"What was your worst defeat in wargaming?" Topic

Nothing really stands out in "friendly" games, although I have failed to connect with a British bayonet charge (this being a specific type of charge) in almost 8 years of playing "British Grenadier" rules. Best fails include all 11 (yes eleven) charges in a re-fight of Bunker Hill, and a spectacular re-fight of Brandywine when (a) both British grenadier battalions (elite) failed to charge into the rear of Militia on 3DPs, and (b) British cavalry not only failed to charge into the flank of the same Militia, but got a retreat result that led to them moving 10" backwards when only 9.5" from the table edge.

In FoG:R competitions, I've lost 25-0 twice – both times to the author of the rules. The first time, it was two 1680s armies and he had 6 heavy guns: just blew my cavalry away – I lost four units routed without losing a single base, just failed cohesion tests. The second time he had Qing Chinese and just shot us to bits with arrows from behind impassable defences.

When playing in a ECW campaign I had a small army of four regiments of horse and three of infantry caught by a much larger Parliamentarian force that rapidly started to take lumps out of me. In the campaign cavalry were so useful that I really didn't want to loose them so I had them turn tail and run away leaving the foot units to be wiped out. What made it worse was that the campaign system dictated that 25% of my defeated infantry swapped sides so I considered I'd effectively lost 125% of my foot.

In a Napoleonic game, I had a regiment of light lancers caught changing formation whilst going up hill by heavy cavalry. They were destroyed and that was only part of a larger defeat that saw brigade after brigade dashed to pieces trying to take a town on a vital crossroads. Why I didn't think to attempt a flanking move I don't know. I guess I kept thinking that one more battalion should be enough to break into the BUA.

In another Napoleonic game I was in command of an Austrian force that made up one flank. Somehow I managed to recall the skirmishers too soon and they blocked the lines of sight. As the rapidly advancing French columns hit my line I was in disorder. The whole Austrian flank collapsed.

Cavcrazy, in response to your comments:

The post "whose defeat was most memorable" was in response to the previous post suggesting a poll, and not the topic.

Yes, you did briefly mention a defeat, but there were no details, in contrast to your lengthy blow by blow description of your glorious and brilliant victory.

I lose 90% of my games. There are so many crushing defeats that none stand out. I am a terrible gamer but I still love it. What I don't like about gaming is massive egos that you occasionally come across.

You completely missed the point of the topic and in fact went the opposite way to impress us how clever you were. I originally thought it may have been an accidental misunderstanding on your part, now I'm sure it wasn't.

At a show I played in a small scale D-Day game, a British attack on a German fort (Hillman, I think). Decent terrain and figures, with a countdown clock to the end of the game. We seemed to spend ages going over the pretty basic rules and we were left waiting on several occasions whilst the umpire just started conversations with his mate on the next table, but it was straightforward enough.

Turn one, Bangalore torpedo in the wire; turn two suppressive fire; turn three assault the first line and continue moving forward. The countdown finished and we were informed we'd failed as we'd not taken the final position. I'd not have minded as much but we were chided for 'wasting time' in the opening turns. I did a quick measure and realised even if we'd sprinted in a straight line on every turn, we'd still have been six inches from the objective. Still, smile and thank the umpire.

I also recall an Arras scenario where the Matilda II I had needed to roll double six for movement every turn to get even half-halfway across the board before German 88s rolled up and drilled a hole.

I think my worst defeat that wasn't poor design was my first GDB game, when my French cavalry brigade counter-charged on turn two and was routed in its entirety. That was a quick game.

Shardik, Wow, I'm thinking if you are commanding a company of cavalry in a Little Bighorn game then the outcome is obvious.
I'm sorry I "misunderstood" the second posting.
Maybe what I'll do from now on is troll through posts and be a whiny nuisance like you !
Things must be pretty boring where you are if you have to try and be this obnoxious. Nobody likes the smarmy puke who tries to prove his superiority by being a jack-ass.

P&H:
"Rogue Trader… orks on foot, all wirhin 2" … virus grenade … One shot. Killed my whole army."

If this was in the Orlando area over 20 years ago, I remember hearing of it.

No, it was in the San Diego area… but I would imagine this could be a fairly common disaster for Ork armies…

Eldar as well or Imperial Guard.

Though I only lost around half of my Eldar and being down by that still almost managed to win.

Would have if the game had gone on for one more turn.

Which is why GW nerfed the hell out of the Eldar.

But as for defeats the worst one goes to a SYW battle that had like 40,000 troops per side.

It was hard fought with both sides being beaten up.

My troops had help cleared the town and took out a Austrian Arty Bde.

But the final die rolls came down to the Prussian Guard de Corp facing off against some scum Austrian Cavalry.

We had work up the odds and the only way the Austrian Cavalry could win was if they rolled Box Cars and the player controlling the Prussian Guard de Corp rolled Snake Eyes.

Well the Austrian Player roll his dice and up came those double Six's.

So we were telling our side player that he was going to roll at least 5-8 and he rolls.

&

So the Prussian Guard de Corp was beaten by one and that caused us the battle.

Though we did leave a lot of dead Austrians on the battlefield.

Yamato (me) vs a British battlegroup with a Rodney. First shot goes to the British, takes out fire control, completely blind for the rest of the game, miss every shot while I slowly get pounded to pieces …

Bootleggers snatch and grab game where one team has to be clever and fast to grab some hooch, while the other tries to pick off as many possible, individual firepower is pretty bad, concentrated fire works much better, I have the advantage of a defensive position with more and better guns, the other player has cars as his only advantage. One gangster runs up to my crew where all the shotguns and Chicago Typewriters are concentrated and throws the only molotov cocktail available. Instant barbecue, the others either run away or get picked off.

Agincourt, multiplayer test game for Field of Glory. We play the English, my fellow player tells me he has already played FoG and I leave him to set up the army which involves putting the knights in front of the archers. I question his motives, but he claims that they can shoot over the heads, so I defer to his judgement.

The problem is that the archers can't really shoot over the heads of the knights and their shooting range is so limited that the shots would hit the English knights anyway, let alone the French. I struggle to shift a few archers in front of the line hoping to pick off at least a few knights, but even causing casualties is like throwing an eight with a six-sided dice. The French take zero casualties from shooting, crash into the knights and archers, rout them, they set off a panic in the rest of the army and Shakespeare loses a play.

I remember one game where I was unable to throw over 3 on any D6 roll.It was heartbreaking, I think even my opponent felt sorry for me! Its no fun beating an enemy with no chance of winning due to dice rolls!

Battletech. Girlfriend's stupid dog came up to the table and ate Wilson's Hussars (everybody had been eating BBQ ribs and there was some transference of BBQ sauce).

Grenadiers a cheval of the Imperial Guard charge Raw Spanish dragoons, pretty safe bet huh?

Not if I roll snake eyes and the Spanish roll 2 sixes it isn't….

The ignominy!

What a coincidence! I had posted an AAR just 18 hours before the OP.
TMP link

In brief, Falklands air battle – Argentinian force with 8 bombers, 2 Exocet-carrying Super Etendards and 6 fighters gets trounced by just 4 Sea Harriers and AA defences.

Every air game I have ever played except one (don't yell at me Shardik!). All the defeats were very conclusive.

In brief, Falklands air battle – Argentinian force with 8 bombers, 2 Exocet-carrying Super Etendards and 6 fighters gets trounced by just 4 Sea Harriers and AA defences.

In fairness, that's pretty close to historical accuracy.

Also Battletech. Campaign play at a local game store had been going for about a month.

I'm the ref playing clan invasion against a merc unit of 3025 tech in 3050. So a star of clan mechs against a company of IS second-line-line in a city fight. I'm running 5 mechs they're running 3-4 each.

I had a Masakari, a Thor, a Vulture, and a pair of Ullers, the opposing force was mostly medium and heavys with minimal updated jerry-rigged tech (one mech had double heatsinks, another had a stolen LB10-X that the players were constantly having to go through hi hijinx to get ammunition for)

things go well for the Jade falcons, as their recon screen runs into mine and 2 ullers make short work of a valkyrie, and two 20 tonners (stingers or wasps) before getting driven off by the Phoenix hawk and some help from the fire support lance.

seeing the fire support lance committed, i march up my warhawk and vulture, and fire all the masakari's energy weapons, get distracted by talking about paint jobs on the mech and fire both arms, foolishly thinking in the moment that I was driving a C and not a Prime. (having had to at to last minute switch out mechs because of balancing the points total for the fight earlier did not help)

for those that don't play battletech this is kinda like not remembering to engage the parking break while towing a trailer on a hill.

This error in calculation causes me to heat up enough i cook off my own ammo and that blows half the mech's torso and arm off, triggers cascading shutdown and piloting check… from a pilot who lost consciousness from the concession of his own ammo cooking off.

Mech falls over, takes more damage resulting in another head hit, meaning the pilot never regains consciousness for the duration of the game.

Massed return-fire from the fire support lance against one mech has predictable results. One vulture by itself can't stand against 2 catapults and whatever else was there (I want to say griffin and dervish?)

The thor and the damaged light mechs catnap mouse the remaining lance but eventually get pushed into the almost pristine fire support lance as a hammer and anvil situation, and while the thor killed 3 mechs, it was a pretty crushing defeat that resulted in the mercy getting a clan assault mech and 2 lights as salvage…

To this day I still get reminded to check that I am driving the right mechs… and I learned to write myself reminders at the top of my force lists hen not bringing my "usual" loadouts.

Back in the late 70's I was playing in a a campaign game of the American Revolution. AH's 1776 was the strategic game, CWW's 1776 were the tactical rules. A battle broke out between Burgoyne's northern army and Arnold's northern army in 1776. Numbers were about equal. I commanded the British right flank. The Americans were falling back before me, delaying me when I realized the British left and center had given way. I turned my reserve unit, Brunswick grenadiers, over to the center. This was a mistake as they soon joined the rout.

Meanwhile the Yanks in front of me stopped falling back and went over to the attack. By the end of the game my brigade was the only part of the British army that hadn't routed. We lost eight times the casualties of the Yanks. I have been beaten pretty soundly other times but this one took the cake.

We managed to get the British army back to Canada after two tight rearguard fights and a tiny naval battle on Lake Champlain so our siege train could escape. We went on to win the campaign, mainly because the British team kept on through adversity while the Yank team quit when things turned around.

There have been far too many to remember all of them!

One that does stick in my mind was from my student days, so we are talking mid 1970s. We were playing WW2 using the old Leicester Micro Model's air combat rules. The scenario was a Japanese Kamikaze attack on a small US carrier taskforce. The objective was to sink the carrier.

The Japanese team flew the manned V1 that the Japanese built under licence. I don't know if they were ever actually used, but we were young and they looked fun. The US team had Hellcats as CAP plus the AA on the ships. I was on the Japanese team. We entered from dead eastern of the taskforce in a long steady dive we expected that this would allow us to close so fast that the US couldn't respond. Initially it worked we blasted past the CAP without problems. What we didn't expect was the volume of AA the ships could concentrate on us. All of the attackers except me were splashed. Still it didn't matter I was directly behind the Carrier and in line to hit it.

The US ships didn't move every turn to reflect the slow rate of movement compared to the aircraft. Yes you guessed it. My carefully calculated dive was going to hit the stern of the carrier except….. it moved and I heroically dived into it's wake!

@Elenderil

If I'm not mistaken, the destroyer USS William D. Porter shot down a kamikaze plane at Okinawa, only to be hit below the waterline when it blew up underwater! The carrier may well still have been lost!

0 for 9 in a "DBA for beginners" tournament. some 25 years ago.

Which led to my only wargaming rule (touching on another post):

Never play publicly with fresh dice. Break them in at home first.

#1. Resisting the Old Glory Army offer.
#2. Resisting anything sculpted by Bob Olley, Bob Murch, or Forrest Harris.
#3. Deciding to play a coupe "walk up/beginner friendly" games at a con.

Any defeat where the opponents played a better game than I did is not bad. #3 is up there because I have had a few experiences where con games so listed were not set up to explain the rules to new players of the system.

When I paid full retail price, plus shipping, plus taxes for a Games Workshop kit.

Doing an introductory Battletech game, two lances of 3025-era mechs face off each other, but the surprise at the end is that the survivors are faced by a single Mad Cat II (mainly aimed to show the enormous advantages of Clan era tech.

I take a few long range shots at the enemy mechs, next turn an Awesome runs forward, fires a PPC at long range and hits, rolls a head hit. He fires the next PPC, hits again and rolls another head hit …

"Those advanced mechs don't seem that good to me." The player added.