Totengräber's Workpläce

So I assumed since Dave canceled the D&D game for last night and I’d PM’d Fred over at the Wizards Star Wars Miniatures board that we’d be playing Star Wars Miniatures. I guess I assumed incorrecty. I didn’t hear a peep from Fred or Joe regarding SWM.

I did end up watching a pretty cool 15mm historicals game called Field of Glory made by Osprey. The rules seemed pretty simple and I think I picked up most of them from just watching the game for about an hour and a half. The game was Romans (Late? Early? I don’t know!) versus Numidians (I guess they are Middle Eastern Africans?). The Romans were clearly outnumbered and much slower than the Numidians, but once the Romans got in contact with the lighter infantry of the Numidians, you could see how much better the Romans were in combat.

What I gleaned from watching the game is that combat is worked out based on a comparison of the two troops in melee. Dice are rolled looking for 4+. The Romans were allowed to reroll 1′s and if the unit had a leader, they could also reroll 2′s. This determines the number of hits. Whoever loses combat has to take a “cohesion” test with modifiers starting at 7. If the winner did 2 more hits than the loser, the roll is at -1 (which is really +1 as you have to roll over this number to not fail the test). If the loser fails this 2d6 roll they become Disrupted (or Fragmented if they are already Disrupted; or Broken if they are already Fragmented). Being Disrupted/Fragmented affects the number of dice you are allowed to roll when rolling for hits. Disrupted removes 1 out of 3 dice and Fragmented, 1 out of 2. After the cohesion test, the loser then takes a “Death Roll”, which is they have to roll one die and hope for a result greater than the number of hits inflicted by the winner. If this is failed, a stand is removed from the unit. That is pretty much the meat of the game. Of course, there is movement, manuvering, joint actions and some other phases.

The game looks like fun, but as always with historical games, I think they can get boring pretty quick. If this game catches on, I might look into either an Arabic-themed or samurai-themed army.

Tonight is supposed to be our bi-weekly Star Wars RPG game. I know Joe isn’t going to be there, and based on the last few sessions, I don’t expect too many others to actually show up. If there isn’t enough to play tonight, I think I’m going to call the game off completely and maybe figure out something else with some more reliable people.

The way things have been going in my gaming world lately, it almost seems pointless to bother showing up at the store anymore.

On a lighter note, I have reconnected with some of the old crew from the Confrontation days (JR, John, Tim) and I might be getting in a game of 40K or WotR soon. I was also able to set up a War of the Ring game for next Tuesday with Bill so we can re-learn the game.