Dux Bellorum, back around for some more work

In the week before Gencon, I got Rosemary Sutcliff's book, The Shining Company, off of my shelf for a reread.  If you aren't familiar with it, it is a retelling of The Gododdin, an early Welsh poem about a band of heroes who almost all died in a battle with Saxons.  Like all of Sutcliff's books, it's very atmospheric.  The battles could be refought without too much trouble using Dux Bellorum, so I thought that it might be a good time to dust off my stalled Dux Bellorum project.  I took a few figures along with my portable paint kit as a backup, but didn't use them during the convention.

This week, though, I had to take my car in for some maintenance, so an enforced time to sit seemed like a good time to get some painting done.  Four of the figures on this stand were finished over a year ago, and have been awaiting the second four to complete the stand, which I polished off during the maintenance (I should note that they were partially painted, so I wasn't starting from scratch):

"Noble" Saxons

As with the rest of the war band in process, all the figures are made from Prince August or Dutkins molds.  They are a mix of Dutkins unspecified Roman and Barbarian molds, Prince August's 25mm fantasy molds, and the mostly discontinued Prince August ancient armies multiple part molds.

I also finished up a mounted standard bearer, a Dutkins figure with a Prince August head on a Prince August horse, leaving me two more riders to go for a stand.  At that point, they told me my car was ready...

Mounted Dark Ages standard bearer

My original minimum Saxon war band was going to have the one mounted stand, three "noble" (better armed/armored/motivated) warrior stands, three "ordinary" warrior stands, and two skirmisher stands, and I am now short one "noble" warrior stand and the riders.  Inspired by completing these figures, I sat down with my large box of Prince August castings to see if I couldn't put together the third noble warriors stand:

While I'm not getting too worried about archaeological correctness, I am still depicted these with a front rank of armored figures and a back rank including some less armored figures.  I glued them to sticks and primed them after this picture was taken.

I still haven't played enough Dux Bellorum to know whether that war band composition is going to give a good game, so, as long I was doing metal work, I started turning out a few more ordinary Saxons.

Their opponents are due to be some Romano-British and/or some Late Romans, so I've also started putting a few of those together from the Prince August ancients molds:

Those armies are permitted to blend by deploying allied contingents of the other, so I would like to get them on the field faster than the Saxons have gone.  The Romans have a few specialized units available, and I did a conversion of a Roman horse archer the last time I was doing metal work for this project.  A bit rough, perhaps, but I only need two, and I'd mostly like to keep this project in home cast figures.

I looked up the first Saxon stand; I posted it here in October 2014, nearly three years ago.  The exception to the home cast mandate will be for Ross's figures. Ross gave me some Romano-British from his collection a couple of years ago, so I think it's high time to get them rebased and refurbished to fight the encroaching Saxon hordes. 

All completed Saxons to date

I like the idea of getting something historical done again; it's been fun getting out the vintage fantasy lead, but it has ended up as a somewhat all-consuming project for the past two and a half years, and I'm getting the itch to mix it up again.

Gencon 2017 After Action Report

Sunday, 13 August 

After double-checking my packing list, Irene and I loaded everything in the car and set off for Indiana on Sunday morning.  I have noted that packing to travel by air enforces some discipline on one’s luggage, and driving this year caused my contingency packing to be somewhat more expansive than was probably necessary. After a relatively uneventful drive of 12 hours (including meal and rest breaks), we arrived at my brother's house in Bloomington.

Monday, 14 August

Norman was mostly ready with the materials needed to run our two Chaos Wars games, but he had a craft project to try to complete before the convention: fire markers built over flickering battery-operated tea lights, to mark burning buildings during the border raid scenario.  We walked around Bloomington for a while, checking out a used book store and a game store, and then played a couple of warm-up games of Carcassonne.

Tuesday, 15 August

It was difficult to contain the eager anticipation, but there was little to be done for it.  Norman and I headed out to Lowe's to pick up a convertible flat bed/dolly to haul around the materials for miniatures games. We eventually headed up to Indianapolis around 2:00.  Through the luck of the room lottery, I had managed to get a room at the JW Marriott, while much of the rest of the team was in a non-convention block downtown hotel.  That meant that we were providing the forward operating base, so our plan was to park in the parking structure under the hotel and move all the miniatures game boxes up to the room before supper.  We were surprised to find that the hotel parking lot was full.  Apparently some other conference was still here, so we found space in a parking structure attached to the Circle Center Mall temporarily.  This is where having a brother who comes to Indianapolis regularly for events is handy.  We walked back to the JW through the skywalk (hamster trail) system, orienting Irene to the venue as we went, and checked in at the hotel.  We decided to finish Irene's orientation tour and then went to find something to eat.  By the time we were done, we were able to call the hotel and confirm that space had opened up in the parking garage, so we moved the car over and unloaded the gear.  Warning signs were all over the place...

Door sign on the sky walk

I love miniatures games, but there is no denying that they are not particularly easy to take to conventions.  My local miniatures club, the HAWKs, is currently setting up a contest to be judged next year at Fall In in November.  Details are to be made public soon, but the basic idea is to see what kind of convention miniatures game can be staged with all of the material packed in a 17-liter Really Useful Box.  (That size has been chosen as the largest which will fit the overhead rack luggage profile on most airlines.) By Gencon next year, this "Battle in a Box" contest will be in process, and I hope to be in a position to be testing my entry.

Wednesday, 16 August

I met my brother around 6:30AM, and we did a quick walk around the convention center. As expected, things were fairly quiet on Day 0.  The Will Call line had not started to form.  We landed at Bee Coffee Roasters, an independent coffee shop, which was getting into the Gencon spirit with a rack of promotional T-shirts and some themed signs.

Since they are on the street facing the convention center, they had elected to be open 24 hours a day starting on Wednesday morning.  They were running a loyalty card for dice promotion as well, with a d10 as the top prize, for ten visits. I had my d10 by Saturday, and the breakfast burritos were a lifesaver for the weekend.  The coffee was excellent...

My Bee dice and token, plus Crystal Caste and Scotty's dice

Speaking of free dice, we walked down to Scotty's Brewhouse for lunch, picking up a Scotty's die.  By then, it was nearly time to go pick up the cart with the Dragon Rampant gear.  We got over to the Union Station gaming space to kick off our Gencon activities with a six player Dragon Rampant game.  I had 24 point factions laid out for my "Myzantine Empire" home setting (fantasy Byzantines), consisting of a Myzantine mounted field force, a Myzantine foot field force, and an allied/mercenary centaur band, opposed by an "Easterner" (fantasy Saracens, essentially) force of actual Easterners supported by a mercenary band of orcs, and an allied group of Lizard-masters. While all six tickets were taken for the event, I didn't expect to see all of them show up.  So, I was not surprised to find that we only had four players. 

Dragon Rampant game

We let them choose which of the warbands they would use.  So the centaurs and the orcs went back in the boxes.  I haven't run Dragon Rampant at a convention previously, and I came home with some notes on improving my handouts.  Dragon Rampant has various ways of handling initiative in a multiple player game, and I went with the simplest; letting each side activate both war bands until they had both failed an activation roll.  Players new to the system are often frustrated by failing their first initiative roll, so I also gave each player three re-roll chips which could be traded in for another activation attempt.  Since we had an even number of players, my brother wasn't needed as a spare player. The game went fairly well, and I felt, as I dragged my cart back to my hotel, that I had gotten off to a good start. Irene and I met up for some dinner and a scheduled game of Carcassonne.  I was reminded by my own ticket situation that the Carcassonne GM was probably wondering whether anyone would show up for his game, so I resisted any temptation to jump into a different game.  As it was, we were the only ones that did show up, so I was glad of that decision. We had a nice game with the gamemaster playing, after which time it was time for some rest.  I was glad to confirm that the kids coming separately from different places in Michigan, had arrived safely.

Thursday, 17 August

We ran two games nearly back to back, a Chaos Wars demo on behalf of Iron Wind Metals, and a tweaked version of the 1975 not-Lord of the Rings game Ringbearer, which we also ran last year. 

Norman explains the rules

Setting up Ringbearer

I had the briefest period of time in which to run into the exhibit hall, which I used to pick up dice and a few selected books from Indie Press Revolution.  The Ringbearer game wrapped up at 6:00, so there was time to grab some sit down dinner with Irene and my brother before we headed off to our seminar.  My kids had both recommended, in previous years, a seminar on medieval foods, which was interesting, if a bit rambling at times.  I need to expand my food horizons a bit, and I marked his web site for further thinking.

Friday, 18 August

Norman and I wrapped up our convention gamemastering with a second run of the same Chaos Wars scenario we had used on Thursday. 

Last GM gig for this con

We had all four players, which was nice, and handed some miniatures samples out to people who stopped to talk as well.  In the usual way of things, the orcs had a pretty easy run of things on Thursday, but had the snot beaten out of them on Friday, so it's hard to say if the scenario really needed adjustment.  I decided that I was over-scheduled, and skipped a live show of "Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff" so that I could look around the exhibit hall for a while,  but painted in an Iron Wind speed paint round. I was about 3rd, so there was no prize for that one. I had signed up for a short craft seminar on building a portable wet palette.  I’ve used a commercial wet palette at home, but I do a lot of painting on the road and thought that it would be a useful addition to my tool kit.  I discovered that there are no deep secrets to this, since it’s just baking parchment on a sponge in a sealable box, but that was good to know, and we got one to take home. I expect to be using this technique more going forward.  I had signed up for a Saga game that evening, but  I ended up sucked into the auction.  I wanted a copy of TSR’s 1977 Star Empires game, which I had noticed was in the display case of rare items.  At Gencon, the rare items usually go up for auction in a special session on Friday night.  As it turned out, I could have played Saga and still been back in time to bid, as it turned out to be the penultimate lot.  I got it (including its companion game Star Probe) for $230, and it was past 0230 before I got to sleep.

Saturday, 19 August

Despite the lack of sleep, I made it to breakfast with my kids and the Dutton children, old family gaming friends with who they have a lot of shared childhood memories.  After that there were  two sessions of swing dance lessons with Irene from the good people at Dancing and Dragons.   I had tickets for two Reaper speed paint competitions in the afternoon, and a second pair intended for William, who had had issues with his events registration back in May. Norman and William discussed the situation and decided to switch events, so Norman came to speed paint with me.  I was parentally thrilled to find that we each placed won one round and placed third in the other, and therefore both earned slots in the Reaper speed paint final round on Sunday afternoon.  

Two Reaper speed paints; the left one is the round I won

This is the third year in a row where I've been in a speed paint final, so I guess I have some idea of what I'm doing.  After the speed painting, I met Irene and did some shopping in the exhibit hall before closing time. My local group, the HAWKs, have been playing Frostgrave by Osprey for the past two years, so I talked to Frostgrave author Joseph McCullough about the upcoming new game, Ghost Archipelago. 

I got a demonstration of the portable gaming tables from Game Anywhere, and now need to consider whether I would buy one. I went back to the room briefly to empty my pockets before we met the whole crew for dinner at our usual Gencon location.   Irene and I dressed up for the Gencon dance, but after a brief section of ballroom danceable music the DJ switched over to some rave club stuff, and we decided that sleep would be a good plan…  

Sunday, 20 August

We had agreed over dinner that we would make sure that we would check out in time to get to 10:00 games.  Norman and I ended up at Games on Demand for my only RPG of the weekend.  Games on Demand, despite being in a new location due to the remodeling of the downtown Marriott, was apparently popular all weekend.  They put on a selection of mostly indie press games, with a system for randomizing the line so you have a fair chance at signing up for something.  Norman and I drew a mid-range slot, and had a fair number of choices remaining, so we elected to try a Fate Bulldogs game with characters inspired by Guardians of the Galaxy.  I'm reasonably familiar with Fate, so learning the mechanics was no issue.  We had a pleasant session.  I ducked into the dealers' room for one last scan before my 1300 Darksword Miniatures speed paint event.  My brother had been in one of their events on Saturday and had been giving an anthropomorphic animal to paint, so I was unsurprised to find that I had the same.  However, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with a penguin rogue, and my Adelie color scheme was over shadowed by king or emperor penguins.  Of all of the figures I painted, I’m least sure what to do with him.   Norman joined me at 1400 for the Reaper final round.   

Norman and I intent on our work

We had 60 minutes of painting rather than 45 for the earlier rounds, but the miniature was more complicated. 

Not too shabby for 60 minutes

As expected, once I was among the experts, there wasn't a prize.  There was, however, another brush and a free miniature, so what's not to like?  After that it was time to depart...

Overall Impressions

Irene had a good time, and enjoyed watching all the cosplayers.  She came home with a dress on order, to be delivered later, so I may have to engage in a bit myself.  The kids had relatively few scheduled events, so ended up with several Games on Demand sessions and enough Magic to win half a booster box of prizes. My brother’s best experience of the weekend was an opportunity to play the old TSR Dungeon board game with Dave Megarry, the original designer.  

While I was working on my Bee “Die for Coffee” challenge, one of the staff asked what my favorite part of Gencon was.  I didn’t have a ready answer, but I suppose it’s just being there with my family among my peculiar tribe that’s the best part.

Lessons Learned and Path Forward

Despite the fact that I know better, I over-scheduled this year.  Next year I will plan to schedule less, and leave a comfortable amount of time for browsing and the auction.  All Gencon experiences chosen result in missing other things, so the best plan is to make a plan and stick to it, with the caveat that it should retain some looseness.

The handcart turned out to be vital; having used it to drag a game across the convention, I have no idea how we managed to run Norman’s Ringbearer game without it last year.

Because of the over-scheduling, Norman (son) and I did not run anything for Games on Demand as we had hoped; I’d really like to do that next year.  

The drive was long, so flying may be the plan again next year, and that would mean that having a portable miniatures game to run would be a priority.

Portable Fantasy Campaign, Part 3

As I noted previously on this blog, some gaming with my elder son in March left me with an itch to do a campaign.  I therefore sat down to do some reading, and pulled out five books from my collection that seemed pertinent.  These were:

The Partizan Press Guide to Solo Wargaming, Stuart Asquith

The Solo Wargaming Guide, William Silvester

Setting Up a Wargames Campaign, Tony Bath

Solo-Wargaming, Donald Featherstone

Wargame Campaigns, Charles S. Grant

Thus fortified by the wisdom of those who have gone before, I started considering how much record keeping I wanted to do, and what my goals were.  I have reminded myself periodically that my goal is to generate some interesting battles when no opponents are to hand, and to help to keep my painting focused on a broader goal of having this whole project available for conventions someday in the next few years.

Recalling that Hordes of the Things will be the army-level rules of choice, and that I intend to spice things up with Dragon Rampant games which will affect the outcome of the larger army-scale gaming (with skirmish games a possibility, but only rarely being something that would have a lasting effect at a higher level), I set down some preliminary thoughts on scale and record-keeping.

Having drawn the map, I started doing some calculations.  For purposes of the campaign, I wanted to use an area movement system, and have the turns be approximately a week.  With a movement rate of one area per week, this would imply a typical distance of about 50 miles across an area.  The map is about 7x10 areas, or about 350 by 500 miles.  

That is approximately half the size of France, an area which might have contained 6 million people before the Black Death.  If 5% were available for military service, that would be about 300,000 fighters.  Given that there are five countries on the map, if each had a 12 element Hordes of the Things army, each element would represent about 5000 men.  I typically imagine a HotT stand as about a thousand troops, and we are therefore in the right order of magnitude.  Let's assume that the population is only half of that, since it's going to be a turbulent period, and that each country can field two armies.  That would make each Hordes stand about 1250 figures, which is going to be close enough for a fantasy campaign which will not involve detailed logistics calculations.

This set of calculations implies to me, by the way, that the cities marked on the map are only the major population centers, and that there are undoubtedly a lot of smaller cities/towns/castles that are not represented.  At some point, I'll have to think about what that implies about sieges and control of territory.

The logistics that I am willing to deal with will be based around HotT army points.  So, each country will have 24 army points times two armies, or 48 army points.  If each army point is supported by an abstract tax point, each country would have 48 tax points distributed across its six to eight locations.

I could probably handle the paperwork involved with the idea that each territory has some inherent "value" and that the tax points collected each year are 5-10% of the total value.  The reason to do this would be to reflect the effect of raiding warfare, where a successful raid would produce tax points immediately and reduce the overall tax base of the area, so that things would gradually wear down unless some sort of reinvestment was made.  I'd probably want to start each country with some sort of reserve treasury. Ross Macfarlane suggested to me that I could probably just let the tax value regenerate after the collection season, so that raids would have to be sustained to keep a province's value depressed.  That would certainly take less record keeping.

The next question would be what the scale of a Dragon Rampant unit would be.  I am thinking that it would be hard to justify more than about 100 men per unit (so a ratio of about 1:10 against the figure representation on the table).  That would make a Hordes element worth 10 Dragon Rampant units.  So it would be a reasonable amount of bookkeeping to track the results of DR battles at the larger scale.  If a HotT element has lost 6 DR warbands it would round down to being undeployable in a HotT game, but from 0-5 DR warbands lost, it would round up to a normal HotT element.  

I have some thoughts about how to handle raiding/looting/chevauchee in more detail, but I think that will wait for later.

My hope is to kick this off soon with a Dragon Rampant scale game involving the forces of the Baron of Rienne against an increasingly organized company of bandits attempting to build a fort in the Debatable Marches.  The bandits will be "free", but I'll record any results against the Baron of Rienne's forces.  Whether there are follow-ups and what they are, of course, is what makes a campaign.  

I might also note that I have been brainstorming ideas for role-playing game scenarios using this map, and the broader military campaign will potentially be interwoven with any games which result.

July Accomplishments

I ended up painting a fair amount this month, and haven't organized everything into the ultimate storage configuration yet. That left everything all neatly together for a group picture. Except for the 1/72 Vikings in the upper left, they are all vintage 25mm fantasy figures or recasts thereof.

My thoughts on that project are evolving, and I still hope to get back to doing some historical painting again soon.