Quartermaster General 1914

 The other game we managed to get through on our 'rainy day at Tims' was Quartermaster General 1914. This one is rather more involved than QMG WW2, and requires a degree of preparation and planning by the players. I really like the points scoring only happening every few turns as it encourages  players to plan their objectives for the year, unlike the WW2 one where it is every turn. It better reflects the more deliberate nature of WW1.

The Central Powers were Russell (Germany) and Tim (Austria-Hungary and Turkey), while the Entente was Pete (Russia), Lloyd (US/UK) and myself (France/Italy).

1914/15 saw heavy fighting in the west and a major Entente presence in the east. Serbia held out, Rumania joined the allies and the British managed to take Istanbul! The Russians expanded West but failed to take Prussia, and heavy fighting broke out in Northern Italy between Austria and Italy. The Allies established an early points lead due to seizing so many production centres. I also had a hilarious status card where I got +1 VP for every attack I made with France in the west, which encouraged a rather aggressive French approach...

The Allies hold the Balkans.

The Germans were being pretty aggressive in the west, and a number of naval actions were fought in the North Sea. This position was a springboard for an early 'Kaiserschlacht' and 'Caporetto' which completely destroyed the French and Italian armies along the entire front. This was so monumentally frustrating as I'd just been about to play the 'Verdun' card and a number of other defensive cards. Oh well. Things started going better for the Central Powers.

The end of 1917. The Germans were now pushing the Russians back, and the Western Front was held mainly by the US and British. France and Austria were almost out of cards, oops. This rather restricted their options! In the east there was heavy fighting in and around the Caucasus and Persia as Russia and Turkey vied for dominance.

The Western Front in 1918. The Austrians have taken Northern Italy and control the Adriatic, while the Germans are in Burgundy. Fortunately Rome and Paris are heavily fortified. The British have managed to retake Picardy, but the German High Seas Fleet is still at large. 

In the East, Russia has lost Poland and Galicia but now controls both the Caucasus and Persia. Although Serbia has fallen, The British hold Greece, Istanbul and the Middle East, while amazingly, Rumania is still holding out. 

Although the Central Powers closed the gap in the last two years of the war, it isn't quite enough to overtake the Entente, and we win by 6 points (59 vs 53 iirc). Those extra points for Rumania and Istanbul clinched it for us, despite the reverses in the West.

What a great game, a very clever design and a bit less random than the WW2 one. Nice to be able to play it to a conclusion in a single session.

QMG Cold War - outing number two

After the last outing, we were all keen to have a go at QMG Cold War again having now got slightly more idea how to play it. One thing I'd completely missed the first time around was that you get VPs for each army you have, rather each supply base as in the WW1 and WW2 versions. That partly explained why the Non-aligned Powers wiped the floor as they spent their actions building armies, while NATO and Warpac spent them fighting WW3!

The game board once more, this time with a very high tech looking addition. I can't for the life of me remember what we used the iPad for in the game though.

Tim had recently obtained a very budget British Generals hat, so naturally had to play NATO.

While John had acquired this rather grand original PLA hat, so played Non-aligned.

That left me with the Warpac, so in the interests of international solidarity, I wore my Castro Cap (sourced in Havana!). I also rather unfairly read the notes at the back of the rules, which suggested the best plan for Warpac was to build armies, lots and lots of armies while building up a huge hand of Espionage cards to unleash a devasating attack (as you can play as many Espionage cards at a time as you like). Well, that sounds like a plan.

In the three player version, you get one deck each, with each of the two power decks shuffled together.  Jerry advised that this worked much better than the six player game.

Mid game, and India and China seem to have expanded quite a bit while Nationalists overrun the middle and far east. At least the USSR has some troops and planes in Central Asia to stem the tide. Eagle eyed readers will spot a big blue NATO counter on the far right. That is Israel (established as a NATO ally early on by Tim).

A distinct lack of WW3 going on in 1955. NATO have Italy and a strong presence in the Balkans though. Warpac have just built armies, and lag behind in the points.  Amusingly the US has just successfully completed a manned mission to Moon.

By 1960 I had a fair crop of Espionage cards and deployed WMDs. This was one  of my carefully planned Espionage coups. A revolution in Central America, supported by an extra army build and some tactical nuclear weapons manages to take the USA. I had planned to do this in the last game but didn't get to pull it off.

This was followed in 1965 with Soviet Fleets and Air based in the USA contesting the North Atlantic. Air power drove away the allied ships and this was followed up with a Soviet Army landing in Britain! Well, that went well. To rub salt into the wounds, we launched Sputnik too. 

At the end of 1965 the scores were much closer than before. NATO lagged behind but Warpac was only a couple of points behind China/India. We called it a day there. We still don't seem to have figured out how to stop China rampaging all over Asia, but at least NATO and Warpac didn't mutually destroy each other in futile combat this time.

So, I think we are getting there slowly. It does seem to take a while to play this one and I'm not convinced we'll ever get to finish a game in an evening, but the three player game did seem to rattle along a lot faster and we had a bit  more idea what we were doing. There are some NATO and Warpac events cards which stem the Nationalist tide in Asia, but we didn't get a chance to play them.

QMG Cold War

Tim had subscribed to the latest Quartermaster General Kickstarter and turned up with the Cold War version of QMG hot off the presses. It is designed to be played with 3-6 players, with three main blocs - NATO, Warpac and non-aligned (China, India etc). With more than three players each block is split in two, with a clever two deck system for each bloc which gives each of the pair differing capabilities but they score together.

It has a global map, similar to the WW2 one. The war runs from 1945 to 1990 and is scored in five year increments.

Naturally Tim hadn't read the rules, so we spent a bit of time figuring out how it worked.

John and I were playing Warpac. My deck seemed to be a bit more on the global revolution side of things, whereas I suspect Johns deck was a bit more warry. In QMGCW, opposing pieces can both occupy a zone, so Germany had both Warpac and NATO pieces in it. I think we'll have to do something about that.  

The various playing pieces. Tanks, planes and nuclear subs. Woohoo!

NATO sort themselves out. Draw decks and prepared card decks. Prepared cards are even more important in this version than the WW1 version as that is how you carry out 'espionage' actions. Many of the espionage actions were really, really powerful but took a bit of planning to make the most of.

My enigmatic Warpac deck. I had some really great espionage cards, including successful revolutions in Cuba, Central America, Africa and Vietnam! Each revolution would give as a supply base (and VPs) and an associated army. I was seriously planning on invading and taking over North America via Mexico. Maybe Trump is on to something.

My somewhat more warlike colleague in STAVKA had different ideas, and we soon kicked NATO out of Berlin and Germany, and even parked some Red Army tanks in Italy. Aggressive actions suffered an 'escalation' penalty so the baddies could do stuff back to you with political impunity, but with our tanks parked on the Rhine, who cares?

Cuba duly fell to Castro, and we even had some short range nukes to station there. Oh dear!

While all this jollity was going on, India, China and various unsavoury nationalists were romping all over Asia. There went my hopes of an early success in Vietnam. Sadly, this was reflected in the points as the non-aligned powers roared ahead.

Over in Europe, Italy was finally ours, through the judicious use of some tactical nuclear weapons, but those d*mn nationalists were all over the Balkans. Fun as this was, we'd have been far better off taking over Africa and Central America.

There was great excitement as we deployed these SS-18s. The little radiation markers and the great big bomb symbol with '11' in it said it all really. These boys go up to 11! That'll deter NATO aggression all right. Even we weren't crazy enough to fire these with the escalation level so against us. Not fire them yet anyway...

The Russian juggernaut rolled over France, but the non aligned powers were miles ahead now as our VP penalties really kicked in. We called it a day in 1960 as NATO and Warpac were outclassed by the new world power, China. Well, that will never happen in real life will it?

That was really good fun,and with the benefit of hindsight, we'll have a much better idea how to play it next time. All out war is a no-no, spreading global influence and stamping on those pesky nationalists is the way to go. I think sadly we were too influenced by the more warry WW1 and WW2 games and forgot we weren't actually fighting WW3. Very clever, and I'm looking forward to trying that again.

Quarter Master General

I've been wanting to try QMG for some time, and I was very excited when Jerry said he'd bring his copy down to the club. I have always had a fascinating with grand strategic games of WW2, I played Third Reich a great deal, and even have two versions of Hitlers War (the AHGC version and the original Metagaming one).

QMG is an abstact grand strategic game for 2-6 players with units representing armies and navies (like Diplomacy), area movement (Risk/Diplomacy) and a deterministic combat system (ie no dice). The logistic elements and fog of war are generated by the card decks used to drive each countries actions (and they can also add a hidden element to combat). 

I got to play plucky Britain. Here the Royal Navy holds the North Sea, whilst the wicked Jerries and Italians have overrun Europe. The Russians still hold Moscow and the Ukraine, but DAK control North Africa. American fleets patrol the western Atlantic

A more general view of the map, you can see the Japanese rampaging all over the Pacific on the left. Also visible are some of the player cards and force pools. The 'status' cards are permanent modifications to a countries capabilities, and some of them are really very good.

Things are hotting up in Europe. The DAK has been destroyed but Axis fleets still dominate the Mediterranean and Baltic.

In the Far East US Fleets build up, whilst the Japanese hang onto the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere.

This really was excellent, and although we only got around halfway through as we were still learning the game, it gave a good flavour if it. I was particualrly impressed with the way the card decks had been constructed so that each country felt and played quite differently. I can't even begin to think of how I'd design a game like that, and I'm looking forward to playing it again.