And now for something completely different
Well, not completely different.
I wanted to post here and let you know this project is not dead. Even though I’ve had to put it on a back burner, it’s still cooking. I’m getting rolling with a webpage design business which, by necessity, is taking up a large portion of my time. It has the possibility of growth since I am acquiring clients faster than I can get their projects done. At some point down the road, I could become self employed.
The point is that I’ve got projects with some deadlines and Marfs just has to wait a little longer for the next real update. My ideas have not evaporated - it just takes time to get things drawn, scanned, cleaned up, typed out and edited. In the meantime, I ran into a game that caught my eye.
SenjiEven though I don't have time to scratch, I still have that game playing itch. I check out board game reviews when I get a second. I ran across a review of a game called Senji. You (up to five other players) try to take over Japan using diplomacy and strategy. It has an intriguing look, doesn't it? That's the sort of destination I'd like to see General Del's Marfs get to, with interesting components and great color.
As you’ll see in the review, it gets complicated and Senji lasts about two hours. I can appreciate complexity but I prefer boardgames where you have a limited number of things to track. (Video games keep track of lots of little details for you, which is helpful if you are playing a complex game. They also cut down on the setup time if the game you are playing if there are a lot pieces to fuss with.) Still, I thought I might share the review with you because Senji looks interesting and you might like it.
Introduction to playing out a battle…
To start a game, each player rolls a dice (and for once) you can just read the actual number. Ties have a roll off and highest goes first. You’ll want to place your squads on your side of the kitchen table (or backyard patio - wherever you decide to play.)
On your turn, you have a choice of three options:
1. Move a squad up to its max number of spaces or
2. Attack with a squad or
3. Move and attack.
4. You repeat the three steps above for each squad you have. After you are done, it becomes the player’s turn on your left.
The first few turns will involve moving your squads within range to attack your enemy. After that, things should degenerate quickly into pitched battles. Note: You may wish to use your Aggressive dice judiciously since you will not get any Defend results from them and your figures will disappear faster. (That is why I stuck star stickers to the ones sides of my Aggressive dice so I could more easily tell them apart from the Regular dice. I couldn’t locally find skull stickers or anything cooler than stars, sorry.)
Now that you see it in action, you can better understand what Marfs is all about. These introductory posts just give the basic rundown of how the game works. Later posts will offer much more in the way of specifics.
There will be scenarios and army builds created, which will require some extra concerns like terrain and mission goals. I will also be showing you how to create your own armies of squads and posting links to places where you can acquire figure sets or actual miniatures. There is almost an infinite number of variations you could create based on the setting, scenario and figures available. As a matter of fact, for each squad there are 500 different possible Marfs ratings before you add specials.
Another nice thing about Marfs Gaming is not only its simplicity but also that most games should finish within thirty minutes, so you’ll be able to play a couple of times through and try out new strategies and tactics. Marfs Gaming is pick-up-and-play but still allowing for unlimited replay. In summary: There’s more to come!
Until next time, this is General Del signing off.
General Del introduces the Dice
This post will introduce the dice and how they work. Specifically, how to take regular dice and make them work for Marfs. Then you’ll face off one squad against another.
Regarding dice - you’ll need regular six sided dice. I recommend ten since you can buy a five pack of dice in Wal-Mart for just $1.49 and maybe less at the Dollar Store.
You’ll have two kinds of dice, Regular and Aggressive and you’ll want some way of telling them apart. I thought it would be fun to theme the dice, so I looked for little stickers with shields or grenades on them, but I found nothing suitable. In the end, I used star stickers on the Aggressive dice. (I temporarily lost one of them, so there’s only nine dice in the picture, sorry.)
You could just create a chart, but I used a (grey) Sharpie marker to write a little letter on each face.
1 = no hit (I left this side blank but you might write a zero on the ‘1′ side of each dice.)
2 = Attack on the Aggressive dice or Defense on the regular dice. (I wrote a little A on five dice to make them Aggressive dice. The other five are Regular dice, so they get a little D on their ‘2′ faces.
3,4 = Attack (I wrote A’s)
5 = Morale (I wrote M’s.)
6 = Special (I wrote S’s.)
Since you’ve already got your soliders ready…You are all ready to play. Just so you see how it works, take two riflemen squads and face them towards each other on your kitchen table. They should each be in two groups of four, basically in a square shape. (If you don’t have army men handy, don’t worry. You can use poker chips or peanuts - this is just an example.)
One side will normally be the attacker, but that isn’t important for this sample battle. These Riflemen squads have 2334 [heavy damage] ratings, so roll three dice for each side.
*If you roll an A, you Attacked!
*if you rolled a D, you Defended an Attack.
*If you roll a zero, that means nothing happened.
*If you roll an M, the opposing squad loses morale and retreats one space (move the whole squad back two inches for each M your opponent rolled.)
*If you roll an S, your special was activated. In this case, heavy damage does an extra A.
Compare the three dice of one side against the three dice of the other. Let’s imagine that each side rolled AAA. That would mean each side lost three figures, leaving them one figure each. It went from 4 vs 4 to 1 vs 1.
It’s not really any more complicated than that to compare dice. Say that one squad (Green) rolled AAM and the other (Grey) rolled ADS. What would the result be?
Comparing these rolls, the Green squad loses two figures and the Greys are forced back a space and lose one figure. The Grey’s D cancels one of the Green’s A dice, but the Green’s M (morale) result forces the Grey squad to retreat.
Next time, we’ll talk about starting a game, playing out your turn and a few other details. Until next time, this is General Del signing off.
Introduction to Marfs Gaming
Marfs, in this incarnation, is a tabletop war game most similar to Battlemasters. You take the role of a “General” and you command a number of army squads - you order them to move and attack so you can vanquish another “Generals‘” army.
To make it easy to visualize, I went to the dollar store and bought two different colored packs of army men. Cheap and easy is General Del’s middle name!
When I had plastic army men as a kid, there were soldiers that were laying down (sniper types,) kneeling riflemen, standing riflemen, grenadiers, flamethrower troops and probably a couple more I’m forgetting. The army men I bought didn’t have most of those types, so this will be a good example of making whatever figures you have work for you. Later posts will expand on the process of building squads, but it’s okay for now. This post is mainly serving as an introduction.
Each squad will have up to four* soldier figures, set up in a square formation. Each squad is rated on the Marfs scale. Marfs is an acronym…
- M stands for Movement. It tells you how many two inch ’spaces’ the squad can move.
- A is for Attack. This is the number of dice you will roll when attacking.
- R is Range. This is how many spaces away the attack can affect.
- F is Figures*. This is how many figures are in your squad. Every time your squad gets hit, it loses a figure. Figures is limited to a value of four.
- S is Special. This is a special effect that can be very different for every squad.
Since these numbers are limited to five (except figures*,) the notation can be kept very simple. 5234[heavy damage] is stated in ‘Marf’ order, so the 3 is the range number in this example. The words in brackets [like this] are the squad’s special ability.
Let’s check out some sample Marfs values for the army men I purchased. There are five different poses which suggest five different kinds of squads.
The first squad I will show you are riflemen 2334 [heavy damage]. Heavy damage causes all dice that come up ‘Special’ to be counted as Attacks. My army will consist mainly of riflemen and be supplemented by other squads. I’ll have nine squads of four riflemen in this army.
The next are my grenadier squads, which have just two figures in them. Grenadiers are rated 3552 [area effect]. Area Effect means that when a grenade is successfully thrown for an Attack, all squads within six inches of the target suffer all the results. This may include the grenade throwers, too. There will be two Grenadier squads, or four grenade soldiers total.
Since I already had grenadiers providing explosive special effects, I used the bazooka army men as single figure squads of flamethrower soldiers. They will be 4551 (no special.) There will be two Flamethrower squads.
I used the soldiers with binoculars and an upraised arm as ranger type soldiers. They will be rated 5552 [heavy damage] so they’ll have two figures in each squad and cause lots of damage. There will be two Scout squads.
Finally, I’ll use the Captains to improve and lead the squads. They will have ratings of 3331 [Leader]. The Leader special allows all friendly figures touching the leader in an unbroken line to add an extra dice. There are two Captains.
Each army will have nine riflemen squads, two grenadier squads, two flamethrower squads, two scout squads and two captains. In the next post, I’ll show you how to read the dice and make it all work. Until then, this is General Del signing off.
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