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  • #80853
    Avatar photoDeleted User
    Member

    Over the years, after an enjoyable game, my pals & I have often said we should re-fight the battle sometime. And, until recently, we never did. There was always another scenario, another game, a different combination of troops to capture our attention.

    The recent exception happens to be the battle from the rule book of the Napoleonic set ‘General D’armee’. Twice, we’ve fought it & my pals want to run through it a third time, next Saturday week.

    I ask myself if this is how Phil Connors began but I don’t see any ennui setting in yet.

    To be honest, I’ve tweaked a few minor things from Game #1 & Game #2 & will have a few inconsequential changes in Game #3. And the teams commanding the two forces have & will be changed around.

    The question I’m interesting in posing is do you re-fight battles? What do you see as the benefits & the pitfalls?

    I won’t rule out a fourth turn of this battle depending on what responses are offered. And I won’t inflict a third set of photos on the forum readership.

     

    donald

     

     

    #80856
    Avatar photokyoteblue
    Participant

    I have replayed battles with different players and or had them switch sides. I think it gives players a better understanding of what the real generals went through, and the decisions they made.

    #80858
    Avatar photoRod Robertson
    Participant

    Ochoin:

    Yes, quite often. In a side A vs. B game we will often play at least twice with both sides’ players taking on the roles of the opposite sides of of the last game. This is done quite regularly in Biblical, Ancients and Dark Age/Medieval games. We will also play the same game over with or without switching sides but switching rule sets in order to compare rule mechanics and their effects on the outcomes of the games, sometimes using randomly generated sheets of numbers to minimise luck’s impact in such comparisons. The last WWII battle I played with my buddies was actually three repeats of the same game using Battleground WWII, Bolt Action and Chain of Command rules to mediate the same game.

    Cheers.

    Rod Robertson.

    #80859
    Avatar photoWhirlwind
    Participant

    Yes, I have done it often.  Sometimes to try out the same scenario with a different set of rules, sometimes to use a different set of tactics, or make a minor tweak to the scenario.  Off the top of my head, the favourite battles for multiple plays have been (I won’t use battles I have done two plays of since I have done a ton of them):

    Mons Graupius

    Medina de Rio Seco

    Saalfeld

    Hagelberg

    Quatre Bras

    Paul Richey’s First Kill (an air scenario) – 29th March 1940

    CS Grant’s “Soggy Bottom” and “Tapas” teasers.

    And all the scenarios in the Ambush! boardgame many, many times…

     

    #80861
    Avatar photoMartinR
    Participant

    I have a few standard scenarios I use as test beds for rules:

    Busaco
    Agira (Sicily, 1943)
    Elst (Sept 1944)
    Maltot (July 1944)
    Nachod (1866)

    Played those loads

    "Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

    #80864
    Avatar photoNorm S
    Participant

    Yes, I have favourites and some situations seem to produce such good games, that they are worth repeating.

    Taking the point further, as I regularly play boardgames, this year I have decided to cut down on the variation of systems I play and concentrate on fewer titles, so that I can get more out of the games, get closer to their systems and appreciate the nuances that each title can give.

    #80865
    Avatar photoDeleted User
    Member

    One down side to “repeats” might be a loss of surprise? After several assaults on *that* ridge, you know it’s impossible & try something else.

    I will concede many commanders, thanks to good scouting or local knowledge, knew their battlefields well but clearly not all.

    My Sunken Road at Waterloo* won’t be full of French cuirassiers if they know it’s there.

     

     

    donald

     

     

    • Yes, I know that’s a myth promulgated by Dumas Snr, I believe
    #80889
    Avatar photoChris Pringle
    Participant

    The question I’m interesting in posing is do you re-fight battles? What do you see as the benefits & the pitfalls?

    Yes, routinely. Our battles are almost invariably historical ones, which means they generally pose unique tactical puzzles, often famous ones. An obvious benefit is that players can try using different plans to crack these puzzles. Another is as Kyoteblue says, if you swap sides, you get more insight into the problems faced by each side. Swapping sides also irons out any imbalance in the scenario. Sometimes one motive for replaying a game is if it was complex terrain to set up, it’s just easier to leave it set up for a week and replay it. Classic battles especially tend to get demanded as replays. And then occasionally there are ones that people just love, for whatever reason, and want to play again.

    Pitfalls? Sort of a variant on Ochoin’s “loss of surprise” is the problem of the “DS solution”: with some games, it soon becomes obvious what both sides’ best plan is, and once everyone knows that, it can feel a bit like going through the motions. But really that’s very rare. The only real pitfall is that, since there are so many more battles to fight than opportunities to fight them, any replay is going to elbow aside another battle I’d like to try for the first time!

    Chris

    Bloody Big BATTLES!

    https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BBB_wargames/info

    http://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.co.uk/

     

    #80898
    Avatar photoRoger Calderbank
    Participant

    I don’t mind repeating a scenario if it produced a good game the previos time it was used.

    Whoever lost last time is likely to try something different. A different player is unlikely to follow the same course of action anyway. So even if the previous winner tries to repeat what they did, they’ll find they are facing something new. If it looks like one side can’t win, that is an excuse to tweak the forces or the terrain or the scenario conditions. Enough such tweaks, and you have a whole new scenario to play.

    RogerC

    #80905
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    I tend to only refight the same battle if it is a game I am running at a convention, or am playtesting for a scenario book.  In both cases changing the players around and seeing what different angles different people take is a good thing to make sure something isn’t too broken*.

     

     

    *I feel that “war isn’t fair” and have no issue with one side being more powerful than the other…

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #81091
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    We usually don’t, but I always thought it’d be interesting to try the same set up from various approaches and ideas.

    For some reason, in my mind, it seems more natural to do it in a board game.

    #81282
    Avatar photoShaun Travers
    Participant

    For WW2 I tend to play historical scenarios and do not think I have ever replayed one.  For ancients, I have replayed battles but mainly with different rules.  Rarely with the same rules twice, the latter mainly after tweaking the battle disposition and wondering how it would play out.

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