Sharp Practice – 25/04/2011 (Tom)

We liked the ACW rules we played at Salute so much that we wanted to give the Napoleonics a try. For our first game we lined up with 5 Big Men each and infantry in 6 groups, even though I’m keen to give cavalry and artillery a go as well. The British had rifles and lights along with 4 Line groups of 12 men each, while the French had 2 groups of Voltigeurs and 4 of Line. The objective was a village in the middle of the board.

The objective

My 2 groups of voltigeurs on my left flank under a level 2 Big Man had their eye  in, and spotted 2 groups of Line led by a Colonel coming down the road, and the rifles and lights hopping over the wall across the field.

Merde – we are outnumbered

The French Colonel (me) had a cunning plan – as his blinds were unspotted, he would deploy into line beyond the village. He had 3 “grasp the nettle” bonus cards as well – more than enough initiative to get his three groups into line ready to deliver a crushing volley to the British as they passed the church. Unfortunately he rolled low on movement, and his groups never made it out of the village yet were too constrained to change formation in the village, so the opportunity passed – the Colonel never got the chance again.

Meantime, the British Rifles and Lights just couldn’t make it to the field wall to shelter from the Voltigeur fire – the Tiffin card kept coming out before they could be activated to move by their Big Men, and the Voltigeurs kept firing on it, though caused mostly shock rather than any real casualties.

Allez Allez!

Tom managed to get 2 groups into formation under his Colonel and started peppering the French group emerging from the village with musket shots, leading to a stalemate on the road. I sent my final blind with 1 group and a level 2 Big Man around my right flank, but Tom met them with 2 groups of his own – even though I charged and defeated 1 group, this bogged down into a musketry exchange as well.

Eventually Tom’s Rifles and Lights made it to the field wall, and though my Voltigeurs fared well in the musketry exchange, they must lose soon as the British were behind a wall and were getting twice as many dice as me. With all units firing and loading for their 2 actions, we called the game a draw.

Tom got frustrated that the Tiffin card (which ends the turn leaving any remaining Big Men in the deck unactivated) came up too soon too often, so next time we may put in 2 and end the turn on the second. In the end, the game revolved on who got into formation first (Tom), and given time his line formation could have fired and advanced under the “Thin Red Line” bonus card which would have carried the village. So, not quite as enjoyable as our ACW game, but then the Lardies had put a lot of thought into the scenario at Salute, whereas we just threw it all on the table and got on with it.

I don’t usually post photos of painted troops, but I’ve been hard at work over Easter in an attempt to clear the backlog so here are some of the results – 2 units of ACW Zouaves – coming to a game in the near future.

Louisiana Tigers – Perry Plastics

Here I Stand – 17/04/2011(Nick)

Now, we’ve been putting off a game of Here I Stand for far too long. With the re-print from GMT I was able to pimp up my copy and we agreed to do a 2-player game prior to a face-to-face 3 player and a Vassal 3-player. Nick was the Protestants and I was the Papacy, but with the game being driven along by the diplomatic deck, we didn’t know quite what to expect. I’ve played through the 95 Theses and Diet of Worms phases on the Vassal server with my friend David, but we never got to the Diplomatic card play phase, which only happens from turn 2 onwards – by the way, David managed to convert all 5 spaces he targetted in the 95 Theses phase (jammy as ever), so I was hoping Nick wouldn’t pull the same stunt.

Guess what – he converted all 5 spaces, followed by 3 in the Diet of Worms – arghh! Burning Melanchthon at the stake in a debate for 3 VPs was some consolation, but even when I converted spaces back to Catholicism, Nick would get them back next impulse – I only counted 2 or 3 failed Reformation attempts in the whole game. The reformation only started to falter when it crossed the border into France, and even when the French New Testament was translated, I managed to hold it at the border. The shock of the game was London going Protestant with the publication of the English New Testament (1 die against 7 and he rolled a 6) – Woolsey was not amused, and a few burnings later, it flipped back to Catholic. We ended the game after turn 4 with the Schmalkaldic League event card played as it had not come out of the deck, and the VPs at 22 for the Protestants and 20 for the Papacy. Luckily I had 5 points for completing St. Peter’s and 5 points for burning 2 reformers or I would have lost through a domination victory.

Positions at the end of turn 4

Above is the finishing positions which I’ve put into Vassal so as we can resume via e-mail or face-to-face. The only rule that we played wrong that I can find was that we allowed adjacent space support for conversion attempts over passes, but as we both benefited from this, it won’t really have swung the game one way or the other. An excellent game, and look forward to the 3-player face-off soon.

Terrible Sharp Sword – 16/04/2011 (Tom & Too Fat Lardies)

Major Tom rolls the dice

I’ve been trying to twist Tom’s arm into playing Sharp Practice for ages, and at Salute we were admiring the Too Fat Lardies ACW game when Tom was offered a commission on the Union side. I think the Union  forces were meant to be looking for a Confederate spy and finding him would win them the game, but instead all they seemed to manage to do was stir up a hornet’s nest of Rebs whose dice-rolling was phenominal. I have never seen so many hits rolled nor points of shock rolled off on demand, and never have I seen my son roll so badly – ever. Tom’s troops are the guys skulking in the woods at the top.

Reb Allotment

In the end the spy went undiscovered and the Rebs successfully defended their allotment – what the guy waving the chicken around was all about was anyone’s guess, though to quote one of the Lardies “Jebidiah sure does love his chickens – ah mean, he REALLY does love his chickens”.

Lookee here boys, I got me a chicken!

Also at Salute was a 1/32 scale Arnhem game which just made you go “wow!”. I noticed Airfix Paras which I played with myself eons ago, but much better painted than mine were.

Arnhem Bridge

The level of detail on the table was amazing – this would never fit in my house never mind my dining room.

German reserves

One of my favourite periods is the English Civil War, though I have had several failed attempts at painting up armies for it – it’s probably a rules thing (as usual). I don’t know what rules these guys were using (turns out it was PIQUET), but their “Alternative Siege of Worcester 1651” with working candles in the buildings looked absolutely splendid.

Worcester walls

On the inevitable shopping spree front we picked up a couple of Humvees for Force on Force, bits and pieces for Dystopian Wars and lots of bare metal for the new Franco-Prussian war project – in the end we weren’t too badly burnt….

Worcester Fight

Finally, the new Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy looks great and has King Billy on the cover, so will be getting a new subscription from me for one!

Combat Commander Europe – 03/04/2011 (Nick)

So, after my failure in the role of the global jihadist, we had a couple of gaming hours to spare. Nick returned from a gaming convention in Manchester saying how he’d played Combat Commander: Europe and how he really enjoyed it. I’ve had the game for years (my son and I played it a lot when it came out), but I’d forgotten to tell Nick that I had it, and anyway, we’d gone down the Conflict of Heroes route for WWII squad-level games.  Now was a perfect opportunity for a trial  game. Here’s my initial thoughts on the game from my BGG entry from March 2008 (doesn’t time fly…)

I shied away from this initially because of the lack of armour, but when I finally chose it over Tide of Iron, I found that the lack of armour wasn’t important – it’s a brilliant game anyway. The use of the cards for multiple purposes (orders, actions, events dice-rolls etc) adds to replayablity, though the frustrations of not having the right combination of cards in your hand is constant!

You can’t do everything you want on every turn, so you have to prioritise and hope you get the results you need to move on to your next priority.  However, even shots that seem certain to break or kill a unit can be influenced by your opponent playing an action card in your turn. When the game ends is never set in stone either, and leads to many cinematic “just one more push (turn)” type actions, when you a praying for the game to go on so as you can get that elusive victory point to win, whilst you opponent is praying for the game to end for the same reason. This variable time encourages the attacker to take the initiative, as he is bound to lose if he doesn’t, because the defender usually starts off holding most of the victory points.

National characteristics are also built into the system without seeming overbearing, with the year the scenario is set in dictating troop quality and equipment.

Anyway, I can’t praise this game enough, and the criticisms it received for being too random don’t seem fair. Things go wrong in battles despite the best-laid plans (guns jam, people run away at the wrong moment), but if you use the wrong tactics, like advancing over open ground towards a HMG, then you will lose (opportunity fire can be punishing). I read somewhere that the 1st play of this for someone was like playing the original Squad Leader for the 1st time, and that struck a chord with me – it has that freshness which I remember from Squad Leader, and that is definitely no bad thing.

All still true of the game – after an initial slow first few turns while we brushed up on the rules, we fairly flew through the first scenario. The usual frustrations where there – a handful of Move cards when you want to shoot and vice versa, but in the end it came down to both my Russian leaders dying herioc deaths but leaving their men leaderless. The poor saps tried their hardest, even charging into melees against troops in foxholes and killing them in an ambush (did they put Schnappes outside to tempt the invaders out of their defenses?), but the 5 VPs from dead leaders and 3 from an event clinched it for Nick when the second sudden death roll signalled the end of the game. 

I predict this one will be hitting the table again very soon…

Labyrinth (the War on Terror) – 03/04/2011 (Nick)

We rolled for sides and I got the Jihadists again, and, in what turned out to be a really short game, got my ass well and truly kicked by the Yanks. Early regime change in Afganistan worked a treat for them, with an increase in prestige for America the maximum difference on 2 dice of a 5 – this put prestige at 12 where it stayed for more or less the whole game. Coupled with a totally failed major Jihad in Central Asia, this led to rogue states quickly falling into line via a heavily weighted War of Ideas roll (I only counted 1 failure in the game for War of Ideas). Goverance rolls which are slanted towards poor were turning up fair (even Somalia!), so in the end I had no answer to the onslaught and Nick cruised past the 12 victory points he needed from Good country resources.

I’ve played several games on Vassal but this is the worst defeat I’ve suffered. On the bright side, it was over so quickly we had time to play another game – see next post.

In a fortnight we shall be tackling Here I Stand for the first time – let’s hope my Martin Luther is more convincing than my Bin Laden!