OPR - One Page Zona - Mini Campaign

Over the last couple of weeks I've been playing with OPZ a bit.

The first couple of sessions were... somewhat frustrating from a narrative point of view.

However I've been contemplating the medium ongoing (which was part of the point) and yesterday I had a more satisfactory series of games.

Summary results...

Game 1:   Tier 1   -   3xHS   -   16 turns

   2x vets (a/rifle)   +   (2x medkits)

Game 2:   Tier 1   -   5xHS   -   11 turns

    3x vets (a/rifle)   +   (3x medkits, 1x auto seer)

Game 3:   Tier 2   -   1xMO + 2xHS   -   8 turns

    3x vets (a/rifle) + 1x vet (shotgun)   +   (medkits,mixed armour,detector,1x red dot)

My earlier games drove home that a substantially OPR-based system, while fine for combat, skirmishes or battles, is less than perfect as an 'exploration' medium.

[Pics mainly to break up a wall of text more than highlighting any particular points.]

I had started on 2x2' map with just two models, and the idea to build the crew ongoing.

This is well and good but OPR really curtails the ability to do much.  Combined with dice failures and restricted turn limits I had the crew wiped out a number of times without much to show for the effort.  Which doesn't progress the story.  Sure it reflects a tough environment, but it doesn't make the effort of gaming particular worthwhile, nor would a newly formed team necessarily jump into the most hostile of encounters immediately.

Specific to the last points you only get to do one 'primary thing' per turn, shoot, charge, or search.  which means during a game you have extremely limited scope to loot objectives, especially given they must be cleared first (i.e. you spend your time fighting, and not exploring).  Given exploration is the goal it seems illogical.

This was extremely noticeable with just 2 models. Perhaps not theoretically impossible, but it's highly unlikely that you're manoeuvring to 3 separate HS and clearing their hostiles, and exploring them, and possibly anomalies along the way.  put simply; it doesn't work.

My 'solution' was two-fold;

i)  dispense with fixed turn limits.

ii)  don't feel bad about sitting on Tier 1 for the first couple of games, especially with only 2 models (until you can build a stronger crew).

I played a couple of games with 2 models at Tier 2 and was wiped out before turn 5.  Admittedly I rolled up some of the toughest hostiles types available, but the resources I had just weren't up to dealing with them.

Other alternatives might include adding action points (in which case you're back playing original ZA), or otherwise/further tinkering and manipulating fundamental mechanics in order to mutate the game into a 'exploration' medium, which seems unsatisfactory as well.

So yesterday I started afresh.  A bigger board. And I started super-basic.   

First game had   2 models with 'standard kit' (veterans with a/rifle + medkit),  on Tier 1,  with 3 HS (no MO)   and NO turn limit.

This gave them time to deal with the threats AND the mission goals in a considered 'safer' manner. They were still attacked, they still took wounds but there was the opportunity to regroup between HS  and  actually get to and interact with all of them.

While fixed turns is considered useful for adding tension and/or motivation there needs to be a compromise in terms of actually achieving game goals.

Second game  I added a third vet,  still on Tier 1 but had 5x  Hot Spots...  this was again, largely about looting in a 'safer' environment, but there were more hostiles to deal with.

I think 3 models is really a 'minimum requirement' for running this game in an enjoyable manner.  2 models feels sub-standard - possibly good for an intro, but barely capable of starting off a meaningful 'campaign' or a set of interconnected games.

Third game I added a fourth model,   and increased to Tier 2.  This time one MO  and 2 Hot spots.  All three points produced high level hostiles so it's not like the game was super easy either.

In all games my models were taking damage, so I don't feel it was overpowered in the other direction.  It just made things achievable.

Notable, I left the turn limits off for all three games, but as my crew count increased and equipment/loadouts improved, the turn limits required went down.

Turn limits might be ok if you're starting with a minimum of 3 models, especially on Tier 1, possibly with 4 models on Tier 2,   if you really wanted to add that 'tension' back in.  I'd still probably suggests a high number of turns available though. perhaps 2 more than I actually took in each game. 

Other than that I think the general mechanics of the combat and the exploration were acceptable.

Anyway, that's my 'progress' and musings on this little project.

Until next time...

Knight Titan for OPR

A while ago I was thinking about playing full version OPR.  However a lot of my actual 40k/28mm armies are mainly/exclusively infantry.

Sure, I have a few lone heavy weapons mixed in, but mainly I built my modest collection on "that model/unit looks cool."

Anyway, I decided that rather than getting tanks to buff up my 'armour' aspect, I thought it might be fun to get a Knight Titan.

And here he is.

It's just standard/common Knight Paladin with standard loadout.  It's  pretty iconic... and cool... hence his inclusion.

A barely passable paint job but it will do. It's actually darker and less shiny than it looks in the pics.

At this stage (pics) I still need to give it a coat of matt clear coat. But the creative aspect is done.

Well, almost.

Until next time...

OPR - 6mm - alien hive vs battle brothers

Had a quick game of mini GF last night. Unboxed my cookie cutter nid aliens vs my favourite printed battle brothers.

2x2' mat, and took about an hour.

Was a low effort session, just wanted to watch a battle.

The horde was weak but plentiful, and the soul snatchers were brutal, wiping out 2 formations of bb early on before they could be neutralized.

All the while the aliens skittered forward up the board, setting themselves around the objectives convincingly.

The bb destroyers and bikes managed to brush off a lot of incoming damage, and the bikes even held their own against the carnivo-rex.

By the end of turn 4 the aliens had taken a lot of damage but still had a functional presence controlling much of the board, while the battle brothers were down to their Tough(x) models.

Another turn might have given the bb a chance to counter forward, but they were greatly depleted.

I missed a few intended loadout changes for the aliens but it probably made very little difference to the result.

The nids covered side to side across the backline. Which is a bit intimidating. And the soul snatchers deployed forward in the closest set of ruins.

The soul snatchers pushed up rapidly through cover, while the majority of the horde progressed up solidly.

The soul snatchers were brutal in CC (their only option) and two of the vanilla battle brother squads were ripped apart before they could do much of anything.

Finally the terminators took out one set, and fire from the tank or bikes took out the other one. But loosing so many activations is pretty devastating in such a low activation army. 

The carnifex and warrior squad followed behind the chaff, finally getting into contact late in the game. Both were largely unscathed by the end of the battle.

The marine bikes did manage to survive an attack from the carnifex and put a number of wounds on it, though wasn't close to half  its Tough(12) value.

By end of battle the battle brothers were pretty much outclassed from the start.

To be fair I didn't really adjust weapons loadout much at all.  Marines had a few upgrades.  The nid warriors should have had ranged weapons but only had melee. possibly the carnifex should have had a more thorough look in as well. 

The vanilla tactical battle brothers did have flame thrower upgrades but they were taken out before they could even print them to bear.

Anyways, was a fun little session. I'd be keen to get this or similar another run.

Until next time...

OPR - 6mm - havoc brothers vs battle brothers

This is something I've been meaning to get around to after pondering my 6mm collection, pondering epic, and seeing posts about people doing Grimdark Future (GF) in smaller scales.

Had kind of spur of the moment game last night.

Whacked together havoc brothers (chaos marines) vs battle brothers (space marines) lists to the tune of 1840pt (or there abouts).

rolled out the 2x2' mat on the desert side, grabbed some ruins and called it a thing.

There is a suggestion in the core rules in the 'kitchen table rules" (i.e. for smaller games) and the option that I used is to "halve distances, rounding up".   while technically a 24" heavy rifle can shoot the length of the board I'm taking the distance as "effective and useful distance," or "distance with guaranteed potential." regardless.

chaos has 2 tactical teams, 1 heavy weapons team, 1 cultist group, 1 terminator team (ambush/late deployment), 1 tank and 1 helbrute (heavy walker).

marines had 3 tactical teams, 1 jetpack/assault team (ambush), 1 terminator team (ambush), 1 tank, and 2 landspeeders (ambush).

turn 1 was largely the deployed units moving up toward the objectives and into cover, with barely a shot fired.

start of turn 2 all the ambush unit arrived and teams started picking up the objectives.

while they weren't primary in holding objectives the armoured units (tanks/walkers/etc) were pivotal in holding areas. in fact none of the amour (on either side) ended up taking any wounds - there were other more pressing tasks (i.e. infantry holding or screening objectives etc).

by the end of turn 4 most of the infantry had taken substantial losses (on both sides) but the objective situation was fairly solidified.  the 'top' and 'middle' objectives were held by marines. 

conversely the 'bottom' objective was almost controlled by chaos (again the tank was a dominant presence) - however by the end of turn 4 the marines did manage to contest it.

so the final result was marines(2):chaos(0).

all this took approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes based on photo time stamps.

some thoughts...

armour

while there were some 'deadly' weapons on the field the armour was largely avoided. there were a few shots taken, and some melee/impacts were done but mostly the action took place around them, avoiding them where possible.

I was using '3D' rules for tanks so infantry can target armour 'over' an infantry unit in front of it, and vice versa.  so you can't screen a 'taller' unit behind a 'shorter' unit.

a tanks ability to split fire between its different weapons is a very nice option to have.

I'm thinking that a predominantly armour vs predominantly infantry matchup might have issues.

Focusing on taking out a tough(6) or tough(12) unit is a big task. That's a lot of actions that could be used on something more beneficial... depending on the situation.  Yep, there are deadly weapons for that but it needs to be a pre-planned consideration/loadout.  regular weapons are quite likely to just ping off the hull ineffectively. so you need AP and you'd likely deadly.  armour units are going to be at least 3+ def and quite likely 2+ def.  while this is the same for infantry marine eq it's still a large task.

you also don't get the benefit of whittling down infantry units, making them less and less effective in attacks etc.

distances

generally this was simple.   a weapon shoots 24" normally, now it shoots 12". fast adds 1" not 2". etc etc.

the only slight niggles were things like the "all units must be 1" apart unless charging" rule so 1" / 2 rounding up is 1"... ok.

terrain

this caused a moment of consideration... the ruins were both 'cover terrain' and 'difficult terrain', especially at 6mm which is very low-fi on detail.

in difficult terrain (rubble) you can move no more than 6" per turn, so now that's 3"... ok, easy enough.  "if any model in a unit moves in or through difficult terrain at any point of its move, then all models in the unit may not move more than 6" for that movement."

a comparison

this is not the same as epic. not at all. nothing like it.

you could probably up the points (a lot) and up the tank and knight/titan presence.  that might automatically skew the game/loadout selection toward deadly as well

it still wouldn't play like epic though. by comparison epic seems very 'shorthand' of the battle action despite having a preponderance of 'special rules' that complicate it. I probably like the idea of more tanks/armour, and i'll probably give that a go with the 6mm OPR.

I did try an epic-esque conversion some time ago with sub-par results. it technically worked, but the results could be described generously as 'clunky' or 'broken', and less charitably as 'unplayable'.

conclusion

this was fun. it was definitely OPR:GF, just smaller. there were minimal changes required by changing scale - certainly not enough that it should people off doing it.

i intend to do this again.

until next time...

OPR - One Page Zona - Small Games

One quiet weekend recently I threw down a small 1.5x1.5', wanting to use the new modern 'villa'/cabin buildings.

Since there wasn't much external terrain, the houses were accessorised with some of the battlefield accessories 'table ready' furniture I got ages ago.  The main Mission Objective was in the house on the right, additional Hot Spot in the house on the left.

Two fresh veteran STALKERS ran on, starting on the 'far' side of the board. The MO was to retrieve something from the house and return to the starting point before game's end.

I immediately rolled 6+6 on the extended (Threat Level 2) hostiles table... Large Mutant... [rolls eyes] starting off easy apparently.  It was nice to get the new Siren Head sculpt on the table of course, but we could have done with a gentler warm up!

It immediately charged STALKER B but failed to hit... or he had some awesome defence saves... or both.  Before the mutant could attack again they shot at it and landed 5 wounds (against Tough(4) this was something of a relief), though this all chewed through the first few turns. 

STALKER B finished it off before it could maul him too badly. Then STALKER A ducked into the MO, searched, and dashed back toward the start point with the loot.

On the last turn the STALKERS arrived at the exfil point. There had been no time to hit up the HS (and deal with whatever was lurking there) as the Large Mutant had really sapped available time.

In review the Large Mutant's attack was adjusted down to 4+, from 5+.  Probably should adjust it from Tough(4) to Tough(5) or even Tough(6) as well.  I was originally going to kit bash one of the large Zombicide Fatties (where the original stats would have been more appropriate), but I couldn't for the life of me find where I stashed them (potentially in the bin).  

That's the nature of the hostile table, adjust to what you have.

I subsequently played a second game but didn't get (m)any pics of that one. I think I went in with 3 vets and one of them got savaged by a Face Melter (ouch).

Anyway, very much looking forward to some more mini games on my out of town trip. The reduced terrain box has the 2x2 and 1.5x1.5 mats, so a slightly larger area can be made.

Until next time...

OPR - One Page Zona - New Crew

Back in very early January I must have been tinkering with ZA and saw this little model (again). It's a kit bash by someone (amongst others) using the Anvil Industry parts.

Anyway, this model really struck a chord and I decided on a whim to get the parts to make him, plus  enough bitz to make up a crew to go with him.

So order placed in January and they arrived end of February. Didn't arrive in time for game day with the big board sadly.

Didn't take long to work out an acceptable combination of the parts from what arrived. There were just a few left overs so fair efficient in that regard. Was really hard not to go overboard and order far more bits than I needed. Anvil do nice stuff, but with conversion rate it's pretty hard on the wallet.

[ED: just recalled I think there is a 3d printed shotgun left over from the old print batch. should do a weapon swap when I get back... try to remember self.]

Here's the full crew, painted and ready for the box. The model box required a bit of snugging models closer but they all fit. DEFINITELY NO MORE MODELS FOR ZONA CHRIS!!

Although I didn't manage to get them for games day, I did manage to get them done before I headed south for a few weeks working remotely so I'm planning on giving the lads a worthwhile run on the table while I'm away.

Quite happy with my rendition of the original model. Project was quite worthwhile just from this result I think. Really like the VSS Vintorez, including in the STALKER games, so it's fun to have one on the board, even if it just counts as an Assault Rifle like all the others. The VSS is a modified Dragunov, basically a barrel swap and cutting down the front foregrip.

Another chappy with a full Dragunov which is a fun looking shooter too. Guess I have a permanent sniper in the crew. 

The other three models all have AR-15 variants. 

Happy enough with those results too.

Probably would have been slightly happier if I'd got an extra weapons set but they're more than functional, and at arms length on the board they look the part.

Until next time...

OPR - One Page Zona - First Public Games

Monthly games day rocked around on the weekend.

After months, if not years of talking about doing 'something zona' on games day it finally happened. Took all the terrain and set up a 10'x4' board, 55% to make something visually fun/finally make having all that terrain worthwhile and 45% a board to play on.

There was still plenty of terrain left in the box, especially buildings, but most of the scatter/trees (especially) were out. Had more crates and sandbags (oh and lots of scatter lichen/bushes) available but yeah most all of the trees were used.

While the stupid part of me thinks "perhaps I need more trees then" I can at least remind myself "this was a stupid big board and more trees are not required to make a sane table."

New factory didn't even get a showing (disappointed) but the apartments, office, and new villas formed a nice little segment. And the pond got on the table too.

Boat was there but we didn't end up playing around that section of the table. It's fun to look at though.

We played two games, generally 'introductory' but my game buddy was of course familiar with games mechanics in general and adapting to new changes isn't that taxing, especially for something based on OPR.

First game was centred around the apartments, bounded by the roads and the solid wall behind the villas (dividing off the pond) - so approximately 2x2'.

Second game was in the warehouse compound bounded by the fence line - approximately 3x3'.

First game we started off with 100cr, and went with 2x Veteran operators each with assault rifle upgrades. I started off rolling up some bloodsuckers which were a fairly brutal start, and an anomaly.

The Scientists (which looked fantastic) rolled up some dogs, and ended up taking the MO and a HS (can't remember who was in the MO). My Contractors only raided the HS for minimal credits, and we both got a medkit in loot.

With a few extra credits in the bag the scientists added another Veteran with assault rifle, and everyone got medkits. I added light armour for both my Contractors.

In game 2 we had two lots of snorks, rats, another anomaly and ended up having a bit of a gun battle between ourselves toward the end.

No one ended successfully searching an anomaly. Threat level 2, adding 2 to the difficultly of searching, was too much even for our Veterans.

In all I think the Zona aspect added onto OPR fundamentals worked ok, without being too clunky. Obviously there was 'totally never played before', and 'trying out new parameters' thrown in there, but we still got both games and an OPR mechanics intro done in less than the time to play a single round of Necromunda... 

While I don't think I can manage an uber-board again in the near future (so much lugging stuff around), it's definitely something I want to roll out again.

A few minor adjustments were made to the rule set (current added to the live share file) but overall it seemed to work as intended.  We covered most of the specific 'zona' elements; searching HS/MO and salvage, throwing, medkits, anomaly search, hostile generation, list and upgrade management.

By my calculations and notes I think our final crew disposition was:

Contractors

veteran assault rifle, light armour

veteran assault rifle, light armour

stash         70cr + grenade

Scientists

veteran assault rifle, medkit

veteran assault rifle, medkit

veteran assault rifle, medkit

stash 35cr

The hostiles were or could be a handful with so few bodies on the board, not to mention inter-player hostilities, but I think that obstacle is probably thematic at the start of the game. Then operators kit up and add more bodies, and the missions become easier as they become more capable.

Anyway it wasn't excessively brutal overall, and i.e. more hotspots would be better on a larger board (3x3' especially). We also didn't really look at alternate missions, just playing a basic battle ('recon' mission).

Seemed to work, happy with the result, fun had.

While I'm here, the top three of these (snorks, dogs, bloodsuckers) are the STLs that were used for my models...

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4160499

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4160492

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4160504

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2701578

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2698706

Until next time...