NP '42: Deciding on Tabeltop Rules

Over the weekend, I set up trying to settle on a set of rules for the North Pole games. There were quite a lot in contention, but the top contenders for this experiment were: One Brain-Cell Toy Soldiers (1BC) with card-based unit activation, G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. with half-sized units, and One Hour Skirmish Wargames(OHSW).

For the scenario, a German platoon of three 5-man sections, one HMG, one light mortar and a platoon leader is advancing to capture some buildings on the outskirts of Christmas Village. An under-strength platoon of British paras, consisting of two 5-man sections, an HMG, and a platoon leader, move into the area to hold off the German advance. The Germans win if they capture both buildings, otherwise it's a win for the British.

You can tell this is non-canonical as I didn't break out my dozens of Christmas trees for the woods.

The fact that the pictures below tell a cohesive story is completely by accident. They are from multiple games.

British occupy the ruined building on their left.

 

"Knock! Knock!"

British assault the house.

The German right advances under cover of light mortar fire. The mortar was more devastating in some games than others. This must be from the GASLIGHT game where the max range was 24". In OHSW it's infinite (and can't move), and in 1BC, off hand, I believe it's at least 36".

The HMG covers the building in case the British capture it, while the English and Germans exchange fire from the relative safety of the trees. Either 1BC or GASLIGHT, because tripod HMGs can't move in OHSW.

The Germans hold the farm house, and the defenders of the other building are defeated in close assault.

Things take a turn for the worse on the British right.

Game over. This is most likely from the OHSW game, as contact with a downed figure is immediate figure removal.

I'm not sure I'm any further along in deciding.

I *can* say that, while it's no secret I love OHSW,, 18 units (the Germans, each figure or weapon team is a unit) on one side really felt like it was straining the system. 

The action felt less chaotic whirlwind and more disjointed than usual. At best you can take action with 13 units, and more often than not less than that. If you want to move and shoot with each figure even drawing a King, you're looking at 6 figures taking action.  To make it work, I'd have to drop one of the 5-man sections or support weapons or some similar combination (never mind that I have tanks, half-tracks, PAK-38s etc. for the Germans to use at the North Pole).

Both GASLIGHT and OHSW handle characters and vehicles easily - so a coin flip there.

GASLIGHT requires some adjustments for the under-sized units: morale and Shoot values primarily. Morale is somewhat silly in GASLIGHT, which I love, but maybe not for WWII troops (definitely would use for woodland creatures, elves, etc.).

1BC wins for simplicity and adding card activation made it more like GASLIGHT. There's no vehicle rules so they require improvising - nothing I haven't done before, and I could probably bolt on either of the others in some way, but still, it's extra work.

I really like the Force Motivation and Force-level Morale check in OHSW as opposed to individual unit morale checks in GASLIGHT or 1BC. Although, this was the first time I ever came close to a side failing their morale check - the paras lost their PL (a Leader(3) in OHSW terms) and only had their section leaders (Leader(1)  in OHSW terms). They came within 1 point of failing their morale check.

So, each set has things that work, and things that work sort-of. And I like them all. 

Maybe I'll just choose whichever one I'm feeling on the day? Or maybe, more play tests are in order? Oh darn.

More games!

This weekend featured quite a lot of gaming again, but almost entirely D&D, so there are no pictures.

For your viewing pleasure, here are photos for one of last weekend's many games:

How it started ...

How it was going ...

How it ended.

I thought the greater firepower for the Russians would offset the numerical disadvantage. 

I was wrong.

Rules used were G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.

This was the last game for the Cossacks. They are heading to Canada. The Imperial Russians are heading to a new home near me.

 ***

The D&D campaign we started on our vacation, continues. Although school started back up on the 1st, it's barely put a dent in our gaming.

Indeed, I haven't played this much D&D since I was a kid.

My son asks to play almost every day - so much so, that we've churned through almost everything I prepped in advance. And, having little to no time between sessions, I had to call last night's session short.I felt like the quality of my DMing was dropping rapidly. 

I've been using a couple of sample dungeons (Holmes and the one in the Swords & Wizardry quick start, both of which I've run many times before), and some of the many freely available one-page dungeons for this megadungeon - reskinned to connect them thematically. However, we have gone past what I reskinned, and I was having to do that on the fly.  While I can improvise easily with an unkeyed map, I can't help but feel compelled to refer to the key when one exists. That led to disjointed play with me flipping back and forth between pages.

I'll spend some time tonight finding or creating some unkeyed maps, make a quick list of what occupies the level and generate contents on the fly so we can play unhindered again. I don't need detailed descriptions of room contents to run a game, I just need to know in advance the relationships between the entities on that level and their relationships with entities on other levels.

I'm a big fan of dungeon economies (which gives PC's an access point to gold without having to fight, if they can find a way to become a part of it) and preparing relationships between factions that the party can get involved with. The latter produces emergent story, and that's my preference - rather than a particular plot (the only hook for this campaign is the PCs are seeking fame and fortune), I like the players to decide what matters to them, and for the game world to react to their actions.

We are using the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert rules (I was in 6th grade when I got them. He's in 7th now.), supplemented with some OSR-created products, including the Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion and some new classes.

So far, it's working like a charm.

 **** 

We played Blitz Bowl together this weekend and he had a great time. That he trounced me by 11 points might have something to do with it. I'm not bitter - he made a great use of one of the bonus play cards to score the winning touchdown - but I demand a rematch! 

It also made me want to get paints for the Nurgle team but there's a bunch of stuff in the paint queue currently.

In related news, my son has expressed interest in possibly playing 40K (he's met some kids at school who play). My wallet weeped a little, but I do like a lot of the figures.

We primed some of fantasy figures from my Pile of Plastic this weekend and one of his sci-fi looking "army men" and we'll do some painting sessions, so he can find out if it's something he likes enough that he'd want to paint up an entire force (Kill Team only requires 10 figures per side, so that sounds like the best entry point to me).

His birthday is coming soon, and I would be happy to buy him a 40K starter set(he likes the set with 5 marines and a bunch of Tyranids), or a box of figures and paints, if that's what he wants.

1917 Fictional Strafexpedition Game 2

Major Neurath was ordered to press on with 5th and 6th company, 2nd battalion, Sacher regiment, to support the stormtroops of 3rd company,501st battalion, lead by Hauptman Mahler, in their effort to capture Fromagio. The trench line was held by 9th Company, 3rd battalion, 212th Regiment supported by a machine gun platoon.

The attack was preceded by a heavy barrage on both the left and right trenches.

That pile of blankets in the upper right is actually our dog.

The Italian machine gun platoon quickly reduced the numbers in 5th company.

But further scheduled artillery cleared the right trench and 5th was able to take it without opposition thereafter.

However Italian reinforcements arrived and launched a counterattack to reclaim the trench.

On the left, the stormtroops easily overran the few remaining defenders, and Neurath redirected 6th company from planned attack route to instead aid 5th company. Meanwhile, an additional Italian company had arrived and moved into positions within Fromagio.

With the right trench cleared, the stormtroops, supported by an MG platoon, assaulted the town.

With the remnants of 5th company (amounting to less than one platoon) holding th right trench, 6th company proceeded per their original attack plan, and moved to attack Fromagio from the West. However, Lt. Colonel Dattoli arrived with another of his battalions MG platoons to the rear of 6th company which forced them to break off their attack to deal with the threat.

Although not pictured, the fighting was fierce. 6th company was badly mauled by the machine guns before they were silencedt. Major Neurath, who had reluctantly moved up to aid 6th company, was killed by none other than Lt. Colonel Dattioli in a dramatic shoot-out. The Lt.Colonel himself being wounded and captured by a squad from 6th company.

Meanwhile, the battle within the town limits raged, with the stormtroops emerging victorious in the end. 

It was a costly win for the Austro-Hungarians. 

Major Neurath (admittedly as much a liability as anything) was killed, as was Hauptmann Hass of 5 company (in the storming of the right trench when it was still held by the Italian machine gun platoon). 5th and 6th company were both nearly wiped out by casualties, as were the stormtroopers. As such, the advance by 2nd battalion on this prong of Sacher Regiment's attack must halt.

On the plus side, the capture of Lt. Dattioli, to join his 2nd in command, Major Lizzio, was something of potentially great value.

The next game will take a look at how 1st battalion did on their advance.

1917 Fictional Strafexpedition

Spring, 1917, Austria-Hungary makes a little-known (read: fictional) second attempt at a strafexpedition...

Following an artillery barrage, elements of the Austro-Hungarian "Sacher" Regiment, 1832nd Schutzen Brigade, attacked the Italian hill-top trench position north of Fromagio. 

Aggressive action by 3rd company of the 501st sturmbattalion and the regiment's 7th company, 2nd battalion, led to the defeat of the defenders (12th company, 3rd battalion, 212th Regiment, "Fagioli" Brigade), including the capture of the battalion's 2nd-in-Command, Major Romeo Lizzio. 

An Italian relief force, composed of 11th company of the 212th regiment, and a heavy machine gun platoon, came under heavy fire. They retreated seeing the trench in enemy hands.

The Austro-Hungarian 8th company, also assigned to the attack, did not see any combat and were delegated to man the trench, while 7th company attended to their wounded. The sturmtruppen were sent rearwards for rest, having accomplished their mission pressed ahead to the next objective. Major Neurath, who never was within rifleshot of an Italian, sent word of his success in capturing the position to his commander. 

The remainder of the battalion proceeded south towards Fromagio.

*******

The scenario was from One Hour Wargames. The others will be as well. I intend to play a 5-game campaign as Neil Thomas suggests in OHW. The rules however are G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. + Contemptible Little Armies. Units are 6-figure companies with a 7th leader figure. Machine gun bases are platoons.

In addition I have created personalities for the leaders of each company, battalion, regiment, and division involved, using a system by Paul Le Long from the pages of an old print edition of Lone Warrior. The system uses percentage values assigned to five stats. Of particular note for this write-up, the personality system has a health stat. So, I decided that if a leader fails his G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. save, after the battle I would roll against their health stat to see if they survive or not.

Major Lizzio failed his save in hand-to-hand, so after the battle I checked vs his health stat (72). He saved, and I thus ruled he was captured.

Hauptman  Philipp Waltz of 7th company failed his save in hand-to-hand and then failed his roll vs his health stat (a lowly 15, apparently he had suffered from longstanding injuries sufferd on the Russian front) and was thus a casualty. 

High health is not a guarantee of survival either. Captain Martino Giannetta, of the Italian 12th company defending the trench, failed his G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. save. His health stat of 85 seemed like shoe-in to recover (albeit he'd be captured). I rolled a 99. He succumbed to his wounds to say the least.

Oh and a final note. One of the stats is Courage. Neurath has a ONE. Hence the jibe at him at the end of the report.

Many Wars Ago

Norm's relatively recent post entitled Too Much Stuff had had me thinking quite a bit about wargame rules and my various figure collections. I realized that one of my favorite sets of rules, G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T., by Buck Surdu and Chris Palmer, hasn't been on the table in ages. This is not because I don't like them anymore, I do, but, as part of that whole "modern age" thing, I am spoiled for choice and find myself always chasing the next rule set. It was time to put this game on the table again.

Saturday night, I set up an Italian assault on an Austro-Hungarian held hill-top, inspired by a scene from the movie, Many Wars Ago, itself based on A Soldier on the Southern Front, 

G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. is written for 10-figure infantry units. Morale checks are directly impacted by unit size - however, if you have polyhedral dice, you can have units of a variety of sizes, although technically the math won't be exactly the same/ (A 10-figure unit that loses 1 figure has a 10% chance of failing the morale check, while an 8-figure unit that loses 1 figure has a 12.5% chance. Still, I'm OK with all of that because it makes the game flexible.)

The Italian's have three 6-figure units (5 soldiers and a leader - I tend to treat the soldiers as representing some number of men, while the leader is just one person. I don't know why but I"ve almost always done this with G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. even though, I am now fairly certain that the intent is 1:1 for everyone), while the Austrians have one 7-figure unit and an HMG unit. 

The discrepancy in the number of figures relates to the sizes for companies given in H.M.G. (a WWI ruleset). While I did not use the numbers given there exactly, I wanted to reflect the differences in the size of the units just the same. The Austrians to have more men per company than the Bersaglieri (a standard Italian infantry unit would have nearly 1.5x as many men per company as the Austrians).

Finally, I set the shooting value lower than usual (normally for trained regulars I use 8-10, so I went with 5 in the event), in order to give the smaller units a chance to survive a little longer.

In any case, enough rambling!

The Battle

The Italians ready in their trenches. There is some concern that there is not much cover on this hillside.

An overview of the battlefield. Both sides are in trenches at the start. I had each Italian unit dice to see if they'd leave the trench when their card was turned. Only the one on the far right in the above picture went over the top on the first turn.

Machinegun fire begins to take its toll almost immediately.

The Italian center and left go over the top - no doubt spurred forward by the gathering carabinieri

The Austrians take fire from the Italians left but they unleash devastation on the Italian right.

The unit on the Italian left is almost to the enemy trench!

The center struggles to advance under oppressive fire. Meanwhile on the Italian right, the unit is destroyed through casualties and desertion. The commander races back towards his trench in a panic but, seeing the gleaming rifles of the carabinieri, he thinks the better of it and eventually makes his way to cover up the hill, where he can fire ineffectively at the MG.

The Italians crash into the waiting Austrians and a viscous hand-to-hand struggle ensues.
Close combat in G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.  can result in neither, one, or both combatants being eliminated.

The carnage after two rounds of violent man-to-man fighting.

Unphased by the chaos to their right, the HMG keeps firing away, chewing up the Italian center and sending the survivors running back down the hill. 

One of the great things about G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. is the potential for larger-than-life leaders - the Austrian officer prepared to hold his ground against the Italian wave, but the Italians called off the attack. It had been too costly.

The Italians lost 2/3 of their force but distributed unequally between their three units. Not visible in the pictures, the Austrians had two more figures on the table (they had 3 casualties and 1 desertion) - the two had abandoned the trench on morale failures but were still within 12" of the leader figure. That means they could move to rejoin him on their next card. 

I'm not sure if it felt like a WWI game or not. I think it pretty much did. It felt like G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. for sure though ( a little silly, a lot of fun, bloody) and that was good enough for me. They will definitely see more use with my Venus collection, which had always been my intent anyway, but now I see them as a strong candidate for small games set in The Great War.

Zombies! And Blocks!

After my son was born, his mother decided we needed a unique family holiday tradition outside of the usual and so she invented "Fall Festival". We play something as a family, make something,  and watch something - usually "Over the Garden Wall". 

Typically, the "play something" is a video game, but this year, after spying some zombie Lego-knock-off brick figures and sets in the Dollar Tree, I decided to put together a game that would use them. To be honest, my original plan wasn't for Fall Festival (which is always the first Saturday in October) but I was asked if I could have it ready and, upon rediscovering the zombies supplement for GASLIGHT on WargameVault, I figured it was feasible.

Almost everything for the game, including the wooden cubes for markers, was from Dollar Tree except for the flora, the lamp posts, and gate with fence. That was provided by Amazon - they are knock-off Legos as well, and inexpensive.

Dice and playing cards were things I had on hand but even then, some of them were from the Dollar Tree.

Overview. of the table. Players had to make their way from the park to the cemetery to destroy the bubbling glop that produced zombies.

The aforementioned glop. As luck would have it, DollarTree sells a zombie figure in black slime. It's like they knew I'd need this!

My zombie horde. Well, as much as 16 zombies is a horde.

In order to make the game more like a video game to appeal to my son, I added ammo tracking (via (wooden cubes) and loot crates (more wooden cubes) with med kits (still more wooden cubes), additional ammo and weapons, and possible "specials".

There were four players each controlling a single figure and an NPC dog that was controlled by the team (but it would run away if it failed a save and potentially leave the table). 

Their objective was to find and destroy the zombie spawn point in the cemetery.

Early turns, the player character figures are entering from the lower left behind the pine trees.

Bob (you know, The Builder) and Brewster (the dog) clearing out zombies in the road. On their right, Potter has fired his AR-15 (The plain cube is a noise marker). Officer Krupke and Hermione in the middle, back (also with a noise marker).

Same turn different angle.

Krupke found this book of esoteric lore in one of the crates.

It contained the secret to defeating the zombies. (And removed the "you must score less than half - quarter at long range - of your shoot score to kill a  zombie" restriction)

The heroes fought across the road into the cemetery. Just before they entered, Potter found a radio in another crate. He managed to reach the outside world. What would it mean?

A helicopter en route!

The chopper lands and a crew of an anti-zombie paramilitary deploy. Will they be able to help our heroes?

Like true heroes, they don't wait to find out.

Bob, Brewster, and Krupke made it to the goop! After fighting off the spawning undead, Krupke planted the bomb. Although caught in the explosion, they made their saves!

The game turned out to be more of a success than I could have hoped for. Everyone seemed to have a great time and my son, who doesn't like to play much of anything table top related save PanzerKids loved it

I have plenty of critiques of course. 

For one, I don't feel it was as intense a game as it could have been - their survival was rarely in question. To do that, I would lower the shoot, scuffle, and save numbers for the player characters if I were to run it again (I let them players assign the values as they chose from 17,15 and 9 depending on how they imagined the character. I would probably go with 15, 12, 9 next time). 

I'd also buy way more zombie figures! There were times when I couldn't spawn any in because there were not enough figures. Actually, I'll probably buy more whether I run this particular game again or not. Zombie games are fun solo too because the zombies don't require any tactical planning.

Finally, a good option would be a second spawn point coming in behind the players so they'd have to watch their backs. As it was, per my original conception, each board section was like a video game level and once complete you don't need to go back. It worked well that way, but I think a second spawn point would be even better.

There was talk about starting a spring celebration tradition as well - mostly because of the game. I don't think another brick game is necessarily in order, but perhaps? The WWII themed brick stuff is very tempting.

As in most zombie movies, the authorities arrived too late to do anything except congratulate the heroes for a job well done.