Gaming in the Quarantine.

At this horrible time it is great to have a distraction or 12 so to help us through Jonathan has kindly started up another PBEM game of Fistful of TOW’s. He did the same last year and I was going to do a full write up once we had finished but the game unfortunately fizzled out. However, we did get through a few moves and it was cracking fun so I am really looking forward to this one. Obviously as the new one is ongoing I can’t post anything about it yet as Des might get some good intelligence about what I’m up to so here’s some of the stuff from last time so you can get an idea of how we are going about it, hopefully it might be of interest and give you some ideas for doing something similar.

First of all Jonathan set out the terrain on his table in his lovely, lofty wargames chambre at his place and sent out a map and briefing to each of us. We wrote our orders and emailed them back and he played out the moves either until orders needed changing or there was some decision point that needed input from either of the players. He then sent out a SitRep that contained pictures from the game obviously taken to restrict the view and we sent new orders back.

It worked a charm and added a great level of friction to the game, best example of which was me completely screwing up a movement order that basically put one of my battalions out of the fight when they could have made a telling intervention, and the not knowing where your opponents units are until you run into them was great, very tense.

So nice and simple really but a bit of work for the host to set up, hopefully Jonathan will say how much in the comments?

Here’s the Maps, briefings and SitReps that we received so you get an idea of what actually went on. One thing I have done for the new one is I’m making situation maps after every SitRep so to avoid a balls up like last time (and it’ll help in the write up)

First contact at Kostanjevica – Soviet

First contact at Kostanjevica – Soviet arrival schedule

0735 UPDATE – Soviet

0745 UPDATE – Soviet

Quarantine update!

Well, I was expecting to have finished off the CoC campaign with Dan by now but obviously that has been shelved for a while, I do have one last report to do but haven’t really been in the mood lately for some reason.

I’ve been trying to get some painting done but had hit a bit of a wall and couldn’t be arsed until the other day when I got stuck in to basing some of my alt-history 6mm ‘Cold War’ kit in an attempt to kickstart something and it did!

After basing some bits up I then started ruminating over a new force – the Ukraine – and have an OOB and TO&E sorted now so pinged off an order to Scotia and will be looking to get that done as soon as they get here. This has led me to get all the 6mm Modern kit out and have a good old sort out and I’ll be cracking on with tarting it all up over the next few weeks, painting up some missing bits and ordering some more. Apart from that there’s the small matter of an epic rebasing job to do as the new basing looks so much better than my old ones and I know I just won’t be able to have both types in the collection, my slight OCD will do my head in! I’m going to be sensible though and its going to be done unit by unit in manageable batches in between painting sessions. It’s really good to have a bit of impetus again, which is probably down to something I’ve just finally figured out.

Since the success of Des’ ‘I Aint Been CoC’d Yet Mum’ rules merging the dice activation of CoC onto IABSM I’ve been thinking about trying the same thing with FFT3 as the lack of command and control friction has always bugged me and I’ve recently started to want to get away from strict IGO-UGO turn sequences. I had a bit of a eureka moment the other week and decided to have a run through today so had a quick playthrough. The basics worked well and I’ve made some tweaks already which I think will work better/well. I’m going to have another go this evening and if it goes alright I’ll be posting them on a separate page on here – I’m quite excited as I think its going to work very well.

Anyway, I hope you are all keeping well and safe and all the best.

Oh, and obviously there’s only one thing you can call a mash-up of ‘A Fistful of TOW’s’ and ‘Chain of Command’ isn’t there….