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[BFD] Blitzkrieg for Dummies, Game 3 - Military Intelligence

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War Phase - Turn 5 // Gen. Marshall

Highlights:
Gen. Marshall's armor twice attacks Haresus' armor at 02.07 and 02.08, destroying it and taking 4 damage after being healed by the supply cache.

Gen. Marshall's elite armor at 06.14 attacks and captures a supply cache at 07.14.

It's still Gen. Marshall's turn.
 
Blitzkrieg!

Move 02.07 to 01.08 and attack 02.09 twice
Move 02.06 to 02.08 and (if applicable) attack 02.09 twice
Attack 03.07 with 04.08 (collapse all the wave functions!)
Move 04.14 to 03.14, then attack 02.14
Attack 07.13 with 08.13
 
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War Phase - Turn 5 // Gen. Marshall

Highlights:
Gen. Marshall's armor twice attacks Haresus' elite garrison at 02.09. Both take 12 damage.

Gen. Marshall's armor at 02.08 attacks Haresus' elite garrison at 02.09 and destroys it, capturing the industrial center it is guarding.

Haresus is defeated and Gen. Marshall gains another blitzkrieg token.

Gen. Marshall's armor attacks Rovsea's elite garrison guarding a supply cache at 02.14, with the armor taking 8 damage and the garrison taking 6.

Gen. Marshall's armor attacks Rovsea's elite infantry at 07.13.

It's still Gen. Marshall's turn.
 
Move 01.08 to 02.09
Move 02.08 to 04.09
Move 03.14 to 06.13
Move 03.10 to 02.12, attack 03.12, move to 01.13, attack 02.14
Attack 08.14 with 08.13, move to 04.12, then attack 04.13
Move 04.08 to 04.10
 
Rovsea is defeated. Gen. Marshall wins! Achievements and after-action report to follow, not that I have much to say in the latter.
 
((Almost posted this in the wrong BFD thread...))

First, achievements:

Gen. Marshall:
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(he basically demanded this one even though it no longer makes sense)

Haresus and Rovsea:

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Rovsea:

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Haresus:

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Now, for the after-action report. I will keep my remarks brief.

Gen. Marshall

Aside from his snafu at 13.11, Gen. Marshall played near-perfectly in this game. He invented several pioneering new tactics, including using engineers to capture enemy territory and then building roads, and the combination of blitzkrieg tokens and industrial centers to heal his elite armor (which will be disallowed in the next game), allowing his units to come back again and again. He lost no armor in the entire game even though most units saw considerable action.

Again, Gen. Marshall remained on the offensive the whole game and was never attacked apart from Haresus' airborne stalling tactics. Marshall used a strategy of eliminating two opponents in a first turn blitz, then played conservatively until the 5th turn, essentially making himself impossible to defeat with conventional tactics.

I believe I made a mistake in giving white player $300 for this game as the divided territory proved not to be nearly as much of a liability as I thought it would be. While I feel getting blitzed is part of the game (it's in the name), I don't think it should be quite as easy as it was this game, and getting beaten in the first turn is no fun for the losing players. I'll again buff defensive play one way or another in the next game.

Rovsea

I'm not quite sure what Rovsea's strategy was here, but he deployed mainly elite infantry, then didn't use them. This made it impossible for him to win because, of course, you can't win BFD games without going on the offensive. He lasted the longest of any player but then again he was also the furthest from Gen. Marshall. Possibly he was trying to make the best of a bad situation by hoping to engineer a counterattack if Gen. Marshall attacked him recklessly.

Haresus

Haresus used airborne to excellent effect to delay Gen. Marshall but ultimately wasn't able to leverage his advantage with his armor and thus never truy went on the offensive. His big moves were limited to delaying tactics. His plans to push north with his armor were foiled by Marshall's deployment of landmines along that border. He was also remarkably quick to sell out his allies to try to save himself.

Barkardes

Barkardes fielded a highly credible defense around his supply cache that was nevertheless breached by Gen. Marshall's blitzkrieg tactics. Gen. Marshall's offensive may have been improvised after seeing his paratroopers hit landmines on the first turn. I am of the opinion that barkardes did nothing wrong, per se, though it would have been possible to field a stronger defense with small changes. His first-turn defeat has increased my resolve to buff defensive play.

Canadian_95_RTS

I think Canadian, as a new player, may not have quite appreciated how far Gen. Marshall could strike into his territory and relied too much on his limited strategic depth and regular garrisons to protect his supply center. He forced Gen. Marshall to blitz to defeat him but his garrisons were essentially helpless against Gen. Marshall's much stronger armored units. His strategy of forming a two-layer column remains untested for offensive purposes since he never made it to the second turn.

Canadian_95_RTS made the correct decision - to attack - when he saw Gen. Marshall's deployment but was unable to redeploy his troops because Marshall still moved first.

That's it for the report. Gen. Marshall needs to choose his prize. Prize options incoming.
 
To be fair, I didn't expect engineers to be able to build roads, then have another engineer use the road on the same turn to build another road, then use that road to blitz. It makes sense with the mechanics, but it doesn't make much sense logically speaking. The use of tanks that moved in behind my lines should have been expected, I suppose, but Marshall's strategy in putting everything at my border was risky at best. If I'd put it more effort into stopping such an attack, I might have fared okay. I also didn't expect some of the units to be as useless as they were. While I do think that my positioning was wrong, given the circumstances, there are several broken strategies that I did not anticipate. Hopefully these are fixed for the next game, but who knows.
 
Sorry I'm being slow, Marshall. I realize it's the middle of the night for you.

ThunderHawk3 said:
Sorry for the triple post, but before I forget, there is one other thing:

I'm going to be offering a modest prize to the winner of the game. I've been brainstorming a few different possible gameplay changes for the next BFD game (game 5 and 6). The winner will get to pick between the three possibilities and dictate how BFD should change for the next game.
Click to expand...

@Gen. Marshall - since you won, you get to decide between these three update packages to decide how the BFD rules evolve.

#1: The Eastern Front
-Expands the map (increases map size by about 1.5x on each side) and gives players more money to build larger armies
-Introduces the ability to enact a scorched earth policy and deny supply and infrastructure to your enemies
-(still thinking through) // Supply bottlenecks and logistical problems to constrain offensive actions

#2: The Resistance
-Allows players to fight on after loss of their final supply center
-Introduces the powerful sabotage token, which temporarily renders units or even supply centers useless
-Gives defeated players the ability to spawn militia in their remaining territory to resist occupation

#3: Veterancy
-Allows infantry to become powerful veterans through experience, including the dreaded Tank Hunter (panzerjager)
-(still thinking through) Introduces the concept of reinforcements, deployed each turn at an industrial center
-(still thinking through) Adds the new AT gun unit to the game for anti-armor operations

Three camels and a goat would have a market value of almost $3,350 by US prices. I'm an author; I can't afford that.
 
Canadian_95_RTS said:
To be fair, I didn't expect engineers to be able to build roads, then have another engineer use the road on the same turn to build another road, then use that road to blitz. It makes sense with the mechanics, but it doesn't make much sense logically speaking. The use of tanks that moved in behind my lines should have been expected, I suppose, but Marshall's strategy in putting everything at my border was risky at best. If I'd put it more effort into stopping such an attack, I might have fared okay. I also didn't expect some of the units to be as useless as they were. While I do think that my positioning was wrong, given the circumstances, there are several broken strategies that I did not anticipate. Hopefully these are fixed for the next game, but who knows.
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone really expected that tactic; Marshall just invented it. I would have to go back through the logs to check but I don't think it was actually necessary to use the first road to build the second.
 
Playing whack-a-mole with rebel militia seems like a pain. Which leaves 1 and 3, both amazing and with features I'd love to see.

Since I can't decide, I'll go with the practical argument and say that larger armies might be a hassle to order around. Therefore, option 3.
 
Gen. Marshall said:
Playing whack-a-mole with rebel militia seems like a pain. Which leaves 1 and 3, both amazing and with features I'd love to see.
Click to expand...

(Emphasis added, in case anyone was in doubt about Gen. Marshall's future strategies and disposition...)

Gen. Marshall said:
Since I can't decide, I'll go with the practical argument and say that larger armies might be a hassle to order around. Therefore, option 3.
Click to expand...

Alright the new game will go up at some point in the future, once I finish writing the rules.

Europeans can sleep now.
 
Probably won't join the next game, new features just seem to make the problems I had with it worse.
 
Just some things I'm thinking about to balance out the first turn Blitz, which after all is so strong. I feel like there needs to be a trade off for attacking first, and the most logical thing for me is this: if you attack you don't get to deploy your $50 worth of troops, if you don't you do. That might seem radical, but given that the attacker can still work around that, and will still always have the initiative in any engagement, that seems balanced to me. Also, just to explain why I just sat there at the end: I couldn't attack Marshall, or I would lose. That may sound a bit over the top, but it was eminently true. I think that I honestly had the material to beat him in a war, it's just that with two Blitzkrieg tokens I stood no chance of ever engaging his troops. It was impossible for me to pick my engagements, because his units could cover four or five times as much land in a turn as I could, got self heals from winning battles, and ultimately had 6 attacks. If I attempted any offensive action towards Marshall, he would have blitzed past my units and knocked me out of the game, and there was no way to defend against that.
 
Rovsea said:
Just some things I'm thinking about to balance out the first turn Blitz, which after all is so strong. I feel like there needs to be a trade off for attacking first, and the most logical thing for me is this: if you attack you don't get to deploy your $50 worth of troops, if you don't you do.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm making this change next game. It should cut down on one-turn kills and extend the diplomacy phase.
 
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