One Year On...

      

... and two weeks.

Oops missed my first anniversary of blogging, but that's just life I suppose. In all the recent "excitement" with my life, health and work stress, it's to be expected.

Anyway, a few words just to thank all of you who have subscribed for taking the time to do so, also thanking everybody who takes time out of their busy day to come and visit here and read what I write, and finally a big thank you to those who post comments on what I write.

More coming this week as I have some time off and stuff I want to finish writing. Catch you all on the bounce.
  

Loving the Alien

Or, how I learnt to enjoy BattleTech in spite of the Clans. 

Over on the Classic BattleTech Forum there is a long and rambling thread about aliens in BattleTech that started as a hate fest for the idea of all things alien being added to the game background, but which has settled down to a more reasoned discussion through polite persistence...

As an Old School Renaissance player (or Retard, depending on you point of view) I really don't care what is, or is not in the BattleTech game, because I see the official rules as merely a buffet that I can choose to pick from as I like. 

However, the tirade of anti-alien hate rather puzzles me. 

I can see that the anti-alien proponents feel that aliens add nothing to the back ground that can't be done by using humans, which is a circular argument that leads no where useful. 

OTOH, BattleTech has always been driven by back ground fluff. 

As I've discussed in previous blog entries, this is a board game that feels like an RPG campaign. Not a bad thing, though I have never been a faction player in BattleTech, I observe that now that I have MechWarrior armies to play with, I have become very faction orientated. 

Go figure I guess? 

I think this is down to the simple matter that MechWarrior miniatures come pre-painted, which makes compiling a force in one faction relatively easy. 

In BattleTech I've always been pretty faction neutral. My main army was nominally mercenaries that were loosely attached to House Kurita, as I like the Japanese culture for the background, but I did not want to tie myself down to specific units in the canon literature of the game. 

Recently, since returning to the game about three years ago, I've started adding more canon markings to my OPFOR armies, making them loosely House Steiner and Marik by the addition of the appropriate decals. 

However, BattleTech remains a game where I haven't invested greatly in the canon background to any great degree, other than dressing mechs with paraphernalia as a nod of acknowledgment to the rules background. 

Rather I'm interested in using the stage that BattleTech give me as set dressing for my own aims, and goals that I want from any game I play. Namely the ability to create interesting scenarios that are based on historical precedence, which require the players to do more than kill the enemy, kill all of them. 

So aliens, what's the big deal?  

They aren't human for a start. Some objections can be raised here about the ability of writers to write about aliens in a way that is meaningful can be raised here. However, as an SciFi fan of many years, I know that the history of the genre is full of examples of really alien aliens. 

Now, admittedly, a lot of these aliens won't fit into a game involving giant stompy robots. 

Mind you, I think that a game of giant stompy robots is so far out from any reasonable definition of plausible that the addition of other implausible elements is hardly a big factor. Though again one can argue that too many implausible things would dilute the verisimilitude of the game to the degree that one's sense of disbelief will destroy any feeling of involvement with what is going on.  

This after all is the main reason why lots of historical wargamers will not play Sci-Fi or Fantasy wargames. 

So, what kind of aliens might be added to Battletech without destroying the background of the universe. For me, it would be aliens that were "interesting", because of their unique perspective. 

What can added to the game is more variety of unit types. Everyone likes a new mech, and the more the merrier. Otherwise why do we need the 1300 plus mech designs we already have? 

Arguably we don't, but players like new designs. Players like new weapons. Now while you don't need aliens to have either, alien mecha and weaponry would appeal to those who like rules for different technology, in pretty much the same way as some players like Clan tech, which is arguably the shape of BattleTech to come, if my understanding of MW:DA/AoD is correct? 

Some of the factors to consider would be the visual design of the alien mechs. which would mean for me non-bipedal mechs like quads with arms, or six-legged mechs with turrets, and or eight legged mechs.

The aliens may, or may not have a different underlying reproductive biology, for instance marsupials, reptilian, insect, or arthropod. We could add more fluff and make them hermaphrodites too. Or ,perhaps they're a race that has uploaded themselves into virtual worlds. This would lead to different minds, more like a hive collective, or one where replication of a mind was routine. 

So, for instance, we could have a dispersed technological hive mind that is limited by the laws of the physics, as they pertain to the BattleTech universe. 

This could be used to generate scenarios where we only meets small forces that wreak havoc and destruction, who then disappear off stage for years, because the travel times are so long that it slows down their communications. So, the aliens are effectively at the end of a very long logistical chain.

There motive is purely xenophobia, they can't tolerate other races.  

However, I agree that the real question of whether or not BattleTech should have aliens is not about the how, but what purpose do they serve?  

The one big question that has never been answered in the BattleTech universe is where are the advance alien civilisations that should exist? Did they all destroy themselves in wars, and ultimately mankind is doomed to the same fate? 

If they didn't destroy themselves, who did destroy them? Or, are we the first to survive and reach the stars?  

Depending on how you spin these answers out, you either create a story where mankind is either going to die out from self inflicted conflict, or a story where mankind goes and destroys any possible alien race that might develop (i.e: we are the destroyers of worlds), or a story where we find the big bad out there and it awakens to the threat that we represent, or one where we are all alone in the dark? 

Any alien threat has to be bigger than just another faction of humans gone stir crazy, or rabid from drinking the local water, or being out in the sun too long, or inbreeding etc. The trick is coming up with ways to maintain the game balance of said alien force; otherwise you end up with the humans being wiped out through superior technology. 

The whole aliens as gods/angels versus puny things like us humans. 

This question and its answers are what could be added to the background of the universe that would then allow the RPG side of the rules more scope for non-military play. 

I favour the latter idea.

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.

MechWarrior Born

  

Well I've just got back from visiting my God children in Brighton. I went because it was their mum's birthday, so I took a bunch of MechWarrior figures down with me for Dylan.

We played, starting with just one mech, vehicle and two infantry bases each, using the Solaris map to begin with and simplified starter rules. After getting the hang of the basic introductory rules, we introduced some more rules, like facing and indirect fire etc. Each time we played a new game we added a couple of new rules for Dylan to learn. We also played on the garden table, and on the floor of his bedroom. So Dylan also knows how to either count hexes, or measure the movement for his mechs.


By the end of the weekend we were fielding up to 6 mechs, with a bunch of vehicles and infantry in support. We also added pilot and equipment cards for the last two games we played. Dylan was quite keen to play. It probably helped that I had given him the Robotech DVDs the last time I visited, so he was all primed for giant stompy robot mech action.
   

Reflecting Progress 3

  

I've been working on some of the serried ranks of toy soldiers that I have on my shelf awaiting some brush love. This includes the MechWarrior: Dark Age/Age of Darkness clix figures that are a good match for Pendraken's 10mm range, which I'm now using for my infantry in BattleTech games. What I have is 9 platoons of figures waiting for me to progress them further along the route to being deployed in a game. That's about 300 figures, give or take.

Four of the platoons are made up as specialist weapons. Either snipers, rocket launchers, heavy lasers, and flame thrower platoons. I just finished basing the remaining sniper and flamethrower figures this weekend, and when I have primed them, added a bit more texture to the bases, and drybrushed the base coat, all of the platoons will be at the same stage of incompleteness.

BattleTech works around 28 men platoons, but I've only used 27 figures, as my feeling is that two sections of 13 men, with a commander feels right to me. However, part of me thinks that a platoon of specialist weapons is not the way they would be fielded in real life. Okay, BattleTech is not real life, but what I mean is how does on deploy such assets on the field of battle?

My instinct suggests that one would assign either squads, or sections as support to generic infantry platoons. Squads being six men, and sections 13 men. However, this may be a bit too 20th Century of me, and perhaps I need to think a bit more laterally about the ORBATs?

Anyway, I also have two 21 man jump infantry platoons, and two 21 man, and one 36 man, battle armour platoons. at the same stage of the painting production line that I have. The latter 36 man platoon is a Word of Blake Purifier battle armour unit. So, all in all, quite a lot of infantry requiring painting.

My original plan was to use all the infantry with my Demi-Brigade armour formation that I have, but my intent now is to have only battle armour or jump troops to go with the vehicles and all the plain infantry will form the basis for a generic planetary militia defense force. With this in mind I have assembled support platoons for the specialist infantry platoons, and plan to expand my generic infantry from one platoon, to as many as I need.

A figure I've not yet worked out, but probably at least one generic platoon per specialist platoon, but I might end up having two generic platoons per specialist one. We shall see how I feel in due course, after fielding some formations in a game or two. Another option is to have Company combat groups with generic infantry, specialist and integrated support and artillery assets all together. Might work quite well in fact.

The support platoons will be made up of mechanised infantry. These are defined under the BattleTech rules as infantry who fight from light vehicles; jeeps, quad bikes etc. The artillery assets will be made up of sections of mortars, heavy machine guns, light towed artillery auto-cannons, and gauss rifle battery's. In addition, I have a rocket battery's based up too. All a bit ad hoc, but this only adds to the charm of planetary defense militia.
  

Reflecting Progress 2

Following on from my previous post, I cast my eye across the next lot of toy soldiers on my work bench and it indubitably true that one cannot out-stare a lead figure. The next group that awaits the soft touch of my paint brush are my Pendraken WW1 British & Germans troops. I have a platoon of British painted and based, but need a Company, as I have plans to do a Company level attack with tank and artillery support, for a game that represents a small part of a much bigger action. So there sits on the shelf the rest of the British infantry company, based and primed, with dry-brushed with one colour. The Germans are based, but not all the bases have been textured, and none are yet primed.

In a shoe box, on a shelf above my work bench, I have a French Company that I haven't looked at since I bought it. This includes tanks and artillery too. I also have some tanks put aside for the Germans; one AV7 and the rest will be made up with repainted versions of the MkIV, Whippet and FT17 tanks, representing captured equipment. I also have some lovely MkVs from Pendraken, which are noticeably longer than the MkIVs, and I also have some MkI howitzer/supply tanks too. Lots of toys, and that is why I like modern games. The variety of machines fascinates me much more than the intricacies of uniform details.

When I was younger, WW1 was considered a pretty "black" period to play wargames about. The image that had arisen in the sixties, from dialectical arguments by arts academics were solely focused on the "lions led by donkeys" idea. Depending on your point of view, revisionist historians have challenged that point of view, and what has emerged is a more complex and challenging reflection on the Great War. Certainly the Great War epitomised industrial warfare, even if the first fully modern war was arguably the American Civil War, which we Europeans dismissed as a Colonial affair with no relevance. It is also arguably true that the lessons learnt by the major European powers, between the end of the Napoleonic wars and WW1, were the wrong ones due to confounding variables specific to each conflict.

All my reading around WW1 has also got my creative juices flowing about how to use historical events in Sci-Fi games, of either Ogre/GEV, or more likely Battletech. For instance the whole evolution of tactics and the introduction of tanks can be mirrored in a Battletech game through the use of the "primacy" of the battlemech over other more conventional forces as one's starting point. I especially like the idea of replaying historical civil wars using Battletech. For instance the Spanish Civil war, or even WW1 with mechs, though that is more a Games Workshop Space Marine thing, if truth be told.

Reflecting Progress 1

One of the interesting things about writing a blog is that it's like having a conversation, in that you can readily check your hit stats and comments. The former indicates how many people think you are interesting to talk to, while the latter gives you a fair idea of whether what you're saying is a conversation or a monologue.

I tend to view post with no comments as monologues, while those with comments are conversations.

I prefer conversations to monologues, if only as a nod to the evil villain trope of monologuing. Cue evil laugh... I've also been looking at my work bench recently, more importantly, looking at the growing expanse of unfinished figures.

Hundreds of figures stare at me in various stages of being finished, ranging from based, on the road to becoming fully painted units, but not quite ready for the table. Like these Peter Pig AK47R 15mm Somalian militia.

Two companies, each of four platoons with four squads each; based at nine figures per squad, which is not AK47R compliant

Why did I do it this way? Well, for me, I like my toy soldiers to be something more than just a token, otherwise I might as well just use a token. Therefore, I like my single toy soldiers to represent a single soldier on the table.

I know it limits the scale of the conflicts that one can realistically manage, but when I want to play strategic, or grand operational level games, I'm not fussed about using toy soldiers anymore.

Anyway, Somalia is an interesting modern conflict that causes a lot of upset with wargamers, because it is modern, yet they would not flinch at Rourke's Drift, or the tribal wars associated with Africa at that time.

For me it's all about the toy soldiers on the table top.

When people ask me "Hey Pip why you do play wargames, are you some kind of war junkie?" 

Nowadays I don't say a word. Why, because they don't understand why wargames are fun to play. People don't understand why we do it, because it's all about the game and toy soldiers you play with and paint. And that's it, that's all it is at the end of the day is people playing with toy soldiers.

So I'm fairly open to playing "black" wargames, assuming you agree that such a thing exist.

One of the reasons I am driven to playing Science Fiction games is that it allows me to play games inspired by modern conflicts; without the baggage associated from the reactions from people who bristle at modern wars from Vietnam on.

Of course, one then gets the reaction of "I don't play Sci-Fi Fantasy games as they are not real," response. Funnily enough, as an aside, I don't play fantasy wargames anymore either, and by fantasy I mean games with creatures from mythology, folklore and involving magic.

I asked myself why do I avoid fantasy games?

For the same reason I no longer play ancient historical wargame, because for me their technology is too tactically limiting. The reason I like modern warfare, as in WW1 and on, is that the technology drives the tactics, though arguably that's always been the case, but that the selection of "toys" is greater in modern periods.

Not just siege artillery, or mobile artillery, but self-propelled artillery too! One can even mix traditional horse, camel etc cavalry, with modern mechanised versions of same. Then there are the extra bells & whistles of main battle tanks and helicopters functioning as cavalry too.

IMNSHO what is there not to like about this kind of variety?

T&CA, E&OE, YMMV.

Paddy Griffiths

As some of you already know, Paddy Griffith's died recently.  I can't say I was his best friend, or even a friend, but he was the most influential wargame writer I ever read, and I had the pleasure of playing in several of his games too.  Paddy was a well know military historian who wrote extensively and taught at Sandhurst, here in England.  I know him best as the editor of the Nugget, the house magazine for Wargame Developments, who also run a yearly Conference of Wargamers.  The title of which alone speaks volumes for the groups' sense of humour.

I remember playing at the first CoW I attended in one of Paddy's games, called First Bombing Raid in History.  I volunteered to be the Batman, which was fortunate for the pilot that I was accepted.  Paddy had given players folding bicycles for them to ride, all folded up of course.  Given I’m a keen bicycle enthusiast, a recalcitrant folding bicycle holds no horrors for me, so my fellow team member was able to take to the runway.  The initial take-off was aborted, but fine-tuning allowed a successful second attempt to be made.  Then flak fired at the bicycle/aircraft by having several boisterous lads throw Frisbees at the unsuspecting player.  Much fun was had.

Another game by Paddy was a freestyle role-playing game called the Red Star Express where we had an hour (representing twenty hours) in which to drive our great workers’ express from Moscow to wherever the Revolutionary action was (I was too lowly to be told our destination).  It was a miserable ride with the cook short rationing us and then ripping us off with over-priced vodka.  As the track ganger my job became vital in overcoming the counter revolutionary forces that bedeviled our journey, and I can say with out doubt, or fear of contradiction, that I led the way in patriotic fervour and willingness to face action and do my job under any conditions (by keeping my character totally drunk on vodka).  I was even wounded, by capitalist terrorist fire, but not a word of protest or anguish passed my lips as quietly I waited for medical aid (encouraged to scream my head off by the umpires), which I received from the hands of no lesser person than the Political Commissar (Bob Cordery I think).

A very busy man who had to keep an ever vigilant eye out for subversives and counter revolutionaries, his duties led him to re-educate several firemen who were sabotaging our noble cause.  If more citizens were like this man then the Revolution would be assured and we would not have failed to reach our destination on time.

Another fun game that also managed to teach its participants about an obscure part of history.  That was Paddy's greatest gift, he opened up people's minds to new ideas and ways of thinking.
   

Downtown Mogadishu 1

  

I got a bunch of buildings for Xmas from the 15mm range from Fieldworks, which are still awaiting their turn through the Paint-it-Pink workshop. Given that it is now June and they are still in the plastic bags I guess I'll be lucky to get them finished by next Xmas at the rate I'm going.

However, some of the buildings in this post don't appear to be available for sale at this time. Sorry about that, they obviously withdraw and replace models according to sales.

I'm tempted to buy another three of the above building, which is still available, so that I could make a square block using them around a crossroad, or alleyway. All of the buildings in the Fieldworks range come with accessible interiors thorough using removable floors and roofs. The pictures below show how the interior works.

Overall, I think these are pretty neat buildings, and I really must get around to painting them soon.

Clan Jade Falcon

       

There are two things on needs to know about Clan Jade Falcon. The first is that they are a Clan force, and the second that they are called the Jade Falcons. Please excuse the Black Adder referential joke, but that pretty much sums up what I knew about the Falcons when I acquired some MechWarrior Clan mechs.

As a diehard in the wool (!?) OSR BattleTech player, the Clans have a lot of baggage for me, which is doubly ironic given that I got the chance to write and design the stats for a whole bunch of Clan mech designs on the 3055TRO. However, the rules for MechWarrior clix game focus on combined arms command & control, which means that the disparity in tech between the Clans and the Inner Sphere forces is less intrusive. That is not to say that Clan tech is less superior, as quite frankly I don't know, as I've not played enough games of MechWarrior, or spent enough time taking apart the mechanics of the game to say.

What I will say is that the Jade Falcon "totem" mechs look way cool, which is enough for me at this time.
 

Yesterdays Heroes of Tomorrow

 

While what I am about to write largely concerns BattleTech, I feel the arguments are apposite for a large number of wargaming eras.

Though reminiscing is sometimes seen as a sign of old age, when I was a teenager, I use to play tabletop wargames with a friend called Tim. 

He was very much into the Germans, and the SS, and introduced me to the questionable delights of Sven Hassel. Tim used to pretty much beat me every game we played. I started off as Anglo-American, tried playing Germans, and ended up fielding Russians. As Stalin said "quantity has a quality all of its own", and furthermore as I saw it then, the Russians has the Josef Stalin heavy tanks. 

Even so I still lost to Tim and his Tigers, Panthers and assorted special panzers etc. 

Just to assuage everyone's sympathy for my string of losses, I did turn it around, and at the end I totally humiliated Tim by defeating him in detail in one long summer afternoon's game on the floor of his front living room. AFAICR we never played again after that. Then Tim got into being a skinhead, and I was a bit of a hippy chick (artistic & highly strung), so we had a natural parting of the ways, which brings me around to the concept of "powering-down" games. 

I think it's only natural to want to play the elite units when you begin wargaming. 

After all, they represent the so called best-of-the-best, and who doesn't want to be associated with the best? After more than 25 years of playing games I also think we tend to move on from this place and start to see that playing the worst-of-the-worst and winning is actually rather rewarding, if a whole lot harder to achieve. 

So, I have found myself intrigued by the challenges of WW1 and the first tanks, which lets face it were a nightmare to operate. I call this process "powering-down", which is the opposite of the tendency to want to have bigger and better, or "powering-up" games via the introduction of better stuff. 

While tanks in WW1 were shiny new things that opened up tactical options, they could at the end of the day be rendered inoperative with fire from a battery of heavy machine guns. The same can also be said of the inter-war period tanks when the lessons of WW1 were reflected upon, and the operational doctrines for using tanks were formulated by people like Liddell Hart. 

What he proposed found itself being used in various theatres of operations around the world, and it became clear that not everyone had learnt the same lessons from WW1, or came to the same conclusions about the role of the tank in future wars as a result. 

Like any transitional period, things can happen that suggest one course, while the reality that was that WW2 really sorted out the sheep from the goats. 

While people will argue that giant battling robots is rather a silly idea, for a whole heap of sensible reasons, the fact is that conceptually they are no different to the tanks of WW1, except in that theirs is an imaginary role that only the mechs can overcome. If you accept this premise, then we can look at tank development in real wars affects how we game them, and by extension look at what happens when you develop games that try to represent the ultimate war machines in action against each other with tanks and mechs as interchangeable units. 

What I have seen from this process is that rules to cover different periods of WW1 or WW2 are different. 

There are few rules that try to cover both wars, because the "powering-up" that occurred, which in real life means that WW1 tanks are completely outclassed by early WW2 tanks, let alone late war tanks like the Tiger, Panther and King Tiger etc. BattleTech is a set of rules that covers a period of more than 50 years of war, and justifies this through the initial premise that prior to main 3025 period there was technological stagnation. The game background then goes on to posit that in the post Helm data-core renaissance, the in universe realms rediscover the lost technological processes. 

That as an assumption for a future universe background is a pretty reasonable place to start, but it then led to further conflict, which has meant that the mechs have become far more powerful by 3075. 

A bit like the difference between early WW2 and late WW2 tanks, while in the background of circa 3025 we have the WW1 and interwar style mechs. However great this may seem to those players who want to see the universe "powered up" with new weapons and technology, the result is that the nature of the game is fundamentally changed. 

New BattleTech is not the same as old BattleTech, even though the core rules remain largely the same, and it's all down to stuff that has been added to the game to "power-up" the mechs. 

This is IMNSHO a very bad thing indeed, because it removes the charm of the initial background. 

The charm for me lay in the idea of mechs as knights. Once mechs just became commodities then you may have more powerful tanks/mechs, but the significance of the pilot is downplayed. This "cost" has affected how the game is played. 

Now if you agree that the original background of the game is where the idea of mechs as a concept works best, then the question becomes how do you return the game to its roots? 

You have to find some way to "power-down" the game background. 

This is why I think that moving the BattleTech timeline forward to 3130 and the Dark Age/Age of Destruction is a good thing. It will allow the game designers to remove the large amount of Tiger, King Tiger and Panther tank analogs, while giving a good reason for using simpler mechs for games. 

Much as in the same way players who have been playing WW2 for a long time gravitate towards early war period as it is tactically more challenging than fielding herds of Tiger tanks. 

This direction is even supported by the original background of the game universe where battlemechs were rare and people converted civilian mechs, called "industrials" into military vehicles by adding weapons and armour to them. In much the same way as in the Interwar period trucks had weapons and armour added to them to make them into armoured cars, or for a more recent example in the Middle East etc, Toyota trucks are converted into so called 'technicals" by adding weapons to them. 

So, I welcome the new Dark Age and the chance to field "industrial"mechs to the game, and only having limited access to true battlemechs for the same reasons that I have found that I enjoy playing with WW1 tanks and the inter war period conflicts like the Spanish Civil War.