David Bohnenberger - Feb 24, 2012 7:51 am (49492.) 
Making gamer fantasies come true

"SCS" Raphia

As part of our "bucket list" program, last night Bob Sohn and I sat down
for a game of "SCS" Raphia, from MMP's Special Ops #1. Despite the notion
that this is a game in the Standard Combat Series, the resemblance to
other games in that series is superficial. It is igo-ugo,
hex-and-tiny-counter, and the units have surprisingly large movement
values. The resemblance ends there.

The game depicts a huge battle between Egyptian and Selecuid forces in the
"Successors" era. The sides are similarly armed, with both armies
featuring a big phalanx and lot and lots of elephants. Players have the
option to set up their forces as they wish, which I think is a nice
feature for an "ancients" game. It sometime seems to me that this was the
commander’s most important role in those days.

The movement allowance for the Phalanx is lowest, and pretty much ensures
that the scrum will take place in the middle of the map, as happened in
our game. Phalanxes “lock” with each other, pretty much setting the focus
for the rest of the game.

To start, Bob and I engaged in some pointless dueling on one flank. On the
first turn, there was a lot of Elephant rampaging to not much effect. It
soon became clear that the ONLY units that really matter in this game are
the Phalanx – the victory condition is to move one in to your opponent’s
“home tent”. So then we set down to the business of trying to set up our
other units to take missile shots on each other’s Phalanx in an attempt to
wear them down. It also became clear that the best use of the Elephants
was to try to get them to Rampage into the enemy Phalanx (and hopefully
not your own).

The game features an interesting grid showing how units interact with each
other. For instance, Formed Infantry will Melee with their counterparts,
Force retreat of lights, but can only throw things at Phalanxes. We caught
ourselves cheating a few times, as these infantry can throw missiles ONLY
at the phalanx, and not at any other unit type, which is perhaps not a
typical game mechanic.

The system seems to generate a lot of “retreats”, and we saw units moving
back and forth from the edge and back into the action over and over. As
the Selecuids, I had fewer Phalanxes but had many more Peltasts, which I
set up in a second line to “pelt” the Egyption Phalanx. This seemed to be
working out fine until a rampaging elephant took out nearly all of them.
There was an overstack on the last retreat hex (the tent), and so all but
two were forced off the map.

Ultimately, however, I managed to get the upper hand in missile fire. Bob
actually managed to break free with a couple of Phalanx units, and headed
straight for my tent. However, they were mowed down in a hail of fire.
These same rock-chuckers returned to the line and helped affect a
breakthrough of my own, for the win.

We had fun. The game seemed a bit sluggish a first, and the rule that all
missile fires need to be declared before any are resolved seemed
cumbersome. But after a while almost everyone was dead or gone and the
game moved much quicker. We did have to make up a few rules to fill some
holes in the rulebook, but it was not hard to agree on them. I do believe
I would play again, but I’m sure Bob would not.

We finished up the night with a 3-game series of Harry’s Grand Slam
Baseball, which is now “the” filler. Bob won that, 2 games to 1.