Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
RuarighParticipantI think the old Urban War demo games were on round tables. Just had a look but can’t find any photos though.
Round tables have the advantage that a player can designate any point on the edge as their starting area, and the other players’ starting areas can then be spaced equally around the table with all players being equidistant from the centre and from each other. I can see this being an advantage over square or rectangular tables if you have an odd number of players, in particular. That way no one player is sandwiched between two others while the others have more open flanks.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantHigh medieval with a design your own system for characters sounds like just the ticket, Craig. Time to dig out that old map of Karameikos again.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantThe layout seems reasonable for the battles being modelled. Our large Towton game looked similar, although with a bit more vertical terrain. The fun in the game came from command and control, as Rhoderic suggests. The command and control rules meant that the players focused on trying to keep their contingents together so that the wings of the army did not become fragmented and attack piecemeal, instead of focusing on geometry and manoeuvre. Certainly for the Wars of the Roses, manoeuvring large bodies of troops was not as easy as some rules would have it.
There was some interesting pontification on the Polemarch blog about flanks. It was noted that flank marches per DBM and similar rules were not nearly as common in reality as wargamers would like them to be. Instead, flanking would happen as a result of one wing being driven from the field, and the army then falling on the remainder of the enemy.
There’s fun to be had either way, as long as your opponent(s) are good company.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantAnother thought for future projects is that wealthy Vikings (and possibly not so wealthy Vikings) almost certainly painted their houses (http://sciencenordic.com/what-colour-did-vikings-paint-their-houses), so you can make the next hall a bit more colourful, and they definitely painted other woodwork, as we know from excavation of King Gorm’s burial mound and from the sleds in the Oseberg burial. This Danish site gives paint chips based on the timbers from Gorm’s grave at Jelling and from a plank from a stave church at Hørning that could inspire a more colourful Viking Age. The paint chips are obvious enough so no need to read the Danish unless you really want to.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantThat’s a great model. Love it.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI want to play skirmish games that have the same feel as Basic D&D games (I’m all about the nostalgia these days) but with a better, more logical system than D&D. Key elements would be: maybe half a dozen or so figures per side, the option for co-op play, traditional character types, high medieval technology at most, a range of generic scenarios, and a campaign system with advancement for character figures. I guess a force could be a character plus a bunch of henchbeings. Frostgrave works quite well for me for all of the previous, but I eventually found the combat system to be too random. A little less randomness than that would be good. Also, the option to have different character types as your leader instead of it being a wizard every time. A solid solo versus game AI option would be particularly awesome but is not essential.
ETA: Just saw that this relates to high fantasy Blood Eagle. Colour me interested. I like Blood Eagle.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI voted for research because I do love doing the research, but I suspect that, like others here, my gaming is mostly habit these days. I might have voted for world-building but it was bundled with model-making. I love world-building but I hate painting and model-making. I also find gaming to be a structured form of socialising that I find easier to cope with; I’m not good at socialising.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI only visit one forum (TWW) regularly. I used to visit a lot more, but I have lost interest in most other forums for a variety of reasons (topics, personality of contributors, wargaming ennui, etc).
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantIf you are interested in Female Viking Warriors, but are unsure if the existed IRL, then read this… A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics //Keith
It’s also worth reading this blog post in conjunction with that article: http://norseandviking.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/lets-debate-female-viking-warriors-yet.html
The archaeologists have proven that these bones were female and are satisfied that they are the right bones for the grave, so we have one definite Viking woman with a warrior identity. Some of their conclusions/interpretation in the article stretch the evidence they cite a bit much though. They’re not great with the literary evidence, and I think they over-egg the cake with their statement that everyone believes weapons burials are warrior burials. No one sensible has claimed that for decades now. Still, I find it really exciting that this burial, which has been the archetype for male warrior burials for so long, was actually of a woman. I hope they will go back to the other weapons burials that appear to contain women and do genomic studies on those too. I would also like to see them test the bones for evidence of stress associated with training with weapons. That would be really telling. As it stands, it’s not evidence of a caste of shieldmaidens in Viking Age Scandinavia, but it certainly supports the view that some women took up arms as warriors, as opposed to taking up arms in defence of their home which would be something entirely different. Warrior women are mentioned in some of the more fantastic sagas and in the less reliable books of Saxo, and so have largely been discounted as a fact, but this challenges that view. Beyond that, it all gets a bit complicated, given that this person is thought to have come from the east somewhere within the Viking diaspora, and may thus not be representative of mainland Scandinavia, or they may represent one area of Sweden rather than all of Scandinavia, etc. Either way, I’ll be citing it if anyone complains about my Shadowforge Vikings leading the rest of my Viking warband into the fray.
And, more on topic, I look forward to seeing how your sculpt comes out, paintpig. Good luck with realising your very own miniature Katheryn Winnick.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantSorry, I hope I did not come across as patronising with the academic comment. It was meant as an endorsement of the book, and not a criticism of the reader. I can understand the issue with getting anything shipped to Rio. My cousin lives there and has told me the same.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI love the museum in Copenhagen. Also the museums in Norway. Their digital collections are generally excellent too and well worth a look, although I’m not sure how many are in English. Still, they are streets ahead of the UK museums (with a couple of notable exceptions) in digitising their collections and making them accessible.
I hope The Viking World is of use to you. It’s more academic than most of the general histories, and a hefty tome, but well worth the price, to my mind. For something more colourful and easier to read, I would recommend (if I may be permitted a little shameless self-promotion) Vikings: Raids. Culture. Legacy. It’s a general history of the Vikings that also looks great on your coffee table! 🙂
The 15mm Iron Age fantasy project sounds fun. I’m more and more tempted to start a 15mm fantasy project myself, with only the weight of unpainted lead in my attic preventing me, like some kind of Unpainted Lead Pile of Damocles.
I see what you mean about the differences between the figures. Shame about that.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantIt’s fair enough talking about religious specialists, but the problem with referring to ‘priests’ and ‘temples’ is that those words carry a ton of Christian bias, and using them creates certain expectations in the modern audience. There certainly appear to have been people that led religious ceremonies and who had charge of the sanctuaries. For the Viking Age, they are usually called ‘cult leaders’, and sources suggest that they would be one and the same as the local chieftains (goði in Old Norse) or kings (possibly related to the concept of sacral kingship). There is also a smattering of Old Norse words that indicate women could have roles as cult leaders, and that maybe point to different types of cults. This is fairly uncontroversial to my mind, because religion was not uniform across Scandinavia and Iceland, and local subcultures would have expressed themselves in different ways. However, delving into the detail really involves hardcore philology (aka meddling in the affairs of wizards). As for the temples, some were buildings as the archaeology from Uppsala suggests, but place-name evidence indicates that others were sacred groves or other outdoor sites.
I’ve not seen anything to suggest that there was anything like a big death cult in Viking Age Scandinavia though. There is certainly evidence of human sacrifice related to burial customs, and some evidence for human sacrifice as an element of religious ritual, but it may have been on the way out as an element of ritual even before Christianisation.
If you’re interested in Vikings generally and want to look into the culture in more detail, The Viking World is a great starting place that is fairly up to date. It’s not that cheap, but well worth the price, although not directly relevant to most wargaming needs.
Shame about the Hasslefree Ragnars and Lagerthas. Will they not even pass the three foot test?
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantAs we don’t know shit about the Vikings’ religious caste, the show is justified in making crap up that looks cool.
There’s no real evidence that the Vikings had a religious caste per se. The historical evidence that we do have is generally glossed with a heavy Christian understanding of how religion should be, not necessarily how it was actually lived. That said, the presentation of religion being a lived experience in Vikings is really quite good. It’s integral to daily life and not just something that is saved for Sundays. The idea that the sacrifice at Uppsala had to be voluntary made me really grind my teeth, mind. Sacrifices are more likely to have been prisoners, criminals or slaves. Choice may have been part of sacrifice on the death of a chieftain, as Ibn Fadlan describes, but not so much at other times.
Good luck getting your Vikings force together. I hope you’ll post pics.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantMy Laserburn Imperial assault group was begun in the mid eighties. I finished it last year. I don’t see any mileage in expanding it further at the moment, unless I can find some decent air support that fits the GZG high-tech grav theme of the armoured support. My Red Redemptionist Rebels that I began at the same time are still unfinished.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantWhen playing skirmish games, I try to use in-scale buildings and terrain. For big battle games, I am currently experimenting with using buildings closer to the ground scale rather than the figure scale by using the Brigade Models 1:1000 buildings with my 6mm WW1 and WW2 armies. Using smaller buildings makes it easier to conform to the size of built-up area templates in CD:ToB, as well as making it easier to leave space for the figures rather than having to remove the buildings so that the figures fit into the BUA. I’m tempted to start using large 6mm buildings with my 15mm armies for big battles too. I think it could be quite aesthetically pleasing.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI also had serious issues with WW1 westfront ground combat. But, though very grim, I have had a good time with very small personal actions, like trench raids. I can’t do the “large” battles with 100s getting mowed down in one go…
It’s interesting to see how the focus on the Western front always seems to be trench warfare. I enjoy gaming battles on the Western front but focus on 1914 and early 1915 when the warfare was more mobile. It’s a part of the war that almost invariably seems to be forgotten in the horror of the later years.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantECW for me. I really want to like it, especially because it is the history on my doorstep, but it just seems so bland at the battle level. It lacks the sparkle that other wars/periods have. It’s the only period that I have collected and painted armies for that I gave up because of this.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantMy 6mm Vikings. It used to be my 15mm Vikings, but I downsized. I guess my work is also my hobby and my main enthusiasm.
Some pics here: https://ooh-shiny-complex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/january-project-success.html
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantThe wargamer’s dream of commanding exclusively elite “armies” must come close to reality for this period & level of play with surely one side, at least, being composed of exclusively seasoned warriors.
Theoretically, if you are depicting only a small force led by a lord or king, you could have a warband comprising nothing but the best-trained warriors with the best equipment.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI’ve never found any that satisfy completely, and most aim towards the cinematic/saga-esque anyway. A realistic set of rules for individual figures could probably be written quite easily but is also likely to be fairly basic and generic, because there is so little evidence of how individuals actually fought. Maybe something like FUBAR would be one of the better options. I like the idea that warriors might freeze (fail their activation) and the combat system is simple enough.
For larger games with figures ranked together in units, I have always thought that Poleaxed 2 models the attempt to keep the battle line together rather well. It was written for the later medieval period, but the central difficulty of command and control is one that larger forces in the early medieval period would have suffered from too.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI like hexes and have a huge supply of GHQ Terrainmaker hexes that I use to make fairly realistic landscapes. They allow me to easily create differently shaped hills, have negative features like streams actually sunk into the terrain, and give a huge amount of flexibility at a reasonable cost in ease of use. The effect, apart from the appearance of the visible hex grid, is much more realistic to my eye than the usual scatter terrain. My table is built with a lip at the edge and a felt surface so the hexes do not move at all in play.
I have not used my hex terrain to adjudicate movement, etc. yet. I do think of it every so often, and I have enjoyed some grid-/hex-based rules, but not doing so is more a function of the rules I have seen rather than the concept itself.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI prefer The Last Kingdom to Vikings because it’s less Hollywood. I find it interesting that my relationship with the characters in the TV series is different from my relationship with the characters in Cornwell’s books. Uhtred in the TV series is an annoying little twerp, and I really like David Dawson as Alfred. In the books, I find Uhtred much more relatable.
The armour is annoying, but I think they are setting up the Saxons as the last bastion of civilisation, using the Roman-style shields as symbolic of this, as well as using them to differentiate the two sides. Same with the blue tunics. What annoys me about both series is the lack of colour. Both series have a very traditional, drab view of the Viking Age. The dyes available to Vikings and Saxons could produce a full range of colours, and we know they liked bright colours, so there is no real reason not to have more colourful clothes, other than going for the grunge aesthetic.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantRuarigh: As in the case of muscle cars, the stripes make me go faster! So, yes, I heartily endorse fecal-fouled fundaments with gusto! Vroom-vroom. Cheers and good plotzing. Rodgnar Hairy Breeches.
I just laughed out loud properly at that. 😀
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantIt is far more interesting to watch than reading the dry prose of Saxo Grammaticus’ “Gesta Danorum”! … Rodgnar Hairy Breeches.
Saxo dry? Really? Come, come, now. His Latin prose is florid and ornate to the point of being Stephen Donaldsonesque. That is hardly dry! 🙂 And, are you sure you wish to take the byname Hairy Breeches, given that loðbrók may actually translate better as ‘shitty-pants’, being a reference to a bout of dysentery that the semi-legendary character Ragnar loðbrók suffered?
Just don’t get me started on ‘The Last Kingdom’
I quite like The Last Kingdom. Just saying.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantYes, it’s inspired by history rather than re-telling it. They have some serious academics on the payroll to provide advice, but they largely work to the rule of cool. I’ve heard it described as Hipsters in Horseskin, and that is fairly true. The haircuts are more hipster than Viking, the excessive leather is just wrong but cool, the shieldmaidens are ahistorical, the post-apocalyptic priests at Uppsala are wrong, etc, etc. I still find it fun to watch, and it does provide roles for women, which is something I applaud. Too many Viking-themed films and TV series really don’t have enough women in them. I mean, where do all the baby Vikings come from? Did they carve them from trees? To be fair, I honestly don’t think that judging it as a depiction of history ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’ is the right approach to the programme. It tells us more about us than it does about Vikings.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantThat is 6mm as seen at JOS.
Yup, Mike’s right. It’s 6mm. We had around 18000 figures on the table. The blog for those that don’t feel like Googling is here: http://towton-2011.blogspot.co.uk/
It was great fun to put on, but I think I’m going to stick to smaller battles in future!
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI have to ask why you each have different terrain objectives on the same battlefield and there is no requirement to defend the other side’s target. It just does not seem logical,
I think that unless you’ve got a very wide table with objectives on both ends, you will still have lots of interaction. In particular, a lot of great rule sets out there make it difficult in a game to outflank another force. In such a situation where opposing forces are focusing on different directions on a table, you’re going to have opportunities for such things.
I can see that there is likely to be interaction on most game tables, because of the lack of flanks, although flank marches are a feature of many rules sets now, so it is maybe not quite the problem it used to be. Regarding the terrain objectives, my issue really is that if a particular terrain feature is significant enough to be an objective for one side, I struggle to see why the other side would not recognise it as such too, and defend it. I do like your idea for each side assessing the value of the objectives themselves and then swapping the envelopes at the end. This is something that I may well borrow for future games. The difference between your system and the originally posited situation, though, is that each side had different terrain objectives in the original scenario. With your system, both sides have the same objectives, but could assign different values to each. In the original scenario, even without flanks on a small table, it might well be possible to turtle on the objective and refuse to engage, unless the other side actively moves towards something that has no value to them.
The focus in this discussion seems to be largely on terrain as objectives, so it might also be worth considering tactical or strategic objectives. I enjoy Command Decision:Test of Battle which includes a system for scenario generation. One way of doing this is to create a mission deck from which each player draws their mission which defines their objective. The cards are revealed at the end of the game. Missions can include an all-out assault, probing the enemy lines, recceing the enemy, fighting a rearguard action, etc. Many of these don’t have terrain objectives, but rather require you to get your troops to a specific point on the table and then return the information, or to eliminate a percentage of the enemy force, etc. (NRBTH at the mo so can’t state specifically all the missions or their details). By not including duplicates of missions that would result in no conflict (e.g. 2 delaying action cards) in the deck, you can have secret objectives that ought to result in a decent game without needing an umpire.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantFair point. It could well come down to how competitive the players are.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI far and away prefer armies that look like armies. I am not a fan of the large 28mm games you see at shows where there is barely room to move. When we put on our Towton project, our aim was to give the impression of two large armies. I was happy with the outcome as seen in the photo below.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantMaybe it keys into a bigger question actually? A “sudden death’ game that declares a clear winner and loser is a more satisfying “Game” but is maybe less realistic?
Is it necessary to have a clear winner, or just a fair shot at winning? As long as both players think they can win, a stalemate or draw is an acceptable result in the end. I’ve played a few games like that where there was an option for a draw (mostly ASL scenarios) and they were still good fun, even when they did end in a draw.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantAh but if them finishing before me does not prevent me from completing my objective the next turn…? We both win?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with games that both players can claim a victory in, but I would suggest that it would be a boring game if it is set up so that neither of you has to interfere with the other’s actions. In the example you gave, I have to ask why you each have different terrain objectives on the same battlefield and there is no requirement to defend the other side’s target. It just does not seem logical, and does seem like poor scenario design. I would suggest sacking the scenario designer and getting a new one!
Then you can recast the victory conditions as ‘take your objective while stopping your opponent from taking theirs. Any other result is a draw’, or, as Ivan suggests, make it a sudden death game. Hey presto, you have neatly dealt with the problem.Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI’m happy to play either way. I’ve found with secret objectives that they usually become obvious fairly quickly anyway as each player gathers their forces to achieve them. As long as the objectives require the players to mix it up on the table and cause them to do so, all is good. For my own gaming group (consisting of my friend Steve and myself) known objectives are easier purely because there are only two of us, but we have played some good games where we draw random objectives from a deck and keep them secret until the end.
Unless it is part of a campaign I am not sure I would care what their objectives are, assuming I win by completing my objective. Let us say I have to take out the bridge to keep my commander happy, then that is what I will focus on. If they are doing something over there by the farm I am not inclined to care.
If you wind up in a situation where both sides can win by ignoring each other, that sounds like poorly constructed objectives to me.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI prefer tracked to hover for near future sci-fi. Tracked just seems more logical, and I can’t get around the idea that a single hole in the skirts is likely to immobilise the vehicle. In my sci-fi world the technology goes straight from tracked/wheeled in the near future (next couple of hundred years) to anti-grav in the far future.
Of course, I actually think that the future will belong to robots and drones as governments seek to reduce human casualties in the front line, while recognising that the reality of warfare 500 years in the future is really beyond our comprehension right now, in the same way that a medieval warrior could not imagine the changes to warfare that have occurred over the past 500 years.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantDon’t think I’ve ever introduced myself on here before. Story of my life, and a peril of being an introvert! Hi, I’m Ruarigh. My day job is Vikings, and my main interest in wargaming is early medieval or anything Scandinavian, but I seem to spend way more time playing Gruntz, Laserburn and Imperial Commander instead. I’ve also been running the Talomir Tales fantasy campaign since 2009 (http://talomir.blogspot.co.uk/).
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantMiniatures-wise it has to be Operation Brevity. It is a small and manageable campaign that I could easily set up myself and it features enough MkVIBs to keep me happy. The rest of my WW2 gaming is done using Advanced Squad Leader for which the Red Barricades module about the battle for the Barrikady ordnance factory is the best of all possible games. I’ve started playing the full Red Barricades campaign a couple of times but not generally made much progress past the first few days of the assault, because my life keeps getting in the way. I do love me a monster game though.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantNot at all. She has no interest in games.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantThere was an era when just about every DBA/DBM camp element seemed to have a model of someone being executed or tortured on it, which I always found a bit disturbing as a trend. But I say that as the guy who has a HOTT general’s element which features Hitler supervising a human sacrifice, so I accept that my moral high-ground probably isn’t that high.
As a Viking enthusiast and historian, I recognise the potential accusations of hypocrisy against myself in this statement too. Is it any better to have a camp with slaves and plunder in it, when you know how they would have been acquired? Still, I think we are all allowed to reserve areas of inconsistency in the application of our qualms and tastes.
You can make a game out of anything, but we all have our own individual “taste horizons”. When I was younger and the world was still black and white, I used to operate a 20 year rule, but these days I really don’t care. If it is an enjoyable and/or informative experience in bringing history to life, I’ll do it.
I’ve gone in the opposite direction. I had fewer issues with gaming anything and everything in my youth than I do now.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantHmm, zombies. I’m not a zombie fan, so never thought of that. Still, it’s a good question. I guess I see the civilians as combatants in zombie games, and that puts a different slant on it.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantI won’t play anything post-WW2 because my emotions and politics generally get in the way. Other than that, a few themes that I would find distasteful spring gazelle-like to mind: torture, death camps, suicide bombs, and civilians as targets. There are also certain nations I won’t play in games because of the reality of their actions or politics, but I’ll happily fight against them on the table top.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
RuarighParticipantNarrative is the key for me. It doesn’t have to be great fiction, but the combination of photos and text should tell the story of the battle. I’m quite partial to the comic-book style narratives that some blogs feature. I also like to see a few notes about the game system so that I understand how the narrative came to be.
Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
-
AuthorPosts
