Andrew Cummins I look forward to the next century of PA. CHV: Forewarned is forearmed! Andrezj Cierpicki Looking forward to issue 100 of PA, hard to believe I have been a subscriber for all those years. On the game front I have mostly been delving into my old collection and have recently played Storm over Arnhem, Junta, and 1812. My most recent purchase is Clash of Arms Close Action which I am playing this Friday with one of my chums of a nautical bent. Robert Lesco What I most value is the reviews of games I am not likely to see elsewhere, particularly the desk-top produced crowd. I've been attending a monthly gathering at the Fort York armouries – we play in the Sergeants' Mess of the Royal Regiment. Quite an interesting place: the walls are covered with old maps, photographs, portraits etc. AND the sergeant has the key to the "refreshments room". Die Sieder von Cataan remains very popular. We do Civilisation, Kremlin, and a host of the others. I had a chance to try History of the World it seems a bit offence-oriented at first. It has such a following though that I intend to give it another go. There must be some subtleties beyond the card draw. I have been thinking about the idea of "Idiot Rules" for France 1940 etc and there is a way around using them. I can remember playing AH's Alexander the Great and many times the Persian would be turning the corner of Alexander's line only to divert one or two cavalry units to take the baggage train. This would be rewarded with a few morale points but it would hardly hurt the Macedonians at all. In fact it often gave them time to rescue the situation and press where they had the advantage. My solution is to use Victory Points to make it tempting, perhaps even necessary, to achieve certain objectives. No doubt the French in 1940 saw their job differently than we do today and they had their own goals and their own idea of what was necessary to win. Give them enough points for holding say the Maginot Line that it becomes reasonable to try. Both sides may not be trying to accomplish them so why reward them as if they were? (CHV: Perhaps because one may have been wrong. This concept works well with different societies - Zulus and British.) David Heath Few purchases and most of these based on readings of PA. Enthusiasm for Blue vs Gray. The only comment I would add to those in PA98 and PA99 is the presentation of the cards themselves. Good for the stats printed on the bottom of unit and leader cards that help with stacking on small tables. A bit iffy on print size and resolution of black print on dark blue cards. Time for new glasses. It still remains excellent value. I await the promised Napoleonic and World War 2 games. Oh yes, BluTac is de rigeur for keeping the map cards in place! Enjoyed Great War At Sea (vol. 1), much of this being the subject matter that is spot on for me. The tactical rules are very simple, buckets of dice, and roster sheets to register hits. Guns and armour come in three categories: Heavy, Medium, and Light/No armour. Each type of gun can only penetrate (cancel boxes on roster sheets) of its equal in armour or less. The gun ranges are 4, 2 and 1 respectively and the map made up of big offset squares. Nice simple bits for critical hits and the like. No modifiers for "Crossing the T" of the enemy. The campaign system is very simple and rests on giving missions to the various naval groups under your command. This makes for a lot of writing before the game begins as most missions require plotting from the beginning. Its main defect is not having found a system to make players scared of their opponents, the designer admits this in his notes which are an interesting read. No premium on fleets-in-being. The counters are very very pretty; birdseye view of the ships themselves. The back of the counters have the ship's silhouette on them. I am tempted to buy Volume 2 but it does seem a bit expensive. Picked up GamesUSA's Borodino/Friedland, as I was looking for a low-density unit count game to play out big battles. I can only echo the points you made way back then. Personally the greatest pleasure is not having to look at hex-shaped everything. Not to mention not having to absorb long sections of rules which translate hexes into various constrictions or very hard concepts to manage, such as four-hex-long lines and their evolution into column, square or whatever (my point of reference here is Kolin). I did not experience the featureless in combat regarding infantry and cavalry. Given the size and scope of the game I thought that the special rules for cavalry combat (possibility of not charging, extra penalties imposed on a failed charge, and the pursuit rules) did the best they could. What DID leave me perplexed (but this is because I do not know the answer) was the basis of the CRT, that is step loss or retreat. Except with heavy defeats (2 or more) where one step loss is obligatory the losing player decides if he wants to retreat or, on passing a morale check, take a step loss. I wondered if our units were not already depleted that this should be "pass morale to retire"? It just seemed strange, "Feeling good you guys?", "yeah" shout the ranks and down go a dozen companies. I would be a lot happier with a combat system that does not let you decide who is going to (try and) die/retreat or whatever. From the little I have read there was not much decision making in the death department. I will however probably pick up the next release (Eylau I believe). I also had the impression that being a simple system it accepted the special rules for the different games quite effortlessly (for example the Friedland fire rules). I bought a block of games from Phil Ecklund, but I have only had time to play the game on Zeppelins Luftshift. This simply oozes flavour. Scrambling crews desperately rush round the ship trying to sew up the bigger leaks, the helmsman must balance his gas tanks to keep the Zeppelin from nose-diving and the detail is easy to savour (buy a bag of penny-sized washers for counters). The maps of the Zeppelins on which crew move, ballast is unloaded, and gas is shifted are based on original plans and are of excellent quality. The counters are a bit thin, the cards are very serviceable and stout, and the map is also on the light side (too much flavour here). There is quite a bit of wristage work in dicing up 'event' cards and in combat, but we have a solo-play game here and a game that one can actually play. I had difficulties with this last concept with the S&T Zeppelin game. The S&T game is operational in scope, whilst this is merely "Me n' My Zeppelin"; but there is great satisfaction just getting back in one piece. I look forward to getting enough players together for a game of Lords of the Sierra Madre. Andy Daglish One niggle that bothers me about Paths of Glory concerns what we might call the Schlieffen Plan. The Germans set up so as to execute it, but unlike in real life, the game essentially disallows the possibility that it might work, and that from this a French political collapse might result. Even if the French are reduced to a few units and friendly-controlled spaces in France -- and this is by no means improbable, given the many advantages the Germans enjoy -- they battle on as effectively as ever. This looks odd. Thus it seems that all the luck & effort required to defeat France has little effect in the game, save a few VP that the British may be defending anyway. The game appears to presuppose that a successful Schlieffen Plan will fail to garner any political benefit for the Germans such as occurred in 1870 and 1940. So I wonder why should the Germans bother attacking France at all? They do very much better expending card plays on pushing their commitment to Total War whilst eliminating the Russian threat, and presumably entrenching to level 2along the French border. Going further, it could be said that a German refusal to invade also diminishes the justification for a British presence, let alone an unprovoked British assault on Germany following a build-up in France. An important point is that all other nations in the game effectively suffer the effects of capitulation as they lose units. Austria-Hungary being the best example, or they cannot be defeated in this manner as in the case of America and Britain, or as in the case of Russia, rules exist to cater for the possibility. France is the odd man out, as its geography prevents large areas being put out of supply whilst even a few French units remain. Seeing as the French did give up in a similar military situation a generation either side of the Great War, it seems odd that this event, that could have occurred but didn't, is not represented in some way in the game. The prerequisites of "Schlieffen Success" might be a German unit somewhere such as Rouen or Paris, or reduction of the French forces to one or two armies at any time, or both. The effects of "Schlieffen Success" might be the similar to those dealing with political collapse in Russia. This would give some point to a determined German invasion of France which at present, in my humble opinion, doesn't exist, as the game begins with the German player knowing he cannot gain the benefit of the clear victory the real-life participants hoped to obtain. Such a new rule would strengthen the Germans still further and a balancing rule would be required, for example allowing the French a bonus RP if the German player declares at game start that he wishes to try for "Schlieffen Success". Back to Perfidious Albion #100 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com