Solo Hordes of the Things

It is a little known fact that the Ottoman Empire was frequently under attack from the ratmen armies which poured forth from the more mountainous regions of its domain.

It is a more well known fact that Hordes of the Things is a great set of fantasy rules for playing out such battles in a small space.

So just as well I had the figures painted! The sad fact is that our study is still crammed to the gills, making it impossible to play anything larger at the moment. I optimistically thought clearing the table would help with this, but the table is useless if I still need to struggle to get boxes of terrain and figures out. Hordes of the Things to the rescue!

Ottoman light cavalry clash with ratmen archers, while their main force comes under assault from packs of wolves.

It also got me thinking about how to play solo games of HotT. Putting pencil to paper, I quickly drafted a few rules about how to deploy the enemy and what actions they would take. Unfortunately this soon bogged down with a lot of 'if-then' type statements, which would drastically slow down the game. Inspiration struck when I realised that a lot of these statements came from me thinking how to best attack the enemy, i.e. not being in column, trying for overlap bonuses, staying away from rough terrain etc. As a result, it was great relief that I found I could replace a lot of these with the simple statement "Make the best offensive move". Job done!

As for the core mechanic, I have borrowed from Two Hour Wargames: When activated, an element rolls 2d6 (the actual number of dice modified by factors such as being outnumbered by nearby enemy, having the general in the group etc etc). Each die which equals or is less than the combat value of the element counts as passed. They then take different action if they pass 2d6 (usually offensive), 1d6 (usually defensive) or 0d6 (usually remaining stationary). This replaces rolling for command points, so you never can be sure how many (or which) of the enemy will activate. Of course, sometimes the enemy might activate more than possible under the usual rules, but hey, the non-player army has to have something to compensate for the lack of brain.

For example, a Warband element with a combat factor of 3 needs to roll 3 or less on each d6. If it does so on 2d6 it makes 'the best offensive move'. If it passes 1d6 it moves defensively, trying to form up in ranks for the support bonus or moving to rough terrain. If it passes 0d6 then it does not activate.

I'm aiming for something simple enough not to blog down the game, but with just enough to it to reduce the amount of 'thinking for the enemy' I have to do.

If it works out okay, I'll post more on the blog for those who are interested.

GW Ponderings

Things have been a bit sparse on the old gaming front since we had a bit of a tidy up and a lot of stuff got placed in the study. A bit of a pain, but it has allowed me to consider my painting priorities, which at the moment I'm thinking are Flintloque, military and police for ATZ and various bits for Hordes of the Things.

I've been pondering other things, one of which is the frequent GW rants that appear on TMP. Usually I browse them out of interest and then just skip to reading something more interesting, which (as a forewarning) some of you might want to with this blog post. But then I got an email from GW this morning about a new campaign book they have launched. I do rather hypocritically get emails from GW as I often find their offerings either interesting (this campaign) or ludicrously entertaining (like the offer of buying a complete Space Marine chapter for a mere £7,000!!!).

Anyway, my eye was drawn to the Sigmar's Blood campaign because one of my favourite aspects of the Warhammer setting is the gothic Late-Medieval/Renaissance styling of the Empire. Add to this that they are frequently pitted in battle against Skaven, Chaos or Undead and you've got a winning combo in my book.  And in GW's book, apparently, as the campaign is Empire versus Undead.

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The image on the GW site conveniently comes with a present symbol to show it is a good gift. As does most of the other stuff on their site at the moment...

There is lots in its favour, including the usual stunning presentation, lots of detail and a focus on the 'narrative' of the campaign rather than strictly competitive play. The email also included links to 'one-click' collections with all the units the sides used in the campaign and a terrain set. This got me thinking, what if I wanted to take up the current edition of Warhammer and start with this awesome looking campaign. I am happy with 3rd and 4th edition (you see, I'm not a full on hater!), but this is just a what if, exercise.

I like to do things properly, so I'd want both the armies:

Whatever else they are, GW figures are stunning to look at.

I wonder what it would cost to do this in 15mm.....?

Also the terrain collection, as they seem to be pieces which feature heavily in the campaign.

The towers I'm indifferent about, but I genuinely think the graveyard looks beautiful.

The page for the campaign book politely reminds me that I'd need the rulebook and the relevant army books, so I'd better get them too. I'll assume I've got enough terrain, paints etc that I won't need anything else. The final decision is if I want the lovely looking limited edition campaign book set, which is limited to 1000 copies and comes with copy of the novella in a similar format, both books fitting into an attractive slipcase. Gosh! How could I not?!

Production quality is excellent. But when does a wargame supplement become over-produced?

Credit card at the ready, I place the items in my basket...

• Warhammer Rule Book: £45
• Empire Army Book: £27.50
• Vampire Counts Army Book: £27.50
• Sigmar's Blood (Limited Edition): £50.00
• Sigmar's Blood scenery collection: £70.00
• Undead campaign army: £304.00
• Empire campaign army: £261.50

Great, I think that's it! So what does it all come to?

£785.50

As a comparison, if I just wanted to buy the items promoted by the email, it would come to £685.50.

Obviously there is a subjective element to what something is worth, and there is no denying that this is not a usual way to get into 'The Hobby' (that would be a 'mere' £61.50 for the Island of Blood box set). Also, starting any substantial campaign in any new period or setting would result in a large outlay. In addition I won't find the cheapest 'alternative' and demonstrate how much cheaper it is to 'do this some other way' as ultimately you either want to play the current version of Warhammer, or you don't.

But, you know, these emails from GW always make me laugh.

For me the sad part is that the campaign itself sounds quite interesting and I wouldn't mind getting the basic version of the book and importing it's ideas into other rules or older editions of Warhammer.  But even that would be £25 for a 64 page book.

On the plus side, I now want to add my Warhamer figures to my 'must paint' list. It's nice and cheap buying them second hand from eBay...

Merry Christmas everyone!

'Teaser' Image for my new Campaign!

A bit of Flintloque

I've been very busy recently, so not much movement on the gaming front. Not a great deal of time to paint and only a little to play. I've been planning my next campaign, but more of that anon. This post is just to show a few pictures of a couple of trial games of Flintloque I played a couple of weeks back. Didn't want the pictures to go to waste really! Looking forward to cracking on with the painting....

Joccian ratmen advance.

Elves form up in a defensive position, while the cavalry trooper moves to outflank the enemy.

Ratman gets cut down by the elen rider (curse the auto focus on my camera!)

Opening fire at the advancing enemy.

Game number two! Had to play another after the rats lost the first one...

Bang!

That's all for now!

30 Days Later (An ATZ batrep in Comic Life)

Two posts in quick succession! Looks like I can't get enough of ATZ at the moment. I also played a couple of games of Flintloque but have not had a chance to write about them.

I took the opportunity to try my encounter deck again, along with something else I have been working on, a revised NPC movement table which takes into account the relationship between the acting group and the group nearest to it (Friend, enemy, neutral or zombie). It is still a work in progress, but I am happy with the results and feel they make the NPC behaviours a little more varied.

Anyway... on with the write up!:

There you have it. Hope you enjoyed it and apologies in advance if you spot any typos!

Customising ATZ encounters (Part 2)

I have managed to get my ATZ encounter idea to a functional stage this week, so I thought I'd give it a test run.

I did make a couple of revisions from my last post on the subject. These were:

1) The table for generating the number of citizens or zombies has been incorporated into the card itself. Turns out there was enough space to do this and it worked fine.

2) The other encounters (i.e. not the zombies or Rep 3 citizens) are now in their own deck. Why? Well, it means that I can have a static deck that is not changed, and a different deck consisting of all the other encounters that can be modified as I want between games without having to rebuild the core deck each time. Instead, I created 'Special Encounter' cards, which go in to the Zombie/Citizen deck and indicate that you need to draw from the second deck. Also, some of the cards ended up asking for specific cards to be pulled (more on this later) and by having all of them in one big deck, you don't end up spoiling future 'surprises' when you look for other cards.

So the rules now look like this:

ATZ Encounter Deck

To build the deck, start by including zombie cards based upon how long it has been since the outbreak. These cards represent a roll of 1d3 or 1d6 depending on the card:

Days	Cards with 1d3 zombies	Cards with 1d6 zombies
1-10	8	4
11-20	6	6
21-30	4	8
31+	2	10

 To this deck of 12 cards, add cards representing 1d3 citizens, again based on the days since the outbreak:

Days	Civilian cards
1-10	6
11-20	4
21-30	2
31+	None!

Finally, add a number of  'Special Encounter' cards to bring the number of cards in the deck to 24. When one of these is drawn, take the top card from a separate deck consisting of all the possible encounters you have figures for. This deck can be adjusted as you get new figures or if you want more of a specific encounter (i.e. More National Guard encounters near a quarantine zone).

Whenever a PEF is resolved during the game, draw the top card from the main deck and follow the instructions.

I'm Back!

The house move has been sucessfully completed and the wifi has just been installed!

So now we have super fast broad band and hundreds of TV channels to entertain me, the question becomes.... which miniatures do I paint next?! :)