Thursday, May 07, 2009

New game brewing, and battling the bulge

My game designer hairs are twitching again. An idea has yet again kept me awake at night. I hate it when that happens.

This time I tried a "coping technique". that is to say, I stopped trying to sleep and instead sat up, and wrote down everything that was whizzing through my brain.

Didn't help.

Next time, I think I'll just try eating some doughnuts. I don't think it'll help me sleep, but at least it will be tasty!

I thought I'd also let you know how my attempt at Axis & Allies Battle of the Bulge went. It went very well. About two turns in I realised That I had been playng it wrong , DOH! I didn't reset the game, but instead just carried on, and I don't think it help the Axis forces too much.

The German forces zoomed across the board, powering up the centre and simply zooming over the town of Bastogne and forming the bulge.

The Allies get a lot of reinforcements that can come in from the edges of the board. This is quite clever because it recreates the "bulge". It accentuates the bulginess of "the bulge".

The Allies struggled. A mistake of using the trucks coming in from each flank to drop supplies in the centre of the board where the Axis forces were striding forwards left the flanks without the fuel they need to pinch the bulge.

Indeed on one flank the American forces were stacked into just a couple of powerful hexes but I managed to cut the roads behind them stopping supplies from anywhere else reaching them. This kept them immobile for two turns but sadly it was not to last. Just then the Allied air power started to take effect.

The Allied aircraft made a point of attacking unprotected fuel dumps on the first turn and managed to do terrible damage to the Axis plans. From that point on, as the designers of the game intended the Axis was pushed slowly back until the end game was reached.

I really enjoyed the game. Took a couple of hours with interruptions of casual play. It's a one scenario game so I don't intend to try playing again for at least a few months, but I am looking forward to it.

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