Latest Wargaming Acquisitions

[Staggerwing]

ASL something or other, I bet.

[MengJiao]

Just bought a used copy of GMT's Three Days at Gettysburg....what a monster!!!   Unfortunately, I will probably never play...just open it every once in while and day dream about playing it...

  I got that a while ago.  I played a day1 scenario.

  BUT these days I'm trying to get a solitaire-friendly Close Action mod working.  The thing is that if you look at 18th-century sea battles -- they are nearly-impossible to simulate except in the rather lose way that Flying Colors does it -- I think.  So I'm reducing things down to something much simpler for Close Action: some smaller -- pivotal moment with maybe 3-5 ships at fairly close range with simplified gunnery and damage.

Might work.  I ran a small battle (2 Spanish 64s against 1 Spanish 80).  Significant sail damage happened in about 7-8 game minutes at around 3-400 yards.  So that's a lot of damage happening pretty fast in Close Action so I'm wondering how to simplify it in the direction of Flying Colors.

Or maybe I'll just complexify the Flying Colors sailing rules (which sortof implies changing the scale slightly so maybe not)

[Bison]

I'm pretty pumped about what the FedEx man delivered to me today.


I've been eyeing Panzer from GMT for about 8 or 9 months now and finally decided to order the game.  All day I was excited to get home and open up the game.  First off, I'm still excited about the game.  However I'm a little pissed about the condition that the game came in from the distributor Roundtree Games.  The game was advertised as "New", but apparently new means the game's cellophane wrap is removed prior to purchase and the box has significant damage.  The entire corner of one side of the box was not only damage, but completely ripped.


I'll be calling Roundtree tomorrow and directing them to look here to see the damage first hand and how easily their company can get a bad name.  Anyway tonight I'll watch a couple of unboxing youtube videos just to verify that I have all the components.  It looked like it did on first glance but the condition it was obviously shipped in to a customer really pisses me off.  I'm just glad that I ordered the expansions from Chris at NWS.  I really wish he still had a copy of the base game that I could have ordered too.

Components:  (sorry about the poor image quality. iPhones do have limitations I guess. :D)

Counters and this image really does not due the counters justice.  They are very beautiful counters.


Map.  I'm a little disappointed that the map is paper and not a card stock, which is how the maps in the expansions are printed.  It's still nice and seems like it will be very functional, but I don't believe it will play into expansion scenarios and limits the board selections for user made battles.


Player aid cards.  I love me some tables and reference cards.



Tank and unit data cards.  These babies are printed on some serious card stock, which just amplifies the deficiency of the map material selection.


Rulebook and scenario playbook.  Nice and thick rule books with full color illustrations.


Really looking forward to reading the rules, punching counters, and setting up a scenario to play some good east front tank battles.

[GJK]

I'll be waiting in anticipation to hear your thoughts on Panzer, B.  I P500'd the game and still have my copy in shrink ( :o ).  I ordered it based off of the original Panzer and '88 that I owned as a teenager.  I remember the detail in the "To Hit" and hit location tables.  I only solo'd the original a few times.  I also have the Excaliber version but it is unpunched and obviously never played.  They went with side view silhoutes for the tanks and that really killed it for me.  The data and maps that it contains are good though and those maps (mounted?  Don't recall) would work for the new Panzer.  So...why the hell is my still in shrink you ask (or maybe not).  Well, when Panzer arrived, I had just groked the AFV rules for ASL and I didn't dare want to confuse my little brain with AFV rules from another gaming system.  I would like to give Panzer a try some day though and I'd really like to try the game system with miniatures because that was the roots of the original game and I think that the latest version would work great with mini's as well.  That way you wouldn't need worry about the flimsy paper map either.  ;)

So, do work up an AAR or a mini-review once you get to that first scenario.

[Bison]

Well fortunately for me, I'm still wrapping my limited brain wave capacity around ASLSK infantry rules.  So the new armor rules here won't confuse anything I learned from ASL.  :D

[LongBlade]

Sweet pickup. Sorry to hear about the box.

[Bison]

Sweet pickup. Sorry to hear about the box.

I'm going to need to list out the Tanks and other pieces so you can help me do some research on minis.  I think GJK has the right of it that the system is could easily be played with minis instead of counters.

[LongBlade]

Sweet pickup. Sorry to hear about the box.

I'm going to need to list out the Tanks and other pieces so you can help me do some research on minis.  I think GJK has the right of it that the system is could easily be played with minis instead of counters.

Two big issues with minis is: cost and time.

Minis can be expensive. There are some cheaper alternatives, but in general they're not cheap. The other issue is time. It takes time to paint them.

What scale are you looking at? If you do the micro armor it's cheap, but tanks are about the size of a dime.

[Bison]

At this point, I have only ruled out life sized replicas.

[mirth]

Bison, that really sucks about the box damage and the fact the game is obviously not "new". I'll be curious as to how you make out with the seller. I've bought boardgames from many different sellers over the years and I'm always curious to hear about CS experiences that others have. How did you find Roundtree Games? Was this an order through their Amazon Store? Please let us know how you make out with the damaged product.

[Bison]

I did order through amazon.  I didn't realize the vendor selection until after I received the game.  When I ordered it listed a different vendor so I'm not sure how amazon directed the order to them.   So far I cannot find a phone number only a vendor customer service email form on amazon.

[LongBlade]

At this point, I have only ruled out life sized replicas.

That will help on the cost issue.

You're going to need to decide on a scale.

1:72 is very satisfying but they're big. I've seen guys mix scale with 1:72mm tanks and 15mm crunchies. Tanks look cool, but LOS can bet a bit wonky.

Micro Armor is tiny, but cheap and lots of it. Or you could go with the Flames of War scale, 15mm.

What would I recommend? I need to know how much you want to paint. If you don't care how they look then you still need to tell me how big you want them. For the least emphasis on looks and least effort on painting, micro armor is probably the way to go.

Best looks and detail is going to be 28mm/1:72.

[GJK]

I was thinking micro-armor:

[Bison]

Yeah that looks awesome G.

[LongBlade]

Looks perfect.

Bison, here's where you can find it: http://www.ghqmodels.com/