PARATROOPER day Sunday 26th May 2024

[Stewart 46A]

A good day of gaming

Total 6 players, 6 games

All Veteran Para forces

Results
          Points    Game 1.         Game 2
Stewart    133    Attacker win     Attacker win
Fred.      128.   Attacker win.    Defender lost
Ben.       100.   Defender lost.   Attacker win
Eric.       89.   Defender.lost.   Attacker win
Martin.     80.   Attacker.win.    Defender lost
Jim.        67.   Defender lost.   Defender lost

Stewart

[martin goddard]

A good day of gaming Stewart

Thanks to those who came along.
There was also a big ACW game there, plus  a lot of warhammer sci fi too.

martin

[John Watson]

Attacker wins all round. Does this tell us anything?
John

[martin goddard]

Valid observation John.

Some of the story behind it is that the more experienced players  beat the less experienced players.
Good validation for a set of rules.

Stewart won twice . He is probably the most successful PBI player of all time. Well done Stewart.
Fred won his first game against Jim who has just started playing.
martin won his first game because he cheated a bit?

By looking about I believe the games went very well in terms of success potential.

It was interesting to have no vehicles.
My bazooka bases got quite bored.

The re-roll assault D6 worked well.
Jim went for the 340(edited) point option and can report here on his thoughts.

Stewarts Russian paratroopers got their first trip out.
Eric's German paras got onto my base edge in their second turn. Quite a shock for my US.

The rules are about finished, but  maybe we can have another PBI day or two in addition to the battle days planned?

martin

[Sean Clark]

240 points sounds like a challenge@

I'm fairly sure that the record of wins and losses is pretty even overall for attack and defence. Such a small sample of games I'd probably statistically insignificant.

As Martin says, you'd expect player experience to be a factor  as well as a bit of cheating 😂🤣😅

[martin goddard]

Apologies . 340. No wonder he lost.


martin

[Wardy64]

I asked Ben his thoughts on this, he had two points.

1. He messed up his points total on his army, so had slightly under strength units.
2. He found the US rifles very powerful in the first game.

No whinges just his view on the games, other than that he found every thing fine.

D&B

[martin goddard]

Thanks for the feedback Dave.

martin

[Jim R]

Some of the story behind it is that the more experienced players  beat the less experienced players.

Just so. I made a sequence of rookie (didn't read the rules) errors which combined with terrible dice scores left me losing both of my games.
By my count I think they were my fifth and sixth games of PBI. Possibly seventh and eighth.
Significantly I am still learning the rules and can see that some of my decisions were poor only with hindsight.
As I told both of my generous opponents, Fred and Stewart, getting a bloody nose will help me remember the rules. Not literally obviously! 

I used the 340pt option for my first game against Fred. I thought that the benefits would be ideal for aggressive chaps whilst overlooking the possibility that I might be defending! Of course I ended up defending in both games.

The 340pt option is a good option to have available I think. I'd stick with +4 to Assets as I don't think it's overly generous. The increased reliability of Assets (probably) and much faster arrival of reinforcements (probably) compensate for the reduced company size about right.
Certainly, I think I had a chance of victory, at least for the first few turns. I can ascribe my loss to poor decisions, ignorance of rules and terrible luck.
If the option doesn't make the cut then I'll still try using it as a house rule.    I can imagine situations that would rationalise the small unit size for any nation. It was easy for paratroopers, 160pts lost in transit.
I'm happy to keep testing the 340pt option as it might excuse further defeats. 

All the best,
Jim