IHMN Dino Hunt!

This weekend past, I set up the table in the man cave, worked up some basic dino rules for In Her Majesty's Name and ran a quick dino-hunt for my friend Shane.

View of the field from the dino end

A basic road through the jungle. Brush is considered to extend back to the table edge.

The hearty band of adventurers

Shane picked a group of figures he liked the look of and I transposed the stats for them from the basic rulebook. Hunter, gun slinger, lady adventurer, Brick Lane bomber - with explosive grenades, and an axe guy.

The Hunt Begins!

The party sets off.  I had some very basic rules for encounters - 1 or a 2 on a D6 for a dino to appear with type coming from a fudged Venus encounter chart in the Space 1889 RPG rule book.

Rawr? Herbivore prey in sight

The first behemoth pokes his head out of the brush.

Bang!

The hunter fires, hits but the massive lizard makes his pluck roll. This was to be a pattern for the rest of the game.  Making dinosaurs armour light and pluck heavy gives the right feel.

That's not very nice! RAWR!

The dino charges and the lady adventurer counter charges! (Must be a follower of Mrs. Pankhurst)

Bang!

Seeing a lady in distress, the hunter fires again and the dino takes one in the cranium.

What'cha doing?

Mean while a Steggie wonders what all the noise is about. While reading up on various dinosaurs, I noted that current thinking is that the plates of the stegosaurus were used for signalling emotional state. I chose to interpret this as the  Clouding Men's Minds power which shuts down all shooting. This may be a bit too powerful but it prevents a complete walk over by the gun carriers.

An Oops! and a Boom!

The Brick Lane boy rushes in and fails his grenade throw.

Deploy the Thagomizer!

Steggy prepares to retaliate against the un-armoured human. Yes, "thagomizer" is the accurate technical term.

Charge!

And the party charges in to close the range.

Swing and a miss!

The Steggy hits but the street ruffian manages to duck under the whistling spikes!

I don't like this!

The Steggy thinks better of the situation and takes off.

Run Away!

And keeps going.....

Follow the Yellow Sand road!

The party heads back out, short a specimen.

Soft, what teeth o'er yonder hill top break?

Only to meet a pair of Velociraptors!

Rawr^2!

Who promptly charge in coming up a little short. The bomber responds but her ladyship can't quite make it.

Bang, Bang, Bang!

Everyone opens up...

And one goes down!

Taking down one of vicious critters. Sadly it's sibling comes up short and snapping teeth fail to connect.

The noise police return.

Steggy wanders back.  This noise is disturbing his grazing and simply must stop!

Crack!

Firing past the head of the Brick Lane boy, the hunter takes out the last raptor.

Deploy Thagomizer! (again)

The Steg charges in...

Another Swing another Miss - Babe Ruth he ain't

and fails, falling to a hail of bullets from the gun slinger.

The road goes ever on...

The Hunt continues.

Fee, Fi, Fo Fum!

What's that noise in the woods?! Could it be....

Nom, Nom, Nom....

The Terrifying T-Rex charges in as fast as a horse and takes a snap at the Hunter....

Eeeeeeek....!

whose pluck isn't that plucky and takes off screaming like a little school girl - the shame - I mean attempts to open the distance for a ranged attack.

By my reading of the rules at the time, the T-Rex did not follow up.  While I wait and see what the IHMN consensus is, for future games I will house rule that unintelligent terrifying creatures must follow up to the extent of their move, intelligent ones may if they wish.

Her ladyship sneaks in for a rear attack.

So embarassing.....

The T-Rex swings his mighty tail to bat the female ape creature away - and fails rolling a "1". Rolling for a critical failure, and failing again with a second "1", the force of his swing over balances the mighty lizard and drops him in the dirt.

RAWR!

Next turn he pops back up and attempts to gnaw on the lady ape...

Eeeeeek....!!! round two

who fails her pluck roll and runs screaming like a un-manned hunter into the bush.

Raaaawr!  I can do this I know I can!

The T-Rex runs on the gunman again, who runs again leaving the lizard open to a rear attack.

Denied and the axe falls.

The axeman jumps in and with one mighty swing to a very sensitive spot, drops the lizard in its tracks.

The butcher's bill.....

A successful hunt complete. Lots of tweaks to make but it was a good game overall with several points where the humans were in serious danger.

TOR games survey

Via Trouble at T'mill

Tor games has a war gaming survey up which given their product lines has some VSF and Steampunk connections.  Go give it a look.

Reinforcements for the forces of Kas'trum

Thanks to the current Federal Election in Canada (If you are Canadian, please go vote) and the resulting overtime, I have been able to make a sizable upgrade to the forces of Kas'trum.

The 2/3 Dragoons will get an upgrade to a full squadron of lance and musket armed gashant heavy cavalry. Num'da's Raiders will also be increased to a full squadron of gasahant light cavalry. The Kas'trum scouts will get a bow armed platoon bringing them to company strength (and allowing them to double as  Boer style mounted infantry / dragoon dismounts in conjunction with the Raiders). The Pier Worm Roaster's Guild has also been on a recruiting drive bringing them up to company strength  -or- perhaps a rival merchant group has also taken up the worm hunting challenge? 

On the artillery side, two pairs of Greek fire projectors will serve as sweepers and a brace of 1841 pattern light howitzers has been acquired along with  the requisite Trucial and Martian crews. These crews will allow artillery on both sides.

Those keeping track will note that the Earthers are seriously outnumbered in all areas, this is by design. To simply get within charge range of magazine rifle armed troops requires an awful lot of open order troops to screen the heavies. The Martian cavalry should encourage the Empire player to pay attention to the flanks (though there is a small unit of Sikh Lancers in the queue).  The artillery will encourage the Earthers to move up and engage rather than be shelled to pieces as well as giving the Empire something to break up any fortified rebel Martian towns. I will also have enough troops for Martian on Martian battles with Earth forces playing only a supporting role - if any role at all. 

With this purchase, my Space 1889 project, at least on the figure side, is as complete as it is likely to be. Any more figures and my table is likely to 1) Look like a FoW armoured battle with wall to wall figures and B) collapse under the weight of lead.

And a picture:

   

Thoughts on Kas'trum and Old School Game Design.

The scenarios in Space 1889, especially those in the core books, have received a lot of criticism for being on rails. Some modern commentators have rightly remarked that players and game masters both are locked into a single story line. For example, if  On Gossamer Wings is played out as written, no matter what the players do to fix Professor Grant's ether flyer, they will always crash - no exceptions and no player input.

So too is much of the rest of the Space 1889 background. When working up possible organizations of my Martian lead pile, I found that the options I wanted to use did not fit into any of the published city states and especially not Oenotria. Instead, I put them in the previously unknown city state of Kas'trum. I wanted to put Kas'trum off to one side of the main British advance preferably in the swamps between Crocea and Gorklimsk. According to known maps, the only way the British can get to those swamps by water is through Crocea with canal routes further north blocked by mountains. Crocea itself is still powerful enough to block any raiding red men coming down the canal and the British are close enough to its walls to make shoe-horning in a decent sized city state difficult.  So what was I going to do? After much hemming and hawing, all I had to do was remember how we used to do things. I'll let Frank Chadwick speak from the designer's notes for the Soldier's Companion rules:

Let me close with a piece of general advice to players and referees alike. Miniatures gaming is a form of entertainment, and these rules are intended to provide you with the means of putting on an entertaining game. It is foolish, then, to let the printed rules stand in the way of your enjoyment. The bulk of this book should serve as testimony to the effort put into making it as complete as it can be, but a set of rules is sterile without an active set of players. If you disagree with anything in these rules, please feel free to modify it to suit your own tastes. Just don't argue about it while the game is being played. During the game, the referee's word is absolute law, above even the printed words of the rules.

So with a plan refreshed by this wisdom Crocea is going to get moved further south, new canals dropped into place and Kas'trum will be put exactly where it needs to be so nothing stands in the way of my enjoyment.  Besides, the Earther maps were likely wrong to begin with.

To no particular scale - but around 3.14159 miles to the hex.

This is entertainment. If you are not re-fighting particular historical battles or you are not playing in a tournament where consistent rules are a necessity, throw out the canon and rewrite the rules until you get the enjoyment out of the hobby that works for you. It's what we did in the old days so there is historical precedent.      

Fort George and the Grand Canadian Steampunk Exposition or Canadian Combat Wheelbarrows!?

This past weekend (11-14 September 2014) I was at Fort George Ontario for the first annual Grand Canadian Steampunk Exposition.  Apart from all the steampunk goodness, a real treat for me was being able to explore the fort and even spend several nights in the barracks.

I took a great many photos and some will certainly show up here in future posts. I did find traces of a little known part of Canadian military history: The Combat Wheelbarrow!

Now wheelbarrows are so generally useful it is to be expected that your standard wheelbarrow will see use by the military such as these cargo variants:

And a better shot of the model on the right. the slats seem to suggest this was used for fodder or other bulk material:

Then there is this model with adjustable sides:

Surely the mortar in front is just part of a general display of equipment under repair in the Artificer's Shop.   But no.  In the depot section of the barracks block, the ingenuity of Canadian (Ok early British Imperial) military thinking is revealed. An example of one of the earliest self-propelled (or should that read squaddie propelled) artillery pieces in North America the Combat Wheelbarrow!:

In loaded and deployed configuration:

Based on information in the display and accompanying markings on the equipment, this was not just an interesting way to pose equipment in the museum but a historical method of moving and deploying light mortars. A great vignette for any modeller or gamer. Forward the First Upper Canadian Barrowmen!

A little painting

One of the groups I loiter around at ran a low pressure "contest" to paint up an infantry unit. The prize - motivation and a finished unit.

Last year a friend dropped by for some gaming and very kindly gave me a box of these:

 Spartan Games Dystopian LegionsFederated States of America Wilderness Section

And this is my take:

Unfortunately the point and shoot camera I have was acting up and of the dozen or so pictures I took these were the only two that worked and even then I had to tweak the brightness and contrast. The actual colours are not quite so toy like and the finish is not quite so shiny.

With the exception of the resin bear traps and the leaping figure, all were re-based onto the steel washers I use. I just don't like the big display bases.  On the whole the figures were very nicely detailed sculpts.  And as usual, my painting doesn't do them justice.

Unfortunately, Spartan's caster might be pushing their molds a little too hard.  There were  a couple of fiddly arm joints - more of a design problem - and some fairly serious gaps in the dogs' hind legs that needed to be filled. The axe head for the leaping figure was completely missing. The rounded end where is should have been suggests the mould  didn't fill properly. A couple of rifle barrels also came up a bit short. The leaping figure had a significantly arched back, so much so that his rifle is decidedly curved in ways it shouldn't be.

Overall I enjoyed painting these figures and will happily put them on the table - especially the dogs, Pepe - the skunk hatted hunter and of course those bear traps.

RAFM Scores a great new line of figures!

RAFM Airship Pirates  Yes folks, Abney Park and RAFM have banded together to produce a line of 32mm heroic scale Airship Pirates.  At the moment the pics are only on Facebook but I am sure they will be showing upon the main RAFM page as they become available.  This should be a very very  cool line of figures.  And now to go crank up some Abney Park

Cangames Day I - Day III

Well this certainly took a lot longer than expected to put up. In brief, I forgot my camera, squirrels attacked the house cutting short my Cangames and then work got very, very busy. Fortunately, Rob of Captain's Blog kindly sent me the photos below a few days after the event.


My game on Day I went very well. Five of six slots were filled and the players seemed to have a good time. As with every event, something important got left behind and that was the camera and of course my fancy new movement bases.

The Objective - An Ancient Martian Temple

I learned a great deal about running convention games. The play aids went down pretty well. However I did learn that a good percentage of players won't even look at a QRS, I found myself explaining things that I thought were pretty clearly laid out on the sheet.  I also found out that players will do the unexpected especially when they are not familiar with the time period.

Hill Martian light cavalry survivors flank the Earthers after charging formed infantry. 

On the Earth side, the three players had a good understanding of colonial era tactics and deployed and moved accordingly.  On the Martian side, this was not the case. I really didn't expect to see hill Martian light cavalry charging in the open against a formed British company (it wasn't pleasant). Later, another player told me he had never heard of an enfiladed line. Again no criticism of the players and a clear sign that keeping things simple is absolutely critical in a convention game.  The young lady whose Hill Martians charged the British with disastrous effect later routed a rifle company with her High Martians so player skill was not in question.

Watch the Monkeys..... 

Of course, the game brought out a number of sticking points with the rules - or rather my understanding of them.  A close re-reading after the fact cleared up some problems we had with opportunity fire - it is there, just not obviously so.  My only real complaint was with the initiative system. The Martians won initiative something like 5 times in a row leaving the Terran players twiddling their thumbs until the defensive fire phase. This wouldn't be a big problem in  a club game but it really isn't good to have players standing around in a convention game.  Card activation by unit is probably a better route.  

Please, Sir - Can we move?

A good game for a first time outing and many lessons learned on my part.  A big thank-you to all the players.

Martians Sir! Dozens of them!

Day two - Saturday was a slow one with some non-game related frustrations.  It began well enough when I found that the naval game I thought had been cancelled had been moved to later time period.  I had missed the game last year due to a scheduling conflict and was really looking forward to it this year.  I did my shift on the information desk and then the missus came by and we walked home together taking in a street festival along the way. Very pleasant indeed. 

I was cooking up some chicken burgers for an early dinner before heading back to the con for the naval game when I saw our attic squirrels were all grown up and ready to be booted out. To keep it short, a mother squirrel had chewed through a roof vent and nested inside. We had been advised to leave her be if possible because if we sealed her out away from her babies she would do a lot of damage getting back in and to put it bluntly, dead squirrel babies in your roof create quite a stink. Having been considerate to momma squirrel we now found she had torn away some of the shingling and of course it was going to rain the following day. 

I went back that evening to play in the home brew WWII naval game put on by Chris Evans from Ottawa Miniature Gamers.  Buckets of dice fast play but with a good level of detail. One of my Italian destroyers put a full load of torpedoes into a British light cruiser sending it to the bottom. I also learned a lot from Chris on how to run a convention game.

On Sunday, I went in for my volunteer shift as promised. I flipped part of my admission refund into Air Force, Tactics II and Lufwaffe from the gamer's market and headed home to repair the roof. I missed a WW I Naval game and sadly the DBA tournament.The only good side to this was that the damage was much less severe than we thought.

So a great learning experience and some great gaming with good people sadly cut short. I will go back next year - and may be run another game.

Rogues Gallery

A very big Thank You to Rob for allowing me permission to use his pictures.

Hill Martians advance past Shield Gunners

The regulars advance supported on their right by stragglers and staff from the Officer's Mess

What? Another flipping hedge? Canal Martian infantry tell the ref some area features
would go down well in the next battle.  

Using Earther tech against the invaders! A Whitworth gets ready to fire.

Temple Fanatics Charge the thin Red Lin!