Screw you Flanders!

This made me laugh rather more than it should. 

General Creaner and I played a game of Command & Colours The Great War recently.  General Creaner is something of an enthusiast for the period and the system.  

Cambrai

General Creaner is running a Great War games day in the near future and wanted to finish the day off with a large scale multi-player game.  Now as it happens the powers that be haven't released a multi-player version of the Great War yet, but we decided to cobble together something.  General Creaner picked Cambrai as the scenario that seemed most open to adaptation. 

The clanking rattling monsters roll forward

Something the Great War gets absolutely right in my opinion is how absolutely brutal tanks can be.  They are slow and can easily fall foul of terrain, but they soak up a great deal of fire. I was only able to knock out one in the course of the game.  They aren't game winning, but you can't afford to ignore them.

The British first wave hits my line

Some very successful British artillery smashed my front line on the right and I had to fall back.  

Things were looking a bit healthier on the left, but those tanks were getting awfully close. 

The tanks finally crash through the German line

It was at this point that the wheels really came off the wagon.  With Tommy's swarming over my front line and tanks shrugging off everything I could throw at them, I resorted to desperate measures calling in artillery on my own position in the hope of blasting the chaps all around me.  It worked (sort off) and I managed to hold General Creaner to a 16-13 score line, but I was eventually overwhelmed. 

Observations & Conclusions

The game worked.  Our generic sort of Memoir '44 Overlord/CCNapoleonics Epic multi-player rules worked relatively well. 

The cognitive load is substantial.  I was playing the part of four players.   This was a slow game and took about two and a half hours, which is a long time for a command and colours game.  I actually found that this made the game less entertaining for me - but as the objective was to simply test if the setup was feasible - it wasn't a huge issue.  It's very unlikely that we will play this game this way again.  

It's all go here. Arthur Kinch in characteristic pose. 

You've probably noticed that the blog postings aren't coming as thick and fast as they used to and for that my apologies.  Now that I'm back at work and the Kinchlets are a bit more mobile, the days are just packed.  Between trying to keep up my fiction writing commitments and everything else,  poor old J&F isn't getting the attention, but I am trying to keep it ticking over.  

But while I'm at it I have a question, I am rather smitten with the Kinchlets and as children go, I think they're smashing.  I am, however, well aware that perhaps not everyone is an enamoured of children as I am and to those who are not immediately concerned with them they are deathly dull.  

So, do you find occasional domestic (usually child related) incidents entertaining or should I stick to the war gaming pure and simple? 

Great War Map

 

It appears I miscounted

I stated in my previous post that the map for Great War is thirteen hexes by eleven and it would appear I was talking through my hat. Here's a quick screen shot from the gameplay video.  It is in fact twelve by eleven. I presume there's solid gameplay reasons for this, but I had so hoped it would be a standard board size. 

Interesting to note that the trench system is notional. Great War trench systems were generally more complex and zig zagged a bit more, but this makes things easier for a modular tile system. 

Kickstarter: The Great War

I may be the last chap on the Internet to hear about this, but be that as it may in case there is another poor soul out there that hasn't heard the good word, I thought a brief blog entry was in order.

Behold the next ruinous assault on my pocket book!

The Great War by Richard Borg is the latest installment in the Commands & Colours series of games. Produced by those fine fellows at the Plastic Soldier Company it is a board game in a box allowing players to play out the bloody battles of the Great War using the tried and tested Commands & Colours system. The game itself is being launched on Kickstarter and you can find it and an explanatory video here.  There are twenty nine days left to back this project, so there is no rush.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with Kickstarter, it is a organisation that allows companies to gather finance for projects from large groups of small investors. This can vary from project to project, but folk have used it to finance films, expeditions, exhibitions, art projects and games. In the context of Great War, what you're doing is pledging money (about £50) for a copy of the game which will be delivered when the game is made. 

Observations on what we know so far.

- The game will use a standard Command & Colours setup, that is a board with hex tiles on it and 1/100 scale plastic figures. Combat will be resolved using the standard bespoke dice.

- One rather clever aspect of the design that isn't mentioned explicitly  in the KS is that the card markers appear to be double sided.  The wire markers have shell holes on the reverse which would appear to indicate that the terrain setup can be altered by bombardments. Very clever if true.

- There will be a hundred odd 1/100 (15mm in new money) scale figures in the box and the initial release will cover the British (hurrah!) and the Germans (boo!).  The French, plucky Belgians, Russians and other expansions are in the works. Americans will be presumably two or three years off.

- Looking at the game play video, the board is a little different from previous Borg games, measuring as it does thirteen hexes by eleven (damn you Borg!).

- Lastly and I think this is an example of Kickstarter maturing as a platform - there is no doubt about it this game is getting made. The game is already written and playtested.  If I've learned anything from speaking to Richard Borg it is that he playtests his games rigorously and over a long period of time. The gameplay will be solid. Secondly, the figures are already in tooling and the boxes are being produced.

This is a type of project is being produced by a company with a proven track record that is so far as I can tell using Kickstarter as a means of marketing their product and limiting their financial exposure, which is fair enough.  KS is a great means of harnessing the enthusiasm of your audience because prospective investors are motivated to push your product to others because of the mechanism of stretch goals. 

Every KS project has a minimum funding target.  If that target is reached, at the end of the campaign, Kickstarter will give the project organiser that pot of cash (less KS fees) and the product will get made.  On occasion, a project will be wildly successful and will garner more investment than it's initial target. As the organisers most likely want more money, they create stretch goals - boundaries at which they will add extra stuff to the project. For example, The Great War is looking to raise £25,000 and will add two additional scenarios if they raise £35,000.  These extras will be added to everyone's pledge if the campaign raises the requisite amount of money. 

The stretch goals for The Great War are as follows. 

£25k base target

£35k 2 extra scenarios exclusive to Kickstarter set

£55k metal command figure sets exclusive to Kickstarter set

£75k replica Princess Mary 1914 Christmas tin, for storing cards and dice

£100k plastic Mk IV tank

£125k plastic A7 tank

Looking at these, they seem quite conservative to me - which is good. Previous Kickstarters have landed themselves in hot water by promising more than they could deliver and have either lost money, some so much so that they collapsed, or were subject to serious delays.  Even if all these stretch goals are achieved, I don't see there being any major issues with the putative delivery date of June/July. 

Now obviously, I'm generally on board for any Richard Borg produced game - but in this case in particular, this looks like a solid game, produced by a professional operation that is capable of delivering on its promises. I'm curious as to what the next few weeks will bring.