Battle of the Saturday

Here are some pics of the latest battle of Black Powder we had at our gaming club. I commanded the french, as usual, and a fellow gamer, Geraldo, got to lead the british and their allies.

On the top of the pic bellow are my forces, on the bottom, the despicable british.

british infantry and artillery ready to march

Some portuguese and spanish at the sevice of the english

As I had an entire brigade on the opposite side of the river, my first movements were directed to secure a bridge head, by advancing my centre brigade, and pushing my regiments of horses forward.

Wellington observes the enemy's movement and dispatches his orders

Columns of british line infantrymen make visual contact with the french and prepare to reform into firing lines

The centre of the french forces were lead by the Emperor himself, and kept advancing at fast pace on their ominous attack columns, screened by their skirmishers.

Portuguese Caçadores face off against french skirmishers

The british lines open fire at the advancing french columns

The british horses cross the river to face the french cavalry, but are caught by it while disorded. The Scot greys received a charge by the Grenadiers à Cheval while in attack column, and should had been smashed to oblivion, had we remembered to apply the -2 to their Morale saves! (we only remembered to reduce their attacking dice...).

The french centre brigade finally makes contact with the enemy, a regiment of spanish, which are soon put to run!

Once the spanish line breaks, the french columns continue pushing forward and put the portuguese regiments to flight as well. Now, the british centre brigade is broken, and things start to look grim to the allies.

The british brigade on the left flank is holding the french columns over there, but with the centre of the field now in the hands of Napoleon, both flanks are at risk of being outmaneuvered. At this point, we had to call it a day, as we both had to go. Although technically still indefinite, the outcome of the battle would most probably turn in favour of the french, had we had the time to play out a couple more turns.

Pax Stellarum 2.0 - Alfa Version Released!

I finally finished revising my spaceship gaming rulest, Pax Stellarum. I've thoroughly revamped every section of the rules, and implemented quite a few changes, but the core of the game, how it feels and plays, remains unaltered.

Here is the link to the Google Drive Folder:

Pax Stellarum Google Drive Folder

There you'll find both the .doc and the .pdf version of the rules, as well as some quick reference sheets of Special Orders, Critical Hit table and some cut-and-paly tokens. There is also the brand new Design Tool Excel Spreadsheet, which comes with several stock ship designs of major sci fi universes. I'll be adding more and more "official" Pax Stellarum stats for famous ships over the next weeks, so that one file is going to get constantly updated on the folder. But the idea has always been having a design system that allows players to come up with stats of their own, and the Design Tool is there to help you do just that!

You can also find the permanent link to the Pax Stellarum folder on the middle of the column to the left on this blog, so it's always just a click away!

The most fundamental changes on this second edition are:

- Terrain Movement: It felt odd to have elements of terrain moving around the table. Scalewise, in the timeframe of a battle, any microcosmic changing of position of celestial bodies should be imperceptible to ships, anyway.

- Basic To-hit Number: On the original version of the rules, each ship had a Profile, based on its size, that constituted the basic to-hit number enemies need to match to score a hit. On this second edition, I've implemented rules for Quality, which replace the original "Spacefaring" Stat. Now, ships hit their enemies based on their own Quality, and the enemy Profile is now a modifer to this role, only. 

Quality now becomes one of the most important stats on a ship, for it determines its to-hit number not only for shooting, but for Skill Checks (to take on Special Orders and such) as well as Morale Checks.

- CTM and Projectile Weapons: On version 1.0, Countermeasures could only be used against weapons classified as projectiles. I've changed that so that now it's effective against any weapon. This, in turn, makes the distinction between energy based and projectile weapons irrelevant, and thus I've done away with that element. The reason for these changings is to make CTM a defensive system complete on its own, so to better represent those sci-fi universes where ships don't have Shields at all.

Still, CTM plays differently from Shields, they have distinct mechanics and feel unique. They each have both pros and cons, in terms of gameplay and design process (cost, mass, etc.), so plays hopefully won't have the feeling of being playing the same thing only with different names.

- Damage and the Spiral of Death: On the original version, the rules determined the loss of dice for weapons and overall combat effectivenes in relation to the amount of damage a ship suffers. Although this may seem more realistic in terms of naval warfare, in practice this meant that a ship woud quickly become useless once it started taking damage. Now the rules determine that if loses 1 point of Quality instead, which is bad already, but still manageable.

The are a lot of other minor changes to the rules on this new version, mostly aiming at making the game flow better. The new rulebook has also seen a revamping on its visual, and now portrays a plethora of beautiful pics of starships and space battles, so to make the reading process less boring and more inspiring, instead.

This is still version Alfa of the 2.0 Rules, which means playtesting may determine the need for some adjustments, but overall I feel pretty good with how the rules are right now. There is also the need of editing my writting (english is not my natural language), but my trusty colaborator Tim White accepted the challenge once more, so this should get done over the next weeks or so.

Go ahead, take a look, play some games and contribute with some feedback!

More Austrian Cuirassiers

Third unit of cavalry for the austrians, second of cuirassiers. This one has got 4 bases only, but I may expand them to 6 bases in the future. These guys have dark green facings, which I think look even cooler than the red of my other regiment.

March Column:

Austrian Light Dragoons

Second unit of cavalry for my austrian army. This time, a regiment of light dragoons, from Hat Industries.

March Column: