Twilight in the East - more moves, more rubbish photos

Mildly long time between posts, all of which are to be blamed on 'real life' getting in the way of gaming and blogging.
AWB returned to Club Dave last Wednesday for another night of Twilight in the East. Again no Second Army player (curse you 'real life') and, due to distractions by the completely farcical circus of the current Australian government, only one turn was completed in the game.
So where are we again?
AWB, as the Germans, is still not completely convinced he isn't about to get his Blog handed to him on a gaming platter. Historically the Germans had disengaged from the Russian 1st Army and were mauling the 2nd Army by this stage. In the game, while it is felt that 1st Army has been more or less stopped and, in a perfect world, would be ripe for a counter offensive, the 2nd Army is gradually getting to a stage where the scattered German units available can't contain it. The Russians are also up a respectable amount of the VP count and the reinforcements from France are still several turns away. True the Germans are, unit for unit, rather better then the Russians and normally come out in front from most combats, but AWB is still not entirely convinced everything isn't about to go completely pear shaped.
So to the photos, again taken very cheap and nastily with the Samsung.

First up First Army. While the front hasn't moved all that much there is movement at the station. Behind the lines 17th Corps is about to be railed south to counter the right shoulder of Russian 2nd Army. This is the Corps that was mauled a few turns ago after being over extended and spent the best part of turn 5 recovering.
Also of note is the Russians trying to force the north and south flanks. While the German centre still contains the largely full strength and rather strong German 1st Corps, being outflanked is NOT a good thing. Expect a German reaction in the very near future.

Meanwhile, in the south some rather critical combats have been taking place. German 20th Corps, in their attempt to backhand the Russians the turn before, managed to rather foolishly pin the 41st Division with it's back to a lake. The Russians moved up the best part of 5 divisions and were unlucky not to force the Germans to have to retreat. What was more lucky for the Germans was being able to force march a brigade around the flank of the Russian 15th Corps to cut communication. Even then, the Russians nearly got away with it, surviving the combat a lot better then expected only to have their nerve break.
While visually we have only a single hex retreat, what we are not seeing is the three CE drops both divisions suffered which is much more significant. Combat Effectiveness (think of it as morale if you like), doesn't so much effect the ability to attack, but more the desire to stay in the line. If this rating drops too low then the division starts to break up.
So why has these combats been critical? Pretty much because had luck been favouring the Russians it may have been 20th Corps that had been smashed wide open. Instead, largely by bad luck, the Russian 15th Corps is very close to breaking.
German phase of turn 6 is next.

Twilight in the East - the slow advance continues

A few real world problems for our game of Twilight in the East these last few weeks. Second Army commander, while claiming repeatedly that he is NOT off scouting forest locations, has been otherwise out of the gaming shed at Club Dave, resulting in one night of non gaming and another of First Army commander bravely agreeing to control the entire Russian side for another.
Again with soddy pictures, let us recap where the game has progressed to at the mid point (Germans to move) of turn five.

First, the First Army front. Main thing to note is that the front has moved westward a respectable amount. As predicted, the Russians ganged up on the over extended German 17th Corps and in a mutually bloody combat, the 17th Corps was forced to withdraw. This made the question the rest of the German forces had been musing over, namely 'fall back or try and delay another turn?' a lot easier to answer and promptly moved off to the west. The Russians, bloodied themselves, have been cautiously following up and, after the massive multiple division combat in turn 4 mentioned earlier, this front has been bloodless for a while.

Experimenting with font colours for the best contrast, we move to the slightly more dynamic Second Army front. In the top right corner we can see the rail line the Russians are gradually trying to get into service to open a second line of supply. With this in mind the entire Russian 6th Corps has been attempting to work over the minor German units defending the land bridges between the lakes and finally got that entire sledge into walnut effect going.
To the left of the picture, on the other rail line of advance, 1st Corps has managed to advance to just off the image after the defending Germans decided to pull back. Also off view is the three German brigades facing off over a river line. Numbers favour the Russians but supply the Germans.
In the middle we see the heroes of earlier turns, German 20th, come down a peg or two. After swatting Russian 1st Division earlier and causing that to retire and regroup, the Germans decided to attempt the same thing against the Russian 2nd. While not a complete farce, sharp eyed readers may notice the white step loss marker with the German stack that wasn't there earlier.
Controlling the Germans in this game, AWB must confess to being slightly dissatisfied. The fallback was always on the cards across the front, so trading the ground has not been an issue. However the few combats made this last turn and a half have been disappointing. TitE, despite being a monster game, has a few bit of almost tactical feel. Putting in a good attack and coming out ahead in the step loss exchange 'feels' important to the overall result. AWB confesses this may not actually be the correct mind set and that maybe instead should be trying to butcher everyone, but the 'feel' is that the Germans did not do well this gaming night.
Germans to move in their part of turn five.
Real life may get in way of gaming again this coming Wednesday and next game night may not be for another week.

Twilight in the East - Now with pictures

After a week delay due to 'real life' getting in the way, Club Dave was able to continue playing 1914:Twilight in the East with the Tannenberg scenario. This time our brave AWB reporter managed to bring along the awesome might of the Pentax... and promptly screw up all the photos which will have to go down as, quote, 'Not my best work.'
Anyway, to recap, gaming had finished half way through turn 2 with the Germans to move. Let's have a brief look at the front before we begin.

Here on the Second Army front things are developing slowly. The Second Army has only just activated under the scenario rules and not really advanced to any great extent as yet. Of note is the large railway less areas on the Russian side of the boarder and rubbish looking terrain they are being forced to advance and trace supply through. On the German side the 20th Corps looks both powerful and lonely.
North of the army boundary we see the German 3rd Reserve division starting to get monstered. There is no way this unit can stand up to a Russian corps and is soon to withdraw, first to the NW and then onto the fortress under the dark brown objective marker in the lakes area.

A lot more fighting in this area as the Russian 1st Army engages the bulk of the German 8th. Mostly minor results so far with the exception of the Russian 27th division has just been roughly handled by the German 1st Corps and forced to retire.
The game is one of limited intel and stacks are not allowed to be examined. What this means is the white edges of the loss markers can't clearly be read in these picture nor can the 'players eyes only' off map tracks that show the divisions Combat Effectiveness ratings (morale if you like). If we could see the CE track we would note that Russian 27th was forced to drop two CE levels (drop four and you are really in big trouble) which is probably a much more significant lose then the steps or hex retreats.
The Russians at this stage were forced to advance before many of their divisions were fully mobilised, so many of the divisions have already started with a significant amount of hits. Also under scenario rules, the sub standard commander of the Russian Cav Corps has movement restrictions in play, meaning the massive mounted advantage is a lot harder to bring into play then would first appear.

Here we come to the end of the night, which means the Germans have had two full moves plus one reaction (half move) and the Russians one with two reactions as well as six rounds of combat being fought.
(Game turn is A moves, B react moves, A attacks if allowed, B attacks if allowed, swap sides. Attacking is voluntary but can result in what side A hoped was a local attack rapidly escalating.)
Russian 6th Corps has been making heavy weather of forcing the gap between the lakes in the top right of the picture. The Germans have managed to reinforce the original small blocking force but the Russians managed to, at 9:1 odds, to find the extremes of the bell curve during the first assault and are hence rather annoyed not to have cleared that rather useful rail line as yet.
Meanwhile in the middle the Russian 1st Division has just been roughly handled. It had mildly over extended it's advance during the Russian movement phase and the nearby German 20th Corps moved forward to engage it. The first German attack was relatively minor but the second prepared (as part of a players movement (not reaction) they may spend MPs to place 'prepared attack' markers which give column shifts and prevent the enemy from retiring during reaction movement) worked them over, caused significant step losses plus CE drops and a retreat. The Germans, slightly smugly, have taken no loses.
The problems for the Germans here is there are rather a lot of Russians. The Russians are next to move and the only real restriction is the rubbish rail/supply network. Reinforcements dragged from the France are not due for a long time so what the German player (AWB in this game) sees is what he has to play with.

Meanwhile, with the 1st Army we have red font to both hopefully provide better contrast and also reflect the massive mutual thumping that has been going on.
The southern German flank was found a bit hanging and is starting to fold back. Also of note is the formation of level 1 trenches in the German line. The game has four levels of trenches and at this stage of the war, armies are restricted to levels one and two. They are a mixed blessing as the games artillery factors allow for heavy and high angle weapons. Attack with both of them (which most first line divisions come with as standard) and you get to cancel out the column shifts the trenches normally offer. They do however offer some useful DRM for CE checks as well as a minor chance on the CRT to cancel a forced retreat.
There has been some mauling happening on this front. The Russian 20th Corps that at one stage was on the northern flank has come off worse and forced back with some painful combat loses to go with their non mobilised units. They are currently under that largish Russian stack.
The German 1st Corps (red corps marker, top division under the northern most trench with other division directly south) have been handling the combat reasonably well. The 17th Corps however has mildly over extended. Combat pushed back the Russian flank and, in order to put pressure on the Russian 25th division, advanced.
There the combined strength of three Russian divisions struck a counter and the advance now seems a 'bad idea.' Remember the next move is Russian so another assault against the exposed Germans is probably expected.
In the south the 3rd Res has fallen back onto the fortress and feels reasonably safe about being able to block the Russian corps facing it.
As the Germans it is difficult to decide if it time to smile or not. Strengths are 7 divisions to 9 with the German divisions typically being slightly stronger. The Russians have probably had 4 divisions here bloodied to the German 1 and if the Germans remain here then 1st Army are going to find it hard to continue to advance.
However, as mentioned before, until the reinforcements from France arrive, this is it for the Germans and Russian Second Army isn't just going to sit still and smile.
This is a rather good game and one that AWB is mildly annoyed has taken so long to play face to face. Combat and the positioning becomes surprisingly tactical. Withdrawing is worthwhile. Feinting forward is worthwhile. Pressuring a flank is worthwhile, and all are also risky. The combat system has a massive bell curve. A good looking attack can produce no satisfaction while a risky one can suddenly force enemy to retire with loses.
Most enjoyable.

Tannenberg - Finally playing Twilight in the East

After some false starts, the Wednesday night group down at Club Dave have finally managed to get some serious counter pushing and actually start the Battle of Tannenberg scen in the GMT Games monster, '1914: Twilight in the East'.
As hard core blog fans may recall, some weeks ago an attempt was made to play this game using the training type scenario to blood the newer players. Unfortunately, real life got in the way somewhat, and Scen 1 was canned, cleared and Tannenberg was setup and started. This scen, as the name suggests, is the Russian First and Second Armies advancing into Germany at the start of the war only to be seriously mauled by the German Eight. It is a one map scenario, uses about a third of the counters and runs for about a third of the total game turns. In short, it is probably about a ninth of the total experience of the Grand Campaign(tm).
To recap briefly, the Twilight in the East system uses a turn sequence of A Moves, B React Moves, A Attacks, B Attacks, Swap sides. Reaction moves are at half movement points and the other big advantage is that during the 'A Moves' phase that player can spend MPs for units in position to declare a 'Prepared Attack'.
These 'black attacks' (as the markers placed are black compared to the white 'normal' attack markers) have the three advantages of a column shift in combat, VP to the attack (as at this time in the war everyone loved a brave attacker and engaging the enemy was the standing order of the month) and perhaps more importantly, it locks the target units into the combat.
This last bit is more important then it sounds. Remember the sequence is A Moves, B Reacts, so if B isn't ready to fight they may shuffle back. Alternatively if they are ready to fight they may bring up their friends as after A declares and resolves all attacks, B gets to do the same thing with anything still adjacent.
What this means in the game is a surprisingly interesting shuffling and feinting as the opposing armies approach each other. Unit scale for the most part is the division and for both sides the Army was typically eight or so infantry divisions plus some cavalry divisions. The Russians were not fully ready to advance at this stage and so are faced with the trade off between getting their supply train in order and getting stuck into the Germans while they are still somewhat spread out.
The other interesting thing that may differ for most boardgamers is the style of the combat system. The units are divisions and under the time scale, did not normally get smashed within the period of a game turn. Hence each unit has several steps, with most divisions having about 10. They also each have an off map tracking chart for their 'Combat Effectiveness' (think 'morale'). What this means is most divisions can go head to head for several turns until the unlucky one collapses, and when they do finally collapse, it isn't pretty for the owner. Judging just when to pull back to recover before this collapse happens is clearly designed to be part of the game and show all indication as to being tricky to master.
The group managed to get one and a half turns completely during the gaming night which included a full set up and minor counter sorting, a 'are we ready yet? Right, what happens now?' last minute rule re-check and a partial reset and remove after it was suddenly realised the Russians could and should have moved their army level supply depots during their first move.
Based on this play speed AWB predicts about 4 weeks of solid gaming to finish this scenario.

Monster Boardgames - Twilight in the East

AWB is mildly surprised to discover that the Wednesday night boardgaming group they are connected with has decided to commit some time and table space to Michael Resch's '1914 - Twilight in the East' by GMT Games.
Slightly old now with a 2007 release, TitE covers fighting against Russia by the German and Austria-Hungarian empires for the first year of World War One at 5 miles per hex and 2-3 days per turn. The vast majority of units are divisions, there are eight counter sheets and five maps. So a reasonably big game then.
Although, having sat down during the week to desperately attempt to relearn the rules, AWB was also reminded that TitE isn't as counter dense as one would originally expect.
Three and a half of the counter sheets are dedicated to information counters - attack markers, step loss counters, entrenchments and the like - and of the 'units', a goodly percentage of these are also used off map. TitE is a game of vast armies grinding into each other and the combat system tracks both step losses - most divisions have around 10 - and division 'Combat Effectiveness' (think 'morale' to use generalised terms) and hence each division has it's own Combat Effectiveness marker used to track this value on off map displays.
What this means is that this vast front is often one of great manoeuvre. Both sides lack the manpower to form a continuous front and due to the supply restrictions, advance is more often then not tied to the major rail lines. Large gaps can and will appear and screening using cavalry is highly recommended.
The turn sequence is a case of A Moves, B Reacts, A Fights, B Fights. Attacks are pre declared during movement with a 'Prepared' attack costing MP and locking units into the combat as well as giving the attacker a handy column shift. 'Normal' attacks do not cost MP but can be reacted away from. The reactive player can also place attack markers during his phase meaning that an overly aggressive active player can find himself counter attacked up and down the line during his own turn.
Net result is that everyone gets hurt and cherry picking the weak spot in the enemy line to attack is not as easy as it first appears.
Our Wednesday group will be trialing/learning the game using the small four turn Masurian Lakes scenario these coming weeks.