New Game - Dystopian Wars

So maybe once-a-week is not a great format for me. Perhaps a bi-weekly report would allow me to keep the blog on a more consistent level. That said, I've actually seen an explosion of tabletop action within the past week alone.


[Dystopian Wars]
the hot new game that I dove into over the past week is Dystopian Wars. Dystopian Wars or DW as most people are calling it, is a steampunk-themed vehicle combat game set in an alternate history of 1870. The Industrial Revolution of the 1900's took place earlier and humans have discovered a new element in the Antarctica region called Sturginium which allows for the construction of super-massive vehicles, airships, tanks, etc. Players take command of these vehicles and try to capture or destroy their opponents models. The game is made by a company called Spartan Games out of the UK. Using a similar ruleset they also make a space-naval game, and a fantasy-naval game.


[DW-Good]
    So here's some of the great stuff about DW. I'll try to avoid making it sound like a sales pitch and more like a 'if you're interested' kind of review. First thing I latched into with DW that many other frugal gamers might eyeball was - price points. Most tabletop gamers know, the hobby we play is not a cheap one (usually) and although many games exist that use few models, some of the best and most well known games also have a high price tag. The bonus of the higher price tag and reputation of bigger games, like Warhammer and Warmachine, is that you can always find someone to play thus justifying the roughly 75-90$ 'buy-in' to get an army started. Then like most games, once you purchase the basics you're going to need specialists to help counter an opponent' specialists. Point is, DW is great because you can buy an entire naval fleet for: 50$ that's right, 50$
    What do you get for 50$? 1 battleship, 1 squadron of cruisers (3 models), 3 squadrons of frigates (9 models) 2 bomber airplanes (2 models) and 10 fighter plan tokens (10 'models'). Not counting the fighter  plane tokens, that's 15 models for 50$! that was the argument that got me to accept the 'buy-in' and my friend purchased another country's fleet. The rulebook was 30$ which is on par with a 40k codex, whereas the 40k rulebook is roughly 50$ itself sometimes higher. so in terms of price point, DW is a bargain. 
    The next question then you could ask is; what kind of models do I get for this 50$ here we go. I'll show you my fully painted Federated States of America (USA) battle group. 

That's 1 battleship, 3 cruisers and 9 frigates. I have not painted the air models yet. To give you a sense of scale the frigates are 1.5" and the battleship is 4.5"! in terms of scale their very big and incredibly detailed. The models are molded from resin, minimal flash, and as you can see with these FSA models the detail is incredible with each little turret clearly and cleanly molded. 
    Now the second part of the equation is, how does the game play? If you've ever played something like Warmachine or Heavy Gear then DW will feel familiar. Players roll for initiative with 2D6 apiece and add the results, the highest goes first. Then both sides take turns activating squadrons of vehicles and performing moving/shooting/assaulting in standard faire. Due to these vehicles being very large in the game world, all ships use turning templates to turn with. There's one template for each model size. Units move in inches, and each segment of the turn template is 1" as well. 
    Shooting is also very familiar. Weapons are measured in a series of 'Range Bands.' Each Range Band is 8", meaning Range Band 2 is 16" while Range Band 4 is 32". All units are supplied with a unit card that gives the unit's stats and weapons. Weapon damage is done in terms of dice rolled, so a weapon that is rated as '12' means one rolls 12 dice to attack with. Once rolled, the attacker needs a 4,5, or 6 to hit. DW also uses the 'exploding dice' mechanic on 6. If someone rolls a 6, then the hit counts as two hits, and the player rolls the dice again. This results in some crazy rolls which only adds to the fun.
    The final piece of action is assualts, most games have some form of CQB or 'Close Quarters Battle.' In DW it's boarding, all ships have a complement of rocket-powered marines ready to leap onto an enemy ship and attempt to board it. Once there, the defender must fight off the boarders or risk losing control of the ship to the enemy!
    This was a brief, but that is the game in short, another good fact is that the game system itself was designed so that players can use Land, Air, and Naval units at the same time in battle using roughly the same rules.
[DW-Bad]
    Now for some downsides. I'll start with probably the worst - the rulebook. Although it's priced at 30$, the rulebook is very disorganized. Yes it is broken into sections concerning each segment of gameplay, it's the layout of those sections which are a nightmare to read. The overall design of each segment is: provide some paragraphs of the rules, a bulleted list or two, and then endless examples. That's the problem when in the middle of gameplay, one does not have time to skim through examples to find out if their adhering to a rule or not! Some rules aren't fully explained either! to me the straw that broke the camel's back was that the index was not laid out alphabetically by item but alphabetically by SECTION. Ergo, skimming the index was almost impossible because it's organized by overarching sections, not the actual individual item you need!
    Another issue is that at times the gameplay can be really basic. The shooting mechanics are straightforward and thus it takes away from some of the flavor when you realize that most guns always hit on a 50/50 dice roll. In an effort to make nicer gameplay, DW removes some of the nuance of vehicle play like to-hit modifiers like movement, and in the case of the ocean: choppy or calm seas. 
    In conclusion, if you're looking for a tabletop-lite game, DW is it. It's fairly fun, the models look nice, and the price is low. Just take this with a grain of salt; learning the full rules will take a little longer than most due to poor layout and word choice. I personally found it entertaining as a warhammer 40k/ warmachine player and will continue to play it in the future.


[References]
Spartan Games http://www.spartangames.co.uk/
Dystopian Wars at BoardGameGeek http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/85652/dystopian-wars

MetroSiege: Challenge of invention

As promised - a post on the subsequent Sunday! 
This weeks topic is an explanation of my tabletop game creation experiment. 


Origins:
I've been playing tabletop games on and off for the better part of a decade. It all started with playing Wh40k at a cousins house using a set of small toys as proxys for the real deal. That christmas my brother and I got wh40k starter kits, 6 years later, almost a thousand dollars I sit on over 40 individually painted figures and some awesome memories. So yes, I love tabletop. In the past four years I have also started to branch out, starting with Battletech, then trying Heavy Gear, Warmachine, and then onto other types of tabletop like Steve Jacksons Frag and Nexus' Wings of War. Throughout these all I tried to think about what got me interested in each. I won't go through the list but throughout most of them it was aspects like: ease of play, quick play times, a fun theme, and fun/goofy mechanics. 


Battletech only sticks out because I enjoyed as being a very long term Mechwarrior/Battletech lover, so I am able to look past it's fault to enjoy it but understand that a new player would have no real interest in learning to play this game. Battletech's game system offers an incredibly detailed combat model dealing with giant robot warfare which is great for fans but results in a clunky and extended play time. Frag however is fast, brutal, and fun that every gamer could get behind. Frag's system is also open enough to let players come up with their own content to enhance the system.


So where is this all going? it leads to MetroSiege, a tabletop wargame of my own design. Metrosiege has its roots in an attempt to create a tabletop wargame based on my comic universe, I started writing it roughly two years ago. At the time I was incredibly inspired by Battletech to write a wargame that could make giant robot combat faster but also remain nuanced. Needless to say the project ended a few months later with a half-baked rulebook that was never tested. Next attempt came early last year when I was tapped by some forum goers of a website I frequent to help write a tabletop game based on the ancient Earthsiege(1) franchise. I would write the rules, and another would make models. Again this ended in failure but was not over.


The Idea:
Around November of last year I swung around to trying to make a tabletop game again. The idea was to try and make a system that exhibited the core of most tabletop games but be straightforward so that anyone could play it (like Frag). Here were the core rules:


-models on a table
-Cards for powers and equipment
-dice for action checks
-moving models around


I'll post the original rule book from this on here at some point, it was a simple take game where players made their own tanks made of 2d cutouts and then were given 7 points to spend on 3 aspects: guns, armor, and engines. It was fun, but I felt too simple to keep alive, so back to the workshop.


This is where Earthsiege comes back in, I decided to use an existing video game to work off of. Part of it was the safety of existing gameplay structure, other spur was my love of the franchise itself. I own both Earthsiege 1 and 2, content to pick them up from time to time and explore the Mechwarrior(2) that might have been. Anyway, Earthsiege provided a framework to use and the tabletop system I explored in the Tank game provided the starting direction. Thus Earthsiege would be turned into a tabletop wargame, where players commanded groups of mecha units, fighting for control of earth.


The Implementation:
I wanted to emulate some of the best aspects of the old video game in the tabletop game as well. I created a basic stat-line for a mech that all mechs would go off of. Points cost, Speed, Energy, Shields, Armor, Weapons. These stats would dictate the behavior of any mech, and Earthsiege provided mechs to choose from. Shields and Armor were the health of any unit, the dynamic is, shields were able to be replenished but armor was worn away. A player had to get through the shields to get to the armor, units were destroyed when   the armor was gone and enough cards taken from a Damage Deck. Mechs would also have space for weapons. 


Taking cues from Frag with concern to player cards and tokens, I chose to make tokens for Energy, Shields, Armor, and weapons. Likewise these would be placed on or adjacent to a card that gave info for each unit. 

A = Weapon token
B =  Energy Tokens
C = Shield Tokens
D = Armor Tokens
E = The 2d cutout of the unit to use on the table
F = The unit card


This was my first draft a unit card, for a sense of scale the card is 6"x6" with the tokens being 1"x1".
I showcased it to my friend as a playtester and we set about making a few more. After determining that it was a fun and good way to go for unit management I made more official cards for existing Earthsiege units.

Using the lineart from the game itself, the unit cards were quick and easy to make. From here on, it was simply testing and tweaking weapon and unit stats. Here is the rundown of the turn for all players:

1) Initiative

2) Actions

3)Resolution

A simple core of three main phases to each turn. Opposing sides roll off 2D6 (6-sided die) and add together, whoever gets the highest gets to move their first unit, first. Players then take turns performing actions with units: mostly moving and shooting. Finally, damage is resolved at the end, along with energy counts etc. The first play test was great - we resolved 1v1 in about 20 minutes. 

As I printed more unit cards out, we had to rewrite and tweak some stats for weapons. A perfect example was the laser weapons, we could not figure out why a player would take lasers over cannons. We had to figure out a reason for the weapons existence - in this case lasers get +1 damage to armor. And this ocurred across the weapons table, each weapon had to have a unique element that made them attractive but at the same time a flaw.

MetroSiege:

Now this is the most recent development. After talking it over with my testing partner, I decided to break away from the Earthisege story core. That is, keep the engine of the car the same, but change the paint job and interior. MetroSiege is the new face of the system, and is largely inspired by Earthsige. It's a work-in-progress now with me as an artist trying to come up with new mech looks, weapons and story. But now that it is my own property I can market it to new people easier and perhaps make it even more compelling as a universe. 

Heres the link to download and try:

Google Docs Link

References:

(1)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaltech:_Earthsiege

(2)earthsiege was released at the same time MechWarrior 2 was in 1995, a direct competitor. For a few interesting reasons, Earthsiege never took off like MechWarrior 2 did, a shame because Earthsiege offered a much more military-focused simulation that MechWarrior. 

The Rundown

Got the first post out of the way, on to more concrete things and perhaps a posting schedule. I'm thinking of making this sanity check every week or so, on Sundays; seems like a good day for recapping. This second post will outline the blog forecast for the next month or so, detailing what I intend to cover but do note that the random post will still make it's way in here. This Sunday will just be outlining everything first and probably an intermediary post this week to setup the first topic I will cover.


Here's the list:
-Tabletop: ideas, future, games I like, stuff I'm working on
-Video Games: ideas, developing, opinions etc
-Artwork: comic projects, one-offs, stuff I've read
-Creative Process: my approach, cool stuff, misc(?)


It's going to be a more personal blog than most, more opinion and questions rather than something more formal like a news blog (there's already plenty). This is all mainly for record keeping and a bit of public eye; the norm is a blog rather than the small leather-bound journal of past eras. Again this structure will mainly be informal, not every post will conform rigidly to those 4 topics, and posts may fall outside of the months discussion mainly cause I will posting as these thoughts and ideas come around. I will try as time goes on to make sure that the posts themselves are more coherent in their message allowing for an easier read and digestion - nobody likes rants or the dreaded wall of text.
-Subject9x

What goes on here

Greetings programs; this is Peter aka Subject9x. I have created this blog as an outlet to the world, informing anyone who reads about my projects, thoughts and etc. I will primarily focus on posting about the projects and comments on Tabletop games, Video Games, and artwork. So far to tease, I have one tabletop project in the pipe, a video game I am working on with a partner, and a comic series that I am doing myself. This blog may never be fully organized but I will try to stay current and post consistently, never had a blog before so bear with me on this. 
-Subject9x