Elvish Longbow Fascists ELF

The Elves have built a civilisation based on the concepts of beauty, elegant design, high culture, epic coolness, total superiority, and a complete disdain for any of the other races.

Their leaders are a family of tyrants, the WhiteCheats, who have passed the superbly designed and elegant crown down their family over thousands of years. So well designed the blood stains wash right off.

The cities of the Elves are creations of great wonder and fantastic design. It is a pity so few of the other races ever see them as it would raise their opinion of the elves from a distinct loathing to an envious dislike. The Elves are very particular of who they let into their cities and towns which are surrounded by woods and lakes of great natural beauty. The Elves happily slaughter anyone they find sneaking about them and it is a favourite pastime for the younger elves to lurk around the woods, enticing unsuspecting visitors to enter, to lead them astray, and then kill them in entertaining ways.

They naturally hold the other races in contempt. The Orcs are crude and disgusting, the Dwarves are disgusting socialists and despised as a race of regicides, and the humans barely tolerated.

The only members of the other races that the Elves will voluntarily talk to are wizards, who by dint of great knowledge and skills can be considered to be worthy of some respect, despite not being elves.

The main weapons of the elves are the bow and the sword but they also employ wizards on the battlefield.

The Elvish Army

Elvish swords men

An Elvish Heroine

The Elvish General

An Elvish Hero

Elvish Bowmen

Elvish Bowmen

Elvish Wizard

19C - War of the Antipodes - VSF Rules

Background

To play my VSF campaign between NSW and Victoria I needed a set of rules and I decided to write my own.

Link to Rules

I wanted something relatively simple, of only a few pages (similar to FUBAR) but which had enough rules for morale, machinery reliability (from GASLIGHT) and also able to manage reasonably sized armies of toy soldiers.

I was not going to attempt to create a realistic set of rules with lots of detail as these would be very long and time consuming both to write and to play. To this end the rules represent many factors in a very limited fashion or ignore them completely. Hopefully I still get some of the “flavour” of the period they are set in.

I feel that reliability of machinery is important for this era and it was something I wanted to include in the rules. However I do not want it ruining the game, if due to bad dice rolls, a machine can just sit there all game doing nothing. 

To cover unit morale and experience I decided to combine machine reliability with human training and morale for a single “reliability” indicator that would cover them both.

As casualties or damage are taken reliability will decrease for both troops and machinery. This is reflected by the decrease in reliability levels during the game. Reliability effects the ability of units to carry out actions and their effectiveness in combat and so is also a proxy for morale.

Action points were included to give some variability in units’ reactions and to create some of Clausewitz’s friction or fog of war. Each turn units will roll to see how many action points they get that turn and then can spend them performing different actions.

Action point generation are biased to give each unit the chance of acting each turn. High reliability / trained troops are likely to do more than less reliable/trained troops and to ensure that troops will not stand around (staring at each other in embarrassment) both high and medium reliability troops will always do something.

Action points also give the opportunity for highly trained undamaged units to out shoot less trained or battle damaged units as each turn they are likely to fire more and with greater effect.

I also like the idea that when your troops are out of enemy line of sight your troops can move further as this gives more reason to hold reserves, switch attacks, etc. than if troops can only move the same distance all the time. On a large enough board you can do flank marches with some (but not complete) confidence that the troops will get there in time. To do this I have included the ability to move multiple times if a unit is only in the enemy’s LOS for one of the moves - as long as you get enough action points.

Multiple moves can give an attacker an advantage but only at the risk of an attack becoming disjointed as some troops move faster or more often than others.

Suppression is inspired by that in FUBAR where initial losses are not permanent but can be recovered. Action points spent on removal of suppression levels can represent damage control on machines or taking cover for other troops. If the decision is to press on regardless of the damage or fire then the next casualties or damage will be more permanent.

The markers on the bases are to remove the need for bookkeeping or having dice next to the figures, or in the case of FUBAR having troops on their side. Using the blue, green, yellow and red bars as markers is inspired from computer games where these indicators are common on screen.

I didn’t want any type of troop type to dominate the game so I think they all have trade-offs and benefits. The practice battles seemed to go the right way and to be reasonably balanced. The other side of troop types is being able to represent everything but without having too many rules or special cases. I think this has happened and the generic nature of the weaponry, saves for damage, and the reliability factors mean that many things can be represented within the rules.

Army Commanders were added to the rules simply because I had painted and based them for each of my armies. The rules give them the ability to affect the battle, to “rally” troops and get them to do more, but only in a limited area. These abilities seems to be consistent with the role of commanders in a battle.

The rules have turned out to be fairly “bloody” and combat and unit destruction is fairly quick. I think that this makes a better game (though not very realistic).

Combat is also biased towards the unit that fires first and in a fair fight, the unit that fires first will win. However, this seems to conform to reality and just proves that when attacking you need to concentrate against defenders with at least double the forces.

19C - War of the Antipodes - Battle Report 3 - Battle for Bare Island

This is the third battle to test my new rules 19C VSF.

Bare Island is just inside the entrance of Botany Bay and on it is constructed a small fort to protect Sydney’s rear door.

The game described below is actually a repeat. The first game ended in only two turns with both the Victorian ships sunk. Which goes to show that you should never attempt to force an entrance past a well defended and ready fortress. In this game I am starting all the NSW forces as unprepared with a reliability level of red. They have to roll on the Activation points table each turn and for every activation point they get their reliability increases one level.

NSW defenders are:
One ray gun
Two fortress guns – Heavy Artillery
Two companies of infantry

Victorian attackers are:
Two ships, one carrying two companies of infantry and one carrying a squadron of cavalry and one company of infantry.
Two Airships. Each armed with a medium artillery and a Gatling gun.
Opening positions

Starting positions - Blue troops on bottom right are the troops in the Victorian boats

Turn 1
The Victorians advance.

The ships coming through the entrance directly in front of the NSW guns with one ship heading for the shore line in front of Bare Island to disembark its two infantry companies while the other makes a beeline for the wharf behind Bare Island where it can disembark its cavalry squadron and infantry company. The airships have cleverly flown over land and approach Bare Island from the south where the guns can’t fire.

NSW starts to wake up. One of the fortress guns goes to Yellow reliability as does the infantry in the fortress.

Victorian ships - air and sea advance in a coordinated assault.

Turn 2

More movement. The Victorian ships disembarks its two infantry companies on NSW territory and the other ship continues to the wharf. The airships move forward to attack the fortress from behind.
NSW continues to wake up. The Raygun rolls a 6 and gets two activation points so moves to green reliability. Both fortress guns get one activation point each so one moves to green reliability and the other to yellow. The infantry in the fortress also move to green reliability. The infantry on the shore stay asleep.

End of turn 2

Close up of the Victorian landings on "Sword" Beach

Turn 3

More moving from the Victorians.
The infantry on land advance against the Raygun. Capturing the small tower will help them to isolate Bare Island fortress.

The ships and airships move forward.

NSW is finally awake enough to fight back.

The Raygun fires at the Victorian VII infantry and score 9 hits with 9 damage. Two bases are lost and reliability moves to yellow.

One of the fortress guns fire at the red hulled ship and gets 8 hits with 5 damage and reduces it to yellow reliability. But it is nearly past the fortress and it should be an easy run to the wharf.

The other fortress gun moves to green reliability and the infantry on the fortress move to Blue reliability. The infantry on land stubbornly stick to their beds and won’t get up.

End of turn 3

The Victorians sneaking past the fortress

Turn 4

The Victorian infantry continue their advance on the tower.

The ships move forward. In the air one of the airships blasts at the fortress guns but despite getting 3 hits causes on damage. It fires its cannon at the raygun and also despite getting 2 hits causes no damage.

NSW

The raygun blasts the Victorian VII infantry and gets 10 hits and causes 9 damage. The infantry is reduced to one base and has red reliability.

With the red hulled ship past the fortress the guns concentrate on the green hulled ship. Together they get 18 hits and cause 6 damage.

The NSW Infantry in the fortress move to cover the walls as the Victorian ship moves past.

The infantry on land refuse to be woken early and keep to their beds.

End of turn 4

Turn 5

The Victorian Infantry on land continue their advance towards the tower.

The green hulled ship fires its Gatling gun at the fortress artillery but despite getting three hits causes no damage.

The red hulled ship continues towards the wharf, safe from the fortress guns.

Airship III fires its Gatling gun at the fortress artillery and gets one hit and causes one damage.

Airship II fires its cannon at the raygun and gets four hits and causes two damage.

The Raygun gets two action points and pivots to fire on the Victorian infantry and scores 7 hits and cause 5 damage. The Victorian infantry lose a base and go down to green reliability.

The fortress guns fire on the green hulled Victorian ship and cause 2 more damage points which sink it.

And finally on land the NSW infantry finally rolls a 6 and goes to green reliability. It is ready for action. Maybe all the guns firing woke them up.

End of turn 5 - looking at the photos I realised I should have shown the sunken Victorian ship just with its masts sticking up out of the water.

Turn 6

The Victorian infantry get two action points and close assault the raygun destroying it with 3 damage points to none. As the raygun must retreat but cannot to move it is destroyed.

The Victorian Infantry occupy the tower just in time to thwart the lay-in-bed NSW infantry.

With their only threat now destroyed the Airships now target the NSW infantry near the tower. They get 19 hits between them and then 12 damage. The NSW infantry lose two bases and go down to red reliability.

NSW is really had it now. They cannot target the airships or the ship. All that is going to happen is that Victorian troops will stand off and destroy the remaining NSW infantry before assaulting the fortress. So the white flag goes up and Victoria is Victorious.

End of turn 6 and game over for NSW - I need some white flags

Lessons learned from this play test.

The ships are too vulnerable. I will decrease their save roll from 3 to 2. This should make them twice as strong.

Airships were too slow. I will increase their speed to 30cm and ships to 20cm.

The one move action if in LOS of the enemy is too restrictive. Infantry and Cavalry will be able to use one action point to change formation, line to column or reverse, and also a second one to move if they manage to roll two or then close assault if they got three action points.

Infantry loses its reliability too quickly and then becomes useless. Therefore I will change the rules so that Infantry and Cavalry gets to save their reliability decrease if they roll equal to or less than the number of bases remaining in the unit, including the command base. Also, if they win a close assault they automatically do not lose any reliability. If they lose a close assault they automatically do lose reliability. This will add some flavour to the game and give these unit types more power.