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Not wanting to step on Lichtenstein's toes, but I'm playing Red Winter PBEM at the moment - would anyone be interested in a session report, to see the ways in which different strategies can shake out?
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Sep 6, 2013 01:32
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VoodooXT posted:Look up Sekigahara, Samurai (GMT), Samurai Battles, or Ran. I've not been able to get my copy to the table yet, but some of my wargaming buddies have said good things about A Most Dangerous Time. I tend to like Tetsuya Nakamura games though, which might be why they recommended it. And you could always get in on the preorder for Warriors of Japan-it's been languishing for years now, but it just got a big push, and I'd really like to see it hit print.
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Sep 14, 2013 14:28
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Red Winter So, a while back I posted about doing an AAR report for a PBEM game of Red Winter that I had going. It did not go well. Luckily, Red Winter is an awesome game, so as soon as we finished the 2 day tournament scenario, my partner and I jumped right in with a full campaign game. So, here we go! And hopefully, everyone has already read Lichtenstein's excellent efforpost on Red Winter, so I won't have to recap how the system works. Instead, I can just show you how to lose as the Finns! Assuming, of course, that this game goes as well as my last one. Setup  We opted for the historical setup, with Pajari at the bridgehead with two machine guns, one division behind him, and one on Kotisaari Island. Appropriately, my strategy is also historical - have the troops at the bridge hold out with defense in depth, to give time for reinforcements to arrive and for those units on the left with a step loss to recover. December 8th, 1939 - 10:30 AM Soviet Turn  A fairly standard beginning - rush everyone to the bridge, and try to take it with overwhelming force before the defenders can dig in. There are two things I'm worried about at this point - he's moved an MG to the Taivaljarvi shoreline, which has a clear line of sight to the bridge. Additionally, he's already moving a stack of two divisions towards the Tolvajarvi shoreline - if he takes the island, he has more tactical flexibility. The dangerous thing about Kotisaari & Okkolansaari is that, if the Soviets seize them, they no longer have to spend a turn on the ice if they want to advance to the west and make use of the road network there. As the Finnish movement advantage is a major factor in dealing with the superior numbers of the Russians, it's vital that I at least delay their eastern movement. At this point, though, combat is still focused on the bridge. My opponent commits the MG, infantry gun, and mortar to his attack, hoping to swing the odds even more in his favor. Luckily, he doesn't achieve any suppression with his support, so his attack is at 2:1 odds after shifting for Pajari & the Soviet morale bonus. While this might not seem too bad, remember that the CRT accounts for terrain in attacks, so the results are fairly heavily weighted in favor of the defender. I'm not able to have any meaningful defensive support, so we just roll - an 8. One hit to me, none to my opponent. I take the loss as a retreat - I hate to give up the intersection of the road so easily, as this will greatly increase his maneuverability. However, I'm really don't want to flip my machine guns, as they are unrecoverable, and I need all the strong defensive troops I can get. Besides, retreating allows my little group to pick up an infantry company to soak further losses. My opponent advances two companies and a MG to the vacated hex, and finishes his turn.  Finnish Turn  I'm very much on the defensive at this point, so no attacks. I bring my reinforcements as far along the road as they can go to support the bridge, which is in the process of digging in. The MG in the village moves to defend Okkolansaari, and the Kotisaari company shifts a bit to project some ZOC more efficiently. Everyone else rolls for recovery, with one company recovering. I pass, and the Soviet offensive resumes...
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Dec 5, 2013 09:38
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At the risk of starting an "is it a wargame?" argument, managed to get my first game of 1989 in. I though it was pretty fun - the power struggle mechanic wasn't as swingy as my buddy and I feared it would be while still allowing for some good tension, and the game seemed more likely than Twilight Struggle to go to endgame scoring, which is nice as I feel like it can be rare to see the late war TS deck. Still, I worry that the removal of DEFCON, coups and the changes made to realignment might make the game less dynamic in the long run. We're going to make sure to get in some more games to avoid some obvious traps, but has anyone else had the opportunity to dig into, or at least play 1989?
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Feb 24, 2014 02:04
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If it helps, I feel bad about not continuing my AAR, although I feel more badly for my opponent. My computer went belly up, and he's been waiting for my turn for about a month. Tekopo, I should have figured you wouldn't like the weight given the die roll in 1989, given your view on labyrinth. I'm curious to see how it plays out long term, because I was able to raise the stakes pretty consistently as the dems, but that could have just been first game lack of strategy on my opponents part. The designer has said that he's comfortable with heavy luck on a per game basis so long as the overall tendency of the game is to come out 50/50, but I wonder how much of that perspective is born from a playtest mentality as opposed to real world play. Or maybe I'm just a dilettante that wants to hop from game to game.
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Feb 27, 2014 06:23
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Ropes4u posted:Are there any good war game podcasts? I like Three Moves Ahead, although it's only intermittently about board based wargames. I've Been Diced will often have interviews with designers, which can be pretty interesting. Finally, I've not listened myself, but the grogs seem to like Guns, Dice & Butter.
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May 22, 2014 04:33
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MikeCrotch posted:As a non-ASLer I feel like i'm in one of those conversations where a bunch of people start talking about their cats, and you're wondering how much of what they're saying is due to the blood parasites slowing infesting their brains. To make this not just an emptyquote I'll say that wargame collecting can be cash positive if you're okay with selling out of print items for ludicrously inflated prices. So, buying games I'll never play isn't a sickness-it's an investment!
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Oct 21, 2016 12:48
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Huxley posted:The fast-playing, small-footprint CDG in the GMT Update looks really promising. It's hard to get my wife to commit to anything longer than an hour, and "30 minute Twilight Struggle" sounds pretty sweet. If you want something immediately, 13 Days does a pretty good job of scratching the itch. This looks a little more chromey/involved, so they might both have a slot in my collection, but I'm happy with my purchase.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:08
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And stuff that's been getting good reviews too-I haven't played yet because I'm saving up for a big order, but they've got interesting games based off of rules reading. 1815 but actually available and set in a (to me) more interesting era is really tempting.
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Aug 19, 2017 01:53
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fr0id posted:Also, thanks to this thread, I bought the most expensive board game of my life and am now a proud owner of Napoleon's Triumph. Biggest problem (other than finding an opponent), is getting the stickers to stick. I would up just wrapping them in scotch tape, so the pieces look glossy, but also a bit ragged in spots. I tried rubbing each sticker with a glue stick and washing the pieces prior to application, but no luck. Try painting them on with a little bit of wood varnish. It seals the stickers on and keeps them looking good and glossy if you're into that.
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Aug 22, 2017 06:46
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Tias posted:What is the vietnam game like? Worth investing in? Didn’t someone play through an attack to show how the system works earlier in the thread? Seemed neat, Vietnam 1965-1975 might be more game than I can get to the table right now but it’s not like that hasn’t stopped me before.
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Mar 7, 2021 06:32
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Tias posted:Linku? Can't find it Right above your post. Turned out to only be two pages back - thought it was older than that but that’s pandemic brain for you.
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Mar 9, 2021 01:14
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Quiz posted:I had my eye on Conquest of Paradise as well. Does anyone have experience with that? Or Sekigahara? Thank you guys for the suggestions! Others have spoken to sekigahara, so I’ll just add in that it is a very intuitive and clever design - it’s held up with my regular war gaming partner and we are at about a dozen plays. Related, you can try it out at Yucata.de. As for Conquest of Paradise, I think thread consensus was negative due to the randomness in island exploration draws. I won’t deny that it can be very swingy, but I enjoyed it personally. It plays fast while encompassing basic 4x aspects. It’s comprehensible enough that my partner enjoyed playing it, despite her aversion to overt conflict or complexity in games.
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Apr 30, 2021 21:23
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rchandra posted:Same. I was wondering about Table Battles - anybody enjoying that one? And also if I'm getting a PnP from wargamevault, can I just get an expansion with appealing settings or do I still need the base game? Can’t answer the second question as I only have the base set and first expansion, but I really enjoy it - the dice can be frustrating, but in a way that maps to line command and it can be surprisingly engrossing for what is truly a filler length game.
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Nov 5, 2021 06:29
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For me, it’s really that I don’t have much to say about it, as the elements in the base box are all I was familiar with and they didn’t have a lot going on compared to other block games. By the time I tried Wizard Kings, I had played about a half dozen other block games and they all did more interesting things out of the box. I know it has a fan base but I just found it boring as hell to actually play and I think what the fans liked was army composition. I do like block games in general though, both for the fog of war and for the way that the actual physical bulk of the components tends to make block games less counter heavy on the whole. It is roll to hit, which I don’t like, especially because it hits that valley where die rolls are frequent enough that they don’t hold inherent drama but not so frequent as to smooth out lucky rolls. Mighty Eris fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 06:06
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A Strange Aeon posted:That's actually pretty helpful--I picked it up pretty cheap, read the rules, it seems alright, if a bit basic. That's what made me think I need to invest in some expansion stuff, but then it's like, maybe the core game itself isn't really fun. The damning thing for me was that the scenario we played pretty much just felt like we kept feeding dudes into a central mosh pit while not being able to disrupt the others supply lines. It made the dice rolls feel overly important and swingy. To be fair, though, I’ve never liked hexes for block games - area movement plays better with fog of war, and allows for slightly larger spaces to accommodate the low block density. I hope you enjoy it though - while I cut my teeth on Columbia block games I’ve generally enjoyed other block games more. Napoleons triumph is a block game.
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Nov 9, 2021 20:25
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Isn’t ASL:SK kind of it’s own product line now? The first three seemed to mostly introduce ASL elements but I thought that they were now just doing expansions and scenarios, which kind of seems like the point where your tutorial is now standing on its own. I kind of bounced off ASL:SK, but that’s less the fault of the system, and more just that with combat commander, conflict of heroes, and band of brothers all available within my war gaming partners it just didn’t feel to me like it was doing enough differently to make it worth the mental investment in another system (especially when I’m trying to learn how to play OCS).
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Nov 17, 2021 18:27
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StashAugustine posted:I don't know if I'd be around to watch live but I'd be very interested in a recording at least Same. And something unmentioned about EotS is that it’s fairly PBEM friendly, and the VASSAL mod developer has posted a guide to the naming and action conventions he uses to streamline things. I’ve finished a couple of fully asynchronous games without issue - if you can spend 5-10 minutes a couple of times a day you can reasonably play a full game of South Pacific in a week or two.
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Nov 18, 2021 18:35
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Have you played any Richard H. Berg games before? I always feel like everything he designs could use more development. Men of Iron was one of the first board wargames I bought, and I traded it on pretty quickly as it was fiddly in ways that didn’t result in more interesting play. That being said, I ended up picking up the tri pack of the series recently because the various editions ended up giving it the development it needed. I’ve not personally played the fourth volume, but if the period interests you the system is now pretty solid and playable in my opinion.
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Jan 12, 2022 18:29
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Tekopo posted:I’ll probably stream it when it comes to it, like I did with those RE tutorials I did ages ago. What sort of time commitment would that entail? I have a wrapped copy of Tunisia II I would love to try, but I also have a seven year old…
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May 17, 2022 02:02
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The answer, as always, is Napoleon’s Triumph.
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Sep 12, 2022 13:45
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I remember playing a Battle for Moscow ai, I wonder if they would share their development process.
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Sep 12, 2022 19:17
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