ON THE TABLE last Tuesday: War of the Austrian Succession (S&T), with myself as the Prussians and Bill T as the Haplessburgs.

Based on previous experience with Gates of Vienna (which is similar), we played that ZOCs were allowed out of unbesieged fortresses, and defenders in a storming may decline to counterattack. (FYI both of these changes hindered the Prussians in actual play, but see below...)


Game at set up

Like some other recent Joe Miranda designs, victory revolves around morale. Unlike GoV, where morale was spent to do everything and regenerated strongly every month, in WAS you get a normal movement and combat phase "for free" - but you can buy additional impulses for individual leaders with morale. Your average morale "income" (based on a die roll plus holding key sites) is only a handful, and with the morale scale topping at 20 any major battle threatens to put one side in the hole, or even knock them out. This is a game about setting up for a decisive blow, rather than attrition and skirmishing. You can set the table with sieges and counter-marching, but a knockout will still take a field battle.

It started off well enough for me, my Prussians quickly taking Glogau. Then Saxony entered the war, and Bill sent an Austrian army to invest Dresden. Fred dispatched a force that, combined with a Saxon sortie, threw the Austrians back into Bohemia in rout (we missed the bit that only the loser of a battle lost morale, so this first battle actually resulted in only minor morale adjustments.)


Prussians attack en echelon at Dresden

Bavaria then entered the war, but other than capturing the attention of a small force in the south, without the French involved they couldn't do much. The re-consolidated Prussian army threatened Breslau, and given his sagging morale, Bill had to reinforce it and hope any ensuing battle went his way. Inexplicably, Breslau is not a fortress so I decided to press my advantage and attacked. Once again the Austrians were routed and I knocked his morale to 0, winning the game on turn four.


Rout at Breslau [stacks spread out for battle]

WAS was fun, though there are a few additional house rules I would use going forward; nothing too major. We played with all the optional/advanced rules, which includes stuff like using supply units for a variety of functions. I'd say it's typical magazine game stuff, the rules are mostly there, the components are functional, and the game is worth trying out a couple times before moving on. If you have a thing against contextless random event chits, you might want to take a pass.

Fields of Fire - got this back on the table this weekend after a long break... Reminded me what a great game it is. Took a few turns and one restart to get the rules straight again - but it was soon flowing smoothly.

Man - the decisions in this game is tough. I replayed scenario 4 from the Normandy campaign - Hill 192. A counter-attack on the second turn, along with extensive minefields really made me wonder if I was going to make it. The counter-attack fizzled out and I made steady progress. An infantry gun in a village firing across open fields was a real challenge and took several turns of flanking and smoke before I could effectively take it out.

The game was memorable as it went down to the last turn of the cards. I had taken the primary and secondary objective, but there was stubborn resistance in a village on row three. In the village house-to-house fighting had been raging over several turns. The defending fallschimajer platoon had been reduced to a single fireteam, but despite extensive use of grenades it would not budge. Every turn I was hoping they had had enough and would withdraw - but they didn't. On the final turn one of my platoon HQs had to join the fight along with an additional platoon. The HQ ordered a wave of grenades to be thrown before being eliminated by the paratroopers. It came down to the last two cards of the game - which gave me a 'Hit' and then a 'Casualty' result. The victory conditions were met.

Wow! just made it. This game really is like nothing else out there - I sometime think of making a way to get it to work as a co-op with another player. Still looking forward to Vol.2 - whenever it finally gets printed!

Thanks, Scott. I really liked the Austrian Succession game. I went into expecting a siege-fest ala "No Victory without Spain" and got a rock and roll battle where siege can be more costly than field battle. My Austrians lost after I was forced to bloody Fredrick and he hence became more formidable.

Haven't tried "Gates of Vienna" yet.

I played Pax Britannica and "Drive on Baghdad" (Modern War) this weekend and will post on those later.

Gareth, for a four player Euro I would recommend Eight-Minute Empire: Legends. You get to balance area control for VPs with Cards Collected for VP. Some cards let you place armies, others let you move armies, some let you cross water for less and other abilities as well. Though some cards allow you to destroy another person’s armies those cards are few and that is the only “combat” in the game. BGG Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/142326/eight-minute-empire-legends

There is already one expansion out called Eight-Minute Empire: Lost Lands. This allows you to add two more players and gives you more cards to bid over and more maps to fight over.

I have both games and have enjoyed playing them. One of my friends who does play Carcassonne has also played Eight-Minute Empire with me and my wife and though she has a pretty strict no-combat rule when it comes to gaming the destruction cards were not too much for her.

There was also an earlier version called Eight Minute Empire which I have not played. CSW Link: http://talk.consimworld.com/WebX?7@@.1dda67f1/1

Neither sound promulgates in space anyhow, so it hardly matters.

A relativistic raspberry can ruin your whole day.

I am one that found the vector methods of Attack Vector and Saganami Island Simulator refreshing. Yes, I know and agree, lots of process for results, but I will take better results.

I've had this for a long time, shortly after I got it they pissed me off by releasing a supposedly much better rulebook for $20 or something that I was not willing to pay, so I have not hunted for an opponent (I think this is not the game you delve in lightly because there's some time left in the evening). It is interesting because it does include rotation and facing, lack of which (in retrospect) was the weakness of games like Vector 3.

That said when it comes to 3D and vector movement I'm usually content with having at least one, so Triplanetary or Monash's Orion fit the bill. (The latter is the most physics-aware game I have seen apart from High Frontier but much easier to play. Good luck finding a copy though. Should talk to Chris about a possible re-release.)

So really, you Battled for Germany twice.

Heh, very good.

you can buy additional impulses for individual leaders with morale

Sounds odd to me.

Sounds odd to me.

I suppose you could say it's wear and tear from force marching or extended operations.

In the Mirandaverse, most substances contain handwavium in at least trace amounts.

:-)

Real space battles probably wouldn't feature ANY maneuvering, since doing one would head your ship in an unpredictable direction of the vast nothingness, with a very high chance that you don't have the energy to get back to civilization. It would be a bit like a battle between armoured trains on parallel tracks.

I don't think so. If your drives are so weak that no one can save you once you are off the rails, then some maneuvering to get you off the rails for combat is not going to get you far enough off to make a difference. On the other hand, if your drives are so strong that a short acceleration can throw you seriously off course, then they are also strong enough for someone else to rescue you.

(I do however predict a significant potential post-combat role for fleet tugs compared to naval battles, since naval vessels don't tend to drift out of the battle area at high speed, and sending a major combat vessel after them might be considered wasteful. :-)

Either way, I do think there will be a lot of evasive jinking and rotating (to hide heat sources, have non-critical parts facing enemy fire etc.). In a situation where reaction drives are used as weapons (per Niven/Pournelle, or High Frontier), there'd be a desire to point drives towards the enemy. At the same time you may want high lateral acceleration. Lots of decisions.

The aforementioned Orion is very interesting in this regards, too, since it has the notion of the combat part of the ship (called a "fighter" - relatively small, high acceleration for a short time) being potentially separated from the big massive interstellar drive unit. No FTL but otherwise intriguingly similar to the fighter/carrier concept from Cherryh's Downbelow Station novels, for those familiar with them, and far more convincing than all the plane-like "fighters" in most other SF game systems, including SFB.

The only game that I've seen give at least lip service to the notion of large 3D formations (a topic that requires realistic facing/rotation rules and is probably too complicated to do at full detail in a boardgame) is GDW's Double Star which handles them abstractly, but very cleverly (including the question of how much training is required to keep a fleet up to scratch in terms of such a complex doctrine).

if you are going to allow FTL then everything else can be justified in some way , AVT Saganami simulator (can't quite remember the name) does the weber universe well but even in books he has massive lines of ships as in the absence of a gravity well what is all the maneuvering getting you? ww2 fighters have energy thy have to spend to go up and gain for free when go down in space all changes in direction cost you energy. assuming gins are arranged to fire in 360 degree arcs then the up down seems of little benefit as you can just flip ship (don't have to move in direction you are facing) IMHO talon is great fun which is all space games can be as the underlying premise is against our known laws of physics

(Just for clarification, none of my comments above assume FTL)

even in books he has massive lines of ships as in the absence of a gravity well what is all the maneuvering getting you?

The question is, is the cause an absence of gravity or an absence of imagination on the part of the author? Like much military SF, Weber's is openly based on historical examples in more than one way.

Attack Vector: Tactical is a very interesting game, I agree it is not one you pick up casually. I try to get it on the table once or twice a year. It has the most ‘realistic’ physics model I have seen in a space game – the author goes into quite detail notes on his equations and also the ‘fudging’ that is needed to make a playable game. I hear the Squadron Strike rules are simpler by discarding the physics but keeping the clever 3D model. I nearly backed the recent Traveller based version – but it would not hit the table often enough to warrant it for me.

Attack Vector is fun, but its a question of whether the overhead is ultimately worth it in play time. One time I did a pass with my ship, went up, over and came back down unloading torpedoes into my opponent from behind it was a sweet maneuver but it took a lot of time even with the good tools Ken has created for the game. The other element is that there is a certain percentage of people that have issues visualizing in 3d, for them the 2d games are just much easier to grok the situation on the game board. ( We all know perfectly good game players who have problems understanding LOS rules in tactical games as well, a similar issue).

I don't think so. If your drives are so weak that no one can save you once you are off the rails, then some maneuvering to get you off the rails for combat is not going to get you far enough off to make a difference. On the other hand, if your drives are so strong that a short acceleration can throw you seriously off course, then they are also strong enough for someone else to rescue you.

I think you seriously underestimate the amount of energy required to maneuver in space. When Nasa probes make course adjustments, I suspect that they can be measured in arc seconds. If you are going to make a turn that shows up in a tactical space game, unless you are basically standing still doing docking maneuvers, you probably have to convert a significant part of your mass to energy, the Einstein way.

To get around this, you basically need alternate physics, in which case you can have it whichever way you want it.

I think you seriously underestimate the amount of energy required to maneuver in space.

That depends on what each of us calls "maneuver". I think we need to distinguish the speeds required for navigating over the solar system from those required for tactical evasion. Even a Mars probe at a relatively gentle 5km/s (18,000km/h) is moving at speeds far in excess of what I'd expect to be achievable (but nonetheless useful) within the limits of actual ship-to-ship combat. But yes, I don't expect "maneuver" to including "getting behind" someone in flight - rotation speeds would always massively exceed what you could achieve in reasonable ΔV. Don't know what I'd be using for rotation, perhaps flywheels. But for the same reason 3D maneuvers become interesting - because you could force someone to try to face in different directions at once.

I note that if you try to use missiles in space, these are subject to exactly the same limitations - no course changes, not even terminal phase target correction, without reaction mass expenditure. They don't work like missiles in atmosphere.

NASA probes carry essentially no reaction mass because they are not expected to make any evasive or other maneuvering at all except for orbital insertions. Yes, a lot of reaction mass would be required for any maneuvers but then if you build ships for combat they would likely be expected to engage in such maneuvers, and so built for that.

Overall, you seem to be postulating a specific amount of maneuvering without having settled on any of the other parameters including where such a battle is actually happening and with what weapons or at what range, so such proclamations are pretty much the kind of handwaving that you're accusing me of. What I was saying was exactly that the degree of maneuver is limited by the amount of energy available - whether maneuver is limited related to the actual orbital path, or whether it is not (say, because of a very efficient drive or whatever), presumably energy at roughly the same order of magnitude is available to restore course (apart from damage concerns). Stopping the evasion before your ΔV becomes irreversible or renders you uncatchable is one of the things to watch out for. Even Triplanetary teaches that lesson. :-)

I was about to weigh in on this earlier, but Markus beat me to it. Thinking of manoeuvre in 3D may be something of a blind alley. The design I'm working on thinks more in terms of orbits and their parameters and whether firing solutions can be obtained, and how and when. And given spaceships' likely fragility, given the difficulties of assigning payload as armour, a lot of engagements between satellites, drones and manned vessels will be resolved very swiftly in favour of the side that can launch first.

The design I'm working on thinks more in terms of orbits and their parameters and whether firing solutions can be obtained, and how and when.

That's why we, in the Space Navy, usually use gaggles of embarked fighters/bombers.

That's why we, in the Space Navy, usually use gaggles of embarked fighters/bombers.

Yes, all of which are launched with roughly the same velocity as the parent platform, and whose ability to change orbit is highly limited by their reaction mass. And let's not even discuss the recovery problems yet.

My aerospace force is a leaner mix of space and surface-based sensors and weapon systems. Our payloads are much cheaper to lift.

But.. but...