All-request Friday

There are two main types of request that I get regarding the blog. Firstly, there are the people who want more politics, on a wider range of subjects, with my point of view more firmly expressed. To those, I can only say "Be patient, but watch this space.". The second group are those who say "That Sidi Rezegh, that's a cracking little battle; isn't it about time that you played it again?". And, for those people, it's Christmas.

Father Christmas assaults the second escarpment

So it was, as you might expect, all change. This week Peter and I were the Germans and James took the British. Peter claimed the infantry in order to show me how to attack properly and, sure enough, he ended the night in control of the central hill. Certainly the terrain changes (see below) and the refined rules regarding smoke made a difference, but largely it was simply by being more aggressive. My own handling of the armour was also affected by rule changes as the 'Action' cards were replaced by more traditional 'Move', 'Reload' and 'Deploy' cards; a change that affects tactical decision making rather than the overall outcome. We played one full turn, but neither side's armour was activated until quite late on so not that much has happened.

There were significant terrain changes as James develops his thinking for Fiasco. The hills in the second escarpment have grown larger and have spread out and the third escarpment has disappeared completely, leaving more space for the tanks. I think the latter will be to the benefit of the British, possibly allowing them to bring their weight of numbers to bear to compensate for their inferior quality. At the death the British got a 19 point initiative run and, had the cards been with them, they could have inflicted severe damage on the panzers. But they weren't and they, er, didn't.

I should also mention the upgrading of the terrain in modelling terms. Considering that we started with paper wadis it has come on hugely and is clearly pretty much ready for the show. The only thing that looks odd to me is the airfield runway, although as James demonstrated it looks much worse if you actually put any aircraft on it. To be honest it resembles nothing so much as the foam underlay for a set of model railway points. However, I understand that Project Runway will soon kick off with the aim of replacing it.

James Roach ponders the dichotomy between ground scale and figure size

I'm still quite happy with the dominoes. In the weeks since we started using them we haven't had any of those long, one-sided periods that can so spoil standard Piquet. What we really need though is a double twelve set, or at least a double nine set. At the moment there is just too little scope for continually changing the rules surrounding the drawing of them.