Check out the latest creation, Don Pedro Monte, for TERCIO CREAT.IV.O's 1650 skirmish game - this guy's just begging to be a non-player character in my campaign.
Showing posts with label miniatures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miniatures. Show all posts
Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Monday, 10 June 2013
"Bombshell Miniatures is a collection of of creators, artists and sculptors from various disciplines working together to bring exceptional miniature figures . . . featuring strong iconic female characters from various genres." A blend of cheesecake and girl power, the line features characters from the fantasy, steampunk, space opera, and other genres.
The line includes two swashbuckler-y figures - Mira the Inquisitor, a female Solomon Kane sort, and Meagan the Buccaneer, an 18th century-ish pirate captain - but I think that a model of a swashbuckling swordswoman, perhaps in the style of Dark Agnes or Red Sonya, would be a worthwhile addition to the collection.
Of the current figures, my two favorites are definitely deep sea diver Vivian Gale and Mongol warrior Wu Ling Shu - I could see the latter appearing somewhere in my game-world.
The line includes two swashbuckler-y figures - Mira the Inquisitor, a female Solomon Kane sort, and Meagan the Buccaneer, an 18th century-ish pirate captain - but I think that a model of a swashbuckling swordswoman, perhaps in the style of Dark Agnes or Red Sonya, would be a worthwhile addition to the collection.
Of the current figures, my two favorites are definitely deep sea diver Vivian Gale and Mongol warrior Wu Ling Shu - I could see the latter appearing somewhere in my game-world.
Monday, 4 March 2013
I've been following the development of the 1650 line with interest. The sculpts are beautiful and the characters fanciful and original - something like Asmodée Edition's Helldorado line, but without the magic and monsters. My favorites so far are el Sargento (pictured at right), Irene Vioque, la Guardia, and el Mochilero.
It appears that they will ship worldwide, though there's no mention of cost - I haven't yet created an account to test the store. The figures themselves are pricey by my ridiculously cheap-ass standards, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be willing to slap my hard-won shekels down for figures I like - it just makes me choosier.
I've dipped from the 1650 and Helldorado figure well several times for inspiration when creating non-player characters for my Flashing Blades campaign.
Thursday, 10 January 2013
Gonsalvo at Blunders on the Danube recently concluded continued his series of posts on his Seventies-vintage English Civil War armies.
English Civil War: Royalist Infantry: pt 2
English Civil War Parliamentary Infantry pt 2
Royalist Cavalry pt 2
Royalist Infantry pt 3
As I was doing some prep the other day, I reflected on the fact that it's April 1626 in Le Ballet de l'Acier, our Flashing Blades campaign, and for all intents and purposes, it's the last year of peace for France for decades to come. I think this is the year I need to start building my own TYW miniatures army, for the conflicts ahead.
English Civil War: Royalist Infantry: pt 2
English Civil War Parliamentary Infantry pt 2
Royalist Cavalry pt 2
Royalist Infantry pt 3
As I was doing some prep the other day, I reflected on the fact that it's April 1626 in Le Ballet de l'Acier, our Flashing Blades campaign, and for all intents and purposes, it's the last year of peace for France for decades to come. I think this is the year I need to start building my own TYW miniatures army, for the conflicts ahead.
Monday, 26 November 2012
Gonsalvo at Blunders on the Danube trots out - literally - his ECW Parlamentary cavalry to celebrate Thanksgiving with a nod to the Puritans.
I'd love to see these two armies arrayed against one another.
I'd love to see these two armies arrayed against one another.
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Gonsalvo at Blunders on the Danube continues to display his ECW army, this time posting pictures of his Royalist cavalry, King Charles' loyal Cavaliers - "Wrong, but Wromantic" - who battled the Roundheads of Parliament - "Right, but Repulsive."
Friday, 2 November 2012
Gonsalvo at Blunders on the Danube parades his vintage Royalist infantry. What's remarkable about them, aside from the fact that ECW armies simply look cool, is the date when they were painted - check out the link to see.
Gonsalvo cites Gary Gygax's ECW rules, Cavaliers and Roundheads, co-authored with Jeff Perren, as one of the inspirations for his cavalier army, and once again, I'm left to speculate how the history of roleplaying games might've gone had GG based his game on C&R instead of Chainmail - Musketeers and Mages, anyone?
Addendum (7/12/12): Part 2 is posted as well.
Gonsalvo cites Gary Gygax's ECW rules, Cavaliers and Roundheads, co-authored with Jeff Perren, as one of the inspirations for his cavalier army, and once again, I'm left to speculate how the history of roleplaying games might've gone had GG based his game on C&R instead of Chainmail - Musketeers and Mages, anyone?
Addendum (7/12/12): Part 2 is posted as well.
Friday, 28 September 2012
Wargame rules often spend a fair number of paragraphs on who can see whom. Line of sight - usually abbreviated LoS - can be a part of everything from firing weapons to charging to a commander changing a unit's orders, so wargames treat it with some care. Fans of the original Squad Leader will remember the dot in the center of each hex used for determining whether a particular hex could be seen from another hex, or the determination of "hull down" for AFVs on ridgelines.
After wargames birthed roleplaying games, the need to determine when something was in view to the characters remained. OD&D, for instance, says that monsters are detected at a distance of 20-80 feet underground or 40-240 yards outdoors unless the party is surprised. It's interesting there's no consideration for individual character proficiency, and when such a differentiation appears, it's associated with classes and skills, not ability scores. Frex, the 1e AD&D Ranger, as a class ability, is more likely to surprise an opponent and less likely to be surprised in turn, while in Traveller, the Tactics and Leader skills and military experience favorably modify surprise for the adventurers.
Boot Hill retains a facing system more like that of the tabletop miniature skirmish game from which it was derived, with characters able to observe a 90-degree arc ahead of them and the ability to observe someone in concealment wholly at referee discretion. I soon added a house rule that a character could spend one movement point to 'look around,' which allowed the character to extend the observation axis by another 90-degrees to the left or right; in this way, a character could run but would be slowed by taking his attention off the direction in which he was moving, which seemed a fair trade-off. Again, the character's attributes played no particular role in determining what could be seen, and in BH, even the dice were removed as a factor, as opposed to D&D or Traveller.
It wasn't too many years before roleplaying games introduced rules for alertness, perception or observation, often associated with a character attribute and/or skill, and this soon became the norm; with some games, such as d20-based systems, a combination of attribute scores, skill points, and feats could produce 'Spot-monkeys' with superhuman powers of observation.
Though I think that later roleplaying games tend to make too big a deal out of things like Spot, Alertness, and so forth, treating all characters as equally perceptive is perhaps a bit too coarse-grained as well, appropriate to small units but not distinct individuals. Accordingly, for my Flashing Blades campaign, I use a blending of the two methods. The core rules make no mention of surprise or observation, but examples in the published adventures point to both the Wit and Luck attributes; in fact, it was this usage of Luck that led me to spell out that in my campaign, Luck is, "rather than a metaphysical force or quality, the insightfulness of the character: it's the ability to notice subtle clues or behaviors, to be in tune with one's surroundings" - a gambler, for which Luck is the associated attribute, isn't so much smiled upon by Fortune as he is able to pick up tells from his fellow gamblers, for example. As such, Luck is often used to represent the power of observation or perception in actual play.
As a modifier to an individual's Luck attribute, I also use the combined surprise and initiative rules for original, 'classic' Traveller - the skills Captaincy and Strategy replace Traveller's Leader and Tactics respectively, and service on a campaign gives the benefit of military experience. If the adventurers are surprised as a group, then individual Luck checks are made at a penalty of Luck/2 or Luck/3 at my discretion. For me this achieves the best of both worlds.
After wargames birthed roleplaying games, the need to determine when something was in view to the characters remained. OD&D, for instance, says that monsters are detected at a distance of 20-80 feet underground or 40-240 yards outdoors unless the party is surprised. It's interesting there's no consideration for individual character proficiency, and when such a differentiation appears, it's associated with classes and skills, not ability scores. Frex, the 1e AD&D Ranger, as a class ability, is more likely to surprise an opponent and less likely to be surprised in turn, while in Traveller, the Tactics and Leader skills and military experience favorably modify surprise for the adventurers.
Boot Hill retains a facing system more like that of the tabletop miniature skirmish game from which it was derived, with characters able to observe a 90-degree arc ahead of them and the ability to observe someone in concealment wholly at referee discretion. I soon added a house rule that a character could spend one movement point to 'look around,' which allowed the character to extend the observation axis by another 90-degrees to the left or right; in this way, a character could run but would be slowed by taking his attention off the direction in which he was moving, which seemed a fair trade-off. Again, the character's attributes played no particular role in determining what could be seen, and in BH, even the dice were removed as a factor, as opposed to D&D or Traveller.
It wasn't too many years before roleplaying games introduced rules for alertness, perception or observation, often associated with a character attribute and/or skill, and this soon became the norm; with some games, such as d20-based systems, a combination of attribute scores, skill points, and feats could produce 'Spot-monkeys' with superhuman powers of observation.
Though I think that later roleplaying games tend to make too big a deal out of things like Spot, Alertness, and so forth, treating all characters as equally perceptive is perhaps a bit too coarse-grained as well, appropriate to small units but not distinct individuals. Accordingly, for my Flashing Blades campaign, I use a blending of the two methods. The core rules make no mention of surprise or observation, but examples in the published adventures point to both the Wit and Luck attributes; in fact, it was this usage of Luck that led me to spell out that in my campaign, Luck is, "rather than a metaphysical force or quality, the insightfulness of the character: it's the ability to notice subtle clues or behaviors, to be in tune with one's surroundings" - a gambler, for which Luck is the associated attribute, isn't so much smiled upon by Fortune as he is able to pick up tells from his fellow gamblers, for example. As such, Luck is often used to represent the power of observation or perception in actual play.
As a modifier to an individual's Luck attribute, I also use the combined surprise and initiative rules for original, 'classic' Traveller - the skills Captaincy and Strategy replace Traveller's Leader and Tactics respectively, and service on a campaign gives the benefit of military experience. If the adventurers are surprised as a group, then individual Luck checks are made at a penalty of Luck/2 or Luck/3 at my discretion. For me this achieves the best of both worlds.
Tuesday, 25 September 2012
The temptation to borrow blatantly rip-off names like Rood Djik, Salty Swallow, and Titan Uranus grips me like a Dutch rudder.
Sunday, 8 April 2012
Hendeybadger finally took his Legends of the High Seas game to the briny blue.
Watch for the insane rope swing of the Black Badger's quartermaster . . .
Watch for the insane rope swing of the Black Badger's quartermaster . . .
Friday, 30 March 2012
If you're not following Hendybadger's blog, Tales of a Tabletop Skirmisher, then you missed more Legends of the High Seas action.
I'm looking forward to seeing ship combat, and I'm giving serious thought to picking this up with some of my birthday booty next month.
I'm looking forward to seeing ship combat, and I'm giving serious thought to picking this up with some of my birthday booty next month.
Friday, 23 March 2012
I am a grognard.
Like many introduced to roleplaying games in the mid- to late Seventies, I was a wargamer first. I started with board-and-chit games - specifically Avalon Hill's 'Bookcase Games,' starting with Tobruk, and later Third Reich, Squad Leader, Panzer Blitz/Leader, and my favorite to this day, Kingmaker, along with several others - then added metal minis, first learning the 15mm Napoleonics house rules used at my local gaming shop, encased in plastic covers in three-ring binders chained the sandtable in the back of the shop.
Roleplaying games slowly consumed more of my free time; my Starfleet Wars Terran squadron was given away around my sophmore year of high school after I started playing Traveller in 1979, for example. The exception was The Sword and the Flame, which I continued to play through high school, publishing a few issues of a 'zine my senior year for TSatF campaigns on the North-West Frontier; rather than falling by the wayside, my TSatF scenarios spun off a couple of 'Great Game' adventures using Boot Hill, with my 25mm Minifigs Punjab Irregulars serving double-duty with some 1:72 plastic Italeri or Atlantic Pathans.
Mashing up wargames and roleplaying games was pretty common, sometimes by design. GDW specifically integrated Traveller with Mayday, Snapshot, and Striker, of course, and I used the rules from TSR's Divine Right for resolving the clash of fantasy armies in my AD&D campaign.
Much has been written about the wargaming roots of roleplaying games. Personally I'm most often reminded of this history when discussions turn to combat in rpgs. After twelve years away from the hobby, I returned with 3e D&D, and I found myself a bit bumfuzzled by gamers who gushed about how 'tactical' 3e was, with its rules for flanking and attacks of opportunity and so forth.
I was puzzled by this for a couple of reasons. First, many, if not most, of the 'tactical' rules that 3e gamers prattled on about had their origins in AD&D. Second, and more bizarrely from my perspective, so much of what they talked about seemed to have more to do with Magic: The Gathering deck building and little if anything to do with tactics as I understand the word.
Coming into the hobby as a wargamer, I found the combat rules in games like AD&D to be simple and intuitive. Frex, nowhere does AD&D spell out the advantage of placing a rank of pikemen ahead of two ranks of heavy crossbowmen, and from my perspective it wasn't necessary for the rules to do so - the pikemen receive a to-hit and damage bonus for setting their pikes against a charge, and the ranks of crossbowmen alternate their fire, as expected from their 1/2 rate of fire, to maintain a steady barrage of bolts. The rules reward tactical thinking, provided you understand the tactics the rules are designed to reward.
But many gamers who came into the hobby after me were not wargamers. The implicit tactics of the rules were lost on them. Furthermore many learned the game through oral tradition rather than reading the rules in the first place, adding a further remove from the wargaming origins. I never realized until I started sharing experiences with other gamers on bulletin boards how exceptional my high school gaming group was: four of us rotated through the referee's chair, and we each poured through rulebooks like the DMG or Mayday, hunting for obscure rules to spring on one another during our turns behind the screen. The net effect was to give us an intimate familiarity with the rules - what the current jargon calls 'game mastery' - that many of our peers apparently never acquired.
To gamers who didn't grok the implied tactics, combat in early roleplaying games could seem sterile, as I learned from many fans of 3e on my return to gaming. But I noticed that after awhile, the 'tactics' of many roleplaying games came to resemble ordering from a Chinese menu, matching class ability from column A against supernatural ability from column B to get the free bowl of egg drop soup or a side of spring rolls. The real-world tactics that wargames attempt to model was increasingly replaced with dissociated mechanics which primarily reward game rules-knowledge.
Experience with wargames contributed to the differences between characters as well. One of the complaints leveled against early editions of the D&D, frex, is that there is nothing to distinguish two fighters of the same level, yet I never found this to be the case because different players chose to emphasize different tactics. Some players wanted their characters to fight like heavy infantry battling toe-to-toe to break the enemy's line, while others wanted theirs to perform more like skirmishers harassing and wearing down the enemy, and they would equip and play their characters accordingly, so even if they were more-or-less identical mechanically, their tactics and peformance in combat varied consistently during actual play.
Even now if you scratch my roleplayer surface you'll find the wargamer gleaming dully underneath. I can't play a game with automatic weapons without adding in rules for suppressing fire, and the fact that I frequently have to do so is a ridiculously common oversight on the part of game designers - I'm looking at you, d20 Modern. One of the reasons I chose Flashing Blades for my current campaign is that it has rules for throwing sand in an opponent's face and kicking him in the junk as well as trying to stick a rapier in his eye, and not Enhanced Mobility and Elaborate Parry. And I still like to mash up wargames and roleplaying games, like AK-47 Republic with Top Secret and Field of Glory with Flashing Blades - I need to set aside some portion of my disposable income toward building 2mm armies for FoG.
Now you kids get off my lawn, or I'll turn the hose on ya.
Like many introduced to roleplaying games in the mid- to late Seventies, I was a wargamer first. I started with board-and-chit games - specifically Avalon Hill's 'Bookcase Games,' starting with Tobruk, and later Third Reich, Squad Leader, Panzer Blitz/Leader, and my favorite to this day, Kingmaker, along with several others - then added metal minis, first learning the 15mm Napoleonics house rules used at my local gaming shop, encased in plastic covers in three-ring binders chained the sandtable in the back of the shop.
Roleplaying games slowly consumed more of my free time; my Starfleet Wars Terran squadron was given away around my sophmore year of high school after I started playing Traveller in 1979, for example. The exception was The Sword and the Flame, which I continued to play through high school, publishing a few issues of a 'zine my senior year for TSatF campaigns on the North-West Frontier; rather than falling by the wayside, my TSatF scenarios spun off a couple of 'Great Game' adventures using Boot Hill, with my 25mm Minifigs Punjab Irregulars serving double-duty with some 1:72 plastic Italeri or Atlantic Pathans.
Mashing up wargames and roleplaying games was pretty common, sometimes by design. GDW specifically integrated Traveller with Mayday, Snapshot, and Striker, of course, and I used the rules from TSR's Divine Right for resolving the clash of fantasy armies in my AD&D campaign.
Much has been written about the wargaming roots of roleplaying games. Personally I'm most often reminded of this history when discussions turn to combat in rpgs. After twelve years away from the hobby, I returned with 3e D&D, and I found myself a bit bumfuzzled by gamers who gushed about how 'tactical' 3e was, with its rules for flanking and attacks of opportunity and so forth.
I was puzzled by this for a couple of reasons. First, many, if not most, of the 'tactical' rules that 3e gamers prattled on about had their origins in AD&D. Second, and more bizarrely from my perspective, so much of what they talked about seemed to have more to do with Magic: The Gathering deck building and little if anything to do with tactics as I understand the word.
Coming into the hobby as a wargamer, I found the combat rules in games like AD&D to be simple and intuitive. Frex, nowhere does AD&D spell out the advantage of placing a rank of pikemen ahead of two ranks of heavy crossbowmen, and from my perspective it wasn't necessary for the rules to do so - the pikemen receive a to-hit and damage bonus for setting their pikes against a charge, and the ranks of crossbowmen alternate their fire, as expected from their 1/2 rate of fire, to maintain a steady barrage of bolts. The rules reward tactical thinking, provided you understand the tactics the rules are designed to reward.
But many gamers who came into the hobby after me were not wargamers. The implicit tactics of the rules were lost on them. Furthermore many learned the game through oral tradition rather than reading the rules in the first place, adding a further remove from the wargaming origins. I never realized until I started sharing experiences with other gamers on bulletin boards how exceptional my high school gaming group was: four of us rotated through the referee's chair, and we each poured through rulebooks like the DMG or Mayday, hunting for obscure rules to spring on one another during our turns behind the screen. The net effect was to give us an intimate familiarity with the rules - what the current jargon calls 'game mastery' - that many of our peers apparently never acquired.
To gamers who didn't grok the implied tactics, combat in early roleplaying games could seem sterile, as I learned from many fans of 3e on my return to gaming. But I noticed that after awhile, the 'tactics' of many roleplaying games came to resemble ordering from a Chinese menu, matching class ability from column A against supernatural ability from column B to get the free bowl of egg drop soup or a side of spring rolls. The real-world tactics that wargames attempt to model was increasingly replaced with dissociated mechanics which primarily reward game rules-knowledge.
Experience with wargames contributed to the differences between characters as well. One of the complaints leveled against early editions of the D&D, frex, is that there is nothing to distinguish two fighters of the same level, yet I never found this to be the case because different players chose to emphasize different tactics. Some players wanted their characters to fight like heavy infantry battling toe-to-toe to break the enemy's line, while others wanted theirs to perform more like skirmishers harassing and wearing down the enemy, and they would equip and play their characters accordingly, so even if they were more-or-less identical mechanically, their tactics and peformance in combat varied consistently during actual play.
Even now if you scratch my roleplayer surface you'll find the wargamer gleaming dully underneath. I can't play a game with automatic weapons without adding in rules for suppressing fire, and the fact that I frequently have to do so is a ridiculously common oversight on the part of game designers - I'm looking at you, d20 Modern. One of the reasons I chose Flashing Blades for my current campaign is that it has rules for throwing sand in an opponent's face and kicking him in the junk as well as trying to stick a rapier in his eye, and not Enhanced Mobility and Elaborate Parry. And I still like to mash up wargames and roleplaying games, like AK-47 Republic with Top Secret and Field of Glory with Flashing Blades - I need to set aside some portion of my disposable income toward building 2mm armies for FoG.
Now you kids get off my lawn, or I'll turn the hose on ya.
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