Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

I got in 3 games of G.E.V. this weekend.  I played against the guy that had crushed me in several games of Carcassonne a while back, so I knew that he could handle a game like this.  It seems like people either really don’t care about games too much–in which case they won’t even bother to master a relatively simple game like Ogre– or they are highly aggressive and tactically minded– in which case the terrain, spillover, and overrun rules of G.E.V. won’t pose them the slightest problem to them.

We played the Breakthrough scenario three times.  The first game, I played the defense and my opponent split his force into two groups.  I purchased heavy tanks and light tanks.  6 points of infantry and a heavy tank were stranded on the small eastern island and the G.E.V. attackers were able to mop them up without taking any fire.  Oops!  On the other side of the board, my light tanks sallied forth and the attackers were able to hit and run enough to destroy them for free.  I was able to send a couple of light tanks out from the central city to a woods hex and get a couple of shots off, disabling a couple of G.E.V.’s, but it didn’t help me in the end: the Combine forced scored a tremendous 80 point victory!  I hung my head in shame.

My opponent then took up the defense.  I sent my G.E.V.’s up the west side of the map and came up against two heavy tanks and a swarm of infantry.  One mobile howitzer brought up the rear while another one was isolated on the eastern island.  He played much more aggressively than I did and sent his forces as far down the map as he could without any cover at all in many cases.  In the bloody melee, I eliminated the infantry and disabled the tanks.  I lost a couple of units to the howitzer before I could slip in a good pot shot.  The surviving heavy tank proved difficult to kill and followed my G.E.V.’s down off the map, getting in a good overrun and a couple of kills.  I also scored a decisive victory, but with just 60 points.

At this point we realized that, just like Ogre, the key to this scenario is mastering the coordination of the defensive units.  My opponent suggested that the game was unbalanced, but I felt that we were missing something in our unit selection and tactics.

In the final game, my opponent took the defense again.  I ran my G.E.V.’s down the river this time.  We took out a mobile howitzer and six points of infantry at the cost of a couple of G.E.V.’s.  We then used our “road bonus” to move down the map at high speed across the water.  The reacting forces continued to move east to intercept us, but even the surviving mobile howitzer was out of range.  I ran my 10 G.E.V.’s into the swamp hexes on the far side of the map.  Three or four G.E.V.’s were disabled.  The howitzer then arrived to pick up a couple of kills while the rest of my force left the map.  I again scored a decisive victory, but with 64 points this time.

We got into an argument about whether or not G.E.V.’s have to pause (like they do when crossing streams) when crossing from water to clear hexes and vice versa.  I supposedly said they did in the first game, but said they didn’t in the last.  Then there’s the question of how the “road bonus” works in this situation as well….  The one key rule that we completely forgot was the obscuring of the defense’s set up in the Breakthrough scenario.  I would not have been able to choose the absolute best point of entry like I did in the third game had we played by this rule!

I like this game a lot.  It is very violent and full of many difficult decisions.  The spillover fire and overrun rules really aren’t that complicated– they’re just hard to explain to a first time player.  The terrain is also pretty easy to get the hang of once you play a few times: we really didn’t have to refer to the cheat sheet that much for that.  It amazes me how far these rules go in differentiating the various units.  Each armor unit has its own personality: in G.E.V., they are so much more than a move, fire, range, and defense rating.

Are you a Munchkin afficionado?

Wil Wheaton is.  While Ogre didn’t make his off the cuff list of “will always play” games, he has mentioned it before in an interview.  (Oh, and his fans did make the photoshopped cigar magazine covers that he asked for, too.  Heh heh.)

I just can’t get the hang of the game– probably because I end up playing it just with two players.  The fun of Munchkin comes from the mind games that emerge in the group dynamic– who will merit the smiting of the “whoop cards?”  With two players, that dynamic is gone because there’s only one place for the hurt to fall.

The thing I can’t stand about it is how everyone has, just as in Chez Geek, all of these randomly powered cards in front of them.  Not only do they interact in weird ways, but unless you’ve memorized the abilities, it’s very difficult to “read” the current situation.  This makes it a pain to plan any coherent tactics….

Anyways, its pretty cool to see that CAR WARS is still high up on Wheaton’s list.  I knew he played it way back, but I didn’t know it was something that he’d still play.

You know, I’d rather be playing Car Wars until 3 in the morning with 5 long time gaming buddies… but I’m telling you those days are gone.  The buddies are gone.  The spare time is gone.  The gigantic table at my mom’s house is gone.  Shoot, even my mom’s house is gone.

But we’re not complaining.  One of those gaming buddies (that actually went so far as to leave the friggin’ country!) kindly bequeathed me his set of Ogre Miniatures.  The eighties are long gone, but there’s still fun to be had.  I just wish he’d painted his infantry and finished his G.E.V.’s before he left….

Anyways, I’ve been steadily weeding my way through Ogre Opponents for the past few years in the hopes of it being a sort of gateway to bigger and better things for somebody.  One player turned out to be more of a miniatures painter and less interested in actually playing games.  One, as I mentioned already, left the country.  Some have been highly casual acquaintances that I just don’t see so often.  In all cases, I’ve failed to teach them the tactics of the winning play.  One guy who happened to be a hardened wargamer actually read my blog after I introduced the game to him and promptly destroyed me in our next game session, but I didn’t teach him: he figured it out himself!

So I’ve got a new mark.  It’s this guy I play chess with.  He’s waaaay better than me.  I’m just a brute that opens up his pieces, takes initiative, throws everything but the kitchen sink, and then trades down in material once I get ahead.  Without chessclocks ticking he can completely defuse any attack I make with subtle positioning and he can cause my setup to fall apart with the slightest pressure.  He can use a pair of bishops like they’re some sort of precision laser cutting tool….

So we played chess the other day and then I drug out the Ogre minis. Probably the coolest thing about Ogre is that there’s only three things you need to teach someone to play the game.  You teach movement in about 15 seconds….  You can teach ‘em how to shoot in about 3 minutes….  Then you teach ‘em how to ram.  That’s it.  There’s a couple of thing’s he’ll need to know about infantry half way through the first game, but it’s really just those three things to get started.

I took 3 Heavy Tanks, 3 Missile Tanks, 3 G.E.V.’s, a Howitzer, and 4 3-point infantry counters.  I use miniatures for everything else, but I don’t feel like messing with the unpainted infantry I’ve got.  As a seasoned player I look at that line up and think, the Howitzer will get one shot off and it will more than likely miss.  That means I’m effectively down 3 armor units.  I’m also short 8 points of infantry.  This game is so balanced… I’m sure I’ll get mauled.

I never tell new players that I’m handicapping them.  Most people would be insulted to know that.  But the above force is still too strong for most new players.  I pretty well crushed the guy in our first game– however the Howitzer did make its shot before getting missiled to death.  The game was so short and fast playing, he immediately asked for a rematch.  (That’s the the second coolest thang about the game, right there.)

In our second game, he betrayed a sudden prejudice against Missile Tanks and G.E.V.’s.  (There’s something  that’s just downright irritating about being pinged to death by two of the stupid units eight hexes away from the command post!)  Then he had to plough straight towards the howitzer at low speed.  After missing the first shot and skipping one opportunity to fire, that crazy howitzer hit the Ogre’s treads three times in a row!!  Meanwhile, my opponent would double up his remaining secondary batteries on several 2-to-1 attacks… and roll ones and twos repeatedly.  His luck was so bad, and my luck was so good… I wonder if he’ll want to stick to chess in the future….

The novice Ogre player dives right into the middle of the defenses forces… and he fails to recognize the race against time nature of the end game.  He fights from a position where he takes worse than he gives… and he fails to consider flanking attacks or hit-and-skirt maneuvers.  <Sigh>

In the future I’ll stick with the same defensive lineup I mentioned above until he can crush it.  I figure that, at this point, letting him play defense would be a good way to frustrate him– some new players can watch an expert Ogre jockey crush them and still not grok the tactics.  To lose as defense at this point… and then lose as the Ogre twice more in a row will most assuredly kill the game for him.

But I do think that the next player I introduce the game to will face only 2 Heavy Tanks, 2 Missile Tanks, 2 G.E.V.’s, a Howitzer, and 4 3-point infantry counters.  Each time he wins I’ll add one armor unit and two points of infantry.  I hate that I maybe picked too strong of a force for this guy….  But he was pretty wreckless in that second game… and I was terribly lucky.  Maybe he can beat me next time….

The big news from Steve Jackson’s latest address to the masses is that Munchkin will continue to dominate the efforts of the company for the foreseeable future.  The tongue-in-cheek card game accounted for over 55% of sales in 2006… and Steve reported in a recent message board post that he is hard at work on Munchkin 5.  He also remarked that in this new year, the company will drop everything at the first sign of a shortage in Munchkin product.  Letting Munchkin go out of print is like “leaving money on the table,” he noted.

Many GURPS fans got their panties in a wad at the news of what was to come for their favorite role playing game this year, but the fine print bears looking into.  Two new hardbacks are on the plate for 2007… including a third that was slated for 2006.  It would appear that the company has officially given the “240-page hardback every other month goal” the royal flush.  [Note to Editor: please cut and paste 'Cut and Run' joke #47 here.]  But don’t forget that the company plans on producing about as many online pdf pages for GURPS products ranging in a variety of sizes.  This e23 component can potentially double the amount of new GURPS material released in 2007– unless of course Munchkin sales rage out of control.

That said, what are the upcoming GURPS releases?  Marketing Director Paul Chapman recently stated that GURPS Ultra-Tech should ship in February and that GURPS Martial Arts likely to be released in the second quarter.  He also pointed out that e23 PDF releases in 2007 are likely to include “projects by David Pulver, Phil Masters, William Stoddard, and Sean Punch, covering everything from Infinite Worlds to supers to dungeons.”  GURPS Line editor Sean Punch has stated that he’d be editing High-Tech while Steve is editing Thaumatology– which will probably lead to High-Tech coming out first what with Steve having to do all of the boring run-the-company sort of stuff all the time.  Thaumatology might squeeze into 2007, Munchkin sales permitting. 

Should the GURPS fantasy gamer contingent be upset about such a perceived slight?  Not at, all, says Punch:  “Since 2004, fantasy fans have received Banestorm, Fantasy, and Magic… Fans of realistic historical gaming haven’t even received a crummy T-shirt, so it’s only fair that we give them High-Tech.”   If that doesn’t satisfy the fantasy crowd, then there are reports of a memo leaked from the Austin offices that Steve Jackson will begin confiscating power stones if he hears any more complaints.

And speaking of complaints, where is Ogre and Car Wars in all of this?  Yes indeedy, a couple of whiners have been heard on this point… nay, I say unto you, lo some have even gone on to write long winded heart-felt pleas.  Is Munchkin-mania a scourge and a plague upon our favorite gaming company stifling work on the fans’ favorite games?  Perhaps not, says Paul Chapman.  “The current situation is no different than the period when the entire SJGames staff focused on nothing but INWO, or the ‘all Car Wars, all the time’ era before that….  We’d all love to see Ogre (and Car Wars) returned to print, and succeed in a major way. However, the numbers (our income vs. our staffing levels) simply aren’t in support of such a move at the moment.”

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….

I went down to see an old gaming buddy yesterday and we managed to play 5 Ogre scenarios in a single afternoon.

Lately, I’ve been playing 5 Heavy Tanks placed on the forward end of the map just out of missile range from the Ogre’s first move.  If an opponent attempts to dive in straight through, then the combined firepower of the Heavies strips him down in time to really increase the survivability of the weaker GEVs and Missile Tanks.  The forces can then knock him down to Move 2 just as he’s crossing the fold– and then the infantry can surround the Ogre and help deliver the coup de grace.  The double whammy of an Heavy Tank blitz with an infantry swarm seems to be an unstoppably defence aganst an opponent that charges straight in.

I tried this approach against an Ogre Mark III a few weeks ago.  All of my attacks missed completely for the first two rounds!  My opponent disabled or killed the heavies and continued his charge.  Instead of taking out the disabled heavies, he went after my GEVs and Missile tanks.  In spite of my bad luck in my first two attacks, the surviving Heavies and swarming infantry helped to take the Ogre down a good many hexes away from the command post.  Because of my bad luck, this was the first and only game in which the Ogre got to fire his Main Battery 4 or 5 times!!

Most Ogre players think of infantry as insignificant.  They also think they are much tougher than a wing of Heavy Tanks.  This just isn’t the case.  You have to take out the Heavy Tanks for the same reason that the Defense always takes out the Ogre’s Main Battery on the first shot.  You just can let yourself think you can slip on down the board in spite of them!  And Ogres have to treat infantry as if they are real units.  Anything that can take out your last secondary batteries and knock you down a Movement point has to be treated seriously!

The first game we played yesterday was a reiteration of the above lessons.  The Ogre always moved straight in regardless of the cost, leaving Heavy Tanks behind and getting surrounded by infantry and got blown away disheartneningly fast.  It didn’t help that my opponent was using some dodgy dice that made consistently bad rolls.

In our second game, I got a chance to play the Ogre.  The last time I did this I got eaten alive.  Knowing the Defense’s strategy is not enough– you’ve got to have a good plan for the Ogre, too!  As I made my approach, I pointed out each possible hex that my Ogre might move to.  Often times these were hexes that allowed the Ogre to “fork” two enemy units so that he could focus his fire on just two or three enemies.  I would then choose the hex that allowed me to concentrate my firepower on a small number of units while minimizing the amount of return fire that I would take on the subsequent turn.  This resulted in a “fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee” type of dance as I gradually moved down the board. 

I consistently gave better than I got and took out the forces piecemeal.  The dance was over when my opponent’s Missile Tanks got to the scene.  Even though they are slow, they are hard to “sting.”  And if you go in for the kill, the infantry will surely swarm you.  This leads to some tougher choices, but if you’ve played well, you can endure the fire you take as you drive on to the CP and then attempt your escape.  My Ogre pulled it off with only five or six tread units left while two Missile Tanks and a GEV harried his retreat.

In our third game, my opponent seemed to catch on to a better Ogre strategy.  He dove down the board towards the pair of neighboring crater hexes.  He rammed three of four Heavy Tanks and shot up the rest and then kept coming in.  My forces could not position themselves well in the area surrounding the pair of craters, so he avoided some extra fire because of that.  (Good tactic!)  It was a bloody fight, but he died only three hexes away from the command post.  My opponent didn’t think that taking six tread hits from raming early on was such a good idea after this.

My opponent then decided to try something new.  He called up the web article on the four howitzer defense and set that up.  He took four Heavy Tanks and let them hang out near the infantry and howitzers.

My Ogre charged in on the opposite side of the board from the command post.  I got into position so that I could dive three hexes into the furthest Howitzer’s field of fire.  I was able to attack infantry and tanks with all of my weapons and decimated them.  I took light damage in return and took out two Howitzers on the following turn.

My opponent really wanted to master the Defense tactics with this, so we set it up again.  This time he sent two Heavies, two GEV’s, and some infantry out to meet me.  These forces attacked me outside of the Howitzer Umbrella, and I was able to outmaneuver them and eliminate them all.

At this point, my opponent was rather disgusted with the game.  If he left the Heavies alive, he died quickly.  If he rammed my Heavies to death, then he dies a few tantalyzing hexes away from the command post.  If he held his defense back under the Howitzer defense, his forces were crushed by a fully operation Ogre… and if he sent his forces out, they were destroyed piecemeal!  Argh!

My opponent found the whole idea of counting hexes to be rather distasteful, so he probably wasn’t going to compare his movement options very well.  Still, it seems that coordinating a defense is much harder for new players to learn than maneuvering the Ogre.  Ogre is a very chess like game in spite of its random elements, and it seems that calculating the costs of various exchanges is essential to top notch play.  I felt bad at the end, though– my opponent really needed a “win” to perk up his interest in the game there and I felt a little bit cruel at that point….

Got a game of Car Wars and a game of Ogre in last Saturday.

We played in the Dumbarton Slalom (from Expansion Set #5 Double Arena) with a couple of souped up hotrods.  We traded a few shots and ended up both flipping over and rolling into the wall during the same second.  It seems that going over 100 mph is dangerous in this environment….  Ah well the game served as a chance to brush up on the classic Compendium 2.0 rules.  And we still had time for a game of Ogre after that.

I played two games with my opponent on a previous evening.  When I played the Ogre, he sent his defenders at me in two waves out from under their howitzer umbrella.  I gobbled ‘em up and then ‘forked’ two howitzers with a double missile attack.  (I’d given him an extra howitzer, too, because it was his first game.)  Then I took a turn as the defense and showed him what 5 heavy tanks could do.  I think he hung back and fought me when he needed a bit more forward momentum and I ate him up.

At this point I was afraid he’d never play again after losing twice.  It turns out he got his revenge.  He found my blog and then read up on my tactics!

In our third game, he showed me what 5 heavy tanks could do.  Things were going well at first.  I still had 3 mp’s even after getting over the crease in the middle of the map.  I dove on down the map to take out his GEV’s.  He had nothing left except 4 heavies, a missile tank, and infantry.  I figured I could make it to the cp before he stopped me, so I didn’t hang back to take out some of his teeth.  His infantry and tanks turned out to have withering firepower.  I made it to range 2 before he crushed me.  If I could have survived one more turn my AP guns could have taken the cp out….

It was rough seeing my own tactics turned against me– but at least I will learn some new things if this guy gets a few more games in with me.

Crashed and burned two times in one night….  Maybe next time…

Got a second game of Mayday in with a former Traveller player on Saturday just after playing a quick game of Ogre.  I figured a corsair could take out a scout without breaking a sweat.  Turns out that the scout scored a lucky hit and damaged the corsair’s maneuver drive.  He was able to pull away before the corsair could repair it.  (Because they have the same G rating, the corsair could never catch up.)  The corsair’s missiles were all shot down as well. The scout pulled this off by rolling an 11, a 12, another 12, and an 11– all in succession!

In the Ogre game I played 5 Heavies, 4 GEVs, and 3 Missile Tanks.  The forward force consisted of 3 Heavies and 4 GEVs.  The Ogre came up the middle and my forces positioned for an attack.  We struck first and took out the Main Battery.  The Ogre rammed three Heavies knocking him down 6 treads.  I started firing everything at the treads except the Missile Tanks which targeted Secondaries.  We knocked him down the Move-2 well before the fold.  The surviving Missile Tanks positioned to 4 hexes away on either side along with the GEVs.  With the Ogre moving at speed 2 the infantry could position for maximum effectiveness.  The Ogre slowed down to take care of the infantry problem, but repeatedly made terrible die rolls in attacking them.  The Ogre continued to charge up the middle.  Even with average rolls the Ogre was soon down to M-1 and finally to M-0.  Even with a missile he didn’t come close enough to the CP to threaten it.  I retained 2 GEVs and 2 Missile Tanks at the end– until he shot his last missile to take out one of my tanks.

I prefer the flexibility of 5 heavy tanks over a static howitzer defense.  The heavies serve as bait to lure the Ogre down the middle– they attract the ire of the Ogre away from the weaker units in the early stages of the game.  The more the Ogre rams, the sooner he’s down to Move-2– which gives us a lot more time and increases the power of the weaker units.  If he doesn’t ram, the Ogre gets shot at by the Heavies.

I’m not sure how this approach fares against the Mark-V.  This force works together well, but with more units on the board they may have trouble getting into position.  In any case, an Ogre that’s been kicked down to M-2 can have 3 secondaries or 100 and it still not do much good– except to fry infantry.

Last Friday we also got in a game of Ogre just before crashing.  Ogre is a great pick for those late night impromtu “just one more” gaming situations.  GEV is less appropriate because of the intricate calculations required for movement and attack accross the various terrain types.  Car Wars is right out– you’re liable to abandon the game by the time you get the vehicle sheets drawn up and the arena set up.  Nevermind the fact that 3 AM is just the wrong time to be reviewing crash table and ramming rules.  Of course, it would be different if you’d been playing GEV or Car Wars all afternoon, then you’d already be up to speed and all you have to do is keep going.  Ogre is quick to set up, and if you’ve played it before, all you have to do is review a couple of key points and you’re ready to go.

We played the standard Mark III game.  I chose 5 GEVs, 3 Missile tanks, and 4 Heavy tanks.  I set up my usual formation for the infantry– 4 “3’s” and 4 “2’s.”  I didn’t agonize over my set up, though I did place a Heavy and a couple of missile tanks at the far end of the map along with my GEV formation.

He started the game with a missile attack against my GEVs taking out two of them.  My opponent _hates_ GEVs!!  He hates my heavy tanks, too, and he rammed them just about every chance he got as he barrelled down the board.  He didn’t go straight in the whole time, but went sideways once or twice in order to eliminate irritations– much the the chagrin of the missile tanks that were flanking him on either side.

By the time he crossed the fold, he was down to 2 hexes of movement.  I had dedicated all of my fire towards treads once I had killed his main battery and half of his secondaries.  The decisive moment of the game occured when he went two hexes _away_ from the cp in order to ram a Heavy that was trailing him.  Though I only had one GEV and two Missile tanks after that, it was enough to allow me to immobilize the Ogre before he could kill the command post.

This was the first time that I had won a decisive victory against the Ogre without using the 4 howitzer defense.  I’m sure my opponent will make it harder for me next time– he’ll think twice before he sacrifices forward movement to make attacks like that again.  I’m pretty sure that he would have taken down the CP if he hadn’t gone backwards at the end.  I normally take 6 GEVs in this game, but I think trading a GEV for a Heavy was a big help to my defense.

Had a blast a couple of weekends ago playing Ogre Miniatures. Here’s a photo:

It was the closest I’ve come to playing a Convention-quality type game.

The geomorphic hex map pieces were really cool. They’d be perfect for Battletech. That was my biggest irritation with that game back in the day– the maps for it were lousy! Especially after you played a lot of Car Wars….