Another 3 hours of Across the Bug River. Session # 3 run live here:

The German momentum for two reasons began to pick up: 1. A series of back to back activations. 2. A better grasp of what is feasible and viable within the confines of the game mechanics.

This game sure takes some time to play. I think we have a few questions about Formation activation, and AP’s and the gamer interaction with the system. It is starting to feel we think  a bit laborious. Where it doe s not really need to be.

A full game would require nearly 1000 die rolls for Initiative, and activation! [3 dice rolled, x seven turns x 40-60 activations a turn]  
For a relatively simple game it might be missing the mark. Moe and I thought that perhaps a chit pull mechanic for the number of activation points would be effective, even making that the # of activation points your get each activation versus such high variability. This would not however then factor in performance degradation over time for each formation [their AP’s go down over time – the more you activate that harder it is to do ‘a lot’ ], so that is a mitigating factor to that approach.

Combat is straight forward once you grok the variables around AT/AFV factors. It eschews arty and air which is abstracted out or ‘factored in’ around variable combat strengths with combat chits, subject to the type of attack – Hasty/Regular/Prepared attacks. This introduces a double luck element. 1 for the chit pull for the multiplier of the combat value from 1-3. Which is a BIG deal when we look at combat factors ranging from 2 – 9. Then a 1d10 die roll that can have +/- 10 or more in DRMS. 

Finally about 25% of the way through Turn 2 in the shot above, the Germans begin to see breakout in the South.

Hyper aggressive attacking in turn 1 from the Soviets limited advances in the North and savaged German armour.  We will run another session next week and see how the game unfolds from the River crossing. – Which I messed up part of last turn. EACH formation has to boat crossings per turn.. I used just the 2 for the  entire turn.

 

Here we can see that slow slow Northern progress. I guess the blitz is building? Which brings two more aspects of concern.

Stacking and current retreat rules. The designers reached out to us after our play to highlight that they were considering changing the retreat rules – which force cascading disruptions and follow on retreats that could see a unit retreat 2,3,4,5 hexes. ‘Inconceivable.’

With a game set in 2 day cycles, and 2 km hexes this seemed off base. As does the strict enforcement of stacking of one battalion hex [ but + 2 armor formations]. Surely a Battalion frontage on the attack is going to be higher density than this?  

I was wondering and Moe mentioned several times that some aspects of the game felt very Euro-esque. Versus wargame from a ‘management’ stand point. 

Have you played? What do you think?