Well, with the fun continuing on all fronts, Ian (from Lead from the Front) suggested that we play What A Tanker via webcam. He set up a Discord server for voice and to stream the tabletop. It worked well, with just some hiccups on the voice side. It was a different perspective for me, being almost top-down, but it worked. Ian ably described the folds in the terrain so I could make somewhat reasonable decisions, It’d been a while since I’d played any form of What A Tanker, even longer since I played the regular version (we normally use our House Rules ), but the rules came back quickly. It was good fun and you can see Ian’s blog post here for pictures and the story of my defeat!
Online, I’ve been playing Battletech, which is great fun. I’ve been interesting mechs for years but never played anything other than the Mechwarior video games, even though I had some miniatures and a technical readout book as a boy. Playing a computer based version is great fun. You’re moving a lance around on a battlefield, using terrain and concentrating fire, and then after the battle managing the mech’s loadouts and their pilots which is also enjoyable. It is almost enough to make me want to purchase yet another game system and get to play with miniature mechs instead of pixellated ones.
Another interesting computer wargame that’s been released is called Radio General. It’s based on the idea of running a command post where you, as the commander, are far from the fighting and trying to get your formation to do what you want. You can even give orders verbally over the “radio”, which is a neat feature. Very much like a real command post, your units will be all trying to contact you at the same time, you’ve got to figure out where they actually are and move their symbology to the correct location to help your plan, use the right tactics to wipe out the enemy and so on. It’s a fun game so far, and I recommend you check it out.
On the home front, I’ve tried to get some painting done with my eldest. They’ve happily painted pictures while I’ve managed to get about 14 feet of walls done to a least a base coat: I think I’ll need that much for game three of our Von Luck campaign. I’m going to work on getting the rest of the buildings I need ready and then pin some more trees. Then, finally, I may get some miniatures back on the table.
Happy Gaming!
Thanks for the game. Afterward, I realized that we were simply alternating our turns instead of rolling for initiative. Personally, I think it worked out better that way because it made the game move faster, although perhaps not having the possibility of back-to-back turns lengthened the game. FWIW, I don’t think I have ever used the wild dice to gain a +1 on initiative.
I admired, as it were from a distance, the What a Tanker rules. I like the Lardies rules but I couldn’t make this set work for me. I have been playing a number of board games and in terms of rules been having great fun with Rebels and Patriots. Tinkering rather than tankering.
We found them to work well with several tanks, but the activation was poor, hence our house rules, though TBH we need to look at them again.