From: Chuck Lietz Subject: Sun Never Sets - Peking Review (Long) There have been a few folks asking for a review of Sun Never Sets (hereafter referred to as SNS) and I have played two games of March to Peking in addition to First Afghan War) and have some initial comments. We will be playing Zulu War this weekend and I'll try and write an after action about that next week and eventually hope to have a combined brief of all four games to date soon. I have some initial clarifications from Miranda but am waiting for a longer set of questions submitted this week. Be aware that there appear to be some questionable counter values/markings that are not listed. I will post the combined results once I have them. A brief note about the system. SNS uses basically the same system as First Afghan War which is generally fairly easy and fun to play (kudos to Miranda BTW). The turn sequence goes Random Events, Reinforcements, March Phase, Combat, Logistics, and then Rally. Units are rated primarily for strength, movement, type, weapon type and morale but there are all sorts of special units like leaders, gunboats, gatling guns, Triad mercenaries etc. that adds some nice flavor. MARCH TO PEKING - THE ARROW WAR Initial Position - British: ADVANTAGES: Let's see here, the British and French forces have a great position. There are three quality leaders for both armies which gives you a lot of operational freedom and mobility. Almost all of your troops are generally all veteran morale units that can be combined into some pretty ferocious volleys if you choose. Your army is generally well supplied getting *two* supply units a turn. You have plentiful special units; engineers for river-crossing and fortress storming, massive artillery batteries to pummel the enemy with before most of the enemy can come to grips with you, and two improved riverine gunboats that basically will control the east-west major river and help ferry supplies forward. To help matters most, you have plenty of time and fairly limited objectives which makes matters very easy to plan for victory. Last, your forces can be concentrated in the early going to have an initial "blitzkrieg" that will be hard to stop. DISADVANTAGES: We could see only two real disadvantages and that was the overall lack of cavalry (probably caused by having to amphibiously land the troops) and the lack of an east-west road, particularly in the center of the board. However, these are pretty minor in comparison to your advanatages. Initial Positions - Chinese: ADVANTAGES: You have a lot of units to soak up losses. Some decent units; 5 Fanatical Cavalry units and the Strong-ish artillery units in particular. Victory points for combat losses are generally favorable to you. DISADVANTAGES: How about inadequate leadership which will make movement tough to start with. (This is particularly harmful when trying for a "hit-and-run" campaign strategy that is generally required for all native campaigns in this series) A horde or poorly armed and low morale units. Slow movement rates for the key artillery units that limits your ability to use the fog-of-war if you take them with you. Poor replacement rates as you only get one or two units a turn and believe me, this will not be enough after the first major battle. What's even worse though is the starting positions, in particular, the Tuan-lien division. These units are required to set up in any fortress but no more than three per fortress. There are 22 units and only 8 fortresses so a good portion of these units must be set-up in the very vulnerable eastern fortresses on the coast. Further, this set-up will break up the important morale-weapon classes which will make the creation of good combat stacks more difficult. MISCELLANEOUS SYSTEM STRATEGY NOTES MOVEMENT 1. Concentrate your forces whenever possible under good leaders, especially as the British. The only time when this doesn't apply is when logistics dictates that you have to split up when foraging. However, do not outrun your supply units unless there is a major reward for doing so. 2. When there is a chance for an attrition result from the march table, don't be afraid to use a supply unit to absorb this result. You generally get them replaced anyway and if you have two in the column, even better. Otherwise, always try and plan for this result if possible. For the Chinese make sure you have at least one spear-armed rabble class unit and for the British, generally try and have at least one replaceable unit in each stack whenever possible. 3. Use those leaders! Don't hold them back. Any leader with at least a "1" strategic or tactical rating should try and be used. Particularly, don't be afraid to stack multiple leaders on a stack as combat losses may split up weapon-morale stacks and so multiple leaders can be used. 4. Most importantly, the most critical part of the game is getting your weapon/morale stacks lined up. Simply put, units with the same weapon type and morale class may be combined into a "volley" whereas different classes must roll separately. While not trying to be a numbers counter, it does make sense though to check out the weapon type CRT break points and see where it makes the most sense for stacking. For example, it appears that the 2M6L (that's a 2 strenght point, Musket armed, 6 movement point, Line morale class) Tsien-Fung unit is kind of a waste however, there are only 6 other line morale musket units at 5 strength point apiece for a total of 30 SP's. A quick check of the Musket CRT shows the volley totals going from 24 to 32. Add that 2 SP Tsien-Fung unit and now you have the option to fire on the more lethal 32 SP Musket row. 5. The native player should use the Fog of War aspect to their advantage whenever possible. Don't always move your full movement value if it will throw your opponent into question as to what you have in the column. BATTLE SEGMENT 1. One critical clarification that we got from Miranda is that combat losses are resolved at the end of each "volley", not combat round. This can be critical when deciding how to take losses. Try and kill demoralized units and demoralize units like artillery units that have already fired whenever possible. Veteran artillery units in particular with their high rally rate can always soak up a DMZ or two for the British. 2. Be *very* careful about the 50% unit killed or DMZ rule for victory and defeat purposes. Usually, you want to watch this and sometimes, it can be useful to kill a DMZ unit when you have only a "(1)" result rather than push your forces over the 50% mark by DMZ a good order unit. 3. Again take advantage of tactical leadership ratings! 4. Try and surround your enemy when he's in the open and you have a good chance of inflicting a defeat on his force as even an extra DMZ or two can severely limit his ability to move in your opponent's turn. 5. Last, is the whole question of when to mass volley or separate volley. Generally, it depends on the result you want. If you are looking to generate a lot of killed enemy units, mass volleys are the way to go. However, with poor luck, even mass volleys can miss entirely with a poor roll. Rolling for more volleys increase your chances of at least getting some kind of loss results but generally will get more DMZ than kills. The other major concern here is morale types play a big part of this. As my PBEM opponent of First Afghan War showed me the hard way, Fanatical class cavalry units when defending should generally always fire as separate volleys. This is to take advantage of the +3 modifier and you can score some pretty impressive kills and DMZ's even on the "4" Cavalry row of the melee CRT. BRITISH SET-UP and STRATEGY Generally, the set-up is easy. I placed the French south of the major river adjacent to Taku South and the British in the coastal hex adjacent to the two northern fortresses. The rivering units are place on some coastal hex for the time being and I think separating the fleets is a good idea. Initially, quite simply, the French should take Taku South and the British Taku North. I'm assuming playing with all optional rules in which case your engineer units will almost always blow the fortress defenses. Barring a miracle, you are almost guaranteed to take both fortresses. I usually will have the fleets try and attack Pemtang. Your next turn also should be fairly easy as well. The British should detach Napier and a small force to take Pemtang while the rest of the British push on Tangku. The French have an option if they get a force march to push on to Tien Tsim but generally they should hang around within 4 hexes of Taku South for logistics purposes. Again, barring a miracle, all four of the eastern fortresses should have fallen by now and Tien Tsim is definately in trouble. The third turn, should really be the assault of Tien Tsim regardless of how many Chinese units are there. If you're lucky, there will be lots of enemy units to kill and either the French or British stack or both should be able to attack them. If you're on the North side, don't be afraid to attack across the major river as your leaders, morale, and engineers will compensate for this either but it would be nice not to. The next turn will really be consolidating your forces around Tien Tsim or taking it and wait for some supply units to get moved up. The next 6-8 turns should see you slowly but steadily build towards capturing both fortresses of Peking. The victory conditions will be pretty easily met by just holding the geographical objectives so make sure and leave adequate garrisons in captured fortresses to hold them. Also, use your riverine units to ferry supply units inland as well as hold at bay any marauding Chinese units whenever possible. The key here is don't be in a rush and don't get distracted. The goal is Peking and no matter how much the Chinese player tries to draw you away from that goal, don't be deterred. Further, once you capture a fortress, the Chinese player does not have any engineers so that -3 modifier is awful tough to get past and you can generally move up reinforcements the next turn, particularly in the coastal forts area. CHINESE SET-UP and STRATEGY In setting up, I think putting any units other than the required Tuan Lien units in the coastal forts including Tien Tsim is foolish. The bulk of your forces will not be able to link up with units in Tien Tsim and with the horde of engineer units the British player has, its fortress combat modifier will most likely be negated. You might slow down the British for a turn or two but that generally isn't worth it. Better to mass your units in Peking and form your critical morale/weapon stacks. Also, keep the slow artillery units in Peking if possible. Generally, these units are going to be best employed in massed volleys in defense of critical battles and so don't let them get caught and slaughtered in the eastern forts. One strategy for the British is to actually not kill any of these units placed in the east until late in the game to deny their being rebuilt inland. The next big question is whether to bring on the Hunan army or not. To my way of thinking, if you're going to do it, do it on turn 1. To wait just means less time to get organized. I generally advocate bringing them on and taking the 10VP penalty. The reasons are two-fold; first you need the extra quality leader and generally, these troops should be able to cause at least an additional four units of casualties thereby recouping your VP investment. If you are unlucky and roll the Taiping random event take your lumps and figure it was still a reasonable gamble. So assuming you've brought on the Hunan army and have set-up almost all of your forces in Peking you still have problems. Generally, there are two thoughts that can be tried. One is to just mass all your forces together, move slowly east and hope the British player attacks you. I don't like this as the British player generally has a mobility advantage on you and so can easily bypass your army and take a key fortress and let you try and knock him out. So, my current strategy is to divide into two columns, especialy if you have the Hunan army leader brought on. The more mobile stack moves east on the south half of the board to where it could threaten Tien Tsim or a column moving towards Peking. I generally advocate this being a stack of the line infantry, the fanatical and line cavalry, the rocket unit, and some of the rabble units for losses. You'll probably also want to have at least one but preferably both supply units as there's no fortress and very few towns for logistics purposes. The other stack will generally be the slow artillery the rabble musket infantry, and whatever's left led by San-ko-lin. This stack will move slowly eastward and trying to move into a town hex in the central plains area. Don't get too far east though as those 2MP will make it hard to get back to Peking. I also like to leave a few rabble units out in the open to slow down and screen any force march or mad dash march results from the enemy from reaching Peking if possible. The best you can probably hope for is that the British players splits his forces and that you can re-combine your forces and try to defeat one of the armies in detail. However, ultimately, one or both of your armies will get defeated thereby forcing a retreat to Peking. The problem is that the fortresses can be a death-trap for the Chinese if the British player wisely brings 3-4 engineers to the table. I advocate trying to defend in towns, hills, or marsh hexes when possible to at least insure a -1 modifier to British volleys. Overall, the cards are stacked against you but with a little luck, you might be able to inflict enough losses to blunt the final drive on Peking or at least gain enough losses to force the British into not being able to win on holding VP hexes. OVERALL COMMENTS and AFTER ACTION REPORT The first game we played had me as the British and my brother as the Chinese. He chose to set up the HKL units in Tien Tsin and by turn three the HKL units were no more. We pretty much followed the plan while the Chinese started trying to rebuild in Peking. We combined into one large army and started across the plains towards Peking. About Turn 7, the British got hit with a pretty nasty attrition roll losing two leaders and DMZ-ing quite a number of units but we still pushed on to attack Tang-chow where most of the Chinese were massed. The engineers came in an blew the defenses and when the Brits got tactical superiority, we rolled a 5 and a 6 with my massed artillery volleys getting a "5" and a "3" result, pretty much wiping out the rabble spear class units he had in the fortress. The British rifle phase had us getting a "4" result which left him with very little to fire back with. His fanatical cavalry did cause a couple of kills but overall, the battle was won and the game was as well. He retreated next turn back to Chinese City and we came at him again and were killed another 7-8 units to about 3 at which point my brother conceded an Imperial Victory. The second game we switched sides and I took the Chinese. This time, I followed my advice and brought on the Hunan army and set up as many units inland as possible. The first three turns were pretty much standard but I positioned my units into two armies and starting moving towards the British. My brother split his forces into the French and British armies and moved west to face my armies. About turn 6, I was in position to attack the French who were in the center of the board position with both armies. However, I rolled the stupid "Foul Weather" random event and was foiled in my attempt. The next turn, the Brits got a "Mad Dash" march result for Grant who linked up with the French who slaughtered my central army including all 5 artillery units by surrounding them with some of his cavalary and infantry units so that when I was defeated out in the open and I had to retreat, I had to DMZ about 25 SP's of units additionally. I then tried had to decide whether to pull back to Peking or stay out in the south with my better army. I elected to stay out of the city in which case the British forces just marched happily on Peking while I went east to retake the coastal fortresses while exiting the Emporer. Peking fell two turns later and I ended up getting slowed down by the stupid gunboats (forgot they could switch sides of the river) and then re-took Tien Tsin. However, British and French replacements moved up from the coast into Tangku so that when I attacked there and lost Tactical Superiority, I ended up not taking the fortress and losing most of my infantry. The next turn I was attacked by the gunboats who rolled a "6" which pretty much ended my activities in the area. I retreated my pitiful remnants back to Tien Tsin which I held onto for the game but ended up still losing by about 60 (!) VP's. Overall, this seems to be the weakest of the four games in the series as far as I can tell so far. I would say the play-balance is really pretty daunting in the early going against the Chinese player that I can't see improving over time due to the nature of the campaign and objectives. We talked about upping the Chinese VP for casualties caused from 3VP's to 4VP's as a simple fix but it may be too early to tell what overall effect this will have. I think this one will not get played as much as Zulu War or Sudan which appear to have better balance and strategic options but I've yet to play them. Even at that though, this system is really one of Miranda's little gems and even while getting completely beaten on points, the quirks, chrome, and system framework of representing this era of strategic campaigning made for an enjoyable afternoon that left me wanting to play again, just maybe another scenario. However, as an aside read "Flashman and the Dragon" before playing as it adds some nice detail to the campaign. On to Zulu War next! Thanks for reading, Chuck