Quick Thoughts on MMP's Storm Over Jerusalem

 

I've now finished two solo plays of Storm Over Jerusalem, MMP's game of Titus' siege of Jerusalem in AD 70.  It's a winner.   It has fairly simple mechanics (a very slim and well written rulebook) that are reminiscent of those old area movement games of the past, most famously Avalon Hill's Storm Over Arnhem.  

It's a fairly short game (eight turns) in which the Romans have a daunting task of getting over the walls of Jerusalem (so many walls!).  There are two vital areas, the Second Temple and Herod's Palace, and if the Romans can take both in the same turn they win automatically, but that's easier said than done.

The new town (top of the map) is easier to take because the defensive bonuses are slightly less than they are in the old town and the terrain around the new town areas is conducive to siege engines and siege towers which can partially negate the wall defensive bonuses.   So the Romans can make initial headway taking these areas but they aren't vital to the Jewish defenders and they can chew up valuable time.

The Romans have a lot of troops but they don't all start on the map oat once and can only be brought on from four specific reinforcement zones.  The Roman stacking limit is five units per zone, so the Roman player has to develop attacks carefully and plan to reinforce them.

The game is card driven, in that each player gets a hand of cards with fresh draws per turn and the cards convey certain bonuses and allow strategems, such as gradually cutting off Jewish supplies, upgrading Jewish units with captured Roman weapons, onager and ballista attacks, siege ramps, and such.   Some cards can negate others, so if the Roman plays the battering ram card and if the Jewish player has the flaming brand card, it cancels the battering rams.    If you like the flavour that cards bring, you'll like this game.

Here's the situation at the end of the second of two play throughs.    The Romans have thrown their full might at Herod's Palace (left) and the Temple (right) and in both case the Jewish defenders hung on grimly.  The game ended a turn early because of card play, and it was a tie simply because the Romans inflicted massive casualties on the Jewish garrison.

Siege games have a lot appeal for me.  For the attacker they can be interesting problems to solve, and for the defenders while there may not be lots of maneuvre choices, the tension of hanging on is always fun.   And the advantage of a paper game like this one is that I don't have to build a model of Jerusalem and to paint both armies, the game's all in the box.   

Physically the counters are oversize, colourful and well printed.  While mounted mapboards seem to be a thing of the past, it's a lovely and educational map and the cards are well done.  Full marks for the game's components.

This is a game I would definitely play again.

Cheers and blessings to your die rolls,

MP+

Review of White Dog Games' The Mission

The Mission by White Dog Games is one of those rare games where you genuinely feel like you are learning as you play.   Designed by the highly prolific Ben Madison, The Mission is a solitaire game covering the whole of Christian history from the death of Jesus to the beginning of the First Crusades.   During that time your job is to spread the Christian gospel throughout the known world, establish the church, and then defend it from enemies within and without.   At games’ end, in the 12th century, your score will determine whether Christianity survives as a world religion or as a small cult practiced in some backwards region.

The Mission is a 4X game with emphasis on the first three Xs: Explore, Expand, Exploit.  The fourth X, Exterminate, is something you try to avoid.   At first things seem easy, as the original apostles move out from Jerusalem with the gospel of Jesus.   Soon they will die and their bones will become relics, which may help you financially later in the game, but before they pass away they have, hopefully, won a foothold in each of the six geographic tracks of the game board. 

In the first phase of the game, you move further out on each of these tracks, attempting to convert regions which in turn give you revenue to fund missionaries and bishops, build key infrastructure (hospitals, monasteries, and universities), and translate the bible into regional languages (Latin, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, and Syriac).  Before Constantine, the Roman Empire can hinder or tolerate you, depending on the policies of various Caesars.   After the Empire becomes Christian, you make hay while the sun shines, because it gets tougher later on when the Empire collapses.   

In the Dark Ages stage of the game, you now try to defend the five tracks against various hordes of people pushing towards the centre over 28 turns, each covering a varying number of decades.   After the fall of Rome, some of these encroaching peoples can be converted if you work at it (always convert the Saxons if you can), and others have to be resisted as best you can.  Good luck with North Africa, you’ll need it.    Later on, when you’ve hopefully got the hordes under control, the rise of Islam means that various jihads emanate from Jerusalem in the centre and try to conquer their way outwards. so you’re always fighting fires and trying to keep regions from being conquered and slipping into apostasy.   Translating the bible helps, as do various great theologians, but at the same time you’ll face challenges from local despots, schisms where various regions choose their own popes and stop talking to you or sending you money, and that perpetual annoyance, heretics.    As regions fall into heresy, you can either sweet talk them back into the orthodox faith or ruthlessly suppress them, though cruelty can work against you in the long run.

I’ve taught church history in my profession as a vicar so I thrive on this sort of thing, and don’t think there’s been a game on this subject so good since Jim Dunnigan’s venerable SPI title Empires of the Middle Ages, though the two games are only roughly comparable.  If your worldview is secular but you’re interested in the ancient or medieval histories, this game does a good job of showing you the transition from the first to the second.  

White Dog Games uses a print on demand business model.  The components are attractively designed and presented, and the counters are on thick laser cut cardboard.   You’ll need four mugs or containers to hold various sets of random chits, and the game board gets more crowded as the centuries proceed.  My first game went fairly well.  The rules and player aid charts are well laid out and the rules explain themselves as you go along.

I did reasonably well for Christianity in my first game, and look forward to trying it again.  Highly recommended.  The Mission gets the Mad Padre blessing.

MP+

 

 

At f

First Look at GMT's Pendragon, The Fall of Roman Britain

Last fall as part of GMT Games' annual sale, I couldn't resist ordering their 2017 title Pendragon: The Fall of Roman Britain.   Designed by Mark Gouyon-Rety, it is one of the latest instalments in their series of COIN games, and is developed by Volko Ruhnke, the Prince of COIN.

GMT's COIN games are multiplayer simulations of political and military struggles other than traditional warfare.   Since they don't use the traditional war-games hex and counter format with historical orders of battle, and have a Eurogames look to them with their many multi-coloured blocks, they aren't for some grognards.   I confess I like them because of their complex and clever modelling of the historical processes - influence, population movement, and shifting allegiances - that mark many conflicts.  Some years ago I made some comments here about their Afghanistan COIN game, A Distant Plain.

So here we are in the last days of Roman Britain.  The red counters are Dux, the Roman Army in the late 4th century. They have a lot of good troops and forts, and are at the start politically linked with the Civitates, the Romanized Britains (blue) who hold the towns and a variety of strongholds throughout the countryside.   On the left, the green counters are the Scoti, Celtic Irish and Scottish tribes, while the black counters are the Saxons.   Obviously the Scoti and Saxons want to carve up Britain between them.

As the photo shows, Pendragon is a beautiful game to look at, and is typical of GMT's high production values.  A quick  play by play of the first few moves follow to give you a sense of the game mechanics.

The turn sequence is card driven, as in other COIN games.   Each card shows the four factions' icons in different sequences.   Two factions can act on each card, starting from left to right.  The card on the left is in play, and the next card is placed face up on the deck, so players often face choices on whether to act on one card or pass and wait for the next, more optimal card.

The first faction allowed to move is the Civitates.   Since, while wearing my Civitates toga,  I know the barbarians are coming, I decide to use the Muster Command to pay resources to place an extra militia cube (the light blue cubes) in each of the provinces marked with a white pawn.  I also spend additional Resources to stockpile Wealth, which can be used for unit upgrades and the like.   Might as well get ready.   

Next up on the St. Germanus card is the Dux faction, and since they are maxed out, with all their troops and forts already in play, they pass and accrue some Resource points for biding their time and harvesting their strength.   Because the Dux passed, the Scoti can act, bu since the Civitates have gone first, the Scoti only have a Limited Action, meaning they can only operate in one area.  They could play the shaded part of the St. Germanus event card, Papal Oversight, which would rob the Civitates of resources, but their game is all about raiding, and I want to see how the Raid mechanics work.

Each raid generates a random number of raider units, which are not as strong in battle as regular units, but are quite pesky.  The Scoti get to roll 1d4 for free, but chose to spend a Renown point (Renown points measure the success/failure of the two barbarian factions) to roll an extra dice.  Scoti rolls a 7, so seven raider parties descend on the region of Ordovices.   The Hibernian Sea is currently unpatroled, so the raiders are cross successfully.

Wealth in Pendragon is measured by gold Prosperity/Plunder cubes.  Ordovices has two, and the raiders can take a number equal to the population rating (Orodovices has pop 1) so the Scoti get a Plunder cube to try and take home - if successful they convert the Plunder to a Renown point, which the barbarian factions need to win.  The only Civitates militia cube in the region has wisely retreated into the hill fort at Segontium, but the Scoti can afford to throw all those raiders at the hill fort.  A multi-stage process (Escalade, painful for the attackers, then Storm, a straight exchange) follows.  At the end, the Scoti lose four raiders, but eliminate the hill fort and the militia, and acquire two more Plunder for a sacked stronghold.  They have three raider units left, so can carry all three Plunder.  Hopefully in the next Scoti turn, the raiders can return home and convert that Plunder into three Renown points.

Since two factions have moved, the St. Germanus card is finished and the Annona card is now in play.   Dux and the Saxons are the first eligible factions to move on this card.  The next card, now face up on the deck, is Groaning of the Britains.   Again, a faction can either chose the event on the card in play, (top version) good for them or (shaded version) bad for the others, or instead of an Event they can chose an Action, so there is always a choice on each card.

Situation at the beginning of the next card - Dux can go first.  The "Annona" event isn't relevant since there are no Feoderati (barbarian bands hired by the Dux/Civitates) in play yet that need to be paid for.   Dux therefore focuses on actions and could choose the Train option to reinforce,  but since all its allowable forces are already on the board, there is no sense in that.   Dux has two red cavalry units in neighbouring Deceangli which could use a Move action to reach Ordovices, but since the British have lost control of that region, the Dux cavalry could not bring the Scoti raiders to battle.  They could do this on an Intercept move, but only if the region was under Briton control (before Fragmentation, Dux and Civitates are both treated as Britons).  Getting Ordovices back under Briton control is a long-term project that Dux is willing to leave to the civilians, and besides, those two cavalry units in prosperous Deceangli are needed in case of further raids.  Dux passes and collects 3 Resource points.

Saxons are next according to the Annona card and with my Saxon cap on, I decide to Raid in a big way.    The Saxons can Raid up to three regions or cities bordering the Oceanus Britannicus or Oceanus Germanicus.  They choose, from N to S, the three regions of Iceni, Trinovantes, and Cantiaci, spending 1 Renown each for Iceni and Cantiaci to roll 1d4 of Raiders and 2 Renown for Trinovanes to roll 3d4 of raiders.  The result looks grim for the people of Trinovantes, with 8 raiders descending on them!

Because the Oceanus Germanuicus is partrolled and is bordered by three red Dux forts, the residue of the Roman Navy does its job and three raiders are removed from each group, which means that the Britons only have to worry about Trinovantes.   The Saxons now grab Plunder equal to the population, so two Plunder cubes.

 The united Britons decide to stand and give Battle, and we go through the preBattle sequence, where the Saxons elect to try and Ambush (need a 5 or 6 on 1d6) but fail their die roll.  The hard hitting Dux cavalry charge first, killing two raiders, then in a  simultaneous round the raiders inflict 1 and 1/2 hits, killing both Briton units, while the Militia do 1/2 hits, enough to kill 1 raider.  That leaves two Saxon raiders loaded with loot, and that seems like a good if bloody day's work.  Trinovantes remains Britain but is now devoid of its garrison and the Saxons, like the Scoti before them, will try to take their loot home.   A dark pattern for Roman Britain is emerging.

So there are lots of things I am probably getting wrong, but that is the game so far, and I am enjoying it and the many decisions it forces on each faction.   As I continue, I may try and use the "bots", the decision trees for the non-player factions, if only to learn what the optimal strategies are for them, but for now the best COA for the barbarians seems to be raid, raid, and raid some more, until the Britons are weak enough that the remaining raiders can start to take up a permanent foothold.

Blessings to you gaming!
MP

First Look at A Wing And A Prayer (Lock and Load Games)

“OK, fellas, I’m Luigi, and I’m hear to give you a rousing welcome as we get ready to take off and go bomb the Krauts, so listen up, because Uncle Sam put a lot of dough into training you apes, and if you want to ever want to see Tonawanda again, you better fly a tight formation and stay alert.  It’s a good game, and the box is fun to sit in. OK, let’s go."

Thanks, Luigi, I’ll take it from here.   Readers of this blog will know that I have a fondness for the air war over Germany in World War Two, so A Wing and A Prayer: Bombing The Reich by Lock and Load Games isa  2016 release.   It’s a solitaire game, though it can be played with a second player as the German defenders, and is simple enough to play.    The US/solo player is given a squadron B17 bombers, and has to make it through a series of missions in campaigns of various lengths.    There is also an option to play a squadron of B24s.

As you can see from the map, movement is point to point, with Occupied Europe divided into boxes containing various targets and flak hazards.   Each campaign has a variety of targets, each represented by one of the cards seen below.   The early war campaign features targets mostly in France and the Low Countries, and the later campaigns get much more hairy.   Each target is rated for its flak defence, difficulty to bomb, and the amount of bomb damage it requires to reduce and/or eliminate.   You get Victory Points by successfully bombing targets and shooting down enemy fighters while avoiding bomber losses.

Once you get your target, then it’s time to get after it.   For the very first mission of the short 1942 campaign, I drew Lille as a target, which seemed quite easy, only three squares away from England.   I could employ all twelve of my B17Fs, and laid them out in the standard box formation of Lead, High, Low and Tail elements.  Unfortunately, I rolled badly for cloud cover, so my bomb aimers would have to squint through the clouds to see the target.  Luckily for me, I rolled well for escorts.  As you can see at the bottom of the formation card below, I have an escort of 6 P47 Thunderbolts, which have the range to accompany me all the way to the target.  

 

One of the features which gives the game its quality is varying bomber crew quality.   You start off by getting one crack crew, two good crews, and nine green crews, all rated for flying, air combat, and bomb accuracy.   I employed my crack crew, “Hells Angels”, to fly the lead plane in the formation.  If they make it to the target, the formation benefits from their accuracy bonus when bombing.

Once your squadron is in the air, there is an events table to check, possibly leading to enemy fighters, a mechanical malfunction in one of your bombers, or something positive such as a visit from Lady Luck.  The chances of an event increase the further out you are from your home base in England.  In my case, my lead bomber had to check for a mechanical problem just before the bombing run at Lille, but the crew of Hell’s Angels were fortunate.   Once over the target, there was flak to check for, using a combat results table which distributes the attack factors (in this case the flak) over the number of bombers.   Since my squadron was at its full strength of 12, the distribution was very favourable, so that each bomber had to roll “12” on two D6 for something bad to happen.   Everyone got through the flak in and out with no damage to any aircraft.

A similar process happens for the bombing.  Each plane has a bombing, which is multiplied on the same Combat Results Table with possible column shifts for the difficulty of the target, skill of the lead crew, etc.   With the bad clouds over Lille, I got nine chances to roll a 6 on 1D6, with each hit counting for so many damage factors against the target.   I only got 1 hit, which was not nearly enough to significantly damage the target.   Lille will have to wait for another day.

Once your squadron gets home, you can automatically land them, or using an optional rule, check to see who makes it carefully.  Damaged planes, and/or planes with green crews, have a worse chance of landing.  Using the advanced rule, one of my B17s suffered light damage on landing, and had to be placed in the Not Ready box.   For the squadron’s next mission, I will have to check to see of the plane can be repaired in time to go again.    Fewer bombers will increase the risk to the remainder if its not read

 

If there is a flaw with A Wing and A Prayer, I suppose it is repeated die rolling for all these steps.   To complete the raid on Lille, with flak going in and out, and the bombing, I had to roll a total of 1D6 X 57 which, along with checking multiple charts over three separate sheets, seems like a lot of work.   Also, the game is abstract enough that there doesn’t feel like there is much emotional investment in the fate of individual crews.   Perhaps that will change as I run multiple missions, but for now these boys seem rather expendable.   Perhaps that was how the bombers’ commanders really viewed them.

So, an agreeable enough game, which took me about an hour to play.     Hopefully we will revisit Generic Squadron soon for its next mission.

Blessings to your die rolls!

MP+

 

Office War-game Thursday: Red Vengeance

I’m a fortunate chap in that I have my own office at work, with space to layout a small game to noodle away at during my lunch hour.   Somedays I’m too busy, but some days I get to push some cardboard and roll some dice.

Currently I’m playing an OOP Avalanche Press title, Red Vengeance, which is a little gem I found in an estate sale purchase I made this spring.

Red Vengeance is a simple, high-level (armies and corps) operational game focusing on the Eastern Front 1944-45, a “Bagration to Berlin” approach .  The designer is William Sariego, not exactly a household name in wargaming circles but he has a respectable CV posted at Boardgame Geek.  Sariego designed a Barbarossa game, Defiant Russia, using the same system, which is still in print.

Turn 1: June 1944.  Here’s the opening setup, with the Germans opposing the Russians on a solid line running from the Baltic to the Black Sea.  This is a mandatory setup, with the German infantry deploying first along an indicated line of hexes, then the Russians, then finally the German armour.    Armour units have a higher combat value and movement, and also get to move and attack again during an Exploitation Phase, along with certain other types of units such as Soviet Guards.  The logical setup for both sides is to mass the armour in the centre, either north of south of the Pripet Marshes.

The game mechanics require Soviet units to attack Axis units in adjacent ZOCs.  German units do not have to attack units in adjacent ZOCs in their turn.   This rule means that on Turn 1, all hell breaks loose as the Soviets attack every single hex on the German front line, guaranteeing a huge bloodletting for both sides. One Turn 1, the German defensive rolls were generally poorer than the attackers, so the Wehrmacht was roughly handled and it has been going badly ever since.  When my son and I tried the game, we found that the first turn went slowly as it was a LOT of die rolling, but the game picks up speed thereafter.

Three months later, here’s the situation at the end of Turn 3, August 1944.   Not good for the Germans.   Warsaw is threatened, and the Germans are practically broken into northern and southern pockets with little linking the two.

Army Group North is in falling back and is in serious trouble if Warsaw gets taken.   The Panzer reserve was thrown against the two Soviet Shock Armies at 0708 but that fight ended with no casualties on either side.  A reduced SS Corps grimly hangs on to Riga as a distraction, Combat in this game is very simple.  Each unit throws a number of device equal to its combat victory and each 6 causes a step loss on the opponent.  It’s that simple.   The number of dice can be slightly modified by terrain, or goosed upwards if leaders, air or naval support are present.   Provided that a stack takes as many hits as it has steps, it can lose one step and retreat a number of hexes equal to the remaining number of hits.  If the hits are one or more above the number of steps, the stack is eliminated.   Attackers and defenders shoot simultaneously.   

Meanwhile Army Group South is falling back on Bucharest, leaving that one poor Hungarian unit at 2313 to hold the mountains against the Red Horde.  On the southern flank there are two hexes with oil wells which are quite strategic.   For each one that the Axis hold, they get one additional armour step replacement.   It is possible to build up and even reconstitute lost units in this game, but there are never enough step replacements, generally just 4-6 per turn, and the armour step replacements dry up in 1945.  There are some reinforcement units that arrive, so the German strategy as I can see it is to counterattack where possible, fall back, trade land for time and hope that the reduced movement in the winter turns slows the Soviet juggernaut.  

Red Vengeance is a small game that is well suited for solitaire play.   There are a few chrome and optional rules to experiment with, but the joy of the game is how simply it plays.     It certainly keeps my mind diverted on those rare days when I have a free lunch hour.

I’ll check in again next Thursday and see whose flag is flying over Berlin.

Blessings to your die rolls!

MP

"Zulus, Mr. Rico! Zillions of 'em!" : A Quick Review of Zulus on the Ramparts by Victory Point Games

 

 

“Men of Harlech, stand you …  AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!” 

Don’t let this happen to you.

If I’m a little bleary eyed this morning, it’s because I was up past my bedtime playing Zulus on the Ramparts, a solitaire game about the Battle of Rorke’s Drift from Victory Point Games’ States of Siege series, designed by veteran grognard Joe Miranda.  In the few times I had played it already I had gotten a quick and unpleasant result, as the Zulu imps almost effortlessly overran my defences and the rifles fell silent.    This game was a different result.  Miraculously the Zulus held off until the defences were reinforced, giving me time to get all my heroes, Bromhead, Chard, Colour Sgt. Bourne, Hook, Hitch, and Ammunition Smith the Padre among others all on the firing line.  When they came on, we let them have it, and while they got close to our final redoubt, it was Steady Lads Steady and Men of Harlech and we dropped them as they came.   All through the night we held, and then the last impi came on like a black thundercloud,  and we were down to our last cartridges, but we held, by God.  It was a Martini Henry miracle with a bayonet and some guts behind it.

Well, as you can see, I enjoy this simple game.  If you’ve played other VPG solitaire games, like Dawn of the Zeds, you’ll recognize the basic idea.   The bad guys (four Zulus impis of various strengths) each start on their own track and their progress is chit driven.  If any one reaches the centre of the board, you lose.   You can help your cause by building two sets of barricades, if you have time, to buy yourself some more space and time to defend. As the Zulus advance, you are drawing cards which allow you to bring various heroes and personalities into play (like Dick, the Surgeon’s dog) and Pvt. Hook, or any of the various volley cards which allows you to engage the Zulus from various ranges.    Each turn you have to chose an action - do you fire a volley, work on extra barricades, pass out more ammo, or get one of your personalities into the battle to use their various abilities?  You have a lot of heroes (all those VCs, after all) which help, but never enough time.

There is a day phase, and a night phase, which is worse because it’s harder to hit the Zulus at night unless buildings catch fire, which they can do.  There are also some random event cards, and some what ifs, like Company G actually showing up and helping the garrison.  If you want pics and more comments, you can find the ZotR page here on BGG.  At $40 it’s at a midrange price for a boardgame, and the components have the usual VPG high quality of treatment - a hard mounted board, professional cards, and thick MDF laser cut playing pieces, so to my mind that’s a good game at a fair price.  While this is a solitaire game, it would be fun to take to the pub/club and play a few times.  A quick defeat can take twenty minutes, but an epic stand might take an hour.  My record so far is one out of three wins, so it’s a challenging game.

 I have this week off, so I’ll probably watch Zulu for more inspiration.

Blessings to your die rolls!

MP+

 

 

Bombers and Builders: Two Game Reviews

Madame Padre and I are on holiday, enjoying the train, the famed “Canadian”, as we roll across northern Saskatchewan towards Alberta, Jasper and the Rockies on our way to Vancouver, where Madame has a bucket list of gardens, parks and other beauty spots to enjoy.   We’re told we won’t see the mountains until early evening, so lots of time to write up some thoughts on a game I’ve been playing for a few weeks now.

Target for Today (TfT) is published by Legion Wargames, a solo game with a tactical focus as you fly a B17 Flying Fortress or B24 Liberator in a campaign of daylight bombing missions over Europe.   The game thus has an ancestry that includes Avalon Hill’s B17: Queen of the Skies.  Solitaire games (GMT’s submarine games like The Hunters are other recent examples of the genre) have good and bad points.  On the positive side, you don’t need an opponent, which is how I do most of my gaming these days.  On the negative side, you are playing against the game, which really means working through a series of charts and tables, rolling lots of dice, and hoping for the best, which can get rather repetitious after a while.

TfT is a very granular game, with charts and stats for early and late models of B17s and B24s as well as the short lived bomber escort version of the B17.  The game features each individual crewman and crew position, and the gun positions that most of the crew members man.  Once your crew is aboard, your mission is determined by a random die roll featuring a list of targets appropriate to the year and month.  Each target, depending on its distance, has a series of zones that most be transited on the route to the target and the route back home.  Zones are rated for being over water or land (which can effect your survival chances depending on whether you ditch or bail out) and the chance of fighter interception by the Luftwaffe.  Depending on the distance to the target, you may have a lot of zones to navigate, which determines the time necessary to play.

A typical zone transit works as follows.  For each zone you first check the weather, which can vary from clear to 100% cloud cover.  Heavy cloud cover can make it harder for the Luftwaffe to find you, but if the target is cloud covered, it’s obviously hard to hit.  Then you roll for the chance (usually 1-3% for B17s, 1-5% for Liberators) of some sort of mechanical failure.  Then you check for contrails, which if formed make it easier for fighters to intercept your bomb group.  The you check the chance of interception, and if unlucky the intensity of the opposition, the number and type of German fighters less whatever your own fighter escort can do) and then the positions of the enemy fighters.

Fighter combat is played out on this battle board.  Depending on which of your gunners have good arcs of fire, you allocate your guns and the type of fire (spray fire is good for forcing fighters to break off, but uses up your ammo faster).  Once your defensive fire is determined, any German aircraft which are not shot down or aborted can make their attacks.  If successful, damage is checked on a series of tables depending on the angle of attack and the parts of the plane likely to be hit from that angle.  

Here is where the game breaks down a little, because by the time you have reached this point, you are moving between three printed booklets, one of rules and two of tables, including one booklet just for hit and damage tables.   Since a zone may have up to three waves of fighter interceptions, each of  which can have several rounds of combat, it can take a long while, especially as the level of damage is quite granular.   While there are several results that can end the game outright (for example, a flak shell exploding in the bombs in the bomb bay), most of the results are non-fatal but have a cumulative effect.

As an example, I took an early model B24 Liberator on a raid in early 1943.  The target determined was an airfield in Cottbus, which is nine zones from the airfield, so a lot of die rolling there and back.  By the time Lucky Lady (as I called her) reached home, she was badly shot up.  One waist gunner was killed, and the other was seriously wounded.  The bombardier was manning a waist .50 cal because the nose gun was knocked out.  Each wing root had taken two out of four hit points (four and the wing falls off, which is bad).  The radio was destroyed, making an SOS rescue call impossible in the event of a ditching. The intercom system was shot out, giving a negative modifier to all defensive fires.   One of the aerlions was shot up, increasing the chances of a crash on landing.  One of the four engines was damaged and racing, but still working.  Both the ball and the top turrets had one of their two .50 calls inoperative.  The navigator’s workspace had been wrecked, meaning that Lucky Lady would have a harder chance getting home if she had fallen out of formation.  Nevertheless, she persisted and made it to Cottbus, dropped her bombs, and made it home, successfully landing on a very tense percentage dice roll.  The wounded waist gunner would survive, but would go home on a hospital ship for the duration.  Lucky Lady was repairable, and the surviving crew could go on to their next mission, with two new waist gunners.  Crewmen who had recorded 5 kills (the top turret gunner) would qualify for an ace positive modifier on defensive fire in future missions.

In return, I calculated that the crew of Lucky Lady had accounted for at least a dozen fighters destroyed, and that many more damaged.  That result seems excessively high to me, but that is only a gut reaction.  I suppose the downside of this sort of game, like a Hollywood film, is that you have to have the perception of risk but the emphasis on the agency of the heroes, otherwise it would be a dull game.

As an extra layer of chrome, there is a sub-game where you can follow the fortunes of the bomb group that your plane is part of.  For each round of fighters or flak the player consults a table to see if another plane in the group is at risk, with the possibility of damage (1-6 points out of 6) or even the plane being destroyed.  This sub game can also interact with random events from the main game, which can result in mid-air collisions among the bomb group or individual cells of planes being temporarily disrupted and more vulnerable to attack.  In Lucky Lady’s first mission, the entire bomb group returned safely, though eight planes had sustained damage, of which three had lost four of six damage points).

 

TfT is a lot of great ideas crammed into one game.  Some of the systems may need to be discarded or streamlined at the player’s discretion for a faster game.  For example, you may not care that Navigator Bloggin’s left forearm is grazed according to the wounds tables.  It may just suffice that he is lightly wounded.  Likewise, while it may be satisfying after shooting down a FW 190 to check the enemy plane destroyed table to see how it was destroyed, that is the chromiest of chrome and wholly unnecessary.   While there are a host of player logs and damage/ammo records that can be photocopied and used during play, I have found that a running log on a scratchpad saves the aggravation of sorting through multiple log sheets in play. Even cutting a few corners, a long mission can take a long time to play.  It easily took 3 hours of real time to complete the epic journey of Lady Luck and that time cost could be a problem for those looking for a quick gaming experience

For fans of the bombing campaigns over the Reich, TfT may well provide an immersive experience.  However, for a game where the question of interest is, can I survive 25 missions, the player may lose interest before learning the answer to that question.

As a quick bonus review, I had a chance to play a game called Mare Nostrum - Empires at the club last week before going on holiday.  It’s an expansion/reboot of the 2003 Eurogames title, this time published by Academy Games - the kind of game where you expand, build, and maybe fight other players on your quest for glory.  It is very loosely historical, since the empires in play include Rome, Persia, and Atlantis.  Different races have different advantages.  Egypt, being most civilized, can build stuff more easily, whereas Rome is best at fighting, and so on.    The owner of the game picked up this deluxe, extra-large rubberized map, which really shows it to advantage.

 

Mare Nostrum allows sudden death victory in several ways, such as being the lead on all three of these tracks (trade, civilization, and military prowess) at any time in the game.  The cards above the tracks are various superheroes (such as Penthilsea, the Queen of the Amazons) who can be purchased in lieu of buying temples, cities, troops, ships or other useful things). Again, get enough of these superheroes and you win the game automatically.  

I

n the one game I played, I was slowly chugging along, trying to expand my little Roman empire.  I had expanded to Sicily, hoped to colonize the legendary city of Syracuse and get a hidden legendary city goody that might help me, while raising some troops to deter my neighbours, who were also slowly building stuff.  The guy playing Carthage had opted to recruit a stable of heroes, but he was two away from winning the game that way, and those last two heroes were pretty expensive, so I wasn’t worried.  Then, the Egypt player, who also owned the game, revealed that he had raised 10 gold pieces that we were totally not tracking, enough for him to buy the Great Pyramids, which was, quelle suprise, another Sudden Death way to win the game.  

Because I had been so invested in the idea of slowly building up Rome the traditional, incremental way, and maybe fighting some battles along the way, I was oblivious to the game as game, and to the various routes to victory that it offered.   I have trouble remembering that games of this sort are, well, gamey, and need to be approached as such.  Instead, I was fixated on the idea that I was playing a more complex, traditional sort of expansion game.   As the victor pointed out, one of the advantages of Mare Nostrum is that it can be played to a resolution in under two hours, which for a club game on a weeknight is a highly desirable outcome.  Nevertheless, I found myself dissatisfied.  Despite the myriad numbers of chrome and levels of complexity in a game like TfT, it offered a substantial experience, whereas  Mare Nostrum was like a delicious creamy pastry, lovely to look at but easily disposed of in a few bites and leaving me wanting more.

If you are on Twitter, I invite you to follow my account, @madpadre1, because I have live tweeted several B17 missions, putting my Twitter friends into the various crew positions for a mission somewhat abbreviated for playability.  It has proven to be a lot of fun, as over a couple of hours you get the chance to risk flak and fighters, with lots of silly banter and some .GIFs along the way.   I try to give folks a few days notice to reserve their spot in the crew, so grab your sheepskin bomber jacket and come along for the fun but be warned, on our second mission we lost our navigator, who lost an arm to a flak splinter, and is now going home.  Maybe you can replace him?

Blessings to your die rolls and bombs away!

MP+

Tuesday Night Boardgame (On Wednesday): GMT'S Fields of Despair

 

I couldn’t resist this title by GMT games - any World War One game generally goes to the head of my purchasing queue, and this one was no exception.    Fields of Despair (FOD) is a strategic scale block game designed by Kurt Lewis Keckley - you can find his blog here and follow him on Twitter at @PhotoAvalanche .  It comes with an attractive hardback folding map, several hundred counters and blocks which need to be stickered (thankfully, for Command and Colours fans, only on one side).  

I’ve only played FoD solo which is a pity because that is rather like driving a Ferrari in stop and go traffic and never getting out of second gear.  This is a game designed for two players, and the one-sided blocks mean that you never know exactly what is waiting for you when you launch an attack.   I can’t wait to try this game head to head because the suspense would be epic.   The blocks themselves are the heart of the game, reminiscent of the four-sided blocks used in well-known Columbia games such as Quebec 1759 and Waterloo.   Blocks range from 1 to 4 up to 17 - 20 Strength Points, with 20SP blocks representing a multi-corps army.   Most blocks represent infantry, with a few cavalry units given to each side.

In addition, players can commit artillery to key battles (representing strategic artillery assets) and can also commit aerial units in the hopes of forcing the other player to reveal some or all of his blocks before battle.   Aerial reconnaissance is not a sure thing, however, because the defending (or passive) player can throw in his/her air units as well to try and keep the observer planes from carrying out their missions.   Besides his/her own blocks, the defender can try to hold the line with a few key fortresses, such as Verdun, which are very hard nuts to crack.

Here is a shot of the game board in the early stages of the three-turn introductory scenario, set in 1914.  Infantry units move two hexes a turn, and cavalry three, but units have to stop when they enter an enemy controlled hex.  Unless all defending units are removed from a hex, it is considered contested and remains in the defender’s control, so the ownership counters seen here are quite important for deterring victory.

And the same game at the end.  The Germans have taken heavy losses, but have done worse damage to the French, and have come within an ace of capturing Paris before the end of the game, which the Germans won 9-7 based on hexes control.  The British (tan counters) are slowly building up strength, but were separated from their French allies by the German advance.

In retrospect this game might have gone better for the French if played H2H, since playing it solo it was impossible as the stronger German side to hit the French where they were weakest.   There is a slightly intimidating solitaire system for one of the late war scenarios, which I hope to try at some point.  

WW1 fans will appreciate the fact that the game is highly attritional.  While breakthroughs are possible and  can be exploited, they are difficult to achieve and hard to exploit.  Manpower is a very finite quantity in the game.  The Germans have an initial advantage, and their army grows considerably in 1914, but like the other countries the manpower streams dry up later in the war, so every SP lost early in the game is one you won’t have later when you may need it.

There are several economics and technology R&D tracks, where players can put resources into developing new weapons (poison gas, gas masks, better aircraft, tanks, etc) and also put resources into maintaining the Allied blockade vs the German submarine campaign, ether of which can hurt the other side’s resources.    The German player must also think about the second front with Russia, which is represented in a very abstract but effective way.  Don’t put enough resources into the Russian front and you as the German can lose the game.   

While the game does not use a card system like Ted Raicer’s WW1 classic Paths of Glory, it does have a series of technology thresholds that introduces events like aerial combat, the start of trench warfare, as well as political events like the US entry to the war.  

FoD is a simple and highly playable game with enough chrome to give it a good feel for the strategic choices faced by the combatants in the Great War on the Western Front.   Fans of WW1 should check this out.  While it would be huge fun with an opponent, the solitaire mechanism looks promising and there is also Vassal.

Speaking of Vassal, here is some bonus WW1 content.  This is a screen shot of a game that Jonathan Freitag and I are playing online - it is from the introductory scenario of GMT’s 1914: Offensive a outrance, from their operational monster game about the first months of WW1 in the West.  My French divisions begin the war by hurling themselves on the Boche to erase the infamy of 1870 and to recapture France’s provinces.   Latest communiques from French HQ confirm that all is going well.  

The cool thing about this game is that it is a 100% digital version of the real game, and while the going is slow, Jon and I are learning a lot about Vassal in the process.

Good luck to your die rolls, virtual or otherwise.

MP

 

 

 

 

Tuesday Night Boardgame: April's Harvest by the Gamers

A quiet week at the Mad Padre's wargaming chapel.   Spring is slowly coming, I've been doing some painting, including reorganizing my 15mm Red Army of the Great Patriotic War (more of that anon) and am generally being delighted that Madame Padre is doing so well.

 

While my GMT 1914 game is still raging at home, at work things are pleasantly quiet and I have found a space in the stockroom to set up a game to tinker with during my lunch hours.   Because it’s April and spring is gloriously here, II chose this 1995 title by The Gamers', April's Harvest, an ACW game on the battle of Shiloh.  It’s a design by Dean Essig, the well-known and distinguished designer behind The Gamers,  and Alan Wambold, part of the Civil War Brigade series now available from Multiman Publishing.  I blame Jon Frietag for telling me about an MMP sale a few years ago.

 

Most of the books in my ACW library are about the war in the East, and I don’t know much about Shiloh except the rollicking account in the first volume of Shelby Foote’s Civil War series, so it’s an opportunity for me to learn a little more about this battle that started the Confederacy’s long slow death spiral in the West.  

Here’s the game set up and ready to go.   The Confederate army is marching on in the top left corner, and the Union are the blue counters scattered around in the centre.  Because U.S. Grant let the Confederates assemble right next to his encampment at Pittsburg landing, without being too bothered by reports of trouble coming, most of the Union troops start immobile and off guard.  Each counter represents a brigade, a battery, a cavalry unit, a commander or a supply train.

I am still working my way through the rules, which are generally well written and moderately complex.   One of the things that appeals to me as a miniatures gamer is the command and control dimension of the game.   As I understand it, divisions and corps need orders (seize this, defend that, go here, etc) that can need to be written in broad terms by the players.   It’s not at the micro detail of hex by hex movement, but broad strokes.  For example, the three CSA divisions that start on the board all have territorial objectives that they are ordered to capture.   If new orders need to be given, there is a mechanism that marks the time necessary for the orders to travel from commander to subordinate, and then a mechanism to see if they orders are accepted and understood.  

I’ve just had time to run the first turn (6:30am).  It wasn’t clear to me which side went first, so I let the Union go first and moved the two Union brigades that had orders.   Since then I have had access to the errata, and discovered that the rebs should go first.  Ooops.  Here Moore’s troops of Prentis’ Division have been ordered to scout for rebel tools.  They run right into Hardee’s third corps and are falling back.  Both sides have fired shots and taken casualties, with a rebel brigade pushing the Yanks back but becoming Shaken after a failed morale check.  Shaken is not a terrible thing, but it does stop troops from making Close Combat (shock) attacks.

The counters on either side of Confederate units showing red arrows indicate that the brigade has adopted an extended line formation.

More to follow as the Union camp starts to wake up.

Blessings to your hardtack and coffee!  

MP+

 

Tuesday Night Boardgame: GMT's 1914: Attack A L'Outrance

Returning to an old and occasional custom here at Mad Padre Wargames, it's our Tuesday night boardgame feature, in which I spare some love for my first love, hex and counter wargames. 

Tonight's subject is the GMT Games Title, 1914: Offensive a Outrance, a modest monster game working on the operational level that recreates the first weeks of World War One on the western front. a 2013 title designed by Michael Resch. 

1914 features a fairly rigorous model of army organization and attachment, and forces the player to think carefully about each army's designated areas of operation and objectives.  It uses historical war plans that guide each army's movement and objectives, which is useful for solitaire play.   Plans can be suspended and armies can be relocated, but initially the game works according to the designs of the 1914 war planners.

Logistics is a big deal in this game, and there are detailed rules for fortresses, siege artillery, and rail movement that I haven't yet dived into.

Because it's quite the big beast, I am only playing the tutorial scenario, which features the Lorraine offensive of France's First and Second armies in the first days of the war as part of the Republic's Plan XVII.   Here Second Army throws itself at the German lines in the true spirit of the bayonet, while the Germans do their best to improve their positions.  The black counters indicate Prepared Attacks, which cost movement points to execute, thus forcing the offensive to move fairly slowly, but which yield better odds of success.  Attacks can be moderated by the Attacker and then the Defender declaring if the battle is to be Intensive, which increases the chances of casualties.

Combat units are rated by attack and defence strength, the two large numbers at the bottom of each counter.  The smaller number between them indicates combat proficiency, and the small number to the side of the unit symbol indicates organic artillery.   Besides the usual retreat/advance/step loss results, the CRT gives a modifier that each side must use in what is basically a morale check after each fight,  which may result in a unit's combat effectiveness being degraded.



Turns allow the defender a limited move after the attacker or phasing player completes his/her movement.  Here below the French 21st XXX was trying to sneak through the Vosges to pressure Strasbourg.   In the German reaction face, elements of 15 XXX have moved far enough south to check the advance, showing that the game has some potential for solitaire play, as one can think through all options for both sides each turn.  

Here the 30th XX has moved into a fortress hex (as in the red lines around Strasbourg.  I did some checking and concluded that this hex must represent the Fort de Mutzig, which I was delighted to find has a website and looks well worth visiting.  in fact, the whole Alsace region looks like a beautiful destination, perhaps a cycling holiday.



I am only half way through a four-turn game, but the tutorial is doing its job and teaching me the basic mechanics.    I am working up the nerve to try the big game this summer, but am liking it so far.  Following the spirit of the French generals, I shall throw myself on the German lines like a tiger and reap the certain victory.  Faith in the bayonet and the spirit of the attack shall prevail!

Marshall Luigi watched the fighting for a while, but could not bear to witness the casualties.





What Monster Have I Created?

My learning this week is that I shouldn’t have offered to give this game away.

If you are an old school board war gamer, you will remember that Avalon Hill did a card game based on its popular WW2 game of infantry combat, Squad Leader.   It was notorious for the ridiculously handsome, almost angelic SS guy on the cover.  I’m surprised that image has not been resurrected by the Alt-RIght.    The bits below, including AH’s Pacific War expansion, Banzai!, was gifted to me by an Army friend of mine.  I tried playing it a few times solitaire, and it didn’t really seem that much fun.

This week I offered the game up on a Facebook group called Wargamer Pay It Forward.  The deal is that members can place dibs on games they want, and if they win one, they have to offer a game in return.  It’s a great system.  I had won a copy of GMT’s Labyrinth, a game on the US War on Terror against international jihadism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.   It seems like a good trade to me, as I like contemporary games and am a fan of the thoughtful work done by Ruhnke and his sometime collaborator,  Brian Train.

However, I wasn’t prepared for the 90+ claimants that have put in their dibs for Upfront!  I am fully expecting the number of entrants will top one hundred by the deadline of noon tomorrow.  Yikes.  I think I’ve found a robust random number generator that will do the job, but it will be a big job.  I suppose I could write the names on slips of papers and let Stanley the Cat draw one.  I’ve done it here before.

Blessings!

MP+

 

Tuesday Night Boardgame: GMT's Talon (at the Cottage)

Madame Padre and I are on holiday this week, in the part of Ontario known as the Muskokas, or cottage country, near fabled Algonquin Park.  It’s sweater weather, but the days are mostly sunny and the leaves are turning, it’s magical.

Madame Padre is out with her camera when we’re not in the canoe.

While I didn’t bring any figures to paint, I did bring a game:   GMT’s 2015 space battles game, Talon.  



Talon is designed by Jim Krohn - I was pleased to find that he is a pastor as well as a game designer.   Krohn is best known for his 2011 GMT title, Space Empires 4X (the 4X meaning eXplore, expand, eXploit and eXterminate).   Whereas Space Empires is a big game of building empires, Talon is game of individual ships clashing in space.  Talon is designed to be bolted on to Space Empires if one wanted to fight the SE battles tactically, though that seems like a lot of work.   With Talon as it is, you can fight battles following the supplied scenarios, or using a points system.  

There are a lot of reviews of Talon out there, including this one, which says much more, more preceptively, than I can say here.  Like the review, I had a strong first impression of the game.   It’s a little challenging to figure out from the rule book at first, but by following the tutorial scenario it started to come together.

The first decision you have to make with Talon is to trust the recommendation to do the bookkeeping on the laminated counters, using the supplied dry-erase makers, rather than the printed ship roster sheets which are also supplied.   I resisted for a bit, but then unwrapped the dry erase makers and found it quite easy to use.   Here you can see a Terran heavy cruiser in blue and the alien (Talon) heavy cruiser in red.  The most important data are the lines of numbers, 3-3-2 for the Terran and 3-3-1 for the Talon ship.  These numbers are the Power Curves.  The first number is the AP (Available Power) generated by the ship’s plant, and the second is the speed (the higher the number, the faster).   The third number is the turn radius: the lower the number, the more nimble the ship.  

A game turn lasts six impulses.  During each impulse, ships can do different things depending on their Power Curve settings.  Power is useful for many reasons; it can reinforce shields as long as they are still up, it can be used to defend or to try and steal the initiative (very useful when one could shot can kill a weakened ship), or ti temporarily decrease a ship's turn radius when trying to attack or evade.  Most importantly, it can be used to recharge weapons.  The Power Curve can be adjusted up or down after every six impulses, during the Power Phase.

On these two counters, you can see that both ships have marks to indicate that their front shields (the green boxes) are knocked down and out of action.   Once a shield is down, hits go to the hull (the red boxes below the Power Curve number).  As hull boxes get marked off, critical hits can occur and the amount of available power decreases until the ship blows up.

In the two games I’ve played thus far, I’ve found that after an initial exchange of fire, which usually knocks down the front shields, ships tend to manoeuvre around each other, recharging their weapons while trying to keep their intact shields facing the enemy.  Small actions thus have the feel of frigates from the age of sail, looking for a moment of advantage while trying to keep out of the enemy’s broadside.  Because the weapons ranges are between 1 and 3 hexes, you need to be careful about losing the initiative and having an enemy ship turn and fire on a weak or missing shield This can happen when the enemy steals the initiative, or when a ship moves out of initiative (the Terrans and Talon both have special tech that allows them to do this on a limited basis).

 

In the first scenario, two Terran and two Talon heavy cruisers mix it up.  After the first exchange, the Napoleon has lost its front shields, the Unity has lost its port shield, and the Justice has lost most of its front shield.  The yellow and red bars represent weapons and their charges.  Ships start a scenario with charged weapons, indicated by marking black on the laminated counters.   Once the weapon is fired, the black line is erased, and must slowly be charged up again.   Here, of all the four ships, only the Justice still has a charged weapon - the starboard disruptors.  The Justice also has a Defend counter on it, indicating that the Talon ship is using its Available Power this impulse to protect the initiative.  At the end of an impulse, if one side has spent more Power to take the initiative than the other side has spent Power defending it, the initiative passes to the other side.  As the game goes on, with multiple ships, there are a lot of decisions about how to use Power as it comes available - recharge the weapons, or try to gain/defend the initiative.

As I said, trusting the design intention and using the dry-erase markers on the laminated counters is a bit of a leap of faith.   The system does work, though I found that after two games, one of the two markers wasn’t working that well.   Hopefully I can find more markers this size at the local office supply store.   One thing I didn’t have was the Q-tips that are recommended for erasing the counters.  Otherwise, using a bit of wadded up tissue as I was, it’s easy to remove the wrong information from a counter.

Some of the complaints about Talon that I’ve read online are that players spend a lot of time dancing around one another, recharging weapons while trying to stay out of harm’s way.  This may be true of the small scale battles I’ve fought so far, while other reviewers mention that the game really shines with large fleets on each side.  These comments also mention that Talon as a game is much more forgiving to players than earlier games such as Star Fleet Battles, which was legendary in its complexity.    There are more advanced rules in Talon that I haven’t tried yet, including missiles, fighter wings, carriers, super-heavy battleships and exotic weapons.   I’m looking forward to trying these rules in future games.

Some might find that the universe of Talon is a little unimaginative.  You have the Terrans, and then a fairly faceless enemy, the Talon, who are sort of a generic, warlike race that comes along to make Terra’s life miserable.  Are they like Klingons?  Romulans?  Does anyone really care?   In defence of Krohn, he has written a player’s guide which is considerably longer than the rule book, full of fluff and backstory to explain the conflict, but all from the Terran point of view.  Another possible objection is the symmetry between the two sides.  While there are minor differences between the Terran and Talon ships, they both have the same ship classes: Scouts, Destroyers, Light and Heavy Cruisers, etc.   Does this make sense?  Can one imagine an alien race that only has one or two types of ships?  I can imagine an SF writer like Brian Aldiss thinking out of the box about an alien culture and its technology. However, in a game that includes a point system for building battles, perhaps one needs symmetry.

Finally, one could ask how a game like this is different from, say, a WW2 or modern naval war-game.   Perhaps a space game is just a naval game by another name, in that you have hulls, ranged weapons, speed and armour (shields by another name).  I would say the difference is the novel impulse mechanic and the inherent logic of the Power Curve system which Krohn as thought up, plus the copious amounts of chrome layered onto the game.

So, my first impressions of Talon are very favourable.  The first small battles I fought took about 90 minutes to resolve, the second game going much faster after I figured out the mechanics.   In fact, I like it so much, I’ve put my name in for GMT’s P500 club for the Talon expansion that is planned.

Blessings to your space ships!

MP+

We're Back ..With A Small Trove of ACW Boardgames

Hello and welcome back to this sadly neglected blog, which I am tempted to rename Dragon Dormant.  Since I returned from La Belle Province de Poutine, all has been well, but busy.  Madame Padre celebrated her third post-chemotherapy bloodtest with very good results, and has decided to celebrate with a new bicycle and a more active lifestyle, so bravo to her.   

There has been a little painting and a little gaming, so some updates coming.  One of the most exciting things to happen lately was this small pile of out of print American Civil War (with one Mexican War title thrown in) cardboard counter type boardgames that came my way.   A friend at the local club was helping to sell off the collection of a gamer friend who had passed away.  I am sorry I didn’t know this fellow, as I think we would have gotten along well.

Three of these titles are from the GMT Games series, Richard Berg’s Great Battles of the American Civil War.  Red Badge of Courage covers First and Second Bull Run, Three Days of Gettysburg was GMT”s answer to Terrible Swift Sword, and Gringo used the GBACW system to treat some Mexican War battles.   I am very fond of the GBACW system, it lives at that Grand Tactical sweet spot for me.   The two titles on the left came from late in Avalon Hill’s existence, from their Great Campaigns of the ACW series, designed by Joe Balkoski, and offer a more operational/strategic scale of treatment.    Finally, at the right is a Clash of Arms game on the Seven Days - I haven’t yet opened the box so know nothing about it.

Below is the seventh game, Lee Vs Grant, another Balkoski GCAWC design, on one of my favourite campaigns, the 1864 Wilderness campaign.   It is currently set up in a quiet corner of the chaplain school library at work, and I am slowly figuring it out on my lunch breaks.

 

 

I know that these games will cut into my painting time, but it can’t be helped, hex and counter games have a large claim on my heart.  If you have played any of these titles, please let me know what you thought of them - your comments may influence which one I take on first.

Finally, because it’s too amazing to pass up without comment, here’s a What If article imagining WW2 German and Japanese battleships at war, because …. battleships. 

Blessings to your die rolls!

MP+

First Take: Playing War of the Ring

Last night three of us tried War of the Ring at the club.   Vincent, who owns the store we play at, raised his eyebrows.  “That game takes a long time, you know, like, six hours”.   He was right.  We didn’t get it finished in the three hours we had, but we got much of it figured out and we had a lot of fun doing it.

Steve and Bruce took the Shadow side, and I took the free peoples.   Here I watch as the forces of evil mass on the borders of Gondor.  My strategy was to try and push the Fellowship as far each turn as I could.   It seems to take about six to eight turns for the Shadow player to get Mordor and Harad to a state of war and to get enough forces massed on the border to start the attack on Gondor.   During that time I could have detached Strider  and Gandalf from the Fellowship and moved them south.  They might have had a better chance of preparing Gondor and encouraging Rohan to get into the war.  Bruce came out last night with a sheaf of printouts of strategy tips for the game from various websites, I will clearly have to do some research.



Too late.  By about turn 10, Minas Tirith had fallen to a siege, and Rohan was more or less just sitting around watching.   I think as the Good player I need to find a better strategy for getting Rohan into the war to aid Gondor.  The only thing I had going for me was a reinforced garrison in Dol Amroth, thanks to a Muster card called Prince Imrahil and his followers.   That garrison was a rock against which the Shadow armies broke in a terrible run of dice, which would have given me a bit of a base left in Gondor had we had more time to play.   It would have taken Steve and Bruce time to muster more troops and move them into the war.




During all this time, the Fellowship had gotten very close to Dale.  My hope was to use them to activate the Northern peoples and get them into the fight, then make a run with the ring bearers from Dale all the way to the gates of Morrannon and into Mordor.   I think the only real hope of the Good player is to run the Fellowship as hard and fast as possible and trade the cities of Men for time.



Also yesterday, the first expansion of War or the Rung from Ares Games arrived in the mail, though we didn’t have time to figure it out last night.



This expansion allows the Good player to use some of the key figures of the Council, Elrond and Galadriel, as well as an enhanced role for Gandalf.   The Good player gets three new action dice which represent the three Elven rings of power worn by Gandalf, Elrond and Galadriel.  The Evil player gets some additional minions, including an enhanced Nazgul King, a new baddie called Gothmog, Lt. of Minas Morgul, and of course the dreaded Balrog.



Some of the new cards that come with this expansion.  



I’m looking forward to playing more with this game and trying the expansion set.