Fire As She Bears!

Over the last few weeks I have been tidying up various house-rules I have used in 'Form Line of Battle' 4.0, as well as creating new ones. I have alluded to some of them in a few posts, but thought it would be worth sharing them here.

A ship which has declared a tack takes a modifier of -1 during that action phase.

(Tacking was a difficult process that occupied the crews' attention so I felt a small penalty was deserved.)

Ignore the rules for 5th, 6th and Unrated vessels firing on larger ships. Instead apply the following modifier.

A ship firing on one of a larger rate may suffer a penalty. Subtract the target’s rate from that of the firer (Unrated vessels count as 7th Rate), and subtract a further 1. Any positive score is subtracted from the base score. This can be summarised as:

Target’s Rate
Firer is:	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th
1st	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2nd	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
3rd	-1	0	0	0	0	0	0
4th	-2	-1	0	0	0	0	0
5th	-3	-2	-1	0	0	0	0
6th	-4	-3	-2	-1	0	0	0
7th	-5	-4	-3	-2	-1	0	0

Firing is otherwise resolved normally; no damage reductions are applied.

(The rules as written for ships of small classes firing on larger ones are probably fairly accurate, and rarely come into play anyway, as most games involve ships of similar sizes. But they lack granularity, and there are situations where ships on the borderline are either unfairly penalised or not penalised. I think this table strikes the right balance.)

A ship with a 0 Broadside Rating (from damage) may still shoot. Treat as a Broadside Rating of 0 for determining factors, but apply an additional -3.

(Ships reduced to a 0 Broadside don't automatically strike, but currently can no longer fight. This rule assumes that they can, from time to time, get some guns firing, at east until the odds catch up with them and they haul down their colours.)

Critical hits now depend on the range.

Roll	Point Blank/Short	Medium/Long
1	Captain	Captain
2	Mast	Mast
3	Wheel	Wheel
4	Fire	Fire
5	1 Hull	Mast
6	2 Hull	1 Hull

Note a Critical is scored on any double which scores a ‘rr’ hit, or any roll of Double 6 if a hit was possible with a 2.

(This change makes Criticals more likely - I find they don't really happen often enough - and also covers the fact that ships would be firing higher at longer range.)

I have split Unrated/Class 7 ships into two gun classes.

Gun Class E now represents Unrated ships armed with long guns. The range modifiers are:

Point-Blank +2, Short 0, Medium -4

Gun Class F now represents Unrated ships armed with carronades. The range modifiers are:

Point Blank +3, Short 0

(Currently ships with a Gun Class of E get a better bonus at Point Blank range than larger gun-armed ships of Gun Class B. And I thought that it was worth differentiating between gun- and carronade-armed ships even at this size.)

Simple Bases For Napoleonic Ships

In my previous post I mentioned that I'd been rebasing my Napoleonic ships whilst on holiday. In fact I'd done a few before I went away, but they were test runs to make sure the process worked before I committed to spending a week cut off from most of my stuff.

Anyway, here's what the new bases look like. If you look at past posts you'll see that the ships are just based on blue mounting board. They now have something that looks like water and waves on it.

And here's how I did it.

Here's an old base. The grey blobs are the bits of Blu Tak which have been holding a ship in place for nigh on 30 years. Really. The pieces of paper are cut to be just bigger than a base. One piece of paper per base. The bases themselves are mounting board. Not the really thick stuff though. Although I know it makes things easier to handle this (mostly American) concept of mounting things on half-inch thick plinths isn't for me.

I then screwed up each piece of paper very tightly. If I was feeling keen I unfolded them and screwed them up again.

The pieces of paper unfolded.

I then used PVA to glue the paper to the base. Because it's a bit bigger than the base I had to scrunch it up a little, using the creases the screwing up had provided.

Each base was painted in blue. I used cheap artist's acrylic paint. It doesn't need anything more sophisticated.

Once the paint was dry I gave each base a wash with dark green paint.

And here's how they look when the wash has dried.

Finally I dry-brushed each base in white. You can really go to town on this bit. I picked out the crests of big waves in a heavier brushing

Finally I glued a ship down on each base. This did involve squashing some of the crests, and on later bases I glued the centre of each piece of paper more smoothly, reserving the waves for the edges.

(Sorry about the distracting newspaper background)

I actualy painted these two luggers whilst on holiday, and based them as well.

In fact there's a final stage I didn't take a picture of. Once the ship was glued down I used some more white dry-brushing to paint a bow-wake, a wake and to cover the point where the ship meets the base. Just detailing really.

The process is fairly quick and simple. I managed to do the bases for about 40 ships over the week, and have another 40-50 to go.

Top Tip: When going on holiday with a project involving PVA glue, remember to pack enough PVA glue to see you past the first day. If you haven't done this, make sure you're staying near a town that has a craft shop. A sewing shop, specifically. Thank you Sew and Tell in Berry.

Holiday Games

Despite living in  country the size of a continent we went for a low-key approach to our holiday this year, travelling a mere 40 minutes down the coast to house-sit for one of my friends whilst they went off to Hong Kong. They got to take their kids to Disneyland. We got to look after their three dogs, four chooks and a cat, whilst living in their lovely house out in the countryside. Easy.

This was the view from our bedroom window

Despite the temptation to just sit and look at this all day, and I did spend a lot of the day doing that, reading Patrick O'Brian and Lankhmar books on the verandah, we did a few trips out and also managed to play a few games.

So here are the games we played.

Tsuro. Although it's got a Chinese dragon motif laid over it it's basically the light-cycle sequence from the original Tron realised as a board game. The two thugs on the right are my children, who freeloaded on us for the week when they could have stayed at home and looked after our pets. However my son is learning to drive, so took most of the driving chores for the week so he could tot up plenty of hours for his log-book.

Treehouse. We played this in a pub-restaurant in Kangaroo Valley, much to the bemusement of the barman.

Carcassonne. We also played this in the pub.

We played a few games of Carcassonne at home as well. My children have definitely reached the stage where they understand the tactics, so they run rings around me now.

I played a coupe of games of Solitaire Caesar as well. This was one of the most successful games I've ever played, with an extensive and powerful Roman Empire reaching its height in 300AD.

Of course the collapse, when it came, was rapid. This was the position in about 600AD, when Rome fell to the barbarians.

And this is where the remains of the Empire clung on for century after century. Heaven knows how, but Rome's might lingered on in Mesopotamia until the 15th century.

Going into the last turn the Empire's capital was all that was left - Babylon, the Rome of the East. It fell in 1485 to the Ottomans.

A second game almost turned into a disaster when Rome fell in about 700AD, to be followed by the whole Eastern empire a couple of turns later. But Roman power lingered on in Sicily, and a resurgence in the 11th and 12th centuries saw the whole Italian peninsula recaptured. Once again the Empire fell to the Ottomans in 1485 - the last turn of the game - but it was Rome itself which fell. A very unusual game.

My daughter and I were scheduled to play Hellas as well, but she got word that she'd been offered a place at university, so passed on the game in favour of sorting that out.

I also did some work rebasing my Napoleonic ships. That will be covered in another post though.

Oh, that view in the first picture? We had a few storms during the week, and I got this photo:

Tibetan Army Lists for 'Hordes of the Things'

I'm on holiday at the moment, so you're getting scheduled posts consisting of old pieces from the original Stronghold. This pair of lists were posted by Karl Heinz Ranitzsch.

I have developed these HOTT army lists for Tibetan armies. They are derived from the stories and legends surrounding the struggle betwen the native Tibetan Bon religion and the recently introduced Buddhism around the middle of the 1st milleniumn AD.

BON TIBETAN

Stronghold: Tibetan castle
1 Magician @ 4 AP - Bon Shaman-priest - 4 AP
1 Knight General @ 2AP- 2 AP
3 Knights @ 2 AP- Tibetan Nobles - 6 AP total
1 Riders @ 2 AP- Nomad allies - 2 AP
2 Warband - Mountain tribe foot - 4 AP
1 Lurker - Yeti - 1 AP
1 God - Sky deity - 4 AP
1 Hordes - lesser earth spirits - 1 AP

Alternatives:
Replace knights or knight general with spears (dismounted knights)
Classify Yeti as beast
Behemoth - Earth giant
Dragon - Giant black-spotted Tiger
Shooter - Skilled archers
Flyers - lesser sky spirits or shaman with magical flying device
Water Lurker - Lake Spirit

Comments:
A Tibetan castle looks much like a European castle built on a rocky outcrop. It has square towers, whitewashed walls an Chinese-style roofs. The knights should be fully-armoured cataphracts. Tibetan legends abound with all kinds of monsters, of which you can take your pick. The black-spotted tiger can spout flames not only from its mouth, but from its rear end as well. No self-respecting Tibetan fantasy can be without an abominable snowman. Portray the Yeti as either a red-haired ape in its Western image, or, closer to the Tibetans' idea about it, as a were-bear.


BUDDHIST TIBETAN

Stronghold: Buddhist temple or Stupa reliquiary.
1 Hero General @ 4 AP - Gesar Khan - 4 AP
1 Cleric @ 3 AP - Buddhist monk - 3 AP
1 Flyers @ 2 AP - Apsaras - 2 AP
1 Beast @ 2 AP - Snow Lion - 2 AP
1 Artillery @ 3 AP - Man-powered rope-pulled Catapult @ 3 AP
4 Knights @ 2 AP - Tibetan nobles - 8 AP
1 Riders @ 2 AP - Nomad allies - 2 AP
Alternatives: Knight General - lesser Tibetan king
Replace knights with spears (dismounted knights)
Flyer - Levitating monk
Shooter - Skilled archers
Warband

Comments:
Gesar Khan is an epic hero of many Tibetan and Central Asian folk tales. Portray him as a horseman in splendid Mongol-style armour, rather than as a cataphract. Apsaras are the Buddhist equivalent of Angels. Portray as young flying women without wings. Tibetan Snow Lions look like Chinese lion statues, but with white fur and red mane.

GENERAL COMMENTS
If you want to class these lists as good and evil, the Buddhist would be the 'Good' list and the Bon one the 'Evil'. The surviving adherents of the Bon religion may wish to differ, however.

Possible semihistorical enemies would be Chinese, Steppe Nomad, Indian and Arab armies.

Thunderball

Another blast from my wargaming past. These pictures were taken at 'Campaign' in Milton Keynes on May 23rd 2004. They are from The Staines Wargamers' 'Thunderball' paticipation game, which is based on the big fight at the end of the Bond film of the same name. The figures are plastic toy divers, with the sharks and octopus from the same source. The sleds and mini-sub were scratchbuilt, and the Vulcan bomber is a 1/72nd scale kit from Airfix.

SPECTRE ready for the off. Each side consisted of three groups, corresponding to up to three players. SPECTRE had two groups of divers, and one mini-sub, escorted by a couple of divers with sleds.

The Forces of Good - Navy divers on their start-line. The Navy had three groups of four divers. On both sides each diver was armed with a single-shot spear-gun, and a knife for close combat. The sleds each had two spear-guns, and the mini-sub had four. These could be fired individually, or as a volley.

SPECTRE Divers swimming past the stolen Vulcan bomber, hidden under its camouflage netting.

The two forces advance towards each other. The greenery is made from plastic aquarium plants.

SPECTRE advances. Their aim was to get the mini-sub, carrying two atomic bombs taken from the Vulcan, off the opposite board-edge.

Most games developed into a battle around the mini-sub. Divers could be killed, or just wounded. If wounded, they bled. And the blood attracted sharks. Sharks would home in on the nearest wounded figure, so there was always some tactical positional play designed to lure them in enemy divers.

In this picture two players advance the Navy divers according to a cunning plan. In the foreground can be seen the Bucket of Blood and some sharks waiting to be attracted by it.

A shark swims towards the Vulcan bomber whilst one of SPECTRE's younger members moved some divers. Behind him can be seen trade-stands, stretching away into the distance. We took this game to a few shows during the year, including Salute and Valhalla.

The shark is on the playing cards used to randomly determine the order in which the groups acted during the turn. Bottom right can see the fluffy white cat, which the person adjudicating the game was allowed to stroke in a suitably villainous manner. At Salute we were put in a room with a big black swivel chair as well, so most club members involved in thh game got to discover their inner Blofeld.

Here's the mini-sub under attack again. This time the fight has disturbed a giant octopus from its lair. The octopus was secretly positioned somewhere on the board, and emerged when a diver, sub or sled passed too close to where it lurked.

Whilst the spear-guns hit or missed according to a die-roll, hand-to-hand combat was adjudicated by a round of scissors-paper-stone.

There one thing you'll notice is missing from the game - James Bond. Although we had a figure for him, he was never used. Early on we realised that he would just attract too much attention from the opposition, shifting the focus of the game, and distracting people from the actual objective. So he was left out.

Whilst the divers and subs were limited in their application elsewhere, the board saw later use in 20mm WWII Western Desert games, whilst the shrubbery appeared as jungle from time to time.