Had an interesting SG2 game tonight, with a lot of buildings, including
for the first time a two-storey building. (I finally got around to
making
it...)
How do other people handle some of the oddities of multi-storey
structures? I'm speaking specifically of assaulting a squad that's not on the
ground floor, and of shooting over smaller buildings.
For close assualting of second storey squads, we had a stop-gap rule
that to get to the 2nd floor, you must get combat movement sufficient to get
you into the building _plus 4 inches_ to get you to the next floor. The
defenders got a +1 die shift for the entire assault. (see my webpage for
Bunker & Building rules for the +1 die shift idea)
For the second situation, we said that you can shoot over lower obstacles, but
that they had a 'dead zone' behind their farthest wall equal to the distance
from the firer to the nearest wall. Thus, if my squad is on the 2nd floor and
is 4" away from the nearest wall of a 1story bldg, they cannot target units
closer than 4" to the rear wall of that building.
How have other people dealt with these sorts of situations? All ideas &
comments welcomed...
> Brian Burger wrote:
> Had an interesting SG2 game tonight, with a lot of buildings,
The
> defenders got a +1 die shift for the entire assault. (see my webpage
How about using a long string? Place one end at the firer, and place the other
end on the target. Pull the string tight. If the string catches on something,
the target can't be seen by the firer.
> Brian Burger wrote:
The
> defenders got a +1 die shift for the entire assault. (see my webpage
Or one of those darned laser pointers that seem to be everywhere these days.
We were playing (ahem... um.... Necromunda, by GW) in an enormous industrial
city terrain set, and the host had one of those inexpensive
laser pointers. It worked excellently for drawing line-of-sight - you
position the pointer nest to the head of the miniature shooting, and if you
can "lase" the target, you've got line of sight, and can tell exactly how much
of the target can be seen. It is quite easy to see if there's any obscurement
of the laser, also.
Personally, however, I don't like the things (there's nothing more annoying
than getting to a tense, exciting point in a movie only to have some idiot in
the back of the theatre start playing with a laser pointer and targeting the
hero, or whatever...), but this is actually a meaningful use for these things
(well, sort of...)
As to the close assaulting in multi-story buildings - because the ground
scale in SG is different from the miniature scale (remember 1" = 10m), we
figure that a single multi story building is actually *buildings*, with much
more detail than is represented on the model (ruined staircases, piles of
rubble, etc). For ruined buildings, the terrain is rough (so you lose
movement) and we play that if you close assault up a building, you use your
normal movement, which is reduced anyway. I've never played in "undamaged"
buildings - they always seem to have been whacked with artillery preps
or airstrikes or something (well, acually we don't model undamaged
buildings...)
For shooting over stuff - if you have line of sight, you have line of
sight. If you don't, you don't. Just agree ahead of time on the means of
measuring line of sight (good players and common sense is, I think, the
best measure actually, but the string/laser methods are a good backup).
We try to build terrain on bases (say, thin hardboard or sheet plastic), and
the rule of thumb we use is that if you are on the base, you are in the
terrain. So if you are on a ruined building section, you count as being
"in ruins" and get a hard cover bonus - even if models have clear line
of sight to you (this reduces arguments over whether or not a model has cover
or not). The only time we don't use this is when direct line of sight is
blocked to a model not on a base - if you can't see him, you can't shoot
at him.
My $0.02
> On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Donald Hosford wrote:
i know the classical solution is to use an inverted periscope; place the
objective end (ie the front) on the mini's head / turret and look into
the
eyepiece for a mini's-eye view. periscopes can be made from the tube in
a roll of kitchen towels and a pair of small mirrors. this is named after
someone, but i forget who. i think the laser pointer idea was better, though.
if you fitted a camera to the periscope, kept the players outside the room
with the minis and had an umpire with the 'scope, then you could get some
fantastic fog-of-war effects ...
Tom
> On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Donald Hosford wrote:
What about one of those little cheap(ish) QuickCam golf-ball-size
computer cameras? On a long enough wander lead, just put it by the figure and
watch the monitor screen... if you have one of the old (even cheaper) B&W
ones,
then it could be a good simulation of lo-light sighting....
Just a wild idea - not tried yet (have to borrow a friend's Quickcam and
give it a go...)