Maquis - New Content

 I have mentioned before that I own a number of solo board games, and also that I virtually never play them; they didn't even get brought out very often during lockdown. Of course that is more to do with me than with any problems with the games themselves, which are mostly clever and challenging designs. That is certainly true of what I think is my favourite among them: Maquis. It's a game that thematically appeals to me as well, as one takes the part of the French Resistance and tries to complete various missions of sabotage, spying, infiltration, propaganda and the like without being caught by the collaborators of the Milice or by the occupying German forces. A second edition has just been published containing additional missions and associated playing pieces. The additional material was also made available as an expansion to those owning the first edition.

Obviously I don't need to explain to fellow wargamers why I would buy extra bits for something that never hits the table in the first place, and so I inevitably sent off for a copy. The missions in the original had their difficulty coded at one star (easier) or two stars (harder), whereas the new missions are given a rating of three stars. I never found any of the first lot of missions - you have to complete two within the allotted number of moves in order to win - to be easy, and these new ones are as difficult as you'd expect. I have so far failed badly to 'Destroy the AA Guns', the main problem as I see it being that the surest route to get weapons is via an air drop, you can't have an air drop if AA guns are present and you need weapons to get rid of the AA guns. In fairness, the resources available have improved including the availability of forged documents so one can bluff one's way past patrols instead of shooting it out with them. There's also now a 'Fixer' character, who can provide whatever you want, for a fee of course.

So, still highly recommended as long as you overlook the fact that I don't actually play it much myself. Having said that, I shall certainly be giving all of the new missions a go before I put it back in the cupboard. Next up is 'Free the Resistance Leader': 'A resistance leader has been captured and will be transported away from town soon. Free him from the occupiers...or make sure he at least can't tell them his secrets'.

Blizzard

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down -
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes -
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there -
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

          - William Carlos Williams

Moys Will Be Moys

 One of my more esoteric medical conditions is that I am unable to be injected in my left arm. Normally this doesn't cause any problems, but yesterday I had both a Covid booster and a flu jab in my other arm, which is now very stiff and painful. Being right-handed this is making typing difficult, which in turn means that the text quality of today's post may be at a level not seen since I used to produce it on a computer missing an 's' key.

So, we finished the second run through of Moys and yet again the Austrians and victory remained strangers. I'm not saying that the events of the two games proved conclusively my hypothesis that they can never win it using Classic Piquet, except of course that is exactly what I'm saying. I've spent more time on that already than is justified by anyone else's level of interest, so I will simply add that the morale rules are also crap and leave it there.

Word of the night was 'snazzy'.

Viva La Revolution, Viva Mexico

 Early last year I mentioned a book  called 'Armies of the Mexican Revolution' by Mike Blake and promised to return with a review. I'm pretty sure that I never got round to it, so let's start today's post by saying that it's excellent. In fact I would go so far as to say that for anyone planning to game the conflict - which obviously doesn't include me - it's indispensable. Partizan Press have followed this up with two further volumes. The first, by Mike Blake and Chris Swan, is the following:

I'm really not sure why the title isn't completely in Spanish, i.e. Viva la Revolución, but in any event, the subtitles sum up the contents better. It's basically a scenario book with a chapter on what rule amendments would need to be made in order to use Black Powder. The scenarios are both historical and imaginary and are easily usable with other rule sets. It's once again an excellent book and worth reading.

The other book, this time by Chris Swan alone, is 'La Cucaracha!', which contains both rules and scenarios for, in the author's words, engagements with small forces. That seems to mean both low numbers of units plus the implication that those units are small enough that key individuals (leaders/specialists/mercenarios etc) would be worth representing both physically on the table and in game terms; a point of reference might be Too Fat Lardies type games. I think that this is my favourite of the three books. In fact I like the look of the rules to the extent that were I intending to start this as a project (*) then I'd give them a go. Including various optional sections they seem to cover pretty much everything from snakes to aircraft. 

Having said that, I'd recommend all three books. The main negative is that none has an index, although 'Armies' has a good bibliography. I got them all from Caliver Books.

* Which I am not.

The Moys Are Back In Town

 James set it all up again and we had at it for a second time, ending the evening after turn four of the eight which the Austrians have to capture all three objectives. James took some photos of the action and may post them on his blog. I didn't, but did remember to take one of the menu style Quick Play Sheets, which I rather like. What he needs now is a blackboard on which he can write the special rules of the day.

I've always bigged up Piquet for its ability to generate radically different games from the same starting position. However, I think any set of of rules would have done the same here. The scenario starts with three Austrian grenadier units about to storm the redoubt. In the first game some extreme dice results at that point saw that command blown away. Not only was that not replicated, but the Prussians spent all night unable to hit a cow's arse with a banjo. By the evening's end they had destroyed a magnificent total of no Austrian units at all and had lost control of the first two objectives. I think next week may be different though. Not just because I am expecting a reversion to the mean in terms of combat dice rolls, but also because my hypothesis about initiative is just about to be proven. We - i.e. the Austrians - are never going to get to turn enough cards to get all our forces up the hill and drive the Prussians off. We shall have to rely on the Major Morale rules to win. I would explain what that means, but I don't really understand it. It's something along the lines of the Prussians having to multiply their number of destroyed or routing units by the value of π and then roll dice and pay morale chips until James declares the game over. A full explanation will follow should we get that far.

Here's a music video, but not the one you were expecting:

 

PotCXpouri

 It's been an odd few days, and I am not referring to the truly astonishing revelations that Conservative MPs are a bunch of crooks, that Yorkshire County Cricket Club is full of racists, or that the Pope is a Catholic. The most disconcerting thing that happened to me was that I found myself the only person in attendance when someone had a heart attack. The main learning point from this was that if one has to have a health emergency then it is better to do so in the company of an individual whose qualifications are in medicine rather than in accountancy. I didn't recognise any of the symptoms and only started to comprehend exactly what was happening when the ambulance controller gave me the location of the nearest defibrillator and told me to go and get it. Fortunately for everyone involved the ambulance itself arrived at that point and I was grateful to be able to hand over to the paramedics. I understand that the patient is recovering in hospital; I also needed a long lie down.

Let's cheer ourselves up with a story about both accountants and doctors:

A woman goes to the doctor and after examining her he says "I'm sorry to tell you that you only have six months to live."

She is shocked and exclaims "Doctor, is there anything that I can do?"

"Well," he replies "you could marry an accountant."

"Will that make me live longer?" she asks, puzzled.

"No," said the doctor "but it will seem longer."

Well I Talk About Moys Now

We finished the battle of Moys (1st run through) which resulted in the Austrians not completely winning as such. There also wasn't much buy-in from the others to my hypothesis that they had been fighting with one hand tied behind their back due to the way that Piquet works. It was pointed out that they had been just as much undone by some brutal dice rolls in the first fifteen minutes or so, which had rather chopped the legs off their attack on the redoubt. And I have to say, that certainly happened. Reference was also made to the foolish commander of the Austrian right having advanced his light troops to harass the Prussians before the rest of the Austrian army had started to move, resulting in their prompt destruction. Reluctantly I have to admit that also happened. In any event we agreed that next week will see the battle of Moys (2nd run through). Will my theory be vindicated?

Cum On Feel The Moys

 It was very nice to congregate chez James once again, and celebrate our host's restoration to health by throwing some ones and drawing some low dominos from the bag. I trust that you have all managed to read the scenario details on James' blog. If not then I have stolen one of his photos, showing what the table looks like. I don't normally take any photographs whilst in the legendary wargames room, but now wish that I had taken one of the new covers for the quick play sheets. They are repurposed menu covers, and both look and work very well indeed.

Having been given the opportunity to play with James' wonderful toys in a scenario he had clearly spent time devising and setting up, it seems churlish to complain. However, it behoves me to point out - to myself if no one else - that James' rules really aren't suitable for this battle; or perhaps visa versa. The rules are a derivation of Classic Piquet, a set which I very much enjoy. For those unfamiliar with them, players get initiative, which they use to both turn cards which show what actions they can take and also to take those actions by command or unit as appropriate. It's a bit more nuanced than that, but that's the essence. The short term fluctuations in initiative for each side plus the arbitrary order in which the cards are turned, plus the normal use of dice for combat resolution, provide a friction which I know isn't to everyone's taste, but which I like. 

However, at Moys the Austrians had twice as many troops as the Prussians. This inevitably means that, given initiative being roughly equal across the whole game, the Austrians will spend twice as much on actions for commands/units; the corollary is that they must therefore turn fewer cards. This is important because when one side has turned all their cards the turn is over and the decks are reshuffled. In a scenario with such disparity of forces this will always be the smaller force. We therefore end up with the counterintuitive, and I would suggest undesirable, outcome of the defenders being far more flexible and agile than the attackers. I think this is such an intrinsic feature of Classic Piquet that no tweaks could compensate for it in this type of scenario. I stress the Classic bit because FoB, the other main game in the Piquet stable, works in a different way and would be perfectly suitable. 

Libertango

Considering that this is a wargaming blog that's been running for more than nine years, it really hasn't included enough tango. So here's the great Astor Piazzolla:

Wargaming will resume soon; I can feel it in my water.

Resurrection

"Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n wirst du,

mein Staub, nach kurzer Ruh'!"

- Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock

Resurrection of the blog? Well, we are starting the new month with a post. Resurrection of wargaming? Perhaps, keep your fingers crossed. But mainly it's because I have been to see a performance of Mahler's Symphony No 2, (known as the Resurrection, although Gustav had a bit of a bee in his bonnet about the life everlasting and kept returning to the theme) and very fine it was. It was very loud too, there were eight percussionists; one can't complain about getting one's money's worth. 

The piece is about ninety minutes long, so I won't include a video. Instead here's Ashton, Gardner and Dyke:

Fun fact of the day - apart from that the band actually had four members - concerns the B side of the single in the US, which was entitled 'I'm Your Spiritual Breadman'. I know, but it was the sixties. In any event, it featured two guest guitarists: Sir Cedric Clayton and George O'Hara Smith, pseudonyms for Clapton and Harrison. Sadly, and despite that added firepower, it's not very good.