As mentioned in my earlier blog entry, I didn't have my camera data cable with me so had to put up a limited game report. Here's the play by play for the first aborted effort.

0545

Hooker: Push forward with all divisions, no contact, apart from forcing the horse arty off the hill to my right.



Jackson: Shuffles JR Jones to his left a little; others just push up.



Hooker: Doubleday clears hill to right and pushes up with arty; Meade pushes forward and gains first blood pushing back Hays; Ricketts also pushes forward, and forces Douglas back on a lucky(ish) roll



No unit failed a morale check yet!

Jackson: JR Jones withdraws a little; Douglas' attack rolls poorly and suffers a reverse, disordering the units; DR Hill advances on my left but again rolls 1.



That could have been so much worse for me!

Mansfield:Moves up, with Williams on the right supporting Hooker, and Greene on the left, hoping to threaten Jackson's right flank.



Longstreet/Stuart/Longstreet/Stuart: all just push forward to defensive positions.



0630 - Confederates win initative

Jackson: JR Jones holds position; Lawton withdraws Douglas; DH Hill pushes on Ricketts' flank, pushing Christian back and disordering him - the first unit to fail a morale check.



Jackson: (Hmm, interesting, what will Chuck do as I could have a lot of activations on that flank) JR Jones holds; Lawton unleashes a big artillery barrage for no effect; DH Hill continues to work around Hooker's flank, pushing Christian back again.



Hooker: Ricketts pushes Colquitt-b back in a successful counter attack; Meade makes an attack in the middle, but the DF is successful.



Mansfield: Presses up and Williams attacks the exposed Colquitt-a, but rolls a 0 to suffer a reverse, all infantry and the artillery becoming disordered; Greene continues to move around the flank.



Man, that blows, as he didn't have a retreat path, and would have started to displace his own units. Anything but a 0/1 as I had a +3.

Stuart: Ineffective arty

Longstreet: Keeps moving forward with reinforcements.

Mansfield: Greene presses against DH Hill's brigades on the ridge protecting Jackson's right flank. However, the DF is successful in taking out some attackers (especially the 50/50 arty DF, which would have seen it dead if it missed), and my sole attack rolls weakly on a -2 modifier and all my units are disordered; Williams decides to focus on the inf/arty on the hill, and forces the retreat, removing the arty and retreating the inf, which then fails it's morale check, leaving DH Hill's brigades in a precarious position.



Longstreet: Hood pushes forward to support Jackson's right flank, and pushes Goodrich back

Stuart: Continues moving forward





0715 - Confederates win initiative on a tied '1' roll; Union gain an AM

Jackson: DH Hill goes into reverse, recovering units from weak positions; Lawton fires arty and actually scores a result, following up with an advance and a successful attack on Hartsuff-b, forcng him to withdraw.



Stuart: Continues to move forward

Hooker: I lose the artillery duel, despite the stronger artillery, with an infantry brigade and an artillery being disordered.



Longstreet: Hood continues to threaten Greene's left flank, but his attack goes poorly (rolls 2, with +2) and becomes disordered; DR Jones and Walker just adjust their positions, McLaws & Anderson continue to advance to the front lines. (Looking at the photos I'm not sure that Hood's attack was legal, as there are two Union brigades that have Hood's brigades in frontal hexes, so one would need to be covered, unless he attacked both units together.)



Mansfield: Just retire a bit, dress lines, and make rally rolls.



Mansfield: Advance recovered arty, and more rally.



Longstreet: Pulls Hood's disordered brigades back from the front line, reinforcing them with artillery.



Hooker: More artillery duels that I continue to lose, despite better artillery; Doubleday rally fails; Hartsuff-a and Christian of Ricketts' division attack Early-a, but another of 0 disorders both units



Jackson: Adjusts the line, and Lawton presses against Ricketts, forcing Hartsuff-a back and Christian withdraws, that previous poor combat roll coming back to haunt me.

0800 - Confederate get initiative - No change to Union AM

At this point we discussed the situation and decided to start over. We agreed there seemed to be no way that the Union could gain success, and too many attacks had gone against them and Jackson has all his artillery strengthening his line. We could play it out, but we agreed that starting over might be a better choice, and as we're only about an hour and a bit in we have time. At the speed we're playing we reckon that we should still get half-way through the game by dinner time, so would still be on schedule.

Before I headed off to Sunriver for WBC-W I had another blood sample drawn for testing, and I got the results back after getting home. The total cholesterol has come down from 245 to 187 (goal is less than 200), HDL (good) cholesterol went up from 42 to 46 (goal is greater than 40) and the bad cholesterol came down from 183 to 121 (normal is less than 130), which the doctor thought was little short of startling considering I've only been on the medication for a little over 2 months. So, it looks like I'm going to be taking the little yellow pills for some time to come, but at least they seem to be having a good effect, so I guess it's all good.

And WBC-W is over for another year. Sigh.

Time to start planning for the next one. Yay!

This year's was definitely fun, as it always is to hang out with the guys. Lots of good banter and chat. It's just a shame that the gaming wasn't always up to par, especially the Glory games with Chuck. We'd spent a long time deciding what we wanted to spend our precious hours on, so it was a major disappointment to have the games be such a bogey. I'll be trying the Antietam scenario solo a couple of times, probably with some 'fixed' results, to see if it can replicate the historical outcomes, and be more entertaining.

The OCS Tunisia with Doug very nearly went the same direction, but stayed enough on the right side to make for an entertaining game. The same can be said for the FAB: Bulge game with Chris. His early poor artillery results were balanced against same later good rolls and made for a very tight game.

The evening games were a mixed bag. A few were OK (Britannia, Manifest Destiny), and a few were yucky (Thunder's Edge, Republic of Rome), and a few were on the edge (War of the Ring, India Rails).

So, what needs to be done differently next time? First off, get Chuck to roll the dice in all my games. That might address the issues of poor rolling, and it seemed to work in one game we played earlier in the year, although it's no guarantee. I'm not sure what I'm going to do in the games where I'm not playing with Chuck, however.

Second, schedule more down time for the evenings. I think that taking a night or two off is a good idea for next year. First it will give me a chance to relax and wind down a little, as well as give others the chance to play some of the games that they like and I don't.

Third, well I don't have a third. Otherwise things went reasonably to plan. Wait, yes, I do have a third. Stick to one location. Heading over to Ken's for dinner and gaming on Thursday was an interesting trial, but it left me sitting around for too long waiting for others to finish their games of Manoeuvre with little to do but watch tv. I wish I'd brought my book.

Fourth, OK, I definitely don't have a fourth.

One thing that didn't impact me, but did the others, was the last minute changes to schedule. Ken decided last minute (well, after the games schedule had been agreed, so it amounts to the same thing) to come on Tuesday, which meant Dave and Doug had to give up their planned game to accommodate him. Sorry, Ken, but I wouldn't have given up my planned game, even if it meant you sitting around for the day. We may fix the schedule a couple weeks out next year, and any late requests will have to wait for a 'partner' to arrive.

On the way home we talked about games we dropped of the list for this year and/or were interested playing next year. These included a multi-player OCS or EFS game, Asia/Europe Engulfed, Paths/Pursuit of Glory, Great War in Europe. Personally, I'd be happy to play a week-long OCS.

Until next year....

After the Manoeuvre blowout, Dave and I played some Zopp one on one. Chuck and I played Dave and Doug three times over the weekend, winning two out of three, and where I learned that my Zopp skills go all screwy after a few drinks.

In this game there was a lot of tactical play before I had a couple of lucky strikes to win 5-2. Dave had just cleaned the board and put on more fairy dust, so it was very fast and we both took a little while to get used to the speed. Certainly a fun flicking game, but I think I still prefer Crokinole.

After that we put Perikles on the table as the last game of the week. Once again Dave was victorious, although Chuck ran him close in the last turn. I languished in last place after some poor choices in the final turn, when I was only 1 point behind Dave and Doug going in.

And that was that. Time to do the final packing up, squeeze everything into Chuck's Murano (and that was a close run thing!), and head off home. One of the pluses to car pooling is that it makes the drive seem very quick, and in no time we were back home.

Many thanks, once again, to Doug for hosting, Chuck for driving, and everyone for making it such a fun time.

With the wind-down starting, Chuck and Doug spent the morning finishing off their A Victory Lost game. Meanwhile Dave and I played Manoeuvre, in the supposed final. It turned out to be another one-sided game as I got stomped 5-1 as the Russians against Dave's Brits.

It started badly, and went downhill from there, as I couldn't draw Supply cards (4 in the deck), and Dave kept attacking units that I didn't have unit cards for. With no Supply or unit cards I was unable to rally, so was behind in units very quickly. Later on I drew handfuls of Leaders and Committed Attacks and no unit cards I could use with them, mostly drawing cards for the dead units that I hadn't been able to draw before, so wasn't able to do much in response to Dave's attacks.

So, grats to Dave for winning the Manoeuvre tournament, going 3-0. (I made it into the final as the only 1-1 player who hadn't already been beaten by Dave.) And he doesn't even like the game.

While Chris and Doug went off to the Wilco concert, Chuck Dave and I played India Rails, the first of the Rails series I'd played, although I had played Railway Rivals, which has some of the same mechanisms.

In the initial draw Chuck got 2 (3?) cards that had co-ordinated deliveries, so was off to a flying start. My cards had no such synergy, and so my first delivery didn't give me enough to complete a line for my second delivery. Dave was somewhere in between. Chuck's replacement cards continued the streak, as he continued to streak ahead. Dave was trying to keep up, but wasn't quite there. By the end of the game Chuck was cruising, and got the 250GMU and 5 cities easily with Dave somewhat behind. I wasn't even on the scoring sheet.

Very much a game of the cards you get, Chuck acknowledged that he didn't have to think too hard about it, as the cards just landed perfectly for him, one after the other. I, on the other hand, refreshed my cards twice, and still ended up with a bunch of required goods sources and delivery locations that didn't match any of my existing locations. And that seemed to be the two opposite ends of the game spectrum - get a great set of cards, and you'll have an easy game, a crap set of cards and you'll never get going. With something in the middle it could be an interesting game, so I'd probably try it )or another in the series) again.

Chuck and I return to Glory III, this time with the Cedar Creek scenario. This is a really wacky one, with the Confederate (me) catching the Union (Chuck) all unprepared, and having to spend the first few turn trying to get corps activated and into the fight without getting totally stomped in the meantime. The victory conditions require the Confederate player to drive the Union player back to abandon his camps (no ordered infantry unit with 2 hexes) and keep them away from a few other key hexes and the road to Middletown.

The game starts with the Confederates sweeping in from the south and south west (left and left-bottom side of the map) , and trampling all in front of them due to large modifiers, as the Union forces start disordered (hence low cohesion) and with an automatic +2 in charges, and often with even more positive modifiers. Crook's VIII corps was removed from the board in the first couple of turns as all the units were routed.

Start turn 3:


I continued to focus on Emory's XIX corps, driving them back from their camp, and trying to remove them as a fighting force. At this point my die rolling started to take its normal tack, as Chuck rolled good defensive fire (DF) rolls and I rolled back to back 0 in my combats, disordering lots of brigades, following that up by rolling lots of high numbers in my rally attempts. At least Chuck was also missing lots of rally attempts, but his attacks went reasonably. (In fact I don't recall if he rolled failed combats in the whole game.)

Start turn 4:


Now the Confederates started moving northwards, although I misunderstood the victory conditions and thought I had to be within 2 hexes of the road to the north of Middletown, so had Pegram's division head north and then come back. My attacks on the remaining units of Emory's corps roll poorly again.

Start turn 5:


The reserve artillery and Kershaw arrived in position, but didn't fire for any great effect. However, I did manage to disorder one unit, but I again rolled poorly in the follow up and disordered more of my own units. In the north it developed into a wild and wooly situation, but I missed attack after attack, leaving me in a bad position with divisions split up and many brigades out of command. I also lost a couple of artillery units as Merritt's AM came out ahead of all my possible defending ones to be able to attack them.

Start turn 7:


I chose Kershaw as my opening chit, and surrounded another unit from Wright/Wricketts VI corps, but Chuck rolled an 8 (needed and 8 or 9) to take out my best unit, and my remaining unit rolled another 0 to get another reversal.

And that's where we left it, as with Sheridan now coming in from the north I had no chance to gain the win, especially with almost half my force withdrawn or disordered.

End position:


Chuck confirmed that I didn't make any of my DF rolls thoughout the whole game, and he made several of his, especially at a couple of critical times. I don't recall him missing any attack combats, where I missed 6 out of 7 at one point, all 50/50 or better.

So it was another frustrating game of Glory due to unbalanced die rolls. I'm still convinced that it's a great system, if only we could have a game that didn't have such imbalanced die rolling. That would probably mean Chuck has to play with someone else....

In the evening we played Republic of Rome, another big stab-the-leader, lots of diplomacy, long, and totally tedious game. Of course it didn't help when I got the game mixed up with Siege of Jerusalem, so it wasn't the game I was expecting.

Again, just the sort of game I don't like, and I lost interest pretty quickly. However, we had a fun evening, but it had little to do with the game, and the banter was running back and fore freely. I'd closely put this on the same level as the first game of Bang! we played, which was a total hoot, but it was down to the people we played with, not anything to do with the game itself, which was pretty dire, and fell flat every other time we played. Same with RoR, which I couldn't be persuaded to play again. Unless I was offered a lot of money, which isn't likely to happen.

Friday was the day that Chris and I had planned to play FAB: The Bulge. I'd played this a few times before, but only the first few turns, and Chris hadn't played so we got together last Friday and worked through the first couple of turns to get to grips with the mechanisms. It was just as well that the Friday play was just a learning game, as Chris' rolls were up to my standard and the game would have been a disaster for the Germans.

So, Chris and I lined up again this morning for a real go at the game, hoping that we would have a good game.

Start positions:


Unfortunately, Chris started the same as before, and missed every single artillery roll for the first two turns. However, his ground combats were far more successful, and he made some progress, although still behind where he really wanted to be. The saving grace for him was that I wasn't rolling many hits, so he wasn't losing too many steps.

Start turn 3:


At this point Chris had a bit of a breakthrough, as his attack in front of Bastogne managed to take out the a 3-step US armored unit in one go, and was able to exploit into Bastogne, taking the town in the exploitation combat. This meant the airborne never made their historical stand, but had to settle for a defense along the river line the the north-east. In the north Chris was still bogged down.

Start turn 5:


Chris started to push my line to the north-east of Bastogne, but didn't make much progress against the elite units in river assaults. When he attacked one area I used a Special Action to reinforce but with 8 dice from elite units I scored 1 hit, but certainly gave him a scare. In my turn I made my first attack of the game, but again scored only 2 hits from 8 dice, and he was able to retreat for no real loss.

In the south I moved out of Arlon, a VP area, and forgot to strat move my reinforcement in, and allowed Chris to walk straight in. In the north Chris rolled 6 hits in 6 dice, destroying a 4-step defense that I thought was safe, allowing him to exploit into Werbomont, so gained 4 points, and suddenly was in danger of gaining an automatic victory.

Start turn 7:


By this time my reinforcements were arriving n strength, but I needed to do something to save losing, especially as Chris gained another point In his turn after a good combat killed another large unit in one go. If I didn't start grabbing points back soon I could lose to an automatic victory, as the score was 5 for the Germans, and I only had 3 turns to the end of the game.

I was able to recapture Werbomont, but my attack on Arlon went nowhere. By this time I was drawing lots of chits from the cup, but managed to draw every British chit available, around 1 out of 20 in the cup for the last one, which were useless to me. I at least drew enough to make attacks possible, and it was this time that I noticed a special game rule that allowed the US player to add an additional artillery to a combat, either as the attacker or defender. Air missions also started appearing, which helped

Start turn 8:


Chris started to withdraw and build a defensive line. I moved forward to attack Malmedy, achieving moderate success, not enough to force him out, but at least he only had a single step left. However, my attack on Arlon stalled again as Chris rolled 4 hits in 5 dice again, so I called off the attack. I also tried an attack on Bastogne, but again Chris rolled like a demon and was able to reinforce using a Special Action, almost making me lose more units. And VPS.

In the last turn Chris strat moved a good unit around to protect Malmedy, and I couldn't stop him from using his Special Action to reinforce Malmedy. And so it came down to critical attack. The VPs were on 1 for the Germans, so I needed to force him out. I piled in my artillery, battle assets and an air mission and was able to score the required hits to kill his units, scoring 4 VPs (1 for the Malmedy space, 2 for killing 2 large units, and Chris loses 1 for losing the space) for the win.

End game:


So, the game came down to the very last combat. (Well, almost, as I still had a Special Action, so I could have fought another round of combat there in the breakthrough phase.) A very exciting game, easily on my top ten of great gaming experiences, I thought I was cruising it until Chris started rolling combat dice like crazy, and suddenly my position looked very precarious indeed, especially as I couldn't roll good combat dice in return. With the way things were going I fully expected not to be able to pull it off, but took the risk to attack Malmedy early and it paid off.

(Speaking of dice, Chris started out poorly on the artillery, did well in combat, and I did probably about average, perhaps slightly below, overall. Over the game I think it all balanced out, and Chris' good combat dice towards the end really made for a tight game.)

I really like the FAB system. Pretty simple rules, but enough chrome and lots of game choices to make through the game. The blocks make for the fog of war and confusion, and the flexibility of assets is a great design mechanism. I'm really looking forward to the next game in the series, supposedly based on the Sicily landings, and will certainly pre-order it when it get put on the P500 list

Well, day 4 was mostly a bust, for various reasons.

First off Ken didn't show up until nearly lunch time, so I spent all morning kicking my heels waiting. If I'd know that he wasn't going to arrive until then I could have gone and done something else. When he did arrive, he decided that Napoleon's Triumph was one he'd like to learn, but he hadn't brought it with him, so had to go back to his place to get it. So, it was after 1pm by the time we got started, after a brief explanation. Ken's first time out showed how important a learning game is, as it turned out to be pretty one-sided. Having played twice already I was quite comfortable with the rules, and Ken struggled to come to grips with the game, so we bagged it about mid-way through, with Ken's French on the ropes, even after having brought on the reinforcements.



It was now around 3pm, and Chris was due to arrive soon, so Ken and I chatted, but it was almost 4pm when Chris arrived. After a brief chat, Chris an I picked Combat Commander, choosing scenario 26 from the Paratrooper Battle Pack expansion. This sees the Americans (Chris) trying to advance across some open terrain, trying to take 4 objectives from the Germans (me). I set up my HMG, squad, team and leader in the middle with a good fire arc, and the other leader with a squad and LMG in the objective building on the left. The final squad went into the other scoring objective on the right.

The game started out with me 'rolling' 3 and 4 for my first two Fire attacks, as Chris Moved forward, but after that I didn't look back, as Chris couldn't do anything right. He missed a mortar attack from 5 hexes away, couldn't fire for much effect, and it appeared as if Doug (it was his copy) had tuned the American deck to remove all the Move cards.

In the mean time I was firing strongly, including a 23 strength attack, but Chris always seemed to have a Recover available. I also dumped 2 Wires and a Minefield on Chris on the rare occasion that he did find a Move card, as well as lots of Fire. By the end of the fifth Time event my 30 VPs at start had increased to 40, and Chris was ready to bale. Another unsatisfying game of CC, although this time I wasn't on the receiving end, for a change. Didn't make the game any more fun, however.



By this time it was after 6pm, and Ken was cooking dinner at his place, the other side of Sunriver, so we had to head off. After a very fine dinner, we started the Manoeuvre pseudo-tournament, around 8pm. I played Chris in the first game, won the roll and chose the French, with Chris choosing the Russians. I fairly quickly romped to a big lead, and managed to win 5-3 in a fairly one-sided game on the dice, as Chris continued his weak die-rolling

Next up I was paired with Doug, who selected the Austrians and Prussians, so I chose the Prussians. This game turned out to be a bust as I didn't realize that Chris' set had never been used, so only gave the cards a cursory shuffle. That meant that cards were coming out in clumps which started well as I was able to use multiple cards to force a couple of quick losses on Doug. However, when you draw a handful of cards for one regiment, and it's at the far end of the board you're faced with a tough decision - toss all the cards for an active regiment or try to get it involved? I went for the latter (as well as a good reshuffle of the deck) and got hammered. My 2-0 lead became 3-4 against and I eventually went down 4-5.

And that was all we played in the evening. I spent most of the evening watching tv, waiting for the others to finish. (Having played a fair bit of Manoeuvre, Doug and I played very quickly, finishing in 30-45 minutes, where Dave/Chuck took around 75 minutes, and Ken/Chris were still playing when we left around 11pm.

That was my concern about going over to Ken's for dinner - that we'd spend more time sitting around than playing, and so it turned out. Next time I'll veto going over, it just wastes too much time. In fact the whole day was a big fat waste of time, with barely 4 hours of gaming in the whole day, and most of that was very unsatisfying. In fact, so far the week has been fairly disappointing, the only really enjoyable game being the OCS Tunisia with Doug on Monday. Bummer.