Saturday's playtest of B/X WW2 didn't pan out as I had hoped; between the long weekend and us volunteering/giving blood at the Red Cross that morning it just didn't happen.
Sadly, Sunday didn't happen either, another victim of the Memorial Day weekend, which isn't to say I didn't get any gaming in at all; we just didn't get in a B/X WW2 playtest.
I got Lance W. to drop by and he brought the old FASA Battlestar Galactica starfighter combat game, which neither of us had played in ages. He had recently reread the rules so we played a one-on-one duel. He played the Cylon, I the Colonial. He took a the three laser, no torpedo variant Raider; I went with the standard Mk. II Viper from the series. We closed to range and I lined up on him with a decent shot and fired my 2 torpedoes and my 2 lasers and missed with everything. It turned into a twisty-turney dogfight after that and we nickle and dimed each other's ships a bit until he scored his customary "Cockpit Destroyed" result, ending our game. It was a good time though, so I don't complain.
Since that didn't take long, we decided to play one of our old stand by games- Up Front! He suggested we play the DiY 501 City Fight in 3 scenario, I was game. We rolled a d30 to see who picked first, he rolled a 30 and picked the Germans. I picked the Americans and we set to spending our 501 points to buy our "squads". Traditionally I am pretty unlucky at Up Front!, but today was Lance's day to have my unlucky breaks. We both set up in the fairly traditional 3 group formation. We both bought Strength 5 radios and double Snipers. He had LMGs in groups A and C, I had a BAR in my group A. I had a mortar in group C. He had a total of 16 men and I had 21. My best men were in my groups A and B, C was my burn off excess fire cards via mortar attacks early in the game and movement cards later group; it contained a number of men I probably wouldn't have considered taking except that the large number of them made them less attractive to move towards for his men.
The bad luck started for Lance with his first attack, my group A moved, his group A had enough fire power with their crewed LMG to fire at them, the first card he drew for resolution was a red 6, the LMG suffered a breakdown. When he tried to repair it on his next turn he drew another red 6 and the weapon was destroyed, pretty much ruining the firepower potential of his group A for the rest of the game.
After that Lady Luck loved me for the rest of the game. Every time he moved a group I had a stream or a marsh to discard and usually a Sniper and nothing else really to do anyway. Wire was a constant issue for him. Whenever I moved I would draw a building card to move into. My mortar group plan worked great. I kept drawing radio cards, and only had 2 out of 7 missions fail. My mortar never missed once. My only complaint is that my Snipers only ever pinned his men.
He never got a radio card, and after the first deck wouldn't have been able to use it if he had because the guy carrying the radio had routed. His one Sniper card he got I easily Sniper checked and killed. He popped smoke once only to see a breeze come along seconds later and blow it away. He was placing his men in open terrain so I wouldn't be able to put them into bad terrain after a while. The bad luck was really getting into his head.
I didn't play without mistakes either, his bad luck made me cocky, and I advanced my B group too close too his C group that still had a functioning LMG; and I voluntarily routed a guy to do so, and not into great terrain, just -2 buildings. To be fair they had all been pinned when I started the move, he got a rally all card, followed by a hero card; possibly his luckiest draws of the game.
Ultimately, the game ended when I had an attack that broke his squad. The score was 2 Americans KIA 3 Routed, 4 Germans KIA, 8 Routed. He held out a lot longer than his crappy luck would have led you to believe was possible and fought a lot harder, we were 1/2 way through the last deck at the end of the game. I had a good time and so did he, it was nice to see Lady Luck switch dance partners for a change though; much as I love this game, and I know I have the technical skill for it, I very often lose.
