I finally have the time to send in a few comments. I really liked the last PAs; it feels very good to see some actual criticism based on content again, as opposed to the "OK, so its ahistorical but look at the nice counters!" crowd that seems to be endemic today. I particularly liked the On to Moscow design essay, and Steve Thomas' reviews. It is been some time since I've written in (feels like years ago and actually that's true), so I have a fair number of games that I've tried in between.
We have played several campaigns of the Successors variant to Alexandros from Command #14, using Field of Battle for tactical resolution, and are still as much impressed as ever how well it works. You should really finish it up, I have been asked several times (also on the net) where one could get these rules. Yet I do not see it on the list of projects any more! If you do not intend to publish it, you might at least put the draft out for free. As time passes, Alexandros will have less instant recognition, and I think it is an excellent vehicle for gaining interest in FoB (not to speak of the fact that it provides nice counters).
We played the Successors game with three players, and in this configuration it is of course inherently more balanced than Alexandros. It did bring out a few shortcomings of the original game and system. First, because players do not have to pay maintenance for units and attrition is relatively rare, one year without campaigning will often see all units on the board. Strategically, getting the right unit mix for your battles becomes less important than gobbling up those units left for replacement before another player gets them. Second, the Seleucid player always turned out to be much stronger than historical. After some experimenting, we found out that Seleucus could be held at bay by the other two players only if they kept him east of the Persian core provinces. In other words, letting Seleucus get Babylon meant that he was stronger than both together. There are several factors at work here.
The Successors rules make the Indians too passive, and the split set-up for the Indian army is an open invitation to Seleucus to walk in, defeat it in detail, and take the two Indus valley provinces, when historically, he actually had to temporally cede Gandara and other provinces to get peace. In addition, the large number of mountain provinces east of Persepolis makes for a sizeable income (much higher than what Greece and Anatolia bring). Finally, Egypt is so small that Ptolemaios has no chance to ever get enough income to defend himself (even at sea) unless he takes a chain of provinces right up to Babylon or beyond.
We came up with the following quick fixes:
- maintenance costs for military units (half of the recruitment costs)
- Divide Egypt into two Rich provinces (possibly even giving each an economic value of 3)
- give a "2" economic value to Libya (representing control over Cyrene, just off the map to the west)
- require the owner of the eastern provinces of the ex-Persian empire (whichever player it is) to maintain garrisons there. At the moment, we consider requiring one unit per economic point produced by the area. That would mean the value of those provinces would be effectively halved in military value if the above rule on unit maintenance were added.
- if the Indians have been reduced below maximum strength by losses, they receive two units per turn until the are back to full strength. (If Seleucus owns all Indian provinces, the reinforcements appear in the Thar desert.)
It should be noted that most of these fixes (in particular the improvements of Egypt) are much closer to the historical reality anyway. They are completely untested, though.
I also bought, for the first time ever, a 3W boxed game (The Guadalcanal Campaign), just in time for 3W's demise. Guadalcanal has long been a topic in which I've been interested, and with few games on the topic: the fossil AH game, an amateur release from AHIKS (a nice small game, but with a small map area and a weak OOB), and GMT's Operation Shoestring, which combines a very long playing time with weak historicity. There are two games in Guadalcanal Campaign box. One, Long Lance, is a straightforward tactical naval game on the night battles around Guadalcanal. An acceptable 1970s-style game, but VG's Tokyo Express has done this a lot better. The other, Henderson Field, covers the land campaign from September to the end of November, and does an excellent job of it. The rules are standard, with few surprises. There are hidden stacks and dummy units for the Japanese, and special unit capabilities for engineers and various types of tanks and SP guns. The game shows the ebb and flow of the campaign very well, with the US side clinging to its perimeter, and the Japanese probing to find a weak spot.
What also becomes clear is that for most of the duration of the campaign, Japanese chances to break through the defence were not good. There is a special rule that no US reinforcements can land on the island while Henderson Field is partially under Japanese control (and after control is regained, they are delayed for one day for each day it remained Japanese-controlled). I am not sure this reflected the historical stance - Halsey certainly would have tried to push reinforcements in for a counteroffensive. This looks a bit like a balancing mechanism. At least it gives the Japanese a true chance a staging a killer offensive before the US November reinforcements arrive - if they manage to get adjacent to Henderson, the US reinforcements will not appear and the US will be crushed.
The main criticism I've seen aimed at the game is that the reinforcements and naval bombardments are fixed to the historical schedule (although an optional rule allows the full 38th division to arrive based on a dieroll instead of the remnants that landed historically). I think it is still an enjoyable game, but have to agree that it is only part of the show. We've tried to get around this by combining it with the Operation Shoestring air/naval system (starting with the US invasion in August), and the land game worked just as well, but the faults of the Shoestring naval rules are a major problem in balancing the historical effects. For example, they do not impose any fuel limits on the Combined Fleet which can thus cruise in Guadalcanal waters without interruption.
Some other games that have accumulated: Guadalajara 1937 from Alea magazine. Supposed to simulate an Italian attack on Republican forces together with the subsequent counteroffensive. A fairly simple system, units are organised in divisions and must remain within the command radius of their HQs. Unfortunately the combat system is the game's undoing. Units have as many steps as their combat strength and are only eliminated outright if they cannot retreat. Units in ZOCs must attack, and combat is differential-based, with a +2 differential already sufficient for a pretty safe success. Unfortunately, the Italians start the game with overwhelming strength - the +2 can always be found somewhere, and in the second player's phase, the Republicans (often unable to retreat due to the ZOCs that also force them to attack) have to attack at a negative differential to complete their own disembowelment. By the time that significant Republican reinforcements arrive, Republican losses have accumulated to a degree where the reinforcements merely serve as additional cannon fodder. Given the large number of divisions in the game, as well as the need for loss markers for almost every unit, stacks become dizzyingly high towards the end (with Republican combat units disappearing, their HQ's alone sometimes were stacked three or four high on the remaining hexes as the pockets were crushed). Verdict: forgettable unless fixed.
Pacific Fleet from Hobby Japan: Of the games on the War in the Pacific, this seems to be the best one that is still playable in at most a couple of weekends. The main negative aspect is that the port ratings on the map are fixed throughout the war and are based on the historical peak use, so the strategic deployments are kind of predetermined - for example, Noumea certainly did not have a larger harbour or better port facilities than Sydney. Apart from this, I like the game a lot. The map uses megahexes for combat execution - all carriers and bases in a megahex (and long range bombers from neighbouring ones) can join in one battle, and produce believable results without the usual complex intercept mechanisms (although the sequence of play, with roughly weekly turns embedded in bimonthly strategic turns, is still quite involved).
Chicken of the Sea from Gamefix: I liked it - finally a system which gives one the opportunity to fight full-sized classical naval battles, although the feeling that a counter is a whole squadron is not really there. I did not get the feeling that the command system is particularly historical either (although when looking at current descriptions of the battles I get the impression that no one knows how they did it anyway), but at least the resulting squadron sizes seem to fit the record.
Budapest 1945: The forerunner of a long series of Command games with similar systems. A quite different approach from the usual Command fare, with fog of war and both sides' doctrine and flexibility built into the sequence of play.
Gazala: Second in the series. The verdict on play balance is still open. I liked the idea of the Green Line that gives the Axis the permanent ability to outflank the Allies, but the supply rules are too simplistic. Rommel can survive indefinitely in the Cauldron. He has to move on eventually to take Tobruk and win, so it may be balanced, but the game does not bring across the urgency which is indicated by what I've read on the battle - where Rommel had to do *something* to reopen his supply lines that he had partially lost when he outflanked the line but could not neutralise Bir Hacheim. In the game, he can always draw full supply even if Bir Hacheim still holds out.
Lee's Greatest Gamble: I tried this several times, with and without your proposed fixes. They help some but not enough. The ultimate effect is still that the defender, by retreating at one hex per turn, can generally prevent any attacks (as implicitly admitted by the designer when he added the "one unit may always ignore the command restrictions" erratum, some issues later).
Also, the terrain-free victory conditions that supposedly are closer to reality than VP hexes miss an important point. Yes, when Meade and Lee gave battle there, they did not initially do this to find out who would hold Cemetery Ridge. But once the positions had solidified there after the first day, individual terrain did take on considerable importance after all. Once an army has settled on a particular defensive position, if pushed off, it will typically not simply shrug this off and slog to the next hill to do it again (the Russians at Zorndorf are more the exception than the rule). In particular since in being pushed off it will typically be roughly handled. In other words, which hill it is may be irrelevant, but given the situation it was quite likely that the Union troops would try to hold onto SOME hill.
And if that hill was not held, Meade would have retreated and regrouped. Instead, in the game, there is no such commitment at all. In one of our games, the Confederates managed to take Cemetery Ridge, splitting the Union in two, with the western wing being pushed up the Round Tops slopes. What happened? The Union troops on both sides of the breakthrough calmly held their position once the Confederate attack status was lost, and on the next day, with the Confederates weakened by their attacker's losses (and unable to move their train through because of some unattackable Union units maintaining a line of sight to the exit road), both Union fragments, with a good command dieroll, counterattacked in unison to cause some more Confederate losses before the battle ended. I find the Across 5 Aprils victory conditions, which postulate a set of (psychological) requirements for each day, based on terrain, much more convincing. If one side thought things were going acceptably well, it fought. If not, there was no reason to continue the battle.
Yom Kippur: A very fluid game, unfortunately too fluid for the situation. Given the movement allowances and the move-fight-exploit-fight sequence of the SCS, units can move across most of the map in their turn. The result is that both sides do not form any kind of front, but instead huddle their units together in small defensible clusters since the enemy will be able to run rings around them anyway in his phase. This also leads to funny situation like the Israeli motorised artillery scooting forward to the front to shoot, and then scooting back into safety in the exploitation phase.
What seems to be completely missing to me is the flavour of the war. The accounts I've read tend to stress the continuous bickering and recriminations that went on on both sides (particularly on the Israeli side), with a lot of activity along the vertical connections in the command structure, and units being assigned frontages to fight on. In the game, there is no trace of that, units have their historical designations, but are switched around like so much small change. The canal crossings allow all units to move and draw supply over just one bridge, and the Egyptians will sail on to sure victory if they manage to roll the release of the exploitation reserve on the first couple of turns. Finally, their reserves slam onto the board and whack the upstarts the moment the Israelis dare to cross the canal. Nice-looking, but not one of their best. I have since played Crisis: Sinai, and while somewhat slower to play and overloaded in spots, it provides a much better impression of what went on.
Germania: Last instalment in the Ancient Wars series. This is a physically smaller game than the others, with both sides mostly having to come to grips with the decidedly unfriendly terrain and the attrition rules. The Germans, without cities of their own, either strike quickly or their leaders have to spend lots of time touring the tribal centres and recruiting replacements for attrition losses.
Friedland: Played all the scenarios, liked it a lot, bought Borodino, am waiting for Eylau. The main problem I have with the command system is that individual initiative and effectiveness of subordinate leaders is not represented (except for command range, which is not quite the right thing). If the command system allows for a co-ordinated attack, any fool is good enough to carry it out. But the system is commendably quick, small, and looks good. Also, the replacement counter idea is appropriate here and because of limited stacking and game size, it is usually easy to replace a counter.
Belisaire (Vae Victis): clearly an Alexandros clone, but with some very interesting improvements. For example, each side gets a number of activity points per turn (by secretly rolling a die and adding the commander's strategy rating), and everything a player does during then turn (move a force to a different area, fight a battle, lay sieges, etc.) costs him a number of points. Makes for very interesting scheming and manoeuvring. Players can move by land or sea, fight naval battles, and have a number of dummy counters to confuse the opponent.
All very nice. Unfortunately, the tactical system is worthless (where have I seen this before...). The CRT is arranged as if morale checks were minor annoyances, and step losses to be feared, but actually, it is the lost morale checks that are the real killers. Arguably, that is how it should be, but it does not happen *when* it should. In our first battle, a smaller Gothic force eliminated a much larger Byzantine force simply because it had better chances (being weak, NB) to inflict a morale check than step losses. Back to the drawing board... I have not yet tried the DBA connection published one or two issues later. I note that neither the promised campaign game nor the promised advanced tactical system has appeared so far (although the recent Champs de Bataille uses very similar counters, I did not get the impression that it mentions any immediate applicability to Belisaire).
Marignan 1515 (Vae Victis): A major dierolling orgy, since units have to test for disorder every time they cross a terrain feature, and testing for disorder is the most typical combat result. At the same time, it plays reasonably quickly, and the victory conditions (which are based on routed French corps and cumulative Swiss losses) are quite effective. Initially, we had problems moving the Swiss quickly enough up to the French entrenchments so that they were shredded by French fire. Once Swiss marching is effective enough to get to the French line in good condition (and to positions where at least some of the guns cannot fire), they have a very good chance of getting across. Once they are on the first hill, they go through the French like a pike through Swiss cheese.
In fact, we've never been able to pull of the historical French recovery. A counterattack by the excellent cavalry on the right wing seems to help, but is not enough to stop the Swiss in time. So the verdict on this one is still open. My opponent noted that not all the armament used on the French icons seems fully appropriate to him, but I'm not the expert to judge on that.
Fontenoy 1745: Little to add to what you said about it. Punching holes in the French lines is not too hard, the problem is exploiting them to any degree before the second line kicks the attackers back out and plugs them again. To be played once.
Samurai Sunset: Finally got a copy of this very early Command game. Joe Miranda plus Ty Bomba sounded very promising, but like Tet '68 it turned out to fall short of the mark. In all our games (and trying the different scenarios), the Japanese were simply crushed. US superiority is strong enough to keep losses low, and the landings themselves are generally bloodless, since there is lots of undefended coastline (quite odd, this - does not appear to coincide with everyone's expectations for the campaign). A simple litmus test (comparing the results of the earlier scenario with the set-up of the later scenario) shows that the set-up is unachievable by starting earlier and playing on - Japanese losses are far too high.
The Legend Begins Deluxe: I share Steve Thomas' view that it this is a superb game with some annoying but fixable flaws. I wonder if he has played with the optional re-roll rules that allow the Germans to repeat bad dierolls and force the British to repeat good ones? So far, my experience was insufficient to judge play balance objectively. However, that will not fix the lack of realistic constraints on British doctrine. For the record, I have seen an Italian victory in the first scenario - after a British error that allowed most of the Italian mechanised forces to get adjacent to Mersa Matruh by passing through passive ZOCs and leaving sufficient units behind to guarantee supply, the Italians rolled a 6 on the Italian attack table and then a 5 and a 6 for combat resolution in a 1:1 attack to take it. I guess those dierolls are an accurate representation of the Italian chances.
TGWiNE: Shows the ebb and flow of the historical campaigns a reasonably accurate way, but with some odd effects. The set-up guarantees a victory hex (Ahwaz) to the Turks on the first turn, so the Russians have to set up to prevent Turkish access to the second victory city in the north of Persia at all means, or the game ends immediately. The Russian set-up will thus be significantly skewed unless one agrees on a house rule. I like the chit system - it may smack of choreography, but it is random after all, and it makes it possible to put events in that are theoretically beneath the scale of the game but nevertheless important.
However, the sudden death supply system is even worse here than in TGWIE, because fronts are not so well defined. Advancing armies in bad terrain will not guard their supply lines (since there are no supply lines, there are none to defend, not even the historical lonely railways in the Caucasus or Palestine), instead they will fan out as far as possible into the desert (or mountains) to keep the enemy from going around their flanks, where even a cavalry brigade will be sufficient to kill six divisions without their having a chance to react if their supply line length is then extended by one hex. My reading of history, in particular in Iraq, is different. Some kind of partial attrition seems to be needed here (as in TGWiE).
Blood on the Tigris: This game is another instance of what appears to be a disturbing new trend at S&T. Apparently in an attempt to emulate XTR's success with simple games (notably diminished though since Ben Knight is at AH), they are now producing simple games of their own by hacking the rules of submitted games down to ten pages, come what may. One would assume the Med War fiasco should have taught them this will not work.
Now as then, the result is that clarity is reduced instead of complexity. Perry Moore stated that the original BotT submission was 20 pages long and included several additional, shorter scenarios. A similar fate has apparently befallen the earlier Guadalcanal game. With regard to Steve Thomas' review, I agree with many criticisms, but have to point out that at least from a rules POV, the lack of British steamers till turn 8 is *not* an issue. The rules make full allowance for the British gaining a steamer on turn 1 as they did historically, by capturing it at Basra. The Turks will not be able to move the steamer that sets up there away in time. That the S&T staff did not mention this possibility in response to his questions merely shows that they have little clue with regard to some of the games they produce.
Given the "hack and slash" treatment and the rising errata rate over the last year after a fairly good period, that is only consistent with experience. Also, I concede that the solution to the steamer issue will be academic in most playings of the game since to get the steamer, the British have to repulse the Turkish gunboat and then get the right dieroll for a capture. Overall the probability for getting the historical result is thus a mere 25% or thereabouts, and most playings will take a different course, with the British stuck south of Qurna for a long time. The Kut scenario, in my opinion, shows that what the game lacks most are limited intelligence rules (however hard those may be to design). Ignorance about enemy strength was what let Townsend attack a superior force (and would have kept the Turks from leisurely looping cavalry around the enemy flanks on what might turn out to be a one-way trip unless you have perfect knowledge of enemy dispositions).
Personal complaint at the end: Nowadays, one should be able to expect that any game that places any emphasis on hierarchical structures (for command or supply), as this does with division HQs being important for both, will have divisional affiliations clearly and visibly marked on the counters. Instead, we find vintage 1970's tiny divisional ID's hidden on the brigade counters, but a lot of colours and detail was spent on putting the right plane icon on the air counters - a classic case of form over function.
Regarding your game kits: Flodden is not exactly my cup of tea (although I will play it with a friend shortly), but some of the upcoming stuff (Quatre Bras but in particular Mars-la-Tour) sounds really interesting. Considering Field of Battle, I humbly submit whether you have thought of making it available via the Internet? I get the impression that you are not at the moment interested in exploiting it commercially, yet its main appeal, the compatibility and usability for Alexandros (and possibly the Casus Belli Gallic War game), is receding into the past at a fairly quick pace. I posted several replays of the Diadochi scenario for Alexandros on the net, and got a number of queries about Field of Battle, but I fear that five years from now hardly anyone will remember what Alexandros is and copies are quite hard to come by even now.
[CHV: The choice is not between working further or releasing it now (since it is presently partially disassembled), it is between doing nothing and doing something. Since I already work until depression renders me ill I elect to do nothing. Selah].
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