J. R. Tracy - Jun 7, 2006 8:37 am (#14045 Total: 14081) "I no drive just for drive. I drive for to finish in front." - Milka Duno, Le Mans Played my first game of “Fury of Dracula” the other day too. Part of our crew played this last night while I played Fire in the Sky with Bill T. In Fury, Dracula had the hunters completely befuddled and was about to win with a maturing bride when Mina caught up with him in Galway in a daylight turn. With Dracula only working with three tactics cards, Mina with a fistful of options and winning every roll, the old count was in the ground for good after four rounds of combat. There was some frustration on the part of the players at the combat system, but thumbs up for atmosphere and non-combat mechanics. Bill and I had fun with FitS. It was the first time for both of us. We played the first four turns of the 'short' campaign. I give it high marks as a game, mixed marks as history, and think it's a winner overall. It's a couple clicks up the complexity dial from Victory in the Pacific but the heritage, intentional or otherwise, is evident. This is definitely big-picture stuff, with an emphasis on strategic thrusts but some operational-ish chrome built into the combat mechanics. It took a while for us to get our heads around the deployment/operations/deployment sequence but once we found the rhythm play went smoothly. I found the combat system daunting when reading the rules but in practice, it rolls right along. There are usually only a couple battles a turn so the game can bear the added hair of the multistep process. After some stumbles we both grasped the fact it's all about operations tempo. Working within the constraints of transport and (for the Japanese) oil points, the players always have to look at least a turn ahead. Nothing significant can be conceived and acheived in a single player turn barring fantastic luck and/or enemy incompetence. I also learned the bitter lesson that if you throw a haymaker, you'd better land it squarely because you're left without an adequate reserve to parry the inevitable counterthrust. My attempt to take Rabaul fell short and with my assets returned to the West Coast, Bill was able to secure his position and take Port Moresby to boot. We appreciated the asymmetry of the two sides. From the very beginning Japan feels the walls closing in - my subs dinged Bill's merchantman capacity on the first turn. While he had plenty left it was a stark reminder he was at his high water mark in terms of military capability, and all downhill from there. The dual considerations of oil and transport give the Japanese seat a real strategic dilemma of resource management, offset somewhat by the power of interior lines. As the USN closes in, a good portion of the Co-Prosperity Sphere is within reaction range of the Japanese home bases. Thus while the US is free of any oil worries, he is much more vexed by the sheer vastness of the theater, burning a couple turns and a heap of transport to line up each and every island hop. As Japanese resources dwindle, the front moves closer, a mixed blessing. Overall I reckon I give the game a higher mark than Bill. The re-basing back to the Home Islands or the West Coast after an operation doesn't sit right with him, and I can see his point. I think it simply forces the players to measure their pace and work out a sustainable deployment/ops cycle, with the timing odd at the turn level but okay over a number of turns. He feels a task force operating in the Solomons, say, should be able to return to Truk or Brisbane rather than all the way home. I don't think it's a gamebreaker for him and I'm sure he'll chime in here soon. I look forward to trying this again soon, perhaps finishing our game. Right now Bill is ahead of history in the southwest, with all of New Guinea in Japanese hands, but I still hold Rangoon and have just grabbed back the Gilberts. I like the flow and look forward to seeing how the mid- and endgames play out. I understand there's a VASSAL module and this might be the game on which I finally cut my e-gaming teeth. JR William Terdoslavich - Jun 7, 2006 9:13 am (#14049 Total: 14081) I have a chapter in Eric Haney's "Beyond Shock and Awe," out now. " The Jack Ryan Agenda is still available on Amazon.com. Chiming in! OK, despite my issues with Fire in the Sky, I did have a good time playing it! First, let me say that the first time I saw this game come out of the wrapper, I was turned off by the map and counters. Taking a closer look at the game as a player, I am still not thrilled with the graphics, but many of the game system's features outweigh the cosmetics of appearance. First, the game is a strange mix of Euro-like and wargame-like mechanics. I must count the board as part of this. It measures only 10x18 hexes on a 34x22 sheet. There are only 47 names spaces that are in contention. Victory in the Pacific, in comparison, has about 28 spaces and shares similar scope (US and Britain only, no China or Russia). Think of FitS as VitP with thorough land and air components. Ground units for both sides are very limited. The Japanese have three armies, (8 SP), four divisions (4SP) and three brigades (2SP). Brits and Yanks have two armies each (8SP), with the US having two Marine and one Army division (4SP each) and four regiments (2SP each). You need the land units to take ground--and there is a LOT of ground. So the squeeze is felt pretty quickly. It is hard to get overwhelming strength on land unless it's a mismatch--two divisions slamming into a regiment, as I managed at Port Moresby. More typical is the slogging match outside of Rangoon--a Japanese Army vs. two British divisions (8SP vs. 8 SP). You try to add assets to the punch to land the blow and blowing die rolls really skews the result. JR and I have spent three turns deadlocked over Rangoon and he has half the British Far East fleet suppporting the defence. I don't have the juice to take this spot, so it's turned into this disgusting attritional economy of force (economy of farce) battle. Where you saw the monster approach was in the Gilberts. JR made Tarawa happen a year early as the entire Pacific Fleet sortied to support one Marine division to pop a lone Japanese brigade. Rolling eight dice in air factors and another handful for gunnery reduced the Japanese to the point where the Marine Division delivered an easy coup de grace. Oil points are the bane of Japanese existence. I had to play in such a way as to leave 4-10 transport points handy at the end of every turn to have enough left to ship the oil back to Japan. Transport and oil points have a logistical symbiosis for the Japanese player as a result. You are using those transport points to send planes, troops and ships to near-front bases, then burning double points to move the stuff the last two hexes while the fleet burns oil points to do its stuff. Fleet goes home after the move, so you have to burn tons of points again to get it to the front. This makes me wonder whether the game should be renamed "Parsimony"! I am not complaining. Historically, the Japanese were very resource-constrained and could not ramble about the Pacific freely. They could react with their fleet to one attack, but never two. Game wise, I found myself having barely enough points to get a small task force to Truk, with nothing left over to support a naval build-up in Singapore to challenge the Brits. Some very big stacks are building up against Japan right now. Destroyers add ASW screening to the game, but otherwise lack practical use owing to weak factoring. We've only played four turns, so I don't know yet if we are noticing something or misplaying the DDs. The limited land counter mix, few spaces and use of single digits in a lot of factoring give the game a Euro-like cast. But the detailed battle procedure and the juggling and planning of oil and transport points also add a lot of detail to the game, so it becomes more of a design for cause wargame at this point. China and Russia don't factor into this game at all. IN many Pacific games, China turns into a static sideshow, though Empire of the Rising Sun made it a source for additional troops if you needed to draw on your pool as Japan. Land-based aviation is under-rated in this game relative to EotRS. In FitS, land air factors are 2 while carrier air is 4. One nice Euro-touch is that air factors extend a ZOC and are half strength when hitting adjacent hexes. As far as the "go home" rule goes, it does impose a logistical constraint on the US/Brit and Japanese players. That's good. I do take issue with the rule's implementation. Both sides historically based fleets in forward bases and returned to them after operations. Third and Fifth Fleets never steamed back in their entirety to San Francisco after a battle. Likewise, the Japanese were always sortying and returning to Truk. I don't want to suggest a house rule yet to bring this point in. Games that rely on play balance through numbers should never be tinkered with lightly, as the resulting unbalance could outweigh the benefit of the fix. J. R. Tracy - Jun 7, 2006 9:18 am (#14051 Total: 14081) "I no drive just for drive. I drive for to finish in front." - Milka Duno, Le Mans JR and I have spent three turns deadlocked over Rangoon and he has half the British Far East fleet suppporting the defence. I don't have the juice to take this spot, so it's turned into this disgusting attritional economy of force (economy of farce) battle. I discovered at the end of our fourth turn I was screwing this up - the British ships can't stay in Rangoon (well, one transport factor can). I should've been Op-moving in and rebasing, so you would not have faced the fleet on your own turn. Still, a tough place to take with 8 factors on defense unless the Japanese commits naval assets for added bombardment oomph. JR