Got a chance to play the full campaign game this weekend and had a lot of fun with it. I had set up a camera to take a picture of the action every 60 seconds, so if you’re interested in watching three guys destroy their backs over a two day period, here ya go.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kE7YOVZzt9k]
Looks like 30XXX got bogged down and Brits in a Pocket? Were you German Player? What happened at Nj?
We played through 13 turns before we called it in favor of the Germans. XXX Corps did a good job initially blasting through and capturing Eindhoven without too much trouble. They got caught up on the bridge leading to Veghel where they couldn’t roll to build a bridge (with two bridge units attempting) in three straight turns. That pretty much killed it for them.
I ended up flooding Nijmegen with as many German bodies as I could muster. The 82nd was able to get a few units into the outskirts of the city but never made much of an effort to capture it. Even if XXX Corps would have got there in a reasonable amount of time they would have had a hell of a time reducing all of the stuff I had poured in there.
Arnhem was untouched by the Allies save for a lone recon unit that tested the bridge early on (and was subsequently destroyed shortly after). The British were pushed west around their LZ and were in the process of being destroyed when we called the game (a picture is on queue for Friday). They didn’t have much time left. The Polish Brigade landed and had their LZ overrun and were totally wiped off the map in a few turns.
Tough game for the Allies if things don’t go their way.
nice job. Looks like you cleaned them up. I think if played right AND you can get XXX thru the XXX force is tough enough to man handle about anything. Being stuck in Vehghel Turn 13 is not optimal! 😉
The guy who played XXX Corps is a rock solid player. If he’s not delayed at two bridges (three turns at Veghel and two turns on the bridge before that) he’s definitely smashing through Nijmegen.
The time lapse was a great idea! And interesting too. It would appear that this hobby requires a deft touch judging from all the fine positioning of units followed by standing back and staring. I think we are kind of like artists in that way. Maybe?
Beautiful looking game when all spread out like that. Did you enjoy playing it? I would think, given the size of it, that the experience would be rather unique. At least for the SCS series.
One of these days I would like to do an overhead time lapse with a high resolution camera that would follow the actual components on the map as opposed to the people moving around the table. Standing back and staring is my best skill when playing wargames, not sure I would qualify as an artist because of it though. 🙂
I had a very fun time playing it, although it was clear that the game can be quite a frustrating exercise from the Allied perspective. A couple of tweaks when it comes to bridge building and a unit’s ability to move after para dropping in would make things a little more interesting from a game play perspective.
Interesting play observations and also about the tweaks. Game play aside, I wonder if this illustrates just how fine an edge one needed to dance along to make Market-Garden a success? That is, it was one of those operations with little room for error and where everything had to go pretty much according to plan in order to pull it off?
And I suppose unsuspectingly landing on one or two panzer divisions kind of threw a spanner in the works. Sigh!
I have never played a M-G themed game, but I suspect that the name of the game for the Germans is to get troops, any troops, on that highway and delay, delay, delay.
I spent a lot of my time as the Germans packing bodies into choke points. XXX Corps has a strict boundary that its units can’t leave, so there are a couple of choice locations the Germans can hunker down on.
I think the game does do a good job of showing just how tough an assignment the Allies were given, which would be great if I was looking for a detailed simulation of the operation. But when I play an SCS game I want to play a game more than a simulation, which I why I think the next time it hits the table some tweaks are going to be made.