More SSOM playtesting in HQ Club

The scenario objective.  The initial assault was easily rebuked.

Ben and Urbain had a go at the rules, version 0.51 or thereabout, and we used more units than the usual 3 squads a side, with the German player fielding a mix of regular troops and FSJ, supported by some StuG and Panzers, including a Panther.  The US player had to defend this headquarter for 9 turns, and fielded 6 squads of Airborne, with LMG and 60 mm mortar support and 3 tanks in support.

The battle did not last very long, with the German player giving up rather quickly due to what I considered limited losses during a full on charge without any smoke cover across a 100 m long field.  The rules, on the other hand, held out all the way.  There were quite a few constructive comments, and the dividing line between what the rules should cover and what they should not is becoming clearer: it's useless to talk about markers, bases and so on, these are things that depend on the players and their gear.  Another thing that I have to start thinking more about is a first scenario pack.  The rules in themselves are near finition, even if the manuscript is not.  The manual remarks, corrections and improvements now need to make it into the v1.0 rulebook.

However, for the rules to have playability, we need a scenario pack too.  The first pack will definitely treat the 1944 Europe theater, with Normandy, Arnhem and Bastogne as the three turning points.  We have already seen how much balancing a single scenario requires, so there will be a lot of playing in the near future.

Another project that has to be tackled in parallel is the Build Your Scenario book, which lists armylists and rarity of equipment and will propose a method for building scenarios in any scenario.

Playtesting v0.51 again

Everything was about the bridge...

The US advance was easily thwarted

We had another at ironing out errors yesterday, with a small - and frightfully unbalanced - ruined city scenario we ran. Teun ran into an iron German defence, and did not have the troops to do the job. His platoon leader's early demise did not help. The amount of feedback generated was plentiful. Lots of work ahead there.

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

Current To Do List

After rereading the to-do list on basecamp, here's the items I'm going to be working on first.  After getting back into the project of course.

Miniatures that need to be finished:

Trucks and APC
6th German Paratroopers
German SS
US army troops

Gaming Aids we still need to improve game flow:

Quick Reference Sheet (in progress)
Fire tokens Rudy Boeynaems
Smoke tokens Rudy Boeynaems (demo version)
Movement tokens for vehicles (demo version)

SSOM Manual (CHAPTER - Subject)

UNITS - Heavy team: firegroup of rifle team and LMG/BAR team (2 teams)
UNITS - Heavy Squad: firegroup of 2 rifle teams and LMG/BAR team (3 teams)
COMBAT - Mines and minefields
COMBAT - Forward observer rules for artillery and mortars, also on board indirect fire
MOVEMENT - Infantry movement types and influence of terrain on movement
MOVEMENT  -Vehicular movement and influence on terrain
MOVEMENT  -Limbered artillery, troop transport, tank riders
GAMEPLAY  -Weather, wind, effects on smoke, fire
GAMEPLAY - Description of in game effect counters, dice, markers (secondary)

Preliminary rulebook v0.5 on dropbox

I took my stuff to the club to show some people, but it turned out I forgot my finished units.  Here's why: everything is in two cases, but the finished miniatures are in this special, magnetic drawer, storage cabinet, and I simply forgot about them.  Now that is perfect storage for you!  Mind you, these units are not finished! It's an old photo.

How time flies.  After a year of being focused on Rune Quest, I will try to shift some of the loving care back in this direction.  Meanwhile, I'll have to ignore the large box full of Call of Cthulhu miniatures still awaiting a base coat.

While slowly getting back up to speed after this one year lapse, I notice I have never put the last version of the rules - that's version 0.5 - online.  Here it is, not yet finished, but a lot more complete than version 0.3 that had been published up to now.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31342564/r2_DraftComplete_v05.pdf

I will start splitting the effort from today onwards, focusing exclusively on the rules and its effects on game play on our personal game table, rather than putting some of the effort into the effect these rules might have on other people playing with these rules.  We have been paying attention at both so far, which definitely slows development down, but it is a good thing that the foundation has been created with the general player in mind.  However, we now enter the realm of tiny details, and trying to invent a rule for every eventuality tunred out - and turns out - to be madness.  People will have to find their own way of indicating status and so on.  Since I have no intention to actually provide - sell or otherwise - game markers, I think this is only sensible.  Given the limited number of followers, I think there will be little objection.

I intend to make a set of markers - it's high on the to do list - and I will use small coins with coloured dots, in a later stage I might order custom ones from Litko.

Remarks after the 06/08 playtest

Jeroen leading a mix of the 82nd and 101st Airborne to a clear victory

Jeroen came to the club to have another playtest session yesterday. We used the version 0.3 rules, with the new close combat rules, which we gave a bit of a testing. General flow of the game went very well, apart from some "where did I put that part of the rules" moments. I clearly need an index. Also, some of the rules have been developed - mostly in calc because I have access to statistic functions there - but have not yet made it into the rulebook. Some of those I found in my little black notebook, but it all caused a significant loss of time. The QR sheet was a big improvement, but I have to make sure everything relevant is on there. The huge gameturn sequence was over the top, and it does not improve game flow awareness. From all of this you'd gather the game went down the drain, but it actually went well, the general feel is becoming very tactical, choices really matter, it's not just roll better than the opponent.

Corrections and additions to the rules:

The to Hit table has no area type target, which we need for smoke
Area type target is not suited for concealed target, as it actually increases the hit chance.
ROF revision, enter it in the manual (UNITS) and QR sheet.
Infantry can only throw smoke as far as 1"
PF PSK Baz Ranges and TK# in manual and QR sheet.
Turn Sheet with wind indicator and weather effects overview.
Malfunction markers for main gun
Road yields movement bonus for vehicles, tanks only if CE
Generate indexes for the next version, the manual is becoming too big to do without.

Plans for the near future:

Make more bocage so we can try another type of scenario with an elevated road
Paint up utility vehicles, a few more tanks, and some US regular and German 6th paras
Design the scenario sheets for two types of scenario's, the village outskirts and bocage attack.

Rules version 0.3 on dropbox

In order to facilitate preparation for playtesters I uploaded the most up-to-date version of the rules on dropbox: Find them here

Some cover ideas and the intro draft

Here are two idea's for the front cover that are probably not gonna make it, but it's a start, I'm playing with styles here.  The cover description is still taking shape as well.

The manual is coming along fine, playtesting has been a real fount of ideas and improvements.  The combat chapter is more or less finished, including close combat rules, overruns, fire groups, and different attacks, including cover fire, prepared fire, move and fire.  The other chapters still are in their skeleton form, being less important at this stage of playtesting.  The only other chapter taking form is the first one, the gameplay chapter.  Here is the first page of the gameplay chapter so far:

Presented changes after the 06/05 playtest

Kilian putting in his concealment counters

1. Smoke: size, turn per turn evolution.  requires write-up for wind change and therefore weather.
2. Post rout eliminiation: Routed unit that suffers one shot suppression > Q is eliminated
3. Movement: first move routers (units that must move), then broken units (units that may move) before anything else
4. Critical Hit: Mortar (and HE by extension) original DR of 2: Resolve infantry damage on HE caliber x2
5. Close Combat: Write-up for Overrun and Charge.  Requires ATM, Mines, DC
6. Rate of Fire: LMG -, MMG 1, Mortar 1, HMG 2
7. Low on ammo: Original DR of 11 means Low on ammo.  Another original DR of 11 means Out of Ammo.  Support units disappear - absorbed by adjacent units without any game effect.  Units can replenish ammo by visiting HQ if available.
8. Mechanical breakdown: Original DR of 12 means breakdown, requires a Q roll to repair during Rally Phase.  Original DR of 6 means broken down beyond repair - replace if needed.
9. Self Rally: Broken units MAY attempt self rally.  Routed units MAY NOT.

Presented changes after 18/3 playtest

0. General ideas:

1. Command points need to work more directly: player must have the option to use up their command points, leaving none for defense, if they want to force the attack.  The highest commander on board can generate command points, say Quality x 2 plus a D6 bonus - this will even out the variation a bit.  OR we can have each commander on board generate points, although this means more administration.
   
2. Alternatively, we can have movement switch sides quicker, for instance by rolling against the leader quality, losing the turn (the turn goes to the opposite player) if the roll fails.  The goal is to have a game that is relatively quick, and that keeps both players involved as much as possible.  This has to be tested in a game situation.

S²OM Playtesting Session

 

My mate Kilian came over Friday for a good playtesting session, this was the first time a number of new game mechanics were put to the test, after the rather large overhaul that was a result of the last round of test games.  Also, it was the first game to actually use finished Pendraken miniatures.  The terrain was still a bit make do, using dirt roads and rivers from the RuneQuest 28 mm terrain, only having a few houses that were only half finished, and using 28 mm trees instead of trees adapted to the scale.  But it still was a nice game, that I spectacularly lost, even after getting my 3 Sherman tanks back a second time.

Here is the German defense.  Kilian had to protect a factory unit against an assault by the American Airborne.  Nothing too historical, the story was secondary to the testing.  He had a few infantry squads, off board 105 mm artillery, and a few tanks, including one tremenduously unbalancing Panther.

The Americans, that would be me, mounted an attack on the right flank, as well as a tank charge across the bridge.  The tank assault was stopped in its tracks by a Pz IV G, leaving the bridge blocked.  The last tank than tried to take up position on the right, but got immobilized in the woods and was subsequently destroyed by the Pz IVh.  By that time, the Panther was already on the board, making the situation all but hopeless.  So much so, that we agreed to allow the 3 Shermans to re-enter as reinforcements.  It made little difference, the Panther alone was alone to stop the advance, and infantry never got close enough to try a potshot with a bazooka.  To make things worse the German artillery started to score hits, and if not for the totally inadequate new HE table, things would have gotten really really ugly.