Weekender XLBS: What Are Your Favourite Gaming Scenarios?
August 13, 2017 by warzan
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Happy Sunday arvo from down under
Happy Sunday everyone
Happy Sunday
Scenarios makes all the difference if a wargame is more ‘game’ or ‘simulation’. Today a lot of emphasis on ‘balanced’ play is based upon an ideal that miniature wargames are competative games. However, war is not competative in a sense of a fair game. The competative game lacks the strategic context, and this is where asymmetrical scenarios come in. Dunkirk, Thermopoly or the Alamo all had a strategic importance in a bigger chain of events. To me, the narrative scenario (or campaign) sets up the strategic context, that is simulates the strategic importance of the specific game that is played… Read more »
Great post 🙂
I think there’s a middleground as well. Yes, war is never a fair fight. However there is something to be said for not being doomed to lose (and equally bad : an easy win). The trick is to provide a challenge for both players based on their skills and army composition. Games like Infinity do a decent job of providing a range of scenarios in competitions that force you to build lists that can adapt. It proves that scenarios can be broken down into abstract concepts. This kind of was discussed in Dunkirk articles : the event can be broken… Read more »
Sometimes a tactical withdrawal after inflicting some pain, maybe burning the bridges and resources left behind, and living to fight another day IS a win from certain start point circumstances.
I agree with @coxjul . Myself and @aras had a Battlegroup game this afternoon modeled on the game Warren, Gerry, and I were talking about during Dunkirk Week, the British delaying action across a canal with the church on the British side. I was playing the British. There was no way I could win. NO way. God, it was fun. However, we had our victory conditions set up where Alex had to draw BRC counters at the end of every turn. I could also roll for two additional tanks in reserve (A13s). I took out panzers with close assaults and… Read more »
Yeah great post knowing what is going on round you off table and that your not fighting an isolated one off encounter is important when creating scenarios
I quite like those Chibi models
GIT, the one time you get to stick up for me too!!! 😉
They actually remind me of an old PlayStation or Megadrive game from years back, but can’t think of the name. I thinking was Sgt …..something?
They remind me of a game called Cannon Fodder
Indeed, War has never been so much fun. 🙂
That’s the one
Loved that game!
Happy Sunday!
As for scenarios, I’m going to say ‘historical’ – especially those which can very easily play out differently from history due to the original’s outcome being on a knife edge.
Probably the best known examples being…
What if the Saxons had held their discipline and the shield wall at the top of the hill at Hastings?
What if Blucher didn’t arrive in time at Waterloo?
What if Severus’ troops hadn’t mistakenly believed he had fallen causing them to break at Lugdunum (197ad Roman civil war)?
The trouble with the Ticket to Ride special edition is that you.can’t us it with the expansions. I actually find the base game boring, even compared to the Europe set (which can be used as base for expansions).
And as far as that caveman club is concerned… I can imagine Warren saying “hey kids, that blow up club was a bit rubbish wasn’t it? Don’t worry, Daddy’s made a better one out of a log and steel…”
Lol yup!
Scenario wise back in the 70’s Charles Grant produced scenarios called Tabletop teasers. They put the gamers in lots of situations where they have to make difficult choices. Although mostly set up for 18th century gaming they can be easily converted to any period of genre
http://www.wargamevault.com/product/68983/Battlegames-Table-Top-Teasers-Volume-1
Happy Sunday! I love asymmetrical wargames, one of the best games I ever played pitted WW2 Italians, a tank regiment, 3 infantry battalions and support, against a soviet mechanised brigade. I had absolutely no chance to stop the red hordes, but was able to delay them long enough for a German Armoured counter attack to arrive. Highlights of the game was my Italian M13 tank battalion killing a T34 section (needed 2 rolls of 11/12 on 2d6!) before being wiped out by the return fire and the remarkably tough entrenched infantry battalion on top of a hill holding back 3… Read more »
We have turned @warzan into a grognard?! Epic! 😀 😀 Victory at last! Plenty of room for you and your chair on our side of the gaming den, good sir!
An extensive collection of pipes and slippers for you to choose from awaits
Surely he’ll have to start off with a hard stool away from the fire until he earn’s the right to a chair – yet alone a padded one?
Great post, @dynarod1164 – it sounds like you were along the left wing of Army Group Don on the run-up to Stalingrad? The Italians and Romanians were hit very hard along that line, that’s part of what caved in and allowed the Soviets to encircle 6th Army (as I’m sure you know, by the sound of your post) .
“Where the Iron Crosses Grow” – a truly great line from a truly great movie. 😀
Do you mean Cross of Iron?. Did it have a different release name in the US?. This is the James Viburnum/James Mason film were talking about?
Great movie. If it is the same one? Love it when the T34’s ( real ones as well) attack across the trench lines especially when it just drives through the concrete block. Pity they ran out of budget to make it properly.
No, that’s the name, @torros – Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron. The line FROM the movie is: “And I will show you . . . where the iron crosses grow.”
Oh, I see what I did, I capitalized everything and made it LOOK like a title. No, that was the line from the movie, not the title of the movie.
Still a great movie no matter and one of my top 5 WW2 movies
Yeah you got it @oriskany . Both of the Spearhead scenario packs are well worth looking at, if you can get copies, as they have some really remarkable divisional level scenarios based on real WW2 actions.
The old GDW command decision scenario books are great as well and easily converted to Spearhead
Warren, I’ll generously let you create some space and learn to be less of a hoarder by taking a sealed copy of Space Hulk off you 😉
And yes, if I could get five times what I paid for a game that I don’t play anymore, then it would get sold.
I´m a narrative driven player, because my gaming background comes from RPGs and less from Wargaming. So Scenarios are the core to my gaming experience, a game without scenario is horrible boring to me. Best Scenario I´ve designed and played was for Pulp Alley in a Fantasy setting. The heroes must escort a wounded courier behind enemy lines, from one table edge to the other. In the middle was an Orc Raider Camp, played by the A.I., so it was a single player game where you have to sneak past the Orc patroles, making noise to distract them so you… Read more »
One of the main problems of playing asymmetrical games is just trying to find players wiling to buy into the concept
@warzan , ref that awesome airship: Don’t think Weird War II, I’m thinking it’s be great for Weird War I, or the pulp world of sky pirates. Imagine having one of these with a crew fending off (or even acting as) pirates in a mish-mash of fighters ranging from bi-planes to proto-jets, with everything in between (if at least one doesn’t havethe prop in the rear it’s missng a trick 🙂 )
Those airship models seem to be straight out of the old GDW game Sky Galleons of Mars
The airships remind me of Space 1889, John Carter of Mars or the LXG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_1889
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_of_Mars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_League_of_Extraordinary_Gentlemen
GDW – @torros , God they made great games. Including Teak Yankee, First Assault. And of course the Assault series, which did “Team Yankee” long before even the Team Yankee novel came out. 😀
@oriskany That’s because they had people like Frank Chadwick,Marc Miller and Loren Wiseman working for them
Man, what an episode. First off, glad to see the return of Justin’s Mind Melter. I don’t think Warren quite applied the single electron theory right, definitely a new interpretation! Awesome DAK forces from @suetoniuspaullinus . Wow, thanks for all the mentions! Thanks, Ben, for the mention yesterday about the Americans in the new FoW release. You’ve certainly nailed it on how inexperienced the American forces were. The battles of Sidi Bou Zid, Kesserine Pass, Tebessa Gap … when Panzer Leader came out with the Desert Leader expansion, they had to invent a new morale level for how bad they… Read more »
I think variety with wargaming is the key. I enjoy a balanced games where generals test their skills against an opponent. Where the meta and the tactics are tested from a balanced or semi balanced point. Also I enjoy the unbalanced or scenario based game. Where my small force has to defend/destroy (or whatever) against a superior force. These however are 2 very different things both good. For me the remaining space is the reenactment type game where you attempt to recreate anot event in history. Again a good game to play. In all of these ways to play I… Read more »
Both have their places in gaming
A dicksterity game where you flick your wooden meeple.
And yesterday @warzan reminded me that fist can be a verb.
My head hurts :p
Happy Sunday!
Just bought a new house,main criteria was room enough to take ALL gaming stuff with us. I live with an angel, a gaming angel.
Happy Sunday As a follow up to the deluxe games topic, what are people’s views on the after market bling options that have appeared for boxed games over the last 5-7 years (custom meeples, tokens, sleeves and the like)? Been a board gamer for about 25 years and I find they are a good way of not just improving the look and feel to a game, but also extending its life and any potential resale value (as the original content gets preserved) As many of us, Kickstarter shiney syndrome has been a major factor in the increase in my collection… Read more »
Unbalanced scenarios sound like a lot of fun, but they require planning and coordination. For my weekly game where we only get a couple of hours to meet down the shop and I’ve no idea when or who will turn up until they actually do, balanced games are more practical. Theres no time lost picking lists and agreeing on the scenario rules, and we can just play with whatever terrain we can find. I like the idea of having a scenario both players are working towards, along with hidden objectives taylored to your factions play style. Deadzone Mk1 had some… Read more »
Thanks for another great shows guys. Also a nice tongue in cheek jibe about ahem spikey bits. The chiby ww2 models are okay but I much prefer the CMON game Rivet Wars minis set during an alternate ww1 which unhappily didn’t take off. For your air ship you just need a Vincent Price model from the Jules Verne inspired film Master of the World.
For me, the best scenarios I have found for games has come from Infinity. I think that’s mainly because there is a real narrative to them, you have to get to the control room, do this, escape. Or go rescue someone, and it all fits so perfectly with the games idea of small special force squads on the tabletop. In those circumstances, it doesn’t really matter that its also equal points, I think it gives the same feel because it gives everything happening in front of you meaning. In fact, I would argue that a battle like Thermopylae isn’t so… Read more »
interesting, but what if you played the Thermopylae game as a precursor to the subsequent Greco-Persian battles. The victory of the Persians at Thermopylae actually gifted the Greeks several things; firstly heroic martyrs to rally around and I’m sure there are things that could be used to give a bonus on the battlefield, but we’ll gloss over that. secondly it showed the superiority of the heavy infantry over the light Persian infantry, so some form of morale bonus could be added to the Greeks for that. lastly the defeat of the Immortals by the Spartans and the decision of the… Read more »
Haha….@warzans look of disdain at the Chibi WW2….priceless….come join us grognarts….haha..
Asymmetrical gaming is great, the challenge is balance. As @warzan says war isn’t fair, but most people want at least a fair chance to win. A challenge is good, esp if you win, but every gamer has a different line on how much of a challenge is acceptable to them. Equally it’s no where near as satisfying to win if you’re on the side with the advantage This makes rule writing extremely difficult. Re Waterloo numbers; from Wikipedia – The French army of around 69,000 consisted of 48,000 infantry, 14,000 cavalry, and 7,000 artillery with 250 guns Wellington’s army consisted… Read more »