April 29th is a break day in the A-Z Challenge

So I thought I'd write about a couple of other things that have been on my mind for the last few weeks while I have been doing all this Norse research work, which really wasn't all that hard for me because I am pretty into Norse stuff anyway. Next year though, if there is an A-Z challenge in April, I will think to pick a subject that has more letter options.

But I am digressing from my original point here, which was to NOT write about the Norse A-Z topic I picked this year and instead write about the other things that have been creeping into my brain during that time. First there's the whole Star Trek and Klingon Assault Group thing, both Star Trek gaming, mostly through Star Fleet Battles, but also a little through the FASA RPG have been a big deal for me and my game time in the past. The Klingon Assault Group, while it coincides slightly with the gaming, is another beast altogether. I want to recruit people to KAG, because dressing like a Klingon and acting like a Klingon is awesome fun; but I guess only if you are part of a particularly brave subset of Trekkie.

I have also been slowly working on my own realization of the 1985 TSR AD&D 1st edition Oriental Adventures book. I wrestle with some of the core ideas presented in that book, and I go back and forth over whether or not the book was too ambitiously focused on presenting an entire fantasy east Asia, while still being concentrated on Japan, or if they weren't ambitious enough and should have gone further in their attempt to include everything Asian with the same "kitchen-sink" approach they gave the western world with "regular" AD&D. As it stands, the book is a mostly Japanese game that could not decide on it's focus; was it going to be about court and intrigue? Those skills (sorry, proficiencies) were presented for the first time in any D&D product in the OA book. Was the game about serving a Lord or Clan or a Temple even? That's kind of implied in several class descriptions, but no real advice was given to the DM about how to make a well balanced party work together if it included, for instance, a Samurai, a Ninja and a Sohei. The "normal" adventuring paradigm of AD&D was broken in OA, and no fixed replacement was offered.

Add on top of that the fact that the game had a real issue deciding whether it wanted to emulate a Chanbara film or Ninja film or a Kung-Fu film and we have a problem. Many of the classes don't work well together, and, even if you are not a Monk, you can easily become a martial artist deadly enough to out class the party Samurai, as I saw in my last OA campaign when the Yakuza character took Tae Kwon Do instead of weapons proficiencies. The Wu Jen spell list is inadequate, and while I intend to reverse engineer that list from the 3e compatible magic books I snagged off Ebay that were designed for Rokugan and the Legend of the Five Rings Setting, I can only come to the inescapable conclusion, despite my love of 1st edition AD&D and my nostalgia for Oriental Adventures and the fun campaigns that I have played using those rules, that AEG and L5R were better conceived and better designed than the rush job that I suspect that 1st edition OA was. The best thing I can say about 1st edition's AD&D Oriental Adventures is that it is far superior to the abortion that was 3e OA.

There are gems in the 1st edition OA books, I have seen mentioned on other blogs recently the Yearly,Monthly,Daily events tables. The court game might have worked if they had separated out weapon proficiencies from the "peaceful" ones. The Samurai class might have been less the super class that it was if it hadn't gotten a requirement to specialize in two weapons, something BANNED to every other class. The Kensai, which should be spelled Kensei, needs a total reworking, it is a valid class idea, but screwing him over by never letting him wear any armor OR have a magic weapon of his "chosen" type blows. The two "Cleric" classes of OA both suck though, the Sohei is just a second class Fighter until finally receiving some spells at 6th level? The Shukenja (which should be spelled Shugenja) can't fight anything BUT spirits? Ninja as a "Split-Class" = dumb idea, easy enough to create a Shinobi class, I did it once and I can do it again.

Currently I am reading a lot of Japanese history, watching Samurai movies about the Sengoku Jidai era and reading books about the Samurai and Bushido written during the Tokugawa era, while I am not reading and studying up on Norse history and lore. Obviously, I think the focus of Oriental Adventures should be on Japan and Japanese history and mythology, more focus is better. This is why OA1: Swords of the Daimyo was such a good sandbox to play in, it ignored all of the other nations of Kara-Tur, except for brief mentions. I think every single copy of Oriental Adventures should have come packaged with that module, although the adventures presented are weak.

The other thing that has me feeling nostalgic is my old Steppe Warriors guild, I recently spruced up our Facebook tribute page a bit, and I tried to get in touch with some of the old guys that I lost contact with over the years. AOL's Neverwinter Nights did go offline in July of 1997, we tried a few other online games, even text based ones, but none had the awesome community of AOL's NWN. We weren't there for long, and the core of us were local to the Oswego county area, which is why it was easy for us to have our reunions, at least in the beginning. But I miss all those guys, even the ones I have fought with over the years; and it kind of makes me sad that I never did get around to playing that Steppe Warrior campaign that I always wanted to. I even have a good idea for it now, but we've scattered to the four winds, and the ones left in the area mostly don't talk to each other anymore. Upstate New York's greatest export has always been it's people.

Now, lastly, I have a Dawn Patrol play report that's more than a week over due. We had decided the last time we played that we were sick and tired of random encounters with Fighters versus Two-Seaters and the whole "I fly straight for six squares to complete my mission, now try and shoot me down before I get home" BS. So we just decided on a Fighter engagement, and randomly chose French or British to engage the Germans; then rolled a die to advance the war a number of days. Since I got thee time wrong, and was running late to start with, all of this was taken care of before myself and John even made it to Big Darryl's house.

The date was February 10, 1917. Two Fighter patrols ran into each other deep inside German held territory. My son John and I played the French, we were flying Spad VIIs and the two Darryls were playing the Germans who were both flying Albatross DIIIs. Darryl Jr. was playing his pilot Vizefeldwebel Oskar Schaeffer, who was flying his second mission. Darryl Sr. was playing his pilot Oberleutnant Erich Von Reinstadt, who was flying his 10th mission. John was flying his pilot Lieutenant Guy Bernet and I was flying my pilot, the Serbian volunteer, Lieutenant Vaclev Petrovic; Lieutenant Bernet had two missions and was deemed the flight leader.

Now is the part where I wish I had written this out while it was clearer in my memory, I took a few notes, but I didn't bring the mission logs home with me, maybe I should do that in the future.

The mission started out well enough for us Frenchmen, we were all at high altitude and the Spads outperform the Albatrosses at pretty much every altitude anyway, their only advantage is their dual Spandau guns, which are deadly. We closed to dogfighting range and ended up in a line firing at each other's tails, poor Darryl Jr. in the lead with no target, everyone took a little bit of damage, except me, because I was in the back. It got a little chaotic then, it broke into two dogfights that kept running back into each other, we ban overt table talk during the game, but we can give some pointers about rules and tactics to newer players like John or Dalton (who didn't make this game). Sadly, seven turns into the game Schaeffer scored a critical engine hit on Bernet's plane and it exploded.

Now, completely out of character, it was the luckiest of hits possible, and I felt kind of bad because I shot down John the last time he played (while he was playing MY pilot I might add), so the poor kid has played twice now, and gotten shot down twice. He's a quick learner and he didn't do anything wrong here, except be unlucky; yes, if he stuck around he might have gotten shot down anyway, he was the least experienced player in the game, but I really hope it doesn't sour him on Dawn Patrol.

At that point, outnumbered two to one, you might think I'd just cut and run for my lines, right? Nope. I stuck it out for another ten turns. I'd like to say it was purely for vengeance for my downed comrade, but part of it was also because I was, up until that point, the only one in the group with a legitimate kill scored on another player, so I was trying to shoot Darryl Jr.'s pilot Schaeffer down to keep my record intact. I almost had him a couple of times, I missed at 50' range twice, my guns jammed once, and I had to do all this while evading the other Albatross DIII, not always successfully. Not all the bad luck went in the favor of the Germans, there were a couple of occasions where I almost certainly should have been shot down, both of my wings had sustained a lot of damage and my engine was two hits away from gone, I was just incredibly lucky on critical hit rolls.

In the end, I shot Schaeffer's plane up pretty bad, and Von Reinhardt had some minor damage too, but I was in a position where, if I stuck it out any longer, I was most likely going to give the Hun another aerial victory. I managed to maneuver so that I was pointed towards home and they were either too far behind me or pointed in the wrong direction, and broke for home. My plane had sustained an incredible amount of damage in the fighting, but luckily only one, relatively minor critical hit, to the wing. My Spad was still faster and more maneuverable, so they gave up the chase and the game was over. Lt.Petrovic added a mission to his resume, Vizefeldwebel Schaeffer added both a mission and a kill, and Lt. Von Rienhardt added another mission to his pretty impressive score.

So, if you live in central NY and you have an interest in playing Dawn Patrol, or helping to fix the bugs of 1st edition AD&D's Oriental Adventures through campaign play, or want to play in a B/X Norse campaign, or are interested in alpha-testing a B/X D&D World War II game, or are an old Steppe Warrior from AOL's NWN or one of the other Ordus like Nyrthellan's Woods or The Realm or Everquest or one of the eight million Facebook games we played as a group, or are interested in Star Trek, especially Klingons, but not limited to them, leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.  

April 23rd T Day

T day is probably the last really tough Norse themed day to do, so I figure even if I start late, like seems to be the case with all my posts lately; I'll probably not have to cut too much content. Not like poor S that got totally shorted.

T is for Thegn, an Old Norse word for a free person, that is someone who was neither a Thrall (serf) or a Jarl (lord).

T is for Thor, a God of the Aesir, the son of Odin and Jorð, easily the most popular god of the Viking age among the Heathen Norse. He is the protector of Asgarð and Miðgarð, and took pride of place in most temples, front and center, between Odin and Frey. He is the patron of common born men.

T is for Thing, a combination of a democratic assembly meeting and law court; usually with a wide variety of social and religious functions thrown in for good measure.

T is for Thrall, the unfree class in Norse society. They may have been born to this status, or they may have been captured and had it forced upon them. It is an unpleasant fact of history that many societies have relied on unfree labor, we modern Americans associate this strongly with racism. There wasn't really a strongly racist element to Norse Thralldom, and there was upward mobility to freedom, although it was usually rather difficult. I hesitate to translate Thrall as "Slave", because it is more akin to "Serf", although the methods by which you may have entered Thralldom may certainly have been similar to becoming a slave, and, unlike Serfs, you could be sold along to someone else, although that was really more a thing that happened in the actual slave markets they set up for dealing with foreign slave traders, to sell captured people. So it's a fuzzy distinction, if you were born a Thrall in Norway, you were probably better off than if you were captured in Scotland or Russia and sold off in Dublin or Kiev.

T is for Tyr, a God of the Aesir, the one that sacrificed his hand to uphold his oath to Fenrir. He is widely associated with order, justice, stability, courage, honor, and truthfulness. Some say that he was once ruler of the Aesir, but he lost his place to Odin. Some say he has a wife named Zisa, who shares many of his traits.

T is for Trade, the activity for which the Vikings are NOT widely known, yet indulged in at least as much, if not more than the whole raiding thing.

T is for Thurs, a type of supernatural being, a giant, that is strong, surly and generally stupid. They are hostile to the Gods and to men, and to pretty much everything that isn't their own kind. There are several "orders" of Thursar, Fire Giants, Frost Giants and Trolls.

T is for Trolls, the most important thing to remember about these guys, aside from what I said about Thursar in general, is what Tolkien wrote about the in "The Hobbit", these boys are extremely photosensitive. There was a recent Norwegian movie called "Troll Hunter" that covered the same topic.

This stuff came in the mail today-

Not for nothing...

...But when I showed this picture to my youngest daughter Ember, we both agreed that it kind of reminded us of her. It looks like her a bit and has her attitude. Lamentations of the Flame Princess has certainly been an interesting look at old school gaming, and it's had a pretty good effect on my blog, I get a lot of hits from Finland. But I think it's starting to seep into my daughter's brains, or maybe it's just that Raggi and I are a little too alike and they'd be what his daughters would be like?

Next Question- If you had to pick an old school Star Trek game to play, would you go with FASA's Star Trek RPG and it's associated Starship Tactical Combat Simulator or Task Force Games/Amarillo Design Bureau's Federation & Empire/Star Fleet Battles/Prime Directive? I know that Prime Directive made it on to the scene a little late, but I also know that the Tactical Combat Simulator was a later add-on. Both games suffer from having to make up a lot of new Star Trek material and extrapolate from what they had available at the time, SFB/PD is still in print, although PD has undergone numerous rules changes from d20 to GURPS to the upcoming Traveler,they are still restricted by their license to ONLY use elements of Star Trek from the original series, the animated series and what they snuck in from some of the original series cast movies; everything elsethey were forced to make up as they went along. FASA did the same thing, only with a better, but more restrictive license until they got smacked down for assuming that Star Trek: The Next Generation was covered by the same license. So which old school Star Trek game do you prefer and why?

I only ask because I already had this.

But this came in the mail today.

And so did this.

All of these miniatures came today too, a good many Celts, always good for my Garnia campaign; and some Norse and Normans, which should be handy in most other cases, as well as in Garnia.

April 14th M Day

I don't have a lot of time to write today either, I played a Dawn Patrol game today and got home kind of late, then spent a little time with my family before I sat down to write, so this list is a bit short too.

M is for Mjöðr , or Mead, a wine made of honey and water and yeast. I can attest that it is very good, and the Norsemen loved it too.

M is for Miðgarð, "Middle Earth", the land of men.

M is for Mímir, a God of the Aesir, who was traded as a hostage to the Vanir after their war. The Vanir killed him and sent his head back to Odin. Odin preserved it and kept it alive, because he was so wise, he learned from it many things. Mímir also had a well that imparted great knowledge, it was there that Odin sacrificed his eye, perhaps so he could continue seeing through the well of knowledge?

M is for Madjus, this is an Arabic word used to describe the Norsemen, it means roughly "Heathen Wizards", which I guess says something about the way the Arabs saw the Vikings.

M is for Magic, there are three main forms of Norse magic Seið (magic through trance, contact with spirits), Galðr (magic through words, written, spoken or chanted/sung) and Hamr (magic through shape changing or sending forth the spirit).

M is for Maðr, which is just the Norse word for man, but since I gave the Norse word for woman, I figured I'd do the same here. It is also used in compound words a lot, so a Wizard (Vitki) might be a Galðramaðr.

M is for Mikligarð, the "Great City", Constantinople. Many Norsemen traveled there to serve in the Byzantine Emperor's Varangian Guard, which was essentially a latter day Praetorian guard made up primarily of Norsemen; after 1066 many Saxons fleeing the Norman yoke in England joined it's ranks.

M is for Mjölnir, the hammer of Thor. Made by Dwarves, it has a handle too short to make it useful as a a melee weapon because Loki, in the form of a fly, bit the Dwarf working the bellows, which is why it is used by Thor as a throwing hammer. Sometime after the introduction of Christianity to the Norse world the Mjölnir became a symbol of their Heathen faith, just as the Cross is worn by Christians.

M is for Muninn, one of Odin's Ravens, "Memory".

M is for Múspellheim, the "Land of Fire", a type of Giants live there, Fire Giants in English, thier leader is Surt, and he'll burn the nine worlds at Ragnarök.

I also got this cool Star Trek stuff in the mail today from EBay, the pictures are, of course, from the auction.

Since this is hard to read- it's the Star Trek III Struggle for the Throne Klingon game from FASA, I'd never heard of it before, it's complete though, but the box is kind of beat up.

This bunch of stuff is FASA trek's Star Trek The Next Generation First Year Sourcebook, AKA the book that killed FASA Trek, the adventure module "Where Has All The Glory Gone?", The Star Trek RPG Adventure book, the adventure module "An Imbalance of Power" (which I already had), the supplement "The Federation" and, oddly enough, the LUG, GM's screen, which is pretty much useless to me. I got all of this for $4.99+ shipping though, so I don't really mind.

April 12th K Day

As it turns out, aside from a bunch of proper names like Knut and Karl or names of objects like Knives (Knífar), there aren't a whole lot of important Old Norse words or concepts that are important for my Viking campaign from either a historical, mythological or cultural point of view, so I am going to have to pad out today's post with some extra stuff that is non-Norse in nature.

K is for Kvásir, a God created by both the Aesir and the Vanir to seal their truce, oddly by mixing together their collective spit. Sadly, it doesn't end well for him. He is so well renowned for his wisdom that "No man can ask him a question he cannot answer."; so of course this engenders jealousy and he is murdered by a pair of Dwarf brothers, Fjalar and Galar, who then mix his blood with honey to brew the mead of poetry. When the Aesir come looking for him the Dwarves lie and say he died by choking to death on his own wisdom.

K is for Kona, which is just the Old Norse word for woman. I mention it specifically because it gets used a lot in compound words like seiðkona.

K is for Konung, which is the Old Norse word for King.

K is for Kennings. Kennings are like poetic code words or phrases, they might be something simple like calling the sea "the whale's road", or something more obscure, like referring to gold as "Freyja's tears".

K is for Klingon, OK, the original Klingons on Star Trek were, more or less, stand ins for the Soviets versus the Federation's USA/NATO. John M. Ford in his book "The Final Reflection" completely redefined what Klingons were, and FASA ran with that during their run with the Star Trek RPG lisence. Actually, that might be a chicken/egg thing, I see that John M. Ford was one of the designers for FASA's Klingons supplement and it mentions his upcoming book in the designers notes in the back; but I read "The Final Reflection" long before I ever saw the FASA Klingons supplement, so I guess it doesn't matter. Anyway, long digression aside, I know that the later Star Trek movies and TV series that came along kind of played havoc with Ford's Klingons and the FASA canon, but I am still a big fan, and from what I have read, so were most of the writers that wrote for the later shows. Ron Moore and Keith R.A. DeCandido have both mentioned that they were inspired by Ford's take on Klingon culture. That's why the Klingons got to get so much awesome added to them, they took all the coolest warrior cultures from earth and threw them in a blender set to "make awesome", Klingons are part Viking, part Mongol and part Samurai, with a dash of some other stuff occasionally thrown in for flavor, set in SPACE.

K is for KAG, which is the Klingon Assault Group, of which I am a member. If you have ever thought about getting costumed up as a member of the original party race of Star Trek, check us out. No Dues, Few Rules, join us or tell a friend about us; we're the largest Klingon fan organization in the world.

OA Quasi-Session

In an effort to not completely screw over my eldest daughter and force her to essentially retire her character, I went with yet another alternate dying rule for my Oriental Adventures campaign and removed the odious broken leg result from her. Instead she ended up unconscious for an hour and losing a point of Comeliness permanently due to scarring. The party healed her up some, waited for her to regain consciousness, then entered the Moathouse proper through the broken doors to the great hall area. There were no random encounters during this time. I described the room to them, not as well as if I had found my original conversion notes, but pretty good from the actual module and my memory of what I had changed. The loss of those notes will continue to haunt me until they are found or someone admits to throwing them away because they didn't realize what they were, but I digress. I fear that I am just going to have to do it all over again, which I guess isn't a big deal, since I did it once, but it is rather annoying.

Anyway, I sketched them a map of the room and what they could see, they looked around and then quickly decided to check out the storeroom to the left, the one with the stairs down that they could not see, oddly enough with Misaki leading the way, and sure enough she heard the rats in there and started looking for them. Well the module says these rats are hungry and fearless, so I just had them roll initiative and combat began. Unfortunately, Aiko was the other person in the storeroom with Misaki and, while she actually got to attack the rats first, she got dropped by three lucky rat hits in the first round. Well, there are thirteen Giant Rats in this encounter, so I guess it's a pretty tough encounter for a (mostly) first level party, particularly in the tight space of the storeroom. It took the party four rounds to kill them all, no one else was even injured. Aiko made her save versus death, but ended up permanently deaf and unconscious for the next four hours. The party decided to retreat to Hondo and return to the strange Moathouse for further exploration later.

Honestly, it was a super short session. Lee Ann couldn't make it, which should have been OK because she died last session anyway and it actually made introducing her new PC less difficult for me. The real problem here was that my daughter Ashli was really beginning to believe that Aiko was just an unlucky character and wanted to roll up a replacement, and my daughter Ember has pretty much been dissatisfied with Natsumi the Sohei since she started playing her too. So both of my daughters spent the after the battle time rolling new characters. Ember will be playing the Human Samurai Kato Momoko, who has awesome stats; Ash will be playing Natsua of the Bear-Killer Clan, a Korobokuru Barbarian of the Forest variety.

Interesting trivia about OA Barbarians- at the top of page 15 in the OA book it says in the second paragraph "Barbarians are automatically considered outsiders and thus occupy the lowest levels of the caste system. Barbarian characters never roll on table 38:Character Birth.", then on page 31, about the middle of the page on table 37:Birth Requirements By Class- when you get down to the Barbarian class it says under Birth Table Required- Yes, it says that for Family too, but when one page tells you one thing and another tells you the exact opposite, which one are you supposed to go with? I mean, for some classes the Birth Table is not required, but is optional, but the class description for Barbarian outright forbids the use of the Birth Table, it says they "NEVER" use it. I tend to think that they mean for Barbarians to use it because they explicitly mention Barbarian characters twice under the Ancestry section, and imply how a roll could apply to a Barbarian character at least one other time.

I also killed Non-Weapon proficiencies officially today and scaled back proficiencies to their core class standard AD&D numbers, so now it's a race to see who gets their versions of all the classes and races done first and best for playtesting, Fabian's got a strong lead, but it's more B/X style because it's for Labyrinth Lord; Dangerous Brian is coming in pretty strong with a "closer to AD&D" version for OSRIC; I hate to throw my hat in too, but I kind of did today in a little way, just deleting bits of AD&D OA that were driving me a little nuts. I am still willing to let my players playtest anything that comes out from the OSR for OA, but I think they are a little scared of new material for an old game or something, or maybe just not using the rulebook and it's official classes and material. Still, I alter the game slightly every time we play, so I wonder how long it will be before the game isn't really an AD&D OA campaign anymore and just becomes a product of the OSR's combined creative talent with me at the helm.

I still haven't put anything more than holding pages up on Obsidian Portal, other real life stuff keeps intruding on my taking care of my D&D campaign time. On a completely unrelated note, here are a couple of pictures of some FASA Star Trek RPG stuff I got off EBay that arrived on Saturday and I forgot to show you all.

It's Snowing Here Today.

And the snow is sticking to the ground, and the dog. Snow marks the official beginning of the bad part of the year. I didn't get everything winterized completely, but at least I managed to get a propane delivery first. On the plus side, I apparently did not tear the ligaments in my knee and will not need surgery, I did end up wasting half a day at the doctor's office running between his actual office and the x-ray department so they could get various different angled shots of my knee.

I got this bit of old school goodness in the mail though-



FASA Star Trek may not be what most people are thinking when they think old school RPGs, but it is from 1982. Big Darryl had pretty much everything for this game back in the day but I don't think we ever played it. He was always trying to integrate it into some vast Star Fleet Battles campaign, which he never quite got to mesh. I bought ADB's Prime Directive recently and haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I think that's the game he really wanted there. FASA Star Trek we never got past the "making characters" stage, which I think is a shame. I'd like to give it a shot.

Another Day...

...Another visit to the dentist, fortunately this time just for a teeth cleaning, but it was my first one in decades, since my insurance never covered dental before.

I didn't get a lot of gaming related stuff done today, I have been quite busy with my other, other hobby- The Klingon Assault Group, or KAG. As SCA time slows down KAG time picks up somewhat, although there is some overlap and I do have to prioritize one over the other. If the SCA is kind of like a medieval LARP, KAG is kind of like a Klingon LARP, although neither of them is really a LARP at all, I just figure it's easier to explain to a mostly RPG playing group of readers in those terms. Really KAG is more like a Klingon themed costume party, that's also part improv theater, particularly at conventions and also does some charity work on the side, but it's more than the sum of those parts too. In KAG I am known as Commander Jag sutai-MaHcha' Comanding Officer of IKV Fist of Kahless and Dark Vengeance Quadrant Commander, it's part of KAG's Dark Moon Fleet comprising New York, New Jersey, Pennsyvania, West Virginia and Delaware. For more information on the Klingon Assault Group follow this link to their website. If you are familiar with the FASA Star Trek RPG treatment of Klingons or John M. Ford's Book "The Final Reflection", then KAG's version of the Klingon empire will be somewhat familiar to you. Here's a picture of me in my very first Klingon uniform circa 2002.



It was taken at my buddy Scott's apartment in Brewerton, NY right before we left to dominate some costume contests that Halloween. It's kind of dark and grainy and the flash doesn't do the make up work justice, it really did look pretty damned good.

Here's some Legend of the Five Rings RPG stuff I won on EBay and got in the mail today-








I shamelessly got these for like $2.00 each, some of them are still shrink wrapped.

AAR 29-05-11

Saturday's playtest of B/X WW2 didn't pan out as I had hoped; between the long weekend and us volunteering/giving blood at the Red Cross that morning it just didn't happen.

Sadly, Sunday didn't happen either, another victim of the Memorial Day weekend, which isn't to say I didn't get any gaming in at all; we just didn't get in a B/X WW2 playtest.



I got Lance W. to drop by and he brought the old FASA Battlestar Galactica starfighter combat game, which neither of us had played in ages. He had recently reread the rules so we played a one-on-one duel. He played the Cylon, I the Colonial. He took a the three laser, no torpedo variant Raider; I went with the standard Mk. II Viper from the series. We closed to range and I lined up on him with a decent shot and fired my 2 torpedoes and my 2 lasers and missed with everything. It turned into a twisty-turney dogfight after that and we nickle and dimed each other's ships a bit until he scored his customary "Cockpit Destroyed" result, ending our game. It was a good time though, so I don't complain.



Since that didn't take long, we decided to play one of our old stand by games- Up Front! He suggested we play the DiY 501 City Fight in 3 scenario, I was game. We rolled a d30 to see who picked first, he rolled a 30 and picked the Germans. I picked the Americans and we set to spending our 501 points to buy our "squads". Traditionally I am pretty unlucky at Up Front!, but today was Lance's day to have my unlucky breaks. We both set up in the fairly traditional 3 group formation. We both bought Strength 5 radios and double Snipers. He had LMGs in groups A and C, I had a BAR in my group A. I had a mortar in group C. He had a total of 16 men and I had 21. My best men were in my groups A and B, C was my burn off excess fire cards via mortar attacks early in the game and movement cards later group; it contained a number of men I probably wouldn't have considered taking except that the large number of them made them less attractive to move towards for his men.

The bad luck started for Lance with his first attack, my group A moved, his group A had enough fire power with their crewed LMG to fire at them, the first card he drew for resolution was a red 6, the LMG suffered a breakdown. When he tried to repair it on his next turn he drew another red 6 and the weapon was destroyed, pretty much ruining the firepower potential of his group A for the rest of the game.

After that Lady Luck loved me for the rest of the game. Every time he moved a group I had a stream or a marsh to discard and usually a Sniper and nothing else really to do anyway. Wire was a constant issue for him. Whenever I moved I would draw a building card to move into. My mortar group plan worked great. I kept drawing radio cards, and only had 2 out of 7 missions fail. My mortar never missed once. My only complaint is that my Snipers only ever pinned his men.

He never got a radio card, and after the first deck wouldn't have been able to use it if he had because the guy carrying the radio had routed. His one Sniper card he got I easily Sniper checked and killed. He popped smoke once only to see a breeze come along seconds later and blow it away. He was placing his men in open terrain so I wouldn't be able to put them into bad terrain after a while. The bad luck was really getting into his head.

I didn't play without mistakes either, his bad luck made me cocky, and I advanced my B group too close too his C group that still had a functioning LMG; and I voluntarily routed a guy to do so, and not into great terrain, just -2 buildings. To be fair they had all been pinned when I started the move, he got a rally all card, followed by a hero card; possibly his luckiest draws of the game.

Ultimately, the game ended when I had an attack that broke his squad. The score was 2 Americans KIA 3 Routed, 4 Germans KIA, 8 Routed. He held out a lot longer than his crappy luck would have led you to believe was possible and fought a lot harder, we were 1/2 way through the last deck at the end of the game. I had a good time and so did he, it was nice to see Lady Luck switch dance partners for a change though; much as I love this game, and I know I have the technical skill for it, I very often lose.