The NEW New Boardgames Thread

[The Brain]

One of the worst things Volko's ever inflicted upon us.

What are the main problems with COIN? I own one COIN game but haven't played it.

the almost-Euro abstractions of the system do not fit that well for some of the topics I think.

My uninformed impression is indeed that people just slam COIN onto a subject matter regardless of what would work best for the particular conflict. Japan's war against China (for instance) doesn't sound very COINy to me.

[Maladict]

COIN seems to now mean any kind of asymmetric conflict. I am somewhat intrigued by Gandhi, I have to say. And I own Pendragon, which is an interesting game even if a subject matter forced into the COIN system.

[Berkut]

One of the worst things Volko's ever inflicted upon us.

What are the main problems with COIN? I own one COIN game but haven't played it.

the almost-Euro abstractions of the system do not fit that well for some of the topics I think.

My uninformed impression is indeed that people just slam COIN onto a subject matter regardless of what would work best for the particular conflict. Japan's war against China (for instance) doesn't sound very COINy to me.

Yeah, that is pretty much how I felt. It is semi-interesting system that gets slathered onto any kind of guerrilla-sih conflict and then everyone gets all slobbery over it for some reason. Every time I've played I've been "meh"

[Berkut]

Played Wing Leader for the first time last night via Vassal. That is a very, very good game.

[Tamas]

Played Wing Leader for the first time last night via Vassal. That is a very, very good game.

Tell me more.

[Berkut]

I only played one scenario, and it was pretty simple.

I was the Soviets, and had two squadrons of Yak-1s trying to intercept two flights of He-111 transports escorted by a single flight of BF-190F-4s.

The way it worked out, because my opponent was new to the game as well, is that I managed to get my first squadron attacking on of the flights, while my second squadron tangled with this flight of 104s in the clouds.

Some things that I thought were cool:

So numbers wise, I was using squadrons against flights, so had pretty great odds. But the game doesn't really give you much of an advantage there - the way the mechanics work, quality is a lot more important than quantity.

My Green Yaks attacking his Trained He-111s - of course this is bad for the Germans, but the way the system works, when you engage in combat, even if you don't take losses, you use ammo and have to check cohesion (which is modified by ammo usage). So even though I was rolling on a vastly beneficial odds, my squadron still got disrupted and disorganized, and eventually broke off their attack on the un-escorted transports (but no before they shot down three of them).

My second squadron tangled with his 109Fs. My guys were green, his were veteran and he had a Ace with him. So this was probably going to be bad. But we were in dense clouds, which meant that even though his combat odds were much better, we both had large negative DRMs to the effects - so I could not really do much to him, but he had a hard time doing much to me as well, which was fine with me.

He tried to get me in a dogfight, which would then mean he could get me out of the clouds, and hopefully get enough kills on my fighters to balance the kills I was getting on his tranports, but I got luck on my roll to avoid the dogfight, which meant I could stay in the cloud layer. In the following combat (you cannot leave a square with a enemy you have tallied unless you drop that tally, which is bad in this case for both of us due to the way initiative works), we both did nothing, but both rolled badly on our cohesion checks, broke, and were out of the fight.

I like that it is a system that after I played it, it "felt" right. You cannot just fight forever - even successful combat tends to leave your squadrons disrupted and low on ammo. Quality matters, A LOT! And the game is not super fatal in outcomes - you aren't going to go shoot down all the bad guys, "losing" is not getting your squadron destroyed, it is (or feels like) reaching the point where your units are disrupted or broken before the other guy, or at the same time with you took 2 losses and he only took one.

I definitely want to try some more, but it is very tactical, and really does give a great "feel", at least with a data set of 1 play!

[Tamas]

 

[The Brain]

Tell me more of the yaks.

[11B4V]

Good series of fighters.

[The Brain]

I like fighters.

[11B4V]

Yes!


https://www.compassgames.com/fulda-gap-a-css-game.html

[Habbaku]

Might want to hold your horses. Scuttlebutt seems to be that it's turning into one of Compass's/Starkweather's usual messes, especially the rules.

[11B4V]

Might want to hold your horses. Scuttlebutt seems to be that it's turning into one of Compass's/Starkweather's usual messes, especially the rules.

Hmm the others in the CSS series are fine. But, thanks for the heads up.

[11B4V]

No matter if it is, it holds a special place. I was in 3rd Brigade, 8th ID. It has my old Battalion 4/8 Infantry.   

[Tamas]

I had my 6-monthly boardgame buying fever set on me, the results are:

Arriving today:

Conflict of Heroes Storm of Steel 3rd edition - it sounds quite elegant and almost as importantly looks gorgeous.

Nevsky - unique period, unique system, sounds cool

Arriving at some later date once both are in stock:

Hearts and Minds (newest edition) VASSAL-ed the heck out of Fire in the Lake, it was cool but want a Vietnam coverage with a slightly lighter touch of meeples

Illusions of Glory - Tested this as well virtually years ago. It is admittedly the least awesome of the ..of Glory trilogy, but still nice and very thematic, and there was a deal on it so whatever.