Grognard Wargamer Thread!

Damn…that sucks. I had emails back and forth with Mr. Dean over the years about a few of his games. Always nice and helpful…and his games were very unique. RIP.

I saw the news on Twitter yesterday. Sad. I didn’t know him, but I was just poking around on the site a couple of weeks ago.

It’s finicky for sure, largely because the AI is relatively complicated and then there are a bunch of exceptions to the basic rules based on the day of the campaign and keeping it all in your head can be a challenge. The player aids and the card layout etc are very good though and that definitely helps…

The AI does give you an excellent scrap though (at least in the German Solo games I have played so far) so I would say it’s worth the time to invest in it…

Seconded. Game is really outstanding.

Terrible news. Always found him to be a good dude.

Oh no, he was such a good dude. RIP sir.

He was a good man. Rest in peace, Chris.

Pew-pew

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/647106057/nguyen-hue-72-the-1972-easter-offensive-in-vietnam

Completely pew-pew.

I think many people here recognize the name Philippe Thibaut

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1284815114/fleet-commander-pacific

Btw, @Brooski, how was your game of Absolute War?

I just set up the game last night and started sorting through gameplay and rules. Not far enough along to have an opinion yet.

I really don’t know what to think of it. I think it solves some problems. I think it introduces other problems.

Interesting. I will try to make some progress this week. For whatever reason, I’ve found learning his games go like this…

No clue.
No clue.
WTF.
No clue.
Huh?
No clue.
click
Okay, everything makes sense.

I’m to about the WTF level now with Absolute War.

I’m a little farther. I definitely get how it works. I like certain aspects of it. But I’m not sure how I feel about the decisions it made. Or that Carl made, I guess. The game itself made no decisions that I know of.

Except that the “grey stars = attack/defense; white stars = defense only” decision was a poor one for a game that is going to be played by a lot of 50+ year olds with failing eyes. So that was objectively dumb.

My biggest current objection is to the variability of War Status Points based on CRT results. The Germans have to be extremely lucky to avoid the BB results that can torpedo them quickly from a WSP perspective, and the CRT seems to dole these out generously.

I also don’t think I like non-variable weather. And the Finns. THE FINNS! Why oh why did he have to include the Finns.

The one-hex Finland + Finland Fort unit in No Retreat was one of the great innovations of East Front wargaming. Why did he have to backtrack??

🇫🇮 🇫🇮 🇫🇮 🇫🇮 🇫🇮

I’m hopeful it plays differently enough from No Retreat that both series have merit. To me, at least mechanically it feels quite different. But yeah, I have to get further with the game to say much more than that.

I can say I didn’t even notice the gray/white thing until I was looking over the rules some at the end of the learning session last night.

I was reading about the BB result rule today at lunch, and it did stick in my head as a wondering.

I can say that the “ease of learning” angle seems overstated. It doesn’t feel appreciably easier to me than No Retreat did. Carl has commented that someone who knows the basic game can easily teach someone the basic game in a very short amount of time, but learning the game on my own has felt about the same as No Retreat.

It is a perty game, I’ll give it that…

Looks nifty and it Has its own thread.

Basic Game is not remotely the game, so that’s a bit disingenuous of Carl. I mean, how many pages does the basic game rulebook have? Four? Compared to the 26 or 27 in the actual rules? I put the basic rules under the box insert that holds the cards and never looked at them again until fact-checking this post!

Cool! I direct y’all there, then!