Some Gaming

I've been doing bit of afternoon gaming with Bruce lately.

We playtested a campaign mechanic for generating miniature battles for his 1920s gangsters. The mechanics entail tough decisions and should give players reasons to interact as well as fight.

We also play tested a grand strategy game called Swords Around the Throne. Basically point-to-point movement, 22 locations, card-driven, and super hard choices (made worse by only getting half of you card deck (at random) for the first half of each turn (a turn is a year and you have six actions per year). I would love to play this again now that I understand the rules!

Man of War

Bruce graciously put on a game of Man of War, hauling out his lovely collection of GHQ ships. This is a very slick system with movement triggered by one's speed (the faster you go, the more times you move in a turn--akin to the activation system in the old fighter-plane game Mustangs). Movement is interspersed with five shared firing phases. So the challenge is to maneuver so you can take advantage of (and not be screwed by...) the occurrence of the firing opportunity. I imagine Bruce has tweaked the rules some but I can't recall what the tweaks were.

Our scenario was a smaller but better quality French fleet (foreground) having the wind gauge on a British fleet (background). The wind is running left to right across the picture above and is abeam the one French ship that is cutting hard to the right all on its own. In my mind, I call this game "oh shit, the wind shifted" and this was no exception

So we get get moving and the second turn I roll a wind change in direction (it is now coming from the right, angling along the hex grain to the left) and it has dramatically weakened. This is a very unlikely event. Bruce has just turned his fleet to try and take the wind gauge away from me and this change basically catches him in irons, partly becalmed, and creates a major traffic jam (basically, he is now screwed). Despite my sympathy for his situation. I am proceeding to take full advantage.

Picture above of pretty ships with a speed counter on in. Speed ranges 0-7 hexes per turn--speed 4 for a big ship is pretty fast.

I manage to get a group of ships around the end of his line an start doing rear rakes. Some lucky rolls and he has two ships awash. My effort to board isn't successful, however.

Over on the left, I'm trying to get ships around the front for more rakes and put him in a box. The wind has just left him with no good options except to fight it out until he can get turned around and run.

In the end, one of his awash ships strikes it colours and that causes a cascading morale failure (a second seton unlucky dice for Bruce) and his fleet breaks contact. Probably a pretty decisive (and lucky) victory for the French.

Overall, one of the better sets of rules. Maneuver is slow and grinding, wind position and crew quality really matter, unusual things (like boarding actions) are risky and unlikely to occur. The mechanics create command and control limits that seem realistic while still giving players some difficult choices around movement and combat. The firing mechanic (basically, if you fire now, you have to skip the next firing phase to reload that side), in particular, make for tough choices.

Up next: A different era of naval operations.

Tough night for Napoleon

We play tested Bruce's Napoleonic game again (the full rules this time) on Tuesday. I drew France again and led it to a terrible defeat.

I had a tough first hand (one campaign card and lots of useless event cards) and then I rolled poorly. Then I decided to buy ships in the hope of getting across the channel and bagging London before the game turned against me. (This did not work as the English Navy was nasty!)

The cards came around for me in turn two but I could not decisive defeat the Prussians and then the dog pile started.

By turn four, I was out of troops and my two capitals were occupied.

The playtest was good (all mechanics worked) but man, is it is say to lose as the French in the first two turns of you play poorly!

Some Napoleonic play testing

Bruce hosted another playtest of his Napoleonic block game. Some new rules about commanders were introduced which were a big improvement.

There was also an option for running a military-only set of shorter games (basically the diplomacy is pre-programmed). This made the game more accessible (especially for someone new to the mechanics) but isn't quite as interesting as a fuller game with diplomacy (which is also an option).

I don't recall who won (I think Russia) but Britain and France duked it out a lot. Some good additions (a battle board to make it easier to sort out the combat).

Looking forward to seeing this one go on kickstarter.

La Salle and PBI at the club

We had eight guys out at the club this week. Bruce hosted Richard, Terry and Scott in a game of La Salle. I think the defenders managed to hold off the attackers' efforts to expand a bridgehead.

Mike hosted Dan, Chen and me in a game of Poor Bloody Infantry (v1). This was set in Italy with the Loyal Eddies attempting to clear some Germans out of some houses (the Germans set up hidden).

On the German right, the Canadians came forward pretty relentlessly.

Over on the left, the Canadians ran into stiffer resistance on the woods.

A firefight saw the Canadian left attack stall out. Mike's cursed green dice were entirely responsible for this. Death to the green dice!

Mike's 10mm figures are very nicely painted, however. And his terrain was super slick so I guess can forgive his choice in dice.

The Germans took the offensive on the left and push an assault forward into the woods.

The result was that everyone but the German platoon commander died ("Ach, Scheisse!"). This basically ended the Canadian attack on this side.

On the right, the Canadians came on strongly but ended up strung out with command and control woes. The Germans then redeployed to contain the Canadians and counter-attacked.

With the game-clock running out of time, the Canadians were thwarted and the Germans won based on casualties.

Zeds, Naps and gangsters

A bit of a job lot of figures today. First up are the last of the zombies for awhile, I hope. There were some of the larger guys. Judging by the neck lanyards, I would say civil servants who just got layoff notices?

There were also three regular toxic zeds plus an old heroclix guy who has been lingering on my paint table for awhile.

I also finished of the gangsters from pulp alley. Some very well armed fellows!

Bruce had me over last week to try out some changes to his yet-unnamed Napoleonic game. I got crushed but, in losing so badly, we discovered a few issues to clean up.

Up next: we have the club this week with lunar wars and some WW2 crossfire on offer. I hope to move some more figures, including a building to completion.

Napoleonic 20

Last week, Bruce put on a couple of Napoleonic boardgames from the Napoleonic 20 series. We started with Waterloo.

The mechanics are pretty simple but the real game is managing army morale (which you can degrade for tactical advantage). I've never really understood Waterloo (or cared to) so seeing it played out at the grand tactical scale with only 20 counters per side was very helpful.

You can see me advancing on Day 1 to push Bruce back and bag a couple of important supply points.

I let Bruce fall back, which gave him time to recover his morale (likely a mistake). The terrain in the middle of the board really constrained my attack options and let him re-form a defence.

Eventually we came to blows again, with some lucky cavalry strikes on the right flank de-stabilizing his line.

I think, in the end, I was able to degrade his morale and his units broke and retreated.

We then switched to the Russian front, with a Russian spooling attack running into a surprisingly large French force.

The Cossacks pushed the French back but eventually reinforcements arrived and it was possible to push the Russians and break their morale.

Very slick rules that took away the button counting that I hate. There are still the usual hex-and-counter gimmicks to think through but the low unit count means there are no stacks and limited ability to get three-on-ones.

Finishing off Lasalle game

Bruce and I paused out game of LaSalle a few weeks back. We finally finished it off last week. When we last left our heroes, the British (bottom of picture below) held the town on the hill, were swinging a left hook, and were rushing to block a flanking attack on their right.

The British right managed to get into position and, eventually, put the advancing French in a nasty box. This took awhile to develop but the Brits had this side in hand.

Over on the left (below), there was some early success for the Brits in cleaning out some cannon. Then they basically lost ever single melee for the rest of the game due to hilariously awful dice. It was crazy to watch units evaporate for no good reason. This side was going French, with only a lack of troops preventing a complete rolling up of the flank.

In the middle, again the Brits could not melee worth beans and the French kept advancing. Some lucky shooting kept them off the hill (automatic victory).

As night fell, the British squeaked out the thinnest of tactical victories based entirely on the casualties inflicted on the first night. One more round at the French would have had things. (Whew!).

No great observations beyond the rules are very slick and combined arms is hard to counter with anything other than combined arms.

Lasalle

Bruce wanted to try Lasalle again so he set up a pretty large battle (one of the Waterloo ones that I can never keep straight). British are on the right with one of three divisions on the table. French enter from the left. Objective for French is town on the hill.

The opening moves saw a huge French deployment followed by the first of British reserves arriving (and having a traffic jam).

The French side of the board saw an overwhelming attack against a few British forces in the trees (Kampfgruppe Speedbump).

There was a valiant stand by one militia in town that held up the French centre. Alas, their bravery was offset by terrible rolling by the regulars behind them who promptly disintegrated.

About half way through the evening and the French are rolling pretty good while the British reinforcements are swinging to the left. We started to see some good combined arms in the middle:  British cavalry forcing the French into square follows by British shooting the square to pieces.

Below is the where we pause the game after 2.5 hours. The British left has worked its way around and is moving through some hedges to try and grab the crest line. The rest of the British are swinging right to hold the town and fend off the French who have finally broken through the wood line. The centre is kind of a mess but basically stalled out.

We're going to pick this up again in two weeks. My bet is the French advance to the east-west road in the picture above but run out of time and/or units to take the town.

Strange Aeons, Look Sarge, No Charts, and The Great War

It was a busy night at the club with three games running. Dan hosted Terry and Chen in a play through of Strange Aeons 2nd Edition. I have no idea what happened in that game, other than the scenarios went quickly.

Scott hosted Craig and me in a game of The Great War. I was the British while Craig played the dastardly Hun. Victory was 6 banners and my plan was to push left to gain points through unit kills and trench occupations.

This started out okay for me. Then my hand turned into "right only" cards and Craig played like a mad-man! It was like the Harlem Globe Trotters were Mrs. Wright's Grade 2 class. There were crazy card combinations and terrifying "activate everything" turns and he was always in the bleeding trenches! It was a complete disaster for the British general staff.

This was the best I could manage in terms of an advance and I was within one turn of winning on points. Then Craig continued with his amazing card play and I was screwed. Good game, though!

Bruce hosted Wiley and Richard with some 15mm Napoleonics using Look Sarge, No Charts. The French set up on the left and had to run for the top of the picture. The British set up on the top of the photo and the right in an upside-down L.

By the time I joined the game, things were thoroughly confused. Bruce's British cavalry had been routed and Richard was attacking (from the right?) while running the majority of his troops off the board. It was quite a show!