The nice people at Armourfast sent me some of their tanks to review, which is always welcome. It helps with the addiction as I don’t seem to be able to choose a single scale for WWII gaming 🙂
Speaking of scales, a little bird also tells me that Armourfast is working on some 15mm projects. Now I can’t tell you what they are yet, but given that Armourfast currently only make WWII plastic kits I could guess. More 15mm WWII plastics? Now wouldn’t that be interesting?
This review is based on a pdf of the complete rulebook rather than the printed item as that’s what was given to me. You can see a lot of this on the downloads section of Vesper-On’s website. Not everything is on offer (the background and some illustrations aren’t there), but it’s jolly nice of them to let you have most of their product for free 🙂
Who are Vesper-On? They are a new company that seems to have been set up specifically to produce this game and the associated miniatures. However, that makes them sound a bit new to all this. Well, in some ways they are, but they have also drawn on the sculpting talents of a group of veteran and highly respected artists to produce a striking and unusual range of models.
The Setting
The game is set in an alternate reality version of Venice in 1795. Due to the murderous (lack of) manners of the Vatican agents, most of the Italian population has died and a vast rent has been torn in the sky, through which raw magic now pours. Venice lies on the edge of this cataclysm. This influx of energy is coupled with the rise of Cthulhu’s minions in the waters of the Venetian lagoon, and between them they have made the soggy streets of that city increasingly dangerous.
The gangs (called squads here) that roam the streets are from factions of dissolute nobles, mad doctors, Cthulhu devotees and the guild of thieves. Magic is real and increasingly widely used by all factions. There aren’t really any “good guys”.
The Rules
You can have a look for yourself on Vesper-On’s website, so I won’t go into too much detail here. Suffice to say that this is a D10 system of alternate activation of individual models. Each model has a number of actions they can do in a turn, and must do all those actions when it is their go.
Most stats are dice pools which tell you how many D10 to roll. One dice in every roll is called a destiny dice and determines criticals and fumbles. The rest are rolled against 7 or an opposing stat (whichever is higher) with the aim to equal or beat it. Each success is an Ace. The number of Aces is then modified further to work out whether you have damaged your target, jumped the canal, etc. So, if I roll 3 dice and get 8, 9, 3 then I’ve got 2 successes, or Aces. If your protection (armour) is 2 then this is reduced to zero so I do no damage.
During the game you have to track life points (hit points/wounds/etc) by crossing off the boxes on the right of your character sheet (each model needs a character sheet, which may get to be a bit of a space hog if you have a lot of models). As you drop in health you eventually get to boxes that cause you to take penalties to your stats. The term for crossing from one level of modifier to another is called pain threshold and I found the explanation for this a little fuzzy, though I think I got it in the end. It actually seems to be a lot simpler than it is made out.
There is also a resource to manage called Karma. This allows you to do special stuff like add extra dice to rolls. When you spend it is important, and it only comes back very slowly. However, it can easily make the difference between a crippled target and a barely wounded one. The name is hugely misleading as the only way (apart from scenario special rules) you get it back is by killing things – not at all the normal use of the word.
The rules for movement, swimming, and special combat moves are all simple enough to follow and shouldn’t cause any issues for someone who has played a skirmish game before. There are also a stack of skills that allow models to bend the rules in various ways. Again, nothing to surprise an experienced gamer.
One thing that is a little unusual is the freedom to add equipment to your models. This is simply bought from a shopping list and includes narcotics and venom as well as magic items. Oddly, in a basic game you can’t buy extra weapons or armour, but you can have magic items. This is one area of the rules where the cheese detector flickered rather alarmingly.
The game can be played in one of the scenarios provided or as a campaign. Rules are given to link scenarios together as well as explaining how characters can progress as they go. This is reminiscent of Mordheim or Necromunda’s system.
All told, the rules are relatively involved, on a par with Confrontation, Helldorado or Bushido rather than Song of Blades & Heroes. They are a very similar level of complexity, offer similar tactical options during play and feel very familiar overall. Whilst you will have to deal with the occasional odd translation (and a large number of typos) the rules themselves will not offer many new confusions (or challenges, unfortunately) for experienced gamers.
On The Table
The rules suffer from being translated as is often the case. Some parts were a little less clear than they might have been, but overall the fact that the rules themselves were so familiar made it easy enough to follow. If you’ve played a skirmish game or two before then you’ll probably be pretty close if you just guess what the rules should do.
I had a couple of goes messing about with small numbers of models to get a vague idea of the rules, and then we played a game with the Cthulhu fans against the Doctors. As we were mainly getting to grips with the rules, scenery was limited to a canal down one side, which proved to be a bit of a pain for me (as the Doctors). I don’t think that more scenery would have made any difference as we we just playing the basic fight.
The monstrosities were made up of a boss and some deep ones. I took a doctor, a couple of madmen and a remote controlled rhino. The game played out pretty much as we expected, and the rules worked smoothly enough. Our only real problems were in deciding exactly what the pain threshold meant and how crazy the madmen were. In the end I think the rules make quite a meal out of pain threshold, which is, in reality, a simple concept. Perhaps it’s a translation thing. The real issue was that one of the skills for the madmen hadn’t been translated, so I was left to surf online and try to work out what the translation might have been. Predictably the first 3 online translators gave me a different answer, none of which matched any of the skill names. In the end we agreed, but it could have been more than one skill. That needs to be added to their FAQ/Errata.
The deep ones were scary, my madmen were crazy and the rhino did a nice job of stomping on things till it got swamped (hem, hem) by the deep ones. Ganging up on people is horrendously powerful. The stats for the different beasties gave them a distinct feel, which was good, and the game rolled along reasonably happily with few mechanical hiccups. Nice as the rhino is, I wouldn’t take it again in a small game. Outnumbering is too potent to miss out on the advantage of swarms of troops. I could have had 5 more madmen.
Conclusion
As with everything else, there are pros and cons, and probably the clearest summary is to list these. But before I do, my brief conclusion is that it is a solid, but unexceptional game, which works as well as, but no better than, Helldorado, Confrontation, Bushido or half a dozen others. It’s very much of that ilk. Whether it is the game for you or not really depends not on the unremarkable rules, but on whether you are drawn in by the models and the background they live in. That’s the real hook here.
Pro: it’s a different setting from the norm.
Pro: the game plays fairly smoothly.
Pro: there are some lovely models (and you don’t get to stomp folk with a rhino very often).
Pro: there are lots of story elements to the game, and there will be great tales to tell after a battle. The scenarios, variable equipment, campaign rules, etc all help this.
Pro: you have lots of opportunity to tailor a squad to your own taste by varying equipment and magic as well as troops.
Con: the game is a bit scatter-shot. It feels as though the designer has tried to get everything into one game rather than spread it across 2 or 3. The nearest thing it has to a strong central theme is 18th century Venice itself, and for me that ends up fighting with Cthulhu, magic, “super powers”, etc. We’ve seen all these other things before, and I think these familiar bits really weaken the strength of the theme. Instead of supporting the originality they dilute the evocative idea of Venice and the masquerade. There are some darlings in here that need to feel the knife.
Con: because there is so much flexibility in equipment and magic as well as troops, it is inevitable that some combinations are much more powerful than others, and there are very likely to be balance issues. I’ve already had some discussions with people about horribly dangerous combinations.
Con: the game isn’t nearly as immersive as it should (and could) be. The combination of background, models, rules, language, art, graphics and everything else should combine to draw you into the world of a game. Here it feels as though many of those elements are fighting against each other. This isn’t a con for players who are sold on it regardless, but it doesn’t help draw people in as it might have done, which is a pity.
Con: there are lots of typos in the rules. These are generally just sloppy rather than problematical, though one skill on the madmen wasn’t translated so we had to guess what it should have been. This was not in the FAQ or Errata and did cause minor issues in play.
Con: because it is a unique setting for a game, you’re going to need a completely new set of scenery for it. Urban 18th century Venice isn’t something most people will have lying about, and you will certainly need something.
I don’t normally promote such things in advance, but I’m going to be at this one and it looks like fun. Among other things we’ll have the first public run out of the Tribes of Legend game. Speaking of which, there’s an animated gif of photos from the new range. I’ve picked a nice one out for you in glorious not-changing-every-tenth-of-a-second-o-vision ™.
If you don’t get the Foundry newsletter, the latest one reads:
“Christmas open days Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd December!
At 2pm on Saturday the 3rd of December, foundry will be hosting the first ever participation game of our exciting new Greek mythology release ‘Tribes of Legend’, written by renowned games designer Jake Thornton!
This fast paced and entertaining battle will see a rampaging tribe of drunken centaurs attempting to overrun the camp of a staunch warband of amazon warriors, so if you want to take part, not to mention meeting the author himself, phone or email us now to reserve your place before we book up!
Plus don’t forget that our Christmas open days will see a range of fantastic in-store discounts, a plethora of other participation games including Condotierre and Street Violence, and more mince pies and hot drinks than you can shake a decidedly festive stick at! Doors open from 10am until 4pm both days, so come along and join in the festive fun!”
If Nottingham’s not too far for you to travel, why not pop along? I’ll be taking pictures and writing up a report afterwards, but it won’t be the same without you!
Tribes of Legend
Speaking of ToL, I had a couple of games this morning. We played the mass battle game twice in 90 minutes (not counting set up time), which goes to underline just how fast and brutal the whole thing is. I managed to just engineer a loss both times. In the second game my centaurs had victory firmly in their grasp, but put it down to reach for another sack of wine. Drunkards all. They’re a fun lot to play, though not an army for players who insist on their army doing what it’s told. Bob took the City States army, which is much better behaved.
Just because an idea is good, doesn’t mean it’s good for this game.
All of the designers I know have more ideas than they can get finished, and this is a good thing. It shows a fertile and creative mind. I find ideas are a bit like the hydra of old: get one into a project and published, and two more spring up in its place, begging to be used too. This abundance of ideas makes it very tempting to crowbar as many into each game as possible, and this is a trap.
Less is more is a somewhat trite cliché, but under the rather shop-worn exterior is an important concept. Sometimes taking things away allows the real strength of the core concept to shine through. Sometimes all the extra “chrome” isn’t adding at all: it’s just obscuring the really good parts. Always, the trick is to know when and what to prune.
This is a bit like murdering your darlings, and can often include that jolly concept, but it is more than that too. What I’m talking about is focussing your design on what is really important for this game. In that process of honing you should definitely murder excess darlings, but you should also look critically at everything else too. As I said at the start: just because an idea is good, doesn’t mean it’s good for this game. And that’s the critical point: for this game. Many, if not all, game concepts and rules are great in the right place and a problem in the wrong one. It’s seldom the rule itself that is at fault, merely the juxtaposition of it with the rest of the design.
Murder your darlings is a phrase that was first used by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (the dapper gent illustrated here) in a 1914 lecture on writing style at Cambridge University. What it means is probably best put by saying that if you think you’ve written something especially clever and particularly witty in a turn of phrase whose inner beauty will have the gods themselves weeping with joy, then it almost certainly needs to be deleted and should, on no account, be printed.
Harsh? Possibly. But it is a very useful guide when you are new to writing (when you are naturally more prone to making these errors), and it has the additional advantage of inuring you somewhat to the pain and anguish of having your deathless prose work edited, redacted, and generally stomped all over by everyone who comes after you in the process.
Whilst this phrase and principle is literary in origin, it applies just as much to games design.
Very often novice designers, like novice writers, will announce that they have finished with a project when in reality it still needs some cutting back. This is partly the understandable side-effect of enthusiasm and inexperience, and I did it as much as anyone. I still do, on occasion, though less so now I have a better understanding and more experience and I am often able to purge my own work before someone else has to. Now I know there is a trap, I can avoid it more easily. Eventually practice may make perfect, though I think I’m a long way off yet.
Applying this notion is fairly simple in principle, and hard in practice, as so many things are. First, you have to design your game, or at least make a start. Then, you have to see if any darlings need a quiet knife in the back. Ideally, you should do this as you go along. That way you can clear up any mess as you make it.
The big question is how do you know what is a darling? The best way I have found is by asking yourself which bits are your cleverest. You may have a workmanlike movement system, and a set of stats which is near-universal, but at one side you have a cunningly wrought rules engine that includes all manner of clever modifiers and twists. You are most proud of its cunning and elegance. It could be your masterpiece, or it could be vainglorious nonsense. Ask yourself: is it really necessary, or is it being clever just to show off? Try taking it out or putting a much simpler system in its place. Does the game still work? What did you lose? Ask other playtesters. Did they notice the difference? Removing some rules will bring the whole edifice down, and others will disappear entirely unnoticed. These latter rules should be high on your list to die. Of course, it may really be clever and elegant. Novices can write just as great stuff as veterans. But not always.
As you gain experience you will learn to use the principle routinely, but even then it is worthwhile consciously stopping and taking stock every now and again. Read your manuscript. Is it all really worth keeping? Can you excise that rule? It’s ever so clever, but does that alone warrant it’s inclusion?
If at all possible, you will be greatly helped by putting a project to one side and leaving it alone for as long as possible. Fresh eyes are what is needed, and you will benefit from a break if you can afford the time. When you come back to it, read the whole thing from scratch, just as if you were coming to it for the first time. Are the rules clearly explained? Do any bits jump out or jar. Often a darling will be obvious by being in a different style of writing, or in a different style of rule (if you see what I mean). Try playing it again, preferably with someone who did not help you develop it this far. Are there any bits that seem redundant, or which would lose little, but help the whole thing to be more streamlined? A particularly big clue is when a rule seems brilliant to you, but incomprehensible or irrelevant to others.
Of course, this is only one of a myriad reasons why games are not always as good as they could be. Time and money considerations are critical drivers and most projects get less playtesting with less critical gamers than they really need. Still, learning how to murder your darlings is a simple and easily applicable concept that can help make your game better, whatever your budget. If you write or design anything, then I’d urge you to give it a go.
I was rummaging through my photos from Derby and realised that I had a couple of rather nice shots I hadn’t shared yet. They’re the Plastic Soldier Company stand, showing some of their rapidly growing range of 15mm and 1/72nd and 28mm models. The reason this is at all relevant is that I’ve got a pile of their models to review, and I’ll be doing that over the next week or so. This is a sort of introduction, in case you’re not familiar with their range.
They are producing new kits at a prodigious rate, and seem to have a great nack for getting everything you need on a single sprue, balancing the detail of the kit with the practicality of a wargaming model. I’ve been really impressed with what I’ve seen so far, and without wanting to jump the gun on any later comments, I think they look to be coming out on top for 15mm models, certianly. And they’re cheaper than the competition too, which is never a bad thing.
Some German infantry here. I particularly like the medic.
And a mixed bag of armour. I’ve left these images pretty big so you can see the detail. You can see their latest models (the unpainted 251s) at the front.
While I was getting the Tau Skyrays I thought I’d pick up some of the Tau light recon vehicles too as they look really cool. Unlike the Skyrays, each vehicle comes as a single piece, which is a pretty good piece of casting.
As you can see, you also get a couple of sprues of the current Epic bases, and a set of chunky casting blocks to remove. Casting, while I’m on it, is again very nicely done with minimal flash lines and other gubbins to be removed (once the casting blocks are taken off). I’ve balanced the Tetras different ways up so you can see some of the detail. What’s particularly nice is that you can see through the Tetra from the side, as in the picture at the top.
It’s a really fine piece of casting, and a great thing to do. It’s just the sort of thing that companies often compromise on and fill in to make the casting easier, and I’m very happy they haven’t taken that route here as it helps to emphasize the delicacy of this light craft.
One of the things I like about the Tau is the clean lines of their vehicle designs, and this has been captured perfectly in these tiny models.
These sleek little craft are only about 18mm long.
The Piranha is the bigger brother of the Tetra, and again the casting captures the lines very well. The exposed crew are visible in both vehicles as you can hopefully see here.
About the only thing that’s wrong with these is that I don’t think they match the unit sizes for Epic, so I may end up with odds and ends of models. Still, that’s hardly a big issue.
Overall I think these are great models. I just wish Forge World still made the rest of the Tau army.
One of the armies I always wanted to do, but never got round to, was the Tau. I made a start at one stage, assembling Fire Warriors with their zillion tiny pieces. Anyway, to cut a long story short I gave up on 40K as a game and so I never got them finished.
Epic, on the other hand, is a game I do enjoy, and recently a friend of mine started muttering about playing that again. Second edition, to be exact. We had a game and it brought back all the memories of how much fun it had been and what a good game it was. So, while I’ll probably be using Imperial forces to start with (as I still have lots), I thought it might be an opportunity to collect the Tau army I never had. Forge World had made a whole army…
Then I discovered that FW had stopped making them. Bother. Well Ebay seemed the obvious alternative, but the prices these go for is a bit silly. Scratch that too.
I went back to Forge World and had another look. Not quite all of the models had been discontinued: they still make the few bits you can use in their Aeronautica game. Thinking about it I realised that actually you didn’t really need that many different basic vehicle chassis, so I got a pack of Skyrays to see whether I could use them as the basis for the rest. Perhaps I could convert these into Hammerheads and Devilfish. Here’s what you get in a bag of Skyrays: lots of tiny bits on big casting blocks.
I’ve set these up so you can see the main bits from several angles. The photo below shows the model assembled in the official shot from FW. In a bag you get all the bits you need for 3 Skyrays, and if you want to convert them to Devilfish you’ll have various spares to decorate weapon platforms or terrain features. Of course, you’ll want some Skyrays anyway.
If you know your Tau vehicles, you can see that it shouldn’t be too hard to make a Devilfish (it just needs a different hatch). A Hammerhead will be more effort as it needs a completely different turret, but even that doesn’t look impossible.
The models themselves are very nicely done, with lots of panel detail and so on – definitely a better idea to be converting one of these than trying to make one yourself from scratch. The various guns, missiles and so on are separate pieces, which ensures that the detail is present and not reduced to blobs by compromising the casting. Hats off to the designers and to the overlords at FW for allowing them to be picky like this. It all makes for a much nicer end product.
The models are cast in a hard resin with minor mould lines on a few parts and some flash. Nothing that would cause problems and actually rather less than on many metal and plastic models. Of course, you also have to remove the casting blocks. There are also zero bubbles that I can see, which is excellent. Finecast take note.
The photo below is another from the FW site, and conveniently shows a Skyray and Devilfish side by side. The only differences are the weapon fits under the front three mounting points/drones and the turret/hatch. As I said, this doesn’t look too hard. Fiddly, yes, but not technically difficult.
The Wooden World by N A M Rodger is a book on the subject of the British navy of the 18th century, specifically during the Seven Years War. To be honest, it is not a subject I would have normally raced to acquire more knowledge on, but it was given as a gift, so I read it. It’s actually very, very good.
This is the era of the sailing ship and the press gang, of pirates and privateers, and sets the scene for the naval battles of the American and Napoleonic Wars. What Mr Rodger has done is trawl through many old official records to produce the basis of his account, supporting the hard evidence from musters, ship’s logs and admiralty papers with letters and other more personal documents. It makes for surprisingly lively reading, and what’s nice is that he can back up his assertions with facts. He explains concepts like mutiny and discipline in particularly clever ways, pointing out that the words meant different things in the 18th century, and understanding that navy in the light of our 21st century language and customs doesn’t work. He then gives you the necessary mental filters to make more sense out of it.
He doesn’t deal with ship handling (other than in passing), so you won’t be able to sail a ship from this, but you should come away with a good idea of the skills that are required to command one.
I felt I was left with a real understanding of the strange and somewhat alien world the seamen and officers of the navy lived in, and how the various peculiarities of it actually make sense within their own context. It’s a strange world, and an intriguing one.
He also deals with explanations for things like why the navy used press gangs and how they really worked, and why British ships won many more than their share of duels when all the ships’ “stats” would suggest they should lose.
All this is great for gamers. If you are at all interested in understanding the fighting navies of this era then this book has an abundance of intriguing discussion points and things to consider. In terms of gaming it offers a neat breakdown of what was important and what was not, which could easily be translated into rules for the tabletop or board. Having read this, I then went and watched Master & Commander again, and even though it is Hollywood, I found it even more entertaining when I had a better understanding of the life they were portraying.
If you like naval warfare, are thinking of gaming in this period or just want to understand how people lived in this turbulent age, then it’s well worth a read.
Quirkworthy 