What A Cyberman!

It occurred to me that I should have an emergency game to take along to Steel Lard in case one of the scheduled game-runners has a last-minute problem attending.

For a non-Lardy event I'd happily bring along my portable Death of Gustavus Adolphus game or the figures and models to play one of my Pavis skirmishes but these both use non-TFL rules sets (The Pikeman's Lament and Song of Blades and Heroes respectively). I need something that can be set up quickly, understood by at least one of the likely players, and that comes from the Lardy stable. What A Cowboy seems the best bet.

I had an errand to run down in Birmingham this week so five hours in the car gave me plenty of time to plan something using figures I already had to hand and a setting that most people could grasp quickly. The idea for What A Cyberman was born, and yesterday I got to play test it.

The scenario involves the Doctor arriving on Earth in the 1930s to find UNIT involved in a confrontation with Cybermen. Any terrain could be used but I used my existing dungeon modules as they can be taken to the event just by throwing one additional box into the car.

The scenario has a few special rules. 

The Doctor cannot be activated normally, doesn't fight and cannot be attacked. He is pursuing his own agenda. He moves whenever a player rolls three or more sixes on their Action Dice. There are six pre-determined, numbered "Important Locations"on the board. The Doctor starts on Location 4 and moves 4>5>6>1>2>3 etc. If the next Location is blocked by another character being on it or in contact with it, the Doctor moves to the next available numbered Location. 

Initially the Cybermen are hard to kill. They treat all Wounds and Critical Wounds as Shock results. This persists until one of the UNIT figures moves into contact with the Doctor. At this point, UNIT learns of the Cybermen's secret weakness and they can be targeted normally.

In addition, Cybermen don't dodge but any Cyberman can move up to three Action Dice from any Cyberman's Shock Pool by spending a Bonanza Token. They can do this even if the Cyberman in question has been put out of action.

The Cybermen aim to capture the Doctor and take him to the transmat platform from which they can beam him up to their control ship. UNIT (led by Lieutenant Lethbridge-Stewart) hope to prevent this.

The game looks to have some interesting tactical challenges. The Cybermen can use their fast-moving Cybermats to block off some Important Locations, thus steering the Doctor closer to the transmat platform.

In my solo playtest the Doctor was fairly mobile, briefly being captured before escaping (he continues to move, even if captured, when three or more sixes are rolled.

The Doctor is captured whilst exploring
the torture chamber

Lieutenant Lethbridge-Stewart played a key role in UNIT's eventual victory. Firstly it was he who managed to reach the Doctor and discover the Cybermen's secret weakness. Some time later his action dice gave him four threes and two fives. He diced to use all four Aim dice to put a single shot into the Cyberman that was menacing the Doctor. A roll of six gave him a Critical Hit and this was followed by another six - instant death!

Later still a roll of five fours by Private Anderson gave the lieutenant the chance to deliver the classic line, "Anderson, silver chap next to the statue, five rounds rapid!"

In the end the Cybermen were forced to withdraw and Earth was once again safe from the alien menace!

Rogue Stars solo

Having printed and painted some marker trays for Rogue Stars I thought I'd have a go at the game to remind myself of how the rules work.

I decided on a starport setting (so didn't roll for terrain) but rolled up the "Rescue" mission profile. The roll for complications gave me "Space Demon", which I decided to ignore while I got back to remembering how to play!

It seemed like a good idea to baptise my starport security building. This suggested a mission by the crew of the free trader Gilgamesh to rescue a crew member held in the cell. The Okh security team would be holding the fort.

I deployed the Okh inside the security building (green with the dark grey roof) apart from one constable standing guard on the door. Roslyn, the free trader's engineer, was in the cell inside.

Roslyn in her cell

The game began with the Okh having the initiative thanks to a roll of 1 by the free trader's crew. Constable Zok moved from his position guarding the door to a location from which he could see black-clad Iklwa approaching with drawn vibro-sword.

Three failures to activate gave Iklwa three reaction chances. He succeeded with all three, sprinting six inches then jumping eight thanks to his bionic legs before striking a blow that immediately put Zok out of the action!

Meanwhile, the robotic member of the Gilgamesh crew, D4QP, approached the door to the security building. It came under fire from Sergeant Gnaar from the roof and replied causing one Pin to the sergeant.

I assumed that, at least initially, the door to the building was in automatic opening mode à la Star Trek. Later the Okh inside would lock it. This resulted in some exchanges of point blank fire through the doorway. Eventually D4QP was put out of action.

By this time insectoid crewman Kekkex and Captain Sabrina had approached the building and started to engage those within in a close-range firefight.

Eventually we ended up with a situation where only three figures remained active! Constable Glyke took a critical hit to the head before spectacularly failing his Endure roll. Dead!

Kekkex and Sabrina broke in through the windows of the office while Sergeant Gnaar waited around the corner within. 

Briefly both sides yielded the initiative to reduce their Stress counters and there was a period of rolling dice but not taking actions until the ideal combination of dice rolls came up. Eventually Sergeant Gnaar rolled two successes and a critical success to activate. This gave him the chance to roll another activation and this too was successful. The resulting four actions allowed him to dodge around the corner and gun down Sabrina before dodging back out of the line of fire.

Another decent set of dice rolls saw him also finish off Kekkex.

So the crew of the free trader Gilgamesh are all captured. Perhaps a prison planet breakout is called for?

3D printing progress

For a while recently my 3D printing progress ceased completely. Some kind of glitch was preventing my Ender-3 S1 pro from printing at all. It turned out that in responding to a broken filament I'd rethreaded the machine bypassing the filament sensor. Unfortunately the Ender's indication that this was the case was obscure in the extreme...

WTF?

Eventually, with the help of a user group on Facebook, I managed to sort out the problem and now I'm back up and printing.

I want to use some T-44s in the Prague Summer game and although one of my mates (Andy T?) has a few I thought it would be sensible to have some of my own just in case. I decided that I'd have a go at creating some.

T-44s not being available on Thingiverse as far as I can see, it looks to me like an approximation could be made using a T-54 hull and a T-34/85 turret. Thing was, though, I couldn't find a T-34 turret from M Bergman, my usual source of printable tanks. I thought the KV-85 turret was probably the same so I printed three T-54 hulls and three KV-85 turrets.

This turned out not to be the case so rather than waste the KV-85 turrets, I printed three hulls to go with them.

Three KV-85s

Not the most widely used Soviet tank but I'll keep them in case I need them later.

I've also been producing buildings for the Prague Summer game.

The two buildings on the right are from a collection of 15mm scale WW1 buildings that I've been scaling down to 34% of their original size. They're great for making ruined city blocks.

The one on the left was billed as a German railway station. It wasn't mean to have shattered roof but the print failed due to the model lacking the correct internal supports. With the windows being open, any internal supporting structures would be visible so I'm not going to print a fixed version. I think I can make this into a bombed-out municipal structure for down-town Stary Boleslav.

The final 3D products are these:

Created using Tinkercad, they are designed as status markers for Rogue Stars. A Rogue Stars character has to track three statuses - Stress, Pins, and Wounds. These are intended so micro-dice can be used to track these three statuses for each character.

More... stuff

I managed to get in another playtest session of Harpers Ferry this Sunday but was too busy to take any photos. Thanks are due to Mark K, Rob C, and Jamie for volunteering as guinea pigs.

This time we tried to get in a bit of Act Two - the Storming of the Engine House - but I'm beginning to think I may have to restrict the Steel Lard games to Act One - a three hour slot may just be too tight to get both in.

One thing we did decide would be a useful addition to the game is some way of recording whether a given figure is using his long arm (musket or Sharps Rifle) or his pistol. I'm going to produce some small laminated cards with a rifle on one side and a six-shooter on the other. These can be flipped over when the character swaps weapons. I'll do a few pistol-and-sword ones too for the militia and marine officers.

I decided that I wanted a figure or two to represent more hostages and maybe freed slaves working with the abolitionists. I put in an order to Redoubt and got a couple of packs that looked useful for townsfolk. 

These street urchins can be scattered around the edge of the board as potential innocent victims of missed shots, while the townsfolk include a number of potentially useful types:

I've started on my version of the slave figure, painted and gloss varnished so far:

Meanwhile I've been doing quite a bit of work on stuff for the eventual Prague Summer 1948 game.

A couple of 3D printed buildings here, both of them duplicates of ones I've previously used, and a well by Leven Miniatures. The piece with the well is sized to bring the building piece up to the same depth (9cm) as several of my urban bases. It can go in front of the left-hand house or behind it or be used somewhere else entirely.

Finally, I carved about a very old FW190 model to make an approximation to a Soviet La-5FN fighter.

 

Harpers Ferry tested

On Saturday I hosted Gus, Ron and Mark to play a first game of the Harpers Ferry scenario. I'd spent the previous two weeks getting the terrain to a finished-enough state.

We played out Act One of the game, representing the attack by the Martinsburg militia from the northwestern end of the rifle works. This was historically rather poorly co-ordinated with advances by the citizens of Harpers Ferry from the southeast. Gus commanded the militia in the role of Captain Alburtis while Mark played three of the locals.

Ron looked after the insurgents. On this occasion he had John Brown, Edwin Coppock, Emperor Shields Green, Aaron Stephens, and Dangerfield Newby (all lovely castings from Old Glory). His aims were to keep Brown alive and to move some hostages from the paymasters office to the engine house.

Shields Green moving hostages

Ron managed to successfully move the hostages but lost Coppock and Newby in the process.

I was generally pleased with the performance of my scenario-specific house rules. These were "Loopholes" and "Other characters".

We needed to capture the fortress-like character of the engine house with its brick walls and lack of ground-level windows. I declared that the insurrectionists would begin the game with 1D3+3 (revised to 1D3+2 in future games) loopholes in the walls or doors. These would be placed whenever an insurrectionist wished to fire from within the engine house. I made little markers to represent their locations and the 60 degree arc of fire through the loophole (in either direction). Shooting into the engine house through the loopholes required an extra Spot dice.

Two loophole markers

There were many more people involved in the events than we could realistically represent in a What A Cowboy game (20 insurgents and about 3000 townsfolk). To represent their influence I included "Other Insurrectionists" and "Other Citizens" cards in the game deck. When these came up the relevant side could:

• Snipe - lay down an area that required an extra Move dice to cross and an extra Spot dice to see through,
• Counter-snipe - remove the enemy's sniping marker by keeping their heads down,
• Attempt a task - battering down a door perhaps, and for the insurrectionists...
• Advance the Uprising Count.

Aaron Stephens finds his way blocked by 
sniper fire, perhaps from the Wager House

The Uprising Count is a measure of the extent to which slaves in the counties around Harpers Ferry are taking up arms in rebellion. I'll not reveal the effects of this until the game has had its first outings at Steel Lard in Sheffield and Posh Lard in Peterborough.

The What A Cowboy rules were well-received. I can see us using them again in other settings. As a lover of obscure history, I'm half-considering the 1839 Chartist Riots in Newport, South Wales.

Finally the terrain. I had got it to the basic minimum standard I was happy presenting to my Saturday Afternoon gaming group. 

Fontaine Beckham near the main gate of 
the rifle works

Since then I've started making improvements. I'm picking out individual paving stones in slightly differing colours and I'll be adding a flagpole and a couple of additional trees.

The retaining wall above the Potomac has been given a dark wash and will get some more weathering while the bridge over the boat ramp will get some rust marks and a coat of varnish.

The next playtest session will hopefully get on to Act Two - the US Marines' assault on the engine house. I've also designed a post-game phase to explore the effects of the insurrection on public opinion North and South. 

More later!

Another Harpers Ferry Update

Another (brief) update on Harpers Ferry progress.  I've finished basing the buildings and started the process of adding texture to the baseboard.

The white strips of PVC board on the railroad tracks are going to form the main structural components of the bridge over the boat ramp.

When I'm not adding layers of tile grout to the base, I'm using off-cuts of timber to make piles of boxes to go in the warehouse or underneath the railroad trestle.

Harpers Ferry Update

Last time we visited Harpers Ferry I'd built the railroad trestle (but not yet laid the track), made a start on building the engine house (aka John Brown's Fort), and glued down the perimeter walls.

The tracks are now in place. Not the most exciting picture but here you go.

The engine house has been a significant undertaking. I knew that I wanted to build it out of foamcore and card but integrating a 3D printed cupola I found on Thingiverse and the windows I designed myself. The plan was to clad the whole building in printed brick paper.

Unfortunately when I came to assemble the building I found that I'd cocked up the process of scaling the model from the available plans. The windows in the end walls were far too high compared to those in the front and rear walls.

The windows should be at the same height all round

I glued the walls together and then sat back for a week or so, trying to decide if I could live with the error. In the end I decided I couldn't so I took the model apart and rebuilt the end walls.

This is what I ended up with after building the roof and applying laser-cut slates from Charlie Foxtrot Models.

I want to make the interior of all the buildings (except the water tower) playable so I've made the roof removable and added a floor from brick paper over cornflake-box thin card.

The shelf unit on the rear wall is simply supports from a 3D print job!

Since taking the pictures I've rebased the fire engines using the same brick paper.

Finally, I had second thoughts on the main gate to the armoury compound. The 3D printed main gates would be far to delicate to transport glue in place on the main board. I decided to construct a gateway module that could be transported in its own box and slotted into place for play.

The gates are now glued in place to a piece of artist's mounting board. This slots into a space defined by glued-down spacers from the same material. I'm hopeful that when I come to texture the board, I can make the join almost invisible. A little scattering of sand will probably help.

I've added Italeri plastic bollards beside the gates and spent about three hours cutting and laying cardboard paving slabs to create the footpath past the engine house and the paymaster's office.

So after all that, the current state of play is like this.

Next steps are the base the warehouse, add thin card "frames" for the buildings to sit within and then to start texturing the baseboard.