SPQR Revised Edition or "Show some Passion, you Lazy......"

I'm going to need an analogy for my relationship with SPQR from Warlord Games.

Sometimes in football (soccer for The Cousins) your team signs a new player, usually a striker. Great things are expected from them. The crowd are initially very enthusiastic about the new signing. He looks the part. Then after a few matches it seems something isn't right. The striker is not delivering, not putting the effort in, is lazy or just doesn't care. The crowd's initial enthusiasm turns to bewilderment and then to exasperation, and sometimes to downright hostility.

That was me with SPQR. My thoughts on this were posted up after they were first published and the disillusionment was at it's height here  https://twtrb.blogspot.com/2019/08/spqr-warlord-do-it-again.html

Originally much touted by Warlord as a great new Ancient "Warband" scale game (30-50 ish figs a side). This was pitched right into Two Fat Lardie territory and looked like it could deliver. Beautiful book, excellent artwork. First glance showed a character progression system, campaigns, the works.  What could go wrong?

Then the elephant in the room - the rules were shite (sorry, that is my considered view). They were not bad - they simply didn't work. After a couple of games it became clear these were unplayable. They lacked any integration between the individuals and units, there was no tactical thought, there.... ok look these were bloody awful and the list of things that didn't work in the rules will take longer to explain than I would care to waste. Probably the worse set of rules I've ever seen chucked at the public. Playtesting??? there are a list of playtesters and frankly they should hang their head in shame. I suspect these are Warlord staff who messed about but didn't actually point out the problems because they were in house and didn't want to rock the boat, or were playing a different game. In addition to the crap rules there were some almost unbeatable combinations - Gauls with a certain combination of large units and heroes would destroy everything they contacted without fail. The only solution was something like an equally stupid \ gimmick build of massed archers who if they won the initiative would just annihilate anything they can see. Neither of these made for good games. SPQR was so bad I think I said they were insulting to the customers and not fit for sale. I got permabanned from the Warlord SPQR Facebook group for saying something along those lines.

So now Warlord have reluctantly recognised there were issues, and have produced a "revised" version. This was originally going to be available free to the poor suckers (like me!) who had bought the original. They changed this so it was available for free with a purchase of a box set from their Ancients line. I bit.

OK I have to admit I bit reluctantly. Warlord are getting a rep for just chucking out stuff that looks good but really is riddled with errors and typos. I'm not sure if this is a quality control issue or something deeper and related to the way they manage their projects and development. Either way it is getting to be a regular thing - Cruel Seas was an example, and SPQR was probably the worse case, but Victory at Sea also seems to have some big issues around a lack of proofreading, particularly in the "Fleet Lists" section - the rules do seem much more "nailed down" to be fair. 

Anyway back to SPQR (Revised). What has changed? Actually not a lot, but that which has changed  will impact on the game in a big way and for the better. Gone is the mind numbingly stupid "everyone fights in melee" to be replaced with only those in contact fight. This neatly fixes the issues previously with Heroes being able to fight at the point of a wedge and never take any risks until everyone else was dead. It also makes smaller units more viable. This is a good start. Gone are most of the bonuses that made large units unstoppable (or at least I think they are). Gone too is the "Parry" system, which allowed units or individuals to parry a number of attacks each turn, now replaced with a much easier to manage reroll system - though again you get to force rerolls irrespective of the direction of attack, so stabbing someone in the back still has no benefits, even when he is already busy fighting someone to his front. I'm not sure if this works or not, or rather if it is much of an improvement. I quite liked the mechanic that allowed a "pool" of shield parries and maybe just a tweak here may have been better?? Then again that was hard to keep track of, but this is very simple - big shields reroll all failed armour saves, little ones reroll 1s. Also the weapon "reach" idea has been reworked to make short spears a bit more useful and the whole idea of "reach" seems more coherent. Mostly. 

There has also been some tweaks to the points system, but as usual with Warlord some errors (?) have crept through. Just how many of these there are is open to debate - did Warlord actually intend for some equipment to be cheaper to buy for one faction than others? It's possible, but Occam's Razor points to a visit by Mr Cock Up.

So are they any good? Will the crowd like them? Back to my football analogy. Sometimes a Manager sees a player is struggling for motivation and kicks them off to Boston United on loan, where much to everyone's surprise they rediscover their motivation and return with a surer touch and become the seasons top scorer, receiving the plaudits and well deserved adoration from the home fans. Will this happen with SPQR (R)? Not sure. It will take some games to decide this, but I must admit I think there may be a spark of interest returning. Maybe they could be the new Marco Van Basten - who knows??

https://www.theguardian.com/football/football-league-blog/2015/feb/24/adam-boyd-marco-van-basten-hartlepool

Painting Zeros wrong in Blood Red Skies - how to do it quickly! :-)

 

One of the big unanswered questions, just behind "Is there a God?", "Why do we dream?", "Is our universe the only one?" and "Why did they cancel Firefly but fund Star Trek Discovery?" is "What colour are early war Zeros?"

The only thing I'm certain of is they're not white. Probably. Why we still think they're white is a story for another day, and quite interesting, but I'm not going there now. The debate over the actual colour is still going on - the real experts seem to think a sort of light grey with a green-y tint, and Tamiya and others will sell you some paint for it. The only problem is I don't think it looks "right". I suspect that this is partly because the paints are designed to be used on 1:48 scale models and that at 1:200 for BRS you need to lighten them up. Whatever

Anyway this is how I'm painting mine. It is embarrassingly simple and quick yet I think it looks good enough for the table.

Step 1 undercoat with GW Wraithbone Contrast undercoat spray. Wraithbone is a funny off white colour designed for painting elves or fairies or something, but it just about ticks the box and takes 30 seconds or so to apply.

Step 2 block in the canopy in your colour of choice. I use a light blue but there are many ways to paint canopies and it is personal preference. Also paint the engine cowl. It could be black, but I stopped painting black stuff black on my BRS models and tend to use Vallejo German Grey because I think it looks better. Go back over the bits you missed and the canopy bars with "normal" GW Wraithbone paint.

Step 3 use GW Contrast Apothecary White to paint he panel lines. You follow the panel lines with a thin brush rather than wash the whole area down. This is the longest bit of the  process but is still pretty fast. 

Once dry, apply your decals of choice and you are done.

The models are A6M2s from the PlanePrinter Patreon printed on my Anycubic Photon, but the process works on any suitable model. Decals are from the "spares" box, mostly Warlord but some others thrown in. Yes it is certainly (probably) the wrong colour, but if these are on the table at a convention 98% of the passers by will see and immediately recognise them as Zeros, which is good enough for me.

Cheers

 

    

Blood Red Skies Digital - Shot Down in Flames

 

In case you missed it, the Kickstarter for Blood Red Skies Digital that I mentioned earlier failed to fund. This was a pretty big disappointment and a shame because the game was very promising.

There are MANY reasons for this I'm sure, so comments below if you want to discuss it - I'll get popcorn.

Cheers 

I've not been doing nuthin, but I may have achieved that - lockdown blues

If someone had told me a year ago we would be locked down and couldn't socialise or play our table top games I would have been ..... hold on, they pretty much did. This is bad.

What I find most depressing is just how much I thought I could get done on hobby projects ready for the great day when the clubs , hobby centres and stores reopened, compared to what I have actually achieved. I have only myself to blame. Painting had slowed to the point where I was basically doing the same thing day in and day out - and painting was not on the list. After an initial gush of enthusiasm, "now I will have time to get stuck in to that pile of shame", the realisation hit that I was not going to be going back to the gaming table soon, so why bother? So I went and watched Peaky Blinders instead*.

I'm happy to report this fugue is slowly lifting and I'm starting to paint up some Blood Red Skies models, and that is leading on to me picking up other "stuff" that is lying around. But it is clear with hindsight I miss my gaming. Not the physical dice rolling so much as the socialising and companionship it brings, and that the loss of something apparently so trivial has had a big impact on my mental state - this last year has been a bit of a challenge. 

Anyway, hopefully now we are getting vaccinated there will be a return to gaming. Yup, let's hear it for gamers, the slow players, the obsessives, the "long inchers", the smug "oh my dice are hot tonighters", the casual cba to read the rules guys, the Grognards with the Lace Wars fetish and an army from a Dutchy in some Mid German region that only existed for seventeen months, the tournament players who insist that even though what they are proposing is clearly physically impossible they can do it because the rules dont specifically say you can't,  the 40K players who don't look beyond GW, the "we play it this way" brigade, and Dave, who paints brilliantly but puts Afrika Korps markings on JagdPanthers. I can't say how much I'm looking forward to meeting up with you all again.

Cheers   

*not just Peaky Blinders - why don't we have any PB style figures btw - seems a gap ??

    

Blood Red Skies is going Digital!

https://www.diecastdigital.com/news/brsdeannoucement

I've had to bite my tongue on this as it is probably the biggest thing to happen on the BRS front since Andy Chambers decided he wanted to try and write some WW2 dogfight rules.

A few months ago I was asked to playtest a very early "pre Alpha" version. It was missing a lot of whistles and bells, but it was instantly recognisable as Blood Red Skies. The developers have religiously ported over everything from the table top game (with only one change, which I will come to in a moment) so after about 30 seconds anyone who plays BRS will be able to play BRSD. 

The initial version I've played was limited to Wildcats vs Zeroes, and you can only play the Wildcats. Also the AI was a bit ropey to start with, as the Zeroes didn't really use their traits very well, however he latest version has ironed this out I'm told - I hope to get a go with the updated version in a week or so and will report back. I suspect this was as much a case of the coding guys not really grasping how card play works as they're more familiar with Pokemon style games. We've had a long discussion and now I think they get it.

The one change is a visual one. Instead of using the tilting base mechanism the Advantage state is now represented by the base telescoping up and down. Other than that EVERYTHING from Air Strike game mechanics is going to be in there.

This is clearly BRS. The game will include a single player campaign mode, but that is not really that important to me, because just like BRS this is going to be head to head except online rather than over a table top. Squadron building is going to be there, so you can try your "cunning plan" Squadrons out against the AI or pit your wits against any other BRSD player worldwide, then port it over to your table top. We will get leagues, historical campaigns, tournaments and all the cool stuff.

How does it play - err just like BRS on a table top. You can move your viewpoint around as you would expect - like getting out of your chair and moving around the table like in real life. Movement is either mouse or keyboard, with some nice touches such as a visual confirmation you have that tailing move lined up. Shooting and dodging are what you would expect, with virtual die rolling, and some nice if vanilla sound effects. Where you have choices such as burn advantage this is indicated on the aircraft and it all works just like BRS. I think this really is the key. The Devs have stuck to the table top game, even where they don't understand the "why" it does things the way it does.

It will launch on Kickstarter in the next few weeks. Initial release is planned to mirror The Midway starter, with new planes, Aces, Maps and scenarios added as stretch goals and DLCs later. 

This can only be great for BRS, bringing the game to a wider audience and allowing distanced head to head play. The straight transfer from BRS to BRSD will mean digital players will also be able to move to the table top version with no problems.

At last something to cheer about in 2021! 

Why all the hate? Warlord games "Epic Scale" ACW

Warlord Games have sprung a bit of a surprise recently by announcing their new "15mm" American Civil War range for their "Black Powder" game. The fanfare accompanying the announcement was well coordinated, including a free sprue of miniatures on the front of January's Wargame Illustrated - available now in December for reasons which I don't really understand. I grabbed one and I like what I see.

The main bullet points are these are hard plastic, and instead of individual figures the infantry are strips of ten men standing shoulder to shoulder. Each sprue has ten such strips - one Command, then a mix of two other infantry strips. The sprue also includes a gun and crew, and a mounted officer. So each has 100 infantry and a gun and crew. Both sides are getting the same sprue but on release the Union will be coloured blue, the Confederates Grey as I understand it.

The announcement has been followed by a large amount of hostile posts in the online wargaming community. These posts have broken down into a couple of broad themes, mainly "proprietary scale" and "wrong" equipment. 

The scale thing does have some validity from a certain point of view. The nominal size in the press releases is 15mm. 15mm is a traditional and industry size (not scale) and very popular for ACW due to games like the excellent "Fire and Fury". The issue is that these figures are 13.5mm foot to eye, 15mm to top if head \ hat. That puts them distinctly on the small side - they're not compatible with other "15mm" which tend towards 15mm foot to eye, indeed some are stretching to 18mm. I can't work out why Warlord bothered to mention it to be honest, but it does give plenty of ammunition to anyone wanting to call "foul". If they had said "Epic" scale and leave it at that then I'm sure there would be (slightly) less uproar.

The equipment thing is also a bit more valid. The sprue is going to be the same for both sides - i.e. the only difference is going to be paint. The figures are dressed in a mix of headgear - kepi and slouch hat on the same strip. OK this isn't strictly correct according to the manuals, however it isn't a big stretch of the imagination to say they would and could be mixed headgear on campaign. 

All this is missing the point I think. For those of us who are complaining they don't fit with our current collections, IT ISNT MEANT TO! Love them or loath them this is Warlord making a product to fit their Black Powder range and for that game only. It's a bit like complaining that your draughts pieces are the wrong shape to play chess with. 

The real issue here is just how damned good they look. I love Fire and Fury, and similar ACW games, and played them extensively in 15mm. The problem is no matter what basing scheme you use your representation of a Regiment \ Brigade \ Battalion or whatever always broke down to looking like a half dozen bases with three or four figures on each - like those episodes of Sharpe on TV when thirty guys are pretending to be the whole South Essex battalion. The visual effect you get with these with 20 figures on a 60mm base is bloody good. I'm looking hard at Regimental Fire and Fury - and indeed other rules like Sharp Practice where the main bases are elements, and wondering how they will play using these Warlord Epic bases instead. 

It's not just the figure count by the way. The shoulder to shoulder nature of the strips means these do look far more like a close order infantry formation than just about anything we have seen (excluding maybe 2-3mm blocks) because with "traditional" single based figures you struggle to get the impression of ranks and close order no matter how many you stick to your base.

I'm aware this is starting to sound like an advert so I will chuck a couple of criticisms in. The decision to use just one sprue for both sides isn't a good one. I can see why, but an all kepi sprue, or even a sprue with all the troops in a strip in uniform headgear would have been much more preferable. I'm also frowning at the decision to release the supporting models in "Warlord Resin" - the bendy resin that has been used on several Warlord projects now with mixed results. I don't like the idea of trying to clean up figures this small in that material. At all. I'm also unsure how good cavalry will look - I'm looking at the bases and thinking there will only be 5 to a base (assuming the bases are universal - which seems to be the case).

However that said I'm chucking my money at this. The starter set has literally thousands of infantry (2400 to be precise, and 24 guns) in there for an RRP of £90 that's amazing value -  the idea of representing units in 1-1 is do-able if you feel the urge. I've no idea how Black Powder plays, but I'm pretty sure it wont be beyond the wit of man to work out a way of using these for Fire and Fury or whatever, ether as a straight base for base swap or a 2 for 1 with the odd half base chucked in to deal with odd numbered units. Let's be honest, with figures this cheap you can easily justify the wastage that you would incur carving the strips in half if you wanted.

So there is my initial thoughts on this new Warlord "thing". I'm sure that if this works, like with the original 28mm plastic ranges, this will grow and grow, with AWI and Napoleonics being obvious candidates for the "Epic" treatment. 

Into the Zone (2) - err "Why didn't I think of that before?"

 OK I just had a brainwave of sorts. Why not 3d print my Zona Alfa crew? I don't have the skills to design models myself but HeroForge has a design your model function and they have a Black Friday sale on, so I thought, why not?

So I spent a very happy hour or two tinkering with them and then downloaded and printed the results. I was quite impressed. Detail is a bit soft but that is countered by the fact that they can be tailored to a very close approximation of what you imaging the character should be.

So here they are - quickly painted using new "contrast" paints. I'm not overjoyed with the results but I'm happy enough ith them not to want to redo them, so......

Fat Arkady

Little Pawel

Big Pavel

FiFi

Kaz

Each stl. cost £3 in the sale - normally twice that I think, so £15 for the files and maybe £2-3 in resin is not too bad. To be honest if I never use them I have had a great time messing about designing them - HeroForge is loads of fun to play with. 

So the Crew is assembled and ready for our first trip into the Zone. I understand there is an abandoned Gaz Jeep somewhere down a forest path that may have something interesting in it. We're going to take a look.