Inside GMT Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Sitrep Hex and Violence Desperation Morale Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Let’s GURPS The Collaborative GamerA few more problems for Watson on the second game. Mostly, I think the humans were realizing just how fast they needed to be on that buzzer. A smaller lead, but still a solid win. The switchoff between Ken and Brad for second was interesting.
I’d like to examine how Watson did across the various categories. That will take some work.
One of the things I figured about Watson was that when he knew the answer, he’d be right on the buzzer. Yep.
Did very well last night, building up a very solid lead against two people who are quite obviously capable. One very good “Watson moment” too.
For those (like me) who missed it last night:
Not a bad showing at all. They handled the background on it all well too.
Patch made it over Sunday, and we tried out my latest game acquisition, Barbarossa: Crimea. It’s the sixth game in a series slated to someday cover all the fighting on the East Front at an operational level. Let’s hope that promise fares better than Europa’s; at least they haven’t decided to up the scope from the East to the whole war.
I’ve been doing some solo work with it, so I was able to give Patch a fairly decent run-down of the system. I just hope there weren’t too many errors and bad assumptions mixed in.
We started with the first, tutorial, scenario, “The Tartar Ditch”, covering the German push from Perekop to Ishun in late September ’41. It’s four turns, with a tiny number of units, and an even tinyer front (even at this scale, the isthmus into the Crimea is only 2-3 hexes wide). Patch got the Germans, who have a lot more to do, as the Soviets are hamstrung, and have a pretty straightforward defense anyway.
In a few solo plays, I have yet to see a German win. Patch came closer than I ever have. I normally run into trouble on the first turn, with neither Soviet fortified position giving way. Without that, there is just no way to make up the lost time of having to attack the same line a second time in such a tiny scenario. Patch managed to replicate the example play’s breaking of the line in one hex, but not the other; though he didn’t replicate the tactics, making two 3-1 attacks instead of a 4-1 and 1-1.
He did inadvertently replicate one bit of performance that I had. The German Stukas only managed to make it in to support an attack once during the scenario, with AA usually aborting them out. At any rate, he did a nice job of attacking all down the line in the second turn, including an attack with the only mobile units in his force down at the end of the line. I got lucky and managed to bounce out the Stuka assigned to the combat, and held firm there while the rest of the line disappeared.
This left him with still clearing his way to the second defense line on the third turn, which was easy enough, even with three units withdrawn. The final turn saw the expected attacks without supply on the final defense line. He actually rolled well on one combat and got in, but the final victory hex held. This is the closest I’ve seen the Germans get yet in this scenario.
Anyway, that took less than three hours, including the full explanation of the main game functions. We set up the second scenario, and broke for lunch before starting it up. I took the Soviets again, while Patch struggled with the Romanian army assaulting Odessa. We only got through four turns, but saved the situation off on Vassal, and we’ll likely continue the game.
While it’s still early, he’s watching his force whittle away with some trepidation, while I’m alarmed at how fast the defensive perimeter is shrinking. Currently, pretty much everything has been happening on the west side of the city, and he’s nearly through all of the defenses out there, just as I gain the ability to start constructing new strongpoints. The good news is that means that he’s entering the range of the guns of the Soviet Navy, which could slow things down.
Also slowing things down has been two turns of Mud. This started just as two fresh divisions came on, and kept them from getting into the action for an extra turn. I’ve finally decided to shorten my defensive line on the east side, but the mud has also delayed the units I freed up.
Patch is still sorting out everything with Interdiction, but has generally managed at least one point in naval movement box. Right now nothing is damaged, but that’s after repairing minor damage on three different ships, and a large number of aborts. I’ve managed to deliver all the Zap units (minus the ones I’m starting to build with the I-points I’m now getting), but it has often taken 2-3 tries.
Both Patch and I like games with a lot more maneuver than what we’re seeing at the moment, but then these are simple, constrained, situations. Certainly, there’s a fair amount of thinking going into the Odessa scenario, and it probably does better than a fair number of magazine games out there. I’m still getting some of the feel for the system, and some of the interesting points won’t come up until the Soviets get a chance at an offensive. But I have to say, I do really like the air system in it, and I like what I’ve seen of the naval system; both are nicely abstracted, while giving decent detail.
As usual, the household went up to Smudge’s parents for Christmas this year. It was a pretty good gathering, and the first time we’ve gotten to see her sister and her husband in years. Everyone is doing pretty well, and Smudge’s allergies are to the point where an overnight stay was possible again.
With money being very tight in the household (though it looks like things will steadily improve over the next year), it wasn’t much of a Christmas from a personal gift-giving or -getting perspective. Smudge’s parents tried, they got me the Halo Interactive Strategy Game. They know I like boardgames, and I give them full credit for the effort, but the reviews are atrocious (and from what I see, they’re right on), there were obviously meant to be expansions to it, and those have been canceled, and the ‘base set’ has been relegated to bargain bins across the country. It does have some nice plastic miniatures and modular terrain. I’ll let the guys in the group who are into miniatures argue over who gets those; it’ll find a good home at least.
And on Monday, my copy of Barbarossa: Crimea arrived (now there’s a study in contrasts). I’m still poking my way through the rules, but it does look pretty promising. I hope to play my way through the introductory scenario soon.
As usual, I have the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. I’ve wasted a fair chunk of it playing Plants vs. Zombies. And by being under the weather. Not full-out sick, though if I’d tried going into work on Monday, it could have happened.
Anyway, Jason is free for the next month or so, so he came up on Wednesday, and we gave Paths of Glory a test run. He could stay ’til 7, and we already know the general system from Pursuit of Glory so we got about halfway through. He decided to take the Central Powers when he showed up, and lead off with the standard Guns of August.
The earliest game-shaping event was probably when I hit him with Moltke right after he discarded Falkenhayn for Ops. This left operations on the Western Front relatively expensive, and the action there stalled for quite a while. I was also able to keep his attention divided between the fronts by various actions, including an ill-fated British attempt to re-occupy Liege, and doing what I could to shore up Serbia. I spent a 4/4 card on RPs on turn 2 to partially rebuild them, and to get the Russians back into shape. The Germans drove into Warsaw pretty early, but I kept threatening the southern flank and picking on the Austro-Hungarian army.
The two main (caught) rules errors were the siege roll penalty on the first two turns, and the fact that British, French and German MOs have to be on the Western Front. The former potentially affected several sieges, but most notably, the Russian siege of Konigsburg. The Russian army got cut off and lost due to Attrition anyway (note to self, not a good idea, no matter how tempting it looks).
I used Salonika to SR a BR and two FR corps to the Balkans, and Yudenitch put out the only NE army our game saw in play. For a while it seemed like the east as a whole was going well for me. I got Romainia out a turn before Bulgaria. And I made a decent stab at taking Sofia (which I was thinking would put him out of supply; it wouldn’t, thanks to Constantinople, but it would certainly keep him from rebuilding BU units. That scheme collapsed, and things were starting to look grim in the Balkans at the end of the day. However, I had SRed the AN corps into the Near East and destroyed Beersheeba, opening the route into Syria, while the Caucasian Army slowly moved around causing problems in the north side of the NE map. I really needed to remember to transfer an extra RU corps into there to allow me to expand the perimeter.
The Western Front heated up towards the end of the day. Jason finally played Falkenhayn, we found our mistake on the MOs, and I remembered to start building better trenches (neither of us remembered to do much with them), and pushed him back out of France.
At the end of the day, it was the end of turn 9, the VPs were at 7, I was entering about my fourth turn of Total War, and Jason had yet to get to it. (Distracted by the high value of the war status cards, like I was the first time I played PuG.) I think I would have gone on to win, but there was a long road to go yet.
It’s a good game, and I certainly want to give it another go. Whether it’s as good as PuG I can’t say yet.