New edition of Hordes of the Things

Hordes of the Things is my favorite set of fantasy rules.  It's short,  simple (if precisely written), and allows you to build any army you want with any figures you have (even Space Invaders).  So I'm thrilled to learn that Wargames Research Group will soon be publishing a new edition of HotT (see the cover above, which was posted on the Yahoo group). 

Version 2.1 of the game will have some new army lists, but no major rule changes.  Still, I will be picking up at least two copies of the new book to show my support for the publisher.  And I'm also glad it's coming back into print since it will make it easy to respond to new players who ask where they can find a copy.

X-Wing batrep

On Super Bowl Sunday, I had a chance to play a little X-Wing before the football game at the starbase of Maj. Diz Aster (who posted his own account on his blog, Starbase Ares).  Since he'd never played the game before, we did a quick intro game with his two TIE fighters taking on my X-wing fighter.  Since  I had the experience of several games under my belt, I was able to take out his two ships fairly quickly.

With the first game out of the way, we brought out more fighters for a larger match.  He took one of his regular TIEs and an Interceptor, and borrowed my TIE bomber and TIE advanced (i.e., Vader's ship).  I took an alphabet soup squad: A-wing, B-wing, X-wing, and Y-wing.

The game quickly evolved into a furball as our fighters jockeyed for shots. The Sith lord was a tempting target that got taken out quickly (for plot purposes, we agreed he was able to eject from his ship to survive and fight another day), but served the Imperials by distracting me from shooting at the rest of his fleet.

However, after that, the Empire began to pay back the Rebels for the loss of their leader.  First the X-wing fell to the lasers of the various TIE craft. 

The battle wore on, and then the A-wing died.  Finally, the B-wing could take no more damage and erupted in a fireball as well.

At that point, my opponent still had three ships on the table, to my lone Y-wing.  It would have been pointless to continue, so with the kickoff taking place, it was time for me to concede.  It was a great game, and my thanks to the Major for having me over.  Let's do it again soon!

Mystery minis

Any idea what line or  manufacturer these miniatures are from?  The two big ones are metal, while the smaller, lighter-colored one is plastic.

Several years ago, I received a box of 1/285 and 1/300 vehicles and infantry that included these castings.  They're suitable scale for OGRE or Battletech or MAATAC, but I don't think these minis go with any of those games.  Do they ring a bell with you?

Remember when this was about spaceships?

It's been more than a month since I blogged about gaming with starships; longer since I've actually played a set of rules involving flying things that go pew-pew-pew.

Anyway, here's a Carnivoran Polecat-class supergalactic dreadnought that I just painted.

Not the best photo, but it's something space-related.  I need to try to get some spaceship combat going in the near future.  Don't worry, I'll blog about it when I do

Trying out Warmachine

I had a chance to play Warmachine last weekend.  For those of you (like me) unfamiliar with this game, it's a skirmish game set in a magical/steampunk world.  You have your warcasters, which throw spells, and your warjacks, which are big and smashy.  There are also rules for regular warrior-types.

Kerstan, who lives nearby, had a few of us over to play Warmachine and loaned me a force to use against Joe, another local gamer.

I'd never played the game before, and I had a good time.  While it took me awhile to pick up the rules, the combat was pretty straightforward.  Spell effects were simple, but taking advantage of the synergies between various spells and models took a little more time.

My game ended with  my caster struck down, but it was a close contest.  If I had rolled a little better on one or two of my attacks on my previous turn, it might have had a different outcome.  After our game, we watched our host play against another gamer, Stephen.  It was fun watching them play, and everyone got a kick out of a misread of the "Lamentation" spell as "Lamination."  Some jokes about the battlefield being coated in plastic, and an entertaining Saturday afternoon.  I will have to play this game again.

Critical hits in OGRE

As originally written, OGRE is a game of attrition: You have to wear down the oncoming cybertank piece-by-piece before it reaches its objective.  Unlike traditional tank games, there's no stopping the looming behemoth with a single shot, at least in the official rules.

And this makes sense: If you can take out the OGRE with a single thought, there's no deciding whether you should spend your attacks on the treads to slow the juggernaut down or use all your shots to target the guns and declaw the beast; it's just an exercise in rolling dice till it'd dead.

Still, in big games with multiple OGREs, a critical hit rule can add some excitement to the game: while it's an all-or-nothing shot at the cybertank, it's not an all-or-nothing roll to end the game.

I've found two different ways to resolve critical hits on OGREs; both are on the SJG website:

• The Golden BB: Roll three dice to beat a target number based on combined attack strength (the higher the attack strength, the lower the roll needed), if you fail, the OGRE's not affected.  The attack roll gets a bonus against smaller OGREs, a penalty against larger ones.
• Poor Bloody Infantry: Roll attacks against the OGRE as a whole--but the OGRE has a large defensive strength (double digits for all except the Mark I).  If you do get a hit, you still might have to roll a d6 to see if you knocked out weapons, or movement, or killed it, and there's a chance it's undamaged.

Myself, I'd like to see a combination of the two rules: Attacking units can combine their fire, and the higher their combined attack strength, the likelier they are to score a critical hit.  But even if they do, they still must roll to see if they damaged it permanently or temporarily, or at all. 

That should provide some tough decisions for players: wear down the OGRE a little at a time as usual, or risk everything for a chance to take it out all at once.  Which would you choose?

Dungeons & Dragons & birthdays

So the OSR section of the blogosphere has come to the consensus that today marks the 40th anniversary of when Dungeons & Dragons first hit the market (based on this detailed research from the author of a history of roleplaying games called Playing at the World). 

Sounds good to me. And while a lot of old-school D&D players associate the game with the original white box, for me D&D will always be linked to the first basic set, edited by J. Eric Holmes.  That was my first roleplaying game, and I got it on my birthday, which is also in January.

My parents bought me D&D after hearing me blather on about it for weeks, since I first heard about it from friends.  This version had been out for several years, and it came with dungeon module B2 Keep on the Borderlands and numbered chits instead of dice.  I raided the family's Risk box for six-siders to roll up characters, and soon after, I had my bemused parents and brother at the table, taking them through an adventure for an evening, the first (and only) time we all played D&D together.

That box and that rulebook are long lost--the container was flattened and thrown away, and I cut up my original blue book to place the sample dungeon in a folder with adventures pulled out of various issues of The Dragon--but this version of the game will always be my favorite.  I've since replaced the boxed set with a used earlier printing acquired for ten bucks at a hobby shop (which also contained three original D&D supplements and Swords & Spells) and even found a couple more copies of the blue book in used bookstores.

And after months of thinking about it and weeks of preparation, a couple of weeks ago, I brought to my table a half-dozen players to go through a dungeon I created, going (mostly) with the Holmes rules as written.  Now, the game I got as a birthday present more than thirty years ago is celebrating a milestone of its own. 

Happy 40th, D&D, and here's to many more!