Well, the annual trip south to visit my parents has been going well. Case in point: I finished a game of Pursuit of Glory with my Dad yesterday.
I’ve had it for a year, and have been playing a game (by Vassal/email) for most of that time, but this is the first one I’ve finished. I consider the Central Powers to be slightly tougher to begin with (more things to juggle at once), so I took them.
Play was a little odd. I’ve found some rules I’d missed or forgotten, darn it. More importantly (for how play went), my Dad’s table is meant to hold miniatures games, so it’s too big to be comfortable with a normal-sized game (there is a plan for next time). Anyway, were were playing at a corner, and the Balkans were the far side away from my Dad, so they got less attention than they otherwise would have.
Even without that, that theater was strange. Bulgaria was practically the last card in my Limited War deck, so it didn’t join the war until very late. In fact, the Russian Revolution happened the same turn, so Romania stayed neutral the entire game, and I eventually got Greece in on my side. The game ended with the Allies in Salonika and both sides staring at each other.
The Allied transition to Total War was a bit slow, but not too bad overall. About two turns after that we both had a turn or so of high-powered events that drove the Combined War Status to end-of-game event heights.
Over in the major theaters, I got a pretty potent early force on the Suez Canal, while holding off the Russians and containing the beachhead in Mesopotamia. However, I didn’t react fast enough to a two-beachhead invasion (BR and FR) in Syria. It got off the beaches in force, and I lost eight divisions OoS at Suez. That put me into a panic, and I was only able to stabilize the line north of Damascus. (I did hold Damascus for a while, but couldn’t keep him out.)
The second half of the game had me grimly holding on, bringing in all the reinforcements I could to stabilize things, and then slowly denuding the reserves as the army ground down. I managed a couple counter-thrusts in Mesopotamia, including one that cut off a corps, and an attack that nearly destroyed the French army (and D’Espery’s reputation). I also maintained pressure on the Russian front, partly for MOs, and partly to ensure that the Allies couldn’t put all their actions where they had the advantages.
The war ground down along with my available RPs (had a about a year and a half of Turkish War Weariness). I think the big problem with my Dad’s strategy during the final parts of the war is that he should have done more ‘even’ attacks, that would have ground down both sides, and take a few more RPs. Sooner or later the Turkish Army has to break—which it did anyway, but too late.
I had put a decent cordon into place in Persia, with the Persian Uprising to help slow things down. However, he eventually put more in there than I could afford, and broke through very late in the game, eventually getting all the way to Baku, which I had recently captured. In the main part of the fighting he got to, but could not quite take Mosul, but would soon. Deir es Zor, Aleppo and Mamure Station would probably hold for a while (well, that last was not as secure). I’d been holding the advance-halting cards 2-3 at a time to make sure I could keep defending….
At the end, VPs were at 10, and we split the oil fields. A very close-run CP Victory of Endurance. I totally muffed the LCU limitation at one point (5 LCU in Mesopotamia; I hastily moved them out rather than blow the game with their elimination); I always forget it when in the heat of reorganizing the defenses… Other rules muffs were smaller and probably more evenly split. So an AP victory may be deserved (especially with that score!), though I may have done about as well without that problem.
