After a very long built up, my big dream becomes reality and I transferred the Avalon board game with the same name onto 6mm and two big 8x6 tables - introducing Guns of August. Campbell played the Austrians, Bart the Germans and Alisdair the French, I jumped between the Russians and umpiring/ introducing the game rules to the players.
In short: Bart decided to go on a heavy defense on the western front and an offensive on the eastern, just to buckle the trend. Campbell funnily enough decided to exact revenge on the Serbs and nearly left the two frontier towns Lemberg and Przemysl (the correct pronunciation goes something like: "Shut up, Bart!") like in the original nearly undefended. The Russian steam train went out of steam and digged themselves in very fast. The French as usual got some bloody noses after the doctrine Plan 17, but then just repaired the damage. stalemate on September already! Britain followed late into the Entente on November, but then France declared war on Belgium and invaded, to circumvent the Ardennes. Unfortunately Romania declared war on Russia and joined the central powers - ouch!
A very chaotic, but in all positive start for the central powers ... we got until November... the reinforcement phase still coming! ...
It was planned as a test game - as I wasn‘t sure about the built up and down time and how many months we would fit into a club night - But 3.5 month is a good start, given that much time was lost due to explaining. Maybe we can get this to 4.
The sound wall of the club was very loud so it is a bit stressful to delegate so many players at the same time. Also the supply rules proved to be too much for the honourable audience (I regret not taken a picture of their faces!) - So I changed the supply rules back to the basic game for the future.
The rules are easy, but still they need to be understood to be played fluently! So that's why next Thursday, we will take up on that, to see how far we get then. A Sunday game to start with or once in a while in between would really benefit the progress of this big game.
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| The two 8x6 tables |
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| Western front set up |
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| Eastern front set up |
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| After first turn (August) |
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| Turkey joined the central powers |
It was lovely to finally see both parts of the map in use. The game was great, hope part 2 will give us all answers to our questions.
ReplyDeleteWell - now we have 3 boxes for active FRONTS (i.e. whats on the map) and 3 boxes of what I would call BANKS (i.e. what one can max. buy)space should be enough. Supply system is simplified down; Your country gets a quota on points and you can spend them on infantry (as per attack points) - does not get any simpler. :)
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