20th Century Wargame test

Hello again, and welcome back to the Dark Ages!

I know it's been a while, but real life and distractions tend to have that effect on my blogging. I have something new to document, and it's kind of cool in my opinion, though, so here I am!

For a little while, I've been tinkering with some rules for 20th century wargaming on the tabletop. Well, I've been tinkering with many rules, but these are the ones that are of importance today, as I have finally put them to the table for a playtest!

Wildman that I am, I didn't set up a remotely balanced test, but it was fun to get the dice out and the little men running about a bit to see what happened, and I think the rules are at least fairly solid. They certainly call for another test!

The entire short game listed below took two "rounds" in game, and only one hour, which bodes well for a relatively fast playing game as I had desired. They also had a feel of realism, and though I have a few tables to refer to in gameplay, it was not overburdened with paperwork. A few redundant or forgettable rules were highlighted as well, so altogether, a worthwhile endeavour!





We join two sections from the Régiment de la Chaudière as they advance along a country road, towards a small farmhouse believed to be in German hands.

Not only is it held by Germans, there are three whole Gruppe of panzergrenadiers there, ragged from retreating but determined to fight.







Here we have a period photo from the point of view of the Canadians on the road :



The game begins with the MG42 team on the hillside overlooking the road, instructed to give security while the 3 Gruppe performed basic make and mend or training activities, opening up on the Canadians in the open.

They don't hit anyone, but begin to inflict Stress (a cumulative measure of morale effects under my rules) on the Canadian section. I track the stress with a red die, and the actions remaining to the leader with a green die.



The Canadians return fire with a Bren team along the side of the road, and kill the loader for the MG team, applying some stress as well.



With no more units in LoS of each other and wishing to fire, the Canadians run to cover along the orchard hedge on the side of the road, and the German Gruppe in the woods crests the small hill separating them from the second Canadian section. The hardest fighting is about to start, with close range fire exchanged constantly. The Canadians in the woods move through the trees to make themselves harder to hit, and the fire begins. The Canadians are immediately laid into by the Gruppe's full firepower, and take one casualty. However, the stress from firing prompts an Unpredictable Reaction (a roll on a random event table), which allows them to treat his wounds immediately, and not lose one man for a whole round to providing first aid.


The Germans on the hill looking down on the Canadians in the woods.

The Canadians' second Bren team engages the Germans on the hill, and takes out one rifleman, but it isn't enough. The German MG42 in the cabin parking lot opened up on the Canadians by the orchard then, inflicting one casualty and suppressing them.


The Canadians by the Orchard about to receive fire.

As the Germans continue to win the initiative and get lucky with their firing, things for the Canadians, particularly in the woods, go from bad...



to worse...



By the end of round two, the Germans have pinned the troops in the woods as well as the troops by the orchard, and the Canadian section in the woods surrenders, while the other falls back at speed. Their patrol has been defeated and turned away, and quite soundly at that.


The Rearmost German Gruppe prepares to receive prisoners.

As I said before, quick-playing and not inauthentic feeling - however, I need a better scenario to test it on next time!

Let me know if you have questions, or if you want to see more, and I hope to see you back around next time!

Happy Canada Day and a question!

Good morning!

First off, Happy Canada Day to all! It's unpleasantly rainy here today, which means most festivities may end up being postponed - hopefully you're having more summery weather!

Quick post today, mainly centered around a question I have. I acquired a copy of the old board game NATO : The Next War in Europe relatively recently, and have been really looking forward to playing it. The concept, a strategic-scale wargame of the first days of a Warsaw Pact offensive into Western Europe, with rules for nuclear and chemical warfare, really appeals to me. The counters are nice, with good NATO symbology, and the rules, while long, are comprehensive, and it seems to me like they would be fairly intuitive to learn if I could just start the game.

That's the thing, though. I haven't managed to start the game yet, because sorting through the hundreds of counters to just start the game is so time-consuming and, frankly, daunting. I get most of the way through the US forces about a half-hour in, look at the remaining NATO piles and the tower of WP markers, sigh, and pack it up because I need to do something else.

Now, I don't expect a strategic game like that to be a pick-up and play title, over in an hour, but I'd appreciate any tips anyone has on organizing the game materials or something, so that I can get the game started in a reasonable time and set it back up later if I need to take a break because I have a life.

The box comes with a cute plastic rack, but besides the cover needing to be weighed down at all times to prevent counters fleeing their assigned spots, there aren't enough spots to subdivide the counters in any useful way. You can split each country off (with 3 spots for WP forces), and put all the game counters in the two remaining spots, but you still have to sift through multiple handfuls of counters to find the right ones for setting up each nation. I've considered Ziplocs, but I'm not sure what the most efficient organization would be.

Thanks for your help if you have any ideas at all, and thanks especially for coming by this blog! I hope you've found something you like, and I promise to get something with pictures posted up again... eventually!

Last Weekend

Hello, and welcome back to the Dark Ages!

Just a quick update today - I've been doing some gaming, but took no pictures :(

So I'll just briefly discuss what I did, and hopefully get pics next time I get around to playing some tabletop games.

First off, I tested my edits to the Dark Souls : The Board Game rules with two other players. Given that we were three, the game was fairly easy - not to mention that we forgot one element of difficulty. That said, they still need work. The iteration as we played it removed every single die roll from the game. This made for a fairly enjoyable and faster playing version of the Board Game, and one that your friends probably wouldn't hate you for making them play - after all, we won, and quite soundly.

The issue here is I have only tested it with three players so far. If it is more difficult but still playable with one player, I may have found my desired solution, making it somewhat of a party game with groups and more of a strategy and logic game with a deal of challenge when solo. Unfortunately, I think it may be too difficult solo, even impossible, with deterministic damage values. Part of this is just the toolbox I'm using - the way encounters are determined and how they work inherently guarantees single players get ganked, and multiple players get to spread the damage. There is no sneaking by, only drawing the aggro of single opponents, or speccing and kitting to go fast enough to attack multiple times against slower opponents.

Some of this I may still be able to solve, we'll see - so in summary, DS:BG project still ongoing.

The other thing I did was a game of Form Line of Battle, a 16th-19th c. naval wargame, with my wife. We played out the Chase of the Droits de l'Homme (https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_battle&id=684) pitting the French 3rd rate ship of the line Droits de l'Homme against the dynamic duo of British ships, the 5th rate Frigate Amazon and the famous 3rd rate ship of the line Indefatigable, commanded by Sir Edward Pellew himself. (that may only make sense if you have read/watched any of the Horatio Hornblower related media available out there - highly recommended to those with even a mild interest in the age of sail)

The action was fairly brutal, with a poor crew on the Droits de l'Homme restricting her maneuvering, but even though she was battered to within an inch of being mission-killed, she succeeded in passing by her pursuers (we played by setting up on opposite edges of a 3x2 ft board, with the short span between us, and halving all distances provided by the Form Line of Battle rules), faking out the Indefatigable and making her way to the edge of the board, winning what was surely a Pyrrhic victory. Just as in real life, the Droits de l'Homme had been splintered and her crew decimated. It's not hard to imagine her running aground shortly thereafter as occurred historically as well.

It's worth noting that even though we determined the ship's crew and command skills randomly, the way they came out seemed quite appropriate. The poor crew and average command of the French ship more than made up for her superior firepower against the excellently crewed and led British ships, meaning that if I had not been able to maneuver myself away thanks to a few lucky rolls, I would have been so many splinters in the ocean. Historically, the French ship had been crippled in a squall shortly before the action, so instead of tacking it on my sailors I could say that the damage to our rigging was what impeded our turning and tacking.

All in all both games were enjoyable, and I hope the next time I break one or both out I remember to record it better for posterity.

As a last postscript, I am about to enter a new phase in my career that may take up still more of my time. While long absences from the blog are no new thing, I will console myself by saying that at least I warned you this time.

Thanks again for your time, and I hope to see you in the comments below here and reading my future posts.

Dark Souls : The Board Game - Review!

Hello again, and welcome back to the Dark Ages!

This post is going to be a bit of a special occasion - I hadn't really foreseen myself reviewing games, but while I was unboxing and trying out my copy of Dark Souls : The Board Game (funded on kickstarter quite successfully) I found myself taking notes of my thoughts on production quality, materials, and rules. This was all intended for my own personal use, as references for do's and don'ts should I ever produce a board game or other game (which I would like to eventually), but it occurred to me that it was also, in effect, a fledgling review. Above and beyond that, I thought some of the things I was writing differed from other reviews I've seen online, and would probably be useful for prospective buyers of the game. I mean, I don't fancy many people are going to see my blog, based on the analytics, but if they do, hopefully they can see something useful here.

So, enough with the intro guff, on to the review!

This review will be divided into four broad segments. The first, Materials will cover all the tokens, miniatures, game boards, cards and wooden pieces that you will use to play the game. 

The second, Rules, will cover the quality and presentation of the rulebook, its usability, and the overall impression before play for a new player. 

The third, Gameplay, will provide my experiences playing the game solo and two-player, which I imagine will be the modes most people want to play a Dark Souls game in, as well as a discussion of those experiences and what they might mean for prospective buyers. It will also touch on the relationship between the board game and the original video game, which should be a useful touchstone for many who are interested in purchasing this game at the moment, as I imagine many will have come from the digital world.

Finally, I will summarize the review with some arbitrary scores, because people love those, and give some closing statements to qualify my conclusions.

Materials

We begin by looking at the materials provided with DSBG (which is how I will summarize the game's title from now, on for brevity), as these will not only be the first thing you look at when you open the box, but will also be instrumental in actually playing the game, so their quality is quite important to the quality of the game overall.

The first thing you may notice when the box is opened and the materials are exposed is that there are a lot of them! Organization will be key to keep your game from grinding to a halt as you search for a particular soul or wound token in the mound. I placed mine in individual, labelled ziploc bags that I was able to lay out in a logical manner after my first couple of playtests to make finding the required components at any point in time fairly smooth.

The packaging the materials first come in is of varying utility. For the cards, the flimsy plastic rack they come is is utterly useless, with no dividers for the various decks and no way to place it in the box so it does not tip or shake when travelling and ruin any sort of organization. For my purposes, I organized the cards into their decks and packaged each individually in a ziploc bag, as I mentioned doing above. For the miniatures, their racks are somewhat more useful. Being shaped to hold the pieces, they will keep the minis organized under most conditions, though due to the material they are made from (more on that later in this section) I refrain from pushing them fully back into their plastic racks, instead letting the packaging cradle them in place.

The wooden cubes, used for tracking the status and attributes of the player characters, are of good quality, being evenly shaped and smooth on all faces. The wood grain is visible through the paint, and lends them a pleasant aesthetic overall.


The cubes.

The dice, probably to be the most used items out of this box, are of varying quality. They come in four different colours, indicating three degrees of attack/defend dice as well as a dodge die, and have had their pips replaced with thematic symbols (an axe swinging on the green dodge dice, and swords on the other dice). These are required in place of other dice for gameplay due to the varied numbers of pips on their faces, ranging from 0 to 4 for the attack/defend dice, but can easily be replaced with result tables and ordinary dice if you are playing with someone who does not have the dice, such as in my two player trials.

When I mentioned the varying quality of the dice, this is specifically in relation to the coloration on their "pips." While most of them are solidly coloured, many are chipped and wearing away right out of the box. This, to me, does not bode well for their lifespan if they are to be used regularly as part of play, particularly since the chipping was most apparent on my black dice, the lowest level of attack/defend dice, and therefore the ones that tend to see the most use in play. The symbols on the dice faces are inset, which should allow repainting by the user, though I would readily argue that shouldn't be necessary straight out of the box.


The dice laid out for a photo. Chipping is evident on all the top faces of the black dice, in the foreground.

The cardboard elements are of decent make overall, with nice full colour and high resolution illustrations on them of the play areas, the characters, and the various token symbols. Their number, as mentioned above, may be daunting (though not if you've already punched out every token in the OGRE Designer's Edition - then you have truly seen the elephant as far as token punching and organization is concerned) but organization will alleviate the load somewhat. The lamination on some boards appears somewhat weak, as just from punching them out, I noticed that if you did not push them out in the right direction, you ran the risk of fully splitting a board in half, or, as I did in one location, peeling parts of the printed face off. Fortunately, in my case, this occurred on the back side of a character board, and so should never be visible to anyone. Good amounts of care being put in to punching the board elements should avoid any damage, but it is not hard to imagine the unfortunate who expects these counters to be as easy to punch and solid as those I've seen in other games punching one of the character boards and causing damage to the game before he or she has even played it.


The peeled sections on the backside of my Knight character board.

It is also worth noting that while no other element of the game requires assembly, the spinners for boss health and bonfire sparks do need to be put together, and the rules include no instructions to do this. You have a small ziploc bag containing the two halves of the plastic centre axis for the spinners, and the two halves of the spinners on sprues to punch out. I realized it fairly quickly due to having seen similar elements (pre-assembled, normally, or with a mention of assembly in the rulebook) in other games, but again, thinking of the new user picking this up, this may provide an obstacle to entry and increase the setup time and frustration.

The cards are, overall, quite well done. They are of good quality material and their colours are vibrant. All information is readily visible on their face. The only thing I have noticed is that, at least in my set, there was an error in their production. Where the rules state that bosses and mini-bosses should be differentiated by the symbol on their cards, a skull with a crown and a skull without crown respectively, my cards show the same symbol for both bosses and mini-bosses. This does not impact gameplay, particularly since I have my cards pre-sorted, but it is an error, so it's worth mentioning.


The Winged Knight, a mini-boss, and the Dancer of the Boreal Valley, a boss, side by side. Note the symbols at centre-left of the cards, both skulls with crowns, the symbol for bosses.

Now on to the miniatures. Those of you of like mind to me may have been most excited at the prospect of a slew of Dark Souls themed miniatures, not only for use with this board game, but potentially for using with other sets of rules, or even as tokens in tabletop role-playing games. The variety is exactly as advertised on the Kickstarter campaign, so you will not be disappointed there.


The miniatures in their plastic packaging

However, those same like-minded individuals will also probably be used to crisp hard plastic or pewter sculpts. Those will not be found here. The miniatures in DSBG are (likely relatively cheaply) moulded of quite flexible soft plastic, and all the hazards of this type of production are found here. This material also meant that punching them out of their packaging was a nerve-wracking experience, as I could feel the weapons bending even further, and glued-together elements wanting to part - hence simply nestling them in the plastic for organization, rather than pressing them back in.


Muddy or soft details, such as on Dragonslayer Ornstein's helm (contrast it to the detail on his breastplate)


Incomplete casting and warped weapons, such as on the guard of the Knight's longsword and the blade itself. If you look at the guard, you will see that the side facing the Knight is not fully cast. The same is particularly evident on my Hollow Soldiers, no two of which have the same length or shape of sword, though in that case the moulding bug will become a feature - broken straight swords all around.


Speaking of warped weapons, the umbrella this Silver Knight is readying to fire looks more like a limp noodle. Not up to the challenge today apparently.

Additionally, the models were cast in many pieces and likely glued together in the factory, so join lines are sometimes visible - they are normally strategically placed at joints in the model anyway, though, and should not be obtrusive to anyone not used to assembling their own miniatures.

The upside to this production quality, of course, is the cost. At approximately 120 USD for not only this set, but all expansions, my own purchase on Kickstarter was quite the bargain given the volume of miniatures I expect to receive. For those purchasing only the base game at that price retail-side, the deal is perhaps less good. I can only say that many of these imperfections can be mitigated with a few coats of paint and perhaps some weapon replacements, for those who know how to do it. If they are worth the trouble to you, you certainly can't go wrong with this for Dark Souls themed miniatures.

I should also mention that they are approximately 35mm scale, for those who are considering using them with other ranges, though because of their proportions they seem a bit lanky compared to other, more heroic 35mm miniature ranges.


The Herald, pictured between two Warhammer Age of Sigmar miniatures from my copy of Warhammer Quest : Silver Tower .Taking into account his bent knees, he seems roughly as tall as they are. Bonus internet points if you can identify the book they are posed on.

Overall, the quality of materials is acceptable for the board game, though I have doubts about the durability of almost all elements. Those of you who are a bit less picky, of course, may find absolutely nothing wrong with any of this. I leave it up to you.

Rules

The rules are presented in a 38 page. full-colour manual, whose back cover is dedicated to a decent quick reference sheet (though I found in gameplay that it didn't quite cover everything I wanted to look up, and covered many things I wasn't particularly concerned about. Mileage will vary.) and whose overall theming and aesthetic is quite effective. Visually, the rulebook is a success, appearing accessible and maintaining the Dark Souls aura about it.

As far as the rules and their communication goes, the results are, again, varied (I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, I fear). Overall, the rules are fairly comprehensive, if only because the game is conceptually quite simple. Using the table of contents at the start, sections of the book can be found easily for future reference. The lack of a glossary or index, however, seriously hinders its utility as a reference during play - some gameplay elements are oddly sorted, and remembering which section they are in to find it in the table of contents is often slower than simply flipping through the entire book two or three times until the paragraph you're looking for jumps out at you.

There are many images, helping to present elements of play like the different information elements on cards or the way that miniatures can move, and this is very effective in making the rulebook accessible and easy to understand.

One thing that confused me, particularly given the lack of an index or glossary for key words, is the intermittent bolding of what are clearly meant to be key terms in the rules. For example, in one section, the words "change equipment" are bolded, but are found bolded nowhere else in the manual, and can't be looked up specifically, so why did you bold an otherwise unremarkable expression? Likely, they wanted to make sure that changing equipment in these rules meant something specific, but this is not made clear by the manual. It does not hinder understanding, but it does not help it either, and makes me wonder if perhaps the rules were meant to have an index after all, but it was cut for page count and the manuscript was not looked at again afterwards.

Gameplay

This is perhaps where most people will be truly disappointed by DSBG. I have seen it described in other reviews online as suffering from its fidelity to the video game series, but that is patently incorrect. If that were the case, fans of the video game, at least, would appreciate its mechanics and enjoy the slog. DSBG does not mechanically or spiritually follow from the video game, as far as I am concerned, and that is the reason for its weaknesses. If it were truly loyal to the video game, then the issues I will identify with its gameplay would not exist, really.

Prepare for many comparisons to the video game series, since #1 they are apparently the same franchise, since it's fair, and #2 the video games are an immensely better experience, and so can help us suss out what went wrong with the board game.l

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between the video game and the board game probably occurred at one of the first planning meetings for DSBG's creation. Someone likely said "people like Dark Souls because it's hard and they die a lot," wrote that on the white board, and it became the mantra for the board game without any understanding of how, exactly, the video game creates and manages its difficulty for a rewarding experience. The Board Game is also painfully aware that, yes, it is a board game, and board games use dice. Those of you who played the video game may have been curious about whether mixing random chance into the formula would work. It, in my opinion, does not.

Randomness is everywhere in DSBG, and dictates every element of your game. All starting weapons and armour use dice that can potentially result in a null effect, no damage inflicted or blocked, and dodge dice only have a 50% success rate. This means that a slew of bad rolling can (and did, regularly) mean that no matter how much strategy you think you're employing, no matter how well you've learned the enemies' moveset (not difficult, since they perform the same action turn after turn) you can die to a hollow soldier after both of you whiff for six rounds with full damage block followed by 0 damage inflicted. This, as you may have guessed, is not a satisfying gameplay dynamic. Quite the opposite.

When you have randomly blundered your way to success in an encounter, you are rewarded with Souls, the experience points and currency of the DSBG. This reward is the same no matter what encounter you do, so get used to receiving only enough Souls to perform the initial upgrade to one attribute or to acquire two random items from Andre the Blacksmith. Players of the video game will now say "well, if you're good enough, any equipment or any attributes are fine for getting through Dark Souls." Sure. They would be if your skill had anything to do with this game. Attributes are necessary only to let you wield newer items. They do not impact your rolls or performance in any way. The only things that do that are your equipped items, which makes good equipment essential to being able to succeed.

Do note that I mentioned that all loot is random up above, so enjoy the game where you get nothing but gems to enhance your starter weapon that has no upgrade slots.

Your equipment determines how well you can dodge, how much damage you can do, and how much you can block. However, it does none of these deterministically, either. All of this is based on chance. With armour that provides you three block dice, you can still be hit by an easy attack and have your plans thrown awry simply because you rolled no successes.

Yes, these are the realities of dice-based board games, but they do not mesh well with the spirit of the Dark Souls games, nor do they provide any sort of fun challenge within this game as designed. All they do is frustrate you when they fail, and permit you to keep playing the game when they succeed.

Dark Souls the video games have carefully crafted levels, where loot is strategically placed and enemies are specifically selected to reward exploration, to test your skill as a player, and to provide choice in how to advance through an area. In the board game each and every one of those features is up to chance, which leaves... what exactly for the player to do?

Overall, rather than reminding me of a challenging but exciting role-playing game, this reminds me more of those old games where you play a submarine or bomber crew (for example https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1032/b-17-queen-skies), and just roll to see what happens to them over and over again. The major difference here is that those games, at least, generally had some choices for the player to make. In Dark Souls, you have a degree of choice as to where you will move, but if you want to hurt the enemy, you move towards them, while avoiding where their friends will go as much as possible to limit how many people are hitting you. Prepare to determine an optimal strategy the first time you enter a room, determining where to move based on the enemies' single action, then try that room over and over until you stop rolling 0 damage so that your plan can actually work.

The Boss battles suffer from the same thing, so while I would like to say that they are exciting and interesting (and the boss deck mechanic is genuinely fun, at first), frankly, sitting around for two and a half hours fighting the same boss while dodging the same attacks in order to go in and probably inflict no damage is not the definition of a thrilling game experience.



via GIPHY

Okay, I think I've gone over the fact that the game is entirely random and robs the player of any agency in the outcome enough. Let's move on to some other comments, then sum up.

This is a personal preference thing, but Dark Souls the video game is in many ways a solo experience that can be enriched by playing online with friends or strangers, but does not suffer by being enjoyed alone. In DSBG, solo play, even with their bonus Souls to get you started (which may enhance your stats in anticipation of items in the future without improving your luck at all now, or buy you random items... which may or may not be useable by your character without stat enhancement...) seemed almost impossible. You cannot disperse damage, so every enemy rushes towards you, pens you in, and hits you (and the odds are they will hit you) and you get to roll one attack every time every enemy goes through their cycle of rushing and hitting you. Excellent. My hopes had been up for a game I could throw down on a table on the weekend and get some fun out of, but that does not seem likely.

Of course, since the game generally involves rolling until failure then repeating the exact same things again hoping for different results (oh, hey, didn't see you there Einstein), good luck getting any friends who hate fun and have nothing better to do with their day to play a second game with you.

Summary

All of this comes together to what many other reviewers have said : Dark Souls is a boring board game, at least with the rules as written. This is not, however, because it is "too true" to the source material, but rather because of all the myriad ways it differs. Where Dark Souls is a carefully crafted, fair experience with interesting lore and beautiful environments to experience, DSBG is a fully random experience of trudging through tunnels towards a mildly more interesting (for the first half hour) boss fight.

If it were a video game, DSBG would be a roguelike, and not a good one like Dwarf Fortress' adventure mode, or Dungeons or Dredmor or something either. Random tunnels, random enemies, random attack results, except instead of being processed in milliseconds while you mash the arrow keys you need to fish around for tokens and roll dice and spend fifteen minutes+ in that one fight.

However, there is a glimmer of hope - If you just want DSBG for the materials, they are of an adequate standard, and I can think of no better or more cost-effective way to get Dark Souls miniatures at the moment, particularly for the bosses. This all means that the game is ripe for modding, and I intend to do just that. While the greatest weakness of the game is its rules, there are no board game police saying I need to ever follow them again. With tweaks to the loot deck, encounter structure, and damage and stamina management, I am looking at a far more playable, and potentially even faithful to the source material, version of DSBG. If they work out for me over some playtesting, I will publish my homebrewed rules on this blog for you to enjoy.

DSBG is not the worst board game I've ever played, but the best thing to come out of it was that I started playing the video games again. If you like painting minis and want to have a toolset to tabletop some Dark Souls themed stuff, this may be the box for you. If you actually want the Dark Souls experience, spend the cost of the board game on a used PlayStation 3 and Dark Souls the video game (or, if you have the console already, pick up Dark Souls 3 - probably the best of the bunch).

All that said, I hope this gave you a fresh perspective on Dark Souls : The Board Game. It may come off as scathing, but I hope that you can see there's something constructive there too. As I mentioned at the start, I started writing this as notes for myself on game-making, and perhaps it'll give you something to think about for your own homebrew games and how to manage the player experience in those too.

I look forward to seeing your comments on the subject below!

Bledore vs Sablenoir - Skirmish on the Sangchaud

Hello again, and welcome back to the Dark Ages!

This is going to be the promised Battle Report between Bledore and Sablenoir, using the FiveCore Company Commander rules.

If you want all the background info you could need, check the previous post. Since that's already out of the way, we're going to dive right in.

Today's occurrence is an example of the kind of engagement that occurs regularly along the Sangchaud. While the UN observers are away, two platoons of militia troops from Sablenoir have crossed the Sangchaud to collude with locals on the West bank, reminding them of their true allegiances and seeing if they have any good information on goings-on in Bledore. They have travelled there in an old military truck, but are accompanied by a BRDM, stolen from the old Beauchamps garrisons during the civil war.

While some of the locals are sympathetic to Sablenoir, for most the war is in the past and they are tired of it. When the militiamen pull up, one of the farmers gets on the phone to the local Bledore reserve unit, and before too long, two M113s roll up the road. The Bledore troops dismount and fan out. Here is a photo of their initial positions. (the blue to the left of the photo is a small offshoot of the Sangchaud - West is near the camera, East away from it)



And here is a view of the Sablenoir dispositions :



One squad moves up the road to shout at the militiamen.

Harsh words are exchanged, and the civilians close their shutters and bar their doors. Tensions are growing...

BANG

A warning shot rings out from the Sablenoir sentries' position, along with a shouted threat. The Bledore Lieutenant decides he's having no more of this, and orders his men to shake out for combat. The M113 with pintle-mounted .50 cal, on the road, readies its weapon.

Seeing this, the Sablenoir sentries let rip with suppression fire, driving the Bledore point squad into cover with their heads down. As militiamen move up to take advantage of this, the M113 suppresses them in turn at the corner of the Southwestern field. (I place the units on their side to mark status effects - in this case, both are hiding, suppressed)



The M113 moves up to support its pinned comrades, but comes under effective fire from the BRDM. To the reservists who have not been in combat yet, the sound of the large-calibre machine gun rounds ringing on the hull sounds like the vehicle ripping itself apart, and they bail out to cover! Fortunately for them, their comrades on the side of the road pull themselves together and lay enough fire into the nearby Sablenoir section to put them out of the fight.



The militias, seeing their comrades go down, rush the SW field, hoping to get to grips with the Bledore troops advancing through there, but are driven down by reaction fire from the reservists.

In the meantime, the M113 crew mount back up, grumbling something or other about internal malfunctions to save what face they thought they lost by bailing out, and force the BRDM's own crew out of their car with the .50 cal, as well as driving the troops in the parking lot to ground.



The militias, seeing the fight turning against them, rush forward through the Southern farm complex, driving back the Bledore troops in the field and putting the squad by the side of the road out of action through gunfire. The M113, oblivious to their approach, kills a crewman of the BRDM, keeping it well and truly suppressed at the expense of covering themselves...

The militia, being no fools, see their chance, and rush the vehicle!



The Bledore GPMG drives the Sablenoir militia out of the road again, but does not kill them, and they are able to repel another advance by Bledore infantry along the roadside.

At this point, the leader of the Sablenoir forces decides that enough is enough - they've bloodied the Bleeders' nose quite a bit by burning out their vic, and it's time to save the rest of his men. (they fail their company morale check...) The militiamen begin a fighting withdrawal.

In the withdrawal, they try desperately to do more damage to the Bledore forces, but simply can't put enough fire on them. One platoon makes it out of the area while the commander, one more squad, and the BRDM stay to hold the Bledore reservists.



Moments later, the accompanying squad is defeated through fire, while the command squad is put 'men down' (having taken enough casualties to impede operation), and taken over in an assault. As the BRDM makes tracks out of the area of operations, the leader of the local militia troops surrenders.

That marks the end of another routine skirmish along the Truce line - the burning M113 will be dragged off by a support crew long before the UN observers get there, as will the dead and wounded. Situation : no change for the island of Beauchamps.

Of course, it's only a matter of time before that changes for good...

I hope you all liked this, and I'd love to see your feedback in the comments. Stay tuned for further adventures on the island of Beauchamps, as well as many other diversions of a gaming sort!

Bledore versus Sablenoir - Intel Brief

Hello again, and welcome back to the Dark Ages!

This week, we have something different (once again) : Ivan Sorensen's excellent FiveCore Company Commander rules, played out on my new home sand table!

The game itself won't be in this post, however.

First, I should explain the setting a little bit. I find playing with existing countries, if you aren't trying to wargame out a specific event for more educational purposes, to be a somewhat exhausting process. Before I even play, I am wondering how to make the scenario plausible, and being stopped by real-world qualms about people, units, and history from having the liberty I want out of a game. I have therefore subscribed to the ImagiNations concept that I believe Charles Grant first popularized sometime in the 70s - Invent your own countries, to be as free of the shackles of reality as you like!

To make this task even easier, Ivan Sorensen, aforementioned author of one of the rulesets I intend to use in this setting, produced a nation generator that is an absolute pleasure to use.

From this train of thought are born the states of Bledore and Sablenoir. A colonial island nation that split in two following a coup d'etat, the nascent countries of Bledore and Sablenoir are not the best neighbours. Divided very roughly by the great river Sangchaud along most of their border (a natural barrier that dictated much of the fighting during the coup d'etat), they are kept apart only by a token multinational force from the United Nations, maintaining an uneasy ceasefire that is only now approaching its tenth birthday. Minor infractions of this peace are common, but all-out war has been kept at bay.

So far.

Terrain :

Here is an overall map of the island of Beauchamps. (click to zoon)




The major inhabited areas are the cities of Adeupond and Bledore. Neither state is inhabited by more than 1 000 000 inhabitants, though Bledore does have a greater population than its Eastern neighbour due to its urbanization.

The river Sangchaud runs from the North of the isle to the Sablenoir lake, and its impressive depth and width allow tankers and barges to reach Adeupond city itself, serving to extract the state's main valuable resource : Oil.

Offshore platforms and the wells in the land to the East of Sablenoir ensure that it will always have a steady source of income - as well as the attention of the great powers of the world.

Bledore, for its own part, thrives on industry, with industrial parks outside of the capital serving to process lumber and minerals mined from the Southern Mountains, as well as what materials are shipped over from the Isle du Neutre.

Both states have a strong agricultural base, though this is particularly pronounced for the primarily rural Sablenoir.

The border, along the Sangchaud and to the South, is heavily contested, with both sides laying claim to the entirety of the others' holdings.

History :

Originally, Beauchamps island was occupied by a state of the same name, ruled over by the Regius dynasty ever since they broke away from the state that had originally founded the colony. Beauchamps made little impact on the global scene, being rather too small to be noticeable, until the discovery of oil off its shores.

When oil was discovered on land as well, the great powers of the world began to show a pronounced interest in politics on the isle. More and more trade came from overseas, and it is rumoured that the isle was even eyed as a target of opportunity during the World Wars. War did not come to its shores, however, until over a century of peace was broken by a dispute over parentage.

The cadet house of Leoncourt was formed when a young Francois was brought to court by his mother in the early 70s. Claiming that the King was his father, she demanded he gain titles and privilege as would be due to the King's eldest. The King, however, had just received news of another son, this one by his wife, and could not afford to disgrace his name by placing a bastard above this boy. The noble title of Leoncourt and a few holdings outside of Bledore would be sufficient for this outsider offspring and his mother.

The mother was satisfied, but the son was not. Francois Leoncourt joined the Royal Marines as soon as he was able, and proved an extremely able officer, earning the respect of many of his peers within the Royal Armed Forces. In contrast, Joseph Regius, who took the throne from his own father at nearly the same age as Francois joined the Marines, was seen as paranoid and generally untrustworthy.

Looking at the political environment of the Cold War, Joseph saw threats everywhere, particularly among the diplomats from the Warsaw Pact and NATO states who visited regularly to negotiate oil deals. He began to tighten his grip on the population, and by the 90s had raised a new militia to his own name, largely from the working classes of the Sablenoir oil fields.

When Francois Leoncourt returned from a training exercise with NATO forces in Europe, Joseph began to truly see him as a threat. With training and contacts like he had, surely he was planning to claim the throne. In the middle of a winter night in the mid 90s, militiamen under the command of Colonel Alphonse Saint-Augustin, King Joseph's protege, attempted to enter Francois' Marine encampment to take him into custody.

A firefight with the Marines standing sentry ensued when they heard of the militia's goal - their loyalty to Leoncourt went deeper than that to their current King. Within two months, King Regius had been deposed, and Colonel Francois Leoncourt was King in his own right.

The United Nations stepped in quickly when it was heard that King Leoncourt had begun summary executions of suspected traitors - loyalists to the old regime who agitated for a guerilla campaign in the capital. Colonel Saint-Augustin, for his own part, promoted himself to Marechal, and took command of the entirety of loyalist Army troops along with the militia. They fought the forces of the coup in a series of ferocious skirmishes, scorching the earth all the way to the Sangchaud river.

By the time United Nations peacekeepers hit the ground, the fighting had been held up at the river for days. The river was declared the truce line, and Leoncourt's government was declared legitimate by most member states of the UN in order to avoid any further upheaval. Saint-Augustin, unwilling to let Leoncourt win outright, declared his own state centred on Adeupond, named for the oil sands that were home to him and many of his men and women.

The truce established by the United Nations is regularly broken by small parties of strongmen from Sablenoir, seeking to reestablish control over the territories they had lost on the West bank of the Sangchaud. Bledore, for its own part, has taken up a fully defensive posture. Leoncourt had not intended for a coup to occur, and any actions he took in the course of it were intended only to bring it to as quick an end as possible. Now, he wanted only peace for his home island - though he would be willing to fight for it if he had to.

Culture and economy :

The government of Bledore is a constitutional Monarchy, with the House of Members meeting regularly to regulate the King's power. The monarchy is largely viewed as illegitimate on the international scene given the coup and the condemnation of the United Nations for Leoncourt's actions during the fighting. However, Leoncourt himself is popular with most of the urban population, his methods having saved the city itself from being the site of any fighting, aside from a brief skirmish at the houses of government and Royal Palace.

Law enforcement and administration are strong in Bledore, with little to no corruption to speak of. However, with UN sanctions still in place after the war, the banks and industry struggle to remain relevant on the global stage.

Sablenoir, on the other hand, is its own sort of autocracy. Marechal Saint-Augustin rules the state with a velvet glove, keeping popular support and a general sense of legitimacy both domestically and internationally. A letter he produced during the war showed that he was King Francois' declared heir, and he has publicly offered to step down from the role of autocrat as soon as Beauchamps is reunited, to make the island a true republic.

Corruption is infrequent in Sablenoir as well, but occurs on occasion as the militias skim some off the top to maintain their equipment - whereas Bledore's industrial base can produce and maintain military gear and munitions, Sablenoir gets everything from overseas... or from Bledore, when they can prevent the others finding out.

The lack of an industrial base hurts in other ways as well. Basic foodstuffs are produced locally, and oil sales keep the treasury relatively stable, but all consumer goods are imported from overseas, keeping their prices at the consumer level relatively high. As such, the informal economy is a growing concern.

Military :

Both sides are avoiding conventional fighting - however, unconventional combat continues to this day. Small strike teams have been organized from both sides to disrupt the other politically and economically wherever possible. If they can collapse the other regime, great. If not, they must be kept weak for the inevitable day where conventional combat breaks out again.

Bledore's military doctrine could best be described as Cautious, with their troops well-trained to tend to the wounded, and to advance only where overwhelming force meets underwhelming defense. This contributed both to their limited casualties during the civil war and to their difficulty in crossing the Sangchaud.

Sablenoir, on the other hand, has trained its militias and remaining troops in Hit and Run tactics. Where they do not have parity of equipment with Bledore, particularly as far as crew-served weapons and vehicles go, they use cover, concealment, and judicious placement of their blows to keep the cautious Bledorians moving at Sablenoir's chosen pace.

That about sums up the information we have on Bledore and Sablenoir to date... Read the next post to see the latest record of border clashes occuring in the contested zone.

Battletech in the City 2

Hello again!

My computer is dead (again), so no more combat mission for some time. However, I do not come empty handed this time!

I've got another Battle Report for you, once again in my current favourite game, Battletech! This time we are turning out 135 tons, with my named pilots Ashild, Lizbeth and Aaron in a Shadow Cat and two Hatchetmans. We're still experimenting with clan technology, but I think I can safely say that it's pretty clear why the Clans overran the Inner Sphere so thoroughly at first...

My opponent, once again my brother, comes to this battle with a custom Atlas and equally customized Jenner.

As the title implies, this is urban combat again, pitting us one against the other in cramped streets and atop towering Sci fi buildings.

We close quickly on jump jets (whose true utility we are now starting to see, thanks to the flexibility they give you in terms of height as well as facing)

Like predators spotting each other in the wild, this battle began with lots of maneuvering around each other warily. He obviously did not want to get trapped between death from above and hatchet attacks from my Hatchetmans, as well as being uncertain of what exactly my Shadow Cat with its improved advanced tactical missiles launchers (a real thing in Battletech, I'm not taking the piss with that name somehow) can do.

For my own part, I know that Atlas of his, named the Wyvern and painted to match a much larger Atlas I 3d printed and painted up for him at Xmas, is quite well armoured and carries a hefty punch at range as well as close in. I don't intend to throw myself on its guns, but rather wait for it to close and attempt to flank it.

The battle's first damage is inflicted by the Jenner with a Medium laser against Lizbeth’s Hatchetman. My custom mechs tend to be relatively light on armour, so while it isn't much damage inflicted, it still gives me pause.

In response, I move in with the Shadow Cat. We quickly learn that advanced tactical missiles with HE do an intense amount of damage but the up armoured Atlas weathers a volley of 30! Twice! I wasn't kidding when I said the thing was tanky!

It even withstands a volley from behind! Well, really from the side thanks to some solid torso twisting.

We then set the Atlas alight with inferno missiles out of spite, burning the woods down around it. If I can't break it, I can at least slow it down by forcing it to manage it's heat level. Plus I brought napalm, so I obviously need to use it.

Turning around, the Shadow Cat then one bangs the Jenner with the HE missiles! This Clanner mech is surely the MVP this time around!

The Atlas then shuts down from another inferno volley, and it's pilot ejects. Another victory for me, though I have to say it's really all thanks to the crazy clan technology my brother somehow let me use again. His mech was up to the task, but the versatility and power of the i-ATMs was just too much even for an Atlas to weather for long.

My Lance has been getting away with Murder so far - however, that may very well change soon... with our future leaders trained up, it may be just about time for us to join forces. The need for mercenaries is always great in the Inner Sphere, and in an Inner Sphere racked by Civil War even as it reels from the Clan Invasion, perhaps even more so...

A transmission from the Draconis Combine has recently arrived, looking for mercenaries. Before you get too surprised that they want mercenaries, this mission is intended to be fully deniable and high risk - picking a group whose survival means nothing to them is fairly logical under the circumstances.

There is talk of a world named Soverzene, great stockpiles of raw resources bound for the Alshain district before the Ghost Bears claimed them, and a prison full of rebel officers whose experience would be greatly appreciated by the Combine military.

So far, I can only disclose this one photo, but I hope this teaser whets your appetite for more!

Clan mechs patrol a hillside outside Averti City, Soverzene, Ghost Bear occupation zone

With that, I say goodbye for now, and I hope to see your reactions in the comment section below!

Blog Silence?

Surely not here!

But in all seriousness, I haven't had another game of Battletech (and haven't completed or proofread the last battle report), nor have I finished the ongoing game of Combat Mission yet, so I didn't have anything of particular worth to post.

I played a game using my OGRE Designer's Edition Kickstarter box this weekend... but did not record it or take any pictures. Some will say it is because I lost, I will say it is because punching out all the counters frazzled my brain. The game was the Ceasefire Collapse scenario, and served as a fairly good example of just how good a large OGRE is, especially compared to small ones - two Mk II OGREs are no match for a Fencer-class under any circumstances that I could see.

For those of you who don't know what OGRE is, it's a board game based around the concept of large supertanks called OGREs, driven by their own artificial intelligence (in fluff - in reality, of course, the players control them). These are played in great detail, with record sheets for their weaponry and damage, against droves of conventional forces. These being largely cannon fodder, they simply (and oh so elegant - a masterstroke of game design) have their stats marked on their counters, so you can just peek over and see exactly what you're contending with when you're not dealing with the stars of the show. All rolls are done with 1d6 (except for one related to nuclear cruise missiles, for some reason), and all hit results are drawn from a neat 6x6 chart. Absolutely wonderful game design, and if the game took 3 hours this weekend, I know it was only because of our setup time and reviewing the rules.

Hopefully I can produce a game report of that eventually so you can see the quality of the Designer's Edition as well.

Well, I know it's not much of an update, but it will have to do for now. Once again, thanks for visiting, and I hope to see you around again with the next post!

Combat Mission - Black Sea : Ukrainian Civil War, Part 1

You read that title correctly! We're going back to Combat Mission, but this time, we will be in the Black Sea!

Both my brother and I chose Ukraine as our faction, so we're having a bit of a civil war here. Equally interestingly, we are fighting it out on what seems to be the same map as we met on so long ago, in Combat Mission Red Storm. We'll see how that turns out with modern equipment involved.

The area we will be contesting

As usual, here's my little analysis of the situation :

Mission - seize North and South of village against enemy attempting same.

Enemy - Unknown composition, probably approx. 2 Coy + to a Battalion of Mech Inf in size

Troops - 2 Mechanized infantry companies with Battalion command, augmented with Fast Air, one BM Oplot under Battalion and one SP149 Shturm under B Coy.

Terrain :

Observation and Fields of Fire - Many open fields provide optimal engagement areas on the flanks. Line of sight broken by intermittent woods, as well as the village itself. Terrain generally means that crossing the East-West road will put our maneuver elements in vulnerable positions. The flat nature of the area make every wooded position a potential firing position for covering the surrounding fields.

Cover and Concealment - The Village itself and the small farm to the East provide the only real hard cover, with woods providing a degree of cover and concealment. An approach up the centre should be largely concealed, as well as pressing up onto the West flank to the woods just short of the road. The East flank is largely open, and cover in the farm should be exploited to control that avenue.

Obstacles - the major obstacle to movement is the centre of the village, which will impede safe armoured passage, but provide optimal positions for infantry to occupy defensively. These positions, if seized by the enemy, can be reduced by vehicles well clear of their danger zone. They will restrict movement from one flank to the other once we are engaged between the North and South Village.

Key Terrain - KT 1 : North Village, KT 2 : South Village, KT 3 : East Farm, KT 4 : West Woodline KT 5 : Wooded Approach into South Village. These will be prioritized on the advance.

Avenues of Approach : East side is exposed to our troops and the enemy's - I expect little movement there except for swift flanking attacks, which can be controlled. Centre is covered and an obstacle to safe vehicle movement, but the buildings and the woods entering South Village provide a covered and concealed approach for light elements. West approach has enough woods to break up long lines of sight, but also open avenues for vehicles. I expect decisive maneuvers to be performed there.

My annotated map - a confused jumble by design. If the enemy find it, I'll be able to kill them before they can glean any useful intel from it!

Time - 1 hour to decide control of the Village

Civilian Considerations - Civilians have been evacuated, civilian considerations nil.

The battle will begin shortly, and for a change, I will be trying to get video rather than or alongside photos! Stay tuned to see how that works out...

Fourth Battletech Battle!

Wow, I sure am getting plenty of mileage out of this particular game!

Once again, my brother and I lined up for our weekend Battletech battle. This time, we would have 85 tons in an urban environment.

Thanks to the handy Mech Factory app for Android (and maybe other platforms? I have no idea), I am using my new Hatchetman variant, named "Hot Rod" for the flames I painted on around its waist.

Assuming Mech Factory keeps me within the rules properly, he should be legal... I say should be because I still haven't managed to struggle through the long rules on unit creation in the Tech Manual, so I'm leaving it fully up to the app to regulate me.

Here are the combatants on their field of battle, an unnamed urban area in the Inner Sphere. On the left are Lizbeth and I, in a Jenner and my Hatchetman,  on the right my brother's recon Lance, a Dervish and a Spider.

The Lances converge rapidly, since all 'Mechs are fairly light (I stripped a lot off my Hatchetman to pin on some extra speed and jump jets, since mobility was always my complaint regarding it). The Spider performs a daring move (not least because we are still learning the related rules), jumping over my Lance and perching on a building to spot for a volley of LRMs from the Dervish, which has found its own place atop a small building.

Failure of the volley sees the Spider pounded by the Jenner. The Spider shifts its goal from spotting to tangling one on one.

Unable to resist, I order a Death from Above from both my 'Mechwarriors.

That said, perhaps I should have resisted... Both miss, and when my Hatchetman slams into the roof beside the Dervish, the building collapses under them!

All downed 'Mechs scramble to their feet, and the Dervish makes another spotted LRM shot at the Jenner as well as firing on the Hatchetman. The LRMs fall short again, but its direct fire tear off the left torso (and by extension, the left arm) of the Hatchetman!

On its return shot, the Hatchetman's own small lasers find a weak point, melting away armur and ferro-fibrous bone to detonate the LRM ammunition in the Dervish! Simultaneously, the Spider receives a lucky gyro hit, falling to the roof beneath it to be kicked to death by the Jenner.

Another great game, but I'm afraid my brother will stop playing with me at this rate! Crafty guy that he is, though, he is already talking about making up some custom 'Mech designs of his own. To complement that ambition, next game, we will be taking the timeline forward!

Welcome the Clans to the battlefield next time in the Dark Ages!