SAGA into Open Combat

Apologies for going a whole month without blogging. I have done my share of gaming and painting in the past month, but kid's birthdays, school sports and a return to running nearly eliminated my blog time. On the positive side, I can now build up a reserve of posts for times when I am crunched for time.

SAGA is my usual go-to historical skirmish game, but Open Combat is increasingly filling a niche: a quicker game, fewer figures, or games with newer players (like my young son).  SAGA is far quicker than most historical games, and its unit point system makes list building a matter of minutes.

On the other hand, Open Combat can be time consuming with its initial RPG-lite character creation, so I have been working on a few rules to convert SAGA figures into Open Combat.  As an “open” system, Open Combat can handle any self-imposed rules players choose to create.

First, to preserve SAGA’s units, the different quality troops will have assigned Fortitude and Renown points. These values will be apply across different factions. Warlords will not be assigned FOR points, as Warlords are meant to be more unique than other troops.

TROOP TYPE	Renown	Fortitude
Levy	12	2
Warrior	18	3
Hearthguard	24	4
Warlord	30	-

Norman Archer (Levy) 

SPD	ATK	DEF	FOR	MIN	WPN	Abilities
3	2	2	2	1	Bow	Aim

For Warriors, the points go up by 6, giving them a Renown of 18.

Norman Spearman (warrior)

SPD	ATK	DEF	FOR	MIN	WPN	Abilities
3	3	3	3	2	Spear, Shield	Resolute, Shield Bash

The Warrior with a crossbow makes a formidable Dark Ages sniper:

Norman Crossbow (warrior)

SPD	ATK	DEF	FOR	MIN	WPN	Abilities
4	4	2	3	2	Crossbow	Marksman, Aim

The classic Norman troop is the mounted cavalryman. The Warlord, center, is flanked by two knights.

Norman Knights

SPD	ATK	DEF	FOR	MIN	WPN	Abilities
7	4	4	4	2	Lance, Shield	Furious Assault

Warlord

SPD	ATK	DEF	FOR	MIN	WPN	Abilities
8	5	4	5	3	Sword, Shield	Furious Assault, Inspire, Intimidate

To set your points for a match, begin with 30 for the Warlord, and add multiples of 24 to make purchasing easier.  The warband above is worth 198 points; 30 for the Warlord, 48 for four levy, 72 for four warriors and 48 for two knights. Finally, this is not meant to go against the ethos of Open Combat or "fix" it, but more as a way to show its adaptability to a variety of settings.

Up next, creating some foes for the Normans.

Open Combat - Finns v. Vikings AAR

This weekend's game was another delve into Open Combat using the Dark Age Finns I put together last week.

The scenario was Capture from page 43 of the rules. Two rival raiders, Finns and Vikings, both fall upon the same village at the same time.  The winner is whoever can get out with the most plunder.  Livestock, pigs, sheep and reindeer were considered neutral or submissive, and the two villagers and the dog were hostile.  My opponent took the Finns who approached from the "north" end of the table, and my Vikings from the lower side.

Below, a Finn target a villager. As a hostile, she attacks and scores a 6 on a mental attack and escaped.

My Vikings close in on the reindeer, who conveniently move towards them on their randomly generated moves. 

My Viking makes it off the table with his prize, a lady who is not that happy with her situation.

Fighting over the sheep in the pen.

The Finn, with the Nimble perk, jumps the fence, avoids a Free Attack runs off with a sheep. My archer tags him, but he still has enough Fortitude to get out.

The plundered village: 

Final score, Finns 10, Vikings 6. 

Open Combat's initial draw is the flexibility of force creation. There are no approved lists; characters can be as fast or strong as the points you are willing to pay.  My opponent and I also stumbled onto another element that added to the fun when we kept our character's scores secret until combat began. In most all games, each player can know the opponent's strengths and weaknesses by knowing the lists.  But in Open Combat, the exact power of each model can vary, giving one the opportunity to bluff and feint.  Obviously some trust in your opponent is required, but we're all gentlemen here.

The interaction with the terrain and objects may be the next best feature of this rule system. Figures are a part of their environment, and the terrain can be much more dynamic than usual. Every tree, fence and barrel can become part of the action.  

Viking Age Finns

The Vikings are at the heart of my interest in the Dark Ages and wargaming.  After years of reading and study, I continue to find new facets to the Viking story. One area often overshadowed in comparison to the stories of Western Europe is the Eastern Baltic.

The Baltic Finns, Estonians and Karelians are a related group of peoples speaking a Uralic language, somewhat related to Hungarian.  In the Viking Age, their cold and marshy lands marked the first leg of the journey eastward to the Dnieper .

Viking goods and burial sites begin showing up in the Lake Ladoga region in the ninth century. This might indicate a pattern of Viking settlement in the region, as they set up semi-permanent bases on the road to Constantinople. The artifacts might also indicate that the Finns and Karelians traded with the Vikings and also adopted some aspects of their culture.

A significant Finnish element to the Viking Age might be the naming of the Rus.  The Finn word for Swede, Ruotsi, may have stuck to the Eastern Vikings as they blended into the people later called the Rus.  There is not a great deal written about the interaction between the Finns and the early Vikings, and even less is available in English.  The story of the Vikings in the west is shaped largely by its raids on targets containing literate monks and by the later Icelandic Sagas. There is no comparable preservation of early Viking encounters in Finland and the Baltic. It can be surmised that the Finns were a frequent target for slave raids, but this decreased in frequency as the Vikings traded and mixed with the Baltic peoples.

This early twentieth century Russian painting served as my primary visual inspiration for painting up some Viking Age Finns.  Pinterest is also a good source of recreations of Finnish folk clothing from the Viking era, although much of the work is focused on female dress.

The Invitation of the Varangians, by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1909.

These Crusader Bondi archers are unarmored and some are beardless which fits in well with some of the presentations of Baltic Finns and Karelians.   In the photo below, the figures on the far right were given a fur hat and cloak using a bit of green stuff.

While a full faction of Finns is not really something I plan to pursue, I can see them fitting into a Rus warband in SAGA. However, as I dig into Open Combat, I find that it is a great system to do small custom warbands as I explore some of the more obscure recesses of the early Medieval period.

Here is a quick stat box for the eight figure shown above:

NAME	SPD	ATK	DEF	FOR	MIN	WEAPO NS	SPC	RENOWN
Leader	5	6	6	5	6	Bow, Sword	Inspire, Intimidate,	30 pts
Hunters(x7)	5	4	4	4	3	Bow, Dagger	Aim, Surefooted	24 ea.
Breakpoint			26			Total Renown		32 + 168 = 200

This small band will make a raid on Viking settlement in an upcoming game, after I finish some longhouses - the subject of my next update.

Open Combat by Carl Brown

Apologies to all for dropping off the blog for a while.  Work, family and church has kept me incredibly busy of late, and I can't promise that my pace will pick up anytime soon.  I do have a number of new painted figures to post, as soon as I have time to take some pictures.  In the meantime, here is a review (of sorts) for a new game I picked up and played recently.

Open Combat by Carl Brown is a new miniature rule system released through his website and company Second Thunder.   Having heard about the game from a couple of my favorite podcasts, Meeples and Miniatures and Fool's Daily, I decided to pick it up.  On the face of it, the game system is flexible for ancient, medieval or fantasy gaming with a limited number of models per side. It is easily customized to fit any miniature, and it promises to be quick to set up and quick to play.

What is perhaps the most unique aspect of the game, one that sets it apart from other miniature wargames, is the creation of your army list or warband.  Warbands are based on a point system ("renown") and can be set at various levels for desired length of play and size of the warband.  One hundred points will get you a small force with some average to good characteristics. Points are assigned to each individual model for five basic statistics - Speed, Attack, Defense, Fortitude and Mind.   Weapons and special abilities (Aim, Inspiration, etc.) add points as well.

The mechanic for combat is based on adding up modifiers to the character's attack value, such as cover, high ground and so forth.  The number of points greater than the defender's total (if any) determines the amount of dice the attacker rolls, with a maximum of three.  The attacker takes the best value, and this should give him a greater chance of scoring a hit.  There is no save roll if a model is hit, this is built into the modifiers and the fortitude (i.e. "hit points").  This makes for a quick resolution of combat.

Initially, I was a bit perplexed by the lack of lists or standards? What is the typical defense value for a Viking in chain mail?  What sort of attack would a Roman legionnaire have? And, if we're getting into fantasy, what about a goblin, an orc or a werewolf?

Lest you think the lack of lists can be attributed to the authoer's laziness or inattentiveness, it was purely intentional and it may be the key selling point of the game. In a true skirmish game, each miniature is an individual and all individuals are distinct. Not all Vikings were equally tough. A quick but naked Celt could have a defense of 6 and a clumsy Roman in armor might have a defense of 3 if you so choose.  This gives you the freedom to create a warband with a few powerful heroes or a swarming mob, or somewhere in between.  You could even create a warband made of a single god-like character (25 attack! 25 defense!) but the rules system naturally limits such pointless overpowering.  No matter how high your attack, you still roll only three dice and pick the best, and no matter how high you defense, your opponent still gets to roll a single die. Regular players of the game should find an equilibrium based on their style of play.

---

For my initial game, I decided to test out character creation and put some Skraelings up against Vikings.  The Skraelings were initially for SAGA, but I never had a great desire to play their battleboard. Loved the figures, so now I can play the Indians as I envisioned them.  The Vikings were led by an 11 year old son of a friend, a Boy Scout with an deep interest in history - definitely a future war gamer.

The Indians are low on defense and fortitude, but I spent points on Speed, Aim and Nimbleness. Run and Gun! 

Above, the Vikings advance to the tree line. 

Initiative is the usual IGYG system, but rolling a "1" during combat ends your turn.  The does bear some similarities to the Song of Blades and Heroes iterations, in that a poor roll ends your turn before all the models have moved.  

Position matters in Open Combat.  This Viking about to get shot in the back will only be able to apply half of his Defense value.  

Above, the Jarl successfully defends against a Brave attacking from the high ground and then pushes them back,  He has taken some damage, however and...

another Brave activates and takes him out.   

With their Jarl slain, the Vikings reach the breaking point on their renown, and the game is called in favor of the Skraelings.  Total game time is under an hour, not bad for two players, one completely new to miniature wargaming.  

---

Open Combat definitely fills a niche in my gaming habit.  The DIY nature of warband construction allows me to field some figures and forces the way I think they should be played, all within a balanced game mechanic.  It is quick to learn, and quick to teach, but not at all oversimplified.  

Currently, it is only available as a PDF from his website, though a published edition may be down the road if the game catches on.  I hope it is because Carl Brown is very supportive of his product through forums and outreach.  

Update:  Apologies to Carl BROWN for originally listing his name as Brand.  Not sure who I can blame for that, but if I find the culprit I'll be sure to identify him!