The Marcher Lords (review)

Mini-games are back!

Fiery Dragon has stepped up to the plate to provide a much needed renaissance in gaming.  This time around, mini-games are NOT packaged with cheap components in flimsy zip-loc bags.  This time… the games are presented in a classy metal case you won’t be afraid to be seen with in public.  Finally! wargamers can enjoy a line of games that do not require a life long commitment to learn to play, games that look good, and games that travel well.  I’m very pleased about this set of games and I’ll have a hard time keeping myself from getting them all.

The Marcher Lords is a Risk-like game set during 11th century Norman conquest of Wales.  The combat mechanics are similar to Shogun (which was stupidly renamed to”Samurai Swords” in later editions) with archers taking a first shot and ground forces following up with a melee round.  Forces kill an enemy unit if they roll higher than their target number– and leaders and castles can each provide a +1 bonus on the d10 die roll.  Leaders and Cavalry get a move of 2 while everything else gets a move of 1.  Forces get a chance to retreat after each combat round– and if they do, enemy cavalry get a free attack against the fleeing infantry units!

Unlike Axis and Allies, players don’t get to spend money to purchase the ‘perfect’ set of military units.  Instead players get to levy a single unit in the various zones they control– and the unit is drawn randomly from a cup.  Things can go badly for the Welsh if the Normans draw a lot of Cavalry units early on, but a half dozen Welsh archers will make any Norman think twice before attacking them. 

One thing that bothered me about Shogun was that the fortifications in that game had little impact on the overall tactics.  Also, the d12 dice used in that game generally didn’t do much more than a typical d6 could provide.  In The Marcher Lords, however, castles are they key to victory and dominate the strategy of both sides and the d10 is utilized in such a way that you get an entirely different flavor from the typical d6 wargame.  Bravo!

The Norman forces are generally better than their Welsh counterparts.  In the first scenario, the presence of Norman Earls makes this gap even greater.  If the Normans are well played, they can also get a much better rate of production.  (Eeep!) 

The Welsh are much less cohesive, but must use what they have to slow the Norman conquerors as much as possible.  They must take advantage of the Random Events (don’t forget to roll for them!) and target lightly defended norman zones before they can construct castles in them.  If they have a chance to trap and eliminate a Norman earl, they’ll have a much better chance of winning, but the retreating rules make this difficult.  The Welsh should save back as much of their forces as possible in order to take advantage of any such opportunity and also to take over any Castle zones on their final turn in the 10 turn game.  If they can do that and keep their as many of their Teulu alive as possible, then they have a chance– but as it stands, their hands are full and they have little room for error.

The key to Welsh victory may lie in the Norman supply rules.  The larger their force and the further they are away from the Norman base, the greater the chance the Norman force will be out of supply and unable to attack for a turn.  The more supply checks the Norman fails, the more time the Welsh player will have to build up his forces for counter attacks.  (The Welsh do not face this supply restriction because they are fighting on their home ground.)

For those people that lack the time, the space, and the requisite 5 or 6 players to play a truly great game of Axis and Allies or Shogun, The Marcher Lords will provide an excellent 2-3 hour Risk-like diversion for two people.  My only complaint is that the map is a little bit too small for people that are as clumsy as myself.

Recommended.

http://www.fierydragon.com/counterstrike/marcher.htm

1918– Trial Run

I picked up an issue of Strategy & Tactics last year and finally tried out the game that came with it:

It took more than half an hour to punch the counters and about an hour to set up the game.  There’s a huge number of counters that have to be set up– just about all of them!  Next time I play I’ll have the thirty-odd army groups seperated out into their own zip-loc baggies or something….

There were several typos and/or unclear things in this game.  The German forces seemed to be short a shock troop corps counter.  (We used three divisions instead.)  There was no German Headquaters #3 counter.  One terrain marking was unidentifiable, but we later agreed it must be trenchlines even though they weren’t drawn the same way as the others.  Some of the deployment zones were a bit confusing.  Finally, there is a “DH” result that appears on the CRT that is not explained.

It took about one hour to play a turn.  The Germans surrounded a French fortress, but the counter was entrenched and defended at quadruple value.  The attackers were repulsed and lost some shock divisions.  On the German’s second move/attack phase, they figured out the barrage table and eliminated the fortress.  They scored one point for that while the allies scored 28 points because of the German casualties.

On the Allies turn, the French managed to concentrate their fire on a few lone German infantry corps.  The concentrated firepower managed to eliminate three regular infantry corps scoring another 18 points for their side.  The allies used their second move/attack phase to entrench their positions so that they would have double defense value for the German players next attack.

The game was really fascinating.  If the Germans can break through and disrupt or eliminate the allied army head quarters and the artillery, then they have a chance to have a field day tearing up enemy units.  (Units that are “out of control” get only a single move/fire phase, which means they must choose between either attacking or entrenching– being able to do both makes them nearly impenetrable.)  Allies lack shock troops and must use their tanks in order to use the Infiltration CRT.  The not-so-good Assault CRT is notable for its “BB” result– a bloodbath that eliminats half of both the attacking and defending forces!

There’s a short 4 turn version of the game and I look forward to playing it sometime.  The various rules really make the tactics and strategies of the late WWI combat come to life.  It’s very fun– and there’s no reason why a player couldn’t have nearly as much fun playing solitaire.  Half the fun is watching the unindented resultes emerge from the CRT results and so forth.  Still, having a good opponent to punish your mistakes is probaly slightly more fun, though.  Each turn seems to take about an hour, though that might drop down to half an hour as the players gain experience.

Teaching Star Fleet Battles

A friend of mine let me know about a guy in the area that was interested in learning the game, so I quickly made room in the schedule for the fellow. We had to baby-sit a six-month old for the first part of the session, but things picked up a bit when baby took a nap and his wife stepped out to go shopping.

I explained, movement, HET’s, phasers & phaser capacitors, Photons, Disruptors, Overloads, and shield reinforcement. I must have talked for an hour or so. After a single turn walk through, the guy was asking about how to do mid-turn speed changes– except for a few details he had a basic intuitive grasp of the intent of the rule already! After our first big volley of damage, he was asking about the “energy balance due to damage” rule. (As far as I knew he’d never seen a rulebook.) He asked about a lot of the unexplained boxes on the SSD, but as with the above advanced rules I just mentioned, I said not to worry about them for this game.

I played the Tournament Klingon against his Tournament Fed. I’ve had the hardest time grasping Klingon tactics, but things finally fell in place for me in this game.

On the first turn, I took a shot at range 13. On turn two, I charged overloads and tried to evade. I couldn’t prevent an overrun and we blew each other up pretty good. We dropped each other’s #1 shield and when I passed over him, I let him have it with all my phasers on his rear shield. (Need to double check that same hex combat rule again.) I then turned to follow him to pound him on the next turn.

On turn three I got to range 3 and dropped another rear shield and scored a couple more internals. On turn 4 I continued to follow him. My opponent was faster than me because I had lost a lot more power and he managed to prevent me from taking any shots through his downed shields. Not having a #1 shield made it very difficult for me to follow him!

My opponent turned as I held my fire… then HET’d such that we were a few hexes away off of each other’s #1 shields. (Thinking about it later, I think he could have nailed me through my down shield without giving me the same option if he hadn’t turn duirectly towards me, but I didn’t realize it at the time so I could tell him he’d ‘really’ won.)

He missed with two of his three photons… and I hit with all three of my disruptors. When the dust settled, he had no phasers left and only 2 photons… while I had three disruptors and a few phasers left. He conceded the game– but I had obviously won due to my insanely lucky die rolls, so he didn’t seem to feel too bad about the loss….

(I’d arrived at 12:30 or so and was leaving before 4PM, so it took the usual 3 hours that I allocate for the usual SFB duel even though I had to do a lot of explaining….)

—–

I’ve struggled to learn SFB for years, but now it all is beginning to come together. The rules that we played with this time were fairly easy. Adding shuttles, tractors, boarding parties, scatter packs, and mid turn speed changes wouldn’t be that hard to do. It’s just detail from here on out. If we played several games and added a rule or two each time, I’m sure we’d get the hang of it.

One thing that made it hard to pick up the game before now was never having the right scenario. I thought pirate scenarios or police actions would be the way to go… but these scenarios just fizzled for me when I tried to play them with my friends. I played the Tholian in the classic Juggernaut scenario with an SFB group back when I was in highschool. I played the “Surprise Reversed” scenario more recently and just got blown up before I could do anything. In neither of these situations did I really learn anything.

I played the D7-CA game with a friend waaaay back and we just went to range one and blew each other up. I couldn’t figure out how the Klingons could possibly win. Last year I tried again and got creamed– I was trying to keep my opponent at range 15 for several turns and found out it could not be done. (Sabre Dancing just doesn’t last for several turns like I had thought it should!)

Anyways, in this game… I could see how the different aspects of the ships really were balanced against each other. It was neat to finally see that in action and have it be something more to me than just an idea in a “Victory At…” article.

I like the tournament ships because you know they are balanced and you know that the game is a fair test of skill. As I continue to learn the game, I intend to focuse on the tourney ships and ignore the weirder rules/ships/scenarios until I’ve mastered the game that’s been “playtested” at hundreds of tournaments.

As others have noted, the game that’s underneath the rules is really dynamic. I think I’ve finally caught my first glimpse of it… and I’m looking forward to seeing more!

Teaching Ogre– With Help

Went out to eat with friends the other day and after coming back we still had time for a quick game.  I cracked out the Ogre pocket box and started setting up the map.  My two year old came to help, so I set him in the high chair.  He threw dice across the table while my friend picked them up again… and I set up a defence of 3 Heavies, 3 Missile Tanks, 3 GEVs, and the usual infantry.

(I didn’t tell my friend that I was handicapping him 3 points of armor– new players seem to resent that even if they really do need it.)

His Ogre bullied his way down the board and met my forces.  After a few turns of combat, he was practically stripped of weapons.  He tried to go around my forces, which meant he didn’t really try to blow my guys up… while my guys got plenty of chances to shoot at him.

I was thinking this was going to be another disappointing game for a new player and that there’d be little to no interest on his part for any future games.  I remarked on how hopeless his position was when he was down to movement-1, but he seemed strangely confident in his victory.  (My two year old son had stopped throwing things by now and was intensely interested in what was happening on the map.  My friend would let him trace an Ogre counter or draw his hand while I was moving my pieces, too.)

My units took another round of shots at his treads and they were just about gone.  He moved one hex forward… and shot a missile at my command post!  I’d completely forgotten that he’d saved it back– and I was even the one tracking his stats!!

Heh.

My wife got a kick out of this and my new opponent got to bask in his glorious victory as we told and retold the tale to the other folks that were there….

Dueltrack– Tortoise Beats the Tank

This game was set at the Muskogee Fairgrounds.  We each designed $30,000 gas burning cars.  Our teams included 4 each of our designs that were manned by our continuing “Corporate” characters.

We used the figure eight track.  Our teams were split up on opposite sides of the track.  Each time a pair of vehicles completed a lap, it would be passed head-on by a pair of opposing vehicles 4 times (assuming they’re going the same speeds….)  Also, if each of your pairs were going exactly the same speed, then they’d run the risk of hitting each other at the crossways!  The first team to make 20 laps would win the game.

At first my opponent would not agree to having a weapons space limitation and a “no tire shot rule.”  I thought over my designs and realized that losing a tire at high speeds would be suicide.  Taking Plasticores would severly limit your speeds….  It just seemed like people were gonna die if we didn’t have the limitations.  I called my opponent the next day after sleeping on it and he agreed to take the 2-space weapon limitation and the “no tire shot rule.”  He mainly did not want a game in which there was only one clear design strategy.  The main fun for him would be agonizing over the various options– speed, maneuverability, defense, or offence?!  What to do!

Given my history, my opponent knew of my tendency to emphasize maneuver over firepower.  (Really, after all my years of playing Car Wars… I’ve lost more cars and drivers to missed control rolls than I have to enemy fire!)  But he was sure I’d be taking weapons– at least a space or two.  He even called the morning before the duel to tell me that I should be able to find better gunners for my cars– initially he’d wanted to limit my cre options!

He showed up to the arena with Luxury sized 400 cid monsters with room for a gunner and sporting a turreted Vulcan.  I in turn showed up with sloped/streamlined Mid-sized cars with turbo charged 450’s, laser reflective metal/fireproof plastic armor, HD Shocks, HD brakes, and NO WEAPONS.

There was no weapons fire permitted until your cars had completed the first lap.  His cars maxed out at 122.5 mph and acceleration 15.  My cars topped out at 165 mph and acceleration 20.  We were playing with banked (-D1 to maneuvers) on the outside circle, so there was no need to brake at any time.  Once we topped out, we pretty much stayed at our top speeds.  He felt no need to “push” the engines… the rules for that seem to destroy your engine on the first few seconds of trying!

As we went into our second lap, my opponent found out more or less how thick the metal was.  Obstacles were left on the track the two times he rolled 6’s for damage.  I was very pleased that I had taken fireproof armor because he was sporting incendiary rounds.  After getting about 4 shots against each of two separate vehicles (if I remember correctly) he’d only taken out a few points of plastic.  (I was 11/35 to the front, 7/35 to the sides, and 5/36 to the back.)

After completing two laps, I was about a half a lap ahead of my opponent.  We agreed that there wasn’t much he could do to change that… and that assuming everything went like it had so far, he could at best hope to get maybe 9 more shots concentrated on each of two of my cars.  We rolled the damage for these shots… and the armor was still pretty solid.

My opponent concede the race to me at this point– 20 laps for my to his 12.  He figured any sort of desperate ramming tactics would do him no good considering my armor….

We might as well have played paper-rock-scissors for this event.  If he had gone with a weaponless car with better top speed than me, HE would have won.  But then he’d have lost if I had taken guns….  He might have done better with Gauss Guns with extra magazines… I’m not sure….

I probably won this one because my opponent misunderstood the pricing of turbochargers.  He thought that they cost $1 per power factor of the engine… instead of being $1 per added power factor.  When we were playing, he just could not believe that a car could go that fast with that much armor….  Doh!

Ah well.  A chintzy victory for me, but a victory nonetheless.

It took exactly 2 and a half hours to play out the two laps we ran.  Better luck next time!