Help support TMP


""Bear Yourselves Valiantly" Games at Cold Wars 13" Topic


Bear Yourselves Valiantly

5 Posts

All members in good standing are free to post here. Opinions expressed here are solely those of the posters, and have not been cleared with nor are they endorsed by The Miniatures Page.

Please remember that some of our members are children, and act appropriately.

For more information, see the TMP FAQ.


Back to the Bear Yourselves Valiantly Rules Board


Areas of Interest

Fantasy
Ancients
Medieval
Renaissance

Featured Hobby News Article


Featured Link


Featured Ruleset


Featured Showcase Article

Demonworld 15mm Orc Slayers

Old Guard Painters paints reinforcements for five Dwarven armies for Mighty Armies.


Featured Workbench Article

A Good-Looking Army in a Reasonable Amount of Time

Painting a wargaming army is a completely different beast from painting a single miniature for display.


Featured Movie Review


879 hits since 17 Jan 2017
©1994-2024 Bill Armintrout
Comments or corrections?

Chris Palmer11 Mar 2013 3:15 p.m. PST

At Cold Wars was this past weekend and we ran the first public playtests of our upcoming "Bear Yourselves Valiantly" rules (aka Look, Sarge, No Charts: Fantasy, Ancients, & Medievals). I ran a fantasy game on Friday night, and James 'Tank' Nickle ran a Punic War game on Saturday afternoon.
I had a full compliment of players for my Friday fantasy game, entitled "The Desperate Defense of the Elvish Kingdom". The figures were 10mm, and the scenario featured two forces of High Elves supported by a force of Wood Elves, guarding two bridges from an attacking army of two Skeleton forces, and one Goblin force.

picture

picture

Saturday afternoon was Tank's Punic Wars game called, "Look, Sarge, the Punic Curse". It featured three Roman legions attacking Hannibal with a mixed force of Carthaginians, Spanish, and Celts. The Roman's goal was to capture the Carthaginian camp, located at the rear edge of the Carthaginian deployment area. The figures were 10mm.

picture

picture

Both games were a big success with the players picking up the rules quickly and having a good time.

For more information and more photos, see my blog:
link

Airlifter12 Mar 2013 1:43 p.m. PST

Chris, you put on a great game. I enjoyed running the Wood Elves Friday night. My opponent did a good job screening my force with a few Wargs, bats, and a big spider while the rest of his force drove in on the Army commander and his knights. I eventually overcame the screen but the game was ending just as my Ents were about to thump the Wargs in the rear.

LSNC-Fantasy/Ancients/Medieval (FAM) palyed well. I'd never played any of that series of rules and I'm glad I played in both this event and Buck Surdu's Fate of Battle Napoleonics event Saturday afternoon. While I might nit some of the unit ratings based on my personal reading, the core rules played well and gave a good overall feel for the battle. I have pruchased the FOB rules and anxiously await the FMA rules release. I hope to see you at Barrage or Historicon.
Cheers,
John Stafford

Chris Palmer13 Mar 2013 9:10 a.m. PST

John-
Glad you enjoyed the game! We plan to include a point matrix in the rules that will allow you to give rating to your units as you think they should be. We'll still give examples of basic armies, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, etc; but with the matix you'll be able to modify those stats to bring the units more in line with your vision of fantasy races.

Buck and I are already making plans for a big 12 player "Bear Yourselves Valiantly" game at Historicon. Hope to see you there!

Jonathan J13 Mar 2013 12:44 p.m. PST

Great looking games, I enjoyed reading about them. Thanks!

surdu200513 Mar 2013 2:40 p.m. PST

John:

First, thanks for the kind words about both sets of rules.

One point of clarification to what Chris said and then some design philosophy. We have developed a point system for Bear Yourselves Valiantly; however, this is not meant to be a bullet-proof, gimick-free point system that can avoid "trick armies" sometimes seen in tournament play. As the period is so varied, we felt a point system was needed to give GMs a general idea of the force balance. It turns out that in our play tests armies of equal point value have been pretty comparable on the table.

If you want your dwarves to be slow, plodding, tanks, you can stat them up that way. If you think the wargs should be more vicious, you can give them a higher melee value. It should enable maximum flexibility and tailorability for players.

The nice thing about the base labels is that you could make your Westphalian guard (in the Napoleonic version) more or less powerful merely by adjusting the numbers on the label. The rules systems will work in exactly the same way without lots of home rules or modifications to charts. We found that people wanted to modify the attack factors or defense factors of various vehicles, depending on personal preference. The rules use a d10, so you have to be careful with unintended consequences. In the WWII version, you have to be careful. Making the defense factor of a T-34 one better, not it is equal to some other tank, so you make it better too. Before you know it, you have to modify the stats for every vehicle and every gun.

Now the philosophy stuff:

I have been insistent on sticking to a d10 for philosophical reasons. I think a lot of game designers add a lot of detail, giving the IMPRESSION of fidelity. In fact, we don't know enough about how warfare was conducted in the ancient world. A d10 forces me as a designer to think hard about whether something is wroth a 10% bump. In the LSNC series we've tried to concentrate on only those most salient of aspects. The rest will be handled by the throw of a die.

It's funny to watch guys complain that it's too hard for units to break morale (for isntance) in one game (when it's the enemy not failing) and then complain that morale is too fragile in the next game (when their units are breaking). It's all a careful balance. In the rules we provide all the probability numbers and the designer notes, because we know people are going to tinker with the rules. With LSNC, they will be doing so from a known statistical baseline.

Buck

Sorry - only verified members can post on the forums.