All Things Zombie

Opening the box on another great game.

     Paul and I broke open a new game the other day, All Things Zombie published by Lock and Load Games.  Now it might be a little misleading to say that this is a new game.  It was originally conceived as a tabletop miniatures game and was produced by Two Hour Wargames.  We got in a couple of plays of that version but the terrain production as well as the amount of zombies that must be painted made it kind of a cumbersome game.  More times than not setup was longer than the actual gameplay.  That is why I was so jazzed for this iteration of the zombie game, the hex and chit version.  This game was really easy to setup out of the box and a quick run through of the rules and we were playing in no time.  We played the cooperative mode and the zombies are still dangerous to tackle even though they are being mindlessly controlled by the rules.  We played three scenarios and each featured a different goal or victory condition.  In the first we had to search a number of buildings to find a weapon.  After the weapon was found we could escape off a board edge for victory.  The second scenario saw us trying to survive for fifteen rounds as 2-12 zombies entered the board every turn.  The last scenario had us checking out a certain number of building within twenty turns before being able to escape the board.  

Surviving the horde.

     This game is a lot of fun as you get to control a "star" and several of their friends in order to survive the zombie horde.  Each character comes with a special trait or power that can help your survival so the challenge is how to work all the characters together for the common good.  The star has some special rules that make them a little bit more durable and they can also help to motivate other characters.  The mechanics of the game works almost the same as the tabletop version of the game so if you know how to play that you will easily adapt to this.  To be totally honest I think that this version of the game is a little bit more streamlined and easy to understand, especially since the rules are laid out in a way that allows easy understanding.  Although I did notice a couple of terms that were used interchangeably that might confuse some people.

Combat Commander Plays

Assaulting from the beach.  The Americans have driven the Germans back from the left flank.

     Recently I have gotten in a couple games of Combat Commander (Normandy battlepack.)  After the assault on Pont Du Hoc gun emplacements we played a beach scenario with me playing the role of the United States.  The idea was to move inland from the beach and capture a series of communiction trenches studded with bunkers and foxholes.  The second scenario took place in the bocage country after the beach with victory coming from surrender of your opponent or exit points by moving off a designated map edge.  In both games the Americans were triumphant but only with a little bit of luck.  I can understand why some people complain that there is too much luck in the game.
     For example:  In the second match in the bocage, the Americans tried to move across a road, through bocage and into a field.  They were having no success and getting hosed down by the Germans and the casualties were mounting fast, approaching the surrender level.  During one of the defense rolls the Americans get the reinforcement event and pick the 155mm radio.  At this point the momentum radically changes and the Americans start calling fire down on the Germans with devastating effect.  Add the radio to the fact that the American's had a leader that could activate like a hero so he was calling multiple Artillery Request orders on the same turn.  The whole lynchpin of that episode was a random event card....
     Continued thoughts about Combat Commander:  1.) If you are attacking you must have a general plan.  This forces you to cycle through cards until you have what you need to put the plan into action.  For instance, if I want to move a mass of troops forward I like to have a Move order, a Recover order and maybe an Assault Fire action in my hand.  I don't like to move guys into or across enemy firelanes unless I have a Recover order in my hand because I always get gunned down.  2.) Tactical flexibility.  Like Kenny said, "You have to know when to hold 'em.."  Sometimes if you aren't getting the cards you want you must formulate a plan around what you have.  This can put your troops in a tight spot with fewer options but there are times when you just have to keep your troops moving rather than hunkering down under a withering barrage of bullets.  Hand management is huge in this game.
     I continue to find this game intriguing and coming back for more.  I think this game is getting close to surpassing WARMACHINE in plays.  I also like it because you can pull it off the shelf and get to playing and 15 minutes rather than the large setup of WARMACHINE and the transport of all the models.

Men of Iron

     Men of Iron  by GMT was the next wargame on our list.  After delving into Warriors of God I was ready for another challenge to my personal wargaming sensibilities.  Men of Iron did not disappoint.  The game started with the Flemish defending against the French.  Set-up was pre-determined by the scenario and it had a couple of small rules variation specific to the set-up, such as the French knights could be pulled down if taking a negative result while being in a ditch.  I wasn't really sure about what I was supposed to do so I ended up passing for the first couple of rounds waiting for the French to come into my troops. This was a big mistake that will be explained later.  

The beginning...

     The French finally gather the stones to come in on the Flemish.  My opponent does fairly well with his pikemen and crossbow troops and pops a hole in my defensive line.  This is the point where I should have had my reserve troops in position to plug the hole and repel the attackers.  Instead I reacted too late and then had traffic control problems in trying to bring my reserves to bear.  I also had the problem of boxing in some of my troops so that they could not move back in a retreat on negative combat results.  When you can't flee you are defeated!  Ouch!  That hurt and threatened the stability of my line.

It is the Towers fault!

     From there he tried to exploit my weakness, which he did readily and caused a lot of my troops to retire.  This has the effect of removing chits from the immediate battle and placing them next to the banner, which is in the backfield.  This effect means that the troops have to spend an activation getting back into order before they can be utilized by the commander.  I don't think that I really had a chance to rally my troops in this game so they where basically done.  As he broke through the line he shifted troops to fill in the gap and keep pressing the advantage.  It seemed like there was nothing I could do, especially since my dice rolling was horrible!  I blame it on the dice tower (along with my very poor luck.)  After that all that was left to do was exploit my turned back and weakened defense and it was all over.

The End is near!

     Thoughts: 1.) The activation of your units revolves around the leaders and their initiative value.  To activate leaders after the first requires a die roll of less than the commander's rating on a d10.  Before your opponent rolls for activation you can "seize" it my rolling under the commander's rating.  It seems like most of my "seized" initiative rolls failed, thus giving Paul a free activation with one leader.  This hurt big time as I kept on giving him initiative and a free activation from my failed seizures.  It allowed his troops to just continue to steamroller over mine.  2.) Troop placement and facing are also a big deal, allowing them to be attacked from the front, flank or rear.  When you lose the activation and someone gets a charge on your flank your dudes are going down quick!  3.) The other thing I neglected was pre-positioning my troops when I saw that he was going to make a push on one side.  I should have adjusted my troops way before he got to my line so that my reserves could be in position for a counter-attack.  This I couldn't foresee though because I wasn't sure how my troops would retreat or retire from the battle.  This is something to think about next time.  4.) The chits.  These things are small and are a little bit fiddly especially when they are under a shield wall marker.  I just couldn't remember which value troops where there so I might have neglected to get them into battle rather than a weaker complement of troops.
     This a fairly good game with a lot to think about tactic-wise.  At first, I didn't want to play again but that was just the tears of defeat clouding my thinking.  I would just want to go into the next game a little bit more deliberately than I did the first play.  Now that I know the capability of the troops types and the way that terrain works I would play differently next time.

Warriors of God

Still reeling from a great World Cup! Visions of the beautiful game still fill my head but it is time to get back to wargaming. Paul and I decided to dip our feet a little further into the shimmering depth of hex and chit gaming by pulling out Warriors of God by Multi-Man Publishing, a member of their International Game Series. This game, created by Makoto Nakajima and Adam Starkweather, is of low complexity with a play time of about 2 hours (if you are conversant in the rules.) It attempts to simulate the Hundred Years War between the French and the English. The rules are 16 pages that are clear and well laid out. It only took me an evening to read the rules and follow along with the examples before I felt as though I had a good grasp of the important concepts. The components and map are high quality and sturdy but I would still recommend using a piece of plexiglass over the map to help keep it flat so you don't upset the counters during play. The game uses a number of battle dice (d6) to determine the outcome of battle. Not a lot of die modifiers to deal with so combat was fairly straight forward and clear. The game uses an impulse system and initiative to determine who goes when. Not hard to understand at all.

To the right is an example of one turn from the game. I don't quite

remember at what turn but this photo was taken but it gives a good example of what the map territories look like and a peek at the turn chart laid out on top. In this game leaders are THE thing, without them your troops will evaporate into the hinterlands with nary a whiff back. Each game turn is equal to 10 years so you can't count on leaders being around for more than about five turns so it is helpful to continue to look ahead to see what leaders are coming up in the following turns and position your existing leaders and troops in such a way as to allow the new leaders to enter the board and take command of troops as leaders can die from old age, battle or taken from the game by being captured.

This is basically an area control game where victory points are awarded for control of territories and captured leaders. The first to 30 (or 35) points is the winner. Territories have different victory point values which are informed by the roman numerals in the territories. The roman numerals do double duty as they also indicate the number of troops that can be raised from that area. The main type of troop is standard infantry but there is also knights, gunners and longbowmen but these are restricted in number, unlike the foot soldiers. Each turn more leaders enter the board and placement of them is critical especially if you have unassigned troops on the map. Each side has their own leaders but there are also unaligned leaders that can be used by either side. The assignment of the unaligned leaders is based on who didn't have initiative as they get first choice of any new, unaligned leaders.

Movement is simple enough and easy to understand and your troops can get around the board fairly easy. Stacking is allowed and each leader can command a number of troops corresponding differing numbers of stars on the leaders chit. Basically, they vary from commanding three to nine troops. Overall pretty simple mechanics that don't take a lot of page turning to apply, whether in movement, combat or game turns.

We started the game and within the first couple of turns the French were taking great expanses of the countryside due to fantastic dice rolls. The same couldn't be said of the English as there wasn't many options for movement and some terrible dice rolling. Due to the amount of territory controlled by the French their buildup of troops was quick and efficient unlike the English. The other thing that skewed the game is that the French kept getting the initiative and that is huge when it comes down to the number of leaders and troops that you can move. Basically if you win the initiative you get to move first and last in that turn. Kind of a big deal if you have a lot of troops to move. It also allows you to react more efficiently to your opponents movements or to move troops as a feint. In addition to the French's domination of the continent they were blessed with some good combat results that rocked the English not to mention the loss of the English king and no one to pick up the royal banner among the English leaders. In the end it came down to the French king taking a bunch of troops and knights as well as another leader with his compliment of troops invading England from Normandy and wiping out the English royal line. The victory point disparity was giant.

Couple of thoughts: There is a need to really plan ahead in this game. Leaders come and go and you need to be positioned to take advantage of their deaths or capture. The English really need a foothold in the continent early in the game or there is no way they can thwart the French land-lust. The English also need to really figure out how to leverage their longbowmen as they can make a huge difference in battle. Overall a fun game and one that I would like to revisit sometime soon. For those who are looking for a historical reenactment this might not be the game for you as the low complexity doesn't really allow for much granularity and it might seem a little simple. It was good for me to play this game especially as it gives me another perspective on wargaming and a different mode of play from my previous experiences.

Can you tell who Paul was representing?

Back in Action

Okay, now that the World Cup is over I can get back to this blog and gaming. The last month has only seen me play a couple of games and dab some paint on one miniature.
A couple of days ago I played another game of Combat Commander (Normandy battlepack.) This scenario saw the Americans trying to take the Pont du Hoc gun batteries. They were tasked with climbing the cliff and taking over six different bunkers. A daunting task as they could only advance up the cliff faces or get up with a special rule at the end of the time advance sequence. The Germans (who I played) were set up on the top of the cliff hunkered down in the bunkers with plenty of light and heavy machineguns as well as medium mortars. The Americans did well the first couple of turns as they got a goodly amount of leaders and troops up the cliff and successfully assaulted a bunker to establish a foothold. After that it was all downhill. They couldn't seem to get anything going and really felt the dearth of smoke grenade action and move orders. A couple of lucky white phosphorous events got some smoke out but by then there was a serious traffic control problem at the top of the cliff as the Germans gunned down American troops with impunity. From there the game quickly ended after victory points started adding up and time advanced to sudden death during round ten.
A good game for the Germans with a hint of payback from the last time that we played the map. Last time the Americans had a textbook, cliff-scaling, German-smashing scenario where most everything went their way.

Final thoughts on this scenario: Germans need to get their leaders up in the bunkers as soon as possible to be able to direct fire from the mortars and machineguns. They also must be able to move troops around quickly in order to respond to the Americans stacking up on one side of the map. The Americans need to get up the cliff as soon as possible and start tossing enough smoke so that at least some will remain on the map after a time advance. This is all important as it allows the Americans to move past the first captured bunker and attempt to assault or bypass the remaining bunkers to gain victory points. I think that spreading the American troops along both cliffs would have the greater effect of splitting the concentration of fire from the Germans across two fronts rather than loading one side down with troops and possible encountering traffic control problems when hexes become overstacked.

That game marked our 50+ play of Combat Commander and I am itching to delve into different types of hex and counter games. With that in mind I asked Paul to pick out a new game to play for our next session and he picked Warriors of God by Multi-Man Publishing. This looks to be a tasty little game that relies on area control and leans heavily on the use of leaders. Simple little rulebook that is well laid out and rules that don't look that hard to learn. Looking forward to it.