I am in the process of moving to the San Francisco area and found the Bay Area gaming club which meets once a month at the local library. They had about 30 people at the meeting I attended and have enough space and tables for about 6 games at a time. I played a Renaissance version of Tactica that someone was working on writing, a Warhammer Fantasy Battle, and a couple of Aerodrome games.
Their meetings go from 11 am to 7 pm so you have a chance to play multiple games. The Warhammer Fantasy game got in there because I do not have any of my miniatures on the west coast yet and had to play whatever game the new guy in town could get into. My choices at that time were Starfleet Battles or Warhammer and I went for Warhammer.
The Warhammer rules really cater to players who like to roll a lot of dice. There were attacks by a single chariot which took about 25 dice rolls to resolve. The chariot starts by rolling to hit, and for each hit you roll to wound and then for each wound, the defending player gets a chance to save if he is wearing any armor. This only sounds like three dice rolls you say? You are forgetting that each of the four horses pulling the chariot gets to attack and when they are done, then the riders in the chariot get to attack, and to top it all off, there was a dog/wolf also mounted on the stand and he also got to attack.
Each one of the attacks was at a different factor (including the riders which had different combat ratings). At least the horses were all rated the same. As you might have guessed, this chariot was unstoppable because attacks were not simultaneous and none of the goblins in the army I was playing could stand up to the lone chariot death machine.
I thought the magic rules were the most interesting part of the game. Each side had a pool of magic (about 8 dice worth each turn) and a pool for dispelling the other side's magic. When you wanted to cast a spell you would grab some of your dice and try to roll a high enough total needed for the spell you were casting (each spell had a rating in points). The opposing side needed to roll a higher number to stop you. Additionally, if you rolled two or more sixes the spell automatically went off however, if you rolled two or more ones you lost control of the spell and rolled on a special chart with lots of bad results.
Additionally, most magic users had a bag of magic mushrooms which you could eat to give you some extra dice. The magic rules had a nice balance and you did not seem to come out ahead grabbing all your dice to cast one big spell.
There is more to tell about the battle because I have not even started to cover what happened with the two Giants who fought with the Goblins. That is, before they fell over because once they fell over, there is not a lot to tell (i.e. they were finished off in about two giant heartbeats).
Well, you are probably at the limit of what you wanted to hear about my Warhammer Fantasy battle so I will save the tale of two giants for another time .
The Tactica game featured the Imperialist vs the Swedes in the Thirty Years War. The game was similar to the original Tactica except you were allowed to slowly wheel your units (one of the biggest complaints with the original game was you could not wheel infantry units at all until they were past the enemy line.).
A foot unit consisted of both pike and musket armed men. Additionally, the Swedish units also had a gun attached. The other guns which were separate were not allowed to move at all. Once you placed them at the start of the battle, all they could do was wheel or fire or load. Infantry units were allowed to either shoot or load or move. All units started the game loaded.
The Swedes were allowed to perform two actions on the same turn, consequently they were very tough. So with the attached gun and the two action rule the Swedish Infantry had four times the fire power of the Imperialist infantry.
I decided to play the Imperialist side for two reasons. One, I though it would be a challenge, and second, no one else wanted to play the Imperialist, and being the new person, I was trying to make friends, so I said sure I will play on the side that is suppose to get stomped.
The battleplan which I suggested to the other Imperialist player (another new player to the club) was to attacked on both wings and hold our center back. If we could win one or both of the flank battles then maybe we could flank some of the Swedish Infantry. As you might remember from the original Tactica rules, if a unit is hit in the flank, it becomes completely impotent. The men no longer fight at all, but just stand there and get pummeled until they rout. My partner agreed to the plan, but when it came time to execute, he only held his center back for one turn.
As the game progressed we attacked with both flanks slightly ahead of the center. After some heavy fighting and a lot of dice rolls Jactica is also a game where you roll handfuls of dice at a time) we managed to wipe out all of the Swedish Cavalry as well as all the allied infantry to the Swedes. In the mean time, the Swedish Infantry were laying heavy fire on our advancing center. In Tactica, each army has a break point and when a certain number of units are eliminated, the army folds.
At this point the Swedish side informed us that they had reached their breaking point.
This was a good thing, because we were only one unit away from breaking ourselves. The gamemaster was ready to call the battle over when he remembered that the Swedish Infantry might have some special rules and requested the Swedes to check their army list, Page two because none of the Swedish Infantry units were broken. The Swedish players said they only had one page. After digging through the draft rulebook, there was a Page two to the Swedish army list, and it had only one rule, which said at least one Swedish Infantry must be broken before the army breaks. So the Swedish Infantry apparently did not care that they were all that was left. The cavalry was gone, the allies were gone. But I guess with quadruple fire power they knew they did not need much help. They could do it on their own.
So, the game continued for about five more minutes when the Imperialist center was broken causing the Imperialist army to break. We took our loss without complaining and made a number of friends in the process.
In summary, the game played very smoothly and at least some of the Tactica drawbacks were addressed. I think the Swedish Infantry firepower was way over rated (maybe hold them down to double firepower instead of quadruple). I don't know if these rules authors have contacted Arty Conliffe to talk to him about another Tactica rule set, so a published version of these rules is probably still a long shot.
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© Copyright 2001 Wally Simon
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