Got game!

Once more the din of combat
As I said on Monday, Badger came round last week and we sat down to a Combat Commander megasession. We weren't taking notes this time, so all details below are purely from memory.

Metaxas Season
We picked up where we'd left off, with scenario 19 'Metaxas Season', featuring a German assault on a section of the Greek defensive line in 1941. My immediate thought was that my 75, my HMG and my best leader should go on the highpoint, for lines of fire and to hold a valuable objective. Quickly checking the position I could see no reason not to do this. I put a couple of squads in trenches by the cliffs to stop Badger sneaking his Germans up that way. I put a squad with the other leader in the remaining trenches, and the last squad went in one of the buildings.

My thinking behind my fortifications was that Badger was most likely to make a move on the buildings rather than the bunker, so I used the wire to do 2 things:

• Preclude an easy flanking maneouvre on Badger's part- if he wanted to avoid the wire he'd have to go really deep, costing him time and putting his units under more OpFire.
• Deny the use of flamethrowers and satchel charges to units assaulting the buildings from the flank.

The mines were an added layer of defence to the easy approaches to the bunker, which would have to be secure because I'd be unlikely to be able to reinforce it. I was really hoping to discourage Badger from even thinking of trying to get up that hill!

I made a small mistake at this point, setting up my fortifications with everything else, before Badger had set up his units. We said at the time that this had been to Badger's benefit if anything. Looking back as I write this I'm no longer so sure. Badger might've been more willing to consider an attempt on the hill if he hadn't seen my fortifications set up with the precise intention of driving the very notion from his mind. This might've been to his benefit.

In the event, Badger set up his entire force on the hill to the NE. He was clearly planning to try to smoke or suppress the bunker then advance on the buildings in the centre. The problem he had with his deployment that this was exactly what I wanted him to do. Badger's entire advance was down 1 axis, which left my bunker unmolested. To make matters worse for Badger, he'd strangely decided to equip an elite rifle squad with his IG, which promptly began pushing thing around the map instead of engaging its fire mission against the bunker.

The result was satisfying: the Germans never reached the road, let alone penetrated my defences. I won on a surrender.

A March in December
Scenario 20 'A March in December', features Finns ambushing a Russian column in Finland in 1939. Online discussion has already given the Finnish Sissi a fearsome reputation despite their puny 1-card discard, so I was looking forward to this one.

My Russians started strung out along the road, which effectively left me the choice of 2 hexes to leave empty. This done I attended to my leaders and weapons. The 'Raid' special rule put an absolute priority on my weapons' survival to prevent the Finns from gaining heaps of exit VP. Spreading the weapons out among my units would just let Badger pick them off 1 by 1, so I decided to mass them. I went for the centre in the end, because it gave me a hilltop firing position with the best lines of fire I was going to get. In line with this plan I put 2 leaders with this group, including my best. My other leader went in the south. I'm not sure why really. Maybe I had a sense of what Badger was about to do. I dunno. It proved a wise decision in any event.

Badger looked surprised to see that I'd left pretty much the entire northern half of my force out of command. Whether this suited his plans or induced him to change them he didn't say, but he proceeded to set up fully half of his squads, with most of his molotovs, flanking my isolated northern column on both sides of the road. They were all neatly within the command of his best leader. The bulk of what remained of Badger's force was concentrated in the SW.

The carnage as the Finns to the north opened fire with waves of molotovs was bad, but I was at least left with stragglers. Perhaps Badger was regretting his decision to add 2 molotovs to his southern force- these could perhaps've had more effect in the north in that first onslaught than they eventually had elsewhere. Meanwhile I got on with my plan, building my fire position in the centre with a move here and there to get units into place. I made what attacks I could in the south, pulled some northern stragglers into the centre, and ran a couple more off the map for exit VP.

Badger had got a bit bogged down by this point. He was engaged in a firefight against what remained of my southern units, which I meantime began to move east through the treeline to keep them safe from advancing Sissi squads. Elsewhere he was moving on my centre, but wasn't pressing hard enough. Eventually I was able to sneak in front. Unable to gain the quick and easy exit VP's which would otherwise've been available, Badger didn't regain the lead. I won with 12VP on time 8. I had pulled off a win as the Russians, but it'd been close.

Saint Agatha
It was off to Sicily in 1943 next for the interesting match-up of the Italians against the Americans in #21 'Saint Agatha'.

Drawing the Italians, Badger set up first. He put the expected HMG nest with support on and around the high spur near the centre, a platoon with a leader to cover the objective to the NE, and a couple of squads in foxholes in the woods to the SE. Two of his 3 precious foxholes for an outflung picket? This surprised me. Badger's response was to gloat about his tactical acumen.

IIRC, my plan was to make a main drive up the right with a diversionary attack up the centre. My good leader with 5 squads and all the MG's went on the right, what remained in the centre. My plan started to unravel quite soon, as Badger's picket held me up long enough for Badger to accumulate a hidden mines or 2 to drop on me as I began to push forward after clearing the picket. Elsewhere, my diversion was proving to be exactly that, as I was unable to bring worthwhile attacks to bear on Badger's hilltop units without any decent heavy weapons.

Hidden mines continued to appear willy-nilly as I struggled to make headway. I kept the game going for an extra time period, but it was all to no avail. My big push on the right had barely made the first crestline of their line of advance when it was all over. Badger won with a healthy 23VP.

A Veritable Bloodbath
The British made a welcome appearance in #22 'A Veritable Bloodbath', fighting against stubborn German resistance on the road through Holland to the Rhine in February 1945.

Playing the Germans I had to set up my fortifications first. I expected to be facing a main thrust down my left towards the large cluster of buildings. So I laid the wire to give Badger the choice between going through and getting caught, or running further through the open to outflank it. The trenches on the left were an obvious choice for this position. Those on the right were placed to enable me to station my puny conscripts a hex further forward so they might open fire sooner.

Setting up as the British, Badger was just a tad put out by the vast expanse of no cover at all which his men had to cross to close with me and make an attempt at the objectives. He chose to make his major push in the west as I'd expected, putting his HMG and mortar in the woods. A few units with an LMG or 2 started in the field in the centre.

My better leader and the 2 volksgrenadier squads with the HMG and a LMG were the base of my defence, going into the trenches on the left (the rightmost 2, to widen their lines of fire against Badger's units in the woods). The other leader went on the right, with some conscript squads, the mortar and the last LMG. What remained was put in reserve in or around the rear objectives.

Badger shared my still fresh experience of watching your plan unravel straight away. Both my mortar and HMG were able to fire on his main force from the get-go, and the quick advance up the woods Badger had been hoping for didn't happen. His attempts to use the mortar to lay smoke to block the fire failing, Badger's efforts otherwise to relieve the pressure on his main force included charging a squad to within shouting distance of my mortar position before it was finally eliminated, an exercise in heroic futility if ever I saw one.

The hindrance of the gathering dusk didn't enable Badger's tattered force to regroup, and my defensive fire forced a surrender during time 4. A crushing victory!

Six Hills
We'd played scenario 23 before, so we moved straight on to #24 'Six Hills', pitting the Indian Army against the Italians in Somaliland in August 1940. Map 24 is another of the 2 desert maps, this one featuring a central hillock dominating the otherwise completely open terrain. Not really the sort of terrain in which you fancy conducting small unit actions without some armour support in other words. Just my luck then to be forced on the attack with the Italians.

Badger set up the HMG and mortar nest you might expect (good leader, squad, team, HMG, mortar) in the foxholes to the east. He put an LMG nest next door, and a squad with the other leader in the last foxholes. The remaining units were split in support of the 2 main positions.

Facing this, I hit upon what I thought was a neat trick. I split my force into 2. The junior leader and 3 or 4 squads deployed for a diversionary attack in the centre. Everybody else deployed on the right, set up to bring heavy fire down on the HMG while using the crestlines to hide some of my units from Badger's on the hill. I hoped that this might buy me enough time to win the firefight which ensued, naturally enough.

The best-laid plans rapidly unravelling was clearly in the air that night. Badger drew an almost immediate time trigger which would've brought on my reinforcements, so giving me access to artillery smoke. Before this implication had struck me though I'd cleverly used initiative to force a reroll, according to the usually smart rule of knocking back early triggers when attacking. My early artillery therefore resulted in strikes which ultimately had no worthwhile effect. Smoke, when it did arrive, proved to be of mixed value at best.

My diversionary manoeuvre did little more than give Badger some elimination VP as my units floundered in the open without a proper mission. I eventually rallied the survivors and made a play for exit VP up the left. Over on the right I was never able to crack the HMG nest, although I was holding in the open with line Italians, which I thought wasn't too bad. It couldn't last though as long as the HMG survived. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it did, helped along the way by, among other things, my losing all my MG's.

The game went the distance, leaving me with my left flank essentially gone, and my right stalled on its start line and withering. Badger won with a decisive 40VP.

Fields of Fire and Blood
The previous game concluded the scenarios from Combat Commander: Mediterranean. Badger was keen to play a scenario from Battle Pack: Paratroopers before we stopped. We had a break, and set to.

Scenario 25 is a 2-part scenario: 25a 'Fields of Fire' and 25b 'Fields of Blood'. The paratroopers in question are German fallschirmjaeger, leading an otherwise ragtag bag of volksgrenadiers and conscripts across the snowy fields of Germany in the opening day of the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

This is a scenario I've pored over several times since I bought it. It's a fascinating setup, which basically tests MGs' pure defensive firepower against infantry assault. The twist is that the American 'defenders' are actually in recon posture, thus denying them the the 'Defender Only' actions and the VP benefits of the clock, although they get an extra card in their hand. On the other side, the fallschirmjaeger notwithstanding, I'd much rather attack here with a regular German rifle company, even against such a small defending force. Those volksgrenadiers and conscripts are just a bit too weak and fragile. And where's the HMG? On top of all that, the 2-part nature of the scenario promised to be entertaining.

I played the Americans. Putting the best leader with the .50 cal in the bunker in the centre with clear fields of fire was an easy decision to make. Double-checking the position I realised I had to hold 3 objectives at all costs, to keep Badger from ratcheting up exit VP. The 3 objectives to hold were obvious, and it didn't take me long to add the junior leader to the left flank position. This MMG team was going to have to hold by itself, and so needed to be as strong as possible. Another MMG went in foxholes on the right flank objective, and the last went in trenches beside the bunker, from where it enjoyed the same wide lines of fire for the purpose of firegrouping with the .50 cal.

Badger set up, at which point we realised that we had incorrectly conducted the 'Morning Barrage' special rule the implications of which had much exercised me during my setup, and the results of which had fortunately proved quite harmless. Correcting ourselves, we redrew our random hexes. Tragedy! I drew my bunker, which was promptly replaced with foxholes, halving the .50 cal's cover. Significant gaps were likewise made in my last of line of booby-trap defences.

Badger set up again, repeating his plan of driving down each flank, with his main force working through the woods to the east. He was able to push me quite hard, bringing units down the right flank, and onto my positions at one point. Deprived of its bunker, my centre just had to give at some point. When it did I had to run units back and forth a bit to stop Badger exploiting his advance into a game-winning breakthrough. I held on, for an extra time period, winning with a scant 6VP. Whew!

'Fields of Blood' began with my setup-as before, and another barrage- I lost maybe a couple of booby traps, not much in any case. We then set up the remnants of the morning's attack, a random process the outcome of which was that Badger's units were as widely scattered, in as poor cover, and as open to as many of my lines of fire as I could contrive. Some had gone into the casualty track and a fair smattering of them were broken or suppressed to boot. I then took my first turn.

With all those units of Badger's in poor cover and broken or suppressed, I just needed to start with a rout and a fire card or two to face the chance of driving a significant proportion of his units off the board immediately. I got what I needed, but in the event I was only able to eliminate a couple of units before Badger played the recover he needed. The prompt arrival of the German reinforcements put paid to any idea of a quick mop-up for a comfy VP cushion.

Badger's plan was pretty much as before. Remembering that the booby-traps were special '1-shots' he was much less leery of entering them. He brought my left flank MMG position under heavy pressure, while repeating his manoeuvre of bringing units all the way down the right flank. In fact, I think 1 of the 3 key objectives must've fallen to Badger at one point, because I'm sure he exited at least 1 unit. It was my hero who saved the day IIRC, grabbing the NW objective to seal the breakthrough again.

In the end though, with the bunker in play my centre held, and I won through to an 11VP victory.

Score
5-2
Grins :)

Afterthoughts
The first thing that Badger and I noted after our last game was that blazes had played no appreciable role in any game. A few had appeared here and there, but they'd never spread into anything significant.

Also notable was a pattern in how we went down to most of our defeats, a pattern revealing a combination of poor force division, mission definition and axes of advance. In #19, Badger didn't divide his force at all, and packed them tight to move down the flank; in #21 my centre force wasn't epuipped to do anything other than loiter as targets, while my (thus overstrong) right force went for an easily-blocked advance up a narrow board-edge terrain feature; in #22 Badger repeated the above feat; in #24 my centre force was poorly chosen and had no clear mission; in #25 Badger's advance down the right was easy to stall as above.

No matter how uninviting the terrain then, you're going to have to have at least 2 taskforces in your plan, each with a well-defined mission and the equipment to carry it out. Opting not to divide your force leaves you open to your entire plan stalling in the face of enemy action. And when the terrain is that uninviting, it might be better to avoid the temptation to try to sneak your main taskforce up one of those narrow terrain features running up a map edge. Sure, you'll have to move out in the open. But otherwise you risk getting stalled behind a point unit, unable to bring your firepower to bear. And you concede the centre. And if you're going to bite the bullet, you might as well bite it properly.

Looking back at those scenarios above, that amounts to: going up the cliffs with the Germans against the bunker in #19; bringing the American main force up through the woods and buildings in the west half of the map in #21; taking the British main force right up the centre in the fields in #22; a proper end-run platoon out on the Italian left in #24; and in #25? Well I guess that comes down to which objective you decide to go for first, left or right, and which units you want then to make the break for exit VP, and from where. I mean to say: a good basic plan is to use fallschirmjaeger to storm the western objective, but I wouldn't want to exit them if I could avoid it. I'd rather keep them in action. So I'd need other units backing them up to make the exit once the objective is secured. This would weaken the first wave over on the right, which would have to rely on reinforcements from units exited to make a major push, and so on.

Most of the remaining scenarios in BP#1 feature open maps, ideal for applying lessons learned. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- A Winter War. Unbalanced but not broken?: we have another go.
- Combat Commander scenario 20: a viable Russian strategy and its opacity

Start the week @ RD/KA!: Meanwhile... just last week

Badger and my ongoing effort to play all the Combat Commander scenarios continued in a marathon 7-game session which took us into the new Battle Pack scenarios.

Before that though I lazed a day away watching all 13 episodes of The Wire, Season 4, which I'd been given for my birthday last month. Pure unadulterated TV heaven. Watching it, I was made vividly aware of how DVD's radically change the way we consume TV, enabling us to watch the TV we want at our leisure, the way we're familiar with from books. This strikes me as something more than just a matter of convenience, a notion which for me was underlined by the oft-cited 'novelistic' style of The Wire, a feature of the show which I'd warrant works better for the DVD viewer than the weekly TV viewer.

Speaking of TV heaven, I'm keeping up with the new Doctor Who season too, naturally enough. I know some people weren't too happy at the thought of Katherine Tate as the new assistant. No fan of her comedy sketch show myself, I've been reserving my judgement. Three episodes in, I'm quite happy. The essential relationship between the Doctor and Donna follows logically enough from those of Rose and Martha- true love, unrequited love, and now no love at all. This projects a nice line of character development for the Doctor and his assistants (all of whom we know are to appear in this series). The comedy aspect, which would be expected from a writing team playing to Katherine Tate's strength, has been handled well.

Something I'm finding particularly intriguing is the sense that, in the new series, everything is simultaneously familiar and different. Familiar: it's the Doctor we've come to love all over again. Different: I can't really say for sure. I just feel that the new kind of relationship between the Doctor and Donna gives the episodes a dynamic subtly different from those featuring Rose or Martha. Whatever, I'm liking it.

Incidentally, Doctor Who is one of those shows which just has to be watched each week. The eager anticipation, the hook of the prologue, the thrill of the theme, these features of the episodic format are irresistable essentials of the pleasure of Doctor Who for me. There's no substitute for that Saturday moment! ;)

Start the week @ RD/KA!: Meanwhile... elsewhere, at the table, and on the shelf

It's been an eventful few months in the gaming industry since last August. D&D4 had been announced just before that last post and has wreaked its attendant hullaballoo across the net in subsequent months. I haven't played D&D regularly since my teenage years, so I've not been following much of this at all. I daresay I'll end up buying the game just to see what it looks like. The most I can hope for from it is that I'll find it interesting enough to read it from cover-to-cover, unlike D&D3 and 3.5

Black Industries finally releases one of the longest awaited and most hotly anticipated roleplaying products ever, namely the 40K RPG Dark Heresy. It shifts shedloads just in time for GW to announce the closure of their Black Industries subsidiary, the better to concentrate on Black Library's core publishing. Lamentations and woe betide us all! Until Fantasy Flight Games rode to the rescue with a licencing deal for GW's (non-miniature) boardgame, cardgame and RPG licences.

Note that Black Industries made their announcement on Jan 28, FFG's was Feb 22. What was the purpose of this three and-a-half week delay I wonder? Was there really so much unfinished business? Or were there just salesmen who couldn't resist the opportunity to sow the seeds of some panic-buying, such as yours truly, who promptly went out and bought the Dark Heresy book which might otherwise've been left lying for some months to come, and who finished off his WFRP collection for good measure, "just to be on the safe side". Also, some readers might remember that BI had procured the licence for the DC RPG. Has this now reverted? Or can we expect something from FFG? Its announcement refers specifically to GW's IP, so I won't be holding my breath.

Elsewhere, Steve Long announced summer 2009 as the release of HERO 6th edition. In a surprising move, he also announced that he'd sold the Champions Universe property- the official setting of the Champions' RPG since the original edition- to Cyptic Studios, who are to use the setting (but not the rules) in their upcoming Champions Online MMORG. Long meanwhile plans to licence the IP back from Cryptic Studios for use in the HERO games line.

Finally, as roleplayers the world over know, Gary Gygax died on March 4th. As people've tried to put his contribution to roleplaying into perspective, we can be sure that roleplaying would've happened without him, but he certainly put his unique stamp on the early days of the hobby with things like his infamously quirky list of polearms in the AD&D DMG. And, whatever his precise contribution at any stage of the creation of D&D was, Gary Gygax became, to all intents and purposes, the founding father of roleplaying. I think the last thing any of those guys were thinking as they dreamed up new ways of playing games with their toy soldiers (when they really ought to've been "far too old for them", remember!) was that they would start anything which would transform the gaming industry, let alonge grant possible 'founding father' status to any of them. So we have to reckon that Gygax's coming to bear this honour was probably as unexpected by Gygax as by anyone else. When all is said and done, he seems to made a tolerably good job of bearing it. And D&D and roleplaying have outived him, which must have pleased him in the end, wouldn't you think?

Gaming stopped completely for a couple of months last year after I went offline, restarting in December in time for the Xmas day Combat Commander bash with Badger. Combat Commander has been at the table a lot since then, but regular sessions with Andy and Donald mean that a lot of other favourites, new and old, have been seeing action. Highlights have included my first victory as the Overlord in Descent, the thrilling tales of my derring duo of ace pilots in Crimson Skies, and my first game in more than 20 years of the old AH game of chariot racing Circus Maximus. Commands and Colours: Ancients and Settlers Cards have also made welcome appearances recently, which I would hope to see again in the future.

Of course, I've bought a few new games, mostly filling out games with expansions: Days of Wonder's Memoir'44 Air Pack and Battlelore Specialist Packs, CC:A expansions #2- Rome & the Barbarians and #3- The Roman Civil War,and the Descent expansions, including the new The Road to Legend campaign expansion. Fast Action Battle: the Bulge and Manoeuvre, both by GMT, are 2 completely new games I've bought recently. Alert readers will already've noticed that I've recently played Manoeuvre (see right...), but it's still too early to report other than to say that it looks like the game delivers what I'd hoped (which was 'what it said on the tin'- check out the link to its page at GMT's site to see what I saw...). I'm still digesting FAB: the Bulge, but I like the look of it quite a lot. Quite a lot indeed.

Got game! Commanders in combat again

Regular readers will remember that Chad Jensen's Combat Commander rapidly became my hot game of 2007, and stayed that way despite some strong competition from Carcassonne. This has continued into 2008. Badger is an avid fan of the game, and for me it remains the single most exciting WW2 game I've seen since Up Front reinvented my ideas about tactical simulation some 25 years ago. More than one third of my 2008's gaming has already been given over to playing Combat Commander. And so it was that last Saturday, Badger and I returned to our goal of playing through each and every official scenario in order.

Scenario 17. Little Stalingrad
Previous games had brought us to Scenario #17 'Little Stalingrad', at which point Badger had insisted we use the Random Scenario Generator for the final game of our previous session, because he really didn't fancy the horrors of urban combat in the densely built-up area that is Map#17. This time though, I insisted amid some grumbling from Badger.

Map 17 is a gem of a map, exemplifying the virtues of Chad Jensen's road rules, in the first instance that roads can run through and modify other terrain types. In map design this allows roads and buildings to be more densely packed, since they don't need to be in adjacent hexes as is more conventional. Moreover, the effect of the road rules is to replace with a richly textured 3-fold rendering the 2-fold road/building representation of the urban setting familiar from, eg. ASL. In movement the road MP bonus of the building/road hexes will speed traversing buildings, and road movement opens infiltration opportunities. Under combat, the -2 cover of the dual hexes is respectable but these hexes will tend to end up as approaches to the -3 cover building hexes nearby.

On map 17 there are some 20 open road hexes, 40 building/roads, and 60 buildings. That amounts to effectively 100 buildings and 60 roads on a 15x10 map. What a layout! 'Hyperdense' is the phrase that springs to mind. Map 17 fills 80% of a compact CC map with this terrain, setting the stage for the most brutal city fight we'll see until the imminent Battle Pack: Stalingrad. Badger's reluctance was never going to avail him a jot!

Random generation gave Badger the Canadians, and he set to deploying. Influenced by objective 5 (the multihex building to the north of the map) being openly worth 10VP, he chose to concentrate more than half his force ready to make a move against that objective. Of the rest, the bulk stood ready to make a move against objective 3 in the south.

Faced with this, and armed with the knowledge that objective #5 was actually worth 15VP, I decided to build my game around holding objective 5 pretty much at all costs. I formed a platoon with my best leader, an HMG and an LMG and set it up in a position to open fire immediately at my prime target- the Canadians massing to attack objective 5. Another strong platoon- my next best leader with 2 more LMG's- was put in position to prevent any funny business in the south. And what remained was placed as a 'forward reserve'; ie. right in the front line to support my northern manoeuvre, but able at the same time to help in the south. And that was that.

This game went pretty much according to plan for me. My HMG platoon did what it was supposed to do, and blunted Badger's attempt on objective 5 satisfyingly quickly. There's not really much chance of winning a firefight against an HMG platoon with a 2-leader in buildings: their combination of attack and defence takes luck or melee to survive and/or overcome, and none of this was coming Badger's way in this game.

Badger did try using his satchel charges to blow open my position, but I wasn't really bothered. First off because I felt that the uses were premature given the satchel charges' secondary use for 'mouseholing' in this scenario. And second because their use wasn't properly coordinated anyway, so they could break but not really kill any of my units.

And he actually grabbed objective 5 too, either through a fortunate melee victory, or because I'd temporarily abandoned the building while hunting down Canadian units in the vicinity. Either way, that 30VP shift was soon returned in my direction never to risk being lost again.

The other flank was much more nip-and-tuck. I concentrated on just keeping the Canadian HMG platoon bottled up so that it couldn't do me any damage. This I was able to do quite happily.

The game ended promptly on Time 7, leaving me the winner with a healthy 26VP, some 11 more than the 15 granted by objective 5.

Scenario 18. Bridge Hunt
Badger was keen on this scenario as soon as he saw it, proclaiming himself delighted with its open terrain and confessing a hankering to play the Germans. For my part I wondered how the game would work with the map typo, which has left off the hex centre-dots, although I was really more interested in how my Yugoslavs would fare against 8 German rifle squads with 6 (count them- 6!) LMG's. I'd played the Poles against Badger's Germans before- winning on the attack in scenario 14; and I'd seen what the French defence could do when Badger beat me in scenario 16- Germans again. So the record was good so far but these Reservists were frankly feeble. At least they had the high ground and some hidden forces.

Random selection gave Badger the Germans he'd hoped for. He split his force into 2 platoons each with 3 LMG's, reinforcing his right flank platoon with the 2 remaining squads. He was clearly planning a hook. Facing this I chose to split my defence into 2 forces, whose roles were simple:

• Force Fache, holding the northern river bank.
• Force Allier, holding the southern river bank.

Objective 5 was the most valuable on the map, unknown to Badger IIRC. My plan involved holding it. Lt. Allier and the HMG would go on the southern hill at I3 whenever they got a chance to OpFire at Germans moving north of the river. The rest of the units south of the river were in reserve.

Sgt. Fache, with the LMG in support, would go into the J8 woods to anchor the left flank. It'd've been nice to have put him with the HMG on a hill, and I wasn't happy at having to put ML6 Axis Minor reservists on a road behind a hedge, but I needed to be able to fire on the Germans from here too. Pondering the weakness and vulnerability of this firing line, I decided on reserves and the better leader to bolster the position. If they did their job properly, these guys were going to suffer the brunt of the German attack. The teams would be placed as appropriate to support this plan, with my initial idea being to get one onto each end of the bridge. Of course, that part of the plan needed friendly units actually in the bridge hexes, which I had neglected in my initial setup.

Once again my defence went largely to plan, although not without Badger putting me under some serious pressure. The Reservist squads revealed themselves to be every bit as fragile as I'd feared, so I was pleased at the effectiveness of my deployment south of the river- it could've been so easy for the Germans to've fought their way onto the end of the bridge if I hadn't left enough men to hold this flank. Hidden entrenchments proved their worth in helping to hold this line.

Blazes were rampant. I was forced to move my HMG as much to avoid the blazes cutting off LOS as any smoke laid by the Germans, running it back and forth along the crestline to reopen LOS. Badger meanwhile was becoming almost completely cut off from the bridge by the resulting wall of fire, spread right into the NW corner. He eventually made a dash bringing all but 1 of his units through a last handy gap just before another breeze closed it off, leaving G6/H6 (right beside the bridge!) the sole remaining way through.

Badger did get close to the bridge, although by that time I had put an IG on objective 4 thanks to a hidden unit. And I had a string of hidden wire and mines to slow down Badger's Germans as they worked their way along the road to gain the end of the bridge. Time was against Badger eventually: the game ended at time 8, and I won by some 20+VP. Badger was having fun though so he insisted we play on, just to see what happened. Those Germans did eventually fight their way across the bridge and force a surrender from the Yugoslavs, although it took them until time 11, at which point they were on the verge of surrender themselves. I confess I was quite surprised that they made it that far at all!

Random Scenario
 These 2 official scenarios done and dusted, Badger wanted to use the Random Scenario Generator (RSG) for our last game. I suggested we set out likewise to play a random scenario using each map in turn. Badger agreed, and so off to map #1 yet again it was.

The CC RSG is another gem. It provides a simple method of generating scenarios which satisfy what, to my mind, are 2 of the key requirements of a viable scenario design system for a game like CC:

• It is quick and easy to use.
• Scenario creation includes features so that DYO scenarios remain fresh relative to carefully tailored official scenarios.

The Combat Commander random scenario generator satisfies these in spades, generating scenario details with a quick series of dice rolls. Players' decisions are clearly defined and carry subtle consequences. Careful assessment of the terrain prospect the map orientation presents is needed to judge the proper OB to choose to bring the engagement under your control- the biggest and best attack is not always the best option!

So the map chosen and oriented, we were soon in 1944, with my elite Germans against Badger's line Americans. I ended up choosing an Elite Rifle Detachment, Badger a Line Rifle Detachment. Rolling for support, Badger decided that he wanted to remain the defender for this game, so he took the cheapest useful item- a weapons team w/MMG. We generated leaders, then Badger invested in some foxholes and setup his units.

I decided to roll for artillery support, which gave me a 150mm radio- pretty damn good! Even if the close terrain wasn't ideal for calling down artillery strikes the woods would make them effective when they did come in. My plan was to break the US centre, establish a firebase, then exploit the left flank. I set my units up accordingly:

• Lt. v.Karsties w/LMG-squad, HMG-team and 3 additional squads to attack the MMG nest in the US point.
• Esser and 2 LMG-squads to cross the road into the woods on my left flank to close with Sgt. Divine and his HMG position.

All of this done, Badger added his 3 foxholes to the hexes with his MG's.

As ever, my initial fire attacks went well, and I quickly dealt with the point units. And then, well then what exactly? Was I feeling cocky? (I was.) Was it just late and I was tired? (Both true too.) Whatever already, it was plain dumb: I advanced v. Karsties and his stack under the guns of Sgt. Smith's stack and some 3 other squads, without a recovery.

As Badger began his next turn with unexpected glee I noted that I expected that this position would prove decisive. I wasn't wrong. It took Badger a bit longer than it had for me to crack open his point, but v.Karsties and his squad were still soon dead and gone, although my HMG survived. Reduced to a single unit/order and deprived of its leader my main attack was utterly blunted. I was gutted and feared that the game had turned a corner round which it wouldn't return.

And so it proved. Both my promoted private and my hero appeared. Toting the HMG and leading a squad and a weapon team, the hero charged all the way up to C4, from where I tried to kill any and all US units in sight then to exit the squad and team ready to return for another time period. Neither the HMG nor the hero/Esser's best efforts with the radio got my KIA VP anywhere close though, and I couldn't pull it off. Badger won a healthy victory by some 19VP on or around time 8. We played on for the fun of it as we'd done at the bridge, but Badger's hold on the game was never seriously in danger the way my own turned out to be at the end of scenario 18.

Score2-1
Grins ;)

Start the week @ RD/KA!: Meanwhile... playing catchup

RD/KA! in review
Recent visitors to the RD/KA! homepage will perhaps be less surprised than readers who follow feeds, but I'm back at the keyboard after a 7-month bloglag, the longest since RD/KA! launched back in August 2005. Thanks to those of you who were prompted to contact me because of this long silence. I was gratified and encouraged as ever.

As you'd expect, the longer RD/KA! went untouched the more I shrank from returning to it, to the point where I was telling myself just to give it up. The wish to give the thing in passed along with the worst of my mood downswing (the trough bottomed-out December last), but I still had to endure months' of writer's block which could've left me just giving up on the darn thing if it'd been as simple a matter as just slinking off and leaving RD/KA! another dead blog long forgotten. But of course, I've got RD/KA! as my homepage. It appears every single time I open a new browser window. So I the darn thing won't just slink off and die. No, I've got to put it out of its misery good and proper. Which I just couldn''t face doing, naturally enough.

As the figures on the right show, on the face of it RD/KA! has had a chequered publishing history, with posts in the initial half-year equivalent to those in the 2 subsequent full-years combined. The 200+ total posts average some 6+ posts/month, a figure which, if maintained, would give both an active blog and a healthy schedule of deadlines which has a fair chance of continuing unchecked through moodswings (fingers crossed!). So here's hoping that 2008-09 sees my existing output organised through a proper schedule so that RD/KA! becomes more regular than ever before.

Start the week @ RD/KA! : Got game!

It continues to be games-a-gogo for yours truly this August with a bumper weekend's gaming, most of which was a pleasant surprise (in more ways than one).

Battlelore and more
It all began Friday night with a visit from Ros. I'd been promising to introduce her to Battlelore for some time, and we finally got round to it. So it was back to Agincourt and another chance to save the day for the English in the topsy-turvy world of the Battlelore Uchronia.


This game was an important test of my enthusiasm for Battlelore. Y'see Ros is exactly the sort of person at whom Eurogames are aimed: she likes competition without destruction and prefers player interaction which is about negotiation instead of conflict. So, for example (as regular readers will already know), she really likes Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne, and for all the familiar reasons put forward by fans of those games. (You could check the BGG:Settlers and BGG:Carcassonne forums if you don't already know what these reasons are and you're interested in finding out more.)

Now I really like games like Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne myself. I really do. I enjoy playing them and also appreciate them as designs. But among all the familiar family games I grew up playing were games like Risk and Campaign. Plus I was a teenage tankie who shared with his brother the fun of writing our own wargames rules for our model collections, and I gravitated to professional tabletop rules and then board wargames in my teens. So there is a part of my gaming self which always yearns for the chaos and carnage of all-out battle.

So, after Ros' and my 24-game stint of Carcassonne in recent months, I couldn't help but feel it was time to step up to some butt-kicking dice-rolling for a change of pace. Battlelore struck me as the best battlegame in my collection for this purpose. I felt that Richard Borg's Commands and Colo[u]rs(!) system offers the ideal style of gameplay to appeal to Ros (who is an avid and regular Bridge player) as her introduction to tactical battlegaming. Moreover I suspected that the chivalric fantasy themes of Battlelore would appeal more to Ros than those of Memoir'44 or Commands and Colours: Ancients. On top of that, I hoped that the wide range of options offered by the fully expanded Battlelore will entice Ros into many future games.

And? Well?

I can report we got off to a good start. The limited range of options offered by her hand of Command cards made it easy for Ros to start making decisions from among an otherwise bewildering array of options, the underlying logic of most of which were beyond her understanding as she got her first ever Battlelore army moving. With the minimum of coaching she was able to form her army up nicely as my English archers maintained a steady hail of largely ineffectual fire.

The first moment of contact was indecisive IIRC, and I could see Ros' spirits wilt. But it wasn't long before the dice started going Ros' way. By this time she was standing up to watch every dice land in the dice box. The moment of her first truly decisive attack was telling: instinctively exulting as she swept my little plastic men from the board, Ros was almost as quickly taken somewhat aback. But she could scent victory and would let nothing get in her way, of her rampaging cavalry especially.

Ros' well-earned triumph followed shortly thereafter: 4-1. I decided I could live with that. I knew there'd be another day. ;)

Score
0-1 :b

Usurpers dethroned!
The pleasant surprises began on Saturday with a call from Bill inviting us to a family boardgames night. I accepted with alacrity.

First, I regain my kingdom
The evening began with a 5-player game of Settlers of Catan (in which we all made sure to play the proper expanded board, unlike the last time we'd played- d'oh!). Facing each other across the island of Catan we had:

• Radka, the unchallenged queen of Catan at our table.
• Bill and I, both smarting from Martin's recent romps to victory.
• Daniel, chomping at the bit to reassert himself after winning at his first ever game many moons ago.
• Ros, keen to establish her winning credentials among a new group of players.

As cut-throat a bunch of colonising desperadoes as you could expect to encounter in virgin lands in other words!

The distinguishing features of that night's isle of Catan were, IIRC, a relative paucity of 6-point, 8-point and brick regions. And the gameplay? Looking back I would say that Development cards were one of the key features of the game. The particular nature of the resource base meant that lots of Development cards were being bought- we all often had both the resources and the time to spend them. The inter-turn building rule of the 5-6 player game meant that many of us were buying these Development cards in other players' turns, so that we could play them immediately in our own next turn. The net result of this was these cards were bought and played more often than is typical in an average 3 or 4-player game.

The upshot of this was that we entered the midgame with Bill in front thanks to his Largest Army while the rest of us were developing our own colonies quite nicely. For my part I was in a desperate life-or-death race based on a potentially fatal flaw in my initial setup. That flaw was the absence of Ore in my initial resource base. Without city-building resources I would be doomed.

I had only 1 way out- a 5-road build towards the centre of the board from my coastal fastness. A Road Building Development card helped me on my way, as did some careful use of the Robber to deny road-building resources to Radka and Daniel, who might've chosen to develop their own colonies towards my strategic target. I achieved my goal, but it was a close-run thing.

My road-building efforts drew attention to me thanks to the Longest Road, thus putting me in pole position for potential spoiler play via the Robber. And Ros started to build her own roads towards precisely the nexus I was aiming at just as I was collecting my resources for my final build. One or two different resource rolls or more favourable trading agreements were all it would've taken to pip me at the post to give Ros the endgame position I was aiming at, and Ros' excoriations when I finally got that settlement built (thanks again to inter-turn building) was sufficient proof that she knew this as well as I did!

And so I entered the endgame in front, with Bill a close second. This was a very dangerous position to be in. Y'see, among the many gaming skills Bill enjoys is that of being a silver-tongued devil. Last Saturday this came into play to distract the other players from his own potentially winning position while he was (with some legitimacy it must be said) rallying everyone to pick on the person in front- namely me.

On Saturday night this almost worked too: it turned out that Bill was a mere single Sheep card from gaining the resources he needed to build sufficient roads to steal the Longest Road from me for the win. In the end though the dice failed him where they didn't me, and I was able to play Year of Plenty to build my winning city.

I won by 2 points over Bill, with everyone else on 7 points. But it could easily've been very different: Bill could've lost his Largest Army but taken the Longest Road off of me. This could easily've kept the game open long enough for everyone to reach 8 or 9 points thus being in with a real shout in a whole different denouement.

Score
1-0 :)

Then I establish my kinghood
We then moved on to play 3 games of a favourite of Radka and Daniel's: Ivanhoe. I won all 3, even after Bill decided to join the last game after having sat out the previous 2 (his Ivanhoe record against me is at least as good as his recent Up Front record!). Perhaps Bill sought to intervene to stave off the terrible fate he saw looming? I don't know, but it was to no avail in any event.

I'd love to be able to put all this down to skill, but I can't. I did play my cards well for sure, but there was also at least one time when I took a great risk in playing out most of my hand, so that I was liable to get shut out of the rest of the game while everyone else raced ahead of me. I also enjoyed some luck with the other players confounding each other so that they couldn't get ahead of me while I sat rebuilding my hand.

No matter. Be it luck or judgement, the night was mine. You can be sure that my fellow players (some at least!) were as despondent as I was delighted, although I must tell you that I was modest enough to forbear a victory dance... ;)

Score
4-0 :b

Finally I show those French a thing or two
Returning from chez King, Ros and I rounded off our own evening with a rematch at Agincourt.

Looking back at our first game, I had concluded that my main mistake was that I hadn't been aggressive enough, ie. that I'd spent too long sitting back firing with my archers, so that my army wasn't well prepared for the moment when the French made contact. For the rematch, I was determined to change this. I did.

Dealt a Foot Onslaught card in my starting hand, I set out to form up my medium and heavy foot to exploit this to attack the French with an unexpected 2-hex charge into melee. This didn't go entirely to plan because I split my forces thanks to misreading the Foot Onslaught card, but I was still able to launch 2 medium and 1 heavy foot units right into the the French lines, then to push them further forward with the other Foot Onslaught.

Ros gamely tried to retrieve the situation, but the cards and dice were against her. I won 4-1.

Revenge aside, what was interesting about this game was the ideas it prompted about how to deal with the knotty problem of teaching basic battlefield tactics to a player to whom this kind of gameplay is utterly new. This problem is amplified by the very nature of card-driven games like Battlelore, where you simply can't separate your knowledge of your own cards from the advice you give your opponent. I hope to return to this another time.

Score
1-0 :)

Curse you Biggles, curse you!
The weekend's (pleasant) surprises were rounded off with a call from Andy, who had some unexpected time on his hands, and was angling for some games of Wings of War. A quick visit to Static Games- our FLGS- later, we sat down to Dawn of War: Wings of War, featuring Andy's 2 Spitfires against my 2 Me109's.

Maybe it was the fact that I was too caught up in the weekend's existing medieval mindset to play my 20th century aerial steeds to their best advantage; maybe it was just that I played really badly (and I have to confess that my first game demonstrated the worst wingman play I've yet shown, with my 2 planes ending up halfway across the table from each other); or maybe it was just sheer dumb luck (and I'm sure that even Andy would admit that- short of outright one-shot kills- some of his shooting was superb beyond reasonable expectations... Hmm?).

Whatever the cause, I lost 1 plane then exited my other with just 1 damage point remaining in our first dogfight. In the second I feared my first plane's days were numbered thanks to its taking an initial 13 damage (out of 19) in our first pass. That'll be the last time I play chicken with 1 plane against 2 then I guess. My fears proved correct, although I did manage to down 1 of Andy's Spitfires in the same (IIRC) deadly pass which saw my own plane crash and burn.

The hopes thus raised were not realised. Luck was with Andy and my remaining Me109 was lost while his last surviving Spitfire flew home on spit and polish (2 damage left out of 17!). My 2 pilots parachuted into the drink quietly adding Goering's name to Biggles' as the object of their curses.

Score
0-2 :(

Weekend's tally
5-3
Grins

Got game!

With barely a pause for breath, the gaming has continued since the post-Claymore bash.

Back to the front
Katana has been on a top secret mission lately- too secret even to tell the GM, so Bill and I resorted to some more Up Front when he came round last Wednesday. We played 3 games:

• 2 plays of City Fight featuring Bill's Germans against my British.
• 1 play of Paratroop Drop where I took my American paras against Bill's Germans.

The details of one of the plays of City Fight completely escape my mind, other than the fact that Bill won. Actually, no, that's not true: I've just remembered that at one point I neglected to play a devestating fire attack against one of Bill's moving groups (his firebase IIRC) because I'd momentarily lost track of the Relative Range, a blunder so elementary I could easily exhaust my vocabulary of superlatives reiterating how stupid I was. Other than that I expect I was somewhat tanked, since my memories of that night's gaming have that sort of tinge about them.

The other play was more memorable, although no more successful. What happened in that game was that my British firebase strolled forward to what I'd planned would be a -3 Building at Range Chit 1- a pretty safe move early in the game. Bill's German firebase opened fire, promptly malfunctioning his LMG, which helped ensure that my own group was completely unaffected by the fire attack. With a Brush card in my hand as well as the -3 Building, I sensed an opportunity: my group hit the Brush instead of the Building, so that I could advance to the Building at Range Chit 2 instead of just at Range Chit 1.

Even as I was doing this, there was a nagging voice at the back of my mind telling me that I was making a mistake. And so it turned out. Bill managed to repair his LMG with no difficulty naturally enough. My firebase did manage to entrench in the Brush, but that didn't help: a series of Wire cards helped ensure that they'd been reduced to 3 men before they finally made it to that same Building more than a deck later.

Now this could've been put down to misfortune- as Bill tried to suggest, but I knew better. Y'see, there was no doubt whatsoever that the move I made would've been a very strong if I'd pulled it off. The problem was that I was relying on too much luck to get there. First I had to hope that the German LMG would remain broken long enough so that I didn't suffer in the Brush. And second I needed to draw a Movement card quickly enough to get forward. Both of these went against me.

In other words: the move would've been a smart play if I'd had that second Movement card in hand when the opportunity presented itself. Or perhaps if I'd been playing the Germans, the Russians, or the Japanese. As the British I should just've taken the definite gain I'd planned on and established a strong position from which to start dishing out the fire attacks against the German firebase. Hardly a numpty play like so many from the post-Claymore bash, or that missed killer fire attack from the previous game, but a sign that I've got a lot of old lessons to relearn to get my Up Front game back up to scratch.

The third game was much more straightforward. Paratroop Drop is an entertaining scenario in which the attackers set up at random. That is: the attacking player defines 4 groups, and their Group ID and Range chits are determined by random selection. Well not quite: the defender has some control over the Range chits (he picks one at random then chooses which attacking group to place it on), giving him the chance to drop an attacking group or two right under his guns. Once in place the attacker's objective is essentially to form up the squad in the hot dropzone.

Our game that night went easily for me because two of my adjacent groups landed at maximum range from the German defenders. So they were able to form up then advance, instead of forming up under heavy fire. An easy victory which taught me nothing I'm afraid.

Score
1-2 :(
(But at least it's better than 1-6!)

Andy and I take to the skies again
With just the 2 of us presest during Andy's regular Sunday visit last weekend, we quickly decided to have a go with the new Wings of War: Watch Your Back stuff I'd picked up at Claymore the previous weekend. So we jumped straight into the combined Famous Aces and Watch Your Back scenario All Quiet on the Western Front. This scenario features 3 planes on each side:

• Allied: a Sopwith Camel, a Nieuport 11 and a SPAD XIII.
• Central Powers: a Fokker Dr.I, an Albatros D.Va and a Halberstadt D.III.

We managed to fit in 2 plays, and the result was essentially the same each time: the Allies won with the Central Powers losing 1 plane before the other 2 beat a hasty retreat. The difference was that I lost my Fokker Dr.I whereas Andy lost his Halberstadt.

What surprised us both about this was that we'd expected the Nieuport 11 to be more of a liability to the Allies- its 10 damage points makes it the most fragile plane in the game. It does have good guns though. And it has to be noted that the Nieuport might be a worry because it's fragile, but the Halberstadt is a worry because it's just plain rubbish- dead slow and stop with no fancy manoeuvres to pull (the Nieuport's no faster really, but it does have 1 or 2 nice tricks available). It does have the same good guns as the Nieuport, and it's not nearly so fragile, but you don't have to fly the thing long before you're cursing it for the clunker that it is!

Andy and I both had a lot of fun playing these 2 games and Fantasy Flight Games' entire Wings of War series has rapidly become a firm favourite we're happy to play pretty much anytime. We'll just have to become better pilots so that we can play it more quickly!

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't note a very important fact: Andy's last plane to exit the table in our second (his Albatros IIRC) had only 1 damage point remaining, and he'd oh-so-luckily taken 0 damage from a hit the turn just before the plane exited. Talk about jam, eh?!

Score
1-1 :)

And yet more!
Erm, I expect I'll be grounded soon chaps
Donald had an unexpected free night yesterday, so he called round for some gaming. And guess what? We started with a game of Wings of War: Dawn of War!

This being Donald's first game that meant we'd be playing the old match-up of the Spitfire and the Hurricane against the Me109 and the D.520. Random selection of sides gave me the British. Good I thought- maybe this time I can keep the Spitfire flying.

I started with a minor variation on my familiar sideslipping and turning-in from the side tactics, while Donald started with the beginner's variation on the tactics Badger had tried in his first game. That is to say: he started to split left and right to come round behind me only to loose the plot completely as he worked to come to grips with basic flying. The upshot of this was that his planes were separated for most of the game and I chased his D.520 across the table and back.

I couldn't believe the luck Donald was having with this flying brick. Time after time I would shoot at it and the thing would still be flying. Meanwhile my own Hurricane had taken a couple of heavy hits. Eventually though I had both my planes flying straight in at the D.520. Unfortunately for me though the Me109 drew a bead on the Hurricane- another solid hit. One more like that and the Hurricane was lost. Luckily the Me109 fluffed its turn and the Hurricane survived.

By this time my Spitfire had passed the D.520 and was pulling an Immelman to get back into the fight. So I was faced with a choice: the Hurricane could break for the sake of survival, or it could fly straight in at the D.520 and hope for the best. Luck wasn't with me, and I lost the Hurricane. The Spitfire was soon in a good position though, and that damned flying brick was finally shot down with my next attack. I had taken 10 shots to kill the thing, which had been reduced to 2 damage points out of 16 when the Spitfire finally delivered 11 damage in 1 attack.

So now it was down to the Spitfire against the Me109. Both planes were undamaged (although Donald didn't know this, since the Spitfire had a 0-damage chit on it), so I was expecting a long fight. It wasn't to be though. Donald got a bead on my Spitfire almost straight away, and promptly drew the Explosion chit, downing my plane with a single shot. A 1/60 chance- what lousy luck! You can be sure that I turned the air blue for a wee while after that!

I save my honour at Kursk (or do I?)
Donald wanted to play Memoir'44 next, so it was off to the Russian front for Scenario 42: Ponyri.

Random selection gave me the Germans, which was both nice- look at all that armour, and daunting- look at all those dug-in Russians (3 artillery units in particular) and those minefields.

My initial hand gave me 2 left section cards, 3 right section cards (including Assault- ie. all my units) and Armour Assault. Getting all that armour moving for 2 turns had its appeal, even if the minefield would prevent the tanks from actually closing in for overruns. But I wanted some cards for my attack up the centre towards Ponyri before I committed to this. So I began on my left.

A turn later and I could see myself getting bogged down on my left without being ready to go in the centre, so I changed my mind and bit the bullet: Assault on the right. This brought 5 of my armour units into a nice line in front of the minefield, from where they promptly opened fire on the Russian tanks. A couple of turns later I'd broken the Russian line and I was 1 VP up on the exchange. Plus I was beginning to draw the kind of cards I'd need to make a decent attack on Ponyri, the capture of which was key to my strategy, seeing as it was worth 2VP if I could hold 3 hexes against Donald's 2.

And that was where the battle was decided. The game ebbed and flowed a bit, but the war of manoeuvre was over after my massed tank attack and it came down to a meatgrinder as I fed more and more infantry into Ponyri in the hopes of holding it while I sought elsewhere the VP I needed to win. I pulled it off in the end, but I was more than just a wee bit lucky: Donald was hampered by a 4-card hand and the fact that we mistakenly played the Russian command rules.

Erm, sorry about that Donald: although we weren't playing my Expanded Nationality rules, I forgot that as standard the Russian command rules only come into play when specified by the scenario. Your comments about the Russian command rules after the game suggest that this had a significant effect on your play.

Anyway, where I was lucky was that Donald wasn't able to feed his right flank infantry into the Ponyri meatgrinder. This could've had a decisive effect on the crucial battle. An entertaining scenario all-in-all, and one I'm keen to revisit, especially with the appropriate rules in play, expanded or otherwise.

Score
1-1 (Ahem.)

Got game!

The Claymore mega-session
So, as I wrote the other day, the post-Claymore gaming bash took place a couple of weekends ago. This year's was particularly epic. Martin was there as usual. So too was Alistair, an old friend of Bill's who was visiting with the express purpose of getting in some gaming. Our regular host was absent this year, so Martin drove Alistair and myself back to Glasgow from Claymore, where Bill's arrival chez yours truly was awaited with the aid of some games of Up Front.

What followed was a weekend's gaming so intense that I couldn't've detailed it all even if I'd sat down to write it up straight away, let alone at this remove. So I'll have to restrict myself to listing what we played and noting some highlights (or otherwise, as may be).

In the space of those 2 sessions, we saw played:

• 13 games of Up Front.
• 1 game of Judge Dredd.
• 5 games of Cosmic Encounter.
• 2 games of Settlers of Catan.
• 2 games of Combat Commander: Europe.

The scores were as follows:

• Up Front:

1. Alistair: 6 games out of 11.
2. Bill: 3 games out of 3.
3. Martin: 3 games out of 5.
4. Me: 1 game out of 7.

• Judge Dredd: Martin.
• Cosmic Encounter: Bill won every game, including 1 solo victory, 2 joint victories with Alistair, and 1 joint victory each with me and Martin.
• Settlers of Catan: Martin won both games.
• Combat Commander: Europe: I won 2 plays of scenario 4 against Martin.

This left overall totals on the weekend as:

• Alistair: 8 (out of 19).
• Bill: 8 (out of 11).
• Martin: 8 (out of 15).
• Me: 4 (out of 17).

The first thing that readers will notice is that someone who was there those 2 sessions was keeping detailed records. I confess: it was me all along. Against the inevitable references to my sphincter I can only reply that I am a blogger after all, so these little details count. I must also note that the 4 of us there assembled that weekend are highly competitive gamers (as the trash-talking which went down made clear!). So vague references to who did, didn't or might've won what simply wouldn't've done!

The next thing that I'm going to bring to my readers' attention is that this was a truly awful weekend's gaming for me! And it wasn't just that I won a meagre 4 games out of 17 played (one of them being a joint victory at Cosmic Encounter more or less gifted to me by Bill). No, it was that I spent most of the time playing like a numpty!

In Cosmic Encounter for example I kept using my powers badly, if I remembered to use them at all.

And that game of Judge Dredd is probably the worst I've ever had. I was sitting on 4 points (thanks to the 'Gila Munja' card) well into the mid-game, which left me wondering if I'd get any arrests at all. This all the more so since I was playing with 3 master-finkers whose deviousness knows no bounds. My only comfort at the end of that game was that I won't have to endure a second term of Chief Judge Rex after he stole my office at the Grand Hall of Justice the last time Bill and I played. At least Chief Judge Lum lives far away, so he can't rub my nose in it quite so regularly. (Bitter, moi? Surely you jest?)

As for the Up Front? What can I say? Some of it could be put down playing the weaker side in difficult scenarios, or to luck (and it can, really!), but a lot of it has to go down to bad play against someone who was on the ball and who was playing the game with the right measure of aggression and daring, namely Alistair.

Take our 3 plays of the Japanese versus the Russians in 'Patrol'. I was happy to play this scenario to try out the variant Japanese setup I had used against Bill a few months ago. Our first play of this was a closely fought win for Alistair IIRC. The post-mortem led us to the conclusion that, if the setup was viable, I had lost because I hadn't pushed the Japanese forward in the aggressive manner required. So we tried again, and I did, winning with a cakewalk. Seeing what the Japanese could achieve with this setup, Alistair simply adapted his own, creating a mammoth Russian firebase with the result that my own lads died in droves as Alistair won a cakewalk of his own. So much for my variant setup was the conclusion of our post-mortem on those games.

It was the kind of flexibility demonstrated there by Alistair that I just didn't show in my games, 'preferring' instead to plug on with poor plans in the face of increasingly desperate situations. Painful as it was (and it was), I have to say that this sorry tale has reconfirmed my love of Up Front. I'm looking forward to playing more soon, and to applying the lessons I learned that weekend.

Of course, my gaming that weekend wasn't all bad: I did win those 2 games of Combat Commander against Martin. I was playing the German defence in the chateau which I have tried and failed to capture against Tony before. This was a bit of a worry to me: Martin is a great gamer, quick on the uptake, aggressive, and never afraid to take risks. So I was faced with the very real prospect that it would fall to Martin to have the honour of being our first player to win this scenario as the Americans.

That honour is still mine to win, but only just. In our second play Martin got closer to winning than I've ever managed. The key to his strategy was the smart use of smoke coupled with bypassing the chateau to gain VP by exiting his units off my board edge. This puts pressure on the German defenders in a way in which my frontal assaults of the past have simply failed to do. The result was a nail-biting game which demonstrated all the virtues of Combat Commander. And, because Martin insisted I record and report this: it is a measure of how close he came to victory that I had no leaders left, and was just 2 more eliminated units away from surrendering when I finally won thanks to Sudden Death while my MG nest was hosing down his platoon making a dash for the board-edge. Gaming is rarely better than that!

I can in all honesty report that some smart cardplay on my part (much smarter than most of my Up Front cardplay that weekend it has to be said!) played a definite role in my eventual victory. That said I must also report that sheer dumb luck played at least as great a role. Perhaps not quite so extreme in its sheer dumbness as my Egorov moment in my recent game against Tony, but a pretty hefty dose of good fortune in my favour all the same.

My own story aside, Alistair, Bill and Martin's weekends had their own highlights.

Alistair's no doubt includes his 5-1 run of victories against me at Up Front, which included several more cakewalks than the one I have already noted. Of all these, I expect that defeating my Russian Guards with his Volksgrenadiers in some 2 decks in our play of 'Elite Troops on the Attack' is one which he will savour for some time to come.

Bill meanwhile will be happy to be reminded that he won every game of Cosmic Encounter and Up Front that he played.

For his part, Martin will certainly be pleased with his own Up Front record. Two very convincing victories at Settlers of Catan which left the rest of us wondering how he'd done it will be very satisfying too no doubt. But something tells me that he'll be happiest of all at having won the prize of prizes: the best office in the Grand Hall of Justice in Megacity One. Curse you Chief Judge Lum, curse you!

Related@RD/KA!
- Once more unto the breach! (Or: Still no room at the inn)
- Easter extravaganza #3: country-house carnage

Start the week @ RD/KA! : Ho hum, another Claymore

It's been nearly a fortnight since I posted last. This was because I've been particularly busy lately, not because my mood has swung so low I can't face the keyboard. Just thought I'd let my regular readers know the good news. Anyhoo, onwards.

A couple of weekends ago saw the first Saturday in August, meaning that it was Claymore Saturday. Run by the South East Scotland Wargames Club, Claymore is probably Scotland's largest and certainly Scotland's longest-running wargames convention. It is also caught in something of a timewarp, being essentially a hardcore miniatures games convention.

The event is held in the indoor athletics track at Meadowbank stadium in Edinburgh. When you go in you are confronted by 3 rows of exhibits: a central row of gaming tables flanked on each side by trade stands. There is a real sense of bustle for sure, but the area is cramped and gloomy. And that's all there is to it. There are no other rooms. There is no space for other activities, let alone for gamers to come along and do their own thing.

On top of all that, when you look at what's laid on, well, to be honest, it leaves me pretty cold. The gaming tables are given over to a mixture of demonstration and participation games. I really don't get this demonstration games thing. I mean to say: why should I want to watch other people play their games instead of playing games myself? I simply cannot get my head around the mentality which thinks that this is a worthwhile activity to lay on at a public event.

And the participation games are by and large little better. Why do I say that? Because most of the participation games are ongoing games which the public can join in with. That is to say: they are not games designed to be run to completion over a short period. This would seem to me to reduce any members of the public who decide to join such a game to the level of a place-filler in someone else's game.

Now maybe I'm being unfair here. There are a lot of nice models on the tables at Claymore each year, and I can well understand their appeal. I'm even faintly envious of people who have some of the miniatures collections on show. So maybe the visual spectacle itself is indeed an attraction which will help grow the hobby. And likewise not all the participation games look like demonstration games with room for a few people to join in. So maybe they too are an attraction whose power is lost on me.

But year after year I go to Claymore, and I end up feeling the same way: for all its charms, this is a backwater of the wider hobby, a timewarp in which D&D, Warhammer and Mt:G might never have happened. More and more too I find myself wondering if this is exactly what the organisers prefer. Whatever: it's their club and their event, so they can run it as they please. I just think it's a shame that our Scottish gaming community continues to lack the sort of event which represents all aspects of the hobby, which presents them attractively and comfortably, and which- above all- offers people as much time as they'd wish to play as many games as they can fit in.

If Claymore is as unattractive as I'm painting it here, why do I bother going at all? I mean, I typically pay my money at the door and only hang around for an hour or so before finding something else to do. There are several reasons. First is sheer nostalgia. I did my student drop-out days in Edinburgh 20-odd years ago. So the sheer beauty of the city is overlaid with poignant memory. On top of that there is the chance to spend some money, which I did this year naturally enough. Finally- and most importantly- there is the Claymore games bash, where I meet my old buddies, drink beer, and while away the hours playing boardgames until we drop. I wouldn't miss this for the world. This year's session was particularly spectacular. More on that anon.

Got game!

More Badger-baiting
Last week's bumper boardgames bonanza continued on Thursday when Badger appeared for an evening's gaming. We were pleasantly spoiled for choice when it came to where to start:

• There was the ongoing playtest of the M44 Expanded Nationality rules, all the more pertinent since Badger nurses a desire for revenge as the Russians at Klin now that the scenario has been corrected.
• Then there was the new Battlelore: Call to Arms pack I'd picked up last month.
• And, of course, there was the Wings of War: Dawn of War which I'd got hold of only a few days previously thanks to Andy.

In the end Badger couldn't resist the lure of the new, and we began with Wings of War: Dawn of War.

Spitfires wasted on me?
Given his choice of sides, Badger chose the Axis. So he took the Me109 and the D.520 up against the Spitfire and the Hurricane. Deciding to stick with a winning strategy, I started by sideslipping ready to turn in so that I could bring the guns of both my planes to bear on a single enemy. I'm beginning to feel that the winningness of this strategy is more luck than judgement, since my turn was too late and too shallow as it was against Tony last week!

Badger meanwhile had hit upon a good counter-strategy: he split to the left and right then turned inwards to bring both his planes in on my Spitfire. I knew that sooner or later someone would come up with a good alternative strategy to my own!

It didn't take long for Badger to start cursing the flying brick that is the D.520, but he was still able to get enough good shots against my Spitfire to send it spinning earthwards with disturbing ease. My Hurricane pilot was clearly more experienced than the Spitfire pilot though, because he was able to down the Me109. The game ended when Badger flew the D.520 off the table. A win! Well maybe not: unfortunately Badger was confused about the victory conditions, thinking that he'd get the VP for this instead of me. Hmm, so I think that we'll have to put that one down to a draw really.

Enthused by the game, and out for blood, Badger readily agreed to have another go. Yet again my Spitfire was the first plane to go down (this time suffering the first explosion yet seen in my plays of this game). What is it about these darn Spitfires? On the face of it they're no more vulnerable to fire than the Hurricanes, yet they always seem to be the first British planes to go down!

I was now doing everything I could with my Hurricane to keep it flying while getting a bead on the enemy. Luck had a lot to with it here as the plane took quite a few hits with no effect. Badger's frustration with the D.520 helped- he just gave up trying to get it back into the flight and flew it off the table. This over-confidence was to prove his undoing. As our planes twisted and turned in the corner of the table, he misplanned a manoeuvre, with the result that his Me109 flew off the table! Another draw!

And so, yet again, Wings of War proves to be a palpable hit.

Score
1-1 ;)

We answer the call to arms
Dinner and a Doctor Who repeat out of the way, Badger was keen to try out Call to Arms, the new Battlelore army deployment system. Time was at a premium, so we just plumped for the first scenario, appropriately called First Encounter.

The core mechanics of Call to Arms (CtA) are really very simple. First, you set up your map:


Then you choose your deployment deck. There are 6 7-card deployment decks in CtA- 3 for each side. Each deck shows an average of 4 units, giving you the unit types and where you will set them up on your side of the map. Your deck chosen, you draw 4 cards at random from your deck. Then you look at them and decide which card will be your Vanguard, your Middle Guard and your Rearguard, and which will be your reserves. This done, you set up the Vanguard units on your right flank, your Middle Guard units in your centre section, and your Rearguard units on your left flank.

To round off the setup the player with the most light units deployed is designated the first player. The other player then chooses 2 of his reserve units to set up, after which the first player does the same. And that's about all there is to it in CtA's simplest version, known as the 'Impromptu Mode'. (If you want more detail, you can download the rules here.)

Random selection gave me the Standard banners, who set up on the bottom of the above map, and which I soon discovered is the side that gets the dwarfs. I grabbed a deployment deck at random (probably deck A), drew my cards, made my deployment decisions, and was soon set up. I had a reasonable mix of cavalry, medium and heavy infantry, and some archers. My set up looked to be without obvious weaknesses. I was content, and pleased at how quick and easy the whole system was.

With me having the dwarfs Badger had the goblins naturally enough. This meant that he had the most green units, so that I had to deploy my Reserves first. Still no problem. Then we chose our Lore Councils (we just had to play the Lore game, naturally enough!). I choose a level 2 Commander, a level 2 Cleric, a level 1 Rogue, and a level 1 Wizard (that's C2/Cl2/R1/W1 in BL jargon).

And off we went. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I tanked Badger in this first game. I do remember that I was able to play both Forest Frenzy and Hills Rumble. Neither had any great number of targets, and each rolled particularly puny dice against those targets they did have in any event. IIRC, the turning point was my Mounted Charge, when my 3 cavarly units were able to do some useful damage.

Mind you, my memory might be failing me here. Maybe this was the game in which I played Greater Portal to swap a dwarf medium infantry with a goblin archer unit, which hapless goblin unit I was then able to trap behind 2 units of my own and then pound into game-winning oblivion in 2 turns. However it went down, the score was 6-1.

Undaunted as ever, Badger wanted to try again. I chose deck C this time, and ended up with a strong force of heavy and medium infantry- mostly dwarfs- deployed on my left and in my centre, and a mixed medium and light force deployed to my right. Badger meanwhile was deploying an unpleasant looking horde of goblins across from me, having drawn at least one of the goblin 5-unit deployment cards from his deck. He was also setting up a Hill Giant with its rockpile.

I too had a creature up my sleeve, on my Reserve card. Facing Badger's Hill Giant I naturally wanted to take the unstoppable Earth Elemental, but Badger and I decided that the Reserve rules prevented this- you have to set your reserves up on your back row, while the Earth Elemental by definition sets up elsewhere. I was already feeling a little bit worried about the amount of cavalry massed against my own lone mounted unit, so having this choice forced upon me just added to my sense of impending doom.

The opening game lived up to those feelings of gloom as Badger was having pretty much everything his own way. But I did manage to get two good things going for me. I was able to manoeuver into a nice defensive formation on my right, at the same time creating a position from which I could support my centre. And my powerful left- 2 medium and 1 heavy dwarf foot, plus another heavy- more than held their own against Badger's attack on that flank. I was soon able to launch a counter-attack spearheaded by my lone medium cavalry unit and that Giant Spider.

Looking back I'd say that it was the Giant Spider which won me the game in the end. I used its mobility to get round the flank and then the rear of Badger's army, where it picked off 2 (maybe even 3?) of Badger's depleted units. I've never seen a Giant Spider do so much. Without it, I'm sure I'd've lost a game in which I sneaked a 6-5 victory.

Score
3-1
Grins

All-in-all then Badger and I both really enjoyed our introduction to this latest member of the ever-expanding Battlelore family. We're both looking forward to trying it again, especially on the Epic scale.