Monday, January 16, 2017

Being flexible (updated)

Well the day has come and gone and I enjoyed myself, hopefully the players did too. It was certainly a close game for most of the more than two hours.

**Update. For the Hun's POV and a more detailed report of the game with more (and better) pictures, check out Jeff's Armchair Commander blog
Ping Pong table? Ohhhhhkay, I can stretch the terrain a bit.....

Even the smallest event can remind us of the potential need to react to the unforseen (ie friction). In this case I missed a passing reference to a ping-pong table in a day-before-email on start times.  I was expecting something like a 5x6 playing area.

Now, I could have just declared that we were only playing on 1/2 the table but I hate to surrender playing area without a struggle so I rearranged things a bit and stretched terrain out while berating myself for not extending the roads to the edge of the cloth as originally planned and for deciding not to bother bringing extra wall sections, trees etc. Aw well, one has to adapt, be flexible and make do as best as one can.

Told you we'd be safe from the horse archers in these woods. Enemy Light Infantry? Where?

The rules are still in development so I was especially glad to get in an actual test game with actual players before heading to Huzzah in May.

Over all they worked as intended but it was soon clear that I had forgotten to actually write down a couple of little things, relying on my own habits, and that there were, as usual, some different ways of doing certain things that I hadn't considered. I need to add the accidental omissions but also need to decide how picky I want to be. Do I need to be more explicit about manouver options, tweak the rules to be clearer and simpler (one man's simple is another man's puzzle) or just not worry about it. All this quick play, gridded stuff has made me more forgiving  but some contemplation is required.

I also need better a QRS which is going to require me to master the Android tools at my disposal. What would really help are unit stats on the back of the bases, I nearly got that done..........

All of the beef, mutton and flour were captured during the last couple of turns  but the Beer cart made it to the Fort which tried to declare a draw if not an outright win due to cargo value.

So much for the game, time to get back to Toy Soldiers with rifles.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for hosting a fun and challenging game Ross. The rules worked well and common sense filled in when gaps occurred. We set up, learned the rules and completed the game inside three hours. The new guy seemed to enjoy himself too!

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  2. The photos are excellent and interesting to hear how it went.I like the idea of stats on the back of a unit.

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  3. The photos are excellent and interesting to hear how it went.I like the idea of stats on the back of a unit.

    ReplyDelete