[Napoleon's Triumph] How Goons Made Napoleon Lose Austerlitz

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The Game Room > [Napoleon's Triumph] How Goons Made Napoleon Lose Austerlitz

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

##MERCENARY SIGNUP. Whichever side fills first, give me the other one.

gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Oct 17, 2014

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 23:50

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:48

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

silvergoose posted:

blah blah blah ##DOWN WITH NAPOLEON something something fart fart fart

The die is cast, then. Pour l'Empereur!

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 04:22

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

So, having never played this before, let me just make sure I have the unit differentiation correct:

Infantry are...well, infantry. They can attack from one location away (either from reserve or from the approach), and they can move from reserve to reserve by road.
Cavalry can ~~attack~~ feint an attack via a road move, and can end a road move blocking an approach. They also do not suffer a -1 penalty for attacking across a blocked approach. Otherwise they behave like infantry.
Artillery pieces can only lead attacks via a unit move (not a corps move), can only attack if they were blocking the attack approach, and you cannot do artillery attacks across the same approach in consecutive turns (unless you're attacking from a hill to a non-hill). They also cannot counterattack. In return however, attacking artillery ignore the unit strength of defending units, and cannot be counterattacked.

Is this correct and comprehensive?

EDIT: Okay, more I was missing.

Artillery lead attacks never take losses.
Artillery can combine Unit Move attacks. Infantry and Cavalry can only combine Corps Move attacks.
Attacking Artillery leaders do not inflict bonus losses on the defender.
Defending Artillery leaders reduce losses on the defender.
Defending Artillery take loss damage with the general defenders, rather than the defense leaders or counterattackers.
Artillery attack leaders do not push into the defending territory on a win.

Artillery are special little snowflakes, aren't they.

EDIT 2: Christ, there's more. I need to make a cheat sheet or something.

EDIT 3: Found one.

gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Oct 18, 2014

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 05:17

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

So wait. Is the french side composed entirely of newbies, with all the experience in the hands of the Allies?

C'est super.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 22:41

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

Complete aside from the tactics of the game: The more I look at this map, the grumpier I get.

I get that Simmons is trying to evoke the tactical maps of the era. I can respect that, sure. But would a little graphical design sense kill you? Like, maybe making the impassable approaches a little more visually present than a tiny symbol in a sea of tiny symbols? A faint red color, maybe? Or some hatch-shading, if you don't want to confuse it with the Allied colors?

And you couldn't mark Santon out in some way as a visual reminder that the region has special rules? Say, with blue text and/or symbols and/or approaches, since it favors the French? Something? Anything?

I usually consider marking a game board to be sacrilege (Risk Legacy excepted). But if I ever obtain a copy of this, I might have to break out the pens.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 23:39

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

I'm getting the impression that Silvergoose is the only experienced player here.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2014 00:06

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

We're much more into beheadings and being the greatest land power in Europe right now.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2014 01:16

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

From my understanding, Simmons Games is (or was) literally just Rachel Simmons. Keeping a game in print and circulation is a much taller order when you have to assemble boxes in your living room. Made much more difficult when you're dealing with both chronic shoulder problems and the unending parade of medical complications that come with gender reassignment. She stopped selling the game on her private store in early 2013.

Guns of Gettysburg is her only game currently in print because she partnered with Mercury Games to publish it. I really hope she finds other favorable publication deals, so that she can get these games back in circulation.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 19:42

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

I'm hooked. This is shaping up to be a lot more direct than the Sample Game. We're not doing a positional dance-off here, we're just lining up and bloodying our fists.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 16:05

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

For the benefit of those not reading the French thread (I don't think any of this needs to be classified):

Tekopo posted:

Allied Movement

silvergoose

Attack Threat 42 -> 54

Since the Artillery defended on another approach, it cannot defend this one.
Artillery is destroyed and the french lose one morale.

Allied Morale: 16
French Morale: 20

Gutter Owl posted:

Wait, how the hell did they pull off this poo poo? The Santon is obstructed against cavalry.

Section 18, Santon special rules, bullet point 3: Approach penalties apply to attacks into the locale even when the defending pieces are in reserve.

Section 11, Attacks, paragraph 9: Cavalry units cannot lead an attack, lead a defense, or counter-attack if the defense approach is obstructed.

They could not have possibly declared a legal attack along the road, as the attack would be invalid on declaration, when they have to demonstrate that the attacking units are cavalry (Section 11, paragraph 8).

Tekopo posted:

Read the highlighted part very carefully. It says that cavalry cannot lead an attack. This is a very specific term in the game. So it is possible for a cavalry unit to do feints on obstructed approaches. As well as that, it is possible to perform an attack (that isn't a road feint) with a cavalry on an obstructed approach, have the cavalry be the only unit declared in the attack declaration, and then be forced to have 0 units named as leading units (although why you would is unclear when you could just declare a feint).

Gutter Owl posted:

gently caress, nevermind. 11.5, bullet 3, "there are no leading units in such attacks [feints]." Which means the obstruction penalty apparently does nothing, because the cavalry aren't actually leading an attack.

This makes no goddamn sense to me. A bunch of cavalry who can't even get up the hil run around and make some noise, and somehow this convinces our soldiers to panic, throw the battery off a cliff, and loving commit suicide. loving brilliant.

Tekopo posted:

There is actually a distinction. Cavalry CAN move up the hill. They just can't attack up the hill. So the presence of the cavalry threatening an attack would still potentially cause a unit to panic, especially if it appeared that they were attacked from two sides.

Tekopo posted:

Also, you need to think about it in terms of how the attacks would be conducted in real life. The first attack would gain the attention of the battery, who would set up for defence, when they suddenly hear about enemies infiltrating on the other side, upon which it would be too late to shift the defence. There's a lot of ways to rationalise it.

Gutter Owl posted:

Fine, fine, I get it. I'm just really sore because this is a significant loss caused by confusing rules rather than tactical missteps. Play on.

Tekopo posted:

To be fair, I hadn't realised the implications of road feint on the Santon before the Allies made the move. I'll know for my next game to keep a bodyguard on the Santon in my future games.

Yeesh. Good loving play, silvergoose. You not only caught us with our pants down, we weren't even aware that our pants weren't on in the first place.

I can recognize that Rachel Simmons is a brilliant designer of games. But christ, she's downright awful at teaching those games to you. Teaching board games is a not-insignificant part of what I do for a living (writing credit, not the voiceover). And writing something as unintuitive as these rulebooks would get me fired.

But then, this is true of a lot of beloved wargame rulebooks.

gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Jan 1, 2015

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 21:30

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

I'm in favor of calling it at this point and looking at what we were thinking and where we were going. I mean, if the game did restart, I'd be completely lost anyways. I forgot my battleplan like a month ago. (Not to mention it's hard to HAVE a battleplan when you've only got direct control of a handful of pieces, and can only communicate in the most abstract and useless ways.)

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 21:44

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

Tekopo posted:

Sure thing, well call it a draw. Sorry for dropping the ball on this! Feel free to look at each other's threads. Btw, the French center would have been absolutely crushed if it had gone another turn.

Absolutely. I was praying that Frankenfreak would notice and send cavalry support St. Hilaire to defend against Langeron, but that didn't happen. Had Langeron been held off, I was banking on a crack across Miloradovich's bow with St. Hilaire's Guard Attack. We'd hopefully crumple Milo, then have a credible hole to threaten Prebyshevsky's flank. (Meanwhile, Prebyshevsky couldn't guard attack into 72, since the Allies had blown their guard capability earlier in the game.)

But yeah. As it stood, we were doomed to a center split from Langerion. As soon as Frankenfreak posted their turn, I just put my head in my hands. No fault of Frank's though. I was running a pretty risky gambit, and I can't blame them for not reading my mind.

Also: I had no idea what the hell Tevery was doing in the south. I was terrified of a complete breakthrough in 134. But it apparently worked, so clearly he had a better plan than I did.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 22:18

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:48

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

Every time my orders were posted, my immediate thought was "NONONO DON'T DO THAT WHY DID I TELL YOU TO DO THAT WHAT WAS I THINKING."

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 22:42

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The Game Room > [Napoleon's Triumph] How Goons Made Napoleon Lose Austerlitz