S3 After game thoughts and notes

The games we played highlighted a number of interesting things.

Firstly, children really are worse than useless. Their deficit in Action Points (AP) means they can’t keep up with the adults, and even a single move – two at most - as part of a group will leave them out of the 3” radius activation circle requiring a whole other Order Point (OP – using this terminology to avoid having two rules with the same acronym) to move them which will probably never happen once combat is joined. I think in future we’re going to houserule that they get free activation. They’re only really worth it to ferry things around as they’re worthless in combat with their -8 penalty. Apply that to ranged combat as well and you can arm them and even then statistically speaking they will never hurt anyone even if they’re outnumbering their target.

Speaking of outnumbering, apart from some vagueness around the rules as written melee combat is fast, brutal, realistic and quite satisfying. Outnumbering gives a huge advantage although well-armed and motivated fighters can get lucky and limp away from an unfair fight. The randomness of the wound chart means that there’s always a messy chaotic element to melee (as there should be) but by making good matchups on the turn you charge or counter charge you can more or less predict the outcome of fights.

There needs to be a little clarification around the melee rules. The rule that calls for some models to get half their dice when wounded or outnumbered for instance; does this mean that you half the number rolled on the dice before modifiers or after? We played the former as it seemed to make sense and it worked for us. It made sense as the rules disadvantaged the figures ability to act and not the effectiveness of the equipment he was carrying. Also in two on one fights the rules are not explicit as to who takes wounds in the case of results of X, Y and Z, where X>Y>Z and Y is the outnumbered model’s total. We played it so that both Y and Z took wounds, the idea being that Y managed to do well enough to injure one of his attackers but was injured in turn by X.

And – segue! -  speaking of outnumbering; Don’t Mess With Wolves! They will fuck your shit up! There needs to be a little bit more structure around their use. When they act in the initiative (we gave them a separate roll) and how they react to long range fire or just people moving around outside their rather small 6” ‘zone of control’ isn’t detailed.

Finally, the campaign rules, and even objectives for single games need some work. According to Xander, a common objective is to gather enough food to feed your group, but despite having a dozen and a half search points at least in both games and searching nearly all of them, we only found one food item over the course of both games. When we were considering Campaign-asizing the first encounter we realised that the result would have been a complete wipe of both parties. Some work needs to be put into making this game work as a campaign game. I have some ideas in my head but I don't want to get sidetracked away from my own projects.

Overlord

I recently got my mitts on the new Overlord book and found that there had been some substantial changes to my para's.

While combat platoons stay the same in price, all of my anti tank has received APDS ammo giving both 6 and 17 pounders an extra point of anti-tank with a resultant increase in points cost. While this might slightly scarier for any Panzer IV's floating around and might give some of the big kitty players something to think about I'd still probably rather have the extra change.

As it is, I can play the lists I already play, by dropping the sniper and 2 dice of air support (down to sporadic - something I was toying with anyway).

My Tetrarchs have also gone up in price for no readily identifiable reason - maybe because they now have cautious movement and disengage without being recce teams.

Speaking of which there is a new list for Airborne Armoured Recce, allowing you to field an entire army of Tetrarch. Now this is probably a little much even for me and my love for the little beasties, but they can be mixed and matched with Cromwells which is heaven for me! My two favourite tanks of WWII fighting in the same list. It's also opportune as I noted in my last post, I have all my Cromwells ready meaning I can field this list right away with para infantry support. All I need to round out the list is a captured Sd Kfz 10/5 flack track.

Thing a Week 4

So four things in twice as many months. So much for forcing myself to paint things.

Here's my latest offering.

The photo's a little overexposed but I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out, despite a little flub with the highlighting and yet another technique for getting the weathering to look realistic.

With these two complete, and thanks to the repricing of units in the new Overlord book, I have completed both my short term goals of a 900pt Tank Aces force and a minimum strength Desert Rats List.

Scavenge Skirmish Survive mob

I've managed to swing myself some S3 action at the start of September, and to this end have had a rummage in the lead pile for suitable figures to start painting up.

A motley crew indeed.

Composition wise, they're probably not all that optimised, despite being fairly heavily armed, with a pump action shotgun and an SMG in their ranks. I've also skimped on the abilities, leaving only one figure with Fighting & Shooting (Lead Adventures Not!AliceFromResidentEvil) and one Leading and Organising (the slightly modified Musketeer Miniatures Brigand Character).

I'm pretty sure that my conversion from a Brodie helmet to a beanie has left the commander looking like he's a monk. I might have to really emphasis the fabric of the hat when painting.

Scavenge, Skirmish, Survive: Corrections and Clarifications

The creator of Scavenge, Skirmish, Survive got in touch with me through the Post Apocalyptic Wargames Forum after reading this review. I'm honoured!

I have a couple of clarifications to issue.

Firstly, I misread the rules regarding blizzards. In order to be affected a model has to be outside and without a supply bag. As almost everyone has a supply bag the rule will effect very few models.

Secondly, the extra expense of boy characters was, as I suspected, a typo, or rather, a holdover from a previous version of the rules, so SCUM lose this one.

Hot Infantry on Infantry Action

For someone like me, who likes statistics but has very little idea how they work having the following aide would probably be very useful.

Playing a force in Flames of War that mostly consists of elite infantry backed up with a few support options, if often find myself disregarding my squad's small arms in favour of retaining my gone to ground bonus. Most of my platoon's kills come in assault rather than from actual firefights.

To satisfy my own curiosity, and for the edification of you, my reader, I present the probability of effective small arms fire in Flames.

Below are the numbers (rounded to the nearest round number) presented in a handy cut out and keep format.

To Hit	2+	3+	4+	5+	6+
No of kills	28	22	17	11	6
With Bulletproof	5	4	3	2	1

Scavenge, Skirmish, Survive: a review

What's that? A new version of Scavenge, Skirmish, Survive? Yes please.

Ok, I've been sitting on this review for a while. I really like the setting and the feel of Scavenge, Skirmish Survive, it's a pity that I haven't managed to get a game of it yet and probably wont for the foreseeable future.

So a super-volcano has exploded, filling the atmosphere with crap and bringing about a nuclear volcanic winter - nicely sidestepping any political blame gaming for the apocalypse in the intro - letting us get straight into the action, which is all about groups of survivors with minimal equipment clinging to their lives. It's part The Road, part The Walking Dead. Some achingly beautiful terrain has been made for it and there are really nifty models for sale. The rules are free (but still in beta) and can be found here along with the rest of the store.

The rules are pretty solid and intuitive, seemingly geared towards multiplayer games, featuring an action point system and special event cards which change the weather (among other things). The blizzards are probably my only real quibble with the mechanics, as they seem to be related to the Protagonist Tracking InstaFreeze(TM) blizzards from The Day After Tomorrow, giving every character a 50% chance of dying every turn they remain exposed.

But that's enough praise, lets get to the hot spicy sexism!

Now, every model in the game is essentially the same, with only special qualities effecting rolls. Age and gender, however, are modifiers, and women (of all ages) get -2 to melee rolls.

Now, this irked me when I first read it, then it sort of made sense, then it started to irk me again.

Before I get started I would like to say that I am sure the author is not sexist, nor intended to come off as one.

My immediate reaction was; Christ, even D&D stopped pulling this shit 3 editions ago. Sure, men have a natural advantage in upper body strength but with enough training there's nothing to stop anyone from closing that gap, why model it in a game? Additionally, everyone in the S3 setting is going to be so malnourished and wasted away that most of that advantage will disappear.

Then it occurred to me that having women with this disadvantage created a 'second line' fighter that was quickly and easily distinguishable from others. It's not like there's a huge variety of differently armed and armoured troops running around. 

I've seen plenty of Blood Bowl games where all that distinguishes one type of model from another is a rubber band, or the colour of the base. And in a game like S3 that has no standardisation of model type, gender is one of the few things that's going to help give you some variety in troop types. (The age difference - and thus difference in fighting strength - in men is marked by whether they have beards or not... There's a joke in there somewhere but I cant find it*).

It would be nice if a sidebar was included explaining the reasoning though.

However, I started to look at how this was affected by other rules, and found some weird inconsistencies.

If we accept that the average man would win in fight against the average woman, how would this situation change if we gave her a machete or a sword and he remained unarmed? According to the rules he'd still have a fifty fifty chance of winning.

What.

Perhaps to resolve this there could be negative modifier for unarmed combatants facing armed enemies.

There's also a weird insult to both sexes written into the points system.

Each gender/age bracket has a point value assigned to it, ranging from 6 points for an adult male to 3 points for a girl.

However, both boys and women are priced at 4 points. Children in this game are essentially worthless. They can't be armed, carry next to nothing and with a -8 modifier they will almost always lose fights.

What the rules seem to be implying, is that a male child - who can do essentially nothing - and a adult woman - who can be armed and fight - are worth the same.

On the flip side this would also suggest that some sort of inferred gender-cide is going on as, if a player had to take a child, they would always take a girl. All the (non)abilities of her male companions but 1 point cheaper.

While these issues are probably just oversights, if for some reason you think they are reasonable, I want you to imagine yourself explaining them to the female gamer in your life (if you're lucky enough to have one) while maintaining eye contact.

In any case, I've offered my ideas for house ruling these oddities and they'll be what I use if I ever get a chance to actually play S3, something I really want to do.

*Something about Samson and Delilah maybe? Or maybe a scholarly reference to Hamlet?