D-Day fails!! Allies take heavy casualties!

Today was the day - today we decided to take on the behemoth that is Memoir '44:Overlord - both in organisation, number of components and number of players. Within minutes of sending out the initial email asking if anyone in Horsham was interested, the 7 available seats were taken (I was taking the place of one player naturally!). Several people missed out and they wanted to play! This was one popular event!

The location was Brians house and the players were Brian, myself as the Axis and Allied general apiece, and Nigel Heather, Jack and Steve as the Axis field commanders and Andy, Tom and Dale as the Allied field commanders. The layout for the Overlord Omaha beach landing scenario is huge - two beach boards are required with a massive amount of beach objects, wire, tank obstacles etc. The allies had a huge amount of men and tanks to attack the French coast is in reality of 6th June 1944 whilst the Germans had heavily fortified and well dug in infantry and artillery defenders. I could tell it was going to be tough.

Top left a pensive Andy prepares for Orders to attack whilst top right
Nigel thinks about how effectively to wipe out the attackers! 

The idea of Overlord in Memoir '44 is that the General is given a hand of cards and then hands out at least one to each field commander as he sees fit, or if not, relying on the local field commander to make their own initiative calls using dice - which to excuse the pun, can be dicey. The general is also allowed to verbally communicate with one and only one local commander to execute his orders and with the others, hope for the best.

There was a lot of thinking and rule checking at first
as this was new to everyone, me included!

The attack started in earnest and at first, Dale started to make head way with his Rangers in the right hand flank and in his two sectors - each commander controlling two sectors of the 6 sector map. Yes this game is huge! Luckily Nigel had kindly leant me his Memoir '44 for the extra figures and obstacles required.

Then things started to go badly wrong - tank after tank was destroyed and Tom was repelled several times in the centre. Poor Andy on the far left was being ground up by withering fire from Nigel! We were making huge losses for little gains - just like in reality...

The medals to win on this scenario were 8 on either side - luckily the Germans held several objective medals which we the allies could exploit to win. Unfortunately it didn't get that far - Andys attack was blunted against the beach defences and whilst Tom managed to inflict losses on the German centre, it wasn't enough to get over the dunes.

Dale had better luck and managed to force a breach on the right and started up from the beach and into the mainland.

Dale takes a chance and forces a breach which works,
the Germans under Steves command start to fall away!

Unfortunately, the Germans rallied and hit back and the Allies suffered huge losses, at one point it was 7-0!! With few more lucky dice rolls it was pulled back to 7-2, but then Dale took a heavy beating and the Germans won!! 8-2!! D-Day, like Operation Jubilee at Dieppe before it, failed!!

The final result - the Allies are crushed 8-2!

For all it's complexity of having 8 players and many figures and rules, Memoir '44 Overlord moved very swiftly, even with the few down times of rule checks - the Air Pack cards were very handy for this. We leant  a few lessons, but I thought that a few of the guys, especially Jack and Tom, were not that impressed with it all. But that was ok - it was fun.

Afterwards there was a lot of talk - a lot of people wanted to know about the large Overlord papermaps I have. They liked the idea of pre-printed terrain and starting locations for troops and vehicles. the large array of missions plus they are double sided means at least two massive games per map - and there are 4 paper maps!

Later on at Battlequest, Andy relayed how much he had enjoyed the game, even though he had been shredded by Nigel. He also told me that Jack and Tom had said they had thoroughly enjoyed the game and wanted to play again which buoyed me up. Plans are afoot for a rematch or another game with some others who missed out before.

Memoir '44 on Steam - a three game try out

Tonight I had a try out of the Steam platform Memoir'44 Online game - basically it is /memoir '44 the board game online - complete with achievements and the ability to play against others online. It's pretty cool, with everything you need to play - the graphics are pretty good; the imagery is the same as the actual game itself. Firstly I played against a Dutch player as British then Germans on a scenario based around the Arnhem Bridge then as the Russians vs the Germans at Stalingrad against a US player. I have to admit its very good - although I don't like the fact that the dice are not thrown from your own hand (impossible in a computer game I know) but there you go. The only major downside I can think of is the fact you have to pay to play by buying War Gold in batches which you then spend in 2/3/4's to play certain maps and scenarios. The better the map/scenario the more you pay. Don't like this idea at all, but what can you do?

Wake Island and Guadalcanal - Nigel and I try out the Memoir Japanese

Although I've had the Japanese units for some time, I've not had the opportunity to play them. Nigel and I had organised a Memoir game a few weeks back but it was delayed until this evening. Stating a preference for either a Russian, Japanese or Desert game, we both went for a Japanese vs US Marines game. 

The Japanese introduce a large number of new rules and tactics but not overwhelmingly so; and the Air Pack help cards are extremely, well, helpful. The Japanese allow a player to conduct Banzai attacks (charge 2 hexes and still combat as long as it's close combat) and an extra combat die when in such combat. Against this frightening enemy, the US Marines get one extra unit to control over the number indicated on the Combat Card; extremely handy. 

The Japanese start to storm the Wake Island beaches -
the US Marine forces look pitifully small!

Firstly I took the Japanese on an Invasion of Wake Island - the number of Japanese was impressive with every unit in the box being used against a comparatively tiny defensive force well dug in. The main objective was the airfield but each bunker, field bunker and town was also a temporary objective win, so as long as a Japanese unit held the town or bunker, I would score an objective medal towards my win total of 5. 

End of the game with a Japanese victory! Even with all those casualties,
the Japanese force a breach to the left and take the town, field bunker and the airfield!

After this, we swapped sides for a battle in the steamy jungles of Guadalcanal - Nigel sent a good post battle report by email, so I'll let him take up the story.

The Guadalcanal battle starts with several artillery positions
ready to bombard the advancing Japanese

The first saw the Japanese invading Wake Island with a few marines dug in on defence.  My Marines fought valiantly, but Frank’s Jap’s took the island for the Emperor  in a fairly even match winning 6-4

The second saw the two forces in jungle separated by a river on Guadalcanal.  This time I played the Japs and Frank the Marines.  We soon found out that cover was high and movement really limited because of the jungle and river.  I had a couple of tank units but on this map they were pretty useless – effectively the same firepower as troops.  So the game was largely a slugathon with both sides sniping each other taking single casualties at a time.

But my Japs proved to be most uncharacteristic.  Frank was ready to defend against the famous Banzai charge but it never happened.  My Japs stayed sulking in the jungle.  When a unit would get whittled down to one soldier or tank it would retreat out of harm’s way.  Instead it relied on artillery barrages.  Started with an off-shore barrage which took out a marine gun unit (1 VP).  Then my on-board artillery took out the remaining two marine guns and a marine unit (3VP).  Finally four of my Jap units swarmed onto a single underpowered Marine unit and finished it off (1VP).  That was it, the Japs won 5-0, a glorious day for the Emperor, largely because of uncharacteristic Japanese caution, cowardice and artillery.

Japan wins again! All of the American artillery is destroyed and
large numbers of US infantry have taken casualties - whilst large numbers
of Japanese remain!

I thoroughly enjoyed playing against and with the Japanese - they proved to be an effective fighting force through shear weight of numbers, able to take large numbers of casualties and still take Wake Island. The US Marines also proved to be an effective fighting force, especially with it's extra unit bonus, but I think the Japanese, even with it's weak tanks (although they roll the same number of dice as a Sherman, Panzer IV, Panther, T-34 or Crusader tanks), have the edge. 

First game of Memoir '44 on Breakthrough maps - a clash in the desert!

Today I asked the girls if they wanted a game of Memoir '44 on the new massive Breakthrough maps - Roshni and Maya were happy to get involved having lost badly the last time we played. I wanted to see if the game was different in any way; longer or less exciting or any balance change etc. We chose a good scenario based in the desert called "Battle of Alam El Halfa", set in Aug 30th to Sept 7th 1942 - the British 8th Army were defending El Alamein on the North African coast in Rommels last drive for Egypt.

To go with a large map, the scenario required a large number of game pieces; hexagonal terrain, special counters and a huge number of German and British units - using up nearly all of the Memoir '44 boxset German units and the British add-on tanks, artillery and infantry. Searching for all of the necessary hills, hull-down positions, beach and railway tracks proved to be a bit of headache, especially as some items were in the Terrain pack, some in the Desert Pack, some were on both sides of a particular terrain piece etc. Plus being a Breakthrough map, there were a lot more pieces required. So set up time increased a fair amount, plus then setting up the troops, so you have to be careful to keep your opponent interested, especially if they are children.

Once the game was set, I found I had a huge amount of German troops and tanks verses a massive amount of British troops, tanks and artillery set in two waves with a large minefield on the left side and some of the front.

The battle is set - El Alamein is the target! Move out!

My German troops and tanks rushed up against the left and central front, trying to tackle the minefield but coming up against a wall of tank fire and accurate artillery strikes that pummelled the tank platoons. I returned fire and picked off a few tanks but not enough. Then the girls rushed in their reserve forces up the centre of the map between two sets of hills and to back up the initial troops on the British left.

German tank forces rush up to try to pound the British positions,
prompting a rush of reserves by the British

6 pounder and 75mm shells fired back and forth, but the hull-down positions even made a full on frontal attack very hard. The German engineers moved in to try to clear the mines to facilitate a weakness that was developing on the British right side, an artillery strike had taken out most of a British infantry section and weakened another.

German engineers move up to try to capitalise on the
weakened British position  

But it was not enough, my tanks and troops flattened against the first set of hills and made it only that far - the attack on the German left was destroyed pretty much and the frontal attack was blunted. It was a fantastic game - the girls won all 8 of their medals fair and square - I only got 4. I loved playing the full on Breakthrough game, it felt like I was in control of a bigger battle and lots was going on - perhaps the inclusion of the air rules would have made it fantastic but still this was amazing and I can't wait for the next one.

The last Allied medal is won with the destruction of a German tank unit

End of game - the Germans never got past the first set of hills -
look at all the German losses!!

History repeats itself! Canadians and Germans square off D-Day +1

Brian asked me over for a game of Memoir '44 - he said he'd had an intro game but wanted a more fuller experience. So I took over the huge especially designed M44 backpack complete with everything I had got so far, plus a few other bits like a book on WW2 infantry tactics. I showed off the enormous Breakthrough maps plus the British and Japanese sets plus the campaign books. We had a look through the available missions that were not too light yet not heavily endowed with rules. We came across a fairly good one - Battle of the Bridgehead (Operation Neptune) - June 7-9, 1944 - involving Canadians moving across fields and hedgerows towards a German held town and airfield (Carpiquet). In the meantime the Germans, using a mixture of elite Panzers and Panzer Grenadiers and Hitler Youth prepared to repel the Allied advance.

The Canadians had to cross a lot of open ground to engage the dug in Germans who were also preparing tanks to strike out if any of the Allied tanks got too close. And this they did with lightning efficiency - as my Shermans of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers rolled across the open ground towards Cairon and Authie when two grounds of Panzers rounded the trees and opened fire, followed by small arms fire from the villages. Within moments, I'd taken heavy causalities and only within a few turns of the game, I'd lost three Medals to Brian out of a total five needed to win! I could see this being a very short game indeed!

Game start - the Canadians contemplate their move - that Armour Assault
card on the left proved to be a poisoned chalice as the armour on the left was
knocked for six by the experienced German tanks

Pausing to reconsider my position, I moved up infantry and tanks to the right, stopping in Norrey-en-Bressin to stop any sort of counter attack from Brians left. The German units in and around Carpiquet then took to the trees and hills producing a stalemate compounded with a tank unit providing covering fire. I moved up more tanks on the right and left - Brian moved in another Panzer unit and tried to conduct a pincer move on two of my tank units. Unfortunately his attack failed and one tank unit that had retreated to woods returned fire and knocked out several German tanks. The green Canadians were quickly turning out into experienced war veterans.

A German pincer move fails as the tank in the trees open fire against
the left side and the three Shermans force the Panzers on the right to retreat.
The left Panzer units were taken out!

Eventually the battle fought to a stand-still, the German infantry in good positions but their tanks had taken a beating, as had the Allied tanks so forcing the Germans to stop their counterattack and the Canadians to pause their advance; as happened in real life. Still I won enough medals to make this a win for me! But just - so a great game.

Last piece of Memoir 44 products bought - Breakthrough maps!

The Breakthrough Maps for Memoir '44 have been on the shelf at Andys Battlequest Games for quite some time now - and each time I have gone into the shop I have picked it up and had a look and put it down again. In this period of Christmas sales and being silly with money, I picked it up and decided to buy it - I spend £50 a week on petrol just to drive back and forth from work yet I fretting for about a year over £28 for the maps. The maps themselves are ENORMOUS and cover a large part of our lounge floor, so a table will be no use. There are two maps in all, with two sides - snow, green fields, desert and beach. Plus it comes with a set of large scale games that make use of the maps. Now I have all of the Memoir '44 items so I had better start putting them to use!

More Last Night on Earth and Memoir '44!

Today I picked up two more items for some of our base games - the 2nd Campaign Book for Memoir'44 and the Survival of the Fittest scenario box for Last Night on Earth. These are two great addons that are in no means small fry. The 2nd Campaign book concentrates more on the Far East campaigns, the Japanese invasion of South-East Asia and the subsequent American Campaign in the Pacific. There is also a campaign for the breakout of Normandy and another for the Fall of Poland. There is also an Air Aces campaign too.

The Survival of the Fittest box contains a whole bunch of new missions and punch out tokens for LNOE. It also includes a great sounding mission for barricading up buildings (including barricade tokens) and one for going out for supplies whilst fighting off the zombie horde! New weapons, cards, zombie and hero cards too.

Italians take a pounding in the Desert

So, we haven't played Memoir '44 in a while, so in the dying embers of the girls school Easter holiday, Roshni, Maya and I replayed a battle in the desert back in 1941 between retreating Italian forces and the British 4th Armoured Brigade in a scenario called "Beda Fomm". The basics of the set was that a large column of retreating tanks and men were caught by a small British blocking force. Whilst they held the Italians at bay, the rest of the 4th Armoured swept up from the south with a mixture of tanks, elite tank units and infantry. Roshni and Maya played the part of the Italians.

The trap is sprung! The Italians are caught by the blocking force on the main road whilst the rest of the 4th Armoured charges up from the south.

Harsh! A single Italian tank catches the full force of 4 dice hits from the tank on the hill.

A line of dice showing another crushing shot against a single Italian tank.

It's not going well for the Italians!!

The Italians are thrown into disarray - tanks burn to their front, British infantry 

charge in from the South and rear

Ouch! Still some fight in the Italians yet!

The Italians fight back!!

The British charge with an Infantry Assault...oh nuts...

Has the British Trap failed???

Then again perhaps not - that's an Armoured Assault card btw...

Surrender or be destroyed!!

Mama mia...

Like in the actual battle, the Italians tried to split their resources between cracking the roadblock and defending against the southern attack instead of rushing the roadblock in force and rolling over it before the 4th Armoured could save the small force there. Yay for the good guys!! 

Memoir '44 - US crush German counterattack! Isla Dorada on order - sort of

Today Roshni and I had a good go at Memoir '44 - as usual Roshni took the role of the Germans whilst I was the Americans in a battle post-Normandy. The Germans wanted to counter-attack but the Americans had paratroopers ready to hold them back. Also two platoons of US tanks were ready to roll because US intelligence had broken German radio signals (That is possibly historically inaccurate but there you go) and the tanks were sent to force back the counter-attack. Roshni tried all she could to force a gap in the US paratrooper lines, but nothing could be done when the US tanks attacked from the left and through the centre, destroying first one then the other German tank platoon. This lead to a general German collapse and a win for US forces! Yay as this is a rare event for me!

Also I paid a visit to Andy at Battlequestgames and had a serious think about a new game - either Isla Dorada, a treasure hunting game set on an island in the 1930s - or Pandemic, a co-op game saving the world from multiply diseases. I put Isla Dorada on order, but Pandemic is quite a good game, ranking very high on the Family Geek list...

Trying to set up a VASSAL game...

Hmm, not since last weeks Memoir game have I had an opportunity to play a game with anyone - and I'm still trying to set up a remote M44 game with Matt via Vassal. He should be downloading the files today and hopefully we'll be able to set up some games in the near future.

Breakthrough at Kiln! Memoir '44 star player Roshni wins again!

Breakthrough at Kiln - December 1941, after the German attack on Moscow had ground to a freezing halt, Russian forces tried to cut them off; in this scenario Roshni as the Germans had to break through the heavy defensive Russian lines to a frozen river in the south. They also had to make a feint to the left to draw Russian forces off, aware from the breakthrough.

The start, heavily entrenched Russians prepare to hold off the 

German drive to the frozen river to the South

A push is made for the Russian trenches - badly hit Germans 

still manage to force the Russians to retreat 

Flee!! Out of the blinding snow, German tanks rumble on!

The German troops, biding their time, then push out 

of the city ruins and charge the trenches

With the right hand Russian defences broken and the centre tank forces 

destroyed, there is nothing stopping the German forces successfully making for 

the river as History dictated.

Gaming day jolly!!

Yay! Monday was a day of getting together with my best mate Matt at his place whilst he had the place to himself for a few days to play games, eat pizza and drink beer! It was also an opportunity to introduce him and his game-aspiring daughter to Euro gaming :) I had brought most of the games with me to try and squeeze in as much as possible.

Firstly we played Diamant as a good introduction. This went down a storm - very popular as it is very easy to learn but difficult to master - Hannah, Matts daughter, got the idea straight away and loved it - eventually winning the game.

Next out of the bag was Zooloretto - obviously it took a bit to explain the rules, but the game proceeded quite well, with only a few references to the rules - this game has a great system where although it is a fairly complex game, say compared to Diamant, there is no text in the game to get confused with; no cards to read or text to ponder over. Again highly enjoyed by all - and again won by Hannah. :)

It was time then to drop off Hannah to her grandparents; after which Matt and I explored the contents of 7th Fleet and Gunslinger, just to get an idea of what ye olde '80s punch counter games were like - actually Gunslinger looked quite attractive to play and if I'd known the rules we'd have given it a go.

So we had a go at Back to the Future the card game - I've played this a few times solo play, so this was a good chance to test out the rules with two of us. The concept of how to play took a bit to understand (even for me and I'd played a few times!) but after getting into the swing of it, it was a great game - won by Matt in the end.

Next was Niagara - Matt loved the idea of the plastic discs acting as the flowing river and there was much merriment in pseudo-Mexican voices. The ending was full of tension as we both had our fill of gems, me 5 different coloured gems, Matt his mixed collection of 7. We just needed to get one more gem each to the finishing line. With our last paddle cards and the end in sight, we raced for him - Matt pipping me to the post!! Another game lost! :)

Next was Memoir '44 - actually two games of Memoir as it was so popular with Matt. The only unfortunate thing I found was that set up took too long and was actually a bit confusing with two people on opposite sides of the table whilst looking at the map in the book. Something to consider in the future. But the games went off really well - the first an American attack against heavily entrenched German positions - including several elite German tank platoons; leading to a win by Germany that followed the course of History. Then it was another try at an Omaha beach landing, this time with Matt as the Americans. This turned into an unmitigated disaster for the Yanks as one after another unit and platoon were destroyed or mown down on the beaches of France.  Notch one up for me! this would turn out to be my only win of the day...

Finally we had a game of Last Night on Earth - and as I'd not played this before, game play proceeded a little slowly at first as Matt read the rules, counters were punched and cards were shuffled. The scenario we took was Get Petrol and Keys for the Truck! or something like that. This involved my humans searching for petrol and keys whilst fending off the undead! Unfortunately one character after another died and then the Sun set and it was game over man game over! A good game, if not 100% my cup of tea in its mechanics. Perhaps another couple of games will win me over.

In all, a hugely successful gaming day/night! Cannot wait to do it again!

Disaster at Dieppe arrives!

I've been on tender-hooks for each for this! The whole idea of trying to represent the huge catastrophic disaster of the Canadian-British assault on the Dieppe front in 1942 was very appealing. The battlemap comes also with 6 SdKzFW German armoured cars and 6 Long Range Assault jeeps for use with the other side of the map, a battle based around Tubruk. These are represented by plastic vehicles like the other maps, plus some paper info cards which I hope in the future are republished as card. I haven't had the chance to play around with it thoroughly, so a fuller report later.