#Tabletop Wargames

[blackboxfaxes]

Battle Report: House Kurita vs Word of Blake, Rematch

For the second campaign turn in a row, Kote Lance came under attack by the Blakists' lead Assault element - a Highlander, an Awesome, and a Crab, all heavily customized. Kote Lance was busy repairing after their last engagement with the Blakists - Raine's Marauder was already active, but Kimiko's Blitzkrieg, Casey's Black Knight, and Heather's Blackjack had to make rolls to emergency start. None of them booted up turn 1, as Raine moved her Marauder up, the other side of the field covered by the Raiden squad usually assigned to Heather.

The Tonbo at the bottom of the image is just set dressing, and the clear acrylic circles are all woods.

>[Reactor online. Weapons online. Sensors online. All systems nominal.] Heather's Blitzkrieg was, true to form, the first mech to activate, rolling a 10+ on turn 2, and she immediately set out to punish the Blakists' Crab for pushing forward, loosing a pair of Ultra AC20 shells on it, neither of which connected, but they certainly let the Blakists know she was there. Raine exploited a heavy woods, keeping her covered as she traded PPC blasts with the Blakists' custom Awesome. It also mounted a Gauss rifle, which she had only one answer for...

>Glad you ladies joined the party. Now, let's deal with our uninvited guests. That answer was the Gauss rifle mounted on Heather's Blackjack, as she leapt to the top of her repair facility, relying on the Jumping Jack ability to keep her accurate, she joined Raine in pouring fire down on the Awesome. Casey, as always, ran her Black Knight out of her mech bay on MASC, screaming the Coordinator's name, daikatana held high.

>Hey, Kimiko, how's your uppercut? With the enemy Crab having moved to the very cliff's edge, and wanting to avoid taking fire from the Awesome and Highlander, Heather saw an opportunity, and ran directly under the Crab, blocked from the other two mechs by the cliff's edge, and fired a pair of shells straight up into the Crab's forward-protruding fuselage. One shell connected, shredding the armor on the Crab's left torso and staggering it, while Heather, Casey, and Raine focused the Awesome.

>I'm gonna getcha Combined fire from those three mechs knocked the Awesome flat as it reached the cliff. The Crab retreated, and Kimiko, seeing herself threatened, pumped the breaks and streaked halfway across the field, aiming to flank around the Blakist formation. The Raiden squad, almost forgotten, saw a golden opportunity, and jumped for the Awesome.

>Alright, let's do this The Battle Armor weren't the only ones to see an opportunity. As the Awesome lurched to its feet, Casey's mech kicked its MASC in, for once not failing the roll, and reached point blank with the Awesome. The only problem with this idea was that it left her in full view of every enemy mech, and all of them focused fire on her exclusively. This put enough firepower into her to knock her flat, costing her her chance to use her hatchet, and getting the Awesome to stomp on her arm for good measure.

>Think we can handle this on our own? Kimiko's Blitzkrieg steamed and buttered the Crab with a second AC20 shot in the left torso, disabling its XL engine and leaving her open to move on the enemy Highlander. Meanwhile, Casey got up, and once again took all the fire from the Blakists, and then fell over AGAIN despite her piloting skill of 3. This time, however, the Blakist Awesome also fell. Now it was the Battle Armor's time to shine, and they jumped on their victim, going for the swarm.

>[deranged screaming that suddenly cuts off] Casey, having failed to connect with a melee attack and lost ninety percent of her armor, decided discretion was the better part of valor. The Blakist Highlander, under attack by a Blitzkrieg, contemptuously swatted it away with a gauss rifle and a PPC shot to the same torso section, taking it from untouched to disabled in two shots. The Awesome, however, tried to stand up. Perhaps struggling because of the battle armor clinging to it, it rolled a 3 when it needed a 4, fell on its arm, critted its arm, detonated the gauss rifle mounted there and electrocuted the pilot, who blacked out. The Raiden squad were of course delighted, and moved in for the kill. At this point, the Blakists conceded. While I was down to essentially one untouched and two half combat-effective mechs, he was down to one, and called it early rather than lose his Awesome. Each of us salvaged our own mechs and rescued our own pilots, leading to no lasting material changes to either side.

[bryanharryrombough]

Lurking on twitter earlier this morning and caught the BrikWars account plugging Mobile Frame Zero :)

[conniemb]

Finally started on some digital kitbashes last night! Super happy with how these look the body's are from Piano Wargames Württemberg Light Infantry Models and the heads are from Max's Patreon. I've been wanting to get into Turnip so bad for the longest time but finding somewhere in my area that sells 28mm Napoleonic minis has been a struggle so making my own is the next best thing! I feel it's very much on the spirit of turnip anyways lol I'm hoping I can get some physical minis in the future tho as I love kitbashing irl but working on these guys and printing them will do me for now

[skunts-own-truth]

One of my favorite things about Quar is, listen, when you go to the old website that sells the older line of metal 28mm miniatures- a lot of the individual minis will have some backstory to them. Like the following for the Partisan militia Crydfen Bryn:

“Syrnol” Crydfen was the town’s expert on all things military. After all, who else had so many stories about serving in the Guard Catrawds for all those years, back in Tok before the rise of Alykinder? In the taverns he would read the newspaper and pontificate on the implications of every battle, describing in great detail (sometimes drawing in beer on the bar) which maneuvers he would undertake to flank an army or reinforce a bastion. When the militia was recruited, he stood for officer and was voted in with great acclaim. But deep in his heart he is terrified that someone will discover that his entire service record is a sham.”

And you see the model and it is:

[owlbear33]

I'm kinda intrigued by the idea of a battle royal wargame,

reason being that a long ass time ago I played a fair bit of Apex, loved the game, great gameplay, loved the aesthetic, did not love the constant push of new characters or the 40gb of download every few months

it's a terrible idea but I'm going to run with it,

sci-fi game, you will need:

some dice, I don't know what sort yet, at the very least something numerical and a scatter dice

a custom deck of item cards, talking guns, health packs, over shields, grenades, upgrades (I don't have that yet, this is more of an outline than an actual game)

a really big board, talking the size they use for massive 28ml scale mass combat games, if not bigger, ideally fairly densely with terrain, though open areas also good

Lots of friends to play with, each with a single sci-fi mini, not sure of the scale, 10-15mm makes the board really big, 28mm pretty and possibly more available

each round each player gets to make two actions: Move, shoot an equipped weapon, find(draw from the deck) a few(3?) item cards, use an item card, land(enter the map)

entering the map - on the first round, a PC must spend their first action on landing, they choose a location on the map, roll 1 die and the scatter die, then place their mini where indicated

every other round starting on the 3rd round, the ring shrinks 6 inches from each end, PCs take damage at the start of their turn if outside the ring

if your character loses all their health then they are out, game ends when only one PC remains

PCs probably start with a shitty melee weapon and maybe some powers or abilities that make them something other than a lump of hit points

[trve-grimdark]

Knights of Santiago & Priest vs. Demon.(Another project for Historical Fantasy gaming/rpgs) 

[swedebeast]

[grayrazor]

So apparently on twitter there's a whole thing going on where anti-woke Warhammer fans performatively stormed out by declaring that they were going to play the horror-themed WWI wargame Trench Crusade instead, only to be mass-banned from its discord because the moderators didn't want a bunch of paleocon trolls stinking up the place.

The thing that blows my mind isn't just that they thought the thoroughly subversive Trench Crusade was positive Christian rep, but that they thought Warhammer 40,000 was. The setting where the messiah is explicitly dead and rotting and was an anti-religion crusader in life. Meanwhile Warhammer Fantasy's Sigmar is much more Thor than Jesus. A lot of conservative evangelicals and tradcaths seem to fall into liking straight up pagan gods if they have a sufficiently macho and traditionalist (western European) aesthetic.

Honestly, this is beyond media illiteracy, it's just straight-up blindness. Obliviousness beyond even the people who think Robocop and Starship Troopers are gung-ho pro-American action movies. Now I'm left to wonder how many fans of the Blasphemous game series are passionate reactionary Christians who get the happy feelings from the aesthetics and totally ignore the story and themes.

Still, I am glad to have learned about Trench Crusade through this, looks like a cool game. Aesthetic and themes kind of remind me of the Trench Foot/Countrycide mod for Doom (which, granted, started off as a Warhammer 40K mod...).

[ordheist]

tech priest commission

[the-god-of-hellfire]

Ever since seeing this meme...

...I haven't been able to get the idea out of my head.

So with much ado, behold:

My magnum opus of wargaming terrain.

[sympyl]

Warhammer fandom elsewhere on the internet: *nerd bros with memes from 2011 and vaguely weird vibes talking about which primarchs could beat up which*

Warhammer fans on Tumblr: Omg. my guy. My dude. My little humfus blumfus. My skroinky paloinky. My blorbo. Littlest of meow meows. *points towards Deathkiller Skullscream the Vile, Lord of the infamous warband the Boneflayers from Planet Murder, whose least significant warcrimes involve torturing civilians to distill hard drugs out of their neural tissue (its more potent if they die screaming) and owning an entire planet as his own personal torture chamber which he goes to to unwind after a hard day of orphan murdering and slave trading*

[blackboxfaxes]

Remember everyone, always be sure to schedule your mechs for regular maintenance! An hour in the mech bay is worth your life in the field

[bryanharryrombough]

CanGames 2023

After a three year hiatus, our local tabletop gaming con, CanGames, returned this Victoria Day weekend; and with it, I had my first in-person tabletop gaming since before the pandemic started.  CanGames is an “all-round” tabletop gaming convention, with RPGs, wargames, board games & card games, but this year I was just there for the wargames.

I’m still dealing with the long-term effects of a health problem, and so I didn’t try to run any games this year and only signed up to play up to two games a day (in past years, I sometimes ran or played in four games in a day).  I ended up playing in four games Friday through Sunday (the final game I signed up for was cancelled due to the unfortunate illness of the game master) and things went fairly well.

Upon arrival, I chatted with some old friends I hadn’t seen in person since before covid, catching up on our lives before going out and having a look at the marketplace.  I didn’t see much there that I hadn’t seen in previous years, but I did pick up a copy of an old Usborne book that I remembered from my childhood: Galactic War.

My first game of the con was a Gaslands demo Friday evening.  Gaslands is a postapocalyptic automotive combat wargame played with converted Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars, and it was quite fun.  The rules were simple enough and the movement templates easy enough to use to simulate vehicular mayhem with gun-toting Hot Wheels cars.  The demo ended spectacularly when I rammed another car, wrecking mine and setting off my grenades, destroying the remaining cars with blast damage!

My second game was the Red Shirt Smash, a free-for-all convention scenario for Silent Death (a space fighter miniatures game from 1990) using “3-times scale” miniatures.  I used to play in Silent Death games run by the Red Shirts in the ‘90s, and it was great fun playing this old favourite again.

My third game of the con was “CanGames Sprint” a simplified version of Car Wars Classic (as opposed to the new 6th edition) played on a criss-cross racetrack.  It was enjoyable but there wasn’t a lot of shooting or interaction between cars during the game.  There was an amicable discussion afterwards with the game master about the game, and possible changes to be made for next year.

My fourth and final game was an old favourite of mine: Ogre, the game of future armoured warfare with giant cybernetic tanks!  My opponent and I played two rounds of the original scenario of a lone Ogre attacking a command post defended by a conventional force of tanks, G.E.V.s and infantry; we traded places between attacker and defender so that we could both get the chance of experiencing the very different sides of the conflict.  In the first round, I took the role of defender.  The Ogre came on strong, smashing my units while they ineffectively shot at its treads.  But after a while, I managed to slow the Ogre down and reduce its arsenal of weapons, giving me time to finally immobilize it before it could destroy my command post.  In the second game, I took the Ogre, and played it in a calculated, viscous manner.  I concentrated my fire to ensure kills, and slowed down at points to eliminate disabled enemy units before continuing my advance on the C.P.  In the end, I wiped out all of the defenders, ensuring an Ogre victory.   This game was the most fun for me this CanGames, and my opponent appeared to be having fun too, despite his losses.

Finally, as I was preparing to leave, a friend of mine had a gift for me, his copy of Heavy Gear Fighter with all of the supplements.  We were both fans of the Heavy Gear wargame when it first appeared in the mid-90s, but I had never played Heavy Gear Fighter (which was actually published the year before the Heavy Gear RPG/Tactical rulebook); so this is quite the gift from an old friend, and I look forward to playing it sometime in the future, just to see what its like.

So I think I can call CanGames 2023 a success for me.  I wasn’t sure how well I’d be able to handle attending a convention going in to CanGames, but now I’m more confident about returning to tabletop gaming in the future, and the possibility of running games next year.

Addendum: more photos, including other games I didn’t play in, here: CanGames 2023

[jovial-thunder]

Lancer on a physical tabletop with Lego minis!

We finally did the thing! I roped my siblings into playtesting a game of Lancer using Legos and a physical tabletop. The sitrep was to destroy five buildings, marked in red, because the Karrakins were using the installation to track their mobile hidden base (our home campaign is a blatant ripoff of Deserts of Kharak).

Things that need improvement:

better way to measure tiles. We were doing 4cm/space and had to do a lot of multiplication. Going to try wood dowels with tiles marked + get some kind of grid underlay.

similarly, we need aoe templates

I used too much terrain, it got messy

should get status rings/tokens to mark lock-on, etc

Things that worked well:

it was sick as hell to be able to physically destroy Lego terrain and mechs as they fell

we used physical dice? For lancer?? And it turns out clicky clack math rocks continue to be inherently great.

witchdice works well on mobile devices for character sheets so not every PC had to have a full laptop

different height-terrain was fun, though it made movement costs tricky to calculate

I'm excited to keep trying out different setups. All the terrain and stuff I've collected is pretty modular (lego makes that easy) so it'll be fun to see how wide a range of map types is possible.

[oldschoolfrp]

Working on a project -- "Modelling Workshop: Fantasy Barn" by Phil Lewis, White Dwarf 140, August 1991. I think with minor variations this would work for any period of historical wargame in North America including Wild West, or WWII Eastern Front.

[canopiancatboy]

Helldivers 2 is pretty great. I'm a really big fan of (Verhoevan) Starship Troopers, and I feel like I could write a whole essay about how "seen" I feel with this game. I do love that this game has resurrected the old discourse about the film, some things never change

My friend got me the game after he found out I hadn't been on it yet, declaring it "made for me" and "wtf are you doing", and yeah he's right. Thanks Gman

Yada Yada for Democracy, feet first into hell, c'mon you apes, all that jazz