Wasted in the Wastes

The Hyenid War - Part 2

After defeating the hyenids at Hecate Hill, an Imperial legion pursues the remaining raiders into the desert.

The hyenids turn at bay.

The legion (red, bottom) boasts 2 auxiliary cohorts, 2 archer cohorts, and a legionary cohort (elite and armored). The hyenids have javelins, fierce warriors, and beasts.

The Battle of the Wastes

As the legion deploys for battle, an unwelcome surprise appears. Reinforcements for the hyenids!

Hyenid fierce warriors and spears join the fight.

OK, I did this for narrative purposes. For each army, I started with the survivors from Hecate Hill, then I added some more. I decided to reveal the new hyenid reserves as surprise reinforcements.

The hyenids charge, sweeping away the Imperial center and right.

Reserve archers pepper the hyenid fierce warriors, wiping them out.

Along with the new arrivals. But the auxiliaries on the left rout in the face of the hyenid javelins.

The javelins flank the archers, putting them to the rout.

The legion is defeated.

Ground Attack

The Next Chapter of the Drake's Dragon's Campaign

The Dragons receive orders to destroy an enemy ground convoy. Drake, Hartley, and Palmer go on the mission, flying Goshawks.

The Mission

With Hartley and Palmer flying cover, Drake makes a pass at the convoy. He misses.

No photo of turn 1.

As Drake pulls up from his attack run, an enemy Cobra appears out of the heavy cloud cover and gets on his tail. Palmer also finds himself tailed. Fortunately, the enemy gunnery is bad. Our heroes are unscathed.

But the Cobra stays on Palmer's tail and damages him. Hartley rushes to help Drake. In the cloud cover, neither Hartley or his target can get a good shot.

Palmer escapes. With a little tricky flying, Drake ends up on his erstwhile pursuer's tail.

Drake damages his foe. Hartley now has a bogie on his tail.

But he shakes him and makes an unsuccessful pass at the convoy.

Pulling up, Hartley is exposed to a Cobra attack. Bullets rattle his Goshawk but do no significant damage. I fished out some yellow tokens to use a rattle markers. Drake unsuccessfully chases his quarry.

By this time, the convoy gets away. Drake orders a return to base.

Aftermath

• Each side had one damaged aircraft. But, the Dragons failed to do any damage to the convoy. Count this as a defeat.
• This means that the Dragons are 1-2 in the campaign.
• I added some rules for cloud cover.
• Roll a D3 for number of clouds.
• Before firing, an attacker needs to roll to see if clouds obscure the shot. Roll greater than the number of clouds to get a clear shot. Otherwise, there is a -1 penalty to the attack.

Nocan Do

Nocan completed another season in the arena. He did not do so well this time.

Here are his results:

Quite the disappointment - he only won 1 bout in 4 tournaments and he never advanced beyond the second round. No regionals this year. :(

Because of his lack of success, Nocan remains at 2nd level.

Additional Rules Ideas

Just some additional thoughts.

Leveling Up

Initially, I planned to roll randomly to determine if a character levels up. Winning tournaments provided a bonus to the roll. Then Nocan rolled a 6 and would have leveled despite going 1-4 on the season. I just did not think he deserved it. Therefore, I cancelled his advancement and changed the rule.

Now, I think I will only roll if a character makes the regional tournament.

Aging Out

With seasons so quick to play, I envision completing multiple seasons for a character. I don't track wounds or injuries, so the character could go on indefinitely. That does not seem realistic, so I plan to introduce an aging rule.

This is my initial idea. After 10 seasons, the character has to roll a 6 to advance instead of a 4+. A roll of 1-3 results in a loss of a level - the skills erode due to wear and tear. At that point, I may want to retire a character.

Fighting Stances

Still working on these rules.

Right now, a player character can choose a stance.

• Offensive - bonus to initiative and to hit, but the opponent gets a bonus to hit if the character misses.
• Defensive - penalty to initiative and penalty to opponent's to hit. Get a bonus to hit if the opponent misses.
• Neutral - no changes.

For simplicity, I don't bother choosing stances for the opposition.

A Voidfighter Project

Now that I have read Voidfighter (VF), it's time for me to go off on a complete tangent.

I'm Not Playing It (Yet)

I have no plans on playing VF at this time. As I mentioned, the rules don't really fit my gaming style.

• I don't have the space (no pun intended)
• The combat system (opposed 2D rolls with various die types depending on the ship or pilot) doesn't work for me.
• I don't have a bunch of polyhedral dice.
• I find opposed die rolls inconvenient for solo play.

That said, I can envision running the game for my LARP friends during next summer's off-season. But that's a ways away.

No Review

Because I don't plan to play the game, I don't think I should review it.

But Why Did I Title This Post a "Project"?

Although I don't plan to use the VF rules, I've been inspired to play some space dogfighting. I don't really have the setup for it, so I need to do a "project."

Rules

The rules are easy. My air combat rules work fine for my purposes. I should post the full rules one of these days, but in short, movement is relative based on maneuver rolls for each plane. This allows me to play games in a small area - about 5" by 7". Combat uses an adaptation of my MicroBattle rules, with tweaks for varying damage from the pilot being "rattled" to BOOM.

Ships

A while back, I made some spaceship counters.

Single seat fighters.

And multi-crew attack ships.

I'm not content with these. I used the same design for both factions, but I'm toying with having different styles for each faction. Also, the counters are bigger than I like. They are 1" long but I have come to prefer the 3/4" counters I use for my planes.

Also, using VF as inspiration, I could use more types. The above can stand in for snubfighters and gunships. I'd like to make some corvettes.

VF also has rules for other encounters, from mines and turrets to space monsters! I want them all!

So this is phase 1 of my project - start putting together counters.

Making Space

Right now, I don't have a space battle board to use. I plan to pick up some black cardstock soon. I will probably use a paint pen to add white dots, giving it a space feel.

A Campaign

VF has a campaign system, but I don't think I'll use it as is. It involves keeping track of a squadron of 15 pilots. That's more than I want to handle. Instead, I may use my MicroBattle air campaign, but extend my squadron to 6 pilots (I use 4 now). I may steal some ideas from VF, however.

I do plan to use VF's scenarios. There are 12 of them; I'd like to run through all of them for the campaign. I may choose the order randomly instead of running them in the order presented in the book.

So these are my thoughts on a space dogfighting campaign. Stay tuned for more details!

Setting

VF includes an optional setting. This is nice for people getting started but I don't like being locked into someone else's setting. I will likely use my own.

This is a large-scale galactic map I created many years ago when I got into sci fi gaming. I have since renamed the Republic to the Federation.

Anyway, there is a sector of space between the Federation and the (evil of course) Empire, which is a good place to run games

Nocan in the Arena

Since my last post discussing my arena combat rules, I made some changes. I'm treating it like a joust - the combatants have 3 passes to score points.

I decided to test out the rules combined with my joust campaign structure. For the test, I'm bringing back a character from my old blog. Nocan was a barbarian miniature that was miserable in combat - he couldn't (no can) hit anything! Let's see how his 2-dimensional avatar fares in the arena.

A little Chat GPT imagining

Backstory

Mocked by his clan for his lack of offensive skill, Nocan travels to the Empire to test himself in the arena.

Note: I'm using my LARP's world as the setting.

Results

Here are the results of Nocan's fights.

Versus the Orc

I did not take pictures of all Nocan's bouts. I recreated his fight against the orc so that I could get a few images. This is from round 2 of the 3rd preliminary tournament.

In the first pass, the orc rushes Nocan, knocking him down. As Nocan falls, he manages to get in a body hit. Score 3-1 for the orc.

The orc rushes again. This time, Nocan sidesteps the blow and clocks the orc in the head. Score 3-3.

This time, both score body hits. Score 4-4.

Finally, Nocan gets the initiative, and strikes the orc while avoiding its counter.

A 5-4 victory for Nocan against a veteran fighter!

Other Highlights

• Nocan proved his tribe wrong with his success in the arena. He reached the semi-finals of one tournament and won another tournament!
• He did not do so well in the regionals. Oh well, there is always next season!
• He did well when the pressure was on. He went 4-0 in bouts that went to extra passes.
• He leveled up, and will fight in the next season as an experienced (level 2) fighter.

GAME NOTES

• Limiting the bout to 3 passes really streamlined the game. The rules as they are could also work for jousts.
• For the latest iteration, I added a simple mechanism to account for different levels. The higher level fighter gets a number of re-rolls equal to the difference in levels.
• I plan to have levels up to 6. Between seasons, characters roll to level up.
• I decided to create two tournament circuits - one for levels 1-3 and another for levels 4-6. That way, there are no crazy mismatches.
• I also added "fighting stance." A fighter can choose to be offensive, defensive, or neutral. Stance affects combat rolls in various ways. I added this to give a decision point to the player. Otherwise, it is just an exercise in dice rolling. The rules did not work as intended, and I usually just adopted a neutral stance. I'm going to play around with these a bit.
• The campaign works great, though. It is quick with lots of drama. I think the entire season took about half an hour.

Voidfighter - First Impressions

I pre-ordered Voidfighter and I received it on my Kindle this morning.

Like a kid on Christmas, I immediately opened it up and have perused it for a bit.

Anticipation, But Why?

I have eagerly anticipated this game since I pre-ordered it a couple of months ago. Which is odd considering that this game does not fit into my current gaming preferences.

A couple of features that go against my preferences:

• Big (for me) board - Recommended for a 3' by 4' space. I don't have a space that big.
• Multiple dice types - based on a ship or pilot's rating, players roll 2D4 up to 2D12. I typically hate "groping for dice" mechanisms.

Usually, these characteristics would be enough for me to reject a set of rules.

So why was I so excited about this? A few reasons:

• I read that it had a campaign system. VERY interested
• Miniatures agnostic - can use any ship models
• Simple movement rules but with special maneuvers to add some spice
• Perhaps I could introduce it to my summer gaming group

Does It Measure Up?

I have not read the rules completely. I have merely been scanning it so far. But I like what I see.

• Movement is simple and should be easy to teach if I want to introduce it to my gaming group
• The campaign system (my initial draw) seems very playable
• LOTS of scenarios (12 in fact)
• LOTS of ships stats plus rules to make your own

So that's my very early first impressions, I'll post more as I delve deeper.

Doldrum Report

As mentioned Wednesday, I'm in a bit of a slump, wargame wise. But I have not been idle.

I made a bunch of these satyr horns for my LARP group.

It's basic, but it will work.

Satyrs are one of the creatures we'll encounter this season.

I haven't made any progress on a joust game. However, it dawned on me that I could use my joust campaign rules with arena battles.

I decided to do a quick test run. My character lost to the elf (who is facing backwards, I notice. Must have been an over the shoulder shot).

This test revealed a weakness in my arena rules - they just take too darn long! In this bout, the elf kept winning the maneuver roll but then failed to hit. The fight dragged on and on. I may need different rules.