You are very welcome mighty Hrugga of the Epics.Originally Posted by Hrugga
Here is another one, which I'm sure you have seen. This is how I have always imagined the Tsolyani Legions, "The Ever-Glorious" deploying for battle. Still one of my favourite scenes and movies.
Shemek,
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
A thought on modern wargaming: what has been lost is the idea of strategy or consequences beyond the immediate battle, really beyond the boundaries of the board or table. Every battle is fought to the last man. No risk is too great no gain too small. Units flee off the battle field on a failed morale check rather than fleeing and rallying. When campaigns are played it's rare to see major consequences from battle to battle, rather small advantages are awarded. It's what folks around here called the tyranny of fun when discussing design decisions relating to D&D.
Really, you guys should find and read Rick Priestly, Andy Chambers, and Alesseo Cavatore's Fantacide: The Game of Homicidal Warbands. It's a funny parody of fantasy battle games by the guys who made Warhammer back in the day. The objectives are set by the seven deadly sins. Wrath gets victory points for wiping out entire units. Pride gets victory points for slaying heroes and monsters. Greed gets victory points for capturing treasure objectives. Sloth gets victory points for doing as little as possible. Gluttony gets victory points for eating foes. Lust gets victory points for capturing enemy models with casualties essentially becoming portable objectives. Envy gets victory points for whatever the other guys are after. It's a demented little game.
At last! The big revision! More monsters! more magic! Two page hit location table!
The Arcane Confabulation
This is something that I witnessed first hand back in the 80's and early 90's when I was zealously playing Hex and Chit war games such as ASL, Panzerblitz/Panzer Leader, Rise and Decline of the Third Reich and the Europa series by GDW. Most "typical" players don't consider the "big picture." They try and annihilate their foes and throw their units or armies in there willy-nilly hoping to achieve their aims. I can't tell you how many scenarios over the years I have won by simply reading the victory conditions which, surprise surprise, rarely call for destroying all of ones troops, or by considering what I want to do in two or three turns in the future. One of my "best wins" was in Panzerblitz where the victory conditions simply stated that I had to get as many troops off the north edge of the board as possible within, I believe, 10 turns. I sent a unit of armour to distract my opponent and streamed the rest of my forces off the board unscathed. I was accused of "cowardice" and "cheating." My only reply to the idiot was "read what my victory conditions are." He couldn't fathom that I wouldn't duke it out with him.
Similarly, I once put an opponent into spasms by launching a preemptive attack against the Germans with the Soviets in 1940, much like the Stavka had proposed in the early 1930's prior to the purge of the Red Army, while he was still committed in France. In the same game I was able to conquer Turkey and open a Southern Front. The British and American players were ecstatic, until they realised that I was going to win the game very shortly. What fun.
Using the Panzerblitz rules we once linked a series of battles using the same core forces/formations, but taking into consideration losses from previous engagements. This added a whole other dimension to the base game which actually made it really challenging if you didn't consider that you would need units for the next battle, which units you might need, and that reinforcements and repairs were not a sure thing. We had a lot of fun playing out these scenarios. Damn I miss those days!
Shemek
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
Understood; I feel the same about games like 'Tractics'. Although I did get my start using 1/35 and 1/32 scale stuff, which is why I have a 100' tape in my gaming stuff. (We used gyms.) Fighting 'sword and sandal' epics means smaller tables, and bigger figures, which I'm all for.I like 15mm for stuff with tanks. 6mm is okay, I had a fair bit of SJG's Ogre Miniatures at one point. But the infantry is fiddly and fragile and prone to miscasts. Most 15s these days are really 18s stooping over. Plastic Soldier Company's WWII stuff is nice because you can actually see them fitting in the transports. Battlefront's a bit bigger, maybe 10% or so. And yeah, Battlefront won't let people use other brands in official tournaments which is one reason I've never applied for prize support at my store.
I'm not fond of parking lot battles so, 200 figures on a side on an 8' table is hitting the maximum for me. Putting my three tanks, three transports, one super heavy tank, 3 walkers and around 100 figures on the standard 6' x 4' Warhammer 40000 table is an exercise in frustration. I'm an Imperial Guard player.
My one friend and I have enough figures to do fantasy battles at that scale but most people just don't. My FoW Rommanians are also pretty numerous, though I need more R-35s to create impassible barricades for people's Tigers.
Probably both, given Phil's historical bents. Have you seen the silent and the Technicolor versions? Less 'first person' then this version, but more epic with lots of shots of ships.Chirine,
I thought you might enjoy this one. Not much of stretch to imagine this on Tekumel, eh?Perhaps during the era of the Fisherman Kings? Or, you could have this as a take on the whole come to Jakalla in a boat motif that Phil was so fond of in the early days?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvA7IrNxM8o
Shemek
I certainly shall, my General!
Would this be:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgywD3XJaWU
We all had watched this, back in the day, and so we knew how to deploy our troops...
Agreed. Campaigns, in the way I used to understand them, are a forgotten thing in gaming.
I'll have to look this one up; it reads well...
Agreed! I play my miniatures games the same way, which has elicited the same reactions from my opponents over the years...This is something that I witnessed first hand back in the 80's and early 90's when I was zealously playing Hex and Chit war games such as ASL, Panzerblitz/Panzer Leader, Rise and Decline of the Third Reich and the Europa series by GDW. Most "typical" players don't consider the "big picture." They try and annihilate their foes and throw their units or armies in there willy-nilly hoping to achieve their aims. I can't tell you how many scenarios over the years I have won by simply reading the victory conditions which, surprise surprise, rarely call for destroying all of ones troops, or by considering what I want to do in two or three turns in the future. One of my "best wins" was in Panzerblitz where the victory conditions simply stated that I had to get as many troops off the north edge of the board as possible within, I believe, 10 turns. I sent a unit of armour to distract my opponent and streamed the rest of my forces off the board unscathed. I was accused of "cowardice" and "cheating." My only reply to the idiot was "read what my victory conditions are." He couldn't fathom that I wouldn't duke it out with him.
Similarly, I once put an opponent into spasms by launching a preemptive attack against the Germans with the Soviets in 1940, much like the Stavka had proposed in the early 1930's prior to the purge of the Red Army, while he was still committed in France. In the same game I was able to conquer Turkey and open a Southern Front. The British and American players were ecstatic, until they realised that I was going to win the game very shortly. What fun.
Using the Panzerblitz rules we once linked a series of battles using the same core forces/formations, but taking into consideration losses from previous engagements. This added a whole other dimension to the base game which actually made it really challenging if you didn't consider that you would need units for the next battle, which units you might need, and that reinforcements and repairs were not a sure thing. We had a lot of fun playing out these scenarios. Damn I miss those days!
Shemek
Stanley Kubrick was awesome! One of the most epic battle scenes ever filmed! with 10,500 extras. Two full Roman Legions 8,000, and 2,500 of Spartacus' Horseman and Infantry . The movie production set stripped all of the Roman armor from every museum in Italy.
The intimate scenes were filmed in Hollywood, but Stanley Kubrick insisted that all battle scenes be filmed on a vast plain outside Madrid. Eight thousand trained troops from the Spanish were used to double as the Roman infantry. Kubrick directed the armies from the top of specially constructed towers. However, he eventually had to cut all but one of the gory battle scenes, due to negative audience reactions at preview screenings. So precise was Kubrick that even in arranging the bodies of the slaughtered slaves he had each "corpse" assigned with a number and instructions. The 8,000 extras that made up the two Roman Legions were in real life active duty Spanish Soldiers who were re-tasked as extras for the movie production. The largest battle scene was filmed in the country outside of Madrid.
According to a March 22, 1959 article in The New York Times, "upwards of 50,000 [extras] took part" in the battle sequences, which were supplemented by dummies and painted backdrops.
On the side of the set that bordered the freeway in Hollywood, a 125-foot asbestos curtain was erected in order to film the burning of the camp, which was organized with collaboration from the Los Angeles Fire and Police Departments. Studio press materials state that 5,000 uniforms and seven tons of armor were borrowed from Italian museums, and that every one of Hollywood's 187 stunt men was trained in the gladiatorial rituals of combat to the death.
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