Where did the summer go?

This summer has been quite busy: multiple camping trips, Jenni working on a graduate degree, kids in musical theater and volleyball camps, and outings to the local reservoir to swim meant not much time was spent on gaming-related stuff. And any gaming I did do, I took no notes as writing it up here wasn't even close to the priority list.

What I have done, in summary:

1) One of the unplayed rulesets lurking in my collection is Aeronef. I like the steampunk/alt. history setting and have often thought of playing. I could play using my 1/3000 battleships, but I want to push fantastical soaring cruisers and destroyers around the table. So I've started making some.

2) Have I written about making American Civil War stands using figures printed from Junior General? Well, I put together some cavalry to go with them. Also made 3 buildings and a bunch of zigzag fences. But looking at army lists for historic battles, now I feel like I need more infantry to play anything larger than Blackburn's Ford.

3) Painted some more figures from my Blacklist Games Fantasy order: spiders, rats, boars, and wolves.

4) Made two simple hills for terrain.

5) Introduced a couple of my son's friends to wargaming.

I've also been thinking about what I post to this blog. Kind of feeling like I should do fewer "after-action reports". Maybe. Or do I want to change format and start a new blog. Or maybe I just needed the break. Even now, I'm fighting sleep at 11:46 pm, having started 40 minutes ago to just write this little bit.

How about for now, I'm not posting anything unless I include some images.

"Aaas yyooouuu wiiisshh!"

 One of the one hundred Heroclix I received those years ago had modification written all over it from the moment I saw it. Looking at it, I know without any reservation, exactly who I wanted this figure to become. It's just taken me this long to actually get to work on making the transformation happen.

The original was called Swordsman. He's arrayed in a purple costume with a mask and swashbuckler's boots, sword drawn and raised, pointing out from his shoulder. A moustache and jaw line to match that of Neville Sinclair in the Disney production of The Rocketeer.

Using pictures from the film, I made a few add-ons: shaved-down some parts of Swordsman's suit then adding head covering, belt, lapels, poofy-ness in the shirt sleeves, and fly-out parts of the gloves out of green stuff. A 97% black repaint would turn this sculpt into Wesley, aka: "the man in black" or the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Of course he's wearing all black, so I tried to differentiate some things to try and make his appearance a little less boring. First up was a zenithal highlight on the black primer. Then, after painting all the black, I chose some elements to be "less black" like his belt, boots, gloves, and headband. These were dark grey mixed with black. I works slightly better for viewing in real life than for these pictures.

Just need to base it now, but I couldn't wait to get some pictures on here.

Renegade Legion: Leviathan - Planetary Defence

 To try out my scenario generator, I decided on three cards each for the belligerents. So here's what I drew:

Terran Overlord Government:

1 frigate (3 fighter flights)

1 destroyer

5 corvettes

5 missile platforms

4 fighter groups

Renegade Legion:

1 cruiser (1 fighter group)

1 carrier frigate (5 fighter groups)

1 destroyer (1 fighter squadron)

From scenario cards I pulled planetary defence and from special conditions it was asteroid belt.

So after some random and some deliberate placement of terrain and units, the map looked something like this:

Note: I don't use the stat sheets that come with the game. Instead, I favour the ones produced by Jape77 on Boardgamegeek (visible at top right). I like the changes the author made, but I also find them more visually pleasing than the originals. The fighter groups sheet comes from my own Excel tool (which I uploaded to BGG as well). Bottom right are some sheets I made up for small craft, like corvettes, based on some discussions I read in different forums that discussed this very thing (I'll likely post these to BGG as well).

My feeling was that the RL force would have a pretty easy go of things. The cruiser's stats alone look very intimidating compared to the entire TOG force. Then again, doesn't a commander want every possible advantage when they are attacking?

I fashioned the following narrative from my card picks. 

RL forces sent a decoy group through the TOG planet's sensor range. Having succeeded in drawing of a number of the vessels stationed there into a pursuit, the RL command sent a small carrier force to raid the planet with the mission of destroying the orbital defences - five missile platforms capable of firing 2 F-class missile salvos each - as a precursor to a full planetary invasion (or liberation, as the RL prefers to call it). 

The Legion ships approached the planet from behind the nearby asteroid belt to hide their signals. But the interference is a double edged sword and they will have to traverse the belt in order to target anything with the capital ships' weapons. This means they will be in range of TOG missiles from the orbital platforms.

Turn 1: 

Fighters deploy. Everyone closing. The first losses are to the fighters that met in the middle, both dishing out exactly what they received. I found a more planety-looking planet to replace the pail lid.

I had trouble trying to figure out how fighters were supposed to do damage to each other, I came up with a simplified process for dogfight attrition. Thinking on my younger days of playing Chuck Yeager's Air Combat on PC, my hit accuracy with that game's WWII fighters averaged around 20% (unless I was shooting down bombers). Based on that, I decided to roll a d3 for each group and multiply the result by 10 for a percentage (10%, 20%, 30%). Multiplied a group's CRA (or LRA) value by the percentage, using the result rounded down as how many boxes to cross off the enemy group's strength boxes, and vice-versa, treating it as simultaneous fire. 

Example: Red Group A (CRA 108) vs Blue Group B (CRA 122). 

Red rolls a 2. 108 x 0.2 = 21.6. Blue Group B crosses off 21 boxes.

Blue rolls a 3. 122 x 0.3 = 36.6. Red Group A crosses off 36 boxes.

Each side then crosses out CRA values if reduction thresholds were reached.

If fighters have a choice between fighter opposition or targets for their missiles, they could only chose one line of attack. In this case, if fighters wanted to target an orbital missile platform, they could not impose casualties on any attacking interceptors. Missile strength is also reduced in to CRA values as they decline with attrition.

Turn 2:

The heavies are still too far away to do much of anything. Fighters meet and start start duking it out with each other. I should have had the RL fighters (red) attack the platforms right away... Also, I didn't realize the RL cruiser is in range of one of the platforms (both to fire missiles and to be fired on).

Turn 3:

The RL cruiser is now in range to fire missiles at the platforms, but they are in range to fire on her as well, so she takes some damage, losing a large portion of her fore and forward right armour sections. Lucky missile placement destroys her silos so the cruiser's second salvo cannot be fired. The two left-most platforms were hit and destroyed by the RL cruiser and destroyer salvos. We start to see some fighter groups go missing. The RL destroyer races in to launch missiles at the topmost platforms.

I couldn't find any info on orbital installations having missiles, so I made up my own stats: shield factor 3, 50 armour, 8 systems that could get damaged (rolled a d10 for each hit past the armour to damage systems, no systems hit on 9 or 0). 

Turn 4:

Realizing her vulnerability to the platform attacks, the cruiser slows and turns to stay out of missile range and just try to weaken their shields for fighter attacks. The bottom platform's reactor is hit; I decide it can explode if I roll a 1 and it does! I roll a d3 to take out percentages of the near-by fighters. Red fighters also take out the right-most platform. The RL Ajax destroyer (sitting between the cruiser and the planet) is crippled, having lost its left-side thrusters last turn, she is also now out of missiles. Only the top-most platform remains and it's up to the fighters beside it to take it down next turn.

Turn 5:

More red fighter groups are eliminated as they try to make their way back to the carrier. The cruiser is flipped around to put armour on the side of the TOG destroyer bearing down. The small TOG ship fires its spinal mount and does a little damage to armour, same as the Ajax destroyer aiming at the TOG frigate. Most importantly, the RL fighters can send just enough missiles into the final platform (already weakened by the cruiser's long range shots) to put it out of commission.

Unfortunately, I cleaned everything up after that turn, figuring there couldn't be much more done to the RL force, totally forgetting about the fact that the TOG fighters that remained all had missiles. It's possible that some of them might have been able to get close enough to retaliate somewhat effectively, and the RL ships could have come away a little worse off than they were. Even so, I think they took more damage than I was expecting, having lost practically all their fighters and two salvos hitting the cruiser with enough punch to damage systems.

The two most heavily damaged ships of the game.

Leviathan is perhaps the most complex game of any type that I own and while I do like it, it takes a lot out of me to play it solo. This was the largest number of units I've fielded in a game. The turns averaged an hour each, setup was a couple of hours (including making the corvette sheets and statting missile platforms).

Take-aways:

1) Check better for firing opportunities - a missed chance at firing could be crucial

2) Stay on target with fighters - RL wasted a turn dogfighting when they could have been firing missiles at the platforms and getting out of Dodge.

3) More spinal mount attacks? - I played with the thinking that only one spinal weapon attack was possible in a game, but can't find that limitation in the book. If more can be fired, one might use maneuverability of destroyers to stay in front or rear arcs of larger ships and come at them with spinal mount attacks (and missiles, of course). 

4) I really should try getting Full Thrust to the table.

Renegade Legion: Leviathan - Making a Scenario Generator

It's been a couple or three years and I've made my way back to Leviathan again. Boy, just seems to be one of those games that always needs a few years to pass before the desire to play it overcomes the mental inertia that resists the pre-game set-up. I like the idea of the game, I like the marking off boxes of armour in the shapes created by different weapons and watching systems go down once the armour is penetrated. I just feel like I don't know where to start to make a scenario. Consider the last time I played, I used a scenario I found online.

This time I did things a little differently and I think I'm mostly inspired by the host of the YouTube channel "Joy of Wargaming" and how he sets up a mini game of moving armies around on a map to figure out how they meet and what the force strengths are...very interesting stuff (Link to series here). What his series following a Napoleonic style campaign has helped me realize is that it's ok to play a non-balanced game. Just the fact that one side is stronger can contribute to a more engaging story and can point you toward a more easily contrived scenario: side blue is stronger on paper, so perhaps side red is staging a fighting retreat, hoping to lose as few units as possible.

Well, I didn't really care to run a whole campaign map, but I had the thought of what about a scenario generator that uses a deck of cards. I got to work.

One suit had types and quantities of ships assigned to each card for the TOG forces and another suit with an identical set-up for the Renegade Legion forces. To the third suit I assigned certain scenario types: planetary defence, escort mission, or an all out fight among others. The fourth suit was assigned special conditions of the battle: asteroid belt bisects the play area, solar flares from a nearby star send damaging beams across the map at intervals and other things that could cause interesting changes in the course of a battle.

My scenarios have the potential to be massively unbalanced! I could decide that each side draws two cards. Maybe one side gets a battleship and a frigate and the other gets a frigate and a cruiser. So, depending on the scenario card I pick, the smaller side is trying to get away, but maybe theirs is a suicide mission to try and bring down that battleship! Or maybe the special condition does something that disables the battleship. I don't know. 

It was actually pretty easy to come up with and I hope it will reduce the amount of resistance I feel about setting up a game. I feel like there's a nice amount of potential and maybe I can tweak things a little as I find parts I don't like.

Now, my Leviathan box has 11 ship counters per side for the capital ships - from destroyer on up - but dividing them up, they only took up 9 or 10 of the cards (some have multiples of the smaller ships on them). So I started adding corvettes, since there are a large number of smaller ship counters that are too big to be fighters. The rule book kind of presents them as corvettes, but it's unclear how to stat them out for a game. Some online searching led me to a couple of old discussions on how to insert the smaller ships. Following some of these suggestions, I made up status displays for these small vessels.

I also added orbital missile platforms as one of the card options. Of course, there seems to be no info about something like that. There seem to be orbital platforms mentioned in some rulebook or something, but they are more on the mostly harmless side of things. So, I'm making up my own stats for missile platforms as well.

Good thing I spent that time to make up some stuff because both corvettes and missile platforms made it into the first scenario I drew. But that's a story for another post.

Painting of Orcs

 Nothing much to write, just posting pictures of WizKids orcs I painted up for our DM (they're his).

The Fearsome 4

As he had multiples of one pair, I used different skin colours for ease of telling them apart.

Also finished up some terminals of my own to use for points of interest or just scatter terrain.

I should be getting more stuff to post as I finally received my Kickstarter order of two years ago: Blacklist Miniatures Fantasy Series 1. Lots of painting ahead.

Pulp Alley: The elusive Anastasia

 No pictures, so I will try out my story-telling.

 Pulp Alley solo game. Scenario was Dangerous Delivery.

The Shadow's Agents (me) vs. Anastasia's Heroes (the game AI)

Prelude:

Lamont Cranston looked over his paper as Miss Lane entered his kitchen.

"You should knock." he remarked, fully prepared for a sassy reply.

"Why? You didn't lock the door." Margo teased, "Besides, you always know when it's me!"

She sat at the breakfast table and picked up a croissant, dipped it in his coffee, and took a bite.

"Why on earth..." he began, but was cut short seeing his ring blink, indicating a waiting message. 

***

Some time later, Moe pulls up to the outskirts of a small town, The Shadow and Margo Lane exit the vehicle with him. Three others are waiting, summoned by secretly delivered messages. The Shadow gives further orders.

"What we know is a group of Russians, fugitives of their own country, will be passing through this area. They have in their possession official plans (main plot point) for a potentially dangerous device, stolen no doubt. Our task is to delay them and capture the plans."

"There's an armed guard (pp1) to the north of us, by that building." Officer Burbank, in plain clothes, adds, "We should be careful around him, in case he's got an itchy trigger finger."

"I'll look into that, unless our main target shows themselves first." says the Shadow, "Spread out. Keep your eyes open. They're probably close."

Turn 1:

The Shadow's agents start in the south-east on a crossroad.

Anastasia's Heroes Start in the north-west, behind a building. Anastasia carries the plans, Mikhail has a broken rangefinder (pp2). They activate first. Victor and Yarina both hesitate, must have a bad feeling about this place. Ana and Mikhail run down the west side of the building and cross the street. Igorek makes her way across the north end.

Margo and Dr. Tam head west along a collection of outbuildings, keeping an eye on the open area with an old well in the middle of it just the other side of the sheds. The Shadow and Trixie go north, toward the guard. Moe and Dr. Tam hang back, in case someone gets past.

Turn 2:

I choose AH to activate first again. Mikhail is held up and Anastasia's card instructs that cards be drawn for all characters. Yarina runs around to the east end of the building and spots something odd: an ancient falcon (pp3) statue sitting on a stone protruding from the side of the building. Victor chickens out and runs the other way (fails a challenge, health saves and is out of the game).

The Shadow and Trixie stop just behind a row of trees. They can see the guard, but he can't see them. Moe tripped over a barrier and knocked his head, Dr. Tam gets disoriented in the dark and goes the wrong way, both are out of the game. Margo rounds the outbuilding at the end of the row and spots a very old looking document sticking out from under the door.

Turn 3:

Anastasia and Mikhail make a run for it across the clearing, past the well. The Shadow sees them and rushes Mikhail, but Mikhail's momentum upends the Shadow for a minute. Yarina snatches the falcon statue from the building as Igorek catches up.

Officer Burbank moves to head off Anastasia's escape. Margo carefully pulls a parchment through the crack under the door. It's a map, but it looks quite unfamiliar (pp4). Trixie takes a shot at Anastasia and misses.

Turn 4:

Mikhail, locked in a brawl with the Shadow, calls out, "Ana...keep going!" Then he throws a punch that gets blocked by the Shadow. The Shadow counters and knocks down Mikhail.

Anastasia makes it to the south-east intersection, knocking down Officer Burbank. The Shadow won't let her go so easily, he causes her mind to think she sees a great bear standing in her way. Unfortunately, Anastasia quickly sees through the fearsome image.

Yarina and Igorek stay to the north, headed toward the guard, who is casually watching what he can see of the pandemonium he can see from his post.

Trixie and Margo both run back to where the action is.

Turn 5:

I try to get Margo to Anastasia to stop her getting to the goal, but the card I draw immediately switches initiative to the opposite league and Anastasia gets away with the plans. Igorek and Yarina reach the guard, and through some artful cunning, Yarina relieves him of his weapon and Igorek opens the door of the building to find a small cache of guns and ammunition, which she loads up on.

The Shadow succeeds in getting the rangefinder off of Mikhail, but the game is over. 

Aftermath:

Anastasia has escaped with the plans and her team has two other plot points. The Shadow got the rangefinder and a mysterious map, but has to accept the he was outsmarted and out-fought by these Russians.

Epilogue:

"I wonder if she's a little like me," Margo as she drove Lamont and a recovering Moe back to the city, "You know, able to see through your mind tricks."

"Perhaps" is the only word a defeated Lamont utters, lost in thought wondering if this was a new threat he'd have to worry about facing again.

More words:

Reminded again of how quickly this game can be played. 5 turns took less than an hour. I've had the table set up for a month waiting for some time to play the game in. Almost seems wasteful.

I had the thought that Maybe I'd like to keep this table set-up a little longer and play a few of the different rule sets I've accumulated. I know that I've used the same Idn Kar Wastes battlemat for two or three different games, but it was far enough apart and without the intent of comparing game rules across them that I can't really compare the experiences. Maybe comparing rules on the same map doesn't matter, but it seems like an interesting enough exercise that I want to try it. If nothing else, it will get me to be a little more active in my gaming. So, I'm off to decide which set is next.

Here is the set up I used for this game and what I'll use for the other rules I decide to apply.

Update 20/05/23: I tried playing similar scenarios using other rule sets. Each scenario was the AI side trying to make it from top left to bottom right and me trying to stop them. I used Swordplay 2015, Star Breach, and Five Parsecs: Bug Hunt.

I don't know how comparable Star Breach is to the others as I had to play both sides where the other games used some level of automatic decision making. At any rate, Pulp Alley was the only one I lost. In the end, it was getting harder for me to want to stick with the same layout and the same scenario. I've go no really in depth analysis on similarities and differences. So all I really accomplished was to pull out and dust off rules I hadn't played in a long while. And that's okay.

Summer Summary

Computer problems and then summer business kept me from posting since May. But I did get a couple of games in and do a couple of crafts. 

Full Sail

I made up a scenario for Full Sail involving three pirate hunters pouncing on five pirate ships anchored in a small bay; again using ships from the Pirates of the Spanish Main game. I'm experimenting with translating thrust and movement rules written for spaceships to suit sailing ships. Haven't quite hit something that I feel works, but I think I'm on the right track.

Anyway, the pirate hunters consisted of a single-mast, a two-mast, and a three-mast headed to the mouth of the bay with the wind advantage (entry side, wind direction and speed was set randomly). Pirates were arranged at random with random facings inside the bay, all starting at anchor (4 two-mast and one single-mast). I rolled for each to see if they notice the hunters coming in, three succeed and try to get underway. Hunters have to capture or sink as many ships as possible. Pirates just have to get away.

Mid-game (the only picture I took). The three-mast hunter is about to fully engage and board one of the pirates (background). During the previous turn, the small hunter in the middle had just dropped off a boarding party to that capsized ship behind it, which was immediately sunk by the dark-sailed schooner making its getaway.

Of the five pirate ships, one is captured, one is sunk, three get away. One of the escaped ships loses almost all of its crew while repelling boarders, before breaking away from the grapple.

5 Parsecs: Bug Hunt (2nd mission)

Nik and Gwisom (Treen is in the infirmary) led a fire team and science team out to investigate an abandoned cargo ship and an alien plant causing problems in a storage compound. Nothing incredible happened, the mission was low priority so razor lizards came at the troopers in easily manageable intervals and numbers. Only near the end did one one of the fire team soldiers fall prey to the aliens.

Some razor lizards eye up the party of troopers and scientists trying to get to the extraction zone.

Full Thrust: Star Wars fighter craft

I got to introduce my two brothers to Full Thrust via the Star Wars fighters modification. They enjoyed it. They took Imperial TIE fighters (2 each) and I had an X-wing and a B-wing. Scattered a bunch of asteroids to make things interesting. They slaughtered me in 5 rounds.

ACW gaming

I used the paper American Civil War soldier stands I made for a simple battle using rules found in One Hour Wargames. The battle over a bridge ended in a stalemate after heavy casualties on both sides. I still want to try playing using more detailed rules. I'll get there.

Miniatures

My D&D group is starting a new adventure and I'm trying a halfling cleric. Modded a Heroclix Puck sculpt to represent the character.

Painted some more Tyranids and a Tusken raider I located after a couple years of being lost. Also started painting some computer kiosks for terrain/objective markers. Also there were some other minis prepped for painting. Pictures likely to show up later.

Not game related

I volunteered my time to make a wooden sign for our local village-owned ice cream parlour. Used a found piece of plywood. It had two coats of paint on it; a kind of cream over a really light blue. Sanding revealed some of the bottom coat.