GAME KIT NEWS Death Ride: Mars-La-Tour sold out and awaiting a reprint. Leopards And Lilies: Counters completed Anglo-Dutch Wars: Held back by overwork Field of Battle: As above, but I have acquired the HaT figures for test running. Les Quatres-Bras: nearly there just resizing rosters and awaiting Mike Siggins escaping from over-work. Louis XIV: Storyboards being costed to model the financial problems. Operational system now mapped. The appearance of Avalanche Games' Eylau has demonstrated a new gaming presence in the hobby. If last year was evidence that GMT was back in action, producing popular and attractive games that had the gamers gasping for more, this year has shown us hope that a healthy competition is returning. They have also tapped a rich vein on the artwork front - with the excitement on the Panzer Grenadier game being quite noticeable. I have briefly played PG and found it surprisingly painless for a non-tactical gamer. Nice counters. From the ranks of the DTPers comes Retro a simple version of ASL produced by Gary Graber of Minden Games (www.homestead.com/minden_games). Gary has also produced several issues of Panzerschreck with games ranging from solitaire Barabarossa to the Nuremburg War Crimes trials. Boulder Jim can supply these if you are interested. I hope we can produce some reviews soon. Most Read Articles in PA100 from MagWeb.com Paths of Glory (1) Combat! For Your Nostrils Only La Bataille De Lutzen Neil Thomas Returns Tigers in the Mist Death Ride Mars-La-Tour 1870 Nuts! Paths of Glory (2) Forgotten Axis: Murmansk 1941 My Back Page (s) Neil Thomas Returns What I Have Been Playing? Normandie 1944 Uncle Macca's Handy Hints I spent a Friday revently travelling up and down the Thames to Greenwich for a Mercers Company "event" courtesy of Marcus Watney. When we were not fighting off constant attempts to give us more champagne we fell to discussing boardgaming. Marcus (like Nick Barker) is a great believer in playing a few games to distraction, whereas I'm rather more promiscuous with my time. As a result we can often find little in the way of overlap. This time, however, we had PoG. Marcus is presently one of the Brides of Barker playing Nick PBEM simultaneously. Marcus' views on certain playing strategies would usually go straight over my head, but oddly enough (perhaps the effect of Tom Kassell and Brandon Einhorn who have shown excellent reasons for not following the historical route) I was up with this lot. Even stranger despite the fact I've never got further than 1916 before my opponents explode (not I hasten to add because I detonate them) I could follow the discussion and even join it. Discussing strategies is as old as the hills but PoG seems particularly strong here. Snoozing my way back I fell to thinking, which other games of recent issuance could have led to such a conversation. I think the answer is few. I read with interest such topics as "Where do you defend in Brandywine" - not where I do seems to be the answer, but only PoG strikes me as having multi-strategy conversations (though I hope La Grande Guerre will lead us there). Why is this? PoG is a work based on a life-time of study and on a very clever system (the Duke of Ragusa can take a bow), this means its game content is accompanied by an atmospheric and holistic view of the war. You may disagree with Ted's view, but it is a fully developed one with its internal consistencies. Indeed, the game has been used to criticise Ted's own views ("Et tu Brute"). This gives a double level of richness that others may find hard to bring to the system. Hannibal failed, for me, because no matter how good the game as history it was not the wars as I recognised them. I am testing a PoG spinoff at present, and it lacks that historical depth than both suspends disbelief and beguiles you into daft moves because they are historically correct. I think that the card system permits one to categorise one's strategies in a way a less "limited" system does not. It renders decisions less diffuse and more capable of being turned into conversational summaries. PoG is strategic, and strategic games, I think, permit one to take much more controlled and differing strategies than say a tactical game. It can be hard to "strategize" a tactical game where pure chaos reigns (and should reign). I think here of Avalanche's Eylau where developing a plan is important, but where getting your men to follow it can be very difficult. PoG's level and its lines of strategy (collapse Russia, bully the French, annoy the Italians, Middle East etc etc) encourage strategy development. The use of the cards serves however to frustrate the Perfect Plan. As this issue has shown one result of Ted Raicer's work has been the opening of a new topic area which formerly languished in the Doldrums. It is not so long ago that ancients were so regarded until the duke of Ragusa (and Dick his faithful manservant) gave it fresh popularity with the GboH series. Excellent news therefore of Simple GBoH which permits large battles to be fought in two to three hours. I foresee a rush to dig out the old games when this appears. Of even greater interest for those of you who like a good punchy game is the work of Renaud Verlaque. His two games Age of Napoleon and North vs South are both strongly card-driven and playable usually within two hours. The essence of these games is cutting away a lot of the old verbiage and getting to the key decisions. Age of Napoleon, which is optioned to GMT, covers the military, diplomatic and economic affairs of Europe during the Emperor's reign. Yet it does so with a few pages of rules, some sensible concepts and some very colourful cards. North vs South is further from complete but by concentrating on a few key armies the result is a fast-play ACW that makes one think about the real strategies underlying the War. I am hoping next issue will have a lot more on Pacific Victory, together with some news of the newer games under development. I am certainly looking forward to Vae Victis' game on Dien Bien Phu, Randy Moorehead's 'Rus (Britannia goes to Russia), and Peter Perla's campaign game on the Risorgiemento from GMT (who knows I might even try Dick's two battle games - Magenta and Solferino). And then there is Battleline a Reiner Knizia Ancient game using cards. Back to Perfidious Albion #101 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