Irrational Number Line Games, LLC
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One Little Outpost - AAR
This
scenario
was a sci-fi version of the classic "crossing of lines" problem. The players
knew what the equities were, but only found out who was who as the game
progressed. We used a subset of the Alien War rules that Howard Whitehouse
has produced for
Defiance Games.
DG also ponied up a box of minis as a prize (as well as donating one to the
GOA raffle that benefits
veterans with spinal cord
injuries
) and included a few extra sprues, so we were able to give a free sprue of
the UAMC forces they played with to each of the 12 participants (well, 11
people got free sprues ... the winner got a free box).
This was a four-player game, and we got three rounds out of it during four
hours due to two things: (1) we only played on a 4'x4' area, and (2) We had
small squads - 5 men each. The subset of rules we used limited the forces
to only rifles. We also customized the initiative table to reflect the "nerves
on edge in the dark without standard comms gear running" aspect of the game.
The players were easily able to pick up on the rules and play sequence (we made
one-page cheat sheets) quickly with few contests, so most of the game ended
up focusing on how to figure out who was who without exposing your forces to
certain destruction while you did it.
Most people were cautious during the initial stages of the game. We did
have one player who just charged in and shot at the closest team, not even
knowing if they were on his side or not. His justification was "Hey ... the
odds are with me!" And he turned out to benefit, as it was an opposing team
he fired upon.
There were two games where the third party nation (Cerulean) was present, but only in one of them did they get any figures across the table. In that game the first player to encounter them didn't fire on them because he didn't see it was in his benefit. Since he was outnumbered two-to-one by the other teams, it was probably best that he didn't engage in an extra firefight. The other side did, in fact, send men out to intercept the Ceruleans (it became apparent who they were after a while, even without a second reveal) to prevent a full-sweep win.
In the other game with Ceruleans, they got id'd early and the other three teams
ganged up on them before engaging in hostilites among themselves.
The overall winner (most points across all three games) was on a side by himself, so the idea that the outnumbered player has more targets while the outnumbering players have to share targets did play out to be a balancing factor. In this game the lagging Ceruleans delayed the full out assault by circling wide.