Issue with Weapons in Dracula's America

I've played four games of Dracula's America and my interest in the game is even higher. (I actually played two games before I publish my review.) Its unique system keeps all players involve for most of the game. And every game so far has been very close, though I've always been on the losing side. Without a doubt Dracula's America has become one of our favorite games to play and we are looking forward to eventually starting a campaign. But as we prepare what we want for our initial posse, we realize an issue with the weapons in Dracula's America, at least under a campaign system. Well, an issue if you don't want to buy and paint 5 times the amount of miniatures you would otherwise need.

The issue has to do with a "what you see is what you get rule", which a lot of miniature games have. If you don't know what this rule is, it means that the model needs to have the weapons its equip with to be physical modeled on the miniature. In most games this is not a big deal once you figure out how to make the model fit your playstyle. But with Dracula's America, a model can only have 3 weapons and no more than two models can have the same weapon beside the basic pistol. A starting posse has 6 models and $22 dollars to equip them with. You can't have any uncommon gear in your initial posse, like repeating rifles, sawed-off shotguns and others. After your first battle, both sides get some cash and then you can start upgrading your crew. So the equipment your posse has can (and most likely will) change after every game for most if not all of a campaign. As someone whom uses proxies a lot the hobby, I understand why the rule is in place. In games with fully equip posses, it is extremely important to know that a model with a rifle if that suppose to be a normal rifle, repeating rifle or a buffalo rifle. Losing track of whose who is a big problem with using proxies, both for the user or their opponent. But at the same time if I'm planning on making a character look vastly different in two or three games from now, why should I model how they look now? I don't want to buy a model for every version I want to use. I suppose I should say this is a problem unique to Dracula's America's campaign system. If you are not a campaign style of player, then this won't be an issue for you. Dracula's America does have a match play system where you build your entire posse with $100. But I haven't play it yet and I'm currently focus on campaigns, so my point of view is only from the campaign side of things.

I didn't realize this issue when I pick up my first mini, a cheap Reaper Bone miniature. I like the model a lot but it only has a single pistol. Knowing what I do now, I wouldn't have pick it up, or I would have pick it up with the purpose of doing conversions on it later. But since I have it, I will make it my posse's spell caster (which the game calls Arcanist) and build the rest of my posse around her. Deciding on what to get next is further complicated by another issue related to weapons, available models. Northstar makes the official line for Dracula's America but I've not been that impress so far with what I have seen. To be fair, I've never seen their models in person which could make a difference. However, it is really off putting to me that they modeled something wrong. There are several creature that you can summon in Dracula's America and a specific summonable creature is an angelic two pistol using gunslinger called a Seraphim. The Northstar official model only has a single pistol. When the game has rules about models being accurately depicted, having the official model wrong undermines the rules. I also prefer to get my miniatures at brick and mortar stores and my local store would have trouble getting Northstar stuff. So that leaves me to find suitable western options that my local store currently has on the shelf, which is two: Malifaux and Reaper Miniatures. Malifaux has been on the edge of interest for me. I knew its setting was called the weird west but I've never got around to truly look at their model line until I needed to find stuff for Dracula's America. At this point I realize they went all in on the "weird" part as most of what I saw while flavorful was extremely outlandish and grotesquely weird. The only things I thought might fit was one crew (which another player interested in Dracula's America already have), a lone model and box of random bits that will allow you to build custom characters. The random bits is out of range of my budget for a while and I don't want the crew because I would like everyone posse to be as different as possible. The only other Malifaux model I'm interested in is the Forgotten Marshal. While he is pricier than what I would like, if no one else gets him, I will probably pick one up.

With Malifaux out, that just leave Reaper Miniatures. I've always been fond of Reaper's products though in the past I just browse their stuff without looking for something in particular, and picking up any miniature I thought was interesting. Now I'm looking for wild west miniatures equip with particular weapons. And it doesn't help Reaper's website is awful for searching. Reaper's miniatures have searchable labels and western is one of those labels. However that doesn't bring up all their western models for some reason. If I had to guess, I think the problem is that the western label only brings up miniatures under their Chronoscope brand and not under any other brand, like Savage Worlds which has their Deadlands minis. Whatever is the reason, it means I will eventually have to look through Reaper's very large catalog, one mini at a time. The reason I need to do this is because I need figures with multiple weapons, in particular rifles, shotguns and carbines. Figures holding a weapon in a way to make it easy to snip the hands off for conversion purposes is a bonus. What disappointed me the most about Reaper was the lack of Native American figures. I found only 3 in their catalog so far and none of them had range weapons. I wanted at least one Native American in my posse but at this time I don't have any viable options. If someone wanted to play the Skinwalkers faction(which only Native Americans can join), then Malifaux and Reaper are not options for them. Unless you want to do heavy conversions on three different models, then you would have look at one of the smaller miniature companies for Native American figures. Who? I don't know. I didn't see any Native American figures at Northstar under Dracula's America either!

As I mention earlier, many of these issue are only present if you play in a campaign. Under match play, you can make a list and then buy and convert your models to fit your list with little problems (unless you want Native Americans). For me, I think I will be looking to build my posse around where I see them during the middle of the campaign. Early in the campaign I think it will be easier to remember to disregard certain gear as weapon options are very limited then. As the campaign goes on, I can start buying items on the model but I don't have in my posse yet. By the time it gets past the middle and heading towards the end, I will probably be needing to expand beyond the initial six and will have a lot of experience to know what exactly I need. That's all I have on weapons in Dracula's America. Next time I will go into what I'm working on for my posse and talk a little bit about the factions. Thanks for reading. Until next time.

A Quick Review: Dracula's America

I had seen pictures of models on Twitter and in an email for Dracula's America. I wasn't really interested in it at the time. Partly because I'm already in too many games that I'm trying to buy miniatures for. And partly because westerns is a distance 4th for genres I want to play in. That said, I got the chance to read a review copy of the book during a 2 and half hour trip to play some Team Yankee. I wish I didn't. Not because it was a bad read. I wish I had not read it because now I really REALLY want to get a few western models and play a few games.

Dracula's America is a skirmish wargame in a similar vein as Frostgrave, Necromunda and Mordheim. You have a warband of six to ten models (Dracula's America calls it your Posse) where you battle other players' warband and random encounters to earn treasure. Build in these games are campaign systems where your force can gain experiences and grew in power. I will admit that I haven't read all of Dracula's America from cover to cover. I didn't get to the fluff of its alternate history. But I did read the rules of how to play, the various game mechanics, how to build a Posse, a few magic spells and all the powers you get from the special factions. In all, I think I read about 65% of the book and I feel confident that I could play a game with a pre-made Posse and would only have to look in the book for charts. To me that is amazing after a single partial read. For me to do that means the rules were written in a simple and easy to understand way for a game that has quite a bit of complexity to it.

The game uses a dice pool system in a way I've never seen or heard of before. Your base dice pool will depend on the action you want to take. For example, shooting is a 3-die pool while a dodge reactions is a 1-die pool. Situation modifiers can increase or decrease this dice pool, though nothing can reduce the pool below a single die. Any die that rolls a 5 or higher is a success. The more successes rolled, the better the result. The type of die used is depended on the characters. If a character has only recently started wearing a gun on their hip, then they will be using d6s for all their die rolling. Now if a character has been in a few fights and has seen a thing or two in their time, then they would be using d8s. But if a character's name is known throughout the country because of their exploits, then they would probably be using d10s. I really like this tier system. It is a way to make veterans of the west more powerful than novices without giving them bigger numbers for stats.

Like all western based games, Dracula's America uses a deck of cards. A deck per player to be exact. Cards are used as an initiative system. At the beginning of the turn, all players draw cards equal to half the number of models in their posse, round up. So if you had 9 miniatures on the table, you would draw 5 cards. You get to draw an extra card if your boss (whom is the leader of your posse) is still on the table. Initiative is done by each player picking a card in their hand and playing it face down. Once everyone has picked, the cards are reveal. The player with the highest valued card gets to act first, any black cards before red cards. In case of ties, roll off. And if two of the exact same cards are used, a special event happens as well. When its your turn to act, you can either pick one model to take 2 actions or you can pick two models to take 1 action each. After you have resolved both of your actions the model/s get a done token and discard the playing card. The player with the next highest card gets to act. Once all the players get a chance to act, play repeats itself by everyone picking a new card. Models with done tokens can't act again. Play continues until either all models on the table have acted or all players are out of cards. I've never seen an initiative system like this and at least on paper I love it. While essentially play is swap back and forth between two players, I see interesting choices being available at all points. You never know if your opponent will activated one model or two on their next turn. With the right cards in hand, you can setup a plan to take two turns in a row by playing a low card followed by an Ace. You won't have enough cards to have all your models take two actions, so you need to strategize who best to get those extra actions and when.

The types of actions available and interaction with terrain seem to be more or less standard with skirmish games. The one significant difference is that facing matters. Not only does a model have to face in the direction where it is shooting but also getting shot in the back does extra damage. Also one of the available actions is a ready action which allows you to interrupt an enemy model later in the turn. However you have to be able to see them to interrupt and if your back is to them, then you can't use the ready action. Now combat is anything but standard. I already explain how skill test work. For combat, you attack with a skill like shooting. If you get at least one success then you hit. The victim now has to make a save. This is not a test so a success isn't automatic at 5+. Instead the number needed to save is based on the number of successes the attacker got. 5+ on a single success, 6+ with two successes and so on. The victim needs to make this test even if they can't roll high enough to succeed. Damage is based on how much the victim fails their saved. There are three damage states in the game; shaken, down and casualty. Shaken means you have some light wounds and have some penalties. Down means you are either serious wounded, or too scared to get off the ground. Either way, the only thing they can do is crawl until they get healed. Casualty, like the name implies is being dead or too gravely wounded to continue. A model that takes a casualty is removed from the board.

I didn't get to fluff where they explain the story behind the setting because I ran out of time. I only know the tagline which is that Dracula's minions assassinated the president and mind control the congress into making him President for life. I also read about the playable factions in the game. I only got to their game rules but that was enough for me to get a favor of who they are and the possible role in the setting. I think the setting has a lot to offer. I am reminded of Deadlands in tone and mystery. I could very easily see adapting Dracula's America to play a wargame in the Deadlands world. Also I can see adapting your favorite pen and paper roleplaying game to have a lot of fun in Dracula's America as well. Just using Dracula's America ruleset as is or with slight changes make work as rpg as well. Some of the available factions includes The Crusaders of the Twilight Order (whom members can have knight armor, holy bless weapons and can summon angelic gunslingers), vampires that serve Dracula, devil worshipers whom can summon demons, Native American shapeshifters and just a lot more.

What I like most about Dracula's America is how they separated the mundane and supernatural. In most fantastical games, the supernatural aspect is entwine through out the rule system. This fine by me as I love my magic. But if someone was a historical player, it would be a headache if not just impossible to use these fantasy games as mundane historical games in my opinion. Dracula's America on the other hand has made it extremely easy to go mundane. If you want to play a historical skirmish western game, then all you need to do is read the first half of the book and play as it. If you do want to play with supernatural elements then the second half of the book can be seamlessly inserted into your game. I don't know if this design choice was intentional but it is really cool they gave us the option to play without magic if we want.

The only thing that disappointed me about Dracula's America is the campaign system that came package in the book. After seeing a few Frostgrave campaigns and how seemingly rich Dracula's America backstory is, I was expecting something rich with story. Instead we got a very abstract campaign system with very bland scenarios. To be fair Frostgrave's rich campaigns came in separate releases from the initial book. But at the same time Frostgrave had more initial scenarios and those scenarios were far more interesting. I suppose its not too bad to have this as your weak point as it easily fix with a new campaign book release. And my complains only deals with how you suppose to organize a campaign, how to decide the campaign winner and the lack of any kind of story. The system for how your posse grows in strength is excellent.

I'm really looking forward to trying Dracula's America. If you are a fan of a weird west setting or enjoy skirmish wargames with leveling up mechanics, then I would definitely suggest you take a look at Dracula's America. Even if you dislike westerns and/or vampires, as long as you are a skirmish wargame fan, I would still suggest looking at it. The uniqueness of the system might be enough for you to love the game despite its genre. Thank you for reading.

Expanding to Osprey Games - Ronin, Of Gods and Mortals

Since returning from the Warlord Games Convention, I've been trying out a couple of new games from Osprey. Tracy picked up Ronin while we were at the convention and later Of Gods and Mortals. I had heard about Ronin in the last few months due to it being similar to Test of Honour. The few complains I saw online about Test of Honour was that they already had Ronin for their skirmish samurai game and saw no need to change. I can certainly understand that feeling. While I really enjoy Test of Honour, I was interested in seeing what Ronin had to offer. Tracy picking up Of Gods and Mortals really surprised me. He told me that he wanted to limited the games he played to just Team Yankee and Test of Honour. Perfectly reasonable giving how much of an investment it is to get into these games. Him getting Ronin makes sense because we can still use Test of Honour miniatures with it. Of Gods and Mortals on the other hand requires (at the very least some) getting new miniatures. In a way, I suppose I do understand why he would be tempted to look into it. Both Test of Honour and Team Yankee are historical games and sometimes you just want to play with magic or a dragon. Also OGAM doesn't "lock" you into particular company miniatures. While there are some official models, you are encourage to get any miniature than you want. I guess that would make sense as Osprey only makes game rules themselves and commissions out the miniature making process to third parties. Both of us already have a large collections but while we could adapt some of it to Of Gods and Mortals, picking up a few new models is going to be needed. But are these games even worth it?

My answer for Ronin is at the moment is I'm not sure but my gut feeling says yes. I've only played one game and I still need to read the rules completely myself. From what I played, I see a rule set that is far more complex with a far different tone than Test of Honour. Ronin doesn't have a group system so every model acts on its own and fewer miniatures are used compare to Test of Honour. The game is broken into five phases in which all players will have the options to act during each. The first phase is Initiative. For most of the game you activate a single model and then play passes to your opponent to do the same. Initiative determines who will have first choice in each of the phases for the entire turn and it is rolled every Initiative phase. So you could be going second every turn for the whole game. Morale is also checked in the Initiative phase if you took enough casualties in the previous turn. Next is the Movement phase. This phase is when players take turns moving troops around. What is interesting with this system is that range units can also fire at a penalty during this phase as well. The third phase is for melee combat. The melee combat has a lot of quarks and complexities with it that I'm saving talking about it when I do a full review of Ronin. What I can say now is that the core melee mechanic deals with risk management of actions. Each troop has a number of actions they can do per turn based on their stat. At the start of combat you decide, in secret, how you want to split up your actions into offensive and defensive actions. Offensive actions needs to be spent to do a melee attack. Dodge is free but spending a defensive action increases your chances of surviving the attack. Play swaps between combatants until all players decides to pass instead of attacking. It is interesting that after the combat, figures are not pushed back. Once you are in base to base with an enemy, you stay that way until one decides to move away which comes with risks. The fourth phase is when range units can shoot again. There is a table with all the different range modifiers you have to consider when making a shot, including whether or not you shot in the movement phase. The advantages of bows vs muskets are similar to what it is in Test of Honour. In Ronin they have the same range though muskets suffer an additional penalty beyond 24 inches. In 2 turns bows can fire a maximum of 4 times compared to 1 of a musket. However muskets are far more deadly. Range damage is resisted by roll a d6 and adding the troops combat value and armor. Muskets ignore light and medium armor while heavy armor gets downgraded. In the single game I played I notice it was hard to get any damage done with bows. Not impossible, but certainly challenging. I can say ignoring armor is a big deal. The last phase is for cleaning up. Minor things that while important doesn't change the big picture.

I like Ronin for being a more detailed game. Strategy can do deeper in a complex system. Also Ronin uses more traditional army lists and has options for Chinese and Korean forces. All positives and makes me want to play more of it. One downside I notice is that some weapons doesn't seem to be a viable option. In particular, Naginata seem to be better in almost every way to the Nodachi (Naginata is a polearm while a Nodachi is more like a great sword). I did notice a very slight advantage for the Nodachi, but I don't think its worth taking over the Naginata. I don't like see weapon options being next to useless. In Test of Honour every weapon has something unique about it. I'm not sure they all are of equal power but since the benefits are unique and changes gameplay, I think they are all viable options. Of course I might have miss something in Ronin which would make the Nodachi more tempting. As it, I think there are enough ups for playing both systems. I think I will wait on playing Ronin again until the Test of Honour Ninja box set is out. Seeing Ninja as an option makes me want to take it but I don't have an appropriate 28mm miniature for it. One last bonus about Ronin for me is that there is an expansion that includes supernatural options for the game. I'm all for adding supernatural to my games.

Of Gods and Mortals is the game we have put more time into. So far I've played 2 games of OGAM. It is an interesting war game about the various traditional mythological pantheons warring each other. If you ever wanted to play game where the forces of Zeus fight against Odin, this is the game for you. Models are classified into either Gods, Legends or Mortals. A force will have a single god, 1 to 5 legends and the rest are mortals. While gods are by far the most powerful units in the game, losing all your mortals means you instantly lose. Also if the god is defeated, mortals has the option to resurrect them. What attracted us to the game is that OGAM has simple mechanics and a large roster of options to play with. However after a single game there was one aspect we really didn't like (and it was a big one). Combat is resolved by both players rolling a single d6 and adding various modifiers. The side with the higher results wins and knock their opponents back. If they win by 3 or more, then their opponent takes a casualty. If there is a tie, then both sides take a casualty and you roll again. Everything only has a single hit point and one bad roll attacker or defending can kill you. If you get killed by a lower class enemy (legend dying to a mortal, or a god dying to a legend) you do get a check to see if you can ignore the damage. We like everything else about the game but the combat system was a deal breaker. Tracy came up a new system that tried to stay close as possible to the intent of the original but we found more satisfying. It involves taking the total combat modifiers that would normally be added to a single d6 and instead roll a dice pool equal to that number. So if normally for combat you would add 4 to your d6 roll, the new system would have you roll 4d6s instead. Any result of 4 or higher is counted as a success. Both sides compare success and the side with more success roll a dice pool of their net successes for damage. Any results of 4 or higher on this roll is a wound. Gods are defeat after taking 3 wounds, legends after taking 2 and each wound removes a single mortal model. With this change we think the game is a lot more enjoyable.

The official miniature line doesn't cover everything that is available in OGAM. What models they are, some of them are tastefully nude. And some aren't tastefully nude. For example Hercules isn't wearing pants, nor are the harpies. With this in mind we are going with other companies miniatures. Tracy is interested in Greek and has pick up a few Reaper Bone miniatures to fill out his army. As for me, I've been leading towards Japanese Mythology so I could expand my Chaos Test of Honour force. There are so many armies I want to work on that I feel like I shouldn't invest in a new one unless I can connect it to a current project. I still want to do my Warhammer inspired storylines which require multiple armies themselves. One plot line I'm wanting to do is some chaos force travels away from the current lands and arrive in a Japanese like nation. For this I need to build up a collection Japanese models. Some of the things I was wanting to do is to have a Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition Nippon force. With the death of Warhammer Fantasy it looks I will have to craft these stories around using Test of Honour and Ronin. Of Gods and Mortals is a possibility though I don't see any of the Japanese Mythology gods fit in with my Chaos Samurai force. Still, the legend options of Japanese myth offer ways I can expand samurai into supernatural areas. One of which is the Snow Woman. I think she would fit perfectly into my Chaos force and I've already build a model for her. The sprue I got from the Warlord Games Convention turned out to be all female zombies. I really don't like zombies which means their value greatly went down for me. However I did find one combination that looks okay if I use green stuff on her leg. This model I can prime/paint her white, and just paint her dress, hair and maybe her lips. This will make the model resemble the Snow Woman from her mythological stories. If that is not enough, I can also use her as a Geisha Spy in Test of Honour. Basically Japanese Mythology will give me a reason to look for supernatural options for my Test of Honour force all the while I can continue expanding Test of Honour which will also help with the mortal requirements in Of Gods and Mortals. My only sticking point is not having a suitable god to use in OGAM.

There are other pantheons in OGAM that I'm interested in such as Norse, Egyptian, Arabian and not to mention Greek. But unless I can tied one of these pantheons to one of the armies I need to build, I do not see it being worth it for me to invest at this time. That said, Of Gods and Mortals does have rules to make up your own force. With how simple the rules are, I'm worried that players could break the game making custom armies instead of building something to fit their personal fluff. Putting that aside, I could make up a rule set for an Arthurian Legend list. The main army in my Holy Moon story is inspired by Warhammer's Bretonnia which itself heavily borrowed from the Arthurian Myth. I don't like using the create your own option to make an entire force, but that might have to be my option outside of Japanese. I'm sure in the upcoming weeks we will be playing more OGAM to see if our new system works. If things works out in our upcoming games then you can be sure I will be writing more about Of Gods and Mortals in the future (I keep wanting to call it Of Gods and Monsters).

One last thing I like about the game (Tracy doesn't) is it the first miniature game I've seen that unique characters are truly unique. By that I mean that while most miniature games have unique characters you can only take once in your force, most of them allow mirror matches. Of Gods of Mortals rules say that if both players have the same unique character, roll off and the loser will have to replace the unique with something else of equivalent value. The story is always important to me in war games and having unique characters on both sides always bother me a little. At least in Warhammer players could say their own custom character just has the same stats as an unique. But that really doesn't work in a game about traditional mythology. Also I think it can deepen strategy since you will have to consider backup options in case you are denied your uniques.

Ronin - https://ospreypublishing.com/ronin-skirmish-wargames-in-the-age-of-the-samurai

Of Gods And Mortals - https://ospreypublishing.com/of-gods-and-mortals-mythological-wargame-rules