Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Playing Pathfinder online

Our adventures continue.

Along with my normal RPG gaming crew I also run a Tuesday night online campaign of Pathfinder. While having the 5-6 guys I play my cleric with meet up each week is fun sometimes you need to have some smaller adventures on the side and playing online allows you to do that quite well.

All in all the gaming for me is in high gear and rolling along well with a more mature bunch of people.

Some images of the software we use online to fulfill our Pathfinder needs:





Friday, August 26, 2011

Pathfinder and Global Agenda Update

More RPG playing the past two weeks and very little wargaming unfortunately.

My Squad Battles Red Victory tournament ended quickly as I had to face guys that not only play tested the scenario but knew exactly what hex to move each unit into to ensure victory. Not fun.

Turning to video games Global Agenda, a game which I pre ordered last year and played for a bit before becoming terribly bored, is ramping up its PVE content with a new free expansion.

With a busy work month I have not had a chance to get down and dirty with more Advanced Squad Leader or Lock and Load. That will change next week hopefully.

Monday night Pathfinder is going well, and now we are starting a Tuesday night online group as well. Should be fun
Notable expansion additions include:

  • New Open Zone with several instanced missions, quest chains, mid-high level
    content, vendors, social spaces

  • New enemy bots – encountered within Open Zone as well as instanced missions

  • Daily Repeatable Quests – for solo agents and teams. Some quests take place
    in zones, while others send teams into Recursive Colony hive nodes and ruins.
    These quests include new 4-man defense Raid missions – now available to smaller
    groups (1-4) at lower levels (20+)

  • New Dyes, Flair, and Trails – rewards for winning missions, completing daily
    quests,  rare bot drops, others given via achievements

  • New Pets – new pets available as rewards and crafted items.

  • New Blueprints – for consumables and mods

  • Easier crafting – components now within the zone, to help with leveling
    crafting skills

  • New High/Max/UltraMax missions entering the Spec Ops queues

  • New PvP Map – Push Dust will be entering the Merc queue from Beta

  • New PvP Acquisition/CTR Map – Colony Caverns will be entering the Beta Queue

  • Revamped Intro Missions – Tutorials now include class-specific elements to
    help train new players

  • Some quests now affect the state of the world (example – Brownouts in Dome
    City…)

  • Ability to transfer between different Open Zone instances (and VR Arena)

  • Open Zone cross-instance chat channels

  • Disconnect to Character Select Screen without re-login

  • Improved Vendor Item Previewing


Monday, August 15, 2011

Pathfinder pics from first gaming session

Session one is under our belts. 3 hours 600 xp earned. Interesting night but more on that later. Here are some pics of a roadside bandit attack and a campfire encounter with a pack of wild boars that almost wiped out our whole party. Would have helped if I wasn't fighting in my underwear. The highlight of the night was me being able to slam my warhammer into the face of a bandit and rolling a natural 20 crit for triple damage. That'll teach em to pick on the healer.







Friday, August 12, 2011

Vikund the Cleric is set

With our first group meeting next week I finally got my Pathfinder character fleshed out and he is ready to join the ranks of the 4 other party members in my RPG group.

I used Hero Lab (along with the Core Rulebook) to help create him and present a nice character sheet and printout. We are from the town of Winston Ridge but most of us will be making the trek to the frontier town of Vigilance at some point on the first evening we meet up.



On another note I played Descent Wednesday and will play again next Sunday. We learned it is a tough go for a person that tries to play the game with ONE hero. Not again that is for sure. I slaughtered him easily. When I return to the game we will tweak it so that he does not have to play 3 heroes at once and reduce the card draw for the Over Lord player.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

John Tiller's newest Squad Battles is Falklands

Just released. He does these things like a ninja.

You can read all about the new game here:

http://johntillersoftware.com/SquadBattles/Falklands.html

I probably will not pick this up the subject matter just does not interest me. I hope he focuses more on that mysterious Panzer Battles game listed on his site to be honest.

Here are the details:

Scenarios



  • 54 scenarios covering actions such as Operation Rosario, Grytviken, Coronation Ridge and Goose Green.

  • Scenarios range in length from 6 to 36 turns and cover actions from small firefights between a handful of men to hundreds of men battling it out for key strongpoints on a variety of battlefields.

  • Close quarters urban fighting, hostage rescues and a variety of remote terrain fights are modeled.

  • 2 linked scenario campaigns.


Thursday, August 4, 2011

Ian Trout of SSG departs us today

Ian Trout (1949-2011), President and co-founder of SSG, passed away today after losing his battle with cancer. Ian was the designer of most of SSG's games and his untimely death represents a huge loss to SSG and the games industry.

You will be missed Ian, God speed.

NWS Online Store adds Victory Point Games inventory

NWS Online Gaming Store, a site I use frequently to order almost all my HPS SIMS games and a ton of boardgames as well, has announced a Victory Point Games sale where $100 dollars spent on VPG titles nets you free shipping. They are carrying almost every title that VPG releases also. There is also discounted shipping for lower cost orders.

The details can be found here:

http://yhst-12000246778232.stores.yahoo.net/vipogase.html

Order subtotal:
USA: ($50-$74) -50%


($75-$99) -75%

($100>) FREE SHIPPING!


Canada/International: ($50-$74) -25%, ($75-$99) -50%, ($100>) -75%




 

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Today's ASL game came down to the wire: Released from the East goes to the Russians

Eastern front 1941. Winter battle. Russians get special snow camo movement rule.

The objective: I had to take two of three buildings from the Germans by the end of turn 6

The result: on the very last movement of the game I dash a squad of Russians ACROSS a road, into German fire, make my morale check on a hit they take and jump into the 2nd building to claim it and win the game!

We had some crazy stuff this game. I used a demolition charge early to blow the Germans out the middle building. I also broke two machine guns but fixed one...only to break it again.

Late game a dice roll of a natural 2 created a German fanatic in the exact hex I was trying to assault to win the game.

On Turn 1 3 of my squads got shot up to half squads just entering the map and trying to take the middle building. However my Russian persistence paid off and on several gutsy moves I melee'd the Germans and took the building. My plan worked as I drove up the middle, split his forces and then focused on his weakest side. However when the fanatic was created it forced me to ignore my original plan and attempt to sneak a squad into the last building. Basically I won the game on a die roll and it paid off.

All in all another excellent game and once again my opponent played me down to the very last possible movement.

Pictures are included below, some chits are spread out to show what was in the hexes.





 

[caption id="attachment_4535" align="aligncenter" width="649" caption="The game winner: an exhausted Russian unit runs into the building"][/caption]

 

HPS Simulations Napoleonic Battles Optional Rules

Another tough list to find are the optional rules for HPS Sims Napoleonic Campaigns. You will have to search through the included PDF's in the updates to find the rules so to make it easy I have put them together right out of said PDF for easy reference here on my site.

Optional Rules Dialog
The Optional Rules Dialog is used to view and select the Optional Rules for a new battle. Optional Rules can be set at the beginning of a battle, but not changed once the battle has started. The Optional Rules selected in the Optional Rules Dialog are saved and become the subsequent default for new battles. See the Design Notes in the Users Manual for why Optional Rules are not called Advanced Rules.

 

  • If you select Manual Defensive Fire, then each turn will consist of a number of Phases rather than two player turns. The game rules under this option are described in the Users Manual.

  • Select Victory Points for Leader Casualties to have Victory Points awarded for enemy leaders that are killed, wounded, or captured. See the Design Notes in the User Manual for why this is not a default rule.

  • Select Rout Limiting to reduce the amount of secondary routing that occurs. The default routing rules require that units adjacent to a unit that has failed its morale check must also take a morale check (there are restrictions such as  routing skirmishers cannot cause non-skirmishers to rout). This is applied recursively if those units also fail their check. While this can result in the rout of large number of units, given normal probabilities it is ``self limiting’’, that is, it stops after a certain number of iterations based on the situation.

  • When Rout Limiting is in effect, units in adjacent hexes undergoing a morale check receive a progressively larger modifier to their default morale. This modifier starts at 1 and is increased by 1 for each iteration based on a failed morale check. So, for example, if unit A fails their morale check, unit B in an adjacent hex undergoes a morale check with +1 added to their default morale. If unit B fails this test, then unit C in an adjacent hex to B undergoes a morale check with +2 added to their default morale. And so on. Therefore, as these modifiers increase, a point is reached where units stop routing which, in general, will be before they would have stopped otherwise. See the Design Notes in the Users Manual for why this is not a default rule.

  • Select Isolation Rules to cause Isolated units to have their strength divided by 2 when defending in a melee. Also Isolated leaders receive no benefit from their commanders during command checks. When an Isolated Artillery unit fires, it may become Low or Out-Of-Ammo. The Artillery unit will become resupplied when it becomes non-Isolated, unless the Artillery supply level for its side is zero. See the Design Notes in the Users Manual for an explanation of the Isolation melee effects.

  • If you select Optional Fire Results, then the resulting fire casualty values are based on the average of two default fire calculations. This produces values which are more likely to be in the midrange of the casualty interval rather than uniformly distributed.

  • Select Melee Terrain Modifiers to have the terrain modifier of the defending hex applied to melee results.

  • Select Column Pass Through Fire to have Artillery Pass-Through fire effects apply to Infantry in Column formation as well as Infantry in Line formation.

  • Select Target Density Modifier to have the fire value affected by the total number of men in the target hex. When the target hex has more than 1200 men in it, then the fire value against units in this affect is multiplied by Total/1200 where Total is the total number of men in the target hex.

  • Select No Retreat Overruns to prevent the defenders of a melee from retreating into hexes containing enemy skirmishers.

  • Select Weak Zone-Of-Control to allow units to move one hex through enemy Zone-Of-Control per turn and to allow units to retreat one hex through enemy Zone-Of-Control.

  • Select Partial Retreats to allow some units to retreat from a hex after being defeated in melee even when there is not enough room for all of the units to retreat. See the Design Notes in the Users Manual for why this is not a default rule.

  • Select Line Movement Restriction to cause infantry units that move in line formation to have the chance of becoming Disordered. The details of this are explained in the Users Manual in the section on Movement.

  • Select Flank Morale Modifier to have the morale of non-Skirmisher units, with non-Skirmisher friendly units on both flanks, increased by 1 for the purpose of Rout and Disorder determination. Another way to refer to this is as "double flank elbow courage".

  • If you select Optional Melee Results, then the resulting melee casualty values are based on the average of two default melee casualties. This has the effect of reducing the variation in casualty values.

  • Select Multiple Cavalry Melees to allow cavalry units to melee attack units that have all already been meleed against.

  • Select Multiple Infantry Melees to allow infantry units to melee attack units that have all already been meleed against.

  • Select No Opportunity Fire Against Skirmishers to prevent opportunity fire from being targeted against hexes that only contain skirmishers and leaders.

  • Select No Melee Eliminations to prevent defenders in a melee that have no valid retreat hex from being eliminated.