Game Day at Dos Palmas
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A long anticipated event, announced many weeks ago, with full attendance of AS, SK, and AW. The goal: play some Ogre, specifically at ODE scale.
After some discussion, we settled on a team play of the classic Breakthrough scenario, but on a double map G1/S1, with each team splitting forces and taking charge of one of the maps. For example, I started as an attacker on the S1 map, teammate SK on the G1 map.
After both sides had some secret negotions, we set it up and got going.
Here's the story.
Breakthrough I
Game 40.
Sk and I started as attacking Combine forces, taking a mix of GEV and Light GEV. The Pan Euro forces set up as hidden until they either move of fire. Here's the situation very early in the game:
Note that all the stacks are out of maximum possible howitzer range of 8 hexes.
As it turns out, Pan Euro chose to defend with a lot of Heavy Tanks, which are actually not bad in a lot of scenarios, but in this one, they don't provide enough armor to create a decent line. This provided opportunity for Combine forces to bunch up and punch a hole in the line.
We focused our forces and punched a massive hole in this line on the G1 board, and drove through for 220 VPs, needing only 50 to win. Not the Pan Euro's finest hour. Here's what that hole looked like near the end of the game:
Breakthrough II
Game 41.
In an alternate universe, Breakthrough again, swapping sides such that SK and I are the defending Pan Euro.
Unlike the previous game where the defense used Heavy Tanks, this game we used light tanks, which are awesome for defending. They have a lot of movement (M3) and are cheap, so it's easy to fill the map with them. In a timed game like Breakthrough, even serving as speedbumps can be valuable. Here's what the Pan Euro line looked like:
It's easy to see there are many more units on this line than there were in the previous games. Pan Euro even broke down infantry squads to create an illusion of even more units. This works pretty well as single squad infantry units still get a heft defense bonus in Forest and City hexes.
Compounding the attacker's difficulties is their decision to attack on a broad front instead of attempting to punch through. Also, PE got first fire if I recall correctly, alway a good thing in Ogre. (A design flaw in my opinion.) We held the line, the attackers only escaped 4-5 units, and scored -57. They were crushingly defeated.
I did not take any pictures of the end game, which is a pity.
This was followed by tasty ham and cheese panini for lunch.
Frag
I picked up Frag many years ago from Amazon as it was super cheap, less than $20 if I recall correctly. I did try to play it solo once, and got a few moves in, but it was really hard to get engaged with it. Frag really is one of these games where the fun is in playing with a good group of people who enjoy blowing stuff up and otherwise being silly in a game.
For this game, SK and AS had to leave, which is perfect, Frag lends itself to playing a few rounds then leaving the game. I could see it similarly to having people walk into a game after it has been started.
In any case, it's super fun lightweight, perfect for after heavier games, and great with multiple people. As noted, SK and AS left after a couple of rounds, and I was able to frag AW again pretty fast after that for the win.
For another description of the game play, AW has played the game a lot, even has a 3D custom board, but he didn't even got a shot off in this game!
Absolutely Aces
AW and I gave a shot at figuring this out. It's definitely a weird little game.
We found cycles right away, but we did not find how to break cycles reliably. It felt to us that some cycles were unbreakable barring a "typo" from one of the players, that is, one of the players making an accidental mistake in game play.
Will have to spend a bit more time with this figure it out.
Race for the Galaxy
Game 18!
Still having trouble getting this game off the ground. I saw how to win with New Sparta though, there is a specific development which multiplies points on military worlds. It's pretty critical.