Not your father's Bastogne

In our ongoing wait for table space to get started with our OCS Korea (BGG entry) game, I proposed The Gamers' SCS game Bastogne (BGG entry). Eric and Chuck had played through the first few turns and had raved about it, so I was intrigued and we had the opportunity. Win-win baby!

Although nominally part of the SCS range of games, Bastogne changes quite a few of the major rules. The main move-fight-exploit turn sequence is still there, but there are quite a few additions and changes to the various systems.

• Road movement phase: An additional movement phase, just prior to the regular movement phase; any unit that starts on a road (of any description, including railroad) and isn't in a ZoC has 3MPs; each MP can take the unit as far as it wants until it either changes to a different type of road, or encounters another friendly unit; moving units are not allowed to enter a ZoC
  
• Artillery: Artillery units may fire ranged barrages; there are two types of artillery, yellow, which requires the expenditure of (limited) ammo, and white, which fires for free; artillery has a hit number, most 4 in the case of yellow, and 2 for white, and rolling this number or below is a hit and causes the target to become Disorganized (DG); after achieving a hit, it's possible for the barrage to cause a step loss in addition, 4-6 for a yellow unit, 6 for a white, and 5-6 for an '88'; all artillery barrages have to be spotted, which means the target has to be adjacent to a friendly unit
  
• Air: The Allied player can get Air Support, starting on turn 6, the number of air strikes being a d6; they don't need a spotter or ammo, but otherwise act like yellow artillery
  
• Barrage phases: There are two barrage phases, one in each player turn; however, only Allied air units may fire in the Allied barrage phase, and all may barrage in the German player turn
  

The turn sequence is:

Allied Player Turn:

• Reinforcements
  
• Road March
  
• US Barrage (air only)
  
• Movement
  
• Combat
  
• Exploit
  

German Player Turn:

• Reinforcements/Removals
  
• Road March
  
• Movement
  
• DG Removal
  
• US Barrage (all units)
  
• German Barrage
  
• Combat
  
• Exploit
  

The Road March is the one that's hardest to get used to. Units can zip from place to place really quickly, and a clever German player can keep some of his armor units on the roads in reserve and relocate them to the other side of the map in a twinkle. This makes holding the intersections and road choke points of vital importance. Miss a road and suddenly the enemy is in your back field, as the other player has 3 movement phases in a row with no chance to react. And some of these armored units have 14 of 16 MPs to spend per phase. That's a lot of freaky movement potential, with nothing the other player can do about it. He can only watch as all these units drive on by, and then take another exploit movement to drive some more. I find this a little much to stomach, and I think there should have been some sort of reaction/reserve phase to allow some way to mitigate it. Either that or reduce the movement allowances.

Also note that there's no supply phase, which is because there are no supply rules in the game. You can stick a unit miles behind enemy lines with no worries about trying to maintain a line of communication or getting more food and ammo to them. OK, the scale is 1 turn per day, but I still think that leads to sticking a single unit behind lines just to disrupt movement, which I find to be rather gamey and not the way units would be handled.

Victory is determined by the number of VPs that the German player collects, which is in three different ways. First, he gains point for how much strength each of the four main formations have when they are removed. At or near their initial strength gains 2VPs, around 25% step losses earns 1VP, and around 50% step losses gains 0VPs for that formation. So the German player can't just use them in a reckless manner. Of course, these are the main armored force that the German player gets, so he can't afford to keep them sitting around doing nothing.

Second, is the opening of the routes, to the north, south, and straight through, Bastogne, earning 5, 4, and 8VPs, respectively. If the Allied player retains any combat units (not artillery, and not units from the reinforcing 3rd army late in the game) in good order on the route, then that route is closed and the German player gains no VPS for it. These are only determined at the very end of the game, after the German turn.

Finally, the German player also gains 2VPs if he has any steps in any hex of Bastogne (there are 6 of them) at the end of the US player's turn. There is no requirement to maintain a line of communication or anything, so a suicide run can be useful.

The German player requires 12 or more points to score a minor win.

In our game I played the US, and Eric took the Germans. The early game proved to be very slow, as I did a good job, I believe, of holding the vital roads, and slowly collapsing back towards Bastogne. During this time it was with no help from my artillery, as I hit on no more than 1 in 2 shots with my yellow artillery, with only 2-3 step losses. In the mean time my armor units were dashing back and fore, nipping any incursions that Eric might have made, including the odd single unit that broke through the lines.

Up until the final session, turns 8 through 10, I felt I was in good shape. Eric had scored only 4 VPs from his removed formations, and it was looking increasingly like he wouldn't be able to open any of the routes.

And then the DSDF kicked in, but you fully expected that. On turn 8, I believe it was, Eric went on an artillery frenzy, hitting around 7 out of 8 50% rolls, 3 out of 4 33% rolls and 2 out of 2 66% rolls. I almost ran out of 'DG' markers. In the same turn I missed both my critical 66% barrages. The former was followed up by lots of successful low-odds combats (one roll below 7 in 10 attempts), which decimated my available forces, and the latter allowed the combat to open an exploit path for him to stick a unit in Bastogne.

Turn 9 saw both my air strikes miss their 50% hit rolls in Bastogne, although I was able to clear the single step unit out in a combat, but only at the cost of another step loss to me. I put a unit with two steps into Bastogne to protect it. But Eric ran a unit up and scored 4 out of 4 50% rolls to score two hits and two step losses, and kill it in one go with a pair of yellow artillery units. He runs more units into Bastogne, which I can't clear out, to score 2VPs, and then DGs all my units on the road (and there weren't many of them left) to claim route B for 8VPs and the win.

Wow, talk about a reversal. Eric scored the perfect storm of die rolls as I missed all mine and he scored all his, although turn 8 was probably the real killer, as I just plain ran out of units to cover all the roads. My reinforcements only made it on the final turn as I couldn't roll the 33% nor 50% on turns 8 and 9 respectively, although I'm not sure they would have made a huge difference.

Overall, a fairly interesting game, and one I'd be more than willing to try it again, as it's a good puzzle. A totally different feel than all the other SCS games I've played. The US player has to be careful parsing the map, and can't afford to miss a road. However, something needs to be done about that movement phasing/MA and lack of supply. As it is, the ability to just buzz about in three movement phases with no way of responding doesn't feel right, and it allows the German player far too much ability to indulge in suicide missions in the hope that the dice go kindly and he can score some points or disrupt the US movement.

Due to the upcoming holiday period Eric and I have agreed to postpone the OCS Korea until the new year, when we can get a clear swing at it. I've had to cancel the past couple of weeks due to various things, and on the calendar will be another go at Worthington Games' Prussia's Defiant Stand (BGG entry, Eric's take, my take), a first attempt at the new GMT The Caucasus Campaign (BGG entry), which leaves a single evening before the holiday.

Some place in Spain

OK, the original plan called for Eric and I to hit OCS Korea after we finished Sicily, but we're going to get diverted to Red Star Rising (BGG entry) instead, because it looks rather intriguing. Before that, however, I wanted a short game to hit the table, something that wouldn't tax our brains too much, something that was familiar, and, preferably, another in the (extensive) list of unplayed games. An SCS game was the ideal choice, as we'd played The Mighty Endeavor just recently, so I suggested Guadalajara (BGG entry), the game on the Italian involvement in the Spanish Civil War. I picked this one partly because of our recent play of España 1936 (Eric's take, mine), and partly because Guadalajara looked colorful and interesting.

This entry in the SCS line covers the exploits of the Italian divisions in Spain, and their initial push for Madrid, when the Nationalists thought that a big push and taking Madrid would end the civil war quickly in their favor. It was not to be, however, as first the weather then the Republicans thwarted the over-confident Italians. The game changes quite a lot of the basic SCS rules, and adds a lot of special rules on top, some of them quite fiddly. All this would be acceptable, except that this is quite probably the worst set of rules in any of the SCS games. Even with the extensive errata there are numerous holes and poorly worded sections that remain unclear on the intention. I'm really surprised that they managed to get out the door in their final form.

The Republicans start on the main part of the board, with the Nationalists and Italians coming in from the east. The main feature here is that the Nationalists have to remain north of the river dividing the map, the Italians south. The Italians aim to get units off the west side of the map, driving on towards Madrid, or, failing that, victory comes down to the number of VPs gained for capturing villagess. Complicating the Italian effort is one of those special rules mentioned above: they're not allowed to move west of hex-row 16xx until they capture Brihuega, which makes it kinda imperative that the Italians head in that direction. To do this they have 3 militia divisions and some regulars. The militia have to be handled carefully, as if they take too many step losses they could fail morale and withdraw from battle.

Facing them is a growing army units supporting the Republicans cause, including Communists and Anarchists, so it becomes a race against time, and the Nationalist player needs to press hard.

As I'd played the Nationalists in our previous game on the Spanish civil War, I offered to take the Republicans this time, which left Eric on the attack. He opened with a fairly devastating attack, rolling lots of high dice with his Italians. However, his Nationalist allies fared the worst, as all his bad die rolls were concentrated with them. However, we did miss one critical rule, and that was that all of the Italian/Nationalist units get a free exploitation move on the first turn. This would have allowed Eric to push forward and move the battle line several hexes to the west, and likely had a huge impact on the game.

As he appeared to be concentrating his forces on Brihuega, my battle plan was to try to force his northern Italian flank, threatening his supply lines for his main thrust. I got set up with some strong units, artillery, and air support as well, and then rolled snake eyes in my first combat of the game. I tried a couple more times, but each time rolled poorly on the combat and lost more steps than I caused Eric to lose, which is pretty bad given how the CRT is slanted towards the attacker. I even committed my best unit in the whole game, but it died in two straight combats as first I rolled poorly in my attack and then Eric rolled well in his attack. All this was enough to reduce my flanking attack to a feeble holding action.

In the meantime, Eric was grinding onwards to Brihuega, but my reinforcements were arriving in strength, and I managed to stack them up high enough that they could absorb the losses. In the end Eric just couldn't clear them out fast enough, and the end of the game came before he could get to Brihuega.

In the north, the Nationalists were making the best they could of their bad start, but also didn't make much progress. They got as far as Miralrio in the last turn or two, but didn't manage to capture the big 5VP village of Cogolludo in the north. Elsewhere there was a minor skirmish over Abanades in the far southwest corner of the map, as my attack to recapture it whiffed again on 3-1, then saw Eric twice succeed at 1-1 to remove one of my two units there. In a final turn Hail Mary I managed to get a result on 1-1 to force him out and recaptured the 2VPs, which was enough to force the result into the Major Victory for the Republicans.

We managed to screw up several rules in the game, beyond the afore-mentioned exploit in the first turn. Armor effects are DRMs, not column shifts. Trucks tripped us up a couple of times. Partly this was due to my having only read the main game rule book, not the errata, up until 30 minutes before the game, so trying to keep track of the changes was a pain. Plus, I think there was a little bit of SCS complacency - we knew how to play, so just barely skimmed over the rules. It changed a lot more than other SCS games I've played.

OK, given all that, it wasn't too bad of a game, but I didn't really feel that the outcome was in doubt for most of the game. Even given my disastrous attacking through the game I still walked away with a major victory, so, what happened? Certainly that first turn was critical. Whilst the Italians rolled a couple of 11s, the Nationalists rolled a few 3s, which more than balanced it out, as the 11s were overkill. The attack in the north never really put much pressure on me, and I was able to divert most of my reinforcements against the Italians. Plus, missing the first turn exploit meant that the main battle was fought 5-10 hexes further east than it should have, allowing me to build up in front of Brihuega.

Given all the other options, and SCS titles, I think this one's unlikely to hit the table again. Sure, it would be interesting to see if getting the rules right would make it any easier for the Italians, but there are so many other options out there that are calling loudly to me. I'm not even sure why I picked this one, really. Perhaps it was just all those nice colors. Ooooo, shiny.

Stalled on the Road to Madrid

After Mike and I completed Sicily, we were looking for something smaller before our next big venture. Mike had a few ideas, and we eventually settled on Guadalajara, the recent SCS game from MMP/Gamers that covers one of the major battles of the Spanish Civil War.

As Mike and I both mentioned a few weeks ago, neither of us know very much about this conflict, and after playing Espana 1936, I'm still not convinced I know anything. So, it was time to take the scale down a notch and play a specific battle.

This battle involves a combined Italian/Nationalist army attempting to break through the area around Brihuega on the road to Madrid.

This battle is one of those situations where the attacking side needs to make progress before the defenders are able to reinforce and effectively fight back. I took the Italian/Nationalist Side and off we went.

The actual session report here is going to be shockingly brief. It took us two nights to play, probably 5.5 or 6 hours total, including setup. The gist of our game was this: I pushed towards the edge of the map, Mike slowed me down, reinforced, then stalled my advance.

One final battle on the last turn put him in the Major Victory category. (It was a Major victory if he won the battle, Minor if he lost.)

The session isn't really where the story is, though. Instead it's in the rules.

First warning: do NOT, under any circumstances, attempt to play this game without a thorough study of the errata and frequently asked questions, both available at The Gamers Archive. In fact, I'd recommend marking up a printout of the electronic rules you'll find at that site with the errata. It's that extensive, and that important.

These are, by far, the worst rules ever published by The Gamers. In my experience, at least. Now, many of you probably know that SCS – at its core – is a VERY simple system. Move, fight, exploit, switch sides, repeat. The Guadalajara rules as written manage to convert this into a convoluted mess. There's loads of exceptions in the first turn, the Truck rules are simply strange (even more so once you incorporate the errata), and you're never sure you've caught everything. It might take three playings to really get the rules down, and this is an SCS game.

If there was EVER a game that exemplifies the argument against separate series and game rules, this is it.

Now, that said, if they can update the electronic rules to incorporate the errata and clarify things to handle the FAQ issues, there's a good little game here. It just takes some work to find it.

There are some interesting tweaks. The biggest is the separation line. The Italians must stay south of the River Badiel (and a line extending it east) while the Nationalists must stay to the north. You can't even fire artillery across the river. (It's unclear if ZOCs extend across the separation line, however.)

Another odd tweak is the restriction on the Italians moving too far west before they take Brihuega. The Italians are forbidden from moving west of the 16.xx column (about four hexes west of Brihuega) before taking the city. The justification for this is that it's a major communication/logistics hub and the Italians were not interested in moving further west before taking the city. This rule has the intended effect, but there's some odd side effects.



The primary Italian goal involves exiting a number of units along the main highway that runs north of Brihuega towards Madrid (point B on the above image). Until Brihuega falls, there may as well be a large gulf across the road – you just can't go any further than the 16.xx column (illustrated on the above image). So, it's possible to see a number of units just sit there on the road waiting for the city to fall. It didn't happen in our game, but it's been talked about in online forums as an odd side effect. This forces the Italians to focus on something other than their victory conditions in order to fulfill their victory conditions. Odd, but I can see what the designer was trying to impart.

The supply rules didn't seem especially onerous, and the Italian Volunteer Morale rules never came close to being in play for us. Probably because, as typical for me, I was insufficiently aggressive as the attacker even with an Attacker-friendly CRT. (at 1:2 odds, a 7 or higher has no negative effect on the attacker.)

There are tank rules reminiscent of the WWI games in the series, which is understandable as tanks didn't really progress until after WWII got into full swing. As in Espana 1936, tanks augment a combat instead of being full-fledged participants, and the tanks fight each other if both sides are represented.

Net result? I heartily do NOT recommend Guadalajara as a first SCS game. However, if you do your homework and make sure you've got the rules down, it seems to be a decent game. It's not in the top five SCS games, but it's notable for covering an under-represented conflict. And, it's in print for an eminently reasonable $32 retail.

I know I'd like to give it another go after some study. It's easy to go into an SCS game thinking “I don't need to learn much to play” and I think that's what Mike and I both did. Do yourself a favor - prepare yourself before playing.

Um, sir? Shouldn't we be moving east?

Over the last three sessions, Mike and I have been playing The Mighty Endeavor, the SCS game that covers WWII in Western Europe from the D-Day landings through the Bulge into the early '45 when the Allies crossed into Germany.

The Mighty Endeavor is scaled much higher than many SCS games. Each hex is approximately 15 miles across, and turns are two weeks long. Compare this to the opposite end of the scale, Bastogne, where hexes are 400m across and turns are 1 day. Yet the system scales wonderfully both directions: a testament to its design. The map covers most of France (leaving out the far western tip), BeNeLux, and the western 75-100 miles of Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. (Though the latter two are excluded from play.)

We'd originally planned this as a warmup game to test strategies for play at WBC-West. When I lost a day due to the job change, this game fell off the schedule. I got the Allies in this one so I'd be attacking here vs. defending in Case Blue.

I've played TME once before, over email with Cyberboard, so this was my first ftf play. I was also the Allies in the prior game, so I haven't experienced this game on the defensive yet. I'll have to do that next time.

I'll post a few pictures of the final position, but let's just say that if Operations Overlord, Cobra, Goodwood and Atlantic had gone this poorly in the actual war, WWII may have lasted another five years. We called the game early in turn 19 (That's late January, 1945 and I had yet to liberate Paris. Historically, it fell on August 23rd – turn 8. I was a bit behind schedule.)

Final position in the south:


And in the north:


You may notice the bottom left of the first and top right of the second picture are the same German units. Mike now had the advantage of interior lines pretty much eliminating any chance at flanking attacks.

It's rather hard to give a blow-by-blow account of a game that took place in pieces over the last month and a half or so, but I will certainly bring up some things I did wrong, and hopefully help you avoid these pitfalls when playing the Allies.

First – Know your troops and choose landing sites accordingly.

You'll notice from the pictures showing the ending positions that I ended up with the US in the northern half of the advance, and the CW in the southern half. This is a tactical mistake for the following reasons:

• The US forces have over twice as many armored divisions as the Commonwealth. (13 to 6.)
• The US has the only exploit-capable HQ.

Now, the Allied forces need to move fast – the VP spaces are 25-30 hexes away, and you've only got 25 turns to get there. (Interestingly, this is about the pace first expected by Allied HQ – a mile a day.) This means you should put your most mobile forces where the most space is – to the south as they did historically.

I got into this situation by landing the US in what was historically the Commonwealth beaches (Sword/Juno/Gold – the easternmost three). As the line rotated counterclockwise across the bocage, this kept the US forces near the coast – eliminating nearly all their mobility advantage.

Second – Understand Supply

I was rather timid in this game as I was constantly concerned with being put out of supply. This was pretty much a holdover from all the OCS we'd been playing lately. I failed to grasp that supply is much less of an issue to the Allies as the Germans. (Allied units cannot die due solely to being out of supply while German units can.) I failed to use the Surrender rule to my advantage at all. (Essentially, if a German unit has Allied units on opposite sides, it will be out of supply regardless of where its friends are.) Also, running units behind the lines lets you use them to restrict Axis retreat paths before they can be marked out of supply. A key need when a bulk of the Axis strategy is trading space for time.

Third – Use your air drops.

This is an alternate method for getting troops in behind the Germans to cut off their retreats. Watch which troops you ferry in and make sure you drop behind the Germans when you can. You will take losses, but you might create entire pockets that either can't retreat from adverse combat results or must be withdrawn in a large hurry to get them back into supply.

Fourth – Keep your Ace in the Hole in the hole.

I made a very large strategic blunder that was caused by the above tactical blunders. Restricting my mobility and not being aggressive led to my being short of ports. And being short of ports in this game means you have limited attack capabilities. It's a downward spiral you have to avoid early on. In reaction to this, I wasn't very smart in using my six beach landings. I used the first three in typical fashion – two on the Normandy beaches and one near St. Tropez on the Mediterranean. I basically wasted one near Bordeaux, as I didn't keep forces in the area to hold it, nor Bordeaux itself.

This led to me, out of desperation for ports, to use my sixth beach port back on the original Normandy site. While this helped me out in the short term, it allowed Mike to abandon his rear defense without fear of my landing behind him. This let him throw more forces into the front line slowing me down even further. The result was an almost WWI-esque front line where I couldn't get around the edges with any sort of force.

If you're having difficulties, save that last landing – it keeps the Axis guessing and may help keep a sector weak allowing a breakthrough.

The Mighty Endeavor is a very good game. If you like the SCS style of game, you'll likely enjoy it. According to the BGG ratings, it currently ranks 4th in the SCS series behind Bastogne, Fallschirmjaeger, and Afrika II. If you're looking for a game covering the drive to the Rhine, it's going to be near the top of the list. After playing this, I'm wanting to give it another go (and avoid the traps I fell into!), and possibly look at Liberty Roads – the new effort from Hexasim that covers nearly the same ground. With the D-Day anniversary coming up, it just seems appropriate.

A Mighty Endeavor too Far

After our OCS Case Blue game, we were going to get in a quick practice for our planned WBC-W The Mighty Endeavor game. This is another of The Gamers' (now MMP) SCS games, a series I'm liking more and more each time I play. So much so, in fact, that I've picked up all the SCS games recently, except for Drive On Paris, which is comparatively rare and mucho expensive.

However, this WBC-W has been cursed, and Eric was another casualty, changing jobs around it such that our TME game was cancelled. Rather than lose it altogether, we decided to extend our practice into a full game. Of course, this meant that our several sessions required to play it would take place over an extended time, as we would have to skip the week of the event and the weeks either side (Eric needs to acquire brownie points). So it was that we played two evening sessions,then picked it back up this last week, four weeks later.

TME covers the entire western European theater, from the north to the south of France, and from the west of France all the way into the western part of Germany. This means that the scale is several times larger (or is that smaller?) than other SCS games, with units being divisions and hexes representing 15 miles. It says something for the system that it can handle the various scales with ease.

The thing that I immediately liked about TME is that the Allied player has the flexibility to choose his own landing zones. The various potential beaches are rated for how good they are for landings, in terms of initial landing and follow-up strengths, and the Allied player has 6 invasion beach tokens. Each beach that's invaded takes a token, that counts for landing units for a fixed number of turns. Once all 6 tokens have been used, no more landings are allowed. So the Allied player has several competing requirements. Landing in strength is important, but so is having access to ports (for future supply and landing of units), and not being too far away from Germany is also important. All very intriguing.

Of course, the Axis player has no idea where the landings are going to come, so has to balance the response to the current landings with maintaining flexibility to cover future landings. So the Axis player doesn't really make much in the way of plans, having to respond to what the Allied player does. All very, very intriguing.

In our game I played the Axis, as Eric wanted to do the attacking since I was doing the attacking in our WBC-W OCS game, which was good with me. The main landings came in Normandy, with Eric using 3 of his 6 beachhead markers. I defended the bocage as best I could, but wasn't doing any attacks as those were some freaky big stacks he was pushing around.

Around turn 6 or so Eric had pushed out of the bocage. I was really concerned with his paratroopers landing in behind me and preventing retreats, so I was trying to defend in some depth, which is never a bad idea, anyway. He's also landed in the south with 2 more of his precious beachhead markers, and in south-west France with the last one. This allowed me the freedom to release all my forces guarding potential landing sites, focusing on the main one in Normandy.

At the end of the first session, I committed my main panzer divisions, which I'd been holding in reserve on an attack on his line. this was rather ill-advised, but in truth I was becoming a little bored as we were about a quarter way through the game and I hadn't made a single attack yet. However, things went really badly (I believe I rolled '3' on two dice), and I ended up with all my armor in a very precarious situation.

Over the intervening week between the two sessions I could see all the possible permutations on how Eric could surround and totally wipe out pretty much the entire panzer component of the Axis forces. However, at the start of the second session Eric either didn't see the options or chose not to be too aggressive, and I was able to extricate them in good shape.

In the north I commenced a steady fall back to the very defensible Seine and Paris, building strong defenses. I was nipping at the edges, and managed to take out a couple of armored divisions that he'd pushed forward too far, unsupported. Eric had captured Cherbourg, but was hurting for a second port to replace his soon to disappear last beachhead. Fortunately (well, for him, anyway!) he captured Le Havre, but I mustered my panzers and attacked along the coast, removing two or his armored divisions in the overrun. However, it was at this point that Eric spotted that we'd been playing the overruns wrongly up to this point, allowing units to overrun multiple times, rather than ending their turn at the conclusion of the overrun, succeed or fail. (Too much playing OCS.) This left my panzers hung out to dry, unable to take advantage of the successful overrun to recapture Le Havre, nor move back to the safety of their own lines.

Meanwhile, in the south, Eric was making slow progress up the valleys, as the lack of mobility through the rough terrain allowed my few units to hold him up. The dice weren't helping him in any way, though, as he continually rolled poorly.

Over in the south west, Eric managed to capture Bordeaux, and the vital port, but he then vacated it, allowing me to sneak in the back door and recapture it. I tried to get smart and used that unit to move north, and Eric promptly re-recaptured it. When he thought it was safe he moved out again, but I was still in range and snuck back in again! Wild. Eventually Eric abandoned that area of the board, moving his units north, but I'd learned my lesson and wasn't taking that bait, leaving my unit to protect it.

And that was the end of the second session, taking us up to the end of turn 13. At this point I'm feeling pretty confident, as I feel I've got a very strong and defensible line in the north that's going to be real hard for him to crack. My weak spots are the south and the southern end of my line. Some quick success in the south could see my defenses unravel pretty quickly, and if he moves the focus to swing around the south of my Seine/Paris line rather than try to bludgeon his way through it could get ugly quickly. However, with very few active ports he doesn't have a lot of flexibility, so I should be able to pick up on any change of focus quickly enough to respond before it becomes a serious threat. Except for those panzers.

Here's some pics of the situation at the end of turn 13:









And so to our third session. This was the session in which pretty much nothing went Eric's way. His air support table rolls sucked. His combat rolls sucked. Except, oddly enough, in the south, where he reversed the rolls from the previous session, and had all his best dice rolls there, starting to seriously push me back.

In the north, his first move was to secure Le Havre, rather than attempt to remove my panzer threat. We traded a couple of hexes back and forth, as my panzers stacked up to get a decent odds column and I rolled averagely, which is all that's needed for the German player in my position. Eric made no more than one hex per turn progress, which meant that he was going to struggle to score any points, let alone the 25 he needed for a draw. With only 8 turns left he'd had enough and we wrapped it up. Here's the final position:











This is one of those games where I don't really feel I did much for the win. The only real decisions are when to stay and when to bug out to the next defense line. Mostly I feel I got these decisions right, although the stack of dead Axis units might say otherwise, but they were pretty much all weak units. Perhaps the telling statistic is that at the end of turn 17 I had 1 panzer and 1 mechanized unit in my dead pile, all the rest being on the map, and mostly at full strength. Where I did trip up, I feel, was in not pressing enough in the first few turns. Looking at those big stacks of Allied units, especially in bocage, I didn't attempt any attacks, but the combat table is very favorable to the Axis player. I'm not sure that trading steps is a good move for the Axis player, however, but trying to push the Allied stacks off their beach-heads seems like a good move.

I do think that I was helped tremendously by a couple of things that Eric did. First, in the first couple of turns I learned the power of an Allied air drop behind my lines. Cutting off retreats helps with step losses on retreats, but, even more importantly, the brutal supply rules for the Axis (EZoCs are not negated by friendly units) makes getting surrounded a bad thing, as units attrition away after the second turn of being OoS. So, I was very relieved to find that all his airborne divisions were in the dead pile, and he wasn't using his replacements to rebuild them.

Second, he burned his 6 beachhead markers very quickly, and using up that last one allowed me to release all the units protecting possible follow-on invasions to build a solid line. Keeping at least one beachhead marker available for another invasion is, I believe, critical for keeping the Axis player off balance.

I just thought of a third thing. The Allies need to keep the pressure on the Axis player, so he's having to defend on all fronts. Whilst Eric suffered for a large period of time with few ports with which to activate HQs for attack, I think the Allied player needs to be attacking in a lot more places than the one or two select attacks (at high odds) that Eric made. In my view (and, not having played as the Allies, I could be way off base here) I think that the Allies should be making 3 2:1 attacks rather than 1 6:1 attack. Sure, there's the chance of some bad rolls, but the Allied player needs to give himself the chance of getting that good result that causes a breakthrough, rather than allowing the game to stagnate into WWI type trench warfare. (I think that was the issue with the Afrika II SCS game I played recently - we were both too timid on attacks, and it really did feel more like WWI than the cut and thrust of the desert.)

Overall, this wasn't my favorite SCS game of the ones I've played. The Axis player doesn't have a lot to do other than run away from defense point to defense point, but, once again, that may have been a factor of the way our game developed. Either way up, that isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it, and for a large part of the early game I was metaphorically chewing my finger nails at the situation. As the game wore on I was feeling more confident, but I always felt that I was just a couple of bad (or good, from Eric's perspective) dice rolls away from a disaster. I'd certainly like to give this one another go, and it's on my list for a future session. This time I get to be the Allies, to see if I can do any better.

Results at the Marne

Mike and I finished up our Rock of the Marne game last week with the final three turns. As expected, this only took us a couple hours as we maneuvered for the final VPs we thought we could reach. I'll post the final positions and let you know I ended up winning 12-11.








I took Chalons-sur-Marne for 6VP, and two roads leading off the southern edge of the map for 3 more VP each.

Mike took Chateau-Thierry (3), Fere-en-Tarden (2), Soissons (2), an Aisne bridgehead (2), and Bois Meuniere (2).

There were some significant runs of bad dice in this game. It's a definite poster child for “all dice rolls are not created equal.” Yes, the total may have ended up average (Mike was logging this, but I don't actually know what the totals were) but there are some VERY high leverage rolls. Probably the most important are the HQ replenishment rolls. If you do poorly on those, you're not going to get very far in this game. Both sides have the onus of attack placed on them for significant stretches of the game, and not having any attack supply hamstrings your efforts.

Now, my thoughts on the game.

Our biggest concern had been with the “monkey-drill” associated with the breakdown regiments. This has since been fixed with errata, but not in the way I expected. Operation Michael has a breakdown phase before movement, and a reassembly phase after exploitation. The fix to Rock of the Marne makes you do all your breakdown/reassembly before any divisions are moved, and only breakdown regiments that have not moved yet can reassemble. This significantly changes the game from the rules as printed.

I was originally concerned about the VP hex placement, then I realized that having nearly all the German VPs at the south edge of the board forces the German player into a decision around turn 7: they can either turn it into a race for VPs and a high-scoring game, or pull back, play defense, and try to win ugly. I decided on the former, and it worked out for me. (Though, had one or two die rolls gone the other way, Mike wins.)

I have a number of other concerns, but I realized they all come down to the structure of the CRT.

First, trenches seem to have very little effect. Technically, they shift you left 2 columns when your attacking a unit in a trench and halve the distance of any retreats. But, given the minor differences in the columns of the CRT, it doesn't make much practical difference. (For example, the 4:1 column rolling a 7 is A2D3 – attacker takes two step losses, defender takes three. The 2:1 column gives the same die roll an A3D2 result. A lone division is going to be dead no matter what.) After seeing what was happening to units in the trenches, we pretty much abandoned them. Mike pulled south in the eastern sector, and I pulled east out of the trenches in the way of the counter-attack.

I also think the CRT is too bloody. If I was playing the Germans again in the initial turn, I'd try something like this:

1.Break down every division in the easternmost trench line.
2.As there's no “minimum attack strength” rule, attack with solo regiments against every solo unit in the French trenches from Reims east. (out of 36 possible die roll results, 6 will lose to regiment to no effect, 27 will reduce the enemy at the cost of the regiment, and 3 will eliminate the division and reduce the regiment.) There's 12 solo divisions and 6 solo regiments in that general area at the start. You will certainly open up gaps.

Given the lack of a minimum strength for attack, later in the game it makes a lot of sense to send solo reduced regiments up against any assembled division you can find on its own. You're going to lose the regiment, but the enemy will lose 0.92 steps on average. But, since 1 divisional step = 3 regimental steps, you actually come out ahead. And, if it's a reduced division, you'll eliminate it 30 out of 36 times.

I'm curious to run a simulation of this, but let's say you're lone reduced division is being chased down by 3 other divisions. You break down your division into three reduced regiments, and send each after a separate division. You will lose your one reduced division, but you'll take out somewhere around three divisional steps in the process. Occasionally, you'll take out full-strength divisions, but it's likely at least one of those chasers was reduced. And he's probably gone now on top of any other losses you can inflict. (Given average dice, which certainly were not in evidence during this game.)

My impression of WWI combat was that the defender had a severe advantage, and it required a 3:1 superiority to have any real chance at success. The results the CRT give seem to be the opposite, and reward well-timed “suicide” attacks. Given the German superiority in numbers (something like 54 divisions to 37 at the start with 30 regiments available in the pool to the French 18) it's just a matter of grinding down the French, given enough attack supply.

Ah, yes. The other big concern. I appreciate what the difficulty in replenishing HQs is supposed to represent. The attack could only be maintained for so long. But, the random nature of replenishment means you are at the mercy of die rolls late in the game. (Mike, in particular, had his counter attack across the north edge of the map stall out because he couldn't get HQs replenished.) It also has the effect of shaping the German attack. They will push further wherever attack supply appears.

Late in our game, I was having little luck getting HQs to replenish. (In the 2nd half of the game, you must roll a 9 or higher to be successful. However, Mike had taken out six HQ units over the span of two turns. As those come back replenished into any controlled town and/or with a unit permanently assigned to them, you can pretty much choose where to place them. As this isn't something you want your enemy doing, you're actually DIScouraged from taking out enemy HQs as two turns later, they'll come back where they're most needed. Again, this seems counter intuitive.

It also had the side effect of my sort of exploiting the supply rules. Each bridge across the Marne can only support one HQ, and unsupplied HQs cannot replenish. They can, however, fuel an attack one last time if they're replenished when they go out of supply. As there's no restriction on replacing the Hqs south of the Marne, I just kept funneling them down there, and I probably had eight or nine Hqs placed south of the Marne with only three usable bridges.

Looking back at all these concerns, I'd probably do two things now that the breakdown rule has been fixed. I'd institute a minimum attack strength. (something like you couldn't initiate an attack that would start off the left end of the CRT.) Alternatively, make units defending in their own trenches ignore the first step loss against them. Also, I'd consider making German HQs placed back in play south of the Marne roll to replenish unless a bridge exists to support them. Of course, lots of testing on these changes would be needed, and for all I know they may have been proposed at some point but discarded.

All this being said, Mike and I did enjoy the game. There were tough decisions to make, even with playing the incorrect breakdown rules. The game came down to the very end as the 12-11 score indicates. And now that they've fixed the breakdowns, I'm looking to try this again to see if my CRT concerns are still valid. I think it's a good game, but I'm not sure how historical it really is. Our total play time was around 12.5-13 hours, but I think it's a 10-hour campaign game when all's said and done.

DSDF hits the Marne

Eric proposed that we play a WW1 game to commemorate the ending of the war, and I suggested that we combine it with a longer, multi-session game report, as our sessions to this point have either been games that fit into a single evening session or our mega-long-term OCS Sicily game. I proposed that we try the new MMP release, Rock of the Marne (BGG entry), and Eric deemed it a good idea. So, for the past few evenings (4 to be precise) we've been slogging through RotM.

RotM is the latest in the SCS series, which has a simpler rule-set than some wargames, with the emphasis on playability, but not to the total detriment of the specific situation and chrome. It has certain similarities to other WW1 games in the series, especially in the limited breakdown counters available to spread the divisions out a little more. These breakdowns give a couple of extra MPs (for the Allied player) or reduced costs for moving into ZoCs, no overrun costs, and gaining exploitation movement (for the German player).

However, unlike Operation Michael in the same series, RotM doesn't provide a specific phase in the game in which to breakdown and recombine, but each division can breakdown immediately prior to moving in the movement phase, and then recombine at the end of its move. This means that as long as you have a few breakdown units available, there is a limited number of breakdown units for each player, you can use and reuse them as each division moves. Pretty big for the German player, and just feels a bit 'gamey'.

These two combine to give a totally ahistorical representation of the campaign. As seen from Eric's earlier post, his Germans attacked pretty much all along the line and just poured through, and I spent most of the early game just falling back. After the first turn the trenches were pretty much useless, as Eric just drove through and I had to fall back or face encirclement.

However, a large part of the game, including the end result, suffered greatly from the DSDF, a term coined by another of our gaming buddies, Doug, and which long-term readers will be familiar with by now. (For new readers, that's the Deansian Statistical Distortion Field. Basically any game that I play, that features dice (or any luck determining feature, it's not really only attributable to dice), will feature wacky outcomes way to the end of the bell curve. Whilst this normally works against me, in the (very) occasional game it works in my favor. Ask Chris about our FAB: Bulge game. Incidentally, I played FAB: Bulge with Eric recently. I got about as far in 7 turns as Chris did in 4.)

This game had it in spades. Early on, I used my Allied aircraft on CAP to intercept the German planes, a successful interception allowing the Allied player to not only negate the German 2 column right-shift on the CRT, but to replace it with a 2 column left-shift. A fairly major change in any single combat. The basic chance for a successful interception is to roll 7 or more on 2 d6, i.e. ~60%. In the first several turns I made 6 interception attempts, and missed every single one of them, which is somewhere off the 1% end of the bell curve. Making even 3 of those would have gone a long way to helping prevent the rather one-sided nature of the early game. (In contrast, Eric made 2 interception attempts, and scored them both, one even high enough to cause a step loss. In my 7 total attempts I rolled low enough to lose 2 steps from my own aircraft.)

Then again, Eric was rolling like a demon in the early part. 10s and 11s were appearing regularly, especially, it seemed, on the low odds attacks, which meant whole stacks of units disappeared, leaving gaping holes everywhere. Naturally these were rapidly exploited by his StossPanzerTruppen. His HQ recovery rolls saw him get most of them back in the early turns (and 90% in turn 5, all but 1 roll being higher than 5, another low probability outcome), although he suffered later on when the recovery number went up to 8 (i.e. he had to roll 9 or higher to recover the HQ).

Despite all this, at the start of the Allied turn 14, the points were 13-12 in my favor, when I made an attack on another 2VP hex, but rolled '2'. This not only eliminated most of my units, it also retreated the remaining unit from another VP hex, which Eric promptly moved into, and was enough to win the game. This was the only result that could have done it, as Eric didn't have any HQs that could provide supply for an attack. I tried to take any VP hex in my turn, but a combination of failed HQ recovery rolls and being unable to roll a '10' or higher in any of the 4 combats for VP spaces gave Eric the game.

(The game in pictures is here.)

In the post-game discussion we noticed that there was one HQ I could have used for another attack on a VP space in that final turn, as the attacking divisions were not tied to any particular corps HQ, and, just for kicks, I rolled. An '11'. That would have been enough to win the game, 11-9. Sigh.

I could go further into the details (like turns where my several combats rolls averaged 4.5, and Eric's averaged 8.5), but you get the general picture. Which is all to say that it's real hard to get a good feel for a game where it's as whacked up as this one. However, some things were readily apparent.

Firstly, the whole breakdown think needed rethinking. Being able to ripple the same breakdown units through each divisional movement just seems wrong. In fact there has recently been a rules change to address this, but rather than just take the same approach as Operation Michael (separate breakdown/recombine phases) they've introduced an even more complex version of the existing rule. Sheesh.

Second, is those very breakdown troops are way too strong for the Germans. Giving them reduced ZoC movement costs, no overrun costs and exploit movement makes them crazy strong. Yes there are limited numbers of counters, but they're pretty much unstoppable. The only thing that stopped Eric from taking Paris was that Paris wasn't on the map to take.

Next, the CRT is a bit too aggressive on the defender results at the upper level, with whole divisions just disappearing in one combat. This means that holes can be blown in defenses, and the German breakdowns units (aka StossTruppen) just pour through, which gives it more of a feel of WW2 'Blitzkrieg' armor operations than WW1. (In fact, at times, it felt more like WW2 desert warfare than the recent game of Afrika II I played with Chuck, which felt more like WW1 trench warfare.)

Certainly the breakdown rule change will make for a considerably different game, but is there enough there to make us want to try it again? Hmm, not so sure, but with so many other games out there to be played, it's going to have a hard fight to make it onto the table. The jury remains out.