Review - Operation Solo Endeavor

I picked up this supplement for Operation Whitebox for two reasons. Firstly I'm a huge fan of Operation WhiteBox and I've written a few scenarios for the system too. I thought I might have some fun solo-ing a team through one of my own scenarios.

I like what I found in here. An intro to solo playing, then a straight into a useful table for determining a mission objective. This table is short but it gives a nice variety of mission types. It then guides you into generating some VIPs for your mission. They might be NPCs, officers, targets, or otherwise. There are tables for theatre of operation and then significant places for the mission. 

Next we move into "Planning" which takes you the player through the design process of what you want to do when playing, and what sort of NPC you might want to prepare. 

It also introduces a mechanic called "Tension". This is a great idea. Its a ticking timebomb for a disaster. As you play it ticks down to something very bad happening. You never quite know when this bomb will go off or what form of DOOM it will take.

Then there's a guide on how to ask/answer the questions that drive the game, and gives you simple "oracle" to get your answers. It's a simple D10 mechanism ... but ... its variable, and you you can tailor it to the situation, ... and ... it drives that Tension mechanism.

Another great set of tables provide you inspiration and flavour for answering questions and feeding into your story. Talking of which, there is an nice set of NPC names tables, tailored to various nations involved. Beyond these, the book gives you plenty of advice on story telling and handling a team of players rather than a single character. 

To sum up, I'm really happy with this product, its a perfect fit for Operation Whitebox, and I'm going to be using it tonight! My only gripe, is that I'd like to own this as physical book.

Operation Grand Slam

Operation Grand Slam is my first scenario for "Operation White Box". Its a one-shot, suitable for a single session and three to four players. The PCs are working in collaboration with "The Dam Busters", trying to mark a target for the flyers.

In real-world history The Dam Busters had to fly multiple missions to bring down the Nielefeld viaduct, because even they were struggling to bring down this very small target using the Grand Slam bomb (another invention by Barnes Wallis of bouncing bomb fame). In this fictional scenario the PCs are dropped behind the lines with a mission to mark the target with fire.

Get the scenario

OSR rule for Consumables

I was breezing over the rules for The Front today, as I'm thinking of writing another scenario for the

system. Actually I was looking for a mechanism to hang a scenario on (that's a little tip for anyone wanting to get into scenario writing). I found my attention drawn to the "consumables" rule.

This rule is a way of tracking anything that can be "consumed", be that rations, bullets, grenades, or hot water. Its very handy for bullets, as in modern games tracking bullets-left can be terribly burdensome, way worse than arrow counting in your average fantasy game.

The core rule is that a consumable is allocated a die, for our example lets assume the players bullets are assigned a D6. After each round firing, the player rolls the consumable die. If he rolls a 1-2 then the die is reduced to the next smaller die, so in this case it would be exchanged to a D4. If you roll 102 on a D4 then that's it, you've run out of whatever it is. The assigned consumable die can be any of the standard polyhedrals, so the companies ammo supply might start with a D20 consumable. Then each time the company is engaged the referee can roll the die and reduce it through the all the dice 

D20 > D12 > D10 > D8 > D6 > D4

I think you could steal this rule and drag it back into fantasy games too. You could track arrows, oil flasks, food, water. Also if you want to stretch it a bit you could use the same mechanism to track the energy supply of a broken down horse the players are relying on. Its cool for this because everyone can see the die roll and will be bought into watching the bones slide across the table.

Solitaire play throiugh of Memoir '44, Montelimar

Another of my solo plays of Memoir 44. Not many left in the base game, then I'll have to move onto the scenarios in the expansions...

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Solitaire play through of Memoir '44, The Liberation of Paris

 Here's the next in my video play-through series of the official Memoir '44 scenarios.

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Solitaire play through of Memoir '44, Toulon

The sun came out for an hour or two yesterday allowing me to wheel out the video camera for another solo session of Memoir '44, this time the 10th scenario from the base game, Toulon.

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Going Ashore released

Cover

The WWII Pacific campaign has captured the imagination of history buffs for generations. The island hopping battles between the hearty U.S. Marines and the dauntless Japanese form the cornerstone of that fascination.

Going Ashore is a solitaire deck building game where you play the part of the Marines carrying out a series of battles as you hop from island to island. You must defeat all of the enemies on each island before you can move to the next. Clear the enemy from five islands to claim victory, any other result will re-write history as a loss for the allied forces!


Currently the game is available only as a Print-and-Play package via WargameVault.com but in the next few weeks it will also become a real tangible game you can purchase via GameCrafter.com

Example attack

This zipped up Print-and-Play package includes rules, the cards, morale tracker and turn sequence chart. The cards are presented in three ways giving you the maximum printing options. One PDF uses a larger format card, another "hobbit" sized, but you also get all of the card images in hi-res, allowing you print the cards in any way you see fit (see the readme.txt file before you print anything).


This is my second solitaire deck building game, and expands both the mechanisms and the number of cards  over those that appeared in "Wipers Salient".


Buy now from WargameVault.com

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Solitaire Memoir '44 Omaha Beach

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Solitaire Memoir '44 Pointe Du-Hoc

Here's my solo play through of the fourth scenario from the base game.

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Solitaire Memoir '44 Sword Beach

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