Something for the New Year?

As previously threatened I've read Issue 3 of Tabletop Gaming from cover to cover.

In short I'm going to be picking up a subscription because I think it's worth £20 to see it can achieve.

Despite the obvious difficulties of the format in the increasingly virtual world it's something I'd like to succeed. Like many things it harks back to the Hobby of my youth, White Dwarf and Wargames Illustrated, which I'm sure for many of us is the attraction.

Anyway, before I get too heavily sidetracked;

The Good:
- It's a high quality, professionally laid out and finished product. It's a compliment to say that it doesn't come across as a wargames magazine if you didn't already know.
- It covers all the bases in terms of content: News, New Releases, Editorial, Features, Battle Report, Interview, Events, Reviews, Hobby, Shop and Club Spotlights.
- It's well and intelligently written, pitched at an adult level.
- The reviews tell you what you need to know and have a useful comparison "If you like........" section.
- The full gamut of figure, dice, board and role-playing games are all covered.

The Bad:
- The obligatory FFG Star Wars article read more like a product pamphlet than an article.
- Other than the Introduction to Bushido there wasn't a lot of mechanics in the reviews. The Dropzone Commander battle report had none at all.
- Historical gaming barely got a look in, other than adverts, and board games seemes to dominate the issue as a whole.

My Ugly:
I have to admit to being biased as I've been wanting a decent Wargames magazine for quite sometime. Tabletop Gaming is good but I'm not sure that it's special. This issue was very Sci-Fi / Fantasy and previous issues look to be the same. That's fine but I would prefer that to be openly stated.

These days we're all a lot more savvy and capable of doing our own research so I can forgive a more impressionistic review, in many ways I prefer them, especially when it allows a wider coverage.
I'm still picking up a hard copy subscription because that's who I am. I'm hopeful rather than expectant as these days we can all find this stuff by ourselves but there still something about having it arrive on you doormat.

I'd suggest its well worth a fiver to inform your own opinion ;)

Rebel, Rebel....

Hello people,

Tuesday afternoon myself Rob and Mr C went and saw The Hobbit: BOFA in super IMAX 3D and then retired to casa del Leg to crack out Mr C's chrimbo pressie to himself; Rebel Assault.

To set the background Mr C has played a couple of games and spent a fair few hours deciphering the apparently poorly laid out rulebook. Rob has had a couple of games, this was my first time out.

The game has two formats, firstly as a traditional skirmish wargame picking and equipping your force from the various options available and secondly as a roleplay lite version of Edge of the Empire / Age of Rebellion. With three players we went roleplay lite, myself and Rob taking a pair of characters each with Mr C as GM running the Empire.

As we kicked off everything felt familiarly homely as the main stats of Endurance and  Strain ported across as well as each player getting two actions (as compared to a manoeuvre and and action). There's also a unique set of dice. Attack dice generate Range, Hits and Surges, which are spent on bonus weapon effects much like Criticals. Defence dice negate Hits and Surges.

That's pretty much the core mechanics. The Mission Scenario sets everything else up and we played through the intro and then one more, from a rolling choice of two. They were fairly challenging and not just in terms of opponents, the intro scenario has a tight turn limit!

Each character has their own special abilities as well as their own decks of XP bought ability upgrades, appropriately tiered for a natural progression, as well as a more generic deck of weaponry, armour and equipment. All of the core elements of the full roleplay system are there.

What isn't there is the narrative nature of EotE / AoR, which is in my opinion it's greatest strength. I can understand why and how it couldn't be for this type of product but it does rather exchange ROLL for ROLE as far as the play is concerned. That feeling isn't helped by some of the more gamey elements introduced by the different coloured Attack dice. In the second mission we had an AT-ST which, by necessity I suppose, was very short ranged.....which jarred badly.

As much everything is beautifully put together, as you'd expect, and you do get an awful lot in the box the layout of the rulebook is a proper pig and we often went by "common sense" rather than delve it's depths.

I appreciate that I've only played two missions over the course of one evening but my initial impressions were that the game felt a bit schizophrenic, neither a roleplay or a wargame though possibly an entry level offering for both. On reflection, whilst writing this, I think that actually it's a Living Boardgame (my moniker) given the forthcoming expansions and FFGs penchant for such things.

As such it's never going to be either a Wargame or a Roleplay Game. If you're experienced with either it's an easy mistake to make. As an experienced player of both I would be concerned to describe it as either to someone starting out, or anyone else for that matter. I suppose it's a matter of expectation.

So, in short, it's neither a Roleplay or War game. There are plenty of elements of both but if that's what you're expecting you won't get it, or at least you'll be let down a touch.

I'm still not sure what a Living Boargame is, but I don't mind having another go :)

Bolt from the Blue

Hello people.

Not a lot to post about recently due various reasons but I have managed to roll a decent number of dice with Rich's Pacific Bolt Action setup.

Not one if played before, but heard and noticed a fair bit about, so brace yourself for another, soon to be trademark, impressionistic review. From what I had read and heard I got the impression of a typically Warlord / Rick P open ended system for more open minded "gentleman" wargamers. 

So, games at the club Tuesday and down at TTN Sunday were setup. Rich is our chief system junkie and we'd heard that BA was getting a lot of table-time locally. The other piece of scuttlebutt was that 15mm with the same 6x4 ground scale was the way to go.

In short Tuesday night was a four way affair with two virgins and plenty of flicking back and forth through the rulebook. Initially I liked the feel and the look of the scale but found nothing ground breaking. Squad activation by blind drawing of order dice is cool but hardly unheard of. Solid but hardly inspirational?

By the end of the game the importance of the pinning mechanic became clear as the defining element of the game. Once appreciated this gives the game something of a "realistic" gritty attrition. Suddenly command squads are properly important with proper platoon tactics required. 

Not headline grabbing neon but that's to miss the point, that's not what BA is about!

Sunday's game was, as might be expected, a fair slicker affair as Rich's USMC assaulted my Jap held hill.

The game also revealed a lot of BAs nuances. Lt Nakamakamora was shredded in the pre-game preparatory bombardment with my command squad taking half the game to properly preserve his remains! This wasn't as crippling as you might have fought but with USMC Lt Slaughter leading the assault it provided an effective demonstration of the mechanic.

Along with the usual "what we did wrong last time" FAQ the game really began to shine as the pearl that it is. Not beer and pretzels, far more tea and crumpet!

As for Sunday's game Rich went for something of a pincer, pushing hard on his left while a single platoon was urged up the hill by Lt Slaughter. In hindsight I got a bit suckered into the main battle on my right, successfully blunting the USMC assault but failed to support my left quickly enough as my artillery support continuously failed to come in on either time or target.

In short Rich took the ridge and raised the Stars and Stripes but paid with the destruction of the remainder of the the platoon for an overall Draw. My lack of command did limit me and lead me into being a bit over cautious. The Pinning and Command really came to the fore and defined the game.
I'm really looking to the next outing!

15mm really suits the game and once again raises the idea that if I wasn't so invested across the board in 28mm I'd definitely be trading in! Time to dig out my Jap Naval Marines :)

That's quite a hill...could do with a Flag!

First wave of USMC crest the ridge.

The armour engagement is swift and brutal. Jap win!

The line advances

MUSTANG!!!

Japs pinned, USMC assault!

Flag of your Father?

Final USMC wave breaks cover.....

.........only to be decimated byt the counter-assault!

Just surviving?

 This Tuesday at Enfield Gamers Ian rocked up with a recent Kickstarter offering in the form of Z-pocalypse. In honesty it wasn't a first appearance but I think I was getting Jud-ed at Dreadball at the time so it was my first time more than others.

Board Game Geek says;

Zpocalypse is a survival board game set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Two to four players start in a basement/fallout shelter which can lead out to several base locations or even through the tunnels to sewer grates throughout the transformable board. The survivors are trying to make it day to day in a world torn apart from the walking dead.

As in any survival game, one needs food, guns, ammo, and more. Players go out into the wasteland and scavenge for supplies, or perhaps to find a new gun or melee weapon to fend off the next zombie attack. In addition to gathering supplies, each player forms and controls his own squad – and each squad works to fortify the bases. Your walls and barbed wire won’t hold the dead for long, however, and they’re getting hungry.

Characters receive victory points for killing zombies, building defenses, and successfully completing goals. Victory points show who is soldiering on the best in this wasteland. The final tally of points determines the winner. Victory points also act as experience points for leveling up a character.
The game combines combat, tactics, resource collecting, character development, team play, and strategy towards the goal of surviving in the Zpocalypse!

In short the blurb is not wrong. This is very much a thinking man's Zombie survivor game as compared to Zombicide, think The Walking Dead vs World War Z.

Set over four turns, each of which represents one night, scavenging for food, weapons, equipment and materials to build defences is as if not more important than whacking Zeds. It's also a definate co-op game as each night more Zeds appear who also become more animated and agressive night by night, mutual support is vital.

Each player controls a group of upto four survivors who each have thier own strengths, weaknesses and abilities. Scavenging well is crucial and can recruit extra survivors to your group, equip, armour and feed them. Completing tasks and kill Zeds gain your group experience to unlock combat and weapon abilites that will very soon be put to the test.

For the four of us playing nights 1 and 2 passed well enough and were getting the hang of things approaching night 3 despite having to move bunker due to an event card. Loosing the defenses thatwe had had built up wasn't great but then a further event card saw us quite literally stuck in the mud and unable to make it back to the bunker before the Zeds appeared.

With each player group on a different tile full of ravening Zeds, who got to go first, and nothing to hide behind the game was qucikly concluded without the need to play out night 4!

In all a good fun Zed game with a lot more to it then you'd think, sort of Zombies of Catan. Definately recommended!

It's a MINI adventure!

I dropped round to Rich's yesterday afternoon for a couple of games of Warlord's SAGA suitably converted for 15mm Samurai prior to Rich's mini-campaign at the club.

As per usual I'm not going to offer an in-depth review of SAGA, as I'm sure a quick google search will give you plenty to choose from, but, as per usual, offer a more impressionistic view. A few more of these and maybe I can refer to them as being trademark?

Having spent 45 mins or so watching a demo game at Warfare I'd found the battle-board element an interesting take on resource management but in all honesty, as a observer with no knowledge of the game, I felt that there was lot going on for "just" a skirmish game. It probably didn't help that it was, quite rightly for a demo game, a simple "kill the warlord" scenario.

Having played through twice, I'm fairly convinced that SAGA isn't really a skirmish game and definitely not "just" another game at all. The battle-board is quite simply inspired and is almost a game in itself, its mastery is surely the key to the game.

The rest of the game mechanic is pretty simple other than Fatigue, which is another mini blinder. Each time a unit fights a combat and / or performs an action past the first it gains a point of Fatigue. Fatigue can be spent by your opponent to reduce your defence or raise his, though you can Rest a unit, as an action to drop them.

First game was learning, thus "kill the warlord, whilst for the second I chose the one where one side ambushes the others baggage train who are attempting to cross the board, I forget the name, as a deliberate attempt to push those rules within my tenuous grasp. All worked intuitively. Good stuff.
SO....back at my main point it didn't feel like a skirmish game. A standard 6pt game is six UNITS which, unless I've missed a bit, adhere to coherency. To ME that's not a skirmish game, though thats not a criticism of the game at all. To ME it feels much more like a medium sized game of Warhammer, historical or otherwise, .........but much, much, much, MUCH...better!

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, its off to battle we go!

5s required to hit!

None shall pass!



The baggage goes by a more circuitous route....



The thin Blue line

An instant classic of a sit-com for Rowan Atkinson from some years back that rather glibly sprang to mind last night on the way to the club.

After settling in amongst the odd siren and a bit of copper spotting Rich ran me through Man at War's Naps offering. Possibly following the Battlefront model they're also offering a range of 18mm figures boxed by the Brigade. As anybody could we played in 10mm with a converted ground-scale.

This was a proper test game for both of us and having dabble d unsuccessfully on a number of occasions I would have cheerfully ticked the sceptically open-minded box (WTF?) if asked.



I'm sure there are proper reviews out there and the following won't join them being more of an impressionistic ramble. In short, after a bit of bodging / learning on the hoof I like them enough to play another game. High praise indeed!!

Despite not being anything of an aficionado of the period, though I do claim more knowledge than the average Sharpe viewer, the mechanics had the right feel to me with more emphasis on manoeuvre, strategy and tactics than hot lead and cold steel.

The reserve move mechanic allowed my light cav to get in around Rich's right wing, whilst my march attack columns pinned his infantry on that flank, and cause a suitable amount of havoc before expending themselves and retiring suitably. Regiments, as the lowest element, "wear" suitably and provided a feel of diminishing returns that quickly plummets if you push your luck too far.

My French reserves turning up quicker than Rich's Brits helped greatly in my securing 1 of 2 objectives a la refused flank but still left us having a decent tussle in the dying light.

After 150 minutes of learning the game we were through our 6 turns for what felt like a draw only to see a British victory as I simply hadn't pushed hard enough, partly at least as I hadn't really paid attention to victory conditions, preferring to learn as many rules as possible. I did feel that as nominal attacker I would have had a hard time given my limited understanding of the scenario and all.

So coming from my Sci-Fi / Fantasy-centric fun-first(good game, good game!!) stance I honestly feel that the fact that I'd play another game is reasonalbe praise at the very least. I even suggested that a few other guys at the club would do the same.

Next up for the rules is Shaun. Shaun knows Naps, Shaun is a Rules-Breaker!!
Napoleon at War, you have been warned :)