All posts by james

James has a keen interest in military history, backed with experience as a TA reservist and a 17th century re-enactor. He has designed and run several face to face social games and is the editor of MilMud, the journal of the CLWG game design group. He is currently working on a book on the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution.
CLWG, design, games, History

Revolutionary Warfare

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When I played Andy Grainger’s A Month in Country I immediately thought of some of the parallels with the Revolutionary Warfare (RW) game that I have run myself a couple of times, although with only a few players. I would particularly like to re-do my Palestine game as the players I ended up with (well one player in particular) didn’t give me the sort of game that I was expecting as they couldn’t cope with the whole concept of the role that they were given. (I won’t name names, but those that were there know who I am talking about – the British Governor wanted to hold elections for a PR power sharing assembly between the Palestinians and the Jews).

Anyway, the concept I was playing with was similar to Andy’s but played on a slightly larger scale. At the time of design I had been toying with the idea of producing ‘Lion Comes Home’ as a megagame and the RW module had to work very smoothly. It is essentially one sided, there would be a small group of roving revolutionaries that would start a new revolution when their current one had been crushed, or at a point determined by the political control team. I haven’t completely shelved LCH, but development has stalled over the last couple of years. Anyway I’m not volunteering something like this as a megagame until I’ve written it all.

In the RW module the resolution is at province level, in the Palestine tryout there were 16 provinces. This could be too low for a megagame but I didn’t want governments suddenly losing control of entire colonies as that just didn’t happen historically. The Government players would set the rules of engagement and the alert levels for the police forces and any military units in the colony.

Each province has an unrest level that can be affected by the actions of both the government and the revolutionaries. If the revolutionaries are successful (or the government inept) then the tension levels can escalate from content to ungovernable via stable, unrest & tense.

The forces of revolution will normally start out with a small amount of support to get them going. They can gain support from the effects of their actions. They also use up support to perform actions as there is only so much support that can be called upon at any time. Revolutionaries may espouse peaceful or military action or a combination of both. At different stages of the revolution different strategies will reap the best rewards in increased tension levels and the downfall of the government. The stages of revolution are broadly:

1.Raising Awareness: getting the people to realise that there is a problem with the government and that they can help to change this;

2.Low Intensity Struggle: starting to make small demonstrations against the government and perhaps attacking key figures or installations;

3.High Intensity Struggle: making the country ungovernable and forcing the government to make concessions to the revolution;

4.Open warfare: becoming a government and opposing the old regime openly to ensure its downfall.

In Andy’s game the revolutionaries are somewhere between stages 2 & 3 depending on where they are in the country. Some parts are probably even in stage 4.

The role of the government is not a purely reactionary one, it is possible to be proactive and prevent terrorism before it has any great effect. The setting is such that there will be an overall political framework to be worked within and the government players will represent the colonial governor and possibly the garrison commander. There may also be scope for the home government to become involved in solving problems. For the purposes of a tryout I would either play it one-sided (more accurately with several revolutionary factions) or have a couple of reliable players to play the local governor and military commander.

 Government actions are determined on a matrix of the current alert state and the general intention of the active units under command. Each police district and company sized unit can be given an intention and an area of responsibility. Doctrine for dealing with internal trouble is of police primacy unless a state of emergency has been declared. Declaration of a state of emergency is not something that should be done lightly, and certainly not before the police have lost the ability to deal with the situation.

 Anyway if there is sufficient interest, and the dates are finalized early enough to let me book cheap flights, I could run this at the Games Weekend. It would need five or six players and would take about three hours all told. If interest was very high I could even run two simultaneous colonial engagements. I would also like to do a design session on modeling opinion polls and elections.

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CLWG, design, games, megagames, universe

What you missed at the January meeting of CLWG

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The Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG) January meeting (Sunday 9th January) was in Jim’s office near Holborn. This one had 14 members in attendance.

When I turned up there was a promotion board going on for one of the characters in our long-running Starship Marine campaign (details of the campaign and a history of the 130th Regiment). To make this more interesting for the players who were on the board (i.e. the interviewers) there were a couple of candidates for promotion, including one marine Captain who brought a bomb in with him to prove how easy they were to defuse. A nice piece of live role-play from Jerry (who improvised the bombs immediately beforehand.)

I was called upon to defuse the device which consisted of an ice-cream box with an anti-tilt device on it and a fuse inside which had to be unscrewed without disturbing the rest of the device. The fuse was a marker pen and the anti-tilt device was a post-it holding it onto the side of the box, if the box had been tilted or nudged then the pen would have fallen off the side of the box and set the device off. Similarly if I had pulled the pen off the back of the box it would also have set the device off.

We also had a tryout of a convoy destruction game intended for wargames shows which Michael Dollin and I are working on. This involves players attacking a convoy in successive waves of torpedo bombers, dive-bombers and perhaps also PT boats and high/medium-level bombers. We mainly tried out the torpedo and dive-bomber mechanisms. These appeared to work very well and played in around twice real time, so a full torpedo run took us around 5 minutes to do. We managed to do dive bomber attacks much faster, around one every minute or so.

The torpedo attacks were done in a conventional figure game way. You fly up with your torpedo bomber, getting shot at as you come in, and launch your torpedo on a likely track when you feel that you are close enough for it to count.

The dive-bombing was a bit different. We had two possible methods for this, but the one we tried most was a co-ordinate system (ripped off from Graham Hockley). As you start your descent you are shown a grid with a slowly moving ship on it (which was magnetic). You can also see your altimeter (a modified clock). When you have got as low as you want you say “Bombs gone” and the grid is turned round so that you can no longer see it. The ship keeps moving the same way it had before and when the altimeter gets to 0 (i.e. then the bombs hit) the umpire stops moving the ship. The player tells the umpire what co-ordinates he wanted the bomb to hit. The grid is then revealed (and with it the position of the ship) and the position of the bomb compared to the ship.

Hits to aircraft were delivered using playing cards. We would print the actual outcome onto cards to speed things up if we did it for a wargame show. The players don’t get told what the effect of a hit is unless it is obvious (or becomes so). This represents the fact that pilots often don’t know how badly damaged their aircraft is except where it affects the handling of the aircraft.

We also developed a bombsight to simulate level bombing. This used a small periscope attached to a wooden arm and a level to release the ‘bombs’ (pieces of chalk). The test target was a block of wood painted matt black so that the chalk marks would be obvious. We did find that the bombing was a too accurate, especially given that level bombing was notoriously inaccurate and the bombs being over-scale didn’t help much. It had a good feel though.

The other game that was run at the same time was called ‘Directory Enquiries‘ by John Rutherford and was a political role-playing game about the French foreign policy immediately after the revolution in 1789. I didn’t take part for the obvious reason that I was running the convoy tryout so can’t really comment on how well it went.

After that another tryout was run, this time as a feasibility for a megagame on WWI. It was “A Great War” from Brian Cameron (an associate member of the Warlords). It ran fairly well as a game but had some pauses in it, which gave Brian doubts about how well it might run as a megagame without more work on the design of the game. I wasn’t involved in this tryout because I was too busy playing a network game of Warcraft with Jim, excellent fun if you can get your hands on it. That was pretty much all of it, we finished up around six and headed for home.

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CLWG, roleplaying, universe, WW2

CLWG December 1999

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What you missed at the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG) December 1999 meeting.

English: Wreckage of a Fairley Battle shot dow...
English: Wreckage of a Fairley Battle shot down by the Wehrmacht, France, on May 1940. Deutsch: Trümmer einer von der Wehrmacht im Mai 1940 in Frankreich abgeschossenen Fairley Battle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The CLWG December 1999 meeting started from 12 at John Rutherford’s house and we played until after 9pm. Afterwards we chatted, with the aid of several bottles of wine, until almost midnight. In total we had 13 members at the meeting. It started with a fairly light-hearted game called ‘Battling Druids‘ which was originally designed by Trevor Farrant as a participation game for wargames shows for another club that he is a member of. This involves four 100mm models of druids, four fountains, a cloud with a lighting bolt, hordes of hedges, magic spells and a whole lot of fun.

A sergeant air-gunner mans his Vickers 'K' gun...
A sergeant air-gunner mans his Vickers ‘K’ gun from the rear cockpit of a Fairey Battle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Next up was an RAF Aircrew RPG which I ran with the help of a couple of others. This involved the layers creating themselves characters, setting off in their Fairey Battles and hamming it up big style. Every stereotype was there, from the Australian bush pilot (who was a real-life Quantas Jumbo Jet pilot) to the terrible ex-public schoolboy who drove his Morgan nearly as fast as the aircraft. All the players ended up in enemy hands (what do you expect when you take a Fairey Battle to bomb a bridge in Maastricht?) They were separated, interrogated and then combined in a prison camp (except for the Aussie who broke out and ran for it like a man).

This led us nicely into our next game from Jerry, which was set in a POW camp near the Swiss border in the later part of 1944. It was based on one of the exercises that the regular army uses to test its potential officers reasoning ability. We split into two groups for this, and although both groups came up with reasonable plans neither of us managed to get the ‘DS solution’ which is what the army consider to be the correct answer. Admittedly the set problem does tie your hands a bit and railroads you towards a sub-optimal solution (at least in my view). This also ran alongside another session of the ‘Battling Druids’.

Next up was the club quiz, run by me. It came in two parts. The first part was where I asked people ten questions about their ideal game, its title, what it would feature, what it wouldn’t feature, where it was set, its subject and who the dream designer would be and a couple of other things too. The interval was filled by Chinese takeaway and some wine. After that I read out the answers to each of he questions and people had to guess who had written which answers. Given the rather silly nature of some answers (e.g. one of the games was titled something like “Manchurian Kung-Fu Space Marines vs. Psycho-Alien Death Nazis from Mars”, another called “Charles & Die” – about the English Civil War naturally) this was a highly amusing game where people were accused of all sorts of things.

After the club quiz things degenerated further into hilarity with a game of Starship Marine. The game was different from normal because each player had to write down what actions the player on their left did (which rotated round the table each turn). When you got the bit of paper telling you what had just happened you announced what you wanted your character to do next (and hopefully the person who was writing down what actually happens was listening to you). This game involved teddy bears, VR porn, scantily clad women, large alien robots, leaking steam, a system failure in a suit of powered armour, accidental grenade throwing and a host of other improbable and hilarious outcomes that wouldn’t normally have happened in one of our usual games using the rules.

All that happened after that was that we sat around and talked for an hour or so before deciding that we had to leave to get last buses/trains/etc home. In all it was a good session.

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alternative, CLWG, design, games

Invasion of the West – Onside Report

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Invasion of the West was a Cold War turned hot alternative history game that I ran at the March meeting of Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG). 

Having cast around for someone to do a plan for Invasion of the West Mukul volunteered, even though he wasn’t able to turn up on Saturday. Mukul’s plan is at the end of this report along with the umpire briefings, but in essence it was for a pre-emptive chemical strike on 1 British Corps near Hanover followed by a mad dash for Antwerp.

Division of Europe during the Cold War. Blue =...
Division of Europe during the Cold War. Blue = US led NATO, Red = USSR led Warsaw pact. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On the day Andy Reeve, John Rutherford, Dave Boundy, Terry Martin and Brian Cameron turned up. Andy and John played the Soviets/Warsaw Pact forces with Dave Boundy as their LU. Terry controlled the NATO forces with Brian joining in when he arrived.

The players weren’t entirely happy with the chemical strike but did it anyway. The results were disappointing as the combat capacity of the NATO forces wasn’t degraded terribly as had been hoped, although the civilian casualties were horrendous. (As a game fudge I deemed that the chemical strike would take a step loss when it hit and also inflict a step loss on any units remaining in the area. Fighting in an afflicted zone would be twice as deadly and all combat factors would be reduced to one). The main game effect of the chemicals was to stiffen the resolve of the German territorial forces to fight.

The Warsaw Pact advance hit the slightly softened NATO forces and punched their way past them with a few casualties. NATO correctly guessed the main axis of Warsaw Pact attack and concentrated their air effort, reserves and logs support on the thrust. In a bloody second day the Warsaw Pact air were swept from the sky. At the same time the West German Northern Corps counter-attacked and inflicted a serious stop to the follow-on forces. The forward Soviet thrust bypassed Hanover and almost reached the Ruhr before being annihilated by a British counter-attack heavily supported by aircraft and LSPs. The West Germans died with the Soviet follow-on force in a bitter slogging match.

Down south all was quiet, relatively speaking. The Czechs having been given no orders decided not to play. NATO forces dug in and fortified their positions waiting to see what happened. In the meantime the all the reserve formations were diverted north. The arrival of the Reforger air-deployed division tipped the balance. Although arguably the lack of activity in the South allowed the LSPs that might have been used there to be used in the North. As my mechanism translates LSP use directly into combat step losses this was disastrous as the forces involved very quickly lost all their offensive combat power.

I was reasonably happy with how the mechanisms worked, although I still have one or two reservations. Given that this was the second outing for the game this doesn’t surprise me. The main thing that I got from it was a few ideas on scenario generation. In the post-game discussion it was reckoned that there was some mileage in a political game set in the final throes of the Soviet Union which would provide the background for a game like this.

A Short Victorious War – Forthcoming Game

Given that everyone there seemed keen on this I intend to try and run an invitation game at the June meeting of CLWG, possibly in John Rutherford’s house. The game will need 15-20 people, which means that I need to go further than CLWG for players. The main teams will be NATO, Warsaw Pact and a few other key states to represent the UN Security Council in a time of crisis. I’ll also need a few umpires as well.

Each team will have 4-5 members which means I need around 15 players, 3 Liaison Umpires, a military umpire and myself as Game Control.

Scenario

The background to the game is that the Soviet Union has realised that its collapse is imminent unless it can do something to relieve its economic position. The choices open are either reform, which has a risk of getting out of hand, foreign aid or a relief from the pressures of the Cold War and the level of funding that the Arms Race requires.

Teams

NATO This will have representatives from Britain, USA, a European state and one of the peripheral members. Their role will be to try and resolve the tension by bringing the Cold War to an end and negotiating market reforms with the Soviet Union and other WP countries.

Warsaw Pact This will have a Soviet Union, East German, Polish & Czech players. They will be looking for ways to relief the economic pressures that they are under.

UN members To bring some sense to things I want to have a few unaligned states to represent the UN and the peaceful influence that it may have on the events. This is likely to have 5 players.

Umpires Each of the three teams will have an LU umpire to advise and also to relay orders to map control. The game will also use the telephone system for communications between teams (although letters and face to face will also be allowed).

This means I need a total of 17 people to play the game. If you are interested, or know anyone who is then please let me know as soon as possible.

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CLWG, design, figure, games, WW2

Chaos, Confusion, Cowardice & Incompetence (C3I) – Onside Report

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One of the things you missed [at February’s CLWG meeting] was C3I which actually turned up and was played in the afternoon (because I always turn up at lunchtime and much prefer twice as many half-day meetings).

Although this was a figure game it was scenery light and what was used was pretty abstract and flat, despite the original scenario being set on a hill. C3I is really a morale-based system for infantry combat which is intended to show how everything goes for a ball of chalk once the shooting starts. The outcomes it produced appeared to be reasonably realistic based on the reading I’ve done on infantry actions.

My aim was to produce a very simple quick system that used morale as its key attribute and would give a realistic result for infantry actions. Most of the psychology of warfare stuff I’ve read (e.g. John Keegan – Face of Battle) suggests that only a small proportion of those in a unit actually cause the battle to be progressed, these few motivate others to do their bit and generally perform well. These individuals are rarely the actual commanders of a force. The first-hand accounts I’ve read of battles in the Falklands back this theory up a little.

I was hoping that I could produce a mechanism that could be used for a number of actions and especially some of the larger company or battalion sized ones. This would mean something quick and easy to run. What I came up with fits onto one A4 sheet in 12 point with space for some of the rationale behind the system, although I need to add a couple of things to it which will probably bump the rationale off the page (and possibly add an umpire page as well).

A couple of the mechanisms need cleaned a bit. Artillery was too devastating (it ought to neutralise totally while being fired but not permanently, this should be easy to fix though). I also need to fix movement in order to make it a bit more consistent, either to speed up the non-tactical movement or to somehow slow down the tactical movement (although in part there is a mechanism that should do this, but the players didn’t try to maintain unit integrity).

Either way I am more or less happy with the system which, with minor modifications, could be used repeatedly. If anyone wants a copy of it I can supply them with a WordPerfect 6.1 document (or a hard-copy if they are coming to a meeting).

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History, Scottish

Cameronians

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This was originally posted on the Command Decision mailing list (now defunct).

The Cameronians, aka Poisoned Dwarfs, were an infantry regiment in the British Army from 1689-1968. The 2ic of my UOTC carried the Regimental Colour in their disbandment parade.

Our RQMS used to tell a story of his worst time on duty was when, in the early 1950s, the Cameronians were taking over a barracks from the Highland Light Infantry (HLI) and he was on the rear party for the HLI. He was assigned to guard the armoury and the Cameronian officer told them that on no account were they to open the armoury for anyone, and if they broke in they were to shoot them.

Colonel Duncan Carter-Campbell and HM Queen El...
Colonel Duncan Carter-Campbell and HM Queen Elizabeth II inspecting the guard of honour of the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) during the Queen’s visit to Lanark in June 1953 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The officer then proceeded to issue them with several hundred rounds of belted ammo as well as two magazines worth for their sten guns. Our RQMS and his mates thought the officer was a bit touched and stowed the ammo away as soon as he had gone. (NB ammo isn’t usually kept in the armoury with the weapons).

A few hours later, just after midnight and the closure of the pubs/NAAFI, the guard was woken up by someone banging on the door shouting rather vehemently that they wanted to be let in. The Corporal told him to go away. No effect. In fact several more Cameronians turned up and started banging on the door and pleading either to be let in or to have bayonets passed out to them. When this was refused they started to look for other ways in and surrounded the armoury banging on the door and barred windows. The situation was grim and the guard had no way of getting help.

After the banging on the door got a bit more co-ordinated the guard set up a Vickers Medium Machine Gun facing the door and made loud noises about doing this. The Cameronians finally got the hint and left just as the outside component of the guard turned up threatening to shoot them too.

The only Cameronians left now are a TA Company. (No.4 Company 1/52 Lowland Brigade). Rangers is also probably the right name too as they are all very staunch protestants (but not religiously of course). The Cameronians were originally formed to support William of Orange by fighting against the loyal forces of King James VII in Scotland, their first battle was at Dunkeld in 1689.

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alternative, Ancient, games, History, megagames

AD69 Megagame of the Year of Four Emperors

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The AD69 megagame was held in Eardley School, Streatham on Saturday 14th June 1997.

712px-Vespasianus01_pushkin_edit
“Bust of Emperor Vespasian” Originally uploaded to wikipedia by user:shakko – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

As all historians know, primary sources are often good for giving you an idea of what was going on, but are often biased by the perceptions of the people involved. For megagames this is even more so, since the players will have you believe that they personally triumphed over all the others. AD 69 is particularly prone to this phenomenon. To this end I collected the papers of Glitius Decianus, the Procurator of Belgica after the game. I also collected a number of papers from the ruins of the Senate including some of the letters from Fabius Fabullus the legate of Legio V, Alaudae and Defender of Belgica.

The recovered papers are:

  • About Glitius Decianus
  • The Belgican Treasury accounts showing (the official version of) where all the money went to.
  • Glitius Decianus’ letters to Rome. These give a chronological account to the Imperial Treasury & the Senate of events in the Belgica/Germania region.
  • Other’s letters found on the floor of the Senate after it had been sacked. These give an idea of what the other players were telling the Senate.
  • Fabius Fabullus wrote home to his Mother & Father regularly describing what was going on at the front in Belgica. When the other German Legions marched on Rome he bravely stayed and defended the frontier from the barbarian hordes which attempted to exploit the reduced garrisons. His deeds in defence of the empire should be rembered always…
  • Glitius’ Story. Events during the year A.D. 69 (as represented in the game) as experienced by Glitius Decianus, the Procurator of Belgica. It focuses on the West and tends to ignore all but the most monumentous events in other parts of the Empire.
  • Glitius Decianus’ eventual fate as the paymaster of the German Legions.
A full write up is on my games wiki

 

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design, games, megagames

It's No Picnic!

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It’s No Picnic! – Press Briefings

The following are the collected press releases/public statements made by the players and the umpire produced Headlines for the Frost City Herald during the Disaster Simulation Tryout Game on Saturday 17 May 1997.

Mayor‘s Speech on Local Radio

During this dry weather it is especially important that we all act responsibly to avoid starting fires and quickly report any we come across. The forest rangers have already put out eight today thanks to prompt reporting on the part of you, the public.

Keep up the good work and keep watching for fires

NOTE: This is a copy of the Mayor’s speaking notes as no transcript of the actual speech is available. There were a few minor differences.

Frost City Herald

Exclusive! 
Mayor Says No to Nuclear Power – Thousands of Jobs Threatened!

Frost City Press Briefing

Mayor Safeguards Tourist Trade

It is untrue to say that the refusal of planning permission for the nuclear power station has jeapordised jobs in Frost County.

Our main industry is tourism and it is without doubt that people would not come to Frost County to spend their hard earned money if there was a nuclear power station. People remember Three Mile Island & don’t wish to take their holidays next to a nuke plant – although it might help their tan!

So the Mayor’s brave decision has been made in order to safeguard jobs & protect the natural environment that we all know & the tourists love.

Frost City Herald

Mayor Denies that Job-losses will be his fault

– Places Faith In Fly-by-night Tourists
– Compares Frost With 3-Mile Island

Threat To Re-Election Campaign Funds

Frost National Park Public Information

Welcome

to Frost National Park. We hope your visit is enjoyable & Safe.

To aid your safety please observe the following:

  • Be careful when lighting & using fires, stoves, matches, glass bottles and cigarettes.
  • If a fire occurs alert the authorities by dialing 911.
  • In a fire alert please move to tracks & roads and use emergency phones to report fires
  • The authorities may close the park to protect your safety.

Frost City Herald

Mayor Quoted As “Not Giving A Toss About Local Businesses” (The Chemical Plant)

Mayor Panicking – Why Didn’t He Act Sooner?

Is The Fire Service “Incapable”? 
Will The National Guard Be Called In?
State Department Quoted as “We Have No Plans For Federal Funding”

Frost Rangers Call For “Stay-Out” Order For Park

Was The Mayor Asked For Help Earlier?

Mayoral Address

It has now become clear that the fires sweeping through Frost County are beyond the capability of local Fire Departments & Forest Rangers. It is therefore necessary for me to call for assistance from the State Governor.

Frost City Herald

Mayor Says That Everybody Else is Incompetent

How Will He Fund The National Guard?

Frost City Press Briefing

Mayor Declares State of Emergency

There is no question of the competency of our brave firement & foresters in the development of the fires.

This is a natural disaster on an unprecedented scale and the fire is bigger than our most herculean efforts can deal with.

It was in recognition of this that we called for assistance early in order to limit the amount of damage to the absolute minimum.

Frost City Herald

Mayor’s PR Officer Advises Him to Resign

Mayor Considers Pulling Out And Relocating To Dulwich

Chief Forest Ranger Says “I Wouldn’t Vote For The Mayor” (Has he voted illegally before?)

Frost City Press Briefing

Mayor Fights Forest Fire

The Mayor participated in the fighting of the Forest Fire near the Cameron Chemical Works

Frost City Herald

Emergency ‘Copters to Land in City Centre

Authorities Say “Don’t Panic!”

Mayor Rumored to Have Fallen Out With State Govt.

Interstate Will Be Closed

That’s all. I’ve resisted the temptation to write the story this time as none of the players would believe it. I was the Mayor’s PR Officer, Dr Spin.

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CLWG, games

On the Bounce – CLWG Game Report

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a post-operation Press briefing from Democracy and Freedom Today! (Game played at CLWG on Sunday 2nd February 1997). This was run by Jim Wallman and was set in the not too distant future. Needless to say Democracy and Freedom Today! (aka DAFT) were somebody’s freedom fighters and the PEC’s terrorists…

PEC Troops Terrorise Teenagers

In the early hours of this morning a heavily armed PEC force flagrantly violated Libyan territory in contravention to UN resolution 1385. The unprovoked raid by PEC forces quickly turned into an orgy of destruction, kidnap and murder.

The PEC killing spree started when a bus carrying school-children from the local academy for gifted children was ambushed on its return from a field trip. The children, aged between 12 and 16, had been out looking at the night sky as part of the Astronomy 101 course. The field trip was a regular routine that the PEC planners would have known about from their much vaunted satellite reconnaissance.

On hearing of the malicious murder of their class-mates other members of the Academy came out in an impromptu demonstration of sympathy in front of their dormitories. The PEC hovertanks then compounded their atrocity by mowing down the young demonstrators and destroying the dormitories with missile fire. These scenes were captured on camera by a courageous CNN crew who were then calously killed in cold-blood. Also killed at the same time was a PEC doctor who, realising the danger, obeyed his hippocratic oath by warning the demonstrators to run away.

It was at this point that the local militia appeared on the scene to chase the cowardly coalition cohorts away. During the engagement three PEC hovertanks were critically damaged and one knocked out. Several lighter vehicles were also hit and some helicopters downed. Libyan losses were much lower than had been expected for this type of operation. The main casualties were the civilians, 73 were killed at the Academy and nearby village and over 50 were kidnapped, presumably to be sold into the slavery of the capitalist corporations controlling the coalition.

The libyan Ambassador to the UN will be lodging an official complaint when this morning’s session opens later today. A suitable form of retaliatory strike is being considered should diplomatic action fail to produce suitable redress and bring the perpetrators of this atrocity to justice. A spokesman from Democracy & Freedom Today said “We can not tolerate the rich Northern Nations using bully-boy tactics to intimidate us in our own homes. This is the sort of action that we have been campaigning against for years”.

This is Ali Hussein, of Libya Today, reporting live from the scene of devastion in Northern Libya.

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CLWG, games, megagames, universe

Serenity Station Post-Hunt Report

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Post-Hunt Report.

As one of the two members of the Climbing Lodge With Gallantry (CLWG) hunting party in the Serenity Station Hunt I was impressed by the excellent hunt set-up. The combination of prey was most challenging and allowed for an excellent day out.

After entering the station and having a good look around I watched the initial human entry and fired a few rounds from extreme range [OOC – around 60 inches, perhaps more] at them as they disembarked. This caused them to disappear (I suspect that they have developed some sort of cloaking technology, although they did not use it when I encountered them later, so it cannot be much good.) This fire was ineffective because the humans were wearing reasonable, if crude, personal armour. The armour was breachable at close range, as my first kill testified.

I stalked a group of 10 prey and 2 machines while they moved from the docking bay, throuh my original position, to the centre of the station. As they moved past me I engaged one of the prey in close combat and killed it with ease. After taking the head as a trophy I abandoned the body and went looking for some real sport, the human being too easy a kill.

After a brief wander around the station I came across a gg’gvnt adult alone in a corridor. Not messing about I shot it from medium range & took the head, this too was rather easy, so I returned to corridor A where I could watch the entry of a lot more humans through the main docking bay.

I had some fun for a while sniping at the prey, and watching their bewilderment and not being able to see what was doing it. At about hte same time Pickles, my compatriot, was doing much the same from corridor C. I didn’t manage to hit anything because the prey was armoured. After a bit decided to go hunt some gg’vnt until the humans had made it a bit farther out of the entry area & were more spread out.

I sensed that there was a reasonable sized group of gg’gvnt adlts in area G. On entering area G, which had only one entrance/exit, I moved to despatch another lone gg’gvnt before taking on the group.

I first encountered the lone gg’gvnt adult as we both attempted to use a doorway at the same time. Giving it a quick shot at point blank range had little effect other than enraging it. A brief hand-to-hand combat ensued during which the gg’gvnt scratched me before I managed to finish it off with my spear. A good fight which nicely warmed me up for what was to follow…

As I took the head I noticed several gg’gvnt adults approaching, more than I could hope to take on at one time. I then carefully chose my ground so that I would be able to take them on without being overwhelmed. Moving into a doorway I sensed that there were about 12-15 gg’gvnt adults closing in on me, lambs to the slaughter!

They spread out to find me and as the first one came through my doorway I tried to shoot it but my weapon refused to fire. Getting out my spear I resolved to have a good look at the D.E.W. when I had dealt with the prey at hand. This weapon failure allowed the gg’vnt the opportunity to strike me & push me away from the door. I finished it off using my spear after receiving a few more scratches and giving some ground.

A large gathering of gg’gvnt adults had formed outside the door at this stage, all baying to get in. The death of the second adult didn’t seem to stop another one launching itself at me. As it charged in I slipped on the blood of it’s friend and it managed to gore me rather painfully. For it’s impudence I immediately killed it when I recovered my footing. I was no longer in a mood to play with these things.

My change in attitude, expressed in the violent death of the third gg’gvnt adult, seemed to transmit itself to the mass of gg’gvnt who took the opportunity to leave me alone. They obviously realised that I was too dangerous to take on. I took the two heads and went off to a place where I could look at my D.E.W. and from where I could shoot at some humans. Now that I was seriously wounded I reckoned that the humans might well be fair game.

I limped down to the medical bay on the station, which had a few gg’vnt eggs around as well as three machines that the humans had abandoned earlier. Inside the medical bay I tested by now-repaired D.E.W. by despatching a lone gg’gvnt adult, for which I also took the head. I then decided that I would go back & see where the humans had got to, and moved off down corridor J where I ran into a some humans rushing towards me, although it was apparent they hadn’t seen me as they were very surprised when I shot the lead figure, which was a machine I had mistaken for prey (I later took the head for novelty value – it being worthless otherwise).

This timely shot slowed the prey down and allowed me to lead them onto the gg’gvnt eggs. As I moved backwards down the corridor the prey carried on towards me, shooting wildly down the corridor. None of this wild fire came close to hitting me but it did destroy one of the human’s machines. (It shows just how indiscrimately destructive these humans are and why we need to avoid them finding out where our planets are.)

I shot two of the humans cleanly before they got close enough for the eggs to start going off. This confused them somewhat as they had apparently not seen this before and suffered badly for it. Four humans were hit by the ‘face-huggers’ and rather strangely they were then killed by their comrades, a strange phenomenon, especially since their comrade didn’t take the heads. I shot the remaining two prey and left their last machine where it was.

As I was finishing off this group of prey anothe rone the same size appeared from behind it, as did a third come down corridor I. Both these new groups tried to locate what had killed the first group, and came close to finding me, although I shot the two which I suspect detected me. The humans concentrated on destroying all the gg’vnt eggs that they could see by using their machines to crush them. They als employed a couple of radiation grenades which landed almost at my feet, although these didn’t appear to have any effect on my suit.

After a while most of the humans moved on up corridor K leaving behind the bodies of the prey I’d killed. As I started to move in to collect my trophies the humans put the fallen prey onto some machines which then trundled off up corridor J. Seeing this I broke cover & ran after them. As I opened the med-bay door a gg’gvnt seed pod got one of the humans which distracted thm a little from detecting me as I ran up the corridor.

Just behind me a horde of gg’gvnt adults burst out of the same door I had come out of and attacked the humans, allowing me to chase my trophies unmolested. The machines were moving faster than me so I was forced to shoot them to stop them getting away. I shot the first machine no trouble, but as I was closing on the prey a third machine started to pick up the trophies, so I destroyed it too.

At this point a large group of gg’vnt adults swept past me up the corridor and blocked my view of the second machine carrying the other trophies. When they passed I carried on to chase the second machine, which was getting away. As I rounded the corner it left my line of sight and I was unable to shoot it. I did however have to bash a fourth machine, which was attempting to recover the trophies, with my spear.

Realising that I wasn’t going to catch up with the second machine I cut my losses and took the two heads that the machines had been trying to get away from me, I also took the head of the human-like machine that I had shot earlier when I met the group in the corridor.

After that I reluctantly decided that it was time to leave Serenity Station. If I had been in perfect health I would have gladly carried on the hunt, but my wound was beginning to trouble me and had prevented me from being able to recover my trophies.

During the hunt I had killed: 1 SAS trooper (Hand-to hand); 2 human marines (both by D.E.W.); 1 human-like robot (D.E.W. but not for scoring purposes); and 5 gg’gvnt adults (2 by D.E.W. & 3 hand-to-hand)

. I had also been responsible for the deaths of 3 other marines by D.E.W. and 5 by luring them into gg’gvnt pod range. On top of this I destroyed 3 of the human trophy-stealing machines.

Not a bad day’s hunt.

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