Been busy over the last10 months.
OCS, more DAK and the Campaign game from Smolensk, OCS continues to impress. Works well via PBEM where there would otherwise be a lot of downtime for the non moving player. Planning your moves and organising your logistics can, literally, take hours. An utterly absorbing system.
Then onto Patton’s Vanguard, an area movement game covering the battle of Arracourt, nice little game, relatively quick playing, very tough to secure a German win. You need to choreograph your moves carefully and hope the dice gods are kind to you. If the US player gets air support, it’s pretty much all over. Sold the game on eBay. Good game, but has limited replay value.
Then onto BCS. This is system I’ve been keen to break into. Lots of new concepts, the initial learning curve is quite steep as you will need to abandon some of the more traditional wargaming concepts. But boy, is it worth it. We’ve played 5 scenarios from Arracourt and are now moving back to the desert for Brazen Chariots.
SCS North Africa, a gem of a game. Think of it as DAK lite and you’ll get the idea.
Finally, embarked on a live VASSAL, multiplayer game of a Time for Trumpets. There's a lot of time specific and side specific chrome over the first couple of days that seems to put a lot of players off the game (make no mistake though, it's still a monster) but that eases considerably by around day 3. The rules appear more dense than they actually are once you delve into the detail you'll find there is lot of repetition as part of the writing style adopted by the designer. There's been a fair bit of errata and clarification since the game was published so I'd recommend printing out the latest version of the living rules from the GMT game support page.
After a 6 month sabbatical from ASL I’m back to playing 2 live scenarios a month via Skype/VASSAL.
