BattleTech: Defense of David Rules

It was a good thing that I forgot some details as the campaign needed a lot more work to make it playable. There are still a few things behind the scenes that needs to get done before we can start but now the framework is done. I will not be posting our full roster until the end of the campaign. The reason for this is when we ironed out the rules, we made the campaign secret. I will get into how this work in a bit. I will be repeating some of the stuff that was in the Introduction. I want all the rules to be in one place and some of the rules have slightly change or have been clarified. In any case, here are the rules:

This campaign is a fight between Draconis Combine and Federated Suns. Each side will get 55,000 battle value points to build their force. Both sides will also get 36 million C-Bills for supplies and repairs. Each point of BV not used will be converted into 10,000 additional C-Bills. The Federated Suns will have to split their force and C-Bills into two; a planetary defense force and a relief force that is on its way to the planet. The Federated Suns can split their force and money in any way they want, it doesn't have to be 50/50 and the Draconis Combine will have no idea what the split is. Both sides force is further divided on the map into elements referred to as Lances which will be 4 mechs, 4 combat vehicles or 4 of any combination of the two. The map will show the movements of Lances on both sides.

Time in the campaign is track by strategic turns which is one day. At the start of each strategic turns except the first, Federated Suns rolls a d20, adding that value to the reinforcement running count. When the reinforcement count reach 100, the relief force has jump into the system and will make planet fall in 12 days. At that time the Federated Suns will have access to both forces and C-Bill totals, and it will now count as one force. Each player may give each of their Lances a single order per strategic turn. A Strategic Move is the amount of distance the Lance can move at the rate of its slowest member. The following are the types of orders that can be given to a Lance:

Fight/Scout - Can move up to its strategic movement to engage a fight. The type of order given will affect the type of battle and win conditions. Also if a side wins while given a Scout order, they get to see the stats of the enemy involved in that fight.
Defend - Can not move but will get a bonus to initiative if engaged.
Repair - Can not move but will get to spend C-Bills to repair, reload and upgrade vehicles in the Lance.
Move - Can move up to 2 times its strategic movement.
Fast Move - Can move up to 3 times its strategic movement, can't move next turn.
Dropship Move - Lances can load up into a drop ship and move into a new hex. This takes 2 turns unless you control the space port in which case it takes a single turn. Draconis Combine have 3 Leopards(dropships), Federated Suns have nothing until the relief force arrive. When that happens Federate Suns will get access to an Union dropship.

The orders for each Lances will be written down in secret and revealed simultaneously.

This is a hex map based campaign using a single continent the length of about 8,000 km. A strategic movement is calculated by how many hexes the slowest vehicle can cross in an eight hour period. Both sides has a HQ base that will allow them to do full repairs and supplies anywhere on the map. If this base is captured by the enemy, then half of the C-Bill stock is lost and that side will only be able to do field repairs. The location of these bases will be chosen right before the campaign starts. The Federated Suns based will be hidden, meaning the Draconis Combine will not know where it is. When the relief force arrive, the Union dropship will act as a second base for Federated Suns. In addition, Federated Suns can setup other hidden bases if they wish. These other hidden bases will be locations where one or more Lances are waiting to spring a trap for a Drcaonis Combine unexpecting force to walk into. There are three other key locations on the map besides the 2 HQ bases. The spaceport which allows a Dropship Move order to be perform in a single turn and two factories. If a side controls a factory then they will receive a 20% discount on the C-bill cost of repairs and supplies, and their mechanics get a 20% bonus on time to finish the work. If one side controls both factories then the bonus increases to 30%.

One side will achieve victory if they can drop their opponent down to 20% of their starting battle value amount. For Federated Suns this is 20% of the planetary force until the relief force arrives in which case it becomes 20% of the combine force. This includes any mech or combat vehicle that can still function in some capacity as well as captured enemy mechs and vehicles.

Other Tidbits -

Any time Federated Suns is the defender, they will get for free three 28-man infantry platoons.

Tech teams can provide 8 hours of work per day. Each Lance has 2 tech teams assign to them. These are the numbers we will used to look up how long it takes for repairs and refits to happen.

Injured pilots can heal 1 point of damage after 2 days of non-combat rest due to the medical teams both sides have access to. Non-combat orders are Move, Repair, Fast Move and Dropship Move, and they don't get engaged by the enemy.

And finally the map itself:

Dots are cities, S is the Spaceport, I are Industrial Cities(which is where the factories are), - are badlands, T are forests, blue lines are rivers, ^ are mountains, curve lines are hills and blank areas are plains. Each hex is equal to 300 mapsheets across.

And that are the rules of our campaign. I still need to make my list and a few questions has come up recently that needs to be resolved. All that should be done quickly and the campaign can begin. Any changes or additions to the rules will be put on the nexus page which will go up sometime next month. Thank you for reading.

Top 10 Differences Between Flames of War 4th and Team Yankee

Version 4 of Flames of War is finally here. A quick scan of the new rules tells me that Battlefront has adapted the Team Yankee rule set into the newest edition of Flames of War. Which is fine by me as I think the Team Yankee rules are easier to learn and use. Cause overall they are both essentially the same rule set, might as well go with the simpler version of the two. Taking a closer look at the rules however, I notice while Version 4 Flames of Wars has the same framework of Team Yankee, there were some easy to miss significant differences. I thought I would make my top 10 rule differences between Team Yankee and Version 4 to help people get into the game. Also if you never played Team Yankee as a Flames of War player, hopefully this guide can still be useful to you as there is a sea of changes between Version 3 and Version 4.

#10. Mistaken Targets - If you never played Team Yankee then something new you need to get use to is that the shooter gets to assigns hits, with some restrictions. To balance out the attacker picking the juiciest targets allowed, the defender on a +3 may swap all the hits on two teams. At first glance Version 4 Mistaken Targets rule (beside being better written) looks identical to Team Yankee's. However, there is one additional restriction that isn't in Team Yankee. In Version 4, hits can only be swap once! I'm not entirely sure how much this will make a difference. I need to see it in action and take some time theorycrafting to really understand what this change means. But in the mean time keep this difference in mind.

#9. Aircraft Spotting - Aircraft is very different in Version 4, if you haven't played Team Yankee. They now behave mostly like other units. A Team Yankee player will be used to the aircraft rules. Something that can be easily missed is that ground units can not spot for aircraft's artillery and vice verse. It makes sense in that communication between the ground and aircraft was probably very limited in World War 2.

#8. Repeating Bombardment - A couple things a Version 3 player needs to know about artillery is that staff teams is no longer used and the spotter picks a point on the board (not a unit) to be a target of the bombardment. There are three things different about doing repeating bombardment in Version 4 from Team Yankee. The first is that the spotter (who could be different from the one who did the initial bombardment) doesn't need line of sight to the aiming point!(there is a penalty for not having line of sight to the aiming point, but it doesn't stop the bombardment) Second, infantry and Gun Team hit by a repeat bombardment have to re-roll successful saves! Third, moving the artillery also removes the range in marker. This third one is something for a while I thought was in Team Yankee but its never mention in the actual rules. Version 4 on the other hand makes it loud and clear moving means losing the marker.

#7. Bombardment - To do a bombardment first you need a spotter, who does need to see the aiming point. The spotter can be a member of the artillery, Formation HQ or a specialist Observer. A Team Yankee player might notice the one thing not listed. Unit Commander! I know it will take me a while to get use to unit commanders not being able to spot for artillery. But that isn't the only change from Team Yankee. In Team Yankee spotters can only spot for a single artillery unit but there is no such restriction in Version 4. Spotters are still limited to 3 attempts but in Version 4, for example if they range in on the first attempt, the spotter can use their second and third attempts for a different artillery battery.

#6 Move Orders and Reserves - Not Team Yankee players will need to get use to movement order. They are a group of abilities that any unit can do and require a check to perform. One of these movement orders, Blitz move, has been extremely useful in Team Yankee for reserve units. It gave the possibility of move or shot units to arrive from reserves and still fire. This will not be an option in Version 4 because it block units from using movement orders until they are on the board.

#5 Reserves - How you pick what goes into reserves is completely difference from both Version 3 and Team Yankee. The rule in Version 4 is that no more than 60% of the agreed point total may be deployed on the table with the rest going into reserves. That means it no longer matters how many units you have in your list. In theory this should force closer to a 50/50 split between on the table and reserves. While this does prevent taking several cheap units to manipulate what goes into reserves, I'm not sure how much this will change stuff in actual games. I know it will change how people build some lists but beyond that I need to play a few games to see how this will truly affect the game.

#4 Commander Re-rolls - This would be a rare case that it would be better to have never played Team Yankee. Version 3 players are used to their HQ giving re-rolls. Team Yankee removed all those rules so its a little surprising to me to see that they are back. Failing to remounted bailed out tanks, rallying from pinned down or Last Stand Test can be re-rolled if the unit is within 6 inches of the commander (and line of sight to unit leader). Just when I was getting use to not worrying about when can I do re-rolls, its back.

#3 Starting Step - The Starting Step between Version 3 and Team Yankee is quite similar. However Version 4 is vastly different in many ways. First reserves is now before aircraft. Team Yankee has it the other way, which can frankly was mistake on the designers part and caused issues that had to be resolved in FAQs later. With reserves happening first, Version 4 no longer have those problems. A far more significant change is that the Formation more check has moved from the beginning like it is in Team Yankee and Version 3 to the middle of the Starting Step. This means you will have a chance to remount bailed out tanks, before dealing with the Formation morale. This rule change is quite beneficial to armor user. In Team Yankee, if you only had tank units in your formation and every tank was bailed out, you had to check whether you lost the game before you could remount. In Version 4, you roll for remount first and if you get enough success you no longer have to worry about auto losing.

#2 Last Stand Test - Both Team Yankee and Version 3 have a rule that the last remaining infantry team in an unit need to make a check every turn to stay in the game. Version 4 has greatly expanded on that concept. Now what triggers a morale check also triggers the Last Stand Test. For infantry that means they need to start taking Last Stand Test when reduce to 2 teams instead of one every turn. For tanks which are normally immune to this rule are now affected. Lone tanks now have to check every turn or get destroyed, unless they started the game as single team (or they are warriors). And still lone non warriors/non commanders tanks that are bailed out also have to take the Last Stand Test. Another thing to keep in mind is that when unit leaders died, you immediately pick a new one unless no one was within 6 inches of the leader. If that happens then the unit remains leaderless and until the unit leader is replace that unit will have to make Last Stand Test no matter how big the unit is. This is a huge change. All the different ways this one change can impact games is almost too many to count. I thought this was the biggest and most significant difference in Version 4, until I read ...

#1 Formation Morale - In Team Yankee you need at least a single unit that is apart of the Formation to be in Good Spirits for the Formation to be consider in Good Spirits. Version 4 requires 2 units instead of just one. If that wasn't bad enough, a Formation not in Good Spirits in Version 4 is auto destroyed! There is no roll from the commander to stay in! The only bright side to Version 4 is that looks at both units on the table and in reserves while Team Yankee only checks units on the table. So you won't auto lose because of reserves but once everything is on the table this will end games much faster than either Team Yankee or Version 3 did.

If you are a Version 3 player and do not know what Formation are, everything but your support platoons are in your Formation. Combat platoon, Weapon platoons and sometimes Regimental/Brigade Support comprise your Formation. If you never played Team Yankee, this is only a taste of the differences between Version 3 and Version 4. It will probably take sometime to get used to the vast differences.

I have only skimmed the rules but these are the 10 things I thought were by far the biggest changes from Team Yankee. Still I'm more excited to try Flames of War again now than I have been in quite a while. When I get some games in I can provide more detailed thoughts on Version 4. Until then, I hope this was helpful and thank you for reading.

Random Links - Manga, Claymore, Sisters of Battle and Shieldmaidens

Have you ever read or watch something that reminds you of something else, which in turn reminds you of something else, which in turn gives you an idea for something else entirely? I get that a lot. And over the weekend it happen again, starting with a manga One-Shot.

An One-Shot manga is a comic that either tries to tells a stand-alone short story or tries to raise interest in a new series that author wants to write. I know some of my favorite manga series started as an One-Shot like Berserk and Seven Deadly Sins. In both of these cases the One-Shot was not connect to the series but was very similar to what ended up being the first chapter of the series. I've recently read Arcadia of the Moonlight One-Shot and it seems to me to be more of the pleading its case to be a new series kind of One-Shot. Its a science fiction boy meets princess and decides to help her story. Cliche but manage to perk my interest so I would like to find out more. The plot was rushed but then again you don't have a lot of time in an One-Shot. I don't read a lot of manga anymore. The only reason I read Arcadia of the Moonlight was because it was by Norihiro Yagi. He wrote one of my favorite manga comics in Claymore.

Claymore is a dark fantasy series about its heroine, Clare out to get revenge on a powerful enemy. Clare is a Claymore, a term used by citizens of the country to refer to a supernatural warrior from the organization. Thought to be half-human, half demons these warriors are expert sword masters with supernatural strength, speed and a range of other powers. They earn their name from the fact each wields a large Claymore sword. The warriors of the organization are also all female. Their uniform is pretty simple with a grey/off white/silver color (I found a wiki that says the uniforms are grey but they look closer to an off white or silver to me). Yet it works for them. Reminiscing about my love for Claymore, I was suddenly reminded of another all-female organization.

Phil has been trying to drag me kicking and screaming back into the 40k universe. I hear a lot about the state of the 40k from him and what's new with his 40k armies. As much as I love Eldar and Blood Angels, it wasn't enough to bring me back to the game I started the hobby in. However Sisters of Battle is a different story. Getting to play Sisters of Battle again is probably the one way I consider going back to 40k. Phil knows this and has giving me all the rules I need to have to play them. Phil has also mention to me kill-team rules which is a way to play without having a full army. I still have what little of Sisters of Battle I own before I quit though none of it was ever completely painted. A compelling reason to at least look into kill teams is that I would have 20 to 30 models I can work on before I would need to spend money on 40k again. I started with a red and purple color scheme but since I never finished painting a single model, I could easily go with something different. Related to thinking about if and what to paint my Sisters as, I've also been thinking about colors for my fantasy Sisters like army in the Shieldmaidens. I need to paint the Cloud Giant in my New Year's purchase soon and I hadn't settle on the Shieldmaidens' color. I was leading towards a light green and purple but I wasn't really happy with that.

With Claymore, Sisters of Battle and Shieldmaidens all on my mind, it occurred to me that I could borrow Claymore's colors to solve my problems. 'Light green and silver' or 'purple and silver' looks better in my mind than 'green and purple'. I also solved a problem I hadn't gotten to yet with how I was going to handle rank and/or unit specialization (by unit specialization I'm talking about things like the Dominion Squad and Seraphim Squad in Sisters of Battle). I knew I was going to have one character with red in her outfit and she was going to be some type of officer. The red would be unique to her so how would I distinguish other officers? If I'm going to have special units or military branches within the Shieldmaidens, how will I distinguish them as well? The answer is to paint the entire army two colors with one being silver. The other color will depend on rank and special units. Silver will be the main color with the second color as highlights except for officers whom this will be reverse. Higher the rank, the less silver on their uniform. Sadly I only have two models to try this on and they both most likely officer characters. My Sisters of Battle models would be a good place to try out this color scheme on the average warrior.

I still have a lot to work on with my Shieldmaidens. I haven't decided whether to mirror them on an existing army or makeup my own force and fit something into it later. And of course there is the issue of finding models for them. Nevertheless some aspects of the Shieldmaidens are now resolved because I read a random One-Shot and my mind went into overdrive. Its funny how that works. Thanks for reading about the inter working of my thoughts. Until next time!

Topic of the Week - On Painting Miniatures

Topic of the Week is a question pose by Vince Venturella to the Warhammer Youtube community to encourage interesting discussions. The questions are sometimes Warhammer and/or Gamesworkshop specific while other times they are more general relating to the hobby itself. This week topic is the latter. The topic for this week is On Painting Miniatures. Vince ask "would you still paint miniatures if there was no game involve", "what is the value of painting to you", "is painting a choir" and "your feelings on pre-painted miniatures". I didn't think I would do a responds for this topic because I really hate painting. Still, after thinking about it I realize my answer is more complicated than that. So here is my written responds.

I'm going to start with the pre-painted miniatures part as my answer to it has change over my time in the hobby. I started the hobby with Warhammer 40k. I hated painting then as much as I do now, maybe more so. I really wish the 40k models were pre-painted at the time. I didn't have a lot of model and what I did have were either not painted or partly badly painted. Over time I develop a narrative for my forces. I've always enjoyed crafting stories and making one within the 40k universe help connect me to the game and to my miniatures. As I got a better picture of what my cast of characters look like, I got further away from a "default" look of 40k. It wasn't something I thought about at the time but if GW did come out with pre-painted miniature after I came up with my own narrative, I'm not sure I would want them anymore because they no longer fit into my story. When I move from 40k to fantasy, I had completely divorce my miniatures from the official setting. All honestly I didn't know Warhammer fantasy even HAD an official setting until years after I got into it. I kind of thought it was a make-up your own kind of setting. In any case, not only was I going with my own color scheme, in some cases I went with different miniatures and/or conversions. Examples of this is me swapping the traditional colors for the Chaos Gods because I want my favorite color to match my favorite Chaos God. Also I modified my Nurgle theme into more of a corrupting Nature. When my army is this unique and different from the "default" setting, pre-painted miniatures does me no good. Making miniatures my own is really important to me now and if I get into a new game, I would want to put my own twist on the models. This is why I have had very little interest into getting into the X-Wing game. Some settings are so big and important that the main reason to play the game is the setting itself. Ignoring the setting of Warhammer to me is one thing, trying to do that with Star Wars doesn't feel right. I love Star Wars but if I'm putting my limited funds into a miniature game, I want to play something that feels right crafting my story. So that's why when I started the hobby I really want to buy pre-painted models but now I avoid games that has them.

On the main topic, would I still paint if there was no game involved? That depends if that includes games I make up. I always thought I would be playing miniature games at some point in my life. Before I learn about Warhammer 40k I thought I would have to make the game myself and somehow find pieces for it. Now that I think about it, there is no way I can divorce the game from the miniatures because if these types of models were out there, I would develop a game for them if one didn't already exist. It would have taken me longer to get into the hobby but I think I would eventually find my home here. I do not enjoy painting at all. I do enjoy seeing my story come to life on the table. Despite my lack of enjoying painting, I have notice my painting skills have gotten better over the years. This is really surprising to me as I paint so irregular and infrequent. I do spend a lot of time thinking about painting in terms of what colors I should use for certain units and in general what colors I see walking around that I would like to use on a model. The most common example of this is seeing a car drive by me with a unique color scheme and I'm trying to imagine what would an unit of knights with that color for their armor look like? I'm not trying nor have any desire to be a better painter. Instead it is a by product of trying to get my vision on the table.

One of my goals for this year is to paint more often. It is not an easy goal for me to achieve given how much I dislike painting itself. Yet so much of what I want to accomplish is reliant on me getting a lot of painting done. And that I think pretty much sums up my relationship with painting. Thanks for reading.

Topic of the Week link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_nt5UWvnks

Team Yankee Tactics: Encounter

I recently played a game with the Encounter mission. Our game ended disappointingly suddenly with the destruction of the Soviets force along with Tracy's lack of ability to get any reserves in. He was extra frustrated because his previous game had the same mission and ended in a similar way. We both had new test lists and were sad that the game ended before we got a chance to get a feel for our lists. At least that what I thought at the time. Thinking back on it, I think I did learn something about my list. However, more important I think I learn the Encounter mission is far trickier than it appears and I though up some advice to think about when playing that mission. I just want to say that I will be using examples of what I think Tracy did wrong in our game. I'm not trying to insult his playing. In fact I would have probably behave in the same way. It was only after witnessing the game going very wrong and contemplating on it that I came up with these ideas.

The first thing I need to tackle is the elephant in the room when dealing with a lot of this missions, list building. Tracy said next time we should just play a game with everything on table so we can properly test out our list. At the time I agree with him but now I think that is the wrong way of thinking about it. 7 out of the 9 Expanded Missions has at least one player dealing with reserves. Reserves is very much a big part of the game and if your list has troubles with reserves then its not a good list. Up until now I only thought about reserves in how many units I have in my list (and by default, how many units need to go into reserves). I now know that I need to put far more thought into how my list deals with reserves. Neither of us had very reserve friendly list as we both struggled with deciding with what to have on the table and what to put into reserves. Here are the things I think you need to think about for reserves:

1. A strong infantry unit on the table. - Infantry are very hard to remove in the game. Having some infantry start on the table means it will be unlikely for you to take (and failed) a formation morale check before most of your army can come in from reserves, even with bad rolling. You have to consider that you might not get anything from reserves until turn 5 while your opponent have access to nearly everything with some bad rolls for you. What you start the game with has to be able to survive for a long time and infantry are the best units for this goal. You don't want to auto lose the game because of a failed formation morale check when you only have 30% of your force on the table.

2. A game changer unit in reserves. - By game changer I mean an unit of 3 main battle tanks from NATO forces or 5 - 7 T-72s from a Warsaw force. I think the reason you want to do this is twofold. One is that if they not on the table, they can't get destroyed! When you have to deal with reserves, there is a good chance you will be out numbered on the table. When you are vastly out numbered, main battle tanks make easy targets. Second, when you are hurting, out numbered and with your back against the wall and you only got 1 thing coming in from reserves, you want something that can make a different. In addition to their natural power, main battle tanks coming in from reserves has a good chance of getting side shots on enemy MBTs.

3. Try to have a balance force on the table. - Since what you start with on the table could be the only units available until turn 5, you should try to craft a list that can have a balance force on the table. Its pretty obvious that your list should be balance so it can deal with armor, aircraft and infantry. But what some people, including myself don't factor in is that you need to have a balance list after taking away your reserve units. That means you should already have a good idea what is going into reserve and what's going to be on the table regardless of what your opponent has.

4. Make adjustment based on your opponent's list. - That said, you need to pay attention to what is in your opponent list and if your opponent has to pick their reserves first, be sure to consider that as well and make adjustments to your normal plan as need be. If your opponent puts all their aircraft in reserves, then you should be safe with putting your Gophers in reserves as well for example.

These are four things that I think will not only help with Team Yankee in general but in particular should help with the Encounter Mission. And they are all things I never consider to do until now.

If your not familiar with the Encounter Mission, it splits the table in middle such that both players have an entire long table edge deployment zone. The key elements of it is that both players have scattered reserves, have to defend two objectives place by the opponent that can be taken on turn 1 and no one knows who has first turn. That's why I started talking about reserves. How you handle reserves is extremely important, maybe more so than some other missions with reserves. Something that is really easy to miss is that the objectives are in a location where that if you are controlling your opponent's objective to win, your opponent's reserve can flank you. The fact that you can immediately take the objectives leads to the incentive to rush across the board to do just that. It's easy to forget that your opponent has the chance to get new units on Turn 3 and will definitely get something in on Turn 5. Or you might think you have reserves of your own so it evens out. If this is your thinking then you need to remember that while you are in your opponent's deployment zone, your reserves might have trouble lending support arriving from your own board edge. In our game Tracy rushed two units of T-72s to my side to put pressure on me and it look like I was in a lot of trouble. But me getting back to back reserves of Leopard 2s and Leopard 1s who got flank shot lead to all of his T-72s getting wiped out. You should always based your tactics on the strengths of your force and what your opponent is capable of, but I think a general rule of thumb is that for Encounter you should resist the temptation to rush for objectives for the first few turns.

If in the first 4 turns you get obliterated, it is pretty easy to get demoralize and give up. Before you do take a deep breath, relax and take a serious look at the state of the game because you may not be as bad off as it seems. Unless your reserves can't hurt your opponent like Shilkas and Gophers against Main Battle Tanks, then its a good chance you still have a large portion of your force ready to come in. In our game Tracy lost 8 T-72s in one turn, completely wiping out 2 units and failed to get any reserves of his own. He thought he had no hope of defending both objectives. The thing is that I wasn't going to win on my next turn as I wasn't near any of his objectives. He still had his T-72 HQ on the table and infantry in a building that I had no hope of doing meaningful damage to. In reserves he had an unit of 4 Hinds and 2 units of 6 Carnations and he was going to get at least one of those units next turn. The Hinds would be risky to use as I still had most of my Gepards and the untouched Redeye Teams on the table. His biggest threats were the unit of 2 Leopard 2s and an unit of 3 Leopard 1s. The carnations if lucky can deal with both of them. If Tracy didn't give up, I would have moved the Leopard 2s up to try to control an objective to win. In retrospect, this would have been bad because now Tracy's carnation would of had the opportunity to get on the flank and with 6 guns the averages say he should wipe out the Leopard 2s. Even if he couldn't get on the flank, 6 carnations has a decent chance of taking out a single Leo2 per turn. And dealing with the Leopard 1s would have been even easier. It would have been an uphill battle to win but Tracy had the tools to handled the board in his reserves.

The last point I want to bring up is that the scattered reserves in Encounter is not as random as it appears. A concern I've heard about and had myself is that your reserves are unreliable because its random where they will arrive from. However a third of the time you can place the unit anywhere on the table edge. Also objective tends to be near the corners to make defending them as hard as possible. That means if you are worried about being able to contest an objective, you have a 2/3 chance of getting to arrive where you want. Failing that, the enemy should still be in range of the arriving unit's weapons, assuming firing lanes are available. Terrain can change this, but in general I don't think you have to worry about the scattered part of reserves in this mission.

These are all my thoughts on the Encounter mission. I hope it can be useful in our own games. If have your own advice on this mission or if any of my advice here help you, please tell me about it in the comments below. Thanks for reading.

Summoners Journal #3 - The World Boss

It's been a while since my last episode and I haven't really made all that much progress. I've still been playing almost every day. My issue has been that I've not been very active when I do play and I'm at a point in the game that my current play style isn't advancing me anymore ... or so I thought. There is one way my play style can still make a difference, I just haven't been trying it yet.

Before I go into that I want to go back to where I left off in the last episode. I has hyping up the Light/Dark scroll because whatever I got would have been fairly rare. However I was less than overjoyed with a Bearman. Not that he is necessarily bad, its just that I have no interest in him. The most common way to get monsters is by summoning them with scrolls. The most common scroll you can earn is the Unknown Scroll. An Unknown Scroll earns you one random monster of grades 1 to 3 stars of the Fire/Water/Wind type. After the Unknown Scroll, the next type of scroll is the far rarer Mystical Scroll. The Mystical Scroll gives you a random monster of grades 3 to 5 stars. The thing about these scrolls is that you can only get Fire, Water or Wind monsters from them. In terms of rarity, the next types of scrolls are Fire, Water and Wind scrolls which acts like a Mystical Scroll but only summons one type. So you can't get Light or Dark monsters from the most commonly found scrolls in the game which makes them far rarer than other types of monsters. Its not until you get to the even rarer Light and Dark Scrolls that you actually have a chance of getting one. Like Mystical Scrolls, Light and Dark Scrolls summon monsters of grades 3 to 5. I'm getting to the point in the game where I'm beginning to sacrifice 3 star monsters for other purpose. Even though I have no interest in a Bearman and have sacrifice other Bearman of different types, I'm keeping the Light Bearman just because Light/Dark monsters are that rare.

After my last episode I was seriously considering change my play style. Relatively speaking, I've been in the same place in the game for 4 or 5 months now. Techniques other experts suggest didn't appeal to me but I was beginning to think I have no other choice if I wanted to advance any farther in the game. And then I unlocked the World Boss. The World Boss operates in a completely different way from anything else in the game. To fight the World Boss you use 10 to 20 monsters at once and you can fight the World Boss three times per day though a monster can only be used against the World Boss once a day. Its also not a "fight" in any sense of what you normally do. Instead the monsters you use in the battle is assign a score to them. The score is based on a number of factors and the score of all your monsters is added up to determine how much damage you did to the World Boss. Higher the damage, more the reward you get from fighting it. Some of those factors include the grade and level of the monster, the grade and level of the runes the monster has equip and how many of the monster's skill has been upgraded. Normal combat effectiveness doesn't matter in the World Boss. Improving the overall power of the monster helps get better rewards from the World Boss.

Because of the World Boss I can play how I like and still make progress in the game. I now have a reason to advance 60 monsters as far as I can. The higher tier World Boss rewards are quite valuable and well within my ability to earn them. I had moved away from collecting and powering up as many monsters as I could to focus on a smaller group, but now a large volume of monsters is the key to doing well against the World Boss. It also doesn't matter what type of runes I give my monsters as long as they are the strongest I have. Nevertheless this will be very slow progression. When I first started playing the game and learn most of its mechanics, it never occurred to me how slow this part of the game is. After 8 months of playing some experts will still consider me in the "early" game. I suppose this is fine as long as I have a goal in the game and haven't gotten myself burnt out.

This is another one of those topics that finding a comparison to miniature gaming doesn't quite work. The amount of effort that goes into maxing a monster's strength in the game is insane. Once a miniature is assembled and painted, its done. There is no need to go back over it outside of repairs and rare touch ups such as change a model's base for some reason. If repainting miniatures was more of a thing then I could make a comparison. In a way the work that goes into a monster is similar to the work of building an entire army in a miniature game. 8 months in and I'm still not close to having a single monster maxed out. Yes I have a few monsters at the highest grade and level, but that is just one part of the monsters strengths. Next time I think I will go over combat strategics as that should be a topic with a lot of crossover with miniature gaming. Until then, thanks for reading.

Progress Review #1

It is the end of the first full month since I've started my new direction. At least until I completely finish my initial purchase, I want to do a review at the end of the month to look at the progress I have made and where I plan to go next month. I had hope I would get more accomplish but at least I've made more progress than my usual pace last year.

As you can see I only got to Team Yankee stuff this month. All six tanks are mostly assembled. One of the smoke launchers was deflective so the far end T-72 can't be finished until I get the replacement in about 2 weeks. The Leopard 2 and one T-72 is fully primed and I started painting them. I should get to/finish priming the remaining 3 T-72s tomorrow. I was really up in the air on how to paint my tanks. For some reason green and red was strongly appealing for both countries. For West German I wanted to do green, red and yellow camo. I didn't have the right shade of yellow so I had to buy it. For the Soviets I was leading to green as a main color, something else for a secondary color for one formation and red as a main color with the green as a secondary for the other formation. I was a little worried at first that my two countries were going to look too similar. Fortunately I don't think that will be an issue now. I had a lot of Flames of War paint I've never used and it help solve my dilemma. It had a brown in the set that look like red to me. I thought it was the perfect shade for my Germans and I knew I wanted a stronger red for my Soviets. Even better the set had two different greens: Reflective Green and Luftwaffe Green.

Luftwaffe Green was what I was feeling towards my West Germans. The Reflective Green is suitably different to work with my Soviets. I've only just started painting but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. The next thing I need to try is red for the other Soviet formation. Funny enough I already have a strong red from Games Workshop.

I'm going to use that red camo with the Reflective Green. I hope this comes out well as I'm picking my colors in the Joy of Painting style. I hope to be done with the painting on most of the tanks in a week or two. After that I'm going to need to pick up a gloss spray so I can follow in the footsteps of what Tracy did for his Soviets. It might have been what I did wrong with my US as I didn't put a gloss coat on before I added the shade.

For next month I plan on finishing the tanks, do a little work on the Gepard and Fliegerfaust Gruppe I already had, start on the Plague Monks and Relic Knights and maybe do something with BattleTech. I don't see myself getting into the Hordes stuff until April or May. Let see how much of this I can get done by the end of March.

Team Yankee Tactics: Mistaken Target

I think a lot of people do not realize how useful the Mistaken Target rule is in Team Yankee. Its value does take a bit to truly appreciate. I myself didn't realize some of the things that could be done with it until I play a few games where it came up. Here I will share some ways the Mistaken Target rule can help you in games.

First I better explain what the Mistaken Target rule is. When your opponent is shooting at one of your platoon, they pick an individual team to target. The attacker can assign the hits how they like as long as the first hit goes on the initial targeted team, and all the hits are evenly distributed within 6 inches of that target. Mistaken Target comes in here as now the defender has the option to swap all the hits on one legal team with all the hits on a second legal team. The first use most players think of for this rule is if some teams in the platoon are inoperative (bailed/bogged down) then you want to try to move as many hits away from the active tank teams. But this just scratches the surface of what you can do with it. Look at this example:

In this example an Abram shot at the T-72s and hit once, putting the hit on tank marked A. You might think it doesn't matter which tank gets hit but it does. Tank A is within 16 inches of the Abram while tank B is more than 16 inches. That puts Tank B at long range so its armor is 1 higher. So it would be in the Soviet player's best interest to swap hits for a higher chance of a tank surviving. In a related note, remember you have to keep track of where each hit came from, especially if some of the shooters are getting side shots like in this next example:

Let's assume the Abrams in this example are more than 8 inches away. If each Abram hit once then the US player would want to put the hit from C on Tank B and D on to Tank A so it would be impossible for the Soviets to make an Armor save because it would be side shots. The Mistaken Target rule would allow the Soviet player to swap hits so both shots would be on front armor. In the heat of battle it can be easy to forget to use the Mistaken Target in this way. On the flip side, a tank "knife" fight is far more deadly than I initially thought. I figure that if my opponent is going to flank my tanks and there is no way to stop it, I would deploy my vehicles facing every directions, hoping I could then use Mistake Target to put as many shots as possible on front armor. What I didn't realize until recently is that if my opponent close the distance, then not only can they practice place the hits for maximum side shots, I also wouldn't be able to use Mistake Target rule because they are too close. In the above example the Abrams are actually 4 inches away, which would prevent the Soviets from using Mistake Targets. In this in mind for your games.

In the next example I have two pictures. In the first picture things are in the actual distance I will be describing. The second picture is a close up of the action so it would be easier to see what the issue is.

This situation happen in my last game, to my detriment. I pointed the issue out in hopes for me and Tracy to become better gamers and it bite me in the end. In this example it is the US turn and the Cobra hasn't fired yet. Wanting to protect my aircraft, I attempted to wiped out the enemy AA. The Soviets still had two working Shilkas and I just had my HQ tank to take them out. The Abram only hit once so I put the hit on the Shilka labelled A. It doesn't matter what angle the shot is coming from, any hit on a Shilka from an Abram is practically a dead Shilka. However in this case, Shilka A is in range of the Cobra while Shilka B is just outside of range to shoot at the aircraft. Since there is nothing else to shoot at the Shilkas it is in the Soviets player best interest to swap the hit so they can still do AA fire on the Cobras. In our actually game we played West Germans vs Soviets and I lost a Tornado because of this situation.

So always be aware what your opponents can still shoot next before deciding on using Mistaken Target rule and rolling saves. Because just swapping hits away from the active tanks may not be in your best interest. Instead it might be more beneficial to try to protect certain Anti-Aircraft teams or move hits onto teams that are the only targets for enemies that still can shoot.

One last point on Mistaken Targets and its something I only learn when I decided to write this post. Infantry can ALWAYS use the Mistaken Target rule outside of assaults. The restriction on using Mistaken Targets specifically mentions tank teams. And I think this makes sense. No matter how close you get, the enemy probably can't tell which individual soldier is apart of which team. And even if you could snipe a special weapons guy like a Milan Missile Team, the platoon probably has some people cross trained with those weapons and could pick them off the dead guy. In fact, something like that happen in the Team Yankee novel. use the Mistaken Target rule if they are outside 4 inches. Their usage of 'either' confused me and I thought the rule was saying something else. The thing I've never notice before is that you can't swap hits to a tank within 8 inches even if the initial target is more than 8 inches away. I always just check to see if the target was within 8 inches or not. I know now I need to also pay attention to who the hits is getting swap to. I also thought that if someone in the shooting platoon was within 8 inches, then none of the platoon's shoots could be swap. But this is incorrect. You need to check whether each shooting team's shots can be swap separately. Sorry for the error.

I hope I was able to offer some advice on playing Team Yankee. If you know of some tactics using the Mistaken Target rule that I didn't cover, please leave a comment about it. Thank you for reading.

The New Beginning Starts Now!

I got my Battlefront stuff today so now I'm ready to discuss my miniature fresh start. Here is a group shot of everything I picked up.

One thing you may notice is that there is no World War 2 miniature. I was planning on getting the Kleinpanzer Wanze to restart my Flames of War force because its a cool looking vehicle but I eventually decided to just drop it for now. Part of the reason was being unsure which Flames of War list to work on since working on multiple German list sometime have as much in common with each other as complete different armies. Also with Team Yankee going from "a game I may get to play sometime in the future, maybe" to "setting up a Team Yankee night", I have more of an incentive to get my Team Yankee stuff done.

From my Battlefront only picture, you can tell I dropped the T-72 singles and the Wanze to get the T-72 box instead. And its a good thing that I did. I had plan to buy a single tank here and there and maybe get the Potecknov's Bears box set from my local store. I now know that won't work for me because of decals. I hadn't taken a good look at the Soviet decals until I open my box and they sucked, at least for my purpose. For start there are only 16 big number decals on the sheet. I don't know why they have two different size numbers on the sheet but if I'm going to use any decals, I'm going to use the same size on all my T-72. My list has 20 tanks so I will need to customize a few numbers no matter what. However the numbers on the sheet is what really gives me problems. The sheet has the numbers "200" and every number between "216" and "230". I don't see a system that makes sense using those numbers. What's extra strange is that you couldn't number your tanks the same way as the tanks on the T-72 box picture. All the tanks on the box are numbered in the 300s. There is noway to number your tanks in that way because they only give you 2 pairs of 3s. Long story short, trying to number my tanks in a way that makes sense to me is going to require a bunch decal sheets. To grab as many decal sheets as possible means I should only buy my tanks in the T-72 Tankovy Company box. I guess this does makes my next three Soviet purchase straight forward.

My West German force is a different story. I don't have either a partial or full list preset to build for my West Germans so I have a different set of considerations for what to get next. A combination of options I'm likely to choose often and reducing proxies are my top priorities. With those in mind artillery will one of the last things I will get as I can us my US 109s to stand for West German's M109s in the meantime. That said, getting my first Leopard 2 assemble is going to be nice but I am really not sure where to go next. I need tank decals so getting the Leopard 2 box or the German Army deal is a good idea. At this point I am not sold on the helicopters so I will probably go with the Leopard 2 box. I just think helicopters are too expensive point wise and I need to play a lot more games with them before I commit to them. The Marder box is another strong option as I will need some amount of infantry to balance my force. With all things consider I think my next Team Yankee purchase will be the Leopard 2 box so I can finish my current Leo2 with my following West German purchase most likely being the Marder box.

Moving on to Warhammer, I was able to get exactly what I wanted to start my Age of Sigmar Poison Army. I love the 3 snap together Chaos Warrior box. It maintains the Chaos aspect of the army and gives me something to practice a new color scheme. The focus of the army however will be with Skaven and the Plague Monks will give me my first taste of rats. I already have square bases to base them with. The next step with them is either another box of Plague Monks since my local store has one on the shelf, the Pestilens Starter Box or the Clan Rats box to get more square bases and rat bits. I will need quite a few more purchases before I will have enough to play with the army. I also need to keep an eye on the General's Handbook 2 news as that may change the outlook of my army. For that matter I need to learn what's in the Pestilens Battletome as well.

It's a little easier to determine what to get next for Hordes and BattleTech after these purchases. Nothing for a while! In BattleTechs case I feel I only need a few mechs for my purpose. Proxying is not as big of an issue in BattleTech and Chris has more than enough models to supply us both for the campaign. I don't need that many mechs to show off the look of my force and I think both the Warhammer and Longbow capture the essence of my army. If need be I can always add one or two more mechs later based on what I will bring in the campaign.

On the other hand I'm getting nothing for Hordes for while because I truly have no idea what to get. I still haven't play enough to even know I like the game. My knowledge on the game and Circle Orboros is quite low. I pick up the Druid Wilder because I really feel she will fit in how I want to play the game. They didn't have the Warbeast I was interested in so I grab Morvahna the Autumnblade instead. I knew I wanted her eventually and I need a warlock to start playing with so I figure might as well start with her. I wanted to start with a different warlock but I never found anyone else I was interested in. I initially wanted Morvahna later was because the story I'm crafting doesn't have her appear for a while, at least in combat. At least now when she does appear in my story I should be good at using her. But that is a long way down the road. Right now learning the game and what is my prefer play style are my top Horde priorities.

I initially wanted to pick up two female cloud giants to go into my Shieldmaiden army. I decide to just grab one now to see if I like the model and how I can paint it. If it turns out well then I will pick up a second cloud giant shortly. After taking her out the package and getting a good look at her, I think chances are good I will be getting that second one. The second giant will probably be a good time to practice doing conversions such as giving her a different weapons.

I'm really excited about everything I pick up. I hope by the end of the month I can have half the Plague Monks, the Chaos Warriors, and all the Team Yankee stuff finish. I'm already getting Team Yankee games in and I should be getting BattleTech and Hordes games soon as well. A gallery page will be forthcoming so I will have a place to post my progress with all these projects. Stay tune. Thanks for reading!

The Delay is Over!

I finally got my Christmas purchase done. My Battlefront order should be here early next week and I have everything else on my gaming table. What I ultimately got is a little different from my initial plans. I will go into how when my Battlefront stuff arrives and I can do a group picture. For now I want to go over my immediately Team Yankee plans.

Tracy has returned to the hobby and picked up the new books. We were given the option the join the next campaign our Oklahoma friends were putting together. We both decided to decline as the campaign was starting that week and we wanted some time to get back into the swing of things (and I was still busy for another week moving). Tracy has found a lot interest in both the British and East German armies. However he wants to get some games in before he invests in them. I on the other hand has shelf my incomplete US army to make a West German and Soviet force. With the prospect of actually getting games in I will be investing in Team Yankee a lot more than I thought I was going to do. We have restart doing Team Yankee demos again though this is mostly Tracy. Today at the demo there was discussions to have a Team Yankee game night with a third player. Even being away from the scene for half a year, it seems our previous efforts are beginning to blossom a local Team Yankee scene beyond the two of us. And all this happen a little over the last 2 weeks.

So what does all this mean? For this blog it means more Team Yankee articles are incoming. It means more Team Yankee tutorials and battle reports on Tracy's channel. And it means we may soon have enough players and interests to do our own Team Yankee campaign. This is quite the unexpected turn around for me but I am excited for it. I have a few ideas for campaigns. Now I can feel confident to work on them and know I can put them to use almost immediately. I'm already thinking about what to get next but that is a discussion that should go with the upcoming group picture post. So I will leave things here. I need to start designing a logo for my AoS army anyway. Thank you for reading.

A Slight Delay

By this point I had hope to have my new year purchases done with my Battlefront stuff on the way. That hasn't happen for a few reasons. A note about my buying habits, I only buy directly from the miniature company themselves or at a gaming store. I had plan to pick up my non Battlefront stuff at my local gaming store but they didn't have what I wanted to start my Age of Sigmar army. I would have been happy with either the Pestilen starter box or the plague monks box but my store had neither in stock. They did have a plague claw but that doesn't make sense to me to get that now. I don't know if I will really like it to have 2 as the Pestilen starter box is such a good deal that I will eventually pick it up. The only other Skaven things my store had was clan rats and the verminlord box, neither were things I want to start my army with. I will have a Corruptor as my army general but I want time to paint other parts of my army before I tackle him. Plus I want some time to think up conversion ideas for him. As for clan rats, I want them mainly for conversion purposes and to scavenge their base for plague monks. Its not quite a new years resolution, but I wanted to try to quickly assemble and paint all new models purchase this year. I now know that plan has some issue but I don't want to break it with my very first purchase. Now my local gaming store had plenty of Chaos stuff to choose from. Still, part of the reason I went with the Poison Army was so I would have an army that was a little different from my current army so I really didn't want to start with more of the same. Now I could have pick up the stuff for other games at my gaming store but if I got everything all at once I would get a better discount. I had to think about what to do. I could have the store order plague monks but I personally have had bad experience with ordering from them. Then again I don't think they ever had a problem getting Games Workshop stuff, just other companies like Battlefront. So in the end I order the plague monks and I'm waiting for them to arrive.

My Battlefront stuff has been delay for a slightly different reason. First I can't get them from my local gaming store because their selection for Battlefront is horrible (outside of Tanks) and nothing I've order has ever came in if it was a Battlefront miniature. The only Team Yankee stuff I can buy off the shelf is the main book, Potecknov's Bear box, Bannon's Boy box and maybe the tokens for US and Soviets. Out of that the only thing I may be interested in down the road is the Potecknov's Bear box. So this means I need to order my stuff directly from Battlefront. Now I'm still in the process of moving and would be worry that the delivery driver would drop my miniatures off at a location I may not be at for a while, a problem I have with them just living in one place! That said I've also been rethinking my purchase, in particular on the Flames of War side. Taking the train over the holidays reminded me that the last time I played Flames of War I wanted to use a train list. My problem is that the Berlin list and a train list will have almost nothing in common with each other. In some ways its like trying to buy 2 separate armies from two different countries. I suppose until I make the order I have time to think about which way I want to go.

That's where I'm at now. I had hope I would update a little more often this month but the move has taken a lot out of me. I probably won't get a post on my new purchases until after I fully move. Thanks for your interest and thank you for reading. Until next time...

Introduction to BattleTech: Defense of David

As I have mention in the Winter Update my friend Chris and myself design a BattleTech Campaign which I have since forgotten many of the mechanics we develop for it. And since he gotten a new BattleTech rule book that deals will some of the stuff the campaign is about, we might as well wait until we can get together to see if we want to adopt any of the new rules. What this post will be about is the general outline of the campaign and how the design came about.

At the beginning I thought we were going to craft our own lore for the campaign. Choose a year in the setting that will serve to limit what technology is available and we would make up everything from there. Instead I was shown that the official lore is so large that it is relatively easy to fit any scenario somewhere in the establish setting. The starting place was still picking a year which I allow Chris to choose since I usually get to choose my preference in our BattleTech games. Unsurprising to me he picked the Fourth Succession War. I favor clan tech along with their more advance mechs and I can tell while he loves nearly all things Battletech, the classic mechs and the tech level where the game started is close to his heart. Next we had to pick sides to play as. My friend was more than happy to play as any of the available choices which left me to decide first and Chris would then pick an appropriate foe. My knowledge on Battletech lore is quite low so my friend had to give me his personal short description of each nation. After hearing about my choices I decided to go with Federated Suns because I like the sound of mixing mechs and combat vehicles working together. Also I was in the middle of playing Tanks! at the time and was beginning to develop a liking for WW2 British warfare which also has some characteristics to Federated Suns. Chris went with Draconis Combine. I was given the choice so I decided to play the defenders. I figure there would be more potential playing the defenders if I decided to write short stories about my part in the campaign. At this stage the only thing we had left to decide was the location for our personal war. Chris looked up all the worlds in Federated Suns that bordered the Draconis Combine during the Fourth Succession War. There were a lot of options but only one planet had a scenario we both were interested in and fit what we had in mind for our campaign. That planet was David.

In the lore David, the second planet in the system, was apart of a skirmish conflict during the Fourth Succession War on the Federated Suns/Draconis Combine border. Under Federated Suns control, David II was the homeworld of the 41st Avalon Hussars. The 41st were deployed elsewhere in the universe so the 12th Deneb Light Cavalry garrisoned David in their place. The Draconis Combine attack David using the 9th Dieron Regulars while the 41st were away. The 12th Deneb Light Cavalry fought the 9th Dieron Regulars using guerrilla tactics. By refusing Dieron Regulars of having a stand-up fight, DLC greatly delay and frustrated the Draconis Combine force. DLC delayed long enough that the 41st Avalon Hussars were able to return, which caused the Dieron Regulars to withdrew from the world. The campaign will be our version of this very scenario.

We gave ourselves 55,000 battle value points each to design our force (which we still need to do). Once this is done I will have to split my force into two to represent the 41st Avalon Hussars and the 12th Deneb Light Cavalry. I will not be basing my force on either of them. Instead I will be choosing my force from anything that was available to Federated Suns during this time. Chris will do the same with the Draconis Combine. Both of us will have 36 million c-bills that we can use for repairs. At the start of the campaign I will only have access to the 12th Deneb Light Cavalry portion of my army. The 41st will show up later in the campaign at a random time neither of us will know about. In the meantime I will have to hold out until they arrive. We will split up our force into banners on a map. We will be giving these banners orders which will affect each unit in said banner. Some of the type of orders we can give banners are fight, scout, defend and move. The campaign splits up time into strategic turns. We will give each banner one order during each strategic turn (which represents one day in the setting). Any battle that I am the defender (I gave my banner the defend order and it got attack) I will get 3 platoons of rifle infantry for free. This will represent the local militia helping defend their planet. At the end of each strategic turn I will roll a d20 and add up the total to previous rolls. Once the total reaches 100, the 41st Avalon Hussars have arrive in the system. They will make landfall 12 days later and join what's left of my force (this is because David jump point stat is 12 days).

And that is a rough outline of our campaign and I doubt any of that information will change. The last time I work on my army list I was struggling to keep the ratio of my mechs, combat vehicles and others items the same as the official Federated Suns Regimental Combat Team. The Regimental Combat Teams was the main reason I pick Federated Suns in the first place so I will find a way to have a facsimile of it in the campaign. Once we rehash out them out, I will post the full rules of the campaign on a nexus page. After that I will post an article that will have our full rosters. At this point, once the map is done, the campaign will begin. My one fear about the campaign is that I will get annihilated before the 21st is even close to arriving since I will be vastly outnumbered. In any case we will find out in the coming months. Thanks for reading.