New rules and new camera, a test of both.

[jthomlin]

Hi all,

My friend Dave and I had play test battle for some rules we are trying to hammer out, very early stages at the moment.

The room we played in is affectionately known as 'the hobbit hole', even though it has a square door (Aussie hobbits don't put much store in tradition ... ;-). Dave just dug out ~2m x 3m space under his house and lined it with concrete.

The lighting is adequate for humans but not brilliant for photography, but since I had my shiny new camera and wanted to test that as well, here are the results ...

The game was a reasonably straight forward clash between mostly Orcs and humans, the aim this time was testing some new combat mechanics so there wasn't much in the way of manoeuvre.

The battlefield:


The Orcs:


And Gobbos:


Humans and a smattering of pointy eared gits:


And some height challenged bipeds:


As I said this was a playtest of combat mechanics, so not much manoeuvre, just a big stoush in the middle:



But not for long, as the casualties piled up on the humans, it was all over bar the shouting ...


Since all the shots were hand held in poor lighting, and all I did was 'point and click', I'm happy with the end result. The colours vary a bit from shot to shot due to the lighting (or lack thereof), but there are a few things I can do to fix that next time.

[fastolfrus]

So what type of camera is it?

[Thantsants]

There's a lot of old citadel loveliness on that table 

I'm intrigued by the skull counters - any more info on your rules?

[jthomlin]

So what type of camera is it?

It's a Sony 'Mega Zoom': http://www.sony.com.au/product/dsc-hx200v

Cheers!
Joe Thomlinson

[Dr. The Viking]

I like the idea of Australia's wargaming populace being dominated by Daves going about writing rules. (unless this Dave is also the author of Skulldred)

Looks bloody fantastic!

[jthomlin]

There's a lot of old citadel loveliness on that table 

I'm intrigued by the skull counters - any more info on your rules?

No steroid abusing, silicon stuffed designer figures here! Just good old fashioned, old school ... :-)

We use the skull counters for any game that needs casualties defined. The skulls have a hole going from top to bottom, so next time I intend having bases with toothpicks or similar on them that I can thread the skulls on to.

The rules as I said are very early in development, we know what we want, now it's the hard slog of turning our vision into A) something that works & B) something that others can understand. They will be different, and probably not everyone's cup of tea, but as long as they please us everything after that is a bonus.

We are both historical gamers as well as fantasy, so we want the rules to have a solid simulation base, hence orders, simultaneous movement and a general lack of telepathy, but at the same time keeping the basic framework as simple as possible with the detail added in at the troop and army levels. Orders for instance are done by chits or cards placed with commanders at the start of the game and triggered by signal or messenger. Once troops start moving that's pretty much it, no changing your mind without personal intervention or sending of messengers who may be delayed or even ignored. No changing your mind every turn, the emphasis will be on planning before the battle, not during it!

Combat is different in that it will probably be far less random than most. The rationale being that if you had a large room and filled one end side to side with a battle line of Spartans, and at the other an equal line of Athenians, so all factors are identical except the troops themselves. Now have them fight 100 times, how often do you think the Spartans would win? The Spartans should win every time shouldn't they? They’re the better fighters and everything else is equal. Yes, you will get differences in individual performance and even at small group levels, (as anyone who follows a football team could attest) but once you get to 100's or 1000's of troops that all evens out.

But The Spartans did get defeated, history is full of 'better' troops loosing. the key is that in those circumstances everything wasn't equal, they were tired, outnumbered, disorganized, flanked, in disadvantageous terrain etc, etc. this is what we want to emphasize. Planning to roll well is not a viable option! ;-)

Fantasy battles add more ingredients to the mix, flyers, magic, monsters etc.

Hopefully that gives you a feel for what we are after, but there is a lot of work to go before we had anything we could expect anyone to pick up and make sense of.

Cheers!
Joe Thomlinson

[jthomlin]

I like the idea of Australia's wargaming populace being dominated by Daves going about writing rules. (unless this Dave is also the author of Skulldred)

Looks bloody fantastic!

This is a Melbourne Dave, the Skuldred one is of the Sydney variety.

Thanks for the compliment.

Cheers!
Joe Thomlinson