Head East, Young Man. Far East.

This past week’s gaming again saw me able to participate in two games during one evening of Army Group York club action at Comic Store West -- both set in Asia.  

Who needs history? We got Mechs!

While normally my club (Army Group York) focuses on historical wargaming, every once and a while some sci-fi stuff works its way onto the table. This was one of those weeks.

I've added new content on my "The Craft" page. This time a picture tutorial on how I made two of the buildings used in our recent game of Ronin.

AMAKAZU RAIDERS APPROACH, SENSEI!

Since my childhood I have been fascinated by Japanese culture and history, so it was natural once I got into miniature wargaming that I would build forces and acquire rules to play out various eras from that country’s history. After trying out a number of different rule-sets I (and the club) have settled on Peter Pig’s Battles in the Age of War rules for our big feudal-era Japan battles, but we had yet to find a set of rules we liked for smaller skirmish encounters. And let me say, we tried a lot (and I read through a lot that I didn’t even deem worth trying on the table). It got to the point where I started drafting my own set. I wanted my rules to reflect the strategy of individual sword combat, so assigned each combatant a number of dice to roll based on skill level and allowed their controlling players to divide them between offensive dice and defensive dice. The early bones of the system worked well but I just didn’t have time to polish all the other stuff to go with it.

So last month, there I was at Historicon and, lo and behold, the Osprey folks had a short stack of the yet-to-be released (at the time) Ronin rules for sale. I thumbed through a copy and what did I find? A combat system where each player had a combat pool of chits or counters they could assign defensively or offensively in each combat, and how many chits they received depended on skill ranking. Needless to say, I bought a copy and couldn’t wait to try them out. On a recent club night some of the guys and I put Ronin through its paces, so after I tell you about the rules themselves, I’ll tell you about how they actually worked. Finally, I’ll give you my thoughts.

(Note: This is an unsolicited review and I received nothing in return for posting it from anyone)

PUSH BACK THE ROMAN INVADERS!

July 29 marked my return to regular Monday night war-gaming with the club after a little over a month off for reasons mostly having to do with my daughter. For the occasion, Greg and I decided to try out the Chipco Fantasy Rules 3! Modified for 6mm ancients (meaning no magic). A number of club members are assembling armies from the Republican Roman era, but we’re the first two to have gotten any decent sized forces done -- Greg’s Romans and my Macedonians. Joining me on the Macedonian side of the table was Jayson of Iron Ivan Games fame, who announced before-hand that he had never won an ancients game before. I’d never played Chipco rules before (I’ll give you my thoughts after the recap). Omens, omens.

Jayson and I won the right to set up as the defenders in a broad valley between two tree-topped hills. He took command of the main infantry line and the Thessalian cavalry on our left, while I took the skirmishers, elephants, light Podromoi cavalry and Hetairoi cavalry spread out to the front and right of the infantry. Because we were the defender we were able to scout one terrain piece to see how difficult it would be to cross. We chose the tree-top hills to our right and found out they were heavy and difficult to get through.

                               

 

Welcome to Hachiman's Toy Chest

I'm still setting the place up, so you'll have to come back later to see what I actually get accomplished.