Somewhere in the limitless reaches of space there exists an astronomical phenomenon, a trinary star system with but a single nameless planet in its grasp. And, in a far off corner of this world, bathed in an eerie light of its three suns, is a valley where magic is supreme and the various races of man and monster exist together, albeit tenuously. It is a land of incredible geological upheaval and sudden. climatic changes. You are in the Valley of the Great Sword, the world of Swords and Sorcery.

SPI took a long time in releasing this game and much of the extra effort is exemplified in the final product. Swords and Sorcery is perhaps the most ambitious attempt yet to create a totally new and original magical environment in a game format. Co-designers Greg Costikyan and Eric Goldberg are to be congratulated on their many unique and innovative ideas and concepts as well as introducing us to a fascinating new creature called the killer penguin. In the tradition of War of the Ring, there are actually two separate games in S&S but only the Army Game will be dealt with in this article. I have not yet had an opportunity to study the Quest Game at this time.

Physically, S&S must also compare with War of the Ring especially in terms of graphics and components. The game comes packaged in SPI's new cardboard box complete with sorting tray and new snap-lock lid which is very effective in keeping the counters from failing out when the game is stored on end. The 22" x 34" full-color mapsheet is another beautiful effort by Redmond Simonsen as are the 400 back-printed counters. Also included are 56 character and magical-item cards, illustrated by Tim Kirk, a 56-page rules booklet (only half of which is actual game rules), two separate 8-page booklets containing all necessary charts and tables. and one combination Solar Display /Diplomacy Display/Personal Combat Display. As is the tradition at SPI, all of the components are extremely well done.

When I first read about S&S as a feedback proposal, I immediately gave it the highest possible rating and sent the card off to New York. I think this is the only time I have ever used their rating system. Fantasy is a subject near and dear to my heart so it is not surprising that I hovered on every word of the progress reports as they appeared in Moves and S&T. Finally, after months of waiting, my copy arrived and one would be hard pressed to describe my elation as I eagerly sifted through the components; wanting desperately to play the game immediately and cursing the fact that I had to read the rules first. The rules were well done and all went smoothly until I actually played the game. The only way to describe how I felt is to say that it was like buying a box of Cracker Jacks and discovering that the prize was missing. By all rights, it should have been the best game ever, but instead it just left me flat. The reasons for this are several and I will try to cover them in this article (which I write with a heavy heart).

Art

The outward appearance of a game, packaging and artwork, has always been very important in influencing sales and certainly in influencing me. S&S is, for the most part, professionally done. Once again Tim Kirk was hired to illustrate the character and magic item cards and the format bears a striking resemblance to that used in War of the Ring. However, this time around Mr. Kirk seems to have done a few of them on his coffee breaks. Although the dwarves, elves and some of the monsters are excellent, most of the drawings are not in keeping with his obvious talents. One character that comes to mind immediately is the Paladin Glade. This poor guy looks like he was trapped in a time-warp, somewhere between Captain America and the Franco-Prussian War. The cover art suffers also, appearing more humorous than heroic. One of the characters depicted on the box looks like he is wearing a boxing helmet approved by the NCAA. Knowing Tim Kirk's talent as I do I feel that his efforts here were kept to a minimum at times, making some of the work look like it was conceived sometime between Laverne and Shirley and Three's Company.

Better luck was had with the game map, which, in my estimation, is as good or better than any SPI has ever produced. In wargaming circles I would have to consider Redmond Simonsen the premier man in the area of graphics. Obviously, a great deal of effort and imagination went into this project as the final rendering is quite spectacular. Other than the fact that woods and broken terrain resemble each other somewhat, there is little else to fault this map. Simonsen has even produced a new and very colorful representation for cultivated terrain.

The counters, too, are quite good but not up to the standards of the map. Though they are colorful and varied, a number of shortcuts were taken which, from a purely esthetic point of view, detract from appearances. The entire counter mix uses silhouettes to differentiate between troop types. Everywhere, that is, except on the monster counters which bear the name of the creature only. In addition, these monster counters are all the same color - white with red lettering. This takes a certain excitement away from the most interesting and formidable units on the board and leaves one with the impression that the product is unfinished. I'm sure doing silhouettes for these creatures would not have required that much extra effort and the thrill of maneuvering dragons or killer penguins around would have been enhanced greatly.

Fortunately, more effort was used in structuring the basic flow of the game. Have you ever noticed how the pace of a movie is often heightened by a good musical score? If you look closely I think you'll see that the turn-sequence of a wargame might be considered its music. Many times a good sequence will hold an otherwise bad game together. This is certainly true in S&S which must have had John Williams (Star Wars, Superman, etc.) as its composer. It is a very good arrangement which is enlivened by allowing player-order to be determined randomly each turn. Here is an outline of the turn-sequence, which pretty much speaks for itself:

A. Random Event Determination Inter-Phase
B. Player-Order Determination Inter-Phase
C. First Player-Turn
          1. Movement Phase
          2. Magic Phase
                    a. Spell Segment
                    b. Counterspell segment
          3. Combat Phase
                    a. Unit Rallying Segment
                    b. Magic Allocation Segment
                    c. Personal Combat Segment (optional)
                    d. Combat Resolution Segment
D. Second Player-Turn, Third, etc.
E. Random Movement Inter-Phase
F. Diplomacy Inter-Phase
G. Manna Regeneration Inter-Phase

The order of events is very good and the random player-order determination allows a player to move two times in a row-if he is lucky. This can be very devastating and makes strategies and alliances very important.

It might seem that this system would become cumbersome in multi-player games by having each player go through every phase every turn. Luckily, this doesn't happen too often because of the construction of the scenarios and the victory conditions. Alliances become almost mandatory, and, since all players of a particular alliance move at the same time, the number of repetitions is cut considerably. The door is then opened for the famous "Diplomacy Back-stabbing Strategy." In S&S, alliances last for one turn only and must be renewed at the end of each turn, so there is always the temptation not to renew an alliance and hope you get to move before your opponent in the next turn. Thus, end-games can get very tense if victory points are close between allied factions. Unfortunately this turns out to be one of the few exciting parts of the game.

Random Events is another nice feature of S&S which can certainly change the course of inhuman events in a hurry. It's certainly simple enough. A six-sided die is rolled twice and the two results are cross indexed on the Random Events Table to yield a potential problem. Quite often nothing happens but when it does - look out! A number of the results concern religious holidays observed by one particular race. What this does is cause one poor guy to take the day off to sacrifice neutered elves, or whatever, while everyone else is busy overrunning his army and his country. It's tough!

There are also a number of meteorological results which can run roughshod over an apparently indestructible army. At least these results are not selective - they wipe out everybody without regard to race, creed, or abyss of origin - kind of an equal opportunity disaster. The worst of these results has to be the windstorm which demoralizes every unit on the board. Demoralized troops are about a step below worthless so you spend the rest of the game trying to rally your troops, and the first one who can do so usually comes out the winner.

Other results include: Killer Penguin Migration, Poisonous Piranha Infestation, and Vortex Storms, It would be interesting to see a Windstorm followed by a Vortex Storm. Just when you start to rally your army every vortex hex (17) on the board burps up his (or her) own little whirlwind that then runs randomly about the countryside re-demoralizing your armies. This hasn't happened to us yet but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. All kidding aside, random events are an interesting idea but in S&S they can affect the outcome of the game too much. If the table were toned down just a bit it would probably balance the game instead of overpower it.

Combat System

If, and when, you finally get into battle you are faced with a combat system that is very similar to Panzergruppe Guderian. It's a great idea for WWII games but is certainly misplaced here. In case you're not familiar with the system, here is a brief outline of it. The CRT gives an attacker and a defender result which can be met either by step-reduction of a unit or retreat or a combination of the two. In S&S, however, forces are limited and there is no step-reduction, just elimination, and whenever a unit retreats it is immediately demoralized. It takes a while to rally troops and sometimes they never get rallied at all so they can't do anything but defend and retreat. This, coupled with a two-unit stacking limit, makes for easy breakthroughs and in the games we have played it eventually forms a domino effect which quickly pushes an army into oblivion. The system would have been better suited to S&S if step-reduction had been incorporated or stacking limits increased.

There is yet another problem in combat and this has to do with defensive terrain, which is almost nonexistent in a number of the provinces. A prime example is the province of Endore, which is involved in several of the scenarios. Out of sixty-six hexes that make up the country only one gives any defensive benefit for combat. So, if the Endorian player doesn't make some good alliances he will probably end up like Italy or Austria in Diplomacy - Dead!

I have already covered some of the diplomacy in S&S that bears mentioning. In most of the scenarios there are a number of neutral countries which can, by using character and emissary counters, be influenced to join one of the active powers in the game. Race type is very critical in determining the outcome of this diplomacy so particular care must be exercised in choosing those countries that you wish to influence. It's very easy to waste the game trying to influence someone who would be just as happy to see you in a vat of boiling tomato aspic. The process can be slow, which, coupled with the brevity of some of the scenarios, means your efforts may be for naught anyway as the new allies may never have time to get into battle. This happens often with the Spider Folk, who are not that easily influenced in the first place.

One thing I am not clear on is in the set-up instructions concerning diplomatic settings. Each scenario gives the neutral countries and the direction of their political leanings. What the instructions don't tell you is where the non-neutrals are on the diplomacy display. This is a problem because the display is in the shape of a giant hex composed of smaller hexes which the neutral counters are maneuvered over. As they are swayed back and forth they take the shortest route between the countries involved. There is no problem in the two-player games since the two countries are directly opposite, the real confusion is in the multi-player games where positioning can be critical. Perhaps I have just missed something in the rules but it would be nice to have this clarified.

Magic

Clarifications aren't necessary in the magic department. This is certainly the one solid aspect of S&S and probably the area where most of the real work was done. It is the supreme power in the game and, when properly used, can decide the outcome of any scenario. Learning the correct application of magic is not that easy, however. In all the games we have played I don't think any of us have handled it effectively enough but have, instead, relied on military might to decide the issues. Proper application of magic in S&S would be very much like giving the Confederates a couple of mechanized infantry divisions to help decide the Battle of Gettysburg.

Everything hinges around color (similar to Sorcerer) but this time it is the color of the three suns; red, blue and yellow. Each sorcerer's power is dependent on one of these suns, which regulates both power level and his manna regeneration. There are thirty-two spells that may be used in the Army game and these are broken down into 7 levels of ascending power. The strongest sorcerer in the game is only a level 6 but each one has the option to try to perform a spell of the next higher level. This is a risky undertaking as your chances of survival are slim. First, there is a 50% chance that the spell will not work, and even if it does there is still another 50% chance that your magician will die in the process. And, on top of everything else, the manna points are expended no matter what. So, the strategy of manna point expenditure becomes critical, and this in turn is affected by the suns' positioning.

Yellow sorcerers have the same power level (limit of spells that can be used by a particular sorcerer) and regeneration factor for the entire game. The red and blue sorcerers' power varies with the position of the corresponding sun, as does their manna regeneration. Each sun (red and blue) can be either ascendant, descendent, or in equilibrium and these positions give rise to the power fluctuations. A red or blue sorcerer is strongest when his sun is in ascendancy and weakest at descendancy. For example: Theregond the Mage, a red sorcerer, can cast spells up to the fourth level when the red sun is ascendant, only third level spells when his sun is in equilibrium, and when the sun is descendant he is limited to just spells of the second level. Manna regeneration also hinges on solar positioning. Yellow sorcerers regenerate a constant two per turn while red and blue sorcerers can replenish 4, 2 or 1 depending, again, on their sun's positioning. All of this is kept track of on an ingenious little device called the solar display which also doubles as the turn record track.

In SPI's game, Sorcerer, most of the game revolves around conjuring and teleportation. This is not the case in S&S. Here the spells are many and varied. Not only can you conjure more kinds of troops but you can also create forests, alter the weather, create force walls, cast firestorm spells and a little dandy called summon force. This spell can either kill or save you. It is the kind of thing that you save until late in the game when things are getting close. The reason I like this particular spell is the nasty little (?) things that you can bring forth. The strongest of these is the Continental Siege Machine with a combat strength of 100 (pretty tough when you consider that the strongest military piece on the board only has a strength of 6) and the ability to overrun anything and everything in its path. Another toughie is the SS Wiking Division which is half the strength of the siege machine. There is a limit, however, to the number of turns these conjured units remain in existence, which is why the magic system is so nicely balanced. All of the spells, especially the powerful ones, have strict limitations placed on them to form a system of checks and balances that prevents any one player from dominating the game. That is why this is the only part of S&S that I cannot criticize.

Scenarios

There is one last item to cover and that is the scenarios. There are fourteen in all, lasting from 7 to 27 turns and incorporating a maximum of seven players. Each scenario is provided with its own "historical" background which gives a certain sense of reality to what would otherwise be an abstract situation. On a whole the scenarios are pretty good, though the games are often too short and a number of the players are weak and forced to make alliances to insure their survival. When one of the weak countries is put in a position where he has to defend a country with no defensible terrain, the problem is further magnified.

One of these countries is Endore which I have talked about already. Another is the Swamp Creatures. The province is small (only 30 land hexes) but extremely defensible. The difficulty here is twofold: (1) The Swamp Creatures are few in number and extremely slow so as not to be much of a military threat, and (2) Sliggoth, their leader, is about a level too weak in the magic department. Like Endore, the Swamp Creatures must make alliances early to be effective. The victory conditions are such that at times this is extremely difficult, which makes it very frustrating to play some of the factions.

All of this does not mean the scenarios are not balanced because they are and the outcome of a game is more often than not decided in the last turn or two. The difficulty is in keeping interested because most of the games come down to a slugfest where elimination of enemy units is the only objective. There is also the area of maneuver - there isn't much. The games usually center around one small area of the map while the rest goes completely unused, which, coupled with small armies, makes for static situations.

It's really very hard to put your finger on why S&S doesn't work, because each individual part of the game is pretty good. The difficulties begin early on as you look over the components, most notably on the map and character cards. Someone had a lot of fun putting names to people and places and as a result it becomes difficult to see what the intention of the game was. Is it serious or a parody?

Let me run through some of the more obvious examples. Who among us would be willing to go into battle behind someone named Peg-Leg Gonzo, or Unamit Ahazredit? Probably not too many. Would it be easier to follow Talerren the Not-So-Brave - Not-Really! This silliness continues onto the map. New Orc City is good for a chuckle, so is the Hill of Avalon. Want more? How would you feel if you were an elf and had to admit you came from Nattily Woods? I bet they just cringe, I know Tolkien would. Hell, I'd rather be from New Orc City. In S&S no area of endeavor is forgotten. For you reading buffs we have the EvAlyn Woods. Or, if you are into new sounds, we give you that mighty country, Ka Chunk. It's all too much corn for my tastes.

I can't figure it out; just when I start to laugh the names become serious. If the game is intended as a parody of fantasy games, please let me know. All I want to do is get into the game. Your Honor, can we have a ruling?

More Nagging Problems

There are a number of nagging little problems in the game as well. The map, though artistically a gem, is poorly laid out, in my estimation. I have already alluded to the fact that many provinces have little or no defensive terrain while others are nothing but. Well, there is something else to compound the problem. Many countries have no roads or trails, making movement and troop deployment slow and frustrating. Many times troops can't even get into the battle before the game ends - one more reason the scenarios are boring. There is one means of rapid transit and that is the portal hex. But here again you take your life in your own hands, since the process is totally random (unless you wish to have your sorcerer expend manna points to insure safe and proper arrival) and there is even a chance of being eliminated. Movement in the game is just too restrictive.

Because of all these prohibitions the scenarios lack sweep and excitement. It would have been nicer, as a friend suggested, to include some smaller maps, about the size of those used in the quadrigames, to show blowups of particular areas and use the main one as a campaign map. These smaller maps would make for more maneuvering and tactics which the game lacks in its present format.

Not all is gloom-and-doom in S&S. Some fine ideas and features have emerged as well as one piece of good news. The rules are both manageable and coherent. SPI has been maligned in the past because of their legalese style of writing but I defy anyone to name a company that provides a more complete set of rules (yeah! I know how many times they repeat themselves) than the people at SPI. I am not talking about content, when I say complete, but rather format. Something I have always appreciated is their table of contents, which makes finding any rule a breeze. This is all by way of saying that the rules for S&S are some of the best to come from SPI since Firefight. We have yet to find any major gaps or omissions and any rules confrontations have been very minor. There is many a game sitting in my closet collecting dust because the rules are so outlandish that just reading them is a game in itself. So, to those people who wrote, edited, and compiled the rules for S&S I offer my congratulations. I hope it is a trend that continues.

There is one other idea that I particularly like, and it concerns movement. In every other game like this there is little in the way of movement differentiation by racial types. In other words, dwarves and elves move through a forest at the same movement rate. That is all changed in S&S. A very elaborate and inventive terrain effects chart has been devised that differentiates between race for both movement and combat. For example: In a forest hex Spiders move at one hex per turn, Elves at two and all others at three hexes per turn. And, quite logically, dwarves (dwarrows in this game) are much more suited to combat in mountains than other races. This is an exceptional idea and I hope it is utilized in other games of this type.

Although I have dealt exclusively with the Army game in this review, there is one item, used in the Quest Game, which bears mentioning - the Personal Combat Display. Here is an item that would have been super if used in War of the Ring. This would have allowed for more elaborate individual combat rules instead of the abstract system that was used. It would be fun to see Gandalf or Aragorn pitted face-to-face with Gothmog or the Nazgul. An addition of this sort would add more interest and excitement to the Character Game which suffers quite often from acute boredom.

In summing up, S&S, with all its potential, ends up being just an average game with some great ideas. It is a frustrating kind of game. One that should be good but fails in spite of itself. Perhaps with a different combat system and more exciting scenarios the game could be improved upon considerably. But as it stands now there is too much that is dull and uneventful, making me feel like I have just had a Chinese dinner - an hour later I feel empty.