First T&T experience: Not Bad!

[warrenpeace]

I've been curious about these rules for a few years, and finally got to try them last Friday at Game Storm in Vancouver, Washington. Particularly wondered if there were any advantages over the venerable rules that I usually play, The Sword and the Flame. Was pleased with the T&T experience.

Scenario was set in the Russian Civil War. A flatcar loaded with food and other supplies was left on a rail line in the snow, protected by a couple of units of Chinese, one of which was low grade coolies whose job was to unload the flatcar onto wagons for Tsarist Russians and Americans when those units arrived.

A line of 6 different Red units advanced onto the board, including everything from a low grade raw militia unit to an elite Siberian Rifle unit. One of the Red units was sailors. The Reds outnumbered the Whites and their allies about 60 figures to 40 figures, but had no heavy weapons, and had to advance across the snow. The Tsarists came onto the board to the left of the advancing line of Reds. The Americans, who were rated at elite and who had a Lewis gun, came on to the right of the Reds.

The Whites at first shot up the advancing Reds pretty well. The Chinese were sheltering behind the flatcar and the railway embankment, and the Tsarists joined them there. The unit on the Red left flank, which had reached the shelter of a fence line, was the first to go, routing into some woods. Then the raw Red militia unit took the first fire of the American Lewis gun and routed behind a hill. A Red unit in the middle, closest to the flatcar, was taking about 50% casualties, but was holding. The elite Siberian Rifle unit had started to advance on the Red left, but then made a tactical withdrawal to woods on the start line to avoid being outflanked by Tsarist Russians. And the Sailors on the far right of the Red line took terrible casualties from the fire of the Americans. The Reds missed their first 4 or 5 attempts to rally. It was looking bad for the Reds.

However, over the course of all this firing, the Reds had concentrated on first killing off the Chinese, which they finally succeeded in doing. Only the Chinese officer survived, and he prudently removed himself from the action after all his men were dead or wounded. The survivors of the hard hit Red sailor unit found themselves within range to charge the smaller American unit to their front, and did so. The results of the melee were all Americans dead or wounded, and 3 Red sailors including the officer left on the table. That threat was eliminated, but the American unit with the Lewis gun was on a hill just off the railroad track, and was dominating its fire area.

At that point the Reds were able to dash a unit from behind the hill that the raw routed Red militia were cowering behind using fast movement to reach the flatcar. At the same time, Red units finally started to rally and emerged from out of woods and from behind hills to take up firing positions again. The Americans on the hill with the Lewis gun decided to make a dash for the flatcar to save it from being pillaged by the Reds. Big mistake. All but the Lewis gunner were shot down, and the survivor decided to vanish into the nearby woods.

At that point, the Tsarist Russians took stock of the odds. They were outnumbered about 3:1, and decided that life was better than a suicidal attempt to recover the supplies and food. They vacated the area.

As compared with TSATF, I liked being able to sequence the unit cards rather than having them come up randomly. Also, as compared with the separate and random movement and firing phases in TSATF, I enjoyed having to make a choice regarding unit orders when the unit card came up, deciding between the various options available. I felt more like I was playing the game rather than having the card deck play the game and reducing me to the role of a glorified dice roller. Also, seems like the basic system would not break with user created variations on some points, so could be tailored to taste.

That was only a two player experience. Look forward to trying out T&T in a multi-player game, as that is what we usually do around these parts, with games typically having 4 to 10 players.

[Westfalia Chris]

I'm really glad you liked it! As you will certainly be aware, if you have any questions, feel free to post them (or see if we answered them before in another thread).

I would like to put out a word of warning, though:

That was only a two player experience. Look forward to trying out T&T in a multi-player game, as that is what we usually do around these parts, with games typically having 4 to 10 players.

Speaking from experience, T&T will work in multiplayer games, but you should consider playing a few smaller games (two or four players) first to properly familiarize the players with the rules, as I will be the first to admit that some parts can be a bit tricky if the players are new to the game. Also, it might be prudent to limit the number of tactical units in large multiplayer games to a maximum of four or five, including the hero to lead the force. Although you can handle non-interacting actions in a parallel fashion early on in the game, later, as the action tends to bunch up in hot spots on the table, it can get a little time-consuming (depending on your rule familiarity), and a large number of tactical units results in much longer turns.

That said, I would truly like to see a really big battle using our rules, especially once the players have some basic familiarity and you have an umpire to coordinate things, push the game along, and interject some unexpected twists into the plot of the game (if you are so inclined).

[warrenpeace]

Skirmish level miniatures games in my area typically have the player controlling between 2 and 5 elements, usually 3 or 4. The Sword and the Flame is the most common set of skirmish level rules used, and it also has activations of one unit at a time. The main difference is that in TSATF the deck of units in cycled through twice during a turn instead of once as in T&T, because TSATF uses  separate movement and firing phases, followed by a melee phase. But TSATF pulls the unit cards out of a single deck, rather than out of separate decks for each side.

Either way, this rules technique of activating only one unit at a time leads to some player down time in large multi-player games. On the other hand, during home games we get to down some beer and spectate on what other players are doing when it's not one of our units that was activated or that is the target of another's activation.

The skilled GMs in this area try to use various techniques to speed up the larger games, but none of them is entirely successful. We used to regularly have games involving 8 to 10 players, but in recent years we've reduced the number to typically 5 to 7 players. But at conventions we still might see larger games with 8 to 10 players. Somehow the better GMs seem to be able to resolve actions of that size within 4 hour time slots.

Personally, I would be tempted to revert to an IGO/UGO system for the larger games, provided that there are actually two sides in the fight. But sometimes we have multiple sides in a fight, going after treasure or whatever.

[Driscoles]

Hi Warrenbruhn,

I know someone in Portland Oregon !

Thanks for the game report. The scenario sounds very good.

We always had large multi player games in our gaming group. It was always fun.
But it know what you mean its also fun to see what others doing why you are on a break.

You should also try T+T with small units. I will give some hints on how to soon here in the forum.

Thanks again and all the best
Björn