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Messages - Rindis

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Historical Naval Games / Re: Flying Colors
« on: June 27, 2016, 02:42:03 am »
Space Empires is a great game! I've played it... not nearly as often as I'd like.

And the system is pretty good; there's a fair number of modifiers flying about, but it does handle fleet actions pretty well.

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Historical Naval Games / Flying Colors
« on: June 26, 2016, 03:20:13 pm »
Got a game of this in yesterday, and just posted it to my blog:

Revel Bay

A little more effort to get back into the system than I hoped (this was my second game), and a lot more frustration with the wind than I would have liked :), but the game went well.

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The Great War / Re: WWI Boardgaming
« on: June 09, 2016, 10:04:18 pm »
Yep, that's the series. Most of it is things other than WWI; so far as I know (I haven't kept up) the main WWI games are Mediterranean, Jutland, and Cruiser Warfare (which they don't list in the series, probably out of print for too long).

Here's the preorder page for Gallipoli:
http://www.gmtgames.com/p-505-gallipoli-1915-churchills-greatest-gamble.aspx
And the playtest report that put it on my radar:
http://www.insidegmt.com/?p=1410

I realized a bit later that there's a number of games on the Air War that I didn't get around to talking about. Being lazy, I'll just say Ace of Aces is great, and my regular FtF opponent is hoping to introduce me to Bloody April.

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Roll Call / Re: Greetings from California
« on: June 09, 2016, 09:52:26 pm »
No, I'd probably play a bit more if SFB wasn't such an action-heavy game, and regular PBeM would work. I've never even gotten around to trying SFBOL, mostly because my regular opponents aren't willing to go for it. I do have a homebrew Vassal module that we use (which is where the graphics in my blog posts come from) purely for online play.

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The Great War / WWI Boardgaming
« on: June 08, 2016, 07:08:49 pm »
Since this is more of a general 'all things WWI' area (judging by the books thread), I thought I'd chip in with what little I know of for WWI games:

Starting with naval matters, there's Avalanche Press' Great War at Sea series. I only have Plan Orange, which is about a hypothetical war between US and Japan in the '30s. But the original two games are the Mediterranean and North Sea during WWI.

It's basically a simple operational level game with tactical combat resolution. The tactical level isn't bad; they try to keep it simple since it's not the only focus of the game, so they ignore facing, firing arcs and the like in 15 minute turns (generally enough for maneuvers to be done in). But the 'simple' aspect is wrecked by a poorly-presented impulse system, and all the ships have paperwork in the form of check-off box hit records. I haven't done anything with the operational-level stuff, but orders are generally given in advance, and there's some hidden movement. Fuel stores and the like are tracked.

It's generally well regarded, and it is good, spawning several games, and the spinoff Second World War at Sea series. I'd try to go for one of the later releases first, as it takes Avalanche a while to pound their rules into good shape.

Grand strategy has had a number of entries over the decades, but the big winner there is Paths of Glory from GMT. A classic Card-Driven design, it's not bad history, and a very good game (and there's a few variants aimed at promoting more historical play). Naval affairs are just a couple of card plays—Blockade, U-boats and a couple others.

The spinoff Pursuit of Glory takes the same system and applies it just to the Middle East+Turkey, and is one of my all-time favorite games. Both players sit down to the board, look at it, and say, 'I'm screwed'. It has a lot more chrome than Paths, but I think it all makes it a better game, and I find Paths a bit bland. The British can bring in forces for invasions, and get to choose when and where to come ashore.

Operational-level games have been popular recently, and there's been a number of WWI titles. All of them are focused on the land war of course. The simplest would be the Clash of Giants series from GMT. I've only played one out of the four scenarios available (Galicia), but really enjoyed it with rolling to see just how active different formations are each turn.

MMP released A Victory Complete (Tannenburg) as part of an issue of Operations magazine, which uses the same general chit-pull system as A Victory Lost. I understand AVC is pretty good, but of the various games in the system, I've only ever played AVL, which is great.

GMT also has a series that goes into great detail at the operational level, taking a look at how units get worn out, and need to draw their supplies from their corps headquarters, and all deal with just the initial campaigns. I've looked at the original 1914: Twilight in the East, which is a real monster game, and it looks very impressive. Serbien muß sterbien is a much more manageable size. A couple of my friends like the series, though I haven't managed to have them teach it to me yet.

Der Weltkrieg came out a couple years ago, and I just picked up the Ottoman front game for cheap, but haven't had a good chance to look it over yet. Main thing is all terrain effects are by hexside rather than hex interior. I'd have to actually play it to see how well that works out.

I know there's a few more tactically-oriented games, but I haven't payed much attention. GMT's upcoming Gallipoli, 1915 is grand tactical, and is looking interesting from the playtest reports I've seen.

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Roll Call / Re: Greetings from California
« on: June 07, 2016, 01:01:10 am »
At the moment, the bulk of my naval-related gaming is SF too.

But I am hoping to get in some Flying Colors soon, which is good old fashioned Age of Sail. Here's my previous experience:
Cape Henry

For SF ship-to-ship, I mostly play SFB. The more recent entries for that are the more interesting ones, as I've got some good diagrams of the movement.

7
Space Naval Games / Re: Newtonian Movement?
« on: June 04, 2016, 12:42:24 am »
The old GDW games (Mayday et al.) used vector counters to keep track of movement. Fairly easy on a hex grid, but I always figured you could do it in a miniature system easy enough. Leave a counter where you were last turn. Measure from there to the mini's current position, and keep going in a straight line for twice that distance. Put a second counter there and adjust for allowed/desired amount/direction of thrust. Place the first counter where the mini currently is, and move the mini to the second counter.

The problem with all this is it only works for small numbers of ships. After that the number of markers to sort through just gets to be too much.

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Roll Call / Greetings from California
« on: June 03, 2016, 10:25:04 pm »
Just found this site through Seth's great blog post about the Naval War College's Jutland war game reenactment.

I've been in wargaming most of my life (since the late 70's), and one of my first games was War at Sea, so naval matters have always been of interest to me. (One of the first serious history books I read was The Naval War Against Hitler, for obvious reasons.) I also played a few games using Pratt's rules, and still have a couple of 1:2400 GHQ minis (one needs a gun barrel repair). Mostly though, I just don't have the time, space, money, or inclination for minis, so I'm generally a boardgamer.

I was a little surprised to see SF games on the blog; it's nice to see a expansive definition of naval wargames here. :) To that end, I've been involved in Star Fleet Battles and Federation and Empire off and on for decades.

I've also played one game of Flying Colors, and would like to get some more in. And I have a blog of my own; most all the gaming stuff is also BoardGameGeek, but I'd be willing to re-post some of the better naval-related pieces here as well.

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