Pointless Views: Historic Hills To Die On
October 25, 2019 by crew
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Good mornin’!
Förster!
*listening to @warzan describing the house activities* Am I in a different house? Dude, you are a bit excageratin… remind me never to buy a car from you XD Justin: “I have a cunning plan” *sudden urge to watch black adder* Royal Guard with Palpatine? In SW:L that is a deadly combo. Close to unstoppable with ordinary troops. 5 armies and 5 tables for maximum randomisation. But what system… Celtos? XD Blood Bowl? I have *no* clue Myths…. I couldn’t think of one local myth of sorts… we’re just to serious and dry for that nonsense 😉 Yes, Kickstarer (and… Read more »
The system could be practically any in a spec tournament
Sounded a bit like you’d like to keep it historical which is out of my field of expertise.
I’d like to keep it historical because that is clearly better ?
But kings of war is a fantasy game and it would work beautifully for the concept. Games with random elements I think would not be doable. Other than that I imagine most systems could be used
So…. Saga? 😉
@avernos What about Impetus? It covers 3000BC all the way to 1700AD.
Units are all diorama bases like KoW, different eras play differently, the rules are dead simple and gives you heaps of flexibility within a time period.
Egyptians
Greeks (Pick a War there were certainly enough of them)
Romans (Caesareans would work best since they loved to take a stab at their fellow Romans)
Feudal (Again plenty to pick from)
Then you could either do some War of the Roses stuff or even cooler head across the Ocean and play some Sengoku Jidai Japanese during Tokugawa’s rise to power.
Impetus or any of the DBX systems would work.
Or To the strongest maybe?
FoW… as in Studio FoW that’s doing the game Subverse and not the agonizingly tiny fighting forces in particularly drab colors? I’ll take a special code for them any day.
@warzan look up Stanley Meyer he made a 100% working Water Fueled Car in the 90’s. It got so popular the US Military sent a Colonel out to help him, unfortunately it went nowhere because he just up and died for no reason while screaming “Help I’ve been poisoned”. But hey it’s great when the US Military gets involved in your business that never ends with you getting two in the back of the head and a tragic suicide note. I can tie your Myths with your Bible Wars with your Americas. St. Thomas the Apostle is said to have… Read more »
good morning. on the spec games does it have to be a mass battle game? would skirish level be just as challenging but with less resources(minis) needed also would tend to be shorter games and easier to reset between games? also if you have 5 armies and 5 boards would show the tactile flexibility of the players more than a single army. i have seen kickstarter lately as either a exclusive single buyin to a game/system or a preorder/ early access platform to get stuff before general public. as the smaller projects get overshadowed. as for myths and legends. only… Read more »
Mass battle would actually be easier to reset. Moving 10 trays instead of 50 or 100 minis. Not sure if skirmish would work. Theoretically any system should but most infantry skirmish terrain isn’t as big an imposition for movement. At which point it would come down to the ruleset. The point we were talking about in the old thread that I failed to get across wasn’t about subsumption of myth by cultures. We were asking why games designers rarely move outside of a narrow band for their games and backgrounds. There is a much greater depth of history out there… Read more »
Not the ‘skirmish’ as abused by GW which has armies of 50+ minis, but the ‘small team’ type with a dozen models max.
WarCry instead of AoS
Killteam instead of 40k
As far as Crowdfunding Bible Wars goes, could one of the platforms allow a two stage process? Each stage would have distinctly separate deliverables, so no problem, hopefully, with breaking “can’t re-run a project” rules. Stage One: Design Includes playtested PDF rulebook, 3D renders and sculps of minis and any other components. Backers would receive the files as deliverables from the project. Stage Two: Production Physical version of the output from Stage One. Backers would receive the physical versions. No big set of stretch goals, which some might find refreshing. What you get is well defined after Stage One. The… Read more »
That is quite a sensible way to approach a project like this.
Would make for an interesting test of the Kick-starter ‘mentality’
The news story on bbc reminds me of blackadder the third… that sausage is very suspicious…
lol
The last crowd funding attempt I can think of that fitted with Warren’s idea of what crowd funding should be about was Rick Priestly’s Gates of Antares – and that didn’t go very well because as Gerry says “people are the worst”. Aliens, oh, aliens. If aliens really do exist and we are being visited by little green beings, well they really are a bunch of c**ts. If you had the technology to travel across space, anally probe thousands of Americans and avoid the millions and millions of mobile cameras we call phones, surely, you would do something when you… Read more »
As much as the HOR’s tickles every bone in my body… I think we will be over ruled on that. (Mind You OTTers have manage to stick – because Gerry is a C***t 😉 )
I refer to the others as ‘the wet ones’ and the ‘HOTTers’ 😉
“surely, you would do something when you see just how cruel we are to each other”
They do… that’s what the anal probing is all about 😛
LOL
There is a short story about Aliens arriving/revealing themselves and telling the humans that they should fix themselves or be eradicated. The humans get scared and manage to arrange world peace. Then the Aliens say : but we wanted you to be the ultimaate warrior race … so you failed the test. (the end) I don’t know who wrote it. It could have been Asimov, but I kind of doubt that. Like the Elder Gods in Chtulluh we should not assume that aliens have the same type of moral system as we do. We may be the equivalent of an… Read more »
Sorry, but a spec tournament IS all the same armies on ALL the same tables (thus the only difference is the players themselves). Changing armies and tables only works if all the players get to play all the armies/tables against each other (which is a LOT of games to try and fit in on one weekend. Naps is an interesting period where the three arms (Inf, Cav and Art) form an interesting rock, paper, scissors balance, so would be ideal for a spec tourney. HOWEVER it’s the rules where we have problems for any spec tournament. If you have 10… Read more »
So one is a SPEC Tournamanet while the other is… SPECish?? 😉
Well if you’re going to go for it, you’ve got to go all the way. Overthinking things (like will it be boring playing nine games with the same armies on the same table?), can lead to things being overcomplicated. You probably need to think of things along the lines of a chess tournament, where it’s the opponent that makes the difference, and their tactics that mixes up things on the table. As you’d probably only have an hour for each game, perhaps you might want to find a chess club and see if you can “borrow” their chess clocks to… Read more »
Looking like Kings of War might be our system here then @avernos it still uses the chess clock system right?
Well there’s Kings of War Historical, so the period is open to anything. Issue is, can you still get a game done in about an hour?
Yep still works in 3rd the same way you can literally set your time and points values, so if you want an hour game drop to 800ish points and 30 mins per player.
Another option might be to try the Perry’s Travel Battle Box set?
https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_62&products_id=3637&osCsid=j06cl6pdutitioklh39i47uii4
This is probably the best way to do things (with the least amount of hassle), and no painting required (unless players want to go mad afterwards and paint them all up.
I’m waiting on a load of standees arriving from a new company and if they’re any good then I’ll be grabbing napoleonics, which could be interesting.
This sounds interesting must sure to keep us good Water folk informed of these Standees
As soon as they land expect spamming as it works out at half the price of minis
Is that WoFun games by any chance? Am waiting for my naps pledge to come thru currently so I can send pics when it lands…
It is. I saw Leon’s unboxing of AWI and it looks exactly as I hoped so. Can’t wait.
Lads this is a cracker and it just the pick me up I needed this week. Cheers!
Solar roads I France and China, nice idea, but so is a halfing war g0d.
One game based heavily on Celtic myths (among others) is Darklands by Mierce Miniatures. It has a small but committed fanbase and doesn’t ever seem to get a wider audience. Is its lack of growth that the minis are expensive (BLOODY LOVELY by the way) or that the myths aren’t so well known? As someone raised on the better-known myths you’ve discussed there’s a research element to getting my head round Darklands, where I can pick up Thor, some giants and trolls and know right where I stand. There’s a lot to be said for gaming lesser-known cultures and mythologies,… Read more »
I would suggest price is a major factor and the fact that they are massive lumps of resin, which can be intimidating for many… plus there might still be a bit of baggage with Mierce from the days of Maelstorm Games, wargamers are like Dwarfs with their books of grudges.
Yeah I piss money up the wall like it’s going out of fashion and even I blanched at the prices. Also I’ve not been near it in a while but it looked like the website was an 80s text adventure game all black with yellow text and unknowable reasons for not being able to go ye Dennis. So much so that I keep forgetting they have a game attached to it. Shame
Would love to see more games based on lesser known or less abundant myths n legends. But guess that’s the problem is they’re a harder sell despite the less uniqueness. It’s funny because I often specifically buy minis or games because they are different (especially minis!). For basing on smaller cultures and those with history – you also have to consider appropriation and making sure it’s not culturally offending (which adds time, effort and cost). There are some amazing Maori stories that offer all sorts of great ideas, but they’re not big on people using things without going through the… Read more »
I know @avernos suggested cut off the spec gaming at naps, but in order to get the armies done, what about army men? I was in smiths today and they had c100 50mm blokes in I believe 3 or possibly 4 colours for a tenner or so – I believe Poundland has army sets in I believe 4/5 colours as well that would get you enough replicas to create units. I did buy some medieval lads on a similar size a couple of years ago for lion rampart to save me having to paint from amazon. XXX rampant (either lion… Read more »
With the spec tournament, does each table have to be the same game?
If the goal is the test a gamer’s mettle. would testing your ability across say, five different games be a worthy challenge? Might be fun and would avoid the burn out aspect.
The ultimate spec game would be Stratego, wouldn’t it ? Two identical armies. Deployment is the only difference. This style of games is kind of boring, because I like the random/unknown aspect of not knowing what my opponent has. To me this is part of the fun and (IMHO) is part of the skills that the spec game format does not test. // Kickstarting ‘obscure’ projects : The idea is good, but it’s like demanding Hollywood make ‘better’ movies … There will be a few exceptions, but the vast majority will conform to the standard format. This is something that… Read more »
For the spec tournament why not use some of the osprey books, they are a good set of rules and cheap and easy games to get start. My thoughts would be ‘the men who would be kings’ the units for each nation can all be the same but each player could chose a nation to play as and build differently. Each game is around 24 pts so a max of 40 minis. And you can have a mix of regular, irregular, native, calvary and crewed units. The scenerios are also fun.
Nice one guy’s I think the five different tables as they will have to p!ay the terrain as well as the enemy differently on each setting.
KoW at Adepticon has a How You Use it Tourney where you switch armies every round.
“How You Use It tournament. This is a long standing standard at AdpetiCon. All armies stay at the table. Only you, the General, moves so each round you are commanding a new army. This is a great way to test your ability to lead whatever is in front of you.”
The problem for me with Kickstarts like that is I’ve become so cynical of the whole crowd funding idea. About half of the “one person starting from scratch” projects I’ve backed, after the short initial effort, have ended up with the creator disappearing and keeping the money. When the platform has no requirement for accountability, the only way for the creator to convince me to invest is to have either solid history of putting effort to previous projects or not to start from scratch but show the product in believable prototype stage.
I have to agree with @warzan regarding KS, it’s been taken over by the bigger companies who have the resources to fund a full prototype ready to go to market. They’re using KS as a pre-ordering system without taking the risk of going to retail. While this is kinda ok, it’s pushing out those whom KS was originally designed for. I don’t think someone who doesn’t have 3D miniatures/parts designed, all artwork in place with slick marketing would get a look in these days. There are too many companies who’ve modelled their business on and around utilising Kick Starter, and… Read more »