Battle for Threnger: Drawing enemy fire

This is the second battle in a series of linked games using MOTH for the 6x6 Challenge. This time, I played on Tabletop Simulator using a virtual 6'x4' board with virtual paper figurines (I still have to find some 3D models that I can use.)

A view of the battlefield from one of the Canlaster squads.

While Platoon 31 tried to break through the enemy defenses, Platoon 24 was ordered to strike at an observation post, to draw enemy fire. Canlaster forces start on the left. Each squad consists of 10 muster troops (including two Emeritas). Meanwhile, each Yordan squad consists of 7 muster and 1 Emeritas. Squad 1 has Elan 7, squads 2 and A have Elan 6 and squad B has Elan 5. The hills and forest patches block line of sight. The Canlaster forces win if they cause 50% or more casualties to the enemy while losing less units. Alternatively, they win if they are on the hill with the observation post with no enemies.

Force setup. The observation post is the light brown structure (made of wooden blocks) near squad 2.

The Canlaster squads spread out, moving behind cover to reach the enemy. The Yordan troops just positioned themselves on the hills, waiting for an opportunity to fire. In the 10th turn, the first exchanges of fire happened.

Canlaster squad A opens fire on Yordan squad #1. The yellow and red units indicate grazed and struck status.

Canlaster squad A eventually managed to defeat Yordan squad #1, while squad B advanced through a forested area. By the end of round 15, Canlaster had sustained 40% losses (8 units), while Yordan had lost 62% of their troops (10 units), thus meeting a victory condition for Canlaster.

Firefight between Canlaster squad B and Yordan squad #2. The yordists killed one enemy but lost another 2.

While the Canlaster forces suffered many losses in the breakthrough, they managed to draw the attention of their enemies to the observation post. The third battle will see both sides with weakened forces.

A quick note about playing in Tabletop Simulator: the interface has gone through noticeable improvements (I love the new top-down view to check the position of everything on the table.) Now it is possible to find a number of wargaming terrain models in the workshop. The custom figurine is still quite limited, so I had to create my own figurine model in Blender. Measuring is still cumbersome. Luckily, MOTH has simplified squad movement because measuring the movement of every single figure would have been tiresome with the current interface. I think that playing miniature games with area movement or grid-based movement will be a much smoother experience.

Back to the world of gaming!

The last months have been really busy, but now I am finally getting back to miniature gaming. I have a number of Osprey wargames to read (bought in a Bundle of Holding offer), including In Her Majesty's Name and Fistful of Kung Fu.

I have just noticed that Tabletop Simulator now supports figurines with fronts and backs, so I might have yet another use to the large number of paper miniatures I have been buying (and not always printing) over the years.

By the way, I would really love to try it with HTC Vive to see how close it gets to the actual tabletop experience. Has anyone tried it yet?

A large battle of elves vs. orcs in MapTool

After some time of inactivity, here is a battle report of elves vs. orcs using Rally Round the King, played in MapTool. In this battle, the elves led by Yoselith the Defender have arrived to challenge Warchief Zagul's campaign of conquest.

Game setup, with a 1" grid and force leaders marked

Yoselith's forces are concentrated at the center. At the front there are four units of elf archers, followed by two bodies of elf soldiers. At the rear, Yoselith stands with three units of elf marines, ready to come to support the battle as needed. [As I played the elves, I made the recruitment rolls and deployed them before finding out what the orcs would do.]

Zagul's main forces are a wide line of melee troops including ogres at the center, black moon orcs and then orc soldiers. In front of them are three units of skirmishers (orc archers.) Warchief Zagul stands with two units of wolf riders and two units of soldiers. Ready to take the other flank are two units of trolls and another two units of soldiers. Lastly, their reserve is composed of two more units of soldiers.

Starfighters for MapTool

Here is another token pack for MapTool. This time there are four starfighter styles, in three color schemes.

A compressed file containing the tokens and the Inkscape file with the original vector drawings can be downloaded by clicking here. The files are shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Soldiers for MapTool

I have created a simple pack of top-down tokens of sci-fi soldiers in light armor, suitable for colonial forces or scout squads. These include soldiers with rifles, a heavy repeating laser and sergeants with submachine guns, all in four skin tones. Here is the preview:

The compressed file with all tokens and the Inkscape file used to build them can be obtained clicking here. The files are shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Battle for Zorpel: Turning the Tide

This is the fourth report on the Battle for Zorpel.

This time I used MapTool instead of setting up a physical board. I made a couple of very simple tokens to represent units of the humans and skelebots in Inkscape.

A long way to go in learning vector drawing. Still, at least I can tell them apart :)

A couple of days after the previous mission, Don, Erick and Harry are sent to scout a nearby area and collect skelebot bodies (blue objective markers.) The plan is to analyze their communication systems in order to try to disrupt them. Meanwhile, a skelebot team is in the same area, tasked with securing a temporary base (red objective marker.)

Mission setup. Brown segments are ruined walls that block line of sight.

The skelebots split in two groups: one of them would secure their objective while the other would prevent the humans from completing theirs. The humans gained the initiative and started with a scurry, reaching their first objective. Then the skelebots advanced. One of them reached their objective, while two others guarded the second human objective.

Harry activated and fire at the visible skelebot, destroying it. Then Erick and Don advanced towards their second objective. The skelebots rolled a scurry and took the opportunity to position themselves around their objective.

Both sides on their way to completing their objectives.

On the following human turn, Don activated and entered the woods. The skelebot snap fired, missing. Don fired and knocked it down, then Erick moved in and disabled it. With this, the humans completed their objectives and prepared to leave. One of the remaining robots kept guarding their objective, while the other moved to engage the humans. They exchange fire, but no one got hurt.

The humans rolled a scurry and moved away, with one robot following. The robots then rolled a firefight and Erick was killed before they could get away. At this point, the robots completed their objective.

Never underestimate a berserk robot.

In the next turn, the humans also rolled a firefight. Don missed and was knocked down by the chasing skelebot. Then the robot reached the unconscious soldier and defeated him. Only Harry escaped the mission.

This resulted in a tie using the mission victory points system: both sides completed their assigned objectives and both sides defeated two enemy units. Harry gains another level (now level 2) and the Dodge skill.

Conclusion
When victory seemed certain, the robots nearly turned the tides. Lesson learned: never turn your back to the enemy.

As this was an opportunity mission, there is no change to the campaign progress. The next mission will be a personal mission, featuring Ford alone.

Rules for space combat?

While taking a look at my collection of rules, I have noticed two things. I have, over time, drifted towards modern/sci-fi skirmish, although when I started looking for miniature games I would get all sorts: fantasy, historical, sci-fi, skirmish, large scale...

Also, I have not played most (maybe none at all) of the starship combat rules in my collection. I think this is due, in part, to my insistence in trying to play them with miniatures and a game mat, while the poor results of my previous attempts put me off.

Having decided to use the virtual tabletop more often, I have already set up a map to start trying 5150 Fighter Command, using Wydraz starship counters and one of Dave Graffam's space battle maps.

Besides 5150 Fighter Command, here are the other space combat rules that I have, in alphabetical order:

Astral Empires: Nova Command
Astral Empires: Battleshift
Full Thrust
Starmada: the Admiralty Edition
Stellar Evolution
Tractus Bellica
USE ME Starship Battles
Warcosm

Does anyone have comments about them, suggestions about which ones to try first or even suggestions about other space combat games worth a look?

Battlegrounds for MapTool

I have set up a few simple battleground maps for use with MapTool. I used to simply draw a rectangle the size of my desired map but I think that having these templates is a little faster. I started by making a 1200x1200 pixel image in Gimp and playing with brushes until I had a texture that looked like a field of grass and dirt. Then I reduced it to 600x600 pixels. The default scale for MapTool is 50 pixels = 1 square. If I assume that each square has 1 inch sides, then I have a 1' square tile. Finally, I used the "make seamless" filter so that I could use it to build larger maps. Here is a reduced version of the seamless tile:

From that, I built several images for maps of sizes 2'x2', 3'x3', 4'x4', 4'x3' and 6'x4'. Here is an example of use of the 3'x3' map (the tokens were created using Slick's Minis figures so I cannot share them.)

The pack of maps can be downloaded here or on the Downloads section of my blog.

A virtual dungeon crawl

Two Hour Dungeon Crawl, as the name implies, is a rules set focused on "dungeon crawling" as many others around. However, following Two Hour Wargames' motto ("just play the game") it is meant to be played with little preparation and without lots of tiles, props or miniatures.

I was one of the playtesters for this game, so I was already familiar with it as I read the final version. However, there were some changes from the last playtest version that, in my opinion, made the game even more streamlined. After a few quick tests to see if I got everything right, I created my hero and recruited other three members to the party:

Sir Reginald, the knight (rep 5 star), plate armor, longsword and shield.
Gweldyn, the elf warrior (rep 4 grunt), plate armor, two-handed sword.
Bordim, the dwarf soldier (rep 4 grunt), chain mail, spear and shield.
Yelena, the human thief (rep 4 grunt), leather armor, twin blades.

I decided to try the "RPG Kit" for Tabletop Simulator for this game. In order to use the pre-packaged models I decided that the Big Bad would be an orc (as the RPG Kit comes with goblin, orc, troll and ogre figures, among others.) The adventurers are represented by color-tinted knight miniatures: Reginald is red, Gweldyn is green, Bordim is blue and Yelena is yellow.