Crimson Dusk - sci-fi wargames rules

Work is now in progress at making the rules more straight forwards and easier to grasp. i'm hoping to get the next version (3.0) ready to just after Christmas after having a few games to just check the balance of the new Df values.

Well tonight Rene and Thomas from my own gaming club gave Crimson Dust a whirl. They also persuaded me to get involved, so I played my 4 gangers that I had finished, needless to say I was severally out gunned. We played with some of the modifications that I'm comtemplating, which seemed to work, though I'd judged the new Df values to be too high after changing them to a 4+ roll, so it became rather difficult to hit some  models. Rene was also very lucky with his armour rolls, often rolling 5s or 6s, meaning most of shoots just bounced off him and after making a quick run for two of the objectives without me and Thomas being able to stop him he won the game.

One of the things I learnt from Horizont was to keep things simple! It makes it much quicker for people to pick up the game and run with it and lets people have more fun. One of the things that seemed to confuse was the requirement to have 5+ dice rols for defence rolls, while all others were 4+ (leader rolls, skills test,etc). As a result f this and other things I'm currently thinking about re-writing whole sections of the rules with some of the following changes:

* Defense rolls on 4+ instead of 5+. This will require the Df characteristics of the archetypes to be adjusted

* Simplify movement, but keep the random element. Along the lines of D6+3 units per AP, running would allow you to double the dice modifier so in this case would be D6+6

* drop going to ground as it is rather too complicated, instead add in cautious movement or crouch, where a model would move slower but gain a bonus to their Df, making it easier for them to avoid shots.

*finally drop the current activation system in favour of the older system, this will help with balancing powerful models. It will however require that I work out how leader should. Perhaps they provide bonuses for reaction/morale tests(?)

*simplify the reaction tests responses. 

Hmmm, well on to writing, but first back to work from my lunch break.

Duncan

Crimson Dust seemed to be well received at Horizont, lots of good feedback and it was good for me to try and explain it again to someone totally new to it. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get the minis I'd intended to take with me finshed so I had to pressgang some of my old GW Eldar and converted Imperial Guard in to place. The mission pitched the Eldar attacking the Imperial guard and had to capture two objectives whilst the Imperial Guard had t fight them off.

Let me show some pictures first:

The table set up ready for a game

A guardsman takes cover behind the wrecked police car

A Eldar guardian looks carefully for behind a building corner

A few things I've learnt, the reaction system and morale system could do with a bit of streamlining. Going to ground is not used, maybe cautious movement might be better giving a bonus to a model's defence. The random movement was well liked, but people felt they moved too slowly at times, so maybe instead of having a totally random movement maybe have it so its D6+3 units or something, this would make things faster, and allow troops to engage. There also seemed to be mixed feeling about a the activation system, especially when the most deadly model in the games (the sniper) took down 3 models in succession. The alternative activation system might both give a better tactical game and help balance some things out, like powerful snipers for example. There's plenty of fuel for thought there.

Well I've just got back from Horizont in Esbjerg - a great weekend so thanks to all you guys that were there and especially thanks to Lord's Assembly and Spicker for running it.

There were a lot of great games, with the german contingent realling showing their best with Nosterferu, Klaus Stortbecker, Last of the Mohicans and Zafarelli's nice sci-fi/modern board. There was also Thorbjørn and Jonas VSF board which was great fun to play using Gaslight. Unfortunately my camera is rather dodgy so I didn't get too many good shots, but here's what I got:

Nosterferu

Last of the Mohicans

Jonas and Thorbjørns VSF

Klaus Stortbecker

Ambush Alley (which unfortunately I didn't get chance to play)

Well I'm busy getting the last few things ready for Horizont. Unfortunately I'm going to have to change the two warbands I'd otherwise considered taking as I'm not going to manage to finish them in time, so I'm drafting in some Eldar and converted Imperial Guard.

Version 2.3 has now gone up on the site. There's not a great deal of changes - mainly the addition of a quick reference page (thanks Andy for that!) and a Warband roster, plus a few minor textual alterations.

Well I'll take the camera to Horizont, so be sure to see some photos here.

Well I've now got 15 playtested games under my belt, there's plenty that needs doing and each game brings something new up to edit and alter. For instances I've briefly toyed with dropping the activation system for a more standard system after playing a game where a single high armour, high damage capacity model systematicly took apart a group of low quanlity low armour infantry. Though having played a similar scenario yesterday, it's maybe not as unbalanced as I'd come to believe.

there's also a few things gone walkies from the pdf version and my own copy, for instance points costs for weaponry and equipment and missions. These have disappeared so I'm going to have to work them out again.

Well Crimson Dust has reached a stage where I feel it's ready to be shown to the world. On its page you'll find a link to the playtest version of Crimson Dust, please bare in mind it's a playtest version so there might be things that need a bit of work, so if you find anything let us know and you'll be part of making these rules something worth having.

Well on Saturday I was over to Esbjerg to the wargames club there 'Lord's Assembly', I took the board some minis and took Crimson Dust for a roll out. They have some great facilities there with their own rooms and lots of storage just perfect for any wargames club, plus they're a friendly bunch.

During the course of the afternoon we have two games the first against Jakob Spicker, who's organising Horizont and a second against another club member who's name I didn't catch (sorry!), both seemed to go well and illustrated the rules pretty well. So thanks for the games.

A little update I've now glue together the minis I talked about last time and got the undercoated and meanwhile I've been home for my cousin's wedding (a great time and they seemed to radiate joy), but while I was home I picked up an old sci-fi truck from Ground Zero Games, which I've painted up in a suitably rusty way. Pictures will come once I've found the camera again.

The hacker rules are now more or less finished and I've got permission to use some artwork by a guy called Juddski over on Warseer. Here's some of his artwork:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v420/juddski/Xenos/jaworkl.jpg

He's done some great stuff, so look forwards to it!

In the post this morning I've just received some of the nice, but very cheap i-kore/void miniatures from Scotia Grendel:

http://www.scotiagrendel.com/void_accs.html

Though there's not a great deal of variety on the models, they'll get quite a bit of customisation to produce heavy troopers, snipers, medics, psykers, hackers, etc for crimson dust. 

Another thing, the hacker rules are almost complete, I'm just needing to write up the hacker equipment then they're finished. When thats done, there'll be a complete playtest version, this will be without illustrations, points cost, missions, etc. But the core rules and mechanics should be down so proper playtesting can start. But I'll write more when we get to that point.