FfoL Galactic Heroes - Jawa Hunting

Andy and I had a great fun game of Star Wars Galactic Heroes recently. We are still using my 20mm Micromachines minis and (sadly still largely unpainted) terrain.

We came up with a quick scenario, both sides were hunting Jawas in a small Tatooine town. Perhaps one of them has a stolen power converter?  Maybe a certain Sith wanted to recreate his glory days on the pod-racing circuit?  Regardless of the reasons, victory would go to the side who had escorted the most Jawas off the board.

Both sides deploy, eying up the Jawas. The Imps are just off the shot, to the left of the sand dune 

Vader surges ahead, as does Luke. The rest of the troops lag somewhat behind. 

(We both made use of the extra action for our heroes on the relevant colour card).

The Rebel leader 'persuades' a Jawa to accompany him.

Behind the large building Luke has befriended one Jawa, and uses the power of The Force to bring another one to him off the roof of the building

The Rebel M25 (heavy blaster) wounds Lord Vader, then a sandstorm hits the area, preventing further shooting

The Sith Lord tries to use The Force against the Rebel M25, but his injury is too distracting. He ducks back into cover

The wounded Vader falls over, releasing the Jawa he had captured

The Stormtrooper's BlasTech DLT - 20 runs out of ammo, that Rebel M25 is safe for now

The Heavy Stormtrooper takes two wounds from the Rebel.  He is just able to crawl to safety where he reloads (I used a Joker to Reload, but this triggered anther sandstorm, if I'd used it earlier I'd have lost the Reload, but he wouldn't have been a target)

A Rebel wounds a Stormtrooper.  He hopes that Lord Vader will Heal him.  No such luck.  Meanwhile, another Stormtrooper captures a Jawa, and in the distance another Jawa is tempted by a Rebel

Stepping up to the Rebel trooper, Lord Vader slices him in half with his light sabre.  (Vader used the Queen of Hearts to remove his wound)

Vader charges his son, it ends badly for Luke

Vader moves to try and intercept more Rebels, but it's too late, the Rebels have taken the bulk of the Jawas to safety

The final tally. The Rebels have lost two men, including Luke, but have captured five Jawas, giving them the victory

This was a great fun game. We were pretty much making the scenario up as we went, for instance, deciding that a model with a captured Jawa would have to release it if wounded, and the Jawa would randomly scatter.  It didn't matter as we both had a lot of fun.  Vader cutting down Luke was very dramatic.  I rolled a 12 for Vader's melee roll, and given that he had a Light Sabre (a Deadly weapon), that was it for Luke, but he has the Nine Lives trait, allowing him to ignore his first Out of Action result and take a Wound instead.  
Sadly, Vader had another two actions, and rolled a natural 12 again, so it was off to the Bacta tanks for young Skywalker.

This was our second game with Heroes, and as before, we thought the rules worked very well.  I struggled to use any effective Force Powers with Vader, he routinely failed his Force Choke, and the few times that he was shot at and missed, he failed to deflect the shot back.  He was, however, a monster with his Light Sabre, attacking three times, and rolling a 12 each time.  Luke, on the other hand, used his Force Powers very intelligently to Grab a Jawa and bring it close.  Shame he fell to his father's blade.  I'm sure that he has simply lost another appendage and will be back, more bionic than before.

If there's any interest I'll post up the details of the scenario separately.

6mm Fantastic Battles Dwarf Progress

I've made further progress on my dwarf army. I've got some more companies painted, and I found the missing stuff from years ago, which I've temporarily based.  I now have close to 1000 points ready to play, though I have yes to finish any characters.

Nearly 1000 points of dwarves ready for war

The newly painted stuff has increased to give me three companies of City Watch armed with pikes, four companies of crossbow armed dwarves and a couple of Avenging Hammers.

When I tot this lot up using my version of the list in the Fantastic Battles book I've got close to 1000 points, and that's without any characters.

The newly painted stuff

Four companies of crossbows, some companies reversed to show the cloaks

The City Watch and the Royal Guard, again with some reversed to show cloaks

Centaur allies and Avenging Hammers

Then there are the dwarves that I painted years ago, which I've temporarily based to get them game ready.  I've got some unpainted strips too, which I'll paint first before redoing these, a kind of 'new paint jobs for old' system.

Four companies of Clan Militia and two groups of Clansdwarves

When painting I find it helps to tell little stories about the minis as that helps me decide what to paint.  The White Mountain Kingdom Dwarves use a heraldry I designed many years ago for a 25mm dwarf army.  Essentially a white triangle on a blue and green field.  The blue represents the sky and the green the plains.  The triangle is the White Mountain itself.  These dwarves are all dressed in blue jackets or equivalent, and green trousers, those these are not usually showing.  The kingdom consists of different clans each owing allegiance to a Clan Elder.  Each clan has an associated colour which is shown on any cloaks.  Clans can have several units, but I'll try and vary the clans across the army as I progress.  The Capital City is home to the Royal Palace.  The King's Guard, King's Hunters and City Watch are all elite units with purple or white cloaks.  These units are made up from Irregular's Dark Dwarf range, and complement the ordinary Dwarf range nicely.

Next I need to get the Dwarf King, some Clan Lords, a Rogue and some Rune Smiths done, though I've made a good start on them already using some of the individual characters from the ranges, and some bits of strips that I've cut up.  I'd like to do some Rangers too, but I've no spare crossbows.

I'll be well over 1000 points then, and the initial target was .  I hope to eventually stretch to 2000 points, which should be doable, though I might need a few extra bits from Irregular to do so.  I expected to find some painted crossbows, but there weren't any, and only two Avenging Hammers is odd, I'm sure I had more.  Also I notice that they now do handgun armed dwarves, very tempting.  However, before expanding the army too much I should look at some opposition.  Probably goblins, as I have quite a few already painted to a standard I am happy with.

Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Magazine Review Index

I've been reading through Hachette's D&D Adventurer part work and giving my opinions. To make things easier for readers I'm linking to all my individual reviews here.  I'll keep this page updated with links to all my reviews.  There has been a lot of interest in the magazine, especially from overseas.  As the run continues it is becoming increasingly difficult to find it in the shops.  Some newsagents are happy to reserve a copy, though experience with other part works has shown this to be unreliable.  

Hachette do take subscriptions, but they are only for UK addresses.

Just a few words; I'm an experienced D&D player and DM, and I'm not really the target audience (and I  already have plenty of dice), so if you are relatively new to the game you may have a very different opinion.

It's my intention to read through the first eleven issues, which covers the first Adventure, and should give a good idea of where the part work is heading.  

Full disclosure; I bought these myself (in conjunction with a friend to spread the cost).

My first thoughts based on looking through Issue one

A more in depth look at Issue one

Issue two

Issues three and four

Issues five and six

Issue seven

Issue eight 

Issue nine

Issue ten

Issue eleven

Issue twelve

Bonus issue thirteen

Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Issue 7

Yes, another week, another part work, though this was two weeks coming due to 'production issues '. Perhaps there was a shortage of glow worms for the dice?

Sage Advice

Sage advice completes the conditions started in issue 3? with Exhaustion, Grappled, Paralysed, Petrified and Stunned (once placed in a ring binder these will be adjacent pages), then a page looking at currency. There's a bit on different types of treasure along with a description of the different standard coins. 

I do like the sentence for each giving an idea of the sort of things one such coin will buy. 

Then a page introducing puzzles. Sample puzzles are given, along with ways to integrate them into an adventure. The importance of the DM being prepared for the players failing is mentioned. There are no mechanics for puzzles given, perhaps in future issues? 

Puzzles are a divisive issue in D&D. There is an argument that puzzles properly only test the players, not their characters, relying on the players to work out the answer from their own knowledge. Conversely, the solution can simply require one or a series of successful dice rolls, player skill has no bearing, except, perhaps, in choice of skills.

The final Sage Advice page looks at Actions and Bonus Actions, including a list of possible Actions in combat. There was a similar list in issue one in the combat booklet.

Character Creation

Character creation looks at weapons and armour over two pages. Complete lists are given, along with the definitions of the keywords. 

At last, the heroes have something to spend their treasure on.

Finally, an introduction to gnomes, as we are getting a new pre generated character soon - every DM's favourite, the gnome bard.

Lore

This issue has no lore section.

Conclusion

I found this issue a little underwhelming. Completing the conditions, for instance, or a full two sides on coins and currency.  Both these articles contain something of use, but nothing I felt really exciting.

This is an issue that the format emphasises.  There are some parts of the rules that may be important for play, but are pretty mundane.  Important, but not exciting,  they do need to be included.

The puzzles articles is it's saving grace, though as I mentioned above, including puzzles in an adventure is very much a matter of personal taste (This short video addresses the issue rather well I feel).

A quick check on Amazon shows that equivalent dice are £7.59 for a set, so I suppose the cover price is still worth it.

If you want glow in the dark dice.

And finally...

Encounter - Graywind's Conundrum

This should have been excellent. A puzzle box that the players/characters have to solve. It ties into this issue's pages covering both gnomes and puzzles. There is a nice reward for solving it, but sadly the actual solving requires very little choice from the players.

They have to choose the correct order in which to do six tasks, but these tasks are simple Dexterity checks. There are consequences for failed checks, such as combats or effects applying conditions to the characters, but nothing to stop repeated attempts, other than a time limit for the whole exercise.  

The earlier article on puzzles discusses the use of props, and the encounter suggests that the DM show a picture of the cube to the players. However there is only one picture of it in the Encounter (there is a nice picture of a different cube on the first page, but that's an irrelevance) and it only shows two of the faces. It seems as if each Encounter gets one or two new pieces of artwork, I would suggest that an exploded diagram of the cube faces would have been far more useful here.

A couple more grumbles; it's another Encounter where the characters just happen upon an NPC who asks them for help. There's no extra information given on the NPC, though the assumption is that the PCs will be spending their treasure at her shop. A page or two for DMs on how to start adventures would be really useful (to be fair, it may yet be presented in the future), but the series seems happy sticking to the format of the rest of the Encounters with their 'you just happen across' hooks.

There's another example of wrong artwork here as well. One of the monsters has a half page illustration, but it's actually of a different monster. Both constructs, but not the same, and the picture is misleading as to it's capabilities.  If they couldn't find a picture of the actual creature that would have been another use for new artwork, though I'm pretty sure that earlier editions featured suitable illustrations.

This is an Encounter that works OK, but I had such hopes for it.  Since I have been so scathing, perhaps I should offer some suggestions for improving it?

Make your own version of the box.  You'll have to redesign the different faces, but that also allows you to remove references to wombats!  In essence, each face needs a different number of creatures, and those creatures should have some sort of tenuous link to the effect triggered if they are chosen out of sequence.  I'll leave you to decide what, as it may well depend upon the lore in your game (or real world folklore that you and your players are aware of).  I'd certainly keep the dragon and the six hound creatures.  Dormice might work instead of badgers, with a sleep effect.  In fact, different colour dragon heads with appropriate traps could work for some of the faces.

6mm Dwarves for Fantastic Battles

As I mentioned previously, I'm putting together some 6mm Fantastic Battles armies using minis from my pile of shame.

I have decided that one of my first armies will be dwarves, partly because they are a relatively elite force, so I shouldn't need too many, and partly because I have quite a few already painted; they just need basing for Fantastic Battles (besides, they make great opposition for Bodvoc's Naughty Elves, and my orcs and goblins, if I ever get around to them).

Building the Army

Now Irregular do both Dwarves and Dark Dwarves, and of course I have quite a few of both. The former are one of their first 6mm armies. The detail is subtle, and they are slightly smaller than their dark kin, but overall they fit together pretty well.  None of my Dark Dwarves are painted.  No doubt when I bought them I intended them to be an army in their own right, but Fantastic Battles has lots of options for troop types, and I reckon the Dark Dwarves will provide the elites for my dwarves.  They give me pikes, crossbows and halberds in addition to spears, axes, crossbows, heroes and artillery from the original range.  

Looking at the sample Dwarf Kingdoms list in Fantastic Battles, I  can match a lot of the troop types there.  It does include Outcasts, which are basically berserkers.  I've never been fond of this trope for dwarves, but it would be nice to have something a bit different, so I'll include some Rangers whose job is to keep the trade roads open. These can easily done using a mix of the axe armed dwarves and the crossbows.  I'm not sure about Miners, it would be nice to have something to make use of the new Emerge trait, but I'm not sure what minis to use.

I'll use the Dark Dwarf Halberdiers as Royal Guard and the Pikes as City Watch.  I'm tempted to paint up some of the Crossbows as hunters to guard the royal family and fetch delicacies for the kings' table.

The Dark Dwarf command strips should provide the Warlord (The Dwarf King) and his various Captains, and the older Dwarf range will provide the bulk of the army; Clansdwarves, Clansdwarf crossbows and Militia (using the spear armed dwarves)

I'm short of anything fast though, I did think that the Irregular range included dwarves on ponies, which would give some sort of cavalry, but I was mistaken (probably confusing the 6mm range with the 15mm range).  So I decided that my dwarves, who I'm calling the Dwarves of the White Mountain, ally with the centaurs of the plains.  After all, the centaurs have to get their horseshoes from somewhere, and where better than from the best smiths in the world?  The centaur range gives me centaur archers and centaur spears/lancers.  I'm tempted to go with the Classical image of bucolic wine drinkers and give them the Stimulants trait.

I'm even tempted to make some crude stone constructs for Earth Elementals to add something a bit bigger to the list.

The Biggest Army starts with a Single Company (or three)

I've rebased some of the stuff I already painted (though a lot of it has gone missing - it'll turn up eventually).  This is a temporary measure while I paint up unpainted stuff, and I'll gradually replace the older dwarves, which will then be brought up to the current standard.

Rebased Clansdwarves

And how they looked before.  I think I must have based them for Hordes of the Things at one time, but I've no recollection of that project

So far I've got two companies painted, though the centaurs were already undercoated and drybrushed brown, so just needed a few little details.  As they are light troops, I cut the strip up to make a less ordered company.  The Dark Dwarf halberdiers, which are now the Royal Guard, were fun to paint, and pretty quick too.  There's enough detail to pick bits out, but not so much that your trying to paint belts or buttons on everything.  The White Mountain uses green and blue in it's heraldry, with a white mountain in the middle on flags and standards (where big enough for such detail).  Units get a distinguishing colour as well.  For the Guard, it's their purple cloaks, though of course I haven't shown this in the photo below.

Dark Dwarf Halberdiers (Royal Guard) and Centaur archers awaiting base finishing

6mm Fantastic Battles

When I did my look back at abandoned projects to celebrate 50,000 views I mentioned a couple of pre-blog projects.  One of these was 6mm fantasy using Irregular Miniatures range of figures.  Bodvoc (or Merlin as he was then known) and I first tried writing our own rules based on, if I recall correctly, a set of SciFi rules from one of the wargaming magazines.  It used a combination of ordinary d6 and average dice*.  I recently found my notes, and I may type them up just for nostalgia's sake, though I doubt we'll be revisiting them for actually play.  While there was nothing wrong with them , we never quite sorted any form of points costings, so battles could be a bit unequal (there is an argument for unequal games being more 'realistic', as few generals would willingly engage in battle unless they felt they had an advantage, but for testing new rules, balanced games are important).

Anyway, the project died off over time, but we revisited the scale years later (2015) with our fantasy version of Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames Rules.  This was fun, but it came at a time when our gaming opportunities were limited by time and distance, so it eventually died off, to be replaced by another bright new shiny game, no doubt.

Now I'm in the process of thinning out my collection (I know, again. But this is a more comprehensive exercise involving looking through all my possessions, even books and music!) and either using or getting rid of stuff.  No keeping stuff on the off chance I might get around to it sometime in the future**.  So what to do with the 6mm fantasy?

I enjoy Fantastic Battles, and have quite a bit of 10mm stuff which is painted up for Middle Earth gaming.  However, there are certain aspects of the rules that don't have a place in our vision of Middle Earth, and I do like the idea of games that aren't set elsewhere, with armies and abilities that don't belong in Tolkien's world.  I'm not rebasing my 15mm Kings of War stuff, and I'm not planning on buying a load more minis just for this, but I've still got the old Irregular Fantasy minis in my garage, some of them are even painted!  Sounds ideal.

Bodvoc has already experimented with basing some of the Irregular Dark Elves for Fantastic Battles, so we have a standard base width of 25mm.  I happen to have quite a few of the Renedra 25mm plastic bases and they are ideal.  Now all I have to do is find the 6mm stuff, decide what to do first and get painting.  I should have quite a few dwarves, orcs and goblins from the previous projects, so that might give me a good few just to base up.  Alternatively I might decide that they are all so awful that I need to start again, so off to the pile of shame to start digging.

* A staple of pre GW wargames, average dice were numbered 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, giving a narrower spread and emphasising the middle results.  They tended to be used for regular troops as they were more predictable.  Irregular troops used a standard d6, with the possibility of extremes.

** I am, of course, aware of the irony here. If I hadn't kept the 6mm fantasy just on the off chance, I wouldn't be doing this project.

Artefacts From My Gaming Past 4 - More Orc's Drift Pictures

While doing some long-overdue clearing out today, I found a couple of photos from a long ago game.

The photos weren't in great condition, but I've scanned them as best I can, and they are fun.  At least, they bring back fun memories to me.

Orcs assault the barricade, stout dwarven defenders try to hold them back

The orcs force their way forwards and into the compound

Now I'm not completely sure, but I think they are from the final Orc's Drift game I had with Bodvoc (then Merlin) and his gaming group.  I've posted a couple of pictures of the game before.  I think these are later in the action, it doesn't look good for the dwarves!