"Dog Soldiers After Action Report, Boston MA" Topic

Boston Trained Bands gave the Savage Worlds Showdown rules a spin this weekend with a pulp-y skirmish between British commandos and Scottish werewolves. The game bore more than a bit of resemblence to the highly entertaining movie, Dog Soldiers.

The British player started with ten Artizan WW II Commandos and four hapless civilians. Since our European member had attended some con in Europe and walked away with mini of King Leopold II of Belgium we included the King as well. The British player had to keep as many people alive till sunrise as possible.

The were player had a random assortment of werewolves. They ranged from mundane pack wolves up to a highly powerful were king (or queen, no one bothered to ask it!. The weres had the job of just killing as many people as they could before sunrise.

We had a third player so he got control of the civilians, a lone commando, and King Leopold II. To stir things up the third player was told secretly that Leopold was a vampire with his own agenda, and various vampire powers.

I added decoy counters and had every figure begin the game represented by a coin. The table was set with country houses, some light forest, and a spooky church and graveyard.

The course of the game was generally pretty successful. The British player was confronted with a swarm of counters advancing towards him at distressing speed. Giving the weres the "fleet footed" advantage really allowed them to tear up the turf. At the same time the British decoy markers kept the were player from just racing in towards the juiciest targets. The showdown rules played well in other regards as well. Giving out a few advantages like "improved frenzy" and "quick" was enough to simulate powerful creatures, trained soldiers, or any other element that might add color to the encounter. A figure that tries to do too much may find negative modifier piling up so the players had to plan ahead rather than just rushing in and firing.

In terms of combat the results were appropriate enough. Very powerful creatures and characters are able to shrug off attacks from weaker beings with some ease. They're not impossible to kill, but it takes some luck- maybe one hit in eight may have an effect. If the heroic characters do strike the damage they inflict is pretty catastrophic. We did notice that when one strong character fought another strong character the odds would favor a protracted fight. Not a bad thing per se but it made the battle between King Leopold II and the king/queen werewolf less exciting than might be imagined.

Other aspects of Showdown were simple and worked well. We used automatic weapons, knives, and an axe and they all worked about how they should have. Damage and death are handled well by the rules, with troopers having a shorter lifespan but heroic characters showing good tenacity. Movement was brisk enough that a six foot by 4 foot board didn't leave people stuck in the boonies for the entire game. And of course the rules are free on the website. Nice.

In the end we were pretty happy with the game. It was easy to set up and played better than similar forays with Gothic Horror: Vampire Wars and .45 Adventure. Our Euro player also has a Copplestone Female Werewolf Hunter figure so I imagine we'll be ripping off a few more movies in the future.

Ah- final score- draw. The sun rose as the more powerful weres came into range. King Leopold II made it to the graveyard and the surviving commandos got the h#$* out of dodge.

Sounds like fun. Thanks for the AAR! SW Showdowns is a great set of rules. I ended up buying the 10 dollar book so I could rate up my own stuff for it.

Let us know about any other adventures!

Thanks,

John

That does sound like a great game.

What are the limits for these rules in terms of putting together horror/fantasy skirmishes? Do they break down when used with particular types of creatures?

Do they handle everything from medievil to Sci Fi? (Just trying to find the period limits if any)

Thanks for the report! I personally think Savage Worlds is a real gem of a system. It manages to pull off the balance between simplicity and flexibility not only effectively, but elegantly, IMHO.

Chortle: The free Showdown rules are really just the very basic rules for playing out a game on the tabletop – they don't cover creating factions, although one could download the free Rippers and Modern Ops unit cards and have more than enough to put together a few good games. When you step up to the full Showdown rulebooks (Rippers, Modern Ops) you get a fuller treatment, including campaign/advancement rules.

Going all the way to the full Savage Worlds rules, you've got everything you need to build anything you want. And I do mean anything – I can't imagine anything you can't cover with these rules. That's one of the reasons I love them – and at ~$10 for the SW rulebook, it's damn near impossible to go wrong.

The only flaw I see in the rules is that they tend to come apart a bit when very tough monsters become involved. Since the system has a fixed number of hits, regardless of a creature's size, harder-to-kill creatures can really only be covered by increased toughness. This means that instead of simply being able to soak up more damage, big monsters tend to shrug off everything below a certain threshold. This is a minor point, however, – it doesn't break the game.

If you're interested in using SW for a minis game, you can really get away with just the main rulebook. (If you're not interested in creating your own units, you could even get away without spending anything and just using the free Showdown rules and the free unit cards.) However, I'd recommend picking up one of the Showdown "sourcebooks" as well. They streamline the rules for tabletop use (not there's much to streamline – the main rules were created with the intention to be both RPG and minis rules, and were based on Pinnacle's Deadlands minis game The Great Rail Wars) and include minis scenarios in two flavors: basic scenarios and "Savage Tales" (more in-depth scenarios). (I picked up Rippers: The Horror Wars a few weeks ago after a couple of years of hemming and hawing, and boy, am I sorry I waited. These have to be some of the best horror minis rules I've ever seen!)

I'm planning on running a GM-run modern horror (Bureau 13) minis campaign (been building the terrain, buying/painting miniatures for it for several weeks now), and here are the books I'm using: SW Explorer's Edition (to build the forces), Rippers: The Horror Wars (for the scenarios), Modern Ops (for the mosern gear and vehicles), and the Horror Bestiary (for the beasties). (That last title is a great book, well-done and full of useful info. As is the Horror GM's Toolkit, which is an invaluable resource if you plan to use the game as a horror RPG.)

I'm not a shill/sock puppet for Pinnacle/Great White, BTW. I'm just a big fan of these rules, and want to spread the word.

Zen

Chortle- we found that the rules cover any era pretty well, and managed both melee weapons and firearms nicely. You can use "advantages" and "hindrances" to simulate various character abilities- abilities from training or some supernatural origin. The rules might struggle with highly supernatural or superpowered beings, ghosts for example.

The Showdown rules are free and easy to find. I tracked down the Advantages list, firearm listings, and some other goodies from various web sources. The web site has official supplements for a variety of settings which would be a more efficient way to proceed of course.

I agree with Zen that extremely powerful entities might not be well represented in the system. But I believe you could do weird war, Underworld/The Howling, gangland, pulp and the like with ease.

B.

What is Boston Trained Bands?

Boston Trained Bands is a wargaming group operating out of The Hobby Bunker in Malden, MA (close to Boston). You can get more details at our site:
bostontrainedbands.com
We play mainly historicals, with some AT-43 and pulp-y stuff thrown in for variety.

B.