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Tekopo posted:You will get some shitters going "it's not a real wargame" out in the wider wargaming community, but Undaunted games are pretty good, extremely playable, and I would recommend them. Even if it is a good game, it does not make it a wargame.
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May 20, 2023 22:48
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:54 |
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Obfuscation posted:Looks like MMP has added some new preorders this month: there's OCS Crimea which is another OCS east front one mapper with a ton of scenarios, and BCS Valley of Tears which covers the entire Yom Kippur war at BCS scale with three maps for Suez and one for Golan. I'll probably get Crimea, but I already own too many BCS games I haven't played yet to get VoT. He says as he greedily eyes Race for Bastogne despite only ever having played 1 scenario from Greatest Day.
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May 22, 2023 23:04
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I find with wargames, that the topic matter matters a lot: what are you interested in as a wargaming topic? WW2? Samurai? Medieval armies? US Civil War?
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Jul 27, 2023 01:31
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Slimy Hog posted:Any good Samurai hex-and-counter games? I haven't played it myself, but I've heard good things about :https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/214296/tenkatoitsu
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Jul 27, 2023 20:08
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British Way sold out - RIP, it was the one game I actually sort of wanted.
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Nov 15, 2023 01:16
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Tekopo and myself sat down yesterday to try out Operation Mercury from the Grand Tactical Series. This is a Company-Scale treatment of WW2 with 500m hexes - currently there are 7 games in the series, all of which cover Wallies vs Germans (though the Italians make an appearance in No Question of Surrender, covering Bir Hakiem), the most famous being the first entry in the series - The Devil's Cauldron, covering the northern half of Operation Market Garden. The heart of the GTS system is its chit pull activation system, where most units can't do anything particularly interesting unless a formation chit is bought for with precious dispatch points. It is hard to maintain momentum as dispatch points are very hard to come by; most units in GTS Mercury would typically not get any DPs during a turn; DPs can be purchased with command points (abbreviated here as CoPs) but CoPs are also important for more reactive manuevers, and spending all your CoPs leaves your units vulnerable and your formations inflexible. This delicate balance makes GTS an interesting game about husbanding resources and maintaining a sustainable operational tempo. We're both newbies to the system, though did study the rules beforehand. For those on the discord, I have been waxing lyrical about the system after having played through the GTS Saar (The introductory game) and some beginner/intermediate scenarios of GTS Gold, Juno, Sword solo. We decided to tackle Mercury as it seemed managable, and (other than 1 "experience" of playing No Retreat Crete about a decade ago), this would be our first Crete game. Crete is an interesting situation - the Allies have massive numerical superiority, but their troops are poorly equipped; other than the British 14th Brigade at Heraklion the Allied forces on Crete had recently been evacuated from Greece. The evacuation had been partially succesful in that many of the troops got away, they left most of their heavy equipment behind, and units were landed in a haphazard manner. Bits of divisions or even individual battalions were landed on Crete while other brigades from the same division went all the way back to Egypt. The frontline allied strength comes mostly from the New Zealand 2nd Division, with a Brigade and a bit from the Australian 6th Division (and the aforementioned 14th Bde). Both these divisions are equipped and organised fairly similarly to other Commonwealth Divisions (thought the Kiwis have an extra Infantry Battalion - the 27th (Maori) Bn), though without the heavy firepower that the CW player would be used to if he/she had previosuly played Gold, Juno Sword (they left that back in Greece). The bulk of the allied steps, however, are a mix of rear echeclon troops, some untrained and poorly equipped Greeks, gunners without their guns fighting as infantry, and some miscalleneous crap lying around, including a few Whippet and Matilda tanks from the 3rd Hussars and 7th RTR. Importantly, the Allies also had a major intelligence advantage; the Luftwaffe were notoriously awful with their ciphers, and Bernard Freyberg, 2nd NZ Division commander, was passed a lot of these ULTRA intercepts and knew about the invasion. He however, mistook this to mean a seaborne invasion, so most of the Allied troops were deployed to confront a seaborne landing. On the other hand, the German Paras from 7 Fleiger Division, are initially heavily outnumbered and have a major qualitative advantage; they have better troop quality, better morale, and in general, better command and control ratings, which means they can do more with less troops. Ironically enough, they actually probably had better heavy equipment because they actually had some artillery. However, the Luftwaffe did put the Allies to shame with how bad their Crete airdrops were. A lot of the parachutists end up getting airdropped directly onto Allied troops; and German losses were horrifiic; so horrific in fact, that they never attempted another division-sized drop again. We agree to do Scenario 5 - Descent into Hell. This Covers the first two days of the German assault in the Maleme-Suda bay sector, and ultimately proved to be the decisive sector historically - and from comments on BGG, scenarios 4 and 1,2,3 all semeed to have major balance issues where the Allied numerical superiority is too overwhelming. The Germans win if they capture 2/3rds of Maleme, or exit units off the Eastern Board edge (representing them breaking through to get to the Cretan capital of Canea).  Pre-Drop Allied dispositions: On the left by the Airfield is the New Zealand 5th Brigade. Towards the east of the map is the New Zealand 4th Brigade. Both of these are front line and good quality allied formations - but they lack the heavy firepower support that would come to charactherise the Western Allied way of war. In between are some miscalleneous Greek units and rear Echelon troops (optimisticaly named New Zealand 10th Brigade). Finally, a few British rear echelon troops (in brown) are on the far eastern side of the map - they will later be reinforced with an understrength Battalion of Australians. In Scenario 5, the germans have to do the historical drop. They essentially have two regiments, Falschrimjager Regiment 3, and the Luftwaffe Strum Regiment.With hindset and knowledge of the Allied dispositions, there is no way a German player would voluntarily do this drop - the historical drop zones had III Battalion LLSR dropping right in the middle of the NZ 23rd Battalion. Even without AA this is a terrible idea - paratroopers are highly vulnerable when drifting down. The rest of the LLSR drop is a few kms west of Maleme Airfield, which is generally much safer; though can get hairy if the AA batteries on the airfield themslevs aren't suppressed (in retrospect, we definitely should have done this!) FJR3 also has half a battalion drop right in the middle of the NZ 4th Brigade, with the rest dropping around the Greek 6th and Greek 8th Regiments.. The Germans get some pretty horrific modifiers for landing in the middle of Allied firezones - and they lose several steps off the initial jump alone. In some ways, however, this drop did prove to be a bit of a blessing in disguise.  Post-drop situation: Scattered German formations trapped behind Allied lines. The Germans use their divisioanl activations to rally and form up to prepare to attack the Airfield, though FJR 3 are delayed in their advance on Canea and end up spending time assaulting the Greek 8th Regiment. The Allies don't get much to do this turn. 0900-1100 turns: Throughout the morning, the Allies spent a lot of time reducing the German sticks stuck deep within their brigade box. The Allied frontline infantry units (such as those of the 4th and 5th NZ Bdes) have purple fire ratings, which essentially allow them to fire for "free" during divisional activations (divisional activations are supposed to represent administrative functions - movement, resupply etc. so you can't do aynthing particularly aggressive during these). The 5th Brgade in particular throws a lot of men to reduce the remnants of German III/LLSR. This was partly to attrit away the qualitatively superior German troops while they were vulnerable ,but also because they were blocking the main West-East Road that the 5th NZ would need to reinfroce Maleme. Disastorously, however, the 5th Bde also decidd to withdraw one of the companies of the 22nd Battalion, on its far western flank, out east because it looked unnecessarily exposed to German fire. In retrospect, doing this made the German advance on Maleme much easier, because each unit projeucts a 1-hex firezone, and you can only enter an enemy firezone during a formation activation (which is, as above, expensive) or by spending a command point. The New Zealanders also got distracted by a secondary German force from LLSR advancing from the Southwest and redeployed units not tied up in the fight against the remants of III/LLSr there instead of against Maleme. The Germans manage to form up and are able to place down heavy fire on the Allied defenders of Maleme. The Eastern side is quieter thought the Allies whittle down some of the German paratroopers trapped behind their lines. However, another company escapes despite taking a step loss doing so.  End of the 1100 turn. 1300-1500 turns In the afternoon, the fighting in the West intensifies. The Allies get a little unlucky with their chit pulls and end up very low on command points. One thing you can do wit command points in GTS is to pass Troop Quality checks; the most important ones being ones that stop you from getting suppressed, or a surrender TQ check if your unit gets assaulted by an enemy unit An allied TQ of 5 generally means a good chance to pass (Roll a d10 under/equal your TQ, 0s are 0s), but Artillery, Cohesion hits and suppression can drastically reduce TQ - so my NZ Machine Gunners effective TQ was 1. I had run very low on CoPs at this point to try to buy Dispatch points to maintain an offensive tempo, and this allowed a unit from the LLSR to storm up Hill 107, overlookign the airfield, and disloding my defences (if he hadn't, It would be very difficult to advance a unit to 09.05 because that hex would be subject to allied fire from three sides). This was followed up with another assault on the Matildas I had brought up next to the Airfield that also succeded in getting the tank crews to surrender. This gave Tekopo control of the Western Half of Maleme Airfield. A single company for the NZ 22nd Bn was al that remained hodling the central bit of the airfield that he would need to bring reinforcements. By this time, 5th NZ Bde had finally cleared all but one of the roadblocks on the coast road and was marching its troops west The eastern sector remained relatively quiet, fighting wise. However, the British rear echeclon troops are finalyl able to activate and they make a flank march against FJR3's right flank.  1700-Night turns. The Germans keep hammering the lone Allied Company on Maleme Airfield, but, having driven off (with significant casualties) LLSR's flanking force from the Southwest, the rest of 22 Bn are able to start to move up to attack. Adidtionally, NZ 21st and 23rd Battalion finally clear off the last remnants of III/LLSr and are able to move west. Realising that their situation on the east was becoming perilousand that it would be very unlikely to be able to break through to the east, FJR3 decide to start withdrawing to the west to attack NZ 5th Bde's rear, with the British and Australians in hot pursuit. Unfortunately, The Allies get unlucky again on the 1700 turn and the 2nd NZ Division is paralysed by command indecision (GTS has a system where the last chit in the cup is played as the fisrt chit of the next turn instead - this is generally fine, but if it's a divisional activation can be disastorous - CoPs and DPs are usually only accumulated during Divisional activations, so going a turn without one puts you very behind). This resulted in a major German assault on the 1900 turn being able to force the surrender of the Allied defenders of Maleme airfield, just as much of NZ 5th Brigade was finally arriving to the key fight. We did pull the chits for the night turn where we did some manuevering (with 2nd NZ division being the last chit out of tht cut again), but decided to call it there with everything still to play for - the Germans have taken horrific losses, but have their precious airfield - but with only 4 infantry steps remaining on the western half of the map. If they could hang on until the afternoon, they can start bringing in Mountain troops. Additioanlly, the Germans were going into the second day with banks full of CoPs and DPs - which means their formations would get to do what they wanted, while the Allies CoPs and DPs for 2nd NZ Division were both very meagre, given the 3 turns of 0 points - CREFORCE had a lot of points, but few troops to use them with. FJR 3 was clearly going to be pivoting west to attack NZ 5th Bde's eastern flank, but they would have to extricate themselves from the Greeks, Australians and British first, and would have to fend off an attack of their own from 4th NZ Bde.  End of the 1900 turn. In all - we both enjoyed this. We both made loads of mistakes, some ending up quite historically flavoured (pulling troops away from Maleme Airfield, and getting distracted by mopping up paratroopers with NZ 23rd Battalion). We definitely got some rules worng ( I forgot the Greeks could actually be activated during an Allied divisional activation! which would have made them much more useful for just getting int he way and making the Germans burn up tempo and command points.). It does a good job of emphasising doctrinal differences between the two sides - e.g. the Allied infantry are happy firing away, whereas the Falschrimjager want to get in close and asault. We would absolutely both play this again - it does have a psuedo-operational sheen to it, and while there's a lot of criticism of the combat system being an exercise of fishing for 0s (for your rolls) or 9s (for your enemiess' rolls), a lot of the game is about maximising your chances by increasing the number of rolls you can do through the economical use of Command and Dispatch points. I would say the game is fiddly - units can have massive stacks of counters on them (when Maleme was finally taken, one of the allied companies on it had 4 markers - suppressed/cohesion hit/barrage/improved position), and it certainly doesn't help that the first turn of the game is domianted by the airborne drop rules that you never use again (admittedly there are secnarios that don't start with airborne drops, and this problem is a lot more pronounced in the Gold/Juno/Sword games). I think Tek went to an FLGS and bought himself a copy of Mercury today, which Iguess is a ringing endorsement (by Tek's standards). tomdidiot fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 4, 2024 21:34
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Tekopo posted:Been enjoying GTS a lot: game is very solo-able and the VASSAL module for it makes life sooo much easier. We definitely should scheulde a few games of it once I hand in my thesis.
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Jan 26, 2024 21:00
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SelenicMartian posted:With how long Downfall takes you'll have to dust the physical board regularly for the pics, too. Lol, I assure you as an OCS/BCS/GTS player, Downfall probably doesn't take that long....
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Jan 31, 2024 14:02
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Tekopo posted:RIP whoever volunteers to play Campaign for North Africa. I volunteer Tekopo as tribute. On a more seirous note I might try to do one for a BCS game.
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Feb 9, 2024 21:40
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Tekopo posted:Please look forward to the up-and-coming LP for GTS: Strike-Counterstrike, coming this weekend. I hope you like tanks! Tanks!
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Feb 27, 2024 17:38
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Count Thrashula posted:MMP is running a big bagged game sale, and I missed most everything, but I picked up a copy of The Greatest Day which I've wanted for years for $100 hell yeah. TBh, I don't think people actually play the full game - but it has lots of scenarios that will fit on a reasonably sized gaming table and are good fun.
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Mar 16, 2024 21:17
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Count Thrashula posted:My copy of Greatest Day: SJ&G is coming today, and I'm really excited to dig into it. I feel like it hits that sweet spot between operational (but not OCS level because I hate ferrying around supply chits) and tactical. I think there's not much interest in doing Ostfront GTS for several reasons. 1. Most of the developers/people involved seem to be West Front/Med War people 2. I suspect that it's very difficult (especially in the current climate) to get the chance to do detialed digging into the sort of OOBs/unit histories to do a good Ostfront GTS - Glantz did a great job of digging into Operational level actions but at these battallion/regimental scale games, it'll probably need a lot more digging into indiivudal unit histories which will be hard to do for Soviet units. 3. The eastern front both has much denser (e.g. at Stalingrad/Kursk) and much looser unit scales (e.g. everywhere else), but most of the really famous battles that draw people to the eastern front are probably not suitable for GTS (which is ultiamtely a system for Corps-sized action lasting about a week). I susepct it's going to be really difficult to find a topic that sells well - GTS Stalingrad would be an exercise in insanity given that D-Day (which will be about 10 divisions on each side at the end of the week) will be 3 massive games that are each a monster in their own right. GTS Kursk is about the right length but probably too dense. Adam Starkweather (The original designer of GTS) went on to create a derivative system called Company Scale System and does have an Eastern Front game about an obscure battle (Novorossiysk) and I'm pretty sure that didn't sell well at all. AFAIK the upcoming GTS games are 1. GTS Utah on Preorder now (imminently shipping) 2. GTS Devil's Cauldron V2 (Northern half of Market Garden) - likely next to be printed, probably 2025/6 3. GTS Guadalcanal being actively playtested 4. GTS Omaha to follow Utah (I don't think we'll see this for a few years yet - Utah was being playtested since at least 2018, and I have not seen any pictures at all of Omaha!) 5. Some guy was talking about GTS Salerno. The way I'd approach SJG is start by watching Lee Forester's videos (here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj_FOrW06dJP5COl_7EXROFDf6vITUprq), and then play the following scenarios: 1. The Black Baron 2. Day of the Tiger (this is a natural progression from Scenario 1, because it's the same action, but starts earlier in the day) 3. To the Sea 4. On to Bayeux and only then would I do Storming Gold/Storming Juno/ Storming Sword (in that order), becausee the beach landing rules are pretty complex and you'll have a miserable time trying to learn the beach landing rules and the system at the same time I'd definitely make sure you've played through the "storming" scenarios a couple of times and are happy with the beach landing rules/how to do a good beach landing, because getitng off the beach without spending all your comamnd points is going to be key. If you wouldn't be unhappy about spending more money - it might actually be worth getting GTS Saar first because I think Scholbach Schwerpunkt has much more evenly balanced forces rather than one Tiger just running around causing havoc like Black Baron is. tomdidiot fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 24, 2024 18:51
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Count Thrashula posted:This is good info thanks! Ugh, I haven't even punched GJS, I don't need Utah, but I want it... I mean, the longest scenario I've played of SJG is O Canada! (a 2 day scenario covering the Juno sector) but that hasn't stoped me wanting to get Utah..... I haven't played CSS, but the consensus seems to be that the rules are a hot mess. The situations are all very different though - you've got 3 games on the Marianas Islands campaign which are infantry slugging matches (US Marines + US Army vs dug in Japanese defenders), Montelimar (the most traditional Wallies vs German Mechanized clash), the eastern front game I mentioned earlier (The Little Land), and two Cold War gone hot scenarios. While I do think it's neat that Starkweather is covering less wargamed topics, I probably wouldn't touch them because of the rules. Less wargamed topics also mean it's going to be harder to convince someone to play them, whereas with GTS, you have two Market Garden, soon to be two Normandy games and a Bulge game (in addition to Crete, Gazala, and Patton in Lorraine) ...... Also MMP has this thing with systems where there's a series rulebook that is the same from game to game, with an extra game specific rulebook to highlight the weird chromey edge cases. Compass for some goddamn reason just lumps all those chromey cases into each game's rulebook......
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Mar 25, 2024 03:25
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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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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:54 |
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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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