(Gnome Wars) Artillery Revisions

I had some quick thoughts on Thanksgiving. For starters, despite having not played a game of Magic in 5+ years, I can still follow a discussion with my wife's cousin over new cards and new decks concepts despite not knowing a single card. Same concepts: discard, big creature, millstone deck.


Now the important stuff.


In Gnome Wars, heavy mortars can absolutely decimate the battlefield. With line of sight, it can hit the board, it has a 3" diameter blast template, and has a 50% chance of killing a figure inside a heavy cover building yet no matter what distance the target is, deviation is the same (D6+4 inches). This basically ensures a successful hit since the deviation, even after 48+", varies from 5-10 inches max.

Here's my suggested revision that we'll be playtesting:


Heavy Mortar Deviation
Up to 24 inches 4+ d6 deviation
Up to 36 inches 6+2d6 deviation
Up to 48 inches 6+3d6 deviation
And so on until max range (or the size of the board) is reached.


Next, cannons in GW are an anachronism. You can only target solid objects (walls, buildings, tanks) and deviation is only left and right. Perhaps I didn't see those movies that has a cannonball or two decimate a closed formation. Truth be told, I wouldn't remove it from the game, because it has its place. I can imagine a small Swiss village pulling one of these old guns out of mothballs to defened against the German armor advancing across their fields. No changes

That brings me to the new addition to the Artillery section: Field Guns

Three man crew, ANY member of any force may operate a field gun. However any figure designated as crew reduces their melee to d6-1.
3" blast template (auto killed), out to 5" killed on a 6 on d6.

Range:
0-12" 4-6
12-24" 5-6 - Max Range to target Vehicles, no blast radius when used vs vehicles.
24-36" 6

As this is complicated enough, we'll make field guns to opposite to cannons in regards to deviation.

Deviation : Roll d6 (1-3 short, 4-6 long)
up to 12" : 2d6 inches
up to 24" : 3d6 inches
up to 36" : 4d6 inches

On top of that, I'm thinking of trying out a house rule: No more than 1 mortar, cannon, field gun, or heavy machine gun for every three units, UNLESS, you want an artillery battery. In that case all the figures must remain within 12" of the artillery at all times. (Consider this support and defense.)

Thoughts and input appreciated.

The Apathy of New Releases (December 2011)

This months GTM #142 contains items that should arrive after the Christmas rush: the retail dead zone, when retailers use the Christmas/clearance sale to pay off bills, restock the store of the necessities, and try to weather the literal storms of winter sales. This is not a time to publish obscure tomes or overpriced special limited edition boxed sets.

First off, my wish list: It's amazing what a good pic of a painted mini can do to promote sales. I would have simply passed over the Warlord listing for "US MP on a Harley Davidson," but then they show the pic:

Even at $11.65 apiece, I want a pack of these guys, a la bikers in 40K, and I don't even play WW2 or 40k!

Hitting the Lottery Wish List: Surprisingly, nothing else.

The Imaginary Store List:
Wings of Glory WW2: This is scheduled to be shipped by Alliance in November (which means December... or they already ordered a pile and forgot to solicit them. After 10+ years, they still do that an awful lot.) Of course each of the four planes is packaged in its own case of 6 and each case retails for $77.40. At a 40% dealer discount, that's a outlay of $186.00 just to stock the game. Coming from a small store mentaility, I could do better to spend that on five or six copies of the next hot $40 rpg book, and restock the book and a couple other quick turnover products than stock this and possibly not sell half, much less sell through.
But ViscountEric, you've said that a smart store owner knows his base yet wants to expand! Yes, but (a) I wouldn't stock this with a nice promotion to attract players and to at least cover my expense of the product quickly (b) if this isn't in stock at Alliance right now, I sure as hell wouldn't try this during the Christmas rush and in the middle of winter. Too many distractions, cancelled demos/tourneys/leagues make players turn to the next big thing, no matter what their cash outlay for the game in question.

Memoir '44 Campaign Book Vol 2: I admit ignorance to Volume 1, but anything that gets more play out of the expensive wargames is a plus by me. Drawback: "Please Inquire" with your store as to the price. Probably not a decent profit margin to justify multiple orders for store stock.

Heavy Gear: Jesus Christmas, does anyone have a store that stocks this stuff? And how does one afford to do so with so much product coming out. We aren't talking a couple of fantasy minis at five bucks a pop, or even Battletmechs between ten and twelve buck apiece. Multiple $20+ packs/boxed sets every month is just a huge portion of someone's budget without going balls in to promote it.

Fantasy Flight 40K Rpg books: Dark Heresy: The Chaos Commandment, Black Crusade : Hand of Corruption.

Paradiso: Tile base game creating achipelagos One, it's only $24.95.. Two, they used the word archipelago.

LITKO: a huge number of 4e token sets

Mantic: Warpath vehichles, seriously. Any 40K fan needs to see these, and then buy a couple dozen of each.

Marvel Heroes basic game from Margaret Weis Productions. Yawn, but each game always sells copies.

Mongoose: Star Fleet Minis, near the absurdity of Heavy Gear releases. At $14.99 each, no as bad for the cash outlay, but what store still does gangbusters Star Fleet Battles sales

Osprey: FORCE ON FORCE: DAY OF THE RANGERS - SOMALIA 1993 $24.95 The Force on Force stuff looks better and better, and there's nothing wrong with a little Blackhawk Down love.

Paizo: Six more items in the Pathfinder-esque arena.

Reaper: Lots of neat stuff, but the cost of metal/sculpting confuses me. Two zombies are $8.99, yet a dragon (albeit a small one) is $12.99?

Colonial Gothic: Colonial America with some sorcery, shamanism, and a few other oddities mixed in. Three books are solicited: Philadelphia Affair 13.99, Grimoire 10.99, The Templars $10.99.

Wooly And His Fortress of Middleofnowhere-ness

This weekend the family embarked on a long, arduous journey to Johnstown to visit my buddy Wooly and his wife Jenny. Our hosts were gracious, our kids well-behaved, and I believed everyone had a great time.


One-completely non-gaming related note: That whole potty training thing? Those golden moments when the little one doesn't need diapers anymore is overrated when you hear, "Mommy? Daddy? I gotta use the potty now!" about two dozen times during the trip.


Early Saturday morning I tried to convince Jenny to have them come with us to next year's Fall-in! in Lacaster. They had left the gaming haven confines of the Lehigh Valley around the same time I had, and Wooly hadn't gamed since. We're talking SEVEN years plus. It's a shame, Wooly has a truly vast collection fo Battletech books and minis, and a sizeable collection of Legions of Steel collecting piles of dust in his basement. It should be used. It NEEDS to be used. But yet, Jeep conventions, real life, and distance have kept him out of the loop.

If I remember Wooly's long-winded stories correctly, Johnstown had a comics/gaming store in the area, but the owner got hit with charges of overdue taxes, child abuse, or something in between. He's found one store in Altoona, but that turns into over an hour drive, and to cultivate a comfortable gaming enviroment does require multiple trips and a few leaps of faith.

Alright true believers, what gaming places are within an hour of Johnstown, PA? Only requirements are that they stock more than Magic/40k/D&D. Any help for the master of the AC-20 to the head would be appreciated.

And I'll see if he's willing to take some time off for Cold Wars to hang with Steve, Nichols, and myself.

(CoC) Random Name Generators

Stolen from a post on the yog-sothoth.com forums:

Need more random names for NPCs outside of Michael, Joseph, and Luigi for the stereotypical Italian in your 20's games?


This one: http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm provides a huge variety of names and you can set the generator from very plain to very obscure. I did get large number of Neils out of it.

This one: http://www.miskatonicriverpress.com/LCNames.shtml generates "Lovecraftian" names. The Herberts, Harveys, Delberts, and other common 20's names are used.

Warlord Games produces Rorke's Drift gold...

Now, I'm not a huge fan of Warlord Games. The plastics don't make me go gaga, and I much prefer lead with few fiddly parts.

Today's post of TMP gives me hope.

How 'bout not one, but TWO different Rorke's Drift boxed sets:

Set one:
Laser-cut wooden Hospital and Storehouse buildings with 'teddy bear fur' thatch.
Resin Wagon Barricade
Resin stone wall Kraal (4 x 6″ sections)
Resin biscuit box barricades (2 x 6″ sections)
Resin biscuit box/mealie-bag barricades (3 x 6″ sections)
Resin mealie-bag barricades (3 x 6″ sections)
20 plastic multi-pose British Line Infantry
40 plastic multi-pose Married Zulus
Metal mounted Zulu InDuna
Metal Zulu in British jacket firing Martini-Henry rifle
British characters: Lieutenant Chard (Royal Engineers), Lieutenant Bromhead, Colour Sergeant Bourne and Private Hook.
Pre-order Price: £150.00 (somebody get me a currency converter!)

Horns of the Buffalo – Rorke's Drift Collectors Set
The contents of the Rorke's Drift set as outlined above, plus:
5 extra resin mealie-bag barricades
1 extra resin biscuit box barricade
4 extra biscuit box/mealie-bag barricades
1 extra resin wagon barricade
2 extra lengths of resin walls
Resin broken down walls (6 x 6″ sections)
Resin mealie-bag redoubt (2 x 3″ x 6″ sections making a 6″ square redoubt)
Engineers wagon
Water cart
6 plastic fences (3″ sections)
4 x plastic bell tents
Resin Cookhouse
6 metal African cattle
3 x resin ovens
Resin Water Closet
1 x metal dead horse
1 x dog (Pip the terrier)
British characters based on the film Zulu: Chard, Bromhead, Bourne and Hook (all made by Empress Miniatures).

for £275.00

Now, that is totally out of my price range in pounds or dollars, but I would love to follow Santa around and break into the house that he leaves either set under the tree.

A Romantic Horror Comedy... with Garden Gnomes?

A while back, I reviewed How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack here . I even had the author of the book link the review to his blog!

Now I find out that Robert Zemeckis is producing a live-action version of the book, aiming for an "edgy" PG-13 horror movie.

Edgy. With garden gnomes.

Oh yeah. I'm hoping that no CGI is used, and the garden gnomes are static, just staring up at you. But yet, weren't they on the OTHER side of the bush a second ago? Mwhahahaha!

I also checked out the authors webpage for the book, aptly titled http://www.howtosurviveagardengnomeattack.com/ and discovered that gnomes are a source of alternative energy.

Exhibit A:

Mouseling Tavern is out!

I'm a little late to the party, the Mouseling Tavern that I had seen greens for from my friends at GenCon is out, and apparently well-received.

Now, every comment I've seen online has been stressing dioramas and other "cutesy" ideas. Not only would these figures be great for Mouse Guard, but I'm thinking of a non-skirmishing unit for Gnome Wars.

Think about it. Yes, drunken mice make great warriors, but the mouse in the front center could easily be a standard bearer, two other two on the right are musicians, and of course, the bar wench is a furrier version of the Bier Maiden in the game (at least I hope this one's furrier, European gnome at all.)

Ten tiny figs for $40 is a bit much in my opinion, but I'll keep this on my want list.