PA 94 (you can coast to the century now, Mr Vasey) was one of the best of recent issues. Set against a background of drastically changing roles - Siggins buying very few games, Vasey enthusiastic about new releases - it made a refreshing noise in the near silence from the rest of the historical gaming hobby. Wherever that may be hiding these days. Thanks to Boulder Jim's recent list, I did a short take on the forthcoming titles from every company out there and found, once again, I am relying purely on you completing one of your projects before the Millennium celebrations, and on those mainstream titles as yet unannounced.
I have a lingering hope that Mark Herman's For the People will be purchasable, but leaks starting to emerge indicate that even this will not be worth the candle (or AH's interesting pricing policy) which leaves only Kosakowski's Napoleonic venture and whatever Randy Moorehead comes up with. Of course pricing is the other recent trend that has virtually killed off my purchases. Talk of some games pushing three figures here in the UK, and almost any big box game at 35 or 40 quid, and those formerly expensive computer games start to look very good value. And it is only a matter of time before we get games as good as those on paper. Not being able to analyse markets, I would be interested in your views on this trend towards smaller and smaller print runs and higher prices - presumably the classic specialist market. While there is a modest core of gamers willing to pay a lot for their next fix, all is well, but in economic terms it cannot be long before these numbers dwindle and the market dies. The Witherer spoke, and the truth is evident.
With my other hat on, that of latent miniatures gamer, I can report no great progress from our painting and show staging chums on the historical front. The evolution of rules seems to have reached a plateau, from which the pickings are few. I would hesitate to say what is being played out there, since the last time I tried that I got lots of letters from people telling me that they were still playing Peter Gilder's rules, or WRG, and having a lot of fun thank you very much. But since the number of new rule releases is way down and each of them is a re-hash of systems going as far back as the sixties, it seems reasonable that they are not progressing in this department. The figures meanwhile seem to get better and better. Thanks to your leads, I have been able to pick up some of the recent plastic figures (exciting releases which would have been the stuff of dreams in the seventies) and for those who can handle lead, the Foundry's recent releases are some of the best figures ever made. But if the hobby contributes nothing else, it has given me the single most effective method of relaxation - painting.
I was interested to read Nick Barker's comments on Hannibal and Krieg, two games that seem to have received rather more praise than perhaps they should have. I have no quibble with what Krieg aims to do, its quality, or how it achieves it (indeed, I am eagerly awaiting the promised Napoleonic follow up) but the problem is the rules and the cards. The rules are one of the ropiest sets we have encountered and our attempt to play recently foundered quickly. Game two was helped by the index downloaded from the Internet, but there seems to be precious little logic or organisation on display here. Once you have struggled through the rules, the cards are rather opaque, even if you know a little about the history. Not a problem when you played it five times, but the first two games are spent experimenting - seeing what happens when a card, or combinations of cards, are played.
Once understood, and ones trust in historical outcomes is established, it really starts to roll. However, as much as we enjoyed even the learning process, what I would love to see is a minimal combat system grafted onto the same card system - so you would play the cards and resolve outcomes on entire fronts with a modified die roll. Now that would be a game, especially applied to something like the Seven Years War. [CHV: Get thee behind me Satan!].
Nick Barker on Patrick O'Brien: I too am proud to stand up and be counted a weed. O'Brien has the singular ability to take what should be a highly exciting theme and transform it into pure stodge - dull, overlong and mired in boring technical detail. Who cares? We want a feel of the spray and the battles, not the rigging used on the little twiddly bits near the front.
(CHV: Set your studsails Mr Siggins, and shiver the taff-rail but you have the edge of it. O'Brien supporters usually seem to be people who find life less than fulfilling. Those of us who working at 110% belong to the Fraser clan. If I wanted this sort of crap I would have joined the Navy, I employ people to sail ships, I just accept the plaudits of victory).Then again, I won't touch Sharpe in book form either, which is a shame since he has just written one on India, so I may yet have to suffer the torture of Cornwell's prose. What we really need is "Flashman" Fraser to turn his pen to the Napoleonic era - I will read his new one, Black Ajax, with interest.
Did GDW really deserve the cry of good riddance? What of Blue Max, Lobositz, Prague, Beda Fomm, Raphia, the double blind systems (many pleasant hours were spent playing Arnhem), and the working bits of White Death? Even Traveller had its moments.
Can we expect a Vasey dissection of Revolution Francaise following the recent email debacle? Stake the Bunny may have given people the wrong impression - saying a game is unplayable usually has them queuing up in droves.
Anorak Department. I have the sense that we have now passed fully into the era of true 'home' DTP. I recall Dean Essig (or someone at The Gamers, I think) saying some years ago that anyone could now grab a Mac and a friendly local printer and produce professional level game graphics. I still think that is untrue, since I do not know of any software or hardware that enables to the extent of bestowing artistic ability or translating Printerese, but we are now as close as we are going to get. The implications for gamekits, or at the very least attractive playtest kits, is that for around £ 1,000 plus tax (Pentium PC, Epson Stylus 600, Corel Draw software, hand scanner), everyone can try it, in colour. And the possibility of printing the games off as they are sold is also there.
I was pleasantly surprised by Age of Rifles (thanks for the loan) which I had avoided largely because it was not strictly my period, and because the two previous Wargame Construction Sets have been less than impressive. The big selling point is that unlike the Talonsoft approach, where you are obliged to wait for them to generate the next order of battle and pay for the privilege, AoR comes complete with that seductive editor. Not just for battlefields and orbats, but for, gasp, uniforms. [CHV: yes
Were I a betting man, I would say this system had been developed by a figure gamer. Who else would go the extra mile to provide over 200 different period jackets, tons of weapons, headgear, trousers, boots, kilts and boots, and even four horse colours, a camel, and three skin tones. To say this is all tempting is something of an understatement. To moderate this, it would take a long time to do it properly (but what fun playing around - I knocked up a couple of Crow Scouts within ten minutes of clicking the editor icon). Of course what we want is bicornes and tricornes, then you could go quite a way back. As for the history, or lack of same, I don't think there is much to distinguish AoR from the Battleground series, so in terms of value for money this knocks Talonsoft into last week, falling short only in terrain graphics. It is compact, quick, accessible, playable and some of the battles (Konnigratz and Buena Vista for starters) are entertaining. A worthy successor to Fields of Glory and given the odd few hours, I would try to pull off Quatre Bras. Good stuff.
My Top Twenty? Tough to do, since I am down to about four games (ignoring those Vasey titles, for it would embarrass the lad) plus Vae Victis. As some may know, I had a bit of a game purge recently. Indeed, were it analogous to a haircut, I would be sporting one of those worryingly short US Marine skinheads. Once I had re-adjusted my views on the 'merits' of collecting, and the chances of playing them again, I managed to sell just about everything. Even SL, Fleet and Joe Bo's ACW set went, and I once regarded those as fixtures & fittings. The only game I now regret selling, and one I shall re-buy, is We the People.
(CHV: Interestingly, I find this now almost unplayable, but so good was it that I feel it should be put out to pasture and not sent to the knacker yard).
Your back page comments on magazine distribution have, sadly, been proved true. It may be my imagination, but it has become difficult to get hold of Wargames Illustrated anywhere but in the London station branches. Not good.
I've just re-read that lot and it seems a little downbeat. I'm not, I am just waiting for something on which to hook my historical enthusiasm. It will come again, it always has, but at the moment I am getting most of my historical fixes from reading and uniforms, and my gaming enjoyment from Bullfrog's Syndicate Wars and Dungeon Keeper, and card games (primarily Middle Earth, Five Rings and Netrunner, while Star Wars has a strangely Colonial feel to it...). And whatever you may be told by embarrassed CCG addicts, I am far from alone in this. Ignoring the insidious side of collectibility (which is now easier and easier to avoid thanks to more enlightened publishers), they tend to typify exactly what I am after from games at the moment: tight, atmospheric games of medium complexity, over in an hour, very replayable and packed with lots of interesting decisions and what I call vignettes - short lived but flavoursome developments that make the game, and establish the narrative, comparable perhaps to the Little Drummer Boy or LeGros in the recent Sharpe's Waterloo - a quality missing from most historical games. No great chaos elements so far, but that can come later. Given that the duff card game designs are becoming rarer, and that we have so far seen a lot of innovation in a short period of time from this field, I suspect ultimately we will get some real mileage from these games and mechanisms.
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© Copyright 1997 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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