New Ogre unit: Armored Boat

I'm always on the lookout for ways to expand my large-hex Ogre miniatures scenario that I ran at Millenniumcon. I have some more buildings I need to put on bases. I even snagged some terrain items the day the convention ended. And now, my latest inspiration is to add enough water hexes to play some nautical scenarios.

To that end, I acquired this Zvezda plastic model at a local hobby store. It's a Soviet armored boat intended for the company's Art of Tactic World War II game. Since I like to repurpose all sorts of models for my gaming, I'm using it as a conventional naval unit for Ogre.

While the scale of this kit is 1:350 and the scale of the Ogre minis is 1:285, the model itself fits in great with my actual game pieces. On the gaming table, this hunk of plastic will represent a manned boat to patrol the waters off Monopolis. Why? Because that's where the invaders will be coming from in my next scenario.

Since the armored boat is about twice the size of conventional vehicles (and has the weapons modeled on it), I'm gonna give this unit two attacks: one strength 4 at range 2, like a heavy tank, and one strength 3 at range 4 like a missile tank. It will also get 2 antipersonnel guns, like a superheavy. It will have a move of 2 on full water hexes only (no streams) and a defense of 4. That comes out to about two armor units, according to the Cobb GEV unit calculator. Sounds about right to me, but we'll see how it does in playtesting.

Gaining followers in Holmes D&D

In the early iterations of Dungeons & Dragons, characters gain followers of some type once they reach a certain level. The Holmes edition of the rules, of course, only takes characters to third level and doesn't mention obtaining followers at high level. Since I like to extrapolate from this version of the game, I want to discuss raising followers according to Holmes basic.

First, of course, in the section on creating characters, Holmes points out that the number of followers is limited by a character's charisma:

A character of charisma below 13 can not hire more than 5 followers, and their loyalty will be luke-warm at best -- that is, if the fighting gets hot there is a good probability they will run away. On the other had, someone with a charisma of 18 can win over a large number of followers (men or monsters) who will probably stand by him to the death.

Next, in the section on nonplayer characters, Holmes mentions letting characters hire "a band of mercenaries" to take part in (and share the loot from) an adventure. He also acknowledges that players may want "a regular entourage of various character types, monsters, or an army of some form." The author then goes on to discuss luring "monsters" (including higher-level men) into service via charisma or charm spell. He adds that surrender may result in service according to the results of the Hostile/Friendly Reaction Table and subdual means an opponent will serve without need of the reaction table.

But what about followers of characters past third level? The monster entries can help.

Take, for example, the bandit. One fourth-level fighting man for every 30 bandits; one fifth- or sixth-level for every 50. Over 200, a one-quarter chance of a tenth- or eleventh-level magic user and the same probability of an eighth-level cleric. If there are 300 bandits, there is a M-U and a 50% chance of a cleric.

And the dwarf: a second- to seventh-level leader for every 40 dwarves.

As well as the elf: one leader (fighter/magic-user, 2-4/2-7 level) for every 50 elves.

Back to bandits: Holmes doesn't explicitly define bandits as fighters, but he gives regular bandit troops shields and possibly chain mail. Since thieves can't use either of those protective devices, we can say bandits are fighters. Further support for this argument can be found in the description of the bandit camp in one of the modules included with the Holmes basic rules, B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. In that adventure, Gary Gygax lists the bandits as fighters or zero-level normal men.

So you've got scores of fighters hanging around with some higher-level type. Why? Charisma. Those upper-level folks must have pretty good charismas scores, and they're therefore able to amass large numbers of followers.

So based on the above, here's one way to go about determining followers when playing with the Blue Book rules:

FOLLOWERS 

In addition to hiring non-player characters through advertising, characters with a charisma score of 13 or more can attract followers as they gain levels, since stories of their adventures will draw others to their service. A character that gains such followers cannot add any more to the ranks until reaching the next level, and any followers lost cannot be replaced until the next level.

Beginning at fourth level, fighting men roll percentile dice each month to determine if they attract 30 first-level fighters into service. A roll of 10 or less succeeds, and the character may not roll again for troops until gaining a new level. At fifth level, a fighting man has the same chance of gaining 50 troops. At sixth level and above, the fighter can obtain up to another 50 soldiers (so a total of 130 troops at sixth level, 180 troops at seventh level, and so on).

Starting at tenth level, magic-users have a 5 percent chance per month of gaining 200 troops, increasing by another 100 troops for each level thereafter on a successful percentile roll.

Clerics have the same chance of attracting followers as magic-users, but can start rolling at eighth level.

At second level and higher, dwarves have a 5 percent chance per month of having 10 dwarves (as described in the Monster List) join their cause, increasing by 10 dwarves per level after that.

Likewise, elves who have reached both the second level of fighting ability and the second level of magic-use have a 5 percent chance to gain 10 elves (from the Monster List). This number increases by 5 elves each time the character gains a level as either a fighter or a magic-user.

Well, that's what I came up with as far as mass followers for the old basic game. It hasn't been playtested, as none of the characters in my short-lived Holmes campaign from last year ever made it past first level (and I didn't come up with it till just now). Also, I didn't include any followers for thieves, since I couldn't find anything in the blue book to draw upon for that class. Any suggestions?

Some trees and a castle

I recently threw together some terrain for various wargames. Using the remaining greenery from my terrain project for Ogre, I put together a handful of trees or bushes for use with 28mm figures like this Heroscape knight.

I will use them as obstacles/line-of-sight blockers for skirmish games like Song of Blades and Heroes, as well to decorate larger patches of forest or bad going for rules like Hordes of the Things.

Speaking of Ogre, I also had some leftover buildings from my Monopolis city project. I joined three of them together with some air-drying clay to make this piece of scatter terrain for use with sci-fi or microarmor.

Here it is with a Paneuropean G.E.V. for scale. While this structure may seem to small to work with 6mm figures, it scales well with my other Monpolis buildings and will make nice scatter terrain or even a scenario objective.

All I did was press the three castles (originally from a Disney edition of Monopoly) into the clay, The castles had already been sprayed tan, so I just had to paint the clay once it was dry. After that, I added a little bit of flocking to spruce this piece up a bit.

Simple, cheap, and quick--just the way I like to make my own terrain.

A swarm of Gnats

It's been a long time since I worked on spaceship minis, but I finished painting up 30 Gnat starfighters I got from Monday Knight Productions some time ago.

These attack craft will fill out the fighter compliment of my Entomalian fleet for Galactic Knights, Starfleet Wars, Star Navy, and other spaceship games.

These are light fighters, a bit smaller than the Mosquito heavy fighters also used by the insectoid Entomalians. Gnat and Mosquito, of course, are the recognition names assigned to these craft by Terran Transsolar Federation Naval Intelligence. I'm not sure how the Entomalians refer to them.

Interestingly, in Galactic Knights, the Gnat starfighters are kamikaze vessels that destroy themselves as they crash into enemy starships. Guess it's easy for the Bugs to just hatch more pilots.

It's nice to work on spaceships for a change. I'll have to do this more often. I don't need to buy any more starships; I still have some that are unpainted. Should keep me busy.

Another attack on Monopolis

Last week I brought my Monopolis setup for Ogre to Dragon's Lair for the Tuesday night game. Five people showed up to play, including another longtime Ogre fan who is new to the area.

I didn't have any river or stream terrain available, so I just set up a city without regard to the map that I used for the Millenniumcon Monpolis scenario. I also brought some new minis: In addition to a couple of extra Ogres for this game, I took my recently acquired truck convoy to use as an objective.

I also gave the option of cruise missiles to each side. They could trade their smaller Ogre for three nukes. While the attackers left their cruise missile crawlers at home and had two cybertanks, the defenders traded in a Mark III for a trio of nukes and set up their stationary missile silos downtown, a block over from their command post.

And of course, the defenders unleashed those doomsday weapons on the first turn. With the gray-clad attackers approaching Monopolis from two sides, the green painted city dwellers sent nukes to the east and west, disregarding the Monopolis real estate on each side. While the attackers shot down one cruise missile, the others proved destructive to both the enemy vehicles and to the defenders' own citizens, wiping out a good portion of the city's buildings, and keeping me busy replacing those town hexes with rubble markers.

Both sides lost a few units to the nuclear blasts, but most vehicles managed to survive unscathed or were just knocked offline temporarily. However, tanks and infantry had a lot less cover to hide in after those mushroom clouds sprouted.

Meanwhile, the two Mark Vs started jousting, with the attacking Ogre getting the first strike. On the other end of the table, the attackers' Fencer B was showering its missiles on defending GEVs and tanks.

At the same time, surviving GEVs worked their way past the rubbled sections of Monopolis, entered the burning city, and made their way toward the defending command post.

The defending Ogre's weapons quickly got stripped thanks to some good dice rolling, and the attackers also shot up the convoy of trucks that was trying to escape.

In the end, the defenders capitulated, with their Ogre eviscerated and most of their other units down for the count. It was surprising that despite the city's decision to go nuclear, the invaders were able to conquer Monopolis.

I told Grant, one of the defending players, that the reason he nuked his own city because he must be getting a kickback from building contractors. He didn't seem too concerned about civilian casualties on his own side. "It's 2085," he joked. "We'll just clone some more people."

I enjoy running my Monopolis game. Even if I do have to start replacing city hexes with rubble on turn 1.

My first sailing ship command

A couple of weeks ago at Dragon's Lair, Grant ran a sailing ship combat game. The minis were from Close Action, but he used a tournament version of Bloody Broadsides. It was my first time playing a sailing ship combat game; it's a lot different when you're so dependent on the wind.

There were nine players, each commanding a single sailing ship. I took the French vessel Pluton, a 74-gun vessel upgraded to 80 for this scenario, as our squadron sailed to meet the English.

As we began play, I quickly found out how important maneuver (and the direction of the wind) can be. The game quickly turned into a chaotic melee, as ships jockeyed for position and that oh-so-satisfying (and damaging) stern rake. In the end, the English fleet drove off the French, but ships on b both sides struck their colors.

Grant was trying out some streamlined rules he wants to use in a Battle of Trafalgar game in a few weeks. One thing I liked was no rolling to see if your cannon hit; you do a set amount of damage based on range. While some players like to roll for hits, it really slows down a large multiplayer game like this one with nine ships. Since the Trafalgar game will involve 23 ships, I think not rolling for hits is a fair compromise.

New edition of GEV announced?

Awhile back, I pontificated on a hypothetical new edition of the pocket-sized version of GEV, the sequel to the microgame Ogre. At the time, I didn't think such a product would ever hit the market.

Now, I'm happy to be proven wrong. Steve Jackson Games announced yesterday that it is considering releasing Pocket GEV late this year or sometime next year. No other details, except that it will probably have a retail price of $9.95.

In order to keep costs down, I doubt they will include any unit that wasn't in the earlier editions of GEV. This means only light tankes and mobile howizters (in addition to the Ogre units also found in GEV). Still, I'd like to see light GEVs and Superheavy tanks added to the counter mix. But who knows--we have some time to speculate.

I will certainly get a copy or two. Anyone else plan on buying this game when it comes out?

UPDATE: SJG exec Phil Reed says they're considering it, but nothing's set in stone. So take this all with a grain of salt.