Wow, that's a lot of fighting! (Rommel in the Desert, Wilderness War, AirWar: Pacific!, Duel of Ages)

As it happens, both Kozure and myself had a week off at the same time, so we decided to get together for a day of wargames!

Rommel in the Desert

I played the allies, and Kozure played the Axis. We tried the "Crusader" scenario, as the playing time is 1-2 hours. Neither one of us had played a full game before, so we knew extra time would be needed.

Rommel in the Desert is a Columbia Games block game about the war in North Africa during WW2. The system stresses the importance of supply and the psychological effect of imperfect information. The rulebook seemed intimidating at first (21 pages + scenarios), but in practice the game flows very smoothly once the system is understood. Besides, many of those pages could have been eliminated if some of the repetition was eliminated!

The starting conditions for this scenario are quite wide open. Each player has more than 20 units and have very few limitations on initial setup (Axis start anywhere in Lybia and Allies start anywhere in Egypt + up to 5 units in Tobruk). As inexperienced players, the flexibility was a bit intimidating (and very different from the wholely prescribed starting conditions of Wilderness War... the only other war game I've played). Predictably, we both setup a wall of units facing each other at the border, with a few behind the wall as fallback. As the allies, the burden of action rests on me... the winning conditions of outnumbering the ennemy or holding Tobruk unbeseiged both favour the axis.

It became quickly apparent that the Allies are absolutely outclassed. The elite german tanks, infantry and artillery were blowing holes into every offensive I launched! The entire Libyian border was under fire, but I was gaining no ground. I switched my attention to Tobruk. It was well beseiged at the beginning, but forces were draining away to help reinforce the front line. With no units further west than Acroma, Kozure had left me an opportunity to disrupt his entire supply line (more on this later). I initiated a number of battles in the areas surrounding Tobruk, faring reasonably well against the weaker units which were left there. Meanwhile, I was trying to get my forces to surround the Axis by working south through the Jarabub Oasis and then back up to Bir Hacheim. With a much smaller are to work in, the Axis were continuously able to send just the right units to key battles and I was taking casualties like they were going out of style. As the months advanced, I had absolutely NO WAY of achieving any of the winning conditions under normal circumstances. I renewed my efforts to break out of Tobruk (besides, my advance from the south and longstanding battles south and east of Ft. Maddalena seemed to be working as distractions. That and Kozure was sending most of his forces to Bardia for reasons I didn't understand)

Supply was the downfall of the axis. Whereas I had been accumulating a large number of "real" cards for a final blowout at the end, Kozure's hand was depleted. I spent my final 5 cards doing battle in Acroma and on the final roll I broke through. With Gazala controlled by the Allies, supply was cut to the Axis and the whole army was eliminated at the end of the month.

...that's when I saw the puzzled look on Kozure's face.

It turns out my ploy wasn't clever at all. Kozure wasn't "distracted" or falling for my ploy, he simply hadn't understood the ramifications of the loss of supply to his entire force. Ah well, that's the kind of thing that can happen in a learning game!

I have to say that I had a really great time. The tension created by the block system, the supply cards and the unforgiving nature of the system is real. The system is quite elegant for a wargame, and a big plus for me is that setup and take down is very rapid. I am curious to see if the scenario is as heavily stacked against the allies as it seems (if the winning conditions had been better understood, this session would have resulted in a crushing defeat for me).

Wilderness War

Next up was our third game of Wilderness War. In our earlier games, the French won each time at the end of the first year with 11 victory points. Kozure was set on playing the English again and regaining his honour with a win.

From the very first rounds, it was obvious things wouldn't be easy for the French. Kozure was blocking all the holes I had exploited in earlier sessions. Dumas and the Indians had to be content to gaze upon the English stockades from their newly built fortification in the mountains as Loudoun sat and waited in Woodstock. I made aggressive moves down the Hudson with Montcalm, Villier, Levy, etc. Rigaud took a band of Indians and one drilled unit to the South Green Mountains, in order to threaten the stockades in Charlestown and Hoosic (and, ultimately, the Fortress in Boston). Unfortunately, the british were receiving forces quickly, but a "Reluctant British Assembly" helped me immensely when I needed it. Kozure maintained just enough pesence in all key areas to keep me from advancing, though.

Blocked at every path, I made a risky attack on Hudson Carry South. The British holed up in their fort and waited for reinforcements. Their attack failed, and the beseiged fort was quickly assaulted. Bolstered by the unlikely victory, I made a second risky move... I combined the remaining forces in Hudson Carry South with those in Ticonderoga and attacked the fort in Hudson Carry North. The odds were much better this time (excellent, even), but in the unlikely event that the attack failed my entire contingent of drilled troops would be eliminated as they had nowhere to retreat to (the fortress in Hudson Carry South was "under construction" since I had just won it).

Wouldn't you know it. The attack failed. With only auxilleries left on the table, I conceeded the game and the British won.
(for reference, the odds were 1 in 36 that I would fail. I needed to roll a 1, and he needed to roll a 6. That's what happened.)
Yet another game which doesn't make it past 1757!

I can't really blame luck, though. A more careful commander would not have put his entire force at risk like that. I guess that's why I command armies in wargames, rather than in real life! In my defense, it's my opinion at this early stage that the french can only win in the first year. If the game goes into 1758, the French are just going to struggle to survive, hoping to acheive the default French win at the end of 1759. Maybe next time I'll play conservative and see if I can make that work. It would be interesting just to see what happens when more than 36 cards get played! It was interesting that the Indians had virtually no involvement in this game, having dominated much of the action in the earlier sessions.

I had a great time playing again and hope to play again soon.

AirWar: Pacific!

Next up was a quick game of Air War!, a card game about air combat between the Americans and the Japanese in World War 2. This feels very similar to Magic the Gathering in the way that resources are placed on the table and exhausted to support the units you want to activate (it is NOT a CCG, though). Players each play "Airbases" and occasionaly "Carriers" in order to increase their capacities to send waves of fighters and bombers against their opponent. I enjoyed the general "feel" of the game as it moved quickly and cleanly, and the mechanics worked well to emulate the subject matter (the waves of planes, the counter attacks, etc). the "instant" type cards are kept to a minimum, lowering the chaos inherent in much of these systems (that's not necessarily good or bad. Either way can work, but in this case I think the choice was a good one). There were 2 things that bothered me, though: 1) there is no attempt at balancing the cards. Some planes are simply better than others (i.e. the better planes don't cost more to activate, etc, as would happen in a game like Magic). This means that luck of the draw has a bigger impact on the game than it normally would. 2) There is something lacking in the mechanics for attacking air bases and carriers. First, in our game it seemed futile to destroy one since another was inevitably drawn shortly thereafter, and second because the planes there are simply returned to the player's hand! You would assume that some, or all, of them would be destroyed in the process. Either way, I think some attention should be paid in that area to improve the incentive to try that avenue of play. In our session, Kozure had the upper hand for the entire game and won handily. A reasonably fun game, but not great either.

Duel of Ages

We setup a random board of three platters and the 4 basic labyrinths and drew 7 characters each. The result was a landscape dominated by mesas and some rough, with the Future and Ancient labyrinths on one end of the board and the Modern and Colonial ones at the other. The characters were:

White:
Arkin Ironshanks
Mandibled Plasmoid
Zygoid
Bog Haunt
Spartacus
Three-U
Sir Gawain

Black:
Jerry Gillis
Mick the Lion
Joshua Jordan
Hamid Al-Duri
Minx and Jinx
Shifter
Beowulf

Things started out normally enough, with various characters making a run for the labyrinths to gather equipment. However, Jerry Gillis, who starts the game with 8 pieces of equipment (!) was suddenly assaulted by Zygoid and the Mandabled Plasmoid. Jerry was killed, but before any equipment could be gathered the Shifter and Beowulf entered the fray. Beowulf was eventually killed as well, but anyone who is familiar with the Shifter and the Mandabled Plasmoid can guess how their battle went.... it lasted the entire game! Meanwhile, Kozure and I each achieved a lead in 2 labyrinths. Three-U used his ability to force other characters to drop their equipment and be banished to good effect. He sat and protected the entrance to the labyrinths I had a lead in, teleporting no less than 3 characters in the process. As our 1 hour and 45 minute game came to a close, the Mandabled Plasmoid had reduced the (now enormously powerful) shifter to 1 health but was on the verge of death himself. He escaped the battle to hide behind Spartacus. In order to tie the game, Kozure HAD to kill one of my characters so he pursued the plasmoid and faced it and spartacus for one last round. The shifter did kill the plasmoid, but Spartacus used his Spear of Implosion (or something) to kill the shifter in the same round. I still had the lead in characters and won the game 3-2. I still very much enjoy this game, especially when the mix of characters leads to a game which involvs more than just running to the labyrinths over and over. I only wish the rest of our group liked it more!

A fabuous day of gaming. Thanks Kozure!

Re-Writing History (Wilderness War x2)

I've been thinking about war games recently. Some time ago we played Midway, and although I had issues with the game, I could tell that there was something in this genre which was appealing to me. Other than ASL, two types of wargames appear to be well liked at BGG: Block games and Card Driven Wargames. I recently picked up Napoleon and quite liked it (enough to now order Rommel in the Desert), so I was really looking forward to the opportunity to give a Card driven wargame a shot. As it happens, Kozure owns Wilderness War.

Wilderness War covers the war between the English and French for control of North America. Being French Canadian, the setting held obvious interest. Beyond that, the game is held in very good regard as an excellent GAME.

I spent a bit of time reading the rules leading up to the session. It's complicated, but not overly so. The base systems are fairly easy to absorb, however there are enough exception and small fiddly rules that it's impossible to remember everything at first. Luckily, in play the pace is such that the rules can be looked up as they become relevant (which we did quite a bit), and once they are put in practice they make sense and can be remembered.

We gave ourselves the entire evening, since the playbook estimated 2-3 hours for the tournament scenario we assumed a learning game would take 4-5. Things turned out differently. Read on.

Predictably, I played the French while Kozure took the British. All I knew from reading reviews was that the French have to hit hard and early if they want to win. My opening hand, in retrospect, was quite good. I was able to put some drilled troops down in Quebec and make an agressive push down the Hudson river to the heart of the face off there. Kozure hadn't fully grasped the implications of river movement, and therefore didn't see this coming. On the western front, I saw the masses of (mostly) undefended stockades and decided to raid as much as I could.

I followed though on that plan and was on the receiving end of fabulously good luck with the dice. Dumas laid waste to the stockades and forts in the south west. Combat routinely went my way. Sieges were resolved quickly and without much losses. The net effect was that the British were on the defensive the whole game. Being so difficult to activate, they couldn't keep up with the damage and I was raking in the victory points. A surprise seige attempt in (I forget the name of the city, but it was the South-Eastern most fortress) nearly made matters even worse for the British, but Wolfe came along and kicked the French out (this would mark the only time die rolling didn't go my way, as I could have had the opportunity to assault the fortress prior to Wolfe's arrival but the siege took longer than it could have). Poor Kozure did not manage to move an inch on ANY front, nor make any attempt on Louisburg. By the end of the first year, the French achieved an automatic victory with 12 points (note: I was going for broke. If my offensive failed, the British would have cleaned up in the spring due to my depleted forces)

The whole thing only took 2 hours, so we tried again, armed with a better understanding of the rules (and hopefully for Kozure) more evenly distributed luck.

In the second game, my hand had a number of Indian Alliance cards, but no French Reinforcements. I decided to play the Indian angle much more strongly than I did the first game. Kozure's hand seemed pretty decent, and he forced me to takes things more slowly this time around by shoring up his defences in the weak spots I had identified previously. I now had a large contingent of auxilleries heading to the south west. My own error in understanding the terrain led to a successful block of Dumas, and he essentially had to retreat and hide for the rest of the game. The Indians successfully raided one city, but then the british sent (insert name of leader here) to attack a second group before they could do any more damage. The indians were hopelessly outclassed. 2 of them vs 4 drilled troops. Should have been a massacre. Somehow, they won!!!. This would be the start of another enormously one sided game in the French's favour, from a die rolling point of view (and a string of really bad showings by that particular british leader). Those plucky indians proceeded to rack 4-5 raid markers, completely unassisted, against all odds.

My advance down the Hudson was slower, but over the course of the game almost all of my able bodied soldiers and auxilleries found themselves there. A few massive battles were fought, with the French being pushed back once and then returning for the kill.

You guessed it, the first year ended with another automatic victory for the French. The second game took approximately 2 1/2 hours.

So, there you have it. Two sessions which never made it past the first year. From reading reports and reviews, I can tell these were uncharacteristic games. The French are meant to hit hard, yes, but normally spend the majority of the game afterwards simply trying to slow the inevitable British advance. Here, the British were essentially unable to advance at all! In future games, where luck will inevitably be more balanced, I would guess that all out French assaults on the british will be fewer (and less successful). I also suspect that the intricacies of using terrain to our advantage, according to unit type, would come more into play. I would also expect to see more action and Louisburg and in the north west (which both went unused in these games).

I am left with one question, however. In our games, forts/ fortresses and stockades seemed like more of a liability than an advantage. For the french, these are easy targets for victory points! Stockades are at least cheap, so you do get some return on your investment by using them as a method to cross terrain more rapidly and provide a place to fall back to during retreats. But Forts are expensive to build and provide no (?) advantage that I can think of... certainly none in combat! I bet I'm missing something, so if anyone knows please fill me in (I know they play a critical role in wintering, but not having had to play through to a second year yet I don't fully understand the impact of the change in seasons. Do stockades help with wintering?)

Anyway, I had a great time and I look forward to playing this game again. I'm sure the British are already planning their revenge.