Well here goes nothing. The old rocket of love and phesphestus were talking about the problems of this online gaming when phesphestus came up with the idea of a skirmish game over the net. Why not, 250 points of treasure raid scenario being fought over a 3ft by 2ft board with my dwarves against his tombkings. With a bit of fine tuning this could lead onto something big. We decided to use a grid reference system with 0-36 along the x axis (left to right) and 0-24 along the y (bottom to top.) To stop confusion any grid points are used y,x ie toptobottom, lefttoright :blink:
The altar was placed at the top of the board (21,13)(21,16)(24,13)(24,16) being the 4 corners of the piece and the exit was directly underneath it on the board (0,13) to (0,16) I then deployed not more than a square away from the altar and awaited the return of the unalive. :(
And thats as far as we got for today as we are playing in timezones 12 hours apart and the setting up took longer than anticipated. Once the basics were in place the game shouldn't be too much of a problem. :wacko:
We shall let the board know if there are any major problems with this type of game and the mechanics of using the net. A battle report will be posted if the dwarves are victorious and if they aren't, well I might use this thread as an excuse-a-rama.
For those still reading this, we will play the game tomorrow and post results accordingly but if you want to try and beat us to it then go for it, its not difficult.
My force consisted of thane with gromril arm, great wpn, pistol, shd, hand wpn, rune of stone. 5 thunderers with shds. 5 warriors with hand weapon, shd and hvy arm. 4 slayers. ^_^
He mentioned something about an icon bearer and a tomb scorpion so I'm off to do some swatting up on the old khemri. :huh:

Well thats the long and short of it right there,
If you want to try just make sure your using the same map reading techniques

I have
1 tomb scorpion, 1 icon bearer, 4 tomb guard and 6 skeletons
The victory conditions are as follows
Dwarfs get treasure and leader off table they win
Leader dies and treasure is kept from leaing the table tomb kings win
If the leader gets off without the treasure or vice versa then its a draw

So this is it, turn 1 of Warhammer Palaces online game.
Dwarf general Thane Fireaxe gave his orders to his troops and they carried them out without question. The treasure carriers moved out onto the flank muscles bulging as they carried the treasure at half speed. 3 slayers moved into a threatening position nearer the enemy. The two remaining warriors moved out onto the right to draw some of the enemy away. The general and remaining slayer took up a position defending the treasure and its bearers. At his command the thunderers opened up on the skeletons. A bullet took one of the tomb guard in the head causing a critical hit which took his head spinning round as he crumbled back into the sand. Another tomb guard was driven to his knees. The thane smiled in satisfaction as a bullet entered the body of the creature in charge of the enemy, his demeanour changed as the icon bearer did not even register the hit. " Obviously got some life left in him somewhere" he muttered under his breath.

Tomb kings turn 1

As nebedzeer surveyed the battle throught eh eyes of his icon bearer abis-mal He hissed as the skeleotns bowfire all went eide then smiled inwardly as the magic of the asp goddess took effect and the arrows writhed in mid air like snakes and struck the leader of the defilers.
However the powerful armour stopped the arrows easily and nebedzeer, the liche priest in charge of this temple smiled knowing the the guardion of this place, the great scorpion echnaton would see them off.

Dwarf turn 2

Fireaxe ordered the advance toward the skeletons, oblivious to their enchanted arrows,"snakes, my asp!" The treasure hunters broke into a run carrying the heavy box, quite content to try a little trot as no enemy could be seen. The slayers and warriors all advanced warily towards the enemy whilst the thunderers moved into a more advantageous position. "Wait until you can see the whites of their eyes" commanded Fireaxe, nobody wanted to speak up and tell him that the enemy had no eyes. The shots rang out and caused a withering of the skeletons and guard again, but they must have been protected by their God as there were numerous hits and wounds caused but every skeleton rose up again. The bodyguard of the leader who had just got up sank again to his knees and would take longer to recover this time. The slayers began to throw taunts to unhearing ears as they threatened the line.

nebedzeer surveyed the battle feild his champion abis mal had returned to his sleep but not before killing the leader of the defilers in single combat. nebedzeer smiled remembering how the trespasser had fought off the tomb scorpion echnaton only to be be headed by the icon bearer abis mal the leaders soul now rested in nebedzeer casket of souls like all the other defilers before him.

He savoured his victory but then frowned there was still work to be done though there leader had been killed the rest of the party had escaped with the tresure so now he must get it back.

The game was a tie in the end.
The system worked pretty good except for one or two mistakes in the board placement which were probably mine as i was playing at midnight and could of made a simple mistake in co-ordinates otherwise the game seems alright to play through pm however if you do you will need to be good sports as some descisions could be 50/50 and if your a power gamer the game may be ruined for both, if you play just for fun with winning second this system should be fine.

I agree with Phesphestus, the game was run in good spirits over the course of a few days which was due to a severe difference in time zones. The grid reference system worked well enough for this game but still needs some refinement (which we are looking into.) Overall it was a good, exciting game and ended up a draw, after trying to get my thane and slayers into combat and being held up by a lone skeleton which just refused to die (again.) The dwarves then munched through everything in the tombguards army including a nasty scorpion, with poisoned attacks and killing blow. They were undone by the killing blow of the icon bearer which in effect ended the game. I only lost one other warrior and there was nothing really left to stop the treasure making it off the board with the scorpion stunned and both it and the icon bearer in close proximatey to 4 slayers. Model of the game, hard to tell with the thundereres move and shoot and =+1 for short range proving invaluable, choppy choppy slayers or hardasnails thane that everything bounced off ( until his head bounced off the floor!) Scariest moment, realising the scorpion had a 14inch charge was pant wettingly scary until I realised how many models actually had killing blow.
The system works so try it, if you need some more info then get in touch with either one of us and we'll try and sort you out with what you need. I'll try and standardize everything to see if the Path to Glory series would work and get back to you.
I'd like to thank Phephestus for the sportsmanship shown throughout the game, dwarves for being dwarves and my girlfriend for not phoning the police when I was checking the inbox every 2 minutes and then scratching my head at coordinates that didn't match whilst looking at a board with a load of squares drawn on it whilst shouting at my dwarves to try harder in their attempts to kill a plastic skeleton whilst avoiding a tomb scorpion represented by an Ushabti whilst juggling numerous army books and rulesbooks about whilst attempting to pin carrion together and succeeding in gluing three fingers to my cheek. Who says we aren't mad? Just off to find my vampire counts out. Flying strigoi should even things out. Or chaos. Or skaven. Or my lizzies. :wacko:

I found this utility at downloads.com called strategic map simulator or something which uses email and let you create your own maps .
The utility while playing has a range finder and dice in built with a games notes for anything needed to be written
I don't know about magoe battles but this will definetly be good for skirmish perfect in fact.
as for majoer battles this could work but would take some more effort. but this should be good for our purpouses

I have done up a quick test map of our game the other night if you want me to send it to you i will. you might need to download the utility but im not sure.