The Great Game!

If you haven't seen the previous post on this game, check out the setup here: http://tasmancave.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-game-of-global-conquest.html

The Battleboard set to go!

The teams were set, the strategies planned out and it was time to set them into motion - who would win? The teams played out 8, one hour turns in two 4 hour sessions.  It was well paced but busy throughout, with a large clock and a team of umpires keeping everyone on track:

The UN: Diplomats in action: coloured vests denote team allegiance

The first few turns the major powers focused on economic development and established free trade agreements. The smaller nations squabbled over the central canal and the non state actor Orange team became a tool of everyone to employ in their bid for their own state.  Machiavelli would have been proud at the amount of double dealing and backstabbing going on!

Then Team Yellow made a bid to garb the whole canal and attacked one of the Blue ships (my team). We then established a cunning plan to beat them down hard which was fun, but rather pointless from a VP perspective.  Once we had destroyed their offensive capability we backed off on them.  Of course, other countries sensed weakness and soon yellow was badly on the ropes having territory carved off everywhere.

VP graph for the second to last turn: Red was clearly going to go for broke against Blue here!

As time came of the last turn, all countries went for the classic 40k style objective rush.  Red was clearly looking to jump onto our island to reduce our VPs for holding it and pip us over the finishing line - this lead to a rapid escalation and the "Battle for the Two Islands"

Red moves into position

And lands a massive invasion party

 We clearly couldn't eliminate the incursion in a ingle turn so returned the favour with paratrooper drops onto their island in turn.  The resulting battle was an excellent demonstration of Mutually Assured Destruction as we wiped each other's Carrier Groups out, but both islands were contested at game end.  This losses chart shows the increase in blue and red losses in the final turn: Major powers wry are bloody!

This is the unit losses graph - as you can see, Yellow became the sick weak member of the herd...

So what was the end result?  The Red/Blue battle while devastating, kept Blue slightly in the lead in VPs at the end of turn 8

And so my Man Cave will now have a new trophy in a suitable place of honour!  I knew I had done well when the Lad said "You were totally Bismarck"