Author: bucksurdu

My daughter, Sammy, has been painting terrain pieces for members of the HAWKs for some time now.  She doesn’t enjoy painting figures, but she seems to really enjoy painting terrain.  She is relatively inexpensive, so it’s been a win-win.  The HAWKs get something painted that was deep in their painting cue, and Sam gets a few dollars to spend on whatever teenage girls spend money.

This was Sam’s most intricate project to date.  Duncan had asked Sam to paint this building he found in a flea market.

We think the building is from Grand Manner.  If you have never gotten buildings from Grand Manner, you’re missing a real treat.  They are fully sculpted inside and out.  The detail is fantastic!  They are premium priced, but worth the money.

Some years ago I bought several of their ACW buildings during a sale, where you could get a set of ACW buildings for a set price.  They painted up really nicely.

I think Sam did a terrific job on this building.

As usual, she did the entire thing herself.  I bought her a nice box for her paints, but she has been using her painting profits to get more bottles of paint, brushes, etc.

Sometimes she’ll ask me for suggestions on colors, but largely, she does this independently.  In this case, I suggested green shutters to give the building a little color.

 

Since the vehicle test went relatively well last week, I’ve been thinking about how to develop the armor and penetration numbers for the vehicles.  Here’s my thinking:

 

Information on armor in various parts of a vehicle can be gathered on the internet and other sources.  As this isn’t meant to be a published project, I will just do this for a handful of vehicles.  Then anyone who wants to stat up another vehicle can do so, using the formulas.  Sometimes what is reported is just the front hull.  Other times what is reported is a range (e.g., the armor on the Panther varied between 10mm and 120mm), leaving the reader to guess that 10mm was the rear hull, the turret and side armor were in the middle somewhere (about 50 – 55mm), etc.

Armor:

To compute the armor number in G.A.M.E.R., take mm or armor, round up to nearest 10, divide by 10, and add 4.  As an example, the frontal armor on a M4E8 “Easy Eight” was about 178mm, making it one of the heaviest armored vehicle fronts of the war.  A standard M4 (earliest model) was about 75mm.  Different Sherman versions varied between these two extremes.  Let’s start with the Easy Eight.  The frontal hull armor would be 178 -> 180, 180 /10 = 18, 18 + 4 = 22.  Using the same formula, the M4 would be 12.

 

Now that result is just a meaningless number until you look at penetration.

Penetration:

(Just for reference, rifles have a penetration of 1 and pistols 0.)

 

At short, medium, and long ranges, take the book value for penetration, round up to the nearest 10 and divide by 10.  As an example, the 88mm KwK 36 L/56, depending on ammunition used, had a penetration of about 120mm at 500m.  So 120 / 10 = 12.  Another example:  An ATR at short range had a penetration of about 35mm.  That would be 35 -> 40 /10 = 4.

Putting it together:

An early Tiger with an 88mm KwK 36 L/56 gun hits the front of an M4 Sherman.  The Tiger rolls d10 and adds the penetration of 12.  Let’s say he rolls a 5, that is a result of 17.  17 is greater than the 12 armor on the front of the M4, so the hit penetrates.  If he had rolled a 1, that would automatically be a “bounce.”

That same Tiger with the same roll of 5 would NOT penetrate the front of the Easy Eight.  In fact, the 88mm KwK 36 L/56 would need to hit the side or turret to penetrate, as the front of the Easy Eight is just too thick.

 

The ATR fired at the Sherman would have a penetration of 43.  If the player rolled an 8 for penetration, that would give a result of 12 compared to an armor of 12, which would indicate no penetration.

 

Yes, I know that not all armor is created equal, but it’s a good enough approximation for what is meant to be a fun skirmish game.  Of course people could fiddle with the stats to handicap their favorite vehicle.

With these formulas, anyone using the rules can quickly create the stats for their vehicles and get playing.  And I don’t have to spend the next two years doing it myself and then listening to people complain about the stats I gave their favorite vehicles.  If it was known that a particular vehicle had a weak area, the results of the formulas can be modified to suit the players’ perceptions.

 

The next step is to build the formulas to determine the movement speed in the game based on the real tank’s quoted stats.

 

I’ve also added another attribute to vehicles.  It is the maximum number of elevations that a vehicle can go UP in a single activation.  I was reading somewhere recently that the Germans were constantly surprised at the climbing ability of the Sherman.  (Of course it was a medium tank, not one of heavy tank like self-loathing American and Brits with axe to grind like to compare with the Sherman.)  So the Sherman might have a max climb of 2, while most other tanks might be a 1.  Or perhaps those numbers are 3 and 2.  I’m still working on it, but if you think about this simple mechanic, I think you’ll see how elegant it is.

Last night at the club meeting, I ran another play test of G.A.M.E.R. (which stands for the attributes of a figure in the game: Guts, Accuracy, Melee, Endurance, and Reaction).  I have been pretty happy with the way the infantry rules are working, but I have been needing to give the vehicle rules a good workout.  Last night I ran a game that was almost entirely vehicles.  It wasn’t a particularly realistic scenario, but it served its purpose.  I also wasn’t very accurate on vehicle mixes, as the scenario included some late-war tanks, even though the scenario was set in Poland in 1939.

A column of German tanks was assigned the task of pushing across the board.  They were supported by two tank-killer infantry teams, one with a panzerfaust and the other with a panzerschreck (recall that historical accuracy was not part of this event’s objective).  The Poles had two 7TPjw tanks, two Vickers E tanks, two TKs tankettes, an anti-tank gun, and an infantry team with an anti-tank rifle.

The game began badly for the Germans, with a Hetzer and a Marder getting knocked out by the two tanks on the far hill in the picture (above).  After a while it evened out and was considered a marginal German victory, since they still had two “real” tanks left at the end, and the Poles only had one.

As the objective was to give the vehicle rules a workout, I was glad to see Bill use anti-tank rifle grenades (again, not necessarily historically accurate) and a satchel charge against Chris’ 38(t).  I don’t think he ever knocked out this tank, but he immobilized it early.  The tank-on-tank action in the center of the table between Geoff and Sam (Germans) and Duncan (Poles) seemed to have about the right feel.  Duncan’s Polish AT gun had ammunition trouble or something, because it kept jamming.

Recall from previous posts that G.A.M.E.R. is designed to be played at three levels of “detail” or “resolution,” at the GM’s or players’ choice:

• Low Resolution: All infantry figures in a unit have the same G.A.M.E.R. attributes.  Wounds are all the same.  Wounds are tracked with markers on the table.  Vehicle crews aren’t tracked; if a vehicle is destroyed, all crew are killed.  If the vehicle is not destroyed, there is no effect on the crewmen.
• Medium Resolution:  All infantry figures in a unit have the same G.A.M.E.R. attributes.  Wounds are tracked on the record sheet.  Upper body wounds effect fire.  Lower body wounds effect movement.  Vehicle crews aren’t tracked; if a vehicle is destroyed, all crew are killed.  If the vehicle is not destroyed, there is no effect on the crewmen.
• High Resolution:  Each infantry figure has its own G.A.M.E.R. attributes.  Wounds are tracked on the record sheet.  Upper body wounds effect fire.  Lower body wounds effect movement.  Vehicle crewmen ARE tracked (at one of three levels of resolution, GM’s preference).  If a vehicle is hit, card flips are used to determine impact on individual crewmen.

Last night, I wanted to test the crew casualty resolution, so we played played at high resolution for vehicles and low resolution for infantry.  My preference will be to play with low or medium resolution on most cases, I think.  The extra steps required to determine which crewmen are wounded or killed as a result of a hit is usually not worth the effort.  But we tested it last night, and it worked fine.  I can see a lot of WWII gamers wanting the higher resolution.  It was fun to see that the gunner was wounded or the driver was killed and see the impact on the rest of the game.

We also tried the bog check rule (see previous post).  Woods and plowed field are considered “green,” pun intended.  When a tank moves through woods or plowed fields, it flips a card to resolve the “green” attack on it.  If the terrain succeeds in hitting the vehicle, the vehicle bogs down.  I was worried that this would be so frequent that players would get frustrated or so infrequent that players would forget to do it.  I think it was about right, but I’ll have to try it a few more times before I decide.  Rougher terrain might be considered regular or elite for bog attacks on the vehicle.  (This is how I plan to handle mine field as well.)  We had a TKs that bogged for three turns, and a German tank bogged down in the woods.

Part of the objective last night was to test the vehicle hit resolution procedure.  Geoff said that he had trouble remembering the sequence.  Most of the other folks who had played the infantry rules seemed to have picked it up quickly, but clearly G.A.M.E.R. is a paradigm that is different from what players expect.

I had a draft vehicle record card for last night’s game.  As a result of the play test, I revised the card.  Below is what I think it will look like.  When printed in full size, this looks like three 3″x5″ cards.  I think that experienced players will only need the one on the top left.  They will eventually learn the hit resolution procedure and the effects of a penetrating hit and won’t need the card, so I think that in a practical sense, a player will only need the single card.  At high resolution, the players will also need a second 3×5 card with the crew information.

I can see players printing this, cutting it into an L and then folding it to be a single 3×5 card.  On the hit resolution procedure card, I tried to show cards next to steps in which you draw a card, and a die next to the step where you roll a die.  (There is a d10 on the cards, so you could use a card and read the result instead of rolling a die if you want.)  The only “trick” on vehicle hit resolution is that you have to keep track of the hit location card, because if you don’t get a penetrating hit, the non-penetrating results are read from THAT card.  You don’t draw a different one.

As a reminder, here is what the infantry (or crew) card looks like:

I think it went pretty well last night, and the players enjoyed the game.  Sammy thinks that she likes it without vehicles better.  I need to come up with good stats for the vehicles I have in my collection, which I’m not looking forward to doing.  I’ll keep plugging away at it.  I think this game has potential.

My first public showing of G.A.M.E.R. was Sunday AM at Cold Wars 2014.  Both readers of my blog will recall several posts describing the evolution of this concept.  Though the scenario needed more Germans for balance, the game was fun, the players had a good time, and several asked when the game would be published.

I’m still tweaking the rules and the cards.  Eventually, I’d like to stabilize the cards and get some printed through a print on demand place.  My next play test will be almost all vehicles in order to test out all the vehicle rules.

Eric and several other HAWKs ran a series of Schlegel’s Ferry games.  Schlegel’s Ferry is a fictional town on the upper Chesapeake that begins as an Indian village and advances through time, seeing battles from many different wars.  I ran Schlegel’s Ferry 1664.   The games this year were separated by 50 years.

Cold Wars 2014 was a good show for me.  Dave ran two Fate of Battle games on Friday with his 25mm figures.  Friday I ran 1664 at Schlegel’s Ferry.  Saturday I ran Montmiraile from Dave’s 1814 scenario book.  Then Dave and I ran the 12-player LaRothiere game.  Saturday night Dave ran his Fastov LSNC: World War II game.  Sunday I ran a first “public” showing of G.A.M.E.R., my new WWII skirmish concept.  I didn’t buy much, because a couple of the folks I wanted to visit weren’t at the show, but there’s always Historicon.

Ever since last weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about infantry close assaulting a vehicle.  I don’t suppose there are any statistically relevant sources on the probability of succeeding.  There would be so many variables that it would be difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions that could be applied to the game table.  According to wikipidea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Destruction_Badge) killing a tank with a hand-held weapon wasn’t very common.  The site claims 18,500 silver recipients of the badge (one kill) and 400 gold recipients (five kills), many of whom were awarded the badge a single time.  When one considers the numbers of tanks and infantryman on the Eastern Front, this would indicate that knocking out a tank with hand-held weapons is a pretty rare event.

Still, on the gaming table, we want there to be some chance.  It’s dramatic and fun.  Plus as a career infantryman, I really like the idea of blowing up enemy tanks.

I have three pages of notes in my gaming idea notebook on special procedures for the WWII card-based game, G.A.M.E.R.  It occurred to me last night that special procedures aren’t needed.  Instead, I can use the explosion markers on the cards for another purpose.  There are three sizes of explosions on the cards, small, medium, and large.  These correspond to general sizes of HE:  grenades, mortars, and artillery, respectively.  I also use the large explosion marker to determine if a tank brews up from a penetrating hit.  When a tank is penetrated, you flip the next card.  If the card has a large explosion, the tank explodes.

So here’s what I’m thinking.  A soldier runs up to a tank.  If he only used half of his movement to get there, he can initiate an attack on the tank.  I see three classes of attack:

1. The attacking soldier has no anti-tank weapons and is hoping to shoot someone through a hatch or vision port.
2. The attacking soldier has grenades, Molotov cocktails, and other improvised anti-tank weapons.
3. The attacking soldier has a purpose-built, hand-held, anti-tank weapon.

For these attacks you wouldn’t use the cards to determine where you hit the tank.  The attacking soldier gets to decide between hull, turret, or wheels.  For a class 3 attack, the attacking soldier flips a card and looks for a large explosion.  A success results in a penetrating hit. Otherwise, no damage.  (Or maybe a non-penetrating hit.  I haven’t decided.)  For a class 2 attack, a success results in a non-penetrating hit.  For a class 1 attack, the vehicle must be unbuttoned.  The attacking soldier just fires his pistol, rifle, or SMG at soldiers in the open hatch.  If the soldier can climb up (half a move) and the hatch is open, he could, of course, try to drop a grenade in the hatch.

It needs some testing on the table, but those are my musings for today.

We had a chance to play G.A.M.E.R. this weekend.  All the way home from Charlotte I was thinking about the tweaks I want to make.  Today I spent a little time on the computer making those changes.  I wanted to improve the way hand-to-hand combat worked.  I wanted to make a few small changes to the action deck.  I also wanted to put the effects of non-penetrating vehicle hits on the cards.  Finally I wanted to make a better unit roster.

Changes to action deck cards:

You can see three of the four changes to the action deck cards above.  The first is that I labelled the large, medium, and small bursts  to make it easier for players to distinguish them quickly, especially in their first game.  Second, added one more modifier, or column shift, for firing.  That shift is a shift to the right if the leader is not present.  This might be applied if the leader is stunned, is firing his weapon, is dead, or for whatever reason is not directing the fire of his squad.  The third change was to change the labels on the “table” of bubbles on the top of the card.  They had been labelled E, V, and T for expert, veteran, and trained, respectively.  Since units’ and soldiers’ Guts attributes were labelled Elite, Regular, and Green, this created confusion.  Now Guts, Accuracy, and Melee use the same semantic labels:  Elite, Green, and Regular.

Vehicle combat:

I have codified the process for shooting at vehicles:

1. Flip a card to see if you hit the target vehicle, just like normal small arms fire.
2. If you hit, flip the NEXT card to determine the location on the vehicle.
3. Consult the vehicle record sheet to determine the protection value for that part of the target vehicle.
4. Roll a d10 (or flip a card and look at the d10 toward the top left) and add the attacking weapon’s penetration value.
5. If this sum is greater than the vehicle’s protection, the hit penetrates.
6. Flip the NEXT card.  If you see a large explosion, the vehicle is destroyed, the crew is killed, and the other players rejoice.  If you do not see a large explosion, bad things happen (to be defined).  In addition, roll TWO crew casualty dice.  For each hit indicated on the crew casualty die, flip another card, ignoring cover, to determine which crewman was hit and how badly he was hit.
7. If the hit does not penetrate, apply the results from the hit location card draw to the vehicle as non-penetrating hit damage.  In addition, roll ONE crew casualty die.  or each hit indicated on the crew casualty die, flip another card, ignoring cover, to determine which crewman was hit and how badly he was hit.  This may result in too many crew casualties for non-penetrating hits, so I need to test it out.  The math seems about right, but still want to see how it works on the table.

A crew casualty die looks like this:  0, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2.

Hand to Hand Combat:

Note on the card above that there are the five little bubbles under the cartoony-looking tank.  This is used to determine which target person was hit.  I plan to also use this for hand to hand combat.  Here’s how I think it will work.  Each player flips a card.  The position of the bubble indicates your initial hand to hand value.  In the card above, that would be 5.  Modify this result as follows:

• -1 if you are suppressed or stunned
• -1 if you are wounded
• +1 (for each additional figure, to a max of 3:1) for each extra figure you have fighting a single enemy figure
• +1 if you are defending some sort of cover
• + the hand to hand rating of the figure’s weapon.  A pistol or SMG have a positive modifier to hand to hand combat.  A crew served weapon has a negative modifier.

The winner draws a card to determine what type of wound he inflicted.  In addition, the loser is pushed back an inch and the victor has the option of advancing.  In this way, the victor can push his way over a wall, through a door, etc.  If the result is a tie, all figures are pushed back an inch.

I’ve also been considering some sort of roll to close, but instead, I think I’ll let the defenders make a reaction check.  If they pass, they may fire at the oncoming enemy, but they will be stunned in the upcoming melee.

Improvements (hopefully) to the Unit Record:

GAMER is meant to be played at three levels of complexity.  The first two are represented on two unit records shown below.

In the most complex case, each figure has its own attributes, so the card is quite a bit larger.

I actually have a version of this card with the top half upside down so you can print it, cut it out, and fold it in half.  All three cards are 3″x5″ when cut out.  A player would normally command a squad, perhaps more, so he would need two of these little cards.

Chart Card?

Along those same lines, I’ve been see how much information needs to be placed on a chart card.  So far, it’s not much, and it fits on a 3×5 card too.

Extra Dice:

JJ suggested something this weekend, that worked pretty well.  He felt like the attacker didn’t have any advantage.  He suggested that the attacker rolls two activation dice for each of his units.  When a card is drawn that matches either of the numbers, the player gets to decide to use that die and discard the other or discard that die and keep the other.  The decision must be made right then.  This helps ensure that the attacker doesn’t bog down just because of bad luck with the activation deck.  It seemed to work pretty well, and I’m anxious to try it again.  This might be something that applies for the entire game, the first x turns, or until some trigger event occurs during the game.  Still thinking on this one.

Reaction and Opportunity Fire:

I really dislike opportunity fire in games.  It is nearly always abused.  My plan with GAMER was that the player could attempt to interrupt the movement of another unit.  First, the moving unit must move at least half of its allowable move that turn.  Then the reacting player announces that he wishes to conduct reaction fire.  For each figure attempting to react, the player rolls 1d6.  If the result is less than the figure’s reaction number, the figure may fire, but them marks himself as stunned.  This is so that when the figure next activates, he would remove the stun instead of acting, since he essentially took is action early.  Of course figures that are already stunned cannot do this.  The players seemed to think that there needed to be some sort of “wait” or “overwatch” action that a unit could take that would let it fire automatically and essentially pay for the reaction fire in advance rather than in arrears.  This is exactly the kind of thing that gets gamey and annoying that I was trying to avoid, but I’ll ponder it before making a final decision.  I thought what we did worked just fine.

So those are my thoughts for now.  Come by my table at Cold Wars on Sunday morning to see how it plays.

For five years now we’ve been hosting a New Years Eve gaming event.  As we’ve moved several times, this is the third venue.  This year’s event featured two full, four-hour convention games.  People began arriving about 1430, we had a break for dinner, we toasted the new year, and finished the second game by about 0100.

We started about 1530 with distortion of the Battle of Montmirail.  Montmirail is a Napoleonic battle from the upcoming 1814 campaign book, written primarily by Dave Wood.  In this case, as I am about to wade into the writing of the book for Bear Yourselves Valiantly:  Look, Sarge, No Charts:  Fantasy, Ancient, and Mediaeval, I substituted fantasy figures for the Napoleonic figures.  It wasn’t a faithful substitution.  I have each player roughly 1000 points of figures, which was more figures than would be on the table for the historical scenario.  In addition, the 1000-point armies tend to be a mix of troop types rather than being the infantry or cavalry divisions of the historical fight.  It is supposed to be a 10 turn game.  We only completed 7 turns, but I think that in a convention, with a smaller number of troops, we could fit all 10 turns into a four-hour convention slot.  We have one of the HAWKs who seems to like the rules but who doesn’t like fantasy, so I asked Tank Nickle (one of the BYV co-authors) to bring his Romans and Carthaginians, who acted as opposing commands of humans on that wing of the table.

Victory conditions involved ownership of four towns.  The “French” (consisting of dwarves, elves, and Carthaginians) held one of the four towns but needed to capture one of the other three to win the game.  The “Allies” (humans and goblins) held the other three.  This required the French to be on the offensive.  In the end, the dwarves, elves, and Carthaginians had not captured a second town.  With another few turns two of the three might have been contested, but about 1930 we called the game an Allied victory, tore it down, and set up the next fight.

Eric Schlegel then set up and ran a fantasy game using his modifications to GASLIGHT, which he calls Mage Light.  The scenario was the British colonial battle of Rorke’s Drift, but the forces were fantasy figures instead.  (This New Years Eve was certainly the night for fantasy transmogrifications of historical battles!)  We, the “bad guys,” with a host of goblins, koblods, gnolls, ghouls, skeletons, orcs, and other assorted units were defending our homeland against the evil rampage of the “good guys.”

This too was a bloody affair.  A high point for me were when the hill giants defending the wall against the imperialist Ent, turned it into kindling.  The good guys had a cleric who kept resurrecting dead “good guys” and a wizard who kept putting up walls of fire, thorns, and other stuff to slow down our movement of troops within the walls of Orc’s Drift.

The battle was going hot and heavy at midnight, so we stopped for 45 seconds to acknowledge the drop of the big ball and toast the new year before continuing the game.  By about 0100 Eric called the game a “bad guy” victory; although, both sides were reduced to fewer than a dozen or so figures.

Fighting two, full-length battles worked well.  In past years we’ve run two somewhat shorter events and then had to start a third game around 2230 or 2300.  The HAWKs are no spring chickens, so STARTING a game that late has been somewhat difficult.  We’ve done things like Munchkin or Red Dragon Inn, but even then, it’s hard to start that third game.  I liked what we did this year better; although, it’s good to have those other games in reserve in case a game plays poorly, and we end it early.

We were missing a couple of “usual suspects.”  The Dean’s were unavailable; the Palmers were indisposed; and the Woods were unable to attend.  On top of that, the Priebe’s were busy getting married.  Still we had 12 players for the first game.  Even missing these folks, we had an excellent time.  It was a nice way to ring in the new year.

Having started a new job, I don’t have a lot of vacation saved up yet, so I worked most of Friday and didn’t get to Fall In until dinnertime, so I missed a whole day of gaming.  When I got there, Kurt was running his battle of Chickamauga game, using A Union So Tested.  After saying hello to everyone, I went to the hotel room to do some work for my consulting job.  I tried to hit the sack early to get ready of a day of gaming on Saturday.

Steve also ran the battle of Marengo, using Shako II.  Everyone seemed to be having a good time in this game, and the table looked quite good.

While I was doing some shopping for toys in the vendor area, Noah and Greg ran another of their Dr. Who extravaganzas for 20 or so players on two tables.  The game went long, because everyone was having fun and didn’t want to quit.

Eric ran his Saipan counterattack game.  We played this last week at HAWKs night, and I was the Japanese tanks.  It’s a fun scenario.

Saturday afternoon I ran what was supposed to be a six-player Napoleonic game: the Battle of La Rothiere, 1814.  Nine people showed up for the game, and by subdividing a couple of commands, I was able to accommodate all of them!  This is from the scenario book that Dave Wood and I have been writing.  The French are trying to hold three towns until nightfall, when they will execute an orderly withdraw in the face of superior allied forces.  The allies (Russians and Austrians) are trying to take all three towns to disrupt the French withdrawal.

The battle was a narrow allied victory.  Neither side had uncontested possession of all three towns, so the allies won more victory points based on destroyed French battalions.

We had several folks in the game who had never played the rules before, yet they picked them up quickly and seemed to have a good time.

Duncan ran a very nice War of 1812 game.  One of the folks who showed up at the table was the author of an book on this battle.

Saturday night I sat in the hotel bar with Mark Ryan and a couple of other folks in the business.  Howard Whitehouse gave us demonstration of his Battle Troll rules, for Norse saga type games, which I enjoyed a great deal.  Plus we spanked Mark and Howard!  By the time I got to bed, it was after 0100, and I was beat.  Sunday morning, I wasn’t in the mood for deep thought, so I wandered around the vendor room and the flea market in a daze.

I did play in Duncan’s Charted Seas WWII naval game against Dave Sunday morning.  Charted Seas is Duncan’s mashup of Uncharted Seas, Axis and Allies miniatures, and X Wing Fighter.  It really works well.  The X Wing (and other airplane game) activation mechanism addresses the biggest drawback of Uncharted Seas.  This was quite fun.  I sunk half of Dave’s convoy, which made the game a draw.

While I was playing Charted Seas, Eric has run his traditional Sunday morning Blood and Swash fantasy game.  Eric takes all comers and runs a battle that spans the table you see above and also an underground labyrinth with bits from Dwarven Forge.  Eric’s layout gets better looking each year.

It was a thin convention for HAWKs.  Fall In is usually lighter for us, but this year it seemed like life really got in the way of the hobby.  A lot of folks who would stay all weekend just came up for Saturday and the HAWKs room was half empty.

I found many of the things I wanted at the convention vendor hall and had time to try a set of rules that I’ve been wanting to try.  For me it was a good, although fast, convention.  I’m looking forward to Cold Wars.

 

I don’t have any pictures, but last night we played two different WWII scenarios for the upcoming Fall In gaming convention.  One involved Japanese and Marines slugging it out on Saipan, and the other involved Germans and Russians on the Eastern Front.  I played in the Saipan game and had a very good time with the very light Japanese tanks trying to get to the beaches to destroy the Marines’ equipment and supplies.  My daughter said that the Russian Front game went really well on the other table.  Both game used Look, Sarge, No Charts:  World War II.

After the game, I had a chance to sit and chat with Don and Dave about my WWII skirmish rules I’ve been developing.  (See several earlier posts.)  Don, who plays a lot of Battleground had some good ideas for the vehicle rules.  Then we talked about morale.  As I’ve mentioned earlier, while I’m pretty happy with the direct fire and need more testing on the HE weapons, I’ve not been satisfied with morale.

I had gone away from one morale check per morale pip as in the Look, Sarge series and went to a single morale check that used the number of accrued morale pips as a modifier.  It worked okay, but the result didn’t seem dramatic or fun.  Last night I hit on a different idea in which you draw one card per morale pip and apply the results.  The table below provides my current thinking on the text of the cards and the number of each.

Card Type	Flavor Text	Game Effect	Num Cards
1	“This place ain’t healthy, Sarge”	Figure with lowest Guts runs 10″ toward cover or away from enemy, becomes stunned	3
2	“I’m getting’ outta here!”	Figure with lowest Guts runs off the table, removed from the game	1
3	“Take cover!”	Number of figures equal to remaining number of morale pips run 10″ toward cover or away from enemy, become stunned	1
4	“… Fight again another day.”	Number of figures equal to remaining number of morale pips run off the table, removed from the game	1
5	“@$#%! That was close!”	Figure with lowest Guts is stunned	3
6	“@$#%! That was close!”	Random figure is stunned	2
7	“This place ain’t healthy, Sarge”	Random figure runs 10″ toward cover or away from enemy, becomes stunned	2
8	“I’m getting’ outta here!”	Random figure runs off the table, removed from the game	2
9	“Lemme at ’em!”	Figure with highest Guts runs toward enemy	1
10	“Take this, you dirty rats!”	Figure with highest Guts fires at nearest enemy	2
11	“Snap out of it!”	Figure with highest Guts unstuns nearest figure	2
12	“Follow me, men!”	Squad leader rallies troops; all stun markers removed	2
13	“Worse than we thought…”	Random wounded soldier dies of wounds	2
14		Go to ground; all figures in unit are stunned	3
15	Bad luck!	Squad leader is hit by a stray round while trying to rally troops; flip a card for hit location	1
16	“Let’s go!”	Unit charges toward enemy	1
17	“Let’s go!”	Unit charges toward enemy, but figure with lowest Guts lags behind, stunned	1
18	“Take cover, men.”	Unit is pinned	4
19	“Those guys are bums!”	No effect; elite unit passes remaining morale checks	10
20	“Those guys are bums!”	No effect; regular unit passes remaining morale checks	5
21	“Those guys are bums!”	No effect; green unit passes remaining morale checks	1
22			2

How does the Guts level (i.e., morale grade) of the unit benefit you?  Note that on the no effect cards, some are tagged with something like, “elite unit passes remaining morale checks.”  When this card is drawn for an elite unit making a morale check, all the remaining morale pips would be removed, and play continues.  There are 10 of these for Elite units, five for Regular units, and just one for Green units.  I’m worried that this will now bog down the game by taking too long to resolve, but I’ll have to see how it works in practice.

I’ve also been working on a little tool that will help generate semi-random squads for the game.  Below is an excerpt from the Excel workbook I’ve been using.

The notion is that you can set the overall, or average, Guts, Accuracy, Melee, Endurance, and Reaction ratings for the half squad.  Then the tool, using some random numbers and some formulas I built, varies the attributes of the individual figures so that they have some personalization.  The “Need Adjustment” box tracks how the player needs to continue to adjust the numbers so that the half squad still has an average rating equal to what was specified at the beginning.  For instance in the Guts box, note that Figure 3’s Guts is one better than the rest of his unit.  To ensure that the unit retains the correct average Guts rating, the player must subtract one from one of the other soldiers.  As a rule of thumb, you cannot adjust a figure who is different than the base unless you have no option (i.e., all the soldiers were modified).

I’m looking forward to another play test in two weeks.

In the meantime, Noah built a simple app for his Android phone that draws the cards for you.  One of the challenges we had in the last play test was the single deck of cards.  I’ve been hesitant to make multiple decks, since I keep changing them.  I’m working on a similar app for the iPhone.  At some point, the players can have the latest version of the cards to use on the table without having to pass a single deck around.