After Action Report: Written by Hauptman Krieger Target for today was near-distance bridge over the Vistula, goal being to cut off the retreat path of the Polish, thus crushing their forces between our army and the river. Gruppe was disrupted by fog, forcing a landing until weather conditions clear. Once again, lack of field experience with difficult weather sapped our pilots of their vigor when they had to make a mid-flight landing. AA defenses over the bridge were remarkably disciplined, it is possible that forward observers alerted the bridge defenders of our formation when we landed for the fog to pass. The ground fire was enough to disrupt our dive formation, most pilots released from base height, missing the target. Lt Schultz, the wingman mentioned in my last AAR, was one of the few pilots to land a solid hit, but unfortunately his bombs hit a hardpoint, causing no structural damage. On the bright side, the bridge may just survive long enough to fall into the hands of our armored columns...
Excellent as always! Do love listening to you go through a game!I should mention your #hit was one less...you were using 250kg bombs which was a -1 on the Bridge Target card payload modifier. You were correct in the +1 with the multiple bombs...but the payload wasn't as high as it could have been to really damage it. so with these early models of Stukas you have to decide to go with either a high payload bomb or multiple bombs-in later models you'll find that with higher payloads you can have both the large number of bombs and higher boams themselves...helps with some other missions you'll run into later on in the campaign. Glad you enjoyed!
Ah, I see, that makes sense! Thanks for the clarification. So that left side is the biggest bomb you have, regardless if you have multiple bombs. That really seems totally obvious, I should have caught that myself. I'll add this error to description, thanks for pointing it out. :)
@@ZillaBlitz no worries. and yes it is for the biggest bomb you have. you'll find that especially hard targets or targets where there is just a building or such will get bonuses for larger payload bombs..but if its an infantry position you'll get bonuses for smaller weight bombs AND get bonuses for more of them as you are trying to hit a wider target area. And glad I could help! =)
That was fun. I think you are right that this would make for a really nice play through on the channel. The story coming out of those first two episodes was great!
Yeah, because of this, you got me to break-out and start a campaign of B-17 Queen of the Skies. And you hit the nail on the head--THIS one (Stuka Ace) with the ability to gain and spend those VPs makes it WAY more compelling than B-17. I like B-17 well-enough, but you're at the mercy of die rolls all over. (Designer said it was meant to simulate the way tactics evolved for daylight bombing so it ends up getting that sort of result.) YES, you can decide which planes your fighter cover drives off, and then how to place your various gun shots, and it can be tense and stressful if you are invested in your plane and crew, but it's way less decision making. (Unless things go really bad and you have to shuffle crew members around inside while flying, but I don't want THAT kind of excitement! ;-)
Good luck with B-17! I'm okay with less agency in these games too, if they tell great stories. I like making meaningful decisions, of course, but I'm also okay with executing procedures to generate narrative. Like you mention in B-17, for many of these games "something happens to you" is kind of the nature of the experience.
In the UK, if you want the base game and all the expansions it will cost around £400, excluding postage. I’ll pass and play a Ju 87 career mode campaign in the flight sim IL2 Battle for Stalingrad, in VR 😎
Where are you trying to buy it from? It's an $85 late pledge and there are no expansions for the game (just a playing mat and the option to get spiral rule/scenario books). Shipping to UK is listed as $25. That's about £85 for the game and shipping included. There are VAT fees to Europe, but £315 worth?
This is fun! It seems to me that Lt Schultz, slightly unnerved by having to land in dense fog (which is kind of a weird event - I would leae the stamina loss for flying in fog but take out the bit about landing in a field) and now encountering flak for the first time, pulled up a bit as he was releasing his bombs and missed the target. Bridges are pretty hard to hit anyway. Oh, I really like that you can buy better cards with experience -- that's a very modern take on card management and again goes to mitigating the luck factor. I'm liking this game more and more -- though I share the concerns about it getting stale. But I'll keep watching :-)
Yes, it was going so well until we did no damage on the bridge. Bummer. But I expect we'll see many days like that, and the best we can hope for is to hit the target hard. :) I do like the card system a lot, and with a lot of different ways to upgrade your pilot, it seems like there are a lot of fun decisions.
I would think a bridge is incredibly hard to hit for level bombers, BUT, a DIVE bomber? If it just flies along the road it should never really miss--just might not do much to it. (No idea if it was practical to turn to follow the road, you understand...;-p)
Loving this. I'm curious what the distribution of the "die rolls" in the flight deck is like; is it relatively balanced? And I think I noticed in the first episode that you will construct a different flight deck for each mission, right?
I didn't check the deck, and the prototype is now airborne to another content creator. I assumed that since there are 36 cards in a flight deck, that it was balanced equally over the 6 numbers in a D6 and 12 numbers in a D12. The flight deck consists of 31 core cards and 6 Theater cards, with some theaters sharing the same extra six cards. European theaters share the Europe subset, for example. So you construct a new deck for each theater, not mission. The extra card in the core deck is a reshuffle card.
I suspect the formations, skill development, and theater changes will keep things pretty fresh, but yeah, the only way to test that is to play deep into a campaign. The other element I'm curious about is the difficulty arc. But with what I've been able to play, I'm very excited. :)
I may have to get this, great video! I like the style of agency. Not only do you have choices, but the choices change the flavor. Also, the game is fast and simple. Too much detail can kill a game if the price is a steep learning curve, and a tedious game play. For me the question is how few rules are required to create an authentic feel. The ideal is somewhere between yahtzee and a game that takes longer to play than the battle being simulated!😆
Thanks! I do like the mission length on these. Formations, damage issues, and enemy fighters add some complexity to missions, but I could see playing through a theater of a campaign in 1-2 hours, which would make for an entire career to be 7-14 hours. Assuming you live. :)
Thanks! And not an ignorant question at all. I probably should give some context when I use that term, thanks for letting me know. "Agency" refers to the game player's ability to have control over what happens in the game. So high agency would be a game where you are given good amounts of meaningful decisions that impact how the game turns out. Low agency would be a game where you don't have many decisions and the ones you have have little impact on gameplay. I've heard it used quite a bit when talking specifically about this genre of solitaire game, as one of the observations of the genre is that these games often have low agency, also described as "gameplay on rails". So stuff just happens and you have little control over whether you live or die, or hit targets, etc. Hope that helps!
Absolutely - games like The Hunters/The Hunted are awesome, but the player doesn't really make any truly meaningful decisions (no agency) so you're kind of just "along for the ride," generated by the dice rolls. They make for a compelling narrative, but can be a little boring in the process, or downright frustrating (like when you get sunk on your first mission because of unlucky dice rolls - lol ... story of my life ...).
I actually enjoy the balance of agency in The Hunters. There are definitely parts where you get sucked into a vortex of death or blasted by an aircraft and there is nothing you can do, but on the whole I feel like there are a good number of meaningful choices. I haven't played The Hunted yet, but from what I've heard that one might have less agency. :)
On the damage check, the chart says that you use the result of the release check but you have been drawing another card. So it looks to me like your release result of a 5 would have damaged the bridge.
Oh, yeah, I suspect you're right about that! To be fair, though, there should have been a -1 DRM on the TO HIT number because of the smaller bomb. So that would have reduced the number to a 4, but still damaging the bridge. Schultz was robbed! But yes, I think in general you're correct, that I should have used the Bomb Release number and not pulled another card. Thanks for pointing it out. I'll add that to the known errors section. That's good to catch, too, before the final version. That could make a big difference in how bombing runs work. It's a little thing, but it has a big impact. Thanks again!
Sure thing! It went to Tony's Board Life. The Stuka landed there yesterday. Here's a link to his channel: th-cam.com/channels/UV2dhL0Uf1Gqs0gl-2atjg.html
The "*no bombs on the wings" has an asterisk before it, which means that it only applies if you selected the 500kg bomb for under the fuselage. It's easy to get when you play, but on the video it might look odd because the bomb counter covers up the "500kg*". :)
If you are treading water with Stuka Ace, perhaps you might want to return to ‘Submarine Night’ with the most famous one of all: Nemo’s War th-cam.com/video/R2pdRbeE0x4/w-d-xo.html Regards
Yeah, I've heard such good things about that one, and it's been on my Shelf of Opportunity for a while now. I also want to look at Raiders of the Deep, which is the WW1 version of The Hunters. I've heard good things about that one, too. Before I can think of longer series, though, I want to play through a number of review titles in. Once those are sorted out, I'm hopeful to start more full playthroughs. :)
Ah frustrating , zilla your play throughs are superb , this game looks right up my street however a little research indicates we might not see this game on general release until the back end of 23 or even 24 and dont even think about availability in UK where I am located 🥲 Keep up the great work and I am slowly cherry picking through your excellent back catalogue of videos
It's coming to kickstarter soon for August delivery. I'm in Scotland. If we get in fast it's 60 dollars and then 30 dollars delivery with vat, 99 dollars or about 90 quid delivered via secondchancegames iirc.
Might be worth keeping an eye on Second Chance games. I'm also UK based, and they do currently carry a lot of Lock n Load games (including a preorder for the Bitter Harvest tactical game that Zilla unboxed last week).
@@ZillaBlitz zatu I think is who you're thinking of. They're decent. Second chance games is primarily war games only and pretty much the best place to consistently get war games over here. Lots of game devs use them for distribution of kickstarter wargames. Definitely kickstart backing this game, had a look at the preview on ks and its got so much more theatres available and plenty of gameplay as stretch goals.! Can't wait. Glad you showed it to us mate.
After Action Report:
Written by Hauptman Krieger
Target for today was near-distance bridge over the Vistula, goal being to cut off the retreat path of the Polish, thus crushing their forces between our army and the river. Gruppe was disrupted by fog, forcing a landing until weather conditions clear. Once again, lack of field experience with difficult weather sapped our pilots of their vigor when they had to make a mid-flight landing. AA defenses over the bridge were remarkably disciplined, it is possible that forward observers alerted the bridge defenders of our formation when we landed for the fog to pass. The ground fire was enough to disrupt our dive formation, most pilots released from base height, missing the target. Lt Schultz, the wingman mentioned in my last AAR, was one of the few pilots to land a solid hit, but unfortunately his bombs hit a hardpoint, causing no structural damage. On the bright side, the bridge may just survive long enough to fall into the hands of our armored columns...
Such good stuff! Thanks for creating these. Pinning to the top. :)
Very nice AAR to say the least and it further adds to the session seen. :)
Aah! I really enjoyed this; I hope we can see the continuing career of Lt. Shultz!
I'm hopeful I'll be able to do a full career when the official game comes out. I think it'd be great fun. :)
Excellent as always! Do love listening to you go through a game!I should mention your #hit was one less...you were using 250kg bombs which was a -1 on the Bridge Target card payload modifier. You were correct in the +1 with the multiple bombs...but the payload wasn't as high as it could have been to really damage it. so with these early models of Stukas you have to decide to go with either a high payload bomb or multiple bombs-in later models you'll find that with higher payloads you can have both the large number of bombs and higher boams themselves...helps with some other missions you'll run into later on in the campaign. Glad you enjoyed!
Ah, I see, that makes sense! Thanks for the clarification. So that left side is the biggest bomb you have, regardless if you have multiple bombs. That really seems totally obvious, I should have caught that myself. I'll add this error to description, thanks for pointing it out. :)
@@ZillaBlitz no worries. and yes it is for the biggest bomb you have. you'll find that especially hard targets or targets where there is just a building or such will get bonuses for larger payload bombs..but if its an infantry position you'll get bonuses for smaller weight bombs AND get bonuses for more of them as you are trying to hit a wider target area. And
glad I could help! =)
Thanks! I've added the error note to the description, good to know, much appreciated. :)
Looks like quite a bit of fun. Looking forward to seeing more of this game. Both on my table and yours.
Definitely a fun one! Anticipation is high here.
That was fun. I think you are right that this would make for a really nice play through on the channel. The story coming out of those first two episodes was great!
Yeah, I'm excited for the full game. With luck it might be the earlier half of the back half of this year, so fingers crossed. :)
Really excited to get this when it becomes available, Zilla. Thanks for this preview and keep up the great work.
This was really fun to play, and thanks! I'm looking forward to the release as well. :)
Yeah, because of this, you got me to break-out and start a campaign of B-17 Queen of the Skies. And you hit the nail on the head--THIS one (Stuka Ace) with the ability to gain and spend those VPs makes it WAY more compelling than B-17.
I like B-17 well-enough, but you're at the mercy of die rolls all over. (Designer said it was meant to simulate the way tactics evolved for daylight bombing so it ends up getting that sort of result.) YES, you can decide which planes your fighter cover drives off, and then how to place your various gun shots, and it can be tense and stressful if you are invested in your plane and crew, but it's way less decision making.
(Unless things go really bad and you have to shuffle crew members around inside while flying, but I don't want THAT kind of excitement! ;-)
Good luck with B-17!
I'm okay with less agency in these games too, if they tell great stories. I like making meaningful decisions, of course, but I'm also okay with executing procedures to generate narrative. Like you mention in B-17, for many of these games "something happens to you" is kind of the nature of the experience.
Great play through and analysis.
Thanks, Gregory! Much appreciated. :)
I've been looking forward to these play throughs.
It's been great fun to spend time with the game. I'm looking forward to the full release. :)
In the UK, if you want the base game and all the expansions it will cost around £400, excluding postage. I’ll pass and play a Ju 87 career mode campaign in the flight sim IL2 Battle for Stalingrad, in VR 😎
Where are you trying to buy it from? It's an $85 late pledge and there are no expansions for the game (just a playing mat and the option to get spiral rule/scenario books). Shipping to UK is listed as $25. That's about £85 for the game and shipping included. There are VAT fees to Europe, but £315 worth?
That looks like it has promise, would like to have seen some of the tougher raids, but enough on display to peek my interest. Excellent play throughs.
Thanks, coyi. I'm curious about some of the harder missions too, but all in good time. :)
This is fun! It seems to me that Lt Schultz, slightly unnerved by having to land in dense fog (which is kind of a weird event - I would leae the stamina loss for flying in fog but take out the bit about landing in a field) and now encountering flak for the first time, pulled up a bit as he was releasing his bombs and missed the target. Bridges are pretty hard to hit anyway. Oh, I really like that you can buy better cards with experience -- that's a very modern take on card management and again goes to mitigating the luck factor. I'm liking this game more and more -- though I share the concerns about it getting stale. But I'll keep watching :-)
Yes, it was going so well until we did no damage on the bridge. Bummer. But I expect we'll see many days like that, and the best we can hope for is to hit the target hard. :) I do like the card system a lot, and with a lot of different ways to upgrade your pilot, it seems like there are a lot of fun decisions.
I would think a bridge is incredibly hard to hit for level bombers, BUT, a DIVE bomber? If it just flies along the road it should never really miss--just might not do much to it. (No idea if it was practical to turn to follow the road, you understand...;-p)
This looks great!
When can we expect to see SBD Dauntless Ace in the Pacific?
Regards
Wouldn't that be fun! The system would totally work.
Oh, hell yeah 👍
Admittedly looking forward to this one.
I really want to play a full campaign with this, I'm looking forward to seeing the final version. :)
Loving this. I'm curious what the distribution of the "die rolls" in the flight deck is like; is it relatively balanced?
And I think I noticed in the first episode that you will construct a different flight deck for each mission, right?
I didn't check the deck, and the prototype is now airborne to another content creator. I assumed that since there are 36 cards in a flight deck, that it was balanced equally over the 6 numbers in a D6 and 12 numbers in a D12.
The flight deck consists of 31 core cards and 6 Theater cards, with some theaters sharing the same extra six cards. European theaters share the Europe subset, for example. So you construct a new deck for each theater, not mission. The extra card in the core deck is a reshuffle card.
This game looks great!
I really enjoyed my time with it, very much looking forward to playing a full campaign when its released. :)
I really want this game now. Seems very simple to learn, only issue is... Will it get stale quickly since it seems so straight forward?
I suspect the formations, skill development, and theater changes will keep things pretty fresh, but yeah, the only way to test that is to play deep into a campaign. The other element I'm curious about is the difficulty arc. But with what I've been able to play, I'm very excited. :)
I may have to get this, great video! I like the style of agency. Not only do you have choices, but the choices change the flavor. Also, the game is fast and simple. Too much detail can kill a game if the price is a steep learning curve, and a tedious game play.
For me the question is how few rules are required to create an authentic feel. The ideal is somewhere between yahtzee and a game that takes longer to play than the battle being simulated!😆
Thanks! I do like the mission length on these. Formations, damage issues, and enemy fighters add some complexity to missions, but I could see playing through a theater of a campaign in 1-2 hours, which would make for an entire career to be 7-14 hours. Assuming you live. :)
@@ZillaBlitz if it's realistic, you shouldn't. If you don't die, you weren't trying hard enough! 😜
I AM INVINCIBLE! 😉
@@ZillaBlitz I'm assuming that off camera you ran through the whole campaign, since it can be done so much faster.😀
@@ZillaBlitz Nice 007reference!
Excellent play thru! BTW what ,pray tell, does the term ‘AGENCY’ mean as used in your discussion? Showing my ignorance here!
Thanks! And not an ignorant question at all. I probably should give some context when I use that term, thanks for letting me know.
"Agency" refers to the game player's ability to have control over what happens in the game. So high agency would be a game where you are given good amounts of meaningful decisions that impact how the game turns out. Low agency would be a game where you don't have many decisions and the ones you have have little impact on gameplay.
I've heard it used quite a bit when talking specifically about this genre of solitaire game, as one of the observations of the genre is that these games often have low agency, also described as "gameplay on rails". So stuff just happens and you have little control over whether you live or die, or hit targets, etc.
Hope that helps!
Absolutely - games like The Hunters/The Hunted are awesome, but the player doesn't really make any truly meaningful decisions (no agency) so you're kind of just "along for the ride," generated by the dice rolls. They make for a compelling narrative, but can be a little boring in the process, or downright frustrating (like when you get sunk on your first mission because of unlucky dice rolls - lol ... story of my life ...).
I actually enjoy the balance of agency in The Hunters. There are definitely parts where you get sucked into a vortex of death or blasted by an aircraft and there is nothing you can do, but on the whole I feel like there are a good number of meaningful choices. I haven't played The Hunted yet, but from what I've heard that one might have less agency. :)
@@ZillaBlitz THANKS!
Sure thing, happy to help. :)
I believe the correct pronunciation of 'Leutnant' is 'Loyt-Nant'.
Yes, you are correct, thanks! I'll get it right next time. :)
Awesome stuff... =)
Thanks!
Someone gave you the pronunciation?
“LOYT-NINT”
Except in Austria😂
Yep, I think a half dozen people have pointed that one out now. :) But thank you, I appreciate the help. :)
On the damage check, the chart says that you use the result of the release check but you have been drawing another card. So it looks to me like your release result of a 5 would have damaged the bridge.
Oh, yeah, I suspect you're right about that! To be fair, though, there should have been a -1 DRM on the TO HIT number because of the smaller bomb. So that would have reduced the number to a 4, but still damaging the bridge. Schultz was robbed!
But yes, I think in general you're correct, that I should have used the Bomb Release number and not pulled another card. Thanks for pointing it out. I'll add that to the known errors section.
That's good to catch, too, before the final version. That could make a big difference in how bombing runs work. It's a little thing, but it has a big impact. Thanks again!
Would it be possible to let us know who the game is being sent to? Or let us know when they post their play through of the game.
Sure thing! It went to Tony's Board Life. The Stuka landed there yesterday. Here's a link to his channel:
th-cam.com/channels/UV2dhL0Uf1Gqs0gl-2atjg.html
Hi how are you great video
Thanks, Ateeq! Things are good here, how are you?
@@ZillaBlitz I'm good thanks
Good good! :)
Hi, Zilla; when this game will be released?
I think a safe bet is "the back half of this year". The fundraising will start very soon I think. :)
Sorry zilla but i think you mean "Schultz" 😄
Yep, that'll be corrected if we bring Schultz back for a full career. 😀
@@ZillaBlitz oh i really that this happens
on the card it said no bombs on the wings dose that mater
I forget the details a bit but yes, it means the bombs have to go on the fuselage. :)
Does it say no bombs under the wings?
The "*no bombs on the wings" has an asterisk before it, which means that it only applies if you selected the 500kg bomb for under the fuselage. It's easy to get when you play, but on the video it might look odd because the bomb counter covers up the "500kg*". :)
If you are treading water with Stuka Ace, perhaps you might want to return to ‘Submarine Night’ with the most famous one of all:
Nemo’s War
th-cam.com/video/R2pdRbeE0x4/w-d-xo.html
Regards
Yeah, I've heard such good things about that one, and it's been on my Shelf of Opportunity for a while now. I also want to look at Raiders of the Deep, which is the WW1 version of The Hunters. I've heard good things about that one, too. Before I can think of longer series, though, I want to play through a number of review titles in. Once those are sorted out, I'm hopeful to start more full playthroughs. :)
It's pronounced LOYTNANT.
Yep, thanks for pointing it out. I'll adjust going forward.
so aa dose nothing which is nothing not realistic. apart from that good game
Ah frustrating , zilla your play throughs are superb , this game looks right up my street however a little research indicates we might not see this game on general release until the back end of 23 or even 24 and dont even think about availability in UK where I am located 🥲
Keep up the great work and I am slowly cherry picking through your excellent back catalogue of videos
It's coming to kickstarter soon for August delivery. I'm in Scotland. If we get in fast it's 60 dollars and then 30 dollars delivery with vat, 99 dollars or about 90 quid delivered via secondchancegames iirc.
I think "somewhere in the last six months of 2023" is a safe bet, yes.
Might be worth keeping an eye on Second Chance games. I'm also UK based, and they do currently carry a lot of Lock n Load games (including a preorder for the Bitter Harvest tactical game that Zilla unboxed last week).
I've heard good things about Second Chance, yes. That and SNAFU, I think, is another one.
@@ZillaBlitz zatu I think is who you're thinking of. They're decent.
Second chance games is primarily war games only and pretty much the best place to consistently get war games over here. Lots of game devs use them for distribution of kickstarter wargames.
Definitely kickstart backing this game, had a look at the preview on ks and its got so much more theatres available and plenty of gameplay as stretch goals.! Can't wait. Glad you showed it to us mate.