One small step for .................Marxist Leninism ?? Lunar by Black Site Studio

I heard of Lunar earlier last year. It bubbled up on a friend's FB feed so I looked into it - and choked on the postage costs from the US to the UK. No UK distributor is a real issue. However I stayed interested and finally decided to take the risk. 

And I'm so glad I did. 

This is one of those boutique games that really work. The premise is that the race to the Moon was won by the Soviets by a matter of a few weeks - if you've watched "For All Mankind" on TV you get the idea.The Cold War in the 1970s but on the Moon. The battles are fought out between small crews of Astronauts and Cosmonauts trying to do their best in low G conditions and with limited resources. A spanner or mineral hammer is probably the best you will start with. The battlefield is usually a 2x2ft square. The games mostly revolve around trying to recover items or mine resources. Usually there's a tight time limit and often the real enemy is the environment. 

We've had a couple of games and now started a campaign - the rules have a nice compact campaign system in there ready to run. Having played a couple of campaign turns I have to say I'm having a blast. 

I think the clever part of this game is the restrictions it places on the player. Sure you can (if you have the $$$$) kit out your Astro as a combat specialist, with a real gun, some reinforced plates in your suit and a ranging system. Problem is you will be so over encumbered that you cant move, and your gun may jam or break due to the operating environment, and by the way the spare parts and ammo is 238,800 miles away. You probably need that hammer as well, just in case. I have a Cosmonaut mining specialist, with a genuine mining drill. He's the dog's bollocks at mining and the drill is actually quite a scary weapon in an emergency, but weighs a ton (ok not a real ton, but it's heavy). So heavy in fact that he needs a mate to carry anything he actually mines. Maybe that mining hammer is not a bad idea, even if it is far less efficient?

Crews are usually only three or four members to start, with one Commander and one Specialist. Choice of your Specialist is quite critical. OK, it's a wargame so a Combat specialist seems a good idea, but as the missions are almost all about recovering resources, an Engineer or maybe even a Medic is a better idea. A Medic because, in the immortal words of Heinlein, the moon is indeed a harsh mistress. It's not so much the risk posed by real weapons - they're few and far between anyway, and most combat degenerates into some clumsy wrestling where one or both participants can end up on their arse, but even a hammer or a bit of well swung or thrown scrap pipe can knock you over, or bounce you into a rock, or worse case, tear your suit. Similarly just tripping over can risk a tear. Suit tears are very bad news. 

In addition to "real" weapons such as guns, there are a few improvised weapons available too - a laser pistol sounds dangerous until you realise it's really just a glorified flashlight or laser pointer. Ok it can dazzle a target, but that's it. Similarly the glue gun is hilarious when you manage to hit an opponent and get him entangled in sticky gunk for a turn. The NASA player can also buy a flag to mark his landing zone, or beat a Commie over the head with (yes I almost lost a Cosmonaut when a NASA guy hit him with the bloody flag and tore his suit). Throwing stuff in low G is a valid tactic - particularly if you do it from outside the victim's line of sight, but does involve you throwing a bit of kit that is probably worth something, and then you need to get it back, or worse the bloody Yanks can pick it up and take it home for use next time.

There is so much to say about Lunar, and it is all good. I don't think it will ever be a "main" game because it will never really scale up beyond a half dozen crew, but damn, it's fun.

It's not junk, it's resources thought Astronaut Nicholson

Enemy at the Gates - yes the Taxman commeth (Undaunted Stalingrad)

Sigh.

It's time to put my tax return in. It's not a disaster, it is just a massive ball ache. And like all things I don't like doing I get distracted and look for something else to do.

Did I mention I got Undaunted Stalingrad for my birthday?

I had heard "good things" about the Undaunted series, and I have a thing for Stalingrad, so it's not a stretch. 

The problem is, it is lacking in almost everything I like in a game. You know, models, historical weapons, historically accurate orders of battle, tabletop terrain etc. Lets look at these in turn

Models - it's a board game. Doh. Each unit is basically a counter representing a team of either Rifles, an LMG or Scouts (you do get more but that's the basics). No need to model and paint your troops and vehicles. (Hold on, is this a plus??) Actually not as I get a kick out of the building and painting, knowing my squad of say German Infantry will always look different in some way to the next player's. There is a little piece of me in each of them I suppose :-)

Historical weapons - not really - the German Machinegun team, with the legendary MG34\42 has the same stats as a Soviet DP "Record player" team. Basically a Rifle Squad is a Rifle Squad, etc etc irrespective of nationality, and they share the same stats.

Orders of Battle - again nope. A Squad consists of a Scout, Rifle and (Light Machine)Gun team. German or Soviets, it makes no difference (also US, UK or Italians if the other games in the series is anything to go by). Similarly a platoon is two of these "Squads" plus NCOs. OK at this point I'm going to say this isn't a total fail. I'd wager very few if any platoons went into combat at full strength, and the extra guy here or there in organisations doesn't really matter. In fact if I have a gripe about Chain of Command it is the way the Orbats are pretty much assumed to be at full strength. Obviously this is a convenience for CoC when working out Platoon values, but it could be different and we have often played with less than full strength Orbats.

Tabletop terrain - another nope, the battle area is made up of a series of heavy duty card tiles each representing a bit of terrain - what scale I'm not sure but in Stalingrad as far as I can Pavlovs House is one tile, which makes them quite reasonable in "real" area - I would expect the same building in CoC to be three foot long for instance. More on terrain later.

So is it worth a look? After a couple of games I will say a resounding YES.

Why this is will probably take a while to explain. Undaunted uses a card activation system. You build a deck of cards from which you draw a hand each turn, and playing them allows you to activate a unit - "Rifle Team A" for example. This reminds me forcibly of the dice activation system in Chain of Command, with all the attached frustration and friction. There are blind cards in there too called "Fog of War" cards, which basically bugger your plans up. The card itself displays a named member of the Team in question - which becomes important later. Each unit can only carry out one action per activation as stated on the card - so Move, Attack, etc - lots of variation here, particularly in the expanded game, but each of the three basic units has it's own unique ability. Rifle Teams are the only ones that can claim objectives, LMGs are able to suppress targets and have two attack die where everyone else has one, Scouts can scout (doh! - I know, but this is critical.) You can only advance other teams into areas your scouts have checked out. This really is an eye opener. Yes it is a bit artificial, but it does force you to scout your approaches in exactly the same way a historical unit would have done, and it does it in a cleaner and simpler way than any other rules I have seen. 

Combat is quick and easy - each unit has a defence value, you add any cover modifiers for the terrain they are in, plus the range, and that gives you a D10 target to equal or exceed. The real kicker is when you hit, your opponent must discard a card associated with that team - run out of team members and the team routs. Also because the cards are named, it's no longer just a kill, it's Rifleman Yuri Gregorovich who just bit the bullet. And in the campaign version of Undaunted Stalingrad they can be gone for good. Gulp.

There is a lot of hidden depth here. The number of guys (and sometimes Gals in Soviets team) in each unit is different - so a Rifle team has five members, but a gun or scout team has only three. This means rifle teams will soak up casualties easier, but as you cant control ground without them, you cant use them as total bullet sponges.  

And I have not touched on the main selling point of the Stalingrad edition - the Campaign, a fully playable linked campaign where not only your platoon changes based on losses and scenario results, but the city you are fighting in and over gets worn down and blasted away over time, with several different versions of the same buildings, each progressively more damaged than the last.   

There is so much here I will probably have to do another post , but for now the TLDR is the game is well worth a look, and if you are a bit put off by the price of the Stalingrad set you can pick up Undaunted Normandy for about £30 which is basically the same system minus the campaign.

Recommended

At last - a "proper" game ! Chain of Command at Hartlepool Gaming Group

I think I misjudged just how much Covid, lockdown and all that impacted on my gaming. It wasn't just the lack of games, it was the type of game I was playing now the restrictions were lifted - ie skirmishing or small scale games with a dozen figures or less. I've played quite a few - Luna (still superb IMHO) Space Station Zero (worth it just for the innovation) to name but a few. And Blood Red Skies of course, which is probably my go to pick up game. 

But that is sort of the problem. These are all really short games - small forces and done in an hour or so. I was pining for something a bit more in depth. 

Rescue came, as is often the case, in the pub. Slight digression, the pub in question is "The Rat Race Ale House", on Hartlepool railway station. This is the second micropub established in the UK and is very much worth a visit. Check the opening times however as they're a bit "exotic" or possibly erratic. Best experienced rather than explained. 

http://www.ratracealehouse.co.uk/

Anyway I was in there last week relaxing after a bit of a stressful day, and who walks in but Andy T. Andy is a stalwart chap who used to be a member of the Hartlepool club but has since left. We sit and have a chat - and a pint or so in says "would you like a game of Chain of Command on Saturday at the Gaming group??" (this is a community gaming group that meets Saturday nights in a dance studio - they play mostly board games plus a fair amount of BloodBowl, some role playing games and there is a small 40K and Middle Earth Fantasy group). They're a great group and very friendly. 

Hartlepool Gaming Group on Facebook

"Yes please!" says I. We drink up and agree to meet Saturday. Andy will bring 1942 Soviets, I will bring 1942 Germans. As neither of us have played for quite a while we had a gentleman's agreement not to bring mortars or flamethrowers, which can sometimes be a bit "un fun" if on the receiving end. 

One of the problems with the Gaming Group as a venue is terrain - they don't have any. Luckily I had sort of bought some terrain as a self inflicted Christmas present the year before last - a double sided mat and some boxed terrain from a company called "Monster Fight Club". This stuff is probably worth a post on it's own. It does look a bit "plastic" because, well. it's plastic, but it's also lightweight, packs up small and appears to be almost indestructible in normal usage. This , combined with some Russian buildings I inherited from Andy P which I repaired and "tarted" up quickly, should be more than enough, and along with the rules and my Germans would be reasonably portable. It was also the first time I really had a chance to use it so I thought "why not?" I also chucked in some lightweight plastic hills from Kallistra.

So Saturday night arrives and we set up. We agreed to play the Patrol mission. Andy has a four squad Platoon with a Maxim in support, I had a standard three squad Platoon with an MG34 on sustained fire mount and a medic to balance out. The Patrol phase went ok - we were both clearly "ring rusty" and made a few miss steps, but we were soon into the game. I wont go for a blow for blow report, but it was a good game. 

The main action evolved on the German left flank, where a squad pushed up to capture a barn that was (I thought) a good point to pivot and roll up the Soviet flank. Sadly Andy had the same idea and we both rushed squads up to the barn then realised neither of us could do much to get around it to get to contact without taking a lot of fire from the opposition forces in the centre of the table who were mostly engaged in shooting at each other, and anything that stuck its head around the corner of the barn. Technically the Germans were outnumbered 2:1 as the Sovs had ran two squads up to it, however there wasn't really enough room behind it so they were taking casualties from an LMG that had a narrow but viable shot at one corner. He tried to push around the other corner but ran into the German Squad's MG34 team which caused predictable carnage as he was in the open at close range, and the survivors ducked back to "their" side of the barn. Andy surprised me mid game by wheeling his Maxim into the open to get a shot at the squad hiding behind the barn. That hurt, hitting the NCO and wounding him, and killing a couple of riflemen. The NCO rallied and threw a smoke grenade to provide some cover, and the now exposed Maxim team was assaulted by the German Platoon leader and a handful troops who responded to his call of "Handgrenatten! Follow Me!". They wiped out the gun team in short order, but in doing so were caught by some vicious covering fire that broke the squad and forced them to retreat. At the barn the German medic arrived and patched up the leader. The leader then rallied his troops and taking his lead from the Platoon leader assaulted around the corner of the barn. This went well at first, rapidly routing one Soviet squad. The second squad however was having none of that and piled in. This should have been ok for the Germans, who had a firepower advantage, but the dice were not kind and the Soviets broke them and drove them back. That put the Germans on break point, and gave the Sovs a costly victory. One final mention must go to the Soviet squad who were on the far right of the German line. Their NCO must have been called Marx - Groucho not Karl, as he ordered his squad out of a building to race across and shore up the centre, where the Germans were starting to win a fire superiority. They got out ok, but then declared they were going to run (3d6) and scored three ones, picking up a point of shock in doing so, then tried again and managed to cover an inch or so total - obviously tripping over their clown shoes :-) pics below

Germans head for the barn

Soviets head for the barn

Marx and his comedy squad 

Final German positions - note the sole survivor retreating from the barn!

Great game, great opponent, and plans for another soon.