Bad Kompany

Well, I had a hard drive crash which resulted in the loss of the Vassal module I created for Old School Tactical, East Front.  I have all the art assets still and I have the saved games, just no module to play it.  So that means it will be some time before I can finish my play through.  But there is some good news.  Prior to my issues, I started another module for the Winter Thunder by Brian Train. On other news, the OST East Front living rules has been update to reflect version 5.2.  I didn't see a lot of changes, but it just shows we are getting closer to the printed version.  Please watch my overly long winded video for all the details. As always, feel free to leave comments!

I recently uploaded turn 2 for the OST East Front play through and thought I would post a few thoughts here.  The second turn did play much quicker.  Well, in my mind it played quicker.  I felt like the pacing improved as my familiarity with the rules increase.  Turns out the video was maybe 15 minutes shorter than the first video.  So it's still lengthy and that may be simply due to the fact that I talk too much.  I'm still referring to the rules, must mostly just to confirm or clarify, not so much to learn as I play.  I've read they rules quite a few times already and I know there is a thing as too much reading of the rules.  At some point, you just need to play.  So my hope is that turn 3 runs smoother. And with that, I did update my module in Vassal.  I did add a button that can clear all of the status markers.  That was a challenge to learn, but I'm happy with the results.  It removes tedium from the game that otherwise is just a lot of button clicking to clear.

It has begun.  After setting up the forces, I have actually started playing the game.  Since this is my first actual play through, I decided to keep the rule book handy.  I really wanted to play the game as close to the rules as possible and make sure to share the page and rule section I'm looking at as I play.  This of course led to a much slower game than I'm sure is intended, but as with most games. once you learn it, the game will play quicker. I did find mistakes as I played, but I did try to correct myself as I played and I think I caught most mistakes.  The first big mistake I made is that vehicles do not do group movement.  I even read over that the other day as I brushed up on fire groups and still made that mistake.  Also, learning how to properly apply the combat modifiers when using the combat charts will still take some time.  It's not overly complicated, but sometimes rules interpretation may lead to mistakes. I'm hoping that for those that watch the v

I actually recorded this a couple of nights ago and I'm slow in posting this.  In this video we discuss the placement of the German troops and determine initiative and starting impulse points.  I'll be recording turn one shortly and will post it soon as well. I also just got this update from my Kickstarter: "Vance Strickland has created a top-notch VASSAL module for the game using the final art. Here, Darryel Cochran plays (on VASSAL) one of the solitaire scenarios Mark designed for OST. Darryel says, "So, the semi-solitaire system seems to be kicking my butt."" Well, I'm happy that someone with some actual Vassal skills put together a module.  I do plan on picking it apart to see how they put it together.  Also, he had access to final art, so it will look much nicer.  Once the Vassal mod is out for everyone to try, I'll be switching over to it for sure!!

I began setting up the Crossroads scenario today.  The posted video goes over how to setup the map using the scenario card.  I then start by talking some strategy for the defense of the crossroads.  I welcome anyone to offer suggestions on deployment in the videos to come.  I hope to post a video every couple of days, so in between, feel free to offer comments to shape the flow of the game. I hope you all enjoy.

I have a love hate relationship with Vassal.  I enjoy all the mods that it has and appreciate being able to play games at home without all the setup.  However, I hate the map zoom features that are clunky and the map movement with scroll bars.  The entire user interface just seems out dated and clunky.  However, I have decided that if I can learn to create my own vassal modules, then maybe I'll better appreciate the interface and not struggle so much to play games. I have chosen to make a module of the Old School Tactical game East Front.  As of the time of this posting, the actual game hasn't come out yet.  I figure this will let me start playing while I wait for the game.  I also get to learn how to program a module into Vassal.  I started by watching the Joel Toppen tutorial lessons on Youtube.  They were really great in explaining the basics and I have found a few things I would like to learn next. One thing I really enjoyed was setting up the scenario card as a map.  T

So I thought that maybe using counters for wargames when minis weren't available might sound silly, apparently there are others that like the idea to.  As I was searching through Kickstarter, I found this project going on.  Modern Army counters.  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1310140601/modern-wwii-civil-and-revolutionary-war-military-a?ref=nav_search I don't think this project will get funded, but I will keep an eye out on this company.  They were only showing the modern counters.  I would have loved to have seen the WWII counters.  I think I will reach out to them and see if they have plans on WWII counters.  I think these would be lovely and could cover a lot of genres like ACW, Revolutionary, Napoleonic and such.

I was thinking about picking up the Panzer Flat paper tank print outs.  After thinking about using counters with miniature rules, I found these on the Wargame vault.  They are for use with the miniatures version of Panzer by Jim Day.  However, since they don't have any printed game information on them, they could be printed out and used in place of miniatures.  Which is what they were designed for anyway. The scale on them is in the micro armor size I believe and I'd want to figure out how to size them up for maybe 15mm usage.  For about $10, you can get one army of units in a PDF format.  That is virtually an unlimited number of units to print and use.  Of course, your limited to the colorings that come with the product, so it may limit their usage just on looks alone. I have slowly grown my collection of models and have a small force of Germans and Russians in both 15mm and 20mm, however, that is a lot of money to run two armies in two scales just to play around the house