Skip to main content

Urban Operations Overview

By

I finally have had some nice sit down and play time with Urban Operations.  I took my time jumping in because I was intimidated by the rules.  Not that they are overly complicated, but that they weren't very intuitive for me to follow on the first read through.  After my second read through a few weeks later, I finally laid out the pieces and gave the game a go.  This for me is definitely a game you need to play as you read the rules.  Everything started to click once I had it out and in motion.

Probably the most unique thing to the game is the concept of weapon effect.  Most of us have seen this in videos, movies, or in person.  It's the representation of the shockwave, concussions, blasts, fire etc. when firing certain weapons or triggering explosions.  There is a simple mechanic marked on each unit card giving the details of this effect on the game board and how it interacts with troops.  This helps to bring the game into the realm of educational tool as you start to see how combat in cramped streets and buildings can be affected by the modern firepower of todays weaponry.

One of these other factors is that of fire lanes.  The idea that when weapons are shooting, their bullets, ricochets and such fill not only the space between firer and shooter, but also beyond.  This again gets you thinking about troop movement and coordinating movement between squads to prevent friendly fire.

All in all, I'll say it's a good game.  I hope the following video gives you a little glimpse into some of the mechanics.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Random Movement in Chain of Command

By
One of the first things I noticed in Chain of Command is that your movement is random and not a set amount.  Depending on your movement choice, tactical, normal or all out, you roll dice to see how far you can move.  This is modified for special terrain and buildings.  I didn't know what to think of that until I played out a couple games and I really like the mechanic. Most games I have played allow for infantry, vehicles, cavalry, etc. to have a fixed movement rate which is modified by terrain.  That works just fine.  So why do i like the random roll?  In a narrative element, it takes into account things like your teams willingness to move forward, how cautious they are moving based on perceived threat or even just how much more unsteady the environment is.  Let's take a look at terrain and how it can affect movement. In most war games, movement for tanks is a fixed value based on tank.  As you cross terrain, you subtract from the movement al...
3 comments
Read more

Updates to OST East Front and Vassal Module

By
I recently uploaded turn 2 for the OST East Front play through and thought I would post a few thoughts here.  The second turn did play much quicker.  Well, in my mind it played quicker.  I felt like the pacing improved as my familiarity with the rules increase.  Turns out the video was maybe 15 minutes shorter than the first video.  So it's still lengthy and that may be simply due to the fact that I talk too much.  I'm still referring to the rules, must mostly just to confirm or clarify, not so much to learn as I play.  I've read they rules quite a few times already and I know there is a thing as too much reading of the rules.  At some point, you just need to play.  So my hope is that turn 3 runs smoother. And with that, I did update my module in Vassal.  I did add a button that can clear all of the status markers.  That was a challenge to learn, but I'm happy with the results.  It removes tedium from the game that otherwise ...
Post a Comment
Read more