My Fall-In! 2007 Vacation!

Gladiator Fighting with Curt and Grant Daniels

A Crowd Favorite Returns

I ran a scenario I called "Hell Comes to Frogtown" (name borrowed from the excellent Rowdy Roddy Piper cheese flick from the 80s) last year at camp. It was an amusing swirl of Sharpshooters, the Undead, Prussians, Killer Robots, Cattle Stampedes and what have you. At this year's camp, I had planned on running a Tavern Brawl game (54mm, using the All for One cinematic swashbuckling rules) instead, but there were many requests to run this game again from the lads who were at camp last year. I had no problem recreating the scenario as many of the figures were still secure in their boxes from last year.

The Dramatis Personae had not changed from last time, and aside from some terrain pieces being added to avoid easy long distance shots, the layout was similar to last year's game, if somewhat more spread out.

The Rules are THE RULES WITH NO NAME, a simple (free) skirmish rule set set in the Wild West, and one that I have had some association with since 1997. This scenario would be scaled just a little bit up from man to man skirmishing, and likely would have been better run in GASLIGHT, but the lads like the "Big Bucket of Six Siders" approach to Game Design, and I have so much stuff for TRWNN it was easy to run and warmly received.

Since Hell Comes to Frogtown, Texas was really a small unit skirmish game, I created factions and had the leader be a shootist and the rest of the faction were "schnooks" or gunmen. Movement of the squad keyed off the leader and it went very smoothly. For more details on how to adapt TRWNN to squad level, see the AAR Post I put up last year, which explains group movment and a few VSF concepts, like programming HERMAN THE GERMAN ROBOT.

The scenario is essentially a hodgepodge of straight TRWNN, with a dash of SCARY MONSTERS OF THE GOLDEN WEST thrown in, and a dash of GASLIGHT. Like the long ago HELL COMES TO COW TOWN, the scenario pits factions with different victory goals against each other and assigns the winner to the faction that achieves their goals best.

SETTING: The town of Frogtown, Texas.. a major transhipment point for Coal Gas.

SCENARIO PLAYERS:

Prussian Squads A, B, and C: 1 Shootist and 6-7 Gunmen. Shootists=Leaders. A Detachment of Prussian Soldiers sent to secure the town from the Texans and capture the transhipment point for Coal Gas.

Doktor D'eth and Herman the German Robot: Mad Inventor and Clockwork Programmable robot.

Ah Pook the Destroyer (three gangs of zombies-- western style). Zombies are essentially brainless gunmen who blaze away until they unload, then close in for melee and munching.

Texas Rangers: Here to defend the bank (1 Shootist, 6 Gunmen)

U.S. Cavalry Scout Squadron: (1 Shootist, 6 Gunmen)..here to "observe" a gang of Mexican bandits they have been chasing. Note in this world, Texas is a Republic, the US is still fighting the Civil War, and the U.S. Cavalry has no jurisdiction in this town. Not that it matters.

United States Sharpshooters (all shootist, 1 leader). An elite gang of spies/saboteurs/agents of the United States Government. Crack shots that can snipe from afar. They are here to observe and foil the efforts of the Prussian Detachments sent to secure the town, whether the government of Texas objects or not.

Cappy's Mercenary Rocketboys (1 Shootist, the rest gunmen). A group of rocket assisted infantry who had been serving as mercenaries for the Texas Government until the great collapse. They haven't been paid. They are upset, and looking for work.

Local Cowboys Out For Trouble (1 Shootist, rest gunmen).

Thomas (my energetic TA) loves this game and since he is now an old hand at TRWNN, I kind of eased back on the tiller once the game got started and let him run things. He kept a rather detailed list of what transpired, which is given below. I so rarely have an AAR of such clarity, I thought it would be fun to post this.

Hell comes to Frog Town. Courtesy of Thomas (and thank you).

Turn 1-

Zombies shamble towards bandits, use gunmans’ action to engage Banditos and kill one.

Banditos promptly flee in terror towards the barn where the Cowboys are hiding.

The Flyboys blast off towards Dr. D’eth and hash out an a deal of mutual protection..

The Texas Rangers shoot at the Flyboys but do nothing.

The US cavalry scout mission sits in its’ barn.

Same for Cowboys.

Prussian squads A & C advance, C towards the mansion where the USSSS is skulking, A to cover the center of town.. Squad B aims, and the combined fire of the squads kills one of the two USSSS members perched on the roof of the governors’ mansion and knocks two others down.

Herman the German Robot Tramples his way around a large square, and ends precariously close to a table edge.

Turn 2

As the Bandits cower in terror, the Cowboys wander towards the USS mansion.

The Cavalry Aim at the encroaching Prussian squad C.

The USSS wounded stand up, move inside, and a member of Prussian Squad A is knocked out and seriously wounded.

Herman Tromps along the board edge as Dr. D’eth runs after, waiting with new instructions for turn 3.

PSC moves towards the USS, determined to drive them off the building.

PSA fires to no effect at the USS.

The Rocket Boys, with their gunman action, blast onto the roof of the Mansion from some 36 inches away. However, they are unable to do anything.

The Cowboys run towards the Mansion to aid the USS. They are followed by the Banditos.

The Zombies shuffle forward along the outskirts of town.

The Rangers, having emptied all their rifles, stand and reload.

Turn 3

PSC continues to march towards the building containing the USS.

PSB once again fired at the USS, knocking one down.

PSA stood and Aimed at the Cavalry.

The Cavalry kill one of PSC.

The Cowboys rush into the lower floor of the Mansion.

The Banditos stand inside the Tavern to blaze away at the flyboys, but nothing happens.

The Zombies continue to shuffle.

The Flyboys jumped down and engaged the cowboys to a stand-still.

The USS kill another of PSC, as well as one of the Flyboys.

Herman marches towards the bank, but breaks down.

Turn 4

Herman the German...Robot spends a turn still as Dr. D’eth repairs him.

The Rangers leap down from the bank and prepare to fire on Dr. Death.

The flyboys jump back to the roof to avoid the zombies.

PSC hides along the building to avoid more fire from the Cavalry. They shoot the USSSS and knock a man down.

The USS kill a member of PSB.

The Zombies use a gunman action to move in for the kill.

The Banditos hold in place.

The Cowboys hold in place.

The Cavalry run out towards PSA.

Turn 5

Unluckily, the Rangers kill Dr. D’eth after he repairs Herman. Herman marches forwards and kills 4 of the 6 rangers and crushes a small hut.

The Rangers flee in terror.

The Flyboys blast ineffectually at the Banditos.

The Zombies charge PSC and devour two of them.

The Cavalry run across the street towards PSA.

PSB reloads, owing to Byrons’ roll of 11 ones out of 36 dice. (The Blazing Away UNLOAD rule happens when you roll more 1s than 6s on your to hit dice).

The USS shoots at a member of PSA and kills him.

The Cowboys hold in place.

Turn 6

The Zombies continue to fight with PSC.

The Cavalry shoot at PSA and kill one.

PSA charges the Cavalry and kill three!

The Flyboys attempt to shoot a cow and start a stampede. Sadly, they kill it before it can tear down a fence.

The USS shoots at the zombies but does nothing.

The Banditos run towards the bank to complete their mission.

Herman tears through the Bank and rips both roofs off.

The Rangers walk towards the melee in the Mansion.

Turn 7

The Zombies finish off PSC and charge the fight between the Cavalry and PSA.

PSA sacrifices their Shootist Action Card in order to flee.

The Cavalry lose a man to the Zombies but also flee.

The Zombies play a gunman action and catch and kill the PSA.

PSB shoots at one of the Zombie Controllers and knocks him out, but he awakens with a roll of a six.

The USS kill a Controller of the Zombies.

The Flyboys shoot at another cow, but kill that one too.

The Cowboys and Flyboys declare a truce and the Cowboys run to the roof of the Mansion.

Herman Tears down the Stables, then marches into a fence and is destroyed by a stampede of horses.

The Banditos shoot and kill a ranger.

The Last Ranger charges the Banditos but fails to kill them.

Turn 8

The Cavalry fight the Zombies. When the smoke clears, a zombie is dead, but only the “.22" McGee survives the carnage.

The Zombies are unable to beat “.22" McGee.

The USS kill the Shootist level character (leader) of Prussian Squad B.

The Flyboys fly down to the fence. They open the gate, and instantly lose four men as bulls trample them.

PSB does nothing.

The Cowboys shoot and wound the sole remaining Zombie Controller.

The Banditos lose one man to the Ranger, but then kill him.

Turn 9

The Zombies kill “.22.” McGee, then blast a Cowboy off the roof with their pistols.

The USS kills the remaining controller, and the Zombies turn on Iggy the Hunchback. Iggy actually kills one in hand-to-hand.

The Bandits run towards the bank.

The Flyboys fight the bulls, fail to wound any, and lose a man to the raging bulls. Only their Shootist level Leader remains.

PSB kills a zombie with rifle fire.

The Cowboys shoot at the Zombies to no effect.

The stampede takes a freak turn, crushes the Zombies and poor Iggy, then kills 4 of the 5 Banditos.

Turn 10

The last Flyboy escapes the Cows.

The last Bandit, Antonio Smyth, runs into the bank ahead of the cows.

PSB, down to three members, retreats away from the Mansion.

The USS congratulate themselves on a job well done!


Victory for the Bandits, as they were the only ones to complete an objective.

Total Body Count- 47 of 63 dead.

Once Again, A Slideshow, this time in context:

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Return to Lilliput

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Warping young minds, that's where...

Cool Slideshows!

Tsaritsyn: an AAR of Red Actions

(Mister Nizz) asked if I could do an AAR for the Red Actions game, so I slapped one together...

Tsaritsyn After Action Report

As envisioned by the game master, our game represented an engagement from the fighting in 1919 around the outskirts of the city. A rail embankment capable of giving cover ran across the board and there were two clumps of woods along the bank of the Volga river. The Reds possessed a large hill and a clump of buildings at their end of the board and had supplemented these with some crude field works.

The Whites fielded 2 battalions of Cossack cavalry, a battalion of Plastoon infantry, three 76.2mm field guns, a Tachanka, some machinegun & mortar detachments and a reserve of Plastoon infantry and Cadets.

The Reds opposed us with a large force of conscript infantry, mortars & machineguns, a field gun and a 105mm howitzer. Over the course of the scenario, they would be reinforced by a significant amount of cavalry and an armored train.

The White Reserve could not advance until it received fire or the main advance neared the rail embankment and so it was placed on the far left in the hope that it would draw fire. The main infantry component of the White force went next to it and then the two Cossack battalions. Getting around the woods to the White front would create something of a traffic jam, so the infantry deployed in columns rather than lines to minimize frontage.

The scenario gave the Reds the first activation each turn (something of a mistake in my opinion) and they began by aiming their first shot right at the White reserves! Yes, the very first shell released them from their restrictions. The Communist artillery also fired at our field guns, but we’d emplaced them in cover and the crews refused to retire. Indeed, they placed a hot fire on the hated foe and blew the foe’s 76.2mm gun apart with a well-aimed shot.

The Reds armored train appeared right at the start of the second turn and it came on shooting, though it managed little effect for its pains. The White artillery continued its rampage on the second turn, knocking out the Red howitzer and damaging the gun car at the front of the train. The train parked itself in the center of the Red line, allowing the Reds to shorten their lines to defend its flanks.

Over the next few turns, the Whites advanced while their artillery pounded down the mortars and machineguns opposite the left flank. By turn 5, they’d managed to shoot the gun car on the train to pieces, silencing its field piece. Attempts to suppress the Red infantry holding down the embankment with small arms ended when we discovered they were partisans and received two shifts on the fire table, making them essentially invulnerable to long range fire.

In the end, two attacks were put in on the Red line. One on the left, using combined arms, and another with all cavalry delivered to the Red right. The latter attack was fairly impetuous and disintegrated in a wall of superbly aimed rifle and machinegun fire. (two or three attack rolls of 10+ in a row) The Reds had positioned themselves well here, detailing a company to the woods to create a crossfire before their positions.

The other White push went rather better and would have been decisive if the pursuit rules had been used properly. (we wondered why cavalry against infantry seemed so light in penalty) Counterattacks by the Red cavalry were rebuffed and the Red infantry abandoned the rail embankment to make a new stand at the village line.

We ran out of time at this point, having played about 10 turns in 6 hours. The Whites were certainly breaking through on the left, though infantry had been drawn off to stiffen the other flank. Given another two or three hours, I think the main attack could have broken through – the Reds simply lacked the firepower to hold it back once the machineguns and mortars reached the front lines.

Overall, I enjoyed the scenario. The balance felt a little dicey – if the Reds had gotten the good artillery rolls and knocked out the White guns, they could have shelled us for the entire length of the board, which would have been awful frustrating – but that didn’t happen here and so I can’t complain about it. The long time it took the Whites to move down the board meant that the final clashes at the end possessed great significance, which kept players in the game – also, everyone had enough force assigned to them to survive the initial casualties and stay interested in the game.


Pics:

Set up for the Whites, set up for the Reds, the armored train, and finally, the White Counterattack in the center.

Red Actions AAR (& Red Storm)

The following post is from Peter Bogdasarian, who recently attended ORIGINS and managed to play in a game of RED ACTIONS at (it looks like) 15mm scale-- and posted this rather nice AAR on his CSW blog. I post this because at least 4 of the regular readers here have some investment in the RED ACTIONS combat system (we are working feverishly on making a faster version of it for convention play) and may wish to look at RED STORM as well. The material and observations are entirely the work of Peter Bogdasarian and I am reposting it for my colleagues who are not on CSW.

A Tale of Two Combat Systems
By Peter Bogdasarian, reporting from Origins 2007 (posted with Permission)

By an accident of scheduling, I ended up playing two Russian Civil War miniatures games on Thursday. A battle from the fighting around Tsaritsyn, using the Red Actions system from the Perfect Captain and a Generic Meeting Engagement from Somewhere in Russia using the Red Storm on the Horizon (hereinafter Red Storm) rules, which will be coming out from Battlefield Hobbies this year (or so I am assured). CSW's Roy Bartoo played in the second game, so someone can always corner him if they want a different viewpoint.

Both games use groupings of stands for infantry and individual vehicles/guns/etc. for the other stuff. Red Actions used companies as the basic unit of maneuver, Red Storm used formations of Indeterminate Size (though they looked a lot like companies).

Combat systems are the order of the day here so that's what I'll be focusing on, but as a brief introduction to the systems, Red Actions uses alternating activations, while Red Storm lets players "program" orders, then there is simultaneous movement & fire.

There is no command system in Red Actions - everyone does whatever you tell them to do.

For Red Storm, a side possesses a limited number of orders - each order allows one unit to activate. Activation is not guaranteed - players issue all their orders (move/fire/move&fire/charge/etc.) and then roll for acceptance. The more difficult the order, the more likely a unit is to reject it. Failing an order causes a unit to accumulate disruption points, which reduce its effectiveness.

Red Actions uses a Squad Leader style CRT for "conventional fire." (sum up firepower factors, find column, shift like hell) The neat thing here is that combat can cause units to accumulate terror markers (as well as conventional losses & retreats) - each terror marker reduces the formation's effectiveness as if it had lost a stand, but terror markers can be rallied off to return the force to full strength. Too many terror markers and you rout. An interesting way to do morale based combat while keeping the number of morale checks down.

The only flaw with the terror markers is that they can instantly be removed by spending the unit's turn to rally - there is no check required. Since the turn sequence in our game was fixed (and the Reds moved first, with alternating impulses), this gave the Reds a large advantage since they could easily rally units back to full strength before they could be engaged again in the next turn. I told the GM he really needed an initiative system and I think he'll give it a try next time.

The combat system in RA is very shift heavy - skirmishers (which includes the entire Cossack army), cover, partisans, etc. can all shift against the attacker and many times we couldn't fire at all thanks to these. When we could shoot, virtually all of the fire in our game took place on the weakest (3-6) column - where there is actually a fairly large chance of inflicting a result. (7+ on 2d6 against troops in the open, 9+ against troops in cover) The higher fire columns are much worse - units in RA cannot really stand up to fire for very long.

Direct fire in RA is rather different. 2d6 - ordinarily for a 10+ - and if you hit, the target loses a platoon (for infantry) or is destroyed (for artillery/crew served weapons). Armored trains can take a couple hits. There are no modifiers...

Which leads to my next point: Counterbattery is extremely dicey but decisively effective. Over the first two turns, we knocked out both of the Red artillery pieces (ironically, they shot first but rolled lower) with our three field guns. Then we knocked out their machineguns, mortars and (eventually) the Armored Train itself. With no modifiers for cover/etc., the only way the Reds could keep something alive was to keep it out of sight of the White artillery...

Red Storm uses a much more conventional combat system - buckets of dice and loss focused. Units accumulate hits and two hits kills an infantry stand. It is a much bloodier game than Red Actions and very likely crappier history, but much more fun. Fire combat can also place disruption points on a unit, impairing its overall effectiveness.

Guns, tanks, etc. use the same combat system as everything else but take varying amounts of hits to kill. (also, certain weapon systems simply cannot inflict hits on tanks) Counterbattery against enemy artillery is fairly difficult and nowhere near as easy as it is in Red Actions.

Given a choice between the two, I'd go for Red Storm. It is a bit more abstract than RA, but the system is swifter (we played 10 turns in both systems - it took three hours for Red Storm and six for Red Actions) and frankly more fun. I got very tired of watching us roll on the weakest column of the fire chart in Red Actions for turn after turn.

Pics:

Red Actions - a shot of the table before final set up. The Reds will end up putting a line behind the railroad embankment while the Whites deploy their infantry on the left and the cavalry on the right.

Red Storm - a shot of the entire table in the middle of the game.

Red Storm 2 - a shot of my position in the mid game. Roy Bartoo has managed to break his tank down near my infantry. An entire White company has been gunned down across from my troops and the naval infantry behind them are thinning fast. The Cossacks will end up carrying away much of my center in the next few turns.



The poker chips you see here indicate orders and the die placed on them shows the actual order. (1 = move, 2 = fire, 4 = move/fire, 5 = melee) The order # is also the difficulty number, as rolled on a ten-sided die.

AAR Ends. Thank you, Peter!