From: David Ferris <Ferns1@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Replay: GL:BBV 1.0.1

Two months ago it became apparent that I needed to distill a simplified,
quick-play version of Generic Legions (GL), specifically designed for very
large scenarios. Several members of my game group have large collections of
miniatures and we really would like to use them in a game. The primary
manifestation of GL that I had been using for the past four years, the
Computer-Assist Version (CAV), will only hold a total of 300 units per
scenario, but actually gets a bit sluggish with more than 200 units. The
original GL (now known as the FBV or Full Blown Version) can be played
manually using the charts and dice, but it is quite a lot of work and each
player could realistically only handle about a dozen units per game. After a
bit of analysis I determined that the charts in the FBV could be boiled down
to a few die rolls, losing quite a bit of the game’s chrome but ending up
with a much more playable system. Thus was born the BBV, or Big Battle
Version.

(More information on GL and its background are at
http://users.aol.com/ferns1/genleg.htm .)

The first playtest of the BBV took place last night. It was a good crew for
the task: five players had played GL:CAV at least once, and most of those had
played GL:FBV as well. The sixth player had never played GL before but has
extensive experience with Warhammer 40K and Warzone.

Rick, a technical support type and fellow AT&T’er, chose to play They Who Are
Having A Bad Day, partially because he had played the Bad Days before and was
familiar with their background, and partially because he has a large
collection of Chaos figures. Mike, another technical support dude and
sometime AT&T’er, took the Undead. Larry Senior, a librarian, chose the
Fishroids for reasons known only to him. Nate, Larry Sr’s 14-year-old son,
picked the Robot race. Marty, an electrical engineer, picked the Dweasels.
Replacement Larry, an artist and bio-chemical student at Rutgers (the fellow
who created my Generic Legions t-shirt and will (hopefully) be doing some of
the art for the GL web releases) decided to play the Generic Legions.

This was the first test of the new point system, designed with the intention
of allowing players to whip up reasonably balanced scenarios with whatever
miniatures they had handy. Other than a bit of confusion over which
miniatures to use for which races and the usual shortage of some unit or
other (I need to invest in more Really Heavy Tanks) the players had little
difficulty deciding on how to spend their 750 points. Most of the players put
together combined-arms forces. The exception was the Undead, whose forces
consist only of mobs of zombies, Scud missile launchers (shamelessly stolen
from NaC), and huge rocket launchers that fling zombie mobs across the
battlefield.

On the first turn, the Undead player fired all three of his Scuds. All three
launchers blew up in the process, taking out several mobs of zombies in the
process, but since they were Undead they didn’t care. One of the Scuds flew
out of control into orbit and knocked out the Dweasel player’s communications
satellite, disrupting all the Dweasel targeting systems for the rest of the
game. The Dweasels advanced into some hills but were unable to place any
units within sighting range of any enemy units. The Robots and Fishroids sent
their air units at each other, locked in an epic Father-versus-Son battle of
wills (sounds like an FGA title) and advanced their ground units towards a
large patch of rough ground between them. The atmo ship fighters all shot
each other down. On the far end of the table, the Bad Days advanced against
the Generic Legions, who had the benefit of some heavy woods and low hills.
The Bad Days had brought along a Blue Snit medium ‘Ster (huge robot-like
combat thing in GL), the Generics had fielded two Medium ‘Sters. After an
exchange of largely ineffective artillery barrages, every ground unit in that
part of the board aimed at the opposing ‘Ster or ‘Sters. After quite a lot of
d10 rolls, the Blue Snit and one of the Generic Mediums lay prone on the
ground, spewing smoke. The second Generic ‘Ster had miraculously survived,
successfully rolling over a dozen saves.

During the second turn, the Dweasels crested a hill only to find they had
practically no targets opposite them. Most of the Undead force was hurtling
through the air at that moment, and most of the rest had been destroyed in
the Scud launch attempts the previous turn. The Dweasel units with clear
shots then turned to their next closest enemies, the Robots, knocking out a
few medium tanks with direct fire and some infantry squads with artillery.
The Robots now faced two dangerous enemies: the Fishroids to their front and
the Dweasels closing up on their right. Robot artillery knocked out a few
Dweasel reconnaissance vehicles while the surviving Robot medium tanks picked
off all of the Fishroid personnel carriers. The Fishroids slowly advanced and
started to target the Robot heavy armour. Replacement Larry pulled his
remaining ‘Ster back behind a line of trees, only to find that his huge red
robot-like thing was much taller than a row of connifers. The ‘Ster suffered
a Disruption hit but otherwise continued its amazing survival, and in the
process drew the Bad Day forces closer to the deadly fire of the concentrated
Generic heavy armour. Generic artillery picked off a few more Bad Day
infantry stands. The Undead hurled through the air, unhappily humming sad
tunes to themselves, waiting for impact.

In turn three, the Robots popped up an atmo ship transport, which the
Fishroids promptly shot down. Unfortunately for Nate, the transport contained
all of his Robot infantry and several medium tanks, so in one roll he had
lost a good portion of his force. Meanwhile the Robots on the ground were
losing a long-range duel with the Fishroid heavy armour on the opposite hill.
The Dweasels, taking advantage of the weakened state of the Robots, pressed
forward towards the center of the board. Right about then the Undead rockets
landed, spewing over a dozen zombine mobs right in the middle of the Dweasel
formation. The Generic ‘Ster recovered from its disrupted state but wisely
stayed put, using its long-range fire to pester the Bad Day artillery nestled
in the back. Right about then the Bad Day player realized he was walking into
a trap, decided that melancholy was the better part of valour, and started to
back up. The Bad Days are very good at close assault, much better than the
Generic Legions, but Rick calculated at that point that he couldn’t get
enough of his forces close enough before they were picked off by the
Generics’ ranged fire.

By turn four it was all over for the Robots. They had lost their two Really
Heavy Tanks trying to keep the hill opposite the Fishroids. The Fishroids had
lost all their light armour and infantry but still had all their heavy and
medium armour. On the far side of the table, the Generics had been completely
undamaged other than the loss of one ‘Ster, but the Bad Days had lost nearly
half their units. Severe fighting had broken out in the center of the table
between the Dweasels and the Undead, but the Undead were getting the upper
(dismembered) hand of it. Whenever the Undead beat an enemy unit in close
assault, the enemy unit becomes Undead itself, so it was fairly apparent who
was going to win that one. The Dweasels, already weakened by the Robot
artillery attacks and the loss of their communications satellite, were taking
a severe beating.

We called the game after two and a half hours of play, as it was pretty
obvious the Fishroid-Dweasel-Generic Legion alliance was winning, despite the
hammering the Dweasels were taking in the center. Since this was the very
first time GL:BBV had been played by human hands, I was very curious to see
how it would turn out. After a few minutes of explaining the rules at the
beginning, the players very quickly figured out how to play the game and were
happily rolling dice and consulting their charts (one page each, a different
page of charts for each race, containing all the things they’d need to know
to play the game) without my assistance. I spent the rest of the game happily
watching and enjoying the carnage, answering the occaisional question.

Most importantly, after the game I asked the players for their criticisms of
the game. They pointed out a few small holes in the system, e.g. the Irvanian
and Bad Day heavy ‘Sters having such high Damage Resistance that they
couldn’t be killed by anything other than another ‘Ster. Marty, the WH40K and
Warzone veteran, was shocked that one of his heavy tanks had been knocked out
by a light tank. In GL, almost everything has a chance of killing almost
everything else; it might be a tiny chance, but it’s there. Apparently in
40K, large expensive (money-wise and game-point-wise) units are pretty much
invulnerable except to other large expensive units. Some questions were
raised about the balance of the point system; since it was the very first
test of the point system, I would have been stunned if there *weren’t* any
problems with it. We decided that it needed to put more mathematical weight
on the abilities of the races, and some of the special damages (e.g. the
Dweasels’ comm satellite) needed to be less severe. I also need to put a cap
on the movement of the Undead mob carrier rockets; since Mike’s units were
flying through the air all through the second turn, they couldn’t be shot at,
and appearing suddenly right in the middle of Marty’s troops put the Dweasels
at a great disadvantage. Of course, most of the Undead died in the process,
but being Undead, they didn’t care.

The most important thing the test brought out was that while it played
quickly and easily, it didn’t play quickly and easily enough. Each player had
about 25 to 40 units on the board, and many of them were still intact after
two and a half hours of game time. I asked the players if they thought there
was too much dice rolling; they didn’t think so, but they felt they had to
look back at the chart too often between dice rolls. They’d roll a couple of
dice, look at the charts, roll a couple more bones, look at the charts again.
Not too bad, but they preferred the concept of rolling a big handful of dice
once or twice and not having to constantly check their charts. (That’s how
John Holly’s homebrew ACW rules, “Buckets o’ Lead”, play, which is where they
get the idea from. We call the concept “buckets o’ dice”.) In the current
version, players roll 1d10 to hit for every weapon a unit has, so a medium
tank with 2 heavy lasers, 2 light lasers, and 2 particle chuckers would roll
6 times to hit, but the 2 heavies would have one to-hit number, the 2 lights
would have a different to-hit, and so forth. Some of the heavy units are
equipped with 8 or 10 weapons, so that could add up to lots of different
rolls. Fortunately, all the rolls are 1d10. I had already figured that the
game mechanics in BBV could be further boiled down to a single die roll to
hit and a second roll for damage. I hadn’t hacked out the numbers for that
yet as it would remove even more of the detail and chrome, but based on last
night’s game I think that’s what’s needed to make this thing work for very
large battles. I should have the revision done in time for the next playtest
session.

Nonetheless, the 1.0.1 BBV did work, it was fun, the players picked up on it
very quickly, and they seemed to enjoy themselves. It’s not quite what I was
shooting for, but I think this manifestation might be of interest to people,
particularly if they’re doing mid-to-large sized scenarios. I will keep this
puppy around, probably as the MBV (Medium Battle Version) and see how it goes
over.

Sorry for the long, non-game related post. If anyone has any complaints, call
my secretary and have her arrange a time when you can talk to me about it. I
think I have an opening in my calendar in April 2014.

DLF
dferris@research.att.com or ferns1@aol.com

Computer industry jargon definition of the day:
LEMMING: (noun) Anyone who uses or purchases any hardware or software product
that is more popular than the one I like