Dominion of the Blue and Grey session

I've got about eight of the Dominion of the X books from Ork Publishing but have not actually spent all that much time playing the games. That is mainly because I hadn't found a satisfactory way of representing the units on the table. You can play the game using pen and paper (and I have) but because I like to use pieces, I don't find that very enjoyable.

I hit on the idea of employing dominos and stickers and over the weekend did up blue and red armies. I'm not sure of the genesis of this idea - I may well have seen something similar on a blog somewhere and stored it away, but I don't know. Be that as it may, now suitably prepped for pieces, I've decided to start playing through the Eastern ACW battles from the Dominion of the Blue and Grey expansion.

See Martin Rapier's blog here for another take on this set, but using figures.

Battles in this version of the game are won by reducing the enemy to two or fewer units remaining and having more units than that oneself.  

First Bull Run.

Symbols represent infantry, cavalry and artillery; letters designate attributes (elite, defender, unreliable). The dice show a victory for the Confederates in the first encounter.

This was a hard-fought battle. The Union began badly, losing on their left in the first round, but fought back through the middle turns, generally giving as good as they got. Reliability roll failures from the Confederates (2 out of 3), rally successes (2 for the Union, 1 for the Confederates) and commander influence actions played their part in keeping the contest tight. It seemed the Union had worn the Confederates down when they reduced them to three units with four of their own remaining, but they could not land a killing blow. Finally, in the eighth turn, the Confederates broke the Union artillery to win the battle 3-2. 

Seven Pines

Seven Pines at start.

The attacking Confederates had an interesting mix of troops. Longstreet's flank marchers, for example, were rated elite, defender, and unreliable! The Union had troops in defensive positions but half of their force was unreliable, adding to their fragility. 

The initial Confederate attack came through the centre. The unreliable Federal unit stood, but was defeated in the fighting. At the end of the turn it was successfully rallied back into the Union reserve.

The next attack was on the Union right, and there the lead unit failed the reliability roll and was removed. The Union struck from the left and defeated Longstreet at the first attempt. Johnstone was unable to rally him. Inconclusive fighting followed until a Union attack on the Confederate right saw both units removed exhausted. The Confederate unit rallied, but the Union one did not. The Federals were now down to three units against five, and on the next turn the Confederate artillery saw off another unit and the Union was defeated again, 5-2.

Gaines Mill

This was another tight battle but over in just three turns: The Rebels scored two hits on the first turn, one on the Union right courtesy of Stonewall Jackons and one on the centre. The Union rallied one infantry unit back into the reserves. 

Stonewall's sector was busy again as both sides traded hits. Neither unit could be rallied. 

The Confederate advantage was pulled back by another successful attack from the Union right, but the Confederates overran the guns on the other flank to win 3-2. Three in a row for the South. 

A note on photos - I'm sure I took photos of all of the battle set ups but some of them seem to have disappeared! Not sure if there are gremlins afflicting the camera or I am going nuts, but I expect we will find out over the next few weeks.

Second Bull Run

This battle finds a Union army of a single artillery unit and five infantry attacking three Confederate infantry and an artillery unit, mostly in strong defensive positions. Neither side has any unreliable units.

Both sides scored hits in the early fighting but both those hits were rallied, with the Confederates using command influence to add one to the dice as they could ill-afford to lose any units. In turn two both sides inflicted hits again, and once more both sides rallied successfully.

Over the next three turns the Rebels scored three hits against one from the Federals. Both sides had three units each remaining and next hit would be decisive as neither army had any rally actions left. The Union launched an infantry attack againt the artillery in the centre, but were repelled with a hit and the Southerners won yet again. 

Antietam

The Union again go in here with a five infantry and one artillery unit mix, while the Rebels are all infantry - two with defensive advantage on the left and the right and two unreliable in reserve (A.P. Hill's reinforcements).

The fighting began in the centre and remained there for the first three rounds. The contest was even at first, with both sides losing two units and rallying one. Then there was a period of attritition in which neither side could make headway. Pressure finally told and the Union collapsed to lose 1-4.

These Rebels are proving hard to beat!  

Fredericksburg

Frederickburg, of all places, is where the tide turned. The usual five / one mix of Federals stormed the heights on the left of the Confederate line and sucked the reserve infantry into the meatgrinder. The Rebels were defeated by the end of turn four. Lincoln finally has his victory!

The Rebels, soundly beaten, withdraw.

The Blue and Grey booklet introduces some new (to me) rules - rally and commander influence. This brings in a little more decisionmaking to this mainly automated solitaire game and while the battles are still very quick by normal wargame standards, they do allow a bit more strategy, and the choice of when to use commander influence decided at least one of the battles. 

The author is extremely prolific and I greatly appreciate how he adds in new elements so that the system keeps developing and evolving and the different eras become more distinctive through the use of new rules and changed troop categorisatios without losing any of its clean simplicity.

Stephen Parker is a clever fellow and astute game developer. It is one of those systems where you think I wish I had thought of that! Well done to him.

I will look forward to fighing out the remaining Eastern battles when time permits. 

Thinking about game systems

Five years ago, if I thought about how much I'd invested into games systems, I would have said that Commands & Colors: Ancients was top of the heap. I have the base game and all the expansions bar the Spartan one, so six altogether. By the time the Spartan expansion had come out I'd realised that while I loved the game I resented buying wooden blocks when nine times out of ten I was going to play the game with miniatures or on VASSAL anyway, and that in terms of game play I was getting diminishing returns from the series. Of course, now I wish I had just got the damned thing, but it's too late for that!

Naturally, C&C:A is not the only system I've bought into. I have four of the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War series by the Gamers / MMP, three of the GMT Musket and Pike series, and three of the Gamers / MMP Civil War Brigade Series. The card-driven point-to-point area control games derived from We The People all share common features, but whether you would call them a distinct system I'm not sure - I guess Hannibal, Successors, For the People and Barbarossa to Berlin probably are linearly connected, but Sword of Rome, Twilight Struggle and Labyrinth are not so clearly among them. I suppose at a pinch I could claim those first four games as part of a system.

The A Victory Lost stable is represented in casa Prufrock by four games as well, along with four of the Undaunted series and three from the recent Littoral Commander system. 

But as I pushed an order through for a couple of Memoir '44 expanions last night, I found that Memoir '44 had overtaken them all. 

I did a quick inventory: two sets of the base game, the Mediterranean, Pacific and Eastern Front expansions, the Overlord and Breakthrough expansions, the Terrain Pack, the Equipment Pack, the winter/desert board, The Winter Wars expansion, and of the battle maps Through Jungle and Desert, Khalkin Gol and Tigers in the Snow. I can now add to those Sword of Stalingrad and the Dieppe Disaster (well, I will be able to when they arrive in the post!). So sixteen items altogether, and probably somewhere in the region of $1200 spent.

It is bizarre that I will now baulk at paying $140 for a GMT hex-and-counter or card-driven game, but will pay that for two Memoir battle map expansions. It is especially bizarre given that I had for various reasons refused to have anything to do with Memoir '44 until a few years ago.

It made me wonder what has changed in the way that I collect, play and evaluate the relative worth (to me) of board games and board game series.

I think it comes down to a combination of circumstance, stage of life, and time in the hobby. 

When I first got back into board wargaming I was living in Japan. I got games from the US, from the Japanese version of ebay, or had them given to me by the very generous Pat Hirtle. At this time I was still discovering what I liked, and would often choose games because they were available rather than because they were something I had a particular burning interest in. This was a great introduction to the hobby, and while there were some hits and there were some misses, that process is vital to discovering one's tastes.

The longer I have been gaming the more I appreciate those games that actually get played. As much as I like the idea of having Grant in the Wilderness nearby, and of Barbarossa on three maps, Marston Moor or Breitenfeld there for when the moment is right, the reality is, for a busy person with a family, those moments come seldom. When there is an exploratory text on a Thursday for a game day on Saturday or Sunday, realistically, choices come down to games that you know, that you can set up and take down fast, and that can be played to completion in three hours.

Another factor I've come to consider is system longevity. Most of the successful boardgame systems eventually get updates or reissues. There are new editions with new counters, rules, cards, maps; either you update or you are stuck with a first edition in a second (or third) edition world. It doesn't mean you can't still play the games, but player aids, errata, glitch-fixes, living rules and the like are now not a straight fit. 

Ironically of course, Memoir has out a new edition of the base game, but as it is a modular system and fully compatible with previous versions it is not the issue it is with, say, the Great Battles of History series, where you might have to replace a map or a bunch of counters to play the revised version of a scenario. 

So what am I trying to say here? I guess the point is that I've surprised myself by investing so much into a system at which I previously turned up my nose. Why I've done it is essentially the same reason that I painted up all my 15mm figures: I will use them. I hope that one day I will get to play out the scenarios in 2nd Fleet, that I will get my hordes of 28mm fantasy figures painted, that I will be able to set up Siege of Jerusalem or War in Europe, but I know that I will play the Memoir '44 expansions I just ordered, and at this stage of my experience in the hobby, that is something I value.

I would love to hear how others think about the way they invest in games systems, so please feel free to leave a comment! 

Desert mini-campaign

There was some time on Saturday afternoon for SP to come over for a spot of gaming. I'd had a hankering for something WWII after our recent ancients binges and decided to turn to the Memoir '44 Mediterranean expansion. SP has got Memoir '44 down and does not need any coaching whatsover so I thought it was a good chance to try out the quick-and-dirty campaign rules. SP was also of a mind to give these a go and as per usual took the Germans, We got things started just after 2:00.

First game was Sidi Rezegh Airfield. The scenario goes to five victory medals with five command cards for the Germans and four for the British. I had eight units of tanks versus six for SP who also had two units of infantry, one with the airfield in the central sector and one entrenched in Sidi Rezegh itself. 

The British have no troops at all in the left section, and Murphy's Law being what it is, three of my four initial cards were for that section!

One out of four ain't bad!

It didn't matter anyway: SP drove in on my centre with his armour and decimated it, winning 5-2 in just five turns (and I was fortunate to get the 2!).

The second scenario was Dug in at Sidi Omar. I had six infantry units and one artillery section entrenched in hills on my left and left centre, and a force of four tank units in the right rear. Against this the Germans had five infantry, one artillery and seven tank units. Both sides had five command cards and to win six medals were needed.

As part of the campaign, SP rolled six dice (five for the banners he won last game and another for winning the game) which forced me to remove four tank figures, one infantry figure, and to retreat one unit. I rolled two dice, which forced SP to remove an artillery figure and a tank figure. The artillery figure was a significant loss for SP and a great stroke of luck for me.

This was a tougher fight for the Germans: they were at a disadvantage when attacking my entrenched infantry and in the fight with my armour on the right did not get the results hoped. It ended up a 6-2 win for the British. 

The last scenario was Flanking Maneuver at Bir Hakeim. Again the Eighth Army was on the defensive. Mines and wire protected the three infantry and one artillery units of my right, while entrenchments and hills protected the four infantry on the left. I also had two tank units in reserve, but they were much reduced by the pre-game campaign dice rolls. 

SP had three units of Italian tanks and two of Italian foot on his left, and across the centre and right five units of German infantry, one of artillery, and three of tanks. He had six command cards to my five, and the game was to five medals. 

This game was very tight, and it turned on my managing to drive off the attack of the Italian tanks who tried to skirt the minefields, come down through the centre and feast on the infantry. Helpful cards gave me strong options and the Eighth Army prevailed 5-3, though it felt closer than that.

It was another good day of gaming and the three linked scenarios kept things connected and interesting. We usually play overlord (two boards together) scenarios, but playing through these showed how good the standard game is as well.

Thanks to SP for a fun and challenging session.