Back Into The Skies

I've been away on holiday this past week and managed not to do any gaming of note (aside from the obligatory Love Letter that is). I didn't taken any gaming projects with me and didn't really go anywhere of gaming interest either. Still, I had a nice few days in Hobart (my first visit to Tasmania).

Anyway, whilst we were away I did mull over Spandau & Lewis a little, and my current quest to strike a balance between how many hots a plane should take and how likely critical hits should be. This was something i wanted to explore in my previous game, and something I was looking at when I played it again this morning.

I set out the same scenario as before, but reduced each side's force by one two-seater and one fighter. I randomised how each sides' fighter were split up and where they cam on. The three German planes - two DVIIs and a Dr 1 - came on individually whilst the British Sopwith Camels came on as a pair and a single.

Early stages in the vicinity of the German two-seaters. Two Camels are on the attack, but the DR 1 is coming up behind them. The DVII hasn't spotted anyone yet, but was about to get a rude surprise.

One of the German DVs went down with an engine hit.

On the other side of the lines a Camel was chasing a DVII, whilst the two FK8s observed their first target.

Long range fire from the triplane took down a Camel with structural hits.

The British had spotted one target, but the FK8s escorting Camel was currently out of contact and a couple of DVIIs were closing in on them.

The Triplane made another kill as a Camel went down with an engine fire.

The third Camel lost contact with the fight and was shot down by ground-fire (left the table and rolled badly to come back on).

The FK8s were now on their own against two Fokker DVIIs and a Triplane. One DVII had a wounded pilot, though, and he struggled to bring the plane into the fight. The other two Germans attacked, putting plenty of holes in the British two-seaters. In return the observer in one of the FK8s scored engine damage on the DVII, forcing it to break off.

The Dr1 was also badly shot up and running low on ammo as well, so did a final pass of the two-seaters (no significant damage) and headed for home. 

The final DVII, with the wounded pilot, now finally came up. Time was running out for him to get home, but if he could down one of the FK8s the points would favour the Germans. It was worth the risk. His shot failed to score a hit on the escaping two-seater

But he British observer was having a good day, and his return fire caused a lucky structural hit on the German plane, that caused its wings to come off. Down it went!

(The British scored a critical that meant that the target rolled 2D6, took the lowest score and inflicted that many hits. They then proceeded to roll a 5 and a 6).

So the British lost three Camels, but got both two-seaters home with a full set of observations. They also shot down two German aircraft. The Germans got their two-seater home as well, and shot down three British planes. However the VPs are weighted towards successfully completing a mission, so the British were the victors despite their losses.

I played with aircraft taking slightly fewer hits than in the previous game, which made things a little more dangerous for them, especially with so many planes having powerful twin-guns. But it seemed to work out OK.

In The Air In 1918

We played some more Spandau & Lewis last night. Firstly I wanted to try a couple of small tweaks to the rules. And, secondly, I wanted to try the rules with late-war aircraft, as my predilection for early war planes has tended to skew my testing in that direction.

There were three of us playing and, with hindsight, I probably had too many aircraft in play. However we had a huge dogfight even if we did have to call it before the end.

So, it's June 1918 over the Western Front, and both the RAF and the German Air Force are sending out reconnaissance patrols. The British were flying a trio of Armstrong-Whitworth FK8s, whilst the Germans had three DFW CVs (although the models were Hannover CL class planes; I just wanted to get the models on the table).

Both sides had fighters in play too. The British had a quartet of Sopwith Camels, whilst the Germans had three Fokker DVIIs and a single Fokker Triplane (which ended up being flown by a novice pilot).

Here's the Germans all set up. We rolled a random entry point for each group of fighters, and the Germans (me) came on on the southern table edge.

The RAF fighters both ended up in close formation with their two-seaters. Two of the Camels had novice pilots, but one of the AW FK8s had an ace crew.

Everyone spotted each other fairly quickly. The two-seaters closed up and headed for their objectives, whilst the fighters split up, some going after enemy fighters and others the enemy two-seaters.

The isolated Triplane found two Camels heading towards it, but quickly turned out of trouble.

The DVIIs heading off into the fight.

Daniel was running the British two-seaters, whilst Stuart had the Camels. One Camel stuck close to the two-seaters, as a single DVII (with an ace pilot) attacked. A lucky shot from the front gun of an FK8 wounded the German pilot.

The Camels attacked the German two-seaters head-on, doing little damage. You can see a DVII and the Triplane moving up to support their reconnaissance planes.

The start of a new turn with initiative rolls against each plane.

The Fokker DVII ace tucked in behind the FK8s, and slowly chipped away at one of them; being wounded reduced his firing capabilities, and that was combined with some terrible shooting die rolls as well.

On the other side of the board saw one of the Camels fall apart under thh guns of a Fokker DVII.

The German DFWs had scouted the first objective and were now heading for the second. But one had a Camel on its tail and was suffering badly. The Dr1 came up in support but not fast enough.

The DVII ace plugged away at his prey, and inflicted an engine hit, which slowed it and reduced it's maneuverability.

A second DVII came in and finished it off.

At the same time one of Stuart's Camels finished off a DFW two-seater. The Triplane was now on his tail though.

At that point we called the game. The British were looking likely to get one of their two-seaters how with a couple of observations. Another - the ace crew - still had to run the gauntlet of a number of German planes and, to make matters worse, had irreparably jammed their rear-gun. There was also a Camel with jammed guns running for home. Two of the German two-seaters looked likely to make it back, with a quartet of observations between them, whilst they also had all four fighters still in play. The ace was likely to head home; wounded and low on ammo it seemed sensible. But the other three could probably have finished off another British plane before the end.

So we called it a marginal win for the Germans, as they'd got more observations home and shot down two British planes as well. To be fair the British were very unlucky with gun-jams, which seriously cut down their useful firepower.

Here's a few shots from Daniel:

A Camel pursues a DFW CV

Armstrong Whitworth FKs flying over the target. OK, the models are actually RE8s, but I fancied using the AW FK8 instead.

The ace approaches the FK8s.

A shot from low down.

The two small changes were to the frequency of criticals and an adjustment to the Power checks.

The first is a compromise where, when checking for criticals, you count any 6s rolled for shooting as before, but can include one 5 as well, so long as it registered as a hit. This slightly increases the chance of a critical without pushing it too far. My previous adjustment was to allow any hit a 1 in 6 chance of a critical, with each 6 increasing the likelihood. I found that made critical hits too likely.

The second change was that there's a modifier to the Power check based on how extreme a maneuver is. So a turn over 45 degrees forces a Power check, and it's at -1 if the turn is over 90 degrees and -2 if it's over 135 degrees.

Oh, and you may notice something different about my aircraft models if you look closely.

More Middle-Earth HOTT

By popular request we got out Geoff's 15mm Middle-Earth armies again last night. This time there were four of us, so we ran a 72AP game but with two 36AP forces on each side. As you might imagine what we really got were two disconnected 36AP games. But they were still fun.

Geoff and Peter were the forces of Evil. Peter used a Mordor army whilst Geoff had Haradrim. Geoff was faced by Dave using Rohan, whilst I match Peter with the army of Gondor.

Rohan faces the Hardrim. Naturally the boys from the South have some Mumakil. Rohan were supported by Gandalf and Treebeard to make up for it.

Mumakil vs a very retro Treebeard.

It took a while for Gondor and Mordor to get stuck into each other. On the right there you can see a paladin element representing some Mearas super-horses.

They were rapidly squished by some trolls. The trolls were now rather excited to find themselves in the midst of the very vulnerable knights of Gondor.

The knights ganged up on the trolls. They got squished as flat as the horses.

Rohan and Harad were still fighting it out n the other side of the field.

I was left facing trolls with Imrahil, my knight general. He continued the 'Getting Squished' theme, and that was Gondor's army broken and running for the hills.

Of course things could still go badly for the forces of Evil, as Geoff rolled his fifth '1' in a row.

Gondor's troops were slowly departing the battlefield, but in the distance you can see Gandalf about to have a go at Sauron's stronghold. If enough of Gondor's troops could hang about until Gandalf had a chance to attack it then maybe Good would prevail.

They didn't. The feckless Gondorians ran away en masse  before Gandalf could do his stuff, and Evil prevailed.

Good game though.

Chariots At MOAB

This weekend just gone was the annual MOAB show up in Sydney. I always make an effort to get up there for at least one day. This year I even had a shopping list!

I went up on the Saturday because Victor had invited me to have a go at a chariot-racing game he's developing. Called 'Ludi Circenses' it uses the racing pack/relative positions concept that you see in THW's Charioteer, combined with an action dice system similar to that in 'Song of Blades and Heroes'. I should say that the mechanisms are not lifted wholesale; they are very much their own thing.

Here's the race underway. The game is for four players, each running two chariots. The teams are the classic Reds, Blues, Greens and Whites of antiquity.

The track has three active lanes; an inside lane on the left, a middle lane and an outside lane. There is also an area to the right called the outer lanes, which is where the 'pit crew' lives and where any chariots that drop off the back of the board go until they can be brought back into the main race. You can see one such chariot in this picture.

The race is run over seven laps, with each lap consisting of three straight sections, a corner, three more straights and a final corner. 

On the corners each chariot simply tests against a hazard number to see if they take stress or damage on their chariots. The level of hazard is determined by how many adjacent chariots you have, being in the dust-cloud of a chariot in front of you, whether you are on the inside track (the most dangerous) and how much stress you have put the chariot under.

In each straight section one chariot will act, based on coloured dice drawn from a bag. Each player has eleven dice in the bag, so with 42 straights in the game you can be sure of getting at least 9 actions in the game, maybe 10 and, for at least two players, 11 actions. Charioteers can use crowd support to get bonus actions if they are popular.

When a chariot acts you roll one, two or three dice with roman numerals on them. Each 'I' symbol gives you an action. Two or more 'V' symbols give you an action but also fatigue the horses. So a roll of 'III', 'IV' and 'V' will give you four actions for the I's and one further action for the V's plus a fatigue.

Actions can be used to move (which is easier the closer to the inside you are), change lanes or attack or overtake other chariots. 

I noted earlier that each team has a pit-crew. These are the mounted Hortartors, who can guide a chariot and negate the effects of dust, and the unlucky Sparsors. These latter are slaves whose job it is to throw water on the axles of the chariots or on the horses in order to cool them down. The wooden axles of chariots would get hot during a race, to the level where they would smoke. In the game a chariot accumulates heat each time it acts. A team can use actions to deploy the Sparsor to cool a chariot down. 

You can see both a Sparsor and Hortator in action here.

Using a Sparsor is an action. If the target chariot is in the outer lane then they can do their job unimpeded. But if they have to cross lanes there is chance that they will be run over. In this picture the green Sparsor has got lucky...

... but he was not so lucky a couple of turns later! Splat!

Anyway, the final straight is the key one; a chariot wins if they are in one of the front three paces of the track. That Blue chariot is mine, looking like a dead cert.

But here's a Red chariot coming up on the inside. 

An overview of the finish. We were both using crowd support at this stage. It was very exciting.

Pipped at the post! In the event of multiple chariots being at the front at the end a chariot in the middle lane has priority. However other factors can affect the finish. Red's horse team were better finisher's than mine, which gave them a bonus and made the result a tie. In that case the tie-break is unused skill counters (which are assigned at the start of teh race). I had one. Red's chariot had ... two. So Red won on the narrowest of tie-breaks; I finished well but Red's better horses and more skillful charioteer just squeaked ahead in a 1st century AD photo-finish.

I was gutted.

The also-rans. On the back wall you can see the dice that have been pulled from the bag, neatly grouped by straights and laps.

This game is tremendous fun, with lots of period chrome and things to manage. As a chariot races it slowly degrades, and the game is very much about managing heat, damage and stress, whilst ensuring that your opponents accumulate some. We didn't have any crashes, although one of the white chariots had taken a couple of corners badly and was close to falling apart. Sadly he failed to amuse us by actually doing so.

And what of the shopping? I bought a few bits for a Turnip 28 force I have on my painting table (I have one unit painted and another couple mostly assembled), as well as some more Grim Fantasy figures for use with Palaeo Diet. And I picked up two boardgames. The first is a solitaire WWII game, 'Field Commander: Rommel', which allows you to play the great man in three campaigns (France 1940, Western Desert and D-Day) against a game-controlled Allied force. I've tried the France 1940 campaign a couple of times and it's a tough nut to crack. Those Somuas just keep comin. The other game is 'Evolution: New World' which is an excellent card-based game about adapting animals to environments whilst fending off other player's predators. I got it for $15 and it seems to be a full kickstarter set with not only the basic game but two expansions as well. Quite a bargain. We've played it three or four times already this week, and we love it. It lacks the silly animal builds of Quirks, but does have a charm all of its own*.

*My wife and I both studied life-sciences at university, so as a theme it's very much our thing.