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Zombie #246 posted:Got my first wargame, ASL starter kit 1. Enjoy your acronyms. Still, ASL starter kit is a solid game that holds up really well. I like it when I'm not feeling the cards in Combat Commander (grumble grumble Command Confusion grumble).
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Feb 20, 2015 17:17
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Zombie #246 posted:Got my first wargame, ASL starter kit 1. I just did the same thing, but did cheat and pick up a few more simple games at the same time. If you ever want to struggle through a game on vessel let me know.
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Feb 20, 2015 20:06
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bunnielab posted:If you ever want to struggle through a game on vessel let me know. Ditto if either of you ever want to run through a game with someone fairly experienced with the system.
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Feb 20, 2015 20:34
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COOL CORN posted:Ditto if either of you ever want to run through a game with someone fairly experienced with the system. I would love that. I have been reading through the Jay Richardson guide and it is like a thousand times better then the manual. The hardest part is keeping all the assorted types of shooting, esp defensive shooting, straight. There is also a youtube series where a guy plays through the first scenario solo and explains all his moves. It amazes me just how bad the rules are explained in the book.
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Feb 20, 2015 20:44
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bunnielab posted:I would love that. Totally agree. I used the Jay Richardson guides myself to learn. Now imagine 300 pages of those rules, and you have the full ASL rulebook  Defensive fire is easy once you do it a few times... During the movement phase (MPh): Defensive First Fire (D1F) - "Look over there!" - anyone who can see the moving unit fires at full firepower, once per movement point the opponent spent. Subsequent First Fire (SFF) - "Where'd they go? Keep shooting!" - If a unit already has a D1F marker, they can fire again on a following move at half firepower, as long as the target is the closest enemy unit (if there's a closer unit, there can be no SFF). Flip the D1F counter over, and they can't fire any more, except for FPF. Final Protective Fire (FPF) - "poo poo they're right on us!" - If a unit moves adjacent to one of your units, you can FPF on them, which fires at half firepower, but then doubled back up for being at point-blank range... so, effectively full firepower. BUT, the firing unit also has to take a normal morale check (NMC). This is close-quarters nasty fighting, and there's a good chance of friendly fire in all the haze. During the defensive-fire phase (DFPh): If a unit has no marker, they can fire at full firepower wherever they so choose. If a unit has a D1F marker already, they can fire SFF as above.
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Feb 20, 2015 20:56
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Also there's a (surprisingly) good DFF flash demonstration on Multiman's website. http://www.multimanpublishing.com/DFFDemo/tabid/78/Default.aspx
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Feb 20, 2015 20:57
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Defensive First Fire can be done as many times as MF was spent entering that hex? I thought you only got 1 D1F, and then SFF if more than 1 MF had been expended. Also, in FPF, the fire roll is the morale check roll, right?
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Feb 20, 2015 22:04
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Foehammer posted:Defensive First Fire can be done as many times as MF was spent entering that hex? I thought you only got 1 D1F, and then SFF if more than 1 MF had been expended. Right on both accounts - sorry, I was kind of vague, just giving a basic overview, not a full explanation
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Feb 20, 2015 22:13
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COOL CORN posted:Right on both accounts - sorry, I was kind of vague, just giving a basic overview, not a full explanation I've only played one game of ASLSK, just wanted to make sure we were doing it right, as the person I'm playing with is also a noob.
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Feb 20, 2015 23:42
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I wound up buying Ogre pocket edition because I like the retro look and I think my friend who is terrible at tactical maneuvering (to the point where I've beaten him in Combat Commander in three time advances) can probably handle being one unit. He also likes giant robots and stuff so maybe this will be close to that. Also I've been looking at Empire of the Sun. I really like the ideas behind the basic card play, but can someone experienced with it tell me how balanced it actually is? The combat seems pretty swingy which granted is historical but is it competitive despite that? I don't think I would mind the "oh poo poo" moments that the intelligence mechanics create but if it throws a whole scenario out of whack I would be displeased. The fact that the new edition is coming with a solo bot is also appealing.
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Feb 21, 2015 03:06
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cenotaph posted:Also I've been looking at Empire of the Sun. I really like the ideas behind the basic card play, but can someone experienced with it tell me how balanced it actually is? The combat seems pretty swingy which granted is historical but is it competitive despite that? I don't think I would mind the "oh poo poo" moments that the intelligence mechanics create but if it throws a whole scenario out of whack I would be displeased. The fact that the new edition is coming with a solo bot is also appealing. The combat is less swingy than you might think. You are pretty strictly limited by your starting combat strength in what you can do, crits just let you take a hit that ignores the normal damage rez rules. The way the combat strengths work and the way the dynamics of the game go, swings in battle rarely end up being decisive because in the early game Allied air-naval units have such low strength that they can't really do enough damage to derail the game unless the Japanese are stupid and the Allies can come back from pretty much any level of losses.
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Feb 21, 2015 05:21
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Are there any hex-based wargames that calculate line of sight using interesting methods? I read Simmons' article on the subject and got interested.
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Feb 21, 2015 13:12
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Morholt posted:Are there any hex-based wargames that calculate line of sight using interesting methods? I read Simmons' article on the subject and got interested.
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Feb 21, 2015 13:37
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My friend SpaceLion and I are going to play War of the Ring tomorrow! We were going to play today, but there was some pretty bad snow in our neck of the woods. Any advice for the Shadow player and Free Peoples player? Anything easy to forget that we should keep in mind? edit: forgot to mention, I printed out that 12 page player aid, so I think we'll be in good shape for the basic rules. My question was more about strategy. A Strange Aeon fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Feb 22, 2015 |
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Feb 22, 2015 06:26
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A Strange Aeon posted:My friend SpaceLion and I are going to play War of the Ring tomorrow! We were going to play today, but there was some pretty bad snow in our neck of the woods. If you want a nice series of strategy articles, I'll recommend these. Otherwise, I think there's two big things to keep in mind. Firstly, get more Action Dice. Be familiar with how you can bring in your Gandalf the White/Aragorn/Shadow Minions, and try to fulfill those conditions as soon as you can. Secondly, play to your dice. As the actions you can take on your turn are determined by what you roll, you need to be willing to change your plans to fit what you rolled, and not what you wanted to. Good Luck!
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Feb 23, 2015 17:32
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Taran_Wanderer posted:If you want a nice series of strategy articles, I'll recommend these. Otherwise, I think there's two big things to keep in mind. Firstly, get more Action Dice. Be familiar with how you can bring in your Gandalf the White/Aragorn/Shadow Minions, and try to fulfill those conditions as soon as you can. Secondly, play to your dice. As the actions you can take on your turn are determined by what you roll, you need to be willing to change your plans to fit what you rolled, and not what you wanted to. Good Luck! We played and had a great time, despite some nuisances like the spaces being no where near large enough to accommodate the stack limit. Free People pulled it off at the end by dunking the ring by pulling a 0 corruption tile they'd put in while at 10 corruption, so it could have gone the other way. My massive shadow army had just swept through Minis Tirith and murdered Aragorn on that region with the fortification near Mordor, which was pretty cool! How does the second edition text of Last Battle read? We had to stop play for several minutes trying to figure this out because the side by side comparison between 1st and 2nd on BGG was too vague. Other than logistical things like having to set up all the armies at the start and the too small spaces and the difficulty in identifying which guy on horseback was which, I think we both really enjoyed the system. Of course as is our chronic problem, it took from like 2 to 10 on Sunday, including rule teaching but not set up, which I'd done the night before. Maybe using a clock is our only hope.
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Feb 23, 2015 21:10
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A Strange Aeon posted:We played and had a great time, despite some nuisances like the spaces being no where near large enough to accommodate the stack limit. Free People pulled it off at the end by dunking the ring by pulling a 0 corruption tile they'd put in while at 10 corruption, so it could have gone the other way. My massive shadow army had just swept through Minis Tirith and murdered Aragorn on that region with the fortification near Mordor, which was pretty cool! Nice! Glad you had a good time. Here's a scan of The Last Battle for you.
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Feb 23, 2015 21:46
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I picked up No Retreat! through a trade, and wow. Just wow. It's excellent. I had my reservations going into it, but had heard such great things. I though "eh, it's such a small scale, it can't be that in-depth," but I was wrong. Wow, what an elegant system. Are the African/French/Polish/Italian front editions basically the exact same thing with different maps? I'm tempted to pick them up if so!
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Feb 23, 2015 22:14
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Taran_Wanderer posted:Nice! Glad you had a good time. Here's a scan of The Last Battle for you. Thanks! Yeah, the post on BGG just said it was restricted to only Aragorn and any non Free People Nation, but the removal condition is completely different. It turns out it wouldn't have mattered but it was annoying to have come up right in the epic final turns.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:19
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They have substantial changes on the base formula. NR2, the North African Front, is alright but tends to be kind of repetitive. NR3, at least the Victory Flag version, is outright a bad game, and I don't have any reservations in saying it. It has really tight VP windows, it hinges the immediate victory of the Germans on a few crucial rolls and even has weird 'roll well and you gain VPs!' mechanisms. Once you get past that, it is an almost workable (and interesting) game, but the are so many issues with it I just don't rate it. No one really knows much about NR4, the Italian front, or the new part of NR3 concerning the Polish front.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:23
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Tekopo posted:They have substantial changes on the base formula. NR2, the North African Front, is alright but tends to be kind of repetitive. NR3, at least the Victory Flag version, is outright a bad game, and I don't have any reservations in saying it. It has really tight VP windows, it hinges the immediate victory of the Germans on a few crucial rolls and even has weird 'roll well and you gain VPs!' mechanisms. Once you get past that, it is an almost workable (and interesting) game, but the are so many issues with it I just don't rate it. No one really knows much about NR4, the Italian front, or the new part of NR3 concerning the Polish front. Interesting. I always thought it odd that NR1 would be so INSANELY highly rated by everyone, but I never heard anything at all about NR2 or 3. Also falls in line with NR2 going for ~20 bucks on eBay, vs. Russian Front going for 75+. I'm not going to say what I traded for it, because it's such a beloved darling of this thread, but it's hard to get a 50 turn, 2-map game on my table that takes multiple weeks to play, especially living in such a small apartment! I can still play it in VASSAL (and do!), and can still enjoy it that way. Perhaps even more so. NR seems like a better gateway game to get my friends into the hobby too.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:50
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It's Unconditional Surrender, just say it 
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Feb 23, 2015 22:52
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Tekopo posted:It's Unconditional Surrender, just say it Don't judge me! When you live in a tiny apartment with cats, having a monster game set up all the time is basically not an option
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Feb 23, 2015 22:56
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COOL CORN posted:Don't judge me! When you live in a tiny apartment with cats, having a monster game set up all the time is basically not an option
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Feb 23, 2015 22:57
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No Retreat shipped from GMT with a miserable, borderline-useless rulebook and they needed to do some serious re-balancing of the early game to make sure the Germans didn't roll over the Russians. Make sure you have the latest rulebook. Even now sometimes things are phrased kind of strangely since the designer is French-Canadian and English is not his first language. There are also a couple of mini-games here that look like they might be good for quick introductions to the game without using the whole map.
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Feb 23, 2015 23:02
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Also the designer is an incessant tinkerer on his own designs and will at the drop of a hat make rule changes to his designs.
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Feb 23, 2015 23:03
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Yeah, I've noticed that.
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Feb 23, 2015 23:04
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It's not necessarily a bad thing but it does mean that you have to check the living rulebook before gaming to see if any changes have been made.
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Feb 23, 2015 23:05
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The tinkering along with the like 30 pages of rules threads on BGG had me on the verge of getting rid of it but I'm glad I didn't because I'm enjoying the campaign quite a bit. I'm just really skeptical of tinkering because it makes me question balance and if there's an overall design vision rather than just a pile of wouldn't it be cool ifs.
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Feb 23, 2015 23:32
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Is Roads to Stalingrad any good for someone who would like to try a wargame and likes the theme and found it for a kinda low price (£15)?
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Feb 25, 2015 19:38
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Just put a P500 order in for the new printing of Empire of the Sun, another game I will probably never play face-to-face. Was going to get C3i 28 because of USE: Case Blue and the Combat Commander content but $11.50 shipping to the east coast for a magazine is ridiculous. I'm better off buying it from Amazon after it comes out.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:43
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Snagged a 95% unpunched copy of Beyond Valor 3rd edition for $60. SO EXCITED. Here I go, spiralling down the ASL hole.
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Feb 27, 2015 21:28
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COOL CORN posted:Snagged a 95% unpunched copy of Beyond Valor 3rd edition for $60. SO EXCITED. I'm just happy the drat rulebook is back in stock at MMP
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Feb 28, 2015 00:07
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I just got gifted Twilight Struggle and Fire in the Lake and I am excited. e: What are some other cool war games that play more than two? Looking at BGG I'm seeing Here I Stand and Virgin Queen. The Combat Commander games look pretty fun for two players and well Chad Jensen. T-Bone fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 17:46
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Here I Stand seems pretty popular on BGG but you'll get more mixed opinions here. It has some serious bullshit dice luck stuff in it which would rub me the wrong way in any game but it's kind of ridiculous in one that's so long. Virgin Queen seems to have some similar issues. People have said good things about Maria which is for three players but I haven't had the chance to try it out yet. Other than that you're pretty much looking at more COIN games unless you want to get into the theater-level games which usually have really long playing times. GMT has some other multiplayer CDGs like Sword of Rome and Wellington but I know nothing about them. Combat Commander Pacific is out of print so you'll have to get Europe. I've never had much interest in Pacific because Chad made some design decisions based on negative reactions about Europe, like reducing the number of events and making the hand-management easier. Cutting back on the stuff that makes Combat Commander what it is to placate people who didn't like the game in the first place is kind of odd. Plus Europe has a lot more expansions, all of which are good, in case you get the bug. I'm a little obsessed with the game so if you have any questions ask away.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:20
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I must admit I'm not the hugest fan of HIS/VQ. It's pretty much 'Roll right to score points' all around, with a bullshit combat system.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:26
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From my experience in the current PBF I like most of the mechanics but yeah it needs better resolution than just dice pools. I'm also not a big fan of the way the deck isn't cycled but I think Twilight Struggle has just spoiled me for intelligent deck mechanisms.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:28
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cenotaph posted:Here I Stand seems pretty popular on BGG but you'll get more mixed opinions here. It has some serious bullshit dice luck stuff in it which would rub me the wrong way in any game but it's kind of ridiculous in one that's so long. Virgin Queen seems to have some similar issues. People have said good things about Maria which is for three players but I haven't had the chance to try it out yet. Other than that you're pretty much looking at more COIN games unless you want to get into the theater-level games which usually have really long playing times. GMT has some other multiplayer CDGs like Sword of Rome and Wellington but I know nothing about them. Is the complexity on BGG accurate (3.2)? What about the playtime (120 min)? Why are you obsessed with it? And double bonus round for anyone is there a good grand theater game that isn't Axis and Allies that doesn't take weeks to play?
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Feb 28, 2015 21:41
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Yeah, I'd say it's a medium game once you actually digest the rules. The BGG weight scales for wargames can be a bit off since it's mostly people used to higher complexity games rating them. It's a side effect of trying to put game complexities from War to Advanced Squad Leader on a 1-5 scale. Playtime can vary. An hour and a half at the low side and 2.5 at the high, I think. As for my obsessiveness, I think it's got a lot of stuff going for it. People always talk about the cards and the chaos but there's more to it than that. Things everyone talks about: -The cards break up your ability to make optimal plays every turn so it keeps scenarios from being easy to "solve." -The cards prevent you from knowing your opponent's capabilities. You might be afraid to move forward but he's not holding an op fire. You might want to advance into melee against a weaker unit but he's holding multiple ambushes to ruin your day. -When you flip a card for your "die roll" it might have a trigger on it which can lead to stuff like sniper fire, air support, reinforcements, heroes, field promotions, and a bunch of other cool stuff both positive and negative. -The different nationalities play a bit differently because of their unit stats, leader to squad ratio, and card decks. -The rulebook might be the best wargame rulebook ever written. It's incredibly clear and concise. The rules take a less-is-more approach in regards to chrome and fiddly exceptions. It might be a bit tricky to get a sense of game flow from the rules but there is an excellent example of play in the scenario book that lays everything out. -Random Scenario Generator: What the game was before GMT insisted on having historical scenarios. I haven't used it yet, unfortunately. Creates balanced scenarios with a few die rolls and player choices. In the Mediterranean expansion there are point values for all the units in case you want to design your own scenarios from scratch as well. Things that don't get mentioned enough: -You can't kill a unit with one shot. You can make multiple fire groups and try to break it and then eliminate it in one go but you'll never get one absurdly lucky shot that takes out a bunch of squads and means the scenario is functionally over already. Mostly you'll probably see multiple turns of fire and rally cards played to eliminate units. This means that you need appropriate hand management and proper positioning to project a volume of fire great enough to gain the upper hand. -Multiple victory conditions. You can win by killing enough squads to force your opponent to surrender, but there is also a victory point system. You get VPs for taking objectives (some of which are of hidden value), eliminating opposing units, exiting units off your opponent's board edge, and occasionally from an event. You mostly don't have scenarios that say "take this building in five turns." Other games that have those types of scenarios can see one player failing to roll well on turn one and their chances of winning drop precipitously. You don't get that here. Say you're close to elimination but ahead by a couple of VP. If you move your last unit off the board the game ends and you win by VP. -Random game length. Time advances happen when you draw a time trigger or a deck runs out. When you advance the time marker into the sudden death space on the time track you roll to see if the game ends. If not, you keep playing. This prevents a player from feeling like they've already lost or taking a last desperate gamble on the last turn since they know it will be the last turn. I honestly think random game length is one of the most important things a tactical level game can have. -The Initiative Card. Basically one player starts the game holding this card and can pass it to the opponent to force a re-roll. This is useful for denying time advances that usually favor the defender, making sure your important leader doesn't die at an inopportune moment and a host of other things. It normalizes the dice rolling and adds a pseudo-negotiation element. -No vehicles. A lot of squad level games like to pursue the ideal of a short scenario with just a few squads and one or two vehicles per side. These scenarios mostly suck because vehicles are usually so powerful that whoever pops the other's tank first wins. Combat Commander just focuses on being a great infantry combat game and is much better for it. There is the Fighting Formations series by Jensen if you're dying for vehicles. I don't like it as much as Combat Commander but it at least achieves the critical mass of vehicles necessary to make it so that losing one of them isn't game over. There's probably some other stuff I wanted to gush about but that's the highlights. So basically you've got a lot of stuff to juggle around every turn, and you've always got options even if you're behind. Most of the scenarios are really well balanced and fun to play and you can roll your own. It's got a pretty good community as far as BGG goes. The expansions add a couple of rules each that are only applicable to scenarios from that expansion. So you can get Normandy or Stalingrad flavor without rules bloat. I think it's the rare combination of randomness that creates tension and interesting twists without mucking up game balance. cenotaph fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 23:03
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T-Bone posted:Is the complexity on BGG accurate (3.2)? What about the playtime (120 min)? Why are you obsessed with it? No Retreat is Eastern Front only, but is playable in a (long) day. If you need the whole European Theater, maybe Europe Engulfed, but even that would take at least a few sessions to finish a game usually. If you want the whole world, then no.
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