The Maverick's Space and Fantasy Gamer's Guide www.brainiac.com/micro/sfgg themaverick@volcano.net $29.95, 500 pages. The Maverick's Space and Fantasy Gamer's Guide is an index to the magazines Ares, Fantasy Gamer, Interplay, Nexus, Space Gamer, and The VIP of Gaming for the period 1975-1990. It represents a nearly incalculable amount of work indexing in various ways the contents of these six wargaming magazines, separately indexing published issues of magazines, articles by classes of topic, classes including designers, magazines, miniatures, publishers, and rolegames, and appendices including book and movie reviews, computer games, complete games, and articles sorted by author. For many articles a descriptive phrase is included.
For the complete games, there is a short paragraph about each game. For collectors of science fiction and fantasy games, and those with significant collections, The Maverick's Guide is a pearl beyond price.
Pacific at War (Xeno Games, Canada): A huge (1x1.5", and nearly 4"thick, 2x3' mounted mapboard, nearly 400 plastic 3D unit counters on mounted sprues, poker chips, paper money, a bag of D10s, and a 32 page instruction manual give you a game covering the Pacific theater, including the Asian land events. The move sequence is attack move, attack, nonattack move, strategic move. Area movement (roughly 100 areas on the map) and production sequences have been fit into a strategic movement game for four sides and up to four players. The style of play will perhaps remind some gamers of Axis and Allies. The physical quality is very high.
Bitter Woods (L2 Design Group, Canada) reproduces the Battle of the Bulge at the regimental level, with polychrome map gloss printed in tagboard. The hex map uses large squares and unit counters. Counter readability is largely high, though we continue to see white print on a black background.
Commanding officers are representing by counters bearing their photographs. Rules run to 20 pages; there is a 28 pages players manual, as well as various charts and tables. The primary move sequence is move-attack-move, dressed by various other phases and actions, a complete turn covering a half-day. Some scenarios are quite short.
The Russian Campaign (L2 Design Group, Canada) is the fourth edition of the original Jedko Russian Campaign game, the Australian version of Stalingrad. 5/8" counters, colorful map, and 22 pages of rules are included. As a specific feature, the German SS units are printed in four different formats (no, you may not use all four at once), ranging from orthodox counters that look like all the others to a mixture of white and black type on black and white backing.
Also included is an Aide de Camp2 CD ROM, which permits play over the Internet. I infer that the game is substantially similar to the earlier editions.
The Great Pacific War (Avalanche Press) has three large maps, two sheets totally 560 unit counters, and a moderate-length rules book. The Great War in the Pacific is the Avalon Hill game Third Reich translocated to the WW2 Pacific Theater. Indeed, rules for linking the two games are supplied. One presumes that there are extensive further similarities.
Soldier Emperor (Avalanche Press) is nothing if not heavy as a game box. The rules are 20 pages of large type, many covering special issues represented by the minor powers. Economics governs unit purchase, with a substantial time delay. Naval and land movement and combat, sieges, and leaders pass across a large mounted mapboard. The designers chose an area map, "areas" being labeled squares linked by lines. Unit counters are large and lushly printed, with full-color national flags, colored small-scale paintings of soldiers in correctly colored uniforms, and ships with sails unfurled. The designers say the focus of the game is national resources, these being the key to victory.
Mighty Midgets (Clash of Arms, 2003) is a set of data tables and scenarios for playing small patrol boat engagements in the WW2 period. This 100 page volume includes coverage of every major theater, as well as detailed information on the every patrol boat of every power in WW2. The game rules are an expansion of Command at Sea.
Devils Garden and Blunted Sword are expansion kits for the Critical Hit game Tobruk. Note that the covers are identical (a collection of Germans in period vehicles) , the outside fronts differing only in a small label, lower left corner. Each expansion kit has hit dozen extra unit counters and scenario cards for a dozen additional battles. Tobruk is required to play; no rules or tables are provided.
Fox's Gamble The Battle of Gazala (Schutze games, 2003, by Paul Rohrbach) comes in a clear flat plastic wrapper, with 9 pages of rules and tables, a two-page full color gloss map, about 50 counters and 70 other status markers. The counters are highly colorful, but unmounted. The battle, in the WW2 African desert, featured two large army corps fighting over the space between Gazala and Tobruk. Combat is move and attack, with air, supply, and recovery phases separated.
Cards of War (Schutze Games) is somewhat unique, in that it is a purely card game (no maps, unit counters, or collectable widgets) that reflects in a sense the outcome of World War 2. The 52 cards come in a flat plastic wrapper. Cards have purposes and value; several sorts of combat in a sense are represented.
Jassin 1915 (Khyber Pass Games) covers that rara avis, small-unit tactical combat in Africa in World War 1. Imperial Germany before the war had extensive colonies around the World. The Three-Emperors-War cost the Germans all of them. There are 20 pages of rules, a set of historical notes, more than 200 full color unmounted units and markers, and a one page 14x17 square full-color gloss paper map. Individual units are platoons or heavy weapons, largely machine guns; ammunition supply plays a major role.
Monty's Gamble (Multi-Man Publishing) covers Operation Market Garden, using an area map, 21 pages of actual rules plus examples of play and historical notes, 170 die-cut unit counters and a similar number of status markers representing two small armies on a battalion scale, and a very large full color map with around 100 or so areas. Players take turns using units in a single area or two areas.
High Tide by Larry Bond and collaborators shows naval combat as it would have been in the 1980s, based on what we now know about the forces of the period. The game includes 100+ pages of looseleaf punched-for-notebook Har-poon rules, a 136 page data annex, 120+ pages of historical notes, scenarios, and playing tables, four dice, and around 500 die-cut cardboard counters with silhouettes for large vessels and small vessel classes of the major naval powers.
Pasaran? The Spanish Civil War: The very first amateur, sold-by-mail hex-based wargame was Madrid (later Madrid II), covering the Spanish Civil war. Here we have a new coverage of the same topic, in the form of an area-based system from Udo Grebe Gamedesign. The rules run to seven pages, the 8th being the counter manifest, an 8 page 'tutorial book' that shows a game being played and notes the rules being invoked at each step, 55 playing cards that give events that affect game play, 80 combat unit counters, and a similar number of status markers of various sorts.
The game includes not only its own counters but also supplements for Blitzkrieg General and Empires of Apocalypse. The unit counter sheet is extremely colorful, though the Pasaran? counters are not the fanciest. The area-based map is rather large, areas being clearly labeled.
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© Copyright 2004 by George Phillies.
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