Fall-In 2010: BBDBA Doubles

JM and I formed “Team Red Meat” at the Fall-In BBDBA doubles competition.  The name was inspired by a combination of factors: we’re first time competitors, aka “fresh meat;” and I really enjoy the Red Meat comic.  Unfortunately I never remembered to say “I hate you, Milkman Dan!”

Larry heckled us a bit for planning ahead and bringing a document describing our plans.  Yes, we were inspired by the Two Davids who make similar documents in preparation for their battles.  However, our goal was not primarily to win.  We only wanted to fail to make utter fools of ourselves, and I think we succeeded.

Planning ahead allowed us to think on our own time instead of wasting our opponents’ time, and gave us a baseline to measure what worked and what didn’t so we could learn more quickly.  Neither JM nor I have a very strong knowledge of historical tactics used by real generals, and neither of us have much experience in BBDBA or other larger scale Ancients games, so planning was also intended to offset our deficit in experience.  I’m glad we did it and we’ll likely do it again, for similar reasons.

There were eight entries in this tournament.  The field was split by army year into two groups of 4, and everyone played everyone else in each group.  The winners in each group played the finals some time after the convention was over; I never heard the final result.

We fielded Warring States Chinese: Chao (II/4c).  As seen in earlier posts, I painted two of the armies and JM painted the third.  No one noticed our use of 3Cb instead of 4Cb or our single Russian light horse stand in with the Chinese; though neither had any effect on gameplay.  Our command split was the same in all our games:

  • Mid PIP (C-in-C): 2xHCh (gen), 3x2LH, 6x4Sp, 3x4Cb, 2x2Ps; 16 elements, breakpoint 6
  • High PIP: 4xHCh (gen), 3x2LH, 3x4Sp, 3x4Cb; 13 elements, breakpoint 5
  • Low PIP: 3x4Sp (gen), 3x4Cb, 1x2Ps; 7 elements, breakpoint 3

Stooges: Larry and Will

Our first game was against Larry and his honorary Stooge partner Will.  “We came all this way to play against you?”  They brought Seleucids (II/19), which combined the elements that posed our greatest anticipated challenge: pikes and elephants. We forgot about the possibility of Scythed Chariots, and they were the killer this game.

We defended, and set up terrain as planned: three small central hills with a road the long way behind one.  It wasn’t much, but we placed it where we hoped we could take more advantage of it than our enemy.

The plan for elephants was to avoid them, or try to shoot them with bows.  Larry had an interesting command structure around his elephants: he combined three elephants and three scythed chariots with one other element.  Since the expendible chariots don’t count towards the break point, the command needs to lose 6 of its 7 elements before it’s destroyed, providing additional protection for the elephants.

Death by Scythed Chariot

For the pike, we wanted to outflank them with light horse and peel them apart.  Unfortunately, they used their pike in passive defense of a well defended position.  We decided to win elsewhere, and didn’t approach the pike.  I’m not sure if this was a good idea or not.

Our failure and prompt demise came on the opposite flank.  Will’s scythed chariots totally destroyed our line, and then broke through to the road where they could kill whatever they wanted.  These things are called “expendibles” for a reason: they aren’t supposed to live very long.  Will rolled really well a few times, and that provided him with the tactical advantage to roll us up.  This was our fastest loss in the tournament.  One important lesson I learned here, was to pay attention when to let your broken command flee.  They’re only useful when they’re still in the way; after that, they’re screwing up the high/low/mid PIP die rolls.

Two Davids: Kuijt and Schlanger

In the second game, we faced the Two Davids: David Schlanger and David Kuijt playing some kind of Romans (Early Imperial, I think) with an ally (Arabo-Aramean, I think).  Their army didn’t have any particularly problematic elements, but the Davids are very good players.

We defended again, and placed a waterway to reduce our time to contact.  It did an adequate job of that, but probably wasn’t really necessary since neither of us was particularly fast.

They refused our left flank with their artillery and forced us to play our attacking force on our right.

This was a very interesting game, I enjoyed it a lot. There was a lot of back and forth on our attacking flank, but the Davids did a great job and I learned a lot.  We had some localized advantages on occasion, but unfortunately I missed our prime opportunity to pull a win from the jaws of defeat.  I had a chariot within striking range of the enemy camp, and asked DS about the finer points of attacking a camp.  I decided not to attack the camp, but in the mean time I missed the fact that I could’ve flanked their commander in chief, which might have ended the game in our favor instantly.  Instead, they broke our high PIP command, then a second command, and won.

A lesson on the virtues of a subtly painted C-in-C

The Davids did a wonderful job of using two of their commands against one of ours, and winning through PIP advantage.  The high PIP Roman command and the allied command were next to each other, and moved into overlapping positions.  This allowed both commands to work together and share PIPs, whether the critical position ended up being in the center or on the flank.  We tried to start doing this later in this game and throughout our next game, but since we hadn’t planned for it, we didn’t do a great job.

I think the Davids’ choice to use an Ally makes this easier: by placing the ally next to the high PIP command, they can always easily tell which elements are a part of each command.  The downside is that ordinary maneuvers are always more expensive since they’re split across two commands and can’t use a single PIP group move.

Team Canuk: Colin Rice and Michael Saunders

Our third game was against Team Canuck: Michael Saunders and Colin Rice.  They played Patrician Roman (East) II/83b, I believe. They had a wide variety of troops, but without any elements that were particularly problematic for us.

They defended and placed terrain: a wall of woods down the center of half the board, a road perpendicular, and the rest of the board empty.  They set up their first two commands in the open area, and left their bad going troops (aux, warband) in their last command.

We didn’t stand a chance in the woods, so we compressed our spears into double ranks against their knights and stuffed ourselves into narrow frontage in the open.  We tried to overlap our commands somewhat, but we limited this to the elements we could tell apart when they stood next to each other.  They deployed their light troops behind their main line, and the entire battle was limited to one half of the board.

They redeployed on their baseline while we ran hell to leather

They ended up spending several turns to redeploy and maneuver their troops without advancing at all, before we made contact.  We were running as fast as we could, but just couldn’t get there before they had time to fix their deployment problems.

Once our lines met, we had an advantage early on and damaged all of their commands, but none to the breaking point. It felt like we had a real chance of winning.  We even had several 4-3 rolls against their C-in-C, but they all failed. 

Finally, the Canadian luck turned, and they broke our commands before we did anything else to theirs.  Just before time ran out for the round, they killed us.

I really enjoyed this event, and I look forward to playing BBDBA Doubles again.  JM and I worked well together, and I think with a few refinements we can increase our expectations to include actually winning a game.  Our plans were not obviously bad, and I’m glad we spent time on them.  Their simplicity helped us implement them correctly.

Neither of us are content with our army choice, but we want to revisit the army “later.”  Warring States Chinese are quite low on bad going troops, and don’t have many different element types available.

Between the two of us, we have enough BBDBA armies to practice together effectively, and with our current level of motivation we should probably start soon.  I wouldn’t want to give any secrets away, so I won’t mention our options for Cold Wars.

Fall-In 2010 Summary

Almost everything went according to plan; at least, nothing went horribly wrong.  JM and I had a great weekend and we both hope to go to more conventions in the future.

Driving to Lancaster always confuses me for some reason, and I found new and different ways to get “almost lost”.  We made it there in time for registration, but just missed getting into Larry’s game (Auxilirama).

Staying at the Lancaster Host was a good idea, and I’ll do it again.  It costs more than the closest cheap hotels, but being in the same building as the convention left more time for gaming between sleep breaks.  We still had to go outside to get to the dealer hall, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone outside all weekend.

Speaking of the dealer hall: I seem to be getting better at not buying things I’m not going to paint.  Between the dealer hall and flea market, the only unpainted figures I bought were 15mm early WWII Russians.  I plan to paint these up for a scenario I’ll run when Mike is in town over the holidays.  I’ll have to fire up the airbrush, since “all one color” is faster that way.  I also bought a variety of other materials and accessories: more bases-by-the quart and adhesive “plasteel” from GF9; a few nicer road segments for DBA; and some cards from an obsolete CCG.

Apparently, last year was the first year they started supporting Toys for Tots at Fall-In.  Besides collecting toys, they also get donations of games, models, figures, and supplies from vendors and individual modellers, and either raffle or auction off the donations.  All proceeds go to Toys for Tots… it’s for the kids!  I have no problem donating money to a good cause, so why not get something good out of it too?

So with that in mind, I won two auctions.  One was a set of foam core buildings, 28mm scale.  These were built by hand with a printed veneer to add a great amount of detail without having to actually paint them.  They’re the perfect scale and style for Malifaux, and they’ll complement our existing terrain nicely.  I also won a 28mm Greek Hoplite army for DBA.  It’s not likely to be a big winner in any tournaments, but it’s a better size for demonstrations and kid-sized hands, and it’ll allow me to play in 25mm DBA events in the future.

I played in all of the events I planned to enter, except the Armies of the Americas event on Saturday morning.  It was early: 9am; and I needed a time to dedicate to shopping without a time limit.  Armies of the Americas was very similar to the 1491 event the night before, and I’d have used the same army for both events.  Unfortunately I got sick of playing my all-bow army pretty quickly… but more about that later.

This was my first convention playing nothing but DBA.  I don’t miss “all the random events” very much.  The comraderie of playing a game I know I like with a group of opponents I’ve played with before more than makes up for the lack of variety.  In the future, I wouldn’t mind spending one or two slots testing out some new rules if there’s something that looks really interesting, but I won’t miss it if that doesn’t happen.

Fall-In 2010 Plans

Fall-In is this weekend! JM and I are driving out tomorrow.  It’s in Lancaster, and we got a room in the Lancaster Host where the convention is, so we don’t have to leave the building all weekend except to go to the dealer hall (if it’s still out back).

Although I feel a bit burned out on DBA, it’s the main plan for this weekend.  I’ve basically packed the weekend with events; hopefully I can sneak out to the flea market once or twice.

We want to register on Thursday so probably won’t play in Larry’s Auxilirama game.  I won’t be bringing an eligible army for this.

Friday morning until 6pm is BBDBA doubles, and Team Red Meat has a plan.  Basically I’m going to lose and say “I hate you, Milkman Dan!” a lot like a whiny little girl.

JM and I are bringing Warring States: Chao (II/4c).  Two of the armies are mine and JM’s providing the third.  We aren’t likely to do particularly well, since we can count the combined number of BBDBA games we’ve played on one hand and some of those were against each other.  But we did think ahead enough that we hopefully won’t slow everyone else down too much.  I’ll post more on that after it’s done.

Friday evening is 1491: New World Dominance, an American army pyramid tournament.  I really enjoyed the pyramid format at Battle at the Crossroads earlier this year. However, with at least two Mound Builders in the Northern bracket, I’m very likely to face them, and they provide a formidable opponent to most other eligible armies.  I’ll be fielding my Tlingit (IV/11) with their newly completed camp, without a totem pole for now.

Finally, Midnight Madness starts at… well, 11pm.  I guess they call it “Almost Midnight Madness” now.  I’ll choose an army based on whatever I feel like at the time, but most likely Later Carthaginians (II/32) with warbands but no elephants.

Hopefully I’ll wake up in time for Armies of the Americas at 9am on Saturday.  This is a non-pyramid format tournament with the same eligible armies as the pyramid tournament.  I’ll be playing my Tlingit (IV/11) again.

At 1pm is an Open Scramble.  You play 4 rounds, but don’t use your own army until the last round.  In the first round you use your enemy’s army and after that the winningest players use the losingest armies until the last round when you use the one you brought.  I was planning on using Later Carthaginians (II/32) again, but come to think of it… maybe Gauls (II/11) would be better.  Or worse.  It’s not clear which is preferrable.  In any case, JM will use the army I’m not using.  They’re both beater armies, made up mostly from the quadruple Carthaginian army I got at the Historicon flea market. I won’t mind if they get a bit beat up by strangers.

5pm starts the Two Davids campaign: Gallic Wars. I’m playing Gauls (II/11) just like everyone else… but I’m using a modified list.  Oh! I’d better go bring figures for the unmodified version to use in the Open.

That’s “it.”  I’ve managed to pack 5 armies for 6 events, including 2/3 of a BBDBA triple army.  That’s not necesarily a good thing, though, since I’ll probably be sick of playing all of them by the end of the weekend.

Despite having a weekend full of DBA, there are other events I’m missing that I’d enjoy.  There are several Hordes of the Things themed events, and some 25mm events I don’t have an army for.

Malifaux: Samael Hopkins

Samael Hopkins

I finished Samael Hopkins, another Guild figure I started along with Perdita and her crew.  I was disturbed by his superfluity of straps and decided to set him aside for a while.

He was a bit easier to paint than I expected, but I totally cheesed out on his boots and knee pads.  I decided that the sculpt has enough detail as it is, I don’t need to try to ruin it with too much fancy paint.  So I just used black with a bit of grey highlighting.

This time, my Army Painter dull varnish was really really dull.  It’s not as dusty looking in real life, but it still doesn’t photograph well.  I picked out the metallics with gloss varnish. 

I got this figure on discount without a card, and I’m unwilling to pay Wyrd’s shipping price for a single $.50 card, so I may have to make my own.

Malifaux Terrain

Here are a few shacks I painted up for Malifaux.

These are from an O-scale model railroad plastic kit.  It’s the Hobo Jungle from Bachmann’s Plasticville USA series.   Despite its horrifyingly bad name, there are a few good models in the Plasticville range.

According to the TMP All About Scales page, O-scale is supposed to be 1/43.5 scale or equivalent to 37mm miniatures.  In practice, these are great with the 32mm Malifaux figures and fit well alongside Mordheim terrain (intended for 28mm).  They’re quite small overall, and most of our 32mm figures won’t fit through the doorways.

I’m not sure how brown can be described as “bright,” but I think some of these turned out brighter than I intended. The rusted metal turned out well enough, though the rust may be a bit too “fresh” looking… or just too bright.

I also have a Plasticville sniper water tower to put together, and I haven’t finished the outhouse from the Hobo Village.  I think I’ll put the outhouse on the edge of a swamp terrain piece.

DBA: Gallic Cavalry

I wanted to play in the Two Davids campaign at Fall-In, and this time the theme is Gallic Wars. Almost all of the armies are Gauls, with a few Romans to kick around and maybe a few others who aren’t even as civilized as the Gauls.  I had most of a Gallic army in the form of Carthaginian allies; I just needed some cavalry to round out the list.

In this campaign, I chose the Remi.  These guys are allowed more cavalry and less warband, so I painted 4 elements (the maximum).  None of the cavalry are allowed to be chariots.

These are Black Hat miniatures that I added to one of JM’s orders.  I really don’t like the rest of my Gallic figures, they’re very “old school.”  These are also fairly old school sculpts, and they aren’t my favorite figures, but I’m happy with how they came out considering how much effort I put into them.  I painted them as quickly as possible, by blocking out the solid colors and then using more of my Army Painter Strong Tone quickshade dip.  That’s the only shading done on them, but this stuff works really well.  The figures had enough sharp detail to catch the dip.

I’m a lot happier with these than I thought I’d be before I painted them.  I don’t like Gauls, don’t like the rest of the army, and don’t really like these sculpts.  They may be a bit too bright, but I skimped and didn’t paint any plaid.

Malifaux: Nino and Santiago

 I finished painting Nino and Santiago Ortega, for my Malifaux Perdita crew.

Nino’s repeating rifle is excellent at long range, and his Hunter ability lets him shoot into cover more effectively.  Nino reminds me a bit of Badger from Firefly, mostly because of his bowler hat.  I’m afraid he’s going to break off at the ankle, but I’ll just try not to drop him.

I looked a others’ interpretations of santiago online, and there is a clear consensus: he wears blue pants (jeans) with an offwhite shirt (dirty t-shirt) and a brown duster.

The figures are displayed here on the second floor of one of Frank’s ruined houses. 

Malifaux: Cowboys versus Samurai

Frank and I played a 25 stone game of Malifaux on Saturday. We had a surprisingly balanced outcome compared to most past games, and we played through 5 turns before the end.

I chose my Perdita crew, set up straight out of the box: Perdita, Santiago, Francesco, Nino, and Papa Loco. Frank didn’t actually have any samurai, he chose his Viktoria crew: 2 Viktorias, 3 Ronin, and Misaki. I had the advantage in ranged combat, but Frank’s crew had high mobility and great melee.

Andy was around to watch and learn, so he set up terrain. We flipped on the extended encounter chart and wound up with a Shared Deliver a Message strategy: both of us had to take a (2) interact action within 2″ of the enemy Master, to deliver a message and gain victory points. This ended up having a large effect on the way we played, which means that as a game strategy, “it worked.”

We announced all our schemes.  I chose to Bodyguard Perdita, and to Kill the Protege: Misaki.  I chose Bodyguard since Deliver a Message required Frank to keep Perdita alive; but in retrospect it wasn’t the best choice, as it gave Frank more incentive to kill Perdita as a contingency plan.  Frank chose Steal Relic, which also required him to take an action near Perdita, and Gather Soulstones: end the game with more stones than me.  He started with only 3 stones and I had 2; but he had the option of sacrificing Ronin to get more stones.

For the first few turns, I did the most important thing possible: get Papa Loco as far away from me as possible, and close to Frank; so when he dies, the explosion doesn’t hurt me.  We got surprisingly close to each other on the first turn, and had a bit of a shootout.  Papa didn’t survive, I’m sorry to say, and his final explosion had no effect.  One of Frank’s Ronin died soon after: Perdita shot her for failing to Obey her orders to run down Misaki.

In the mean time, the Viktorias were approaching Nino and Santiago around a building, while Misaki hid behind it.   The two remaining Ronin were on the other flank, seemingly out of the action for now.  The Viktorias hit Santiago in melee, and in response he took 2 actions to Deliver the Message.  Since I completed the scheme first, I got 3VP.

At this point, Santiago survived long odds for longer than I expected. All my remaining guys emptied their guns at the Viktorias in rapid succession, in one huge Companion activation for the whole crew.  Since I was shooting into combat, all of the shots required me to randomly determine which model was the target, but Santiago avoided all but one of the attacks.  Unfortunately, the only luck I had was used up missing Santiago; I also did almost no damage to the Viktorias.

On their turn, Viktoria (no, the other one) killed Santiago, and Frank’s remaining Ronin closed in on Perdita, locking her in combat.  He Delivered the Message for only 1 VP, and then Stole my Relic (so we thought) and started running away.  I killed Misaki.  By now we were both out of soulstones, and the score was at 7VP for me (completing the strategy and both schemes) and 4 for Frank.

But the game wasn’t over yet.  Frank killed Perdita, knocking me down to 5VP.  For him to win, he needed to keep one Ronin alive (giving him 2 of his current 5VP) and sacrifice the other to gain soulstones (for another 2VP).  For me to win, I needed to kill either of his Ronin.

In the final turn (turn 5), my shooting was ineffective but Frank’s was not.  He got initiative, allowing him to get one Ronin out of the way. I wasn’t able to kill the other because it was Hard to Kill, and Frank cleaned out all of my remaining crew with the Viktorias.

So in the end, it seemed like Frank won with 6 VP, and I had 5VP.  But wait! He realized he was supposed to make a Willpower duel in order to steal my relic, but we forgot to do it. The result is unclear; but I think with the cards I had, I wouldn’t have been able to beat him.

I made some mistakes: I spent too much time shooting with Perdita to remember to keep her out of harm’s way.  I expected more from my guns based on their past performance, and Perdita was frustrated that no one would Obey her.

The strategies and schemes definitely affected gameplay and our play motivations.  I put Perdita into danger, counting on Frank not to harm her until he got his strategy and scheme VP’s… unfortunately I wasn’t able to get her out of trouble quickly enough once that happened.  In the end, I could’ve won the game with all my models lost, if I had only killed one more model.  I still really like the Malifaux encounter system, and we haven’t repeated any strategies yet.

I like this crew, especially how different it is from Ramos. I also the opportunity to demonstrate that it was in fact possible to beat them; maybe now I’ll hear fewer complaints about how broken they are.

Minecraft

I started playing Minecraft, but I was hampered by a nearly complete lack of instructions. It’s a fun open-world sandbox game, but it’s easy to get frustrated until you know how to control things.

Here is a basic control summary, targetted for people unfamiliar with normal game controls. It’s based on my limited experience with the Mac standalone executable version Alpha 1.1.2 in single player “free weekend while the website is down” mode.

I’m playing on a laptop without a right mouse button: ctrl-clicking is the same as a right button click, just like everywhere else in Mac land.

The most commonly used controls:

  • Look around using the mouse pointer
  • Move using the standard WASD keys
    • W moves forward
    • S moves backward
    • A slides left
    • D slides right
  • Jump using the space bar: you can jump one block high, to climb hills
  • 0-9 select the on-screen inventory item slots. 
  • Left click to destroy the block (or creature, aka “mob”) you’re pointing at. The most important clue: press and hold the left button to break blocks, don’t click it rapidly.
  • Right click (ctrl-click) to place the currently selected block where you’re pointing
  • I opens your inventory
    • I or esc to close inventory
    • left click to pick stuff up
    • right click to pick up half a stack
    • left click to put stuff down somewhere else in your inventory
    • right click to put down one item from a stack

I’ve also found that multitouch on the Mac scrolls through the 0-9 inventory slots, and it can zoom your screen in and out if you have ctrl pressed. I don’t find this useful, but it was an explanation for why “weird things” happened when I didn’t realize I was resting another finger on the touch pad.

I don’t want to spoil very much, but staying alive for a few days is important if you want to make any progress. Skip this section if you prefer a challenge or know how to use Google search. Penny-Arcade provided a good summary introduction to Minecraft with a good starting strategy for “survival mode” (single player): build a shelter as
soon as possible, without any human-sized entrances. When night falls, wait in there to avoid the zombies.

It’s good to build a shelter near where you started the game, since that’s where you’ll return after you die. You might build a spire above it so you can find it from a distance: the map can be confusing until you get used to it, and you’ll want to get home quickly as night falls.

The Minepedia has an excellent introduction to crafting, providing a useful reference during gameplay. You need tools to mine stone, and need a workbench to make tools, so start by knocking down some trees and collecting logs. A workbench and tools will also give you stuff to do at night.

If you know me in real life and want to play on my server, send me an e-mail.