GMT The Spanish Civil War (PBF) - “Glory of war, indeed!"

I suspect the sudden death condition is there to convince the Republican player to take chances during the war of columns, I suppose a lot of the playtesting went along a more historical line of play.

You’re probably close on that. The latest version of the Playbook and rules had a change in the rules (10 City/Town points for sudden death) when it was previously 4 Towns/Cities. It looks like something they kept tweaking and tweaking even after release. I don’t have a problem with the rule per se, but it assumes certain things. For instance in the Player’s guide it advises the Nationalist to Rail colonial units to the Northern cities/towns to help hold them. How do you do that if you are busy guarding a Railroad and can’t connect the Northern Zone to your Southern Arrivals? You really can’t get daring with the Army of Africa against aggressive Republican Play until October earliest. You just don’t have the stuff to do it with. @Juan_Raigada expressed the opinion to me that they should merely allow Nationalist Ultimate Supply be traced to a Mediterranean/Southern Atlantic Coastal Hex, as opposed to Cadiz. That would solve the issue.

In real life, weren’t the Nationalists able to get at least some supplies through Portugal?

That sudden death rule feels awfully gamey to me. Maybe it should be more like “the Republicans control X cities and the Nationalists fail to win any battles in a turn”. That way you wouldn’t have one side lose for bad morale while they’re actually winning.

Hi there. So after winning two games I also have my opinions…

First, my takeaway is similar to that of @Navaronegun, with the caveat that I think we are not that experienced players at this game and we both made mistakes. The critical issue is that I do not think the Nationalists did more or more glaring mistakes than I did this game, and that in general their play was more clever, while mine was exploitative of the rules and risky as hell.

I think a strategy like the one I ended up following might have about 75% chances of winning in a contest between serious, mildly experienced players of this game. Bear in mind I did not attack Teruel and that an Oviedo offensive like the one I launched would have had crazy options of success before turn 4 and the Nationalist air support entry. So while the Nationalist would have some knowledge that would facilitate defense in another game, I would also have knowledge that would allow me to optimize such an strategy.

I think maybe this strategy would be suicide against a really experienced player in the game, but I’m unsure. It would still certainly put pressure on the Nationalists even if not executed. Certainly had I not won sudden victory I was hosed for the rest of the game, so it’s an all or nothing approach. At least in the way I went for it (but again, it can be optimized).

That originally the sudden death rule was limited to just 4 cities and not 10ML worth of cities is mind blowing.

This game can not have been playtested much, or of it was, it was between gentlemanly players who formed tidy lines out of custom or expectations, but that did not play the game as written. The rules do not fully encourage historical play, as we have seen. This is a game about the Spanish Civil War, not about two people having tea. Cutthroat-style play is to be expected.

The other issue is that a face to face game, with less time to analyze moves, will probably be less conductive to the factor counting that led to the crushing sudden death victory. You do need to careful maneuver to get perfect odds attacks. But then again, that would be the game relying on externalities and not on design.

Now on to an analysis on what is happening with the rules:

-The supply rules are there to force the Nationalist player to play somewhat defensively and measure his attacks and air support. That’s good because otherwise the balance of forces makes it an impossible task for the Republicans. Otherwise you get the crippling attacks we saw this game (@Navaronegun was careful at first but then forgot the supply line and that almost cost him supply to the whole south). As the game progresses the Nationalist player gets more and more troops. This is important, I think, to understand (although not justify) why the rules took this shape. To keep tha game balanced but the OoB historical, the Nationalist player has to either risk and lose a lot of troops early on, or not gain a lot of space in the first year so when he becomes overwhelming we have a ticking clock before game end (a failed Nationalist victory is a Republican Victory). So we need supply rules, but the supply rules are too fickle, with only two entry points for the Nationalists. Allowing the Nationalist to open additional supply points would still slow him down (he would have to take some southern cities first) without risking a complete supply cut.

-Also supply rules regarding movement limitations mean OoS units can’t really move and you don’t really need to spend units pocketing them. That feels strange. The movement limitations make it so that units exert a sort of soft ZoC early on, and it works that way, but it has strange consequences.

-The northern supply situation is weird too. You have regular supply (and another all-or nothing point for supply control), but then you have an additional supply rule making attacks more risky there (the ammo shortages). This makes little sense and points that there probably should be just one single supply rule so that you make it easy to place the center OoS, but one that is less limiting on unit capabilities, it is as simple as taking out an unit in Galicia or even lowering its stats so that Republicans have a good chance of a supply cut there. The existence of two co-existing supply rules ruling the north points toward some kind of patch there.

-Sudden death is also important to keep things in check and tense, even though it played weirdly in our games. Again, the Nationalist become really strong later on, so there needs to be a way to put pressure outside of optimal moves early on to keep a force balance. 10ML seems very easy to attain and might have to be higher, but I think a certain specific Nationalist strategy would keep the balance at this level on a knife’s edge (more on that below). The problem is that coupled with supply issues it really allows for no mistake.

-As for how gamey the sudden death is, a game about the Spanish Civil War that follows historical reinforcements is going to have gamey victory conditions. The main victory condition is the Republicans holding to maybe 1/4th of Spain, and that’s a victory. I have no big issue with the sudden death and other victory conditions per se (for example, the Nationalist win if they take Madrid turn 7 or earlier, which they would have done if not for the Republican sudden victory triggering) except perhaps the fine tuning of the balance.

-Rules as they are, the game just forces a specific strategy on the Nationalist player. Garrison all cities with at least 4 defense factors and make it impossible for the Republican to really take more than Oviedo, Teruel and Granada without super-heavy loses. That would make the southern fight all about Cordoba and force the Republican to either lose many units trying to take an additional city or two in the north and the Nationalist to be very aggressive against Granada (thus delaying connection to the North). With the current rules it seems the best game would play along those lines. But this strategy is boring for both players, it is not obvious on first or second play and gives little options, so why have the game start so early when there’s only one optimal path?

At the end, I do not think a Republican Victory is guaranteed, but the Nationalist player can only play one specific way early on, while the Republican has many choices to react to any minor mistake the Nationalist player does, without necessarily playing better. It does require a much better player playing the Nationalist than the Republicans or, maybe, I can’t really tell, two players with a looooot of experience with the game, so we have a chess like situation with tight opening moves. But getting experience while the first games are so lopsided is hard. Right now, a fatal mistake early on can cripple the Nationalists much harder/more easily than the Republicans.

The game is fun and I like how the ruleset shifts as new units are introduced (we got just a tiny glimpse of that at the very end with the Republican conversions). But while the individual elements look good there’s something fundamentally off as to how it holds together. Ultimately it is maybe trying to do too much with medium complexity rules.

Thinking about it, it’s an East Front Scenario. One side has a chance for an early victory and then it’s a slog with little prospect of success unless both sides take it easy and then it’s just a slog.

I think nobody in the playtesting tried my aggressive forward deployment on the South that puts pressure on supply from turn 1 (and makes forming a 4 unit chain on turn 1 mandatory). Maybe force the Republicans into the historical setup and do not allow any variable setup at all?

I don’t have much else to add. A couple of specific highlights, really. Against a free-deploying, aggressive Republican Strategy:

1.) The Nationalists cannot advance from the South until September, earliest, and even then risks attacks of at least 2-1 somewhere on his tenuous supply line. It was only viable to me given that I received the Victory Convoy in the First Turn via event pull. Without that, I may not have had the forces for such a “Case Yellow” sort of Turn 3 and 4. Historically, the Nationalists took Badajoz on August 14, 1936.

2.) The Nationalists cannot, without getting suicidal, conduct any attacks in the North, Madrid Front, or Aragon Front until the ammunition shortage is resolved and Army of Africa troops can aid in those attacks. So a rail connection must be established with Cadiz. Against a free-deploying aggressive Republican strategy, I refer you back to point 1.) above.

3.) The Republican Player needs 10 RML worth of Nationalist controlled towns or cities to win in sudden death. So against an aggressive Republican strategy; At start, Cordoba and Granada can be isolated and put OOS (which also, prevents reinforcements from arriving there in August and September). They can also be taken at leisure if the aggressive strategy, which requires troop reinforcements in the South, is used. Teruel is behind the lines and OOS. So hat right there is 5 RML of low hanging fruit that the Nationalist playercannot do anything about. Segovia (2 RML), Avila (2 RML), Huesca (2 RML), Zaragoza (3 RML), Soria (2 RML), Jaca and Calatayud (1 RML each) are all on the front lines. So even leaving an Oviedo assault out of the picture, a total of 13 RML are available for the other 5 the Republican player needs. And the Nationalists cannot reinfoce any of those areas until a rail line is established. Again, see point 1,

Juan and I are so flummoxed by this game/determined to prove our thesis correct that we are actually going to play a quick version of turns 1-4 or 5 PBEM. We’ll sum up the results here. If The game is not broken, we will return at a later date for a full-bore PBF here. But right now, we need a PBF palate-cleanser. From a creative standpoint, I can’t keep writing all the events and finding art to weave the story about the same 4-5 months, three times in a row. That way lies madness.

So soon, once we play an intro scenario, we’ll start a PBF of The First Punic War in Richard Berg’s “Carthage” by GMT Games:

Pat

They are trying to add impetus to the Nationalist move North with that rule, and prevent a slow, more determined move directly for Madrid by the Nationalists. I get it, but I don’y think the designer is getting the results he wanted. Ultimately, it seems to me that they had too internecine a playtest group and groupthink (or groupwargamingculture) took over the playtesting.