Very British Civil Warpath

Very little of the old paintbrushes and superglue used for this one unfortunately, but at least I've done something hobby related that can be blogged about for once.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I've been playing some games of the Warpath v2 beta recently. This is Mantic's sci-fi skirmish game, which is apparently going to be ready for release soon as a full, non-beta version. It's somewhat simpler than 40k and has a nice mechanic for activating units that adds some brinksmanship to turns.

I've also been playing games set in the Very British Civil War, the alternate history setting described in the books from Solway Crafts and Miniatures. In case you don't know, this "what-if" setting assumes an unpleasant outcome to the abdication crisis in 1938 and has a fascist government of Britain fighting a very splintered war across the whole country. It's presented in a very light-hearted style and the emphasis is on over the top cobbled together forces, vehicles and weapons, and can be a lot of fun.

We had been using 40k rules for our games, which worked quite well, but I wanted to try something different and so I have created Very British Civil Warpath - army lists and special rules for VBCW games using the Warpath rules!

Kieron and I played our first test game of this last night and it seemed go well (despite ending in an extremely bloody stalemate).

The simplicity of the Warpath army lists meant that I was even able to come up with (hopefully) sensible points values and options for different units, so it's a system which we can use for some reasonably balanced games and as the basis for our campaign.

Something that I was very keen to include was a method for representing shortages of fuel and ammo - in most cases the weapons and vehicles being used have been scrounged or bodged together so it makes sense to me that they can't be entirely relied upon. I've come up with what I think is a fairly simple mechanic for this, which will require a few tokens to be used to keep track of things but can make for very uncertain times for the commanders.

I've also tried to do something sensible with cavalry and give them the ability to mount and dismount during the game, so that they aren't caught in the trap of trying to behave like napoleonic cavalry against opponents with machine guns.

Finally I came up with some rules that allow vehicles to be upgraded fairly simply, so I think you can cover most things with the options there.

There are still more things to add to it in future but I think it works as is, but I need to test it some more. Any offers of help would be gratefully received...

Building a Better Future

Ah, irony. I finally break my blog silence (with a post so apparently well-written that people queued up to insist I hadn't written it), apologise for not posting, and then circumstances conspire to prevent me from posting again for another fortnight. Well, that's a better explanation than "I couldn't be arsed", so I'm sticking with it. Here we go, another post. Isn't about painting and doesn't even have any pictures in it, but it's all you're getting.

Anyway, to wrestle myself back on topic. The Wargamers FC clubhouse is currently abuzz (is that a word?) with talk of Mantic Games' not-in-any-way-similar-to-Warhammer-oh-no-siree fantasy game, Kings of War. I played my first game of this last night, and it's pretty good - in particular, I like the fact that you don't take off models as casualties, so it's much tidier. Also, the way damage works in Kings of War is nice - it's worth peppering units with fire before you engage them in close combat, as the damage you inflict with shooting makes breaking the unit in combat easier. As a final bonus, since you don't remove individual casualties and units have a set formation based on their size, you could use scenic bases and fewer models than for the equivalent Warhammer unit.

So that's all good, and I'm sure I'll play it some more. In particular I think coming up with different armies would be easier as there's a lot less scope for variety in army selection than in Warhammer, so I'll be looking at different races and so on that I can make with my Games Workshop models. Got to use them for something!

Perhaps more interestingly though, I've played a couple of games of Warpath v2 with Pete and Kieron. Warpath is a sci-fi skirmish game in which a totalitarian human faction attempts to dominate other races based on standard fantasy races such as orcs and dwarves. Any resemblance to other sci-fi skirmish games in which a totalitarian human faction attempts to dominate other races based on standard fantasy races is, I'm sure, entirely coincidental.

Warpath is perhaps more similar to 40k than Kings of War is to Fantasy, since you do remove individual models as casualties. What's interesting though is the unit activation system. You are never entirely sure what order your opponent will choose to do things, which means there are lots of tactical decisions to make each turn.

As we've been playing the beta v2 rules there are some things that I think need to be changed. The Mantic forums suggest that some of these will be altered, and we're likely to get more interesting army lists at that point. I even suggested a couple myself (probably too late to affect anything), so I now consider myself to have co-authored whatever version of the rules is eventually pulished.

I think both Mantic games are much simpler to get into than the Games Workshop equivalents, and to my mind are much better suited for games on a club night. It is probably also fair to say that they lack some of the GW depth though - there aren't as many silly or completely fantastical things available to you as there are from Warhammer army lists, but then all the lists are in the basic rulebook which is nice.

In my mind at least I am still setting these games in the Fantasy and 40k universes. Not that it really matters, but I've never had a problem with Games Workshop's background - it's just the games that get a bit over complicated for me...

There you are then. Couple of interesting new games, and if nothing else I can use my existing models for more things than before, which can only be a good thing. I'm going to have a look through the army lists and see what other variations I can come up with.