WIP - "Rescue Of Hommlet" - Playtest Weekend

Having written stolen and mashed up rules to create a Chainmail/Book of War hybrid Frankenstein monster, I wanted to make sure that the thing played well, and I wanted to see what comes up that I hadn't thought of.

And I wanted to give the model a shakedown, to see how it would be used by (hopefully) friendly faces before taking it to GaryCon to sit next to two other Greyhawk games taking place with the same topic - the goings on of the Temple of Elemental Evil and the infamous Moathouse.

But first... picture porn of the model! I've made progress since the last model update from early December.

      

It felt really good to get the model to a point where I could play with it. Obviously, a lot of work left to be done, with painting details, making the mucky moat and surrounding terrain. The comments I got from players was very positive!

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Playtesting - I had three concerns with the scenario and rules:

• Will the rules work in reflecting that we have figures that represent single characters (1:1 scale) and figures that represent troop units (~10:1 scale)
• With using the forces as represented in the module T1 - Village of Hommlet, is there a huge mismatch?
• What surprises do I need to account for that devious players will come up with?

I ran one session on Saturday for Chris and Alex, two of my D&D players and members of the Northern Illinois Fantasy Miniatures Association. On Sunday, I ran a session for my D&D player Derek.

 

I'm happy to say that I got tons of great feedback from my very patient friends! Overall, they all expressed enjoyment with the scenario and with the approach of playing "D&D" with Chainmail as the battle mechanism. It became clear that what we had was more of a skirmish game than a huge battle. That turned out to be OK!

If you go and look at the rules, you can see a number of tweaks and approaches that I've adopted to reflect lessons learned. Here are the three big ones:

I. Having a character figure that isn't a superhero somehow take out a troop unit figure with just a single dice roll didn't feel right. The character should be a lot more threatened when they go against a unit of soldiers [1].

To solve that, I took this approach:
1. If the battle is troop unit figure vs. troop unit figure, or character/creature vs. character/creature, roll number of dice equal to Fighting Capability (FC) of unit. Count hits. This is standard Chainmail or Book of War.

2. If battle is troop unit figure (representing 10 soldiers) vs. character/creature, scale the dice. Roll # of dice representing FC of unit multiplied by number of soldiers left in figure. Count hits against character. Character rolls number of dice equal to their Fighting Capability.

So, Rufus the Fighter is facing a figure of bugbears. He has an FC of 6. He is attacking as Heavy Foot (HF) and the bugbears are defending as Armored Foot (AF). In my rules, he needs a 6. He rolls 3 6 1 1 2 5, so he scores a hit! That means a bugbear will be a casualty out of the unit.

The bugbears return the favor. Their FC is 2. The figure represents ten bugbears. So the player for the bugbears would grab TWENTY six siders and roll. The bugbears attack as HF and Rufus defends as AF. With twenty dice, the chances are likely for at least 3 to 4 hits, so Rufus might be in trouble here...

THIS felt right, even though it would be murder on the characters - as it should be! Up to about Superhero level, a single character is taking huge risks to get involved in an Aragorn-esque fight against a bunch of baddies.

What helped was the adopted rule that magic armor removes a dice from each roll. So if ten bugbears are rolling 2 dice each, Rufus's magic armor made that 1 dice. Which, magic armor should have that effect. So this felt right as well.

It does mean I'm going to have to track the "hits" on a troop figure from characters. So that as the character whittles away at the troop unit, it grows less and less effective in attacking, meaning less dice to attack with. I'm OK with that right now, but I'm still considering if this is the approach I want to take.

I may revert to the approach of Chaos Wars and represent units as multiple figures - so it will look like a 1:1 game, although troops on troops will still be adjudicated at a 10:1 scale. I'm not sure yet.

II. Magic and the different classes. At first, I was struggling with how to interpret the various bonuses and minuses from the gear that the inhabitants of Hommlet and Moathouse have with them. Through testing, we agreed to use the approach from "Compleat Chainmail" - if the defender (against ranged or melee) has magic armor, attackers remove a die from their roll. If attackers have a magic weapon, they add a die to their roll. This worked well for a convention game approach.

I also had to dig through OD&D history, original booklets, supplements and the Strategic Review articles to fill the rules and approaches for things in T1 that don't come in OD&D/Chainmail as written. Things like how to implement Elmo the Ranger (riff off the Ranger article from Strategic Review Vol 1, #3), the Druid Brother Smythe and his spells (look at Supplement III, Eldritch Wizardry), how does Lareth's Staff of Striking work in the Chainmail combat rules (riff off of AD&D/DMG description of the staff and have the player opt to improve a hit to be two or three, while spending charges).

That was a fun exercise in looking at how iconic classes were built, and how AD&D was still a similar game to OD&D in that you could easily use magic items from one in the other.

III. Crossbowmen are murder! The basic scenario has the Forces of Woe at the Moathouse, prepared with full knowledge of the approach of the Forces of Weal. This means that logically, the ranged forces are going to be on the ramparts, ready to shoot down any who approach. It's a sound tactic, used effectively through history. In the first game, I had written down the wrong range for crossbows, using the heavy crossbow range of 24" versus the actual range of 18". I also had two figures of crossbow units on the ramparts, to represent the 20 Guards of the New Master.

Had we run with the rule of multiple dice x FC of troop units versus single characters, I doubt that many would have survived the approach!

In the second game, I reduced the number of New Guards with crossbow to 10 soldiers (1 figure) only, but even with that, they murdered the approaching forces of Weal - taking out both single figures of mercenary bow and militia bow, then the elderly farmer captain armed with a crossbow.

The one factor in both situations was that the crossbowman had cover on the Moathouse's ramparts while the forces of Weal were out in the open.

I have a solution that is tied to the description of the terrain around the Moathouse.

A scrub of thorns, thistles, weeds, and shrubs grows thickly along the edge of the track which leads to the ruins, and even the track is mostly overgrown and cluttered with fallen branches and trees.
...
After two miles of distance, the land begins to sink and become baggy, as the track turns more northerly, and tall marsh plants grow thickly where cattails and tamaracks do not. Off to the left can be seen the jagged silhouette of the moathouse.
...
The bogs here stink, and the vegetation appears dense and prolific, but somehow sickly and unhealthy, creepers and vines throwing their strangling loops over the skeletons of dead saplings and living bushes alike. The rushes and cattails rustle and bend even when only a slight zephyr blows over the marsh, and weird bird calls, croakings, and other unwholesome sounds come faintly across the fen.

I had been saying that the only place where normal movement can happen is on the path/track to the moathouse. If you go off-road, you are in that thick scrub and vegetation, therefore you move at half movement. My fix here is to give anyone in the weeds the benefit of cover as well.

So it's a tough choice, go slow and with benefit of cover, or go fast and possibly get cut down. I think this is a good tactical choice, so I will leave the forces as-is, and playtest this approach.

Plus, I get to make more terrain! Scatter terrain to represent the bog/swamp around the moat.

There are a lot of other lessons and tweaks from the play-test, but these are big ones. I'm really glad I did the testing, it's going to make my Greyhawk game that much better.

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Researching Greyhawk is interesting for me, because it's such hallowed, well-trodden ground in D&D lore. The Battle of Emridy Meadows and the Temple of Elemental Evil are well-known and beloved. This has led me to approach this scenario with a lot more preparation and thought than I normally do with my "plan a little, play a lot" approach. 

I want players to "feel" like this is OD&D/Chainmail and that the game is accurate, for the most part, to how T1 - Village of Hommlet sets things up. Judging by how my testers reacted, they weren't all that familiar with Greyhawk, but they enjoyed the experience. So I'm hopeful!

As a reminder, if you want to see what I'm doing, here are links to my documents on Google Drive:

Rules - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zLoQ7Kks-uv_-OJKmfHmeiYdvpm1NLaBNEPOpYAQQGA

Order of Battle - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jB3d_lzssqH4kcHi0vh3fvMOct8wMdIj1UqCcV-1XWc

[1] I blame Daniel Collins (of Delta's D&D Blog) for converting me to the view that many of the 'single person versus an army' fantasy scenes are just really unrealistic. I feel like it's a better game when I keep that in mind and take that approach. 

A Fear Of Flying They Call It

Image in Public Domain.

Being the easily impressionable student that I am, I decided to take on the collegiate tradition of studying abroad. It's a common cliche to hear alumni gush about how studying abroad changed their life, and will change yours, too. The salesmen sure know how to pitch, but I can't say I was completely sold.



I study Spanish, by the way. No, it didn't come out of a great passion for the language, or anything noble like that. In my freshman year of high school I had to select two electives. I chose Spanish and Wood Shop, since they seemed to be the easiest grades. Sure enough, they were. I intended to stay for only two years in Spanish, but stayed longer for the fiestas. Yes, I'm sleazy.

A few scholarships later, I found myself at the airport, ready to go. Well, not so ready. My proficiency in Spanish was crap. I'd only taken a cursory glance at the map, so I getting lost was inevitable. My destination was Santander, Spain. A city I'd never heard of before.

The luxurious plane trip did well to calm my nerves. I have always been pensive about flying, having heard the stories of cramped seats, crowded bathrooms, and crappy airplane food. I didn't worry too much about airsickness (since I'm not prone to vomiting), but I grasped my sick bag should Pazuzu suddenly feel the urge to possess me. I expected lifting off to be like riding on a roller coaster (did I forget mention I don't like those?) yet flying through the air hardly felt any different that riding in a car. Better even. My fears about airplanes were assuaged halfway between the in-flight movie and risotto. This was the Blackjack of Setzer Gabbani. Yet, alas, no flight lasts forever.

In the book of Exodus, Moses names his first son with Zipporah, "Gershon", while in exile from Egyptian royalty. In Hebrew, "Gershon" means "stranger in a strange land." In Spain, I thought my name was "Gershon", but in Spain, my name was "mud."

My problems started as soon as I landed in the Madrid airport. The place was a labyrinth and with no David Bowie to guide me, either. After studiously running around in circles for about two and a half hours, I finally found my plane...just about to take off! The flight crew had to stop the departure for me to get on. I scrambled into my seat, sweaty, delirious, and paranoid.

I took a taxi to my host mother's apartment, knowing my habit for getting lost. The Spanish was mostly basic, "Hola", "¿Que tal?", "Estoy bien", etc. I think those cheap formalities would've sufficed, but I overreached my hand and chewed off more than I could swallow. She gave me a slightly confused look. To this day, I wonder what it was that I said. A cat named Rita also lived there. Cats speak the same language in Spain.

I soon had to meet up with my classmates at "Ayuntamiento" which is Spanish for "town hall." I stepped into the streets nervously, my hands jammed into my pockets for fear of thieves. I tried desperately not to look a tourist, but that veneer faded as soon as I brought out my map of the city. I was lost for two hours. A fat lot of good the map did. At the end of my struggle, I gave in and searched out a taxi, but the cab driver nearly laughed me out the vehicle. It turns out that Ayuntamiento was only a few minutes away.

The next day was hardly any better. Classes began at 8:30, so I woke up at 6:00, knowing that there would be a long walk ahead of me. The school was somewhere on the other side of the city, and I had no idea what it looked like. I figured at the time that a university would be easy to spot. Well, you know what they say about assumptions.

The trek was tiring, to say the least. It often had me going uphill through the various neighborhoods and alleyways. I recalled watching The Flash on the plane. How I would've loved to have had Barry Allen's super-speed at the time. Though if I did, I might've missed out on many of the aesthetics. The shops and dwellings of Santander were melded to fit into the rising landscape. Laundry hung on clotheslines outside of the windows, while pigeons scurried on the grounds, pecking for bread crumbs. By the orange hues of sunrise, it all looked at times as if I had wandered into a painting. Though I doubt if a late student would get extra credit for cultural appreciation.

La Universidad de Cantabria was far smaller than I had anticipated, though I suppose that was for the best. If it had been any larger, I'd probably get lost there, too. The university, small though it was, would become something of a second home for me. The think with relish on the countless hours I would spend outside of the cafeteria, listening to quirky stories NPR, memorizing Spanish vocabulary, or eating what was left of my pig liver sandwich.

Perhaps it was the Sea of Cantabria that kept me (relatively) sane throughout all of that initial madness. My host mother had an apartment near the sea, so it sort of functioned as my North Star. I need only know where the sea is, and I'd (eventually) find my way home. It was a great, wide blue that glittered in the sunlight, its waves licking the shore.

I suppose there's something poetic in the sea, though I can't tell you exactly what it is.

Double CoC Play-test For Barbarossa

4 new terrain boards for Mark, 12 feet of canal!

 Spent a terrific day in the company of Mr Freeth and Mr Waple playing a couple of games of Eastern Front CoC in preparation for Mark's forthcoming Barbarossa Big CoC weekends at the WHC later this year, although the first one is only a month away! I still have a few bits and bobs to finish before then (a bit more Soviet infantry and 4 x T26s) but all is in hand.
One of the things we wanted for these games was a canal board - these will also do perfectly for planned France/Belgium/Holland 1940 games, not to mention Holland/Belgium 1944- Mr Waple is also keen to incorporate them into a Carentan scenario. They will also do fine for Mark's massive 20mm set-up.
So, over Christmas I made 12' of canal...that's it really! They had to be on a 12mm ply base to match with the existing boards, so I routed out the channel and some ditches, then built up the towpaths with a further layer of 9mm MDF. The water was just painted brown and then resin poured- I'll have to do a further post really to give a bit more detail- suffice to say I have a little more fine tuning to do on them to match them to Mark's boards, but overall they have turned out ok.  I'm well pleased.

Boards laid out for the game, some new-ish fields in the foreground

 We laid out terrain for a normal CoC scenario, a straightforward 1941 game with a 4 section German platoon with 2 Senior Leaders and a 50mm mortar attacking over the canal against a big 4 section early war Soviet platoon, with their massive sections and a senior leader and an inferior SL + a 50mm mortar. It was an attack /defend scenario, with the Germans having a generous 12 support points and the Soviets 7.
The Germans took a Stug III A (6 points), an Ig18 (4 points) and a preliminary barrage (2 points). The Russian picks (I think) were a BT5 (4 points) and 3 entrenchments (1 point each). Given that the buildings, although numerous, were all flimsy wooden ones only giving light cover the trenches were a wise choice for the Russians. For the Germans, my logic was the Stug is a hefty beast, solid in all departments with both good defensive options and  high offensive capability against both soft targets and any Soviet armour which might appear. The Ig18 gives another 75mm gun with which to hammer the Russians from range, this, in conjunction with the Stug should make it easy. The barrage was a nice bit of icing on the cake to hinder the Soviet deployment.
We played on a 6' x 6' (although we set up a bit more to make the pictures pretty 

The patrol phase for game 1 from the German side. Fields by Hotz matts

 So, onto the 1st game-FM was German 10 - Russians 9. The patrol phase was straightforward enough, The Germans only got a single free move which was disappointing, so we ended up with 2 fairly uniform straight lines across the centre of the table,. It meant the Germans got 3 Jump off points, 2 about 2' in, 1 to the right of the road, behind the barn 1 to the left of the road back behind the rise, and 1 way off to the right. The Soviets dropped all 3 of theirs right back down to their baseline, spread out uniformly giving them access to the ditch and buildings on their side of the canal.

Stug moves up the main road, buildings from Scenic Store pimped by my good self at CAC Terrain

So the German plan was simple enough, batter away with the Stug and the infantry gun from range, then strengthen with the infantry...Didn't quite work out like that.

Both sides were a bit cagey, I got the Stug on early and pushed up the road, the Soviets did very little, and both sides accumulated CoC dice points, as the Stug drew level with the barn, I deployed an infantry section to advance tactically with it, and perhaps draw some fire. They did. 2 Soviet sections deployed in the house by the bridge and in the ditches and opened fire...despite being tactical the big Soviet squads were putting out a lot of fire (more than a German squad) 17 dice iirc, and the german section took a few hits which mounted up fast. There was very little room to deploy another section to put down covering fire, and although the Stug hit back with HE because it lacked an mg it couldn't cover the infantry. Then a BT5 hove into view on the other side of the bridge. The Stug had to redeploy in order to get the BT in its sights (no turret...grrrr). The Russian infantry could carry on firing unmolested. A brief duel took place between the armour, with eventually the Stug coming off best - the BT's main armament getting Ko'd. It scuttled off and reversed behind the house.

 Meantime the Soviets got a couple of double turns, and the German section took more hits, including the Junior leader! he took a round right between the eyes. The German FM took a hit, and the firepower of the Stug just wasn't proving enough to do major damage to the dug in Russians.  

The Stug is given support in the assault on the Bridge. Really excellent rubber cobbled road sections from EWM

 Time for the Germans to up the ante, there now was room for the ig18 to come into play alongside the Stug, 2 x 75mm guns should do a bit more damage, they pounded away for a few phases, but it meant the concentrated fire of 2 sections now went against the little infantry gun...The Russians were simply rolling a lot more dice than the Germans, the casualties began to mount...the gun became pinned, then the JL commanding the gun was wounded- more FM loss, then he's hit again and killed- the gun breaks and the Russians sneakily end the turn with a judicious CoC dice. German FM at this point is 3....not great.

A 75mm Ig18 gives additional fire support. What could go wrong? All models by Warlord, Painted by me!

At this point I decided to call it. The Germans were not going to get over that bridge. Yes, they could plink away with the Stug but it was frankly going to take an age for anything much to happen, and if I deployed any infantry to up the firepower, any BTH roll could be fatal. It was still early in the day and we could get another game in.

Soviet infantry hunker down in the ditch and pour fire into the advancing Germans

 For speed, and rather than re-set terrain we decided to simply re-play the scenario, this time gifting the Germans an extra 2 support points, for a total of 14.
And this is where it all got interesting.
In many rule-sets simply replaying the same scenario with essentially the same forces would result in pretty much the same game, particularly in a scenario like an attack on clearly defined defence line. This is not what happened at all.
FM rolls went German 11 Russian 9- In the patrol phase the Germans got 2 free moves, but it played out fairly similarly however, this time the Germans got a bit further forward, getting a JOP behind the bomb-damaged building on the left.
For the Germans the support picks were very different.I took 2 x Pzr II's at 5 points each and an observer for a mortar battery. The Russians, it transpired swapped it about a bit - A BT (4) and an ATR (2) and a trench.
No hanging about this time, I quickly got on both Pzr II's and they advanced up the road, leapfrogging with one on over-watch as the other advanced, I got a section way out on the right which advanced in the lee of a rise, heading for some hedges. The FO got into the barn next to the road with a good view of the Russian left- any of them popping up to attack the German section there would get pounded by the 81mm battery.
It more or less (ok, less) went like clockwork. The Russians deployed the BT in a cunning spot where it could fire down the road but couldn't be spotted by the second Pzr II which by now was crunching through the gardens on the German left. A little duel ensued with both tanks dealing shock, with little result. As the second Pzr II advanced in order to get a view of the BT5 up popped the ATR in the ditch! it fired! CLANG! the Pzr II ground to a halt- immobilised

Game 2: A different approach, armour heavy, 2 x panzer II's leapfrog up route 1. An infantry section swings right in the distance

I quickly deployed a German section who could put fire down on the ATR, This combined with fire from the Pzr upset the ATR but couldn't get a decisive hit- the ATR fired again- this time disorientating the Pzr's gunner- no activation next phase- it was getting very tense- the BT kept firing at the other Panzer, and scores a winning hit- the Panzer is knocked out but the crew escape- things are looking bad for the Germans yet again.

Finally, the Germans get some hits...a Soviet section has deployed along the river to fire on the Germans hitting the ATR, A firefight ensues, the Germans lose an entire LMG team, The ATR goes down in a hail of cannon fire from the stranded panzer, both FM's are starting to trickle down. The Russians have opened up on their left and are duly met with a brutal mortar barrage, the Russians end the turn, but hadn't realised the Germans held a dice to continue the barrage- The Russians play a second CoC dice and the turn ends but not before the barrage gets a a couple of lucky kills on the Russians.

Infantry attempt to build a base of fire on the left flank. 

 The Germans are trading fire on both flanks,using a mix of covering fire and LMG fire
 on the Russians, the ability of the Germans to use individual teams paying off in the face of the sledgehammer Russian sections. A couple of Soviet  leaders get wounded, the little panzer pouring in cannon fire onto the infantry- finally with yet another Coc dice the BT advances, interrupts and fires on the PanzerII- it misses!
The little German mortar keeps chipping in with the odd hit on the guys in the ditch. The Germans are winning the firefight.

The lead Panzer II dukes it out with the BT5 over the canal while the mortar barrage pounds the Soviet infantry on the right. Bridge is a Sarissa kit.

The Panzer now has a shot at the BT...gets 3 hits- zero saves from the Russians- BOOM! the Russian tank is burning, their FM plummeting. This leaves the panzer free to keep firing at the dwindling section to its front, The FO manages to call in the mortars for a second time which again start to hit the left flank Russians...A brutal lucky hit clobbers a couple more Russians including the JL. and the Russians break- BTH and the suddenly their FM is at zero.....the Germans have done it!
Great fun, a fine time was had by all.
BUT...what really got me thinking was how different the 2 games were. They were both exciting, they both had their moments of tension, but both sides employed similar forces and tactics for both games..yet they were totally different.
It could have been the first game where the power of the Stug prevailed, it could have been that the German mortars had no effect, The BT might have one-shotted the second Panzer...there were a lot of possibilities, and it shows why CoC is such an intriguing game.
Can't wait for the Barborrossa big CoC campaign week-end where the canal will double up as the Kharkov river at some point. In my crystal ball I foresee T34's...and a Soviet counter-attack!

Game 1:Whats left of the first German section cower behind a house, letting the Stug do the work