More OHW Epic 40K

The other day I posted a report of a One Hour Wargames scenario played using some rules for OHW Warhammer 40K I found on Grid-Based Wargames.

I have been playing with the rules some more, thanks to the author answering my various questions, and being so kind as to post  the army lists from a campaign he ran, giving me an idea of how troop classifications work. Of course I have been using my Epic 40K stuff, but I have found that the game is abstract enough to handle the switch.

Needless to say I have been tweaking and changing the rules as I play, although oddly enough, for me, nothing too radical at this stage. However I didn't bother taking any pictures; the picture above is one I staged after a game to show roughly what a game looks like (with the markers and dice removed, as no-one wants to see those). It's the Control The High Ground scenario from One Hour Wargames, and features Evil Sunz Orks attacking Imperial Guard.

You can find the rules at the second link above, and I heartily recommend that you do. The rest of the post won't make much sense unless you do.

Most of the changes I have made have been to the special abilities. The game seems to work best if all units have some kind of ability, to give them a bit of flavour. But I felt that the list was a little limited; partially, I suspect, because of the author's desire to get the whole thing onto one page. One Page Be Damned, I say. I'm happy to go to two in exchange for a few lines of clarification and some more chrome. So I started fiddling with the abilities, changing existing ones and adding new ones.

These are the lists I used for a couple of runs of the scenario above, for example. After it I will go through the changes to the existing rules. The special abilities are in italics.

Imperial Guard

2 x Guardsmen - 10 Troops, Light Armour, Ground, Tactical Weapons, Heavy Bolters
1 x Elite Guard - 10 Troops, Light Armour, Ground, Tactical Weapons, Veterans
1 x Commissar - 4 Character Points, Ground, Tactical Weapons, Veteran
1 x Gorgon - 4 Armour, Ground, Support Weapons, Shield (Can transport one unit of Guardsmen, Elite Guard or the Commissar)
2 x Leman Rus - 4 Armour, Ground, High-Force Weapons, Heavy Bolters
1 s Shadowsword - 5 Armour, Ground, High-Force Weapons, Armour-Piercing
1 x Manticore - 3 Armour Points, Ground, Ordnance, Barrage

Orks

2 x Boyz - 10 Troops, Light Armour, Ground, Tactical Weapons, Consolidate
1 x Warboss - 4 Character Points, Ground, Power Assault Weapons, Warlord
2 x Battlewagons - 3 Armour Points, Fast Ground, Support Weapons, Charge (Each can transport one unit of Boyz or the Warboss)
2 x Buggies - 2 Armour Points, Fast Ground, Support Weapons, Hit and Run
1 x Gun Wagon - 3 Armour Points, Fast Ground, High-Force Weapons, Unpredictable
1 x Stomper - 5 Armour Points, Ground, Power Assault Weapons, Blade

Veterans and Warlord are unchanged from the rules.

The other abilities are mostly refinements of existing, broader abilities. What I have done is take simple 'Add 2D6' abilities and made them conditional. I hope this offers more variety and increases tactical decisions.

Here we go:

Heavy Bolters - The unit gets +2D6 when firing at Troops at one square range (A lot of tanks and similar things seemed to get an assault bonus. I wanted something similar for armies that shoot as a tactic)

Shield - Ignore all hits from one attack once per game (This is Mechanic/Droids renamed, as the Mechanic abiity is something different I'm working on).

Armour-Piercing - When firing at Non-Troops you may reroll a number of dice up to the original armour value of the target. (This is to cover big, big guns tailored for taking out large opponents.)

Barrage - Applies to Ordnance Weapons only. When a weapon with this ability fires, place a marker in the target square. For the rest of this turn, no unit may enter or leave the square unless activated with a winning roll of 5 or more. (This covers artillery which lays down a storm of fire, or things which affect the ground, such as mole-mortars. You could use Sniper in the existing rules for weapons which ignore cover.)

Consolidate - Once per game the unit may, when activated, roll 1D6 for every hit currently scored on it. On a roll of 4 or more the hit is removed. (This covers units with good organisation who can reform in the face of adversity, or, for Orks, the fact that they may have hordes of Gretchin cannon-fodder following them around, soaking up casualties. It needs a better name.)

Charge  - Place a marker on this unit when it moves into a square with an enemy unit. The next time the unit engages in assault combat, as an activation or a counterattack, it gets +2D6. (This is a conditional variant of the Stomp/Walker ability, which I felt was a little bland, just giving a +2D6 to all Assault combat.)

Blade - The unit gets +2D6 in assault combat against Non-Troops. (Another variation on the Stomp/Walker ability. I have a third - Overrun - which gives a unit +2D6 in Assault combat against Troops)

Hit and Run - Applies to Fast units only. The unit may choose to fire and then move as an action. The movement takes place before any counter-attack from the firing. (Allows fast vehicles to harrass more dangerous opponents)

Unpredictable - The unit rerolls any scores of 6 it gets in combat. On a 4+ the an additional hit is scored. However if any of the unit's original D6 scored a 1, roll a single D6. On a 4+ the unit takes a hit. (I created this specifically for the Orks, who have weapons that can be randomly dangerous, sometimes to the users)

Abilities I haven't tried yet are:

Flame Weapons - If the unit scores any hits in an assault then the target cannot counter-attack.

Steadfast - The unit can always counter-attack.

I'm still working on a Berserk/Fury rule, as well as something for Chaos Blessings.

I dropped Observer as an ability. Instead my rules for indirect fire are:

For every unit you currently have in your force with Ordnance weapons, you get one observer marker. At the start of your turn, you can place these markers on any friendly unit or units. If the unit is destroyed, or is activated, then any markers on them are removed for that turn, but can be used on subsequent turns. When the Ordnance Weapon is activated it may fire on a square adjacent to a unit with an observer marker. The observer marker is then used for that turn.

Ordnance can fire at squares containing friendly units. Ordnance cannot fire into its own square. You really don't want to have your artillery assaulted.

The games I played with the lists above ran very smoothly and were great fun. The Orks failed to take the hill in either of them, but it was a tough fight for the Imperials. The second game saw a Leman Rus tank on the hill holding off assault after assault until the Imperial reinforcements fought their way through a swarm of dodging buggies and battlewagons. It was a close-run thing.

King Of The Hill

I introduced Caesar's son Kaleb to Battlesworn this evening. He took my newly printed and painted Dwarves, whilst I used the Uruk Hai. The warbands were:

Dwarves

1 x Warlord (Brute/Tank)
4 x Warriors (Fighters)
4 x Armoured Guard (Tanks)
1 x Mechanical Stonethrower (Arquebusier/Tank)

Uruk Hai

4 x Pikemen (Fighters)
4 x Warriors with armour and shield (Tanks)
2 x Warriors with Crossbow (Arquebusiers)
1 x Berserker (Berserker/Brute)

We played the King Of The Hill scenario from the book, except the hill had one level with a stone plinth on the top. Whoever occupied the plinth at the end of 15 turns would win. Or you could kill the enemy warband and win that way.

I took the initiative on the first couple of turns, and quickly got an armoured warrior onto the plinth. Kaleb moved up a couple of his armoured Dwarves to oppose me.

I moved some pikemen around the flank to prevent him launching an all-out attack on the warrior on the plinth. After throwing a couple of rocks ineffectively the stone-thrower was committed to melee. A Dwarf attacked the warrior on the plinth, but came off badly.

The first casualty. I tried to charge the Dwarf Warlord, and was intercepted. With one mighty swing the Uruk Hai warrior cut down his opponent.

More figures were sucked into the fight. I kept my crossbows in the woods. If Kaleb did get a figure onto the plinth, they would shoot it down.

The first Dwarf to attack the plinth was finally killed, but the Warlord now entered the fight.

Another Dwarf joined in, and the King of the Hill was soon wounded. Meanwhile the Uruk Hai berserker swept into action, although not by choice.

Kaleb looks satisfied as the berserker was cut down by a five dice rolling four sixes. If only his dad could roll like that.

The Uruk Hai warrior was finally toppled from his plinth.

The Warlord was still stuck in combat, so Kaleb had one of his armoured warriors climb onto it. I reacted with the crossbows, who both missed when the lucky Dwarf dodged the shots.

We were now onto the last turn. I managed to throw two figures into the attack, albeit that one was seriously wounded. The wounded warrior died, and the other missed.

Kaleb was King Of The Hill.

He picked the game up very quickly and won it the way the scenario probably should be won; wait until the last possible minute before getting onto the plinth to prevent the enemy from mounting an effective attack to topple you. The Uruk Hai crossbows were executed after the fight for incompetence.

I lost five figures  - three Fighters, a Tank and the Berserker. Kaleb lost a Fighter and a Tank.

I managed to fail to take any pictures of the three - yes THREE - other games being played this evening. Caesar and Gary were playing Saga again (Welsh vs Anglo-Danes), Geoff and Dave played DBA (the game included Cyrus's great big tower, and I didn't see anything past that) and Ralph and Bryan played Team Yankee.

Knights and Knaves

In a comment on a previous post I was asked what I thought of the Knights and Knaves supplement for Battlesworn.

Firstly I should say that I haven't tried everything in it, but I've read it through a few times so feel qualified to make at least a few comments.

What do you get? Well, the big selling-point are the new character classes - Acrobat, Alchemist, Assassin, Bard, Beast, Berserker, Chaos Warrior, Construct, Druid, Giant, Monk, Paladin, Pistoleer, Priest, Ranger, Swarm, Witch, and Witch Hunter. There's some interesting ideas within the classes and my feeling is that they are best used like spices; a small pinch here and there to improve flavour, rather than a heavy, dominating dose. A number of them are restricted in the numbers you can have anyway, and some are restricted in that they can't be in warbands with other types (a Witch-Hunter and a Witch don't mix, for example).

The restrictions are the trickiest bit actually. All of the characters are now limited as to which other types (including those from the original rules) they are allowed to multiclass with. In some cases this restriction is a list of permitted types and in some cases it's a list of excluded types. I understand that this was done for editorial reasons - some types can only multiclass with a few things, so it makes sense to list just them, whereas other types can multiclass with lots of stuff, so it makes sense to include the exclusions only - but it is confusing to read. Fortunately there is a helpful chart in the back of the book noting the exclusions as well as which types cannot be in the same warband.

I haven't played with all of the new types yet, so haven't encountered too many issues, but I suspect I will have questions about them eventually as just from reading I can see one or two things which aren't explained as clearly as they could be.

There's more magic; some twelve new spells. Some of these are specific to the new Druid class (who also shares a coupe of spells with the Warmage and the Sorceror), but a few are new spells for the basic magic classes as well. I haven't tried any of them, but some of them look interesting, even if the names are a little silly (Switcheroo - swaps the position of any two figures in line of sight; great spell, silly name). You also get rules for potions, talismans and other magic items, which I can't say I found very exciting (one or two silly things in there again), but which certainly offer guidelines as to how to run such things in a specific scenario.

There is an optional rule for tied bids called Escalation, which I tried once and didn't really like. It does encourage figures to get stuck into a fight, so might be worth it for a straight head-to-head game, but in a scenario the rules would sit pretty strangely.

Finally there are set of rules for playing Battlesworn solo, using a chart to determine the non-player bids for initiative and combat. This is cleverly thought out, and not to bad to navigate once you get used to it and understand why certain results are included. There is a priority system for NPC actions and reactions, but players are encouraged to ignore this in favour of 'sensible' moves if they are the more obvious choice. I certainly do.

In summary, this is a curate's egg of a book. You will probably find things you like in it and things you don't, but you can pretty much use it that way anyway. I've enjoyed the solo rules, and tried some of the new classes quite happily. Other things I've looked at and decided they are not for me, but they may be helpful in the future.

If you like Battlesworn, then it's worth the purchase.

One Hour Wargames - Scenario 19 - Blow From The Rear

For my next One Hour Wargames report I am moving into a different genre - sci-fi (of a sort) using my Epic 40K collection. This was mostly because of my stumbling across these WH40K OHW Rules from HERE, a sub-page of the excellent Grid-Based Wargaming blog. They nagged away at my brain all weekend, so I decided that I would have to give them a try. It was a simple enough matter to adapt them to my Epic 40K collection on its HOTT bases.

In this scenario one side is guarding two river crossings. The other side is attacking them (from the left in the picture below). However they have sent a force around the flank and, part way into the game, it will appear in the defender's rear at the top of the picture. The defender has a reserve, bottom-left, which cannot activate until after the flank march arrives.

Are you with me so far?

The rules use a square grid, with multiple units allowed in a square. Since the scenario uses a 3' x 3' board normally, I created a 6 x 6 grid to best represent it. I used a 2' cloth, so you can work out that the squares are 4". This would be quite adequate to hold my 40mm frontage Epic 40K bases without them looking too lost in the square.

I added a few random areas of broken ground - rubble and brush, which all ended up along or alongside the road.

I decided to run Imperial Guard (defending) against Orks (attacking). Rather than six units a side I doubled up to twelve. I pretended to balance things as I classified troops, but have no idea if I really did so.

The armies were as follows (the classifications won't make much sense unless you read the rules):

Imperial Guard

4 Guardsman units - Light Armoured Troops, Ground, Tactical Weapons, 10 Hits
3 Leman Rus Tanks - Heavy Vehicle, Ground, High Force Weapon, 4 Armour Points
2 Manticore Rocket Launchers - Medium Vehicle, Ground, Ordinance, 3 Armour Points
1 Ratling Sniper unit - Light Armoured Troops, Ground, Tactical Weapons, Stealth, Sniper, 5 Hits
1 Rough Rider unit - Light Armoured Troops, Fast Ground, Assault Weapons, 5 Hits
1 Commissar - Character, Ground, Tactical Weapons, 3 Character Points, Special Ability - Once per turn can allow a friendly unit in the same square to reroll all of its combat dice.

Ork

4 Boyz units - Light Armoured Troops, Ground, Tactical Weapons, 10 Hits
2 Ork Tanks - Heavy Vehicle, Ground, High Force Weapon, 4 Armour Points
1 Stomper - Super-Heavy Vehicle, Ground, Assault Power Weapons, 5 Armour Points
2 Buggy units - Light Vehicle, Fast Ground, Support Weapons, 2 Armour Points
1 Madboy unit - Light Armoured Troops, Ground, Assault Weapons, Unreliable, 5 Hits
1 Warboss - Character, Ground, Power Assault Weapons, 3 Character Points

The Orks could give one Troop unit the Deep Strike ability. I gave it to the Madboyz.

'Unreliable' is a new ability I created for those Ork weapons which are erratic in their performance. Roll hits as normal. Reroll an 6's - a score of 4+ scores an extra hit on top of that scored by the 6. Reroll any 1's. Each score of 4+ scores a hit on the firing Ork unit.

I hoped that a combination of assault weapons, plus the fast buggies would give the Orks an attacking edge, whilst the Imperial Guard had some nice defensive artillery, plus a couple of units capable of mounting a counter-attack.

The Guard set up their defence; infantry covering the crossings with some tanks in the centre to provide supporting fire.

The artillery, Rough Riders and a tank were in reserve. The snipers were part of the river defence force, but actually appeared based on an initiative roll of '6'.

The first Ork unit appeared along the road - a Stomper. I changed the rules for roads. The author allows a unit on a road to move one square, then attack. I just allowed the possibility of faster movement with an attack only if you are a fast unit, as normal; if a unit is activated with a 5 or 6 and moves entirely along the road it moves two squares instead of one.

The Stomper was soon joined by a mob of Boyz and the Warboss. The tanks and buggies would be the flanking force.

The Stomper assaulted across the bridge.

It was followed by a horde of Boyz.

Disaster! Excellent shooting by the Imperial Guard, inspired by the Commissar, blew up the Stomper before it had a chance to score any real damage.

The Orks now committed to throwing all of their infantry across the bridge or provide supporting fire. The guard responded by mowing them down in droves.

At that point the battery on my phone ran out, so I put it on to charge and carried on with the game, accepting that there might be no more pictures.

The Ork infantry pushed as hard as they could, and the Imperials took some losses, but the Orks were soon down to a single infantry unit and the Warboss. At that point their flank-march arrived, and I had enough power on my phone to take some pictures.

The Imperial Guard had deployed their snipers in the wood to harass the armour as it arrived, but the buggies wiped them out in passing. However the Orks also landed the Madboyz by the ford, where they were cut down by Guardsmen before they could launch an attack. So much for the special units.

The tanks and buggies pushed forward, but the Imperial Guard sent Leman Rus tanks to hold them, supported by fire from the now activated Manticores.

By the river the Ork Warboss assaulted some Guard infantry.

Meanwhile the Commissar held the bridge against the last mob of Ork infantry, until they overwhelmed and killed him.

The Warboss defeated the first unit of Imperial Guard infantry, but was shot down by the second.

The Ork infantry at the bridge were wiped out by fire from the Manticores.

The flank-march never got anywhere. Fire from the Imperial tanks, plus artillery support destroyed the buggies, then picked off the tanks. The Orks were soon left with one vehicle. It was Turn 10 of 15. I ended the game.

I never have much luck with the attacker in this scenario. They start with half of their force opposing two thirds of the enemy force defending the river; odds of 3 to 4 against them. It's true that they don't have to attack, but in the OHW rules the defenders have the range to engage the attackers as they enter the board, and can spend six turns picking them off before the flank march arrives. The there is time to turn to face that and defeat it as well. In these rules the Orks could have held back because the range of most weapons in no more than one square. I added the rough going to provide some terrain interest, and one patch would have allowed the Orks to pepper the bridge defenders with fire from the safety of cover. So possibly a less aggressive approach was called for, rather than trying to force a river-crossing against the odds. Indeed the attackers don't need to actually cross the river; they win by there being no defenders within a certain distance of either crossing, so dominating them with fire is a possible strategy. One to try in a future game.

As for the rules, they were fun to play, although I found a few areas I wasn't sure about and others I wasn't happy with and would probably change slightly. I can see the initiative system offering some interesting choices and decisions in future games.

This is the first of these reports to use a gridded board.

Follow the rest of the scenario refights HERE

Dwarves for Battlesworn

I printed off a Dwarven warband for Battlesworn before we went away last weekend, but only got around to painting them this weekend.

The files were scaled for 18mm figures, but I increased them in size by 40% and the detail didn't go too fuzzy.

Here's the full warband - there's more than twelve slots there, giving the player a few options.

Four fighters.

These Dwarves have more armour, so would be classed as Tanks.

A couple of Dwarves with 'gonnes' - Arquebusiers.

Two personalities - a Dwarven Lord and a Forgemaster. The Lord could be a Brute/Tank, Tank/Leader of something similar. I'm not really sure what you'd class the Forgemaster as; a Warmage maybe.

The Tinkerer and a Rock-Lobber. The former has a jetpack, so could be a Flyer. The latter? Tank/Arquebusier seems a good bet.

Update: I played a quick game with them this evening, against an NPC Goblin force and using the King of the Hill scenario from the rules. They scored a fairly convincing victory, getting one of their Tanks onto the hill early on, then pushing other units closer to the Goblins in order to draw off attacks.In fact they took more casualties than the Goblins, losing two Fighters to a cave troll whilst the Goblins lost a Rogue early on. A lot of figures on both sides were on red or yellow by the end, though; had the game continued past the 15th turn casualties would have mounted quickly. And the Goblins had, on that last turn, finally pushed through to the objective - just too late.