First Game of 2020

Per the title, I got my first game of 2020 in last night. Admittedly, it was a board game, Long Range Desert Group from Decision Games, but the ease of set up and the ability to play board games sitting down with my cat on me makes them an obvious choice right now.

LRDG is a solitaire, low counter count, low complexity, point-to-point counter based game. Realizing it may be awhile until I get around to fielding any toy soldiers for WWII desert battles, this is a quick fix.

It comes in a zippy bag.

This was the second time I played this game - the first was in late December. I purposely played the same scenario, 1941's Crusader! mission, because I botched it badly the first time through by spreading my force too far from the objectives with only 8 turns to achieve them.

This was due in large part for failing to remember that I could stack unlimited units on a base point.

This time, I put everyone in one base, Kufra - in the picture below I broke it into two stacks just to keep it from falling over. Again.

I really need to invest in a small sheet of plexiglass to flatten my maps.

I decided to take a small but fast force out to Jalo to see what was there, before following with others, and only if necessary. On the way we were bogged down in the Calashano Sand Sea, which of I anticipated of course.

In game terms that means we have to stop movement there. I drew the Orders from Cairo! card but as we had no wireless, it had no effect.

On arrival in Jalo, I took a survey of our force's morale give our slight delay, but as we had suffered no loses nor dealt the enemy any blows, nothing was to be noted . There we also acquired the first objective. I sent it back with one of my recon units to our base.

Along the way we received  some intel (a card that let's the player reveal two objective markers, take an additional turn, or make an air or water move) that revealed that Sirte and El Aghelia were both mined, and not locations for our second objective. That eliminated moving in that direction and instead I sent my force on to Mechili.

In Mechili, we ran into a mine field but managed to avoid any damage. From there, we moved on to Beda Littorio. In addition to more intel, we nabbed the second objective there.

Through an act of unheralded daring, I stole a plane from an airfield there and escaped by air to our base in Kufra (I used the air move option on the intel card). The armored car and remaining recon trucks would have to make their way back without me because "I'm much to important to be captured."*

****

It sounds like a victory. Right? Wrong. I had to score 6+ KIAs against the Germans as well as get the two objectives and I didn't encounter any! I suppose I could have gone looking for some rather than taking the objective back to base, but then I would have risked running out of turns to get back or losing my force for that matter.

In any case, LRDG is an inexpensive, fun, quick game, with enough player decisions to be interesting and enough randomness to provide friction and variety. On BGG, some players noted that after enough plays, you'll know what cards remain in the deck and so some of the surprise is lost, but I don't find that troublesome - most of the cards have multiple possible outcomes and so even if you know what's left, it doesn't guarantee a particular result.

Looking forward to playing again!


*Flintstone's reference