This report is just a brief summary of the games played yesterday evening. I've been reluctant to do this sort of thing in the past, because I've always like to say something when I post, but in (not so) recent times, I've been, perhaps, suffering from a bit of writer's block, which has resulted in my sitting on things for weeks with the only result being that I've forgotten many of the details and end up not being able to write anything anyway. Anybody is welcome to comment on the games mentioned, so should you have a comment to make do so on this post or alternatively if you have posting privileges there is nothing stopping you making a post of your own. This was the original idea when this blog was set up. Note: anybody who attends regularly but can't post, send me an e-mail and I'll get you set up.
Anyway on to the games. Steve H and Donald have been waiting for a chance to play Combat Commander Europe, so split off to do that, I don't have any details of this so please let me know.
Dave D and Mike played Ra: The Dice game while waiting for Dave C to retrieve Ben from the fair up the road and then played Tinners' Trail for the rest of the evening.
That left Paul, Nigel, Steve Perkins and I to an evening of 3 games of Race for the Galaxy, where Steve showed his prowess by winning all three. The third game was very close and I think either Paul or I would have had him in game 2, if it hadn't been for his uncanny knack of finding Improved Logistics when he needed it.
The evening's scores
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Dave F | 68 |
2 | Mike | 64 |
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Mike | 111 |
2 | Dave F | 84 |
3 | Dave C | 82 |
4 | Ben C | 70 |
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Steve Pe | 40 |
2 | Dave D | 29 |
3 | Nigel | 27 |
4 | Paul | 20 |
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Steve Pe | 49 |
2 | Paul | 46 |
3 | Dave D | 42 |
4 | Nigel | 26 |
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Steve Pe | 34 |
2 | Dave D | 32+ |
3 | Paul | 32 |
4 | Nigel | 19 |
Posn. | Player |
1 | Donald |
2 | Steve H |
Combat Commander: Europe is a game about battlefield chaos. For anyone who dislikes either wargames or randomness, or who prefers perfect information games, I would suggest they steer clear.
ReplyDeleteEach player represents one of the armies in the European Theatre of WWII. For the purposes of the game, this means Germany, Russia and the US. Quite why the British aren't represented, I don't know, but hey-ho.
This is one of GMTs card-driven games and it seems quite successful.
Our game on Wednesday was very much a learning experience. We picked the first scenario in the book as it has fewest units and does not contain some of the advanced mechanisms such as radio traffic and artillery.
As is usual in wargames, this is hex-and-counter affair with the unit stats printed on the face of the counter, and the reduced effectiveness of 'broken' units on the back. Leaders give modifiers to teams in their immediate vicinity, and give orders without modifiers to units within their 'sphere of influence'. This combined with stacking limits for each hex means leadership use is extremely important because of the way Orders are implemented.
Each player has a deck of cards from which a hand of 5 is drawn. The cards can be played as Orders on a players turn, or as Actions at any time during either player's turn, provided the conditions of the Action are met (for example, the inactive unit can take Opportunity Fire Action against a unit activated by the Move Order). The cards are also used for battlefield Events which are triggered by different mechanisms, including dice rolls, which are also resolved by the turn of a card. There are no dice used in the game - instead, each card has a pair of dice in the bottom corner, and each time a roll is called for, the player affected turns up the top card on his deck.
Attack works like this: any unit in range can combine fire into a Fire Group (if you wish) and the firepower of the group is added to a die roll (card turn). Defence is moral plus a die roll and any modifier such as terrain and relevant Actions played (taking a Cover Action reduces the attack roll by double the effect of terrain).
Anyway, before this turns into a review, suffice to say the clever part is that each player has a hand of five cards with which to perform a defined maximum of Orders on their turn, though they can play additional Actions. At the end of a player's turn, they draw new cards up to 5; however, if Player 1 plays Actions on P2's turn, they do not draw cards again until the end of the next P1 turn.
It is also common to have no Orders or Actions in your hand which will be effective against the enemy. Instead of playing a turn, a player can chose to discard and redraw up to a maximim number of cards, which differs dependent on the armies played. THIS HAPPENS A LOT!!!
The players set up with their units hidden from each other, though the general area of set-up is known.
ReplyDeleteMy Russians were split to either side of the map, whilst Steve's Germans were all pretty central. The Germans are much more efficient in movement than the Russians, so he activated his leaders and swooped in early to take 3 of the 5 objectives on the board. I decided to advance under cover through woods as his machine guns were set up in a farmhouse and he would have ripped me apart in the open. This did mean that one of the remaining objectives was light tree cover which his guns had a bead on, so I left it alone and took one of my leaders to the last objective, where he left a squad with a heavy machine gun as protection, then continued to move forward with his remaining men. My other leader kept to the trees and began a slow flanking maneouvre which turned out to be very slow. One unit was left behind as it was outside the sphere of influence, and this is an extremely important point - Move Orders are so vital, and so scarce, that you do not want to give them to single units, therefore this unit was effectively sidelined for the rest of the game. This didn't matter for my defensive HMG unit in the second farmhouse as it was always going to defend to the death anyway.
We skirted around the edges of woods for a while, taking the odd pot-shot at each other, with first blood going to Steve. This wasn't teaching us much about the game, though, so eventually I went for a headlong attack, firing into the copse that held Steve's fire group who'd taken out my squad. This went well for me as I was able to break Steve's veterans as I charged the open ground, then melee'd him into submission, for which I earned 2 VPs. Steve had little response due to a lack of available actions, so I advanced into the trees. His machine guns had their LOS blocked and I began skirting towards his held objectives. Steve decided to counter-attack, but the luck of the cards wasn't with him. I lobbed in some grenades and melee'd again and took out two more units. Eventually, his machine-gunners swarmed from the farmhouse in a last-ditch attack. More carnage followed.
I won by majority, but not conclusive victory - this was more down to some battlefield luck than any great strategy on my part, as Steve has a far better understanding of the game than I do. The best plan seems to be to go for the jugular, but make sure you have Orders and Actions that will allow you to finish off your opponent as a half-baked attack will run out of steam, allowing your opponent to rally.
Maxim for this game: Protect Your Leaders.
Combat Commander has interested me since it came out. I have dabbled with war games but I am not a simulation buff. In most games I mentally strip out the theme and enjoy the underlying mechanics. Strip out the theme for your average war game and you are left with a bunch of dice and ratio combat table. Not for me
ReplyDeleteCombat Commander might just have enough "game" in it for me to enjoy.
Nice write up by the way though I missed not hearing your opinion on how enjoyable you find the game.
I enjoyed it a lot, though time will tell whether I grow to enjoy it immensely or decide that the randomness is just too frustrating. There are times where you have no Order or Action you can play against your opponent, and can do nothing effective but discard. At other times you have to balance whether you use the Action on a Move Order card to inhibit the enemy, or retain the Move Order to use on your turn.
ReplyDeleteIt's either a very clever system, or one that's too clever for its own good. I'm not au fait enough to know which yet, but I'll enjoy finding out.
I enjoyed Tinner's trail again, and really appreciate how cleverly Martin Wallace crafts real-life mining stuff into it, but.... it's plagued by runaway leader syndrome. OK, so my real gamble on taking a 2nd mine at the end of Turn 1 was probably deservedly rewarded by high prices in Turn 2, but to be honest I felt that by end of Turn 2 I was cruising and it would take a massive mistake to stop me winning. Nice for me, a bit dispiriting for the others I suspect. One coup or stroke of luck early in the game shouldn't be so decisive in sich a high percentage of games played really.
ReplyDelete