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Count Thrashula posted:Ugh, okay well I'm not surprised at least. Compass and Decision are two publishers I will rarely touch for those reasons. I really wouldn't do Mercury as a first GTS. The Greeks add too much chrome, and the two sides are too asymmetrical. I'd go through the non-landing SJG missions and Saar first.
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Mar 25, 2024 17:31
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tomdidiot posted:I really wouldn't do Mercury as a first GTS. The Greeks add too much chrome, and the two sides are too asymmetrical. I'd go through the non-landing SJG missions and Saar first. Oh sure, I'm talking way in the future. SJG is my only GTS for the near future, until my preorder for Utah comes, which I know will be a while.
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Mar 25, 2024 17:51
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Just saw on Facebook that Dean Essig passed away. For those that don't know, he was the founder of The Gamers and had a hand in designing SCS, TCS, OCS, BCS... heck, name a Multiman Publishing game system and he probably helped design it. Thankful to him for many, MANY hours of enjoyment.
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Mar 26, 2024 04:41
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Well that sucks, he really was a great designer and shaped the industry
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Mar 26, 2024 07:15
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Yeah that’s sad, I’m a big fan of his stuff also. Besides coming up with the series rules and having either designer or co-designer credit on tons of those games, I think Dean also did most of the graphics for The Gamers line of games. I know all the maps are done by him at least.
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Mar 26, 2024 07:37
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Catching up on the thread and reading about the different possibilities grand strategic WW2 games offer in building your force mix put me to mind a kind of combat resolution based on chit pulls, and you can design your chit pool over the course of the game using some kind of doctrine resource. You would add in stuff like Infiltration Tactics or Close Air Support and remove bad chits your pool started with like Command Indecision. The drawn chits would not all be returned after each combat, so you would need to consider the full chit mix, not just adding one of each of the "best" ones. Adding a new chit should probably get cheaper the more of the same type were already in your pool, essentially designing your doctrine chit pool as your army's "default" way of waging war. Is there any strategic game that represents doctrine that way? Edit: what a moment to catch up... very sad to hear. Count Thrashula posted:Just saw on Facebook that Dean Essig passed away. PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 10:56
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What's your favorite meaty, complex Eastern front operational game or series that I can play single map or less-than-single map scenarios from solo? Is OCS still the king of that? How is it compared to EFS from GMT?
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Mar 27, 2024 02:13
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World in Flames
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Mar 27, 2024 02:19
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Jobbo_Fett posted:World in Flames Don't tempt me...!!!
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Mar 27, 2024 02:21
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Count Thrashula posted:Don't tempt me...!!! I did a solo thread not too long ago, you can be tempted.
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Mar 27, 2024 03:47
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I may be in the process of creating a new wargamer! One of my neighbors is a retired fellow, and we chat a lot. He's got some interest in military history, had a CO when he was in the Army do tourns around Petersburg, Chancellorsville and similar places when he was in the army, and generally a voracious interest in why things happened the way he did. Well, he came by today and I showed him around a hex and counter game. He left to read rules and background for Across Five Aprils and a couple of Against The Odds magazine games on the ACW. We'll see if we get to roll some dice in... April.
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Mar 27, 2024 03:58
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mllaneza posted:I may be in the process of creating a new wargamer! One of my neighbors is a retired fellow, and we chat a lot. He's got some interest in military history, had a CO when he was in the Army do tourns around Petersburg, Chancellorsville and similar places when he was in the army, and generally a voracious interest in why things happened the way he did. Nice, have fun! If he likes that stuff he'd probably like Great Campaigns of the American Civil War.
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Mar 27, 2024 13:17
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Count Thrashula posted:What's your favorite meaty, complex Eastern front operational game or series that I can play single map or less-than-single map scenarios from solo? I like OCS (and own and have played Hungarian Rhapsody, and own but have not palyed Baltic Gap, Guderian's blitzkrieg 2 and Third Winter). I own Barbarossa Kiev to Rostov but have never played it properly. The best thing about OCS, and probably the strongest reason to get it over the East Front System, is scope: you have 1941 games (Smolensk - about Army Group Centre in Summer 41, Guderian's Blitzkrieg - about Typhoon, Crimea), 1942 games (Case Blue), 1943-44 games (Third Winter - about Army Group South vs the Ukranian Fronts, Crimea Part 2, and the soon to be released Forgotten Battles - about Army Group Centre vs the Belorussian Fronts), and 1944 games (Baltic Gap - northern half of Bagration - Army Group North vs the Baltic Fronts , Hungarian Rhapsody - Army Group South vs the Ukranian fronts including the siege of Budapest) whereas all the EFS games only cover Barbarossa/Typhoon and AFAIK there are no plans to extned the game deeper into the war at this time. Notably, there are a lot of 43-45 OCS Eastern Front games in development: Hero City (Army Group North vs the Baltic Fronts in the Siege of Leningrad), Season in Hell (Kursk), and two different Bagration games (one by Anthony Birkett, one by someone else). Smolensk is commonly recommended as a good intro OCS game, but I haven't played it myself. - one map, limited chrome, and you can skip all the naval/port rules (Compulsory for all the Wallies games except BTR). The one downside of Smolensk is counter density - you have 2 countersheets worth of units on a single map. There's also a dedicated intro scenario (Vitebsk). The caveat about Smolensk is it has recently gone out of print. Other games worth considering include (Incidentally these are the ones currently in print) - Crimea, which is the smallest eastern front OCS Game, though it lacks the armoured manuevers and is more of a slogging match (OCS still does this reasonably well, but it's much less exciting a topic). Again I haven't palyed this. - Hungarian Rhapsody: Debrecen is a nice meaty one-map scenario which I played vs Tek and we both enjoyed this. It has a lot of chrome, however, which probably makes it less suitable as a first OCS. - Third Winter has the tiny Scorpions in a Bottle scenario - but this is super-high density and probably not a great starter scenario. It also has several one map scenarios that last about 6 turns, so is worth looking at for variety reasons. Would not recommend: Case Blue, not only is the game expensive - like, $500 expensive, but the smallest scenario is bigger than Reluctant Enemies (The 2nd smallest OCS game after Luzon) Guderian's Blitzkrieg: I've heard reasonable things about Drive on Bryansk as an intro, but the rest of the scenarios are just big Baltic Gap: No small scenarios in the box, though there are a few extra ones in the scenario pack on ocsdepot.com TL;DR Buy Smolensk if you can find it at a reasonable price. Of the ones in print, I'd say Crimea > Hungarian Rhapsody > Third Winter. Avoid CB/GBII and BG until you're more experienced with the system - they all go for pretty big premiums these days. tomdidiot fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 19:56
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Good advice - one of the draws of the system is the linkability, I know that Crimea and Third Winter are eventually going to be part of the huge combined 1943 East Front campaign game (after like 3-4 more releases). I'm tempted by those for that reason alone. I think I might go with Crimea and see where that lands with me. Thanks!
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Mar 27, 2024 20:24
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Catching up on the thread and reading about the different possibilities grand strategic WW2 games offer in building your force mix put me to mind a kind of combat resolution based on chit pulls, and you can design your chit pool over the course of the game using some kind of doctrine resource. You would add in stuff like Infiltration Tactics or Close Air Support and remove bad chits your pool started with like Command Indecision. The drawn chits would not all be returned after each combat, so you would need to consider the full chit mix, not just adding one of each of the "best" ones. Adding a new chit should probably get cheaper the more of the same type were already in your pool, essentially designing your doctrine chit pool as your army's "default" way of waging war. I am fascinated by this idea, I've never heard of a system like that but I would absolutely jump on a game that implemented something like that - I find the idea of building a doctrine way more interesting than the idea of using resource points to build units. I'd especially love it if it meant that you could have a relatively abstract combat system but with significant skill elements still - I think a grand strategy game should have relatively more abstract combat instead of lots of operational details but it seems like that tends to always boil down to "move all your units into an area and roll dice"
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Mar 28, 2024 03:49
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blackmongoose posted:I am fascinated by this idea, I've never heard of a system like that but I would absolutely jump on a game that implemented something like that - I find the idea of building a doctrine way more interesting than the idea of using resource points to build units. I'd especially love it if it meant that you could have a relatively abstract combat system but with significant skill elements still - I think a grand strategy game should have relatively more abstract combat instead of lots of operational details but it seems like that tends to always boil down to "move all your units into an area and roll dice" I think, yeah, something like this would probably be a start of something that has a lot of potential to be interesting. The Enemy Action games use a chit pull system for their combat, where instead of having a bunch of modifiers in every combat, the chits will have modifiers themselves, so like >=4:1 D:3 would mean if there's a 4:1 odds on the attack or more, the defender takes 3 hits, but you may not draw a chit where any of the odds matter. I still really think there'd need to be some granularity in the ability to allocate units to tasks, but there's something to that.
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Mar 28, 2024 13:56
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I'll get to it after I devise a system like World in Flames (and after I document all the possible docks/ports for an appropriate timeframe)
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Mar 28, 2024 14:23
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Ha! I forgot I helped Chas with some proofing stuff on Croix de Guerre, and I just discovered that there's a 9-1 Free French leader with my (very uncommon) last name on. 
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Mar 28, 2024 15:56
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Jobbo_Fett posted:I'll get to it after I devise a system like World in Flames (and after I document all the possible docks/ports for an appropriate timeframe) Don't forget to account for each port's tons/day offloading capacity and the maximum hull size each shipyard can fit!
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Apr 3, 2024 14:59
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Don't forget to account for each port's tons/day offloading capacity and the maximum hull size each shipyard can fit! I literally have those stats ready to go
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Apr 3, 2024 15:13
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