From FRESNO GAMING ASSOCIATION
Crusader: 8, 11" x 17" maps (actually, 2 are strangely 10" x 17"); 1440 counters; 11 Charts & Tables Cards; 1 Rules Book; 1 Historical Commentary booklet; $35
Classics: 1 22" x 34" map, 1 17" x 22" map; 480 counters; 6 Charts & Tables Cards; 1 Rules Book; 1 Historical Commentary booklet; $28
Published by FGA, 228 South Lind Avenue, Fresno CA 93727
Many, many years ago, in the Jurassic Age of Wargaming, just as Dunnimagne was emerging heroically from the mists of medieval game publication, there appeared a company called Liberator Games. Liberator burst upon the scene with a series of ads selling what appeared to be dozens of new games on a wide variety of subjects; their range of expertise - along with their chutzpah, as it turned out - appeared to know no bounds. For the nascent gamer in a fledgling hobby, starved for play material, it seemed too good to be true. And it was. Liberator ran lots of ads, took some money (no one knows how much) and never published a game.
The mists of time descend, to rise a decade later (some 10+ years ago) to the arrival of a series of very expensive wargames from a puzzle house in Italy (International Team, or something like that). The games were then - and are even now - graphically spectacular, featuring interlocking, heavy cardboard maps, mucho color and excellent artwork. They did have one problem; their rules were not only undecipherable - they appear to have been written in a sort of pidgen English, as if Inspector Clouseau were in charge - but when you could finally make out the language they made little sense in terms of design. The games were monumentally unplayable and, ultimately, unsalable.
The Company
Fresno Games Association - a spin-off/split from GMT games (M and T left; G stayed) - has an omnipresent, we'll-publish-it-all, ad campaign that brings back those fond Liberator Memories, and a product that has far too many echoes of the Italian disasters. Unlike Liberator, however, the Fresno Folks have made good their campaign promises and published a couple of games. Then again, maybe Liberator knew what they were doing, because beneath Fresno's remarkably impressive graphics debut and the professional sheen of the entire production lies a veritable House of Usher-like Cards.
[The latest issue of "Fire & Movement" (#76) features an early quote I assume I made (back in issue #7), to the effect that " . . . designing a war game is easy as hell, within certain parameters." Those parameters are that designing a good game is a lot more difficult. Other parameters include doing at least a modicum of research and an extensive amount of both in-house and outside playtesting, all of which takes time - a lot of time. Three or four guys sitting around playing their own "system" and telling each other what a great time they're having is not game design; it's mental masturbation.
I'm taking a not-so-wild guess here, that what Fresno is setting about to do is to publish their own, revisionary games on the old ones that they love to play but, as the state-of-art progressed, with which they became dissatisfied. Actually, it's quite a good idea (it must be, I use it). Popular titles are not so for no reason; people like to play them - over and over. (Just ask Danny Parker.)
Fresno, though, went one, brilliant step further; they would publish these "update specials" with spectacular, eye-catching graphics and then support them with a massive flood of advertisements. It's the quintessential, American Way of doing business: come up with a product (it matters little what it is or how good it is), spend most of your creativity on the packaging, because that's the single most important, point-of-purchase ingredient, and then advertise the hell out of it. Some cynicism aside, it works. It's what has given us feminine sprays, tasteless beer, pet rocks, Alpha-Bits . . . and now, Fresno Games.
Two Fresno products have appeared, both selling like condoms at a Safe Sex orgy: Operation Crusader, a battalion-level game on several of the battles in the Tobruk/Bardia area in North Africa (WWII); and Civil War Classics, Vol. 1, featuring the battles of Shiloh and Pea Ridge (both of which were somewhat historically connected) and using a (purportedly) low-complexity approach.
At latest report, OC has "sold out", and CWC-1 is rapidly approaching that mark. Regardless of how many copies were printed, this is an impressive debut in terms of marketing. The one problem is that, like Andy in the old "Amos & Andy" show, these consumers have just bought the front of the house from the Kingfish. When they open that door to inspect the premises, they're going to fall flat on their faces.
Eye Catching
Both game boxes are eye-catching, although OC's cover is somewhat crisper and more interesting than the Civil War game, which features a period, albeit nice, lithograph of Pea Ridge. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that OC's boxcover, alone, accounted for 25+% of its sales. The rest of the production values are equally, but not uniformly, impressive. Both games have excellent counters: colorful, easy to read and well designed in terms of information presentation. I'm not a fan of OC's German military notation (its use was one of the reasons for the poor sales of AH's Longest Day), but it certainly is not a reason to not buy or play something. For most gamers, though, it will be an additional layer to what is already a massively confusing learning process.
The maps are somewhat less successful. OC's map is utilitarian - there's not much color to play around with in North Africa - although several of the hex symbols are too similar for easy reading. However, the maps for CWC-1 are, at best, ill-advised. The colors are OK (although I'm beginning to get an allergic reaction to pastel shades); it's the tree symbols that kill it all off - and both battles have plenty of trees. My son says they're kaiser rolls used for St.Patrick's Day sandwiches. I think it's really an aerial shot of Christo's Umbrella Project. (Curiously, the color photo of the map on the back of the box uses "standard" woods symbols; wonder why that was changed?) The Pea Ridge map, the least visually successful of all the games, also appears to be a direct adaptation of the one used by Eric Smith in SPI's Pea Ridge. (A similar resemblance has been detected by others for OC, vis a vis the old GDW Crusader game.) There's nothing inherently wrong in this - other than not acknowledging it, which appears to be Fresno corporate policy, and not checking to see if there were any errors and/or newer/better information available. If I'm not mistaken, both of those categories apply here. And, for some reason (which Fresno lays down to popular acclaim . . . I don't think so; try "too-cheap-to-change-the-software-program") the OC maps are chopped into 11x17 mini-maps. The effect is something akin to Ted Turner colorizing all of Perry Moore's games.
Rules
And then we come to the by-now, infamous rules books. If Fresno is in their element graphically, they are Strangers in a Strange Land when it comes to designing systems and writing rules. Ignoring their Uriah Heep-like mea culpa about printing the wrong rules draft (which even in the best light looks stupid), these are, far and away, two of the most incomprehensible, unfathomable and unreadable sets of rules I have had the displeasure to try to read. I design games for a living; I can play most games without even looking at the rules (which is highly recommended here), but this stuff left me euphemistically scratching my head for hours. What you have here are a bunch of guys, probably veteran gamers and pretty good playtesters, totally Without a Clue in trying to explain what they've been having fun with for several years. So extensive are the gaffes that a full list would read like the errata for SPI's infamous Fall of Rome, which these games resemble in their incompleteness. Some examples:
The Sequence of Play in OC starts with an "Initial Phase". No where in the rules does it mention what this is for, or what you do in it. For that you have to refer to the "Sequence of Play" Chart (which is the most adroitly handled item in the game).
OC talks about five types of combat, including a "ground attack". It neglects to tell you that "ground attack" is part of the air game.
OC supply rules use hex radii. Terrain effects? None. You can, apparently, trace them across the River Styx without penalty. The same applies to Command radii in CWC-1.
I loved this one. Basic rule in OC: you can't cross wadis; Advanced Game rule: you can cross wadis. C'mon, guys. These are dried-up river beds, not the Grand Canyon.
In OC, it appears that unsupplied units have their attack "factors" (there's that word again) halved; which is OK, considering two lines above it says unsupplied units cannot attack. You have to reread this three times to understand that they're talking about two different categories of units here. At least I think that's what they intended.
Set-up instructions for virtually all of OC's scenarios are printed in paragraph form, are hopelessly muddled, and leave out major information. E.g., where do the Allies set up in BattleAxe? And how far does the (unprinted) Axis Start line extend? Were the air units purposely left out - or were planes not flying during those days? And that's for one of the easier scenarios.
CWC-1 rules succinctly state units that take a step loss are flipped over; next loss they're eliminated. What the rules DON'T tell you is that this is not true. Most units actually have FOUR steps! The errata helps out here, if you have it.
The CWC-1 rules book contains several obvious carry-overs from the OC rules book, including another left-handed ad for my old Campaigns [sic] for North Africa game. I love the plug, guys; but at least get the title right.
CWC-1 leaders move using "infantry" rates. Pray tell, why? They were all on horseback, Grant even suffering an injury at Shiloh when his horse fell on him.
In CWC-1 units are supposed to pay extra costs to leave enemy ZOC's. Nowhere in the game does it list these costs. Pick a number.
In CWC-1 unalerted Union units supposedly suffer melee disadvantages, for which we are to check the CRT's for those DRM's. Look in vain.
Both games' rules make endless references to "DRM's" - but no explanations. This is left to the combat charts, etc. Unfortunately, most of the information on the charts is, at best, opaque - try this one: "(Any) Average Proficiency . . . > 0, less than or equal to 1. . . . . . .is -1".
Figuring out how to use the Combat Effectiveness Table in CWC-1 requires a Rosetta Stone. It does seem to suggest that immediately after units fail one of these checks you can rally them before applying the results. Strange.
Both games have, basically, only two types of combat results: step losses and retreats. This may be fine for "melee", but it is non-applicable to artillery, especially in the Civil War. ACW artillery, on the scale with which we are dealing, disrupted and demoralized; it did not destroy. And in a game (OC) in which there are 24 different types of combat units - some with virtually no discernable play difference - why do we have only two, simplistic, combat results?
I can hear the outcry from the balcony: Who Cares? We didn't come to read the rules, we came to play the game! Well, you can't play the game unless you can read the rules, and these rules are pretty much 6+ pages of poorly written, typo-ridden declaration with virtually no coherent exposition or explanation. The fact that Fresno can cover a game that contains 2+ full-size maps and 1400+ counters (OC) in only six pages of rules is indicative of the paucity of design and development experience at work here.
Too Bad
All of this is too bad, because in OC it obscures and ultimately destroys a rather nice little system. Most of the game mechanics of OC will be familiar to any veteran gamer (which helps in discerning rules intent, a feat second only to deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls), especially those who have played Gene Billingsley's Operation: Shoestring and Air Bridge to Victory, to which OC's system is much beholden. Apparently, however, Fresno felt that GMT's 12+ pages of rules were far too long, so they simply went at them with a machete. In the process they produced some truly macabre results. For example, why can all units in one hex attack but only 4 stacking points per hex (half of the allowed maximum) defend? And if only four can defend, why do results affect the whole stack? The last mechanic means you can send in your heavy armor and mech units, and then take step losses from your uninvolved artillery. Now there's a heavy shot of realism. And ground combat resolution has been changed from odds-ratio to strength differential, a mechanic of which I am decidedly not a fan. Unless properly handled, differentials produce far too many anomalies. For example, you use the same column when 15 points attack 13 as you do when 3 attack 1. And then, given an opportunity to change what was one of the least felicitous aspects of Billingsley's system - Average Proficiency - they simply left it in place. What we're looking at here is change for the sake of change - and rather inept and inapplicable change at that.
All of this is far too great a burden for the game to bear. Aside from combat having a shadowy tinge of unreality, play proceeds sluggishly. Much of this is a result of Fresno's decision to include individual counters for every battalion-sized unit a brigade carried with it. (Gee, if they had called up Richard Garczynski in Wisconsin he could have given them the ID for all the Axis bakery companies.) This means lots of counters, over several hundred per side in the scenarios with 3+ divisions deployed. The system is good enough so that, at times, it shines through. But the end result is sheer despair and, that ultimate skeleton in every designer's closet, boredom. Fresno loudly proclaims they do games - not simulations. Given the tragic-comic confusion of the rules, the massive overdose of counters, and the paucity of design experience, Operation Crusader is neither. What it is, is unplayable.
CWC-1 presents a different problem. Simpler in intent, the game rules appear to have far too much in common with those of OC, a subject with which the Civil War has little affinity. Once again, it's cut-and-paste time, with far too much cutting and not enough pasting.
Having designed two games on the battle - and with the feeling that Pea Ridge is subject to partial deprivations from the Custer-Rorke Syndrome (see the Trajan review) - Shiloh seemed a good game to play. It's an interesting battle with many opportunities for designers to show their mettle. The scale here is about 250 yards a hex, and the combat units appear to be demi-brigades (much the same scale as appears in 1862/3 and the West End Shiloh), a design convenience that solves many problems without causing undue catastrophe to history.
Right off, the map has problems. Most of the trail system is gone, and the Sunken Road (whose graphics have a most unfortunate resemblance to doggy do) is entirely in the clear when, in reality - and most importantly - at least half of its length wound through dense woods. The terrain key lists major roads and minor roads; the TEM Chart, however, does not list Major Roads - it has "pikes". The roads at Shiloh were definitely not pikes. That leaves one to wonder whether he should differentiate or ignore. And, aside from the misprinted set-up hexes for the artillery attached to Tuttle's (Union) brigade (they should both be in 2423, not in 2011/2210 as printed), Fresno has opted for starting both the Confederate II and III Corps in one long line when, in fact, Bragg's corps deployed several hundred yards behind Hardee's. This is quite important, as it was one of the reasons the initial Confederate attack was not as effective as it could have been. (It's also easy to correct; simply place all of III Corps plus Gladden's brigade - which anchors the right - in the first line: 1007-1301. The remainder of II Corps is placed in 0105-0901. Then again, why bother.)
Re-aligning
After realigning the CSA deployment correctly, play pretty much proceeds along the lines of every previous Shiloh game, with the exception that in those games you knew what you were supposed to be doing. In CWC-1 the player does get a marvelous feel of what it must have been like to be in that advancing line of troops, because, much like them, he's wandering around some metaphysical woods without a map, without direction and without training. Never mind the poorly thought out, overly restrictive command control requirements, which change the basic Civil War unit of maneuver from a brigade to a corps. What does matter is that the instant you go to resolve the initial round of combat you realize that, not only do the rules not state at exactly what point unalerted Units become alert (an important rule, as it decides exactly when they can begin to operate efficiently), but there appears to be no disadvantage to being caught napping, other than the inability to fire back. Referenced rules entailing appropriate melee DRM's are nowhere to be found. This is a crucial piece of design ineptitude.
Other bits of flotsam and jetsam . . . do you calculate the effect of command range at the beginning of the turn or at the instant it is required? Do you fail a Morale Check if the dieroll is the same as the rating, or just higher? (Morale checks are never explained in the rules; just mentioned.) Trails negate streams? Despite overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary, that appears to be the intent here. (The "streams" at Shiloh were difficult to cross not because they were water barriers, but because most of them ran through steep, difficult ravines, a terrain effect nowhere in sight.) Do unalerted Union units have a ZOC? Whether they do or not has great effect on the game's opening turns, especially in the Rhea Field area.
And on it goes. There is an OoB and variable arrival time for a hypothetical intervention by Van Dorn's Trans-Mississippi army, although there are no rules - or even mention in the body of the rules - as to how to implement this idea. It is a nice variable (although, historically, pretty much impossible because of Pea Ridge); but an even more applicable variable - the time of arrival of Lew Wallace's wandering Union division - is totally ignored.
Shiloh is a great battle to simulate. It has much drama, and its course tends to change each time you play it, trying to figure out your "best plan". As such, it is virtually impossible to publish a bad Shiloh game. Well, Fresno has achieved the impossible, because the CWC-1 Shiloh is worse than bad - it's dumb.
Dishonest
And worse than dumb, it's dishonest. As both games included extensive historical commentary, I looked - in vain, as it were - for any source references or bibliography. Normally, this is not a factor worth mentioning; here, it is. The CSA hypothetical arrival of Van Dorn includes the Missouri State Guard, whose commanding officer is given as a General Loutsch. You will spend useless hours trying to find out who this fellow is, because he is not a Confederate officer; he's a presently practicing psychiatrist in New York City.
When I designed Bloody April, a decade or so ago, I included aides-de-camp (needed for the alert rules). I had specific information on everyone's aide, except for General Price. As a joke I threw in Dr. Enrique Loutsch (anglicized to Henry Hector, as Loutsch is Argentinian). Over the years I had mentioned this countless number of times in articles and convention lectures. To my amazement - and great humor - Fresno not only perpetuates the gag but promotes him to the command of a full division.
In and of itself there's nothing wrong with this; after all, I started it. However, it does make you wonder where everything else came from, a question that has been raised by other veteran, astute gamers, who have noticed both games' uncanny resemblance to prior products. I have no objection to using someone else's work; I do have a strong distaste for those who do it without acknowledging such "borrowing". So do the legislatures of most states. At best, it's intellectually lazy - but, then again, so are these two, brightly colored pieces of junk.
Both Operation Crusader and Civil War Classics,Vol. 1 are the S&L's of the game industry: virtually bankrupt. They're empty of ideas, devoid of any semblance of professional design, and morally "out of cash" on a basic research level. If I hadn't gotten them for nothing I would be screaming for my money back.
CAPSULE COMMENTS
Physical Quality: Quite impressive, although counters much more so than the rather wan - and sometimes silly-looking - maps. An exceptionally well-produced and effective package.
Playability: OC pretty heavy going, although some of the smaller scenarios aren't too bad. Rules indecipherable, system inelegant. A true chore. CWC-1 better, altho it suffers from you having to spend most of your time designing in what they left out.
Historicity: Rules claim FGA doesn't do simulations; three cheers for truth in advertising. If you buy the OC system as simulating history, you'll buy anything. Can't quibble with the OoB, though. Wonder what game that came from . . . . As for CWC-1, check the Shiloh Sunken Road and the fellow leading the Missouri State Guard . . . Try research, guys.
Playing Time: Depends on the scenario, but OC is a slow-moving game. The two ACW games move a lot quicker. You'll probably quit in about a half hour.
Comparisons: These games invite instant comparison, as they are fairly obvious copies of previous efforts. They also use an adaptation of another game's system. At all levels, they suffer - and so do the people who have to play them. If you want to game Crusader, get ahold of the old Frank Chadwick/GDW game; to compare this game to Chadwick's is to lend depth to the term blasphemous. Compared to their many ancestors, the ACW games test the gag reflex.
Overall: Big production budget PLUS big ad budget MINUS any semblance of design intelligence, professionalism or even minimal capability EQUALS a veritable "poster boy" for game-burning. Instead of promoting Loutsch, they should have consulted him before proceeding with this prettily-produced, but essentially misguided and ill-begotten trash. Gamedom's answer to War is Hell.
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© Copyright 1999 by Richard Berg
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