May in Review

May saw a surprising increase in not only the number of games played, but I even picked up a paint brush!

Rules played in May:

1. Sword Weirdos 
2. My own modified version(s) of OHSW for melee heavy fantasy (so many cards to draw)
3. My own Sword Weirdos Lite
4. Portable Wargame-ish Ancients (using fantasy figures)
5. OHW Ancient/Dark Ages/Medieval for fantasy
6. My modified Morschauser Shock Period rules for fantasy
   

That's a lot of fantasy.

And it all owes to the arrival of my old school GW Black Orcs "regiment" (10 seems more like a company to me) which, as they provide an opponent for my lizards, sparked a renewed interest in figure gaming. A 24" square playing area, figures mounted 2 to a 3"x 2" rectangle, borrowing some orcs and goblins from my RPG minis to pad out the Orc army, and I was off to the races playing One Hour Wargames scenarios, using rules 4, 5, and 6 above.

Eventually I settled on number 6 as my preferred option for these "battle" sized games.

And there were many of them, but I took pictures only during a few:

Quite a mix here - SCS Direct, Reaper Bones, Reaper Dark Heaven, Games Workshop, and some random toy manufacturer.

Close up of the Black Orcs - GW metal sculpt. eBay purchase - painted by previous owner. I love them.

Reaper orcs in the foreground, GW orks in the middle.

The standard is so orc, it hurts!

The games themselves have been great fun and full of drama, but also the aesthetics of the games just make me happy. They remind me of Maudlin Jack Tar's games on Projects & Procrastinations and the potter bench games (i think that's what it's called) of Alan of the Duchy of Tradgardland, both of whom put on clean, uncluttered-looking games in small spaces. 

A thought on the Morschauser rules: Although the rules are simple, I find I am able to accommodate a variety of troop types, without adding innumerable special rules. Using One Hour Wargames as my reference, I decided "warband" type troops could be represented by increased movement, a front melee value of 4, with a rear melee of 1 (a combination Morschauser does not account for), for example. 

Admittedly, this can result in some imbalance when a force consisting mostly of archers (front 2/rear 1, long range missiles) and skirmishers (front 3/rear 1, short range missiles) run into a force consisting mostly of heavy infantry (front 4/rear 2), but I'm not worried about that. I play each army to their strengths and it works out in play.

The lizards are fast moving, light troops (a mix of skirmish, archers, and warband), with the possibility of long-range attacks and some tough, dangerous dinos (mostly treated as heavy cavalry with more strength points) in support. The Orc army is primarily slow-moving heavy infantry, supported with some warband and light infantry, and occasionally some dire wolves (with goblin handlers) (front 5, rear 3, but speed in the skirmisher/light infantry range).

I imagine it isn't too dissimilar to Celts vs Romans.

The joy of these games has led to a sudden burst in painting enthusiasm - more goblins to fill out the orc army, but also, additional undead to both bring up my RPG collection and to form a whole new army to field.  

Ever since I was a kid and had a set of D&D monster cards, I've thought goblins should be yellow/gold in color. You can see what I mean here: https://rollforcombat.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/27-DD-Monster-Cards-3.jpg

Homage to Spiderman's enemy, the Green Goblin.

Smurf-lins. I crack myself up.

Oh yeah! 54mm figures! I remember I used to paint a lot of them! These will function as skeletal giants.

Brains!

I think this is the Reaper mascot. I'm using this figure as the 2nd figure on the undead general's stand.

Just a bunch of giant rats. In addition to being super common for fantasy RPG adventures, I'm them as light cavalry for the undead army for now.

Some stuff just for RPGs:

Almost as ubiquitous as giant rats, large/giant/huge spiders.

I think I have a 2nd dwarf figure - if I paint it, I can field a base of Dwarves as allies for humans.

Continuing the superhero motif - his snarl and oversized muscles reminded me of the incredible Hulk.

And back to the wargaming, the human general has some furry friends:

I've had all three figures sitting in the pile of shame for well over 10 years, I think. Better late than never.

So now I have four forces that I can use. With the huge benefit that all figures can serve double-duty for RPGs.

Speaking of ....

We kicked off our Episodic Campaign in May, with the party adventuring to the Halfling House - an abandoned halfling farmstead deep in the woods. 

The party consisted of:

• Macho Man Randy Savage  (1st lvl. Barbarian with Monk quasi class)
• Morticia (1st lvl. Necromancer)
• The Chaplin (1st lvl, Paladin - playing as an anti-paladin - with Confessor quasi class)
• Clarence (gnome, 1st lvl Scout with Barbarian quasi class)
• Mustard (1st lvl Necromancer with Monk quasi class)

Quasi-classes are a Basic Fantasy RPG optional thing. They are sort of like templates that can be applied to certain other classes (I wave all limits like that though and let them apply whatever they want to whatever they want) to create particular kinds of characters - Archer" is a quasi-class for example. So you could take Thief as your base class, and apply Archer, and voila! Robin Hood.

Unlike multi-class, they just add XP required to advance to the character's base class, rather than splitting XP between two classes.

The entire party survived their first outing, although a TPK was a real possibility when they were attacked by a bunch of stirges and three of the five went down with 0 HP. We're playing with the "death save" option a la 5e, so that helped them out quite a bit in that fight.

They cleared the whole place of monsters and looted all the treasure, but they want to come back with a cart for the furniture, which is worth a few hundred gold, before proceeding to The Purple Worm Graveyard. Of course, if they're returning to a site, there's a greater than zero percent chance that something will have opportunistically moved in during their absence and/or they will be attacked on the way in or out.

Macho Man is now being followed by a giggling ghost child (it's not part of the adventure, it was just a thing i added to an empty room and he befriended it by returning its doll, found in a tree house. The doll is also something I added just to add some mystery to the tree house.) This is the kind of thing I love as a GM, and why I don't prep stories or plots. I like it to emerge at the table.

The party was curious about the intended recipient of some letters they found (an actual part of the adventure but with no intended significance that I'm aware of) and though he letters are decades old if not older, I'm going to turn the recipient into a recurring thread that I'll plant in the other adventures they go on, to help bring the game world to life. 

If the players express interest in something, I try to reward them for it.

So, while I'm not writing up adventures or building dungeons for this campaign, it's already taking on a life of its own beyond the pre-written adventures.

Finally, I have been jonesing to get my 40K figures on the table for some One Hour Skirmish Wargames, Space Weirdos, Planet 28, etc. but I really wanted suitable terrain that isn't just me digging through my son's old toys (actually, strike that...i love his old toys, but I want to repaint them to be more suitable for my vision. When he goes off to college in a few years maybe :D )

Enter "poorhammer" as it's called by some - most of us know it as DIY scenery and terrain. 

Cardboard, cereal boxes, card stock, sprue cuttings, canvas knitting mesh etc. I decided on a ruined/abandoned industrial-type site, rather than Grim Dark Gothic ruins, as the latter has a very specific look that I do not feel I could do justice with my "measure 30x-cut myself" crafting ability. 

Also, an industrial site seems to me to be more "universal" - good for battling troops but also for ragtag bands of scavengers and smugglers. Possibly even a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

 Here's where it stands as of now:

This was the first piece, and I sort of fumbled along with trial and error. It was supposed to be a proof of concept, and I ended up really liking it.

 

Occupied!

"Sheet metal" from the lining inside a can of Pepperidge Farm Pirouette cookies. This might be my favorite - works as an objective to capture, but also provides cover, and adds to the atmosphere. 

Clearly a piece of sprue, but it reminded me of an old antenna.

I love how corroded and rusted this looks. The texture of the corroded area was a happy accident of repeated hot glue mishaps.

The other side. I pictured this as having been a converted shipping container or makeshift foreperson's office

Oops! Missed aging the copper pipes!

This is the entire lining inside a can of Pirouette cookies. I was really sloppy gluing the dop disc to the cylinder, but I like how it made the rim look ragged and corroded once the paint was added. Another happy accident!

The aftermath (or as I like to say, "Genius at work!":

I did make a purchase on eBay of some scatter terrain to supplement my hand-made efforts. 

I picked up Mantic's Terrain Crate: Industrial Scatter Terrain to be precise. The pieces look great, and will add visual variety, act as objective markers, and provide substantial amounts of light cover. 

Finally, because one of my 2025 goals is to do more social gaming - well more social things generally even:

I joined the One Page Rules Discord server and once there was pointed to a group in North GA that meets for games regularly. They play at a game store a bit far away for their regular weeknight gaming - 30-90 minutes depending on traffic (Atlanta traffic is like that). Never mind that it's a night I can almost never make because I typically have a guitar student that night, but a bunch are open to weekend gaming with advance notice. 

So, I'm trying to arrange a meetup for mid-June. Wish me luck!

Ok, finally (this time for real), on May 4th a distortion pedal that I wanted way back in 2017, and which was discontinued, returned for a single day, and one now resides on my pedal board:

It's a good basic distortion - nothing fancy. I could have purchased cheaper used Boss DS-1 or something, but R5-D4! 

Until next month!

April Recap

Not much to share pictures of this month.

I briefly picked up a paint brush and applied the base uniform color for eight WWII French. I could have sworn I had primed nine, but it seems he's AWOL.

That was the extent of my painting.

I did order ten used(and painted) old GW metal Black Orks. I can't wait until they get here - they'll go against my lizards, when I make time to game that is.

Gaming-wise, I didn't get a game in until this most recent Monday night when my Sisters of Battle and Tyranids met in a first pass at Space Weirdos in a small 75-point game.

At that level, that's just three Sisters and five Nids - a tiny number of figures, but well suited for a small space gamer.

I played without the command points or the optional rules, just to get a feel for the basics. One game is not enough to go by, but I enjoyed it far more than Grimdark Future: Firefight for a similarly sized game. I found the rules easy to pick up and I appreciate that they have a solo supplement included with the rules (though I haven't tested). It's dice-based, which is not my favorite, as I prefer cards, but it uses more than just the d6, so I actually enjoyed rolling. 

RPG dice need more love!

Oh and I took no pictures.

That said, this evening (Wednesday), I setup a similar set table but played with One Hour Skirmish Wargames. I don't know why I bother to play anything else honestly. Such a great game. Immersive. Cinematic. Strong narrative. Etc.

I need to buy more decks of cards though - I keep losing one or two cards from each deck. Maybe the missing French infantryman took them.

Oh and no pictures again - trying to get even further away from photographing games and just enjoying the playing.

Most of my gaming efforts in April were focused on prepping for an Episodic Old School D&D campaign  - we meet this weekend for our character creation session. 

I'll be running Basic Fantasy RPG (BFRPG) which is essentially a retro-clone of one of my favorite iterations of D&D (and the first one I played lo those many years ago), Moldvay\Cook Basic\Expert Dungeons & Dragons. Character creation should take at most 10-15 minutes for B/X but everyone will be creating three PCs (given the lethality of old school games). 

Not only that but BFRPG implements a 1e-style separate race and class system and they have a plethora of community tested and approved additional races and classes beyond the four core classes (Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, Thief) and four core races (human, halfling, elf, dwarf). So, selection will probably take quite a while as most of our group won't read anything until we're at the table.

If you're unsure of what I mean by an episodic campaign, think A-team or Law & Order as examples. Basically, they will have adventures with no overarching plots tying them together, other than player character emergent plots. There isn't even a necessarily consistent world (how many times does the same actor appear on Law & Order as different people on different episodes?).

Adventurers, however, are not police nor are they a team of commandos who were imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit. Especially at 1st level, they aren't even top of the list when someone is in trouble. So, rather than waiting for adventures to come to them, I want them to find them, yet not a sandbox and not a hex crawl, because those are a hard sell for at least one of my players. 

To that end, and mostly because I love making maps, I created a map of sorts (there's no scale, it's not even relative distances, so is it really a map?) with some initial adventures indicated on it. My intent is that it provides them agency in what adventures they go on. 

It's not really for navigation within the game world, but for navigation within the list of curated adventures from my library that I could run for them in the first two gaming sessions we have scheduled - it's more of a graphical database interface perhaps?

March Recap

This will be a photo heavy post as there was some painting in March - not so much gaming though.

What gaming there was featured five Sisters of Battle trying to escape a hoard of 21 Tyranids by reaching an extract point. I played two games of the same scenario - once with Grimdark Future:Firefight - which I'm not fond of as a solo game anymore - and once with some improvised rules that were equally unsatisfactory. I think One Hour Skirmish Wargames is going to be the way to go, or something very much RPG-lite.

 Painting-wise, I made some progress on my Alps 1940 forces:

French MG base, two infantry bases, and a leader.

The Italians received reinforcements making one full platoon and one 3/4 (using Crossfire organization):

I'm trying to code the units by basing material. Not an original idea by any means, but very useful.

Work began on the fourth army for my fantasy ... campaign? ... I don't know, I have ideas.

The microphone in the back tells you about what I've been spending most of my time on.

They are WiP. I have a lot of gear remaining to paint - I am hopeful the headgear will really make the figures pop as I don't want to shade them (going for toy soldier look). As they are, the white just washes out the details.

 In my last post, I mentioned painting some lizards (but no picture) and then I painted a few more. Here are the ones done last month:

The archer is intended to function as a Chameleon Hero in Age of Fantasy, while the spears will make up a unit of Saurian Guards (when combined with some command figures)

 Next up, some heavies - a unit of gator warriors:

I don't know who made them - they kind of remind me of Age of Aegyptus figures but not anything currently available.

My favorite of the bunch:

He is an old Grenadier model from the early 80s I believe. His color scheme is based on the yellow-headed gecko (they tend towards orange in spite of the name). He will be a Gecko Hero for Age of Fantasy.

And, just for giggles, the current painted 28mm lizard folk army:

Obviously that excludes the dinosaurs I have, as well as the yet to be painted frog mage and gator hero. Plus I have a fair number of Wargames Atlantic figures to assemble and paint to add to my red-tailed skinks.

I just get a kick out of looking at them. 

Will they ever be used as a full force for Age of Fantasy? I have no idea. I'd have to be able to find people that play it locally (I know they exist but I am no longer on FB which is where they are). I do have an idea for games of small skirmishes between the various tribes that will get them on the table regardless.

I am fairly certain that if I had to abandon all of my stuff to relocate, I'd find a way to pack my lizard folk figures in  28mm and 54mm! 

Until next month!

January/February Recap

 Lots of irons in lots of fires, and blogging regularly has received the axe, but I am still out here doing my thing, and I got in a bit of painting and gaming in January and February.

Finally got my Pozzuolo del Friuli scenario on the table using modified One Hour Wargames "Machine Age" rules

Morschauser Shock modified for Fantasy, One Hour Wargames scenario on 2/3 scale table, i.e. 24" square.

Morschauser Shock and Horse & Musket modified for VSF. One Hour Wargames scenario. Full scale, i.e. 6" bases and 36" square.

For reasons, I started painting the Battle of the Alps (Italy and France) in 1/72, with multi-figure basing. this is the first platoon of alpini.

I also painted five additional 28mm lizard warriors - one Reaper Bones and four Dark Heaven - and have gotten the first platoon of 1/72 French started.

Oh, and I played the classic GDW game, Battle for Moscow, several times in a single day, and also a game of Burning Mountains 1916, from Compass Games - with turns spread over three days.

Cheers!

Morschauser Shock Modifications for Fantasy Document

I played another game of modified Morschauser's Shock Period Rules last night - testing a few tweaks made since the last game. 

Human Heavy Infantry clashes with Marine Iguanas (Move 9", Front Melee 4, Rear Melee 2, SP 6, unarmored)

They worked well and gave an exciting game with unexpected highs and lows for both sides, and a lot of narrative flavor.

Here is a link to the document for those interested: Modifications for Morschasuer’s Shock Period Rules for Fantasy    

The modifications are intended to result in satisfying games of an hour or less, with 6 units per side, clearly in the One Hour Wargames way, and I have not tried them with more or fewer units.

Pteranodons were statted with the monster table - a mix of picking and rolling: Move 12", Melee Front 4, Rear 2, SP 8, 2d6 when attacking, and tagged with armored and flyer.

They require a copy of Morschauser's How to Play War Games in Miniature, original or the John Curry reprint as I have, to fill in the blanks.

It's inexpensive to get the e-book version and it is by far my favorite of the wargaming classics, only just behind Little Wars, and I highly recommend it.

Human hero captures the hill but the lizards would reclaim it. It would change hands several times.

I feel that 10 turns has worked well in my games with these rules using One Hour Wargames scenarios, however, if you want to play 15 turns per OHW, by all means.

This plucky unit of Geckos (bog standard Skirmishers in my modifications) held off the enemy General's unit repeatedly.

Going forward, I think, if the result is not obvious after turn 10, I may roll 1d6 and subtract 1 from the score. The result will be how many turns remain (so, on a 1, the game is over).

In the end, the humans claimed the hill, but the lizards were in clear control of the cross-roads. A tie!

The game pictured above was surprisingly well-balanced, probably by accident. 

What I find most surprising about Morschauser's approach, is that even without +/- to die rolls, only different unit stats, the different unit types feel different, and benefit from being used in ways that, to my mind, make sense. 

Now, admittedly, skirmishers holding the hill was not the best choice, but deployment was determined by die roll. 

That they held their own was a delightful surprise, and exactly what I want from the rules.