Brief update

I am still alive, but was down most of the week with a nasty cold...sadly, I was on a scheduled vacation for this week too.  So instead of getting to do a lot of stuff that I needed to do or wanted to do, I was laid up under NyQuil and had no energy to do much at all. 

I am no longer in Savannah, GA, but back home for a while.  How long?  Don't know.

Yesterday, I felt good enough to go visit my great uncle and a couple of great aunts out in Jefferson City, MO, area.  I timed it to give me a some time to swing by the MO Highway Patrol Safety & Education Center to see the BAR and the license plate that was found from the Joplin shoot out with Bonnie & Clyde on April 13th, 1933.  The interesting plus to this visit was seeing the weapon that was captured from Machine Gun Kelly by the MO Highway Patrol too.  So it was a really good day for several reasons.

Next, I just got my book today that I am really looking forward to reading (along with about another 100+ books).  The book is, The Royal Navy In The Cod Wars: Britain and Iceland In Conflict 1958-1976 by Captain Andrew Welsh FNI RN.  Yes, I have a very obscure taste in interests.  Now, I am going to have to dig out those 1/1200 scale ships I have to game the Cod Wars...

Cheers,

Sapper

Game Review: 'The Department' & 'Ghosts of Hefei' by Joseph Dragovich

I started reading back over the rules for miniature game system by Joseph Dragovich called, The Department, and its related sister rules set, Ghosts of Hefei.  I didn’t back the Kickstarter for The Department, although I regret that now, but I did back the Kickstarter for Ghosts of Hefei after buying a PDF of The Department from Effigy Miniatures, which is now defunct, but you can still buy a PDF copy from Sabersedge.com.  I also got one set of the 15mm figures for The Department (six in total), but I can only seem to find four of them right now.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that they will be remade (here is to hoping that they are remade.)  As of now, I have the PDF of the Ghosts of Hefei rules, but I am still waiting on the figures (according to the last update, all of the figures have now been cast and now the books and T-shirts are off to the printers to be made).

The 15mm figures for 'The Department'

Both game systems are set in the same setting, but in different parts of the world and different objects using the same game mechanics, Goalsystem, which was designed by Scott Pyle.  The games are designed to be totally independent of each other, or to be used together, so one does not need to have a copy of The Department to play Ghosts of Hefei.   The Goalsystem is a fairly simple system.  Basically you roll the number of d6 dice that you have in a skill, or damage from a weapon, etc., and look for a 4+ which counts for ‘goals’ or successes, with a ‘6’ equaling two ‘goals’.  Actually, it might be worth it to make your own set of dice with 3x0, 2x1, 1x2 on the faces if you were to play a lot of Goalsystem games for ease in counting ‘goals'.  

The Department is the most interesting of the two games in my opinion because its subject matter, primarily, and that it was designed to be a solo game that can handle up to four players as a cooperative game.  The background of the game is in future USA were Fabricants, or androids, are being used, or acting on their own programs, for legal and illegal activities.  The Fabricants don’t have the same equal rights as humans, much like in the movie, Blade Runner (1982).   Matter of fact, the design of this game is very heavily under the influence of the movie, Blade Runner.  The player(s) are police detectives for the Dept. of Fabricant Management, sort of a cross between the FBI and the Blade Runner’s bounty hunters.  What is really nice is that the game can easily be transferred into different time periods with some minor modifications to do any detective style miniature game. 

In The Department, there are several scenarios and a campaign system.  I really like how the scenarios and campaign are set up, besides the fact that they are meant to be played on a 2'x2' area for 15mm figures.  First is that you create your primary characters, the protagonists for your stories.  You start off with 100 character points, but you are limited to 50 points per character.  So you will have at least two characters, but you could have more if you spend fewer points on your characters’ abilities.  But I don’t think you want to go over four characters as it appears that characters with less than 25 points will be extremely weak. 

Next, you start off with a budget to use through the entire campaign.  This is not like Warhammer where you buy all of your goodies at the beginning and have them show up every time in every game.  This is because at the end of each scenario, most of the stuff goes away and it can’t be used in the next scenario as part of the campaign!  Also, if any time your budget reaches 0, the campaign ends automatically as a failure if you have not successful defeated the primary suspect.  So, you really have to learn how to husband your budget and make it last throughout the entire campaign.  But no fear, because as the campaign progresses, you can request more budget resources based on evidence gathered.  This reminds me a lot of the another classic Sci-Fi movie, THX 1138 (1971), (Also it is George Lucas’ first movie!) In the movie the police almost have to end their pursue of Robert Duvall’s and Donald Pleasence’s characters several times, only to have their budget increased because they committed another crime, allowing them to continue on trying to catch them.  If you have never seen this movie, rent it.

In the scenarios, the characters can gather certain types of evidence to build a case.  There are five types of evidence, Person, Place, Physical, Electronic, and Financial.  Some are harder to get than others, with Person being the most easy to get.  Plus certain scenarios can not be played until the characters have gathered enough of the right types of evidence first.   As you gather evidence, you can also get certain items to assist your characters in the next game, maybe with a little loss of your budget too, like Arrest Warrants. 

But how do you keep players from being gun happy thugs and think every encounter should end like the final scenes of Bonnie & Clyde (1967)?  Now this is the best part of the game in my opinion, there is a system for Internal Affairs investigations that can range from a reprimand, to a temporary suspension (i.e., the character can’t be used in some number of future games), to getting fired and removed from the campaign.  During the course of the game, if the characters do something undesirable, like shooting at a suspect in crowd (for every shot!), he gains Internal Affair Points (IAP).  At the end of the game, you roll the number of IAPs earned in the course of the game with the same number of dice looking for ‘goals’, but these ‘goals’ you don’t want.  Depending on the number of ‘goals’, it will determined the punishment of the character.  But you can also gain IAPs for in-between games actions, like interrogating a prisoner too hard (yes, there are rules for this too!) 

Ghosts of Hefei, as mentioned above, is set in the same setting as The Department, but it has a different objective.  This game takes place in Hefei, China, a large industrial city that makes fabricants.  In this game, the players are competing against each other in a more traditional type of game.  The players build a gang of criminals whom job is to steal fabricants through hacking and other means and build their power on the streets.  In this campaign system, your gang can either win by eliminating all of the other gangs (players), gather enough wealth to go legit, or gain enough reputation that you can rule city hall.

In Ghosts, the player must choose one type of gang to be from, but other players can also pick the same type as a rival faction.  The gangs available are the following:  Iranians, Russians, Tong, and Yakuza.  There is an option to play the police too, but it only suggested if you have two or more players running gangs for the campaign.  Like The Department, there is a set number of character points and resource points to build your characters, the rest of the gang, and outfitting them.  But in Ghosts, you have more character points so you can easy get five or six characters for your gang, plus some standard thugs.  The author pretty much state that your gang needs at least one character that is a hacker to take control of fabricants. 

Also in Ghosts, there are cyber implant rules.  As the game system is the same as The Department, you can easily transfer the cyber implants and hacking rules to your The Department campaign and play something more in line of the Ghost in the Shell animated series or even Cowboy Bebop rather than Blade Runner.

Some lovely 15mm Sci-Fi civilian vehicles from Darkest Star Games.  They also have some great not-Tachikomas for a "Ghost in the Shell" games

While I have yet to actually play a game of either game, just from reading the rules, they are a fairly solid system.  I think the only thing that would improve them would be have vehicle rules as there are none. One other set of rules I think that are missing for a proper noir type game are for Femme Fatales.  With both of those rules, I could even turn the system into a James Bond like campaign!

It is not Noir without a sexy Femme Fatale!

Cheers,

Sapper

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..." Roy Batty

Anarchy in the UK / Cold War scenario idea: Nuclear Convoy Ambush

Well, I have been spending too much time in front of my computer and not doing more productive things.  But, I started looking back at BW Models for a possible order after Xmas.  BW Models is a very specialized company for 1/76th (20mm or OO scale) vehicles for the the British military or civil sector for WWII or post-WWII (mainly post-WWII) with over 400 vehicles or trailers kits, plus a bunch more accessories and decals.  If you are looking for any kind of support vehicle for your 20mm BAOR Cold War forces, this is the place to look (Link). 

Mainly, I was looking for some more Northern Ireland kits that will show up as part of my Anarchy project.  But looking through their catalog, I came across two kits that got me thinking of a future scenario:  BW312 AEC Mammoth Major, Nuclear Weapons Transporter & BW313 Volvo FL6, Nuclear Convoy Escort Vehicle.

BW312

BW313

Sudden I had an image of a piece of art work I remember from a young teen of Spetsnaz commandoes in civilian clothing attacking a British nuclear weapons convoy on the road as WWIII was starting.  So, hmmm....

Well, I am sure that I have now been tagged by several intelligence agencies for my Google searching, but I finally found what a typical British nuclear weapons convoy is supposed to look like from NukeWatch UK (Link).  Needless to say, the number of vehicles is way too much for a game, so I am going to down size it for playability.  Now, I need to order the vehicles and figure out a balance for the game.  

Save the nukes!


Sapper

 

Patrol Markers for Too Fat Lardies’ Chain of Command and other news

I think I finally figured out how to use the Google Drive to make PDF’s and other documents available on my blog for others, without out making all of my files accessible (Sorry folks, there are just some things I don’t want to share!)

Platoon Orbats for Falklands & AitUK projects

This is a breakdown of the platoon structures for the Falklands and my Anarchy in the UK projects, specifically for TFL’s Chain of Command.  I am not promising that these are 100% accurate, but I am fairly sure that they are correct. 

TFL Chain of Command - Unofficial weapon stats for the Falkands / AitUK projects

Hello again!

Well, I finally finished reading Too Fat Lardies (TFL) Chain of Command (CoC) rules.  So far, I liked what I read.  I might not use the Patrol phase or Jump Off points for all games, but I think that they will work. Anyways, as I mention before, I am planning to use CoC for the smaller Falklands and Anarchy in the UK (AitUK) projects.  I want to try out this system with these two projects.  But since the stats in the rules are only for WW2, I had to come up with some unofficial stats to cover the weapons for my period.  Luckily, most to the weapons were easy to convert over from the WW2 stats.  Some I have not figured out yet, but I am going to work on some more later.  Also, some of the tactics have changed since WW2, but for the most part, the tactics remained the same for the British from WW2 to the early 1980’s.  So, I will be able to the WW2 National Characteristics for the UK in the CoC rules with no changes. 

 

Weapons Stats

Weapon name / CoC stats

British weapons

L1A1 self loading rifles / Semi automatic rifle*

L42A1 rifle / Sniper rifle

M16A1 rifle / Assault rifle**

L2A3 Sterling / SMG

L4 Bren / Magazine feed LMG

L7A2 GPMG / Belt feed LMG

L7A2 GPMG (in Sustained Fire mode) / Tripod mounted MMG

M79 grenade launder / Rifle grenade with a minimum range of 10” (30m)

M16A1 & M203 grenade launcher / Assault rifle with rifle grenade (Min. range 10”)***

L9A1 51mm mortar / Light mortar

L16A1 81mm mortar / Medium mortar

L14A1 Carl Gustav recoilless rifle / Working on - Minimum range 1’ (40m)****

L1A1 Rocket 66mm HEAT (LAW) / Working on - Minimum range 3” (10m)

MILAN ATGM / Working on - Minimum range 11’ (400m) – so this will be off board support

40mm grenades available for the M79 & M203 (I don’t know if everything was available in the 1970’s-80’s)

High Explosive Dual Purpose

High Explosive

Star Parachute: White, Green, & Red

White Star Cluster

Smoke Ground Marker: Red, Green, & Yellow

Tactical CS Gas

Buckshot

Notes on the British weapons

*The L1A1 only fired in semi-automatic

**The M16A1 could fire in semi-automatic or full automatic

***The M16A1 & M203 can add their fire together, if the target is the same as the rest of the Fire Team.  If it is engaging a separate target, only the grenade counts.

****The ‘Charlie G’ as it was well know in the British ranks had a lot of problems in the Falklands of misfiring due to the very cold temperatures.  The Royal Marines with their arctic training had far less problems then their army counterparts.  I have not figured up rule for this, but I am thinking about a simple d6 roll the first time that it fired.  There will be a chance for totally inoperational, repairable, and workable.  I also do not know what the backblast area size is yet.

Argentine weapons

FM FAL 50.61 self loading rifle (folding stock) / Assault rifle or Semi automatic rifle*

FM FAL 50.41 self loading rifle (fixed stock) / Assault rifle or Semi automatic rifle*

PAM-1 & PAM-2 SMG / SMG

FMK-3 SMG / SMG

Halcón ML-43 & ML-63 SMG / SMG

L34A1 Sterling / SMG

FM FAP (Fusil Automático Pesado) / Automatic rifle**

FM MAG / Belt feed LMG

FM MAG (in Sustained Fire mode) / Tripod mounted MMG

Browning M2HB / Tripod mounted HMG

Rifle grenades / Rifle grenades and working on***

FM 60mm mortar / 60mm Light Mortar

FM 81mm mortar / Med Mortar

M67 90mm recoilless rifle / Working on - Backblast 9” (23m) x 18” (55m) wide****

Notes on the Argentine weapons

*The FM FAL is the same design as the British L1A1, but they were able to be fired fully automatic.  However, it appears that the Argentine conscripts did not do this and it should be treated as a semi automatic rifle.

**The Fusil Automático Pesado was a FM FAL designed with a heavier barrel to allow the rifle to be fired in a fully automatic mode all the time, very similar to the US BAR. 

***The rifle grenades available are the following: FMK-8 Fragmentation, FMK-6 Illumination, FMK-9 Antitank (penetration 230mm of steel) – still working on what dice it would get vs. armor and minimum ranges.

****The 90mm recoilless rifle’s backblast area is what is considered “Dangerous” and I deleted the additional area that is considered “Caution”.  There are no rules for backblast in CoC, so that will be something I will need to add.  As of now, I can’t find the minimum range for the 90mm rounds, but when I get home again I will see if I got that data somewhere as I use to be a 90mm gunner.  The HEAT round was able to penetrate 350mm of steel.

Cheers,

Joe