Victory Block Set: Made in a series of colors, the Victory block sets are 50 blue wooden blocks and stickers, to be applied to the blocks to represent the military strength of World War Two period unit counters for the Victory:The Blocks of War game series. The blocks are wooden cubes—almost cubes—designed to sit vertically so that the opposing player cannot see what units he is actually facing. The game series at the time was well received.
WW1 in America, The North American Upgrade Set of Empires of History, actually covers World War One, the Mexican American war, and the War of 1812. The map uses areas and shows everything from northern Canada down to Mexico City. Unit counters are stiff cardboard tags, some hundreds of them, that must be cut out and inserted in little plastic holders that hold them vertically. The game rules feature production, naval and land movement and combat, resources, and some level of diplomacy. An interesting variation shows World War One in which the United States of America entered the war as a Central Power allied with Germany. The rule book totals fourteen pages, including a detailed description of the map, scenarios, and in the end a half dozen pages of the actual rules. Unlike most other games, the scenarios are presented before you get to the sequence of rules and combat. The rules are rather simple. For example, the land combat rule runs a small number of paragraphs. You will have to read the rule book fairly carefully, because the organization is a bit different than that used by some other manufacturers. The combat rule is unique to this series; each unit has a combat value. You roll a ten sided die against the combat value and must roll under that value in order to hit the enemy unit. The entire naval combat rules section is five fairly concise paragraphs. There is no specific time limit; the game continues until countries have been captured completely. The game rules may also be used as an upgrade for the Great War in Europe game from the same manufacturer.
Three Battles of Manassas, from The Gamers, Incorporated, is published by Multi-Man Publishing, which purchased The Gamers series at some recent date. The game covers the Battles of Bull Run. It includes an attractive map of the battlefield, polychrome on glossy paper, 60 by 35 squares, with map sheets A, B, and C. There are four pages of tables, not to mention the series rules for all games in the Civil War Brigade Series series of games. The series volume is 32 pages long and includes an extensive discussion of what the rules mean. The rules are based on written orders that are not hex by hex but are instead free form; that is the game is somewhat similar to a set of miniatures rules. There are 24 pages of special rules, including hit charts for unit counters, and scenarios. The game comes with 560 two-sided unit counters, including a modest number of status markers.
Tunisia 43 (Moments in History) Tunisia 43 describes the battle of Kasserine Pass. The game comes with 420 unit counters and status markers, a 60 by 34 square map, a 32 page including index rules book, and eight pages of charts. The map is largely done in shades of tan. Some roads are scarlet; others are blue. River features run along the hex edges rather than through the center of the square as in more modern games. The rules are respectably complex . Units in a stack are partially hidden; only the top unit may be examined by the opposing player prior to combat. There are morale rules, limitations on initiative and operational actions, reinforcements, a process known as formation activation which allows the units in the formation to do things, a somewhat complex combat sequence based on efforts to avoid combat if one chooses, attacker and defender choices as to the vigor with which the attack or defense will be conducted, administrative movement, and a series of scenario descriptions. The box is wide but quite thin; it is not quite flimsy.
Cruiser Warfare (Avalanche Press, 2004) comes in a 1 inch thick bookcase sized box. There are twenty pages of actual rules, extensive lists of ships and their properties, 140 square ship counters and 140 rectangular ship counters, an area map of the oceans of the world and a hexagonal tactical battle map. This is a naval search and surface combat Game describing naval raiding efforts of the Central Powers during World War One. The navies involved include the British, German, Japanese, French, and several smaller powers with few ships. One moves on the area map, one searches, if combat arises there are gunnery and torpedo and damage rules. For naval raiders, a critical difficulty was resupply. German units are in danger of running out of coal, ammunition, or torpedoes.
Downtown: Air War Over Hanoi 1965-1972 (GMT Games) This game comes with two10 sided dice, 560 unit counters and status indicators, and a package of non reusable log sheets, 24 pages of charts, a 48 page rule book, and 40 pages of scenarios and background information and illustrations of play. The game map is 39 by 53 squares and shows Hanoi, Haiphong, and the Red River Delta area. The game seeks to represent aerial warfare in complete detail, including antiaircraft, radar, electronic countermeasures, aircraft maneuvers, specialized munitions, helicopters, weather: you name it, it's probably there.
Desert Rats (Avalanche Press, 2004) is a platoon level tactical game on African desert warfare. Unlike other games of similar title, Desert Rats includes scenarios from Eritrea, Somaliland, and the successful Italian conquest of British Somaliland. There are two large tactical maps, each 23 by 34 squares, a 48 page book of scenarios, almost 900 unit counters for the large number of scenarios, and various charts. The series rules book is quite short, only sixteen pages of respectively large type. There are allowances for stacking, movements, leaders, various sorts of fire and assault, morale, and rules covering smoke, entrenchments, and so forth. Actual scenarios involved only moderate number of unit counters; a random sample shows dozens of unit counters, not hundreds, in a given event.
Risk Godstorm (Avalon Hill) includes a massive sack of plastic playing pieces, almost 400 of them, circular counting tokens, cardboard punch-out features, some of exotic shape, and a mounted map roughly of the Roman empire but extending north into Norway, east beyond the Caspian sea, and west as far as Atlantis, a terrain feature not found on many historical maps. The rule book is extremely modest, only fourteen pages with a fair amount of white space. The game marginally resembles Risk in that it is an area-based conquest game, but the presence of miracles, magic cards, plagues, divine intervention with divine being unit counters, generation of materia magica "faith" tokens to power the divine beings doing the intervention, a continent that may spontaneously sink in mid-game taking everything with it, options for invading the underworld, and fortification, make the technical details of the rules a bit more complex than those of the classical game. Ten dice are included. Semblances between the divine beings described here and actual historic pantheons are a bit limited.
Kaiju Moon, an Empires of History Game, comes in a cardboard box that is slightly thicker but otherwise smaller than a paperback novel. Kaiju Moon is a variant on the game Kaiju. For those of you who are not quite clear on this, a Kaiju is a Japanese giant monster whose primary habit is eating cities and other breakable items. This game features a battle on the surface of the moon between moon men, the united nations, giant monsters from other worlds, and evil people from the future here to use their future technology to take over everything. If you look carefully, several distinct genres of Sci-Fi film have been mixed. The designer has a slightly unconventional order of writing the rules, but in the end everything appears to be here. There is production of various esoteric units, the units can move and engage in combat, and there are resource limitations.
Ardennes '44 The Battle of the Bulge (GMT Games, 2003) are dense 44 comes in a 1 1/2in. deep bookcase-sized box with two map sheets of size 34 by 37 and 43 by 40 squares. The maps are full color, with multicolor roads carefully drawn, pale and deep green woods, and a variety of water obstacles. The map area is slightly broader than on the original Avalon Gill game mapboard on this battle, in that the city of Liege is actually on the map. There are slightly under 600 unit counters and markers of various sorts. Most counters are two-sided using NATO symbols for most units other than tank units, for which various profile silhouettes are used instead. There are two small dice, five pages of charts, a full color setup sheet showing each unit as would be seen by the player looking down on the board, 22 pages of rules, 18 pages of notes, an example of play, reinforcements schedule, a real index, and other details. The game includes in the rules photographs of both sides of each counter sheet so that players can replace missing units. An interesting feature is the notion of the zone of control bond, which limits the ability of units to move through a thin line of enemy units. The effect of the zone of control bond is essentially similar to the old Joel Davis fractional zone of control rule, as described in the first amateur wargame magazine, The Tank. In essence, a zone of control extends only part way across the squares around a unit counter, and what an enemy unit may do is determined by whether not the enemy unit has a clear area or not. There are detailed rules for artillery and fuel supply, for destroying bridges, for strategic and regular movement, orthodox rules for combat, retreat, disruption, advance after combat, supply surrender, special rules for night turns, and some interesting details involving fuel dumps. Most unit counters represent regiments, with a significant representation of specialized smaller units.
Risk The Lord of The Rings (Parker Brothers, 2003) is a Risk-like game with references to the Tolkien novel. Players capture territory and perform other acts that get them points until the game is ended because the One Ring either reaches Mount Doom or is captured by the Dark Lord. There are strong points, lines of power, a somewhat complex path that must be taken by the Fellowship-not controlled by a player-to reach its destination, four distinct colors of army, and various events and power and mission cards. While the cards have some additional particular powers, the core combat movement rules are in the classical risk sequence. The unit counters are plastic statuettes. The map is twenty by thirty inches with large areas.
Risk 2210 A.D. (Avalon Hill, 2001) is a Risk-like combat game with maps of the earth, the moon, and various cities, some underwater. There is a large plastic sack of unit counters, several decks of playing cards, five normal dice and five octahedral dice, substantial numbers of cardboard diecut punch-outs including circles and complex shapes, and fourteen pages of rules in reasonably large type with much white space. The unit counters are the technically improbable, walking giant robot style. In addition to orthodox units, there are commanders which permit things to happen, there are costs that must be paid for taking combat and other actions, there are special rules for moving into water and lunar areas, and there are space stations. The rules are moderately more complicated than those of regular Risk.
Gettysburg 1863 (Avalanche Press, 2002) comes with a twelve page rule book, around 200 unit counters, 2 six page special rule books for the two players, a terrain and time record chart, and a mapboard that is divided into areas rather than squares or some other form. The map, which covers the entire Gettysburg battlefield and some places that were not fought over, has 350 areas. Unit counters represent fractions of a division. There are leadership rules, rules for activating units for combat or movement, stacking and morale rules, rules for cavalry charges, and limited artillery rules. Players are limited in how much artillery ammunition they have. There are somewhat elaborate rules for stacking depending on terrain. There are scenarios for each of the three days of battle and a full battle scenario; a single day extends through 18 turns.
Bodyguard Overlord (Spearhead, 1994) attempts to duplicate the intelligence battle between the Allies and the Germans prior to the invasion of France. The game comes with 300 unit counters, a dozen page of rules book, an area map of France and surrounding terrain, a deck of event cards involving possible intelligence outcomes, and other control chits. Underlying the intelligence is an actual military game in which an invasion is carried out. The combat rules are fairly simple. The intelligence rules are the interest in the game. Game turns represent months. The number of turns is not large. The Allies win by occupying a small number of areas on the map.
Three Days of Gettysburg (GMT, 2004) comes in a double thickness bookcase box. There is a 32 page rules book, a twenty page scenario book, a trio of map sheets beautifully printed, roughly 48 by 50 squares each, six counter sheets each with 280 double sided unit counters ( two sheets are status markers) a half dozen pages of charts and aid charts, and a ten sided die. Counters represent regiments, a term that in this epoch referred to units the size of an orthodox battalion. There are five scenarios, and a game covering the entire battle. The designer estimates that the full game will need roughly 75 hours to play. There are remarkably detailed rules; for example, the rules on fire combat run to four pages of reasonable size print. Units firing at range must honor line of sight rules. Units that are fired on during the enemy turn are allowed to shoot back. Comparing this game with Gettysburg 1863, it is astonishing how two designers can take the same event and produced two dramatically different games, each of which will undoubtedly produce great enjoyment in the hearts of people like a game of that style.
Paper Wars is a longtime wargame magazine now at issue 56. Its focus is game reviews, the game reviews including significant discussions of game tactics. Recently, the magazine has been upgraded. The cover is full color on glossy stock; the pages are center stapled. The most recent issue is 48 pages plus the covers. A page of paper wars carries somewhat more material than a page of Game!, because Game! uses ten point type and Paper Wars appears to use something slightly smaller. The reviews are entirely focused on military games. I would be happy to have been able to publish at least most of the reviews. There are modest interior black, gray, and white graphics, including in some cases reproductions of unit sheets. Subscriptions are $30.00 a year for six issues. Contact: omegagames@aol.com.
Strategist is the newsletter of the Strategy Gaming Society; last year it published three issues. The newsletter is twelve pages with very modest amounts of internal color. The most recent issue had a nice set of interior photographs.
Against the Odds is a nice Full size glossy magazine on the same style as Strategy and Tactics, including a complete game in each issue of the magazine. The latest issue was Volume 3 Number 2. The game was "Into a Bear Trap" on the Russian attack on Grozny, Chechnya in January, 1995. In the real event, the Russian army units were treated extremely poorly by the Chechen army, with the attacking Russian motorized regiments (actually, battalions) being almost wiped out. The Russian T-80 tank is apparently extremely vulnerable to RPG fire. (Alternatively, the Russians designed their antitank weapons to be able to destroy their tanks.) There is an associated, extensive historical article on various wars with Chechnya. An article on leadership and the American Civil War includes considerable discussion of a long series of war games on the era.
Russia Besieged is a new board wargame from L2 Design Group of Canada. It ships in a giant roughly twelve by sixteen inch box. The game includes 420 unit counters, several pages of charts, large size Russian and German order of battle cards on colored glossy paper, and a map of the Soviet Union that extends from Berlin to Kuibyshev and south into Turkey, most of Turkey and parts of Iraq and Syria appearing on the map. The entire map is 59 by 40 squares but because of the shape of the countries, parts of those areas are not used. German units are corps; Russian units are a mixture of corps and army. The combat sequence is move attack move, with reserve units moving during the enemy turn. There are representations of leaders, air units, paratroops, partisans, and movement of economic objects. Combat uses step reduction. A complete turn represents two months of play; the game is played from 1941 through 1945.
Axis and Allies Europe, and Axis and Allies Pacific, are new games from Hasbro using the Avalon Hill name. The games come in large deep boxes. The area maps are mounted. The Europe map, which includes part of North America, shows European countries as one to three areas, except for Russia, which is a substantial number of areas. Also included are mounted reference and turn charts, plastic poker chips, a bunch of dice, a stack of paper pseudomoney, little unit counters of various sorts, a plastic tray to hold all of the objects, vast numbers of toy soldiers, toy tanks, toy ships, toy aircraft, and toy artillery, and down at the bottom a 32 page rulebook. The rule book has large amounts of white space with carefully set up examples, and the actual combat rules, which are similar to the original Axis and Allies. Axis and Allies Pacific features an unmounted area map of the Pacific Ocean with five spaces taking you from Hawaii to Tokyo, status cards, accumulated objects that are largely very similar to Axis and Allies Europe except for the aircraft carriers, and a rules book with considerable emphasis on naval and air units. The rules are again quite similar to original Axis and Allies, except that there is no research.
Gringo! is the GMT application of its Great Battles Of The American Civil War rules to the Mexican-American war. As is not always clear to many Americans from their high school history, many of the key battles of the war were very close. At the start of the war, the Duke of Wellington noted that the Mexicans had a European trained and equipped army, the Americans did not, and therefore as a reasonable estimate the Americans would be lucky to avoid losing New Orleans to Mexico. The actual war turned out somewhat differently. However it was not a one sided runaway, though American naval superiority turned out to be quite advantageous. Gringo! comes with two map sheets printed on three sides to cover for battles as well as 1120 unit counters and markers, ten pages of charts, a 32 page series rule book, and a 44 page scenario book including a special rules. Individual units represent somewhat large infantry companies. The designers estimate that the games take quite a while to play; for example, Buena Vista is estimated to take six to eight hours for a complete game.
The Russo-Japanese War: This 2004 game from Clash Of Arms Games covers the first major European war of the twentieth century. The game includes 210 ship unit counters, 140 small ship and status unit counters, a 128 page rule book most of which is full of rules, a 26 page introduction to the rule book, two regular and two decahedral dice, 40 pages of reference sheets, rules annexes such as the Expanded Critical Hits Table, and technical details on every ship that could conceivably have become involved in the war. The rules' Table Of Contents go on for four pages; there is a true subject index involving two pages and three columns. Game turns cover 30 or three minutes depending on the circumstances. If you want a totally detailed set of rules covering the first quarter of the twentieth century's ideas on naval combat, this is it.
Pirate's Cove from Days Of Wonder: The game has a twelve page lavishly colored rule book, die cut counters of various exotic shapes, hit markers in the form of a colorful illustration of the pirate ship, mounted mapboard, bunches of dice and interesting wooden pieces, including little plastic sailing ships, and event cards. In realism and complexity, this game is at the other end of design from the Russo-Japanese War. In addition to dice, the game uses spinners though not as a randomizing element. Ships have a hull, crew, cannon, and sails, and there are options to redesign one's ship to one's liking. Combat is fundamentally accurate, in the sense that the fastest ship always has the choice of engaging slower ships or withdrawing.
Memoir 44 is a somewhat abstract ground combat game on the Allied invasion of France in World War Two. The game includes a 36 page rules and scenario book, several sheets of punch-out terrain shapes and related counters, eight 2-sided, mounted mapboards, plastic miniatures representing playing counters, and a large deck of playing cards. There are restrictive command and control rules, special tactics rules, allowed movement but only over limited distances, ranged fire, and a process for scoring hits on enemy units. Punch out terrain symbols allow the same map sheet to be used for multiple battles. Days Of Wonder has given us a relatively straightforward, extremely attractive physically, game that may lure many young people into the hobby.
Duel of Ages, from Venatic, represents combat between small numbers of individuals in historical periods ranging from the future to the ancient past. The map sheets assemble using a lock and key pattern. There are rules for assembling a team of characters; characters can move, carry equipment, and engage in combat on the map. There is an extreme range of possible characters and groups, so it would appear that games will rarely repeat each other. The rules book is only 24 pages, with many colored illustrations and short rules, so learning the game is likely not excessively challenging.
Panther Line (Critical Hit) is a small-unit squad level tactical game from the "Advanced Tobruk" series. The game refers to events near Leningrad in 1944. Unit counters are squads, vehicles, leaders, and weapons teams. The rules book goes on for 56 pages. There are two dozen sheets of scenarios, extra maps, and charts. The scenario cards have the peculiar feature that they provide a description of events for the German player, and the German background situation, but did not provide a corresponding Soviet background. If you are playing the game solitaire as the Russians, you may find the lack of support a bit odd. The number of unit counters in the game is vastly larger than the number of counters used in any scenario. In any event, there are the equivalent of three full size counter sheets with 176 counters on a typical sheet. Vehicle counters are larger; status markers are smaller. The game supplies a certain number of unit counters that will be used only in the future expansions.
Winter Fury (Avalanche Press) is a battalion scale reproduction of a collision between a corps of the Finnish and a corps of the Soviet army at the start of World War Two. The rules book, including scenarios, is only a dozen pages, and long using respectably large type and a healthy amount of white space. There are 140 unit counters. The map is brilliantly colorfully printed; the artist showed the trees as casting shadows. At the moment of the map, it is morning. Unfortunately, the unmounted map is slightly longer than the box, and has rolled while sitting in storage. The turn sequence is generated by drawing markers. There's no particular guarantee as to which units move or in which order.
Galactic Starfire (Starfire Design Studios) is a paper simulation of the traditional computer explorer and conquer game. There are rules for tactics, strip sheet, and universe generation between and the two rules books go on for 176 agents. There are four initially blank map sheets of 62 by 32 squares. There are two counter sheets with a total of 560 unit counters of various sorts. The game looks as though it would go on in play for very considerable period of time.
Sword of Rome (GMT Games) is a multiplayer game on wars in the Italian peninsula of the fourth century BC. Movement is by labeled area and along roads, but the background shows very detailed topography. There are events decks, a half dozen dice, a beautifully colored map, well over 200 unit counters, several pages of charts, sixteen pages of rules of which the first page only has a table of contents, and a twenty page rule dealing primarily with scenarios but showing in effect examples of play as to how the rules work. Game play and units eyes are somewhat abstract, though individual. Leaders of various sorts are lifted. The events covered in this game ran for most of a century, so find time detail is not going to be seen.
Baron's War (Clash Of Arms Games) comes with sixteen pages of rules, 280 unit counters, two map sheets for the battles of Lewes and Evesham, several pages of tables and status record charts, and some dice. The battles date to the medieval period and involve combat between Henry De Montfort, King Henry, and various relatives. There is fire, melee, and charge combat, and a novel rule for command and control.
Simulacrum (John Kula, kula@telus.net, $25/year) is the game collector's magazine, with lists of published games, descriptions, articles on the history of the hobby, and notes on old games. The most recent issue had a long article on pricing for old game magazines, ranging from the expensive AH General to the much less expensive American Wargamer.
Seelow and Kuestrin 1945 (With Six Angles issue 7). Six Angles is a Japanese (for the most part) language game magazine. Careful reading uncovers bits in English and French. The magazine is noteworthy for publishing games in its issues, such as the game here on the two battles Seelow and Kuestrin, which happened in 1945. The game comes with 130 unit counters, a beautifully colored map of the two municipalities, rules in Japanese, and at least in my copy an inserted English translation of the rules. The game rules run a dozen pages. The game, at the battalion level, shows Russian attacks and German counterattacks in a small area near the banks of the Oder river. A specific positive feature of the magazine is that the unit counters have been put in an envelope prior to mailing, so they may be counted on to stay put.
Kharkhov 1941-43 was included with Six Angles issue 8. The game comes with fourteen pages of English rules translation, somewhat over 300 unit counters in pale gray and an attractive rose pastel, a 29 by 15 square map covering the area around the city of Kharkhov, and in the rest of the magazine Japanese-language reviews of a range of games including some published in unfamiliar locations such as the excellent magazine Vae Victis. Unit counters represent divisions. The turn cycle is two repeats of move, enemy reaction, combat. Of some interest is the full page ad for another Japanese-language wargaming magazine whose title appears to be Game Journal.
I Obey! is a game on the Italian-Austrian combat that happened simultaneously with the Austro-Prussian war, the seven weeks war. Unit counters represent battalions. They must be mounted and cut out. The game rules are only seven pages long with a great deal of white space. The map is beautifully printed on high cost paper and extends for approximately 25 by 28 squares, except that a fair number of them are not really there. There are slightly fewer than 250 unit counters and status markers of which under 100 are actual unit counters. The game features activation, operations by activated leaders, various sorts of movement, garrison units, fatigue, supply, and a considerable number of random events.
Che from Khyber Pass Games, is another envelope game featuring an area map, three dozen unit counters, and three pages of rules on the efforts of Ernesto Guevera to begin a communist revolution in Bolivia. The combat rules are extremely simple. Units may be moved. They then engage each other with some limited likelihood of causing units on the other side to die.
The Cuban Revolution, also from Khyber Pass Games, includes 100 unit counters, a turn record chart for the twelve turns of the game, three pages of rules, and a page of setup and reinforcements. The game rules are extremely straightforward; the game should lend itself to extended tactical analysis. The game map shows only part of the island of Cuba, the easternmost part, with the map divided into a modest number of areas. Units represent companies and battalions.
Mediterranean Fury: The Battle Of Cape Matapan 1941, from Paul Rohrbaugh, is another small flat envelope game. The game rules run to eight pages; the map of the island of Crete and surrounding waters is 30 by sixteen squares. There are somewhat more than 200 ship, aircraft, and status markers. This World War Two battle represents the last time the British navy fought a large scale action to defend its naval superiority on part of the ocean. There is representation of surface combat, of air attacks on ships, and of searching and spotting events, as one would expect.
Conquest of the Pacific , from Conquest Games (2002) comes with a large glossy map of the Pacific (an area map, with island sizes grossly enhanced) and a 24 page 5.5x8.5" rules book. As the back of the box says, dice, territory markers, playing pieces, and money not included. Apparently Axis & Allies components work well. At $26.95, the game is let us say considerably overpriced relative to reasonable custom. One builds units and takes territory: The Japanese must take enough territory; the United States must bomb Japan.
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© Copyright 2005 by George Phillies.
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