From: Markus Stumptner Subject: [consim-l] Landships Scenario 17.6 Replay Our most recent Landships session was scenario 17.6, The Battle of Rafa. This utilizes map 8, the one with the Arab-named village surrounded by trenchlines on an empty plain, on which first five British armored cars and a lot of cavalry charge in, followed by some Turkish reinforcements from the other side who are then locked in by further British reinforcements coming from the sides. The special rules for this scenario caused some hilarity. They start out with a statement that "all printed minefield hexes are considered active", but the term "active" is never mentioned again, instead later reference is made to hexes "inside" the printed mine belt no longer being mined after the mine belt was pierced, which leads to the conclusion that there could be non-printed minefield hexes which may be active or not. We dismissed the whole thing as redundant rule writing that was supposed to say (in a needless repetition of 7.14) that the printed minefield hexes contain mines, but no other hexes do (which is what we normally expect from terrain printed on the map). The rules also allow the British player to choose "any one aircraft", which led to jokes about Tornados with cluster bombs (perhaps less than funny given the current real world context). In play, the Brits will typically choose a CS plane to do artillery spotting. The British rolled Shrapnel ammunition, a major hindrance in a scenario where all the defenders are in trenches. Interestingly enough, ART guns in trenches can apparently spot and fire direct without restrictions, but get the protection modifiers. We looked for anything that said differently, but didn't find it. We did keep forgetting to apply the cumulative terrain modifiers that make a strongpoint in a trench hex have a +3 modifier (or +4, with Prepared Trenches), but it did not make a difference in this case, as the only strongpoint lost in this game was lost to charging cavalry (which presumably jumped off the horses once on top of the strongpoint - we had no problem with that outcome). With British artillery stymied by shrapnel (a single barrage could only hit on a roll of 1), the cavalry moved into charging position. Ironically, since cavalry can only charge in a straight line, here it has to maneuver for a turn before charging despite being theoretically in range from the start, because the hexgrain runs the other way. Having the cavalry dismount and go into a firefight was not an option because then it would need much of the scenario just to get to the trenches. The armored cars managed to eliminate one of the ART guns quickly (together they have 12 firepower with a -4 modifier, good even against units in trenches), and artillery killed another unit on turn 2, but the barrages from the Turkish onmap guns kept getting in the way of the cavalry, and direct fire from the ART guns killed several armored cars on turn 3, after they had moved closer to the trenches. This drastically reduced the firepower coming from the armored cars, and when the cavalry units finally got to charge, half of those that did were killed outright in the minefields (should be 1 in 6 - a lot of sixes were rolled there). One was Pinned but managed to overrun a FO in a strongpoint on the next turn, as mentioned earlier. With not quite half the game over, the Turkish artillery was still mostly unharmed, Turkish losses were few, and the British had lost almost half their armored cars and cavalry, significantly reducing their chances to do real damage, so the British decided further attacks were fruitless. We then looked at the "aftermath" report for the scenario and found that it went seamlessly from "No headway was made against the well-dug in Turkish forces" to "When the Turks received reinforcements... Unknown to Chetwode, his cavalry and armored cars had already charged, destroying the last of the enemy forces", thus leaving us in the dark about what actually happened in the historical battle between the British being stymied and being totally victorious. After the game, we realized that the Turkish player did not barrage out to the maximum limit for the guns, but only to the Direct Fire limit - this might have killed some more cavalry. Conversely, I think we let the Turkish guns fire Offensive Fire at the armored cars while barraging, which is not allowed and would help the British somewhat. This also shows the main distraction when playing Landships, that we are still suffering from after ten or more games - although the rules are not all that complex, there is a fair amount of niggling little exceptions and special rules spread througout, and you frequently find yourself looking for them. Nonetheless, much of that can simply be laid at the feet of the fact that it covers a transitional period with lots of different technologies and doctrines being experimented with, and all of these are in the game with their various idiosyncracies, which is what gives the game its charm in the first place. As the next scenario, 17.7 "The Baptism of French Armor", is by far the largest in the game (it uses every single infantry unit on both sides), we decided not to set it up immediately and we will give Landships a bit of a rest. We have after all played six or seven straight sessions of it, with a number of other games clamoring for attention. When we pick Landships up again, we'll probably restart with scenario 17.8, "The Kerensky Offensive", which is a bit of a misnomer, as the scenario depicts headlong Russian flight *after* the offensive. It should be a normal 3-hour job, involves some interesting aircraft (including a Gotha bomber), and has half a dozen British armored cars plus a truck-mounted AA gun coming to the rescue of the Russians. Markus Last 3 games played: Aleutian Campaign, PzG Afrika Korps, Landships --------------- http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/mst/games/ --------------- "Bakayaro! Bakayaro!" ("Stupid Bastards! Stupid Bastards!") -- Admiral Aritomo Goto's last words to his staff, October 11, 1942