Here we can see the start of the Science Faculty and the robots from the future. Dr Applewhite is on the left (ha! I made a funny!) and the only male.
I’m not sure what to put on the computer screen of the robots. In Fallout similar robots have cartoon faces.
Why is one of them lime green you ask? I plan on inking that one dark green and making it different. Or at least leaving me the chance to do so.
Later I’ll work on the other robots! I’m still really excited about their arrival!
Happy day! The right robots showed up from Black Cat Bases. I have to mention right off that the people who run the company are right decent people. Best customer service I’ve had in a while. A long while.
Today I’m going to start painting them up. The only thing I’m missing now are the zombie mutants. Looks like Wargames Factory are having problems now. A real shame as they had produced some great kits. I’ll be shopping around again for appropriate miniatures.
Yesterday was a day full of win for me. Coming home late last night and finding those miniatures in the mail was the cherry!
Japanese School Girls take on Red Oni
Today we got a chance to run the 2nd edition of Japanese Art of War. I’ve been working on it for the past several years and preparing the manuscript to be released later this year.
One of the additions to the rules is to include fantasy elements. In this case we added Oni, or Japanese Demons if you prefer. The female figures are straight from the mad minds at Eureka Miniatures.
It has been about 10 years since I last published Japanese Art of War. The first two revisions were historical only. Adding mythology into this edition was just part of the original plan. In the interim several Oni models and other Japanese mythological beings have appeared on the market. It isn’t too hard to find them and they are fun to paint.
Japanese Art of War is a unit based game. Units can be as small as 1 hero or a dan of up to 7 figures. Initiative determines who activates first, initiative winner choosing first. For each activated unit each figure is activated with some action being chosen (melee, movement, shooting, etc.) After any movement (you can move during melee) dice are rolled to determine how many offensive points and defensive points are generated. If in combat the opposing figure does the same thing. Then, priority is determined by weapon type, but generally the attacker’s offensive points are applied against the defender’s defense points first.
There are conventions for re-rolls, automatic conversions and so forth to simulate better armor, weapons and training from lesser examples of those. It is a very tactical game.
What we added today was the concept of Toughness where the Red Oni needed to be defeated by 2 offensive points, not one. That was it. The school girls and the brown Oni were described using the normal rules.
The first game was an interesting split – the toughest Onii went for the weakest unit of School Girls and vice versa. The first school girl to attack an Oni was literally speared out of the air as she came in with a flying kung-fu like kick. The Red Onii defeated them in order.
On the other side of the field the leader of the school girls and her hatomoto, or personal body guard, prepared to face off against the unworthy brown Onii. My poor friend Al had really bad luck with the dice. His skill was not lacking and his attack plan sound. Sometimes the dice go against you.
We ran it a second time to highlight the new terrain rules. The school girls plus some spearmen conscripts and the Head Master (spear and bow) took to stone stairs and defended from there. The Head Master put arrows into the Oni at a distance but didn’t kill any – however he did weaken a Red Oni which allowed the school girls to get some satisfaction. On the other side the Brown Onii made their way up against the retainers… It didn’t go very well. The first one managed to smash his way up using a tetsubo or war bat but the surviving retainers managed to push them off. The narrowness of the stairs prevented any decent flank attack.
Overall both battles were one sided and decided very quickly. I’ll need more playtesting before I come to any conclusions. However the terrain rules worked out nicely and the toughness factor added a lot of tension and in some cases determinism to the math of the game.
A friend has started a website for Story based games. They are a lot like Role-playing games but are more casual and less rules intensive. They are perfectly suited for one-off games or convention games. He, obviously, is a big fan of them and his site, What Are Story Games, has links to several example rule sets out there. One that caught my eye was Geiger. Well worth taking a moment to check them out.
I’ve done some experimentation on my own with Story Games and I like the concept. Its a bit like Kriegsspiel. Kriegsspiel was the 19th century Prussian officers’ training game where the instructor would present a situation and the young officer candidates would discuss what they would do.
What I liked about Geiger was the theme – survival (horror, behind enemy lines, alien invasion, etc.) and that most characters would end up dead by the end. Much more appealing than fantasy: “If we can just get over ourselves we might defeat the dragon! Gosh I look dashing in my shiny Paladin’s armor!”
Experimental automatons
These are the droids I was looking for. Sadly they are not the ones I got in my shipment from Black Cat Bases. A small snafu meant the person picking blisters for my shipment ended up pulling the wrong ones. There is no one around at the shop to fix this until January 5th so I won’t expect replacements until January 20th at best.
In the meantime the robots I did get sent are kinda cool and while they don’t fit in with the University theme, they could make a surprise appearance from the Ad Astra portal… The robots I did get are Mono-wheeled robots that look suspiciously like the 2060-B RobCo Securitron robot! Here is a picture of the figure and another from the Fallout series of games. Its a bit tongue in cheek but the people at Segway(tm) have us covered.
CGI From Fallout series of games
The way I would work them in is via a card that was keyed to the Ad Astra project and they would appear in the central tech room. I might make it two cards. One for when they are on the side of the Mutants and one for when they are on the side of the Humans!
My latest project is coming all well. I had a long hiatus with gaming and I am coming back to it now that the end of the year is here and my job search is naturally slowing. While I am still plugging away at it every day I’ve decided for mental health reasons to take some time off once a day to put some work into this game.
The game is Attack of the Mutants. It first came out in 1981 and was one of the first game purchases I ever made. There was a great game store in Fanueil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts. I loved going in there. I rarely had the money to afford the games but my two favorite game purchases came from that store. Attack of the Mutants was one of them. The game sold for $8 back then. It is a simple game about the survivors of a nuclear accident near a college attempting to perfect the science of teleportation before mutants overrun the building.
One of the major aspects of this game will be to recreate the science building. To do that I envision 28 wall sections laid in an interlocking grid, surrounded by 4 outer walls. So far that work is going well. I did a prototype interior wall and I am please with the results.
The 1944 US Marines I have in the picture are stand-ins since I don’t have all the miniatures for the game yet and none of them are painted. The zombies I found cheaply on the internet are sadly on back order. Hopefully they will come before the end of next month.
I’m really jazzed up by this initial prototype. It tells me the look of what I am doing is going to work. I am sure it will be a lot of fun and this building can be used for a wide variety of scenarios and game types. Reuse is big for me. Any project I build I consider ways in which it can be used over again.
One question I am sure a lot of people will have is if this will be a faithful reproduction of the game. The answer is no for a few reasons. The main one being that I don’t want to have a copyright violation on my hands. The game is themed after the first one with some noticeable changes. I’m adding a card driven element to the game to better tell the story. Each card will present a rule change and a one-liner as if this were a film. The 1950′s B-Horror film style will be updated to more reflect 2010. The jokes in the original game had a strong liberal bias – half the defenders were ROTC and depicted as expendable morons whose descriptions lead one to believe they were former Nazis. I am getting rid of the ROTC element entirely. I am adding two other professors and spreading the jokes around a bit more. There will be pokes at left and right, plus nerds and hippies. Penny Applewhite’s boyfriend Buck will go from being a jock douchebag to a statement about diversity on campus since he will be a Tea Party supporter. Professor Applewhite will be the sterotypical liberal professor. The two other professors will represent the right and the nuts. In fact the Ad Astra project is the brainchild of Professor Trip Moonbeam this time. Professor Applewhite and Professor Richardson will be the robotics professors, with Richardson being the one responsible for the military grants that have kept the project alive.
The overall flavor of the game will remain the same though. The humans have to cooperate vs. the mutant menace! There are 10 turns until Ad Astra can be turned on. Can they hold out? In the original game the question of holding out was simply a matter of how many barricades the humans got at the beginning. The number varied for 11 to 15. At 15 it was a shoe in for the humans. At 11 it was a win for the mutants. Anytime a game is determined before the first die is rolled turns me off. So I am trying to make the game more dynamic and less deterministic.
I have been working on other sites for quite some time and now it is time for me to return to Victory Points. This site has languished for some time now, mainly due to many other pressing needs in my personal life. Until recently I haven’t been gaming much. That is changing and I have a new game design I am currently working on (Battlestar Galactica Tactical Battles) and several older designs will get a new treatment.
The site could still use an RPG Editor to blog about the world of role playing games. There is no money in it. This site has never generated income in this or it’s previous incarnations. That may change in the future but for now it would be for the intangible benefit of loving what you do.
If you have been here before, keep your eye out every Friday for a new posting. If you are new, welcome. I hope we have something of interest for you.
I noticed that my favorite company was going out of business; Boulder Games. The owner was retiring. This was sad but I am happy for him. So my retirement present to him was to buy up some of games! I got the following:
Columbia Games Napoleon, Waterloo Campaign 1815: I opted for this as my first block game. I’ve played them before but never owned one. This is a subject I’d always wanted in an easy to play format. The complexity is fairly low but it is a well known battle and a good way to get new gamers started.
This is the third edition of the rules and I have heard they are quite good. Ultimately there are only a couple of actual strategies but I am not expecting to play this game dozens of times. Ideally it will give me a feel for the campaign and inspire me to consider doing something in miniature…
Next up was another Columbia game, Liberty, The American Revolution 1775-83. Again, for the same reasons. I am interested in the period but I don’t do any miniature gaming in it. I like a nice simple introduction to the whole period. Again with Columbia games, the Fog of War element makes the game play really engaging. The blocks make record keeping simple too.
I picked up Price of Freedom from Compass Games. This is a card driven game of the Civil War. It looks great. I tore into it first and the components are very nice and the cards are very interesting. You keep track of a lot of political states and have to choose when you change them. For example the emancipation of the slaves. In real life that was carefully timed for when the war was losing support in the North. I think this is brilliant and shows the game authors are quite well read on the subject.
I have had other, monster sized games of the Civil War. This is a lot more compact and faster playing. The appeal for me is I might actually get to play it. Most of the time it is hard to get interest in a boardgame in my circle of friends. However so long as they aren’t likely to take several sessions to play and can be explained in short order they can happen. 3 hours with 132 pieces seems just about right to me.
Finally I picked up Okko: Era of the Asagiri. This is a Japanese myth based game that is very miniatures like. I am not really sure how it plays but the figures are awesome and have colored high quality cardboard stands for use as well. I’m still waiting for the main game to show up. I got the supplement first, Yakuza Hazu Akai, which adds lawless and godless mercenaries to your clan. OK sounds good! The game is based upon a comic produced in France. I expect it to seem a little weird but in a good way. I love the AT-43 and Confrontation worlds so I know the French have what it takes to interest me. I like weird games in general. I thought once of doing an RPG set in Japan with a theme similar to “Delta Green” where the players are quasi-official forces combating the supernatural. This game seems to be more about clans fighting clans with supernatural forces. Check out the website for more details.
I took a hard, statistical look at the attacks in the game Morituri Te Salutant which depicts historic gladiator fighting in the 1st century. My group has been playing it at Wargames in Nashville this year and have started a campaign this past Saturday. It did not go well for my school as I lost two gladiators in the two fights I was in. So I took a look at the complex combat matrix that determines the results of comparing attacks and what I found was eye opening and useful. In one game I chose a “kick” attack even though I had many others available to me. When looking at its level of difficulty and expected damage I found it is truely one of the worst attacks in the game! This kind of understanding will help me better choose my attacks in my next game.
Difficulty is an absolute number derived from the total difficulty of the manuever and it’s likely hood of being blocked. Damage looks at all possible damage outcomes and the likelyhood the attack will be damaging. This is an absolute number. Finally the best vs. is useful to see where the attack can get you an easy hit with greater damage.
This information doesn’t preclude you from knowing an opponents weaknesses and it only looks at attacks. For example if you are up against a Sagitarius with a bow your best bed is to block all of their incoming fire with a Shield manuever if you have a shield. The Sagitarius is going to be hesitant to close with a better protected gladiator such as a Samnite.
| Attack | Difficulty | Damage | Blocked | Best vs. |
| Lunge | 61 | 25 | 33% | Getup, Charge, Cut |
| Swing | 57 | 32 | 24% | Cut, Getup |
| Slash | 59 | 26 | 29% | Ssmash, Lasso |
| Cut | 61 | 26 | 33% | Swing, Slash, Getup |
| Thrust | 52 | 31 | 24% | Cut, Charge |
| Jab | 57 | 18 | 33% | Move F/Stand |
| Charge | 56 | 30 | 24% | Cut, Getup |
| Sh. Smash | 62 | 17 | 38% | Cut, Getup |
| Butt End | 64 | 16 | 43% | Jab |
| Lasso | 55 | Special | 14% | Getup, Reclaim |
| One/Two | 60 | 26 | 29% | Jab, Swing, Getup |
| Riposte | 64 | 16 | 43% | Lunge, Charge, Entangle |
| Hook | 67 | 17 | 57% | Lasso, Entangle |
| Entangle | 53 | Special | 14% | Swing, Charge, Getup |
| Kick | 73 | 10 | 62% | Getup, Reclaim |
| Throw | 49 | 38 | 5% | Getup, Cut, Reclaim, Move Back |
| Shoot | 46 | 29 | 5% | Getup, Reclaim, Move Back |
Pete English, a good friend of Victory Points has given us a preview of his new supplement to “Check Your Six!” aka “CY6″. This supplement takes us to the early days of WWII when the French faced the German in the sky. I got a chance to play a couple of the scenarios and while you may think they would all be cake walks for the Germans and impossible for the French – nothing could be further from the truth. These are historically accurate scenarios that for our gaming group were real nail biters. Here is the info blurb we got concerning this new supplement:
DAYS OF GLORY is a scenario and campaign book for the popular CHECK YOUR 6! Air Combat and Campaign Rules. The book provides three campaigns and 25 scenarios under one cover. The first campaign of 9 scenarios follows the beginning of the German air campaign over Belgium and France from 10-23 May 1940. The second campaign, recreates the intense combat above Dunkirk from 27 May to 1 June 1940 with 9 scenarios. The final 7 scenarios focus on the German drive to Paris from 3 June during “Operation Paula”, the attack on French airfields defending the City of Lights, and the last forlorn attacks by French squadrons up to 25 June 1940. The book also features some of WWII’s legendary aces including Helmut Wick, A.G. “Sailor” Malan, Robert Williame, Werner Mölders, Ian “Hack” Russell and Rene Pornier-Layrargues.
HISTORICAL RESEARCH: This book includes several introduction sections containing campaign historical background, organizations, formations and tactics of the French, German and British air forces, plus a bibliography for further reading.
AIRCRAFT STATISTICS and CAMPAIGN INFORMATION: This book contains aircraft statistics for 15 French, British and German aircraft in CHECK YOUR 6! format for use in the scenarios. The book also contains detailed notes and rare pictures of the various aircraft featured in the campaign.
CHECK YOUR 6! CAMPAIGN SYSTEM: This book includes a CHECK YOUR 6! campaign that allows the scenarios to be played individually, linked to form three mini-campaigns, or combined as one grand campaign.