Warhammer Fantasy Battle

Hey fellow Rollers, We have just recently begun using Roll20 to run our DnD games with friends cross the country, and it occurred to me in a (slight) brainstorm that we could use this to continue playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles too. It of course would not be exactly the same, but would allow me to continue playing friends who have moved cross country. Has anyone tried this? How did/does it work? Making the battlefield was easy, but creating tokens/units is more tricky. I am not looking forward to creating 3 units of 50 goblins with cut and paste or drag and drop. I am thinking more along the lines of creating rectangular tokens and then assigning a value (unit size) to it. That would solve placement issues, but then again we run into problems with combat and who can see/reach etc. I'd love to get into poke around at any  current WFB games running. *Sorry I now see this is probably in the wrong forums. :) thanks! Robert

Moved to Off-Topic Regarding 3 units of 50 goblins it would be pretty easy. Just make a group of 5 and then copy/paste it until you have a block of 50. Or use doubling. When you have your first group of 50 copy/paste it twice to get 3 groups of 50. If you have the grid on at the time you create the units they will align properly. After that you can turn the grid off since the grid would mess up Warhammer play. If you need any help getting it to work let me know. I used to play WHFB (5th edition). - Gauss

I am going to be trying to run a 40k war game campaign soon and I expect this will be a problem for the Imp Guard players.

How will you solve the issue of wheeling your units?

Soren V. said: How will you solve the issue of wheeling your units? wheeling?

Wheeling is rotating an entire unit by one corner of the unit. Roll20 currently does not support that method of rotation.

HoneyBadger said: Wheeling is rotating an entire unit by one corner of the unit. Roll20 currently does not support that method of rotation. Ah yes that doesn't happen in 40k, yes i can see that would be hard. I would simply have anything that moves as a unit like that as a single token.

It does happen in Warhammer Fantasy, which is the original title of the thread.

The only way I could see it being done is to rotate the token and then use the draw tool to mark where the corner you are rotating it on was before manually moving the token the appropriate length so that the corner still stays on the mark. It is very convoluted but it would definitely work. Now granted I don't know anything about the particular mechanic but I figured I would at least help. With the grid off you really have free reign over the tokens so it would work...in theory....

Heartagun is close, I would mark the corner with an art tool before rotating the unit, then I would rotate the unit followed by placing the unit's corner where the mark is.  Edit: Here is a visual example of what I mean.  Between the two images I rotated the group of soldiers and then re-positioned it so that the soldier in the back right corner was in the same place. I used the other two drawings to indicate the starting and stopping point of the soldier moving the greatest distance. (This is based on 5th edition rules half remembered, I could be mistaken.) Note: I left the grid on and just held ALT down to get the unit to ignore the grid. - Gauss

Ok I have it planned so it should work, and sorry but I don't have the tech skills to post cool pics lol Here is what I have: "character sheets" of all the units, with requisite tokens. As was mentioned it means placing and copying them over and over, but that's not much worse then placing each individual figure on a real tabletop. Once that is done we will group them for ease of movement. We can delete rows or individual pieces as needed. I have adjusted the size of the tokens appropriately for 20mm v 25mm v 40mm etc. Wheeling: Place a marker to where you want the unit to end up (on the wheeled corner). From there use the measure tool to see wheel distance, and then subtract that from the movement. It isn't exact, but it means playing or not playing. Tabletop: No grids, of course. Still working on getting the exact table measurements down. The biggest issue seems to be seeing the entire field. The zoom function keeps defaulting for me. That's a problem, but it's manageable. It would be nice to have a 'full screen' mode.  Over all it's a LOT of work to get it to work right. Now, let's hope my friends will be willing to test and play etc. :)

Robert , in order to post pics hit the print screen button (usually on the far right side of your Function keys) and then open Paint (the basic art program that comes with windows) and hit Ctrl+V (paste). I usually trim it down from there but you don't have to.  Regarding copying/pasting you can also hit Ctrl+V to do a lot of pasting. It is much quicker than right clicking and hitting paste.  What do you mean by the zoom function keeps defaulting for you? - Gauss

Thanks for the reply Gauss! I have been trying to save the pic sin word and save it as a jpeg, but it is not loading then into Roll20. I will try it with gimp. I have created three different maps and on my initial map whenever I zoomed out it would not 'find' the units or allow me to maneuver around the battlefield. I created a new map, sized it appropriately and then tacked on my green field and it seems to be working better. :) I think I need some live practicing.  -Robert

If you want help with MS Paint let me know. It should work just fine.  What is the file size when you save it in Paint? - Gauss

We have played about 10 matches of WFB in Roll20. At first we used these "unit-tokens" where the whole unit was just one pic and we had to replace the pic when models died. Now that Roll20 supports rotating grouped objects we do it "correctly". Making units: It really doesn't take long to make the units. Just make one token with correct information and then just copy paste one full row (meaning you need to press v a few times, usually takes me about 2 sec). Then aling them using the grid (usually takes me about 2 sec) and then copy paste the row as many times needed and then aling those rows as the ranks (usually takes me about 2 - 5 sec depending how many ranks and whether the last rank is full). The biggers problem is the size of the models base. You need to manually adjust the size of the unit if it's anything but 25 mm, 50 mm, etc. This usually takes me about 10 - 30 sec per unit. Factions: I have a page for every faction (grid enabled) we have used and put all the tokens on those pages and make the units on those pages and just copy the unit to the actual battlefield when the unit is deployed. So if we ever need to use an identical unit that has already been used in any of our matches before it's there just waiting to be copied to the battlefield during deployment. Wheeling: The problem is that the measure you have at your disposal is a straight line not a circle but the wheeling motion is circular. This same problem exists with physical models and table. You always need to adjust the measure you get using the straight measuring tool because circular motion is always longer than a straight line. Thanks to 8th edition this is no longer such a big deal since charges are random so you have to be 1 mm accurate with your wheels. We usually assume wheeling taking 0,5 - 2 inches more movement than the straight line. When making a longer wheel we use the draw tool to draw a small dot to the corner around which the unit wheels and then remove the dot after the wheel is done. Measuring: We have made ruler tokens to help measuring distances. 20'', 30'' and 40''. These help a lot with the measuring problems. LoS: Since LoS is in 8th edition "the real LoS" of a model this becomes a problem with a VTT since it is in the end 2D so we can't really know what a model can and can't see. You need to have some kind of house-rules for this. We use the following rules: a) A model can see 2'' in to a forest and b) Every model and terrain feature has hight and taller models can see above shorter models regardless of distances (this is the problem part since it's not even close to realistic). Battlefield: Terrain features go to map layer with their hight (written next to them). I made rollable mystical river and forest tokens which are put next to or on top of the feature when the rules are rolled. The battlefield obviously doesn't have grid enabled. Hope these help you. I'd gladly hear how others do these things.

Maetco , I may be able to speed up the 'size of the base' issue.  1) Set up the grid to match the size of the tokens you are about to place. 2) Place a token and size it correctly using the grid 3) Go through the normal process of setting up the unit (copy/paste). 4) Repeat 1-3 for other units. Alternately change the grid size to a fraction of the tokens. Example: If one normal (70px by 70px) grid square is 25mm then you can set the grid to 0.20.size. When placing the tokens 25mm is 5x5 grid squares while 30mm is 6x6 grid squares and so on.  Regarding model height and distance, you should be able to use a sidebar to quickly calculate the line of sight issue.  Both the red and the blue line are at the same height. The Line of sight is drawn from the height on the left to the height on the right. (I am assuming top to top of a mini, top to bottom is also doable). While my example isnt perfect (one further away probably would have worked better) the idea here is that the line is going over the red and not over the blue. Thus, the red line (representing some terrain feature) would not be in the way.  All you need is the length between the units and the placement of any intervening features and the height of all concerned.  A blank section of the map at the bottom of the map would work for drawing this quickly.  Out of curiousity, back in 5th edition we didnt care about the arc traveled, we just used the corner to new corner distance. It is inaccurate but simpler. Did that get changed or were we just doing it wrong back in 5th? - Gauss

Thanks Gauss for the reply. That token size workaround should work very well. I don't know how I didn't think of it. Every model has a base size which is divisible by 5 mm. Thanks for that. The LoS workaround you posted would technically work but how I understood it it would take way and I mean way too long to actually use a method like that. I mean there are usually about 5 - 10 units per side and 5 - 10 terrain features and that "measuring" of LoS would have to repeated at the start of every players turn for every unit against every unit. In practise you usually would need to use the method maybe for every 2 - 3 units but still. If assuming that it would take 2 min to do it per unit and then every player would have to do it for 3 units per turn that alone would take about 2*3*2*6=72 minutes just for that. A no-can-do solution imo but thanks for trying. I started playing WFB Fall 2006 when 7th edition came out so I have no idea how the 5th edition worked, sorry. In the 7th and 8th edition there is nothing about how to actually measure the distance and therefore we have always assumed that then you're supposed to use the actual distance travelled. The only thing said about the matter in BRB is that the whole unit counts as havin moved as far as the outside model and that in a wheel the unit pivots around one of its front corners. Since the unit can't change formation unless it reforms the wheel move essentially has to be round arc. Think of a situation where a small unit with movement 10 marches and uses that whole movement into wheeling from right to left. The movement would form a circle.

Back in 5th edition there was nothing about measuring the circle either. It had you measure the mini that traveled the farthest distance and that was the unit's distance traveled when wheeling. That is also how it worked in tournaments that I was in. So my example above is how things were measured in 5th edition tournaments and if the rules haven't changed that should still be the same. While not 'realistic' it is simpler and I think it is the expectation of the game since the game came with straight rulers and not curved rulers. :) - Gauss

Gauss said: Back in 5th edition there was nothing about measuring the circle either. It had you measure the mini that traveled the farthest distance and that was the unit's distance traveled when wheeling. That is also how it worked in tournaments that I was in. So my example above is how things were measured in 5th edition tournaments and if the rules haven't changed that should still be the same. While not 'realistic' it is simpler and I think it is the expectation of the game since the game came with straight rulers and not curved rulers. :) - Gauss I asked around and it seems that at least nowadays no-one (had answers from several countries) is using a straight line when measuring the wheel distance. So either this rule has in fact changed from 5th edition to 7th edition or you did indeed play it wrong.

Well, an entire community would have had to be playing it wrong back in 5th, so I am guessing the rules have changed or the expectations have changed. Perhaps measuring an arc of a turn in increments. Ill have to play with it some to see. - Gauss

Just remember, no one really knows the rules for warhammer :D some good info up here, has me wanting to bust out some books and play.

William P. , yup, thats how it was back in 5th too. From what I have heard it has gotten worse, not better.  - Gauss

btw, what do you think the best way to handle random directions is?

oh wait, figured it out. I can roll a d360 and hold up a degree templet probably more accurate than using it on the table.

That would work pretty well actually. I have been wondering about that. When you complete the template image I'd like to take a look. :) - Gauss

William P. said: btw, what do you think the best way to handle random directions is? We use 3D dice d12 and use the upper corner as the direction and 9 - 12 is bull's eye.

I decided to go with this image. Its off wikipedia and you can see through the blank spots so its ideal for roll20. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Degree-Radian_Conversion.svg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Degree-Radian_Conversion.svg</a> BTW, not sure if anyone saw it but i'm looking to start up a league if I can find enough intrest. play once every couple of weeks.

On the topic of measuring wheels, we always use a straight line. Some people do in fact bend the tape measure to create an arc, but for us that's too much work. warhammer is a game of inches, but if you quibble about fractions then you lose the whole point, in my opinion. This is really just a way to get together and play with friends I wouldn't normally be able to probably play ever again after they moved across country. Playing tabletop there is always a certain amount of inconsistency and inaccuracy that you have to live with. This gets a bit exaggerated playing VTT, but it's something to live with. Slight mis-measurements on a wheel isn't going to break a game I don't think.&nbsp; What I have done with tokens is what Gauss suggested, resizing the grids of the base map for each token, and then saving that token to a unit card. Right now I have some orks and ogres done, and am working on skaven. These are the armies my friends play and we are most fmailiar with to test it out.&nbsp; LoS is tricky, but we have been playing since 1992. We can pretty much figure out a giant can see over a troll, who can see over a goblin. Others are a bit trickier, but again we aren't prone to arguing too much as a group any more. :) In experimenting i have found zooming out to between 40-60% to be ideal. Too much more and things are too small, and too close you lose the sense of scale. You kind of have to have the experience to have a feel for the game in general. I've forgotten enough units on the tabletop in front of me, I am sure that I will forget some VTT. I think using turn order for units will be a good idea, and checking them off as they move. I don't know that VTT will work for players unfamiliar with the game. I am using colored dots to indicate unit champions, etc. General troops get a circular or generic token (orc face for example), while characters are getting a more exact picture. It is super easy to just get an official model picture to use however. I am not sure on the copyright issues, if there are any.

Robert, I'd love to come take a look sometime.&nbsp; - Gauss

I haven't done anything with it in a couple days as life has bene busy, but here is what I have: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/join/179082/Ar9Uxw" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/join/179082/Ar9Uxw</a>

Gauss said: Maetco , I may be able to speed up the 'size of the base' issue.&nbsp; 1) Set up the grid to match the size of the tokens you are about to place. 2) Place a token and size it correctly using the grid 3) Go through the normal process of setting up the unit (copy/paste). 4) Repeat 1-3 for other units. Alternately change the grid size to a fraction of the tokens. Example: If one normal (70px by 70px) grid square is 25mm then you can set the grid to 0.20.size. When placing the tokens 25mm is 5x5 grid squares while 30mm is 6x6 grid squares and so on.&nbsp; - Gauss I finally got to try this and probably figured out why I hadn't done it before. The page setup doesn't allow me to but 0,x values to the size. If I but 0,2 as the grid size it disables the grid. Have you used values below 1 succesfully for grid size or unit size?

Yes, I have used values down to 0.0625 for a grid size. I just tested it out and 0.2 works fine. Please send me a join link and I will come take a look to see what may be going on.&nbsp; - Gauss

Gauss said: Yes, I have used values down to 0.0625 for a grid size. I just tested it out and 0.2 works fine. Please send me a join link and I will come take a look to see what may be going on.&nbsp; - Gauss Ok so definitely should work. Do you need GM rights too?

I probably will yes. :) - Gauss

Gauss said: I probably will yes. :) - Gauss Sorry I was being an idiot. The problem was that here in Finland 0,2 is typed with "," (that's what is found in the keypad) but the software is American so I need to use "." instead. Sorry for the trouble.

Ahhhh that would do it. My GF (who is also from Finland) has had to make a similar adjustment. Easier for her though since she spent half her life in the US and half in Finland.&nbsp; - Gauss

Gauss said: Ahhhh that would do it. My GF (who is also from Finland) has had to make a similar adjustment. Easier for her though since she spent half her life in the US and half in Finland.&nbsp; - Gauss Small world. If she's from Finland where probably distant cousins or something because we Finns are really inbred. Anyway thanks for your great suggestion, it works well. Sorry folks for highjacking this thread, I'll end now.

Anything that leads to improvements is not hijacking. :) Has anyone tried a game on it yet? My friends are reluctant as they cannot see how it will work, despite having played DnD on it multiple times now.

Yeah, we've had several matches. I myself have played maybe 6 matches in Roll20. It works pretty well. Matches tend to take about 1 h longer than f2f though.