Armada (Euro Games) boasts a mounted board, plastic and metal pieces, a deck of playing cards, three odd cubical dice, and four pages of rules. The players are pirates, in a remote archipelago; they explore a central island looking for loot, purchase warriors, and have optional rules for paying card events. There are simple economic considerations, optional rules permitting a benefit from taking territory, and special rules for three and two player games.
Age of Mythology (Ensemble Studios) a 12x12x4" or so game box, solid packed with plastic pieces (six square-foot sprues, different for each player, well over 100 little wooden cubes, three decks of cards, several hundred die cut counters, little maps (4x3 squares of the homeland and of a city), and fifteen pages of full color lavishly illustrated rules. The game has modest economics, combat, effective invocation of magical units, technical advance based on progressive historical epochs, and bits of tactics on finite-territory economics. The usual historical ranters will complain that Pharaonic Egypt, Trojan Greece, and Norse Vikings were not simultaneous, which is only true if you think AD and BC are different; real gamers disdain historicity and will remain unconcerned by such trivial issues. The counter castings, notably the elephants and dragons, are quite impressive.
Attack (Eagle Games) 2x2.5' map, 600 unit counters (all little plastic models) and Attack Expansion (more units and board) reproduce World War 2. Attack includes hundreds of little plastic models, two decks of cards, a polychrome area map (the US is about five areas; South America is six), and a 20 page rule book. The game represents the world in 1935, with competition between four players, who get to choose more or less where they start. The rules include simple economics--there are four types of land units and four types of sea units--and multiple types of resources based on cards. Attack covers the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia Minor, while Attack Expansion covers the rest of Asia and the Pacific. Attack Expansion inserts more complicated economics and political rules, and more areas to the board.
For King and Country (Multi-Man Publishing) is an Advanced Squad Leader Module, with counters at the subsquad/vehicle level and engagements involving up to a battalion or so. It supplies all UK counters, 20 scenarios from various periods (mostly reworks of previously-published scenarios), around 800 unit counters, and 30 pages of rules and background notes. The module is designed to make available the British Army in a coherent way for ASL play.
Senjutsu (Salvador Games) features 60 plastic bases and 20 flat-sheet tops, a 7x8 squares square board, and an 8 page rule book. The game is somewhat chessic in its abstraction of combat and movement with multiple styles of attack, cards providing a range of special events, and a historical basis, an intrafamily feud. We are told that the game name translates as 'tactics'. Some assembly, of plastic pieces into each other and of decals onto particular locations, is required.
Rise of the Roman Republic (GMT Games) comes with a colorful hex map of Italy (the Italian peninsula is 8 or so squares wide, to give an impression of the game scale), about 800 diecut unit counters and markers, a 28 page rules book, and 28 pages of special rules and scenarios for the period 340 to 218 BC. GMT Games has a very extensive series of rules and games on ancient battles of the Mediterranean World, of which this is another segment. Roman internal politics plays a major role in what the Roman armies can actually do.
Sweden Fights On (GMT Games) covers Swedish battles, e.g., Jankau, during the later parts of the 30 Years War, with 750 unit counters in polychrome color, play aid cards, a 22 page Musket and Pike series rules, and 40 pages of scenarios and notes. Unit counters are typically larger companies or very small battalions. Rules make this a classic board war-game, with leadership, fire and close combat, morale and rallying, and other issues. A reaction rule allows units of the nonmoving player to become active, on occasion, in the middle of the moving player's turn. Battlefields (hex grid) are 26x26 squares; terrain is more limited on some fields than others.
New England (Ueberplay) is a colonization game referring to the Pilgrims in Massachusetts. Competition is economic. The players share a common board, with development being based on bidding, tile placement, development, finances, and wooden unit counters with specific abilities. The game includes a map, 90 thick-cut very large cardboard tiles, two decks of cards, and wooden and plastic chips. My very superficial read is the game is somewhat akin to Puerto Rico, but perhaps with fewer options for each play on a given turn.
Ark of the Covenant (Ueberplay) has 70+ tiles, wooden counters, and elaborate rules for placing tiles and wooden counters, leading to a game score. The title links to the rules in that the map resembles modern Palestine in terrain, though the walled cities, prophets, and ark are ancient. It's a tile-placement game, in which you try to optimize the use of randomly revealed resources.
Waterloo (Phalanx Games) repeats the battle on the not-quite-corps level, with a nicely colored large board that uses real squares, 1" square unit counters, and a 14 page rule book. Command and control is done by special cards: You play your cards, which give you movement points and battle points to enhance your attacks. Special benefits appear for flank and rear attacks, artillery, and cavalry. Diagonal movement is not allowed. The total number of counters is small, in the vicinity of 50 all told.
Europe Engulfed (GMT Games) has a 3x4' area map of Europe (France, e.g., is 8 areas), nearly 300 wood-block counters, and two dozen dice. The mapboard, which shows the entire European continent and North Afrika, allows replay in two-month turns of World War 2. The rules cover 23 pages; additional rules, play examples, and setups cover a further two dozen pages. The blocks receive decals that must be applied; combat between two areas involves detailed procedures and potentially large numbers of units.
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© Copyright 2004 by George Phillies.
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