What the last rules set you played in 2021

Started by Steve J, 06 January 2021, 02:15:30 PM

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pierre the shy

27 February 2021, 08:39:31 PM #45 Last Edit: 27 February 2021, 08:41:24 PM by pierre the shy
1) What ruleset did you use in your last game? - General Quarters 1/2
2) What navies were confronted? - Japanese and British off the East coast of Malaya 9/10 December 1941 - a night action
3) Did you feel comfortable with the ruleset? - Yes, very
4) and... was this the first time you used this ruleset? - No
5) How many players were in the game? - 4
6) What went well? - The British managed a single torpedo hit on a Japanese heavy crusier while all the Japanese "Long Lance" torpedoes missed.....mainly because HMS Prince of Wales received a engineering hit from a 14" shell hit and was forced to slow down so she was not in the zone predicted when the Japanese torpedoes arrived.
7) What could have been improved? - No ships were sunk and both sides bigger ships took a fair amount of damage. In the end the RN decided to withdraw in the light of the PoW's speed being reduced and the fact that they did not want a stand up fight with the Japanese covering force but instead were trying to intercept the invasion force of Kota Bharu further to the west.

I will put up a small AAR later about the game itself. Got halfway home and then received a text alert that the COVID 19 level was going up to 2 as further case found in Auckland  :(  
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
we are not now that strength which in old days
moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.

paulr

The Japanese battle-cruisers (Kongo & Haruna) were not enjoying their stand up fight, particularity Haruna who was facing Prince of Wales X_X

Pierre the Shy sent me an email asking me to bring the seven Japanese ships for the game last night

I was quite pleased as ran through the list, I had them all except Sirayuki, I had to use another Fubuki class destroyer, Shikinami, as a stand in :)
As has been mentioned before I have quite a few Japanese and American ships ;)
Lord Lensman of Wellington
2018 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!
2022 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!
2023 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!

Last Hussar

Blood Sweat and Tears - Sicily, 10 July 1943. British vs Italians - 3 games
The ongoing evolution of the rules continues, with stuff corrected for each game.

Sunjester has a Company of infantry, which we will follow up Italy.

1 - Attack
1 Platoon were to capture a bridge across a stream on the road that links the landing sites to the paras near Syracuse. This went very well. The Italians were there to control flow of traffic, rather than any meaningful defence; the picture being somewhat confused. There were 3 sandbag positions - one at each corner, two with rifle bases (about 3 men) and 2 with the LMGs. A squad of 9 or so were on the bridge it's self. A bunch of organised hairy arsed Tommies rushing out of the treeline soon had them overwhelmed and driven off.

The British then reorganised themselves for the defence of the bridge (game 2). The other 2 Italian platoons came back and counterattacked.  This is where it all went wrong.

3 problems

*My cards and dice ran perfectly.  These early games are not supposed to decimate the British, I'm GM'ing a campaign, and I got the sort of luck I usually can only dream of AS A PLAYER. As the GM I didn't want a fantastic Axis win!

*Sunjester got his tactics wrong. This is partly attributed to new rules, so he did things that would have been obvious not to do on the ground.  It didn't help him that approx 1/5 of the board was a tomato field. Forget those things you put in grow bags on the patio- commercial Sicilian tomato plants are densely planted, and grow up to 6 meters!

*Nobody seems quite sure how Italian infantry sections work.  We know a platoon is 2 x 10 men, with 4 MG, but actual use descriptions are a bit thin on the ground.  I was using them like the British, so all 5 bases in a section (3 rifle bases and 2 MG) worked together. That's pretty devastating in close assault, plus I could lay down an awful lot of fire.

So I went away, taking his suggestions in hand, and asked some questions on 'The Other Place', and actually got some useful responses.
- The game is card driven for activation. The British activate a section on 1 card, 2 Rifle and 1 MG bases. The view is that this is a bit OTT for the Italians - their sections being twice the size. The MGs now have their own card, so activate separately to their rifles, unless activated by a leader as their 2nd order.
- Italian MGs are not allowed to Close Assault.

We replayed the defence the following week, and it was a lot tighter. The battle flowed back and forth, with Sunjester managing to pull a distinctly bullied section out of the way in the nick of time, and shore up his eastern end. In fact it went on til 1 in the morning, we were so engrossed!  This time there were still casualties, but a reasonable amount, and some of them were just 'froze under fire' rather than actual deaths.


This week (Friday 26th), while 1 Platoon were defending the bridge, 3 Platoon were tasked with investigating some info from a local, who said there was some sort of commander in a farm.

The main road ran West East, with a track up to the farm about 3/4 along. On the Left is a vineyard. The road has terracing, so it was higher than the field to the south, with a 1m bank and retaining wall dropping down, and on the north side tha bank and wall went up over the road by a meter, giving the British cover for the first few 30-40 meters. Apart from the woods the platoon approached through, the rest of the ground was pretty open.

The Farm track entrance was guarded by some rifles. A brief firefight and close assault soon dispatched these.

Now Sunjester's woes began. And it was funny.

Classic British platoon attack - 3 Sec went right, after clearing the gate guards, and were to lay down covering fire. 1 and 2 were to work their way up the vineyard, flank and clear.

This relied on L/Cpl Micky Smith being able to drop smoke with the 2". Yeah, about that...

Smoke drop rules are simple. Nominate the target Range Band (Range bands are about 10-15cm a side). Roll a d6 6-Long, 1 Short. 2nd d6, 1 Left, 6 Right.

I think it is quite possible Sj used far more smoke than a Platoon carried. He dropped it on the Italian sandbags. He dropped it blocking his own troops line of fire. Where he didn't drop it was where he wanted it. Smithy got it right ONCE, out of god knows how many attempts. The problem was, as 1 & 2 moved in response to the battle because they weren't getting smoke cover, where the smoke had to go changed. This needed the Lt to run back and tell the mortar to shift aim. This meant he wasn't with the advancing sections, so they couldn't charge in (C/A needs to be ordered directly by a Leader stand. Your average PBI will happily not charge towards people shooting at him if no one is yelling at him.

In the end Sgt Joe Benjamin left 3 Section to find out what the Rupert was doing, and having given Smithy a bollocking when he found out, went to join 1 Section.

The Lt ended up taking the Mortar team with him to 3 Sec. I pointed out they still carried rifles, so they were ordered to drop the mortar, and attached to 3 Sec.

The two MG nests were put under huge amounts of fire, then SJ risked it. Luckily the cards came out in the right order, and the Sgt and Lt each lead a section in before the Italians could activate. The activations for defensive fire* found an awful lot of suppressed Italians, who when charged surrendered of fled.

Having seen the British get right up to the buildings, the rest of the Italians retired and the game ended.

During the game I had drawn a certain card 10 times. I asked SJ to roll a d6 - he didn't get over 10 (unsurprisingly), then 2d6 - still under 10, then he finally got over 10 on 3d6. 2 fails on beating the 10 meant that while he had enough info to realise this was the local Battalion HQ, the Colonel had had enough time to destroy/pack up and take any useful info.

*Firing is on delayed resolution. When you fire, you work out fire points (FP), and mark them on the targets, taking account for cover at this point. When a unit activates you declare what it will try to do - the declared action gives the To Hit number - so 'Fire' is 5+. 1d6 per FP. Any hits are rerolled; 1- No effect, 2-3 pin, 4-5 Suppress, 6 Kill and suppress. The to hit and effect rolls have no modifiers - all that is wrapped up into the FP placement. So often you are charging not knowing if you have suppressed your target, or is he going to pop up and shoot you, you gamble on the amount of fire he has received.
I have neither the time or the crayons to explain why you are wrong.

GNU PTerry

paulr

Sounds like the rules are giving some interesting games as they evolve :-bd
Lord Lensman of Wellington
2018 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!
2022 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!
2023 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!

Duke Speedy of Leighton

You may refer to me as: Your Grace, Duke Speedy of Leighton.
2016 Pendraken Painting Competion Participation Prize  (Lucky Dip Catagory) Winner

FierceKitty

1) What ruleset did you use in your last game? - No Paradise for Cowards
2) What navies were confronted? - Holy League and Ottoman
3) Did you feel comfortable with the ruleset? - Fairly. Second game.
4) and... was this the first time you used this ruleset? - No
5) How many players were in the game? - 2
6) What went well? - The Turkish commander enjoyed winning, I suppose.
7) What could have been improved? - Galley battles do still seem to end up as a buckets of dice slugging match. I think I need to keep my vessels closer together and perhaps back water for a few more rounds of shooting before banging heads with the Janissary marines.
I don't drink coffee to wake up. I wake up to drink coffee.

Last Hussar

I have neither the time or the crayons to explain why you are wrong.

GNU PTerry

Duke Speedy of Leighton

You may refer to me as: Your Grace, Duke Speedy of Leighton.
2016 Pendraken Painting Competion Participation Prize  (Lucky Dip Catagory) Winner

Last Hussar

You'd better get Sunjester's opinion before committing to BS&T.
I have neither the time or the crayons to explain why you are wrong.

GNU PTerry

mmcv


1) What ruleset did you use in your last game? - Aristeia (working title for homebrew skirmish rules)
2) What armies were confronted? - The Acheans comprising well-armed Ariston and strong-hearted Demitrios leading a force of archers, javelinmen and spearmen against the Trojans, bronze-clad Cephalus and Kyros the archer leading a force of javelinmen and warriors from lands afar.
3) Did you feel comfortable with the ruleset? - Somewhat, been working on the core mechanics over the past few days, first run using a 2d6 mechanic rather than handfuls of dice.
4) and... was this the first time you used this ruleset? - essentially yes, other than a quick pencil and paper run to try some bits out.
5) How many players were in the game? - solo
6) What went well? - The game flowed nicely and provided a good narrative. 2d6 mechanic for resolution felt better than the variable d6 system I'd toyed with for it previously.
7) What could have been improved? - a few of the stat lines for the non heroic troops need tweaked. Archers were a little too powerful and spearmen a little too slow, so I've rejigged them and set up for a second fight in the morning if I've time before work.

sunjester

Quote from: Last Hussar on 28 February 2021, 06:24:07 PM
You'd better get Sunjester's opinion before committing to BS&T.

I really like them, they give a good game. I have also used them to run a remote game on Zoom with another Tring Club member, and they worked really well for that too! :-bd

mmcv

1) What ruleset did you use in your last game? - Aristeia (working title for homebrew skirmish rules)
2) What armies were confronted? - The Acheans comprising well-armed Ariston and strong-hearted Demitrios leading a force of archers, javelinmen and spearmen against the Trojans, bronze-clad Cephalus and Kyros the archer leading a force of javelinmen and warriors from lands afar.
3) Did you feel comfortable with the ruleset? - Yep, second run with them, though still tweaking a few things on the fly.
4) and... was this the first time you used this ruleset? - see above
5) How many players were in the game? - solo
6) What went well? - The game flowed well and moved quickly, despite playing it first thing in the morning (I'm not a morning person, but wanted to play it before clearing my desk for work). The new stat lines seemed to work better.
7) What could have been improved? - heroes need a bit of tweaking to better reward risk-taking and fighting like the Homeric champions they are

Report and a few pics (bare metal and mdf mostly I'm afraid) posted elsewhere.

Leman

03 March 2021, 10:13:22 PM #57 Last Edit: 03 March 2021, 10:21:28 PM by Leman
1) What ruleset did you use in your last game? - Tin Soldiers in Action
2) What armies were confronted? - Austrian v Prussian early SYW
3) Did you feel comfortable with the ruleset? - Yes
4) and... was this the first time you used this ruleset? - No
5) How many players were in the game? - Solo
6) What went well? - It gave a result very quickly. Card draw for brigade actions is a useful solo mechanism.
7) What could have been improved? - The kill rate was very high which, as it was part of a campaign, caused me to make night fall after only three turns so that the Austrians could withdraw. The Prussians were also battered so could not pursue, giving both armies the chance to rest and recuperate. There was also little contextual feel to the rules, thus I am continuing the campaign with Honours of War instead as they are specifically written for the European theatre of the SYW.

An Austrian big gun from my latest 10mm game - still in progress

The artist formerly known as Dour Puritan!

FierceKitty

1) What ruleset did you use in your last game? - Ball and Bayonette
2) What armies were confronted? - Austrian v Prussian SYW
3) Did you feel comfortable with the ruleset? - Yes
4) and... was this the first time you used this ruleset? - No
5) How many players were in the game? - Two; Lee had the Prussians
6) What went well? - Lee had terrible artillery rolls, and my musketry was better than I expected; the effect added up.
7) What could have been improved? - A unit of cuirassiers got bogged down and slowly cut to bits by some Prussian dragoons, who were lucky and took out a general early in the fight.
I don't drink coffee to wake up. I wake up to drink coffee.

Steve J

1) What ruleset did you use in your last game? - Rebels & Patriots
2) What Armies were confronted? - Moravia vs Ruthenia
3) Did you feel comfortable with the ruleset? - Very
4) and... was this the first time you used this ruleset? - No
5) How many players were in the game? - Solo
6) What went well? - The Ruthenian plan came together well and the terrain favoured them too. Also a devastating volley won them the game.
7) What could have been improved? - Both sides had some very bad morale rolls, which led to units routing off the table.