From: OHara Walter Subject: Last Crusade Follow-up/Replay My Thursday night group o' boneheads played Chamelon Eclectic's Last Crusade again last night, with much different results than last time. Five guys showed up, so three played the Americans (including me), two played the Germans (including Larry, the gun-toting psycho-- a real man's wargamer). We set up the terrain in a 3x4 arrangement, like so: T stands for terrain cards. H for Headquarters, AF for airfield. H AF German side T T T clear, light woods, clear T T T bocage, swamp, clear T T T clear, town, clear T T T hill, heavy woods, clear AF H American side Since you have to pay for the row of terrain closest to you (your own start line) out of your supply dump, I was saddled with 12 points worth of initial terrain cost, and the Axis only with 4 or so. Ouch. You get to choose your initial troops from your deck (and pay for them out of your allocation of 21 sp's for American, 25? for Germans). Larry & co. bought a Panther, an 88mm AT/AA, a couple platoons of veteran infantry, a Panzerfaust, and a SDKFZ 251. They saved a couple of points. I had less to work with, and worse units. I bought a M-18 hellcat, a towed AA gun (40mm?) that could do double duty vs. inf/arm, two platoons of riflemen and three of green infantry. Larry's initial draw was very good-- He drew a Nashorn, an Ostwind, and a Whirlbiwind. I kept drawing planes and very small arty pieces. I tried to establish a defense in depth, which really stretched me too thin, considering the disparity of quality of Axis vs. Allied units on the field. Larry attacked down my left flank and destroyed my M-18, a rifleman unit (that hung in there for three turns with 1 point left) and a green unit I threw in as a speed bump. I tried counterattacking but much of my mobile units were used up & I had to save the only two decent arty pieces I had left, a 3" and the AA gun, to defend their attacks on my HQ. I threw caution to the wind after a particularly good supply roll and purchased a B-24 Liberator. All the other cards did not have the requisite amount of punch for the cards that were spotted on the table. I attacked down the left air corridor and that's when I blundered into the "flak trap"-- the Ostwind, Whirlbiwind, and 88 revealed themselves. Oy! I managed to punish the Nashorn but couldn't take it out. My B-24 went down in flames (along with the 7 sps spent to buy it). It got to be kind of late, so we conceded victory to the Axis at 11 pm. Final tally: Axis: 12 VPs, Americans: 4 VPs. Lessons: 1. it doesn't matter how good the American logistics situation is, if you draw lousy cards, you're sunk. 2. you can pay an extra 3? sps to draw an extra card from the deck. Don't bother-- there are too many "special" cards and you will probably get one of these instead of a much needed ground unit. 3. If you play the Americans, spend the money for mobilization. My opponent massed on my left and I had a clear shot down the right hand side (in clear terrain all the way to the opponent's HQ), but my feeble attempts to cover *all areas* meant that I couldn't managed to mass in the areas that mattered-- and when the time came to counterattack I didn't have enough units to move out. 4. If you try team play with the Last Crusade, it will increase playing time considerably. I wanted to make the newbies feel like they were in on the decision making, so I got their inputs for the purchase decisions, tactics, etc. This usually neccesitated getting up and going to another room, stopping gameplay. 5. More consistent deck balancing needs to be done to balance the game IMHO. The Germans have a low to medium purchase price for units that could clean the clock of even the best, expensive American units. The solution is to give the Germans less and the Americans more. Regards, Walt O'Hara ohara_walter@po.gis.prc.com