Old School Tactical. Solitaire. An AAR.

Today we have a guest post from Darryel Cochran. He has been kind enough to test one of the solitaire scenarios that I designed for Old School Tactical. Here is his brief battle report followed by his thoughts on Old School Tactical. 

Shayne Logan’s Old School Tactical:  Take That Town

(Mark's note. The Germans must get to the town before sunset. The Russians are controlled by the game.) Sergeant Voss seems to go through Lieutenants like other soldiers go through socks, only more so.   They don’t even have names anymore.  Each one has a private goal of getting Voss and his assault squads killed.  All Voss wants is a roof over his head and warm food for his men. 

The current Louie (must be out of his teens, thinks Voss) is very systematic, one building-one fight at a time.  Voss thinks it might work.  They have men and bullets aplenty.  What they don’t have is time.  Night is falling very soon, and with it comes the unforgiving cold of the Russian hell.

Turn Four.  The Lieutenant has captured the first objective.  Voss is preparing his men for the hard fight against the stronghold across the creek.  Without total control, none of the troops will sleep tonight.

Two more drives.  Voss shakes a Russian rifle squad with a lmg out of the woods (O13 grid coordinates) and Louie is able to come forward for fire support.  The lieutenant does not stop there.  He takes two squads and the forward position.

But the last light of day finds Voss and his countrymen shivering as they hear Russian reinforcements coming forward to hold their village.

And another try... Few casualties for the Germans, but they were only able capture the west side of the small creek.

Darryel's Thoughts.

OST…coming soon to a table near you.  I Kickstartered this gem, but only at the $35 level.  I was convinced that a 2.5 by 3.5 foot map was never going to fit in my game room.  Then I saw the stretch goal Stalingrad map, and I knew that the 17 by 22 inch mini-map I was pledging was not going to sit well.  So I had to go in for the full package.  One more CURSE YOU MARK WALKER on the checkbook.

And what a system this game is turning out to be!

Let’s get the obvious out of the way:  It is tough to learn to count down on the turn track after a lifetime of ending the game on, say, turn six.  Record keeping is all taken care of by various tracks on the map board.

The play’s the thing.  Players alternate impulses moving or taking shots.  You get a variable number of “impulse points” each turn, and there are NEVER enough to do what you need to accomplish.  Tension is created by the choices you make.  Do I try to shoot the enemy one more time, or do I need to get moving to take the next objective?  You just can’t always or ever do both. 

The game portrayed here is a semi-solitaire effort.  What does semi-solitaire mean?  Most gamers who play two-player games alone play both sides to the best of their ability.  Here also.  The Russian has a set of general rules as to which unit acts and what that unit does.  Most usually it will fire on the nearest or strongest forces that you as the Germans have.  Most usually it will gum up all of your plans to get the mission completed.  The Russian also has four opportunities for reinforcements in the form of line of sight control markers.  These reinforcements can be a single passive squad all the way up to a machine gun nest manned by a sergeant and two rifle squads. 

Does the “semi-solitaire” work?  Yes.  The system spells out which Russian units can fire.  There are a few instances of WHICH unit to fire, but in every case I fell back on the maxim of playing the Russian to the best of my ability.  The Russians seem tough but fair as opponents.  In a straight up firefight, the Germans will win, but they have the onus of aggression.  A long way to go and a short time to get there, so to speak.  The German will have an uphill fight with this scenario.

A quick note on the Vassal Module.  I do not have a lot of experience with Vassal

(cardboard is just so warm and friendly).  I am guessing that the vmod will be released for general consumption at about the time the game comes out.  It contains all three maps soon-to-be available, the Russian countryside, the winter version of the same and the Stalingrad expansion map, all bee-yoo-tee-ful.  The controls are easy to use, and the units from OST East Front are available, including the panzers that would have been helpful during my solitaire excursions as posted.  It needs a little polish, mostly in nit-picky ways like remove the extra PZKW IV E from the roster.  The Turn, Impulse Point and Casualty Tracks are on the outside edges of the map, so they can be “out of sight out of mind” is you are not used to the system.

I have played this scenario several time now, and the Russians just sit back and snicker at me.  If I move too quickly they opp-fire and ambush me.  If I move slowly and defeat them in detail I never make it across the river.  I will continue, and someday I will find that fine point in the middle (and I surely will not be stymied by low dice rolls!)  Good work, Mr. Logan!

Darryel Cochran 10/25/2015