20mm Miniature Scavenger Hunt

For next year, I think I want to invest in some new figures for tabletop miniature battles. Since I'm playing ACKS, it's natural to look for a way to cover the (quite substantial!) range of different troop types. While most fantasy miniatures are released in the 28-to-35 mm range, smaller scale miniatures are often better for large battles between armies. Buying everything at 28 mm scale gets expensive, and for anything above human scale, it's hard to match the figure's footprint to a 1-inch hex grid.

Although 15 mm fantasy figures are available, the main appeal of 20 mm is the broader availability of 1/72 plastic sets. Some of these are released for games, and I've been using the armies from War of the Rings for the last couple semesters, even though these are at the large end of the range (more like 25 mm). The variety of troops and poses is pretty limited, and it's tempting to switch over entirely to smaller figures.

There are currently three sources of inexpensive fantasy miniatures in the 20-25 mm scale:

• Board games like WotR, Age of Mythology, and Age of Conan
• Plastic soldier sets from Caesar and Red Box (released under the Light/Dark Alliance label)
• Resold boxes from the recently discontinued Arcane Legions game

All of these provide a pretty generous collection of different poses, and usually sell at less than 50 cents per miniature. This is about a tenth the cost of a comparable metal mini, and a fifth of the cost of high-quality plastic minis. It's currently possible to field  hefty armies of humans, dwarves, elves, undead, and orcs, without breaking a $50 total budget.

Covering all the more obscure troop types in the D@W system requires a bit of scrounging. Here's a roadmap I'm considering for acquiring a more or less complete set:

• Start with the War of the Rings minis. This provides a nice mix of infantry and cavalry for humans, dwarves, elves, and orcs. As a bonus, you also get some (not-to-scale) war elephants and cave trolls. That's just as well, since a 1/72 elephant wouldn't really fit well on a hex map anyway. Already owned!
• Buy the Caesar Miniatures (or Red Box) sets necessary to get some undead and unique hero units. I think the cheapest options are Caesar F104-Adventurers and F103-Skeletons. That's another $30.
• Add all three of the Age of Mythology game piece sets, which can be purchased independently from the publisher's website. These provide alternate (and not consistently scaled) versions of ancient-world infantry, cavalry, giants, elephants, chariots, and lots of classic mythological creatures, for a very low price of $3 per set.

Even factoring in the cost of shipping and handling, that's not more than another $50 beyond WotR, which is a solid enough game in its own right so that the minis are virtually a free bonus.

Now it becomes necessary to fill in the gaps and find more obscure troop types.

• Camel Cavalry: HaT makes a few colonial-era camelry sets, including two of African irregulars (Hadedowah and Taaishi) that don't carry any weaponry that would place them outside the medieval era.
• Camel Archers: Probably the closest equivalent is Caesar's Bedouin set, which features Biblical-era Arab riders. But it might be better to just get...
• Horse Archers: This Mongol set from Italeri has a half-dozen of them. As an added bonus, it comes with more camels! On a tight budget, this could cover all three categories at once. For a more primitive take on horse archers, there's also this Scythian set from Zvezda.
• Cataphracts: These late-Roman and Byzantine cavalry are captured in all their glory by Zvezda. Of course, you can just use any old heavy cavalry and call them cataphracts, if you don't care about them looking particularly Byzantine.
• Dwarven (Mule-)Mounted Crossbows: This is virtually impossible to find. Medieval cavalry occasionally include a few mules, like this El Cid command set. But good luck finding a dwarf in a riding pose! Even human mounted crossbows are rare, although you can find some in this Zvezda French Knight set.
• War Elephants: Yes, these are already represented in reduced scale, but if you absolutely want them in true 1/72 size, this phenomenal Zvezda set is a wonder to behold. But good luck fitting these things in even a 2-inch hex map...
• Orc Boar Riders: You've got me. If I feel ambitious, I might try to pick up some vintage Britains Wild Boars (1360) and stick the Dark Alliance heavy warg riders on them with glue or pins.
• Goblins and kobolds: Caesar offers a goblins set. The Reaper Bones sets for kobolds are fairly inexpensive and don't look bad next to 1/72 figures.
• Centaurs: Age of Mythology has a some low-quality ones. The best source of these is probably Arcane Legions, where they appear in the Egyptian cavalry booster packs, which also provides more Mongol horse archers.
• War Bear Cataphracts: Seriously? Arcane Legions released these? How did this game die?!

Romans on armored bears = You win!

I don't know of any place to find gnolls, lizardmen, or bugbears. Fortunately, these are pretty easy to borrow from 28 mm collections, since it doesn't matter too much if they are a slightly oversized. The same holds true for dragons and other exotic fantasy creatures, where the real problem is finding small enough versions to fit in a hex at any scale.

I think my first priorities are grabbing the dirt-cheap Age of Mythology sets, the Mongol set (for some starter camels), and Caesar's Goblins and Undead sets. It also makes sense to buy up some discontinued Arcane Legions boosters before they disappear forever -- probably along with another game, the next time I want to mail-order a game.

Holiday Break

For Christmas Eve (with my wife's family), I ran a short game of Axis and Allies 1941, the newest (and smallest) iteration of the venerable AaA franchise. Despite being a game that supposedly can finish in a couple hours, we didn't even see the fall of Russia before we had to quit. As usual, the culprit was the entrenchment of builds into infantry categories, which turns everything into a Risk clone, but with double-strength defenders. In other words, a stalemate.

Russia crumbles before my onslaught!

The good news is that everyone had fun anyway. My nephews had never really tried a large strategy game before, but took to the mechanics quickly. My wife was predictably hyper-aggressive in an attempt to shorten the game and make more things happen before we had to quit. Always a good suggestion when introducing something to new players!

It's strange to go back to playing something simpler after years of high-level wargames. It's a little like developing a taste for double-shot espresso, and then trying to go back to drinking a Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha (or whatever sugarbomb equivalent is popular at Starbucks these days). It's exactly the same game I played to death in high school, but now I feel guilty about enjoying it. And worse yet, I have a desire to "fix" it, a project that would lead down a deep rabbit-hole of house rules.

If I could propose one (and only one) fix, I'd probably go for a weather system. I feel like a good weather system creates a "rhythm" to wargame play, with good weather creating "offensive turns" for conquest, and poor weather creating "defensive turns" for reinforcement and consolidation. It also provides the breathing room to regroup and build some powerful assault units for a coordinated attack, rather than just pumping out stacks of infantry while your navy and air force is frittered away. Finally, this allows for Russia to be plucked from the jaws of defeat by "General Winter" in much the same way that it was in the real 1941 Barbarossa offensive.

Below I've written a rule based on the assumption that every turn represents about a half-year. (For the 1940 Global game, using four seasons would probably fit the scale better.) I also assume that the game's focus is on regions with a temperate (summer/winter) climate. This is adapted from the weather system from my own Fantastic Frontiers project.

Axis and Allies Weather Rule

The first turn of the game is a Summer turn for all players. Every subsequent turn alternates between Winter and Summer. In regions on the southern hemisphere of the map -- anything with a northern edge lower than the northern edge of Brazil -- the seasons are reversed.

(Optional rule to handle tropical regions: Draw an equator across the map. Every region that the equator passes through, or that is adjacent to a zone the equator passes through, is an equatorial region that has reversed seasonal variation relative to the temperate regions in its hemisphere, to reflect Wet/Dry monsoon patterns. So while the North Temperate and South Equatorial zones have good Summer/Dry weather, the South Temperate and North Equatorial zones have harsher Winter/Wet weather, and vice versa.)

At the start of every combat round, roll a 1d6 to check for the weather conditions that round. In Summer, the weather is Clear on a 1-2, and Severe on a 6. In Winter, the weather is Clear on a 1, and Severe on a 5-6. Otherwise the weather is Average, with a mix of rainy and sunny days.

Clear weather represents perfect weather for modern mechanized warfare. All aircraft and armor increase the number of attack dice they are allowed to roll by 50%, rounding fractions up. For example, a group of 3 tanks would roll 3+1.5 dice, rounding to 5 dice, instead of their usual 3. This is calculated individually for each type of armor or aircraft unit present.

Severe weather represents storms or blizzards that are miserable for everyone. All attack dice are reduced to half, rounding fractions down. A group of 4 fighters would only roll 2 dice, and a group of 1 bomber would roll no dice at all. After Severe weather, combat must end with that round. If the battle is not won at the end of that round, the attacker must retreat.

Longview Gets A Game Store

Since moving to East Texas I've been mostly purchasing stuff over the internet, since the closest game store is more than an hour away. Just this month I heard about a small local startup called Three Suns Unlimited on the north side of town. Despite being busy with end-of-semester grading responsibilities, I've found time to drop by twice. Here are some of my first impressions:

• The majority of space is devoted to gaming tables, suggesting that Three Suns is positioning itself more as a venue than as a retailer. Both times I dropped by, there were relatively few shoppers, but plenty of actual players. Most recently I arrived in the middle of a Pathfinder Society event that seemed to involve at least a dozen players, or else there was a second game going on at the same time.
•  Most of the stock was skewed toward card games, both CCGs and some of the newer boxed "deckbuilder" boardgames. Since this is the end of the hobby with which I have the least familiarity, I'm not sure how to appraise the quality of their collection, but it seemed reasonably

  

  This must be an old photo. They have more shelves than this now!

  respectable for a startup. Many of the deckbuilders have demo packs available, and at some point I want to go back and try some of them (like Paizo's Rise of the Runelords or Cryptozoic's The Two Towers).
• There were plenty of demo games on the shelves. Playing them would have been a good use for an entire afternoon, but I had to leave because 1) it was a bit noisy with the PFRPG people there, and 2) my 2-year-old daughter was in the process of systematically rampaging through the store and causing mayhem with sticky candy-cane fingers. At some point I'll go back without those complications and see if I can't round up some MEK OPS Saturday night folks to try out the games on the shelf.
• The RPG selection was pretty heavily skewed toward Pathfinder and D&D. I did see a stack of Troll Lord Games sourcebooks (most of which I already own), and a beautiful OD&D reprint boxed set (for $150!!!), but for a retro-oriented player there wasn't anything that seemed usefully system-independent. I'd like to see them invest in a respectable stock of inexpensive 25mm fantasy figures (like Reaper's Bones line), which could support some of the ACKS campaign stuff I want to set up or any other generic fantasy-based miniature system. It would be nice to be able to snap up exactly the specialty mini I need for a Saturday Domains at War session. (Get me a club-wielding stone giant in hide armor, stat!)
• Helpful hint to game store owners: You get the best revenue stream by selling minis and miniature accessories! This is the stuff that people want to touch and inspect before they buy it, which means that you won't be replaced by online pdfs and Amazon.com. Plus, there's an unassailable cool factor when you can set up a glass display case full of Dwarven Forge dungeon dioramas. Diehards are going to drop in just to gaze longingly at it...
• I really wanted a small collection of 8mm d6 dice to replace the ones that Walley took back home to Arizona with him. They are currently retailing in large lots at eBay in larger quantities than I want to pay for (when I only need a dozen or so). Buying unusual dice types in bulk and then selling them individually is a good way for a small store like this to beat online retailers. The employee working behind the desk said that they had tried to buy them, but ended up with even tinier 5mm polyhedron dice instead! Cool looking, but at about $6 for a set, a little pricey.
• They have very limited selection of historical games, which is pretty much my experience at every game store these days -- I'm part of a dying breed, I guess. I did pick up a copy of the latest Axis and Allies release, the lightweight 1941 set. It supposedly plays in 90 minutes (we'll see about that!)  I'm also going to keep my eyes open for any other players of the Axis and Allies War at Sea miniatures game, which was represented there by a single starter set. That's the sort of thing that I could justify purchasing only if I knew I could get some use out of it -- my last attempt to run a tabletop naval miniatures battle attracted only a single player!

Hopefully they can expand the variety of their product offerings. Otherwise, it looks like a good place to stop and pick up dice/card games, or look for RPG or CCG players.

MEK OP Game Night: Semester Finale

Saturday featured the wildest finish yet to War of the Ring, with a 2-vs-1 game that ended in... a military victory for the Free Peoples!

Shadow initially set up for invasions of Gondor and Rohan. The Gondor invasion went relatively well, taking Dol Amroth and Pelargir. But Rohan held firm, and was relieved by substantial reinforcement out of Edoras, eventually enough to break the siege. All of this unraveled slowly, with the game under little time pressure due to some horrific damage inflicted on the Fellowship by hunt rolls; the Ringbearers ended up holing up in Lorien for several turns in a row, having lost both Boromir, Pippin, and Gandalf.

Meanwhile, the North had been left nearly depleted. Elves sallied forth, first from Rivendell, and then from Lorien, to pressure Moria and northern Dunland. The first invasion was thrown back, but the followup from Lorien was sufficient to seize a mostly-depleted Moria. The Shadow retaliated with a counter-siege out of Isengard, but pressure from Rohan made reinforcing the invasion difficult.

"No worries, folks, we got this."

The final blow came from Erebor. Gimli and a reconstituted Pippin commanded a combined force of Elves, Dwarves and Men through Mirkwood to challenge the Witch King and his Dol Guldur army outside of an undefended Lorien. The Witch King attacked, hoping to defeat both the army and then Lorien. Gimli prevailed, slaying the Witch King personally! The remaining garrison of two trolls fell to a Later-than-Last Alliance of 4 dwarves (leader, elite, 2 regular), 3 northmen (2 leader, regular), and 4 wood elves (leader, 2 elite, regular).

All in all, a relief to finally see the Free Peoples win a game for once.

Tournament Rules (As In, Rules For Simulating Tournaments!)

For a while I've been bothered by the fact that the Adventurer, Conqueror, King system (ACKS) seems to give fighter-type classes a less inspired domain-management endgame. They get to do all the same basic functions as other classes (trade, stronghold building, and basic economics), but they don't really have any special flavor elements that they don't share with all the other classes. Worse, clerics seem to be able to do all the same things, and do them better, thanks to having larger strongholds that can control more land and population. Fighters ought to be the best at something!

To look at the Platonic ideal of what it means to be a Lord (a name-level fighter with a stronghold), let's look back to the original OD&D booklets, and see what happens when a party of adventurers trespasses on the lands of a mighty ruler from each of the three archetypical classes (this is pre-thief!). From Volume III: Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, page 15:

• Fighting Men within castles will demand a jousting match with all passersby of like class. Otherwise they will demand a toll of from 100 to 600 Gold Pieces from the party. If a joust takes place (use rules from CHAINMAIL) the occupant of the castle will take the loser's armor if he wins, but if the character wins the castle owner will host all in the party for up to one month, supply them with two weeks of rations, and provide warhorses (Heavy) if the party so requires.

• Magic-Users from castles will send passersby after treasure by Geas if they are not hostile, with the Magic-User taking at least half of all treasure so gained, the Magic-User having first choice of magical items and automatically choosing Miscellaneous Magic, Wands/Staves, or Rings (in that order) in preference to other items. Otherwise, the Magic-User will require a magical item from the passersby as toll, and if they have no magical items suitable for use the Magic-User will require a toll of from 1000 to 4000 Gold Pieces. 

• Clerics will require passersby to give a tithe (10%) of all their money and jewels. If there is no payment possible the Cleric will send the adventurers on some form of Lawful or Chaotic task, under Quest. Generally Evil High Priests will simple attempt to slay Lawful or Neutral passersby who fail to pay their tithes.

Here we have the endgame focus of each of three classes. Mages covet magic items above all else. Clerics covet money (ahem, "tithes") above all else. Both of these are well-represented in ACKS, which gives mages all kinds of crafting systems to invest their time and money, and gives clerics lots of revenue enhancing perks.

What do fighters care about? Challenges! High-stakes challenges, where the victors are rewarded handsomely as celebrated new champions of the realm, but the losers are stripped and kicked to the curb. OD&D is mostly concerned with the high medieval period -- hence the special attention to jousting -- but almost every other pre-industrial culture had its equivalent quasi-martial spectator sport: the Greeks had the Olympic (and other) games, the Romans had Colosseum and the Circus, the Byzantines dropped gladiators but doubled down on chariot-racing, and jousts were really nothing more than a more genteel version of free-for-all melees arranged as recreational activity during the Dark Ages.

This aspect of the ancient world deserves a new and improved implementation in the ACKS style.

After floating the idea for new fighter perks on the developer forum, I got mostly recommendations that involved personnel improvements to henchmen or hirelings. For example, the cap on henchmen could be relaxed, or the pool for recruiting them could be expanded. I'd really like to make a system that involves active decisions and resource management, rather than just a passive bonus, for sake of consistency with the highly customizable crafting systems for the other classes.

In my approach, fighters would not only build a physical structure for games (a stadium or something similar), but would also schedule competitive events. This would be in conjunction with the usual "feasts" required for domain morale purposes, as part of the celebration. The events would have different costs, and attract different types of (pre-rolled) contestants. By observing the outcome of each contest, the sponsoring lord (and any visitors from other realms) could learn something about the skills and attributes of the contestants in advance of recruitment, instead of the usual system of hiring henchman and then "rolling them up" to discover if you got a valuable one. A winning contestant would make a good choice for a henchman!

Here's a brainstormed list of different contests and games, some of which might be restricted from a given setting (i.e., no jousting in a bronze-age campaign). The "formula" determines how contestants will place during competition, based on their skills and attributes. Each contest has a base cost of 5000 gp associated with it, which mostly reflects creating a sizable purse of money for the winners as well as the cost of offering hospitality to celebrated contestants. Increasing the purse will improve the number of contestants who arrive to compete. Contestants will only compete in events that match one of the prime requisites of their classes (i.e., a bard would compete in recitation, but a regular fighter would not).

• Horse racing: 1d12 + DEX + STR / 2
• Chariot/harness racing: 1d10 + DEX + STR / 2 + INT / 2
• Jousting: 1d6 + STR + DEX / 2
• Sprinting: 1d6 + STR
• Distance running: 1d6 + CON
• Javelin throwing: 1d6 + DEX
• Wrestling: 1d6 + STR + CON + DEX / 2
• Boxing: 1d6 + STR + DEX + CON / 2
• Gladiatorial combat: 1d6 + STR + CON + DEX
• Hunting: 1d6 + DEX + WIS
• Recitation: 1d6 + CHA + INT / 2

By observing the outcome of many events, a shrewd ruler could identify the most outstanding young warriors in his region of the world, getting an early chance to recruit a potential Lancelot or Hercules. As sponsor, he'd have first right to offer something to a contestant. Of course, rivals might arrive to make offers to any contestant who wasn't successfully recruited, or to try to enter themselves or their own henchmen for a shot at the purse!

I'm try to work this idea out into some more formal rules that include adjustments for level and proficiencies.