Own Goal

I recently picked up used copies of Panzerblitz and Panzer Leader, two games from Avalon Hill's golden age of bookcase games, which I somehow managed not to buy despite promising every time I saw them that I would.

For those not in the know, these games "simulate" armoured conflicts in WWII, Panzerblitz between Germany and Soviet Russia and Panzer Leader between the German and Allied armies post D-Day. In their time there were expansions available (if you could find them) that could shift either game into new theaters of war. They remain quite popular with enthusiasts to this day, even though neither game has been available outside of a collector's market since the late 80s.

Picturing battles to come with opponents I am determined to scare up, I decided to pen my own version of The Panzerlied - the German song of the tankmen as heard in the movie The Battle of the Bulge. Since I don't speak German, and the point was to needle my putative opponent (assuming I get to play Germany) the lyrics were of necessity in English and inflammatory in nature.

If we see an enemy tank we shoot it to bits!
If we see an enemy truck we shoot it to bits!
And if we see a tank hunter we shoot and shoot until it's blown to bits!
If we see an enemy jeep we shoot it to bits!

The enemy hides in camouflage which we shoot to bits!
The enemy hides in houses which we then shoot to bits!
The enemy hides in trenches which we squish and then we shoot them to bits!
The enemy hides in bunkers which we shoot to bits!

The enemy arrives in landing craft which we shoot to bits!
The enemy arrives in gliders which we then shoot to bits!
The enemy arrives at airfields which we overrun and then we shoot to bits!
The enemy arrives in halftracks which we shoot to bits!

Only thing is, since writing it I can't stop it running round and round in my head. It seems I have written an earworm.

So that worked.

Savage Worlds Kickstarter And More

And speaking of Savage Worlds, a new version is being kickstarted.

Funded in 3 minutes. Oversubscription to this level should speak volumes about the quality of the product line to date. I believe Savage Worlds is more fun than a barrel full of monkeys poking one in the eye, and I recommend it to anyone not moving quickly enough to get out of the way. It is simple to riun, easy to teach and fun to play.This is the most entertaining explanation of how it works that I've come across to date.

You can use it to build your own RPG games or you can bolt it onto any of the many available pre-written settings: Deadlands Reloaded, Space 1889:Red Sands, 50 Fathoms, Slipstream, Flash Gordon, Rifts, Necropolis, Realms of Cthulhu, Sundered Skies, Lankhmar, Rippers, Gaslight, High Space, Kerberos Club, Weird War, Mars, High Space and more. Call it a sort of math-light GURPS in concept.

Two self-contained games don't even require a separate purchase of the basic rule books: Solomon Kane and Pirates.

I can personally recommend Pirates and 50 Fathoms to would-be Jack Sparrows , Flash Gordon and Slipstream to 30s SF serial buffs, Rippers, Realms of Cthulhu and Gaslight to the Steampunk and Horror fan bases, Space 1889 to anyone who loved the 60s movies based on Jules Verne and H.G. Wells stories, and Deadlands Reloaded to everyone - even those with no interest in the wild west, as I found it to be exciting and enjoyable after over a decade of avoiding it. Of the stand-alone games, Solomon Kane is a personal favorite.

Coming soon will be a new mashup Fantasy/SF/Horror setting called "Crystal Hearts", set in the world of this webcomic about an RPG campaign, kickstarting in mid-November.

Figure Flats For Wargaming and RPGs

Like every gamer I like having metal or plastic miniatures on the table when doing grid-based combat¹, but am increasing less enthused when it comes to the job of basing them³, prepping them⁴ and painting them, as this takes time I'd rather use to be playing.

So I've fallen back on an old idea, made new again first by Stephen Jackson (or GURPS fame) and later by several others, of cardboard representations of the figures mounted in some sort of base.

The disadvantages boil down to "not a three dimensional figure" and "can easily blow over if clods abound". The advantages are that the artwork is often superb and large collections can be transported with a fraction of the time and trouble three-d minis cause.

Steve Jackson's Cardboard Heroes were assembled as "tents", so the figures resembled upside-down letter Vs with a base that could be stuck to a coin for heft.

Pathfinder sells collections of high quality thick card "Figure Flats" to match their printed products⁵ that are sort of like cardboard tombstones in shape. They are designed to slip into a grooved set of jaws of the special bases they sell. These bases are not cheap either, because they are quite complex mouldings made, unless I miss my guess, by injection moulding. Dies represent a hefty investment - they have to be fabricated using machine tools, which is why small companies don't do plastic injection very often.

Precis Intermedia make a series of figures that can be assembled as triangular prisms, flats and counters, and also sell a rather nice base to take the flats. These are the bases I prefer to use as they are much less expensive than the Pathfinder ones and actually grip the thinner card likely to be used to make them. Precis Intremedia actually sell PDFs of these figures for download and print-at-home..

Pinnacle Entertainment Group, the company that puts out my favorite RPG system Savage Worlds also make a range of settings for the basic system, most of which (but not all) also have an available line of figure flats for purchase. These are intended to be assembled as triangular prisms and so have three faces, one of which is a black silhouette and the other two a full-color depiction of whatever it is.

I have extensive collections of both Pinnacle's and Precis Intermedia's product lines, but I prefer the figures to be presented as simple two-sided flats, with a rear and front depiction. I also prefer the figures to be slightly larger than either company chooses to make them so that the detail prints properly on inexpensive home printers that cannot get anywhere near the resolution of a professional printing press. So, to get a usable figure collection I have to do a bit of work.

Job one is to import a page of figures into a program like Photoshop or GIMP so they can be re-engineered. The Pinnacle figures are usually presented in a tight matrix that makes good use of the card available but is not suitable for flats to be mounted in a clip-base. I pick out the figure I want, and carefully extract two of the three panels from the original (one side image and the rear silhouette).

Using the rulers and guides in the graphics program I carefully scale the image appropriately. With Necessary Evil, for example, the PC Villains were scaled to be larger than the NPC aliens, which in turn were scaled up slightly so they would print cleanly. For Deadlands I made the figures, which started life at about 1.25 inches tall (including whitespace) 1.5 inches tall. I then carefully added a half-inch tab to the bottom of the character. This is what got printed, on high quality matte paper.

The printed figure art was then stuck to card using rubber cement. This is a decent bond for the duration of the preparation, but won't last long in play as the glue gradually loses its grip.

The figure was then carefully cut out using a sharp Xacto knife, the fold line scored and the figure folded and glued into a flat. It was now a two-sided cardboard affair of decent thickness⁶ with a tab. This I wrapped with heavy duty clear Scotch brand wrapping tape. I started about halfway down the tab on the rear side of the flat, wrapping the tape over the back of the figure, across the top, back down the front and cutting enough to fold over the bottom and cover the initial start point of the tape. The sides of the tape wre then trimmed flush with the sides of the flat.

The wrapping was done for several reasons, starting with the fact that rubber cement does not form a durable bond with the card. Wrapping over the top and bottom not only made sure the paper would not come away from the card backing, it formed a durable point at which the base attached - slipping the figure into the base posed no threat that the paper would be torn away from the card by the jaws of the base itself.

The glossy tape also made the card figure durable vs greasy dimwit player fingers, and gave me a nice erasable surface on which to write with wet- or dry-erase pens to indicate special status or wounds or whatever.

So not quick as far as preparation goes, but oodles quicker than painting.

1. In which the RPG sort of strays into board game territory in the name of clarity and fun. Some hate it and prefer Theater of the Mind², but I see useful applications of both techniques↑
2. In which all combat scenarios are enacted in the players' heads and no miniatures a re needed. All RPG combat was like this at first↑
3. i.e. gluing them to a base and then dressing the base to look nice↑
4. An endless process of removing the casting lines and flash, changing out patrs for others in order to make the figure unique, bending or cutting/regluing to change the pose etc↑
5. Bestiaries and Adventure Modules↑
6. Because two layers of card, yes?↑

New Purchases

I just successfully bid on three Avalon Hill boxed wargames from the golden age of games, when people weren't afraid of rulebooks.

The first was an almost complete "Tactics II", arguably the game that jump-started the market for Avalon Hill wargames. I've wanted to try this for years and a copy was available for the Buy it Now price of 20 bux plus postage, so around 35 bux in total. Not bad for a game missing a couple of counters¹.

The second and third came as a single deal in one auction. "Panzer Blitz" and "Panzer Leader" were games I remember seeing and scheduling for my shelves but money wasn't endless and I had other games that were fun and ... well, the time when these were available new passed when Avalon Hill collapsed and became a boutique name for Wizards of the Coast.

These days it is almost impossible to find people in the same locale as me who are willing to invest the time and effort in playing simulation games like these. The games are designed to recreate the actual physics of driving tanks and shooting at things. Things are intuitive once you get the designer's basic take on what is important, and certain standards were used in just about all wargame-type games so picking up a new one wasn't a steep learning curve usually and things were designed to work the way you expected them to.

The rules are also written in what is called the "Case System" which groups rules in increasing amounts of specialty. You look up whatever you want to do in general terms, then the special conditions that apply as and when you need them. It is a sort of hyperlinking. The key concept is that the players are never expected to be "off book" while playing, so the rules ware exhaustive and easy to navigate. ².

I was feeling nostalgic and decided to chance the condition and component count³ but these seemed in good condition.

I expected to get sniped to be honest and placed my bid in such a way to foil the manual snipers, but there's nothing you can do against software designed to up the bids incrementally before a human can type a counter offer. But after a brief flurry of activity by one inexperienced bidder and a halfhearted bid by someone not really interested I took the prize for around 50 bux. Twenty five dollars per game, not bad.

So I'm looking forward to receiving these blasts from the past⁴. Even now I am picturing the Panzer games in the window of Dungeons and Starships on Summer Row, my not-so local friendly game store of choice in 1981.

Now if only I can find an opponent ...

1. Which can be replaced easily enough by printing replacements from counter sheet images on the web↑
2. Contrast this to game rulebooks today which typically adhere to the RPG standard where it is assumed that the players will figure a way of winging it when (not if) things get confusing or they hit something not covered. The result is often a disorganized mess. Fantasy Flight Games, I am looking at you↑
3. the options for both these games were not great and nobody was doing a component count on the various offerings↑
4. The ancient past in the case of Tactics II, which dates from 1958 I think.↑

Intro To Savage Worlds

I came across this excellent primer on the Savage Worlds RPG game engine and think everyone will find it entertaining and informative.

And you can join a game running in the Crystal Heart setting. Well, you can watch the others play.

After reading, bet you wish the writers played your favorite system.