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Let's arrange a game folks. Also, upcoming posts and thought about OCS and Reluctant Enemies.
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Jul 10, 2014 17:18
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Tekopo posted:Let's arrange a game folks. Also, upcoming posts and thought about OCS and Reluctant Enemies. I hope you have a few positives for Reluctant Enemies Horror story time: I've been stickering/sorting Command & Colors: Ancients over several days, and at some point during the process I lost one of the countersheets. While I can still sticker all the pieces needed, some of them will only have stickers on one side. Truly a day of woe.
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Jul 12, 2014 02:54
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Trynant posted:I lost one of the countersheets. While I can still sticker all the pieces needed, some of them will only have stickers on one side. Write the publisher and ask for another sheet...
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Jul 12, 2014 03:47
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Ropes4u posted:Write the publisher and ask for another sheet... The real twist ending was that the sheet I thought was missing was never there; C&C had duplicate sheets for the first two pages and only the third sheet by its lonesome--it took me a glance in the rulebook to discover that. Long story short? I'm a moron. At least the game is stickered now.
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Jul 12, 2014 10:52
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What's the best World War One game?
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Jul 12, 2014 16:17
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La Grande Guerre?
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Jul 12, 2014 16:22
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Riso posted:La Grande Guerre? Riso, do you do anything with wargames other than watch calandale videos? Paths of Glory is the most broadly considered one. Tekopo likes Pursuit of Glory.
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Jul 12, 2014 16:31
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I do prefer Pursuit of Glory to Paths of Glory for various reasons: for a start, PoG feels a-historical with crazy 'dances of death' in the eastern front and with the russians being way, way too strong. Pursuit works better at the smaller scale I feel and you can do some encirclement but the presence of smaller units as road bumps helps the game not feel completely silly. It has some faults though, for example if you don't get a specific card as Turkey and it comes up late, you pretty much lose the game.
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Jul 12, 2014 16:41
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Is anybody interested in a game of Paths/Pursuit next weekend on vassal?
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Jul 12, 2014 22:25
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Gonna be busy tomorrow, how about next weekend?
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Jul 12, 2014 22:27
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:next weekend I'm working this weekend, but yeah next works for me. I forget the time difference but we'll sort something out The reason for the WW1 interest is that I'm reading The Guns of August, which is really great so far. Plus 100 years and all that.
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Jul 12, 2014 22:34
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Tekopo posted:Let's arrange a game folks. Also, upcoming posts and thought about OCS and Reluctant Enemies. I would also be interested in participating if its not a big deal if I've never played it or even a similar game before...
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Jul 13, 2014 01:01
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:What's the best World War One game? I never see A&A mentioned, so I'll throw out that I really like A&A 1914.
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Jul 13, 2014 02:03
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I played most of a coop game (doomsday machines) of Space Empires today. That was vastly more fun then my first experience with the game. I'd only recommend using the basic game rules if no one playing has played before - they remove more useful options needed to make the game good than complexity that makes it hard to learn. Also, Close Encounters is good - the tech rebalance, bigger homeworlds, new techs and alien tech/race ability cards add a lot to the game. We ran out of time before we got to hilarious stuff like Titans but we basically had it in the bag. The Easy difficulty really lives up to it's name. I really want to try a normal game with 3 or 4 players now.
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Jul 13, 2014 06:10
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Ilthe01 and I just finished up a game of Napoleon's Triumph on VASSAL. We had played before but it was a floundering mess of rules look-ups and mistakes so we just abandoned it a few turns in. It was still a floundering mess of rules look-ups this time but we didn't make too many mistakes. I won a "decisive" victory as the French with five morale to zero but Ilthe got me down to one the previous turn and I called in my reserves to be safe. We both had a couple of terrible blunders. His was something earlier on I don't really remember the details of but mine was getting a full strength corps shattered by unnecessarily moving it up when I already had a decent position. I feel like I actually have a vague idea of how things work now. Here are a couple of crappy screenshots.  
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Jul 13, 2014 06:18
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A couple of things to add to that. Cenotaph is the French (blue) and I'm the Alliance (red). My massive blunder was a really unfortunate misreading of how to use artillery (or, more accurately, how to not use artillery). The game didn't feel like it was over when it ended, I guess it was because of all the units still on the board, but most of mine were greatly reduced in strength and I was running on fumes just trying to get that lost point of morale damage. Cenotaph lost a lot of morale to early attacks that I was able to defeat by using my manpower advantage to throw wave after wave of men into counter attacks. There wasn't a lot of flanking or feinting and I think we both could have used that to our advantage much more than we did. Cenotaph was much better at dividing my corps by making attacks that forced me to pull men to the approaches, but even then my superior manpower almost carried the day. All in all, our worst enemy was ourselves - but what war gamer doesn't say that at the end of the day? (The ones who play games with dice, obviously) Look forward to another battle when we find the time.
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Jul 13, 2014 07:43
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Maneuvering and feinting are key in the game, really. I almost never throw men into a direct attack unless I can draw men away using flanks or if I have a corp against a bunch of independents (that's because if there are independents in reserve, no more than one can be selected for defense). For example, one of the things that don't become clear until afterwards is the strength of french cavalry. The way I use them in the flanks is by declaring an attack (this only works if the enemies aren't on approach): if the enemy selects only one unit for defense, I push the attack. This is because on ties the french win on a 1v1 not on approach scenario. If the enemy selects two, I feint and now I've tied up two enemy units for the price of one of my own. Basically, any time that an enemy corp is surrounded by three approaches or more, it should be eaten alive by feints that tie up their units on the approaches. At this point a good commander, seeing this situation developing, would just retreat his Corps to prevent further losses. There are a lot of subtleties in this game that aren't apparent until you play it a few times, but I hope you enjoyed what's really my favourite game ever. What did you use to point to approaches in Vassal? Did you use skype/something else to make the resolution of combat easier?
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Jul 13, 2014 09:06
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I gathered from various reviews and discussion that the slow, attritional nature of combat was a very important concept to get one's head around. If I couldn't flank to dice up a corps I fed some mediocre unit into the meat grinder to hold my better stuff for a more decisive attack. Personally I like the tension of trying to maintain your line when you move. It's really easy to open yourself up to some pretty brutal assaults if you make a bad push forward. We used skype. I can't imagine playing anything more complex than a C&C game on Vassal without voice. Any advice on what to do with artillery? I find it kind of perplexing. It seems really hard to get into position.
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Jul 13, 2014 09:37
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It is very hard to get into positions but it allows you to prepare your attacks with artillery preparations and get rid of enemy 3-strength units. You usually have to hide them in your corps though, since if you just send them alone they either get attacked or the element of surprise is lost. I use them like this: move a corps up to approach in an area that you want to attack, then in a subsequent turn, announce an attack. The enemy calls his defence and you don't call it a feint, so the defender gets to pick his defending leading unit first. If you see a 3-strength, call the artillery as attacking leading: now you have destroyed a 3-strength for no loss of your own. If you see a 2-strength, send a 3-strength in and force the defender to use counterattacks or lose the combat. If your attacking locale is a hill, you can do this trick every turn. Also remember that artillery doesn't take up the 'one attack per approach per turn' limit, so you can do a followup attack as well. There's a notable advantage on the attacker being able to decide if something is a feint or not/what is the attacking leading unit after the defender has already made choices. Also, yeah, sometimes for the Allies the only way to push through is attrition, but you should use your artillery creatively in order to give yourself the advantage. You have more artillery and one of them isn't tied up as a fixed artillery, so make use of them to give you the edge in combat. If the French player has to use counter-attacks to defeat one of your attacks, you are pretty much half the way there already.
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Jul 13, 2014 09:49
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I think the thing that happened here was that it was really really obvious to both us what was going on at all times (you could say we have a rapport) so moving a unit up to a position or an attack didn't carry the same element of surprise that it might otherwise. As a result, feints weren't used as much as they could be if only because we both knew what the unit making the feint was capable of. The problem with artillery is that if your opponent attacks you can't put units into the defense if there's a unit already in the advance so an artillery versus a 3 strength unit means that the artillery gets rolled and every unit in the locale is forced to retreat. I lost about 9 morale to this mistake. My preferred method of getting artillery ready was to hope that there was a feint by a corps nearby and to get the artillery into position without revealing what they were.
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Jul 13, 2014 10:17
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Well that's why you place your entire Corps in approach instead of just the artillery. It does telegraph that you have artillery but at that point, it doesn't matter, because the trick is hard for your opponent to counter unless he takes your flanks (don't put a whole corps on approach unless your flanks are covered). Even if your opponent knows more or less what a unit is capable of, feints should still be used for a variety of reasons: - They tie up defenders that can't be used to defend other areas. - They force at least one enemy to go on approach, splitting up Corps and thus limiting the offensive impact of a Corps. - They can be used to do an attack if the enemy doesn't commit enough forces to the defense of the feint (only realistically doable by the French). Considering the above, point one and two don't really care what your units/the enemy units are. My favourite unit in the game, though, is the french 2-strength cavalry. Let's imagine a situation in which you surround an enemy allied corps on three sides, with two approaches having 2-strength cavalry and the other approach holding your corps. Unless the enemy is a full 8 piece corps (unlikely), it is extremely easy to dice them apart. You first of all declare attacks using the cavalry: if the enemy corps only picks one unit to defend, you declare it isn't a feint and you immediately make the enemy retreat. If he declares two, you simply feint, forcing one to the approach and the other to not be able to defend anywhere else. If the Allied player is experienced, he will always defend with 2 (unless he selects a 3-strength unit as a defender but then hey, you just took out a 3-strength). If he has 6 units, this means that 4 units are already tied up to the defence of his flanks and then you can attack using your Corps (if you have an artillery already in position, even better!). Feints are great because they tie up enemies for no real loss on your side, but they also allow you to push the situation if it seems advantageous. I pretty much use them all the time.
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Jul 13, 2014 10:44
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Panzeh posted:Riso, do you do anything with wargames other than watch calandale videos? Of course not, everyone knows I don't play any games. You can ask anyone!
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Jul 13, 2014 17:38
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Thanks for the arty advice. I don't think I put a whole corps in an approach the whole game. Also i think Ilthe is understating the flanking since I did it whenever possible even if I wasn't going to attack since I was trying to create disorder to make the Allies' command disadvantage even tougher.
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Jul 13, 2014 20:50
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I noticed that Coolstuffinc has ASL Starter Kit 1: 10th Anniversary Edition in stock for a little over $20 (and the game is MSRP of $25 anyways). This is quite simply the best way to get introduced to Advanced Squad Leader. Considering Multiman Publishing take years to reprint these drat things I'd jump on it if you're interested at all.
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Jul 14, 2014 10:21
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Numlock posted:I would also be interested in participating if its not a big deal if I've never played it or even a similar game before... We should also decide if to make the scenario east-first, west-first or open as well (in open you don't have to attack Poland, or anyone really).
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Jul 14, 2014 10:38
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Tekopo posted:Alright well that's one, anyone else up for it? Ideally we want 3 players. Newbies welcome, but reading the rules prior to playing is a must. We won't finish it in a session, though. I'm game, but I will be on the road tomorrow and Wednesday.
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Jul 14, 2014 12:00
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Panzeh posted:I'm game, but I will be on the road tomorrow and Wednesday.
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Jul 14, 2014 12:06
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Tekopo posted:Numlock, are you up for a simple testing session in the next couple of days so that you can try out the ruleset? Sure, Generally around 7pm CST or maybe earlier. Anyday this week. I'll make a point to give the ruleset a once over tonight. Is there some way of getting in contact with you guys other than this thread? Do you use a TS/mumble server for these things? If not I think it would be a good idea.
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Jul 14, 2014 13:34
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We are in the #boardgoons on SynIRC. I think we used skype in the past if we needed voice communication. 7pm CST is gonna be difficult for me since I'm on GMT and 6 hours ahead.
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Jul 14, 2014 13:50
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gently caress. I finished "sorting" Guderian's Blitzkrieg II and there seems to be recurring theme in war games to make one of the most challenging parts to play a game sorting the drat poo poo. It's fortuitous to have a wargame have all its stuff fit in its box, let alone have anything close to proper storage in box.
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Jul 15, 2014 08:38
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It's happened. I'm officially that wargamer that buys more games than they'll play any time soon. This was probably the case before, but I got both Axis Empires games (Totaler Krieg and Dai Senso) and Reluctant Enemies in the mail yesterday. I don't really think I need more than a couple of near-monster to full-out monster war games; I think I'm nearing a dozen. Let's not forget the dozens of scenarios of other games waiting. This...is a problem. Of course, what if I do get to play these games and they go out of print!?  And hey, why not a list the way-too-many content-heavy, barely touched wargames?:
Welp, that's it; gonna go play through this stuff. See you all in a few years.
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Jul 16, 2014 16:42
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I've managed to get to play most of the stuff I have bought: notable examples of stuff I haven't even tried once are Combat Commander: Mediterranean and None But Heroes. There's a lot of stuff that I've only ever played once or twice and I still have a backlog of stuff I need to clip as well... 
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Jul 16, 2014 16:46
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I keep telling myself that I don't want to be like you but it's just covering up the fact that I already am since my Dad dumped all his old wargames on me when my parents moved so I have a bookshelf in the basement with 20-30 wargames that I will probably never play on it.
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Jul 16, 2014 18:20
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SavageMessiah posted:I keep telling myself that I don't want to be like you but it's just covering up the fact that I already am since my Dad dumped all his old wargames on me when my parents moved so I have a bookshelf in the basement with 20-30 wargames that I will probably never play on it.  Dude there is a pretty healthy market for out of print wargames. Especially if they're in decent shape and CIB. Like if you have something like White Bear Red Moon hanging out in your basement bookshelf you can get a couple hundred bucks for it.
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Jul 16, 2014 19:57
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There's nothing like a good ol' whole-day blackout to make you realize you don't have enough wargames. I got my brother to learn and play a few turns of Twilight Struggle by candlelight before the power came back on. I think I'll look into some Dan Verssen games to pick up next
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Jul 16, 2014 20:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:There's nothing like a good ol' whole-day blackout to make you realize you don't have enough wargames. I got my brother to learn and play a few turns of Twilight Struggle by candlelight before the power came back on. I think I'll look into some Dan Verssen games to pick up next I really like thunderbolt apache leader. It was my first solo game and I have finally spent enough time working through the rules and scenarios that I think I am ready to play a campaign. I think my next war game will be Omaha Beach or Zulus on the Ramparts for solo play.
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Jul 16, 2014 21:25
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orphean posted:
I doubt most of them are worth that much, and I still consider them Dad's so I won't be selling them anytime soon. There is an unpunched copy of Squad Leader that I think I could get a decent price for though. All the ASL 2nd edition stuff is unpunched too, I think he played with other people's copies. Or it could be that I have become the wargamer with more games than he will play because I inherited games from a wargamer... with more games than he would play.
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Jul 16, 2014 22:19
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SavageMessiah posted:I doubt most of them are worth that much, and I still consider them Dad's so I won't be selling them anytime soon. There is an unpunched copy of Squad Leader that I think I could get a decent price for though. All the ASL 2nd edition stuff is unpunched too, I think he played with other people's copies. Or it could be that I have become the wargamer with more games than he will play because I inherited games from a wargamer... with more games than he would play. Totally understand about not wanting to sell them. But you are kidding yourself if you think unpunched SL and ASL 2nd Ed. stuff isn't worth that much! Just don't throw them away!
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Jul 17, 2014 05:47
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Playing Twilight Struggle with my wife tonight. Is there anything I should point out to her that could possibly ruin the experience for a first time player? I've only played it twice myself so I'm not really sure.
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Jul 17, 2014 06:26
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:Playing Twilight Struggle with my wife tonight. Is there anything I should point out to her that could possibly ruin the experience for a first time player? I've only played it twice myself so I'm not really sure. Don't play "CIA Created" or "Lone Gunman" at DEFCON 2.
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Jul 17, 2014 06:27
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