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As the proud leader of the 53rd brigade, I would like to say: 9/10, would not want to be flanked again.
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Mar 5, 2017 06:30
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Where do we sign up?
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Mar 5, 2017 06:37
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Bacarruda posted:I agree with the spirit of this - if not the exact layout. I'd keep the French in the south and the Germans in the north. You are missing the part where Germans sent in an overwhelming force five hours ahead of French reinforcements and connected the gains made by us.
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Mar 5, 2017 07:18
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steinrokkan posted:You are missing the part where Germans sent in an overwhelming force five hours ahead of French reinforcements and connected the gains made by us. Yeah this - if you guys hadn't made Fali, then the Germans would have taken the field entirely. As is you were able to hold on in the south long enough for your own reinforcements to hold back the tide.
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Mar 5, 2017 07:24
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steinrokkan posted:You are missing the part where Germans sent in an overwhelming force five hours ahead of French reinforcements and connected the gains made by us. I did take that into account. It'd explain why your men retook Pasteur and Failblempot. But if two corps can drive off a solitary brigade, then La Crepe and Quatreprouts should also have been retaken, especially since that section is very close to where French reinforcements would have entered and very far away from the entry of German troops. I'll abide with whatever Trin's decision is. I've enjoyed the game and I have no regrets with how I fought my division. But I'm frustrated by off-camera circumstances completely out of our control erasing the gains on one side while cementing the gains of the other.
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Mar 5, 2017 08:14
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Want to say, here over in the observer thread it was really fun to read and follow things along and a big kudos to Trin for running this and all the players - Entente and Central Powers, whom were a part of it. very fun to read and follow in both threads and see how plans were made and executed!
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Mar 5, 2017 08:28
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I can reveal one thing: the name of Tigre Bois was originally a joke on the German Roll20 map that didn't transfer to the final one. See, the original name of the town of Clemenceau was Clemenceau Country Club. Thus, Tigre Bois was both a reference to Clemenceau's nickname and a reference to the name of a certain golfer. Also, Toilettes-champs was originally named W.C. Fields.
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Mar 5, 2017 08:54
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thatbastardken posted:haha wow, what a clusterfuck Can't hear you over the sound of losing 4/4 brigades before breakfast. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 5, 2017 09:36
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steinrokkan posted:Can't see you over the sound of losing 4/4 brigades before breakfast. The 15th lasted until noon, thank you very much. 
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Mar 5, 2017 09:42
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Good game all. Not sure it's all that necessary to have perfectly balanced maps or victory conditions, especially if we are aware that's the case. The initial German plan of en masse overwhelming force straight down to their objective was much better than ours, which strung us out deploying west-east before turning on the objective. Looking back now, the really revolutionary and potentially game winning thing would have been to fight north south from the beginning, concentrating firepower on an enemy that was determined to march into the middle of nowhere. Reorienting the battlefield would have been cool - and the observer thread seemed to spot that pretty quickly!
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Mar 5, 2017 10:08
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This was very entertaining to watch and read, thanks to everyone for playing and to Trin to doing this. The pace of the game was incredible! To me, this looks like a potentially decisive German victory that got blunted to a minor one / stalemate thanks to good play by the French. So - relatively speaking, and taking into account what could be - it really is a minor French victory. I don't think it's bad to have unbalanced games, quite on the contrary. One of the best LPs I've participated in was the Combat Mission one where we as the Germans were extremely outnumbered and had to slow down the incoming American hordes. Everyone knew we would lose and still we enjoyed it because the setup was good. Preparing asymmetrical scenarios like that is the way to go, as long as everyone is clear on what to expect. You can only play so many meeting engagements, and they never happen to be perfectly balanced anyway. You just need to take the imbalances into account in the final evaluation.
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Mar 5, 2017 10:08
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Hey guys! First of all, many thanks to forums poster my dad for his gallantry, great play, and, most importantly, sportsmanship. Except for trying to attack me on my nationality. YOU FUCKER. (  )I only have like half an hour before I am leaving to watch some ballet in honour of Here's what I'm thinking of:
Let me know if there's anything you want to see first.
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Mar 5, 2017 10:45
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Well played by both sides. I think Trin did a great job, and his map was far more balanced than mine!
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Mar 5, 2017 10:49
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Tevery Best posted:Let me know if there's anything you want to see first. All of the above, but definitely a gallery of unsent messages. Trin, can I join the people clamouring to volunteer for later rounds?
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Mar 5, 2017 11:13
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Well, that's that! A valiant salute to whoever french brigade commander knocked my jägers off La Ouef. Seeing the final result I think our rush to move the lime was justified, and my spirit shall pass well into the next life. I also hope this is a lecture for all participants not to declare ignominous defeat before half the game time has even passed, there are plenty of options to recoup setbacks once reinforcements and runners sort things out. Tevery Best>> THE MAIL NOT SENT!!! Tias fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 5, 2017 11:32
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steinrokkan posted:You are missing the part where Germans sent in an overwhelming force five hours ahead of French reinforcements and connected the gains made by us. Partly what this man said, with a small slice of "well, if my initial instincts tell me the line should go about there (which was slightly more generous to you in places), if I move the line back to halfway on Dejeuner and back off Pasteur to about here, that opens up some more interesting possibilities for 1915". I may tweak that line further, and you will have some discretion in where you place the actual trenches before the battle begins; that might mean an opportunity to shove forward again some more with (abstracted) local attacks before the big push.
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Mar 5, 2017 11:39
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Can't quite decide if I'm happy or sad that we didn't get to see that final grand French assault that would've killed us all.
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Mar 5, 2017 12:29
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I'll be honest - when the 54th got absolutely mauled in the Bois de Baguette without doing much in return I was pretty much ready to step back to near observer status. So naturally I was incredibly thankful to be given the B.E.F. along with having the advice and support of all the Entente commanders at every step of the process. For a relative novice at this sort of thing, y'all were a joy to work with. Also, teacup marching formation forever.
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Mar 5, 2017 12:30
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this was a lot of fun to follow and it has produced some tales that i am sure will go down in the annals of history. I cant wait to see what other devious tricks Trin has up his sleeve
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Mar 5, 2017 12:35
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lenoon posted:Good game all. Not sure it's all that necessary to have perfectly balanced maps or victory conditions, especially if we are aware that's the case. All the objectives were West. Leaving the entire West of the map to the Germans would have lost us the game ridiculously hard.
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Mar 5, 2017 13:22
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There's no way one side could have held an entire half of the map and keep it against a concentrated enemy push. The idea that Germans were impossible to dislodge and defeat once we reached St. C. hinges entirely on the notion that we would never leave that place and spend the rest of the game on localized defense. As long as we were going to actually leave the town and get moving, the advantage was gone and it was entirely up to French tactical acumen to do something about the situation.
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Mar 5, 2017 13:27
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steinrokkan posted:Can't hear you over the sound of losing 4/4 brigades before breakfast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGv1VKAybcI
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Mar 5, 2017 14:03
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Not so, both sides expected long edge deployment - if we'd have expected short edge and planned for it, we would not have lost ridiculously hard as we'd probably have rolled up on st croissant en masse shortly after they Germans arrived. Now we can go back through the threads, the observer thread figures this out immediately and the scale of panic leading to those German reserves being called up suggests that our accidental move towards this strategy caused some serious worries. As it was, both sides did that whole ships of the line thing on their way to the objectives, when north south deployment would have crossed the T and continued to do so while the Germans scrambled to redeploy. Funny how quickly the armchair strategy develops after a battle, eh?
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Mar 5, 2017 14:35
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aphid_licker posted:Can't quite decide if I'm happy or sad that we didn't get to see that final grand French assault that would've killed us all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8rYotiiFP8 Lets say, I really wanted to see it 
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Mar 5, 2017 16:21
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Trin Tragula posted:Partly what this man said, with a small slice of "well, if my initial instincts tell me the line should go about there (which was slightly more generous to you in places), if I move the line back to halfway on Dejeuner and back off Pasteur to about here, that opens up some more interesting possibilities for 1915". I may tweak that line further, and you will have some discretion in where you place the actual trenches before the battle begins; that might mean an opportunity to shove forward again some more with (abstracted) local attacks before the big push. Ok. That sounds fair enough to me.  Thank you for running this, Trin. I really enjoyed myself and look forwards to watching/playing the next game!
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Mar 5, 2017 16:53
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thatbastardken posted:
Hey, by my calculations I only lost around 80% of my guys this time! It's a step in the right direction!
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Mar 5, 2017 17:15
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Trin Tragula posted:Partly what this man said, with a small slice of "well, if my initial instincts tell me the line should go about there (which was slightly more generous to you in places), if I move the line back to halfway on Dejeuner and back off Pasteur to about here, that opens up some more interesting possibilities for 1915". I may tweak that line further, and you will have some discretion in where you place the actual trenches before the battle begins; that might mean an opportunity to shove forward again some more with (abstracted) local attacks before the big push. That's cool with me. As a heads up from one GM to another (Yes you're a GM running a campaign, just in an RP system with a very combat biased ruleset  ), a good way to handle this in the future is acknowledge the players' achievements, and put the blame for things going that way on the NPCs.I know you're running a tabletop wargame that happens to have been part of a narrative campaign so you might not have even thought to use that toolkit, but it plays a lot better if you use the fact that the NPCs are all your units to do it. Just a brief mention of something like "Despite the French units holding out on Dejeuner and Pasteur, their reinforcements were in worse order and came off worse for it. Later historians would agree this would prove to be important in later battles." would address the criticism and give you more free reign to make gameplay choices without worrying about ruffling feathers. lenoon posted:Not so, both sides expected long edge deployment - if we'd have expected short edge and planned for it, we would not have lost ridiculously hard as we'd probably have rolled up on st croissant en masse shortly after they Germans arrived. Just because the French plan worked better for the objective doesn't mean that it wasn't disrupted. Remember that we thought there were solid odds that we'd be staging to Pasteur ridge for part of an attack on St. C with our eastern forces, instead of them getting drawn into a bloody slugging match.
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Mar 5, 2017 18:32
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Loxbourne posted:All of the above, but definitely a gallery of unsent messages. Tias posted:Tevery Best>> THE MAIL NOT SENT!!! Here's a selection of stuff I can more or less remember: quote:quote:I'm mounted on a pig! A hundred devils chase! This one I started, but never finished, it was a huge challenge to even get as far as I did. It was a part of my project of sending the French ever more demented messages only to see them try to link them to anything that actually happened in the game. Needless to say, I picked a wrong place to start and the plan never got underway. I wanted to send them that once we take and hold Dej. Alas. quote:
This one I had in my head in some form for most of the game, but the ending was really written by my dad himself.
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Mar 5, 2017 18:37
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Just chiming in to say 1914 was heaps of fun despite getting my brigade knocked out early on attacking st. Croissant. Things I would have done / will try to do in 1915 differently: 1) Read over the rules more carefully regarding the points that weren't relevant to a suicide attack. Most of the time during the middle of the game when I had something not-worthless to say in roll20 I had to go back and check how artillery or spotting worked to make sure I was actually right, and by then the discussion had either moved on or someone else had said what I was going to say anyway. 2) Post in the thread more 3) More Elan
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Mar 5, 2017 23:09
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On the grounds that what-ifs and maybes are fairly unhelpful in reviewing events I will instead make some general observations.
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Mar 6, 2017 00:02
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The real question here is which general earned the moniker "the butcher of St Croissant"?
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Mar 6, 2017 01:15
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Jaguars! posted:The real question here is which general earned the moniker "the butcher of St Croissant"? Should be a baker, really.
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Mar 6, 2017 01:16
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Jaguars! posted:The real question here is which general earned the moniker "the butcher of St Croissant"? I'm just sad Mon Pere rode off rather than bringing in a full assault when the BEF came so I could make my joke about Croissant full of wurst and drizzled in the creme anglais sounding like an American breakfast sandwich. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 01:20
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 Gyfcat Link Here's what the Battle of Saint Croissant looked like (more or less) from the French side of the fighting. Looking at it, a some things stand out to me.
Bacarruda fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 05:22
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ARF also did a decent amount of the work of making the charge stick by picking off units routing suppressed, and Hunt's division paid a lot of the cost in blood of the cav charge. Croissant wasn't going anywhere unless maybe if we had more morning time to play with to get a big sweeping encirclement off with all our forces. Actually, maybe setting things up so that the timer progressed at full speed overnight was a mistake because it amplified the problems from the map giving St. C to the Germans since so much of it passed during the night.
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Mar 6, 2017 06:37
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Random question: How good would this ruleset be (with minor modifications) for a game set in the USA Civil War?
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Mar 6, 2017 07:00
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From what I can tell? Really drat bad. The lack of machine guns (which are an integral part of the game), the different granularity of artillery, prevalence of canister shot, significant difference in how infantry operated, and a much smaller-scale nature of the ACW would all contribute to the game just not feeling like an ACW game. Which is weird, because I usually find you can extend rulesets made even for Napoleonic-era games (mutatis mutandis) all the way to World War I, but it only very rarely even sort of works the other way around.
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Mar 6, 2017 08:09
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At times communication could be so bad that you'd have to start each division in a separate thread until you've found each other. And Civil war inter-general politics would probably intrude a lot more than those of WWI.
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Mar 6, 2017 08:21
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Bacarruda posted:
Again, these imagined difficulties are the result of your narrow focus, rather than of inherent problems with the scenario. As you can see from the events that transpired later in the day, it was up to French to merely pick a better time for their assault to entirely eviscerate the defenses. Both sides suffered a lot from not having any god drat patience at all.
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Mar 6, 2017 08:28
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xthetenth posted:ARF also did a decent amount of the work of making the charge stick by picking off units routing suppressed, and Hunt's division paid a lot of the cost in blood of the cav charge. Croissant wasn't going anywhere unless maybe if we had more morning time to play with to get a big sweeping encirclement off with all our forces. My Dad's heroic sacrifice (Or rather, his choice to take the field at all), was what really gimped us during the night. The timer had nothing to do with it. It will be my opinion to the last of my days that our final attack on St. Croissant would have worked. The German defences were all oriented south, and if we were able to actually give orders, we would have smashed around 60 chits into 20, right at dawn. It's also possible that every all of our attacking brigades would have taken 2 companies of damage and then rout. But I was willing to believe in Elan. As things turned out, we could only attempt to change orders once every 4 turns. One failure meant another 4 turns of waiting. So, everything was called off.
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Mar 6, 2017 09:04
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