ECW thoughts

One of the replies I received to my recent request for playtesters was a question about when would we be doing an English Civil War game.  Tomorrow, if I had my way.  It is one of my favorite periods, and I would dearly love to see my miniatures make their appearance using the Battleline-series rules.  Push of pike, forlorn hopes, and all that goes with it.  I have to bring the current rules-editing to a close first.

Waiting

I would love to have more playtest results than I have now, especially for Battlelines.  Waiting for the gamers to play, record their comments, and then go through them can be frustrating.  I want those playtest comments and AAR's as soon as possible, so we can move forward with publishing the new versions.  But I wait, and hope there are some forthcoming.  Urk!

Artillery and other unwanted effects

Artillery was a potent force in WWII, supposedly the #1 source of casualties.  I have never been able to track down the source of that statistic, but it is repeated so often it has become commonly accepted knowledge.  In wargames, however, no one really wants fire from the sky in anything like historical terms.  Looking at historical OoB's, AT guns, mortars, and artillery assets were very common.  Why is it then that players so resent mortars and off-board artillery in their games.  Maybe because it is out of the player's control as they maneuver their infantry and armor around the board.  For the U.S. forces it makes up for untrained infantry and deficient armor.  One U.S. army officer in Europe said once that he moved about five to ten miles each bound.  Then he would call down the artillery on the enemy position, and advance another five to ten miles.  So you can see playing without the artillery for any of the western Allies hamstrings them unfairly.

The new playtest rules have significant changes to the artillery, which make it quite a force to be reckoned with.

Convoy and General Quarters III

I have just received my copy of Clash of Arms's latest, Convoy, a game of submarine warfare in the Atlantic.  Designed by Mal Wright, a naval gamer extraordinare, it is actually two games.  One is the set of fast play naval rules, Convoy.  The other is the operational game that provides the battles to be fought using the tactical rules, Deadly Waters.  It is the usual attractive package from Clash of Arms, made even more so by their use of color throughout — I believe a first for them.  It also contains a CD with ship forms and a copy of the map, useful for those who want to print additional forms, and have another map that they can blow up to a larger size than the one provided, should someone want to do that at a copy shop. Knowing Mal as I do, he no doubt poured his heart and soul into this project, so even though it is from another game company, I whole-heartedly recommend it, despite what some of the online forums have said.  Anyone wishing to procure additional material should visit the Yahoo egroup, WWIIConvoy.  Mal and the developers have been busily putting up errata, play aids, and new material in their files section.  And of course you can use General Quarters to resolve the combat.  Amendment 1 has all the necessary U-boat logs, and the Royal Navy Ship logs Database has all the ships.


In fact, most of the playtesting was done using General Quarters rules, as can be seen in one of the photographs in the book.  Nice to get some advertising.

Strategicon event — Orccon

This past weekend I attended the local thrice annual Strategicon convention, Orccon. Along with the founding member of Miracle Mile Gamers (MMG), Sacha, we ran a Mein Panzer event on Sunday morning and afternoon. The scenario was largish, and we scaled it down to allow for fewer players than originally intended. The overall result was a German victory, as the Canadians bashed their heads against the defense by elite Fallschirmjaegers.  A lot of casualties on the Canadian side, but few on the German.  Chalked up as a learning exercise by the San Diego group for whom we presented the scenario. Notably, only friends played in this scenario, so it was not a success from the standpoint of introducing new players to the game.

Saturday, I played in my usual Guns at Gettysburg game, and had a good time losing my entire brigade in near record fashion, due to some spectacularly bad die rolling.  Then off to hear a lecture by Lonnie Gill, designer of General Quarters III, on pre-WWII naval and aviation subjects.

As usual, dinner Saturday night was at the Versailles, a Cuban restaurant in Los Angeles, that serves a lot of food, heavy with garlic, inexpensively.  Chowed down on a great pork roast dinner.  Spent Saturday night observing a Fear God & Dreadnought game, run by the San Diego crew.  Still cannot bring myself to again play the Command at Sea-system, on which I cut my teeth as a naval gamer some twelve or thirteen years ago, when it was first released.  It is a worthy system, which is well-supported by its publisher, Clash of Arms games.  Just not my cup o' tea.

Also was introduced to the Glory-series of board games from GMT.  Jury still out on these.  Relatively simple to play, but at a level that I do not particularly like, i.e., brigades.  I prefer their regimental games in the Great Battles of the ACW series.  But will play the game again.

The dealer room was a bit sparse this time round.  Nothing and no one really new.

Overall, Strategicon is what you make of it.  Have to bring your own game in order to have a good time.  There were other historical games, including a General Quarters III game, which is at least some smattering of continued interest in the non-fantasy end of the hobby.