The Abominations Arrive!

Onslaught Miniatures announced that the next wave of their 6mm science fiction line is out, and I had to buy some. This time it is the Abomination, reminiscent of Genestealer Hybrids. As I loved the game Space Hulk (First Edition, along with all of the expansions, and the articles from White Dwarf magazine), I still have a collection of 28mm Genestealer Hybrids from Citadel Miniatures. These are not reduced sized copies of those original miniatures, but they definitely give you that feel, just as their Legion figures give you the feel for the Tyranid species without actually copying them.

First up are the three variants of the close combat Abominations. As you can see, two are four-armed and one is two-armed.

The body armor is well formed. I painted the armor a dark gray, then picked out the high spots with blue paint. For the flesh I primed the figures white, washed them in GW purple wash (the one no longer available; I have not tried the new ones), then picked out the high spots in sunburned flesh. If you click on the pictures, you will see a greatly magnified image.

Next are the Abominations with squad automatic support weapons.

As you can see, two are held slung low – the left hand actually holding a handle on top of the weapon – while the third uses a more traditional grip. The first figure is three-armed – he looks like a leader signaling with upraised claw – and the additional of a "bionic eye" lends to that aura. I like him; I need to add some markings to his armor indicating that he is a leader.

As with the previous figures the armor is well defined, making it easy to pick out the detail with a paint brush. I started getting a little better with the faces on these guys.

Finally, we have the Abominations with the heavy weapons. Two weapons look like the weapons on the GW Epic Orks with heavy weapons; they look like missile launchers to me, which is great, because it gives the unit some anti-armor capability. The last looks like a shoulder-mounted laser weapon.

It almost looks like I painted the teeth white on some of these guys, but that is just the purple wash not getting into the crevice of the mouth and leaving it white. I cannot see it with the naked eye, but I had to laugh when I saw the pictures.

The openings on the front and back of this weapon are well defined, so it warranted a wash in order to highlight it. I was worried that the wash would overpower the light gray color, so I used Army Painter's Soft Tone Ink. I probably could have gone darker, using something like an armor wash.

The 'sun glasses' worn by this figure is purely an accident of painting. But he does look cool!

All in all, these figures were very fun to paint. In all of the GW Epic figures that I have, I was never able to get any Tyranid forces on eBay, largely because others outbid me; they were very popular (and expensive). From a skirmish viewpoint, using something like In the Emperor's Name (ITEN), FUBAR, or Angel Barracks' KR16, the Abominations are probably a better force to collect. When gaming at a larger scale – where units are squads or platoons – the Legion are an excellent choice to represent mass attacks by the 'Bugs'.

New Science Fiction Rules

Speaking of which … Ganesha Games has come out with a new set of science fiction rules called SWATTERS! It has some interesting concepts for representing multi-unit combat (think Sixty-One Sixty-Five for science fiction) that I think can be applied across many genres. I hope to do a review and battle report soon.

Well, I need to keep off of the forums for awhile, so I hope to get back to the painting table and finish some sample figures of the rest of the Legion line (I bought the Gashers, Stalkers, and Winged Stalkers when I bought the Abominations). I have also painted up some Dark Realms figures, but I am a little unsure I like the results. The figures are great to paint, don't get me wrong, but I think I chose a bad color scheme.

Angel Barracks has come out with a new draft of his KR16 rules. They are free, so other than your time, there really is no cost to downloading them and trying them out. As far as I know, they are only available on the Angel Barracks forum on Yahoo. (If I am wrong, don't worry, Michael will probably correct me in the comments section.)

iPad Gaming

I got into the game Frontline Tactics on the Mac. It is a pretty repetitive game and you will probably find it additive for about 20 hours, but as part of an experiment with the online account, I downloaded the game it to my iPad. I had a point where I had to wait someone for awhile, so I started playing the game on my iPad to while away the time.

There is a new mobile gaming technology that I heard a podcast about that allows the developer to pop up an ad, at appropriate breaks in the action, while gives the gamer in-game rewards for play. It is not too annoying (it pops up at the end of each mission) and I have tapped on a few to see what they were offering.

I surprised the wife with an early delivery of flowers for Mother's Day. My wife used to not like to receive flowers, but now that she has a lot of land, she likes trying to see if she can take the cutting and get them to grow. I have not given her flowers in awhile so she was surprised by the gift. "Why did you decide to give them too me this year?" she asked. "Oh, just because …"

… just because it earned me 250,000 credits in the game Frontline Tactics, that is!

There is a board game called Eclipse that has been converted to the iPad. It has been a long time coming and greatly anticipated. As it was less than $10 ($6.99, I think?) I decided to pick it up, because of all the buzz.

Stay away! It is a huge time drain!

Seriously, the game is very fun and has gotten me interested in the board game itself. People that play the board games say that the iPad version has a few implementation issues (i.e. the rules are different from the board game), but only one crashing bug has been reported (that I have heard of) and it is apparently not likely to be triggered.

Money well spent (even if the time is not).

BattleLore

And finally … the BattleLore over Vassal tournament is finally over. (I love the gaming, but scheduling within a time limit creates pressure I really did not like. In the end I was starting to get irritated over the scheduling issues.)

I won both rounds, scoring 8-2 and 8-7. Yes, I won the tournament! As strange as it sounds, this was the first BattleLore over Vassal tournament that has ever completed, so that makes me the first champion. This for a game no longer printed and poorly supported by the license holder.

One of the things that came out of it, however, is how much Chris and I prefer the Epic version of BattleLore. It actually lowers the luck factor of the card draw, plus uses larger maps and more units. It seems like we will be using this format more often in the future.

New Readers

Welcome to new readers Les and Dehewes. Dehewes' profile pointed me a nice Kindle blog that shows new Kindle eBooks that come out and go on sale. Les has an interesting blog, Wargaming France 1940, where he games that subject in 6mm. He is also a solo gamer, so it will probably be a source for ideas for me for my Solo Battles blog.

I hope you guys enjoy the blog content. Feel free to leave a comment when something strikes you.

C4ISR – Test Game 2

Another C4ISR Test Game

Today, gaming buddy Don agreed to test C4ISR (my science fiction version of Command and Colors rules). I really liked the game, but more importantly, I think we both came up with what we did and did not like.

What we tried:

• Battle dice were 10-sided, with the faces: Infantry-Infantry-Armor-Artillery-Air-Grenade-Medic-Flag-Miss-Miss. Note that the odds are reduced compared to the Memoir '44 six-sided battle dice. Also note that artillery is hit on its own symbol now.
• Grenades only hit in close combat.

• Infantry attacking Anti-Personnel (AP) Targets: dice rolled are 3-3-2-2-1-1. (That is the number of dice at each hex range, so 3 dice at 1 and 2 hexes, 2 dice at 3 and 4 hexes, etc.)
• Infantry attacking Anti-Armor (AT) Targets: 4-2-2-1.
• Mech Infantry attacking AP Targets: 3-3-2-2-1-1.
• Mech Infantry attacking AT Targets: 4-2-2-1.
• Armor attacking AP Targets: 2-3-3-2-1-1.
• Armor attacking AT Targets: 4-4-3-3-2-2-1-1
• Artillery attack AP or AT Targets: 3-2-1. Note that for artillery this is not hex count, but board section count. In other words, 3 dice for the same board section, 2 dice for an adjacent board section, and 1 die for a board section two away. (On a normal gameboard there are six board sections: Left, Center, and Right for each half of the battlefield. For a Breakthrough-sized board there are nine board sections. For Overlord-sized boards it is 12 board sections and Overlord-Breakthrough-sized it is a whopping 18 board sections!)
• All units use 1 less die if the unit has taken any number of casualties.
• Terrain was more like BattleLore than Memoir '44. Rather than subtracting dice to attack in or out, the maximum number of dice were indicated instead. Buildings were 1 die shooting in and 2 dice shooting out (1 die for Armor shooting out). Woods were 2 dice in and no restrictions out. Hills were 2 dice up, 3 dice across (hill-to-hill) or down. We did not use any other terrain types. Artillery was unaffected by the battle dice restrictions of terrain, either in or out.

• Artillery count as AP targets.
• Mech Infantry and Self-Propelled Artillery count as AT targets.

• Light Infantry move 2 hexes and Battle or 3 hexes.
• Elite Light Infantry move 3 hexes and Battle.
• Mech Infantry move 4 hexes and Battle or 6 hexes.
• Armor move 6 hexes and Battle.
• Artillery move 1 hex or Battle.
• Self-Propelled Artillery move 2 hexes and Battle or 4 hexes.
• Units must stop when they enter the first hex adjacent to an enemy unit; they cannot move through.

• Units with support ignore 1 Flag.
• Units with support can Battle Back in close assault.
• Units are supported if two friendly units can provide them support.
• A unit can provide support to a unit it is adjacent to.
• An artillery unit can provide support to a unit within two hexes of it.
• A command unit can provide support to a unit within two hexes of it.

So, although the game is based heavily on Memoir '44, it really takes elements from all of the Richard Borg games. The idea is that C4ISR is at a much lower scale; each unit is a squad or platoon, at most. Each Town hex is more like a Building hex. Using boards from Squad Leader would be more appropriate, in terms of scale.

Units move and fire much farther. The Armor units being able to move 6 and fire 8 hexes means it has a large threat zone. Of course, at this scale, sufficient cover and line-of-sight-blocking terrain is a must.

There were a few other rules that we added, but they did not come into play. For example, the ability of a unit to move through a friendly unit. I also had a few ideas, but Don was not keen on them, so we set them aside.

So, how did it play? Very interesting, I think. The ability to ignore Flags due to support meant that units often stayed in formation. This in turn meant they could battle back in close assault, making them more likely to keep their positions without burning cards.

The long ranges often came into play, then we switched to everything being close assaults, and finally we went back to firing at 2-3 hex range, in order to avoid the battle backs.

The terrain had a great impact on the game. As most infantry was holed up in buildings, most battles were with 1 die, unless it was artillery. In fact, artillery is how we dug infantry out of buildings. We may have to change Armor to getting 2 dice in close assault against buildings to represent the effect of HE in enclosed spaces, but we will see. Using 1 die for infantry fighting house-to-house was a slow, slogging process, and I was fine with it.

Another interesting effect was the penalty of a die to a unit that lost one or more figures. This has a contrary effect to how you play Command and Colors normally, which is to focus fire on a unit until it is dead, and producing a victory point. This gives you an incentive to spread the fire around, pinning units here and there (my explanation of what the -1 die represented). Don focused on that tactic, and as a result a lot of my fire was reduced (but not all – firing into a building with a full unit or reduced still only gives you 1 die). I, on the other hand, kept trying to eliminate units and get to victory.

So, what did we want to change? Most things, actually. Although the game was fun, I could see the complexity in remembering how many dice to roll based on the range was going to be a problem. I mean, in Memoir '44 it is 3-2-1 for infantry, 3-3-3 for armor, and 3-3-2-2-1-1 for artillery. Pretty easy to remember. Infantry in Battle Cry is 4-3-2-1, artillery is 5-4-3-2-1, and cavalry 3, so it is also easy to remember. This model is not (although I did get the hang of it about 75% of the time, by the end of the game). Next experiment will be with a fixed number of dice, like BattleLore, with the same terrain effects (restricting the maximum number of dice, rather than subtracting dice). Also, we will probably extend the range of weapons even farther.

I think support should be a unit within two hexes. Aesthetically it looks much better. Units are not in solid phalanxes and supporting units can be in buildings across the road (i.e. one hex between). Artillery should provide support to any unit in its board section.

Our scenario was not really representative. I am not sure which scenario we played, but it was a Memoir '44 Breakthrough board scenario. The Allies were spread out and the Axis were concentrated, so the latter just started rolling over units eventually. But the low number of dice rolled, along with changing the probabilities of getting hits, meant that it took a long time. Our game last much longer than the normal Memoir game, about twice as long, and about 50% longer than a Breakthrough-board Memoir game.

Sorry no pictures, but it would have just looked like a Memoir game as I was using those figues as proxies. Not enough 6mm science fiction troops painted up yet.

New Figures from Onslaught Miniatures

Speaking of 6mm science fiction miniatures, expect some more comparison photos of the new figures from Onslaught Miniatures. When I made my purchase, Don (of Onslaught Miniatures) only had the Prowlers, Mantis Beasts, and Overseers at the time. I knew I wanted to get the Gashers, Stalkers, and Winged Stalkers, but when the newsletter came out saying that the Abominations were now out, I knew it was time to order.

Perfect for a Genestealer Cult army in 6mm.

Although I like these, and think they will be a blast to paint, I have to be honest and say I was looking forward more to his OTC (not-Tau). But I understand his position. If you start a miniatures line you need to finish it, otherwise people will complain about starting too many lines and finishing none. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. So I will have to wait patiently for the OTC and buy and paint the Abominations in the meantime. I am sure Don won't mind. At this price, neither will my wallet.

BattleLore over Vassal Tournament Update

Well, I am proud to say that I made it by the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin into the Semi-Finals for the BattleLore over Vassal tournament. I only had one bad loss (but it was bad) in the main rounds and I thought it had knocked me out as a contender, but it turns out only one player did not have at least one bad game. Of course, that one player was the guy I had to play in the Semi-Finals!

But, we played our match on Saturday and I lost 5-6 in the first game but won 6-2 in the second, for an 11-8 win in the match, moving me to the Finals.

Today, I watched the other two semi-finalists play and the winner of the match also lost 5-6 on the first game and won the second 6-2. (Weird. Not only that, but we both lost as the Goblin player and won as the Dwarf player.) Ironically, the winner was Chris, the guy I play BattleLore all the time over Vassal. I think I taught him too well! Worse still, he knows all my tricks!

So we will start the Finals this week. Wish me luck!

As for the Samurai Battles over Vassal tournament, I think that is dying a slow death. I did complete another round (there are six, plus semi-finals and finals), but have not gotten any response from the other players. As it turns out, Samurai Battles looked much better on rice paper than it plays. Very disappointing.

The Impact of the Turn Sequence on the Solo Gamer

Over on my Solo Battles blog I wrote an article about the impact that the turn sequence of a game's rules has on the solo gamer. I only mention it because it has gotten a number of very interesting and thought-provoking comments. If you are into game design, you might want to check it out.

Other Gaming News

I finally finished making a simple gameboard with a 2" square grid so I can start playing a gridded version of De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) 3.0. I have given up that the author is going to refine the rules enough to get out the geometric tricks, so as John Acar suggested on a thread on TMP, simply go to the grid; that always gets out tricks like kinked lines and such. I know I won't be able to play in tournaments using these rules, but I think I can get the guys locally to play it. Expect to start seeing some write-ups on my Dale's DBA blog.

C4ISR

C4ISR is the modern US military acronym for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (and is actually C⁴ISR, but I am too lazy to superscript the '4' each and every time) and is an appropriate name for a science fiction variant of the Command and Colors family of games as it hints at the command and control aspect of those rules, in a modern setting.

I played my first test game today – if it really can be called that, as it was basically an all infantry fight – just to see what sort of kinks I needed to get out of the system, and areas that I needed to think about. Although I am strongly looking at the Memoir '44 style of dice symbols¹ for combat, I like the Command and Colors denotation of Red, Blue, and Green for Heavy, Medium, and Light. These designations seem to fit well with armored protection and hitting power, and I think these aspects of science fiction combat will come through.

I am considering using six combat ratings for each unit (yes six): speed, ranged firepower against soft (anti-personnel or AP) targets, assault power against soft targets, ranged firepower against hard (anti-tank or AT) targets, assault power against  hard targets, and ranged firepower against aerial (anti-aircraft or AA) targets. These will be reflected as a series of colored dots on the back of the unit's stand. The values would be:

Rating	White	Yellow	Green	Blue	Red
Speed	No movement allowed.	Move 1 or battle.	Move 2 and battle.	Move 1 and battle or move 2.	Move 1 and battle.
Ranged AP	No ranged fire allowed.	1 die	2 dice	3 dice	4 dice
Assault AP	Not allowed to initiate assault. 1 die otherwise.	1 die	2 dice	3 dice	4 dice
Ranged AT	No ranged fire allowed.	1 die	2 dice	3 dice	4 dice
Assault AT	Not allowed to initiate assault. 1 die otherwise.	1 die	2 dice	3 dice	4 dice
Ranged AA	No ranged fire allowed.	1 die	2 dice	3 dice	4 dice

Here are the initial values that I used for the Legion (not-Tyranid) troops.

Unit	Speed	Ranged AP	Assault AP	Ranged AT	Assault AT	Ranged AA
Flying Bugs	Green	Green	Green	Green	Blue	Green
Prowlers	Green	White	Blue	White	Green	White
Overseers with Swords	Green	White	Red	White	Green	White
Overseers with Guns	Blue	Red	Blue	Green	Blue	Green
Mantis Beast2	Blue	White	Red	White	Blue	White

I am using four hits for each infantry unit (with the Mantis Beast being an exception with having a single hit) and three hits for each armor unit. Infantry fire at a range of three (too short for the scale, in hindsight), but with no diminution in dice with range. (Note, however, that the Grenade symbol only hits when in Assault (adjacent).

Here are the stats for the Kraytonian soldiers.

Unit	Speed	Ranged AP	Assault AP	Ranged AT	Assault AT	Ranged AA
Light Monitors	Green	Green	Green	White	Green	Yellow
Medium Monitors	Blue	Blue	Blue	Green	Green	Yellow
Heavy Monitors	Red	Red	Blue	Blue	Red	Yellow

Please note that all of these are preliminary values. They need playtesting.

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¹ Memoir '44 uses two Infantry symbols, one Armor symbol, one Grenade symbol, one Flag symbol, and one Star symbol for its six faces.

² The Mantis Beast is like a Tiger tank in Memoir '44 or a Creature in BattleLore in that it has a single hit, but requires that all hits scored against it be confirmed by rolling a Grenade/Sword on Shield symbol in order for the hit to take effect. Any other result on the confirming roll results in no hit being scored.

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Playtest Game

Okay, the pictures are pretty ugly (as the miniatures are not painted), but it shows the concept as well as any Command and Colors game, and gives an idea of what it would look like with 6mm miniatures. Of course, you can always go for a game mat with larger hexes and figures and better terrain.

I flipped through the numerous Memoir '44 scenarios that I have, looking for an interesting terrain setup. Ironically I picked The Battle of Villers-Bocage just from the terrain before I recognized what the scenario was about. Villers-Bocage was an ambush by German Tiger tanks, led by the famous Tiger Ace SS-Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann against a British armored column. (I have a few books that are tactical studies of WW II battles, and The Battle of Villers-Bocage is one of those few.)

I thought that this would be a good scenario to convert to science fiction only I did not want to jump into armored combat yet, and I wanted to use the Legion figures ("the Bugs") from Onslaught Miniatures. So, the Bugs became the Tigers and the Kraytonian infantry (from Dark Realm Miniatures) became the hapless British.

In the original Memoir '44 scenario there were two less German units, but as they were Tigers, they were pretty powerful. I gave the Bugs two extra units. I substituted ½ of the British armored forces for Heavy Infantry and the remaining ½ for Medium Infantry. The British infantry forces became Light Infantry.

Originally the scenario called for a six-card German Command hand and a three-card British Command hand. I increased the Kraytonian Command hand to four and left the Bug hand at six. Also, the Germans needed to achieve only five Victory Points while the British only three, but I changed this to both sides requiring five Victory Points for this game. The Bugs would move first, just as the Germans do in this scenario.

One other key point of this scenario that is unusual is that all woods and building terrain are considered impassable. Where the Bugs start in woods, they can move out, but once out they cannot move back in.

One final note: I did not treat the Mantis Beast as indicated in the rules above for this scenario. I simply treated them as a four hit infantry unit.

The picture above shows the initial deployments. The Kraytonians (blue) are strung out along the road across the entire board. There is no left flank security whatsoever. The Bugs (red) are attacking from the top-left corner.

Turn 1: The Bugs start off with a great card, able to move all of their units on the left side of the board (their right flank). They quickly engage the Kraytonians on the road, sending one unit fleeing, leaving another crippled.

Turn 2: The Bugs continue to press on the left, getting their Overseers with Swords in amongst the rear of the column. The cripples Kraytonian Medium Infantry is eliminated, making the score 1-0 for the Bugs.

Turn 3: The Bugs attack starts to peter out under the massed fire of the Kraytonians. The Mantis Beast is felled under a hail of slugs from the Heavy and Medium Infantry in the center. The Light Infantry in the center is badly crippled forcing a second Light Infantry unit to jump into the fray with the Overseers with Guns in order to cover their retreat. The score is now tied at 1-1.

Turn 4: The Overseers with Guns back off and blast the Kraytonian Light Infantry while on the other flank the Overseers with Swords fall under a hail of slugs from massed Kraytonian fire. The score is now tied at 2-2.

Turn 5: A massive push (using the Infantry Assault card) by the Kraytonians brings a huge amount of firepower to bear, eliminating another Bug unit (the Overseers with Guns) and pushing a Prowler unit to the baseline. This ambush is not quite going the way expected… The Kraytonians lead 3-2.

Turn 6: As the out-numbered Bugs try to regroup, the Kraytonians continue to hammer the Bug units. Of the four units, one has three hits, one two, and one has one hit. On the other side, four Kraytonian units have three hits, but as the Bugs just cannot move through the wall of slugs coming at them, they cannot eliminate any of the weakened enemy units.

Turn 7: The Bugs continue to struggle and make no headway. Ironically, the Kraytonians make a heroic effort (they play the card Their Finest Hour, allowing them an extra die in combat) and eliminate the two weakest Bug units, winning 5-2.

Analysis

Until I put bigger Bugs on the board, I will probably use the Mantis Beast like a Memoir '44 Tiger unit or a BattleLore Creature. In BattleLore terms, the Mantis Beast should be something like the Giant Spider: fast, great in the woods, but not very hard hitting (relatively speaking).

The problem with the Bugs, of course, is their lack of ranged weapons. Part of that is my collection. Time to send an order to Onslaught Miniatures and get the rest of their line, which happen to be the ones that have ranged weapons. I need to find or make a Bugs leader and base up the huge Skyth so I can use them as artillery pieces and add a new component to the game.

I like Command and Colors, of course, so as a game it felt a bit better than Memoir '44, which is probably the simplest of the rules (we are speaking of the simplicity of the core mechanics; Memoir '44 has added a lot of rules in all of their expansion), but still very simple. That was largely because I was using all infantry, and a small attacking force at that. Further, using the cover of terrain was not allowed.

I don't want to change too much based on this one play. After all, it played all right, although I have to re-think the ranges. Of course, extending the ranges will make it even deadlier for the Bugs, so I may need to up the speed of the Bugs or just understand that I will need a lot more of them on their side.