IABSM3 play test

Over the weekend of March 3-4, I got to enjoy another game play test of IABSM3.  Steve was trying out a scenario for playability and wanted to see if the scenario was too unbalanced.  Steve ran the game, Curtis was playing the Germans, and I was running the Russians.  The scenario was set in 1941 with a Russian armor force attacking a German armor force.  I don’t want to give too much detail, as there some scenario specific events/conditions that in the game and I don’t want to ruin anything for the actual players when this game is run officially.  Later, when the game is actually played as an event, I will give a proper AAR.

The system went rather smoothly, even with the amount of armor on the table.  The Russians have a major disadvantage of be poorly lead and trained, but have numbers and decent guns for anti-tank abilities.  The Germans are better lead and trained, but lack numbers.  I played a rather brash leader and failed to do over watches, as I was hoping that a continuous rolling push would get me to the objective and then I would sit it out for a gun battle with the Germans.  I could have worked, but cards came up right for the Germans and they successful destroyed the armor unit that came close to seizing the objective.  The battle shift heavily towards the Germans then, but by then I had stopped my advance with the remaining forces and battled it out with the Germans.  In that aspect, the trade off was more even with the loss in vehicles.  But I could not make up for the loss of my lead force, so it was a hands down German victory.  But I could take some pleasure in knowing that the German tank ace was killed by the Russian Big Man, who was still alive at the time the game was called.  But he ended in a dangerous spot, so it was very possible that I could have lost him in another couple of turns of combat as well.

Anyway, Steve was fairly happy with the scenario, but plans to tweak a couple of things before we run the game officially at a specific upcoming event.  Once the officially game is run, I will hopefully get a bunch of pictures and will write up a better AAR on it. 

Steve reviewing the charts

An End to an Ace

Well painted Panzers

 Next week, if all goes well, I plan to visit the Missouri Historical Museum in St. Louis and see the “Civil War in Missouri” exhibit.  I am getting my shutter finger ready to be a picture taking fool there!   I still have to sit down and edit, as well as identify/name, my thousands (I am not kidding here) pictures from my sightseeing tours from the last few years.  I need to start posting these up on my travel web sites for those who can’t get to some of these out of way places.

Other than that, I know that I stopped with my book reviews as I just ran out of time to type up reviews for the blog and I didn’t want to go back after a long period of time to do one for each book, as I have finished off probably close to a dozen since my last review. But currently I am reading “Blackhorse Riders: A Desperate Last Stand, an Extraordinary Rescue Mission, and the Vietnam Battle America Forgot” by Philip Keith. I am not very far into it yet (maybe 20% of the way in), but it is not a bad book. In a nutshell, the book is about a battle that the paper work was missed filed by the Army and eventually was recovered almost 40 years later. The battle was so significant, once it came to light, that President Obama issued one of the two cavalry troops that made the daring rescue with the Presidential Unit Citation in 2009. Alpha Troop, 1/11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and Alpha Troop, 2/8th Cavalry drove deep into the jungle near the Cambodian border to rescue Charlie Troop, 2/8th Cavalry for being eliminated by a North Vietnamese force that outnumbered number them somewhere between 4:1 and 6:1. Had they not broke through and rescued Charlie Troop, it would have been the largest US defeat in Vietnam with the loss of an entire company of men in a battle. It is well worth picking up if you are interested in Vietnam. Depending on how things go, this might be my Fall Recruits scenario in a cut down version of the rescue mission with probably two platoons of each for the Armored Cavalry and ‘leg’ Cavalry as I already have one armored cavalry platoon and two infantry platoons. I need to read some more about what engagements they hit on the way to the rescue before making up my mind. But as of right now, I am planning to do another Operation Cedar Falls game (or two) at the Fall Recruits. I might even do a Falklands scenario if I get the hills finish for Recruits.

Be seeing you

Cheers