Two Sides to the Coin

On hiatus again

2012-06-19T20:18:00.000-07:00

Once again we're into the summer, and that means outdoor activities. Especially for Eric, as he has younger kids. One of the advantages of having older kids is that they come and go as they want, and have the transportation to do it, so I get more free time for gaming than Eric does.

All that boils down to Eric having to take a break again as he just doesn't have the time for gaming any more. In the meantime, I've found another outlet for my energies.

C&C:Nappy again

2012-03-05T20:38:00.000-08:00

Eric's choice again, and he wanted to revisit GMT's Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, specifically the new Spanish expansion, which adds the, umm, Spanish to the British, French, and Portuguese from the original game. I'm rather partial to C&C:N, having played it with Eric previously, although it was never blogged, so I was more than happy to give it a whirl.

Not a great deal in the way of new rules, the biggest is the addition of rules for the Spanish guerrillas, which allow the Spanish player to get chits which may be played to cancel the French player's card, effectively making him miss a turn. The Spanish themselves are just slightly weaker than the British or French, and retreating further when required.

Eric picked the Espinosa de los Monteros scenario, and off we went, with me taking the British/Spanish. I started with a slight push on the right, with a combined British/Spanish force, immediately taking effective fire. This must have caused casualties in the leadership of those units, as they were paralyzed into inaction, and were manhandled by the French. (I didn't get any more 'Right' cards until half way the game.) He jumped out to an early lead in flags.

Instead I started on the left flank, achieving some success in wrecking his right. However, my cavalry advance didn't go so well, and I had to retire with a single block remaining from my two units. I also made a good push in the middle, taking some good ground, and killing units. Eric reinforced from his left, and I had to retire to better ground.

By this time we were at 6 flags each, needing 7 for the win. I had a good artillery card, but was waiting for a good opportunity to use it on a weak unit. That opportunity never came, however, as Eric always had his weakened units screened by strong units. In the end, I decided to risk all, as I played a cavalry charge with my single remaining block, and was able to successfully attack an infantry unit, also with a single block, for the final winning flag.

It was still early in the evening, so we switched it around, and had another go.

This time I played it very conservatively as the French, trying to suck the Spanish on my left into my units in good terrain, having a couple of good defensive cards in hand. However, Eric wasn't having any of that, and gave me no opportunities, playing it equally cautiously.

Instead I tried to press in the middle, scoring some good hits to start with, but then my fire failed completely, as I scored no hits in 10 dice (!). At that point I decided to retire to ensure I didn't lose units, even though he was also weak.

Eric had tried a little advance on his left, but his Spanish militia didn't fare well, leaving a couple of units with only a single block. Eventually I found 2 Cavalry Charge cards in my hand, and I maneuvered my cavalry over to my right, where they were unleashed to devastating effect on the weakened units on that flank, managing to eliminate the 4 units required for the win in a combination of attacks and breakthrough combats.

After this session, I don't think my attitude to C&C:N has changed any. I still think this is my favorite of all the C&C flavors I've played. The continual tweaking that the system has seen has brought it to a pinnacle, removing a few of my little annoyances. e.g. units now reduce the dice they roll in combat as they suffer losses - far better. Whilst I've always enjoyed C&C:Ancients, it's always felt very light and short on the simulation front. C&C:N has rectified that, such that it now feels like a war-game; a highly abstracted one, yes, but certainly a game where you are rewarded for applying general military principles. In an abstract way. Yep, several thumbs up here.

The rains in Spain fall mainly on the plains

2012-03-05T15:11:00.001-08:00

This post won't be one of my longer ones. Events in real life have delayed this post a bit, and I don't really have a whole lot to say, in any case.

It was my choice, and I wanted to give the new Spanish Army expansion to Command and Colors: Napoleonics a run. We'd played C&C:N a few months ago, and I may have given it a bit of a short shift.

C&C:N might be the most complex of the entire series of games. The minor tweaks in unit capabilities between the armies lead to a very different play style for each army. The French need to charge in, British prefer to stand and shoot, and the Spanish, we've discovered, need to play with finesse.

The way the game changes how many combat dice you roll depending on how many blocks you have left, whether you moved or not, and whether you're in close combat give a number levers and dials that can be tweaked to modify unit performance. And Richard Borg has done a very good job moving around those levers and dials.

The Spanish army is best on its home turf: rough terrain. It can't stand up to the French toe to toe on open ground, so ducking in and around terrain is the way to go. The catch, of course, is surviving that ducking around terrain long enough to get a decent volley off before slinking back again.

The other tweak the Spanish expansion adds is Guerrilla warfare. This allows the Spanish player to disrupt French orders by turning in a chit. The French player gets a die roll: if it's swords, nothing happens, otherwise the French player effectively loses his turn. The card he was trying to play is discarded, and his turn is over. The Spanish player can be awarded Guerrilla chits during setup or when playing a Recon card. Instead of drawing two cards and discarding one, the Spanish player can draw one card and take a chit instead.

Don't forget to use these chits.

Had I remembered, I likely would have won our second battle when I played as the Spanish. Mike won the game with two consecutive cavalry charges at the end to finish things off. Stopping either of those likely would have tipped the game my way. It was that close.

If you liked CC:N, the Spanish expansion gives a nice tweak to the game. If you didn't, I don't know this will change your mind. It doesn't fundamentally change the game, but gives a third army with a very different style of play. I'm hoping the three upcoming expansions (Russian, Austrian, Prussian) will provide the same variances.

I'm going to have to get this to the table more. I'm liking it more every time I play.

Mike's choice after this (and the subject of my next post) is Breakthrough: Cambrai.

Simple, pimple

2012-02-19T16:56:00.000-08:00

Next on the table was my choice, and, after playing complex treatments of various battles and campaigns, I wanted to try the new Martin Wallace war game, Test of Fire. This is a simple treatment of the first battle of the American Civil War, Bull Run (for you Yankee northerners) or Manasses (for you Rebel southerners).

And ToF is certainly a simple game. With just 5 pages of rules it’s easy to pick up. The player rolls dice at the start of the turn (4 for the Confederate player, 5 for the Union), and that dictates the actions that can be performed that turn.

1 – Draw a card

2,3 - Activate an area with artillery for fire

4,5 - Activate an area for movement

6 - Activate an area containing a leader for either artillery fire or movement, as above

Artillery fire is pretty simple. Choose the area with an artillery unit; choose the target area; roll 2 dice, with a 5 or 6 scoring a hit; roll each hit to determine effect, a 6 being a loss, anything else means 1 unit in the target area has to retreat.

Movement is equally simple. Any units in the activated area may move to any adjacent areas. However, there are some border limits, with the normal limit being 2 units. Rivers and some rough terrain borders allow only 1 unit to move across per movement action; Roads allow 3 units to cross. These are all marked on the map.

Combat happens when there are units from both sides in an area, and may be performed at the end of any action. Note the 'may' in that sentence, it's where one of the game choices come in. If you have 2 movement actions available, you could perform one move then perform combat, and if the area is clear, activate that area for movement again. Or you could choose to use each action to move units into the enemy held area, and then perform the combat. After all actions are done,any area containing units from both sides must have combat.

Combat resolution, as you might expect, features yet more dice. First the defender, then the attacker rolls 2 dice for each unit, up to a maximum of 6 dice. As with artillery fire, each 5 or 6 scores a hit, except now a loss is scored on a 4-6, and a retreat on 1-3. The attacker applies his losses and retreats before rolling his combat. If there are units left from both sides after combat, then the attacker has to retreat back to his originating area(s).

So, as you might expect, getting lots of move actions are vital to force the river crossings and take the hills, where the border limits are reduced. Otherwise you're going to have only a single attacking unit against all those likely defenders.

Finally, the cards. As usual in these sorts of games, they just perform wacky stuff or otherwise add benefits. They may allow extra dice to be rolled in artillery fire or combat; cancel a retreat; perform extra moves; cancel an opponent's action die; or allow a roll for victory and end the game (rolling less than the number of units your opponent has lost).

With a projected game time of 45 minutes, our plan was to play this twice, playing each side. However, I missed one critical rule (that the 'standard' area border limit was 2 units, not 3 units), so we restarted after being 30 minutes into the evening. Second time around, my union forces found the 'Ford' card quickly, which allows the border limit on one river crossing to be increased by 1, and was able to force the Rebels off Sudley Hill to take the first victory area. From there it was a grind along the river to take the second victory area before the game ended, which is when one player runs out his card deck, with a simple majority of the three victory areas required for a win. This full game took around an hour, as we futzed a little with the rules, and we chose not to turn it around, having played enough.

OK, this isn't a game that any even semi-serious gamer is going to base a play date on. It's simple to the point of being simplistic. It makes no real effort to model command and control, and the combat system is laughable to any grognard. However, if you have 45 minutes to kill, or are playing with kids or non-wargamers, I can see this hitting the table. It's easy to pick up, and the action dice dictate your options in any single turn, so you're never overwhelmed by potential options and decisions.

Yet, even at 45 minutes I think it outstays its welcome by around 10-15 minutes. Other than a few choices on the card plays, everything is dictated by the dice, with very few real decisions to make. And that's a lot of dice you're going to roll. So many, in fact, that I'm not sure that any decisions you make have any real bearing on the outcome of the game.

If I were going to a gaming retreat, I think I'd throw it in the bag. For those occasions when you don't have time, space, or the mental capacity, to play anything deeper. It just might come out then.

FAB: Siciliy

2012-02-19T15:56:00.000-08:00

Eric's choice again, and he decided that next on the table would be the recent release from GMT, FAB: Siciliy, the second in the Fast Action Battles series, the first being FAB: Bulge, which I'm rather fond of after a couple of excellent games.

The first thing to note is that the rules have changed very little from the first game in the series. Although I hadn't played FAB:B for a year or so, the mechanisms came back quickly, and we didn't have to do much rule referring pretty quickly.

Additions to the FAB: Bulge rules are fairly minimal. Some rules for landings, and for the wobbly Italian morale, but that’s about it. Air units have been moved from distinct units to become assets, so they’re handled as part of the standard rules. Overall, pretty easy to play, and the rules are well presented, and thorough. Once you’ve been through the move/combat processes it sticks in the brain quite easily.

We spent an evening getting back into the FAB ruleset, playing the tournament scenario, then played the full campaign game over another couple of shortish evenings. Perhaps 5 hours for the full game, with a little rules confirmation and kibitzing. That first game played pretty quickly, although I was a trifle concerned that it was rather easy for the Allies to win.

The Axis player has 8VPs at the start of the game: 5 from areas that score for both players (Termini Imerese, Caltanissetta, Catania, Val di Catania, and Niscemi); and 3 that only score for the Axis player (Syracuse, Palermo, Marsala). The Allied player has 0VPs at start. 1VP is also awarded for killing any large block, one that starts the game with 3 or more steps. The current victory level is determined by subtracting the higher score from the lower, so the Axis player starts with a net 8VP lead. So, for example, if the Allied player captures Niscemi, the score is 7VPs to 1VP, for a net Axis lead of 6VPs.

In the tournament scenario, the Allied player wins if the net score is 3VPs to the Axis player, or less, after 5 turns. Capturing Syracuse is 1VP, and Niscemi and Val di Catania are 2VPs each (1 lost by the Axis player and 1 gained by the Allied player). So, capturing those 3 areas give an Allied victory. Given that the British land in Syracuse, Niscemi is adjacent to Gela, an Allied landing area, and Val di Catania is only 2 areas from Syracuse, it doesn't appear too hard.

And indeed it wasn't. By the end of the 3rd turn (I think it was) my Allies had already done enough for the victory. The last couple of turns were just playing it out. The Allies have the stronger force, better assets, and a higher replacement rate. The Axis have a couple of good German blocks, but mostly just weak Italian garrison blocks. I don't recall any outrageous fortune on either side.

For the full campaign game we switched sides, but the outcome was pretty much the same. Requiring to get a net score in their favor to win, the Allies took Syracuse and Niscemi quickly. However, they had trouble getting into Val di Catania as I rolled like a demon with the strong forces there, rolling above average to score 5 or 6 hits in his first couple of attempts, and Eric chose to call off the attack rather than take the large losses.

By the time it fell during turn 6, Eric had also captured Caltanissetta and killed an Italian large block. That made the scores 4VPs against 4VPs, for a net 0VP, meaning Eric had 3 turns to score a single VP for the win.

There then followed 3 turns of ‘find the weak block’, which Eric totally failed at, as I successfully played a shell game. He also attacked into Catania, but, once again, I rolled well in my defenses and repulsed him each time. In the final turn it came down to Eric needing to roll 5 hits in 8 dice on a 50/50 chance in his at ton Catania. For pretty much the first time in the game he got the roll, captured Catania, as well as removing a large block, swinging the score by 3 VPs for a Decisive Victory.

I have several issues with the game.

Despite rolling like a demon for most of the game, the Axis still lost. If I’d been rolling averagely, the Allies would have captured Val di Catania, and been attacking Catania, a turn or two earlier, and won that much sooner. Eric rolled on or below average for most of the game. If he’d been on average, he would likely have killed more blocks and won that way. Yes, it was very close in the end, and Eric pretty much won with a Hail Mary, but if he'd been able to guess where my weak blocks were, and roll average on his attacks, he would have found the required VP there. The balance of luck was with the Axis, and they still lost. After just I single play I can’t say the game is unbalanced, but I’m sure not able to see how the Axis can win. They have to protect the VP areas, but doing that loses blocks, so they lose either way.

The second issue is that the game is very small. The British zone from Catania north is 1 area wide, and only 2 areas wide below that, so they have no real maneuver options. The US forces have more room to maneuver, but won’t get too far given the length of the game. Generally, the US has a choice of one or two areas to attack in, sometimes not even that. The only real choices are in the shuffling of the blocks, and how to assign assets, not in any choice of strategy.

Another issue is the VPs for large blocks losses. At the end of the game, I’ve seen it devolve into a search for the weak units for that final VP, quite common in our FAB:B games. Just feels a little off.

And that brings me to the biggest challenge I have with the game; it doesn’t cover the whole Sicily campaign, stopping about half way to the actual German withdrawal. That leaves an odd taste to the game; just as you think it’s getting interesting, it’s over. The US forces never get a real chance to drive to Palermo and capture the island; the Axis never really have to play a fighting withdrawal. The campaign just feels half done.

Overall, the FAB system works, and it’s a cool system, I like it. But Sicily just doesn’t work as well as Bulge, Not enough options, too small an area, not enough play, and it’s over before it gets interesting. I think I’d play it again, as with familiarity of the rules you can fit it into an evening, so it’s a good length, but I’d far prefer to play FAB: Bulge.

It doesn't quite float off the table

2012-02-15T09:49:00.001-08:00

For our latest session, Mike had wanted to give Martin Wallace's latest game, Test of Fire: Bull Run 1861, a go. This is an American Civil War game covering the first battle of the war: First Battle of Bull Run. (Or, First Manassas, depending on your perspective. The Union tended to name battles after rivers/creeks, the Confederates named them after the nearest town.)

This is not a big game. It fits the typical Wallace mold being somewhat abstract and rules-light. The board is only 14x20 or so, and it's area movement. In fact, movement is reminiscent of a block game: area-to-area, with a limit on the number of units that can cross any particular border during a move. These border limits change depending on terrain.

Each force is represented by a number of identical 2-step infantry units, a couple artillery units, and a leader. (The confederates have a 2^nd leader as an optional rule that we didn't try.)

The Southern force is parked south of the Bull Run, and the North is trying to take two of three VP hexes on the other side. There are also auto-victory conditions if either side occupies the other's camp.

The turn sequence is pretty simple:

Roll a number of six-sided dice (3 for the Rebels, 4 for the Union), to determine what actions are available to you that turn.
Perform those actions

The actions are Draw a Card, Fire Artillery, Move, and General (Activate your leader, or draw a card – sort of a wild card draw) The first and last of those happen one time in six, the middle actions happen two times in six.

Units move one area per order, and can be ordered as many times as you have Move orders that turn. The cards do things like give you extra dice, provide additional move orders, allow you to ignore retreats, etc. Nothing game breaking, but little performance tweaks.

If you move into an area containing enemy units, there's combat after all orders are completed. Defenders fire first, two dice per unit, generally hitting on 5s or 6s. After you generate hits, you re-roll those dice, with a 50/50 shot of each hit being a retreat or step loss. The surviving attackers then do the exact same thing. There are minor terrain modifiers, but nothing that really breaks that mold. The only extra rule is there is a cap of 6 dice rolled for any one combat. You can't raise this max for any reason, including card play.

The game does a pretty good job of simulating how ACW warfare generally went: repeated assaults of a defensive position until either the attackers wear out or the defenders break. It's very rules light – I knew very little about the game, and Mike was able to teach it in 10 minutes. It plays in around 45-60 minutes.

Sounds pretty good, right? Here's the problem. You roll a LOT of dice. Buckets and buckets of them. Our original plan, as the game is so short, was to play the game once, switch sides, and play again. I just couldn't face another ¾ hour of rolling dice. So we bailed after one playing.

That said, this game fills a rather particular niche – it's a good 45-minute filler game for two people. I wouldn't seek it out as a featured game for an evening, by any means, but if I was at an all-day event and had just shy of an hour to kill before something meatier, I'd certainly play it. And it's, what, a $30 list price? That's not too shabby.

Another niche it fills is to lure in young players. Once my kids have a slightly better grasp of tactics (a handful more plays of Memoir '44 should help) then I could certainly see playing this game with them. The order system limits the “oh my god I have so many choices” problem that can give wargames a high barrier to entry, the rules are simple, and kids love rolling dice.

So, not a big winner of a game, but good amusement nonetheless.

Next up is C&C Napoleonics again. We're taking the Spanish expansion for a test run. Plus, I think this entry in the C&C system needs a closer look.

Sicily calls us again

2012-02-08T15:00:00.001-08:00

Mike and I returned to the table these last few weeks with GMT's latest release, Fast Action Battles: Sicily.

I'd played the first FAB game, The Bulge, a couple times soon after it was released, and felt it to be a very solid, if not quite spectacular, game. It certainly brought some new life to the block game genre with fresh concepts like asset chits and a move away from the buckets of dice, A/B/C combat resolution you get in most block games.

I do remember a ton of hype surrounding FAB:Bulge right after it came out, which eventually settled in, and the game's rating on BGG stabilized (it's now the #84 ranked wargame). While not the greatest thing since sliced bread (That is DAK2), it's a quite accessible and quick Bulge game, and I've certainly been looking forward to Sicily coming to market.

As long-time readers on here are aware, Mike and I played the OCS: Sicily game to completion a couple years ago. I hadn't played any other game that tackles Operation Husky, so I was definitely eager to see how a higher-level, and simpler, game would handle the largest amphibious invasion of WWII.

And so, the game hit the table last month. We took one session playing the tournament scenario to get the feel for how things went, then switched sides and played the campaign games over a couple evenings.

So how does the game play?

At the beginning of each turn, both sides draw a number of asset chits from a cup. The Allied quantity never changes throughout play, but the Axis steadily draws fewer and fewer assets. These assets cover pretty much everything that isn't a full combat unit: air and naval support, engineering, artillery, detachments, replacements, “special” actions that could be a number of activities, etc. These assets are either used or eliminated, depending on what happens to them during the turn. If used, they're put back into the cup at the end of the turn, possibly to be drawn again. If eliminated, they're probably done for the game.

Many times, the detachments we drew filled the role of ablative armor as losing full units costs you a VP and losing assets doesn't. (Directly, at least. Diminishing support over time has its own drawbacks, of course.) Engineers are handy for blowing bridges, and there's a couple places on the map where that's almost a required tactic. (It's not as prevalent as in the Bulge, but close.)

After assets are drawn, the phasing player has an admin phase to do various actions that don't involve moving or combat. Then the non-phasing player has a go. Finally, movement, reserve movement, combat, breakouts, and supply. After all that, you draw chits again (though about half the number) and the Axis player has his turn, reversing the roles of phasing and non-phasing player. After that's done, you do a VP check and continue on to the next turn if needed.

How were our sessions?

When we played the tournament scenario, Mike took the Allies, and had a relatively easy go of things, though he only won by one VP. (VP ranges in this game seem to run +/- 8). The campaign game is the first five turns of the nine-turn full campaign, and covers the initial breakout after the landings.

Turns out we'd played a particular rule wrong (though I can't for the life of me remember what it was) which made things a little easier on the Allies. Given the tourney scenario took us less than 3 hours to play, we figured the campaign would be easily played over a couple evening sessions, and we were right. So, the next week we swapped sides (by random choice) and played the campaign.

The starting situation has the Axis with 8 VP. VPs are scored through control of certain areas, and elimination of large units (anything with three or more steps.) Some areas score points for either side controlling them, some only score for one side or the other. So taking some areas provides a two-point swing, others only one. That part of things is a tad confusing, but if you use the control markers properly, they should be pretty easy to count up. The Allied goal is to drop the VP counter below zero, and back up onto the Allied side – the more VPs you have, the more significant your victory.

During our campaign, I probably wasn't quite as aggressive as I could have been as the Allies, but I was still making decent progress. Around turn 6 (of 9) I had the VP counter down to 1, and things were looking pretty good. However, I stalled out big time up until the last turn, and going into turn 9, we were sitting at a flat 0 score. I had two or three opportunities to pick up a point, and the first two failed miserably. The final assault up the east coast was going to decide the game. I had eight dice that would hit on a 50/50 chance, and I needed five hits to force a victory. Anything less would be a draw. I ended up with a good final roll providing six hits, which actually gained me another 3 VP through unit death and taking a critical area. So, while I scored a major victory, it was literally that close to a draw.

Thoughts?

The game plays remarkably similar to FAB: Bulge. There were very few core rule changes, but the game-specific changes make the game. Rules are in place to enforce the animosity between the US and British/Canadian forces that existed in the actual operation. There are areas of the map that are forbidden to one side or the other, and other areas that have to be explicitly opened up before units can move in there. This does a much better job of simulating the operational restrictions the two forces were under than approached by anything in the OCS title. The difficulty of taking difficult terrain (particularly behind blown bridges) was quite clear. Overall, I felt it gave an excellent feel to how this campaign actually panned out.

After you've given the introductory and tournament scenarios a go, expect the campaign game to take you four to six hours. Probably closer to four after more plays.

Mike commented when we were done that he couldn't see what he could have done differently as the Axis defender. When I pointed out that we nearly had a draw, he realized he wouldn't need to do much more. More play will naturally start fleshing out any balance issues that might result. And given it's only a 4-5 hour game, it will probably see more play than most. It is a tad disappointing that the campaign game does not last the full historical length of Operation Husky – you never get to the point where the Axis started withdrawing units into Italy. It would be cool if GMT released an expansion that let you play it all the way through, but the game still stands well as is.

Recommended.

Eagles striking

2012-01-04T01:25:00.000-08:00

My choice again, and for this week I proposed the recent Academy Games release, Strike of the Eagle. This covers the struggle between the Polish and the Soviets in 1920, although strictly speaking the term 'Soviet' didn't come into existence until 1922. I had played this recently with another gaming friend, and I thought that Eric would enjoy it.

SotE is, at heart, a block game in the Columbia tradition, played over a very good looking point-to-point mounted map, split into two fronts, north and south. The strengths (from 1-4 Strength Points - SPs) and types (Infantry, Cavalry or Leader) of the blocks are hidden, and they are rotated to reflect losses and/or additions. Unlike most block games, however, combat losses are not dictated by dice, but on a flat table, which dictates the losses inflicted for a particular attacking strength. All well and good, and pretty standard so far, but SotE adds 2 mechanisms.

The first is the orders mechanism used in A Game of Thrones. Each player has a number of order tokens that are used to command the armies, placing two orders per front. These include orders to move, defend, recover (steps), use rail, etc., and they are placed face-down, which provides an additional level to the fog-of-war aspect. You can see that orders have been placed on a group of blocks, but you have no idea whether they have been ordered to advance, defend, or fall back. Orders are revealed in a specific sequence, with the player with initiative deciding who plays first when revealing orders of a each type.

The second mechanism is the addition of cards, and it's a card supported game, rather than a card driven game (CDG). Each card has several potential uses, and as in most CDGs, can only be used for one of them. They can be used to increase the number of orders that can be placed on a front, in battle resolution as a combat modifier, to gain reinforcement points, or for the text on the card. This last can be either a historical event, a battle event, or a reaction card, which can be played at the times specified on the card for the defined effects (e.g. place additional orders, switching orders, prevent execution of enemy orders, etc.). Of course, the best cards are strong in all three options.

Each game turn has a card draw phase (draw 6, discard down to a maximum of 7), 5 Operations Phases (where the meat of the game is played), then a Reinforcement Phase. The Operations Phase is:

Initial Card Play: each player may play a card on each front, starting with the non-initiative player for the northern front, initiative player north, then the same for the southern front; in the same sequence any played cards are revealed and the player states how they are being used, either for the Historical Event (after which the card is removed), to increase the number of orders for that front; or for reinforcement cubes, to add SPs at the end of the turn
Order Placement: starting with the northern front again, the player with initiative declares who will place the first order, then they alternate until the full complement of order tokens determined from the previous step have been placed; then the same is done with the southern front
Order Execution: Order tokens are resolved in the following sequence, with the northern front again being done first, then the southern front:
- Forced March: initiative player decides who goes first; blocks move one extra space, but fight at half strength (round down); orders are either 'To' or 'Out'; the former is placed on the target are, and any blocks within range may move to that area; the latter is placed on the area with the blocks to be moved, and they may be moved to different areas
- Recon: initiative player decides who goes first; if this is placed on an enemy-occupied area then the blocks have to be shown
- Move: initiative player decides who goes first; blocks move 1 space for infantry, or two spaces for cavalry; once again, there are 'To' and 'Out' orders
- Withdraw: initiative player decides who goes first; units in a battle area may move out of the battle area, but lose 1SP; cavalry may ignore the loss if only attacked by infantry
- Battles: battles are executed from smallest to largest, treating both fronts together; starting with the attacker each player may play a battle event card, then chooses whether to play a combat modifier card from hand, for a +1 value, or to draw from the deck; blocks and cards are revealed, each side calculates total strength and compares this to the loss chart to determine the number of SP losses caused; steps are lost, step by step from the strongest block at that moment, the loser determined, and retreats and advances performed; adjustments to the initiative and VP tracks are then made, and you continue to the next battle
- Reorganize: initiative player decides who goes first; one block in the area marked with this order may gain 1SP
- Rail Transport: initiative player decides who goes first; up to 4 blocks in the area may move up to 8 areas following rail lines; blocks may be moved to different areas
Supply: Blocks in areas that cannot trace a supply line to a Key City now lose 1SP per block; units that lose their last SP are removed, and 1VP is awarded to the opposing player; OoS blocks can only use Move Out, Withdraw, or Defend orders
Victory Points: the VP track is adjusted for changes of ownership of Key Cities

OK, I've glossed over a few bits of chrome, e.g. Fortifications and Garrisons, but that's about all you need to know to get started. SotE is that simple it's brilliant. A wonderful amalgam of mechanisms that leave you with deliciously angst-filled decisions to make. Fog-of-war on top of fog-of-war. What are those blocks in that area? A couple of weak brigades or are they full strength divisions? What order has been placed on them? Are they defending or planning to advance? What if they're cavalry and Force March, how far can they reach, especially knowing that there's a Reaction Event card that allows cavalry to move through enemy blocks? Should I use this card for the powerful Historical Event, or keep it for more orders? Or for the high combat modifier? Delicious, delicious, delicious. Eric and I played through the first 2 scenarios in one evening, then for our upcoming full day of gaming chose to play the full campaign, it excited us that much.

Now, if I could stop there, this would win game of the year, decade, and century, and could be my first '10' on BGG, it's that good. However, I can't because the rules are just plain goddamn awful. Atrocious. Ridiculously bad. More holes than a holey thing. SotE suffers from, to paraphrase Mr. Ballmer, "Development, Development, Development". Or, rather, the lack of it. This game is 2-3 months short in it's development, suffering from an obvious lack of play-testing, editing, and even rudimentary proof reading.

When I first looked at SotE, I got as far as the first actual rule, discounting the component descriptions, setup, and overviews, before I found that the example of play contradicted the actual rule. That gave me cause for concern, and it got worse. Confusing terminology; terms used to mean different things in different places; examples that don't agree with rules; play-aids that don't agree with rules; game situations that aren't covered. Not just in the rules, but in the cards as well. When I first played SotE we spent about half our afternoon wrangling over possible meanings of the rules, and what to do in situations that weren't covered. When I played Eric we found even more situations that had us scratching our heads. At least by this time a lot of questions had been answered on BGG and in the FAQ/Errata. However, on one BGG thread the Academy representative admitted that he hadn't decided what the rule should be yet. WTF? You've published the game and you still don't know what the rule should be?

Eric opined that the problem is that the rules were written to fit in the available 8 pages, but I'm not sure that I agree. In my view the biggest problem is that the verbiage is just plain bad, and a good editor would solve most of the issues by being consistent in term usage and clearer in the prose, and still fit within the 8 pages. The second big issue is that more (and better) play testing was required, especially blind play-testing, to find those areas that weren't covered adequately. (Heck, even I could see major rules omissions just from reading them, without even having to play it.) Again, judicious word choice and phrasing would have addressed the issues identified, without taking up copious amounts of extra space.

So, after SotE, and the preceding Conflict of Heroes farce (where the game rules had a major makeover from the first game to the second, substantially changing the game play), I now would not buy another game from Academy Games that hadn't hit at least a second edition. I'm done with buying games where I have to throw the rule book out and print a set of rules that could, and should, have been done right the first time. Chad Jensen, with his exemplary Combat Commander ruleset, has shown it can be done. It takes a commitment to doing it right, and not just pushing the product out the door.

The big question is whether these are the worst rules ever? We've excoriated Prussia's Defiant Stand from Worthington Games, Fury in the East from MMP, and The Devil's Cauldron, also from MMP, in the past, but in my view, SotE takes the prize. Mostly, however, that's because I really, really, like this game (just in case it wasn't clear by now), and it's frustrating as all get out to see it substantially reduced by a shoddy job in the final stretch to publication.

Overall verdict: go play this game; just don't buy it until the second edition hits the streets.

Oh, and in our game Eric's Poles resigned when it was clear after 4 turns that the Soviets were going to win an automatic win. But that's not important right now.

Block battle in Poland. Film at 11.

2012-01-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

The last two times Mike and I have gotten together, it's been to go over the new block game from Academy Games, Strike of the Eagle (SotE). This game covers the Russian/Polish war that occurred just after World War 1.

Mike had been raving about this one, and he felt it would hit my sweet spot. So, bring it on.

Overview

SotE is a block game that incorporates mechanisms from a number of other games. It has the standard fog-of-war mechanisms you'd expect in a block game: rotating blocks for strength, and hidden unit information. The map is point-to-point instead of area, but that's a graphics detail. As with the Columbia family of block games you have a hand of cards refreshed at the beginning of each turn and optionally play one at the beginning of each round. The cards in SotE differ in that they can be used in multiple ways: Extra orders (more on that in a bit), an event, or for replacements. Cards also have events on them that can be used at other times.

Combat in SotE has far less wristage than in most block games. Instead of one die per strength point, multiple rounds, etc. you total your strength points, take into account any battle cards and tactical modifiers, play a card (in lieu of rolling a die), and consult a chart. It's still got some randomness, but there's a much smaller range of results. Also, combat is simultaneous. You then compare the amount of damage inflicted by either side to determine the combat winner. A much cleaner system than most block games.

The other primary part of the games is the order system. The map is separated onto two fronts, Northern and Southern. Each of these fronts gets, by default, two orders per round from the following set: (Force March To, Force March Out), (Recon), (Move To, Move Out), (Withdraw), Defend, (Reorganize), (Rail Transport). At the beginning of the round, you have the option to play a card on each front to trigger an event or add to the number of orders you can place. Of the two orders per front, one must be a Recon order. So, if you don't play a card on a front, you can only take one effective action. Given that you get either 6 (one front scenarios) or 12 (two front scenarios) cards on a turn for five rounds, and these cards can be used in many other ways, you're constantly making tough decisions on how to use your resources. You can never do everything you need to do, let alone want to do.

During a round, you first play a card (or not), then place orders, then execute the orders in the order listed by the parenthetical groups above. Where “Defend” is listed is where the combat phase happens. Combats are resolved from smallest to largest, determined by the number of blocks involved.

The first time Mike and I played SotE, we walked through the two training scenarios. I highly recommend doing this. The first only goes through the bulk of a single turn, while the second takes you through two full turns. Enough to see how the cards play out. We got through both of those in under three hours. I played the Russians in these scenarios. IIRC, they're pretty hard for the Poles. But, they're training scenarios so balance isn't a primary concern here.

As we were both off work, we took a full day over the holiday break to play the full campaign. In the rules, they recommend this as a 4-player game, and after playing it, I can see why. It's difficult to get your head around everything that's going on. The full game is six turns, but after three turns we called it. We were running around 2 hours per turn, and it was very clear Mike was going to win as the Russians by the end of turn 4. There wasn't anything left I could do to stop it. The campaign features very different situations on the two fronts – the Poles need to push hard in the south and survive in the north. And when I say push hard in the south, I mean recklessly hard. Russian reinforcements are coming, and you better get to Kiev before they do.

My reactions

I'm splitting my actions on this one into two categories. Pros and cons.

Pros

The mechanisms pulled together into this game work really well. The combination of orders and cards provides a great pacing system as well as constantly forcing you into tough decisions.
The large map provides a much larger scope of play than your typical block game. It feels grand tactical, bordering on strategic.
The combat system works. There's still some randomness (along with tough decisions – if you play a card as a combat die roll, it gets a +1 bonus. This is big when the cards run from 0 to 4) but it's contained within a small range.
The order system provides for a fair amount of bluffing. I haven't even gone into the initiative subsystem, but going first or last, having more orders, etc. makes placing orders a game unto itself.

Cons

The rules. It seems like we harp on this in half the games we play, but the rules writing in SotE is atrociously sloppy. And I'm being kind here. As an example, many times a VP award or some other action is determined by how much damage you “inflict” on an opponent. You would think this means the result you get from referring to the chart as I mentioned in the combat description. But it doesn't. It means the number of actual losses the other side took. If they reduced the damage you did through card play, Defend orders, or simply not being large enough to absorb all the damage, it's the number of losses they took that matters. As “inflict” is an outgoing verb, you wouldn't expect the result that's actually there. I won't even go into the amount of information missing from the retreat rules, or the inconsistent wording on the cards.
Mike described these rules as the second worst he's ever seen after Prussia's Defiant Stand. I tend to agree. They (and the cards) need a complete once-over specifically looking for consistency and omissions. My belief is they locked in on a page count for the rules, and got over-enthusiastic in cutting down the text to fit. You can be too concise, and these rules prove it.

Unfortunately a similar, though not as extreme, problem existed in Academy's other main game, Conflict of Heroes. (Let's not go into them completely changing how the game works from one volume of the game to the next.) So, this looks to be a pervasive problem in how Academy writes their rules.
The cards. Besides the wording issues I've mentioned, I have the feeling the game is pretty dependent on certain cards being used for events. Given the size of the deck, it's likely many of these events may never be seen during a particular game, and one side's fortunes may be completely drained as a result. Now, I've only played the campaign once, so this is just a gut-feel call, but I've got a feeling they could do more with the deck. Things like “The Poles get card #x in their hand during turn 2” sort of improvements. It's not at all unlikely for critical events to go by as combat card draws, never to be seen again.

Final feelings

This game rocks. Despite the horrendous ruleset, this game plays very well. You constantly feel like you're fighting uphill, even when things are going your way. The various design features mesh well. You're always thinking things could turn at any moment. To me, this is a sign of a good design. What they need to do is spend three months with blind playtesters fishing out all the inconsistencies and omissions, and they'll have a winning design. Bump the rulebook up by four pages to handle the omissions. (Example: it never says what directions you're forbidden to retreat. From the way the rules are written, you can retreat from an area in the same direction the other side entered the area. While this is not the case, you wouldn't know it from the rules.)

Mike toyed with calling this his game of the year for 2011. I don't recall if he finally settled on it or not. While it didn't win that award from me (that goes to Axis Empires: Totaler Krieg, not that I played a whole lot of games in 2011), it warranted consideration. Just expect you're going to be doing a lot of rules research while you play the first few times. At least until they fix the rules.

A few is more than two

2011-12-20T15:36:00.000-08:00

On the table this week, at Eric's request, was A Few Acres of Snow (BGG entry), a newish title from Treefrog Games, by Martin Wallace.

Now, there are a couple of things here that you probably need to be aware of before we go much further. First, I am a Wallace fan boi. Rampant, in fact. His game designs just hit my spot. Age of Steam, Steam, Brass, Age of Industry, Automobile, Gettysburg, Last Train to Wensleydale, Perikles, Prices of the Renaissance, Byzantium, Liberté, Rise Of Empires; some of my favorite games of all time. And yet, his more recent designs have me troubled. A Test of Fire looks lighter than light. I didn't even bother ordering Discworld: Ankh-Morpork after reading the synopsis. Could it be that he's falling out of favor with me? (Collective intake of breath from all those who know me.)

The other thing to be aware of is that I am not fond of deck building games. Well, it's not really just deck building games, but a lot of these more recent card games just leave me cold. Dominion, Race For The Galaxy, 7 Wonders. I can barely tolerate Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer and Thunderstone. I just find them totally tactical, and very prone to luck of the draw, with not really much you can do about it. (I find RftG to be especially prone to draw luck, and find that my card draws are totally opposite to whichever strategy I'm trying to follow at the time, regardless of how I try to roll with the draws.)

So, given a potential waning of interest in Wallace games, and a dislike of the central mechanism, just how did A Few Acres of Snow sit with me?

The physical presentation of the game is good. Mounted board, with good graphics, showing a point-to-point rendering of the game area. There are wooden cubes and discs in the player colors, representing villages and towns, and a neutral color to represent fortifications. There are the standard Warfrog/Treefrog plastic chips for money. The Limited Edition, available to subscribers, replaces the cubes and discs with houses in two sizes, and the plastic money chips with wooden tokens. The cards are of decent quality, and consist of two types: Location cards, representing a named location on the map, its connections, and the method of transport connecting them; and Empire cards, which have various types of benefits, e.g. Traders, Military, Leaders, etc. Both types of cards may have symbols at the bottom that are used in the player actions, e.g. boat, ship, wagon, settler, fur, gold, military. Some Empire cards are only used for their symbol. There are also a few neutral Empire cards (Settlers, Fortification, and Native Americans) that may be bought by either player.

There are many special Empire cards that I'm not going to go into, or we'll be here all day. Players have their own deck of cards, and don't have the same collection of Empire cards in their decks, so the sides have a different feel to them, e.g. the French player doesn't have a Settler card in his Empire deck, so one tactic for the British player is to buy up the neutral settler cards. The Location cards are the same for both players, and are added to the deck as the locations are captured on the board.

There were also lots of mentions of symbols there, and Location cards for the larger locations, e.g. Quebec, Montreal, have lots of symbols on them, but can only be used once before they hit the discard pile. Out of the way locations may have only a single symbol. So choosing how to use your more flexible cards drives a lot of the game.

Generally, you have four types of actions that you perform, and you have two actions per turn. The first type is to improve your empire, by capturing a new location, or improving an existing location. The former is done by playing a Location card, and card that matches the transportation type that connects it and the target location, which may be either a Location card or an Empire card. Some locations also have a settler symbol on the map, so also need a settler symbol card to be played. This allows you to put your village in the location, and add the Location card to your discard pile. Improving a location requires the Location card and either a settler symbol card, to upgrade the village to a town, or a fortification Empire card and 3 gold to add a fortification.

The second type of action is to get more gold. Either play a single Location card for the gold symbol on it to gain that amount, or play combinations of Empire cards that allow gold collection. The French player may also play the Louisberg location for piracy, which steal 2 gold from the British player.

The third type of action is to manage your deck/hand. You may select a card from your available stock of Empire cards, often with a cost in gold; discard from hand; place a card in reserve; take the cards from reserve back into hand (which is a free action); or use special Empire card actions to remove cards from your deck or (for the French player) take a card from your discard pile.

The final type of action is to screw with your opponent. Raids are performed by playing an empire card that allows raids, and you may raid an enemy location adjacent to a location you control. (You can play multiple raid cards to raid further.) Your opponent may play a card that allows a raid to be blocked, but if not you capture the enemy token, and any town is downgraded to a village. You can also ambush, which if not blocked removes an Empire card with the ambush symbol, generally military, from your opponent's hand, and it goes back to the available Empire cards and has to be repurchased. Then there are sieges.

A siege is started by playing a Location card that connects to the target location that you want to siege, the a card with the transportation symbol required, and a card with a military symbol. Each location has an intrinsic strength of 1, and fortifications add two to that. Regular infantry Empire cards have 2 military symbols, others have 1. So if a siege is started by playing, say, a 2-symbol card, the marker is put in the 1 space for the attacker on the siege track. The 0 spot and the 1 spot for the defender are colored grey, meaning the siege is unresolved, otherwise they're in the player colors. If the marker is ever in your color area at the start of your turn, then you've won the siege. If it's in the other player's color, then you need to play card(s) with military symbols to move it at least into the grey area before the end of your turn, otherwise the other player will win at the start of his turn. As an action you may play a single card onto the siege, moving the marker on the track for the number of military symbols on the card. The winner of the siege retains the loser's token, and may place their own village token, while the loser also has to remove one of the cards in the siege back to the available cards deck. Each player may have a single active siege at any one time. Fairly abstract, but pretty simple and effective, as you get a chance to react to the attack or defense, before the other player's turn, but you need to draw the right cards. This is where the Reserve comes in, as you can stack your military cards there, ready for attack or defense.

Now, that probably all sounds very confusing, but the rules are very clear (and a lot more verbose than my brief description). There are play aids for each player which covers the basics of each action, as well as the Empire cards available.

All well and good, but how is it to play? Our game had me as the French (randomly picked), and I focused on settling initially, and then fortifying and developing my gains. Eric tried a couple of sieges, but I managed to defend successfully, in the first by having my military in my Reserve before he started, and in the second by having a lucky draw of both my military cards immediately after he started the siege. I was able to raid extensively, sometimes keeping 2 Native American cards in hand to draw out his blocking card, which let me grab a few of his village and town tokens for VPs. Eric had a couple of successful raids, but mostly I kept a blocking card in hand.

The game end is when one player runs out of either village or town tokens, which Eric did first. However, the tokens I'd captured were enough to give me the margin, and I won by 8 points.

I'd actually played this once before, getting stomped as the British player, as my initial thoughts on reading the rules were reinforced by my game experience - deck building, yuck. However, when Eric asked to try it, and I started to read the rules again, I started to see some of the possibilities that I hadn't seen or understood previously. Lots of choice angst as you can't do everything with the cards that you want (or need) to do. I think having that first game gave me a huge advantage over Eric, as translating the rules into game board action takes some understanding and there's no better way than getting the experience while playing.

As the French player, gold is always a limitation, and there never seems to be enough to do what needs to be done. With the British player being stronger in military, keeping a reserve of Regulars Empire cards (which have 2 military symbols), and the cash to use them, seems important. The French player will be raiding a lot, trying to grab the villages and towns that mean VPs, and hasten the end of the game.

So, did this play change my attitude to the game? Yes, it did. Whilst I'm still not overly fond of the deck building mechanism, I now at least understand it a lot more than in my first game, and I can see some of the strategies and options. Whilst I don't think it will ever be my favorite Wallace game, I can see me playing this occasionally, and I can understand why a lot of people are really grooving on it.

Hey, it's a Wallace, did you really expect me to come up with anything different? My Wallace fan boi badge is intact.

Dissing Quebec

2011-12-15T14:26:00.000-08:00

Last week, Mike and I got Martin Wallace's newish (and controversial – I'll get to that) euro-wargame A Few Acres of Snow (AFAOS) onto the table. I bought it mostly due to it being a Wallace game (I tend to love his designs) and the fact it won three Golden Geek awards this year: Best 2-player game, Best Wargame, and Best Innovative Game.

That's a rather high bar. Does the game measure up?

First, for those (like me) who really didn't know what the game was about, here's the scoop:

AFAOS is, at its heart, a deck building game, a-la Dominion. It manages to merge that mechanic into a game where you are trying to conquer eastern Canada (or the Eastern Seaboard) during the French and Indian War. Once you start playing, it's the typical Wallace “war-o” where it's really a eurogame in wargaming clothes. Sort of like Wallenstein. There are even elements of Elfenland built in.

To build your deck, you can either conquer cities, thus acquiring the appropriate card, or claim cards. (Some of which may have a cost paid in coins. As opposed to Dominion, your cards generate cash, but don't act as cash.) There's a rather large number of possible actions you can perform on your turn, but you only get to do two of them. (Unless you've got one of the few “free action” cards in your hand.) Discarding is one of those actions, by the way. So every card that comes into your hand has to be involved in an action, somehow.

To conquer an uncontrolled city, you play the card matching an adjacent city, and a card with a transportation symbol matching the way you'd get from point A to point B. (That's the Elfenland link.) If there is a colonist symbol on the city, you also have to play a Settler symbol from a third card. Besieging opponent-owned locations, and upgrading currently owned locations are done in similar fashions, just with a slightly different mix of cards.

Other actions include creating fortifications, adding to a siege (the only way take a city from your opponent), raiding, ambushing, discarding, and spending cards for cash. (There may be one or two more actions, but that's the bulk of your game.)

On your turn, you first check if you've won any existing sieges, perform two actions, then draw your hand back up to five. Over to your opponent. Game ends when New York, Boston, or Quebec changes hands, or one player plays all their village or city counters. In case the latter happens, you count up your score – points are scored for appropriately marked locations on the map, with their value doubled if they've been upgraded to a city.

Mike and I got one session of this game in, and frankly, we were fishing around a lot. (Picture the first time you played Dominion, then add a map to that...) We fumbled as we went, and Mike eked out a small 64-56 victory as the French.

My thoughts?

As with most Wallace “war-o” designs, it's very abstract. At times it reminded me of Racier's First World War design that Phalanx published, though it's FAR better than that. (This is due to the multiple routes across the map - they're nearly as separated as the fronts in FWW.) There's a good amount of meat on the bones, and repeated plays should uncover openings and approaches that will be eventually countered and improved upon. There's a definite asymmetry to the game. The French cannot produce Wagons, for example, which are required to move towards the coast from Fort Duquesne. So their progress is blocked along those lines. Also, the French have very few Settler symbols, limiting their ability to take those locations compared to the British approach.

And, speaking of openings and approaches, here comes the controversy.

Note that I rarely participate in, or read, online boardgaming discussion boards. I used to frequent the BGG and Consimworld forums, but I no longer do. I just found the signal-to-noise ratio WAY too low. I still use BGG as a reference, but I don't go surfing the messages. As a result, I had no idea there's a community out there that considers this game “broken” because of a certain corner-case strategy the British can use that is claimed to be unstoppable. I looked it up after the fact. (Mike had mentioned the owner of Rainy Day Games had told him about it, but didn't say what the strategy actually was. So I got curious.) I prefer to evaluate games based on my own experience, and not a whole lot else.

Basically, the British player maintains an extremely small deck, then takes Halifax, Louisbourg, and Quebec as quickly as possible. Done right, they say, the French can't stop it. Apparently this “broken” strategy has been dubbed the “Halifax Hammer.”

I haven't tried to play out this approach. I see how it might work, but I don't know enough about the game to know if it will work consistently, and if it fails, what sort of position the British will be in to survive a French counter-attack. Even Wallace has yet to be convinced as best I can tell.

That said, if it does turn out to be true, I think there's probably a couple rules or map tweaks that could be put into play that stop it from being a game-breaker. The design is solid enough that one route through it shouldn't destroy the whole thing.

In the end, this is a solid game if you ignore the mutant “broken” strategy. I just don't think it was deserving of three Golden Geek awards. Maybe Best 2-player. Certainly not Best Wargame. (That should have been either No Retreat! or Fighting Formations. I haven't played Labyrinth yet, so I can't comment on that, though I suspect it might be better than AFAOS in both categories.) Most Innovative? Um... the core is taken straight from Dominion (and Wallace's designer notes state exactly that) and much of the rest is a blend of First World War and Elfenland with a few other things tossed in. Good, yes. Innovative? I wouldn't think so. But then, I've only played three of the ten games that were nominated.

Will I play this again? Certainly. There's a lot of depth here. Am I glad I own it? Also certainly. I have the feeling this is one Jack's going to want to pull out in a few years. (He's not even five and a half, and he's already asking to play “army games” with me. We've started with Memoir '44, and will work our way up from there.) Would I recommend someone else buy it? Probably. If you like Wallace's designs, definitely. If you're ambivalent about his games, wait and see how the Halifax Hammer situation gets resolved and make your decision. If you use cheat codes in video games, don't buy this. You'll get obsessed with the “broken” strategy, and you'll miss the game you actually purchased.

Oh, wondering about the title of my post? It's a reference to where Wallace got the name of the game. When Voltaire (yes, THAT Voltaire) was told Quebec had fallen to the British, he said it didn't matter. It was just a few acres of snow. Voltaire is just so quotable... I've got a perennially unfinished set of rules for wargaming the Great Northern War that I call “The Sword Does Not Jest.” Another Voltaire quote.

Our next installment will look at Academy's recent release, Strike of the Eagle.

Resist, you must!

2011-12-07T16:45:00.000-08:00

Last week, Mike and I got the new Combat Commander: Resistance! onto the table.

For those who don't know, this expansion presents Partisans as their own force. There's a new deck of cards and a counter set (in yellow), along with a dozen scenarios and six new maps. Some of the scenarios are remakes of existing scenarios that included Partisan forces in earlier releases.

The new Partisan force is very different from any other published so far. First, the deck is only half-sized. Thirty-six cards. This has two interesting implications:

The deck will run out faster, appearing to cause more frequent time triggers. However, this is balanced by removing the Time events from the deck. In two playings of this expansion, I haven't noticed time moving any faster than in a typical game. In fact, the time triggers seem to come in a more regular fashion since only one side has Time triggers.
A quarter of the board isn't covered by random hex draws. I haven't actually tabulated which hexes aren't represented, but this deck will only reference half the hexes normally covered by an allied force deck. I'm sure Chad Jensen (designer) has balanced this effect against broken weapon recovery/destruction and objective placement: It's the kind of thing he's good at. But, I'll eventually compare the deck to the US deck and see what's missing.

On point two, for those that don't know: A Combat Commander map has 150 hexes, and 144 are covered by random hex draws (72 from the Axis, 72 from the Allies – I believe the missing hexes are the four corners plus the top and bottom of the middle column). This is the primary reason why you can't fight two Allied forces against each other, btw. Random hex draws would be completely skewed.

After you get over the tiny Force deck, you are introduced to the Partisan units themselves. And they're very different than what you're used to. All other forces have squads of four figures, teams of two, and leaders. The Partisans have Gangs (6 figures), Bands (5), Troops (4), Sections (3), and Crews (2). Each of these units have a firepower (FP) equal to the number of figures, and a movement rate equal to 7 – FP. So, you trade mobility for strength. There are “Muster” orders in the Partisan deck that allow you to increase the size of a unit to the next level up.

The first major rule change to absorb has to do with the leaders. An unbroken Partisan leader has an eye outline around their leadership rating. This means they can activate any Partisan unit within their line of sight. This is a fundamental change that we frankly forgot about a couple times during our session. It completely changes how you organize your force.

The other major rule change for the Partisans is what happens when a broken unit is broken again. In the normal game, the unit dies, and the Axis player scores 2 (1 for a team) VP. Not here. The Partisans draw from a 19-card Force Pool deck. Each of these cards has a top and bottom unit illustrated. If the bottom unit on the card has fewer figures on it than the unit about to die, the dying unit is replaced by the next smaller unit in the exact same state. This simulates desertions while under fire.

Finally, there's Sighting markers, similar to those in CC: Pacific. They function a tad differently here. There's an Infiltration order in the Partisan deck that forces you to give up 0 to 3 VP (depending on the card) in order to mess with hidden units. You have two options when using an Infiltration order: Add a unit to the time track, or put a new sighting marker on the map. To add a unit to the time track, you flip a card from the Force Pool deck, then choose between the two options on the card. You then put your choice anywhere on the time track you'd like. When the Time marker reaches that space, you put the unit in the same hex as a sighting marker, and remove the sighting marker from the game. To place a sighting marker, draw a random hex and place it there.

Between the Muster orders, Infiltration, and the ability for units to sometimes shrink instead of die, you have to get used to your contingent changing a lot during play.

I chose to play the Thunderstorm scenario (#72, on map 50 – one of the new ones in the expansion). This is a meeting engagement: both sides are in Recon posture, and are merely trying to capture objective hexes. (Each are worth 3 points, each side controls the one in their deployment zone only.) Starting score is zero, so it's definitely a race to grab space. As I chose the scenario, I gave Mike the choice of side, and he chose the Partisans (to my surprise, frankly).

Our game had a definite flow. It took Mike a long time to get a Move order, so he was a bit hampered at first, but I didn't have the best results either, so while I was able to claim two of the three open objectives, I wasn't able to hold the middle one for long. The VP counter moved briefly to my side, then Mike had a run and got the score to around 11 in his favor. It was still around 4 or so on his side when we hit Sudden Death. We did the typical initiative card bouncing trying to get the game to end (or not) in our favor, but Mike had the advantage of 7s working in his favor. I got lucky here, though, and the game continued for two more time triggers. By the time the game ended, the score was 1 for me. Yes, One. The narrowest finish I've seen in a CC game yet.

There were two primary features to our session. One was an incredible number of snipers. There should be more snipers than normal when playing the Partisans (they have 5 Sniper triggers in a half-sized deck, while the Germans have 7 and the Russians have 8) but we saw a LOT of snipers. This certainly slowed both of us down at times, and weakened key units at inopportune times.

The other was a beautiful bit of narrative. I got an event that allowed me to draw reinforcements from the German roster. From the options I had (and in 1943, there's a lot of German options) I chose an Infantry Gun and crew. The random hex they appeared in was down in the corner near my side of the board. The gun jammed the first time I tried to fire it, and was eliminated on the next random hex draw. I could just picture it: “Hey guys! We found this old artillery piece in a barn over here! Let's surprise these jerks with it!” They don't fully inspect it due to the heat of battle, and the thing explodes (or misfires, or whatever) the first time they try to fire it, and they abandon it due to lack of time/ammo/resources. Just a perfect sequence of events.

Oh, and we had one Partisan unit that failed every Recovery attempt, and fell back on every Rout roll. I think that unit routed six hexes off the map by the end.

Things I learned playing against (and in a later play against Doug, with) the Partisans: Have a loose plan, but don't put all your eggs in that basket. Circumstances WILL change, and if you don't have a fall-back plan, you're hosed. Partisan units will survive longer than normal, but may have a hard time recovering after they break. What you have is a real big house of cards. It could work really well, but could fall apart in an instant. When playing against the Partisans, watch those sighting markers – the enemy could appear literally anywhere, and quickly. Finally, don't let the randomness get to you – it's random within a set of bounds, and could settle down at any time. Follow your plan, but snatch opportunities as they arrive.

Overall, this is a welcome expansion to the CC system. It radically changes how you think about playing the game, without breaking the structure of the rules. Just realize it could be an even more chaotic experience than the base game gives you.

Resisting Combat Commander

2011-12-03T12:44:00.001-08:00

After a long period of time when we were playing long games that weren't really conducive to blogging, we've decided to get back to shorter stuff and resuscitating the blog. There's been a lot of OCS played this year, in fact we've played pretty much nothing else for most of this year, most recently play testing a new, smaller OCS game on Operation Exporter. That's been an interesting experience, one I'm prepared to take on again, and I hope that our input was useful.

With a plethora of choices available, Eric wanted to try the latest release in the long (and getting longer) list of titles in the Combat Commander franchise, CC: Resistance (BGG entry), from GMT. Previous readers of this blog will already know that this is a game that I have a love/hate relationship with. I kinda love it, I think it comes closest of all the tactical games I've played in portraying the chaos of combat, but it just hates me back. Outrageous things happen in a lot of the games, and I'm (mostly) on the receiving end. In fact Chuck has now referred to it as 'Mike's ugly girlfriend' game (in homage to 'Chuck's ugly girlfriend', a reference to Twilight Struggle), and he refuses to play it with me any more, on the grounds that just too much outrageous wackiness happens, and it's no fun to play. And yet I keep coming back to it.

So, what's new in this incarnation?

Partians have their own deck, which has only 36 cards, rather than 72, so time triggers happen quickly
When discarding, the Partisan player has to discard his entire hand
Partisan leaders don't have a leadership range, but can command all units within LoS
Partisan units can grow a step in size with Muster orders - from a 2-man Crew to a 6-man Gang; however, the Fire strength + Movement Points always total 7, so as it gets larger, with more Fire strength, it gets less mobile
Reinforcements appear by use of the Infiltrate order, which costs 0-3 VPs to play, and are placed on the Time Track rather than directly on the map; so the partisan player doesn't know when they will appear
Reinforcements are decided by a draw from the Force Deck, which gives two options on the reinforcements; so the partisan player doesn't know what will appear
Reinforcements appear at a Sighting marker, and each time a Random Hex draw is made, a Sighting marker must be moved to, or adjacent to, the random hex; so the partisan player doesn't know where they will appear
When a Partisan unit is eliminated by a second break, a card is drawn from the Force Deck; if the unit symbol at the bottom of the card is a smaller force than unit on the map, the unit on the map is replaced, still broken, by the smaller unit, and no VP is lost; if not, it is removed to the VP track, for the loss of 1VP, regardless of the unit

As might be expected from GMT, production is good. Maps, counters, rule book, all look very professionally done, and up to the expected standard. The one omission, that I found to be annoying, is that there is no summary card included for the new Partisan deck, so you have to memorize the distribution of the cards - Orders, Actions.

What must also be mentioned is that CC:R continues the CC tradition of having the tightest set of rules of any game I have played. I have yet to encounter any game situation or question that isn't clearly covered in the ruleset. Given some of the rules abominations we've had the privilege to encounter (yes, Prussia's Defiant Stand, I'm looking at you), this is little short of remarkable.

In our game Eric had chosen scenario #72, and I was randomly assigned the Resistance. I'd only had the chance to briefly flick over the rules, and that bit me in the first card draw, as I discarded my hand of 2 Recover cards, a Command Confusion, and an Infiltrate-0. I drew an Infiltrate-2 card, then decided to check on the rule retail, to find that the card I'd just discarded would have given me reinforcements for a 0VP cost. Oops.

There were a lot of pot shots in the early game, to no effect, and it took half way through my deck before I found a Move order, having previously found a single Advance order, so I was very slow to get moving towards the VP objectives. In the meantime, Eric had been moving forward, and had occupied 2 of the 3 objectives. With his lead units.

I eventually managed to grind him down, timed a couple of reinforcements (playing an Infiltrate order with only a few cards left in my draw pile, so I knew when/where they would appear), and at the high point I had control of all 5 objectives on the map, due to Infiltrating into his back field, with 11VPs in my favor. Then, as might be expected, it all went south.

I missed the draw for ending the game in turn 7 (requiring a 6 or less, I didn't think it was worth the Initiative card), and then we traded rolls at the end of turn 8 as the Initiative card went back and forth several times before Eric drew two cards higher than 7 in a row. Drat. From there he used his big group to take back one objective, killed a few units in Melee, and then managed to rout a unit off the map. (It had missed 4-5 Recover attempts, needing 6-7, and drew 9, 9, and 11 in his Rout attempts. Pfft.

With hands full of Command confusion, Artillery Denied, and Infiltrate cards, I couldn't find a way to get the single VP required, and the game ended at the end of turn 9 on the first draw.

Other points of note: I managed to get 3 '10' strength Fire attacks in the game, and rolled 4, 4, and 5; I used both Molotovs, 12 strength attacks, and they both failed; Eric got a reinforcement, choosing the IG, which then fired at range 4, drawing snake-eys to miss, jam, and then was removed on a subsequent Random Hex roll.

That's probably the closest CC game I've had, I think. Whilst it's easy to view the failure to Recover that unit, and the Rout draws, as the game loser, failing to recognize that the Partisan units don't want to go toe-to-toe with the German units was the real game-losing mistake. I should have been pulling back away from him, in order to not give him the Melee attempt. Ho hum, lesson learned.

We missed the rule that the Partisans only spend 1 MP per hex, which would have helped me a fair bit, and that eliminated Partisan units are removed from the game, not that it had any impact. And I didn't grok the Partisan Leader LoS command rule for some reason. It's pretty clear in the rulebook, I just couldn't get it into my thick head. So I wasn't making the best possible use of my Move/Advance cards.

Overall, an excellent expansion. With the Force Deck and Infiltrate mechanism, the Partisan player doesn't know what he's going to have to play with, and that seems realistic.

So, if you like CC, you'll totally groove on this latest addition to the family.

Two Sides, Take Two

2011-12-01T15:32:00.000-08:00

I'm going to dispense with the cliches and “tap tap is this thing on?” crap.

The blog died, the blog is coming back.

Mike and I haven't been idle, by any means, but we haven't been doing things that are very blog-friendly. That, and I was going through a soul-sucking period at work where I writing enough that I wanted to do anything BUT write blog posts in my spare time. I really had the feeling that period was going to kill every desire I had to ever write again, but that thankfully turned out to not be the case. Playing games and writing about those sessions is something I want to be doing again.

So, you might ask, what HAVE Mike and I been doing over all this time?

Pretty much all of 2010 was devoted to an ongoing OCS Korea campaign. We got through all of 1950 before calling it a wrap. We will finish it some day, but it's going to be rough slogging the rest of the way. I was playing the US, while Mike took the Chinese – by the end of 1950, we devolved into a sort of WWI-style slogging match where I'm slowly wearing him down. I have to be cautious, but there are very limited opportunities for him to attack.

We took pictures as we went along, and someday maybe we'll write the thing up, but don't count on it. Maybe just a photo-log.

The second half of 2011 has been devoted to playtesting another OCS game that should be submitted for preordering very shortly. I don't want to go into details, as I'm not sure how public the information is, but it's a small (by OCS standards, it's a miniature) game on Operation Exporter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Exporter).

Those of you wanting to get into OCS, but have been turned off by the size of the typical OCS game, pick this one up. You won't be disappointed. Once it's available for preorder, Mike and I will tell you all about it.

There have been other things we've done – Mike may be able to supply some details as he keeps better records of what he plays when – but there have been a few shorter games that have hit the table in the mean time. I know C&C Napoleonics and Stalin's War were among them. We had our annual WBC-West gaming retreat in mid-May, so the bulk of early 2011 was centered around that.

We'll be getting things back under way with a playing of Combat Commander: Resistance. FAB: Sicily will be hitting the table right after we receive it (GMT claims it's shipping mid-late December), and there's plenty more where that came from.

For those of you new to what we do here, let me refresh you on the idea:

Mike and I play games. We then independently write about what happened. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't. Mike prefers his games with a minimum amount of luck (With good reason – we've named the effect the Deansian Statistical Distortion Factor (DSDF)), while I'm fine with a fair amount of chaos. We're both wargamers at heart, and that'll be the large majority of the games we play, but you really could see anything covered here.

I've learned over time that I'm really not good at writing reviews. What I do write are reactions. Other people around the net are much better at reviewing games, so if you want that, head over to BGG or some other site to get your review fix in. What you'll get from me, at least, is how I reacted to that particular playing of a game. Sometimes I'll get into why I did what I did as well, but that depends on how many beers I had that night.

Unless life presses too hard, we'll be playing every week, and posting just about as frequently as well. Sit back, and enjoy the posts. Thanks for reading!

The sound of giants clashing

2011-03-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

Our latest game has been GMT's Clash of Giants II (BGG entry), the Galicia scenario in particular. On reading through the rules for this one I was concerned that it was simple. Bordering on simplistic. 2 unit stacking; ZoC stop movement; regular terrain effects; combat has retreats and step losses; supply lines. Nothing that the average gamer hasn't seen before. Meh.

The only thing that is at all different is combat resolution. Odds are calculated as normal, but that's where normality stops. Instead of a Combat Results Table, the odds give modifiers. Each unit has a performance rating, and has to roll that or less to not suffer a step loss and, for the defender, a retreat. This roll is modified from the combat odds, a 2-1 giving the attacker a +1 and the defender a -1, 3-1 makes it +2/-2, etc. The modified die roll is compared to the unit's rating, and if it's lower then the unit suffers no effects from the combat. If it's higher, the unit suffers a step loss, and the difference between is how far the unit (if defending) has to retreat.

So, as the ratio goes up, it's more likely that the defender will suffer losses, and vice versa for the attacker. There is also a limit on the number of attacking units that need to roll at the larger odds. However, the effect is that one side could roll badly and lose steps from all units in the combat, and the other side nothing. A regular CRT would probably limit those losses. Still, interesting.

The only other tweak is that where there are multiple hexes of attackers, then all enemy stacks adjacent have to be attacked. A single attacking stack can ignore other adjacent enemy stacks.

Like I said, simple, bordering on simplistic. So what makes the game? There are 3 components that make this worth playing.

The first is that it uses chits to determine the order that the armies play in. This introduces an element of uncertainty on how your plans are going to pan out. I'm generally a fan of chit pull games, so this is a good thing. Also, as the chit is drawn you roll to see how many movement points the army gets, from 2-6.

Next is when you do combat. You get one combat phase per turn, but you can take it after any of your chit draws. Do you do combat now, or wait for the other army to get into position? If the opposing army moves, it could move away from contact and you'll have no combat to perform.

The third aspect is that each player has two offensives, which gives a 1-column combat ratio improvement for each combat. These happen at various times for the players, and each can be taken in one of a range of turns, generally earlier in the game for the Austria-Hungary player, and later for the Russian.

And those 3 factors make the game. The order of the chit draws provides for a lot of angst on how to move and when to perform combat. Throw in the offensives and it gets even more factors to think about.

In our play the first evening saw Eric withdraw quickly on his northern front, but my opposing army kept rolling low for MPs, and couldn't keep contact. I pressed hard in the middle, and Eric did the same in the south.

The second evening saw the decisive action as the combat rolls went my way in pretty much every combat in turns 6 and 7. My concerns about the combat results came home to roost, and they bit Eric hard. I pretty much had no losses, while he lost steps from pretty much every unit fighting.

By the end I'd maxed out my allowed VPs and Eric had barely made any headway on getting to his main VP areas, for a major A-H win.

Ultimately this is like most games that use lots of dice. If the distribution stays reasonable then it's an interesting game. But those dice can have a very wide bell curve, and if it heads to an extreme then it's not much fun for the player on the receiving end, and there is little you can do to prevent it. Even if you stack up the combat odds, your opponent could roll snakes and you roll boxcars, unlike a normal CRT where you can often guarantee that you don't lose.

Now this would be an issue in a longer game, but CoGII doesn't outstay its welcome. We played over two evenings, probably for about 5.5 hours. Part of that time was looking up a couple of rules, and part kibitzing, so I'd reckon that 4 hours might be achievable with experienced players. So, overall, I enjoyed CoGII, and I'd be happy to play it again. It's a good length, and there are enough interesting decisions to make. But watch out for those dice.

Giants clashed

2011-03-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

As previously hinted, Mike and I recently got GMT's Clash of Giants II onto the table. This is their (now OOP) game on the battles of Galicia and First Ypres from World War One.

The game was designed by Ted Raicer, one of the top (if not THE top) WWI game designers out there.

For the most part, this is a standard hex-and-counter game, and on the simple side. There are some interesting quirks about movement and combat that I'll get to in a bit.

COG II is a follow on to the original Clash of Giants which included the battles of Tannenberg and Marne 1914. The game system provides a basic set of common rules, then specific rules for each battle. While this can be seen as the same model many games provide (rules and scenario-specific tweaks) in this case, the balance is almost 50/50 between basic rules and scenario-specific rules. The sequence of play and supply rules, in particular, are different in every battle. It's an easy comparison to The Gamer's SCS line for this design structure.

And, coincidentally, the CoG games are about the same level of complexity as SCS. Maybe a bit simpler.

We played the Galicia scenario. This was an early clash between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies near the Russian border. The historical clash saw the northern Russian flank pushed back before recovering, and the southern flank steadily push back the A-H forces until they broke. The battle significantly, and permanently, damaged Austria-Hungary's military capabilities. They were only a minor force for the rest of their existance.

The sequence of play in a turn consists of:

Mutual supply determination phase
Mutual reinforcements/replacements
Operational phases (these are random chit draws)
Mutual recovery phase
End phase/victory check

Each force is split into four armies, and each army has a chit that goes into a cup. As the doctrine of the time dictated commands by location on the map, not by units, when a chit is drawn, you activate the forces currently within borders drawn on the map, not the units that started in that army.

Mike was worried before we started playing that the game was so simple as to almost be simplistic. I shared the same concern before we started playing, but not quite to the same level as Mike. As it turns out, the game plays much deeper than it reads, because of these rules:

Movement rates are random
You get to declare one combat phase per turn
The wild swings possible in combat resolution

Let's look at these in order.

Random Movement Rates

When you activate an army, the first thing you do is roll on a table to see how far (in MPs) it gets to move. The number range between 2 and 6, with most results being 2, 3, or 4. The tables you roll on change during the game as well, making some forces faster later in the game, while a couple slow down. This means you might not get to pull off the attack you planned. In our game, Mike's most northerly force (his 1st army, I believe) consistently rolled low movement. As this was the command at the far end of the wheel he was trying to execute, it meant the 1st army was out of action for most of the contest. It simply couldn't move far enough to come into contact with my retreating forces.

Alternatively, it might mean you can pull off a maneuver your opponent wasn't expecting, as you suddenly get to move a lot further than you thought.

In any event, it does make tactical maneuvering and planning a bit tougher as you simply don't know how quickly you can pull of a particular move. Once you're in the thick of it, it doesn't matter as much, but that only turned out to be in our center – the wings needed lots of movement.

One Combat Phase

This rule didn't have an impact all the time, at times the choice was obvious, but a couple times during the game we really had to think about it. While you've got four armies to activate, you can only declare one combat phase per turn. You get to choose which activation includes the combat phase. Between this and the random activation order, there were times you wanted to come to grips with your enemy, but he was able to run away first. Particularly if you wanted to get two commands into position before attacking. You might intend to declare combat after commands A and B have moved, but if your opposition A is supposed to fight runs away after A moves, your combat isn't as effective.

There is room for a lot of finesse and lessons learned through experience from this rule alone.

Combat Resolution

CoG has a combat resolution mechanism I haven't seen before. There aren't really combat strengths, per se. You count up the number of steps fighting on each side, turn that into a ratio, then adjust for terrain. This produces a DRM for both the attacker and defender. (The DRMs mirror themselves. -1/+1, for example.)

You then roll a die for each unit, modified by the DRM. If you roll equal or under the units quality rating (usually 3, but sometimes 2 or 4), it emerges unscathed. If you roll higher, the unit loses a step. A 1 always succeeds, a 6 always fails. It's entirely possible for a single, one-step unit to be grossly outnumbered and survive while it inflicts loads of casualties on the attacker. This is mitigated a bit by more attacker-friendly ratios limiting the number of units that have to check for casualties. (e.g. a 4:1 fight limits the attacker to 2 possible losses.) But a lucky unit can be very stubborn. And as you only get one step worth of replacements per turn, step losses add up over time.

It felt like this combat resolution mechanism led to a much wider range of results than you'd typically get from a d6, ratio-based system. It was certainly unpredictable.

Conclusions

Our battle ended in an Austria-Hungary victory, as I couldn't get my Russians to exploit a gap I created in the center, and some bad combat results wore down any attacking oomph I had left. I felt that the game, while definitely among the least complex wargames we've played, does not feel simplistic. There are tough decisions to be made, and it satisfied on both the tactical and strategic level. Given the random chit draw and random movement, the game seems well suited to solitaire play. (And, in fact, the box says 1-2 players.) Expect a 5-6 hour play time per scenario. If you're looking for something on the easier side that covers WWI, I'd definitely recommend it.

Fury at the fury

2011-02-09T22:46:00.000-08:00

In the past few sessions Eric and I have been playing Fury in the East (BGG entry), a one-map WWII East Front game from MMP that covers the first 9 months of the Barbarossa Campaign. This game was part of Operations Magazine Special Edition #3, their yearly special that features a complete game, sometimes more than just one, as well as lots of updates, corrections, and variants for existing games.

FitE is a reprinting of the Japanese game G-Barbarossa (BGG entry), with updated graphics. It's a fairly strait-forward, corps level, move-fight-panzer move, locking ZoCs, odds combat, column shifts for terrain/supply type of game. However, there are a few wrinkles:

Only German panzer units move in the second movement phase
German panzers may move out of a ZoC
Units performing Rail or Strategic movement may move out of a ZoC, as long as at least one unit is left behind
For Axis combat is optional; for Soviets it is mandatory; all enemy units exerting a ZoC must be attacked; all units in an enemy ZoC must perform an attack
Soviet Leaders have hidden strengths, and must be revealed to provide leadership to Soviet units; some leaders have no capability, and are removed immediately to the pool; Leaders destroyed in combat are out of the game
Soviet combat units have to be in range of a Leader, otherwise movement rates halved, negative column shift applies; panzers may ignore infantry ZoCs with no Leader
Terrain effects only apply to the Soviets, in terms of plus/minus column shifts
Axis units not only have to trace supply to a supply source, but also have to trace to one of three supply heads
There are different CRTs for each side; the Soviets taking losses; the Axis having retreats, with option to take a step loss instead
Weather is a single condition affecting the whole map; also controls how many Luftwaffe units are available
Axis player gains VPs for controlling Soviet cities; capturing Moscow is an automatic Axis victory
Axis player has Hitler mandated objectives in turns 2-7; not achieving these are -5VPs per objective

The major problem is the rules just totally SUCK. Without doubt, this is the worst set of rules I think I've seen for any game I've played. (I believe that the S&T game Frigate had worse rules, but I never played that one.) Terminology issues, major omissions all over the place. Now this is a magazine game, and perhaps there should be some allowance made, but the game is effectively unplayable with the rules that came with it. Did no-one even attempt to blind playtest this from the proposed rules? Even worse is that as a reprint from a previous game there are so many glaring omissions. Did no-one make a comparison to the original game rules?

On the plus side, the developer, Adam Starkweather, has been very active in supporting the game over on ConSimWorld, responding to questions very quickly. However, he does have a habit of shooting from the hip and making pronouncements without going back and looking carefully at the rules. Several times he's made rulings, and then had to reverse them in later posts. That gives no confidence in any of his responses. He's also said 'If not mentioned in the rules, that’s fine.' Trouble is, the rules miss out so many critical items that you can't take that attitude.

And all this is a damn shame, because FitE is a very decent game, and does a very good job of modeling, at a high level, the differences in the forces, and the nature of the Barbarossa offensive. The game flows easily, with options for both sides and plenty to think about. The initial Axis successes slowly grind to a halt in the face of mounting Soviet forces, and the switch in the player turn order nicely reflects the change in balance caused by the winter. I've been playing it quite a bit recently (solo, as well as with Eric) and I've had a blast doing so.

So, track down this gem, get all the errata and rulings from the ConSim World forum, which has been nicely collated into a single document here, get the beer and pretzels out and have a blast.

Next up is Galicia from GMT's Clash of Giants II (BGG entry). Due to a gaming weekend and scheduling issues, we've had to have a couple weeks off, but are due to get back to it next week.

Disappointment in the East

2011-02-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

Mike and I gave Fury in the East another go. After the first aborted affair, we got our questions (mostly) answered, and gave the game a second shot. We fully expected our play to last at least a couple nights as reported play times had been in the 1 hour per turn range. 10 turns means likely three nights unless Moscow falls earlier.

The first night saw Mike with slightly less progress as our first game, but with slightly more kills. We got through three turns that first night (as opposed to two the first time we played) and things were feeling smoother. We still had a few niggling issues, but nothing major.

During the middle of turn five, we suddenly realized we'd completely forgotten about the Russian militia. (Did I mention they're completely missing from the rulebook?) It was impossible to backtrack at that point, and so we bagged it. It's likely Mike would have won, but it's impossible to say at that point, as the bad weather was just arriving.

Thoughts on gameplay, from the Russian perspective:

You have one job in the first three turns or so. Run. Make sure you know when you can leave negated EZOCs, and get out of dodge. Leave sacrificial lambs as speed bumps to slow the Germans down, and get as much out of there as you can. Particularly the leaders. It violates every instinct you have to do this, as you have this feeling you need to keep units around in force as much as you can to slow the Germans down, but you can't. You need those units much, much further East.

And herein lies the problem. You're very much at the whim of the random Leader draw during setup. In our second play, I didn't draw a single *-rated leader on the map. This meant every leader Mike was able to kill on the first turn (and it's a lot, there's no way around this) hurt. If you're lucky and get two or three *-rated leaders in that initial setup, you'll fare much better later on. The only way you can try to mitigate this is to plan your deployment with two things in mind: a ZOC net with weak troops to slow the German advance, and everything else placed with retreat in mind.

I haven't played enough to really give good advice on how to do this. Here, of course, lies the problem.

I likely won't play this game again until they can revise the rules. They're basically unusable as printed. Major rules are left out (+3 movement cost for overruns and any mention of Militia units come first to mind) and they're horribly organized.

And, really, it's a shame. This is a good little game destroyed by horribly written rules. I lower my quality expectations a tad when looking at magazine games, but this falls well below even these lowered standards. Hopefully, MMP sees fit to published revised rules. Errata won't do it – they need a new edition. There are enough niggling things slightly incorrect that it makes you question everything else you read, no matter how clearly written. It's just too frustrating.

After Mike and I stopped playing, we had a little discussion about the state of rules writing these days. Sadly, I feel it's declining. I can think of only three designers where I can count on a solid set of rules with a minimum of fuss: Dean Essig, Ed Beach, and Chad Jensen. Other designers may have occasional good or great sets of rules, but aren't consistent enough to hang with those three. Wargames these days have almost fallen to the level of software: never use the very first version of anything; wait for the update. And, the inevitable result of that is that publishers seem to be counting on that update to fix problems they've missed the first time around. It's a nasty spiral. But at least, most companies are savvy enough to understand that keeping those rules updated and electronically available is a good thing, and makes customers (eventually) happy.

Which is what I hope MMP does here, because I think you guys would enjoy this game after they fix the rules.

Familiar Ground

2011-01-20T17:39:00.000-08:00

The last two weeks, Mike and I have been playing Fury in the East game included in the most recent Operations Special Issue published by Multi-Man in the summer of 2010.

This is a remake of a game originally published in Japan as “G-Barbarossa” and is originally designed by Ginichiro Suzuki. It covers the initial phases of the invasion. The game is ten turns, and all but the first two cover four weeks. The first two turns cover two weeks each.

In many ways, this is a standard Barbarossa game. It probably most resembles Red Star Rising of all the eastern front games I've played. While it doesn't use a variant of the Victory in the West system as in RSR, it does incorporate randomness into the Russian combat units and leaders. It's at a bit higher scale, though; more like Defiant Russia in scope.

Two weeks ago, Mike and I got two turns into the game in an evening, and compiled a large list of rules questions. While two-thirds of them had been answered on CSW, we still had a number of other issues to resolve.

After posting questions and getting very quick answers (one of which conflicted with a prior response on CSW), we proceeded to restart the game, with myself taking the Russians again versus Mike's Axis forces. We got three turns in this time, and didn't really run into any new questions.

While I'll post more information about the game next week, I do want to get a few things posted first.

Keep in mind, this is a magazine game. As such, I do have a bit of a lower bar for quality, proofreading, etc. While the production quality is good (all components are good quality, and I know of zero counter or map errata) the rules need restructuring and at least one more edit pass.

There are some frightening omissions. First, overruns cost an extra 3 MP beyond the movement cost of the defending hex. This isn't in the rulebook – it's in the minimal posted errata. Given most German units have 8MP, this is a massive mistake. The Soviets are required to make mandatory attacks against adjacent German units during their combat phase. However, the rules state that all German units in Russian zones of control must be attacked. A clarification on CSW has modified that saying all Russian units in German zones of control must attack as well. This is very significant if you're trying to preserve units or leaders. (And as Russian units cannot move if in an enemy zone of control, preservation is important.)

I'll leave final thoughts on the game until my next post, but I'll leave you today with this: If you attempt to play this game, do your CSW forum research first, and play through the first two turns. Ask questions, then start over. You cannot get this game right the first time from the rules as written.

On a different note, it might be worth the effort. More to come.

Washington wins his war - again

2010-12-30T22:05:00.000-08:00

As promised last week, on the table this time was Washington's War (BGG entry) from GMT, a remake of the old Avalon Hill game, We The People (BGG entry). I'd never played the original before, but had played WW once with Chris B, but it was far enough back that I don't recall a huge deal about it. I think I played the Americans, and I recorded that Chris won, but that's about it.

Looking at the game itself first, like C&C:Nappy from last week, it's a great production. A sumptuous hard board worthy of any Euro game, a good deck of cards and some colorful pieces. There are two sets of counters provided for the generals - large ones that fit in the provided stands, and smaller ones like more traditional war-game counters. More pieces for the combat strength points (CUs) and double sided Political Control (PC) markers. There are also some area control markers, some of which were printed with the same nationality on both sides of the counter, which means that you can't correctly mark control of the areas if one side gets more than 8 areas. Replacement counters were provided in their magazine, C3i, but they're of the smaller 1/2" size. OK, that's a minor issue, but still a trifle annoying. All well and good so far, then, but how does it play?

Let's start with a brief overview of the basic mechanisms for those of you unfamiliar with this CDG. The map features 14 Areas (the 13 Colonies plus Canada), with each area containing a number of Spaces. These Spaces are connected by lines which allow movement between the Spaces. There are three types of cards; Event cards; Battle cards; and Operation Cards (Ops), which have a number from 1-3. Each player is dealt a hand of 7 at the start of each game turn, and they take turns to play an Ops or Event card, with the American player deciding who plays first (unless the British player has a Campaign Event card, and chooses to reveal it). In CDG terms it's closer to Unhappy King Charles (BGG entry) than WW2: Barbarossa to Berlin (BGG entry), where the cards have both Ops and Events, and you choose to use one or the other.

An Event card allows the player to take a special action as detailed on the cards, which may allow the placement or removal of one or more Political Control (PC) markers, or other special event to occur, including activating multiple generals in a play (Campaign). These are separated by nationality, and getting a hand of your opponent's event cards is not good as they can only be used for very limited actions.

An Ops card allows you to do one of several things; place PC markers; take reinforcements; or move a general/army. The first are used to take control of Spaces, with each of the 13 Colonies (plus Canada) having a varying number of Spaces. The player with the most controlled Spaces has control of the Colony. What's interesting here is that the placement rules are asymmetrical, with the British player needing to place PC markers adjacent to an existing PC, but the American player can place them in any empty Space. Both players may place a PC marker in a Space occupied by a friendly army, removing any opposing PC marker.

Reinforcements are also asymmetrical. The British player gets a varying number of CUs by game turn (listed on the game turn track, e.g. 3 in GT1, 8 in GT2, 1 in GT3), but they are placed in a Reinforcement box, and once during the game turn may move any number of CUs from the box to a port, along with a general. Do do this, however, the player must play an Ops card of any value. The American player, however, can receive reinforcements up to twice per turn, again paying an Ops card to do so, but receives CUs to the value of the Ops card each time, and they can be placed in any single space not containing a British playing piece. A general may also be placed at the same time.

Finally, the Ops card may be used to activate a general, but the Ops card value must be equal to or higher than the general's Strategy Rating. Most of the American generals have a value of 1, so any Ops card can be used, but most of the British generals have a 3 rating so they are harder to get moving.

Battles are fairly abstracted, and occur when an army moves into the Space occupied by an opposing army. The Americans may attempt to intercept a British army moving into an adjacent Space, as well as evade combat, at the cost of retreating and giving up the Space. If a battle does occur, each side calculates their strength - the number of CUs, plus modifiers for control of the Colony (militia), if it's a port Space (for the British player - British Navy intervention), British regulars, and play of a Battle card - which gives a +2. There is also a modifier for the Battle Rating of the general (which are from 1-6), but the actual rating may be either full or half, depending on a die roll for that battle (1-3 = half; 4-6=full), but may never be more than the number of CUs in the army. To this total is added a d6 die roll for each side, and the player with the higher grand total wins the battle. The loser of the battle has to retreat one space, and loses a variable number of CUs (1-3=1; 4-5=2; 6=3), and the winner may lose a CU based on the Agility Rating of the opposing general and a die roll (AR3:1-4; AR2:1-3; AR1:1-2). Battles are the biggest change from the original version of the game, which used battle cards in the same manner as Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage (BGG entry).

The end of each turn has a supply/attrition phase, where isolated PC markers are removed, each British army north of the wintering line loses half its CUs if not in a wintering space, and all American armies lose a CU (except for any army with Washington). The French may also come in on the side of the Americans.

The game ends at the end of the ninth turn (1783), unless a special Event card is played, which makes the game end earlier, representing the fall of the British government. There are 5 such cards in the game, and they have to be played as events, they may not be discarded, and they cause the game to end either in 1779, 1780, 1781, 1782, or 1783, i.e the game may be as short as 5 turns or run as long as the full 9 turns. Having a majority of the spaces in a Colony gives the player control of the Colony, and the winner is the player with control of the most Colonies.

In our game my opening hand consisted of 2 2Ops cards, a 1Ops card, a British Event card, 2 American Event cards, and an American Battle card. Not exactly a great starting hand. Eric opened by using Washington to attack my single general on the map, Howe. With both armies having 5CUs, he gained the advantage with a full Battle Rating to my half, and the die rolls gave him the battle win. To exacerbate the result, my roll caused 2CU losses, but despite facing Howe's 3 Agility Rating he did not suffer any CU losses.

This gave me 3 problems; Howe is now in a non-wintering space, so will suffer attrition in the winter; as Howe has a Strategy Rating of 3, I have no Ops cards to activate him with; and I'm at risk from Washington attacking again and totally eliminating Howe. If I reinforce Howe with my 3CUs available in the reinforcement box I'll probably persuade Washington not to attack, but I'm going to lose half of them to winter attrition. In the end I choose to place PC markers in the south, taking away the American control. We jockey back and fore for control for the rest of the turn, and I use the 1Ops card to bring in an army in the south, and I lose 1CU from Howe from attrition in the wintering phase.

The second turn sees the British get 8CUs in reinforcements, and with a pair of 3Ops cards in hand I use my one reinforcement action to boost Howe with a 1Ops card. I then try to hunt down an American army, but he successfully evades (required 1-4 on d6). At this point I make a really stupid mistake, using my other 3Ops card to place PC markers, forgetting that Howe is still on a non-wintering space, so he loses another 2CUs to attrition at the end of the turn.

In the third turn Eric chooses to move first before I can get Howe out of harm's way, and pounds him good. I place a new army in New York Colony to try to cause a diversion, but Eric isn't falling for it, and over the two actions Howe's lost his army and is removed from the board. He then moves to block my army I just placed, while I can to little but place PC markers and actually gain control of a couple more Colonies. We'd missed placing the extra cards (the Declaration of Independence and Benjamin Franklin) into the deck on the second turn so shuffled them at the start of this turn, and Eric immediately draws both of them. The former allows him to place a PC marker in each Colony, swinging the balance to him. (I think that put it at 7-6 Colonies in his favor.), and the latter moves the French intervention marker 4 spaces up the track. (There are 10 spaces on the track, and it moves forward for each battle won by the Americans.) With all the battles I'd lost this was enough to have French intervention at the end of the turn.

However, I also had drawn one of the Special Event cards that indicates the fall of the British government in 1780, which shortens the game by 3 turns. Even worse, Eric had drawn the card that ends the game in 1779, meaning that the game will end in the earliest possible turn and there are only 2 more turns to play, unless another Special Event card is drawn.

The fourth turn sees me draw another four American Event Cards, a 3Ops, a 2Ops, and a 1Ops card, and I know the game is over for me, barring some sort of miracle. That ain't happening as Eric draws a full hand of Ops cards, and his armies go a-hunting. With the board almost full of PC markers, and with the limitations on the placement of PC markers for the British, the Event cards are useless to me, and I have to watch as Eric takes control of Colony after Colony. Indeed, even my last 2Ops card is played as a discard, as I am unable to do anything with it.

At the start of the final turn Eric is up 9-4 on Colonies, with one undecided, and way more CUs on the board. Neither of us draws any Special Event cards, and although I gain a Colony in the North, I lose the one in the south when Eric pounds my army there in a continual wave of attacks, as although I win the first battle (the first time in the game) we both lose a single CU. He also takes the undecided Colony to run out a solid 10-4 winner.

Here's the ending position:

We only missed two things in our game:

two extra Event cards are added to the deck at the start of the second turn - we added them at the start of the third turn
the British CU in the NW of the map isn't on a wintering space, and should have been rolling for attrition each turn

However, I missed several rules that might have helped me:

after playing a Battle card you draw a replacement (I missed that only once, but it meant that Eric had 2 plays at the end of the second turn when I had no cards in hand)
you can play an opponent's Event card in a battle for a +1 modifier, but don't draw a replacement card (this would have helped me in the first two turns)
there are overruns of weak forces - I left 1CU in the north, thinking that it would block him, but needed more, which I did have available
you can create a queue of Ops card play to activate a general - this would have allowed me to activate Howe in the first turn, although I'm not sure what I could have done with him that was useful, and it uses up 2 actions
discarding an Event Card allows the removal of an American PC marker adjacent to a British PC marker (I would have expected this to be included in the list of available 'PC Actions' for discarding an opponent's Event card)
ports are considered adjacent to each other for the British player - this means that all my discards for no use could have been used to place British PC markers, and, when combined with the above, to remove American PC markers

Pretty much everything in the game went wrong for me. From the die rolls to the card draws. Going back and looking at the deck, there are 12 Event cards each, 4 British Battle cards to 5 American, 2 Mandatory Events, 5 game end Special Events, and 4 Campaign Event cards (3 Minor, 1 Major), leaving 66 Ops cards (22 of each value). From my draws, I think this one is another statistical outlier, so I'm not going to hold too much over it.

WW is certainly at the simpler end of the CDG scale in my view. Unlike Twilight Struggle (BGG entry) or Labyrinth (BGG entry), there is less in the cards themselves, and you don't need to be aware of potential 'killer' combos, it's more in the Ops.

I really enjoy playing this one, as I do Unhappy King Charles, and all the CDGs, really. It's certainly a very interesting game, and I like the options available, the jockeying for position of the PC markers, the maneuvering of the armies. Every card play feels important.

Another great point is the game length. We finished in just around 2 hours, but really only played half a game, so it could run up to ~4 hours, likely less, but it easily plays in an evening. Knowing the rules better, I'd really like to take another swing at it. If you're thinking of trying a CDG I think this is a great starting choice.

Next up, after a week's break, is Fury in the East (BGG entry) from MMP, a one-map WW2 East Front game that gets gets good buzz. I'm looking forward to that one.

Valley Forge wasn't needed this time

2010-12-30T13:46:00.000-08:00

Most categories of wargames can point to a single game that started them off. For block wargames, for example, you can point to either L'attaque or Napoleon as being the starting points. For hex-n-counter, many point to Tactics as the originator.

For card-driven wargames, there's a clear start: We the People. Published by Avalon Hill in 1994, Mark Herman's design paved new ground for what was possible in a wargame. Looking back on it now, it is still the simplest game in the genre (maybe... 1960's rather simple as well) and holds up pretty well given how different it was at the time.

That said, availability of We the People is a bit lacking. Herman had wanted to reprint it. As Hasbro now owns the rights, it appears the negotiations weren't going well. So, Herman re-designed it as Washington's War. He tweaked a few things (not many) from the original to the new release. Here's the differences:

Battle cards are gone. You used to play cards from your hand to resolve battles. That mechanic – which I hated – is now gone in favor of a contested die roll with modifiers.

You can now discard opponent events during a battle for a modifier.

If your opponent plays one of your events for any purpose other than discarding, you can swap an Ops card for it to play the event later in the turn.

An overrun rule was added that keeps 1-strength armies from being an overly strong blockade.

And that's really about it. If you know how to play We the People, you know how to play this. A quick run-through on the rules should be all you need. That said, I'd only played WtP a couple times, and not for many years.

Things to watch for if you're playing for the first time:

Take care about winter quarters

Watch for political isolation

The Brits get a LOT of positive combat modifiers

I randomly drew the Americans, and off we went.

Early in the first turn, Mike attacked Washington's forces with Howe, trying to take advantage of those early British modifiers. Combat in the late 18th century was a bit of an unknown affair. You never knew how well your forces (or commander) for that matter would perform. To sort of simulate this, one of the first things you do is roll for commander effectiveness. It's a 50/50 roll that if you fail cuts your commander's rating in half. Mike failed his roll on this first attack while I passed mine. This effectively eliminated the British DRM advantage and made the combat essentially a toss up. I won it, forced him to retreat, then pressed the advantage before he could reinforce.

From that point forward in the game, I held a military advantage. My cards matched well with what I was trying to do, Mike's did not. I think I only drew three British events the entire game, Mike had four American events in a single turn.

Mike did a pretty good job early on forcing the political control. I think he had 8 colonies at one point. Turned out after the fact he really didn't have much of a choice due to his card draws. Turns 3 and 4 saw me methodically reducing that advantage.

Between winning battles and events (including getting Benjamin Franklin into play pretty early on) I was able to get the French into the conflict in the fourth turn (1778).

We drew a 1779 “Government Falls” card in the second turn or so, and the way I was able to keep Mike on his heels meant the French helped lay the coup-de-grace early that year. When we hit the end of 1779, I think I had 9 colonies, Mike had 4 (including Canada), and one was drawn. It was a pretty significant victory for the Americans.

I had evicted Mike from the South, and he didn't have much left in the way of forces in the North. Even without a government falls card, it was going to be very hard for him to recover.

My thoughts on the game?

Production quality is good. Mounted board, thick cards, attractive (standard GMT) counters. It played very cleanly. We only had a few questions, and they were all handled by the rulebook. The game doesn't break any new ground, really, but it wasn't meant to. It was meant to be a refresh of a game that broke a whole lot of ground when it came out. And it does that very well.

Recommendation?

If you're looking for a good, simple 2-hour CDG, this is it. It is the wargaming equivalent of an appetizer, though, so if you're looking for something a bit more substantial, you might want to temper your expectations. But appetizers are usually pretty tasty, and this is as well. It's one I'm happy to have in my library.

We're taking the week between Christmas and New Years off as I've got family coming to town. Our next game up will be Fury in the East from the MMP 2010 Operations Special Issue. More East Front goodness.

We're not dead yet

2010-12-20T17:52:00.000-08:00

Well, after a rather extended hiatus, we're baaaaaaaack!

It wasn't really a hiatus, as such, just that our plan didn't really work out as we'd thought it would. Our OCS Korea game has been going on for most of this year, with (mostly) regular weekly sessions, and we were both taking notes and pics, but we just never got around to writing anything up. Partly that was down to our schedules, but at least on my part there was a certain amount of lethargy and disinclination to actually say much. It's hard to give insights into your thoughts and plans when your opponent is reading.

Anyway, we discussed where to go from here, and the idea of quietly closing the blog was quickly voted down on a 2-0 count. We agreed that the blog works best when we're playing shorter games, and that's what we're going to get back to. Moving forward, we'll get back to focussing on games in the 1-2 session length (i.e. 3-6 hours), unless we can find time for a longer session. That means shorter war-games (hex/counter, block, and CDGs), and (probably) more 18xx. Sounds like a plan, and I'm certainly very comfortable with that mix.

So, the first topic (and, in fact, the above conversation took place while we were playing) is the new GMT release Command & Colors: Napoleonics (BGG entry), the latest in the Commands and Colors series. This game covers the battles in the Peninsular War, featuring the British, French and Portuguese, and a single scenario featuring a small segment of the Waterloo battle. An expansion for the Spanish is currently on the P500 list, and tentatively scheduled for an August production slot. I'd expect to see more expansions for the Prussians and Russians, as well as lots more scenarios covering those armies, as well as some sort of 'Epic Napoleonics' rules/expansion. Sigh, more money sucked from my wallet.

The production is just as you'd expect for a C&C game from GMT; lots of wood blocks; colorful stickers; mounted map; good player aids; all in a bullet-proof box. In other words, up to their recent production standards, which have certainly taken a step up in quality.

I'm not going to go through the whole ruleset, but here, in my view, are the major differences from C&C:A (and others):

Unit losses: the number of dice used when attacking is based on 1 die per block in the attacking unit
Unit/Nationality distinction: various units get extra dice in combat depending on their unit type or National characteristics; e.g. Light/Rifle units gain a die in ranged combat; British line foot units gain a die in ranged combat if they do not move, and French line foot units gain a die in melee combat
Terrain: unlike the Ancients battlefields, we now have terrain to deal with, more akin to the Battle Cry and Memoir '44 battlefield
Objectives: just like in M'44
Square formation: infantry can form square in the face of cavalry assault

Of these, the first is the biggest change, in my view, and one that has been a bug-bear for quite a few C&C players, or potential players. Now those 1-block units are really fragile and mostly useless, and have to be withdrawn from harm's way. The unit/nationality distinctions are an interesting change, and allow for some variation in the way you use your force, with both the composition and side impacting your strategy/tactics.

OK, terrain really isn't a change, per se, but it's just that there is some, often a lot, unlike most of the C&C:A scenarios, where I've seen pool tables with more features. Some of the terrain features are also classed as objective hexes, in the same way that M'44 has. This was, in my view, one of the biggest issues with BC, as often there was no incentive to move forward and get shot at, as the other player would get the first shot due to the move/no fire rules. (In C&C:N you can move and half-fire.) So, that provides an incentive to do something.

C&C:N wouldn't truly represent Napoleonic warfare without allowing foot units to use square formation, and the implementation is interesting. As part of the cavalry melee procedure the infantry unit has the choice to enter square, but to do so, the player has to give up a command card (and you must have more than 2 in hand), which is placed on a holding display, reducing his hand size and, hence, tactical flexibility. Furthermore, the card is chosen at random from your hand. To quote the Guinness advert, 'Brilliant!' With some good cards in your hand, you now have a tough choice to make. Protect your unit, or potentially give up the ability to carry out your plans. Of course, all those that hate the C&C abstraction style will have more reason to hate on the system, spluttering about lack of control, etc. I think it's a stroke of genius!

We played the first two scenarios, both from the battle of Rolica, with me drawing the French each time. The first saw me move to a quick 4-banner position (with 5 required to win) as the dice gods favored me with an embarrassment of dicey riches, seeing me score 4 hits out of my first 5 rolls on his Light Infantry unit. (With 5 blocks and a 1-die bonus they can be pretty lethal, so that turned the good fortune into great fortune.) However, I thought to dash forward with a good card to claim my winning banner, but an untimely flag result on the first combat took his unit out of range of my second unit, allowing Eric to isolate them and bring it back to 4-3, before I did manage to claim that winning banner.

The second scenario, later in the same battle as the French were pushed back, once again saw me with the French. The sides are almost identical, with the Allied forces gaining an extra leader. What makes the scenario interesting is that the terrain provides for only 4 axes of advance for the Allies, with prohibited terrain funneling the attacks. The French, meanwhile, are sitting on a ridge of hills, which reduces incoming ranged fire by 1 die. So, restricted advance options for the Aliies, and a strong defensive position for the French, quite a puzzle. To make it even worse, most of the Allied artillery (which doesn't lose a die for firing into hills) is still stuck at the base line.

Sounds easy for the French player, but my sole artillery unit ran out of ammunition (an early card play by Eric) and returned to my base line. The issue was where to place it, as I was unsure of where Eric's main thrust was going to come, and although my hand had some really interesting cards, I had few section movement cards. In the end I chose to concentrate on the Portuguese on my left flank, but also drew a card that allowed me to redeploy a unit by 4 hexes, so my artillery was able to reduce the Portuguese threat, then move to the center to counter the advance in the center and on the other flank. I had one opportunity for using square, but with a hand of great cards I had to decline, as I had plans, which all worked as I ran out a comfortable winner.

A tough scenario for the Allies, in my view, but Eric felt that he played it wrongly in not bringing up his artillery first and using them to reduce my units. That would have given me a tough choice on whether to hold or force the action. The French bonus die on melee means that closing the action is of use, but is it worth leaving the hills? I'd like to get this scenario back to the table, and try it from the Allied side.

Here's the ending position, which shows the terrain:

(The 2 units at bottom left are Portuguese, one with a leader.)

OK, so what are my thoughts on C&C:N after my first play? As you've probably surmised by now, I really liked this one. I found it more interesting than C&C:A, which was partly due to the terrain providing a more interesting battlefield. However, the bigger factor was unit/nationality characteristics, and how to leverage them in my favor. I know it probably sounds like cult of the new, but so far this is my favorite C&C game. The mix of terrain, characteristics, everything. A great balance, and the continuing development of the C&C system is very evident. In play, I think C&C:N also flows better much better than BC, and has more tactical choices than C&C:A. The choices are tougher, as witnessed by several times in our games, as Eric or I had to take a moment to weigh our options and consider the potential implications. Yes, this will definitely see more table time.

For next time, Eric has requested GMT's Washington's War (BGG entry), the remake of We The People and the first of the CDGs. I've played it once before, so I'm looking forward to getting a second chance to try it. Beyond that, I'm thinking of Fury In The East (BGG Entry), one of the games that came in the MMP Operations Special Edition #3 magazine. But who knows, there are so many good choices out there.

Back to the fun bits

2010-12-20T15:44:00.000-08:00

And, we're back.

I'd like to say I did something interesting in the year it's been since you heard from me on this blog, but (other than a wonderful trip to Europe with my wife for a combo 10th anniversary/40th birthday gift) that hasn't been the case. Mostly, two things have shut down my writing on this blog: I was working on two simultaneous, parallel documentation projects at work that severely diminished any desire I had to write, and Mike and I were playing OCS Korea for most of the year. We discovered that really big games make poor incentive to blog. Various non-gaming life issues jumped up as well cutting us way back on gaming in the fall, and so that left us with a grand total of four posts this year up until now.

Not acceptable.

My work duties have shifted to a new project, and Korea's been packed away (or will be shortly.) We've made it through the end of 1950, and we will complete it at some point. Just not now. After some discussions, we decided we wanted to get back to what got this blog moving in the first place: evening two-player games and what we think about them. So, if you're ready to hear our slightly-informed opinions every week or two again, we're ready to start writing them. Right... about...

Now.

Mike and I got GMT's new Command & Colors: Napoleonics on the table last week. I'd been curious about this one, as I find the C&C system quick and enjoyable, but don't particularly care for Battle Cry – the version of the game closest in time frame to the Napoleonic wars. Also, the Napoleonic era is about my least favorite one to study. As a result, I didn't preorder this game. But, never being one to pass up a good game, wanted to see what it was like.

C&C:N is, frankly, not very different from C&C: Ancients. The production is very similar, and I think they use the same terrain tiles. Readers of this blog will likely be familiar with C&C:A, so I'll highlight the differences between the two games:

Ranged fire is more powerful.
The number of blocks in a unit changes per national characteristics.
Similar units (say, Line Infantry) fight differently for different nationalities.
The number of battle dice you roll is a function of the number of blocks remaining in the unit.
Units down to a single block may not be able to battle due to terrain modifiers.
There is much more terrain in the game. MUCH more.
Many of the scenarios involve terrain objectives.
Infantry can form square

There are more differences, but these highlight the major points. Let's just say that playing this game like you'd play C&C:A will cause you to lose. Badly. And that's a good thing. It also much more closely resembles C&C:A than Battle Cry as far as rules complexity goes. And that's a good thing as well. I was fearing this game was Battle Cry with Bicorns. It's actually closer to C&C:A with gunpowder. In all the good ways.

Mike and I decided to start off at the beginning and played the first two scenarios, randomly drawing sides. As fate would have it, I drew the Brits/Portuguese each time. These two scenarios cover positions early and late within the Battle of Rolica. (Apparently the first battle in the Peninsular War involving the British.)

I attempted to push on my right flank with the Portuguese, as my opening hand was right-flank-heavy, but they failed miserably. Eventually, I gained some center cards and began advancing there, trying to focus on using artillery. Mike got to four of his required five flags quickly (three of them thanks to the Portuguese) but after I started forcing the action, pulled back to a 4-3 deficit with victories in the center. Shortly thereafter, Mike got his fifth flag, breaking my position.

As is typical with this game, both of us tended to run out of cards in the sectors where battles were the fiercest, and of course you have no idea your opponent is in the same boat. We felt we had the rules down pretty well, so we moved on to the 2nd scenario. This involves the exact same unit mix (except the Brits get a third leader) but radically different terrain. This one forces the Allies down lanes with impassable hills between them to assault a hill infested with French infantry (and one unit of artillery). Not an easy task.

I lost this one 5-2, I believe, and realized I was doing something very wrong. I'd been playing with the very Ancient approach of leading with the cavalry and having the infantry mop up. Not how it works in the Napoleonic era. You need to soften with artillery, push with infantry, and punish weak positions with cavalry. Particularly when you're assaulting a good defensive position, as you are in this scenario. If I play this one again as the Brits, I'd have a very different plan.

So, I lose two scenarios. I had some poor dice, Mike had some good dice (including five hits out of six dice in ranged combat against a single unit), but nothing earth shattering that would invalidate either play.

Those are the high-level reports of the gaming, but the important bit is what did I think about the game?

First off, it surprised me. After reading the rules (and only the rules – I had not seen any of the other components), I had a feeling it was going to be better than I initially expected, but the gameplay exceeded even those thoughts. Despite how light the C&C series is, this game will make you think. You've got puzzles to solve as well as battles to fight.

Secondly, the game gives the feel of Napoleonic warfare without getting into too much detail. There are bits of chrome to distinguish the varying fighting styles (e.g. the French line infantry get an extra die when in melee against infantry, but the British line infantry get an extra die when firing without moving) but the chrome doesn't get in the way. Exactly the level of abstraction I'd expect from this series.

Eight out of 10 from me, with the understanding this will probably go up as the line is expanded with other nationalities and scenarios.

Finally, a bit of a soapbox moment.

There's already been a bit of talk about “fixing” the game after a play or two because of some perceived superiority in one of the troop types. This is the kind of talk that has soured me on a lot of gaming lately – people make pronouncements about games very early without giving the games a fair shake. This is particularly bad with wargames, as that “fair shake” may involve 20-40 hours of play to really get a feel for what's going on.

Of course, this involved someone who is a self-proclaimed “Napoleonics buff” who has a different idea of how things should go. This is exactly why I was turned off of Napoleonic gaming back when I was a heavy miniatures player. For whatever reason, this particular era has a knack of attracting know-it-alls who are more than happy to tell you you're doing it wrong. As a result, I simply won't play Napoleonic miniatures. It's not worth the angst.

In this era of the internet, these people get a voice a lot louder than they deserve. I've seen many situations where games have been played once, discounted because they didn't meet the expectations of the initial player (who usually has way more time on his hands than should be allowed), and the game is subsequently shuffled off and ignored by a large number of players who'd probably like the game. That early dissenting opinion gets parroted rather than challenged. And there's a lot of games that don't get the table time they actually deserve as a result.

This whole phenomena has completely turned me off the primary boardgaming websites I used to frequent (BoardGameGeek and ConSimWorld). I now no longer go on there except for reference purposes. The interest in finding out about what's coming up has been completely squashed by people who, frankly, are most interested in hearing themselves.

So, while I used to occasionally re-post these blog entries on the Geek, I no longer will. I have no interest in shouting above the din. I will, however, be creating a Twitter account specifically for the blog, and will throw little tidbits up there as they cross my mind. I'll post details when those are available. I'd be more than happy to have you follow.

If you like what I write, great. I hope to be providing you semi-regular content for the foreseeable future. There's been a ton of great new games released in the last couple years, and lots of them are on our schedule.

If you don't, I'm sorry. But I do completely understand. There's no shortage of other game reviewers/reporters for you to read. Thanks for the time you've given us so far. Hopefully, we'll draw you back at some point.

And, with that, the return is complete. Next week's game is Washington's War.

From Korea to Nebraska

2010-08-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

The OCS Korea (BGG entry) game is ongoing, but this evening we took a break. Partly this was just me wanting to play something different, and partly due to the warm weather, which makes the garage a little stifling in the evening, as it takes the full blast of the afternoon/evening sun. My original thought was some Combat Commander (BGG entry) (Yes, yes, yes, I know that after the last game with Eric I said I'd never play it again, but it keeps calling to me, and I keep hoping that it will be a better gaming experience, and, on occasion, it is. It's just that it hates me.), but Eric counter-proposed some 18xx, and we settled on the recent Deep Thought release 18Neb (BGG entry), one that neither of us had played before.

18Neb is fairly straightforward for experienced 18xx players. There's an initial auction for the minors, then the regular Stock/Operating rounds. Points of interest include:

One private is the Credit Mobilier, which pays you $5 for each track tile laid by any player (new or upgrade).
In the Stock Round a Corporation President can have the Corporation sell stock to the pool or buy a certificate back from the pool or another player (with the player's agreement). In other games this happens at the end of each OR turn (e.g. 18EU). Any buy action counts as the player's buy action for that SR turn.
Corporations float with only the President's share. From Phase 5 onwards new Corporations that sell 5 shares become fully capitalized, with their remaining shares being placed in the pool.
Bidding in the 2nd and subsequent SRs is done by pass order in the previous SR. The 1st player to pass gets the 'First Pass' card, the second player gets the 'Second Pass' card, etc. At the end of the SR you swap your card for a turn order card (as used to determine initial seating order), with the 'First Pass' owner getting the 'Priority Deal card. The only issue is that as a player then buys a share after passing, you all have to pass your cards around, as the, for example, 2nd pass player now becomes 1st pass player. A trifle clumsy, perhaps, but overall a decent idea, although irrelevant in the 2-player game.
Local Railway Corporations have only 5 certificates, representing double shares.They are permitted to own a single train, which must be one of those already rusted.

So, some interesting aspects to the game.

I started off with the Missouri Pacific in the SW corner, planning to run to Chicago South, and along the bottom of the map. Eric opened UP, using his private, as well as the Colorado & Southern, on opposite sides of the map. However, I chopped and changed plans a couple of times, before Eric managed to dump the Chicago NW on me, through fine play on his part and carelessness on my part. The worst part of having to buy a train for CNW, which didn't cost me that much, was that it rusted the sole train on another company I had. Didn't see that one coming!

Now _that_ could have been the end, but Eric's view of the rules was that as President I could sell the company shares in the OR in order to pay for the train. Now, the rules don't explicitly state that when selling shares to pay for a train that the President isn't permitted to have the company sell its own shares to pay for the train, putting money in the company treasury and thus saving the President's stupid a$$. As it turns out, this all had a silver lining as my companies now had better trains, and were running for gobs of money. The game lasted just long enough for me to catch up, and I squeaked it by only $149, pretty much a rounding error. Here's the final map and stock positions:

I had 6 shares in Missouri Pacific, Chicago Burlington, and Chicago NW, and Eric in Colorado Southern, Denver Rio Grande, and Nebkota, with us splitting UP. Only Missouri Pacific, Chicago Burlington and UP were sold out, which helped me, I think, to seal the game. Our share values were almost identical, only $4 difference, but I had the better cash balance to the tune of $153.

Whilst 18Neb is a very interesting 18xx game, and I'd like to try it again, I'm still not sure about 2-player 18xx. Until the latter part of the game you very much seem to own your own companies, with very little cross investment in the other player's companies. There seems to be little incentive to make a company sold out if you don't have the majority position, as you help your opponent more than yourself. Although I guess if the company income is high enough, then buying that extra share can outweigh the benefit of being sold out. However, that all being said, I would still rather play 18xx 2-player than not play 18xx at all.

Now back to OCS Korea....

Helloo (helloo, helloo, helloo...)

2010-05-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

OK, it's been rather quiet in here for some time now, so I thought it was about time to post something to show we're still around.

We're currently in the middle of our long-planned OCS Korea game, with me as the godless commies, and Eric as the capitalist pig-dogs. We've got as far as November 1950, so we're not far off half way through the game. We had planned to post thoughts as the game progresses, but, as you've probably noticed, that hasn't happened so far. The game-end post should have something to say. And then some.

I was looking back through some old posts for info on a particular game we'd played, and found a plan from last year of what we wanted to do. In the absence of anything real to post, I thought I'd give it a quick revisit. (Hey, content is content, right?)

This is what I posted almost a year ago that we were going to focus on, and [how it panned out]:

OCS - completing Sicily, and perhaps Korea [Tick, definitely.]
SCS - TME again, and more from this series, which I'm very fond of [Mostly a tick, we played Bastogne and Guadalajara, but never did get back to TME. Yet.]
Bitter End - with the revised retreat rule, this is a high priority [Fail. Still one I'd like to retry.]
Conflict of Heroes - getting deeper into the scenarios, including tanks [Tick. Now for Storms of Steel!]
CDGs - Shifting Sands, PoG, PuG, and more (oh, my!) [Fail. Although I did play PoG and PuG with another gaming partner, so I get a tick. Nyah!]
Musket & Pike - OK, we haven't played this here, but we've played a few scenarios before TSttC [Tick. Although our grand plan of playing all the scenarios in the box gets a fail.]

So, about 3.5 ticks out of a possible 6. Not a bad score really, considering all the great games out there, and more arriving all the time. If anything, we've found another couple of games to add to the list of games that we'd like to get back to the table again:

The Caucasus Campaign [we actually played this before the holidays, but never managed to get the posts done]
Richard III [As this is only ~3 hours, it's quite likely to see table time in our upcoming retreat.]
Red Star Rising [This would be another multi-session event, but needs serious table space.]
SCS The Mighty Endeavor [I need to try the Allies, to see if I can do better.]

So, what's my current take on the path ahead? Mostly it's pretty much the same.

OCS Korea - We've got some time to go on this, and with the upcoming retreat we're not going to get another session until the end of May. At ~3 turns/session, we're looking at another 5-6 months to complete this, although we might be able to fit in some full-day sessions to speed things along.
SCS - There are lots of games in the series that I'd like to try. With limitations on space, these may see a lot of table time after Korea is finished, as they're mostly single-mappers.
Bitter End - I still want to give this another go, the whole campaign with the updated retreat rule.
Red Star Rising - I want to try running the Axis, to see if I can do any better. As this needs a large table space, this is the most likely not to happen.
Conflict of Heroes - Storms of Steel

In amongst all those there's quite likely to be a few single session fillers. And then there's all the stuff that's in the current production pipeline. Man, I so don't want to think about all that.... :)