Miniatures Rules: Movement Trays and Unit Size

I'm starting to put together a set of miniatures rules for the side game.   My goal is to get a system that is fast and playable, with as little math and figuring as possible.  

Gygax and Perrin's Chainmail, is a good start, but gets all bogged down in the post-melee morale phase.   Tony Bath's two systems from the 60's are also pretty good, but also have some fiddly bits in the morale department.    Pig Wars was always fun, but I'd like to get away from the playing cards system.  Also, movement is handled by individual figure, and I'd like to do unit movement.  Warhammer Ancients is more detail than I want to get into, and is too historically specific for our needs.  The WRG systems and DBM systems by Phil Barker are far too fiddly for what I want to do.

I'm also looking to make the system fit my particular miniatures collection and system (so I don't need rules for Elephants and Chariots), and I want a system where individual figures are removed to indicate casualties.

My first step is Basing Units.  I want to use a standard sized unit Movement Tray, and thought that 4x6 would be ideal.    Here's my first step:

UNITS AND FIGURE BASING

INFANTRY:

Each Infantry Battalion is mounted on a single movement tray that measures 4 inches by 6 inches.

A Battalion must contain at least 6 figures and no more than 24 figures. If casualties ever reduce the number of figures to 5 or less, the unit breaks and flees the battle field or surrenders.

MISSILE TROOPS

Each Battalion of Archers, Crossbowmen, Slingers or Javelin-men is mounted on a single movement tray that measures 4 inches by 6 inches. Each Battalion must contain at least 4 figures but not more than 18 figures. If casualties ever reduce the number of figures to 3 or less, the unit breaks and flees the battle-field or surrenders.

SHOCK CAVALRY

Each Troop of Shock/Melee Cavalry is mounted on a single movement tray that measures 4 inches by 6 inches. Each Troop must contain at least 4 figures, but no more than 8 figures. If casualties ever reduce the number of figures to 3 or less, the unit breaks and flees the battlefield or surrenders.

SKIRMISH CAVALRY

Each Troop of Horse Archers or Javelin Cavalry is mounted on a single movement tray that measures 4 inches by 6 inches. Each Troop must contain at least 2 figures, but no more than 8 figures. If casualties ever reduce the number to a single figure the unit breaks and flees the battlefield or surrenders.

Masked Archer of the Apocalypse

I've painted up a pretty decent miniature for my character "The Masked Archer of the Apocalypse" and even painted in a little mask for him.   I think this may be the first time I've ever bought and painted a miniature specifically for a character.   I always buy and paint from a GM's perspective, looking to provide things that can be used for a vast variety of purposes. 

I've also been thinking about changing the Masked Archer from a Thief to an Assassin:

Both have the same to hits, both get backstab and move silently/hide in shadows

Advantages to Thief:  locks, traps, hear noise, climb walls and pick pockets.  10% XP bonus, and faster XP track.

Advantages to Assassin:  damage bonus, more cleaves, can wear heavier armor if desired, may use shield, d6 hit points instead of d4.

It seems more and more desirable to make the switch.   I know the rest of the party would like having a dancing trap-monkey/chest opener.  But, the assassin would be more useful in a fight overall.

Vague idea for rampart and stockade, using what we've learned

Putting together what we learned about Salt Dough and Plaster casting.   A rampart and stockade combo might be a doable thing.

Step one:  make a 6" section of rampart out of salt dough.

Step two:  top the rampart with a stockade, either carved somehow or made from real sticks.

Step three: use aluminum foil to make plaster molds.   Cast pieces.

Repeat for a corner piece and maybe gate section.


Sweet jumping merciful blood-stained gods!

Do I indeed have a real stockade piece?

It's jumping all around my memory.

Calm down.

The piece I remember is actually much shorter than would make a proper rampart.  It might have been for 15mm, and only comes to chest height.

I need to get home and have a look.

Maybe a lie-down too.

What terrian do we need?

I'm trying to think of what sort of terrain pieces we might get a lot of use out of.  I'm not really interested in one-shot items that would end up just taking up space.   I like things that can be used over and over again (like the infinitely repeated hills, or any sort of monkey miniature).

I think we could use a few more hills to spice things up.   Maybe a few buildings with removable roofs.  A great hall might come in handy, especially one with a removeable roof. 

I'd like to fix my fortress walls.   They're pretty cool, but I totally failed to make the angled edge line up properly with one another.   I could probably use the help of a better carpenter than I (meaning anyone in the world except my wife and daughters) to shave off the longish sections.

Some sort of River or creek might be nice.   I had a two section river that looked pretty good, only it was built to span a table I no longer possess, and doesn't fit our current table.  The piece was also too thick, and you had to step up to get onto the riverbank from the surrounding terrain.

Do we need a better stockade or earthen rampart system?   We've used my cheap ramparts a billion times, and they have their flaws (though the price couldn't be beat).    The stockade I had for on top of the ramparts are long since gone.

We might be able to do a plaster-cast of the cottages I have, using the method Andrew and I learned at Fall-In,  if we wanted to try using plaster and really need more cottages.

Painting Progress

I haven't done any painting since the Crab People and White Apes for Mutants and Muskets, but the Convention got my wheels greased again.   I had a box of 8 GW knights that had sat on my shelf for a year or so, I managed to glue those together and prime them this weekend (I'm still leary of gluing together 30 Vikings, but we'll see).  I also primed 8 ape commandos, and a half dozen thieves and rangers (possibly for "The Masked Archer of the Apocalypse") and 4 of my dismounted crusader knights I bought at the con.  

I forced myself to prepare a lot of my less recent purchases, rather than shoving them aside and doing all my new toys up front.  But, I do admit the GW knights are all fancy-like, not as plain-jane as the historical knights I've gotten more recently.

Granulairty of the Strategic Game

The most important question about the Strategic level of the miniatures campaign is granularity of the moves.

Option A:  Diplomacy Style:  in the game Diplomacy, each space can hold one and only one UNIT  (an army or fleet).   If we took that outlook it has several advantages and disadvantages:  
a) Every Battle is Even:  since only one unit will ever encounter 1 unit, the troops on both sides will be even.   Depending on time and number of players for the table-top battle, each side gets an equal number of points to construct the miniature army doing the fighting, at the time of the table-top fight.  Advantage
b)Ease of Record Keeping:  all you need to know is how many units you can support, where they are and to send in a simple move (Army 1 moves from A3 to A4).  There's no need to keep track of how many of what type is in which army.  Advantage.
c) Lack of Persistence: there's no sense of units persisting from battle to battle, they can't gain experience or a unit history.   Army #1 might be mostly cavalry one battle, but mostly infantry the next battle.  Disadvantage

Option B:  Points Model:  players can make any number of stacks of troops, but each is only noted as a number of "points".  The points are converted into troops when a battle actually occurs.  This option looses the "Every Battle is Even" advantage, but the record-keeping isn't all that much worse.    There are systems for quick resolution of minor clashes that allow for a much wider range of outcomes (I've used one from the Chivalry and Sorcery RPG from the 80's for example).  The lack of persistence and characterization remains.

Option C:  Lord and Master model:  each player has a number of characters who raise and lead units.   Lot more persistence, lot more character, can be significantly more record keeping (but certainly doable, as past experience indicates).   The difficulty is meshing the units raised with the Miniatures available.   If the goal is to have actual miniature battles every few weeks or so, this option is more difficult.  I would actually want to scale back from the version in Triumphant.

Option D:  The Full Tony:  following Tony Bath's Hyboria plan, you can go into incredible detail of troops raised, taxes collected, immense number of characters and character actions.   Perhaps more than I want as a side project.  I can show folks his suggestions if they are interested.   I actually think that Lord and Master is a much more manageable model than this one, but it is the most detailed.

Lord and Master

All this talk of a remote-play campaign to connect some miniatures battles, jogged some memories in me.   Back in the early 1990's, when I was more or less game-less, I ran a series of play-by-mail games called "Lord and Master" with 4-6 players a piece.   It really was play-by-mail, snail mail that is.   I think people phoned in their moves and I photocopied and colored the map with colored pencils.

I discovered that I had electronic versions of the last of the versions of the game, Lord and Master Triumphant, which ran to at least 17 turns.   I rendered the rule book into a pdf, which is available here:

Lord and Master

The Lead

I really have to make some kind of inventory of my lead supplies before anything can be nailed down.

Just working off the top of my head:

I know I have at least 120  Saxon infantry, plus some Saxon archers, and then 30-40 Gothic infantry, and 30 or more Gothic/Lombard cavalry, and some 30 Frankish infantry.   These guys all are right for the Northrons, so I'd imagine we should have 2 Northron factions at least (it's also why the Spanish game was appealing to me, Visigoths, Vandals and Swabians would all use these guys).

I know I have more than 10 but less than 20 Huns, not enough for any real Easterling army.  I have a scattered number (20-30??) of Egyptian and Arabian infantry and 10-20 Carthagian Infantry, again I don't think I could really field a Southron army of any real sort.  But I may have more than I think.

For Romans, I have 12 super-heavy cavalry, 10 medium-ish cavalry, and 20 or so lightish cavalry, and  at least 60 infantry of various sorts (maybe quite a bit more), at least one solid army, maybe 2.

Of Picts and Irish, I think I have a dozen horse and at least 40 foot, maybe enough for a faction of Westerlings.   Perhaps they could be used in combination with the Huns and some  of my more generic barbarians to make up the Bastarnae.

Especially once I get my new stuff painted, I could probably field a solid generic medieval army of some sort (20 or so mounted knights,   15-20 long bows, a dozen crossbows, and a random assortment of dismounted knights and soldiers).

I honestly don't know how many Orcs I have.   I had 30 on the table 2 weeks ago, and that wasn't all of them.   Probably another 20 at least.   But, I know I have less than 20 Old Ones.   I've got a decent number of skeletons and zombies too. 

I'd kind of like to avoid putting Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings, Giants, Dragons or Trolls on the table for this project. I'd like the game to be more of an ancients-surrogate game rather than a full-blown fantasy emulation.


I have a few bolt-shooters, and maybe a catapult or 2.  I could put two stone forts on the table.  I know I made some siege ladders at some point too.

Refining a Baldgarth Campaign

After looking at the Baldgarth world map, I think an interesting place to have a miniatures campaign might be the North-Eastern province in Roricon.   This would be where Roricon (19), Provere (20), Ost-Gault (14) and Bastarnae (15) all meet.   So, Northrons, Easterlings, Ardeans would be easy, and an Old Ones fortress not impossible, since Roricon is a series of petty fiefs.  I could even use my new knights.

Campaign Scenario Ideas

After reading through Tony Bath's "How to set up a wargaming campaign", I've had a couple of ideas.   These are what he called "mini-campaigns", I don't want to do anything like his legendary Hyboria game, just something to give a context to a miniature battle once a month or so.

#1)  Spain:  420 AD:   around 410 AD, three barbarian tribes:  the Vandals, Suevi (Swabians), and Alans crossed the Rhine River, ravaged Roman Gaul and then passed over into Spain and took over the place.   Around 420, the Romans paid the Visigoths to drive these tribes out of Spain.  The  succeeded, but ended up taking it over for themselves.
         I have a map of Roman Spain and could make it into a campaign map.   We could have a 4 person campaign (Alans, Swabians, Vandals and Visigoths) or a 5 person campaign (add a Roman player).  Or another variant might be combining Alans and Swabians into one faction and have a 4 person game with a Roman player.
      Most of the miniatures I have are 5th century Romans and Barbarians, (and the Saxons and Franks I have wouldn't look different from the Vandals and Swabians), so it would make a solid historical campaign.  I wouldn't get to use my new late medieval knights, nor any of the fantasy miniatures, but still I've got more than enough period-approriate figures to make a whole campaign work.

#2)  Fake Country, Create an Army:   I could draw up a fake map, then make a grand catalogue of the troops I have available, and allow people to create their own army lists from the available figures.   We could allow units of dwarves, orcs, skeletons etc. if we wanted to.  On the upside, this would allow many people to have a lot of imput, but on the downside, it would require a lot of people to have a lot of imput.  It would also mean a more gigantic selection of miniatures would apply.
      We could have just as many factions as players that were interested.

#3)  Baldgarth:  I could pick another section of the continent we're playing ACKS on and whip up a campaign set there.    It sort of blends some advantages of the other two options, bust also some of the disadvantages; but I don't have anything in mind off the top of my head.

Tooling around with a miniatures campaign

I've been thinking of some ideas for a minitures campaign, using most what I've got.   Some basic ideas would be to run the campaign angle on-line, either like a boardgame, or actually use a boardgame for the structure.   I'd have a quick and dirty resolution system for many of the fights (an Avalon Hill style odds-chart, die roll) but once a month or so I'd pick the most interesting encounter and fight that out on the table top.  

The players of the overall campaign needn't necessarily be the same ones who fought out the battles,

I'm thinking that, now that my wife works evenings, I could have the miniatures game on some weekday evening.  The trouble is, I'd assume that Fridays might work out the best for people, but I couldn't start until 6:30 or 7:00 on Fridays and wouldn't have any set-up time then, since my folks are over for dinner that night every week.

Well, I'll keep thinking.

Train Guys: The Dangers of Rhetorical Irony

After Fall-In, I posted the following on THE MINIATURES PAGE (TMP) message board:

"I went to Fall In this weekend and had a great time. But, Sunday I was driving around the old hometown and passed by a model train store. My wife turns to me and says "Were there any train guys at your convention."
My first thought was "Train guys? Those jerks? Yuck."
Then I got to thinking, whether there was indeed any real overlap between the two superficially similar hobbies.
I mean I can't remember meeting war gamers who admitted to also being model train guys, but that doesn't mean there aren't such animals out there.
I also know most war gamers have gone into train stores at one time or another looking for buildings or trees. I also did use some of the buildings from my train set (which I had when I was 10, and put aside soon after) for terrain for a recent post-apocalyptic game.
So, my question is whether there are any significant number of TMPers out there who are also Model Train enthusiasts?"

Apparently, the irony of a toy-soldier guy calling toy-train guys "jerks" was lost on at least one fellow.   He called me a bad person for calling train guys jerks.   I, of course, immediately apologized, but it did serve as a reminder to keep a firm hand on the rhetorical irony in a purely written context.

Gangs of Rome

On Saturday, Andrew and I played in a game called "Gangs of Rome" at the Fall-In convention.   It was set in the 80's BC during the struggles between the political factions in Rome.   There were 2 scenarios, in the first Andrew and I were the two Consuls Sulla and Pompeius.   On our team was also the son of Pompeius--Pompeius Junior.   Our job was to escape from the forum and get back to our houses, so that the rabble-rousers couldn't force us to allow a popular vote on suffrage for the Italian towns.  We each had a stand of about 12-15 supporters, and were faced by gangs of our enemies, and several neutral players. 

I was bushwhacked by a mob of commoners, but managed to defeat them.   Andrew bought off one gang of enemies, but another beat up Pompeius Junior's guys badly.  Then this gang of gladiatiors showed up behind where Junior and I were.    I outran Junior, bribed one neutral mob to turn against our enemies and found I had an unopposed road home, so home I went.  Andrew also found himself in the clear and got home.   There was a huge brawl among the enemy and the various bribed groups, and Junior got captured, but then paid off his captors.   Some goons tried to bust into Andrew's house, but he sent them packing.   So, all in all we pretty much won hands down.

The funny thing was that Andrew bribed this one guy with some of the plastic coins we were given.  They could be used to sacrifice to the gods for re-rolls, to hire additional men and so forth.  The thing is we both thought that this guy's victory conditions involved collecting cash, and that's why he was bribed.  But, it was no such thing.  I think he was really supposed to be on the other guy's team, but just liked the idea of getting his hands on the plastic money.  So, part of our victory involved one guy just being naturally venal for fake plastic money.

The second scenario was more of a straight up fight, Sulla and his legions swarm into the city to crush Marius and his popular forces.  This time I was Marius, and I rolled really well in a long brawl with Sulla's men in the street and managed to fight my way to the gate and escape.  I lost track of what was happening on the other side of the board, but it looked bloody too.

The terrain was pretty darn awesome, and the system was super fast.  Nobody was sitting down or waiting his turn.   Moves were simultaneous until you got in visual range.   The GM would call a new turn when his egg-timer ran out, and the melees ran in a sort of "real time".  There were as many rounds as you could get in before the GM called a new move. 

The game was fast, exciting and a boat-load of fun.  

(I was going to upload picture of Sulla, but my window's machine crashes every time I try to add a picture to a blog post.  I should have done this on my Ubuntu machine).
 

Airfix Robin Hood

I bought a package of Airfix  HO-scale (approx 20mm) Robin Hood figures through Amazon the other day.  My brother had a set of these when I was a kid, and I needed to reach the "free shipping" threshold for a book I was ordering, so I picked them up.    There are about 50 of the figures for a little under $10.  Man, I wish they were just a little bigger, they're neat figures and reasonably priced.  They're just a little short for the rest of my guys.

Thor good

I took my daughters to see THOR on Tuesday evening.  It was pretty good, better than the first THOR, just for the amount of hammering alone.

But here's the thing.   Tuesday night at 5:45 there's not going to be a lot of people in the theatre.   We got there 5 minutes before the show, and were alone.   Then about 2 minutes later this other group of people show up.   With a totally empty theatre, they sit directly behind us.   It's lucky that they weren't obnoxious during the show, but really, what is your damage if you can't let 1 row between you and the only other people in the theatre?  What kind of sick freak are you that you need to crowd up on people when there is all that glorious space?