Pirate Raid

Star Fleet Battles is another of my all-time favourite games. Again its the complexity of the rules, the number of options available to you in a turn, and the amount of support for the game that makes it so interesting to me.

Whilst refreshing myself of the rules and teaching someone to play I find myself playing through the Cadet Handbook scenarios (available from here). This guide teaches the very basics of the game, starting with just movement, and then firing different weapons (seeking and direct-fire), assigning damage and allocating energy. The rules for the complete game are far more complex and quite daunting to look at in terms of learning the game, but the Cadets Handbook again gives good advice on how to approach it once all the training scenarios have been completed.

We are playing Scenario 8 which introduces the concepts of tractor beams and transporters during an Orion raid on a freighter convoy.

I originally discovered SFB through mixing it up with another game called Star Trek: Starship Tactical Combat Simulator published by FASA. My friend and I played STSTCS as kids and going through a period of nostalgia I hoped to find the game again. I remembered it being a game of Star Trek spaceship battles, allocating warp points to shields, moving counters around hexes and so on. Searching online I discovered Star Fleet Battles and thought this was the game I had played. I bought it off ebay and really enjoyed the game. But something in the back of my head told me that the game I remembered had coloured pictures of spaceships on the counters, and couldn’t have been quite this complex a game seeing as we had played it aged around ten or twelve. Eventually I realised my mistake (and managed to find STSTCS on ebay as well!) but I liked the game of SFB so much I kept playing it and collecting the expansions.

STSTSC is a very much cut-down version of SFB in some ways. Though the energy allocation system is quite similar. STSTSC supplies all starship captains with a form (The Tactical Display?) on which counters represent the current values of warp engines, movement points etc. In fact is a far more representative system of energy allocation than the energy allocation charts of SFB. I find these quite confusing and often have to count back through a number of turns to recall how much power I have in my batteries and whether my phaser capacitors are charged. Bearing this in mind I considered how a similar tactical display could make energy allocation much easier in SFB.

I had a go at designing such forms for SFB and we are currently using the prototypes in our games. They do seem to make explaining the game much simpler. And they serve to record a number of other factors that have to be kept in mind – when a weapon was last fired in particular. They also do away with the SSD as they can be used to record damage too. The forms are in prototype at the moment (I keep finding extra boxes I need to add or changes that are necessary) and only cover the rules necessary to play in Cadet games but when they have been tested further I hope to be able to post up a a template and somee explanations of how they are used in our games.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition

So I played Original Dungeons and Dragons. I played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I played Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. And now Dungeons and Dragons 4.0 has arrived. But do I like it?

I loved D&D as a kid. My friends and I played it non-stop during summer holidays and every other spare moment we had. The fact that the rules were simple meant the games flowed fast, the monsters came and went fast too. It didn’t matter that every magic-user you rolled up was almost identical, even after reaching 20th level. It didn’t matter that every monster you faced had more or less the same abilities. Our imaginations filled those gaps and we had enormous fun: escaping Castle Amber, finding the Isle of Dread, running around Castle Ravenloft.

Then I grew up and left Dungeons and Dragons behind for a long time. It was only in the last few years that something prompted me to pick up the latest incarnation of D&D: 3.5.

And I loved it for its complexity: the number of possible playing races and classes; skills, feats and class abilities so that success or failure was no longer the whim of a DM; and each character felt and played differently. As a kid I would have hated it: too many rules – we would probably have ended up ignoring half of them just as we ignored lots of rules in the basic game (encumbrance – no you can carry as much as you like …).  But as an adult it was great, providing a good amount of choice in character definition, giving more control over combat rather than everyone can hit everyone as we used to play. Sure there were people that had to abuse the system and find the race and multiclass combination that with the right feats and prestige class would leave you unstoppable at fifth level – but you didn’t have to play with them. Lots of expansions, lots of official and unofficial classes, races, feats. Lots of different campaign worlds.

Then came 4th edition. And do I like it? Well the jury’s still out to be honest. I’m playing a mini-game from the DM’s Guide just to see how the game plays. Yes, they’ve fixed the problems of needing a cleric to heal, needing a wizard/sorcerer to rest every so often to recover spells (but doesn’t everyone have to rest regularly now to recover daily powers and healing surges?). But the game now just feels like a roleplaying version of the D&D Miniatures game. It all seems to be focussed around combat on the battle map, even more so than 3.5. Your characters just move from encounter to encounter. But maybe that was what it was always like?

I think what I am missing most of all is the complexity. The Player’s Handbook has only a small collection of races and classes (with some standard races and classes missing: no half-orc, gnome, druid, barbarian etc). I’m sure there will be lots more in further expansions. (I came into 3.5 when there was already a large number of sourcebooks available so it is an unfair comparison.) Multiclassing has been limited to the taking of a feat which provides some abilities from another class. Similarly Cleric Domains have been reduced to feats providing abilities for each deity.

So whilst there are changes I don’t like there are also a lot of things that I do like and I need to see how the game’s going to develop. I certainly like the look of the DnD Insider programs and I hope that demo versions can be released soon.

No matter what I am always going to love this game for the great times I had with it when a kid.

Simple Equation

Finally finished this battle. I hadn’t really taken enough photos during the game to fully show off this game as a battle report (and some that I had taken were a bit dark.) I shall make it a future project to get good photos and draw a clear battle report of a game.

As to the game itself, it was very enjoyable. A close run affair though the Americans probably should have been more aggressive from the start. They got drawn into a long-winded combat with the Germans holed out in two fortified buildings right at the centre of the board.

A flanking attack to the north worked and drew off some of the German forces in order to prevent the Americans capturing too many buildings. But a flanking move to the south got held up by a German LMG.

The battle in the middle continued nearly all game. American assaults were thrown back again and again. Finally in the penultimate turn most of the German defenders were broken and the American player threw everything forward to capture the buildings essential for his victory. But it was too late – only nineteen building hexes were under his control by the end of the game.

American Comments: concentrated too hard on going against the Germans in their strongest place: two fortified buildings with an HMG. Should have realised that this wasn’t going to work and sent forces north and south instead. The German player would have had to follow to prevent a victory (though these two buildings did have good LOS across the whole board.) Flamethrower never got put to best use, it was always firing at range 2 instead of range 1.

German Comments: the choice of fortified buildings and placement of troops worked well. As did the tactic of recapturing the buildings the Americans took rather than trying to defeat his flanking troops. By following them around and keeping out of LOS a small number of squads could recapture all the buildings.

I look forward to playing further games of ASLSK and would like to include Guns and Tanks as soon as I feel ready to tackle them.

ASL Starter Kits

Began playing Starter Kit 1 Scenario 3 at the weekend. Also tried to take some photos during the game in order to provide a full battle report. That’s something to work on in the future and will possibly appear on its own page.

I have all of the Starter Kits but currently have only had chance to play scenarios from Starter Kit 1. The first couple of games were played only to learn the rules. Some of the games were stopped partway through as we felt we were playing them all wrong: we needed to check up rules on the internet and find some useful guides to answer our questions.

This time around though the game has flowed much better, less checking the rulebooks as we seemed to understand the game more.

I really enjoy the Starter Kits. I think they are a useful introduction to the full-blown game. I would never have dared buy the entire ASL rulebook and the modules required to play without knowing anything about the game. It could have been an enormous expenditure if the game wasn’t one that I was going to get much enjoyment out of. However by being able to sample the game at the relatively cheap price of the Starter Kits (roughly £15 each if you search around on the internet and on ebay) I have a basic understanding of the game, a number of scenarios to play and I am keen to buy the full rules as soon as possible.

2 Half Squads

Fell Calls for Warmachine/Hordes is one of my favourite gaming podcasts. And for sometime has been near enough the only podcast to which I regularly listened. I recently added Meeples and Miniatures to that list.  And now I have had to include the 2 Half Squads podcast concerning Advanced Squad Leader.

Two guys, Jeff and Dave, just discuss their absolute love of the game ASL. Whilst it may currently be a bit short on the factual, tactical and strategic articles that I like, it is reassuring to know that other people get so much enjoyment from unwrapping a new box and finding inside hundreds of coloured counters, rulebooks containing complex rules, maps and reference sheets! They are only up to their fifth episode so I am hoping that as they get into their stride and as they receive feedback their content will become better defined and more practical and useful to the novice and expert gamer. But in the meantime it still remains a great podcast, full of interesting stories and (geek) humour.

I shall certainly continue to download and listen regularly and wish them success and a long-live podcast.

Conquers’ Games

The purpose of this blog is to record details of information related to the games that I play. The games that I am interested in are mostly fantasy, science-fiction and historical miniature wargames, boardgames and roleplaying games. Foremost amongst the games that I collect and play are: Advanced Squad Leader, Dungeons and Dragons, Napoleon’s Battles, Star Fleet Battles, Warhammer, and Warmachine/Hordes. 

Not an exhaustive list by any means and I have to admit that I am always on the look out for new games especially if they tend to be on the complex and detailed side of the games’ spectrum.

In this blog I hope to be able to record details of games played; discuss and review new games (or at least games that are new to me); and provide details of some of the house rules that I use in my games.