Paint-it-Pink

On Being Spammed

2012-01-20T00:26:00.001-08:00

It seems that this blog has become a target for spam. I thought the sarcastic comments quite a nice touch too.

"Thank you for this blog. That's all I can say. You most definitely have made this blog into something thats eye opening and important. You clearly know so much about the subject, youve covered so many bases. Great stuff from this part of the internet. Again, thank you for this blog."

So I will be switching the moderation for posts feature on, and apologise for this.

Late Xmas Salutations

2011-12-27T03:16:00.000-08:00

Been a bit busy and work has been a bit stressful and therefore not a lot of action going on. So let me wish you all a belated very Merry Xmas, and a very Happy New Year, which will hopefully be prosperous and rewarding.

My Xmas indulgences...

All Panzer Depot 10mm prepaints.

No, this is not the start of another period, just an indulgence in tank oddities.

ACAV Huah

2011-11-26T02:32:00.001-08:00

Still in the acquisition phase of my 10mm Vietnam gaming ambitions, which has meant a lot of inspirational thinking while the shiny toys mature in the their assigned shoebox. However, I couldn't resist showing these lovely models off.

Also, when I was at Warfare last week, Leon at Pendraken reminded me that I promised him some riverine monitors, which I have the parts for, but not yet started work on. Had to apologise profusely for my lack of intestinal fortitude, but I have a new job and I'm still in the probation period, which I am finding stressful. Good intentions and all that really.

Shiny, Shiny, Shiny Model Miniatures

2011-11-19T12:15:00.001-08:00

Okay it doesn't quite scan to the Lou Reed original, but what do you expect from someone who has virtually no musical talent?

I was going to to do a review of Warfare at Reading, forgot to take my camera with me, and I suck!

Bought some of the new 10mm Fieldworks miniatures buildings that I talked about seeing at the Newbury show. Also bought a Char 2C from Pendraken. They only had the one when I arrived and it was soon mine after the exchange of folding money.

Have to say that I really enjoyed the show, again mostly because I get meet old friends and make new ones. A good chin wag about stuff always lightens one spirit. Met Martin B., at the show who was down from Manchester with a friend. Xmas came early for Martin as I gave him my 15mm buildings that I've shown on this blog to him.

I made the decision some time ago that while I have a lot of 15mm figures, I can live with using them with 10mm buildings. This saves me the bother of having to have two lots of terrain for games. This is a big factor here at the Paint it Pink HQ, as I live in what most would describe as a shoebox. Okay, it's a very nice shoebox, after all it's my home and I've lived here for 13 years, which is longer than anywhere else I have lived in my life.

So, shiny new toys...

The above picture is about five times larger than the real thing. This is a recent eBay purchase and I'm planning on using this for the Mummerset campaign, which we are playing tomorrow in fact.

More updates in due course. As always, thank you all very much for taking the time, and having the interest in reading my blog and idle musings.

Battlegames Update

2011-11-19T12:12:00.001-08:00

Good news this week as Henry announced that Atlantic Publishing will be taking over the publication of Battlegames, including the transfer of subscriptions etc. Henry will remain editor, so all good news really, though some doubts have been thrown on the long term developments given that Atlantic also own Miniature Wargames. Who knows what the future holds?

Battlegames News

2011-11-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

Henry over at Battlegames has announced that the magazine, and hence him, are having financial difficulties.

Read more at the link.

I did my bit today, buying a few back issues and a couple of PDFs. A small thing, but it is what I can afford right now. Feeling saddened by this news as I only just found the magazine in the last six months, and have enjoyed every issue.

Heroic 6mm

2011-11-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

I've decided that there is something heroic about 6mm in today's wargaming hobby. Quite simply 6mm is no longer 6mm. The dread size creep that has plagued the mainstream 25mm end of the hobby have suffered from this for a number of years, so that we are now seeing 28mm figures that were described as large 25mm, and in turn these became the standard "28mm is the new 25mm" being replaced by 32mm figures standard of 32mm is the new 28mm".

In some ways this is a product of the expansion of the wargame market and the popularity of 25mm, which of course was driven by Airfix plastic toy soldiers that were nominally 20mm, though actually averaging around 22mm.

I'm not going to rehash the old do we measure to the eyes versus to the top of the head arguments, because quite frankly they are ad hoc post justifications for the state of the hobby, and are just opinions about what is, or should be the standards that should be used.

Instead I will say that I think it is a reflection on the economic growth of the hobby and competition to produce the best selling range that one can, which is no bad thing.

Therefore I now want to point back to the title of this piece. I think that 6mm is becoming more popular, and the evidence is in the size creep that we have seen over the last 25 years or so, ever since Herioc's & Ros brought out their figure ranges in the then newish 6mm. They of course were less than 6mm tall, averaging around 5.5mm, and newer ranges increase the size and bulk of the figure, thereby producing nicer looking, and therefore better selling toy soldiers. Hurrah!

However, we are now at the stage where the market leaders are producing figures that are 8mm tall (sometimes taller) that are marketed under 6mm branding. Originally the Ral Partha BattleTech figures were to this Heroic 6mm size, though later on they were joined/replaced by true 6mm figures, becasue AFAICT there was a drive to be compatible with GHQ, who are steadfast standouts for 6mm figures being to a scale, and therefore approximately 6mm tall.

Recently though, Iron Wind Miniatures have started producing figures of battle armoured troops for BattleTech that are 10mm tor taller, but nominally falling into the 10/12mm size range. New standard infantry is being produce to match the larger figures, and so inevitably we have nominal 6mm figures that will be around 10mm.

For me this leaves me with one obvious choice. Go 10mm, as 10mm is clearly the new 6mm and get on the size creep bandwagon at the head of the curve, rather than be left behind with true 6mm. Afterall 10mm figures have more bulk, look better and paint up well.

So welcome to the world of Heroic 6mm, using 10mm toy soldiers to play games with.

Wargaming Phases

2011-10-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that not everyone understands that wargames are played in phases. Heaven forbid I thought that this was a truism that everyone knew about, but clearly not as evidences by this recent'ish thread on the Pendraken forum.

So let me review the phases of wargaming...

1. The Acquisition Phase

This is the ooh shiney I must buy it when I see right now phase that is common to all wargames. Triggered by seeing something new, generally in a shiney metallic material that grabs one's attention.

2. The Maturing Box Phase

The acquired shiney toys are placed in a suitable place for painting later, usually some sort of shoe box equivalent, but it can be a cupboard. Neither is considered superior to the other, except that cupboards tend to be larger and therefore more stuff can be maturing at the same time.

3. The Inspiration Phase

Once one has bought new and shiney things for painting one can become inspired to dream about how one is going to paint them and the the great games that one is going to play with them? This is often call the the Daydreaming Phase, and much time can be "usefully" spent here while the shiney toys mature.

4. The Planning Phase

After daydreaming, sorry being the Inspiration Phase, one then moves on to the Planning Phase where one finds that one needs to find out more about the subject and how to paint the shiney toys. This is not a do-one-thing then do-the-next-thing model so the player can then interrupt the cycle to go back to the Acquisition Phase, so as to get the necessary extra shiney toys to meet the requirements defined from the Planning Phase. In a clever game mechanism this can result in the whole project entering the Maturing Phase for another round before going back to the Inspiration Phase.

5. The Painting Phase

Shiney toy miniatures are now prepared for painting by being placed on the work bench. Depending on the demands on the wargamers spare time, this phase can stretch out and lead to more planning. This is especially true if a new set of rules are purchased that require a re-assessment of the basing requirements, and therefore the number of figures needed for the project, which can result in another round of going through the Acquisition Phase.

6. The Playing Phase

Once the shiney toys have been painted, based and varnished they can then be lovingly deployed onto the field of battles where the likelihood is that the you will lose the game you are playing. This will cause you to reassess the need for further acquisitions of new shiney toys that will add more flexibility to the deployment of the force,s and it's ability to deliver a satisfactory victory by roundly thrashing one's opponent, or not as the case might be?

And that in a nut shell is why wargames have phases.

SELWG 2011

2011-10-21T02:41:00.000-07:00

Hard to imagine that this time last year I was in hospital on an IVF antibiotic drip and had to have emergency surgery for a burst abscess in my breast. Where has the time gone? Indubitable another sign that I'm getting older, as time just flies by nowadays.

Anyway, off I went this year to make up for missing the last one. Went with Trevor and his son Oliver, but like all good expeditions we arrive later than expected, around 11.45, and therefore missed bumping into Richard Clarke from Too Fat Lardies.

This was not a big spend show for me as I only bought one thing, a book from Anita's Books, who always have a good selection of titles that tempt me to open my purse. In this case I bought Aircraft of World War 1 1914 -1918 by Jack Herris and Bob Pearson published by Amber Books.

I thought the show felt quiet, but the traders all seemed to be happy enough. Talked to Leon and the crew at Pendraken and Dave on Caliver, whom I have known for more years than either of us would care to remember. Bumped into Richard Partridge from the Southend Wargame Club, not to be confused with the Southend-on-Sea Wargames club, or South East Essex Military Society that started off as the Southend Wargames Club that was started by Ken Lazenbury. The Southend wargame scene is a bit like a Welsh village and its churches stroke pubs, with ones that one doesn't go to or not, as the case may be.

Games at the show were all rather nice. First one to catch my eye was the Yom Kipper War game by the Essex Warriors. Centurions massing, what was not to like?

Seen before at Salute, but here it is at SELWG, the rather lovely (to be honest I'm totally jealous of the look) WW2 game Budapest 1945 by Loughton Strikeforce.

Trevor and Oliver played in the Central London Club's WW1 Air War, which had some really nice 1/72nd scale aircraft, and as the German schemes are my favourite, here is a picture of some of the aircraft that appeared in the game. Still think that the Bristol Fighter was the best Allied aircraft of the war though.

Finally, this WW2 Warsaw Uprising by the Shepway Wargames Club. Again lovely buildings to die for.

Bought coffee from the Costa franchise, which was much nicer than the coffee at Newbury, and talked to a chap called Alistair who lurks on the TooFatLardies yahoo group.

Busy Doing Nothing, Totally Spaced

2011-10-14T02:37:00.001-07:00

Working the whole day long, as the song goes, but in my case not so much finding lots of things not to do, as not being able to finish projects and photograph them. As Trebian notes blogs are about what you haven't been doing.

I have been away too. Last weekend off to sunny Devon to see my Father-in-Law, family issues to discuss, but we did manage to go out for a meal with Maria and Cary (boyfriend) of Buffers for a slap up meal at the West Bay Hotel in Bridport. Buffers is a great shop for all your terrain needs, and I bought some more Woodland Scenics Realistic Water, which I'm using for my Vietnam river project.

So not a lot of painting done last weekend, and this weekend it is SELWG, so Sunday I will be out with Trevor and Oliver lowering property values and generally causing mischief while having fun there.

In the meantime I've been watching Spaced, a geek sitcom starring Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson and Nick Frost, all of whom are recognisable for their roles in various things like Dr Who, Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. I can't recommend this TV series highly enough.

It is a sitcom that speak to my inner geek. So much of the humour just really resonates with me. Writers block, imagining film scenes and quoting dialogue are part and parcel of what I think makes life fun. So if you have any interest if SF films, comics and geek culture you should check it out.

BTW: Spaced is being repeated on TV, but the DVDs are dirt cheap, so go on treat yourselves.

IABSM 3 Teaser

2011-09-28T09:46:00.000-07:00

Breaking news just in from TooFat Lardies...

The rules are 104 pages long, full colour. The contents are as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Contents
3. Playing the game
4. The basics
5. The Game Deck explained
6. The Rules
7. Optional Rules
8. Aces
9. Recruiting Your Force
10. Normandy Handbook (Brits, Germans and US for Normandy with orbats, stats etc.
11. Random Scenario Generator; 6 types of random scenario, infinite variety of games
12. Historical scenarios, how to write them and balance your forces
13. Two starter scenarios
14. Two historical scenarios

Richard Clarks said "The cards arrived from the printers yesterday. The tokens are being made, and Hugh Jarce is being cast."

I can't wait to see these rules, just feels so exciting. Previews of the layout look really polished and I think this is going to be the must have WW2 rule set, and I hope to steal loads of ideas from it for my own games.

Reprising Progress

2011-09-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

I meant to post this a few days ago, but didn't quite find the time to sit down and write it on Wednesday afternoon as planned. Went to the dentist instead of writing a blog, I know which I prefer.

Anyway, been painting and doing basing of figures for my Mummerset campaign. The basing being the problematical bit as after playing four games BattleTech with miniatures using our house rules certain things have been brought into focus for me and the group I play with.

Infantry are really tiny in comparison to mechs and vehicles and are readily confused by people who need glasses to read. BattleTech is not at heart an infantry centric game, the clue is in the title, and while there are rules to expand the repertoire of infantry types, those rules tend to add to the rule burden, rather than actually creating a wider focus on combined arms.

As a result we have already gone from "realistic" platoons with mixed weapons by squads back to generic platoons that have a theme e.g: this is a laser platoon, or SRM launcher platoon, which is a shame in a way, because it loses flavour. However, we are still employing squads that fire as platoons, which is good, and one of the things I've been doing is re-examining the way I base the figures.

BattleTech is a boardgame that has one hex equaling 30 metres, which means that infantry platoons are tripped up by the granularity of the time and groundscale assumptions; 10 seconds per turn for those who are not familiar with the game.

Therefore the game is working to a 1:1000th groundscale where the models are nominally 1:300th scale so we start from the position where the models are just over three times too large. Now one solution is to use smaller models, say 2mm miniatures, but this is not to everyone's taste, and one can argue that one might as well use counters at that point. Depending on your taste for such things. The other side of the coin is that you change the groundscale, which funnily enough is exactly what the official rules recommend.

Of course the eagle eyed alert reader will of spotted that even increasing the groundscale from 1:1000th to 1:500th still doesn't make the model scale equal to the groundscale. Not generally a problem except for two things. BattleTech miniatures are notoriously inconsistent in scale, with the dreaded scale creep over the last 25 years making newer models larger still, and the original smaller models were in my opinion closer to 1:220th scale (Z gauge in model railway terms) to begin with, and what you are left with is how to decide what compromise works best for you?

I'll be direct and to the point here and say that my tastes run towards mechs being shorter than the nominal 40 foot height that the boardgame assumes, and having a larger range of sizes depending on weight class. So I visualise a light mech at around 20 to 25 feet tall, a medium mech around 25 to 30 foot tall, a heavy mech 30 to 35 feet tall, and assault mechs 35 to 40 foot tall. Just my opinion.

So measuring up mech models and making some choices about how to interpret their size we can chose a scale that makes us happy. My choice is to assume 1.6mm to the foot, or around 1:160th scale. Now that choice means that even with a a larger groundscale the models are still about three times larger than the groundscale. So all that examination has lead us precisely no where.

Therefore one just has to be pragmatic and accept that one's choices have costs and benefits and decide what is important to you. I want the infantry to based as squads that make up platoons, but given the size of the infantry models the most I can get on a 25mm base is three to four models, which to me is not enough to represent a squad. So I've ended up having two bases per squad, and four squads squad platoons require eight bases in total. However, as we have played games the need to be able to remove single casualties became apparent, and after some experimentation the solution I have reached is to add to single figures bases and one base with two figures on it.

My reasoning being that the double figure base represents the platoon commander and RTO, while the two single figure bases represent a sergeant and runner. The second single figure base is not strictly necessary for playing the game, but does keep the numbers even, which for some reason pleases me, as the number is 28. The same a standard British platoon, and nominally the size of a standard BattleTech platoon.

We shall just ignore the whole frontage that a platoon occupies, as we've already accepted that the figure to groundscale is an abstraction to make the game playable on the size of table we have available.

Mummerset 09.04.11: The 2nd Battle of South Boring AAR

2011-09-16T07:27:00.000-07:00

This session was to resolve the situation from the Republican Guards pincer movement on the defenders of South Boring.

Background

Elements of Colonel Whales's 3rd Royal Guards have pinned down by an attack by General Spencers 1st Republican Guards who have numerical superiority. See the last report for further details in the first link above.

1st Republican Guards 2nd Battalion

1 x Hornet custom modified 3132 Inner Sphere tech worth 585 bv (move 5-8-5, armour 69 points, and 10 single heat sinks). Loadout 2 x medium lasers, 1 x LRM5 (with 24 rounds of ammo), and 1 x small laser.

1x ConstructionMech MOD custom modified 3132 Inner Sphere industrial tech worth 335 bv (move 3-5-0, armour 40 points, and 1 single heat sinks). Loadout 1 x LRM10 (with 12 rounds of ammo), 2 x machine guns (with 100 rounds of ammo), and a lift hoist.

1 x MaintenanceQuad MOD P custom modified 3132 Inner Sphere industrial tech worth 576 bv (move 3-5-0, armour 48 points, and 6 single heat sinks). Loadout 2 x LRM10 (with 12 rounds of ammo each), and 2 x lift hoists.

4 x Vedette light tanks worth 475 bv each (total 1900 points)
4 x Striker light missile tanks worth 564 bv each (total 2256 points)
4 x 3039 wheeled APCs that could carry one squad of infantry worth 157 bv each (total 628 points)
4 x 3039 GEV APCs that could carry one platoon of infantry worth 102 bv each (total 408 points)
1 x Morningstar City Command vehicle worth 412 bv

1 x mechanised infantry platoon
1 x PAL infantry platoon
2 x jump infantry platoons
2 x foot infantry platoons

Also again on call were three artillery batteries in support of the assault.

4th Battalion of the House Steiner 4444 Regimental Combat Team

1 x Firestarter 2C XP custom modified 3132 Clan tech worth 1683 bv (move 6-9-6, armour 58 points, and 10 double heat sinks). Loadout 1 x ER Large laser, 2 x ER medium lasers, 2 x flamers, and 1 targeting computer).

3rd Royal Guards 2nd Battalion

1 x AC5 field gun battery
4 x foot infantry platoons

Initial Deployment

As the players had aerial recon and orbital dominance the forces under the command of Major Alexander Mercia (Oliver) were deployed on table in order of the line of march. After this Trevor deployed his forces, which were all initially out of sight or hidden.

The above shows Major Mercia's forces moving down the main road hunting for the enemy, which he has to engage and eliminate and then leave the opposite side of the board within fourteen turns (time set by length of the previous game where General Spencer transmits the withdraw order to the Republican Guards). So Oliver was very much on the clock and he can't just rush everything to the other side as he would lose if the defenders are still in place.

At the far left you can just glimpse the missile tanks that were positioned to provide indirect fire for the supporting forces, it was a pity that the enemy was so well hidden. In the middle left you can see the advancing industrial mechs and slightly further right the wheeled APCs moving towards a building they suspect is defended. Smoke from an artillery barrage has also been placed on the table.

The first shot of the game sees Trevor brewing up Oliver's leading GEV APC and effectively killing all the infantry inside it too as an added bonus. As you can see Oliver's forces are very bunched up due to the choke points (it is assumed that routes outside of the board are mined or blocked to prevent passage). It sucks to attack dug in defenders.

The battle has just got down and dirty with Trevor's Firestarter bugging out to the far right with Oliver's mech forces in hot pursuit. As can be seen another GEV APC has been hit, but this time the infantry inside were able to get out. Also a wheeled APC has been brewed up with the loss of one PAL infantry squad (Power Armour Light). One of Oliver's industrial mechs is very lucky in that an offboard artillery barrage just misses it after over shooting its target; the building to the left near the front of the board.

The Firestarter is leading the Republican Guard mechs in a merry chase around prime down town real estate that presents exciting investment opportunities for an entrepreneurial real estate developer looking to get in on the ground floor of a major redevelopment of an up and coming residential area. Oliver's Hornet has jumped on top of one of the building trying to catch up with the Firestarter that can just bee seen center top of the picture.

The battle during the last turn of the game of what ended up being quite a blood bath. Oliver's Hornet mech was taken down by a combination of SRM armed infantry and one of his own artillery barrages oershooting and hitting it just to rub salt into the wound. One industrial mech was still standing relatively unscather, but the other had been well and truly cored. Trevor's Firestarter fell to three critical hits on the engine shielding and a whole heap of armour sanded off by being under constant fire.

Losses were high on both sides. The Oliver's Republican Guards lost five platoons of infantry, which left one platoon of infantry that was combat effective. He also lost one tank, three GEV APCs and four wheeled APCs. Trevor two platoons of infantry. However, Trevor's remaining forces were not in a position to control the battlefield having no armour, and so they agreed to collect the wounded and allowed each other to retrieve mechs and vehicles for salvage.

Oliver and Trevor. Since Oliver did so well, actually inflicting losses on House Steiner I have promoted his character Major Alexander Merica to Lt. Colonel and of course the Republic news service will hail this as a great victory over Colonel Whales Royalists who only withstood the attack down to the support of the offworld mercenaries that he had employed to subjugate the citizens of Mummerset to the old rule of Kings again.

Colours 2011

2011-09-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

I haven't been to Colours, which is held at Newbury racecourse for a couple of years. When I checked my diary I see it was 2009. That was the year I was checking out terrain and making the decision to make my own, rather than buy a commercial product.

Going back was like visiting the past, as it seemed to me that nothing much in particular had changed, which is not a bad thing by any means. What had changed though was the fresh coffee stand was not open this time, and as far as I'm concerned this was a disaster.

I don't want to be drinking alcohol as I'm driving, so I want something nice to drink, and for me that doe not mean instant coffee. So that was a disappointment.

We drove down to Newbury from St. Albans where I had been taking a few pictures for Richard Clark, so by the time we arrived we were quite hungry, as well as thirsty. To say the least the food service was desultory and I ended up having a hot sausage roll thing that was very unsatisfactory. So from a culinary perspective Colours was an epic fail, which may sound a bit unfair, but the lack of choices really affected my experience of the show.

As to the show itself.

Traders were in the usual plentiful abundance. The win of the day was getting a copy of Battle (1970 edition) for five pounds from the bring and buy stand. I then found a dealer with Testors Dullcote and bought their last four tins. Then I bought some Basetex texture paint as I had run out. Yes I know I can make this stuff by mixing paint, texture and glue, but it is simpler and less messy to buy a pre-prepared product. Spoke to the crew at GZG, as we go way back to when we were all young and foolish

Looked around at other stuff but didn't buy anything, partly because the most of the traders I might have bought stuff from weren't taking credit cards. I don't know if this was something to do with the venue, or what? So mostly browsed, rather than bought anything. However, did see some fabulous new building from Fieldworks, but though they said these would be up on the website this week they are not yet posted. However, as soon as they are I will be ordering one of each of the nine new buildings I saw. I should have taken a picture I suppose?

A couple of games caught my attention. First up was Edward VIII Cocktail Bar - A Very British Civil War set in 1938 called The Battle of Ambridge.

I especially liked the seaplanes above. The other more low key affair being the Royal Air Force Wargames Association game Stargate GB-1.

Reminded me of a miniature version of the Contact! airsoft LARP I'm involved in. Talking of this, a picture of a twelve inch to the foot scale military vehicle at Colours 2011.

An American M1009 CUCV radio truck in three colour NATO camo.

Weekend Photoshoot

2011-09-11T05:27:00.000-07:00

Been a bit of a busy weekend for me as I went up to St. Albans Saturday morning to shoot a few photographs for Richard at TooFat Lardies for his forthcoming I Ain't Been Shot Mum 3. He says he is pleased with what I did, but for me the proof of the pudding will be seeing the end product etc.

For me the photo shoot was quite stressful, because it has been an awful long time since I've taken pictures on any sort of commission basis, and it was a lesson in how stress makes you forget things. However, in spite of all that I took 94 pictures in an hour and a half, which was all the time we had, because the hall was booked for use by another group.

Some are appallingly out of focus, and other have camera shake to die for, when one take 94 shots one is bound to get a few good ones. I just hope that I got enough good shots for Richard to be happy and able to proceed with producing the rules.

I've been looking at the manual and dummies guide I bought to refresh what I need to know to get the maximum out of my camera. Oh yes some very cropped teasers for your delight.

Enjoy.

PS: I'm really excited by these rules and I don't even play WW2, but I can see I'll be using them for modern actions though.

Some Quick Comparisons

2011-08-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited having a new toy to play with...

Been spending the day reading the manual, as that always helps, and setting all the options to what I guess will be the best settings for me; close-ups with maximum resolution and depth of field. And here are some comparisons of old pictures from previous posts versus one very quick and dirty hand held. All are posted as original size, so pretty much WYSIWYG.

Pendraken WW1 British officer, which is cruel enlargement from a group picture. The figure is 11.5mm tall.

MechWarrior battle armour figure, again taken from a group picture, which shows the best quality I could achieve with the Sony using aperture priority and a tripod i.e: F8 multi-second exposure. This figure is 14.5mm tall.

MechWarrior power armour figure that is 12.5mm tall, paint job unfinished, taken as a handheld and blown up from a group picture. Sorry no idea of the F stop etc as I haven't quite got to grips with the information overload from the on screen display. I swear this camera's viewfinder is like looking through an aircraft HUD.

All have had the same amount of post camera tweaking to improve contrast etc. All pictures are shown here at actual size. So I'm well pleased with the results so far. Now all I have got to do is become one with my camera through the process of Zen meditation!

End of an Era: Photographic Meanderings

2011-08-31T10:04:00.000-07:00

As is my wont I'm meandering a bit off the general theme of wargaming to talk about photography, as I've just bought a "new" secondhand camera off eBay. This act has been quite unsettling in some ways, as it marks the end of me using a 35mm SLR. Though realistically this is more like the full stop that ends the sentence, one that has been left unfinished since 2002, which was when I last used my Pentax MX in anger.

When I came back into wargaming circa May 2008 I started to take pictures for a modelling thread that I have on the BattleTech Universe Form here: Workbench. This required me to be able to post digital pictures, and for a time before I had considered buying a scanner and using film etc, but quite frankly the cost in time and effort, as well as money, just wasn't worth it. I was lucky in that my partner lent me a Sony Cyber-shot 5 megapixel DSC-V1 with four times optical zoom for me to use.

The shift from film to digital was quite interesting, because it turned me from an experienced user into a complete newbie.

Start of extreme photographic geekiness...

Below is a picture of my SLR system that centered around my Pentax MX SLR (single lens reflex), which I've owned for many years, having bought it in I think 1981 from new. Over the intervening years I bought lenses for it and a spare Pentax ME body about twelve years ago.

As you can see above The black MX has a 2.5 FPS auto-winder, which was a big deal in the 1980. This is actually my second one, as the first fell to bits and I bought a second hand replacement many years later, which has served me well ever since, and still works like new.

To the extreme left is one of the two original lenses I bought back in the day, a Pentax M series 100m F4 macro for taking pictures of models funnily enough. Mounted on the MX is a Pentax M series F3.5 15mm super wide angle lens that I bought second hand, which I loved for its extreme 114° field of view. In the middle is a second hand Pentax M*(star) series F4 300m, which again back in the day was the smallest, lightest telephoto lens of its generation. On the ME (original ME not ME Super) is the other original lens I bought back with the camera, a Pentax M series F2.8 40mm pancake lens, which was the slimmest lens that you could get, and made the Pentax MX feel light weight and compact (for definitions of light and compact that today seem laughable). Finally, on the far right is a Pentax M series F4 24mm wide angle, again bought second hand.

The reason I emphasise the second hand acquisition is because in their day these lenses were arm and a leg expensive, costing way more than the camera. Needless to say I used this camera quite a lot over the years, and as my first degree was in photography I have a certain amount of technical competence.

It can also be said that I was a manual everything user, as I never saw the need for automatics and the purchase of the ME was a bit of an aberration given that all of my lenses have the capability of resolving more detail than high street commercially processed film can render. which was driven by the desire to have a cheap point and shoot camera.

End of extreme photographic geekiness...

So, it was a bit of a paradigm shift for me to get my head around the fully featured Sony Cyber-shot DSC-V1. However, I did get to grips with it and have been taking pictures with it for the last three or so years. Still haven't used all the features, like for instance the nightshot feature. Not felt the need, as my main aim was to take pictures of my models, or pictures of full size vehicles etc.

Just for the record the above picture is the first taken with my new camera, which I'll come to in a bit.

This Sony model first came out in 2003 and was pretty dam good for its day. It has a 1/1.8" (7.2 x 5.3, 8.9mm diagonal) CCD (charge coupled device; the thing that acts like a film in my Pentax) with 5 megapixels, and the lens is a F2.8/F4 zoom that can be stopped down to F8 (stopped down is when you make the aperture of the lens smaller that then gives you a greater depth of field, which is really good when taking pictures of small things). You've seen the results here on this blog.

However, even with the lens stopped down to F8, using a tripod to compensate for the long exposure times, the fact of the matter is that I've not really been able to get the picture quality I want (namely close-ups of very small 10mm figures) that shows the work I've done in the best possible light. So I took the plunge and bought a new second hand camera.

Above is my new Panasonic Lumix GF1 that has a 4/3rds CCD (18 x 13.5, 22.9mm diagonal) that shoots at 12 megapixels. The lens is a 14 to 45 F3.5/5.6 zoom that stops down to F22. So this camera is big step up from the Sony, as not only does it have more megapixels, it also has a much larger CCD, which means better "quality" too. Once I've got my head around all of the controls and set up everything to my satisfaction I shall be posting pictures using my new camera in the weeks that follow.

WW1 Interregnum

2011-08-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I've posted anything about my efforts to put together two WW1 forces so that I can play games set in late 1917 and finishing with the 100 day offensive of 1918. While I'm no where near finished painting anything of note, what I have done is finally finish basing all of the figures for both the Germans and British forces I am building.

Above shows the British company and I'm thinking about about adding another base of three Tommies to all the rifle squads because as they stand each platoon is only 33 men. This would strengthen the platoon to 39 men. As you can see I have six Vickers machine gun teams and a four mortar teams to support this lot when in defence. I'm also making up shock markers using casualties on stretchers, but again I haven't decided how many I will need? Or, I could use one each with a die next to them to indicate shock points. Any advice would be welcome.

Alternatively, if Pendraken were to do some poses of Tommies firing either prone, kneeling and or standing, then I could add two scouts to each platoon, which would only strengthen them up to 35 men. I'm undecided about this.

Above is an incomplete 18 pounder artillery battery as I still need to order extra crew to complete these. I have the ammunition limbers for the other three guns though, but haven't gotten around to assembling them.

The German company organisation is taken straight from the example in TooFat Lardies Through the Mud and the Blood book, and represents a late war company with Stosstrupen attached, which makes them quite formidable and what has caused me to re-evaluate the number of Tommies I have in my British company.

Above is the basic company consisting of three kampfzuge (platoons). Two of the kampzuge are made up of eleven man einheits gruppe (squads); seven riflemen and one LMG four man team, plus NCO. The third kampzuge is half strength einheits gruppe consisting of of 32 men; two groups of eight riflemen, and two groups of with one LMG with eight men.

To strengthen the German company each kampfzuge will have a stoss gruppe (shock troops), or assault grenade squad attached to stiffen them when attacking. Finally, there are the erganzun zug consisting of sixteen men with four NCOs and the reserves made up of a recce squad and granaten werfer squad. In addition, I've added two flame thrower teams and one 37mm artillery piece that the stoss gruppe could have attached when in assault.

I also have tanks for the British; three MkIVs, three MkVs and three MkI supply tanks, plus eight Whippets for the break through group, and plan to add a cavalry troop/squadron to this as well, but no pictures of them yet as I haven't managed to assemble the models.

Besides WW1 actions I intend to use this force as the basis for a what if continuation war that rolls over in 1919 and beyond that is based on the Germans not counter attacking when the Americans arrived, but rather basing their strategy on defense in depth with mobile quick strike formations. This story could then develop into a breakdown of both sides ability to wage war when the inevitable discontent the lengthening of the war produces leads to uprising and civil war breaking out. This does preclude me going all out and adding H. G. Wells Martians for a War of the Worlds scenario. I have some tripod war machines that would serve quite nicely for this idea.

1st Republican Guards & 3rd Royal Guards of Mummerset

2011-08-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this a couple of days later than planned, because I've allowed myself to be side tracked with stuff; Real Life (TM). One of the things I was musing on, as one does when one is thinking about writing is topics. I have loads of topics to write about, but as most of them involve pictures of stuff I've been painting etc, and I've singularly failed to take said pictures, they will have to wait. Not that every post needs pictures, but the feedback I get is generally along the lines of where's the picture!

Anyway I've been following advice given by Gordon Y in the comments of the previous post, and have primed up and dry brushed some of the vehicles I need for the Mummerset campaign; in particular those that I need for OPFOR and the occasional friendly support stuff.

First up is the OPFOR, in this instance the units for the 1st Republican Guards of President Marx, under the command of General Spencer. All of these are MechWarrior models de-clixed by the removal of their bases. At the back are four missile tanks with the battalion/regimental command truck in the middle. Then there are four wheeled tanks with an anti-aircraft platform in the middle. In front are four APC/armoured cars, and a Morningstar the company command vehicle leads the way. What I plan to do next is clean up the castings before I paint them up properly at my leisure.

What I'm short of for this company are suitable vehicles for transporting the the company of infantry. I had originally planned on using the APC/armoured cars, but to my eyes they only seem large enough to hold a squad, which is very realistic, but it would mean I would have to acquire and paint up another twelve models. I'm lazy and feel painting as few models as possible is a far better thing to do than paint up hordes.

Here are the 3rd Royal Guards under the command of Colonel/General Whales. Again all of these are converted MechWarrior clix models. At the back are are four SM1 self propelled guns that have been converted to troop carriers, and I've also added a small missile launcher to each so that they can provide indirect fire support. These are quite large models and I can fully imagine them carrying a platoon each. Next are four hover tanks, and in front of them are four scout craft. At the front is the company command vehicle.

Originally I wanted all the APC GEVs to be based on the model I'm now using for the company command vehicle, but it is one of the MechWarrior promo models that I was lucky to get hold of, and I haven't seen any since on eBay. The plan had been to to use the models at the back as the basis for missile carriers, rather than troop transports, but needs must as they say.

Finally, HMS Burlington, a resin model from Pendraken miniatures, which I've assembled, but not yet finished. It is a pastiche of a WW2 Flower class corvette, which I intend to detail up with gubbins and gribbly bits to make it more visually stunning, because as it stands it is a bit bland.

So there you have it, a picture of another weeks progress on my workbench. Well not quite as I've done a load of infantry, but have yet to find time to take some photographs of them. Neither have I found the time to take pictures of the completed infantry that I promised to post up here from a couple of blogs back.

However, all things considered not a bad weeks worth of work, even if I feel I could have done more the truth is I've been too tired to concentrate on making and painting things.

Too Little Time, too Much to do

2011-08-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

On this TMP thread there is discussion come poll for how many periods one plays? I tend to think of myself as primarily a Sci-Fi wargamer who does some modern era stuff, but when I sat down and listed all the different miniatures I have I found I 'm spreading myself quite thin...

1. BattleTech is probably my first and foremost commitment. Certainly it is one of the few games where I have miniatures that I bought for the game that are over 20 years old. I have a large lead mountain of unpainted figures in spite of my best efforts.

2. MechWarrior follows, there is no argument that I actually have more stuff for this game, but on the other hand this is not saying much given how was easy as it was to buy all pre-paints after the game folded off bought eBay.

3. 15mm SF. Mostly Traveller and Dr. Who Daleks, which again are mostly over 20 years old by now. However, very few unpainted figures.

4. 6mm OGRE/GEV most of these are again old models from the first time around and are again a minimum of 20 years old in most cases. Have a shoebox full of unopened blisters and another box with unpacked models that have been sorted into company's etc waiting paint to be applied.

5. Spaceships, a motley collection of older stuff with a few more modern additions to fill out the fleet. Mostly languishing unloved and unplayed with for some time now. I also have a box of unpainted models to add to my lead mountain.

6. 15mm AK47R. One of new additions since I got back into wargaming again, more unpainted than painted, but that pretty much goes without saying, and is equally true of my unpainted BattleTech miniatures. About half based, while the other half form a small mountain of lead.

7. 10mm WW1 late war Western Front. Another new period brought on by buying Through the Mud and the Blood from TooFat Lardies. Still mostly unpainted, though largely all the figures are based.

8. 10mm Spanish Civil War. Lead mountain awaiting some TLC.

9. 10mm VietNam. Another lead mountain awaiting attention.

Well that is a lot more periods and scales than I would have given myself credit for being involved with. No wonder I don't get any thing finished.

Historical Wargamers Have it Easy

2011-08-13T03:58:00.000-07:00

I know that the title of this piece will cause a bit of controversy, but it is made partly in response to Neil Shuck and Henry Hyde's podcasts View from the Veranda, where they assert that Sci-Fi & Fantasy don't have to do research for their armies. I inferred from this comment that they think that having to do research somehow makes historical wargaming a more serious activity requiring dedication to achieve the goal of fielding an army, whereas Sci-Fi & Fantasy just require one to buy an easily digested source book.

Neither of them would appear to be anti Sci-fi & Fantasy, far from it in fact, as there is clearly evidence that Neil is a player an collector of Sci-fi & Fantasy wargame armies, and Henry plays Neil. However, I really want to beg to differ about having to do research makes historical wargaming somehow harder, and or that one has to be more serious about the hobby.

Okay, I will admit that I have a research background, it goes hand-in-hand with my job, and I have to be able to interpret the results of research trials and apply said result in my work. This without doubt gives me more skills when it comes to researching stuff, but given that any person who can read can go to a library, or in this age of the internet search on Google, I can't see that a determined person can't find out all they need to know about any given subject. Whether or not what they find is correct, or not, is of course another matter indeed.

Of course, if a person is not determined to follow their passion then that is another matter. In this case they want the stuff in an easy to digest format, and preferably be able to buy the miniatures and rules to go, which is all well and dandy until you realise that one still has to paint all the stuff you've bought up. And this is the Elephant in the room, which in all fairness to Neil and Henry they do acknowledge and muse upon possible solutions.

The other problem is that miniature wargames can segueway into military modelling. This is epitomised by the fastidiousness over the correct colours for painting uniforms and the details of the uniforms and equipment carried. I always have a wry smile to myself when this topic comes up, because of the old adage that a unit that passes inspection is not ready for combat. and any unit ready for combat will not pass inspection. You only have to look at the field expedient changes and modification to the gear that is worn by serving soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to see that this is as true to day as it ever was. In my opinion this fastidiousness is driven by the scale/size of the figures that are being played with. I'm with Peter from Baccus in that 6mm is the one true wargames scale.

Actually I'm not completely with Peter, because doctrinally 6mm is not a scale, but rather a very loose definition of the size of a figure that varies depending on assumptions made about the height of a man, and how to measure said height, with complications like variable average heights across the ages.

However, in principle, smaller is better and I would consider 3mm to 10mm, where the average is approximately 6mm as being a good size for miniature toy soldiers, if you want to play anything other than small skirmish wargame. For me the figures need to be as close as possible to the ground scale that one is playing over if one is going to make the most of the benefits of using toy soldiers, rather than having all the downsides that toy soldiers bring to a game when the ground scale is grossly out of proportion.

The topic of ground scale deserves a blog entry in its own right, because what I might consider proportionate others might consider foolish. I'll come to this another time.

Anyway, I've meandered off the topic of research and historical wargaming versus Sci-Fi & Fantasy wargaming, and why I think that neither is easier to do than the other. Quite simply if you are modelling a British WW2 regiment, you chose the one you want to represent, a period where they are deployed and with a little bit of faffing you will be able to get an ORBAT (order of battle) and away you go. Painting the uniforms is then just a matter of finding a paint that matches the colour the uniforms were, and Bob's your Uncle and Charly's your Aunt.

On the the other side of the coin if one is making up an army for a Sci-Fi campaign, and I will use my own Mummerset one as an example, I had to decide what colour were the uniforms would be, how the platoons would be organised, how many men, what sort of infantry would they be, how many platoons to a company, how many company's to a battalion, and how many battalions to a regiment? Admittedly I could just pick figures off the top of my head, but I know that this stuff comes from doctrine. So I had to think what sort of doctrines would the armed forces of Mummerset have? And then I had to think what was the main arm of the army?

All of this actually required a lot of historical knowledge into how armies grow and develop wen reacting to past wars fought and the introduction of new technology. Of course one could by a book on Ork armies, but I'm not playing Games Workshop Warhammer 40K, and I think to label all Sci-Fi & Fantasy wargamers as people who play Games Workshop products rather blinds one to all the other wargamers that are getting on and doing there own things, like for example Gruntz and the Society of Science Fiction & Fantasy Wargamers , not to mention BattleTech of course!

Battletech Interregnum

2011-08-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

Like most wargame hobbyists I too fit the stereotype of someone who buys stuff and then doesn't get around to actually doing anything with it, all the time buying new stuff that is shiney, which has caught my attention. I'm currently off work sick, and have as such a lot of time, but very little inclination to do anything, hence the sick part. However, I have dragged myself to the work bench this week and spent sometime texturing bases of trays of infantry figures.

Above are the extra figures I need for the Mummerset campaign I'm running. Basically more infantry than I've ever painted for BattleTech. What you can see here are two motorized infantry platoons, followed by two standard foot infantry platoons, and at the rear one platoon of Power Armour and one jump infantry platoons. Oh, the bases to the left are modified MWDA clix flight bases for VTOLs and helicopters.

And here are another two platoons that are slightly further ahead on the painting production line. More Power armour, motorized infantry and modified Clix flight bases.

Above are the long lost on the back burner battle armour platoons for my Pink Panther Battalion. On the left are Raiden battle armour platoon, and on the right Kage battle armour with partial wings platoon.

Texturing infantry bases is not the most interesting task in the world, but suits my limited concentration span, and it is something I can do while listening to a podcast. Not something that I would have thought I would ever find myself doing as I find listening to talking voices on the radio rather distracting, but at the moment as long as it is the right kind of distracting I can listen to a podcast about wargaming.

In particular I've been listening to View from the Veranda and Meeples & Miniatures both are quite fun, though I prefer View from the Veranda more, because the chemistry between Henry Hyde and Neil Shuck just really works. Anyway, those of you who want something to listen to can check these out and make up your own minds.

Card Decks for Epiphany

2011-07-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

I was asked in the previous blog how I decided what cards to design for using with BattleTech?

The answer is actually by trial and error, though at the time I started I thought I had worked out what I needed and that it wouldn't need correcting. How wrong can one be? Hubris I'm sure. Anyway, I thought that the question deserved an answer, if only so that others can make their own mistakes and not repeat mine, which is always a good things to do.

I started by having a pack of cards that were made up for TooFat Lardies Through the Mud and the Blood and Charlie Don't Surf games that I got from ArtsCow that had been graciously posted as being freely available to anyone who wanted to buy a set. Unfortunately, I don't think I can return the favour as I've used some imagery for my sets from Catalyst Games Limited, and therefore my sets fall under personal use only, so you will have to make your own. Having a pack of cards to look at allowed me to at leat think about what I might need.

So the first thing I did was make a list of all the mechs I had and to what factions they belonged.

Obviously, if you are not fussed about factions, or just want a card for very mech you own as a generic card, then I can't see why one couldn't just make up a deck with all the different mechs you own, or want to play with. Though I'm not a big faction fan, I do have all my mechs assembled into units that I think match each other in some way. So all my Dougram bipedal mechs are in my Pink Panthers Battalion, while the Dougram quads are in my House Steiner unit, along with faction specific mechs like the Zeus.

My House Kurita unit is made up from models from the Macross show UN Spacey forces, while my House Marik unit has Marauders from Macross and Locusts from Crusher Joe, mostly because I think that a unit should look like all the units came from one design philiosophy. YMMV.

So, where was I? Ah yes, making lists. I then added some extra cards to the pack. These included two what I call "vent" cards. When both of these are drawn the turn ends. Given that they are shuffled into the pack at random this means that some turns can be very short, or you can run through the whole pack on occasion, but by and large you only get through about two thirds of a deck. So not every unit in the deck will move every turn.

This mechanism generates a lot of extra tactical problems for players, and yet at the same time it simplifies things. The first thing is that you can't be sure when the vent card is going to appear, but as soon as one does then you know that the turn could end on the next draw of the cards. This strangely makes it a lot easier to move units as over planning stuff by micro managing doesn't work when you can't guarantee what you will be able to move in a turn. This also speeds up the turns.

At first I planned on giving all units a card, but since this is BattleTech, a game about battlemechs, I decided to make all vehicles and infantry move by platoon. However, after the first game it became apparent that battle armour is better moved by squads, as each squad is effectively equivalent to an infantry platoon in defence and offensive capabilities.

For artillery I again had a card per battery, but wrote on the cards that they could either move or fire. Now most of the time artillery will be off board, but given I was going to allow counter battery fire, adding in the option seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, not yet play tested, but I imagine it will happen at the next game. I also added a forward observers card so that one could call in the artillery. This allows one to dispense with tracking how many turns the fire takes to arrive, as all too frequently what happens is that the artillery cards are drawn before the forward observer card and when it is drawn no more artillery arrives before the vent cards are drawn to end the turn. Neat huh?

Finally, I added special cards. First of were cards blind movement, again not yet play tested, but in principle one will be able to move units as blinds, which are not revealed until spotted, fired upon, or when they fire with a certain amount of dummy blinds to add to the confusion. Then I added a special event card that could be scenario specific, and a faction specific card. For the House Steiner unit this was the "wall of steel" that makes all the units fire when it is used at the expense of being able to move, and of course the units can fire again at the end of the turn as well. Assuming the player manages the heat build up of course. I plan to have a House Kurita "banzai" when I make up a pack for them at some point. I will have to think what special stick I can assign House Marik though? Suggestions welcome if anyone has any ideas. And I think that is it?

Not quite, I remembered I also made cards for air strikes, which we play tested as if they were artillery strikes. That didn't work out all that well, so the use is going to be changed to when the card is drawn it can be used there and then, but afterwards it has to be discarded from the deck. This is to represent the limited amount of air power available in the campaigns and the fact that aircraft have to go back to re-arm and refuel between sorties.

So, I made a couple of decks up and I then had to go back and make a couple more decks up from the refinements that came from play testing the idea. Ideas for variant cards become quite addictive as one thinks if I had a card that did this? So this is not something for people who want a ready to go answer as making cards, by whatever process, will require some play testing and modifications to meet your needs, but I for one will not be going back to games without cards for controlling movement and length of turns, because for me it has just made the game so much more fun to play.

Epiphany Cards

2011-07-21T03:20:00.000-07:00

As I said in an earlier blog entry I would come back and describe the card system that we have implemented for playing with BattleTech. The goal for using the cards was to remove the control players had over the order they move their units in and too replace the certainty of knowing one would always have one spare unit to move last if one had won the initiative.

By replacing the you move one unit and then I move one unit with a random order of movement system one has to deal with the battle developing from chaos into order, rather than having control from the get go.

The way the cards work was shamelessly stolen from TooFat Lardies games, in particular their Charlie Don't Surf and Through the Mud and the Blood rules. At first I found the need for cards off putting. Why oh why not have some simpler mechanism driven by dice? However, after playing Terrible Sharp Sword, an American Civil War supplement for their Sharp Practice at Salute this year I was taken by the flexibility that the addition that cards bring to a game.

So I set out to make some cards of my own, and not satisfied with using standard playing cards with sticky labels stuck on them I took advantage of a Hong Kong based playing card maker called ArtsCow who do print on demand cards set to one's own specification.

So I made up a list of all the units that I wanted to be able to field for my campaign, used ArtsCow's online Silverlight design package and got my first two sets of cards made up for my Mummerset campaign, which you can see a selection of in the above picture.

I also stole another idea from TooFat Lardies, the idea of a variable length turn that is governed by what they call the "tea break" card, but for BattleTech I'm calling the "vent" card. I use two of these for the game shuffled into the pack. One ignores the first draw, but the turn ends when the second one is drawn. This means that turns can have lots of units being moved, or very few units being moved, and it is all down to the luck of the cards.

Besides the vent cards and the various different unit cards each side has, I also added other specials. For instance artillery barrages that need a forward observer to be called in, and again the order that the cards are drawn in matters. If the forward observer card comes first then the players keep it until the time when the artillery barrage card is drawn, and can then use it to designate a target. If on the other hand the artillery barrage card is drawn first and there is no forward observer card to use, then the artillery barrage doesn't happen.

I've also added a House Steiner "Wall of Steel" card that allows the Steiner side to fire when the card is drawn, and fire again at the end of the turn, but at the cost of losing movement for all battlemechs that haven't yet moved that turn. However, this is a very powerful special card and after the game we decided that once the Steiner player uses it, the card is then discarded from the deck.

Other cards include "airstrike" and moving on "blinds". Airstrikes work a bit like an artillery barrage and a special event, so the airstrike doesn't require a forward observer card to use, but once used is discarded from the deck. Blinds are for hidden movement. Each side will be able to deploy as hidden identity, with a number of dummy blinds as well. Units on blinds are revealed if observed on a roll of 8+ on 2D6, when the unit on the blind fires, or if it is fired upon.

No doubt I will think of other special event cards, for instance "Banzai" for House Kurita, and add them to packs of cards I will need to design for my other BattleTech forces I have, but at the moment I'm concentrating on only adding stuff I need for the campaign, so I will need to think about House Marik next.

Epiphany Play Test Review

2011-07-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

This is a review of the Epiphany game rules we used to play the Battle for South Boring with notes and amendments from our discussion on how the game went.

Guideline 1: Amended to movement and range now to be two inches per hex/movement point equivalent. Needs further play testing.

For the game we used two inches per hex for movement, and doubled the range of the weapons to four inches per hex. This played a lot better than using one inch per hex for both weapons and movement, which is what we had done in earlier games, but it had the effect of putting everything into short range.

Guideline 2: No changes were deemed necessary as the game played well with this house rule. So movement is now just measuring the distance and having a free facing change at the end for all units.

The modified movement rules really sped up play a lot with minimal loss of tactical flavour.

Guideline 3: Amended to we will colour code the weapons on the record sheets, use one matching die for each colour, plus one die for the base roll that all the weapons will share for their targeting solution. So still one roll, but many dice, so needs to be play tested.

We started the game by rolling 4D6 and discarding the two lowest results to calculate whether or not all the weapons for a unit has hit or missed, but it became apparent we didn't need to stack the rolls for the players. However, on reflection we didn't on balance like the all miss, or hit effect this produced.

Guideline 4: Roll 4D6 and discard highest and lowest results for all the missile weapons fired to get an average of number of missiles hit e.g: you fire five LRM launchers of say three fives, and two 10s, you would then roll on the 35 missile to hit table, rather than for each launcher in turn.

We kind of fumbled this, so it needs to be properly play tested, which we will do next time.

Guideline 5: Ammo explosions are calculated as the value of one round of the ammo cooking off when they explode. However, after applying the internal damage, roll again on 2D6 (the usual roll of plus eight) to see if more critical damage is done to the mech (if the ammo bay is hit again, this too will explode one round and so on).

Not tested as no mech suffered a critical hit to the ammo, so again this guideline needs to be properly play tested, which will hopefully happen next time.

Guideline 6: No change to Ferro-fibrous armour, endo-steel count and empty slots count as valid locations for an internal hit and need not be re-rolled.

Happened a few times, didn't seem to affect the game balance either.

Guideline 7: No change to head hits do not automatically kill the pilot, instead the auto-pilot is assumed to eject the pilot, unless of course there is no ejection system or auto-eject is turned off for some reason. Pilots only die from wounds received.

People like this, even though the only pilots that ejected were the enemy, when Dan was hit in the head he appreciated the fact that had it all gone terribly wrong his pilot character would have survived.

Guideline 8: Initiative to be governed by using cards, which will randomise what moves when during a turn.

While there were some problems with some of the special cards, and how to use them without unbalancing some aspects of the game, but in principle this was the outstanding success of the Epiphany game guideline changes, as it really was a game changer.

For instance I lost count of how many turns we played after we got to turn seven in the first 90 minutes of playing. What was really good was that it eliminated up the tactical dithering that plagues most games of BattleTech, as you really didn't know when the turn would end as the it was based on the draw of the cards. I will explain the cards more in a separate post.

Guideline 9: No changes needed to the idea that we just use the Introductory Rules as the jump off point with the minimum amount of extra rules from other books as necessary.

If you can't remember a rule, or it can't be added to a record sheet, or quick reference sheet, then for all practical purposes it doesn't happen in the game, as it slows down the game to be constantly referring to rule books during a game.

Mummerset 07.18.11: The Battle of South Boring AAR

2011-07-18T10:15:00.000-07:00

The session started with me bringing the players up to speed on real life and in game developments. Trevor couldn't make it so I accounted for that by having some in game problems develop that allowed his mech to be detached, and unfortunately, Graham was required to be in Bournemouth, which meant that I would be both the GM and have to run the OPFOR; the 1st Battalion of the 1st Republican Guards under the command of General Spencer.

Background

At the end of last session the players had taken off in their dropship and were heading towards the jump point, but the plan was that the flight was a ruse, and that in fact they were only boosting out on an extended elliptical orbit, by using the local satellites to swing back and fall back to Mummerset pulled by gravity, rather than boosting all the way in.

Meanwhile, there are two incoming dropships from the Lyran jumpship inbound for Landfall that will take about a week to arrive and therefore land about three days after the the battle that is about to occur. In addition, the so called "pirate" jumpship has used the pirate point and released a dropship that will arrive in orbit around Mummerset at about the same time as the players will be dropped off at South Boring. This will mean that their dropship can't be used to dominate the airspace over South Boring.

While all this is happening General Spencer has led the 1st Republican Guards out of Clear Water Boring and is heading towards South Boring to deal with Colonel Whales and his 3rd Royal Guards Regiment. This move will take him approximately three days, with the attack beginning on the third day. General Spencer has managed to pin Colonel Whales force in South Boring with his 3rd Battalion, while the 1st and 2nd Battalion's are sweeping round the flanks. The 1st battalion is under General Spencer with three battlemechs; an Awesome with a command console for the General, a Blackjack and a Hornet. The 2nd Battalion has one battlemech and two industrial mechs; a Fireball and two custom converted with industrial mechs with weapons.

Colonel Whales is in a bit of a pickle as his naval convoy that was moving the 3rd Royals up the Fork River was attacked on route by Republican Guard air units. This sunk one of the boats, damaged another and this has meant that the only one battalion of the 3rd Royals in actually sitting in South Boring, and it has been forced to take up a defensive position in the town. The good news is that he does have two of his four industrial mech with him, but these are seriously outclassed by the enemy Fireball, and the Colonel requests that one battlemech be sent to ease the pressure on his left flank, with the players being tasked to stop General Spencer's attack on his right flank.

1st Republican Guards 1st Battalion

1x Awesome AWS-8P custom modified 3132 Inner Sphere tech worth 1768 bv (move 3-5-0, armour 232 points, and 11 double heat sinks). Loadout 1 x autocannon 10 (with 20 rounds of ammo), 1 x large laser, 2 x PPCs, 2 x ER medium laser, and 1 x small laser.

1 x Blackjack BJ2-0P custom modified 3132 Inner Sphere tech worth 1134 bv (move 4-6-4, armour 125 points, and 10 double heat sinks). Loadout 2 x Er large lasers, and 2 x autocannon 2s (with 45 rounds of ammo each).

1 x Hornet custom modified 3132 Inner Sphere tech worth 585 bv (move 5-8-5, armour 69 points, and 10 single heat sinks). Loadout 2 x medium lasers, 1 x LRM5 (with 24 rounds of ammo), and 1 x small laser.

4 x Vedette light tanks worth 475 bv each (total 1900 points)
4 x Striker light missile tanks worth 564 bv each (total 2256 points)
4 x 3039 wheeled APCs that could carry one squad of infantry worth 157 bv each (total 628 points)
4 x 3039 GEV APCs that could carry one platoon of infantry worth 102 bv each (total 408 points)

1 x mechanised infantry platoon
2 x jump infantry platoons
2 x foot infantry platoons

Also on call were three artillery batteries and one possible airstrike.

4th Battalion of the House Steiner 4444 Regimental Combat Team

1 x Zeus 2C XP custom modified 3132 Clan tech worth 2973 bv (move 4-6-4, armour 240 points, and 16 double heat sinks). Loadout 1 x ER PPC, 1 x LRM20 (with Artemis with 24 rounds of ammo), 3 x ER medium lasers, 4 x ER small lasers, and 1 targeting computer.

1 x Scorpion 2C XP custom modified 3132 Clan tech worth 1763 bv (move 6-9-0, armour 192 points, and 10 double heat sinks). Loadout 1 x ER large lasers, 1 x ER medium laser, 1 x LRM5 (with 24 rounds of ammo), 2 x SRM2 (with 50 rounds of ammo to share), and 1 targeting computer.

1 x Commando 2C XP custom modified 3132 Clan tech worth 1067 bv (move 6-9-0, armour 86 points, and 10 double heat sinks). Loadout 2 x ER medium lasers, 1 x LRM5 (with 24 rounds of ammo), 1 x Streak SRM4 (with 50 rounds of ammo), 1 x ER small laser, and 1 targeting computer).

4 x Anhur VTOLs that could carry one platoon of infantry 720 bv each (total 2880 points)
1 x Grey Death scout battle armour platoon 16 bv each (total 320 points)
1 x Grey Death assault battle armour platoon 43 bv each (total 860 points)
4 x foot infantry platoons

Initial Deployment

As the players had aerial recon and orbital dominance General Spencer's forces were deployed on table in order of the line of march.

As can be seen above our Captain Green (Dan) looks as happy as Larry as he surveys the oncoming battle. I'm using MechWarrior Dark Age models for the vehicles, with all the vehicles being stand ins for General Spencer's forces.

From the other side Captain Magnusson (Clive) is feigning his usual indifference to such trifles, as for him the battle is won or lost prior to the deployment. He may not look it, but he was feeling quietly confident.

This is the first kill of the game as the 1st Republican Guard Hornet is caught in open by Dan's Zeus that manage to blow both legs off, the left arm and gut the left torso completely in one round. Prior to this move Susan's Scorpion had blown the left arm off the Blackjack.

The two Republican Guard Vedettes, next to the Hornet, are eliminated by a combination of Susan's Scorpion and House Steiner infantry attacks from the buildings they occupied when the players VTOLs swept in and deposited infantry in choice buildings that then were able to act as choke points to threaten the Republican Guard infantry forces.

We are well into the battle at this point. Clive's finger is pointing to where the Dan's Zeus is as it lines up to brew up the 1st Republican Guard APCs. One of the Strikers has also been taken out by Susan's Scorpion, which you can just see a bit of a leg of in this picture (the orange blob between the destroyed tank and the tree).

The Blackjack is taken out by Susan's Scorpion which takes out both gyros and leaves it with one functioning autocannon 2 so at that point the pilot ejected as he was no longer combat effective. Meanwhile Dan's Zeus takes out the first Republican Guard APC, but misses the shots on the second, third and fourth, which at least allows the remaining infantry to de-bus, not that it will do them any good, because they then come under a hail of withering fire from the House Steiner infantry that have occupied the building they were about to try and enter.

The MechWarrior monocyle horde represent a motorised infantry platoon that was delayed getting onto the battlefield.

Finally, one of the Republican Guard jump infantry platoons was able to deploy while the Awesome and the Zeus face off to exchange pleasantries with each other.

While the Awesome held its own against the Zeus it was forced to move as the Susan's Scorpion was flanking it. I was trying to get the Awesome off the table at this point, but assault mechs are just too dam slow, and I had nothing that I could use to slow down the House Steiner advance at this point. However, I was able to move the Awesome away from the Susan's Scorpion and avoid my mech being shot in the side. However, Clive's Commando had been keeping up small scale indirect harassing fire all this time and it was chipping away at my armour, and I felt quite put upon by the cheekiness of it!

Unfortunately the Zeus was waiting and this time Dan got the better of me, as my shots missed, and his didn't. By this point the Awesome had 5 points of armour left on the right torso, had lost its left arm and had taken internal hits on the right arm, left torso and center torso sections with a gyro hit. The left leg had 12 points, and the right leg 5 points of armour left. Needless to say as it fell over from failing the piloting roll and the General with his pilot ejecting to be retrieved by the motorised infantry platoon.

And here is the final shot showing the position of the Susan's Scorpion that had herded my Awesome into the Zeus's kill zone, with Clive's Commando snuck in between two buildings lurking with intent.

So another glorious victory for House Steiner, which has saved Colonel Whale's from ignominious defeat at the hands of the Republican Guards. We of course still have the second battle of South Boring to fight, where Trevor's Firestarter will be facing a Republican Guard Fireball. All I have to do now is work out when we can fight this next action? Once this battle has been resolved this will bring this phase of the campaign to a neatish resolution, in that the Republican Guards are now going to be very much on the defensive. This then just leaves the Freedom Army of Mummerset to be dealt with by our heroes. I suspect that this will be a far trickier proposition.

Note: No points cost were used in the creation of this scenario, I just added them in so that BattleTech players could see what the totals added up to to satisfy any curiosity about the balance.

BattleTech Infantry

2011-07-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

I've been painting infantry today, and yesterday, and the day before. Surprising how long it takes to paint a load of infantry, when it the bigger scheme of things I'm only painting a couple of hundred troops per side. Mind you in BattleTech terms that is a pretty large infantry force, but when one steps back not so much in the broader scheme of things.

Anyway, not going to write about the numbers being painted, rather about some thoughts I've had on playing with said infantry tomorrow. If you play BattleTech you kind of know that everything has a record sheet. I'm okay with that for mechs, can live with it for vehicles, but even then I want to simplify the records sheets down some more, but plain infantry it just bugs me to do the paperwork.

So I had a thought, like one does when one is cogitating stuff as one is painting, and I think I can simplify the paperwork for infantry by throwing it out. See it doesn't get simpler than that does it? No seriously, use the bases to keep track of the infantry, and either use dice as casualty markers, or base the infantry so that one can remove bases. I mean this is done all the time as standard in miniature wargames, so let's apply the idea to BattleTech is what I say.

As for calculating damag,e I'm going to use the rule of thumb that each infantry man is worth half an attack point, add up by squad, section or platoon and round down, and that is the number of attack points they do; in groups of two as per the standard rules. The difference between a rifle armed infantry versus rockets launchers, or laser armed men will be range, mg units will get a 1D6 bonus against other infantry, and flamers will catch stuff on fire as per the standard rules. Swarm attacks are calculated exactly the same way, but the damage is applied to the legs of the mech, or the transmission of the vehicle. I think this keeps infantry nice and simple, but still effective when used properly, but we shall see tomorrow what happens when the guys go to it.

As a result of this brainwave I realise that I now have to make up some infantry bases for my militia with two figures per base and mix these with the three man bases I have, which will double the number of platoons that I have. Now the question is would it be reasonable to treat four platoons as two Company's and therefore call them Battalions? Especially considering I'm going to be adding APCs, and helicopters for transporting the troops with integral artillery and some tanks to make a fairly formidable combine arms team. Let me know your thoughts on this?

Next Weekend

2011-07-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

Next weekend is the big one, as the three way clash between General Spencer's Republican Guard face off against Colonel Whales 3rd Royal Guards, and the 4th Battalion of the Spirit of Steiner Regimental Combat Team. I have managed to invite a my friend Graham, who is a WW2 gamer, to come and play as General Spencer, while the players will each manage their own battlemech. Colonel Whales forces will be in defense and only react to orders from the players, assuming said orders are received and passed on by Colonel Whales HQ?

Trevor can't make it for the big battle of South Boring, so I've devised a cunning plan to account for his absence and have adjusted the battle lines accordingly. Actually makes for a fairer game, for definitions of fairer that don't include easy, or walk over, for the players.

Anyway, enough of me letting the plot out of the bag before hand, I've been busy all day painting up four town boards, and in eight hours I've gone a long way from white undercoat with a wash, to something that at least looks presentable, if not finished. I will be spending more time tomorrow as I'd like to flock the boards with static grass just to get them up to a basic standard that won't look to bad to me.

I've also chosen the other terrain boards for the set-up and really would like to add some tree trunk stubs into the two original open terrain boards I've chosen for the game. So, another job for tomorrow, and I still have to slap some paint on the infantry units for both the Republican Guards and the 3rd Royals. As luck would have it this scenario doesn't require the players infantry, which are of course all pretty much painted up and ready to go. However, they will be deployed at a future point. So hey ho, nose to the grind wheel.

Evil is as BattleTech Does?

2011-07-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

Over on the Classic BattleTech Forums there has been a certain amount of banter about evil in the in game universe with particular respect to two of the developed powers that people can play. This made me think about what is evil, or what makes something evil?

One definition of evil is that it is something defined by some source or another. For instance, from deities, religion, nature and evolution, morality, or from common sense, whatever that means? Such an approach can be described as one of moral absolutism. Here if an action is wrong, then regardless of any good that might arise, it remains a wrong thing to do.

The dichotomous opposite would be that there is no such thing as evil per se. So killing someone is neither right or wrong. Obviously, the consequences will depend on whether or not the action takes place within a framework where the rules permit, or do not permit such an action, and therefore the term evil is something we create to describe the breaking of rules that have been made by mankind.

Another stance is to look at evil from the perspective of moral relativism, which leads to the position that what is evil is a subjective product of local customs, mores and prejudice. To me this seems so open minded as to be a position where one has no brain because it has fallen out.

Finally, another approach to the definition of evil is to come from the position that one has to compromise between the absolute and the relativist position to find a third way. This way posits that morality has to be flexible and one must finds ways of measuring happiness and suffering to find the common denominator of what is considered evil.

Needless to say all of these arguments are rooted in ethics and philosophy and can make for an interesting discussion in any group, depending on the definition of the word interesting?

Within the BattleTech universe background I think that one can see that all the majors powers have done things that would be considered evil from at least one of the above four perspectives. Depending on one's beliefs the individual details of the various evils will appeal, or disgust you accordingly. Therefore I am of the opinion that any Inner Sphere polity that either all are evil, or none are truly evil.

Mummerset 05.21.11: Aftermath

2011-06-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

The session started off with a recap to bring everyone, especially me, up to speed on what happened last session. This then led into a task organisation exercise to secure the base the players had retreated into after the last battle, allowing them to consolidate the forces under their command. This involved radioing the helicopter forces and moving straggler units to either the players current location in Elizabethville, or join up with the forces that were left in Clear Water Boring barracks.

The players then got their scout choppers to swept the perimeter and as a result they discovered that the enemy had managed to retrieve the four downed mechs from the last sessions battle. I then advanced the time with daily reports updating on the riots, and general news reports that were being aired over the Mummerset Broadcasting Company (MBC). Revolution seemed to be on the cards yet it was a revolution that seemed rather calm all things considered. Police were handling the riots and the Mummerset army was just waiting in barracks, apart from the 3rd Royal Guards who had gone out to defend the palace from attack by the "pirate" forces.

Communication with the diplomatic mission was re-established and the players made their report to the Duke. The session then became one of sifting through reports and summarising events as they occurred. This allowed me to use the Duke to move the diplomatic mission from Clear Water Boring to Elizabethville and co-opting the players as military attaches under his command. Orders also arrived by drop ship from Major Lester at Bolan with a notification that Dan's brevet promotion to captain became confirmed as a full promotion, and the other players all received brevet promotions to the rank of captain, so as to fit into their new roles of military attaches. The team also grew with the addition of brevet Captain Edmund Deville who had arrived on the drop ship that had brought their new orders with his Firestarter as reinforcements for the players team.

Summary of Events

No enemy mechs had been spotted in Clear Water Boring during the attack on Elizabethville. Civilians riots had been handled by the Royal Mummerset Mounted Police (RMMP) both in Clear Water Boring and Elizabethville. No other reports of fighting were heard, which suggested that the attack was focused on one limited objective, namely destroying the Kingdoms administrative center and the royal family.

Post Attack Developments

The players had sent out their special forces team who had reported back that the apparent revolution "didn't smell right" as a full on revolution that the initial attack on Elizabethville, but more like a military led coup d'état. The enemy "pirate" force had managed to do its vanishing act again. In the aftermath of the attack three main factions appeared.

The first was the Royalist faction led by Colonel Whales, and his 3rd Royal Guards, which had been sighted going North after the battle at the palace. Colonel Whales seemed to be the military leader of any remaining Royal loyalists, with the Right Honourable John McDevitt of the RMMP, and the Mayor of Elizabethville being his civilian counterparts.

The Northern Alliance faction appeared to be the biggest and strongest faction as it was based in Clear Water Boring the commercial heart of Mummerset. The Mayor of Clear Water Boring, Chirico Marx, announce his support on MBC for Prime Minister Rufus T. Marx's motion in Parliament to turn the Kingdom of Mummerset into the Democratic Republic of Mummerset (DROM); with Rufus T. Marx as its first President of course. I sold this very much as a progressive development to move the politics of this world forward.

The main opposition appeared to be a Southern Faction led by the Mayor of New Cromwell, Lady Charlotte Spencer, with support from the RMMP Constable of New Cromwell, the Right Honourable Sir Henry Bewley. While the players could not prove that the Southern Faction were the ring leaders behind the so called "pirates" that had attacked Elizabethville, the fact that the Lady Spencer seemed remarkably well informed of the action at Cromwell where the players had fought two enemy mechs did suggest a link.

However, a compromise between the Marx led Northern Alliance, and the Spencer led Southern Factions, led to the announcement of the "New Deal" making everyone citizens of Mummerset with rights protected by a constitution that would be drawn up with representatives from all the factions.

The Rise of the Republic

The days and weeks passed by with the MBC televising the developments of the new constitution and the rights people would have as citizens of the Republic. However, the players started to notice that while the motto "service brings citizenship", one could easily lose one citizenship if one was found guilty of a crime against the state, for example by spraying graffiti or getting into a street brawl when drunk. Otherwise life on Mummerset seemed to drift along with occasional protests at the developments in the drawing up of the Constitution being dealt with by the RMMP, which had been renamed the Republican Mounted Mummerset Police, just shortened back to Mounties. So no change there then.

Further investigations and intelligence reports from the Second Attache David Bradford, the diplomatic missions spook, indicated the Marx & Spencer coalition had eight of the 13 mayors of Mummerset in their pockets, but that four towns were sitting on the fence, while the Mayor of Elizabethville was calling for an investigation into the assassination of the Prince Albert and General Briton.

Meanwhile the Marx & Spencer coalition had formally invited the Marion Hegemony and Outworld Coalition to set up diplomatic missions on Mummerset, which suggested to the players that the "pirates" were aligned to one of the ruling families, probably the Southern faction under Lady Spencer and the Right Honourable Sir Henry Bewley. The local network of informers had also heard that there was an illegitimate heir to the throne, and that the Mounties had indicated that they served the citizens of Mummerset, and supported law & order above any other considerations.

Soon after the existence of the "pirates" as an onworld faction was confirmed after leaflets for the Mummerset Freedom Party (MFP) were found and further investigation showed that this was the political wing of the Freedom Army of Mummerset (FAOM). This political wing was made up of lesser colony founding families that felt disenfranchised by the actions of the founding fathers of Mummerset, and that FAOM basically channeled the political protest of the MFP in a more direct manner.

Rumble in the Jungle

Like all good marriages of convenience the Marx & Spencer DROM fell out. However, the MBC announced that Colonel Spencer was being promoted to General, to replace the late Sir Thomas Briton, and was being made the overall Commander-in-Chief of all Mummerset armed forces. General Spencer was then interviewed by the MBC and anounced the formation of the 1st Republican Guards with its own battlemech force. With the General telling everyone that he would be leading the force himself in an Awesome assault class battlemech. General Spencer then announced that the the 1st Royal Guards would be renamed the 1st Republican Guards.

Meanwhile Colonel Whales had taken his forces to Whales Land and appeared to be in exile, but in his journey into exile had managed to liberate four of the six industrial mechs that House Steiner had brought as part of the diplomatic mission to secure the boron market. Needless to say that via unofficial channels that Colonel Whales had requested help in converting said industrial mechs for combat and training for the pilots of his battlemech force. The Duke agreed that it would be in the best interest of House Steiner to provide a cadre to train Colonel Whale's forces, but that it would not be in the best interest to declare this action to the current government of Mummerset. This was basically on the understanding that the players wanted all their options open and have plausible deniability if the need arose to ditch the Royalists in favour of whoever won the upcoming war.

Inevitably Lady Spencer then declared that the Southern Federation would support the Mummerset Freedom Party's application to be recognised under the new constitution, and in a surprise move the former 2nd Royal Guards regiment declared itself loyal to the Southern Faction of the Republic.

Meanwhile, Colonel Whales requested access to transmit a message over the House Steiner communication satellites under the banner of the World Wide Broadcasting Company WWBC. His hour long speech to the people blanketed all channels and announced that he was acting as Regent to the 18 year old daughter, of the late Prince HRH Albert Burlington, Princess Natasha Anastasia Briton-Burlington. In addition, he would be visiting South Port, East Point, New Start and South Boring (the four towns that had not declared for the the Marx & Spencer coalition) to make his case for the Republic to become a constitutional monarchy with the Princess.

By this time we had reached week 48 of the campaign and the Republican government made it quite clear that they knew that the players had been helping the royal faction and the Duke announced that House Steiner would be leaving Mummerset. The players then did a rather good pea-under-the-cup shuffle of appearing to load up all their assets into the drop ship, while actually sending them out to rendezvous with the 3rd Royal Guards. Therefor they took off with only their battlemechs loaded on the drop ship Northern Lights, which meant that they could also be prepped for a combat drop to insert them behind Republican Guard forces when the time came for action.

The plan was to deceive the Republican Guards and lure them out of Clear Water Boring where they were dug in. Colonel Whale's force was using the Fork River, a major deep water shipping lane, to move his forces to South Boring, while travelling with an airborne security force to visit the towns with Princess Natasha, thereby focusing President Rufus T. Marx's faction on the political manoeuvrings rather than the impending display of military force.

The game ended with the Northern Lights drop ship taking off from Mummerset and General Spencer leading the Republican Guards out of Clear Water Boring to attack Colonel Whales's forces at South Boring. Hurrah!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Medium Laser

2011-06-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

When I started writing this blog back in the day, two odd years ago (and very odd years they have been indeed, channeling Charles Gray for a moment) I was still working through my thoughts and feelings about the combat values for weapons and usefulness of Catalyst Games battle values for use in pick up games.

For a die hard mech bunny knowing what the "real" in game effects arise from the weapon choices that one makes is a very good thing indeed. If only so that when you design a suboptimal mech design you know that it really is suboptimal, and yet meets the operational expectations you've set out. IMNSHO, too many of the mech designs in BattleTech end up suboptimal for fluff reasons that don't make much sense from a real world operational perspective, because the writer designing the mech has trouble translating the brief into a playable unit that would meet the tasks required of it (Did I just say real world perspective for a game of giant battling robots?).

As such one gets to see an uneven mix of designs, where the truly awful are fluffed away as being just like real life, with insert your example of choice, to justify something that while history shows us could exist, yet adds nothing of value to the experience of playing a game of BattleTech. YMMV.

So, I've come to the conclusion that, for me, the best way to understand the effectiveness of the weapon choices is to use the weapons test format of averaging the damage over 36 rounds of firing to come to a damage inflicted ratio. For those of you new to this blog here is the link back for you to read.

Crunching the numbers

Getting my Geek on

Crunchy Geeky Goodness

Nailing it Down

I've also tagged these as Number Crunch Geekiness for good measure. After all I'm talking real world perspective for a game of giant battling robots, if that is not the very definition of geekiness, I don't know what is.

Going off tangent for a moment, sort of on an affiliated blog of note, if you don't read Skiltao's Xanga may I recommend that you at least take a look at his posts that are exploring the unliked weapons and equipment in BattleTech, see here:

10 Least Liked Pieces of BT Technology 1

10 Least Liked Pieces of BT Technology2

Well worth reading IMNSHO! Now back on topic, and there is one, no matter how meandering and rambling this post may seem. So my plan, when I have time, is to create an Excel spreadsheet that has all the current weapons in BattleTech that will calculate the damage over 36 results for short, medium and long range, and then I'll look at the results divided by range to create a comparison chart of weapon effectiveness.

Now running into the dark laughing and cackling madly...

BattleTech Community

2011-06-01T03:47:00.000-07:00

An announcement of sorts and link to same:

Mech Heads UK

If you are reading this you are the BattleTech community. Paint it Pink out.

It's a Long Road...

2011-05-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

It was my intention after last Saturday's game to sit down and write up what happened. My intention remains, but time is fleeting and I've lost control...

What I will say at this point is that the campaign is surprising me, especially as I'm the GM who kind of knows what is really going on, or at least is seen as the master manipulator of all that goes on. Slipping into corporate speak, this emergent property is down to the synergy from the interplay between the player and myself as the narrative of the story develops.

For instance we have discovered during the previous sessions that the so called offworld pirates were in fact onworld forces, who then became a bunch of people who oppose the government of Mummerset, and from this place we changed the label from "pirates" to calling them the "Freedom Army of Mummerset ", the military wing of the Mummerset Freedom Party. The name having also evolved from what had happened during the game, as all I knew as the GM was that I wanted a bunch of people causing trouble and lowering property values on Mummerset.

So, I made all that up as I went along, but it fits the plot of my story.

So what is the story? Well, I hide everything in plain sight, so the story remains the one I set out for the players. They as representatives of their government are going somewhere to fly the flag, and support the diplomatic trade mission, which is the main McGuffin of the plot; it's all about the getting the Boron deposits.

However, as the story unfolds details get added. Some are mere trifles that I add to amuse myself, like the names of the characters, or places. Others are big picture stuff to do with acquiring the Boron and the lack of potable water on Mummerset. Everything else revolves around this, and things evolve from the different goals each faction has. All the Mummerset factions want technology to improve the quality of life onworld, while the House Steiner faction want the Boron (actually my players want battles, but they also want reasons for having the battles and want games that are fun), and it has amazed me how other stuff just falls into place from this when you add one or more other factions who have a different idea on how to achieve the goal of improving the technology base of Mummerset.

Hence the Mummerset Freedom Party, the political wing of the Freedom Army of Mummerset and their goal of removing the current government for the greater good of Mummerset. One of the things that came out of the previous sessions where the "pirate" attacks were described as "Strike and Fade" was the that the "pirates" had the whole sleight-of-hand, pea under the cup routine going when it came to deploying their forces. This hoisted me on my own petard, because during the last session I thought that the next battle the player team would fight would be the "pirates", but I could think of no way to arrange said fight, and my players were in that zone too.

However, I had more than one faction in opposition and this is what saved my bacon on the day, and from this the dominoes tumbled along until we reached the inevitable conclusion that a battle between President Marx's faction and the Royalist diehard Colonel Whales was on the cards. And thus I find myself now having to fast track the painting of the Democratic Republic of Mummerset's forces, as the Mummerset Freedom Party I was working on will not be needed next time.

Reviews versus Testimonials

2011-05-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

I asked myself what is the difference between both, as could think of quite a few? First off, a testimonial is, practically by definition, a positive endorsement of something, or someone. There's nothing wrong with that, but everyone understands that it is all about singing the praises, so it has limited value, because it only tells you one side of the story.

A review has a different function as it looks at both what is good and bad about what is being reviewed. In academic terms a review will search for other work that covers the same topic and summarise those reviews, which turn was a review that had searched for previous works that had discussed the same topic. As can be imagined this is quite a recursive process, but what saves it from becoming stodgy is the critical element that removes weaker work in favour of stronger work. So through trial and error a researcher can weight the evidence, and look at the balance of probability to hone theories to see if they fit the facts, which is the academic equivalent of the Darwinian process in action.

So what purpose would a game review serve? Does it comment on the production values, the game mechanisms, the playability, or the experiential process? I would argue that it would need to address all of these things, and probably a few more like value for money, support for the game and accessibility for the new player too.

However, such a review would be a monumental piece of work, so what you tend to get is an edited highlights of the reviewers concerns about the game, rather than a more objective review that places the game in its historical context.

Then there is the thorny issue of offending the games company, and a writer will offend if they are perceived as being critical and damaging sales of the game. This is mirrored in academia where the issue of who is funding the research colours how much you can trust the results of the research. It's called bias, and research reviews have to declare their biases. When was the last time you read a review in the commercial press where the reviewer declared there bias?

Ah I hear you say, what about the non-funded reviews posted on the internet for example? A good point, but more often than not they fall into testimonials that say they like the product, or a hate-fest where they say this product sucks, because it does not meet the reviewers needs. Neither are particularly useful to either the buyer, or the manufacturer of the game.

Hence my reluctance to really review games that I like, but as and when I have the time to analyse my biases, do a search of previous games in a genre, and summarise the game mechanisms, playability and experiential quality of said game, I will.

BattleTech Troper

2011-05-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

BattleTech is a wargame that has not one, but two main pages on the TV Tropes site. Who'd have thought huh?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BattleTech

The URL above deals with the general tropes of BattleTech, like duh! BTW: that is of course me using a trope. However, more importantly, as an introduction to the world of BattleTech I really can't recommend this page enough for the casual person who wants to know what's it all about Alfie? Sorry for that shout out.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BattleTechExpandedUniverse

The second URL is a page on how FASA allowed the BattleTech universe to be expanded and the various tropes that have become signature items of the franchise. Be warned that clicking on either of these links will take you to pages with lots of other links on them that form a hypertext database, or Wiki as they are now called.

So what is a trope, apart from the content of a site called TV Tropes that is?

It is a figure of speech, or a metaphor if you prefer, that describes something using words whose literal meanings are different from what they say, for example "road works", which means a road that is being dug up, or repaired, but not one that is literally working. Using a metaphor allows people to explain concepts that are not easily understood using language that describes something else. Often these end up as common clichés, for instance "blue sky thinking".

Metaphors can then become metonyms, which are figures of speech that become the thing. For instance I have my wheels meaning I have a motor car. Funnily enough a trope can become ironic through meaning the opposite of what was originally intended and this trope has many flavours too. My favourite being Socratic irony, or the "Colombo gambit", where you start off by stating how one doesn't understand something and ask the other person to explain it. This then leads the inherent contradictions being spotted in what has been said.

When you have a trope that contains two words that have opposite meanings you then move into the realm of the oxymoronic, an obvious example is "living dead", and another is "military intelligence", the latter having been described as "a highly refined organisation of overwhelming generalities, based on vague assumptions, and debatable figures drawn from undisclosed activities, pursued by persons of diverse motivation, and questionable mentality, in the midst of unimaginable confusion".

Of course that is a gross exaggeration of the process behind "military intelligence" for comic effect, which therefore make it hyperbole, which funnily enough is another example of a trope. Ironic huh? Probably a bit of an understatement to describe military intelligence in this manner too, something that we Brits do with a certain amount of aplomb. I always remember an RAF chap being interviewed after a raid over Berlin who described that whole death defying ordeal as a bit of a "whizz bang". In trope terms such understatement is called a litote. A more modern example of a litote is of course the use of double negatives.

Any metaphor/trope that starts off as a counter proposition is counted as an antithesis, and you thought that it was just a part of dialectics. Well it is, but dialectics is a part of rhetoric, which uses metaphor as the basis for constructing arguments. So finally we get to the end of the different categories of tropes with the synecdoche. This is the mirror of the metonym in that the description has replaced the thing to the extent that it starts to become a cliché, though not all synecdoches are clichés.

So BattleTech is all of the above and more, which is probably why I like it in spite of the ludicrousness of the central conceit.

Tree Shades of Green

2011-05-15T15:16:00.000-07:00

This weekend started out with a rare burger from Byron's, and afterwards treating myself to a new handbag for work from the House of Fraser, both establishments being local to me at the Westfield's shopping center, just round the corner from where I live. Wow, living life to the limits is my motto, and this morning I even went and had my hair done at my local hairdresser.

Compared to the excitement of painting trees three shades of green the above is probably all rather dull. I've been struggling through yet another steep learning curve with my new tree project, and down to the simple fact that I can't bear to do anything "just good enough", I've been trying to produce the best trees that I can using Woodland Scenics products as a starting point.

Anyway, as I'm writing this now I've just watched Dr Who: The Doctor's Wife and afterwards I was dry brushing green on the trees. Second shade in this case. As I want the trees to have variety I've split the 32 deciduous trees I'm painting into three groups, as can be seen above. All have sea green as the base colour, but then have two other shades of green painted over the top. The plan being to have three shades of green on every tree, but not the same three shades of green on all of them

I originally started by priming the trees by spraying them black and then I sprayed the trunks in red primer. On top of this I then drybrushed sea green to delineate the foliage from the trunk and worked from there.Unfortunately, I made a bit of a mess of the drybrushing and overdid the amount of pain I put on, which was so not good. So I resprayed them black and started again without painting the trunks in red primer, which was okay, but I failed to get the tonal variation I wanted and though that all the trees looked rather dull and uninteresting. So I re-drybrushed them and changed the combination of greens that I was using to add more variation to the three basic shades of green I was painting my forest.

I would like to say that this plan I had worked. It sort of did, but it doesn't account for the fact that I ended up painting each batch of trees three times, improving on the application, order and combination of shade of green. In addition, The reason for the revision was down to the order that I chose to paint the colours, and a big confounding variable was painting the tree trunks, which cause one of the repaints.

Hopefully you can all now see that there are three distinct shades of green in this forest down by the river side?

After taking the above pictures I spent some time drybrushing the tree trunks with pale flesh to give them a grey looking texture, which has improved upon what you can see above. Finally, I whisked some canary yellow over the upper surfaces of all the trees to make them pop a bit more.

From my observation of trees I kind of know that they are complex fractal structures that reflect light in many different directions due to the structure of the leaves, which are themselves fractal in nature. Capturing the lacy structure of trees is extremely difficult, especially when one has to make them robust enough to be handled in a game.

So there you have it. One weekend spent slaving over a hot forest...

Being Human

2011-05-09T04:14:00.000-07:00

Last night I was watching the series Being Human, the story of a vampire, werewolf and ghost sharing a house in Bristol. It is a charming and often hard hitting metaphor for life and the choices one makes when growing up. As often the case when such topics are written quotes from the Bible spring forth to hit the point home. In this case this one:

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (1st Corinthians verse 12).

I mention it because to some extent one can consider hobbies like wargaming to be the anti-thesis of Corinthians. I rather like that it is.

I can't remember if I've ever discussed why this blog is called "Paint-it-Pink". No doubt if this were a graphic novel it would have been part of my origin issue, or in a more Po-Mo presentation an inserted back story to illuminate something like the Corinthians passage above. Me being me, I will use the telling to illuminate my thought processes around gaming, and in particular running campaigns; whether that is a traditional RPG, or more tabletop figure game.

I like to make my campaigns like onions. So that cutting them open provokes a strong reaction and reveals that there are many layers to the story. Once cooked onions become sweat and delicious, and my intent to always run games that delight the the desire to play games in much the same way as a good meal not only assuages one's hunger, but satisfies one's taste buds.

So why Paint-it-Pink? Why not. Pink is a girly colour. A Pink team is description of a Red and White scout and hog team in Vietnam. I could go on. What I will say is that the periods of conflict that interest me largely feeds into the games that I play, of which BattleTech remains a favourite, despite of, or because of its ludicrous elements.

So do I take elements of World War One and use them for games of BattleTech. Yes I do. Also I take elements from the Inter-War period, for example the Russian Civil War, Spanish Civil War, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and of course World War Two. Though in the latter case, even though I play a large number of games over the years, it no longer holds me in its thrall, especially late war actions. This is odd, because to some extent BattleTech could be seen to be a paragon for disguising WWII scenarios, which is what appeals to me so much about the BattleTech rule setting.

However, Vietnam, remember John Wayne in Green Beret, is still the war of my childhood. Hence Paint-it-Pink, and funnily enough BattleTech and Vietnam play together well. Units that have an overwhelming advantage, US armed forces, choppers etc. versus battlemechs that stomp around owning the battlefield, but just like Vietnam no guarantee of a meaningful victory.

OTOH I still like to dabble in those areas that I steal from wholesale, because at the end of the day it is always good to go back to the source material that inspires one. As I said the very anti-thesis of growing up and giving up childish things, rather the acceptance of one's inner child and the value from having an open mind that is still able to learn new things.

Mummerset Command Bunker

2011-05-07T05:27:00.000-07:00

Just a little project that has developed out of the town boards I've been making, which I thought I'd do a brief photo run through of how I did it.

Above is the picture showing a terrain board with some Kappa board siding that I cut to make a room/basement for the building on the right. The building was from the Fieldworks 10mm range, being described as a Sci-Fi spaceport. Whatever, because quite frankly if it's Sci-Fi it's whatever I say it is. Anyway, Fieldworks are remastering this building, because it was too small to put 10mm figures inside it. I therefore got it cheap and plan to modify it to rectify the problem.

The walls you see here are 40mm high and are simply cut and stuck down with double sided sticky tape. This really was a slap it together job.

As you can see from the above shot the building covers the room/basement, acting like a lid, or roof. The reason I chose 40mm for the height of the walls was to allow vehicles to enter, but not larger mechs. Though in fact a Commando battlemech can get through the entrance.

Here is a side view to give a better impression of how things look before I start adding stuff to turn this into a command bunker. As you can also see, when I started I drew an outline around the building on the Kappa board so that when I built up the walls they would would support the building, making it effectively into a roof.

Using my now trusty Hot Foam Factory polystyrene cutting tools I took some scrap polystyrene and carve the various bits into a shape that pleased me. Finally the foam was glued to the Kappa board with PVA glue.

And et voila, the Fieldworks spaceport becomes the basis for one command bunker just like that. Obviously, lots of finishing work to to here, but the above was all done in about an hour's worth of fiddling around. I'll post further pictures of this project after I have textured the base to show the final effect.

And above is an aerial view of the entrance to what could be another underground secret bunker, or just a natural cave with a worn path up to the entrance.

Red River Delta

2011-05-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

I have been off from work all of this week, since the funeral in fact, so I have had a lot of spare time and I've been fairly busy making and painting stuff. Probably not done as much as I could have done, but there again it has been a difficult period for me having to deal with a surprising amount of grief from the loss of my mother-in-law. To keep myself focused on things, other than loss, I've been building terrain boards. This includes some new river boards, which I've decided to call the Red River Delta project, which is the first step towards my goal of being able to play Vietnam riverine delta games using Charlie Don't Surf from TooFat Lardies.

Anyways here are some work-in-progress shots of the eight boards I'm making.

The picture above shows all the polystyrene contours after been covered with filler, then textured using ground foam, and finally painted. I use a sort of wet-drybrush technique for terrain where I layer alternate contrasting earth colour tones over one another to get a multicoloured soil base.

After painting the land areas I then used an extended wet paint technique, blending three different colours while the paint was still wet, to define the river. After allowing the river to dry overnight, I applied two washes over the top, and then sealed the whole thing with ultra gloss gel. I then plan to layer another two washed over the top of the gloss gel before applying a coat of Woodland Scenic's realistic water over the top to finish.

In the mean time I've been busy applying static grass over the painted terrain, but I haven't yet taken a picture of this, but I will do so in due course. Also you probably can't really see from the pictures, but there are loads of embedded tree trunks in the terrain, which is all part and parcel of my mark two terrain boards.

However, while this terrain is is for Vietnam games, it would be fair to say that the terrain will also be used for my Operation Sandbox Campaign set on the mythical world of Mummerset, where it will represent the Fork River Delta. I imagine that at least one battle will take place around the delta during the course of the campaign. I could be wrong of course, but OTOH I am the GM, so if any of my players are reading this they now have the conundrum of deciding whether this is info that will help them or not?

BattleTech 3.0: Epiphany

2011-05-01T01:35:00.000-07:00

This is not a review of the 25th Anniversary box set, as quite frankly it doesn't need a review from me to add to what has already been said by others. However, if you are thinking of getting into BattleTech then this is the current entry level product. In short it has everything you need to play BattleTech in one big box, which is full of goodies to get you going. I can't recommend it more highly than that. Everything else the CGL do is just icing on the cake, and can be dipped into if you are so inclined.

After that plug I'm bringing this blog back down to playing BattleTech. So going back, or round-and-round like a gerbil in a hamster wheel (depending on how you look at what I write here in my blog?), are some of the ideas on how to play quicker games of BattleTech, as I've talked about in previous blog posts that have evolved out of playing the game for more years than I care to remember. The manifesto for any House rules for speeding up the playing speed of BattleTech were:

1. Must not conflict with BattleTech's construction rules.
2. Must use BattleTech record sheets.
3. Must feel like a simpler version of BattleTech.
4. Must be compatible with all pre-generated unit designs that exist now.
5. Must allow two or more players control six units each, and play four turns an hour.
6. Must cater for combined armed games that play quickly.

Guidelines

1. For board games keep movement as cost per hex, but double the firing range. For miniature gaming make each hex equal to four inches, but movement points only equal to two inches.
Reason: to balance the emphasis on manoeuvre from simplified facing changes with firing range while speeding up play.

2. For movement now all units just count the number of hexes (board-game), or inches moved (tabletop), and add a free facing change at the end of the turn only. Quad mechs can move sideways down the line of the hex, or just step side-ways in tabletop miniature games, effectively retaining their side-slip advantage.
Reason: taking a leaf out of MechWarrior: Age of Darkness quick play.
Addendum: this effectively adds three movement points to all mechs and vehicle, which compensates for doubling the range of the weapons.

3. Roll one pair of 2D6 (change to 4D6 and discard two results) for combat to calculate whether or not all the weapons that the unit has hit or miss.
Reason: reduce number of die rolls, which means quicker fire resolution.
Addendum: modified in light of discussion below.

4. Roll one pair of 2D6 (change to 4D6 and discard two results) for all the missile weapons fired to get an average of number of missiles hit e.g: you fire five LRM launchers of say three fives, and two 10s, you would then roll on the 35 missile to hit table, rather than for each launcher in turn.
Reason: replaces boxes of dice with one table and remove design artifacts that can affect game balance from game play and resolve damage quicker.
Addendum: modified in light of discussion below.

5. Ammo explosions are calculated as the value of one round of the ammo cooking off when they explode. However, after applying the internal damage, roll again on 2D6 (the usual roll of plus eight) to see if more critical damage is done to the mech (if the ammo bay is hit again, this too will explode one round and so on).
Reason: reduce number of times dice need to be rolled and therefore speed up the game, but still allows for catastrophic explosions.

6. Ferro-fibrous armour, endo-steel count and empty slots count as valid locations for an internal hit and need not be re-rolled.
Reason: to again reduce number of times dice need to be rolled and therefore speed up the game.

7. Head hits do not automatically kill the pilot, instead the auto-pilot is assumed to eject the pilot, unless of course there is no ejection system or auto-eject is turned off for some reason. Pilots only die from wounds received.
Reason: emphasis on heroic RPG, rather than pure wargame play.

8. Initiative to be governed by using cards, which will randomise what moves when during a turn.
Reason: stop gamesmanship and calculating the best unit to move last, which slows down the game.
Addendum: further discussion on principles to be dealt with in a future blog entry.

9. Introductory Rules to be used as the jump off point with the minimum amount or rules from other books as necessary.
Reason: when in doubt, less is more.

Let the discussion begin...

And the Winner is...

2011-04-25T05:55:00.000-07:00

This is the new viral thing called the Stylish Blogger Award, for blogs. The rules of the award are:

1: Thank and link back to the person giving you the award.

I was sent this virtual award by David Manley, so thank you for including me into this viral awards fest thing.

http://dtbsam.blogspot.com/2011/04/stylish-blogger-award.html

2: Share seven things about yourself.

Started wargaming age 12 at the original Southend Wargames Club, which became the South East Essex Military Society that use to host Present Arms, back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
I use to cycle to get there, and I remain a keen cyclist, enjoying cross country mountain biking.
My first degree was in photography and film studies, as a result I've seen far more classic foreign films than most people have had hot dinners. As such it is always hard for me to name a favourite movie, as I have seen so many of them, but what I will say is that my favourites tend to be genre films of some sort.
I enjoy listening to film sound tracks, favourite composers being Hans Zimmer, Basil Poledouris, Dave Arnold, Bear McCreary, Danny Elfman, Howard Shore, and James Horner.
I've been writing reviews for magazines from a very tender age, early teens, and one of my big triumphs was getting a review of the 1st Edition Warhammer game into the original Miniature Wargames magasine.
Wrote OHMU War Machine rules for TBA Games, which went bust.
I am married, no children, but I do have a lovely Godson and his sister to spoil.

3: Select 10-15 blogs who you think deserve this award.

When I went through my list of blogs I came up with 25 blogs that I thought deserve some recognition, but only 15 of them will be mentioned here today. In no particular order:

Trebian's Wargaming for Grownups; http://wargaming4grownups.blogspot.com

Eponymous The Welsham Writes blog; http://thewelshmanwrites.blogspot.com

Steven Satak's The Battletech Reader; http://battletechreader.blogspot.com

Robin Filton 's Gruntz; http://www.gruntz.biz

The eponymous Mistress of Minis blog; http://mistressofminis.blogspot.com

Steve Blease's Bleaseworld; http://bleaseworld.blogspot.com/

Mark Kinsey's Daddy's Little Men; http://daddyslittlemen.blogspot.com

Brian O'Leary's Irishserb's Miniatures Adventure; http://irishserb.blogspot.com

Donogh McCarthy's Land War in Asia; http://donoghmccarthy.blogspot.com

Dan Eastwood's Giant Battling Robots; http://giantbattlingrobots.blogspot.com

Ben Rome's One World at a Time; http://benhrome.wordpress.com

Reinwood's CBT Workbench; http://reinwood99.blogspot.com

Sydney Roundwood's Roundwood's World; http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com

Jon Yuengling's Lebanon 1982; http://lebanon1982.blogspot.com

Dan Dunbar's Gunner's Wargaming; http://gunnerswargamming.blogspot.com

4: Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award.

Done.

From Abstract to Generic Trees

2011-04-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

Back in my very first blog I posted I was painting some trees up for wargaming with. Here I am still painting trees, but after making what I called the "hero" trees for my Newten Town boards I'm no longer enthused by my earlier efforts. The trees on the above photograph now look very unsatisfactory to my eyes. I call them the abstract trees, because they are simple geometric tree like shapes, which are in no way representative of what a real tree looks like.

As a modeller, who wargames, the modelling aspect of the hobby is as important, if not more important to me than the gaming aspect. Mostly because I don't get to play as regularly as I did when I was young (teenager and early twenties being my definition of young). However, as I recounted previously the tree kits from Woodland Scenics come with a tacky-yucky glue that never quite sets. So I set my myself the task of finding an alternative glue that would grab the foam and secure it firmly. My hunch was that either matte gel medium, or Copydex latex glue would do the job, but which would be best?

First off I prepared forty Woodland Scenic tree armatures, just following the instructions in the packet i.e: remove tree base from tree armature, twist branches until you have a pleasing tree shape. Simple really. Above you can see the first twenty armatures ready to go.

First off I a tried the Copydex. Didn't like the brush that the container supplies, and it all felt a bit sloppy. Rather than just brush the glue on and dip into a bag of foam, instead I chose foam chunks and pushed them onto the armature one-by-one, and the results can be seen in the picture above.

I repeated the task with the next twenty trees using matte gel. Again I chose to push on suitable chunks of foam onto the armature at random. To me it felt easier to apply the matte gel, probably because I got to use a brush of my choice. However, the matte gel wasn't as "grabby" as the Copydex, but overall it all felt marginally easier to apply.

However, after allowing both sets of trees to dry overnight, I did my my twizzle test (take tree and hold upside down as you rotate the tree rapidly between fingers), which showed loose foam coming off the trees. Not catastrophic amounts, but enough that I thought a coat of matte medium would help pull all the foam together on the armatures and make the trees stiffer, and therefore easier to paint.

As the above picture shows while brushing on the matte medium yet more foam fell off. I kept the results for each tree set, and on the left is the foam that fell off the matte gel trees, while on the right is the foam that fell off the trees that I used Copydex to glue the foam on with. Clearly the Copydex is the overall winner for the task of attaching the foam to the tree armatures, because it grabs better, less falls off when twizzling, and one can brush on extra matte medium gel with minimum foam loss from being tugged at by the brush while doing so.

Palm trees next...

Salute 2011

2011-04-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

Another year, another Salute. I'm sufficiently old enough to remember Salute as being a lot smaller big show rather than the ginormous big show that it has grown into today. I had my advanced ticket and was going to go around the show with Trevor and his son Oliver, but sadly Oliver was too ill to come. Arrived nice and early and stood in the queue, and passed the time chatting to Trevor, looking through the goody bag and shooting the breeze. As always the queue was long and winding, but once the doors opened everything moved along at a fair pace.

One of the things I noticed this year was that there was a dearth of MechWarrior stuff for sale, probably because I bought it all last year! For me a wargame show is a chance to look at the wares, buy stuff I want and catch up with friends on the fly. This year was no exception to the rule. Met up with Martin Buxton, a friend who I play airsoft with who gave me box of 10mm building he no longer wanted (Fieldwork's out of production building to boot too). We then bumped into Graham with his new girlfriend Allessa (I'm guessing on the spelling). Missed out on bumping into another couple of friends I know were going, but hey it's a big show with lots of people milling around.

I didn't buy a lot of things on impulse, largely because I had made a large pre-paid order with Fieldwork's for what turned out to be three carrier bags full of building. I was lucky in that I scored their last examples of some buildings that are no longer in production, which was well pleasing. I also added four more new buildings that were released at the show to my swag bag. Had a chat with them about the current plans on expanding the range and upcoming stuff. There was a very nice re-issue of the Stalingrad GUM building in 15mm, which has now been re-sculpted to be moulded in three sections. That should make production easier for them (BTW no pictures of the new stuff as of yet on their site, so ask them what's new?).

I also spoke to Dave at Caliver Books while he grabbed a quick bite to eat. Again, I've known Dave for more years than I care to remember as we were all part of the Southend wargaming fraternity back in the day. I queried Dave about the Minifigs 10mm Vietnam models and he very helpfully confirmed that they are available to order via the website under the 12mm Modern banner. Doh! Well it's almost needless to say that I ordered Huey Hogs and Cobras when I got home. No excuse now, I've committed myself to Vietnam whole hog... gotta play Charlie Don't Surf don't cha know?

Said hello to Jon and Mel and the rest of the gang at the GZG stand, and then bumped into Alex Stewart (aka Sandy Mitchell), one of my oldest Southend friends who was relieved not to be signing books, and therefore able to get out for a bite to eat and a drink. He had brought Hesta, his daughter along, who also plays, though I must admit I hardly recognised her as she has grown so much in the last two years. It's good to see youngsters being exposed to the hobby though. I've promised to teach her how to paint next time we visit.

Bought some decals, from the QRF stand, for French tank markings (not actually going to be used on French tanks per se, rather on my SF French Foreign legion force instead), and three cans of the new spray weathering dies from another stand we passed. Also bought the latest issues of Battlegames and the relaunched Wargames Soldiers & Strategy. Then it was off to see the TooFat Lardies and play in a game of Terrible Sharp Sword, which is the ACW supplement for Sharp's Practice.

Rich Clark umpired the game, which introduced me to the underlying game mechanisms and and how they are used to play the game. I'll admit that I'm not an American Civil War fan. To sum up some very complex arguments into a pithy one liner: No tanks, No thanks.

Anyhow, I got to handle Lt. Justice T. Lovetrain's force who had been tasked to escort the lovely Confederate spy Miss Angel Delight off the field and to safety. Actually, I imagined myself as playing Miss Angel Delight whose job at hand was to give a tug in the right direction to Lt. Justice T. Lovetrain, and so achieve the victory conditions by escaping the clutches of the Damn Yankees who wanted to subvert the rights of citizens to be ruled by laws of their State, by imposing Federal control, thereby increasing taxes and lowering property values by undermining free trade and democracy... all said in my best Alabama accent of course.

The game was well, nay over subscribed with players, and rattled along at a reasonable pace. It was clear to me that the Yankee players were really into the whole deploy the troops and shoot at things, to the extent that that they actually fired at Miss Angel Delight's escort party. Falling back into my Alabama accent, they were clearly not gentlemen, and fools to boot, as their victory conditions were to capture Miss Angel Delight alive. Seriously though, the card turn sequence was interesting and I learnt some new ideas about how to play games, which I will now steal for my Mummerset campaign.

One observation I will make though. If this game is indicative of TooFat Lardies rulesets in general then I'm not surprised that Rich is finding it hard to get the right sort of reviews in the wargame magasine, as to my way of seeing things what I played was very much a role-playing skirmish game. It reminded me of the original D&D Chainmail, except the TFL books are better written, better produced and the game flows better too, but the look and feel is more RPG skirmish than traditional wargame. I also see that Rich has released Platoon Forward as a mini RPG campaign supplement. Perhaps he might consider doing a core mechanisms rule book and then period add on rules and market them as RPG skirmish rulesets?

After all this fun and excitement I was fair tuckered out by all the walking around and went home before the rush. Another year, another Salute, and I salute all those who made this show such a good time for one and all.

Trees 'Undreds of 'Em...

2011-04-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

To misquote Sir Michael Caine I have hundreds of the things to make and paint, as can be seen in the picture above (just shy of 700 in fact, with 340 palm trees recently added to the pile).

Above is a picture of some Woodland Scenics trees from their starter tree pack that I bought to try out. In the background of the picture are some Hornby tree armatures I got in a sale, which I have painted with texture paste so as to hide the the shape of the twisted wire armatures.

Initially I was quite impressed by the Woodland Scenics tree system, as the glue dries clear just as described, and is jolly good at picking up the clumped material provided in the pack. However, the next day I was less than impressed, because the tacky glue never quite dries and remains tacky, and yucky to handle.

For trees on a diorama, or for a train layout these would not be too bad. For a wargaming board where things have to be reasonably robust to stand up to handling, not so good as the trees will tend to stick to one's fingers and hands.

Huhm I thought, I know let's coat them in some matte medium. Bad move, do not repeat my mistake. Tacky-yucky glue will absorb water from the matte medium and lose its tackyness, resulting in virtually all the clumps of foliage falling off. Oh dear, it was going to be one of those days, you know the ones that are rich in learning opportunities.

So, I re-glued them and thought I will spray varnish on the trees to seal the glue and then I can paint them. Unfortunately, the foliage is not what I would call robust. As I dry brushed the trees the foliage wobbled and feels very unstable; as in the foliage is going to drop off again. Plan C is to dip, or bush good old matte medium all over the foliage, which will cause it all to go rather rigid. This is a good thing for a tree that will be used for wargaming.

More as I progress into the forest's dark heart...

Mummerset 03.27.11 Part 3: Battle of Elizabethville AAR

2011-04-08T11:24:00.000-07:00

The battle of Elizabethville was the second BattleTech game of the Mummerset campaign.

OPFOR Force Composition

Trevor was again the commanding the OPFOR with me as GM for this second game of the day. Trevor's force this time had four battlemechs, two jump infantry platoons, two standard infantry platoons, two mechanised infantry platoons (represented with mono-wheeled gyro bikes), and one power armour platoon, four towed artillery pieces and an armoured car, to deploy as he saw fit.

Urban Mech UM-R70P custom modified 3062 Inner Sphere tech tech worth 741 bv (move 2-3-2, armour 99 points, and 11 single heat sinks). Loadout 1 x Rotary AC5, 1 x ER medium laser, and 1 x ER small laser.

Rifleman RFL-PAC custom modified 3025 Inner Sphere tech worth 708 bv (move 4-6-0, armour 72 points, and 10 single heat sinks). Loadout 4 x Ultra AC2s.

ConstructionMech MOD-P custom modified 3132 industrial tech worth 332 bv (3-5-0, armour 48 points, and 1 single heat sink). Loadout 1 x SRM6, and 2 x lift hoists.

ConstructionMech MOD-P2 custom modified 3132 industrial tech worth 368 bv (3-5-0, armour 64 points, and 1 single heat sink). Loadout 1 x Light AC2, and 2 x lift hoists.

However, both the industrial mechs were played as notional mechs, as I hadn't remembered to print them out, but could remember roughly what their stats were (very roughly as I remembered the weapons wrong, and they were played as if one had an LRM5 and the other as an AC5, oops).

Force Anvil Composition

Clive was in nominally in command command of force Anvil, being the pilot of the Commando, while Susan piloted the Scorpion, and this time Dan controlled the four battle armour squads.

Commando 2C XP custom modified 3132 Clan tech worth 1067 bv (move 6-9-0, armour 86 points, and 10 double heat sinks). Loadout 2 x ER medium lasers, 1 x Streak SRM4, 1 x (Streak) LRM5, 1 x ER small laser, and (1 targeting computer). See notes in italic.

Scorpion 2C XP custom modified 3132 Clan tech worth 1763 bv (move 6-9-0, armour 192 points, and 10 double heat sinks). Loadout 1 x ER large lasers, 1 x ER medium laser, 1 x LRM5, 2 x SRM2, and 1 targeting computer.

The battle armour was two squad each of five Grey Death Scouts, and five Grey Death heavy suits. Dan also had the use of the Northern Lights infantry security platoon, which was deployed before the dropship left to go back and pick up force Anvil from Cromwell.

Inital Deployment

Trevor's orders were again to not lose his mechs, and as this was his second game he had quickly cottoned on to the fact that while he had a lot of stuff that looked very impressive as it swept onto the the battlefield, it was stuff that would in all likelihood die once engaged in combat.

Force Anvil moved to engage hostile forces that were heading towards the barracks of the the 3rd Royal Mummerset Guards where the dropship Northern Lights had landed them so that they could relieve Force Forge, which was under attack from rebel forces outside the palace at Elizabethville. As they moved out from the camp they came under immediate fire from hostile forces.

The above picture shows the game at the end of turn five. The players had deployed the Scorpion in the center, which meant that it dominated the main thoroughfare and slowed down the enemy advance.

The Urban mech was the first mech destroyed, after the Scorpion's second round of fire had hit with devastating effect with the right arm being blown off after the right torso was completely vaporised, which resulted in the Urban mech pilot ejecting.

Meanwhile one industrial mech on the players left flank had been rendered hors de combat by the Commando, after some dilly-dallying around that had caused the Commando 15 points of damage total, with a five point hit to the head. After beating the industrial mech to a pulp the Commando then swept up the left hand side to flank the remaining industrial mech.

Then the Scorpion went on to punch holes in the Rifleman, which then failed its piloting roll and promptly fell over causing more damage to itself. Unfortunately, for Susan, her Scorpion suffered a golden bb hit when Trevor rolled a double six on the critical hits tale after rolling a double one for the hit location. Fortunately, Susan's Scorpion only took two engine hits and one gyro hit from this event, otherwise her mech would have also been rendered hors de combat.

As can be seen from the above picture, placing the Scorpion on the central thoroughfare meant that Trevor's rebel force had to divide into two and come down both flanks. Well it didn't have to divide, but after the first round of fire hit the Urban mech to devastating effect, the rest of his forces strangely enough moved out of the Scorpion's line-of-sight.

During the mech part of the battle, Dan's battle armour and one infantry platoon had managed to roll up the rebel infantry platoons that they encountered, including ripping the armoured car to pieces with a close assault by a battle armour squad. Unfortunately, Dan's battle armour got a bit of a licking too, losing a total of four heavy and two light battle armour suits.

With the Scorpion severely damaged the players didn't fancy pursuing the enemy who had started to withdraw at this point. The game was called, with me as GM again declaring a Steiner victory as the purpose of the battel was to send the enemy dropship packing and identify the existence of hostile mechs. Seriously, this was a bloodbath with droves of rebel infantry being killed and downed mechs and the loss of the armoured car meaning that they would not to be able to effectively take control of the the 3rd Royal Guards barracks and armoury.

Note in Italics

Clive was to say the least really unlucky with his die rolls throughout this game, which caused him a certain amount of frustration to say the least. So I decided to retcon his mech stats slightly, hence the italics. I've changed out his Streak LRM launcher for a targeting computer as on the whole this will make hitting things generally easier. The in game rationale will be that when servicing his mech after the battle the technicians discovered that the computer programme controlling the mech had the wrong software for the actual hardware the mech was fitted with (though how no-one noticed this until now is another matter, I guess wrongly labeled parts?).

Just realised this is my 100th post. Permission to cheer loudly!

Mummerset 03.27.11 Part 2: Battle of Cromwell AAR

2011-04-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

The battle of Cromwell was the first BattleTech game of the Mummerset campaign.

OPFOR Force Composition

Trevor commanded the OPFOR with me as GM for this his first game of BattleTech. Trevor's force consisted of two battlemechs, one jump and one standard infantry platoon's, and four towed AC5 artillery pieces to deploy as he saw fit. He also had four smoke barrages from eight pre-registered artillery pieces that he could call upon.

Urban Mech 2C P custom modified 3132 Clan tech worth 1105 bv (move 3-5-3, armour 96 points, and 10 double heat sinks). Loadout 1 x Ultra AC10, 2 x ER medium lasers, and 2 x ER small lasers.

Jagermech JM6-P custom modified 3132 Inner Sphere tech worth 1230 bv (move 4-6-0, armour 128 points, and 10 double heat sinks). Loadout 2 x Ultra AC2s, 1 x LRM15, 2 x ER medium lasers, and 2 x ER small lasers.

Force Anvil Composition

Dan was nominally in command command of force Anvil, being the pilot of the Zeus, Susan notionally controlled the off board artillery battery (she wanted to watch and learn), while Clive controlled the two battle armour squads.

Zeus 2C XP custom modified 3132 Clan tech worth 2973 bv (move 4-6-4, armour 240 points, and 16 double heat sinks). Loadout 1 x ER PPC, 1 x LRM20 (with Artemis), 3 x ER medium lasers, 4 x ER small lasers, and 1 targeting computer.

The battle armour was one squad each of five Grey Death Scouts, and five Grey Death heavy suits.

Both the four GEVs and four self-propelled artillery pieces had notional stats, as the models were effectively off board throughout the game. Therefore the GEV missile carriers were treated as LRM20 launchers, while the self-propelled guns were Thumper artillery pieces (the smallest artillery caliber in BattleTech).

Inital Deployment

Trevor's orders were to not lose his mechs, and the players wanted to nail the Urban mech. Force Anvil entered the outskirts of the abandoned city of Cromwell and came under immediate fire from hostile forces that were hidden in various buildings. Dan strode the Zeus down the centre road giving fire support to his battle armour squads and destroying the enemy AC5 towed field artillery units.

The above picture shows the game at the end of turn three, and we can see the Urban mech retreating after one round of fire had hit itto devastating effect. Both sides offboard artillery barrages have been resolved and the Jagermech has decided it will leave the area under cover of the smoke barrage having done nothing more than threatening the VTOLS, which the players could not afford to lose therefore effectively denying them of the chance to do a coupe de main.

During the mech part of the battle, Clives's battle armour rolled over the rebel infantry platoons that they encountered, but lost a total of one heavy and one light battle armour suits while doing so. As he noted this may appear to be light casualties, but they are inherently not replaceable.

Trevor effectively lost three quarters of his infantry platoons and towed AC5 artillery pieces, there not being much left to extract after the barrages hit home.

Things have been difficult recently after my mother-in-law became ill and died last Friday, hence the delay in posting these AARs to the blog. Things may be a little slow for a while until after the funeral.

Mummerset 03.27.11 Part 1

2011-04-01T15:12:00.000-07:00

We met for our third Operation Sandbox game, which is set on the planet of Mummerset. The kick off for the actual miniatures on the table part of the day was delayed by three hours due to the need to prevent an Ikea shelving system from collapsing, and the need to feed ourselves at the end of this time. Fortunately, we had a new player turn up to join the game, Trevor, and this meant that I was able to fill him in on some of the background, with help from Clive, Dan and Susan.

To recap the end of the last session we were left with the team about to go on high alert for one week, with part of the forces aboard their orbiting dropship the Northern Lights. I used the power of GM fiat to rewind some time and revisit the preparations, and therefore add Trevor's character into the fabric of the campaign. Trevor got to play one of the NPCs that they had met at the May Ball during the last session; playing Colonel William Whales of the 3rd Royal Mummerset Regiment of Guards. This put Clive on edge who thought I was being trés evil and setting the team up with an informant to spill their plans etc., which turned out not be the case. My evil plans for the players are far more involved than simple stoogery.

However, Trevor did get to play the OPFOR, being the commander for what turned out to be two separate actions that would occur that day on Mummerset, playing two people who's call signs were "Billy Bob", and "Little Bill".

So the game kicked off at beginning of week 30 of the campaign, with a total of 12 weeks spent so far on the planet of Mummerset. Before the dropship went into the planned geostationary orbit the players were all briefed as to the current situation in Mummerset society from Queen Elizabeth "Bess" Burlington being admitted to Elizabethville Royal Infirmary after suffering what appeared to be a stroke in her frontal temporal lobe. The Royal Household official report is that she is in a stable, but critical condition, requiring surgical intervention. As a result of this illness H.R.H. Prince Albert Burlington heir to the throne was to be invested as King, having the full support of General Sir Thomas Briton who had been the Queen's biggest supporter during her rule.

After the faff of working through those details, we then went onto Captain Heidenheim's briefing on the possible landing paths the unknown dropship might take when landing on Mummerset; these boiled down to either a pro-grade, retrograde, or Polar orbit re-entry. The lack of aerospace assets available for the battalion rather limited the tactical options for the players. Fortunately, for the players, Trevor's 3rd Royal Mummerset Regiment of Guards allowed their plan to be refined and give them a back stop positions for worst case scenarios, and this force was given the operational name of Forge (to go with the theme of Hammer, Anvil and Tongs).

The game then kicked off with the detection of the arrival of a jump ship at the pirate drop point, which was detected at approximately 18:00 local time, just as the sun was setting and Mummerset was going into night. With the Northern Lights dropship running dark in geostationary orbit, it allowed the players to know the position of the enemy drop ship (from its engine flare), and Captain Heidenheim's crew were able to calculate that it would take 6 hours for the unknown dropship to enter Mummerset's atmosphere.

The tension was palpable as the final re-entry path of the unknown ship was revealed and the landing site it was heading for, which I think came as a surprise to the players, and yes it did create a conundrum for them as though they had planned for a ship to land and mechs not necessarily to come from it, the time and place created operational difficulties from having to transport part of their force by air to the landing site, which caused hours of delay. Hours that the crew of the dropship then had to unload whatever they had brought with them to the planet, and load whatever they were going to ship out with them in exchange.

The Scenario

At 03:00 Mummerset time the unknown dropship was detected entering the atmosphere of the planet using a Polar projectory, coming in over the North Polar region and setting down at the abandoned city of Cromwell, which use to be the major metropolis of Mummerset before the fall of the Star League. The dropship used the old airport facilities at Cromwell to land on, which of course hides the obvious disruption to the ground that would be cause had it landed in the open countryside.

The re-entry route meant that the Northern Lights could not do a simple drop descent onto the unknown's landing sight as it would be easily detected as it effectively spiraled down from geostationary orbit. The players had hoped that they could initiate a burn that would coincide with the other ships communication blackout during re-entry, but it was not to be. This of course meant that in all probability the other dropship would blast-off before the Northern Lights could land.

The players then discussed how to get the air transported elements of their force to Cromwell and how long this would take? They had five distinct elements to plan for. The first four were the scout helicopter squads that they had used to set up observation posts at likely routes the enemy could take to make a raid. This element of their forces were called Red Rovers. The first Red Rover chopper team would reach the outskirts of Cromwell by 06:15, with the second arriving an hour later. These would be the only units of the Red Rover elements that would play an effective part in the upcoming action.

Force Anvil (the airmobile element with the Zeus and four missile GEVs and two battle armour squads being transported by VTOLs and a heavy lift chopper), would arrive on the outskirts of Cromwell at 08:45. Following this rendezvous the Red Rovers were tasked with proceeding to the dropship landing site, in advance of force Anvil arrival to recon the site.

It took the the Red Rover team 45 minutes to traverse to the landing zone and spot the dropship where they came under fire from an unknown mech that had been hiding in the city at 09:15. One team landed their infantry on top of a building to act as observers and then the choppers withdrew to await the arrival of force Anvil. At 10:00 the Northern Lights lit up and descended from geostationary orbit arriving near force Anvil so as to combine the force Hammer assets (the Crusader and Scorpion mechs, four self propelled artillery pieces, four battle armour squads, and one infantry platoon) for the upcoming battle of Cromwell.

After coming out of re-entry blackout, the Northern Lights picked up a newsflash over the Mummerset broadcasting systems announcing that at 10:15 the motorcade transporting H.R.H Albert Burlington, along with General Sir Thomas Briton had been blown up by terrorist insurgents with both of them reported killed in the explosion. This put the cat amongst the pidgeons. Northern Lights lands at Cromwell at 10:27, and as predicted the unknown dropship (identified as a Manatee Class ballistic dropship as it left Mummerset) by the crew of the Northern Lights had lifted off taking advantage of the Northern Lights being in communication blackout during re-entry.

At this point the players decided that they would go ahead with unloading the self-propelled guns, but that they would take the Northern Lights up to Elizabethville, where a battle had started between the terrorist insurgents who were attacking the royal palace defended by Colonel Whales's 3rd Royal Mummerset Guards. it was felt that the arrival of the Northern Lights and two mechs would be a force multiplier in what was seen as the decisive engagement of the day (as the GM I was surprised by this decision, which would come back to haunt the players later).

So the Northern Lights carrying a reduced in size force Hammer took off at 10:30 and flew to Elizabethville to help Forge force under the command of Colonel Whales, while the reinforced force Anvil maneuvered towards the now vacated dropship landing site with the intent to engage with the enemy mech that had fired at the Red Rover scout choppers.

A Mission up the River

2011-04-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

Well here are some pictures of my progress towards making some more terrain boards to add to my collection, and it this case building upon my experience I gained from building the first two lots. My first attempt at building terrain boards and the resulting tutorial/diary that I posted about building the boards can be found here:

http://www.battletechuniverse.org/hpguplink/viewtopic.php?t=14272

As you can see, even back then in 2008 I was keen on making a riverine delta terrain board. While what I did was good, it has some limitations due to my assumptions about what I thought would work size wise for a river suitable figures between 6 and 15mm.

Also, as my skill increased from the the experience so my techniques evolved from the process of working of building 39 boards, and my most recent tutorial can be seen here:

http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=348.msg3299#msg3299

However, since then I have acquired some new tools, which have had a considerable impact on how I constructing the new set of boards.

These have to be the best foam cutting tools I've bought. Previous wire cutters being rather Heath Ronbinsonish affairs where the wire would break, and the power source required obscure battery sizes to run the tool. These one's from the Foam Factory actually work, doing exactly what they say on the packet. Not cheap though.

So above is the first stage of cutting the contour shapes for some hills that I wanted to add to the existing set I have, and give my terrain more flexibility in how I could lay it out. And below is how they looked after I had sculpted the contours using my new tools

As you can hopefully see from this I no longer have stepped contours that need to be filled with filler to get a smooth transition and slope for the models to stand on. Less filler means lighter boards that are still strong enough to stand on, if necessary.

Next up is a picture of a special board set against one of my standard large hills, which is mostly going to serve as my future backdrop for all the glamour photographs on my miniatures that I post on the forums. So it needs to be self contained and frame the models, providing a backdrop that needs to be built into the board. I have since added a piece to the back to achieve the latter goal. Fortuitously, I have been able to contour the board that it also serves as a functional wargame terrain piece, as well as a photographic studio set.

Finally, I started work on my riverine delta expansion set. As can be seen the rivers are much wider, nearly the full width of the boards in fact, but I've been able to sculpt some transition pieces that will allow these to be used with my original river boards too.

Obviously, still quite a way to go with these as I need to add texture with filler over the top of the foam contours I've sculpted. I also plan to spray them first before adding the filler to prevent the warping that occurred to my series one boards when I first started building terrain three years ago. This trick I discovered by a process of trial and error after spraying some town boards and noticing that they didn't warp. Spray car primer prevents kappa board from warping when wet.

So Vietnam riverine warfare here I come...

Newten Town 2 WIP

2011-03-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

I'm now working on some town boards for Operation Sandbox, and finally here are some work-in-progress pictures of the Newten Town, which will no doubt stand in for many towns on Mummerset. For some reason or another, doing these boards were a lot harder than the one's I did for Dunmarkeet in 15mm, and have proven to be a steep learning curve for me. Even though these are just pictures of work-in-progress I wanted to post them, just because really.

Next I'll start working on the grass areas to finish them off, and then I will have to start putting all the other junk to on them (like destroyed cars etc), and of course finish the trees too, unless I decide to go for that winter look?

Charlie's a Brewing

2011-03-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

I can imagine that some of you might be saying that I need to start another new period about as much as I need another hole in my head, or perhaps not? Maybe as typical wargamers you'll be thinking, cool what is she going to do next.

Vietnam

It has to be done as it is a favourite of mine, and I can actually blame my mum for this one, because she loved John Wayne movies and took me and my sister to see the Green Berets. And thus it began...

I'm planning on doing this is my new favourite scale of 10mm and I've been busy searching eBay for stuff, and redrawing the next set of riverine terrain boards that I plan to make. So all good now, except that I just need to clone myself so that I can finish all the stuff I have planned.

OGRE Six Command Post Zero

2011-03-12T13:54:00.000-08:00

The news is out SJG are going for a limited edition box set of OGRE 6ED with large hexes, 3D Ogres, buildings and all the trimmings. Estimated price $100.00. Yep, I shall be buying one, because the pleasure of having the new box set and playing with all the goodies will last longer than me remembering the price in years to come.

Of course, I have miniatures, I have loads of miniatures from the 1991 Ral-Partha release. I have a shoe box full of unopened blister packs too. With the release of a new set I might even be able to introduce people to the game, as lets be quite frank, while the original was cheap in a bag, the small plastic box sets convenient, everything was a little flimsy.

The new set will have card board maps and will a lot nicer game to look at. I might even be able to get people to play games with miniatures too. All win, and if not I will still have had the pleasure of buying and owning a new copy of the very first wargame I ever bought back in the day when I was young.

Mummerset 02.27.11 Part 3

2011-03-06T08:46:00.000-08:00

After all the planning we moved to the large scale maps and Clive and Dan really got into the alternative scenarios that could unfold. As a GM I was most impressed with how they sifted through the data and the conclusions they drew from it. Susan was a little left out of all of this, but by judicious use of role-play opportunities, during the "May Ball", I was able to keep her involved with developments within the game as it unfolded.

North Mummerset

The first thing the did players was compare and contrast their LOKI intel briefing they received in the Bolan system with the realities of actually being on Mummerset. As Clive said: "we thought this planet was under some sort of unified government, instead what we have is is one small region, which is split into a rich North and poor South", he was not amused.

In fact the players were serendipitously able to connect Devlin Stone's forces contact with this world, and the current situation they found himself in with I believe Dan saying: "so Devlin Stone's group came along, landed at the only spaceport on the planet, and condemned the rest of the worlds population by ignoring them", or words to that effect.

South Mummerset

The South of Mummerset appeared to consist of a few rather smaller, poorer towns and one city with the remains of long abandoned settlements. Historically the South had more settlements, because the weather was comparable to the South of France, whereas the North is generally colder and wetter.

During the "May Ball" the players were briefly introduced to Queen Elizabeth "Bess" Burlington ruler of Mummerset and her senior military supporter, General Sir Thomas Briton Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Mummerset Guards. Susan found herself the focus of the attention of the heir apparent, Albert Burlington, known to his close confidantes as "Bertie". Their exchange of pleasantries being quite limited due to cultural differences; Susan playing a Clanner to perfection as the heir apparent made a move on her, attracted by her formal Spirit Cat leather uniform. They also met Colonel Sir William Whales who commands the 1st Mummerset Royal Guards regiment, who exchanged pleasantries, with some vague promises of visits to each of the respective commands, and some joint exercises being arranged in the future.

The players also got to schmooze with débutantes, Dan getting some attention from the ladies who fancied an offworld mechwarrior as a dancing partner. Clive played disdainful disinterest to perfection to all of these going ons. During the party, drinks and interesting food on sticks etc., I was able to introduce the Prime Minister of Mummerset, the Right Honourable Rufus T. Marx and Mayor Chirico Marx of Clear Water Boring. The players quickly picked up that there were a series of families that basically ran Mummerset lock, stock and probably with two smoking barrels hidden away somewhere.

Obviously, the Steiner Diplomatic mission were at the ball too, and the players had a chance to talk to Duke Kelswa's attachés; Jane Johnson and David Bradford. The latter turning out to be a most useful person to know and all probability some sort of spy.

After the ball, the players got down to the meetings that the players wanted to go to, where they could ask the questions they needed to know answer too. First they went to see the Chief Constable of the Royal Mummerset Mounted Police, the Right Honourable Sir Allan Marx in his office at the RMMP HQ in Clear Water Boring, who offered them tea and biscuits and talked about law and order in Mummerset. After this they went to see the nearest regional commander, his office was down the corridor of the HQ, Sir Mark Kapp, whom they had a more productive chat with about setting up a hotline to liaise with the RMMP over any sightings of pirates landing on world. The didn't get to meet Sir John McDevitt of Elizabethville, or Sir Henry Bewley of New Cromwell RMMP district commands.

However, Kapp did arrange a pirate mech spotting hotline under the command of Captain Gordon Goodfellow. Our heroes visited him in the basement of the RMMP Clear Water Boring HQ, where they found him in charge of 20 filing cabinets, each with four draws, all full with the witness statements from every pirate raid over the last ten years. To say that paperless was not an adjective that could be used to describe the RMMP operations would be a slight understatement. Happy in-character hours passed by as the players researched the files.

After being slightly disheartened by all this info, the team went off to do some research in the library for a history of Mummerset. The very nice Head Librarian, Mavis Brandon, helped them through the intricacies of library coding and Rolodex indexes. After several hours in the library the players a better understanding of the five major wars that were fought over water and what had occurred before Devlin Stone's forces arrived on world. These wars are locally know the the Great Water Wars, with number five being called the Boring's War, which had resulted in the current ruling family taking power and start rebuilding Mummerset's infrastructure. Think Mad Max and you will get the picture of Mummerset's past troubles.

I then announced that two jumpships had appeared in system, and that two dropships were inbound. These were identified as merchantmen from the Rim World Coalition, RWCMS Forlorn Star and the Marion Hegemony MHMS Stella Prophet. After landing the merchantmen were inspected and found to be exactly what they said they were, regular merchant ships on their scheduled run to Mummerset. It was purely happen chance that both jumpships had arrived on the same day with each emerging at the opposite polar jump points.

However, shock horror probe, both the Forlorn Star and the Stella Prophet carried a diplomatic mission from their respective homeworlds with the aim of setting up permanent embassies on Mummerset. In addition, the Rim World Coalition had brought two industrial mechs with them to smooth over the trade deals, which "set the cat amongst the pidgeons". Fortunately, the Marian's only brought luxury goods and machine tools.

Later on the players discover, through the good office of David Bradford, that a 1000 tons of offworld cargo had gone missing in transit. The funny thing was that no one was complaining of lost cargo, but the second attaché had counted the number of wagons that left Landfall and had discovered a discrepancy in the paper work when he compared the number at the main marshalling yard at Clear Water Boring. He asked the players for a helicopter flight over the marshalling yards where newly painted wagons could be seen, and then asked to informally borrow their special forces scout team under Captain Bruce Gilmour. This would be for a plausibly deniable operation.

The result of the operation by the scout team was that they discovered that all the repainted wagons were empty and that no trace of the 1000 tons of cargo could be found in Clear Water Boring.

Finally, to bring the session to an end we played out the beginning of the second transient pirate jump point appearing, first being a no show obviously, and yes this time a jumpship did appear.

Mummerset 02.27.11 Part 2

2011-03-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

As you can see this map below has an area marked that could be viewed in more detail. However, we began by looking at the general area and the players noted the large number of apparently abandoned settlements, ranging from small villages up to several large cities. The enormity of the task ahead did not phase my players, who got stuck in and started sifting through the data, and asking questions of me for clarification of things they didn't understand. I was able to then make a list of all the appropriate people they needed to talk to onworld.

Mummerset Area of Operations

The time just flew by as the various options were discussed and force allocation plans were made. The players had to deal with the reality that they would most likely have to deploy in two groups as heavy lift was at a premium, and given the operational necessity of having assets combat ready, rather than packed up efficiently in packing cases.

The following alert levels, rules of engagement, mission task organisation, and operational plans were formulated by the players.

Alert Levels

1. Normal

2. Pirate jump point active

3. Dropship inbound

4. Enemy battlemech sighted

5. Receiving fire

Rules of Engagement

Level1: Do not shoot. If fired upon use a proportionate response with warning shots

Level 2: All leave cancelled, elective maintenance only,force on standby

Level 3: High alert, force deployment preparation 30 minutes

Level 4: Deploy, weapons free fire on enemy

Level 5: All targets weapon free-fire zone

Mission Organisation

The players planned to deploy infantry as observation posts at four likely routes that the enemy might use to hit their designated targets. Observations posts would be set up at Oldtown, Firston, Midville and Forest town.

Observation Posts

One platoon of infantry

Four scout VTOLs

The actual forces that would be used for fighting were split into three groups code named Hammer, Anvil and Tongs.

Hammer

Two battlemechs (Scorpion and Commando)

Two squads light battle armour

Two squads heavy battle armour

One artillery battery (four tubes)

One platoon infantry (security for dropship)

One dropship (Northern Lights)

Anvil

One battlemech (Zeus)

One squad light battle armour

One squad heavy battle armour

One platoon of four GEV LRM carriers

One Heavy lift helicopter

Four medium lift VTOLs

Tongs (Reserves)

One squad light battle armour

One squad heavy battle armour

One platoon of four light tanks

Two platoons infantry

Plan A

The consensus was that the players wanted to prevent the enemy mech from returning to its dropship, and force the dropship to leave without it. Hammer would be used to deal with the mech, while Anvil dealt with the dropship. The observation posts would monitor key routes to likely targets and report in if they saw enemy movement.

This plan would pretty much end any further pirate raids, on the basis that Mummerset would be no longer seen as easy pickings.

Plan B

If it turns out that the pirates are more numerous, or better equipped than the intel suggested, then after the deployment of Hammer and Anvil, the VTOLs would be sent back to pick up Tongs the slower assets, which can then be deployed as necessary to stiffen the main attack.

Mummerset 02.27.11 Part 1

2011-03-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

Mummerset

Our intrepid heroes returned to Mummerset for the second day of gaming in my Operation Sandbox Campaign. The first thing I did was orientate them to the progress of time in game, and calculated that we had reach week 20, which allowed me to announce that the Royal Mummerset May Ball was due where all the débutantes would be presented at court. Of course the players would be expected to go in full dress uniforms to fly the flag. However, they were keen to get into the operational planning and analysis of all the data that they had requested at the end of the last game. So I started them with the map you can see above (all the maps are clickable for larger views).

This had been compiled from the orbital satellite imagery they had and the questions started as various points were noted. They were disappointed to find that the scout Captain, the very nice special forces, Bruce Gilmour couldn't find the site where the pirates were landing their dropship, but when he described the enormity of the task it was not very surprising really. His summary was that there were a large number of suitable sites and nothing obvious had been spotted.

The players then got the report from Captain Franz Heidhenheim of the Northern Lights that the both jump satellites had been check and nothing untoward had been found, like for instance tampering, or malicious code. He had even downloaded the logs of the satellites. This was a useful thing to have done because it revealed that a far larger number of jumpships were passing through the Mummerset system each year than the players thought from their original briefing.

Over the last ten years a 118 ships had come to the Mummerset system, which was nearly 12 a year, or an average of once a month. A far larger number than the two ships a year that the LOKI intelligence briefing had suggested. In all fairness to LOKI, they had only been following Lyran trade ships that were registering flight plans, but even so though had underestimated these by about 50% too as there are two different Lyran merchant jumpships coming to Mummerset.

The most regular ships coming and going were the Lyran merchantmen, but the records showed two different Marik ships, two Marian Hegemony traders, a Rim World Coalition and one visit by a Magistry of Canopus vessel too. Worryingly there were 20 unidentified jumps into the system by ships who had switched off their IFF beacons, making their identification impossible.

The biggest bombshell for the players was being told that due to Mummerset having four moons that there was an oscillating temporary pirate jump point that appeared roughly every six weeks that was about six hours transit time out from the planet. We then zoomed into the regional map below and the intel discussion continued.

Mud and Blood WW1 WIP 3

2011-02-13T06:35:00.000-08:00

It has been quite some time since I posted anything about my Too Fat Lardies games Through the Mud and the Blood WW1 project, which I started in a fit of enthusiasm, but then I lost sight of the models, and as a result progress ground to a halt. As a metaphor for WW1 this is very fitting. Well, except that in this case "lost sight" was only in the sense that they were sitting on the shelf waiting to be painted and I did nothing with them. Well Saturday I was inspired to get them out and start working on them again (I know I was distracted from working on my Spirit of Steiner force, but as I have said before, I'm like a butterfly who flutters from one thing to the next).

I realised that I wasn't totally happy with the way my British Tommies had turned out, as I had tonally transposed the uniform and webbing colours. So I set about rectifying this by an application of Games Workshop's Thraka green wash that did a good job of correcting this problem. However, while that corrected the uniform I still had to repaint the webbing. I've started on this used Catachan green for the dark tone, and will probably use a light khaki for the highlight on the webbing. Here is a WIP picture.

Of course once I started repainting the core of my first company I just had to look at the remaining infantry and work out what figures I needed to complete the formation. Fortunately, I had actually bought most of the necessary figures some time ago, but I had just slipped them into a shoebox until such time as I felt ready to continue painting up my British force again. Another out of sight, out of mind moment. Anyway the above picture shows the core of the four platoons my British company will have, the actual formation will be organised as follows:

Four Section Platoon
Seven man rifle section
Seven man rifle grenade section
Seven man bomber section
Ten man Lewis gun section with two Lewis guns
A Lieutenant and senior Sergeant lead the platoon

You can see the bags I sorted through to finish of the various sections in the picture below.

I intend to field four platoons and as you can see from the picture, add a mortar and HMG sections, with an artillery battery for support. Additional forces will include a troop of cavalry, some Whippet tanks, and of course the iconic MkIV and MkV tanks.

If my Tommies were a little unloved, my Germans were languishing even more from a lack of attention. So I got my notebook out and started sorting out the figures to complete my late war German company.

The company will consist of five platoons, or zugs as they were called by the Germans. Being this is a late war force I'm basing my formation on one that is cited in Too Fat Lardies games Through the Mud and the Blood rules.

The company will consist of three kampfzuge (battle groups), each with two zugs. The first and second kampfzuge will each have two zugs consisting of two 11 man einhets gruppes (standard squads), while the third kampfzuge will have two 16 man einhets gruppe.

Zug with two 11 man einhets gruppes
Seven man rifle squad
Four man squad with one LMG
A korporal schaften will command

Zug with two 16 man einhets gruppes
Eight man rifle squad
Eight man squad with two LMGs
A korporal schaften will command

Supporting the kampfzuge will be three squads of stossgruppe (stormtroopers). Two squads will have eight riflemen, while one squad will have ten men with two LMGs. As I like vehicles and want tanks for the Germans too, I will also add an assault stossgruppe consisting of one eight man bomber squad and an eight man pioneer squad with two, two man flame thrower teams to support the AFV7 and other captured tanks I intend to field when using this force in the offensive role.

Compared to the British company organisation, the German force just did my head in as I worked through it. Probably down to the names and the fact that the organisation was left to local commanders discression, which results in very mission orientated task organisation, but by the late war the Germans were struggling to hold the line, so it all looks a little ad hoc.

Another thing I've noticed is that the organisations here are very telling about the psychology of the factions and the inherent prejudices that both had about what made for good operational doctrine. Ultimately wars are won through logistics, not tactics and WW1 was a good predictor of the outcome for WW2, though that is largely down to 20:20 hindsight on my part.

Spirit of Steiner Delta Battalion

2011-02-12T13:07:00.000-08:00

I thought it might be useful to reprise the evolving task organisation that my players have come up with. Delta battalion's HQ & HQ company has the following:

HQ Section

1 HQ AFV and 1 light utility vehicle, which is pretty much the minimum, but in keeping with the lean, mean fighting machine from post Jihad scarcity.

Staff section: 1 light utility vehicle for Personnel, Operations, Supply, CA, and GRU staff functions (all drawn from other areas as needed).

Supply platoon: 2 utility choppers.

Maintenance platoon: 1 recovery chopper, 1 fitter's vehicle, and 1 contact team.

Medical platoon: 1 MASH unit (local vehicles to be acquired).

Air-Defense Platoon (no dedicated units available).

Combat Engineer Section (no dedicated units available).

Scout Platoon (1 VTOL Scout/Sniper team).

Fire-Support Battery (4 artillery units).

Most of this is down to what models I have to hand, and the desire to limit the players as much as possible to following a combined arms route for the campaign. I'm using a lot of Mechwarrior vehicles as well as infantry to make up this force, as I've been converted to the idea of using 10mm infantry with standard Battletech mechs, which are supposedly 1/300th scale, but are larger than scale. I like the fact that using 10mm infantry makes the mechs look smaller, and to me more "real", or at least real to the descriptions in the novels and sourcebooks where they are describes as ranging from 30 to 40 feet high.

Combat Force

Armor Company: 2 platoons (with 4 AFVs each).

Battlemech Company: 1 lance (consisting of 4 battlemechs).
Battle Armor Company (Infantry): 2 platoons (with 4 Squads of 4 BA in each)

I've been painting up the battle armour platoons, but this has been a case of two steps forward and one step back. I got them done, but I hadn't cleaned the flashing off them sufficiently so in my eyes they looked rough. I then spent a couple of sessions on the work bench filing off the flash, resulting in the need to re-prime them black etc. However, I've now started painting them again, and with a bit of luck they will be ready in time for the next game session.

Support Forces

Combat Aviation (4 scout VTOLs and 4 utility VTOLs)

I'm using the Mechwarrior Skadia and Cardinal VTOLs, but it is highly unlikely that I will be able to get them repainted in time for the next game. I'm very taken by the looks of these models, which bear a striking resemblance to the VTOLs in Avatar, but of course predate the film by several years.

Colossus Class Tripeds

2011-02-06T01:34:00.000-08:00

Usually when I put up a picture, like these MechWarrior Colossus Class mechs, I tend to chat about the models, which I will, but this time I will also be going off on a tangent. So no change there then I hear you all say!

For the Classic Battletech players these models epitomise all that was wrong about MechWarrior. First they are tripods and how silly is that? Second it was just another example of how Whiz Kids were just running roughshod over all that was sacred in Battletech by breaking the construction rules. Third, MechWarrior was a game with stupid clicky bases and silly rules.

Anyway Whiz Kids produced four variants of the Colossus class mechs. My two favourites were the the blue Poseidon and orange and red Ares variants. I especially like the Ares, as the colour scheme really appeals to me, maybe because it looks like camo for a hot dessert environment (sic after the event obviously one with jam and orange in it)? Anyway, I stole the idea and modified it slightly as the basis for my Republic of the Sphere units BattleTech scale mechs I've painted, which will no doubt get a blog entry of their own in due course.

Anyway, I liked the Ares so much I decided I would have to make a BattleTech scale one, and I've been working on scratch building one for a while now. The trouble is time. I, like everyone else, am really busy everyday that ends in a Y, and I have so much to work on in my spare time that there really isn't enough hours in the day to do everything I want.

So I like everyone else tends to prioritise what has to be done, or needs to be done first. In this case making and painting models for my Operation Sandbox campaign. However, as I mentioned previously, during the first game we talked about the Colossus mechs as part of the game, and this happened because I had my model of this mech on my work bench.

Operation Sandbox 01.22.11

2011-01-24T11:29:00.000-08:00

Saturday was the first free-form role-playing session for a BattleTech inspired campaign, which ran from 12.00 to 19.45 hundred hours, with breaks for refreshments. Feedback so far has been largely positive. Some surprise about how free-form the role-playing was, and how a large part of the day turned into a staff officers planning session. However, each of the players got what they asked for e.g: plan the force, work on doctrine and develop a character.

Our Heroes

1st Leutnant Thomas Green (Dan), playing a newly graduated mechwarrior from Nagelring passing out in the top ten of his class, and that he his the great nephew of the late Lt. General Thomas Hogarth. He was pleased to be assigned a very nice Zeus, family connections don't you know.

Leutnant Alice Pawser (Susan), playing a Spirit Cat freebirth mechwarrior who had enlisted with House Steiner as part of her vision quest, and had brought a Clan second line Scorpion with her.

Finally, Leutnant Magnus Magnusson (Clive) playing the oldest Leutnant in the Lyran Armed Forces at age 61. His backstory has something to do with taking the fall for an an embarrassing operational failure when his unit was ordered by a social general to a task that they failed to complete with appalling loss of life.

The Beginning

The game started with Dan and Clive arriving at Camp Beaumont of the world of Bolan in the year 3134, assigned to report for duty in the "Spirit of Steiner" 1st 4444 Doctrinal RCT, which they soon discovered was a showpiece regiment run by Colonel Jamie Tasker (played by me, there again I played all the NPCs in this game), and introduce to her XO Lt. Colonel Henry J. Thompson, and Hauptmann-Kommandant Arnold Renquist. They were then orientated to the camp and went to see their mechs and meet the tech crew etc.

Susan's character had been with the regiment since its formation, so she was not initially involved with this part of the game (this was done because she was not able to come until later). When she arrived we moved on the regimental officers meeting. The agenda included introducing the command team, welcoming the new officers (so they got to say a bit about their characters), current orders, reviewing the TOE, upcoming events, and mission order warning.

I then explained that the regiment was designed around a new operational doctrine of four battalions, each with four company's, of four lances with four mechs, vehicles, or infantry platoons. This creates a regiment with 67 mechs, 67 ground vehicles, 16 battle armour and 16 infantry platoons. However, after this presentation they were all informed that doctrinal changes meant that only 8 battle armour platoons would now be allocated to the regiment.

Then they got the real bad news and found that while the TOE specified all of the above the reality was that the number of vehicles were a minimum of 20% down, and 75% down when it came to the battlemechs. I then ran a "mission task organisation" game, where the players got discuss at great length how they were going to allocate what to each battalion. As the GM, I got to play all the senior staff, and put limits on what the players could request by providing the bigger picture.

What we ended up with were four close to "Dark Age cannon" battalion combat teams, where theirs (delta) ended up serendipitously as the "recce" force of the regiment; with appropriate assets to support the players battlemechs. At this point Susan's character was in Alpha battalion, which had become the default assault battalion. This kept her on the sidelines throughout this phase of the game, which wasn't on hindsight a great way to handle her character. It wouldn't have been so bad if things had gone a little faster, but these things set their own pace.

Anyway, after the regimental officers meeting we went on to planning delta battalion's chain of command. Then to leaven the session I ran a regimental dinner to celebrate the first anniversary of the formation of the unit. The players got to schmooze with other officers (me in multiple roles) and talk about breaking news and reports of things like the Colossus class assault mechs, amongst other things. Much fun for me playing the different officers they met, and jollity getting them to think up after dinner party games to play and working out the results of same etc.

The mission orders finally came when Lt. General Winters arrived to review the regiment. A "dog and pony" show was organised for him and the regiment ran its annual Thomas Hogarth day too. We then got back to the plot to discuss the following orders:

1. Form a training cadre to Remain on Bolan at Camp Beaumont so as to bring the regiment up to full strength.

2. Prepare the regiment to deploy in the pre-emptive counter-strike that was planned to counter a supposed House Marik plan to attack across the border, which Steiner intelligence operatives had uncovered (real story in Fire at Will by Blaine Lee Pardoe).

3. Fly the Flag for a Steiner trade Delegation that was going to a world where "pirates" had been raiding on some backwater world.

The players got to review the regimental allocation of assets for these missions, and I gave them the opportunity to present a valid case for whatever mission they decided to choose. Obviously, the training cadre might be boring, or not as the case may be. The assault would require recce assets, and as the recce battalion they were probably the best fit for the trade delegation and anti-piracy operation.

The players chose the trade delegation and anti-piracy mission as being the one they wanted to go on. It was at this point in the game that their very nice Hauptmann Lester, Delta battalion CO had a live fire training accident, which meant he couldn't go. A quick transfer of Susan from Alpha battalion to make up their numbers and one step up brevet promotions all round sorted that out for our valiant heroes.

Journey

They set off to the jump point in their Aurora class drop ship "Northern Lights" with a full combat load of all the gear for their battalion. This required breaking down all the vehicles and boxing them up, and only keeping the mechs ready for immediate deployment on arrival. The journey would take six weeks, with a jump each week, with the Steiner trade delegation travelling on a private civilian drop ship, and other drop ships joining and leaving the jumpship as it made its way to the Mummerset system.

Intel briefing and stuff occurred during this phase with the players trying to get as much extra intel as they could from the trade delegation to supplement what they already knew. The information they gleaned confirmed that Mummerset had fallen off the maps during the 3rd Succession War, and only been rediscovered in 3085. A mission, at the end of the Jihad, that was hunting down Word of Blake units rediscovered the the lost world.

The Planet of Mummerset was water poor (lots of heavy metal contamination, with a population of 60 million people (approximately). Currently ruled by a democratic-monarchy, under Queen Elizabeth "Bess" Burlington with a Prime Minister and City Mayors forming a parliament. The biggest city was called Clear Water Boring, the spaceport was named Landfall and the second biggest city New Cromwell. The capital of Mummerset is called Elizabethville. Two major mining sites, North of the main population, called South Fork and North Fork were the main reason for the trade delegation's visit, as there were rich deposits of boron in the area being worked by the Royal Mumerset Boron Company. Over the last 10 years the planet had been harassed by pirate raids, which came and hit random settlements, stealing anything not bolted down and taking people.

The trade delegation were going to Mummerset to sign contracts for boron and provide industrial mechs to the Kingdom. Our heroes were there to fly the flag, look shiny and if at all possible eliminate the pirate threat. The players were informed by Alex Kelswa, head of the trade delegation, to not "screw the pooch", and that this was not an opportunity for a jingoistic military jaunt to shoot up people and lower property values. They were also informed that the "pirates' may be backed by the Circinus Federation (a former pirate kingdom become respectable over the last 100 plus years), and that ultimately House Steiner didn't want to become embroiled in a military conflict with other powers. However, the planet had to be kept in the Steiner sphere of influence for the boron trade.

Deployment

After arrival deployment all went smoothly, in spite of the player's worse paranoid fears. I even railroaded them to have the infantry deploy from the dropship playing bagpipes, as the men had brought them along and were eager to impress the locals. Landfall spaceport turned out to be two landing pads and a bunch of wharehouses for boron and other goods, plus a village for the local small support staff community. So the players ended up spending most of the time organising the unloading of the dropship and over seeing the reassembly of their vehicle assets, before sending the drop ship Northern Lights to check out the jump point detector satellites, as they suspected the pirates may have suborned the system.

They then got an over view of the area around Landfall, with me drawing out a map, and getting local information about the pirate raids from the Royal Mummerset Mounted Police. No landing site had been discovered, though to be honest the locals hadn't bothered to look for one, but they did corroborate the story of twice yearly raids. The pirates took stuff and people were reported as missing, presumed taken as slaves during these raids. Each time the raid would be headed by a mech, which from photographs taken by fleeing citizens, seemed to show an Urbanmech model battlemech.

The players after seeing the rough map, came to the conclusion that they didn't have enough assets to do more than mount a ready response force of about one third of their total assets, given the area that the raids had occurred over (400,000 square miles). meantime the trade delegation was busy schmoozing Queen Bess, the Prime Minister of Mumerset, and the Mayor of Clear Water Boring, having brought industrial mechs to sweeten the trade deal. The players managed to make field expedient quarters at Landfall where the drop ship would have to be hidden, and better quarters at the Clear Water Boring Barracks where the 1st Royal Mummerset Guards were housed.

Summary

The world was pretty much what their intel had suggested it would be. One major population area of 400,000 square miles with approximately 6 to 10 million people spread across three major cities, an unknown number of minor towns and villages.

The planet military consists of the first, second and third Royal Guards regiments, which are rotated between Clear Water Boring, Elizabethville and New Cromwell, and three Mummerset militia regiments that are local to the three major cities and outlying towns and villages. The military is parceled out in small garrisons across the kingdom, with the Royal Guards being rotated through each region, thereby gaining local knowledge and flying the flag for Queen Bess.

The pirates seem to be a marginal operation at best, and all the players have to do is not muck it up. More in a month when the dread pirates will no doubt make an appearance, somewhere in the kingdom.

Spirit of Steiner 1st 4444 Doctrine RCT

2011-01-19T03:42:00.000-08:00

After 18 years I'm starting a new campaign and I'm so excited. This coming Saturday sees the first session where myself and three friends will sit down and plan the first actions that they want to take in the campaign, which is going under the name of Operation Sandbox.

The Regimental Combat Team (RCT) Table of Organisation & Equipment (TO&E) will show that the intent is for the force to be organised with four battalions, each consisting in turn of four companys, each having four platoons, and so on. The reality will be the RCT is severely understrength and the players will be attending a regimental staff meeting to be informed of the changes necessary so as to be able to field Mission Task Organisation (MTO). All of this stuff I've gleaned from hanging out with people in the know.

Big call out to all the contributors on the Faction Formations after 3120 thread, here:

http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=76651.0

Especially, Matt (aka Charlie_6) for his comments on choosing the decisive element of a command, and also to Failure_16 for his Faction-Generic Combat Command list:

Force Headquarters & Headquarters Company (x1)

Headquarters Section (2-4 BattleMechs or AFVs as appropriate, 2-3 HQ AFVs, 4-5 Light Utility Vehicles)
Staff Section (8-10 Light Utility Vehicles and staff members for Personnel, Operations, Supply, CA, and GRU functions)
Supply Platoon (18-20 Medium/Heavy Utility Vehicles)
Maintenance Platoon (3-6 Recovery Vehicles, 4 Fitter Vehicles, 4 Contact Teams)
Medical Platoon (3-6 Ambulances, 1 MASH)
Air-Defense Platoon (3-6 Air-Defense Elements)
Combat Engineer Section (2 each CEVs, ARVs, APCs, Supply Trucks, Sapper Squads)
Scout Platoon (4-6 Skimmer-Mounted Scout/Sniper teams)
Fire-Support Battery (3-6 FS-capable elements)

• Armor Company (x1) - Complementing Battlemech Company below

Armor Platoon (x3 with 4/6 AFVs each)

• Battlemech Company (x1) - Complementing Armor Company above

Battlemech Lance (x3 with 3/4 Battlemechs each)

• Infantry Company (Battle Armor)

Infantry (BA) Platoon (x3 or 4 with 4 Squads BA each)

• Potential Support Forces

Combat Aviation (Close-Air Support or VTOLs as appropriate/available)
Infantry (Conventional) Platoon or company (including airmobile/motor/mech assets if available)
Additional Reconnaissance, Combat Engineer, Fire-Support, and Military Police Elements as required by mission

So, I'll be using the above to guide the players into thinking how they will form their force, and the harsh realities of fighting in the year 3135. I like the whole new Dark age vibe, but now it can have added new tech, which is always exciting for the players.

I'm still working on the names of the major non-player characters for this game and other stuff. Finally, wow has this project got all my creative juices flowing, and here is a picture of just some of the mechs that are coming out of the PiP chop shops; all classic unseen mechs from the Macross anime show that Battletech used back in the days under FASA.

House Liao & Bannson's Raiders

2011-01-15T04:02:00.000-08:00

Been busy doing nothing, but busy all the same this last week what with health checks and arranging stuff to go back to work after being ill for so long. The good news is that I've been building and painting stuff and working on a new campaign, which will start next week.

I've therefore been thinking about how to run the campaign and decided that it will be quite free flowing and use various rule sets to portray different aspects of the game that the players will find themselves facing. So, for the really big battles I will be using MechWarrior Clix. It is a quick system that allows one to play out medium size actions, say up to a Battalion's worth of mechs, vehicles and infantry etc on the table. Fortunately over the last year I've built up quite a collection of clix models.

At the start of this piece are a few of my Brannson's Raiders, a mercenary unit that has connections with House Liao. I have a full Company of mechs with supporting forces to go with them.

Above is a picture of some of my House Liao mechs, and again I have substantial numbers of mechs and support forces for them. That is one of the things I love about the MechWarrior Clix game system, you can put a lot down on the table and just get on with getting it on. The funny thing is though, that it's highly unlikely that the players in my campaign will have to face these guys, but you never know when you have an open ended campaign where the players get to make their own sandcastles in the sandbox.

Happy New Year from Paint it Pink

2011-01-01T04:42:00.000-08:00

As it says, I do hope that you all had a good night of celebrations to welcome in the new year last night.

Here I sit, after eating and drinking too much, feeling rather full while catching up with blogs and posts on the forums. For my avid Battletech readers I recommend checking this video out on TED.

Remember the first rule of the Cabal is that we don't talk about the Cabal.

The second rule of the Cabal is that it's all about Chunky Salsa. :-)

The third rule is that what happens in the Cabal, stays in the Cabal.

Okay, enough of that amusement. :-)

Plans, I have a few. They mostly involve doing what I enjoy as much as possible fitted around the real necessity of having to work to make ends meets. Oh to be independently wealthy.

So, just bought the cards I need to play Charlie Don't Surf and Through the Mud and the Blood from TooFat Lardies. As I don't have any Vietnam figures I guess that I will be buying some 10mm stuff from Pendraken at Salute this year. Please don't mention the fact that I have unpainted Spanish Civil War armies to start, and that I've yet to finish my WW1 forces.

Got to build more terrain too, and finish my town boards being a priority project so that I can play games in my planned Battletech campaign for one.

Got to find time to paint more AK47R stuff, as the town boards are an ideal setting for my Mogadishu: Dunmarkeet District ideas based on Black Hawk Down.

As always, so much to do, so little time to do it all in.

Battletech 2.5: Manifesto Tight & Fast

2010-12-28T02:21:00.000-08:00

Since I started discussing on this blog the problems that I have with some of the game mechanisms of BattleTech, my favourite wargame in the whole wide world ever, I have become more focused on how to address my need to tinker? Realistically, there is no way that CGL would rewrite the core BattleTech rules to satisfy me. I'm under no illusion about this.

I also think that any house rules that I write will always been seen as something that stays in any group I play or communicate with. At best one might get a general consensus that some idea is worth adding to a game, but not everyone is going to agree, especially those that prefer to play the rules as written on the tablets brought down from CGL on high.

So where does that leave me? What I want is a true quick play version of BattleTech.

Well, I've decided that instead of trying to rewrite the BattleTech rules, hubris and arrogance beyond belief really for one person to attempt, I would instead try and write an introductory quick play version of the rules instead.

The reason for this choice is that I think that the current quick play rules for BattleTech that come in the starter set cut too much out, and that the quick strike variant rules for BattleteForce are conceptually not BattleTech, but a higher level game. that creates its own niché within the CGL product line; an alternative game to play, rather than a rewrite of the core rules. So now I need to set the agenda for this project, my six point manifesto is as follows:

1. These rules will not be a top down rewrite, but a bottom up process, so as not to conflict with the BattleTech's overall approach.

2. Must look like BattleTech e.g: record sheets must be similar even if simplified.

3. Must feel like BattleTech i.e: initiative, target to hit and location rolls, even if the charts are changed.

4. Must be compatible with all pregenerated units designs that exists now, or may be introduced later by following the current construction rules in full.

5. The rules must allow two players to be able to control six units each, and play four turns an hour minimum, and ideally up to twelve units each.

6. Speed of play scales consistently up to six players and six units each indicated by no less than three turns per hour i.e: BattleTech tends to slow logarithmically as the number of players and units increase, while these rules will be designed to slow proportionally as game friction increases.

Of course now I've got to go and write this, but how hard can it be?

Oh I've just noticed that I've hit the 10,000 views. Thank you all for taking the time to read my blog.

Xmas Blog 2011

2010-12-25T03:52:00.000-08:00

May I wish festive Xmas greetings to all the readers of this blog of mine. I hope that you are having, or had a good one this year.

Listening to Kate Bush as I type this blog, after the present opening frenzy earlier. Goose is being dealt with and we have a day of TV highlights to watch, including Dr. Who. Got a bunch of things I wanted, plus a couple of surprises.

You all have a great time now and see you all on the bounce...

BattleTech 2.3.1: The BattleTech Reader

2010-12-15T01:40:00.000-08:00

A riposté to The BattleTech Reader post here:

http://battletechreader.blogspot.com/2010/12/sweet-looking-tank-and-another-response.html

As always Steve's awesomeness in spending his time to think about this stuff amazes me.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=awesomeness
:-)

Moving on rapidly from evolving language jokes, to the meat of the post.

Even Bigger 'Mechs

Steve’s reply: What players choose to field is going to be limited not by what the company provides in the way of ‘canon’ designs, but what the rules support... I know will not start churning out 400 ton machines just because they found a nifty set of add-on rules for it out on the net [snip].

You are absolutely right on this account.

Steve’s reply: First, the game has been tweaked and balanced to accommodate ‘Mechs and other machines of the current tonnage range [snip].

I agree again, but will add the caveat that the balance in the force (game mechanics) can be restored, there is still hope in the galaxy.

Steve’s reply: Second, who wants to allow such a beast in a game that is supposed to be over in hours?... The Ares is interesting and yes, cool, but only time will tell whether or not there will be rules to permit such a machine... I wonder if they are even going to bother with a set of rules for what is, admittedly, the only example of a +100 ton machine in the game – and which came from a spin-off game at that. It sets a precedent for something quite unpleasant to consider – the complete overhaul of a good portion of the TW rules. And once a foot has been wedged in that door, only God knows how and when they’ll get it shut again.

Not my call and the rules for the Ares have been announced as in the works. I think you are being to pessimistic here. YMMV.

Steve’s reply: Finally, controlling the background setting of BattleTech is what keeps it BattleTech and also something they can put up for sale in the shops. Would you have them hand everything over to us (ugh!) fanfic writers? We’re a pretty shady lot. Someone has to set the limits, after all. Why not the folks who have the license and practically invented the game as we know it?

Why not, but as many people have pointed out, just because you own the license to the game, doesn't mean what one writes will not unbalance the game?

Quad 'Mechs

Steve’s reply: [snip] I think that the idea behind leaving turrets off the standard quad is intentional. It is in the interest of game balance, which I mentioned before.

Six legs – visually, quite impressive, but what effect in the game? Why would more legs help?... I can see it in a movie or an anime series where the Rule of Cool is king. But translating it to a game where physics are paid a little more than lip service (not much more, I grant you), it just won’t wash.

The Centauroid ‘Mech is another product of the Rule of Cool... But I cannot think of anything, even a ProtoMech, which would benefit from that body plan in terms that would be meaningful in BattleTech [snip].

Turrets have always been FUBAR'd ever since the construction first came out. IMNSHO after 25 years I think it's time to fix them. More legs, simple answer, it's a two for the price of one deal.

If you are adding hexapods, then Centaurs are just an easy variant. As a Dougram fan I want hexapods so that I can field Desert Gunners, to go with the Crab (Goliath) and Tequila Gunners (Goliath variant). As for Centaurs, it is a logical design progression from biped with arms to quadraped with arms. Heck, one could even have a tripedal mechs with arms! Oh yeah, we are going to get one of them in a year or so. ;-)

As for in game benefits, more locations to cover (downside), but more internal spaces (upside).

Steve’s reply: Moving the engine, gyros and such inside a battlemech would, I believe, break some fundamental rules in the game... There is something about the game’s insistence on placing the goodies in a location represented by a ‘7’ that says to me there is more going on there at the game’s structural level than meets the eye. A ‘7’ is the most commonly rolled number on two six-sided dice.

Your point is taken, but let me turn it around. Quads are too good at present, or would be too good if changed, is an argument I've seen used on the official forum. If the internal allocation for the engines and gyro were spread across all three torso locations it would make the quads more vulnerable to internal hits, which would balance out any perceived awesomeness of the changes.

Steve’s reply: Some kind of balance is kept on the tabletop by this arrangement, I don’t understand it and as a consequence, I am loathe to screw with it. There is no telling what will happen, good or ill. Mayhap Mr. Eastwood could look into this?

It would be great if he would, as it will take the skills and contributions from more than one person to rewrite a set of rules that are as much loved as BattleTech.

Steve’s reply: Flexibility is fine, but the more detail you have, the more things slow down. I am not sure the addition would be worth the eventual cost. There’s a break-even point and I believe the game’s designers know where it is better than I do.

That last sentence is total Hubris Steve, because by that argument I can turn it around and just say that the game designers haven't done a 3063TRO, because they know best what to write for the market. Sorry if that offends. Perhaps you were being the Devil's Advocate here?

Breaking the Game with TarComps

Steve’s reply: Slow moving assaults move slowly because they are armored out the ying-yang and have a significant warload... Stationary opponents automatically gain an effective –2 bonus against targets that are running as a ‘Mech that stands still does not have a movement modifier to add to it’s own gunnery [snip].

Calling EastwoodDC, calling EastwoodDC. What do you say?

Steve’s reply: Furthermore, the lighter machine’s warload is not likely to hit hard enough to match that of the stationary target – who, even when hitting less often, hits much harder with guns only a machine of his size can carry – and usually in quantity.

As you well know using light mechs is not something that occurs in isolation. So your point while right, is rather largely academic. Light mech users, like myself, tend to be doing "pea in a pod" tricks, dividing the audience's attention and generating chances to roll dice for critical hits. A very metagame approach to playing BattleTech.

Steve’s reply: Finally, the lighter fast ‘Mech is nearly always much more lightly armored. The hits from those big weapons that do land are going to get through pretty fast.

They sure do, no disagreement there, but academic, because when I play you will always be faced with a dilemma; shoot the little mech, or shoot the bigger mech.

Steve’s reply: Yes, the big stationary pillbox can use a tarcomp to tip the balance. Many do. However, not many pack pulse weapons and the reason is simple – they don’t move fast enough to compensate for the shorter range. Now that light, fast ‘Mech? It practically begs for pulse weapons, as it needs something to offset the penalty for running with the throttle slammed forward all the time. And a lot of them have such weapons.

However, as I'm the kind of player that parks right behind your assault mech to get the kick in, you having pulse lasers or a targeting computer can mean "big trouble for a little mech Battletech town".

Steve’s reply: Die re-rolls replacing gunnery bonuses?... In any case, how will you translate the ability of the targeting computer to select a given location – at a +3 to hit – and slam it with every direct fire weapon that makes the to-hit roll?

Not going to argue this as my comment was an off the cuff proposal meant to illustrate options, rather than a specific game mechanism I had in mind. Not you, but people have somehow got it into their heads that I've already got this house version of BattleTech already written and ready to roll. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have some house rules I've used in the past, and some I've stolen, but as these blogs progress I'm realising that house rules to achieve my goals will need much more work that the little fixes that most house rules cover.

Electronic Countermeasures, Sensors, Networks a Waste of Time

Steve’s reply: If they were standard on every ‘Mech, THAT would be a pain in the tuckus. Can you imagine trying to figure out the effective ECM bubble for every machine? When would C3 ever be effective? When could you field hidden units?

The one thing about the game that I think really reflects how much electronics are packed into the average machine is this: all players, at all times, can see what units are on the field of combat. They can identify them, determine their state of damage and furthermore, know exactly where every machine is – friend or foe - even if it is behind cover. Unless the unit is specifically Hidden or the game is Double Blind, we all take this privilege for granted.

I think you are absolutely right, but these additions are IMNSHO things that have been added to the game that break the spirit of the original rules. If one is to keep them, then it requires some more digging into the core mechanics and assumptions of the game to make them fit better. YMMV on that opinion.

Steve’s reply: I see the ECM, ECCM, Beagle, etc as just specialized gear designed to get around unusual starting conditions or to counter special link systems – such as C3...Would you deny us the one piece of gear designed to combat it until such time as all machines can boast of having ECM?

No I wouldn't. I might deny you both, but not just one thing. :-)

Gentlemen Do Not Fight With Anything But Ranged Weapons & Their Bare Hands

Steve’s reply: Ah, but the Solaris comment was supposed to elicit the understanding that physical weapons also appeal to the Rule of Cool – note their popularity with the gathered throngs – even when they are not strictly practical.

Agreed, which is why I wouldn't ban them or anything like that.

BattleTech 2.4.1: Music Metaphor for Rules

2010-12-12T05:49:00.001-08:00

In my previous blog I wrote about house rules for games of BattleTech. I removed my first comment I made there, because after other comments were posted, it seemed natural to expand it, and to discuss the links I posted.

Reminder; last time I compared the process of digital encoding of music to how it could be used to compress the time it takes to play a game of BattleTech. Now I'm going to expand my ideas with an extended, and somewhat tangential discussion on music, inspired by comments made by Bradley & Farady77, with a links to threads on the CBT forum about house rules etc. for BattleTech. I want to use the analogy of a "cover version" in music to discuss the process of rewriting of a set of gaming rules.

Let me start first by going of on my tangent about music and ask you to listen to Bear McCreary's rearrangement of "All Along the Watch Tower" used in Battlestar Galactica the TV series by using this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka_sHy9cVH0

Now compare it with Jimi Hendrix's version, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bng3agUOYiI

Arguably the Jimi's is most well known version, but the original song is actually by Bob Dylan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya4bGV5b18c

That link pushed my GoogleFu on YouTube to the limit, just so many dam covers. Would you all agree that they are just different versions of the same song, and recognisable as such? if not what was it that made it a totally different song?

Now for my second example let's listen to"Mad World" from the Donnie Darko film by Garry Jules:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZvnGGLh--c&feature=related

The original 1980s Tears for Fears version is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBJePxdPX3Y&feature=related

And just to complicate matters Tears for Fears recent live version of their own song, which IMO appears to be a response to the success of the Garry Jules version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU68TLWikhM&feature=related

Still the same song? What do you think?

And my third example is the cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up The Hill" for the film Daybreakers by the group Placebo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBlAdApfK9U

Kate's original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snb5729vZe0

I would argue that fundamentally that all of the above examples are intrinsically the same song, which have been rescored for different singers, or instruments. After all, the last time I heard Kate Bush sing live, she openly admitted that she can no longer sing "Wuthering Heights" the same way she did when she was a teenager.

Now my next example is of what I would call a rewrite of a song. I've chosen a reggae version of "Dark Side of the Moon" called "Dub Side of the Moon" by the Easy Star All-Stars:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HK3oE6fRD0

Versus the original Pink Floyd:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_1f6LUc1eE

Now I think, if not this song, then the album by the Easy Star All-Stars, is sufficiently different that though I recognise themes from the original, it is no longer IMO the original song. OTOH one could just argue that it is a terrible cover of the classic what do you think?

So how about listening to this classic version of "My Way" by Frank Sinatra? Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1sg7RImyM

Versus the Punk rock version of "My Way" by the Sex Pistols:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7WU5aLZ_Iw

I would argue that both of these versions are classics. However, the Sex Pistols version of "My Way", is far truer emotionally to the content of the lyrics than the original version of the song, because they really sung the song in a way that was "their way"; Punk rock. For me BattleTech is all about having fun from playing games of giant stompy robot action. For me this was epitomised in the original second edition rules. Since then there has been a slow, but inevitable layering of extra rules to address perceived shortcomings that has ended up slowing the game down. So I want to go back to a faster paced game and have a version of the BattleTech that has the energy of Sex Pistols version of "My Way", rather than the slow Frank Sinatra version.

Finally a reach out to Professor Jamie Angus, all of the above links were of course digital recordings that have been compressed, so none of them are exact replicas of the original live performance of said songs.

In gamer speak, we are talking about a game where the ultimate war machines used are really not all they are made out to be, due to unintended consequences of how some of the rules have either shadowed the original intent, or have compressed the affective (fun) component of the game through excessive optional rules IMO. Now let's move to the comments made on my previous post, Bradley said...

[snip] The core idea and subsequent extrapolations: First make the turns express 1 minute of time. This allows the hexes to be 6 times larger, and range 6 times greater, to better simulate a longer ranged ground conflict. Second, thanks to the 1 minute turn length, all weapons will fire 5 times in a round. Thus, armor/structure on a mech will be 1/5th. This allows the record sheet to be shrunk to the size of a playing card,... [snip] Third, because damage is being inflicted 5 times as fast, game length will be reduced to 1/5th the duration. So a duel that lasts 20 rounds in BattleTech will be concluded in 4 rounds in BattleCommand... [snip] Forth, and this part really pertains to your post: Change the dice rolling conventions. 2d6 as a mechanic has the advantage of a bell curve, but in practice with modifiers and such requires numerous individual rolls and doesn't make use of the bell curve distribution well... [snip] [snip]... the initial reaction was that if I wanted to speed up BattleTech I should play BattleForce (despite my dislike of BattleForce for stripping too much personality of the mech away); also people were very adamant that their was nothing wrong with the 2d6 system, you just need something like a box of death to handle lots of 2d6 events.

Looking at the description of the comments that were made about BattleCommand, I would infer that the the consensus was that this was no longer a game of Classic BattleTech. I can also agree with Bradley's comment that BattleForce strips too much of BattleTech's personality away ("personality" here being define as "look & feel"), and that I would have no problem with the house rules as written. However, the question is more what is it about these house rules that provoked people into labeling them as not BattleTech? All I can see is the change of dice rolling conventions, because logically none of the other modifications change the mechanics of the game.

Moving on now to the second poster Farraday77 said ...

There are many ways to streamline the game, and they all boil down to personal preference. For my own, I i.e. cut down on irrelevant stuff (like FF and ES crits written on the record sheet when they're only relevant in the construction phase), took the good old medium lasers heat and damage as baseline for other weapons as well as armor and internal structure diagrams, and gave the players the option to switch to a 1d8 mechanic and a base THN of 0.

Looking at the this comment what I see is not so much a "cover version" of BattleTech, but a change in the core rule mechanics, which while perfectly logical would be a new game. I assume that people on the forums have said as much, assuming Farraday77 has posted them up for discussion?

If not and if Farraday77 wants comments/feedback, then these house rules they could be posted on the CBT forum, assuming that Farraday77 is a member there? Also, talking about ultimate house rules and new editions of BattleTech try reading this thread, link:

http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,75565.0.html

After skimming through the BattleTech: Omega rules from 1992 (not to be confused with FASAs 1999/2000 Omega rules), IMO they seem to me to be more like extended house rules rather than a completely new version of Battletech, but YMMV.

Or, if you want to see what people think about changes to the BattleTech rules then go here:

http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=75627.0

As can be seen this topic is discussed quite a lot on the CBT forum. It seems to me, that any new version of the rules would have to feel like the original (so as to keep the diehards happy), but be new, which is a pretty tall order when you come to think about it. However, if we use the analogy of re-scoring a song for different instruments versus rewriting a song, then perhaps one could end up with a more successful "cover version" of BattleTech that overshadows the original? More like Bear McCreary's "All Along the Watchtower" rather than the Easy Star All-Stars album "Dub Side of the Moon".

Then the question becomes how? What can be changed when any change will be seen as not being true to BattleTech? The only approach that I can see working here is one where basic "look & feel" of the game mechanisms are kept, but streamlined so as to speed up the time it takes to play a game. Sounds like a manifesto to me, and I'm reminded of my April Fool I posted here:

http://panther6actual.blogspot.com/2010/03/press-release-battletech-new-era.html

Talk about full circle etc...

Disclaimer: All posts are condensed & abbreviated summaries of complex arguments posted for discussion on the internet, and not meant to be authoritative in any shape, or form on said subject, T&CA, E&OE & YMMV.

BattleTech 2.4: Purpose of House Rules

2010-12-09T12:47:00.000-08:00

Why have house rules? Or a more helpful way of phrasing this question, what purpose do house rules serve?

From a purely pragmatic perspective house rules are the players of a game system using their power to audit what has been given them, by saying "yes but" to the rules of the game. However, as soon as one enters house rule territory one has to get others to agree with you about your "yes but", which often leads to a reversion to a "yes but, let's just use the rules as written".

Now I've made it clear in past blogs that I'm an OSR kinda gal, and for me realism and Battletech are not synonymous, which means I can accept I'm just playing a game. However, the pedantic wargamer in me also wants the rules to touch some sort of base with reality. Fickle female I suppose?

This also touches on some science fiction mantras that writers use when creating new universes for their stories. Change one thing to the reality of your universe to allow your story to work, but follow the laws of physics etc with the rest. Of course it's not that easy to do this, and writers end up using a combination of unobtainium and handwavium at times, but in principle less is more. Stories where the writer moves further away from "keeping it real as much as possible" tend IMO to be writing science fantasy, rather than hard science fiction.

Like most things though, there is a continuum from hard SF to soft SF to pure science fantasy. Hard SF tend to limit things like tractor beams and anti-gravity usually, because they indicate soft SF by having consequences to the universe that are conveniently ignored. Scantily clad women and muscle rippling heroes with swords tend to fit better in a science fantasy setting.

Where does BattleTech fit then?

Well it's not ultra hard, inspite of having no anti-grav and tractor beams, because too much unobtainium and handwavium exists around the size of the ships (mass to volume ratios too low), and having ludicrously high thrust drives with handwaved reaction mass. For more on this I can highly recommend the Atomic Rocket's website:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.php

Therefore I've decided I'm going to put BattleTech in the soft SF category, especially since the literary form of the universe is predicated on telling stories within a pulp fiction/juvenile rite of passage mix. So it's a bit borderline to science fantasy, but on the whole BattleTech keeps itself in the middle lane.

So what leads me down this tangential path from my starting position of house rules. It's the "yes but" part. The rules of the game do not simulate the novels particularly well, and to some extent it's good that they don't, because games follow rules, whereas stories are about emotional and physical responses by the characters to situation the plot has landed them in. Both have logic driving them, but the purpose of games is to play, whereas stories tell a tale about people. Of course games can also tell stories too, but that really would be going off on another tangent.

Either way both stories and games require people to spend time to enjoy the pleasures that each offer, and this is where my "yes but" comes from. I no longer have the time to spend playing a game that will require more than a few hours of my time. Long gone are the day where I would stay up until the early hours of the morning involved in a role playing game, or a weekend playing a wargame.

Books are easy enough to put down and pick up. Films generally don't run more than three hours or so, but wargames can run for 10 to 15 hours, and what is worse not have been played to a satisfactory conclusion. Large games of BattleTech fall into the latter category. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just saying it is hard to pull off without a lot of preparatory work by everybody involved in playing the game, and the thing is that I don't have the time to do this anymore. Again I'm long past the time in my life where I can rattle of chapter and verse on any set of rules, let alone Battletech.

So what's my plan? KISS; Keep it Simple Stupid. Seriously, simplify the games and then simplify some more. The problem is not only how, but by what has to be be simplified?

One evening this week I went to a lecture by Professor Jamie Angus on compressing sound recording through digital encoding. She was a fascinating speaker, and even though I have little interest in audio engineering (I just like listening to music), when the presentation moved into system analysis and statistics I saw the same patterns I recognise in the probabilities from using dice to generate outcomes for games. Fascinating stuff, and most of of it way above my head. Link:

http://www.aes-uk.org/event/santa-baby-come-creep-a-codec-under-the-tree-for-me/

She described a three stage process for digital audio encoding, which is about reducing the number of bits of information it takes to record a piece of music. The first stage is the use of lossless compression, which leads to the second stage of "quantitative entropy" that can allow music to be compressed further, but with various levels of information lost depending on format choice. Running in parallel is an intermediary third stage, the "psychoacoustic components" to the digital encoding, which one can then use to massage the music. Psychoacoustic modeling accounts for things like how loud music shadows underlying tones that precede it, which can then be removed with no audible loss. Thereby saving a bit of information in the process. This allows the encoder to take into account masking of sounds that occur due to the biological limitations of the ear's acoustic range, and the brain's processing of music and people's affective responses to sound combinations.

As I listened to her talk about this I had an eureka moment about applying this to games, because games are based on information theory, and what we want is for the outcomes to be calculated with the minimum of loss; all be it of detail resolution, realism and time among many things, rather than soundwaves. In this case I'm going to target one particular loss that Battletech manages poorly, and that is the time spent by player's resolving each turn of the game, which increases as the number of battlemechs and players rise in a game for my examples.

From EastwoodDCs Giant Battling Robots I know that 2D6 encodes 3.27 bits of information, link:

http://giantbattlingrobots.blogspot.com/2010/12/dice-and-information.html

I also glean from then same article that 1D6 rolled twice encodes 5.17 bits of info. Both of these are relevant to BattleTech, because both mechanisms are used in the game to generate combat results, The first 2D6 for one's to hit number, and 1D6 rolled twice when damage goes internal (Ed: correction, except that in BattleTech the first 1D6 roll is actually a 1D2 roll, so instead of this encoding 5.17 bits of information, it only has 3.58 bits, assuming I've got my maths right?). These rule mechanisms tell us the maximum amount of information that can be encoded, or in game speak the granularity of the detail that can be resolved, or accounted for. For instance as Steven Satak in his blog The BattleTech Reader made some relevant comments about the limit that the groundscale imposes on the game, link:

http://battletechreader.blogspot.com/2010/11/more-new-artwork-and-reponse-to-paint.html

His comments were about the 30 meter hex size and how the game rules breakdown, and this is a good example of granularity in a games resolution of underlying detail, and illustrates what the game designers assumed could be ignored, discounted, or waved over.

Now if I've understood EastwoodDC & Professor Jamie Angus right, then approximately three bits of information is all that you can encode when rolling 2D6. Now I put my neck on the line and see how stupid I can be made to look on the internet. This means that rolling 2D6 encodes just a little bit more than rolling one D8, and I'm now going to round down and treat them as synonymous to each other, because it allows me to use heuristic analysis based on 8 bit computer systems.

Now when one applies modifiers to a 2D6 roll, if one knows that it only encodes 3.27 bits, then a modifier of one is equivalent to one bit. If I'm correct then a modifier of three is equal to three bits of information, which has the effect of reducing surprise in the diced for result? Such modification of the base 2D6 roll is therefore highly significant, which seems to me to support my proposition about the modifiers for targeting computers and pulse lasers in the Battletech game being too coarse.

"Yes but" I hear, but what about the modifiers that you get from movement that make it harder to hit a battlemech, aren't they the same? Yes they are, but they add to the granularity of the game, not take away from it. By granularity I mean that more bits of information are added to finesse the combat results, whereas reducing the information in the 2D6 combat roll coarsens the granularity of the combat resolution results.

For instance, my hunch (WAG), is that if BattleTech had used 1D6 rolled twice to resolve hits, and 2D6 to resolve internal damage then the minus three modifiers of having both a targeting computer and pulse lasers would be far less unbalancing, because 1D6 rolled twice encodes 5.17 bits of information, rather than 3.27 that the current 2D6 system can encode. Now if I've not just made a complete ass of myself, which will then require me to edit and delete said parts of this blog, where we go next is to look at "the what" consumes time when playing Battletech?

Reducing the amount of time it takes to resolve the action each turn will streamline the BattleTech game resulting in either quicker games, or more turns in the same time period. So what is the first step?

First we start by identifying where dice rolls, or modifiers are not needed, because if you can reduce the number of things one has to do in a turn, then the game will go faster.

Secondly, using the concept of digital encoding would allow the compression of game data, while still retaining the original granularity of the game play. Where this choice comes into conflict with the need for speed, the encoding model would indicate the appropriate game mechanism (choice of dice to roll, or rule) to use so as to be able compensate for any loss granularity from the reduced number of dice rolls. I imagine this will be equivalent to the concept of reverse shadowing in psychoacoustics; where a sound is revealed that was previously hidden by the change in timing of a louder passage in the score.

However, big problem number one. Taking the standard BattleTech rules and rewriting them using this model of information coding goes way beyond any set of house rules that I've encountered in all the years I've been playing the game.

Quite frankly this really would be BattleTech 2.0, the next generation, or re-imagined game universe, and I can't see anyone from CGL reading this and saying to themselves "you know what, why don't we let her do this?" I'm under no illusions here, as after all CGL have said that no outside contributors are being sought at this time, and as and when they do seek new freelancers, it will be to fulfill their long term business plan for the game. Given that CGL have not yet finished their six volume core rule set, one which is rumoured may/has been cancelled, I'm not so much holding my breath, as waiting for Hell to freeze over.

So do I now go back to my metaphorical drawing board and rethink my approach to house rules, or do I run with the idea of compressing the core rules of BattleTech? The former is quick and easy, the latter not so much. Time is probably going to dictate what I do next.

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BattleTech 2.3: The BattleTech Reader

2010-12-04T06:28:00.001-08:00

This post is going to be a response to the one made over on The BattleTech Reader by Steve Satak. Linky:

http://battletechreader.blogspot.com/2010/11/more-new-artwork-and-reponse-to-paint.html

A lot of what Steve says is basically I agree, but have you thought of this, or yes that works for me etc. I'm only going to address those points where it is obvious to me that I did not make my position clear, and thereby caused misunderstanding.

Even Bigger 'Mechs

Steve said; "There are rule sets out there cobbled together to allow larger ‘Mechs and other machines. But reality (such as it exists in BT) in the form of the in-universe flavor the writers want prevents this from becoming canon. Also, there is the acknowledgment by many players (including myself) that a machine much over 100 tons becomes little more than a slow-moving pillbox. We have no shortage of ponderous gun platforms at 100 tons – why would a 200-ton machine be anything other than more of the same?" [big snip]

I mostly agree, but they already exist (Ares Colossus Class) from MW:DA and sometimes one has to make the most of things as they come. While all you point are valid, the truth is that CGL can't limit what players choose to field, only players can do that. The attempt to control the shape of Battletech through the use of canon designs only works if the players buy into it. I've never bought into canon as the only one true word of Battletech. IMO trying to control the background setting is doomed to failure.

I see the universe canon code more as "guidelines", if you savvy?

Quad 'Mechs

Steve said; "I think advanced rules already allow for a turret in a quad ‘Mech. I have used HMP to make them. The loss of internal space in a quad’s legs is somewhat mitigated by the fact that they are permitted to carry armor equivalent to a bipedal ‘Mech that is ten tons heavier... Neither is their ability to fire in a hull-down position behind Level One terrain,... That’s four out of twelve hit locations that are essentially ignored and that is the same as a LOT of extra armor!"... To put them in a position where they enjoy not only the hull-down ability and the extra armor, but all of the advantages of a bipedal ‘Mech as regards field of fire is to negate any real difference at all... [lots of snippage]

Yes but, the construction rules are clunky, and IMO could have been phrased in such a way as to make them conceptually easier to stat up designs that look like quad mechs with center torso turrets e.g: unseen Goliath. I also want six leg designs for a Desert Gunner from Dougram, or a quad with an upper body and arms. I'm not interested in super munch, but I am interested in look and feel.

To do this one needs a slightly redesigned record sheet, and the ability to move engines and gyros etc around the center and side torsos. That's all I'm asking for. More flexibility.

Breaking the Game with TarComps

Steve said; "You flummoxed me here – earlier, you wanted the option of heavier machines that for most practical purposes are designed to get to the area of operations and... sit and shoot... Targeting computers take up tonnage, are tied into all weapons and grant only a +1 to hit. Are you going to nix precision rounds for the autocannons as well? After all, they negate up to 2 points of movement modifier on their chosen target. Ma’am, those rounds are the best reason anyone would use the AC/10. Which is it to be?" [some snippage]

Can't have you all flummoxed now. Okay, here's the thing. Slow assaults moving 2/3mps per turn are sitting ducks to fast light mechs, which IMO is a good balance for the game. Anything that makes it easier to hit has consequences out of all proportion to the on the face of it bonus. For example, using weapons giving a minus two to hit bonus has effectively made the pilot an elite 2 gunner. That is a big bonus.

My proposal is that targeting computer allow a player to re-roll one die, and the minus two weapons allow a player to re-roll both dice. Only once per weapon per turn of course..

Electronic Countermeasures, Sensors, Networks a Waste of Time

Steve said; "I have never played in a double-blind game, so for me the Beagle and ECCM are things which rightly should exist but which are not necessarily critical assets when playing at the local game shop. That said… I have equipped several of the machines in our TRO with ECM for the express purpose of ECCM, because when it DOES affect my local game, the impact is phenomenal." [snip again like we did last summer]

I agree, these things have to exist. They are just a pain in the ass, because IMO such things as ECM, ECCM and Beagle probe should be standard on every mech, not additions that take away from the combat effectiveness of the mech itself. YMMV, and there is little that can be done about it either, so I put up with the stuff for the time it can serve a purpose.

Gentlemen Do Not Fight With Anything But Ranged Weapons & Their Bare Hands

Steve said; "Given that most ‘Mechs repeat the human form in large, it seems to me nothing is more natural than two ‘Mechs facing off against each other with swords and such. How is that not cool? Several million avid fans of the Solaris matches would beg to differ."

Ah but, what happens on Solaris stays on Solaris. Carrying a dead weight around that can only be used close up and personal, is IMO (and Greyson Death Carlyle) a waste of the opportunity to carry something more useful; like armour, heat sinks, or ranged weapons. ;-)

Final Comments

Steve said; "I once called the fuzzy line between what ‘Mechs do and what infantry do the ‘30-meter Limit’. Once you begin trying to play BattleTech inside that single hex, the rules break down – and fast. You are effectively in RPG territory. You can’t have it both ways, though the writers and designers have worked hard to make it at least somewhat possible. I strongly believe that there is an upper limit to the game’s resolution as well, one I call the ‘100-ton Limit’. Once you start playing above that limit, you are in BattleForce territory, and again, the BT rules break down pretty fast." [from snippage done earlier]

You are right, but the easiest answer is to ignore it, just like the ranges. It is an artifact of the game to make it playable. However, I disagree with the 100-ton Limit rules, because in practice I have found that while the younger players will revel in the awesomeness of the Colossus mechs, in the long run they are very specialised units that exist really for the Rule of Cool.