Category: rules

Vector Based Traveller Combat

The implementation of vector-based spaceship combat in Traveller is easy.  It’s the strategy that results from the process that’s hard.  Like chess, the rules are simple, but lead to a wealth of complex puzzles and potential pitfalls for the unwary. Marc Miller gives Traveller (1977) players two options: Just...

One Billion Suns: Printable Fleets and Tokens

NOT 3D PRINT FILES! Sheesh. A Billion Suns has been on my shelf for far too long.  That’s Mike Hutchinson’s space shoot-em-up wargame built from the bottom up with an objective system that gives it more of an economics and shoot-n-scoot flavor than a line-em-up one.  It’s been languishing...

AD&D Weapon Versus AC Adjustment

AD&D’s weapon versus AC adjustment table is the online recipe of tabletop RPGs.  Everybody that talks about it wants to talk around it. Or talk about their houserules. Or talk about people talking about it.  Or talk about how they calculated them better than Gary. Or sell you on...

The Game Changers

These are some very good looking aircraft. After four decades of tinkering with weight, aerodynamics, engine power, and a host of other variables, the US produced what many consider to be the finest prop-driven fighter in the world.  These babies were designed for long range escort missions and still...

Don’t be a Rule Zero, be a Rule Hero

This probably looked pretty weird on the day it happened.  Let me explain. The tabletop RPG hobby has ossified. The conventions have been established, and everyone that follows those conventions can only innovate around the margins.  Or worse, they engage in a complete deconstruction without the re-construction necessary to...

Figure Catchup

Alternative armies has a great little selection of character models that I havne’t done justice.  In addition to a nice fat demon lord, I’ve added a NotMing The Merciless and totally not Dejah Thoris to my collection. They also have a fun little collection of elementals.  The air elemental...

Warhammer Racing League

Warhammer Fantasy Battles has a reputation, at least so far as I’m aware of it, as a game that tends toward the line-’em-up and run-’em-straight at each other.  After a whopping two whole games of 6th edition under my belt, I’m now an expert.  So it’s safe for me...

Army List Tinkering

Dipping into Warhammer Fantasy Battles has given me a newfound appreciation for the joys of army list tinkering. It is a fiddly business in Warhammer, building an army list.  Even at the warband scale that is my chosen order of magnitude – a scant 500 and perhaps forty to...

WAR *sigh* HAMMER

You can find copies of Warhammer Fantasy 6th Edition online for ten bucks and that includes shipping. That’s less than the cost of a lunch, and in these troubled times a 288 page book for that price is a steal. I almost feel guilty for snapping it up. It...

Broman Reinforcements

The boys in yellow and white are back, and this time they’ve got a few upgrades.  These bannermen come to us by way of Ral Partha Europe, and the wonderful Demonworld line of miniatures.  Their imperial forces can be a bit fantasy cartoonish, but if you know where to...