Archaeology is Hard to Spell

Despite recent setbacks for the Allied Venusian Expeditionary Force (AVEF), the civilian explorers who had tagged along on this inter-planetary adventure were not content to stay put in the security of the AVEF strongholds. 

Thus, it was that Professor Blackwood led an expedition to an ancient site that had piqued his curiosity - a site that bore evidence of a pre-lizard civilization, or at the very least, a center of pre-Bokrug worship. Accompanied by Lady Pennington, late of the Geographic Society and a celebrated traveler of Central Asia, a team of Royal Engineers and an armed contingent of French Legionnaires under the command Lieutenant Candide (who had volunteered his services in hopes of catching the attention of Lady Pennington), the party enjoyed a relaxing afternoon ransacking liberating artifacts from the ruins.

Lady Pennington and Professor Blackwood admire the heretofore unknown iconography.

Unbeknownst to the expedition, although not unanticipated, a native warband encircled their position.

When the fighting started, Lt. Candide ordered the civilians to retreat. Lady Pennington was reluctant - obeying orders isn't high on her list of priorities - but the professor seemed keen to return to safety.

"Ladies first, Lady Pennington."

He was, as she discovered, a bit keener about it than she had realized. Aided by Lt. Candide who engaged one of the great Saurian warriors who had taken a targeted line of attack for the retreating civilians.

"On second thought, age before beauty!"

The lizards breached the walls, but the defenders held their ground - certainly better than the AVEF had performed in recent clashes.

A second Saurian had attacked the Royal Engineers before turning his attentions to Lady Pennington. She would have none of that.

"You filthy creature, do you know who I am? I am your worst nightmare."

As the good Lady put her knife fighting skills to use, the surviving engineers made for a ford and crossed the river.

Lady Pennington left the wounded Saurian and fell back across the river - time was running out to get to safety, as Professor Blackwood reminded her. At least that's what she thought he said - he was running quite fast by that point and moving away from her rapidly.

"Devil take the hindmost!"

Speaking of devils and hindmosts, Lt. Candide was brought down by the fierce leader of the warband. At least he would never experience the pain of Lady Pennington's piercing brushoffs.

Both sides suffered significant loses - the Venusians more so than the Earthlings. The fighting ebbed until both sides disappeared into the jungle in the directions of their respective security.

For the AVEF, their valuable civilian scientists had survived, and the Legionnaires had held the ruins long enough to ensure their escape.

It was not a resounding triumph, but still, it was a much needed boost for the flagging morale of the AVEF troops.

****

Rules used were Age of Fantasy : Skirmish, half ranges for everything since I was playing on a 3' x 3' square. This was a 300 point per side game. The lizards used the AoF:S Saurian list, while the AVEF used the Duchies of Vinci (I use the crossbow stats for the rifles - it works). 

I set 5 turns for the game - to win, the AVEF had to get their two high-value targets out of harm's way, and hold the ruins long enough so they could escape.  

The ruins were contested when the game ended, but Lady Pennington and the professor had escaped.  So that seemed good enough to call it a minor victory for the AVEF (they needed one).

To further aid the AVEF, my lizards were distributed by die roll, which led to them being spread quite far apart - which made some of the heroes abilities to give bonuses to other figures moot.

If you're wondering why the Royal Engineers took off across the river - after they delayed the one Saurian warrior they had really done all they could do. They only had melee weapons as they were on artifact liberation duty.

Lady Pennington, by the way, as is fitting for her, was statted as a Duchies of Vinci assassin (Quality 4+, Defense 5+, armed with dual poisoned arm blades as well as throwing knives). The professor was a Vinci Scholar. Poor Candide was a Vinci Leader, for all the good it did him.

I should add that Lady Pennington and that coward Blackwood have plot armor. If they had been killed, they would have been captured instead.

Man the Walls!

Although I had planned to write up the Family Fall Festival Cthulhu Dark game, I was overcome by the desire to play a miniatures game set on Venus and gave into temptation as it were.

I was thinking about One Hour Wargames and how I like my VSF mish-mash version, but I really don't like little dice on the table trailing the units around (as of the other day - sometimes I don't care).

Hordes of the Things doesn't have this issue and while I have never played it or even read the whole book, I do have it and have seen plenty of game reports. 

So, I cherry picked a bit from it and had myself a game of what I am calling "HoTT and Lazy" (lazy because I am not using more than few of the combat rules). This is actually the second game played with the rules - the first one was spent tweaking things every turn. A re-match was in order (outcomes were the same).

***

The Allied Venusian Expeditionary Force (AVEF) after two recent disasters, became aware of movements towards a lonely outpost - one of the outer ring of small fortifications that provide a first line of defense for the AVEF zone (they think it's a zone; the local residents feel otherwise). 

A relief column was sent out almost immediately.

The fort's garrison held off frontal assaults by bands of determined lizard warriors, but on both the left and right, lizard forces were bearing down hard surround the defenders.

The AVEF's lancers (The Duke's Own), leading the relief force, were the first to arrive to aid the beleaguered fort.

The AVEF infantry were thrown into battle immediately as the lizards begun turning the flanks - presenting opportunity for the AVEF. Teeth and claws, stone, steel, and lead cut down swaths of fighters on both sides

The gallant Lt. Taylor commands the relief force.

Disaster struck! In a swirling melee, Lt. Taylor met his end at the hands of the lizard hero.

Moments later the fort was overrun, and with their forces crumbling, the remaining AVEF troops were forced to fall back.

Fortunately for the AVEF generals, word of failures, such as these, takes a ridiculously long time to reach the politicians back on Earth.

***

From  a HoTT perspective these are 24 point forces:

• AVEF: 1 Hero (General), 1 Artillery (in the fort), 6 Shooters (1 in the fort, 5 in the relief force), 2 Riders.
• Lizards: 1 Hero (General), 1 Behemoth, 2 Shooters, 2 Spears, 4 Warband

Playing area was 36" wide by 24" deep. Lizard foot troops move 6", AVEF moves 4". 

I was undecided on how to handle the fort in this game.

In my first game, the night before, I played it as a stronghold in HoTT. In this game - I started treating it as two units in cover, but didn't like the idea of troops recoiling out of the fort. So, I let them ignore recoil. But after a number of them, I realized they might never be eliminted. 

So, eventually I decided they would count as two units for shooting (Gatling with a 12" range, rifles with an 8" range) but they would fight as a stronghold (+6) for close combat and if a garrison unit was forced to recoil it was destroyed.

I'm not sure what I'll do in the future - that's the fun of playing solo though. I can change my mind and my opponent goes along with it!

Family Game Preparation

As I mentioned the other day, our annual "Family Fall Festival" is coming up rapidly (this approaching Sunday as a matter of fact).

For this year's fare, I am steering clear of a miniatures-based experience, as time has slipped away from me for preparation. Since we primarily play RPGs in our friends and family gaming group, no one will bat an eye if I roll out an RPG scenario.

Although I still have plans to run Fall of Delta Green eventually, the sample adventure is potentially far too involved for a single session.

I have found a standard Call of Cthulhu one-shot adventure to run, but I will be instead running it with The Cthulhu Hack Cthulhu Grey, a rules-light game based on the even lighter Cthulhu Dark. Call of Cthulhu, 7th ed., is pretty easy to understand for the most part but I don't want a D&D 5e situation where everyone is reading their character sheets trying to figure out what they can do (which has, coincidentally, also been my experience playing Call of Cthulhu, albeit 6th ed.). 

Rules-light hopefully means we can get into it much faster without getting bogged down in mechanics and worrying about long lists of specific skills (characters have an occupation, three skills, and two stats).

The hard part, for me, is that I like the Family Fall Festival and Christmas games to stand out from the other gaming we do during the year. It's part of the celebration and I want it to feel that way to the players - not just ordinary ho-hum.

Minis are out, so I'm turning my attention to the ambiance. 

I've purchased a table cloth(we don't use tablecloths ever so while it's not spooky, it's different) and LED candles for lighting. 

Now, as I have trouble reading even in bright light, I know the dim light may be an issue - that's why I picked up 24 votive candles and three tapers. Unfortunately, in last night's testing, I found 3 or 4 votive candles each may not be enough - at least not for me. So, I'll probably order some more to make sure we're covered.

I have a playlist of 1920s music to put on in the background while I set up, and from which I'll segue into creepier ambient music when the game starts.

Sound effects on hand will include waves, wind, rain, lighting, and strange sounds, controlled from a venerable Boss SP-303 "Dr. Sample" rather than software on my phone or laptop (to minimize light from anything but candles).  

Sometimes being a music-gear pack rat pays off.

Now that I think about it, this whole thing has a performance vibe, where the actors don't know their roles until the day of. I digress ...

The adventure, like most Call of Cthulhu adventures, comes with player handouts. I'm getting those printed, since they are in color, and possibly aging some of them with tea or coffee. 

Strange coins play a role in the investigation, so I picked up some creepy made-of-metal prop coins from Etsy. 

Picture by The Unassailable Mage on Etsy

They don't match the ones in the story, but they are odd enough, and I got enough that each player can take one home as a memento. 

I also picked up inexpensive sets of five different d6s for each player. This is entirely self-serving so I can tell at a glance when someone's Harm or Insanity is higher than their other dice. It just happens to have the benefit that they can keep them to add to their collections after the game.

At the very least, if they don't have fun, they will at least come away with some goodies! (Is this bribery? Maybe.)

Finally, I was looking for a centerpiece for the table - there are plenty of cool looking Mythos statues on Etsy, but those typically cost more than I can afford to pay for a one-time use. I recalled I had some air dry clay left over and finding it still good, I decided to try a proof of concept.

Behold, an ancient (and tiny, like 3") evil idol

Cthuloid idol.

 

My crude (aka non-existent) sculpting skills actually work to my advantage here, I think. The downside, as I've encountered before with this stuff, is that it takes forever for the clay to dry completely when it's a thick chunk.

So, for the "final product", I made a mass of aluminum foil roughly in the desired shape and then applied thin strips of air dry clay.  At least that was the plan. I kind of used some thick lumps for the "legs".

Shub-Niggurath

Despite that deviation, in the whole, this process theoretically means it will dry quicker - which is good, since I need this all finished - including painted - by October 6!  My goal is a "crude and disconcerting ancient idol of a previously unknown religion" and  once the paint is applied I think it'll sell that even more.

Why Shub-Niggurath? (asked no one)

Because she's my favorite. 

Also because the adventure is tangentially based around one of the water-affiliated entities and I want to draw the players minds away from that at first - especially the ones familiar with the Lovecraft Mythos who will immediately grasp for Cthulhu and Dagon.

There's still a lot for me to do before Sunday not least of which is finishing converting the scenario from the format of the module to my preferred format for running (this process, though tedious, means I really learn the module, so that, ironically, the final document needs only minimal reference during the game).

Tonight I pick up my PA from the rehearsal space so I can start working on setting up the sampler. (See, it really is a performance!)

Finally, on top of everything, I've been re-reading some of my favorite Lovecraft stories -mostly to mine for his vocabulary for describing cosmic horror and the creeping dread that overcomes his protagonists as they realize the full horror of what they are experiencing.

I may post again before the game but if not, I'll see you on the other side!

AVEF Punitive Expedition

My attention has turned to prepping for our Family Fall Festival game (I'll be running a Call of Cthulhu RPG adventure using The Cthulhu Hack rules) but I still managed to setup and play a game this weekend:

After the devastating ambush of an Allied Venusian Expedition Force (AVEF) patrol, the allies decided to strike a retaliatory blow upon the lizard folk of Venus. A show of force would be made at a lizard gathering spot - an abandoned ancient temple complex known to be used by the lizard warriors as a gathering ground for exchanging intelligence about the Earthlings' movements. An engineer section would, if possible, blow the temple sky high.

Unfortunately, the lizard folk were well aware of the column fast approaching the ruin and sent a considerable force to oppose it.

Armies consisted of 6 units each which, 1/3 would arrive on turn 1, 1/3 on turn 2, and 1/3 on turn 3. The composition of each wave was determined randomly, with the exception of the AVEF cavalry, who would arrive from one of three potential flank points on a die roll on turn three or after, depending on the result. 

There are 5 objective points 1) the center thick jungle terrain on the AVEF edge , 2) the hill on the lizard edge, 3) the ford, 4) the thick jungle to the right of the AVEF (center top in the picture below), and of course 5) the temple complex. The temple complex is worth 2 points, everything else is worth 1 point. A tie is quite possible.

The forces arrive on the battlefield.

The French advance on the AVEF left, but it's slow going.

Lizard folk archers arrive on the hilltop, accompanied by a triceratops battle wagon to their left.

The stalwart Highlanders arrive in the AVEF center.

The lizards, unimpeded by their native jungle, reach the temple complex first.

The AVEF gatling makes its way into position - a clear lane of fire to the complex - while the Highlanders become entangled in the jungle growth.

First contact! Lizard skirmishers (of the Gecko tribe) tear through the jungle and crash into the advancing French. 

The Gatling opens fire on the complex. Unfortunately, they are hindered by the cover provided by the ancient stones, as well as by the fact that they are poor shots.

The French fall to the lizard skirmishers. They continue their relentless advance along the river.

The Gatling crew has no idea what is coming towards them. Meanwhile, more lizard forces arrive by land and, concerningly, by air.

Lady Luck finally shows favor to the AVEF; the lancers appear behind the lizard heavy troops (of the Marine Iguana tribe) and crash into the triceratops battle wagon.

Although greatly reduced by a hail of arrows, the Highlanders manage to reach the complex and engage the lizard archers in violent hand to hand combat in and around ancient walls and pillars.

Surrounded and vastly outnumbered, the lancers fight valiantly for Queen & Country & Planet.

When the Gatling crew fell, the AVEF flank was completely exposed - leaving the engineers and the commander in charge of the force to hold off the approaching Geckos and Pteranodons.

The battle wagon is knocked out of the fight, but the Marine Iguanas closed in. The lancers' luck has run out.

The AVEF is decimated. The few survivors are forced flee back towards their base, with a flight of Pteranodons no doubt pursuing overhead.

This was another crushing victory for the lizards. Now, it is true that I was playing them as "my" force, and even I look with suspicion upon the result. Still, I don't control die rolls or card draws. 

When I was setting up the sides, I had thought the superior fire power of the AVEF would help overcome any hidden bias. What I had failed to account for was 1) the limit to LOS presented by the crowded terrain which would greatly reduce the range their rifles could be effectively deployed from and 2) how my rules changes would impact things.

Once again, I used In Good Company. 

However, I added and changed a few rules:

The first modification changed what a unit could do on its activation. As played above, units can only take 1 action on their activation Move OR Shoot OR Melee (which might involve a charge into melee, but you get the idea) or for leaders, they could instead choose a leader action.

Movement was adopted from Contemptible Little Armies. The value to the left of the slash is for open ground, to the right is for rough ground. Lizards, being native, are not subject delay through the Venusian jungle, the way non-native troops are. The dice are rolled once per unit and apply to all figures in the unit.

• AVEF Foot units 2d3/1d3
• Gatling units 1d3/1d3-2
• Lizard Foot units 3d3/3d3
• Lancers 4d3/1d3
• Pteranodons 4d3/4d3

To try to preserve the rule about machine guns moving and shooting, I modified that bit to read:

• Machine guns and cannon may NOT move and fire in the same turn

That's actually quite a bit stricter, but it makes more sense given my restricting units to move OR shoot when activated.

Leader actions are:

• Order friendly unit within 6” to fire
• Order friendly unit within 6” to move 1d3”
• Attempt to recover any in hospital figures for a unit within 6”

Both sides made good use of these.

Finally, I added a morale rule:

If a unit ends a turn with only KIA and in-hospital figures, then it has routed/been destroyed and does not return.

Nothing earth shattering, but it would add just a little more to an enjoyable slim set of rules.

The rule change that had the most impact, I believe, was the rolling for movement. The AVEF just rolled horribly all around, but the Highlanders spent several turns traipsing through the jungle. They should have gone around - had they done that they could have brough the center into contention.

Whether that would have changed anything is up for debate - the AVEF, with the exception of the lancers, rolled poorly in close combat and especially so when checking to see if the figure was out of the fight, in the hospital another round, or back to its unit.

The morale rule, while I like it in theory, did mean that there was no chance for the French to come back from a rather devastating melee that ended with the remaining seven figures in-hospital. My new rule meant they would never get a chance to even check their status.

Perhaps a better rule is if a unit STARTS a turn with all of its figures killed or in-hospital, then they are routed/destroyed. That allows for every in-hospital figure to at least test once (on the STOP card that ended the previous turn) before a unit is written off.

One Hour Wargames Scenario Idea: Pozzuolo del Friuli

I am house/cat/plant sitting this week and I am away from my wargaming paraphernalia - so, I began looking at some of the non-painting/non-playing options I could pursue. 

Of late, I've been inspired by people taking historical battles and making scenarios from them. The problem, for me, is that I only rarely if ever have the necessary kit or space for those kinds of games. However, One Hour Wargames scenarios often approximate a historical situation (beyond the ones that inspired their creation), and those take up very little space and are forces I can muster.

So, taking my interest in the Battle of Pozzuolo del Friuli (October 1917, part of what is commonly called 'Caporetto', and which features Lancieri), I applied the OHW approach. 

None of this has been play tested yet and I probably won't until I get home. 

Rules will be some version of my modified One Hour Wargames Machine Age rules (here and here and here).

The Map:

Click to enlarge

The result is a sparse looking map admittedly - just like those in OHW. 

In this case, the land around Pozzuolo del Friuli is pretty flat and is mostly farmland, at least in modern photos. Scattered trees won't look out of place (but provide no cover bonus), but there are no forests or woods playing role in the battle according to my one and only source (see link below). 

Situation:

Battle of Pozzuolo - Wikipedia

Army Sizes:

Austria-Hungary 60th Infantry Division:  8 units

• Two Heavy Infantry
• Four Infantry
• Two Assault Infantry

Options: 

• May swap up to one Assault Infantry for Forward Observation Officer
• May swap up to two Assault Infantry for Infantry
• May swap up to two Heavy Infantry for infantry

Italian Force: 6 Units

• One Heavy Infantry of the Bergamo Brigade
• One Infantry of the Bergamo Brigade
• Four Lancieri of the Lancieri di Novara Regiment

Options

• May swap up to one Lancieri for one Infantry
• May swap up to one Heavy infantry for one Infantry

In the historical event, the Austro-Hungarians had a division vs an under-strength infantry battalion and an under-strength cavalry regiment. To reflect this, rather than doing a 6 vs 4 game which Neil Thomas does, I went with 8 vs 6. I get to use more of my toys this way.

A variant to consider is to allow eliminated Austro-Hungarian stands to enter via the road north of the village on subsequent turns to better reflect their numerical superiority.

While I came up with representative forces, I thought it might be fun to have some "legal" tradeoffs, for replay value. Note, my tradeoffs are limited by my collection, not by anything remotely historically influenced. I left out arditi as a swap for the Italians, as they were not present, but I suppose if you want to go down the "what if?", why not?

One reason I wanted to formalize my scenario idea is to lend some direction to my figure painting queue - having a defined scenario I know I need to focus on making two more cavalry stands, so 4 more figures.

Deployment:

My layout is inspired by the Flank Attack (1) scenario but adjusted to reflect the historical situation. The deployment zones I've specified allow for some options while keeping the general idea intact.

1. The Austro-Hungarian 60th infantry division approaches Pozzuolo del Friuli from the Northern table edge.
2. The two Bergamo infantry units are deployed in the village of Pozzuolo del Friuli.
3. The Lancieri di Novara deploy to the east of the village.

The downside for the Austro-Hungarians is that they may not all make it onto the table on turn one, depending on base depth (which might be a thing that becomes official later, now that I think about it).

 

Game Length and Turn Order:

The game lasts 15 turns. Austria-Hungary goes first each turn.

Victory Conditions:

        Austria-Hungary:

• For minor victory, must occupy the village by the end of turn 15.
• For victory, must occupy the village by the end of turn 15, uncontested (no Italian unit within range to attack)
• For major victory, eliminate all Italian units and occupy the village before 15.

Italy:

• The Italians win a major victory if they still hold the village with at least one unit at the end of turn 15.

I decided to give the Austro-Hungarian force the opportunity to achieve varying levels of victory, while the Italians have only one objective - hold out until turn 15. It might more in keeping with the historical event to have to move units off the map for the Italians, but they are a delaying force, and I felt that it can be presumed that when a unit is removed, it reflects that in addition to wounds, men retreating due to failed morale.

Plus, with so few units, I really hate moving them off the table.

Once I get a chance to play this a few times, there will likely be some changes, but I figured I'd share what I have so far just in case it's of use to anyone else.

Birds of a Feather

Originally, I had picked up a few (four) Dollar Tree pterosaurs to paint up as sort of a stand-in for "Parrot Men" of Venus. But that seemed like a lot of work to paint in the way I was imagining. And so they sat in the dinosaur bin (yes yes, i know they are reptiles, not dinosaurs).

Recently, I had the obvious idea to use them for Dactyl Riders for Age of Fantasy. The figures are rather plain looking but they have a lot of texture (Fur? I don't know. It's a Dollar Tree toy, I make no claims of paleontological accuracy), so I slathered them in Agrax Earthshade and then touched up beaks and claws. 

They looked good enough, if a bit drab, so one I did with Carroburg Crimson to give it a reddish look. 

And then decided that one looked vaguely male cardinal like, hence the black around its eyes and its orange beak.

Armies in Plastic legionnaire for scale.

Here is one in its naked state:

 

 

Now, I did try to use Wargames Atlantic lizards as riders but their legs just wouldn't fit easily and since Age of Fantasy is not WYSIWYG, I'll just pretend they have riders.

Still, since I had the Wargames Atlantic lizard box out, I figured I'd make two more red-tailed skinks:

Pilots posing with their planes.

Why two?

Because I paint in threes, and since I had done one as a demo (a long time ago), I needed two more to count as the first three! 

My plan, now,  is to eventually paint ten to use as a unit of Saurian Warriors when fielding an all 28mm force for playing Age of Fantasy with others (who typically don't game in 54mm).

Run Through the Jungle

An Allied Venusian Expeditionary Force  (AVEF) patrol is returning to their base at Fort La Fin du Monde.

Unbeknownst to them, the lizard folk have been watching their movements and have laid a trap.

With the tantalizing flank of the patrol exposed to them, the lizard warriors erupt from the jungle!

Sacre bleu!

As the mass of lizards crashes into the patrol's left, a second threat emerges, heralded by a rain of arrows. 

The situation goes from bad to worse

Carnage ensues!

For those who dislike knocked over soldiers, eventually I removed them as they were getting in the way of subsequent combats.

The AVEF at first gave better than they got, but soon find themselves outnumbered by waves of the fierce jungle fighters.

And then, as suddenly as it began, the clash is ended - not a European left alive.

Singing their disconcerting chorus of hisses and rumbling growls, they fade back into the tangled jungle.

Soon, scavenging dinosaurs will descend on the scene to claim their share and it is best not to stick around too long in celebration.

*****

Rules used were based more or less on In Good Company