I P500 most GMT titles (other than monster games or games with exceptionally high complexity), and this was one I was really leery of preordering. I own both Battle Cry and Memoir '44, both very closely related to this title. The earlier games cover the American Civil War and ETO WWII respectively, and I don't know that either period is well represented in either game.
I liked BC to a point, although I wondered why they even bothered with Cavalry. The problem was that you really had no reason to put your units in harm's way. M44 addressed this problem with the addition of objectives, but you still had the problem of basically throwing your units into the meatgrinder and hoping they would survive. While this can be a faithful simulation of some situations in WWII (Omaha Beach is an excellent example), it doesn't make for a particularly interesting or competitive game. I actually found M44 to be even more luck dependent than BC, and it has gotten into my "sell" pile despite really nice production values. I have never played the original game, nor am I aware of what the differences between it and its descendent titles are.
GMT, being a wargame company, isn't quite so good with euro-style production values. I think that part of the problem is simply that they don't have the contacts or volume to make plastics cost-effective, and that's OK. What they ended up doing with C&C:A is using wooden blocks with stickers on each side. This is a cost effective idea compared to plastics, but on the other hand you really don't need to have four blocks to make up a unit if you can realign the block to represent depleted strength, so it could have been even more cost effective to use somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 of the block count.
Another somewhat bizarre idea was to use small blocks for foot units, medium squares for mounted, large for elephants, and rectangular for chariots and leaders. I understand that by making mounted units a different size, they become easily differentiated on the board, and the same goes for the other large blocks. What is a mess is trying to figure out the differences between the various light units (archers, slingers, light infantry, auxilia) on the board. The symbols are all quite small and I am still having trouble differentiating between auxilia and light infantry after a couple of practice games. Making things even more complicated is the use of different art for the Carthagian and Roman units, so that means there are actually eight different stickers just for the light units! Medium and heavy foot have at most four types, and these are easily identified, the main problem is the lights. I do think that the huge elephant counters do a great job of representing just how enormous these beasties looked on the battlefield, so that was money well spent. Note that unlike Columbia Games' titles, the blocks don't hide what units are, the stickers are on both sides.
The rest of the components are pretty much right on. The rules are pretty well written, and introduce several new concepts (see below). The player aid cards have a tremendous amount of info on them, but I suspect they could have put a terrain key on the side that explains what dice symbols are effective against what units. M44 does a great job of this by including the terrain info on extra cards. I also would have liked to have the various situations for leader loss checks as well, this doesn't take up a lot of space.
The cards are very nice, with minimal artwork (the M44 cards do nothing for me), and some require so much text that artwork is a secondary concern at any rate. I am a bit confused by exactly what the helmet on some of the cards actually allows me to do (is it only to allow detaching a leader from a unit? That seems kind of lame, but I haven't worked too much with it yet). So far, the cards seem pretty clear and I haven't had to look up what they do in the reference section of the manual yet.
The new rules differ in a few ways:
1) Battle Back. Now you have to worry about whether or not you give your opponent a free shot when you attack up close. If they aren't forced to retreat or wiped out, a unit in close combat may be able to battle back. This makes going after the very strong heavy or medium foot units a risky proposition.
2) Retreats. First, units retreat by "moves" not by spaces. For light cavalry with their move of 4 spaces, a single retreat flag may result in being sent right off of the board, and two retreat flags almost certainly will do it. I suspect these units will mostly shoot from a distance. Second, you can ignore at least one flag result with some units based on type or whether or not they have two or more supporting units near them. This makes keeping a coherent line extremely important.
3) Leaders and Cards. Some cards allow you to activate a leader in a particular area of the board along with a string of adjacent units. Again, cohesion is a big deal now.
4) Evasion. Light units and most cavalry/chariots can now choose to retreat a couple of hexes in exchange for ignoring sword, flag, and leader results. Very historical, and an excellent choice for light cavalry to avoid being run off of the board entirely.
5) Ranged combat. Pretty much exclusively only available to light units (there is a Roman "war machine" unit). In most cases, movement reduces the effectiveness of ranged combat. A few units can attack from three hexes away, but otherwise this game requires closing with the enemy.
6) Elephants. Tons of rules for these, my favorite is that if an elephant is required to retreat it has a decent shot at damaging pretty much everyone nearby. Cavalry and chariots aren't too fond of them, the horses get a tad nervous. One hit, though, is enough to take out these big boys, so you want to pick your battles with them. There are other special units (warriors, essentially medium foot with attitude; war machines, and chariots, all with special rules).
In play, these new rules make me feel like you are rewarded for effective tactics, unlike M44 where I felt like the card draw and the rolls were the primary factors and tactics were not as important to win. A cohesive line, effective use of your light units and cavalry, special units, evasion, use of leaders, all of these things play a big role in whether or not you can win. I was very nervous about trying out this title, as my last attempt to give M44 one last shot resulted in me deciding to sell it, so I'm quite happy to have a good first impression despite wishing that GMT had gone with a different unit paradigm than the earlier titles of multiple pieces per unit.
I've played the first two stock scenarios (P500 orders got four bonus scenarios), both featuring the Syracusans against the Carthaginians prior to the Punic Wars with Rome. The first game, essentially a learning scenario with no elephants or terrain, is a walkover for the Syracusans, which is a shame. A learning scenario should be a bit more balanced, although it is useful if you are familiar with the game and playing a newbie (hint: let the newbie win by giving them the Syracusans).
The second scenario, Crimossos River, is a bit tough for the Carthaginians, as they have half of their army on the other side of a river that they must ford, and that takes time and cards. This game was a thriller (at least as much as you can have playing solitaire). The Syracusans have a lot of heavy foot, and they were doing much damage to the Carthaginians. When they did lose battles, the units managed to hang on by their fingernails. At one point, the Carthaginian medium foot had gotten across the river and were causing a lot of damage to the Syracusan heavy foot, and the game was on the line with Carthage only needing one more VP to win. Seeing that there was little to lose, Syracuse attacked from both flanks: on the left with a heavily damaged cavalry unit, on the right with two ranged attacks. Both managed to destroy the units they were fighting, giving Syracuse the two VP it needed for the victory. I love that sort of come-from-behind win (even if I lose as a result), and I was quite happy to see it happen in this game. Of course, this was a single playing, but it does bode well for whether I'll like the game on a regular basis as opposed to me considering selling it.
The one thing I still hate is that it seems to take almost as much time to set up as it does to play, and I've separated out the various units into baggies. A big help would be a list of needed units with each scenario, not just the diagram on the map which is nice, but I always forget something. Of course, playing an actual opponent would help out here, as you'd have two people setting up, but it's still a bit onerous. This is a problem in general with all of these games, and the blocks do make it a bit easier to handle the individual pieces.
So, there you have it. This looks like a great light wargame with a strong euro feel, aided by the best rules I've seen (both in terms of organization and special rules) in this series. If you don't mind blocks instead of plastics, and you wish that BC or M44 was a better game, this may be the ticket for you.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Broads and Ruts
Roads and Boats is one of those games that has achieved legendary status, pulling down well over $300 on eBay for a used copy. The funny thing is that I suspect that few of the people who want to get it have ever actually played it, putting it in the same category as wargamers who want a copy of Pacific War or Wacht am Rhein.
With many of our group off at the Gamestorm special session, Mike, Eric and I sat down to finally give this title a try (at least for me). I will admit, this is a game that intrigued me, but the price tag even when it was in production and available at retail lost me completely.
I won't go into the details of how the game works, other than to say that it falls quite firmly into the category of "create this to grow that to take here to build this to do this other thing that gets you points". This kind of game is pretty much a Maybe Something Good, Maybe Something Bad experience. What is different is that the game is deep. There are a lot of choices once you get going, and the number of "Doh!" moments, at least in our first game, were something to behold.
We played the symmetrical map with the three rivers coming out of a central group of mountains. This map is supposedly easy on beginners, it certainly was fair as everyone had exactly the same amount of stuff to work with. We all started out with the standard Woodcutter/Sawmill/Breed Donkeys opening, and we all went for the Clay/Stone Factory pairing. Then it all went vaguely pear shaped.
I had a lot of trouble with remembering exactly what the heck I was supposed to be working with to build various things. For example, I built a paper mill in the central mountains, thinking that this was somehow a good idea, mainly in order to get the ability to build carts or rafts on the tech tree. You don't need the tech tree to build either carts or rafts, of course, so I found myself wondering just what I would buy on the tech tree. The wrong thing, as it turned out, as I got Big Mines which let Mike get a bunch of free gold off of me. Then, of course, I build a raft factory, when I should have done the rowboats and built a rowboat factory. Sometimes, I am dumb as a post, and this game brought that feeling out in spades.
It went on like that. Realizing I had wood instead of lumber, or that the oil derricks did indeed need research when I had seconds ago researched new shafts. I also managed to figure out about 3/4s of the way into the game that I could keep Mike from stealing my stuff if I build a freakin' wall. Ugh.
About three hours in, I realized that we were all hopelessly slogging around the board doing one dumb thing after another, although I do admit that I had a pretty good truck factory going on the far bank of the Sea of Dug where no one could reach me. Getting fuel back over to make coins out of gold, that was the tricky part, especially as I didn't have a good place to do this. Of course, getting the oil derrick helped, but by then I couldn't get gold out of my big mine because the first five pieces out were iron.
You get the picture. It wasn't pretty.
By the end of the game, at least while we were all still making more than a token effort (the last few turns were for formality alone), it was taking quite a while to think out what had to go where, what had been moved, what hadn't, what we really should have done, and it was a mess. I understand there are some suggestions for tracking these things, and I wish I'd used them more often. Still, figuring out your optimal move led to barely tolerable downtime stretches for all involved.
This game feels a lot like the computer game Civilization (the earlier versions, I hated III). I can spend an entire day starting from scratch with that game, and then it gets to a point where it feels like work. I almost never finish any of the games I start, which is mildly frustrating as I always loved to get the spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Same with this game. The early part is a blast, with managable goals and interesting puzzles and I really like it. The late game was just too much.
This is all stated with the caveat that this was indeed, in every sense of the word, a learning game. Learning the rules (we screwed up several), how the various elements interact (Doh! Doh again!), and what you have to do to keep from giving away the bank. I'd be very interested in playing with two, or even solitaire, as I think this game is a great puzzle (although I'm not really into $300 puzzles, to be honest). I don't know that I'd play with three again, certainly not with four, unless everyone could play briskly once things got hairy. The problem, of course, is that with such a long game, and so many interesting long games that my group likes, and the rarity of this particular title, I don't see it coming out enough to warrant the effort. Perhaps at a Sunriver retreat if Dave and I are doing two-player games for an evening.
Regardless, thanks to Mike for hosting. I'll miss the next regular Tuesday (it's a bit too far away for my road rage to handle), but the following week I host and then off to Mike's for the annual Super Bowl party. Go Seahawks!
Damn, now I've jinxed them. It don't take much.
With many of our group off at the Gamestorm special session, Mike, Eric and I sat down to finally give this title a try (at least for me). I will admit, this is a game that intrigued me, but the price tag even when it was in production and available at retail lost me completely.
I won't go into the details of how the game works, other than to say that it falls quite firmly into the category of "create this to grow that to take here to build this to do this other thing that gets you points". This kind of game is pretty much a Maybe Something Good, Maybe Something Bad experience. What is different is that the game is deep. There are a lot of choices once you get going, and the number of "Doh!" moments, at least in our first game, were something to behold.
We played the symmetrical map with the three rivers coming out of a central group of mountains. This map is supposedly easy on beginners, it certainly was fair as everyone had exactly the same amount of stuff to work with. We all started out with the standard Woodcutter/Sawmill/Breed Donkeys opening, and we all went for the Clay/Stone Factory pairing. Then it all went vaguely pear shaped.
I had a lot of trouble with remembering exactly what the heck I was supposed to be working with to build various things. For example, I built a paper mill in the central mountains, thinking that this was somehow a good idea, mainly in order to get the ability to build carts or rafts on the tech tree. You don't need the tech tree to build either carts or rafts, of course, so I found myself wondering just what I would buy on the tech tree. The wrong thing, as it turned out, as I got Big Mines which let Mike get a bunch of free gold off of me. Then, of course, I build a raft factory, when I should have done the rowboats and built a rowboat factory. Sometimes, I am dumb as a post, and this game brought that feeling out in spades.
It went on like that. Realizing I had wood instead of lumber, or that the oil derricks did indeed need research when I had seconds ago researched new shafts. I also managed to figure out about 3/4s of the way into the game that I could keep Mike from stealing my stuff if I build a freakin' wall. Ugh.
About three hours in, I realized that we were all hopelessly slogging around the board doing one dumb thing after another, although I do admit that I had a pretty good truck factory going on the far bank of the Sea of Dug where no one could reach me. Getting fuel back over to make coins out of gold, that was the tricky part, especially as I didn't have a good place to do this. Of course, getting the oil derrick helped, but by then I couldn't get gold out of my big mine because the first five pieces out were iron.
You get the picture. It wasn't pretty.
By the end of the game, at least while we were all still making more than a token effort (the last few turns were for formality alone), it was taking quite a while to think out what had to go where, what had been moved, what hadn't, what we really should have done, and it was a mess. I understand there are some suggestions for tracking these things, and I wish I'd used them more often. Still, figuring out your optimal move led to barely tolerable downtime stretches for all involved.
This game feels a lot like the computer game Civilization (the earlier versions, I hated III). I can spend an entire day starting from scratch with that game, and then it gets to a point where it feels like work. I almost never finish any of the games I start, which is mildly frustrating as I always loved to get the spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Same with this game. The early part is a blast, with managable goals and interesting puzzles and I really like it. The late game was just too much.
This is all stated with the caveat that this was indeed, in every sense of the word, a learning game. Learning the rules (we screwed up several), how the various elements interact (Doh! Doh again!), and what you have to do to keep from giving away the bank. I'd be very interested in playing with two, or even solitaire, as I think this game is a great puzzle (although I'm not really into $300 puzzles, to be honest). I don't know that I'd play with three again, certainly not with four, unless everyone could play briskly once things got hairy. The problem, of course, is that with such a long game, and so many interesting long games that my group likes, and the rarity of this particular title, I don't see it coming out enough to warrant the effort. Perhaps at a Sunriver retreat if Dave and I are doing two-player games for an evening.
Regardless, thanks to Mike for hosting. I'll miss the next regular Tuesday (it's a bit too far away for my road rage to handle), but the following week I host and then off to Mike's for the annual Super Bowl party. Go Seahawks!
Damn, now I've jinxed them. It don't take much.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
MLK Wargaming
Were MLK alive today, he'd have spent his birthday playing wargames.
OK, maybe not, but since Chuck had the day off, we decided to celebrate with a couple of shorter wargames. On the table were two sessions of Twilight Struggle and one half-session of Bonaparte at Marengo.
I was extremely high on TS after my first ftf playing with Chuck. However, we did get one essential rule wrong, and we wanted to see how it would go with the correct rules. In our first game, I took the USSR again, starting with more focus on the battleground countries in Europe. I had a great start on the Space Race (including the Nazi Scientist), and despite an initial hand with mostly US cards, I got lucky on a couple of rolls at the end of turn 3 with the Arabs invading Israel, and won on points.
There has been quite a bit of concern on CSW that the USSR has a marked advantage in this game, and Chuck had played a few solo sessions that made him think that this was indeed the case, so we tried one more game. This time, I took the US, and was in decent shape going into turn 4, with the USSR up by only 4 points. Then I got...The Hand.
Here is where TS falls down. If you get the wrong hand at the wrong time, it doesn't matter what has happened before, you are going to be in a lot of trouble. This was one of those hands. First off, I had four, count 'em, four scoring cards (Africa, CenAm, SouAm, and Mideast). My other four cards were two 1's, two 2, and a 3, plus the China card. I had no advantage in any of the areas, and so I got SouAm out for my headline. Making things considerably worse was Chuck's headline play of Red Scare, which reduced the OPs of each of my cards by one, leaving me with at most eight OPs for the entire turn (you must play all scoring cards, so at best I play China for 3, then 2+1+1+1). The Defcon was at 2, so I couldn't even coup in battleground states. Chuck scored 15 points in that single turn.
While I will admit that this is an unusual distribution of cards, it did demonstrate that the scoring card mechanism is broken in this game. I suspect that the designers thought that knowing you have a scoring card is an advantage, so having to play them and lose any other activity is compensated. However, once you have more than one it is almost impossible to do anything to improve your position if you are behind in any areas. Even though Chuck didn't score anything in Africa or SouAm, I still had to play both of those cards, losing OPs or events in the process.
Chuck believes that this problem is particularly bad for the US, who has a shortage of good events early in the game and is already at a disadvantage. I haven't played as much as him, nor analyzed the deck as thoroughly as he has, but I tend to agree. In two games, I have gone from thinking this was the best CDG yet to thinking that this is up there with 30YW, perhaps the most poorly developed game that GMT ever put out.
To be fair, I have run into a similar problem in Hannibal, where I lost a game largely because I drew a hand without a single 3 card with one 3 general in Africa, sadly out of position. My opponent figured this out quickly, sent Africanus to Carthage, and won without me being able to do a single thing. However, I have played 30+ games of Hannibal, and this was the only one that felt like the game turned on such a freakish draw.
At any rate, I will hope that the designers recognize that the scoring card mechanism is broken and needs tweaking. I think the answer may be some sort of "mulligan" where if you draw a certain number of scoring cards you randomly discard down to two (or some number), draw new cards to replace them, and shuffle the cards back into the draw pile. I don't think just bidding will help this problem.
We then went and had lunch, and returned to try out BaMarenge, the dance of luuuuuuuv. BaM.
BaM is a "luckless" block game with some big differences. Rather than just having blocks in a given location, they are assigned to either reserves in that locale, or block approaches, each of which has different characteristics with regard to defense against different types of units. I actually like this "approach", although to be honest the map is a bit hard to parse. The roads and many of the terrain features (which dictate the qualities of approaches, but otherwise don't play a role in the game) show up much better than the approaches, and it requires careful examination of the board to see what the true situation is.
The blocks are actually sticks with the type and strength of the unit on one side of the stick. Since units may be assigned to an approach that faces you, all of your units are placed face down, so no one can see them. Also, the sticks can be accidentally rotated very easily, making it far too easy to spin your units and expose them unintentionally.
The rules are, in essence, very simple, but the movement rules get very fussy. Like most block games, you activate "groups" to move as a unit. However, movement along roads is complex. To start with, each unit moves three spaces along the road, and each unit counts as a single group. However, the movement phase is broken up into three subphases, with only one unit allowed to cross an approach along a road per subphase. That means you have to remember which unit moved when in the turn. To make things worse, if you move along a primary road exclusively, it doesn't count towards the three units/groups you can move/assault with in a turn.
Sound complicated? Try getting this information from the rules. I've owned various synthesizers over the years, and the ones coming out of Japan are typically written in "Japanenglish", which is to say that they try to explain complex technical features with faulty English. These rules are pretty close. They are poorly organized, and overexplain some very basic ideas. An entire paragraph to explain how to say that you are going to use artillery to defend - just the declaration, mind you - is a bit much.
This feels a bit like whining, as most wargames fall into this category. In fact, I read the rules for a Richard Berg game (Carthage, his most recent Ancient World game), and was startled by how much the rules assume that you've been playing wargames for a long time. This game went exactly the opposite way.
The Austrians are supposed to either knock the French's morale down far enough while keeping their own up, or else manage to get to the other side of the board and take some particular spaces. Since you can only activate three groups/units per turn (other than primary road only movement), it can take a while for the Austrian offensive to get started. The French have the problem of a) being randomly assigned to specific spaces on the board, and also not being able to even activate them until someone is knocking on the door or things are well under way. This is the only luck in the game, but it can be a doozy... the key to an Austrian victory is based on where the strength 3 French infantry is and whether the Austrians can guess where they are.
In our game, after a couple of abortive starts, Chuck got his single artillery into position (which essentially forces the French to retreat from that locale or take unrequited losses), and got his cavalry moving along the primary roads, which are essentially on the flanks of the board. I had a couple of French units holding the line a bit too long, but since you can't just retreat (the French will get pushed off of the board if they do that), it is important to make at least a few token stands early. When Chuck had to leave, we were about half way through the game, and with Chuck halfway up the map. The French were still a ways away from demoralization (you lose one point for every combat loss you take, and the French start with 17), and the game might have gone either way.
I think that my initial evaluation of the game as "eh" was strongly influenced by the poorly organized and written rules, the component problems, and the confusion we had in the first hour of play. I also think that the short play length, minimal luck, and other factors make the game feel almost like a puzzle instead of a game. I'm concerned that, random initial placement aside, that there is an optimal Austrian strategy. All of that included, I do want to try the game again. A player aid sheet to help clear up the fussiness of movement (combat is very straightforward, other than the cavalry pursuit rules) would help a lot.
Because of an HOA meeting (God, I love HOAs) this week, I did not attend the regular Tuesday session at Matt's. However, we are having a Third Saturday of the Month session, so I'll have another report then.
OK, maybe not, but since Chuck had the day off, we decided to celebrate with a couple of shorter wargames. On the table were two sessions of Twilight Struggle and one half-session of Bonaparte at Marengo.
I was extremely high on TS after my first ftf playing with Chuck. However, we did get one essential rule wrong, and we wanted to see how it would go with the correct rules. In our first game, I took the USSR again, starting with more focus on the battleground countries in Europe. I had a great start on the Space Race (including the Nazi Scientist), and despite an initial hand with mostly US cards, I got lucky on a couple of rolls at the end of turn 3 with the Arabs invading Israel, and won on points.
There has been quite a bit of concern on CSW that the USSR has a marked advantage in this game, and Chuck had played a few solo sessions that made him think that this was indeed the case, so we tried one more game. This time, I took the US, and was in decent shape going into turn 4, with the USSR up by only 4 points. Then I got...The Hand.
Here is where TS falls down. If you get the wrong hand at the wrong time, it doesn't matter what has happened before, you are going to be in a lot of trouble. This was one of those hands. First off, I had four, count 'em, four scoring cards (Africa, CenAm, SouAm, and Mideast). My other four cards were two 1's, two 2, and a 3, plus the China card. I had no advantage in any of the areas, and so I got SouAm out for my headline. Making things considerably worse was Chuck's headline play of Red Scare, which reduced the OPs of each of my cards by one, leaving me with at most eight OPs for the entire turn (you must play all scoring cards, so at best I play China for 3, then 2+1+1+1). The Defcon was at 2, so I couldn't even coup in battleground states. Chuck scored 15 points in that single turn.
While I will admit that this is an unusual distribution of cards, it did demonstrate that the scoring card mechanism is broken in this game. I suspect that the designers thought that knowing you have a scoring card is an advantage, so having to play them and lose any other activity is compensated. However, once you have more than one it is almost impossible to do anything to improve your position if you are behind in any areas. Even though Chuck didn't score anything in Africa or SouAm, I still had to play both of those cards, losing OPs or events in the process.
Chuck believes that this problem is particularly bad for the US, who has a shortage of good events early in the game and is already at a disadvantage. I haven't played as much as him, nor analyzed the deck as thoroughly as he has, but I tend to agree. In two games, I have gone from thinking this was the best CDG yet to thinking that this is up there with 30YW, perhaps the most poorly developed game that GMT ever put out.
To be fair, I have run into a similar problem in Hannibal, where I lost a game largely because I drew a hand without a single 3 card with one 3 general in Africa, sadly out of position. My opponent figured this out quickly, sent Africanus to Carthage, and won without me being able to do a single thing. However, I have played 30+ games of Hannibal, and this was the only one that felt like the game turned on such a freakish draw.
At any rate, I will hope that the designers recognize that the scoring card mechanism is broken and needs tweaking. I think the answer may be some sort of "mulligan" where if you draw a certain number of scoring cards you randomly discard down to two (or some number), draw new cards to replace them, and shuffle the cards back into the draw pile. I don't think just bidding will help this problem.
We then went and had lunch, and returned to try out BaMarenge, the dance of luuuuuuuv. BaM.
BaM is a "luckless" block game with some big differences. Rather than just having blocks in a given location, they are assigned to either reserves in that locale, or block approaches, each of which has different characteristics with regard to defense against different types of units. I actually like this "approach", although to be honest the map is a bit hard to parse. The roads and many of the terrain features (which dictate the qualities of approaches, but otherwise don't play a role in the game) show up much better than the approaches, and it requires careful examination of the board to see what the true situation is.
The blocks are actually sticks with the type and strength of the unit on one side of the stick. Since units may be assigned to an approach that faces you, all of your units are placed face down, so no one can see them. Also, the sticks can be accidentally rotated very easily, making it far too easy to spin your units and expose them unintentionally.
The rules are, in essence, very simple, but the movement rules get very fussy. Like most block games, you activate "groups" to move as a unit. However, movement along roads is complex. To start with, each unit moves three spaces along the road, and each unit counts as a single group. However, the movement phase is broken up into three subphases, with only one unit allowed to cross an approach along a road per subphase. That means you have to remember which unit moved when in the turn. To make things worse, if you move along a primary road exclusively, it doesn't count towards the three units/groups you can move/assault with in a turn.
Sound complicated? Try getting this information from the rules. I've owned various synthesizers over the years, and the ones coming out of Japan are typically written in "Japanenglish", which is to say that they try to explain complex technical features with faulty English. These rules are pretty close. They are poorly organized, and overexplain some very basic ideas. An entire paragraph to explain how to say that you are going to use artillery to defend - just the declaration, mind you - is a bit much.
This feels a bit like whining, as most wargames fall into this category. In fact, I read the rules for a Richard Berg game (Carthage, his most recent Ancient World game), and was startled by how much the rules assume that you've been playing wargames for a long time. This game went exactly the opposite way.
The Austrians are supposed to either knock the French's morale down far enough while keeping their own up, or else manage to get to the other side of the board and take some particular spaces. Since you can only activate three groups/units per turn (other than primary road only movement), it can take a while for the Austrian offensive to get started. The French have the problem of a) being randomly assigned to specific spaces on the board, and also not being able to even activate them until someone is knocking on the door or things are well under way. This is the only luck in the game, but it can be a doozy... the key to an Austrian victory is based on where the strength 3 French infantry is and whether the Austrians can guess where they are.
In our game, after a couple of abortive starts, Chuck got his single artillery into position (which essentially forces the French to retreat from that locale or take unrequited losses), and got his cavalry moving along the primary roads, which are essentially on the flanks of the board. I had a couple of French units holding the line a bit too long, but since you can't just retreat (the French will get pushed off of the board if they do that), it is important to make at least a few token stands early. When Chuck had to leave, we were about half way through the game, and with Chuck halfway up the map. The French were still a ways away from demoralization (you lose one point for every combat loss you take, and the French start with 17), and the game might have gone either way.
I think that my initial evaluation of the game as "eh" was strongly influenced by the poorly organized and written rules, the component problems, and the confusion we had in the first hour of play. I also think that the short play length, minimal luck, and other factors make the game feel almost like a puzzle instead of a game. I'm concerned that, random initial placement aside, that there is an optimal Austrian strategy. All of that included, I do want to try the game again. A player aid sheet to help clear up the fussiness of movement (combat is very straightforward, other than the cavalry pursuit rules) would help a lot.
Because of an HOA meeting (God, I love HOAs) this week, I did not attend the regular Tuesday session at Matt's. However, we are having a Third Saturday of the Month session, so I'll have another report then.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
New Look
Trying out a few new looks over the next few weeks, as Blogger has many more themes to choose from now than when I first created the blog. I'm shooting primarily for readability over style, and the Dark Dots theme looked just a bit too retro for my tastes.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
He's Got The Whole World In His Box...
Since we've been playing "classics" at our recent Tuesday sessions (what that exactly meant seems to depend heavily upon who you are talking to), I didn't want to drag my new copy of World of Warcraft to the regular session. However, with this many bits, I really wanted to at least set it up and play through a few turns to get a sense of how it works for when our group does try to tackle it. The rules are about as complete and full of examples as I could hope for, although they were long. Really long (40 pages). While admittedly this is 40 pages wil lots of illustrations, examples, large type, and whitespace, it is a lot of pages. Fortunately, they seemed to convey the game pretty well, I had very few questions as I played the game.
WoW is your typical board-based RPG, where you play one or more characters (which are associated with one of two teams, Horde and The Good Guys). The basic gameplay is organized around "quests" that are determined through random card draws for each side. As quests are drawn, they place a particular critter in a particular space. If you beat said critter(s) in combat, you get gold, experience, and maybe goodies. Quest cards also often place "independent" critters in other spaces on the board. The cards are separated into four decks per side, each deck with progressively more difficult quests. When your side has enough experience and goodies, you can take on the "overlord" character, and if you beat him you win. If you don't, or time runs out, there's a big melee between the two teams and whoever survives wins.
Play is based on "actions" similar to many euros. Every turn, one team can take actions (divided up between characters, each of which gets two per turn) that allow you to develop your character, replenish your health, go to the "store", move, and fight. One character on a team might take one action, followed by another character using two, then back to the first character again. This, to my mind, is where the game will shine in that you plan out your team's turn to best accomplish character growth to be ready to take on one of the three overlords at game end.
There's been some complaint about the combat system, which can be a bit fussy. Characters have various capabilities built in, but can improve them through their own Power and Talent deck that allow quite a bit of customization, and this gives a lot of replay value. Various powers, talents, and items (as well as inherent abilities) lend various elements to combat. This seems a bit convoluted, but actually once you've got the drill down, you can move through a combat fairly quickly. Here's how it goes:
1) Figure out what dice you use, based on your abilities. Blue dice are ranged and can knock out an opponent before they can even take a swipe at you. Red dice inflict damage up close, and green dice protect from damage, but don't cause damage on their own. Some powers add dice only if "energy" is spent, which is based on the character you play. Note that as you get better armor, weapons, etc, the number of dice you get can increase or the mix change.
2) Next, your character may have the chance to reroll dice, again sometimes if energy is expended. Sometimes, you may also get to add dice if certain die rolls meet a criteria, such as begin at or above a certain value. Different characters will have a different number of dice you can reroll, and some critters will cause damage based on particularly poor rolls.
3) Once you've got your dice rolled and rerolled, you compare the dice to the "Threat" value of the critter in question. If you meet or exceed this value on a die, you put a hit in the "Damage" or "Defense" box if the die is blue or red, and armor tokens in the Defense box if you hit with the green dice. You also add hit markers to the "Attrition" box if your character has that ability.
4) If there are enough hits in the Damage box to meet or exceed the Health value of the critter, one is removed from the battle. If you've killed all of the critters in the group (based on whether the monster is independent or quest, and the same breed), you've won. If not, leave the hits that haven't killed critters in the Damage box and continue.
5) compare the Attack value of the critter, multiplied by the number of critters, to the number of armor and damage tokens in the Defense box. If the Attack value is higher, you have to assign hits to the characters equal to the difference. If you run out of Health yourself, you are defeated and lose the rest of your turn and resurrect in specific areas.
6) If you are still alive, you remove all armor markers from the defense box, then move all hits from the Defense and Attrition boxes to Damage and again compare them to the critter's health as in step four. If characters and critters are still around, you do it all again, leaving the unassigned hit markers in the Damage box.
Like I say, it sounds complex, but there are a lot of ways to make things go quickly. For example, if you know that you need four hits to kill off two critters, you can tell pretty quickly if you've got four hits on blue dice. The problem is that because you are constantly improving your abilities by upgrading items or abilities, the number of dice you'll have in a given combat is constantly changing. Also, you have to remember to pay for any "instant" abilities with energy, and it was pretty easy for me to forget this in my session the first couple of times. Still, it wasn't too bad. Player vs player is similar. Different colored critters have different values (green quest monsters are wimps, red are much tougher, blue independents can range in effectiveness. It's important for players to know what your character is capable of taking on, one character failed to defeat what appeared to be a pretty wimpy Scarlet Fighter twice, costing them four or five turns while other characters were gaining levels left and right.
That's essentially the game: improve your character, complete quests by fighting critters, and finally having enough cojones to take on the Big Bad Dude. I could see downtime being a problem with six players, as if you aren't fighting and everyone else is, it could take five or ten minutes until your turn comes back around. With only 30 actions per character in a given game, it seems like making every one count is critical. Fortunately, it is not too tough to get around the board, as there are special "transporter" spaces that make it easy to jet across the board from time to time.
There are also events that come up every so often, some of which give out goodies or replenish health, gold, or energy, and some that allow more events to tag along. In fact, I suppose it is possible to get four or five events if the right ones come up. These seem to be there just to make the game more unpredictable, which may be too much of a good thing since so much depends upon how the quests come up.
My solo session was played with four of the six recommended "first game" characters, and I did the recommended "Training" action for each of them first to add a few powers. After that, three of the four characters went through the standard "Train, move, fight, recharge, move, fight, recharge" cycle. The fourth kept losing, and was clearly going to be challenged as the game went on. The three successful characters got through roughly seven quests in the first eight turns, which I think would be pretty typical. I didn't do any player vs player combat, nor did I look too closely at the Overlord portion of the game.
While I own Warcraft: the Boardgame and the first edition of Runebound (bastards at FFG, if there was ever a game that should have had an upgrade kit, this was it), I really haven't had much chance to play any of these games. The one short solo of Runebound felt particularly constrained in what the characters could do, especially with so few movement options (the Flight Paths of WoW are a great addition to a board that is built to create constrictions), and by then the second ed came out and I refused to buy the game again. W:tB looks like fun, especially with the expansion, but this game really requires actual players to do more than push pieces around, and I really don't have a good feel for how any of these games will work.
WoW, on the other hand, feels like you have a lot of control over how you want your character to improve. Every time you increase in level, you have three choices as to which Talent to add, not to mention the various powers and items. Since each character has a set number of spells, powers, armor, weapons, etc (that use a very clever and transparent system that even limits how much stuff a character can even have with him), you constantly have to decide how you want to configure the character for maximum effect. However, you can only equip new stuff at the end of your turn, so just because you get the Sword of Instant Vasectomy doesn't mean you can or even want to use it right away, much less later on.
OK, now for a few nits. The box is big, roughly the size of two large Kosmos square boxes set side by side, and you need it. However, rather than a plastic inset to help sort the goodies, all there is is a useless piece of cardboard that separates out the bazillion cards but is useless after you've taken them out of the shrink, mine went into recycle immediately. I ended up using a lot of little plastic baggies, more than I use for some wargames. Setting up and taking down this game is not a trivial task.
As for the components, the critters are in the same red/blue/green colors as you see in Doom: the Boardgame, which is to say the colors are saturated and a bit on the radioactive side (although nowhere as bad as, say, Nexus Ops). You'll want to separate out the various critters, as they can look a bit samey samey if you shove them all in a big quart ziplock. I did separate out the various character cards, starting energy/gold/health and minis, which does improve setup time. The character minis are a bit hard to tell apart, as all are grey plastic, although I didn't have too much trouble on the board as there were only four of them. I'd have liked for Horde characters to be a different color than the Good Guy minis. There is even one Horde mini that only bears a passing resemblance to the illustration on the character card. Even the critters don't really have a good map of what figure matches what drawing. However, these are truly nits. I haven't played the computer game, so I don't know whether the mix is a good representation of the various characters in the game, but frankly I think these things are fairly generic as so many fantasy games and books use the exact same types and have become interchangable. However, just having the ability to choose from nine different characters, most of which can be played on either side and have a lot of improvement options is beyond anything I've seen outside of pencil and paper RPGs.
As for play, the game struck me as being an incremental improvement over other RPG boardgames. Even with the various options for improvement and the board's flight paths, the game still comes down to completing a series of quests that for all intensive purposes vary little in any parameter other than difficulty and location. With 30 actions, however, this would result in roughly seven or eight quests attempted per character (assuming one quest per four actions). Even random events and a choice of three different Overlords probably won't do much to change this essential truth. However, I do think that if any game was going to break out of the standard fantasy RPG mold, it would be WoW.
I hear that it is best to play with four or six players, and the game scales rather directly for those numbers. With others, you have some players that will be much more active than others. That might be good for learning situations, but not so cool when everyone is up on the rules. Two players would work well too, and could use either four or six characters, and I could see the game getting play this way (although probably not for me unless I had the right opponent who didn't like wargames).
I'm looking forward to a "real" playing of this title, probably not until April and our group's Sunriver retreat (unless Chris holds a Beach Bash between now and then). I'm certainly more interested in giving this a shot than the other fantasy titles I've got.
Note: Seeing as FFG's new Descent game is essentially a second edition of Doom, I have no intention of buying it. I do hear it's better in several ways, but I get very tired of FFG's policy of expecting me to pay for the same game over and over when what they've really done is fix some basic problems. With wargames, the rules and cards (and occasionally even counters or the map) are given errata, preserving the value of your investment, Avalanche excepted. With euros, the rules are simple enough and the games playtested well enough to avoid more than an occasional rule change. With the heavier American board games, we get to buy the game again. Even White Wolf did this regularly with their Vampire/Werewolf/Etc LARPs, releasing second edition rules and adventures, sometimes as soon as six or eight months after the initial release. I got fooled twice, then stopped buying their material. I certainly won't do it with FFG or any other company that makes this a regular strategy. I am not talking about euros that are republished in the US, that is an entirely different situation and one that I applaud.
Enough ranting. Next up, a second playing of Twilight Struggle, this time with the correct rules...
WoW is your typical board-based RPG, where you play one or more characters (which are associated with one of two teams, Horde and The Good Guys). The basic gameplay is organized around "quests" that are determined through random card draws for each side. As quests are drawn, they place a particular critter in a particular space. If you beat said critter(s) in combat, you get gold, experience, and maybe goodies. Quest cards also often place "independent" critters in other spaces on the board. The cards are separated into four decks per side, each deck with progressively more difficult quests. When your side has enough experience and goodies, you can take on the "overlord" character, and if you beat him you win. If you don't, or time runs out, there's a big melee between the two teams and whoever survives wins.
Play is based on "actions" similar to many euros. Every turn, one team can take actions (divided up between characters, each of which gets two per turn) that allow you to develop your character, replenish your health, go to the "store", move, and fight. One character on a team might take one action, followed by another character using two, then back to the first character again. This, to my mind, is where the game will shine in that you plan out your team's turn to best accomplish character growth to be ready to take on one of the three overlords at game end.
There's been some complaint about the combat system, which can be a bit fussy. Characters have various capabilities built in, but can improve them through their own Power and Talent deck that allow quite a bit of customization, and this gives a lot of replay value. Various powers, talents, and items (as well as inherent abilities) lend various elements to combat. This seems a bit convoluted, but actually once you've got the drill down, you can move through a combat fairly quickly. Here's how it goes:
1) Figure out what dice you use, based on your abilities. Blue dice are ranged and can knock out an opponent before they can even take a swipe at you. Red dice inflict damage up close, and green dice protect from damage, but don't cause damage on their own. Some powers add dice only if "energy" is spent, which is based on the character you play. Note that as you get better armor, weapons, etc, the number of dice you get can increase or the mix change.
2) Next, your character may have the chance to reroll dice, again sometimes if energy is expended. Sometimes, you may also get to add dice if certain die rolls meet a criteria, such as begin at or above a certain value. Different characters will have a different number of dice you can reroll, and some critters will cause damage based on particularly poor rolls.
3) Once you've got your dice rolled and rerolled, you compare the dice to the "Threat" value of the critter in question. If you meet or exceed this value on a die, you put a hit in the "Damage" or "Defense" box if the die is blue or red, and armor tokens in the Defense box if you hit with the green dice. You also add hit markers to the "Attrition" box if your character has that ability.
4) If there are enough hits in the Damage box to meet or exceed the Health value of the critter, one is removed from the battle. If you've killed all of the critters in the group (based on whether the monster is independent or quest, and the same breed), you've won. If not, leave the hits that haven't killed critters in the Damage box and continue.
5) compare the Attack value of the critter, multiplied by the number of critters, to the number of armor and damage tokens in the Defense box. If the Attack value is higher, you have to assign hits to the characters equal to the difference. If you run out of Health yourself, you are defeated and lose the rest of your turn and resurrect in specific areas.
6) If you are still alive, you remove all armor markers from the defense box, then move all hits from the Defense and Attrition boxes to Damage and again compare them to the critter's health as in step four. If characters and critters are still around, you do it all again, leaving the unassigned hit markers in the Damage box.
Like I say, it sounds complex, but there are a lot of ways to make things go quickly. For example, if you know that you need four hits to kill off two critters, you can tell pretty quickly if you've got four hits on blue dice. The problem is that because you are constantly improving your abilities by upgrading items or abilities, the number of dice you'll have in a given combat is constantly changing. Also, you have to remember to pay for any "instant" abilities with energy, and it was pretty easy for me to forget this in my session the first couple of times. Still, it wasn't too bad. Player vs player is similar. Different colored critters have different values (green quest monsters are wimps, red are much tougher, blue independents can range in effectiveness. It's important for players to know what your character is capable of taking on, one character failed to defeat what appeared to be a pretty wimpy Scarlet Fighter twice, costing them four or five turns while other characters were gaining levels left and right.
That's essentially the game: improve your character, complete quests by fighting critters, and finally having enough cojones to take on the Big Bad Dude. I could see downtime being a problem with six players, as if you aren't fighting and everyone else is, it could take five or ten minutes until your turn comes back around. With only 30 actions per character in a given game, it seems like making every one count is critical. Fortunately, it is not too tough to get around the board, as there are special "transporter" spaces that make it easy to jet across the board from time to time.
There are also events that come up every so often, some of which give out goodies or replenish health, gold, or energy, and some that allow more events to tag along. In fact, I suppose it is possible to get four or five events if the right ones come up. These seem to be there just to make the game more unpredictable, which may be too much of a good thing since so much depends upon how the quests come up.
My solo session was played with four of the six recommended "first game" characters, and I did the recommended "Training" action for each of them first to add a few powers. After that, three of the four characters went through the standard "Train, move, fight, recharge, move, fight, recharge" cycle. The fourth kept losing, and was clearly going to be challenged as the game went on. The three successful characters got through roughly seven quests in the first eight turns, which I think would be pretty typical. I didn't do any player vs player combat, nor did I look too closely at the Overlord portion of the game.
While I own Warcraft: the Boardgame and the first edition of Runebound (bastards at FFG, if there was ever a game that should have had an upgrade kit, this was it), I really haven't had much chance to play any of these games. The one short solo of Runebound felt particularly constrained in what the characters could do, especially with so few movement options (the Flight Paths of WoW are a great addition to a board that is built to create constrictions), and by then the second ed came out and I refused to buy the game again. W:tB looks like fun, especially with the expansion, but this game really requires actual players to do more than push pieces around, and I really don't have a good feel for how any of these games will work.
WoW, on the other hand, feels like you have a lot of control over how you want your character to improve. Every time you increase in level, you have three choices as to which Talent to add, not to mention the various powers and items. Since each character has a set number of spells, powers, armor, weapons, etc (that use a very clever and transparent system that even limits how much stuff a character can even have with him), you constantly have to decide how you want to configure the character for maximum effect. However, you can only equip new stuff at the end of your turn, so just because you get the Sword of Instant Vasectomy doesn't mean you can or even want to use it right away, much less later on.
OK, now for a few nits. The box is big, roughly the size of two large Kosmos square boxes set side by side, and you need it. However, rather than a plastic inset to help sort the goodies, all there is is a useless piece of cardboard that separates out the bazillion cards but is useless after you've taken them out of the shrink, mine went into recycle immediately. I ended up using a lot of little plastic baggies, more than I use for some wargames. Setting up and taking down this game is not a trivial task.
As for the components, the critters are in the same red/blue/green colors as you see in Doom: the Boardgame, which is to say the colors are saturated and a bit on the radioactive side (although nowhere as bad as, say, Nexus Ops). You'll want to separate out the various critters, as they can look a bit samey samey if you shove them all in a big quart ziplock. I did separate out the various character cards, starting energy/gold/health and minis, which does improve setup time. The character minis are a bit hard to tell apart, as all are grey plastic, although I didn't have too much trouble on the board as there were only four of them. I'd have liked for Horde characters to be a different color than the Good Guy minis. There is even one Horde mini that only bears a passing resemblance to the illustration on the character card. Even the critters don't really have a good map of what figure matches what drawing. However, these are truly nits. I haven't played the computer game, so I don't know whether the mix is a good representation of the various characters in the game, but frankly I think these things are fairly generic as so many fantasy games and books use the exact same types and have become interchangable. However, just having the ability to choose from nine different characters, most of which can be played on either side and have a lot of improvement options is beyond anything I've seen outside of pencil and paper RPGs.
As for play, the game struck me as being an incremental improvement over other RPG boardgames. Even with the various options for improvement and the board's flight paths, the game still comes down to completing a series of quests that for all intensive purposes vary little in any parameter other than difficulty and location. With 30 actions, however, this would result in roughly seven or eight quests attempted per character (assuming one quest per four actions). Even random events and a choice of three different Overlords probably won't do much to change this essential truth. However, I do think that if any game was going to break out of the standard fantasy RPG mold, it would be WoW.
I hear that it is best to play with four or six players, and the game scales rather directly for those numbers. With others, you have some players that will be much more active than others. That might be good for learning situations, but not so cool when everyone is up on the rules. Two players would work well too, and could use either four or six characters, and I could see the game getting play this way (although probably not for me unless I had the right opponent who didn't like wargames).
I'm looking forward to a "real" playing of this title, probably not until April and our group's Sunriver retreat (unless Chris holds a Beach Bash between now and then). I'm certainly more interested in giving this a shot than the other fantasy titles I've got.
Note: Seeing as FFG's new Descent game is essentially a second edition of Doom, I have no intention of buying it. I do hear it's better in several ways, but I get very tired of FFG's policy of expecting me to pay for the same game over and over when what they've really done is fix some basic problems. With wargames, the rules and cards (and occasionally even counters or the map) are given errata, preserving the value of your investment, Avalanche excepted. With euros, the rules are simple enough and the games playtested well enough to avoid more than an occasional rule change. With the heavier American board games, we get to buy the game again. Even White Wolf did this regularly with their Vampire/Werewolf/Etc LARPs, releasing second edition rules and adventures, sometimes as soon as six or eight months after the initial release. I got fooled twice, then stopped buying their material. I certainly won't do it with FFG or any other company that makes this a regular strategy. I am not talking about euros that are republished in the US, that is an entirely different situation and one that I applaud.
Enough ranting. Next up, a second playing of Twilight Struggle, this time with the correct rules...
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