On my yahoo group I occasionally run disastrously boring contests that generate some moderate amount of disinterest and usually have a single entry when all is said and done. One was for a VSF invention, which Don won (garnering an excellent set of steampunk goggles my wife made), the next for a scenario for a miniatures battle which Alan won and which will be part off The Sword and The Hive rule book as the free scenario, since he was kind enough to allow publication (and since it was more than good enough to see publications!)

OK, here is my new contest:

Go to your bookshelves, a library, a book shop or other place with lots of books. RANDOMLY select three books from three widely separated areas (both physically separated and in terms of subject matter). Take core ideas events or characters from those three books and develop something related to VSF, Steampunk or Hive, Queen and Country in Particular. This can be a character concept, a piece of artwork, a costume, and invention, a scenario or a fictional story.

The rules
Say what three books they were and where you found them-All on this list are considered gentlemen and ladies so there is a certainty that books will not be “cherry picked” to lead to a pre identified idea.
Say what three ideas you are using and which books they came from
Entries must be in to me by October 15th. The winner will announced no later than December 1st.
HAVE FUN
No other rules.

We will post the entries on the yahoo group and on the web page and will have a voter poll to determine the winner

The Prize:
A signed copy of The Sword and The Hive
I will assemble, paint and base a bike of hive creatures for your gaming pleasure
I will work to include the work in the next published HQC product in some fashion.

As I mentioned I ran a demo game at Game Club in Fenton Missouri today. I had a number of players cycle through the event usually having two players on each side. The British had two companies of Royal Marine Light Infantry, one of British Army Infantry, all mounted in carriers. In support was a Royal Engineer fighting vehicle, three Mk I landships and a pair of Royal Artillery 5 inch howitzer carriers.

The Bugs had about a dozen Bikes of various shapes and sizes of nasty critters, but no flyers.

It was a meeting engagement on Dartmoor, so terrain needs were limited. A number of roads and hedges crisscrossed the table and a small village stood at the central crossroads.

Each side started at a table edge and had a mission to clear the area of enemy forces.

The hedges blocked line of site so long range artillery fire was prevented. The aliens resolutely marched across the table attempting to reach the British and bring them to melee. For their part the British forces had some early confusion and after initially attempting to race into contact with their enemy instead chose to form a battle line and let the invaders come to them. By the time they had finally decided upon this course of action it was nearly too late, with the enemy being extremely close. The Royal Engineers vehicle was quickly overrun and destroyed by Major Crabs and bombers. On the left flank the company of infantry was engaged in a melee with a unit of Media lancers and another of minor lancers.

By firing and retiring the British force was able to slowly back off the table, with the exception of the company in melee. British loses were otherwise light, while the aliens had several units entirely wiped out and suffered a disproportionate number of drone loses. By the end of the action four bikes had lost all their drones, one routed, one was torpid and two had run amok.

It seemed like folks had a pretty good time and the Game club event was pretty well attended.

As I observed the action I believe that several tactical hints would be valuable to players. First for the Bug player. Use terrain as much as possible to block your units from fire. When breaking cover have as many units as possible break at the same time, presenting a vast array of targets and preventing the British player from concentrating fire on any single unit. Position drones so that they may control multiple units if drone casualties are heavy. Screen high value units with minors, so that the British are forced to fire on the less threatening small fry and can’t get good shots on the large aliens until too late.

For the British get into position to start shooting early and shoot as often as is possible. Position heavy weapons so that they can fire early and often. Don’t mask your own fire by poor unit placement. Either get to terrain features usable as defensive positions or just get your firing lines set up and wait for the enemy. But the key for the British is shoot.

Game Club seems an excellent event. I was made welcome and their staff worked very hard to make sure that attendees are challenged by games and not by the event. I look forward to going back.

Terry

I’ll be at gameday in Fenton Missouri this Saturday playtesting The Sword and The Hive. It sounds like a good event and it will be interesting to see what folks make of this whole Bugs vs Brits thing. If things go well I’ll do a battle report. If they go badly I won’t :–)

http://www.gameclubhq.net/

I wrote a short piece on how big individual Bugs get. How many of those are there? If you look under the Biology of the Hive tab you’ll see a screen shot of a program that calculates the size of teh Hive at any point in its life. If anyone would like a full copy of teh program please let me know.

Thanks
Terry

One of the really nice things about having a web site dedicated to this setting is that information that supports the background, that provides depth and texture, but wouldn’t really be valuable as part of a retail product can be made easily available. In the historical Documents section I’ve uploaded the Treat of Brussels from 1872. This fictional agreement describes the diplomatic events in the wake of the Russian claim to Lunar ownership. It spells out how the Great Powers will partition space and where they will compete and where they will cooperate. I wrote this a few years ago and am still very pleased with the result. I’m exceptionally please with how it looks on the web page. Feel free to look it over and leave some comments.