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Keystone Kops at MOAB 08

Page history last edited by Rob Brennan 15 years, 5 months ago

I have this vision in my mind of the old silent movies where the

Keystone Kops are all piled into this overcrowded paddy wagon

chasing the bad guys around a corner, they are going too fast, miss

the corner and go careering off the road and end in a big pile up.

Taking Serbs to MOAB was full of these Keystone Kop moments!

Of the three times I deployed first I had the unpleasant experience

of not having any enemy in front of me bar the lone horde or lone

light horse.

In particular my last game against Chris I first deployed three

commands of Knights to be faced with nothing opposite them! His army

was cowering in a narrow stripe screened behind a craggy hill.

Trying to get into contact with the enemy was when the fun started.

The knights where required to move forward for two bounds to pass

the craggy hill, break thru the lone horde pickets and then make two

wheels to contact the enemy.

To make a wheel requires 3 pips. This wasn't always forthcoming at

the right time.

One command couldn't deal with the lone pickets, missed the turn

towards the enemy, went impetuously straight ahead, hit another

craggy hill then headed off to the enemy's baseline. Keystone Kops

really – don't know what they where supposed to be doing, but it

wasn't contacting the enemy!

Fortunately to make a game of it the command closest to the enemy

just got the pips to make a half wheel to get half of the command

into contact while the other half hit a craggy hill and then had

Keystone Kops moments of their own.

With the CinC's command I was lucky that I had deployed in a column

on a road and together with a couple of sixes I was able to redeploy

that command.

Against Doug's Sassanid's I also deployed first to be faced with

enemy requiring wheels to contact. The result also was similar with

pip starved commands hitting the enemy base-line. Doug let me get

back into the game by turning around and attacking me. If he had

simply redeployed the Keystone Kops would never have been able to

catch him.

All very amusing for my opponents whom I was happy to entertain

although not at my expense!

I'm not sure what the impetuous rules are intended to do. The result

seems to be a break down in group cohesion and willingness to

contact the enemy, a far cry from "not waiting for permission to

charge the enemy" more like "we are really stupid and we're going

over here while you aren't looking!"

My Issues from MOAB:

* Deployment rules and night attacks too one sided

* Magic tents and irregular PIPs are a problem

* Impetuous rules

* Vulnerability of LH to being outmanoeuvred by marching opponents

* PIP and grading rules are unreadable

* Rule book fell apart – never happened with WRG

* After two comps I now understand my bound/your bound – still think

its crap!

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