DINOSAURS AND SUCH
Recently i bought a handful of the
http://www.magistermilitum.com/ dinosaurs and they are bloody fantastic. so much so that after buying myself a large ankylosaurus i went back and spent nearly thirty pounds on them in one visit. I love these models and they have inspired me.
anyone who knows of me and my works with black west and my fantasy city game City Grounds (both linked below)
(http://www.ezpainter.co.uk/1/post/2013/10/updates-on-city-grounds-and-black-west.html)will know that i love to create new and exciting skirmish games based only on the emphasis of fun and excitement.
Both Black west and City grounds have a flavor of stupidity to them which aids in the random fun you can have playing them. City Grounds especially is packed full of mad moves and actions to add to the chaos of gameplay.
The reason i bring these up is that i have now ventured into another rules writing project. Having determined it is something i love to do i have decided to add a new set to my repertoire in the vein of a simplistic but realistic Dinosaur skirmishing experience.
First i bought the miniatures i needed to get the game off the ground. i wanted to get a mix of large and small predators and herbivores so that i may experiment with generating new profiles and a mixture of them at that.
Below pictured is
(L-R) - AT THE BACK -
1. parasaurolophus - a dosile but defensive herd mentality herbivore.
2. Ankylosaurs - a large aggressive herbivore built like a sherman tank
3. Charcarodontasaurus - The largest living tyrannosaur in all his pre painted glory.
4. (middle) - Edmontonia - a medium sized armored herbivore. this little guy best puts in perspective the size of these things to scale being that he is the size of an army tank. litterally! it would be 10mm miniatures to represent humans next to these dudes should i wish!
5. (Front) - Deinonychus - the "velociraptor" (a fake name made up for jurassic park) that is probably one of the most famous small dinosaurs in existence.
In the above picture i have affixed them to the provided bases except for the Deinon's as i wanted them to be able to fight individually. also this way i can give a more focused paint job to each of the little guys without losing patience painting one big base.
My initial impression is that these are not only very historically accurate (to the best of current human knowledge) but that the scale is lovely and the detail is insane. sadly the magister militum page for these guys has the shodiest of shoddy photos, as does the packets they come in. which, i think, is why i didn't buy any until i saw them at crusade last week!
The miniatures have very little to zero flashing and they are a very strong and clean white metal. Each one required some slight cleaning on the bottom of the base, but little else.
DOWN TO BUSINESS!
First thing i did when working on these rules is watch a shizzle ton of dinosaur documentaries. This definitely helped me in my understanding of the social life and combat of the creatures. it appeared to me quickly that a predator prey style game was going to emerge from this, and being that i was aiming for realism i loved that idea.
I wrote down a bunch of rules, and where possible i was adding as many quirks as i could to give it a unique flavour
After writing for three days i decided to have a go at preparing some terrain. being that i had way to much work for easy painter at the moment i couldn't really justify starting painting these guys, but terrain, being my forte, was a justified sacrifice to the work shedule
below is some of my initial outcome from that process.
ANY SUGGESTIONS FOR TERRAIN IS WIDELY ACCEPTED HERE. IT TURNS OUT THAT DINO'S FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD FOUGHT IN LITERATELY EVERY CLIMATE...SO EVERYTHING GOES! A super size dino tree. FIIINNAAALLLLYYY something to do with loo rolls. and i love how easy its turning out to be so far.
A W.I.P jungle segment. i have needed a use for these aquarium plants for years. and they have just sat in my box. until now!
I plan to knock up about fifteen of these, so that i may really create a maze of jungle.
I want to make some tall bamboo style jungle segments aswell, if anyone has good examples or ideas for that please let me know. i vaguely remember games workshop doing something like it for the catachan jungle in 2004-5 but i can't remember the colors/ process.
i have also began making markers for the actions in the game. from our test game we found that the turns move very slowly although the gameplay moves fast, which occasionally makes for a confusing time. with simple makers for walking/running/charging and barging, we could better keep track of the dinosaurs movements and more specifically, the turn sequence.
THE GAME
Our test game took about an hour to play and was extremely satisfactory. i played with my little brother who played the part of the carnivores.
Fred poses for the camera
The game board ready to go. even with unpainted dino's and a bunch of twigs and rocks scattered it looks awesome and very inviting. let's jsut say should you see this at a convention, you would want a test game
- Here you can see the carnivores on the right hand side. a large brooding and hungry carco readies to ambush an unwitting parasauro. he has a small entourage of Deinon's that trace his movements, scavenging what they can. (all of this is very true to the life style of these particular dino's)
The ankylosaurus and the edmontonia placidly graze on the left side of the board, unawares to the danger. in fairness they stayed relatively unawares throughout the game!
ANother pic of the carnivores readying for a feast.
The first gaming bump we hit was the jumping rules! being that i hadn't thought to write them we made them and they will stay. we are using the basic 1/2-4/5-6 chart (table) from lotr and lotow. it has served me well for many years, and i won't stop using it yet, it just WORKS. Above a parasauro attempts to jump some debris, he makes the jump but on a four he only lands the other side. He was trying to jump because he saw the carco coming and had to roll a spot and flee check. ALL HERBIVORES in this game follow this procedure when a carnivore is within a certain distance. i believe it really adds to the realism.
In retaliation and in ballsy parsauro style the para attacks the carco with a headbut to his tail. he causes one wound and the carco is caught off guard. The deinon's just stand and watch as they plan their attacks.
in the distance you can see the ankylosaurus and the edmontonia fleeing. being that the edmon spotted the para fleeing but still hadnt seen the carco he had to test for spot and flee. in response to his fleeing so did the ankylosaurus. this mechanic makes for a very interesting game as the predator closes in and the herbivores flee like mad in all directions, sometime uncontrolled by the player. later in the game the carnivores get their time to shine as they close in on combat!
here you can see the deinon measuring for a barge. a barge is a full length run but must be in a 45 degree angle from the attacker to the victim unblocked. in this case there is much debris in the way and he is forced to simply run after the enemy, as his brothers have. A succesful barge allows for one extra attack before the intended attack. this is what sets a charge and a barge apart.
having dealt with pesky smaller predators the aggressive ankylosaurus sprints into battle with the carco and headbutts him straight in the tail. this renders his tail useless and makes it impossible for him to tail whip for the rest of the game. the ankylosaurus is a beast and amroured at that!
turning to face the miniatures is a large aspect of Cretacea, in turning the miniatures the game becomes more visual. backwards for a tail whip, forward for a bite and even a little lift here and there with added sound effects...for fun
the game ended here, in turn three, one hour down the line. As the carco delivered the final scathing blow to the ankylosaurus and brought him down to china town in a pile of armored shell.
CONCLUSION SO FAR....
In conclusion Cretacea is young and has LOTS of growing to do. there are many tokens to be made and replicated many times over, there maybe even is cards for the individual creatures to make. but for now it is great. it plays well and it has SO MUCH room for interesting rules like broken teeth and disable dinosaurs.
My favorite aspect of the game is that cover is only good for hiding out of LOS and that it is mainly close combat. i played a game of dead mans hand on the weekend and i found it to be a glorified £20 version of my free game black west. i won't hold it against people playing it but the game had a very lazy and underdeveloped combat system for close combat. so much so the guy demoing it said "oh god no one goes into combat...what do i do now?". this in itself is often the downfall of skirmish gaming. and i hope to expand on that later. makind cretacea one of the first FREE and ClOSE COMBAT ORIENTED GAME on the market.
ALL COMMENTS AND CRITICISM WELCOME. PLEASE IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT THE GAME ASK AWAY.
MORE UPDATES SOON.
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June 04, 2008, 10:53:35 PM
