Random: Recap of 2023

 

Well, look at the time.  It sure does fly by when you are having fun.... or something.  Another year in the books.  Yikes.  They keep going by faster and faster.  

When the year started, I had no real plan for what I was going to do.  This was a big change from my previous few years when I had very clear goals.  This one I came in a bit unsure where I wanted to go.  It was the first year in several where I did not have a book being published that I had to support.  In a way it was going to be a much more relaxed year!  This led to a rather unproductive year in a few categories, but success in other areas.  

Like most years, I try to break down my focus into a few areas: 

• Purchases - Things I bought
• Painting and Modeling - Things I built and finished off
• Playing - The games that I played
• Rules Writing - What I wrote
• Miscellany - The stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else

So, let's get into it shall we?  

Purchases

Of course, I can not start off this section without giving YOU my loyal customers a big shout out.  Every time you purchase one of my games from Osprey, Wargames Vault, Drive-Thru RPG Page, follow me on Patreon or support me in other ways you help make this all possible.  It is your support that allows me to buy the minis, paints, artwork, web domains, and other supplies needed to keep Blood and Spectacles Publishing operational.  Therefore, I try to keep all the money earned in these endeavors going back into the business of Wargaming. Thank you!  

So, going into this year, I had not even settled on a "Big Project" for 2023.  I had a number of open projects that I could have chosen to complete, but I narrowed it down to two for 2023 and the purchases I would need to support it. This was a tough decision.  Ultimately, I decided that my "big project" for 2023 was going to be..... drumroll please......

Finally by the second half of the year I got my "Big Project for 2023" started.  I picked up two armies for the Battle of Kadesh; Egyptians and Hittites.  I ordered them from Baccus 6mm and also picked up 60mm x 60mm bases to go with them.  That was my "big" purchase for 2023.  

I also picked up something from Games Workshop (Boo-hiss) for Kill Team.  I grabbed the Hand of the Archon box.  I all ready had minis for the Craftworld Eldar, Harlequins, and Corsairs.  I all ready have Aspect Warriors for the future releases too.  I figured I would round out my Eldar collection for Kill Team.  That should give me a decent variety for my local club.  

I purchased two RPG games, the updated Legend of the 5 Rings game and the G.I. Joe RPG.  

A very limited year on purchases.  I didn't even buy any new wargaming rulesets for the year.  That is a big surprise to me, as I was interested in Strength and Honor, Saga, and other Osprey Books.  However, at the end of the day I was too busy and never got around to it.  

Painting and Modeling

I'm not going to recap what I did the first half of the year.  There wasn't that much as I finished off little bits here and there.  I had finished all my 2022 Pile of Shame, so I had nothing left.  Therefore, my chance to paint new stuff was mostly what I managed to print or scrounge up.  As we saw above, I didn't buy that much.  

Most of my work the second half of the year has been focused on the Big Project.  Above you can see some of the progress on my Egyptian 6mm forces.  Looking back, I have painted a lot of 6mm this year.  Perhaps that was an unofficial theme for 2023?    

I also managed to re-paint my old 80's Harlequin models from Citadel.  They also managed to hit the table at the club this year as well! 

Overall, I painted 51 models of 28mm scale, and 34 bases of 6mm models. 

Gaming

This is the area where I have had the most success in 2023.  I have been growing a local gaming community.  This is a very rural area, and the population is relatively small.  Finding folks who are interested in sharing the miniature wargaming hobby is not easy, but that also makes us a relatively close-knit group.  You can find us at the True Crit Gaming Guild

The most popular miniature game at the local group is Games Workshop's Kill Team. I played over a dozen games of it there, and helped bring in several people to our group.  Kill Team has been great for grabbing eyeballs and bringing people in.  

I also got to play and complete a campaign for the Ionian Revolt.  That was a fun campaign where we used land and sea elements to follow along the historical campaign.  We used Osprey Poseidon's Warriors and Men of Bronze to play the games.  That gave my "historical" wargaming a nice boost for the year.  

The next big element of my gaming was playing more of the Operation: Hemlock campaign.  This is a campaign set in the Warhammer 40K universe, but my Skumgrod and I used a variety of games to play out the campaign.  This year was no exception as we used Aeronautica Imperialis, Restless Sun, Restless Stars, and Aquanautica Imperialis.     

I also was able to wrap-up the Castles in the Sky Indo-China campaign.  This was a campaign that we hit really hard just before the game came out from Osprey.  I played so much of it with the club and others that I burned out on it as it was coming out.  The second half of this year I was happy to come back to it and finish the campaign.  

Finally, I also got to start a loose White Star/Red Star campaign that will slowly cover the course of the Air War in Korea.  We have all ready played out some iconic engagements.  It has tempted me to pick up some more Tumbling Dice aircraft for the Commonwealth forces and for the US Navy.  They are relatively cheap and easy to paint.  However, that will have to wait for next year.    

  

Of course, there were also a few one-off games through-out the back half of the year as well.  This was a very productive year for me in the gaming space.  Usually, I shoot to play a game a month, but I blew that goal out of the water this year.  I am closer to three games a month.  

I played 20+ sci-fi/fantasy games, 12+ historical games, about 15 of my own games, and 20 games that I did not make.  A good mix for the year! 

Rules Writing

The first half of the year was relatively productive.    

Homer's Heroes: Bronze Age Bad Boys is a model-vs-model skirmish game, and my attempt to solve the problem of Melee Yahtzee with a Homeric veneer.  It has a campaign play mode and solo/co-op options.  You can find this one on the Blood and Spectacles Wargame Vault page.   

The second publication is something a bit different and it can be found on the Blood and Spectacles page on Drive Thru RPG: 

The second half of the year I also managed to get out something new.  I put out the Castles in the Sky: Addendum.  This work captures all the fleets and rules that I had to cut from the Osprey release of the game, a FAQ, and a Quick Reference Sheet.  

I also put out a free Episode pack for The Princes of the Universe Role-Playing Game.  This provides a 3-4 hour episode for 3-4 players.  It can be found on the Blood and Spectacles Publishing page on Drive Thru RPG.  

I also got a few new rulesets and adventure packs started.  However, nothing over the finish line or ready to show yet.  A lot of grinding and not finishing this year.  Hopefully that will make next year a very productive year in writing with lots of rules and campaigns hitting the shelf.  

Here are some things still in the pipeline: 

• Late Roman 
• Aztec Flower Wars 
• Darkest Knights - Solo- Horror
• Glittering Void - Space Mecha Combat and RPG
• G.I. Joe RPG Campaign
• Module for Flashlight: Tales of Terror
• Another Year in Rokugan

Who knows what I will actually finish?  

Miscellaneous Stuff

This is assorted stuff I wanted to do, but doesn't fit into another category. 

• Update Trackers on the blog for painting and playing?  Check
• Get a game group going and expanding?  Check
• Quarterly Wargaming events?  Ahhhh....... at least the group has been getting together bi-weekly.
• Weekly RPG Campaign?  Mostly check! 
• Charity Game?  Ahhhh....... 
• Game Design content monthly on the blog?  Check
• Patreon updates on a regular basis?  Check
• Work on a local Con?  Hmmmm..... put it off mostly

One of my big challenges this year has been to decide exactly how much I want to lean into this Wargaming Identity?  It sounds weird to say it out loud, but I have to balance Wargaming with other parts of my life too.  I could lean all in, BUT I have held myself back a bit.  I am not 100% sure how much I want to lean in.  

I could do a lot of things differently if I went all in: 

1. Start hitting the convention circuit
2. Lean into more Podcasts, Interviews, etc. 
3. Start doing talks and events about wargame design, publishing, history, etc. 
4. Write more articles for magazines 
5. Start a video series/Podcast
6. Better tables
7. Start that Con

At the end of the day, wargaming is my hobby.  If I lean into it too much it might become my job.  I have seen others do this, and been close to it myself; and I am not sure I want to make that transition.  Therefore, I have been kind of holding myself back a bit, and uncertain how much I want to lean-in.  Maybe that is something I can tackle a bit further in the coming year? 

So, until next year!  

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Wargame Design: Sometimes I Just Get So Tired

 As we all know, the 4Ms of Wargame Design are Movement, Melee, Missiles, and Morale.  However, those broad categories cover a wide range of areas.  My recent look into Logistics and RPG-Lite spawned some great discussion on various places online, and those types of discussions help energize my thoughts.  The topic of exhaustion and fatigue came naturally came up in these discussion and I felt like that was an area I needed to spend some time thinking about.  Fatigue and Exhaustion probably fit into the Morale part of the 4Ms, but I wanted to take a deeper dive into modeling exhaustion in miniature wargaming. 

Tired Examples

There are a number of ways I have seen "exhaustion" covered in rules.  Not surprisingly, it various a bit on whether it is a Model vs Model, Unit vs. Unit, or Big Battle scale.  However, no matter the "scale of the battle" exhaustion can still be a key component to a wargames design.  

#1- Bushido

Bushido is a boutique skirmish game with named, bespoke characters making up your force.  Typically you are using 3-10 models and actions are resolved by model level interactions.   In Bushido, each model picks up "Fatigue" tokens that lead to modifiers on action rolls.  However, fatigue happens very easily in this game, and just moving around can cause fatigue to start to accumulate.  

#2 Bolt Action

Pin Markers represent a sort of escalating "Battle Shock" that accumulates on units that they have to try and shed.  Simply moving around does not generate fatigue, but their are a number of factors that can cause Pin Markers to accumulate.  The most common is taking fire from the enemy.  

#3 Blucher

At the start of a player's turn, their opponent rolls 3d6 to generate a number of Momentum points for the turn.  This is kept secret from the player.  As they activate and move units, it costs Momentum Points.  Once all Momentum Points have been spent, the player can no longer move anymore units.  

They then move to fighting.  Fighting causes a unit's Morale to be reduced.  Firing is easy, but hand-to-hand and charging reduces a units Morale.  It is possible to become "Blown" where the unit over-extends and no longer has the morale to keep going.  They are broken.  

Why Model Exhaustion in Miniature Games? 

Fatigue and Exhaustion add an element of friction that a player needs to manage to get the most out of their troops.  Adding these elements provides the following options for a game designer: 

1. Add Resource Management

2. Unit management

3. Add a tactical layer of decision making

4. Morale elements

5. Victory conditions

These elements are places where a designer can highlight their Point of View on the nature of the warfare being represented and how it plays out on the tabletop.  Some designs will emphasize a certain design goal or Point-of-View more than another.  

Resource Management

There are a couple ways to approach Fatigue as a resource.  The first is that Fatigue builds up and creates limitations, therefore managing the amount of Fatigue is the resource.  Similar to how Heat is used in Battletech.  Once you reach a certain limits, actions have negative modifiers until a unit is non-operational.  

The second is using a command resource to reduce or remove fatigue.  A simple way to think about it is using a Command Point (or the equivalent) to boost an abilities remaining ability to absorb hits or fatigue.  This could also be used to off-set a growing amount of Fatigue with additional actions.  

Unit Management

A key part of games with a Fatigue related mechanic is knowing how to add units to the conflict, and extract the ones that are all ready engaged.  This unit management adds decision making that a commander needs to make through out the game.  Often, this leads to decisions as early as the deployment phase, as you need lines of retreat and lines of advance available to your units.  Then, through out the game players will need to decide when to maneuver in and out of combat with depleted and fresh units.  

Tactical Decision Making

To me, when I think of tactical decision making; I am referring to decisions made while playing on the actual tabletop.  In this case, Fatigue can be a natural limiting decision point.  A player will think, "My unit can not break through here because they will acquire too much fatigue while doing so." This leads to a decision on what they should do instead or in addition to.  Even a victory can leave a unit so depleted to be "blown" for the rest of the game.  These kind of decisions are the heart of wargaming.    

Morale Elements

Fatigue can naturally been rolled into a Morale or even Hit system.  What is being lost by enemy action is not necessarily death and injury, it could just be soldiers getting to tired to continue.  This is an abstraction common to wargames.  Conversely, I have also seen it as its own "factor" in command and control. 

Victory Conditions

Causing Fatigue on an enemy is a good way to erode their will to fight.  Therefore, it makes a natural victory condition.  The most innovative often have a "trade-off" between combat results to gain VPs and Fatigue reducing VPs.  Therefore, the decision is how to cause as much damage as possible while limiting your own Fatigue in doing so. 

Thinking About It as a Designer? 

So, let's talk about how this concept of Fatigue plays into game design.  Often, it is not as obvious as a mechanic that is labelled fatigue.  

In ancient warfare, you will read accounts of soldiers getting tired, maneuvers designed to help relieve this fatigue, and battles that last hours and days.  We know that a person can only engage in hand-to-hand combat for a limited amount of time.  However, the ancient authors are not always as clear about how all of this works as we would like.  Therefore, a wargame designer has to think about this ties into their design.  Therefore, when designing for this period, it is a big element of ancient warfare. 

Of course, the first thing to do is to look at your Design Goals and see how Fatigue plays into them?  Often, these goals will also establish the "Scale of the Game", is it a Model-vs-Model, Unit-vs-Unit, or Army Group-vs-Army Group.  Finally, you need to determine where you want to abstract and what you want to track in the game.  All three of these elements will play into how you want to use the concept of Fatigue in your games.  

Let's use Wars of the Republic as an example.  This was a Unit-vs-Unit game that was designed to be played in about 1 hour with about 5-10 units on each side with a focus on abstracted units with minimal tracking.  Therefore, speed of resolution and reduced tracking was important.  Therefore, I chose to abstract Fatigue in the following ways: 

1. Fatigue was wrapped into the concept of Courage, and therefore was a Morale Element

2. Fatigue (Courage) could be managed with Commander's Gaze, adding Resource Management

3. Loss of Courage led to units fleeing, and units fleeing led to Collapse and loss of Resources.  Therefore, Fatigue played a role in Victory Conditions

I made a conscious choice to abstract Fatigue into the Damage process of the game, instead of making a separate process to maintain or track.  I made these decisions based on the design goals, scale, and what I wanted player's to track.  

Final Thoughts

Fatigue is a fact of life.  It is a fact of warfare and fighting.  Therefore, designers need to think about how they want to represent it in their games.  This decision should be based on the larger needs of the game and what the designer is trying to represent on the tabletop.  Thankfully, there are a number of ways Fatigue can be implemented into a game, and not all of them are as obvious as just creating a Fatigue stat or measure.  

As always, the designer needs to choose the best tool for what they are trying to accomplish on the tabletop.  This might make Fatigue an obvious and blatant part of the design.  Alternatively, it may handle Fatigue as part of a large mechanic in an abstract way.  However it is handled, Fatigue is a great way to add Friction and Meaningful Choice into a game.  

Well, this post has made me very tired.  

Second Wind Bonus Content! 

The True Crit Gaming Guild had a nice day of painting and then playing just before Thanksgiving.  There was a nice turn out, with several folks showing up to paint various models for various games.  A few 40K guys, a few D&D guys, some Holiday themed models, and just random bits and bobs.  I painted a Reaper Hillbilly model.  Why and for what?  Only time will tell.  

Undercoating a Hillybilly from Reaper

Then, after we all got some painting, we set up a few games of Kill Team to get going.  We had a few different tables, and more players than space.  Therefore, I participated in a 3-way game.  I took on some Chaos Legionaries and Grey Knights in the standard 3-player mission.  I was using my Voidscarred Corsairs for this game. 

I set-up a decent firebase as my more mobile troops moved up.  My standard tactic is to hang back a bit the first turning point or two, and try to time my rush to the objectives carefully once I have worn down my opponents.  

The Grey Knights managed to get on the objective early and we had a hard time dislodging them.  Here my Warlock bravely moves forward to try and use psychic powers, which he promptly failed the roll and fried his own brain!  I knew there was a reason I rarely used him for that. 

  

This time, they were wise to my tricks and I was whiddled down to just my Felarch left.  Of course, no one else was in a much better place.  The Grey Knight only had their leader left, and Chaos was the best off with 3 models.  I blew my final turning point and ended up getting cut out of the scoring all together this game.  The Chaos forces and Grey Knights tied, but since the Chaos models had more paint on them we awarded them the victory.  

I had a small morale victory when a heavily injured Chaos Champion attacked my Felarch and I ended up killing him in Hand-to-hand.  Normally, if my Felarch gets caught out he gets deleted pretty fast.  Not today Chaos!  Otherwise, not my best showing but I still had fun.  

Oh yeah, I took a picture of my finished Hillbilly when I got home too....

There he is on the painting table along with my 6mm Egyptians and some Dark Eldar in the background.  I did manage to get the Hand of the Archon box undercoated and ready for paint. 

  

Until next time! 

 

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On the Painting Table: For the Glory of Ra- More Egyptians for Kadesh

 

Faithful readers, you know I have been working on a 6mm project for the Battle of Kadesh for sometime now.  This means I have been grinding out work on an Egyptian army first.  I have completed the following: 

• 4 Bases of Skirmishers with Bows
• 4 Bases of Auxiliary Infantry with Bows
• 2 Bases of Levy Infantry with Bows

However, that still leaves a whole lot of bases left to paint.  I have started tackling the largest single unit of the force, the Archers.  There are 6 total units.  Each unit has 12 strips of 4 archers and two command strips also with 4 figures.  That means each unit will have 56 figures per base.  That's a lot of batch painting.  

Progress was very slow on these units.  Painting any single 6mm figure is pretty simple.  Undercoat black, use Bronzed Flesh for skin tone, add white on the skirt, and skeleton bone for the bow/quiver, brown on the base.  Easy.  However, batch painting all of of them..... not easy or fun.  

I actually decided to paint them by unit to break things up a bit.  I batched the undercoating, then skin tones.  Once I painted the flesh on 2 units worth I went back to unit #1 and painted the other colors.  Then, I flesh undercoated unit #3 and then went back to finishing off Unit #2.  I did this routine over a few week ends until they were all complete.  

From there, I went onto the basing.  I used the same method of gap filler spackle that I have been using.  The command elements were a bit more complicated because I had to "cut" them off the strips so I could arrange them to face the correct way.  However, it was nothing complicated.  The biggest danger was one of them flying off into space, but a closed hand around the piece solved this little issue. 

After letting the bases fully dry, I moved onto one of my least favorite parts.  I painted all the bases using a Territorial Brown dry brushed with a Khaki color.  Then, I used a Green wash to add some foliage look.  The last step was to re-edge the bases with pure black.  This helps the whole unit stand out a bit on the table and look finished.  

6 Units down.  That left 5 bases of Egyptian Infantry including a base of Sherden Guards, and 3 bases of chariots to call this army done.  The bulk units were now complete.  The race to finishing off the Egyptian army before the end of the year was on!  

Below you can see the 12 bases the army is right now.  This is a mix of Auxiliary infantry with bows, Levy infantry with bows, archers, and bow armed skirmishers.  You can see that firepower was a big part of this army.      

Until next time.  I hope I have the whole army done! 

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Battle Report: White Star/Red Star - April 12th, 1951 "Black Thursday"

 

Dateline: April 12th, 1951

Location: Northwest Korea, MiG Alley

In early 1951, the Communist forces were able to dislodge UN forces out of the Kimpo area.  This success also led to an increase in Communist air activity in northwest Korea; MiG Alley.

April 12th, 1951 was nicknamed "Black Thursday" after 30 Mig-15s engaged and attacked 48 or so B-29 Bombers in MiG Alley.  The Bombers were escorted by F-80s and F-84s that were no match for the Soviet aircraft.  Several B-29s were lost or damaged.  No MIGs were lost.  This caused bomber operations to cease over North Korea for three months.

Today we will be playing another Bomber intercept mission similar to our last engagement.  However, this time we will be using a few more defenders and attackers and see if we get a different outcome from the historical, Black Thursday results.  

Forces:

USAF

3 B-29 Bombers - Experienced Pilots

4 F-84 Thunder Jets- Experienced Pilots

4 F-80 Shooting Stars- Experienced Pilots

Soviets

4 MiG-15s - Experienced Pilots

1 Mig-15- Ace Pilot

Mission: 

This will be a Bomber Intercept sortie with the USAF as the Attackers.  They gain a kill for each Bomber that makes it off the board. 

Set-up:

Today we are using 1 MU = 1 inch on a 72MU by 48MU across board. 

However, the sky is overcast at High Altitude, meaning that Detection is harder for aircraft at High Altitude and shooting is reduced to Combat range only. 

For fun and flavor, we scattered some Low Altitude terrain across the board at random.  These will only impact flying at Low Altitude.  

If an aircraft is off its base, it is at low altitude.  If it is on the base it is at Combat altitude.  If it has a dice behind it, the aircraft is at High-altitude.  As usual, I will be breaking the game down into three phases, Maneuver, Battle, and End phase.  I will not be tracking the turn-by-turn action as it makes recording the game and playing it easier.  

Maneuver Phase:

As normal for games of White Star/Red Star the table starts clear of any aircraft as none have been detected yet. A strong Soviet detection roll let them spot the B-29s and escorting Shooting Stars at High altitude, even with the Cloud Cover before they made it very far onto the board.  The following turn, the Thunderjets were also detected.  

Finally, the MIg-15s were spotted coming in low, along the hard deck.  They use their speed and low altitude to sneak beneath the F-80s in front.  

Battle Phase: 

The Soviet pilots use the amazing climbing ability of the Mig-15s to race up and engage the B-29s.  The Migs swarm the Bombers, and manage to take one down in a fire ball.  

1 Bomber Down!

However, it doesn't all go the MiGs way, as fire from one of the B-29's also takes out a passing MiG. The experienced MiG pilots race past, needing to reposition for another pass.  However, the Ace does a high-G turn and targets another bomber, but fails to bring it down. 

Scratch 1 MiG!

After frantically trying to shift position and get back into the fight, the MiGs manage to get in behind the second bomber and blast it from the sky.  The MiG on the outside runs out of ammo tangling with some F-80s, but no one goes down.  The Soviet Ace over-shoots the last Bomber, and has to break-off, pursued by USAF F-80s.  

2nd Bomber Down!

The pair of MiGs manage to be in a tailing position on the last bomber, after finishing off his companion, and they down the last B-29.  

The last Bomber just before getting shot down!

Disengagement Turn:

The USAF go back to High Altitude and turn for home.  The MiGs avoid any further engagements with their mission complete and break-off back across the Yalu river. 

F-84 Thunderjets flee for home.

Conclusion:

Soviets scored 3 Kills to the USAF 1.  A clear win to the Communists! 

A "Black Thursday" indeed.  The MiG-15s proved why they were so feared and effective at their job.  They easily out maneuvered the F-80s and F-84s and took the B-29s apart.  As the USAF player, I never had a chance as I was always out of position with my escorts.  I think I managed to fire with them twice.  Meanwhile, most of my shooting came from B-29s!  The Soviet Ace was all over me.  Being able to maneuver in all three phases is pretty good, but thankfully he couldn't hit the broadside of a B-29 or this would have been over much faster! 

I think next time we will have to put some Sabres up against some MiGs.  The Shooting Stars and Thunderjets are not up to the challenge! 

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