TWW: Persian Gulf - Finished

I finished out my standard-length (8 war turns) game of Persian Gulf tonight.

In the end, it was a NATO Substantial Victory. That seems odd, give that, at the end of the game:

- the Turks had been crushed almost entirely
- Iraq was half overrun and over 50% of its military forces were destroyed
- the Jordanian forces had been totally destroyed
- All of central Iran was controlled by the Soviets (albeit narrowly)

What bailed out NATO was aggressive counterattacking and the limited time that the Soviets had thanks to very late mobilization of the Southern Military Districts. That and the fact that only oil fields and forcing surrenders really helps, and the Soviets couldn't force anyone to surrender. They couldn't get to the gulf, either, thanks to the USMC seizing all of the ports. In the end, the Soviets were in a solid position but ran out of time.

I'll post pictures tomorrow if I can, edited back into this post. I have a lot of cleanup to do, since I don't want to just pour everything back into the box. Overall, it was a very satisfying game. If I play another in the series, it'll likely be Southern Front (which might be my favorite) or Artic Front (which is my least favorite, so I think I need to give it another chance.) More likely, I'll work up a game of Fire in the Lake, instead, or dust off Victory in Europe and finally give that a go. But that's for another time.

Random Thoughts & Links for 9/6/2024

- Next Felltower is the Sunday after this coming Sunday.

- CRPG Addict finally got to Betrayal At Krondor, which I really enjoyed.

- Wealth in GURPS, in a long and detailed look, and a specific campaign's set of rules.

- B/X Procedural Flowcharts. Neat!

- Getting rid of Weapon Master? I won't for Felltower, but I'd run a game without it.

- This kind of thing reminds me of Felltower - more than once my players have realized that, well, maybe they're the bad guys. But like these players, they got over it when they found loot and rationalizations for murder.

"Losses: moral/ethical high ground?" - I love it.

Sometimes I get a little nostalgic for the days when I ran a game and no one killed anyone - deliberately, not just because they didn't find someone to kill.

- My TWW: Persian Gulf game has taken an interesting turn. Nuclear escalation allowed the US to leverage its superior airpower to smash several key Soviet divisions with nuclear weapons, but the Soviet's 3rd wave reservists have flooded the map. A US counterattack has started to push into central Iran, but a massive wave of Soviet divisions - like 15-16 of them - is pushing back the last of the Turks and is moving on Iraq. It should be a tough two turns to finish the game out - the Soviets have to hold on to central Iran or lose a lot of VPs, but they can make up for the loss by crushing Iraq. But is there time? We'll see.

Random Thoughts & Links for 8/30/2024

It's the end of another week.

- Delta has some Star Frontiers minis he's made from molds. You know how much I love Sathar!

- This is an interesting take on treasure - per hoard, not per gp.

- Marc Miller has plans for Traveller to continue after he dies.

- My playthrough of Persian Gulf continues. Things have gone bad for the US and its allies, despite the Soviet's inability to roll well on the Combat Results Table. There are just too many of them, and some poor choices cost the US some time and space. Turkey is overrun and its last units are getting mauled. Iraq looks to be next. Jordan's force in Iran was expelled from the city they held, and now can't break back through to the mountains. The Kurds are largely eliminated, and the rebellious Iranian army units - that sides with the US - are all destroyed. The US holds the swamps and oil fields around As-Basra and Iraq, and that's about it. Poor rolls on maintenance have meant the US can't keep the B-52s rolling week after week, and through sheer numbers the Soviets are contesting the air a bit now. I'll play it out, but it's looking bad . . . the US has almost nothing else coming (a few reservists in Iraq, that's all) and the Soviets have another 10 divisions coming and some units a week or two later. They're all poor quality units (Mig-19s, for goodness sake, and 3rd-rate reservists) but there are a lot of them. The US needs nuclear escalation to the next level for air-delivered tactical nukes, but unless that comes soon it won't change anything.

Still fun, but man, I forgot how hard it is to stem a wildly aggressive Soviet player with so few units. If you don't get deep into Iran fast enough to sieze the mountain passes, you're toast.

TWW: Persian Gulf update

I've played a few more turns of Frank Chadwick's Third World War series game, Persian Gulf.

It's been a hot mess.

At the moment, we're just starting Pact First Impulse for War Turn 4.*

- the conflict went nuclear as fast as possible. On the end of War Turn 1. It narrowly avoided going from level 1 to level 2 last turn. All of this benefits the Pact, since Soviet forces get 2:1 on artillery/short range tactical nukes.

- the Pact luck on airpower kept up for 2 more weeks (turns). The RDF B-52 wing was out with maintenance issues for 2 weeks. They shot down the precious A-10s and turned about the AV-8Bs once as well. Severely weather kept the Western Asian theatre out of threat from NATO airpower.

- The Syrians got massacred. Their entire expeditionary force was wiped out after a severe brusing with the Iraqis. They tried to limp home but the Turks crushed them.

- The US 24th ID (real world - become the 4th ID) and a tank bridge and a few assorted units rushed a Soviet force and mauled them badly . . . but when the conflict went nuclear, they suffered from the exchanges. The 4th ID and attacked armored brigade barely escaped destruction, and were mauled badly enough to need to flee to the coast and to get evacuated to Saudi Arabia (well, Bahrain anyway) for reconstituion. In game terms, they have proficiency 7 and took 6 disruptions each. Ouch.

- The Soviet's first wave of reinforcements arrived while the Turks were finishing off the Syrians. Looking at the board, I chose a different approach. In the past, I'd used them to backstop my Iran positions and try to finish off American units. This time, Turkey seemed vulnerable. So I had them rush Turkey . . . and it worked. They smoked most of the defenses and are now debauching into northern Iraq.

- The US had to back off, the Jordanians are surrounded in Iran in Kurdistan, the Kurds have been mauled, the Turks are mauled, and there is little left of the rebel centrist Iranian army.

- But then, the worm turned a bit. A Soviet gambit to finish off the 24th ID cost them a Motor-Rifle Division (in NATO parlance, a mechanized division) . . . in fact thei best one (it was 9-9-6, when front line units in Germany are 10-9-6 and most on the flanks are 7-7-5). And then weather cleared over Western Asia, the B-52s were back in action . . . and turn 4 began.

- The US was able to, finally, use the B-52s for deep strike missions, and went after logistical depots. The B-52s inflicted 46 brigades worth of unsupplied markers in one massive strike. The Soviets had 43 brigades in theatre. So suddenly, the Pact units whooping it up and chasing the mauled RDF to the coast are unsupplied. There aren't remotely enough units to deprive to change this much (using emergency supply redirection to keep the key units in supply), but we'll see. If the US can keep this up, it might change the war. If not, this is a brief respite before the Soviets finish off the rebel units in Iran and crush most if not all of Iraq. We'll see.



* Turns are interesting. Once you do some preliminaries, you get Pact First Impulse, a second phase for Pact units not in a ZOC, then a NATO Reserve Impulse for units not in a ZOC, then a Pact Second Impulse and second phase, then two NATO phases. It's all based on doctrinal assumptions about how both sides make war. Potentially, a Pact unit can move 4x and recover damage 2x; a NATO unit 3x and 3x. Usually it's less thanks to ZOCs (zones of control) and movement.

TWW: Persian Gulf update

I decided after all to keep playing TWW: Persian Gulf as is.

I probably needn't have worried too much about the Soviets. They've steamrolled their way south, demolishing the few rebel units in their path and seizing a few important locations along the way. They managed to get as far as seizing Abadan and Shiraz. They had phenomenal luck with air defenses, and bad luck with ground attacks. The US tried to stop their steamroll with a B52 strike - which a lucky "6" aborted, and with an F-16 attack (halved by AA). Ground fire also aborted an A-10 deployment against one attack. Only some USMC AV-8Bs (Harriers) managed to get useful ground support in. But low rolls on the attacks meant they dealt damage but suffered disruptions across the board. Same with a Syrian attack on Iraqi units, which did nothing but bruise everyone.

However, the US RDF has landed and struck back. The first direct US vs. USSR fighting on the ground was a counterattack on Abadan. The Soviets held it with two MRDs (Motorized Rifle Divisions, which are mechanized infantry). The US counterattacked with the 82nd Airborne (airborne infantry), a helicopter brigade, the 9th Light Mechanized Division (light motorized, a division that never came to be as the game envisioned it), and some Iraqi units - some Revolutionary Guard tanks plus regular infantry and armored. The MRDs were forced to retreat and disrupted heavily passing through ZOCs on their way out. A Jordanian expeditionary force took Bakhtaran with some light Kurdish help. And the Iraqis counterattacked the Syrians and achieved as much as the Syrians had - mutual bruising, with the Iraqi suffering a lot of units damaged to two Syrian units banged up. Still, they're fixed in play with the Turks nearby . . . not that they can coordinate attacks as they're rival nations.

And the Iranian army, fighting on both sides, has suffered about 50% of so casualties in effective units. Ouch. The IRG took losses, too, but they can recruit replacements.

FWIW, if you're familiar with the game, I am using the Chemical Warfare rules, which inflicts extra damage on non-NBC equipped troops and reduces damage if one side doesn't have CW and the other does. It's a fun rule that makes the minor powers really minor, and what might be a soft target a bit harder when they'll use nerve gas against your unsuited troops.

The aborted A-10 mission was a godsend to the Soviets because they provide a 4-column shift in odds. Your 6-1 attack becomes 2-1, for example, and 3-1 becomes 1-2 (1.5-1 is a column). It stayed 6-1. And aborting that B52 strike was potentially short-term game-shifting. Most air units have a rating for air-to-air, ground attack, and strike ranging from 0-5. The Tu-96 Blackjacks have a 6. Otherwise, the heaviest strike wings have a 5. The B52? 10. That's enough to reliably inflict 2-3 disruptions on every unit struck, and potentially 10. The elite of the elite are eliminated with 9 disruptions, and most US units have 7, 8 for the elite, and Soviets 5, 6 or 7 for the elite. Oh, and it slows movement. No worries, AA got the mission nullified. It could have wrecked two soviet divisions right next to US forces that could counterattack . . . instead, nothing at all.

Now it's War Turn 1. I'll pick up there next time.

Overall, my strategy for the Soviets has been damn the torpedoes full speed ahead. I'll spend units like bullets if I have to in order to take cities for the victory points, and I'll need a big whack of them and some luck in the air war to crush the RDF. But the US doesn't get a lot of reinforcements, so do I slow it down and let the reinforcing armies roll up and make a big final push with everyone? I'm not sure. We'll see what it looks like after the Turks enter the war and if the Syrians can survive.

Random Thoughts & Links for 8/2/24

It's the end of the week, which means random stuff too small for its own post.

- Got 12 minutes? Then you can hear about how DF1 Monster's Leaping Leeches aren't fiction, but fact.

Leaping Leeches!

- I've played 9 turns of Third World War: Persian Gulf. So far . . . I'm a little underwhelmed. I chose to randomize the diplomacy cards for the pre-war phase using an optional rule. The results were . . . interesting, for sure. The usual suspects went Pact - Syria, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Iranian Communist Party. The US got pretty much everyone else - the Saudis, Iraq, the Kurds, Jordan, Israel, the majority of the Iranian Army during a revolt. All fine. But because the diplomacy cards to alert the military forces (Alert the RDF for US/NATO, Mobilize the Southern Military Districts for the USSR) are held to the end, nothing much has happened. Some jockeying and movement, but no actual fighting, no air war, nothing. Everyone is just primed to go. And now that the end phase of diplomacy is coming, the US has the advantage. The RDF is small but powerful and arrives quickly. The Soviet reinforcements arrive slowly (6 weeks later!) and aren't as powerful. When I used to play face to face, generally as soon as someone could, they'd start the call up. Once things got along a bit soemone would intervene in Iran and the other side would invade, or vice-versa. You'd have fighting breaking out in Iran, followed by US/USSR conflict for a few weeks, and then you'd pull the trigger on general mobilization and war. Now . . . there is going to be 1-2 weeks of pre-war fighting before mobilization, and the Soviets will receive their main reservists before the ones called up by the special mobilization, which is both odd and kneecaps their ability to steamroll Iran (or in this case, the rebel army units in Iran.) They only have 8 weeks of war turns before the game automatically ends, so then what? It's really not that dynamic of an environment.

So I'm deciding between playing it out, and restarting, but allowing a free swap-in of the Alert/Mobilize cards as soon as they apply, and then go back to prewar diplomacy, allowing only for an Invade/Intervene swap-in as appropriate.

We'll see . . .

- Lots of grail history in the preface to this game discussion here - the Quest for the Holy Grail.

- This is me, explaining to my players why the tough monster placed to stop them isn't loaded with loot.

OOTS 1306 Out of Pocket

Random Thoughts & Links for 7/26/24

So, I'm back from my summer travels.

- I have a bit of time and space to play a wargame. I'm 99% sure it'll be Third World War: Persian Gulf by Frank Chadwick. It takes a lot of space, though, and my table might be a little small. Iran and Iraq are really big . . .

- I don't need this, but a complete set of all four Third World War games as one monster game would have been exactly what I needed when I was replacing my original worn-out four game set.

The Third World War

Just this map alone is worth it, since Arctic Front's map doesn't mesh well with the others.

- Game is Sunday. A reduced group, but enough gamers to play, I think.

- Oh, and while fiction isn't something I usually talk about, yet another of my former gamers is an author. andi lai jones, known for his little fish logo on illustrations (like Sid!) - wrote a book, The Surreal Estate Agent. I finally had a chance to read it. It's pretty entertaining, especially if you like explicit gaming and comic references. So I think we've got two fiction writers and like 6 or 7 game book authors in my (loosely defined) gaming group. Maybe more if you count Ryan.

Fantasy General: Grinding Out a Win

I have resumed playing Fantasy General as General Marcus.

I think I have two battles left. My current one should put me just outside the Shadowlord's fortress. There is a little side penninsula I ignored, which I'm hoping I can keep on ignoring. In video games, though, one never knows. In WWII the Allies just encircled those "fortress" cities the Nazis set up in France and left them until the war ended. In video games, you might have to clear them before you're allowed to attack the main fortress.

The battle before the last, then, is going on. It's nasty. Rough terrain, spread out objectives, and the enemy has lots of high-experience sky hunters (fighters) and seemingly endless numbers of mechanical infantry units (Mechanus) and cavalry (Rolling Thunder.) They're brutal to take out, and they're backed by Shadow Warriors and Monks of Meo in large numbers. It's been a slog and cost me a lot of pain and I'm not even a quarter done.

I'm enjoying it despite the title - it's a slog, it's a grind. But it's good. It shouldn't be easy. My tactics, though, still work - rush in mobs of Sky Hunters to take out all the units I can easily demolish, hound the wounded, and then let my combined follow-on forces mob the remainder. It's just slow.

I'm interested to see how this wraps up. I enjoy the game in spurts. This is one of those spurts. I hope to finish it this week!

Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865)

I broke down and got Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865) when it went on sale for Black Friday at GOG.

I fired it up and played around a bit.

- it's really attractive

- the default font is tiny. I was sitting about 15" from my 15" laptop and needed to squint

- the tutorial is pretty helpful

- this is pretty much the game I wanted when I was sitting around playing SSI wargames like Antietam and Gettysburg: the Turning Point.

- I'm still concerned about the A.I., since I'd rather play as the Union than the Confederacy and I think a solid A.I. is needed to make that fair.

- this is going to suck hours and hours out of my life, help!

Just kidding, don't help. I'm reserving play for when I have a bit of time this weekend. I do have some other goals besides winning the Civil War for Mr. Lincoln. But I will spare some time to play and post about it!

Fantasy General comments

I was able to get through my tough fight in Fantasy General, and I got my combat groove back. It's a pretty simple game.

It's a good game, but I find with the turn limits given, a lot of units become more marginal. My main killers are Sky Hunters, Heavy Infantry, and Light Infantry, pretty much in that order. I use a mix of everything, but cavalry are useful for ranging around but tend to get mauled by infantry when attacked instead of attacking. Bombardiers are helpful, but they're too vulnerable to enemy Sky Hunters. Archers are great in a support role, but light infantry are faster and heavies can use Forced March and quickly outpace them. You can't just advance in a big wall of infantry backed by archers, in my experience. Healers are so useful as support troops that I don't upgrade wizards past that level because the higher level types attack but can't heal . . . and healing battered units is a good way to keep the pace of an offensive without missing a few turns getting away from the enemy, resting, and then moving back.

I'm enjoying it but I feel like I could probably do just as well with a force more centered on just a few unit types.

I'm rolling through the campaign now, though, after getting past coming back to the game in the middle of a large, vicious battle with a tight time limit. I paid a price in a few units to win that but now I'm rolling solidly now.

Panzer Blitz playthrough video - how I'll learn

Here is how I'll learn to play Panzer Blitz:


Seems like a good way to go. Watch and play along. 40 minutes seems long but it's less time than I'd expect to spend on turn 1 by myself fumbling through the rulebooks.

Panzer Blitz rules - thank goodness for the internet

A ways back, I purchased Panzer Blitz off of eBay. I didn't read the auction really closely, clearly. It was complete, all components included . . . except the rules of play.

Thanks to this site, I was able to get them:

Imaginative Strategist

I'm not 100% certain about their authorization to publish the rules . . . but I'd like to give a scenario or two a go, and while I do have Panzer Leader I know the rules aren't exactly the same. I have to see if it has the same "safety in numbers" issue vs. artillery that Panzer Leader has.

Assorted Links for 7/21/2023

A few things for tonight:

- There is a Kickstarter for a 10th anniversary special edition of Castle of the Mad Archmage. And here I just finally caved and got a copy. It's revised and $20 for the PDF.

- I'm struggling through extended solo play of Fire in the Lake. It's complex. I'm thinking I need to find a good playthrough video and play along for a little bit to get the hang of it. One suggestion I've read is to play a short game and not use events, just operations, for all of the factions, to get a feel for the operations. I'm not sure which I'll do but man it's dense stuff once you are loose on your own. Still interesting, though. Partly this makes me wish I'd started with something simpler, but honestly, Andean Abyss and this one are the most interesting to me and neither is supposed to be an easy starting point.

- I've had little time for gaming or reading as I'm prepping for a big trip and working around that. That said, we're gaming Sunday, or so I hear.

Fire in the Lake - 8-turn Tutorial

I just finished the scripted portion of the Fire in the Lake tutorial.
Sorry some of the pictures are a bit unclear, I'm still getting used to the lightning in my new gaming spot.

Here is a brief look at important points to understand the game.

- There are four sides. The NVA, the VC, ARVN, and the US. Each has their own victory conditions.

- The victory conditions of your "ally" doesn't match yours. They have partial overlap - both the US and ARVN benefit from pacified, controlled provinces. The VC and NVA both benefit from occupying territory and controlling it. But they also diverge. You can't have a joint victory. And sometimes your actions to help yourself can push your ally toward victory before you.

- Most of your actions come with a cost - resources (the US and ARVN spend from the same pool, the VC and NVA have seperate pools), reduced support (VC taxes drop support but raise resources, say, while US airstrikes remove enemy units and indirectly improve control but breed hostility from the population), or opportunity. Some actions require you to expose "underground" guerilla units to accomplish them, which open you up to destruction, but staying hidden eliminates your ability to take some actions.

- Often what you do to improve your position undermines your ally - the NVA can convert VC to NVA, the US can force ARVN to spend resources and take actions, and so on.

- There is very little randomness to actions. You roll for effects sometimes, but the core effect generally just works.

- The game is card driven, and acting costs you the chance to something the next turn, often a chance at a good card. You can see the next card coming and try to plan accordingly. Basically only two factions get to act or pass on a given turn. Going makes you ineligible the next turn, unless there is a coup.

- There are a series of Coup cards, which force victory checks and reset the game's rhythm.

In country:

I'm still in Saigon. So are 1 US base, 2 US troops, 2 ARVN troops, and 3 ARVN Police. The area is under COIN (counter-insurgency) control, with passive support from the population of 6. You can see VC and NVA (blue and red, respectively) out provinces.

I Corps becomes a battleground. The NVA infiltrated in 6 units of guerillas. Airstrikes and reinforcements would reduce this down. The province is under NVA control because they outnumber everyone else there - including the VC, importantly.

You can see Hue, the cirle overlapping the province. It's full of US troops, ARVN, ARVN police, and one VC unit that just caused a terror event.

I'm still having trouble recognizing the place names . . . that'll come. Hue, Saigon, Laos . . . those are easy. But Quang Nam vs Quang Ti vs. Quang Duc . . . tougher. I have to search the map until I find them.

Here are a couple of cards - the left is the current, and the VC would use it to terrorize Hue. The right is the next card. At the top is the order of selection, telling you which of the eligible factions goes in what order that turn.

Overall impression?

I like the game. There are a lot of rules, but few come into play any given turn. Turns aren't the slog they'd appear - you are limited in what you can do, and you don't act every turn. You need to plan ahead but you don't get too much of a glimpse at what's coming. I had fun during the tutorial and I'm curious how I'll do playing a faction "against" non-player factions run according to a flow chart. For now, I'll play a short game or two playing all sides just to get familiar with what I'm doing before I try to play a single faction to win.

Fire in the Lake setup in progress

Table is ready, game is out, and the board is down flat.

I should be able to start play Wednesday.

I have the card set up for the tutorial. I just need to put down all of the wooden bits. I'm quite pleased to have gotten this far. All of that waiting and now I've got a week and a table and I plan to make the best use of it I can.

Fire in the Lake . . . soonish

I finally have a table to play Fire on the Lake.

I have the space.

I do not yet have the table in the space, due to some ongoing renovation projects.

But I have dug out my copy of the rules and I've begun to give them a solid re-read, and I expect to get the game set up to play in a week or so. I have time for a short playthrough to get started. I'm excited . . . I've been wanting to play this game since I read up on it and started to really dig into the political state of the area during the war.

It's getting closer!

Random Thoughts & Links for 5/12/2023

Friday thoughts & links:

- I spent a chunk of time reading this AAR for Grand Tactician: The Civil War.

My concern with that AAR, and some others I've seen, is that the AI is:

- strategically aggressive

- tactically stupid

- and quickly and decisively focused entirely on maximizing its military strength at all costs

The three means the Confederacy launches endless attacks into the Union right from the word go, ready or not. But it's not hard to defeat it on the battle map because it makes a lot of basic mistakes (piecemeal attacks, unsupported artillery, ignoring supply concerns.) And that the game turns quickly - immediately, even - into 1863-4 style battles between large armies enabled by a rapid rush to conscription.

Historically, it would be more like:

- strategically concerned with defense more than offense

- tactically brilliant

- unable to focus too much on conscription or large army size due to political weakness by the central government and a weakness in access to arms.

The second is what I'd like to play, the first seems to be what I'll get. But finding very recent AARs and videos has been tricky - perhaps these have been ironed out in the latest patches. It's such a tempting game . . . but if I'll have to play the South to even have a fun game of it and even then the enemy will just march into my guns to die nonstop from the first day of the war until the last . . . I'm not sure I'm up for that. I don't mind a total war grind in 1864-5 but in 1861? Everyone still thought they'd be the next Napoleon and win a field victory and send their 90-day volunteers home.

So I'm undecided. I'd love to hear more about any AI updates that have come along.

- SJG has a kickstarter for POD GURPS books. $1 to get in, pick the books you want to POD in the add-ons, POD through DriveThruRPG.

- FASA's Doctor Who adventures. I owned none of them.

- DIY Bamboo Men minis! Be thankful I didn't have minis like these during the Forest Gate episodes! Just saying, it would have gotten uglier.

- Next Felltower game is 5/21 as far as I know.

- More work done on the secret writing project, but this time by my co-author.

War in the East & operating vs. playing a game

I found the Three Moves Ahead podcast thanks to a link over at ACOUP. They mentioned "War in the East" so I found the episode where they discuss it.

Here is the link:

Three Moves Ahead: War in the East

One criticism of the game by the podcasters was that in a way you operate the game, rather than play it. In other words, much of what's going on in combat resolution is effectively a black box - it's hard to gauge the odds and the possible results. So you don't so much play the game as move the pieces around, try things, and see what happens. In other words, operate the interface.

I don't think that's entirely fair (or that my summation really does the argument justice.) But I can see where it comes from.

In a way, I like that about War in the East. It's resolving individual tank-on-tank attacks, company assaults, artillery bombing of units, and so on. You can turn the highest level of detail on and watch combat take place shot by shot (don't, it takes forever.) But you don't have to do it all. You can make an educated guess if you two Soviet infantry corps and two infantry divisions backed by front artillery is enough to prise a German division out of its fortifications behind a minor river . . . but you could save the game and play that fight out 10 times and get 10 different calculations of effective attack strength/results/etc. as random factors come into play.

And I like that. I like that it's not just some math-grinding of putting X units vs. Y units and getting Z effect 100% of the time. Or even 50% of the time. I like it when I put a single division a little too far forward and it gets mauled, or I put it forward and against all odds it holds out. The AI makes better guesses about what will work than I do, but that's fine - I make better decisions overall. I feel a lot more like STAVKA or O.K.H. when I order a front to attack, move it into place, and then sigh because they couldn't get the job done. Yet I still have enough control to feel like I'm making the good stuff happen - encirclements, reinforcing success and starving failure, implementing my own strategy and operational choices.

It was a good listen - especially on the pricing, actually. But this is what made me fire up WiTE while I was listening and play it. It's because I like the uncertainty and the level of decision making. Thought provoking stuff.

Fire in the Lake-sized table acquired. Kinda.

Good news - I have a table space enough the size of South Vietnam . . . in Fire in the Lake!

Bad news - it's not actually my table. I may have to negotiate for use.

But it's a step forward. Onward to victory!

Fire in the Lake Tutorial setup

I'm starting to work on playing Fire in the Lake.

The issue is logistics. Amateur wargamers talk about tactics, grognard wargamers talk about logistics. Like, as in . . . how do I do this?

The map is 34" x 22" and shows all of South Vietnam and the bordering provinces of Laos and Cambodia, too. It leaves me a bit of an issue - I need some room to play. I don't intend to leave this on the floor, but I don't have a table quite big enough that isn't already in use for something else. The others are a bit small. The card table is a no-go.

Learning how to play involves a move-by-move tutorial. The rules themselves are very slender, but learning how to apply them will take some time. It's easier to follow along on the tutorial. It's just a matter of space.

So tonight is all game prep - punching the counters, sorting them, arranging the cards per the tutorial. I'm hoping to figure out space this week to start playing solo. The game is gorgeous, the topic interesting, and the concept behind the COIN series is fascinating.

Hmmm . . . maybe those two little end tables with some tape to make sure they don't slide apart . . .