Two Sides Two Fer

Now that the holidays and all it's myriad vacations are over, Mike and I sat down to restart regular Two Sides sessions. We're intending to do this every other Monday for the foreseeable future.

Of course, I missed the BCS title game for this, but the game ended up being almost exactly what I expected, so that wasn't much of a loss.

Mike wanted to get Duel in the Dark, the new Fantasy Flight game on British bombing raids of Germany during WWII on the table. I'd heard a few good things about it, so I was pretty curious to see how it would play out.

When I was reading through the rules, I had the hardest time getting the idea that this was about the Battle of Britain out of my head – that lead to some confusing re-reads as I kept expecting the Brits to be on the defensive during the battle, not initiating things.

We decided to play a single night's raid then switch sides. As each night is supposed to take around a half hour to an hour we figured that would be a safe choice for my first play and Mike's second.

For those that don't know the game (and I expect that's most of you) here's a quick rundown.

The board has a rather large hexgrid superimposed on top of it, and you move on that grid. (There's something like 45 different spaces – I think the hexes are about 2.5-3” across.) The map has England on one edge and Eastern Germany on the other edge. North/south is roughly the south edge of Scandinavia down to the Alps. There's about a dozen possible target cities scattered around the map, and most hexes also have airbases.

The British have a Mosquito fighter squadron and a Bomber squadron. The Germans have four fighter squadrons (one having a longer range – I don't recall the aircraft types.) A night's raid has six phases:

1. Determine the weather. This involves drawing a card and placing clouds, fog, and/or lightning as appropriate. The wind is also set at this point.
2. Germans place their fighter squadrons. One per hex unless a fuel asset is placed there.
3. And,
4. (these are done sort of simultaneously.) The British player chooses starting airfields for his fighter and bomber and a target city. He then pre-programs the entire flight of the bomber squadron from take off point to target back to a landing location back in England. This route can be no more than 14 steps in length. While he's doing this, the German player decides where they're going to place 40 different defense assets. These are things like AA gun emplacements, fuel trucks, citizen bunkers, fire trucks, radar, etc. With the exception of the Rail Gun (a mini-expansion Mike has) these are immobile once placed. After the British player says he's done with his planning, the German player places his assets.
5. The British player now places the Mosquito and Bomber on the board.
6. The actual play begins in the following sequence (performed until all planes land at the end of the bomber run):

• British player moves the Mosquito up to two hexes bombing assets or tagging the target city as desired
• German player moves his fighters, spending fuel to do so
• British player flips over a preprogrammed card and moves the Bomber accordingly.

So, things to note – Brits must plan their route after knowing the weather, but before the ground assets are seen. Germans have to guess where the Brits are going given the weather.

Combat is highly abstract. You simply get VPs for the opponent moving into spaces where you are. The VPs are modified by a variety of factors including weather, altitude, ground defenses, etc. For example, if the Brits can cause the Germans to move a fighter into the same hex as their Mosquito, they get 1 VP for the first two fighters moving into that hex, plus 1 for it being a full moon, minus 1 if clouds are in that hex, etc.

The primary source of VPs is the city you choose as a target – they score you anywhere from 13 to 30 depending on difficulty. Ground assets frequently score points for the Germans as the bomber moves into those hexes. Some ground assets help against the Mosquito as well.

In our session, the weather and Mike's initial fighter placement left an opening at the far southern end of the map, so I headed for Munich (which was in cloud cover, costing me 5 VPs). I had to travel over one heavily defended hex along the way as well. The tactics between the Mosquito/Bomber and fighters is certainly rather interesting, added to by the fuel expenditure of the fighters. (they have 8 points to spend, and it costs 2 per hex of movement, 1 for downwind, and 3 for upwind. Then they have to land and refuel.)

After various levels of give and take, we finally made it with me scoring a net 11 points. We swapped sides and did the whole exercise again. Mike chose a far northern route which, in combination with my defense placement and the air direction (heading due west) made it a bit more difficult for me to hurt him on the way to his target. I did a little bit of damage on the way back, but had to call things off so my planes could land before running out of fuel. I think Mike ended up with about 22 points or so.

My initial impression was that it's a clever little game. It certainly gives a bit of the feel of the “flying into the unknown” nature of those bombing raids in a VERY simple form. You can play multiple raids per side if you wish, and the weather and all defenses but bunkers are changed. There are also advanced rules for changing the wind/weather, but we didn't play with those. It certainly would change the planning phase if you knew the weather could completely change on you.

There are apparently a number of mini-expansions planned. (Mike and I almost completely forgot about moving our rail gun, btw.) The game has some promise, and is certainly fun to play and looks good, but I don't think it's one I'll be getting. When I sat down to think about what I was going to write, I just got this overall impression that something was lacking. I don't know if it's the anticlimactic nature of the “combat” or the fact that the planning stages take nearly as long as the actual play. I think I had a similar reaction to it that Mike initially had to Command and Colors: Ancients. It's the gaming equivalent of Chinese food. Satisfies you in the short term, but an hour later you're left looking for more.

Speaking of looking for more, by the time we finished, it was only about 9:15, so we pulled out the new Expansion #2 for Commands and Colors: Ancients. We randomly chose what turned out to be the first scenario: Clusium. I played first as Rome, Mike had the Gauls, then we swapped sides and played again. In this one, the Romans are trying to sack the Gallic camp guarded only by cavalry while trying to hold off a larger force. I don't remember a whole lot of details on these games, but I know that neither of us successfully took the camp. The Gauls have 15 units to 12 for the Romans, and in both games the numbers were telling. Rome lost both games. First, I lost 6-5, then Mike lost 6-2 (though I had a number of units down to a single block.)

I was a little too brash in my attack (probably fueled by the fact I started with a Line Command card in my opening hand and nearly the entire Roman force is in a single line) and Mike was very effective in his counter attacks. On Mike's turn with the Romans, his initial attack was more measured, but he ended up running out of cards on his left flank where I was weakest, and I was able to push back on the other side to end up scoring the victory. Both of us had entirely ineffective cavalry in this one.

Great fun as always, though. I've never had a session of C&C:A where I was disappointed in the game. (It's those dice, I tell you...)

In two weeks, we'll be back with Tide of Iron on the table. After that, it wouldn't surprise me if we get into something much bigger, but it'll be Mike's choice then.

Duel in the Ancients

Back from the holiday break, and just soooooo ready for some gaming. As mentioned in the last post, it was my choice of game this time, and I wanted to give Duel in the Dark a longer go.

This is the recent Z-Man game on the WWII bombing of Germany. One player controls the British, choosing the target, route taken by the bombers, and controlling the Mosquito fighters. The other player controls the German forces, deciding the layout of the defenses and controlling the fighters. I’d played once, and Eric had read the rules, so after a brief recap, we dived straight in, with the bombers going to Eric.

With some cloud to north and south, I spread my defenses around, but focusing in the more populated areas to the north. Eric had plotted his bombers to come in to bomb the southern city of München, and with a north easterly wind getting my fighters down there took a lot of aviation fuel. Barely a couple of turns into the night and some of my guys are already landing to refuel. However, I’m managing to get in a few licks, as I get most of the guesses correct as to where the bombers are headed, despite the Mosquito trying to persuade me otherwise.

The same happens on the bombers’ run back home, as I pull back from the big total he’d achieved after his bombing run, and the final score ends up at 11 for the British.

We swap sides and have another go. This time I fake going for the middle, but head north, fly along the coast of Holland then cut inland to bomb Lübeck. I use the Mosquito to cause confusion on where the route home will go, bombing a flak unit to help, and Eric spreads out his fighters to cover the options. Perfect! It all means they have to spend fuel to catch up, with one not even being able to vector in. In the end he has to give up the pursuit as, with a westerly wind, he won’t have enough fuel to get back to his airbases, and dropping in the drink would give me mucho VPs. I’d managed to confuse him enough that the Brits scored over 20VPs this time.

I really like the theme, the cat and mouse play of trying to figure out where the bombers are likely to target, and then determining their flight path. Combat is very simplistic, which is perfect for the depth of game. The actual mission execution is interesting, taking about 15-20 minutes to play.

On the downside, is that the play isn't terribly engaging. The British player only has the Mosquito to do stuff with, and the German player has 4 fighters to move, and often the moves are obvious, and no real decisions need to be made. That cat and mouse thing is just too short. Another issue is the setup time for each mission, which has the British player plot his bomber route there and back, which can take a few minutes. Then the German player has to set up all his defense toys, which takes another few minutes. During each of these parts of the game the other player has little to do but watch. So, around 10 minutes of setup for 20 minutes of play, only 5 or so minutes of any real tension, not a great ratio.

OK, so it’s still just 9pm. Too early to call it a night, too late to start some combat Commander. Perfect for some C&C: Ancients, breaking the TSttC tradition of playing a single game in the evening. With the new expansions on the shelf, they were just screaming to get pulled down, so we had the Romans fighting the Gauls at the battle of Clusium, me being the Gauls first time through. This sees a Gallic camp in the middle of the board, with the Romans threatening to capture it. The Gauls get first turn, however, not enough to protect it, but enough to threaten.

Eric started with a Line command, advancing and killing 2 of the 3 cavalry units defending the camp. Only my second turn and I’m already 2-0 down in flags. Not looking good. However, things turned around, and despite losing a unit and leader, I managed to pressure his center and left flank into submission, winning a close one 6-5.

We turned it around, and started again. Once again the Romans opened with a Line command, with pretty much the same result as before. This time Eric wasn’t in a position to push me back off the camps, and they both were removed. I had 2 Mounted Charge cards, so spent a little time adjusting my line, trying to learn from the previous game not to be too impetuous.

I felt things were shaping up nicely. I was maintaining a good line, I’d just used one Mounted Charge to cause serious damage to a couple of units (but no kills), and had a good chance to hit a unit with leader with the other Mounted Charge card. And then it all went pear shaped. With 8 dice I managed a single hit, while with his returning 7 he scored 5 and a double flag (he did have a leader, which helped him), effectively wiping out my cavalry. My defensive position atop the hill crumbled despite a dice superiority, and I was forced back everywhere. I managed to get the heavies up, but even with their dice I couldn’t hit the wide side of a barn door and went down 6-2. It didn’t help that Eric took out another leader!

C&C:A is just superb, every game is fun. So, given that, why would I ever bring out DitD over it? A good question, and not one I have a ready answer to. Both have set-up time issues, but at least both are setting up at the same time in C&C:A. They both provide tension over what will your opponent do, just more so in C&C:A. In fact I can foresee that, given the choice, I’d pick C&C:A over DitD almost every time. Unless I really, really wanted to fly British bombers over Germany. Hmmm, I just might put DitD on the trade pile. Well, maybe I did have a ready answer after all.

Rules Vengeance

This is going to be a relatively short post compared to a lot of the ones I write. I've got a lot going on – hey, it's the holidays and I've got two kids – and there actually isn't a whole lot to say this week.

Back on Monday, Mike and I sat down to the Avalanche Press Red Vengeance title. This is a follow-on to Defiant Russia using essentially the same rules, only with the situation reversed – Russia is on the offensive driving the Germans back into Russia.

As you may recall, Defiant Russia left us with a very favorable impression. Nice little system, and it played very cleanly. It's a basic Igo-Ugo sequence with a buckets'o'dice combat system. (One die per combat strength, 6s hit.)

Red Vengeance does essentially the same thing with one very important difference. The fun was left out of the box. This game left us totally flat and unfulfilled.

First, how did our particular session progress?

We took the setup options as presented in the rules and (minus a couple errors where later-turn reinforcements were accidentally set up at the game start) gave it a run. The Russians are trying to capture cities at the far end of the board. You have to break through the defensive line and make a run for it while keeping your units supplied.

Our game featured some wild swings in die rolls. I had more than a couple occasions where 13-17 dice or so produced zero hits, and even one sequence where successive single die rolls produced hits.

The main result was that I had almost no push for the first three turns. In many sectors, I was at or behind my starting point when the weather started to turn. It became very clear that I was never going to make Warsaw, let alone Berlin. At no point was I able to both punch a hole and exploit it at the same time. Now, some of this may come as from poor setup locations for my armor, but a lot of it is in the setup rules themselves.

When the snow came, I thought I might have an advantage, but due to the restrictions on exploitation, no opportunities arose.

In the end, Mike won this game handily. I never did reach Warsaw, and we called it after 8 of 11 turns.

Mike and I talked about how we'd rate the games after the fact, and I'd probably rate Defiant Russia a 7 or 7.5, and Red Vengeance a 2.5 or 3.

How can two very similar games play and feel so differently yet use nearly the same system?

Two primary reasons come to my mind: counter density and setup restrictions.

In Defiant Russia, you have some real maneuverability in how and where you attack the Russian front line. And the Russians have to make choices in where they defend hardest.

In Red Vengeance, you get very few choices. Setup is along the marked hexes you can see at the top of the map image on BGG. There can be no empty setup hexes after deployment is finished, and you cannot set up anywhere else, including behind this line. (Except for a very small number of other nations' troops which deploy in their respective nations.)

This means there is no effective way to set up a reserve or exploitation force. Everyone is on the front line, and you're packed pretty much two deep everywhere. And given that the setup order is German infantry, Russian Infantry, Russian Armor, German Armor, you can't even effectively plan for attacking a weak spot – that advantage is instead given to the defender.

There is simply little to no choice in how the Russian player approaches this game for at least the first two-three turns. It's a pure dice fest. Yes, you get to choose where you do your exploitation combats, but those are almost non-choices. There's very obvious answers.

The only possible way to create choice (and I haven't tried this) would be to do a massive shuffling of units on the first movement turn of the game. However, as opposed to Defiant Russia, zone-of-control rules are in effect for the first turn, and every unit you have is deployed in a ZOC to start the game. This makes reshuffling difficult, and not something you should even have to do immediately after deployment anyway...

There might be a way to make this game fun. But as I saw it from the Russian player perspective, it is almost devoid of choice. I'd pick Defiant Russia over Red Vengeance every single time unless the initial setup rules were completely redone. It might succeed as a decent simulation of the Russian Drive to Berlin in 1944-45 at that scale, but it certainly seems to fail as an entertaining game. Also, if you do try this title, make sure each player has at least 15 dice, preferably 20. We played for over three hours and still had three turns left. The box says 1-2 hours playtime. While 60 minutes is entirely ludicrous, 2 hours could be done if you played quickly and both players rolled all their dice simultaneously. The first turn alone probably featured 50 combats when every unit starts at full strength. That's on the order of 600 dice being rolled in a single turn.

Now, I've been looking forward to getting They Shall Not Pass on the table. That is the third game in this series based on the WWI battle of Verdun. Given how poorly a high-counter-density game has fared in this series, and given the style of fighting in WWI, I'm now thinking twice about it. TSNP gets good reviews, so I'll at least solo the first turn or two to see if it suffers the same problem, but I'm far more apprehensive about it than before.

Back to the land war

You know how one of the greatest mistakes is never to start a land war in Asia? Well, this week Eric and I played a game on the end results of making just that mistake. At Eric's request we played Red Vengeance, the sister game to Defiant Russia, which we played a few weeks back (Eric's take, my take). We'd both really liked DR, so I was happy to try RV, and it was only fair to allow Eric to take the Soviets, and the opportunity to go on the attack.

Both games are pretty similar rules wise, although RV tidies up a few things. It does away with the railroads, allowing Strategic Movement anywhere at 3 times movement allowance. It still has a few holes, e.g. the rule book didn't cover what happens to Yugoslavian reinforcements when their set up hexes are occupied. Overall, not too bad.

The first turn is the longest in the game, as the Soviet player starts with massive attacks everywhere, and we roll buckets of dice. In this way our game was the same as DR, except with the roles reversed, as I rolled loads of 6s, way over average, and Eric nowhere near his average. However, unlike DR, where the counter density is way less and the few 6s I did roll was enough to leave gaps, RV has enough units to allow the defender to keep a solid defensive line all the way from the north to the south. This continued over several turns, and although he gained localized successes he was never able to effectively exploit them and I was able to retire to the next defensive position successfully.

And so it continued. The dice eventually sorted themselves out, and we were rolling pretty much on average, but by this time the Soviet units had been pretty much bled dry. In fact the Soviets had way more points in the dead pile than the Germans, and hadn't got anywhere near the VP cities. Eric called it a day at the end of turn 9, with two turns left. By this time he hadn't even been able to capture any of the oil fields, and therefore wasn't getting any armor replacements, which meant the Germans were getting more replacements than the Soviets! As it stood it was a 6-0 position in favor of the Germans, and unlikely to change much, if at all.

So, what's the deal? Why was DR so good and RV such a bust? The game system is fine. Clean, simple, I really like it. There were two problems with our game, one inherent and the other our particular playing.

To take the last point first, it all comes down to one word: dice. Or, rather, two words: wacky dice. The first couple of turns saw me roll so many 6s to Eric's few that it was getting embarrassing, not to mention a rather boring game. (I find this rather similar to the issues in Wellington. With so many dice being rolled the likelihood is that they will balance out. However, it also means that the wacky results out at the end of the bell curve are _really_ wacky.)

Secondly (or should that be firstly?), the other problem is that RV has a higher counter density than DR. With so many units on the board there are less opportunities for inventive play. In DR there were gaps to exploit, although I had to work at exploiting them and Eric had to be inventive in his defense. In RV there are so many units that the Soviet player pretty much just keeps driving forward, grinding the German down, the only real options are where to stack units, and hope the dice don't get wacky. (See point one above.)

Another (lesser) issue I have is game length. The box says 60-90 minutes. Yeah, right! We weren't playing slowly, but we called the game after almost 4 hours, with 2 turns left to go. OK, if we had a bucket of dice we could have saved a little time over doing die rolls in groups of 4, but not that much. The estimate was out by a factor of 3-4.

In my view there's nothing really wrong with the game per se. The historical situation was that the Soviets had superiority, and all they needed to do was keep grinding the Germans down, exploiting any weaknesses that potentially developed. In other words it's the game situation that's the problem. There is a reason why there are only a few games on that period of the war - it's not a very entertaining situation to game. The German is so weak that attacks are very few and far between, and the player spends most of the time looking for the next defensive position. Now, that can be an interesting challenge, but having a better balance of defensive and offensive positions make for a more interesting game. Add in the wacky die results and you end up with a less than satisfying gaming experience. Normally after a 6-0 result I'd be all "Dude, you got so p*wned!", but this game just left me flat. I'd just like to know what Eric did to piss off the dice gods so bad.

Overall, I think that at the scale and scope, and wacky die rolls aside, it's a fairly decent simulation of the historical situation. Does that make it a good game? No, sir! With knobs on.

My pick for the next session. With the holidays coming up I've no idea when the next official TSttC session will be (we may get together on another project), but it's my choice again. Hmmm, that's a toughie. I think I'll go for Duel in the Dark, the new Z-Man game on the RAF bombing of Germany.

Kiwis against eagles

A whole month between sessions, don't you hate it when real life intervenes into your gaming schedule? Still, the new Combat Commander: Mediterranean had arrived on schedule, so it was the game of choice. I'd had it for a week, but hadn't spent much time with it at all, and in fact was feverishly cutting out the counters in the morning before heading off for work, and after I got home. With nothing else to base a decision on, I picked the first scenario, and drew the British. (Well, the Kiwis really.)

This scenario has the Kiwis attempting to drive through the thin German force and exit the board, gaining double VPs for doing so, with no other objectives in play at start. There is a large hill in the center of the board, a load of brush to my left flank, and a small hill off to my right on the German side of the board, with a river splitting the board as well. I set up first, near J1, with the Germans moving first and holding the Initiative.

So, what did I see as my strengths? The biggest is that Brit mortars can fire smoke. When mucho VPs are available for exiting the board, being able to place a lot of smoke is vital. With 2 mortars and the occasional Smoke Grenades action there was plenty of smoke to hinder his fire. Next, Eric mentioned that I always seemed to have a Recover card in my hand, and that's because the Brits have 10 in their deck, the highest of any nationality. I made sure I always kept one around for when I needed it, and I was fortunate to draw them regularly rather than in clumps.

I start with a neutral set up, as I only have 3 squads, and have to start near J1, although I misunderstood the instructions which allowed me to set up 3 hexes from J1, setting up only 2 away. I put one leader and a mortar with the reinforcements due to arrive with the first Time event. Eric placed a single German squad in the house near the edge of the board, one off in the brush on my left (he reinforced it with one of his hill squads pretty quickly), and the rest up on the hill. However, a couple of them were placed on the reverse slope, such that they were unable to get LoS on a large part of the board. I'm not sure if that was deliberate, but it certainly allowed me more freedom in movement.

I started with a great hand of 2 Artillery Request and 2 Artillery Denied cards, totally useless, so my first action was to discard them, but only after Eric had opened with fire from his sole unit able to see me, breaking my squad in the middle with the mortar. I then drew 3 Command Confusion cards to replace them. 'Great' I was thinking, first turn in, one unit broken (of 3 on the board!) and I still have a hand of crap. Looking pretty much like my usual games of CC! However, most of those Command Confusion cards also have Marksmanship actions, so they're not too bad.

Then the typical CC wackiness started. Eric just played a Rout, which I shrugged off, and in my turn played a Fire into his squad in the woods hex at the base of the hill, drawing a 9/Sniper. Eric decided to use the Initiative card, and the next card was a.... 9/Sniper. Wacky. And the squad broke to boot. Unfortunately I couldn't draw Move/Fire, and after a round of discards Eric Recovered the squad, and again broke my mortar squad. I recovered, but failed my fire, Eric tried again, causing the first Time event and all my reinforcements. In my defensive roll I also drew Time!

Looking at his position, with the hill units unable to get LoS, I put most of the squads on the left, and a couple on the right to keep him honest. I immediately started moving on both flanks, drawing a bunch of wire on the right. on my following play I fire at one of his two squads protecting his right flank, breaking it, but causing another Time. Halfway to the Sudden Death marker and I've barely got anywhere! In the next actions he gets an HMG team reinforcements, and proceeds to fire right down the road through the brush, breaking my squad and leader. Dashed unsporting!

Never mind, I've got a Recover in hand, but the leader fails, preventing me from moving that group forward. Still, I press on with both flanks, drawing mines on the right (pfft!), but getting into contact on the left, with an Advance and an Ambush already in hand. He uses Spray Fire to good effect, breaking 2 squads on my left.

Once more, however, I have a Recover card in hand, and draw a hero to boot! I Advance into both hexes, killing both German units, but lose one of my own to over stacking. I can see the edge of the board! Except for that HMG.... :(

Eric starts moving units across to the edge of the hill to try to prevent me from moving off, and I move the central group forward, Advancing and killing his unit in the woods. They are now around the other side of the hill to threaten VPs from that direction.

Meanwhile, on my left flank with a woods hex between me and the HMG I squeeze up a little, whilst he gets another reinforcement - a freakin' infantry gun!. On its first fire it causes another Time event on the Hit roll, and another on the Effect roll! I really don't want to face a 24 attack and Time, which would force an end of game roll, so use the initiative. The second roll is a 6, and Eric chooses to give the initiative back for a 9 roll, breaking a squad and leader, which I Recover quickly.

The map edge is tantalizingly close, and I have a Move card in hand. Do I go for it and try to Move off the board, risking the HMG, or do I patiently press forward with the group on the other side? Time is ticking away, it's in the 5 box already with Sudden Death check marker in the 6 box. I chicken out and use the Move on the right, and Eric....... discards! Ack, I should have gone for it! Not really, it was the smart move, as both groups are now close to exiting, and I drew an Advance and Move card, which I play next turn, now being right on the map edge on the left, and only a Move away on the right. I draw another set of Advance and Move cards, so I'm looking good for next turn.

However, I've still got to survive Eric's turn, and he turns on the fire, killing one of the squads and leaving the other and the leader broken. And another Time event! Are the fates going to deny me? Not with the Initiative card in hand they're not, and needing to draw a 6 or less to end the game I draw a 7. Phew! I Advance a squad and leader off on the left, and a pair of squads on the right for 16 VPs, swinging the game well to my side, with 11VPs.

After that it's all downhill from there. I decide not to get too cocky and take the simple move to exit the leader for another 4VPs, then start driving through my deck as fast as I can. Eric gets his gun to the top of the hill, but my lone mortar squad makes good use of more Command Confusion/Marksmanship cards to break the team manning it, meanwhile moving my right flank units up, even managing to exit another squad. Eric draws his last card, as do I, and the game is ended with that roll.

As usual, an odd game. The first part of the game sped by, and then slowed down, then took a last minute sprint for the end, then walked across the finish line. The ability of the British deck was very apparent. That extra Recover card really helps them pop up. The mortars firing smoke is also a huge benefit, which I took full advantage of, firing a lot of smoke, which really reduced his fire attacks, allowing me a lot of movement capability. The Command Confusion cards having Marksmanship as their action is also huge, as any Fire suddenly becomes really strong. Yep, the Brits are fun to play with.

In the end, though, I felt I was really lucky in drawing a lot of cards when I needed them, although I was holding the occasional card as I knew I'd need it. With a 6 card hand you have more capability to do that. Winning the melees on the left was big, and drawing Advance cards right at the end solved my issue of Moving in LoS of that HMG. It all contributed to a high VP margin.

I think Eric's set up helped me a fair bit. Starting a third of his squads behind crest lines meant that they took no part in the first phase of the battle. I'm also not sure I'd have given away the Initiative quite as quickly as Eric did. I only used it twice, and got it back immediately both times. i don't think I made too many mistakes, but with the cards I got it was hard to miss the obvious plays.

We made a few mistakes with the rules, getting the artillery rules slightly wrong, and we only used the new smoke counters instead of combining them with the old ones. The Germans don't have a lot of squads to defend with, and need to be careful. I'd really like to try this one again from the other side.

I've also detailed the actual plays, with photos at my own blog.

For our next session Eric has chosen Red Vengeance, the companion game to Defiant Russia that we played a previously, and I've promised to let him be the attackers this time. Bring it on!

Attempting to stall ANZAC advances on Crete

Monday night Mike and I sat down to crack open his new copy of Combat Commander: Mediterranean. Neither of us had played the base game in quite a while and were both eager to see what the new package had to offer. (My copy didn't arrive until the next day, so this was my first look at the contents.)

What you get isn't all that much different than what came in the original box, minus some of the support boards. You get Italians, Brits, and Allied minors, 12 maps with one scenario each, updated rules, and appropriate counters. It's not a standalone package, though – you need the base game. The random scenario rules have been tweaked to handle both boxes combined, so you could see combinations you don't get in either box alone.

Without any information to work with, we decided the first scenario is as good as any. I drew the Germans, and had to deny the 5th New Zealand Brigade taking the high ground on this part of Crete near the Maleme airfield.

In this scenario, victory points for exiting the far side of the map are doubled, making it doubly important to protect your ground. Mike took loads of photos during our play, and I'm hoping he posts most of them. You'll definitely see how things progressed.

This is a tough assignment for the Germans – you have six units to defend the entire baseline broken up by two large hills. Initially you're only facing three units and three leaders but six more units appear after the first time trigger. So, you're quickly outnumbered. Mike had to set up first, and clumped most of his troops towards the middle. I deployed one unit in the buildings near his baseline, and the remainder split between the northern point of the hill and the brush to my right.

As I'm the defender here, I want time to pass quickly. Sudden Death could kick in any time after the 6th time trigger, so I just needed to keep him delayed. The first time trigger came very quickly, bringing on the remainder of the ANZACS. Two of them deployed far to my left, the rest behind his initial units. I eventually collected mines and wire cards and managed to constrict the left side of the board – the road on the left had wire in the A column, mines in the B column, and the river in the C column. Very slow going over there. (It turned out later a blaze appeared down on my side of the A and B column almost locking down that side of the board.) Shutting that side down allowed me to concentrate more on my right and the center. Soon after deploying the wire and mines, I got a Hidden Unit action. I held onto that puppy like gold. Eventually, Mike discarded some cards and I got to go shopping on the German Support Chart. A roll of 10 got me a heavy machine gun and weapon team to man it. I stationed it on my edge of the board pointed right down the road through the brush. This completely changed Mike's plans on that side of the board and likely slowed him down a lot.

We traded fire back and forth for a while and it always seemed like Mike had a Recover action available when he needed it – and I was having trouble synchronizing my plan with my hand. It seemed whenever I needed Move actions, I had Fire and vice versa.

The first four time triggers seemed to come rather quickly, and I was thinking things were going pretty well. As Mike was working his way down the board I was hovering anywhere between 3 and 7 victory points – barely hanging on as each squad he could get off the board was worth 4 points. He was just about to emerge from the brush (after wiping out the two units I had there) when I got a Reinforcements event that brought me the IG33 infantry gun. Woohoo! Now, all I needed were fire actions to be able to use it...

Just as Mike was getting three or four rows from the edge of the board, he started using Advance actions to move his troops so I couldn't get opportunity shots at him. I would fire when I could, but he'd recover back any results and advance again. As he got to the final row on the board, we hit the 6th time trigger and I was at around 4 VPs. If the game ended here, I'd win, but if not it was looking rather bad. Unfortunately, Mike had the initiative, and it's not all that easy to roll under a 6 with two dice twice in a row... Needless to say, the game didn't end at that point.

He was finally able to exit three units and a leader off the board on that side as I simply couldn't respond to what he was doing. That meant the only chance I had was to start killing off units remaining on the board. With the help of Lt. Von Karsties I managed to drag the infantry gun up to the top of the hill. This gave the gun nearly the entire map as visible targets. I commenced firing at every opportunity. I managed a couple kills, but it wasn't enough in the end when the game ended on the 8th time trigger. I think Mike had something like 16 VPs at the end. It got pretty ugly with troops practically streaming off the board.

Great fun as usual. The new volume offers (very) slight tweaks to the system, but we were able to jump right in without any difficulty. The fact that we really didn't have to consult the rules all that much after a couple months away from the game reinforces the game's elegant design. Things just work, and the rules are very clear.

I think I could play this game every week for a very long time if it were logistically feasible. The random scenario rules are the next thing I want to test in this game. The accounts I've read are favorable, and if that bears out they'll give near infinite replayability to the Combat Commander family. This is an absolute Top Shelf game system.

Check Mike's post for photos – he'll give a more detailed game progression than I did, but the great thing about CC is it tells a story in prose. You almost don't need hex and counter data to understand what happened.

Until next time, when Red Vengeance hits the table... Happy gaming!