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Dadbod Apocalypse posted:One of my favorite times of the weekend: sitting with my morning coffee, making my moves in various ongoing games of Titan. If I could only take one game with me on a deserted island, Titan would be it. What's going on in this picture? What is the paper's purpose? Obv, that's the app for the game, but what are you tracking here?
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Aug 11, 2018 18:30
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Titan is a board a game and yes, I’m playing the iOS implementation. It’s really good and let’s you get a multiplayer game going quickly. I track my opponents’ moves with my homemade charts though this isn’t allowed during in-person or tournament play. There’s a lot of hidden info and best-guesses involved, and since I have ~15 games going on simultaneously it’s the only way I can remember what’s going on where. The app developer (Titan HD) put in a crude ability to take notes, but it’s a pain in the rear end to use.
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Aug 11, 2018 19:18
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I'm having a lot of fun with Musket & Pike. I'm quickly growing to feel like GMT's tactical series are my favorite wargaming experiences. GBoH, GBACW, and M&P are all absolutely solid, and I'm excited to try Men of Iron too. Quick shot of Nördlingen before the battle kicked off. Gustav II Adolf has died at the battle of Lützen. The Spanish tercio system is on its last legs. The Swedes, led by Gustav Horn and Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, were out to prove that the Swedes could still carry on after the death of Gustavus Adolphus. The Imperial Catholic Army under Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and Spanish Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand were out to prove that the tercio still had battle use. How will it end?? We'll find out!  The interesting thing about the M&P series is the order system. Each "wing" has a leader it needs to stay in command of. Each Wing Commander can be under one of 4 orders: charge, make ready, receive charge, or rally. - Charge can move freely, including into an enemy ZOC, and gets bonuses certain reactions like cavalry interception - Make Ready can move freely, EXCEPT into an enemy ZOC, and units around the Wing Commander can regroup if they're formation is shaken or broken - Receive Charge can only move one hex, but ALL units can regroup their formation - Rally can't move, but can ALL rally their morale or regroup their formation So you end up with this really interesting paper-rock-scissors sort of game where you're going up against opposing wings, but have to balance charging vs. backing up and regrouping vs. rallying after lots of combat, but then that leaves you open to enemy charging, etc. And if all of your wings are under rally orders at the end of a turn, you lose 
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Aug 13, 2018 14:47
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They do sound like fun maneuvers. Those double sized chits remind me I need to play the GBoH Alex game I got. What happens to a wing if the commander gets killed?
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Aug 13, 2018 15:40
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Sleekly posted:They do sound like fun maneuvers. The commander is replaced by a less-good "replacement". If the overall Army Commander gets killed, one of the designated Wing Commanders gets promoted, who is in turn replaced by a replacement.
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Aug 13, 2018 15:52
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Dadbod Apocalypse posted:Titan is a board a game and yes, I’m playing the iOS implementation. It’s really good and let’s you get a multiplayer game going quickly. Is the app any good? I have a physical copy of Titan and I'd really like to give it a shot, but lack an opponent. I figure if I can run through a game online and get a better sense of the play, I might be better able to snag an opponent and teach them the game.
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Aug 13, 2018 18:03
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How long do those Musket & Pike games take, and how many scenarios are in the box?
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Aug 13, 2018 19:31
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StashAugustine posted:How long do those Musket & Pike games take, and how many scenarios are in the box? It varies. Sweden Fights On (which I have) has 4 battles, but some have more than one setup/scenario per battle (for example, Nordlingen has a D-1 cavalry excursion scenario, a day-of riding-onto-the-field 30-turn scenario, and a later-in-the-day 20-turn scenario). Saints in Armor (which I'm looking into buying) has 6 battles. I think they're all between 4 and 6. Once you get a flow going, you can knock out a turn in around 20 minutes. The White Mountain scenario from SiA is 7 turns, so roughly ~3 hours. The Nordlingen full day scenario from SFO is 30 turns, so you're looking more at like... 10 hours. But, then again, one side could completely rout off the field early if you play your tactics right. So it really varies.
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Aug 13, 2018 20:19
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GMT has a P500 going for a dual pack of the first two Musket & Pike games (Accursed Civil War & Sweden Fights On) with a couple new battles thrown in if you find yourself interested.
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Aug 13, 2018 20:30
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I really should get into that copy of nothing gained but glory that I have but my eyes glaze over when I get to the reaction section.
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Aug 13, 2018 20:41
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cenotaph posted:I really should get into that copy of nothing gained but glory that I have but my eyes glaze over when I get to the reaction section. Give it to me instead Really though, there's a 4-part video series on Youtube that does a pretty good job of explaining and showing off the game's rules. It's like 4 hours, but... some people learn better that way.
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Aug 13, 2018 20:44
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Jordan7hm posted:Is the app any good? The app is great with two deviations from the board game: it won't let you do three-way splits and; there's no real way to negotiate. Otherwise it's exactly the same. You can play against the AI to learn the rules and practice, but it's real easy to get an online game going. There are around 150 active players at the moment. 99% of the games are asynchronous (you move, wait for the next player to move when they get around to it), but you can sometimes drum up a two-player, real-time game every now and then. If you happen to live in the SF Bay Area, I'd love to meet up and play some Titan on the board.
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Aug 13, 2018 20:45
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COOL CORN posted:Give it to me instead A dude on BGG had some nice pdfs with diagrams that I probably would have had a good time with but they're not current to the living rules and he doesn't have any plans to update them.
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Aug 13, 2018 22:04
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Are there any good computer or iOS implementations of solo games? Stuff like B-17 Queen of the Skies or Ambush or anything like that? Those all seem like good things to do at work but would also cut out all of the setup/breakdown time of that type of thing.
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Aug 14, 2018 01:43
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EdsTeioh posted:Are there any good computer or iOS implementations of solo games? Stuff like B-17 Queen of the Skies or Ambush or anything like that? Those all seem like good things to do at work but would also cut out all of the setup/breakdown time of that type of thing. The Galaxy Trucker app has a great solo campaign mode. EDIT: Oops, I thought I was in the other thread. Still stand by my recommendation. It includes battles after all! CaptainRightful fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Aug 14, 2018 |
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Aug 14, 2018 05:19
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HerraS posted:GMT has a P500 going for a dual pack of the first two Musket & Pike games (Accursed Civil War & Sweden Fights On) with a couple new battles thrown in if you find yourself interested. That P500 has been going for two loving years 
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Aug 14, 2018 05:21
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CommonShore posted:That P500 has been going for two loving years But now it has hit its goal and is slated for an Early 2019 release  Sweden Fights On is a fun game so far and very playable, but I would wait for the dual-pack reprint of This Accursed Civil War. It has lots of errata and the counters don't have any formation/wing information, so you have to do a lot more manual/mental bookkeeping.
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Aug 14, 2018 13:47
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CaptainRightful posted:The Galaxy Trucker app has a great solo campaign mode. hah, that reminds me that I really need to get that!
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Aug 14, 2018 14:47
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Comments on the battle of Nördlingen after 3 turns (out of... 15 or so?): (Catholic side is in yellow - Left, Spanish, Center, and Right wings Swedish side is in blue - Left Cav, Left Infantry, Right Infantry, Right Cav wings) The units at the top at losses so far. The Swedish left cavalry wing started under Charge orders, so was forced to move toward the enemy. Immediately, the terrain became a problem. Going up or down a hill causes one hit to their formation, as does crossing a stream - first to shaken, then to broken. That causes negative effects to fire combat and close combat. And why's that a problem? When you run up adjacent to a unit, they get a free shot at you. After that, the attacking cavalry can fire a pistol. This incurs ANOTHER free reaction shot. So, immediately, shots are going off left and right. But Close Combat is really what got me. All of those Formation Shaken units, and on top of that having low morale levels (the difference between attacker morale and defender morale is another modifier), meant that a lot of the combats were ill-fated. Some I gambled anyway, which is why the left side of the map is empty now. The left infantry wing basically has to just creepy forward. Getting up that hill is going to be a disaster, and that frontal 2-hex unit is blocking my path. It couldn't move until this turn because of going Formation Broken (reduces movement allowance to 0). The artillery is firing, but that's about all that wing is doing. The right infantry wing, however, is doing much better. They're at least making progress. They can push HARD against cavalry, since they get at least a +2 to close combat rolls due to their size advantage. They've made it across the stream and can hopefully break a little more into the Spanish line. The right cavalry wing is basically doomed at this point. There were 6 (I think) close combats this turn, and ALL OF THEM rolled a 0 or 1. So, I think there were 4 eliminations and 2 Morale Shaken/Broken results. Including 2 leaders that were eliminated. So now, Schawelitski has replaced Horn as Army Commander, and a generic överste has replaced Schw. as RC wing commander. So, I'm seeing now how decisive and brutal close combat can be in this game, and how absurdly hard it is to make a frontal attack. Logistics-wise, it's a very fiddly game, and I'm VERY annoyed at the pistol markers. Every time a cavalry unit shoots, they get marked with "one pistol used" or "no pistols", so there's a ton of fiddling with those, and obscuring what units actually are. Either way, I'm enjoying it, but I'm understanding how the Swedes lost this one. A combination of bad morale (probably from the loss of Gustav Adolf) and bad terrain made a frontal assault very costly.
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Aug 15, 2018 02:00
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Sounds really similar to Blood & Roses (from the Men of Iron series). According to the design notes, cavalry at the time was mainly used to get to the battle faster, at which point the knights would dismount before actually engaging the enemy. So trying to use them like Napoleonic cavalry is nearly suicidal. A dismounted man-at-arms is a tough unit, but an unhorsed one (shot off rather than choosing to dismount) is significantly weaker. And many terrain changes will disorder a unit, whether infantry or cavalry. Games get frantic and bloody very quickly, even more than in GBOA. Also, every time archers or handgunners fire, they roll to see if they ran out of ammo.
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Aug 15, 2018 07:06
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MMP is re-releasing Where Eagles Dare and The Devil's Cauldron as a single game entitled A Magnificent Disaster.  That's gonne be a HUGE box.
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Aug 15, 2018 20:27
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COOL CORN posted:MMP is re-releasing Where Eagles Dare and The Devil's Cauldron as a single game entitled A Magnificent Disaster. Man, that game has an incredible vassal module though. It does combat resolution for you.
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Aug 15, 2018 21:42
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COOL CORN posted:MMP is re-releasing Where Eagles Dare and The Devil's Cauldron as a single game entitled A Magnificent Disaster. Haha I might have to get that one and mount it on my wall as a warning to others. It should deter a variety of predators (and women).
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Aug 17, 2018 00:19
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Wall mounted maps make good people-repellant. Ask me how I know...
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Aug 17, 2018 00:26
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Dadbod Apocalypse posted:Wall mounted maps make good people-repellant. Ask me how I know... Whoa, I just had this map (technically the AE version) out because I'm measuring for a wargame table topper.
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Aug 17, 2018 01:10
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Who do you think are the best war game reviewers/bgg commenters? Besides calandale senpai
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Aug 17, 2018 06:03
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EdsTeioh posted:Are there any good computer or iOS implementations of solo games? Stuff like B-17 Queen of the Skies or Ambush or anything like that? Those all seem like good things to do at work but would also cut out all of the setup/breakdown time of that type of thing. There's Bomber Command. It's real time, but you get to manage a bomber and crew through a long series of missions. It can get incredibly frantic. You can go from tagging incoming fighters to 'oh god, there's fire everywhere, the person with the fire extinguisher is hit, someone get a med kit, oh crap, they're down too" to "that but more fire" veeeeeery quickly. And heavy flak can one shot you. I've played three campaigns, including one Ironman no-save scumming. I think that last one is a loss.
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Aug 17, 2018 06:19
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What are some games sort of like COINs but at a smaller scale? I have a copy of Days of Ire on the way (when the sequel Kickstarter ships) and I was eyeing Chile '73 by Brian Train. Related: Are there some small, playable games you might recommend from Tiny Battle? I was thinking of Rifles in the Ardennes.
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Aug 17, 2018 08:48
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COOL CORN posted:MMP is re-releasing Where Eagles Dare and The Devil's Cauldron as a single game entitled A Magnificent Disaster. Yeh, I'm really looking forwards to it, despite having played about... oh, 3 hours total of WED. It just seemed pointless to learn how to play GTS 1st ed when prett much all other games are now 2nd Ed. Glad that'll be the case. Sad that they won't be doing watermarks on the new counters though.
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Aug 17, 2018 12:36
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Who do you think are the best war game reviewers/bgg commenters? Besides calandale senpai Sphere is really great as a commenter, though I'll admit I only know his content from Simmons games. 
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Aug 17, 2018 14:59
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Are there any wargames that model an OODA loop? Maybe in an abstract way using timers? E: It sounds like TCS has a system where you need to write down orders in advance similar to sw armada which kind of seems related fozzy fosbourne fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Aug 18, 2018 |
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Aug 18, 2018 17:15
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Are there any wargames that model an OODA loop? Maybe in an abstract way using timers? A lot of wargames try to get at it but it's very tough to make one that works without being really clunky. The games that get at it tend to try to simulate the effect of the OODA loop rather than actually showing it. Written orders, for example, require a lot of very mushy 'try to do it' type rules for any kind of system with detailed geography. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Aug 18, 2018 |
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Aug 18, 2018 17:40
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Are there any wargames that model an OODA loop? Maybe in an abstract way using timers?
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Aug 18, 2018 19:13
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Ilor posted:It's not a hex-and-chit wargame, but the WW2 tabletop miniatures wargame Chain of Command has a couple of awesome mechanics to introduce von Clauswitz' "friction." While the mechanics are abstract, they are often interpreted as interruptions of the OODA Loop. The game really models the difficulties of platoon command in combat very well, and coordinating your entire force effectively is extremely difficult. You can pretty much guarantee that someone somewhere is not doing exactly what you want, which makes for a really compelling gaming experience. I mean, CoC is sort of there, but it kinda gets back to trying to simulate the 'effect' of the OODA loop through a game mechanic that's there to make turns varied. I don't really think it's hugely realistic(even regular platoons are far too flexible in the system compared to reality, but the real limitations of a bunch of conscripted infantryman would make for a game that's extremely un-fun). Sort of like how Combat Commander: Europe sort of simulates the effects of problems in the OODA loop without really getting into it- you will sometimes have hands that let you do nothing useful and will have to sit out a turn, or have little of your force move.
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Aug 18, 2018 19:24
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The Eagles of France series handles command in a unique way. At the start of the game, you don't place all units on the map, just one counter per formation. Then, on a separate player mat, you order an objective for each formation. This also models fog of war, since some of your formation counters are dummies. All formations must move toward their objective. Once within visual range of the enemy, the counters are flipped, and if they aren't a dummy, you place all the formation's units within a few hexes of that spot. These units must still follow their formation's order. If they choose to move more than one hex in a different direction, they must first pass a quality check, and if they pass they still only get half their movement points.
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Aug 18, 2018 21:12
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mllaneza posted:There's Bomber Command. It's real time, but you get to manage a bomber and crew through a long series of missions. It can get incredibly frantic. You can go from tagging incoming fighters to 'oh god, there's fire everywhere, the person with the fire extinguisher is hit, someone get a med kit, oh crap, they're down too" to "that but more fire" veeeeeery quickly. And heavy flak can one shot you. Huh, that sounds sort of like a weird mashup of Space Alert and FTL Faster Than Light, both of which I love. Not really what I was looking for, but definitely on my radar now. Thanks!
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Aug 18, 2018 21:23
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EdsTeioh posted:Huh, that sounds sort of like a weird mashup of Space Alert and FTL Faster Than Light, both of which I love. Not really what I was looking for, but definitely on my radar now. Thanks! Here's a suitably chaotic gameplay video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h50o4dgzdMc&t=1125s
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Aug 18, 2018 21:59
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mllaneza posted:Here's a suitably chaotic gameplay video. It's...beautiful...
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Aug 18, 2018 23:48
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I should get that and name all the crew after Catch22 characters
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Aug 19, 2018 04:24
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A guy sent me the C3i issue with the Battle of Wakefield in it (Men of Iron series), and it was over in about 30 minutes. The duke of York died, along with 2 of his mounted men-at-arms, a long bowman and an infantryman. That's 14 flight points and, if at the end of a turn a players flight points + a D10 are greater than 18, they lose. The Lancastrians only had a couple units retreat, but they all lived. (2 units retreating is 2 flight points total, so there's no way they could have lost from that) It was over before Sir Thomas Neville could move or any of the Lancastrian reinforcements could even hit the field! Nice small game, I might play it again, and definitely want to play the rest of the series. Count Thrashula fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Aug 19, 2018 |
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Aug 19, 2018 13:06
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