LnL's Point Blank:V is for Victory

[judgedredd]

British Impulse

Upkeep Phase
I complete the move for Sgt Angrave from A-C1 to A-D1

And he is readied


Next I complete the move for Lt Hughes and his 2 squads from A-E1 to A-E0 (I should've marked them as Spotted now)

As you can see, I've moved them into Brush - that's a card I had when I performed a Recon Action a while back. I could've drawn a card, but there's a fair chance it would've been Open Terrain - so I might as well play a good Terrain card if I have one to hand.


Action Phase
These are the cards available

• Rally and Ready Actions
• Move Action
• Ready Action
• Ready Action
• Unit and Ready Actions

I'm going to play the Unit and Ready Action card



The first thing I'll do though is Spend Sgt Angrave and try and and rally the Paras in A-D1

For the Half Squad, he rolls an 8. I take two off that roll - 1 for the Leader and 1 for the Squad

that's 6 which means they are rallied


Next the full squad...they roll a 7, -2 again which is 5

So they are also rallied


All that was done by spending Sgt Angrave.


Now to Lt Hughes mob. I use the Ready Action part of the card to remove 1 fatigue from one of the squads

Next I try to remove a fatigue from one of the other squads by rolling 1d6 and if it's odd, the attempt is successul. It's a 2

So that is unsuccessful

Finally I'll use the Unit Action part of the card to perform an attack on the German Half Squad and MG42 in G-E1
First off, this sequence of images aren't correct. I have included the unit with 2 Fatigue and marked them as Spent because they had 2 fatigue (and fatigue gets removed when you are spent). However, I shouldn't be including that unit because I'm performing a unit action...so I can only activate one unit.


So the final FB for the Paras is 4

• +1 for the unit
• +1 for the Bren Gun
• +1 for the Leader
• +1 for being at range 1

With a roll of 4, that gives 8. The Germans rolled a 6 giving a difference of 2 (again, the image is wrong).
I roll a 5 for the damage check giving 7 which is more than the German Half Squad's morale but crucially, less than double

so they are just shaken



Finally, I'm going to Spend Lt Hughes and see if I can get the troops to conceal. In order to do so, I need to roll 1d6 and get 6 or over. Lt Hughes has +1 for this ability and so he needs a 5 or 6...he rolls a 6

so the Spotted marker (which I hadn't placed when I moved the units at the start of thes turn) is removed


German impulse next and its getting close to the end of turn one...where I will end this and crack on playing at pace.

[judgedredd]

German Impulse

Upkeep Phase
I ready Lt Andersch




Action Phase
The Germans have the following Action cards

• Move and Ready Actions
• Reinforcements Action
• Reinforcements Action
• Fire Action
• Move Action

I know I have reinforcements to come on - but they won't add anything at the moment. Also - I could rally the Shaken Half Squad with the MG42 - but I've got units to spare (reinforcement squad waiting in the wings - I want to try and get rid of some Para units
I'm going to use the Fire Action card

and attack the Paras in the Open Terrain in A-D1


The German 7.92mm MG Weapon Team are going to attack first with the support of Lt Andersch. They have a base FP of +4 and +1 for the leader giving +5. The Paras have no defensive modifiers and are not in any defensive terrain


The German 7.92mm MG Weapon Team roll a 1 - and it was a Support Weapon, it could break...but it's not. That gives an attack value of 6. And the Paras roll 2 giving a difference of +4

A hit...so roll for damage on each of the British units, including the Leader


Sgt Angrave rolls a 3 making him shaken (total of 7 to his 6 morale)

Next the Shaken Para Half Squad - they roll a 4 giving 8 - shaken

And the full Para Squad - a 6 giving 10 - shaken


So they are all Shaken and cowering in the open!

Next the German Squad can fire. They have a firepower of +1 and roll a 1 giving +2. Again - if they had a Support Weapon, it could break. The Paras roll a 2 - so there's no hit and no damage check


I've got to the end of the turn...so I shuffle the cards and turn the marker over


I would also ready any spent units and remove 1 fatigue from any units with fatigue

So I ready Sgt Angrave and Lt Hughes and remove 1 Fatigue from each of the units with Lt Hughes



And that's it. It's the end of the first turn and the end of this AAR. What would normally take somewhere in the region of 30 minutes has taken me days - so I'll end it here.



It's probably best to put my thoughts here - though I think they're interspersed throughout the AAR anyway. But I'll sum up.

I'm enjoying the game much more than I thought I would. I like the art and I like the mechanics generally. I like the card draw and randomness. There's alot in the game and it's all excellent quality. It also comes in a big box - though the tray that came with it was unlikely to allow sleeved cards back in...so I created an insert (a BGG poster created the design).

However - there are some things that leave me wondering...

• The Map
  I know you don't have to use it - and honestly I'm not sure I will in the future. It's just too damned tight. I got on reasonably well with the cards in the sectors - but more units could prove extremely difficult - particularly if you're like me and like to keep a tidy battlefield
• The Manual
  On initial inspection, it seemed well laid out, intuitive and easy to understand...but things turned out differently. There are duplicate, ambiguous rules in the manual that make it difficult to reference. Additionally, there's not always a link. An example is the Transferring Support Weapons. There are 3 sections on Support Weapons. The 2.10 Support Weapons rule references 6.1.6 for Transferring Support Weapons but makes no mention of 7.21 Transferring Support Weapons...which has different information in it to 6.1.6
• The Mechanic
  So I said I generally like the mechanics of the game - and I do. However - and you may have seen this in my playthrough...it's entirely possible to get fixated between two opposing sets of units - and very possible you could stay there for the entire game.
  
  Because it's 1 unit impulse followed by your opponents unit impulse, it's possible each impulse could end up being a stalemate. My unit get's shaken by the German unit. I rally my unit. The German unit attacks the same unit. I try and rally...and round and round we go.
  
  So I generally like the mechanics of the game. Maybe two opposing players wouldn't play that way. I know the AEO wouldn't play that way. SO maybe it's just how I was playing it.
  
  I'll give the AEO a go next time and see what it does...though on my first attempt playing the AEO, it looked like I was going to end up with all my German units (within stacking limits) in the centre by the objective
  
  It's early doors...maybe this won't be a thing
• To Hit
  I know I've moaned about this...but I just always found ordinance in LnLs games to be a right pita due to this To Hit mechanic. It always seemed to be overly complicated to make a hit before you even get to try and generate any damage - and it's replicated in this game. I've now had 2 games with ordinance (a tank and an Arty gun) and neither got used due to their To Hit value being so pathetically low.

That's it. That's all I have. Kind of seems like I'm 50/50 on it - but actually I'm more positive about the game than I was before I took the leap for the Kickstarter and I am much more positive than I come across in this post - mainly due to the fact that I haven't given the AEO a proper chance yet and also the game - I've only had 1 try at the beginner scenario and 1/2 a turn here...so there really is alot of game to be had before I could genuinely say whether I love of hate it. For now, I'm going to go and finish this game and then crack on with another - whilst I read the rules in between for Decision At Kasserine for bawb.

I hope you enjoyed this. I did

[Barthheart]

Thanks for all of this JD. I know it’s a lot of work but we all appreciate the effort to show us the game. 

[judgedredd]

I'd just like to make a clarification or two here - in case anyone retro reads this...

There were times when I played a Spend Action. You do this when you have cards that are limited in what you can do (say you had 5 cards and they were all Rally cards but you wanted to attack). When you do a Spend Action, you discard a card and perform an action on one unit and the action you are performing MUST be one on the unit's card. When complete, the unit is SPENT. I'm pretty sure I did 2 things wrong through here
a) I think I performed a Spend Action, discarded a card and did an action that wasn't on the units card - like a rally.
b) The other thing I may have done wrong was performed that on a stack of cards. So where I discarded a card to perform an Attack Action, I think I may have included all units in that attack

The other thing I think I did wrong was to activate a Shaken leader and Spend that leader in order to perform his Rally on himself and the stack. A Shaken leader cannot Spend in order to perform any of his actions.

This is all important because I'm sure you remember the stalemate I had for a while between certain units - that may not have occurred had I got these little nuances down - particularly discarding a card to perform a spend action and then using an action that wasn't on the unit card...that made it all powerful for things like rallying.

[judgedredd]

I've now went back to a simpler scenario as I've got a better grasp of the rules.

The game is even better than I first thought now I'm playing it correctly. I was way too loose with the discard function in the game allowing units to ready or rally and perform other tasks they shouldn't have been able to with a discard action.

It's much more balanced than my play through showed...and the to and fro problem I had with firing and rallying between two units is not normally a thing. It can happen...but it's much less likely and not nearly as often as my play through highlighted.

Double thumbs up for this at the moment