July 04, 2006
Command and Colors
I was never a big fan of the C&C series after the inital flush of excitement died down after seeing it in action in the Gathering (when R. Borg used 15mm ACW troops to portray the troops and on a nicely painted map). I thought that for a Horse and Musket era game a lot of the decision points are missing (and could easily be included even in such an introductory game).
More specifically I thought that the division of command by battlefield sector is weird, and I've suggested that instead of Left, Right, Center, it be substituted by command A,B,C (this approach has been adopted by many variants floating around on the net, mainly from the excellent Belgian site here.) Richard pointed out one flaw which could be abused by bunching all three commands next to each other, then every card can move every unit in range. This is something I haven't thought of and that's why he's a noted game designer and I am not.
Another gripe I had about Horse & Muskey era game is that the key tactic of flanking an opponent's unit seems to be missing from gameplay. A unit fights just as well if it's fighting with flank support, or if it's completely surrounded by the enemy. One can use the "this is an introductory game" argument but I thought that some simple support rules can easily fix the problem w/o overcomplicating the design.
The last gripe I had is the victory condition. Most scenarios wins by killing units, so instead of wrecking your opponents army by rendering it ineffective, you go about chasing down weakened units to kill it for flags. This reminds me of the chess games I had with my brother when we were little where the game becomes "chasing down and killing all of your opponet's pawns".
The subsquent followup to Battle Cry was Memoir'44, which has a more interesting deck to spice things up, but the fundamental flaws remains. In fact the sector based devision is even more of a problem if you consider that part prob makes more sense in a Horse & Musket era game than the WW2 setting.
All this is a long winded intro to Command and Colots: Ancient, which despite all my initial trepidation, seems to work. How does it overcome the three flaws I outlined?
1.Board sectors: AS oppose to WW2 and ACW, Ancient armies actual do have distinct flanks and center, and it affects troops deployments (i.e. heavies in the center, and lights and cavalry on the flank). So in the context of C&C this works.
2. Out flanking of enemy: There are no overt changes to the system to make this aspect better, but subtle changes abound that improves the game in this regard. For one thing having friendly "support" (at least two adjacent friendly unit) can cancel one retreat result, so it pays to have a cohesive line (and indirectly awards flanking an enemy). Another improvement is the Move Battleline [sic] card and the leadership card, bot of which awards deployment which have a contiguous line of units. This also forces the player to keep his line intact in order to take adventage of these powerful cards. Both of these changes are subtle, and forces more historical consideration without adding a lot of rules. In short I like them a lot.
3. Victory Condition: Most scenarios are still kill enough troops to win kind, but in an ancient context this also seem more ok. I do have a gripe that a heavy infantry unit have the same worth as a light skirmisher unit, in reality the heavies would be the only thing that really "counted". Armati have introduced the concept of "Key unit" where only their destruction matters. I can see a variant rule somewhere down the line.
My conclusion? C&C:Ancient is the only game in the series that I really liked, and by that I mean I like it a lot and I think it hit the sweet spot for me in terms of playability and historical fidelity. With two more expansions coming there'll be many many battles for us to play, and I am looking forward to them all...
(one future project, come out with a add on that let one do ancient campaigns using C&C, coming up with rules for building armies, deployment, etc. would be cool...)
Posted by msoong at 04:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 30, 2006
Here I Stand (AAR)
I was a fan of SPI's A Mighty Fortress back when I was in high school. Now the game itself is very old school (read process heavy and not very elegant), but I've always liked the historical chrome that was thrown in since it's such a color period with all kinds of cool events happening. The negotiations are also fun and atmospheric (instead of negotiating for an abstract supply center as in Diplomacy, you are talking to the Pope about granting you a divorce so you can get on with your new hussy).
All that color is a perfect match for the currently popular Card Driven Game paradigm, and GMT's new Here I Stand does not disappoint..
The game is based on the popular Napoleonic Wars game from GMT. The HIS basic mechanics are simple and almost unchanged from its parent game, but all the subsystems are much better designed and explained. The Napoleonic Wars suffers from a poorly written rulebook and broken victory condition (IMO). For HIS, despites its longer rules (and a lot more special subsystems governing religious conflict, discovery of new world, etc.) is actually easier to grasp.
One reason why the rules are easier to grasp is because much of the special rules applies to only a subset of the players, and for our game where all the players knows what they are going to play beforehand, we can all ignore the rules that does not apply to us (i.e. Only the Ottoman have to learn about piracy rules, only the Protestants and the Pope have to know about religious conflict, and only English/French/Hapsburg have to worry about the new world, etc.)
AS the Ottoman I probably have the easiest task regarding rules leaning (all I need to know is how to fight and how to talk like a pirate, also have to learn about the Hungry special rules and that's yet). Even with that it's still many pages of rules that I have to digest, and I have no problem because it's logically layed out and clearly explained. All complicate games should take a page from this set of rules on how to explain difficult concept. Kudos to designer Ed Beach.
The game is full of period color, and each powers plays very very differently (players like the Protestants and the Pope are playing a very different game from the more conventional military powers like France & Turks). Trying to balance the victory condition must be a monumental task for the designer/developer, but in my one play I felt that everyone had a good chance to win if we played the full stretch (we only played for 4 turns to learn the system).
The game have some distinct Euro influence on top of the standard conquest type of objectives found in traditional wargames. Beside capturing key locations for victory points (and even here there some asymmetry, since for the Protestants his keys are different since they are the seats of the Electors, which is ignored by powers like the Turks), every power have some special way to get their points. For the Ottomans they get points for successful piracy. For Protestants and Papacy they want their faith to spread far and wide. English gets point for getting a heir, France gets points for building Chateaus, and for many they can explore/conquer/colonize the new world for VP or resources. A turn often comes down to deciding how to spend your command points on the different approaches to victory like a good Euro.
Unlike a good Euro, the game is LONG. We did a four turn game in about less than 5 hours (we can probablt get it down to one hour/turn). A full nine turn job is going to take us a whole day. Now I enjoy a meaty game once in a while like the next person, but this kind of commitment is hard to come by on a regular basis (in my case the wife is out of town for the weekend), so I don't see myself a regualar player of the game going forward. With that said, I still think there's a lot of downtime between turns. Now it's fun to watch a theological debate and see the loser burned at the stake, but the Sultan of Ottoman gets bored with that stuff after the first few. In terms of amount of fun per unit of time, there are better ways to spend the time (in that time frame a game of Hannibal can be played to a conclusion).
Now a good game doesn't just come down to a fun per minute formula. HIS has one of the best narrative of any boardgames out there for the historically inclined. Instead of the themeless mechanics driven Euro games or your standard panzer pushing wargames, We had a hastily assembled Turkish host being defeated at the gates of Buda by the host of the empire led by Charles the V himself, we had spreading of the new Protestant faith (which initially spread east into Hungry), we had a English/Papacy cable that granted Henry a speedy divorce which saw the quick birth of a healthy boy, we also have conquistador being eaten by natives for trying to pass on small pox. The game is more structured in terms of making sure certain events happens in the proper sequence (this involves adding and removing specific cards to the event deck every turn). Some powers have more constraints on what they should be doing, but it doesn't feel overtly scripted. Everything that happened can be explained on a historical basis as oppose to some other CDG which gives some pretty odd results due to card play.
Final word: Not something I'll play regularly due to the time commitment required for the "full experience", but if I do have the time it's a great way to recreate this facinating period. (I can see this being a convention favorite).
Posted by msoong at 06:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 28, 2006
First World War AAR
I am a big proponent of the Card Driven Game system, and one of the best of that lot is Paths of Glory by Ted Raicer. It is a grand strategic game on the entire WWI. I have played it many times (mostly using the ACTS play by email system), and although I enjoy it immensely, it is a heavy game that takes a long time (a full game is easily 8~10 hours). Which means I don't play it much nowadays.
Ted went on to design The First World War (TFWW), which came out in 2004. It is a radically simplified design, almost a Euro game which can be finished in about 2 hours (this comes from Phalanx who aimed to become a publisher of Euro/Wargame hybrids back in the last few years. Alas I think they might have stopped doing this since their recent releases are more pure Euro offerings. Maybe hybrids didn't do well in the marketplace?)
TFWW is quite a radical design compare to a "normal" wargame. The map is divided into about 11 "fronts", and each front contains a series of spaces aligned along a single line. The line is a symbolic way to show the relative progress of the armies. I think this is a very innovative way to abstract the map (in normal wargame where there's a hex map, you can move your armies to any point on the map assuming you have enough movement allowence. In reality there are plenty of real world constraint that limits where your front can be anyway, so this design approach cuts down on "unnecessary details" for the gamer so he can concentrate on the big picture.
Big picture is what the gamer gets to worry about. He makes decisions on the strategic level like which front do I launch an assult this quarter? Or how do I reposition my army? There are no fiddly details to deal with because that level of decision has been abstracted out of the game.
Combat is simple and deadly (roll a die, add your modifiers. High die wins, loser dies). If the attacker wins a combat, he pushes the front toward the enemy. ALong the way the enemy might lose important reinforcement center (so his replacement rate goes down), or worst of all, the front line might get pushed to his "base", in which case he gains "surrender point" for that tuen. At the end of a turn anyone with surrender points must roll a die, and any result <= the surrender points acrued for that turn will lose you the game.
It is a light wargame, but there's no doubt it is WWI you are dealing with. From the vantage point of the player you are making strategic decisions akin to what national leaders will be making. At 2 hours it's fast and furious. One can quibble that the surrender mechanism described above is a bit too luck oriented (My Western Allies surrendered because I have 1 Surrender point and Chris rolled a 1 so game over), but it's a good game that I'll definitely play again.
Posted by msoong at 08:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 26, 2006
All Things Roman
Due to some convergence of the stars, I've been doing a lot of Roman related activities lately. The last movie I got from mt Netflix is the new TV movie version of Spartacus (Kubrik has nothing to worry about). The current book I am reading is Adrian Goldsworthy's In the Name of Rome (an excellent survey of Roman generals throughout its history).
I have been collecting/gaming a 25mm Carthagenian army with my buddy Jeff. With the wife out of town this last weekend, Jeff and I decided to get the old AH card driven classic Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage. This is Jeff's first time playing this game, but the rules are clear enough that we got started in less than 30min worth of rules explanation (I haven't touched the game in years so it's a good refresher for me as well).
The Roman (Jeff) decided on an aggressive stance (i.e. rash) by sending out a consular army led by Scipio Elder into Spain on turn 1 (the theory being anything to delay Hannibal's entry into Italy is a good thing. Hannibal (me) promptly dealt with Scipio before resuming his march into Italy on turn 2.
I've been drawing a LOT better cards then Jeff, so the Carthagians are having an easy time of it. I got tons of Campaign cards (I was even using it for 3 OPS on occasion). I got all my ally recruitment cards so Hannibal's army was up to full strength most of the time. Furthermore I got most of the good political/deplomacy cards, so by turn 5 (where we took a break and will resume the action on tuesday), Syracuse has turned Carthagian, all 3 Carthaginian Naval victory are in effect, and 3 Italian provinces are solidly Carthagian. Hannibal was also lucky in combat, narrowly escaping defeat on two occasions, and then see the Roman rolling horribly on the retreat dieroll. We'll see if my luck hold come tuesday, when Scipio will arrive with Rome's last hope of salvation.
Posted by msoong at 10:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 19, 2005
7 Ages AAR
After our last 7 Ages outing (where we got a lot of the rules wrong, but throught there's a good gem in there worth exploring), I've always talked about doing a followup. Then my betwen my house move and other real life stuff it just did not happen. Now that Linda was on a biz trip for a week, I figure this is the perfect time to have a all day game.
We actually got 6 players this time (probably the best number since all the empires can be in play to create more player interaction). Half of the players have never played it before so the first 30 min was spent explaining the rules.
The game started out fine, with interesting first age empires popping up all over the place (we played the the option where the game is forced to start on Age 1, and we took out all the 1st Age empire cards from the deck and handed each player two of them so nobody will get empire hosed). Holes start to show shortly (by shortly I mean maybe a few hours, since it's a LONG game).
There are a lot of fiddly text on the cards (be it the artifacts, empires, or the events), if you actually want to use them you'll have to read through them in details, and then look up the rules to see how it affects play. The model of the cards are what I call the "Magic CCG" model: There are main rules to the game which are relatively logical, and then each card effect is a rules-breaker/bender. There are not just broad categories of rule breakers like in Magic (which are in most cases very consistent within a release), in 7 Ages the card effects are very random, and normally really powerful.
I found that instead of planning out your economy to the last detail, it's easier just trying to draw a goldmine card that gives you 20 extra gold. Instead of coming up with some killer military strategy, it's easier to just draw for some killer combat card that can wipe out your opponent's army in a single shot (we've witness this a few times during the game). In another word, this is a "take that" kinda game, (and a long one at that).
I still liked how empires pops up and evolves, plus the empires themselves have a lot of personality. What I do not like it's the fiddly rules on the cards, plus all the "take that" aspect of the events. I think there's a goos game in there somwhere, and some additional development (in this case that means taking stuff out), it might be something I'll play again, but not the form it's currently in. It's now on my trade pile...
Posted by msoong at 08:52 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
May 11, 2005
Empire of the Sun (AAR)
Chris and I had our first Campaign game last saturday (we played the "short" campaign starting '42. The entire exercise (including numerous rules look up and a 45 min dinner break) took us from 1PM to about 10:00PM.
The game is good. Those of you who monitors the CSW board might get scared by the number of rules questions there, but if you have the fixed up v1.2 version of the living rules, it's actually pretty clear and free of controversy (non of the wacky supply situation ever came up in our game for example).
The game is tense from the get go. The game is designed so that the Allies are under political pressure from the get go (I can imaging being head of the joint chiefs and FDR is yelling at me to "get some results"). The Political Will is constantly hovering between 2 and 3 (that means if Japanese player gets the Tojo card, the game can be over with a JP auto victory). The tension is also felt on the other side, because Japanese player is also agonizing how to conquer Dutch East Indes (DEI) and how to fend off gradual US encroachment.
My Strat from the get go is to keep constant pressure on the Japanese. So if he's concentrating on DEI, then I should launch attack in the Solomans or Burma, etc. Due to lucky dierolls (Air/naval battle are heavily luck dependent, as appropriate to the theater), I had a decisive voctiry in the Battle of Coral Sea where I flipped most of his ships. After hat though I seem to run into a wall as to how to proceed from there. So after I control Raboul, what then? (note to self: check out historically what happened to Allied timetable after the victory in the Solomans...)
One of the biggest mistake I made is the misplacement of one of the most important HQ unit in the game (IMO) (The ANZAC HQ). I stuck him in Townsville where he's out of range to most of the interesting DEI theater, so a lot of potentially useful raid by Commonwealth units on DEI (which is required since the Allies will have to take back those Resources hexes in the DEI in order to win) never happened. I could've used the ops to move the damn thing but just seems at the time that there are more useful things for the ops. Will not make that mistake again.
Speaking of using Commonwealth troops for the reconquest of DEI, that happened because of the appalling dieroll I had regarding sending troops to Europe (War in Europe is going badly, and so army units are rolling 0-3 and ending up in Europe). In one turn I rolled 3 consecutive 1's to see TWO US Corps ending up in the meat grinder of North Africa. At the end of the game I found that only 3 US Corps ever made it to the Pacific front.
So why is lack of US corps important you say? That's because I have to invade the home islands to win, and that ain't gonna happen if all I have is 3 US corps. This points out the potentially biggest issue with the game balance front IMO:
The Allies can win oen of two ways:
1) by conquering EVERY hex (there are seven) on Honshu. I argue that given historical Allies timetable, this is NOT gonna happen barring incompetent JP play.
2) by Playing the Soviet invade Manchuria card AFTER Tojo Resign card in '44 or after (and in conjunction capturing everyone but one resource hex on the map, which is more doable than (1)). In our game I drew the Soviet card TWICE before '44, and by the time Tojo came out in late '44 my chance of drawing Soviet for the 3rd time is slim to none (Note that the deck in this game is much larger than average CDG games, so once a card is burried in the game the chance of seeing it again is pretty slim). This means that whether the Allies get a shot at the relatively easier victory condition 2) and the almost impossible condition 1) hinges on the random appearance of the two cards in strict order (and has to be '44 or later, since Tojo can not resign before). This seems a little luck dependent to me.
Barring this potential problem, I'll still play the game. The hours just flew by since we are so engrossed in it, and the history is in generally good. I'll definitely try this one again. we'll try a shorter scenario next time, maybe the '42~'43 one, which captures most of the interesting aspect of the campaign while avoiding the victory condition issue that I pointed to earlier (since the short scenario uses a different victory point count).
Posted by msoong at 10:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 27, 2005
Empire of the Sun (First Impression)
I've been a fan of the Card Driven Wargames (a la We the People, Path of Glory etc.) for a while now, so Mark Herman's new CDG that covers the WW2 Pacific theater is a eagerly waited event.
Empire of the Sun has great physical components: A nicely done map of the Pacific theater (China is abstracted, but there are northern India hexes that you can move in). I especially liked the depiction of airbases (which has got to be the single most important aspect of this game as far as the maps is concerned), which is done in a deep red color, it kinda floats up toward your eyes from the predominately blue background.
The Cards: As far as the cards is concerned the quality of the cards themselves are thr highest yet from GMT. I think these are produced by Carta Mundi (they feel and smell like Magic cards). One other aspect re the cards is that the deck is very BIG, and one is lucky to make it through the entire deck just once. So one complaint about other CDG like POG and B2B re deck weeding (the art and science of ditching certain cards at certain times to ensure optimal deck composition for future turn, often with no relations to history portrayed) seems to be addressed.
Counters: Workmanlike, nothing special. The only complain I have is that the damaged stripe on the reduced side of the counter are on navel units only, not on any air or land unit. Since it's often just as important to know which air/land units are damaged, I feel that they should've been there.
Rules: The basics of the rules are not that complex (maybe same or below that of For the People), but the big gotcha is that many of the rules concept is pretty different from standard wargame and/or CDG, so the departure from norm is generating a worrying level of Q&A on the consimworld board. My first impression upon reading the rules as printed was that it's serviceable, and I understood probably enough to start playing. My mistake is probably hanging out at the CSW board and witnessed a slew of questions that shakened some of my basic understanding of the rules as read (i.e. ZOI, amphib assult, and supply for example). Mark already released living rules versio 1.1, and I hear he's gonna release 1.2 very soon now. I am going to wait until the dust settled a bit before wading in again.
First Play: Chris and I setup the game for a quick play through (just a weeknight thing. doing about 2~3 turns to learn the system). The first turn of the campaign game turned out to be pretty boring (Pearl followed by operation IAI, yawn...) Next time we'll probably start with the 1942 starting position.
The mechanics: of the game is built arounf "operations". These could be playing an op card (simulating small scale operation), or a specific event (that simulates some major operation favoring using certain historical combatants). An operation allows the player to activate a headquarter, which in turn can activate a number of units within range depending on the quality of the HQ and the card. The defender then have a chance to react (given the right reaction card or the right intelligence dieroll, all dependent on the original op card played). Any battle is then resolved.
The feel of game reminded me of a game of Go or the sport of fencing, where you look for an opening on the board, launch your attack, and see if the opponent gets to parry your assult before launching his own counterstrike. The tension level is quite high.
Another facet of the game is the management of your interconnected distances via your different sub systems. What's the distance of your HQ to your units? What's the distance between a potential enemy force and your reacting force? What's state of your airbase to airbase network? (one has to get used to look at "an airbase that's within 4 hexes of another airbase") People with an eye to these things will do well.
There are interesting decisions for both sides. The Japanese player have the obvious task of how to do the initial conquering which should appeal to the "perfect opening" players. But there are so much for the JP player to do that I can see many paths to victory depending on temperment and card draw (conquer Dutch E. Indes or raid on Pearl? China, Burma, or India?) At the same time the US player is not just sitting idle. He has to worrying about rebuilding his navy, planning raids to disrupt the initial Japanese conquest (w/o putting hsi carriers in danger), or even launch an attack from Burma if the Japanese player is not paying attention (precisely what I did, almost destroyed a Japanese corps).
My next full game is coming in about a week, will have a full report then.
Posted by msoong at 02:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 28, 2005
Death of Board Wargames? Another Take
www.wargamer.com has an editorial on this topic here.
Posted by msoong at 05:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 20, 2005
Death of Wargames, my take
There’s recently a lot of discussion on various blogs regarding the issue of the greying of the hobby. It’s been something that old grognard moaned about for eons now, a new blog entry by Lewis Pulsipher (designer of Britannia) brought the discussion to the fore.
My regular gaming buddy Chris countered the article with his own blog entry, basically refuting Mr. Pulsipher’s claim. After reading both articles, I found myself agreeing with both of them!?
The one sentence version of Mr. Pulsipher’s claim is that: Youngsters now aren’t what they used to be, and they can’t handle serious wargames (i.e. read hex based maps, cardboard counters, 50 page rulebook, the whole nine yard). He then goes on to list a bunch of reasons why this is so.
Chris countered with the fact that today is the golden age of games (i.e. be it consim, Euro, RPG, CCG, what have you), the reason people aren’t playing the serious wargames now is because they are playing these better products, and therefore have no desire to visit the old AH stuff that we loved back in the 70’s/80’s.
To me, both claims are correct to a degree, since 1) I do believe that youngsters todays are not touching “serious consims”, and that is a dying hobby, and 2) There are more and better games today (consim included). To me the central issue that needs to be explicitly spelled out is the following:
A) Is youngsters of today avoiding serious history based consim?
B) Is so, why is that?
For question A I do believe the answer is yes. Most people I know who still touches serious consims are boomers in their 30’s and 40’s. There are very few (even from web presence on various consim discussion boards) younguns in their 20’s let alone in their teens. I think this is an established fact (although I do not have hard data to back it up). Back then we had AH & SPI whose print run is much larger than consims of today, and they are carried in mainstream outlets (such as toys r us).
For question B, you can read Mr. Pulsipher’s claim. I have my own theory though, the first one is culture, and the second one is choice.
Culture
When I was a wee lad (before I was exposed to wargames), I wanted a coonskin for Xmas because my favorite show was Disney’s David Crockett. I saved my allowance so I can buy scale models, and all of them are war themed, be it a tank, a plane, or a ship. When we go to the theater we go see movies like Where Eagles Dare and Kelly’s Hero. When I want to read I have my Ballantine WW2 series to keep me company. Also the BBC documentary series The World At War was playing on TV every other night. In short, it’s quite easy and natural for some nerdy kid who grew up in that environment to fall into the hobby of history based consim wargames. That is no more.
For one reason or another, little boys (or older ones) aren’t obsessed about “history based” milieu anymore, there are many different things to keep them occupied. This bring me to the next reason: Choice.
Choices
Kids nowadays is bombarded with much more choices on how to spend their leisure time and money. Yes there was another Alamo remake in the theater last year, and that might have inspired a few young-uns to be interested in history, but if they look at the theater marquee, they’ll also find:
1. Spiderman 2 – And if they are interested in that they might get sucked into a game of Heroclix, or they might pick up the Marvel VS CCG that caters to the comic book crowd. Therefore a nerdy little kid might be enjoying the wider “gaming world” (read Collectable miniature and CCG game) without touching (or having ever heard of) historical consim.
2. Lord of the Ring- For the fantasy inclined, there are LOTR CCG, LOTR miniature game from GW, Collectable miniature game from GW, or for people even more adventurous (no pun intended), there’s the whole fantasy RPG scene one can fall into. And if you are too much of a geek and don’t have real life friends, there’s various online MMORPG you can spend your time and money on.
So if I am a little geeky kid today, I would have to fight through all that temptation of all these gaming products that matches my geeky interests in Sci-fi, fantasy, Superhero, in order to get into a much less accessible world of historical consim. Granted that a blip in the cultural radar screen might change that temporarily (i.e. supposedly consim sales got a jump after the 1st Gulf War), but in the long run, there’s just too much competition.
Many of these other game medium can be just as challenging on the brain dept as traditional consim, and they also requires math and tactical/strategic thinking (i.e. have you ever seen a teenager build a killer Magic deck, or some youngster building the killer Warhammer army?) The skill might be different than that of a monster Consim, but they require real “skill” nevertheless.
So, for all you old grognard like myself, break out those counters and enjoy that monster game with you fellow boomer. Forget about recruiting those teenagers, since they’ll be busy tweaking their magic deck…
Posted by msoong at 07:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 13, 2005
7 Ages Review
The last time I played Advanced Civ is in about 14 years ago, and it's about the same timeframe when I last touched something like History of the World or World in Flames. What inspired my madness to purchase 7 Ages, the new Civ-like empire building game that takes reputely 20+ hours to finish?
The game was described to be something like Civilization (in that you get to start and nurture a civilization and watch it grow), History of the World (in that you control multiple empires at multiple points during the game), and Euro (some compared it to Porto Rico in that you have to choose one and only one action for your empire to perform every turn). None of these reasons by themselves is enough to sway me, but the game is supposedly amenable to players joining in and dropping out throughout the session. This grabbed my attention since I don't have the time to sit through a 20+ hours session in one sitting, so the fact that I can leave the game setup in the garage and live with the possibility that not eveyone can make every game session is an attractive one. I plunked down my $57 (from a previously unknown web discounter Games in a Box) as a Christmas present to myself.
First impression of the game is the terribly organized rules. One has to make sure to read the included Player's Guide (and the errata) to have a better understanding of how the game flows. The next thing one noticed is that the game can certainly use some playing aid to help organize the myriad counters/cards used. Thankfully other trailblazers have created many of these already and they are available in the files section of BoardgameGeeks.
The game proceeds kinda like History of the World (Hotw) in that one start empires and then run them from a deck of cards. Unlike Hotw the deck isn't separated out from the beginning, so you can end up with a handful of late empires (i.e. Say the Mongols who aren't availble until Age 3) which you can't use at the beginning of the game. We adopted the optional rules where the game always start from Age 1, and eveyone get predealt an Age 1 empire so they aren't hosed from the get go.
Also unlike HotW, you are actively running more than 1 empires at a time (exact number of empires depends on how many players are in the game, but in all cases the theoretical maximum number of empires on board is 15). This creates some interesting game choices since you might want to optimize your victory point intake (termed Glory Point "GP") by dumping underperforming empired and startup new ones.
Once an empire is up and running they behave more like a civilization from Civ or Adv. Civ. They merrily go along collecting incomg, building armies, move/attack their neighbors, or improve their civilizations by building stuff (buying artifacts), or advance along the progress track. The key word here is "OR", since on everyturn an empire can only do ONE thing and one thing only. So there's some tough choices of "do I collect income, or do I move and attack?". There are surprising little "move and attack" actions carried out in the game (considered that all 3 of us are wargamers), so the game did not bog down in move/combat, which is somewhat time consuming comparing to the rest of the system.
As an empire progresses along the track, more powerful units become availble, and its city size increases (which allows more build up of troops). Progress in and of itself do not win the game (some empires might get GP for being the most advanced culture), but the leading civilization defines the current "age", and the game is over when someone reaches the end of the 7th Age.
At the end of every turn every empire collects GP according to its empire card, and this is the part where a lot of the flavor of each empire comes from. The empire card defines how GP is accumulated, some get GP for controlling territories, some get GP for advancement in culture, and some get GP for hoarding certain resources. The combination gives an empire its unique and identifyable traits. For example steppe nomads gets GP for attacking more civilized neighbors, whereas Babylonians gets GP for having artifacts.
In addition to unique GP condition, empires may also have some specical ability that makes them distinctive. So Romans have their legion unit that fights better than others, whereas when the Mongols starts up they get cheap cavalry and 2(!) free move/attack actions.
Actions are driven from a deck of 110 multi-use cards that serves as 1) Empires, 2) Artifacts (similar to civilization cards a la Civ.), and 3) Events. With 110 Empires you get a LOT of varieties, and no two games would be alike given that the appearance (or non-appearance) of empires would greatly alter the game.
With 4 players playing (and later 3), we found that most of the world is still pretty sparsely populated by the middle of Age 2 (albeit we screwed up the rules so that people are not getting a chance to drawing as many cards as they want to get fresh empires, and some players are "empire-screwed" since they couldn't draw a playable empire). When we play again more empires should be popping up, making a more crowded world and hopefully a more interesting situation.
One big problem with the game is the Event section of the card. Most of them are of the "take that" type that you can use it to screw someone else, and they are powerful. When I say powerful I mean I'd rather get hit by a civil war in Civ. than some of the stuff here. Though to be fair once you have 3 empires up and running, if one gets wiped out it's not the end of the world. If you are the type sensitive to overpowering events, then you can simply play without them w/o a big loss of the essence of the game.
Combat is another weak link in the game IMO, since it's overtly fiddly with possibility of multiple round of combat with many modifiers. As I mentioned earlier our game didn't have that many battles (usually the attacker do not bother to attack unless it's a walkover), but I suspect that might change if the world is more crowded.
Overall, despite of the flaws I pointed out, it's got interesting choices for the empires, moves along at a good clip, and it's a nail biter. So if you can stomach the 20+ hour play time (we got to about age 1.5 after 5 hours of play), then it's worth it.
P.S. Chris is one of the players, and his review can be found on his blog here.
Posted by msoong at 04:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 22, 2004
War of the Ring, First Impression
This is quite a good year for me gaming wise despite increased stress at work. On the miniature front the group got in some good Flames of War scenarios as well as a couple of Grande Armee games. I've been cutting back on the boardgame front a bit (interest in Euros has been sagging and there hasn't been much oppertunity to do much wargaming), but now near the end of the year I am getting interested in board wargaming again with the advent of War of the Ring and 7 Ages.
I've been following WoTR on the Consimworld board for close to a year now, with some mixed expectations. On the one hand who would resist a war oriented game on LOTR? but I was never a fan of figures based boardgames- a bad trend that started with MB's Axis & Allies.
There are further bad news from the board, such as areas that's too small to put all the figures in, also card text that's too small for mortal eyes. I am a big stickler for game-play ergonomics, so little things like that can swore me off of a game for good. For all of the reason above I did not snatch a copy of the game on release, but wanted to play with someone else's copy first.
My buddy Chris "let's buy all the boardgame release" Farrell got the game, and organized a weeknight session. It's a 3 player affair where Jeff and I plays Shadow, and Chris plays the Free people.
We finished the game in about 3 hours (all three of us are relatively quick players). I have heard that the pace of the game is set by how aggressive the Free People players play, as a overtly passive free player can greatly lengthen the game. Initial impression seems to bear that out.
Jeff and I decided early to go for a military victory, so Jeff "lidless eye" Grein was concentrating on sacking Minas Tirith while Milton the White was aiming toward Helms Deep, with some secondary movement to bring up the Southron's into the fray.
Both MT and HD eventually fell to Shadow, but we did not really calculate the VPs right so it turns out that we did not push hard enough elsewhere to get enough VP to win (we should have concentrated on Lothlorien earlier on to whack the Elves)...
I liked the mechanics, this rolling of action dice to decide what you can and can not do (very similar to the kinda decision you have with multiuse action cards like POG/WtP), but since it's dice and not cards you can not plan ahead, so the decisions are much more tactical (no long term card weeding or anything like that, it's always what's the best I can do with the action dice I rolled?)
There nice tension in the game as the SHadow player starts to sack the cities and the Hobbits approaches Mt Doom. There's a good narrative element too that let you relate to the battles and the "quest" aspect of the game.
A good game that can be played over a weeknight, so what's not to like? The only suspicion I have (and it's only a suspicion at this point) is that there's an optimal strat for both side that once figured out might mean a problem for replayability. But as it stands there's probably at least 5~8 more plays in it for me, and that's probably enough nowadays, since I have to get into 7 Ages next, something I actually paid $$ for...
Posted by msoong at 05:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 20, 2004
Victoria Cross
For those of you that knows my gaming past, you know that the colonial period is my main thing (at least for the last 17 years or so). I do play less in that period now (burnout perhaps?) but it still has a special place in my (gaming) heart.
So it was a pleasant surprise when I heard from CSW that a small company is doing a block game (a la Columbia Games) version of the battle of Rorke's Drift. Prelim review indicates that it's a tense and short game that can be finished in one sitting. So after learning that Chris got himself a copy at Origins, we decided to give it a whirl tonight (it's supposed to be a group Arts and Craft night, but everyone else bailed because they are travelling to Historicon).
The Zulus needs to get enough victory points in 16 turns in order to win the game, and vp can be earned by burining down the hospital, capturing the water cart in the middle of the field, killing wounded Brits from the hospital (clearly a design for effect decision to force the Brits to protect their wounded), or to capture the reboubt in the middle of the compound. There are only 3 types of Zulu units: Small (steps 1~4), Large (steps 1~10), and leaders. Leaders are useful because they can herd a group of up to 10 factors two areas instead of the default 1). The British units have smaller combat factors.
The Turn sequence is Both players move, both players shoot (Zulu snipers on the escarpment), and then both melee. British fire power is what's gonna save them, as they can shoot up to 3 areas. They also get the "Volley fire" attack if units are stacked with Stanley Baker or Michael Caine, and they get to fire with TRIPLE the dice (!) They normally shoot on 3-6, and the to hit number decreases as the range goes up. The Zulus has to survive all that shooting in order to close and melee. The saving grace for the Zulus are that they get to replace all their losses EVERY TURN. (there's a -1 VP penalty if they lose too many factors in a single turn).
I made the fatal mistake on turn one by stacking the leaders with too few soak-off units (and made the mistake of actually moving the leaders into effective fire range) because the leaders are not replacable. So in effect I lost most of my rapid deployment capability on the first turn (thankfully my opponent didn't know that). In hind sight I should've held them back and not close with them until I can concentrate on a single area, ready for some serious melee.
I liked every facet of the game except the 1) book keeping part, and 2) The map. There are some amount of book keeping since the Zulus needs to keep track of how many "Factors" (not steps) that he lost, and a step is not always equal to a set number of factors (since a large Zulu Impi is a 1-3-5-10. In fact toward the end of the game I discovered that I was short about 35 factors on board for god knows how many turns (yeah I know, an engineer should be able to do math, but still...) Next time I will have to remember to recount the total factor count after every turn or so since it could clearly make a difference. The mapboard is a problem since the publisher decided to use a 3D perspective to depict the Rorke's Drift station, and some of the edge of the building are ambiguous as to what area is adjacent to what.
The game comes down to an exciting last turn assault on the redoubt, winner takes all. I wonder if the game is scripted in a way that it'll always come down to a last turn all or nothing attack.
All in all, I would like to try it again (now that I know what not to do...) and that's better than a lot of wargames that saw play here. It might even be something that sees play every once in a while like Columbia's Napoleon, but I doubt that it's got the depth or staying power of a Rommel in the Desert. Still, a solid B+ game IMO.
Posted by msoong at 09:50 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Memoir '44
Our friday night German game group contains a lot of ex-hardcore hex wargamers, and we still get to play "light" wargames when there's a suitable candidate. The new Days of Wonder release of Memoir '44 seems to fit the bill.
I have the original Battle Cry Civil War, and I was even interested enough in the system to order the Napoleonic variant from the designer (for pictures of my Albuera game is here). But ultimately I found the system wanting. (I can imaging the same use of cards to bring about a more historical tactics, instead of the "move right/left flank" cards that you currently get). I still enjoy it as a light "game" for non-wargamer though (and the designer Richard Borg is a good egg, and his endeavor is worth supporting).
Our group decided to do a double board Omaha Beach scenario, and since we only had 6 players that night, that means all of us are in (three players per side). Now a beach assault scenario is not my first choice of an intersting scenario (I much prefer maneuver battle to a headlong attack onto bunkers type), but it's one that all 6 of us can play, so there we went.
The scenario specific rules are pretty interesting: The commander in chief of each side draws 2 cards each turn, and can give up to 1,2, or 3 cards to the other players (with no more than 2 cards to any single player), and that's actually pretty interesting decisions to be made. The rest of us grunts have less choices: We get a card (or none) from our superior, and we execute it. There's no choice to save the card fo r future use.
The actual card play are classic Battle Cry though: Infantry is pretty much unchanged, and Tanks are kinda like cavalry (but with more powerful range attack and has a overrun capability). Artillery is pretty much the same except can ignore LOS blockage. Movement is still the "right/left/center flank" variety. There are no account for combined armed attack (which IMO can be added quite simply by cards that allows inf/armor/guns to attack in conjunction with some added bonus die).
One improvement for Memoir '44 is the card deck itself, as there are a lot more intereting stuff in it (things like airstrike, artillery attack, etc.) Things that I see as a good way to simulate the wild and woolly part of a WW2 battlefield in a elegant manner.
The game started out as a slaughter for the GI on the beach. Artillery is just deadly (scenario special rules makes a certain types of card to be a powerfull offboard artillery bombardment for either player) which is a bad thing for the Yanks who's wading ashore.
After the troops made it to the beach however, we started to kill off the German defenders with some serious number of dice roll. At the end I think the Allies lost 5 to 6 to a much closer game.
All in all it's Battle Cry improved, and with the smaller footprint (a serious factor for us with storage space issues), a tempting target to replace my ACW Battle Cry game, once I resolved to sell off my ACW copy...
Posted by msoong at 09:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 09, 2004
ASL (again)
For about 3 years or so SL (and later ASL) was the mainstay of my gaming. I remember those friday night SL sessions when I come back to my parent's house. It brings back good memory.
My ASL buddy and I ran through every SL scenario, as well as the COI, COD, scenario 100, scenario 200. We haven't quite made it into GI when ASL was released. and then we went through about 1/2 of the Beyond Valor scenarios as well as some of the Delux ASL stuff. It all stopped when interests changed (got into miniature almost full time), and also because my SL buddy moved away.
So about 19 years later, what kind of insanity possessed me to want to try this again? I mean I had a great time with the system back then, but let's face it, that was back then, before the internet, before marriage, and before work. I guess nostalgia probably has something to do with in, but really, why did I do it?
I guess I am still in search of a playable and versatile tactical WW2 game. The search has been relentless: we tried PanzerGrenadier from Avalanche (thumb down), TCS (a bit too attritional for me). Lock and Load looks like a good system, but the WW2 component isn't out yet. So that bring me back to ASL.
After spending about two weeks going through the rules again, I guess it did not seem all that daunting. A lot of the basics stuck in my head after all these years, so re-reading it wasn't all that painful (but it did bring out how dated the system is. The inelegance of many parts of the system obviously never went through the streamlining of game rules that happened in the last 10 years.).
Chris and I tried "Gavin Takes" (you can read about his writeup in his excellent blog), a simple US Para scenario where the most complicated thing onboard is the machine gun. I lost, but had a great time. Rules-wise Chris was pretty patient in pointing out stuff to me (he's an ASL grognard), but surprisingly I remembered a fair chunk of the stuff I read in the last few weeks.
The goal now re ASL is to play some more smaller scenarios regularly to get familiar with the rest of the system, and then maybe graduate to one of the HASL module (afterall, that's one of the reason I went on this journey for the mad).. Stay tuned.
Posted by msoong at 12:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 11, 2003
Age of Napoleon
Just had my 2nd playing of AoN tonight. It's game that went down to the wire (French lost in 1814), and the entire game took 3.5 hours.
Austrian folded in 1806, and the French immediately launched into Russia early in 1808 or so. I came that close by taking Russia (Russia did not surrender because I've lost one unit too many the battle before and the Russian troops in the country side out number the invaders by one! (of course I later found out that he had "No Surrender" in his hand so it wouldn't mattered anyway.
French fortune went steadily downhill since. Spain went into insurrection around 1809 or so, and then a Russian army appeared from the east. The emperor is busy trying to put down the Spanish ulcer when the freak battle die happen.... and Napoleon lost a battle to the Spaniards despite a two column advantage in combat. The worst part is that the Emperor actually became a prisoner!
French fortune went downhill from there. The next turn I found that even though Napoleon is out of prison, due to the fact that the French Mobilization limit is already full, Napoleon can NOT return! So another year went by when the marshall had to hold down a Russian invasion, Prussians joining the Allies, and Austria going into insurrection.
Starting with 1812 or so, Napoleon is playing defense to fend off the eventual defeat. Chris made a mistake by having the entire Prussian army vacate the country, so I sneaked in a single french corps into Berlin to cause a Prussian surrender.
The last two turns consisted of the giant Nappy stack runing around putting out the 3 invading armies: Wellington from the South-west, Blucher around Flanders, and the Austrians aiming for Paris through Champagne. The last phase of 1814 consisted of a gigantic Battle of Paris where the emperor finally gave in.
A much more exciting 2nd outing! Great time is had by all...
Posted by msoong at 12:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 15, 2003
Leros Invaded! (TCS)
Both sides have finished their ops sheet, and my first monster game in 15 years is finally underway!
Hans and I play the British. We've decided to setup one bat. as the cordon, one bat. spreadout to cover outposts around the island, and have the 3rd bat. and most of the support weapons right near the middle of the island as the "rapid deployment force".
Of course the Germans ploted their invasion RIGHT where our RDF is located. So we have a opposed beach landing on turn 1, starting out with doing "Assault commbat" on my first TCS outing. Everyone assure me that this is not typical TCS (translation: normal games might take many hours of manuevers to contact with enemy). But this could be the shortest TCS in everyone's memory if we can throw the invaders back into the ocean!
Posted by msoong at 12:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Age of Mythology boardgame
Both Linda and I are long time fan of the Age of ... computer games (started with Age of Empire, the Star Wars abomination, followed by many hours of AoM itself), and we looked forward to trying out the AoM boardgame (all the advance word of mouth called it Purto Rico goes to war...)
After about 45 min of setting up (the other table next to us which started their Attika game at the same time already finished). The game mechanics are flavorful and very Purto Rico like (that's a good thing), while the whole rock-paper-scissor combat system is very broken (might be fun with the family game crowd, but didn't work with us wargamer types). The whole "one can only attack people adjacent to you also did not work, since Carl got into a war between Chris and I, and Linda (whom the warlike Carl can't reach) pretty much went for the economic expansion route and won the game handily.
I think with some tinkering with the combat system (I am in the process of coming up with a "add up all the factors and roll on a CRT to get a result type of thing to speed up play), the game might be salvagable. As it stands right now though, it's simply too much down time for the amount of fun. A near miss...
Posted by msoong at 12:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 29, 2003
Monster Game (TCS)
Even back in my glory days of consim gaming, I've never been a big "monster" game kinda guy. The only game I've played (and enjoyed it immensely) is 3rd Edition World in Flames (before the game got horribly complicated).
Now for some strange reason (I chalk it up to mid life crises), I have a hankering for monster tactical games. My first choice is some kinda Napoleonic game (specifically, GMT's Austerlitz game, which looks like a playable monster), but I can't get any takers. So now I settled on TCS from the Gamers/MMP.
I've witnessed my buddies doing Omaha, which is one of the biggest TCS module out there. TCS' order writing system intrigued me, so I decide to give this one a try. We (about 5 of us) decided on Leros, and we are meeting once a week (every wednesday night). Will report any progress here on this blog...
Posted by msoong at 12:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 24, 2003
Deadline
Now one thing that does focus the mind when it comes to hobbies is a publicly visible deadline (such as "I am putting on a game this saturday and I need to finish basing these figures") Nothing focus the mind more than panic!
Currently a bunch of us old consim boardgamers have decided to get together and do a monster game (TCS Leros from the Gamers/MMP). Now I am not really a monster games kinda guy, having only played World In Flames that qualifies. The "idea" of playing a monster game with a group of your buddies appeals to me (it's more the social aspects I think), so I decided to give this one a try.
That gives me the incentive to concentrate and read through the v3.1 series rules over saturday. One hobby activity over saturday w/o a task switch to something else is a rare thing indeed!
Posted by msoong at 01:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack