Random: Painting for 2018 Goals

Last year, my 2017 Goals for Painting were not met.  For 2018, I decided to scale back my painting goals to something more managable.  I really scaled it back since I did not expect to have much time to paint.  My peak painting season is typically Novemebr through March.  This year, that did not happen do to pesky "Real Life" commitments getting in the way.

This blog is primarily about designing and playing wargames.  However, part of what makes wargaming a unique experience is the tactile and visual spectacle elements.  That is what drew me to wargaming in the first place.  It is no secret, I am not a great painter and do not really enjoy it much.  I am not above using paper templates in place of miniatures.  However, when I do have models I typically do not play a game with unpainted models.  It is a wierd quirk.  I am fine using paper templates or toys, but if I am playing with wargaming models I want them painted!

So, to that end I have been doing a bit of painting.  Let's see my progress.

You may recall these two models that I picked up when I purchased Pulp Alley.  They are a Red Queen and D.A. Thompson model that I intended to use in Turf War, Mad Dogs with Guns, Pulp Alley, or even Strange Aeons. 

I managed to get paint on them.  Nothing spectacular, as I am not that good of a painter. However, they are now ready to hit the tabletop.

Besides these two, I also painted up some Mobile Artillery for All Quiet on the Martian Front.  These had been sitting in the silver and unassembled on my desk for sometime.  I think since late 2016!  They finally got a coat of paint.  

My main base coat of dark green went dry so I had to make do with some other colors.  However, you can see that they turned out just fine after some Dark Tone washes.

Finally, I also went back to some of my Crusader Gladiators.  I had been putting them off for sometime as I don't like painting horses.  The chariot horses did not turn out great, so I put off paintingthe Equites on horseback for a long, long time.  Probably longer than the Mobile Artillery even!  However, now that they are painted, I can use Equites Gladiators in The Games: Blood and Spectacle games.  That will be fun! 

They have a mounted and dismounted version now too.  I actually painted the dismounted guys a long time ago to act as Damnati and Noxi models too.  For Gladiator games they will prove versatile, plus I can use them as a Sons of Spartacus faction in Broken Legions.

I really need to stop taking iphone photos from my basement at night and expect them to come out!  These are a pair of Retarius and a Noxi for my Gladiators.  They are also from Crusader.  The Retarius with the iron mask... I actually have no idea what he is.  He doesn't have a net and he doesn;t have a trident... so I think he is something from the movie Gladiator with Russel Crowe i.e. some made-up Hollywood gladiator type.   

That actually sorts my 2018 Painting Goals plus a few models more!  Wow, anything else I paint is gravy!   

  

     

Wargame Design: New Title: Turf War

The astute reader of this blog will have noticed that the number of Free Wargames has grown on this page!  When I first started there were 6 games available for free there.  That selection has grown a lot in the past year and a half.  It is now a whopping 11.  Not bad productivity for 18 months or so. 

The newest addition to the Blood and Spectacles fold is Turf War a game of 1930’s Gangster battles.  I like this game since it is a skirmish game that allows for campaign play and RPG-lite style scenarios.  It uses the Combat Pool system for combat found in The Games: Blood and Spectacleand Tournament Pageantry and Pain.  However, it also uses pools for other non-combat actions such as smooth-talking, safe-cracking, and other RPG-lite options.  Not everything has to be solved by a flurry of Tommy Gun fire…. but it can be.   

In addition to the Core mechanics of everyday gang warfare Turf War also has a strong campaign system built on the model of some of my favorites such as Necromunda, Strange Aeons, and TheGames: Blood and Spectacle.  Lowly gangsters can gain experience to earn skills, get injured, or improve their abilities.  In addition, the game uses a Turf bidding system prior to games to represent the give and take of territory based on the results of a game.  Resources for your gang are managed such as Reputation, Take, Turf, and Favors.  In addition, the Boss has to manage the recruitment and retention of his gang too.  The game also uses a Most Wanted rating to gauge relative gang strength that allows for catch-up mechanics for those just entering an existing campaign or who have had a run of bad luck. 

Overall, I wanted the game itself to force decisions making, and reward good gameplay.  Sometimes, campaign games focus too much on the campaign and bolt the gameplay on as a secondary concern.  That is not the case with Turf War.  I wanted the game to be full of decisions.  The theme of Turf War is to try and force decision making on a risk vs. reward continuum.  This is primarily accomplished through resource management of dice pools for combat, non-combat, and even activation.  Combat Pool is bid and used to attack and defend, but it will not be replenished until the following turn.  Therefore, as the player you have to decide when is the right time to use it, and how much of it. 

Activation is also a push your luck system as a model can only do one thing per activation such as move, shoot, perform and action, etc. You can risk trying to chain activations together as well.  I used a similar activation system in Combat! Starring Vic Morrow as well.  Failure to activate multiple times risks losing the initiative and allowing your opponent to start activating.  Therefore, additional activations are another risk vs. reward decision point.

The biggest sticking point in completing these rules was coming up with interesting Scored (scenarios) to play.  In the end, I used some “generic” wargames style scenario with some added period flavor.  Inspiration came from StrangeAeons, Mad Dogs with Guns, Pulp Alley, Rogue Trader, and Rogue Stars.  However, there is room to combine or modify the scenarios in the rules and adding more RPG-lite elements is strongly encouraged.

To help kick-off the game, I of course made some paper templates that you can use to get your gangs started.  I also put together a couple of gangs for playtesting.  These should give you a good quick start into games.  They can be found Here on the Messageboard.  

Of course, I have also started picking up a few gangsters here and there to paint.  You probably recognize these Pulp Alley figures from the Painting Desk.  Well, I have one doen to get a start on one of my gangs! 

   

Random: On The Painting Desk

On this blog I rarely talk about the painting or modeling side of things.  Of all the aspects of wargaming it is one of my least favorite aspects.  Clearly, it is not imperative to me as I am more than willing to use Paper Templates to play a game.  However, I am also attracted to the spectacle of wargaming and prefer to have actual painted models when I can.  Sadly, for that to happen that means I have to paint them.  I am no great shakes at painting and do not really enjoy it.   

Recently, I re-read my Goals for 2017 and the progress I had made on them up to July.  I have been making good progress on my playing and designing goals.  The main things that had been holding me back on my 2017 goals were the painting side of things.  With only two months left of the season, I had better get cracking on with some painting if I wanted to improve from July!

Suitably motivated, I went online and finally ordered those Victrix Limited Greeks I was going to need for Men of Bronze.  I ordered enough models, bases, and transfers for 1 Spartan army, 1 Corinthian army, and 1 Macedonian army.  I told myself that had been one of my 2017 Goals, so I was helping get me closer to finishing them!  The second reason I had to act now is that I needed to get 30 digital photos of Greek Hoplite miniatures to Osprey prior to May 2018 for my deadline. 

With that out of the way, I decided to head into the old Game Cave and find some of those projects that I still needed to paint.  Many people have a dedicated painting area where they keep all of their projects to work on.  I do not do that.  Instead, I keep everything stored and packed away.  I only pull it out when I actually intend to paint something, and when I am done I tend to pack it all away.  Thanks to this approach, I do not have many “On The Painting Desk” type moments.  This is very different from how I handle wargames, as I will get them all set-up and leave them set-up to play until I play the game, and then switch out the table for the next game I intend to play.  That is why the Messageboard has threads dedicated to what is ‘on the table” to play, but not to paint. 

So, here is what I pulled up out of the gaming area and set-up to work on this weekend,  we will see if any of it even has a brush applied to it before it ends up packed back away. 

First up we have a Spartan Games Prussian air ship.  The actual name escapes me, but it is a big one.  I will be using this for games of AeronauticaImperialis as a Varingyr Warlord Super-heavy aircraft.  You can also see four Steel Crown Valkyrie Gunships that I will also be using for Aeronautica Imperialis as Varingyr Iron Eagles with ground attack weapons.  I have painted a usable force of Varingyr using Steel Crown models, and you can see them in a number of Battle Reports on the blog.  This will just fully round the force out.  Sadly, I think Spartan Games and Steel Crown are now defunct. 

Next up, I have some Mobile Artillery Steam Tanks for All Quiet on the Martian Front.  As you can see, these still require some assembly of the metal parts.  I will need to go get some super glue for this project.  I look forward to adding them to my Minnesota Volunteer Army to help push back the Red Menace in the Minnesota River Valley campaign.  I have had these since the end of last year and I assembled the plastic parts of the kit early, I did was put off by the metal components.

 

Lastly, I have a few models for Turf War.  These are models I picked up when I ordered Pulp Alley.  I think they are called DA Thompson and the Red Queen, but I am not 100%.  Either way, they looked like they would be great models to get my gangsters started for games of Turf War.  I figured I could also use them in Strange Aeons, Pulp Alley, or Mad Dogs with Guns pretty easily.  That will make them nice versatile models once I get them painted up.

         

That is what I have on my desk for the weekend.  Typically, I tend to have more than one painting or converting project going at once so as one dries I can rotate to the others.  I normally only have a scant few minutes to paint so I try to maximize any time I can sit down and get to work.  I am hoping I can lavish some attention on these models and show some results soon.  

Review: Pulp Alley- Pulp Alley Publishing

Pulp Alley is a skirmish game designed to recreate the adventure of serials and cheap paperbacks.  This is commonly referred to as Pulp Gamin, and often takes place in the inter-war years between WWI and WWII.  In addition, Pulp Gaming often takes place in exotic locales, have two-fisted men-of-action, villainous scientists, gangsters, and femme fatales.  It is the stuff of Sam Spade, Indiana Jones, Sky Captain, and Doc Savage.  With that you have an idea of what the game is trying to recreate. 

I was first exposed to Pulp Alley after playing some games of Super System 4thEdition.  I briefly toyed with the idea of picking up Chaos in Carpathia or Chaos in Cairo.  While researching these two titles I stumbled across the Pulp Alley game.  I heard people mention some interesting mechanics in the game system, and I became very interested in learning more.  It seemed like it had some of the mechanics that I enjoyed.     

Each [layer creates a League of characters for the game.  These can have some generic archetypes that give League wide bonus, and then there are a few character types of different skill levels.  Each League is typically run by a Hero.  The Hero then has a collection of followers and sidekicks.  Think of Indiana Jones, Short Round, Professor Brody, and Henry Jones all working together as a League. 

This sounds like fun to me, so let’s dig in and see it if delivers.

Things I Like

This game has an interesting Initiative system.  The player with initiative can choose if he will activate a model or the opponent.  The player maintains it as long as the opponent does not complete an objective (plot Point) or outright win in a fight.  If one of those things happens then initiative passes to the other player.  If you want the other player to activate they can choose any model in their league so there is an element of risk.  Go first and do what you need to do, or let your opponent and possibly lose the initiative.  Decisions are good!

Models use a dice poll with a dice shifting mechanic.  This is similar to Force-on-Force.  A 4+ on any dice size is a success, but some things will require more successes than others.  For example, to solve a peril or Plot Point you might need to roll more than one success.  In addition, a model’s Health is also a Dice size, as you are injured the dice size is reduced and no dice pool can be used with a dice larger than your injury dice.  If you dice shift below a d6, you are unconscious or out-of-the-fight.  This is a clever mechanic to give models more than one injury but reduce effectiveness due to injury. 

Finally, the game uses an opposed dice roll called Dice Matching.  Both players role the Model’s opposed dice pools and compare the number of successes.  However, if you roll a success with a result equal or better than an opponent you can cancel the result.  Typically the attacker can match, and that allows him to decide how many wounds he wants to try to inflict at a cost of receiving how many back.  Therefore, you are forced to make decisions about how much punishment you are willing to take vs. receive.  Decisions are good.  Dice matching is also used in other opposed tests as well. 

Things I Do Not Like

Each player draws cards from a Fortune Deck.  These are used when an opponent activates a model.  You can use it to force them to make challenge rolls.  If succeeded, the model may continue but if failed they make take damage.  This could be anything that fits the narrative.  It can also be used to make terrain features perilous to cross without a test, securing an objective (Plot Point), or complicating an action. 

This is a good way to force decisions on both players and keep them engaged in the game.  So, why do I not like it?  There are three reasons. 

1.       The game uses a number of different dice sizes to resolve actions.  A deck is just another form of resolving or forcing actions and clutter up the mechanics away from the core mechanic.

2.       I didn’t buy the deck when I bought the rules as I did not know I needed it.

3.       The challenges are rather abstract and boring.  The detail needs to be added by the players. 

This game is designed to be played player vs. player and the Fortune Deck is the mechanic that allows it.  However, this game would play best with a GM.  That way the abstract perils and challenges could be defined by the GM.  This would ideal, but most gamers are lucky to find a single likeminded individual much less a GM too.  I can see why they tried to bypass needing a GM.  Personally, I think this game would be really cool as a League vs. the GM type game too. 

Meh and Other Uncertainties

The game comes with a number of scenarios in the book.  This includes plot point placement, special events, deployment, terrain, etc.  Everything you need to get playing.  There are 6 scenarios and give you a good idea of where to start.  However, I think this game would shine with custom scenarios instead.  The scenarios recommend 5 plot points, but this seems like too many on such a small boards.  However, season to taste.

The scenarios also allow for some basic campaign enhancements.  I am sure the supplements go into this in much greater detail, but the main books gives you a basic system to get you started.    

The rules themselves are bound like a comic book.  This is a neat little gimmick to bring home the pulp nature of the work.  The art is stylized and peppered with photos of models in black-and-white.  I enjoyed the design touches to keep with the Pulp feel of the rules. 

Final Thoughts

This is a very clever game, perhaps too clever!  It combines dice pools, dice shifts, matching, opposed rolls, deck building, card playing, and an innovative initiative mechanic all in one game.  I will be honest it is a bit overwhelming and feels like it may actually get in the way of the game play.  The dice mechanics alone would make me want to play the game but the deck aspect feels like too much goodness layered on top.  I tend to prefer games that choose a core mechanic and stick with it.

This game would be ideal for a small group of dedicated players who were rotating GMs to make a sort of wargame/RPG hybrid.  That being said, I look forward to trying these rules out using some of my Inquisitor 28 guys.  The system seems like it would be a great system for Oldhammer as well as Pulp Action.  The small model count and board size seem to make it ideal.  Plus it covers investigation on and light RPG on the tabletop too.

If that is the type of game that interests you, then I recommend picking up the rules.  Be sure you also get the Fortune Deck as well.  The rules come with some in the book, but I am sure the deck from Pulp Alley would be worth it. 

I am very glad to have read these rules.  There was a variety of great mechanics to look at and think about.  As a designer, it is a good toolbox for game mechanic ideas.