Pages

Monday, October 24, 2005

Meanwhile...

Well I'm relaxing watching Gladiator on the telly after a hard day's WFRP, so I've only got time for a quick post- one to report dire tidings from the field of conflict.

Last week after WFRP and dinner Donald and I sat down for a game of M44. We decided randomly to choose a scenario from those I'd downloaded from the DoW website, and ended with me playing the Yanks against Donald's Germans in Scenario 25s: Ardennes- Bastogne Corridor, West. Lots and lots of tanks and some artillery: a good game in prospect one way or another in other words.

After a bit of careful manoeuvring, my tanks crashed into Donald's forces on my right flank, and did what was expected. Donald responded. And then I made what I still maintain was my Big Mistake of the Game: calling on long range artillery instead of getting stuck in with infantry. Long story short: Donald's shattered tank units survived, and proceeded to get stuck in amongst me- with the aid of support moving in rapidly from his centre- and I was ripped a new one (I lost 3 tank units in a single turn!).

I was on my uppers for the rest of the game, and lost quite crushingly shortly thereafter. I still maintain that it all might've been different had I played a different card after my initial armoured attack had been so successful. But then: that's the psychology that makes cardplay commmand and control so exciting. So what can I say?

On top of that, Ros and I played some Ivanhoe last night, and I lost 6-3. Some of these games were close, and others were exactly the sort I've talked about before: games where you just couldn't do anything because you simply didn't have the cards. Even so, there were still games I feel I lost because I gave the initiative away when I had nothing in hand to regain control of play. So that particular bitching is a bit of swings and roundabouts really I guess.

Moreover, I was 5-1 down at one point, so I would like to claim some small crumb of comfort from pulling back to a less than utterly humiliating margin of defeat. But all the same... Well, :(

No comments: