Victory Points

A clever April 1st Joke has turned into an actual product now! The TaunTaun sleeping bag. If you can’t figure out why this is cool I can’t spend the time needed to explain it. Will Star Wars ever die? Not if this thing sells like hotcakes!

The extrodinary and helpful Tony Barr of East Riding Miniatures has come through to help me with expanding my range of figures for the Iwo project. One of the heroes of Iwo was the working dog (aka War Dog). These animals were trained to deliver messages, sentry duty, mine detection and of course scouting/patrolling. They were very useful in finding people hiding in bush or caves. They were very useful in the battle of Iwo Jima in helping defend against sneak attack, night infiltration and ambush. I’ve worked up rules for hidden units in the Iwo game but they needed a possible counter and putting these working animals into the game seemed like a perfect fit. But it is hard to find WWII era war dogs in 20mm (or other scales). Tony has them for Vietnam but he has a wide collection of WWII marines so he is going to substitute the Viet Nam era marines for appropriate ones in period. We looked at a bunch of photos and saw what the handler were dressed as and the need for leads and such. I think we should end up with some really good looking stands. I also think the authenticity of the game experience will be greatly enhanced.

You can find out more about East Riding Miniatures here.

I’ve been thinking for a couple years now that I want to do a game based upon Iwo Jima. A big game. I have lots of figures but it’s a complex battle spread over nearly a month. I’ve finally got enough figured out that I am proceeding with a full write up of the game. Last week on the ride home from Cold Wars Baxter Key and I discussed the new direction. This past weekend I got to test out the formula for the tactical battles. It seems to be a winner. The Operation will be run very similar to Multiman Publishing’s “Iwo Jima: Rage Against the Marines” while the tactical battles will be a simple system derived from DBA. The idea is that for each section of the map that is contested a specific scenario is fought. These sub battles have to be over in under an hour. Hopefully 45 minutes will be typical. The ultimate idea is to run the entire campaign at a major convention.

I built some hills with caves, some bad going and did a full tactical battle on a 30×40 playing area. The Marines had an HQ, 6 infantry sections, a sniper section, an engineering section and 2 heavy weapons sections. They also had an LVT-4 for transport of up to two sections and an LVT-4a for armor support. The Japanese had an HQ, 4 infantry sections, 2 heavy weapons sections and an ATG plus two cave complexes.

The game played well and to my surprise the LVT-4a was wiped out by a Banzai! charge. The Marines beat the Japanese but took heavy casualties. The next fight was not going to be so easy. The game with all of our haggling over the rules took 45 minutes. I’m writing up the full rules this week.

I am looking forward to this game. I think if I do a good enough job it will be worthy of publishing. I certainly hope people enjoy the scenarios I create and the method I use to control the overall operation.

I just stumbled upon the wargaming blog Zone of Interest. I’ve added it to the blog roll because it is smartly written and a joy to read at that. It isn’t updated very often (like I should complain!) but it is full of great articles. I highly recommend it. For some reason my blog was on there as well already… small world. Anyway, this belated link back is in honor of the great work the author has done on his site.

Next up. Pictures of how things are progressing on Iwo Jima.

I got to go to Cold Wars this year. I was seriously in doubt I would make it but Wargames LLC needed help with the show so the thought of getting paid to attend the convention was irresistable. Off I went.

It was a good show. I half expected with the economy it would be a ghost town but it was quite a good show. I saw many friends including Jan Spoor who I haven’t personally seen in one or two decades. He was running a F&IW game that was quite attractive. I was in a game of Barbary Pirates vs. English. That one used 28mm ships (yes they were huge!)

I got to play in Howard Whitehouse’s new WWII game “Combat” that is in the playtest stage. Quite an interesting take on WWII. I think it will be a promising game.

The dealer room was excellent as usual. I picked up from Eureka Miniatures the Apeonauts to go with the boilersuit apes I got from them a year or so ago. I got a board game from Academy Games called “Conflict of Heroes” which is a WWII game set during the winter phase of Barbarosa. The game appears to be a nice mix of accurate unit representation and simple mechanics. What I don’t like about Memoir ’44 and Tide of Iron is the abstraction that was done to the units. Tanks aren’t generic like they are in the other games. I can’t wait to see how it plays. It is a very tactical game – like Advanced Squad Leader but with only a few pages of rules.

I picked up some ships to start playing Warhammer Historicals “Trafalgar” which upon my first read through is a fascinatingly easy way to play Napoleonic Age of Sail. I love “Close Action” by Mark Campbell but it is a bit onerous to play and has a bit of a steep learning curve for a pickup game. I played quite a bit of Age of Sail using Close Action for years. I like the tactical problems present in these battles. You have to think on your feet because the infamous changes in the wind can make or break your plan. The new Warhammer game looks to cover the bases quite nicely and I hope that it plays well. Initial reports are very positive. Back in the 90′s my roommate got hooked on the original game that Trafalgar was based upon (Man ‘O War I think?).

Fox Miniatures was there selling BSG resin and pewter fighters. The heavy raider was finally in! I got 20 of them! I also picked up a bunch of extra fighters and some bases. I think I should have these painted soon. I still don’t have a set of rules I will be using but I think I’ll have something figured out shortly.

Of course I bought the usual t-shirts and such. Nothing major to note there.

Overall a great time. I started a project on Saturday when I wasn’t feeling well. I started to program a damage deck simulator for Wings of War. My biggest complaint about the game is that you can’t get extra damage decks without buying the base games over again… so screw them. I am writing a software program that will allow multiple planes to be tracked, their damage and all. Data entry should be simple and I’ll even make it networkable so several computers can access the same database allowing even faster data entry. I may even come up with a mobile version of the software so that you can submit your attacks via the web browser on your phone. It’s all in an effort to re-aquaint myself with C#, to learn Silverlight and WPF and the latest web 2.0 tech.

Well that is my report – see you at Historicon.

It is no secret – gamers tend to be, well, overweight. We have a rather sendentary hobby involving sitting and reading, sitting and painting, pushing lead weights around (12-15 grams!) and so forth. About 8 years ago I was 250 lbs. on a 6′ tall frame. That was way to heavy. I was unhappy about it, I didn’t feel good and I needed change and I started to work out. I got myself down to about 230 and was happy with that and then I got the calling join the Army. That was when I really started work out and I got down to 210. However there was a ticking genetic time bomb that was waiting for me. I had a disk blow out and 3 years of physical therapy and exercise hasn’t fixed it. Last year it was a major problem. This year I am feeling better in part because I’ve stopped exercising and getting physical therapy. The real solution is surgery but in these trying times I can’t afford that – it has actually become a luxury for me.

So how are the back and losing weight related? Simply it is leverage. The more weight I have on my stomach the more leverage there is on the back as gravity pulls the forward weight down causing my back to flex right where it hurts – the lumbar section. I know I am somewhere between 210 and 220. I am going to keep track of my calories and of my weight and I’ll report on what is working and what isn’t.

Most importantly I’ll report on ways of staying healthy at gaming convenions – lets face it you are there to game and eating becomes a distant need so we all tend to go for the easy option with includes hot dogs, candy, beer/coffee and snack food. So the question is, what can I bring to conventions that is easy to transport, acceptable to eat around a gaming table, etc. I’ll also come up with some low impact exercise one can do without seriously impacting the hobby. Personally I plan on asking gamers for 5 military pushups for each critically failed die roll. Hey, why should it just be me that is doing all this work?

Well I had good intentions ages ago of getting Victory Points up and running but it has failed to happen because Joomla was a pain in the tush to learn and customize. It has a lot of cool features but it was more work than I have had time for.

So I’m doing it all over again. I am also wondering if I am going to keep GreaterPacificWar.com alive as well. My thought are that I will use GPW to store everything there is about my Iwo Jima game that as of today is back on track. For the site to be successful it will have to have everything about the battle – history, model making, terrain making, rules, design notes and after action reports – in such a way that the site can be expanded to incorporate many other battles as well.

VictoryPoints will be much broader – being a storage place for lots of game aids and reports of all kinds. Since it will be less static I’ll have my hands full creating the basic software to handle it all. With VictoryPoints.com I want to be able to cross genre lines and allow the site visitors to participate as much as possible.

The host I am using is 1and1.com and right now they are having an unannounced sale where you get 3 months hosting for free. Their rates are already dirt cheap – I think I pay around $10 for three domains. I am plenty happy with the service. The sites have great up time.

I just finished a very simple design for a community action website designed to let a community keep up inappropriate development. Power to the people. It refocused me on these two other websites and the direction I need to take them in.

I just discovered my brother’s new url – EvilBitGameStudios. It is this outfit that is going to work on taking Japanese Art of War and bring it to the computer. The game platform is coming along nicely. I’d provide screenshots but then I’d have to shoot all my readers. That isn’t good on many levels.

There is nothing to see as of today on the site but the company logo. Decoding the logo doesn’t requires knowing if it is big endian or little endian or signed or unsigned.

So keep watching this space for news and info. Pretty soon it will be time to don the bathrobe and the two swords and carve out an empire!

CSA Cavalry MAW Cav Old West Ptd 25mm 28mm Cowboys – eBay (item 280312083647 end time Feb-15-09 06:09:55 PST)

I’ve got a back log of articles to write, some are mostly written but before I get those out I want to point out a great set of figures available on EBay by my friend Tony (aka CombatPainter).

Absolutely gorgeous stuff. The photos do not do them justice. Check them out and make a bid!

I’ve been working some time with a new start up at adapting my game Japanese Art of War to the Windows and XBox platform. It has been in the works for months now and we are finally getting down to brass tacks. I feel really invogorated by this. I’ve been playing a lot of xbox lately because my days are filled with a ton of other projects. I haven’t done much standard wargaming or painting because I’ve been so busy. Work went to 10% hours for everyone which you would think would leave me a ton of free time but in fact you spend a ton of time looking for contracts and other work just to get the bills paid.

The game will still be turn based, which should be interesting. The same interplay between dice is present which means it will be a highly tactical game. One thing that the original game lacked and was to get in 2nd edition was a full campaign system. Well this past month that is what I’ve been working on. I am treating it a lot like the way things work in Call of Duty 4 where the better you do the more toys you get to play with. The way they have it implemented, if you keep plugging away even if you aren’t all that great you will get everything eventually. Same here.

I am also drawing a line between honor awards and duty awards – a very Samurai concept! Basically if you want to be a defensive player and guard your team’s territory then you will get special rewards for it. In fact many of the Duty rewards are necessary to push forward so players will have to at times give up the glorious charge into battle and win one for the home team.

The game will be set squarely in the Kamakura period (1185-1333). It is after the Gempei War between the Mimamoto and the Taira clans. The clans won’t really be mentioned as the game spans the whole period and we want to give the feel of it while leaving it dynamic. The major themes will be there, mainly do you side with the Shogun or the Emperor. The Single Player game will have two tracks, one for and one against the Shogun. During the period several emperors attempted to restore power. The period ended with the Emperor ascendent but that was short lived. Some of the greatest and most trecherous incidents in Japanese history were during this period. Go-Daigos rebellion against the Shogun is one of my favorites. There are others that are just amazing but I’ll leave that for you to read yourself. One thing I have loved about japanese history was no one spoiled the “punch line” for me. I never read up on, say, Benedict Arnold because I already knew what happened. But imagine reading American History and not knowing this great hero would turn out to be such a dick? BTW go rent the movie about Benedict Arnold with Kelsey Grammer as George Washington – great film.

Your army composition will be different depending on who you favor in multiplayer. That distinction won’t affect who you can team up with and who you can fight. There will be rules for what parts of your army you can bring. It should be pretty dramatic. As players progress they will gain interesting upgrades. It is all designed to keep things interesting. I am definitely looking at other games and looking for good game mechanics. Ultimately we are in uncharted territory since this is a turn based game on a console. It will be easy to play but, from my own experience, it is not easy to master. It is very tactical and requires thinking about each move.

I’m looking forward to seeing this come to completion. It is one of those ideas that just needs to be born.