Our group has had a long spell trying a few other multiplayer games. In the end we drifted back to World in Flames. Two key factors here. Firstly, there are 5 of us who play nearly every week. WIF is one of the few games around that can handle 5 players. Secondly, all the multiplayer games we tried were either failures or disappointing.
Now trying to use the Ships in Flames module. The general feeling is that it doesn't add much to the game, except complexity. There are a few nice features in it. Carriers and their planes are handled better but cost more. The ships are very well rated now for combat and defence. In addition they have introduced the question of range as well as speed. The Italian navy in particular had very limited ranges for their ships. They were designed for short operations in the Med. Now ships are restricted on how far they can move by their range. What sea box they can get into in an area depends on the speed.
Convoys make a bit more sense but are considerably more work to administer. Convoy counters are now doubled sided and you need to be extremely careful to keep them the correct side face up. It is a lot more work to manage the convoy system with every single ship needing to be carefully placed.
Ships can now stay at sea when the turn ends. This represents continuous patrolling. It ends the silly business of who moved first and could they get the jump on their opponent for some vital move.
The rules about subs have still got us a bit confused. They are absolutely deadly against unprotected or lightly escorted convoys, far more than they should be. To make it even worse an unprotected convoy can't even do subs any damage. On top of this is the fact that you cannot attack subs. They can choose to attack but can always avoid combat it attacked. Thus the only time you can inflict a casualty on a sub is when they choose to attack an escorted convoy or surface ship.
Ships adds a few extra features. It also adds considerably to the complexity of the game, slows it down and has some dubious areas. All in all I don't think its worth the trouble. The Mech in Flames supplement that came out with the last Annual is definitely good value and I'd recommend it. It adds a number of extra units that do improve the game quite a bit.
Operation Typhoon (German drive on Moscow Nov/Dec 1941 GMT. Boxed game)
This is a big, serious and detailed game to be tackled by real enthusiasts. Three maps and large numbers of counters. It covers the German offensive against Moscow in late 41. Units are divisions and regiments and turns are week.
The underlying game system is I guess fairly standard. There were a few rules we struggled with but generally it seemed OK. The problem comes with the layers of detail they piled on top of it. If you have lots of patience and time and are very serious I'm sure you will find it appealing. I lost interest when I came across the rule that allowed anti aircraft fire by various units against planes doing ground strikes against them. OK, it's probably realistic but quite unnecessary in game terms. A time wasting rule of little value that should easily have been factored into the game in some abstract way.
The campaign game is a real slog and will take weeks to play. Supply is a problem for the Germans. They grind forward against stiffening Russian resistance. Pretty realistic but all in all rather boring. Its just not exciting enough as a campaign to justify the amount of work. We abandoned by mutual consent it after two nights. Its a game for the serious players who are really prepared to put in a lot of time and effort.
Ring of Fire (Fourth Battle of Kharkov. Moments in History. Boxed game)
Just started playing this. Fortunately, besides the regular weekly session I usually manage a two player game a month. Brilliant stuff and the designers have continued the high standard set by their other games. Very effective systems yet easy to play. (CHV: Good job I kept my copy, perhaps I should give it a try).
Great War in Europe (First World War. Command magazine)
Another game we tried, with some considerable enthusiasm at first. Regrettably disillusionment set in and after three attempts we abandoned it. Overall its got a lot going for it. The basic system is reasonable. The chit pull system for events etc is a really good idea and one that I think many will copy.
The ZOC rules are dubious here. The game has 2 week turns and the western map represents 9 miles per hex. At that scale a division with its artillery component is certainly going to exert some kind of influence on adjacent hexes. Furthermore it is not going to sit idly by while the enemy moves past it and tries to encircle it. This however is what happens in GWIE.
Certainly armies strove to keep a continuous front even in the opening mobile war. Gaps did occur. The famous example being the Marne where a 20 mile gap (2 hexs) opened up in the German front. The advance of the BEF might have been slow but the Germans responded to the move immediately by pulling back. In the game the BEF would whip round the German rear before they have any chance to move away.
The game falls down in a number of areas. These are; the supply rules, lack of ZOCs, the ability of the Germans to dictate whether they get two turns in a row and the combat system. These areas are all interrelated and result in a system which a good German player can exploit to give them an extremely high chance of victory. It also results in a game which is governed by tactics designed to exploit the rules rather than being historical or realistic.
Let's look at the problem of the French front once it has settled into trench warfare. What do the French do? They only have enough units for roughly 2 per hex. Later in the war with the British they can manage perhaps 3 per hex. They can try to stack two units all along the front and force the Germans to attack at low odds. The problem here is that the initiative lies with the Germans. Actually, they can concentrate a number of attack formations and hammer several sections of the French line each turn at quite high odds. Given the numbers they can concentrate they will inflict more casualties than they suffer - so much for the superiority of defence. This has two dangers, that slowly they will grind the French down through attrition and that the Germans will get a breakthrough. In most games breakthroughs shouldn't matter, the defender simply moves units in to block the gap. Not so here.
In GWIE the Germans have the ability to take a double turn. The maps are broken up into an eastern and western group. While player A moves in the west, player B moves in the east. When both have finished they swap with B moving in the west and A moving in the east. Each of these turns represents roughly two weeks. A number of turns makes up strategic turn and every few months there is a Strategic Interphase. During this a number of things happen, one of these is that the Germans can decide whether they are going to move first on which map. Thus the Germans can be the second player in the west in one Strategic Turn but chose to be the first in the next Strategic Turn. In addition they get the chance to do one double attack each strategic turn.
In the game the Germans should be able to blow at least one hole in the French line at the end of a strategic turn. On the next turn they can fan out and threaten to roll up the French line. Obviously its hard work but its still too easy to achieve.
To get round this the French can go for a double line. The problem here is that it leaves the front line so weak that the Germans simply pick off the defending units at very high odds attacks and lose very little. We worked out this attrition technique ourselves but gather it has also been proposed by others.
Supply is based around ownership of towns. Now there is some validity in this but armies also had the ability to build up supply networks in other areas as well. You can't do this in the game. Thus you can get a situation where the one side blows a hole in the others line but is quite unable to push forward because there is no town within reach that can become a supply source. All you can do is try to roll up the line. In other cases though you can jump forward to a town which becomes an instant supply source. That's another strange feature. Captured towns become instant supply nets. There is no need to rebuild roads or rail lines across battletorn trench lines. Talk about the 'Green fields beyond'. Here you have trainloads of ammo and food which can instantly trundle forwards across the Somme mud fields.
Units out of supply at the end of a turn are removed, just like that. Doesn't matter who's turn it is. Thus if the Germans isolates French units during the German turn then those French units die before they even get a chance to counterattack or breakout. Commands argument is that units didn't carry enough supply with them and needed constant replenishment. You shouldn't get into a situation whereby you can be cut off.
Well, I have a few problems with this. Firstly, if units were cut off they did have some level of supplies with them, at least on the western front enough to sustain them for a few weeks. They certainly wouldn't roll over and die without trying some kind of breakout. Secondly its too easy to be cut off in this game. We saw one situation where 20 Russian divisions died because one German cavalry unit was blocking their supply path. I could accept that units that are out of supply at the end of their turn might die and that they units should be halved for movement & combat.
We tried it three times and our last effort got through to 1916. Then we abandoned it as too silly. Not a game I would recommend. It continues Commands annoying habit of focusing on a few features of a situation but making a nonsense of other key features.
Europa Universalis (300 years of European conflict and expansion. Boxed game) 2 maps and 1400 counters, numerous charts. Some friends of mine got this and we tried a few practice games. It attempts to cover European history for the period 1492 to 1792
This is a pretty tall order and isn't really practical. It tries to cover too much I think. As a result it bogs down in detail and doesn't really succeed properly at anything. Which is a shame because there's some good stuff in it..
The maps cover Europe on a large scale and the rest of the world on a smaller scale. Each turn represents 5 years but you can have a variable number of impulses in a turn. They have put an enormous effort into producing the counters. They look beautiful, unfortunately they are terrible to actually play with. Some of them are very detailed pictures of ships, admirals, military leaders etc. Regrettably the pictures are so small you can't really appreciate them and they are almost meaningless. Even worse is that the factors printed on the counters is crowded out and very small. The result is these factors are extremely difficult to read. The rules are poor on explaining some of these factors properly. The maps are better, well done and easy to use.
The rules are undoubtedly the worst feature. The game was originally produced in France. It seems to me that the original rules were very badly structured and written to start with. We encountered numerous omissions and spent ages trying to find what rules applied, invariably it was a case that there was no rule and we had to make up a house rule.
The writer also had it appears an extremely verbose and colourful style. Finally the rules have been translated rather badly into English. The result is an unmitigated mess. Probably the worst set of rules I've read in years. There are lots of charts but these are very badly set out, squashed, have no cross references to the rules and contain some cryptic notes.
Some of the rules are a bit weird. I'm going from memory here as I don't have the rules so I'll just say that, for example, the rules on movement attrition are either incredibly badly written or extremely strange.
All the individual rules are fairly straightforward and many are clever and effective. Because the game covers such a wide time frame and range of national capabilities it has to incorporate different weapon and ship technology into the game. It does this pretty well. Another feature is the changing capability of national leaders. Now, the rules on these and other areas are all quite simple. The problem is its just a succession of layers of complexity piled on top of a fairly basic system. The end result is a multitude of steps and dice rolling to go through at all stages of a turn. We only played the basic game. Once you get into the advanced game and finances it gets to be a real challenge. Never tried this but its clearly a lot of work.
Because the game covers such a long period it would be a unacceptably long game to play the entire 300 years. Thus it comes with a large number of scenarios covering a whole range of wars and campaigns. Most people will only ever play the smaller scenarios. Even the mini campaigns, say 50 years, are a lot of work. Your looking at 3 or 5 people to play for 5 + sessions. This is not an interactive game, most of the time players are waiting around for the one player to do their turn. You may as well buy a specific game on a topic and play that. At least with Europa though, I guess, you do get a lot of potential games in one box.
Its a nice game and has some good ideas. Don't think your going to play the 300 year campaign game. Be happy to settle for some of the two or three player scenarios. You'll also need to put a lot of work into understanding the rules. This a game for serious players prepared to put in a lot of time and effort. I suspect those who persevere will find there is a very enjoyable game buried in there.
Ardennes (German attack in the Ardennes 1944. The Gamers. Boxed game.)
This is quite a nice system. As in Operation Typhoon a fairly basic system. This time with only a limited amount of chrome bolted on to it. As a result its quite playable. There are fairly strict rules on movement and moving through a friendly unit on the roads cost extra movement points. This is a reasonable reflection of the problems of traffic management on those congested forest roads. Thus it is vital to plan and sequence your moves correctly. It does tend to mean you take longer to do the movement phase.
We played the campaign game. It seemed very tough for the Germans to achieve anything more than minor gains against a good Allied defence. The Allies would have to be pretty silly to allow the Germans to capture enough territory to score a major victory. The Germans didn't seem to be able to score an initial major breakthrough against the American defence. After that of course the Americans fall back stifling many of the German opportunities to advance.
Supply is vital for the German advance and they operate on something of a leash. As a result they can't necessarily exploit gaps as readily as they might like. This is a marked and commendable difference from Commands ridiculous game Proud Monster. The latter has German units running around Russia with no supply constraints worth speaking of.
There probably should be more restraints on the Americans in the opening turns. They don't really suffer enough from the shock of the offensive. The campaign game is fairly long ie at least a few nights playing. Its probably better played for the scenarios which are faster, shorter and more balanced.
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© Copyright 1996 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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