> At 01:14 PM 1/25/2000 -0500, John Crimmins wrote:
[snip]
> My experience with the other games has involved reading part of the
Well, the same could be said (constantly looking up rules) about Clan War,
yet it doesn't stop our local group from playing it every week. :-)
I've found the StarGrunt rules fairly easy to understand - once I get
past the jargon that Jon used. Now, I will be playing my first SG2 game next
week against one of my regular Clan War opponents, but I don't foresee any
difficulties in teaching him while I'm learning it myself - after a few
reads I have a fairly good grasp of the game mechanics, and can translate the
SG2 jargon into terms used by other games that we've played.
* Movement? Similar to Heavy Gear infantry squads in Skirmish scale.
* Actions/Activation? Heavy Gear again, with a squad getting 2 actions,
like the old 1st edition HG skirmishing rules.
* Fire combat? Costs an action to fire, like the old 1st edition Heavy Gear
skirmish rules. Defender rolls range die for the "target number" (Clan War).
Attacker rolls higher than TN to suppress or hit. Attacker rolls any hits to
wound (impact die), defender rolls "armor save" (armor
die) - similar to WH40K in mechanics.
* Confidence checks? Call them Morale tests (Clan War).
* Reaction tests? Call them Leadership tests (Clan War, Heavy Gear).
* Transfering Actions? Very similar to Heavy Gear Command Points, except you
pass activations out instead of single actions.
For this basic demo game, I only need to worry about these 6 items, along with
the RALLY rules. No vehicles, so I ignore all of the Point Impact rules. No
CaseVac, so we'll have to carry our wounded out. Since all of
my Clan War opponents are also WH/WH40K players (which I'm not), we'll
use Imperial Guards for the grunts and Space Marines for the Power Armor. No
new figures for them to buy <g>.
Here's my TOE for this demo:
(2x) Infantry Squad
-------------------
REGULAR Quality (d8) Level 2 Unit Commander (5x) Guards with Lasguns
(Firepower 2, Impact d8) in battledress (Armor d4) (1x) Guard with Assault
Cannon (Firepower d10, Impact d10) in battledress (Armor d4) (1x) Commander
with Lasguns (Firepower 2, Impact d8) in battledress (Armor d4)
(1x) Power Armor Squad
----------------------
"Medium" movement (8") VETERAN Quality (d10) Level 2 Platoon Commander (4x)
Space Marines with Bolters (Firepower 2, Impact d10) in light PA (Armor d10)
(1x) Space Marine Commander with Bolters (Firepower 2, Impact d10) in light PA
(Armor d10)
All troops start out with MEDIUM Mission Motivation, TIRED, and STEADY
confidence.
It should go fairly smoothly, since most of the rule concepts can be
correlated almost directly to other rules that we've played before. Constantly
looking up rules is something that Clan War gets you *very* used to
(unfortunately, and we all can hardly wait for the Daimyo Edition to be
released), so I don't see that as a big hurdle either.
One thing that I will be doing to speed the learning process is to make a few
squad "Force cards" that have all of the ranges, die shifts, and leadership
rolls in tabular format all written out. This will allow most of the combat
mechanics to be easily done, without a lot of the mental gymnastics and page
flipping normally required to look up all of the proper die types.
We've been running the demo games for Stargrunt for two years now and with
quite a bit of success. We used set force cards as Mark is intending and made
up a modified Quick Reference Card as well as a condensed
intro/explanation of the rules.
For a Participation Game with New players the Squad Cards are a huge help!
In our Bugs Don't Surf scenario we included VTOLs ground mounted heavy air
defence weapons and the surfing troopers complete with a "gnarly set" read
wave! The game lasted 4 turns and we were able to play it out in 45 minutes
and that with people who had never played SG before!! Ran about 6 sessions a
day and had a lot of fun!
The Coopers Creek scenario was a longer affair included vehicles on both sides
but was still well attended.
Our series of linked scenarios at Cancon this year had everything bar EW and
Ortillery!
If anyone is seriously interested I'll send them what we used but with due
respect to list members I won't send teh docs to teh list.
Good Luck mark, have fun!
Owen G
> -----Original Message-----
SNIPPETY SNIP
> One thing that I will be doing to speed the learning process
> At 10:17 AM 1/26/00 +1000, you wrote:
We've been running the demo games for Stargrunt for two years now and with
quite a bit of success. We used set force cards as Mark is intending and made
up a modified Quick Reference Card as well as a condensed
intro/explanation of the rules.
<<<<
[snip]
Well, I've just made a first cut at some Unit Force cards for my upcoming demo
game. If you want a peek, I've converted one page of the CorelDraw file into a
JPEG for your viewing pleasure. You can find it on StarFighter Command at the
following URL:
http://www.sfcmd.com/sg2cards.jpg
If your browser is a little squiffy over displaying a 263K image file at that
high a compression factor, you can go to
http://www.sfcmd.com/preview.htm and right click on the link to do a
Save Target As in order to download the file locally.
Let me know what you think about the format. :-)
> At 08:02 AM 1/27/2000 +1000, Owen G wrote:
Thanks - I am reasonably pleased with them myself <g>.
> For an introductory game to the public, the colored sheet,
Ooooh - cut me to the quick there, didn't you? :-)
Actually, my background is as a software developer & hardware product designer
(I'm currently doing Tech Writing for the Evil Empire here in Redmond).
However, I've done reasonably well as a layout artist, since I've done all of
the promo and program material for our dance troup while we were directing it
the last decade or so. It's amazing the things that you can get done with
CorelDraw and Word...
Mark,
Your Squad card is absolutely Kewl! For an introductory game to teh public,
the colored sheet, explanation of effects of fire and range bands is well
thought out and presented....do you work in Marketing or Design?
Well done!
Owen G
> -----Original Message-----
http://www.sfcmd.com/sg2cards.jpg
If your browser is a little squiffy over displaying a 263K image file at that
high a compression factor, you can go to
http://www.sfcmd.com/preview.htm and right click on the link to do a
Save Target As in order to download the file locally.
Let me know what you think about the format. :-)
In 2 sqd vs 1 sqd, if the guard player has any clue at all, he will butcher
the marines as soon as he get's double suppressed (which is quite likely with
2 fire actions vs 1 fire action.)
Neath Southern Skies - http://users.mcmedia.com.au/~denian/
[mkw] Admiral Peter Rollins; Task Force Zulu
[pirates] Prince Rupert Raspberry; Base Commander
> -----Original Message-----
> At 11:33 AM 1/27/2000 +1100, you wrote:
I may have neglected to mention that the TOE listed is for each side -
this
will be a 3 on 3 encounter. :-)
Feasable then.
Neath Southern Skies - http://users.mcmedia.com.au/~denian/
[mkw] Admiral Peter Rollins; Task Force Zulu
[pirates] Prince Rupert Raspberry; Base Commander
> -----Original Message-----
Ha, not if he uses a Detachment cleverly! The parent squad can lay down
suppressions on one enemy squad while teh deatchment does teh other. This is
the perfect example of valid and useful employment of Detachments!
Owen G
> -----Original Message-----