big screen to chew on these links.

Dungeons of Doom: Making a Tavern bar! (The Grinning Skull): So, while not fitting the whole dungeon theme entirely, we kick off this belated Grim’s Dungeons of Doom article with a set piece that is ever present in stock fantasy games, The Tavern bar. This’ll be first in a series detailing how to turn your modular dungeon scenics into more than just an underground lair, and lets you turn the system into a viable way to simulate entire buildings and interiors.

Battle Report: The Temple of Fate - The Final Death of the Undead Lord (The Dark Prophet Chronicles): The day had come to face the Banelord Valak Thul in direct battle. After the Templars fought their way through his undead forces they finally met him on the small river island where the necromancer changed into the form of a giant undead Terrorgheist.

Can you squeeze 15mm models into 6mm rules? (Dropship Horizon): Laserstorm rules are designed for massive battles using 6mm models. The minimum suggested game size is around nine units a side. A unit being three standard vehicles or field guns, 4 light vehicles, 6 infantry stands or one super heavy vehicle or behemoth. This is the sort of size of game I have played so far. Units are arranged into three battle groups of roughly equal size. Weapon ranges seem fine used unmodified in 15mm. The rules suggest infantry stands of 4-6 models but my figure collection would not stretch to that. I chose stands of 3 models so that my standard units of 20 models could form an infantry unit. It also takes up less real estate on table. Purists may argue that three figures do not make a fire team but it looks OK to me.

2nd Big Battle of Fantasy Empires, aka 15mm Kings of War (Mikeopolis): Yeah, we got the bug now, a small Bretonnian vs Lizardman battle on Saturday (Troy's Lizards whopped up on my Bretonnians) and then another Big Brutal Battle 6000 vs 6000 Orcs vs Dwarf/Elf alliance on Sunday. Notes to take home: Bretonnians, catapults suck and Kinights are awesome, More Knights! Orcs, catapults suck and Giants rules! More Giants! The big battle ended up in a bloody draw.