(Completed) Call to Arms! Battle of The Wither Woods (And LDD Ch

[Horssten]

To late? As a seasoned sailor I will recruit the far travelled Senor Ortega's gang, they are well known up and down the coast. I hope my revenue from the salami sale will be enough, to get some additional plunder.

Edited July 21, 2014 by Horssten

[Maxim I]

Aah, I''ve uploaded the picture on flickr, but as I can't find any way to post it here, you will have to wait some until I got acces to a pc :(

[SkaForHire]

I saw the pic DM, looks good!

OK THIS IS THE CUTOFF POINT.

all new signups will be treated as reinforcements and will not be there at the start of the battle (you can sign up until the battle finishes)

All the rest of the mercenaries have been bought by various NPC lords and will be on the battlefield.

I will change the thread title when the first battle posts start going up.

[SkaForHire]

In the hand of Dugal MacLean…

My Dearest Merith, I hope you are safe. I do not know why you insisted on staying at the siege, we could have used your stable temper in the capitol as the High Lord’s Council meets to discuss the strange occurrences in Kaliphlin this month. You should be representing Eastgate at the meeting since neither Paulis or I can be there. We just hope that our friends make the right decisions.

We have made camp near Trigan’s Mill, an old lugging town, now almost claimed by the ever-expanding desert. It has an odd geography, within a mile stretch we have the Red River, the tail end of the Wither Woods, the Oil Road, and the Western Desert. There is only one building standing here, a blacksmith’s shop, with an owner who refuses to vacate his house, even with the battle coming. Our General’s council made up of Sergio, Hailfist, Paulos, Phrixelle, two Aleenridders, Al’Eden Mantherin of the Blue Guard, and Jakon the Invincible – along with a Masa who had stopped by and paid his mercenaries who will be fighting with us – has decided that this would be the best place to hold. It is almost a choke point, as the River on our left protects our flank, while the desert to the right becomes inhospitable quite quickly. So at Trigan’s Mill, the battle of the Wither Woods will be fought.

It shouldn’t be more than a Day now before Petera’s men are upon us. I sent the GEAR Co. 4^th Light Infantry, you know, your old regiment the “Amazons,” to run a scout and screen maneuver. Besides Lissa and Madini, I doubt you know many of the current ladies in the regiment. They were able to get limited intelligence, but they did capture a diplomat from Petera’s army who had come with surrender terms for us. Unfortunately, the man did not make it to our camp.

DSC_1302 by skaforhire, on Flickr

Our big worry is that Petera will show here. You must tell DaMaximus to fire off the warning rockets if the Dome disappears around Eastgate, and have him send his fastest dragon rider. We will need all the help we can get. If that dome around the city falls, that means Petera is no longer there and he would be on this very field with me and your brother-in-law. Only fate can save us then, I fear what an open battlefield with such a powerful mage would look like. Still, if the dome falls, make sure DaMaximus presses the attack, he may only have hours before Petera’s return after he finishes us off.

From the Amazons we have learned that the leader of the enemy army is Elden Logan, the patriarch of the Logan Clan in Eastgate. I am surprised that Petera has stooped so low to associate with the former kingsblood. Still, the man is said to be cautious and well versed in strategy. Apparently a couple of Petera’s old buddies, Fenghan Wade, who seems to be sporting the colors of the King, and Lord Argentus of Grimstone. These men are also formable opponents on the battlefield. We have learned that the Eastgate 1^st Heavy Infantry, the Red Guard are among Petera’s troops – so it seems we will see the battle of the guards, Blue v. Red – well they have been scrapping in Eastgate for 20 years now, I guess the rivalry will be settled. Al’Eden has assured me that he will Eliminated Captain General Flint himself.

DSC_1287 by skaforhire, on Flickr

That is all the intelligence we could gather, all we know is that Petera currently has a few less troops than us, and that he is not with his troops. We expect that they know where we are positioned.

I must go inspect the 1^st Heavy Cavalry now, as the “Titans” are anxious to prove to me their readiness.

All my love,

Dugal

P.S. make sure to lead another quest to save me from the pits of the underworld if I fall. Too much to ask?

---

OOC

A sneak peak at Petera's forces, the baseplates won't be there when the final setup is complete -- it was just to quickly move forces to figure out set up strategies.

DSC_1309 by skaforhire, on Flickr

[Gabe]

Looking good Ska! Great prologue to the battle!

[Mike S]

Looking forward to the next update!

[TheUtilityBelt]

Yay! I love wars! Lego wars that is.

[Zach101]

Hey, Ska, is their anyway I can see these rules, I read the Queenscross battle(it was epic), and I think playing the battle would be awesome. I have always tried to figure out how to make a rule set to play with Legos similar to a miniatures game.

[SkaForHire]

My brother (scarst) said that we should probably post the rules to give people an idea what they are getting into. They are in a state of flux, with only parts fleshed out, but I am glad to send them out. Right now we have the basic rules and the beginning of the codexes for different races. The original idea was to have a table top war game that could take on Roleplaying elements easily. We liked Brikwars, but felt as if it was not detailed enough. Admittedly, our game (which has the running title Block Combat) is much harder to fight a large scale battle with, but we wanted to make sure that figs were different in their attributes and abilities, unlike Brikwars (although i have not been back to their site in quite a while, they may have changed things). We are not trying to build a better mousetrap than Brikwars or Evil Stevie's Pirate Game, we are just trying to build a different kind of mousetrap. Also, as with these two great games, our game will be open to everyone for free when completed.

. One of the goals was to make the game scalable by era -- in fact, I started writing the rules for EXOForce era, but then got into castle again. So right now, we have the first era(s) mapped out, and that is where the majority of the playtesting happens -- medieval period.

With all that being said, I can post the alpha rules somewhere (they are too long for a post) and you all can look at them. I do have a website still I think... I should put it there haha.

Basically every figure has a set of stats and abilities, I can give you a short rundown to get an idea of how we play out fights between characters.

Dugal stat by skaforhire, on Flickr

The basic fig has much lesser stats than Dugal here, but he is a good example. He can move 6 (or use a full action to run 12), He has 7 wounds at 6 toughness (the amount of damage he has to take to receive a wound) His strength is above human average at 4, while his intelligence and ego are inflated to 9 :) This is also his command stat when units under him have to take a fear test, it is also sometimes used for special events like "would Dugal know that there was an evil groundhog burrowing towards him, roll a d20 and find out." He has above average ranged to hit and hand to hand to hit, and his defense (we sometimes call it "agility armor") is a little higher than normal because of his experience. Basically if someone would attack Dugal, they would roll a D10, add their hand to hand ability, and see if they tied or beat dugal's defense, if so, we have a hit. They would then role the dice corresponding with their weapon type (which, as you can imagine there is a long list of weapons due to the different types in Lego), Let's say his attacker was using a long sword, which is a d10 weapon. They would role a d10, they role a 9, add their strength of 3 and they would have done 12 damage -- well if we look at the very heavily armored Dugal, we can see that he has 12 armor, which is subtracted from the damage first. In this case, not one point of damage hits Dugal and he goes on about his merry way reaping souls. However, if that same player rolled a 10 on their to hit roll, a critical hit on a longsword would occur, then they would roll 2 d10s. and add twice their strength... Let's say the final result was 23 after all addition. Now, Dugal is hurting a bit -- he subtracts the first 12 points of damage, but he still takes 11 points more! Well Dugal is a pretty tough character, so we see that it takes 6 points of damage to wound him. With 11 points left over, that is one wound. The remainder points are discarded and do not stack against him on the next hit he takes. So now dugal is down to 6 wounds.

So, Dugal is probably one of the tougher models out there to kill (there are a lot of reasons for this, mainly because of plot and being a sig fig), but the basic figure is much smaller, and usually dies with a good role. There are ways to kill Dugal easier, like gang attacks where multiple attackers combine their attack to do more damage, or high damage weapons and magic. Most people who signed up got at least one pretty strong character that their personal battle story will follow, but some people who signed up many will have some basic troops too. survivability in this game can be quite tactical, for example, even though Dugal has follow up attacks if he kills someone (the cleaves) he can't just go cleaving his way into the middle of the enemy army, or else he will get gang attacked and die. So their are smart ways to play characters and bad ways. However, the run of the mill troops are important too, as they are the ones that take the hits, deal many smaller hits, and sometimes win the day... after 20 of them get eaten by a T-Rex.

Anyway, that is a little bit of explanation, there are a lot more rules... I will see if I can revive my site www.cutthroatgames.com and get an ALPHA copy up there on the web for you all.

Edited July 22, 2014 by SkaForHire

[Zach101]

That makes me want to play even more :)

Can't wait for the full rules, although I need to find a d10,I have d20s and d6s, but no d10s. I'll have to make some weapon rules for Star Wars, I'll have the Imperial invasion of Lord Zach of Kaliphlin :)

[SkaForHire]

That makes me want to play even more :)

Can't wait for the full rules, although I need to find a d10,I have d20s and d6s, but no d10s. I'll have to make some weapon rules for Star Wars, I'll have the Imperial invasion of Lord Zach of Kaliphlin :)

For some reason d10s get lost the easiest... I think the weapons chart has lasers... I would have to pull it up to see.

[Zach101]

Yeah, would 2 d6s work the same as a d10, would the lower probability of getting a specific number equal out the higher number possible, or would it only work with a single d10?

[SkaForHire]

for the to hit roll, 2d6 would not work, stats would have to be adjusted for defense. As it is, the average minifigure human hits 60% of the time against another average minifigure human (the to hit stat is usually 3, and the defense is usually 8. Also, critical hit chance would be much lower if 2d6 were used, and the same with critical failure (rolling a 1 sometimes results in bad things happening -- like with Jakon's rocket artillery from the LDD challenge associated with this battle would have ill-effects, perhaps exploding )

On the other hand with weapons, you could always only use d6 or 2d6 weapons, I will throw in there that tere are d8 and d12 weapons in the list. If you have the money, a big bag of dice costs about 20 dollars, and if you are doing larger battles it is nice to have one -- and if you play D&D, it is a relatively cheap way to get dice.

[Zach101]

Ok, I know a store not far from me that sells different kinds of dice relatively cheaply so I can buy them their. How many dice does a battle usually use at once. I have a ton of d20s and d6s form playing Star Wars minis and the axis and allies miniatures from wizards of the coast....

[Jakon]

Are we going to get to see the individual stats for our chracters?

[SkaForHire]

Ok, I know a store not far from me that sells different kinds of dice relatively cheaply so I can buy them their. How many dice does a battle usually use at once. I have a ton of d20s and d6s form playing Star Wars minis and the axis and allies miniatures from wizards of the coast....

Are we going to get to see the individual stats for our chracters?

Upon request. Sure, Although I guess that I should not have posted one of the biggest characters as the template. LOL. If it was a sigfig sent, they got comparable stats.

jakon stats by skaforhire, on Flickr

Jakon actually leveled up since he was in a battle before this. So did Gideon's Ediz Falconi and Niku's Lord Tiven as there were also former soldiers in a battle we have run.

[SkaForHire]

On another note, Jakon's soldiers are the basic human stat line. So we can compare average to better than average here.

[Zach101]

That looks pretty good, although still unsure what the intelligence or what the "A" is, and do u measure movement in inches or studs? (Sorry for all the questions :)

[SkaForHire]

3 studs = 1 inch roughly, so our measuring sticks are usually lego for movement, but the stat is in inches. Sorry, the A is actions -- it takes one action to walk your full movement, all of your actions to doublemove / run / charge. You must have 2 actions in order to make those special movements. It also costs one action for a basic attack. For example, Jakon has 3 Actions. He moves 6 inches with his first action, then attacks twice with the second and third action. Whirlwind, an ability that allows him to attack every unit around him in range, costs 2 actions. So essentially, Jakon could step up to a mob of soldiers and then Whirlwind, where a basic soldier could only step up and attack (even if they had the ability whirlwind, they would have to stay still to do it)

Intelligence is not used that often other than on fear tests. If a unit takes 50%, all figs/models in that unit must take a fear test --- if they do not roll under their intelligence on a D10 roll, then they begin to flee the battlefield. Essentially, it is a leadership skill. However it is also used for damage when casting a spell, or when countering a spell. And again, it is used for "special situations" For example, when asking if a model can see an invisible unit, find a trap, etc...

Edited July 22, 2014 by SkaForHire

[Jakon]

Looks good! Glad to see the ridiculous amount of armor I piled on my sig fig acknowledged.

[Zach101]

Ok, that sounds great, can wait for the full rules on your site :)

[Zach101]

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image by germain_zach, on Flickr

Pledged troops from Kaliplin

From left to right:

Sensei who trained Lord Zach that speed can be better than armor is his most trusted advisor and is very deadly even with the simple stick. His apprentices are Lord Zach's elite guards.

Lord Zach who is known for is skilled tactics and sword fighting believes that speedy attacks and counter attacks can overcome disadvantages such as weaker armor.

The captain who used to be the leader of a mercenary group, but after several battles with Lord Zach, he respects him and his group serves as an elite shock force for Lord Zach.

P.S. I would prefer my named characters not to die

P.P.S can I see the stats u come up with for him

[SkaForHire]

Which side did you pledge to? And, I do want to say that your men will probably be reinforcements in the third or fourth turn, as the armies are pretty much set up and have moved by this point. What are the parts for Captain? and which head are you using on your sig fig (not sure if I can rep any of this accurately), also oddly enough, I really don't have many camels, so I did not give anyone camels -- is it OK that he is on a horse? Finally, you need to copy the whole link from the flickr share button in order for it to show up in the post.

[Zach101]

Ok, and the captain is Panaka from the Star Wars Sith infiltrator, and a horse is fine. I don't know where the head from sigfig is just found it in a bunch of bricks I got at a yard sale... His head has a black moustache and a beard.

And for some reason the pic part of bbcode is not in it, must of somehow got deleted, it's not there when I look at the pic on flikr either....

[SkaForHire]

you have to switch over to BBCode in order to get the link...

also, you never said which side you were joining, Petera or Dugal?