Having finally broken out the Red Alert game from a Kickstarter a while back, I played a solo game against myself.
First off, lots of models. Lots and lots of models. I like toy soldiers, so that's a plus for me. And on-board, there's very few counters to clutter up the fight. Terrain-wise, they've got asteroids and planets and space-rifts and comets... Lots of stuff to fly around. No three-dimensional terrain in the box, but making that will be a project for another day.
In terms of rules, I think the set would work better for a Napoleonic War-era game: lines of troops that are susceptible to morale, falling back because of the weight of fire coming their way. Maybe even mech and armored warfare, the way range works... For space ships though, kind of an odd way to run a game. But it prevents both sides from just closing to range zero and blasting away. The command cards mechanic contributes heavily to a "fog of war" feel that I don't see too terribly often (in games): you can only order certain units as dictated by a selection of cards drawn at random. So more accurately, it would be a "fog of communication". There's a definite component of planning out your battle and reacting to the other side.
I took mostly heavy units on the green side, and flocks and flocks of fighters on the red side. Not trying to leverage any special rules or play-style, I just like the models. The heavier ships on the green side remind me of UNSC ships from Halo, and the red fighters are reminiscent of Thunderbolt heavy fighters from the Warhammer 40,000 setting.
First turn: both sides fought a small meeting engagement on the left flank, two heavy squadrons of fighters and a heavy squadron of destroyers against a heavy squadron of cruisers. The lead fighters took a pasting and fell back.
.
The green cruisers are totally not Gozanti transports from Star Wars, and those are definitely not Thunderbolt fighters from Warhammer.
And then the red side rallied, threw in two squadrons of destroyers -I keep wanting to say "frigates" for some reason- and blew up green's battleships.
A few turns of back and forth, and both sides fought a fairly inconclusive duel around that asteroid cluster. Green took more casualties, but red took more "Red Alerts" and had to fall back consistently.
Eventually green had a couple of cruisers, their dreadnought, and their flagship left, against pretty much the entire red fleet. Not as one-sided as it sounds: the dreadnought and flagship had significant CAP fighter strengths which put out huge numbers of combat dice. Okay, so "six dice" isn't a lot in Warhammer 40,000 or Bolt Action, but it's significant in Red Alert.
CAP: Combat Air Patrol. Maybe CSP would be a more accurate term? "Combat Space Patrol"?
For this game, red victory in terms of board control and weight of metal destroyed. In a larger game with different objectives other than "slaughter", maybe the heavier units of the green side would perform better.
I need to figure out the "combat card" mechanics, and what the Star Tokens do.
I'm not sure if it was just poor luck, poor cards, or what, but I normally don't fight out such a one-sided battle. Potentially it was unit choice: green had heavier units but fewer of them, whereas red had lighter, faster ships. I'd be very curious to see how it works out when I'm not in charge of both sides...
First off, lots of models. Lots and lots of models. I like toy soldiers, so that's a plus for me. And on-board, there's very few counters to clutter up the fight. Terrain-wise, they've got asteroids and planets and space-rifts and comets... Lots of stuff to fly around. No three-dimensional terrain in the box, but making that will be a project for another day.
In terms of rules, I think the set would work better for a Napoleonic War-era game: lines of troops that are susceptible to morale, falling back because of the weight of fire coming their way. Maybe even mech and armored warfare, the way range works... For space ships though, kind of an odd way to run a game. But it prevents both sides from just closing to range zero and blasting away. The command cards mechanic contributes heavily to a "fog of war" feel that I don't see too terribly often (in games): you can only order certain units as dictated by a selection of cards drawn at random. So more accurately, it would be a "fog of communication". There's a definite component of planning out your battle and reacting to the other side.
I took mostly heavy units on the green side, and flocks and flocks of fighters on the red side. Not trying to leverage any special rules or play-style, I just like the models. The heavier ships on the green side remind me of UNSC ships from Halo, and the red fighters are reminiscent of Thunderbolt heavy fighters from the Warhammer 40,000 setting.
First turn: both sides fought a small meeting engagement on the left flank, two heavy squadrons of fighters and a heavy squadron of destroyers against a heavy squadron of cruisers. The lead fighters took a pasting and fell back.
The green cruisers are totally not Gozanti transports from Star Wars, and those are definitely not Thunderbolt fighters from Warhammer.
And then the red side rallied, threw in two squadrons of destroyers -I keep wanting to say "frigates" for some reason- and blew up green's battleships.
A few turns of back and forth, and both sides fought a fairly inconclusive duel around that asteroid cluster. Green took more casualties, but red took more "Red Alerts" and had to fall back consistently.
Eventually green had a couple of cruisers, their dreadnought, and their flagship left, against pretty much the entire red fleet. Not as one-sided as it sounds: the dreadnought and flagship had significant CAP fighter strengths which put out huge numbers of combat dice. Okay, so "six dice" isn't a lot in Warhammer 40,000 or Bolt Action, but it's significant in Red Alert.
CAP: Combat Air Patrol. Maybe CSP would be a more accurate term? "Combat Space Patrol"?
For this game, red victory in terms of board control and weight of metal destroyed. In a larger game with different objectives other than "slaughter", maybe the heavier units of the green side would perform better.
I need to figure out the "combat card" mechanics, and what the Star Tokens do.
I'm not sure if it was just poor luck, poor cards, or what, but I normally don't fight out such a one-sided battle. Potentially it was unit choice: green had heavier units but fewer of them, whereas red had lighter, faster ships. I'd be very curious to see how it works out when I'm not in charge of both sides...
Overall, fun game with minimal dice throwing. Definitely looking forward to trying this against a living opponent.
At the risk of recursive URLs, my Lady had me do a guest post on her blog. Check it out here: The Glass House It's a very pretty blog. She does photographs much better than my admittedly amateur-level shots. Give it a whirl!
At the risk of recursive URLs, my Lady had me do a guest post on her blog. Check it out here: The Glass House It's a very pretty blog. She does photographs much better than my admittedly amateur-level shots. Give it a whirl!
Six out.
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