Projects Over Christmas

With the Christmas holidays fast approaching it's time to think about some special projects. First, because I've got relatives coming, my sacred "room" has been designated a bedroom, which kind of precludes any wargaming activity. My shelves have been "tidied" and the miniatures stored away. As an alternative I'm considering a more simulated approach by looking into the possibility of using cardboard counters or top-down unit views on a gameboard. I've a few ideas involving using the top-downs on some of the paper gaming sites, combined with the use of terrain tiles, overlayed by a perspex cover to keep everything in place.

Second up is to complete my trawl of all the rulesets and army lists for completeness. I'm still actively developing the Future Wars rules with a new "universe" close to my heart concerning the series of wonderful books produced back in 1978-80 describing the evolution of the Terran Federation, written by Stuart Cowley, and illustrated with loads of visually stunning artwork.

"Classic" Traveller Setting: The Spinward Marches

I've been inspired by some battle reports I've seen on the web dealing with military simulations set in one of my favourite roleplaying settings from the 1980s - the Traveller RPG universe which deals with the "Classic" period in the Spinward Marches. I've created army lists and rules modifications to recreate this in my Future Wars Wargaming Rules in the files section. These accompany my Space Marines adaptation with a similar in depth treatment of the various factions and military forces. I've restricted it for now to planetary assault task force lists which cover the marine contingents of the Imperium, Zhodani Consulate, Sword Worlds etc. I've had a lot of fun developing these and a few are still WIP such as how psionics should work. I've played a couple of minor skirmishes to see how the new rules play out - no issues so far and it delivers a nice atmospheric feel which appeals to my 80s nostalgia trip. Hope to get a full battle report of a larger scale action posted this weekend.

World War I & II Variants

I've been doing a bit of research to back up a few ideas I have on the go regarding alternative histories set during the inter-war period.

1. British Civil War - I've been quite intrigued by the development of the "A Very British Civil War" wargame genre over the last year or so. This got my interest first and I've developed some army lists for the factions which I've placed in the WWII Rules in the Files Section. The conflict is set in 1938. I've designed a nice little scenario which I'm going to play out this month.

2. War Plan Red - inspired by the article in Miniature Wargames which outlines a conflict between the USA and British Empire over Canada. I watched the documentary on Youtube and was hooked to the idea. I'm developing some lists which detail the early war in 1935 and then the wider conflict set later in 1936-37. The later armies include some WWII AFVs developed earlier such as the A13 and M3 Stuart.

3. WWII set in the 1930s - to cover the Axis powers, UK, US, French and Soviets. Loads of early tanks to play with.

4. WWI extended by 10 years. This postulates an extension of the conflict past 1918 up to 1928 with all the possible technological advances this would entail. Bit of a nightmarish WH40K future history.

5. WWII extended beyond 1945 combined with a technological revolution - power armour, dreadnought walkers etc. These pet projects should keep me occupied for a bit!

Scottish Wargaming Armies

As I'm a Scot with a keen interest in both my own national aswell as military history in general, I thought I'd combine this into the creation of a list of Scottish armies throughout history during the periods when we were still an independent nation. Commencing with a Caledonian Army that can fight at Mons Graupius through the Dark Ages and Medieval periods into the Renaissance, covering Covenanters, mercenaries in the Thirty Years War and Montrose Royalists. All interesting stuff and I now need to start playing out some of my creations.

Battle of Leuctra 371 BC

I played a simulation of this classical battle between the Thebans and Spartans this afternoon. I chose the same historical deployments with 12 units per side. The battle commenced much as the original did with the cavalry clash and advance of the Theban left, however, the Spartan horse didn't scatter as they did historically and put up a holding resistance which bought time and allowed the entire phalanx line of both armies to eventually clash. It was looking good for the Spartan alliance until the deadlock suddenly broke on the strong Theban left with the destruction of the Spartan units and a spate of fortunate rolls from the Boetian allied phalanxes on the Theban right. As the Thebans turned to roll-up the remaining Spartan allies these conceded defeat and fled the field. A real hard fighting contest which went closer than the historical battle but with much the same outcome. The phalanx cohesion rule worked very well and made for rapid and bloody unit contests which seemed very in tune with phalanx warfare. I think I should have given the Spartans an advantage here to account for their superb drill and modify this to the second base loss resulting in the cohesion loss. An excellent game with lots of period drama.

Fantasy Adaptation based on the AMW Medieval Rules

As mentioned in an earlier message I was involved in a project to develop a credible Fantasy variant. My background basis was a long running Chivalry & Sorcery campaign I used to be involved in back in the 1980s. The world of Archaeron was the background to my lists and rules design. Basically a feudal model so the Medieval AMW rules were used combining some Dark Age and fantasy features. I've now completed the rules and designed all the lists for the nations occupying the known world. The major innovations were the introduction of leaders to represent heroic personalities and magic users, spell casting and the impact of magic on the battlefield. I've had a lot of fun developing these. I now want to do some thorough play-testing particularly to see how the overlays for leaders and magic work. Probably will need to do some more tweaking.

Updates to the Variant Rules Versions and a Couple of Projects

Recently I've been quite intensely involved in going through all my variant rulesets updating, streamlining and making them more consistent. The Modern rules have had the largest makeover. I've also extracted some basic conventions and published these for AMW. So everything is now updated in the folders. This left me with a couple of pet projects. I greatly expanded my Future Wars army lists to incorporate more star nations from my favorite Sci Fi universe. This is based on the FGU Space Opera / Space Marines future history. I included some more special rules and included a race of cyborgs - the Andrayadan Collective complete with Walkers and Malignants - these I copied from Dark Realms.

My second project was to develop a credible Fantasy variant. I used to play and sometimes GM a long running Chivalry & Sorcery campaign. I really liked the world imagined by Ed Simbalist, the co-author. This is Archaeron, with the designed setting of Arden, a feudal Kingdom modeled on medieval England. This was quite a "hard" fantasy environment in that it was very much based on a Medieval setting with fantasy touches. This made an adaptation of the Medieval Rules an easy transition. I've now drafted the majority of the rules and I'm working through each of the nations described by Mr Simbalist. One rather radical departure was to introduce leaders and personalities. These are single base units that can add abilities to fighting units or fight on their own. By getting more involved in the battle they increase the risk to their base. If they work out I might extend this to other rules-ets - the Dark Age version might be a promising venture recreating some heroic action. I'm quite excited about this variant and am looking forward to play-test it over the next couple of weeks. I'll put them in the files section soon. One down side is that I've neglected my road test of the 19th Century rules. I've a Franco-Prussian war scenario all setup and ready to go but haven't got round to it yet. Well - rest of the year to go.