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.