Shared courtesy of OCS playtesters Eric & Andrew part of the Greater Boston Grogs group.

Eric and I continued the test of Reluctant Enemies. Its a devil of a problem even if it is a smaller OCS offering.

Everytime I play OCS I am left wanting more. I totally blow at this game. I’m still struggling with putting together a coherent turn with logical beginnings and endings. It’s tough but fun.

After debating which turn we were on (took us about 15 minutes!) we started Turn 2.

Because of the small amount of units and the size (1 step) of the units combat seems really iffy. As the CW I’m struggling to bring combat factors against his 5 strength units sitting behind small rivers or holed up in rough terrain. The barrage options are limited and expensive- using them to try to get a DG result before attacking has just not panned out.

Combat is not iffy if you attack Stat Mode units, however! Its been a long time inbetween playings so I just got lazy and didn’t read up on strat mode penalties. I just assumed it was like 1/2 combat power. Not so.. they are reduced to warm butter level.

The Circassian Motorized Infantry unit cleaved through a few of my battalions in a suicide mission. Historical, no, perhaps. Hilarious, yes, definitely.

I hate myself.

In Syria, my 2 HQs (one being the released Free French) mobilized north on Turn 2, moving up the road and rail net. Vichy Forces generally moved backwards into a consolidation maneuver.

On the coast, I used both of my reserve markers to get up to the Litani river basin. The Vichy sit on the other side taunting us with catapulting cows and naughty words. I concentrated my naval guns on an infantry battalion there. This didn’t work. I had 15 factors of barrage, shifting 1 column left due to the unit’s size. I did get a CW unit next to the Vichy so as to avoid the extra 3 colum shifts left for lack of a spotter. Even so, the CW player needs a DR of above 10 or so to get that DG result. Didn’t happen. I was still able to kill it in the ensuing attack by taking an attack option. Problem is that I couldn’t then cross the river. On Eric’s turn he was able to plug the hole and shift a stronger unit there- seeing what I had seen: a weakness in the defense. Oh well, it didn’t work!

The Commandos are in my anger box. I mismanaged them and missed how a track meandered near them. Eric was able to get trace supply to the Litani River units b/c of this- another lazy error by the CW! I had brought in the Commandos on T1 thinking that this would cause issues right away for trace. Waiting would possibly allow Eric to shift and manuever units around for a few turns thus making it harder to apply that trace pressure. Not sure this was wise…

We will see what happens in June 12th!

Andy