Quick Update - 6/8/12 - Flower of Chivalry, Dungeon Delves

We played Flower of Chivalry last night in an ongoing campaign battle that had to get fought to keep things moving. We have been playing these rules for about 10 years now and everyone knows them well, so they are great for a quick pick up game or a simple mapless campaign. A tight little set of rules from the Canadian Wargamers Group. Written by Bruce McFarlane, the book is an intro to War of the Roses, and an awesome set of medieval battle rules. The great success is the simplicity of the rules and the true fog of war introduced by the battlelust system incorporated that deals with morale, motivation, fog of war and ability to get your troops to do what you want. All in one chart, and all with one roll. Combat is simple and deadly, and in the end always feels right. I didn't include these on my 10 most influential rules post a while back and should have included them. They also have a great set of ECW rules as well, with a great campaign system. You can order the rules from The Canadian Wargamers Group website for $25.00. Go get em if you want to have a great, simple but not simplistic, tactical set of rules for all those Perry War of the Roses box sets you have sitting gathering dust on your paint table. I might just buy some box sets myself.

We also started making some characters for Goalsystem Dungeon Delves by Scott Pyle. I have been giving the beta versions of the rules a once over and man, has Scott put a lot of excellent work into this baby. His love of RPG's really shines through. The BG's are a great fan of Scott's innovative Goalsystem rules systems and this is gonna be a winner. We are fighting for time to do some playtesting, but we will get it in. There is a lot to absorb, but its pretty intutive especially if you know the Goalsystem rules. Expect a Kickstarter in June.

Pike and Shotte - quick pic

The Baron and I have been talking rules and what we want from a game and rule system quite a bot lately. His interest is focused on the Pike and Shotte rules by warlord. After several different discussions, I broke out my painted 28mm ECW to see just what I had if were going to play P&S straight up.

They have 4 pike stands of 4 on 40mm square bases. And 2 shot sleeves of 3 stands of 4 figs each on either side. (its really 3 units in the game). So 40 fig units. My figs are mounted 4 to a 40mm stand, so that works to start with. My original units were built for 24 man units(6 stands). I arranged them as 10 stand units and this is what I got:

So instead of the 7 units I had, I now would have 4 big units(Battalia I think in the rules) It still takes about 9-12 Big Units to make an army, and 4-5 of those would be cav. So We are a bit away from playing unless we do a proxy unit game. These are probably the army I will do after the Spanish Nappies are done.

Fontline Gamer and his giveaways

I've been bitten by the Inifinity bug a little. and the blame can be laid to rest squarely on Frontline Gamers shoulders. He is having a give away for his Birthday bash on the blog. Go check it out and follow him for a chance to get some goodies. And his normal posts are a nice reward if you don't already follow.

http://thefrontlinegamer.blogspot.com/2012/05/happy-birthday-frontline-gamer.html#more

Pouring update - 5-21-12

Well this distraction has been fun and energizing. I spent most of the weekend installing a new set of exterior doors on the Villa, but I did get those new molds poured and they are awesome.

Right now I've made about 6 pours each of the cavern molds. I really like the amount of wall that you can cover with these molds. And their height is perfect for 15mm figs. Just high enough for evoking the dungeon feeling, but low enough to move figs and see. Only issue I see is pouring enough floor to go with all the wall. I think I need to cast the floor 2 to 1 to keep eough floor tiles ready.

I got out and got a new sheet of pink foam so I will cut some tiles out of it tonight na start building. I think I will go 6x6, that's large enough to have a 4x4 room with wall all around. That seems to be a basic module need. Halls will be 4" and 3" wide (so I can have a 1 or 2 tile wide hall way with walls).

the thing I don't like is building the walls on top of floor tiles. It wastes a lot of floor tiles. But if you don't the walls look shrunken and small since their base is lower than the floor. I don't think I can get around this, but it sure uses a lot of tiles.

Pics tonite when I start making a few tiles.

Poured and ...loved.

Well I got a chance this evening to pour about 20 casts of mostly the cavern sets and the sci if sets. I poured 3 each of the new industrial edge and cavern accessory molds . AWESOME. These molds are great. And I can't wait to do some stuff with them. 15mm sci if corridors and dungeons here I come. And 28mm too I guess. Pics of the stuff and test fits later this weekend.

They're here...

I got back to the office today and waiting on my desk was a great little package from Bruce at Hirst Arts. - My new molds are here!!! Yeah!!!

I will pour them up this weekend and let you know how it goes. I need to find a suitable tile base (foam, cork, mdf) to put the casts on. I need 2x hallways and 6x min rooms. Litko priced the 6x6 bases at $300.00 for 50. So I won't be doing that. I dont have a table saw or I would do them my self. For $300.00 I could buy a table saw.

I think I will concentrate on pouring the caverns and use the sci edge and floor molds as the off pours or scrapings. The cool thing about pouring plaster is, if you scrape your mold at the right time, the scraps off the tip are still plastic and you can slop those in a simple mold(usually a basic block or floor tile mold) and get more castings. Its pretty efficient and reduces waste. Of course I keep all the waste in a bucket and use it for rubble when I do post apoc stuff.

Poor little Hussars. I will be back soon. just needed a break.

My Favorite Ladies - A Top Ten List

So Frontline Gamer put the ten games that have influenced him the most (good or ill). Fire Broadside followed with an insightful commentary as well. These are the two gentlemen who are mostly fueling the Infinity thoughts I have dancing in my head. Anyway I thought the commentaries were well written and thought provoking and several of my most influential games were on their lists. So I thought I would follow suit and explore this a little as well.

http://thefrontlinegamer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/sunday-sermon-games-that-define-us.html#more

This doesn’t include computer/console games and they have influenced me greatly as well. But in the end I keep coming back to wargaming, minis and rules.

D&D Basic – My first. She was so seductive and mysterious. If ever there was a gateway for gamers my age it was her. She treated me well and when I came back to revisit her later in life, she was just as beautiful as ever. Her sisters and cousins were a real blast too(gamma world, star frontiers, villains and vigilantes) but no one was ever as good.

SPACE MARINE(2^nd Ed) – A different sort of lass from across the water. She was so new and foreign. We dated for years. And she always came through. She was a gateway drug for mini gaming. And it opened a world of possibilities. One of the best and funnest games ever. Before the bloat, before the volumes of rules. 64 pages of rules. That was it. And it was awesome. I still visit her now and again. She makes me feel young.

DBA – A very grown up Lady. Prim and proper. I courted her for a while and tried to make a go of it, but after a while it all kind of felt like chess. She did however, connect the dots for me for the history that I loved and mini gaming that I was beginning to love. So she lead me to bigger and better things. But she was the first historical. I wouldn’t even give her the time of day now, as I think the world has simply passed her by.

WHFB/40K/NECROMUNDA/MORDHEIM – Welcome to the party. Come on everyone is doing it. Seductve, evocative, self contained, over confident, this club girl was who everyone wanted. Big armies, new rules, background fluff. But as she aged and tried the same old tired moves, or invented new ones you could never help but feel unsatisfied when you were done with a date. She always looked good. But something was missing. And she just ran off with your credit cards. Time to break up. I have had the same love/hate affair that most people have had with the Evil Empire. Some games were really gems,( Space Marine, Man O War, Warmaster), some just got bloated and decrepit, making Nurgle himself proud of their corpulence. In the end, the resin will ruin them, but the only thing they really had left was some cool models.

MAN O WAR – Brutish and loud and an absolute blast to be with, this confident little lady seduced many a gamer in its heyday. My second favorite GW game. Fantasy sea battles were a revelation. And there were norse. Need I say more. I still have her, I still have all her fleets. She always satisfies.

FULL THRUST – A smooth and sleek evening dalliance. She is warm and engaging and isn’t terribly demanding. There isn’t a lot of depth there, but she sure is fun. She is aging gracefully as well, but could use a little touch up. An introduction by the Baron to me many years ago. My great love of Sci Fi fleet combat was finally realized with these rules. They are getting old, but that doesn’t mean they are any less relevant or fun. I would love to see an updated version with updated clean crisp styling but not a lot of rules changes. This thing has been put through its paces. It knows who it is. And you love it for it. A fan based update of the basic rules was done with some really nice graphics and style. Wish GZG would do a full rules book update. They’d sell a mint.

COMMANDS & COLORS/BATTLELORE – A confident and robust lady. Pretty on the outside, much depth underneath. On a whim I played the Fantasy version of this game, Battlelore, with the Barons son on a rainy afternoon waiting for the rest of the Generals to arrive. We had a blast. The rules were easy to learn, but much subtlety lie beneath the surface. It seemed to embody the best of both board games and mini games. Finally a vehicle for my hordes of 15mm Demonworld guys. I immediately rebased them all. We then started to play Commands and Colors, the historical and earlier version of the Richard Borg rules(Commands and Colors, Battle Lore, Memoir 44, Battle Cry) that are so fun and engaging. I liked them because the speed of play, the lack of arguing and gameyness that can happen, and cause they are fun. They will be an important part of my gaming collections and games for the forseeable future.

FISTFUL OF LEAD – A total tramp. She has been played and played and played by us for years. We have used FoL as our go to game forever. Always a fun time. Always a great game. This is the Barons lady, so treat her nice. I am Dancing with her sister right now, Warriors of the Wasteland. And the Baron is whipping her other sister into shape-FoL:Horse and Musket.   

FIRE & FURY – A saucy old tart of a game. You either love em, or hate em. I have probably played these rules for longer and more consistently than any other rule system. I always loved them and we fielded huge forces and 5 people a side games. No other game could have done that. It was a slog, but it was fun. I even built massive 15mm Napoleonic armies to play the Nappy variant, Age of Eagles. It was not as successful, and frankly turned me off to nappy gaming until…

BLACK POWDER/HAIL CAESAR – My newest mistress. I was already  in love with the period addressed by the rules, and the style, attitude and general gentlemanliness of the game was a nice breath of fresh air after so many detailed and fiddly rulesets about the period, home grown  or published. It is the rule set that motivated me to finish my British Pennisular army and feel like I was painting toward a goal. That’s huge for me. Its Brother, Hail Caesar, has motivated me to keep my hordes of fantasy figures and not sell them, so that they could be used for the HC rules. That was a revelation and a breath of fresh air as well.

Honorable Mention:

Supersystem/Goalsystem – While not as known as some names on the list, she has been an incredible companion these last 5-6 years. Interesting and innovative, the the goalsystem mechanic is just damn fun and easy to understand and get on with playing. It is the sole reason a fun miniatures(not rpg) super hero game can be played that captures all the flavor and action of a good team-up or annual. The intuitiveness of the system allows it to be ported to a huge range of possibilities across genres too. I am sure she will move up the list as I continue to spend time with her.

Crimson Skies – Sleek, sexy and fast, this fine dame had it all. A great rule system, and well thought out and semi-believable alternate pulp history, and of course superb minis. We have had a lot of fun with her. We still get her out occasionally, and our buddy Chris, of the Cluck Amok blog had the most awesome giant blimp for gaming. I have a giant tub of the minis, the original box set of rules and Wright Fury with your name on it.

Heavy Gear - I will always love the thought of you. You are beautiful to look at, but I can't stand to spend time with you. In my mind you are perfect. Reality does not match. Complicated, laborious, and simply not fun. All of your reinventions are the same. You look great, your story is compelling and interesting, but deep down you can't escape the fact that you are not enjoyable. I have mentioned it many times on the blog. I love the concepts, the minis, the background, the look, the art, the feel. But lets face it folks, these rules(pick you version) are not enjoyable and fun to play. At all. It's a huge disappointment that has been with the game since its inception. Please, I implore you DP9 scrape away all vestiages of the mini game from its start to now, and totally write a new game. Make it fun, and fast and engaging for all sides playing the game(do not use IGOUGO), make it simple(simple doesn't mean smart, it meas playable). I won't rant on price cause I guess if you can get it, get it.  

Well that’s it. A lot of the things on this list were introduced to me by my oldest friend, and founder of the Basement Generals – Ze Baron. Thanks to him for being the always willing opponent and force in my own little gaming world.  It seemed right to equate each one of them with a woman or lover. Cause it has been a whirlwind affair with gaming that started when I was 11 and read my first copy of D&D basic under the covers of my bed with a flashlight, Tolkien on the night stand.

P.S.
After I had written this post, the Baron and I had gone to lunch to talk about gaming and stuff. His current thoughts are on the blog today. I also heard from some other people that understand my current malaise(as one of them put it). It seems we are all sort of searching right now for the sweet spot. I hope we all find it. Paint, build terrain, game, have fun with your friends. It doesn't get any simpler than that.