[Adrian Arnold]

Thanks folks 🙂

 

looking at 1 base per fire team, so pretty much two bases/squad. Plus on the VC/NVA side, you’d have fresh militia alongside veteran main force VC units as well 🙂

Initial plan is for PVP as well… if I just wrote it for solo play I’m pretty sure the missus would kill me as she’s my usual opponent 🙂

[Adrian Arnold]

Mike wrote:

Just saw this around scales/sizes and popularity: https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/wss_gws/gws-2019-digging-into-the-numbers-size-matters-to-whom/

Interesting reading – I wonder though if they included a question asking what other scales people were aware of? Mind you, that could then lead into questioning peoples perceptions of different scale/sizes

[Adrian Arnold]

Another thing regarding skirmish gaming I’ve had in my mind for quite a while now –

For a decent skirmish game, you usually need a lot more scenery than a mass battle game – How many people start skirmish thinking they just need a few figures only to abandon it as they don’t have the space/time/will/whatever to make and store a decent amount of scenery?

An example from my own supplies – I’ve a lot of the files from Printable Scenery for the various buildings and ruins. Printed out in 28mm I can get 1-2 buildings per storage draw. For games like Mordheim or Frostgrave you need a lot more than 1 or 2 buildings plus a base of trees or two.

But then, we’ve also pretty much switched entirely to 15 & 6mm for a mix of cost, storage space and visual appeal for the larger games and speed of painting, cost, storage and play area for skirmish…. And not regretting that.

 

 

[Adrian Arnold]

The reviews have been an interesting read on this one – I’ve been trying to make my mind up about ordering a copy of this – and it sounds that, other than a few nuggets of info it is very much an explanation or possibly even justification of why they have wrote the style of rules they have over the years, rather than discussing the various considerations around designing rules.

[Adrian Arnold]

fir myself, I agree with Craig – I believe the rise in Skirmish gaming is attracting more new people to the hobby.

I’ve also been reflecting on when I started – back in the late 80’s – It was pretty much all skirmish games with very ropey terrain because it was what we could afford. Even when I returned after a few year gap it was skirmish gaming at first – purely because it took so long and a fair amount of money to build up rank & file.

Also look at the sheer number of new players that the recent glut of GW skirmish/board games are bringing in – some of those players are likely to move onto none GW games as well.

The only.. well.. drawback… to skirmish gaming is that it can require more terrain than a mass battle – But terrain is also part of the many reasons we* are switching to primarily 6 and 15mm – Terrain is cheaper and we can play in smaller spaces easier.

 

 

*The royal We – I’m lucky enough that my usual opponent is my Wife 🙂

 

[Adrian Arnold]

Ehhhhhh….. I guess it depends on the setting for me

High magic/High fantasy – then yes, fill your boots – magical healing talismans & that sort of thing.

Supernatural settings – again yes.

Future setting – poossible – nanotech medkits and other super-science things could do the job.

Anything else would be uncomfortable for me and not something I’d include.

Just my two-pence worth.

 

 

[Adrian Arnold]

Intriguing and worth a try I think.

 

I do wonder though – what other methods people use for mines/boobytraps/ied etc? Both on the tabletop and in the rules?

[Adrian Arnold]

Not here I wouldn’t – for me scenario’s – even “unbalanced ones” should at least be interesting and give an good, fun game for both sides.

A situation like the op posted doesn’t feel to me like it would give any of those things.

[Adrian Arnold]

Darkest Star Games wrote:

Mike wrote:

the idea being to make it about tactics and not winning because you have the latest £50.00 hero model..

THIS is the sort of game I am interested in. I have stopped playing a lot of games because of the syndrome mentioned above, just kills the game for me. Some of the most enjoyable games I have played were just plain old grunts slogging it out, not uber units to skew things.

 

Join the club 🙂 Our rulesets have some mods for command units they can use to sieze initiative and you can add a few upgrades to them if you want slightly shinier commanders, but the rules have been designed to avoid the whole hero-hammer type approach…

[Adrian Arnold]

Steve Johnson wrote:

Dare I say it but more balanced armies? Over the course of my gaming life I’ve seen oh so many games ruined by uber armies, despite a wealth of wonderful background fluff. Mind you the same could be said of historical games, with Germans always having Tigers, or in the ACW the Iron Brigade etc etc.

 

Bit of thread necromancy…

 

But I agree – it’s basically this that was the reason my group left the merry-go-round of commercial releases as each new force seemed to have more & more special rules compared with the last. It got to the point where it felt like it was purely to push the latest & shiniest models – which is fair enough for a business… but for us it just felt too blatant after a certain point.

 

Nowadays I’m still working on our own rulesets – Balanced? Possibly not – but all the units work from the same formula for stat/point cost so they are at least consistent.

[Adrian Arnold]

For the most part I do –

28mm: Most minis are hex based but I find the usual hex bases too thick so have knocked a few different sized and pattern of base up. Works for both Skirmish and Gurps RPG as well

15mm – Fantasy most units are element based – For the most part we use commercial 2mm MDF bases for these, simply for ease.

15mm skirmish – custom 20/24/30/40mm round bases (Depends on model) with a recess in them to help reduce the visibility of integral bases – Also use the same but without the recess for slotta base minis that have the tabs clipped off

6mm – Pretty much all custom printed – artly as still trying to decide on a basing scheme for fantasy and easier to print of 2-3 bases than order a batch – Sci-fi – custom again generally 20×40 for infantry with varying numbers of insets for mini’s – again have none inse versions but as don’t need too many it’s easy enough to print.

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