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Hi,
So aside from buying a house, the other thing I did this weekend was go to HAVOC. It's a miniature wargaming convention in Shrewsbury. Because of a ton of other things going on, I only go to play in two games, but they were both rulesets that I was interested in trying out so it was time well spent.
On Friday night, I got to try out AK-47 Republic which is the game of African warlords duking it out in the mid-80's. I was a crap general in this game. I didn't fully understand how a couple of things would work (charging a tank with infantry isn't incredibly stupid because all the infantry stands get to take pot shots at the tank and can eventually force it to blow a die roll), but I also totally screwed up my deployment and got hemmed in.
So bearing in mind that I had a crap game, you might be rightfully suspect when I say that in play the rules were only so-so. Here's the big deal (and the one I thought would be a problem) -- you roll dice for movement. For infantry you move d6+2 inches and for vehicles it's like d6x2 inches. If you've got your guys in a truck, and you roll a 1, you can't deploy them and moving them 2 inches in the truck will probably expose you or not really get you anywhere. So there were turns where it just didn't pay to move. Sometimes you might roll OK, but you wouldn't be able to get everyone across the gap and into cover.
There are certainly some subtleties that I'm not getting, but the game is incredibly luck heavy.
On the other hand, the game I played on Saturday morning was quite a bit better both in terms of the rules and how I did (although my rolling was still pretty crap). It was an implementation of the Chain Reaction Rules from Two Hour Wargames called All Things Zombie and as you might guess, it was a zombie survival game. The idea was that three gangs of survivors were converging on this small desert town to find much-needed supplies and a briefcase that contained the keys to one of those "undisclosed locations" where the government could continue in the event of an attack. Three teams of two players each ran in and shot up the town, the zombies, and each other looking for stuff.
It's a pretty straightforward ruleset. You try and roll 1 or more d6s and looking for die results that are less than your rep. Every die that's under the rep "passes" and the number of "passes" determines what happens. The order of movement is a basic I-Go-You-Go deal, but there are various "reaction checks" that allow the inactive player to do stuff so it's not quite as lopsided as you might think.
Probably the best rule about this game is that every time you take a shot, you put a marker down next to your guy. At the end of a turn, you roll for each shot you took and if you roll a 5-6, you put down a zombie 12" away from where the shot marker is at. Since you can fire and then move, you can shoot a lot, then run away as zombies close in on the noise. Of course, if you get held up anywhere and have to shoot down a few zombies, more will show up. It's a really great mechanic and produced a lot of tension in the game.
I had crap rolls on shooting and hand-to-hand. Only one of my guys died, but I just spent round after round trying to put down one or two zombies. I did manage to search and clear a few cars/buildings before finally bugging out. In the end, the other two teams savaged each other in the center of town and then my teammate's squad went in and hosed the last standing guy or two so we wound up with all the goodies and the game.
So I thought this game was fun and I picked up their Sci-Fi version of the rules to try out later. I think that it might be what I'm really looking for in an skirmish game. Although now I really want to run a zombie game.
later
Tom
So aside from buying a house, the other thing I did this weekend was go to HAVOC. It's a miniature wargaming convention in Shrewsbury. Because of a ton of other things going on, I only go to play in two games, but they were both rulesets that I was interested in trying out so it was time well spent.
On Friday night, I got to try out AK-47 Republic which is the game of African warlords duking it out in the mid-80's. I was a crap general in this game. I didn't fully understand how a couple of things would work (charging a tank with infantry isn't incredibly stupid because all the infantry stands get to take pot shots at the tank and can eventually force it to blow a die roll), but I also totally screwed up my deployment and got hemmed in.
So bearing in mind that I had a crap game, you might be rightfully suspect when I say that in play the rules were only so-so. Here's the big deal (and the one I thought would be a problem) -- you roll dice for movement. For infantry you move d6+2 inches and for vehicles it's like d6x2 inches. If you've got your guys in a truck, and you roll a 1, you can't deploy them and moving them 2 inches in the truck will probably expose you or not really get you anywhere. So there were turns where it just didn't pay to move. Sometimes you might roll OK, but you wouldn't be able to get everyone across the gap and into cover.
There are certainly some subtleties that I'm not getting, but the game is incredibly luck heavy.
On the other hand, the game I played on Saturday morning was quite a bit better both in terms of the rules and how I did (although my rolling was still pretty crap). It was an implementation of the Chain Reaction Rules from Two Hour Wargames called All Things Zombie and as you might guess, it was a zombie survival game. The idea was that three gangs of survivors were converging on this small desert town to find much-needed supplies and a briefcase that contained the keys to one of those "undisclosed locations" where the government could continue in the event of an attack. Three teams of two players each ran in and shot up the town, the zombies, and each other looking for stuff.
It's a pretty straightforward ruleset. You try and roll 1 or more d6s and looking for die results that are less than your rep. Every die that's under the rep "passes" and the number of "passes" determines what happens. The order of movement is a basic I-Go-You-Go deal, but there are various "reaction checks" that allow the inactive player to do stuff so it's not quite as lopsided as you might think.
Probably the best rule about this game is that every time you take a shot, you put a marker down next to your guy. At the end of a turn, you roll for each shot you took and if you roll a 5-6, you put down a zombie 12" away from where the shot marker is at. Since you can fire and then move, you can shoot a lot, then run away as zombies close in on the noise. Of course, if you get held up anywhere and have to shoot down a few zombies, more will show up. It's a really great mechanic and produced a lot of tension in the game.
I had crap rolls on shooting and hand-to-hand. Only one of my guys died, but I just spent round after round trying to put down one or two zombies. I did manage to search and clear a few cars/buildings before finally bugging out. In the end, the other two teams savaged each other in the center of town and then my teammate's squad went in and hosed the last standing guy or two so we wound up with all the goodies and the game.
So I thought this game was fun and I picked up their Sci-Fi version of the rules to try out later. I think that it might be what I'm really looking for in an skirmish game. Although now I really want to run a zombie game.
later
Tom
