I started playing around with the Savage Worlds Showdown rules after getting hold of Pinnacles latest greatest Product "Weird Wars: Rome".
Weird Wars Rome puts the player in the position of legionaries of the Roman Empire, but the setting has a twist: the ancient world is infested with low magic and magical creatures, making this a bit more challenging!
A good review on youtube for the setting can be found here.
I always enjoy watching those...
Anyhow, the games in Weird Wars Rome seem to run a bit differently than normally, because it seems to heavily emphasize battles and hierarchy. So normally the player characters will be a squad of roman soldiers (they don't have to be but for that the campaign presented in the corebook is layed out) and one of them will be the leader of the squad.
Now, my experience shows that it's normally not a good idea if one player of the group is the "leader", it tends to kill a bit of fun in the roleplaying, probably because the other players don't feel that much involved because they feel they cannot take that many decisions by themselves. So I wonder how that would play out.
On the other hand every player might be just happy to collect their might and wealth in this setting and therefore not care about that that much. The rules for Spoils of War and for running a dynasty of warriors seem to emphasize such play. If I start a campaign I might even think of giving them some friendly competition, every player trying to be promoted higher than the others...
So that is a small look at Weird Wars: Rome. A setting with a high emphasis on battles. So so many battles in this setting.... that just cries for big tabletop fighting action just like in my old days when I played Warhammer 40k....
And because the setting is very heavy battle focused and potentially also focused for BIG battles, I finally decided to check out the Savage Worlds Showdown! rules which are more or less tabletop rules for the Savage Worlds system! They simplify the combat just a wee-bit more than the normal rules do and give rules for unit coherency and morale checks on casualties. And the best thing about those rules is: they are free! You can download them from the Pinnacle Entertainment website, a direct link is here.
One thing that repelled me a bit was that there is not a whole lot of material out there for Savage Worlds Showdown!. It seems not many people use it. One Showdown setting for Iron Dynasty that should use the system seems to never really have been published although the Showdown Rules inside have quite some pictures showing Iron Dynasty....
Even more, although Weird Wars: Rome seems to just CRY to be used with Showdown!, there is nothing I found out there on the internet combining the two.... I find it a bit sad that the Weird Wars Rome Rulebook does not include the Showdown Unit Points for the different types of troops.
The second sad thing about the Showdown! rules is that calculating the Unit Cost for Units is REALLY a hassle! That is definitely a fail by Pinnacle! In the Showdown!-PDF they are referring to a excel sheet for building troops and are referring to that they want to make a nice web-site based approach for creating those troops. Fair enough, but given that Showdown! is already released for multiple years I would expect to have good means of creating my troops by now! Ok, its free, so I cannot complain much, but I think its sad that they put so much effort into this and then stopping like five yards before the finnish line! Without an easy Troop Builder its quite hard to create scenarios, and so nobody does it, thus nobody uses the system!
It was actually a member on the pinnacle forums that extracted the math used for calculating those troop costs, you can find his post here and the document here.
With some searching you can also find that somebody already put in some effort to make a web-based troop builder, which you can find here. Beware that this mentioned troop builder has some bugs, so he will NOT save ranged weapons! Maybe there would have been a more complete troop builder available if Pinnacle had released the math used for calculating those troop costs in the first place... anyway...
I finally managed to build my own first troops with that mentioned troop builder and was able to make a small test-battle in Weird Wars Rome!
I put two contubernium (=squads of 8 soldiers each plus each with one commanding officer) of typical Principii (legionaries of the early roman period) against two brigands of Gaul warriors.
That meant 18 romans versus 24 gauls, totalling 42 extras on the table and roughly 324 points worth of units.
The points favored the Romans a bit, but as an experienced Savage Worlds Game Master I already had the feeling that the Gauls would be slaughtered. And just like historically accurate and just like I expected, the Romans DID slaughter them taking only few casualties. The interesting point about it is that I only needed roughly around 40 minutes finishing the whole fight! So, I had the unit cards ready, and just needed to set the miniatures up and get the dice and start.
That was pretty impressively fast!
So how does Showdown play? I even make the unfair comparison: How does it compare to other Table-Top games?
Well, as a veteran of Warhammer 40k and also some Flames of War I have to admit that the skirmish with Weird Wars: Rome Showdown! did not run as smooth as a Warhammer 40k battle runs.
You have to concentrate much more, because
* the dice can explode and you have to add up
* you have to calculate (you have to beat the parry and toughness)
* you can't always roll all attacks together
* you keep track of shaken
Everything like that can be handled but it makes it a bit less fast, but on the other hand the units on the table can have much more detail! I think it is safe to say that the scope is a bit smaller than for games like Warhammer 40k.
It might have been down to what scenario I tried, but I miss a bit of tactical opportunities. I remember that in Warhammer I often had to think: "Do I go into melee now and by that get special bonuses or do I stay for this round out of melee and take a round of rapid-fire shots and let him attack me?". Less so here so far. On the other hand, the Savage Worlds Showdown! rules will probably handle the hero-aspects even better than what I am used to in Warhammer 40k. I think a fight between your Space Marine Sergeant with a Power Fist against an enemy Eldar Avatar in the middle of a heated melee-fight between multiple squads could be much more epic. The one turn-off for me is just creating the troops. In Warhammer 40k or Flames of War I got a kick of creating my armies. Here, it just wasn't fun until now. But then again, the rules for Showdown are made not for that kind of play to just create your troops in a Tabletop fashion and then pit them against each other. It's more meant that somebody out there creates you a "Codex" (to stay with the Warhammer 40k language) that you use to create your troops. The Showdown! rules clearly state that its easy to bend the rules Showdown! for powergaming.
Plus, I say again: The rules for Savage Worlds Showdown! are free!
Conclusion
If I get some people to start a Weird Wars: Rome campaign I will definetely use the rules for making some great large scale battles! Until then I will do some more tests.
I will probably continue with some more Weird Wars: Rome Showdown! experiments and also post the troops I created so far so anybody interested does not have to go through that boring part of creating them themselves.
So now as Kurt Wiegel would say,
Good Day and Good Gaming!
Weird Wars Rome puts the player in the position of legionaries of the Roman Empire, but the setting has a twist: the ancient world is infested with low magic and magical creatures, making this a bit more challenging!
A good review on youtube for the setting can be found here.
I always enjoy watching those...
Anyhow, the games in Weird Wars Rome seem to run a bit differently than normally, because it seems to heavily emphasize battles and hierarchy. So normally the player characters will be a squad of roman soldiers (they don't have to be but for that the campaign presented in the corebook is layed out) and one of them will be the leader of the squad.
Now, my experience shows that it's normally not a good idea if one player of the group is the "leader", it tends to kill a bit of fun in the roleplaying, probably because the other players don't feel that much involved because they feel they cannot take that many decisions by themselves. So I wonder how that would play out.
On the other hand every player might be just happy to collect their might and wealth in this setting and therefore not care about that that much. The rules for Spoils of War and for running a dynasty of warriors seem to emphasize such play. If I start a campaign I might even think of giving them some friendly competition, every player trying to be promoted higher than the others...
So that is a small look at Weird Wars: Rome. A setting with a high emphasis on battles. So so many battles in this setting.... that just cries for big tabletop fighting action just like in my old days when I played Warhammer 40k....
And because the setting is very heavy battle focused and potentially also focused for BIG battles, I finally decided to check out the Savage Worlds Showdown! rules which are more or less tabletop rules for the Savage Worlds system! They simplify the combat just a wee-bit more than the normal rules do and give rules for unit coherency and morale checks on casualties. And the best thing about those rules is: they are free! You can download them from the Pinnacle Entertainment website, a direct link is here.
One thing that repelled me a bit was that there is not a whole lot of material out there for Savage Worlds Showdown!. It seems not many people use it. One Showdown setting for Iron Dynasty that should use the system seems to never really have been published although the Showdown Rules inside have quite some pictures showing Iron Dynasty....
Even more, although Weird Wars: Rome seems to just CRY to be used with Showdown!, there is nothing I found out there on the internet combining the two.... I find it a bit sad that the Weird Wars Rome Rulebook does not include the Showdown Unit Points for the different types of troops.
The second sad thing about the Showdown! rules is that calculating the Unit Cost for Units is REALLY a hassle! That is definitely a fail by Pinnacle! In the Showdown!-PDF they are referring to a excel sheet for building troops and are referring to that they want to make a nice web-site based approach for creating those troops. Fair enough, but given that Showdown! is already released for multiple years I would expect to have good means of creating my troops by now! Ok, its free, so I cannot complain much, but I think its sad that they put so much effort into this and then stopping like five yards before the finnish line! Without an easy Troop Builder its quite hard to create scenarios, and so nobody does it, thus nobody uses the system!
It was actually a member on the pinnacle forums that extracted the math used for calculating those troop costs, you can find his post here and the document here.
With some searching you can also find that somebody already put in some effort to make a web-based troop builder, which you can find here. Beware that this mentioned troop builder has some bugs, so he will NOT save ranged weapons! Maybe there would have been a more complete troop builder available if Pinnacle had released the math used for calculating those troop costs in the first place... anyway...
I finally managed to build my own first troops with that mentioned troop builder and was able to make a small test-battle in Weird Wars Rome!
I put two contubernium (=squads of 8 soldiers each plus each with one commanding officer) of typical Principii (legionaries of the early roman period) against two brigands of Gaul warriors.
That meant 18 romans versus 24 gauls, totalling 42 extras on the table and roughly 324 points worth of units.
The points favored the Romans a bit, but as an experienced Savage Worlds Game Master I already had the feeling that the Gauls would be slaughtered. And just like historically accurate and just like I expected, the Romans DID slaughter them taking only few casualties. The interesting point about it is that I only needed roughly around 40 minutes finishing the whole fight! So, I had the unit cards ready, and just needed to set the miniatures up and get the dice and start.
That was pretty impressively fast!
So how does Showdown play? I even make the unfair comparison: How does it compare to other Table-Top games?
Well, as a veteran of Warhammer 40k and also some Flames of War I have to admit that the skirmish with Weird Wars: Rome Showdown! did not run as smooth as a Warhammer 40k battle runs.
You have to concentrate much more, because
* the dice can explode and you have to add up
* you have to calculate (you have to beat the parry and toughness)
* you can't always roll all attacks together
* you keep track of shaken
Everything like that can be handled but it makes it a bit less fast, but on the other hand the units on the table can have much more detail! I think it is safe to say that the scope is a bit smaller than for games like Warhammer 40k.
It might have been down to what scenario I tried, but I miss a bit of tactical opportunities. I remember that in Warhammer I often had to think: "Do I go into melee now and by that get special bonuses or do I stay for this round out of melee and take a round of rapid-fire shots and let him attack me?". Less so here so far. On the other hand, the Savage Worlds Showdown! rules will probably handle the hero-aspects even better than what I am used to in Warhammer 40k. I think a fight between your Space Marine Sergeant with a Power Fist against an enemy Eldar Avatar in the middle of a heated melee-fight between multiple squads could be much more epic. The one turn-off for me is just creating the troops. In Warhammer 40k or Flames of War I got a kick of creating my armies. Here, it just wasn't fun until now. But then again, the rules for Showdown are made not for that kind of play to just create your troops in a Tabletop fashion and then pit them against each other. It's more meant that somebody out there creates you a "Codex" (to stay with the Warhammer 40k language) that you use to create your troops. The Showdown! rules clearly state that its easy to bend the rules Showdown! for powergaming.
Plus, I say again: The rules for Savage Worlds Showdown! are free!
Conclusion
If I get some people to start a Weird Wars: Rome campaign I will definetely use the rules for making some great large scale battles! Until then I will do some more tests.
I will probably continue with some more Weird Wars: Rome Showdown! experiments and also post the troops I created so far so anybody interested does not have to go through that boring part of creating them themselves.
So now as Kurt Wiegel would say,
Good Day and Good Gaming!
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