It's Been A Little While. . .

The last time I posted was on the eve of the Chief's first regular season win of the 2020 season, and here we are now hours after their one-sided loss in Super Bowl 55. The Chiefs had plenty of heart, they just didn't have the tools. Repeating is really hard. . .

So why the lapse in posts? Well, not playing any games for almost a year hasn't exactly been an inspiration, and I haven't had a lot of free time, either. Thankfully, I have been very busy with work, and when I had hobby time, I spent it building terrain or reading new rule sets. LIke what, I hear you ask?

I finally built some corn fields. Can't really play wargames set in North America without corn fields, and they'll be useful for the Aztec and Conquistador project waiting in the wings, too. I started with the Britains corn models and then repainted and added greenery to the bases.

 Also working on some more woodland terrain, featuring some rock outcrops to fight "around."

Still flirting with skirmish gaming in other, more ancient periods, so have been reading some new rule sets. Really like what the SAGA folks have done with Age of Hannibal; I think the "factions" have real character. 

 

Finally a plug for a board game I am excited to finally get my hands on, Bayonets & Tomahawks. I posted about it previously after getting an opportunity to do some play-testing. It will make a perfect vehicle for campaigning with the French & Indian War, if we ever get back to that kind of gaming! The "period" map is just stunning. Here is the link to the author/designer unboxing his production copy of the game.

 See ya.

So What's New?

Well, I'm working more hours than I do normally, so I have no great stories about all the hobby projects I'm finally getting completed. . . Not playing any games, so the basing goes on. Above is a photo of the British Grenadiers from the 47th Regiment. Working on the "hatmen" still. No photo, but I also finished up 3 French and 3 British artillery crews.

Been tinkering a bit with solo rules for both DBA 3.0 and Commands and Colors: Ancients, but really most free time I have right now is going toward completing bases.

I did pick up 2 new rule sets in the last month or so. I supported the Kickstarter for Clash of Spears, a skirmish game set in Ancient times, in particular, the Punic Wars.

They had me at "Punic Wars." Scale is small-unit; around 6-12 soldiers per unit. I really like the deployment system; it reminds me a little of Sharp Practice 2. It's different but also uses a concept of "deployment points" that is a fun alternative to the "line up and go" of some Ancients games. The rest may seem familiar. . . roll to hit, roll to save, lots of traits and customization possible. Haven't played it yet. Lots of pretty eye candy.

The other set is Muskets & Tomahawks 2. 

Another very pretty hardback book. Same basic game as the original version, but with some streamlining and clean-up. The command system has been re-vamped; the optional hand management system from the original version is now standard, and an interesting additional system of command points has been overlaid to provide more tactical flexibility. Like Sharp Practice 2, Muskets & Tomahawks 2 is a broader volume covering all theaters of "black powder" warfare, not just the colonial wars in North America. To get the army lists and specific rules for said North American conflicts, a second softcover book is required: Redcoats & Tomahawks.

Not sure that this will ever replace my "go to" Muskets and Mohawks, but I am sure I will at least give it a test-run.

And while we're talking about small-unit skirmish rules (I just realized we have a theme going now), check out Wiley Games' new Fistful of Lead offering:

Stay Safe!

Got my Studio Tomahawk on! Part Two.

And the winner is. . .

This Very Ground from Iron Ivan Games. What the . . . !?

If you've visited here before, you may be aware that I was already invested in This Very Ground for my French and Indian War project when I decided to give Muskets & Tomahawks a look. Overall, Muskets & Tomahawks is a very nice product. The N.C. Wyeth illustration on the cover alone gets a nod. 

Recently The Baron pointed me to a post on Anatoli's Game Room that includes a thorough review of Muskets and Tomahawks as well as a "short comparison" with This Very Ground that I find quite useful. If you're interested, Mr. Anatoli also provides a similarly-thorough review of This Very Ground here (and I do hope Mr. Anatoli doesn't mind the links, but I would be hard-pressed to improve on his detailed reviews).

So why do I use the term "useful" to describe the comparison? The comparison provides an opportunity to show subjectivity in practice, as Mr. Anatoli and I look at the same points of difference between the rulesets and draw opposite conclusions, based ultimately, I think, on "what we like." Both systems quite obviously provide a good game and lots of period flavor. . . but as we all know, it often just comes down to what "feels right." Mr. Anatoli  is calling Muskets & Tomahawks (M&T) his "go to" set of rules for the French and Indian War, while I have decided to stick with This Very Ground (TVG). For example, if we look at the comparison:

1) Shooting Mechanics. In M&T each soldier in a unit can take one action, which means some soldiers can move while others shoot while still others reload. Individual soldiers' firings have to be tracked for reloading, which I don't like as well as the Volume of Fire in TVG, which is tracked by unit, and provides a neat little morale mechanism based on the amount of firepower a unit puts out.

2) Movement Mechanics. I prefer that in TVG Regulars are limited to Formed Formation, regardless of terrain, which makes them slow and cumbersome in the forest, all the time. Regulars don't get to break into skirmish formation for movement in the woods, which I think better reflects their European training prior to their arrival in the colonies.

3) Close Combat. I really like the "psychology tests" involved in the "Charge" and "Standing Ground" procedures prior to Melee. Used with the Initiative system, there is real finesse in the tactics of driving off the enemy with a volley and the threat of the follow-up with cold steel. If you can get to hand-to-hand, the new streamlined procedure makes Melee fast and lethal.

4) Casualties/Morale. TVG uses a roll to hit and a roll to wound based on a D10, and different Volumes of Fire provide Morale modifiers - the "psychology" of coming under fire is well illustrated. Using a D10 (rather than the D6 in M&T) allows Units to be defined more through differences in numerical ratings as opposed to the use of "traits." Morale is based on percentages of casualties in a unit - this coupled with the D10 means the game is scalable. A unit can be 5 soldiers or 20 and the game plays just the same.

M&T uses a deck of cards to activate units; it works fine. I prefer the Initiative-based system of TVG because it is a little sneakier - you can actually choose a disrupted enemy unit to activate on your Initiative and force to it take a Rally test that just might cause it to rout off the field if it fails. . .

M&T's Scenario Generator and Random Events are great features. No reason you couldn't use them with TVG, too.

So two really good game systems. . . and which one is "better" is totally subjective. 

I'll be taking This Very Ground to Spring Recruits in April. See ya there, maybe!

Got my Studio Tomahawk on!

Last week at my FLGS I picked up some new rulebooks. Saga has been all the rage lately and since I love me some Dark Ages, particularly the Norman Conquest kind, I decided to give it a closer look. Since we know the French and Indian War has some appeal for me, Muskets & Tomahawks, from Studio Tomahawk, the creators of Saga, seemed a natural pick-up, too. And since I like my current French and Indian War rules of choice so much, This Very Ground by Iron Ivan Games, I bought their World War Two skirmish set, Disposable Heroes & Coffin for Seven Brothers.

So if I like This Very Ground (TVG) so much, why bother with Muskets & Tomahawks (M&T)? Shiny object - I couldn't resist. And I have an ultimate plan. . .
A campaign, of course. I want to use GMT's boardgame, Wilderness War, as the basis of the campaign. 

I have been building my 10-man units with the John Jenkins miniatures to each represent 1 Strength Point from the boardgame. TVG perfectly handles the army level battles generated by the boardgame, but there's a "frontier ravaging" sub-game that is happening simultaneously with the army level that feels like it needs a more intimate scale than the army level. Hence I keep looking at rules. . .

After reading through M&T, I think it could easily fit the bill. In fact, it reads (disclaimer: I haven't played, yet) a lot like TVG. Both games are unit-based; each unit comprised of 4 to 12 soldiers in M&T, 5 to 20 in TVG. Both games activate a unit at a time, and alternate activations. TVG has a more interesting activation system, based on Initiative and player choice; M&T is card-driven, with an option to build hands instead of relying on the draw (I like the option). Again, in both games, each unit moves, shoots and fights before another unit activates. In TVG the soldiers are required to be in a formation and all take the same action. In M&T the soldiers can do different actions, which means that some can fire while others reload, and individual figures have to be marked for reloading. TVG uses a "Volume of Fire" mechanism that allows a single marker to be used for a unit, which I like.

In both games, each combatant has 3 defining characteristics. TVG bases these characteristics on a D10, M&T on a D6. This permits TVG to differentiate unit quality with numbers to a greater extent, M&T relies a bit more on "traits."

Shooting is handled the same in both games; each figure gets a die, rolling to hit and then rolling each hit to wound. Morale tests are taken by unit each time casualties are incurred. Both games handle morale degradation with 3 levels of decreasing effectiveness.

Officers are treated as individual units in both games; unit leaders are handled differently. In M&T, each unit has a leader who by virtue of being a leader is the last casualty in the unit. In TVG, each unit has one or more leaders (non-coms) that can become casualties as part of normal combat, and their loss can have a detrimental effect on unit performance. As officer mortality was quite high in the French and Indian War, I think TVG gets this right.

TVG provides some sample scenarios that can be strung together to form a mini-campaign and encourages the reader to devise their own scenarios, while M&T provides a neat scenario-generation system. M&T also has a system for random events and for "Side Plots" that add some fun and fanciful elements into the canned scenarios.

I like M&T enough to play a few games to get the feel of it, but I am not convinced I will switch from TVG. I may just be able to switch to smaller 5-man units to get the more intimate feel I want for the "frontier war". 

I'll get to Saga and Disposable Heroes later.

See ya.