Vassal Preview 3

by on September 24, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: F&E

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

Well, when I put the mini-battle boards into the capital charts, I knew I was going to be re-doing the regular battle boards. First, there was actually a new feature to put in (the slot for plus and minus points), and then I wanted to update the look to match the much nicer style I’d achieved by starting with CorelDraw instead of PhotoShop. I think it’s much nicer looking:

However, that left the ‘Charts’ the boards where the module lets you keep track of the Raid Pool, available tug pods, the Depot, and other limited items as the last bit of pure-PhotoShop graphics. While they aren’t bad, they were starting to look out of step with the rest of the module. So, I’ve decided to re-do those too.

:sigh:

I’m still working out just how I want the new ones to look, but I think this is pretty much it:

As always, I’m interested in hearing opinions and advice.

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Vassal Preview 2

by on September 3, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: F&E

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

All right, things are moving along, graphically speaking, and here’s a completed version of the new capital form:

I’m definitely interested in hearing any feedback on this version before I release the new module.

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ISC War and other things

by on September 2, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: F&E, SFB

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

Just a few notes and a preview:

I finally got my copy of ISC War a couple weeks back. I haven’t gone through it with a fine tooth comb yet, but it looks pretty good. And pretty massive, with six sheets of counters, it is the biggest F&E expansion yet.

One of the sheets was actually printed six years ago, when there was a spare slot on one of the single-sided runs. So, it is of the ‘old style’ with fewer counters per sheet, while the other five (actually, five copies of the same sheet) have the current, ‘denser’ layout, and use the newer white core counters that most MMP products have moved to. There’s also several cardstock reference cards, including the ISC Capital Chart, a new econ form, and several fleet and battle line setup cards.

There’s actually only four new rules in the product, which surprised me. One of them, Tactical Reserves, is a general use rule for kind of ‘local reserves’ that can be used by any power in the post-General War period (though the ISC gets it first).

There’s notes (but nothing else) on how the ISC could be (ahistorically) integrated into the General War, and a mini-scenario that would have the Romulans and Gorns trying to keep the ISC from establishing their outer ring of bases while the General War gets going on the other side of the map (the combat damage that results could unbalance the rest of the war though). But the bulk of the rule book (25 pages!) is taken up with the Pacification Scenario, broken down into smaller areas for each border they tried to drive their wedge into. It’s longer than the actual Pacification, since it is assumed for this version that it is not interrupted by the Andromedans.

I also blew a bunch of money on other things by ADB while I was at it. I got Module R11: Support Ships, which was also surprisingly thick. (96-page SSD book, instead of the more common 80.) In general, there’s nothing really “exciting” in this one, but it still has some neat stuff, and there are a number of interesting short essays talking about several general ship types; a real boon to anyone interested in the background of the Star Fleet Universe.

And I got Captain’s Log #36. (Yes, I am a few years behind on my collection, why do you ask?) It’s a fairly standard issue, fiction, new ships, scenarios, and so on. Nick Blank has another set of great deckplans, this time for the Romulan Snipe frigate.

And now, a preview:

The next version of the F&E Vassal module is under way. I’ve re-done a bunch of stuff in the ISC extension to match the published version. Now I’m starting to tackle a complete rework of the capital charts. The idea is to only need those during a capital assault without recourse to the main battle mat or fleet boxes. Here’s a work-in-progress preview (the full version would have another three systems):

The idea is to have the two battle lines in miniaturized forms right with each system display. Some of the ‘bonus’ slots will need stacking multiple units on occasion. I plan on making some ‘tokens’ that can be dropped on the defending fleet to mark if they come from the static or mobile forces. (Similar ones will be done to mark ISC Core Ships on the normal form.)

I’m still working out the color scheme and main layout, and any comments on that will be appreciated. I was originally planning for the Mobile and Attacking force boxes to go at the bottom of the form, below all the system displays. I’m wondering if maybe they should go [i]above[/i] the systems. It would be much handier during an assault, though it would get in the way of day-to-day tracking of bases and facilities in the capitial hex.

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R vs B Alliance Turn 4 in Review

by on August 31, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: BvR - The Wind

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

The carnage from the Coalition Turn 4 offensives caused several difficult choices for me. Kzinti income is down to 2/3rds normal (and down 11 just from last turn), while Hydran income dropped 25 EP to the 2/3rds mark in just one turn.

The Kzinti navy is in quite a bind, with a lot of cripples backed up at the Capital and the Barony. I had to short the repairs quite a bit, repairing my maximum in the Capital with a CC, 2xBC, 3xFF and four escorts. In the Barony, I only repaired an EFF, despite more cripples than the facilities can handle.

The other problem is that this is the Spring, a dreadnought turn. I made the hard decision to downgrade the DN to a CV. I would rather have subbed out the BC for that, and I’m worried about losing a CR-10 hull, but it did drop the cost quite a bit. I also canceled four FFs, and produced one extra MEC, which will go to a CV group without an inner escort.

The Hydrans canceled all six of their FFs and one HR, but built a PAL, RN, TR, and HR while adding two PDUs to the capital. I would have liked to build the max four, but didn’t like giving up any more quality units than I had to. Also, a HN and TR were repaired in the capital. There’s a few other cripples around, but most were not on repair facilities.

On the Kzinti front, this was a less intense turn that I would have liked. Part of it, is that I don’t have that much experience with the game, and I’m still trying to figure out just what can be gotten away with. It is also a goal to keep cripples (and therefore damage) down this turn so that the backlog can be mostly cleared next turn, which would put the Kzinti navy on a very good footing indeed. I poked at two Klingon-held planets, but not with enough to force him off after reserves showed up.

In Hydran space, most of my effort went into moving the cut off Gold Fleet back towards the capital. I also poked at the planet the Lyrans captured, to pin his ships there as I attacked a lone DN and crippled CA in 0318. If I had been smart, I would have set up cordon to catch the fleeing DN, but then, I’m not sure I could have spared ships across three hexes, especially since some of them wouldn’t get to retrograde.


Kzinti front


Hydran front

Combats:
1105: Klingon: crip D5; Kzinti: crip CLE
1203: SSC – both sides retreat
1303: SSC – E4 destroyed
1202: Klingon: crip D5, E4; Kzinti: crip CL
1402: Lyran: dest crip CC; Klingon: dest F5
0301: Lyran: dest crip CA
0416: Lyran: crip 2xCW; Hydran: crip LM
0817: Klingon: crip 2E4A, dest D7C

The last fight in particular surprised me. It was a fairly massive open-space confrontation brought about by my efforts to pull the wreckage of the Gold Fleet back from the destroyed SB to the homeworld. Included in the fleet were 5 crippled HNs, which I figured would probably go up during pursuit. In the meantime, I was going to make it hurt. I put up my second best line with PAL, 5xRN, HR, and a 4UH group (best line would have had 3xHR in place of the UH), for 100 ComPot.

The real surprise was that even with a D6M on the line, there was no directing, and when I retreated, no pursuit. I had kind of thought that Belirahc had already figured out the secret of fighting the Hydrans. But now I’m going to spill it all:

The Hydrans love open space battles. They want to engage in fights where there’s nothing important. They take damage on fighters, and maybe a cripple or so until the enemy retreats, or they run out of spare fighters, then they retreat. In this fight, the Klingons took two cripples and lost a D7C (not common enough to be throwing away) in return for nothing. The way to keep the Hydrans from doing this  is to direct on the biggest thing that can be blown up by direct damage every round (preferably a fighter-heavy fusion-ship). DirDam is technically inefficient, but it’s far more efficient than letting it all fall on fighters, and the Hydrans can absorb a lot of damage just on fighters (that line had 42 fighter factors in it, and only counted 8 of them towards the three squadron limit).

This shuts down the fighter-sponge tactic of the Hydrans quite easily. The Hydrans do not have an overly-large navy to start with, and their economy is not capable of building everything on their schedule. Therefore every ship loss hurts. Worse, cruiser losses soon become terminal, and have to be minimized by the Hydrans lest they lose the very units that can make them so scary.

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Here I Surrender

by on August 16, 2011 at 9:06 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Last Sunday, we got the gang together again for a learning session of Here I Stand. I’ve been eager to try this out since I got my copy of the second printing, so I was certainly eager.

We had a full six, and after some hemming and hawing drew randomly for who got to be what, ending up with Mark as the Ottomans, Jason as the Hapsburgs, me as England, Zjonni as France, Dave as the Papacy, and Patch as the Protestants.

The setup is a bit more intricate than I’d like (just for the on-board elements, I’ve got the deck separated out right), so that ran late. I’m going to have to find a way to speed that up a little.

At any rate, considering the amount of explanations needed, and the fact that the two ‘experienced’ ones (me and Mark) weren’t that knowledgeable, it went very smoothly overall. With a fair amount of rushing right at the end, we got through the end of turn three, which is more than I had expected.

The first real action of the game was with the war between France and the Hapsburgs (already in progress). Jason moved across the pass from Spain to southern France, where there was an army waiting. The battle had heavy losses on both sides, but the Hapsburg army ended up retreating back over the pass.

Since this was a learning game, I decided to be a bit aggressive with England. After beefing up the armed forces a bit, I used The Six Wives of Henry VIII to declare war on Scotland, hoping that France was too involved with the existing wars to want to intervene.

If I had thought about the fact that France was being played by Zjonni, I would have realized that hope was folly.

I also mistimed things, and didn’t have a chance to prosecute the war with Scotland before running out of cards.

For the second turn Zjonni got a peace deal with Jason (white peace), and he turned his attention north. I was generally one step behind, and not thinking things through, as well as keeping up my aggressive behavior. He besieged Calais, but did not take it in the first assault. I got the navy into the North Sea, and moved my main army, under Henry VIII to relive the key.

I should have thought about that longer. I will say that I thought there was a much bigger difference in our army sizes than there was.

So, I attacked his army, and naturally lost. This being a naval invasion, I lost the entire force, with Henry VIII being captured. The rest of the turn was downhill from there, losing more troops against the Scots, and forgetting that the Scots had a navy too, so when I moved to make sure the French navy was bottled up, they came out and provided transport across the North Sea for the French army. The only thing I could do about London would be to lose more troops trying to relive it, so I had to leave it to its fate.

Meanwhile, the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs were clashing in the Mediterranean, with two large naval battles. Jason was trying to transfer troops into range, but was having trouble arranging the logistics and CPs. Patch had finished translating the New Testament into German, and Protestantism got into full swing.

For the third turn, I sued for peace (naturally), taking London back, and ransoming King Henry for a total of two VPs and a card (I decided to leave him Calais rather than give him another permanent VP). With only two cards (including the home card), it was a turn of quiet rebuilding, and not a heck of a lot of that.

Zjonni however, was close to winning on Keys, and only had one war to worry about. He took full advantage of this, taking Milan and Ravenna without there being anything able to stop his armies. Between that, Calais, and his alliance with Scotland, all that was needed was to take Metz for auto-victory, right as we were going past our time limit.

It seemed like everyone had a good time with the game, so I expect we’ll get a second try at it soon. I definitely handed France the game with the ill-advised move to relieve Calais. Really, I shouldn’t have even declared war on Scotland at that point. Seems like something to reserve for when France is actually in trouble. But it was a valuable learning experience, and other than the Keys and VP problems, I think I could have kept going pretty well. Troops aren’t that hard to get, and the British navy was intact, so the only thing was to make sure the Scots couldn’t get too uppity.

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