Ad gladium

I completed a batch of 27 gladiator minis two weeks ago. I started some of them almost three years ago. Yeah, I know, but that's nothing compared to the 20 years that elapsed between starting and finishing my fearsome boomsticks of war. But many of the freshly finished gladiator minis were only started in December, so that's a little better. It's not atypical for me to buy lots of minis, get cracking at them right away, and then buy lots of minis for something else and get cracking at them right away, setting aside the minis I was previously cracking away at. And so on...

But, here I am now with 27 wee gladiators to bash away at each other. The plan has been to use them with Jugula from Tomahawk Studios. I had apprehensions about Jugula at first because it's one of those games where you need to buy the rules and other accouterments and several sets of cards to play. Additionally, you need tokens and a playing mat, although you can make these yourself rather than buy them from Studio T. Still, Jugula is not nearly as bad at that as Saga, also from Studio T., which I've been sucked into along with all the books and several sets of dice.

The crupellarius stands alone

I arrived at Jugula after trying several other sets, which I found wanting in some way. The other sets were detailed, too much so in some cases, and intended for a single player to run a single figure. Jugula has players fielding four gladiators at once and can works with two, three, or four players. Jugula also has a nicely designed campaign system, where a player controls a ludus of several gladiators whose skills can rise as they survive turns in the arena.

My murmillo takes a bold stance

I first played Jugula at Drumbeat, our local mid-winter game day here in Western Washington. I was instantly hooked and bought the rules, cards, tokens, game mat, and a few packs of 28mm Crusader gladiators. I already had several of the official Jugula minis in 'heroic' 35mm scale, which I planned to use with the aforementioned other rules and, in fact, did. But I liked Mike Lombardy's 28mm minis from Crusader; the price point is lower and the variety greater. Phil Bardsley and I once bought the whole lot of Wargames Foundry's gladiator line and divvied them between us. My thoughts on those minis can be found in a blog post from 2015.

The arena

So now I'm pretty much all in with Jugula. I have four decks of cards and a spiffy mat and, if I say so myself, some pretty nice 28mm Crusader minis gladiators. They're veterans, having already survived, intact, a spill in their box when Bogart, a.k.a. Destructo-Cat, jumped on the box, which sat atop other boxes, and then jumped off, sending the top box, containing the just completed gladiators, flying. After chasing the unrepentant offender upstairs, I reset the minis in their box (they all have magnetic bottoms) and gave them an inspection to assess damage. There was none. Dave: 1, Destructo-Cat: 0.

Rick's hard-pressed thraex

I planned to play with them for a few weeks now, but something kept getting in the way (in one case, I was just too lazy to drag myself to The Panzer Depot on a Thursday evening). I planned to play my friends Rick and Janet at a local game store, Zulu's Boardgame Cafe in Bothell, WA. Zulu's is fairly new, starting business about mid-2018. They're in an old home on Main St., which they're expanding to accommodate more table space for playing.

Janet's veles vs. my crupellarius

Rick, Janet, and I semi-regularly play Eurogames together. Rick and I have been miniature gaming since 1975. He introduced me to the square ancients crowd that played at Al Tilley's house. These days, Rick is pretty much absent from miniature gaming, but an old veteran nevertheless. Janet had never played a wargame before—though in every Eurogame that has a combat mechanism, she's proven to be an aggressive adversary. She took to Jugula right away.

My dimachaerus joins the fun

We played a three-player game. We started by selecting minis from my new collection and matching them to their cards. I took my beloved crupellarius again along with a murmillo, a dimachaerus, and a thraex. Janet took a sagittarius, a dimachaerus, a murmillo, and a veles. Rick took a secutor, a thraex, a hoplomachus, and a retiarius.

My murmillo nearing his last stand

We started slow because Rick and Janet needed to learn the game. After a while we were moving along. Even then the game lasted more than three hours, though the time seemed to fly by and no one really wanted it to end.

My crupellarius (the tank) wades into the carnage

By the time we quit playing, I had lost my murmillo, Rick had lost his retuarius and hoplomachus, Janet had lost her veles, and murmillo. Both Rick and Janet had had wounded gladiators, but managed to play the card that removed the wound.

Sole survivors

Janet and Rick both liked it, so it's definitely on the playlist for future gatherings. Jugula is growing on me more and more. I'm glad I made the investment. I may see about splurging on some Foundry packs, despite my misgivings about them. I already have all the figures that Crusader makes. My box of minis is now in the garage safe from Destructo-Cat ready to be pulled out to play.

Rick's thraex and my dimachaerus face off

I plan on running two game mats at our upcoming Drumbeat game day in March, using Mike Lombardy's mat, figures, and cards along with my own. I'll also have to keep an eye for other opportunities to play. I'm not a regular at the Thursday night gaming at The Panzer Depot, but I've played a few Saga games there in the past. I think I'll need to get down there more often.

Drumbeat 2016

NHMGS held Drumbeat, our annual mid-winter game day, this Saturday at the Lake City community center in Seattle. Drumbeat is the brain-child of Dick Larsen (Yes, Dick has a brain and his brain has children) who looked and beheld the winter doldrums and saw that it was not good. I'm not sure when the first Drumbeat was held, but it's become an annual effort, helped immensely by the efforts of John Kennedy of The Panzer Depot. (Drumbeat is perhaps the only event where you can observe John outside the native habitat of his store.) We started out at a location in South Seattle, but moved to the more convenient (at least for me) location in Lake City some years ago.

I played Bill Stewart's Battle of the Marne game. He wrote a 2-page rule set with simple move, combat, and morale. The situation was a handful of French troops in 1914 holding off what must have been the entire German army.

The last battalion stands between Paris and the Hun

Bill painted all the figures (beautifully), made the buildings (also beautifully) and most of the other terrain. He even supplied the pennies to use as "prone" markers for the units. The rings around the figures heads in the pictures aren't scale versions of toilet seats or those small styrofoam flotation rings. They're what old-school gamers know as casualty markers.

A sea of feldgrau about to wash over the few islands of bleu

Steven Puffenberg and I were Les Français, Dick Larsen, Scott Murphy, and Mark (?) were Les Boches. I had a feeling from the start that this game would make Custer's Last Stand look like a even match, only our Sioux were in feldgrau and carried Mausers.

The imminent collapse of the French left

We were outshot pretty early on in the game. Scott's Krupp Feldkanone knocked out my Soixante-Quinze in short order and then proceeded to play havoc on my troops in the buildings. Before long were were in a last-ditch effort to survive the onslaught. We made it through about five turns before the inevitable end.

After the game, Bill, Mark, Scott, and I repaired to The Elliot Bay Brewery for lunch and suds. The brewery occupies the location of the former American Eagles hobby store. Bill used to work for Mike Edwards at American Eagles in the 70s (in their Greenwood location) when he was a student at the U. Lunch at Elliot Bay always has a bittersweet taste.

After lunch, I fell in with Mike Lombardy and Troy Wold. We got Kaffee und Gebäck at a little German coffee house (Haus?) just a few stores down from the brewery. I'm not sure how recent it is, but it's a pretty nice place and the pastries (das Gebäck) are wunderbar! On the way back to the community center, we decided to play a game of Jugula, which Mike conveniently brought along.

I have the rules and cards and have been painting the 35mm minis for Jugula, but have been mostly ambivalent about which rules to use for gladiator games. Playing Jugula for the first time has convinced me that it's the way to go.

Across the deadly sand I go...

The game is heavily dependent on card deck management. A player's turn involves playing one of the cards from his hand and doing one of the things the card allows. The allowable actions can be moving x number of figures, attacking x number of times, increasing your popularity with the crowd, drawing more cards from your deck, adding primo cards to your deck, or some other special action specific to the card.

Troy's boys waiting

Mike read the rules and Troy and I squared off against each other. I had two heavy gladiators and two lights; Troy had three heavies and one light. I advanced right into the arena from the start, while Troy bid his time increasing his popularity and adding primo cards. The advantage of popularity (the Vox Populi track) is that your gladiator's attack and defense values increase as your popularity does. By the time I hit Troys figures, he was already at +1 against me and soon made it up to +2, +3, and +4 while I was still mucking about using my cards to move and attack.

My scissors wounds Troy's secutor

I managed to finish one of Troy's gladiators and wound a second, but the disparity in Vox Populi started to tell against me. Troy's wounded secutor came back and finished my scissors and then proceeded to go after my others. I eventually caught up in Vox Populi, but too late to matter. My last gladiator went down surrounded by Troy's three surviving gladiators.

Drumbeat turned out to be a nice diversion as I head into a very busy week with work and parish activities. Next Saturday I'm cooking Cajun for about 60 people.

Blood on the Sand

We played a first game of Habet, Hoc Habet! yesterday at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland, WA. Phil Bardsley's grandson Zach was in town and wanted to game, so we decided to do something simple and quick—without, of course, factoring in our ignorance of the rules. I'd given the rules a read and thought I had the gist, but actually playing the game disabused me of that illusion.

We played "cut-throat" with each taking a single gladiator and fighting all against all. We used my big 35/40mm Jugula figures from Gripping Beast. I made some quick gladiator stat sheets yesterday morning using Adobe InDesign. We each chose a gladiator and rolled 4 x D3 to get a total of points we could use to customize our gladiators. Phil chose a Secutor, Zach chose a Retiarius, and I chose a Thracian.

For simplicity sake, the stats for the gladiators were pretty equal. Where they differed was in the weaponry. I quickly filled out the armor and weapons stats for the gladiators. The Thracian and Secutor are both sword armed, but the Secutor has a large shield and the Thracian a regular shield. Both also have full helmets, leg and arm armor. The Retiarius is mostly unarmored and has a trident and net. The net is a bit of a novelty and works a little differently than other weapons.

Habet, Hoc Habet! uses playing cards to determine the order of actions in a turn. Each gladiator got three cards and the order of play goes by ranking of the card (King - 2) and by suite (Spades-Hearts-Clubs-Diamonds) in case of ties in the ranking. Aces are an extra card that lets the holding player interrupt any action and play a free action of their own (Phil got two aces on the first turn). Jokers let the holding player re-roll and die.

Phil moved first and went after Zach's Retiarius. Zach moved towards Phil. I hung back waiting to see what would happen. Phil attacked first, but Zach's Retiarius managed to block the strike with his net. I thought at the time that the net took damage in blocking a sword cut, but I later thought I was wrong and returned the net to undamaged. I've since learned that I was right after all: nets used to block cutting weapons, like swords, receive damage equal to the hit points they block. In Phil's case, he did six points of damage to a net worth 8 points. Also, the net blocking the sword, should have deprived Phil's Secutor of his sword, which was moot after the next actions.

Zach struck at Phil next. In a very bad sequence of poor die rolls, Phil failed to block the trident thrust, which landed on his Secutor's right arm, which was armored. But then, he failed to make the saving roll to count the armor in defense. Zach managed to inflict 5 points of damage on the Secutor's right arm, which could take only 4. The attack deprived the Secutor of the use of his right arm, effectively disarming him. I've since learned that it also counts as a MIGHTY BLOW, which does more nastiness. At this point, Phil and his Secutor were hors de combat.

Now was my time to strike and I went after Zach's Retiarius. I managed to hit and Zach managed to block with his trident (his net having been damaged by Phil's Secutor). I rolled a natural "0" for my strike, which calls for a roll on the Critical hit chart. The result was that I would do double damage and cause damage to any blocking weapon/shield. The attack destroyed the Retiarius' trident, but I failed to do any further damage to the Retiarius.

Next turn, I managed to strike first but rolled a natural "1" on my to hit roll, which means a fumble. The result of that was a permanent -3 from any damage points from my sword.  In response, Zach successfully netted my Thracian. In his next action, Zach wanted to attack but had no weapon, his trident being destroyed blocking my sword last turn. Instead he picked up a rock (they are, apparently plentiful in the arena) and tried to bash me. But rocks have a low damage potential and my Thracian was pretty well armored. Bash away though he tried, he couldn't do any damage.

Being netted, I could do nothing until I cut my way out with my -3 damage sword. I tried again and again, but failed to do any damage. A sword does 1 x D6 damage (now a -3 for me) and I got no possible strength bonus because I was netted. I slashed and slashed but could not cut my way out of the net.

At this point, we were at a stand-still. Zach's Retiarius could bash away to no avail at my Thracian, who could not cut himself out of the net.

My initial thoughts on Habet, Hoc Habet! were a bit morose. The game seemed awkward and didn't work as I expected, but on reflection, that may be more a matter of fumbling through rules without having a good sense of the game flow. I sat down earlier today and started writing out a flow chart of the turn sequence, especially that attack sequence, and I have a better appreciation for how the game works. It needs a second game or two to get a real sense of it. I also want to complete my remaining gladiators, so we have more types to choose from.

I also got to wondering whether the rules might not be adaptable to my Bronze Age skirmish figures. I'm still waiting for Ganesha Games to release it's ancients skirmish game and I rather fear I may be waiting for a long time. Ganesha seems to be putting a lot of their effort into other projects.

Faux Lucre

More bread cast on the water has returned to me after many (many) days. Way back in September of '13, I caught sight of a Kickstarter campaign for metal gaming coins—not just any metal gaming coins—these were the best damn metal gaming coins ever! I kicked in at the $100.00 level, which gave me 500 coins. I was duly notified on 9/1/13 that I was in the club.

The campaign was fully funded soon after that at the fullest level. This unlocked a lot of new coin options. Among them all, I went for the Roman coins because my idea was to use them for betting in gladiator games. I chose eight of the standard sets and one each of a set that included just one coin type. For reasons I'm still unsure of, I chose to get a set of 20 of the "Caesar" coins and a set of 70 of the "Constantine" coins. I had the option of adding additional sets for $10.00, but close to stick with my $100.00 funding. I wish now I might have kicked in another $20.00 or $30.00.

The making, sorting, shipping of the coins took some time. Months. 18 months, in fact. All the while, we kept getting progress reports good and bad (mostly bad): Production delays, production problems, shipping issues, etc. But fulfillment drew inexorably nearer. Finally, last Thursday, a very heavy and well-wrapped priority mail package appeared in my mailbox.

Little plastic packages filled with the best damn metal gaming joy ever!

Each set contains 4 of the large gold "Caesar" coins, 6 of the silver "Augustus" coins, 10 of the bronze "Constantine" coins, 16 of the nickel-ish "Antoninus" coins, and 24 of the wee bronze "Trajan" coins. It turns out that one set didn't contain any "Augusti" but I got an extra set of "Caesari" instead. I could complain, but I'm too happy to have the coins to whinge. I can manage to do with six fewer of one and four more of another.

It makes sense for valuation to assign them Roman numerals from smallest to largest: I=1, V=5, X=10, L=50, C=100. All told, including the mis-sort, I have the following:

"Caesar" coins (value C): 56
"Augustus" coins (value L): 42
"Constantine" coins (value X): 150
"Antoninus" coins (value V): 128
"Trajan" coins (value I): 192

"Caesar" coin

"Augustus" coin

"Constantine" coin

"Antoninus" coin

Wee "Trajan" coin

I have my 35mm (closer to 40mm) Gripping Beast gladiators in the works. Now that I have the coins, I think there's nothing stopping me from finishing the project (other than myself, of course).

I do need to figure out a betting system for the games, however...

Morituri Te Salutant

I'm sort of wandering back into to gladiator gaming. Phil Bardsley and I started a project years ago using the excellent Foundry line of figures. We bought the lot together and divvied them up between us. The packaging for the Foundry line is awkward—any given pack contains figures you want and figures you don't. For example, in a pack with a nice thracian figure, you get stuck with a dwarf dimachaerus and a female samnite. It's not that I'm anti-dwarf or anti-woman, I just want to build a familia of gladiators without having to pick up a bunch of novelty acts (at $3.00 a figure!) just to get the other figures I want.

That situation is better with the excellent Crusader Miniatures range. Figures come four in a pack and are complementary, i.e., you don't get a pack with a thracian, a samnite, a secutor, and Bibulus the spectator making rude gestures.

West Wind also offers a line of 25mm gladiators for its Gladiator Wars rules (which, apparently, suck). It's a good line, though not as nice as Foundry or Crusader, but it does offer more types like charioteers and mounted gladiators. (Crusader has a pack of mounted, but no chariots.)

Many years ago, I sold my painted Foundry figures. I have a few unpainted and partially-painted figures, but they're mostly those novelty types: dwarves and women. That might make for an interesting match-up, but I need some of the more standard types: murmilliones, thraeces, secutores, retiarii, etc. So I started the hunt for new figures.

All the figure lines mentioned above are 25/28mm. After my 40mm prehistorical Europeanoids project, I'm quite taken with using larger figures for games that require only a few figures on the table. Enter Jugula. This is a new game system from Gripping Beast that comes with a new—and growing—line of 35mm figures. Nominally 35mm, that is. Comparing them to my 40mm Sash and Saber ACW and my 40mm Monolith/Graven Images Prehistoric Europe figures, they're every bit as big—in fact, they're bigger than the Sash and Saber figures.

At this point, there are just four figures and an "extras" pack with more weapons, helmets/heads, shields, etc. The figures are cast as a torso with arms 'n' legs. The left hand is a fist meant to attach a shield to; the right hand is a socket so you can attach a variety of hands grasping weapons: various swords, spears, axes, maces, tridents, daggers. The head is a post on which you can place one of several helmet types or bare heads (only one, for two-headed gladiators you'll have to wait for the figure from Foundry; two-headed female dwarf gladiators could follow soon after that).

This arrangement gives you some means of getting some variety from the same figure, but it's limited. The armor and weaponry of a specific historical gladiator type is pretty well known. Each torso's arm and leg protection conforms, more or less, to a type. For example, there is a torso that is intended as a retiarius, so converting it to something else would be a bit of a fudge. The main thing that identifies it as a retiarius is the manica (arm guard), but it's only just a shoulder protector of the left arm while the right arm is fully protected and the right leg has a greave. He's a little over-armored for an actual retiarius.

Retiarius (on the left) vs. a secutor

Retiarii typically wore only a leather or metal arm guard on their left arm, with a large metal shoulder guard. Otherwise, they were unarmored: no helmet, no shield, no greaves.

Retiarius shoulder guard

Their weapons were a trident and a net. They used the latter to ensnare an opponent and then stabbed him with the trident. Their usual opponent was a secutor, whose helmet was streamlined to minimize getting entangled in the retiarius' net.

Because I can, I fiddled a bit with the extra bits and made the following gladiators from pack 1: A secutor (the figure in the individual pack was meant to be a murmillo), a thracian with a wickedly curving sword, a velite with a tight metal helmet and a spiked mace, and a retiarius (pretty much as intended).

Pack 2 extends the gladiator types available to include a scissor, a sagittarius, a provocator, and a dimachaerus. I have it, but haven't started it yet. Soon. The first batch is near completion. I'll post pics when they're done.

Rules: Habet, Hoc Habet!

The rules I'll use are Habet, Hoc Habet! from Flagship Games. I played them some years ago with my 28mm Foundry figures and found them to be a nice balance of detail and playability.

I once had a copy of the rules, but it disappeared, or I sold it, or I lost it, or it's on my bookshelf and I've missed it the last umpteen times I looked, or it's in a box in the garage waiting to surprise me. This is a familiar scenario, which leads in many cases to multiple copies of rules and books. Flagship Games has gone away, but you can still get copies of Habet, Hoc habet! from Scale Creep Miniatures for a mere $25.00. That's a steal in these days of expensive over-produced rules sets and the ever-enticing buy-the-basic-rules-for-a-lot-of-money-and-then-buy-lots-of-supplements-and-specialty-cards-dice-etc-for-much-much-more approach.

There are a few others out there that were in the running. I have a copy of FGU's Gladiators. They offer some nice detail, but perhaps too much. They're also needlessly complex in some ways. I like old-school miniatures rules for the most part, but I think that too many have Rube Goldberg mechanics, i.e., over-complication of a simple process. I think I once had a copy of Rudis by Tabletop Games. I know that Habet, Hoc Habet! was the last rules set we used, but Rudis may have been what we started with. I likely sold them with my painted figures in days past.

There's also Jugula, the game for which the nice 35/40mm figures are produced. These rules are from the same designer as Saga. Like Saga, it has the potential to be a buy-the-basic-rules-etc. kind of thing. You need a grid map to play it on, special counters, and special cards in addition to the rules, which are about $30.00. You need a deck of cards per player, which limits hosting a multiplayer game to however many card decks you want to buy at $11.00 a deck. The deluxe game mat is about $40.00, the counters are $11.00—and you'll need more than one set for multiplayer games. That's about $125.00 for enough rules 'n' stuff to play a four-player game, which doesn't take in the cost for the figures, which are $8.00 a piece for the Gripping Beast 35/40mm figures. I already spent a lot on Saga stuff without yet buying the figures for an army. I'm not getting sucked in Jugula. Also, from what I've seen the rules don't really provide much detail.

 HHH is pretty straightforward. One of the things I like best about it is that it doesn't require a hex or square grid to play on, which seems to be a feature of most other gladiator rules.

The play is move/counter-move. A single deck of standard playing cards is used to determine the player's actions and play order. There are four classes of fighter, from novice (gladius fodder) to champion. The better the fighter, the more cards are dealt: 1 for novice, 2 for fighter, 3 for warrior, 4 for champion. Aces and Jokers are special cards. If dealt to a player, an additional card is dealt, so the player always has the correct number of action cards. The order of action is by card rank and suite, e.g. king of spades/hearts/clubs/diamonds on down.

Each card lets a player perform an action like move, fight, rest, etc. Aces let you interrupt another player's action and can be played anytime. Jokers let you call for the re-roll of any die result.

Fighting is a match up between an attack strength based on the gladiator's physiology and weapon skill vs. the opponent's physiology and defensive skill. If a hit is made, the weapon effectiveness strikes against the defensive armor and hit points assigned to a particular area (legs, arms, torso, head). As soon as hits add up to the critical amount, the gladiator is gone.

Fights can be 1:1 or in groups, so it's a fair bet that it can work as a multiplayer convention game—if I have enough figures painted.

Filthy lucre!

Back when our first gladiator project was alive, I kept looking for ways to incorporate betting into the game-play. The only Roman coins I found were from, I think, RAFM, but they were simple cast lead and would need to be cleaned up and painted and then would wind up chipping when used.

One of the inspirations for getting back into gladiator gaming is a Kickstarter campaign I joined last year for The Best Damn Metal Gaming Coins Ever! I kicked in $100.00 for several sets of the Roman coins and several of the smaller single Roman coins.

I should have 500+ coins coming, which is enough to be getting on with. The finished coins have been delivered from the manufacturer in China. They're still pending delivery to us. The last update from the campaign indicates that fulfilling orders will complete by February sometime.