WFB4 Elves

Earlier, I reported that there were some Elves on my painting table. Finally, they are finished.

These are plastics from the Warhammer 4th edition boxed set, and hence are painted a bit simplistic: simple block painting, limited highlights. They will be mostly used for quick fantasy games.

Facing or no facing on hexgrids?

In our 6mm Napoleonic rules, we use a 3" hexgrid to regulate the movement of troops. See e.g. the Bataille of Mont St-Liselle, which shows the grid in action

The hexgrid in our 6mm Napoleonic games.

One of the aspects in the rules is that all units need to choose a facing after movement. 12 different orientations are possible: a unit must either face an edge, or a vertex of an hex. The main reason are the firing arcs. Each unit has a 120 degree fire arc, hence facing is important. It sometimes caused a bit of a headache, because in the heat of the wargaming battle, facing is less than accurate, and sometimes a small discussion ensues. However, being gentlemen wargamers and all that, the matter was usually resolved quickly, but it nevertheless forms a little clunky mechanism in the rules.

The diagram below shows the fire arc for both types of orientation, with a reduction in fire power in some hexes which are only "half-covered".

However, after reading the following post on the Battlefields and Warriors blog, and reading the house rules written by feloow wargamer Norm Smith, I realized that this can be resolved in another manner as wel:

• Whenever a unit is shooting, it can distribute its fire only within a 120 degree fire arc. So effectively, it is choosing its orientation at that point, but it is not necessary to orient the figures as such. Just don't shoot at different targets more than 120 degrees apart.
•  When judging flank attacks, there is a flank attack if the unit is attacked from 2 different non-adjacent hexes. Again, actual orientation of the unit is unimportant.

Since in our rules, we do not make a difference between close combat and firing, the 2nd point is moot, but the first point is useful. It does away with worrying about facing, as long as you do not distribute fire in a larger than 120 degree arc. Of course, this also assumes that "changing orientation" is a free action, which in our rules, it is.

Just a wild idea ...

Many years ago, I bought one of the Columbia block games, Victory, together with all the expansion maps, new unit types, logistics expansion etc. I've always liked this game and its simplicity, although a good scenario setup is necessary to prevent it from becoming a big long draw.

I never sold my copy of the game, although I have sold many other board games of which I was sure I would never play them again. I always had in the back of my mind the idea that someday Victory could be used to play out a big war between nations.

Yesterday, when I was reorganizing the storage space in which I keep a number of boardgames, I suddenly couldn't resist bringing out Victory. I tried to lay out all 16 maps to form a coherent whole (not that easy, given the constraints of the maps), and the result you see below.  I tried to build 2 main land areas in opposite corners, with a couple of islands in between.

My Victory-map layout.

At once, I started to imagine wars between the 2 countries in the lower-left and upper-right. Perhaps one of them would have taken the islands in the middle, rich in resources. Perhaps neutral countries (upper-left and lower-right) would be forced to choose sides. Perhaps there would be some sort of peace council trying to set the matter? What sort of governments would all these countries have, that would determine their stance in the conflict? In short, I was dreaming up an imaginary setting in which these countries went to war.

Just an idea ...

Storage and transport of wargaming figures

A recent discussion on a local wargaming board made me think a little about how to store your wargaming figures. These days, a number of wargamers invest in cases such as those sold by KR. I can see these serve a specific need, especially if you have to transport your wargaming army to your local gaming venue.

However, I always felt that these cases do not offer enough density in terms of number of figures that can be stored per unit volume. Once you cross the threshold of several thousands of figures, storing figures in such cases is simply not an option.

I know there is a difference between storage and transport. In principle, your storage system can be different from your transport system. But several years ago I made the decision that storage should be the same as transport.  I was just fed up with moving figures from storage boxes to foam-lined transport boxes. Now, storage and transport are the same.

There are of course some factors that have made this decision easier for me. I am lucky to have my own wargaming room, so transport only happens for big con games, once or twice a year. Moreover, once you have the amount of figures I have, I really can't be bothered anymore by treating every figure as a precious gem. Accidents do and will happen, and if a figure gets damaged, so be it. Apply some superglue, and done. Life is too short to still get upset about a spear that breaks off, or a rider that gets unmounted. Rarely has damage been such that the figure in question became unusable.

So, what is my storage system? I have a number of wooden drawer units underneath my gaming surface. Actually, they form the base on top of which the gaming surface rests. I acquired these in a DIY store a long time ago, and I have enough of them to build a "big block" of drawers. Each drawer is roughly 5 cm high, and that is high enough for most 28mm cavalry. Figures that really do not fit are kept in some seperate storage boxes. Also, I do keep a lot of the smaller scenery items in these drawers.

Drawers on the long side of the gaming table. There is a small size discrepancy for the top 3 blocks,
since the combined height of two 5-drawer blocks would be too high for the gaming surface.
Hence the 5 + 3 solution, and the 3-drawer blocks were a different size.

Short side of the table.

Opposite long side of the gaming table.

Typical drawer filled with figures. If I need to transport those, I simple take the drawer out,
put some bubblewrap on top, and that's it.

A drawer filled with scenery items.

By having the figures readily accessible in the gaming room, I am also spared from numerous trips back to the garage where I keep the bigger scenery pieces. I try to keep generic items as much as possible in the gaming room, and the bigger or more rarely used items in the garage.

So what about transport? I simply pull the drawers out, but a sheet of bubblewrap over them, and place them in some bigger plastic containers that can hold 3 or 4 drawers. So yes, now and then something gets damaged, but so what?

This system has served me for over 10 years now. Although the esthetics could be improved somewhat, I am still happy with my storage and transport solution.

The Quest for Fantasy Skirmish Rules

Many moons ago, I started out as a fantasy wargamer (WFB 1st edition!). This was my first foray into miniature wargaming, after a healthy diet of Avalon Hill boardgames. As a result, I have amassed hordes of fantasy miniatures over the years. Sadly, they haven't seen much use during the past 10 years or so.

Due to the success of our Antares campaign, in which every player controls one squad in a continuing series of special operations, I was tinkering with the idea of doing something similar for a fantasy setting.

The idea would be that all players control a warband of fantasy personalities and monsters, all camped in the city. This city is located on the edge of the civilized world, from which expeditions are mounted into the Desolated Lands, in the hopes of finding treasure (this setting will be based on our fantasy cmpaign world Dor, which we developed for the Dutch FRP Schimmen & Schaduwen 25 years ago).

Anyway, the question is what rules to use. As in Antares, I really like it when we develop our own rules as we go along. This results in a ruleset that focuses on those aspects that most participants like, and never develop the ballast that never gets used anyway.

However, I recently learned about two new rulesets that might fit what I am looking for. The first is Dragon Rampart, a variant of the medieval Lion Rampart rules, and the second is Frostgrave. I think both look promising, and I will certainly check them out.

Gridded games

The latest issue of Miniature Wargames with Battlegames (issue 385) has a nice column on gridded miniature games. Various wargamers make extensive use of gridded games. Just one example is the blog Battle Game of the Month. Another is the renowned Wargaming Miscellany. Both have excellent visuals as well.

Now, I have proclaimed my love for gridded miniature wargaming before (on this forums and others), and it remains a mystery to me why not more wargamers are taking up this trend.

AquaZone - our Crisis 2009 game, and a prime example of hex-based rules.

 My thinking on gridded wargaming also has evolved over the years, and I will not delve into an extensive explanation of how and why my thinking evolved (I do a lot of thinking!). But I can state my current opinions about gridded wargaming.

1. Speed of play. Ranges for both movement and firing are measured in hexes or squares. No fiddling with tape measures. When using a high enough resolution (e.g. Kallistra terrain), spatial resolution on the battlefield is good enough for most types of games. This is the most significant advantage.
2. Footprint of a unit. Many rulesets have guidelines w.r.t. the basing of troops. When playing on a continuous gaming field, this is understandable, since the base of a unit determines it footprint and its front arc. When using grids, the footprint of a unit is determined by the gridcell, and basing becomes irrelevant. This allows troops based in different manners to be used in the same game without any problems.
3. Line of sight: A common misconception when using grids is that LOS also has to be aligned with the grid. This stems from boardgames, in which LOS is usually measured hex-centre to hex-centre. But this does not need to be so. E.g. in a skirmish game, LOS can still be influenced by terrain pieces at a finer resolution than an individual hex, and LOS can still be measured figure-to-figure, altough movement and ranges are measured in hexes. It is perfectly acceptable to use sub-gridcell resolution when placing individual figures.
4. Orientation: In unit-based games (e.g. Horse and Musket period), orientation of units (front, sides, rear) might be of importance. One can imagine that orientation is decoupled from the grid, just as LOS could be, but this poses problems in practice. Best solution is to allow for 8 (squares) or 12 (hexes) degrees of orientation. In case of hexes, this means a unit can face the sides or a corner of a hex, with slightly different definitions of what it means to be in front or in the flank. We have used rules in which half-hexes in the fire-arc can be shot at at half fire-power, to compensate for the fact that fire-arcs might be larger in one orientation scheme or the other.
5. Terrain alignement. This is something I still struggle with. Human constructions such as buildings, roads etc. tend to be in rectangular grids. When using hexes, a rectangular area such as a field cannot be delineated that easily with walls or hedges. Two solutions: either make all your areas parallellograms, or allow half-hexes to be used. It is more of an esthetic issue than a game-playing issue, but it still irritates me now and then.
   Another terrain alignment problem is the placement of linear obstacles (rivers, obstacles). Do you place them along the grid lines, or across the grid cells? When placed along lines, it makes it easier to place "defending troops" behind the obstacle. When placing inside the cells, actual placement of troops inside the cell matters. In practice, I usually go for what works best with a given ruleset.

Overall, I still like gridded (and in particular hexagons) for playing miniature wargames - although I am less dogmatic as I used to be.

Papierslag - our Crisis 2011 gamae using Kallistra-hexes.

Wargames Soldiers & Strategy 78

The new issue of WSS arrived in my mail this morning. Always a good read, but this issue is special. An irregular column, written by yours truly, is published in this issue. It always feels good to make a little contribution to the world-wide world of wargaming.

With our little gaming group, we started writing articles for the glossies (Wargames Illustrated, Battlegames, Miniature Wargames, and now WSS) a few years ago (although our first publication in Wargames Illustrated goes back to 2005). So far, we published roughly 10 articles, written by Bart Vetters, Eddy Sterckx, or myself. This is not nearly the number that some more prolific authors publish, but variety in the magazines is a good thing. I always considered articles in the magazines a nice way to get a peek into how others approach the hobby.

Recently, I started to reread some of the older issues of Battlegames, and I was surprised I found good stuff in there that escaped my attention before. So, even after many years, it pays off to reread your stack of magazines. A specific article, or rules idea, or scenario, might not seem useful the particular week the magazine arrives in the post - and you might not make a mental note of it as a result - but perhaps after many years it migh come in very handy. That crazy idea that some wargamer wrote about, might just hit the right chord many years later.

And that's what a hobby should be all about: sharing ideas and experiences! 

A few finished miniatures

I have to admit wargaming activity has been on the slow side lately. I barely managed to do any painting, and due to a variety of reasons, actual number of games also has suffered.

Anyway, here are some finished miniatures.

First, some old Runequest miniatures which I identified earlier in this blogpost. From left to right: Smitten Broo, Broo with Mace and Orlanth Adventurer. The Broo with Mace required a small repair, since the mace was broken off.

Second, a large siege engine from Games Workshop, published several years ago as part of their Lord of the Rings range. I originally bought this set in 2005 or 2006, for the Lowenheim game, but I only got around painting it now.

Third, not really a paintjob, but a hangman stand put together. This set is produced by 4Ground. The figure is one I had lying around, and was (is?) part of Foundry's Old West range. Time to play some more Shootist games!

First playtest of fantasy skirmish rules

Yesterday we had a first playtest of our, yet unnamed, fantasy skirmish rules. The idea is that we will start some sort of warband-like campaign set in our fantasy world of Dor (dating back over 25 years), developing our own rules as we progress through various games. Such a scheme has worked well for our scifi Antares campaign. Instead of trying to foresee every possible feature needed in the rules, we just adapt the rules as we progress from game to game. Less stress, more fun!

Why not use commercially published rules? The only answer I can give is that developing rules is something I enjoy. But there's also a philosophical argument. I have always seen the wargaming hobby as building and designing your own game, and that includes writing your own rules. The  commercial side of the wargaming hobby, in which you buy into a set of rules with associated army lists and figures is something I consider as a less fullfilling experience.

Anyway, here are some pictures of our game from last night. The pictures are not of terribily good quality, for which I apologize. I really need to learn how to make better pictures ...

Some scribbled notes for the first playtest.

Lay-out of the table, based on the tabletop teaser published in Battlegames #13.

The table from the other corner of the room.

Stronghold of the Barbarians. Old GW Townscape cardboard buildings.

More Barbarians.

Even more Barbarians.

Facing the Orcs, commanded by a giant.

Now as seen from the giant's side.

Bart is contemplating his next move.

Still contemplating ...

State of the table when we quit the game.

SciFi Dreadnoughts

It has been silent on the blogging front. As usual, blame real life ...

Anyway, to break the silence, here's a quick picture of a recent acquisition. I bought (online) some 2nd hand Warhammer 40K Imperial Dreadnoughts, released during the late eighties. See also the pages from the 1988 Citadel catalogue, and 1991 Citadel catalogue.

They will feature in the ongoing Antares 2401 campaign, but I am not sure yet whether they will act as reinforcements for StarMarines SpecOps, or rather as the enemy ...