Cold Wars 2019

I attended Cold Wars this past weekend, another good time.  On Friday night, I ran The Dying of the Light, a Late Roman game using the Lion Rampant rules, that I had run previously at Fall In.  I think it went well again.  The Roman riparensis troops were not able to replicate the incredible stand that they had at Fall In - although they put up a tough fight, they were ultimately wiped out.

The various Goths and Gepids were able to wreak some havoc.  Interestingly, there was far more inter-barbarian conflict and diplomacy this time around.  As with the game at Fall In, there were a number of "NPC encounters," all played by Zeb Cook, including an officious bishop, an irate cow, and a traveling philosophy symposium, that contributed to the players travails.  The Slavs, after attacking a church and facing the determined opposition of irate monks decided to convert to Christianity and worked out a land-for-peace deal with the Roman Imperial Pretender.  The Huns were also bought off by the Loyalist Roman commander who remained behind walls of the city. 

The intra-Roman conflict was settled at the end of the game, when the Pretender used the remnants of the monks to trick their way into the city, bringing a plague cart along.  This gave the Pretender's troops access  and after a few turns of shoving, the issue was decided by a personal duel between the Pretender, played by Howard Whitehouse, and the Loyalist. It came down to a single hit margin but the Loyalist was killed.  Hail Domusalba Caesar!   It turned out to be a close score among most of the factions but the Hun King, played by Dale Zartman triumphed through a combination of ruthless pillage and even more ruthless tribute extraction.  We won an award in our time slot.

Saturday morning, I assisted Howard in a presentation to the new Game Design School.  The title of the presentation was "Mass Mayhem in Miniature: Running a gloriously entertaining convention game for vast numbers of complete strangers" in which we waxed poetical on the topic of how to run very large but very silly games at conventions.  The small but enthusiastic audience got to participate in brief sample game based on the conclusion of "Die Hard" called "It isn't Christmas until Hans Gruber Falls from Nakatomi Tower.  We didn't have the chance to take pictures at the presentation but here's some prep shots I took of the "table" for our sample game:

I also got the chance to play in the WWI aerial game that has been just about every HMGS convention that I can remember.  A simple yet very evocative rule system that captures the spirit of dogfights in the Great War.  

Saturday night, I played in a game Howard put on, using his newly-published, old-school-inspired rules, A Gentleman's War.  It utilized armies of ancient plastic flats that every boy who grew up in the '60s remembers from colorful ads in the back of comic books, such as these:

I remember as a 10-year old, being terribly disappointed when my set of 200 Romans arrived but played with them nonetheless.  With a good paint job, they are actually highly attractive figures:

It was a fun game with a determinedly "toy soldier" feel to it.

Aside from the games, there seemed to be a renewed energy in the whole convention.  The HMGS staff did an incredible job and have added to the experience.  This included a generous swag bag for Game Masters, pictured below, as well the free-beer-and-snacks reception at the Dealers' Hall Saturday afternoon.

The hotel formerly known as the Host, now the Wyndham Lancaster, has shown enormous improvements since Fall In.  The guest rooms as well as the gaming rooms appear to be completed and are light years ahead of where they were at Fall In.  The exteriors are still very much in construction mode.  As someone suggested, perhaps they are to give us the really immersive experience of walking through a battlefield.  Here's the scenic view of the pool area I had from my balcony.  However, the hotel really is coming along.

Finally, there were a number of great games being put on.  Here's some that caught my eye:

Some beautiful Sky Galleons of Mars ships in 28mm.

A very nice WWI trench board

An incredible Isandlwana game.

A VSF race in the NW Frontier

WWII Crete

Miles Ready's beautiful American Civil War board for his game on the sinking of the gunboat Tennessee.  This looked very fun and I'm sorry I missed it.

Fall-In 2018 AAR - The Dying of the Light Lion Rampant Game

I had an abbreviated attendance at Fall In this year, but did have a chance to run a Fall of the Roman Empire game using a slightly modified version of the Lion Rampant Rules.

The game was set in, of course, the Roman province of Ruritania, somewhere between the Battle of Adrianople and the 410 AD Sack of Rome by the Visigoths.  

Just a word about the conditions at the site of the convention, the Lancaster Host Resort (sic), which has been undergoing a seemingly perpetual refurbishment.   The main room usually used for gaming, the Distelfink ballroom, had been cut in half with the back end lit only by a string of work lights slung precariously from some nails and plugged into the overstuffed extension cord pictured above.  I joked that it was lucky I was running a Dark Ages game since the lighting was so appropriate - I think torches would have given better lighting.  Despite these challenges, my eight players were very engaged and seemed to have a good time and the game went by fairly smoothly with plenty of dramatic actions.

I had forces representing two factions of Goths, a group of Gepids, Huns, and Slavs.   The Goths and Gepids, above, began on the northern bank of the River Ister and had to find a way across.

The Huns, pictured above, and Slavs had crossed the river elsewhere and could charge into the heart of the Roman province.

The Slavs led by their incredibly distinguished warlord.  This was a figure of myself that I got from Minuteman Miniatures.

There were three Roman players: the limitanei given the thankless task of defending the riverine border from the barbarian hordes; the comitatenses "field army" that was ensconced in the provincial capital of Strelsona; and the army of a pretender to the Imperial throne who invaded the province on his way to the imperial capital at Ravenna.  The pretender and the field army commander were opponents to each other and went after each other, often to the exclusion of defending the province.

There were also a tribe of mercurial Sarmatian foederati, the Ruritanii from whom the province had received its name.  There mercurial nature was shown by a die roll at the beginning of each turn to determine which player controlled them for that turn. There were also "random encounters" on the board that could help or hinder the players once one of their units touched them.

I used the Lion Rampant rules for the game.  Given the large size of the table, I doubled the movement rates of units and increased missile ranges by 50%.  This seemed to give the game a good dynamic.  I also did not have a failed unit activation roll end a players turn, they just would not use that unit that turn.   I based the army lists, in part, on the excellent Crepusculum Imperii lists found of the I Live with Cats blog.

Victory was determined by the number of coins each player had at the end of the game.  Each player received a few coins at the start of the game.  The barbarian players then received a certain number of coins for pillaging various locations on the table.  The Romans received coins for locations that remained unpillaged at the end of the game.  The barbarians also received coins for eliminating other players' units or leaders, including those of other barbarian players.  The Roman pretender and Roman field army commander received substantial coin rewards for eliminating each other's commander.

The final result was that most of the province was devastated with only the city, on villa, and an imperial granary remained intact.  The field army commander had been killed by the pretender forces, gruesomely skewered by a lucky ballista shot, giving the pretender control of the remaining field army forces. 

The game was marked by the incredible stand of the limitanei troops.  Despite being outnumbered with fairly mediocre troops, they held off the three German tribes for most of the game, inflicting heavy losses on the barbarians.  

Here's the last stand of the limitanei, encouraged by the ancient equivalent of a USO tour.  At one point, the limitanei commander was the only figure left holding the bridge and successfully destroyed unit of Goth attackers single-handed. Horatius at the Bridge indeed.

In the end, all that was left of the valiant border troops was the commander himself and a half-strength light cavalry unit.  With the barbarians having moved on the loot the province, he sent his light cavalry across the river into the barbaricum, capturing the baggage trains of the two Goth players!

By the end of the game, the Gepids attacked the city and actually managed to get on top of the walls.  However, Roman heavy infantry drove them off and the Roman cataphracts counter attacked, saving the city.  However, this was not enough to give the Romans victory. The Slav player who concentrated on avoiding unnecessary fights and pillaging soft-targets ended up quietly amassing the most coins.

I may be running this game again, with some tweaks, at Cold Wars in March.

Here's some pictures of some of the games at the convention that caught my eye.

Commando raid on German sub base

Boxer rebellion

Mad Maximilian 1934

Sand Pebbles game

World War I

Fall In Convention

Due to scheduling, my attendance at Fall In 2013 was sporadic. Fortunately, I live only about 40 minutes away from the Lancaster Host so I commuted for Friday and part of Saturday. First, some general observations, as some other folks mentioned, attendance seemed to be light, especially on Friday. I noticed lots of games cancelled and at least two GM said they cancelled because they didn't have any players. I normally run big games with 10-12 players but this time I was lucky to have 6 players in the game I ran on Saturday afternoon. Despite that, I had a very good time, it was a good convention, and everyone else I talked to felt the same.

The game I ran was my weird science Roman game, Res Mechanica, that I had run at Historicon. The scenario took place at the end of the Year of the Four Emperors but in a world in which the Romans developed high technology. Vespasian's brother and his son and their retinues barricade themselves onto the Capitoline Hill after a failed attempt to get the rival Emperor Vitellius to abdicate. As the Capitoline is being assaulted by Vitellian die-hards, the Flavian relief forces, consisting of a strong cavalry force, including steam cavalry with the allied Sarmatian Ruritanii as well as the air and land ship elements of the Roman Fleet.

At Historicon, the Flavians prevailed through a slow advance that wore down the Vitellian defenders to break through. At Fall In, the Roman Fleet player pushed past the Briton and Amazon defenders and got into the city very early. There they met disaster. First a unit of Praetorians disembarked at a wine shop. Then Balteus (an ancestor of Blackadder's Baldrick) used his "cunning plan" ability to toss a augury chicken into the Archimedean heat ray of the landship, causing a grease fire that stopped the ship. The Vitellian Trojan Horse came up behind and set further fire to it. This caused a neighboring insula to catch fire that ultimately caused the destruction of the airship. On the other side of the board, the Flavian cavalry was chewed up but did get its big steam car into the city in time to break up the final Vitellian assault on the Capotiline. In the city itself, the Vitellians tried repeated to storm the Hill but were beaten back each time but it was a very close run thing. The big winner turned out to be Nigerapis (Blackadder) who abandoned the Vitellian side and ran off with Vitellius treasure and Mrs. Vitellius.

I ended up receiving an award for best game in my time slot.

The only other game I had chance to play in was Howard Whitehouse's Chainmail Bikini. As expected it was a great time. Four player leading teams of adventurers entered d a dungeon from four directions, hoping to rescue a prisoner being held in the dungeon. The rest of us players ran the barbarians and other things that were defending the dungeon. I got to play Nostril the Necromancer, the main villain who amazingly survived to retire, along with a withc from one of the other player teams, to run an Orange Smoothie stand in Boca Rotan, FLA. It was that kind of game.

Chainmail Bikini is the fantasy version of Howard's Astounding Tales!. He's added some really great features to CB, tactic cards, to enhance the hand-to-hand fighting rules. The rules should be published in the near future.

These are pictures of the "other City of Rome" game, Cy Taylor's Gangs of Rome. I was disappointed that I could fit this game in my schedule, it looked like great fun.

There was another anachronistic tech game, this based on the ideas of Leonardo Da Vinci:

Here's some other games that caught my eye: