Old Rules Never Die

When you write a set of rules, even one heavily derived from someone else's, and then post them on the 'net for others to see, it's always a great source of satisfaction to find people not only looking at them, but playing them as well.

About three years ago I put together Clobberin' Time, a simple set of rules for superhero skirmishes. To be honest it's been a while since I played them - over two years in fact - but it appears that they haven't gone entirely unnoticed.

The authors of the Old Heroes Never Die website is running a game of it at Kublacon at the end of May, featuring a scenario based around the still-classic X-Men #137 - 'Phoenix Must Die!'. I shall be looking forward to seeing more on this as it happens, as that comic was a defining moment in my love of comic-book superheroes.

In addition Natholeon, of Natholeon's Empires, has been modelling superhero RPG characters, basing them on various Heroclix figures, for use with Clobberin' Time, as can be seen HERE. He plans to run and document a game soon, and I shall be looking forward to that as well.

Update: Read The Anarcho-Bomb HERE

In fact, I almost feel inspired to play another game myself.

Epic 40K HOTT - Marines vs Chaos

I'm in a funny mood at the moment. I have a whole mass of games whirling around in my head that I want to play, or at least develop ideas for, but I don't seem to be able to summon up enough energy or enthusiasm to get on and actually focus on one. As usually happens when I'm offered too much choice I become paralysed and choose nothing. This is great when I'm shopping (it's the reason I generally buy very little at wargames shows) but a pain when you just want to play something.

Anyway, I forced myself to play something last night just so that I didn't spend another evening regretting not doing so. Since my Epic 40K stuff was still around after our recent camping trip, I set up a 24AP HOTT game - Space Marines vs Chaos.

I selected the makeup of each army randomly, assigning each a core force of 12AP of troops, then grouping some remaining elements into six groups of 4AP each and dicing for which three the army would get.

The Marines got 8 Blades (including the general), covering the Marines, Terminators and Dreadnoughts, plus two Knights (Land-Raiders) and a Hero (Chaplain). Chaos (represented by the forces of Slaanesh, in their fetching hot pink), got a God (Greater Demon), a Behemoth (Hellstrider), two Blades (Chaos Marines), four Hordes (Beastmen, Cultists and Traitor Guard), two Riders (Beasts of Slaanesh) and a Magician General (Chaos Sorcerer)

The Marines defended. I used terrain placement derived from DBA 3.0 and got an odd setup with four small areas of bad going along one diagonal - fields at one end and woods at the other. The Forces of Slaanesh found themselves attacking through the woods.

They quickly slipped the Riders through, hoping to harass the Marine's flank whilst the rest of the army came up. The Marines moved up the Land-Raiders to cover this attack.

They engaged.

Traitor Guard moved through the woods in support, as the Greater Demon of Slaanesh arrived.

The Marines had been doing well until the Demon arrived, but this changed. The hideous creature set to work dismembering the Imperium's elite.

The woods were creating a command issue for the Chaos troops, so the Sorcerer entered the fray directly, as it was now obvious that what was originally the diversionary attack was, in fact, going to be the main action.

The Sorcerer destroyed a Land-Raider as the Marines tried to form a line to meet the Chaos attack. They held some Marines in reserve in the centre, since Chaos had troops ready to advance on their stronghold if a gap were left. In the distance the Dreadnoughts and some marines faced what was actually a diversion; the Hellstrider.

The Hellstrider attacked the Dreadnoughts and destroyed them before the supporting Marines could swing onto its flank.

The Demon was now engaged with the Chaplain in a titanic, but fruitless, struggle. This continued until the Chaos Sorcerer blasted the Chaplain with eldritch energies, ensorcelling him.

The Marines were in trouble. They formed a new line, but the Demon, unwilling to quit the battle because of the fun it was having, was behind it in a moment. The Marines awaited the onslaught of the other Chaos troops ...

... but the battle was lost on the other flank as the Hellstrider and Marines fought in the fields. The Marines were wiped out and the rest of the army broke.

This was the end. The only permanent Chaos losses were an element of Riders. Some Hordes were destroyed, but quickly replaced. The Marines lost their Chaplain, the Dreadnoughts, a Land-Raider and two elements of Marines.

As with many games featuring one, the battle hinged on the God and the fact that it never went away. They are not that good at killing elements directly, but they can pin powerful enemy elements in stalemated combats or block recoils of less powerful ones, allowing other troops to secure the victory. The fact that the Marines army was extremely heavy on Blades also didn't help, as it left them too slow to respond to the rapidly developing Chaos attack on their flank.

Square-Grid Orks And Marines - The Stats

I fianlly dug out the notes I'd made on troop classifications for the square-grid Epic 40K game I played on our recent camping trip. Here they are.

Space Marines

Marine Commander - 5 Wounds, Ground, Assault Weapons, Veteran, Commander
Librarian - 3 Wounds, Ground, Psyker, Veteran
Marines - 10 Hits, Armoured, Ground, Tactical Weapons, Veteran
Land Raiders - 4 Armour, Ground, High-Force Weapons, Rapid Fire (Can transport Terminators)
Land Speeders - 3 Armour, Fast Skimmer, Support Weapons, Impetus
Terminators - 5 Hits, Heavy Armour, Ground, Power Assault Weapons, Veteran
Dreadnaughts - 2 Armour, Ground, Support Weapons, Overrun
Legion of the Damned - 10 Hits, Armoured, Fast Skimmer, Assault Weapons, Deep Strike, Berserk

Bad Moonz Orks

Ork Warlord - 5 Wounds, Ground, Power Assault Weapons, Warlord
Ork Warboss - 3 Wounds, Ground, Support Weapons, Veteran
Weirdboy Tower - 3 Armour, Ground, Psyker, Shield
Ork Boyz - 10 Hits, Light Armour, Ground, Tactical Weapons, Heavy Bolters
Tankz - 4 Armour, Ground, High-Force Weapons, Overrun
Stomper - 5 Armour, Ground, Power Assault Weapons, Blade
Battle-Wagon - 5 Armour, Ground, Support Weapons, Rapid Fire (Can transport Warlord)
Madboyz - 10 Hits, Light Armour, Fast Ground, Assault Weapons, Unstable

The abilities not in the original rules work as follows:

Berserk - In assault combat any scores of ‘6’ count as a hit, and are rerolled with the same chance of hit as before to see if additional hits are scored. Any scores of ‘6’ from the rerolls are rerolled and so on until no more sixes are scored.

Blade - +2D6 in assault combat against non-troops.

Commander - If you have a commander then you can decide which player wins initiative on a tie, the player acting as if they had that roll. If both sides have a Commander on the field then ties are rerolled as normal.

Heavy Bolters - +2D6 vs Troops in ranged combat

Rapid Fire - When firing ordnance or ranged, any scores of ‘6’ count as a hit, and are rerolled with the same chance of hit as before to see if additional hits are scored. Any scores of ‘6’ from the rerolls are rerolled and so on until no more sixes are scored

Shield - Once per game may ignore ALL hits from one attack.

Overrun - +2D6 in Assault combat vs Troops

Unstable - After D6 are rolled for combat, reroll any 6’s with a 5+ counting as an additional hit on the enemy unit, but any scores of 1 being treated as a hit on the firing unit (which cannot be blocked or saved).

Psychic - A psyker can roll up to six dice in either assault combat or ranged combat, or can indirectly target any square on the board adjacent to or containing a friendly unit with up to four dice. Sixes are rerolled as for Beserk. After the combat roll a D6 - if the score is less than the number of hits scored, then the Psyker takes one hit. For the purposes of this roll, count double the hits scored if the attack was indirect, or if the target square contains an enemy Psyker.

I will probably drop the indirect attack from the Psyker, as it seemed very deadly in the game. In addition, after creating lots of abilities by making more specific versions of the originals, I may look at reigning in my enthusiasm and drop some of them. I created more abilities to give the individual armies more character, but I am rather taken by the original author's idea of traits for the entire force. If those are used then two armies with similar, simple abilities on certain troop types still differ from each other in the trait assigned to their particular army. It's something I will have to investigate in future games.

More Chain of Command

We had another go at Chain of Command last night. Gary put together a very busy table (despite an unfortunate lack of green cloth to act as a backdrop) and we played one of the scenarios from the book, with a force of Germans looking to break through a Russian defence and capture a jump-off point near their baseline.

Here's the setup, looking down the table from the Russian baseline.

John and Caesar took the Germans, whilst Gary and I ran the Russians.

The Russians got off to a good starat, bringing on a reasonable number of troops early on, and we moved to occupy a forward position in the buildings.

This was a bad plan. The low mounds along the road pretty much blocked out line of fire to any of the rapidly advancing groups of Germans. They swiftly set up LMGs covering our lead infantry squad, and then subjected them to a withering fire, which we could neither avoid, nor reply to.

To the bottom right of the picture can be seen the objective, with a strong force of Russians covering it. This force did have a reasonably clear view of the battlefield, and the Germans sensibly avoided hurling themselves straight at the objective. Mid-left can be seen another line of Russians covering against an advance on that flank.

Here's our defensive line, showing Gary's lovely Russians, and one of the very nice jump-off point markers he's made.

Here's the other flank - infantry along the hedge-line and an MMG in the building. The Germans are skulking behind the wood, unwilling to expose themselves to the MMG.

In the end the German players realised that they could just whittle down the Russian morale and win by making the entire force run away. And, essentially, that's what they did, routing our exposed force and then threatening the others. We had defended the objective reasonable well - the forward position was a mistake, but most of our other troops were well sited - but the Germans effectively changed the nature of the objective. We actually found the text of the scenario confusing, and felt that with the attackers under no time pressure they could afford to go for a slow, methodical, wearing down of the defenders, rather than actually having to go for the objective in any meaningful way. That aside we enjoyed the game, though, with the mechanisms providing much entertainment.

Epic 40K On Tour

It's my birthday, so once again I celebrated it by going away for a long weekend. Fortunately the weather wan't as appallingly cold as last year, because this year we decided that we would go camping - a bold move in winter, even winter in coastal New South Wales.

We ended up spending three night near Gloucester, then moved to the coast and spent a couple of nights in the Myall Lakes National Park. But frankly you just want to hear about the games, and won't be at all interested in the scenery and the dolphins.

Here's some scenery anyway. I only really got chance to set up figures on one day, and this was the setting, on the banks of the Manning River near Woko National Park.

I wanted to try out some more of the gridded Epic 40K game I've been playing recently, so took some Bad Moonz Orks and Space Marines with me. I set up a game using one of the One Hour Wargames scenarios - Scenarion 7 - Flank Attack (2)

And here it is. In the distance you can see Catherine fishing. She didn't catch anything.

Back to the scenario. This saw the Orks defending a hill-line against a Space marine attack. However the Marines had worked their way onto the Orks' flank, leaving a small holding force to the front, and were poised to deliver a mighty blow!

I haven't got the army lists and special abilities to hand, so I'll stick them in another post. I ran the game on a 6 x 6 grid, with twelve units per side and six activations allowed.

The Marines attacked vigorously along the ridge, mostly against the Ork Boyz stationed there. The ridge was made up of six squares and I rules that there must be at least one unit in each square. My Ork Defence had Boyz on the end just to hold it and then the better quality stuff further along, to mount a counter-attack. A more interesting approach, with hindsight, would been to have randomly distributed the Orks, to reflect their lack of preparation.

Anyway, the Orks organised a counter-attack. Beyond the ridge their tanks and a Stomper prevented a flanking move by the Marine Land-raiders, whilst in the centre the Ork Battle-Fortress, carrying the mighty Warlord himself, was poised to dive in where needed. Both armies had psykers - the Marine Librarian can be see top-right, whilst the Orks' Weirdboy Battletower is out of shot to the left. I'd not tried psykers before.

Later in the game ...

The Marines had secured a foothold on the end of the ridge, but their flanking move had come unstuck in the face of the Ork war-machines. The Warlord and the Battle-Fortress had been thrown in against the Marines at one end, and were slaughtering the Imperium's finest. In the foreground the Marines' commander was moving into the action.

It went downhill from there for the Marines. The Orks kept attacking and the Marines kept dying. This picture shows the Marine commander and a unit of tactical Marines fending off an assault by the Battle-Fortress, a Warboss and some Boyz. They failed ...

Soon the Marine commander was left to face the greenskins on his own. He didn't last long.

And that was it - game over, and a convincing Ork victory.

I had lots of special abilities in play, and had trouble keeping track of some of them, so it took me a couple of hours to play. I will need to tweak a few of them. I tried allowing psykers an indirect attack, but found that it was far too powerful, so I'll probably drop it. As they stand they have a decent direct attack, but risk taking damage themselves. That's probably good enough to make them different from other troops.

The ridge was a funny area of terrain to fight over. The effect of hills in the gridded rules is that they conceal units; they can't be engaged by ranged attacks except those that are counter-attacks. This essentially means that the battle became a long series of close-assaults, as once both armies were ensconced on the ridge they couldn't shoot at each other. Annoyingly both armies had units with ranged attack special abilities, so I didn't get a chance to try those out as much as I'd have liked.

I considered a second game, but whilst I'd enjoyed the first I wasn't sure I was up for the mental effort of keeping track of everything. So I moved my table to a new bit of shade, and set up a game of Epic 40K HOTT instead - I had enough units to form two 24AP armies, found a measuring stick marked in inches in my box of stuff, and have the rules in my head. I even had a totally un-40K castle I could use as a stronghold.

The armies were

Marines

1 x Blade General (Commander)
4 x Blades (Marines)
3 x Knights (Land Raiders)
1 x Hero (Chaplain)
1 x Rider (Land Speeders)
1 x Warband (Legion of the Damned)

Orks

1 x Behemoth General (Warboss in Battle Fortress)
1 x Behemoth (Stomper)
4 x Hordes (Boyz)
1 x Warband (Madboyz)
1 x Magician (Weirdboy Battletower)
1 x Warband (Nobz)
2 x Knights (Tankz)

The Orks defended in the first game, with the Marines attacking on either side of a ruined city.

The Ork war-machines counter-attacked en masse. The Weirdboy was flanked, but saw off his opponents, and then ensorcelled the Marines' Chaplain ...

... who promptly escaped the Ork fortress, and captured it.

Moral: If you are the defender, never ensorcel an enemy Hero unless it wins you the game outright.

The second game saw the battlefield dominated by even more ruins, as the Orks defended again.

Again the war-machines attacked en masse, whilst the hordes of Boyz tried to delay the Marines' vehicles.

Disaster! The Marines lost their commander.

But their losses at that stage were lower than those suffered by the Orks, and the Marines kept fighting. Even returning all of their lost Hordes couldn't stop the accumulation of Ork casualties as the Imperium doggedly fought to another victory.

That was it for miniatures during my break. A few days later we played some games of Exploding Kittens in a restaurant, but I took no photos. They were both excellent games, though. The first ended with one card in the draw pile and two of us desperately trying to avoid taking it (because, of course, it had to be an Exploding Kitten). The second game ended less than halfway through the deck after most of the Kittens cropped up in a tight group causing mayhem, explosions and much merriment.

Now I must go, and edit the photo of the dolphins ...