That thing about knowing the rules

 As part of Phil getting himself sorted out post-stroke, now he has a wargames room he is looking to run a game once a month on a regular basis. This week it was time for a game chez Steele and he wanted to get out his North African PBI kit. For those of you not familiar with these armies they're a wee bit obscure, being the Italian equivalent of the LRDG and Vichy French. Or something similar. The Italians have lots of semi-armoured trucks with assorted mounted weapons. They are, of course, all beautifully modelled if totally obscure.

The obscurity factor does cause problems, as no one* can tell what anything is supposed to be. The trucks are armed with a mixture of HMGs, light AA and light artillery (37/47mm), and at normal distance honestly they all look the same to some of us.

So we were going to do a scenario driven game using PBI rules, but with some local tweaks and new ideas. Phil couldn't find his copy of the rules (he has the last but one iteration) so he borrowed my copy of PBI II which is the last but two. What could possibly go wrong?

Well...not a lot, really, but we did make some errors in the initial choices of who does what. I'd forgotten that Steve hadn't played PBI at all (or at least only once, perhaps) so when we sat down Chris K & I split the Italians, and Steve had the French. I thought that the French were the best option for him as they were defending and seemed to have the best kit.

How wrong I was. The French have really poor equipment, having been starved by the Germans. Whoops. And having an excess of infantry isn't great for a newbie.

I started off with a bold dash across the desert with my trucks, but not as bold as Chris, who looped round the back of the hill, and ended up in the far corner. It was then that it started to become apparent that none of us really knew the rules, for various reasons. Steve, because he'd never played them, Chris and me because it had been a long time since our last game** (and Chris isn't a massive fan on PBI in any form anyway) and Phil because he was mixing things up between PBI & PBI II and he hadn't played them for ages either.

There was a bit of blundering around, with the usual lack of AP fun and games you get with PBI, and what with no one really knowing what the kit and the rules were it may well have been a really good simulation of the Italians in the desert. The French having a not a lot of good equipment, compensated for by masses of infantry, meant that Steve's turns took a long time. PBI can have a lot of player down time for the non phasing player, and I finally didn't bother reminding everyone you should be keeping an eye out for chances to use Opportunity Fire.

I regret to say that once I'd worked out that my kit outranged the French, I mostly stood off and blazed away. Which wasn't really very friendly.

Chris called it an early night, so Phil took over his position and launched a full scale assault. Like a lot of us who have niche interests he rarely gets to push his own toys around and made the most of it. At the top of the board he launched a close assault, supported by a truck. He wiped out Steve's defenders, but took a hit. We had some confusion over the role of vehicles in close combat, as they seem to be different from PBI II to PBI. But no matter. Having taken control of the square, Steve then hosed him down with HMG Op Fire, and killed pretty much everyone. Then in the centre the Italian "tanks" shot up the French armoured car.

Then that was about it, and time for a warm beverage.

I do have a soft spot for PBI, but you really do need to know how it works. It isn't a game you can blunder through and hope everything turns out for the best, as we amply proved over the course of the evening. My own PBI armies (Burma, thanks for asking) haven't been out for years, which is a shame, and I should look at an opportunity to blow the dust off the boxes.

Anyway, next week it's sort of the Battle of the Five Armies, with DBF. That should be a hoot.

*When I say no one, I mean me.

** Two and a half years. I realised this and would have read up the rules beforehand, only I didn't have them. Then I couldn't find any of my QRS.