After all the shenanigans of the holiday period it was time to get back to some serious gaming fun, and our collective choice for first game of the year was Unhappy King Charles (BGG entry), the new release from GMT. Regular readers will maybe be aware that I spent 20 years in the Sealed Knot, the largest English civil War re-enactment society in the UK, so I have a great affinity for all things ECW. When I saw UKC on the GMT P500 list I was straight there with credit card in hand. That was some time ago, as there was a long time between UKC making its number and actually seeing release, finally hitting the mat in December last year. This was good timing, as I'm currently planning to hit CDGs hard this year. I've played Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage and Barbarossa to Berlin, and although I've enjoyed them, I am seriously bad at them.
On reading the rules it seemed that this CDG was simpler than others I'd looked at, in that, unlike most CDGs, each card is only used for one purpose. Each card in UKC is either an operation (of 1, 2 or 3 points) or an event. As an operation it's pretty much the same as all other CDGs, the value of the card has to be equal to or higher than the general's rating for him (and his army) to be activated, or it can be used to place control markers on the board. However, the events are where all the flavor is, and there are lots of those, divided into Royalist and Parliament events, divided into Early, Mid, and Late war decks. There are also 3 Mandatory cards that are added at specific times, and each player has 2 cards (worth 1 and 2 Ops) added to their hand each turn.
Battles occur when two armies end in the same space (it's a point-to-point movement system), either through movement or interception. The defending army may attempt to evade, may disperse prior to combat, or fight, where the value of all brigades, the general's rating, any tactic card, and a single d6 are combined. Scores are compared, and the loser retreats and loses a number of brigades, and the winner may gain a card if the win was considered Major or Decisive. Pretty simple. Some areas are considered fortresses, which have to be captured by siege. Victory is measured, for the Parliament player, by forcing Charles to surrender at battle. If that doesn't happen then control of areas determines victory.
In our game I drew the Parliament, and drew the Mandatory card 'Raise the Standard'. I decided to hold onto this until my last play of the round, as we both jockeyed for position, placing control markers. In the second round we started in earnest, and had an indecisive battle in the north, both losing our veteran brigade. I'd been focussing in the south, and when Eric besieged Plymouth with Hopton I reinforced Bedford and then used an event to transfer another brigade from Essex, and attacked. In the battle I also played a tactics card, and achieved a major victory, the first (and, I believe, only) one of the game. I followed up with another attack, which forced Eric to disband Hopton's army, rather than face surrender, and I converted pretty much the whole of the South to Parliament. After this Waller started moving north, besieging Reading successfully. In the north things weren't going so well, but my aim was to steadily move my line north, so I wasn't too concerned as the battles were never decisive, so I only lost a brigade here and there.
Eric reinforced Oxford, and moved Rupert to support. However, the Mid-War cards saw me draw the first of the 'Alt-History' cards introduced to the deck, and Lord Wilmot's Plot converted Oxford to the Parliament cause, dispersing the Royalist army. This also allowed Essex to gather forces from Bedford and attack Rupert, and another Combat card for that battle I was able to gain the upper hand, as I chased Rupert back towards the Welsh border with him evading battle. Eventually he missed one, and he was also forced to disperse, leaving the southern Midlands under Parliamentary control.
By this time the second of the Mandatory cards had been played, and the Scots had started moving south, and had besieged Newcastle. However, this was a slow process as I used my big 3 Ops cards to get rid of Rupert, but got there eventually. They sat there as a threat, but no more, as I didn't draw any more big cards. Eric pushed in the North, but just couldn't gain a solid win, and the desertion rules saw his forces largely damaged as I was able to lose brigades from several armies, but his were more focussed.
In the early part of the Late War he pressed forward from Wales with Maurice, but the New Model Army appeared and Lord General Fairfax chased him back, and pressed into Wales, capturing Cardiff, and a part of Wales. This allowed the conversion of several other spaces in the Midlands, and it became controlled by Parliament.
And this was where we had to stop, 4 turns from the end. Parliament was marginally in control of the Midlands at the end of the turn, with the East and South being solidly for Parliament, but the start of the turn and removal of control markers for being isolated meant the Midlands were likely to also become solidly Parliamentarian. With the Royalists getting squeezed from the south and north I was confident of a win, even if I didn't force Charles to surrender.
We botched up a couple of rules, mostly that you can only recruit a single brigade in a region. I forget what the other one was. In any case, that's our fault, as the rules were quite clearly explained.
We played for around 4 hours, getting through 7 of the 11 turns, but that included a lot of rule confirming and discussions in the early part, as we got to grips with how it works. With more playings under the belt I think this should be doable in a 4 hour session, so a good length. With the variations in the way cards come out of the deck, and the 'Alt History' cards, only 4 of 12 are used each game, there appears to be a lot of re-playability. The game is certainly good to look at, with map and counters well done. I especially liked the pictures of the painted miniatures on the brigade counters, although they could have been larger, and would have looked great on 3/4" counters. The cards are also nice, but felt a little thin, although card sleeves make that a moot point. The rules were very straight forward in play and we didn't find any areas that weren't covered well or cases that were hard to find.
Overall, I really enjoyed this one, and it gave a good feel for the sweep of the ECW. However, that doesn't mean that I didn't find it hard to play, but that's just me and CDGs, and part of the reason I want to play more CDGs this year. Then again, that's part of the attraction of this style of game - so many things you want to do, and limited resources to do them with. Especially when you've got to figure out the list of things you need to do in the first place. Let's hope it gets back to the table soon.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Charles Should be Happier than He Is
Mike and I got the 2009 season of Two Side rolling with a look at GMT's new release Unhappy King Charles. This is one I'd been looking forward to for a while, and was pretty happy when it finally got released.
UKC was designed by Charles Vasey. This is Mr. Vasey's 2nd game on the English Civil War between the Royalists and Parliamentarians for control of England between 1641 and 1645. His first is the longer, and more detailed, King's War that was published a few years ago by Clash of Arms. I've got a copy of that one and would really like to get it on the table at some point.
Anyway, back to the game at hand. UKC is a card-driven wargame (CDG) that covers the entire English Civil War. As opposed to some of the more recent CDG releases, UKC is much further towards the simpler/shorter end of the scale. It's got a few features in it, however, that model the dynamics of 17th century warfare in ways I haven't seen in a CDG before.
The components are pretty standard GMT fare. Paper map (beautifully illustrated by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood) counters (mostly one sided) with a bit of a unique twist: instead of the Roger MacGowan artwork we've come to expect on GMT counters, these feature small photograph of painted miniatures illustrating the various brigades that took part in the war. I think these illustrations could have been a bit larger without crowding the counters at all. It's a nice idea – hopefully someone else picks up on it. The cards seemed a bit thin, but in sleeves it doesn't really matter. They're also attractively designed with some pretty good visual clues.
The way the cards are used harkens back to the original CDG, We the People. Cards are either events or operations, not both. If you're dealt an opponent's event, you can discard the card to act as a limited sort of 1-operation card. Operations are mostly used to activate generals with that strategy rating or lower, but can also be used for expanding political control either directly or through raids by Local Notables (a unique aspect to this game I'll get to in a bit.)
The turn sequence is your standard CDG fare – administrative stuff, action rounds, then cleanup/victory check. A few things within that distinguish this game from others, however. First, during the administrative stuff, units are recruited from a pool of available units. As C17 warfare was usually short-term and regional in nature, each region has a pool of units from which you can recruit, and you can only recruit one unit per region per turn. Placement of these units is handled slightly differently for each side, reflecting the differing nature in how the two sides were supported.
An interesting point to note here is you place your new recruits before you draw your hand for the turn.
This is also the point at which political control markers are checked for isolation. If they can't trace (avoiding enemy spaces) to a friendly army, supply fortress, or local notable, they're removed. Parliament removes first, and this might open up trace for the Royalists. This didn't happen in our game but is definitely possible. A strategy point to make here is that the ECW had no front lines. There were pockets of support for both sides all over the country. This means you will have what would be an isolated pocket in games set later on, but here if they surround a friendly trace point they carry on. This means there aren't very many “safe” areas on the map – nearly any spot you control is reachable by the enemy from somewhere.
After all that, it's time to draw your hand and start the action round. This runs typical to most CDGs with one minor difference – you can begin to pass if you have no mandatory or core cards in your hand, and you've played at least six cards (and cards played during combat count towards this amount.) Each side has two core cards, and is dealt four more cards each turn. Certain events allow you to draw cards, and you get to draw cards for major or decisive combat victories. At the end of the action rounds, any cards you may have left over are placed aside as “Ace in the Hole” cards which are not considered part of your hand, but may be played during any future action rounds. This allows you to sock away strength for a critical turn should you manage to acquire extra cards.
One other note about the deck – the game uses a single deck that's added to as the game progresses. I don't believe it's possible to end up reshuffling, so once a card is used, it's gone. The three mandatory events are placed at or near the top of the deck whenever the Early, Mid, or Late War decks are added, indicating the major milestones in the war: The Raising of the Standard starting hostilities, the appearance of the Covanenters from Scotland, and the creation of the New Model Army.
Combat is simple – it's a contested d6 die roll where the starting value is the combined combat value of the armies involved plus the battle rating of the commanding general. Combat cards can modify this initial amount. After adding your d6, if the totals are within one, the fight's a draw and each side must lose a veteran unit. If one side wins by 2-4, it's a minor victory, the losing side must lose a militia. A win by 5 or more is a major (decisive if a combat card converts it) victory and in addition to the losing side losing two militia, the winner draws one (or two) cards.
You'd think this would lead to the creation of large armies to go hunting, but large armies can only be led by a small number of generals, are harder to move (require 3-op cards), and suffer more attrition. So, if you're going to do that, do it when you know you've got a number of 3-op cards and don't expect the army to survive into next season.
After action rounds are over, the biggest thing that happens is attrition. This is a critical feature of the game. Between 1 and 3 units (starts with one slowly increasing to three as the game progresses) are removed from the board according to a certain priority. These tend to remove units from regional generals operating outside their region first, then large armies, then armies adjacent to enemy armies. If you're not familiar with these effects, you might be in for some nasty surprises. (Case in point: about halfway through the game Prince Rupert, while campaigning in the Midlands, saw his army go from four brigades to one in a single turn of attrition.)
It's probably important here to mention a key feature of the game: the only way units are permanently eliminated is via combat. (There may be an odd event here and there, but that's the exception.) Units removed during attrition or when dispersed (as an army can do when attacked by a superior force) are eligible to be recruited again in later turns. Mike and I fell into what's probably a common trap for people playing UKC the first time – fighting too much. In fact 2/3 of the way through the game, I was out of units to recruit in the North. You really can't afford to be constantly fighting in this game. Your armies are a means to an end, and what matters is getting political control markers placed and controlling regions.
An automatic victory occurs if one side drops below a required number of controlled spaces. (This starts at 14 and increases by one every turn.) It also happens if King Charles is ever forced to surrender. If the game goes the distance, the Protestants get two points for each of the five regions they control, and one point for each of the nine industrial spaces on the map. If they have 12 or more points, they win. No draw is possible.
Mike and I managed to get through seven of the 11 turns in the game in four hours. As much of the early game was spent verifying rules, etc, I can easily see this being a 3-4 hour game, if it goes the distance. I've got a fair bit more CDG experience than Mike so I was able to get into the flow a little quicker, but as neither of us had played a game quite like this one before, we weren't quite sure what we should be doing. Things started to click as time progressed, and we got through 7 turns. (The last turn we played was when the New Model Army appeared.) Mike made the final play, flipping a control marker in the Midlands. This gave him control of the Midlands, and added to the South and East plus 7 of the nine industrial spaces gave him 13 points, enough for a close win. However, it would have been very interesting to see what would have transpired in those final four turns. We were both critically short on units (I was down to seven total on the map, Mike had seven or eight plus the hard-to-control Scots. He had the New Model Army on the board, however, and it's a tough fighting force.
Our game saw a lot of fighting in the North. Charles never moved far from York, leaving the campaigning to Rupert. The Royalists (me) were ejected from the South relatively early on, making it very difficult for me to liberate those recruiting areas.
One thing I started to realize as we were nearing the end of the evening is that you almost have to look at this game backwards compared to other CDGs. In other games, you're dealing with the armies in order to achieve things on the map. In UKC, you're looking at the map and figuring out how and when to use your armies.
I really enjoyed my initial experience with UKC. While there are a number of exceptions in the rules, they really are rather simple as CDGs go. It's getting used to the fluid situation that's presented that will take time and experience. The initial buzz on this game has been very strong, and it doesn't disappoint. I'm looking forward to getting a lot of experience with this game, and it could quickly become my favorite two-player CDG.
UKC was designed by Charles Vasey. This is Mr. Vasey's 2nd game on the English Civil War between the Royalists and Parliamentarians for control of England between 1641 and 1645. His first is the longer, and more detailed, King's War that was published a few years ago by Clash of Arms. I've got a copy of that one and would really like to get it on the table at some point.
Anyway, back to the game at hand. UKC is a card-driven wargame (CDG) that covers the entire English Civil War. As opposed to some of the more recent CDG releases, UKC is much further towards the simpler/shorter end of the scale. It's got a few features in it, however, that model the dynamics of 17th century warfare in ways I haven't seen in a CDG before.
The components are pretty standard GMT fare. Paper map (beautifully illustrated by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood) counters (mostly one sided) with a bit of a unique twist: instead of the Roger MacGowan artwork we've come to expect on GMT counters, these feature small photograph of painted miniatures illustrating the various brigades that took part in the war. I think these illustrations could have been a bit larger without crowding the counters at all. It's a nice idea – hopefully someone else picks up on it. The cards seemed a bit thin, but in sleeves it doesn't really matter. They're also attractively designed with some pretty good visual clues.
The way the cards are used harkens back to the original CDG, We the People. Cards are either events or operations, not both. If you're dealt an opponent's event, you can discard the card to act as a limited sort of 1-operation card. Operations are mostly used to activate generals with that strategy rating or lower, but can also be used for expanding political control either directly or through raids by Local Notables (a unique aspect to this game I'll get to in a bit.)
The turn sequence is your standard CDG fare – administrative stuff, action rounds, then cleanup/victory check. A few things within that distinguish this game from others, however. First, during the administrative stuff, units are recruited from a pool of available units. As C17 warfare was usually short-term and regional in nature, each region has a pool of units from which you can recruit, and you can only recruit one unit per region per turn. Placement of these units is handled slightly differently for each side, reflecting the differing nature in how the two sides were supported.
An interesting point to note here is you place your new recruits before you draw your hand for the turn.
This is also the point at which political control markers are checked for isolation. If they can't trace (avoiding enemy spaces) to a friendly army, supply fortress, or local notable, they're removed. Parliament removes first, and this might open up trace for the Royalists. This didn't happen in our game but is definitely possible. A strategy point to make here is that the ECW had no front lines. There were pockets of support for both sides all over the country. This means you will have what would be an isolated pocket in games set later on, but here if they surround a friendly trace point they carry on. This means there aren't very many “safe” areas on the map – nearly any spot you control is reachable by the enemy from somewhere.
After all that, it's time to draw your hand and start the action round. This runs typical to most CDGs with one minor difference – you can begin to pass if you have no mandatory or core cards in your hand, and you've played at least six cards (and cards played during combat count towards this amount.) Each side has two core cards, and is dealt four more cards each turn. Certain events allow you to draw cards, and you get to draw cards for major or decisive combat victories. At the end of the action rounds, any cards you may have left over are placed aside as “Ace in the Hole” cards which are not considered part of your hand, but may be played during any future action rounds. This allows you to sock away strength for a critical turn should you manage to acquire extra cards.
One other note about the deck – the game uses a single deck that's added to as the game progresses. I don't believe it's possible to end up reshuffling, so once a card is used, it's gone. The three mandatory events are placed at or near the top of the deck whenever the Early, Mid, or Late War decks are added, indicating the major milestones in the war: The Raising of the Standard starting hostilities, the appearance of the Covanenters from Scotland, and the creation of the New Model Army.
Combat is simple – it's a contested d6 die roll where the starting value is the combined combat value of the armies involved plus the battle rating of the commanding general. Combat cards can modify this initial amount. After adding your d6, if the totals are within one, the fight's a draw and each side must lose a veteran unit. If one side wins by 2-4, it's a minor victory, the losing side must lose a militia. A win by 5 or more is a major (decisive if a combat card converts it) victory and in addition to the losing side losing two militia, the winner draws one (or two) cards.
You'd think this would lead to the creation of large armies to go hunting, but large armies can only be led by a small number of generals, are harder to move (require 3-op cards), and suffer more attrition. So, if you're going to do that, do it when you know you've got a number of 3-op cards and don't expect the army to survive into next season.
After action rounds are over, the biggest thing that happens is attrition. This is a critical feature of the game. Between 1 and 3 units (starts with one slowly increasing to three as the game progresses) are removed from the board according to a certain priority. These tend to remove units from regional generals operating outside their region first, then large armies, then armies adjacent to enemy armies. If you're not familiar with these effects, you might be in for some nasty surprises. (Case in point: about halfway through the game Prince Rupert, while campaigning in the Midlands, saw his army go from four brigades to one in a single turn of attrition.)
It's probably important here to mention a key feature of the game: the only way units are permanently eliminated is via combat. (There may be an odd event here and there, but that's the exception.) Units removed during attrition or when dispersed (as an army can do when attacked by a superior force) are eligible to be recruited again in later turns. Mike and I fell into what's probably a common trap for people playing UKC the first time – fighting too much. In fact 2/3 of the way through the game, I was out of units to recruit in the North. You really can't afford to be constantly fighting in this game. Your armies are a means to an end, and what matters is getting political control markers placed and controlling regions.
An automatic victory occurs if one side drops below a required number of controlled spaces. (This starts at 14 and increases by one every turn.) It also happens if King Charles is ever forced to surrender. If the game goes the distance, the Protestants get two points for each of the five regions they control, and one point for each of the nine industrial spaces on the map. If they have 12 or more points, they win. No draw is possible.
Mike and I managed to get through seven of the 11 turns in the game in four hours. As much of the early game was spent verifying rules, etc, I can easily see this being a 3-4 hour game, if it goes the distance. I've got a fair bit more CDG experience than Mike so I was able to get into the flow a little quicker, but as neither of us had played a game quite like this one before, we weren't quite sure what we should be doing. Things started to click as time progressed, and we got through 7 turns. (The last turn we played was when the New Model Army appeared.) Mike made the final play, flipping a control marker in the Midlands. This gave him control of the Midlands, and added to the South and East plus 7 of the nine industrial spaces gave him 13 points, enough for a close win. However, it would have been very interesting to see what would have transpired in those final four turns. We were both critically short on units (I was down to seven total on the map, Mike had seven or eight plus the hard-to-control Scots. He had the New Model Army on the board, however, and it's a tough fighting force.
Our game saw a lot of fighting in the North. Charles never moved far from York, leaving the campaigning to Rupert. The Royalists (me) were ejected from the South relatively early on, making it very difficult for me to liberate those recruiting areas.
One thing I started to realize as we were nearing the end of the evening is that you almost have to look at this game backwards compared to other CDGs. In other games, you're dealing with the armies in order to achieve things on the map. In UKC, you're looking at the map and figuring out how and when to use your armies.
I really enjoyed my initial experience with UKC. While there are a number of exceptions in the rules, they really are rather simple as CDGs go. It's getting used to the fluid situation that's presented that will take time and experience. The initial buzz on this game has been very strong, and it doesn't disappoint. I'm looking forward to getting a lot of experience with this game, and it could quickly become my favorite two-player CDG.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Happy Holidays!
Hope this post finds you in good spirits (literally if you'd like) and that the holiday season is going well for you.
Weather, family, and the holidays ended our Two Sides gaming a little earlier than expected this year, but we'll be cranking things back up next week with a look at Unhappy King Charles, the latest CDG from GMT Games covering the English Civil War. Designer Charles Vasey is a bit of an expert on the conflict, and it will likely lead to Mike and I taking a look at his earlier (and more detailed) effort The King's War.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Weather, family, and the holidays ended our Two Sides gaming a little earlier than expected this year, but we'll be cranking things back up next week with a look at Unhappy King Charles, the latest CDG from GMT Games covering the English Civil War. Designer Charles Vasey is a bit of an expert on the conflict, and it will likely lead to Mike and I taking a look at his earlier (and more detailed) effort The King's War.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Friday, December 12, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Back and Forth Across the Marne
Over the last two weeks, Mike and I have continued our Rock of the Marne campaign. We're through 12 turns at this point – just three more to go. To date, we've been playing for around 10 hours with another half hour for setup. Now, there's definitely been some extra time spent on getting your head back into the game than had we been doing this all in one sitting, but it's still probably a 10 hour game when all's said and done.
My last post covered us through turn 3. That is mid-day on July 16. (Each turn is 1/2 day.) On July 18 (GT 7) the Allies began a large counter-attack that eventually ended up pushing the German force back to their starting points, and destroyed much of what was left of the forces in that area.
Our game has deviated from history a fair amount, and the last three turns are going to prove which directions things fall.
This image shows how the historical counter-attack happened. The solid red line is the front on the morning of July 18 (turn 7). I've drawn three sets of lines on this graphic.
The black box is the approximate map area the game covers.
The blue line is through the first three turns. You'll see it pretty much matches up with where things should have been after six turns.
The green line is through twelve turns. I've effectively created two salients that have seriously exposed flanks. This should roughly correlate to the red dotted line on the map. You can see I've continued to push in the southwest and southeast, but am getting pushed back much harder in the west than actually happened.
To what can this be attributed? Well, a number of factors. First off, the majority of German VP hexes are at the southern edge of the map. 15 of 26 points, IIRC. Historically, the Germans never came close to any of them. As I've maintained the offensive across the Marne, that meant I didn't have the resources to also put up a strong defense in the western trenches – therefore I abandoned them and attempted to set up a defense further east. Mike has spent a good portion of the last four turns chasing me across the northwest sector of the map. Our final session will pick up with him catching me as I can't afford to give up any more VP spaces running away.
In the southeast, I've taken Chalons and now have to hold it against a British relief force.
The other concern I've got is holding western bridges across the Marne river. As each bridge can only support one HQ, it's imperative to me to hold them. At the offensive's peak, I held seven bridges. I'm now down to three (though I may be getting one back this turn.) That's not enough to maintain all the HQs that have moved south, so I either need to pull someone back or take more space.
The latter is becoming more difficult as to attack, you need attack supply. To get attack supply, you must have replenished HQs. To replenish an HQ, it must be in supply, and you have to roll higher than your supply number each turn. For the last 1/3-1/2 of the game, that number is an 8 for the Germans. That means I have to roll a 9 or higher on two dice to get attacks supplied by that HQ. Not easy, and in fact on one turn (either turn 10 or 11) I whiffed on ever single roll.
Here's the current board position from the Allied perspective after 12 turns.
West
Center
East
I'll wait until next week to post my full thoughts on the game.
My last post covered us through turn 3. That is mid-day on July 16. (Each turn is 1/2 day.) On July 18 (GT 7) the Allies began a large counter-attack that eventually ended up pushing the German force back to their starting points, and destroyed much of what was left of the forces in that area.
Our game has deviated from history a fair amount, and the last three turns are going to prove which directions things fall.
This image shows how the historical counter-attack happened. The solid red line is the front on the morning of July 18 (turn 7). I've drawn three sets of lines on this graphic.
The black box is the approximate map area the game covers.
The blue line is through the first three turns. You'll see it pretty much matches up with where things should have been after six turns.
The green line is through twelve turns. I've effectively created two salients that have seriously exposed flanks. This should roughly correlate to the red dotted line on the map. You can see I've continued to push in the southwest and southeast, but am getting pushed back much harder in the west than actually happened.
To what can this be attributed? Well, a number of factors. First off, the majority of German VP hexes are at the southern edge of the map. 15 of 26 points, IIRC. Historically, the Germans never came close to any of them. As I've maintained the offensive across the Marne, that meant I didn't have the resources to also put up a strong defense in the western trenches – therefore I abandoned them and attempted to set up a defense further east. Mike has spent a good portion of the last four turns chasing me across the northwest sector of the map. Our final session will pick up with him catching me as I can't afford to give up any more VP spaces running away.
In the southeast, I've taken Chalons and now have to hold it against a British relief force.
The other concern I've got is holding western bridges across the Marne river. As each bridge can only support one HQ, it's imperative to me to hold them. At the offensive's peak, I held seven bridges. I'm now down to three (though I may be getting one back this turn.) That's not enough to maintain all the HQs that have moved south, so I either need to pull someone back or take more space.
The latter is becoming more difficult as to attack, you need attack supply. To get attack supply, you must have replenished HQs. To replenish an HQ, it must be in supply, and you have to roll higher than your supply number each turn. For the last 1/3-1/2 of the game, that number is an 8 for the Germans. That means I have to roll a 9 or higher on two dice to get attacks supplied by that HQ. Not easy, and in fact on one turn (either turn 10 or 11) I whiffed on ever single roll.
Here's the current board position from the Allied perspective after 12 turns.
West
Center
East
I'll wait until next week to post my full thoughts on the game.
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