"First Game of All Quiet on the Martian Front" Topic

Our first game was a trifle anti-climactic, but still a lot of fun and we are eager for more!

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Nice looking table and well done battle report. Well my pal Nazrat should have his stuff arriving about any time now. He was one of the higher end supporters so he will have a ton of models he will need help assembling and painting. Where were all the nice building from? Are they railroad model buildings? If so are they HO or N gauge? Again, great looking game and I was amazed at how bloody it turned.

Scott is the proprietor of Paper Terrain. I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess where the buildings are from…. ;-)

Scott,

Nice writeup and game. The buildings look especially good.

Regards,
Keith F.

Indeed yes, Dom! My company, PaperTerrain, has an arrangement with Alien Dungeon allowing me to produce paper buildings to go along with the All Quiet Game. You can see my stuff here:

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the game looks great! i may get this for our club.
i'm not really likeing the infantry based "in line" like that. can they be mounted on flames of war type bases, or would that throw something out of whack?

John,

I think a number of folks are going to use FOW style bases. Doing so would probably give a very small bonus to the humans, because you could probably get 6 bases into an assault on a Tripod, whereas the most you will ordinarily be able to manage with the long bases is 4 (unless the Tripod is surrounded). But I think assaulting a Tripod with ordinary infantry is a marginal, desperation tactic anyway, and so I doubt this would upset play balance.

Personally, I'm still undecided, but the long bases are starting to grow on me.

The size/shape of the bases was a major topic of discussion during the kickstarter. But Alien Dungeon definitely heard the voices of the people who didn't like them and the rules and even some of the terrain features (like the trenches) were modified to handle any sort of base. I'm still torn myself between the long base and a FoW type of base.

As a counter to the extra guys in contact arguement, I noted in one early game report that you cannot move within 1" of an infantry stand (without entering combat I assume). The writers of that report used groups of infantry to hem in the tripods. With the 2" cohesion of infantry (IIRC) a 3 stand nit on the wide bases will screen about 18" of table while a unit on the FOW size bases would occupy only 12". Basically you'd need to buy 50% more infantry to screen off the same linear distance.

Smaller bases also mean potentially more stands getting caught in all of the Martian's various template weapons and those are not rare – every tripod can use the sweeping heat ray template.

Yes, I'm a bit leery of the rule that allows infantry to block the movement of a tripod. I mean the things are fifty feet tall with long legs. Why can't they just walk right over the infantry and keep going?

I'm thinking (after just one game!!) about a house rule that would allow a tripod to step over an infantry stand, but maybe give the infantry one close assault attack on the tripod as it goes by.

That's a very good observation about the wider bases being better at screening, definitely something to keep in mind.

I agree with Scott that Tripods ought to be able to walk right through infantry, and that's how I'll play it. In fact, it would also make sense to require the infantry to take a morale check if that happens…

Nice write up.
I starting painting my initial order over the weekend

Physically a tripod could easily walk over infantry, but psychologically I can see the sense of a blocking rule. If we assume the martians have a basic awareness that infantry can potentially be carrying nasty surprises, they're unlikely to blithely stroll over the top of them.

But I'd rather leave that choice to the Martian player. If he walks right through or past infantry, and then the spring a forlorn hope on him, or a lucky grenade assault, then he'll pay the price. But to say that a Tripod can no more walk through a skirmish line of infantry than it could a stone wall just seems wrong.

Not sure I agree – there are some things sane troops will inherently shy from, regardless of what the general wants….

Yeah, but these are Martians.

Assault troops with scaling lines and demolition charges can hide in infantry units. They activate when a tripod gets into close combat range. Experienced Martians know – One does not simply walk over infantry!

Yeah, but these are Martians.

From War Of The Worlds we know that after taking a handful of casualties they sat back and used chemical weapons on a massive scale. This doesn't suggest a race who are particularly prone to dsregarding risk….

That's a good point, but it's the guns the Martians are concerned about, not individuals. And psychology cuts both ways: humans would not automatically just stand there when a tripod charges right up to them. That's why I think infantry should have to take a morale check.

Obviously a lot of this just comes down to how we want to imagine 100-foot tall tripods piloted by inscrutable aliens… as I personally conceive them, Martians are contemptuous of individual humans, and in the book they operate the Tripods very aggressively in the face of humans without artillery. I just don't see a Tripod automatically stopping for a skirmish line of fifteen guys. It might DECIDE to stop (particularly if it had seen other tripods swarmed by infantry in the past), buy I don't think the rules should require every Martian to always be that cautious.

Horses for courses – must admit I'm fine with the rule. Yes in the book they only worry about artillery, but in the book artillery's the only thing that has any effect on them – once infantry become dangerous (which they appear to be in AQMF) I'd expect them to be treated with caution too. Similarly for the infantry's morale, if anything I'd expect them to be happier seeing a tripod walk through their position rather than stop just short and start shooting…. Easy to make a case either way though.

We must expect some departures from the book- the Martians were building flying machines by the end there. No sign of that so far in the second invasion.

I'm happy with the blocking rule as a mechanic. Infantry don't seem to be a major obstacle to clear as long as the Martians bring the right tools. You could even say it encourages combined arms tactics, after their own fashion.

Leigh

Hmmmm. Let's see. Infantry in the open versus the Martian Heat Ray template. I know pretty much which side I would put my money on.

The Infantry stacked behind get to fight as well, so the bases used cause less issues, I think.