Gaming Weekend - Day Three

Clash of Iron, 1944

Our first game on Monday was a slightly adapted version of the Clash of Iron scenario from Super Science Tales, one of the expansions for .45 Adventure. Lenin shifted the action from the Eastern Front to the Western just following the failure of Operation Wacht am Rhein (the Battle of the Bulge).

The scenario is in three chapters using the characteristic Rattrap 2' x 2' board (which is all you often end up using on a larger table anyway!). In Chapter 1 my small German force managed to penetrate the American supply base and find one of their suits of Power Armour.

In Chapter two we had a much tougher time getting ourselves and the Power Armour back out. Particularly due to the intervention of a rather tough US robot. We took a few casualties but, thanks to a stray mortar round, managed to get away.

The final Chapter saw us pick up some other stragglers, try to break through the US front line, past another US robot and make it to the German lines.

Initially, the .45 Adventure system seemed a little fiddly but as the game progressed we got back into it. One of the key issues is remembering any special attributes any of the characters has and using it appropriately. This is tricky enough when you only have a couple of characters but is a handful when you have more.

“Bloodying The Nose”, 17 December 1944

We went on to try the first scenario from the new Two Hour Wargames scenario book for Nuts!, Peiper at the Gates.

This one had the German forces advancing onto the table and encountering a partially dug in US force. My job as the Germans wasn't helped by Lenin rolling up a snowstorm which reduced visibility to only 8 inches!


Initially, things went pretty well with the US missing my half-track with their bazooka and then withdrawing from the barn just before I demolished it with the Panther's main gun. However, our advance stalled when the half-track broke down, we encountered stiff resistance from the farm house and the Panther wouldn't move.

I found that advancing troops (even using a Fast Move) across open ground was rather too hazardous and chose instead to flank the farm house. After popping a grenade through one of the windows my assault was repulsed and the synchronised advance of the MG42 team was stopped by a hail of lead. This ended up with something of a stalemate until I managed to get the Panther going again and took out the whole building (Lenin and I agreed that we need to look at those mechanics in the rules as they seem a little too extreme).

I pushed forward again, following the US Engineer unit which had retreated from the barn but came unstuck when they successfully disabled the Panther with a well aimed bazooka shot (my fault for exposing its flank armour!).

At this point and having inflicted quite a few casualties the US troops melted away into the snowstorm.

It was a great opportunity to get my Artizan and BAM late war figures our along with my Corgi die-casts.

Tarzan and the Slave Queen

Our final game was a trial of the Rattrap Broadsword Adventures rules with Tarzan trying to rescue some villagers from the clutches of an Amazon like tribe of slavers.

Things started well but Tarzan got trapped by a man eating plant and needed help to escape. In the meanwhile the slavers managed to capture some of the village children. Fortunately, we saved some of the villagers and were in the process of finding some more when Tarzan was surrounded by the slavers.

Whilst he held them off, the village headman rescued the others. The rules worked pretty well and, if anything, rather better than the earlier game (of course simply having played the earlier game might have contributed to that!) so we're likely to be seeing these ones again.

I am in the process of sorting out the photos from the various games and will be posting them to a new album on picasa shortly.

Gaming Weekend

Last weekend Lenin popped over for one of his regular quarterly visits and we managed to get a few games in.

Winter War - The Church Village

We tried out one of the smaller scenarios in the SkirmishCampaigns Winter War booklet using a mixture of 28mm Brigade, Bolt Action and Baker Company Finns and Lenin's Copplestone RCW figures standing in for the Soviets (my Bolt Action ones should be ready soon).

The variable attachments meant that the Soviets added an additional squad to their base two and the Finns gained an HMG and assault squad.

The scenario also gave me an excuse to paint up one of my Bolt Action Eastern Front houses and an Anglian T26 (which, unfortunately, didn't hit the table as it was one of the other variable attachments).

The first challenge was to convert the SkirmishCampaigns statistics to Nuts! which are our preferred skirmish rules. The approach we adopted was a straightforward conversion using the full Rep range from 2 to 6 with exceptional leaders getting additional attributes. With this particular scenario that meant the Soviets were all Rep 2 including the officers (other than the Commissar - which Lenin wasn't lucky enough to get as a variable attachment). Whilst the result was probably not unrealistic it did make the game a little one sided as the Finn's Reps were significantly higher.

Nevertheless the game was fun as the Soviets were dug in around the church but it did make us want to rethink the conversion system.

Modern - Lebanon
Next up was a 15mm game using one of the TooFatLardies new supplements for their Troops Weapons & Tactics rules - Rock the Casbah. We'd previously tried TW&T and, whilst we like I Ain't Been Shot, Mum (from which they're derived), we thought TW&T added complexity but without adding extra enjoyment. Consequently, Lenin adapted one of the scenarios for FNG.

The Israeli column was exceptionally lucky as, despite being ambushed several times, none of the RPGs fired at the vehicles actually hit. Had they done so then, under FNG, the occupants would most probably have been Out of the Fight.

Given that the period is a favourite of Lenin's (he owns it in a large variety of scales) I think this will be one which will be hitting the table again.

Modern - Blackboots on the Beat
We followed up with another 15mm game using a new Lardies supplement, this time B'Maso. This time Lenin decided to stick with the Lardies rules and used I Ain't Been Shot, Mum. Using Peter Pig figures and vehicles, the scenario featured the British South Africa Police investigating a suspicious incident at Mr Patel's Wondermart.

Of course the BSAP were ambushed and (mainly owing to initially playing the straight IABSM rules rather than the B'Maso variant - Doh!) they took rather substantial casualties. Having concentrated the whole force to see off a few insurgents the BSAP lost one of the vehicles to a landmine and spent the rest of the game chasing the oppostion across the board.

It was a fun game that warrants more plays (especially using the right rules!)

Great War - Rommel's Route to Verdun: Recon at Cosnes
Back to 28mm for our fifth game and the second to use a SkirmishCampaigns booklet, this time Rommel's Route to Verdun. I plan to play all the scenarios in this booklet in sequence over coming weekends as they're all just the right size for a good Nuts! game.

This scenario game me a chance to get our my new early war Germans and French from Renegade. In this case only two small sections of Germans against a single larger one of French. We used the same conversion approach was with our earlier Winter War game and, whilst the Reps weren't quite as extreme, it did reinforce our view that we need to revisit the conversion.

As the Reps were a little closer, the game wasn't quite such a walkover. Although the Germans did get the variable attachment which meant that both their officers were Rep 6! Of course the other issue is converting turns to Nuts! - we settled on using activations and counting only the successful ones for both sides with the limit being that both had to have the requiste amount.

Napoleonic - Blunte's Village
Next up was a Napoleonic skirmish during the Peninsular campaign in 28mm. I'd just picked up a copy of the Lardies latest new rules, Sharp Practice and also wanted to give my new Grand Manner buildings an outing.

The scenario was a bit spur of the moment and the Big Men were rolled randomly from the rules. Basically an advance party of the 95th Rifles under Lieutenant Blunte had secured the little village of San Guano (after which the infamous Banana Republic was named) and had to hold it against all comers until relieved.

In the end Blunte didn't live up to his normal reputation and actually saw off the French!

Whilst we weren't using all the optional rules (e.g. no bonus deck) it did give us a decent initial view of the rules (I'll probably post a more fuller description of my first thoughts later) and left us thinking that we should try them again with more figures.

Aegypt - Temple of the Skull
Our final game was another 28mm one but quite, quite different from the others. Lenin put on an excellent Aegyptian game using the new fantasy rules from Rattrap - Broadsword Adventures. As with the other Rattrap rules these are designed to work on small tables (2 x 2') with only a few figures and loads of terrain.

I suspect it was also an excuse to use his catgirls! The game played very well despite the lack of ranged weapons (quite a departure from the usual Rattrap scenarios) and the scenery looked great.

I suspect we will be using the Broadsword Adventures rules again in the future in preference to our usual Savage Worlds.

I've posted a few photos of all the games in a Picasa album:

Gaming Weekend - Sep 08

Thrilling Expeditions: Valley of the Thunder Lizard

The latest supplement from Rattrap Productions has just made it's PDF debut. Thrilling Expeditions: Valley of the Thunder Lizard is slightly different from previous supplements as it's designed to work with several of their genre rulesets, in this case, .45 Adventure (pulp), Gloire (swashbuckling) and Fantastic Worlds (pulp SF).

Valley of the Thunder Lizard is 126 pages long and is intended to be the first of a series. In brief it covers adventures with dinosaurs, so the Lost World, anything with Doug McClure in it, time travelling tourists in pre-history etc.

It contains a few new rules, some new archetypes (one each for the 3 rule sets) a couple of new special abilities (Big Game Hunter and Tracking), stats for various dinosaurs (including info on how to create them), prehistoric mammals, neanderthals, saurians and scenarios for each of the three genres.

At $12 for the PDF it's pretty good value (especially with current exchange rates) and will make some interesting reading!

Gaming Weekend - March 08

Lenin paid a visit this weekend and we managed to get plenty of gaming in. It might not have gone quite as planned (no change there!) but it was excellent fun none the less!

Before "discovering" the benefits of the .45 Adventure system we had tried one or two of the scenarios from the Dragon Bones supplement using Savage Worlds (another of our favourite rule sets). We decided to try them using the rules they were made for and the two games went very well. Strangely enough the results were the same as when we played using Savage Worlds!

We also gave my eBay copy of Quebec 1759 a go. It was the first of the Columbia Games block games and certainly has a pretty simple set of rules; however, the game gives you plenty of things to think about. I took command of the French and was utterly trounced by Lenin playing the British - obviously my usual dice luck had some effect but it was more down to some poor deployment on my part and a well co-ordinated two fronted attack on his! Now that I have some idea what I'm doing I'd certainly like to give it another go.

Next we improvised a Back of Beyond game using Lenin's superbly painted Copplestone figures (along with a couple of Pulp Figures) using Savage Worlds as the rules. More than anything it was a test to see if Savage Worlds could be used for a game of this type and size. Lenin has a very sizeable collection of figures for this period and we have tried a few other sets of rules but haven't been happy with them. The result was a Russian victory - having repulsed the Chinese attack on the Russian dig site - and a decision to use Savage Worlds for future games of this type.

Having majored on 28mm we swapped down to 20mm for the next game, a WW2 scenario using Nuts! A simple take the bridge and hold until reinforced for a small Para jeep mounted unit facing a unit of German engineers (who had been ordered to destroy the bridge) - with a few pesky refugees to get in the way! It was an object example of taking and holding the initiative taking the day with the Paras having it pretty much their own way (it also demonstrated the power of automatic weapons to keep people's heads down under Nuts! - the "outgunned" rules).

Our final tabletop game was another improved Savage Worlds game - this time using 28mm Gripping Beast Normans/Crusaders/El Cid figures. Having seen that Savage Worlds could handle a large 20th Century game, we really wanted to see if Savage Worlds could cope with a melee heavy scenario. We probably didn't have enough variety in the troop qualities and so melee did tend to bog down a little (but this wasn't entirely unexpected or a-historical) but overall SW proved that it could manage to cope. With properly prepared unit cards and a little more unit variety I think we're on to a winner again.

We finished the weekend off with a couple of board games - the Crimissos River (341BC) scenario for Commands and Colors: Ancients and the first two player scenario for Friedrich (The War in the West - France vs Hanover with a little help from Prussia). The C&C:A game was a pretty close run thing but finally going to Syracruse (though not by anything like the margin they enjoyed historically). Friedrich turned out to be a lot of fun with plenty of challenging decisions for both sides. The French were doing well but the Hanoverians managed to cut their supply lines; however the French recovered and went on to capture their objectives just in time. An excellent game that I can't wait to play 3 or 4 player.

I've posted a few photos from the weekend below:

Gaming Weekend - Mar 08

Pulp

My Pulp gallery covers a number of games in a genre which has been seeing more and more table time in recent sessions.

The first game was inspired in part by Conan-Doyle's Lost World. An aircraft crash lands on a massive plateau deep in the jungle. The crash survivors encounter dinosaurs and an ancient civilisation cut off from the rest of the world.

The next game was a scenario from the Dragon Bones supplement for .45 Adventure. At the time we were regularly using Savage Worlds so Lenin converted it. Now that we have got into .45 Adventure maybe we'll try it again!

The third game was the first part of Ice Fang the second Mission Manual from Legion publishing for Savage Worlds set in the artic in Weird War 2. The first chance to use my Brigade Games Mountain Troops and my JU52!

Pulp

In addition to the games there are a few staged photos of my Deep Ones for those into the Mythos (actually they are West Wind's Piranha Men but I think they work pretty well). The others are Pulp Figures fighting it out in front of some Microtactix buildings and die cast cars.

Review: .45 Adventure

.45 Adventure is a set of miniatures rules by Rattrap Productions for Crimefighting Action in the Pulp Era. These rules have spawned several supplements and versions for other periods including Fantastic Worlds (Pulp SF) and Gloire (Swashbuckling Adventure).

Each figure is assigned various stats familiar to anyone who has played RPGs; however, these have been allocated names suitable to the genre - shivs (melee), heaters (shooting) etc. These are allocated to one of four hit locations (head, torso, arms and legs). When hits are taken in these locations the stats are reduced and eventually the figure will be disabled or killed. Each location is also allocated a damage rating (DR) which is taken into account to determine whether a hit is effective or not.

In addition to the stats the figures may be allocated specific attributes or skills which may improve stats or provide special abilities.

The game only uses a 10 sided dice (d10) which makes is less confusing for new players than Savage Worlds, which we have typically used for this period in the past. The mechanics used are based on stat tests where a player will roll a d10 and add the relevant stat (adjusted by an appropriate modifiers) and if it equals or exceeds 10 then they are successful.

On a game turn initiative is rolled and then players activate figures alternately within each Dodge level. Each figure can then conduct a single action (unless they have a special ability which permits more) which include moving, aiming, shooting and the like. Moving and shooting is permitted if appropriate but with a significant modifier.

Figures also give the player Hero points which may be used to improve dice rolls or allow dice to be re-rolled. This contributes significantly to the Pulp feel as along with the better characters being more robust you can use the hero points to avoid results which would spoil the "feel" of the game.

All the usual combat situations are dealt with along with rules for appropriate period weapons and vehicles.

One of the key features of the system is the approach to the terrain. Rattrap have clearly recognised that most games end up being fought in a relatively small area of the table no matter its size. Consequently their scenarios are based around a 2' x 2' area. Obviously the rules will work with larger tables but the more compact approach certainly speeds up game set up and reduces the costs!

In addition to the terrain the scenarios are expected to include encounter markers which trigger events or allow figures to discover equipment, clues or whatever is required to move the story along.

The rules come with a decent number of character archetypes (which are further expanded in the various supplements) and rules for creating your own. Two sample scenarios are provided along with guidance for making up your own (the supplements go on to build in both of these areas).

Whilst .45 Adventure doesn't have the absolute range of Savage Worlds (particularly in the area of magic for example) it is much more straight forward and provides a really fun experience.

Given the minimal requirements to run a game these rules are recommended. They are available as both a hardcopy ($16) and a .pdf download ($8).