Cloud Clads

Last night Pete came up with an interesting idea for Cloud Clads, take the TooFatLardies naval idea of each ship moving on its own card, and firing on its own card.

That got me thinking about some other things I've wanted to do on our naval game, which might be a good chance to try on this one.

the main one being to get away from the idea of ships being a bunch of points that slowly get whittled away until it sinks. I want ships to be more to go down to a collection of criticals brought on by a progressive structural failure.

Shooting to be simplified (only 4 range bands, modifiers being range, target size/speed, crew quality and maybe something for gunnery).
Smaller guns to get a higher hit chance due to more shells going off round the target.

So, each ship has a structural integrity (SI) rating, which has 3 numbers. These are the minor, major and catastrophic damage levels. There are multiple SI ratings, where the numbers decrease, these can be lost by criticals, when the last one goes the ship breaks up.

When a shell hits a ship, its damage is compared against the SI rating, and depend on which number it is <=, then a count is made for a minor, major or catastrophic hit.
If the number rolled is equal to the hit number (and the hit number is greater than 1), then the hit is marked on the next higher hit type (higher from catastrophic is 2 catastrophic).

There is also a count for on-going damage.

Each side has a "Take Damage" card in the pack, when it is drawn, each ship that has at least a count of one in any category, takes possible damage.

There are critical tables against each category, numbered 20 across the top (compares to a D20 roll) and 1 to 6 down the side (compares against the category count, can have multiple rolls if more than 6 (I.e. 8 would have one against 6 and one against 2)). The critical caused in each table depends on the higher the dice roll (or lower to match up with shooting) and the category count. Obviously major hits are worse than minor, and catastrophic are even worse.

The rolls are made in the order of minor, major and catastrophic, after each one is calculated then its count is erased. This allows for results of lower categories causing higher counts.

Once those 3 categories are done, the same process is applied to on-going damage, but this is not erased.

There is also in the pack a card for damage control (one per side). when this is drawn, any possible repairs can be fixed, and the on-going damage can be reduced.

Most damageable things have 3 results, +10, +18 and destroyed. The 2 +'s are the numbers that need to be rolled on a D20 to fix the item.

There are various crew levels, this represents how much the crew have been knocked off their feet. This is increased both by criticals and by the ship taking a number of hits in a turn, this can be reduced during damage control. Each level of crew gives modifiers to shooting/damage control.

Speed is to be represented by boiler rooms, each one produces so much speed, which are added together to give the top speed.

There are 6 height levels, a ship can choose go up by 1 or down by 2 safely. Each ship has 6 lift panels. These are represented on a ship by a 6 by 6 grid, across the top is the number of panels left, down the side the current height. Each intersection has a number which represents the roll on a D20 that needs to be made to get the ship to level out there (adjust for crew levels). If a critical says drop X levels, then the number at the new level/panel intersection is checked, if made it stays at the new level, if no it drops one more. If panels are destroyed, then the ship drops a number of levels equal to the panels just lost.

When firing, if shooter is higher then the actual range is reduced by 10cm per level distance, but with an actual range blind zone of 5cm per level (I.e. with a height difference of 4, then the target appears 40cm closer for calculating the hit number, but can't be shot at within 20cm).

If the shooter is lower, then the actual range is increased by 20cm per level, once again with a blind zone of 5cm per level (I.e. with a difference of 4, then the target is 80cm further away, and can't be shot at within 20cm). Any hits occurred when shooting up count as one category higher, to represent the thinner armour that must cover the lift panels.

Still alive

I am still alive, just not seemed to post much recently, not sure why.

Anyway, some bits for me to remember in the future. Mainly what I am watching/planning at this time.

Music
She and Him Volume 1. Really good album, just very easy to listen to. Zooey has got such a good voice.
The Ting Tings, very nice first album.
Johnny Cash, got a best of album, did not realise how many of his songs I have actually heard of before.

Just spent a while on You Tube, going through ACW songs. Split from there into some folk music.

TV
Veronica Mars. Living are showing the whole of the 3rd series each night at 3:30 am, just get the V+ box to series record it, and watch the episode the next morning. Really loving it, can not find many faults with it at all, which is kind of strange as I have got the impression that the fans did not like the 3rd series. Hope they will repeat the 1st and 2nd series in the same way after this one finishes.
Gossip Girl. Blake looks too old to make Serena believable, I have a hard time telling the blokes apart, but I do like the show. Not sure how long it can go on for, but for now I will carry on watching it.
House. Always good, not sure if I really like all the new assistants, but they are a minor point of it.
Greek. Watched the first one, I will keep at it for now.

Wargames
Fire and Fury. Got last Sunday at Partizan, looks quite good. Going to be done in 6mm, just going to have to find some ready made bases in nearly the correct size.
The Great War. Also got last Sunday, only had a quick glance at them, but do not seem too bad. Not sure what scale to look at, as far as I am aware no-one else has any WW1 figures so I have got a free run on that. Maybe 6 or 10mm. Base size is roughly the same as that for Fire and Fury.

Just checked, looks like East Riding Miniatures do them, 1 inch square bases.

Been playing
WW2 naval. Our rules. Still got to sit down and have a total rethink on them, lose the mark of points bit and have effects totally based around explosive effects of weapons hitting.
Pulp Fiction. Bob has been putting on some games on a Thursday night, mostly they work, but it does lend me to wonder if a better way of doing it would be to give each player one decent character with some abilities, and quite a few add on minions with no skills. Allow each player to really get to know one character, and then put in the advancement rules to allow them to build up other characters. Sort of a dungeons done on mass.

Some old pictures I found floating around on my PC. Taken at some point in 2001.

Firstly, some of the family. To say that some of them look nothing like this now would be a massive understatement.








The angels in the picture below are still sitting on my painting table unfinished. The only difference these days is that their wings are blue.


Since this I've changed the table for a wheeled cupboard thing, and the table top is a lot more cluttered with paints, brushes and tools.

Ships

These are some of the models I've recently painted. All they need doing now is to give them a spray coat of varnish.

Firstly, a Klingon D7 cruiser escorted by 2 F5 frigates (or small destroyers as they really are)



Next is some 1/2400th scale Napoleonic sailing ships.


Must admit, doing this post was harder than I expected. Picking photos seemed to place them at the top of the post, where I then had to cut and paste them where I expected.

I suppose I could always try reading the help pages next time.

Things not to do when painting wargames models.

I was trying to paint some 1/2400th ACW ships (Tumbling Dice) while attempting to catch up on some of the stuff I'd recorded.

The program I picked was Bottom Live 3: Hooligans Island (I know it is old, but managed to notice it was on Dave, and decided to record it).

Gave up on painting after 20 minutes, doesn't really work when tears are streaming down my face.

Good show, very funny, but I've got to wonder how much of the "mistakes" were genuine, and how many were scripted. Especially some of the prop ones.