New Blood.

Managed to get a game out of my new Kislev proxies. Introduced two chaps to the old school warhammer with pared back rules to serve as an introduction to the game. We did basic psychology, which I decided was test to see if they run away. No modifiers or what ifs, just dead simple. The idea is that I ease these two new chaps slowly into the rule sets I use for mass gaming. So I said to them, “if 50% of your chaps in a unit die in one turn, then they test to see if they run away. If in a combat, the side who has more deaths tests to see if they run away. That’s it.

We went through basic shooting, move and manoeuvre, and combat.

The forces I gave the newbies are just a foot troop type, a missile troop type, a cavalry and a simple war machine. Each newbie had the above and the experienced players had a slightly more complex human force (galloper guns/ two types of cavalry, for instance) and played the side being ambushed. The ambushed side is really up against it in this scenario, the road down the centre is the line of travel. The imperial marching column must escort the dwarf pony pulling treasure off the table, heading for the roads end in between the two trees. The mercenaries must catch up and aid this effort from the opposite board edge before the marching column is overrun. The Orcs get to deploy second and go first, it is an ambush after all. The objective being for the orcs to have uncontested control of the pony for one turn and sack it, possibly eating the pony later!

The whole game would last no more than 6 turns so that everyone could get a good game completed in an evening and have a very bloody time of it. It certainly would be bloody in the end as on turn 6 two giants arrive in the hills to eat up the remaining imperials. Time is not an ally this day.

The opening moves from the orcs did not go well, many tests on animosity failed. Everyone enjoyed that part of the game, so I made a mental note that narrative was going to be a theme for them going forward.

The Uruk hai siege ballista’s and Morranon orc bolt throwers made a devastating salvo upon the marching column. Soooo many Zweihanders and missile troops died instantly!

The imperials tried to manoeuvre to block access points to the treasure and allow the pony to make a dash for the road exit!

The mercenaries managed to blunder their manoeuvres and slow their own advance by being stuck behind the dwarf slayers. Oh dear.
The newbies picked up fast cavalry principles very quickly and placed the Warg riders in very annoying positions on turn 3 and made a dash for the pony. Luckily, the artillery started to misfire and blow themselves up which was quite a relief for my imperials!

The Knights of Saint George made a dash along the right side of the valley to attempt to clear the enemy troops from the pony, while the valiant halberdiers did Stirling work on the left of the valley. Alas the knights could not push forward far enough and the pony was contacted by the wargs! My only hope was the mercenaries would push forward and aid the halberdiers to free them up so the halberds could do their bloody work on the wargs before they could eat Bill the pony!

Those cunning newbies placed a unit of pike man in front of the hussars, the newbie chap in charge of the hussars charged the pikes head on………

It was carnage. My rules regarding pikes is if they have not march moved, or charged, then they are ‘in formation’ which confers certain benefits. +1 strength against charging infantry, +2 if the chargers are cavalry or large monsters. And they get to fight in 4 ranks. They also get to attack first even against chargers. As would happen with real pikes!
The only times this does not apply is if the Enemy charge is in the flank or rear of the pikes or the pikeman are not ‘in formation’. In which case the beleaguered pike are using swords only! With no rank bonuses!
The zweihander great swords can force pikes to be out of formation by lucky rolling in combat. The great swords negate the pikes attacking first and force simultaneous combat with the zweihanders rolling first to check if modifiers come into play. If the great swords win the combat then the pikes are no longer ‘in formation’ (leaving them open for a cavalry more up). Any 6’s rolled by the greatswordsman in hitting the pikes, negates a pike rank bonus down to the minimum front rank. So if 6 zweihanders attack the pikes and roll two 6’s, then the pikes originally fighting in 4 ranks can only fight back in two ranks as the two 6’s negate two of the pikes rank bonuses. 

This was of no use however, as the Zweihander greatswords were basically dead, and nowhere near the pikes.

The Hussars charged, died, and ran away. The narrative attached to these special weapons really helped the game along for my players as they had just seen the devestaing nature of cavalry charges with my knights of Saint George.

The Mercenaries failure meant an orc success in turn 5. We carried on playing for the funsies and some Kislev horse archers did magic works and then everyone ran away when the giants arrived. I used the Giants as a way to gently hint at what is in order for next time should the players wish to play again and build on their knowledge of the game so far.

They said they would like to play again! Someday I will have a full 6 local players for the mega game ideal.

Great Fun, keep those newbies coming!

The mission: get in, grab the hobbits and make your escape in the car.

She is really switching on to narrative play. The game can go hang for all she cares, she just wants a story and to find random magical stuff on the way. I’ve had props brought in for her, she found a wand, magic gloves, a magic ring and a few tiny glass bottles that are magic potions. She’s not found them all at once of course, she’s built up these collections over many linked missions. But beware! If you set a precedent be prepared to maintain or ween them off it. I didn’t have a little prop at the end of the last mission, there was tears. She needs to learn though so I didn’t cave in and give her something but tears was there none the less. She is still very young.

she has taken to involving herself more and more in the narrative as it’s happening. She pipes up often, ‘oh dad this monster makes a grumbling sound because he ate a magic……..and we kill him cut him open and take the magic thing.’ I’ve been reading her red riding hood. She’s taken some lessons from it.

the top of the glass vials have the tiniest of screw eyes in the cork stopper. No more than 2mm rings. She pulls one out and shouts excitedly “it’s got a key to something!!! Must be a door!” Yes says I, and we don’t know what door it is, we will have to keep searching for this special door and found out what lurks behind it.

Must be something special.

Well done to that little imagination I say. Onwards to the next quest to save Arundel for queen Elsa.

The eldest has decided she doesn’t like dungeon games, she prefers no threat bored games like Catan, chess, ticket to ride, genius star and the like.
Well, I’m proud she game dungeon crawling a go and I can definitely play board games with her. I like a good board game, Catan is very good.

The new Heroquest is proving immensely popular with the young people. They get it intuitively. The minis are attractive for their tastes. The board is a full inch squares so my dungeon saga bases fit on them perfectly so that’s fun!

Some adult newbies have enjoyed a hybrid Heroquest of old 80’s cards, minis and gaming components with modern game board, dungeon furniture and doors. Again because it is intuitively easy board game for people to ‘get it’ and it’s familiar in a board game format so not intimidating. Makes a perfect entry point to then Segway into D-Saga for those that find even the saga a big jump from snakes and ladders. Very well designed game for bringing newbies in, even after all these years.

I really like dungeon saga. I have had some great fun with that game and introduced a couple dozen people (including kids) to gaming through it.

It has had some issues with the adventurers companion for sure. Didn’t work very well when it came to campaign mode, co-op mode or any kind of automated overlord. With a bit of kicking and bashing however, it was perfectly adequate to the task of deeper games. Shame there was no search function built in but again that is easily solved with a bit of overlord ingenuity and a deck of cards that had been adjusted for such a purpose.

You could also go head to head with extra overlord decks and both sides have minions to use! Brilliant fun.

The main problems for me was length of set up time once doors are opened. While the tiles have almost endless variation to play games on the one hand, they can be tedious to construct on the fly. A bit of pre game organisation helps, having the entire mission set up but unpopulated helps more. You are getting closer to losing that mystery element however. But it never seemed a problem as long as the adventurers did not know where they had to go and what was populating the map that had been created. So a pre set up dungeon didn’t seem to detract anything.

Another factor was the tiles would shift around, a lot. Well a black non slip mat solved that instantly. Even added to the experience as the black background made the map really show up!

The tiles were improved by buying several sets second hand of the return of valandor and abyss expansions. This created a uniform tile pattern that did not distract from the miniatures and 3D terrain. it was visually simpler and aided gameplay as players stopped asking ‘where is what here Jason?’ The varied visual elements distracted and boggled some new players eye. The uniform valandor/abyss tiles did not. You have to be able to see your playing pieces after all!

The rules were excellent but newbies still found it slightly boggling so a paring back was still necessary. Easily accommodated but not so for the wizard who was perplexing for all my new players.

Finally many people introduced to the game have been woman and wanted a female version of x y or z core character. Some chaps wanted a male version of madriga, this is all so they could take ownership of their character and play them as if they were the character! I made up some character cards that had the names blanked out and been laminated so dry wipe pens can be used to name them and keep track of certain heroic deeds! I also made some alternate miniatures from other companies that were put onto dungeon saga bases to act as proxy for the core male characters.

Now I should state here that I am very aware that the expansions have plenty of female characters. My players (almost to a person!) did not want to abandon the first characters they used. They wanted the barbarian again in the green menace expansion and in the abyssal expansion etc! So a female Orlaf has been used throughout allll the missions because that player has ownership of that character they created and doesn’t want to start again. A lot of dungeon mastering was needed to adjust for this and not always successfully!

So you can see what I want from a new version of DS. In comes Origins campaign!

So what is it claiming to have addressed?

The signs so far are positive for me! Individual trays containing all components for the mission. Quick setup with larger clearer tiles.

Pared back rules, but proof will be in playing for me. I can’t visualise exactly how my players will respond so I need to test it out. Point is that Mantic are addressing it directly and that is encouraging.

A claim for a slick automated overlord and co-op mode, again is a good claim and I hope it bears fruit, in game.

A search function with wandering monsters! Yes yes yes!

Keeping a narrower focus on providing only the base game. I’m divided here, I want the improved adventurers companion. That’s what we reallly want, with female versions of the base generic characters. This is spoken of in humming and aaaahhing tones for a future release. Renton has given his reasons and they seem very reasonable from a company point of view. I do not know much of company pressures however and will just take his word on it. Other companies seem to be able to add an expansion covering this stuff quite readily so a small doubt is in my mind and I fear Mantic will never do it.

The origin miniatures are larger, annoying but not insurmountable as they are the same scale as the eye of the abyss expansion which are just fine. As I say, annoying, but not insurmountable or truly bothersome. The new poses are looking a little expansive now, getting the modern problem at wanting an individual action pose for everything and creating visual chaos in the whole. I like simple miniatures, they are playing pieces after all, and I need to recognise them at a glance. Original DS had it nailed. This one will have to be seen in action to convince me.

Now the round bases will be cut off in the immediate, devilish bastard things. But I understand why they’ve done it as it creates more options for their sculpting, even if I don’t think it needs it, as the simpler minis are superb for the task. As an aside I really don’t understand the modern desire for every miniature to be in a state of mid action manga pose of its own!? It really creates problems during gameplay with fitting pieces together on the board and if you have to rank things? Well! Just put them in the bin before you burn them through frustration. I just don’t like the visual chaos that ensues from the many many poses all together and disjointed from other playing pieces. Add overcomplicated dungeon tiles to the mix and you can get a mild migraine from the strain. A little hyperbolic perhaps but not very much so.

They claim the rounds don’t create a problem with facings but I see a lot of the new miniatures are embigulated and overhanging the base! What will happen in combat with multiple opponents? Someone is going to have to juggle the pieces to fit. ‘Who was facing where? Oh I don’t remember.’ I hope I’m wrong in this concern.

So I’m backing the project in the hopes that there will be enough content in it that I can import to my older system, like the room tiles, the search function, new enemies and rapid intro play. I like the neoprene extras and screen. And the miniatures look like they will appeal to the modern kids aesthetic so plenty for the mites to paint up. I will be putting them on squares, I will be discarding those that do not fit the base. None of which is truly a complaint as the thing is cheap enough that I can afford to this.

I cannot shake off the feeling that what I really wanted was a reworked adventurers companion that had new missions, new dungeon tiles and a search deck. Could Chuck in some alt female/male characters for Rordin/Orlaf/Danor/Madriga and Mortibris. Perhaps some new dungeon features like an entry/exit spiral stairway. And a blank mission creater pad.

Could have thrown in a small beginners pamphlet for a pared back intro version. All my old stuff would then be relevant. All the new stuff would genuinely add to my collection. Mantic would have been able to put out its new red intro box for shops and newbies. Grognards like me would have our deeper adventurers companion. All for what seems less effort than what they’ve currently done.

I can only assume I don’t understand something fundamental to the current marketplace and the needs of Mantic as a company. I’m getting some of what I want and for a very small price, I’ll take it and shoehorn it in as best I can to my current sets.

Love to know others opinions on this though, please let me know. Have I missed anything out here? I love Mantic as a company and look forward to this Kickstarter. How can we returning players make the new offering work best for us?

All thoughts wanted!

As another extra aside, the old heroquest board works brilliantly for dungeon saga extras and a quick setup.

The new hasbro heroquest got one thing and one thing alone right. Female alternatives to core characters. Otherwise hasbro can shove it.

I was essentially a dungeon master. My demons were woefully outmatched and that was the point. My girls had to get there team of friends into the middle and defeat the demon monster to win the gold.

they needed all 4 of there friends in the middle in order to overpower this enemy! Elsa and Anna from frozen managed to beat the rest and get all 4 party members to the centre. They then rolled a dice to invoke the giant spirit dog to eat the demon so they can safely claim the treasure! They had to roll a 4/5/6 on the dice to do it. Victory belonged to Arandel!

along the way the girls learned about special abilities, if they managed to get within one space of a demon they could roll a dice. If their dice was higher than mine (demons) the demon was banished back to the beginning! After that they had some particularly special characters enter the board with ranged weapons that can defeat demons from 2 spaces away if they get a 5/6 on the dice! They decimated the abyssal horde.

the girls understood Ludo well, they immersed themselves fully in a narrative that was created on the fly, by them, as we played for 2 hours! They drove the gameplay and no prompting to continue was needed. It was all due to them taking ownership of their own miniatures they had painted. I had an opportunity to turn it up a couple notches using their own miniatures. One had a gun and came onto the board later on. It was a demon killing gun and introduced ranges and needing a specific number to succeed. Next was a magic user who could fight a demon with magic but the demon can fight back! So the dice was an opposed roll with victory given to the highest roller.

they are now very keen indeed to play again, and paint some more minis.

the hard but for me was swallowing my ego! I do wanted to have more balance and rules. It would have spoiled it for their early experiences. The narrative meant more. As did letting them show me how they wanted to have fun.

job well jobbed.

My youngest adores Frozen.
One of the things I have to do is get my desires, likes and ego out the way. I dislike frozen quite a lot. I dislike a great deal of the new wave disney.

She adores it and completely immerses herself as Elsa the ice and elemental sorceress.
I would love to get my girls playing games with me and the best way to do it is to meet them at their own enjoyments. So I painted up Elsa and Anna as best I could to match the films. Now I am the first to admit that it’s not a stellar job, I’m not very accomplished as a painter. My daughters imagination and enthusiasm has been fired up with my lane attempts so it is good enough. She wanted to paint a monster for her disney characters to combat in our dungeon so she happily painted a Dungeon saga Troll. She insisted he is red as he likes Jam. She also insisted that he had pooed himself. I think the results bear both these claims out.

Next up, get her rolling some dice in Mantic Dungeon Saga but a very paired back form. Well we will just be rolling dice with the highest number wins. Wins what you say? Anything she wants, I need it to be her game after all.

Nuiance and complexity can come later.

The miniatures are from hassle free and have been put on dungeon saga bases. One thing I did have to do was add green stuff to Elsa’s dress, it was cut very high indeed! A little over sexualised for my tastes, indeed most female minis I’ve come across have been massively over sexualised. The best I have come across are the Elf ‘Madriga’ in dungeon saga, some frostgrave female wizards  and some of the wiz kids female stuff for dungeons and dragons. I would like some more convincing female models that portray adventurous women in a bit more realistic manner, not always as muscular she hulks or scantily clad in a mischievous pose. Or some bloody minded combination of these!

Content for contents sake? Her be chickens and cats then! I have not been idle in this past couple years since I started this but have only had a couple things worth talking about. I was planning on waiting until it resembled something of a conclusive statement rather than this burble your about to get. Being a man who is sensitive to mob and individual pressure, including quietly rising to the bait of a man I’ve never met who is goading me, I submit my findings thus far: New players want easy. That’s it. They want to rock up with everything ready to go, next to nothing to learn, easy to track gameplay, few tokens and few mechanics. They want to have fast streamlined fun. Nuance and grit can be added a piece at a time with repeated games that are linked in a campaign sort of way. Players do not want pressure to join a cult, they do not want to be required to spend money. Most people just want to casually join in. Roleplay is lost on most people unless anchored to a physical ‘scene’ or game set up that is in front of them. Free movement freaks people out. They like counting squares. A paired back Dungeon saga fits the bill to all of the above, except on 2 points. It takes too long to set up once a door has been broken. The wizard has too much going on for a new player so should be someone experienced, which makes some new keen admirers of the occult of arts disappointed when they try the wizard and get perplexed. Now these points are very generic and some people take to it like ducks to water. People do tend to fall into two broad camps once gameplay is an established reality. Some want narrative character to a mission, almost to the point of random chaos at times. Some want a tactical chess play sort of scenario that they can credible-hulk their way through. A spectrum does exist between these two types but there are bulges in each camp rather than a bell curve. So far this can only be addressed with me ducking and diving as the dungeon master to alter gameplay to suit the majority of your players that have attended that evening. Even introducing people to like minded players rather than mixing the two. Anecdotes of failure: I tried to introduce my wife and sister to Warhammer. I used 6th edition skirmish rules to start a very small game. Same sort of size as Frostgrave. It did not get far before people were clearly not having fun. Comments of ‘this is slow’. ‘Why are we rolling again!?’ Then insults fly, questions of parentage are raised. Reminders that we all got 6 months last time and should calm the fuck down. Yes unfortunately Warhammer is not a good game for introducing newbies. I have failed on all attempts to introduce raw recruits. The only 2 times I have succeeded is where my newbies had developed from the D Saga, to Frostgrave, and are now intrigued by something a bit more crunchy and larger in aspect like lord of the rings battle games. They then are less intimidated by a small Warhammer game, say the old boxed game set in size is ok. Even in these circumstances people are merely more likely to tackle it rather than the smooth winning streaks that other games present. It seems there really is just better games out there for new candidates and a wider audience. Age has very little to do with it, the above applies to all ages it seems with clarity of rules being more important to older players than children who prefer narrative generally. Elsa and Anna from Disney frozen make great miniatures in a dungeon and my daughters are completely ‘IN’ the game so long as the threat is not high. A sin I must now admit. Boys tend to aggregate towards threat and Uber violence and girls to narrative intrigue with lower threat levels. WHO KNEW OR WOULD HAVE DARED GUESS THIS OUTCOME!!!? ? There is always an outlier mind. IP definitely helps massively. A familiar and loved IP helps engagement enormously. You don’t even need change dungeon saga at all, just swap the wizard for Elsa and the elves archer for Anna and call them those names. Onwards we go. Far mass games I am currently experimenting with leading people through lord of the rings skirmish

after the prep of D Saga and Frostgrave, with the outlook to giving War of the Ring a go as it’s a mass battle version of LOTR SBG. And should be only a minor step on in mechanics, rules and  length of play.

Watch this space, out of 25 people introduced 20 of them are still interested in playing D Saga. 10 are good with Frostgrave and LOTR, with the prospect of more joining them once the D Saga lot reach the same level. Only one has stepped onto mass battles, Sigh.

Onwards not backwards. Upwards not downwards. And always Twirling, TWIRLING! To FREEDOM!!!

“400 hits and 300 kills that’s a victory to me after turn two.”

This should be said in the most snivelling, annoyingly nasal way possible. This is the experience I had for many years visiting my local GW gaming clubs.

The vast majority of its members or players are very right brain competitive players. Competetition or tournament play, as I’ve heard it called. Min maxing, in it to win it, chess glory.

Dull. Dull dull dull. This is not to denigrate those chaps who are all over this kinda play, but your all insane to me whatever way I frame you.

You seem to want wargames chess, but the companies won’t let you do this fully as it could mean sales are finite. How many versions of chess could you sell? So instead ,it appears to me, an awesome mechanism has appeared to take people by the nose and walk them through the the land of sprues with their wallets open. As we all know, if you don’t own this flyer then you won’t be able to win. Next months releases is anti aircraft weapons teams. Now you can’t win without them. Familiar?

At core there is nothing wrong with the motivation behind winning. Becoming a chess master is no easy thing and it is a rigorous mental exercise.  I’m just not wired that way I think, but this is my feed so I’m allowed to be biased!

So what is it that attracted me to it at all? Why am I convinced my kids and mates will like it?

It was two salesman at GW. One in the 1990’s who captured a young lads imagination with an awesome Skelton warrior in the shop window. The 8 year old me had his neck nearly twisted off by his eyes snapping round to get a proper look “it’s Jason and the Argonauts Mum!”.

We went in and was introduced to a free mini. Hooked. They then introduced this young lad to a space warrior who was a warrior monk who took on a medieval knight rile and donned mechanised exo armour to fight space Orks and aliens in a holy crusade.

I nearly passed out.

The enthusiasm, visual spectacle and the narrative dragged me in.

Roll on 20 years and I’ve managed to convince a pal who, until now, had no interest in even going in the shop. He likes video games and the occasional board game but that’s the extent of it. I told him “you’ll have fun! There is no pressure to know anything about it, the chap will guide us through.”

I said this knowing his previous objections and concerns. Put concisely, the game is intimidating! Now your probably thinking, which game we talking about?! Well to the uninitiated all the dozens or hundreds of game workshop games over the years is known simply as ‘Warhammer’. Doesn’t matter if it’s future, fantasy, space ship, armada, Titans, mass battle, skirmish, cards or a weird variant of kerplunk. To them, it’s warhammer. And warhammer means: complex, loadsa stuff, loadsa rules, loadsa people who know better than you. And loads of fanatical individuals bearing down on you.

So I am rather pleased he is placing his trust in me! I had done my homework first, prepped the shop assistant before we came in, on a known quite day! Having previously met the GW store manager in question I already knew he was a nice fella who put sales second and fun first (It’s alright! He doesn’t work there anymore, so there’s no risk of upper management burning him in tyres, as an example to the other sales people of getting the priorities wrong).

We played 6th edition fantasy, my pal against me with the manager as GM. The figures are all painted, the scenery is excellent. The mood jovial and relaxed. All the rules are in the GM’s head and there’s nothing to think about except the fun of the game. It was a take and hold mission, my pal lost. But he lost while laughing. He then committed to spending £50 on the game off his own back. No prompting from the manager or me.

It should be bourn in mind the nature of the said wallet in question, it was dusty and came covered in locks and chains and, when prised open with the pocket crowbar, moths came out with the sighs of the long dead. So it was an omen to have him buy the game.

We got back to mine and opened his goodies. At first he was intrigued, then quite. 3 hours later we had assembled the miniatures and started to attempt a game, checking the rule book. A lot. With no scenery and a grey wasteland before us. He did not return to that game. He gave it to me in fact, saying “It’s not for me.”

But it was for him! Clearly. A man such as he is not impulsive. It was the effort involved afterwards that was the problem. For normal people it was just too much commitment to bring to a game. The fun for most ‘Normies’ is in the mood, the spectacle and the company.

I swore there and then that I would be trying again, but I would do the legwork. So first up as test, the Wife. We will have to see how that goes!……