Fortune Squadron 1 - Operation Rapid Mazarin 01 - "Assault on Riccorluvio"

 Operation "Rapid Mazarin"

The 13th Havenite Volunteers had been deployed to the embattled Eparchy of Velania, to the "Faithian Corridor". This swath of territory was tenuously in control of local insurgents-- the "Free Faithian Legion" which had been violently resisting the Prime Ascendency for years.

The operation called for the 13th Havenite Volunteers and 23rd Margravite Guard to expand the Faithian corridor; combined operations were aimed at the cities of Campi and Monagosco to the south, and Foialattilet and Jenti to the north.

Additionally, part of the operation's aspirations were to drive a wedge between the 6th and 8th Riofria Regiments.

To that end, Fortune Squadron had been dispatched for special operations.

"Solar Lance" --Ingvar Ragnarsson, Farquhar Ascenso, and Eftichios Tolotis--were to drop on Riccorluvio, aiming to disrupt the mech repair facilities there.

"Lunar Lance"--Nora Davies, Ceredig Clough, and Fatimah al-Hassan--were going to deploy closer to friendly lines, harassing the enemy held city of Montorano.

Mission 1

This mission was being made on "sketchy intel", which in WeaselTech impacts deployment. The better your intel, the better/more forgiving your deployment. I would be facing four initial "Blips", which represent enemy contact. In WeaselTech, you have to reveal enemies which may range from a gaggle of mooks to an ace pilot with a grudge to bear.

Solar Lance would be dropped into Sector 3, with three objectives. To the north-west (Sector 1) was an administrative building and to the south-east (Sector 4) a religious center, both of which were to be cleared/captured. To the north-east (Sector 2), the mech repair facilities which needed to be destroyed.

Left to right:

• Kell of Kells, an X-1 "Archer" mounted with MRL-4 and RPG-5 missile launchers, piloted by "Fortune-2" Farquhar Ascenso
• Hobson's Choice, an X-1 "Nieru-C" mounted with PL-a and PL-b beam cannons, piloted by "Fortune-1" Ingvar Ragnarsson
• The Human Condition, a B-1 "Shadow Hawk" mounted with an AC-3 autocannon, piloted by "Fortune-3" Eftichios Tolotis

Solar Lance dropped right on top of a patrol of four "Macaw"-class mechs, who barely had time to react before a flurry of missiles and an azure beam turned their frames into wreckage.

Kell of Kells provided overwatch as Human Condition made a beeline for Sector 1's objective; a prudent choice, as it turned out to be protected by an Elite pilot in a "Python"-class mech. Though Farquhar's missiles stripped the Elite Python of armor, Eftichios was unable to finish the enemy off with his autocannon.

Hobson's Choice squared off against a second patrol of Macaws, which proved as unwise the second time as during the landing. The brilliant flash of the PL-a beam vaporized myomer-fiber and ablative armor alike.

Eftichios' attempts to kill the Elite Python were further hampered by a new swarm of Macaws-- though the plucky pilot was able to avoid the worst of their incoming fire, his own AC-3 salvoes were also spoiled.

Not to be denied, Eftichios eventually outpaced the Macaws and cornered the Elite Python near Sector 1's objective. A trio of depleted slugs tore through what precious little armor remained on the mech, and a plume of reactor-flames signaled the enemy's end.

In Sector 4, Ingvar had little opposition securing the religious center-- even managing to extract a religious icon for return to the Faithian revolutionaries.

Similarly, Farquhar's advance on Sector 2 and the important mech bay were only nominally contested.

 By the time Farquhar emptied his missile racks into the mech bay, Eftichios had secured Sector 1's objective and skirmished the pursuing Macaws to exhaustion.

With all objectives complete--and little OpFor remaining--Solar Lance was able to exfiltrate without complication.

Aftermath & Social Scenes

In the wake of the mission Ingvar and Farquhar would advance to Level 1, while Eftichios would advance to Level 2.

The first two Social Scenes (the part of the game in which you explore the melodrama of these pilots and command staff) both occurred at a concert; I imagine some celebration being held back in Fortune Squadron's home base of Fonza.

Ingvar Ragnarsson--an impetuous and ill-tempered young man--got into a spat with the Intelligence Officer, Captain Levi Keller. Undoubtedly, Ingvar felt that their job had been made more difficult due to some deficiency in pre-op intelligence analysis. The two would become Rivals.

Farquhar Ascenso, seeing an opportunity to ruin his own rival's reputation, attempted to badmouth Ingvar to Fortune Squadron's commanding officer-- Major Ragnar Magnusson. He might have made a better decision had he recognized the patrynomic surnames, and realized that the Major was in fact Ingvar's father. The two would become Rivals.

Not everything was hot-blooded drama, however. The young and optimistic Ceredig Clough invited both Eftichios Tolotis and Nora Davies to meet up at a bar, with the aim of resolving their differences. Ceredig's relentless desire to find common ground (and at least two bottles of Fanza Reserve) would eventually settle the matter. Eftichios and Nora were persuaded to put their rivalry to an end.

And that's that for Turn 1! I'm already finding this game to have a lot more moving parts than 5 Parsecs; from the movement and revealing of Blips, the impact of staff officers during and after missions, the social system. But it's all a lot of fun and I can't think of any part which is particularly onerous.

Mission 2: The Long Patrol

Fortune Squadron 0 - Setting Up The Campaign

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm going to start up a solo campaign of Nordic Weasel Games' WeaselTech. I'm doing this for two reasons:

1. I have largely replaced my gastrointestinal functions with the purchasing and painting of miniature mechs; they sustain me, body and soul, in a way mere food cannot.
2. Global fucking pandemic. I am so tired.

The first step is contextualizing the campaign. With a lot of Nordic Weasel games, the context is very nearly presumptive; in Gang Warfare you are a gang engaging in warfare, in Salvage Crew you are a crew of salvagers, you get the idea.

But the devil is always in the details.

For this campaign I'm borrowing liberally from a Lancer mini-campaign I ran; that Lancer is also deeply invested in mechs and inspired by some anime means it shouldn't be hard to smush them together.

Welcome to Golgos Prime

(This unnecessary amount of detail to contextualize shoveling resin miniatures at one another is brought to you by Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator)

Some time ago, the Golgos World Administration--a global administrative organization which originally united the planet's various work syndicates and mining collectives--met a slow and unseemly end. A rising tide of anthrochauvinism (take the worst tenets and practices of nationalism, writ large on the galactic scale) would eventually see an internal coup. The GWA was dissolved.

In its place, the Prime Ascendency asserted planetary control. Because all tyranny breeds its own end, the Ascendency's violent push for global hegemony eventually blossomed on one of the continents in the form of the Free Golgos Confederation. Local militias and revolutionaries managed to pool their efforts, along with a sizable defection of Ascendency military.

I'll probably write more about the planet and its history of problems, but that certainly seems enough for now.

WeaselTech helpfully includes some random tables for broad context; I rolled "an uprising against an oppressive power or regime" and "located at a military instillation on the frontiers". That meant to me that this campaign would not take place in the front lines of contested territory (the diagonally-hatched zones on the above map) but in one of the brushfire revolts on the Ascendency's mainland (the red zones).

For the flavor of the squadron, I rolled "volunteers eager to do their part" which actually didn't initially point me anywhere. But I did notice one of the red zones snaking towards the heart of the Prime Ascendency-- towards the planetary capital of Golgos Prime, High Haven.

That led me to the "13th Havenite Volunteers"; a regiment of mech-pilots drawn exclusively from those who had either defected or been driven from High Haven. Young recruits--maybe from High Haven's war college--eager to test their mettle against the anthrochauvinists.

Meet "Fortune Squadron"

Now WeaselTech includes, as I mentioned, a whole sub-system for the soap opera melodrama of young pilots butting heads; I wanted Fortune Squadron to be particularly involved with one another from the outset. The dice were happy to oblige.

Ingvar Ragnarsson and Farquhar Ascenso were Rivals, as were Eftichios Tolotis and Nora Davies. The outliers were Ceredig Clough and Fatimah al-Hassan, who ended up as Friends. I liked the idea that they were the youngest and oldest pilots in the squadron-- not having been in the same war college class, they had very little friction with their fellows.

The pilot tokens were made using RetroGrade Minis, which I've leaned on heavily for my Lancer RPG campaign. I cannot stress enough how useful and thorough the digital support for Lancer is-- from its free rulebook, active Discord, and excellent liveplays to the Comp/Con character generator/character sheet and RetroGrade's Lancer-oriented pixel tokens.

Mission 1: Assault on Riccorluvio

WeaselTech - All Systems Radical, Dude

 Occam's Laser

If you're exceedingly clever and/or can read, you may remember the campaign log I was keeping of a Star Wars Solo Wargame using Nordic Weasel's "Five Parsecs From Home". I do intend to get back to that sometime! But I am a man ("man", really) of varied and sundry tastes. I'm the hedonism-bot of gaming; novelty, inventiveness, new things please! This is, I am certain, entirely unconnected to my ADHD.

I apologize for nothing

Anyway-- continuing the trend of this veering dangerously close to a Nordic Weasel Fanboy Blog, I am going to leap right into Ivan's newest product. WeaselTech!

Apparently the poor man has been hounded for a mech game about as long as Mitch McConnel has been hounded by the Collections Department of Hell. But unlike Lucifer the Prince of Darkness, Ivan's fans look to finally be getting what they wanted!

In any case, I have been somewhat bitten by the mech bug lately and hopefully Ivan has just given me a particularly robust and long-armed scratcher with which to itch.

Glancing At The Weasel

I'll start with a quick run-through of the rules; not a proper review (which may come later, once I've gotten some hands-on experience with the system). This is just to get some context for the later AARs.

The game makes no bones about its influences; Macross, RoboTech, and a host of other Large Big Robot Battle Pow Pow anime with which I'm personally unfamiliar. This has two notable impacts on how the game plays:

1. Rather than the plodding land-battleships of BattleTech, these are the fast-and-furious laser-belching type of mech.

2. There is an entire sub-system for tracking the rivalries and romantic entanglements of your mech pilots.

The broad structure of play is mostly recognizable if you've played a Nordic Weasel game before (most especially the 5 X from the X series); you have a wargaming-scenario which impacts a downtime procedure which itself wraps back into a wargaming-scenario. Where WeaselTech departs from the formula is in the downtime procedure more than the wargaming-scenario.

Each wargaming-scenario is a "Mission" and three Missions constitutes an "Operation". The downtime is then split between stuff you do between Missions (gain XP, roll for commendations, see who has gotten in a love triangle) and stuff you do between Operations (research new equipment, check on the status of the overall conflict, roll for promotions).

That might sound like a lot of homework, but let's not pretend that you've got something better to do. You're playing a solo-wargame! Somewhere my high school bully's hackles are up; they do not know why, but they know in their bones they have to shove someone in a locker. Even most normal wargames marinate in loneliness and math, why would this be any different? Don't act like you're better than me. You're not better than me! I'm not crying you're crying! Loser! You're the loser not me--

I'm okay I'm fine I'm okay

Sorry, lost the thread there a little.

Taken altogether, my impression is very much that WeaselTech is deservedly distinct from the 5 X from the X series-- though it is also solo-oriented and campaign focus, both the scenario-wargaming mechanisms and procedural structure give it a very different texture.

Keep your eyes peeled as I set up for a solo campaign of my own using this system!

I'm out.

Design Notes 0: McLuhan's Roleplaying Game

I Met A Traveler

Some people who read this blog may remember when I was more prolific in the TTRPG streaming ecosystem, and I'll immediately add that "prolific" is only by comparison to my current activity. Even if I never became a proper neon-and-vape e-boy on Twitch, I did come to appreciate the performative space that it represented. Represents, even. Twitch is still around, even after I stopped streaming regularly! Wild, I know. I'm made to understand that a lot of things happen without much consideration or input from me.

One day I'll get used to it, but I don't have to like it.

Pictured: This fucking thing refuses to revolve around me

An Antique Land

Anyway every medium impacts its media. A book's content is absolutely related to the fact that it is a book and not, for example, bathroom stall graffiti. Shakespeare could not have written Much Ado About Noting on the wall while slapping out wet misery in a Wendy's toilet, is my point, though I think we can all agree that Billy Shakes might've been game to try.

RPGs are an interesting artifact because to my observation they don't have as prescribed a medium as even one of their closest chirographic relatives-- the script. A play's script presumes a certain medium, a space where the active performance will take place; the literal stage. There are conventions of that space which impact--and can be manipulated, played with, subverted, upheld--by the script itself.

Similarly, a screenplay presumes the camera as its performative space-- the acting, the directing, the cinematography which girds the textual object all channel towards the camera lens.

I'm not being revelatory here, this is a critical theory that has been well-trod elsewhere by people more successful and less inclined to make jokes about Billiam Shackespurr having an unpleasant shit in a fastfood joint.

But I am leading up to an observation that RPGs as textual objects make very little presumption as to the space (and attendant rules, conventions, mores) of their performative space. Where does an RPG "happen"? Is it a table? I've personally been at RPG sessions in a living room, without even the benefit of a coffee table. Is it a garage or a basement?

Is it some invisible imaginative place, not unlike the space two people occupy when texting one another?

Awkwardly sexting in an AIM chat is the ur-RPG, not Blackmoor

Of That Colossal Wreck

This isn't something I have an answer to, though I'll admit I'm curious what kinds of arguments could be hawked.

Twitch is the example I'm going to lean on, but understand I also mean Youtube. I also mean things like Penny Arcade's Acquisitions Incorporated games, on stage. I also mean a house where your family goes about their own activities even as you pretend to be an elf with your buddy Keith.

I want to explore an RPG which presumes at least one aspect of its performative space-- that it will have an audience.

The impetus was a conversation with a good friend of mine. We had started on the topic that there are some RPGs that are better suited to a Twitch liveplay than others; even that this suitability was more granular, extending to certain kinds of liveplays (pre-recorded, edited, podcast, etc.). To our sight, some channels and content creators seemed to have a grasp of that-- and others did not.

But it spun out from there. If the RPG system could impact the "success" (I hesitate to use the word because art isn't about success or not, it's about whether people think you're handsome and are ging to send you thousands of torrid love letters, or at least that's my experience) then was there some kind of Ideal Liveplay RPG out there? What elements of an RPG helped a liveplay (or a kind of liveplay) and what elements hindered?

Because I felt the conversation was veering into territory dangerously not centered on me, I ended up saying that I was going to take a crack at writing a Liveplay-oriented RPG. Then, because I'd committed, I had to go back and actually think about it-- hence all the paragraphs above. There is a Google Doc with a bunch of stuff, already.

I'm calling it Chorus, because I will die a thousand deaths before I give up the paper-thin veneer of academic intellectualism which I've so carefully cultivated. In the desert there will be two vast and trunkless legs of stone, a pedestal on which will appear the words "My name is Colin, Coolguy of Coolguys; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside will remain.

System Delve: 5 Parsecs From Home

 I think "System Delve" is going to be the phrase I use to describe an in-depth look at an RPG or wargame; if it sounds like a review, it basically is but with the plausible deniability of someone who lacks the confidence to call themselves a critic. I am critical of many things--my body, certain flavors of Takis, certain types of testicular trauma--but that's only because I have the experience and authority to be critical. I am an expert in my own body, having been imprisoned in its bloated and always-oily confines since I was born. I am an expert in Takis, having made my flesh-prison bloated and always-oily with them. With RPGs, wargames, and the like? I don't know. I've played them a long time. I think about them a lot.

Fundamentally, I don't need you to think of me as a critic or to give my thoughts any undue weight in your brainparts-- all I need you to do is give them space up there. Don't take me too seriously, but take me as I am.

Anyway.

5 Parsecs from Home is one of many offerings from Ivan Sorensen (Nordic Weasel Games); like a lot of indie designers, Ivan has found a niche and burrowed into it with voracious energy. Ivan makes games like my dog Samwise makes turds in my backyard-- recklessly, prolifically, and with apparent joy.

Behold, a satan

His shtick is often that the games he makes are a) solo-friendly and b) lightweight enough to hack. That second one is a real balancing act. Too lightweight and the game feels anemic, but too heavy and one might feel like you need some kind of degree or special permission before you start mucking around in its pendulous cogs and stolid gears.

5 Parsecs From Home works on a very simple, very tight conceit. First, you create a little band of misfits; the various supplements ("Gang Warefare", "Salvage Crew") of the game could mean you're salvage professionals, space-gangsters, or just space-freelancers a la Cowboy Bebop. As a player, you resolve a pre-game procedure which will contextualize the wargame scenario you're going to play. Then you play the scenario.

The Characters

Your misfits are typified fairly simply, with only five statistics:

Reaction is how likely they are to act before the baddies during a scenario.

Speed is how far they move when activated

Combat Skill is how talented they are in the act of violence

Toughness is how durable they are when subjected to violence

Tech is "lmao the rest". Ivan includes it as a catch-all for anything that isn't pew-pewing or being pew-pewed. Each of the supplements handles this statistic in a slightly different way.

These statistics are, initially, generated randomly and often result in awkward .5's littering your statblocks-- but that's just a vector for some granularity, and you always round down when faced with these fractional stats during play.

Remember when I talked about the balancing act? It's here. The way you generate misfits is by rolling a 'background', 'motivation', and 'class'. Taken together, there's a surprisingly good texture to the characters you end up with and the expectation is that you'll spin these prompts out into a more satisfying dossier for your space-criminal.

It's emblematic of most of the game. 5 Parsecs From Home doesn't build your setting, your characters, your opposition for you-- but it does a pretty great job of handing you the tools to do so yourself without really even thinking about it.

The Pre-Game

The actual system calls it a "campaign turn", but that does a disserve to how much it sets up your eventual wargaming scenarios. There is some homework to be done, here, where you pay upkeep for your little dudes. But more of it is split between a) choosing what they're doing when not pew-pewing (are they training, going shopping, getting hammered?) and a) checking a variety of things which could complicate your little dudes' lives (has an Enemy caught up with them, is a Patron demanding their skills?).

The "campaign turn" isn't a game by itself, and it isn't just busy-work. You are given clear mechanical prompts which demand your fictional embroidery; the process feels a bit like the oracular act of sorting through goat entrails, but in a way that won't make your child tearfully ask what happened to their pet.

The Game Scenario

Again, my attention to language is superb and handsome. I could have just said 'the game', but that would ignore the quiet pleasure of rolling to see whether one of your misfits changes their hair significantly (an actual very real result on one of the "Gang Warfare" tables). I could have said 'the scenario', too, but I think that would risk underplaying the very wargaming-oriented nature of these. So, handsome as I am, I combined the two. The game-scenario. You can win, you can lose, but at stake is more than just winning and losing.

The mechanics themselves are delightfully simple; a turn is functionally split between three phases. You roll d6 equal to the number of models on your side, then assign those dice to models. Those whose die is lower than their Reactions will get to activate in the first phase, while everyone else activates in the third phase. The second/middle phase is therefore the exclusive purview of the NPCs. So there is a fun analysis to be made deciding, based on your rolled pool of d6, which figures you want to activate early and which figures are your least favorite child (also called The Colin in my family).

And if I'm going to mention NPCs, I should mention the soloability of this. Opposition is vaguely typified between certain suites of AI. As far as AI goes, it is not complicated. "Cautious" enemies have guidelines that keep them from advancing too far, too quickly. "Tactical" enemies try to hug cover. And so on.

The game, I think, hands players such loose reigns because as it notes-- you can just cheat if you want. It gives notes on how to make things easier or harder, to taste. You are, after all, playing with yourself. Why play in a way you don't want to? Whether that means the game's AI is sufficient or rigorous is harder to say, but like so much of 5 Parsecs From Home it is tremendously functional.

First Impressions: BattleTech

 Daddy Warbots

BattleTech is one of those ancient grandpas of old-school wargaming which always gave me pause. Its nascent first edition ("Battle Droids") was published half a decade before I was alive. There is such a tremendous amount of history in the development of the game, not to speak of over three decades of continuously updated lore-- I felt I needed some degree in archaeology to even start figuring out what the game is, what it was about, and why it had such enduring appeal.

I'm not sure what caused me to turn a corner and hurl myself face-first into the game, but I think it was a combination of a) a friend's Golden Retriever-esque enthusiasm, b) the relatively low cost-of-entry on Catalyst Game Lab's A Game of Armored Combat boxed set, and c) a global fucking pandemic.

So what's going on with BattleTech anyway? I'm gonna skip the behind-the-scenes frippery (how the IP rights get tossed around like a football, lawsuits over the creative designs of some 'Mechs, etc.) mostly because that stuff deserves its own post. Also because I don't want to. I'm my own boss here, no matter how much I'll degrade myself for even the hint of social media approval.

What you need to know, from the get-go, is that BattleTech long ago ceased to be just one thing. It started off as a fairly traditional hex-and-chit style wargame; it has since evolved into a hex-and-minis wargame, a traditional tabletop wargame, a pair of RPGs, a series of video games (tactical mech fighting, turn-based strategy, PvP arena shooter), and more. So choose your poison, I guess. This blog article (blarticle) will be about the hex-and-minis wargame.

A Universe of Possibilities So Long As Those Possibilities Involve Giant Robots

The setting of BattleTech fascinates me and not because it is well written. It isn't not well written, at least not all the time. I mean they've got Michael J. Stackpole writing their novels and he's one of my favorite Star Wars Expanded Universe authors.

Rather, the setting fascinates me because it's deeply invested in a kind of material culture; what exists in this universe is well-defined. Often excruciatingly well defined. The in-setting technology is scrupulously tracked and updated with efforts to keep it coherent within the parameters of itself. They didn't have to do this, by any way of looking at it-- the premise is space-feudalism with multi-story walking artillery. You don't have to pretend that makes sense. But BattleTech has such a sincerity and straight-faced enthusiasm for its subject that I found myself suckered in.

You can break the setting down into four major eras.

1. The Succession Wars - The galactic hegemony of the Inner Sphere falls apart, and a bunch of successor states slapfight each other to see who will be top-dog. They do this like four times in a row. No one really wins.

2. Clan Invasion - Some folks who left the galaxy when that hegemony fell apart, return. They've since gotten really into some Klingon-esque "blood and honor" bullshit and, consequently, want to beat the bejesus out of the entire Inner Sphere. They do a pretty good job.

3. "Jihad"/The Dark Age - The galactic AT&T, which is a religion, is unhappy with the outcome of the Clan Invasion and expresses that dissatisfaction with lasers, nukes, and 'Mechs. Most everyone beats the bejsus out of them and gets a galactic service outage for their trouble. Make note of the weird use of the word 'jihad' here, I'll come back to that.

4. Il-Khan - This is the current era and in many ways resembles Clan Invasion 2.0; it's also incompletely written. Catalyst Game Labs' recent Kickstarter has, as far as I can tell, promised to flesh this part of the setting out.

On the whole the setting plays out like some version of Dune as written by a Cold War fetishist in their bunker. It has the feeling of a tipsy uncle at a holiday party who is excited to tell you about a history book he just read and feels extremely qualified to regurgitate; as the use of the word 'jihad' up there might indicate, maybe Uncle Victor could use a more nuanced view of things though.

That's one of the main things which I felt hold the setting back, for me. As fiction written thirty-five years ago, there's some shit in there which just hasn't aged well-- "jihad" is a word with very specific cultural connotations. Its further a word whose specific cultural connotations have been broadly and repeatedly misunderstood, often with an Islamaphobic lens.

It's not the only place where BattleTech has plucked out cultural items as though they were mere aesthetic cargo, either-- the Draconis Combine falls squarely on the 'excited white guy with a flea-market katana who once read part of the Hagakure' side of the How Badly You're Gonna Fuck Up Japanese History & Culture spectrum.

The setting is replete with cultures and nation-states which evoke recognizable ones-- and those are the weakest parts, to me. At best, they feel like homage to cultures these writers clearly have affection for. At worst, they feel like they were written with one-hand and a national anthem droning in the background. Especially for a setting which seems deeply invested in a kind of nu-feudalism (MechWarriors as an ennobled warrior-caste through most of these cultures), the nationalistic elements are weird to me.

In conclusion-- the writers of this setting took themselves very seriously, but you don't have to.

Battle of the Bell Curves

Now let's finally turn towards the game. I had the opportunity to play with my brother, my father, and my cousin's boyfriend, and we tried out a scenario from the Game Of Armored Combat boxed set I linked above. The boxed set seems like a really good introduction to the game-- a 56-page rule booklet, some handouts, record sheets, minis, and hex-maps.

The miniatures paint up nicely

The gameplay has not changed overmuch through the decades-- errata here, streamlined there. Tweaks and edits, not major edition changes. The underlying paradigm is largely untouched from the early 80's.

These 'Mechs are walking battleships. Massive, ponderous war-machines stuffed with more ordinance than common sense. Your job is mostly to manage their heat; while trudging around accrues nominal heat, discharging your bevy of lasers and boombangs will see your 'Mech end up hotter than a young hot Christopher Walken.

Remember when I said not all wargames are about war? This one isn't. This one is about management. You manage your speed, balancing how your movement fucks with enemy targeting even as it disrupts your own. You manage your ammo, hoping to deplete a couple missile-bins before a critical hit causes them to explode inside you like an undercooked gas-station burrito. You manage your facing, to present whichever side of your 'Mech has the most armor (or the most weaponry).

Record sheets will be the bane and boon of your existence. They're tremendously useful once you learn how to read them. Until then, they're emblematic of a game design ethos which only considers streamlining in the sense of fictional aerospace craft rather than player-facing complexity.

This is your god now.

Now, I'll say we had fun. The scenario we played had each of us controlling a single 'Mech; I was tasked to lumber my 85-ton assault-class roboboi past a picket of three lighter ones. The asymmetry was interesting-- I outclassed each individually, but the demand that I keep moving and the fact that I was outnumbered/outmaneuvered kept my attention firmly split.

The whole thing took a little over 2 hours, and while it was the first time playing for all involved, we had a) read the rulebook, and b) are not exactly novices in these kinds of games. Managing a single 'Mech wasn't so straightforward that I was hankering to manage four or five (the more usual size of a game of BattleTech). I'm fairly certain that's going to be A Big Ask if I want to get these same players to have another go. It's likely I'll give Alpha Strike a try, as it promises a bit more abstraction than BattleTech is interested in.

That said-- I like the crunch. When I said that this is a game invested in the material culture, the lack of abstraction is what I mean. It may be process-heavy, but this is a game which will tell you what happens when your 'Mech's leg actuator gets destroyed. It has rules for your ammo cooking off, for what happens when your pilot gets concussed. It asks a lot of you, but it gives back as much as it can. Its output is tremendously tangible, tremendously grounded in terms that you can easily understand (even if the mechanical input process is not particularly elegant). The devil is in the details, and this devil makes some of the details downright sexy.

My 'Mech won the scenario, but only just. Its right leg and arm had been devastated as my opponents harried me like a wolfpack trying to hobble my movement. I'd wasted precious time earlier by dumping all my weaponry into a single opponent-- freeing up a lane of escape but nearly shutting down from the massive heat-dump. In refusing to abstract wherever possible, the game kept me busy and invested. It was a lot of fun.

Neat game. Check it out.

Afterthoughts: Dune

 Dune You Have The Time / To Listen To Me Whine

I am a rare breed of Dune fan, in that I am very excitable about a series I have remarkably little knowledge of. I've read many of the novels, but at the time I was young and all those paint chips I ate almost certainly warped my knowledge.

Further, I saw the movie adaption by David Lynch which was so formative to my personality that on any given week I am at least twice as majestically sweaty as Sting was in that film.

The boardgame is something of an odd duck. It was published in 1979 by Avalon Hill, having only been recently rejiggered from a Roman historical theme to that of Frank Herbert's celebration of dusty invertebrates. It remained out-of-print for a long time (briefly reflavored by Fantasy Flight Games as Rex: Final Days of an Empire).

Only recently has Gale Force 9 re-published it with some spit-and-polish. That's what I played. As usual, I shitposted about it on Twitter as I did so.

Part 1: Wormtime

Part 2: Time for Worm

Part 3: W O R M

The Game

Dune is a game about information. Like most games about information, this means it is largely a game about deception. The boardstate is appropriately cloaked in layers-upon-layers of misinformation, despite how transparent a lot of stuff is.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

The core gameplay loop is that each player controls a faction with a vested interest in controlling the titular planet Dune (properly, Arrakis); if a single player controls three of the cities, they win.

Battles between troupes of troops is carried out with a kind of wagering system that can be frustrating for someone like me, whose sense of math and calculation is as reliable as a Sapho-stained mentat's ability to kill the chill vibe at a party. That's a little Dune joke for ya, just some Dune humor to spice this blog post up lmao I'm so good at this writing thing.

Pictured: A kanly-duel over who gets to compliment my writing first

But really, it can be annoying. You're wagering four things:

1. How many troops you're committing to the fight. Any troops committed will die.

2. How much spice you're committing to the fight. Spice boosts the effective strength of any committed troops, but is similarly lost.

3. Which leader from your pool you're committing, ranging from nincompoops to nightmarishly competent generals. Helpfully, leaders only die if they're specifically murdered and will otherwise survive a loss.

4. Treachery cards to either protect your own leader or try to murder the other.

From that vichyssoise you eventually get a total strength. Higher strength wins. Loser loses all their troops and the territory.

But fuck me are there a lot of factors that go into figuring out what you're wagering-- what's the maximum strength they can achieve? What leader are they likely to commit? How badly do they actually need the territory? How much spice is in their bank to boost their strength? What treachery cards do they have, or more importantly, not have? Will they commit their Super Special Cool Soldier guys (the Sarduakar and Fedaykin)? There's a lot going on.

This might sound like a condemnation-- it isn't. While the process isn't what I'd call elegant, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. The game is not these calculations. The game is about finding out the information to make these calculations easy.

Every faction has access to slightly different information. House Atreides are the only ones who will reliably know what treachery cards each player has. The Bene Gesserit can compel their opponent to commit certain types of cards.

And this extends to other parts of the game as well. The Fremen know where the planet's storms move (and therefore which territories are dangerous to hang around in), the Harkonnens have a decent knowledge of which leaders are prepared to stab their player in the back.

The strategies each player pursues is informed by the information they have--or can easily have--which makes analyzing someone else's move an act of Byzantine interpretation. Knowing the special rules they're using only helps a little-- you still don't know what hidden information is informing their maneuvers.

An Aside About Cool Stuff

Above I'm only describing one specific segment of play, but there is so much going on in this game. Everyone is playing the same game and a different game. Remember what I said about a player winning if they control three cities? Not entirely true.

The Spacing Guild wins if no one else controls three cities.

Except the Fremen win if they control their ancestral territories and deny control of the other cities to the major houses.

Except the Bene Gesserit win if the faction they predicted wins, at the time they predicted they'd win.

Let those nuggets settle down in your mustard sauce. Imagine the kinds of cold-blooded Machievellian information-brokering those goals could provoke in a player. Are the Bene Gesserit allying with you in good faith? Or are they trying to help you win, so that they win, so that you lose?

But Is It Good?

I don't fucking know, why are you asking me?

When I played War of the Ring there was a particular sensation which I'll call 'Getting Punched In The Crotch' that I associated with it. Very frequently I would aspire to move a certain army to a certain territory, or assault a certain stronghold-- only for my opponent to slap down a card that said some variant of 'lmao get fucked scrub'. It was unsatisfying because there was no way for me to know what Crotch Punch was coming, but it happened so regularly that I knew a Crotch Punch was likely.

My initial instinct is that Dune had something similar going on-- a treachery card could pulverize my army, a miscalculation could see my entire plan to take a city collapse. What distinguished the experience in play, though, was that while Dune takes pains to make a lot of information hidden it is never strictly inaccessible.

Someone at the table knows. Alliances can be formed based solely on the desire for/need for certain information. Information is as much a currency in the game as the spice tokens which pepper the board like cocaine dust above a day-trader's lip.

Where in War of the Ring I eventually gave up trying to plan for Crotch Punches--hurling my armies and ambitions at the wall to see what survived--in Dune I tried to do my homework. Because I could do my homework.

The caveat, of course, is that it is still homework. It was mentally exhausting for me to constantly and with well-deserved paranoia try to evaluate whether what I knew was sufficient for the plans I had. As satisfying as it was to be right, it was an uphill climb to get there.

Still. The game is pretty dope, check it out.