Ghosts Legions: The Revenge

Much like my recent post on Elemental Knights a frequent brain worm of mine is Ghost Legions. My attempt at fighting wars with ghosts in the afterlife, a good excuse to drag out any historical figures you have to hand and play a game with them. Similar to those you may have fought as a child pitching your Airfix Germans against Robin Hood.

The challenges of getting going with Ghost Legions has been the costs involved. I’m a big fan of cheap and I mean cheap wargaming and I’ve often felt that for a game to be interesting you need a good mix of units, so you can get that rock, paper, scissors style of play. Getting a good mix of figures from different periods can get a little pricey if you’re starting from scratch and my usual go to of 1/72 plastic figures can equally get pricey if you buy a good few boxes. £5-10 pound for 50 figures and a great, but for that mix of units you probably want 6+ boxes, and as soon as the price of a project goes above £30 I find myself second guessing if it’s a good idea (I’m sure your price limits will vary).

So the ideal is to have a game where I don’t need that mix of units to have fun, where one box of 1/72 figures will do nicely for a single force, and you can easily stat up a single box to pitch it against another, although depending on what the box is, you may not use all of it.

I recently grabbed 3 such boxes from Drum and Flag:

As a starting point for rules, I had the following, very rough idea:

Stats –

FP – Fire Power

KR – Kill Rate

MB – Melee Bonus

SHOOTING

Total the FP of a unit and roll that many dice, each 4+ counts as a success. Divide total successes by target units Defence Value.

Defence Value = Range 0-6”=1, 6-12”=2, 12-18”=3, 18-24”=4 etc.

Total = hits. Ignore remainders. A unit cannot score more hits than its total KR.

Make saving throws against hits – 5+ for soft cover, 3+ for hard cover.

Each unsaved hit kills one figure in the target unit.

MELEE COMBAT

When two opposing units make contact pair up all figures in units with opponents. When one unit is larger pair up additional figures with already paired opponents and spread them as evenly as possible.

Roll a die for each figure in a pair adding their Melee Bonus, higher roller kills their opponent. Where multiple figures are paired against a single opponent only roll once for the larger side adding 1 to their MB for each additional figure. Higher roller wins, and if the outnumbered figure wins they will kill all of their opponents. Reroll any ties.

So applying the above to this situation:

The Japanese unit has 4 riflemen, 4 carrying SMGs an LMG and an Officer with a pistol.

Stats are as follows:

Rifleman FP 3, KR 1, MB 0

SMG FP 2, KR 2, MB 0

LMG FP 3, KR 3, MB 0

Officer FP 1, KR 2, MB 1

Total FP of 24, total KR of 17.

Bad rolling for the Paratroopers scored 8 successes, we’ll under their KR cap of 17.

The Bazouks are in the 12-18” bracket and so have a defence of 3, meaning 2 hits in total. The soft cover gives them a 5+ save but they fail both and take 2 casualties.

The Bazouks then advance 6” (as is customary because I haven’t though about movement yet), and fire their muskets.

Bashi-Bazouks FP 1, KR 1, MB 1

The eight remaining with a FP of 8 and KR of 8 scored 6 hits, very impressive shooting! The Japanese are now within the 6-12” bracket and so have a defence of 2 meaning 3 hits are scored, and with no cover that means 3 kills.

The Japanese advance 6” too and fire again, scoring 7 hits and the Bazouks fail 4 saves.

The Bazouks charge!

Three of the Bazouks face off against two Japanese each, and one faces off against the Officer, so all rolls will be a simple. The Bazouks get their +1, the Japanese get a +1 for outnumbering, and the Officer although alone gets his +1.

Three Bazouks die in the combat and two Japanese, I’m guessing at this point the Bazouks would flee.

I think a simple totalling of stats may well be the best way to point things so 42 points of Japanese defeat 30 points of Bashi-Bazouks. Assuming a rough 3 point average per figure, a 150 point game seems fair.

I think that’s enough of a core idea to get the ball rolling.