A New Review and Saying Words About Games

Back now from not merely Jena-Auerstedt but Leipzig, Saalfeld, Schleitz, Lutzen, and Breitenfeld.  The latter two were a late addition, but I couldn't say no to my guy Gustavus Adolphus II.

Since coming home a bit over a week ago I've had this published:

http://grogheads.com/review/15983

And said some words about gaming here:

http://grogheads.com/podcast/grogcast-season-5-episode-8-cardboard-gunpowder

Both worth checking out, but I'm hardly unbiased.

I Was Again Unable to Contain My Enthusiasm (Urban Operations Unboxing)

From doing none of these ever to having a go at two:

http://grogheads.com/review/video/15826

And I Write Again About the Trip to Jena

Honestly, it's getting real now.  This is the first trip I've planned anywhere near this much.

http://grogheads.com/aars/15673

An Un-Boxing Video, You Say?

What sort of game, even in concept, could put me to do such a thing?

This kind:

http://grogheads.com/?p=15429

A C&C:A Coda

First, today is the battle of Waterloo +202 and, for me, it's always a day of remembrance.  I think I shall always take it as history's greatest battle and only regret I can't visit every year.

Back weary from Origins, but I wanted to follow up on the folks who wondered how the kids' Commands and Colors: Ancients gaming from www.grogheads.com would go.

It was absolutely splendid.

For those who don't know, running a wargame at a convention these days is something of a crap shoot.  Some days you can't put up enough chairs and others you wind up talking to your friends in the booth.  The one thing the organizers of Grogheads Central Command seem to have intuited, however, is that there's a fair number of older folks with young children that want to have their children at least try the games they love.  It turned out that it would be hard to imagine a better game than C&C:A.  As said before the scenario was simple, the number of different unit types limited, there's no terrain, and the objective is simple enough.  The young people, and their parents, responded.

We had six slots if memory serves and only one of them had no takers.  Others were oversubscribed and I'm glad I brought an extra copy of the base game so we could set up an extra table for the unexpected players.

A few animadversions if I might:

1.  Every one of the parents that came by wanted their children to enjoy the game for its own sake.  Sure, a few of them seemed to be harboring the hope that their boy or girl would be willing to play something other than "Click, Clack, Lumberjack" with them, but that did not come at the expense of the youngster having fun.

2.  C&C:A is stupid popular.  I had quite a few folks wander by as I was setting up and ask if I was looking for a game.  They seemed quite disappointed when I said the session was targeted at kids.  My second favorite moment of the whole business, though, was the fellow who looked to be my age who, while HL was helping a youngster at another table, asked if I'd be willing to teach him the game as he'd just bought it.  His enthusiasm for the system and gratitude for me having taken the time was memorable.

3.  My number one moment, though, came from the very first session just on Thursday.  A pair of brothers were brought over by their father.  The older brother was a talker -- verbal and connected to those around him.  The younger was an introvert who said little even as I explained the rules and the game set up.  Once the game started though, this kid, who was certainly no more than six, either by accident or design understood the scenario almost intuitively.  Playing the Syracusans, he nigh-wordlessly marched his heavies, one hex at a time, across the battlefield and ground his brother into paste.  He could have advanced his flanks but never expressed an interest.  He never acted bored or restless -- quite the contrary, it seemed he really, really, really wanted to play.  He played cards, moved blocks, and rolled dice with the confidence and focus of a real veteran.  He crushed his brother 5-0.

A fine, fine set of memories -- and, may I say, a bit of a hope for a groggier tomorrow.

A Bit of C&C Ancients By Way of Apology

It's been a bit since I've been by.  The nice folks at grogheads.com have been publishing a fair amount of my stuff and I've not been to the table as much as I'd like either.  With that as prologue, HL and I set to several rounds of Commands and Colors: Ancients as we prepare for our part in the Grogheads Central Command, set to begin this very Thursday at Columbus, OH's own Origins game convention.  I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those who remember that Origins was once a wargame convention and would like to see wargaming return to a place; its rightful place having been usurped it would seem by a combination of lovely boardgames and silicon chips.

Particularly exciting this year, we're going to have some wargaming geared to younger gamers.  We've chosen C&C:A because of its relative simplicity, but also because it's offered for sale by the fine folks at Enterprise Games who are one of the sponsors of Central Command.  We've got three slots available and have chosen three different scenarios, each of ascending difficulty, so that certain rules can be taught as we go.

The first is, appropriately enough, the very first of the included scenarios, the battle of Akragas (406 B.C.)  It suits the present purposes as it offers a limited number of troop types and has no terrain.  The historical narrative of the battle is reasonably well handled here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Akragas_(406_BC) where, to sum up, the Syracusans come to break the Carthaginian siege of the city and win rather handily.  In our own dust up, HL had the Syracusans.

The image above is the board at start.  My big bats are the two heavy chariots, one unit to either side.  They punch hard and can follow up a successful melee with another melee, but, at two blocks, they are near an archetype of the glass cannon.  My foe men for their part have that cluster of heavy infantry in the middle that, while slow, represents the very best of Greek spear-and-shield fighting; all together best avoided.

It didn't take too many turns for matters to go pear-shaped.  The Syracusan right fell on my left -- as a dad, I'm pleased the boy is finding some aggression, but I digress -- and, with a couple of lucky rolls, wiped out my chariots before they could do anything more than kill a light infantry block or two.  My right flank is ordering pizza from a charming local eatery; or something else unproductive.

The left is not improving.  Dionysius has crashed his medium cavalry well into my lines.  If I'm not mistaken, I'm already down 3-0 in victory banners at this point.

I managed to turn the tide just a little bit by wheeling Himilco and his mighty auxilia (sigh) who, with the assistance of a "Clash of Shields" card, joined in my single best turn of the game.  With the bonus that card confers in hand, I was able to cobble together three victory banners.  Although, as can be seen, my other heavy chariot unit is gone.  HL proved unnaturally adept at rolling red squares this afternoon.

The end, though, was one of those moments for which C&C:A is deservedly well-regarded.  Daphnaeus had marched his heavies all the way across the board -- one hex at a time -- eventually to reach Himilco's command.  I would note in passing that Dionysius has scampered off to behind the Syracrusan lines.  His five heavy dice were enough to end the rest of Himilco's troops and then, at the last, Himilco himself.

Final score: 5-3.

This will be a good scenario for Origins, I think.  Short setup and HL and I managed the whole of it, with photography, in well less than 45 minutes.  Here's to a bit of groggy goodness in Ohio this week.

What...in the Blue Hell...

I have never been more than tangentially involved in game development -- BETA testing, scenario designing, and the like -- so I try to be circumspect, but there are times that I see something that really winds me up.  I'm quite fond of GW's Battlefleet: Gothic.  It's another in their longish line of side-games that I wound up preferring to their mainstays, fantasy and 40k.  End of the day, lacking as it does a Z-axis, it was an Age of Sail game in space.  What, then, wasn't to love?

When they announced the PC version some months ago, I was fairly pleased.  The game looked lovely with glow-y Imperial ships, Ork ships that look like they've been cobbled together from scrap, and all the rest rendered in a reasonably high-end fashion.  I was saddened, though, that the developers made a choice to make the game "real" time.  The table top game is obviously turn based and so many of its best mechanisms are based on that IGOUGO system.  Still, it was a system I liked and I've more or less enjoyed it since BETA.  Then and now, though, I was left wondering what might have been had they taken a crack at making the game turn based.

This, then, stunned me:

http://grandcauldron.com/en/games-indie/battlefleet-gothic-game

Turn-based, still more or less lovely, full campaign, asynchronous multi-player, and a fairly faithful adaption of the tabletop rules.

For the iPad.

Say it again.  For the iPad.

I've fired off a message to the developer to see if there's any chance it will make its way over to Steam -- the developer has put together other products there -- but I'm not optimistic.

I do not understand.

Not Writing HERE Because I'm Writing THERE...

In fairness to me, I've not been neglectful in recounting my gaming adventures, I've just been sharing them with the fine folks at grogheads.com.

Here, for example, is the interview I did with VentoNuovo games for its Bloody Monday KickStarter.

http://grogheads.com/?p=14188

People did not understand the difficulty I was going to have when I gave up purchasing or ordering new games for Lent.  Now perhaps they understand.  On the other hand, let it be noted that the KS doesn't end until the day after Easter.

And here's my latest interview with the fellow who invented by favorite game by a living author -- Dr. Didier Rouy, author of The Flight of the Eagle.

 http://grogheads.com/?p=14345

Both have interesting things to say, but I particularly enjoyed Dr. Rouy's for his introspection on a career not only in gaming but in medicine.  He said so much, in fact, that the article wound up being broken in two.

Two Fine Bits of Reading I Commend to Your Collective Attentions...

https://panzerde.blogspot.com/2017/03/how-not-to-be-general-in-age-of-reason.html?spref=fb

In which my guy Doug goes after a video guy for not understanding how horsies used to work.  He's dead on right.

http://grogheads.com/?p=14089

In which your host opens many boxes, stickers many wooden blocks, wonders at game production choices, and revels in Napoleonic battles.

Back to Gallipoli -- John Tiller's SB: First World War

It's been a while since my friend Charles and I were hard back at one another in the Dardanelles.  We'd made our way through the first six Gallipoli battles on John Tiller's Squad Battles: First World War when we ran into a technical glitch that bollixed our PBEM save.  With that behind us, we've started scenario seven.

I'll let it speak for itself:

1915 May 19, Gallipoli Front. 0320 hours.

Size: small (company +)

After the opening battles in April, the ANZAC sector saw little activity as both sides were disorganized and expended. Both sides spent weeks reorganizing and digging in. The Turks inched their positions as close as they could to ANZAC lines to avoid naval gun fire, since the British ships would not risk firing on their own troops, and the ANZAC forces dug in where they could to hold the small beach head.

In May, sporadic Turkish artillery fire, sniper fire and sporadic small attacks occurred but on the 18th the whole line was strangely calm. ANZAC forces suspected something was brewing and this was confirmed when British aircraft reported another Ottoman division arriving in their area and that enemy forces seemed to be massing for an enormous assault.

In the early morning hours of the 19th, ANZAC forces manned their trenches and stood at the ready for the suspected Turkish attack. At 0320 ANZAC infantry peered across the flat 400 Plateau and observed wave after wave of dense Turkish troops advancing with fixed bayonets.

MISSION:

(Allied Powers) Hold your trench line at all costs! We cannot fall back!

(Central Powers) Attack across 400 Plateau and overrun the ANZAC trenches. Doing this will overrun their front line in this area and will cause their whole position to collapse.

NOTES:

*Historically the Turks advanced bravely and were shot down en masse, littering the whole plateau with hundreds of additional corpses. In a couple of hours, the Ottoman attack along the whole front line had failed, with over 10,000 dead and nothing to show for it.

One of the things I've enjoyed about playing through this sequence is the terrific research the descendants of the ANZAC forces have done to keep the memory of both sides of this conflict alive.  There's a lot of great photographic tours of the grim space where all this took place, but I also found this sketch which portrays well, I think, just how much was in the hazard.

This is the setup for my Turks at game start.  As I said regarding the Combat Mission game below, it's what you don't see that gives you the willies.

 I figure there's nothing for it but to advance, light up the trench (it's 0320 at start, if memory serves) and have at them.  At the end of the first turn, I've marched the lads out in front of their officers -- better to rally the pinned with my dear -- and will set on Charles' Aussies next turn.

There are many scenarios provided with this game that speak to a more sweeping war of maneuver than is usually depicted in World War One.  I have a fancy hunch this will not be one of those scenarios.

Hehe...Red Versus Blue...

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_62&products_id=3637

Everything old is new again.

A Rante: Parte the Seconde...With A Worthie Assiste

Very, very strange serendipity.

The crew at grogheads.com asked if I'd be interested in interviewing the folks behind the Pub Battles series of games.  Having been a fan for some time, I jumped at the chance.

What I did not expect was that Marshall Barrington's critique of rule complexity -- up to and including a pretty direct hit at ASL -- would match my own thoughts on the subject.  In a way likely more concise than mine, he makes the case the war games generally will either simplify or die.  Mind you, they need not become "stupid", but complexity is not realism, over-narration is not completeness, and beauty is not truth.  In this last bit, I digress.

I think all his responses are well worth a read (I would think that, wouldn't I), but his remarks concerning the above are particularly noteworthy.

http://grogheads.com/?p=14032#more-14032

Another Thing I Wrote for the Grogheads

Not the groggiest of games, but a fine one nonetheless and well worth checking out.

http://grogheads.com/?p=13905

You Can Linger Too Long In Your Dreams...

So the spectacular crew over at grogheads.com (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=18893.0)went on a wind about the games fondly remembered from their youths and that they'd like to see rebooted.  I, for all my years, believe firmly that the best of times, especially for PC gaming, is right here and now.  For all the time and attention I lavished on Battles of Napoleon, Castles, Populous, System Shock, &c., very few of them hold up well by contemporary standards.  I've tried GoG and DosBox only to find that most of the games I so fondly remember just aren't that good any more.

This mutated into an obsession, viz.:  review the list of those games mentioned in this thread and, for those with which I had sufficient familiarity to comment (a horrifyingly high number) share my own, highly biased thoughts as to why we've seen no proper sequel or update.  Then, to make things really interesting, set my own house odds for how likely I think any reboot is.  I should state clearly that I'm fond of most of the games on this list and, I believe, owned them all.  Sometimes more than once for various reasons.  Taking only B-17 as an example, I'm not happy that I think the genre gone, I'm just convinced that it is.  I'd be very happy, indeed, to be wrong.

It's all for fun and wildly subjective, but beneath it is a reminder that the best place to look in most situations is forwards rather than backwards.  As the poet said, "...the good old days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."

Age of Rifles -- Few games are dearer to my heart, but a "game box" like this is unlikely.  John Tiller has argued, and none have proven him wrong, that you can't make it worthwhile giving everybody all the tools.  This is also one of the few games on this list that I can think of that has taken a real hit from VASL.  The grogs have moved on. (Replaced)

Airborne Ranger -- I loved, loved, loved, loved, loved this game, but a wiser mind than my own pointed out that this is Metal Gear Solid's bunk now. (Replaced)

Alpha Centauri:  They've tried to capture that lightening twice and failed, both times fairly abominably to hear tell.  No one wants the game itself back -- that's available.  They want a pretty, shiny, new one.  And they'll keep trying so long as you're asking. (Replaced)

B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty Eighth -- Dead genre.  Much missed.  (500-1)

Battles of Napoleon:  I cannot discuss this.  I become more a gibbering gibbon than usual.  (No bets)

Birth of the Federation -- Strikes me as far more likely that we'll someday get either a turn-based or real-time ship-to-ship combat simulator with a strategic layer.  Surprised that hasn't happened, frankly, but Attack Wing wasn't the success that X-wing Versus Tie Fighter was either. (10-1)

Car Wars or Roadwar 2000:  Top-down tactics are largely done and, while I'd love to see it, I can't see an X-Com - scale sequel working with cars. (75-1)

Chaos Gate:  Behold Sanctus Reach.  (Replaced, although I continue to be amazed at how many games are trying to jam themselves into this gamespace)

Dangerous Waters/Sub Command -- Didn't sell well in the first place, not that Battlefront has proven itself able to manage much other than CM.  This, too, is now CMANO's space. (Replaced)

EA/Interplay RPGs, e.g. The Bard's Tale and Wasteland -- The last of these that I can think of was Might and Magic X: Legacy.  I loved it.  No idea how it sold, but it was widely mocked for its square-based movement and lack of an open world.  That's expected now. (100-1)

Emperor of the Fading Sons -- I assume the desire here is for a straight re-make as the war-in-space category is a crowded one.  If so, I see zero chance as that IP is locked in some ancient vault with the keys guarded by deathless cobras. (No bets)

F-119A Stealth Fighter and Gunship -- Victims of the evolution of sims.  There are plenty of great sims that allow you to fly all kinds of awesome planes and helicopters.  These were both wonderfully accessible arcade games with sim gloss that you could successfully navigate with an Atari 2600 controller.  I know. (No bets)

Freedom Force -- This will never again happen without an IP.  No small miracle that it ever did.  (No bets)

Great Naval Battles -- I, personally, have asked JTS to take this mantle up...right after they give me a proper Age of Sail II.  Nothing since the first counts even a little.  I'm getting way too old for this sort of a wait. (500-1, because I must hope)

Gulf Strike -- As with any other board game, the most popular will make their way to digital and the rest will be played over VASL.  Except for HexWar which makes all kinds of weird marketing deals (why C&C: WWI before Ancients, for example).  (100-1)

Imperialism II -- Always a curiosity to me re: what people like in this game, even after all these years over any of the other games in the genre.  Far too niche these days. (50-1, especially as Paradox seems uninterested)

Incubation -- This was X-Com meets Aliens and, as terribly fond as I was of it (I can still hear the theme song in my head), I think X-Com now holds this field. (25-1, on the notion that somebody might try it with the Aliens property)

Knights of the Old Republic -- One of the most likely on the list, but isn't all this stuff kicked out of the canon now? (5-1)

M.U.L.E.:  This one wandered the other way onto the tabletop.  Far better on the iOS platform.  The PC environment would never again tolerate this level of simplicity in anything but a value title.  Heck, it's real spiritual successor, Offworld Trading Company, was criticized by some as too shallow.  (100-1)

Panzer Elite -- If the desire is a WWII proper tank sim, I see zero chance.  If not, is this not the offerings from Graviteam? (Replaced)

Red Storm Rising -- Seems to me this is CMANO's niche now.  If you're looking for simpler than that, you're into an iOS app. (Replaced)

Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe -- An add-on pack for MSFSX.  (2-1)

Soldiers at War -- While X-Com lives I can't consign this genre to irrelevance, but it's on life support. (50-1)

Steel Panthers -- The lack of a credible sequel in all these years speaks volumes.  Again, top-down tactics is, if not dead, flat-lined. (30-1)

Syndicate -- I think the failure of Satellite Reign has ended this one for the foreseeable future. (40-1)

System Shock -- Never, ever happen.  The days of the moody, brilliantly-written, single-player experience are done.  (500-1)

Terra Nova -- It stuns me that this has never been re-done.  It obviously inspired Tribes which has since fallen on hard times.  This is one of the few on this list that I cannot figure out. (5-1, just because I think a re-make is so obvious.)

X-Wing/Tie Fighter -- The full content of both these games and all their expansions wouldn't satisfy the contemporary market.  They'd be taken as a mini-game. For much the same reason, by the way, I think Wing Commander might re-appear as an IP, but never as anything close to the same game. (30-1)

A Rante. Parte the Firste.

All right, time to get this one out of my head lest it explode.

I'm a board game guy.  I love them.  I have an IKEA wall system full of them, two closets piled up with them, and several more dozen binned up in the basement in those clear plastic containers.  I hated Monopoly the first time I played it and quickly went in search of better alternatives.  When I happened on Starship Troopers, the die was cast and I began what now stands as a 40-year love affair with the form.

I hope I come as a friend to my grognard brothers when I ask them why they persist in playing certain games on the tabletop when there are manifestly superior digital equivalents.

Let me begin with Talisman, if I may.  I remember playing this game in the original GW edition seemingly a lifetime ago.  I was never enamored of it, but friends who wouldn't play War and Peace with me were at least willing to give it a go so I had to settle.  When the short-lived Black Library edition was released I snatched it up a Gen Con -- took me three morning "runs" (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) for those who have ever been there -- and eventually added the Fantasy Flight Games upgrade pack.

Then I saw the digital version during the Steam Holiday Sale.

Now I know not what course others may take, but I spend during this sale as if today is the last day to purchase software 'til the end of time.  I not only picked up the base game, but I also bought, at a remarkable discount in retrospect, the "season pass" which entitles me -- two years after the fact -- to every bit of DLC they produce.  Then, like so many other games purchased during a Steam sale, I shelved it in favor of some other new, shiny, low-cost trinket.

A couple months ago, though, I wandered into my FLGS and found a fellow playing Talisman.  Forgive me.  I have understated matters.  This gentleman was lolling about in a pool of Talisman.  He was Scrooge McDuck diving into a vault brimming with doubloons, save that every doubloon was Talisman.  I watched in amazement as he ran three other people through his game and as he did so was compelled to choose between dozens of card decks with each roll of the dice.  He had the main, basic board surrounded by the expansion boards which were in turn surrounded by all the cards, counters, figures, &c., the twisted minds at GW could imagine.  And all of this was in service of a game that, basically, is Chutes and Ladders with demons and a mighty set of "screw your buddy" mechanics.  I was dumbfounded.

I went back home and fired up this game on my PC.  There it all was.  All the expansions, all the card decks, and all the characters.  I mean, seriously, look at these card decks:

How damaged do you have to be to want to play this on the tabletop rather than on a PC?  Note that I'm stipulating that you want to play this game in the first place because that's a topic for a different piece.

The PC version gives you the board:

 It gives you the pieces -- painted even:

And there's a live community of human beings to play against should you be so inclined.  If you're not so inclined, though, it will happily provide you with as many A.I. opponents as you wish which, based on my experience, would have giggled as it left Dave to die out in the cold void of space.

Surely there must come a point where a boardgame is simply too much for the table to bear?  All equal, why in the name of all the blue hells would someone prefer a tabletop Talisman to the PC experience?

And, seeking to parry one particular argument even before it's thrust my way, I don't think the whole "human interaction" component can carry the day.  No game that has metastasized in this way can be enjoyable for actual people without a PC handling the drudgery.  I've played ASL and La Bataille, so I certainly know from complex games, but this is something all together different.  This is a game that, to my eyes, collapses of its own weight when reduced to paper and cardboard.

But, oh yes, ASL, I would like to talk to you next...

CM:RT: It's What You Can't See That Kills You.

Jobu88 and I have been playing CM games for a long time, dating well back into the days of x1.  Having just wrapped up an excellent "Scenario of the Month" from theblitz.org, it was my turn to chose and I took one "off the rack", as it were, one of the stock scenarios for CM:RT, "Bunkers Burning".  It's an historical scenario set in the early days of Operation: Bagration in which elements of the Soviet 16th Guard Rifle Division are tasked with punching a hole in the German lines near Orsha for the following troops to pour through.

A couple general points are in order.  First, sitting in my comfortable office chair mulling over my deployments for this battle, I was struck with how distant I am from the terror that must have been in the mind of the Soviet commander knowing that he had the stavka ever at his back.  Surveying the terrain, this was nothing short of a kobayashi maru.  Seriously, look at this:

My troops are being told to cover acres of open ground into the teeth of multiple lines of German defenses, prepared during the previous winter.  It would seem the lines had been there long enough for the Soviet high command to get an unusually (at least in my experience) sense of their dispositions.  War of maneuver my Aunt Fannie.  The Battle of Ypres is more like it.

Still, as Jobu pointed out to me, the designer put an awful lot of love into this map.  As is often the case, it's not so much the broad strokes seen in the below, although the model railroad lover in me will always appreciate how nice CMx2 renders them.  Pay particular attention to the ground just to the right of the trees lining those railroad tracks.

What is not readily apparent is that there's a rise, gentle though it may be, that my support AFVs and troops will have to climb before coming into full view of the defenses beyond.  Knowing the CMx2 engine as I do, I'll have to strike a delicate balance between moving as quickly as I can while still giving my forward troops enough time to spot the Jerries wherever they might be hiding.  The recon platoon in the lower photograph is slowly making its way to the top of that ridge in the hope of both finding the enemy and not having their collective heads shot off.  The AFVs, for their part, are going nowhere until they have something more certain to shoot at.

As will be seen in the top two screenshots, I've placed a fair amount of smoke into the area around "The Hill" objective hoping to give the men advancing steadily from behind some cover.  I also do have a battery of medium mortars at the company level at my disposal.

Oh, and the "burning" mentioned in the title?  Well, more on that in a bit, eh?

Into the breach, lads.  Into the breach.  Comrade Stalin demands it.

Napoleon 1806 -- A Kickstarter Just For Me!

I can't imagine the craziness of trying to get a successful boardgame Kickstarter up and running, but the fellows at Shakos still took the time to answer my questions about their project.

I wish them every success and this is is well worth checking out.

http://grogheads.com/?p=13736#more-13736

Much Deserved Warm Review for "Fields of Fire"

I've run Fields of Fire games at Origins for the nice folks at Proving Ground games for two years now.  We've done both modern micro-armor and WWII 15mm.  Participants have always found the game easy to learn and a lot of fun.  Underneath, there's also a very thoughtful rule set to which, I'm proud to say, the boys and girls of Grogheads Central Command have contributed a thought or two.

Now Bill Gray has given the rules a go and this review is, frankly, glowing.  Credit to him for giving it a spin and to the Wargamer website for giving a great company some much-deserved attention.

http://www.wargamer.com/news/crunchies-a-review-of-fields-of-fire-the-fow-killer/

I would note that, God willing and the creek don't rise, MB, HL, and I will be back at Origins this year both teaching and playing Fields of Fire.  Rumor has it they're also bringing something special to add to the experience.

Looking forward to it.

And, because everything is better with miniature soldiers, a couple shots from Origins '15:

Eagles: That Old, Drunken Friend

Greetings to the few and sundry that stop by here from time to time.  I know it's been a bit, but the grim hand of real life has prevented far more enjoyable activities like, for example, reminiscing about old friendships.

To that point, did you ever have that one friend who was forever showing up at 2 a.m. with a desperate need to tell you that now, for real this time, he was setting his life right?  The one who wanted to borrow a cigarette even when you only had three Basics left?  The one who was forever falling madly in love with a girl, telling you to mind your own business that this time Tristan had found his Isolde, only to wind up drunk on your couch regaling you with her sudden but inevitable betrayal?

And yet you -- for reasons that you can't quite discern -- loved him anyway?

This is how I feel about Columbia Games' Eagles: Waterloo.

Offspring of both Dixie, which took up the American Civil War, and, by indirection, the seminal block game Napoleon's tactical system, it's honestly hard to believe that this game has been in my head space for 21 years.  Originally a collectable card game (more on that in a minute), the game is intended to be a colorful, quick-playing way to hammer through the battles of the Hundred Days.  I love this game.  Honestly, I do.  But, damnation it can stink up the couch.

Let me count the ways:

1. It was collectible (told you I'd come back to this).  The original point-of-purchase product was a deck of 60 cards that had a weighted, though random, selection from not one but three collections of playable cards.  Each one of these collections, labelled bronze, silver, and gold,  had a total of 300 cards.  A Waterloo game from Columbia was and remains utterly unresistable (despite my somewhat precarious personal situation in the mid-1990s) so I invested in several decks, but I got nowhere close to a set until the market for CCGs crashed and, suddenly, individual decks were available for well less than $5 each.   Candidly, I find the idea of a wargame CCG, at best, tedious.

2.  It was obnoxiously collectible.  I mentioned above that there are three types of cards.  A scant 10% of the cards in the weighted distribution are gold.  The grim secret, revealed right in the rules pamphlet, is that there is no difference between any of the three sets.  I cannot for the life of me imagine why you would bother to release what amount to three identical sets of the same cards.  Surely some of that money could have gone towards hiring a better artist.  Turning to which...

3.  The art is not to standard.  I am being kind.  Behold:

Nosey, a dough golem, and, Lemmy.

 

Mind you, some of the unit art is quite nice and I like the landscapes very much, but, overall, it's a sub-par effort.

4.  The rules aren't done.  The game is intended to be simple and quick and, by and large, succeeds.  There are, however, holes, some of which were addressed over time, but some of which, in my mind, remain.  These become more grievous as one attempts to play the campaign game which imagines playing with the whole of the 300-card deck.  A few examples:

 4.a.  Fundamental to the game is the "Left-Center-Right" deployment areas for both sides facing off over a "Middle Ground".  The problem is that for everything except artillery to attack, units must advance over this "Middle Ground".  It's said not to be a space itself, but, given simple ergonomics, should have been granted a clearer place in the rules and its illustrations.  I understand that the rule writers didn't want it to be a "space" of its own, but it takes several playthroughs to figure out just how important it is and begin making allowances for it during play.  And there really should have been some mechanism developed to demark a unit as having advanced to engagement and therefore being ineligible to fire or shock attack.

Middle Ground Matters

4.b.In the Campaign Game, do engaged troops undergoing their second rout check receive the benefit of commanders and terrain?

4.c. In the Campaign Game, may I reinsert those Special Cards that have multiple battles listed on them into a later battle's deck, even if I used that card in a battle I lost?

4.d.  In a Campaign Game, which units does the loser of a previous game get to advance to the next battle.  Obviously not those destroyed, but how about those on the field, in his hand, or in his reinforcement deck?

And I love playing this game.

I love the feel of pouring troops from my hand into the maw of a sector that I seem certain to lose.  I loved it just this evening when HL played the "Friendly Fire" card on the Old Guard and he argued that, as they are old, they likely lack good eyesight anyway.  And I particularly love the decision of when and where to commit your leaders.  They provide no benefit in combat, but, in the all-important morale phase that begins each player's turn, they make it more likely that units damaged in the previous player's turn will not turn tail and run.  Leave then about too long, however, and they, like the Emperor himself in my last game, will meet a grim end.

As we are given to say, "Boney took the pipe".

And, of course, I'm extremely fond of using the Eagles system to play out the tactical battles in Napoleon, 4th ed.  (You could do it with previous editions, but why would you when 4th ed. is available?)  That right there is a long weekend of great fun trying to undo the wrongs of June 1815.

Now and always, Vive L'Empereur!  If I could only get him to pick his socks off the floor.