Pulpy Boat Crew

Have had these figures (mostly Artisan) and the resin boat (Ainsty) for ages and finally got round to painting them. I had the idea they might work as some sort of yacht club faction for AVBCW, but will also work just as well for a pulp crew.

We also played a four-handed game of Living on the Frontline last week, which went well. Have added some leader figures for the military, police, and People's Party factions. The military couple are from Artisan, Thatcher from Mike Bravo Minis, and Wolfie Smith from Matchlock Miniatures. Also got various specialist military figures from Crooked Dice and some heavily armed police from Mike Bravo.

Freedom for Downend!

Burn and Loot

So, I have Fireforge's Deus Vult, and have played it a few times. I really liked a lot about it, but a few of the bits left a bit for me to desire. I like games with a consistent and neat core mechanic, and I liked Deus Vult's. It's basically roll one or several d6, a 6 is a Resounding Success, 4 and 5 are successes, 2 and 3, failures, and a 1 an Abject Failure. And this mechanic goes through the whole game in quite a nice way.

But I had a few problems with it. A lot of units had a pretty long list of exceptions, which I found difficult to keep track of. Probably just my feeble mind and not a fault of the game, to be fair. And in melee there were often massive dice pile-ups which seemed a bit excessive. You get a basic 1 dice per stand attack, but then you were often adding another dice per stand for an advantageous circumstance. And so with powerful units they could crash through a game, where you'd been happily rolling 6 or 8 dice attacks, with 24 dice attacks and follow up attacks and following up follow up attacks. Again, not necessarily a problem, but it did feel like these units (charging knights and other heavy cavalry, mostly) made the rest of the game irrelevant (which, who knows, irl, they could well have been).

Then, there was the way the morale mechanic interacted with the fighting mechanic. Essentially, if you took a certain number of casualties a poor roll would leave you demoralised, and with a good roll you'd be fine. But there wasn't a lot of modification to this roll. Have a load of knights smash through your archers leaving 80% of them dead, you can still stand firm. Have a few hopeful arrows fired in your direction from a distant unit, you might have just about the same chance of holding. Again, not necessarily a problem, who knows how the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune really affected things on the battlefield?

But, these factors affected my enjoyment of what, for me, could have been a great game. Who knows, someone else could easily love the game for similar reasons, so this isn't a criticism of Deus Vult.

So, I was very interested to see that Fireforge had brought out Burn and Loot. A Deus Vult game for 'small engagements.' The idea seemed to be to have similar rules to Deus Vult but to use individual figures in informal groups to represent individuals in loose order instead of stands of several figures used to represent massed ranks. And the idea seemed to be to keep the stats and traits of units as similar to Deus Vult as possible, but to redefine them where necessary to take into account the different scope of the game.

So, figures are arranged in groups (or blobs as I like to call groups of figures in a skirmish sort of order with no facing and a simple limitation on group integrity). A blob can take as many casualties as is inflicted upon it regardless of whether they are in range of enemy attacks (you only need to be in range of one figure to attack it). But a figure can only inflict damage if it is within range (2 inches in melee) of an enemy. Therefore it doesn't make any sense not to line up in tight formations; who wants to be in a position where you can take damage but not give it?

I was under the impression that this game might be for smaller units, which it is, just, but really in the army lists I used, the unit sizes were pretty similar to Deus Vult. Eg, in DV you can take 3 to 6 stands of knights, that's 6 to 12 models, and 4 to 8 stands of crusader spearmen, that's 24 to 48 models. And in B&L you can take 4 to 12 knights, and 12 to 48 spearmen.

One thing I found in B&L, the massive dice pool thing is a lot more prevalent. In DV you take attack dice for each stand (2 figures for cavalry, 6 for infantry) starting at a base of 1 dice per stand. In B&L you take them per figure, so for infantry that's 6 times as many dice. And although there are fewer bonuses for advantageous circumstances (like attacking flanks etc, coz there are no flanks) the pool sizes still creep up. We only had a 150 dice pool in our game, but worked out this could have got to 240. And yes, we did bother to roll it.

We found that weight of numbers was more of a factor than quality of troops in battle. Although higher quality of troops gave you more attack dice in the right circumstances, it was much cheaper to get those dice from troop numbers which are then available in all circumstances. This was compounded by the relative cost of troops, which seems to have been miscalculated when converting from Deus Vult.

For example, 6 stands of knights (12 figures) in DV costs 195 points while 12 figures in B&L costs 216 points. In contrast, 8 stands of spearmen (48 figures) costs 210 points in DV, while 48 figures in B&L costs 196 points. This looks fair enough, except attack dice are calculated by stand in DV and by figure in B&L. So, you get three times as much bang for your buck with infantry in B&L than DV. This was certainly apparent in our game where we had units of expensive cavalry wiped out quite comfortably by average infantry.

Another thing that didn't feel right for me in B&L was the way the leader is dealt with. I really liked leaders in Deus Vult, just lending morale dice to nearby troops and mostly keeping out the way. To a certain extent, this is similar in B&L, but it looks like they added extra rules for leaders as an after thought. Now, you can spend points in a Warhammer Fantasy Battle type build, kitting out your leader with loads of equipment and (to all intents and purposes) magic item-analogues.

It really looks like someone tore a page out of a WFB book and sellotaped it into B&L. Which is odd because B&L leaders can (and should) stay in a unit. Leaders in a unit only take damage when the rank and file have been whittled through. Total casualties on the unit are calculated and if the leader is the Nth figure in range it will lose a wound. So why spend WFB moments building and paying for  a heavily armoured leader if it effectively takes the armour of the unit it is in?

The original idea of having a leader just giving out its morale scores to those within range is a nice, neat one that suits the game. Changing this to a WFB (or maybe Saga) style high-powered hero might have worked if done properly, but here it's a sort of half and half compromise.

So, really, I can't be much more emphatic about about how disappointed I was with Burn & Loot. It seems to be an ill-considered rehash of DV that was maybe intended to redress some perceived flaws in that game (too complex, the requirement for stands over individual bases, perhaps) but is itself genuinely flawed and anti-fun to play. I'm not sure I have ever played a game that has thrown up so many risible situations in such a short space of time.

Clock Tower

I used the last bits of the Dust Tactics tenement to make another block. I thought this might be a department store, but then I put a clock tower on top, for some reason, so this might be more of a town hall, or something like that.

I've now got enough pieces with good roof space to have some decent roof top battles and chases, too.

Pub and Bank

Pretty much finished building my pub and bank buildings. The pub looks remarkably similar to the bank just down the road from me, and the bank looks remarkably similar to the pub just down the road.

I've got just enough Dust Tactics: Warzone Tenement building pieces left to make another corner building, so I might try that next, although I'm a bit tired of doing those fiddly roofs. The next one might have to be a flat roof.

Geezers! Wages Snatch Part Two

So, the Capri makes a mess of the turn and slams into the wall. We decided that the car was a write off, and Soft Eddie needed to get hold of a replacement vehicle. This wasn't strictly under the rules, but the car rules in Geezers are a bit off, imo, and just throw up too many bizarre results.

Mad Harry took Stan the security guard hostage. The rest of the gang jumped out too, and made their way towards the security van. 

Meanwhile, one of the WPCs made an effort to talk down Johnny. But they don't call him 'nostrils' for nothing, and he shot her down in cold blood.

For some reason, the local force never got another volunteer for undercover security van work.

Eddie managed to get the door of the new getaway car open. Seven blaggers and three bags of swag in a mini? No problem.

Denny and Marty grabbed the remaining bags of money from the van and then made their way towards the alleyway behind the factory.

In the previous game, played on a very similar table, there was a back way out of the factory grounds, which I had covered by sending a couple of policeman to block off an escape. I totally forgot about it, this game, and so the gang decided to leave Soft Eddie to it, and all make their way down the back alley. Which, in any case, was the most direct route to the gang's table edge. Poor policing.

The police tried to talk Mad Harry down, and despite them being unarmed, and Harry having a hostage...

...he bottled it. What a muppet. Sad Harry, more like.

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang headed for the alleyway.

The PCs also got their hands on Soft Eddie who gave up quickly, too.

We decided that now he was liberated, the security guard would join the police's side. So he rushed off towards the factory with the PC.

The gang made their way down the alleyway. Movement in the game is random. You get 2d6 movement points whether you're legging it, walking, or sneaking. So, the getaway was pretty pedestrian.

Realising their tactical error, the detectives' jag did a U turn and headed for the end of the alley.

Getting there just in time. Callan shouted for the villains to give themselves up. Marty did, dropping his swag, while Arthur and Denny disappeared off  the edge of the table with a grand, each. Reggie decided to go down fighting.

Meanwhile, keeping their cool, the security guard and the two PCs decided to look for clues. They each managed to grab a clue, which could turn out to be vital evidence if they could get any of the villains to court.

So, Reggie did go down fighting. 

And trapped in the alleyway, hampered by Mr Smith's slow movement, it was only a matter of time before Johnny gave himself up, too.

So, the villains got away with 2 grand, had one killed, and four arrested. The police meanwhile suffered one fatality. Of the three bits of evidence collected, two turned out to be decent clues. 

In the first game we played, four police got killed and three villains, so that was a lot more blood thirsty. Of the three villains captured two were inexplicably let off for lack of evidence, and Mad Harry got ten years.

This game, Soft Eddie got released after the police interview. Despite being caught red-handed trying to break into a mini, there wasn't enough evidence to go on. Marty, caught with a bag of swag running up the road, went down for fifteen years, as did Johnny, cornered holding a shotgun to the local factory owner's head. And Mad Harry's lawyer managed to get him out of the police station quicker than you can say 'travesty of justice.'

So, under Geezer's strange victory points system: the Villains won 11 points: 2 for swag, 1 for killing the PC, 4 coz two of them escaped, 6 coz two of them got off, and minus 2 coz two of them went down.

And the police got 5 points: 2 for killing a slag, minus 1 for the dead PC, minus 2 coz two villains got off, and 6 for sending two villains to jail.

Very fun game but some hard to fathom or sketchy rules around the edges. Think I might make a few house rules and have some more goes.