Progress Report: 02/14/2015 Slaughter at Ponyri CG Playtest

[Jim Aikens]

We had five members for the February edition of our Slaughter at Ponyri CG playtest. Dan Plachta, Dave Kocot and Scott Thompson were in command of the Russians against me and Jim Cotugno as the Germans.

We started by implementing a counter-saving device that Dan suggested; using sticky color dots on hexes to denote fixed defenses like Wire, known Miles, and Trenches, as well as terrain changes like Shellholes. It was an inspired and welcome improvement that we’ll probably incorporate in our Thursday night playtest as well.

After implementing the ‘dots’ suggestion, we set up and resumed the action with the Germans movement phase of turn 5 of the 7/7 AM CG date. We played through the end of the player turn, but it was obvious we were running out of time to continue.

At that point, I initiated a discussion as to whether it was worthwhile to continue with this playtest:

1. While the CG was certainly fun enough, the necessity of setting up and taking down such a huge CG was reducing the amount of playing time we were actually getting in. It was taking about 90 minutes to set up Ponyri and an hour to break it down. By way of comparison, it took us about 20 minutes to set up or break down our previous RB CG.

2. Because the CG is so complicated in terms of units on board, added to the fact we were only playing once every 4 weeks, it has proven to be very difficult for the individual commanders to maintain and execute a cohesive plan from month to month. By the time we recalled exactly what it was we intended to do with certain units, we were done for the day and ready to take everything down. Consequently a lot of mistakes were being made in terms of opportunities lost and units under-utilized.

We collectively concluded that while the CG was fun, the necessity of set-up and break down combined with the infrequency of play was making the venue unsuitable for a CG of this size and scope. It really needs to be left set up and played at least once per week, as in the case of the Thursday playtest at Brandon's house. We decided to call this playtest a wrap, and we will move on to a new CG next month.

I want to extend my thanks to each of the players who made the valiant effort to get this done. We compiled a ton of feedback, suggestions, input and corrections that will prove quite valuable to the future development of the module.

We have decided we’re going to move on to LFT’s historical module “Cholm” beginning next month.

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