C&C:Nappy again

Eric's choice again, and he wanted to revisit GMT's Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, specifically the new Spanish expansion, which adds the, umm, Spanish to the British, French, and Portuguese from the original game. I'm rather partial to C&C:N, having played it with Eric previously, although it was never blogged, so I was more than happy to give it a whirl.

Not a great deal in the way of new rules, the biggest is the addition of rules for the Spanish guerrillas, which allow the Spanish player to get chits which may be played to cancel the French player's card, effectively making him miss a turn. The Spanish themselves are just slightly weaker than the British or French, and retreating further when required.

Eric picked the Espinosa de los Monteros scenario, and off we went, with me taking the British/Spanish. I started with a slight push on the right, with a combined British/Spanish force, immediately taking effective fire. This must have caused casualties in the leadership of those units, as they were paralyzed into inaction, and were manhandled by the French. (I didn't get any more 'Right' cards until half way the game.) He jumped out to an early lead in flags.

Instead I started on the left flank, achieving some success in wrecking his right. However, my cavalry advance didn't go so well, and I had to retire with a single block remaining from my two units. I also made a good push in the middle, taking some good ground, and killing units. Eric reinforced from his left, and I had to retire to better ground.

By this time we were at 6 flags each, needing 7 for the win. I had a good artillery card, but was waiting for a good opportunity to use it on a weak unit. That opportunity never came, however, as Eric always had his weakened units screened by strong units. In the end, I decided to risk all, as I played a cavalry charge with my single remaining block, and was able to successfully attack an infantry unit, also with a single block, for the final winning flag.

It was still early in the evening, so we switched it around, and had another go.

This time I played it very conservatively as the French, trying to suck the Spanish on my left into my units in good terrain, having a couple of good defensive cards in hand. However, Eric wasn't having any of that, and gave me no opportunities, playing it equally cautiously.

Instead I tried to press in the middle, scoring some good hits to start with, but then my fire failed completely, as I scored no hits in 10 dice (!). At that point I decided to retire to ensure I didn't lose units, even though he was also weak.

Eric had tried a little advance on his left, but his Spanish militia didn't fare well, leaving a couple of units with only a single block. Eventually I found 2 Cavalry Charge cards in my hand, and I maneuvered my cavalry over to my right, where they were unleashed to devastating effect on the weakened units on that flank, managing to eliminate the 4 units required for the win in a combination of attacks and breakthrough combats.

After this session, I don't think my attitude to C&C:N has changed any. I still think this is my favorite of all the C&C flavors I've played. The continual tweaking that the system has seen has brought it to a pinnacle, removing a few of my little annoyances. e.g. units now reduce the dice they roll in combat as they suffer losses - far better. Whilst I've always enjoyed C&C:Ancients, it's always felt very light and short on the simulation front. C&C:N has rectified that, such that it now feels like a war-game; a highly abstracted one, yes, but certainly a game where you are rewarded for applying general military principles. In an abstract way. Yep, several thumbs up here.

FAB: Siciliy

Eric's choice again, and he decided that next on the table would be the recent release from GMT, FAB: Siciliy, the second in the Fast Action Battles series, the first being FAB: Bulge, which I'm rather fond of after a couple of excellent games.

The first thing to note is that the rules have changed very little from the first game in the series. Although I hadn't played FAB:B for a year or so, the mechanisms came back quickly, and we didn't have to do much rule referring pretty quickly.

Additions to the FAB: Bulge rules are fairly minimal. Some rules for landings, and for the wobbly Italian morale, but that’s about it. Air units have been moved from distinct units to become assets, so they’re handled as part of the standard rules. Overall, pretty easy to play, and the rules are well presented, and thorough. Once you’ve been through the move/combat processes it sticks in the brain quite easily.

We spent an evening getting back into the FAB ruleset, playing the tournament scenario, then played the full campaign game over another couple of shortish evenings. Perhaps 5 hours for the full game, with a little rules confirmation and kibitzing. That first game played pretty quickly, although I was a trifle concerned that it was rather easy for the Allies to win. 

The Axis player has 8VPs at the start of the game: 5 from areas that score for both players (Termini Imerese, Caltanissetta, Catania, Val di Catania, and Niscemi); and 3 that only score for the Axis player (Syracuse, Palermo, Marsala). The Allied player has 0VPs at start. 1VP is also awarded for killing any large block, one that starts the game with 3 or more steps. The current victory level is determined by subtracting the higher score from the lower, so the Axis player starts with a net 8VP lead. So, for example, if the Allied player captures Niscemi, the score is 7VPs to 1VP, for a net Axis lead of 6VPs.

In the tournament scenario, the Allied player wins if the net score is 3VPs to the Axis player, or less, after 5 turns. Capturing Syracuse is 1VP, and Niscemi and Val di Catania are 2VPs each (1 lost by the Axis player and 1 gained by the Allied player). So, capturing those 3 areas give an Allied victory. Given that the British land in Syracuse, Niscemi is adjacent to Gela, an Allied landing area, and Val di Catania is only 2 areas from Syracuse, it doesn't appear too hard.

And indeed it wasn't. By the end of the 3rd turn (I think it was) my Allies had already done enough for the victory. The last couple of turns were just playing it out. The Allies have the stronger force, better assets, and a higher replacement rate. The Axis have a couple of good German blocks, but mostly just weak Italian garrison blocks. I don't recall any outrageous fortune on either side.

For the full campaign game we switched sides, but the outcome was pretty much the same. Requiring to get a net score in their favor to win, the Allies took Syracuse and Niscemi quickly. However, they had trouble getting into Val di Catania as I rolled like a demon with the strong forces there, rolling above average to score 5 or 6 hits in his first couple of attempts, and Eric chose to call off the attack rather than take the large losses.

By the time it fell during turn 6, Eric had also captured Caltanissetta and killed an Italian large block. That made the scores 4VPs against 4VPs, for a net 0VP, meaning Eric had 3 turns to score a single VP for the win.

There then followed 3 turns of ‘find the weak block’, which Eric totally failed at, as I successfully played a shell game. He also attacked into Catania, but, once again, I rolled well in my defenses and repulsed him each time. In the final turn it came down to Eric needing to roll 5 hits in 8 dice on a 50/50 chance in his at ton Catania. For pretty much the first time in the game he got the roll, captured Catania, as well as removing a large block, swinging the score by 3 VPs for a Decisive Victory.

I have several issues with the game.

Despite rolling like a demon for most of the game, the Axis still lost. If I’d been rolling averagely, the Allies would have captured Val di Catania, and been attacking Catania, a turn or two earlier, and won that much sooner. Eric rolled on or below average for most of the game. If he’d been on average, he would likely have killed more blocks and won that way. Yes, it was very close in the end, and Eric pretty much won with a Hail Mary, but if he'd been able to guess where my weak blocks were, and roll average on his attacks, he would have found the required VP there. The balance of luck was with the Axis, and they still lost. After just I single play I can’t say the game is unbalanced, but I’m sure not able to see how the Axis can win. They have to protect the VP areas, but doing that loses blocks, so they lose either way.

The second issue is that the game is very small. The British zone from Catania north is 1 area wide, and only 2 areas wide below that, so they have no real maneuver options. The US forces have more room to maneuver, but won’t get too far given the length of the game. Generally, the US has a choice of one or two areas to attack in, sometimes not even that. The only real choices are in the shuffling of the blocks, and how to assign assets, not in any choice of strategy.

Another issue is the VPs for large blocks losses. At the end of the game, I’ve seen it devolve into a search for the weak units for that final VP, quite common in our FAB:B games. Just feels a little off.

And that brings me to the biggest challenge I have with the game; it doesn’t cover the whole Sicily campaign, stopping about half way to the actual German withdrawal. That leaves an odd taste to the game; just as you think it’s getting interesting, it’s over. The US forces never get a real chance to drive to Palermo and capture the island; the Axis never really have to play a fighting withdrawal. The campaign just feels half done.

Overall, the FAB system works, and it’s a cool system, I like it. But Sicily just doesn’t work as well as Bulge, Not enough options, too small an area, not enough play, and it’s over before it gets interesting. I think I’d play it again, as with familiarity of the rules you can fit it into an evening, so it’s a good length, but I’d far prefer to play FAB: Bulge.

Resisting Combat Commander

After a long period of time when we were playing long games that weren't really conducive to blogging, we've decided to get back to shorter stuff and resuscitating the blog. There's been a lot of OCS played this year, in fact we've played pretty much nothing else for most of this year, most recently play testing a new, smaller OCS game on Operation Exporter. That's been an interesting experience, one I'm prepared to take on again, and I hope that our input was useful.

With a plethora of choices available, Eric wanted to try the latest release in the long (and getting longer) list of titles in the Combat Commander franchise, CC: Resistance (BGG entry), from GMT. Previous readers of this blog will already know that this is a game that I have a love/hate relationship with. I kinda love it, I think it comes closest of all the tactical games I've played in portraying the chaos of combat, but it just hates me back. Outrageous things happen in a lot of the games, and I'm (mostly) on the receiving end. In fact Chuck has now referred to it as 'Mike's ugly girlfriend' game (in homage to 'Chuck's ugly girlfriend', a reference to Twilight Struggle), and he refuses to play it with me any more, on the grounds that just too much outrageous wackiness happens, and it's no fun to play. And yet I keep coming back to it.

So, what's new in this incarnation?

• Partians have their own deck, which has only 36 cards, rather than 72, so time triggers happen quickly
• When discarding, the Partisan player has to discard his entire hand
• Partisan leaders don't have a leadership range, but can command all units within LoS
• Partisan units can grow a step in size with Muster orders - from a 2-man Crew to a 6-man Gang; however, the Fire strength + Movement Points always total 7, so as it gets larger, with more Fire strength, it gets less mobile
• Reinforcements appear by use of the Infiltrate order, which costs 0-3 VPs to play, and are placed on the Time Track rather than directly on the map; so the partisan player doesn't know when they will appear
• Reinforcements are decided by a draw from the Force Deck, which gives two options on the reinforcements; so the partisan player doesn't know what will appear
• Reinforcements appear at a Sighting marker, and each time a Random Hex draw is made, a Sighting marker must be moved to, or adjacent to, the random hex; so the partisan player doesn't know where they will appear
• When a Partisan unit is eliminated by a second break, a card is drawn from the Force Deck; if the unit symbol at the bottom of the card is a smaller force than unit on the map, the unit on the map is replaced, still broken, by the smaller unit, and no VP is lost; if not, it is removed to the VP track, for the loss of 1VP, regardless of the unit

As might be expected from GMT, production is good. Maps, counters, rule book, all look very professionally done, and up to the expected standard. The one omission, that I found to be annoying, is that there is no summary card included for the new Partisan deck, so you have to memorize the distribution of the cards - Orders, Actions.

What must also be mentioned is that CC:R continues the CC tradition of having the tightest set of rules of any game I have played. I have yet to encounter any game situation or question that isn't clearly covered in the ruleset. Given some of the rules abominations we've had the privilege to encounter (yes, Prussia's Defiant Stand, I'm looking at you), this is little short of remarkable.

In our game Eric had chosen scenario #72, and I was randomly assigned the Resistance. I'd only had the chance to briefly flick over the rules, and that bit me in the first card draw, as I discarded my hand of 2 Recover cards, a Command Confusion, and an Infiltrate-0. I drew an Infiltrate-2 card, then decided to check on the rule retail, to find that the card I'd just discarded would have given me reinforcements for a 0VP cost. Oops.

There were a lot of pot shots in the early game, to no effect, and it took half way through my deck before I found a Move order, having previously found a single Advance order, so I was very slow to get moving towards the VP objectives. In the meantime, Eric had been moving forward, and had occupied 2 of the 3 objectives. With his lead units.

I eventually managed to grind him down, timed a couple of reinforcements (playing an Infiltrate order with only a few cards left in my draw pile, so I knew when/where they would appear), and at the high point I had control of all 5 objectives on the map, due to Infiltrating into his back field, with 11VPs in my favor. Then, as might be expected, it all went south.

I missed the draw for ending the game in turn 7 (requiring a 6 or less, I didn't think it was worth the Initiative card), and then we traded rolls at the end of turn 8 as the Initiative card went back and forth several times before Eric drew two cards higher than 7 in a row. Drat. From there he used his big group to take back one objective, killed a few units in Melee, and then managed to rout a unit off the map. (It had missed 4-5 Recover attempts, needing 6-7, and drew 9, 9, and 11 in his Rout attempts. Pfft.

With hands full of Command confusion, Artillery Denied, and Infiltrate cards, I couldn't find a way to get the single VP required, and the game ended at the end of turn 9 on the first draw.

Other points of note: I managed to get 3 '10' strength Fire attacks in the game, and rolled 4, 4, and 5; I used both Molotovs, 12 strength attacks, and they both failed; Eric got a reinforcement, choosing the IG, which then fired at range 4, drawing snake-eys to miss, jam, and then was removed on a subsequent Random Hex roll.

That's probably the closest CC game I've had, I think. Whilst it's easy to view the failure to Recover that unit, and the Rout draws, as the game loser, failing to recognize that the Partisan units don't want to go toe-to-toe with the German units was the real game-losing mistake. I should have been pulling back away from him, in order to not give him the Melee attempt. Ho hum, lesson learned.

We missed the rule that the Partisans only spend 1 MP per hex, which would have helped me a fair bit, and that eliminated Partisan units are removed from the game, not that it had any impact. And I didn't grok the Partisan Leader LoS command rule for some reason. It's pretty clear in the rulebook, I just couldn't get it into my thick head. So I wasn't making the best possible use of my Move/Advance cards.

Overall, an excellent expansion. With the Force Deck and Infiltrate mechanism, the Partisan player doesn't know what he's going to have to play with, and that seems realistic.

So, if you like CC, you'll totally groove on this latest addition to the family.

The sound of giants clashing

Our latest game has been GMT's Clash of Giants II (BGG entry), the Galicia scenario in particular. On reading through the rules for this one I was concerned that it was simple. Bordering on simplistic. 2 unit stacking; ZoC stop movement; regular terrain effects; combat has retreats and step losses; supply lines. Nothing that the average gamer hasn't seen before. Meh.

The only thing that is at all different is combat resolution. Odds are calculated as normal, but that's where normality stops. Instead of a Combat Results Table, the odds give modifiers. Each unit has a performance rating, and has to roll that or less to not suffer a step loss and, for the defender, a retreat. This roll is modified from the combat odds, a 2-1 giving the attacker a +1 and the defender a -1, 3-1 makes it +2/-2, etc. The modified die roll is compared to the unit's rating, and if it's lower then the unit suffers no effects from the combat. If it's higher, the unit suffers a step loss, and the difference between is how far the unit (if defending) has to retreat.

So, as the ratio goes up, it's more likely that the defender will suffer losses, and vice versa for the attacker. There is also a limit on the number of attacking units that need to roll at the larger odds. However, the effect is that one side could roll badly and lose steps from all units in the combat, and the other side nothing. A regular CRT would probably limit those losses. Still, interesting.

The only other tweak is that where there are multiple hexes of attackers, then all enemy stacks adjacent have to be attacked. A single attacking stack can ignore other adjacent enemy stacks.

Like I said, simple, bordering on simplistic. So what makes the game? There are 3 components that make this worth playing.

The first is that it uses chits to determine the order that the armies play in. This introduces an element of uncertainty on how your plans are going to pan out. I'm generally a fan of chit pull games, so this is a good thing. Also, as the chit is drawn you roll to see how many movement points the army gets, from 2-6.

Next is when you do combat. You get one combat phase per turn, but you can take it after any of your chit draws. Do you do combat now, or wait for the other army to get into position? If the opposing army moves, it could move away from contact and you'll have no combat to perform.

The third aspect is that each player has two offensives, which gives a 1-column combat ratio improvement for each combat. These happen at various times for the players, and each can be taken in one of a range of turns, generally earlier in the game for the Austria-Hungary player, and later for the Russian.

And those 3 factors make the game. The order of the chit draws provides for a lot of angst on how to move and when to perform combat. Throw in the offensives and it gets even more factors to think about.

In our play the first evening saw Eric withdraw quickly on his northern front, but my opposing army kept rolling low for MPs, and couldn't keep contact. I pressed hard in the middle, and Eric did the same in the south.

The second evening saw the decisive action as the combat rolls went my way in pretty much every combat in turns 6 and 7. My concerns about the combat results came home to roost, and they bit Eric hard. I pretty much had no losses, while he lost steps from pretty much every unit fighting.

By the end I'd maxed out my allowed VPs and Eric had barely made any headway on getting to his main VP areas, for a major A-H win.

Ultimately this is like most games that use lots of dice. If the distribution stays reasonable then it's an interesting game. But those dice can have a very wide bell curve, and if it heads to an extreme then it's not much fun for the player on the receiving end, and there is little you can do to prevent it. Even if you stack up the combat odds, your opponent could roll snakes and you roll boxcars, unlike a normal CRT where you can often guarantee that you don't lose.

Now this would be an issue in a longer game, but CoGII doesn't outstay its welcome. We played over two evenings, probably for about 5.5 hours. Part of that time was looking up a couple of rules, and part kibitzing, so I'd reckon that 4 hours might be achievable with experienced players. So, overall, I enjoyed CoGII, and I'd be happy to play it again. It's a good length, and there are enough interesting decisions to make. But watch out for those dice.

Washington wins his war - again

As promised last week, on the table this time was Washington's War (BGG entry) from GMT, a remake of the old Avalon Hill game, We The People (BGG entry). I'd never played the original before, but had played WW once with Chris B, but it was far enough back that I don't recall a huge deal about it. I think I played the Americans, and I recorded that Chris won, but that's about it.

Looking at the game itself first, like C&C:Nappy from last week, it's a great production. A sumptuous hard board worthy of any Euro game, a good deck of cards and some colorful pieces. There are two sets of counters provided for the generals - large ones that fit in the provided stands, and smaller ones like more traditional war-game counters. More pieces for the combat strength points (CUs) and double sided Political Control (PC) markers. There are also some area control markers, some of which were printed with the same nationality on both sides of the counter, which means that you can't correctly mark control of the areas if one side gets more than 8 areas. Replacement counters were provided in their magazine, C3i, but they're of the smaller 1/2" size. OK, that's a minor issue, but still a trifle annoying. All well and good so far, then, but how does it play?

Let's start with a brief overview of the basic mechanisms for those of you unfamiliar with this CDG. The map features 14 Areas (the 13 Colonies plus Canada), with each area containing a number of Spaces. These Spaces are connected by lines which allow movement between the Spaces. There are three types of cards; Event cards; Battle cards; and Operation Cards (Ops), which have a number from 1-3. Each player is dealt a hand of 7 at the start of each game turn, and they take turns to play an Ops or Event card, with the American player deciding who plays first (unless the British player has a Campaign Event card, and chooses to reveal it). In CDG terms it's closer to Unhappy King Charles (BGG entry) than WW2: Barbarossa to Berlin (BGG entry), where the cards have both Ops and Events, and you choose to use one or the other.

An Event card allows the player to take a special action as detailed on the cards, which may allow the placement or removal of one or more Political Control (PC) markers, or other special event to occur, including activating multiple generals in a play (Campaign). These are separated by nationality, and getting a hand of your opponent's event cards is not good as they can only be used for very limited actions.

An Ops card allows you to do one of several things; place PC markers; take reinforcements; or move a general/army. The first are used to take control of Spaces, with each of the 13 Colonies (plus Canada) having a varying number of Spaces. The player with the most controlled Spaces has control of the Colony. What's interesting here is that the placement rules are asymmetrical, with the British player needing to place PC markers adjacent to an existing PC, but the American player can place them in any empty Space. Both players may place a PC marker in a Space occupied by a friendly army, removing any opposing PC marker.

Reinforcements are also asymmetrical. The British player gets a varying number of CUs by game turn (listed on the game turn track, e.g. 3 in GT1, 8 in GT2, 1 in GT3), but they are placed in a Reinforcement box, and once during the game turn may move any number of CUs from the box to a port, along with a general. Do do this, however, the player must play an Ops card of any value. The American player, however, can receive reinforcements up to twice per turn, again paying an Ops card to do so, but receives CUs to the value of the Ops card each time, and they can be placed in any single space not containing a British playing piece. A general may also be placed at the same time.

Finally, the Ops card may be used to activate a general, but the Ops card value must be equal to or higher than the general's Strategy Rating. Most of the American generals have a value of 1, so any Ops card can be used, but most of the British generals have a 3 rating so they are harder to get moving.

Battles are fairly abstracted, and occur when an army moves into the Space occupied by an opposing army. The Americans may attempt to intercept a British army moving into an adjacent Space, as well as evade combat, at the cost of retreating and giving up the Space. If a battle does occur, each side calculates their strength - the number of CUs, plus modifiers for control of the Colony (militia), if it's a port Space (for the British player - British Navy intervention), British regulars, and play of a Battle card - which gives a +2. There is also a modifier for the Battle Rating of the general (which are from 1-6), but the actual rating may be either full or half, depending on a die roll for that battle (1-3 = half; 4-6=full), but may never be more than the number of CUs in the army. To this total is added a d6 die roll for each side, and the player with the higher grand total wins the battle. The loser of the battle has to retreat one space, and loses a variable number of CUs (1-3=1; 4-5=2; 6=3), and the winner may lose a CU based on the Agility Rating of the opposing general and a die roll (AR3:1-4; AR2:1-3; AR1:1-2). Battles are the biggest change from the original version of the game, which used battle cards in the same manner as Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage (BGG entry).

The end of each turn has a supply/attrition phase, where isolated PC markers are removed, each British army north of the wintering line loses half its CUs if not in a wintering space, and all American armies lose a CU (except for any army with Washington). The French may also come in on the side of the Americans.

The game ends at the end of the ninth turn (1783), unless a special Event card is played, which makes the game end earlier, representing the fall of the British government. There are 5 such cards in the game, and they have to be played as events, they may not be discarded, and they cause the game to end either in 1779, 1780, 1781, 1782, or 1783, i.e the game may be as short as 5 turns or run as long as the full 9 turns. Having a majority of the spaces in a Colony gives the player control of the Colony, and the winner is the player with control of the most Colonies.

In our game my opening hand consisted of 2 2Ops cards, a 1Ops card, a British Event card, 2 American Event cards, and an American Battle card. Not exactly a great starting hand. Eric opened by using Washington to attack my single general on the map, Howe. With both armies having 5CUs, he gained the advantage with a full Battle Rating to my half, and the die rolls gave him the battle win. To exacerbate the result, my roll caused 2CU losses, but despite facing Howe's 3 Agility Rating he did not suffer any CU losses.

This gave me 3 problems; Howe is now in a non-wintering space, so will suffer attrition in the winter; as Howe has a Strategy Rating of 3, I have no Ops cards to activate him with; and I'm at risk from Washington attacking again and totally eliminating Howe. If I reinforce Howe with my 3CUs available in the reinforcement box I'll probably persuade Washington not to attack, but I'm going to lose half of them to winter attrition. In the end I choose to place PC markers in the south, taking away the American control. We jockey back and fore for control for the rest of the turn, and I use the 1Ops card to bring in an army in the south, and I lose 1CU from Howe from attrition in the wintering phase.

The second turn sees the British get 8CUs in reinforcements, and with a pair of 3Ops cards in hand I use my one reinforcement action to boost Howe with a 1Ops card. I then try to hunt down an American army, but he successfully evades (required 1-4 on d6). At this point I make a really stupid mistake, using my other 3Ops card to place PC markers, forgetting that Howe is still on a non-wintering space, so he loses another 2CUs to attrition at the end of the turn.

In the third turn Eric chooses to move first before I can get Howe out of harm's way, and pounds him good. I place a new army in New York Colony to try to cause a diversion, but Eric isn't falling for it, and over the two actions Howe's lost his army and is removed from the board. He then moves to block my army I just placed, while I can to little but place PC markers and actually gain control of a couple more Colonies. We'd missed placing the extra cards (the Declaration of Independence and Benjamin Franklin) into the deck on the second turn so shuffled them at the start of this turn, and Eric immediately draws both of them. The former allows him to place a PC marker in each Colony, swinging the balance to him. (I think that put it at 7-6 Colonies in his favor.), and the latter moves the French intervention marker 4 spaces up the track. (There are 10 spaces on the track, and it moves forward for each battle won by the Americans.) With all the battles I'd lost this was enough to have French intervention at the end of the turn.

However, I also had drawn one of the Special Event cards that indicates the fall of the British government in 1780, which shortens the game by 3 turns. Even worse, Eric had drawn the card that ends the game in 1779, meaning that the game will end in the earliest possible turn and there are only 2 more turns to play, unless another Special Event card is drawn.

The fourth turn sees me draw another four American Event Cards, a 3Ops, a 2Ops, and a 1Ops card, and I know the game is over for me, barring some sort of miracle. That ain't happening as Eric draws a full hand of Ops cards, and his armies go a-hunting. With the board almost full of PC markers, and with the limitations on the placement of PC markers for the British, the Event cards are useless to me, and I have to watch as Eric takes control of Colony after Colony. Indeed, even my last 2Ops card is played as a discard, as I am unable to do anything with it.

At the start of the final turn Eric is up 9-4 on Colonies, with one undecided, and way more CUs on the board. Neither of us draws any Special Event cards, and although I gain a Colony in the North, I lose the one in the south when Eric pounds my army there in a continual wave of attacks, as although I win the first battle (the first time in the game) we both lose a single CU. He also takes the undecided Colony to run out a solid 10-4 winner.

Here's the ending position:



We only missed two things in our game:

• two extra Event cards are added to the deck at the start of the second turn - we added them at the start of the third turn
  
• the British CU in the NW of the map isn't on a wintering space, and should have been rolling for attrition each turn
  

However, I missed several rules that might have helped me:

• after playing a Battle card you draw a replacement (I missed that only once, but it meant that Eric had 2 plays at the end of the second turn when I had no cards in hand)
  
• you can play an opponent's Event card in a battle for a +1 modifier, but don't draw a replacement card (this would have helped me in the first two turns)
  
• there are overruns of weak forces - I left 1CU in the north, thinking that it would block him, but needed more, which I did have available
  
• you can create a queue of Ops card play to activate a general - this would have allowed me to activate Howe in the first turn, although I'm not sure what I could have done with him that was useful, and it uses up 2 actions
  
• discarding an Event Card allows the removal of an American PC marker adjacent to a British PC marker (I would have expected this to be included in the list of available 'PC Actions' for discarding an opponent's Event card)
  
• ports are considered adjacent to each other for the British player - this means that all my discards for no use could have been used to place British PC markers, and, when combined with the above, to remove American PC markers
  

Pretty much everything in the game went wrong for me. From the die rolls to the card draws. Going back and looking at the deck, there are 12 Event cards each, 4 British Battle cards to 5 American, 2 Mandatory Events, 5 game end Special Events, and 4 Campaign Event cards (3 Minor, 1 Major), leaving 66 Ops cards (22 of each value). From my draws, I think this one is another statistical outlier, so I'm not going to hold too much over it.

WW is certainly at the simpler end of the CDG scale in my view. Unlike Twilight Struggle (BGG entry) or Labyrinth (BGG entry), there is less in the cards themselves, and you don't need to be aware of potential 'killer' combos, it's more in the Ops.

I really enjoy playing this one, as I do Unhappy King Charles, and all the CDGs, really. It's certainly a very interesting game, and I like the options available, the jockeying for position of the PC markers, the maneuvering of the armies. Every card play feels important.

Another great point is the game length. We finished in just around 2 hours, but really only played half a game, so it could run up to ~4 hours, likely less, but it easily plays in an evening. Knowing the rules better, I'd really like to take another swing at it. If you're thinking of trying a CDG I think this is a great starting choice.

Next up, after a week's break, is Fury in the East (BGG entry) from MMP, a one-map WW2 East Front game that gets gets good buzz. I'm looking forward to that one.

Valley Forge wasn't needed this time

Most categories of wargames can point to a single game that started them off. For block wargames, for example, you can point to either L'attaque or Napoleon as being the starting points. For hex-n-counter, many point to Tactics as the originator.

For card-driven wargames, there's a clear start: We the People. Published by Avalon Hill in 1994, Mark Herman's design paved new ground for what was possible in a wargame. Looking back on it now, it is still the simplest game in the genre (maybe... 1960's rather simple as well) and holds up pretty well given how different it was at the time.

That said, availability of We the People is a bit lacking. Herman had wanted to reprint it. As Hasbro now owns the rights, it appears the negotiations weren't going well. So, Herman re-designed it as Washington's War. He tweaked a few things (not many) from the original to the new release. Here's the differences:

• Battle cards are gone. You used to play cards from your hand to resolve battles. That mechanic – which I hated – is now gone in favor of a contested die roll with modifiers.


• You can now discard opponent events during a battle for a modifier.


• If your opponent plays one of your events for any purpose other than discarding, you can swap an Ops card for it to play the event later in the turn.


• An overrun rule was added that keeps 1-strength armies from being an overly strong blockade.

And that's really about it. If you know how to play We the People, you know how to play this. A quick run-through on the rules should be all you need. That said, I'd only played WtP a couple times, and not for many years.

Things to watch for if you're playing for the first time:

• Take care about winter quarters


• Watch for political isolation


• The Brits get a LOT of positive combat modifiers

I randomly drew the Americans, and off we went.

Early in the first turn, Mike attacked Washington's forces with Howe, trying to take advantage of those early British modifiers. Combat in the late 18th century was a bit of an unknown affair. You never knew how well your forces (or commander) for that matter would perform. To sort of simulate this, one of the first things you do is roll for commander effectiveness. It's a 50/50 roll that if you fail cuts your commander's rating in half. Mike failed his roll on this first attack while I passed mine. This effectively eliminated the British DRM advantage and made the combat essentially a toss up. I won it, forced him to retreat, then pressed the advantage before he could reinforce.

From that point forward in the game, I held a military advantage. My cards matched well with what I was trying to do, Mike's did not. I think I only drew three British events the entire game, Mike had four American events in a single turn.

Mike did a pretty good job early on forcing the political control. I think he had 8 colonies at one point. Turned out after the fact he really didn't have much of a choice due to his card draws. Turns 3 and 4 saw me methodically reducing that advantage.

Between winning battles and events (including getting Benjamin Franklin into play pretty early on) I was able to get the French into the conflict in the fourth turn (1778).

We drew a 1779 “Government Falls” card in the second turn or so, and the way I was able to keep Mike on his heels meant the French helped lay the coup-de-grace early that year. When we hit the end of 1779, I think I had 9 colonies, Mike had 4 (including Canada), and one was drawn. It was a pretty significant victory for the Americans.

I had evicted Mike from the South, and he didn't have much left in the way of forces in the North. Even without a government falls card, it was going to be very hard for him to recover.

My thoughts on the game?

Production quality is good. Mounted board, thick cards, attractive (standard GMT) counters. It played very cleanly. We only had a few questions, and they were all handled by the rulebook. The game doesn't break any new ground, really, but it wasn't meant to. It was meant to be a refresh of a game that broke a whole lot of ground when it came out. And it does that very well.

Recommendation?

If you're looking for a good, simple 2-hour CDG, this is it. It is the wargaming equivalent of an appetizer, though, so if you're looking for something a bit more substantial, you might want to temper your expectations. But appetizers are usually pretty tasty, and this is as well. It's one I'm happy to have in my library.

We're taking the week between Christmas and New Years off as I've got family coming to town. Our next game up will be Fury in the East from the MMP 2010 Operations Special Issue. More East Front goodness.

We're not dead yet

Well, after a rather extended hiatus, we're baaaaaaaack!

It wasn't really a hiatus, as such, just that our plan didn't really work out as we'd thought it would. Our OCS Korea game has been going on for most of this year, with (mostly) regular weekly sessions, and we were both taking notes and pics, but we just never got around to writing anything up. Partly that was down to our schedules, but at least on my part there was a certain amount of lethargy and disinclination to actually say much. It's hard to give insights into your thoughts and plans when your opponent is reading.

Anyway, we discussed where to go from here, and the idea of quietly closing the blog was quickly voted down on a 2-0 count. We agreed that the blog works best when we're playing shorter games, and that's what we're going to get back to. Moving forward, we'll get back to focussing on games in the 1-2 session length (i.e. 3-6 hours), unless we can find time for a longer session. That means shorter war-games (hex/counter, block, and CDGs), and (probably) more 18xx. Sounds like a plan, and I'm certainly very comfortable with that mix.

So, the first topic (and, in fact, the above conversation took place while we were playing) is the new GMT release Command & Colors: Napoleonics (BGG entry), the latest in the Commands and Colors series. This game covers the battles in the Peninsular War, featuring the British, French and Portuguese, and a single scenario featuring a small segment of the Waterloo battle. An expansion for the Spanish is currently on the P500 list, and tentatively scheduled for an August production slot. I'd expect to see more expansions for the Prussians and Russians, as well as lots more scenarios covering those armies, as well as some sort of 'Epic Napoleonics' rules/expansion. Sigh, more money sucked from my wallet.

The production is just as you'd expect for a C&C game from GMT; lots of wood blocks; colorful stickers; mounted map; good player aids; all in a bullet-proof box. In other words, up to their recent production standards, which have certainly taken a step up in quality.

I'm not going to go through the whole ruleset, but here, in my view, are the major differences from C&C:A (and others):

• Unit losses: the number of dice used when attacking is based on 1 die per block in the attacking unit
  
• Unit/Nationality distinction: various units get extra dice in combat depending on their unit type or National characteristics; e.g. Light/Rifle units gain a die in ranged combat; British line foot units gain a die in ranged combat if they do not move, and French line foot units gain a die in melee combat
  
• Terrain: unlike the Ancients battlefields, we now have terrain to deal with, more akin to the Battle Cry and Memoir '44 battlefield
  
• Objectives: just like in M'44
  
• Square formation: infantry can form square in the face of cavalry assault
  

Of these, the first is the biggest change, in my view, and one that has been a bug-bear for quite a few C&C players, or potential players. Now those 1-block units are really fragile and mostly useless, and have to be withdrawn from harm's way. The unit/nationality distinctions are an interesting change, and allow for some variation in the way you use your force, with both the composition and side impacting your strategy/tactics.

OK, terrain really isn't a change, per se, but it's just that there is some, often a lot, unlike most of the C&C:A scenarios, where I've seen pool tables with more features. Some of the terrain features are also classed as objective hexes, in the same way that M'44 has. This was, in my view, one of the biggest issues with BC, as often there was no incentive to move forward and get shot at, as the other player would get the first shot due to the move/no fire rules. (In C&C:N you can move and half-fire.) So, that provides an incentive to do something.

C&C:N wouldn't truly represent Napoleonic warfare without allowing foot units to use square formation, and the implementation is interesting. As part of the cavalry melee procedure the infantry unit has the choice to enter square, but to do so, the player has to give up a command card (and you must have more than 2 in hand), which is placed on a holding display, reducing his hand size and, hence, tactical flexibility. Furthermore, the card is chosen at random from your hand. To quote the Guinness advert, 'Brilliant!' With some good cards in your hand, you now have a tough choice to make. Protect your unit, or potentially give up the ability to carry out your plans. Of course, all those that hate the C&C abstraction style will have more reason to hate on the system, spluttering about lack of control, etc. I think it's a stroke of genius!

We played the first two scenarios, both from the battle of Rolica, with me drawing the French each time. The first saw me move to a quick 4-banner position (with 5 required to win) as the dice gods favored me with an embarrassment of dicey riches, seeing me score 4 hits out of my first 5 rolls on his Light Infantry unit. (With 5 blocks and a 1-die bonus they can be pretty lethal, so that turned the good fortune into great fortune.) However, I thought to dash forward with a good card to claim my winning banner, but an untimely flag result on the first combat took his unit out of range of my second unit, allowing Eric to isolate them and bring it back to 4-3, before I did manage to claim that winning banner.

The second scenario, later in the same battle as the French were pushed back, once again saw me with the French. The sides are almost identical, with the Allied forces gaining an extra leader. What makes the scenario interesting is that the terrain provides for only 4 axes of advance for the Allies, with prohibited terrain funneling the attacks. The French, meanwhile, are sitting on a ridge of hills, which reduces incoming ranged fire by 1 die. So, restricted advance options for the Aliies, and a strong defensive position for the French, quite a puzzle. To make it even worse, most of the Allied artillery (which doesn't lose a die for firing into hills) is still stuck at the base line.

Sounds easy for the French player, but my sole artillery unit ran out of ammunition (an early card play by Eric) and returned to my base line. The issue was where to place it, as I was unsure of where Eric's main thrust was going to come, and although my hand had some really interesting cards, I had few section movement cards. In the end I chose to concentrate on the Portuguese on my left flank, but also drew a card that allowed me to redeploy a unit by 4 hexes, so my artillery was able to reduce the Portuguese threat, then move to the center to counter the advance in the center and on the other flank. I had one opportunity for using square, but with a hand of great cards I had to decline, as I had plans, which all worked as I ran out a comfortable winner.

A tough scenario for the Allies, in my view, but Eric felt that he played it wrongly in not bringing up his artillery first and using them to reduce my units. That would have given me a tough choice on whether to hold or force the action. The French bonus die on melee means that closing the action is of use, but is it worth leaving the hills? I'd like to get this scenario back to the table, and try it from the Allied side.

Here's the ending position, which shows the terrain:



(The 2 units at bottom left are Portuguese, one with a leader.)

OK, so what are my thoughts on C&C:N after my first play? As you've probably surmised by now, I really liked this one. I found it more interesting than C&C:A, which was partly due to the terrain providing a more interesting battlefield. However, the bigger factor was unit/nationality characteristics, and how to leverage them in my favor. I know it probably sounds like cult of the new, but so far this is my favorite C&C game. The mix of terrain, characteristics, everything. A great balance, and the continuing development of the C&C system is very evident. In play, I think C&C:N also flows better much better than BC, and has more tactical choices than C&C:A. The choices are tougher, as witnessed by several times in our games, as Eric or I had to take a moment to weigh our options and consider the potential implications. Yes, this will definitely see more table time.

For next time, Eric has requested GMT's Washington's War (BGG entry), the remake of We The People and the first of the CDGs. I've played it once before, so I'm looking forward to getting a second chance to try it. Beyond that, I'm thinking of Fury In The East (BGG Entry), one of the games that came in the MMP Operations Special Edition #3 magazine. But who knows, there are so many good choices out there.

Back to the fun bits

And, we're back.

I'd like to say I did something interesting in the year it's been since you heard from me on this blog, but (other than a wonderful trip to Europe with my wife for a combo 10th anniversary/40th birthday gift) that hasn't been the case. Mostly, two things have shut down my writing on this blog: I was working on two simultaneous, parallel documentation projects at work that severely diminished any desire I had to write, and Mike and I were playing OCS Korea for most of the year. We discovered that really big games make poor incentive to blog. Various non-gaming life issues jumped up as well cutting us way back on gaming in the fall, and so that left us with a grand total of four posts this year up until now.

Not acceptable.

My work duties have shifted to a new project, and Korea's been packed away (or will be shortly.) We've made it through the end of 1950, and we will complete it at some point. Just not now. After some discussions, we decided we wanted to get back to what got this blog moving in the first place: evening two-player games and what we think about them. So, if you're ready to hear our slightly-informed opinions every week or two again, we're ready to start writing them. Right... about...

Now.

Mike and I got GMT's new Command & Colors: Napoleonics on the table last week. I'd been curious about this one, as I find the C&C system quick and enjoyable, but don't particularly care for Battle Cry – the version of the game closest in time frame to the Napoleonic wars. Also, the Napoleonic era is about my least favorite one to study. As a result, I didn't preorder this game. But, never being one to pass up a good game, wanted to see what it was like.

C&C:N is, frankly, not very different from C&C: Ancients. The production is very similar, and I think they use the same terrain tiles. Readers of this blog will likely be familiar with C&C:A, so I'll highlight the differences between the two games:

• Ranged fire is more powerful.
• The number of blocks in a unit changes per national characteristics.
• Similar units (say, Line Infantry) fight differently for different nationalities.
• The number of battle dice you roll is a function of the number of blocks remaining in the unit.
• Units down to a single block may not be able to battle due to terrain modifiers.
• There is much more terrain in the game. MUCH more.
• Many of the scenarios involve terrain objectives.
• Infantry can form square

There are more differences, but these highlight the major points. Let's just say that playing this game like you'd play C&C:A will cause you to lose. Badly. And that's a good thing. It also much more closely resembles C&C:A than Battle Cry as far as rules complexity goes. And that's a good thing as well. I was fearing this game was Battle Cry with Bicorns. It's actually closer to C&C:A with gunpowder. In all the good ways.

Mike and I decided to start off at the beginning and played the first two scenarios, randomly drawing sides. As fate would have it, I drew the Brits/Portuguese each time. These two scenarios cover positions early and late within the Battle of Rolica. (Apparently the first battle in the Peninsular War involving the British.)

I attempted to push on my right flank with the Portuguese, as my opening hand was right-flank-heavy, but they failed miserably. Eventually, I gained some center cards and began advancing there, trying to focus on using artillery. Mike got to four of his required five flags quickly (three of them thanks to the Portuguese) but after I started forcing the action, pulled back to a 4-3 deficit with victories in the center. Shortly thereafter, Mike got his fifth flag, breaking my position.

As is typical with this game, both of us tended to run out of cards in the sectors where battles were the fiercest, and of course you have no idea your opponent is in the same boat. We felt we had the rules down pretty well, so we moved on to the 2nd scenario. This involves the exact same unit mix (except the Brits get a third leader) but radically different terrain. This one forces the Allies down lanes with impassable hills between them to assault a hill infested with French infantry (and one unit of artillery). Not an easy task.

I lost this one 5-2, I believe, and realized I was doing something very wrong. I'd been playing with the very Ancient approach of leading with the cavalry and having the infantry mop up. Not how it works in the Napoleonic era. You need to soften with artillery, push with infantry, and punish weak positions with cavalry. Particularly when you're assaulting a good defensive position, as you are in this scenario. If I play this one again as the Brits, I'd have a very different plan.

So, I lose two scenarios. I had some poor dice, Mike had some good dice (including five hits out of six dice in ranged combat against a single unit), but nothing earth shattering that would invalidate either play.

Those are the high-level reports of the gaming, but the important bit is what did I think about the game?

First off, it surprised me. After reading the rules (and only the rules – I had not seen any of the other components), I had a feeling it was going to be better than I initially expected, but the gameplay exceeded even those thoughts. Despite how light the C&C series is, this game will make you think. You've got puzzles to solve as well as battles to fight.

Secondly, the game gives the feel of Napoleonic warfare without getting into too much detail. There are bits of chrome to distinguish the varying fighting styles (e.g. the French line infantry get an extra die when in melee against infantry, but the British line infantry get an extra die when firing without moving) but the chrome doesn't get in the way. Exactly the level of abstraction I'd expect from this series.

Eight out of 10 from me, with the understanding this will probably go up as the line is expanded with other nationalities and scenarios.

Finally, a bit of a soapbox moment.

There's already been a bit of talk about “fixing” the game after a play or two because of some perceived superiority in one of the troop types. This is the kind of talk that has soured me on a lot of gaming lately – people make pronouncements about games very early without giving the games a fair shake. This is particularly bad with wargames, as that “fair shake” may involve 20-40 hours of play to really get a feel for what's going on.

Of course, this involved someone who is a self-proclaimed “Napoleonics buff” who has a different idea of how things should go. This is exactly why I was turned off of Napoleonic gaming back when I was a heavy miniatures player. For whatever reason, this particular era has a knack of attracting know-it-alls who are more than happy to tell you you're doing it wrong. As a result, I simply won't play Napoleonic miniatures. It's not worth the angst.

In this era of the internet, these people get a voice a lot louder than they deserve. I've seen many situations where games have been played once, discounted because they didn't meet the expectations of the initial player (who usually has way more time on his hands than should be allowed), and the game is subsequently shuffled off and ignored by a large number of players who'd probably like the game. That early dissenting opinion gets parroted rather than challenged. And there's a lot of games that don't get the table time they actually deserve as a result.

This whole phenomena has completely turned me off the primary boardgaming websites I used to frequent (BoardGameGeek and ConSimWorld). I now no longer go on there except for reference purposes. The interest in finding out about what's coming up has been completely squashed by people who, frankly, are most interested in hearing themselves.

So, while I used to occasionally re-post these blog entries on the Geek, I no longer will. I have no interest in shouting above the din. I will, however, be creating a Twitter account specifically for the blog, and will throw little tidbits up there as they cross my mind. I'll post details when those are available. I'd be more than happy to have you follow.

If you like what I write, great. I hope to be providing you semi-regular content for the foreseeable future. There's been a ton of great new games released in the last couple years, and lots of them are on our schedule.

If you don't, I'm sorry. But I do completely understand. There's no shortage of other game reviewers/reporters for you to read. Thanks for the time you've given us so far. Hopefully, we'll draw you back at some point.

And, with that, the return is complete. Next week's game is Washington's War.

Action at the Dirschau

Mike and I spent a few nights playing the Dirschau scenario from Gustav Adolf the Great: With God and Victorious Arms, GMT's most recent entry in the Musket and Pike Battle System (MPBS).

We'd played this together a while back. First to play Marston Moor from This Accursed Civil War (the battle the contains the unit Mike's old re-enactment group was modeled after) and after that we played a scenario from Under the Lily Banners, but I honestly can't remember which one. After that particular outing, Mike pretty much had sworn off wargames for a while. Not that he didn't like the game, but it just didn't hold his interest. And, given the time involved was something he didn't want to do.

Lots of things have changed since then. Obviously.

So, Mike wanted to give the series another try. As I have enjoyed the game in the past, I was certainly up for playing again. The idea was to start with the first scenario in the box and play through them all.

It took us a while to get back into the swing. We hadn't played a detailed, pre-WWII, tactical game in quite a while. I took the Poles, and Mike had the Swedes. Historically, this is a delaying action by the Poles trying to slow the Swedish crossing of two rivers towards the Polish camp northwest of a dry hill. The interesting thing about this is the Swedes have two wings starting behind fortifications. This leads you to believe the Poles are on the offensive, and the first night's play followed that impression.

It took us parts of three nights to play the game (probably a total of about eight hours or so). The flow of the battle can definitely be tied to each night's playing. There were certainly rules missed.

On the first night, I attacked with the Poles as I had a pretty strong cavalry advantage early. Mike was keeping his two wings behind the entrenchments, so it was my left wing against his right. That night's battles certainly went my way. On my right (the bottom of the map as pictured in the link above), I advanced through the dunes in column to pressure and screen the wing head of them.

On the second night, Mike stormed over the entrenchments trying to catch my center before it could join the battle (it comes up from the corner of the map over the rivers). Things didn't really go my way that night, but I was starting to form a line in the middle and had managed to get my center to connect the left and right.

On the third night, it fell apart. While I was probably too aggressive given the victory conditions and the tactical situation, what's the fun in hanging back, right? After all, what's the worst that could happen? Well, I found out. I ended up with a number of combats in the center (and on the center-side of my right wing) that were all pretty much around even odds. Rolling average dice would effectively give me what I was looking for: attrition on both sides and his advance checked. So, what do I roll? 0, 0, 1, 0. Now for those who don't know, the game uses a d10 where 0 = 0. And 0 or less on the CRT = attacker eliminated. Oh, and these combats generally included two of my units attacking at a time.

So, at this point, my center basically disappeared. And, while we didn't count up the final point total, it was pretty clear Mike had prevailed.

What are my thoughts on the system after returning to it for the first time in a few years?

Essentially, Very Good with caveats.

Units function along three primary axes. Their current orders, morale state, and formation state. Formation degrades through fighting or traversing certain terrain types, but can be restored with Reform actions. Morale degrades as a result of negative combat results and can be restored with Rally actions. There's three values to both of those states: Normal, Shaken, and Broken. So a unit could be Formation Shaken and Morale Normal, for example.

Finally, there's orders. Each wing can have one of four orders: Charge, Make Ready, Receive Charge, and Rally. Certain troop actions may be denied to units under certain orders. Units under Charge orders can't Rally, for example, and units NOT under charge orders may not move adjacent to enemy.

The catch, however, is that it takes a die roll to change orders for a wing. And some transitions are a LOT harder than others. There's no guarantee you'll be able to get your wing to charge when you need it to. Or stop charging after it's blown through the enemy's first line and has reserves staring it in the face.

Let's get the obvious out of the way: This is not a game for control freaks.

In addition to the above, wings are activated in sequence depending on their orders (roughly in the sequence I listed them above) and may get a 2nd or 3rd activation if you can pass your continuation rolls. (and the less aggressive your orders, the harder it is to pass continuation) So, you might be able to get your reserve wing into action in time. Or not. They might stop charging after they blow away the advance guard. Or not.

This, of course, reflects the state of warfare in the 17th century. You gave your orders, watched things develop, and tried to change them if necessary. Controlling individual units after they engaged the enemy was difficult at best. (It's VERY possible for cavalry units to pursue defeated enemy off the map and be out of the game.) It's probably the best game out there for giving you the feel of how 17th century battles flowed, but there is some sense of “taking what you're given” here as opposed to controlling the action. Some people will find this entertaining, some won't.

If you can deal with the lack of control, I recommend the series. If you can't handle the idea of being unable to fully control your units' behavior, you should probably stay away. As always, interest in the subject matter may trump - I love this particular period so I'm predisposed toward the game. But I certainly understand if it's not your cup of tea.

Gustav

The original plan had called for us to tackle MMP/The Gamers' OCS Korea (BGG entry). However, after a couple of detours here I realized that I no longer had the available table space, having used it to play OCS Hube's Pocket with my other regular ConSim gaming opponent, Chuck. Sheesh, what a maroon.

Reckoning on that taking until the end of the year (at pretty much one evening per week, one turn per evening), we needed something else to tackle before Korea was a possibility. I suggested something from the GMT Musket & Pike series, and Eric picked Gustav Adolf: With God and Victorious Arms (BGG entry). I even went so far as to suggest that we do the whole box, all the scenarios. An ambitious undertaking, indeed.

Eric and I had played a few of the M&P scenarios before, mostly from This Accursed Civil War (BGG entry), and one from Under the Lily Banners (BGG entry). At the time I wasn't too enthused about ULB, but really enjoyed TACW, mostly because of my long involvement with the Sealed Knot, an English Civil War re-enactment group. This was also around the time that I was losing interest in ConSims in general, so any lack of interest in M&P could have just been general rather than that series in particular.

Anyway, off we started with the first scenario in the box, Dirschau, with me being Gustav, and Eric the Poles. This features the Swedes on the defense initially, but with the right wing in charge mode. The Poles only have one of their wings (their left) across the river, and are under pressure until their center arrives and crosses over. Meanwhile their right wing is advancing slowly through the dunes, hoping to make contact before the end of the game.

The first session (this was played over three evening sessions) saw my right wing (mixed infantry and cavalry) charge and be intercepted to great success by Eric's left wing (cavalry). A series of weak rolls on my part and decent rolling on Eric's part saw him up on the VPs at that point, as most of my cavalry had been killed or routed off the board. The only saving grace was that my infantry had managed to catch up and were able to hold the line, as their strong musketry would be pretty lethal on the comparatively weaker cavalry facing them.

Up to that point I had left my other two wings waiting behind the fortifications (although they were barely justified in being called that, only offering a +1 modifier to close combat), mostly from being unsure on how best to approach this, so taking a 'wait and see' attitude. In retrospect I think this was a mistake, and I should have advanced my center wing (under Gustav himself) sooner. We ended the session with Eric in the lead in terms of VPs (for killed units), his center wing (mixed infantry/cavalry) starting to cross the river and enter the fray. At this point Eric really just needed to move over to the defensive, and I would have to come get him in the hope of bringing the score back into balance.

The second session saw me advance Gustav's wing, as there seemed little point in just standing around for the loss. Our two centers met in the, umm, center, and although I think I got the better of the initial charges, I was mostly in poor formation and coming up against his infantry. Over on my right, our two wings mostly just glowered at each other, being too weak and broken to do much more, and I wanted my infantry to protect Gustav's flank.

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the map, Eric's right flank kept plodding, plodding, plodding. With lots of dunes that meant limited movement he was making slow progress. My wing just stood there, waiting.

By the end of the second session, I think we were about in parity in terms of VPs, as the dice had mostly gone my way over the course of the evening. However, things weren't looking too good for me. My center was mostly cavalry in shaken formation, although my light infantry was catching up. Eric's center was all heavy infantry, and was threatening. If I let Eric's center come to contact it could get ugly pretty quickly.

And so to the third session, for the last two turns. As expected, Eric pushed in the center, and I was able to mostly retire my cavalry. However, he was able to force a few close combats, and that's where, indeed, it did get ugly, but not in the manner expected.

You've heard us talk in the past of the DSDF, the so-called Deansian Statistical Distortion Field, as named by another gaming friend. This is where you get a series of random events that are so far off the end of the bell curve it makes a total mockery of any serious attempt to play anything resembling a balanced game. Normally it happens to me, but on the odd occasion I'm able to inflict it on my opponent. And so it was here. Regular readers will be totally unsurprised to hear that in three close combats Eric rolled consecutive '0's for two attacker eliminated results and an attacker morale broken. Fully four infantry units hit the dead pile, plus a leader, and 2 more routed for mucho VPs. And that put paid to any threat in the middle, as his whole wing literally disappeared.

As a footnote, right at the very end Eric's right wing finally made contact with my left, to no great effect. Fighting over the dunes and the entrenchments was too much to ask of the weak cavalry, and they mostly fared poorly, adding insult to injury. We didn't total it all up, but it was very clearly a decisive win for Gustav.

It was a very unsatisfying end to what was, up until that point, a very close game, and was very much in the balance. Man, I really hate the DSDF.

Okay, so what about M&P in general? Let's start by saying that I think this is the most accurate simulation of the maneuvers and tactics of the period available today. The pacing and challenges in getting your units to do what you want just feels right. Your nice clean line quickly starts to degenerate as you move forward, and units lose formation crossing terrain, and then totally disintegrates as you come to contact. Designer Ben Hull should be rightly proud of his achievement.

There are only two areas that I have a quibble with. First, I think there should be some sort of morale check required when a unit adjacent suffers a 'Morale Broken' result. Whilst brigades were independent, having your flank unit break and run has got to have some effect. Second, I think cavalry interception is a little too powerful, allowing them to charge, gaining the bonus for momentum, where the other side does not. (Then again, I'm wondering if we played that wrong, as I think both sides could claim momentum?)

(Now, in reviewing the rules again, I see that we did miss one thing - Formation Shaken units have half movement.)

Of course, as there is so much to take account of, due to the low level nature of the game, there are a lot of moving parts, and status counters, to go with it. It's not uncommon to find units with two or three status markers on top, reflecting formation, morale, pistol shots, interception, salvo, and the like. (Some markers are doubled up, but then it becomes an exercise of finding the right combo in the box.) And, of course, all the rules to go with this. Whilst the rule set has stabilized, and are fairly clean, there's a lot of detail to remember, and the first session went quite slowly due to a lot of rule checking and figuring out. However, by the second (and especially the third) session we were mostly into the swing of it, and we were focusing on game play rather than rules checking.

As may be expected of the period and the level, control is limited, which means there are die rolls for everything, and consequently leaves a lot of room for random wackiness. Die rolls for changing orders, interception, firing, combat, continuation, all lends to what feels to be a very random outcome. At one point I commented that I felt I had more control when playing Combat Commander, the big difference being that CC takes but a couple of hours, where our M&P was three whole sessions. And that's where I think that M&P fails for me. If it lasted for an evening, then the amount of potential wackiness would be acceptable, but three sessions is pushing it into less acceptable territory.

In reflection on our game, I'm beginning to think that we were too keen to get involved in close combat. I was initially thinking that the close combat results were too wide, where all possible results from attacker eliminated to defender eliminated are available within the die roll range with no modifiers. Perhaps those AE and DE results should only achieved when there are modifiers available. However, on further contemplation I think that the aim is to encourage you not to go into close combat without some factors in your favor (and there certainly are lots of options, from strength, to arms, formation and morale) and that if you choose close combat with no modifiers you really are casting the dice of fate. Certainly, if Eric had chosen to concentrate on musketry rather than pressing the close combat he wouldn't have lost all those infantry units.

And this, really, is part of the issue with where we are in gaming today. There are so many good games out there that we can't/don't spend the time on any one game to fully explore the best way to play it. Our original intent was to play all the scenarios in the GA box, but after 3 sessions (and partly the way it turned out), we abandoned that idea. However, after thinking about it more while writing this, I'm interested in trying M&P again, altering my tactics to see if that works better. Man, too many games, too little time.

So, given that we weren't doing more M&P at that point (this game was completed a couple of weeks ago - yes, we're a little behind on posts), and that my Hube's Pocket looked like it might be over at the next session (but that's another story entirely, one that I'm still figuring out what/where/how/whether to post) we needed a game to fill one evening and Eric proposed the new Columbia Games release Richard III: Wars of the Roses (BGG entry). Good choice, one that I was very interested in playing. Look for it next time.

New Combat Commander, same old story

Eric arrived for our latest session and we headed out to the garage to get started on the Sicily game, which we set up after our España 1936 game in our previous session. We both looked at each other, and both expressed an interest in playing something else. It had been a long week for both of us, and I was coming off a cold, and we both felt mentally unprepared for OCS. So we headed back in for something lighter. After throwing around a few options, Eric wanted to try the Pathfinder campaign from C3i #22, so we set up the first scenario, which features the American airdrop on St. Mere Eglise. I'd been playing the Axis in pretty much every game we'd played recently, so asked to play the Americans, and Eric accepted.

The Germans have just a few units on the board, and the Americans land by random draw to simulate the airdrop. About half of my guys ended up along the 'B' hex-column, 2 units adjacent to his guys (and automatically broken), and one on the opposite of the map in each corner. The biggest issue was that 2 of my 3 leaders were at opposite corners of the map, and not near anyone. In the end they played no part in the action at all. The two broken guys were taken out pretty quickly by Eric's fire, although not before I'd drawn a hero event and so just gave him even more points..

My biggest problem was finding cards that allowed me to move, and I seemed to spend half my time discarding cards. I was making reasonable progress, having captured two of the three objectives, when it came down to the usual critical bit of action. At this point we'd pretty much traded casualties, he having removed all the units that landed close as I couldn't find move cards to get them away nor recover cards, and me from assaulting his units in melee. I advanced into his hex holding 2 ambush cars, and generated a +4 attack. He drew a 9, and I calculated the options. He was at +5, so all I needed was a 6 for the clear win, as that would put him over his surrender level. A 5 would have us both killed, but I would be short of my surrender level by 1, so would still win. Hmmm, I need a 5. I decided to use the initiative whereupon he drew an 8. OK, I still need only a 4. And drew a 3.

At this point I have little option but to try another advance and melee as I have little chance of taking him out with a fire (I have no MGs, and only a small mortar). However, once again it takes me forever to find movement cards and he gets the required ambush cards to kill my remaining unit for the surrender win.

Once again I manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with a freaky card draw. Just like a lot of my CC games. This has got so monotonous that I have now placed CC onto my 'Will not play' list and I'm planning to sell my CC games.

This game did bring up one weakness in the CC system, however, one that I'd never really thought about before. The card decks are tuned for a set of tactics, and if you don't have the force that matches those tactics, then you're going to have problems. Take the American deck. In most of the scenarios the Americans (at least all the regular scenarios that I've played) are dripping with support weapons, and the deck provides tactics that match. Lots of fire, break (or kill) the enemy, then maneuver. Take away the support weapons and you're left with a hand that's heavy on fire cards that you can't really use. (A 6 fire attack against a regular 7 morale unit, in terrain, isn't going to see a lot of success. Add in a leader on defense and it gets even harder. And any number of Sustained Fire cards won't help you when you've no MGs.)

I'm not sure how this impacts other nations/scenarios, and it may be a feature of the Americans only (I think the Germans, at least, are rather more balanced on the card distribution), or even just this scenario. The American player here needs to maneuver, to get troops together to build fire teams to provide some mediocre attack fires. But the tactics forced on him by the card distribution prevents that.

One of my other gaming colleagues is only so-so on CC because he feels that it comes down to ambush and advance cards, and this game highlighted that. With no real way to generate high firepower attacks the only real way to remove the defenders and gain the VP objectives is through melee. Then the game comes down to who can draw the advance and ambush cards. And get the better draws in the melee itself. I was lucky in that I drew advance and ambush cards together twice, but I couldn't draw the movement cards to make use of the advance before Eric had time to discard through his deck and also get ambush cards. As far as I can recall, this is the first CC game I've played where the game ended with the surrender criteria being met, rather than the sudden death.

Over the years I've pretty much had a hate-hate relationship with CC in all its forms, and this game was the final nail in the coffin. Too many games have been little or no fun, with random blow-outs to one side or the other. And I've been on both sides, but mostly the receiving side. I may keep CC:Pacific (I think it's the best of the bunch) but the rest are going on the block. The tactical limitations of the pre-determined deck introduce a restriction that I'm not prepared to deal with. Well, that and the game just hates me.

We fully plan on getting back to Sicily for the next session.

Fulcrums

So, the big plan kicks in. OCS Sicily is back on the table.

Mike and I spent some time after our Espana 1936 game getting Sicily redeployed down in Mike's Garage.

A while back, I saw a reference to an old issue of Operations Magazine that had an article on a simple method for taking down and re-establishing an OCS game. I'll put a post up sometime soon (very soon after this one, schedule willing) that details the method. I can't dig it out at the moment as my access to old Operations Magazines has died with the recent demise of Magweb. Have to consult the archives.

We've used this technique twice now to tear down Sicily for later completion. And it's worked nicely. Took us about 30-45 minutes to get the game back ready for play.

So, last week, Mike and I met to get started again. One catch, though. Neither of us were really mentally ready to play it. I'd been swamped at work, and I believe Mike had as well.

So, what could substitute quickly for an evening's play with no prep time? Combat Commander, of course!

I had been a bit curious about the Normandy Campaign published in the latest C3i magazine. (#22, I believe) it's set up as a sequence of battles where the first is fixed, then you have a small number of choices for each of the next two rounds. So, that meant we were playing scenario #33 from the Paratroopers Battlepack, set on map #2, the bocage around St. Mere Eglise on D-Day. The Americans have landed dispersed and are trying to take the town from a German contingent holding it but not expecting the Americans. Mike took the Yanks as he hadn't played them recently, and off we went.

This is one of those games with random deployment for one side. So, Mike's troops and leaders were all over the map. German reinforcements were due on the 2nd time trigger, and on the 3rd, the American command has organized enough to get an extra order per turn.

For the most part, the the game was tight throughout. VPs toggled back and forth a bit, and I managed to pull an extra HMG crew and leader from the support forces. Time wasn't going nearly quickly enough for my taste, however. Mike had managed to assemble two primary fire teams while two or three other squads remained in cover out of the action.

The weaker of the two teams managed to take out my HMG – a useful item, but with somewhat limited effectiveness in the reduced sight lines around the bocage. This gave Mike one of the three objectives. I had just a lone unit in a second, neighboring objective.

We finally reached a tipping point – Mike had split his primary fire team under cover of smoke to prepare for an assault on the third objective. Success on his part would put me one unit away from surrender and move the VP count to around zero. All this with around three time triggers before we even started rolling for sudden death. Then, I hit a time trigger and removed one of the key smoke markers. I pretty much had to take initiative here and assaulted the smaller piece of the split fire group, eliminating it. If I had not, I would have been assaulted with unstoppable force. However, in the process I had to abandon the objective. I had expected Mike to move into the objective, taking the 8 VP swing, and make me try to take it back from a stronger force while he brought up a unit four or five hexes away in reserve.

Nope. Mike assaulted my unit+leader instead. He had the initiative card and a 4 point firepower advantage. No ambushes, so it was straight up. I rolled a 9, and Mike figured it was worth spending the initiative to make me re-roll. (This after some discussion on which had higher odds: me rolling higher, or his troops dying.) He decided to spend the initiative card and force me to reroll. I proceeded to roll an 8.

If Mike rolls a 5 or higher, he's pretty much got the game in the bag, though I'd spend initiative to make him try again, of course.

If Mike rolls a 4, we all die, I'm one unit from surrender (while he's 2, I believe) and I have almost nothing left on the board while he's got two unencumbered squads available to claim open objectives. I wouldn't spend initiative to re-roll this, as at least I've got a shot at a surrender victory if I can gang up on somebody.

So, 8% of the time I win outright. 8% of the time it's a draw (though really a win for Mike given the circumstances). On the other 83%, I force a re-roll with the same odds. That works out to around a 16% chance or so of my winning the combat outright. A little less than rolling a natural 6 on one die.

Mike flips the card.

He rolled a three.

Yep. In the one critical point where the game is essentially decided either way he had about an 85% chance of success (about 75% of that outright success) and the dice failed him. DSDF rears its ugly head. Again.

At that point, Mike pretty much failed his personal morale check. He still had a great shot at victory as I had two broken units very close to a unit of his, but I was able to rally them before he could take advantage. From that point on, Mike mostly threw things at my units hoping they'd stick with the unsurprising result of a German win by American surrender.

Of course, I saw it as a very tense hard-fought battle that came right down to one critical point where the result wasn't what was expected and involved a very interesting decision point. Somehow, I don't think Mike's report is going to portray it quite that way.

The interesting thing about it is the number I rolled: a 9. Given the 4-point spread in our firepower, this exactly straddled the bell curve, providing the illusion of a toss-up decision.

In retrospect, I don't believe that's the case. I'm not sure I would have spent the initiative when he did. My 9 was going to be the same or better around 27% of the time on a re-roll. If he keeps the initiative, he'd have failed the assault 16% of the time, with another 11% being a “winning draw.” The exact same odds.

I'm going to have to drum up a simulator to figure out what's the best choice here. I've already got the state machine defined, just need to code it up. In my free time.

My gut says, though, that I'd rather have the initiative to re-roll my rolls. I have no idea if that's statistically correct, though. Either way, I was surprised when Mike first assaulted my units, and more surprised when he made me reroll a 9.

Yet another Combat Commander scenario that comes down to one or two critical points. Which, of course, leads to two minds on the thing – either the games are tense and exciting and come down to one or two critical junctures that may go either way, deciding the game; or you may as well just roll a die and declare a winner and save yourself the time.

I'm firmly in the first camp, in case you haven't figured that out on here.

Charles Triumphant

My choice this week, and I wanted to get Unhappy King Charles back to the table. I quite enjoyed our last playing, and wanted to see how this game developed all the way through.

We've pretty much covered how the game works last time we played, so I'll just get into the gory details. I thought it would be good to take the same side we had before, and knowing now that the game is more about area control than battles, we both adjusted our play accordingly. So, I took up the Royalist mantle, and Mike played the rebellion-fostering dissidents.

The first play of the game set the tone. Hotham's Plot. Remove up to two cards from the Parliamentarian hand. This removed Mike's ability to have an Ace in the Hole card after the first turn and removed a moderately powerful card from his hand, if I remember properly. I was able to sock away a Major Campaign card after the first turn as Mike raised the standard late making it not as useful on the first turn. It certainly came in handy later.

The Early War went slightly in Royalist favor, as it tends to go. I was doing well in the South, kept Mike out of the North, and even started making slight incursions into the East. (Getting Newark in my favor was a big deal on that note.) As we moved into the Mid War, however, things started going haywire. I had a stretch of three or so turns where I simply couldn't draw operations cards to save my skin. I was getting good cards, regardless. One of the four Alt-Hist cards that made the deck fell into my hands: The King Abandons the Bishops. This removes the Covanenters from the game, and completely removed any pressure on the North. This let me concentrate on the Midlands and South, and even continue making forays East. Also, on one early turn I drew four events – two of them being important Parliamentarian events: one that remove cards from the Royalist hand, and one that draws two extra cards.

After this point while my card draws hadn't really changed (they stayed relatively good), Mike's started getting worse. Even after the New Model Army made it out, he couldn't get enough operations cards to activate Cromwell with any sort of consistency. I had pulled a couple subordinates under King Charles, and managed to keep that force essentially the strongest in the game. Most of the battles in the game went against Mike, and while there was certainly some bad die rolling, a lot of his losses game from the fact I was, generally, stronger than him when we fought. I was mindful of the cost battles can exact, but when you have the advantage and the means, it makes sense to press it.

We called it after then penultimate turn. We did deal out the last hand, and it confirmed that Mike wasn't going to have a chance to turn the game. He controlled the south and seven of the nine production areas giving him 9 points with 12 needed for victory. I was likely to take back at least two or three of those production areas, and he was not going to be able to do much about it. A resounding Royalist success.

I'm always one to give criticism when poor rulebooks appear. Let me give some kudos here – the book is well organized, and we've run into exactly one situation that wasn't covered. And it's enough of an edge case that the question hasn't been publicly answered to this point. (The rules cover what happens when you run out of cards in the Mid-war deck while dealing out hands at the start of a turn. It doesn't cover what happens when the deck runs out on the last card you're supposed to deal. The designer is tracking down what you're supposed to do.)

This one's a keeper. If you're a fan of card-driven wargames (or have been curious what they're about) I can recommend this as possibly the best entry-level CDG currently in print. Just don't go of fighting at every opportunity – your losses aren't replaceable. Go for control, and fight when you think you have the advantage. It pays off.

UKC meets DSDF

Eric's choice again, and he wanted to revisit Unhappy King Charles (BGG entry). Once more I had Parliament and he had the Royalists, but this was a totally different game to the previous one (his take, my take). Essentially, he had a great start, I came back a little in the middle, then the dice and cards conspired against me in the last few turns to make it a walkover.

The great start for the Royalists mostly revolved around three things. First he drew and played Hotham's Plot in the first turn. This takes two cards from the Parliament hand, which means two things. First, obviously, I got fewer cards to play that turn. Secondly, and more importantly, it meant that I couldn't keep a card 'in the hole', where he could, reducing my operational flexibility.

The second thing, and driving on from the last point, he drew the Major Campaign card in the first (perhaps second?) turn, and was able to put it 'in the hole' until he had a good time to use it. While I did draw the Minor Campaign card early, with no ability to save it, I had to play it that turn.

The third thing was the early die rolls went Eric's way at the critical moments. I missed a 50/50 evasion, then rolled low to his high in the resulting battle, giving him the Major Victory, so I lost my entire force, and he gained yet another card.

After the first couple of turns, the South was on the edge of tipping to the Royalists, the North was already a Royalist bastion with Lord Fairfax holding on by his fingertips. The middle part of the game saw me recover the South and make some inroads into moving north. However, in this time the Royalists totally controlled the North and most of the Midlands, even pushing into the East. Even so, I didn't think the game was totally out of reach. The Scots Covenanters were due to arrive and they would start to put pressure on from the north.

The final part of the game saw my position totally disintegrate as I missed battle roll, after evasion roll, after interception roll, drew a whole bunch of 1 Ops cards and saw Eric draw all 3 of the Alt-Hist cards that came out, including the card that removed all the Scots from the game, drawing it the turn after they arrived. In the meantime, his battles went well, Prince Maurice made all 4 50/50 evasion rolls in a row to avoid the Lord General and the far superior New Model Army, converting spaces all the way. We quit prior to going into the last turn, as it was clear there was no way I was going to pull back the position with only 4 brigades (strength 7) on the map to his 7-8 (strength ~13).

However, whilst all that was somewhat (OK, a lot) frustrating (especially Eric making the 4 evasions, while I missed my 2 50/50 rolls) I don't think I played all that well. Too often I saw better plays after I'd done something, or options too late to do anything about it. Not seeing the consequences of plays or game situations. None of that is any fault of the game, all my own work.

I still really like UKC, and want to play more. The presentation is fabby. The rules are tight (although we did manage to find 1 situation that wasn't covered). The game-play feels like a good simulation of the ECW. Lots of choices to make, bags of replayability. Yep, I definitely want to play this some more, and I have a long way to go before I can say I've learned the game and could consider myself even a mediocre player.

The same goes for the rest of the CDG-style (and I'll ignore the distinction as to exactly whether UKC is a CDG) - I enjoy playing them, I just really, really suck at them. But I want to get better, so I'll keep playing.

My choice for the next week, and after some thought I'm going to settle on Shifting Sands, another CDG, and one I've been interested in for a while. Let's get a-punchin' and a-clippin'!