David Moody - 12:15pm Nov 1, 1999 PST (#895 of 954) Currently playing: ASL and DiF Grand Campaign (currently fighting in Poland), Advanced Civilization (AH computer version), Rivoli (SimTac). I have a question on The Cwimean War. The rules and victory conditions make reference to the Kinburn Operation, saying it is an optional rule. I can't find any optional rules, though. Am I looking in the wrong place? Can someone please enlighten me? Thanks! I finished the first turn over the weekend. Allies tried to maneuver around the Wussian positions at the Alma, but Menshikov was able to escape the trap (DW result on the Maneuver BRT). Wussians are scuttling the Black Sea Fleet and repairing the Sevastopol fortifications. The Allies are now moving to capture Balaklava and Kamiesh to use as supply bases for the siege (otherwise it will be difficult to get the siege guns up). Turks took Eupatoria in a sharp fight with a militia brigade (they had to use the S kirmish table because the Wussians won the die roll, so the Turks got demoralized even though they had a huge numerical advantage). Menshikov pulled his three divisions back to Semiopol (sp?--the town where all the roads converge) to await reinforcements. I changed my initial Wussian deployment to Minimal, because that seems more historical and I didn't want the Wussians to start out in a 10 VP hole, with consequent BRT penalties. I also decided not to roll on the Random Events table for either side on the first turn, so as to avoid weirdness before the game even started. I was prompted to do this when the first result was Allies get Volunteer Brigades (I had barely enough room to land at the historical Kalamita Bay landing sites as is, without throwing in m ore troops), followed by French withdraw troops to N Africa (no French troops even on the map yet) when I rerolled. Now that the Allies have landed and we've had a couple battles (and it is a new turn), I will roll as directed. Cool so far. I've got the historical accounts from the Osprey books on Balaklava and Inkerman (the anniversary of which is this Friday), in addition to the one in the magazine, to assist me in figuring out what to do. More updates to follow from the fwont. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Moody - 12:17pm Nov 4, 1999 PST (#896 of 954) Currently playing: ASL and DiF Grand Campaign (currently fighting in Poland), Advanced Civilization (AH computer version), Rivoli (SimTac). I guess other people had the same problem. Oh well, it WAS an optional rule, after all. At any rate, I got the October and November 1854 turns done last night. Lots of fighting in the Caucasus (Random Events) as both the Turks and Wussians won major victories in September. The Wussians withdrew some of Menshikov's promised reinforcements to try and reverse the situation; the Turks, badly needed to hold Eupatoria, did not pull more troops out. Meanwhile, back in the Cwimea, in September the French took Kamiesh and established their siege lines, landing siege guns and more troops in November. The French carried out the first bombardment of the city in November, an ineffectual one. The brave redcoats, on the other hand, took Balaklava as their base of supplies, occupying it with the 4th division. Menshikov moved to attack this isolated division, and inflicted heavy losses upon it, but Colin Campbell led a counterattack (optional Meeting Engagement rule, which isn't specifically explained either but I kind of fudged it/made it up so I could get a reasonably accurate model of what happened at Balaklava) that sent the Wussians weeling. Campbell, however, fell dead at the head of his men--a major loss for the Brits, since he is their best commander. So Menshikov, reinforced by a full corps, tried again the following month, this time at the main British position near Inkerman. The result was a bloodbath, with both sides lo! sing heavily but remaining in position. I took some of the British losses by eliminating the light brigade--wrong battle, but Tennyson has to write about something. So now the winter comes. BTW, problems in India have forced the diversion of a British brigade there to resolve the matter (November random event). The Turks have landed a divison at Balaklava to help hold it, and they, along with a newly arrived French corps, will bolster the British. One of the things I like about this game (other than the novel battle resolution system and the Random Events) is the supply rules. The game uses supply units, like 1776 (they even kind of look like the ones in 1776), and you need to expend them to entrench, conduct a siege attack (use siege trains to try and breach fortifications, like the ones at Sevastopol), make rally attempts, and supply all the units of the same nationality in a hex. You only get so many per turn, and you have to expend command points to get them to units in the field (you only get so many command points per turn to move, fight, etc.). You can also build them but a) it costs command points b) a leader has to be in the hex c) it has to be a city, town, or open ground and d) you can't do it in winter. The Wussians can place a supply unit automatically in Sevastopol each turn (out of their pool of reinforcements), provided they still occupy it. The French have buttloads of supply currently, and the Wussians! can fairly easily move it in from off map (it does eat up command points), but the British are hurting. They can't entrench or rally the units demoralized at Inkerman because they will need what supplies they get during the two winter turns to feed everybody. And it will take some time to build up enough supplies to do a really good bombardment of Sevastopol's defenses. So it will be a long siege. The Sardinians show up in a few months at least. So for the allies, the winter will be spent mostly gathering supplies (French) and trying to survive (British). The VP count is 35 Allied to 27 Wussian (I changed the Wussian At-Start deployment to Reasonable when I saw in the errata on Web-Grognards that that was the historical situation and put most of the new troops in the Sevastopol defenses), so the Wussians will sit tight, build up supplies, and select the Nominal reinforcement group each turn (0 VP to Allies) so as to close the VP gap (they get 2 VP each turn for holding Sevastopol), then getting a big reinforcement group in the summer and trying to crush the besiegers. Fun so far, with only some minor rules quibbles. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adam Starkweather - 05:35pm Nov 5, 1999 PST (#897 of 954) Calling from high atop the Empire State Building David, I wrote Joe Miranda asking about the Kilburn Operation and was told that it is an optional add-on that will appear in MOVES at a later date. I looked long and hard as well. Good game though. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Moody - 11:38am Nov 8, 1999 PST (#905 of 954) Currently playing: ASL and DiF Grand Campaign (currently fighting in Poland), Advanced Civilization (AH computer version), Rivoli (SimTac). "it is an optional add-on that will appear in MOVES at a later date" Ah--that's why I couldn't find it. Thanks!! Any chance of it getting posted here or on Web Grognards for us non-subscribers? I wrapped up the war over the weekend. I won't go into a blow-by-blow description here--suffice it to say that Sevastopol fell in mid-summer after yet another massive Wussian assault (with Guards no less) was beaten back by Raglan's lads, bolstered by the French and Sardinians. The Turks had started moving from Eupatoria to take Semiopol (sp?) and cut off the main Wussian resupply/reinforcement route, forcing the Wussians to reploy a substantial part of their army to meet and repulse this threat. So, after a massive bombardment from land and sea, a multi-hex assault carried the works and forced the Wussians back to Fort Constantine. I saw no point in continuing after that. All in all, a fun game--very neat system, which I would love to see adapted to other wars of the period (Franco-Prussian War?). I'm not sure about the replay value, however, as both sides are pretty much locked into Sevastopol as the main objective, and there are only so many ways to get there because of the terrain. As Joe said, it might be fun to try an early assault on the city just to see if it would have worked. I would love to try this against a live opponent--the Wussians have a lot of decisions to m ake about initial deployments, reinforcements, etc., and this would add to the fog of war element (you'd never know how many men are in Sevastopol, for example). And of course the Random Events add a lot of variability. I still think it might be good to have a house rule where you don't roll for Random Events on the first turn--better to get everyone landed and fight a meeting engagement or two before the fun starts. Now, off to Italy.