u/DinoHorrendous

Having recently shown one of the mdf buildings I am painting up for modern games, I’ve been adding rules for playing in and on buildings.

Indoor Locales

If you have any suitable terrain for fighting “indoor” battles, like in a giant warehouse, inside a shopping mall, running around on a single floor of an office or apartment block, etc., feel free to use that instead of the Locales listed, when it seems appropriate to the scenario. I’d suggest using a 2’ x 2’ table for these games though and pack it with appropriate scatter. 

Otherwise, when it’s a smaller building with a removal roof, just use it as part of the normal locale.

A figure or Marker placed in the corner of a room is clearly trying to hide there, but again if part of them can actually be targeted, then the targeting figure knows they are there and can try a shot, or to spot the Marker.

It is important to decide at the start which doors are open, which are shut but not locked, and which are shut and locked. To unlock a door you need to already be right in front of it at the start of the action and unlike a normal Act, it takes the whole action to unlock it. To open an unlocked door needs a normal Act action and so can be done while moving, but takes 1” off the move. 

Once a door is open, if you can trace a straight line between a figure and any part of their target they can take a shot or spot the Marker. Peering or shooting around an open door counts as being in cover.

Shooting from buildings

In addition, if you have smaller buildings that allow you to play within them then the above rules apply but we need to cover what happens when one character is inside and another character is outside.

Buildings can be entered and exited by windows as well as doors, and a closed door or window slows the movement down by 1”.

When someone inside a building shoots at someone outside, they must be positioned by an open door or window, and that of course makes them visible for being shot at themselves, but they do count as being in cover.

Falling from heights

If you include flat-roof buildings, balconies, fire-escapes, etc. in your games, you need to account for falling.

Any character damaged by a ranged attack or defeated (pushed backwards) in hand-to-hand combat, on (within 2” of) the edge of a roof, on a balcony/ledge/fire escape, or firing out of an upper floor window, must roll to see if they fall.

Game 11 of the Enemies at the Borders campaign.

[It’s the final battle against the Undead, a Special battle against an Adversary roll of 5 that gave 3 Veteran Fighters, 3 Regular Shooters, 1 Special/War Machine/Monster, 1 Magic User, and a Leader, but as the battle is Cut off the head, one of the shooter units is replaced by another Veteran unit with a leader that needs to be killed.]

An enemy leader is headquartered in a disused farm, so a force has been sent to “kill” it. Here’s the target unit and there are others in sight around the farmhouse, though clearly more a lurking nearby.

Setup - Any unit selected for this battle will not be available for the final battle, so I can’t just load it up with the best troops, but I also know this is likely to be the harder of the two battles. I decided to trust that consolidated missile attacks would hold them off and hopefully the Heavy Fighters would take care of the wraiths and the target leader, though Lord Baldwin was there to back them up with his trusty arrows.

Round 1 - Sir Botwood and the crossbow unit open proceedings with a 15 dice volley [and I hope it’s not an omen for how the battle is going to go that there are no 6s and four 1s in the mix!] dropping just two skeleton archers and leaving half the unit unable to fire anymore! The first to react are the skeleton cavalry on the far side of the building, who head for the action, so now the archers can try to do better than their crossbow cousins, which they do indeed, taking out 5 more skeletons, but there’s still one left and it has no fear! It shoots back at the crossbows and it’s bow breaks!

The Horse archers fire off at the undead chariot, but they stay true to form, do a mere single casualty and lose three bows. The wraiths now swing towards the battle too, so Lord Baldwin takes aim at them. Despite their incorporeal nature halving his chances he takes out two (not enough to kill the leader]. Finally the chariot swings into action, killing two archers but not breaking their nerve.

While the rest of the human force holds still, more of the undead start to appear.

Round 2 - The remaining archers deal with chariot, and as the newly arrived undead units start heading towards the fray, the crossbows switch to shooting at wraiths, killing one but losing two more weapons in the process! [much more of this and they’ll be a melee unit!]. Lord Baldwin then takes out another wraith, but they keep coming on, only to be met by charging Heavies! When the dust settles, there are two human bodies on the ground and the rest are retreating, but the wraiths are gone, and the enemy leader has been smashed to oblivion. The battle is not over but victory has been assured!

Meanwhile the skeleton cavalry are starting to look like a threat, so Sir Botwood sends out their giant, which the hapless skeleton no-longer- archer charges, and that’s the end of that unit too.
The horse archers take out one of the skeleton spears that are now the vanguard of the enemy units approaching on their left, but now only two can still shoot. At the end of the round, Lord Baldwin spies the enemy necromancer skulking off in a corner.

Round 3 - The giant wades into the skeleton cavalry but fails to take any out while the skeletons score 3 wounds on it. The skeletons immediately fight back and do enough to finish taking down the giant who collapses into them taking out two of them, leaving them easy targets for every remaining human that can shoot [though due to an appalling set of rolls so far that’s not many]. The archers take down two more and the crossbows take out the last two. The skeleton javelins take out a couple of human cavalry and that’s them off the table again, they’ll never live this down. Meanwhile the necromancer has skedaddled!

Round 4 - The four archers who can still fire take a shot at the advancing skeletons only to break every last remaining bowstring and only take out one of them. The skeletons then charge them and another one goes down, but the archers lose four and the remaining too retreat. This leaves the way clear for the Grosmorne Spears to now charge though and they kill five for only two loses. The remaining functioning crossbows are fired at the last skeleton but it survives, so then Lord Baldwin has to take it out. Meanwhile the last two undead units keep coming.

Round 5 - Lord Baldwin now lets fly at the Revenant unit and takes out two of them before the remaining six charge into the six remaining spears. Both sides lose half their number but the spears also lose their nerve. The Heavies have now made it over from the other flank though and pile into the Revenants, killing the last of them while only taking one casualty. This leaves them in the open though and a hail of javelins is sent their way, killing two more of them and sending them too into retreat.

Round 6 - Lord Baldwin steps forward to both do some damage, taking out two, and make himself their target, soaking up three wounds. The two remaining archers fire and take out another, the two crossbows fire but don’t achieve anything.

Round 7 - With the battle drawing to a close and already a victory, the humans stay back. Lord Baldwin fails to drop any at all and takes five wounds for his trouble, while the archers take out one more and the crossbows fail again. Then with the light failing, Sir Botwood gives the order and the 20 remaining humans head home, less than half the number that was with him when they arrived!

Aftermath - The victory was hard won but word of it, and the casualties, would not arrive at the capital until after the final force of loyal sons and daughters of Grosmorne had set off for the final battle with the Orcs in the North.

I don’t currently have any “modern” terrain, so I thought I’d try out one of the laser cut mdf kits you can by. This one is the complete retail park from Sarissa Precision and I’m quite pleased with how much came in the kit - 4 buildings, 2 bus shelters, and a bunch of streetlights. The building roof comes off and there are some bits for interior details for low cover while inside, and the shelter included advertising stands which will make good full cover.

One building and one shelter done so far, but enjoyable to do, and the flat roof will be great for playing on even if I don’t use the optional interior rules I’ve added to the next two games.

I gave you a teaser last month about the 5 types of Fixer, and now here are the specific tables.

The rules are done, as soon as I finish the Arcs for With Great Power I can write one for this and get it out for playtesting, so if you are interested start thinking about your team now.

To summarise then, here’s all the new stuff that’s now part of the core rules. They will be in the next two new Adventures, and will be released in updates to all the existing ones in December:

More focus on Bystanders. They are no longer just placed somewhere but are uncovered from Markers like the Adversaries. They are often under threat, making it more important that they leave the table, but one of your team can now encourage them to leave or decide to defend them. So in some Editions there are two Spotting tables for when there are and aren’t Bystanders present.

There are now set tables for locating or investigating objectives.

All games now have tables that specify injuries, use experience for gaining skills, and all have a section for moving a team you have already used onto another Arc.

There is also now the option to fight an incident (10 scenarios) with a single character when they are sent on a private mission. Be aware with only one character a single bad die roll can seal their fate, but on the plus side success means a skill roll.

To implement all this in every Arc, there are no more Random Incidents, all 15 in each Arc will need to be specifically written, hence taking until December to complete them.

Alongside this I will finish Department U too, but I’ll finish With Great Power ahead of time, so it should be fine.

So that brings me back to the schedule. I’m eager to start writing Back to the Daylight in parallel in case it throws up anything else I want to get into the updates, so that means I’ve bumped it up the schedule (ahead of the Science Fiction unit level skirmish campaign).

I’m also thinking that 12 is probably the right number of Editions, and I’ll pack the last one with single Arcs for different genres, like a Pulp Arc exploring the Artic or the Jungle, a Spy-Fi Arc, something in feudal Japan, something using musketeers, etc. That way any time I want to do something different (like a civil war involving sentient trains), I can shove it in there. It will also coincide nicely with the second anniversary.

In the last look at the new core changes that will be in all the new Editions and in the next update to the existing Editions, is a way on linking your Arcs so you can keep the same Team if you want to.

This is a replacement for the “Level 2” idea and means you can play any Arc to follow on. The Editions will continue to be structured so that later Arcs are more difficult than the earlier ones, but you can dive in at any point you want.

Continuing your adventures

“Well that’s over, and we really appreciate what your team has been through Chief, but I have a feeling things are about to get tougher!”

While you are most welcome to start a different Arc with a brand new Security Team, you may well want to keep playing with a previous one, especially if they were successful. So here’s how to get that team ready for their next Adventure.

Changes to the Team

In the few months between Arcs there is a good chance something will have occurred that changes your team, especially due to the strange whims of the Station Authorities, so roll on the following table:

[see photo]

If you now have less than 10 in the Team, you now roll on the Recruiting table to bring the roster up to 10.

Other differences

When playing new Arcs with the same Team, there are a few changes: 

The Security Team is fully re-supplied with weapons before the new Arc starts.

One of your Security Officers receives medical treatment that cures a niggling Injury.

When rolling for Gaining Skills, roll 2D10 and pick the one you want.

I’ve skipped Guild and Squad when talking about minis as they are just too wide open, but I do want to talk about Wardens because it may not be immediately clear from the title what you need for figures, and that might be putting some people off, but to be clear Wardens is the ultimate answer to wanting to play a different genre in each game.

I will lean further into the actual time travel impact with new Arcs, and likely some arcs where the team don’t bother to use period appropriate gear, but for now it’s simply about a free hand on how you make your team look (the photos show my Warden and a full set of the specialists (you have 3 in your team) and then a selection of Security (you have 6). All of these were from Crooked Dice.

Here’s what it says in the book, and the photos are of the relevant tables.

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Getting this on the table

With the Incidents taking place in all these different timelines, you have two options for your team. You can either use miniatures picked to match their skills and with the kind of clothing and equipment you imagine a bunch of time travellers will look like between missions, or the team will always be dressed and equipped to match the locals each time. I’m leaning towards the former, so a specific set of figures for the Team, knowing in my head that in each Incident they will actually be attired and equipped appropriately, so as to reduce the risk of them breaking the timeline.

I also imagine that while you may have plenty of armed figures from different periods around, but not so many unarmed civilians of different periods, so feel free to just use some generic civilian figures for all Bystanders.

As the terrain where the Incident occurs could also be a little different due to the period, I will suggest the feel to the terrain to be used but I don’t imagine you will always have exactly what I would suggest, so please don’t let that stop you putting down whatever you have to hand. 

Of course, you can also just have a whole Arc play out in one specific period of history, you don’t have to bounce the team around through time each game.

The People

There are three distinct groups portrayed in the campaign.

Your campaign is all about your Warden and their team. The team has a few Specialists and includes a Security detail, as they always seem to end up in a fight. Your full roster is ten characters and up to six of them will be involved in each Battle. I will refer to all of these as the Team members.

Then there are the ones trying to break the timeline, who might be humans or aliens, and the local people (hirelings) they have paid to get in your way. These are all referred to as the Adversaries.

Finally there are the other locals, the people who populate that part or version of the timeline and are just in the wrong place at the wrong time when the fighting starts. They have a habit of getting in the way, may even get involved in the fight, and you really ought to keep them alive … just in case one of them is important to the timeline. Your Team will be able to interact with them during the game, in an effort to stop the timeline being broken. I will collectively call these Bystanders.

At the start of each game you will not know who around you is an Adversary as opposed to just being a Bystander. Until you do know, all the people are represented by Markers and are called Unknowns. There will be up to 25 on the table at the start of the game.

I also use the term Character when I am talking about figures on the table in general no matter whether they are in the Team, are Adversaries, or are Bystanders.

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The Adversaries are just very generic categories to give a few different levels of “quality” to the pools, and there’s even a few oddities listed for when you are doing non-historical (broken timelines). Again here’s what I’ve said in the book:

When selecting what period an Incident is to be set in you need to consider who the Team would be posing as, who the Adversaries would be, and what the Bystanders would be like. Particularly the latter as the Bystanders really ought to be neutral (apart from Arc 5 of course). Hopefully the scenarios themselves will lead you to an appropriate idea And that’s why you pick the period after you know what the scenario is.

As this is a wargame you might be, naturally, thinking in terms of military forces, but you should notice some other ideas below, and riffing off these is what I am hoping for. As far as I can see, any minis in your collection can find a reason for being on the table, it’s only limited by your imagination. 

The Prehistoric World

To start right at the beginning, this game can include anything you can table or even just think of. How about the earliest humans running about doing the bidding of someone who magically appeared before them, or how about the Team getting bad information and running into a pack of hunting dinosaurs?

The Ancient World

Any actual historical period or even the Hollywood type Swords and Sandals epic works here (gladiators anyone?). Could also be any period of the Roman Empire you like, and as specific as you want. Roman invasion of Britain even as a fictional background for an Arthurian game would work. Or how about early Chinese dynasties or the Indian states.

For Broken timelines there is also a rich tapestry in the various myths, any time the gods want to meddle with the mortals would fit well. Don’t be afraid to go completely mad though, how about aliens using the Pyramids as landing platforms and pretending to be gods?

Dark Age and Medieval

Taking us through the period prior to the rise of gunpowder weapons. Yes it spans a huge period, but it doesn’t need to be too specific, Viking pillaging or the Great Army in 866 AD for a Last Kingdom feel? 
Or just something clearly feudal with knights, regular troops, and levy. Don’t ignore pre-Islamic Arabia either, for an Arabian Nights feel, and then of course the Islamic Caliphate and the Crusades. Got some Test of Honour Japanese figures you can use here, or a Mongol horde?

The Broken version is then your typical High Fantasy, where goblins, elves, dwarves and the like are wandering around. Indeed any fantasy setting you want, you only need a few figures so I’m dusting off my home made Ur-viles and Kresh!

Black Powder

Basically we’re starting with the rise of black powder manually loaded weapons through to WWI. This then covers the Wars of the Spanish Succession, through the Seven Years’ War, American War of Independence, French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleonic Wars, Crimean War, and indeed through to the American Civil War. But don’t be bound to these, also in this period would fit Aztecs, American Indian wars, Pirates, Jacobite Rebellion, even Wild West. It also takes us through into the nineteenth century and the Afgan, Crimea, Zulu and Boer wars. Or to the Indian Mutiny and the Taiping Rebellion. Indeed there is a huge scope to reuse figures from other games here. If you go down this route there are optional rules for Reloading gunpowder weapons.

Broken also presents a large range of options, all sorts of gothic horror fiction based in Victorian or Edwardian times, where your figures could easily just be re-purposed Napoleonics, but could spin off to Egyptian adventures and the like. Or weird Wild West (zombie cowboys, skinwalkers, your basic six-shooters versus weird stuff), Steam punk (the typical goggles,cogs and weird weapons vibe), or Victorian Science Fiction (using historical troops versus aliens).

The World Wars

There’s plenty of small scale opportunities to get your WWI and WWII figures on the table. Got trench terrain, bombed out ruins, any stuff from your bigger skirmish battles will be easy to use. Anything in the same area works too, Vietnam, Korea, etc., but don’t forget this can include multiple between wars ‘pulp’ type things like private investigators, mythos, alien invasions, expeditions to far flung reaches, etc.

Broken is not really a challenge either, firstly you could use the same figures but talk about how the history has changed, so Germans in the UK, Japanese in the US, etc., but feel free to go wild with alien invasions and the like.

Modern times

The late 20th Century to the near future has plenty of fun figures available. I’m also thinking 1950’s Cold War type spy high jinx, and all sorts of pulp type things here allowing locales from frozen desolation to tropical jungles. 

Broken then brings in all sorts of Post Apocalypse vibes be it just a world gone bad, apes in ascendance, or zombies. Though it could also be an opportunity to field Cyberpunk figures or even Superheroes?

For both the Modern and World Wars periods, there are optional rules for Throwing and Firing Grenades (Team members only).

The Space age

Our last period sounds like Science Fiction but although it’s our future in the game it could still be the Team’s past. Your ideas for what is Historical and what counts as Broken in the future could have a great deal of scope, from early contact with an alien race, through a world overrun by artificial intelligence, to early space colonies on hostile planets. As I have said, anything goes!

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So, if you have multiple figures from different genres to play with, this game might be for you?

Don’t forget, updates to this are also coming but it already has more interaction with Bystanders (as it’s their tales that might break the timeline). There are also two new arcs planned, one where your team do not travel covertly, but then neither do the adversaries, and the Bystanders will fight you both. The other explores the ‘reality’ of time travel and dealing with the effects of overlapping jumps.

I’ve used looking for Objectives in a few arcs now but again as I’m about to go back and re-work all the ones that use random incidents I want to formalise this. So these three new sections are being added to every Edition.

Some Incidents will have a single thing (or a few things) that you need to locate while others will have you investigating. Either way the tokens may be placed or scattered.

Another benefit of re-writing all the Arcs in the previous Editions means I can change scenarios with Bystanders to have them start as Markers like they do in Wardens, Power and Dept U. I will also bring in the new Defend and Interact actions I have been toying with (and in the Arcs we’ll have more Bystanders in peril).

Defend - The character goes to the aid of a Bystander who is likely to be attacked. They can make up to a full normal move to get next to the other character but cannot Shoot or Fight, and then no Adversary can attack the Bystander that the Fixer is defending, they must attack the Team member instead.

Interact - One Team member per Round can try to convince a single Bystander within 6” to leave the area, gaining a modifier on the Bystander’s Reaction roll. The Team member may make a Move as well (before or after talking to the Bystander), but lose 1” of movement. 

A defended Bystander does not roll for reaction, while in most cases an Interact gives a bonus on the Bystander Reactions, so they are more likely to run than freeze (third photo is the table from Squad). Wardens and Power are different as Interact is a bigger deal.
I will also take the opportunity to make sure every Edition uses the same rolls. So here’s the updated rules and the two different tables are shown in the photos.

Spotting Markers

As soon as any Team member has line of sight to a Marker, roll 1D10 with no modifiers, to spot it. Which table is used depends on whether the Markers only represent Adversaries or could be either an Adversary or a Bystander, as noted in the Incident.

There are never more Bystanders than half the original number of Markers (for example 15 Markers means a maximum of 7 Bystanders). Once that many Bystanders have been used, any further rolls for a Bystander will be an Adversary instead.

When your Adversary pool of figures is all in play, remove any Markers remaining on the table. If any Special Character from the Incident has not been placed on the table yet, put it where the Marker furthest from a Team member was.

When all the Markers have been spotted, any remaining figures in the Adversary pool are individually placed at the middle of randomly selected table edges, and if there is a Special Character still to be placed, also put it at the middle of a randomly selected table edge (unless there is a special rule for its placement).

Nothing lasts forever, especially peace! It’s been quiet for a while but thankfully I still keep a close eye on the borders, and today the alert has come that I have been fearing, large bodies of troops have been spotted at three different points along the borders. So apparently it’s down to me to muster the army, divide it into appropriate sized forces, and try to out manoeuvre the invading armies coming our way. It’s not just going to be about winning battles if the realm is to survive, supply lines will need to be maintained, nomad tribes will need to be courted, and towns must be protected. Can I do this? I have no choice!

Defending the Realm is a solo wargaming system where you play a number of large battles between the armies of your realm and an invasion force that is out to crush those armies, raid your supply lines, and lay siege to your towns.

While there are many games that can be played solo, these have been specifically designed to be played that way. You take full control over your own forces, but for the adversary armies, their composition, army movements, and reactions in battle are all determined by rolls of the dice.
  
This is also fundamentally a campaign game, where the map based movement system is what leads to the different types of battles, and the scenario system makes each battle a little different. How these battles play out on the tabletop will then determine whether your realm survives or falls. 
 
The combat rules are designed to be miniature, scale, and basing agnostic, so you can use what you already have, and while it was written at 10mm scale miniatures, anything from 6mm up to 15mm will work without modifying the rules. I would suggest a 3 foot by 3 foot table is appropriate for the battles but as the rules don’t care how big the units you field are, then this too is flexible.

https://www.wargamevault.com/en/product/578865/defending-the-realm?affiliate\_id=4612915

Good grief a lot has happened in the past 12 months! It was a year ago today that after a surprise “opportunity” to retire from my day job and the realisation that the only way to have exactly the kind of solo campaign I wanted to play was to create it myself, I published Call Security! I said at the time it was part of a “Solo Tabletop Adventure System” and even called it the “Space Station Edition” to give me the impetus to create other “Editions”.

So here we are, 12 months later and not only are there seven Editions in the Adventure System, there are two sets of “Tabletop Miniatures Campaign” and today I’m releasing a “Miniatures Campaign and Big Battles System”. That’s 10 publications and 870 pages of solo gaming material. All of which I’m also painting figures for, making terrain for, and playing myself. A hobby on overdrive!

So have I got that out of my system now? Absolutely not! The early games in the Adventure system have already had a significant update and there's another set of updates plus two more new Editions planned before the end of 2026. There’s also another two Adventures and another Campaign set planned after that! Of course I’ll probably start other things before the end of that, but have not (yet) decided what, possibly another “big battles” project … maybe.

Oh and if that sounds like I’m slowing down a bit, don’t worry, you may have noticed that I’m still doing things for others and that will continue, especially with one particular company, but more about that as things get released.

While this Reddit sub is much newer of course, I’m really liking it as platform to communicate with players and potential players, so this will definitely continue. Maybe not with a brand new post every day like I’ve been doing so far, but hopefully we’ll get more of you posting too, so there will be plenty to “talk” about going forwards.

Anyway, thanks for reading, thanks even more if you’ve bought any of my games, and I hope you’ll still be around over the next year.

Dean.

In the next two Editions I’m using Markers to represent both Adversaries and Bystanders, as I did in Wardens.

In both your team needs to protect Bystanders and get them safely out of the area, and I’m using two different mechanisms for that.

In With Great Power your superheroes can Interact with a Bystander to try to convince them to leave. However, as they have no actual authority the Bystander may not comply hence needing a roll on a table (photo 1). This is further complicated by the reputation of your team, who may be seen more as vigilantes than heroes. There is also the chance a Bystander may get pinned by rubble and need you to get them out.

While in Department U your team will actually order the Bystander to leave, giving a modifier to the normal movement table (photo 2) and the Adversaries are much more likely to target Bystanders than usual. Some of the possible Fixers will have a bonus for this.

In both games Imam adding a new team member action:

Defend - The Fixer goes to the aid of a Bystander who is likely to be attacked. They can make up to a full normal move to get next to the other character but cannot Shoot or Fight, and then no Adversary can attack the Bystander that the Fixer is defending, they must attack the Fixer instead.

I think this will add an extra dimension to the games and will no doubt roll something similar into individual Arcs elsewhere over time.

Any thoughts?

While it’s likely that there’s an effect here from the fact that some titles are less than six months old, I do find it interesting that the two science fiction titles (Call Security! and We Need Your Best Squad) make up 35% of the sales to date.

I think the popularity of Join the Posse (3rd best sales) is probably due to a lack of other fun solo rules for that period, but you can’t say that about sci fi.

Of course what I really have no idea of is the level of these actually being played rather than just purchased.

A Facebook group of 35 and this Reddit sub now being at 32 members (hello to you all!) implies a decent number buy the games and are interested enough to see where they are going.

Why am I pondering all this? Well the first anniversary of Horrendous Gaming as a publisher is next week, and that will be marked by the release pf my tenth game, which is frankly a bit bonkers, but has been making me think about the next 12 months, but more on that next week.

In the meantime as a thank you to those of you bothering to read this, if you message me (don’t reply here, use a private message) your email address and tell me which game you’d like for free, I’ll arrange it via Wargame Vault for delivery on the 3rd August to mark the anniversary.

All the best, Dean