The Link for the RSBS Vassal Mod

Here is the download link for the RSBS-HOTA Vassal mod.  Forgot to add it to the last post.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?u4plbdm6u5ywuk6

Vassal module is Done...Finally!!!

     The last couple of months at work has kinda kicked my butt, so work on the Vassal Module for "Red Sand, Blue Sky- Heroes of the Arena" was at a snail's pace.  But I have finally finished it.  Only problem is the file is kinda large (99.5 MB).  I suppose it's kinda picture heavy.  For each gladiator, there are a few different poses involved, including attacking, defending, stumbling, falling prone...and for certain shield carrying gladiators, there are poses for them fighting one handed without their shield if their shield arm becomes useless.  For the net-wielding Retarius, there is a pose for throwing the net.  Of course, none of these different poses is really necessary to play the game, I just added them to spice up any batreps/AARs that anyone wishes to post.  You can simply play out the match with each gladiator(and in some cases animals) in a basic stance.
     There are also Stat Cards for each gladiator and animal.  These contain all the info needed for each fighter involved in a match and they can be edited to show a gladiator's/animal's stats, including their Savvy, Strength, and Speed and also any signatures they may have.  Also in the case of gladiators, a name can be entered on their stat card.  Info for each body part is also shown, which includes any armor it may have as well as that body part's strength and any wounds it may have sustained.
     Here is an example of a Secutor's Stat Card.  This shows the Secutor's card when placed on the board.

This is the Secutor's card after entering the info for him and what his state is during a match.

     I gave him the name, Agrippa with the Brawler signature.  The grey shaded boxes on each body part shows the armor worn, L, A or A+...or U if no armor is worn.  The middle box shows the strength for each body part while the right box will show any wounds that have been suffered (in this case, Agrippa has suffered a wound to his left arm and his right leg...once the number of wounds on a particular body part equals the strength of the body part, it becomes useless.  So if Agrippa suffers 2 more wounds to his left arm, he will not be able to use it).  The grey shaded box under Bonus Dice is the gladiator's starting amount while the box to the right shows his current amount(which will change a lot during a match).  In this example, Agrippa is down to 5, half of what he started with.  Sv, St and the Sp boxes are Savvy, Strength and Speed.  The lower grey shaded boxes in the Right Leg and Left Leg areas are the armor worn on the lower right and lower left leg areas.  In this example, Agrippa has no armor on his upper leg areas while his lower left leg is armored.  

     Here's an example of a Tiger's stat card during a match.

     You can see that the tiger wears no armor(although you could enter an "L", "A" or "A+" if you wanted this particular tiger to have a hard head or if it wore some special kind of armor, it's up to you.  I mistakenly put an "L" for armor on his left hind leg armor area, whoops).  He has also suffered 2 chest wounds and is down to 10 bonus dice from a start of 16.  So anyways, that's how Stat Cards work if you wanted to use them.

     Once I figure out how to upload it to the Vassal website, it will be available to anyone who wants to give it a go.

     Thanks for stopping by, and thanks to Two Hour Wargames for a fun game.

Arenas Done...and a couple animals

Continuing on the (Two Hour Wargames) "Red Sand, Blue Sky" mod for Vassal, the arenas are done(unless changes need to be made later)...and I've finished a lion and tiger to be added as well when you reach Rome itself where animal hunts can happen in the big arena.  The 4 arenas that you fight in are labeled "Fringe of the Empire", "Heart of the Empire", "Outside Rome" and "Rome".  The first 3 arenas are all the same: small and circular.  The only difference between them are some of the images I added to them just for flavor.  The "Rome" arena is bigger and oval shaped, allowing for larger battles and animal hunts.

The arenas are:

The 3 small arenas have some space to the right to allow the placement of the gladiator stat cards...I think I may have to go back and add some space on the large arena too.

The lion and tiger are as follows

Male lion basic stance...

Attacking...

Prone/Dead...

Tiger basic stance...

Attacking...

Prone/Dead...

                                           

I think for animals I only need the 3 pics of each, as animals will only ever be in any one of these stances.

Need to add a few more animals and put together some stat cars for each of them.  The Vassal mod is getting closer to being ready to be released.  When ready, I will try to add it to the list of mods on the Vassal main site.

Until next time...thanks for stopping by.

Gladiator Images for Red Sand, Blue Sky Vassal Mod

Images for the 6 gladiators used in RSBS are done now.  I had to go back and make some changes and add some new pics to represent each gladiator having to fight one handed.  During a fight, a gladiator's arm can take  enough wounds to be rendered useless.  At this point he can no longer carry a shield, or a net if he's a retarius or an additional sword if he's a dimachaerus.  All gladiators will have different images of them that represent different actions they may take during a match which are selected from a pull-down menu after right-clicking on their image.  These are attacking, slashing(at an opponent who stumbles past them in an unsuccessful attack attempt, stumbling, prone on the arena floor, bashing with their shield, blocking with their shield.  They all start off in a basic fighting stance.  Of course it isn't really necessary to use any of these extra images to play.  One can run an entire match just using the basic stance of any gladiator.  The extra ones can add some flavor to a BatRep or AAR for others to see.

I'll use the secutor as an example...
To begin with a basic stance..

Attacking...

Blocking with shield...

Slashing...                    

                                     

Bashing with shield....

Stumbling forward(after a badly missed attack)...

Lying prone on the arena floor...

Now if the secutor takes enough wounds to his shield arm to where he can no longer carry it, he will have to drop it into the sand and fight on without it.  I have included images of the various shields that are used that can be placed on the arena sand to represent a dropped shield.  Again, it's not necessary...just purely for cosmetic effect(although you could roll against a gladiator's Savvy stat each time he/she moved into a square containing a dropped shield to see if they tripped over it).

A secutor's shield lying on the arena sand...

You will be able to rotate the shield and face it in any direction(just like all the rest of the images used).

Now when the secutor has to drop his shield and fight one handed, he will look like this...

His arm will hang useless at his side for the remainder of the match.

Attacking...

Slashing...

Stumbling...

And Prone...

The other 5 gladiators have similar pictures of them to represent their actions taken during a match.  The retarius will be a little different as he carries no shield but a net to toss, so some of his images will be a little different.

Such as his basic stance...

Throwing the net...

And after throwing the net, wielding his trident two-handed(and making it more damaging if he scores a hit)...

So those are a couple of the gladiators.  What's next is adding animals to the arena(Lions, tigers, wolves, etc.), then adding another arena or two.  I need to add a large arena to represent the colosseum in Rome itself(if you win enough matches to make it there).

Thanks for stopping by.

Retarius vs. Secutor

For this match, I chose to do a classic.  The net-wielding Retarius vs the large shield of the Secutor.  Both gladiators are being run by the game mechanics.  I rolled each of them up on the "Heart of the Empire" table in the RSBS rulebook.  Both fighters came up empty on the "Signature" table, and both have attributes of, Savvy-5, Strength-4, and Speed-4.

And now...to the arena...

Well, a quick match that saw the secutor using a lot of his bonus dice in Turn 1 to gain position, but missing terribly on the ensuing attack, causing him a crippling wound to his shield arm.  By the time he regained his feet, he was nearly exhausted, and had to use his last bit of energy to dodge the net thrown by Agrippa.  Now I just need to possibly add some pics to represent gladiators that have dropped their shields and maybe the pics of the shields themselves laying in the sand where they are dropped.  Hope you enjoyed the fight and thanks for stopping by.

RSBS Gladiator Stat Cards

Ok, I was thinking I needed a way to keep track of a gladiator's wounds and bonus dice during a match in my Vassal mod for Red Sand, Blue Sky.  Also a reference as to what type of armor he/she is wearing and on what part of their body.  So I put together "Stat Cards" for each individual gladiator.

The stat card pics look like this...

Each body part is labeled with 3 boxes underneath.  The first box on the left(the grey shaded box) will have the type of armor that is being worn.  Each type of armor is represented by a letter where "L" is leather, "A" is metal, and "A+" is extra heavy metal(in the case of some types of helmet, and "U" will be unarmored.  On the bottom where the "Right Leg" and "Left Leg" boxes are, the upper and lower grey shaded boxes refer to the upper and lower parts of the leg.  

The middle box will be the starting strength number for that body part.  The right box will indicate any wounds that have been taken during the match and will have red numbers to represent wounds taken, if any.  

The 3 boxes in the left center of the card labeled Sv, St and Sp are the gladiator's Savvy, Strength and Speed stats.  They range in number from 1 to 7. 

The Bonus Dice boxes have the shaded box to represent the gladiator's starting bonus dice and the box on the right will be their current bonus dice amount that will go up and down during the match depending on their actions( a good way to represent fatigue).

Each gladiator will have their own personal stat card with their picture on it and stating what type it is(retarius, murmillo, etc.) and the player will be able to put the gladiator's name and any signatures they have at the bottom of the card.

So for example, we have a retarius named Graccus with a Savvy of 4, Strength of 3 and Speed of 3. He has the "Agile" signature. His card will look like this at the beginning of the match.

So we have Graccus the retarius who is agile.  He has metal armor on his right arm and leather armor over his belly.  Everywhere else is unarmored.  Since the match hasn't started yet, he has all 10 of his current bonus dice.  The right side (white) bonus dice box is the one that will change the most as it will go up and down many times during a match from all the actions he will take.  

If Graccus were to take a wound to his right arm, for example, it would look like this...

If that red number were to reach 3(3 wounds to the right arm) then his right arm would become useless and he would be in trouble.

If Graccus was trained as a Thraex, his stat card would look like this...

 You can see his upper legs are wrapped in leather, as denoted by the "L" in the upper right and left leg grey shaded boxes while his lower legs have metal armor, "A".  Also, he has a helmet that protects his entire head, "A+".  (I would feel safer with this type as he is better protected...but then again, that retarius has a net that he can entangle opponents in).

Next, I'll post an example fight to show the mod in action...thanks for stopping by.

Red Sand, Blue Sky Gladiator Pics

With the release of Two Hour Wargame's title of" Red Sun, Black Moon"(the companion title to Red Sand, Blue Sky, gladiator combat in ancient Rome, and one of my favorites of THW) coming soon, it inspired me to try to finish my Vassal mod for Red Sand, Blue Sky (RSBS)...since I can't paint minis worth a dang, I use Vassal to play out THW's titles, all which have solo rules that are really well done and a blast to play.

For RSBS, there are six basic gladiators...I've put together pics of them below in a basic fighting stance to give an idea of what they look like and what they are armed with and the types of armor they wear.  The Top-down view next to each one is what the playing piece will look like in the arena.   The Six gladiators are as follows...

Red Sun, Black Moon will feature gladiator combat in a fantasy setting...ogres, elves, goblins etc...can't wait for that one.  Maybe I can have a net-wielding retarius sizing up against a massive club-wielding ogre...