Surj and Fran silently move their troops |
Last Sunday, six of Posties Rejects met up at Posties place for a War of the Roses game, myself and Fran both posted a report of the game on our blogs, Link to my post., Fran's Post. It was quite an unusual game as Postie changed a long standing rule. With nearly all the games we play, we are allowed to discus tactics before and during the game. This as some of you well know helps stabilise your side, sometimes it’s very easy to make a silly mistake or forget a move you were thinking about.
But with this game unbeknown to us at the time, we were only allowed to talk before we set up, myself and Smiffy decided that he would defend the left and I would attack on the right, which was all well and good until we found out we could not talk anymore. While our opponents decided to defend against my large army and attack Smiffy’s smaller army.
The only way we could talk was if our command stands were touching, which was never going to happen, or we sent a message. We were not even told how long the message would take to get there or if it turn up at all.
Postie was quite strict, saying no talking, no nudging or no gesticulating what so ever would be acceptable, if we did and were caught, then the opponents would receive either a re-roll of any firing or melee of their choice, which could prove costly
Smiffy and I were quite happy with the rule and it only bothered me once, I had blocked the line of sight of my artillery due to my advance, so thought I'd give Smiffy a hand and fire on the troops advancing on him. But because we couldn't talk tactics he moved a unit forward blocking my line of sight, but I could still fire on the unit behind.
On the other hand our opponents had a bit more of a hard time, possibly because there was three of them, (I’d like to think it was me and Smiffy who dazzled them with tactics and great dice throwing).
Their original plan fell to pieces as their commander Surj, who was in their centre stopped the joint attack on Smiffy as he wanted to reinforce Fran’s troops who were having a rough time of it, (from me!!) on their left. But he couldn’t tell Richard of his change of plan, so Richard moved his troops up thinking Surj’s troops were going to be by his side, but they didn’t turn up, leaving poor Richard’s troops to walk into a hail of Smiffy’s arrows.
This in the end was a major mistake and helped them lose the game because Smiffy could concentrate all his firepower on Richard’s troops and quickly destroy them before they all got into contact.
At the end of game debate, Surj commented that he hoped Richard wouldn’t move forward and realise what he was going to do, Richard was gobsmacked saying, “ How the hell did I know what you were going to do”. It did make me and Smiffy laugh!!
Personally I quite enjoyed the game, it defiantly made my brain ache, you had to really watch what you were doing, as well as your teammate, and of course watching your opponent moves. I did miss the usual banter and abuse that we throw at each other during games, which was missing as we were all concentrating so much!!
So my question’s to you are,
Do you ever play a team wargame and are not allowed to talk?
Which do you prefer, the talking or non talking game?