Nicholas Barker I recently found myself playing TAHGC's Successors, with high hopes. The game is loosely based on the Hannibal system. (CHV: To be fair to Richard Berg, it was not his intention to make this link, but TAHGC did it). It was a bit late in the evening and, through rather blurred vision, I spent most of my time complaining about how awful the game was. I tried a second time the next morning, and still hated it. (Tried it sober, and tried it drunk, nothing in it either way.) To my huge amusement, it was only then that someone told me that it was a Berg design. Nice one, Dickie! I really should have spotted this earlier, but I had sort of assumed that TAHGC had more sense, especially after they were conned into publishing Berg's egregious and migraine-inducing pirates game which came out a few years ago. The whole thing is covered in chrome, and has the classic Berg feel, which is of a fully-loaded furniture van with a 50 cc engine. Only four players, but you hang around waiting for everyone to take a turn. There is also very limited player interaction. I won my second game pretty easily despite nipping away for a quick smoke or two whenever it was not my turn. Despite all the chrome, all it really boils down to is a question of building up your forces for several hours, and then biffing the smaller stacks. There are some deep implausibilities in the rules. If you get biffed in battle you can suddenly turn up with all your troops a few thousand miles away. One of the leaders dies on turn 3 (because he did historically). No possibility that he dies on turn 2 or 4, no siree, it has to be turn 3. If you are besieging a town your forces always stay the same size because attrition only kills one step and, by not moving, you can recruit a step. Neat or what? Who needs to worry about dysentery or starvation with the advantage of ancient Greek sanitation? Civilisation clearly took a few steps backwards later on, at least in terms of siege technology. Similarly, a huge army can sit out in the desert and never take any attrition if it stays where it is. As soon as it moves, it takes attrition. Oh, yeah, right. I would urge anyone who is looking for a game which is both fun and historically accurate, with some interesting choices for all players, to avoid this abortion like the plague. CHV: My experience of Richard's work on BNA being what it was I decided to hold off on this game. Mike Siggins Got the chance to play Atlantic Storm and have to say I was surprised - by nature rather than quality. It is not bad, but it isn't much of a wargame - the back of the box indicates otherwise. Simulation value is very low, flavour is iffy (you play both sides at will, but I am pleased because Das Boot images are not pleasant) historicity is mainly from card text. The card system is properly multi player and (Ben Knight design) quite interesting, but flawed and not high on decision making. There are Kingmaker problems, inability to circumvent a duff hand, the need to wait until it is your turn to decide and major repetition. It is just an odd game for AH to do. Almost a German card game (and not a great one) with a historical veneer. Briefly: a convoy card is turned over. It may be Atlantic or Arctic. It has a year and a number of victory points. These are 'filters' for your cards - instantly you can't play much of your hand as the year or theatre is wrong. Lead player plays a card, declares whether it will be air, surface or sub or all three combined. This is the third filter - narrowing your choice again. He sides with the baddies or the allies that is, he attacks with Subs/Condors or the Gneisenau or defends with escorts. There are special cards for stuff like Huff Duff, St Nazaire and Hedgehogs. Your choice is to side with him, but you must 'Out Prien' him to get the big points, or to oppose, thus sinking Das Boot and claiming the convoy and U boat kills. Sometimes (about 20% of the time for me) you have no card at all - that is, filtered out or not worth playing) so you discard and hope for a bigger convoy later on... With three it was okay, would be better with more. Playing last can be powerful (it rotates) but equally it can be a no hoper as you can't influence the situation. For example, Convoy JJ17 appears in Arctic waters in 1941. Biff plays a rain card (either theatre) with 1941 on it. It is dastardly von Testikle in U999. He declares "sub" and has a value of three. Buffy plays next and decides to counter with HMS Flowerpot (sub value 3). The convoy is on tenterhooks... and along comes Lothar in U65 and tips the balance with special torpedoes (1) and a die roll (some ratings are a d6). He rolls 5, totals six (nine for the Germans vs allied 3) and claims the convoy points. von Testikle gets the corvette kill. On to the next round. 20 reps as my old weight training coach used to say. Before I killed him. There is a 'fate' element too, which is quite neat but needs to be constantly checked. Some cards have a 'nemesis' and if you can match them up you get an instant win. So a submariner card may have QQ17 listed. If he comes up against QQ17, that's it - the convoy is rust and wreckage. One oddity so far: one U commander was captured in 1942 per his card but in the game managed to keep on killing boats from his POW camp in Scotland. Damn clever these Germans. The graphics are done in Bryce, just like Babylon 5 Component! Bryce is my tip for most common graphic effect of 1998... The review will read "One merchantman short of a convoy" but it is not horrible. We will play again. Expensive though, 16 to 20 quid here. Ulrich Blenemann Thank you very much for another great PA issue. Nick Barker mentions that he would like to see someone picking up the rights to Modern Naval Battles. Well, One Small Step, publisher of Competitive Edge, have the rights to MNB and will release a new "deluxe" edition. No release date has been stated yet. Game prices: In my opinion, it depends what you get out of a game. If you just open the box of a game and then put it away without playing, $40 is a lot of money. However, if you spend 50+ hours on a game you enjoy, $40 is certainly not much - especially if compared to other entertainment activities like visiting a concert, seeing a sports game, going to the cinema, or having a nice dinner. CHV: Correct, although where the big tag has big rules one needs to think how much time it will cost to get to be able to play it. HBTLF's big tag (for example) is peanuts in terms of my budget (I would buy a couple of books for that without blinking) BUT because of its size I know I'll never play it. In fact, upon due consideration, I realise the price is irrelevant it is the time that matters! But maybe if its cheap enough we can exercise Plausible Deniability. Steve Thomas Had a few questions about Vae Victis and thought you may be able to offer some ideas. I took out a subscription and have several copies. Have you played the Meuse 1940 game? We tried it twice and it just did not work as far as we could see. The Germans just got nowhere. The French were just too good and flexible with the ability to launch significant counterattacks. More interestingly the Germans couldn't even do what they did historically. Rommel's Panzer division actually put units across the river on the very first turn of the game and by the second day had a significant portion of the division across. There is no way they can do this in the game. Panzer divisions can't cross except at a bridge. By the time the Germans can build one the French have covered the river bank with a solid wall of units. What do you do about the counters? Do you stick them onto cardboard or doubleside them. Putting them onto cardboard was OK but then trying to doubleside them required infinite care. If your out by 1mm then the whole think is messed up. When you cut the counters out it means one side or the other is going to be cut badly. I took out a subscription last year and ordered some back copies. Gettysburg, Loire (based on the PA reviews) and Crusades. They were posted on 16th Jan and arrived in early May (we were on holiday at the time). That's a story not a criticism. I rather like the games, good value, playable (in an evening), simple and fun. Command has become a joke these days. I hardly even bother to look at the games, strange subjects at times, too big, too much work and invariably the games are hopeless. CHV: The Meuse game looks to be a little too quick to assist French reaction, German units were already across the river when the game begins. David Fox Joe Miranda's The Sun Never Sets sounds like it's worth a look-- I'll see if I can snag Richard Berg's copy, or maybe just wait for the French Foreign Legion game to come out. Has anybody else noticed that while "Strategy & Tactics" is steadily improving as Joe Miranda hits his stride, the quality of "Command" has really dropped off? I haven't seen a good game in "Command" since Wave Of Terror (back in early 1997 !!!) and some real dogs like Attila, Yarmuk, and Hell Before Night. I suspect that XTR's decision to publish two games an issue has spread their talent far too thinly, and with Ted Raicer dropping out of sight, the "Command" staff has pretty much vanished from public view. Kudos to Joe M., however, for doing so well with S&T. And while I am dropping compliments, I'd just like to take a moment to praise in these pages the job that John Kranz has been doing with his Virtual Wargamers Discussion Board on the Internet. With this one resource- created, maintained, and administered by John for absolutely free- he has done more for wargaming in the past two years than the rest of the hobby combined. Accessible via the Internet (the address is www.manzana.com), the VWDB contains a host of discussions about wargames, military history, and wargame-related topics (including furious discussions about the Vietnam War and the benefits/evils of capitalism, I kid you not), as well as links to other wargame websites. Richard Berg has moved the BROG website to the VWDB after becoming fed up with America Online's customer service policies (with Charles Vasey taking his place on AOL, plug, plug) In addition, some very clever companies have used the VWDB to market their forthcoming games. It's a fantastic website, full of great information and lively discourse; every wargamer with Internet access should run there immediately! Any chance of John K. getting a Dukedom out of this? If so, I hereby nominate him. (CHV: Marshalates are my exclusive prerogative impudent Johnny Yankee, however your entreaties have touched my Imperial heart and it is the Duchy of Bassano for John. The location is now http://www.consimworld.com/webx. Be warned that a lot of crap appears there but you can also get some good topic discussions.) A very good summary of Krieg by Steve Thomas. Although I am by no means a fan of strategic-level W.W.II, I'd heard enough wonderful comments about this game to finally purchase it, and am quite glad that I did. Some exceptionally clever design/development work in evidence here, with excellent use of cards to drive the stickier strategic stuff (Peter Piper picked a peck...) like economics and unit-building. I, too, found the rules to be very tough going, but do not despair, the designers are VERY active on-line and responsive to even the most obtuse questions. That said, I did not care for the retreat rules much, myself, as I think they're very gamey, written to allow the sweeping armoured breakthroughs required for historical results. So I do not require retreating units to pick up friendly stacks they retreat through. Instead, I allow the attacker a second "exploitation" attack after pursuit against enemy units that have been retreated through, and that seems to give the right results. I also do not buy Germany's ability to potentially sign up Belgium/Holland, Norway/Denmark, and Greece as allies, and so gain Green Strategic Hexes on the cheap. These were not governments that were about to ally with the Nazis, so my house rule is that the Axis must grab those countries through good old-fashioned conquest. But aside from the above, KRIEG is an outstanding game, a real surprise and suddenly one of my all-time favourites (see below). As I was reading a book on the Gulf War, I noticed that one of the UK 1st Armoured Division's brigadiers in the Gulf was named Ian Drury. That's not the same Ian Drury that we see in PA, is it? (CHV: I am not at liberty to answer this question for reasons of state). Mark Pitcavage Avalon Hill, for those who may not know it yet, passed up Origins completely this year, allowing the Armoury to shill some of its games. Needless to say, AH's imminent releases, including For The People (designer Mark Herman was walking around holding the box), were not released at the convention. It was a black spot on a convention which otherwise sported the debut of a surprisingly high number of wargames. Mike Siggins Well, the plan for today was to play Chariot Lords but one of the players dropped out so we were stumped with only three. Instead, we played Montjoie using the rules headed Joan of Arc which I got through Esdevium Games. Basically, the game is a cross between Africa 1880 and Condottiere (a rather unashamed cross in the latter case). The problem we had (so much so that it got shelved after an hour or so) is the rules need a lot of tightening up. Definitions (fortification etc.) are very weak, as is combat/card effects. I am also a little worried about play balance (Flanders seems to be a poor option) and the fact that a vital chart was missing from my game. CHV: Ed Wimble and Mike are hosting on this topic even as I type. Robert Lesco Ever heard of an outfit called MKD? Desert Fox Games lists three titles Game Auction, Race for Space, and of most interest to me Montcalm & Wolfe? (CHV: This is Rob Markham's company. The first of these is a "German" game taking a number of waggish shots at the Hobby. The last of them will be reviewed in these pages). Competitive Edge #12 features an interesting looking solitaire effort, which I have not tried yet, called Der Kessel - Escape from Stalingrad. What catches my interest is that the game not only asks you to re-examine the common notion that von Paulus was some sort of fool but it also factors in the overall strategic situation so that by holding out the Sixth Army is drawing Soviet attention away from other areas of the front which is not unfolding favourably for the Germans. Increased commitment to relieving and sustaining the pocket by Hoth or the Luftwaffe is detrimental to the overall picture. (CHV: That sounds rather like a German Apologist view, losing all those men was pretty detrimental itself!) Regarding Martin James' letter I wonder if you or your readers could suggest appropriate games to start young people on and what games to follow up with. Those 'introductory' games that were in favour a few years ago were quite disappointing. My oldest son is 6 and I am not sure what to try. He may not be old enough but he certainly asks a lot of questions and shows interest. So far we've only done Chess and Stratego. Back to Perfidious Albion #97 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com