Category: rules

Towards a Unified Theory of Wargaming Complexity

Put on your thinking man’s cap, because today we’re talking math. Earlier this week, Delta Vector (you know Delta, he runs the excellent Delta Vector blog) posted the latest installment of his in-depth analysis of wargame design, this one on the perfect number of units.   The entire series is...

One Hour Wargames: Further Thoughts

With multiple games of Neil Thomas’ One Hour Wargames under the belt, it’s time to take a more solid look at the ruleset and see how it stacks up. Spoiler alert: Pretty darn good! What makes for a good tabletop game?  Enough units to have meaningful choices.  Enough variety...

Shrodinger’s To Hit Roll

Continuing on from yesterday’s discussion on suppressing fire in Black Ops, but the same sort of thing happens in a number of wargames where the condition of a model is left ambiguous until that model next activates. So there you are, staring at the table where your opponent has...

Shooting Around Corners in Black Ops

When somebody uses suppression fire at my table, they always announce it like this. Osprey’s Black Ops uses a card driven activation system.  It’s a randomized IGOUGO system broken up by held actions, orders, and suppression fire.  As can be imagined, suppressing fire is more likely to have an effect, but...

The Necromancer War, Chapter 3

When last we left the on-going saga of the Necromancer King’s attempt to add the Targar Empire to his domain, Lady Hotfor M’Motherson successfully routed a flanking force of the Necromancer King.  Seeing an opportunity to deliver a smashing blow to the dark lord’s forces, she quickly rounded up...

Black Ops, Trial Run

In northern corner, the crew of the G.S.S. Myconis, four hard charging Special Forces. Crew of the SS Myconis, from left to right, a specialist,heavy, trooper, and ace. In the southern corner, a dozen conscripts working for Hazmat Security, Inc. An ace, a heavy, and ten troopers. Since this was...

Actual Play – Barbarian Prince – Episode 1

If you haven’t seen it yet, Castalia House Publishing has a new blog feature called Wargame Wednesdays, for all of us hex-and-counter-philes.  The series has inspired me to push some cardboard around.  All of my kids love themselves some Awful Green Things, and we spent a summer tooling about with...

Black Ops, Around the Horn

Welcome to another clickbait article.  This one has a lot less weird tricks and local single moms and a lot more Black Ops.  With the rules out for less than a month, there aren’t a whole lot of actual play posts around the web just yet – I haven’t...

Black Ops Counter-Intuitiveness

Apparently I’m not the only one having a hard time wrapping his head around a couple of quirks of the Black Ops system.  Over on the Lead Adventure Forums asked a question that had bothered me on my first reading as well. In Black Ops your model stats are...

Black Ops: A Capsule Review

Is that what you call it when you write up a review of a game where you’ve only read the rules?  You’ll get a proper review after we’ve had a chance to take these bad boys for a test-drive. These rules are great.  in just about every sense they hit...