Time off, Time spent, Time lost.

Having a week off from work is a funny thing; it both simultaneously creates and prevents apathy. Time constraints are a great motivator; we know the pressure of deadlines, we want to fill the few hours in the evening after work with something productive (well, I do at least). In my case, having any extended length of time available inevitably leads to procrastination - I am my own best and worst motivator.

Despite this I have managed to get some work done on my various projects:

• My 500 points of Warhammer Fantasy is nearly complete.
• I've worked out a 2000 point list for Epic Armageddon (and ordered some more models for it).
• I finished work conceptualising a special box of decks for Magic: The Gathering.
• I've worked out lists and purchased miniatures for two teams of Heroes and Villains for Super Open Combat.

Earlier this week I even managed to make myself go out and do a bit of photography practice. I decided I'd like to try and catch the sun rise over the local park and challenge myself to get some pictures of the local wildlife. My friend Steve decided to tag along as well; we got to Harrow Lodge Park at around 4:50am, clear skies in evidence.

Unfortunately it begun to cloud over quite quickly, so the light wasn't particularly great; the sunrise almost non existent. Nevertheless we trudged around the perimemter of the lake and took some photos along the way. I have a newfound respect for wildlife photographers; it is exceptionally difficult to get pictures of animals. I did my best though, and learnt a few things:

• Light is everything.
• I need to work on picking appropriate depth of field.
• I really enjoy taking macro images.

Anyhow, here's what I managed to produce:

I still need to complete my 10 minutes, 10 steps, 10 photographs assignment. Perhaps I'll do that in the second half of this week. Or maybe I'll get distracted and do something else entirely. Who knows.

Super Open Combat

Open Combat is a game I supported on Kickstarter a while back. I finally received my hardback copy of the rulebook a couple of weeks ago (after realising I hadn't actually paid the postage; I could have had it in my hands a lot sooner).

Although I shan't go into a full review of the rules here (although rest assure I will at some point), here's a quick succinct overview:

Open combat is effectively a sandbox rules set; there are no unit profiles, rather the players use 'Renown' points to stat up their models however they see fit. This allows players to use almost whichever models they want, within the confines of a pre gunpowder historical or fantastical setting. This means you can recreate archetypal dungeon crawl encounters, fight battles between Saxons and invading Danes or send your Spartan Warriors to slay a foul Gorgon and her minions. Your imagination is the sole limiting factor.

 

The few games I've played (using an older pdf version of the rules) pitted my necromancer and her undead followers against a band of chivalrous knights. These few games we're a lot of fun, but really just scraped the surface.

So what am I getting at? Where does the 'Super' come in to all this?

Last weekend I was playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends Elliot and Aaron. I use the word playing loosely, it really just gives us an excuse to meet up and talk about Father Ted, comic books and movies whilst occasionaly rolling some dice and maybe moving some models around.

 

We somehow ended up talking about B-list superheroes, and that we should come up with teams of our own and play them against eachother in Open Combat. We came up with some stupid ideas for superheroes and references we could make (some of which I can't repeat here); the Zookeeper from Futurama, for example.

Having subsequently given it some thought, I think the rules could actually handle the idea. Our crappy superheroes would almost definitely be fighting eachother in hand-to-hand, perhaps with the odd bow and arrow or laser beam thrown into the mix.

The few skills and abilities presented in the rulebook allow for some psychic or magic powers, as well as different weapons and combat styles. The renown points system also makes it easy to model certain powers - super speed (high SPD stat), super strength (high ATK stat) and super endurance (high DEF or FOR stat).

The 24" x 24" play area is also great for representing a small area where the two teams of heroes / villains might beleiveably meet up - a city square, dark back alleys, the interior of a base or other more exotic locales.

I've decided to take this idea and run with it; I really think it could be quite fun inventing our own (ideally terrible) Superheroes and Villains. Hopefully Elliot and Aaron will jump on board as well, letting us run a series of games using the campaign rules presented in the rulebook. We shouldn't need more than 5 or 6 models each, which will neither break the bank or be too difficult to get painted up.

I'll follow up with a roster for my Heroes and Villains once I've invented them and found some suitable models.

Until next time viewers, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!

First Steps - Fundamentals of Photography.

So I bought a camera. Had I ever owned one before? Nope. Did I know even the basics of how to use one? Nope. So why on Earth would I drop nigh on £600 into getting one? Two reasons.

Firstly I wanted to be able to capture better images of my modelling projects. It is simply impossible to produce images of adequate quality using the camera on my tablet or phone. I don't like the like the quality, and you, reader, wouldn't be able to see anything of value. This, initially, was the only reason.

A second reason occurred to me later. The challenge. Presented to me was a whole school of thought almost entirely alien to me. I found myself in an unlit room with no idea where the light switch was. Fantastic. An opportunity to learn something brand new. Where to start?

 

I had purchased a Fujifilm model X-T10 with a 16-50mm lens. I read through the manual. Short of telling me what the dials did and how to access all the settings, it didn't explain a whole lot. Time to go back to fundamentals. ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed.

How could I brush away all the modern extras and paraphernalia, and work out the basics? Simple. Look back to the past, go back to analogue. So I rummaged through the cupboards to find my Father's old Canon A-1. Well used and worn, I like to think it was happy to once again see the light of day.

I found a website dedicated to the Canon A-1 and started reading. I learnt the following:

Aperture (also known as f/stop) is the size of the opening in the lens, which determines the amount of light which will fall on the film (or nowadays, the sensor). The aperture determines how much of an image will be in focus, the focal length. The lower the f/stop, the wider the aperture; less of the image will be in focus. Higher f/stops prouce an increased focal length, but require higher exposure times - the shutter speed needs to be longer.

Shutter Speed is the amount of time the film (sensor) is exposed to light. This affects the brightness of the image, too short a shutter speed the image will be too dark (under exposed), too long and it'll be too bright (over exposed). Modern digital cameras provide a preview image to aid in getting this setting right.

ISO (International Organisation of Standards) is the scale determining how sensitive a film (or sensor) is to light. I found this easiest to understand in chemical terms: the size of the silver halide grains in the film affect it's sensitivity to light. Larger grains require less light to translate into an image, smaller grains require more light. Thus large grain (fast) film works better in low level light (at night for example), but produces grainier images. Digital cameras use a similar concept, based on the properties of the sensor and processing carried out by the camera.

The following websites also helped to cement the concepts for me:

The Exposure Triangle: aperture, shutter speed and ISO explained

The Basics of Aperture: FocusEd 

With these fundamentals understood, I was able to transfer back to the X-T10 and start shooting on manual mode. Salute 2016 was my first outing using the camera, the outcome of which can be seen in my Salute 2016 post. I was reasonably happy with the results, especially considering I'd only had the camera and learnt this stuff two days prior.

A couple of weeks later my Father was having a clear out of his wardrobe and found a couple of lenses that used to fit his old Canon - a 50mm lens and a 70-210mm lens. I thought it a great shame to not get some use out of them, so looked to see if an adaptor existed to convert them to fit my camera. To my surprise such a thing did indeed exist. A small investment (£20) in an adapter ring opened up two new lenses.

Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm lens

Canon 50mm lens

With three lenses at my disposal, I decided to go in the garden and around the house and take some quick shots:

So what next?

I recently discovered the 'Photoclass 2016' subreddit, wherein a series of weekly photography assignments can be found, ostensibly aimed at beginners. Just my cup of tea. I intend to start at assignment one and work my way through.

Assignment one involves walking for 10 minutes, stopping, then taking 10 photos within 10 paces of the stopping position. I'll have a go at this one weekend and see what I can come up with!

Gateway to Game Design

A few months ago I embarked upon a journey of discovery; I wanted to seriously explore the realm of game design (specifically traditional games - board games, card games, miniature games etc. as opposed to video games). Game design is wondeful; it blankets into many different schools of thought: mathematics, psychology, logic, critical thinking, creative writing and design.

My initial discovery pertained to the appropriate naming convention for game design: Ludology.

Ludology (noun) - The study of games and gaming, especially video games.

Over my 10 years of experience playing miniature wargames (a relatively short time, I acknowledge) I have been able to gather, perhaps sometimes unconsciously, an understanding of a repetoire of game mechanisms. I shan't go into any specifics at this time, but I began to work out what did and didn't work when it came to understanding a rules set.

Over the past couple of years I've been able to cobble together a couple of rules set, both for miniatures games. The first was based on the video game 'Bioshock', retelling the story of the fall of Rapture as a skirmish wargame. This was never playtested and ultimately served as an interesting distraction whilst studying at university (some people went out and got hammered, I wrote a game).

The second game, 21 or Bust, a skirmish game based on the American Old West actually got to the playtesting stage. The game was dice less, and used a unique (I think) mechanic for determining player success - games of Blackjack. I'd like to divulge more on this game in it's own article sometime in the future, I feel it's an interesting topic that deserves it's own space. The following pictures are from the playtest version of the game:

I digress.

The aim of this series of articles is to share with you some of the resources I have found helpful in opening up the world of game design. These resourcs include books, podcasts, websites and videos I have found useful in my learning.

 

Ludology podcast - Ryan Sturm and Geoff Engelstein

A podcast devoted to the hows and whys of board game design, hosted by two published game designers. I will shamefully admit that my exposure to board games over the years has been rather minimal (I've only played two games of monopoly, ever). A lot of board game design translates directly over to miniature wargames, so this is an excellent source of information. Of specific interest should be episodes 123, 124 and 125, where Geoff and Ryan discuss their extensive checklist of questions game designers should ask themselves during the process of designing a game.

 

Magic the Gathering Drive to Work podcast - Mark Rosewater

Mark Rosewater, head designer for Magic the Gathering, records a podcast twice a week during his commute to work. He is a character, to say the least. The 'Drive to Work' podcast covers a wide variety of topics related to Magic the Gathering, and very occasiuonaly he will talk more specifically about game design (usually with the context of the card game as a frame of reference). The back catalogue here is extensive (I have yet to dig deeper), but a required listen is the series '10 Things very game should have': Goal, Rules, Interactions, Catch up, Inertia, Surprise, Strategy, Fun, Flavour, Hook.

 

Game Developers Conference (GDC) Vault

The GDC is an annual event (which leans heavily towards video games) where game designers from all over the world give lectures on different aspects of game design. Many of these lectures are made publicly viewable in the GDC Vault after the event. The event has been running for 20 odd years now, so the back catalogue is immense. I have been slowly trawling through the 2016 catalogue; the following are some lectures I have found I have found particularly interesting:

"Life Is Strange" Case Study: Using Interactive Storytelling and Game Design to Tackle Real-World Problems by Raoul Barbet, Michel Koch

A Course About Game Balance by Ian Schreiber

History and Game Design by Chris King  

Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons by Mark Rosewater

That's enough for now, or this post will become an essay by itself!

I will endeavour to make this article part of a series on game design - as I come across useful repositories of information I'll try and talk about them. I have only scratched the surface here.

An Epic Endeavour

Battalions of infantry. Companies of tanks. Massed artillery. Squadrons of aircraft. Titanic war engines. These are the components of Epic; the Warhammer 40,000 universe imagined on the tabletop, at a scale that makes sense.

6mm is a scale that I've never previously dabbled in, which, in all honesty, surprises me. Flames of War is one of my favourite mass battle games, and that's only 15mm.

I am a massive proponent of the separation of skirmish and mass battle games. Too often wargames attempt to blur the line between the two and ultimately fail in their depiction of conflict.

My issue is with scale creep; the ratio of model size and density relative to playing area.

Take the current iteration of Warhammer 40,000 (disregarding the rules, they are irrelevant) for example; game sizes have swollen in both model count and breadth, yet still remain on a 6'x4' board. Flyers fight for board space, both with other models and terrain pieces, while massive war engines (often in multiples) dwarf those around them. Entire companies of infantry compete for one tiny (in the grand scheme) patch of ground. It looks absurd.

This (admittedly excellent) 30k display at Salute 2016 perfectly demonstrates the issue.

Warmachine and Hordes is another prime example; the introduction of massive units, Colossals and Gargantuans. These models simply do not look right for the scope of the conflict that the game represents (which equates roughly to platoon level).

Sure it looks awesome, but should it even exist?

Mass battle games belong at smaller scales; 15mm, 10mm or 6mm. The larger the conflict you wish to represent, the smaller the scale should be, and vice versa.

Anyway, enough ranting. Let's talk about Epic.

I had looked at Epic Armageddon a few years ago when Games Workshop released the rulebook for free on their website. I really liked what I saw and decided that one day In the future I'd get around to actually playing it.

Wind the clock forward to about a month ago when one evening in Richard's game cave the subject was bought up; specifically Epic 30k (the Horus Heresy in 6mm). Epic 30k will be a future project (that will perhaps be chronicled over on Special Fried Dice), but I wanted to test the waters and put something together for Epic Armageddon (more speciifically Net Epic Armageddon, the fan produced update).

I chose to put together a Sisters of Battle army, using the excellent sculpts from Onslaught Miniatures.

Battle Sister Mission.

Why Sisters of Battle? Its an army that nigh impossible to play in Warhammer 40,000, it was never officially supported for Epic by Games Workshop, and the sculpts from Onslaught Miniatures really fit the bill.

Seraphim Choir

I painted these test models as members of the 'Order of the Argent Shroud', an order which played a role in the Third War for Armageddon, hence the desert bases. I'm really quite pleased with how this inital test purchase turned out and will certainly be turning it into a full army of at least 2000 points.

In future articles I'd like to discuss more about Epic as a rules set, I just need to learn how to play it first!