Testing: Broken Arrow

I had a test game tonight at the GP North with Evan, who chose Broken Arrow as our mission from the choices I gave him. Cool! Here's how it went...

  

The Mission

The mission worked better than I expected it would. Considering that this was it's first test.

For the first 2 turns we ran and shot at each other, and everything was fine. Then the reserves came on starting on turn 3. I got my Dragoons and huffed it for the far objective. While Evan didn't get any reserves. When he did get another unit on turn 4, it was too late to stop my Dragoons from capturing the objective at the top of turn 5.

That's not necessarily broken, as Evan got bogged down by shooting on the first 2 turns instead of choosing to get his initial troops closer to the debris field. So maybe his tactics were to blame. But I might fiddle with the reserve timing a bit. Either making them come on later, or automatically bringing one unit on turn 3 instead of it being randomized.

The Game

This was Evan's first game of M42/WarStrike, and he really liked the game mechanics, without any reservations at all. His only criticism was of the reserve aspects of the mission itself. Which is understandable.

Other Stuff

For wound allocation, I'm still fiddling with the system. Instead of rolling all the hit dice again to try and get some 6's with which to allocate, we tried a simpler method. Where we rolled just two dice when it was time for the defender to remove models that failed their saves.

If the attacker rolled a 6, then he could remove a specific trooper instead of letting the defender pick his dead models freely. If you rolled two sixes, you could either remove 2 specific troopers, or the unit leader. We both liked this method as it was very quick and easy to do. More importantly, we never forgot to do it. Unlike the previous methods where you had to roll something and allocate before the saves were rolled.

Total play time was about an hour after I went over the rules with Evan. So thumbs up there.

Otherwise, we used the new terrain and shooting rules that I've been working on. As well as the new Close-Combat rules that I'll be posting tomorrow. Both worked fine. The mechanics really are feeling very solid at this point. Which makes me all fuzzy inside. :)