Topic of the Week: Favorite Army

On his channel Vince Venturella promotes something he calls the Topic of the Week to the war gaming community. The idea is that he will toss out a topic every Friday to give the community something to think about. Content creators interested in the topic can make a video response to that topic and Vince will link those videos in the Topic of the Week description. He also encourages others whom don't want to make a video to post their thoughts in the comments section. In this way he helps bring the community closer together. Seeing various ideas discuss among the community is great and I've wanted to join in on the conversation for a while now.

Last week Topic was on your favorite army. I spend some time thinking about it and I finally gather my thoughts together to make this video:

Here is the link to Vince Venturella channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgptSaRLvd1QH0SURdQNYgg

Also episode 26 of the War Journal: Flames of War podcast is out: http://neaceul.podbean.com/.

Battle of Thermopylae Teufelsberg-Pietzeistein Forest

Captain Jack, as he was known to his men, was uneasy. He had the feeling something big was going to happen that day and with the current tensions, that something would probably mean World War 3, with him being on the front line. He was lying down in the grass at the edge of the tree line. His tank was several hundred yards behind him, hidden in the forest. Scanning the horizon for the enemy, Jack heard someone running towards his position. Jack lowered his binoculars and got to his feet, confident that enemy wasn't THAT close to them yet. Lieutenant Dawley ran up to Jack with concern written across his face. "The Russians are advance here! Its an attack!" he said. "How many are we looking at?" Jack asked the Lieutenant. "Probably all of them!" Captain Jack was about to admonish the lieutenant until something on the horizon caught his eye. Captain Jack could see dust clouds no matter where he look north. He could also now hear the roaring of jet engine in the distance. He wasn't sure what they were, but he knew they weren't American! "Get to your track!" he screamed at his lieutenant as he made a mad dash to his own. Once in his chair Captain Jack radio the battalion to let them know his position was about to be overrun with Soviets and he was planning to make a strategic withdrawal. He was told to delay the Russian as much as possible before withdrawing. "Sure, no problem," he sarcastically thought. He switch the radio to the local net and began barking orders as he thought them up for the retreat. Second Lieutenant Maxwell Short, the fire support office realize the situation must be dire judging from Jack's orders and tone. He switch his radio from the local net to call for air support. He knew they were going to need it if there were to survive the Soviet Offensive. It was just a matter if the air support would arrive in time..."

This is a campaign battle report of my first game in the Fulda Gap Campaign. Since I don't have a page for the Fulda Gap Campaign up yet, there are some things I need to explain about this battle report before I go on. First this battle report uses a lot of proxies. Most of my force is still not assemble and painted and even if it were, the campaign adds addition units neither had plan on buying. Next, the campaign has three unique rules that changes the normal game. While a default game is 100 points per side, the campaign maybe give either player an additional 25 points to expand their force. The opponent will not know about this bonus ahead of time. For this report the Soviet receive the addition 25 points while the US did not. Second, both sides have the use of off the table artillery. The artillery count as having unlimited range but will need a spotter to fire. To get this artillery a check needs to be passed after rolling for strike aircraft. The Soviets artillery count as a 6 gun carnation battery and will fire on a 4+ roll. The US get a 3 gun M109 battery with the copperhead upgrade and will fire on a 5+ roll. Both forces gets an additional observer. Lastly, both sides have a secret list of when addition aircraft will reinforce their army. The opponent has no idea when or how many aircraft will show up until it is announce. When helicopters show up, they stay for the rest of the game and count as apart of the rest of the force. Strike aircraft are automatic but are only available for that turn. If a player get strike aircraft in multiple turns, any destruction of aircraft does not carry over. That means if a player is getting 2 strike aircraft in turn 1, 3 and 4, that player will get 2 strike aircraft in turns 3 and 4 even if they were destroyed in turn 1. Now lets get into the battle report proper starting with the board

We got a map of where our battle was suppose to take place so we tried to make the battlefield resemble that map. What we got was very interesting. We didn't have much terrain overall but we did get 2 thin tree lines that bisected the board. The hill on the west side is actually a forest. We added trees to it later. The three hills on the top right were hills and also help sub-divide the board. Since tanks couldn't fit on top of the tree lines, we had the rule that if you were next to a tree line, you were counted as being in the forest and required a cross check. We both had the same idea of who would get the most benefit from the map. Who actually DID get the most big for their buck is a different story, which I will get into shortly.

Here is a picture of the entire Soviet force. I'm not sure what's what so I'm just going to list what is in it:

HQ T-72
T-72 x3 w/ mine clearing devices
T-72 x3 w/ mine clearing devices
T-72 x3 w/ mine clearing devices
BMP-2 motor rifle company (4x AK-74, 3x RPG-7, 4x BMP-2, 1x SA-14 Gremlin AA)
BMP-2 Scout x2
BMP-2 Scout x2
2S1 Carnation x3
2S1 Carnation x3
BMP-1 OP
BMP-1 OP (bonus from the campaign)
ZSU-23-4 Shilka x4
SA-13 Gopher x4
BM-21 Hail Rocket Launcher Battery x3
MI-24 Hind x6
Assault Landing Company (AK-74 x6, RPG-7 x4)
Frogfoot x6

In addition to this, Soviets got MI-24 Hind x3 to come in on Turn 1 from the secret list.

Here is a picture of the US force. It includes:

HQ M1 Abram (its the black one in front)
M1 Abrams x3 (right behind the HQ)
M1 Abrams x3 (right behind the HQ)
M106 x3 (proxies right behind the Abrams)
M901 ITV x2 (StuG proxies right behind the M106)
M113 FIST x2 (includes bonus one from campaign, next to the StuG)
M163 VADS x4 (the 4 M113 chassis)
A-10 Warthog x2
M109 x6 w/ Copperheads and Bomblets (the 6 vehicles in back, the black one is the actual model)

Mission

The rules of the campaign said we had to play a defensive battle with the Soviets attacking from the north/top of the map and the US defending from the south/bottom. The die roll was 4, which gave us Fighting Withdrawal. The key elements of this mission is that both side start with everything on the table with the defender getting to put one unit in ambush. I pick one of my Abrams unit place in ambush. If the Soviets control any of the three objectives at any time, they win. If the US can not lose by Turn 8, they win. One last point, starting on Turn 3 and every turn afterwards the US adds a "delay counter" or removes a unit depending on how many are left. The US gets to remove an objective on Turns 6 and 7.

Because my deployment zone was half the board and there is not much concerning terrain beside the tree lines, the Soviet scout's spearhead special rule was render useless. The Soviets only had an 8 inch deployment zone and the scouts could only extend that 4 inches behind the hills. Even then other Soviet units couldn't much beyond that because they were in clear view of my deployment zone (which counts as my teams for the spearhead rule). Nevertheless the Soviets greatly outnumbered me and had first turn.

Turn 1

The Soviets failed to get in their strike aircraft and off board artillery. Since none of his spotters were in a good position, Tracy move all of his artillery and observers up to get a better view along with most of his force. Some vehicles failed a cross check and bog down, which will be a running theme for the rest of the game. On the west side an unit of T-72 move up and shoot at the Abrams in the woods, destroying one. The six hinds had move behind those Abrams and finish the Abrams off. The ant-air fire from the Abrams, HQ and the ITVs took out a single before they shot. On the east side, the BMP-2 transports move up to near the tree line close the M109s. Three T-72s move up and fire on a FIST hiding in the woods. Tracy got a lucky 6 and blew the FIST up. The 3 hinds had moved behind those T-72s and would have also fired on the FIST if the tanks had miss.

Bottom of Turn 1, US failed to get in their strike aircraft but did get the off the table artillery. The secret list did give the US 2 A-10s to use on turn 1 so it was like it made its strike aircraft roll. The VADS moved up to put the 3 hinds into range and shoot them up, destroying 2. The FIST spotted for the 6 M109 to fire copperheads at the 5 hinds and knock two of those out the air. The heavy mortar leader spotted for the off-board artillery to drop a bombardment on the Shilka on the hill. Range in on them but only manage to bailed out a single Shilka. In retrospect, that was as good as destroyed since that Shilka never remount for the rest of the game. The A-10s avenged the FIST by destroying one of the T-72s that shot at it. More things fired this turn but nothing else landed.

Turn 2

Soviets got everything this turn. Strike aircraft, off board artillery and even the campaign gave Tracy an additional 2 Frogfoots this turn. Tracy loitered single Hind off the table to prevent him from losing the unit. The Soviets poured a lot of firepower into the ITVs and my HQ on the west side. 6 Frogfoots, 3 remaining Hinds (both of which stay out of range of the VADS), T-72s and more all fired. Only a single ITV got destroyed. It forced a morale checked but the remaining ITV passed. On the east side the infantry disembark and prepared to assault the M109s. The T-72s (and maybe something else) shot at the VADS, one got destroyed and a second was bailed out. A spotter for the off board artillery tried to range in on the M109s but rolled 2,2 and 1. The 2 Frogfoots fired on the remaining VADS but their anti-aircraft fire blew them out of the air. This made Tracy happy for now he can assault the M109s with his infantry. I think since .50 cal machine-guns is really only used to shoot at aircraft in our games, he forgot their normal rate of fire is 3. His men didn't fair well running into 18 shots. Half of the infantry was killed forcing the remaining men to fall back. At this point I'm thinking while the US held, things looks really bleak.

At this point I should say while I'm describing most of what the US did, I'm just highlighting the Soviet turn. The reason is that the Soviet just have so much stuff and most of what I'm leaving out is moving, failing cross checks or both. On the US turn the strike aircraft came in but the off board artillery did not. Since I was losing the west flank badly I brought my Abrams out of ambush to help protect the objective. Moving through the tree line, all three Abrams had to take a cross check and they all passed. Being face to face with the T-72s, the ambushing Abrams fired and destroyed enough tanks to force a check and caused that unit of T-72s to flee. The 6 M109 fired copperheads into the Hinds again but did no damage this time. So the ITV shot at them and took a Hind out. My HQ shot at the Shilkas, destroying 2 to force a morale check. A check they passed. The heavy mortals moved up to support the M109 from the infantry by giving them covering fire. Since some of the infantry was hiding behind the trees, they could sneak up on the M109s, preventing some their defensive fire. Of course I didn't moved the heavy mortal far enough so they couldn't help out anyways. One VADS moved up to contested the eastern objective. One M109 was right on the line to being able to contest so I wanted to make sure another vehicle was clearly within 4 inches. The A-10s was going to clean house on the eastern flank, but anti-aircraft fire got the best of them and they were shot down.

Turn 3

For Soviets turn 3 they got their strike aircraft in but not their off board artillery. The campaign gave the Soviets another set of 2 Frogfoots whom come in despite the previous set were destroyed. That gave Soviets back-to-back turns of having 8 Frogfoots in play. Everything on the west front shot at the Abrams platoon, including all 8 Frogfoots, and it was just barely enough to destroy them all. On the east coast the VADS got wiped out by tag team shots from a T-72 and Carnations' straight shot. Everything else over there shot at the M109s and bailed out half of them. I believe the infantry assaulted again and again got stopped by the .50 cal machine guns. Tracy decided to shoot his men so none of them were able to deny defensive fire.

For US they failed to get their off board artillery. Soviets now have infantry in the forest on the western front near the objective. This forces the US to get something over there to stay in the game. The HQ tries to move other there but fails its cross check and bogs now. Now the ITV has to move and it passes its check so it can now contest. On the east 2 M109 remounted while the third failed the check. Having 5 guns I split my shooting to do 3 copperhead shots into the T-72s over there, blowing them up, 2 straight shots into the Carnations and destroying 2 as well. This force a check on the Carnation but they made it. On the drive home I began to wonder if this was a legal move. I forgot artillery has a rule that if any gun fires a bombardment, the other guns either has to join the bombardment or they don't fire. Then again, copperheads is not a normal bombardment. Something I need to check out on the forums but in any case it didn't change anything in the game. I will explain why at the end.

Turn 4

Soviets did not get their 6 Frogfoot strike aircraft but they did make their off board artillery roll and over the screams of Captain Jack and myself, the campaign gave them another pair of Frogfoots this turn. On the east the M109 were essentially surrounded and was fired upon from all sides plus the off board artillery. The few that survived failed their morale check and fled. On board artillery bombardment ranged in and destroyed the remaining FIST and one of the heavy mortars. In the west, several shots fired into the HQ, with the Frogfoots delivering the killing blow. Captain Jack's final words as he heard jet engine toward his position were "Oh COME ON!" The Hinds sealed the deal by destroying the ITV.

The Soviets turn is now over but at this point nothing US can do to stop the game from ending. Tracy is controlling 2 objectives on both sides of the board and the only thing the US have left is 2 M106 heavy mortals. The campaign would have given me 3 Cobras on Turn 4 but it was too little too late. Even with the Cobras I thought there was nothing I could have done to change the result of the battle (I was wrong) and I was tried of getting my teeth kicked in. The only units the Soviets lost were 2 units of T-72s. The Soviets force was large enough to ignore one of those lost units for victory points, which means the Soviets won 5 - 2.

Summary

Let's start with the ending. I was quickly put in a bad place and had so many ways to lose. I was really close to being tabled and because of the mission would have eventually been force to remove at least one of my remaining units before turn 8. The reason M109 mistake, if it does turns out to be one, wouldn't have change anything was that I was going to shoot the T-72s no matter what and the Carnations made their morale check. Now if they failed their morale check then it would have change the game because that would make the Carnations the third unit destroyed which would change the final score to a 4 - 3. That also means that I should have played out Turn 4 because if the Cobra could have wiped out one unit, it would have affect the score. We almost never use victory points before so I was unaware how it work until after we quit and looked it up. By the end of the game I was emotionally drained. While Tracy had some really good rolls at key moments, his dice rolling was overall below average and down right sad at times. I think this gave me false hope in thinking of turning the game around. He just had too much stuff for me to overcome.

The terrain was extremely interesting as we would never setup a board like this on our own. We both thought it gave the US a stronger advantage but by the end of the game there is a debate to say the Soviets benefited more. You can say the US benefited more from Terrain in the east while the Soviets benefited in the west. Tracy had to us so much overwhelming firepower to remove the few models I had in the western woods. Then again, it was nearly 60 points worth of US so it probably should have been hard to remove them. With the lost of my first FIST, Soviets could use the tree line in the east to block all line of sight to them, allowing them to move up to the objective without being shot at.

I won't comment on the campaign rules until the campaign ends. I will go into more details about the system when I make the Fulda Campaign page. Despite the long odd I did enjoy playing most of this game. Coming into the game I had the feeling I was going to get creamed but the actual battle was closer than what the score says. One thing I did forget to mention in the report was that I got 4 minefields and they did play a minor role in the game. They are hard to see in the pictures but I put 2 on the road which I don't think help very much. The other 2 above the forest on the western edge. This greatly slowed down the Soviets infantry by making them go around the minefield. They probably could have gotten to the objective in a turn or 2 sooner than they did. In any case this was nearly an overwhelming victory for the Soviets.

Summer Update 2016

I have many plans for this summer. I will probably not reach all of them but I will work hard to see as many of them in action as possible. One thing I have learn about this hobby is that interest can change astonishingly fast. A new game can suddenly attract attention while local interest in another game I had planned on playing can instantly vanish. That all said, here are my current plans for the summer:

Team Yankee - Team Yankee is what I've put most of my energy in to. I've done a video on the current progress of my Team Yankee force as well as explain the reasons why I am not as far as I probably should be. You can watch that video here. Beside my army, there are two things going on with me related to Team Yankee. The first is that I'm doing weekly demos at my local gaming store. For about 2 months now Tracy and myself have been at Hero Complex every Saturday from 2 pm. to 5 pm. Because of the demos we have generated a lot of interest locally and hopefully that will soon turn into more active players to join the community.

The second is that I'm apart of a Team Yankee campaign that started this week. I'm not running it and there are some elements of it I don't completely understand. However I do know what my part in the campaign is and I will be setting up a page to chronicle the events of the campaign. The campaign should run about 6 weeks and has some interest ideas that should generate a few topics worth discussing here. More on the campaign will be coming very soon.

Battletech - Both my friend and myself want to get some Battletech action going on this summer. My friend is working on a 2 player Battletech multi scenario campaign. We are still working on the details. The general idea is that we both will have a large force to command. It will start with each of us purchasing our force at a set BV total. Somewhere around 15,000 BV to 120,000 BV. I'm lending toward the 120k value but its still something we have work out yet. I'm not sure if I will have a page dedicate to it but I will cover all aspects of it in normal posts. We are looking at having some of the battles being recorded on Tracy's youtube channel as battle reports. Once we finalist the rules and pick our force, I will post a summary here and the space battles can begin. I would like to also write fiction for our campaign but that may be too ambitious for me with so much else going on. We will see.

Relic Knights - Relic Knights is the game I'm most excited about that I've never played. Its the only game I ever develop an interest for without having someone trying to get me into it. I brought one of the six starter boxes last year and had planned to do a video series about my hobby with Relic Knights. That project got delayed and then I notice no one was playing Relic Knights at my local gaming store anymore. If there was no local interest in it, I didn't see the point in putting in any effect into a game I still haven't played yet. But then last month I ran into one of the people I knew was into Relic Knights and asked him about it. He told me people stopping showing up and the game died. He still loves the game and would be interested in playing again. So knowing there is interest out there I'm going to do my Relic Knight video series. I expect the first episode to be out later this month. Outside of just getting the models together and playing some games, I have no plans for Relic Knights from a story point. I suppose I should find out if I like the game first, which I can do later in the summer.

Frostgrave - I talk a little about Frostgrave last summer. It was a game I was looking at that I though would be fun and have a lot of story telling potential, which is a big plus for my blog. However I never manage to invest in the book. Last month while demoing Team Yankee, another group was demoing Frostgrave at a table next to us. They were also the same group that played Relic Knights and one of them was the person I mention above. I didn't get to play, but I did get to see Frostgrave in action. It had some quirks but I really need to play it myself to know how I feel about it. Their plan is to get a local community of Frostgrave players to have pick up games as well as a full campaign. I told them if they did run a campaign I would be happy to join it. There is a slight problem in that I have no way of contacting them. Next time I see them I need to make sure we trade contact info so we can setup some Frostgrave or Relic Knight games.

Civil War - This is the least likely to happen but I wanted to give it a mention in case something becomes of it. We have generated a fair amount of interest in Team Yankee. Two people whom display strong interest in Team Yankee is apart of the local historical group. They usually play Bolt Action but recently it looks like they are trying out a miniature game of the American Civil War. The last time I've seen them, they were still waiting on getting their models. I watch them play with cardboard strips which I assume were the size of the movement trays. I'm not sure why I am even interested in this but watching them I had a nagging urge to try it out. Not really sure how they would feel about a non-historical accurate painted army, which would be what I would want to do. On the other hand, thinking about the long term if I eventually expand my story telling to a western setting, having Civil War models, even historical accurate ones could come in handy. Deadlands and Malifaux are popular games that uses the wild west as its setting, an alternate fantastical wild west but a west that Civil War models would fit in. There is also a new dungeon crawl boardgame that uses a Cthulhu wild west as its setting and its a game Tracy and myself have been eyeing. The temptation is strong but I don't think I will invest in the game anytime soon. However if they allow me to play with their models, my interest in investing may change in the future. The fact that my local gaming store has a single box of Civil War cavalry for sell is taunting me enough as it.

Shieldmaiden Knights - Last week at my local gaming store I was in a situation where I need to make change. Reaper's Bone miniature are really cheap so I scan the shelves for something I would be interested in. I settled on the Aviriel model to use in my Shieldmaiden Knights project I discuss in my previous post. She is suppose to be an elf but that is hard to see from the package. I will probably just treat her as a human and paint her as such. My Shieldmaiden Knights' history is still unwritten so how Aviriel will fit in is still up in the air. But now that I have an actual model, I need to design what their paint scheme will be.

Shieldmaiden Knights

It is not often that I can track an idea from initial concept to the point where I'm willing to put money into it. But this is exactly what happen with my latest multi-game project. Since it is still fresh in my mind I thought it would be interesting to write about the entire process here.

The idea started with me playing the game Bravely Default. One of the characters, Agnès the vestal of wind was raised by a coven female acolytes. As vestal, it is Agnès mission to tend to the crystal of wind, one of the four artifacts that are the life force of the planet. Since this was a job the require her entire waking moments, Agnès had almost no contact with the outside world. The coven did all of Agnès' necessities for her. This includes going to the city for supplies, cooking, cleaning as well as being Agnès' bodyguards. I know I've seen this trope in other media, though the only one I can think of is the movie Red Sonja. In that movie an order of all female priestess were guarding a world changing artifact. Of course in both these examples something bad happen to the coven. In Bravely Default's case, it force Agnès to face the outside world by herself for the first time in her life.

I took this concept and started playing with it in my mind. I toy around with some variables but at its core its a coven of all female warrior/priestess dedicating their lives to protecting something or someone. One of the things I thought about was if the coven was lead by someone like Lilith from the high fantasy setting of Anima. Lilith is one of the 4 Knights of the Seventh Heaven, each one said to have the strength to fight an army alone and win. To have someone of that caliber as leader would probably mean the rest of the coven strength would be much higher than the average small army. Going with this line of thinking, if the coven is protecting someone that is cloistered, like in Bravely Default, then that person wouldn't be aware of the power of the coven compared with other military forces. Now if an overwhelming force attacks and the person being protected escapes by herself, it would make sense for her to believe everyone in the coven had died.

This scenario can continue to play out in different ways. Where the protected will go, who she will allied with and how she learn about the survivors of the coven? I played out these scenes to figure out what would be the best way to tell a story. I soon realize my interest in this story idea is more than just a storytelling exercise. This seed of a story was now something I want to work on for as a long term permanent project. For that I need to decide whether to incorporate the seed into the series of novels I'm currently working on or make up a new short story/novel that is centered around the seed. At this point it still never occurred to me that any of this would be in miniatures. I took my time thinking about which way I wanted to go as both options had their positives and negatives. While I was thinking it over, I continue to play out various scenario in my mind. One of the variables I was constantly changing up were the side characters. Sometimes I used characters from my novel series to see how well the seed would work in them. Other times I use characters from other media to use as a blueprint for a new character if I went with the original story route. Eventually one of the characters I used was from my Chaos Magic mythology and that was when my prospective on this project completely change.

As soon as models entered the equation I knew the best fit for this story seed was in Holy Moon/Scarlet Nights. The focus of my thinking now shifted to rules and models. What game system can I use a coven of female warriors? I thought I would have more options but really Age of Sigmar is the only thing I'm interested in that fits. Since the coven is not a full size army, it doesn't fit into classic Warhammer fantasy. It probably could fit well into Kings of War but I'm not that familiar with the setting and I don't see myself playing it in the near future. Private Press's Hordes is a game I've been thinking about for a while. But that game is really more about monsters with very few (usually one) humanoid. Not how I envision the coven. Now that I'm thinking about it, there is one more game I'm interested in that I think might be a good fit. BattleLore! I still haven't gotten around to picking up the second edition box, or even playing it but from the reviews I've seen (and I enjoyed the first edition game) BattleLore is still something I really want to have. Unfortunately I will probably be unable to get the game any time soon. And with every other game I'm into being the wrong genre, Age of Sigmar is the system I need to plan for. I will be using both round and square bases so I would have the option to use the models in different game (since it really doesn't matter in AoS). I still haven't decided what warscrolls to use. Due to their background they should be from the forces of Order. Stormcast Eternals is close to what I'm envisioning but at the same time they are still off. To use a 40k reference, they are too much like Space Marines when I need Sisters of Battle. (On a side note, it didn't occurred to me how close the coven idea was to Sisters of Battle until after I started writing this post.) On second thought, if I can find large armored female models, I might have a couple coven members use the Stormcast Eternals rules. But for the majority of the coven I need to look at Bretonnian and Empire rules. Or maybe just wait for more human Order releases. That will probably be my best bet as I also envision the coven being mostly if not entirely on foot. As for models I will be starting with a couple of Reaper Minis that I like to use for commanders and a box or two of Mantic Games Basilean Sisterhood miniatures.

And that is as far as I've gotten on this idea. Initially I thought I would start on the Shieldmaiden models after I get 100 points of US in Team Yankee done and have assembly all the models in the Bretonnian Battalion box. But it has just been announce that West Germany will be in release for Team Yankee in July. So I guess after I get the West German book and Tornadoes (if they are in initial release) I will then start on this Shieldmaiden Knight project. At least that is the plan for now. I have a lot going on right now. In my next post I will discuss my Summer plans, some of which has already started, like being apart of a Team Yankee campaign. Until next time...

Return to Sigmar

It has been many months since I've done anything with Age of Sigmar. I've been listening to some of the conversation in the Age of Sigmar community but overall I have gone dark on AoS. The reason for this is due to the local negativity towards the game. Its really hard to enjoy something that my friend refers to as "just a beer and pretzel game" while we are playing it. I cringed every time he says it and I can't make myself speak up about it. When giving the choice between playing 8th edition and Age of Sigmar, the thought of playing Sigmar gave me a panic attack. I could only think about Age of Sigmar's faults ... or rather things AoS was NOT that I wish it was. There is nothing in the rules about how to balance forces against each other among many other "issues". I did come up with my own system but I've never tried it out. It was always at the back of my mind but I was a little afraid to play Age of Sigmar again.

Eventually my desire to test my system overcame my fear and last month we played Age of Sigmar again. While I didn't enjoy the game we played (which was due to other factors such as being exhausted and playing too big of a game too soon) it did renew my interest in the system. I can still see why many don't like the game. It takes a lot of effort to make it work, much more than any other war game I've heard about. But now I see the potential in the system if you are willing to put in the work. From browsing forums I know many people played 8th edition with home rules. But the differences in those games pale in comparison to how Age of Sigmar is played in various communities. Some use a point system while others go by wound totals. Some limit a force by armies in the old world while other go by the 4 grand alliances. This almost makes Age of Sigmar a wildly different game depending on how you decide to fill in the blanks. I normally would be worry about how house rules are splitting up the community but in this case I don't think it will be an issue. For one the official rules is to make up your own rules. That of itself makes playing with house rules much more acceptable. Second, it is much easier to adapt house rules to Age of Sigmar for narrative and campaign play than it is for 8th edition. AoS structure (or rather lack of one) lends itself towards that kind of gaming style. I can even see tournament play being done with AoS. Again it would require a lot of work and I have no interest in it at this time, but for a system many said tournament play would be impossible, I can certainly see the potential in AoS.

I want to go into more detail in each of these gaming style and explain how I can see AoS handle them, starting with narrative gaming. Narrative gaming is by far the easiest style for Age of Sigmar to emulate. Age of Sigmar was practically made to do this kind of gaming. A narrative battle is one that tells a story thru the game either by retelling a story from a book, history or some other media, or by the players crafting their own tale. Most war gaming systems trying to do the former requires some finesse. Usually taking a scenario from a book and trying to apply it directly into a war game is a disaster waiting to happen. A story isn't written with game balance in mind. An interesting conflict in a novel could a boring, lopsided affair if played as it in a war game. Age of Sigmar was probably design with this kind of lopsidedness in mind as a possibility. This means you could take almost any scenario as is and having an interesting game in Age of Sigmar. This doesn't mean the game would be balance in any way. Only that an uneven battle in Age of Sigmar can be still interest and fun to play for all involved.

Campaigns. Age of Sigmar works really well with campaign play. While I love playing in campaigns with 8th edition, there were a lot of idiosyncrasy with the campaign rules due to having a mostly balance game trying to represent real war which by its nature is very unbalance. The campaigns I've been apart of can be characterize as either abstract or concrete. Abstract campaigns are ones that the causalities of the battle doesn't matter. Battles start with preset point totals that other factors may adjust up. So regardless of how many casualties are sustain in combat, a force will always have a baseline in the next battle they play in. Army composition is also usually allowed to change battle to battle. In many abstract campaigns the number of banners a player has is base on the amount of territory they control. Concrete campaigns on the other hand keep track of the exact army composition and causalities matter. Any loses a banner sustain in combat remains in the next battle. Learning to limit and manage loses is an important aspect of this type of campaign. Even with the ability to resupply throughout the campaign, a force needs to be careful not to have their loses out pace the rate they can replace them or they will find themselves quickly eliminated from the campaign. I enjoy concrete campaigns because they mimic the feel of war closer than an abstract one. The downside to them is that they require a lot more paperwork and one single devastating loss can be crippling. Age of Sigmar is a perfect fit for a concrete campaign. The system can handle partial units which is important when the causalities starts coming in. Similar AoS can easily adapt a recruiting system that allows the purchase of single models for the same reason. Abstract campaigns are harder to fit with AoS because Age lacks a normal list building method. It can be done but I think the concrete style suits AoS much better.

Something that is not necessarily in every campaign (but can be applied to either abstract or concrete styles) are outside of combat magic. To give the campaign more of a high fantasy feel, some campaigns I've been apart of had custom rules for doing magic outside of a normal battle. I like the idea but it is hard to get a custom magic system right. It always felt like something just tack on. AoS has a mechanic that would work well with an outside magic system and in turn help balance an issue people have with AoS itself. Summoning! Using a limited resource magic system to fuel both summoning and outside combat magic will make everything feel like its the same game and setting. It will also make mass summoning in a battle or two have trade-offs that are not present in one-off games. Another interaction campaigns and summoning can have is to have unique summoning options as rewards for winning key battles. I didn't think so when it came out but I now think Age of Sigmar can have a much more satisfying campaign experience than 8th edition.

I will be brief on tournaments as it is not a strong point for Age of Sigmar. On second thought I will wait on that for another time. After a May update I will post my long overdue article on my design philosophy (which has change some) and will include my thoughts on tournaments.

As for the game that re-ignited my interest in Age of Sigmar, there are a couple of concepts from it I want to discuss. We used the system I discuss in here to pick our armies. Though it needs some fine tuning, overall I was happy with the balance of our forces. It did produce a MUCH larger game than I thought it would. I don't mind large games but not when I'm learning a system and expecting to play something smaller. The game ended up being somewhat lopsided but that was a result of the armies we decided to play with. Phil played a Lizardmen force. He more or less just took one of his 8th edition armies and put it in Age of Sigmar. I went with a concept I called the Plague Army. I made my decision before I looked at the war scrolls so I was surprised that I ended up with an all Nurgle army. I had no idea ahead of time that Skaven Clan Pestilence models had the Nurgle keyword. (I'm using the old war scrolls so I don't know if this was changed. I don't have access to the new ones.) That gave my army far more synergy than I thought I was going to have. This meant very little as Phil brought a lot of skinks which had an interesting interaction with half of my force. And by interesting I mean hard countered. My "core" troops were Nurgle chaos warriors and plague monks. Skinks can start the game hidden. At the start of their turn they can appear near the enemy and shoot a lot of shots. On their next turn they can hid themselves again, even if they are locked in close combat. As far as I know there is nothing the opponent can do to stop them from doing this. Now these shots tickled my chaos warriors but my plague monks has no armor so they died in droves. In two turns I lost half of my army because of the skinks. My initial reaction was that the skinks ability was broken and overpowered. But as the game continue my feeling towards them changed. Instead of having a static list made ahead of time, if we played with a system that allowed the players to pick their force during deployment then the dynamic of our game would be vastly different. I wouldn't have deploy the plague monks and in turn the skinks wouldn't have had the game change impact that they did. When I first looked at Age of Sigmar I figure there was going to be this type of hard countering but this was the first time I saw an example of it. I don't mind this aspect of AoS if it allows more units to have a purpose on the battlefield. It is something to keep in mind when deciding what structure your Age of Sigmar games will have.

The next few Age of Sigmar game I want to play are link narrative games. No army creation system. Just coming up with a simple story and giving each side a force the story says they should have. Find a few scenario that fit the story and start playing. I will write about how it goes. In my next post I will discuss a new but short project idea I will work on shortly and will probably see some Age of Sigmar use. Until next time!

New Podcast and Project Progress Video

We had meant to do a new podcast before TwisterCon but that didn't happen. Tracy was too busy trying to have his force completed before the convention to do the podcast. Besides some finishing touches like inking and sealants, Tracy was able to go to TwisterCon with his entire force beautifully painted, minus models that didn't come up until the day of the convention. A week later and we did a new podcast about our adventures at TwisterCon. I was going to do a post about TwisterCon but I didn't take enough pictures and videos. We talk about the highlights of the convention in episode 22 of War Journal. As always, you can listen to the podcast at http://neaceul.podbean.com/.

My own progress with Team Yankee is much slower than Tracy's. I have documented what I've gotten done so far in my second progress video. You can watch that video here. In April I won't be able to pick up anything new so I will focus on finishing what I've already have (that is not screwed up). I'm giving myself the goal to have 4 Abrams, 1 Cobra, 2 M113s and the FIST all done by the end of the month. For the M113s I'm just talking about the main bodies because the mounts require additional purchases. For that matter, I need to pick up magnets before the tanks can be finish as well. I'll consider the Abrams done if adding magnets is the only thing left to do with them. My goal also includes some Bretonnians. My Warhammer goal is to have 10 archers, 5 knights and a lady finish by the end of the month as well. I'll do another progress video in the middle of the month to see how close I get to accomplishing my goals. Stay tune as the forces of Team Wraith and Thylalon comes to life!

Update in Chaos (3-28-16)

Recently the only thing I've been working on is Team Yankee. That was because I was preparing to go to TwisterCon which was this past weekend. It was a 20 hour affair but it was a blast and well worth the effort. I got the chance to meet another community of Team Yankee players. Going forward any events or campaigns I come up for Team Yankee now potential has a much larger pool players who may participate. Exciting times! My Team Yankee force is coming together but there is still a lot of work to be done on it. At the same time I have push aside work that needs to be done on other projects that I want to get back to. So after doing another progress video and an overview of my time at TwisterCon, I'm going to put Team Yankee on the back burner so I can get something done on my other projects. Getting started on the Bretonnian Battalion is number one on my list. Watch for more to come!

Team Wraith Update

I'm jealous of how fast Tracy was able to put together his Soviets. Everything he owns is assemble and primed while I am not a quarter of the way to that with far less models. I suppose this is partly because I have a little OCD in me. Still I am happy to have any progress, with pictures no less! Here is the current look of Team Wraith:

I still have not done any work with the Cobra since my progress video. Everything else has some new elements. Minus magnets, the three Abrams are nearly assemble. And by assembled I mean a completed tank minus the tracks as I will paint the tank and tracks separately. The 66 is done and just needs to be prime. The tracks on it just need some minor touch up and then I can starting painting them. The others I will work on in stages so I don't mixed them up. That basically means when I prime the 66, I will then finish assembling the 11. When I finish painting the 66, I will prime 11 and assemble 12 and so on. I know this is slowing the progress down but I can't help it. The numbering of the tanks is based on the order I started assembling them and the OCD in me doesn't want to mix them up since putting on decals is the very last step. I got new black primer that acts as both primer and paint. This will make painting go much faster since I won't have to do a base coat. I will start on the next three Abrams shortly. Here is a close up picture of my Abrams.

Fortunately I don't have the same OCD issue with my M113s. There is an issue with their dragon mounts. When I deploy a mech platoon, I have the option of removing a M47 Dragon missile team to add a dragon mount on a M113. I have not played enough games to know how often I want to use this choice. I have never made one of my models modular before but I might need to learn how to for these. I probably should leave my M113s in an unfinished state until I decide on how I want to deal with the issue of the dragons. Except for the FIST. I will be working to finish the FIST as soon as I can. Here is a close up of the M113s.

In addition to these models I also have a box of infantry. I tried to prime 6 of them but something went wrong. For some reason the primer didn't stick so I need to redo them. Next time I will hopefully will have pictures of some of the infantry. Until then!


PS. War Journal: Flames of War has return! You can listen to episode 21 here.

So, what happen this month?

This month did not go according to my plans at all. I would like to say there was a lot going on behind the scenes and to a certain extent this is true. However my plans were far more ambitions than what my skills could keep up with. I added more projects to my plate and underestimated how long it would take me to complete them. I think the best thing for me to do is to talk about what I did get done, what I had plan to get done and what are my plans going forward.

I started a third blog. Beside this one, they are about League of Legends and Shadowrun. I have not done anything with League of Legends because the eSports scene moves fast and I am not able to write fast enough to keep up. Also just staying on top of the games is very tiring. On average it takes 30 hours a week for me to watch 2 of the 5 major leagues and its easy to fall behind. I'm probably going to have to wait until the summer split before I will have the time and skill to write about eSports. The Shadowrun blog will be for a new project that I didn't think will feel right putting here. I'm apart of a new Shadowrun table top campaign and I thought it would be interesting to write about my character's adventures in that game as an ongoing story. My new Shadowrun blog will host this story, "A Spirit of Shadowrun" which should happen twice a month. I'm half way done with the first session's rough draft so I'm hoping I will be able to keep this up. In the future the Shadowrun blog will be a perfect place for other projects like my idea for the Shadowrun: Crossfire show and me just writing about interesting Shadowrun sessions of the past. For now "A Spirit of Shadowrun" is the only thing I'm planning on working on for those two blogs.

For Holy Moon/Scarlet Nights I am still working on background information. I'm fleshing out details on Thylalon and it is taking longer than I had thought. In the meantime I've played many more Warhammer games as Bretonnia so I'm getting a feel for how they work. I've also pick up the Bretonnia Battalion and will put them in the queue to be work on after some Team Yankee stuff. Holy Moon is high on my list to get done but I'm so bad at judging how long it will take that I'm hesitant to give a release date for the first episode.

Helping Tracy move and waiting for him to setup his new studio cut into our time to do anything with Team Yankee or the podcast. Now that is all done we will be doing more video content on Team Yankee. I have also pick up infantry and the M113 box. We are currently planning on going to a Team Yankee event in another city at the end of March. Tracy has order several new Soviet models, so getting our new stuff assembled will be a top priority for us both. Getting them primed or painted will be gravy but I am not holding my breath on that. The podcast has constantly been delayed but we will get back to doing it. The podcast will be very different from what it was last year. It has become clear that the focus of the podcast will be on Team Yankee instead of Flames of War as we have no plans to play Flames of War anytime soon. I'm sure Flames of War will continue to be apart of our conversation in someway but our interest right now is only on Team Yankee. Lastly, we are strongly considering doing another podcast about games more broadly and adding my Warhammer pal Phil into our discussions.

Since making my first video I've been trying to follow it up with others. Vince Venturella has a youtube series called "Topic of the Week". In these videos Vince talks about a subject that he wants the community to respond to in either the youtube comments or with their own videos. He had two topics this month that I wanted to respond to and I had plan to make them into videos. I have yet to finish either one of those videos. I thought it would only take an afternoon worth of work to do one video but that is clearly not the case for me, at least at my currently level of skill. I do plan on finishing at least one of these videos. Vince gives thought provoking subjects to discuss so I do plan on attempting to make more respond videos. You can find Vince Venturella's youtube channel here.

Short Update

This week I spent most of my time working on a video showcasing the miniatures I am working on as they relate to my projects. I had plan it would take a day or two to finish the video and then I could work on the first issue of Holy Moon. Instead it took the entire week to finish. My experience with making this video will go a long way to help me with future editing. I now know the process of what goes into making a video for when I start to produce my own battle reports. I also got a valuable lesson into what it takes to make the War Journal: Flames of War podcast. New episodes will be recorded the same as before but now it will be on me to put them together.

Outside of working on the video, I did find the time to play a practice game of Warhammer Fantasy. It was months since the last time we played and I figure we need the practice to get back into form. The rules came back to us fairly quickly but I realize there is one skill in Warhammer that I have sometimes neglected. List building. When I make a list in Warhammer, what kind of story I want to tell usually has a bigger factor than battlefield effectiveness. I don't want my web novel to be about the Bretonnians that loses every battle! I don't plan on being hyper competitive but I now realize list building I need to pay more attention to. Not that Bretonnians have that many choices compare to armies with newer books, which is everyone else.

So here is a quick run down: Holy Moon - Going to start writing the first issue this week. I plan on it being out in about 2 weeks. Going to play another practice game with Bretonnians this week. Might do a short battle report about it. Everything else I'm working on is touch on in my new Project Progress video. Until next time!

Holy Moon/Scarlet Nights Intro

The land of Thylalon is protected by the guardian Lady Vivianna. She is beloved by Thylalon's people and in return she empowers Thylalon's defenders. Lady Vivianna's powers of precognition foresees dark days ahead and the Thylalon kingdom is not ready to deal with the upcoming threats. She tells King Dylan and his knights that they must undertake a dangerous quest that will end with the deaths of many beloved knights. If they refuses or fail in this quest, then everything they hold dear will be no more!

Holy Moon/Scarlet Nights is my serial fantasy fiction series. Key elements of the story will be decide by the results of various games such as Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Holy Moon/Scarlet Nights will be release as chapters and episodes. Chapters are entire story arcs made up of multiple episodes. Episodes are the individual story post. Episode titles will be based on the chapter it is from. For example the third episode of the first chapter will be entitled "1.3" while the fifth episode of chapter seven would be "7.5". The story will be told in two ways. Text post which will tell the story just like any other piece of fiction and with battle reports which is a description of what happen during a game that is apart of the story. I will be using two types of battle reports. Summary reports will give an overall description of what happen and will treat the event like a game. That means it will include game concepts such as army list, dice rolls and custom rules if any that were used in the game. Dramatic reports will summarize events in a narrative style. Any concepts that are game system specific will not be included in dramatic reports. Battle report titles will be named after the episode that sets up its events. So the battle report based on episode 3.6 will be entitled either "Summary Report 3.6" or "Dramatic Report 3.6". If a single episode sets up the events of multiple games then the corresponding titles would include a letter ie "3.6 A", "3.6 B" and so on.

The story centers around King Dylan and his knights which will be represented as Bretonnia in Warhammer Fantasy. As the story progresses other actors will take stage in the narrative represented by different Warhammer armies. Age of Sigmar will probably be used when the battles are either smaller or one of the forces don't neatly fit into one of Warhammer Fantasy armies. My personal collection is not as big as I would like and a lot of it still needs to be painted. My friend's collections is probably about half fully painted, half only assembled. I don't actually own a Bretonnia army yet. I will be putting together one as I am writing this series. Many of the early games will be done with my friend's Bretonnia army along with a lot of proxying. Hopefully by the end of the year the battle reports will be done with my own fully painted models.

In addition to the above I will be doing Author's Notes post as needed to keep readers inform on my current progress. These will be for discussing scheduling delays, answering fan questions or behind the scene elements I want to share. The Author's Notes are separate from my general Chaos Updates for the blog which I try to do every 3 to 5 months. I am a little behind where I wanted to be at this point so I will probably won't get to a battle report this month. Chapter 1, Episode 1 should still be out before the end of the month. I've never done a serial series before so it might take me a while to find my rhythm. I hope you will follow me along this journey and enjoy the ride. Until next time.

New Year Update!

2015 was a very mix year for me and Chaos Magic. I co-started a Flames of War podcast and we were able to release new episodes throughout the year semi-regularly. I also took the steps needed to move this hobby into a business. In the middle of the year I had a personal crisis which derailed everything I was doing for 4 months which prevented me from having the level of progress I had hope for in 2015. 2015 was not the year I hope it to be but it was a year I took many steps forward. For that I am very grateful. And I need to keep going. For me to be successful in 2016 I need to produce even more quality content. Here is all my current projects and my plans for what I plan to do in 2016 with them.

Border Prince Campaign - As far as I know, I am one of only two players in my local community that is still interested in playing Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition. As long as that is the case then the Border Prince Campaign will remain on hiatus. That doesn't mean there won't be new updates in the new year for the Border Prince story. When I went through my notes to finish the skip story article, I realize I have many more partially written short stories that needs to be finish and posted. In addition I have ideas for stories I can tell as flashbacks in the Border Prince Campaign to help flesh out the overall story. The Border Prince Campaign will no longer be the main focus of this blog but these new stories will help bridge any gaps with my new main projects.

Warhammer Fantasy/Age of Sigmar - I no longer know enough people interested in Warhammer Fantasy or Age of Sigmar to do a normal campaign. So instead I'm going to commit to a narrative campaign. How this is going to work is I will write a story that ends with a battle of some kind. I will play out the game with my friend Phil using either Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition, Age of Sigmar or Kings of War, depending on what we want to play. I will followed our game up with a battle report here. Based on the results of that game will determine what direction the next part of the story will go. While Phil has told me he has no interest in working on the story aspect of the campaign, he will have an opinion on what armies we will play with, which in turn will affect how the story will go. My goal will be to have at least 1 story post and 1 battle report a month this year. The name and intro of the campaign will be upcoming in the next two weeks or so.

BattleTech - I have two projects in BattleTech I plan to do this year. I mention the Warhammer narrative campaign to my friend Chris and he suggested I do something similar with BattleTech. He gave me the idea to do a story about a group of warriors that is defending their home during a planetary invasion conflict. I love the idea as it immediately made me think about my favorite Gundam series, After War Gundam X. I don't feel as confident in writing science fiction but this is a great idea for me start practicing! I still don't own that much BattleTech stuff. After coming up with my team of heroes and their equipment I will need to pick up the corresponding models. The problem is that I'm not familiar enough with BattleTech to know what I want in my force (I'm always amazed at how large and in-depth this setting is). This have given me the idea of doing another project first before starting the narrative campaign. Chris and myself will compete in an abstract attrition campaign. The both of us will start with a set number of BV points, like 200k. When we decide to play a game, we will pick mechs from our individual rosters. At any time we can add new mechs to our roster by buying it with BV points. The campaign is over when one side is out of BV points and have no functioning mechs. There will also be a resource mechanic that will be earn by winning some of the battles. Resource will be use to fix damage mechs that have otherwise survive a battle or to pay ransom to the other player in certain scenarios. This gives us an easy to run campaign that will eventually end on its own. It is also a system that will allow me to try out many different types of mechs. I will give updates on where we are on starting the narrative campaign. Once we work out the numbers more details on the abstract campaign will be posted and its first battle will be around a month from now, hopefully.

Descent: Journeys in the Dark - I mention in my Refocusing post that I was considering doing something with Descent. Since then I have started running friends through the base game campaign. So far I am enjoying the game and I think my friends are as well, even though we are still making a lot mistakes with the system. Trying to craft a story to fit into my setting will be harder than I initially thought. So after we finish the base campaign, if my friends are still interested I will pick up one of the expansions and run them through that campaign as well. After that I think I might be confident enough to design my own campaign. In the meantime I will be picking up various Descent products such as lieutenant packs and the monster packs. We are playing with Tracy's copy of the game but eventually I want to get my own copy so I can paint the models. In the coming months I will be showing off my Descent models and maybe reviewing elements of the game. I am not sure we will get to my own crafted campaigns this year but we will see how far we can get.

Alien vs Predator: The Hunt Begins - This is a game I heard about but I really did not think it would be something that would affect me. I was wrong. I failed to realize how much Tracy and Chris were Alien fans. Tracy picked up the game when we were at the gaming store to play Team Yankee. We have since played it 3 times and overall think its a very good game despite some pretty big flaws. The rules are in desperate need of a FAQ. That said I can see many fun hours being had with this game. With it being such a big brand and how protective Fox is with this brand, I am much more reluctant to do anything with this game. That said, sometime my mind doesn't listen to reason and have already generate ideas on how to develop stories with this game. Nevertheless this is one game I will never buy anything for nor will I have any pictures of its models here. There is too much risk for me to include them. A possible idea I could do is recreate our games with Descent tiles and Warhammer models and I could take pictures of that. My only problem with that is that the marines don't have a good analogy in my fantasy fiction. Of course two weeks ago I barely heard of this game and there was no way for me to imagine it might be one of my most play games in this new year. Given more time I am sure I will come up with something.

Team Yankee - Team Yankee as well as Flames of War is in a weird spot for me in that I know they will be major elements of this blog in the new year but I am not sure how. With Team Yankee being a new game, all of my current efforts are going into learning how to play the game and deciding on what my force will look like. Much like with Flames of War, I am not sure if Tracy will have the time to commit to do a campaign with either game. That said, I have notice there is a lot of buzz about Team Yankee around my local gaming store when we played. If a couple people pick up the game in addition to Tracy and myself, then the prospect of a Team Yankee campaign increases immensely. The only thing I can be confident on is that I will have Team Yankee models in my gallery and a few battle reports here and there. I am very interested to see where Team Yankee takes me in the new year.

Others - Even when I think my hobby is full, something always surprises me and changes things up. I am sure 2016 will continue that trend. I have side projects like Relic Knights, Samurai Battles and BattleLore that I'm not sure at this time what my level of interest will be in the new year. It is possible in six months one or more of these games will be added or replace my current project list. Or they might remain on my shelves, unplayed. I do plan to show up at my local gaming store more often this year on my own and see what people whom I don't normally play with are playing. I might discover a new game that I'm interested in with new friends to play with.

I will end on two more points. In this new year I plan on playing as many games as possible and giving my thoughts on those games here. Whether I'm doing reviews, offering tactic advice or exploring ideas on how to make games better, I hope readers will find my content entertaining and informative. On my major project I will work hard to make sure they are release on a reliable schedule. I am working with friends whom have their own time constraints and may not be available when I would like. I will try to work around my friends' schedules but that may not always be possible. Those are my plans for the new year. Be safe and have a Happy New Year!