Acquisitions have of necessity been rather minimal recently but I could not resist the Thirty Years War edition of S&T: at last a game with Mansfeld in it. It looks very attractive. A read-through of the rules indicates an interesting multi-player game. We will be playing it fourhanded in due course and I will report again on our findings. By that time it will probably already have been reviewed by others condemned and consigned to oblivion, but no matter. (CHV: Not here anyway, in the Land the Timely Review Forgot).
We have recently been delving into the crypt, whence we resurrected amongst other things Raiders And Traders, which created an interesting alternative history. Troy did rather better this time round. Despite, or perhaps because of its age, the game looked attractive and worked suprisingly well with four players. I recall that Chaosium also produced a game on the siege of Troy, with attractive graphics. Was it any good? (CHV: I got the rules wrong, but I preferred the Metagaming one).
Russian Campaign also played well with that number. While we enjoy mainstream wargames and we have twice played the full campaign scenario of Hell's Highway to completion, the increasing complexity of these does not usually suit multi-player arrangements. Games of moderate complexity are much more appropriate. I remember a particularly exciting three-player Air Assault On Crete, a game of similar complexity to RC.
Even the computer games I have been playing recently are relative antiques. The take-over by CD-ROM now means that diskette games are passe but it also means that bargains are to be had in the obsolescent format. The few games I have are probably enough to keep me going for a long time, but in my usual cheapskate way I am ever on the qui-vive for bargs. My best find to date was the Lords Of Power combination set which comprised Railroad Tycoon, Silent Service 2, Red Baron, and The Perfect General, not state of technology but excellent games for all that. Trains, boats, planes and mechanised warfare in one box, at paperback prices.
Harpoon
My current favourite, yet another oldie, is the original Harpoon, now available with all its supplementary sets on CDROM for a tenner. The format and subject matter of the game is so well suited to the computer. By contrast, the Avalon Hill computer games and no doubt others, seem to go for the direct transfer of board game systems to the screen. I think this is a pity. The Harpoon display, using either the S pictorial or NATO standard symbols, with not a hex in sight, gives a convincing impression of a real battle display in some command centre, all symbols and messages. Unit data can be quickly called up as required, and there is masses of it, efficiently presented.
I have had some really exciting and vicious battles in the Greenland- Iceland- Faroes gap area. It did feel odd though sending my Backfires to slip through the air defences and with a storm of Kingfish missiles, seriously put out the lights at Leuchars, where I spent an interesting week in my cadet days. Would it really be so easy though? I cannot but feel that in the game, bases succumb rather too easily to missile attacks. At Leuchars I can imagine some going into the bay, some onto the golf course even. Just how accurate are those things when engaging land targets as opposed to ships and at long range?
Another possible weakness is the ability of the player to command every movement of his submarines. To reduce the effect of this, I propose to plot a move or series of moves for them, at the end of which sequence they will be set to come to periscope depth as though listening for satellite transmitted messages. The staff prompt will then come on to ask for new orders. The above process is then repeated. Any contacts they make in the course of their fixed sequence will be reported back, from whatever depth they are at. This is probably still unrealistic but I can see no way round it. Ideally, submarine groups should make their own tactical moves, but I presume this would require a more sophisticated artificial intelligence than is feasible within this format.
I have to say that the computer is in fact a bit of a prat. Even I, a notoriously erratic player with a number of spectacular disasters to my credit, have on several occasions totally annihilated its task forces. For example, its bomber units tend to take the same line of approach on successive attacks , making the job of the air defence controller that much easier. I took advantage of this to obliterate twentyodd Bears with a head-on interception by six F15 Eagles from Keflavik. My own tactic for attacking Iceland was to bring my bombers in over Red Fleet, launch, turn about and go into reheat, drawing the interceptors onto the formidable anti-air defences of the ships. The computer lost two Eagles to nil Backfires by this dirty trick. Keflavik was badly damaged and subsequently destroyed.
The great thing is though, you cannot afford to relax. There is so much going on that it is very easy to lose track of where your own forces are going and to do what , never mind predict the computer's intentions. When I was defending Northern Britain, a Backfire force was over southern Norway before I detected it and my Tornado CAP was low on fuel (I had not quite got the hang of the repeat patrol procedure). As it happened, I had a tooled-up RAF Phantom squadron en route to forward deployment in the Faroes, that had sufficient fuel to intercept and clobber the incomers. The day went well, just.
If all else fails you can cheat by saving at a favourable occasion and reverting to this when things go wrong subsequently.
RETAIL DETAIL: To Burton-on-Trent and to Spirit games wherein much of interest. A number of new Avalon Hill products were in evidence, although one was but a remake albeit revised, of the excellent Machiavelli (already in our crypt in its original Battleline guise). Sierra Madre Games seem to be going into overdrive with another Lords of S.M.-type game on Mexico and its problems as well a smaller, graphically-similar game on the hunt for Pancho Villa an interesting-looking science-fiction job and a solitaire game in which the player is a Zeppelin commander raiding these islands and fighting off among other types a Farman Shorthorn.
This must surely be the only time one of those contraptions has ever appeared in a wargame. Could one have got anywhere near a Zeppelin that was trying to avoid its company? There was a stack of Decision games, including the one on the '45, other wargames and magazines a good selection of Sumo-type games, many of interest, Essex and other figures, all sorts of wonderful games goodies and loads of, to me incomprehensible, fantasy stuff. The Azure Wish games looked wonderful but their price puts them out of my present league. Forty-four pounds for the Britannia-clone Hispania is going some, however exquisite the graphics.
I could not resist a card game based on, so I thought, Waterloo but it was in the event a disappointment, of which more elsewhere. I seem to be going on as though I have shares in the shop, but to find such a treasure-house in Burton of all places is a minor miracle even to one who remembers the wonderful original Dungeons and Starships in Summer Row Birmingham.
Which leads on nicely to the new-ish Dungeons and Starships in Digbeth, also in Birmingham, just down from the Bull Ring, which is a much more convenient location than its namesake occupied. There is a good range of games there, although fantasy seems the main line and as at Spirit games CCG products seem to be big earners for the firm. Since Virgin gave up on board games, this is now the only outlet I know of in the Second City.
TIP FOR THE DAY: Those readers who take little or no interest in DIY might not know that the cruciform 'Keep Track' markers advertised by Decision Games in S&T at $6/100 seem remarkably similar to the wall-tile spacers available very cheaply from DO-IT-ALL and similar stores There is also a larger version for floor tiling.
IT'S IN THE CARDS Card games seem to be thing at the moment for our small group too. My own enthusiasm for the medium goes way back to childhood and Pepys' Round Europe and Foreign Legion and when I was really very small to their Woodland Snap (CHV: Now you're talking - a Hoppy Spadge fan too!!!!) and Happy Families. Part of their charm, to me at least, was their excellent graphics. Aeons later, the superlative design of the cards in Guerrilla have caused a similar frisson on first acquaintance, although Mr. Never-Satisfied would have liked different faces for the different characters. When it turned out to be such an exciting game, played four-handed, I was seriously impressed. We have played three games so far and I think it will be a regular favourite for some time.
We played Credo some time ago. The graphics and general presentation here though serviceable are hardly in the same class as the AH masterpieces, but it would be a pity if potential players were put off by this and by what must be one of the most esoteric and unfashionable subjects for an historical game: the Council of Nicaea, summoned by the emperor Constantine to compel diverse and bickering factions of the early Christian church to draft an agreed set of beliefs, the Creed. On the contrary, as it is a conflict of ideologies with no territorial aspect, it adapts well to a multi-player card game format. It is also fun.
There must be other non-spatial conflicts which could be similarly treated. The plot to assassinate Hitler is one that comes to mind. Old hands may recall the SPI game on this subject, for which the conventional hex-grid system used seemed, for me at least, totally inappropriate. I recall reading in the designer's notes the amazing comment that it was to be played like a tank game. I also have an idea that En Garde could be turned into an interesting card game, with period graphics for atmosphere, possibly using a board to act as the social/political environment, like that in the magnificent Republic Of Rome, which itself has an important card element.
More direct action is represented in Gunslinger, an old favourite of mine, although the relatively short time that AH kept it in print seems to suggest that my enthusiasm is not widely shared. I cannot imagine a better method of representing the split-second action of these, possibly legendary gunfights and brawls than the combination of action cards and board movement used here. Some years ago, having been inspired by the Wild West game, I adapted the TSR Chainmail jousting rules to a simple action-card format. The result, in small doses, was quite entertaining as a participation game with miniatures. It was no great intellectual challenge, but neither was the real thing.
Up Front
Up Front is for me the card game that brings it all together. The downside is that the spatial concept of relative range, fundamental to the game system, is difficult to explain to a newcomer and is not well described in the rulebook, in my opinion. The table of values does not make things any clearer. I recently introduced Junior to Courtney Allen's minor masterpiece Attack Sub and thought that Up Front would be a good follow-on.
I have made only one sortie into the world of collectable-card games, by buying an Eagles pack. This was a big disappointment, purchased without my customary deliberation. It was examined and returned unplayed pristine for a refund. I had foolishly thought that I was buying a Waterloo set to which could be added a second to enable Ligny, Wavre and Quatre Bras scenarios to be played. I was prepared to accept that additional cards would be necessary to have a full range of units from which to choose, but not to have my random selection to include four duplicates, including two Marshals Ney, terrain cards for Ligny and Wavre and in the event insufficient cards for a Waterloo game. The rule sheet states quite un-shamefacedly that to play the 'full campaign', most, if not all of the full set of three hundred cards are necessary. The purpose of rare, quite rare and common versions of the same unit card is quite beyond my comprehension. Caveat omnes emptores.
The graphics are not to my taste, the figures being executed in the style of the Rapidograph and felt-pen school, and an attempt at period atmosphere makes the overall design too florid. I accept that this is a subjective matter, but I would have preferred the photographic realism of Guerrilla and the fantasy cards that I have seen, representing units rather than individual soldiers. I have an idea to design my own, he said, over-ambitiously.
The game system is based on the Gamma 2 Napoleon battle resolution, which is a firm foundation on which to build but for the price of five of these packs or thereabouts you could buy the updated version of that excellent game, an old favourite of mine. That would be my recommendation.
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© Copyright 1996 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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