[Deleted]

[Aurelian]

Reminds me of this guy I used to play chess, and other wargames, with.

Chess stands out because he was always bragging about beating his Fidelity Chess Challenger on the hardest level.

Every time we played, he lost. One time after a move I made, he pronounced it was my mistake. Only to lose 10 moves later.

[Aurelian]

double post

[DD696]

Back in 1973 I was a Corporal working in S-3 (operations) at Subic Bay Marine Barracks, Philippines. The 1st Lt in charge was Lt James Patterson. I had brought a few of my SPI games over and told him about them. He was intrigues, and wanted to play me in the Korean game, even tho officers fraternizing with lowly enlisted personnel was strictly forbidden. He and I got together, him taking the the North Koreans/Chicom and myself the Allies.

Well, I whipped the pants off the Lieutenant. Told him you have to protect your flanks and cannot charge unsupported against the opponent. He later said to Colonel (Edward Snelling), who won the Navy Cross during the Korean conflict, that I could handle any position there. He tried to get me to go to officer's school, but I wouldn't. These were two officers that I still respect to this day. Sadly, they are both now under the ground. Lt Patterson, later a captain, was stationed at Quantico teaching officer trainees, one of which was my brother, who dropped out. Captain Patterson died 1 April 1997 (can't find out much info about him - good man). Colonel Snelling died almost 2 years ago not too far away from me.

I wish I could have met them again. Good Marines.

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: DD696

Back in 1973 I was a Corporal working in S-3 (operations) at Subic Bay Marine Barracks, Philippines. The 1st Lt in charge was Lt James Patterson. I had brought a few of my SPI games over and told him about them. He was intrigues, and wanted to play me in the Korean game, even tho officers fraternizing with lowly enlisted personnel was strictly forbidden. He and I got together, him taking the the North Koreans/Chicom and myself the Allies.

Well, I whipped the pants off the Lieutenant. Told him you have to protect your flanks and cannot charge unsupported against the opponent. He later said to Colonel (Edward Snelling), who won the Navy Cross during the Korean conflict, that I could handle any position there. He tried to get me to go to officer's school, but I wouldn't. These were two officers that I still respect to this day. Sadly, they are both now under the ground. Lt Patterson, later a captain, was stationed at Quantico teaching officer trainees, one of which was my brother, who dropped out. Captain Patterson died 1 April 1997 (can't find out much info about him - good man). Colonel Snelling died almost 2 years ago not too far away from me.

I wish I could have met them again. Good Marines.

You will meet them again. The will be guarding Heavens streets, will they not?

Semper Fi, Marine.

[Perturabo]

My most cringe wargaming moment was probably this thread XD .

The context for it is that I wrote it 5 years after I started studying IT in community college and then later going to CS college and not learning even basics of programming during these years.

[Will_L]

A friend and I decided to do a miniatures battle featuring Vikings versus a Chinese army just to see what would happen, took a while to set up since the Chinese had a massive force of cheap, low quality units. The Viking army was small and unreliable to manage.
We started marching towards each other and as the gap closed I decided to take a pot shot with a crossbow unit at one of the Viking light/medium infantry and apparently it didn't appreciate that because it reacted by going berserk and charging my crossbowmen which caused a morale check that they failed and were forced to rout, leading to more morale checks for the units nearby, leading to more routs, more morale checks and the Chinese streaming off the field in terror.
We looked at each other, laughed hard and went to the NCO club for a couple of beers. To this day it's my favorite gaming memory.

[DeepBlack]

This was back in 1979. Was playing Squad Leader
"Cross of Iron" against my brother. Scenario
was "Defense of Luga".

Was losing and had to capture stone building victory hexes to win.
But, I had lost most of my infantry.

So, I ordered my AFV crews to bail out and serve as infantry
to help capture the required hexes.

But, we had never played using that mechanic before so
my brother got justifiably angry with my cheap rule book lawyering.

And, that was the very last time I ever played Squad Leader.



It is funny how memory works. I cannot reliably tell anyone
my current number yet my phone number from 42 years ago rolls
off my tongue like it was yesterday.

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[Trugrit]

Long years ago when I was living in Baltimore I would go every year to the Historicon
Miniatures Convention which was in Lancaster, PA.

I had several friends from North Carolina who would meet up with me there.

One of them was named Chuck and he was a real character.
He came to the games with another friend of mine named Joe who was big into miniatures.

Joe tells this story:

At one convention there was a massive Mexican War scenario set up as a day long game.
They were going to cater in lunch for the this grand event. They had a huge table set up with
an intricate town designed to scale and over a thousand beautiful hand painted figures.

About a dozen players were in it and everyone at the convention wanted to get into or
watch this spectacular game.

In fact there was a British player who had flown all the way from England just to play in this game.
Joe said he was a sort of grand master of miniature war gaming in the UK.

Well….Joe and Chuck got into the game with Chuck playing several units of artillery on the American side.
The British player was also on the American side as the grand commander of the entire American army.

When the game started the Mexican side positioned a single sniper in the tower of an
elaborate church located near the center of the town.

Chuck became obsessed with the single sniper and directed all his artillery to fire at the sniper and tower.
The artillery barrage took down the tower and the church. The Games master ruled that when
the church collapsed it destroyed a scared statue of the Virgin Mary.

The games master then ruled that the entire Mexican army goes berserk at seeing this!
They charge with increased stats and wipe the American army completely off the
board in less than half an hour.

Chuck ducks out of the game in a hurry and has to hide in his room for the rest of the convention
to keep the British player, who is searching the hotel high and low from finding him and punching him out.

[RangerJoe]

You remember things that are important to you. So you remember exactly how much beer that you have left, how much beer that you are going to buy, but if you are married, you don't remember what the wife wants . . . [8|]

[RFalvo69]

A bad memory is what happened during a game of "Command Decision" miniature game set in the modern era. The scenario saw a heavy Soviet Mechanized assault against a mixed British/Dutch defence. We played 3 vs. 3. It was my last year in high-school and I was the "mascot" of the group. As a new player I got the NATO reserves - so that I could watch some turns of "the real battle" and better familiarise myself with the game. My allies assured me about "not worrying too much" because "real life tactics worked".

Beer was flowing high, so after some turns I went to the "loo", washed my hands, came back to the table and... I looked at it, stunned. During the turn resolution phase the Soviets had achieved a general breakthrough in the center. Their advanced forces were already near my reserves. Even worse, my forces were badly positioned. My plan had been to wait before committing and, if things went south, to commit according to the situation. It wasn't bad planning, but I never thought that a breakthrough could be so sudden and that meant that I was in serious trouble. It was easy to see how the Soviet player had to do only one thing: take advantage of the situation as fast as possible. To compound my problems even more, the referee had judged that, due to both heavy electronic warfare and the chaos in NATO lines, normal communications were impossible. I couldn't talk with the other two NATO players.

The only good news were that I still had contact with both our tactical air forces and the divisional artillery. In a way, the situation was forcing my planning. I had to somehow slow down the Soviet schwerpunkt, try to reposition the reserves and, hopefully, gain enough time for my friends to reestablish the front line. So, I called all our available airstrikes on the Soviet advanced forces (among them a flight of A-10s which was our real hammer) and then with the artillery I did a "number" for which I patted myself. Instead of some desolutory firing, I called for FASCAM minefields to be delivered in front of the enemy.

Next turn, and each of us reveals his actions ("Command Decision" is WEGO). I revealed mine and... everybody, allies and opponents alike, just looked at me. Then the referee asked me if I was sure about what I was doing. I wondered if I had missed some rule. Was there a delay before the airplane and the artillery could answer? If so, I had wasted my best ammo and we had lost the game right there...

Well, no, my comprehension of the rules was fine. The problem was a bit different: true, the Soviets had broken through while I was in the loo, but those "advanced Soviet forces" weren't neither advanced nor Soviet. I had called all of our airborne hell on a Dutch brigade that was trying to retreat fast while still in good order - while cutting off their retreat route with my FASCAM mines. In a way, my plan had worked perfectly. In a way.

The game was actually stopped, with the Soviet players arguing that "that idiot" had never played the game before and so it was only fair to allow me to change my orders once. It was the NATO players that wanted to keep the SNAFU because "this is what happens in war" - while, at the same time, also wanting my head due to my complete inability to "just look". I sat in depressed silence through all of this (it was there that I started hating miniature games).

At the end the referee made a compromise: my air and artillery strikes were called back, but I couldn't send orders to my forces for two turns due to "the obvious confusion in their commander's head". This, basically, cut me off from the main game and at the end the Soviet won.

That wasn't the last time that the Warsaw Pact was able to reach the Pyrenees due to me commanding some NATO forces, but this is a tale for another time...

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69

A bad memory is what happened during a game of "Command Decision" miniature game set in the modern era. The scenario saw a heavy Soviet Mechanized assault against a mixed British/Dutch defence. We played 3 vs. 3. It was my last year in high-school and I was the "mascot" of the group. As a new player I got the NATO reserves - so that I could watch some turns of "the real battle" and better familiarise myself with the game. My allies assured me about "not worrying too much" because "real life tactics worked".

Beer was flowing high, so after some turns I went to the "loo", washed my hands, came back to the table and... I looked at it, stunned. During the turn resolution phase the Soviets had achieved a general breakthrough in the center. Their advanced forces were already near my reserves. Even worse, my forces were badly positioned. My plan had been to wait before committing and, if things went south, to commit according to the situation. It wasn't bad planning, but I never thought that a breakthrough could be so sudden and that meant that I was in serious trouble. It was easy to see how the Soviet player had to do only one thing: take advantage of the situation as fast as possible. To compound my problems even more, the referee had judged that, due to both heavy electronic warfare and the chaos in NATO lines, normal communications were impossible. I couldn't talk with the other two NATO players.

The only good news were that I still had contact with both our tactical air forces and the divisional artillery. In a way, the situation was forcing my planning. I had to somehow slow down the Soviet schwerpunkt, try to reposition the reserves and, hopefully, gain enough time for my friends to reestablish the front line. So, I called all our available airstrikes on the Soviet advanced forces (among them a flight of A-10s which was our real hammer) and then with the artillery I did a "number" for which I patted myself. Instead of some desolutory firing, I called for FASCAM minefields to be delivered in front of the enemy.

Next turn, and each of us reveals his actions ("Command Decision" is WEGO). I revealed mine and... everybody, allies and opponents alike, just looked at me. Then the referee asked me if I was sure about what I was doing. I wondered if I had missed some rule. Was there a delay before the airplane and the artillery could answer? If so, I had wasted my best ammo and we had lost the game right there...

Well, no, my comprehension of the rules was fine. The problem was a bit different: true, the Soviets had broken through while I was in the loo, but those "advanced Soviet forces" weren't neither advanced nor Soviet. I had called all of our airborne hell on a Dutch brigade that was trying to retreat fast while still in good order - while cutting off their retreat route with my FASCAM mines. In a way, my plan had worked perfectly. In a way.

The game was actually stopped, with the Soviet players arguing that "that idiot" had never played the game before and so it was only fair to allow me to change my orders once. It was the NATO players that wanted to keep the SNAFU because "this is what happens in war" - while, at the same time, also wanting my head due to my complete inability to "just look". I sat in depressed silence through all of this (it was there that I started hating miniature games).

At the end the referee made a compromise: my air and artillery strikes were called back, but I couldn't send orders to my forces for two turns due to "the obvious confusion in their commander's head". This, basically, cut me off from the main game and at the end the Soviet won.

That wasn't the last time that the Warsaw Pact was able to reach the Pyrenees due to me commanding some NATO forces, but this is a tale for another time...

Your Scouts should have been able to identify the Dutch forces if they had vehicles. The Scouts are trained to do so at the lowest level. If there were no vehicles, then the Dutch troops would not have been mistaken for the Soviet spearhead either. The A-10 pilots also should have been able to identify the vehicles as well - maybe even before they fired their guns.

[Zovs]

That was an excellent AAR ! Thanks for sharing.

[RFalvo69]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Your Scouts should have been able to identify the Dutch forces if they had vehicles. The Scouts are trained to do so at the lowest level. If there were no vehicles, then the Dutch troops would not have been mistaken for the Soviet spearhead either. The A-10 pilots also should have been able to identify the vehicles as well - maybe even before they fired their guns.

Had I had more experience with wargames maybe I could have argued this. I guess that, for some players, "pilots' awareness" could be abstracted as me "just looking" (BLUE forces had blue bases - it was really hard to miss that. I had, literally, placed "airstrike" chits on columns of clearly "blue" units).

(Hmmm... since nothing similar ever happened again in our "Command Decision" games, I never checked if there is a rule for "target recognition" when you order an airstrike. I still have my copy of the the rulebooks somewhere, and now you made me curious...)

But I feel that, at the end, the referee made the right call. The airstrikes and the artillery didn't fire because they were able to recognise in time a potentially terrible "blue on blue" situation. My forces, however, were frozen for a while because their "commander" had clearly reacted to a breakthrough by entering into a panicked confusional state. There was a bit of role-playing there. Also, remember how everybody had revealed their moves, so allowing me to redo mine would have turned a mistake into orders given with the benefit of insight (amid "chaos and communications breakdown", BTW).

I don't think that the "Commander" I portrayed that evening had a big career afterwards...

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Your Scouts should have been able to identify the Dutch forces if they had vehicles. The Scouts are trained to do so at the lowest level. If there were no vehicles, then the Dutch troops would not have been mistaken for the Soviet spearhead either. The A-10 pilots also should have been able to identify the vehicles as well - maybe even before they fired their guns.

Had I had more experience with wargames maybe I could have argued this. I guess that, for some players, "pilots' awareness" could be abstracted as me "just looking" (BLUE forces had blue bases - it was really hard to miss that. I had, literally, placed "airstrike" chits on columns of clearly "blue" units).

(Hmmm... since nothing similar ever happened again in our "Command Decision" games, I never checked if there is a rule for "target recognition" when you order an airstrike. I still have my copy of the the rulebooks somewhere, and now you made me curious...)

But I feel that, at the end, the referee made the right call. The airstrikes and the artillery didn't fire because they were able to recognise in time a potentially terrible "blue on blue" situation. My forces, however, were frozen for a while because their "commander" had clearly reacted to a breakthrough by entering into a panicked confusional state. There was a bit of role-playing there. Also, remember how everybody had revealed their moves, so allowing me to redo mine would have turned a mistake into orders given with the benefit of insight (amid "chaos and communications breakdown", BTW).

I don't think that the "Commander" I portrayed that evening had a big career afterwards...

Well, I am talking actual military training and not war games for pleasure. But then again, I heard of an incident where a US Army Scout vehicle (M113) was fired upon by tankers firing the 50 caliber machine gun at it, thinking that it was just a moving target on the range. The bullets went in one side and out the other side.

There are other things that the Dumb A. Tankers (DATS) have done as well to their detriment or others, even if it was just inconvenience or a quick cure for constipation.

[Kuokkanen]

It was a weekend long RPG event open for all and I was in (several times actually). It was my first time game mastering RPG, which was an adaptation of BattleTech wargame. I had made player characters beforehand and handed them over to the players. Along with character sheets I had copied & printed stuff (skills & traits) from game's PDF file that each character had. In setting the player characters were independent freelance MechWarrior mercenaries who just so happened to have taken the contract in the same place. In a meeting with local military officers player characters were placed under command of a proper mercenary unit which had arrived some time before. Decision was made to have a mock training battle with the freelancers (player characters) against the mercenary unit. And then it was wargame time!

One player makes an attack with Large Laser weapon and rolls double 1s (2d6). I declared that a fumble and told player to look up "gremlins" trait in the printout attached to his character's sheet. He didn't find it, and sure enough, it wasn't printed there. Trait didn't appear in character sheet either. After consulting my laptop, I came to a conclusion I had simply just forgot to write/print the damn thing (I messed up like that plenty of times). So I opened the rulebook (I got both PDF & TDF) and told player to read it out loud. Player character's BattleMech ( = game terminology for mecha) was WLF-1 Wolfhound armed with lasers. He read this:

GREMLINS [CHARACTER]
Trait Type [TP Score]: Negative, Opposed [–3 TP]
“What the—? ‘Load Ammo Error?’ What does that even mean?
This is a Wolfhound!”

Hilarity ensued! After everyone had stopped laughing, I explained that Large Laser gun is malfunctioning and displays that error message. Later he rolled snake eyes for a Medium Laser too.


Last Saturday I took part to scheduled multiplayer event of Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game. Connection was lost repeatedly. One player explained he's got a thunderstorm going on and that may be the reason for dropping connection. Before that explanation was given, I made these comments on Discord:

This is going rather well

WHO THE HELL KEEP TRIPPING ON THE NETWORK CABLE!!?

[wodin]

The internet came along and I joined this thing called a forum ran by a digital wargame company called Matrix Games and there I met alot of good people, some sadly no longer here (RIP). Anyway I thank Matrix games forum giving me a place to hang out and meet like minded folk! I'm also all the richer for meeting alot of new people on said forum.

[deeter]

First time poster here. Mini and table top memories too numerous to mention, but one game I will always remember. It was a modded Reb Baron 3d mission during a US career, 1917. I was leading a flight of N-28s over the Saint Mihiel salient. After numerous scraps, I was the only remaining AC, deep in Hun country so I decided to head home.

In the distance, I noticed a fight between some Bruguets and Albis. Joining in, I drove some off but got engine damage and was low on ammo. So I broke off and set course for my base. Soon I saw a flight of Huns 1,000ft below, apparently focused on the Bruguet fight. A half roll and dive put me below and behind the trailing D-V. After just four rounds, the Albi started to burn and fall into a death spiral while the rest of the flight continued on, oblivious.

Another half roll and dive saw me streaking for home. The perfect bounce. Loved Reb Baron 3d.

Deeter

[deeter]

Well that was a thread killer.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: deeter

Well that was a thread killer.

I know the feeling. I make a post wanting to take part in the discussion, and nobody post ever again.