Unfortunately, I didn’t get to play in it. My opponent got stuck in traffic, so I watched two others play and occasionally answered rules questions wrong.
It was 1000 points, Freeborn vs Boromites. The Freeborn guy has played a few games (but not a lot), the Boromite guy had played…a couple games (maybe 1-2). He had a brand spanking new Brood Mother he wanted to put on the table, and after handling this model I totally agree!
The Freeborn firebase hides in the woods.
Unfortunately, on turn 2 the Brood Mother took enough pins to be removed from the table, even after her general did a rally order. Only so many x-launchers even a Boromite model can handle. Here she is, with her 10 pins and 2 down orders and looking a little bit like a dead spider.
Here’s the map after this game. The teal and yellow sections are the Salt Excavation Union, Local 50 and Antares Brine Commission, our two factions. I’m on the SEU. This game was fought over #18, the teal piece nearest the bottom of the map. After the Brood Mother died it was a fairly quick game after that, since they were played scenario #1 from the main book and 2 of his 9 dice had just disappeared.
The yellow cross-hatching is places were the Brine Commission are attacking. The teal cross-hatching is where the SEU is attacking. The red cross-hatching is where someone is attacking, and the attack has a defender scheduled already. So red — all good. Not red — needs someone to help out. Players can defend any attack that is adjacent to one of their factions territories. So that little teal section in #11 is, right now, totally open for the SEU to break out of their little corner and start taking other parts of the galaxy over.
The campaign system has gone through a lot of change this week. I had previously given my club mates access to it, so they could poke around and make suggestions. One fellow did, but one person is not 14 people. 14 people find all the problems in your system, very quickly. My to-do list went from empty* to zomfg-I-don’t-have-this-much-time.
(*it was never empty. It just ran out of high priority things to do. I have lots of plans, but I wanted to get this piece test-driven before I started working on anything more).
We’ve been playing Blood Bowl for a long while now. There are a few reasons I think why it has had success: small model count, utilizing models people had already, there were a good number of people who already knew how to play when we started so the community was easy to build, the league structure that our commissioner built up, the games RPG-like elements, and lastly: a good app to track it all.
I can’t do much about a lot of that stuff, but the last 3 we can build. I partnered with a friend who wanted to do a map-based campaign to write some rules, and I set about writing an app. This is what has been taking up all of my free time for a few months, and I’m ready to show off the “first draft”.
Goals
I had a few goals going into this project.
Simple, but not too simple.
Each game has to have meaning, within the context of the greater campaign.
Ensure that no one misses a game because of a lack of opponent.
Make it easy to join, and easy to leave. I’ve seen to many map campaigns die because 3/8 people stop being interested.
Allow scheming. Everyone in my club is connected through WhatsApp, so we should be able to get some devious moves going on.
Allow a narrative to be written. 40k has taken some flak in our group from “forge the narrative”, but it doesn’t have to be so serious. A story is as simple as “we all need to kill Chris because he has a movement 10 gutter runner!” That’s a story, and although it isn’t one that will sell novels, it’s worth writing about.
How I met those goals:
Maps are pretty simple. I also had a couple friends go over the app to ensure it was somewhat user-friendly. This was a good idea, as I hadn’t “killed my darlings”, as they say in the writing trade. 🙂
We added a point-system whereby players gain 1 point for winning a game, and points for playing games at the end of themonth. Points can be spent on things like attacking anywhere (instead of adjacent map spaces), placing extra terrain on the table and gaining a few extra points on the table. (but not too many).
I’ve currently missed on “no one misses a game”. I wanted to include rules to allow in-faction fighting, but not necessarily encourage it. We left those out for now, with plans to include them should we notice a problem.
The campaign is entirely faction based. In other campaign systems, you hold sections of the map personally. In this game, you hold them with your faction. This means that players can drop out if they lose interest, and join if they think it’s interesting, without needing to allocate or de-allocate sections. The trade-off is that players may feel less ownership, which could lead to a lack of interest.
There is a front page news feed that displays information from campaign-creators, as well as players who fill in their entries.
Rules
While I was writing the app, myself and another person were working on a set of campaign rules that would fit with my goals and would also be fun to play. This was the result. This document drove all of the “game-like” aspects of the campaign (the game outside of the game), which strives to give the reason why someone would play in a campaign at all. It’s gone through a lot of revisions, and I expect it will see a few more once it actually hits the pavement.
Video games start with a design document, which outlines what the goals of the project are, and a little bit of what someone could expect when they play the game (which hasn’t been written at that point!). I think of these rules as my design document for the app – the game must be playable with just the document, and the app has to facilitate that play.
Photos
I’m deliberately not posting a link, because it’s not ready for public use right now. I want to run a full campaign through it locally, and make a few more user-friendly features before I offer it up to others.
These pictures are all from my development copy of the app, so some of the text will be gibberish. 🙂
The app has been designed to be game-system-agnostic. It tracks wins and losses and the map, but doesn’t tell you how to drive those games. You just could as easily play Backgammon.
At the front page, there is a news feed. This comes from 3 places: sites administrators can post news, campaign-creators can add news, and players can add a narrative to their games. Only the news from the campaigns you’re a member of will be shown here.
On the left, there are a few buttons. Clicking the “Campaigns” button opens a side bar that shows a list of all campaigns in the app. Here you can Create a Campaign, as well as click on an existing one to look at it.
Entering a game
To join one, you’ll click on a campaign in the sidebar and it will bring you to a screen similar to this. I’ve already Joined this campaign, otherwise there would be a Join button at the top. Campaign administrators have a gear button to give them some extra options. Regular players click on the map to select which section they wish to attack. They can only attack sections adjacent to their existing territories.
At the top, there is also information about:
Phases. This is a generic term to denote a period of time. We’ll come back to this.
Materials. You gain materials for winning games. They can be spent in game on some special things. You can also give materials to your faction-mates!
Mandatory attacks. Each phase, each player in a campaign must attack a certain number of times. This is to motivate people to play at least one game per phase!
Optional attacks. Each phase, each player is allowed to attack a few more times. We limit this, to ensure that someone with infinite free time doesn’t steamroll.
VPs. Who is winning!
After you click a territory, you come to this entry page. Here you’ll fill in how many points you got, and how many materials you used, as well as the same information for any opponents you played in the game. You can also fill in a narrative for your game, if you want.
Lastly, you’ll Save it (if you want to come back to fill in information later) or Finish it (if you’re completely done).
Creating a campaign
If you click Create Campaign, you’ll be brought to this simple entry form. Give your campaign a name, enter whether it is a Simple campaign (no map, no meta-game features) or a Map campaign. I have thoughts of adding some other options here as well – a tournament is one possibility.
You will also add as many factions as there are in your campaign here, and they will be automatically assigned a colour. When you’re done, click Save or Generate Map.
A map is generated automatically for you, but you still need to place your factions on the map so they have a starting point. It is a simple drag-and-drop interface to give factions their start sectors.
When you’re all done, you Save your campaign!
The Future
I’ve got thoughts, but most of them have to wait until we actually get this campaign going and I get real people running through the system.
I’m not happy with how the “in progress campaign” screen looks. The map is large and unwieldy, and looks awkward. I keep looking at Google Maps for inspiration, but they get to use a map that fills their entire screen. The map isn’t “out of place”, because it’s the reason you’re on the page!
Clark wanted me to add tournament support, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to.
User customization of things like number of squares, size of the map, colours, themes, etc.
Whether to monetize some of it. I look at the Roll20 app and think that I’m not that far away from having something that might be worth a few bucks to some people.
The public…
But for now, it’s going to be about running through the stuff I have with real people who are actively trying to use the system!
Following quickly on playing scenario 2, I managed to convince a group of people to play the multi-player scenario 3!
Even though we only got through turn 2 over ~2.5 hours, the game went very smoothly. Everyone had a good time, very unlike massive GW games. I think the alternating activation, and quick activations (except for assaults) keep everyone mostly engaged at all times! I was also pretty militant about pulling the next dice – with 5 people and 46 dice in the bag (in turn 1) I needed to keep things moving!
This was also the first game of Antares for one of our most passionate game players. He’s the guy who owns mostly every game played in the club, but unusually he’s also the guy who runs tournaments for most every game played in the club. 😛
I took a ton of photos!
46 dice! We added another Distort dice in turn 2, as per the scenario special rules. We had some odd pulls – in both turns Dan received most of his dice before anyone else, and Clayton received most of his dice after anyone else!
Pretty much at the beginning of turn 1. We had the Freeborn allied with the Ghar, as Clayton’s Freeborn had been paid off by them to help hold Xilos, and also to give the new player an ally. We changed some of the other rules — we gave the non-Ghar players a 15″ deployment depth, and had the “Ghar” come on from the table edge on turn 1 since I wanted people playing right away and didn’t imagine we’d get to turn 3. 🙂 We told the “Ghar” players they couldn’t assault on the first turn as well, since assault is pretty brutal and they were pretty close.
I deployed my C3 in the closest corner of the table in the photo, Ryan deployed his Isorians to my left, and Pat deployed his Algoryn opposite me.
My corner of the board quickly became a quagmire, with the Algoryn opposite and some of the Builder Relics between us. Then the Freeborn and Ghar came on the table edge and started shooting things!
This was funny. The Ghar put on their Command Crawler, just the one unit, behind the Isorians battle lines. The Isorians spent both turns trying to make the Crawler go away, but just kept being completely unable to do anything about it. I believe that Ryan is looking forward to Isorians getting some heavier weapons.
The problem on my side didn’t dissipate. I moved forward and tried to “cross the streams” of the Batter shields of my T7 and the Algoryn Avenger? I don’t know what that thing is, all the Algoryn’s look alike. 😛 (a little casual fantasy racism for ya!)
While the Isorians were focused on the Command Crawler, these Ghar suits snuck up behind them and started pounding on them.
Behind my view, the Algoryn had a mag mortar and x-launcher on a hill and were trying to pin these suits to death. After they were removed, the mag mortar pivoted and took part in the middle of the battle a bit more, but 2 turns is hard to do much in. 🙂
I moved Arenal Yu up the hill to use her IMTel Stave to remove the Avenger, but whiffed. I was corrected, in that I thought she had 3 shots at SV3 but she actually has a single shot with D3 hits. Because of this, I didn’t give her a Spotter drone, since I didn’t think a model with 3 shots needed it. It turns out that Spotter drone is just a 10 point mandatory upgrade!
Clayton has been super excited about his Nuhu, calling them the best models in the range! I don’t know if I can agree – I don’t really get behind the “dance party” aspect that he’s loving so much, but they are pretty awesome! Apparently his Nuhu are a pair of Space Germans from Space Berlin who are constantly on the look out for the next EDM dance party. The constant oontz, oontz, oontz from his side of the table is pretty hilarious.
I didn’t mean for these to be comparison shots between the Freeborn M4 and my T7, but here it is! This is the best model in the range! I love the hell out of it, and wish that I could get a T7 and an M4 into a 1000 points (or even 1250 – 1250 is “possible”, but super difficult!). It just looks so cool!! (also, the more I look, the more I think the bottom photo is from a different game…).
Tactics?
If you got this far in reading, I commend you.
The Nuhu’s use is getting more solidified in my mind. I put her into the T7 with 2 Shield Drones, and the T7 had 2 Shield Drones. This is a lot of points in one place so I wanted to protect it well on it’s way up the table. This also helps give the Nuhu a lot more mobility since the T7 can move 10″ over MOD2 and then she can move another 5″ and still get her shots off. Since the Stave is fairly short range, this additional mobility is pretty important. I do regret (as above) not giving her a Spotter drone, but that’s easy enough to fix.
I took my max number of Get Up!s this game (didn’t get to use them), which I will prioritize in future games. Having a unit that you need to not be Down, but be unable to roll a good number for, lost me my last game and it just doesn’t need to happen.
Drop Command are nice with Acc 6 and a medi-drone, but not as nice as I want them to be. Like others, I do with I could take a Drop Squad without needing to take the Command first. The limitation means that there isn’t room (with my current models) for the Squad, which limits those all-important Lances!
I’ve put on order an Algoryn Plasma Cannon I’m going to use as a C3 PC. Because I need more high SV weapons, I added the Nuhu into this list for her SV6. But she’s ~200 points and limits what else I can fit into the list. The PC has SV6 and is a lot less mobile, but is also ~100 points cheaper so I could get my heavy weapon and still be able to fit more mobility into the list. Movement is key in all of the games I’ve played so far, so having those Drop Squads in the list is going to really help out with that!
Fluff?
The Algoryn and C3 have maintained hesitant ties throughout the Xilos initiative, but when actual resources are on the line communication breaks down and the gloves come off. Maybe their fractured alliance can be repaired, but maybe this is the end of their common ground.
You can never tell with any given Freeborn whether they’ll deal with you, or kill you, but this band of space DJs appear to have been heavily bought off by the Ghar Empire and didn’t even ask if there was a counter-offer on the table.
The Isorians have had very little presence on Xilos so far, but showed up just in time to help out their ancient and incompatible enemies, the C3. Arenal believes that their assistance was given only because they were distracted by a Ghar Command Crawler, and they didn’t have time to worry about other things, but I believe the ancient human saying is “any port in a storm”.
The Concord led by Arenal continue to receive a beating at every opportunity given, even simulated opportunities, and there is a good chance that the NuHu will take some time to meditate on the correct forces to send into the next battle. Reinforcements may be necessary. They may also be unavailable.
I once again failed to get many photos for this game. I played Dylan in his first game against 1000 points of his Boromites! The first Xilos scenario felt complicated with the deployment mini-game (which has me thinking a lot, by the way, about unique deployment methods), but once you got into the game it was fairly straight-forward. This game was straight-forward to start with, making it a decent beginner game.
The forces of Arenal Yu stood resolute against the cold metal bulwark of the Last Tree on Xilos (not actually the last tree, just a symbolic name created by the IMTel to encourage troops to work harder. Ideals are easier to promote than Reality). The hard working men and women of Adama’s work gang had a job to do, to dig a giant hole under the Last Tree, and they weren’t going to let the C3 stand in their way. Unfortunately, the Last Tree was also the site of an in-progress transmat station that the 21st Regional had been ordered to protect and construct. This timing was exceedingly poor in the end, as the coincidental arrival of the Boromite workers put an end to the construction of the transmat station and thus also set back the C3 progress on landing their heavier support on Xilos.
Afterwards, Clark pulled out his Tsan-Ra. I love and hate those elbow spiders! I can’t wait to see someone paint and play with them!
I lost the game by being overwhelmed. I rolled to build the transmat 3 times, rolling a 1, a 2 and a 5, before I lost enough troops to lose the game. I used some of my troops poorly (I failed to Ambush twice while lavamites approached…), and made some poor decisions in army selection (Batter drones from my X-Launchers would actually have been a good idea here, as opposed to the last time I did that). On the other hand, this was the first game I’ve played where I felt like my troops actually had some teeth. Before this, I would get removed quite quickly while merely putting a few pins on a few opposing units. Here I removed a couple units, pushing them back to the table edges.
This was my first game with my new Drop Command as well, but they spent most of the game pinned and down. 🙁
After their humiliating defeat against the Freeborn mercenaries, the ground forces of the 21st Regional took to the holosim to practice new techniques in warfare. The local Algoryn commander volunteered to oppose the Concord, but insisted on being the ones to drop.
Whispers took root among the 21st, about whether the Algoryn had volunteered to show them up after their initial failure at Xilos. Morale lowered the longer it took to prepare the simulation.
As the “game” started, Arenal Yu chose her battle plans carefully, placing a strike squad on the generator, an X-Launcher team hidden in some nearby trees and another strike squad on the far side of the generator, attempting to spread out any possible damage from landing pods.
The Algoryn landed a mere 3 units after the simulated Concord anti-air guns, however they were laser-like in their precision of landing and destroyed the X-Launcher and all-but destroyed one of the Strike Squads upon reaching the ground.
(In my initial game I missed that the drop-pods caused D6 SV3 hits as well as placing the unit Down! This is huge!)
The Algoryn seemed confused in their objective as they raced past the generator to get into combat with the physically weaker Concord. After brutalizing a few squads, they remembered their plan and hopped back to take the generator and hold it for the rest of the simulation.
The Concord fought forward, forced to come to the monstrous Algoryn and fight them on their own terms. That, combined with the Concord’s lack of fast-moving troops ensured that they couldn’t get to the generator to stop the Algoryn from holding it.
At the end, both sides were devastated. Arenal herself took an entire salvo of gunfire from a skimmer squad, a move that seemed calculated to embarrass the leader as she took to the field of battle herself.
This is a much more balanced game with the D6 SV3 hits. >.> Also although Pat (who played the Algoryn) landed with the same number of units as I did when I defended, this game was only 750 points so ratio-wise it was a lesser loss of power. This is a hard scenario, no matter what side you are. The Attackers start with less units, but the Defenders have really no where to hide if they want to contest the generator because there’s a big open space around it.
I need faster models. It’s just that simple. I’m losing these games because I can’t get to where I need to go, and even though I have a couple different squads and my hope was to be able to fire with one while running with another and then switching, it just doesn’t allow me to place enough pins on my opponent. I brought my T7 to this game, but Pat wanted to play 750 so I wasn’t allowed to play with it! There was a mess-up in an order at my local games store and so I’m still waiting for my drop command to come in!
Freeborn Privateers led by Lady Jessica held a Quantum Gravity Generator on behalf of the Ghar. Concord forces led by Arenal Yu used borrowed Algoryn drop pods to land and try to take the generator from their enemies. The Freeborn anti-air guns proved exceedingly accurate, destroying 8 of the 12 incoming pods, 5 of which contained Concord forces. The remaining 4 pods contained a 5-man Strike Squad, a weapon drone unit of 2 C3D1 Light Support Drones, a kitted out X-Launcher squad, as well as a single support lander that held a table edge against Freeborn reinforcements. Bereft of leadership, Strike Squad Delta attempted to fulfill their mission to capture or destroy the Generator, but were overwhelmed by Freeborn forces.
Game
I cut out 12 3″ circles to act as drop pods and showed up to help Clayton learn how to play Gates of Antares by playing one of the more complicated scenarios. 😛 I didn’t want to buy 12 drop pods for a scenario I might play once or twice, so “drop construction papers” it is!
When you get down to it, the scenario wasn’t that complicated. The deployment was complicated, and we both had a lot of fun playing it. But the game was simple – touch the thing in the center, and stop your opponent from touching the thing in the center. The deployment was a mini game where the Attacker chose a number on a dice and the Defender had to guess it. Simple, but there were some other rules that made it more interesting than just “guess my number!” which would have been pretty random. There were 3 types of “drop pods”, one of which had special powers if it did get hit. As well, hitting the final target or overshooting the final target gave different deployment results. All in all, not a game I would play every Sunday, but definitely a new and cool way of deployment your army!
Clayton had some really good and/or lucky guesses. There were two times when he said “2…NO 1!!” and I had hidden “1”. This photo is of my entire force that managed to land. He destroyed 3 Strike Squads, my Nuhu and an X-Launcher. We played 1000 points. >.>
We might have given up and re-racked in another situation, but it was Claytons first game at all and I wanted to help him take the rules he’d read and turn them into reality. Drone squad got Down early and couldn’t get up, my X-Launcher came on in the 2nd turn and missed the one shot it got, and my Strike Squad got surrounded by Freeborn and assaulted and destroyed!
Clayton has a neat mix of troops. A Command squad, some feral troops, some of the well-armed shooty guys, a bunch of bikes and a MOD2 skimmer thing. He put most of it together in a weekend, since I announced this campaign on Thursday and he’d only picked up his army on Wednesday!
