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Battlefield 3: Team Deathmatch

14 Jan

Team Deathmatch is the simplest game type in the Battlefield 3. Two teams square off to see who can cause the most harm. The game isn’t over until it one side is out of tickets. Any weapon and any style of play can be used but the winning team is the one where the most aggressive and effective tactics are put to use. By effective I mean the best Kill to Death ratio possible and the highest number of kills per minute. Those are opposed goals. That means that trying to maximize one is often at the expense of the other. The careful player knows how to favor not dying over getting the kill and when to get the kill because death is inevitable.

There are no vehicles in this form of play which makes the Engineer class suddenly not a go-to choice. Engineers can still do well, they have access to Personal Defense Weapons (at one point in history known as sub-machine guns, machine pistols and a few other variations. Each map is different for Team Deathmatch (aka TDM) and maps like Caspian Border favor the medium range engagement. Few if any of the maps favor long range engagement. While this may seem to play against the sniper, given enough cover a good sniper will select a medium range scope such as the ACOG and select a suppressor and find someplace to hide in the dark. Snipers also have access to PDWs.

The real trick for the sniper is the MAV, though. This micro-uav is phenomenal. Without pulling a single trigger the MAV equipped sniper can get 4-5000 points per game by simply hiding well and spotting the living hell out of the enemy. I have found that using the MAV often gains my side the win because the advantage of having the enemy lit up all the time is fantastic. One might even say unbalancing excepts for the fact that they can counter-MAV your team.

An often overlooked capability of the MAV is to jam and destroy TUGS, Radio Beacons and other MAVs. How? When you see one, zoom on it (left trigger on the 360) and when it locks pull and hold right trigger to jam and destroy. It is extremely effective and when you are good at it you can keep they skies clear. The other way of removing an enemy MAV is to use a MANPAD (Man Portable Air Defense) such as the Stinger or Igla.

MAVs can avoid being killed by missiles and lock on by aggressive flying. Alter your altitude a lot. Fly in and out of cover, near buildings and so forth. This moving target approach increases the likely hood any incoming missile will either miss or get caught on a terrain feature and detonate harmlessly. If you are being targeted by an enemy MAV you will make it that much harder for the enemy pilot to jam and destroy you.

Some maps favor close range. ‘Canals is a great example with lots of room to play in and among the containers. If your side has a TUGS hidden in one all the better. Close range weapons are ideal such as shotguns, pistols and PDWs. Other weapons are fine but rate of fire, time to aim, accuracy from the hip, reload time, and so forth are all critical which is why some assault weapons are not as ideal. My personal favorite is the USAS-12. I played with buckshot until I finally unlocked 12g. FRAG and after that, that is all I used. Its devestating in close quarters but beware, you will suicide a lot if you aren’t careful. Those explosion hurt you too! However, for wiping out the opposition in mass, its a great choice. Double and Triple kills in tight spaces is what that choice is all about.

TDM is great for leveling up weapons. Since you aren’t distracted by other objectives it really keeps the focus where you want it, on engaging and killing infantry.

TDM is the ultimate squad game as well. Few games reward healing, reviving, resupply and spotting as much. The poor mechanic can’t catch a break here for squad support but rockets can sometimes be fun. Plus one of the assignments involves killing 50 people with rockets. This is the place to do it!

Support personnel with their heavy and bulky LMGs aren’t to be forgotten. Take the foregrip over the bipod and equip a reflex or holo weapon sight and you are good to go. The sheer volume of fire one can lay down with those weapons makes up for the slow rate of turn they give you and the piss poor accuracy. Short bursts in a contested area means the enemy will at least be suppressed which will greatly aid your team. Finally, dropping ammo and resupplying your team is just one of those great benefits.

One thing you will notice is that you can’t respawn on your crew in Team Deathmatch. The idea on some of the maps at least is to rotate the spawn locations. You could end up behind enemy who were defending a line. The lesson is, don’t keep still, watch your back and every corner, stick close to teammates when you run into them and use mutual tactics to help each other. That means one guy is watching left while you watch right and keep communicating.

Winning TDM isn’t easy but even if you are behind, stronger cooperation will help turn the tide. Choose accessories for short and medium encounter ranges. Kills are the only thing that really count so do what you need to to make sure you or a teammate gets the kill.

 
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Posted in War Gaming

 

Battlefield 3 Tactics to get you started

09 Jan

Battlefield 3 is DICE/EA’s latest Battlefield Game. There have been many to come before this one but this is clearly the cutting edge of First Person war-related shooters. There are tanks, planes, light vehicles, artillery, soldiers and all manner of equipment simulated. Its an amazing collection of tools, objectives and terrain effects. It is such a collection that it can be hard for the beginner to fit in. These tips apply to the XBOX 360 version of the game. They may apply to other platforms but may not. YMMV.

This article is about giving advice to the new person about how to level up and get proficient so that each game isn’t about watching yourself get killed after 10 seconds or less of play over and over again.

Game Types

There are 4 game types: Rush, Conquest, Team Deathmatch, Squad Deathmatch and Squad Rush. Each plays very differently and each offers unique challenges. For the beginner I highly suggest Team Deathmatch or Squad Deathmatch. The reasons are simple. You start off as inexperienced in 4 categories (Assault/Medic, Engineer, Support, Recon.) The weapons you start with are plain. Each weapon has a path of progression. As you get kills with the weapon you earn the accessories that come with it. Weapons have between 12 and 18 possible accessories you can get for them. At some point each weapon gets a set of accessories that make its ultimate configuration for a task at hand. Here is what you will face in each gametype. The deathmatch games focus on killing infantry with small arms. If you want to level up your small arms these are the game types to choose. Acccept no substitutes!

Rush: In rush a defender defends a series of objectives in stages. Each stage has an Alpha and Bravo target. The aggressor is trying to get men on those objectives and taking a few seconds to activate explosives on them. The defender then has seconds to get in there and deactivate them or lose the target. The aggressor has 75 lives and the defender has unlimited lives. It seems like an easy win for the defender but in reality the defender has two lives at each stage, Alpha and Bravo. In that context it is clear what the weakness of defense is. In order to make it to the end of the aggressor’s 75 lives the defender had to inflict as much pain and harm on the aggressor as possible as they take more or less predictable routes to the targets. It is a glorious thing for the aggressor if they blow the last and final target.

Conquest: In Conquest there are 3-5 objective areas. Each team has a set number of tickets. Each time you lose a life your team loses a ticket. If the enemy has >50% of the objectives under control then your team loses a ticket every 5-8 seconds! There is a point of diminishing returns in trying to hold everything instead of just >50% of the objectives. That said, the processeses of taking and then holding objectives are quite different and can utilized the whole range of weapon types in the game. Conquest games have the most vehicles. If you want to learn the art of flying jets and helicopters, driving boats, tanks and jeeps then this is the game type for you. Tank Hunting is worth it’s own article.

Team Deathmatch: this is the best way to level up your arms. Its all about killing the enemy. The spawn points on some maps rotate, causing a situation where you could spawn right near the enemy and vice versa. You have to keep  on your toes! It is chaotic but fun.

Squad Deathmatch: This is one of the toughest game types and teaches the most valuable lesson – how to play with your squad correctly. The squads that don’t break into lone wolves but instead support each other with ammo, health, spotting and heavy fire power are the ones that win. There is one vehicle that respawns on the map. The squad that controls it tends to get the most kills. Being good at coordinating to take vehicles, keeping them alive and operating them correctly such that your enemies lament your very presence is vital.

Squad Rush: This is the game I need more time with. Basically, it’s a mini version of Rush and is much more tactical, requiring great skill among your teammates to operate together. Everyone must contribute to the final victory. Anyone from beginner to expert can aid in that and learning the skills needed is easier in this environment. You aren’t tossed into a target rich environment and so each tactical problem is neatly packaged.

Small Arms

Besides accessories there is the combat modeling of small arms. In many games, such as Modern Warfare, the bullet goes where the cursor is pointed. This is, of course, unrealistic as gravity comes into play. Bullets in real life drop. They follow a parabolic curve and over distance they slow down and lose energy via friction. Each weapon system is differentiated by a model that covers the CEP (circular error probable) of the weapon. This means that the bullet will hit something inside of a circle of a given size at a given range 50% of the time. So when you shoot you want to consider two things – the CEP and the bullet drop. There is nothing you can do about the CEP of a given weapon. Shotguns have a huge CEP meaning after about 50 yards the circle becomes pretty large, being larger than a man-sized target around 70-80 yards out. An M16 had a CEP about the size of your head at 100 yards. So a shot at someone’s face at 100 yards has a 50% chance of getting a head shot if bullet drop is compensated for. If you are using a telescopic scope you can actually see the bullet drop. A good marksman learns how much bullet drop to anticipate which dictates the “hold-over” gap they should have above the target at distance. At medium and close range this isn’t a big deal. A target that is 50 meters away isn’t hard to hit and bullet drop is a pixel or two. Getting hits at longer distances that are effective requires adjusting your aim point up. We call this hold-over and it works in real life as well.

So as the beginner start as the assault class with it’s M16. Its a great weapon to begin with. Keep your shots at close to medium distance targets. The iron sights are a bit of a chore but if you are really close you don’t need to engage them (left-trigger throws the weapon in aimed fire mode – without it you are hip firing.) The best hip firing tactic is to use very short controlled bursts. Just tapping the right trigger will get you the right amount of fire. The weapon will become grossly inaccurate with full auto fire. Doing 5 quarter-second bursts is far better than a 1.5 second burst from hip fire. Even aimed fire can be inaccurate with long bursts. There are ways to compensate for this with accessories. Let’s look at what gifts can be yours if you stay faithful to your Rifle. Like in Full Metal Jacket I suggest you name your rifle and make it your girlfriend through these exercises. Be faithly to your Rifle and she will be faithful to you as you graduate from noob to Minister of Death!

Here are the things you can earn while being faithful to your M16 rifle:

Optics

Primary

Secondary

 

The first 30 kills generate the ACOG, Heavy Barrel and Foregrip in that order (10,20,30). This combination produces a platform that can transition from medium to long range with ease. The first, the ACOG is a weapon sight with 4x magnification and a bullet drop reticle that makes taking distant shots a lot easier. For close shots don’t aim and use short burst hip fire. For those medium and longer shots magnify. The heavy barrel aids accuracy making the already good CEP even tighter! The problem is that it also means you are using better bullets with more kick (what are known as “match” ammunition – in other words ammo you’d load up to got to a competitive shooting match for its strength and accuracy.) This means that barrel climb is significantly increased so when equipped keeping bursts short is more critical. The benefit is that getting headshots for the instant kill are easier. When you finally get the foregrip you have much greater accuracy. The other solution is to start aiming lower and letting barrel climb take your point of impact from the chest up to the head. Generally my thinking on automatic weapons fire follows this. Single shot weapons I hold over and automatic weapons I aim lower and allow for climb.

The D-Pad controls some interesting aspects of your weapon’s operating system. By using DOWN-DPAD you will change the fire mode of the M16 from auto to “selective fire” (aka single shot fire). For distant targets you seem to be failing to hit with aimed fire, go to selective fire, aimed fire and take individual shots. What was once out of reach you are now introducing to a World of Shit. Keep it up. Eliminate your foe. Make them watch you on death cam and curse this damn game! They deserve no less than your full wrath.

At 40 kills which you have taken with total impunity because you now have become one with your weapon you will get the first monkey wrench. It’s the tactical light. The use of this weapon addon comes with caveats. The first is, at distance not only will the enemy see you, they will know what direction you are facing. The use of this device is limited to a few situations. The first is you want to be close to the enemy. How close? You want to smell the oder of their last breath as you waste them kinda close. The light is good at illuminating dark building interiors but mainly it’s use is to blind the enemy. The light is extremely bright and causes pretty massive blooming in the visual spectrum up close. This means that getting an easy headshot when being blinded by the light is hard. However if you are blinding them you can make them seen an entirely different light – the light emitted by the death cam as they again curse this damn game!

Now, the light is an awesome tool up close but if there aren’t any enemies near by and you want to be concealed, don’t worry there is a solution. UP-DPAD will toggle the light on and off. You can control when it is on or off easily. As it should be.

At 50 kills you get the REFLX RDX optic. This allows for quick sighting of targets at close range. It will make the rifle worth shit at long range. Add the Sprint specialty so you can move fast and this combo will allow you to charge the enemy and weed out the non-hackers who can’t pack the gear to play this game! While your own life will be short using this tactic, on some game types it is preferable to be full on aggressive than not. For example lets say you are playing Rush and some ass-grabbing piece of slime is going for one of the targets with the help of friends. While they are concentrating on getting hands on your beloved objective go full on ape shit aggressive, charging the target and snap firing at each and everyone of them. You will get kills and importantly you will get them suppressed and this is another important subject.

Suppression

Suppression is represented in the game as a loss of fine motor skills, clear vision and loss of speed of movement. The more you suppress a target the less likely they will be able to accomplish their own wishes or react to your actions. Some weapons lay down suppression like a hard heart that kills. The LMG class weapons excel at this. Suppressed targets are easy to kill. With a teammate in the back laying down ungodly fire upon the enemy you can move in and mop them up. Knowing a target will be important and will attract the enemy makes for an opportunity for a support gunner to find a good place to set up and make hell come to a very small place. Sniper weapons are also fantastic suppression weapons and eventually you will earn a skill to improve your ability to cause suppression.

One upgrade that any weapon can get is the bi-pod. This is a great device if you know its secrets. This is especially useful for suppression. The bipod steadies even the most violently jumping weapons in your arsenal. Equip them and kneel or stand at a wall or go prone on flat terrain and the bi-pod will activate when you go into aimed fire. If it doesn’t adjust position or stance and reaim. Once equipped, your weapon will have a limited 90 degree arc of fire. However it will also be a steady source of instant death. The first LMG, the M249 with a bi-pod can be the most effective weapon you have in your first 10 levels of game play. In the right position on the right map you can reap thousands of points from kills and suppression kill assists. Add the right optic and the range at which you will be tearing off the balls of the enemy so that they cannot contaminate the World will be impressive.

Long-Range Weapons

The art of the long range kill is one worth studying. My personal best is a headshot at 454 meters thus far. I am hoping to beat 500 yards. I know it is possible. It requires patient planning, setup and execution. Long range (8x or 12x) scopes have point of aim sway. This is natural and you can compensate for it by clicking the left stick to hold your breath if you aren’t set up with a bi-pod. Remember, know the drop at the range you are shooting for, hold over, hold breath, squeeze trigger. To gauge the drop take a shot, but not at your target (don’t want to spook them with a close shot!) and watch the bullet drop. The faster the bullet the less the drop. Even at extreme range all bullets will have significant drop but some weapons have less. The SV98, for example, is a great sniper platform but it takes 30 kills before you get the bi-pod you need for really great accuracy. Some snipers stick with that weapon for along time simply because of its great accuracy and stopping power. For very long engagements the M98, M40 and L96 are your go to guns. They are slow but good. For accurate and speed at medium to long range go with the M11 and SVD. The SVD with a low power scope, bibod and light attachment is fantastic for Metro inside the station. You have the accuracy and killing power plus the ability to engage in rushing the enemy.

Be sure to try setting up the bipod on unusual surfaces. For example it will work with building scafolding. The bi-pod can get you killed by making it hard to disengage from where you are but if you do end up in a close quarters fight hit Y and go for your pistol. The best self defense pistol is probably the M9 because it’s large capacity allows you to shoot a lot. Its low probabillity of a kill means you will need it, though. Once you are good at getting kills with it, try upgrading to something more powerful, if slower.

Well that is it for now. More to come later if people like this.

 
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Posted in War Gaming

 

47 Ronin legend slain, Turnbull Praised

07 Sep

One of my favorite blogs, Shogun-ki, has done a review of Turnbull’s latest Osprey book about the 47-Ronin. I had known for some time that the legend was false but not so much the actual details of the correct history. Much of what I learned that was wrong I learned from Turnbull’s books. As with any ethical historian, as knowledge of the facts improve so does one’s opinion change and thus the book does a great job of telling the new story. The Shogun-ki blog goes into much greater detail in their review and I highly recommend reading it.

As for gaming it, I definitely would be interested. I’ve been sitting on the 2nd edition of Japanese Art of War for 5+ years now. Part of the problem I have is I don’t have a solid group of play testers which makes writing good rules impossible. That said, I may yet get involved with putting together a scenario and running it.

Be sure to add Shogun-ki to your reader. They post infrequently but high quality material.

 
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Posted in Industry News

 

Dr. Manbender Comes a Knocking

19 Aug

Ah yes, another game of Attack of the Mutants. This time we had High Roller Ken*, Chemical Dave** and Lord Al*** as the humans. I, Whitey, was once again entrusted to the bad evil Doctor. There were some interesting moments in this game but it still needs a hint of tweeking. One of the tactics tried was an aggressive push by the Humans to get the robots into the fight early. This produced the most serious robot losses I’ve ever seen. By the end of the game the human’s had one Grip-Bot, shown in the picture above.

What should have made the human tactic work was the so-called wall of lead a lone Gun-Bot can throw. Frankly, the way it is in the game right now its more like a wall of snowballs with rocks in them. Yes, sort of daunting but no real match for the natural tenacity of the Mutant. So I am doing two things to the next version of the rules. 1st, the number of dice thrown will double. Get lucky and you can wipe out even bigger hordes! The other thing is I am now going to make it possible for the Gun-Bots to “go dry” as they say. After a wall of lead, roll a D6. 1-3 = low ammo. After the first round of the fight is over the robot must retreat and be resupplied (does it need a human or grip bot to resupply… that is an interesting question.) It is a bit of a gamble, which suits me fine. There is no such thing as certainty in life! It makes the Gun-Bots more independent but also retains their vulnerability such that independent operation requires a risk vs. gain evaluation.

Dr. Mincy still doesn’t have a special ability. I’m working on that one. The professors are locked in labs until turn 4 as per the original game (well in the original they were in the Tech Center, now they can be in 1 of 3 labs outside of the tech center. I’m considering that if they want, they can stay in their labs an additional turn. For each TA, Grip-Bot and Scientist in the lab on turn 5 the Humans get a D6 to roll. A roll of 6 on one or more of those dice produces an advancement. The Ad Astra Lab produces a faster startup of the time machine (one turn can make a world of difference.) The quantum lab produces the quantum gun – a strange contraption that allows one upgraded Gun-bot to act as support (+1) even from a different room or while in reserve!

“My god, it only took 30 years to weaponize Special Relativity… now we’ve done it with quantum mechanics!”

Finally a breakthrough in the Robotics lab will allow one Grip-Bot to be improved to CV 6. I assume that means the TA’s raided Archaeology and welded a Lombard shield and lance to the poor machine!

Tonight’s game went pretty smoothly. It was close. Dr. Manbender and 3 Leader Mutants crashed through the door on turn 10. One of the mutants took a hit and went down, but then Dr. Manbender got into the action himself. Because he was the attacker all of the ties went to his side instead of the human side. I wonder if it would have been better for the humans to have counter-attacked before he was in the room. The only problem with that plan was the mutant’s had a formidable pincer attack going with another set of mutants waiting at the only other un-barricaded door. So, I don’t blame them for not wanting to take a chance. It was an opportunity to produce a hit and run attack which is what the retreat rules are for. I understand their reluctance at that gamble.

I think the loses of the robots early on and the weak performance of the Gun-Bots led directly to the human loss. The strategy wasn’t bad, not knowing the odds. However I’ve played the game 7 times now and the Gun-Bots need the above adjustment.

In the next day or two I will post the rules here.

As for the quote above – I should point out that it is actually not correct. QM/QP has been weaponized for decades – the advances in transistors, chemistry and lasers all rely upon quantum mechanical understanding and the neutron modulators in nuclear weapons rely upon the understanding of the duality  of photons as waves and particles. But it sounds cool and would and should be a line from a B-Movie!

*,**,*** and yes, I know, I game with people who have funny nicknames.

 
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Posted in AAR

 

Runebound: Class Decks

16 Aug

I played a long game of Runebound using the Isle of Dread variant and class decks. If you have not tried the class decks yet they add several interesting mechanics to the game. There are two components of each deck. The first is a group of 5 talents, labeled 1 through 5. The rest of the deck are cards you can form a hand of that either can give you bonuses or give your opponents some serious trouble. You also get 10 malice tokens. Use of the cards depends upon the amount of malice you’ve built up. For example to throw a really strong challenge at an opponent they will have have to have built up a good deal of malice. You can build up your own malice by playing cards that benefit you. When you play against an opponent you reduce their malice.

I found the cards and abilities to overwhelm the game. The extra steps seem to slow it down far more than general game play is benefitted. Sure, it gives players who are behind a chance to take down the leader (their intent I guess) but the talents add such a new level of power that there isn’t an excuse to not use them every turn. As a result not one character was ever knocked out during a challenge. While this can happen when one is playing very conservatively it wasn’t the case here. The extra talents just made the characters that much more experienced. There was one knock out, with the first player to try the final challenge on the Isle of Dread but even that was partly due to bad dice and not bad strategy.

I think the decks would be great – in a totally different game. That game would be about the players dueling or fighting each other and not about exploring the land and getting into adventures. As is they add too many mechanics to remember and handle during the game play of Runebound to be really useful. They also overwhelm the actual game and dominate it.

 
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Posted in Review

 

Creating a character in the Hero System: Tutorial Part 1

25 Jul

Lorus Hightower Wizard Miniature P-65 Heavy Metal by Reaper Minatures

Introduction

The power of the Hero System RPG by Hero Games lies in the freedom it gives players and the game master to create exactly what they want. It does this by having rules that concern only the game effect without being tied at all to presentation. You can literally create any character from any genre. Each mechanic can be modified by advantages and limitations. This extends all the way down to even your base abilities. For example lets say your character has average strength of 10, unless there are certain circumstances in which case he has a strength of 100! You wouldn’t want to see him angry, would you?

Reasoning from the Special Effect

The Hero rationale for this is “reasoning from the special effect,” which means that you consider what the effect on the game would be. There are no rules specifically for say a lightning bolt or a fireball spell. But there are rules for powers that cause damage that you can modify to act like those things. To me a fireball is hot, it explodes on contact and strikes an area. A lightning bolt is quick, hits a single point and delivers all of its damage there. There are ways of modifying the standard attack to make these things happen such as adding an Area of Effect advantage to the Fireball and Armor Piercing to the lightning bolt spell.

A great example of this philosophy would be you have conceived of a character who can manipulate the weather. You could go looking through the rule book looking for weather manipulation powers but they won’t be there, excepts perhaps as examples. Your next step is to think of “what effects would come from manipulating the weather?” High heat and humidity would sap endurance. Bitter cold would slow beings down. A sudden snow flurry would obscure sight. A small tornado would throw things randomly with great strength. Icy rain would make surfaces slick. How localized is the weather change? Is it a single cloud over an enemy’s head or is it a major storm that covers a 30,000 meter radius? Perhaps the effect is widespread but the most intense effect is very localized. These are all possible given the proper advantages and disadvantages.

Where to Begin

The first place to begin is the background the Game Master provided. It gives the theme of the game, lets you know how many points the starting characters begin with and what the adventure is classified as (Super heroric, Heroic, etc.) You could certainly have a super heroic fantasy game or sci-fi game – the characters start with extraordinary powers. Or, conversely the characters might start off as standard humans with no special abilities for a game setting where the character’s decisions are more important than the character’s stats and abilities. Once you know if your character will be imbued with great abilities or common ones you can begin to ponder just how the character will exist in the world – not how they are constructed but at a more basic level. Consider how you would introduce the character to a story.

A great method I’ve seen used is for each character to have a 3 page introduction. Page 1 is the origin and back story of the character. Page 2 is a description of the character’s recent past. Page 3 is a description of the character’s strengths and weaknesses. The language should not contain any Hero System mechanics. It should simply describe the powers, talents and skills the character has in plain terms. Don’t be afraid to list as yet dormant abilities – mentioning them now will make it easier to add them to the character later in life as experience is earned.

Inspiration can come from many sources. You could take a current comic book, graphic novel or regular novel and develop a character like one of the characters found in those sources. You could take a playing piece, like the miniature depicted in this article and use that as the basis of your inspiration. You can research art, history and science to find inspiration. You may have your own muse – just go with it!

Remember, consider first the special effect, then the effect it would have and then finally the game mechanic.

Quick and Dirty Example

The world is Margaxt – a complex continent in the temperate zone that is marked by deep forests, mighty rivers, tall mountains and disputed borders. It is a world of high-fantasy where a small cadre of elites enjoy the benefits of The Magic while the rest of the population can only dream of such luxury. The problem isn’t tyranny but the exact opposite. The Magic has given The Elite everything they want. When they have no other needs they don’t have to depend upon the people. In fact the regular people are a problem because the lifestyle of The Elite demands a lot of resources. The Elite no longer really even acknowledge there even exists a population bereft of The Magic outside the stoney walls of their super fortresses.

Enter the Heroes – drawn from the best the common population can muster they have developed skills, recognized talents and created their own system of enchantment they call The Way of the Wyrd (or just Wyrding Way in many parts). The Elite have cut down forests, disturbed dangerous creatures which now roam the villages and cause great damage, they have diverted rivers, poisoned lakes and polluted the air. This heroic cadre is bent on entering the fortresses and breaking the source of power for The Elite so that the villagers may live better lives in safer world.

Pg. 1 Lorus Hightower Origin/Backstory (kept short for purposes of this article)

As a farmer, Lorus was good with the land. His sharp mind kept is harvest bountiful each year; that is until The Elites diverted the river he used to irrigate his fields. Angered by this he flew into a rage and attempted to sabotage a river diversion team made of of golems. He was badly beaten and if it wasn’t for High Rebel Anticus he would have likely perished. Instead he was brought back to good health and instructed in the Wyrding Way. Under the tutelage of Anticus and several others of The Wyrd Circle he gained the abilities he would need to disrupt the plans of The Elite and plot his eventual penetration of the nearest Super Fortress. During his training, Lorus acquired Screech, a pet owl that he soon enchanted to become his familiar.

Pg. 2 Recent History

It should be noted that this is a rather excellent time to collaborate with other players about their characters and to come up with some reasonable minor adventure you can claim they were in together. It makes the reason for the party to be aligned as they are in the present more understandable and beats the old saw “you all meet at a tavern to discuss who is brave enough to follow up on the latest rumor.”

Lorus recently was out scouting for river diversion teams with the tracker known as Ed the Ranger. It was not long before Ed found tracks belonging to golems. “These are big ones! We won’t be able to take them down just by ourselves.” They crept ever watchful through the forest until they heard the unmistakeable sound of rock and mud being brutally reconfigured to divert the river along a new path. Lorus spoke to Ed, “give me your leave and I’ll enchant you such that we may speak over great distance. We may thus split up and surround this team.” (Here we see an indication of an ability the character has planned for Lorus that will appear on Page 3.) Ed gave his leave and the two separated.

From his new vantage point he could see the team of golems at their task. They indeed were big and far to powerful to render harmless. Lorus knew that the golems would need a human master who was somewhere hidden among this site. He sent forth his familiar, Screech, who was able to communicate to Lorus all that he could see. Indeed, in a protected houdah on the back of the largest golem he spied the controller. Alas, since there was no direct path to the controller there was little Lorus could do. He could try to penetrate the houdah with his spells but it may take too long before the golems ripped him to shreds. He communicated with Ed the Ranger and told him where to look. Perhaps with his bow he could, by indirect path, strike the master. Ed understood where he needed to strike and carefully arched an arrow through the forest, striking his target and halting the entire company of golems in their tracks. (A nice touch is to talk about team work or to reveal your personality. The point is to introduce some recent history and foreshadow the noble and ignoble traits of your character.)

Pg. 3 General list of powers, talents and traits in on gaming terms (this will be what you’ll design your character from when it finally is time to put them together.)

Lorus is above average intelligence and has a very outgoing personality. He is a leader and respects hierarchy. He is proficient in the Wyrding Way but still has a lot to learn. He absolutely hates The Elites and will never skip an opportunity to strike at one of their operations. He would want nothing less than seeing a Super Fortress collapse into rubble and dust.

He has an ability to allow one other person to speak to him and hear him at long range. He has the ability to see and target what his familiar sees and to target what his familiar smells. He is working on developing his ability to fly but currently can only make great but awkward leaps. Offensively he has the ability to command fire and brimstone into flaming and exploding balls as well as the ability to direct lightning that can penetrate many things or chain from one thing to other things in a short path.

He still has a knowledge of plants, farming, harvest cycles and irrigation techniques.

Conclusion of Part I

This was a very basic tutorial. While you didn’t learn much about how to build an actual character from the Hero System, yet, you did learn the basic philosophy of the system and a method for defining your character ahead of time before starting on the actual design. Next time we will start to build out our character and get into the actual mechanics of the point system. I hope you enjoyed this article!

 
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Posted in RPG

 

Battlestar Galactica Tactical Battles preview added to site

13 Jul

Battlestar Galactica Tactical Battles CoverI’ve uploaded a preview edition of the rules I’ve been working on for Battlestar Galactica fans. The game plays a bit like chess, in space, with humans and robot. But, you know, pretty much the same game as chess! Ok, not at all like chess. But at least I tried. I’m happy to report the things missing thus far are just the campaign game and the appendix for model building and so forth. If you like this game leave comments! I can be found under the Wargaming menu item or you can simply go here. I’m very curious in what people think of this draft copy.

 

 
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Posted in Industry News

 

Black Cat Bases

30 Apr

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Got to run the game with others today. Learned a lot. This picture shows some of the BCB figured I used. Worked well! People liked the game and filled a whiteboard with suggestions.

 
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Posted in Model Building

 

Playable Attack of the Mutants game done!

23 Apr

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I could not be happier. The game is ready to play. All required components are done. The only thing left to do are the cards. I got through 5 turns of my first solo play test. I was reminded of some problems from the original game. It’s hard to remember which stacks moved. I may solve that with markers that let the mutants plot their moves before executing them.

Overall I love the look of the printed aluminum. The boards are printed at photographic resolution and are very glossy. The original graphic I created contains photos of actual floor tiles so this works out great.

The game is totally green. The inks and paints are all water soluble. The aluminum can be recycled. The paper used for the transfer was recycled. The figures are made of non-toxic metals. The only non-green aspect are the bases on the figures which are plastic.

You may notice the door smashed counters are an homage to the original game.

The combat system works neatly. It’s a little more complex than standard Risk(tm) but on par with the later Risk based games.

More to come!!!

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Posted in War Gaming

 

Final 28mm map done for AOTM

21 Apr

AOTM Full MapWell I got my map done. It is very similar to the map that came with the original game. I am pretty happy with it. My original intent was to print it out on my printer, stick it to some MDF and then build the wall using foam core. Problems with warping (both with the MDF and the foam core) led me to consider alternatives. Finally I decided to just have the map printed to aluminum sheet. Yes – printed on metal. A local printer does incredible work and one of their specialties is printing to just about any surface. How – I don’t know! But I saw their work and its incredible. I now am having them do this to two 12″ x 24″ sheets of aluminum. It is a better option for me in that it won’t warp, it is unique, it lays flat and will look great!

Something that can be done with miniatures that wasn’t easy to do with the paper counters in the original is that I can control the number of mutants per room simply by area. This will limit the massive super stack of mutants that used to make it easy for the mutant player to win.

They also do 12″x12″ aluminum tiles. I may consider that for my next game. Once can make them geomorphic or semi-geomorphic. I like the geomorphism of Carcassonne. Now, doing that game in aluminum titles would require a Donald Trump like budget, but doing something that required only a dozen tiles would be doable.

Mainly the durability is what I like. It is possible to get it done just on vinyl and that would have saved me a ton of money but I felt the advantages of being printed on metal plus the uniqueness were good advantages.

 
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Posted in War Gaming

 
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