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Jun20

Fool’s Mate

by Rindis on June 20, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Patch came over on Sunday, and we played some Sekigahara. He’d played once before, and enjoyed it more than enough to request it again.

I had Tokugawa the first game, and kept up a fairly aggressive strategy the entire game. This blew up a couple times with some expensive defeats, but I generally caused some casualties every battle (and there were a lot of them), and had some very good victories as well. I took Ueda castle early and kept it all game, but otherwise the East was a problem, with Date being defeated early, and an attempt at retaking Sendai failed.

Resources were tied at first, and then went to Patch for a couple turns, and then started going to me as fighting around Kuwana got very intense for a while. About mid-game I pushed south with a large army of Maeda, and had the cards to use it. I think this did a lot to break the deadlock in the West in my favor, and at the end of the game I had a commanding position, and was starting to mop up his armies, for an 18-9 victory.


State of the board at the end of the game.

After lunch we turned it around, and I was over-aggressive. During week 2 I pushed the main army up to Sawayama, and Patch got in behind me to attack Osaka with a decent force (I hadn’t properly credited that he could reach it). Mori’s army duly appeared, and a loyalty challenge on my second Mori card kept me from even doing any damage to Tokugawa’s army. That was the last act of turn 2, and Patch naturally won the initiative and won the siege of Osaka to win the game. (Now that I think of it, the surviving Mori blocks could have retreated into the castle…. darn it.)

We re-set the board and started a third game that didn’t go much longer. I pushed up to Gifu, but still had plenty holding things behind me. However, Patch’s nearby army had the cards, while I could only deploy a couple of units. He followed up with another fight against me before I could react, and eliminated the army, including Ishida. So Patch won that game in the second half of turn 3.

Technically, we had more time after that, but if the next game went the distance we wouldn’t have the time, so we called it there with Patch getting two wins to my one. (Sorry that none of the photos of the other games came out well.)

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May31

En Garde!

by Rindis on May 31, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark and Jason came over Saturday for some gaming. Dave was unavailable, so it was just the three of us, and we went for a ‘long game’ of Blackbeard.

I went for the same pattern as our previous three-player game, and deployed two pirates at the start, one in the Atlantic and one in India. Mark put one in India with me, and another in the Caribbean, while Jason just deployed one in the Caribbean to start with. The good news is that I had drawn Edward Teach (Blackbeard) as one of my three, and kept him in reserve at first.

I managed to swoop in and take the merchant that had started in India before Mark could, and he ended up sailing for the Gold Coast. I managed to get a decent start on VPs with a couple early retirements, and brought out Edward Teach in the Atlantic. Jason had taken the lead with a very nice retirement on his Caribbean nest egg, but I managed a very good career with Teach, living up to his name by taking prizes up and down the Atlantic coast, and getting a decent amount of ransom. He successfully retired with a Notoriety in the mid-20s and a decent net worth, which shot me  up to ~120 VPs, and well past Jason (Mark had been somewhat even with me).

Further retirements pushed Mark and Jason past 100 VPs, but I was climbing into the high 100s. As the game was coming to a close, Jason’s latest captain did very well in the Caribbean, getting a good amount of Notoriety and several high-value cargoes, as well as staying too strong to be challenged by warships and King’s Commissioners. All this time, I had been holding a Duel-4 captain to possibly get someone else’s ship, but I didn’t have the Piratical Ambition card. I finally drew it in between the turn that Jason converted all his booty to net worth and bought a safe haven, and the turn where he used it. With four dice for the duel, I rolled poorly, burned a Cunning and re-rolled just about as bad, and then used his last Cunning to re-roll a 15, which Jason couldn’t match on a 3-die Duel rating. Sadly, all I got was an empty ship with poor crew loyalty, and a captain with no Cunning left, but I had kept Jason from retiring with 7900 Net Worth. Between that and double Notoriety, he would have gone well into the 200 VP range.

My previously-active captain was on the Atlantic coast, following in Blackbeard’s footsteps (wake?), racking up a decent score, but I got the third draw of the General Pardon card on the turn that he would have gone in and retired, getting me 12 points for his Notoriety instead of 24 for that and ~14 VP for Net Worth. My final score was 210 VPs, while Jason had 104 and Mark managed 111 at the end.

One really good retirement put me in a strong lead, and I managed to do fairly well for the rest of the game to keep it. Getting that duel to wreck Jason’s main chance really shows how powerful keeping the right captain in reserve can be. I think Anti-Pirate activity was overall down from our previous game, though I certainly gave it a few tries. I pretty much ended up sticking with the Atlantic coast the entire game, but there were consistently merchantmen to be had there, which made up for the poor cash value. I should probably try concentrating on the Caribbean next time, as I’ve never really done that, though it tends to get attention from everyone else.

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May23

ASL Upgrade Round 1

by Rindis on May 23, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

Much of my base ASL set dates to the mid ’90s. I originally got the rule book and Paratrooper at a flea market at DunDraCon in ’96. I remember specifically getting West of Alamein in a visit to the Oceanside GameTowne (which closed a year later), but I can’t remember where I got the other core modules. Anyway, while I mostly play on Vassal, the physical set does come out every once in a while. So I’m finally getting around to upgrading my copies of Beyond Valor and Yanks from the AH versions.

Eevee wanted to see what was going on. And yes, I also got an Action Pack so I’d also have something new while spending all this money.

This gets me the newer, nicer counters (without the annoying side-nibs) for the main system markers, the Germans, Russians, and Americans. (I’ll note that I ‘gain’ a half-sheet of counters going from one set to the other. I also get the light gray Finns to go with the ones from Hakkaa Päälle.) I transfer 9 boards to the newer SK-style, which helps on storage space. I managed to get most of the old SL-boards back in the 90s, so I’m getting several duplicates of boards that aren’t scheduled to go out with the sale of my old sets (1-5 and 8, 40-41 will someday go out with CdG, and this is my second SK copy of 24) the only ‘new’ board I’m getting is 46, which was originally from Action Pack 2 (and the other board from that was in Rising Sun; now if MMP will just release the scenarios…). There’s updated scenario cards, which mostly just update small bits of language, though “Gavin’s Gamble” is practically an all-new scenario, and can’t be played with just the contents of BV and Yanks since it also wants a couple overlays. Finally, there’s also all the ‘new’ reprinted scenarios in BV3 (123-136) and Yanks 2 (178-202), but I should have the original versions of almost all of those.

Round 2 of upgrading should be getting For King and Country and Hollow Legions 3rd Ed to replace West of Alamein and Hollow Legions 2nd Ed (this plan is part of what prompted this round, as I want Soldiers of the Negus, which will be included in the new HL). Of course, FKaC has sold out, so it will be trickier to do round 2 as I wouldn’t be surprised if HL3 sells out by the time MMP can get around to reprinting FKaC….

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May15

Two Rounds of Lechaeum

by Rindis on May 15, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

Patch and I had our between-bigger-games round of Commands & Colors: Ancients on Tuesday. This time it was the Battle of Lechaeum from Expansion #6. It’s a tiny little battle; Patch commented that it looked like I hadn’t pulled the pieces out yet when he saw it, and it only goes to three banners instead of the usual 4-5. The Athenians have two more units, but are all Lights with a couple Auxilia, while the Spartans are mostly the much-nastier Spartan MH. However, the Spartans only get three cards, while the Athenians have five.

I had the Athenians the first time, and led off with a Line Command to bring the Auxilia up to the front and start peppering the Spartans with arrows, doing a block each to two units, and force one retreat. Patch Ordered Two Center, doing two damage to an evading unit, and taking a block to one of his damaged units after doing nothing to an Auxilia. My next turn did nothing, and Patch Ordered Mounted to pick on my right flank, wiping out my Auxilia, and doing one block on an evade in return for three damage on one of his Spartan MH. I got lucky on archery to wipe out his two-block unit, and Patch rolled with Order Two Left in to force me back on evades, doing one more block. I got no result from an Order One (Heavy), and Patch moved up his right flank.

I used Leadership Any Section to activate most of the center, and forced two units to retreat, one of them with a loss. Patch used Mounted Charge to get three units into contact, forcing my Slingers to evade back to the base line while doing a block to them, and did two damage to the other Auxilia, who did three damage in return. I then used Clash of Shields to activate four units; the first attack knocked out the Spartan MH I’d just damaged, but the Spartan leader got away. On the other end of the line, I did one damage, while two banners in battle back forced my Light to retreat to the base line. Patch Ordered Medium to knock a block off my leader+Light while it evaded to the base line. I Ordered Three Center to pick on his 2-block MH and got lucky with archery to finish it off. 3-1

For the second round, Patch started with a familiar-looking Line Command maneuver and did one block each to two units, and forced one to retreat (he actually got two other banners, but they were both against a supported unit). I Ordered Light to bring up the Light Cavalry and start peppering the Athenian line back, forcing a retreat of his Bowmen. Patch forced a retreat on my left, and I Darkened the Sky with my Light Cav, doing one damage to a Light before forcing it to retreat. Patch Ordered Three Left to reform his line and do a block to one of the Cav. I Ordered Two Left (with only one unit there) to get him back in line, and he immediately did two more hits to the unit. A Coordinated Attack got him and his neighbor into contact while part of the right flank started moving up. I did one hit and was forced to retreat before a First Strike took out my weakened Spartan MH. Patch Ordered Light to do one block each to two units.

With both Spartan MH near my leader down a block, I Rallied to get them up to full strength (I could have rallied a third, wild, block, but the only other thing adjacent was the undamaged LC) and advanced to do a hit to his Auxilia while taking two in return. Patch Ordered Light again to pepper my line, forcing a retreat, and doing another two hits to my leading Spartan MH while only taking two hits in return and retreating out of the line. I Ordered Medium to pursue, breaking his line up with evades but no hits, but my 1-block MH forced his 1-block Aux to retreat and then Momentum Advanced to hit him again to finally knock out the unit, while the leader retreated to his base line.

Patch used Order Two Center to join him up with a unit, but his archery missed. I Ordered Three Center and knocked out his other Auxilia while my more distant units tried to reach the battle. Patch Ordered One (Mounted) and missed with archery on my 1-block unit again, and I Counter Attacked for Order Mounted to force him to evade, but only did one block of damage. Patch used Leadership Any Section to finally knock out my 1-block unit, and my leader joined a full strength Spartan MH right behind him, while he did a block to another unit. I Ordered Four Right (only three units) and I hoped to force his Bowmen to get trapped between the city walls and my Spartan MH, but my LC couldn’t get a result on him, and I simply forced his Light to evade with a block of damage. Patch used Order One (Mounted Charge) to force my weakened LC to retreat, which eliminated the unit. 2-3

Afterword:

Frankly, my hands were terrible both times. In the second game I finally chewed through bad cards to have some some ability to maneuver, but at one point in the first game my hand was a pair of Order Heavies, an Order Light, Clash of Shields (with no one in contact), and Counterattack (with Patch not using anything that I wanted).

The scenario really does a great job at presenting the heavy force that just can’t come to grips with the light force. The Auxilia are the only things that hit on swords in the Athenian army, and since they can’t evade they’re going to be the first casualties. It’s probably worth just keeping them behind the main line, and let the Spartans have to force the Lights to evade before getting to them, but I wanted every unit I had doing archery to whittle down the Spartan extra-large units. I really didn’t want to put the Light Cav in harm’s way, and it killed me the way I was afraid it could, but with three cards and my starting hand, I just couldn’t let Darken the Sky clog up my hand all game.

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May07

J167 Hart Attack

by Rindis on May 7, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

While looking through the ASL Journal 11 scenarios back in January, Patch saw that J167 “Hart Attack”, featured some Grants, and wanted to have a go at it. We’ve actually used them before (or at least some Lees), but I got to drive them that time, so I took the Germans defending against Allied forces in Tunisia. This is technically a re-release of the early ’90s scenario ASLUG7, but frankly, it’s a completely new scenario from the same designer. The German forces are about the same, the British have been cut down, it’s two turns shorter, and gone from a three-map area with overlays to just needing board 7a. The VCs and SSRs have also gotten a lot simpler. That said, someone could probably talk me into trying it for comparison’s sake.

The Germans have 8 squads and 3 HS of 548 elites, with MGs, a pair of 50mm MTR, an ATR, DC, and a 40mm squeezebore ATG, and then get three Pz IIIs with a 9-1 AL on turn 3. The Allies enter from the west with thirteen British squads (mostly first line, with some elites), good leadership (four leaders with -4 in leadership mods between them), HMG, MMG, a couple 51mm MTR, an ATR, and five American M3 Grants. The Allies have six turns to get 7 VP; getting one VP per building they control (there are seven on the board), one per every other tank they exit off the east side (i.e., 1 for exiting one, 2 for exiting three, 3 for exiting all five), and a VP per German tank they kill. The Tunisian setting means that orchards are olive groves, and hedges are cactus hedges. The Germans are considered Elite for Ammo Depletion (…I think I forgot that), and the British get to use ATMM to represent Gammon bombs.

There’s one building at the west edge, and then two widely separated clusters of three buildings on the board. This gives the Allies two general approaches depending on which cluster they want to go for first. One set is tucked way back, and is hard to get at unless it’s the primary target, while the other is much more central (and nearer the odd, ‘close’ building), but is made of stone in fairly dense terrain with walls, olive groves, and a couple hills, and features the only two-hex building in the lot. I set up blocking positions on both western roads, one MMG overlooking the further buildings, the other in the two-hex building, with a MTR adjacent that it could spot for (which was bore-sighted on the hill overlooking the compound). The ATG went on a hill where it could boresight a woods-road that Patch would almost have to use if he went north. I figured if he went south, he’d still come for the final buildings anyway, and I’d push the gun down to where it could trade shots from either side of the walls. The ATR went in the center, where it’d have a chance at an underbelly shot at a tank going over the wall that lines the area; about the only good shot I figured he’d let me have with the thing.

Patch took the northern route. In fact, more northern than I’d figured. I’d kind of mentally shrugged off the most-northern section of the board, which would require going around a fair amount of terrain before getting anywhere. So naturally, half his force went there, and made me wonder if he’d be trying to overrun my ATG before it got a shot at a tank. I didn’t have any fire against most of that, but the rest of his forces lined up at the wall, with a large stack headed for the close building just across the wall, and a lucky shot broke his 9-2 as he entered, and the resulting LLTC pinned the two squads with him. Two of his tanks went over the wall, but my ATR shot went wild (Final 12), while one of them stopped long enough to reduce my forward squad with a BFF K/2, and three of his tanks parked around a concealed HS in D5. His AFPh scattered a number of acquisition markers about, with no other effect, despite a NMC against the squad in E4.


Situation, British Turn 1, showing the full board with my boresighting and ATG.
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Apr21

J32 Panzer Graveyard

by Rindis on April 21, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After finishing up Lagus Assault Guns, Tom suggested trying out J32 “Panzer Graveyard” from Journal 2, and we got going at the beginning of March. A January ’44 scenario in Italy, it has a worn-out German force with a lot of tanks assaulting a stiff British defense in the board 46 town. The Germans attack with twelve squads (ranging from first line to conscripts), a few MGs and four Pz IV Hs with a 9-1 AL and four Pz III Ns. The British are defending with ten first-line squads, a HMG and a MMG, two PIATs (who are assigned to 1-2-7 crews), a 6 pdr AT gun, a Churchill IV and a Sherman III, and some concealment markers. There’s a small cluster of buildings added across the street from the main town that serves as a possible jumping-off point for the Germans.

This ordinarily should be a 1/2 map scenario. But instead, it uses all of board 46 and 18 (including an overlay with another level 2 hill). This is for the use of the Pz IIIs, which set up on the various hills, ready to shell the defenders, or smoke them in. The Germans have six turns and need to control 20 buildings (out of 30) in the British setup area at the end of the game. While they have lots of armor support, they have problems; all German MMC are Lax, and their ELR is only 2. Finally, there is a +1 LV on the final turn.

I took the British defense, and spent some time trying to figure out what I wanted to do. There’s three main ways for the Germans to approach this, the main obvious one is the center area, jumping off from the built up area. I figured an approach from the east had a lot of open ground to go through before reaching the first buildings, and then tended to hit the least-dense parts of the town, with the graveyard, woods, and orchards, though all of that was harder to defend. Meanwhile, the west side had some open ground as well, including an extra small hill, but with some cover just on the other side of the road that forms the setup areas. I put some light forces (including a Dummy in 46W7) to slow down an east-side assault slightly, while defending the west more heavily with the HMG in EE4 and a PIAT in the brush in DD2. Another HS was in the brush in EE1, which was as far forward as I dared to go there (and there was no concealment terrain forward of there anyway). LMGs were in Y5 and W5 to provide Fire Lanes against advances in the center area, with the HMG centrally located in BB5. I had a hard time figuring out where to put the tanks and ATG, since anywhere exposed could lead to them getting easily swarmed, with eight German tanks out there (though the Pz IIIs would struggle to kill either of mine even with a rear shot with a Final TK of 3; 5 with HEAT on a 9 or less), and a good number of PFs available. The Churchill anchored the main line of defense in the northeast in Z7, with help from a PIAT in Z9 (with a crucial error that I’ll get to later), and a 7-0 Z6 to act as a preliminary rally point. The Sherman was in CC7 to cover the central street, and possibly anchor the defense once the first line of buildings had fallen. The ATG went in GG7 facing SE, in case armor tried to go around the west flank and cut off my defenders (and I had problems finding anyplace that could see terrain I wanted to cover).

Tom’s setup surprised me, with the bulk of his forces in the center, but largely a hex back, and out of sight from my line, and three squads (and two HS, with his HMG & MMG) on the eastern flank backed up by two of his Pz IVs. He had figured my ATG was around EE2 (exactly the type of forward position I avoided) and stayed away from the brush. Most of his Pz IIIs were behind them on the board 46 hill, but one was backing up the main force in 18Q2. One Pz III fired, placing Smoke in V5, while the eastern Pz IV first pinned my HS in U7, which then ELRed to fire from his MGs. Most of his center forces fired on my other visible unit in AA2, forcing a 1MC which they passed. The last Pz IV fired on W7, but missed.

Tom then started showing off aggressive armor tactics my moving the second eastern Pz IV into Motion VBM of V8. I attempted CCRF, but pinned instead. Having locked up my primary defense, he advanced two squads and a 9-1 towards the building, but a good roll from W5 managed a 1MC that pinned the leader and broke a squad. This activated his Sniper, who broke the squad that had been the target of all his fire earlier. Past that, there was little left to move, other than some of the Pz IIIs advancing up to the rest of his troops.

My LMG squad Final Fired on his MG stack, and with another low roll, broke both HSes with MGs. Not only that, but my Sniper activated, and hit the same hex, with a three-way tie (out of four units), to fatally wound the 8-1 and then break the squad in the hex. The only CC was with the VBM Pz IV in V8, and my squad only missed because of being pinned.


Situation, German Turn 1, showing the full scenario area, and my HIP Gun. The blue ribbon is the dividing line between the British and German setup areas.
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Apr02

Two Rounds of Coronea

by Rindis on April 2, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

After going a couple rounds in Up Front, Patch and I went back to Commands & Colors: Ancients for a quick pair of games. This time was the Battle of Coronea from Expansion #6 (and as a part two of Anabasis). Unusually for this period, the Greek army has three Heavy units, while the Spartans (the 10,000) have two units of ‘Veteran’ Spartan MH that get an extra die as long as they’re in command range of Herippidas. The lines start relatively close, and there’s two hexes of fortified camps behind the Spartan left, which the Greeks can loot to gain banners. Also, this fight goes to eight banners, promising a long, hard fight.

I had the Greeks the first time, and started with Order Light Troops, close a gap in the center of my line and bring my flanks into archery range. Patch Ordered Three Left, doing one block of damage, and taking one each on two units in return. I Ordered Three Left to bring up a leader who was behind the line without being attached and move up some of my hoplites, before doing a Line Command. That brought most of my heavies in contact on my right, but I refused to come into contact on my left as his line was much heavier there. I knocked out an Aux, and picked off another block.

Patch Ordered Mediums to bring the entire center into contact, and wiped out a Heavy with attached leader, while breaking up my hoplites, doing two blocks to one, three blocks to another while driving it back a hex, and one block to a third, which also retreated three hexes. In return, he two two blocks to a MH, three to another, and three blocks to one of his veterans. I Ordered Three Right to finish off two of his MH and drive off another without damage, after which my MC charged into the gap and drove off another unit without doing damage. Patch Ordered Two Center to finish off one of my units, and drive off another.

I Ordered Three Center to go after his camp, and failed to do more than one block to his remaining MH on that flank, while taking a block on a Heavy, and two on my MC. Patch Double Timed his center over to this fight to knock out my MC and Heavy, but only took one damage when he tried to pick off a MH. I issued a Line Command to bring up my entire right flank, but most of what I faced was now his Spartan hoplites. I only did two blocks to one unit, and in return had two units reduced to one block and forced to retreat. Patch used Leadership to get his solid section in motion, and wiped out three units to finish the game. 3-8

Patch lead off the Athenians with a familiar Order Light Troops to close up the hole in the middle, and I Ordered Four Right to bring that side up. Patch used Line Command, which brought both flanks into contact. No units were eliminated, though one of my MH was reduced to a block, and two of my Spartan hoplites took damage. However, Patch had three units reduced to a block, as well as taking a block on two more, and a couple units were forced back, breaking up his left flank.

I Ordered Three Center, wiping out an Aux, and damaging and driving off a MH for no damage. Patch Ordered Heavies to finish off a MH and do three damage to one of my Veterans, taking five blocks across two of his heavies in return. A Line Command brought the centers into contact, but the right simply flowed around a forward weak Athenian MH, with the rest of the Athenian left out of range. I wiped out four weak units, and reduced his remaining Heavies to a block before driving them off. Patch Out Flanked me to drive off the left end of my main line, and knock out a unit in with Momentum after driving it off with the losses the first time. He also attacked my LC with his. I decided to take his two dice without evading, but he got a banner to cause it to rout off the field.

I Double Timed my left flank up to combat, and while Patch drove off my Lights with no damage to either side, I knocked out two weak units, and reduced a MH to a block. Patch used Clash of Shields to try and use that unit (the only one in contact) to finish off my MH+leader, but a First Strike got him first. 8-3

Afterword:

Both plays were surprisingly fast, with the total playing time being just a bit over an hour and a half on Vassal. The second game was particularly fast thanks to some powerful dice from me, but in general, the 5-dice units on both sides helped promote some aggression that sped things up. In both cases the Athenian army came apart with an ease that seems unlikely given that it’s a pretty good force. The real problem is that they have two leaders to the Spartan’s three, and in my play, the Athenians lost a leader early, and Patch never actually used the unattached one the second time.

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Mar26

Block Clearing—Defense

by Rindis on March 26, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

After the smoke cleared, Patch and I decided to give Up Front scenario G another try, with me on the defense. I think we both decided to try out some of the later nationalities this time. I picked the Italians, partially because I knew that they got an ATR and DC in this scenario. Then I read the rules for them and thought maybe it was a bad idea. But, it was a little late for second thoughts, and Patch took the British for his attack. (I’m giving the Fire Strength and all the modifiers that applied to attacks; a ‘C’ refers to a concealment card played on it.)

I set up with one big group (seven men) in the middle with the at-start building and the ATR. Group A got both LMGs (which aren’t as good as most LMGs, but don’t need a second crewman either), and five more men. The last four in Group C were some of the best men I had, including the squad leader, and my one Morale 5 man with the DC. My general plan was to try and get into motion early, since ordnance will miss on any red RNC if the target is moving, and then get into cover. I’d try to keep moving to help keep the ordnance less effective, and if I was lucky, I might get into DC range at some point. Patch deployed his Sexton as Group B, where it could offer cover to everyone else, and split his eight-man squad in half, with his one Bren gun in Group A, and neither of us had any further pre-game terrain.

It took a couple turns for either of us to be able to do anything, and then the Sexton opened Fire on my Group A (TH 0) and missed. The next turn, it Fired again (-1C; TH 0) and hit (5) to kill two men outright (including one of the LMGs) and pinned the rest of the group. (This led to a rules question: An Italian Group surrenders if everyone is pinned at the end of a turn. Is that either player turn, or the Italian player turn? We figured the former is way too punishing, since the only remedy for a strong attack is a Hero card, and played that it surrendered at the end of an Italian turn.)

I Rallied 4, and the Sexton Fired on the Group again (TH 0-1), but missed. One of the riflemen grabbed the loose LMG, and my ATR opened Fire on the Sexton (TH 4) but missed. Patch discarded some Wire onto my Group A, and the ATR took another shot at the Sexton (TH 4) and missed again. Group A then Fired on Sexton as well (1) for no effect. Patch’s Group A returned Fire at my A (1 + 1) to pin three men and rout the one man who was still pinned from earlier. My ATR took another shot at the Sexton (TH 4) and missed. Shortly after, I managed to Rally Group A, and the next turn move them off the wire.

Right after that, the Sexton Fired again (TH 0-1), hitting (5 +1) to kill the second LMG gunner and pinning everyone else. I Rallied the three survivors, and the ATR Fired again (TH 4) and missed. The next turn, Group A recovered the second LMG, the ATR Fired again (TH 4) and missed, and Group C finally Moved forward… and instantly ran into a Stream. Group A Fired at the Sexton (1) for no effect, followed by the ATR Firing again (TH 4) and missing. Group C attempted to ford the stream, but didn’t manage it. The Sexton returned Fire at A (TH 0-1), but missed, and then Fired again (TH 0-1) the next turn, and hit (5) to pin all three survivors of the Group. His Group A then Fired at my A (1) as well, but had no effect). I had no Rally cards left, and Group A surrendered.

The ATR Fired again (TH 4) and missed. To my surprise, the Sexton then Moved forward, with no other movement to support it. The ATR tried again, before any move could complete (TH Black 3) and missed. The Sexton then moved onto a Hill, and his Group A Moved forward to join it at Range 1. The ATR took another shot at the Sexton (TH 3) and missed, and Patch’s A halted in some Brush. The ATR Fired again (TH 3) and missed. Patch’s Group C then started moving forward. My Group C Fired on them (1 – 1 + 1), but one of the rifles malfunctioned on the first RNC, reducing the Fire Strength to 0 (actually -1, I forgot the stream, while Patch forgot his cover from adjacent armor, so we were both off one for different reasons), though it still managed to pin one man (and still would have even if we had gotten it right). Patch’s C moved into -3 Buildings and Rallied while I repaired the rifle.

The Sexton then Fired on Group C (TH 0-2) and hit (5 + 1), pinning three men, and killing the fourth. I Rallied All to get the Group going again, and Patch Fired on them again (TH 0-3), malfunctioning the gun. My Group C finally got Moving again, successfully fording the stream. The Sexton failed to repair the gun, while C ducked into some -2 Buildings. The ATR Fired on the Sexton twice more (TH 3), and missed both times. Patch’s Group A Moved forward again, while the Sexton repaired its gun, and I got my C Moving forward again. Patch’s A stopped in some Woods, and the Sexton Fired on my C (TH 0-3), hitting (5 – 2 + 1) to pin my SL and kill another man. Group C ducked into more -2 Buildings (I should have been a card down at the end of this turn, but had forgotten that my SL was in that group by that point). I Rallied my SL, and Patch discarded some Wire on my Group B.

The Sexton switched Fire to Group B (TH 0-1) and hit (5 – 3 +1), pinning 5 men. I Rallied 3, and then Moved off the Wire (illegal with pinned men, but Patch didn’t catch it until slightly later, and I was thinking it analogous to playing terrain while pinned). The ATR Fired (which is when Patch noticed) (TH 3), and missed. The Sexton Fired back (TH 0-2) and hit (5 – 3 + 1), pinning four men and killing one of the pinned ones. I Rallied 2, and the Sexton Fired again (-1C; TH 0-1) and missed, and I Rallied 3 to get the entire Group going again. The Sexton Fired again (-3C; TH 1) and missed (thanks to the Concealment; he nearly had a +2 hit). The ATR returned Fire (TH 3) and missed. The Sexton returned that Fire (TH 0-2) and hit (5 – 3 + 1) to pin three men.

I had been considering moving B onto a Hill to get rid of the Hull Down (not that it had made a difference) and possibly get the rest of the oversized group into range for some Fire cards. Now that the Group was pinned, I Moved C forward instead. Patch discarded a Brush onto them in the hopes I’d reject it, but that was better than two Movement cards, so I took it and Moved up to Range 4. Patch’s C fired on my C (3 – 1 + 1) pinning my SL again (I’d still forgotten that my SL wasn’t the ASL in Group B), and Moved his Group A forward. Group C ducked behind a Wall, while Patch’s A moved into some -3 Buildings.

Patch discarded and then apparently realized that he’d missed a shot against my C, with the DC-toting man at Relative Range 5 and unpinned. Speaking of which, he then Infiltrated Patch’s B with the aid of a Movement card to pass the MC, and then passed the Infiltration check as well (got it wrong, but it would have worked anyway). Thanks to us being unfamiliar with Infiltration, DCs, and CC vs armor, we missed the fact that it the attack against the tank should have gone off right then. My Group B Fired on his A (2 – 2) but got no effect (every RNC was 2 or worse…). I finally Rallied the pinned men in B, and we figured out the goof on CC vs the Sexton, and resolved it (+4) and got no effect.

A Sniper forced the Sexton to Button Up, but they immediately Rallied to become CE again. I Rallied my SL in Group C, and then the Sexton Fired on Group C (-2C; TH 0-3) and hit (5 – 1 + 1 + 3) to kill the man who had been carrying the DC and end the game with my squad broken.

Afterword

In between our two games, I saw multiple references online that this scenario is unbalanced. And I can’t argue with that, since in both cases the attacker didn’t even take losses, though Patch made a decent try at running out the clock after killing the commander of my Sherman in the first game.

I’ve been thinking that splitting my Group A in half and put the other half in D. Either A or D would be at longer range to the Sexton, and the only way he could plow through a large group with that big 88mm gun and its ‘5’ effect would be B in the -3 Building. But doing anything effective would still require being able to maneuver, and not being able to draw any Movement cards for nearly half the first deck kept me from getting to cover, or to a range where the rifles could do anything. The ATR at least allowed me to throw a fair amount of Fire cards downrange, and even needing 4s and 3s to hit, I figure I should have connected at some point. Patch was worried he’d just get picked apart by all the Italians out there, but the lack of Movement played into his long-range strengths.

Getting into DC range added some nice excitement to the end of the game though; neither of us expected me to suddenly make it to RR 5. It’s a pity that I still needed a decent RNC to do anything, and couldn’t connect. Patch would still have easily won (off of VPs if not breaking me), but at least I would have vented my frustrations.

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Mar22

Action-Hero Circus

by Rindis on March 22, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Back on Saturday the 11th, we had another group gaming day. There was only four of us (me, Dave, Mark and Jason), and we had decided to go for a round of Circus Maximus followed by other shorter games.

I had decided to go one fast chariot (+2 driver, fast team), and then a slower one that would be as aggressive towards the other teams as I could manage (I chickened out of a heavy chariot, and had high endurance and a 0 driver). The fast chariot rolled decent for the team, and I had a top speed of 22 (including the driver bonus). Only Dave’s red team had a comparable speed, and he did great maneuvering for the corners, gaining a small lead. My second team ended up as part of the main pack, but it never had a good opportunity to try and thin the competition for my lead team. In fact, that happened to just about everyone, and the first lap was fairly peaceful.

But not without incident. I started pushing my cornering speeds early, and my second team, with the slower speed, needed to do it more, with a lower skill…. My die rolls tended to alternate high and low, and while I never had trouble with my high-skill driver, my second team ended up taking a double-sideslip during this. During the second lap, I started getting opportunities. The main event was getting a chance to attack Mark’s lead chariot, and Dave’s lead chariot on the same turn as I came out of the initial turn of the second lap. Notably, I managed to injure Dave’s team to slow him down a little, and then I got him again at the end of the straightway. But, that became largely moot as Dave ended up getting trapped going into the the third lap, and had to brake hard to avoid a crash, and wasted a turn between that and being trapped in the 8-speed lane partway into the turn (he had otherwise been positioning properly to go through the turns cleanly on the 8, which is why he had been in the lead.

Mark was the only one close to my lead chariot after that, and he couldn’t keep up with my high speed. My endurance on that team was low, and I burned through the last of it on the final stretch, but otherwise there were no problems. Meanwhile, my second chariot was still struggling for position, and went into the final turn at 2 over speed… and rolled a 17 to flip the chariot! My driver stayed with the team, but expired as they crossed the finish line.

Final placing:

1 James
2 Mark
3 Jason
4 James Wrecked—Dead
5 Dave
6 Dave
7 Mark
8 Jason

Mark had brought over Betrayal at the House on the Hill, and we tried that out after lunch. Jason was the only person completely unfamiliar with it (Dave had seen the episode of TableTop with it, and I had seen part of a game at a con), and got confused when he ended up being the Haunt. But it wasn’t too hard to set things up for that. The Haunt ended up in the basement, where two of us were, and I had just gotten the spear, and was going to try confronting him on my next turn.

But first, Dave’s character decided he was an action hero. He went into the collapsed room to leap from the top floor to the basement, confronted the Haunt, defeated it, and solved the final problem after that, all in one turn.

Past that, we tried a round of Forbidden Island, and being nearly out of time, hurried through any explanations. We had just enough time to lose due to one of the tiles with a treasure disappearing.

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Mar14

Bloody Rules

by Rindis on March 14, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark came over on Saturday for some FtF gaming, and brought over Bloody April, which he’s been wanting to try out for a while. We knew that it’d be a day of kicking the tires and exercising the systems, as I think both of us went through the rules and had trouble picturing just how it would all work. Sadly, we didn’t anticipate the parts that really gave us trouble.

We decided to try the second scenario (with Mark taking the RFC, who have more to do), which is the first one rated as a ‘Patrol’, or a small scenario, and started the setup with figuring out our AA deployments. Mark used a log sheet to record his three hidden locations, while went for the planning map, so I could see where they were at a glance (two notes: it would have helped if I’d used colored ink to make them stand out, and the map is just too small in 8 1/2×11; I think a version rotated 90-degrees and just showing the middle part, where most of the plotting should need to be done, could be handy). Then we ran into the biggest problem: three of the four German flights listed no planes. This led to over an hour wasted trying to find something that spelled out what to do, to no avail. Two things were found: A pair of tables on the back cover of the rules that allowed for generating the type and number of planes in a Jasta (the German units that didn’t have a proper OoB), but there was no rule number referenced by the charts (all the others do reference their rule), and no mention of them in the rules. And the following sentence in general setup rules of the Playbook: “Plane(s) will list how many and of which type with XxType meaning the player will roll to see how many planes of that type will be used.” Which means that the scenarios should list the specifics, and when they do… you roll to see how many you get? We eventually decided that had to be reversed, and that Mark really should be using what was stated (there’s no rolling method for it anyway), and that I should use the unmentioned charts. It was the only way to get going anyway.

Physical set up was fairly easy, partly aided by the card listing where all the Aerodromes on the map are. Keeping all the details of the various taskings straight took some doing, but that was where we expected to be spending a fair amount of effort. Another problem cropped up a bit later: The specific description of the Patrol types states that the start and end points of the patrol must be designated, the Recon description does not. However, the separate Flight Navigation section mentions that Recon does have to predetermine what hexes they’re photographing, along with the Patrol start/end hexes, so I had to jot down the itinerary for my Recon Flight when that was discovered few turns in (Mark had recorded his along with his patrols, but that was more for his convenience at the time). A final unanswered question: Does a ‘Defensive Scramble’ get to go up any time it wants (it seems ‘yes’), or does an enemy flight have to be spotted before they can respond (which seems reasonable given the name)?

Two of Mark’s flights were entering from off-board at the beginning of the game, and the rest took off the first turn. My recon flight took off, along with my closest ‘defensive’ flight, and my other two took off a few turns later. We voluntarily followed the ‘take off into the wind’ optional rule as it makes a lot of sense. We had generated a 15 MPH wind blowing to the NW at the start of this, so we all took off facing SE, which was good for Mark, as that’s where he was headed, at the southern end of the active trench line (the legal patrol area did not include the very southernmost portion), but bad as he was flying into the wind, and losing half a point of movement each turn (‘drift’ due to wind is 0.5 hexes per 15 MPH). Whereas once my flights got turned around, they started picking up a similar half point of movement from the tail wind, and they started really moving. The maneuver and movement system in the game is pretty good. Going along hexspines is legal, so there’s actually twelve headings that can be used instead of the usual six, and along with altitude markers, flights can pick up -.5 and +.5 markers to represent half hexes that adjust movement. You can only pick up the -.5s from headwinds, but speeds are done in 0.5 increments, so you can have a leftover half hex. In general, turns are meant to be short and fast, and speeds look to top out at about 4 hexes, so you get to see what the enemy is doing develop as your own flights move.

However, there’s a few things here as well. Altitude is marked with markers on each flight (the number of markers starts piling up when there’s clumps of flight nearby), in a ‘Time to Climb’ system that has the same markers meaning different things for different aircraft. In kind of the opposite of the name, the marker means how long the aircraft has been climbing (Time of Climb), as you start at 0, and then climb 1 point each turn (if you want to climb, of course, but we were still clawing for altitude with everybody at the end of the 8 turns we got done), until you hit the maximum value for that aircraft, and trade to 0 in the next ‘altitude band’; the markers are color-coded per altitude band, so you can get some idea of where everyone is at a glance. The data card lists the maximum value for each band for that aircraft as ‘4D’ and the like. The letters are pretty obviously for the band it applies to (‘Deck’), but this is never explicitly stated as a notation method, and its a bit redundant on the data card table (the max value for Deck is 4D, the max for Low is 24L…). Being nitpicky, I’d also appreciate a bald statement that climbing past the max value of a band puts you at +0 of the next band; instead it’s just stated “Flights flying at the lowest level of an altitude band will be marked with Alt Band+0 markers…”.

There’s a wind gauge diagram on the map, but there’s just the eight standard Cardinal and Ordinal directions, and they’re presented ‘true’, which means the Ordinals fall midway between the hexspine and alternate-hexspine directions used for maneuvering. So, is a wind blowing NW (black) going along the grid (red), or along the hexside (blue)? We just went with along the grid, but it’s not defined. Also, the Drift rule states “There are 12 possible headings on the map. Five will be with the wind, five will be against the wind and two will be perpendicular and drift in the direction of the wind,” and then goes on to the actual mechanics of drift in those cases. This is actually pretty clear, but a diagram of the twelve directions in relation to the wind direction would be handy for reference, and mentally picturing it in the first place.

As flights drew closer to the trench line, they started coming into observation range. There’s an interesting three-stage detection process, from just moving tracking chits around (which may include dummies), to ones that have been spotted by the ground, to being visually spotted by enemy flights (at which point the actual flight counter is used). Mark started a bit closer, and I started rolling for detection for the last few turns. I rolled horrible. Across maybe four turns, with an average of 3-4 rolls a turn, I detected one flight. For the last couple turns, we had flights in visual range of each other, and Mark spotted one of my flights with one of his, while I failed everything.

For the last turn we had time for, we acted as if I’d actually located one of his flights, as it was the only one that had a shot at combat (his flight had already moved). As it happened, this was Jasta.11, led by the famous Baron von Richthofen, and we got to see the influence of quality difference. Despite the fact that he had me visually identified, he did not engage me, but I engaged him with only an ‘assumed’ detection because of the difference in Aggressiveness Ratings. This is still actual combat with both sides fighting (especially since this was head-on), but I got a good bonus to my roll for surprise, and he got a small penalty. Looking up our actual altitudes turned up another problem, where the tables in the back were mislabled (this has been fixed in the living rules), and we missed the fractional method at the time, which probably would have been fine for us. I had actually gotten to a higher altitude (which, yes, is checked earlier, just to let me try to engage), but while we figured that translated into an Altitude Advantage modifier, weren’t sure, as there’s no definition, and some of the altitude figures break down pretty finely. (Also, calculating this referred to a rule [10.15] that doesn’t exist; or rather, it’s there, but the entire header and rule number is missing so it’s run into 10.14.)

My firepower (a term that was different between the reference cards and rules, but that also got fixed in the living rules) and advantages turned into three ‘shots’ against his flight, while Mark’s squadron wasn’t able to get any. This generated one of his aircraft shot down, and another crippled, with the engine knocked out. Sadly, we didn’t have time left to exercise the gliding rules as the one plane split off and looked for a safe landing. A final bit is that made my ammo depletion roll, sending the flight’s number from 4 to 7. A missed roll would have gotten the number to 10, which is effectively out of ammo! After one pass! A worthwhile lesson for the future. But I got my first kill in the system! Maybe someday I’ll be an ace.

And that is pretty much where we had to pick up. We never even had a random event; Mark kept rolling too high for them. I believe he’s planning on going back to this the next time it’s his pick for one of our games. It actually looks like a good system and game. But this is the least-baked rulebook I’ve seen out of GMT so far.

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