Notable Folk for a Notable Land

Ultimately I think DBA is likely the best foundation for rules, and was a big DBA 2.2+ and WADBAG fan.....though something happened in the last year that seems to have killed both.  While this makes me sad, the show goes on.  I would note, that while wargaming focuses on the most static of times, basing games in our shared history, miniatures and rules seem so much like mayflies.  Sad, but onward.

For clarity I'm building a world leaning on Tolkien with a smidgen more magic.  Armies may be based on DBA but I expect we'll see some magic in the mix.

Rules based, the bigger issue is not the rules for the battle, but the rules for the world.  I will be rolling out the hexmap soon for the armies I have, but that part is easy.  What is not easy is the idea of solo proper.  There's two schools of thought for solo gaming:

• I'm building a world and I don't care who wins each battle I'm sold on both sides equally.  Sadly while this likely builds a better narrative in the log term, I'm curious to see what will happen to my little state of Noremgaarm. 
• You can figure out a system for programming the world and the foes, with random options for the foe based on their expected range of behavior.  This is a much more difficult way to build a legitimate foe, but likely the only option.  

So with this in mind I've created my core cast - six characters who shall serve as the basis for this first generation of events.  Each was generated randomly, with at most one stat swap each for narrative cohesion.  Each of them have a set of stats: 

• Health
• Combat
• Command (to avoid another C with Command) 
• Administration 
• Loyalty (to the current leader)
• Age - Only stat in reverse.  Higher score is older
• Diplomacy
• Skill - Riding, reading, anything not otherwise covered. 
• Magic - X is susceptable to it, while ✶✶✶ or ✶✶✶✶ may be able to cast. 

Each of these stats have a rating from X (zero, or incompetent) to ✶✶✶✶ (exceptional).  Of all stats 20% are X, 40% are ✶, 20% are ✶✶, with, for dramatic purposes, 10% are at ✶✶✶ and ✶✶✶✶.  I was slightly concerned when the first character I rolled up came up with only four total stars, but I chalked that up to him being the predecessor.

 And with no further ado-

Teos DornAthan -  Regent Captain of the Northern March - Unmarried, no heir

• Health -  ✶
• Combat - X
• Command - ✶✶ 
• Administration - ✶ 
• Loyalty - N/A 
• Age - ✶
• Diplomacy - ✶✶✶✶
• Skill - ✶✶
• Magic -X

 Vost PraeVist - Childhood friend of the Captain Regent and Commandant of the West

• Health - ✶✶✶ 
• Combat - ✶✶✶✶
• Command -  ✶
• Administration - X 
• Loyalty - ✶✶
• Age - ✶
• Diplomacy - ✶
• Skill - ✶✶✶
• Magic - ✶

Paraht DornAthan - Uncle to the Captain Regent, Commandant of the Center

• Health - ✶
• Combat - ✶
• Command - X 
• Administration - ✶ 
• Loyalty - X
• Age - ✶✶
• Diplomacy - X
• Skill - ✶
• Magic - ✶✶✶✶

Hegran Sworn - Leader of the Freesteads thrust in to leadership too young, Second to the Commandant of the East. 

• Health - ✶
• Combat - X
• Command - ✶✶  
• Administration - ✶  
• Loyalty -  ✶✶
• Age - X
• Diplomacy - X
• Skill - ✶
• Magic - X

Paet Dornborn - Adopted child of Paraht DornAthan, legal cousin of the Captain Regent

• Health - ✶
• Combat - X
• Command - ✶✶✶ 
• Administration -  ✶✶
• Loyalty - ✶
• Age - X
• Diplomacy - ✶✶
• Skill - X
• Magic - ✶✶

The Fourteenth Noremgaarmi Raeedmas - Independent religious judge of the faith, no name save his title. 

• Health - ✶
• Combat - X
• Command - X 
• Administration - ✶ 
• Loyalty - ✶✶
• Age - ✶✶
• Diplomacy - ✶✶✶
• Skill - ✶✶
• Magic - ✶

And while we're at it, let's bump into the neighbors, who we'll see in our first outing, the three of Firdyoc, neighboring barbarians with a curse of the Trohkborn.

  

Pyoroc the Sixth Firdyoc - Last upright earl of the Firdyoc, shares name and destiny with his people. 

• Health - ✶✶✶
• Combat - ✶
• Command -  X
• Administration - ✶✶ 
• Loyalty -N/A
• Age - ✶✶✶
• Diplomacy - ✶
• Skill - ✶
• Magic - ✶✶

Roakh Firdyoc Trohkmarked - Misshapen and short tempered heir

• Health - ✶✶✶
• Combat - ✶✶✶✶
• Command -  ✶
• Administration - ✶ 
• Loyalty - ✶✶✶✶
• Age - ✶
• Diplomacy - ✶
• Skill - X
• Magic - X

Dinaik the Hunt, semi-sacred killer of the crossroads

• Health - ✶ 
• Combat - ✶
• Command - ✶ 
• Administration - ✶ 
• Loyalty - X
• Age - X
• Diplomacy - ✶
• Skill - ✶✶✶
• Magic - ✶

Somewhere North...

It had been sixty years, give or take, since the barbarians cut the last of the roads to the empire.  The sea remained open, the unwashed hordes stayed fearful even of ocean fishing due to remonstrances of their blood marked priests and bleached wood effigies. The sea should have been a lifeline, and for a time it was, but before long, as the problems spread south, all that came were fat emissaries demanding obedience and gold, often from competing claimants to the Onyx Scepter and Torc.  So Norengaarm survived, limping from  border raids from the East each summer and the newest Resplendent Torc's Voice every winter coming to the Westharbor.  But Norengaarm did survive.

In the 804th year since the Paohlain first broke the Altar and replaced it with the Podium, Teos DornAthan sent his sigil ring, the ring that had in this form or another served as symbol of the First Marker of of the North.  He promised to send back emissaries' heads, and was forced to.  Now Regent Captain of the North, he claimed he would make his own king, and find a way for Noremgaarm to do more than survive.

*  *  *

Well, you can imagine my surprise when I discovered I'd last updated this in October 2015.  Well, mark it up to kids, commutes, and that thing called life.  That said, let me see what we can do to inject a little life into this.

It's been a while since I last had a game, but the mind keeps wandering.  So I look at my favorite of my DBA forces, my Patrician Romans and see if I can get a game in with them, if only with myself in a world of my own creation.  So let's see if I can create my own little polygot Dark Age Hyboria.

Battle for Planet Earth and the Question of Rules.

A friend of mine read an article.

(Riveting, right?)

I don't know the name of the article, though I myself would enjoy reading it.  This article wandered about a few different topics in the retelling, but in an aside it spoke to a central core of miniature wargaming that isn't spoken about enough.  Often the idea of the game, exploring each and every possibility, is more enthralling than the game itself.

It's not a bad thing I think, as long as you recognize it.  It feeds the Gamer ADD like dating a new girl.  It is what it is and on another drive between the Richmond and DC offices, after the last call was done, I chewed on the Battle for Planet Earth, that on again, off again Star Blazers redo.  The problem is the rule set.  I want it to feel pre-dreadnought, with limited formations, wildly random hit effects, and, well, not every ship looking the same.

The way I saw it, out there on 95, is that there are a few decent contenders, but I'm not really enamored with any of them.  They lack the elegance I've seen in other genres, but there's two that are out there that I think have some possible staying power.  Well, three, but one is not published.

First is Battlefleet Gothic, sadly their free Specialist Games version ripped from the website.  Thank you Games Workshop (again).  Simple system, basic mechanics, easy to teach and learn.  Little customization is required, the original models fits the models size I'm looking at.  It's not complex, but it's doable and it meets the need.

The other one I was looking at was one I played back in college, called The Stars Our Decimation.  We got through a half-dozen games in a short sprint, before folks moved on to other games of the era.  TSOD became Voidstriker sometime in the middle of the first decade of the new millennium.  So I decided to reach out to buy them, but the Cafe Press site is no longer functional.  This is what I would call a conundrum.  So I reached out, on a lark, to the writer....and now by the grace of a generous soul, I have a copy.  It's an excellent balance of playability and crunch.  What makes it interesting is the the fact that it is a hex game.  There are ways to play hex games on an open table....so this truly remains an option.

The third?  Song of Void and Stars has "been almost there" since 2012.  I like Ganesha games.  It's a simple rule base, and I have hopes for it, I'll just have to wait.

So....

I am still here, though with a 20 month old and an active work life there is little time available for anything but the necessary.  I've not completely stopped mind you, and figured I best come here for proof of (gaming) life.

So...What am I doing. Or trying to do. Limited time should help me focus but so far my Gamer's ADD has won out.

1. Duergar-As you may or may not know, Dragon Rampant is due to come out come winter.  At my current painting rate I'll not have a new army ready, even if it's for the smaller scale for which Dragon Rampant calls, but the rule set has me started.  None the less I have recently acquired some of Clam Miniatures Ewal Dvergar.  I've not seen much traffic of them but bumped into them while looking for Chaos Dwarf substitutes. I've purchased some of these, and along with some Skaven Auxiliaries I think my Duergar expedition is set.

2.  As seen elsewhere, I have a few of the Star Blazers ships in my Battle for Planet Earth project.  After a recent order, the few has blossomed into too many.  Still, I enjoy putting them together and hope to get a game going, though frankly the rule set on this one is deeply in doubt.  Clearly in my mind this is a story of Pre-Dreadnoughts in space, but the rule set remains a challenge here.

3. Lastly I looked at my pile of Mechwarrior Clix. That too has grown, and as a result I've added to them an order of N-Scale train kits from Japan with a distinctly Shogunate era flavor to them.  Between these two components I have a view of one of two options:

• Mech Wars a la Battletech on a sparsely populated city-state dominated world.  

• Kaiju Hunting on Hokkaido.  

In either case I need to figure out the rules.  For Mech Wars, give the number of Mechs we're looking at, Alpha Strike looks like a front runner (I can't stand filling out dozens of bubbles).  Alternately there is the Ganesha Set which between Samurai Robots Battle Royale (battle report elsewhere on this site) and Mighty Monsters.  This later gives the advantage of having two very specialized rule sets for the two participants if I go with Kaiju Hunting-but the rules have limits (six a side gets a little clunky as experience has shown).  Alternately I'm looking at Savage Worlds Showdown as an option.  What this all comes down to is the ability to push three inch tall mecha across the table.

So three options.  So what.  Pretty boring read, but my hope is that one of the three of these will actually turn into something.  Time will tell.  So far it's not gone well.  I have 2mm sitting by the way side, as well as others.  Too many others.

(By the by, any folks in DC with an appetite to unload a pile of Mechwarrior Clix, please contact me).

New Year, New Goals, New Opportunities to Drop the Ball

Well, it's 2015.  Who would have thought we'd be here with so little to show-but here we are.  I've been looking around The Miniatures Page (it's all but my home page at this point) and it's the time of year that folks profess to their new goals and mark progress on old ones.  While there's the usual professions to focus the hobby on to one approach or another, I saw one that was oddly novel.  One of the individuals wants to go all of 2015 without actually buying a model.  I was reading this as I was in the process of inventorying the Napoleonics I'm currently contemplating rebasing (Napoleon's Battles to WRG Standard).  And that's when I realized that this needs to be my 2015 goal.

You can imagine how put out my wife was at this proposal.

I've already acquired a few figures this year (individual Warhammer figures for Song of Blades and Heroes warbands) but that just puts me at a 1/15/16 cutoff.   And I'm ok with that. This means no buying figures, terrain, rules (yes, gasp, rules), or anything else.  I will except anything that help basing or preparing figures-so bases, paint, flock, etc, remain in play.  Instead the focus is on painting and preparing with what little time I can find.  The tragedy (ok, mayhap I protest too much) is that I've done a DBA army in 30 days before.  I can paint quickly (ish), though not well.

Q1 will focus on the battles of Napoleon.  I have acquired assorted figures, and any button counter or otherwise uniform sharpshooter would be appaled with what I have.  But it makes me happy.  So I will convert these figures to new basing (132 bases actually) and prepare for a battle for St Patricks between my French and Austrians.

Let's see how it goes.

Merits of Merit?

Since Power Legion is out, let's use it.  I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, nor will for a little bit, but in the evening moments I'd like to see what I can do to see what the system can do.  To that end, I'd like to look at one of my favorites: Merit Comics.  Hard to find, rarely referenced, but Merit Comics, first in the early 40s with Maximum Comics, then in the 60s-80s with the Merit Universe, set in such classic locations as Port Pacifica, Defiance Heights, and Haywood Crossroads.

I can't sculpt, I can't modify, but I have a bevy of Heroclix that are easy to repaint, and from there let's see what we can do.

Starting at the top, let's look at what a hero, rather a Villain in our case, looks like in Power Legion, starting with my favorite.  Pure late Sixties, may i bring to you the Atomic Cosmonaut.  One of the Archvillains of Paragon, first showing up in Stupendous Stories #4, but not really coming into his own in to the early teens arc of Paragon and the Port Pacifica Protectors.   First a simple cosmonaut traveling with his partner (later to become the Devolved) on the Invader Probe where he met the the two Americans (later Cosmos the Evolved and Paragon), over his history he became more and more non-linear, calling versions of himself from the future and past to aid him in his battles, and stepping in and out of time with his (its?) teleporting abilties. When communicating very alient, distant, without sense of time or location reference.  What's not to like.

Atomic Cosmonaut Villain 48 Pts

Mind	Agility	Strength	Knockout
d8	d8	d8	d12

Traits:
Teleport d8
Lethal d8
Damaging Aura d6
Intimidation d10
Duplication (3)

Figure: For this one I intend to use an easy fit that inspired the entire effort-the Evil Cosmonaut from Horrorclix.

Duplication is a missing power I feel from the rules, something of the style of Jamie Madrox or Multiplex. Something like this is needed to represent the non-linearity of the Evil

Duplication: Spend one action to create a duplicate, up to Power level. Each duplicate requries separate activations, but each duplicate other than the first can only take one wound before disolving. Which duplicate is the original is kept hidden until a duplicate is wounded. After the intial # of duplicates is created, additional ones can be created, but each one reduces KD by one step

For those who are checking the math, for simplicity sake I've divided the Power Legions points by 10. It makes it easier for me to baseline forces.

...Power Legion?

It was an oridnary enough day recently.  I was wandering around, and in my usual circuit of web comics I decided to stop on a dead link of mine, namely Goblins.  The owner had gone through a bit of diffculty some months back, but you had to hope.

Well, he's back.  Slow and steady, but moving in the right direction.

Well, on that note, after several months of silence from one of my favorite Web Comic properties, I figured I'd go and check a few other things.  At top of the list was a rule set by the name of Power Legion.  I've been waiting on it for years.  Produced by the same folks who brought you Song of Blades and Heroes, I think most folks expected a variation of the core rules....

Wait, what?

You haven't played SOBH?

Well, go on, it's $8-games run from 30m-1h; 5-12 figures; playable at seven, enjoyable far beyond, infinately flexible

No, seriously, go on.  I'll be here.

Ok.

Back?

Good.  Anyway, Power Legion was the superhero version of the "Song" rule set.  Long story in danger of getting longer, I went ahead and searched and found a reference to errata.  Errata?  A few short moments later I found it.

It?

Well this.

So I bought it.  It's who I am, the rules version of Hoarders. In review though, it wasn't a mistake. While I have deep respect for Supersystem, the industry standard for many years, it always felt a little too slow for superheroes.  Don't get me wrong, it's a practical, linear, translatable system.  Then there's Power Legion

It's not just another Song of <Fill in the Blank> rule set.  There's a few key differences.

1. Stats-There are four instead of just two, bringing a level of complexity above what you're used to.

2. Polyhedrialismo-No longer dealing with single stats, a hero (or villain) can run from d4-d20

3. No more doubling-there are wounding effects.

Now don't get me wrong, it's got its flaws (take this with the grain of salt originating from yours truly trying to deal with a seven month old, close quarter, and trying grok the rules).

1.  Powers are missing.  There's 91 included, so it's not from lack of trying.  I dropped a note to the developer, and he mentioned there was an intent for expansion to address at least one of the power, but part of it is clearly interpretation.

2. The version reads through a little light on examples and somewhat light on campaign components.

This said, it's a great starting point, I hope there's more coming, but happy with at least this much