The Gamers built a reputation for publishing big games, with early games typically including two maps and roughly 560-840 counters. A "small" Gamers title, with one map and 280 counters, is medium-sized by industry standards. None aims to be a beer-and-pretzels special. You might consider these games unsuitable for a casual afternoon of play. You might think wrong.

Big Friends and Little Friends

Yes, the "campaign game" tends to attract a lot of attention, and for good reason. Playing the full scenario brings out those features that make these games special. Op Sheets, written orders, corps attack stoppage, straggler recovery, unit rebuilding, SP stockpiling, air preparation, and sweeping panzer exploitations all show up best when you're playing with lots of map space and plenty of turns. The opportunities are more varied, and the required decisions are more subtle, in the campaign scenario of any Gamers title. For an extreme example, look at the difference between battle scenarios in Afrika -- full-bore panzer-bashing -- and the campaign game, with its choreography of units and supplies in shifting patterns of attacking, sitting tight, and running away.

That said, you should not neglect those short scenarios, as they have a number of virtues. These scenarios are a good opportunity to practice basic tactics like overruns, air unit sequencing, cavalry charges, artillery handling, divisional rotation in a corps-sized assault, apportioning Suppressive Fire Actions to important targets, and whatever else you wish you could do better. Players short on table space can set up one-map (and even sub-one-map) games. For solitaire play, the workload stays reasonable. For face-to-face, you and your buddy can toss a game on the dining room table and finish it before the wives ask you to set out the plates and salad bowls.

Most importantly, these scenarios do what any good "folio-sized" game should: they provide fun, tense, and satisfying contests without occupying major portions of time and space.

The trick is to find the right scenarios. Some of the short "slice of the battle" scenarios are good for historical interest but provide little opportunity for smart and competitive play. "Carnival of Death" from Embrace an Angry Wind comes to mind. Other games -- particularly Barren Victory and Bloody Roads South, in my opinion -- need the entire campaign scenario to tell an interesting story. Many others, though, make for great short games and provide a fine "miniature" experience of the full game. Here are my picks of some good "short features," along with suggestions provided by several participants on The Gamers' e-mail list.

Civil War, Brigade

EAW's "Carnival of Death" actually does make for fun solitaire, if you're in the right mood. I have even imagined gamey tricks the Union side could pull in a two-player contest to deliberately minimize Rebel casualties and thereby frustrate Confederate victory. Life being short, I have never actually tried to talk anyone into a face-to-face playing.

Steve Newhouse has a couple good CWB suggestions: "I vote for the 'Little Round Top' or 'The First Day' in TATC." I agree especially about "Little Round Top." Each side has enough divisions in play to allow for some tactical flexibility, and the victory conditions combine the imperatives to kill the other guy and take that hill. It's a fun and furious nine game turns." In contrast, the shorter "Battle of Sander's Field" is less satisfying. This BRS scenario has similar victory conditions, involving brigade wreckage and a geographic objective, but somehow it feels more deterministic. Unless the Union can make a good initial attack, the Confederate will get his line organized and solidified, and from there on out it's much slaughter with little movement. Nevertheless, with five turns of intense action, it's a good quickie for solitaire or for firepower enthusiasts.

The first time I played Champion Hill, it immediately became one of my favorites in the CWB. The situation is tense, with Stevenson's division fighting like heroes and wondering when the whole Union army will get moving and land on top of them. While the Union player works at getting the bulk of his troops moving, the Confederate has to handle every brigade with precision. The game stays fun and fast-moving for its eighteen turns, and in my experience the scenario is nicely balanced. Dan Cicero likes this scenario because you "can get it done in an evening and the situation is like a Civil War game of King of the Hill'."

Tactical Combat Series

For some reason, no one offering favorite short scenarios for TCS mentioned "Island of the Lost Nazis" (Ops 23). Remember, guys, this is a scenario you can enjoy even without setting it up: just reading it is enough.

In 1991 I was a big Objective: Schmidt fan, and I still recommend it highly to those who have a copy. For small scenarios here, you pretty much select one or the other side of the Kall River and go to it. My suggestion is Scenario 5, "The Second Attack on Kommerscheidt." Though hardly suited for maneuver warfare, the correlation of forces is good in terms of players clobbering each other. As a town-taking puzzle, the scenario also lends itself to solitaire play. Anders Fager immediately recognized the short-scenario potential of Semper Fi! and remarked, "it looks a lot like training stuff from Officers School to me." Here are designer Lee Forester's recommendations for that game: "Fox Hill isn't that short; it takes 2-3 hours to play, because there is some thinking and calculating.

It should be included in short playing scenarios I think, as well as the first couple from Hagaru and the smaller ones of No-Name Ridge." Semper Fi! also appears in these well-considered remarks from Peter Arnold: "The TCS [as opposed to the OCS] is perfect for a one-day game. Both players are very active because of overwatch, morale checks and the limited units involved. And I believe the Semper Fi! scenarios were designed for just this purpose of a one-day/night game. I think that Leros lends itself well to short scenarios (especially scenarios 2 and 3). The campaign game is really just a succession of short, non-linear engagements, unlike BW and others where the "big" picture is a bit more satisfying than the warm-up scenarios. "I'd also recommend the GD'41 Scenario 1 as suggested by Lee Forester's gambit contest (Ops 25).

I don't think I'd recommend any other GD'41 scenarios, as they are a bit long, and the Soviets can do nothing more than watch their guys get overrun. The full campaign is needed to get that satisfaction of an armored counterattack."

Here's a suggestion from Pat Collins I'd like to see somebody try. "Semper Fi!, Fox Hill: 1) You can play it on an airplane tray, and can do so in the time it takes for an average US flight! 2) Drawbacks: Not so much replay value as KG Peiper from Ardennes."

Standard Combat Series

My dad's favorite from The Gamers was Afrika (and probably would have been even if he had owned more than two Gamers titles). I have his copy here and can see how worn the counters are; he played the hell out of it. For short scenarios, he preferred home-rolled "slices" of the campaign game over the included three-turn battle scenarios. He would set up various historical (or alternate-history) situations and then play the campaign game out from there. Other players have voiced a liking for the short scenarios: "Crusader," "Gazala," "First Alamein," "Alam Halfa," and "Third Alamein." Steve Newhouse votes for "any Afrika scenario," while Anders Fager recommends, "Start with the small scenarios in Afrika." For a while I thought I had an unstoppable Axis strategy in Scenario 4.2, "Gazala": run wild and inflict maximum casualties, so that the Commonwealth finally has too few units to block the investiture of Tobruk and Bardia. Maybe someone out there can find the flaw in this approach.

Also popular in this series is Ardennes. Patrick R. Collins likes the "Kampfgruppe Peiper" scenario (5.1) because "1) It uses only the top half of one map. 2) Counters are also limited. 3) It can be set up and finished in a half day, yet it is quite complex, and you can have many different strategies." Steve Newhouse likes "The Drive on Bastogne" (5.2) from the same game. I can attest that the campaign scenario (5.3) can end up being short indeed. Last year Bill Quoss ran a very efficient German breakthrough, while I continued to pace my reaction according to my experience of previous "typical" playings. The result: I was a game turn behind where I needed to be, and Bill moved rapidly to a sudden death victory.

Another SCS scenario that can end up shorter than you might expect is the campaign game of Yom Kippur. Once I stubbornly ignored a cease-fire with the Israelis -- merely for the "fun" of getting the superpowers on the map -- and ended up turning a slim victory into a draw. More often, though, players will reach a decision before they reach Game Turn 12.

Our last suggestion for the SCS comes from Ernesto Sassot (see the sidebar). Can you repeat his optimal Soviet strategy? Can you beat it?

Napoleonic Brigade Series

Except for the full battle scenario (5.4), all of the scenarios in Marengo are short. You can play any of these to get the hang of the rules and have some fun, but my recommendation is 5.3, "Desaix's Counterattack." At 9 turns, this is the longest of the short, and just about every command from both sides starts on or enters the map. You'll find yourself moving lots of units (for Marengo, anyway) and writing lots of orders. Still, the situation lends itself to immediate action, and the possibilities are wide open. The Austrians start by trying to get everybody moving and crush the French off their small slice of map in the vicinity of St. Giuliano Vecchio. But the victory conditions combine casualties and geographic objectives, with St. Giuliano Vecchio and the Tete du Pont worth five wrecked divisions. Maybe a French formation operating on divisional goals can raid some victory hexes and force the Austrians to react.

If the French use the right combination of grim resistance and fancy footwork, this scenario can be a wild ride -- and a good demonstration of how much fun the command rules can add.

Austerlitz is another of the games that I think work best in the full battle scenario. Still, the game includes two short scenarios covering initial historical encounters on the south-center ("Battle for the Goldbach Stream") and northern ("The Olmutz Road") portions of the map. Of the two, I recommend the latter (7.2). Here both players get to work with the full Napoleonic toolbox, and your results will depend very much on your skill with combined-arms tactics. If you have yet to revisit Austerlitz with the NBS 2.0 rules, return to this scenario.

Operational Combat Series

One short scenario that jumps to mind is "The Battle for Kasserine Pass" in Tunisia. Here the Axis player tries to orchestrate the most efficient possible operation: every supply token counts. Caught with a disjointed initial deployment, the Allies try to find ways to throw monkey wrenches into the Axis timetable. The scenario calls for lots of witty play and good unit handling, but its brevity (3 turns) and the fact that the situation is already established at the beginning of play make it feel unlike a typical OCS game. I like this one for solitaire, trying to work out the optimal Axis approach.

Other players have noticed the problem with short OCS scenarios. Peter Arnold puts it this way: "In my experience, I find that OCS scenarios shorter than, say, 15 turns would be kind of a waste of a day. The room for error in those 3-6 turn scenarios (especially Kasserine) is almost nil, and I believe that the beauty of the OCS is when it's played over the long haul, when players are able to build up supply for an offensive of their choosing, etc. Those 3-6 turn scenarios are better for solitaire play when trying to learn the system or to teach someone else the system. Anyway, the non-phasing player will sit around without much to do." While I agree with Peter, I can still find enjoyment in the more "tactical" aspects of play -- like running the perfect hipshoot/overrun combination -- available in shorter scenarios.

Likewise, while James Sterrett has identified some good short scenarios, he recognizes the value of full-length OCS. Here are his recommendations: "The Soviet counteroffensive scenario in GB makes a good afternoon and evening of rookie vs. grognard. Make the rookies the Soviets, let them go first, and the grognard will need to pull out every trick in the book to stay afloat. 'Operation Star' in EatG is well worth a shot too as an afternoon/evening. The really small OCS scenarios I do not much care for -- there's too little to them." I too like "Operation Star." It plays in a very compact area and takes only five turns. During that time, however, both players have a full set of unit types to manage (with the Germans getting a somewhat better selection of toys). For these reasons, I find it makes for a good teaching scenario and an all-around fun time.

Anders Fager has a recommendation I think many will agree with: "For OCS, I'll say Tunisia and start with 'The Race for Tunis'." Likewise, I understand that many of you agree with this sentiment from Perry Andrus, who says his favorite short OCS is Sicily and asks, "Where is it?" As I write this, it's buried a few maps down on my game table; by the time you read this, it will be in Homer awaiting the major reconstructive surgery I'm sure Dean will want to give it.

How About a Quickie?

Though you can never make a monster out of a folio, a judicious eye can help you pick good short contests out of a large game for solitaire, teaching games, and good face-to-face play in limited time. I hope the few examples presented here, along with their rationales, have given you some ideas and inspired you to just toss a map on the table and play.