Wargame Design: Kitchen Table Games

In recent years, the idea of "Kitchen Table Games" have seen a surge in popularity.  What is a Kitchen Table Game you ask?  Well, it is a game that can be played on a smaller playing surface.  Notably a kitchen table that is about three-feet long and two-feet across.  Of course, this is a change from traditional wargames as they typically use 6x4 foot tables or larger. In today's world, getting access to such large tables can be problematic.  The rise of these smaller table games is a natural reaction to these problems.            

In my current "Mobile" situation the idea of Kitchen Table Games is much more appealing to me.  I no longer have access to my 8-foot by 4-foot table.  I have made a few smaller table games in my days, but I typically only go 3-feet by 3-feet as the smallest.  The realm of smaller board games is a new realm for me.  

Thinking about "Kitchen Table Games" leads me to speculate about a few ways to approach the "problem" of scaling down a game.  Many games have all ready tackled these ideas:

Odin's Ravens

1. Reduce the Size  

In this scenario, I mean reducing the actual size of the miniatures that you are using.  I.e. if you are playing a model-vs-model skirmish game instead of using 28mm models, you use 10mm models instead.  You keep the relative relationship of range to movement the same, just different, smaller, measurements.  

2. Reduce the Scale

Here, I am talking about reducing the scale of the battle.  I.e. instead of focusing on unit-vs-unit in the conflict you focus on model-vs-model.  Instead of warbands of 10-12 models, your reduce the scope down to 4 or fewer.  

For example, the game Doom 1490 has a tight focus on only a handful of models for a full game.  

3, Bathtub It

This is an old practice in wargaming where you modify the ground, unit, or even time scale to fit the scenarios. This can include telescoping, rubber banding, time-warping or other tricks to distort the size of the battlespace relative to reality in various ways.  

For example, the Portable Wargame makes use of this technique.  

4. Set Spaces

A technique where all games take place in the same general space.  This is typically some sort of arena like a gladiator game or sports game.  The arena can always be the same general size.  

For example, Heroquest always uses the same board for a variety of adventure types. 

An example of a set-size

5. Abstracting 

In this situation, you intentionally misrepresent the connection between factors on the table.  Such as the minimizing or changing the relationship between movement, range, and speed.  As you modify these relationships you can adjust the size of the table with such tricks.  

For example, Kill Team makes use of this technique to allow games in the Warhammer 40K universe in a small play area.

 

6. Scale of the Game fits the Reality

The final trick I can think about is to find a reality that fits the scale of the game.  This means choose a situation to play-out that only requires a small space.  Think of situation such as the gunfight at the OK Corral, a single samurai duel, or something similar in scope.  

For example, Blood on the Sands is a game of gladiator combat between 1-on-1 combatants.

The Games: Blood and Spectacles

7. Zoom In

Just zoom in real close to the action.  Maybe a huge battle is going on but the game is only interested in a small, close-up piece of the action.

For example. arguably this is how Warhammer 40K: 2nd Edition handles things.   

8.  Ready for the Close-up

Similar to the Zoom In, except all the action is intentionally up-close and tight.  The game has a very tight and focused view on just the action that it needs to see.  Everything is up close and personal, almost cinematic in focus.  

For example, a game like Warriors of Athena uses this trick to keep the play area small.   

Kill Team

Final Thoughts

This is just a general primer on tricks or tips that Wargame Designers can use to create some compelling or interesting Kitchen Table Games.  This can include a tight focus on realism or a much more cinematic approach.  This can include various tools to play with related to how you use The Designer's Triangle.  The key is deciding how you want to make your game fit the space limitations of a Kitchen Table and commit to the bit.  

Until next time! 

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Review: Aeronautica Imperialis- Forgeworld

 Aeronautica Imperialis focuses on aerial combat in the grimdark, war-torn 41^st millennium.  It features air-to-air combat from the Games Workshop Warhammer 40K universe using 6-10mm scale aircraft.

Aeronautica Imperialis is a dead game.  Dead, dead, dead!  It was produced by Forgeworld which is part of the Games Workshop empire.  When Forgeworld stopped carrying Epic scale and Battlefleet Gothic models, the Aeronautica Imperialis line went with them.  Interestingly,  Aeronautica Imperialis was the one and only game that Forgeworld created in-house.  However, less than a year later flyers were introduced into Warhammer 40k.  Since Forgeworld is an organ of Games Workshop it doesn’t take a genius to see what happened to it. 

The basic design was created by Warwick Kinrade who has since moved on to help create the Battlegroup line and also Soldiers of God.  In addition, the rules were robust enough that they were reformatted and used in the last Warhammer Historicals rule set called Richthofen’s Flying Circus which was a game about World War I dogfighting.  So, this game has somewhat of a pedigree to it.

With all that being said, let’s take a pre-flight walk through shall we? 

Things I liked

This is a game about aircraft and it uses altitude as a 3^rd dimension.  The base of every aircraft is supposed to have two dials, one for speed and another for altitude.  As you change altitude, it will also impact your speed.  There are 9 altitude levels, with 0 being the ground.  In addition, the engagement corridor is slim, as you can only attack targets at the same altitude or one altitude difference.  Therefore, positioning in this game matters not just horizontally but also vertically.  To me, this is a must for an aircraft game as one of the only differentiators for aircraft games is the inclusion of altitude. 

All firepower essentially has three ranges of short (up to 6 inches), medium (up to 12 inches) and long (up to 18 inches).  Within that a weapon has a firepower rating which is the number of dice you roll looking for a target number to hit.  Some weapons are good up close, others at medium, and others at long range.  This accentuates the need for good positioning and to try and jockey your weapon not just into a kill zone based on board position vis-à-vis your target, altitude, and also optimal weapon’s range.  This is easy to grasp as a concept but difficult to execute on the board. 

At the beginning of the turn, each player chooses a maneuver card for their aircraft.  This includes high G turns, drifting to the side, going straight, loops, etc.  There are 9 different cards.  When you activate your aircraft you choose to change their speed with thrust (up or down), then begin to move.  You can play your maneuver card at any point in the movement.  You physically lay the card down and move the model the direction indicated by the card.  At this point, any speed and altitude changes take effect for the aircraft.  You can then finish any remaining movement.  This allows an aircraft to do a wide range of position changes, but it is limited to 1 per turn. 

Things I Do Not Like

The game is dead now, but the initial buy-in for this game was relatively high.  It hasn’t gotten any cheaper.  I have made my own aircraft for many factions but the specialized bases are tough to come across.  I hate specialty dice, bases, etc for this exact reason.  They add a barrier to entry that is not needed.  In a pinch, a pair of 10 sided dice or recording off board will work fine, but the bases make life easier. 

Changing dials and some maneuvers are pretty hard to do at the board level.  You end up taking the model off the board, moving the base ab bit, or other little adjustments that end up altering the play space a bit.  This can make it challenging to make sure everything goes back exactly where it started and that all your measurements are precise.  In friendly games, this is not an issue but when you start to get in the heat of the moment it can be a frustration point. 

The game uses alternate activation by phase with movement phase, and then a shooting phase.  That means each plane essentially works individually and it is a challenge to coordinate your aircraft.  However, that is also part of the “skill’ of the game.  I actually prefer X-wings mechanic of using pilot skill to determine who shoots first.  If one player has more aircraft, they will have an advantage as the last aircraft to activate always knows where the others will be and choose the engagement.      

The bulk of both book are pure fluff.  The game rules are covered in less than 30 pages and the rest of the two hard cover books deal with the aircraft.  This is purely narrative and the books are filled with great full page, color shots of schematics, color schemes, etc.  It is great to look at, but for the asking price it doesn’t add much to the game experience.  If you are familiar with Forgeworld books you know what I mean. 

Some of the “official’ air force lists are maddeningly short role-player aircraft.  I am talking about transports, dedicated bombers, ground defenses, etc.  For example, the Chaos Raiders list is a fighter and a fighter/bomber.  Many missions need ground defenses and transports so this list does not have what you need for a basic campaign! 

Meh and Other Uncertainties

The core turn sequence is choose maneuver card, initiative, tailing fire, move, and then shooting.  The player that wins the initiative roll-off goes first.  The game can end by hitting a max number of turns, reducing your opponent below their break point, or accomplishing mission objectives.  However, the last turn is always a disengagement turn before the end of the game. 

The core rules cover a basic campaign, while the supplement book covers a variant type of campaign rules.  These allow you to link games and generate missions for your air force.  They are relatively straight forward.  The game also includes some “scenario” driven missions that are stand-alone missions. 

The basic rules also cover a wide variety of situations such as ground fire, bombing, strafing, stalling, ejecting, special maneuvers, aces, weather, landing, hovering, etc.  These are mostly add-ons to make the game complete.  There is a short section on painting, making terrain, and some hobby stuff too. 

Final Thoughts 

I personally adore this game.  I still play it and spent a lot of time making additional content for it.  This included online campaigns, new aircraft, new factions, new rules, and new missions.  I even learned to sculpt and made some of my own aircraft models for the game after the range was dropped.  The game has been officially dead for half a decade, and I bought in late in the games life cycle but I still play it regularly.     

This game is very easy to learn.  The core rules are only about 25-30 pages and cover things you might not even use such as ground fire, tailing fire, landings, etc.  However, it is very hard to master.  Many of the mechanics force you to think about where you opponent is going to be and what maneuvers you have available to get you into firing position, without putting yourself in a position to get attacked.  Since it is alternate phase activation this can be a challenge and you are always thinking in this game.  It rewards coordinated effort and such coordination is not inherently built into the rules, making it a skill game.

I am hopeful that with the “return” of specialist games like Blood Bowl that Aeronautica Imperialis may one day see the light of day again.  However, with flyers in 40K I see no reason why GW would come back and revisit this game genre.  Too bad as this is probably one of their top three games that they have produced from a mechanics and game perspective.  If it doesn’t come back I won’t shed a tear since there is no reason for me to ever stop playing it! 

Now that I have this review up, I have carte blanche to fill the pages of my blog with battle reports for this game! 

If you are interested in any of the additional content I have created for this game, you can go to the following places:

Rules:

Airspace Compilation

Play Aids:

Eldar Counters

Imperial Counters 1, 2, 3

Ork Counters 1, 2

Cards 1-4, 5-9

QRS

Campaigns:

War over Zephyrus

Investigation of Bin Mazar

Feud of the Red Clouds

Blood and Irongard

Hunt for the White Wyrm

Cleansing of Grex Silex     

Review: Horizon Wars- Osprey Games

Horizon Wars is another title by Osprey Games.  Like Frostgrave, this one has a stand-alone hardcover rulebook and is not part of the Osprey Wargames Series.  Unlike Frostgraveit has not generated any “official” new content, but I know the author Robey Jenkins (PrecintOmega) has put unofficial content on his Facebook page.  Mr. Jenkins is relatively active online and is more than happy to talk about Horizon Wars with you. 

I remember being on the Warseer Forums when Robey started building and selling the “Mech” portion of this game.  At the time, I was also working on a Mech game with JUGS, so I followed his work closely.  This was part of his “5 Pound” (as in the currency) wargaming efforts.  After finishing the mech game, he made an air frame and conventional forces game.  They could all work separately or together and were sold independently at the time.  Horizon Wars seems to be all of these works combined together into one source with some additional scenario and background content added. 

That’s a long enough stroll down memory lane.  I am sure if I mis-remembered any of the above Mr. Jenkins will be along soon to sort me out.  Let’s dive into the review. 

What I Liked

The game uses a rather innovative mechanic for resolving shooting attacks.  You measure the distance to the target, add modifiers, and that becomes your Target Number for success.  The unit firing rolls its firepower dice and adds them up.  Every time you can create a combination of this Target Number it is a potential hit.  The defender can roll his Defense dice, and any roll he makes that matches the roll of an attacker is cancelled. 

So, If I am shooting at a target 12 inches away in the open, my TN is 12.  If my unit has Firepower 3, I happen to roll a 9, 8, 7.  That would be 24 but would only be a single hit, since 8+7 exceeds 12, but 9 does not.  In addition, let’s say the defender rolls two defense dice and gets a 2 and 7, then I would have 9+8 which still exceed 12 and gives me one hit. 

This is a pretty clever mechanic as longer range shots are automatically more difficult due to the range, but there is theoretically no range limit.  This is a much more “active” way to deal with advanced weapons on the tabletop and much more elegant than giving each weapon system a “range” stat.  Very clever! 

I also really enjoy the “Adventures” system. It is essentially a method to create a set-piece battle that reflects the effects of previous engagements on the forces.  You roll up three categories, a situation, mission, and purpose to help you define the reason for the battle and that impacts the forces involved.  Based on the situation, mission, and purpose it changes your force selection, deployment, and mission objectives.  This means as a commander you no longer have “perfect knowledge” and must work with the “friction” of battle before it begins.  Very clever again!

Conventional, Mecha, and flying units all seem to be fairly well balanced against each other.  You do not have to take Mechs to be competitive.  They are just another unit type with some fun add-ons, but a tank can blast a Mech just as easily as vice-versa.  The same goes with aircraft.   

The size of the forces involved is also interesting.  For most 6-10mm scales games you see them focused on what I would call “battle” scale games.  In Horizon Wars the forces are almost “skirmish” scale.  You do not need dozens of tanks and infantry stands to play.  When I mocked up a couple of average sized game forces, they clocked in at 7 and 8 units respectively.  That is smaller than a game of Blood Bowl!  The game is intended for each “unit” to be a single model for vehicles and 3-5 infantry models on a base.  Wow, that makes playing this game super affordable!  The engagement ranges are also relatively short with 2x2 to 4x4 tables for game play.  This rulesets seems to hit the sweet spot for scale and price.    

Things I Do Not Like

With the aircraft rules, some of the seams start to show in the game.  The aircraft rules would work just fine as stand-alone rules for an aircraft vs. aircraft duel.  However, they start to get a bit muddier when you are trying to integrate them in with conventional ground forces as their movement is a bit different than that of ground forces.  This is a common problem when trying to make a combined arms game, and the aircraft rules combined with the Conventional rules add just a bit more complexity than I like.  This is the only part of the game where you can see the independent design of its components start to show a bit. 

Damage in Horizon Wars is based on attrition.  What does this mean?  Well, units all have a base set of stats.  As you take damage, the stats are reduced.  When the stats go to 0, a unit may not be able to move, shoot, or is destroyed.  The defender chooses which stats get reduced, unless a critical hit was rolled, in which the attacker chooses.  I am not a fan of this approach as it tends to increase “tracking” in the game.  Some level of this is unavoidable, but in a 6-10mm scale game I prefer either disabled/destroyed or not.

Every unit gets two activation a turn.  They can use this to move, shoot, engage in close combat, etc.  It is possible to use them up all at once or to save your second activation to potentially “react” to an opponent’s action.  I really like the nature and concept of this mechanic, but it is essentially an “action” point system.  I am not a fan of the system presented here for two main reasons. First it relies on counters on the table to track, and I tend to dislike those.  Second, it leads to more tracking and at 6-10mm scale I prefer to reduce the tracking. 

Both the action/reaction system, and attrition damage system are less of a problem in Horizon Wars as it is more of a scaled down skirmish game than a typical 6-10mm battle game.  These same mechanic with a larger unit count would be a deal breaker, but with the number of units present it works well enough. 

Meh and Other Uncertainties

The book has some really great artwork, including full page artwork.  I love the cover and think it captures the feel of the game really well.  There is a couple great full-page pieces of art inside as well, especially page 14 and 32.  However, some of the “in game” photos are a little less inspiring with boring terrain.  However, I recognize some of the models from PrecintOmega’s painting log from back in the day, and that made me smile.

There are several scenarios in the book.  They are pretty standard stuff, but when combined with the Adventures details they can shine and do the job.

There are also four “pre-packaged” sci-fi backgrounds that you can set your games in as well.  The first is a hypothetical future conflict where the British decide to attack the French essentially for the LOLs and because the French needed a “good kicking”.  This is my favorite of the backgrounds as it makes no sense, and even the people describing it “in-universe” are baffled by why it happened in the first place.  I could make some preposterous comment about how it mimics the absurd nature of modern warfare, and amplifies the general mood of Post-Brexit Britain to satirical levels; but that would just be a bunch of tosh.  The others are a Venus/Earth/Martian civil war, Mech obsessed E-sports-nutters, and truly advanced/grimdark/future of Galactic expansionism.  All of the pre-packaged sci-fi universes are a bit tongue in cheek and I appreciate that. 

Finally, the index provides a number of sources for 6-10mm models to fill your armies.  There is also a handy play summary sheet and army stat sheet for tracking. 

Final Thoughts

Horizon Wars is a nice little game.  It covers combined arms nicely and has some innovative and creative mechanics to model such "advanced” warfare.  The scale of the conflicts represented also makes this a great game for small spaces and the forces are affordable.  There is a bit more book-keeping than I typically like in a 6-10mm game, but the small number of units makes it manageable.  It is a nice bit of design work and I look forward to playing it more.  

As I said, Mr. Jenkins was working on this game when I was building Jugs.  Truth be told, I think his efforts are much more innovative and deal with combined arms much better.  The aircraft pieces feel like their own game to me, but they are perfectly serviceable if a bit complex to be integrated into ground warfare.  His Mechs also scale nicely together.  I think we had different design goals, as the big, stompy robots of Jugs were supposed to be the pinnacle of warfare where in Horizon Wars they are just another tool of the military trade.

It looks like Osprey has been on a roll with their rules.  Add this into the “Hit” column.