First, let me say that we were impressed by how the game went. Once we got the hang of the system, it went pretty quickly. We both liked the action/reaction system. I got the initiative the first turn, and never lost it. That meant Ken was basically reacting to what I did for the most part, but it was not a problem.
We each had 3 fireteams of 4 guys each. Each fireteam had one guy with a 2 die support weapon of some kind, so except for the unit with the flamer, the fireteams at full strength were 4 D8 plus 2 D8 for a total of 6 D8. Each side also had a walker. We were not sure how to handle these. We finally went for powered armor that carried support weapons. We may do some more tweaking on how we do this. This is one of the first problems we encountered. While they have examples from their "universe" in the book, some things are left to the imagination of the gamer on how to define the units. That is good in that it makes the game very flexible. Its bad when you are setting up a scenario to try out the game.
Ok, they do have scenarios that you can set up to learn the rules, but who really does that? :)
The whole business of how you do casualties took us a bit to figure out. We may still be doing it wrong. That is one of the things we are going to go over carefully.
Ok, probably time for another picture. I apologize that these don't really tell a story. This one is from the end of the game. I had trashed Ken's walker and killed the fireteam close to it. He also lost another fireteam by rolling 1s for every person hit. That kills them outright.
The game requires you to roll for casualties to see how bad they are. This whole system worked better than we thought it would when we first read it. It looked like it would be really clunky. In practice, it wasn't a problem.
The rules are advertised for both 15mm and 28mm figures. For me there is no question. I would play with 28s. I don't like trying to fiddle with individually based 15s. They are too small for me.
The rules physically are a problem for me. They are in a hardback book. It has small black print on a blue-grey mottled background. I can only read it up close in bright light. My 57 year old eyes just can't handle it. If we play these rules (and I think we will) I will probably pay for a pdf copy and see if I can find someone who wants to buy the hardback. I have heard that the pdf has an option to print the rules clean, without the colored background.
The QRS that you download off of Ambush Alley game is 4 pages. I found one on the web that someone had made for himself that was 2 pages. It gives page numbers for the actual rule in a lot of the sections. .It was useful. I didn't bother to print the one from Ambush Alley.
We are at this point planning on playing more and are going to try it out on our gaming group when we are good enough at it to help other people over the learning curve.
We are still looking for a "big battle" set for 15mm figures with multiple figures on the base.
Back side of a rubbled building I was using for cover. My medic is cowering in cover. His explanation is that he is keeping squad cohesion.
High tide of Ken's troops. By the time this fireteam reached the heavy cover, they were the only surviving troops on his side.
I had my first game of TW a couple of weeks ago. We played the rescue the pilot game from the book. It's an elegant system, as is Force on Force which I have also played a couple of times. The only real problem is balancing the forces and the victory conditions to give each side a realistic chance of a win
ReplyDeleteKeep going with the blog - I have just started one myself and am not sure how easy it will be to post regularly