The tanks are coming!

Oh the internet is a terrible thing, a curse and a burden upon the unwary; such as an aging gamer rediscovering the geek that was a teenage tankie, and now equipped with Paypal thus succumbing to all manner of temptations both old and new. Take, for example, the package which arrived at my door this morning, hot from Second Chance Games. It was my new copy of 2008's hottest WW2 tacsim, Academy Games' Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! - Russia 1941-1942 by Uwe Eickert.

I must confess I've been putting off buying this for months. Well, more precisely, I'd been picking up the buzz from an FLGS and from across the net, and after nearly 2 solid years of Combat Commander I was hankering for a bit of a change of pace. Tanks would be an obvious choice. So it wasn't that I wasn't interested in Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! - Russia 1941-1942. Far from it. It's just that, well, I had other irons in the fire. Badger, however, wasn't biting, so I thought I'd better run another game up the flagpole before imploding into a mixed metaphor so dense it'd endanger life, the universe and everything.

Seriously though, I'd been hearing a lot about this game, and was certainly going to buy it when it eventually reappeared on my local shelves. But it was taking a long time coming, and Badger's and my 3rd annual wargaming xmas was moving ever closer, so last week, armed only with a freshly topped-up Paypal account, I went surfing in search of some satisfaction. My business done, I read the entire CSW Conflict of Heroes thread from start to finish, and topped it off with the rules to boot.

Reading some 1900 messages at 10 messages/page took some time, but it was worth the effort. I found it really interesting to see how the design changed as the game approached final production, and I particularly enjoyed the ongoing window into the designer's thought processes (I've always liked reading and rereading designer's notes). And my appetite for the game was certainly whetted. All the more so when I read the rules. All-in-all, I think I can say I knew so much about how CoH works and why that I could've got a game running in not much more time than it'd've taken to sort out the necessary pieces, some 15 minutes I'd say. It might've clunked a bit now and again as rules'd've had to be checked, but it could've been done. And I'd venture that experienced gamers could get running in perhaps 30 minutes or so from a cold start.

The key to this ease of access is CoH's Action Point and Command Action Point system. The core concepts of this'll be familiar to any fans of GW's classic Space Hulk, which regular readers might remember is a game which has generated quite some enthusiasm on my part (#1, #2, and #3). So each unit- squads, and individual vehicles or ordnance- has its own AP allocation, while there is a pool of CAP available for each side. These are spent for the units to conduct fire, movement and other actions in a fluid interactive phase structure which looks to me like a very original implementation of the 'resource management' model of command and control which cardplay handles so well.

I'm really pleased with Conflict of Heroes so far. It scratches a definite itch, gives me another fast playing WW2 tacsim which I'm sure'll see the table regularly, and fills a niche which isn't going to render any of my other favourite games of this kind obsolete. Oh, and the board and counters really are as astonishing as people say! Thick and chunky full-colour 1" counters (think the size of a 2p piece!) with a luxurious satiny texture just pop effortlessly out of their counter sheets. The maps too are bold and heavy duty. These key components strike me as being well designed to appeal to an audience wider than the usual grognards, as CoH's brisk sales seem to demonstrate.

You've not heard the last of this game, naturally enough. Tony's coming round later so we can take CoH out for a first run. Heh. The satisfaction of new ownership and the anticipation of 'battle'. ;)

You heard it here first!

In which- Shock! Horror! Probe!- I criticise Combat Commander

Regular readers will be only too aware of my love of Chad Jensen and GMT's Combat Commander series (at 107 registered plays to date, it's closing fast with SL/ASL as my most played company-level tacsim ever). Some of you might even remember my waxing lyrical (here, or even here) about CC's excellent Random Scenario Generator (RSG). But what I haven't aired yet is my major complaint about the RSG, which is the way that artillery support is called in. (NB. I'm here talking about the rules for adding off-board artillery (OBA) to a scenario, not the rules for using OBA during play.)

Adding my tuppenceworth earlier today to a BGG thread about the CC RSG, I included an aside about this complaint, which in turn gave me a flash of inspiration about what has been bugging me since that August session of 5 CC RSG games with Badger. What then, is this complaint? Naturally enough, to explain that, I'll have to give some background first.

In a nutshell, the CC RSG works like this:

• One player chooses the map.
• The other player sets its orientation.
• Nationalities, the year, and the troop qualities are determined.
• Each player then chooses a force.
• The player with the cheaper force is the defender, and goes on to: roll for support, buy fortifications, and set up.
• The attacking player may roll for artillery support, then sets up.

There are a few extra details, but that's the gist of it.

As I was saying only yesterday...

Descent & anti-climax: intrinsic to the system, or just poor scenario design?
The sense of anti-climax observed by Andy after our final encounter with the Big Boss in Sunday's long-awaited heroes' triumph in Descent was recognisable to me from my own recent victories as the Overlord. I referred to this last month as being "taken a bit by surprise". And it has to be said, in 'narrative' terms, it is true that a 1-turn kill of the Big Boss by our pocket- nuke wizard Dave wasn't the epic toe-to-toe showdown that'd've capped with dramatic appropriateness our long slog to eventual victory.

I mean to say, looking at my BoardGameGeek games-played stats for Descent says that our heroes' road to victory was a 9-game marathon running from the end of September, through October, and up to last week. These statistics aren't 100% reliable, but the fact remains that the buildup to Sunday's triumph was 2 solid months of defeats, broken only for Andy and I, the Overlords. So yes, if these adventures had been part of a narrative- whether in print or in roleplaying- the sense of anti-climax would've been more than passing, it'd've been cause for serious complaint by players or readers.

I said yesterday that there is "something in this which strikes to the heart of Descent". This idea was sparked when I read an interesting thread discussing an insightful review over at the BGG. Among the various thoughts and perceptions of the game what was immediately most striking to me was Zimeon's comment that it "feels as if the designers have taken all the joy of new shinies from World of Warcraft the online game level 1-60, and packed it into 4 hours of play." Echoed by kingbobb ("I think the game does, within each quest, attempt to capture the WoW 0-60 progression"), this made me realise that the overwhelming power of Dave's lone hero against the Big Boss might well have been a matter of chance, but it wasn't entirely accidental all the same. That this wasn't accidental, and is therefore a conscious design feature of the game, is proved by Robb's explanation, from his Descent Decrees for an Aspiring Overlord, that

"veterans... understand that the treasure dynamic is backwards from normal games of this type. In order for heroes to defeat monsters in Descent, they must get treasure. This goes against the thinking that heroes are slaying monsters to receive treasure."

All of this is confirmed by our experience of play. Heroes have no chance without good treasures. Moreover, the really good treasures- sliver/gold, or relics; or fortuitous treasure/skills combos, eg. Dave's Spiritwalker wizardry skill and Dragon's Breath rune treasure (a mere silver too!)- can indeed be utterly overpowering, as we've seen more than once before. This just goes to highlight the absolute importance, to the Overlord, of protecting the treasure chests- silver and gold at least- from the heroes, or making them pay a heavy price for each chest they open in any case.

The heroes' extreme power curve and the spread of its variations give Descent a peculiar razor-sharp balance. I say 'peculiar' because halfway successful heroes will effectively turn the game inside out, as their superior treasures will enable them to turn the tables on the Overlord, subjecting him to the grind they'll already've had to endure. The taxing mid-to-end-game slugathon as the heroes start to overwhelm the Overlord's monsters is something I held against Descent at first, and that BGG thread plus another over at F:AT show that some people never got over it.

I wouldn't want to be too dogmatic about these conclusions, especially since other players- eg. quesodog at the FFG Descent forum- think that the expansion scenarios are radically different from the basic ones. All the same- and finally coming back to that sense of anti-climax- barring haplessly choosing all the wrong doors to open and corners to turn so that you stumble upon the Big Boss before you've properly powered up, I suspect that surviving long enough to meet the Big Boss in the first place will typically require hero parties to have got their hands on something powerful enough to make shorter work of that Big Boss than the Overlord (who 'is' that Big Boss, after all) would wish. Otherwise, I would expect the Overlord to win before the party is ready to face the Big Boss in any case. Built-in anti-climax almost by defnition it seems to me.

If true this perhaps isn't the best of adverts for Descent, but to be honest I don't really care. The game gives me exactly what I want, and I find myself looking forward to playing it as much as almost any other game in my collection. I'd call that a palpable hit! Definitely not the last word. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- As I was saying only yesterday...

Hoo hah!

So, as I noted last time, it was Andy's turn to Lord it Over us in yestersday's game of Descent. And yes, at last, we (ie. the heroes) won! It took 8 long games, but eventually good prevailed over evil. Except, well, in 'narrative' terms it turned out to be something of a phyrric victory, because it turned out that we had delivered a dangerous relic into the hands of an evil villain. So I expect that the next dungeon, the last in the basic set, will feature heroes trying to clear this damn mess up.

As I said last time, I did go and pick out a hero in advance. Knowing Tony and Donald's penchant for fighters, I decided to opt for a roguish ranged combat specialist. I found one I liked, Silhouette. The key features which attracted me to Silhouette were:

• The ranged combat trait and starting subterfuge skills of 3 each- I wanted to try a specialist rogue before taking a look at 'multiclass' heroes.
• The hero ability, which I quickly realised would enable me to spend 3 Fatigue in a turn, go to Dodge, then spend those 2 remaining Fatigue to swap that Dodge for a Rest to reset the Fatigue to 5 before taking my next turn. I used this trick often in the game.

I also had a plan for Silhouette, which involved saving all her cash for training tokens so that I could push her ranged combat trait to 5 as quickly as possible. I managed to do this too.

I'd like to be able to say that all this preparation was crucial to our victory on the day, but I'd be kidding myself. The truth is that the major contribution I made was using my speed to get through to treasure chests or to glyphs to open or activate them. This is a very important part of Descent to be sure, but lone heroes are always vulnerable to the Overlord's monsters, lone and fragile heroes all the more so. Sure enough, it was Silhouette's death which put us within a mere 8 turns of defeat as we neared the end of the midgame.

In fact, I'd thought we were doomed to defeat long before that. We'd taken so long to clear the first area that the sight of a 2nd area with the same layout and harder monsters convinced me that we simply couldn't win. Moreover, it was precisely what Silhouette was good at- ie. grabbing the treasure- which I feared would take us so long that we'd lose simply by running out of time. I was wrong fortunately.

All the same, my useful contribution wasn't decisive. I would have to say that that honour belonged to our new 4th hero, Dave. Offered his choice of hero archetypes, he plumped for magic-user, ending up with Landrec the Wise.

Dave was a quick learner, and was soon charging about zapping monsters like a veteran. He was dangerous enough equipped with a rune which gave him access to the Breath template, so that he could waste whole handfuls of monsters in a single turn; but when he gained a skill which enabled him to use other heroes as the point of origin of his attacks, he became, as he said, a nuclear device with remote targetting. And when he got his hands on the rune for which we'd been searching, well, let's just say that he was powerful enough so that our final encounter, with the Big Boss, was, as Andy said, a bit of an anti-climax.

There's something in this which strikes to the heart of Descent, but I'll come back to that later. In the meantime, HOO HAH! ;)

Argh! You evil £$%&#!! Etc.

Regular readers can be reassured that this past 4-week bloglag wasn't caused by a descent into the slough of despond, but was instead down to a family visit and the same dearth of inspiration I noted a couple of months ago. Gaming in the past month has continued to be as steady a diet of Descent as availability for Sunday sessions would permit. The Descent score is now Overlord(s) 7, heroes 0. Tony and I almost managed to take Andy down, but, well, I decided to pull some fancy footwork to get the game over and done with so's I could get to work on the dinner, and instead of being the hero I ended up the goat.

It was quite funny really. There I was, a puny magic user outnumbered in close combat with 2 master monsters (the tougher ones of each kind, for those who don't know) because my supposedly game-winning blow with the nemesis relic Sword of Mighty Piercing Stabbiness against the pesky Invulnerable Beastman Minion had, well, missed (a mere 1/6 chance, sheesh!). I died, inevitably. No worries I thought, Andy could kill my hero 4 or 5 times over before we'd have to worry about losing. Then, when it was his turn, Andy rather shamefacedly moved the pesky Invulnerable Beastman on top of the only weapon which could hurt it, and then pointed out that he had won the game, because we couldn't get the weapon

Andy was right too, in the end. Feeling guilty at such a cheesy win in a game in which the heroes had had everything their way thus far, he chipped in to help Tony and I find a possible winning strategy. There was one, which involved raising all the cash we could to invest in skills, in the hope of getting Acrobat, which enables a hero to enter an enemy occupied square. (I've since discovered that there is also the Telekinesis skill which could've moved the damn thing.) But no, our luck wasn't in.

Andy's winning tactic has provoked some discussion since, with both Tony and Andy voicing thoughts that there was perhaps something wrong with it, one way or another. Painful as it was to have to admit it though, I had to disagree. As Andy evidently swithered over his move I quickly concluded that it would be asinine to expect him to throw a game just because he was embarrased to exploit my stupidity. Beyond that I also reasoned the scenario's designer must surely've been aware of this possibility, and nothing had been written in to preclude it. Further, I thought there was something tragically apt about the whole fiasco.

The dungeon in question was very lucrative, so that Tony and I were soon tooled up with lots of lovely treasure which we used to cut a gleeful swathe of destruction through everything that Andy could throw at us. We were cruising to what looked like an easy victory, only to fall foul of the relic rules, which we were seeing in action for the first time; the most important of which being that, unlike everything else heroes carry, relics are dropped on the spot when a hero is killed (to be sent back to town). Awesome treasures, carefree carnage, a deadly relic, and hopes of easy victory cruelly dashed thanks to my complete failure to grasp the implications of my extravagant scheme falling through; this rollercoaster ride of a game wasn't just fun, but it was thematically satisfying to see an evil Overlord win because of a hero's hubris!

When I first commented on Descent last year, I noted that it "might represent a real breakthrough in dungeon-bash boardgaming". Recent games have convinced me that this is indeed so, even if only because it gives me the "honest-to-god dungeon-bash in a box" I set my heart on when I first heard about Talisman 25 years ago. I just hope I'm not the first vanquished Overlord as I was the first losing Invader player in Doom: the Boardgame last year.

More anon, for sure. In the meantime, there should be an extra player tomorrow, so that the heroes can take a full party of 4 into the next dungeon. And I think it's Andy's turn to be the Overlord again. So, I'm off to have a look at some heroes... ;)

Look on my works ye mighty...

Journeys in the Dark
Flush from Saturday's victory I was ready to take on the role of the Overlord in Descent when Andy, Donald and Tony turned up on Sunday for games. We played dungeon 4, with the end result that Descent's reputation as very tough on the heroes has proven to be more than deserved. I won while the heroes had only just opened their 2nd area on the map. I was taken a bit by surprise, because I hadn't realised that the kill I was just about to achieve would win me the game.

After 3 straight defeats for the heroes, the question of balance naturally came up on Sunday. I think the point is that the dungeons in Descent are supposed to be serious challenges, perhaps more so even than the missions in Doom, and I'm sure our marines took more games of Doom to beat the Invader than we've yet played of Descent altogether.

Clearly then we've not learned the necessary lessons about how to run a party of heroes in Descent. I have my own ideas about this, naturally enough, but as next Sunday's Overlord, I am reluctant to share them right now. But I can suggest that players who haven't yet done so read Kevin Wilson's Advice for Heroes. Of particular interest here are the thoughts of the man who designed dungeons to distract and divert heroes with trinkets and baubles. Also worth a look is Decrees for an Aspiring Overlord, which looks at the same things from the Overlord's viewpoint. Both of these articles contain good ideas about how to run a party of heroes in Descent.

Score
Puny mortals 0
His Supreme Overlordship 1
;)

Meanwhile, over at the Monolith
Descent done and with time to spare before dinner (Millefoglie alla 'guardia' as I'd done for Badger once before), we decided to play Nexus Ops. This was the first full 4-player session of the game, and it ran pretty smoothly. Even with 4 players, Nexus Ops is a game that should be playable in an hour or less.

We were following some new tactics I'd picked up off a thread over at BGG, so the game set off at a cracking pace. Donald was soon in a strong position, with a large empire and a strong VP lead. By this time though I had managed to seize the Monolith and was making good use of the extra cards this position gave me. As we entered the end game, Andy and I sat on opposite sides of a DMZ on my right, Tony had been ground down between me and Donald on my left, and Donald was looking for the breakthrough to victory.

Quite sensibly, Donald was massing to sieze the Monolith. Unfortunately for his plans, the sight of so many of Donald's units on his own borders made Andy nervous, and he launched a spoiling attack on Donald's army, which effectively saved me. Donald was justifiably miffed at this, although it has to be said that he kept quite quiet about his intentions throughout his buildup, so that Andy's misunderstanding of Donald's intentions (not shared by me I have to add) was essentially entirely Donald's fault.

In any event, with Donald's attempt to knock me off the high ground of the Monolith foiled, I swept to victory by winning 2 battles in a single turn, including swallowing up a puny human with one of my Rubium Dragons which had flown down from the Monolith.

Score
Puny humans 0
His Supreme Overlordship and Master of the Universe 2
;)

Saturday night firefight

Tony came round on Saturday night to play some Combat Commander. I fed him the lamb and fennel stew with which I'd my recent pepper catastrophe the first time I'd cooked it. I have moved on, beyond the simple caution that experience immediately imposed, to developing the art of tasting my cooking while I season it. I'm also measuring out my pepper by the teaspoonful instead of just pouring it in by the heap. The result was a hit, which was nice because fennel is a vegetable unfamiliar to most, and one with which I'm keen to cook regularly.

Tony hasn't played Combat Commander in a while, so I gave him his choice of scenario. He chose Scenario 8, Breakout Dance. I guess this choice was influenced by the low unit count in the scenario, which Tony must've thought would ease his return to the game. Whatever his reasons, Tony's choice was to prove unfortunate for him, as a quick card draw gave me choice of sides, and I chose the Germans. So not only was Tony forced to play the Russians he'd declared he wanted to avoid, but he had to play them at night and with a mere 1 order (yeah, well, I didn't fancy that much either!).

The effects of night on fire attacks, combined with the Russians' restriction to 1 order, means that the Germans can easily exploit any gap in the Russian lines. Accumulated wisdom therefore dictates that the Russians have to set up a simple line straight across the map. Apprised of this, Tony saw no reason to disagree, and promptly set up his line in hexrow G, ie. as far foward as allowed. He had a leader plus an MMG in the field to the west, and another in the woods on the hill in the centre.

For my part, I went for a main attack comprising a squad/LMG in the western objective building, led by the redoubtable Sgt. Ganz (8-2 leader), and a squad/LMG in foxholes on the adjacent hill. I also put foxholes in the hex where the road ends, immediately north of the position. I set up my 9-1 leader and squad/LMG in foxholes on the wooded hill, to the SE. My basic plan was for Ganz and his squads to shoot a hole in the Russian lines, then to exploit the gap. The immediate purpose of the other squad was create a 2-pronged attack to split and overload the Russian defences. In practice this would have to amount to aggressive exploitation of any opportunities offered by a hand otherwise to be optimised for Ganz's attack.

Tony was soon made to pay the price for what we both saw with hindsight was a foolishly foward Russian deployment. As if turn after turn of fire attacks from Ganz's hilltop vantage point from the get-go wasn't bad enough, I was also getting good use out of a German specialty I always enjoy- spray fire, by virtue of which I was able to break 2 units on Tony's most western flank. While that breakthrough point was being finally secured, I'd thrown my units forward in the east. A quick close combat ensued, with another breakthough point the result. I quickly got Schrader and his men through the Russian lines and into the woods hex on the eastern map edge.

Ganz's dash for the western gap followed almost immediately. Tony had a card for opportunity fire natually enough, so that both my moving stacks were broken some halfway, ie. somewhere adjacent to the farmhouse in those fields. Ganz's stack in particular was worrying, it being adjacent to Russian units and me with no recover cards. I was fortunate to draw an advance straight away so that a quick move to safety in the building soon followed.

The rest of the game played out with me completing my exit and re-entry on my right, while Tony quickly regrouped his dispersed force from around the central hilltop into the low ground just west of centre, from where he promptly launched a dash north along the hedgeline. His hope of establishing a firing line to block my dash for the map edge were shot down by opportunity fire from Ganz and his platoon, by now rallied and regrouped. Tony's counterthrust neutralised, Ganz and his squads began their dash for the board edge. I had the 2 move cards needed before I began, but I was slowed down for a turn or two by opportunity fire from Tony's reinforcements so carefully deployed many turns previously. An isolated squad at night couldn't do much though, and my units made their exit soon enough.

Tony's force was on the verge of surrender by this point, and he was 34VP behind, so he conceded just after the game had entered time 5.

Score
Tony 0
Me 1
:)

Afterthoughts
Setting up the Russians at the forward limit of their deployment area left Tony's units exposed to immediate fire of weight sufficient easily to break them, night conditions notwithstanding; in other words, it effectively surrenders the cover of night. So the Russians have to set up further back. My choice would be hexrow D. Stacking the 2 leaders and MMG's together has a twofold immediate effect:

• Denying, to the German player, the choice of an easier flank to choose as their primary axis of advance.
• Giving the Russians the strongest possible firebase with the best possible lines of fire.

Of course, stacking all your leaders in 1 hex is not ideal, so the Russian player can plan on moving the leader with the MMG to the appropriate flank once the primary German axis of advance is known.

Additionally, Tony helped me get round the 1-card discard imposed on the Germans by the night attack special rules. If I'd been in a position to have to move up before engaging in the firefight, then I'd've had some 17 immediately usable orders- or 24% of the deck- increasing to as much as 62% through the 28 additional actions that might spin out cardplay combos from the basic move order. Able immediately to open fire I could instead play as many as 45 orders and 16 actions, or 63% to 85% of the deck. In other words, I was gifted much increased chances of opening and sustaining a rapid attack that'd give me a card cycle overcoming my discard limitation. ;)

World of Warcraft: Azeroth beckons at last!

WoW! How weighty was thy download?!
Having been persuaded to try Blizzard's World of Warcraft 10-day free trial I registered an account and started a download. That was half past ten last night, and Blizzard Downloader has been running ever since. And I thought OO.org 3.0's download yesterday was heavy duty.

This is like no webspace I've seen before, and it's still just downloading! (99% and less than 2 minutes now... 10:48.) Yep, that was a 12-hour download. I guess that's what you get with over 10 million online. I just know that I'm going to love this to bits. I've watched the trailer, and it's lovely. This is realms of fantasy on the scale I used to dream about. I thought it was a cyberpunk fantasy. It's not. The sooner I get a character running the better.

Later still... Checking system specifications
I'm going to have to make sure my computer's well up to the mark for this. Meanwhile, I haven't got a clue as to how to being to create a character. Time to check the manual I guess. So no heroic tales of my first steps into Azeroth today then. Although just finding and recording those minimum requirements for that varied selection of hardware and software of which I'm essentially ignorant, because I've never played computer games?- I guess you could call that that a quest, of sorts. ;)

Wow, just WOW!

Open Office.org is a suite of office software derived from earlier products by Sun Microsystems. It's free and, for the average user, is at least as good as MS Office. I've been using it for several years now. I just found out today that OO.org 3.0 is now available, and that the servers are heavily overloaded. And how! When I started my download some 15-20 minutes ago, the download time was some 3 hours and 20 minutes. It's now some 4 hours and 20 minutes, having shot up past the 5 hour mark in the interim. This is crazy shit! (4h39 now.) I've got to leave the house, so I'm going to have to cancel my download and come back to it later.

Like I said: wow. Just WOW! ;)

PS. 4h13 now.

Combat Commander scenario 20: a viable Russian strategy and its opacity

A reminder of the story so far
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking about how Combat Commander Scenario 20, A March in December, is unbalanced, but not broken, despite the early wave of overwhelming Finnish victories. Today, naturally enough, I'm going to lay out the Russian strategy that I think makes the scenario a fair contest.

The core of the Russian setup is simple enough as I said: you've got 15 squads and 17 available road hexes, so just pick which 2 to leave empty. I'm sure there are good reasons to choose hexes other than those I've indicated here; the 2 I've marked here are those I chose in my last game as the Russians, my 2nd attempt to get out from under that fiendish Finnish ambush.

I noted before that the key to the Russian strategy in this scenario is the denial of exit VP to the Finns. To this end the Russians have to mass their weapons for mutual support. More important perhaps even than that in my opinion is that the Russians also have to mass their leaders. Readers familiar with Combat Commander might already have recognised how unusual is the deployment of the Russian leaders on that map, because no effort is made to maximise the number of squads within the leaders' command radii. In particular, those 5 squads strung out to the SW are very vulnerable to concerted attack, being able only to fire and manoeuvre individually because they are out of command.

Facing the Finns and those molotovs
Seeing this, I wouldn't be surprised if players faced with the Russian defence in this scenario, and thinking along lines similar to myself, were to consider spreading their leaders further down that road just a bit so as to get additional squads moving more quickly and with greater coordination. It is the expected Finnish tactics which makes me think that this would be a mistake. The keys to the Finnish tactics here are:

• The 2-hex command radius of their best leader, who can get as many as 8 squads into position on each side of the Russians strung out along that road.
• Those 8 molotovs which, by depriving Russian units of their cover, can make the early waves of Finnish fire attacks in the centre quite devestating (they're not marked on the map, but you can assume that the leader and 7 squads in those pictures has a molotov).

There are other elements to consider (not to mention other possibilities altogether), but I think that this the best approach for the Finns because of those crossfire opportunities, and because I think the molotovs should be massed for maximum effect.

Pictures B and C show the basic variants of this setup, with setup C perhaps being the better of the 2, because, by blocking the rear of more Russian squads, it allows the Finns more chances to wreak carnage with combined fire attacks and routs. Pictures A and D show more aggressive Finnish setups which take the fight directly to the Russian leaders. This would be based on the reasonable assumption that the Russian plan involves stacking 3 of their 4 MG's with leaders (the Russians get to place their MG's after seeing the Finnish setup).

So, back to those poor harassed Russians, and that temptation to spread those leaders further down that road. Consider the simplest of options: moving the best Russian leader just 1 hex further down the road, in the hopes that another Russian squad can move early and so avoid the worst of the Finnish ambush. If you look at setup A, you'll see that this would render the Russians' best leader open to an all out assault (ie. adjacent to 4 Finnish squads and therefore to as many as 5 molotov attacks) by Finns playing the more conservative of the most aggressive attacks. Similarly, if the Russians were to setup a leader 2 hexes further down that road, then he'd be vulnerable to the same onslaught from either of the most conservative Finnish setups.

Contrariwise, the Russian setup as shown means that the Finns can only maximise their attacks on that best Russian leader by using their most aggressive setup, as per picture D. This has some immediate disadvantages for the Finns:

• Only 3 squads are initially able to attack that best Russian leader, and none of them can form firegroups.
• All the Finns' advantages notwithstanding, this setup is the riskiest of them all, offering the greatest opportunities for a swift and crushing Russian counter attack (eg. a quick advance into an overstacked melee could kill the Finns' leader and leave their centre essentially paralysed).
• The maximum number of Russian squads have open lines of movement towards the Finnish map edge and the exit VP which are crucial to the Russian strategy.
• The Russians could decide to setup their MG's elsewhere, ie. in the NE corner of the map, so that the attack on the centre loses its strategic purpose.

Conclusion
This scenario is one which, for the Russians, puts a priority on a feature of Combat Commander which strongly distinguishes it from other tactical board wargames: exit VP. Sure, other games often incorporate into their victory conditions units exiting the board, but Combat Commander integrates this completely into the core system, and gives additional incentives to seek exit VP by allowing units so exited to re-enter as reinforcements. From play and from reading across the net, I have learned that recognising when to cut and run instead of standing and fighting can be one of the hardest decisions to grasp. This is therefore the first feature of Scenario 20, A March in December which makes the Russian strategy opaque. On top of that need fully to understand and apply a feature of the game which makes it unique AFAIK, this scenario also requires the Russian player to deploy and use weapons and leaders in ways running counter to all normal doctrines. It is this triple layer of opacity that I think is what has given rise to the appearance that this is a no-win situation for the Russians.

A final note
That game I referred to which Badger won because he held the initiative card was closer even than I suggested last time.

Badger had effectively cleared the centre and finished off my attempts at exit VP in the SW, leaving him ahead on VP. Pretty much all I had left were that leader, those 4 squads and a MMG in the NE (better deployed for activation by the leader by now, naturally enough). Flushed with what he was sure was an inescapably imminent victory, Badger looked at me and said that I'd have to get them moving.

OK, I said, playing an Advance and moving everything forward so that they were adjacent to the Finnish units which had been sitting there throughout the game. Badger's surprise turned to something more when I played another Advance the following turn to bring my units in melee with the Finns. This included an overstacked melee to make sure that my leader wouldn't die due to Badger holding too many Ambush cards for my comfort. This was what cost me the game. The tension of the moment (coupled, no doubt, with the lateness of the hour) meant that I sent 1 unit too many into that overstacked melee, resulting in the loss of 2VP the consequence of which was that the VP marker found itself on the '0' space. The game ended almost immediately thereafter giving Badger the win as described.

So near yet so far! Ouch! ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- Got game!: our first game goes to the Russians.
- A Winter War. Unbalanced but not broken?: we have another go.

Quiet, but still unseemly, I gloat

So I've still not been posting much, despite my hopes about trying to think my way from a zine into a journal, and despite too several gaming sessions since my last post. Thirteen games across 3 sessions in that week and a half .

Settlers
First there was a visit from Tony and Di, which saw 4 games of Settlers, 5 games of Ivanhoe, and a couple of nice curries (one chicken, as requested by Di). The question of the strategy and tactics of robber placement was as thorny in that night's 4 games as they'd been in the games played the last time we'd got together. We ended up split 2-1 on the issue, with Tony and I in favour of a strict application of picking on the person in front, and Di preferring something else.

Sweet monkey jesus!

As the world holds its breath waiting to see if there's a hole at the bottom of the big bailout's bucket, I feel a bit like I'm fiddling while Rome burns to be talking about boardgames on a blog in an obscure corner of cyberspace. That sense of a disconnect isn't going to stop me any more than my usual avoidance of leftist social/political commentary is going to stop me from indulging in a quick rant.

An advocate of the still unfashionable socialist transformation of society for over 25 years now, I am boggled to hear the future of capitalism itself being called so widely into question by people from so many walks of life. Let's face it though, no matter what happens in the immediate future, the extraction of surplus value for the sake of profits, and so the rule of capital over labour, will remain 5, 10, and probably 20 and more years hence.

All the same, the global financiers who were lauded as the greatest thing since the advent of industrial mass production, these people have had absolutely everything their way for some 25 years. And what have they done, apart from reaping huge rewards and amassing vast fortunes? They've just gone and dropped us into the greatest economic crisis in the whole history of capitalism, or 'just' since the 1930's depression that gave us WW2, depending on which pundits you prefer to listen to.

This is one of those 'no going back' moments, like the end of the Cold War, and 9/11. Hmm. There's gaps of 11 then 7 years. I wonder if the next one will be along sooner than that again?

In the meantime, fuck the lot of them! ;)

A Winter War. Unbalanced but not broken?

Badger and I returned to the published scenarios, as I'd talked about before. I'd had a specific scenario in mind all along, naturally enough. That was Scenario 20, A March In December, which we'd first played back in April.

It'd been a thread over at the BGG which'd got me thinking about replaying this particular scenario. The consensus on that thread was that this scenario must be broken because it appeared just too difficult for the Russians to win; an obvious challenge to me because I'd won the scenario as the Russians on that first play. And I'd been wanting to try out the Finns ever since I'd got hold of Combat Commander: Mediterranean.

We played this scenario twice that night. I was the Finns the first time and won a crushing victory, forcing a surrender on time 2 (and with 33VP). Playing the Russians in our 2nd game, I lost in the closest result I've ever seen in my Combat Commander career of more than 100 games. That is to say, the game was tied on VP when it ended on time 8, so that it went to the player holding the Initiative card, who just happened to be Badger.

It might seem obvious that 2 more Finnish victories provide grist to the mill of those who think this scenario is broken. It cannot be denied that the scenario is unbalanced. All the same, I think these results amplify Chad's remarks (on that BGG thread) about how the raw statistics might hide the different kinds of victories each side achieved, namely runaway victories for the Finns contrasting with close-fought near things for the Russians.

What I think this comes down to is that this scenario is unbalanced but not broken. The situation favours the Finns, making the scenario- the only one featuring the Finns in CC:M- a suitable exemplar of the historically outstanding feature of the 1939/40 Russo-Finnish war (wiki). But the scenario isn't broken, because there is a viable winning strategy for the Russians, one signalled in the special rules, in particular the rule denying exit VP to the Finns until they have eliminated all Russian weapons.

All the talk over at the BGG about a broken scenario therefore seems to me to be little more than players crashing and burning in the face of a tactical solution the novelty of which has escaped them on their first encounter therewith. I know it may seem obvious to state, but this is the nature of an unbalanced scenario. Not only will one side win more often than another, but it'll win disproportionately more early games until the underdog's winning strategy reveals itself.

Related@RD/KA!
- Got game!: our first game goes to the Russians.
- Combat Commander scenario 20: a viable Russian strategy and its opacity

Another gamers' weekend

So, Badger was round Saturday night for some gaming as noted. No prizes for guessing what we played. We got in 3 games and a nice curry supper. I took special care with the curries because I'd had a pepper catastrophe with the lamb and fennel stew I'd cooked the last time Badger was here. Long story short, it's embarassing when your guest calls out for a pizza delivery because he just can't eat what you've served up!

I've spent the week writing and rewriting my thoughts on those games we played, but I haven't been able to finish them yet. I don't expect to have more games of Combat Commander to report before those comments are completed. So I should be back to these games sometime soon.

Into the depths once more!
In the meantime, Andy and Tony turned up for a Sunday session. Andy was keen to play Descent again, keen enough to volunteer to play the Overlord, which was enough to win my agreement.

And so Tony and I ended up going into the 2nd dungeon with a sorceror and a bloodsucking undead warrior. We almost made it too, especially after we picked up a couple of magic items which turned my sorceror into a walking nuclear cannon: all of Andy's minions were instant toast unless I missed them outright (1/6 chance); while 2 hits would be enough for bosses, minor or major. Unfortunately, these mighty magic missiles notwithstanding, the crucial fact that we didn't pick up any magic weapons boosting Tony's melee attacks told against us over time.

By the way, I don't think that Tony and I really 'almost made it'. The last few turns were marked by our ever more desperate visits to town so as to avoid immediate defeat should one or other of us die. We'd've had a long way to go even if we'd've survived that moment, but the reality was that we were finding it increasingly difficult to fight our way out of Andy's endless spawns.

We're going to play again Sunday next, which means that the game has achieved one of its design goals, which is to get people to give it another try. ;)

Score!

So I've finally gone and done my first ever bit of ebay business. I bought a copy of the forgotten 1975 classic naval wargame Seastrike. The game was brought to mind by an article across at the F:AT, about multi-use cards, a design feature I haven't seen in any earlier adventure game. (That's another nod to the benefits of lurking at the F:AT I guess.)

I've only played Seastrike once before, back in the late 80's, with my old pal Jim the T. My most vivid memory of that game was my massed helicopter attacks, which were able to sweep across the table and back with irresistable speed and deadly effect. They more or less won that game for me by themselves I seem to remember. I am very pleased finally to have got myself a copy of this game I have so much wanted to revisit for so many years. ;)

Posting on consecutive days? Shock! Horror!

One of the things about journal writing as opposed to 'zine writing is that you don't need to try to write full length articles. You can just do snippets of whatever kind.

My internet forum posting has dropped to an level lower even than slow times here at RD/KA!. I'm not lurking all that much either. So I'm surprised to find myself feeling quite pleased recently to have registered for the ConsimWorld forums.

I've been reading ConsimWorld for a couple of years, and have a been a regular reader of the Combat Commander forum in that time. But I've never posted there because I thought you had to pay to register, and I see no reason to pay to post on a boardgames forum. It turns out that I was wrong, as I discovered recently on this thread at Fortress: Ameritrash. So my lurking there has paid off. The story goes that ConsimWorld hides its free registratrion to increase the numbers of paid registrations.

Some of what is said in that thread is true. You're not going to read thousands and thousands of posts to catch up on all of an old thread. But then, you're not really going to do that on a bulletin board either, are you? It's an obvious point that the bulletin board format is generally easier for finding things, so that it works better for rules questions and so on. But for general chat about a very tightly focussed topic- eg. a single family of boardgames- the open-ended single thread format offered by ConsimWorld actually seems ideal to me. It is certainly better than what you get at the BGG, where each expansion and/or supplement to any game gets its own individual forum, which just fragments the discussion, which must therefore to some extent undermine the community-building elements of internet fora.

If only I'd had something like this at my disposal back when we first played Up Front! ;)

Alive and, well...

I don't know the effect on you all as readers, but I confess that the recent staple diet of ever thinner Combat Commander battle reports has become uninspiring drudgery to this blogger. Working up the GIMP files I use to create my CC maps has been the part of that labour I've found the most enjoyable and productive. I've now got a bunch of XCF files put together by cutting, copying and pasting elements from PNG's saved from the VASSAL CC mod. I've got some more work to do, but eventually I'll have the template honed to a nicety. Not enough by itself to break this writer's block though.

A serious narrowing of my gaming activities in all sorts of ways has reduced potential content to a trickle. And this at a time when I was struggling to find the voice to make RD/KA! less a 'zine and more a journal. This was troubling for me because I kept a diary as a teenager and that angst-ridden adolescent self expression is a memory best left resting. What practical function might this blog therefore fulfil, beyond reportage and opinionated exposition, so that I could escape this impasse?

August Bank Holiday Offensive #3. And punishment in Stalingrad

As I pondered the map for our 4th game, Badger was keeping up his own personal whinge, "Oh dear please, not the bocage."

Victory notwithstanding, I wasn't feeling the slightest bit charitable at 2-1 down, especially with all that had gone before. "OK," I thought, "You don't want to have to endure the confines of the bocage, eh?" And so I choose map#17 of Scenario 17 'Little Stalingrad' infamy, just to be a real bastard. The result was a colourful and apt finale, even if it did turn history upside-down just a bit.

The first game on this map saw Badger take his Soviet assault engineer company in against my German rifle company. In the face of Badger's aggressive setup, I spent most of the game precariously close to his best assault troops, and in danger of being pinned on, then forced off my baseline. Fortunately I'd made sure to set up pretty much all of my units out of sight of his, so that I forced him to move onto my guns. This told in the end, and Badger lost as his units got bogged down in minor firefights none of which were ever really likely to deliver him the break he so sorely needed.

In perfect fashion, the dice just swapped our sides, so that I was then able to take my own German Pionier company up against Badger's Soviets across the same terrain. Badger made the mistake of setting up some defenders on my right flank who were immediately open to attack by my flamethrower squads. This was all the worse for Badger because objective 5 down there was my secret objective chit, making it my primary objective in the game.

I didn't have everything entirely my own way- Badger showed yet again that he really knows how to mount a good ambush; but my win was comfortable enough.

Score
3-2

I had saved the day, but only just! ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- August Bank Holiday Offensive #1. I take a tanking
- August Bank Holiday Offensive #2. Revenge on the steppes

August Bank Holiday Offensive #2. Revenge on the steppes

Getting the choice of map, Badger decided it'd be amusing to send us to the wide open spaces of map #23. Oh dear, I thought, this is the kind of terrain you only want to fight over if you've got tanks. A choice between the short ends suited me because I wanted to hunker down behind wire with some MG's in this situation. After events in France my immediate thought was objective 5. This turns out to be bang in the centre of map #23, so I chose to put the next most valuable objective- #4- as far away from Badger as possible.

With green Germans against Badger's line Soviets in 1944, I imagined we were fighting it out in some corner of Operation Bagration, otherwise known as 'the destruction of Army Group Centre', or "the most calamitous defeat of all the German armed forces in World War II". This wasn't really as bad as it might've looked because I'd already decided to play a defensive game. I chose a Volksgrenadier detachment which I figured would:

• Be cheap enough to ensure my posture as defender.
• Leave me enough VP to buy the 2 wire OB's and the foxholes was going to rely on.
• Give me just enough men and materiel to hold (an HMG would've been nice, but to go for one in my OB choice- buying a full company- would've cost me the fortifications I wanted, and might even've left me in attacker posture).

This all worked out in my favour against Badger's Late-War rifle company, especially when he forgot to check for the artillery support which had so bedevilled me before. With neither cover nor sufficient heavy firepower, his units balked at the wire, where they were easy meat for even my light forces. Surrender was quick.

I think this was a game where Badger's best chance would've been to confront the madness of just flat out storming the wire. With a Surrender value of 15 compared to my 6 he could lose 2 for 1 and still win on attrition. Looking back, I think Badger played the Russians in this game with too high a regard for the lives of his men. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- August Bank Holiday Offensive #1. I take a tanking
- August Bank Holiday Offensive #3. And punishment in Stalingrad

August Bank Holiday Offensive #1. I take a tanking

So, Badger and I had our bank holiday Combat Commander session as announced. I cooked a meatball lasagne (Millefoglie alla 'guardiese'- pasta layers the guardia way- from the Abruzzi region) which was really good if I say so myself, and we got 5 games in, all using the Random Scenario Generator.




France, 1939
I chose the map, Badger orientation. Nationality and OB rolls pitted my line French against Badger's line Germans. A minor setback. Then Badger's objective chit draw turned up chit R, which made objective 5 worth 10VP. Oh look, there's objective 5 right in Badger's deployment zone. A major setback. And sure enough, I ended up forced to counterattack across little or no cover against a German rifle company with artillery support (naturally enough). That's the French. Attacking. With a 4-card hand... Setback upon setback!

I actually had the inklings of a decent plan: pin and break Badger's units on his startline for the sake of rout exit VP while developing an attack on objective 5, whose 10VP I figured would decide the game. There was a viable strategy here, especially since I nabbed an extra HMG with my support roll, leaving me 10VP to spend on fortifications.

With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I'd bought:

• Wire OB- 3VP.
• Strongpoint- 2VP
• Trenchline- 2VP
• Entrenchments x2- 2VP.

Then I wish I'd set up my units something like this. (The C+1 and C+2 notations on the map refer to where I'd've put the leaders I generated during that game.) For readers who've not played the CC RSG, I should here point out that I'd be setting up my fortifications (9 wires, 6 foxholes, 4 trenches and 1 bunker) after Badger'd set up his units. Where would you set up in your 2-hex deep deployment zone in that situation dear readers? How far could you risk setting up right under the guns of that mass of French infantry massing by the primary objective? Might you be tempted by the prospect of making an end run against my weak flank for exit VP?

So anyway, one way or another, there'd be a German comany strung out along its narrow deployment zone with a French company about to kick off up close and in its face. And the fortifications? Well, the situation required the French to attack, forcefully and quickly. The position shown here seems more or less to fit the bill. The assault platoon and the base of fire are right in the line, able to bring their squad FP to bear immediately against the objective and/or its supporting units. The assault units have trenches to cover their move up. And the right flank should be secure with that wire and the covering platoon.

All of which would've been very nice, perhaps. But of course I didn't work all that out on the night. I bought myself 2 lots of wire, for 18, and some foxholes for extra cover. I set up firegroups around the buildings, woods and buildings features across the middle of the board. Considering my main objective I added extra men on my left for the assault. I wired extensively on each flank. I was confident that Badger wasn't going to get forward off his startline, so I was hoping that I'd have time to break him and rout him before he could get clear.

Of course, Badger was going nowhere. And neither was I. There wasn't enough cover to risk much running about in front of all that German firepower, and I'd wired the area in front of my primary objective to boot! And the odds are against the French winning a firefight against the Germans all things being equal, and all things weren't equal here: I was playing the worst hand and cardplay in the game against the best and with most of my units out of range too. Oh yes, and don't forget the artillery! Badger didn't, and neither could I as it rained down on my men with dreadful frequency.

So the game was a painful defeat for me, and just painful for Badger, because I couldn't help myself: I bitched and moaned. I did actually talk myself out of it before the game was finished. And I wasn't totally slaughtered in the end. The result was close enough that I wouldn't've needed all that much luck to swing my way after the glorious good fortune of Badger's scenario generation and early turns of the game, and I was more or less in with a shout (and yes, a bit more of a whinge again, I must confess) to the end.

Italy, 1943
Facing the next game, I had to pull myself together quickly I knew. I didn't want to whinge my way out of another potential victory. Badger's choice of map gave us #5. I pondered my choice of sides as carefully as I could. I decided that putting the marsh and that pond in the middle of Badger's deployment zone couldn't work against me, and that's how he got the long edge at the top there.

It was downhill all the way after that, and certainly not worth the effort of a cut and paste session with the GIMP. I got green Italians against line Americans, which left me defending with my Blackshirts company against Badger's rifle detachment, with artillery support, naturally enough. I bungled my defensive setup a bit again. I'd bought wire again, as is my wont. I had originally planned to put a row of 5 across the woods just above the stream. But I had some kind of brainstorm instead, and put it all on the right, to pin Badger's units there in the brush. This turned out to be exactly as pointless as my use of wire in the previous game. On top of all that I made the mistake of trying to hold a forward firing line with the worst troops in the game, troops who should be lurking out of sight waiting to take pot shots at enemies incautious enough to move into sight.

And so Badger's firegroups and artillery spotters were able to inflict a steady steam of casualties giving them healthy increases in VP without pressing need to worry about objectives or exiting. I tried to hold on, but my line was crumbling in short order and no mistake. I resigned when even Badger realised that he was down to mopping up. I was well and truly stuffed by any measure.

Score
Badger. 2
Me. 0

Ouch! ;-\

That's it for now. I hope to write more about the other games in time to get something posted this week. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- August Bank Holiday Offensive #2. Revenge on the steppes
- August Bank Holiday Offensive #3. And punishment in Stalingrad

Another Sunday session

A call last week from Donald broke incommunicado, so he and Andy were round for boardgames on Sunday. A recent thread on the Classic AT board at Fortress Ameritrash (F:AT) had reminded the me classic oldie from my collection I most wanted to play after the past few month's hankering for more tactical and wargames-oriented multiplayer gaming. That game was Gunslinger.

Gunslinger
Donald turned up well first, so Andy arrived to witness me finishing Donald off in our first game. I'd got the first hit, typically enough in Gunslinger as in its prototype. Donald therefore spent the game reeling in shock while I finished him off, which had a certain charm of its own thanks to the delights of the system. All that can be said is that I wasn't the utter cold-hearted killer, letting Donald's character pass out from his wounds instead of sending him to Boot Hill when I had him dead to rights.

Andy agreed to join in for another game, and, funnily enough although by pure chance, he and Donald ended up on the same side against me. Against 2 opponents, I figured my best bet was to go in as close as possible against 1- Andy; thus being as far as possible away from the other- Donald; this left me 2 hexes (each hex is a pace, or approx. 1 yard in Gunslinger it seems) from Andy, who'd been chosen for his role because his character had the lowest 1-handed shooting skill, which improved my survival chances against him.

All of which only served to prove the difference between probability and eventually, statistics and luck, when Andy's character nicked mine just as I ran behind him. Looking back, I suspect that the turn sequence management might've broken down a bit there. It wouldn't've changed the result, which saw Andy and Donald's characters finish me off in best clinical spaghetti western fashion. I just think that I might conceivably've been in a different hex is all!

In any event I was pleased to get this old favourite out on the table again. Andy and Donald's reaction was more guarded. Insofaras as application of the actual rules went, I was left with the impression that it was the strict attention to the peculiarities of the turn sequence that both players found most testing. Otherwise, I thought that both players found the mechanics quite intuitive, really startlingly quite intuitive when I look back on it, considering that I actually explained almost nothing to begin with.

Settlers of Catan
My past few month's hankering for more tactical and wargames-oriented multiplayer gaming notwithstanding, after Gunslinger we just had time for a quick game of guess what? Settlers.

Settlers(?!).

Precisely the game from which, for quite some time now, I have been wanting to escape in favour of more martial pastures new in my mulitplayer gaming. 'Combat Settlers' is the multiplayer game I've been looking for for years now, and even as I still look for it (Nexus Ops is the closest I've seen yet), I can't help but enjoy coming back to the qualities of the original.

The main distinguishing feature of our game was there being just 1 grain region on the board. Our setup meant that we each got a corner of it. That single grain region then proceeded to come up for at least 5 of the first dozen or more turns, and then more again later!

We entered the midgame with Andy just behind. I was happy to be generating a lot of lumber and/or ore to trade through my 3:1 port. Donald however was doing much better, with more numbers and cities to generate even bigger hauls of resources. Andy was suffering at this point, having to watch a long, long series of 6's net him just 1 resource instead of the 3 his building should've entitled him to (the robber's responsibility, naturally enough).

And so we entered the endgame with Donald in front and Andy even further behind. And we barely had time to realise we were in the endgame before a series of resource rolls had come round leaving Donald with a huge hand of cards in his turn, with which he, if I recall correctly; promptly built a settlement then a city in one turn to leave him on 9VP, then noticed he could trade for a development card, so picking up a VP card for the game. Curses!

Andy. 1
Donald. 2
Me. 1

Ah well. ;b

Oldie but goodie

Mark and Robert, a couple of old, old buddies, passed through last weekend. Mark was an avid and skillful Up Front player back in the day, so it was a cinch that we'd get a few games in; unless, that is, I could persuade him to try his hand at Combat Commander instead. In the event I deferred, naturally enough, to Mark's inevitable yearning to revisit battlefields of old, and we got stuck in.

We started with Scenario 1. Patrol, as you do; my Japanese against Mark's British (not jungle). My variant Japanese set-up having been decisively refuted at last year's post-Claymore mega-session, I went with the standard Japanese 3-group setup (2 ML rifles, firebase, and Sgt. Okimoto's 4-man bayonetting group). Against this, Mark too deployed 3 groups, including a 5-man firebase and Sgt. Vasey in a 3-man manoeuvre group. Hmm, I thought.

For the unititiated, Mark's choice of setup had reopened the old issue of the better basic British/German 10-man-squad setup: fire, or fire and manoeuvre. Or, as veteran players will know: the 2-group, 6-man firebase setup versus the 3-group, 5-man firebase setup. You lose 1FP from 9 and 10FP at RR1 and 2 respectively by going for fire and manoeuvre, so that the essential question is whether that 1FP is worth the additional fire and manoeuvre opportunities.

Mark clearly thought it was. He was almost right too. My initial Japanese rush was quickly pinned and started taking casualties early. That was the point at which I managed to keep my nerve. I pulled everything back together quickly enough to leave Mark facing the killer tactical problema of the British versus the Japanese: how to avoid your firebase getting stuck at Range Chit 0 while the Japanese swarm forward. His failure to solve this problem left me winning comfortably from the position I enjoyed once I'd rallied from under Mark's early hails of fire.

An excess of whisky renders vague the precise order in which followed the subsequent 3 games. But I can avow that Mark's SS enjoyed an easy victory over my Russian Conscripts in Scenario K. Elite Troops on the Attack. I'm also certain that I defended with the US in Scenario F. Infantry's Iron Fist, and with the Germans in Scenario D. Rearguard Action. What I can't remember (whisky again) is who won which playing what to leave us tied 2-2.

Circumstances conspired to force us to declare a draw just as we were readying ourselves for our next game. I have to confess I was a bit relieved. I was going into the attack with the US against the Japanese in Scenario S. Jungle Assault. A flamethrower and 2 BAR's might be all very well; but you've still got to get through the jungle to use them on the beggars, and they're dug-in with their MMG to stop you. So, like I said, I was satisfied to call a draw! ;)

The Dark Knight... returns?

So, I did go and see this again as I'd said I would. I enjoyed it about as much the second time around as I did the first. That's pretty good going really. I mean seriously: 1983's The Return of the Jedi is the last time I can remember enjoying a movie more than once on its original release. My tone therefore, however restrained, just really cannot be a matter of damning by faint praise.



I agree with Andy about the "non-comic-bookiness of it." It'd been precisely the focus on street-level crimefighting that I'd thought had made Batman Begins the successful film that it was. I can hardly complain about the same aspect of Pt. 2 of the revival of the franchise. And of course The Dark Knight is not as such a movie adaption of The Dark Knight Returns, although I'd argue there's more of the comic in the movie than Andy asserts.

Again, that's the point for me really.

The comic is a masterpiece transcending the limitations of its genre (the presence of Superman is essential to that by the way), casting its shadow to this very day over a truly iconic postmodern character. The movie is just a superior Hollywood blockbuster. Of course, the movie's huge audience suggests that many might disagree with me.

My general antipathy towards Hollywood blockbusters aside, I have to remind readers that reading the original The Dark Knight Returns on its first release stands out as one of my peak comic-reading experiences. Y'know, one of those personal landmarks the memory of which is cherished and brought out for a polish every now and again. What chance did the movie have against that? Let's be honest: none at all really.

It's like the Lord of the Rings movies which, by adding to an already rich trove of delights, delivered the best they could've done for me. I mean to say: by the time I watched Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring, I'd had the bedtime stories and the calendar; read the books, the geek encyclopedias and the atlas; listened to the Radio 4 adaption; and played with the miniatures, the boardgame and the rpg. Oh, and I'd seen Bakshi's film, naturally enough, which I left out of the preceding list because it broke my heart, being the only bit of my sub-Tolkien Middle Earth experience that was actually shite.

So...? Well, ICv2 reported ticket sales of the order of $B1, or 100 million tickets at a mean $10/ticket. (I'm assuming that the price and multiple-purchase variations mutually cancel.) 100 million?! Holy moley Batman!

I'm going to have to come back to this. ;)