AD&D Combat Computer Wheel

By popular demand, here's the AD&D Combat Computer that I found with all my old gaming stuff.  This item was cut out of a Dragon magazine (issue #74 I believe).

The idea was to line up the arrow with the target's AC (the inner ring of numbers) and then compare your character level (colored bars) to the outer ring of numbers to find your target number on a d20.  It even included all the weapon/armor class adjustments if you needed them.

As you can see, I fastened mine with a metal brad that's actually not too rusted after all these years.  I doubt I actually used this device in play.  Did anyone else have one of these?  If so, did you use it?

Starfleets by Superior: old flier

Digging around the old Trapper Keeper notebook that I stash a lot of old gaming material inside, I dug out this old Alnavco advertising flier from the inside front pocket (along with an AD&D combat computer wheel and a Thieves' Cant phrasebook taken from old issues of Dragon magazine, a map traced from an Arduin book, and a bunch of old Scratch'n'Sniff stickers).

I like the graphic design on the front of this circular: three emblematic fighter icons in staggered formation at the top, and just three words: Starfleets by Superior in a shadowed font at the bottom.  Very clean and elegant.  

When you open this publication up, it unfolds onto photographs of all five factions in the Starfleet Wars line, images that spurred me to get these ships and start this blog.  The text here really sells the setting background and notes "the designs of each fleet have been influenced by the physical characteristics of the beings who conceived and built them...designs based on military, scientific and fantasy considerations."  There's also an image of the SfW rulebook with information about the game.

Flip the page over and you see the additions to the line, including the super galactic dreadnought models and a space station.  This side also has blurbs for the MAATAC ground combat game and the company's short-lived periodical, Wargamers Forum.  There's also a section about the Stardate: 3000 line of ship models, suitable for various games, with a parenthetical note that these minis "can also be used with Superior StarFleets."

The postmark on the envelope the flier came in was dated July 9, 1980.  Finding this catalog was a blast from the past, taking me back to the days loooooong before the internet, when if you lived in a small West Texas town with no gaming store, you actually had to send off for a catalog like this and order products through the mail.

Interestingly, Alnavco is still in business, and they have (almost) the same mailing address--except now they're at PO Box 10 instead of 9.  Although they're out of the starship business, Alnavco still sells historical warship miniatures, so go check out their merchandise--no need to send off for a catalog!

Sunday Starships: Kill Radius

I think everyone who plays wargames also has the urge, deep down, to be a game designer.  I'm no different, and I started working on a set of rules for the kind of starship combat game I'd like to play: simple, fast, and a minimum of recordkeeping.

I came up with Kill Radius: Quick and Dirty Starship Combat to scratch that itch.  The game is short, but not as short as I intended.  I originally wanted to keep the rules to two letter-sized pages (or one front and back), but it grew to almost four pages.

You can use any starship miniatures in your collection, but you do need a hex mat.  Recordkeeping is fairly simple--you can fit a whole fleet on one sheet of paper.  Ship design and combat is abstract, but I thought that was a good tradeoff in return for ease of play.  Kill Radius still needs some work, but when I playtested it last year, we had 30 ships on the table, from destroyers to dreadnoughts, and we played five turns in about three hours. I've revised it since then to make it play a little faster.

It keeps the vector movement system that most people I game with have said they enjoy.  I like the way maneuvering works in Kill Radius--you have to think where you want to be not just one turn, but several turns ahead.  In last year's playtest, we started out on opposite ends of the table's long axis, closed within a couple of turns, then drifted past one another, exchanging fire all the while.  Of course, then we both had several ships drift out of range (and even off the board), so we ended the game.

I have posted a preliminary version the rules on the Kill Radius web page, so take a look and tell me what you think.

I had a chance to play another game of Red Sand Black Moon--this time a four-player free-for-all.  I took a human soldier, my opponents were a beastman, a snakeman, and a Black Moon orc.  Ed had figured out a rating system for gladiators, and my human and the serpent man were rated 8, while the orc was a 9 and the beastman 11 (the higher the rating, the better the gladiator; but if you beat someone with a lower rating, you don't gain experience).

The serpent man took a blade to the belly at the start of the combat; then the beastman sliced up the orc (cutting him more than a dozen times).  The beastman and the human then engaged each other, with the human getting a couple of thrusts with her trident into the beastman's chest to win the game.

Dragon on the ceiling

This fearsome beast appeared above us in our kitchen near the hallway one evening.  However, there was no fire-breathing, princess-taking or other carnage involved with this little drake.  In fact, he's quite the tame dragon.  He and his friends sometimes come inside for a visit, and we gently help them find their way outdoors again.

Silent Fury launched

Image from the Silent Fury website.

Last month I mentioned a new spaceship game in development.  Silent Fury is a vector-movement game in which crew plays a vital role, both for damage control and in boarding actions.    The creators have released a prototype version of the game:

• The rules
• The ship sheets
• The scenarios

One of the scenarios is a solo game, another is meant for cooperative play.  I hope to try these out sometime soon.  Go check it out for yourself, and let me know what you think.

Steve Jackson doesn't need my help

Image from Steve Jackson Games.

The OGRE Designer's Edition Kickstarter campaign had more than $205,000 in pledges as of late Tuesday evening. 

Not only is that amount 10 times what Steve Jackson Games needed to fund this project, but it's also enough for SJG to put some nice extras into the game--both the Kickstarter version and the regular retail version--things like bigger dice, extra maps and counters, and so on, as well as some more scenarios on the company's website.  It looks like the fundraising for this game will set some kind of record.

So it looks like there's plenty of support in the gaming community right now for this venerable sci-fi tank wargame.

With that in mind, I've made my decision on where I will obtain my copy of the designer's edition.  I'd asked this question earlier, and comments were overwhelmingly in favor of supporting Steve Jackson via Kickstarter (not to mention the extras you get by doing so).  However, I'm gonna buy it from Dragon's Lair.  After all, the local gaming store as tables for anyone to use--and it doesn't have to be a game you bought at that store. 

I've spent many Saturdays at the San Antonio Lair playing Hordes of the Things or Galactic Knights--two games you won't find on the store shelves.  And they let Lone Star Historical Miniatures meet there and play games every Tuesday night.  They also will order items for you, and let you know when the store gets the merchandise.

I want to support Steve Jackson and OGRE--and I am, by purchasing the sixth edition of the game once it comes out.  But I also want to support my friendly local game store--so I'm buying it retail from them, even though the Kickstarter version comes out earlier and with more stuff.  I'm content with this decision, because I want to be able to play OGRE (or any other wargame) at the game store as well as at someone's house.  But do you plan on buying the new version of OGRE?  If so, are you gonna go Kickstarter, FLGS, or both?