Games! (For lack of a better title)

Last week, on a very rainy (3" of rain in one hour) Wednesday, I headed over to the FLGS for another  head-to-head game of Grimdark Future.

I brought my fantasy lizard folk again, but with a slightly different order of battle. In addition to the spinosaurus, I brought my triceratops battle wagon:

 

As one person commented, a transport that actually transports.

Long time readers will note the added railing on the howdah, in addition to the permanent goblin green base. I've long had an issue with the crew falling off when moving the triceratops around the table and this prevents that quite effectively while looking appropriate.

 Here are some pictures from the battle: 

 

The space ork deployment. *boo hiss*

The Children of Bokrug deployment. Yay! (The archers have "scout" and get to be beyond the standard deployment zone)

 

Squigs!

Green vs green! My crocs (Gator Hero and Gators in Age of Fantasy) did OK this game. Not as good as last time.

Carnage! My favorite image from the game! I think it conveys a certain gonzo joy.

If brevity was my thing, I'd have just posted this picture to summarize the whole game!

From a game perspective, my lizards got stomped pretty badly. But from my perspective, they had some awesome moments of glory and some remarkable fortune that made the story of my army more than enjoyable for me. 

My opponent and I discussed it a little afterwards and we were both somewhat convinced that in Grimdark Future, a primarily melee force increases the challenge level.

As I have previously mentioned I intend to make my own version of a Penitent Host (40K thing), which will feature Sisters Repentia - armed with chainswords - as the dominant infantry. However, they'll have Celestial Warrior Sister squads in support. Those units are much better shooters than the best lizard archers, having a 24" range for their rifles (30" for the HMG), hitting on 3+  vs 18" range, hitting on 5+.

So much painting to do to even get to field phase one of my Blessed Sisters force in Grimdark Future! 

And of course, I ran out of black gesso, which I use for primer. So there will be a delay there until the weekend when I can get to the art supply store. 

In any case, Saturday, I set out the Bleid, Belgium 22 Aug 1914. scenario for Great War Commander again. 

This is 2nd turn? The French platoon with the MG are already gone.

This time, I tried to move French leaders around in an effort to bring outlying units into cohesion. Unfortunately for the French any kind of movement order card came few and far between (I attributed this to a indecisiveness in command), and they suffered a jam on their MG the 1st time it fired. The next turn, the infantry unit carrying it were destroyed. That was turn 2, if I recall.

It went almost entirely downhill from there for the French. 

The one bright spot for the French. The French unit marked Veteran was the result of a field promotion in response to fire received. Perfect timing because they were going to have to defend in melee. And they won handily. 

 

But the Germans kept coming and the French collapsed.

Surrender! The French had lost six units - five infantry and one leader. For the second time, Rommel was sidelined early and played a minimal role in the ensuing battle.

It seems to be a tough scenario for the French - most of the units are out of cohesion from the start. Even if you bring the leaders to them, you have to round up the units to all be in a group (adjacent hexes within the command range of the leader) to get the most out of the orders. That requires more movement orders itself. And, as I said, they were few and far between. I ended up using Advance and Offensive to accomplish movement for the French, but those have limitations/requirements that Move does not and so aren't always as useful. 

I suppose if the Germans were circumspect in their approach the French might have had time to reorganize their infantry, but I have read Rommel's Infantry Attacks and he *is* one of the leaders on the board Therefore, putting the French back on their heels was the name of the game.

As it was, the French reached their surrender point of 6 units lost, thus ending the game automatically in a German victory. Meanwhile the time tracker had advanced exactly ONCE. 

I plan to play it yet again this coming weekend - both to help the rules thus far to stick (there's no artillery in this scenario, that's the next one) but also to try to use the French leaders to bring units into cohesion, perhaps with better luck and also to see if I can keep the French on the table long enough to force a sudden death.

I believe this might be possible by falling back and consolidating as soon as possible, as opposed to starting a firefight on turn 1, which greatly favors the Germans.. 

This theoretically/ideally would force the German "player" to wait for/use up orders for movement and minimize losses. If and when the time track advances, the defender (French) get 1 VP automatically so the more card time the Germans spend trying to get their troops to the village, the better for the French. 

This approach  *will* sacrifice objective control, but the benefits might be worth it - especially since I don't think the French can really hope to hold more than two of the four objectives on a good day (at least when I'm running them!).