CelestiCon 2014

EDIT: 2014.11.02 I the pics that I got from Kyle! 

CelestiCon Pictures

Alrighty.  I've finally got some time to write something.  Here's what it looked like at CelestiCon 2014 with our Retropocalypse offering using the MEST 1.5.8 rules (or so).  We had two 4-hour sessions and the first one was a rough start for me; I misremembered some rules and called them incorrectly during game play.  You know the deal; what you remember play-testing is different than what is written in the rules.  It made for some stress and some grumpiness for the players especially since - as a practice - I hand out free copies of the rules book.  Otherwise I think it went okay.  

As always I didn't get a chance to take photos during game-play.  I'll just need another 8 years for my eldest child to get old enough to responsibly shoot pictures for this blog.  Until then, here's what I have; the start of the first session;

I'm setting the character cards up.
Giant man is admiring my precision.

This is one of the faction cards and the top
of one of the character cards.

A close up of the Cultist character cards.

Here's Anika from the She-wolves.  Her faction wasn't used.

Here's a better shot of the entire set of minis
and character cards.  There's a total of 7 factions
with about 10 minis each.

View from the far side of the table.  CelestiCon organizers
were very generous and gave us a humongous set
of tables.  Any how, from this corner the Vault Dwellers
faction was used and they pinned down the Survivors faction
across the board at the left.  `should have been there.

This corner had a father and son? team each playing
as the Red Army faction.  They pretty much caused
problems with the Mutant Hillbillies across the board
and at the left. The Survivors at the right were
also limited in mobility as a result.

Here I am trying to be precise.  I actually confused
myself numerous times.

The Red Army team.

We tried our best to keep everybody involved.

Actually might be early during game set-up.

This is from the Survivor's faction view point.

I tried something new with this leaderboard concept so that
I could track Resource Points.  I will need to redo the
concept a little because I had a hard time moving around
the magnets which I used as pins for scoring as they would
continually stick to each other.

Simple AAR Session One

Five players arranged as so:

MH|  |VD
--+--+--
RA|RA| S

From the arrangement you can see that the Vault Dwellers (VD) have a lot of breathing room. Their Comm-link equipment and AI/Bot characters allow them to dominate during any action.  The Survivors (S) are literally cornered within some ruined building walls because of the nearby presence of the Red Army (RA) as well.  Some activity occurred at that half of the board to pick up objective markers for Resource Points but there wasn't otherwise a lot of movement.

At the left side of the battlefield the Mutant Hillbillies (MD) had to deal with the remainder Red Army team. From what I remember, Leroy (the mutant gator thing) finally got to rush into the fray at the center-line of the battlefield to acquire some more objective markers but during this process Ben (the mutant critter thing) got kild-ed.  The middle Red Army player placed a soldier atop the gas-station building and that essentially created a large area with which he could cover.  

Three hours passed very quickly at 4 Turns into play.  I started this session without declaring all of the rules and abilities for the players in order to not bore them but apparently I spent a lot of time during the session clarifying rules and re-playing actions in order to be fair to each player.  I corrected this failure in my communication in the next session.

Simple AAR Session Two

Two players arranged across each other at the middle third of the battlefield as so:

  | C|
--+--+--
  | S| 

I remember it was Cultists (C) versus Survivors (S).  This was a surprisingly tense session as both players seemed to be tactical game veterans who quickly grasped the rules.  Not so!  The Cultists player was experiencing her first tactical miniatures boardgame and was doing a phenomenal job of keeping the Survivor player - a veteran of many game systems and battles - tasked with tough decisions.  

In this session I did my best to inform each player of their various options and character or faction abilities as soon as I could.  It came back as a reward to watch very interesting game-play unfold.  The Survivors rushed to areas near the center-line road to cover large fields of fire which forced the Cultists player to eventually make the hard decision to risk penetrating that line with a few characters in order to acquire more Resource Points.

About two hours passed and the game concluded with a hand-shake.

The young guy sitting down is a veteran of tabletop affairs.

Our lady opponent was surprising in her tactical
acumen being that this was her first meeting engagement!

Aha! A chance to explain a rule! I think these two
enjoyed their game, and if so; I'm happy about that.

CelestiCon 2014

UPDATE
Quick update about the MEST effort; we've been whacked over the head several dozen times since our last post.  Work, family, ... the boring stuff that consumes nearly everything involving minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months.  Sorry about that.  Unfortunately life happens and hobbies come last.  Good news; just 20 more years before retirement!

Retropocalypse

This year we decided to check into CelestiCon 2014 which is running in my home town of Fremont,

CA.  Here's the Web site URL for the Events search page;

http://celesticon.com/schedule.php

Enter the keyword 'MEST' and you'll find two Retropocalypse events each 4 hours long running on Sunday starting at 10:00 AM PST.  We will be pleased to receive each and every one of you that stop by.  Just like our previous entries for PacifiCon and DundraCon you'll discover that we'll do our best to take care our guests; we provide the minis, dice, rules, terrain, and hair-loss inducing GMing and you provide the tactical brilliance to play and win.

Files worth reading are duplicated here for quick access:

MEST Basic Rules version 1.5.8
Retropocalypse Character Cards
Retropocalypse Faction Cards
Retropocalypse Agenda Cards
Retropocalypse Mission Brief

Retropocalypse at DundraCon

Aggro and myself ran the Retropocalypse scenario at DundraCon just yesterday. Our first session ran for nearly three hours and we had 6 attendees. The second session ran for 1.5 hours and we had a repeat attendee and a new intrepid player. Our attendees demonstrated mastery of the basic rules very quickly. We did not expect such a large audience for the first session and it required the doting care of the both of us to ensure our guests experienced maximum enjoyment. Something had to give and we soon forgot to get enough sequential pictures to build a proper AAR.  However, in all cases our intrepid gamers did express to us that their time was well spent.

The six players in the first ran one team each of the various available factions issued at random.  The Red Army was not selected. The second session was two mini-games with two players each  (me + one, Aggro + one) at different ends of the battlefield.

At the start of each session I laid out the rules booklets with gamer card attached.

Booklets removed.

Those yellow stars are the Objective Markers. We didn't have time to build a thematic set.

Sometime around Turn 2?

Pa just took down a Scavenger.  "Get off my lawn!"

Sort of blurry.  You can see Herr Maske at the left with the She-wolves moving up towards the middle.

Done and Distracted.

Deep in the mix.  Those little bowls helped us corral the numerous dice.

From the second session, my one-on-one game.  Princess is Hidden and Ready.

A little blurry. 

Leroy about to move a bit closer to Princess and Onyx.

Ben is protecting the Object Marker.

Leroy by his lonesome.

Pa and kin Hidden.  Pa looks a bit Distracted.

Leroy caint really be hidin past them barrels.

Long view of the situation.

I think here my game was called.  Leroy took out Onyx, Princess looks out of it, and Moondog has no ranged weapons.

VSF Battle Revisited

Overview

Wee Aggro, Aggro84, and myself had a chance to re-run an earlier battle from last year.  The time we've had has been spare and so this was a welcome match-up!  Aggro84 decided to mentor Wee Aggro and I was the opposition.

Here's the previous AAR:
http://matter-energy-space-time.blogspot.com/2013/11/november-10th-2013-vsf-game.html

Assemblies

Aggro's Assembly included many Beasts with Elites, Marksmen, and a Heroic.  My assembly had many Average with Melee weapons and my Elite and Heroic were given Pistols and Heavy Armor.

Battlefield

We used the same rosters for our assemblies but we decided to go urban this time. Gamekastle in San Jose had a decent street board that we overlayed our terrain. Our mission was the Treasure Hunt one found in the full-color MEST Basic Rules .  We deployed 9 Objective Markers [ OM ] and placed them hovering within 8" near the center of the 48"x48" battlefield and no closer than 3" to each other.  Afterwards we deployed our assemblies at opposite edges.

Resource Cards

For every Objective Marker retrieved a player can draw from the Resource Cards deck which is an Advanced Rule feature.  Each card might award additional bonus Resource Points [ RPs ] to augment the collection of the OM or have some game effect that can be good or bad.

Victory Conditions

The player with the most RPs is given 1 Victory Point [ VP ]. The player that KO'd or Eliminates the greater number of enemy is given 1 VP.  The player that crosses the mid-line of the battlefield with the greater number of models is given 1 VP. The player that forces the other to bottle-out is given 1 VP.  These incentives shaped our game-play strategy.

Aggro's starting line-up. There's four OMs within view.

The starting line-up had three Beasts.  You can see
 in the back one of the OMs near those quick models.

Those little black/purplish tokens identify the models
 as being Hidden.  Hidden models receive many
 benefits, one of which is that they can't be
 targeted for Range Combat unless first detected.

Here's some of my forces.  My Elite is that all-black
 steam-punk guy with dual Pistols from LAF minis.
There is an OM nearby.

A high shot of the starting conditions.  My forces are
 way in the back near the top. 

This is one of my blurry smartphone pics. Sorry. 

One of the Beasts makes a run to carve out a
 tactical position near the skull-pile OM; it goes into Wait.
 Another Beast runs to the barrel OM.  The two other
 OMs are taken by a third Beast at the jalopy and by a
Marksman near the south-west wall at the street-lamp.

From this angle you can see that Wee Aggro
 has secured 1 VP for most objective markers, and one
 more for crossing the center with at least one model.
 At the left his quick beast is fighting my Turk Marksman
 for the bone-pile OM.  My forces at the right are bit slow
 but they have been moving into position.  The Elite
 with the pistols is in Wait to cover the skull-pile OM.

Here's my Turk Marksman and the Beast.  It doesn't look
 good; he's been Wounded and is already Nervous. 

Aaargh! Turkman down! Apparently the Beast is
 now Distracted and this may slow it down.

Meanwhile across that particular wall you can see
 that I've got another shooter in position and Hidden.

Across the street in the courtyard I've bean able to
 maneuver several of my characters into position.
This particular area becomes a critical choke-point because it
 is also at the mid-line of the battlefield.  The Beast
 already took the other OM and so I'm stuck trying to
 acquire VPs by other means.

Back near the Turkman I've been able to bring into my
Elite and Heroic to acquire the bone-pile OM.
Another Beast was fielded to prevent that and
 also Wee Aggro decided to bring in one of his shooters.
 I got the OM for myself when I brought in the Heroic.

You can see that my Heroic with the Sword and the
 Elite really kicked some butt.  Though it looks bad
for my Elite this little Scrum was mine to own.

OK. This is back at the other courtyard.  You can see
 that I've been able to bring about my Leader and
 begun getting closer towards the mid-line.

Here is my last picture.  I've been
 doing mop-up work in that courtyard.
At this point Wee Aggro forfeits
 knowing that it is a matter of time.
I win with achieving the most KO'd and
 Eliminated, and with the most
 models crossing the mid-line.

DundraCon 2014

New Year New Conventions

It's 2014 and I want to see about getting more exposure for our game system MEST using the Basic Rules.  First on the things to do is to attend more tabletop gaming events and so on Sunday February 16, 2014 Aggro84 and myself (kitrok) will be attending DundraCon!  It's the day after Valentine's Day and so it should be worth the trip to the dog house. =)  Just Kidding.

You can search for our event entry by using the keyword "MEST" here:
http://www.dundracon.com/Events_GameSearch.php?GameType=Miniatures

Retropocalypse Mayhem!

We'll be running the game on that Sunday using the Retropocalypse genre we introduced at PacifiCon 2013.  As before, I'll be handing out printed materials to for all attendees of our game.  We'll have two 4-hour sessions back-to-back starting at 10:00 AM PST each one allowing up to six-players.  You can get a preview of the content we'll be running by examining the Downloads documents at the right of this post; of key importance is the Retropocalypse Mission Brief and the character cards.

Previously at PacifiCon

Last year's photo-op is shown here for the curious:
http://matter-energy-space-time.blogspot.com/2013/09/pacificon-2013-noble-pursuits-pictures.html

As well, if things are organized in our favor; we'll have a side-board table using the Schleich "New Heroes" gladiators to demo for visitors.  These figures are pretty awesome and stand about 90mm (about 3.5-inches) tall instead of the normal 28mm many of us are accustomed to.

Toy Soldiers!

UPDATED 2014.01.19: I uploaded a better effort on the Basic Game for Toy Soldiers! in which I've taken time to correct my syntax and grammar problems.  I also did a better job of structuring the rules.  The Advanced Game rules are still yet untested but have been included as an addendum.

A Simple Start

My nephew left for Minnesota and I gave him a small going-away gift; a simple set of rules and some cheap plastic toy soldiers to go with it.  Of course, this being me I made sure that his gift would be useful and fun.

And it is!

I tweaked the rules just a bit and played against him about 6 times; he won all but once.  He's just 5 years old but loves the game.  Happy me.  Then over the Winter break I visited him and his older cousins and introduced them to the game as well.  They really enjoyed the game and I'm pleased because they are not accustomed to playing board games or tabletop combat simulations.  We played a total of 5 games.  I actually built two sets but I never got a chance to have a 4-player slug-fest.  Basically I introduced two girls, and three boys to the crazy and exciting world of buckets-o-dice warfare and they all really enjoyed themselves.

Total games played; probably 15 within two weeks.  This includes being played twice against my eldest daughter and twice against my eldest child niece.

Upon returning home to the Bay Area I left with this promise to each of my nephews; show me that they are still playing the game the next time I visit and I'll fashion a nicer set of game pieces for them.  They each made the promise but who knows?  I think that I'll go 15mm sci-fi for them if the time comes to deliver the upgrade.

The Game Itself

I added a link to the sideboard under "Downloads".  It is also available here at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bye3wyX639RGTS1lcnByVVJpZFk/edit?usp=sharing

I tried to keep the game as simple as possible while being fun for me.  The rules I posted show Basic and Advanced (front and back pages) sections.  I only got a chance to play the Basic game but I can say that those are well vetted.  For some reason kids really want to make sure that when you lose a battle it is because you fight to the last man standing and so the Basic game rules don't have anything to do with morale tests.

I tried something new with the game design; I wanted fast and easy.  I also wanted the rules to support use of furniture, shoe boxes, and any level playing surface be it a kitchen counter or the top of a sofa.  This feature is a plus for my nephews and nieces.  One of our games took place across about 15 feet of basement floor across doo-hickeys like potted plants, bookshelves, storage boxes, and old chairs.  I suppose that when I bring this game to Damon we'll try to keep the game-play upon a standard 6-foot by 4-foot battlefield.

Each player receives 21 soldiers.  Each soldier comes with two values printed at its base divided by a line; a top value used for when it doesn't move, and a bottom value for when it moves and then shoots.  The top and bottom values may also denote special abilities.  The simplest soldier is the Private which grants a single six-sided die either way.  Kills are on scoring 4 or more for all soldiers.  If the target is behind a corner ("cover") a kill is when scoring a 5 or more.  If both the target and attacker are behind corners, the kill is scored with a 6.  Veterans provide 2 dice if they don't move, and Bazookas auto-kill 2 soldiers if they don't move but can roll 4 dice if they do move.

I wanted to allow reaction fire and so I got that in place.  When a player activates, he may pick a group of adjacent soldiers - up to four - to move.  If they move into the open, the other player may announce "React" and respond with an attack against that group.  The player that reacts picks up to 4 of his own soldiers in a group and attacks the moving group.  Afterwards if there are any survivors they may continue moving and be subject to further reactions but by other groups, or may stop and perform their ability which usually means to shoot.

When the group is done using their ability, it may scoot to a corner within 6-inches and hide but not be subject to any reactions.  This is something I included in the design; normal movement is of undetermined distance being stopped only by the player that moves or by the player that reacts.  It made the game play very quick and the battlefield seem fluid.  In practice - except for that basement-floor game - the groups didn't actually move more than one or two feet (12 to 24-inches.).

Anyhow, the games completed in about 30 minutes apiece. The rules were simple enough all of the kids had them memorized.  I think with just small tweaks this could be a cross-genre set of rules for example ACW or AiQ.  I already have ideas for vehicles and robots and other sundries.

Some Pictures

I don't have anything very clear for the pieces but you can see what I've got in these attached screenshots.  The figures are mounted singles upon these tear-drop Woodsies identifying a national roundel.  I didn't make any rules for faction-abilities but I will probably do that in the future for "Expert" play.  The soldier ability values are underneath the figures.  Each figure is about 2-inches tall because they are the cheap-o kind you can buy for about 50 to a dollar at my local Dollar Tree here:

http://www.dollartree.com/toys/action-figures-cars/Plastic-Action-Figures-2-/629c635c635p294318/index.pro

Junior Generals

Oh, I almost forgot.  I had to invent three rules that I didn't include in the PDF for the Toy Soldiers! game in order to help my nephews - who are very young (about 5, 6, 7) - play. The first rule is the "Box of Death"; any soldiers that are killed are placed into the game-box.  This prevent them from being stepped upon, dropped, or accidentally re-introduced mid-game.  Hee hee.

The second rule was the "Touching Disease".  Two of my nephews would touch a piece, move it about and then change their minds once it was determined there would be reaction fire.  One of my nephews also had this habit of pushing pieces around and out of view.  So the rule is that if a piece is touched it must be used otherwise it is automatically killed and removed from play.  And go into the Box of Death!  Hee hee part deux.

The last rule was my favorite; "Falling to your death!".  A few of our games were using furniture and tall cardboard boxes.  Figures placed upon these were fairly safe unless they were touched.  Invariably they were touched but I wouldn't notice until they began to fall.  At other times the figures would be placed precariously at the edge of a shoebox or shelf and these would fall as well.  So any figure that fell a distance higher than it is tall would die horribly and go into the Box of Death. 

With all of these rules into place, the game flowed much quicker and my aspiring Junior Generals became great commanders.  And that is why I lost several games to each of them.  Well, that and the fact that dice hate me.

Nephew #3 anxious for his turn to move.  Waiting to react.

Nephew #1 deciding to move, Nephew #3 pondering.

Germans on this side of the battlefield looking spare.
The "Box of Death" in brown can be seen here; all
eliminated soldiers are placed inside that.

The Russkies looking bad on their side as well.

German reserve group.  There's a single Leader here.
I decided to make Leaders easier to recognize by
basing them on circular Woodsies.

Random shot.  I think this was another battle.  You can see
here how the units are behind improvised cover.  FYI to
the curious; the language shown is Vietnamese.  Yes, that
is correct; I brought the War home to my nephews. Bad uncle!

A different shot of the blue hill trio from above.
The German "Bazooka" unit just needs to flit to the
corner there and fire off 4 dice of death against all
of those poorly hidden Russkie targets in the open.

The aforementioned Russkie targets in the
aforementioned open.  Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.