There’s a wonderful scene in the old Broadway musical, “The Music Man”, in which River City’s musical con man, Prof. Harold Hill, extoles the virtues of “Anticipation”, the delicious thrill of expectation waiting for something to arrive. Some years later, Carly Simon - and Heinz ketchup - combined for a TV visual on the same tingle, all leading to the observation that Chris Perello’s Mason-Dixon, a what-if special on what would have happened, militarily at least, had the South won the Civil War, was one of the more anticipated games of the past year. Heightened anticipation can often be illusory, however, and if the delivered product does not measure up to what you expected the letdown can be something fierce. And while Chris, unlike the larcenously intended Harold Hill, fully intended to deliver on his, and the games, promises, what Mason-Dixon turns out to be is an OK game that, ultimately, is one of the more disappointing products of the past year. If I remember correctly, M-D was intended as a giganto, two-map special, with players envisioning a maneuver-oriented ACW II (and III). For whatever reasons, that plan was abandoned and what we get is a rather nice-looking, one-map game that is a fluid and interesting as a relay race of 400-pound wargamers … but certainly not as humorous. It’s hard to say what went wrong, as there’s an awful lot of “good stuff” in M-D; it just doesn’t hang together. Visually, the Beth Queman components reveal a decided step forward for the much-maligned graphics artist. The map is interesting, with lots of nice detail, and the counters are clear and readable. They do have the advantage of being the 1/2” variety, thereby eschewing XTR’s affinity for fat-print. The 13+ pages of rules, while not overly long, are like one of the Christmas fruitcakes, so jammed with individually enticing goodies, that two bites of one of those lessons in the physical laws of mass and density is enough to get you to swear of Xmas for at least another year. And I think that’s the problem here. Chris has come up with some very interesting mechanics, and he’s opted for putting them all together at the same time. Two things are sure to happen when you do this. Firstly, as with any other game that profers a “new” system, the first ingredient that bubbles to the top is a trunkload of errata; if not actualy “mistakes”, certainly an overly healthy bunch of questions. (Cf. my own “Loo” and 3DoG, CoA’s Koln, even Chris’ own Fatelful Lightning.) It comes with the territory, as the canardists would quack. But even worse, at least for the player, Mason-Dixon ends up like one of those cakes you bake, with lots of ingredients, that simply don’t rise, regardless what you do with it. And that’s Mason-Dixon, which plays flatter than a cheap pancake. The game is actually three games in one, with scenarios covering (truly) hypothetical wars between the CSA and USA in 1917, 1940, and 1995. They all use the same rules (more or less); they just have different hardware. We played the 1917 scenario, if alone for the fact that it meant we didn’t have to deal with extensive air rules, and it also appeared, at first glance, the more interesting of the three. To digress a bit here, there has been much commentary - at least on the Internet - on how many times it takes to play a game to be qualified to review it. Designers, of course, emphatically state that you have to run through their enfant terrible at least half a dozen times in order to understand all its nuances and subtleties. At the risk of heaping more oppoprobrium on my already so-crowded head, I say that’s rubbish. I’m not advocating the old “shake the box, does it rattle nicely” routine. But it is not up to the reviewer to tell you whether Section 14.53 is fully melded with the mechanics of 11.0 and 21.0. His (or her; we do have an occasional interloper from across the aisle) job is to tell you whether he (or she; last time) liked the game … and why (not). In order to put this into a more visceral frame, ask yourself how long into any game it takes for you to reach that conclusion? Granted, the reviewer does owe the designer the respect of giving his creation a fair chance, which usually means playing a game sufficiently so that one understands what’s happening, why, and where it’s going. And, while we slogged our way to the stolid conclusion of M-D ‘17, it didn’t take that long for all of us involved to realize that the game wasn’t going much of anywhere, and it was taking its own sweet time doing so. Which is too bad, because, as I said, Chris has a lot of really interesting systems wandering about …sort of like a ten-sided Diogenes, looking for an honest game. The sequence is Igo-Hugo, with monthly turns, although that is somewhat misleadsing, as there are three “turns” within each montly turn. Sandwiched around the usual move-fight phases are an Air Phase, then Naval Phase to start each month, with a Production Phase at the end. The game is rather production oriented, as was the real ACW, with both players wanting to do far more than their logistics allows them. This feel is somewhat negated by the ease with which players can trace supply. from XTR/Command One 33” x 22” map; 538 counters; rules book. Addendum to Command #35. 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. 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