Airborne Church!

Over on Boardgamegeek.com David Dockter informs me (http://boardgamegeek.com/article/17591715#17591715):

“The Russian military has introduced a high-tech air-dropped church along with a unit of priests trained in parachuting and vehicle assembly to serve the army and navy’s Orthodox Christian soldiers in the field. The European country claims its airborne-friendly and ready-to-assemble house of worship is the first the world has ever seen, although similar structures have long been in existence.”

Looks like a unit for your game, Mr.Train. 

No room to include this one in the counter mix but I wondered about the unit symbology to use for it:

 

The one on the left for the TO&E “wire diagram”, the one on the left for the installation in the field… though I am not sure what exact system the Russian Federation uses for its maps now, I am sure someone will fill me in, here or on BGG….

Backfeed

 

http://www.strategyandtacticspress.com/wpsite/mega-feedback-mw15/

What is the sound of one hand waving?

New (kinda) rules for Ukrainian Crisis

I meant to do that.

Well, it is nearing the end of November and there is no news to report on the Victory Point Games edition of Ukrainian Crisis, other than VPG’s admission in September that their playtesting (with which I was not involved, except to answer questions later) had “gone off the rails” during the summer.

In June I made some revisions to the rules to suit VPG, to recap from July posting:

• All processes will use d6, not via the substituting method I listed in section 2.1 of the rules though – for Efforts there will be a “normed” result which I did briefly consider when originally designing the game. This required a couple of changes to processes, notably the Diplomatic resolution and the introduction of random Critical Incidents that can occur when players make a Maximum Effort on something. I do like this way better.
• Some minor Russian OOB changes to reflect the ID numbers and likely composites of units that appear to have been actually fielded, rather than my original guesses (most of which were right, but they were obvious ones). There is no overall change in Russian combat power though, so I did not make up replacement counters.
• A completely deterministic version of the game that doesn’t use dice at all, if you feel that rollin’ dem bones is a sin (though it does use playing cards, so you are halfway to Perdition anyway).

I think it less and less likely that this will hit the presses any time soon, so I have decided to publish the revised rules anyway. You can find them both here and at the original post for all the game files for Ukrainian Crisis.

ua-crisis-rules-12

https://brtrain.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/a-new-pnp-game-ukrainian-crisis/

Let me know if you try these out!

And in the fullness of time, if/when VPG gets it out the door, you will have a truly beautiful map and nice thick counters to play it with….

RBM bnr of ADP re SFWkly-MS

Thanks Rodger!

BottosCon 2014!

Not sure what i was saying here, but I guess it was important…

Spent the weekend in rainy Surrey to attend BottosCon 2014, an annual gaming convention put on by Rob Bottos, the guy on the left. I had a great time, like always!

Playtesting of Caudillo. Presentation of balding head.

Two very good playtest sessions, one of Caudillo (multiplayer card game about power politics in fictional Latin American country) and Denouement (two-player iteration of the GMT COIN system, for the Algerian War).

Also seen in passing: two guys (Ralph Shelton and Steve Lieske) playing Third Lebanon War, the original version of the game.

I sold a copy of Andartes too!

(all photos by the excellent and unobtrusive David Rice)