Watch with Caution

I've recently discovered Marco Arnaudo's video reviews of wargames. Each review is about 10 to 15 minutes long and covers the basics of the game. Watch with caution--if you're like me, watching a gamer give enthusiastic reviews is but a short step from placing an order.

Chronosorting the Bulge

I had an interesting experience this afternoon stemming from something that we wargamers do all the time--sorting counters. I was working on an old GDW game Attack in the Ardennes, which is a point-to-point simulation of the Battle of the Bulge similar to their American Civil War game A House Divided.

In Attack of the Ardennes, each of the counters (representing a battalion), has, printed on the back, either a starting area (e.g., "H26") or an arrival date and time (e.g., "20 PM", that is, the afternoon of December 20th). What I decided to do was to store the counters for easiest setup and play entry. So, I decided to separate the counters of each side into the various setup areas and the various entry times. I then placed them into the wells in a Chessex counter tray: Axis units occupy 7 of the 16 wells and Allies unit occupy 6. But, what a difference in the distributions!

Of the 7 Axis wells, 5 are filled with units that begin the game on the map: 1 well each for staring units in areas D26 (Udenbreth), K25 (Uttfeld), L24 (Dashburg), N24 (Obersgegen, and 1 well for all the other beginning areas. All the reinforcements are stored in only 2 wells. So, the flow of the Axis view of the Battle of the Bulge is one of huge concentrations of forces in a few key ares, with only limited reinforcement later.

Now contrast this with the Allied setup. All the Allied starting units fit into a single well (with only a couple of units in any one area), while the other 5 are filled with reinforcements. Reinforcements for December the 17th and 18th fill one well, those for the 19th through the 21st fits in another, those for just the morning of the 22nd fill another, while reinforcements for the afternoon of the 23rd the the end of December the 26 fill the remaining two wells.

So, there you have the Bulge in a nutshell: the Axis starts with a concentration of forces in a few key areas, they launch an attack against scattered Allied defenders. Over the next few days, the defenders try to delay while waiting for significant reinforcements that finally arrive beginning on the morning of the 22nd which begin to equalized the forces, then the pushbacks occur.

Pretty impressive for just sorting some counters.

First Play of War of the Ring Collector's Edition

A couple of months ago, Fantasy Flight Games announced that they had a limited number of War of the Ring Collector's Edition available at the nominal list price of $400. Since this is going for about $1000 on Amazon or eBay, I decided to snap one up. I had a chance to play it for the first time today. We made it through about 3/4 of the game with the shadow player (me) about to win. We played for 5 hours, but setup and takedown took about 1 hour each. I don't think we did much wrong, but I was certainly scrambling through the rules looking up small details. I hope it will be better next time.

Compared to the regular edition of the game, the Collector's Edition is marvelous! The figures look outstanding and because they're painted, it's easier to see which figures belong to a certain nation. The larger board is also very nice, allowing you plenty of room to stack figures without crowding.

Ankle Deep in Lead (uh) Pewter

I recently saw a series of posts on The Miniatures Page where someone was selling their GHQ WWII micro-armor collection. In total, they were selling about 500 vehicles, and I snatched it up for $200 including shipping. And, the sweetest part is that these are already nicely painted. I already have a sizable collection of GHQ modern vehicles (mostly spray-painted medium green with a few details), so this complements my existing collection quite nicely.

Now I'm reading through my entire collection of WWII miniatures rules trying to decide which one to play and find some scenarios. I'm looking at games like Spearhead, Crossfire, Blitzkrieg Commander (a Warmaster derivative), and Look Sarge, No Charts WWII amongst others as well as trying to look at more grand-tactical games where a stand is a company, battalion, or regiment.

Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be

Yesterday, I had the chance to play both Commands & Colors Napoleonics and the 150th Anniversary Edition of Battle Cry. After playing two games of C&CN (trying to make sure we got all the special +1 die firing/+1 die melee modifiers) followed by the First Manassas Battle Cry scenario, Battle Cry felt very simplistic and lightweight. I loved the game in its day, but perhaps I'm ready for a bit more meat in my ACW games. I'll probably work on retrofitting Battle Cry with C&CN rules, using light rifle infantry and light cavalry for ACW troops. Then again, for light ACW games, there's Yankees and Rebels from Gio Games.

My worthy opponent in both of these games was Richard Bliss of The Game Whisperer blog. Please check out Richard's blog--his is much better than mine. Hi Richard!

Memoir Online

I've just started playing the beta version of Memoir '44 Online. This is very nice. But boy is this going to be a time sink...

I'm Stuck on Westeros

I've resisted purchasing Fantasy Flight Games new "BattleLore" game Battles of Westeros, because it was priced high ($80), I already have BattleLore, and I didn't see that Westeros added much to the system. Well, I caved. Why? As usual, because my Friendly Local Game Store, Game Kastle, had a slightly damaged copy for 50% off!

So, I've been reading the rules, trying to grok the differences between BattleLore and Westeros. So far, the items of notes are:

- D8 instead of D6 for battle. dice have (3x light, 2x medium, 1x heavy, 1x all, 1x flag), so that heavy units are harder to damage
- Units in combat are engaged and retreating units have to endure "parting shots"
- Roll dice for a number of activations (single units) and card play for multiple units
- Players alternate activating units instead of iGo-uGo
- For units destroyed, light units count 1, medium units count 2, and heavy units count three

It remains to be seen whether these changes are for the better or not. Certainly it addresses many of the criticisms of the Commands & Colors system.

In the meantime, I've been assembling the figures. I've found that you really need superglue. Two hours and a small tube of superglue later, and I've managed to glue the Lannister faction and the leaders to their bases and tapping them in with the blunt end of a toothpick. Today, my fingers are sticky with dried superglue. But I must continue.

Another new game: Julius Caesar block game

Another game that my brother and I played during PacifiCon was Columbia Games new block game Julius Caesar. JC, as I'll call it, is very reminiscent of other recent Columbia Block games such as Hammer of the Scots and Crusader Rex in that you play a card each turn then move that many groups of blocks.

JC adds the extra mechanic that movement cards have both a number (Roman numeral in this case) showing how many groups you can move, and symbols for how many steps can be recruited after movement. These steps can be to rebuild damaged blocks or to recruit new blocks. The extra wrinkle in this game is that many blocks, such as Roman legions, can only be recruited at a particular city. So, leaders find themselves having to move a block to that city (fighting for it if necessary), then using one of their recruitment steps to "build" a new legion. The legion is built at strength 1, so it's still very fragile at first, and players may have to spend several turns improving it so that it's fit to fight.

In our first game, which only lasted a few turns, I found it confusing knowing where all these recruitable legions were located. I suggested that we place these recruitable legions on the board face down. It then became obvious what cities were important to both sides for recruitment purposes.

This is a good game. Block game fans should check it out.

New game played: Marcher Lords

My brother was able to come visit me for PacifiCon over Labor Day. One of the the new games that we tried was Fiery Dragon's game The Marcher Lords. It's a medieval game about a relatively rare subject: the Normal invasion of Wales during the 11th century. Our mother's maiden name is Bowen (Welsh "ab Owen"), originally from the Swansea area. As such, both of us were interested in a simple game involving the invasion of Wales.

The game has some interesting asymmetric features:

- All reinforcements are random draws. The Welsh get infantry and bows, while the Normans get infantry, knights, and crossbows. The Normans have better fighters, including Knights, but the Welsh have more bows which get to fire first in combat. The Welsh do have some cavalry, but they appear at the start and can't leave their home kingdom. The first Norman reinforcement into a newly conquered area is a castle, which then shores up the defense of forces in that area. Often, the Welsh must try to reconquer an area quickly before the Normans can build their castle.
- The Normans can invade wherever and whenever they like, but any Welsh kingdoms adjacent to conquered areas become mobilized so that they begin receiving reinforcement. Welsh kingdoms not adjacent to conquered areas just sit there, as the Norman's aren't this kingdom's problem (yet!). So the Normans may want to invade only some areas so that the Welsh don't get as many reinforcements.
- To invade, the Norman force must be in supply. The more units they attack a Welsh kingdom with and the farther this kingdom is from the home Earldom, the harder it is to be able to commit resources. The Welsh only roll for supply when attacking a home Earldom.
- There are random events that come into play. At one point, the Vikings attacked the Normans, conquering one of their castles forcing the Normans to deal with them.

It was a pleasant game, finishing in a couple of hours. We were pretty pleased with the game; I'd rate it about a 6.5. It has some nice features, and might also make a nice game for a miniatures campaign.

Commands & Colors: Ancients Features on "View from the Veranda" Podcast

I really enjoy the podcast Meeples and Miniatures, but especially, the View from the Veranda episodes, which are extended conversations between Neil Schuck, the host, and Henry Hyde from Battlegames Magazine. In episode 5 of View from the Veranda, they talk about Commands & Colors: Ancients in some detail. As miniatures people, they admire the quick playing of C&CA, yet enjoy the satisfying feel of the games.

I talked with Richard Borg at KublaCon at some length. He said that his goal of the Commands & Colors games is not to simulate the battle, but rather to simulate how descriptions of battles read in print. Look at this depiction of the battle of Zama from Wikipedia, which has a lot of "the center does this" or "the flanks troops do this other thing". It's easy to see this battle being played out with C&CA.

"At the outset of the battle, Hannibal unleashed his elephants and skirmishers against the Roman troops in order to break the cohesion of their lines and exploit the breaches that could be opened. The attack was confronted by the Roman skirmishers. In addition to this Scipio ordered the cavalry to blow loud horns to frighten the beasts which partly succeeded and several rampaging elephants turned towards the Carthaginian left wing and disordered it completely. Seizing this opportunity Masinissa led his Numidian cavalry and charged at the Carthaginian left wing, also composed of Numidian cavalry, and was unknowingly lured off the field. Meanwhile the rest of the elephants were carefully lured through the lanes and taken to the rear of the Roman army where they were dealt with. The plan of Scipio of neutralizing the threat of the elephants had worked. Scipio's troops then fell back into traditional Roman battle formation. Laelius, the commander of Roman left wing, charged against the Carthaginian right. The Carthaginian cavalry, acting on the instructions of Hannibal, allowed the Roman cavalry to chase them so as to lure them away from the battlefield so that they wouldn't attack the Carthaginian armies in the rear.

Scipio now marched with his center towards the Carthaginian center which was under the direct command of Hannibal. Hannibal moved forward with only two lines and the third line of veterans was kept in reserve. After a close contest the first line of Hannibal was pushed back by the Roman hastati. Hannibal ordered his second line to allow the first line in their ranks. The bulk of them managed to escape and to position themselves on the wings of the second line on Hannibal's instructions. Hannibal now charged with his second line. A furious struggle ensued and the Roman hastati were pushed back with heavy losses. Scipio reinforced the hastati with the second line principes."

Love Child: Hold the Line and Black Power

I like the American Revolution game Hold the Line (previously published as "Clash for a Continent") by Worthington Games. In the game, each player rolls a D3 (3 sided die) plus a fixed number depending on the scenario for action points. Each action point allows one unit to move or fire or, with 2 action points, perform a close assault. I've not been entirely satisfied with this scheme: it would be nice if units far from the commanders were harder to control (e.g., costs more action points) and if groups of units could be giving similar orders for the same action point (in effect a "discount" for having multiple units perform the same action).

I have recently been looking at the miniatures rules Black Powder, a 17th and 18th century version of the Warmaster rules. I think there's enough synergism that one could play Hold the Line scenarios using an hex-grid adaptation of Black Powder. I need to play some games, if only solo, to see how this plays out.

BattleLore Reinforcements

I purchased a bunch of BattleLore expansions (Scottish Wars, Dwarven Battalion, Goblin Marauders, and 2 Goblin Skirmishers) on a 20% off sale with the thought that I would sell them on eBay. In the end, since they are out of print, I decided that I would keep them and use them for scenarios.

I like to paint green, blue, or red stripes around the base of my BattleLore to aid in the recognition of light, medium and heavy troops. Because the bases are grey, green or brown, the colors don't come through very well at times. However, I've discovered paint pens. First, I paint the side of the base with a white paint pen, then use a green, blue, or red "Sharpie" marker to paint the sides of the bases. Here's an example of my older efforts. The color isn't bad, but you can see that the green color is a bit dull:

Game Table Online Works with Safari 5!

I enjoy playing Battle Cry at Game Table Online, but it's always been a bit flaky with Macs, my preferred OS. I've recently had success using GTO with Firefox even on Macs. Apple recently released Safari 5, which seems to work great with GTO. I was able to play a solo game of Battle Cry with no problems. Yeah!

Imperium 2nd Edition

I'm a big fan of GDW's space game Imperium. Imperium came out in 1977 about the same time as Star Wars. Gavin, a friend of mine from college, and I played this all the time. I just recently found out that you could get a PDF copy of the 2nd (GDW) edition from Drive Through RPG. (The illustration that they use is from the 1st flatbox edition, which I have, but the rules are from a later edition.) One significant change is that the Imperial player has to pay 2 Glory Points for appeals to the Emperor rather than 1, so that it's harder for the Imperial player to gain the resources he needs to fight the war.

Yet More Panzer Grenadier

I picked up a copy of Panzer Grenadier: Fall of France plus Kokoda Trail and the Elsenborn winter boards from an artist who did work for Avalanche Press.

He mentioned that he hadn't yet been paid for his work for Avalanche Press and had received a bunch of games instead, so he was selling them on eBay. Very said.

What I Did During KublaCon

KublaCon is over. I ran two events, neither of which were terribly successful in terms of number of participants.

On Sunday morning, I ran a "Learning Panzer Grenadier" event. Only one person showed up, but he seemed to enjoy himself. We played a 12 turn nighttime urban assault of Battles of the Bulge. Because it was a nighttime scenario, I decided to use my new counter sleds to hide what units of both sides were in each stack. Units were revealed only when they came within sighting range, which in a nighttime scenario is only one hex.

On Monday morning, I ran a "Commands & Colors Fest", which involved bringing all 4 of the current C&C games: Battle Cry, Memoir '44, BattleLore, and Commands & Colors: Ancients. Four people participated. Two people decided to play a game of Memoir '44 with the new Memoir '44 Breakthrough boards. I played games of Commands & Colors: Ancients with two other players. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I was disappointed that no one was interested in playing BattleLore. I'm starting to work on some feudal era scenarios for BattleLore, such as the Viking scenarios Clontarf and Brunanburh.

Counter Sleds

I finally decided to pick up some counter sleds from Rdoxx.



For those that haven't seen them, they are L-shaped pieces of wood that are big enough to hold a small number of counters vertically, with the counters facing the player and hidden from the opponent. In essence, this allows you to make any hex and counter wargame into a block game. The sleds come in a number of sizes: 0.5" square, 5/8" square, 3/4 wide x 1/2" tall, 1" wide x 1/2" tall, or 1" wide. I decided to order a set of 100 of the 5/8" square size ($12.95 for sets of 25). At this quantity, Rdoxx gave me a 10% discount.

My idea is to initially use them for Panzer Grenadier. Having played some PG night scenarios (where the sighting range is just a hex or two), it's way to easy to maneuver your forces towards enemies you really shouldn't be aware of. I thought with sleds you could simulate the uncertainty of war by giving extra sleds to each side so that players could maneuver dummy as well as real stacks. And of course, you wouldn't know what was in those stacks until they fire. Having bought 100 of them, I'm sure I'll have enough to use in other games. I've seen people paint their Sleds, but I thought it would be best to keep them in natural wood so that you didn't have to decide how many of each color.

The other product that Rdoxx makes is 2.1" wide hexes, which can be used for hills for the Commands & Colors games. I thought about these, but decided to make them out of brown 6mm "foamie" material at craft stores. For under $2 one of these sheets will make lots of hexes.

Boulder Games Continues to Take My Money

Boulder Games, my "go to" source for online Euros and especially wargames, is quitting business. Unfortunately, they are selling off games at extra low prices, and I can't resist a sale.

I purchased a bunch of Avalanche Press's Panzer Grenadier stuff. I also decided that I would give their Great War at Sea series a try by picking up a copy of Avalanche's Great War at Sea: Mediterranean. For some reason, I find the big ships with big guns of WWI more interesting than the carrier actions of WWII. (I feel the same way about "Star Trek" vs. "BattleStar Galactica".) That was order #1.

I noticed the other day that they were selling off GMT games at special prices. I managed to hold myself back from picking up a bunch of stuff, but I posted a note on BoardgameGeek on their "Hot Deals" forum. Apparently, some people referenced my post when they bought their stuff, because Jim, the owner of Boulder Games, sent me a $10 gift certificate. So, I decided to take the plunge and pick up a copy of GMT's War Galley. I've been thinking about doing some ancient naval stuff and thought this might be worth it. Perhaps it will keep me from buying a couple of fleets of 1/1200 scale ancient naval miniatures. Of course, if they're on sale...

Review of Gio Games War to Axis Posted

To go along with my review of Yankees and Rebels, I've now posted a review of Gio Games War to Axis. I plan to complete the "trilogy" by doing a review of their newly-updated release Advanced Vive l'Empereur.

Review of Gio Games Yankees & Rebels

I've posted a review of Yankees and Rebels, a Euro/Wargame hybrid American Civil War game on BoardgameGeek. If you've played Battle Cry and like it (even if you liked the simplicity but didn't like some of the mechanics), you should check out this game.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/517922/