Boy, you turn around for three minutes and everyone comes out with a magazine. Everyone, it seems, wants to get into the Print Act, ranging from Japan to France, with lots of stopovers in North America. If you love games, and you have lots of money to spend, you’ll be in Game Magazine Heaven in short order. Six Angles First to appear among the novices is Masahiro Yamazaki’s Japanese magazine, “Six Angles”. This will, most likely, have minimal appeal here in the states, as few of us can read Japanese. However, it does include a game - Zaparozhye 1943 - by Yamazaki, the rules for which are in English. The graphics are excellent, although its cut-and-paste time in Counter Land, and the game itself is a rather simple Eastfront basher, with a Move-Reaction-Combat sequence, plus a nod in the direction of Logistics. Other than that, of interest is Yamazaki’s photographic essays on last year’s Origins and visits to XTR and 3W. They all look like the grainy photos that show up on “America’s Most Wanted”. I’d give you an address, but it was in Japanese. Vae Victus The other new magazine-cum-game is also foreign, but this one is rather an eye-opener. It’s the French “Vae Victus”, and, if you want to see how good a wargaming magazine can look, take a gander at this one. Full, four-color on ALL pages, slick, heavy paper, lots and lots of good photography and graphics, plus a snazzy looking game on Tunisia, 1943, the counters for which are some of the best I’ve seen (although, once again, its Cut-and-Paste Time). As a game, as much as I can tell, it looks interesting and not overly complex. It appears to have some interesting ZOC rules. “Vae Victus” covers all aspects of wargaming, from board to figures and cards. There are reviews of all the recent Nappy games, wherein the author hopes he’ll see one where the French can win, plus a close look at the new French version of SPQR from Oraflam. If you are multi-linguistic, this is a Not Miss publication. A six-issue Sub cost runs 235 F (from the US; about $45+), and you can get more info from Histoire & Collections, 19, avenue de la Republique, 75011 Paris. GameFix And then, of course, we have our old game-magazine friends, the most busy of which has been Jon Compton’s GameFix. Since we last spoke, they have come out with 3 issues, including games from Joe Miranda, Crisis 2000; me, Chicken of the Sea (Punic era galley warfare), and Mike Anderson’s Bomb’s Away. Scott Johnson took a whack at the Miranda Crisis, which covers, at a very simple level, a future US Civil War. After waxing somewhat apoplectic about a variety of political positions, including Environmental Darwinists, this era’s House of Inbred Idiots, our own ATF Bureau, as well as Republican “Contractors”, Scott found the game a fun, fast-paced little game on the big issues that the cybernetic future portends. Joe is always good for politically-oriented stuff, and, although the approach here is a bit too simple, Crisis has a lot of interesting mechanics that could get you to play it more than once. As for the other two Fixers, I can’t review my own game (as much as I’d like to), and Bomb’s Away is too recent. It is a card game, which is unusual, and it covers strategic bombing in Europe, WWII. Alan Emerich was quite enthusiastic about it; but Alan is enthusiastic about everything. Literally. Word on Genie looks good, and they’re coming out with an advanced game expansion set in the next issue. Oh, and Dave Wood is still rattling his Cage aux Pedants. He’s been over-imbibing from the Fount of Font, although he does get to review a few games. He mostly discusses whether the game designer followed Dave’s Eight Commandments, most of which have little to do with whether the game is fun or not. Dave is not a barrel of laughs, that’s for sure. Command Command’s latest was John Desch’s Budapest ‘45, which looked interesting at first glance. The Beth Queman map is quite evocative … very icy … but the Larry Hoffman counters are butt-end ugly. They remind me of the counters from the old Taurus game stuff from the 70’s. (Anyone remember that group??) Then again, virtually all the counters are played backside up, which also seems to be how they were designed. We actually had some fun playing the game, and it is errata free (or appears to be, as we had no questions about it). On the other hand, we felt that it was a one-play-and-out special, for two reasons, only one of which we discerned. Because of the terrain, and time constraints most games will tend to be quite similar in strategies. But even worse, several players - but not dumb us - quickly spotted that it was mathematically impossible for the Germans to stop the Ruskis from re-taking Budapest, which is an auto-win. OK! Back in the bin. Nice work to little result. S&T As for recent S&T’s, I only hear vaguely that it still survives … although there have been even vaguer rumors that Le Medecin du Blanc Mange is looking for a buyer. El Cummino Unreal stoutly denies this. Whatever, I haven’t seen an issue in about a year, although I did hear (read) that the two-issue Atlanta game was a slightly upgraded “Blue & Gray” special with some error-laden maps. There has also been a lot of bitter ink spilled between outgoing developer Kirk Schlesinger and Doc Indecision concerning the handling of “On to Moscow”, both pointing more fingers at each other than they have available. Knowing what I do about DG operations, and about Kirk as a developer, I’d lay my well-earned bucks on KS, and take the “over”. As for the “commentary” magazines, we have one new one and one new look. Zone of Control New Kid on the Block is John Kisner’s “Zone of Control”, a rather well-done effort that looks like it is attempting to find, as its niche, the Sober Aspect of Reviewing. The writing is at a pretty good level, even if no one can really understand what John Walker is talking about in his discussion on sequence impulses, but there are some informative reviews by such as Rick Swan, Chris Perleberg, Terry Rooker, Henry Lowood, et al. The accent is far more on objectivity than subjectivity; Kisner is almost paranoid about the question of reviewer “bias” … whatever that may entail. The result is lots of number-crunching type info, but not enough soul … and very little wit. It is the 1st issue, so let’s see what develops. In the meantime, it’s a solid, pro production, so your not getting junk. Canadian Wargamers Journal And Canadian Wargamers Journal has gone “Big Time”, with a full-color cover and magazine-size format. Looks impressive, but I always get a somewhat empty feeling after reading CWJ. They do a great job on variants and play aids, but the game reviews are brief to a fault, and relatively non-insightful. Other And from England came two of the magazines I read closely, more so than others: “Sumo’s Karaoke” and “Perfidious Albion”. The former is the best way to find out virtually every game that has come out, although the focus is nonwargame. And Charles Vasey’s “PA” has been around for what must be almost 20 years now. It is, if anything, even more opinionated than BROG. And it does provide the gamer with a totally different - and often refreshing - view. PA did think that the BROG Crack Playtest Staff looked a bit too much like the Village People for comfort. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. II # 16 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com