A Marshals Baton in Every Backpack

Below is the first draft of the rules I have written for 10mm Napoleonic gaming. My goal was to make them simple, fun, and to frustrate the hell out of players as they balance the need for action with the need for control.

Enjoy and feedback welcome.

The Rules

The Charts

10mm Austrians

Well, I sold my entire collection of 15mm Napoleonics in order to buy...10mm Napoleonics. Here's why:

1) I was tired of the amateurish paint job on most of the old figs. No shading, no wash. Just sloppy primary colors.
2) They had been based and rebased so often that it looked like the dog had gotten to them.
3) I liked the idea that I could create true swarms of figures in 10mm, and still have them look pretty good on the table. I was not thrilled with the 6mms I painted up, and while I think Polemos is a great game, I kinda want to see tactical formations on the table.

So I sold the old troops on eBay, joined the Old Glory Army (great deal! 40% off!), and bought a mess of Napoleonic French and Austrians. With the home brew rules I plan to use, I have enough for a large corps on each side, with a corps consisting of 500+ infantry, 80+ cavalry, and 12 guns.

The Austrians painted up quickly. I'm still learning the technique, but I think they look pretty good. I completed this batch--consisting of 6 line infantry battalions, 1 jaeger battalion, 2 dragoon regiments, 3 heavy guns, 2 brigade commanders, and a division commander--in just about a week.

The Austrian Artillery.
My primary reference work claims that the Austrian gunners wore wolf grey. However, every miniature painter online depicts them in brown. I like the brown better, so I went with it.

From Drop Box

Hungarian Line Infantry.
The 'Magic wash' treatment really brings out fine details, even at this scale.

From Drop Box

The Dragoons, with generals and jaegers in the background. As you can see, I still need to texture the bases.

From Drop Box

Here's the whole batch--roughly a division of troops completed in just over a week. I'm well into their French counterparts now. If I keep up this pace, I should have my two corps ready to rumble by April.

From Drop Box

Yippie ki yay!

So I've decided to write my own rules for an Old West skirmish game. I wanted one where gunfighters could shoot it out, and one in which a tiny band of shootists could tate on an army of Mexican banditos like in The Magnficent Seven. I'll post those rules here when I've completed a draft I'm happy with.

In the meanwhile, I've painted up my first batch of figures, enough for a moderate-sized shootout. The cowboys are "Cowboy Wars," and the banditos are 'Villa Expedition Mexicans' from Old Glory.

I'm testing out the camera on my Droid. The photo quality could be better--I'll keep experimenting.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

"Moo Can"

My six year old son has been asking for a "moo can" lately. We had no idea what he was talking about until he showed us a scene in "Despicable Me" in which one of the little mutant Corn Pop minions turns over a can and it makes a "mmmooooooo" sound. "Oh," says I, "A moo can."

So it arrives tonight, and the look on the little guy's face was priceless when he figured out what was in the box before he opened it. After mooing for about twenty minutes straight, he looks at me, still delighted, and says "I like it because it's annoying!"

Anyhow, here's where I found one. It was trickier than I thought, since Spencer Gifts closed their doors.

Reviews of Classic DnD Modules 4: (S2) White Plume Mountain

S2 White Plume Mountain

Experiences and Reminisces: This is one I never owned until my adult years. I remember playing it in Paul Fey’s backyard, where his mom set up a picnic table for gaming al fresco. Playing in this module was like visiting a funhouse. Each room represented a wildly different encounter, which was more or less by design, as this was originally a tournament module. There was a sphinx asking riddles in the first room, a hallway that functioned like a microwave over, swinging chains over lava pits, hallways that turned into rotating cylinders. Damn, this place was wild. But the room that captured my imagination was the “inverted ziggurat,” a stepped arena where each level had a different environment for the monsters that lived there—giant scorpions, sea monsters, and manticores. I don’t remember if we ever recovered even one of the three magic weapons we were looking for, but all of us in the game has a blast.

What Made it Popular? Well, White Plume Mountain did not win praise because of its well-thought out ecology or logical arrangement of rooms. Lawrence Schick, the author, went to great lengths to make each single encounter unusual and memorable. At a time when most TSR produces would describe a room as “Four goblins guarding a chest with 236 sp,” S2 makes sure that players are constantly on their guard, challenging their own first impressions of the situation. Most of the traps had several possible solutions, encouraging creative solutions to problems (judicious use of flight helped us with the inverted ziggurat, if I recall correctly. So, yeah, this is a funhouse. There must be better ways to guard important magical artifacts. But if you can get past the sheer irrationality of the setup, there are far worse ways to spend time in the hobby.

Test of Time. Two subsequent editions were published. The 2E “Return to White Plume Mountain” greatly expanded the dungeon and the history behind it. The dungeons were stocked with copies of the mad mage, who replicated his personality in a host of unpleasant beasties. This creates a political dimension to the dungeon. I admire the sophistication of this adaptation, but I think it loses a lot of the sheer lunatic fun of the tournament challenge that S2 presented. Wizards released an online update for 3.5E that is fairly faithful to the original, with a few updates to promote new rules supplements (such as the “weapons of legacy” and the recently published Fiend Folio.

Given how short the original is (along with the 3.5 update), an experienced party could complete the dungeon in a single long session or perhaps two. White Plume Mountain is an ideal diversion, with unique challenges and rewards. It is well worth looking up and adapting to your game, if only to keep in reserve for that night when everyone is feeling a little silly.