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Ilor posted:But let's set that aside and focus on the actual game-play. One of the complaints related to me by a friend of mine (who has played SP2) was the sense that the game bogged down and that "nothing happened." When pressed for details, it turned out that they'd been doing Shock incorrectly, using the total Shock of all the groups in a Formation together before deducting for moving or shooting. So once a Formation got a decent amount of Shock on it, it became immobile, which in turn led to the "static" feel of the game. But if you play it...you know...by the rules, this isn't actually an issue. And many of the AAR's I've read have troops maneuvering all over the table, which is cool. That's my fault =/ I believe you mean John, who played in my game at Flintcon. I totally hosed up the shock on formations and movement thing  quote:
Totally agree. You're in Ann Arbor, right ? When we can do an ACW campaign?
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Mar 7, 2017 01:40
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ExtraNoise posted:I was absolutely destroyed during Friday night's game of Bolt Action. The guy I regularly play with brought something new to the table: artillery. I hadn't played against this before and wasn't really expecting it, so when he put a million pins on half of my squads, I wasn't sure what to do. Needless to say, everything was pinned, took all the bullets, and I lost after turn 4, 28-2. Vs an artillery observer, yeah, you gotta spread out. If he's gonna wait until the end of the turn, maybe try to shoot his guy first or at least put pins on. Observers are definitely not a sure thing, and cost a good amount of points (unless he's british). Just spread out, imo
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Mar 7, 2017 05:40
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Ilor posted:I'll try to get some tiny ACW mans on the table this weekend and see if I can draw more concrete conclusions. Thank yoou for the rather exhaustive rundown. That stagnation / static experience is something my first (and only, so far) CoC game devolved into as you're aware but if it really is something which is mostly a factor of learning the rules, rather than something that's endemic then I guess I'd better get a few more 'practise' games in (especially of CoC). I can't seem to find any points values for Leaders - and it would appear they're relatively arbitrary in their additions to the army lists. Just something I should get a feel for?
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Mar 7, 2017 08:20
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My impressions of SP2, although only after two games: - basic rules are sound - it's good for creating a story, even with relatively few troops on the table - the activation system is fun and suspenseful, and the addition of the command flags introduces a resource management where you have to balance using special abilties and risking not being able to activate some troops - good size game for when you want to paint up entire units, but not paint up several battalions of everything - it irks me that there is little difference between decent and great troops, especially regarding hos they handle shock - casualties are only low until you get into close combat. Close combat is needlessly clunky yet extremly deadly, but I think it is too deadly for both sides. Somewhat equal forces mean that everybody's mangled afterwards, not that one side wavers and then get chased off which would be more typical - cavalry rules don't really work for Napoleonics, need some tweaks. And I'm not complaining about cavalry not being able to just charge headlong and break everything in their path: I'm talking bout how extremly hard it is to even get into a combat where your cavalry is not automatically losing so many troops that they are lost of the rest of the game, even when attacking skirmishers in open formation and similar situations that would be a complete game over. Cavalry simply doesn't behave like the descriptions I've read of napoleonic cavalry skirmishes. - the army lists contain some iffy choices at times and the points values are not really good for balancing. Some special rules are way better than others but costed the same (compare thin red line, or even pas de charge, with stoic serfs). Same goes for traits like aggressive or sharp practice compared to stubborn or surly. -typical TFL stuff: we played the escort mission and half the space used to descibe the scenario was about how to roll for a random number of civilians who don't do anything (as specifically pointed out in the scenario rules!) Verdict: really worth experimenting with and making some house rules to make it a game that suits our preferences.
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Mar 7, 2017 09:20
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^ Interesting, so you've played another battle since the batrep on your blog site? I'm still very much interested in the era and grogging out on the models, but it would appear there are indeed some rather big flaws in the system - which I guess isn't altogether unexpected and certainly in the vein of what I've come to realise is a "British"-style of game. I'm going to cast my net a little further afield before I settle down directly with SP2 - right now I'm looking at Blucher and Bacchus (if you remember from last year or so, I painted up some barbarians vs Marian romans for DBA, and I found the figures to be excellent): I'm smiling to myself because I was squinting at this picture thinking: I wonder which ones are the Chasseurs and which are the Hussars, and yet there is apparently enough to differentiate early and late French armies puurely in 6mm sculpts: <1812  >1812 
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Mar 7, 2017 10:20
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Southern Heel posted:^ Interesting, so you've played another battle since the batrep on your blog site? Yeah, we rolled for scenarios and got the escort mission. I'll try to write up a batrep this week. The only other napoleonics game I've played is Lasalle, which I remember liking a lot. It's worth checking out if you are window shopping for rules to try out. We have 6mm nappys waiting as well (of course), and our plan for them right now is to try Lasalle and Blücher. e: Lasalle is much less RPGish than SP2, if you want something that is more clearly a wargame. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Mar 7, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 10:51
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OK, I've got the PDFs for Blucher and Lasalle and I will have a look through. Blucher looks like it has a similarly interesting activation mechanic: your opponent roles D6/2D6 'momentum' (i..e activation points) and hides it from you. You then proceed to manouvre your force consuming those until your opponent reveals there's no more momentum left. An interesting take on Fog of War. It appears to require about 20-25 Southern Heel fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Mar 7, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 12:33
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Lasalle is at least playable with around 16-20 bases per side.
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Mar 7, 2017 12:58
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muggins posted:That's my fault =/ I believe you mean John, who played in my game at Flintcon. I totally hosed up the shock on formations and movement thing muggins posted:Totally agree. You're in Ann Arbor, right ? When we can do an ACW campaign?
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Mar 7, 2017 13:09
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Yeah we tracked shock on a group level I just screwed up and added all the shock together when looking at movement for the formation. I've finished my Virginia provincials for French and Indian War comma going to put up a blog post later today but I wanted to share this quick picture 
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Mar 7, 2017 14:09
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lilljonas posted:Lasalle is at least playable with around 16-20 bases per side. Ah ha! ... so I guess we're getting to that question of game-scale, because the Lasalle rulebook again suggests that 'large' units should be 6 bases, and small ones 4 bases, and then gives this as an example army:  As written at least, this would be two brigades of 13 bases, one of 15 bases - but if as you say each 'object' was represented by a single base, then only 15 total (albeit without any formations). http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=185105 above posted:The author suggests the 12-18 unit game will play as a 2-3 hour game. Now 90% of rules authors underestimate the time games will take, a good rule of thumb is to add an hour to their estimate. I'm going to assume the 12-18 unit means 12-18 units consisting of 4-6 bases as per his rules, because holy poo poo.
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Mar 7, 2017 14:39
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Southern Heel posted:Ah ha! ... so I guess we're getting to that question of game-scale, because the Lasalle rulebook again suggests that 'large' units should be 6 bases, and small ones 4 bases, and then gives this as an example army: We played with less than the contents of one Baccus starter set per side, and it worked ok for getting a feel for the rules. So about three groups of four bases of infantry per side, 2-4 bases of artillery, and maybe a unit or so of 6 bases of cavalry. Then you can expand it, and the lists in the book are larger. But it was playable with fewer bases.
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Mar 7, 2017 15:10
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I guess the game works out more like Kill Team or DBA with a fewer number of units? Anyway as I've been doing some calculations/etc. I'll just whack this here incase anyone is remotely curious - there are three army lists presented in the LaSalle book, a full army, a small force, and the basic army list. I'll skirt over the particular organisational structures and try to represent just the count of bases required: Bradys (Austrian) Division at Eggmühl, April 1809 posted:20 bases infantry The Battle of Venzone, 11 April 1809, Austrian Order of Battle posted:18 bases line Austrian Infantry Division posted:26 bases infantry It's quite a strange thing to consider a brigade as 'the unit of purchase, as opposed to in 28mm a squad/regiment' - even more strange to consider that a single brigade works out at 16 or 17 bases of ~8-10 dudes each. It would appear that Pendraken are the go-to company for 10mm (and roughly £50 will get you enough to field the Brady Division listed above, using 8 infantry per base and four cavalry).  10mm Napoleonics Old Glory "blue moon" (18mm) are significantly more expensive (over double the price for the same number of dudes) but obviously you need significantly less of them to fill up the same sized base. They roll in at around £65 for the same force, if one bases at four infantry per base and three cavalry. Pricing up the standard British Peninsular War infantry division works out to around £69. This would be a good option to expand to 'full size' units AFTER a game or two, in theory:  18mm Napoleonics Southern Heel fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Mar 7, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 16:56
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More pics of my finished Virginia Provincials for Sharp Practice http://freshcoastgaming.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-road-to-adepticon-finishing.html Preview  
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Mar 7, 2017 19:13
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^ so from earlier conversation I gather that later periods rely alot less on sabers and cavalry charges?
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Mar 7, 2017 19:43
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It's less the period and more the location. North America isn't really full of flat spaces for lots of cavalry.
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Mar 7, 2017 19:46
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If you're doing a cavalry charge in the ACW, it's probably because you've hosed up and are desperately trying to pull something (anything) out of your rear end. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy fielded anything like the lancers that existed in Europe even as late as the Crimean War. By the ACW, cavalry was used predominantly in the scouting and raiding roles; its chief importance was to be able to tell you where the enemy actually was at any given time (or to screen your force to keep the opposing cavalry from doing the same). Cavalry most often engaged other cavalry in combat, and when they did so it was most commonly as dragoons (i.e. dismounted with musketry) rather than a sabres-a-swingin' kind of deal. FWIW, the campaign supplement for SP2 (Dawns & Departures) allows players to make use of cavalry in these scouting and harassing roles. The expanded system I developed several years ago for Gettysburg Soldiers was similar in that it allowed you to allocate cavalry units to various "off-board" duties (screen, raiders, scouts, etc). While this is cool and fits with the period, it does have the downside that it means your lovingly painted horsey-mans don't actually get used on the table as much.
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Mar 7, 2017 19:57
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I just erased a bunch of text here so I'll keep it short. There's a small risk with this black powder endeavour, which is that it'd be another new scale in addition to being a new system (of whatever choice) and if it doesn't pick up then I've got a pound of lead sitting in the bottom of a drawer. I've found one way around this I think though, since Blucher, LaSalle, DBA, DBN, Impetvs, etc. really don't care too much about base size and don't handle casualty removal, it makes them remarkably similar to Kings of War, which is my current 28mm game of choice. After checking out the Pendraken site for some 10mm Austrians, I found they also do a fantasy range and it appears to be quite common to use the standard 40mm x 20mm base size for historicals as the 'troop' base size in KoW (which would be 100mm x 40mm in full size). So, what this means is that I can go full steam ahead with a 10 or 15mm Napoleonic army without too much risk, since I can transpose the army into KoW if the situation demands. It's actually quite eerie how the Venzone disposition from the LaSalle rulebook maps almost directly to a 2000pt KoW list: pre:Size LaSalle KoW Description -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Oberstleutnant Volkmann General Commander 6 bases Large BN Line Infantry 3 Regiments Hand Cannon Infantry regt. #52 6 bases Large BN Line Infantry 3 Regiments Hand Cannon Infantry regt. #53 6 bases Large BN Light Infantry 3 Regiments Arquebusiers Grenz regt. #11 6 bases Large BN Hussars 3 Regiments Light Cavalry Hussar unit (regts. #5 and #2) 4 bases Standard BN Dragoons 2 Regiments Heavy Cavalry Dragoon unit (regt. #5) 4 bases Standard BTY Medium Foot Artillery 4 Units Cannon Artillery Battery 1 SK Standard SK Unit - - Skirmishers Southern Heel fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 12:23
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We love COC to death. It's a fantastic ruleset, but it's very rough around the edges. IMO it really needs a second edition, but until then, we've established these houserules/accepted clarifications of grey areas/rules for situations that just aren't covered. A lot of these aim to allow the player options for mitigating dice variance - Two of our players really disliked just how much the dice can screw you over, so we put in some options which allow you to "buy" your way out of dice rolls. House rules: 1) A player can only have two phases in a row. 6s rolled on the second phase are treated as 5s. -We had two games where one player had three phases in a row on his first go, which let him deploy his entire force and get his MGs all nice and cozy on overwatch in hard cover before the other guy even got a model on the table. Statistically unlikely? Absolutely. lovely? Absolutely. 2) A player can, before rolling for movement, skip rolling any of the dice and treat their result as a 3. -Random movement was just too much for one of our random-averse players. We decided that allowing a player to substitute his rolls for a slightly below average roll was fair. You can still roll the dice if you want to try to go that extra little bit, but if you just wanna get to that hedge that is right next to you, and don't feel like rolling double 1s, you can take 3s. 3) If a force has no Senior leader off-table, the player can skip rolling for delays when deploying a unit by spending an extra dice that could be used to deploy the unit (2 or 3 for sections, 1 for teams, 3 for vehicles). -I like the thought behind the delay rolls (encouraging the player to keep his Senior off the table until everyone has deployed), but spending four dice over two phases to put a section on the table because you can't roll to save your life isn't fun, it's frustrating. This way, there's still a cost associated with deploying your Señor early, but you won't lose your game because you just can't beat 50% odds no matter how many times you try. 4) Before rolling any Command dice, the player can choose to roll two fewer dice in order to get an extra result between 1-4 of his choosing. -This lets you buy a desperately needed result for two dice, and make you look really stupid when you roll triples of that result anyway. 5) All vehicles come with a free driver. -The rule that you need to drive APCs with one of your infantry is just dumb. Clarifications: 1) Troops can deploy in APCs. The APC deploys using the normal vehicle rules, but can be deployed on a 2 or 3 if it contains a section with a junior leader, or a 1 if it contains a team. The passengers can deploy dismounted, within 6" of the vehicle. (yes, the rules actually don't state anywhere that troops can deploy in APCs.  ) 2) A Junior Leader in a vehicle can order his driver to advance and put one of his gunners on overwatch, but not if the vehicle moved 3d6" (The rules state that troops going on overwatch are activated, which prevents them from moving implicitly, and they state that a vehicle moving removes all overwatch tokens - But the rules don't explicitly allow or disallow a vehicle to move and then go on overwatch. Intuitively, it makes sense to allow this, because the commander and gunner aren't actually busy moving the vehicle, so the commander can give the advance order and then explain the overwatch to the gunner). 3) When Overwatch is triggered by enemy movement, the firing player chooses at what point of the movement his troops fire (ex: Enemy moves from hard cover to hard cover through intervening open ground, firing player can choose to fire while the enemy is in the open). Geisladisk fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 13:00
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Your dice mods all seem like reasonable changes for people who are randomness-averse. And hey, if it gets more people playing, godspeed! Though I'd point out that depending on the scenario, having your entire force deployed and on Overwatch might not actually be advisable. It deprives you of a reserve and makes you mortar-bait. I think the APC deployment rules are left out because at the ranges CoC is sort of assuming, everyone should have un-assed their vehicles half a mile ago. But your mod seems reasonable if people want to get APCs on the table (and after spending all that time painting them, why wouldn't you?) And yes, picking the point of enemy movement during which to fire is absolutely how Overwatch works.
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Mar 8, 2017 13:17
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EDIT: reformatted this post. I've just finished up a very quick game of Lasalle and I'll put my thoughts here. The game is oriented around a Divisional level, so easily 10,000 men per side. Interestingly though, there are almost direct analogues to skirmish games: pre:_____________________________________ | Division Level | Skirmish Level | |-----------------|-----------------| | Brigade | Platoon | | Subcommander | Sergeant | | Battalion | Squad | | Regiment | Team | | Company | Trooper | |_________________|_________________| The main difference between this game and ANY other ruleset I've played is the turn order: Shoot/React, Combat, Move, Recovery. This took a bit of getting used to, and does seem to take the teeth out of the thunderous charge a little, as you have to wait for two phases before any combat happens. In my demo game, used bits of chopped up cereal packet - the grey side representing the Austrians and the red side representing the brits - the only real difference at this scale was that the brits would get +1 dice shooting against the Austrians due to their superior skirmishing troops, and the Austrians would have heavy cannons. Bugbears I have a feeling that the scale I played the game at around (3/4 of a battalion) without a discrete battle line may impact my views on two of the rules I found most onerous. I can imagine if there's a battle line then it would limit you, but even so I can't see how you'd get really hammered if a flank was turned, since your infantry regiments could form into squares - especially if you were on defence. Anyway: - it was way too easy for troops to simply fall back out of unfavourable combat - needing enemies to be within a straight-ahead firing zone (since you move AFTER shooting) and giving them another opportunity to move obliquely/charge/etc. seemed a little too difficult. - it appears the ONLY way to win/lose the game is to roll over/under the turn number on 4 or 5D6, and then the only degree of win/loss is based on your cavalry. I gather this under the assumption that someone clearly losing will forfeit? - Rolling double the score of your enemy in close combat will instantly kill that whole regiment, it seems very chance-y given you only have 6-8 regiments in the whole game that's expected to last around 30 turns. Southern Heel fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 15:15
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Since you guys are on the subject, has anybody here tried Chosen men?
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Mar 8, 2017 17:40
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I'd not even heard of it - it looks like a 28mm game? Also I think I may have convinced myself to go with 15mm even with only using half strength regiments (i.e. one row of four miniatures, instead of two rows of four for each 'base') - look at these: 
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Mar 8, 2017 20:03
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Are there any cool squad-level WW2 games I can use all these 28mm mans I've painted up for? Something where you order each individual guy around in great detail?
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Mar 9, 2017 00:41
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Geisladisk posted:Are there any cool squad-level WW2 games I can use all these 28mm mans I've painted up for? Something where you order each individual guy around in great detail? Five Men In Normandy/Five Men In Kursk might be up your alley. In unrelated news, holy crap you can get a box of 5 PSC T-55s for literally less than half the price of 5 of Battlefronts. What are Battlefront even thinking with their pricing scheme?
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Mar 9, 2017 01:00
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Yvonmukluk posted:In unrelated news, holy crap you can get a box of 5 PSC T-55s for literally less than half the price of 5 of Battlefronts. What are Battlefront even thinking with their pricing scheme?  "Also I guess that's why they're packaging the stats with the minis now. Guaranteed sales of at least one pack per type.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:36
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I have no attention span and poor impulse control. So I also have a new second-hand FoW British paratrooper army!   (Testing colors on snipers.) (This is the best wood I've ever painted.) I also have two questions: 1) How do I base the Rifle / MG teams? On the BF site they have photos of both four- and five-man bases. They're listed as Rifle / MG teams, but the breakdown is about half SMG, half rifles, and a handful of bren guns. 2) What's up with the guy in the mortar platoon pushing an apparent moving dolly? It looks like something you'd use to get a refrigerator out of your house.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:37
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Yvonmukluk posted:Five Men In Normandy/Five Men In Kursk might be up your alley. Because they were idiots insisting on resin rather than, ya know, plastics like everyone else.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:45
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moths posted:I have no attention span and poor impulse control. So I also have a new second-hand FoW British paratrooper army! Post a picture of the mortar dude, I can't find anything like that on the site.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:56
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Thanks for the help! I'll be glad to get these guys ready to (probably) get chewed up in V4. This is the guy. I couldn't find him on their site either. It's a two-part model, I assume he's pushing the rickshaw because of the pose and how his hands are. Is that something they'd use to cart the Eureka transponder around?
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Mar 9, 2017 02:17
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Not in a mortar platoon they don't. My guess is it's for moving ammo or something.
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Mar 9, 2017 02:53
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Yvonmukluk posted:In unrelated news, holy crap you can get a box of 5 PSC T-55s for literally less than half the price of 5 of Battlefronts. What are Battlefront even thinking with their pricing scheme? They needed to rush out a model because they forgot the warsaw pact existed and had to bump a digital list up to a full book, and plastic tooling takes forever. Arquinsiel posted:"We are the new Games Workshop! Nah, you get all the stats in the book too.
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Mar 9, 2017 03:21
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Righto, so:  or  ???
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Mar 9, 2017 11:05
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Both?
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Mar 9, 2017 11:15
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spectralent posted:They needed to rush out a model because they forgot the warsaw pact existed and had to bump a digital list up to a full book, and plastic tooling takes forever. Didn't they already have armies that used T-55s from Fate of Nation and Vietnam? You'd think they would have had the foresight to retool in plastic before now. They're already moving over with their WWII tanks. And weren't PSC come up with theirs after Team Yankee came out? Seems like the plastic tooling wasn't that big a deal.
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Mar 9, 2017 11:20
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Yvonmukluk posted:Didn't they already have armies that used T-55s from Fate of Nation and Vietnam? You'd think they would have had the foresight to retool in plastic before now. They're already moving over with their WWII tanks. They were making plastic stuff for V4 at the same time, so it's not so much difficulty but the practicality of doing it alongside everything else. That said, still gently caress them because they found the time to cram an unnecessary tiger into the El Alamein box and found room for something like five british plastic kits when everyone else got three, so there were easily spaces they could've used to make plastic T-55s. They just didn't because, I stress, they forgot the warsaw pact existed and had to bump up a digital list to book status when they realised they had wall-to-wall NATO.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:42
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spectralent posted:They were making plastic stuff for V4 at the same time, so it's not so much difficulty but the practicality of doing it alongside everything else. I...how? How do you forget the bloody Warsaw Pact in a game about the Cold War going hot? 
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Mar 9, 2017 14:48
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I mean, I'm being slightly farcial, but apparently Volksarmee only happened because they had a digital list for East Germany coming up with the Red Thunder book and then someone went "Do we have literally any warsaw pact releases coming out alongside Leopard, Panzertruppen, Iron Maiden, the Canadian book and the ANZAC book?" and everyone else went "Er..." so they turned the digital list into a book and that's why they had to cram the T-55s into the schedule.
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Mar 9, 2017 14:53
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Yvonmukluk posted:I...how? How do you forget the bloody Warsaw Pact in a game about the Cold War going hot? It kind of makes sense to me that they assume people will just focus on the Soviet forces and ignore the rest of the Pact, but to me the idea of running with a Czecheslovakian 
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Mar 9, 2017 16:32
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Arquinsiel posted:It kind of makes sense to me that they assume people will just focus on the Soviet forces and ignore the rest of the Pact, but to me the idea of running with a Czecheslovakian Oh, man, would that be period appropriate? Because if so,
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Mar 9, 2017 16:59
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