First Play: Midnight Death Race

Hello racing fans!

I was perusing the new offerings on Wargame Vault when I came across the title Midnight Death Race. It was free and the cover art grabbed my attention, so I ordered and downloaded the game. The description says it's a minimalist game and there really isn't a whole lot for rules; only 11 pages and many of those are mostly art. It's a game for putting your Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars onto your game table, or the floor, and racing them in a no holds barred death match. The game is described as gritty, dangerous street racing set in the '70s and recommends using cars that fit that aesthetic.

Each player choses a car, takes a d6 to keep track of what gear they're in, and fills out a character sheet. Depending on the type of car the player chooses to use, they have a certain number of points with which to buy driver perks and/or car upgrades (write these on the character sheet). Perks are driver attributes that give some kind of bonus during the game (for example, the perk Anxious lets the driver go first at the beginning of the race). Upgrades add defensive or offensive bonuses to vehicles, like a thrust-jumper, caltrops, or flamethrower. A player can also choose to add a flaw, limiting their driver in some way in exchange for more points to spend.

The game uses the Gaslands movement templates (you'll need two sets, I downloaded a free PDF from the Osprey Publishing website). On their turn, the player chooses a number of templates equal to their current gear, but the caveat is that the templates must be used in the order they are picked up and if you touch it, you take it. Lay them out and move the car along them to the end (reminds me of Wings of War/Glory). Collect hazard tokens for being involved in crashes or for pushing the limits of your car. Any turn a player begins with a hazard token requires a driving check to see if they complete their path as planned or lose control.

Gaslands looks so cool. However, from what I've seen of Gaslands (mostly people playing on YouTube), it has never really grabbed me. I think there's two main reasons I don't pull the trigger on that game that Midnight Death Race solves: 

1. Simplicity - it seems each player controls a team of vehicles in Gaslands and it's a bit daunting to me to want to modify six or so die-cast cars to prep for a two-player game (I've worked on three, only one is finished). MDR gives you one vehicle and there's not much for an arsenal available, so it feels okay to field an unmodified vehicle (none of the cars in the book art have guns and things sticking out of them). 

2. Physicality -  Gaslands seemed formulaic in its chaos. For example, if a player's car spins out, it seemed like there's a formula to it and they can sometimes plan it to gain an advantage. The chaos in MDR seems more authentic with the addition of actually letting the cars contact each other in a crash or a player being forced to manipulate their car in a way that they truly have limited control. For example, if a player fails a driving check and spins out, they flick their car at one of its quarters to actually spin it and then play it from where it comes to rest.

Anyway, after making templates from the downloaded PDFs, all I had to do was make a track on the kitchen table with some Jenga blocks and other terrain pieces and get the kids to choose their cars. In order to not overwhelm us, I told everyone to only choose from the perks list. We were playing within 15 minutes. We had a blast and a surprising come-from-behind win after the leader took a hard turn when he needed a hairpin and crashed into a wall.

Top center: The Jaguar that spent most of the game in the lead comes within millimeters of the Willy's Jeepster that found a chance to overtake it. Left side: You can see the polka-dot top of Toad from Mario Kart hugging the green divider wall. Toad was the underdog success story.

All the kids liked it and had a bunch of laughs. I'll definitely be introducing this game to my brothers next chance I get.

One note I should mention: when I ordered the rules from Wargame Vault, they were free, but it must have been a temporary promotion or something, because I looked again a week later and they were $5 (USD). Still not a bad price, though.

Note 2: The rules did not lay out how to decide turn order, so I chose order based on cars positions after every round, so leader first, then 2nd place car, and so on. Made sense to me and seemed to work well.

One Hour Wargames: Surprise Attack

Since my last post, I felt driven to play something before too much time passed. While listening to a podcast, the speaker brought up One Hour Wargames, by Neil Thomas. They mentioned the thirty scenarios included in the latter portion of the book. I remembered reading the rules once and knew I shouldn't need a whole lot to get on the table. It sounded perfect for restarting after such a dead stretch. So I worked at getting enough of the table cleared off that I could play a quick. Got out the Junior General micro-scale American Civil War paper cutouts I built a couple years ago. Then I set up a play area before choosing a scenario.

Here is a fork in the road with some green splotches for forest stands, a few buildings, fenced areas, and a couple hills. The top right area is out of bounds as I realized I made more of a 3x4 foot board, maybe it's a lake or something.

With the terrain set up, I rolled a d100 to get a random scenario (1-30) and my first cast got me an 11: Surprise Attack. This scenario states that red controls a crossroads with two units and blue makes a surprise attack with six units. Red gets reinforcements at Turn 3 and Turn 9. Whoever is in control of the crossroads after 15 turns is the winner.

Each side gets 6 units. There is a set of tables in the book that one can roll on to get unit assignments. For the red team (Confederates), I got 4 infantry, 1 artillery, and 1 zouave. Blue (Union) got 3 infantry, 2 cavalry, and 1 zouave. I have no counters for zouaves, so I replaced them with cavalry.

So, trying to be a good general for red, I started the cannon on the hill by the intersection. I figured its range would allow them a shot or two before blue's infantry got into range. The red infantry I put between the road and a forest blob, in case I wanted to retreat them to cover.

Here come the blue troops. Also trying to be a good general for the blue team, I place the cavalry units off to the sides so they are positioned to get around the field obstructions and slower infantry; two on the west and one on the east.

Red artillery starts inflicting damage to the first line of blue infantry. The added distance for troops travelling on the road only allowed one unopposed shot from red. The red infantry slides over to the protection of the woods.

The lead blue infantry unit and the red cannon exchange shots while the following two blue lines try to get around them. The lead blue infantry also takes fire from the reds in the woods. 

The east blue cavalry come into range and start firing into the trees, not doing much damage, but one of the blue infantry gets into position to fire into the trees as well. 

Better rolls for blue see the cannon unit taken from the field, and the red unit in the trees eliminated as the first set of red reinforcements arrive. Blue only loses two stands.

The layout after turn 4. Two red infantry units are on the east side of the hill, but they are taking fire from the blue infantry to the north and cavalry in the south.

The first red reinforcements make a good fight of it until turn 9, when the rest come out from the west. However, they lose one full unit and they lose control of the intersection; the second unit retreating into the larger clump of woods to the southeast.

The layout at turn 12. Blue infantry on the hill and behind the fence to the north, as well as an almost destroyed infantry (1hp left) east of the hill. Blue cavalry in the road junction, behind a fence facing red infantry to the west and the other facing the reds in the trees. A greatly reduced red cavalry taking fire from the hill and in bad shape. I don't think red has a chance at this point to regain the junction in 3 turns, and I called the game a blue victory.

 Someone experienced with the book, One Hour Wargames, will know, the actual combat rules are quite simple. I go, you go turn order (blue always playing first in this scenario). Units may move or attack. Attacks always hit, roll for casualties (modifiers increase or decrease this number), 15 hp per unit.

I like that play and keeping track of hp is quick and easy (in this case I used a die to keep track of damage, removing a stand for every 5 hp lost). I like the very limited turns (move or shoot) since it reinforces the image that a unit has to move to a position, then ready itself to fire, taking time that an opposing unit already in position can take advantage of and fire upon them. This forces decisions like do I move to cover, giving up speed but saving hp, or get there fast and risk taking severe losses.

However, it still felt like something was missing in the end. I wonder if 15 hp per unit is too even. What about rolling for morale? But then I figure that casualties don't necessarily mean soldiers downed, but could also represent lost morale and the resulting fleeing from the field by affected troops. If this was a campaign, one could set up an aftermath generator to see how each unit was affected, otherwise what difference is it if the unit is removed because they were mowed down or ran away? So I guess that wasn't really my issue.

Maybe it's missing the ranking of units and assigning them with different hp values to represent variations in fighting strength/morale/staying power. I do like that kind of thing. There is a form of ranking in the attack roll modifiers assigned to some unit types, but I still think that while most units would likely perform similarly, there could be an accounting for some who might be of a reduced staying power, even at full strength.

Of course I also like the addition of command units, in so many other games, whose proximity to troops affects their ability to carry out orders and/or withstand hp(morale) loss, because it sounds like an aspect that would add some interesting twists to this game.

Well, I guess I can jus go with the knowledge that OHW has left me with some things to think about and that's a good thing, right? Will have to try another session soon.

Also, I should probably make up some zouave units to add a bit of variety to my forces.

Aeronef: Attack over the Falkland Islands

Rules Doctoring

Maybe I'll get this out of the way first: I only have the core rules for Aeronef. Realizing I said I'd play the rules as written, I just couldn't get past some items that I felt needed tweaking, so tweak I did. There is another book out there with additional rules and it may cover some of the things I added, but I don't have that book and am currently in a "don't spend money if you don't have to" mode of thinking and haven't looked into buying it.

So my tweaking included two things:

1) Air torpedoes - I built some of my models with the memory of having read about them in the rules. They are not actually there. So I made up my own that I will, perhaps, post later.

2) I was a little more specific about how many gun dice could be used when firing, taking into account the number of guns I placed on each model and where it looked like they could be pointed. For example, Ansaldo is a round platform with guns positioned so they could all fire forward, but only two turrets could fire out either side or the rear, so full gun dice used for forward fire, and half for the other three arcs.

Reinforcements were rolled for at the end of each turn - 1d6 vs. 1d8. If the d6 beat the d8, reinforcements arrive. For each try after the first, +1 was added to the d6.

On to the scenario...

September 19, 1889

The Falkland Islands have been under British rule for over 60 years. A small force of British air ships is stationed at the archipelago to reinforce British claims over the islands, which are disputed by Argentina.

One of the richest countries on the South American continent, Argentina is still far less wealthy than England. Yet, the Argentine government has bided its time and saved up a reserve which they have started to dip into. They have acquired two airships, which now make their way towards the contested islands. First, the Almirante, a Class 2 airship commissioned of a German builder is accompanied by a small contingent of craft. Second, the Ansaldo, a Class 1 vessel purchased in secret from Russia for a very affordable sum, likely because the Russians didn't tell them about the propulsion problems they were having with it...

The British Admiralty, having known about the Almirante for some time, have sent a second Class 3 airship and torpedo dirigible to beef up their presence in the area. They thought this would be enough to keep Argentina at bay. They didn't know about a second deal with Russia, and the Ansaldo has rounded the Andes and is on course to rendezvous with the other Argentine airships at Islas Malvinas (the Argentine name for the islands), intending to send the English packing.

Set Up

Layed out four islands on the play area (mine was 3' x 3').

British set up their ships (minus one Class 3 and the torpedo dirigible) in any configuration around the isles. All but one start at speed 0. The ships not set up are en route from England (or Canada, perhaps) and come in as reinforcements from the N, NE, or E table edge.

Argentina sets up all of their ships, except Ansaldo, in their choice of NW, W, or SW edge of the table. Ships start at top speed of the slowest airship, probably Almirante. The Ansaldo has experienced propulsion issues en route and arrives late as reinforcements.

Victory conditions

Major Victory, England - Accomplish minor victory conditions and bring down Ansaldo

Minor Victory, England - Inflict 1/2 of total hull points damage to the Argentine force or bring down Almirante

Minor Victory, Argentina - Inflict 1/2 of total hull points damage to British force

Major Victory, Argentina - Down both British Class 3 airships

Battle continues until one of these conditions is met.

The Play (in pictures)

Three British ships sit "at anchor" next to one of the islands. To the north, a fourth, meanders through.

Argentine fleet incoming! Ansaldo waiting to arrive (on table edge).

Turn 2 sees the two groups coming into range and each side fires a torpedo. The white peg torpedo will hit the larger dirigible with minimum damage.

More torpedoes flying in turn 4. The nearer one (friendly fire) misses Almirante and will continue on with no further targets along its path. So far as guns are concerned, small amounts of damage done to either side. In the distance, reinforcements arrive for the Brits.

Ansaldo finally arrives in turn 6 and immediately starts hammering a British Class 3.

Then the larger Argentine dig runs into a torpedo and the damage is too much. Blast that friendly fire!

Ansaldo finishes off that Class 3 in turn 7...

... and gets hit by British air torpedoes! It's only minor damage for a Class 1 ship, but it's enough to trigger the condition for a minor British victory.

So Argentina retreats, saving a badly damaged Almirante from a doom that was too close for comfort. Surely, the Brits will take the Argentine threat quite a bit more seriously and try to send a more beefy support for the islands before another attempt on them is made. But there are rumblings that friction between England and Germany could lead to war, which might limit a response from England. However, other South American countries have been participating in this localized arms race and may see this as their time to make a move. Time will only tell.

First Play: Five Parsecs: Bug Hunt

During early pandemic days, I purchased the Five Parsecs From Home rules (2nd Edition?). It's been upgraded and is now available as a hardcover. Either way it's worth checking out. I played set up a crew and played one battle, wrote up an AAR and haven't played again.

Last month, I bought the spin-off Five Parsecs: Bug Hunt. This game is a little more similar to the Vanguard title I wrote so many AAR's for; try and get something done before the alien threat gets too great. Only this title adds that higher level of off-table crew management I enjoyed in Five Parsecs From Home. I rolled up a team (you get a team of three to keep track of in Bug Hunt, but they have a chance at pulling in special teams or weapons to assist in each battle).

I started a spreadsheet file to keep track of everything happening off-table. Will it help me get more games in? I don't know.

So the first mission is on an Earth-like planet and takes place at a historical commemoration site where a couple of old buildings are preserved along with a working lumber yard. Reports come in stating a disturbance in the area. The Anti-Xenomorph Extermination Squad (A.X.E.S.) is sent in to investigate. They are Nik, a space fleet marine; and Treen and Gwisom, two infantry soldiers. 

Our sleepy little out of the way museum of olden-days construction and forest exploitation. Image is pre-generation of objectives (secure west building and hack museum kiosk on south side of display enclosure).

What a good scenario I had: over the course of the game I must have rolled in a grand total of over thirty aliens (used my trusty Tyranids). I rolled well to set up a team of my three heroes, the customary fire team of 4 soldiers, a sergeant, and a team of two engineers (high Tech score for hacking). Also got an incinerator, which I gave to one of the soldiers.

I didn't keep track of turns nor did I get any pictures until it was almost over.

The team encountered aliens right away as they came in on the south east and crossed the road toward the kiosk and the large building. Two blips located among the buildings turned out to be around 11 aliens (I rolled razor lizards). Treen did an outstanding job holding them off while Nik tested a tactical location that opened up a force shield and he and the engineer team got in it. Treen was wounded and put out of play.

Gwisom went for a tactical location among the lumber piles. All he found was a device to distract the six aliens he found for a while. But it gave him time to make his way back to the fire team. They decide to run to the museum courtyard to help clear a path for the engineers to get to the kiosk (a vital objective). 

At this point, Treen, the sergeant, and a fire team soldier are out. The engineers (bottom-left) succeeded in hacking the kiosk and the fire team are about to secure the west building. The dark circle is the marker for the triggered force shield that kept everyone alive while they cleared away all the aliens that were hanging out among the buildings. So many more blips coming from the north!

West building secured! Evac called in! It's a race to the jump ship!

That incinerator is a welcome addition to this mission.

Post action line-up: (left to right) Engineers, surviving Fire Team, Nik, Gwisom, and casualties Treen, sarge and trooper.

In the post-mission phase Nik and Gwisom got their XP and Treen rolled up a torso injury landing her three days in recovery, but I awarded her the bonus XP for her mighty stand against overwhelming odds. Can two agents accomplish get through the next few tasks? We'll see next time on Five Parsecs: Bug Hunt!

This was a great and engaging game! The blip system keeps a person on their toes, I didn't dare approach them because I kept rolling high numbers on contact. The only thing I can think of at the moment that is lacking is a battle area generation system like one sees in Five Klicks from the Zone (which I've yet to play) as I find it hard to just come up with a battle map.

First Play: Warstuff

The following is an old entry that was being drafted as the motherboard went kaput on the computer I was using. Played in November, I'm just getting back to it now.

Looking through lists of free wargame rules, I was really looking for air combat stuff, but I ended up on One Page Rules. Their new starship combat rules (new to me, have not been on the site for a long while) had come up in a list of free wargames I found. Scrolling through the sight, I happened onto Warstuff. So, where their other rules are pretty much written as alternates for some well-known popular wargames, Warstuff is a very generic game to be used for any models or toys one might have lying around their house.

The game is very accessible; needing only a print-out of the rules, some minis or toys for combatants, some six-sided dice, and a pencil and paper for writing out the army lists. I made a 150 point army in about 15 minutes then helped my 9 year old son make one in about 20 minutes. I set up a table and we played a game in less than an hour.

Building units

Warstuff is a points-based army builder. The rules suggest a game of 150 points and provide a very easy unit building process. 

Start with a model/toy/minifig you want to use in your squad. Choose a unit quality level for it; what number does the unit have to roll on a d6 to succeed at something, mainly shooting and dodging or landing hits in melee, but easily expanded to include testing for other perils. It costs though. For example: a low quality grunt costs 5 points, but only hits on rolls of 6+, where a higher quality troop succeeding on 3+ is 20 points.

Next step is to assign up to three of the 26 special features, which also cost points, to your units. Features consist of things like Frenzy (reroll a failed melee roll) or Shooter (make a ranged attack). 

Mix and match quality, features, and number of units until you hit the game's point level. So you could have a force of ten low quality (6+), medium range shooters (call it a squad of Imperial soldier goons). Or go for two high quality (2+) guys with the max number of high-cost features (perhaps some armed and armoured bounty hunters). Hmmm, that's a game I should try running myself - Does quality stand up to quantity?

Rules

Super simple rules provided for movement, shooting, and melee. Easy to add on anything more you need. The download on the website now is actually different than what I downloaded, though I haven't compared the two versions.

Gameplay

As mentioned, I played with my son, who's 9. We had two games using Lego minifigs as our combatants. I played both games with a team of five: a dwarf warrior, Maui, an undersea being, and two random gun-men. It's been long enough since I started this post, I don't remember any stats except that Maui had the Large feature.

My glorious Warstuff team.

My son tried two different teams. Team one was Sith Anakin and a collection of clone troopers. Second was a pilot Anakin and some Ninjago guys.

He really liked the game, even though I won both rounds. We'll probably play again soon.

Lord Garmadon perches himself on the building, ready to huck some dynamite my way. This is where we had to improvise some rules for jumping/falling off of things.

We had some morale rules and Anakin's team lost a morale check at this point. I think only Master Wu and R2-D2 remained standing. Besides the dwarf, seen here, I had lost one of the gunmen.

First Play: Pulp Alley with Solo Deck (Part 1)

As sometimes tends to happen here, I'm going to ramble about how I came to actually play this game before I actually show anything about the game. To see the game, skip until you see pictures.

During the Christmas break, I downloaded and put together a bunch of stands of American Civil War figures from Junior General to try out one of those types of games. Had it all set up on the table, watched videos on how to play the rules I had chosen, moved some of the Union soldiers forward, and quit because I just felt confused by what I thought should happen next compared to what the rules said I should do compared again with how the person in the video did it (in exactly the same scenario, no less). I just felt dense. 

I hope to revisit ACW gaming in the future, perhaps with a different ruleset. But as I put the soldiers up and out of the way, the old blue Pringles can beckoned once again to be brought out to play.

"Why a Pringles can?" you may ask. Well, that's where all the figures and cards I printed and put together to play Pulp Alley have been sitting since I made them back before we moved into our current residence 4 or 5 years ago.

I purchased the rules for Pulp Alley about seven years ago because I thought it looked cool: rolling different dice types, custom characters, pulp stories theme, easy to learn and play, and more. Got cards and figures put together and it all went into a Pringles can and sat. All this time, the can has sat, begging me to play. The one time I did take it down was to add the Solo deck after purchasing that PDF and printing it out.

Well, it's finally happened! I finally played Pulp Alley. Did it with the solo deck, which comes as part of an add-on package sold separately from the core rules. 

What I quickly found is that this game is as much about the story around a scenario as it is about playing it. The solo deck comes with a campaign to use, complete with ready-made leagues for you to use, but I went about starting my own story.

My first move was to put together some leagues. A couple of leagues came together nicely using the paper figures in the can. A couple others needed some additional figures and I went on a hunt for the same ones that I printed out so long ago. Well, a person can no longer get those figures. At least not in the same image quality. I could only find a link to the archived pages of the now defunct website. So the additions I made look fuzzy compared to their friends. I might have the files I downloaded so long ago, but they'd be on one of my external drives, which I cannot conveniently access since my laptop died and we are only running on a Mac right now (wrong format). Oh well, we must go on. So yeah, the leagues. Well, I got four completely assembled (the Leader being the left-most character followed by the Sidekick, then Allies and Followers):

The Shadow's Agents - Cranston and Miss Lane head up Moe, two agents from the '90s movie, and Trixie is a Follower I made up to fill the spot.

Anastasia's Heroes - as in the surviving Romanov girl, now in her mid-30s, with a band of displaced Tzarist troops hiding from the Bolsheviks and making their way in the world as mercenary adventurers. A Russian A-Team.

Military Occultists - The ones we all love to hate. They're bent on seizing something that will help them achieve world domination, even if it means waking some ancient horror.

The Fortune Hunters - Most comfortable in a cockpit and raiding some luxury zeppelin, but there's more than one way to make a fortune and sometimes it doesn't require a plane.

There are other leagues in the works, just not fully assembled yet. Each league also has a League Perk.

I started up a spreadsheet to keep track of things. So using the resources I had at hand and the scenario-building tables in the core rules, my first scenario was born. I randomly chose the contestants and it ended up being me playing the Fortune Hunters against the Military Occultists and this short narrative came to mind:

Nathan Zachary receives a telegram from an old army buddy he knew during the war. The telegram begs for him to come to Casa Blanca with friends. Once there, Nathan learns that his friend had recently returned from a trip, part of his return was aboard a zeppelin crossing the Sahara Desert, during which he saw strange ruins uncovered by raging winds. He marked the location and noticed a shady-looking man in strange military attire doing the same. Sitting close enough to overhear the soldier whisper to his female travel companion, he deduced that they are part of an occult relic-hunting team and they were obviously planning to return there. 

Feeling that he couldn't trust anyone else with the potential importance of whatever the occultists could be interested in, Buddy turned to his old squadron-mate. Nathan's response: "I learned to always trust your instincts during the war. If you feel like something's fishy, we'll go investigate. At the very least, we'll make sure there's nothing for your creepy couple to find."

Pulp Alley uses objective markers, called plot points, to drive the game. It's a contest of who can grab the most plot points before game end (turn 6, under normal circumstances). There's always a main plot point. The main plot point here was the Purple Death Receptor. The location of this objective would be revealed at random in one of three possible locations after someone acquired the plot point "exhaust valve". Two plot points were treasure ("smuggled diamonds" and "booby-trapped diamonds"). The final plot point was a torn letter. I think the letter and/or the receptor could lead whoever possesses it at the end of the game into another scenario.

To be continued...

Or desktop computer crashed and it's a doozy. Symptoms point to motherboard fault. So I'll just stop this write up here and tell the game story a little later on.

First Play: Quickfire

Another thing that's been on my mind a few years and I have now gotten to the table; some kind of pre-dreadnought game.

Pre-dreadnought type ships have almost a romantic quality all their own as they fill a relatively short gap between fighting sail and the modern battleship. Having been developed during that turn of the century heyday where discovery and invention seemed to take such frequent leaps in so many directions, the warships of the era abound in differences as theories in engineering and armament are tested, built, then discarded. I think it's why these boats fit so well into the steampunk sort of genre, if you're in to that sort of thing.

I looked into buying ships, but I ended up making my own and I quite like how they turned out. Using drawings downloaded from the-blueprints.com, I looked up ship sizes and scaled the drawings to fit 1:3000 scale on a PowerPoint slide (one can fit a number of ships at that scale on an 8.5 x 11 slide). I cut out and glued the top views of the drawings to popsicle sticks, stacking superstructure portions to roughly match the side view drawings for height. Funnels and masts are made up of metal rods and paperclips, respectively. Large turrets are sawed off ends of bamboo skewers or cut circles from bread tags. The boats are glued to tongue depressors cut at 5cm lengths (luckily, some of these I found in our craft drawers were blue). To finish things off, the ships' names are written on and a little flag glued to the depressor.

Three Japanese battleships. From left: Mikasa, Asahi, Yashima. Not pictured: armoured cruisers, Asama and Tokiwa.

Russian ships. Front to back: battleships Tsesarevich, Retvizan, Potemkin, Rostislav, and protected cruisers Zhemchug and Izumrud. 

The 11 ships mentioned in the above captions are all I've made so far, but I wanted to play with them, so I found a ruleset to use online called Quickfire. It looked like the right mix of detail and quicker play I was looking for. 

Initial setup of my game. Russians on the left, Japanese on the right. At the ship scale and the size of my table, these fleets have just come into range of each other.

I got stat sheets filled out and for the sake of easiness I decided to have the boats start single file with the position and approach angles decided at random. I didn't take many pictures or really keep track of much of the battle, so I don't really have an after action report like I've done with other games. This game would take me about a month to play out as I took a turn or two or three on days I could spare the time.

Although I deliberately chose to start with Japanese and Russian ships, I just randomly picked which ships I made, so the match-up seemed a bit uneven when I got the stats all figured out. Although it was six Russian ships vs. five Japanese, in this game the Japanese cruisers are rated almost as powerfully as the battleships and the Russian cruisers were useless for firing anything but torpedoes (which have a range of only 4 inches and even then rarely hit anything).

Mikasa is set afire early in the game as battleships head right and cruisers go left.

Around turn 7 or so, the Japanese boats seem quite organized. The Russians less so, with their battle ships splitting left and right as the cruisers race through the middle.

It's a close call as Rostislav maneuvers to pass behind the cruisers to join Retvizan.

The ships remaining after turn 20.

End of turn 23. Yashima is the only Japanese ship still afloat, but is adrift. Izumrud has had its speed reduced to where she cannot turn, her ability to launch torpedoes is nil. Rostislav has only her primary weapons operational, but is still in good shape for maneuvering. I ended the game here proclaiming a minor Russian victory.

I keep saying, after playing games like this, that I should be using some kind of moral check. I'd have thought the rules for this game would include something along those lines. Probably would reduce the number of turns in a game like this. As it was, I had no other motive for either side than to shoot each other up and that seemed to take quite a long time. Here's the stat sheets at the end:

Stat sheets used for Quickfire. Pretty simple stuff, considering other games I've played or seen.

It took ten turns to sink the first ship (Tsesarevich). The first two sunk were Russian, it was looking bad for them until Retvizan made an improbable hit on Asahi, triggering blast damage that reduced her speed and started fires that caused even more problems next turn. It was amazing how often Asahi was ablaze before finally sinking at turn 17. Turn 15 saw an amazing torpedo hit on Tokiwa by Izumrud, sinking her that turn. It was the only damage dealt by either Russian cruiser the whole game.

Thoughts on the Rules

I rather enjoy these rules. However, I think I would enjoy them more playing against someone who isn't me. There were times I wonder whether I targeted the right ships in a turn, thinking someone else might have acted differently, but I'd just put that into the downsides of playing solo.

An interesting part of these rules is the division in gunnery and armour. If a ship fires using primary (heavy) guns, the receiving ship uses a heavy armour rating that is compared to attackers heavy gunnery rating to decide the hit value needed. The same ships have different ratings for secondary (light) guns, which are compared against a light armour rating. The variety of ratings and rates of fire of the ships is also interesting.

The firing process is different; one d6 to see if the guns put enough shots in the air to do any damage, then if they do, total two other dice and compare to the value needed to count a hit based on the gunnery/armour comparison (on a chart), on a hit total all three dice and cosult a chart to se if blast damage occurs. I caught on pretty good and found less need to consult the charts later in the game. A cool sounding optional rule is for the player to guess the range, then measure to see if they hit (I didn't do this).

Movement seems scaled well enough, it took about half the game for ships to get into short range (which increases the possibility of blast damage and explosions) and over half the game for any ships to get into torpedo range. Moves at the scale I used are measured in millimeters, the faster ships on my table topping out at 80mm per turn. An optional rule is to double movement, which would get ships into short range and the increased possibility of blast damage quicker, might have to try that.

In any case, Quickfire turned out to be a pretty good game. Building the ships was enjoyable and I think they look good for their simplicity. 

Have fun!

First play: How to Host a Dungeon

 Short version? This was not quite what I expected, but it was a really fun exercise!

With RPG game masters in mind, How to Host a Dungeon is more of a guided exercise in somewhat localized world-building. The manual takes you through a number of steps, called Ages (briefly described below), to end up with a populated world that has a history that can then be used in a fantasy role-playing game.

Step 1: The Primordial Age

You start with a landscape profile, which you draw on your page, either completely of your own making or patterned after a general plan randomly selected by d6 roll. Then you map seven stratigraphic layers in the underground portion, so you have eight zones of play, including the surface. Then you roll a die to decide the composition of each layer (i.e.: caves, gem deposits, subterranean biomes, and more). There is an optional feature called a Nexus, but I did not use this in my first game. The board is now ready to be populated.

For ease of keeping track, stratigraphy layers are labeled 1-8, usually with 1 being the surface and 8 the deepest layer.

Step 2: The Age of Civilization

There is a list of civilizations to choose from: aliens, dwarves, elves, demons, and magicians. Each has its own set of turn options, called a Lifecycle, that are played through until the civilization comes to an end. As you play through the Lifecycles, you will be drawing rooms and tunnels, mining resources, and keeping track of population until the fateful day of their destruction, disbanding, or disappearance.

Step 3: The Age of Monsters

Part of the print job is a pile of monster cards. Each monster has a certain way to spawn into the game and a custom Lifecycle of three possible actions: one they always do (unless it is impossible), one that is conditional (used to resolve being unable to do the first action), and a list of lesser actions from which they may choose one to perform.

Each monster gets to take a turn, with new monsters entering the fray until one of them achieves superiority through numbers or riches. Some build more rooms, others just roam what already exists. The Age ends when a monster group reaches a threshold level of population or wealth, or special condition found on their particular card (not all monsters have one).

Step 4: Age of Villainy

The monster group that triggered this age embarks on a path of villainy as a horde or an empire. Each path adds more action options to the villain monster group which they follow until they control the board in whatever way their path dictates, ending the game.

My session

Primordial Age

I rolled landscape profile 4, an up-thrust mountain where the stratigraphy is angled, such that all but one of the layers are exposed to the surface on one side of the mountain. Layer 1 (surface) rolled forest cover, layer 2 rolled a large cave that takes up most of the layer, layer 3 rolled a large cave with three distinct gemstone deposits, Layer 4 rolled a large cave with a lake in it, layer 5 rolled two small caves with water in them, layer 6 rolled a large cave with magma and a vent tunnel that goes to the surface, layer 7 rolled a fungus biome, and layer 8 rolled six gemstone deposits.

Age of Civilization

Dwarves move in, tunnelling over from the left side of my paper. They start with two living quarters and two treasure vaults (population 2, wealth 2).

They explore, finding the cave of gemstones and they build a workshop. (pop. 3, wealth 2)

Mining begins on one of the gem deposits, a drinking hall (fortification) is built. (pop. 4, wealth 3)

Mining begins on second gem deposit and a power plant is built. (pop. 5, wealth 4)

Mining begins on third gem deposit and the settlement is big enough to be called a city. It is granted the name Hulden Dur and a great room is constructed in which is carved a giant statue of the Torvund the Founder. (pop. 6, wealth 5)

With the available gems being exploited, the dwarves push deeper into the mountain, finding two more gem deposits in their exploration. A manufactory is built. (pop. 7, wealth 5)

Mining begins on the first of the newly discovered deposits and a tomb is built. (pop. 8, wealth 6)

Mining begins on second new gem deposit. An impossible engine is constructed (bonus: build an additional room). The dwarves build a magnificent imperial throne room (epic treasure). (pop. 9, wealth 7)

There's a reason it was called an impossible engine. Unstable from the day they started it, the engine was closely monitored and kept in check by the dwarves' best scientists and mechanics. They used it to infuse the most perfect of gems with magical energy. These gems were used to power tools and weapons of all kinds. It was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened. A missed flaw in a gem approved for infusion caused the gem to crack, releasing a burst of energy that damaged the machine and its controls. Unable to stop it themselves, the dwarves in the room ran, but some were not fast enough. The explosion rocked the city, destroying the nearest rooms, shock waves causing cave-ins in the further away rooms. A quarter of the population was lost, caught in the explosion or buried under the rubble.

Unable to cope with the losses, the survivors packed up their belongings and riches and left their city deserted.

Age of Monsters

Years pass. So closely together are their advents to mountain, one might say they came together. A small group builds a new settlement in the incredibly large cave. They call it Brazencragg, but they are followed by a hungry couple of dinosaurs. On the other side of the mountain, a swarm of insects finds the warmth of the vent hole and builds some caverns next to the vent tunnel, capturing some of the heat from below to help them thrive.

The dinosaurs infiltrate Brazencragg's cavern, hunting the settlers and multiplying. The sellers build a tomb, but it doubles as a fortification against future attacks. The insects delve deeper into the mountain, finding the tunnel in layer five that connects the two caves. A group of elusive humanoids called Morlons appears in layer 8.

Brazencragg is careless and loses more of its people to the dinosaurs. The Morlons build a refinery to process magma, drawing the ores and metals out of it. The bugs find and infest the ancient dwarven statue room. A giant takes residence in the fungus biome of layer 7.

The dinosaurs wipe out Brazencragg and move into the gem cavern that had been mined by the dwarves. The giant is attacked by the bugs, but kills enough of them that they retreat. Morlons move into the lowest of the dwarven mine chambers and explore into the lower gem deposits. An ogre shows up on the shores of the magma pit.

Dinos expand their territory into the dwarven chambers to look for food. Morlons expand into dwarven chambers and build a fortification, but get robbed by the ogre. The giant attempts to rout the ogre but loses. The bugs attack the ogre and he kills them all. Nomads come from the surface.

The ogre extorts the Morlons again and they retreat into their caves. Nomads move and trade with the Morlons. Dinos hunt the giant. City of Saltbury is established on the surface.

Saltbury starts to delve into the deeps, dinos hunt some of their scouts. Dinosaurs rout the ogre. Morlons refine more magma. Ogre attacks the nomads after they just built a bazaar and some are killed. A medusa shows up in a dwarven living quarters.

Saltbury builds a wall. The dinosaurs wipe out the nomads and breed triggering the end of the age and they become the villains.

Age of Villains

Saltbury allies with the Dinosaurs. Since building their wall, the city dwellers are now safe from being hunted in the depths. Saltbury is safe from the dangers below and turn their attention outward.

Medusa scouts out other rooms left by the dwarves, searching for prey and finds the Morlons. Morlons continue their magma refinement. The Ogre hunts them.

The Dinosaurs attempts to rout Medusa and fail. They breed to replace their losses and just so happen to populate a stratum layer with no other monsters in it, triggering the game-winning condition.

The final map of my first try at How to Host a Dungeon.

Thoughts

I was not expecting how things went down, as in profile-wise. Where the designer's game description says How to Host a Dungeon will generate a complete dungeon map, I was picturing a top-down view. As one can see, that is not the case. However, I see that the profile view allows for layers of elevation and I think works better playing/planning on a single sheet of paper. I have never GMed a game or created a world for one and maybe the profile is a well used method of dungeon creation among the breed (I am currently in the middle of my first D&D campaign, so very new to this) and as such, my praise here is not a surprise.

The creation steps and their changing through each age kept me engaged right up to the Age of Villains. I liked the sense of directed randomness as I rolled and drafted features and populations with the liberty to arrange how they looked as things unfolded. Interesting also was the sense of there being a central location where most of the action was taking place in a grand fight for dominance (around the Dwarven structures here) while outlying caverns housed fewer life forms that mostly just existed.

Even though I have never run a game as a GM, after playing this I feel like I'd have a leg up already creating a micro-world for some RPG campaign. There's locations with varied terrain and treasures, a history of past and current populations, each with different behaviours, localized interactions, and even some strange technologies. I feel like my map would be easy to transfer to some other game.

One thing though, I was forced to stop at the switch from Age of Monsters to Age of Villains and I had a hard time wanting to pick it up again to finish. I did finish just before writing this down, but it's been a month. Maybe I was tainted by one of the comments I read about how the commenter doesn't play the last age. Or maybe I felt the same thing they did. Maybe some combination. At any rate, I felt like the game was already won and I was just figuring out by how much. Interestingly enough, as seen above, I only played one more turn before the game ended.

One thing I would change is to use beads or tokens for population and wealth as suggested instead of using a pencil and eraser. The map would be a little cleaner for it and I might have had an easier time with tracking.

I got this title from DriveThruRPG. It was on sale when I purchased it and I forget what I paid, but to play a 2 or 3 hour epic that you have a hand in creating for less than the cost of a movie ticket (not that many of us are doing that activity right now), I feel it was a good deal. I can see myself playing/using this again sometime, probably not right away though as I've been drawn into other things, some of which will be appearing on this blog over the next few weeks.

Vanguard: Seeking Sanctuary - Part 1: Despair

 Some months ago, I came across a link for this solo skirmish game called Vanguard: Seeking Sanctuary. It consists of a simple set of rules that don't require any paper recording beyond what your characters are and their special actions/conditions. Of the 29 pages, 16 pages contain rules, the rest are scenarios for the game's campaign and a map. I downloaded it to my phone, so when I needed something to pass the time, I'd just pull up the file and read. Did that all summer! 

The premise is that monsters have suddenly begun spawning from portals/crawling out of the depths of the ground and, due to an army already spread thin for whatever reasons you wish to invent, your team of six mercenaries has been hired to discover the cause and, hopefully, stop the rising tide of terrors. Basically, each scenario is a task for your team to accomplish before being over-run by the constant stream of incoming monsters.

This is my first play of the game, starting at the first scenario, titled "Despair".

Morlok's Court, an area on the outskirts of the town where the mercenary team had just assembled and struck their deal with the regional authority, is thrown into chaos as a sudden trembling announces the imminent arrival of the hideous horde from the ground! The heroic band must save and evacuate as many civilians as they can.

Setup: the mercenary band is walking down the street on their way out of town when the ground starts to rumble. Time to gather up civilians! There are ten civilians (paper figures) randomly placed on the table, two are hidden behind the two small buildings (bottom right) and one is behind the townhouses (top left). 

From left: Turok - barbarian fighter from the north, Ivor - fearless leader, Emeralda - priestess of protection, Katya - knight errant, Elan - elven ranger, Fenrir - dwarven fusileer

Turn 1

As the mercenaries spread out to gather up civilians, the first of the monsters arrive. Three grunts and a boss. As per the scenario, roll a d6 at the end of each round and add +1 for every civilian in contact with a mercenary. A successful roll of 7+ results in the arrival of a carriage/wagon that rescued civilians need to be taken to for evacuation. No luck this turn.

Turn 2

Elan takes aim and makes the first kill.

The boss doesn't have to go far for its first victim.

This grunt, however, has a hard time pinning this one down!

Two elites and two more grunts arrive. No ride out of here yet!

Turn 3

Elan manages to knock down the boss.

Fenrir bags a grunt as it comes up a side road.

Emeralda casts an armour buff to help Katya, who attacks an elite. Unfortunately, her blow is deflected.

This grunt still having troubles with its prey!

Seeing the danger that woman was in (back in Turn 2), Emeralda cast a protection spell on her, hoping someone might be able to reach her in time. With the protection of the spell, the woman is spared a grizzly death, for now.

Thanks to the armour buff, Katya avoids being knocked down. The boss gets up, immediately attacking Ivor, but is too disoriented to land any blows. I forgot to document what spawned this round.

Turn 4

The carriage has arrived! Four civilians are loaded up. They really should go, but Emeralda thinks she has the time to get to one more civilian.

Elan takes down another grunt!

Fenrir shoots a grunt, but it keeps on coming!

Ivor and Katya keep their charges at bay while Emeralda rushes past them. Ivor actually kills the boss, but I must have missed taking a picture of that.

Those women are proving quite difficult for the grunts! Too bad they're so far away, there's just too many monsters and no chance they'll be rescued by the mercenaries. In the spawn phase, a couple more elites and a couple more grunts showed up.

Katya knocks down the elite she's fighting. Ivor moves to contend with another elite that spawned just after the boss got killed. He can't knock it down, but at least keeps it off of Emeralda as she grabs another civilian.

Fenrir takes a long shot and knocks down an elite.

Elan moves to cover Emeralda and hopefully help out Ivor and Katya. Turns to take down another grunt.

Ivor keeps the elite at bay. Turok's shadow on the right as he comes to help. Where has he been?

Katya's elite gets up and takes a swipe, catching nothing but a shield.

Our unlucky grunt finally sees a success!

Turn 5

I started to neglect the picture taking, but the previous turn spawn phase saw another boss and more grunts. As Emeralda passes through the battle line with civilian in tow, the mercenaries gather rounds and start their retreat toward the carriage, being massed by the monsters as they went. Elan is knocked down, but is luckily able to fend off any blows that come while he's on the ground.

The end is near. Either their defence breaks or the mercenaries will get to the carriage!

Fenrir is alone on the other side of the carriage as more monsters close. His heavy armour keeps him safe from this boss and elite and a ranged grunt. I had originally decided to have no ranged units for the monsters, using Tyranid hormagaunts and genestealers as grunts and elites. The boss is some kind of spider mage thing from Heroscape. I started running out of hormagaunts, so I started bringing out termagants (ones with guns), so some ranged units.

Turn 6

Thanks to Katya's knight ability, the defence holds and everyone is able to get on the carriage, along with five civilians. In order to live to fight another day, they have to leave the town behind and let fate play out its hand. 

As the heroes and their charges head into the great forest of the Svartvalt, they are joined by others who have managed to flee the town. What awaits this group as they traverse the road through the great trees of the forest? Can the monstrous horde be stopped? The sounds of destruction fade and night is coming on. The forest's darkness only invites one feeling at the end of this day... despair.