I think if one reads back through the recent issues of PA, it will be easy to detect a gradual decline in my interest in historical boardgaming. I think this March saw me give it up virtually in its entirety, and then about three months later I got bored with the fluffy market (an increasing problem, it must be said) and came back to see what was going on. Of course what is going on is the same old long, dull, ahistorical stuff, with, as ever, a few little gems to make the hobby worthwhile.
However good these occasional finds are, I still do not think it is an area where one should be spending speculatively. So, with that in mind, and an even greater need for PA's reviews and historical analysis, I return to the fold with my usual waffle.
I suppose my trouble was (is) that I keep trying to recapture some of that old magic, most recently through a disastrous experiment with GMT's Samurai - two games of this was enough to put me off the system for good, and very nearly the period. I also find I cannot go back to some of my favourite systems as they feel either outdated (with design advances or 'nostalgia not being what it was') or, like the Fleet series, strangely inappropriate. On the other hand I am looking forward to playing King's War, the Games USA system, Avalanche's Great War at Sea, the new Perla ACW game, perhaps Krieg and of course anything Editions Foppington manages to get off the production line. (CHV: calling it a production line may be going too far).
But the point of all this introspection is that I am not really sure I am any better off with my current mix of games. The basic plot is that I play almost all the German and multi-player stuff, some CCGs and the very rare decent historical title that gets through the layers of filters. I am also a latent miniature gamer: I read most of the rules, and have even tried a few of them, and am still a sucker for figures. The crunch came when Richard Berg recently wrote of his experiences with Mayfair's Manhattan, Settlers of Cataan and other games - the like of which my cronies and I have been playing, and enjoying in the main, for almost seven years now. Richard's comment was, basically, that yes the systems are quick, and easy to learn, but that they did not have much to offer in the decision making departments. While I was initially indignant, on reflection I agree somewhat and decided that the large volume of simpler games in my diet needed some balance. Add to this the string of duff titles of all sorts in recent months (we have been almost a year without a true German winner) and it was starting to tell. But where will these titles come from? If not from Studio Vasey, I am reduced to the odd picking from elsewhere - and precious few of those will be historical or multi-players.
Whatever, I have been playing Flodden recently, a couple of games to bring me back up to speed and to introduce my regular opponent to the system. He liked it, and I still like it, and boy is it quick. We did the first game in 75 minutes including set-up and re-learning on my part. This is what we want. And I still think the flavour is top notch. The Scots cannae win yet though, so we must play a rubber next time, but the game and the flavour are as good as I remember from playtesting. And at least I have a chance of winning without the designer in the same room....
I think, more generally, this links in to your recent comments on simpler games and speed of play, especially in relation to miniatures rules. DBA (hard to believe it is five years old already) seems to have appealed for three or four main reasons, as far as I can discern. Firstly, it appeals strongly to the competitive, tournament gamers (the opposite end of the spectrum to my interests, by the way) as they can have at it quickly, on a small table and with minimal terrain and troops. Armies are deployed in a fashion not dissimilar to Magic tournaments - the style of deck equating to the style of army - "Okay, I can take this Teutonic Army with my Assyrians by doing x, y and z." And even if he fails it has not taken long and he can play five more games that day. I think it has long since left the realms of history, it just happens to work well as a game with a historical veneer.
Secondly, DBA (and more so DBM/DBR) enables club gamers to get a full game finished in an evening. When I was a club man twenty years back, this never actually happened. Usually it involved chatting, setting up, moving three turns and just getting into action as it was time to leave. Thirdly, it has encouraged small armies, which is a wholly good thing in the right circumstances. The chance to build armies, where before you would have built units, is good from the economical, historical flavour and unit/army/history variety angles. Finally, it has sired a whole generation of rules that, even if they do not deliver, seem at least to be aware that fast play is the way ahead. At least until the next sea change of opinion.
Quite why the boardgames hobby has not taken to the simpler, quicker game in the same way, I really do not know. Possibly because there has not yet been a truly revolutionary, widely accepted DB equivalent. However, I for one was surprised by the reaction to the recent discussion on AOL where the general view of the American contributors was that they did not mind long games, even preferring them. I guess they must have some form of different clock over there now, as I would now find it extremely difficult to find five or more hours for a single game.
Okay, we run a quarterly 12 or 14 hour multi-player session, but within that time we will play 8 or 10 games, often new ones. I suppose one could argue that a slice of that time could be used for two player historical gaming but the benefits, for me, are rarely the same. So the two player games generally get tackled on a weekday evening, starting at 8ish and running to a finish in the small hours. When we tried this with Samurai, we were still setting up at 9pm, and 'finished' (okay, reached a conclusion) well after midnight. With Flodden, we could have played it half a dozen times and still had time for post-game analysis. And before anyone shouts, there is often no difference in flavour, decision making or detail between the 'bad' long game and the 'good' short design, and I would say that in this case Flodden wins easily on all counts.
There is something slightly amiss with Hannibal. Do not exactly know what it is, though, but it is amiss. Perhaps it is the period, perhaps it is the expansion of the map and naval combat, perhaps it is simply the dual function cards having their wicked way with our card gaming-oriented minds. It may even be the fact that the Go analogy does not extend well over several land masses. Do not get me wrong, it is still one of the best games to appear for years, but it is not We The People, and I will still play the latter game in preference. I enjoyed the one game of Hannibubble we played, but it is much longer than I had hoped and did not have anything like the same period feel. If I may go out on a limb here, the card play was far less convincing and immediate than WtP, somehow more grainy and gamey, and as a result the system feels crackable. Is this paragraph vague enough for you so far? It also lacks that 'edge of the seat' quality that WtP never fails to deliver. I concede that my knowledge of this period could be written on a stamp, but I just did not go for it in the same way. What really struck me was that it did not even come close to Peloponnesian War in wanting to play again, or period flavour. So, rightly or wrongly, it joined the for sale list and was snapped up by buyers with more patience than I.
I understand from the rumour mill that I have been accused of yellow journalism, being a mountebank and a cad, a deflowerer of Essex Ladies and being an enthusiastic fan of the AC Cobra. I plead guilty to only the latter charge. The group who seem to have got the wind up are the gossiping women at Wargames Developments who, if they cast their mind back to the Victorian Military Fair 1994, where I asked some pointed questions, and to Salute where I played their execrable Gordon matrix game, will know that I speak from a position of knowledge, albeit very limited. I feel I cannot be alone in thinking that Matrix Games are a bag of snot, and response from the readers of Wargames Illustrated at least indicates it is 50/50. So I must be right. As for the sensationalism, that lead Frank Dunn to compare me to a journalist (lawks a lordy), well it got the readers interested and it was what the editor asked for. The column has toned down now to discussions of the latest whizzo figures, periods, books, painting techniques and whether we can expect a decent set of historical miniatures rules this century. I've even had to self-edit my tirade against the re-enactment wankers who dress up and preen in those ill fitting uniforms when I found out that two of my figure designer idols enjoy this as a hobby. I suppose if Yellow Journalism meant total cowardice and selective insults, I had be guilty as hell.
There has been an awful lot of talk about the recent Battleground computer games from Talonsoft. Considering there was hardly any interest in the first in the series, Ardennes, the build up in support, interest and presumably sales of Gettysburg and Waterloo have been remarkable. I have played both of the games, thanks to review copies blagged through the Wl column (otherwise a cool £90 'value'), and can report in as follows: good aesthetics, flavoursome, very playable, debatable history - pretty much a miniatures game in all respects, really. Seriously though, there are similarities, even to the extent of the hexagonal terrain (beautifully done in Gettysburg, fractally 'improved' in Waterloo to its detriment) which looks like GeoHex, and the figures are mounted four to a base on little stands.
The big missing element is command control, of almost any sort. Sometimes your units run away, and sometimes they get tired and irritable, or run out of ammo (even at Waterloo) but most of the time they do exactly what you want them to. March here. March there. Charge those guns. Attack that landwehr unit behind the crestline, no not the Highlanders next door. Etc. What is frustrating is that this would not have been difficult to add as an option - at no risk to 'the public' who buy this sort of thing, and adding value for the rest of us. The other sticking point is casualty rates. These seem to swing wildly from just the one man getting a nasty graze from a close range musket volley, to 300 of the finest British cavalry being wiped out by a unit of shaky voltigeurs in line. I had charged the Greys in, shouting 'Ride them Down!' (to the annoyance of Drouet de Poynter sitting next to me) and needed the Householders to save my bacon and extract me from the mass of stabbing 1st Corps bayonets. Odd.
One of the adverse comments concerns the artificial intelligence (a chap I was at school with had this ailment, and actually went up to Oxford in the end). In truth, I had not noticed this initially as we tend to play two player, 'hot seating' and reading old copies of PA when it is not your turn at the keyboard*. But when I tried d'Erlon's attack on my own recently, I was the French for once, (CHV: the unthinkable has at last occurred!) there were some mighty weird things happening on the other side. If I had to nail it down, I had say there was an intermittent bug in the targeting logic - units sometimes chose to fire on the biggest but furthest units, ignoring those climbing the walls in front, or sometimes just fired into the walls for good measure.
* I lied about PA.
The interesting aspect, played two player, is that any of the larger scenarios are going to take you around five or six hours. This means you have around half that as down time, and the total time is probably comparable to a boardgame or a faster playing miniatures game. So one wonders where it scores? Well, lack of set up time, the ability to turn on 'fog of war' hidden units (I had recommend this as a default option) and the ability to save and come back to it without annexing the kitchen table. And with Waterloo you can also play by email - make your move, save it, and mail it to Joe in California. Not bad.
Despite my liking for Napoleonics (you'd noticed, I am sure), I would say that Gettysburg gets the nod as the better of the two and the more playable game. The scenarios are more interesting, it plays quicker, the terrain is much better than the Fractal Fields of Flanders, and I do not have to cringe every time a unit pops up with the wrong designation, or wearing a kilt when it should not. Overall though, these games have made a big advance in the spheres of graphics, playability and sales. We need someone to come along (preferably without the terminal hubris of Jim Rose) to add in the history and by the time we all have huge 3D monitors and photo realistic graphics, we could be there. Another couple of years then?
Interesting stats from Mr Moorehead on gamekits sales, and I am embarrassed to say my positive outpourings (deserved, without doubt) were partly responsible for 25% of Ironman Football shifted. If and when I get my gamekits done, I shall be expecting sales of less than 50 which I nevertheless think is a figure worth aiming at, certainly for the obscure subjects I have in mind. With The Tour, we did 50 and sold almost 200, so reprinting became a way of life. Good to see Sim Workshop and yourself still blazing the trail. One day, I might finally get one finished.
Lots of good stuff from Craig Ambler and Ian Drury last issue. I think Ian, with his W.W.I card system, has unwittingly solved a design problem I had on stamina for bike racing (!) and I would be very interested in seeing Craig's Napoleonic rules, if he has them on paper and does not mind. Even from that brief precis, they read better than 99% of the commercially available sets. However, he'd better move fast as I have a hunch that there will be a lot of card driven systems in 1997. With Piquet already on the market, and Bryan Ansell's to follow, I know of a number of people with 'ideas' and card systems are much talked about at shows. This is good, since one of them might crack it, and bad because they will be expensive (with the cards) and I will have to wade through them to find the good one.
Cor, have you seen the latest Vae Victii? (CHV: bitching!) I understand from comments overheard that some of the games may be less than original, but who cares? We only buy them, look at the pictures and cuddle them in bed anyway. Who plays the games? No one! Sorry, lost it completely there. (CHV: Don't listen to him Theophile, I cut them all out and assemble them on six-board then I stroke them). What I liked about the recent issues is the continued mix (issue game, miniatures, books, computers and boardgames - hard to imagine this combo surviving in the UK), the upgrading of even their outstanding counter artwork and the subject matter - I was particularly taken by the Fields of Battle issue and the Kepis Rouges illos. The only aspects I do not like are the reviews, which sometimes seem to be written without much (or any) play and the fact that the historical article gives the lie to the next issue's game - I had rather be surprised, especially when it is WWII or Vietnam.
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© Copyright 1996 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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