Blogging through the slog

"Incoming!"
The slog? Yep. Not just the mood swing - which had already slowed down the lickety-spit with which RD/KA! began 2009; but also a flash of déjà vu when three out of four of the easter extravaganza reports (count them: #1, #3, #4) were marathon sessions at the GIMP, working on yet more "ever thinner Combat Commander battle reports... become uninspiring drudgery to this blogger", to remind readers what I wrote last September. This time, the drudgery was at least productive (all hail the GIMP!); not just nineteen new maps, but a new avenue in fleshing out battle reports with real history and geography.

Even so, that game of Rogue Trooper came along in the nick of time. All the more so since there's shedloads more Combat Commander on the way.

Uncle Joe curses as 2nd front delayed till fall
A recent news update from GMT confirmed what Combat Commander fans already suspected:- that BP#3: Normandy's 40-hour sprint through the P500 preorder system was a record-breaker. We are now looking forward to a September release.

Patrols report enemy in sight!
Another visit from my old gaming buddy Mark is imminent. I imagine we'll play some Up Front, as we do; but what I expect the visit will really be about is Mark's introduction to Combat Commander. A hardened veteran of the long years of Up Front back in 80's Edinburgh, and a seasoned SL/ASL player to boot, I really look forward to seeing what Mark makes of Chad Jensen's retrofitting of the hexmap and counters back into the card deck command and control with which he is already so familiar. Badger'll be there too. This should be good!

"Give me battery access you dumb f..! Ahem... Sir."
Regular readers might remember my laying out my criticisms, last December, of a small but important rule in the CC:M RSG: namely that only players in the Attacker posture can start with a radio in their OB. Those among you who also followed the debate surrounding the issue over on CC@BGG might remember I promised to devise and test variant rules. Badger and I are going to give this a go this week.

I've been wondering where to begin on this, and I've decided to KISS! So: all RSG rules will stand with the following exceptions:

• A player in the Defender posture may buy 1 radio if his Support Roll permits, paying VP as usual.
• If the Defender buys a radio, advance the Sudden Death marker 1 space up the time track before the game begins.
• If the Attacker buys a radio, advance the Time marker 1 space up the time track before the game begins.

They say no plan survives contact with the enemy, but could the fix that Badger and I seek really be as simple as this? Time will tell. ;)

A parcel of rogues...

Rogue Trooper
Donald, Gav, Tony and I made 4 for boardgames on Sunday. Casting around for the main event as you do I spied, tucked away almost out of reach on a high shelf, my as yet unplayed second hand copy of GW's Rogue Trooper boardgame from 1987.

I confess I was never a big fan of the Rogue Trooper story, which made its debut in the galaxy's greatest comic - 2000 AD, in 1981. To paraphrase a friend at the time, there are only so many ways to ring the changes with "Eat chemcloud Norter scum!" The story was very popular though, so it was hardly surprising that a Rogue Trooper game was added to the series of licenced 2000 AD products which came out of the young design studio's halycon days.

The game passed me by on its initial publication. I'd not even seen a copy of it until last year, when it was one of my earliest successful ebay bids, an impulse buy when I was still flush with the thrill of internet shopping. Tony's a fan of the comic strip, and he's often talked about how much he used to enjoy playing the game, so it was a cinch that the game would appear on the table sooner or later. No one objected when this came about on Sunday.

Twenty-two years ago, in dingy student Edinburgh
In these days of megaboxes like FFG's Descent: 6 times the size of Rogue Trooper's standard bookcase box; and stuffed to bursting with dozens of plastic minis, big thick counters and poker deck quality cards; it's worth bearing in mind exactly how revolutionary was a box full of bits like those seen in the pictures above.

The Rogue Trader boardgame was a product of the halcyon days of the youthful Nottingham design studio, days which left their enduring mark on the adventure gaming world with:

• Judge Dredd (1982): a game whose cardplay-driven finkery - a landmark in multiplayer game design - underpinned Ian Livingstone's masterly interpretation of a British pop-cultural icon; and which is a reminder that GW was a something of a pathfinder in what became the Eurogames revolution.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1986): GW's Warhammer Old World is the quintessential postmodern spawn of Tolkein's Middle Earth in the same way that Lawrence Block's Scudder walks in Marlowe's shoes. Unparalleled in its day and still unique, WFRP remains an exemplar of the devil-may-care syncretism of our culture of the fantastic.
• Warhammer 40K (1987): the ne plus ultra of that which WFRP exemplfies; 40K isn't so much a game as an entire new subgenre of the hobby, which marks it out as probably the single most influential product in the history of GW. It also bring us conveniently back to our starting point, since the most casual scan of the 40K wiki shows Rogue Trooper's influence on the Dark Millenium's emblematic Space Marines.

Conceptual chutzpah, design innovation and peerless production standards aside, what made these products (and so many others) utterly brilliant at the time was that they were ours; that is to say: British. To reassure readers who might be shocked at the notion of petty flag waving, let me explain further.

Each and every cultural artifact embodies and expresses a distillation of space and time: the moment and locale of its creation; and the history of that place. These give the artifacts their referents, which will be more or less opaque to those for whom the creators' situation is somehow alien. What marks out modern culture in general - and postmodern culture in particular, from all preceding cultural epochs is this: advancing globalisation similarly drives forward a universalisation of culture which renders the artifacts of each locality increasingly less opaque to those of others.

All that said, each locality remains distinct (even when geographically dispersed), so that its denizens crave the particular products which will embody and express their own lives. And so, GW's achievements in the 80's - in respect of the exciting new horizons opened to geeks everywhere by the late, lamented Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson; these achievements closely paralleled those of Britain's rock and pop musicians of the 60's and 70's: they took another landmark cultural innovation of the postwar era, and gave it a British expression, a twist in which we were able to recognise ourselves as if for the very first time.

To quote the poet Wordsworth: "Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven."

Last Sunday, at a table in Glasgow
We all enjoyed the game. Its elements are all close to our gaming hearts:

• Mission objectives.
• Exploration.
• Tooling up.
• Combat.
• Treachery.
• Card-driven finkage (here: Rogue cards).

This last is intriguingly handled. It's done in sequence ending with the active player, and only the last card played takes effect. The most obvious conseqence of this is that the active player always has the opportunity to trump his opponent's finkage with a card of their own, but I suspect that the tactical nuances of this mechanic will prove deeper than that.

The game features player elimination, which many people dislike for very good reasons. I was the first and only player whose G.I. died on Sunday, and I have to say that it's both thematically appropriate in a Rogue Trooper boardgame (although I can see that it could easily be designed otherwise), and that's it's really well handled, because:

• You become a biochip, rapidly to be plugged into another player's G.I. and so becoming their Bagman or their Helm (they'll have their own Gunnar already, believe me!); and then you play as a team, with 2nd place as your own prize if the player carrying your biochip wins.
• You'll be fighting the battles of the opponents of the player to your right, so you get to try to kill his G.I. as compensation for losing access to the routine finkage of the Rogue cards.

I'll stick my neck out here: player elimination is utterly essential to the game's magnificent interpretation of the comic strip. Rogue Trooper has these possible outcomes:

• Everyone loses: the Traitor kills all the G.I.s.
• No one loses: all except 1 G.I. die; the survivor wins, and everyone else is second-equal.
• Some lose: more than 1 G.I. survive the game; 1 will win, and there might be runners up too.

I leave it to my readers to work through the tactical-strategic implications of this unique array of outcomes; but you've got to admit, as a dynamic dramatic potentiality embodying the underlying epic themes of its source material, this is a thing of beauty. That is to say: it's art Jim, but not as they know it.

What went down?
Donald picked up my biochip, which was handy for him, since he'd only drawn one at setup. This sent 3 well-equipped G.I.s up against the Traitor when he was revealed (this crucial turning point in the comic strip, and the game, works with artful dramatic tension too, BTW).

The traitor has 4 wounds like the G.I.s. Gav got the 1st hit, then had to leave on an errand.

The next period saw the 3 G.I.s tooling up and figuring the angles on how to manoeuvre the traitor and themselves into positions from which they could deliver that crucial 4th hit. Spelling for Gav, I knew that he was carrying the potentially game-winning Rogue card, the High Ground. I know that I was certainly looking forward to unleashing it when everything'd come together just so... Unfortunately for me Gav returned to enjoy this himself.

Gav won in the end. Atop the Glasshouse dome, he rained down plasma grenade death and destruction on the heavily wounded Traitor General lurking below. Even all us losers were impressed.

Score
Seasoned G.I. 1
The rest of the squad 0
:-/

Afterthoughts
This game is magnificent! The rules are the confusing wodge of a turn sequence and mechanics that was typical GW fare of the period, although the resulting gameplay does make sense. The graphic design doesn't help, being:

• In general too busy, ie. the rulebook.
• Often difficult to interpret because it's too wee, eg. crucial terrain effects on the mapboard.
• Inconvenient because what each player should have is in just 1 place, eg. the weapon data, which is on the board instead of the players' playsheets.

We had the feeling that the game dragged on a bit, but inevitable first-play clunks and fumbles and the time pressure due to Gav's appointment mean that we're not sure if that was us or the game itself. I'm pretty sure we're going to find out. Soon, I hope.

Nuclear War
"Ivanhoe, or..."

This question: with which filler to conclude the session before we were to dine out in our favourite oriental restaurant (the current mood downswing last week put paid to proper shopping and cooking), confronted us. Tony was talking about heading out to catch up with Di (of Settlers infamy). He was happy to stay when I really preferred some Nuclear War instead.

Shiftily eyeing each other up across the conference tables of the world this time were the representatives of:

• Libronia: yours truly, natch.
• Ulanda: Tony's take on his childhood Rhodesian years.
• The People's Democratic Republic of Govan: Donald, having twigged that his dwarves would just dig themselves too deep to give a damn in this particular game (a.k.a. "F**k this for a game of soldiers!").
  
• Gavonia: a name too obvious to avoid coining, but sufficiently irritating that Gav might decide to change it!

War broke out almost immediately, thanks to those PDRG warmongers; perhaps unnerved by the sight of Libronia's cruise missile, which I had launched on my first turn (I no more had Propaganda cards than did Donald). He chose to hit Tony (petty revenge after secrets and lies? - I can't recall) dealing a substantial 21 million.

Tony was the target of the game's first landmark moment: the first ever MX launch, 100 megs, by yours truly. I was the victim of the game's next landmark moment: the first ever MX warhead results in double nuclear clouds so that it landed on Libronia, thankfully costing a mere 3 million. This unforseen setback aside (who was it in the Libronian military that was buying Libronian missile technology?), and forgetting too another from the same missile, I was pleased with the resulting damage inflicted on Tony. Donald finished Tony off shortly thereafter.

In the endgame, Donald's B1 (another new 100 megatonne delivery vehicle) hit Gav for 28 million (nice!); after which Gav hit Donald with the Supergerm for 25 million. I was feeling hopeful at this point, even after I rolled another double nuclear clouds resulting in another wayward strike on my own people. Eventually I nuked Donald. His retaliation forced me to cash in my last card - 25 million natch; so that Gav knew exactly where I stood.

I was nervous as Gav and I faced each other for the final exchanges. All I could hope for was that Gav had poor propaganda, enabling me to exploit the Peace Dividend to my advantage before the bombs inevitably started to fall again. I was unlucky: Gav hit me with a 10 million Propaganda card that finished me off without even the chance to mount a retaliatory strike that would in any case have been ineffectual against Gav's 62 million population.

Score
Genocidal maniac who's lost his rank-and-file roots 2
Everyone else 0
:-(
;)

02/05/09
Ha ha! It took me until today to twig that 'debut' is a noun and not a verb, so that I had to use 'make a debut' to construct the past tense I was after. D'oh!
#gurns# ;p

For the record

Ivanhoe
No sooner had I returned from sunny Anstruther in Fife than I got a call from Antony (a.k.a. the mighty Grundi), who was at a loose end. His visit concluded with an outing to the tournament field in Ivanhoe, which I suspect is Antony's favourite game.

Long story short: Antony had skillfully fought his way to 3-2 up. It was late and time was getting on, but I psyched him into another game, which I won, thus forcing the inevitable tiebreaker (Antony no more wanted to surrender the night's knightly honours than did I). I won that too.

Score
Headstrong youth 3
Wily old dog 4
:)

History of the World
Tony's absence gave us 5 the following Sunday. There was a great appetite for giving History of the World another try after Easter Sunday's first play. Andy was content to go along with this.

Notes were taken of the scores at the end of each epoch, but again the intervening week has cleared the interesting little details from my mind. What I can report is that the Romans did make their appearance this time- in Dave's hands, and they were truly mighty, especially with the addition of weaponry; that I held the lead until epoch 5, when it was stolen from me by Dave; and that my best efforts with the British empire in epoch 7 (and they were a lot better than last time too) weren't enough to prevent Dave sneaking past me in the last turn of the game to win by a mere 6VP (216 to my 210).

Score
A man who needs no introduction
(Because he's not getting invited back) 1
The civilised world 0
:-\
;)

Easter extravaganza #4: Rumble in the jungle

Our trip to the chateau of doom done, we proceeded to what, for Martin, was the main event: a trip to the PTO and Martin's first taste of Combat Commander: Pacific. A noted player of the Japanese in Up Front, Martin was looking forward to seeing how they shaped up in Combat Commander, a game to which he rapidly took, pronouncing it the most exciting WW2 tacsim he'd seen since Up Front.

Send out the scouts!
We started at the beginning, as you do, with Scenario A. Grassy Knoll, which Badger and I had played in our first CC session of the year back in January. Since then, the scenario has acquired a reputation as being too tough on the Americans, as witness this thread on CC:P@BGG.

Slaving away again at the GIMP (where do you think I've been all week?!), I went first to Wikipedia in search of the Battle of Mindanao to see if I could find any information that'd clue me in about the map's orientation. That search proving fruitless, google followed, which led me to HyperWar: a hypertext history of the Second World War.

Perusing this site proved far from fruitless, including as it does:

• Southern Philippines: The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II
• Chapter XXXII: The Conquest of Eastern Mindanao, taken from Robert Ross Smith's War in the Pacific, Triumph in the Philippines (United States Army in World War II), a volume of the official history first published in 1963.

The map and photo included here are from those sites.

Thanks to the campaign map reproduced above, I was able to make my best guess at the orientation of the CC:P map for scenario A, but I must stress that it was a guess. And thanks to the photo on the left, I got a really vivid image of the overgrown hemp fields which make the centre of CC:P map#A a virtual no-go area in this scenario. A quote culled from the wiki article linked above underlines the impact of this terrain on the battles:

in "the hardest, bitterest and, most exhausting battle of the ten island campaigns... another punishing aspect of the subsequent combat was the proliferous fields of abaca. To the foot soldiers fighting in the Davao province, the word abaca was synonymous with hell... these thick-stemmed plants, fifteen to twenty feet high... the plants grow[ing] as closely together as sugar cane, and their long, lush, green leaves... interwoven in a welter of green so dense that a strong man must fight with the whole weight of his body for each foot of progress... visibility was rarely more than ten feet. No breeze ever reached through the gloomy expanse of green, and more men - American and Japanese - fell prostrate from the overpowering heat than bullets. The common way for scouts to locate an enemy position in abaca fighting was to advance until they received machinegun fire at a range of three to five yards."

Just how hard can it be then?
Playing the Americans for the first time in this scenario, I decided to concentrate all my firepower in one group, the better to winkle the Japanese out of their fortifications. So I had a large firebase which I planned to send forward to the treeline; from where I would decide whether to swing north to grab the objective beside the pond; or east, across the hemp and towards those objectives on the edge of the jungle. Sgt. Savage and his lone squad were to move up my right flank and link up with the infiltrating guerrillas.

Martin's setup put paid to this plan from the get-go. Instead of a slow slog through the dense terrain, I had to deploy for an immediate attack on a Japanese strongpoint which hadn't figured in my original calculations. To the right, you can see my depleted forces bogged down just off their startline, while my outflanking guerrillas were forced to enter much further south than I'd hoped just to help me retrieve the situation.

You might also've noticed the lack of that pesky bunker? Yep, I got lucky when a dive bomber scored a direct hit on the bunker, eliminating it! Thanks to this, I was able to bring my second guerrilla unit in far ahead on my right (not quite according to plan, but good enough in the circumstances), in a position to make a move on objective 5, whose 10VP would prove decisive, as the final position - left, shows.

Even without the bunker, the Japanese forward position held out until the very last. I was able to eliminate the squad with the MMG, but there was little I could do when Lt. Dainichi and his squad found some solid cover in the remains of their bunker (damnable Trenchline event!). Fortunately, I was able to grab objective 5, and the resulting 20VP swing gave me a time 7 victory on 6VP. Phew, that was close!

BTW, that Japanese leader and squad deep into my right? They're an Infiltrator and a Hidden Unit which Martin was able to pull together. They played no part in the action; I just thought it worth pointing out where they came from.

Oh, that hard, and some!
Martin wanted to give this scenario another go and, bemoaning both my luck with the dive bomber and his own stupidity in not realising more quickly the importance of objective 5's 10VP, he offered me the Americans again. I was happy to accept.

Faced with my heavy commitment on the left, Martin adapted his setup. The strongpoint was moved to a more central position. The battalion gun and squad in foxholes gave objective 5 the cover it needed, and was to become a standard deployment.

My main thrust bogged down on the jungle's edge in the face of the Japanese strongpoint. Although I had plenty of firepower, the Japanese advantage in morale and cover meant that trading shots with them was largely futile. Recognising this, I concentrated my fire on the light mortar squad, which I was able eventually to eliminate.

Elsewhere, I brought my guerrilla reinforcements in as far forward as possible, and concentrated on running them up my flanks in search of exit VP. This strategy proved sufficiently useful that Martin was driven to some frantic manoeures to cut off my units' moves. He was helped in this by infiltrators and another Hidden Unit (that damn MMG with its pillbox!).

As the final position - left, shows, a consequence of this was that it left the crucial objective open to an assault on my part. Unfortunately, time ran out before I could exploit the situation. Martin won with a scant 4VP.

I must also here note that this exit strategy of mine probably won't prove quite so useful in future, because we made a crucial error: the guerrilla units can only enter along the sides of the map the first time they enter the map, so exited units recycling as reinforcements have to enter on their own map edge as normal.

"Feint, not faint, you morons!"
We had another go. I decided that linking up a leader with the guerrillas was a priority, and that the left was the way to go because the trails meant that my American army units would be able to move up more quickly. So I put my firebase down in the southern corner to draw Martin's strongpoint away from my planned line of advance.

This worked, but it was about the only part of my plan that did. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, as the final position - right, shows. My move up the left went according to plan, but my firebase was destroyed in a short-range firefight with that damn Japanese strongpoint. Meanwhile, Martin's forces had been joined by the human mincing machine that is the Japanese hero, and by the Sogeki Hei, the special Japanese sniper. Facing that, and Martin's 26VP, I retired on time 4.

Confusion reigned on all sides
The quick end of that game gave us time for just one more, in which Martin took on the challenge of finding a way through for the Americans. Seeing Martin's units concentrated in the jungle, my setup was almost a copy of his from our second game; I just decided not to contest objective 3, and deployed a squad further back on my left to deal with those pesky guerrillas and their outflanking manoeuvres.

I was openly sceptical about the wisdom of Martin's setup and early manoeuvres, but as the time 3 map - right, shows, he got his units into position quickly, and was well placed to exploit down his right flank. In the face of that, I'd brought in another leader (my Infiltrator IIRC), who joined up with my squad covering that flank, and pulled them right back to a good covering position.

Also, unfortunately for Martin, that wire I'd dropped on him meant that his firebase couldn't deploy into a proper firing line. This position was to remain unchanged throughout the game as Martin pushed his other forces forward towards the vital objective 5.

Martin's push down his right proved effective, as you can see in the time 5 map - above left. I made life as difficult as possible for him with wire, but he was using smoke to good effect and covering a surprising amount of ground, which I gladly gave him as my units pulled back in good order.

Elsewhere, Martin was able to eliminate my light mortar, and his hero had arrived. I was openly sceptical (again) about Martin's choice of where Hoss went, but he had something up his sleeve, naturally enough. Hoss and his squad slogged their way through the jungle to launch an assault on objective 5. Luckily for me, I won.

Meanwhile, my left flank holding force was bolstered by the arrival of another squad. Martin's strong advance stalled long enough for me to win with 19VP on time 9. If Martin had won that close combat on objective 5, he'd've picked up a 23VP swing, which could've given him the game on 4VP, so that was a really close result. Whew!

Score
Martin 2
Me 2
:)

Afterthoughts
This is a very challenging scenario. After 5 plays, the only win for the Americans was down to sheer dumb luck. Still, the last game showed that there are tactics which give the Americans a real chance. If Martin had held back from objective 5 just long enough to pick up some Ambushes or Bayonets before closing in for the kill, then there was every chance he could've won that close combat, and the game.

In that BGG thread, I argued in favour of going up the middle of the map, that bloody hemp notwithstanding. Four more games in, I'm not at all sure of this now. This is not so much a matter of how much it'd slow you down. Rather it's the complete lack of cover. Sure, the grass screens your units very nicely, but that doesn't help your defence rolls, and the Americans' low morale means that attacks on units in the grass will usually be punishing.

Martin showed his tactical ingenuity immediately in our first game too, with a brilliant use of the Infiltrators rule (there are 3 infiltration boxes which can contain Japanese units who can be ordered to enter the board using an Infiltration order; they arrive on a Spotting marker, one of which is visible on several of the battlemaps). Instead of using some of his initial OB to occupy an infiltrators box, he left it to be filled by an Infiltration order, thus gaining a 'free' reinforcement. Now that's tactical genius!

Martin and I had a long discussion afterwards about the controversial Asset Denied order (see this thread @BGG). I was initially leery of a rule giving players control over events their real world counterparts wouldn't even know about, let alone control. A few more games in and I'm finding that the way it works out in play isn't so bad. Martin agreed with that, but is still unpersuaded. Me? I'll need to see some more games before I can really decide. Still, I can vouch for the fact that it's very satisfying slapping down an Asset Denied to break a Japanese MMG or Battalion gun that's been raining fire down on your hapless troops. That psychology might win out in the end! ;)

Related@RD/KA!
Easter extravaganza
- #1: The long weekend
- #2: Limbering up
- #3: Country-house carnage

Easter extravaganza #3: Country-house carnage

Preliminary reconnaisance
After a short night's sleep and a journey across the country to the east coast Martin and I sat down to the main event: Combat Commander. We decided to start with Scenario 4. Closed for Renovation. Could one of us gain the American victory which has eluded everyone so far?

Working at the GIMP to get files ready for RD/KA!, I searched for Humaine, Belgium on googlemaps, as I'd done with Scenario A. Ichiki Attacks from CC:P. I was able to find the town, but neither googlemaps nor google earth are detailed enough for me to pick out the chateau itself, so north is purely conventional on the maps for this scenario. Still, I found some pictures which show the piece of real estate to which those Germans clung so stubbornly back in December 1944.

The trees on each side of the picture to the right make me think that this shot was taken from the NE corner of the grounds, just at the wall along which the Americans set up. I don't think this is a shot of the other side because, by the CC map:

• There are neither outbuildings nor trees in the centre of the shot.
• The chateau is too distant in the shot for the vantage point to be inside the grounds and beyond those obstructions.

On the left is a closer view of the front of the chateau, showing what a strong defensive position it offered. And below left you can see the tree-lined wall which offers such valuable cover to the Americans' flanking manoeuvres. Notice that the trees are inside the grounds in the photo, whereas they are outside on the CC map. Does this represent changes on the ground since 1944? Or did Chad and his developers decide to fiddle with the map for the sake of balance? Either way, it's certainly true that the American exit-VP end run is much easier with the wall breaking LOS to the road from inside the grounds of the chateau.

Into the attack
I took the Americans in first.

Martin put most of his Germans into the chateau, as you'd expect. He also put a decent HMG covering force out on his right flank so that I didn't have an easy time of it with the end run he knew I'd be making after seeing how close this tactic had come to winning the game for Martin's Americans the last time we'd played.

My plan involved the by now familiar 2 task forces, each comprising:

• A leader.
• 5 squads.
• MMG.
• .50 cal MG.

Sgt. Buehler led my left-flank exit-VP end run with the line squads, plus an elite squad to lug the .50 cal. Lt. Wray - complete with satchel charge - led the assault across the chateau grounds. I usually give satchel charges to leaders, because they typically have the best morale, and are therefore least likely to be MIA before I've had a chance to lob the satchel charge. The other satchel charge went with an elite squad.

The map above shows I was making good progress by the first time trigger:

• Sgt. Buehler's flanking force was established where I wanted it to be after its first bound.
• Under the cover of smoke, Lt. Wray and his men were already halfway across the chateau grounds (and I had a veteran squad - that one with the green box around its statline).

This proved to be the highpoint of my left-flank manoeuvres, as the map of the final positions to the right shows.

Sgt. Buehler was MIA, severely hindering my exit-VP end run. With my left flank scattered and unable to coordinate their attacks, Martin had the leeway to bring his covering HMG through the woods, over the wall and into a position to bring fire down on my engineers who were working their way through the chateau. I brought my .50 cal across to put paid to any notion Martin might've had of charging these units across the grounds and into the chateau.

My attack across the grounds was getting bogged down thanks to wire and a blaze, so it was up to the engineers and their flamethrowers to do the job in the chateau. They worked their way through the wire at the east end of the chateau and set about the Germans, only to discover a hidden pillbox. I cleared this with an overstacked melee. Then my hero popped up. So I gave him a flamethrower and he went to work. I played 5 flamethrower attacks in just 2 turns - every CC player's dream scenario!

Unfortunately it wasn't enough, even though I managed to keep the game going for another time period. Martin won with 13VP, although he was just 2 kills from surrender when the game ended.

Hold the line!
Martin wanted to try for the prize himself, naturally enough.

I decided to try a variant defence, and put my HMG covering force in the treeline to the east of the chateau grounds. The idea was that it would be able to shoot both into the grounds and against the inevitable exit-VP end run.

Seeing this, Martin sent his strong assault force up the treeline. The result was that I quickly lost a leader and an HMG, which was only compensated for by a couple of quick time triggers. Still, I was feeling fairly confident as we hit time trigger 5:

• I felt I had enough firepower to make it too costly for Martin to get across the wall and into the chateau.
• And I was pleased to see that his second force hadn't even moved off their startline.

As the final position above shows, my confidence was justified and unjustified:

• Martin decided to ignore the chateau and to play for exit VP (you can see that he was caught in the middle of his exit/reinforcement cycle at the end of the game).
• His second force made a rapid advance under the cover of smoke and almost cleared my flank.

My lone squad on the left survived thanks to a fiendish piece of defensive fire: with wire, Spray Fire and Crossfire it was able to break a leader and 3 squads in a single bout of OpFire! (I just love Spray Fire!). Martin battled on bravely, as he does, but even keeping the game going until time trigger 9 wasn't enough. I won with 25VP.

Score
Martin 1
Me 1
:)

Afterthoughts
So the chateau is still securely in German hands after 2 more tense games. I'm mostly pleased with the plan I put into action as the Americans, although the result wouldn't've looked so close if my hero hadn't turned up. One thing I would do differently next time is to use smoke to cover my end run. With the benefits of hindsight, I feel that sitting back and engaging the German HMG covering position in a long range firefight is a bad move; it's a recipie for getting bogged down.

As the Germans, I wouldn't put an HMG in the treeline again. I'd looked to have arcs of fire to each flank, but that proved to be misguided:

• The units' main role - covering the end run - was weakened because the Americans were running across an arc of fire, instead of into my guns.
• The treeline gave the Americans cover until they were at pointblank range to the covering units, depriving them of defensive fire opportunities.

Martin punished me for this mistake.

I was fortunate that Martin got a bit carried away with his exit-VP end run. This is an important tactic, but I think the Americans have to combine this with an assault on the chateau if they are to win, as witness the VP totals: mine was twice Martin's.

Until next time then! ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- Once more unto the breach! (Or: Still no room at the inn)
- The Claymore mega-session
Easter extravaganza
- #1: The long weekend
- #2: Limbering up
- #4: Rumble in the jungle

Easter extravaganza #2: Limbering up

The Easter holidays brought a visit from 'Uncle' Martin for a WW2 tactical megasession.

Up Front
Beginning in the wee small hours, we opted for a couple of quick games of Up Front. We managed 2 games. Turning to Scenario A. Patrol as ever, random generation pitted my British against Martin's Germans, then I took the Americans in against Martin's Germans.

The details of the games escape me at week and a half's remove, and I wasn't taking notes. What I can remember is that, continuing my setup experiments, I decided to give my Germans a chance to gain a manoeuvre victory with a strong 4-man assault group on my open flank. I managed to pull this off.

I tried something similarly unusual with my Americans, setting up:

• The 2 ML1 wimps with Cpl. Moores at group A.
• A 6-man firebase at group B.
• Sgt. Burnett with Myers and a ML3/Panic 5 rifleman at C.

Sgt. Burnett and his lads got into close combat, and amongst the game's high jinks were:

• I took a prisoner.
• Burnett junked a tommy gun (what?!), then picked up the dead Bernhoff's rifle from the German group he was infiltrating.

In the end, Martin's assault group died in a hail on fire and on the points of my bayonets, and I won again.

Score
Aging reservist 0
Combat-ready veteran 2
:)

Afterthoughts
These games were part of my ongoing consideration of Up Front tactics, naturally enough. Isolated data insufficient for the drawing of conclusions, the results are grist to my mill nonetheless.

Key for the Germans was the decision to keep open the option of the manoeuvre victory with 4 men at range chit 4. Historically authentic for the Germans, this aggressive strategy is also eminently playable with their hand in Up Front. Going with a strong 4-man assault group raises the question of how to build your firebase. I opted to put the ML1 Beck and the ML2/Panic 2 Wollack at group A, and to transfer Wollack into the firebase at the first opportunity:

• The firebase has to have at least 5 men.
• ML1 wimps shouldn't be in your firebase.

In addition, I would consider pulling Beck back to range chit -1 to keep him out of range of the enemy. That way, he'd be able to run around for the sake of card cycle without coming under too much fire.

Unlike the Germans, neither the American hand nor their firebase favours the manoeuvre strategy. So I prefer to go with a 3-man assault group whose role is to hold out against their German opposite numbers. The novelty in this game was to put Cpl. Moores with the wimps in group A instead of with the firebase in B:

• Moore's tommy gun makes him largely superfluous in the firebase.
• His smoke capacity is likewise mostly redundant.

So, putting Moores in group A with the wimps means that:

• The wimp group can lay smoke to enhance their own survivability and to increase card cycle.
• Group A will be more durable because of Moores' higher morale.

These strategies worked against Martin on Easter Monday. Even so, the vivid memory of the utter tankings back in 2007 which refuted my alternative Japanese strategy means that I'm not leaping to any conclusions about these setups, all the more so given my concerns about the scaling of Up Front's firepower engine. Still, I know I'm going to try them both out again the next chance I get. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
Easter extravaganza
- #1: The long weekend
- #3: Country-house carnage
- #4: Rumble in the jungle

Easter extravaganza #1: The long weekend

Diversions, dinner, then duel in the depths
The long weekend brought Badger round on Thursday night. Events elsewhere diverted us unexpectedly for a few hours, so that our anticipated WW2 tactical megasession turned into a single visit to Stalingrad in Combat Commander, but not before dinner, naturally enough. Dinner was another new recipie from Nick Nairn's Top 100 Chicken Recipes: chicken with butternut squash and bacon.

I like cooking chicken. It ticks a lot of healthy eating boxes; is available prejointed in portions ideal for freezing, and easy to apportion to appetites; it cooks quickly and easily; and is adaptable to any and all culinary styles. Truly, the pack of chicken portions is a boon to the busy modern cook. Butternut squash was new to me, even though they've been around for ages.

The recipie was a success, just like all the others I've taken from this book by Nick Nairn. It'll be revisited, and I'll be looking for other ways to use butternut squash just as soon as I can.

Scenario 38. Not One Step Back!
If we had to play just one game, then scenario 38 was an interesting choice. Set during the battles to control the Mamayev Kurgan hill which dominates Stalingrad, the scenario features a clash in a giant ravine with little or no terrain to screen or cover the troops. I think Badger almost wished he was back in the tight confines of the city streets when he saw these wide open spaces!

Seeing Badger's setup, I did the obvious thing with an HMG platoon on the crestline facing the bridge. My flanking force went on the left because my secret objective chit had given me 3VP for objective 4. There was nothing subtle about my plan: hammer away at the bridge so that I could grab it, and attack across the gully in the direction of objective 2.

Events moved fast in the first time period. Badger's IG crew broke almost immediately under fire from my HMG platoon on the heights dominating the ravine. The crew and their gun were disposed of when they failed a defence roll which just happened to generate the Scrounge event, just a fraction too soon for Badger's benefit (the event was executed before the elimination of the IG's crew made the gun available for scrounging!). Badger also gained a Hidden Unit, which turned out to be an SMG squad, which he decided he needed to bolster his right flank.

I had got off to a strong start, but Badger mounted a tenacious defence. Soviet hero Gretchko popped up during the second time period to rally and bolster his forces clinging to the bridge. The defence of the bridge was further helped when my HMG squad was routed off the map with a single high roll.

Elsewhere, my HMG squad reappeared across on my left (without their HMG unfortunately) thanks to the Walking Wounded event, (that's them bringing up the rear, having rallied and started to move out); one of my line teams broke and was routed, never to rally; and Dietel - my own hero - appeared, also far across on my left. Confident that Sgt. Biermann and his platoon could fight their way across the gully without Dietel's help, I sent him on a charge right across the map to grab objective 3.

As the unit count on the above maps shows, Badger's forces were taking a hammering, but they were holding together. The main effect of my combination of fire attacks and Rout orders was that they were scattered so that the Soviet leaders were having problems coordinating the defence. Even so, time was pressing and Badger was maintaining his slight lead.

My options for pulling off a win in the endgame were twofold:

• Seize the bridge.
• Force a surrender.

As the battle raged on, Badger managed to get the pillbox on the bridge. This didn't worry me too much because he only had 2 leaders in there to hold it against my planned assault. Badger also enjoyed another Scrounge event, which he used to add a German HMG to his force trying to hold off my efforts to get across the gully and onto objective 2.

Badger's SMG unit had been routed right back to the map edge, and soon enough I got the Rout order which I thought would win the game for me. I rolled a 12, which would've given me the surrender victory I was after, but I had to use the initiative to reroll this because it would've prompted a Sudden Death check, which might've ended the game with Badger victorious. Sure enough, the SMG unit survived the subsequent rout test, as did the other 2 broken Soviet units on the map at that point.

Badger's respite was only temporary though, and the SMG unit soon legged it off the map, leaving me victorious in the position shown to the right.

Slavic mob 0
Prussian military science 1
:)

Afterthoughts
Another great game packed with incident. I really like this map. It's daunting going into action across wide open space like this, especially when your opponent has a cannon, but it certainy gave the game a unique dynamic. I'd like to see it in action in a Western desert RSG scenario sometime.

Badger's loss of his IG just as the event turned up which'd've let him retrieve was a fine example of the torturous 'Yes, but no!' tensions CC generates so smoothly. The game also saw more blazes than we've seen in a while, although they turned out to have little effect on play.

What marked this game out from most though was the use of Rout orders. These are often used just to maintain card cycle, but in this game I was slapping them down like there was no tomorrow: with broken morale 6 and no cover, the Soviet squads were very vulnerable to routing. Badger used them to good effect too, but his firepower was more limited than mine, so he didn't have as many broken units to exploit as I did.

Mine! All mine!Andy had a prior engagement on Sunday, so Dave, Donald, Gav, Tony and I sat down to try out History of the World, which has been sitting on my shelf untouched for years. I took a wee bit of persuading to get the game out because I hadn't studied the rules to ready myself to teach it. In the event I needn't've worried too much. The rules aren't the best written I've seen, and there are some ambiguities, but the mechanics are very simple, so it was pretty easy just to plunge in and then to figure out what was supposed to be going on.

Sunday's game is now too distant for me to remember any details, other than the outcome, which I noted down:

• Dave: 169VP
• Donald: 163VP
• Gav: 169VP
• Tony: 111VP
• Me: 174VP

A very close result then.

Score
Civilisation 1
Barbarism 0
:)

Afterthoughts
History of the World is a great game, with some unique mechanics which give it a real sense of the history it purports to cover; make the game look well balanced; and suggest strong replay value. I'm looking forward to playing this again soon, and I suspect I'm not alone in that.

Related@RD/KA!
Easter extravaganza
- #2: Limbering up
- #3: Country-house carnage
- #4: Rumble in the jungle

Doom, despair, devestation, dastardliness and dinner

Andy, Donald and Gav turned up for last week's Sunday session. Dinner was going to be a French classic: chicken cassoulet. The recipie was a quick and easy modern version from Nick Nairn's Top 100 Chicken Recipes, suitable as ever for advanced preparation and last-minute finishing.

The dish was a great success, which was nice. I took special pleasure in the lip-smacking appreciation of my favourite spicy Italian bangers, which I believe were new to everyone else.

Doom
I was keen to have another go at the final Doom mission Donald and I had lost so pitifully last month. We were humped, again, even with 3 marines and a reduced difficulty level. Our humpage was of a degree less severe than the last time - we did get out of the first room, though only as far as the second area; but it was humpage in the extreme nonetheless.

Our defeat was so overwhelming that the question inevitably resurfaced of whether the marines can ever actually win. I confess that I too felt the sheer demoralisation of yet another complete and utter tanking. But of course, as the first defeated Invader I know only too well that the interdimensional horde isn't all powerful in Doom.

A quick web survey
I knew that we weren't the only group having issues with the power of the Invader in Doom because Andy and I had read and discussed threads on this very topic when we first played the game regularly a couple of years ago. So I headed off to Doom@FFG and @BGG. Sure enough, I found several threads devoted to this topic:

• Game is too difficult or not?
• Rebalancing the game?
• New Doom owner, have some questions after first play
• Doom too hard?
• Am I playing this right!? Please help!
• What is the problem with Doom?

These threads demonstrate that the full range of results is experienced by new and dedicated Doom players. For those who're not going to click through and read the threads, some choice extracts are below.

"In my games, the marines always win except if I manage to separate them."

"I show no mercy and play event card after event card after event card. But they still manage to win some of the times."

"I find difficulty depends on who is playing what."

"I am generally lethal no matter what role I play, but some of my mates suck at playing invader."

And perhaps best of all, some concise and cogent tactical advice which shows up exactly where our marines are going wrong:

"- ADVANCE QUICKLY: Don't dawdle in a room trying to kill all monsters and taking all the loot. This ain't a dungeoncrawl where you're always stronger than the monsters, this is a survival game.

- CONSERVE AMMO: Don't waste your chaingun rounds on a trite for godsakes.

- STICK TOGETHER: Avoid splitting up or you'll be mincemeat. Try to position so the Invader player has difficulty to place new invaders."

Dawdling? Check. Wasting ammo? Well, not on trites, that's for sure; but I can remember insisting on using my shotgun when the assault rifle was the weapon of choice, so I can't claim a full grade there either. Splitting up? Check. So we fail on more than 2/3 of these points. In other words, our strategy and tactics are exactly as rubbish as our marines' appalling record would suggest!

Shape up or die?
We need some practical suggestions if Doom is to return to the table at all, let alone often enough so that Andy gets full value out of his Expansion set:

• Let someone who's new to the role enjoy a taste of the Invader's power (somone who's not been the Overlord in Descent either), eg. Donald.
• Rotate this role every game. Andy has played heroes in Descent, so he has some idea of how overwhelming the villainous powers can be. But nobody else has played either the Invader or the Overlord.
• Play the next game at the easiest setting, and allow the marine players to choose their own skills. The matter of skills isn't just about power levels, it's also about individualising the marines, and creating marines and teams with different playing styles. So this should inject new fun into the process of selecting marines.
• Follow the suggestion of BBG'er Cleitus the Black on that last thread linked above, and adopt the 'Fully loaded' mod as a standing houserule.
• Reinstate the basic rule that players go in a set order. We've ignored this in all our games, but I find myself beginning to wonder if a fixed order of play for the marines might not prove useful; eg. by focussing minds and reducing dithering, or by generating proper drills for the different situations the game presents.

These suggestions apply equally to Descent. I love playing both these games in all roles, and I too have a vested interest in getting full value out of my investment in Doom's big brother.

Score
Forces of darkness 1
Beleaguered humanity 0
:-\

Nuclear War
Having fallen prey yet again to the extradimensional invaders, humanity cleared its head by indulging its passion for weapons of mass destruction in Douglas Malewicki's 44 year old classic Nuclear War. I had recently picked up the Nuclear Escalation expansion which had been a regular feature of our games back in the Edinburgh days, so I was keen to introduce everyone to the delights of the expanded game.

My copy of the expansion features the new full-colour artwork, digitally remastered and/or fully revised. It's all very nice I have to say. I also have the new Nuclear Misfunction dice. I confess I prefer the elegant simplicity of the original compared to the cluttered design of the new one.

I was pleased to get all the new elements of Nuclear Escalation into play at my own table. They are a great addition to the original classic and I'd missed them. I wasn't quite so pleased when my hope of being the first player to launch a space platform failed because it was a killer satellite instead. D'oh! I think everyone else liked the new stuff too. And I'm sure whoever is first to use the cruise missile and the space platform to hit the same person with 3 nukes in the same turn will be an enthusiastic fan for evermore thereafter!

We got 2 games in. All I can remember is that Donald won the second with 47 million population. Does this mean that we all lost the first? I can't recall. Perhaps one of the lads might enlighten us all?

Score
Forces of darkness 2
Donald 1
Beleaguered humanity 0
:-(

Ivanhoe
With tummies rumbling and dinner looming, we rounded off the session with a quick visit to the field of honour in Reiner Knizia's evergreen Ivanhoe.

The tabletalk was scabrous as ever while a bunch of underhanded, backstabbing landed thugs and murderers 'genteelly' competed for momentary favour with the mob and their overlord. Always a winner! Except that I can't remember who won. Was it me?

Score
Forces of darkness 2
Donald 1
The Knight With No Name 1
Beleaguered humanity 0
;)

A night on the Russian front

Up Front

Badger and I began last Friday's session with a game of Up Front, another Patrol because Badger's still green despite his excellent record. Random selection gave him the Germans against my Russians. He chose to go with a variant of his winning setup from 4 weeks ago. I went with my now standard 3-group Russian setup.

Routine trash talking aside, I was quietly confident as this game started. The Russians are probably the best force with which to take on the Germans. Sheer weight of numbers, a capacity for insane charges, and the best discard in the game are strengths which I reckon give them the edge over the British or the Americans. Plus, Badger's run of luck surely couldn't continue?

My confidence wasn't misplaced. As we entered deck 2, Badger's groups were both at range chit 1; group A was wired in woods; B was in a stream. My wimps were entrenched; my firebase - 1 man KIA (his death just pre-empted a 10/5 fire attack, as these things do in Up Front) and another pinned - was entrenched in the open at range chit 1; and Sgt. Rostov's assault group were in brush at range chit 3. I was poised to seize victory in other words.

I did, but not before Cpl. Hessel enjoyed his moment of glory. Flanked from a hill (so that I had 16FP), the pinned Hessel was a hero; his doubled firepower gave Badger that extra 1FP he needed to fire out of the wire. Rostov broke (sheesh!), so that my 15/5 fire attack was pre-empted too. Still, the sergeant promptly made up for this by leading his group to a range chit 4 instant victory before deck 2 was out.

Score
Green troops 0
Hardened veteran 1
:-)

Afterthoughts
A much needed victory. I'd like to say that this victory demonstrates the errors inherent in Badger's alternate setup, but I can't. Dettinger and Hessel in the same group was a definite mistake, as Badger discovered when he tried to lay smoke to cover his group in the stream. That aside, the stream and the wire deprived him of both fire and manoeuvre, so that I was free to roam the battlefield virtually at will. A decisive defeat which by itself proves little or nothing, in other words.

Badger's attempts to reinvent Up Front tactics raise some interesting questions about the game actually. You see, as much as I love the game, I have to admit that there is perhaps something of a flaw in its firepower model, in particular the way it drives players towards the regulation 6-7 man firebase. MG fireteams in WW2 were usually smaller than this AFAIK, typically 3-5 men, leaving the bulk of the squad in the manoeuvre group. But I just can't imagine a veteran Up Front player going with a 4-man firebase, because it just couldn't deliver enough firepower to do its job.

So I'm torn about Badger's experiments. I want to sweep his variant setups from the field to teach him the error of his ways, naturally enough. Yet I'd also like to see another player start to prove that there are viable alternatives to the standard tactics advocated by the old Avalon Hill General article back in the 80's. What I've begun to suspect is that the game's firepower engine has built-in optimal tactics mitigating against these historically authentic variants.

Combat Commander
Blooded on the Russian front at the squad-level, man-to-man scale of Up Front as we had been, a trip to Stalingrad at the company-level, squad scale of Combat Commander inevitably followed. I took the German attack in against Svidrov's garrison in Scenario 37, Dom 31, part of 6th Army's efforts to secure the legendary Barrikady factory.

This scenario was noteworthy for 3 reasons:

• Sewers were in use for the first time.
• Several new Russian units were in action, particularly the Garrison teams.
• I think Badger actually quite liked the map, enjoying its wide avenues and open vistas.

I was quietly confident again looking at this scenario. Sure, I had a couple of problems:

• Bunkers to bust with neither special forces nor assault weapons.
• Puny +1 leaders.

All the same, I enjoyed some advantages:

• The edge in troop quality.
• Plenty of time (10 time periods - a real luxury).

Concentrated around the Dom 31 bunker complex as it was, Badger's setup boosted my confidence, because it left me an open run up the flank to swing round behind his position, a manoeuvre vital to cut off the Russian reinforcements (each objective I held on time 6 would be 1 less extra Russian rifle squad w/LMG). With hindsight, I suspect that this might've lulled me into a false sense of security.

In any event, my basic plan was sound, but my force selection proved to be poor:

• A squad on my left to cover possible Russian dashes for the map edge, and exit VP.
• A leader and 2 squads on my right to run up the flank.
• The other leader, 4 squads and all the weapons in the centre to take down the bunkers.

Time 1 was eventful:

• I got a quick kill.
• A broken Russian unit in the open survived in the face of my HMG platoon's awesome firepower thanks to the timely arrival of Gretchko, the pesky Russian hero.
• Badger played a Hidden Unit to gain Cpl. Deniken, who would prove helpful in organising his defence against my manoeuvres.
• I opened fire on Cpl. Deniken with my mortar, generating the Reinforcements event, which gave me a mighty IG33 cannon.
• Cpl. Deniken's defence roll promptly generated the first time trigger.

Going into time 3 I was feeling quite sanguine:

• My flanking force had grabbed 2 objectives, leaving me another 3 time periods to grab the remaining 2, thus reducing the Russian reinforcements to the absolute minimum
• Badger's force was suffering under my withering fire.

On into time 4 I was feeling even better. As the inset in the map above right shows, Badger's force had been reduced almost to half strength, and he had been forced to split his force to hold on to his last objective in the rear.

That was the high point of my game, as this map at time 9 shows. A spate of quick time triggers had given Badger a total of 3 rifle squads/LMG in his reinforcements. These arrived in the SE corner; immediately retook an objective; and promptly used the sewers to sneak down the flank to retake another.

Elsewhere Badger had managed to regroup to move to attack the last objective I was holding (how did he get that 3/3/1 SMG Garrison with its 1MF to move all that way from the bunker?). Outnumbered 2:1, my meagre 2 squads were hard pressed to retrieve the position, but I pressed on. I sent a rifle squad/LMG up the flank to help recapture objectives and brought that lone covering squad across to join my HMG platoon.

The key to the whole position was still Dom 31. I belatedly realised that I just had to get in there and storm it. I finally managed to clear some of the wire in the street, and soon had my platoon lined up ready to advance into close combat. It was not to be though.

Another foolish time trigger ensued to heap more pressure on me, then Badger launched Cpl. Deniken and his SMG squad and team into close combat against my hero and squad holed up in my last secure objective. Ambushes were slapped down so that Deniken and a broken SMG squad faced a broken hero and a rifle squad. A mere 1 up, I heaved a sigh when I drew a 10. The sigh heaved wasn't given time to become relief when Badger promptly drew a 12: not only had he won by 1, but he'd pulled another damn trigger to boot!

The game ended shortly thereafter. Badger was on 30VP IIRC.

Score
Badger 1
Me 1
:-\

Afterthoughts
A great game. It's just a pity that my plan was so poor. My basic manoeuvre was fine: assaulting the strongpoint and going up the right after objectives are the priorities of the situation. I made the mistake of trying to take down bunkers with simple firepower, and I persisted in this mistake for far too long. I was able to set up my assault comfortably enough late in the game, but didn't have enough time to carry the attack through.

I should've set up a 3-squad platoon to assault the bunkers from the get go. This would've left the same HMG platoon to go up the flank to capture objectives and hold them against the onrushing Russian reinforcements. That's what I'll do next time. ;)