Concept: Siege Resolution Via Dice - Morale

Well, "morale" may not be the exact word, but it works for my purposes. It may be better to combine the meaning of "will" to it for what I wish to represent as far as sieges go.

Morale can be a tricky thing to model, but the focus is the end result of the siege and not the actual dynamics of the interactions between psychological stimuli. Instead, the willingness of the garrison to hold out or for the besieger to keep at it is what I am most concerned with.

So, my working mechanic for this aspect of siege resolution is to require either side to pass morale tests based on the results of their activities during each of the successive phases.

Each such test would be an opposed roll, with each player rolling a number of d6s equal to the current morale of his force. For example, say the garrison has a morale of 8 and the besieging force a morale of 12, the defender rolls 8 dice and the attacker 12. Both players are looking to achieve a "success" by rolling a 4 or greater on each die. The resulting number of successes are tallied and compared. Losing the test drops morale by 1, winning increases morale by 1. However, if one side scores 3 times more successes than the other, the losing side capitulates or lifts the siege, depending which side they were on.

Now, there are modifiers to the base morale, but not to the actual die rolls. So, a particularly gifted commander may increase the base more of his troops by 2 die or the failure to advance to the next phase may cause the besieging force to lose 1 die. Other modifiers would include the presence of a siege train, whether the garrison is on half rations, the length of the siege, proximity of a relief force, etc.

In my view, this method allows for the chance of an unlikely result, with the siege lifting very early or the garrison surrendering at the end of Phase 0, but the actual results of player actions will play a part in the chances of such extremes occurring.

While it is true that players may be rolling a fair amount of dice, it is still preferable to requiring players who live over 40 miles apart to get together to resolve the siege. Again, it can be done remotely via Skype or by phone, using an internet based die rolling program (the one I am thinking of actually records the results so they may be verified).

True, it is not the same as pushing miniatures around a table, but reality does not always allow for what is ideal.

Concept: Siege Resolution via Dice - Phases

As I wrote in the previous post, I believe I am satisfied with the number and objectives of each phase of this method to resolve sieges for my campaign. Based on Vauban's own timetable, I compacted events slightly in some areas, and expanded them in others, to better the flow of what a player is trying to accomplish during a campaign turn.

Here is Vauban's published time table:
To invest the fortress, collect stores and construct the lines of circumvallation and contravallation - 9 days
To open the trenches and to reach the covered way - 9 days
To capture the covered way - 4 days
To cross the ditch to reach the demi-lune - 3 days
To create a breach by battery or mining - 4 days
To capture the demi-lune - 3 days
To cross the main ditch - 4 days
To site forward batteries and breach the main defences - 4 days
To capture the breach and flanking positions - 2 days
To accept the capitulation of the garrison - 2 days
To allow for unexpected delays - 4 days

Total time allowed = 48 days

Of course, I am sure this was not a "set in stone" factor, but more of a general guideline of expectations. Also, this assumes a certain amount of defenses present at a given location, namely one or more demi-lunes (ravelin), but makes no mention of the well defended citadel that many fortified cities possessed.


In my campaign, the most well defended locations do have a citadel, and thus my phases below account for that. In fact, the below listing would be for the two most well defended fortress types (out of five) that are in the campaign. Each player has one of the best, and may have a couple of forts of the type slightly less defended, with a preponderance of poorly fortified locations.


Siege Phases for Campaign
0: Gather supplies and construct lines of circumvallation and contravallation.
1: Complete the 2nd parallel.
2: Complete the 3rd Parallel
3: Breach the demi-lune
4: Capture demi-lune and site the forward batteries.
5: Breach main defenses.
6: Breach flanking positions.
7a: Receive surrender of garrison.
7b: Site batteries to bombard citadel.
8: Breach Citadel.
9: Receive surrender of citadel garrison.
(note: I am likely going to add another phase "breach hornworks/outerworks" to this list, between phases 4 and 5 as lesser fortresses did not have these extensively)

These phases are not strictly limited to single week (campaign turn) durations, but may span more than one week or, due to felicitous events for the besieger,  more than one phase may be accomplished in a single turn.

Lesser fortifications will have fewer phases for the besieger to fulfill, specifically with the smallest fortress lacking not only a citadel but also the demi-lunes, for example.

More to come, of course. Also, I am open to questions, comments, and criticisms, so feel free to comment below.

Concept: Siege Resolution via Dice

While I, slowly, repair my downed desktop (which has all of the critical files) before starting the 1708 campaign, I am revising and extending the campaign rules.

To this end, I am working on a off-table way to resolve the all important sieges that inevitably will take place during the campaign. These need to be covered off-table because 1) we don't have any terrain for a siege in 25mm, 2) no one really wants to spend their limited game time to handle multiple siege battles between campaign turns, and 3) with players who do not live local to me, this method could be used via Skype.

So, after being inspired by Roger Underwood's off-table siege rules, but then deciding that they likely would work best for a two player campaign and not for an eight player campaign, I wanted create my own system. Of course, the off-table method would require die rolling, but in keeping with the tactical rules (Beneath the Lily Banners, 2nd Edition), the dice used would be limited to d6's wherever possible.

Also, I really liked the matrix that Underwood's rules utilize, but felt it a bit complicated for players who were not as detail oriented as myself. Instead of four exclusive choices per player per siege stage, I wanted to have players allocate their forces via a binary, similar to the "guns vs. butter" argument used in introductory Economics classes.

In this way, players could control the major factors that would determine the outcome of the siege, using their table top forces, without setting up terrain, figures, or making a lengthy drive to the game. Note, I expect we will be able to handle one or two battles per player per campaign turn, but siege battles could run into several per player per turn, and the additional time and fuel required would break the campaign. Another note: one of the players lives over 30 miles away, so fuel costs must be considered.

While I am not, as yet, ready to publish the system here, I am becoming more comfortable with what I have worked out thus far.

The attacker and besieger both seek to improve their circumstance, but also hinder the other. Their individual resources include: troops on hand, leader skills, equipment (siege trains), supplies (for the defender), and morale. Yes, I am including morale as a resource as it represents the expenditure of will to overcome an obstacle or endure a hardship.

Each player must allocate the above to a pair of choices they are presented with at each phase of the siege (more on that in another post). Resources allocated to one choice cannot be used for another, but each allocation bears an associated cost (quite apart from the opportunity costs) as well as the potential for a specific benefit.

For example, a garrison commander may allocate troops to reinforce or repair sections of the walls that have been damaged or even breached. However, those troops cannot also then be used to conduct a sortie during that same campaign turn. Forces used in a sortie may delay the besieger or even perhaps damage/destroy his siege equipment. Yet, those troops who sortie might suffer greatly at the hands of the besieger's covering force, adding to the garrison's attrition losses.

At this point, I believe I have finalized the number of phases of the siege and what choices are available during each. I must still determine the numbers of dice to be used, how generals' skills (or even what skills they should be) interact with the system, and how morale tests are to be made.

More to come...

Little Generals: Sept. 2013

A friend and clubmate, along with his eldest son, opened a game store about 40 minutes south of where I live, last month. So, for this month's club meeting, we drove down to the new store and played a 15mm sci-fi game.

Using a bastardization of some steampunk miniature rules, as well as a large collection of Khurasan and Rebel Minis figures, our umpire, Ryan, put on the game for us. Units were moved individually as each side's players were given one activation at a time, with both sides alternating until all units had been activated. Infantry could move half and still fire, with vehicles rolling at d6 and then adding the result as energy points to their power ratings. The vehicles then used energy to move 2", 4", or 6" inches (depending on the vehicle) per energy point allocated and/or to power up their weapons (taking one or two energy for each weapon), with weapons being able to fire as often as the player could provide the power.



My troops, minus the walker, the platoons on the far left, and one platoon from the center. Essentially, I had three heavy tanks, three APCs, three platoons of infantry, two scout vehicles, two scout infantry, and two mortar teams.




A rather crappy pic of the table.


Dave B. setting up his troops. He outnumbered me, considerably, and his few vehicles were superior to my own, unfortunately. He had alien troops which were quite nasty as they had two shots a turn to my own infantry's single shot, per figure.



Just a few moves into the first turn and I have lost one of my heavy tanks, but have been able to take out an enemy APC (which required the combined fire of all three of my heavy tanks!). Those grav tanks and apcs proved to be a real bane for my own vehicles. I felt they were a tad OP as they moved 3 times as fast as my own tanks, had nearly the same armor, and had more firepower and that was just the APCs. The grav tanks had gimmicky weapons (lightning gun!) or more powerful weapons and I faced an onslaught of fire that my own armor could not withstand.


My sector at the end of turn 1. The blue markers were used to show which units had taken an action, which we then removed as each unit acted in the following turn.



"Friendly forces" on my right flank at the end of turn 1. I put the friendly in quotes because this was about where these troops were at at the end of turn 3. My ally (who shall be added to the Book of Grudges) fired about 4 times all game. Note the opponent facing him came directly at me, so I was facing nearly 3/4 of the enemy with about 1/3 of our army, but my ally took his objective and then didn't budge. Grrrrrr!



Jeff, on my left, faces the close combat specialist troops of our enemy and also takes the brunt of fire from the enemy heavy vehicles this turn. Jeff remained stuck in until the bitter end, but he too could not hold back the tidal wave of enemy.



My left flank at the end of turn three, which was also the end of the game. Jeff's infantry is shattered and falling back, while the majority of his vehicles are destroyed.



My right flank at the end of the game. On the far side of the building, out of sight, is another of our APCs.



My forces at the end of the game. The two apcs in the foreground are both tracked and without their main guns, effectively hulks. I do have an operating and undamaged scout vehicle, but the rest of my vehicles and 2/3rds of my infantry have been taken out.

Note, aside from their super heavy grav tank and an apc and also a grav apc, the rest of the enemy vehicles in my sector have been destroyed, including their very nasty VTOL gunship. So, while I am forced to retreat, their victory was costly.

The rules were interesting and we players made a few suggestions, which Ryan agreed to take under consideration.

Whenever I sit down to play at a club game, if I am not assigned a role and objective by the umpire, I create one for myself. This way, I do not always play exactly the same and I have personal goals that I attempt to achieve. For this game, I felt my role was to be as aggressive as I could and thus I threw my forces as far forward as possible, while still being able to fire at the enemy.  Not pictured was the highwater mark of my infantry, which had made it to the far side of the fenced in compound before being annihilated by the advancing enemy infantry.

I really felt I had no choice as my right flank was not supporting me in the center, although he faced no opposition himself, and I was taking two shots (one per player) for every time one of my units activated and fired. Jeff, on my left, was fighting for his life the whole game and while he was defeated, I cannot fault him for his efforts.

However, my goal of taking out the enemy VTOL gunship and the bulk of his vehicles gave me a moral victory.

Pandemic

As I am constantly trying to find activities for my sons and I to do together, I look out for games of various types which would fill certain niches in our list of needs. While my personal preference is for miniatures games, my current living conditions and my sons' visitation arrangements do not allow us to always break out the minis, terrain, rules, dice, etc., as my landlord does not fully embrace our taking over the kitchen table for three hours or more at a time.

This is the primary reason why our All Things Zombie campaign has been on a temporary hiatus (but we keep discussing what we want to do with it).

One of our needs is to have a game that plays in under an hour, including set up and take down, for weekends where our schedule is filled with yardwork, housework, or family gatherings. This need has been tested and met by Pandemic, an interesting product by Z-Man Games.

My local game store has about 120 boardgames available to rent at $5 a night. Should a person then decide to buy the game, half of their rental fee is applied towards the purchase amount. In my case, I had the fiver from the remnant of my recent figure sale. Having watched the Tabletop episode where the game was played, I decided that my younger sons (the game is 1-4 players without the expansions) and I would give the game a testing out. We are glad we did.


The game is a cooperative contest to cure four deadly diseases. All the players start at the CDC in Atlanta, with each having a role (which determines what special abilities are in play), and also cards which match cities on the map. These cards are used for movement or for curing a disease (takes 5 of same color). There are event cards, which give the players other special, one use, abilities. The players take turns to perform 4 actions (movement, place a research center, exchange information, treat a disease and cure disease) in any combination or repetition that they desire. A player can move four times, or move and cure a disease then move twice more, or treat a disease one or more times and then move, etc.

While the quality of the photos are not great, you can easily see the components of the game as well as see some of the action in the following pics.

The above photo shows the start of our game. Each player has been given his "role" and also his starting cards. The four diseases have been spread as per the start up rules and we are ready to take the first turn.



The very first player card turned over was an Epidemic card. In the beginner game, only four of these are contained in the player deck. So, it was bad luck (!...and when we played it a second time, the next day, the first card was again an Epidemic card!!) for us.

We also suffered our first outbreak in Johannesburg, which was another piece of bad luck. One of the conditions for the players losing is having 8 outbreaks occur. We did place another research center in SE Asia as we needed to be able to move around without spending a card as well as have an accessible means of curing diseases.



Not a bad turn for us as we were able to eradicate the black disease. Eradication means that no new instances of that disease can happen. Of course, to win we have to CURE all four diseases, so eradication is great, but not a game winner on its own.

I was playing as the Medic, whose special ability means I can remove all instances of a disease when I treat it at a city I am in (normally, one cube is removed per treat action). Thus, I was helping out the people in South America survive the dreaded yellow disease.



Another outbreak, but this time it was the red disease in SE Asia. Outbreaks not only help you lose, but they also increase the rate of infestation. At start, two cards are drawn from the infestation deck (top right corner) every turn. One cube matching the color on the card is placed on the city on the same card. A fourth cube is never placed, but instead, an outbreak occurs which then causes all adjoining cities to receive a disease cube and also advancing the two associated markers on their respective tracks.


We chase down the red disease, trying to eradicate it, while also trying to exchange information so that we can get it cured.

Except the red disease proves too wily for us. It is at this point that we realize we are about to lose. The cards with the + sign on their backs are essentially our timer. Each player takes 2 at the end of their turn, but when a player cannot take his 2, the game ends and the players lose.


Finally! We cure red, but it can still spread. Unfortunately, we are not even close to curing a second disease and we're getting desperate.



And the game ends with a player loss!

We had fun with this first game and ended up playing a second game on Saturday afternoon. We also lost that game, again on the beginner difficulty, but we almost won that game having cured three diseases. We lacked five cards in the player deck for a win (as it would have given us enough time to transfer cards and cure the yellow disease).

Overall, we had fun with the game and it is going on our family wish list for Christmas. There are two expansions for the game, which increase the number of players to six, add a bio-terrorist, more roles, and other rules and additional mechanisms to the game.

BUT WAIT, there's MORE!

For those who like to play zombie miniature games, this boardgame has a perfect system for running a zombie campaign. Instead of diseases, treat each cube as an instance of zombie infestation. When at a city, each disease cube is a scenario that must be played and won, to remove a cube. Different colored cubes can be used to adjust the types of zombies in the scenario (if your game differentiates between slow, ragers, etc.)

When a disease has been eradicated, just assume that the locals have figured out a way to deal with any zombies that do  pop up. When cured, the source for that particular zombie scourge has been dealt with, leaving the players to mop up and stamp out any zombies who happen to show.

If the players lose, well, they either ran out of time to save humanity from the zombie hordes, or the zombie outbreaks were enough to overwhelm the human defenders.

Check out the game for yourself!

The World Turned Upside Down

Amongst my game club mates, I am well known for having particularly poor results at die rolling. In real life (RL), out in the harsh and unforgiving world, my luck pretty much parallels my gaming luck. Don't stop reading here, the important bit is below.

This is not a sob story or a "pity me" post, but rather a public acknowledgement that whenever life presents me with two outcomes, the worst one is what I am typically left with. Just today, in fact, a very promising voice mail was dashed to bits when I discovered that it was from two weeks ago and I only today received the incoming voice mail from my cell carrier.  A great chance for employment vanished in the time it took for someone to say "I am sorry, but I left that message almost three weeks ago, the position has been filled."

Yes, the rising level of frustration is very much like that of a volcano just prior to an eruption.

So, as a bit of therapy I took myself to the local game store, looking for some old friends in print. Having recently sold of some more of the remainder of my Games Workshop miniatures collection (yes, the parts that weren't stolen last summer), I had enough dosh to make a small purchase.

I don't know about you, but I have been an avid gamer since before I was a teen. I was severely bullied as a child (for some reason, intelligence is viewed as a BAD thing in public school) and my escape was through gaming with other "outcasts" from the various social groupings that are usually found in school. My time in the Marine Corps pretty much put paid to any attempts to bully me, but when adult life throws yet another brick at my head (there is another true story there) I fall back to memories of roleplaying with my mates over 30 years ago.

Which is where the important bit of this post enters. If you have not read Knights of the Dinner Table (aka KODT), then run, don't walk...or simply click THIS link here: Knights of the Dinner Table and take a gander at a bit of what is offered. If you are even remotely amused or if you laugh out loud at any part of it (like I am wont to do), then do yourself (and possibly your mates) a favor and buy some issues of this magical, mystical, and therapeutic treasure.

The publisher, Kenzer & Co.  is a great company. A few years back, before my divorce induced poverty, I subscribed to the monthly offering of KODT and enjoyed the hell out of it. I also bought of few of their roleplaying supplements and two of their RPG core rules (which have since been replaced by new editions that I have yet to acquire). Today, I was fortunate enough to pick up three back issues, which have served (as expected)  to pick me up a bit following the bad news I mentioned above.

Essentially, KODT is a comic relating situations and storylines that roleplayers and miniature gamers (and boardgamers) would be familiar with and find humorous. The characters and the comic has a long history, found elsewhere on the net (go to the links above and poke around for it) and some of the bits from the stories go back almost two decades. Sometimes, I am inspired by the contents and I always feel a bit better after reading it (on several occasions, I laughed out loud for extended periods of time as I could place myself exactly in the storyline).

So, my point is, even it feels like the GM/DM of life is doing everything He can to screw with your character (you!), there are still escape routes and paths to riches and treasures to be found. When I don't have extra spending money (which is the usual condition), I spend an hour or two reading other gaming blogs, and wish and dream and plan. Hell, one can always plan for a brighter future and what one would do with it should it arrive.

If you would, please repost this, or an edited version of it, on your own blog, if you have one, providing a link back here. I am sure there are gamers out there who are in even worse situations than my own and who just need a mate, a blog post, or even a silly comic book to give them a bright spark to hold on to. Hope is a good thing. It is what makes the unendurable a bit more bearable.

Also, if you happen to like KODT or any of the Kenzer & Co products, after you follow the links above, let the publisher know about my little post here, which hopefully inspired you to read KODT each month for the long term. I am just a small fish in a very large pond, so I don't expect anything, but having someone, somewhere, know that they help others cope with the crap that life brings is a GOOD thing.

Wouldn't you agree?