GrogHeads Forum

After Action Reports => Digital Gaming AARs => Topic started by: JasonPratt on September 01, 2017, 08:28:10 PM

Title: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Complete)
Post by: JasonPratt on September 01, 2017, 08:28:10 PM
...uh, since we're playing it on the digital Vassal mod, it counts as digital, right?

AzTank and I are returning to FIRE IN THE LAKE, and this time we're bringing along DaveM and Barthheart as our sacrificial pawns! I mean allies!  :D

Specifically, DaveM will be playing the North Vietnamese Army; Az (Larry) will be helping him as the Viet Cong; Barth will be Captain Arclighting the map as the United States; and I'll be juggling all this grievous nonsense as the local mafia THE ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM!

We'll be playing a full team game, meaning that I can't win unless Barth (who is on my side this time, thus guaranteeing some kind of reality implosion) also has scored enough to win; and if all four of us are past our various win-posts, then the teams compare our lowest scores each. This forces everyone to focus on scoring efficiency for all our teammates, too, not only our own.

DaveM and Barth haven't played the game before (and only Az has played the Vassal mod among us before), so pray for us.  :hug:

I may or may not create a video AAR as turns go along, using Tabletop Simulator to illustrate the moves so far. But whether or not I do, here are a couple of relatively short introduction videos.






Dave as the NVA will be kicking off, based on the first card draw, with ArizonaVC having the second initiative. (Then Barth, then me.) The two videos do represent the starting piece placements, but not the starting card draws (yet).
Title: Re: The Crisis Grogs present... FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO!
Post by: JasonPratt on September 13, 2017, 05:52:53 PM
Fire in the Grogs Too doesn't continue to begin! Yet!

Once upon a time this post included a sample video of running a coup turn, but I've deleted that video as pointless now.

Don't worry, more vids on the way.
Title: Re: The Crisis Grogs present... FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO!
Post by: superhaus on September 18, 2017, 05:20:21 PM
USA reporting in ready to spread some freedom!
Title: Re: The Crisis Grogs present... FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO!
Post by: JasonPratt on September 19, 2017, 08:16:04 AM
 :bd: Come, spread your freedom all over my vast tracts of land!
Title: Re: The Crisis Grogs present... FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO!
Post by: Barthheart on September 19, 2017, 08:17:51 AM
 :o
Title: Re: The Crisis Grogs present... FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO!
Post by: JasonPratt on September 19, 2017, 08:24:24 AM
You had your opportunity.

(https://img.memecdn.com/prepare-for-freedom-and-occasional-bombs_c_2675649.jpg)
Title: Re: The Crisis Grogs present... FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO!
Post by: Barthheart on September 19, 2017, 09:24:57 AM
More surprised at your .... interesting.... choice of words..... but I have a gutter mind so.....  :D
Title: Re: The Crisis Grogs present... FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO!
Post by: JasonPratt on September 19, 2017, 09:37:40 AM
Yeah, I tweaked it to be off-color for the lolz. Not sure if it's better or worse to be about pimping or not! -- but I figured it would count either way as a jab at the regime governments I'm playing. ;)
Title: Re: The Crisis Grogs present... FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO!
Post by: JasonPratt on October 03, 2017, 11:37:47 AM
Have _you_ been wondering when if ever we're going to play this game after all?

Me, neither!  :D

But that's because I already know we've been playing it, down to Turn 16 currently. It has been a pretty amazing game so far, and I'll be doing AARs on it eventually -- I'm just catching up on my belated DC:Blitz AARs first (so that I can continue that game, too, which is much closer to the end of course by now.)
Title: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 1 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on December 16, 2017, 09:47:17 PM
We're well into what must be the final downhill run of the game, but this is where it begins. Namely with the communists trying to understand economics, failing, and resorting to terror taxation out of the gate.  >:D


Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 2 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on December 30, 2017, 09:03:23 PM
For (probably) my final video of 2017:


ALL HAIL BARTHHEART WHO WINS AS THE UNITED STATES ON TURN THREE! -- and then moves along to another game.  :coolsmiley:

Fortunately for the rest of us, it's a full team game so I have to win, too.

Unfortunately for me, ARVN is a long, long way from winning...
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 3 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on January 07, 2018, 06:09:31 PM

Wherein we play our first coup turn, ending the beginning of the game with... a crushing win by Barthheart!  :D

...but since he has to drag me along for the full team win, too, the game continues. (Though without Barth who decided to watch from the sidelines as Rich subs in to try to drag me to victory. And by "me" I mean "us" but mostly I mean "me".  >:D )
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 4 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on January 14, 2018, 12:18:02 PM
Now that the beginning of the game has ended with the first coup (and a crushing Barthheart victory as usual  >:D ), it's time to get busy on the tromp to the next coup, far down the road.

By "getting busy" I primarily mean testing new readable font designs!  :D

But also a short episode focusing on a subtle rule quirk of the game and on a basic short-range move operation.

Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 5 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on January 14, 2018, 06:27:27 PM
Yep, episode 5 uploaded today, too! You can thank an inch of ice under three of snow for this.


Everyone gets a full turn this episode as we settle down to work. Also, Hamburger Hill arrives early: will it be any more decisive than in real life?!
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 6 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on January 24, 2018, 09:38:49 PM
Well, Team South (that's US-Rich, and me, ARVN) are doing okay, but Team North isn't really that far behind. Despite NVA-Dave still having the exact same 4 points (out of 19) he started the game with. And still having no new pieces on the board. At the start of Turn 9 already. Yeesh.


I know that sounds bad for Team North, but notice: they aren't far behind without the NVA having even started rolling yet. Our fellow Groghead ArizonaTank (Larry) is punching a respectable second place more-or-less by himself so far.

This suggests we need to keep Dave down as long as we can. ...but can we?
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 7 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on January 26, 2018, 07:45:31 PM
US-Rich does something clever that makes the episode shorter than it otherwise would be!

Also, my faction's theme song.

Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 8 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on February 01, 2018, 10:18:17 PM
NVA-Dave gets tired of watching VC-Larry slowly defeat Team South by himself; and Team South gets tired of the NVA having any points at all.


This creates a certain amount of tension. ;)
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 9 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2018, 07:43:14 PM
...wait, am I still doing this series? I am?! Well, where are we now!?


Time for COUP TWO, NGUYEN KHANALOO!
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 10 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on March 19, 2018, 06:19:50 PM
Forward progress over onto the downslope of our game, and Team South's prospects have never looked quite so shining!


(...as long as you ignore VC-Larry's ace play and the giant red wave of doom looming over there...)
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 11 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on April 09, 2018, 10:04:39 PM
Poor ArizonaTank continues being just murdered as the Viet Cong, while Team South edges closer to ultimate victory...


...and NVA-Dave cooly profits from the war.
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 12 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on April 10, 2018, 09:41:36 PM
Episode 12 of 18 -- the North Vietnamese watch as their Viet Cong puppets (I MEAN ALLIES!) struggle to recover against the search-and-destroy teamwork of the South Vietnamese and their American dupes (I MEAN ALLIES!   \m/ )

Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 12 current)
Post by: ArizonaTank on April 12, 2018, 05:50:43 PM
Good Stuff Jason!!!
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 12 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on September 23, 2018, 02:19:16 PM
Update: I've been working on a Grand Finale episode for several weeks, going out through the end of our game; but when I sat down for final editing today (I hoped), I discovered that no less than 4/5ths of my video had been corrupted somehow. And when I bit the bullet to fire up TTS and Shadowplay to re-record the video, I realized I had erased many of my specific gamenotes about what specific moves I and the other players were making (because for the grand finale I figured I could skip narrating a lot of them, not needing to explain many mechanics now).  :pullhair: L:-) :pullhair: :pullhair: :pullhair: #:-)

The Vassal logfiles still exist, so I can recreate the plays -- and try to adjust for the errors we corrected along the way (not counting a few errors we never caught, which I've still got to mention as such so that viewers will know why I'm including erroneous play). But dang that's going to take more time and effort than I feel like putting back into my work, today anyway.

At best, this is going to massively delay the grand finale some more. And I might just decide to skip trying to produce it altogether, because I'd rather be making and playing other things.

If you want to know which team won and how, I'll include it as a spoiler below.

[spoiler]Starting on Turn Twenty-Seven (a few turns from the end of Episode 12), NVA-Dave, having built up his Trail value to 4, which allows him to freely move as many of his units as he wants on, across, and off the Trail for nothing (and having built his cash up to something like 124 equivalent ARVN cash, where I'm limited by the game to 75!), finally leaned over and spat his massive tidal wave of Troops, with some specs, into South Vietnam. At about the same time, his teammate VC-Larry, having spent most of his cash reforging his specs after US-Rich and I kept blasting them off the board, launched the Tet Offensive. This didn't accomplish a whole lot, and it crippled them from using their now-activated specs for a while, but it started pushing Dave's NVA score up steadily.

After a while, I had to just give up trying to do anything in the north of South Nam, and try to staunch the bleeding in the south around Saigon; and Rich's US Troops kept being blown progressively off the board. A little too late I chose to Vietnamize, bringing all the rest of my pieces into Available from Out of Play, but I didn't have time to vomit them onto the board. VC-Larry finally did what I had been worried he would do since the start of the game, and marched a ton of specs into Saigon from those long low-pop provinces to the northeast, taking away my score there and distracting us enough -- with Rich needing to throw an air strike on the city, dropping his own score in the process -- that NVA Dave could march troops into the city.

With the Coup finally arriving at almost the last possible moment, we managed to nerf Dave down to 18 points, below his goalpost, and with the Monsoon preventing Marching I thought I was safe to Vietnamize, since I didn't see how Dave could score one more point before the coup. But Dave managed to do so by Rallying troops various ways across the board to take control of that northernmost mountain province between Laos and Hue (on the border with North Vietnam), and that put him over the goalpost. Team North only needed one player past the post to win, and we had no play, and Larry sure wasn't going to do anything to mess with the score, so Team North won at the third Coup.

We didn't remember at the time that Team North only needed one player past the post to win, so we all continued the game through the 4th coup until the 5th coup, where once again Dave got the NVA past the goalpost, and we remembered then that only one of them had to win for their team to win. Whereupon, I suddenly recalled he had been there before at the 3rd coup, and went back to verify. So I didn't film and narrate those turns out to the 5th coup during the replay: only up to the point where Dave and Larry won in the 3rd Coup.

This was a MASSIVE win for Team North, even though Dave was only barely past the goalpost and Larry had been punched back a lot. Dave, the total COIN-game newbie, had at one point been nuked back to literally one point of score, with only one base remaining on the board and almost no forces. And from there he managed through careful logistic gameplay, to come back from only one point to win it all for his team while Larry ran interference in-country, keeping our united Team South from winning practically by himself.

I badly wanted to show this, for Dave and Larry's sake -- I kept preparing for it dramatically in my replays, so that the audience could appreciate the scale of their win. And I may get around to doing it eventually. I was livid when I discovered my videos had been corrupted and that I had dumbly erased key parts of my written log rather than archiving them somewhere in case of an accident!

But in case I never do, here's the spoiler end of the story.  O:-) All hail Dave and Larry for their brilliant come-from-behind victory!
[/spoiler]
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 12 current)
Post by: Iconoclast on September 24, 2018, 12:21:18 AM
Well,  thank you for doing this. I enjoyed the Videos immensely and perfectly understand that at some point cost-benefit is just not cutting it.

If you ever decide to do the Vid, I will be watching, if you don't thank you anyway. It really increased my intrigue with the COIN series, although I am currently eying the Next war  :-\

Cheers
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 12 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on February 27, 2019, 05:50:26 PM
Over 120 days later.... THE PROMISED TIME IS COMING!

<:-) <:-)

Thanks to hunting up a technical fix for my corrupted video files, I've spent the past few weeks (mostly on weekends) editing five and a half hours of audio and video into a 36 minute grand finale after-action report of our match.

All that remains is to upload it, which based on past experience will need 8x36 = 288 minutes. Which means I'll have to start it tomorrow morning before I leave for work, since I have things I want to do tonight, and I can't sleep well with THE PRESENCE whirring its cooling fans in the background (even though it's relatively quiet for a monster computing tower).
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 12 current)
Post by: Iconoclast on February 27, 2019, 06:35:13 PM
Thank you, I am waiting with anticipation
Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Ep 12 current)
Post by: JasonPratt on February 28, 2019, 12:55:42 PM
SO IT ENDS!

Title: Re: FIRE IN THE GROGS TOO! (Complete)
Post by: airboy on June 23, 2020, 01:54:11 PM
Ouch!  You almost knocked the NVA out of the war - yet let them come back for a Red Victory.  I'm guessing the excuses for this will go on for decades.