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Author Topic: Mayhem Battle Report and Custom Unit Counters  (Read 3829 times)

Offline Hobgoblin

  • Galactic Brain
  • Posts: 4911
    • Hobgoblinry
Re: Mayhem Battle Report and Custom Unit Counters
« Reply #15 on: September 07, 2018, 01:41:24 PM »
Hobgoblin:

Those Ogres are amazing! I investigated, and will add them to the Empire shopping list...

Thanks! I think the Blood Dawn orcs are pretty much the best fit for Empire-style ogres in smaller scales. Most of the orcs in that range are a little smaller than these ones ("armoured orcs"?), but they're still fairly ogreish for 10mm and below.

That's odd. I couldn't get it to work on my phone at all (it wouldn't accept the army list files), only on the PC. Still it is quite cumbersome to use, and in the end I used a custom made Excel sheet to design units and army lists. I'll make the Excel file available on the blog once it's a bit more polished.

I use a Mac; it doesn't work on that. I also found it extremely counter-intuitive to use on the phone. Every time I look at it, I find I've forgotten how to get to the troop types!

But a generic guideline of standard troop types would definitively help a lot with making various army lists 'comparable', as in giving you something to compare them against. Like "My Empire list uses lots of light and medium infantry, but they all get the 'Disciplined' trait because of their training." Using generic statlines as a baseline should make armies easier to read, while making the deviations stand out more and give the units their specific flavour. This is on my to-do list once I get a really good grasp of what 'feels right' (to me, at least). Something to do after a lot more games.

You've nailed it with getting a "really good grasp". That's always been the problem for me. It's ironic, because I like to have troop profiles that reflect the models used, rather than assumptions based on (say)  Warhammer. Mayhem should be the perfect game for that, but the lack of sample profiles makes it a bit hard to gauge what a block of huge Essex orcs (they're the size of mid-80s GW ogres) should look like on paper.

It's certainly a game where two players could stat up their armies in good faith and come to the table with wildly differing profiles for similar troops.

Thanks for the detailed info about HotT. Can you explain how balanced the command points generation feels? IIRC you get one d6 each no matter what, which feels really swingy. Roll three ones in a row and lose the game?? The comparison of HotT to Mayhem in this regard was what made me chose the latter, because Mayhem models CP generation on the command structure you bring to the table. It can be targeted, interrupted and deteriorate during the course of the battle. I like that a lot in Mayhem.

I've never found the d6 roll particularly swingy in HotT. There are two reasons for that. First, HotT turns are really fast - before combat's joined, they often take place in less than a minute. With standard 24-AP armies, you're just as likely to have spare points left on a high roll than insufficient on a low one. That's because it takes 1 AP to move a whole block of troops. So, say you've massed your warbands on your right flank: they'll all be grouped together and will only need 1 AP to advance over open country. Early in the game, a string of ones probably just means that you advance a little more disjointedly. And given the short movement distances and the disruption caused by terrain, there are generally quite a lot of turns before battle is joined - unless fliers are involved. That means that there's a lot of time for the rolls to even out.

Second, the d6 roll really only covers movement, magic and deploying off-board elements (returning hordes, dragons, gods, etc) So for many armies, it just covers movement. Shooting and combat happen automatically. That means that you're not entirely reliant on activations to pursue your strategy once the armies have closed.

I'd stress again that HotT/Mayhem isn't an either/or thing. As all the base depths in HotT are "recommended minima", you can play a perfectly good (and even book-legal) game of HotT with Mayhem blocks.

About rules clarity: I read a lot of army scale rulesets, and boy do they get fiddly and confusing. I personally found Mayhem to be easy to understand and quite clear on most mechanics. Do you remember any particular things that were unclear?

I agree with this. From memory, there is one thing that's a bit confusing: the differences between 'drive back' and 'beat back', I think. Of Brent's games, I think the real heartbreaker is Havoc, which is a brilliant game buried in an overlong and badly (or un-) edited rulebook. I'd love to see a second edition of that.

That's what I thought. I really like the game system and noted the lack of recent online material. My blog is (in part) my little contribution to making Mayhem more popular.

It's a worthy endeavour! I might even try to get a game in at the weekend.

I have remembered, though, the one thing I don't like about Mayhem, though (the lack of sample troops isn't a dislike, just a minor inconvenience): some of the weapon profiles. It seems to me that the game has been influenced more by RPGs (or perhaps computer games?) than military history in this regard. Take blunt weapons for example. Why should they negate] heavy armour? The sort of weapons developed for use against plate armour were often spiky rather than blunt: warhammers, poleaxes and the like. I can see that a troop of ogres with huge clubs might be a counter against heavy armour, but a bunch of orcs with maces or clubs aren't likely to be any greater threat to armoured knights than a bunch of orcs with axes or swords.

In the same vein, axes as a counter against shields seems both dubious and overly specific for a massed-battle game.

The extra action point used for great weapons strikes me as an RPG balancing mechanic rather than anything reflecting reality: Dacians with falxes or huscarls with Danish axes don't need extra effort to cause huge damage: these weapons were pretty light. And even massive two-handed swords are generally lighter than a sword and shield combination. The battlefield cost of using a two-handed weapon should be the lack of a shield or the need for heavy armour.

I also don't think heavy crossbows should ignore heavy armour, either. They might be more effective against it, but I'd imagine that a group of 15th-century men-at-arms in full plate would cope a bit better with volleys of crossbow bolts than

And then there's the "swords as a counter versus infantry" rule. That's a real headscratcher: one-handed swords were generally sidearms to be used if the primary weapon (spear, axe, etc) was lost. So this makes little sense to me.

That's where HotT does do things better, I think: grouping troops according to fighting style rather than weaponry. In HotT, warbands might be armed with targe and shield, falxes or two-handed axes - or any other sort of melee weaponry. What matters, though, is that they're fast, aggressive and potentially devastating, though with limited staying power. Similarly, blades might have two-handed swords, gladius and shield, poleaxes or a mixture of weapons. What matters is that they're heavily armoured, stable and deadly. I think that's really the better approach for a "zoomed-out" mass-battle game.

All that said, though, my objection to the Mayhem weapon rules is pretty minor. In our games, I've tended to ignore them (excepting spears and lances, which work well). Instead of using the "great weapons" rule, I've just lowered (i.e. upped!) the CQ of the unit so that it hits harder. And I've ignore swords, axes and blunt weapons (except for ogre-sized creatures in the last case). So the weapon thing isn't a strike against the game itself - it's entirely detachable.

Offline Zappi

  • Student
  • Posts: 10
Re: Mayhem Battle Report and Custom Unit Counters
« Reply #16 on: November 09, 2018, 10:31:25 AM »
Hobgoblin:
Thanks for the reply, I got swamped in real life and forgot to answer. Your explanations for HotTs peculiarities were very helpful, I've put the system on my mental 'Try it out sometime' list again... Regarding Mayhem, we agree on the need for some basic conventions on unit representation, so armies don't vary too much between comparable troops. I'll certainly try to give it a shot and do a blog post on that, once I find a system I'm happy with. Regarding the sword-paper-scissors of weapon keywords: What you wrote is a good description of my own concerns. I just couldn't put my finger on it like you did. The system feels like it is missing some countermeasures against certain troop types, while giving too specific options in other areas - like axes being very specific against shields. My initial thoughts were to switch the keywords to more generic things like "Anti-Cav", "Anti-Armour", "Impact-Weapon" etc., giving mainly soft counters, and balancing in-built bonuses with negatives. Haven't thought about it a lot, though.



In other news...



My blog has been updated with new projects. Two Warmaster Armies have found their way into my possession, and after a lengthy phase of too-much-real-life I started to paint like a madman (at least for my standards...). I dabbled in Warmaster a bit - it recently got updated to a well received, revised edition by a fan community - and will use the armies for both systems. Over the next "few" (ahem) weeks, the plan is to get units finished and on the table, develop Mayhem army lists for Tomb Kings and High Elves, and finally arrive at another detailed battle report. If all goes to plan, all this will result in new content on the blog. I've documented my painting in a post that I will update every few days, so feel free to visit from time to time, I need the feedback :)

6mmMayhem.wordpress.com



Comments here or on the blog welcome. To start off: Anyone know of a good way to paint sandy desert bases? My previous attempts resulted in much hilarity. Also, does anyone know of a supplier for 40mm square movement trays? I need to Mayhem-y up my Warmaster bases (40x20mm) into 40mm square units. Warmaster 3-stand units are actually perfect for Mayhem use, as I can swap out the first stand: Either take the command unit stand (for standart carrying units) or the generic second and third stands for vanilla units.

Thanks!

Zappi


"Onwards, lads!"



« Last Edit: November 09, 2018, 10:33:37 AM by Zappi »

Offline fred

  • Galactic Brain
  • Posts: 4359
    • Miniature Gaming
Re: Mayhem Battle Report and Custom Unit Counters
« Reply #17 on: November 09, 2018, 06:05:21 PM »
Nice work on the WM figures