The container pt2

so at the end of the last post, the villains speed demon and Titania were trying to get the container off the board and making slow progress, rhino had charged the heroes and taken damage for his troubles but had finally managed to get into contact with capt America.  Arachne had moved into position to stop the container leaving the board and had webbed rhino to slow him down and cable was content to stand and shoot at rhino with a good measure of success. Here's the board.

 turn 4
initiative rolls and another poor effort from the villains.
Heroes go first with cable on 6 and capt turning his 5 into a 6.
Cable blasts rhino again for 5 hits! the web is destroyed but rhino is out of stun again so collapses to the floor. His second shot only counts for 6's and cause more body.
Capt sees his chance and pushes again for a combined attack of 9D. However, rhino's good armour protects him from any additional damage.
Arachne, speed demon and titania all have 2 initiative so its down to speed. Speed demon and Arachne both have same speed so its down to a die roll and speed demon wins! He makes a change in the plan and charges Arachne.  His attack is 5D6 flurry (2) meaning he is so fast that he gets to attack twice, following up each attack if he needs to.

He hits 3 times with his 5D but Arachne has dodge (3) so rolls 3D and each success is a hit dodged.  she succeeds in dodging 2 and suffers only 1 damage.  However the damage gives speed demon an extra die for his second attack.

3 hits and none dodged- 2" knockback. in retaliation Arachne webs speed demon for 5 successes and on her initiative titania charges forward.
Finally rhino has his turn.  He is down but yet to activate so he has the option to forego his action this turn or to burn a body (in addition to the one required to refill his stun track) to immediately stand and have his go. This he chooses to do.
He charges Captain America again, over have a move so AP attack counts but chooses not to push as the Cap only has 1 stun left.

just a 9D AP killing attack (killing attacks cause an immediate body if there is an 6 left after armour and dodge adjustments but armour doesn't count for armour piercing attacks!! tough break there captain!)
4 damage and 1x6 which means a body damage and capt is down! (out of stun)

End of turn. Capt stands and refills his stun but is looking shaky, but so is rhino! Speed demon is webbed.

Turn 5
an important initiative.

Capt drops his 4 to a 3 so all heroes go on same initiative but 2 villains go before them.
Rhino activates first. capt is closest but too close for charge and therefore killing and AP to kick in, cable, however, is over half move away.  So cable it is!
A charge and a push gives rhino 12D. here's hoping!

Rhino must still be dazed - 4 hits and no 6's. 1" knockback.
titania charges Arachne.

9D attack and Archne forgets how to dodge! 3" knockback and stunned!
Now for the good guys go.
Arachne burns a body to get up and activate.  She then webs titania just trying to buy time for herself while the others defeat rhino.  She gets 3 successes which wont hold for long!
Cable is up next and he shoots rhino twice for a total of 4 stun then captain america wades in and pushes for his 3rd and final time to again get 10D

5 hits but rhino's armour stops 3, so 2 hits and no pushback.
Last but not least speed demon tries to break out of the web.  His 5D first attack gets 2 successes bringing the web strength down to 3 whilst his second attack only succeeds once so he is still webbed.

Turn 6

note on the boards above that the body track is moving from the right to the left on rhino, captain america and arachne - some supers are starting to get a little tired!
Capt flips his 2 into a 3 to go with cable.
Arachne moves first and attempts to reweb titania.  some entangles can be combined and added to.  Archnes web can and if it gets to twice the targets remaining body then they dont have the strength to get free without outside help - not important on this occasion as she still has all her body left.

Something must have distracted her as she only gets one success increasing the web strength from 3 to 4.
 cable, capt and rhino all go on 3 but rhino has a better speed and so he charges capt but as he is under half move away he gets no special bonuses.  He gets 3 hits but no AP means captains shield holds so only 1 hit.
Capt retaliates. he has 7D6 in hand to hand.  He gets 3 hits but can't get through rhino's armour.
Cable can't shoot into combat so he charges.  6D in combat, 3 hits all blocked by rhino's armour.
Titania tries to break free of the web and scores 3 successes so still held by a web of strength 1!! so maybe it wasnt such a poor effort from Arachne this round after all!
And finally speed demon rips his bonds apart.

turn 7

the villains had a plan.  speed demon and titania needed the high activations so rhino went last out of the villains.
speed demon activated and attacked the webs holding titania (it is assumed that you can target a friendly models entanglement without damaging the friend - if its an enemy the assumption is that you dont care). He destroys them with ease, freeing his comrade.
capt and cable both go on 6 initiative, with capt going first. He scores 5 hit and with 3 absorbed by armour 2 still go through causing (more importantly) 2" knockback.  Now not in hand to hand combat, cable swung up his gun and blasts rhino. first shot causes 4 damaging hits and down he goes. second shot causes no extra body.
Arachne activates next and rewebs Titania for 5 successes and lastly rhino pulls himself to his feet using his last 2 body to act this initiative with a full stun track.  Cable is inside 5", capt outside so capt it is! With the charge bonus and AP its 9D

4 hits and 2x6's for an extra body. the captain isn't looking too flash himself!!

turn 8

Captain flips the 7 into an 8, again to activate same initiative as cable.
Cable fires first, 2 damaging hits, 2nd shot 3hits but armour stops 2 so 1 hit and combined 3" knockback.
Capt activates next and uses the extra 2 damage dice to inflict 4 hits but rhinos armour stops 3 and no knockback.
speed demon attacks titania's webs again, using both his attacks to free her of her bonds. She then charges Arachne and hits her for some damage that she is only partially able to dodge.
Rhino activates next and he charges captain america.

9D, 1 hit but that's a 6 so down goes capt(he only had 1 stun left) and an extra body from a killing attack!
Arachnes last and again she webs Titania for 4 successes.

Turn 8
captain stands - no body left.
Rhino attacks first - 6D no benefits as he is too close. 4 hits but capts shield blocks 2.
Speed demon activates and charges Arachne. She dodges some but the 2 attacks still cause 4 damage and she starts to look wobbly too!
Cable's turn and he shoots Rhino and his 2 shots cause 6 hits!  Rhino goes down and out of the fight!
Capt moves towards the other fight to give support to Arachne.
Finally Titania gives a shrug of her massive shoulders and the web falls apart! (7 successes!!)

i had to stop at this point as I had to go and pick up my daughter from preschool.  I felt that the fight was still in the balance as the villains were a man down but neither Titania or speed demon had suffered any damage whereas both capt and Arachne were struggling.  Overall I was pleased with how the game went - there were a few rules that I forgot to apply here and there and some changes that I have made in light of this game but it will be interesting to play out another game using different figures and different combinations of skills and abilities.  Although he ended up being the only character to be put out of the fight, I thought rhino has the ability to be really effective!

The Container - super heroes battle report

I will run through the rules as they are used .  I might have to break this into two parts as it ended up being quite long even though in the end I ran out of time.  There were a few rules that I forgot and I will mention these in passing - still don't know my own rules yet!
So here goes!
A villain group has broken into a storage facility in order to steal a container that will aid their nefarious plans! However, things start to go wrong when they discover just how heavy the box is.  It takes two of them to move it and then only slowly - if only they had a criminal mastermind in the group they might of thought to bring a truck!  Things go from bad to worse when a group of Heroes turn up to stop them.

special rules;
the container needs two figures in contact and it can only move 2" per turn activating of the slowest of the two figures.
villains win if they get the container off the board or knock out all heroes
heroes win if they knock out 2 villains as they will be unable to carry the container.

Villains

the villainous group comprise of Rhino, Titania and Speed demon.  Here are their boards.

 Titania is a straight forward brick, Rhino a more complicated brick and speed demon a speedster.
Here are the Heroes.

Here are their boards

Captain America,  a leader with a few abilities, Cable, energy blast and marksman, and Arachne, a web spinner.  none as strong in hand to hand as the villains but with more tricks at their disposal.

Turn 1
Each group rolls 1D8 for each figure in their group and allocate these to the figures.  This is the initiative order and goes from highest to lowest.
Villains rolled well giving Rhino 8, titania 7 and speed demon 6
heroes rolled lower, Captain america 6, cable and Arachne 5.  One of captain america's abilities is combat reflexes and this means that he is more aware of the ebb and flow of battle. He can alter his initiative die value by +/- 1, meaning he can alter slightly where he goes in the initiative order.  In this case he alters his 6 down to 5 as there are advantages to hitting the same target in the same initiative, so although all the villains get to go first, the heroes all get to move at the same time for better teamwork.
Rhino moves straight towards the heroes at full speed of 10", hoping to engage them and buy time for the box to be moved. Titania and speed demon move the box forward.
Captain america mover forward but is out of range for his attacks, Arachne moves along the base edge to try and block the escape route.  cable move forward and is in range of rhino with his gun and so fires.

(sorry about the shine on the table will sort it for next time)  Cable fires 5D6 auto2, which means that he  fires twice and rolls 5D6 each time.  Looking for 4+ he scores 4 hits.  he is a marks man so can add 1 pip to any die so turns a 4 into 5.  Rhinos armour is not so good against energy weapons so he can alter any 2 D by 1 pip each making the 4 into a 3 and so a miss but can do nothing about the others so 3 hits (his stun track goes down by 3) and 3" knockback (5&6 cause 1"knockback each). As his first shot did damage, his second shot gets an additional die and so rolls 6D6. this additional die is accumulative and represents over powering of defenses, it can get very significant if a target takes multiple damaging hits in a single initiative.
in his second attack he scores 3 more hits and more knock back.  A good start for Cable!

turn 2
initiative -   villains Rhino 8, titania and speed demon 4
heroes arachne 8, cable 3 and Capt America 2 which he turns into a 3 to act on same initiative as Cable.
Although both Rhino and Arachne have initiative of 8, Rhino has a better speed value and so goes first (if they had been the same then die roll off)  He charges forward but due to knock back in previous round is still out of range!.  Arachne continues to move along the base edge. speed demon and Titania move chest.
Cable fires for 3 hits that rhino's armour turns into turns into 2, but second hit is more effective with his extra die and causes 3 hits overall.  Rhino's stun track is empty and he falls to the floor, dazed!  On seeing this Capt America tries to tack advantage and puts his all into his attack and 'pushes'it.  (some characters have attacks/abilities that they can squeeze a little more out of if they try - these are called push attacks.  captain america has a special trick shot that hits back arc for an additional 2D useable 3times per game)
With his extra 2 D for pushing and 2 more for 2 damaging attacks this initiative, Capt's normal 5D6 has turned into 9D6!!!

he roll poorly and only get 1x 6 (when a figure is stunned extra hits count for nothing except that 6's cause an automatic body damage instead- i also forgot that rhinos armour should have stopped all of these hits as armour works even when stunned) so rhino took a body damage and this was marked on his track)

end of turn - rhino stands up and turns 1 body into a full stun track.  he might be out for revenge this go!

turn 3
poor initiative for the villains

Capt turns his 5 into a 6
cable fires at rhino again for 3 hits, then 3 more, capt then attacks him with 5D6 + 2D for damage done already this initiative.  He gets 2 hits but rhinos armour is much better against physical attacks and ( it is -3D vrs phy so he can remove 3 hits) so none get through.
Rhino charges capt America.  Hooray for the bad guys!!!

Rhino was determined to make it count.  His base attack is 6D but if he charges in a straight line for at least half his move then he gets a +3D charging bonus and the attack with his horn becomes amour piercing (AP). Just for good measure he pushed his attack for another 3D (he can do this 3x each game) making a total of 12D! above is the results- 6 hits and all count as capts shield is useless against AP attacks.  These hits were marked on his stun track and he was moved 5" knockback.  Way to go rhino!

Arachne is the last to move.  Gets into intercept position and the finds she's still in range to web rhino which she does.

She has a 6D entangle attack. still looking for 4+'s, she get 2 successes which means some of the web suck.  Wont hold him for long but it will slow him down as to activate he now has to use his action to break the entangle rather than attack. Incoming attacks will also damage the web so he could just wait for someone to attack him first.

going to end the post there as its getting quite long. pt 2 to follow!!!

my 'work in progress' supers rules

in this post I will start to lay out some of the ideas behind the rules.  I suppose the best place to start is to explain my motivation to design my own rules when there are several sets of perfectly good ones available.  In the dim and distant past that was my late teenage years, we occasionally punctuated our mainstay dungeons and dragon campaigns with mini campaigns of many flavours - runequest, traveller and, for me the most memorable, Champions!!  We had many a happy session beating all manner of supervillains, throwing cars at each other and knocking characters through walls.  As you can see it was only the fights that have stuck in my mind all this time.
     I still have a copy of the rules but a much later version and had considers using them to recreate the battles of my youth. However, there were two issues with this;
1) the character generation rules are complex
2) there is a lot of character bookkeeping thereby limiting the number of characters you can easily run.
I also had a few of the marvel herocliks and I saw a painting thread on the Lead Adventurers Forum (many in fact but sunday hero being the most influential with his excellent painting!) so decided to try and repaint some of mine.

Being reasonable pleased with the result my wargamer's obsessive nature kicked in and I ordered a few more from Troll and Toad in the US.  As I was only interested in the figure not the base I could get the cheapest option on each character as some have multiple versions and prices vary depending on rarity and value for points within the game neither of which was an issue to me.  

After buying and painting my new figures I realised that I had not thought things through properly and now I had 2 of the fantastic 4, a couple of Avengers, Magneto but not many mutant brotherhood to give him a hand.  Luckily Santa rectified that for me so now I have enough major and minor heroes and villains to play the game that I was planning on developing.

And so finally on to the start of the game.  If I do ever manage to get them finished I will make them freely available to anyone silly enough to want a look. However, that day is a long way off......

Each hero/villain has a board that track health and lists abilities.  one is below - please excuse the roughness of it as it is still work in progress as the post title suggests.

This is the board for Titania and here is the figure.

As can be seen from the picture, the board is divided into several sections;

• health, comprising body and stun
• movement, comprising speed and movement
• combat, comprising offensive powers/abilities
• defense, comprising defensive powers and abilities
• other, comprising all powers that don't fit in the other boxes.

Stun is the amount of damage a character can take before they fall to the ground, body is the damage a character can take before the are out of the fight.  1 body is equivalent to a full track of stun.

Movement is the number of units (inches/squares/hexes) that a character can move when activated. Speed is a measure of how quick their reflexes are.

Offensive and defensive powers and abilities are pretty self explanatory, and other is everything they can do that is not yet covered.  Some powers are obvious where they go, others are more open to debate but as long as they are there I am not too bothered if they seem a little odd in their placement... it seemed to make sense when I did that card. 

Titania is a pretty straight forward - she has pretty good body and stamina values, a good attack and defenses based on her tough body.  She is commonly known as a brick.  Other characters have much more complicated boards giving the character more options to chose from.  As an example, here's Captain America's

I think I will finish here for this post.  Next time I will start the battle report as it will be easier to show how the fledgling rules work in practice.  

ok, so I'm not the most prolific of posters but time to restart this blog as the original purpose of the blog still stands and that is to encourage me to keep working on some of my more individual projects.
At the moment I am still working on zombie project and have been busily building card terrain for the project but this will also appear in my other project which is to produce a set of super hero rules for my heroclik repaints, just for my own entertainment.

This shot was the start of a small trial game is ran solo just to test out some of the rule ideas.  The whole battle report will follow soon.