EAGLES by TOM DALGLIESH DAMN THE TORPEDOES by JOHN BOHRER MIDDLE EARTH by COLEMAN CHARLTON THE LAST CRUSADE by JOHN HOPLER Eagles Now that the card market has slowed - and in some instances, come to a dead stop - we can start examining these games from a purely “play’ standpoint. All-encompassing Acquisition, born of Initial Enthusiasm has given way to good old Consumer Caution. I don’t think we will see an end to card games; I just think they are now a specific niche in the hobby, a niche with both smooth corners and rough edges. And the three above-titled efforts have both of those, and more. Perhaps of most interest to BROGers is the latest card/wargame from Tom Dalgliesh at Columbia, Eagles. After two shots at the ACW Tom has ventured into the rather more colorful Napoleonic era, here, with mixed results. The first installment of Eagles covers the 4 battles that comprise Waterloo … sort of. Each deck comes with 60 of the 300 cards in the set, which means you will need, at least (and that’s a big “at least”) five decks to get anywhere near all 300 … or an investment of $40+, again, “at least”. Columbia has made it easier on those who want to play, as opposed to those who think these things will be collectably valuable as their Gone With the Wind dinner plates, by making all 300 cards equally available, but providing silver and gold-rimmed versions of same with diminishing availability. Aside from America’s desire to create a heritage by saving everything in sight, regardless of its æsthetic value, I can’t see any reason anyone would want to save any of these cards. Granted, in terms of graphic design and color schemes, they are quite handsome, even striking. The subject matter artwork, on the other hand, is far less successful, crowned by, perhaps, the least flattering portrait of Napoleon one could imagine, a picture that, unfortunately, graces the boxcovers of the decks. As I mentioned last issue, it looks less like Napoleon than Porky Magoo. For those of a cinematic bent, it looks like they gave the part to Steven Furst, the actor who played the fat guy in “Animal House”. It’s so bad that we all breathed a sigh of relief when the NapMan got offed on the second turn of the game, wherein lies deeper problems. I have been relatively quiet about the Columbia cardgame system, mostly because it isn’t intended to be anything more than an hour or two of fun. But c’mon, guys, we can make at least a stab at even a superficial sense of reality and historicity! Especially where it would make the game far better without even the remotest addition of complexity. The system is familiar to most of you: three piles of cards, 4 max to a pile. You move your piles onto his piles (and don’t forget the Preparation H) to have combat, combat being either Fire or Charge, each card rated for how many dice it can “throw”, and what numbers are needed to cause hits. (Eagles has more ratings than its ACW predecessors.) Hits are then either removed (at the beginning of the next player’s turn) or, in the process, cause the card to be eliminated. Very simple, rather elegant … and quite simplistic if you’re looking for anything other than a game. But Eagles is looking for far more; it wants to have the trappings of historicity, and does so by providing actual units and individualized ratings. And in doing so it falls into several potholes from which it never emerges, either as history or, to my mind, as a game. The main problem is that virtually all infantry units have a higher Shock Rating than a Fire Rating, the only exception being some British units with equal ratings. So why Fire? What do you get from it? You get nothing, and that is because there is NO Defensive Fire in the game. You can charge the best battery in the game and eliminate it without so much as a mussed hair. Would it be so hard to add Defensive Fire, applied only when the opposition opts to Shock and which, if successful, would negate that Shock ability, thus maintaining the ratio of losses in the game? That would not only add a touch of reality to the proceedings, but it would give units a reason to Fire instead of Shocking. On the other hand, for some reason, cavalry has Fire capability which they, too, never use. Aside from the above, I find it hard to fathom where the Scots Greys or the Life Guards would have the same (albeit minimal) fire capability as a battalion of Dutch infantry. And it’s far too enjoyable to charge back and forth with your cavalry than have them use weaponry they probably didn’t even have! Then there’s the Leaders. I won’t go into the somewhat flat ratings - Blucher is almost as good as Napoleon, as are von Alten, Uxbridge, and far too many others. Napoleon has the same effect as any other commander, other than that he may provide such for more units than lower level leaders. But that’s not really the problem. Leaders affect only Morale DRs in the game, a not-unimportant function. But to do so they place themselves in harms way, and that, in a most peculiar manner. If, when rolling for hits against a unit with a leader, you roll a ‘1’, the Leader suffers a “hit” which, if you roll a ‘6’ for removal, kills him. The result is that these guys tend to go down faster than Hugh Grant’s dates, and in far from felicitous circumstances. I used the Life Guards - at 4A , 4S one of the best cards in the game, to charge Napoleon-led cavalry. (Don’t ask how that happened; it’s a game.) The DRs? Three 1’s and a ‘2. You might say “aaaak!”, as all that expertise and no hits on the French horse. But wait a minute, that’s three hits against Nappy, a 50% chance he’ll ship out across the Styx rather than to St. Helena. And that’s just what he did. All of this - and a lot of other blemishes - could have been handled a deal more adroitly simply by adapting a ten-sided die. As a result of the above, Eagles ends up as an easily accessible, basically fun game that suffers much from added frustration and annoyance. Damn the Torpedoes Simplicity and accessibility is also much evident in Winsome’s ACW naval game, Damn the Torpedoes. However, aside from a few missed opportunities, DT is a much less frustrating game. DT has been out for a while, so there has already been some commentary about it, mostly concerning what consumers perceive to be a rather high price tag ($25). I, too, raised an eyebrow at that, especially as the cards are so thin they make you yearn for the days of Cedar Creek. But the plastic, fish-tackle box they come in is rather neat, and the rules, if not overly helpful, are quite short. It’s also a game system we’ve seen before in several other incarnations, such as Attack Sub and Naval Battles. I wonder, though, if the reviewers who complain about such consistency (to put a good light on it) say the same after playing one of Command’s games that does pretty much the same? Just curious. Torpedoes, while using actual ACW ships and accouterments, makes little pretense at being accurate, especially as players get a mixture of CSA and USA ships, personnel, rams, torpedoes, etc. You get a couple of ships and then draw cards, most of which are Ammo Cards, which provide you with firepower. Ships are rated for volume and type of fire (Rifled or Smooth) as well as their ability to withstand punishment, in the form of Ammo Cards piled atop them. Thus a late-model ship might have a ‘17’ defensive rating, which means it needs Ammo Cards worth at least 17 points to sink it, and claim it for victory. Then there are the old wooden-sided ships with massive firepower and a defensive rating of ‘1’. Bye bye! Added to the ships is a rather chrome-heavy, but fun, mixture of torpedoes and mines of all types and capabilities, Ellet Rams, massive forts, some of which are unreducable, unless you get to use a Grant or Sherman card to capture it, and a few other interesting goodies, all of which provide a fair amount of variety in play. And DT is a game that plays a level or two better with more than two people, as there is far more “strategy”, as you get to take advantage of other people’s efforts. We enjoyed our two rounds of DT play, far more than we did for Eagles, even though both games treat history in cavalier fashion. The difference is that Eagles purports to portray events with some sort of realism, while DT doesn’t. That they both do not is whimsical in DT, annoying in Eagles. I can’t help but feeling that, with some top-flight graphics, Torpedoes would be a rather popular little game. As it is, the $25 pricetag didn’t bother me that much… especially as I didn’t pay for it. Middle Earth Didn’t pay for my Middle Earth decks, either, a gift from my compadre, Danny, at Compleat Strategist in NY … a store (the 33rd street one, not the other touriste trappos) with such a complete inventory you need a machete to get down the aisles. Having designed the first complete game on the Tolkien novels, along with Howie Barasch (SPI’s Lord of the Rings), and having lost an opportunity to gain mucho bucks from a reprint when ICE discovered cards, I was most intrigued by the possibilities cards entailed for what was one of the best pieces of genre fiction ever written. Many people feel the same way; however, Tolkien is at least a generation old. Will it be a generation past? Well, reports are that ME is selling well, if not spectacularly. Appears as if licensing is the key, as card games appear to have settled for a system sameness, locked in by the inherent restrictions of cards as a game medium. I wasn’t overly enthusiastic when I played through ME, mostly for that reason, nor was my design partner, Mark Herman, who was far more unenthusiastic than me. But our Colorado stringer, Mike Lemick, felt that ME was a winner, mostly because it ventured into systems areas that other games seem to have avoided. He liked the idea that each player was one of the Good Guys, a fact which I held against it. His argument, that it avoided the hindsight-prescience problem of the original board game, had some weight, especially when everyone does get to play Bad Guy cards against each other. The best system mechanic, though, is the Corruption idea, wherein players get to use powerful cards which (can) turn out to be very sharp two-edged swords. At the top of this list is the Wizard’s Ring card, which gives you a major boost in capabilities but, with a bad dieroll, can end your (game) existence at the same time. Mike also points out that, because there is dierolling in ME, unlike many other card games, there is a healthy element of chance (or luck), an element most present in the novels. He also liked the fact that the card flow was constant and fluid, something that provided the game with a fast pace and lots of tough decisions. Add to that the built-in safeties against Killer Decks (the scourge of the lower Middle Class Magic-ites) and the relative unpredictability of play, and you have a winner. At least according to Mike Lemick. And Mike was gracious enough not to mention the rather insipid, Study Hall level of graphics that passes for art on cards these days. Sort of as if someone handed a dragonsmasher to one of those Keene “paintings” from the 60’s. The stuff you can sell only on the QVC Shopping Network. The Last Crusade Better artwork and predictability are features, though, of the rather ambitious Last Crusade, a card/wargame on US vs Germans in 1945. Here, instead of resorting to the usual tank doodles, the Chameleon Eclectic folks were smart enough to integrate photos with graphics, so that the cards have a level of visual sophistication above that of the Bundy’s. (Al, not Ted). Even better, the game is fun, probably the best of the historically oriented carders to date. It’s not that it’s so different from the others; they’re all essentially boardgames with 9 (or maybe 15) hexes. It’s that LC brings a variety to play that is truly missing in other, similar ventures. And, yes, it does have “rare” cards, although I managed to get a deck that contained two rare Rommels. LC is pretty much the same as, say, Eagles, in that the play area is a 3x3 row system, and you attack your opponent’s cards with your cards. In LC that means using one of the three Firepower ratings - infantry, armor, air - which delineate how many dice you may roll. If you roll a 5 or a 6 it’s a hit, with the target card’s Defense rating showing how many of those it can absorb before it goes belly up. Throw in a nice supply system and some air, and you’ve about got it. What makes it different, though, is the variety of cards. Now, Eagles has a whole bunch of different cards, but they’re different only in that they have different unit names. Basically, there are three cards in that game: infantry, cavalry and artillery. They all do the same thing. Not so with LC, where the weaponry and “specials” run a remarkable gamut of capabilities (or lack thereof). The result is that, much like Magic, each player always has something new and different up his sleeve. There’s all sorts of hardware and heavy weaponry, from tanks to big guns, to fighters and bombers. There’s also a neat assortment of off-the-wall happenings, from guest shots by Rommel and Patton, to HQ Snafus, to espionage, to field hospitals, to ambushes, etc. So, while Last Crusade, like other card games, is still limited by that pseudo hexfield, it has enough variety to make it fun. But be warned, this is not one of those games that plays in an hour. An evening is more like it. But we do recommend it to those who want to see what the fuss is all about. CAPSULE COMMENTS Eagles: Only for those who care little about reality and/or truly believe that this stuff will be worth money one day. Torpedoes: Whimsical fun; fast playing, too. Not very deep, though, and hampered by minimal graphics. Middle Earth: Interesting turn on cardplay mechanics. More quest than war. Last Crusade: Lots of card variety makes for nice play tension. Best of the histo-card games. Eagles (Columbia Games), Last Crusade (Chameleon Eclectic) and Middle Earth (ICE) are sold “collector” style, in individual decks of c. $9 each. Torpedoes is self-contained: 114 thin cards; rules book; heavy plastic box. $25 from Winsome Games, 1-412-244-0599 (Pittsburgh) Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. II # 21 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 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