C is for.... Cameron's Tiny Men

At the risk of this being a bit of a cop-out post, C is for Cameron's Tiny Men.

Cameron is one of my nerdtime friends. I first met him in the local  game store playing flames of war a number of years ago and our gaming group has grown over time. One of the best parts of table top gaming with Cameron is that he is a super prolific painter, and tends to accumulate both sides of a force so he can host a game. I've tried out more systems, and played more games that he has hosted than I've ever probably ever played at my own place.

He's very open to trying almost any game system and experimenting with new ones a couple times even if the learning slope is pretty steep. I must say that what I've found I like in a game system seems to align with things he likes.....not sure if this is a case of independently discovered, or highly influenced (in this case I'm being influenced). The important values are around friction (your troops don't always do want you want them to do/it's hard to activate them), random/semi-random ordering of who goes next (activating units by flipping cards, or the ability for the turn to suddenly end without all units having acted), and fog of war (imprecise knowledge of troops versus the omniscient 100ft general).

It's sorta annoying being friends with numerous people who paint much better than you. On one hand it's helpful when you need to consult on recommendations for color, or products, or how to deal with that damned yellow color. On the other hand...gah! All their stuff looks better than yours. Bah. (EDIT: putting in the pics I ripped off his blog reminds me of how great his stuff ends up looking. The plaids on the 15mm warriors are sick).

Additional awesome-ness is that Cameron has a pretty sweet camera and light box and is able to document what he has painted (and often played). This has some great results for his sparse blog posts....lots of eye candy that is original work.

Anyway, big props to Cameron's blog and his gorgeous pictures.

B is for ....Bones

As, no doubt, many are aware, Bones is the reaper line of miniatures that are cast in a polymer. I recently was told by a friend that they don't even need priming....although this is currently second hand info to us, rather than first hand use. It does however go with their 'ready to paint right out of the package' info point.

The biggest draw on the bones is the amazing value they offer. Check out the current availability here.
What is amazing to me is that they range from 1.99 to 5.49, even for the slightly larger than human sized monsters. A unicorn is 2.99. I've had a bones blister of kobolds (ordered with some lead to test it out) staring at me for months and months. The casts look pretty crisp, only small mold lines which I'd expect would be easy to remove with a sharp blade. It'd be extra informative if I could compare the lead to the bones......

.....and I will. Some of the lead I ordered happens to parallel what will be shipped to me in the next couple months with the Bones kickstart I signed on for. I really ought to have titled this post under 'W' for "WTF have I done?!?!?" There is a disgusting number of figures headed my way. I expect to cast off quite a few just as things I'm not interested in, but still......it's crazy.

One of our regular gamers in our space 1889 campaign used to manage a brick and mortar games store. He figures this reaper project is going to shake up the miniature industry. After all, how do you compete with this price point and huge range of sculpted minis? Reaper has managed to convert an obscene number of their figs to the new process, and more importantly is they have gained the infrastructure to do all their figs this way.

The latest tidbit that escaped was that there are even CAV (battletech esq) figures done up in the bones polymer now. A few comments on the page I saw suggested that these are better looking than a bunch of the battletech mechs, and much easier on the wallet. I love the look of Otherworld miniatures classic D&D figs, but the prices are brutal. Given an option between even vaguely similar miniatures and you'd be hard pressed to go with the lead. Certainly you can be in love with certain sculpts....but I'm sure volumes will suffer. The other conjecture was around whether Reapers kickstart had sucked the oxygen out of the room....did the mass vacuuming of gamers dollars affect purchases elsewhere? It's hard to say. I, myself, am more interested to see if the sudden appearance of termite mound sized piles of minis ends up reducing sales as gamers are forced to find new space and/or stop getting new stuff under duress from their partners (and/or physical limitations of space).

I leave you with a picture of the 'basic' vampire backer level....this doesn't even include options you can add (and I picked up a few). For more pics, go here.

A is for.....Afghanistan

I'm going to attempt the A to Z blogger challenge. I have fairly low expectations of success, given it's a busy month, but we'll see what we can accomplish.

A is for Afghanistan......an area I hope to get to game in the future. My interest is more in the Russian invasion, rather than the more current fighting that is happening there now. To be honest, it seems like not much has changed in the the many fights that occur in the country.

The exact plans are a little vague at this point, but I have recently acquired some of Eureka's modern soviets....close enough I expect to the kit used in the 80's...especially at 15mm. I expect I'll test force on force as a rules set, but I hope also to try Disposable heroes, there's a soviet afghanistan supplement that I've downloaded off the yahoo group (By the knife).

More importantly, perhaps, I've got a number of books to chew through.

An overview of the afghan country and history. Picked up from a friend when he moved I've yet to get through more than the first chapter. Definitely on the to read list though.


Two great books on the war. The first, the bear went over the mountain, is soviet tactics in Afghanistan. It's quite interesting in that it's a translation from a book written by the Kiev institute, with the translators adding a commentary after each scenario/vignette.

I managed to pick up the follow up book this Easter weekend from Powell's books in Portland (largest independent book chain in north america!). The translator from the first book went to interview Afghan Mujahideen about the war and their point of view of the conflict. Unfortunately I've gotten the re-skinned book, named Afghan Guerrilla warfare, the original is a much more interesting title: The other side of the mountain: mujahideen tactics in the soviet-afghanistan war. From what I can tell, the content is identical.

 This is the typical picture that accompanies a scenario/vignette. I suspect that for gaming it will be invaluable for setting up interesting scenarios to play out.


I'll try and milk this topic for some more A to Z goodness this month!

Osric: Cleansing the hobgoblin lair (11)

We have finally started a game session at the opening to the crypt of Kas the bloody, in a position where we aren't already totally worn down. Amazingly enough we seem to be kitted up to clear this bastard dungeon and have the people power to do it. A big boost in group power came from the hiring of our two new henchmen (archon the disgruntled dwarven cleric, and Jane the impressario illusionist) followed by the windfall profits (in gp and xp) from the winterwolf pelts.

We launch into the first level of the dungeon expecting an easy walkthrough (as we have a truce with the goblin king on level 1), alas it was not meant to be. The gygax dungeon ecology has been disrupted with an opening of an ecological niche previously held by bandits and goblins. We are ambushed by bugbears, with nasty orange hair with highlights. After our first battle against a pair of ambushers, Jane clones up 6 illusionary bugbears via improved phantasmal force, and uses them to trick the next set of bug bears in the old bandits lair. As they rush out to join their 'compatriots' in 2:1 battle, the illuionary force falls back behind us, and proceed to moon the newcomers and mock them. This doesn't do a lot for their morale.

You are getting distracted.....very distracted

We continue through level 1 and encounter another group of bugbears by the goblin tribe room. It turns out that the goblin king has been kept in a cage and poked with sharpened wood sticks and methodically starved. The goblin assasin (whose name escapes me right now), has been sneaking food to him, and reporting on his crafty kills. He has managed to prevent one group of bugbears from disrupting the seals on the liches room. Thanks goodness for small mercies Jenks (and myself) breathe. A final group of 12 bugbears lurks in the room of the flying dagger. Once again we use the illusionary force to coax them out into battle. Archon thunders out a stirring dwarven chant that impedes our enemies and boosts our own abilities. Jane after getting her illusions to 'can-can' dance for a bit, proceeds to cast hypnotic pattern and traps a fair number of enemies in a stupor. As their compatriots force their fellows gazes down and away it drastically speeds up our fighters work in chopping them down.

A relevent point to be made now would be that Bugbear treasure sucks. Primarily coppers and silvers. Nowhere in line with the risk involved in killing these bastards. This was observed early by the GM and I heartily agree.

A rest break is arranged to heal up, and refresh spells and then we descend to level 2.

We still have 3 major choices down here. The dueregar zone, the hobgoblin cavern, and the mysterious floating skull that demands a magic item to pass it. We decide the hobgoblins are probably a good group to wipe out, as they've been reduced a bit, and are highly aggressive. On our way to the cavern we find that the fungus farms of the goblin tribe are heavily overgrown, and the fungi mutant dog corpse has spawned a strange, rapidly expanding patch of eyeball fungus (eyeballs on stalks.....creepy).

In the main tribe area Jenks spots an invisible deuregar sentry and manages to charm him as he slinks off to the South. He explains the groups presence away as a lost bet that requires him to swim in the Otaygh cesspool to the West, and to please not mention it......terribly embarrassing and so forth. We manage to extract some very useful information from the guard:
- The deuregar number: ' a few score'
- The floating skull marks the start of an undead area that is a type of laboratory for the liche. Apparently a necromancer prowls the area as well.
- Approximate2-3 dozen hobgoblins.

Eventually he notes that his relief is coming soon and we better bugger off. We do so and sneak to the final door that seperates us from the hobgoblins. Dan the fighter breaks out his hand drills and quietly drills a peep hole that lets us view the massive chamber. We can see hobgoblin fighters, females and youth going about their activities of daily life, as well as about a half dozen human slaves....some we recognize from compliments! A massive bronze gong on a wooden frame stands on the far wall, and we seem to recall hearing this alarming in the past when we were chased. As we stand about discussing how we could shut this thing down before it makes sound the view point is obscured.....

A yammering small hobgoblin child is playing on the other side of the door and is excited by the individuals on the other side. The guards nearby who throw open the door are slightly less impressed. The alarm is briefly sounded by a female before Jenks manages to warp wood the structure into uselessness. Interestingly the hobgoblin non combatants promptly start covering the fire with leather blankets and such.....apparently word of the pyrotechnics trick of Jenks has spread.

Once again Jane breaks out hypnotic pattern to our benefit. As the few who managed to resist start to break the hypnosis of the others we play a close game of trying to halt the chain reaction. We are lucky/successful and manage to clear out the room, although the non combatants have fled to the south.

Our 6 rescued human slaves inform us that there are some fungus farms to the south and what sounds like a bastion/treasure room. Even more interestingly there are stairs that descend deeper into the depths.

Osric: The grey (10)

Jenks, Dan and Jane all are finally freed from their lycanthrope treatment. Scabs has managed to sell the glowing blue ring (a ring of continual light) to finish paying off the cost of treatment. While dickering with the wizard (one Helminster), he finds out that the wizard is willing to sell a powerful magic robe (The robe of eyes) for the princely sum of 50k. Not like we have anything near that amount...we're actually mostly cleared out at this point.

We proceed to leave shadowgate and head towards the dungeon, pausing to sleep at compliments. Thought the snow is deep, there has been some steady progress in building labourer housing. The smithy of Gideon is pumping out some steady amount of tools and we can see our training militia has better equipment. No reports of abducted villagers has come back to us. Thank goodness for small favours, we already have enough on our plate.

We continue to head north towards Greenich and the crypt of Kas, despite the worsening weather. It's been a tough winter, and there seems to be a new storm brewing off the ice fang mountains. Jenks, the druid, decides to find a safe location to weather what appears to be a bad storm and leads the group off the road towards a forested gully. As they descent the icy treacherous path they hear the boom of wings and chilling screams of a massive beast above. Passing his wisdom check, Jenks decides it is an arctic dragon, and the group picks up speed a bit to get into the safety of the narrow gully.



Once on the bottom they scout out and find a mostly buried cave entrance. Entering only the front portion they send the dark seeing gnomes, Scabs and Chester, and dwarf Archon to scout the deeper portions. A pile of wolves near some sort of door is discovered, the wolves appear to be hibernating. The scouts report back and Jenks decides to go cast animal friendship on some wolves to help head off problems and recruit some allies. Unfortunately the approach of the Druid and the 2 fighter escort seem to wake the wolves.
 
The first surprise occurs when the wolves start yipping and growling amongst themselves as if conversing. Jenks casts speak with animal and attempts to parley with them, asking only to stay the night at the front of the cavern. The wolves do not want their master disturbed and are fairly hostile. Jenks attempts to reassure them, and notes that blood will be spilled if they can't come to an agreement. The wolves charge.

The second surprise comes when the wolves breath blasts of icy cold damaging wind on us. We are facing something tougher than normal wolves. Jenks manages to cast some hold animal spells and eventually the fight turns into a mob up operation. Archon deciphers writing on the gate and it speaks of a lord with a cold heart that should not be woken. We decide it's probably the dragon and we proceed to ignore the door completely as we camp. There's a hint of loot in the cavern, and we decide to skin the wolves for their wonderfully warm looking pelts. It turns out this was a fantastic idea as the pelts are winter wolf pelts, a rare and endangered (Jenks feels bad here) species with valuable pelts.....VERY valuable.

Overnight we all sleep poorly and have nightmares of the gate opening and something terrible coming to get us. When we look in the morning we find all the wolf carcasses are gone. We get the hell out of there and decide to head back to shadowgate with our lootz. Shopping around we manage to sell the pelts and buy the robe of eyes. We finally decide to let Jenks wear it so he can cast faerie fire on invisible enemies.

The massive sale of loot counts for xp and pretty much every character levels up. We are much more prepared for our next run of the crypt of kas the bloody.

Osric: Wolfsbane (9)

We did some quick out of game shopping and hiring of henchman. A new welcome to the henchmen Archon, dwarf cleric, and Jane, human illusionist. In addition we hired a slew of hirelings (5 carpenters, 5 masons, and 20 porters) to start work on housing in Compliments, along with the expensive Dwarf smith Gideon, who should be able to keep them supplied with tools etc.

On our way back to Compliments one of the porters was dragged off into the trees by a snow jaguar. Though Dan and Jenks were facing the beast, the porter was obviously dead and they decided to leave it to it's kill. Not a super popular move for the hirelings however.

A brief stop in compliments had Renault (Marshal Renault now) give us an update that some outlying farms to the North had been raided and the inhabitants disappeared.  Speaking with animals Jenks had a report that some furry people with big fangs who came along the dark line in the forest (the road) had done it, and they had come from Greenich to the North.

The party (Scabs, Chester, Renault, Dan, Jenks, Jane and Archon) head north. After their first day of marching as they are looking for a camp in the frozen winterscape they hear the calls of wolves. Crap. As an aside our GM LOVES the move 'the grey' and suggested to me if I don't see it soon there will be lots more wolf attacks (at this point it's a bit of a meme in many of his games).

We race towards some tall rocks and propel the squishier members of the team on top. Archon demonstrates himself to be somewhat craven as he scrambles up as well. As the wolves come rushing in Jenks manages to cast a charm spell on what appears to be the alpha wolf. As the group pauses and asks Jenks what may happen, he says it depends on if the wolves follow the lead of the alpha or not.

'Pretty unlikely pal' comes a mysterious voice that Jenks attributes to Archon (the new guy) at first.
Jenks is now subject to a surprisingly well directed 5 wolf pile. During the next few rounds it comes rapidly obvious that these wolves are 1/. totally tough and badass. 2/. start speaking human. 3/. transform into a human shape to try and escape from a snare trap the thieve scabs rigs up.

We are facing were-wolves. We are so toast. Jenks is down spewing bright red blood on the snow. Dan is heavily wounded. The alpha wolf is helping us actively now but Janes single 'useful' memorized spell of colour spray can't affect these monsters.

After a highly touch and go battle, and some late finally decent rolls by the fighters, we find a trapped werewolf to question, and the final werewolf is sent fleeing, pursued by the charmed leader. The trapped werewolf is dispatched fairly quickly after being less than forcoming with information and highly threatening to us.

The leader returns and tells us of what the life is like: No recollection or control for years. He is offered the opportunity to come to town to help leave this life behind but he refuses; he rather likes his current lifestyle. We encourage him to stay with us while we try the belladonna cure (located by Jenks spell).....after all should it fail then he will have more pack members. After treatment Jenks casts PLANT GROWTH on the Belladonna patch which erupts in uncontrolled growth catching and destroying the final werewolf. The 3 afflicted members (Jenks, Dan, and Jane) all fall into a coma.

I'm cut out of the gaming session for a bit as all my characters are incapacitated. Upon recovery after 3 days we get the great news that NONE OF THE CURES WORKED. Detect evil has shown us all to be afflicted. It's 9 days to the full moon and we're 8 from shadowgate. We start hauling ass to the capital city. Dan goes wacky and disappears for a week leaving his gear behind, but finally reunites with us (after apparantly eating all the chickens at a farm by Compliments) just before Shadowgate.

We find a very good, very generous church of good. Galandrel (I think? spelling?) is the goddess of Peace. The priestess offers to cure us but the treatment takes a month, and involves  imprisonment and a heavy cash price of 500g per member. Jenks is cleared out completely to fund 2 cures and Dan hands over an unidentified ring to Scabs to assess and sell. It's been a costly trip to Greenich that didn't even succeed. More ominously there is yet another costly lapse in time before the party can return to the Dark Crypt.

Thrice damn the random encounter tables....although really those are a huge element of the fun in old school D&D.

CinC Lefebvre - Missing in Action

Campaign update
I suppose it's not all that unusual when a campaign falls apart after the first battle occurs. The meshing of a campaign system to a tabletop gaming really does attach two quite different games together and requires a fair amount of commitment from numerous people.

In any event, the game has been on pause for a few weeks now. I think the primary problem is so few people are set up to game out the battle themselves. This puts a high load on Gavin, who I understand is working a fairly new job with a much larger commute. It's hardly fair division of labour considering he has a family AND needs to debug the system.

Here is the writeups by Mike and Gavin.

At this junction we see another source of trouble for the campaign. The system wasn't explicitly built around the tabletop ruleset. This gives more flexibility by using #'s of troops and an ambiguous fatigue factor but it means that decision have to be made about which rules to use and how to port results back and forth. I think this has also stymied the campaign given that the result have not been re-inputted into the system.


Rules
This first/last battle was fought in 6mm with principles of war (which I managed to track down a copy for myself as I was interested by what I had found online HERE). One of the things that appeals to me about this system is the requirement for orders to be given to your formations. Between the orders, and the blinds, the variably amount of actions a given formation generates and the difficulty in changing orders for units you create a fair amount of friction in changing the battle plan on the fly. The use of blinds as either deployed or marching (basically is the rectangle lengthwise or width wise) seems very appropriate for the era. I'm hoping to get to a point where I can get in a game or three myself. I managed to find another example of play for a different era here.

Gavin/Mike noted (if not in their writeup then in the campaign forum) that the forces involved were a bit too large for this system. I know that Malcolm's campaign (the progenitor of this one) used napoleon's battles (the system I've been working towards for my own 15mm naps).

Figures
One of the nice results of the campaign is that I've been making progress on painting up my own napoleonic figs. It's a pretty steep cliff you need to ascend to start playing in terms of numbers though. I'm working towards playing a 'small' napoleon's battles scenario with a friend in town, Marengo. The requirements for the french player include: 200 infantry, 12 command stands (of between 1 and 3 figures), 1 artillery base (~4 figs), and 36 cavalry. This doesn't include the breakdown of cavalry and infantry into their different types (light, line, hussar, etc).

I intend to get some pictures of the progress up soonish.