The NEW New Boardgames Thread

[CountDeMoney]

Only OCS game I have so far is Tunisia, unfortunately.  Korea should see a resurgence in interest for me.

For what it's worth, you should check out Baltic Gap;  it's a very manageable size physically, one of the smaller ones considering the rest of the OCS line-up, and even though it's the far north sector when Bagration was really starting to run the donkey dick right up the Wehrmacht's ass, it still offers some pretty cool scenarios between a Red Army that almost can't stay out of its own way momentum-wise, and a relatively still-mobile defense-in-depth with the Dancing Martim Silvas.

[Tamas]

the Dancing Martim Silvas.

[CountDeMoney]

GMT pulls the plug on OSG

Termination of OSG Strategic Partnership
Kevin decided late last week that our strategic partnership just wasn't working out for him. Though I had certainly hoped for a better outcome, for his sake and ours, I think this is probably for the best. I imagine many of you, just noting how the P500 numbers were looking, had the same sense I did - that it was going to be difficult for the OSG games to getting printed through us anytime soon. Given that, I think Kevin made  the right call, as he's going to have more control over his brand if the games aren't on our list competing with all our other P500 games. And based on what I've been reading from him online, it sounds like he's going to be able to print at least one of those new games more quickly than we would have been able to, especially if you guys who ordered the games through us will go and re-place those orders with OSG in the near future.

And that's a point I'd like to stress here. Those orders you made for the OSG games through the GMT website have been deleted, as we do not share customer data, credit card numbers, etc, with anyone. We keep your data on secure encrypted servers and will never give out that information or send that data over e-mail. Additionally, you guys made those orders from us in good faith, and you didn't authorize us to share that order information with anyone else. So, to make sure we honor our ethical and legal committments to our customers, we have cancelled all orders for the OSG P500 games on our servers. They should no longer show up on your order lists on our site.

That said, we remain very supportive of Kevin and OSG, and I want to strongly encourage all of you who had ordered the games through us to go to Kevin's website at  http://www.napoleongames.com/pre-ord.html  and re-order those games directly from him. He told me today that their site won't be ready to take pre-orders until late this weekend, but please do go over and support Kevin by pre-ordering the games as soon as it is up. Thanks!

Kevin asked us to make sure that this note from him got out to all who had pre-ordered, so here it is:

-------------------
OSG Pre-Orders (from Kevin Zucker at OSG)

I have just spoken to Tony (at GMT), and he offered their help in publicizing the url for the OSG pre-order page, to their customer list and on GMT's website. The url for OSG's P-350 page is

http://www.napoleongames.com/pre-ord.html

Unfortunately it is confirmed that GMT policy prohibits sharing customer databases. Some will agree with this policy, some disagree, but this does take them "out of the loop" altogether, which is fine and sensible. This means re-doing all pre-orders for OSG games that were placed with GMT. I am sorry about that.

NOTE: Our pre-order page only has information. At this time we are not set-up to record any pre-orders. We will re-install those old pre-order forms in the next few days...

I certainly do apologise for the inconvenience this causes. Please accept my apology for the extra work I am asking you to do ... Let's get on with it.

If you had placed pre-orders before the Alliance then those are still good. (All Pre-orders for the Special Studies books are o.k.)

-Kevin

[Ed Anger]

I wonder what happened with Zucker's retirement and move into that new age healing bullshit.

[Tamas]

So since most of you people play alone anyways, Thunderbolt Apache Leader should hold great interest to you. It is awesome.

Not sure  how much you are familiar with Hornet Leader (the latest edition of it is also very good. You get to bomb shit not just with Hornets but also with F-14s, Harriers, and other stuff). Apache Leader is the same system, but with some important differences. Most notably that you have a 10-hexes randomly generated terrain for each mission, on which you randomly place the units  listed on your target battalion's card, and you must destroy them. Each units (artillery, tanks, trucks, scuds, infantry, buildings, SAMs, AAA, etc) have a VP value and it is given for each battalion, how much VP worth of units you must destroy to make the battalion half-eliminated or totally eliminated.

The challenge comes from all these fuckers shooting at your rather fragile planes.

Which you fight mostly by good use of timing and terrain.

The terrain fetaures which matter are... ridges, basically. So the point to random generation is the setup of ridges which you get.

They block LOS, especially for the ground-based stuff. Even if you are high altitude they can't spot you through a hex edge with a ridge.

Now of course you don't REALLY want to go high altitude. Sure, it saves you the trouble of stressing your pilots with zig-zagging through a ridge hex side, but going high altitude may trigger the appearance of various nasty enemies like helicopters.

And since you have to keep your precious planes and pilots going for the whole campaign, you want to avoid unecessary shootings at them.

But, then again, ridge-maneuvering is stressful and you must keep your pilots functioning properly. So it is a matter of choosing one risk over the other and managing them, and the game is great at presenting interesting choices, and then fucking your choices up via random  luck.


A key concept in the game (more important than in Hornet Leader I think) is Special Options points. You buy the better ordinance with them, you buy refuel priority with them so you dont have to lose prescious weight limits to fuel, you send your stressed-out pilots on R&R with SOs, and you  occasionally pay for some beneficary events with them.

Now, the thing here is that not only some enemy battalions (like artillery) decreases your daily SO gain by themselves, the more enemy battalions get closer to your airbase (this is tracked in a simple manner), the more daily SO penalties you get..

How many SOs you gain daily depend on the kind of campaign you play. You set up a campaign by theatre (Lybia 84 or 2011, Pakisan 2013, Israel 2001, WW3 1986, Korea 2014 and a couple of others), and situation.

FOR EXAMPLE, I am now playing a Rapid Deployment Israel Defense 2001 scenario. With the imagined story of shit hitting the fan and some US forces rushed to help defend the joos.

Right, so the starting situation gives you a number of SOs to buy your planes and scouts.
A big mistake I was making in early tries is that I just basically spent all here.
That is a BAD IDEA. Various support and command battalions can have various adverse effects on your campaign so you want to hit them early and hard, and you also need bo QUICK and EFFECTIVE because you can't loiter above battlefields gathering damage and stress, when you have several days of hard fighting ahead.

While I would LOVE to finally try the AC-130 "gunboat", it is just too fucking expensive for a rapid deployment situation, where you get 25 SOs to start off with (the AC-130 costs 10, and you then only have a single plane in your squadron.

So I went with two Harriers, and two 64A Apaches. That left me with some SOs to buy fueling priority, and special equipment so I could destroy two battalions right off the bat: the enemy arty unit, and a command unit which I can't remember.


The main ordinance I bought was... CLUSTER BOMBS. Gotta' tell you I love cluster bombs. The arty unit was full of trucks and SCUDs and shit and it would have taken an eternity (spent in small arms fire) to get rid of them all. Not with cluster bombs.

So the first day went surprisingly well. My two Harriers obliterated the arty unit, and the old Apaches took care of the other unit, altough due to extensive ridge-maneuvering to minimize the threat plus bad rolls with their missiles, they took their sweet time with it, and went home with bingo fuel. One of them became a nervous wreck due to this, so at the start of the 3rd day of a 4 days campaigns, he is still nowhere ready to fight again.

On the second day, I had to take notice of the various assault battalions making their progress toward my base. It is a bad enough situation to have enemies camping near it in any campaign, but in the Israel one, if any of them reaches the Airbase square, it is game over for you.

But, you see, I spent all but one SO points to repair my planes fully (1 SO point can decently set up two Apaches with premium ordinance), and the daily event for the 2nd day was "enemy reinforcements", so I had to spend that last SO to avoid the appearance of a new battalion.

So with regular ammo, going after all those tanks in two separate missions against two battalions wasnt that good an idea. It relied too much on luck, and I could have ended up with badly damaged planes, freaked out pilots, and enemies rapidly advancing on me.
So I just flew a single mission, two Apaches and a Harrier, against the enemy battalion which had the special attribute of having more chance to advance.

At least I didn't have to worry on where to assign my single scout for the day! scouts increase your potential loiter time over the target, but wasn't very effective on this one. Luckily I never leave home without fuel tanks!

The battalion didn't have any effective  anti-air units, so what I had to was stay low and bide my time.
The plan suffered a setback when it took basically all the rockets of one of the helicopters do destroy a tank unit. They were reduced to their gun and it's not exactly anti-tank material.
I had more luck with the regular bombs fitted on my Harrier, so I ended up destroying the tansk with those, while the Apaches flew around machine-gunning APCs and Trucks.
Still, I did not have time to destroy EVERYTING, I had to leave a tank, behind ridges from all sides but the edge of the  map, alone. That was enough to declare the battalion destroyed, but I didnt get the extra XP for completely eradicating a battalion.


Well that's a long post, but I didn't mention some things. Like how you can also have drones for your squadron, and they are great because if you have a Drone on high altitude (drones and AC-130s don't trigger extra enemies when at high altitude), all pilots are considered Fast, which means they act before the enemy units.
But drones are rather fragile since in these cases they are sent above the battlefield and can be shot at.

Also you can not just repair, but replace planes, and when you do, you can use some of their non-damaged parts to retrofit your other damaged planes with. But you buy replacement vehicles and pilots from Victory Points, and the limits on judging your performance (by VPs) are quite hard.

[CountDeMoney]

Yeah, I got all three Leader games the other week; haven't cracked Thunderbolt yet; too busy blasting the Viet Cong with Phantom Leader.

[Tamas]

Yeah, I got all three Leader games the other week; haven't cracked Thunderbolt yet; too busy blasting the Viet Cong with Phantom Leader.

I read mixed reviews of that one, but I am awfully tempted.

I am also awfully tempted for DVG's Napoleonic solitaire game. It is big and just gorgeous. But it is also super-expensive.

[CountDeMoney]

I read mixed reviews of that one, but I am awfully tempted.

Yeah, I've read that it's the "weakest" of the three Leaders, but since the reprint for the Deluxe version doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon because the pre-orders are so low  , I pulled the trigger on it anyway.  The wide spread of aircraft availability is, for my part, the coolest feature.  And I haven't even started with Carrier Op yet.

I am also awfully tempted for DVG's Napoleonic solitaire game. It is big and just gorgeous. But it is also super-expensive.

I think you should go for it, before it disappears.

Since these are my first DVG games, I'm totally impressed;  what fantastic productions.  Personally, in addition to the Israeli Air Leader, I'm really looking forward to the Nimitz game.

[Tamas]

I think you should go for it, before it disappears.

Good point, actually...

Carrier Ops (if that's the last HL edition) was my first DVG game. Yes, very impressive production value. And such a cool game. I like how you have the basic Navy game, where yeah, you can shoot yourself in the foot and even without that can have some hairy situation but by and large you play a superior force with a vast array of potential weaponry. But then you can play a Marine Corps game and have your Harriers or whatnots and be in a different ballpark.

Plus not to mention the range from 80s planes to the F-22s. Cool.


So yeah, Field Commander Napoleon is probably a buy. I wanted to stop purchasing shit and pissing away my money on bullshit, but I think I will just pretend that I already have this looming promotion in the bag and spend.

[CountDeMoney]

I wanted to stop purchasing shit and pissing away my money on bullshit, but I think I will just pretend that I already have this looming promotion in the bag and spend.

As more than one individual here will attest, there's no such thing "purchasing shit and pissing away my money on bullshit" when it comes to stockpiling wargames.

[11B4V]

I wanted to stop purchasing shit and pissing away my money on bullshit, but I think I will just pretend that I already have this looming promotion in the bag and spend.

As more than one individual here will attest, there's no such thing "purchasing shit and pissing away my money on bullshit" when it comes to stockpiling wargames.

Most certainly

[CountDeMoney]

Most certainly

You know the Big Brown Truck is showing up with all your Panzer shit next week, right?

[11B4V]

Most certainly

You know the Big Brown Truck is showing up with all your Panzer shit next week, right?

and I cant wait  . Meantime I'm contemplating pulling the trigger on three games

Ardennes '44; IMO a no brainer off your recommendation and other things I've read. Was looking at the new WaR2, but fuck, they (DG) seemed like they complexed the fuck out of it.

Other two are Avalanche and Citadel by GDW

Going to put in a preorder for Bear's Claw and Sichelschnitt: May 1940 (Simonitch's new game.

[Tamas]

what drama!

On the 3rd day of my Israel Defense campaign, I had two battalions just a space away from my airbase (and game over). I sent the two Harriers against the one choke full of tanks. The other one was a scout force.

I filled up the Harriers mostly with cluster bombs but there were also two enemy helicopters, and assorted heavy-hitting anti-aircraft stuff, so it was tricky. And of course you target tanks with a penalty (since hitting a target equals destroying it). Did not go well, the Harriers had to abort with the enemy reduced to half size only. There was a good chance they won't advance though, as half battalions get a penalty on advance check.

But the harder mission was still ahead: Out of 3 Apache pilots (for 2 helicopters), one was totally fucked up stress-wise, the other wasn't THAT fucked up, but being a green guy, he was useless. So I had to send my coolest guy into action alone. It was iffy but I didn't really have a choice.

Lucky me, I drew 'MLRS bombardment" as target-bound event - for an SO point, I could roll against the enemy units to see which one gets pulverized, and a good amount of them did. Actually, the lone Apache had only mop-up work remaining.

I reduced them enough to count as destroyed, only an infantry and an APC remained in one of the hexes on the edge. I figured I would go for the extra XP and kill them off. The pilot was Slow, though, so before he could destroy them with a rocket run, they were to shoot at him first - infantry small arms fire forced the heli to go high altitude.
He did destroy the enemy units, but before the mission could end, he had to suffer a draw for the "pop-up" of enemy units as a reaction to him being high up in the sky. And... a SAM unit spotted him and fired at him...
killing the pilot

Plus the half-reduced battalion managed to advance anyway and collapse my section of the front

[CountDeMoney]

and I cant wait  . Meantime I'm contemplating pulling the trigger on three games

Ardennes '44; IMO a no brainer off your recommendation and other things I've read. Was looking at the new WaR2, but fuck, they (DG) seemed like they complexed the fuck out of it.

Other two are Avalanche and Citadel by GDW

Going to put in a preorder for Bear's Claw and Sichelschnitt: May 1940 (Simonitch's new game.

Yeah, I think I'm going to pull the trigger on Ardennes '44 as well sometime--far too many people are raving about it.  And yes, looks like WaR2 has become an unmitigated errata fest, worse than the last one.  Habbaku was right.

I figured Bear's Claw would definitely be up your alley    I was thinking about Sichelschnitt as well, but between grabbing GMT's Case Yellow 1940 (although I am more partial to Simonitch than Racier) and waiting for the OCS treatment Blitzkrieg Legend shipping by the end of the month, I think I'll be 1940'd out for a while.  I think I'll pre-order the 1914 western front game.

But I can only tolerate seeing the French taking it on the chin so much.

After this flurry of releases, I think I'll be done for a while.