I Love the Smell of Dice in the Morning

Stuart and I have been trying to get more wargames played in 2026 -- our goal is at least one a month -- and last week we played one that was new to both of us; The Nam (not that one).

You can read Stuart's in-depth summary of the game here. I am in agreement with him for the most part; it's a fun enough game that runs well, if a little lacking in specific Vietnam War flavour, and it seems to have a lot of vague and ill-defined mechanics, or at least organisation that obfuscates key terms.

That said, there were two mechanics that jumped out at me as quite interesting: activation/initiative, and game duration. Unit activation is handled in a system very much like the initiative token system of Troika! and it worked just as well here. It's not quite the same, as The Nam doesn't have simultaneous combat like Troika! so there's an element of imbalance, but as most of my force was hidden for much of the game, I could miss turns without repercussions.

Game duration was also interesting. The game is measured in "minutes" rather than turns, and our mission had a 60 minute limit. At first I thought we were going to be playing in real time -- which is itself a fascinating prospect, and one to which I may give some thought -- but they are in-game minutes. At the end of every turn, the player that went last rolls a dice and adds that many minutes to the clock; if the limit is reached, the game ends. The tactical element is that the dice size is chosen by that player, so there's an element of clock manipulation.

In our game I needed to slow things down to have time to push my force forward and capture objectives so towards the end I opted to roll 1d4 for the clock each time. Stuart, who was losing troops too quickly for his liking, would much rather those had been d12s!

As it was Stuart looked at his depleted force, and having to choose between sucking up fewer activations or gambling on keeping his activations or suffering an automatic loss, put his faith in the dice, which of course betrayed him and ended the game with 25 minutes to go.

(Stuart had two objectives to my one, so he was technically in the controlling position. Could he have held out for 25 minutes and won? I think it was possible but very difficult; I had realised that activations were the key and targeted his force so as to reduce its possible activations, so I suspect a death spiral was more or less inevitable. The question is how long would that spiral take?)

Will we play again? Perhaps. It was fun enough for an evening's entertainment, but aside from a couple of mechanics, it didn't grab either of us. And we do have plenty of other games to play.

Outnumbered But Never Outgunned, Yes?

Oh, so that's who Robocop was trying to arrest the other day.

Good luck, Murphy.

And happy birthday Simon Furman!

(And Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #1 was released on this day in 1994!)

#DrawDeathsHeadDay

BRUTICUS BLASTED

My quest continues!

Here's Blast Off, alongside his 2001 sort-of-incarnation.

I have seen some complaints about his weird cup hands, but I think they're a nice nod to the original design, even if they make little sense.

As much sense as a Space Shuttle counting as a combat vehicle, for example.

Three down, two to go!

Your Move, Creep

I *think* it's #EverybodyDrawRobocopDay today isn't it?

Who is Murphy arresting? Perhaps we'll find out in a few days...

#KelvinDrawsThings

Still Obvious

Lanced Through the Head, and You're to Blame

We are playing Pendragon! Yay! I love Pendragon.

My knight, Sir Moriddig (MOR-i-THIG; it's pseudo-Welsh) is famous for being reckless, which has got him into a little trouble, but it was only after he'd calmed down and got a hold over himself in a recent battle that he took a lance through the noggin. Typical.

So I decided to update his character image:

Hello, ladies.

#KelvinDrawsThings

Mission: The Long Way Around

Here's another Stargrave scenario to try out, maybe for fun, probably not for profit.

---

THE LONG WAY AROUND

Ion storms make descent to the surface difficult. If we get separated, rendezvous at the target location as soon as possible. Be careful.

SET-UP

Set up the table as normal. Place terrain, select board edges, and place loot tokens just as in a standard game. Select a Target Point as normal.

Do NOT deploy crews as normal. What? Read on, MacDuff.

SPECIAL RULES

Where the heck ARE they?!? Each player randomly selects half (round down) of their crew members. These models are deployed at the start of the game as normal. The remainder are "missing" and are set aside.

At the start of the second turn, and every turn therafter, each player's initiative roll also determines when their missing crew turns up. On turn two the remainder of the crew appears on 1-5, on turn three they turn up on a roll of 1-10, on turn four they arrive on 1-15, and from turn five onwards they turn up on a roll of 1-19. Set up newly arrived crew members as per the normal deployment rules.

If a half-strength crew is wiped out before the remainder arrives, then the other half will arrive at the start of the next turn, regardless of the initiative roll.

Option 1 - Lost Patrol: When missing crew arrive they enter at the centre of a random table edge, which may not be their own!

Option 2 - This feels like more than just bad luck... Rather than choosing missing crew members randomly, each player selects an opponent's missing models.

Option 3 - Dribs and drabs: The missing crew arrive, but not all at once. Instead of the system above, a variable number of missing crew turn up depending on the initative roll:

• 1: Four crew members arrive.
• 2-10: Two missing crew turn up.
• 11-15: One crew member arrives.
• 16-20: No missing crew turn up!

(Thanks to Calvin for this option. I shouldn't have to specify this, but you can't have more crew members turning up than went missing in the first place!)

LOOT AND EXPERIENCE

Loot and experience are scored as normal, with the following additions:
+25xp to a half-strength crew that eliminates a full-strength crew.
+50xp to a half-strength crew that finishes the game without the rest of the crew appearing.

BRUTICUS UPDATE

A new soldier has marched up to the door of the recruitment office!

My quest to complete Bruticus before I die has progressed with the arrival of Brawl! Here he is, alongside his earlier incarnation. Well, the re-released version of his earlier incarnation, anyway.

The tank mode is a bit boxy, and there's that weird hole in the front, but he's a handsome lad.

Claire Mollet

So this is mad.

In 2021 I wrote the murder-mystery adventure Terror in the Streets for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Some people quite like it.

This week, I have been informed that Mariah Kronvik wrote a song about it!

(About the adventure, not about me writing the adventure.)

This sort of thing has never happened in my world before. I am humbled. Thanks Mariah!

P-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-pancake Day!