Saturday 28 April 2012

Wargames Weekend: The Lost Temple

Our penultimate game was a chance to try out the Triumph and Tragedy rules and for Lenin to get some of his Pulp figures back to the table.

An female American archeologist has discovered an ancient temple in the jungle; a temple which is reputed to contain a valuable treasure.  This expedition has angered the local Chinese warlord who considers the temple to be part of his domain and obviously wants to claim the treasure for himself.  His men have occupied the temple and taken the archeologist hostage.  This, in turn, has upset the Americans who have sent a gunboat to rescue her.
I took the part of the Warlord and his, mostly raw, troops; whilst Lenin played the American sailors from the gunboat.
I placed my only trained men along with another raw unit in the temple guarding it and the archeologist.  Meanwhile my remaining unit and maxim gun team remained in my stronghold.  Hearing that the gunboat had landed some troops I ordered the units at my stronghold to march to reinforce the men at the temple.
We spotted the Americans advancing through the jungle and deployed to engage them.  Things were going well until they deployed their BAR (which whilst a rather poor LMG was enough to automatically pin raw troops).  This meant that my maxim was deployed but didn't get to fire.  My riflemen opened fire, causing some casualties but soon also came under fire from the BAR.

Meanwhile the other American unit was advancing on the temple.  A firefight rapidly ensued with both sides taking casualties but I had a slight edge as my men were defending the temple.
With my reserves falling back the first American unit swung round and advanced towards the front of the temple.  Another firefight began.  With units being gradually whittled down on both sides Lenin decided to assault my position.  His men rushed forward but after a bloody melee were thrown back.  Whereupon my hero leapt up and engaged them with his SMG.  This was the last straw for the Americans and they withdrew.

Whilst the game was fun I'm not sure about the rules.  I have a feeling it's something to do with my expectations relating to the "scale" of a game.  Where you have a very small skirmish I can easily accept these operating in a more hollywood or pulp style.  It can even work when units are added but are merely extras to provide a backdrop for the heroes; however Triumph and Tragedy feels like a unit based game with the heroes acting as units.  My first impression is that this feels a little uncomfortable.  I expected the game to be more "realistic" as it was unit based.  I suspect it will need another go to see if they gel for me.

7 comments:

  1. Cool to see the game in action.

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  2. Interesting game, does sound odd about the heroes acting as a unit??

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    1. I think it's their way of dealing with combination of groups of mooks and single characters. I've seen it before but it just felt odd this time - possibly just me though...

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  3. Thanks guys. It was a good game and a chance to finally try these rules out as we've been looking for a set for this period - undecided as to whether these are the rules we're looking for though.

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  4. Nice game report. Thanks for playing our rules. Heroes are single characters but are treated as "units" for the context of the rules. They can join units or can be played individuals. Actually they are in the game to represent "you" on the battlefield. Games work perfectly well without Heroes because. And I heard from other players they often play games only with units and leaders and abandon Heroes completely. Anyway...the main feature of the game are the units activation and initiative game mechanism. Hope you get along with that. If you have questions you can contact me on the Triumh and Tragedy homepage.
    Happy gaming and all the best
    Björn

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    1. Thanks - both for writing the rules and the comments. I haven't had a chance to play another game as yet - mainly as the rules belong to my friend Lenin (no, not the dead one) and so games are rather up to him!

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