Author: bucksurdu

Last night at the HAWKs meeting there were two games.  One was a Union So Tested American Civil War fight.  From what I could tell it was quite a good scenario.  The second game was another (only the second) play test of the WWII skirmish rules I’ve been developing.  Noah, Duncan, Chris, and Don were my guinea pigs.

The scenario was a simple meeting engagement in which both sides were fighting for control of the road intersection in the center of the table.  It perhaps wasn’t an interesting, but I wanted to get the players engaging each other quickly.

The game confirmed that the firing mechanics worked well.  (See previous posts about the card-based combat resolution mechanisms I’ve been developing.)  I may double the weapons ranges.  Right now an M-1 rifle shoots about 36 inches.  In Beer and Pretzels Skirmish I used shooting ranges that were closer to figure scale, but players didn’t seem to like the idea they could shoot across the whole board. Food for thought.

I knew something wasn’t working for activation.  I’ve been using a mechanic similar to the Look, Sarge series, except with many more cards, because I wanted elite and regular units to, in general, activate more frequently than green units.  The down sides were that turns are significantly longer, players don’t get the sense of passage of time, it’s almost impossible to recover from being pinned, and other drawbacks.  For the next test, I’m going to go closer to Look, Sarge, with cards numbered 1 to 6 in red and also in black.  I’ll add an “elite” card.  When that card is drawn, elite units with the same number as the last number called will activate.  So SOME elite units will get two activations in a row.  This is both simpler and addresses some of the issues noted.

Movement worked fine.

I had recently revamped the morale rules, but it didn’t seem that players every failed morale.  In fact most players didn’t even fear the morale checks.  I think what I forgot to take into account is number of figures lost more heavily.  When a figure is wounded or killed, the unit picks up a morale pip.  To pass you subtract the number of morale pips from your “Guts number.”  This difference has to be greater than the target number on the card.  I think I want to make the following change.  In stead of accruing one morale pip for each wound or incapacitate result, you will accrue one per wound and three for each incapacitate.  This should result in more morale failures, which will enable me to test the morale failure mechanics better.

Finally, I’m not sure that I’m happy with the unit record sheets.  On them you track wounds on your figures, but it’s hard to remember to look at the card when shooting, because wounded figures have a negative columns shift.  I won’t make any changes to that just yet, but it’s on my list to revisit later.

Don tried to test rifle grenades, but he “rolled” poorly each time and scattered in a bad direction, so we never got to see how the new mechanics worked.

In general, I’m happy with the way the rules are shaping up.

In the top third of the card, I thought all the modifiers and things looked too cramped and busy.  It occurred to me that the players could start in the right “column” and then apply fewer column shifts.  So in the example above, all the cards have the “EVT” labels under the first three “columns,” standing for expert, veteran, and trained, the three ratings for accuracy and melee.

I had envisioned a multi-step process using the existing mechanisms for resolving HE and other forms of indirect fire:  flip a card to see if you hit the right area [if no, then scatter], then flip a card to see if where you wanted to hit is blocked (e.g., by a window) [if so, then scatter], then figure out which figures are in the short, medium, and long radii from the point of the blast, then flip a card to determine if each figure was hit, then for each figure hit, flip a card to determine wound location.  Argh!  One can imagine the game coming to a screeching halt and folks heading out for a meal every time someone throws a grenade!

It occurred to me that I could make three octagons that are just “rings.”  These would be different sizes, representing different blast radii for indirect fire.  While a bit of an oversimplification, the smallest one would be for grenades, the second would be for small mortars (say 81mm and below), and the larger one would be for large mortars and artillery.

The process for throwing a grenade, for instance, becomes flip a card and look at the small numbers above the row of checks and x’s.  As with direct fire, the starting “column” used would based on the accuracy rating of the thrower.  The top row of numbers indicates the number of radii of scatter and the little knife indicates the direction.

In these examples, a veteran unit with no other modifiers would scatter two radii, zero radii, and one radius, respectively.  One can imagine that the scatter distance might be doubled for off-board artillery.  Or, you might imagine that HE fired in direct fire would use the radii as indicated on the cards, on-board indirect fire would double the scatter distance, and off-board artillery might triple the distance.  The beauty of this approach is that a weapon with a small burst radius thrown from a short distance, like a grenade, would scatter a smaller amount than a light mortar fired from some distance.  This was a problem I’ve tackled in different ways in other rules, such as BAPS.

Now, here is another nuance.  See the three blast symbols on the top figure?  They represent small, medium, and large burst radius weapons.  When all three are shown as indicated above, if the soldier is within the octagonal ring of either a small, medium, or large weapon, he has been hit, and you flip the next card for damage, just as with normal fire.  You would flip a card for for each figure in the burst radius.  Some convention might be used, like go from inside out or left to right.  The manner doesn’t really matter as long as one card is flipped for each figure.

There are 50 cards in the deck (plus two extras).  Twenty will be misses, meaning that the figure for which you are flipping takes no damage.  Ten will have all three symbols, ten will have just large and medium, and ten will have just large.  (I need to think about this math a little more, to make sure I’m including the right number of each type of effect.)  One can imagine ways to reduce this to one symbol showing the smallest radius weapon that scores a hit, so instead of having to use all three symbols, the “small” symbol would be read as “small or larger.”

What does this mean mathematically?

If there are four figures in the large burst radius, the expected number of casualties is 0.6 x 4 = 2.4.

If there are four figures in the medium burst radius, the expected number of casualties is 0.4 x 4 = 1.6.

If there are four figures in the small burst radius (a difficult task), the expected number of casualties is 0.2 x 4 = 0.8.

It might seem odd that everyone within the radius has the same probability of damage, but on average, I think it will work out fine.

See how this gets away from complicated templates, having to break out the calipers to determine who is in the short radius and who is within the medium radius, etc.

The HE procedure now is significantly streamlined from what was discussed above.  Now you flip one card to determine whether the round landed where you want it and determine the scatter direction and distance all on one card.  Then for each figure in the burst radius you flip one card for damage effect, ignoring the counting (which figure is hit) diagram.  Indirect fire, instead of being onerous, has just one more card flip (on average) than direct fire.  Pretty cool.

I’m going to bed now.

Last weekend, Dave, Chris, and I travelled to War Horse Farm in Gettysburg to run some games for Sam Fuson and folks from his work.  There were 16 gamers, plus the three GMs, including several kids.  We ran two morning games and two afternoon games.

In the afternoon, Chris ran his Nijmegen WWII Look, Sarge, No Charts game that he will be running at Fall In.

In the morning, Dave helped me run a Fate of Battle game from our upcoming 1814 Campaign book.  This was also a play test for Fall In.  The scenario was really quite good, and the players had an excellent time.

In the afternoon I ran a multi-sided GASLIGHT undersea game.

Various international factions were competing to get secrets off of the Nautilus, which had recently been discovered.  The native denizens, the local fauna, and Nemo’s crew had other plans.

The game was a good time and a nice, light change of pace after the more serious, four hour Napoleonic game.

It was also the first time I had had a chance to get these underwater figures on the table.

In the end, I think only Dave and the weird fish were able to accomplish their mission — killing and eating one soldier from each of the five attacking factions.

It was another successful outing at War Horse Farm.  Sam says that the folks he works with are getting ready to start buying and painting their own figures.

I have updated all the action cards based on comments I’ve made in the previous four posts.  I think I am ready for another play test before taking on indirect fire, HE, and tanks.

During yesterday’s run, I came up with what I thought was a solution to my morale dilemma.  After a few minutes with Excel, I think it will work.

What I envision is that the card will have a target number, between -3 and 4.  When making a morale check, the player will subtract the number of morale pips from the Guts # of the unit.  If this difference is greater than the target number, the unit passes.  Otherwise the result of the morale break will be found on the card.

This will allow a single card draw for the morale check, rather than one card draw per morale pip as currently envisioned.  It gives about the right percentage of pass and fail results.  I think I’m ready to give this a try.

My thinking on these rules continues to evolve.  It gives me something to do while running in the mornings.  🙂

In the play test we had a couple of weeks ago, I was generally pleased with the way it worked, but still thought it could be faster without any loss of accuracy.  There were two areas I thought were an opportunity for improvement.  The first was determining whether a body part was protected by cover, and the second was morale testing.

Recall from my previous post that when you draw a card to determine hit location, that body part may be protected by cover.  I had originally envisioned that the cover would be on the back of the single chart card (4×6) that you would need for the game and that eventually player wouldn’t need to refer to it any more.  I found that even toward the end of the play test, there were still questions about whether a piece of cover protected a body part.  I decided that I could add that right on the chart card.

This accomplished two things.  First, it put the information right on the card that you were already looking at, and second, it allowed me to have greater variance.  I wanted a wall, for instance, to usually block a torso hit, but not always.  You can see in the figure above that now I’ve added small icons that indicate when a piece of cover protects the body part.  You still have to compare weapon penetration against cover protection as described earlier.

This figure shows all ten hit location and cover possibilities.  These are repeated five times on a total of 50 cards.  For cards 51 and 52, I think I am going to make body hits, but instead of the five circles used to determine which figure was hit, they will indicate the soldier with a crew-served weapon was hit.  I figure folks will try to knock out the machine-gun, so this will provide a slightly higher chance of hitting it than a rifleman.

The original morale resolution process was copied from LSNC, replacing special dice with special cards.  This requires you to draw a card for each morale pip accrues since you last activation.  Interestingly, this process seems slower with cards than with dice, even though the information was almost identical.  So, I thought about a system that requires only one card draw but takes into account the number of morale pips accrued.  As it looks like math, I’m sure anyone who plays the game will complain.

An example is:

Difference = (2x # morale pips) – Guts#

If Difference > 0, then…

Let’s say a half squad had accrued three morale pips.  In the formula above, Difference would be 6 – Guts#.  The Guts# is 3 for green, 5 for regular, and 7 for elite — the same as the minimum movement distances for those Guts ratings.  In this case, a green unit would fail, but a regular or elite unit would pass.  I haven’t thought through all the implications of this change yet, and in the back of my head I think it may make shot-up units more difficult to break than fresh ones, but I’m still working on it.  There are also some cases, under this new scheme in which units are guaranteed to break.  That’s not what I’m looking for.  Somehow, I need to compare number of pips with morale level and also take into account cover.  It’s a vexing issue.