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| This didn't happen |
The third and final week of the WWII Western Desert game proved to be, for me at least, the most enjoyable. Piquet's initiative swings stayed within the bounds that make it add to the game rather than detract from it and, the game having moved forwards somewhat, we actually had some close fought action between the tanks.
Regular readers will remember that Peter had a plan which hadn't worked very smoothly because he didn't get the right cards, his infantry in particular not appearing very keen to advance towards the central hill. I had a plan which didn't work primarily because it was crap, and in particular because I had brought one third of my armour on in completely the wrong place. I had amended this plan with the intention of concentrating two thirds of the my armour against half of the German tanks. Strangely enough that didn't work either. Plan three was to try to negate the Panzers' superiority by basically charging straight at them; a tactic that has a certain amount of historical validity having been tried in practice by the 8th Army.
This plan actually gained some traction and I manoeuvered myself into a position to launch four close assaults if only the appropriate card could be turned; which astonishingly it immediately was. At this point I had no morale chips left, but Peter didn't have many either so my plan was to win the easy assaults first (tanks vs infantry, Crusaders vs Panzer IIs) thereby moving myself into the position that he was giving me morale chips and press on to destroy his armour. Obviously what actually happened was that despite rolling the higher dice in all four assaults I lost the lot and made the morale position completely safe for Rommel.
I was only saved from losing under Piquet's normal rules (lack of morale leading to failing a major morale test) by the specific scenario turn limit. Whilst Peter could destroy/rout any units that I had on or near the central hill I basically had too many of them for him to achieve this in the time available. a draw was called.
I won't comment much on the rule changes because they'll only change again anyway. It was too easy to rally retreating units (it became apparent to me that morale challenging was a waste of time; it was much better to leave enemy units there to be destroyed otherwise they would simply and inconveniently reappear), but that applied to both sides so didn't affect the outcome. I'd rather lost my grip on the artillery and air support rules, but wasn't entirely convinced by how they were working in practice; targeting seems a bit easy in both cases and I wasn't impressed when my air superiority arrived after a very long wait on one card and then immediately left on the following card.
Overall, a good game although I'm not entirely sure one can ever win as the British. If it was revisited I would suggest some sort of Peter Pig style pre-game element so that initial deployments aren't quite so random, but as usual I have no specific suggestions in mind.
Regular readers will remember that Peter had a plan which hadn't worked very smoothly because he didn't get the right cards, his infantry in particular not appearing very keen to advance towards the central hill. I had a plan which didn't work primarily because it was crap, and in particular because I had brought one third of my armour on in completely the wrong place. I had amended this plan with the intention of concentrating two thirds of the my armour against half of the German tanks. Strangely enough that didn't work either. Plan three was to try to negate the Panzers' superiority by basically charging straight at them; a tactic that has a certain amount of historical validity having been tried in practice by the 8th Army.
This plan actually gained some traction and I manoeuvered myself into a position to launch four close assaults if only the appropriate card could be turned; which astonishingly it immediately was. At this point I had no morale chips left, but Peter didn't have many either so my plan was to win the easy assaults first (tanks vs infantry, Crusaders vs Panzer IIs) thereby moving myself into the position that he was giving me morale chips and press on to destroy his armour. Obviously what actually happened was that despite rolling the higher dice in all four assaults I lost the lot and made the morale position completely safe for Rommel.
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| This did happen |
I was only saved from losing under Piquet's normal rules (lack of morale leading to failing a major morale test) by the specific scenario turn limit. Whilst Peter could destroy/rout any units that I had on or near the central hill I basically had too many of them for him to achieve this in the time available. a draw was called.
I won't comment much on the rule changes because they'll only change again anyway. It was too easy to rally retreating units (it became apparent to me that morale challenging was a waste of time; it was much better to leave enemy units there to be destroyed otherwise they would simply and inconveniently reappear), but that applied to both sides so didn't affect the outcome. I'd rather lost my grip on the artillery and air support rules, but wasn't entirely convinced by how they were working in practice; targeting seems a bit easy in both cases and I wasn't impressed when my air superiority arrived after a very long wait on one card and then immediately left on the following card.
Overall, a good game although I'm not entirely sure one can ever win as the British. If it was revisited I would suggest some sort of Peter Pig style pre-game element so that initial deployments aren't quite so random, but as usual I have no specific suggestions in mind.
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