Nuts! The Battle of the Bulge

[Nefaro]

Way to step up to the plate.  O0

Took some balls?

[nht]

I picked this up this morning (iPad version). It runs a bit slow on my pokey old iPad 2, but it's still fun. That said, I've got a few concerns about the AI (I'll note too that I've never played the actual card game that it's based on, so I was totally unfamiliar with how the game is played until I went through the "tutorial").

I only played the "north" scenario, but even on my inept first play (I didn't figure out how to play cards during the opponent's turn until halfway through), I thoroughly crushed the AI. This was mostly due to the AI losing a ton of units during attrition checks while trying to besiege a town I'd fortified. It also tried a few ill-considered offensives against far stronger defenders, leading to massive losses. I'd say that the game was pretty much over with 11 or 12 turns left to play, and after that I was just mopping up a few stray units here and there and counting down the turns until the end. Apart from one card that let the Germans put a unit behind my lines, I'm not sure they ever once made it past row #2.

Will have to see if this was just an isolated bit of beginner's luck, or if I can duplicate it in other scenarios.

[tgb]

How do you play cards during the AI's combat phase?  I'd ask on the Hexwar website, but the support there is horrible.  It might take weeks for me to get an answer.

[nht]

That's one thing I haven't figured out. The action cards are all labeled as to when you can play them (movement phase, combat phase, etc.). I've been able to play most cards that are marked for enemy movement phase ("Traffic Jam," etc.), but several times now I've had a "friendly fire" card in my hand that says that it can be played during the enemy combat phase -- but I haven't been able to do so. The AI designates combat targets and it immediately moves to combat resolution.

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if it's a bug.

FWIW: I'm on my third game -- the first, as noted above, was a blowout in my favor. The AI won the second after overrunning my southern flank and eventually getting 3 mech units off board. The third game is shaping up to be a total blowout in my favor once again -- I've occupied all but one of their starting squares, and they only have 3 units on the board (1 in the starting square and 2 spread out elsewhere), all but one of which is cut off. There's still 8 turns left, but I think it's about over (the app crashed, so I haven't finished yet).

(UPDATE): I finished the last game having controlled every square on the grid for 8 turns.

Honestly, it's the cohesion check at the end of the round that seems to wipe out most of the units.

[tgb]

And that just bad die rolls.

Friendly Fire is the card I'm struggling with as well.  I wish Hexware's support didn't suck so badly. I asked a question about something I thought was a bug last night and they still haven't answered it.

[nht]

I hope that they can get some of these issues worked out. I think the Hexwar/Decision Games partnership has the potential to be very fruitful from a wargaming perspective. But some of their adaptations have been pretty half-baked so far. I like "Congo Merc" well enough, but it's pretty shallow (and too dependent on lucky dice throws). And their adaptations of "Wellington's Victory" and "Battles of the Ancient World," while fun, basically feel like re-skins of the same old Hunted Cow engine that they've been using for years.

I'd really like to see some faithful adaptations of some of the games DG's library. So far, "Nuts!" and "Congo Merc" seem to be the closest they've come.

[tgb]

I hated Congo Merc, because it seemed to consist of nothing but moving pieces and then rolling the dice to see what happened.  No strategy at all.  Have you played Infection?  It was the first Hexwar game I bought and it's excellent.  I'm still stuck halfway through the campaign.

[Tosh]

I cannot figure out how to attack with my encircled unit the encircling unit. Reading the rules and watching the tutorials didn't really helped, as the usual way to conduct an attack (picking attacker then piching defender thereafter) doesn't work.
I'm glad "Nuts" is running on my machine (Congo wasn't, but I got a refund after six weeks or so), despite some minor flaws (several display errors, stuck on combat screen, because of missing "continue" button).

Re Infection: I generally like the game, but think its very luck dependent. As tgb I'm stuck midway through the campaign, and stopped playing it, because playing the same scenario over and over again in order to progress in the campaign wasn't fun in the long run.

[tgb]

Out of desperation I posted to the Hexwar website this morning and actually got a response the same day.  What's next, dogs and cats living together?

To play the Friendly Fire card it needs to meet the following conditions.

1. Axis AI has to be attacking you.
2. The attack has to take place into a Northern grid (columns D, E and F)
3. There must be an Axis artillery unit involved in the attack.

When all these are true it will be available for selection just before combat begins.

We hope to add more detailed descriptions of the event cards and how they work in a future update, hope you are enjoying the game

[nht]

Well, I still haven't seen it work, and I have only played the northern scenario so far.

As for encircled units, I'm not sure they can attack. Honestly, I just let the encircling army wither away from failed cohesion checks.

I think Congo Merc could be a fun little diversion if something were done about the combat system, which is totally luck-based and really detracts from the "adventure" aspect that could be part of the game. I think it could be kind of fun to put together a "merc squad" and roam around the country hunting rebels and saving hostages. But as it is, I just take the path of least resistance to the objective, and then back out -- and I make sure to have a Psy-ops unit so I can re-roll bad (read: any kind of combat) events.

[tgb]

Try posting in the Hexwars forum.  Maybe you'll get an answer as quickly as I did.  I just creamed the AI in a Northern Front game.  I'm starting to think that if there any challenge here at all, it's in the full campaign, s I'm going to try that over the weekend.