Scrum in Miniature

[The Bibliophile]

Just wanted to drop a line letting folks know that I've decided to start a blog to share some of my battle reports, home-brewed skirmish scenarios, and my wife's photography of our games. Scrum in Miniature: A Field Marshal's Campaign Journal's first post went up a couple of days ago detailing my Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes game from last weekend.

http://miniaturescrum.blogspot.com/2017/04/hamlets-heroes.html

Any feedback appreciated! Thanks...

Joe

[boneio]

Thanks for posting, I enjoyed looking through this.

Great scenario and I like the little background hook.

My suggestion would be to tie the pictures to the narrative a bit more as I found it hard to work out what was going on from the photos alone.

[The Bibliophile]

Thanks, Boneio. Much appreciated. And I agree...the pictures were thrown in there to give a taste of the game, but I now realize people probably are looking for more of a linear narrative.

[Patrice]

Great! A nice table, a good story ...and Orcs. 

[midismirnoff]

Great write-up and minis! Just one question about the rules: I've seen that the characters have a lot of special abilities, I've counted up about thirty unique in your game's build. Now: isn't it clumsy to keep track of so many special rules? And: what's the extent of having just two characteristics (Q & C) when you have to add 2/3 special abilities to each dude in order to make it feel different?
Sorry to hijack the thread toward the rules and not the beautiful campagna you are playing, feel free to ignore my rantings

[beefcake]

I love the intro. Nice scene you set up.
Where did the smaller orcs come from? I recognise the big reaper ones but not the smaller guys.

[Mars Miniatures]

Hey Joe,

I just happened to see the word scrum and thought... I wonder if that is Joe?
And it is
Hiya buddy! 
Glad to see you here on LAF.
I wish you the best of luck on your blogging adventures.


beefcake,
Hope Joe doesnt mind me fielding your question...
The orcs and goblins are from the 80s Citadel box set known as PBS3 "Warhammer Fantasy Regiments"   
Which had 10 each of 6 different figures: Orc, Gobbo, Dark Elf, Wood Elf, Skaven, and Dwarf.
http://solegends.com/citboxes2/pbs3whfbregs/index.htm

[The Bibliophile]

Mar: Don't mind at all that you jumped in...you're my guru for all things wargaming!

Beefcake: As I told Mar recently, I bought that regiments box back when it came out when I played RPGs but not miniatures games. Jump ahead about 30 years, I found it still unopened in my basement, dusted it off, and it became my entre to tabletop miniatures gaming about a year ago.

midismirnoff: That's a fair question about the rules, and I don't mind discussing them at all. I counted around 22 different traits and four spells spread out across the two warbands, and you're right that each of these units has two to three traits. That was a personal choice, and they could conceivably have had no traits at all, or maybe just one. My experience is that the traits serve as a proxy for any number of things, from movement rates to particular weapons. For example, all movement is based on predefined lengths of short/medium/long. Units by default have a "medium" movement rating, but if you feel that the stubby legs of a dwarf should make it cover less ground when it moves than a human, then you give the dwarf the "short" trait to indicate this. If your unit wears plate mail, give it the "Heavily Armored" trait. Most traits result in fairly simple modifiers (positive or negative) to the base three characteristics (Quality, Combat, Movement) under certain circumstances. It's usually pretty easy to jot down a few words and numbers next to the unit's info to capture the trait's game effect, and many of them are simply self-explanatory. The "Long Bow" means the unit uses the longbow stats for firing ranges/modifiers (again using the exact same three basic measurements of short/medium/long as with movement). If the unit also has "Good Shot," they get a simple +1 to their Combat rolls when firing on the enemy. If they have "Fire Into Melee" they can fire at enemies who are engaged in melee with one of your own units (something prohibited under normal circumstances). I think the trick is to not get too carried away when creating your units and overloading them with too many traits. The system probably isn't ideal for folks who look to min/max units; the game can get thrown out of whack if somebody sets their mind to it. Fortunately, there are literally hundreds of pre-generated unit profiles in the published books to choose from that help keep play balanced. Personally, I find the system pretty elegant for fun skirmish games, especially if you like your games narrative based.

[The Bibliophile]

We managed to get another fun skirmish in this weekend. I cooked up a scenario titled the "The Homeless Fire Giants." Lots of photos and scenario notes at the link to my blog, Scrum in Miniature: 

http://miniaturescrum.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-homeless-fire-giants.html

[boneio]

Another great post. Loved the intro and setup. I was rooting for the fire giants, shame they didn't make it!