Simple, pimple

Next on the table was my choice, and, after playing complex treatments of various battles and campaigns, I wanted to try the new Martin Wallace war game, Test of Fire. This is a simple treatment of the first battle of the American Civil War, Bull Run (for you Yankee northerners) or Manasses (for you Rebel southerners). 

And ToF is certainly a simple game. With just 5 pages of rules it’s easy to pick up. The player rolls dice at the start of the turn (4 for the Confederate player, 5 for the Union), and that dictates the actions that can be performed that turn.

1 – Draw a card

2,3 - Activate an area with artillery for fire

4,5 - Activate an area for movement

6 - Activate an area containing a leader for either artillery fire or movement, as above

Artillery fire is pretty simple. Choose the area with an artillery unit; choose the target area; roll 2 dice, with a 5 or 6 scoring a hit; roll each hit to determine effect, a 6 being a loss, anything else means 1 unit in the target area has to retreat.

Movement is equally simple. Any units in the activated area may move to any adjacent areas. However, there are some border limits, with the normal limit being 2 units. Rivers and some rough terrain borders allow only 1 unit to move across per movement action; Roads allow 3 units to cross. These are all marked on the map.

Combat happens when there are units from both sides in an area, and may be performed at the end of any action. Note the 'may' in that sentence, it's where one of the game choices come in. If you have 2 movement actions available, you could perform one move then perform combat, and if the area is clear, activate that area for movement again. Or you could choose to use each action to move units into the enemy held area, and then perform the combat. After all actions are done,any area containing units from both sides must have combat.

Combat resolution, as you might expect, features yet more dice. First the defender, then the attacker rolls 2 dice for each unit, up to a maximum of 6 dice. As with artillery fire, each 5 or 6 scores a hit, except now a loss is scored on a 4-6, and a retreat on 1-3. The attacker applies his losses and retreats before rolling his combat. If there are units left from both sides after combat, then the attacker has to retreat back to his originating area(s).

So, as you might expect, getting lots of move actions are vital to force the river crossings and take the hills, where the border limits are reduced. Otherwise you're going to have only a single attacking unit against all those likely defenders.

Finally, the cards. As usual in these sorts of games, they just perform wacky stuff or otherwise add benefits. They may allow extra dice to be rolled in artillery fire or combat; cancel a retreat; perform extra moves; cancel an opponent's action die; or allow a roll for victory and end the game (rolling less than the number of units your opponent has lost).

With a projected game time of 45 minutes, our plan was to play this twice, playing each side. However, I missed one critical rule (that the 'standard' area border limit was 2 units, not 3 units), so we restarted after being 30 minutes into the evening. Second time around, my union forces found the 'Ford' card quickly, which allows the border limit on one river crossing to be increased by 1, and was able to force the Rebels off Sudley Hill to take the first victory area. From there it was a grind along the river to take the second victory area before the game ended, which is when one player runs out his card deck, with a simple majority of the three victory areas required for a win. This full game took around an hour, as we futzed a little with the rules, and we chose not to turn it around, having played enough.

OK, this isn't a game that any even semi-serious gamer is going to base a play date on. It's simple to the point of being simplistic. It makes no real effort to model command and control, and the combat system is laughable to any grognard. However, if you have 45 minutes to kill, or are playing with kids or non-wargamers, I can see this hitting the table. It's easy to pick up, and the action dice dictate your options in any single turn, so you're never overwhelmed by potential options and decisions.

Yet, even at 45 minutes I think it outstays its welcome by around 10-15 minutes. Other than a few choices on the card plays, everything is dictated by the dice, with very few real decisions to make. And that's a lot of dice you're going to roll. So many, in fact, that I'm not sure that any decisions you make have any real bearing on the outcome of the game.

If I were going to a gaming retreat, I think I'd throw it in the bag. For those occasions when you don't have time, space, or the mental capacity, to play anything deeper. It just might come out then.

A few is more than two

On the table this week, at Eric's request, was A Few Acres of Snow (BGG entry), a newish title from Treefrog Games, by Martin Wallace.

Now, there are a couple of things here that you probably need to be aware of before we go much further. First, I am a Wallace fan boi. Rampant, in fact. His game designs just hit my spot. Age of Steam, Steam, Brass, Age of Industry, Automobile, Gettysburg, Last Train to Wensleydale, Perikles, Prices of the Renaissance, Byzantium, Liberté, Rise Of Empires; some of my favorite games of all time. And yet, his more recent designs have me troubled. A Test of Fire looks lighter than light. I didn't even bother ordering Discworld: Ankh-Morpork after reading the synopsis. Could it be that he's falling out of favor with me? (Collective intake of breath from all those who know me.)

The other thing to be aware of is that I am not fond of deck building games. Well, it's not really just deck building games, but a lot of these more recent card games just leave me cold. Dominion, Race For The Galaxy, 7 Wonders. I can barely tolerate Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer and Thunderstone. I just find them totally tactical, and very prone to luck of the draw, with not really much you can do about it. (I find RftG to be especially prone to draw luck, and find that my card draws are totally opposite to whichever strategy I'm trying to follow at the time, regardless of how I try to roll with the draws.)

So, given a potential waning of interest in Wallace games, and a dislike of the central mechanism, just how did A Few Acres of Snow sit with me?

The physical presentation of the game is good. Mounted board, with good graphics, showing a point-to-point rendering of the game area. There are wooden cubes and discs in the player colors, representing villages and towns, and a neutral color to represent fortifications. There are the standard Warfrog/Treefrog plastic chips for money. The Limited Edition, available to subscribers, replaces the cubes and discs with houses in two sizes, and the plastic money chips with wooden tokens. The cards are of decent quality, and consist of two types: Location cards, representing a named location on the map, its connections, and the method of transport connecting them; and Empire cards, which have various types of benefits, e.g. Traders, Military, Leaders, etc. Both types of cards may have symbols at the bottom that are used in the player actions, e.g. boat, ship, wagon, settler, fur, gold, military. Some Empire cards are only used for their symbol. There are also a few neutral Empire cards (Settlers, Fortification, and Native Americans) that may be bought by either player.

There are many special Empire cards that I'm not going to go into, or we'll be here all day. Players have their own deck of cards, and don't have the same collection of Empire cards in their decks, so the sides have a different feel to them, e.g. the French player doesn't have a Settler card in his Empire deck, so one tactic for the British player is to buy up the neutral settler cards. The Location cards are the same for both players, and are added to the deck as the locations are captured on the board.

There were also lots of mentions of symbols there, and Location cards for the larger locations, e.g. Quebec, Montreal, have lots of symbols on them, but can only be used once before they hit the discard pile. Out of the way locations may have only a single symbol. So choosing how to use your more flexible cards drives a lot of the game.

Generally, you have four types of actions that you perform, and you have two actions per turn. The first type is to improve your empire, by capturing a new location, or improving an existing location. The former is done by playing a Location card, and card that matches the transportation type that connects it and the target location, which may be either a Location card or an Empire card. Some locations also have a settler symbol on the map, so also need a settler symbol card to be played. This allows you to put your village in the location, and add the Location card to your discard pile. Improving a location requires the Location card and either a settler symbol card, to upgrade the village to a town, or a fortification Empire card and 3 gold to add a fortification.

The second type of action is to get more gold. Either play a single Location card for the gold symbol on it to gain that amount, or play combinations of Empire cards that allow gold collection. The French player may also play the Louisberg location for piracy, which steal 2 gold from the British player.

The third type of action is to manage your deck/hand. You may select a card from your available stock of Empire cards, often with a cost in gold; discard from hand; place a card in reserve; take the cards from reserve back into hand (which is a free action); or use special Empire card actions to remove cards from your deck or (for the French player) take a card from your discard pile.

The final type of action is to screw with your opponent. Raids are performed by playing an empire card that allows raids, and you may raid an enemy location adjacent to a location you control. (You can play multiple raid cards to raid further.) Your opponent may play a card that allows a raid to be blocked, but if not you capture the enemy token, and any town is downgraded to a village. You can also ambush, which if not blocked removes an Empire card with the ambush symbol, generally military, from your opponent's hand, and it goes back to the available Empire cards and has to be repurchased. Then there are sieges.

A siege is started by playing a Location card that connects to the target location that you want to siege, the a card with the transportation symbol required, and a card with a military symbol. Each location has an intrinsic strength of 1, and fortifications add two to that. Regular infantry Empire cards have 2 military symbols, others have 1. So if a siege is started by playing, say, a 2-symbol card, the marker is put in the 1 space for the attacker on the siege track. The 0 spot and the 1 spot for the defender are colored grey, meaning the siege is unresolved, otherwise they're in the player colors. If the marker is ever in your color area at the start of your turn, then you've won the siege. If it's in the other player's color, then you need to play card(s) with military symbols to move it at least into the grey area before the end of your turn, otherwise the other player will win at the start of his turn. As an action you may play a single card onto the siege, moving the marker on the track for the number of military symbols on the card. The winner of the siege retains the loser's token, and may place their own village token, while the loser also has to remove one of the cards in the siege back to the available cards deck. Each player may have a single active siege at any one time. Fairly abstract, but pretty simple and effective, as you get a chance to react to the attack or defense, before the other player's turn, but you need to draw the right cards. This is where the Reserve comes in, as you can stack your military cards there, ready for attack or defense.

Now, that probably all sounds very confusing, but the rules are very clear (and a lot more verbose than my brief description). There are play aids for each player which covers the basics of each action, as well as the Empire cards available.

All well and good, but how is it to play? Our game had me as the French (randomly picked), and I focused on settling initially, and then fortifying and developing my gains. Eric tried a couple of sieges, but I managed to defend successfully, in the first by having my military in my Reserve before he started, and in the second by having a lucky draw of both my military cards immediately after he started the siege. I was able to raid extensively, sometimes keeping 2 Native American cards in hand to draw out his blocking card, which let me grab a few of his village and town tokens for VPs. Eric had a couple of successful raids, but mostly I kept a blocking card in hand.

The game end is when one player runs out of either village or town tokens, which Eric did first. However, the tokens I'd captured were enough to give me the margin, and I won by 8 points.

I'd actually played this once before, getting stomped as the British player, as my initial thoughts on reading the rules were reinforced by my game experience - deck building, yuck. However, when Eric asked to try it, and I started to read the rules again, I started to see some of the possibilities that I hadn't seen or understood previously. Lots of choice angst as you can't do everything with the cards that you want (or need) to do. I think having that first game gave me a huge advantage over Eric, as translating the rules into game board action takes some understanding and there's no better way than getting the experience while playing.

As the French player, gold is always a limitation, and there never seems to be enough to do what needs to be done. With the British player being stronger in military, keeping a reserve of Regulars Empire cards (which have 2 military symbols), and the cash to use them, seems important. The French player will be raiding a lot, trying to grab the villages and towns that mean VPs, and hasten the end of the game.

So, did this play change my attitude to the game? Yes, it did. Whilst I'm still not overly fond of the deck building mechanism, I now at least understand it a lot more than in my first game, and I can see some of the strategies and options. Whilst I don't think it will ever be my favorite Wallace game, I can see me playing this occasionally, and I can understand why a lot of people are really grooving on it.

Hey, it's a Wallace, did you really expect me to come up with anything different? My Wallace fan boi badge is intact.

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.

Fury at the fury

In the past few sessions Eric and I have been playing Fury in the East (BGG entry), a one-map WWII East Front game from MMP that covers the first 9 months of the Barbarossa Campaign. This game was part of Operations Magazine Special Edition #3, their yearly special that features a complete game, sometimes more than just one, as well as lots of updates, corrections, and variants for existing games.

FitE is a reprinting of the Japanese game G-Barbarossa (BGG entry), with updated graphics. It's a fairly strait-forward, corps level, move-fight-panzer move, locking ZoCs, odds combat, column shifts for terrain/supply type of game. However, there are a few wrinkles:

• Only German panzer units move in the second movement phase
  
• German panzers may move out of a ZoC
  
• Units performing Rail or Strategic movement may move out of a ZoC, as long as at least one unit is left behind
  
• For Axis combat is optional; for Soviets it is mandatory; all enemy units exerting a ZoC must be attacked; all units in an enemy ZoC must perform an attack
  
• Soviet Leaders have hidden strengths, and must be revealed to provide leadership to Soviet units; some leaders have no capability, and are removed immediately to the pool; Leaders destroyed in combat are out of the game
  
• Soviet combat units have to be in range of a Leader, otherwise movement rates halved, negative column shift applies; panzers may ignore infantry ZoCs with no Leader
  
• Terrain effects only apply to the Soviets, in terms of plus/minus column shifts
  
• Axis units not only have to trace supply to a supply source, but also have to trace to one of three supply heads
  
• There are different CRTs for each side; the Soviets taking losses; the Axis having retreats, with option to take a step loss instead
  
• Weather is a single condition affecting the whole map; also controls how many Luftwaffe units are available
  
• Axis player gains VPs for controlling Soviet cities; capturing Moscow is an automatic Axis victory
  
• Axis player has Hitler mandated objectives in turns 2-7; not achieving these are -5VPs per objective
  

The major problem is the rules just totally SUCK. Without doubt, this is the worst set of rules I think I've seen for any game I've played. (I believe that the S&T game Frigate had worse rules, but I never played that one.) Terminology issues, major omissions all over the place. Now this is a magazine game, and perhaps there should be some allowance made, but the game is effectively unplayable with the rules that came with it. Did no-one even attempt to blind playtest this from the proposed rules? Even worse is that as a reprint from a previous game there are so many glaring omissions. Did no-one make a comparison to the original game rules?

On the plus side, the developer, Adam Starkweather, has been very active in supporting the game over on ConSimWorld, responding to questions very quickly. However, he does have a habit of shooting from the hip and making pronouncements without going back and looking carefully at the rules. Several times he's made rulings, and then had to reverse them in later posts. That gives no confidence in any of his responses. He's also said 'If not mentioned in the rules, that’s fine.' Trouble is, the rules miss out so many critical items that you can't take that attitude.

And all this is a damn shame, because FitE is a very decent game, and does a very good job of modeling, at a high level, the differences in the forces, and the nature of the Barbarossa offensive. The game flows easily, with options for both sides and plenty to think about. The initial Axis successes slowly grind to a halt in the face of mounting Soviet forces, and the switch in the player turn order nicely reflects the change in balance caused by the winter. I've been playing it quite a bit recently (solo, as well as with Eric) and I've had a blast doing so.

So, track down this gem, get all the errata and rulings from the ConSim World forum, which has been nicely collated into a single document here, get the beer and pretzels out and have a blast.

Next up is Galicia from GMT's Clash of Giants II (BGG entry). Due to a gaming weekend and scheduling issues, we've had to have a couple weeks off, but are due to get back to it next week.

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.

Conflict returns to the table

After our Red Star Rising (BGG entry, Eric's review, take, my take) wrap up, we had a single session before Eric was off entertaining his mom, so a perfect night for something short, and I proposed a return to Conflict of Heroes (BGG entry, Eric's take, my take) as we'd both enjoyed it when we first tried it, and I was curious to see how the game progressed. This time the aim was to get through scenarios 3 and 4, which sees the whole rule book introduced, as well as vehicles.

In scenario 3 Eric ended up with the Germans, on the attack, to my Russians. I set up an MMG and the mortar on the leading ridge, and the other MMG on the east-most hill. My squads went into protecting the approaches, one to the west (in the heavy woods), one on the choke-point at the road, and the other in the light woods at the end of the wall, just below the hill. All my units were hidden.

Eric came up the road, and around the east side of the hill on the edge of the two boards with most of his squads, with a squad and a mortar to the west, on Hill 342. He made short work of my mortar, and I didn't get much from my artillery, just hitting a single unit all game. However, my lead MMG did some fair damage before succumbing. Eric managed to get two units onto board 4, and getting close to the headquarters. However, I managed to use my squads to fire on and then melee his squads to remove the threat. Eric was left with a couple of pot-shots at my HQ with a mortar with only an outside chance of success, but to no avail, leaving the Soviets with the win.

Onto scenario 4, which sees the introduction of fixed defenses and tanks, and, once more, Eric drew the attacking Germans. I set up my AT gun in the Hasty Defense in the heavy woods to the north of Hill 53, protecting the road, and with a decent field of fire. The MMG went in the bunker, a squad on each of the control hexes, and the spare in the light woods near his entry, hoping to grab back the control/VP hexes when they got captured. One T26 set up on Hill 53, the other on the other hill.

Eric came in strong, and rolled well to quickly remove both squads and one of the T-26s with a Vehicle Destroyed chit draw. One of his tanks ran around to my right and captured the control point, removing the squad there, and then took out the other T-26. At this point I was 5-1 down in units and it was looking bleak. However, the AT gun managed to remove a couple of tanks and disable another. It was this last one that was critical as it was the main unit for taking on the bunker. And so it was that Eric was unable to dent the bunker, and I was able to hold on for a win.

Over both games I was very careful of my CAP expenditure, trying to hold onto CAP for when I really needed it, and also passing a lot, trying to force Eric to use up his units and CAP. As defender, this is often easier than as attacker, especially where if he tries the same passing tactic it leads to the end of the turn, and the game has a limited turn length. This did back-fire on me once, as I ended the turn with 5 CAPs still on the track. What a maroon!

Both games fit into our 3-hour slot and played very quickly once we got back into the swing, which didn't take too long at all. The vehicle extensions work well, and it has a decent feel. There's a decent amount of tension, and there should be good variation and replayability. I'm looking forward to going deeper into the scenario list, especially the bigger ones. And the new versions that are coming out.

OCS learnings

I've played a few OCS games now, and here are a few thoughts on what I've learned, especially after the Sicily game.

1. Use reserves

For the defender, this is critical, especially artillery. Sure, it burns supply, but it forces the attacker to call off the combats or attack at low odds. And throwing more units into a hex that's had a stack lose a step to a freak barrage result can be the difference. For the attacker this is also critical. You never know when you're going to get that freak set of results that opens up the defenders, and throwing in the reserves can be crucial. Anther point is that your opponent cannot put units in a ZoC into reserve, so using your reserves to move adjacent cuts down the defender's flexibility, perhaps allowing an even better exploitation next turn.

2. Attack reserves

Attacking the defender's flexibility is critical, so using barrages to attack reserves can be a good tactic, even with the big negative column shift for unspotted barrages.

3. Keep up the attack!

Sometimes you've just got to burn the supply (and units) and keep attacking. That means an overrun in the movement phase, followed by a combat, then an overrun and more combat with released reserves (or, if you're lucky in the combat, exploitation units) in the exploitation phase. Keep the defender on the run!

4. Defend in depth

To counter the above, you have to defend in depth, to ensure that the attacker isn't exploiting in your back field. Nothing is going to ruin your day more than an armored division breaking through and cutting supply to everyone.

5. Be aware of Spotting rules

(This one is related to Sicily) Keep a mix of Italian and German troops together, as the one nationality cannot perform barrage spotting for the other. Keeping them mixed means more flexibility when performing barrages, especially when your opponent has air superiority, and you don't know which of your artillery reserves will be the target.

There, an exercise in teaching granny to suck eggs.

No cheer at the Chir

One of the sessions in our upcoming WBC-W game-athon will be a 2-day, 4-player 'monster' game. After some discussion, we settled on one of the games from the MMP/Gamers OCS line, and choose the 'Drive for Oil' scenario from Case Blue (BGG entry). (OK, that's not such a huge monster in the grand scheme of things, but it's a start for us.)

So, as part of our preparations for WBC-W, and Case Blue specifically, Eric and I will be spending the next few weeks getting back into OCS. Last night saw our first foray into Case Blue, with the Chir River training scenario. This was a scenario that was a part of the original Enemy at the Gates OCS game, and which (along with a lot of others) was not included with the enlarged version of the campaign, Case Blue. (I've never understood why they weren't converted and included with CB.) Anyway, several devotees of OCS have started converting these old scenarios to Case Blue, so, it seemed a good place for Eric and I to start, as it's only 3 turns long, with a small group of units and portion of the map.

The scenarios sees the Russians attacking to the SW of Stalingrad in the middle of December in 1942, trying to gain a foothold over the Chir River. The Axis have a lot of crummy units holding the line, but with a full panzer division to provide mobile backup. The Russians win if they break through the Axis lines and capture Morozovsk (to the left from the Axis perspective), and the Axis win if they prevent that. Here's the opening situation from the two perspectives:





I randomly got the Russians, and my plan was to force a gap in the center/right flank area with the two infantry divisions (212th and 93rd Gds), where they only faced a couple of Alert battalions, using 5Mech Corps to drive through the gap. From there, drive to Morozovsk, whilst trying to protect my flank from 11Pz. The second part was to use the existing bulge into the Axis lines, and 1Tk (stacked under the 12-2-2), on the left to also force a gap, threatening to pocket his entire frontline, leaving them out of supply, and forcing him to also protect his right flank of 11Pz as they try to stop my main thrust.

A grand plan, but it went awry from the first roll. I started with an overrun of a minuscule Alert battalion by my 1Tk units in the bulge. However, despite a +1 action rating modifier, I managed to roll a 6 column defender surprise shift (needed 6+ to avoid defender surprise), which meant I lost one of the attacking units, although I did remove the Alert battalion. Further, after moving in, we spotted that this would leave 1Tk unsupplied, as the HQ couldn't throw that far, so it had to pull back. (Frozen march is 6MPs, and a frozen minor river is +3MPs, so it can't throw across the river.) In all my following combats I rolled another couple of defender surprise results, and a single attacker surprise. Fortunately, my combat rolls were generally very good, so things mostly balanced out, as without that things would have looked pretty bleak. However, by the end of the turn I'd surrounded several units, cutting them off from supply.

Then Eric went into action with 11Pz. They came storming forward, and overran the mech unit holding the pocket, gaining surprise for another 6 column shift, and promptly vaporized. So went the rest of the turn, with Eric gaining attacker surprise in 4 out of 5 combats, for 6, 6, 5 and 2 column shifts (4 at +2, i.e. needing 8+, 1 at +1, i.e. needing 9+). By the end of the turn 5M and 1Tk Corps had pretty much ceased to exist, and for no loss to the Axis.

It was pretty clear that there wasn't going to be any Russian win in this game. With there still being a gap in the Axis lines, I pushed my remaining strength forward, attempting to take out part of 11Pz. Once again I didn't have much success, although I did successfully overrun the 11Pz artillery unit that had been left exposed, and managed to clear Surovikino, to create a better line of supply to the units on the left, and once again surround some of the Axis front-line units.

Once more, however, the dice didn't go in my favor as Eric's attrition rolls were 4 and 5, meaning both stacks survived, one with no loss, the other with a single step loss. (The first needed a 8+ to die (AR3, 2-5 no loss, 6-7 1 step, 8+ 2 steps), the second 6+ (AR2, 2-3 no loss, 4-5 1 step, 6+ steps.) Elsewhere, he just rejigged his line, with little (or no?) combat.

In the final turn Eric won initiative, and chose to go first. He started a withdrawal, and pulled everyone back, knowing that with a single turn to go, I had a lot of ground to make up. In the pocket, one of the isolated units still survived, as the AR3 stack only lost a single step, but the AR2 stack lost its final step.

However, there was still a chance! Eric had left one hex in his line protected by a single Alert battalion, and I threw what I had left against it. But it was not to be, as I couldn't muster the '6' required on two dice to get the exploitation result to allow the units to drive through the gap and have a chance of overrunning Morozovsk, although, thinking more about it, I wouldn't have had the MPS to do that, anyway.

This had taken around 1.5 hours, so we set it up again, and switched sides.

This time it was Eric's turn to suffer from the dice, as his very first roll saw the best weather possible, not what the Russian player wants, leaving the rivers unfrozen. (In my version I did well on the weather rolls, having frozen rivers each turn.) He pushed a little in the bulge area of his left, but didn't risk any attacks across the river, settling for setting up for the next turn. I pushed 11Pz forward to blunt his attack in the bulge area, successfully pushing him back, but at the cost of a panzer battalion.

In the next turn the weather became frozen, and Eric pushed forward. He attacked along his right flank, all the way to the end, hoping to turn it and set himself up for the final turn. I moved 11Pz across to protect, and removed his leading units in combat.

In the final turn, I won initiative, and chose to go first. I pushed all my units forward, in what I considered to be a very 'gamey' tactic, taking advantage of a gap in his lines to put all his lead units out of supply. If this had been part of a larger game, rather than a focused scenario, I wouldn't have done this, as I fully expected most of my forward units to get blasted, and wouldn't have been prepared to give up so many units for such a short-term gain. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened, as Eric over-ran all those Alert battalions I'd pushed forward, but they'd done their jobs, as he didn't have anywhere near the range or capability to get close to Morozovsk, so the Axis won, once more.

In the post-game kibitzing we discussed how the Russian player should tackle this puzzle. We agreed that there are a few items that appeared critical, and which we learned through play:

• Rail bridge at 30.31 - without it the Russian HQ can't throw supply far enough to allow an attack on Morozovsk, so removing the LW division protecting it is vital
  
• 8-4-8 armor unit - neither of us used this unit effectively, but with its big movement and combat strength it should be used in the drive/attack on Morozovsk
  
• Get the Katyusha across to the point of attack in the first turn, or at least use it to DG 11Pz
  

OK, it's a very limited scenario, but it served its purpose. We got back into the OCS groove, and very quickly too, with a minimum of rules referencing, as either one or the other of us remembered the specific rule in question. We're planning to do the Edge of the World scenario over the next few weeks, which should have us ready for WBC-W. Not having played OCS for several months now, I'd forgotten how good it was, and how much I liked it.

I am _so_ looking forward to the WBC-W OCS session, the highlight of the week for me.

Sand in the toes

Another session, and another game off the burn-down list. This time it was the turn of Shifting Sands, the CDG from MMP of the campaign in North Africa. Whilst I've been aware of this one for some time, it's only recently that it's jumped onto my 'to buy' list as my interest in CDGs in general (and the desert campaign, as a lesser factor) has ramped up.

Having played a little of WWII: Barbarossa to Berlin, Shifting Sands was very familiar, and the mechanisms were mostly in my head. There are lots of special rules that allows for a fair amount of chrome relevant to the theater and its special circumstances and situations, but I never felt overwhelmed at any point.

In our game I played the Allies, and pressed forward smartly. An early play of Poor Morale was useful, although I was very short of Reinforcement cards. By the time the Germans entered, I had captured Tobruk, and was clearing out East Africa after a slow start. I was fortunate to get a couple of good results when the Axis attacked towards Tobruk, repulsing both attacks with even results, although I was down a column in each combat.

In 1941, Tobruk fell to a large Axis attacking force, as my spoiling attack failed, despite a +2 drm. After that the front went quiet, as I was able to move a couple of divisions around from the empty East Africa. Eric did make one attempt on my line, advancing Italian units adjacent in two spaces, but I was able to remove both of them in my turn with Crusader, leaving him no platform to attack.

1942 saw the Torch, Patton, and Vulcan cards all come into my hand on the first turn. With another couple of Torch-specific cards being dealt in the next turn, I went into the Spring 1942 turn with only a few usable cards. Fortunately I was able to hold on to my existing position, and Summer 1942 saw the Americans land in Tunisia. Throughout the year I was running close to the limit of VPs for an automatic Axis victory, but Eric was never able to grab that all-important final VP space.

From this point on I pretty much focused on Tunisia, ignoring the rest of the map unless I had spare operations points I couldn't use in Tunisia. I drove towards Tripoli with infantry and armored divisions, and towards Tunis on two axes with both US and British divisions. However, while the former was successful, Eric mounted a spirited defense of Tunis, shuffling units in from Libya with a succession of well co-ordinated card plays. Combined with a seemingly endless supply of combat cards, some good rolls on his part, and some weak die rolling on my part, I was unable to winkle him out. This despite several attacks, and also a combined attack rolling on the max. column.

Two card plays into the Winter 1943 (and penultimate) turn things were looking bleak for me, as he'd managed to break the US assault into Tunis, and forced me out of Tripoli by abandoning the Libyan/Egptian front and transferring pretty much every available German unit to Tunisia. It was at this point that the game became a total bogey, as Eric spotted that the whole of his Libyan/Egyptian front was unable to trace supply, and should have been removed from the game at the end of the Fall 1942 turn.

This had come about because I'd taken Tripoli, and he'd stripped his line so bare of units (moving some to Tunis and the others towards Tripoli) that I was able to advance and isolate Tobruk in the Fall 1942 turn. This left Benghazi as the only remaining port, and it's not a supply source for the Axis. Of course, if Eric had been aware of this I'm sure he would have put more effort into either defending Tripoli in the first place, or ensuring a line to Tobruk was maintained, preventing me from putting his units out of supply. The other side is that if he had done that, then he possibly wouldn't have had the units to defend Tunis so successfully, and would have ended up losing that instead.

Anyway, we back-tracked to the start of the Winter 1943 turn as best we could, and then re-dealt. (As we'd each played two cards plus combat cards we knew half the cards in each others' hands.) Now that I had no pressure from the east, I was able to release the armored division from the defense of Tripoli to aid in the attack on Tunis, and with the rolls finally swinging in my favor (or even just matching the percentages) I was able to grind him down and take Tunis for the automatic victory. (It requires owning both Tunis and Tripoli.)

OK, the end left a rather tainted victory in my lap, but overall I really enjoyed the game. It went back and fore a bit, and there were lots of areas to be considered. The game mechanisms introduce just the right balance between complexity and chrome, and the variations in the deal of the cards ensures good replayability.

I can see there are a few critical factors. When Torch comes out is the biggest; if it's into 1943 before the Allied player gets to play it, then that could be a game killer for them. Still, I'd look forward to playing this one again.

The bitterest of ends

My choice again, and this time it was a bigger game, Compass Games' Bitter End (BGG entry). This has been on my peripheral radar for a little while as it's been getting some good press, and I eventually decided to pull the trigger and get a copy from Boards and Bits.

Eric's already given a good description of the main differences from 'regular' wargames, so I'll just give my take. I really like the presentation: nice big counters; big hexes; good charts and play aids; clear (if unexciting) counters; attractive map, very wintry; clear rules. Overall, a game that makes you want to play it.

The game mechanisms are all mostly familiar: supply-move-fight-exploit; hard ZoCs (i.e. stop on entry, cannot move ZoC-ZoC); hard stacking limits (i.e. cannot exceed at any time). The main difference, and one that takes some getting used to, is the combat result mechanism. Each combat produces a number, the attack level, from which the defender's terrain defense level is subtracted, to give a combat result. If the result is negative, then the attacker suffers a loss/retreat; positive, and the defender suffers a loss/retreat; equal, and there's same-hex combat. Each step loss reduces the result by 1, and any retreats are measured in MPs. Now, there are other games that use a similar system (although I can't, off-hand, remember where I've seen it before), but where BE differs (at least, in my recollection of those games that I can't remember!) is that retreating units cannot use roads, and if the retreating unit does not have enough retreat MPs to enter a hex then it loses a step and enters that hex.

And it's that last point that is the one that's difficult to handle. The easiest point to note is that it now becomes critical to ensure that your units have good retreat paths. Defending in the middle of a clump of Rough/Wooded hexes (defense level 4, 4MPs to enter) now becomes a dangerous proposition, as any combat result less than 4 means that you're going to lose a step in retreat. In some cases the retreat hex terrain is of more consideration than the defense hex terrain. In a couple of cases I found myself deliberately choosing weaker defense terrain rather than better, expecting to create a higher combat result which would allow a safe retreat. The other angle is that, as attacker, you don't want your attack to be too successful, as that might give the defender enough MPs to retreat into that nasty terrain behind it.

Now this just all seems rather counter-intuitive, and it was hard to get a handle on it. However, by the end of the game we were both getting more of a grip on how to use the mechanism. Don't defend in the middle of that clump of Rough/Wooded hexes (as you would in other games), but right at the back edge of it so you can retreat into the clear hex behind. Now, I don't have any real-world military experience, but that just doesn't strike me as right.

Anyway, back to our play of the game. We played the 6-turn scenario, the first turns of the full 26-turn campaign game, with me as the Russians. For initial deployments I pretty much just dumped units in a line, not knowing what to expect from the game. This allowed Eric's initial attacks to put a lot of my units out of supply. As OoS units can't use one-hex minimum movement, and remembering that units can't move ZoC-ZoC, a large part of my force was eliminated or stuck. Next time my deployment would be way different.

Eric pushed on five main axes: Székesfehérvár in the south; Mór-Czákberény in the center; from Tata south-east towards Tatabanya; from Tata east along the south side of the Danube; east along the north side of the Danube. For the first, he pushed a little too far and I was able to cut off his panzer spearhead, and push the supporting units back. In the second he gained some initial success, but I strongly reinforced (too strongly, really) and pushed him back, again cutting off his lead units. The Tatabanya axis almost gained as far as Biscke, one of the victory condition hexes, but, again, I was able to blunt his offensive by aggressively advancing with units from a cavalry division in his flank, cutting his supply.

This last move was aided strongly by the resolute defense of Tata by a couple of units, which sucked in a lot of potentially dangerous German SS units. (In other words, Eric rolled like crap in his attacks to remove the defenders from his back field.) These were originally heading east of Tata, but he was never able to develop this axis of attack. In fact the Tata defenders were able to retreat across the river, where they were able to contribute to the move to place the whole Tatabanya axis out of supply.

North of the Danube is where Eric had the most success. He forced me back, and then used his Sturmboot to cross the river, taking Esztergom, the other of the mandatory victory condition cities. This was the most scary of the five axes, but Eric missed the eastern approach and I was able to run an armored unit around and into Esztergom, also putting everyone out of supply. It was also here that we made our biggest (only?) rules gaffe, as motorized units are not allowed to use the Sturmboot to cross the river. Anyway, I pressed into his ZoCs, so the only units he could free up to attack Esztergom gave him a fairly weak attack, which failed. Elsewhere, his attacks to free up his supplied units also went badly, and with only one turn for him left to capture the other mandatory victory condition city of Biscke, plus two of the three others, he called it a day. With it being my turn, lots of reinforcements coming in, and a few units freed up to push him back around Biscke, it was clear that the Germans weren't going to get near to winning.

After the first evening's play I was a bit 'hmmmm' about BE. Now it's just 'hm'. The whole combat system still doesn't sit quite right, but I can work with it, However, once you figure out how to deal with it, it's not too hard in play terms. The game was certainly tense, and I was very concerned that I'd made a mistake by reinforcing the southern area too much, and neglecting the main victory condition axes. As it turned, Eric was the one who had an evening of rolling less than average dice, while I was ahead of the curve.

One thing that I would like to try at some point is the whole campaign game. It has a totally different set of victory conditions to the scenario, being based around how well the Germans do in getting close to liberating Budapest, holding towns at the end of the game, etc. With all those Russian replacements and reinforcements it's going to be a real hard game for the Germans. However, it's estimated at ~25 hours, so unlikely to be done any time soon, but I can see us having another go at the scenario.

Overall, a thumbs up to Compass Games for Bitter End.

Results at the Marne

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








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

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

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

Now, my thoughts on the game.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DSDF hits the Marne

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(The game in pictures is here.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conflict of gamers

After our Vassal fun last week, it was back to regular gaming, and I won the toss for selection. It wasn't too hard to pick Conflict of Heroes, a game I bought several weeks previously, but hadn't really looked at since. I wasn't even aware of this one until our gaming friend Patrick mentioned it and I started some research, starting with the BGG entry. Pretty quickly I was sold on the game and it was one of the first games I purchased with my store credit from the recent Rainy Day Games auction, in fact I even placed a pre-order for it before the auction had even taken place.

I've been looking for a good squad level game for some time. ASL wasn't it, too detailed, too many rules to remember, and although it has a big following, it just wasn't doing it for me (although it was great to just read through the gorgeous rule book, and drool over the fascinating range of weapons and hardware). Combat Commander wasn't it, too wacky. Although I will play it, too often it's not very satisfying. (I still can't make up my mind whether I want to get the new Pacific version, but, for the moment, I haven't cancelled my P500 pre-order.)

So, over the past few weeks I've been following all the posts on BGG, and, boy, have there been a lot of them! And then some more! (46 pages in fact.) This game is generating a LOT of interest, and it's all positive, with everyone raving about how good it is. Can they all be wrong, or have they just been drinking the Kool-Aid? Time to find out.

Prior to our game, I decided not to do more than just read the rules, in order to keep a level playing field. That way neither one of us had any more experience than the other, although it was hard not to get it onto the table. The rules appear ridiculously simple, and the first major thing of note is that there are no leaders in the game, which comes as something as a shock to those brought up on ASL and CC. Instead, there are Command Action Points (CAPs), which represent the abstraction of command, that can be used to allow units to perform actions, or modify dice rolls. Each player has a CAP allowance, which is received each turn, unused points at the end of the turn being lost.

Players take turns being the active player, being allowed to take multiple actions per activation, and only when the player is done taking actions is their activation over. However, after each action in that activation the non-active player gets a chance to react by taking an action. During an activation only one unit, or group of units, may be activated, where it gets 7 Action Points, with each movement, fire, or rally, etc. being an action, and taking a number of APs to perform. Other possible actions are Opportunity Action, Command Action, and Play an Action card, and the reacting player may choose any of these three actions as a reaction to the active player's action. (The non-player may not choose a unit/group activation as a reaction.) The
Opportunity Action allows a player to use a unit/group to perform and action is response to a previous action. A Command Action allows the player to use CAPs to perform actions with units/groups. This is useful, because after activation or an Opportunity Action, a unit/group is flipped over to show they have been used. Note that CAP can be used on ANY unit, even one that has been flipped! The final action is a Card Action. Each player has a number of cards which allow a variety of actions to be performed, e.g. firing for no AP cost, adding to firepower, etc.

And that takes us, rather conveniently, to combat. Units are divided into 'hard' targets (e.g. armor) and 'soft' (e.g. infantry), marked by the color of their defense strength, blue or red, respectively, as well as frontal and flank defense values. Some units, e.g. armor, also have both types of attack strength (red & blue), and if using the 'wrong' type of attack strength for the intended target the strength is halved. Take the attack strength, apply any modifiers, add 2d6, and compare to the target's defense strength. Equal or greater scores a hit, 4 or more greater scores 2 hits, and 2 hits kills. When a unit is hit, the player draws a damage marker from the bag (for the correct target type) which identifies the impact of the hit, which ranges from pinning (no movement) to varies modifiers to action costs, defense and attack strength, and outright kills. This marker is kept secret and placed under the unit until it rallies and removes it. A hit scored on a unit with a damage marker removes that unit from the game, and each removed unit reduces the CAPs by one point.

As an example, to start their activation, player A could play a card, and in response player B may choose to do nothing. Player A may then choose to activate a unit, placing the AP marker in the 7APs space, moving it one hex for a cost of 1AP. In response to this player B may use CAP to allow a unit to fire on the moving unit as a Command Action, which means the firing unit isn't flipped to its used side. Player A could choose an Opportunity Action, firing with a different unit to the one currently active, which would flip the unit, but save CAP until later. And so it goes on, back and fore, until the active player decides he doesn't want to do anything more that activation. Pretty simple and straight-forward.

So on Wednesday Eric and I sat down, briefly recapped the rules required (it uses a programmed instruction style), and set up scenarios 1. (We used the set-up in the play book, although I note now that there is a correction.) I was the Russians, Eric the Germans, and has the Germans trying to kill units and take control of the victory location. Eric started by advancing strongly, and managed to capture the VP location at one point, but I forced him out and scored lots of casualties for a convincing win.

That took around 45 minutes, so onto scenario 2, which once again saw my defending Russians being attacked by Eric's Germans. This scenario introduces hidden units and group activation (costs 1 CAP to activate a group of units). There are two VP locations, one in the village that the Russians get more VPs for the longer they can hold onto it, the Germans more for capturing it quickly. I placed a couple of units forward, hoping to catch Eric quickly, and it almost worked as Eric activated a group and dashed forward up the road. I allowed them to move past the hidden unit, and then fired on their flank from an adjacent hex (+3 fire modifier). Requiring only a 5 on 2 dice I whiffed one of them, then when he turned to face me (a movement action, spending APs, so allowing me a response) I whiffed on both units requiring a 6. He fired, scoring a hit with one unit, but as I'd used two cards to allow fire for no AP/CAP cost, I used an Opportunity Action to fire again, finally scoring a kill, but Eric got his revenge and also took out my unit. That could have gone so much better for me!

Eric started a drive up my right flank, and I (stupidly) let him, rather than fire on him, eventually revealing my other forward unit when he advanced into my hex. In my reaction I fired in Close Combat (which is just fire, but with different modifiers), scoring a hit, and Eric decided to run away rather than risk losing an LMG unit (they're -2 in CC). The next turn he played a card that flipped one of my units to its used side, and chose the unit protecting the VP location. He then used his activations to gang up on it, as I didn't have any LoS to stop him, managing to capture it in turn 3 for mucho VPs. I did manage to capture it back again in turn 4, but Eric kicked me out again in turn 5, and those VPs were enough for him to take the win.

I think I can honestly say that this is one of the two most exciting and interesting games of the year for me. (The other is Napoleon's Triumph, btw.) The price is high ($75), but the production values are excellent. Great mapboards, luscious large counters, colorful rule book, play book and play aids. (The rule book was mis-collated, but free replacements are offered, and the customer service response (from Uwe, himself) to my request for a replacement was almost instantaneous.)

The game play is some of the most elegant I've seen, and it just flows together. The idea of CAPs work wonderfully, and gives some hard decisions to make, and each CAP spent has to be justified. I found myself spending CAP too quickly, allowing Eric freedom from response at the end of the turn, as well as playing a very poor tactical game in the second scenario, leaving my units without mutual support. The interactive flow of the game makes for some tense decisions and flexibility. This has obviously been some time in the production and must have seen serious play-testing as everything just fits together so well and so cleanly.

There's a time for a long, detailed, intricate game, and there's a time for something lighter, and this fits the bill for the latter category very well. Both scenarios took us no more than a couple of hours, which is a very decent length. Looking forward in the scenarios/rules there is armor, off-board artillery and larger multi-formation scenarios, so there is a lot of depth to go yet. I can hardly wait, as I think I've found that squad level game I was looking for. This is going to see a lot of table time in the future, and I plan to pick up the new installments as they're released. My CC:Pacific pre-order is in the greatest danger it's ever been, and is now hanging on by a thread.