To the wheat fields beyond......Part 2

In case everyone was wondering why

When we actually get to put this on as a demonstration game there is an accompanying information booklet complete with links to the emu wars orchestral piece, all the scholarly tracts, parliamentary reports and other good stuff.  This time we are going to go through the Rules  play test and do some behind the scenes stuff.

If we did a blow by blow account we would have to explain the thing with the echidna and one of the soldiers being run over by an emu. That would of course be embarrassing so we will show the pics without commentary.

The board

We have had some queries about the board so here is some info.

It’s basically hard polystyrene sheets with various pieces either glued down or moulded. The road and creek depressions were made with a low power blow torch then layered with cellulose fibre. Which is a very cheap light weight alternative to plaster. Huge amounts of scatter was made from sawdust and paint.  Hill contouring was all done with sawdust mixed with cellulose then covered with plaster strips. Tufts and grasses were hand made by Barry from Leadbears Tufts in Murray bridge.  The fences and flowers were all hand made. Gravel, sand and stones were stolen shamelessly from the building site down the street. The trees are all made by a serious tree maker in Queensland named Symes. Some people collect stamps; he makes trees.

The finished board took about two weeks to complete. It’s not quite the Christmas holiday home maintenance activity my family was anticipating.
The main problem was keeping everything to scale.

Some scenic shots

It's dry Australian outback during a drought. Oddly enough as soon as there is any rain the wild flowers come out and everything goes madly green.

The main objective was to get a range of different terrain types that our teams could waddle around while seeking out the errant wild life.

Some Rules

As its a play test there are obviously some rules. Wallenstein defined a game as consisting of the rules by which it is played....we have further defined the rules as being what we could get away with....

By way of credit: I went mad trying to find some way to simulate the passive issue of wild life fighting back realistically. The main problem with this war was (as the Argus newspaper so aptly put it in 1932) only one side knew there was one on. The emus just carried on as if nothing happened.

I came across a simple set of rules written (in haste I suspect) by those talented chaps at 2 Hour Wargames, entitled Turkey Shoot. Basically a Pilgrim goes out to shoot a turkey for thanksgiving; the turkey reacts to this invasion of privacy by either running away or stomping on the pilgrim. It was ideal. So we shameless adapted it to fit the emus, kangaroos, and other exotic wildlife bounding about the Western Australian Bush in 1932.

There are five factions:
The Royal Australian Heavy Artillery
The Campion and Districts soldier settlers,
The boys from Pickering Brook
Fox the Cinetone cameraman
and
The Wildlife (emus, roos, dingos, foxes, echidnas, wombats, goannas, various birdlife, snakes etc....basically as big a collection of ding dongs as one could find outside a large belfry)

 The dreaded foe during a mass migration near the rabbit proof fence in 2014. This is a small mob compared to 1932. Essentially that much weight simply pushes the rabbit and dingo fence over and the emus just go straight through....accompanies by rabbits, foxes and dingoes. Emus however are really just interested in stealing stuff and eating things.

The solider settlers at one of the ambush sites during Smoko. That blob on the horizon is a set up Lewis gun.......just in case the emus make a raid.

Fox. The Commonwealth government could see the obvious publicity benefit of the Army boldly dealing with an environmental problem. So they hired Fox to shoot a newsreel documentary...and he did. The minute or so of usable footage was duly made into a newsreel....shown in the cinemas and then locked away in the National Archives for 50 years.

Fox's role in the game is to film everything. If its not caught on camera it never happened (until they find the bodies). He is controlled by the Umpire (as the Umpire has to have some fun)

The Pickering Brook contingent in The Old Bus. Whether they just wanted to get out of work or were seeking adventure, Vic and Bert Francias, and Ray Owen ventured north and took part in the great adventure. Ray had a 1928 Salmson sports car which, as it turned out, was probably the best vehicle for chasing emus. As there is a dearth of 1928 Salmson sports car models in 28mm he just gets to ride in the bus. Our advice is, if you have a suitable model let him roar around in it....it can't hurt.

The Royal Australian Heavy Artillery represented by Major Meredith, Sergeant McMurray and Gunner O'Halloran. They had 10,000 rounds of ammunition and two Lewis guns. Given no one knew what they were doing it was surprising that they didn't kill someone. Gunner O'Halloran was nearly killed when they mounted a Lewis gun on the back of the truck and tried to chase emus, and he fell off.  It didn't help that emus are much faster than  trucks of 1932. The good Major at one time reported that the emus were led by "Black Plumed Generals" who marshaled their troops and foiled every ploy the humans threw at them. Even the media thought the heat was probably getting to him. He did however report eventually that his force had suffered no casualties.

The play test was to see about that.

The REP

Each character/animal has a REP which is shorthand for Reputation, or Repugnance, or Reprehensibility or something. Basically its a beer and skittles way of consolidating all the stats you might need into one number. You throw against it to determine shooting, melee, waddling about the bush and so forth. It's the non thinking mans game stat.

Each faction has a chip with their details on it placed in a bag and the game proceeds with chips being drawn and the faction going for it in the  bush.

Next Time : Going for it....Some rooting, tooting. shooting action from our test heroes.