Quantifying Lard part two

The post analysing player choices at Steel Lard excited some discussion here and on a couple of social media platforms. This prompted me to revisit the analysis.

Rather than mess around comparing the popularity of each offering with the "average popularity" of games in each year, I've now just expressed each by what proportion of the first or second place choices it received each year. 

The choice of rule system table is pretty much unchanged (though I've lumped all of the Chain of Command variants into one:

System	Average Pref 1 or 2
GDA2	0.182
Pickett’s Charge	0.175
CoC (all variants)	0.163
Kiss Me Hardy/The Full Nelson	0.15
Sharp Practice	0.126
When the Last Sword is Drawn	0.091
Algernon Pulls It Off	0.091
Dux Britanniarum	0.091
What A Cowboy	0.084
What A Tanker	0.070
If the Lord Spares Us	0.045
Kriegspiel	0.045
O Group	0.036

Again, I'll not cover the relative popularity of individual game-runners (though I can reveal that your host has achieved solid mid-table mediocrity). 

Operating from memory of the games offered, I can reveal the following scores with respect to figure scale:

Scale	Average Pref 1 or 2
Naval Games	0.150
28mm	0.128
15mm	0.109
Aerial Games	0.091
10mm	0.070

That bigger toys are popular perhaps says something about the average age of the community?

And, probably somewhat arbitrarily, here's an attempt to quantify "scale of game" for the land-based games. 

Scale of Action	Average Pref 1 or 2
Large Skirmish	0.129
Battle	0.110
Small Skirmish	0.098
Strategic	0.045

Here I've used "Small Skirmish" to mean those maybe-a-dozen-aside games like What A Cowboy or When the Last Sword is Drawn, "Large Skirmish" for those fifty-odd aside games like Dux Brit, Sharp Practice or CoC, and "Battle" for larger actions. Oh and I treated the one Kriegspiel game as "Strategic".

Quantifying Lard

What are the most popular games at Lardy Days?

The preparation for Ebor Lard is pretty much done. I have one figure left to paint after realising that my existing Legionary optio has the wrong shield design.  That being the case, I thought I'd take the chance to share some analysis I've done on Lardy Day game preferences.

I've overseen the allocation of players to games for four years of Steel Lard. I think I'm in a position to make some vaguely informed statements about which of the Too Fat Ladies systems are the most popular.

Each year I asked players to choose their preferred games. Initially I asked for first, second and third preferences but last year I extended this to have all games ranked from highest to lowest preference. The reason for doing this was that we had an unusual number of games that had either appeared at Steel Lard previously or that had appeared at other Lardy Days recently.

In my analysis I considered only games that had been selected as first or second choice - typically everyone plays two games.

For each year this gave me a percentage figure for each game. For example if there were a total of 66 first and second preferences, a game getting 8 first/second choices would have 8÷66 or 12.1% of the top choices made.

Taking this percentage figure for each game I could then calculate the mean percentage for games as a whole (9.1% in 2022) and the extent to which each game's popularity differed from the mean. Note that in the analysis below I've removed the names of the game-runners and titles of the games to protect the guilty.

Thus in the table above a one of the Chain of Command games (with a score of 4.5) was the most popular choice, while another (scoring -9.1) was the least! A Relative Popularity (RP) of 0.0 shows a game that was neither more nor less popular than the average. This analysis was completed for all four years. 

Having established the popularity of each individual game I could then also work out the popularity of particular rule systems. Across the four years (2022-2025) the following scores result:

The systems in bold type have scores based on multiple games across the four years. The rest were offered just once so their scores may be a bit less statistically reliable.

I've broken down the figures for Chain of Command somewhat. The analysis covers the period during which CoC 2nd edition was being play-tested.  I thought it likely the chance to try out the new rules early was probably pushing up popularity. First edition (including the "CoCing Up the Mud and the Blood" WW1 variant) is still of above-average popularity but not quite so extremely and 2025, with CoC2 published, did show a slight decline in interest in the system.

A couple of other points of interest are the relative unpopularity of "What A..." games and of "all-day" games.

Amalgamating the scores, What A Tanker and What A Cowboy and variants thereof score an RP of -4.6. I wonder if this is because they are seen as beer and pretzels games that one can play at any time with friends and not engaging or different enough for a Lardy Day? Certainly my Harper's Ferry WAC game scored -3.7 whereas my three Sharp Practice games all had marginally positive RP.

We've had three all-day games over the course of the four years. Their RP scores vary widely (from +5.0 to -8.9) but overall it appears players would rather play two shorter games in a day with -2.8 being the overall RP value.

So what do you think? I'm no statistician and I may have got this all wrong but the numbers do appear to support my general impression of what goes down well with Lardy Day punters.

Playtesting continues

On Sunday I managed to get together a team of play testers to try out my Ebor Lard scenario. The result was the clear realisation that I need to revisit the overall approach!

I don't want to go into detail at this stage but Mark, Phil, Ron and Gus proved that my chosen mechanisms worked well simulating the process of getting lost in the trackless forests of Germania. We also demonstrated, though, that the process is too long-winded for a game at a Lardy Day. A thoroughly revised approach is called for.

Florius Gracilis and his hunting party lead legionaries
through the forest

Revolting Batavians

Confusion in the forest:
It's far from clear who's fighting whom

The result of the game was a large amount of manoeuvring and negotiating; fascinating but again probably not suited to the Lardy Day experience. In particular, I'm expecting to cater for players at least some of whom want to experience Infamy Infamy for the first time. I'm going to rewrite the scenario to something far more conventional and straightforward.

-o0o-

On Wednesday, Dex and I went down to Patriot Games in Sheffield. We wanted to discuss some Steel Lard administrative matters with the staff but it also gave us the chance to get in another game of Infamy Infamy. 

Because it's easy to transport, I brought along the latest revision of the Battle of Cirta scenario that I ran a week or so ago. I tweaked the rules for the effect of surprise on the defenders' ability to deploy onto the table. The result was that King Adherbal never made it onto the table and his royal guard arrived only after the battle was already lost.

Dex's commander leads his horse through the enemy
camp. The orange stars mark burned-out tents.

The Royal Guard arrive too late

The result was a glorious victory for Dex. He's now going away to consider whether Infamy can be adapted to early medieval Ireland!

Numidian Infamy!

The son and heir came over on Sunday and we had another practice game of Infamy Infamy. Rather than setting up the Iron Hand of Mars terrain with its enormous number of trees, I decided we'd have another go at a scenario based on the Numidian Civil War of 118 BCE.

I played Adherbal, one of the rival Numidian kings. I had one unit of spearmen (Warriors in Infamy Infamy terms) and a few skirmishers and cavalry but all of my troops had to dice to emerge from their tents and might start the game with unfortunate amounts of Shock as a result of the surprise attack.

Jamie took on the role of fictional Jugurthine commander Arabio leading a mixed force of javelin-armed fort and cavalry skirmishers. 

Jugurthine cavalry chase off some of Adherbal's skirmishers

We used the Numidians I based some years ago for To The Strongest. They're on 12cm wide unit bases with so, with no figure removal possible, we used blue micro dice to mark losses. 

The game was fun, with lots of darting attacks but it pointed out a problem with the Infamy Infamy rules in this particular historical setting. With forces made up almost entirely of skirmishing troops, it was almost impossible for either side to lose Force Morale. This was because:

• You don't test for morale loss if Skirmish troops are forced to withdraw (only if they're completely wiped out),
• You don't test for morale loss if Warriors withdraw due to being shot at (rather than in melée) , and
• The wounding or death of Supra numerum Leaders (predominant on both sides) is ignored in the game.

In the end we called it a day with the attackers well on top but unable to force a result. We were nevertheless happy to have improved our familiarity with the rules.

I'm in two minds as to whether to pursue this scenario further. I could see it making an attractive participation game for an event like Hammerhead but I'd want to:

• Model the camp properly, perhaps with a rampart of thorn bushes defining the boundary of the broken ground,
• Model the walls of Cirta at the city end of the table,
• Think more clearly about the mechanisms around deploying surprised units onto the table,
• Revise the Loss of Force Morale table to capture the factors likely to cause a Numidian army to break, and
• Add more "character" Leaders to both sides.

I want to get to the point where my familiarity with Infamy Infamy is such that I can immediately see how I could use the rules to run a variety of small unit actions. I'm there with Sharp Practice but the varied nature of ancient armies makes this a bit more challenging.

Filling the Forest Floor

I have The Iron Hand of Mars, my scenario for Ebor Lard written (in two versions pending playtesting next weekend) so I'm working on improving the appearance of the game. Lardy Days always feature some fantastic terrain and I don't want to be left too far behind.

The entire table represents a portion of the dense German forest. There's no chance I could put down enough trees to represent that accurately, and if I did there'd be no room to deploy the units appearing in the game.

With spread-out singly based trees, there's a danger that the table resembles savannah with individual trees sprouting out of level grassland. I want some low-lying terrain pieces that tie together the trees into a coherent primeval forest.

I'm putting together a bag of "forest floor scatter" that will be strewn across the table but I've also taken the opportunity to make some generic small terrain pieces.

They're based on irregularly shaped "rafts" from my 3D printer. For some reason I find that I can only guarantee proper print-bed adhesion by selecting the Raft option when slicing stl files so I generate quite a few of these.

The ground surface is Bond It Dark Oak wood filler, the rocks are rocks and the vegetation is two grades of static grass over an initial layer of fine flock.

Revolting Batavians!

I've also been experimenting with a technique I picked up from a model railway magazine. This tree is made from a cheap, Chinese-made tree armature. I soaked it in hot water to get of the original fluorescent green foliage and then painted it with Modpodge before applying two shades of static grass using my applicator. 

After I'd left it to dry, the coverage of the original plastic wasn't complete so I sprayed the whole thing with WSS layering adhesive before applying a third lot of static grass. Finally a whizz of hairspray to try and lock it all in place. We'll just have to wait and see if this will have the longevity to withstand transporting and storage between games.

Infamous Events

The "learn Infamy Infamy in short order so I can run it at Ebor Lard" plan continues to make progress. On Saturday Jamie and Phil came over and we played a scenario I'd designed specifically as a learning exercise.

The idea for The Summer of 69 came from an episode from a podcast called The History of Cologne. Episode 7 on the Batavian Revolt depicted a time when the city (then called Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium) was at the heart of a region overrun by raiding Germanic tribes and revolting foederati. With Colonia's strong walls attracting refugees and a drought causing food shortages, it made sense to run a foraging mission into German territory across the Rhine.

The set up was randomised using the tables in the rules. Below we see the area of battle before the game began. Note (far right) a single tree knocked over - the only casualty of leaving the game set up from the night before with a cat in the kitchen!

I think the Geek Villain Rocky Grass mat works quite well for summer-parched Europe.

Needing three areas of habitation for the scenario, I made a new A-frame hut to supplement to two Jamie could provide. Materials were foam core, cardboard, wooden coffee-stirrers, and Milliput for the thatch.

Jamie entered from the west (left above) with his legionaries in column of march.

German slingers emerged on their left and were opposed by the Romans' own in the form of some Balearic allies.

Who were in turn attacked by German warriors.

The Roman commander was forced to split his legionaries to respond to attacks from two directions.

Eventually, we came to a fierce action near the centre of the battlefield.

With time moving on, with plenty of rules interpretation questions under our belt, and with the Romans outnumbered in the main fight, Jamie decided to concede the day. 

With some Roman-allied Gallic light cavalry in his rear and with one undamaged legionary Group to his front, Phil was relieved. He later said that he thought Jamie could still have won from that position.

-o0o-

On Tuesday evening, I decided to build on my familiarity with the rules by solo-gaming a small Numidian Civil War action. I knocked up a scenario based on a passage in Sallust. 

Following the death of King Micipsa, Numidia was divided between his sons Hiempsal and Adherbal and his far-more energetic nephew Jugurtha. 

Jugurtha quickly arranged for Hiempsal to be murdered and then took up arms against Adherbal. Armies led by the two men met near the city of Cirta (modern day Constantine in Algeria) but it was too late to form up for battle so both made camp. In the early hours of the morning Jugurtha's army attached the unprepared enemy and Adherbal only just escaped to be besieged in the city.

This was a fun exercise with both forces consisting almost entirely of skirmish cavalry and javelin-armed foot skirmishers.

I won't go into details here of what was a confused affair but suffice to say it was great fun. With a little adjustment (I should have imposed greater penalties for surprise on Adherbal's units) I think it could make a fun Saturday Afternoon Wargame.

My next step will probably be to set up a solo, alpha test of The Iron Hand of Mars scenario before introducing it to my Saturday Afternoon play-testers.

A bit of Infamy

With Ebor Lard coming up in little over a month, I'm well into a programme of preparation for my Infamy Infamy game The Iron Hand of Mars. The scenario is written, I have sufficient terrain (though more is in development), and I have 75% of the figures painted and based.

The plan now demands that I properly master the Infamy Infamy rules (I've previously only played in other people's games) and playtest the scenario. Rich Clarke did a series of play-though videos on YouTube when the game first came out and following these step-by-step is proving very helpful.

The coming weekend sees the next stage as Jamie, Matt, and Phil will hopefully be joining me for a practice scenario I'm calling The Summer of 69AD. Set during the civil wars following the death of Nero, the outline is as follows:

After the assassination of the tyrant Nero a year ago, first Servius Sulpicius Galba and then Marcus Salvius Otho wore the purple. Now Aulus Vitellius, commander of the Rhine Legions has seized Rome and been declared Emperor by the Senate. This year will surely go down in history as The Year of the Three Emperors!

With the legions away securing Vitellius’s position, the situation of the Roman cities and forts along the Rhine is precarious. Several have already been sacked by rebellious Gauls and Germans. Marauding barbarian warbands and, it is said, rebelling Batavian auxiliaries haunt the countryside.

Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (modern-day Cologne) is in a particularly difficult position. Its strong defensive walls have attracted soldiers and civilians from across eastern Gaul but drought is making it hard to feed these additional mouths. Having largely exhausted the resources of the surrounding farmland, foraging expeditions must now be mounted into the forests across the Rhine.

I'm going to use smallish forces and leave out some elements of the rules. A straightforward foraging scenario should enable us to master the basics of the system.

I need three areas of habitation and Jamie will hopefully be bringing along a couple of suitable buildings from his Saga collection. I have another in production thanks to foam core, cardboard, coffee stirrers, Milliput and an off-cut of MDF...