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Arquinsiel posted:I've been tempted by the Bauda Norse Irish for years, but I never get around to actually pulling the trigger on them. Plus I have no idea if anyone at HATE plays DBA anyways Hackney, eh? That's just over the road from Salute, I'm taking the long march from Sussex. I reckon despite their being less overt differences between Napoleonic forces there's the potential for interesting games because of the variety in army composition and """special rules""". The ROI on that appears a bit higher than investing in new armies for tactical variety. About the largest game I can put on, on my little 3x3' table is ~8-10 units per side, each of 3-4 bases - any more than that and it gets swamped - so Absolute Emperor, OHW Horse & Musket and DBN seem like sensible games to pursue.
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Apr 9, 2024 15:59
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I'm not in Hackney, it's just where nerds play games regularly with a convenient train to get there from my house. Excel is a slightly longer, but still convenient, train trip. The main problem will be getting off my rear end early enough to try meet people flying over for it.
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Apr 9, 2024 22:04
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Turner's AWI campaign is live! Unlike on Kickstarter, you immediately get everything when you pledge here. And we need more pledges to unlock the Hessian stuff! (The infantry is like $13 away) There's early bird pricing until sometime on Sunday so if you want a ton of printable models for a great price, take a look. https://www.myminifactory.com/frontier/colonies-asunder-the-american-revolution-2483
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Apr 12, 2024 23:52
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Anyone got any good recommendations for Magnets for Flames of War Minis? Got some el cheapo magnets off amazon and they are freaking awful. as far as I can tell the official magnets are probably the cheapest... but anyone got any good recs?
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Apr 13, 2024 21:03
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I really like TotalElement.com for best price, but their stock is in imperial sizes so that's something to look out for.
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Apr 13, 2024 21:27
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Sorry, should have clarified - I'm in the UK.
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Apr 14, 2024 01:41
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I got my 5x1mm magnets from some random Chinese seller on eBay and they're perfect, so the quality might just be a random crapshoot
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Apr 14, 2024 01:45
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Yesterday at Salute I saw a guy who had made a lovely Vietnam table and I really liked the South East Asian style colonial scenery. I managed to find some of them searching online but there are some shop houses which I can't seem to source. They're the type which would have been all over the Straits settlements. Anyone have any good sources for these, especially in 6mm? There was a MDF kit maker from Australia who did some shop houses in exactly that style but they've gone out of business recently. Pic for example  tomdidiot posted:Sorry, should have clarified - I'm in the UK. Spider Magnetics on eBay.
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Apr 14, 2024 14:27
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Third Edition of Bolt Action coming September. Sounds like they're going to change a lot of a lot of the fiddly rules and change the army lists. I have a whole pile of books I have yet to ever play with, but anyone who does play Bolt Action got any opinions on this?
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Apr 17, 2024 15:22
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Annoyingly they're keeping the templates which was something I hated from second edition.
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Apr 17, 2024 16:54
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I've been looking at Rommel and looking at my largely-unused TY stuff and wondering if I couldn't use it for GWGH stuff. The open points architecture feels like it makes it plausible. I feel like strategic and operational concerns in WW3 scenarios are kind of inevitably subject to the judgement of the author, too, so that sorta excuses me from needing to justify why, for instance, everyone isn't using three Carpet Bombing operations every turn...
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Apr 18, 2024 22:55
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Comstar posted:Third Edition of Bolt Action coming September. I'm hopeful about it! I just hope they don't drip-feed us too much, when it comes to vehicles for the different countries. Since if it's a bit of a bland opening line-up for the more minor nations, I'll probably stick to second edition until they flesh them out a bit. But yeah, otherwise I'm keen to see the rule changes
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Apr 19, 2024 02:31
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I just hope they finally ditch the purely punitive special rules for some of the nations.
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Apr 19, 2024 16:30
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Ilor posted:I just hope they finally ditch the purely punitive special rules for some of the nations. YES. Some of those special rules are just bad.
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Apr 19, 2024 16:46
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Ilor posted:I just hope they finally ditch the purely punitive special rules for some of the nations. 100% agreed. The pre-Case Blue Italian ones are godawful, for example. I hate that kind of mindset some developers have, where they seem to want to make some options unfun/harder and make games more unbalanced than necessary, seemingly just because. Hopefully they keep the lessons learnt from Case Blue
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Apr 20, 2024 14:55
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Ilor posted:I just hope they finally ditch the purely punitive special rules for some of the nations. And the historically-inaccurate ones, stop perpetuating the Ronson myth, Warlord! 
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Apr 20, 2024 16:17
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Z the IVth posted:Spider Magnetics on eBay. Just got them and am extremely impressed Anyone got any tips for removing old magnets from plastic models? :p
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Apr 22, 2024 17:33
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Major Isoor posted:100% agreed. The pre-Case Blue Italian ones are godawful, for example. I hate that kind of mindset some developers have, where they seem to want to make some options unfun/harder and make games more unbalanced than necessary, seemingly just because. Hopefully they keep the lessons learnt from Case Blue Also, some of the "national rules" don't scale. A free squad of riflemen has a lot more impact on a 500 point game than a 1000 point game.
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Apr 22, 2024 17:59
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tomdidiot posted:Just got them and am extremely impressed Freeze the model for an hour or two. Makes the super glue bond brittle and you can snap it off.
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Apr 22, 2024 18:45
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Major Isoor posted:100% agreed. The pre-Case Blue Italian ones are godawful, for example. I hate that kind of mindset some developers have, where they seem to want to make some options unfun/harder and make games more unbalanced than necessary, seemingly just because. Hopefully they keep the lessons learnt from Case Blue Do they get point discounts for this?
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Apr 22, 2024 19:07
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Panzeh posted:Do they get point discounts for this?
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Apr 22, 2024 19:24
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Ilor posted:See, this is my intrinsic problem with points-based systems, and that's that so many game designers take the laziest approach possible to "balancing" things (lower quality troops == cheaper == more of them). That's not how asymmetric conflict actually works. Having a lovely squad LMG did not lead to Italians fielding more men, for instance. Balance is done so much better across multiple games (in a campaign setting) than as one-off scenarios, but that's not "tournament friendly," so as a result you end up with lovely rules that skew the forces on the table. Yeah, but you gotta work out ways to like, give a lower quality force a chance in an individual game- it's not always through numbers, but, without a scenario designer behind the hood, things start getting a lot more nebulous, like Chain of Command's support list or whatever. You can just throw up your hands and shrug about it all, but i mean, it is what it is, when somebody's platoon goes up against somebody else's platoon, this is what the game is.
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Apr 22, 2024 19:44
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Ilor posted:See, this is my intrinsic problem with points-based systems, and that's that so many game designers take the laziest approach possible to "balancing" things (lower quality troops == cheaper == more of them). That's not how asymmetric conflict actually works. Having a lovely squad LMG did not lead to Italians fielding more men, for instance. Balance is done so much better across multiple games (in a campaign setting) than as one-off scenarios, but that's not "tournament friendly," so as a result you end up with lovely rules that skew the forces on the table. I do like the TFL approach where your core list is set in stone and points values are just used to see how much higher level support you get. But yeah there is a problem that the only way quality is balanced is quantity- I've always kinda thought about a system where the superior army has pre game disadvantages- like a Roman army will often be superior to a Gallic one, but that means the Romans have to attack into unfamiliar terrain to win
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Apr 22, 2024 20:05
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I wonder if the answer is to incorporate situational advantages instead of numerical ones. Basically copping TFL's system but gamifying to let the Italians buy things like extra rerolls, the first activation, a larger deployment zone, or even forcing a smaller one on their opponents. Maybe the lower quality army can use points to buy objectives that only they can claim. It makes balancing harder, but beats "where did all these Italians come from?"
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Apr 22, 2024 20:43
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Panzeh posted:Yeah, but you gotta work out ways to like, give a lower quality force a chance in an individual game- it's not always through numbers, but, without a scenario designer behind the hood, things start getting a lot more nebulous, like Chain of Command's support list or whatever. You can just throw up your hands and shrug about it all, but i mean, it is what it is, when somebody's platoon goes up against somebody else's platoon, this is what the game is. Go back to my post, my contention is that individual "points" systems encourage game designers to be lazy. There are loads of ways to balance forces that don't involve "just have more dudes," and I feel like good games are going to use some of those methods, and further that those methods often work better across multiple games than just a single game. I am not throwing up my hands and shrugging, I am being the change I want to see. That's why I wrote the "Totensonntag" Pint-Sized Campaign for CoC the way I did.
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Apr 22, 2024 21:05
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StashAugustine posted:I do like the TFL approach where your core list is set in stone and points values are just used to see how much higher level support you get. But yeah there is a problem that the only way quality is balanced is quantity- I've always kinda thought about a system where the superior army has pre game disadvantages- like a Roman army will often be superior to a Gallic one, but that means the Romans have to attack into unfamiliar terrain to win The game Deus Vult, about the Crusades, does something like this. You use your points to buy units or abstract "scouts." The scouts can be used to control terrain or do subterfuge. At the start of the game you deploy the "terrain-controlling" scouts to the board; in every section of the board where you have more scouts you get to put down terrain as you like. The "subterfuge" scouts draw cards that let you do things like set up an ambush, deploy last or attack first, etc. So you could, for example, have a small army with a lot of "scouts" that completely controls the tactical situation and terrain, or you could just blunder in with a big army and hope you can win through force.
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Apr 22, 2024 21:10
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I can see how there's a degree to which balance is ever at odds with history in this respect - usually, the side with fewer advantages just lost, and being doomed isn't that interesting unless you're actively playing the "we both play both sides and see who does better" type game. "Why do the italians always get the drop on the british" is just as ahistorical as "why do the italians get more dudes", after all, and historically, they couldn't really throw in more dudes or use them better, and had to be bailed out by the DAK.
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Apr 22, 2024 21:16
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Springfield Fatts posted:Freeze the model for an hour or two. Makes the super glue bond brittle and you can snap it off. They're sunk into a recess and I can't get under the magnet to snap hem off.
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Apr 22, 2024 23:23
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spectralent posted:I can see how there's a degree to which balance is ever at odds with history in this respect - usually, the side with fewer advantages just lost, and being doomed isn't that interesting unless you're actively playing the "we both play both sides and see who does better" type game. "Why do the italians always get the drop on the british" is just as ahistorical as "why do the italians get more dudes", after all, and historically, they couldn't really throw in more dudes or use them better, and had to be bailed out by the DAK. Well if you go all in on it, lots of board wargames have victory conditions of "lose less badly than historically." If you're taking an understrength Italian unit into veteran British on defense, why not just say the Italian player "wins" as long as they don't actually lose ground
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Apr 22, 2024 23:44
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tomdidiot posted:They're sunk into a recess and I can't get under the magnet to snap hem off.
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Apr 23, 2024 00:36
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Some sort of solution has to be found for individual, non-linked games, because that’s how the overwhelming majority of players interact with most games. Campaign play requires a commitment of multiple sessions that is beyond most people.
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Apr 23, 2024 00:39
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Cessna posted:Also, some of the "national rules" don't scale. A free squad of riflemen has a lot more impact on a 500 point game than a 1000 point game. Oh yeah, absolutely! IIRC one or two worked around this by essentially letting you take a free copy of your cheapest infantry squad, however many others are rather set in stone, unfortunately. Panzeh posted:Do they get point discounts for this? Nah, it's all treated the same. So for example, Italy didn't get any kind of bonus or freebie, they simply received penalties that amounted to the game getting harder if they started losing more men than the opponents - which would allow opposing players to snowball into victory more easily... (I've been pretty lucky though, in my games as Italy - so I can't complain too much!) Case Blue finally gives alternatives that are actually positive though, which is nice.
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Apr 23, 2024 05:37
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StashAugustine posted:Well if you go all in on it, lots of board wargames have victory conditions of "lose less badly than historically." If you're taking an understrength Italian unit into veteran British on defense, why not just say the Italian player "wins" as long as they don't actually lose ground I wonder how easy it would be to use asymmetrical objectives and/or support to provide balance. For example: say Player A brings a company of Shermans and Player B brings a company of King Tigers to a game. On paper, sure, the King Tigers are going to win every time, but if Player B has to completely wipe the board in order to win, and/or needs to accomplish their objectives within an extremely tight time limit (Fluffed as needing to justify the massive investment of resources into the attack), and Player A gets access to off-map artillery and air support to try and stay alive... that could make for a balanced and fun scenario.
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Apr 23, 2024 07:51
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This is kind of how the space battleship wargame Billion Suns works - you bid for a "contract", a pool of VPs, and you spend VPs on your ships. You're aiming to accomplish your objective at a profit, and ideally a bigger one than your enemy.
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Apr 23, 2024 10:56
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Yeah how is that from a game point of view? I hear the contract system and multi table aspect discussed a lot but no one says if the game itself is very engaging or fun.
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Apr 23, 2024 12:08
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I wonder how easy it would be to use asymmetrical objectives and/or support to provide balance. For example: say Player A brings a company of Shermans and Player B brings a company of King Tigers to a game. On paper, sure, the King Tigers are going to win every time, but if Player B has to completely wipe the board in order to win, and/or needs to accomplish their objectives within an extremely tight time limit (Fluffed as needing to justify the massive investment of resources into the attack), and Player A gets access to off-map artillery and air support to try and stay alive... that could make for a balanced and fun scenario. LaSalle - a Napoleonics game - works like this. For example, if you have a French Imperial Guard army, you must win a "decisive victory." If you win by less of a margin - a "marginal victory" - you lose.
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Apr 23, 2024 15:11
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