Megagame: Invasion from Mars – the end

Dateline 3127.160

General Buck’s HQ, BRADLEY

It’s all over bar the talking.

Army Group West is now all back on the East Continent. With due pomp and ceremony (we got a band in) the Mech Brigade left by sea and then my HQ flew out. I was the last member of the DRC forces to leave the East Continent having handed over FAREAST to the MAFC Marines I got on the last flyer out and flew back to BRADLEY.

Troops evacuated from the West Continent have been deployed into our cities in the western part of the East Continent. If the negotiations break down then all forces have been withdrawn to defend the homeland, and most of the losses have been made good using the Repair and Maintenance Points (RMP).

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As a conclusion, the DRC are all very surprised at where we got to with this game. We always thought that we would be well and truly stomped into the ground by the Martians using their standard ‘Plan A’, i.e. ‘drop a GF division on it’. ‘Plan B’ of course being ‘repeat Plan A until it works’!

We have been amazed at the relative non-aggression of the MAFC forces (despite the bluster and politicking, it remains that the MAFC didn’t really try hard to defeat us militarily). I expected the MAFC force to try and decapitate us, landing on our home continent and forcing a withdrawal by directly attacking our cities. I also expected them to be a bit more mobile, using shuttles to flit about from place to place rather than landing somewhere and then moving on the ground like the rest of us.

From a political perspective we’ve gone from being cast as the bad guys to being seen as having a legitimate grievance that is generally acknowledged, and which the INN reported much more favourably than we had expected. That said, we went to some effort to ensure that the two press players got plenty of material from us, and most turns I personally briefed them about what my troops were doing before I carried out the orders. I also made sure when I spoke to them that I knew exactly what the message I wanted them to get was. Classic press briefing techniques, which I’ve been taught for my day job.

As Jim Wallman said at the start “no game survives contact with players”, and at the end “you’ve all done terribly well” (insert punctuation as appropriate).