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Thread: Tripods Scenario 1 - Bring Proof 18th March 1918

  1. #1

    Post Tripods Scenario 1 - Bring Proof 18th March 1918

    Having acquired a TNT starter set (two) and a number of Tripods I decided to try out the rules on the very first Introductory scenario in the rulebook to see how it went.
    I decided to play the Mk1 tripod and used Dave’s solo rules for the Nieuport 16 (no rockets). I started the Nieuport at level 3 as I wanted to use the altitude rules (well it is a photo recon and scenario states must be at level 1 or 2 so made sense). I also used optional rules for Black Smoke and was going to use special damage rules along with aim, my problems and issues are at the bottom of the AAR for anyone who can help me out. Majority of issues were around altitude application, not least of all there is nowhere that talks about altitude in the TNT rules or what levels to use for the Tripods themselves. So here is my report and stab at the game to keep it flowing and what made sense.

    The French were unconvinced that ‘Martians’ had invaded the earth as they had been misled by German propaganda throughout the Great War. Cylinders had been dropping at various places and the French High Command wanted photographic evidence of any invading Martians and also reports of their capability and weapons before committing any forces and especially to set aside current status with Central Powers to deal with these unknown aliens.
    There was only one pilot for the job, and Lt Jacques Clouseau had been called for to get the necessary evidence and report back. A Nieuport 16 had been provided with the relevant cameras and Clouseau set off in the early Dawn towards the smoking cylinder that had crash landed close by, not knowing what he would encounter. Testing his rudder controls by right and left side slipping, he closed on the position.
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    Clouseau closed on the cylinder position, when suddenly the lid unscrewed and fell aside, and spidery mechanical legs climbed out of the smoking hole, an unearthly green glow emanating from around the alien machine. It drew itself to full height, balancing on 3 of those legs and towering over the surrounding countryside. Clouseau stalled his machine to get a better look, the first human to see one of these alien ‘tripods’, he wondered if they were friendly although the very demeanour was menacing.
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    Clouseau soon had his answer as he moved into firing range. He felt, more than saw, the energy build up in the red eye at the front of the machine, and a nervous sweaty finger quickly reacted on the guns of his machine at long range. Unfortunately for him, his guns jammed without scratching the enormous machine in front of him and in the next instance……….a sweeping, blinding ray of heat came searing up from the evil eye to strike his frail machine, causing major damage to its structural integrity. The heat swept across his exposed skin, instantly searing it and causing him pain and cold chills at the same time. He had discovered at least one of the weapons of these ‘Tripods’ and felt it’s searing power, a devastating heat ray. ( short range, 0 redrawn for explosion and 1/2 max damage (5))
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    He frantically started to unjam his guns thinking that the deadly machine could end it for him at any time, but it seemed that the machine had stood still and seemed to need to build up its energy before attacking again.
    He edged his machine closer, all the while nervous fingers working the gun mechanism to free it, damn new guns, he thought and knew if he made it back would speak with the ground crew to ensure bullet belts were throughly checked in future.
    The machine moved forward without firing allowing him a close-up look at it from altitude and cursed that he was too high to take a shot from the camera. He did note a curious shimmering along the side of the machine that was not evident from the front view.
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    Finally the dud bullet cleared the breach and his guns were useable again. He performed an Immelmann manoeuvre to get back at the rear side of the machine, flying close over the still smoking cylinder but unable to penetrate the green murkiness. He noticed the shimmer at the back of the machine too and fired at long range. The bullets seemed to hit an energy screen that crackled as the bullets hit home but no damage to the main machine could be seen or seemed to penetrate. ( 3 energy cubes lost in attack) Clouseau had discovered another defence weapon of the lumbering machines. He was about to find there was a third as a metallic canister was hurtling towards his plane, fired from a muzzle at the rear of the machine. Luckily for him the canister exploded below his aircraft and left a large black oily, swirling cloud that obscured his sight of the ground, but he was able to fly above it. ( Black smoke only effective at levels 1 or 2)
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    Clouseau knew he had to get closer to inflict any more damage, but the shimmering screens did seem to glow less following the last attack and it seemed vulnerable at the front with no screens but the devastating heat rays were there! He needed to fly lower to take photographic evidence. He was wary though, what other secrets might the visitor have. For now the machine lumbered on and again seemed to be recharging its energy source somehow. Clouseau stalled his plane and took another long range shot on a protected side, resulting in no noticeable damage.
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    The tripod turned to the left as he followed it closely from behind. He side-slipped to the left, and with the Tripod standing still and seemingly recharging still, managed a close-range shot into its protected side, but yet again, it seemed to have no effect, the energy screen protecting the precious machine hidden away behind.
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    The Martian seemed to be making its way towards a factory unit in the countryside and suddenly he realised that this was its target, and that his efforts were being ignored by the Martian. He knew he had to dive and get close for the photo and somehow get in front of the machine, risking all against those deadly heat rays. The Tripod had moved forward again and after the dive, Clouseau unloaded his guns at close range again, resulting in no damage to the protected flank and worse than that, jamming his guns again.
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    The Tripod moved over the factory and it went quiet and the stood still and turned on the spot to its right, exposing its front, Clouseau threw his machine into a left turn and then stalled to get the close in photos required but his guns were still jammed and he knew he was exposed.
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    He threw his machine into evasive manoeuvres and a wide right sideslip. The last thing he saw as looked over his shoulder was the angry red eye, spitting heat into the exposed rear of his machine….and then nothing as the burning wreck fell to the floor. (Heat ray at short range, 0 followed by redraw of 8+smoke)).
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    All the knowledge he had learned came to nothing and other daring pilots would need to learn everything he had seen all over again.
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    In this way, the alien had gained a victory and was left unmolested to destroy its objectives before moving on. The alliance had learned the hard way that it needed to send 2-3 planes in a joint attack, aimed at its unprotected side. Little did they know or suspect that other Tripods were to come later and differ from this first contact.
    “Ulla!”
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    The next post I will list the problems/rules that I could do with some help with to progress. For reference, I plotted the Tripod moves first and the actions for each phase, before using the D8 rules for the plane movement so could not ‘cheat’ by remembering where the plane would be.
    Last edited by Baz; 08-23-2021 at 17:34. Reason: Upside down images

  2. #2

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    Hi Baz, Firstly, it was a great AAR and good to see the tripods stretching their horrible legs. On my machine it looks like most of your photos are upside down. When I had this problem I saved all pictures to my PC and opened them with Paint then resized them to 640x480. That seems to fix photo problems. Now I just use an old phone for taking pictures and I have set the camera on it at 640x480 and I have no problem. Thanks for posting.

  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by Baxter View Post
    Hi Baz, Firstly, it was a great AAR and good to see the tripods stretching their horrible legs. On my machine it looks like most of your photos are upside down. When I had this problem I saved all pictures to my PC and opened them with Paint then resized them to 640x480. That seems to fix photo problems. Now I just use an old phone for taking pictures and I have set the camera on it at 640x480 and I have no problem. Thanks for posting.
    Hi Gary

    Thanks for the look in and advice. I use an iPad and have saved all in free photo edit app and reloaded and they all seem to be ok now. The duff ones are showing at the bottom now and unsure how to get rid of them.

  4. #4

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    Thank you for the good AAR, Barrie. It was a very imaginative account and the photographs illustrated it well.

    Regarding altitude, I consider the Tripods to be on level 1, since they are on the ground and do not allow them to shoot up to level 3 (although I might allow it with a heavy heat ray, if I think it is appropriate). The T&T rulebook mostly seems to assume that the action takes place on level 1, although it does say on page 27 that, if you are using altitude, then you should use the rules from the Wings of Glory rulebook in the Rules & Accessories pack. (Incidentally, this would prevent any firing between levels 1 and 3, but it was your scenario and you can 'House Rule' as you wish).

  5. #5

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    Nice to see some Martian activity again.

    REP incoming.

    To get rid of the 'bonus pics' you need to edit in Advanced mode and Manage Attachments.
    From there you can select the ones you want to delete.
    Not sure who the Moderator of this section is, but they can probably help sort it out.

  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by Stumptonian View Post
    Nice to see some Martian activity again.

    REP incoming.

    To get rid of the 'bonus pics' you need to edit in Advanced mode and Manage Attachments.
    From there you can select the ones you want to delete.
    Not sure who the Moderator of this section is, but they can probably help sort it out.
    Ok thanks for this, I have managed to find how to delete rogue attachments by using my edit profile-attachments-delete so have tidied it up a bit.

  7. #7

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    Looks great! Okay, makes me want to get my Tripods out!!!!

  8. #8

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    Ok, the problems I had were:

    1 ALtitude - as I said at the beginning I wanted to play altitude and had issues. There is nothing in the TnT rulebook except something that mentions looking at the RAP rulebook. The RAP rulebook is fine for Plane on Plane but was in place prior to Tripods.
    So, if I had made the assumption that Tripods are level 1 (ground machines) as suggested and their weapons (heat ray and black smoke) cannot get any higher than level 2 there would have been a lot of inaction in the play through which doesn’t make for an exciting game.
    It also raises other questions about short/long range. To play this strictly by the altitude rules, the weapons for the Tripods would only hit a level 2 target if it was in short range, and then the result would be a long range shot. Anything at long range for a target at level 2 would be a miss (heat ray). Level 3 targets are not achievable. This doesn’t seem right.
    1) the Black Smoke does not have short or long range so the damage is the same. This makes sense as it is a 3D cloud reaching from ground level up to the 2/3 level border and covers everything. I did have to look up about a BS attack immediately covering a target - is it dissipated and does it block LOS. This has been covered elsewhere by another thread. I was also unsure whether you could fly above the cloud, how this would affect LOS, and whether this would dissipate the cloud. I made the assumption that no to all of these questions.
    2 Heat ray affected by targets at different altitude. The altitude rules just did not seem right for this so I assumed that targets at levels 1-2 are treated the same with no penalty and a straight measure on the ruler.
    I think in hindsight, for a medium heat ray I will play no penalties for targets at levels 1-2 (straight ruler measure) and only short range for level 3 (counted as long range). For a heavy heat ray no penalties for targets at levels 1-3 and only short range for level 4. (The ruler is longer and this seems justified). This leaves scope for a light heat ray on later models to have effect at Level 1 only with a short range for level 2.
    For the planes, I will follow the Rap rules for firing and altitude as if it was plane on plane.
    The next issue I have is for overlapping and collisions and subsequent damage ( not in the TnT rules). The Tripod does not have a centre peg like the plane, so have made an assumption that if the centre peg of the plane base overlaps any part of the Tripod base, there will be a collision and both will draw one card on the C damage deck (same as plane on plane). I am also considering that the tripod topples as well, although this may be too much.

    Apart from that, I have listed other rules I applied for solo fighting (pick all Tripod actions and manoeuvres before the plane manoeuvres if playing the Tripod) which seemed to work well.

    I am sure there were other grey areas but that’s it at the moment. Feel free to comment or add to the above if you have your own house rules. I played the rules very liberally in the first game so that it flowed and had a story, but will try the above in next games to see how they play.

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by Baz View Post
    ..The next issue I have is for overlapping and collisions and subsequent damage ( not in the TnT rules). The Tripod does not have a centre peg like the plane, so have made an assumption that if the centre peg of the plane base overlaps any part of the Tripod base, there will be a collision and both will draw one card on the C damage deck (same as plane on plane). I am also considering that the tripod topples as well, although this may be too much...
    Great AAR Baz, been meaning to drag my kit out to the Orderly Room and have a go myself.
    Planes & Tripods overlapping is covered in the rules on p.11 but not collisions so maybe the assumption is they fly over the Martians, much as they would other ground targets ?
    I'm thinking of co-opting my simple Alt rules for this game where Peg 1-4 is up to Alt 1, 5-8 is Alt 2 , 9-12 is Alt 3 etc, up and down movement is quite fluid and it looks like it fits in with the height of the figures. I'll have to see what I can come up with.
    Shooting rules froth RAP should work fine for the planes as they are for shooting at ground targets as well as planes. I'd treat the Heat ray as something more like an AA gun. The effects are the same as the range to the base for simplicity, we'd just need to decide to what altitude it reaches. AA guns can reach level 6. Again, something to be looked at.
    Plenty of Red areas (the Greys want nuthin' to do with it ! )

    "He is wise who watches"

  10. #10

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    ….also as it doesn’t say otherwise, i assume a flaming tripod takes flame damage from the A deck as planes each turn?

  11. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by Baz View Post
    ….also as it doesn’t say otherwise, i assume a flaming tripod takes flame damage from the A deck as planes each turn?
    The fire rules are in there Baz, on p.19 & generic - they use the term vehicle rather than plane, or, tripod and are, as you say, the same as for planes. 3 fire tokens, damage drawn from the A deck, explosions and numbers only counted.

    "He is wise who watches"

  12. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by flash View Post
    The fire rules are in there Baz, on p.19 & generic - they use the term vehicle rather than plane, or, tripod and are, as you say, the same as for planes. 3 fire tokens, damage drawn from the A deck, explosions and numbers only counted.
    Hi, thanks for confirmation, I had read the rules part but had some doubt in my mind as I had now used all of the following damage decks on 1 machine - A deck ( fire damage), B deck ( Nieuport 16), C deck ( Collision), D deck ( rockets), Y deck ( Locust) and Z deck ( Black Smoke).

    Just wanted to confirm that fire damage to planes was the same as Tripods as I thought it might be more.



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