More Rules Updates

The labyrinthitis continues giving me ample opportunity to pursue my trawl of the period gaps I have in each ruleset. My ambition is to have completed period variants and supporting special rules and Army Lists for all the periods I could be conceivably interested in gaming at a future date. As my interests are pretty wide ranging this looks like a lot of work but it's proving to be great fun researching and exploring each in more detail.

I've also put the finishing touches to most of my Sci-Fi variants of the Future War Wargaming Rules I'd developed as an evolution of the WWII Rules in the Introduction Book. I'm quite proud of these now and have even inserted some relevant illustrations to give them a better look.

These now cover:

1. Space Marines: Marc Ratner FGU Game - later Space Opera Universe

2. Classic Traveller: Spinward Marches, Fifth Frontier War

3. Star Soldier: based on Star Force Alpha Centauri

4. Terran Trade Authority Universe. Based on the future history presented in Stewart Cowley’s Books.

5. Solar Union Universe. An alternative future history influenced by Space 1999.

I've still have a couple of pet projects remaining for the Sci-Fi genre. I'm investigating a Victorian Steampunk setting which appeals to me - not really happy with any of the current options offered commercially, and also a setting where the expanding Terran colonies are restricted to our own Solar System and slower than light space transportation. This has ideas about how our technologies would adapt to a more restricted frontier - human adaptations, terraforming etc.

That being said, my work has primarily been centred on historical settings and here I've updated for periods as diverse as Dark Age Greek to Spanish-American War to the Soviet-Afghan War. I'll have to provide a list sometime soon! I've still not found anything I can't combine the core rules with to produce a simulation which satisfies my own personal tastes and requirements.

Rules Updates: Modern Period

I'm suffering from an inner ear infection and hence have a lot of free time on my hands. To keep myself occupied I'm trawling through all my various ruleset variants to review for gaps that I need to fill in terms of army lists or special rules.

I've now completed some updates to my Modern Period variant where I've added sections for the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and a contemporary section : 2013 for UK and Russian Federation forces. Still to do a Chinese and US list. I've also tidied up my Cold War sections and crunched them into one time period of 1970 to 1985 adding some lists for West German, French and Warsaw Pact Allies.

It's proving to be a great deal of fun researching all the modern kit and considering the unit design.

New Rules Development for Sci-Fi Rules

I've been doing a bit of work on my adaptation of the Second World War Rules from the Introduction Book. This has entailed a significant stretching of the rules to a very specific style of combat which I came across in my youth regarding the excellent series of SPI Board Games which covered the Star Force: Alpha Centuari universe. This particular adaptation used one of the games in the Trilogy - the Star Soldier Board Game, as the basis.

It involves a fictional future setting dealing with planetary conflicts set in the 25th to 28th Centuries between a handful of races including Humans that use telesthetic shifting to move between star systems and then deploy Strike Forces of Star Soldiers to perform assaults on the orbiting Star Gates and Planetary Defences.

The combat units are squads of Star Soldiers that can move in both ground and airborne modes utilising Active Battle Dress to provide completely self contained environments and the deployment of a variety of direct fire energy and projectile weapons to neutralise enemy units and ground bases. This was a lot of fun to develop and the Future History presented is very intriguing. I've done some minor play-testing and published my draft with outline Army Lists and background in the Modern Rules Folder in the Files section. I hope to play some larger games and develop the scenario design to cover the mission types these future armies would engage in. Seems to work fine and demonstrates to me at least what you can do to a good simple core design to meet any gaming requirement.

Solar Union Universe: Timeline

Here is the timeline I've created for this new alternative Future Wars campaign:

1905: End of Great War with victory to the British American Empire

1907: New Thinking becomes prevalent in government circles and starts to permeate society

1911: Discovery of White Energy

1951: Lunar Station completed

1950s: Colonisation of the Solar system

1956: Discovery of the Warp Field

1965: Creation of the Solar Union as the new world government

1976: First FTL warp to Alpha Centauri

1980s: Exodus into surrounding space to establish colonies

1980s: Encounter Andrayadan, Kyrillian, Grail and Geonee

1983: Colonial Union Defence Force founded

1986: Interstellar Wars commence

1999: Current year

I've also fleshed out some other details about the CUDF which now resembles a militarised Space 1999 complete with Eagles and Hawks. Pure indulgence!

Here also is an extract on the Grail mentioned in the earlier post.

The Grail are a lesser but still potent and frightening enemy. They are inter-dimensional beings that have been warped from what humans’ term chaos space. They use their priests and acolytes to wield their mind powers and assimilate sentient races. They are particularly partial to humans and have made a compact with the other races. They resemble Mind Flayers from AD&D.  

Future Wars Rules: New Setting of the Solar Union

I've recently been working on another setting for playing my Future Wars modifications to the WWII Rules from Introduction. This one introduces a mish-mash of my experience with counter factual history, Space 1999, Star Force Alpha Centauri and some other appealing themes and ideas in general sci-fi which I've melded together into something I'm comfortable with.

Here is a synopsis of the overall idea. I'm working on the army lists and supplementary rules just now with a view to get these posted into the files section in the Group pages in the near future.

Human history follows a different course following the failed American Revolution and the dominance of the British American Empire culminating in the defeat of the German Empire and the establishment of complete world supremacy in the early 20^th century.

Parallel to this were two revolutionary technological developments. The first was the discovery of White Energy which provided a limitless and highly effective power source to catapult human technology. In turn this led to the discovery of the warp field allowing faster than light travel.

In the area of human civilisation there was a fundamental re-focus of intellectual thought. The New Thinking following the Great War preached tolerance and socio-economic relationships where it was in the individual’s best interests to act for the greater societal good. This had a fundamental impact on the ethos and outlook of the emergent Solar Union government which setup the Colonial Union Defence Force as agents of human expansion and colonisation in the remaining century.

The date is now 1999 and the CUDF administers c50 active colonies. So far the alien worlds they have explored have tended to have mainly non-sentient life-forms, however, the few technological races encountered with star faring ability have been almost universally hostile. Curiously they have similar technological developments in respect of energy and warp fields so planetary conflict is between similar technology levels.

The Alien Conspiracy is a current theory being used by the CUDF to explain and react to the perceived threat to human expansion. This is no longer a paranoid reaction, but a proven viewpoint from recent discoveries. It now transpires that the alien powers ranged against the Solar Union are party to a still unexplained but certainly co-ordinated opposition to human expansion.

The alien forces ranged against the CUDF are formidable opponents and present a real danger to ongoing human expansion and potentially human existence in this region of space. The major opposition are the Andrayadan Collective and Kyrllian Combine. The Grail are a lesser but still potent enemies.

The Geonee Technocracy: this humanoid race is the only advanced species encountered so far that has provided a passive response to the Solarians. The Technocracy has enslaved a number of “low” races in it’s development so far and Geonee rule is generally at odds with Union political philosophy. The resulting alliance that has been established is one of convenience. The Geonee hope they back the eventual winner in the conflict and will be able to benefit from the enslavement of the Andrayadan and Kyrllian races.

Napoleonic Battle: France v Spain 1808

I finally managed to find some quality time and play a battle. I chose an Iberian encounter between a French force led by General Moreau against the decrepit General Cortenesca. Both generals were pretty poor and this became evident in the game where I was following my solo amendments to the letter.

The French advanced on a line of Spanish defenders and managed to make reasonable headway despite a surprise attack from a unit of Spanish cavalry. I found the Spanish poor command rating to be a real problem in allowing me to co-ordinate any credible response to the French thrusts and with a few units going awol, of their own accord, the game was up after turn 7. I took a defensive outcome on my Battle plan generator, modified with a downward penalty due to the General, as an exceptional result, entailing a general retreat for the Spanish army. This conceded the field to the French.

A fine game, although it didn't show off many of the French strengths. The unpredictable Spanish were fun!

Campaign Board Game

It's the start of 2013 and I've loads of projects to achieve. I must start playing some more games and publish the battle reports on the AMW Yahoo Group. Over Xmas, I bought a couple of versions of the old Waddington's Campaign game, which I played when I was a child. Beautiful pieces, beautiful board, lovely rules. I've done my usual and have created a host of amendments. I've just played a superb "Austerlitz" re-fight between the French, Austrians and Russians. I think this game is worthy of future investigation so I'm going to play a SYW match with five nations involved.