In the last couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to teach a couple of games I love to friends. So how did it go?
First was World of Warcraft, the Boardgame, to my friend Connor. Connor likes games, and in the past he's been one of my top 2-player game partners. As a guy who loves role-playing games, I figured he'd be a natural for World of Warcraft's character development system. We played using the basic game (not the Shadows of War expansion to keep the options to a minimum), a competitive game with two characters each. I was the Horde player, he was the Alliance.
World of Warcraft is a pretty easy game to teach, although I think it's a bit harder to learn (if that makes sense). There are many options each player has in the course of a turn, at least if you're playing two characters. I kept it all at a pretty high level, covering what the general goals were, what the various dice were good for, the differences between using instant and active powers, and the five basic things you can choose from for each action. Still, there is a considerable amount of complexity in understanding how battles work, and knowing what powers and talents can combine to good effect.
We played for three hours, and were about 2/3rds of the way done when it came time for Connor to head home. We were both very close to fourth level in our two characters (each), and we were using the Travelin' Dragon overlord. Connor felt a bit overwhelmed, I think, but so long as you have an experienced player involved, it's not that hard a game to teach - you just start playing and demonstrate the various elements as you go. Better for the experienced player to be in the Horde, as they can demonstrate training from the very beginning.
That said, I still think the game is just as interesting in solitaire form, and I don't know that I'll try to bring it out again for two-player gaming, especially not with Combat Commander available.
The other game I taught was GMT's classic WWI card-driven wargame, Paths of Glory. Chris Brooks had this on his "burn-down" list (games he wanted to play this year or get rid of), and so I offered to spend an afternoon teaching him the system. The game is the second of the "strategic" card-driven games (For The People was ostensibly the first, although the Avalon Hill version is hard to find), but comes with two player decks, further divided up into three sub-decks that enter play as the game progresses. Unfortunately, the game takes about 8-10 hours to play to completion, and we had nothing like that amount of time, especially considering it would be Chris's first game.
Chris had read the rules, but you simply can't just pick this game up that way. I really hadn't considered that I'd be teaching the game, but I have played 20+ games over the years and while I don't consider myself to be a good player, I know my way around the rules. As such, I gave kind of a scattershot coverage of the rules, focusing heavily on the strategic situation on the board and what players had to be aware of when playing. I took the Central Powers, as the burden of attack is on them to some extent.
We only got four turns in, but I was mildly disappointed that we couldn't continue. The Germans had made good progress into Belgium, but the French were recovering nicely and I wasn't getting much in the way of replacement points onto the board. On the Russian Front, I was just starting to bring up an extra German army to start working through Poland, and there hadn't been a concerted effort by the Russians in Galicia, but the AH were starting to make trouble for the Serbs (who managed to roll a trench on one try in Belgrade). The MEF had landed off the coast of Adana, so things were also getting warm in the Near East, but just barely.
Chris's view after our short game was that this is a title that needs to be played repeatedly to be enjoyed, and he is absolutely right. To be honest, I rarely have the chance to play long games like this anymore, especially since I no longer go to WBC or play on ACTS or online (too many 3am's sitting up in bed thinking I shouldn't have made the move I just did). As for shorter games on topics his kids will enjoy, I think he's out of luck in this genre unless he can score a copy of Hannibal - everything else is either too long or not an interesting option for his kids, and I simply can't recommend Shifting Sands because of the card cycling problems (how the game goes is too heavily dependent on when cards come up, and too many events are "must-play" simply to get your deck down to a size that you can get through it in the course of a year). I did, however, recommend...
Wait for it...
Combat Commander.
Regardless, I was delighted to at least give Chris a chance to evaluate this classic. Like all CDG's with player-specific decks, it must be played repeatedly to be understood and enjoyed, and although I personally feel that this is a worthwhile thing to do, it just doesn't fit Chris's lifestyle and time availability. I will have to get this on the table again at the next WBC, though, it really is a game I miss playing.
I did think that the way I taught the game (giving my opponent a high level overview of what things they might want to accomplish over the course of a turn, giving specific warnings when a potential problem arose such as holes in the line) worked pretty well. I've also taught it by having my opponent tell me what he'd do, then making alternate suggestions. It really is a problematic game to teach, it's almost better to have two new players going at it with an old-hand helping with rules and occasional suggestions.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Command and Colors - Ancients Vs Battlelore
I had a chance to play C&C:Ancients (Ancients from here on out) versus Jesse on Thursday, and a game of Battlelore versus Chuck today. This was a great chance for me to compare the two takes on this system.
Most of you know I was not a big fan of Battle Cry or Memoir '44, largely because I felt the games didn't really evoke the period they were trying to. While I think the game system has serious problems with balance (too much reliance on historical battles that are unbalanced), and this continues into Ancients and Battlelore, these two games are definitely the pinnacle of the system.
First, a comparison of the components. You could not have more of a difference between the two games, largely because Ancients is published by a wargame company and Battlelore by a Euro company. Ancients has a heavy stock unmounted board and rather bland pencil-art terrain (although almost all of these battles were fought in plains terrain, so the choice is more than justifiable). Battlelore has a mounted board that is painted, as are the terrain tiles, and terrain is much more varied (including bridges and "special" terrain that ties in with the War Council rules). The units in Ancients are wood blocks with cel-filled graphics on the stickers, while Battlelore uses miniatures that are damned hard to tell apart except for a few differently colored bases and a bunch of banners/flags that differentiate whose side the units belong to.
In a nutshell, Battlelore goes for flash while Ancients goes for functionality, and to be quite honest functionality wins out. There is literally no reason for Days of Wonder to have done anything other than one infantry type, one cavalry type, and one archer type (in addition to the specialized Dwarf and Goblin types). Oh sure, there's a giant spider, but it's pretty much the same as the elephants in Ancients. The cavalry figures also have a tendency to be "flattened" which is easy to fix but annoying. The Ancients blocks are easy to move, easy to store, and (oddly) more colorful. To be fair, there are several differentiations between the various "light" units in Ancients, but it's only slightly annoying as there are few enough units. Otherwise, it's easy to tell mounted units apart easily (they have bigger blocks), and parsing the board is very easy compared to Battlelore. Finally, my Battlelore board is already warping, and I've had it for two days.
Second, the rules. If you have never seen a C&C game before, there is no question that Battlelore will teach you the system in a step-by-step process that is quite well done. However, there are graphics *everywhere* and I feel like I'm looking at advertising copy. Ancients has a decent ruleset, although there were quite a few clarifications made in their first expansion game, especially in their examples, so they have some work to do in this area (although this was also their first C&C publication, while Battlelore is Days' second after Memoir). Where the Battlelore rules completely fall down is when you have to look something up. As a reference source, they are a mess. Even Days' plans to make the various rules for cards searchable via the web, leading me to believe the intend us to have a laptop handy when we play. Ancients, on the other hand, has rules for leaders spread out through several sections, making it a trick to find a specific rule. Do you look in the section titled Leaders? Movement? Combat? You won't know until you look. This round is a lock.
As for the rules themselves, there are a few differences. "Bold" units in Battlelore can battle back and ignore one flag result, while in Ancients you can always battle back if you aren't forced to retreat, and no units are specifically bold (as are dwarves in Battlelore). The entire Lore/War Council ruleset doesn't exist in Ancients, but there are no leader counters in Battlelore, nor are there any cards that take advantage of said leaders. Ancients also comes with more "special" units - Chariots and Elephants in the core game, compared with just Giant Spiders in Battlelore (although there are two other critters out there if you count the Giant as something you can actually pick up somewhere other than eBay). Most units in Ancients can advance after combat if they eliminate or retreat the unit they attack, although both games' cavalry can pursue. Units in Ancients retreat at the same rate in which they move, which makes some of them quite brittle (but historically so - light cavalry got the heck out of Dodge on a pretty regular basis when things got hot and heavy). Only Spiders and Goblins retreat more than a single space per retreat flag. Finally, all light units other than Auxillia in Ancients can evade specific units, making a retreat in exchange for not taking sword hits (and light cavalry not risking a big retreat off-board).
The biggest differences between the two has to come down to Lore vs Evasion in any meaningful way. Both are ways to minimize luck of the draw, and perhaps Lore succeeds in this in a better way, but at a huge cost in complexity. I can see this becoming a huge issue in terms of interacting spells, to some extent as happens in most CCGs. However, evasion feels more historical and appropo for me in Ancients. I'd have to give a very slight edge to Battlelore in this respect, but only by a hair.
Next up is expandability. GMT is already providing extra scenarios in their house magazine, C3i, and they also provide bonus scenarios to customers that pre-order games. I'd really rather see them pubish scenarios online, but to be honest there is nothing stopping players from doing this. In fact, Battlelore is seeing the same thing happen, but all of the scenarios so far are unofficial. Days' also provides (or will provide, as of this writing) an online scenario generator. I have no expectation that GMT will do the same, although it is entirely possible that a third-party may provide one (probably Windows based) if one isn't already out there.
As for official expansions, GMT has already created an Alexander the Great-based expansion with an entire set of new blocks and 22 scenarios. I applaud the new blocks even though they add cost, as the illustrations are of phalanx-era armies instead of the Roman legions, and include Indian and Persian armies as well. As such, GMT will be producing large and expensive expansions at the rate of a couple a year, at least for now (the second one focuses on the Gauls, and will come out in early 2007). In contrast, Days' marketing plans are to produce both larger army kits and single creature blister packs. While at first glance it may feel a bit like spending $4 for a single creature and it's rules seems a bit steep, or $20 for an army, at least you can get them one at a time and the cost compared to the GMT offerings is pretty close when all is considered, although you don't get the extra scenarios (although you do online). Again, a toss-up.
Finally, how do they play? This is hard to compare directly, as I was trying to figure out the lore system only to be drawing Cleric spells (when I didn't have a Cleric, but I did have everyone else) and I ended up casting a whopping two spells in the entire game. Compare this with at least a half-dozen evasions in my game with Jesse, and I have to consider Lore to be considerably more prone to luck in a game that already has far too much luck as it is.
In both games, I had a lot of trouble getting the cards I needed to move and attack with critical units, and of course this is a core knock against the system as a whole. However, in Battlelore I had a five-card hand (compared to four in Ancients), and exactly a single card that would have allowed me to move one of the two heavy units on my right flank. While this was a single game, it was still annoying. I also kept drawing battle and lore cards that would have been great had I been the English at Agincourt with lots of archers, completely useless to me in our game.
I mention this because I give the nod to Ancients, although I'm aware that my take on Battlelore is heavily colored by my frustration in that game, although it was much closer. There are other reasons I like Ancients better, though:
o Easier to parse the board
o Easier to move units on the map
o Easier to set up the game
o Easier to find rules
o Evasion is always "on"
o Lore is more luck
o Don't need to be supported to battle back
o More unit differentiation (especially with light units)
o Historical events informing how the systems works
o Leader units give tactical flexibility, additional firepower
Battlelore, on the other hand, only has a couple of things going for it:
o More colorful rules (the map and cards are, if anything, too busy)
o War Council/ Lore rules create more variation from game to game
o More scenarios will be available over time, although many will be home-brewed
o Expansions can be added in a bit at a time and will almost certainly be more extensive over time
o Can be expanded in almost any way desired, as there is no history that must be followed
The one thing that Battlelore really needs, and would give it the edge for me, is a random conflict generator. Most scenario-based wargames like Combat Commander and ASL make use of these, although most people who enjoy historical games prefer historical situations. I'd actually like to see GMT do this for Ancients, and if they did it would lock up Ancients as the best iteration of this vererable, if perhaps flawed, gaming system. At least the games are fairly short.
I should note that neither game uses victory point spaces, as was done in Memoir in an attempt to give players a reason to fight (this was a bit of a problem with Battle Cry). Battlelore does include some terrain that gives Lore benefits, but otherwise you go at it because that's what you are supposed to do. Of course, neither game has devastating artillery like Battle Cry and Memoir do, so there is more incentive to "bring it", and perhaps the VP spaces aren't needed. Note: there may be VP spaces in Battlelore - I have not read all of the rules, but there are certainly no such rules in Ancients.
Of course, I'm also a wargamer (which both of these games are), and like more wargamers I like some history to base the game on. To be fair, Battlelore can be played as a historical game without the Lore rules, but I can't speak for whether or not the game evokes medieval battles in the same way that Ancients evokes antiquity. At least, not yet. For now, however, I'm much more likely to pull out Ancients if I'm playing another wargamer, Battlelore if I'm not.
Most of you know I was not a big fan of Battle Cry or Memoir '44, largely because I felt the games didn't really evoke the period they were trying to. While I think the game system has serious problems with balance (too much reliance on historical battles that are unbalanced), and this continues into Ancients and Battlelore, these two games are definitely the pinnacle of the system.
First, a comparison of the components. You could not have more of a difference between the two games, largely because Ancients is published by a wargame company and Battlelore by a Euro company. Ancients has a heavy stock unmounted board and rather bland pencil-art terrain (although almost all of these battles were fought in plains terrain, so the choice is more than justifiable). Battlelore has a mounted board that is painted, as are the terrain tiles, and terrain is much more varied (including bridges and "special" terrain that ties in with the War Council rules). The units in Ancients are wood blocks with cel-filled graphics on the stickers, while Battlelore uses miniatures that are damned hard to tell apart except for a few differently colored bases and a bunch of banners/flags that differentiate whose side the units belong to.
In a nutshell, Battlelore goes for flash while Ancients goes for functionality, and to be quite honest functionality wins out. There is literally no reason for Days of Wonder to have done anything other than one infantry type, one cavalry type, and one archer type (in addition to the specialized Dwarf and Goblin types). Oh sure, there's a giant spider, but it's pretty much the same as the elephants in Ancients. The cavalry figures also have a tendency to be "flattened" which is easy to fix but annoying. The Ancients blocks are easy to move, easy to store, and (oddly) more colorful. To be fair, there are several differentiations between the various "light" units in Ancients, but it's only slightly annoying as there are few enough units. Otherwise, it's easy to tell mounted units apart easily (they have bigger blocks), and parsing the board is very easy compared to Battlelore. Finally, my Battlelore board is already warping, and I've had it for two days.
Second, the rules. If you have never seen a C&C game before, there is no question that Battlelore will teach you the system in a step-by-step process that is quite well done. However, there are graphics *everywhere* and I feel like I'm looking at advertising copy. Ancients has a decent ruleset, although there were quite a few clarifications made in their first expansion game, especially in their examples, so they have some work to do in this area (although this was also their first C&C publication, while Battlelore is Days' second after Memoir). Where the Battlelore rules completely fall down is when you have to look something up. As a reference source, they are a mess. Even Days' plans to make the various rules for cards searchable via the web, leading me to believe the intend us to have a laptop handy when we play. Ancients, on the other hand, has rules for leaders spread out through several sections, making it a trick to find a specific rule. Do you look in the section titled Leaders? Movement? Combat? You won't know until you look. This round is a lock.
As for the rules themselves, there are a few differences. "Bold" units in Battlelore can battle back and ignore one flag result, while in Ancients you can always battle back if you aren't forced to retreat, and no units are specifically bold (as are dwarves in Battlelore). The entire Lore/War Council ruleset doesn't exist in Ancients, but there are no leader counters in Battlelore, nor are there any cards that take advantage of said leaders. Ancients also comes with more "special" units - Chariots and Elephants in the core game, compared with just Giant Spiders in Battlelore (although there are two other critters out there if you count the Giant as something you can actually pick up somewhere other than eBay). Most units in Ancients can advance after combat if they eliminate or retreat the unit they attack, although both games' cavalry can pursue. Units in Ancients retreat at the same rate in which they move, which makes some of them quite brittle (but historically so - light cavalry got the heck out of Dodge on a pretty regular basis when things got hot and heavy). Only Spiders and Goblins retreat more than a single space per retreat flag. Finally, all light units other than Auxillia in Ancients can evade specific units, making a retreat in exchange for not taking sword hits (and light cavalry not risking a big retreat off-board).
The biggest differences between the two has to come down to Lore vs Evasion in any meaningful way. Both are ways to minimize luck of the draw, and perhaps Lore succeeds in this in a better way, but at a huge cost in complexity. I can see this becoming a huge issue in terms of interacting spells, to some extent as happens in most CCGs. However, evasion feels more historical and appropo for me in Ancients. I'd have to give a very slight edge to Battlelore in this respect, but only by a hair.
Next up is expandability. GMT is already providing extra scenarios in their house magazine, C3i, and they also provide bonus scenarios to customers that pre-order games. I'd really rather see them pubish scenarios online, but to be honest there is nothing stopping players from doing this. In fact, Battlelore is seeing the same thing happen, but all of the scenarios so far are unofficial. Days' also provides (or will provide, as of this writing) an online scenario generator. I have no expectation that GMT will do the same, although it is entirely possible that a third-party may provide one (probably Windows based) if one isn't already out there.
As for official expansions, GMT has already created an Alexander the Great-based expansion with an entire set of new blocks and 22 scenarios. I applaud the new blocks even though they add cost, as the illustrations are of phalanx-era armies instead of the Roman legions, and include Indian and Persian armies as well. As such, GMT will be producing large and expensive expansions at the rate of a couple a year, at least for now (the second one focuses on the Gauls, and will come out in early 2007). In contrast, Days' marketing plans are to produce both larger army kits and single creature blister packs. While at first glance it may feel a bit like spending $4 for a single creature and it's rules seems a bit steep, or $20 for an army, at least you can get them one at a time and the cost compared to the GMT offerings is pretty close when all is considered, although you don't get the extra scenarios (although you do online). Again, a toss-up.
Finally, how do they play? This is hard to compare directly, as I was trying to figure out the lore system only to be drawing Cleric spells (when I didn't have a Cleric, but I did have everyone else) and I ended up casting a whopping two spells in the entire game. Compare this with at least a half-dozen evasions in my game with Jesse, and I have to consider Lore to be considerably more prone to luck in a game that already has far too much luck as it is.
In both games, I had a lot of trouble getting the cards I needed to move and attack with critical units, and of course this is a core knock against the system as a whole. However, in Battlelore I had a five-card hand (compared to four in Ancients), and exactly a single card that would have allowed me to move one of the two heavy units on my right flank. While this was a single game, it was still annoying. I also kept drawing battle and lore cards that would have been great had I been the English at Agincourt with lots of archers, completely useless to me in our game.
I mention this because I give the nod to Ancients, although I'm aware that my take on Battlelore is heavily colored by my frustration in that game, although it was much closer. There are other reasons I like Ancients better, though:
o Easier to parse the board
o Easier to move units on the map
o Easier to set up the game
o Easier to find rules
o Evasion is always "on"
o Lore is more luck
o Don't need to be supported to battle back
o More unit differentiation (especially with light units)
o Historical events informing how the systems works
o Leader units give tactical flexibility, additional firepower
Battlelore, on the other hand, only has a couple of things going for it:
o More colorful rules (the map and cards are, if anything, too busy)
o War Council/ Lore rules create more variation from game to game
o More scenarios will be available over time, although many will be home-brewed
o Expansions can be added in a bit at a time and will almost certainly be more extensive over time
o Can be expanded in almost any way desired, as there is no history that must be followed
The one thing that Battlelore really needs, and would give it the edge for me, is a random conflict generator. Most scenario-based wargames like Combat Commander and ASL make use of these, although most people who enjoy historical games prefer historical situations. I'd actually like to see GMT do this for Ancients, and if they did it would lock up Ancients as the best iteration of this vererable, if perhaps flawed, gaming system. At least the games are fairly short.
I should note that neither game uses victory point spaces, as was done in Memoir in an attempt to give players a reason to fight (this was a bit of a problem with Battle Cry). Battlelore does include some terrain that gives Lore benefits, but otherwise you go at it because that's what you are supposed to do. Of course, neither game has devastating artillery like Battle Cry and Memoir do, so there is more incentive to "bring it", and perhaps the VP spaces aren't needed. Note: there may be VP spaces in Battlelore - I have not read all of the rules, but there are certainly no such rules in Ancients.
Of course, I'm also a wargamer (which both of these games are), and like more wargamers I like some history to base the game on. To be fair, Battlelore can be played as a historical game without the Lore rules, but I can't speak for whether or not the game evokes medieval battles in the same way that Ancients evokes antiquity. At least, not yet. For now, however, I'm much more likely to pull out Ancients if I'm playing another wargamer, Battlelore if I'm not.
Combat Commander - First Impressions
I published this first-take review on the 'Geek a few minutes ago after Chuck and I played this game for a first time today.
The verdict - The game rocks. If you've ever wanted to play Squad Leader or Up Front, but felt that the rules, acronyms, or clunky mechanisms got in the way, this is the game you've waited for. If you've ever wished Ambush! worked for two players, this is for you.
Here's my review...
This is a short review of GMT's new tactical WWII game, Combat Commander. My group has been anxiously anticipating this game coming out, and I spent a good chunk of Friday (the day it came) clipping counters, reading the rules, and going through the example of play, all to prepare for playing my friend Chuck on Saturday.
First, the components (as always). In general, very good. Chuck felt the cards were on the flimsy side, and I suppose they could be beefier, but considering that they're going straight into protectors and deck boxes, that shouldn't be an issue. The box is the same size as Command & Colors: Ancients, which is to say bookshelf-sized, but deep enough to hold a Plano box for counter storage. Too many of the bookcase boxes are too thin to hold a deck box, so the extra depth is appreciated.
I really like the counters, but of course there are a couple of nits. The grey and green counters are very similar in color, and in less than stellar lighting that could be a problem. Also, for some reason I keep confusing the leader and team counters, although neither was a problem during play.
Finally, the rules. I've been advocating this particular style of rules (give the basic flow, then break out specifics in the back of the rules, combining the strengths of user's guides with reference manuals). Combined with an excellent index, this is the best rules set I've ever seen, and I've been wargaming for 30 years. Well done, Chad and GMT. These rules will set the standard for years to come.
Next, learning the game. The process referred to in the rules, reading the Components, Core Rules, Orders, and Op Fire action entry, is possibly a bit too much. What I did was read the Components and Core Rules, then set up the example of play and ran through it. As I got to a section that discussed, say, movement, I'd go look up that rules section. It worked well enough that Chuck and I got through our first game (Scenario 1) in less than two hours the next day. Of course, I have enough experience with Squad Leader and Up Front (the obvious ancestors of this game) that most of the concepts were very familiar.
Finally, how did it play? Quite well. We played the first two scenarios, with me as the Germans in both cases. In the first, I foolishly held the initiative, allowing Chuck to move first. My primary weapon squad and leader moved into Op Fire range, of which one broke, and the other was broken by a sniper. It went downhill from there, and I never felt like I ever got a chance to get back in the game - I kept getting tagged by snipers while Chuck went untouched in the first few turns, and recovery cards were nowhere in sight for the Germans. We were considering this a learning game, so it tolerable, and I'd definitely move with the Germans before I even considered hanging on to the initiative.
In the second game, I was defending Bocage country from the American advance. I started out with a pretty strong defense (I put the light MGs up front, holding the heavies back along some obvious advancement lanes), only to have Chuck do quite well with his melee rolls - I lost the three I was involved in, despite having multiple Ambush cards in every case. I ended up losing before the Time marker hit the Sudden Death marker through loss of units, which was killing me - in every melee, I lost a leader and a squad. Clearly I was doing something wrong, but we agreed that luck was not with me in the second half of the scenario.
Still, I had a great time. The game takes the tactical feel of Squad Leader and pairs it with the strong elements of Up Front. UF was a great idea hampered by an unreadable and error-filled rulebook, not to mention amazingly involved attempts to handle the intricacies of manuever through cards. Unlike Squad Leader, terrain and weapons are approachable and consistant. If I could name a game that comes close to having the same feel, it would be the Victory Games' chestnut Ambush!.
We really only had one question not easily addressed by the rules, namely what constitutes the end of a movement activation (for purposes of placing smoke - can a unit place smoke after you've used up all of its MP?) Even then, it was pretty clear that you could, although I think this is an unusual situation.
By comparison, the other game I was really excited about getting this year, Shifting Sands, suffered from the twin CDG maladies of Must Play Events and When Does My Critical Event Show Up, exacerbated by too-large event decks. While the initial prognosis on that game was very good, it became clear that many cards simply had to be played in order to thin your deck down as a missed event would likely cost you the game and there were at least two chances for something like this to happen.
Combat Commander, on the other hand, by it's very nature can be balanced. While bad luck can play a role (and did to some extent in my two games), the games are short enough (our second game was about two hours as well), and the various victory conditions mean that even though you are losing units that you're only one really successful combat away from turning things around. In our second game, even though I was losing units I was also very close to winning on points if time ran out because of an extra 5 points for an objective that I still held, and had I won the last melee it would have been very close indeed.
Perhaps best, you are constantly deciding how to play cards. Do you take a shot at the unit about to advance into your position, or hold the card for it's ambush action? Answer (in this case) - Ambush. Definitely. Melee's are all or nothing, and every additional differential is incredibly important.
So who would like this game? Anyone who's wanted to play ASL but is daunted by the rules commitment and acronym insanity, who's really wanted to like Up Front but the rules and conceptual acrobatics get in the way, who's ever enjoyed Ambush but wished for a live opponent instead of an AI and paragraph system, who'd like to play a wargame that (insomuch as a game can) gives the kind of tension you would imagine you'd have in actual combat. Sans bullets whizzing by your head and you crapping your pants, that is.
Is it perfect? I'd say there are quite a few compromises - a big one is that mortars require a line of sight from the hex firing, and the only thing they bring is to avoid fire attack modifiers for intervening terrain such as hedges. There are no vehicles, although off-board artillery is simulated at a pretty accurate level. If you want a game that will give you complete control over your situation other than a few die rolls, this is not a game for you, and I suspect that a lot of hard-core ASLers won't be impressed. Still, considering that I was into this game in about two hours (to read the salient rules and to run the example), that's quite an accomplishment.
Once again, well done to Chad Jensen, the playtesters, and the developer. Considering this game only started being designed in it's current form a couple of years ago, it is quite well conceived. Brilliant.
The verdict - The game rocks. If you've ever wanted to play Squad Leader or Up Front, but felt that the rules, acronyms, or clunky mechanisms got in the way, this is the game you've waited for. If you've ever wished Ambush! worked for two players, this is for you.
Here's my review...
This is a short review of GMT's new tactical WWII game, Combat Commander. My group has been anxiously anticipating this game coming out, and I spent a good chunk of Friday (the day it came) clipping counters, reading the rules, and going through the example of play, all to prepare for playing my friend Chuck on Saturday.
First, the components (as always). In general, very good. Chuck felt the cards were on the flimsy side, and I suppose they could be beefier, but considering that they're going straight into protectors and deck boxes, that shouldn't be an issue. The box is the same size as Command & Colors: Ancients, which is to say bookshelf-sized, but deep enough to hold a Plano box for counter storage. Too many of the bookcase boxes are too thin to hold a deck box, so the extra depth is appreciated.
I really like the counters, but of course there are a couple of nits. The grey and green counters are very similar in color, and in less than stellar lighting that could be a problem. Also, for some reason I keep confusing the leader and team counters, although neither was a problem during play.
Finally, the rules. I've been advocating this particular style of rules (give the basic flow, then break out specifics in the back of the rules, combining the strengths of user's guides with reference manuals). Combined with an excellent index, this is the best rules set I've ever seen, and I've been wargaming for 30 years. Well done, Chad and GMT. These rules will set the standard for years to come.
Next, learning the game. The process referred to in the rules, reading the Components, Core Rules, Orders, and Op Fire action entry, is possibly a bit too much. What I did was read the Components and Core Rules, then set up the example of play and ran through it. As I got to a section that discussed, say, movement, I'd go look up that rules section. It worked well enough that Chuck and I got through our first game (Scenario 1) in less than two hours the next day. Of course, I have enough experience with Squad Leader and Up Front (the obvious ancestors of this game) that most of the concepts were very familiar.
Finally, how did it play? Quite well. We played the first two scenarios, with me as the Germans in both cases. In the first, I foolishly held the initiative, allowing Chuck to move first. My primary weapon squad and leader moved into Op Fire range, of which one broke, and the other was broken by a sniper. It went downhill from there, and I never felt like I ever got a chance to get back in the game - I kept getting tagged by snipers while Chuck went untouched in the first few turns, and recovery cards were nowhere in sight for the Germans. We were considering this a learning game, so it tolerable, and I'd definitely move with the Germans before I even considered hanging on to the initiative.
In the second game, I was defending Bocage country from the American advance. I started out with a pretty strong defense (I put the light MGs up front, holding the heavies back along some obvious advancement lanes), only to have Chuck do quite well with his melee rolls - I lost the three I was involved in, despite having multiple Ambush cards in every case. I ended up losing before the Time marker hit the Sudden Death marker through loss of units, which was killing me - in every melee, I lost a leader and a squad. Clearly I was doing something wrong, but we agreed that luck was not with me in the second half of the scenario.
Still, I had a great time. The game takes the tactical feel of Squad Leader and pairs it with the strong elements of Up Front. UF was a great idea hampered by an unreadable and error-filled rulebook, not to mention amazingly involved attempts to handle the intricacies of manuever through cards. Unlike Squad Leader, terrain and weapons are approachable and consistant. If I could name a game that comes close to having the same feel, it would be the Victory Games' chestnut Ambush!.
We really only had one question not easily addressed by the rules, namely what constitutes the end of a movement activation (for purposes of placing smoke - can a unit place smoke after you've used up all of its MP?) Even then, it was pretty clear that you could, although I think this is an unusual situation.
By comparison, the other game I was really excited about getting this year, Shifting Sands, suffered from the twin CDG maladies of Must Play Events and When Does My Critical Event Show Up, exacerbated by too-large event decks. While the initial prognosis on that game was very good, it became clear that many cards simply had to be played in order to thin your deck down as a missed event would likely cost you the game and there were at least two chances for something like this to happen.
Combat Commander, on the other hand, by it's very nature can be balanced. While bad luck can play a role (and did to some extent in my two games), the games are short enough (our second game was about two hours as well), and the various victory conditions mean that even though you are losing units that you're only one really successful combat away from turning things around. In our second game, even though I was losing units I was also very close to winning on points if time ran out because of an extra 5 points for an objective that I still held, and had I won the last melee it would have been very close indeed.
Perhaps best, you are constantly deciding how to play cards. Do you take a shot at the unit about to advance into your position, or hold the card for it's ambush action? Answer (in this case) - Ambush. Definitely. Melee's are all or nothing, and every additional differential is incredibly important.
So who would like this game? Anyone who's wanted to play ASL but is daunted by the rules commitment and acronym insanity, who's really wanted to like Up Front but the rules and conceptual acrobatics get in the way, who's ever enjoyed Ambush but wished for a live opponent instead of an AI and paragraph system, who'd like to play a wargame that (insomuch as a game can) gives the kind of tension you would imagine you'd have in actual combat. Sans bullets whizzing by your head and you crapping your pants, that is.
Is it perfect? I'd say there are quite a few compromises - a big one is that mortars require a line of sight from the hex firing, and the only thing they bring is to avoid fire attack modifiers for intervening terrain such as hedges. There are no vehicles, although off-board artillery is simulated at a pretty accurate level. If you want a game that will give you complete control over your situation other than a few die rolls, this is not a game for you, and I suspect that a lot of hard-core ASLers won't be impressed. Still, considering that I was into this game in about two hours (to read the salient rules and to run the example), that's quite an accomplishment.
Once again, well done to Chad Jensen, the playtesters, and the developer. Considering this game only started being designed in it's current form a couple of years ago, it is quite well conceived. Brilliant.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Mondo Tuesday Session
12 people at my place for games at our regular Tuesday session. I may need to buy a new house sooner than later, as at one point we had Alex, Matt, and Carey playing a game on the counter between the kitchen and family room. Wow.
Who was there? Me, Matt, Mike, Carey, Alex, Liz, soon-to-be-official new guy Ian, hopefully-new-guy Zach, Tim, KC, Rita, and Jim. Yikes. A whole lot of gaming going on, no question. I can't really keep track of what goes on in the extra sessions, but I will mention them when I can remember them.
Six of us started out in the dining room playing Ave Caesar. True to form, I immediately screwed up a rule that cost Carey dearly in the first race. I'd hate to think I got a game right the first time (although I did pretty well in Aquedukt later on). This is a reprint of an old title where you are a chariot racer in a Circus Maximus. Each player in turn plays from a three card hand, which in turn is drawn from your player deck. All of the decks are identical, and as far as I can tell without a closer look there are four each of 1's, 2's, etc up to 6's. The game is very simple - you play a card, move your chariot that many spaces, then draw another card from your deck. The track has lots of bottlenecks where only a single racer can stop, along with lots of curves where being on the inside track will move you along faster. You also need to be sure to stop by the pit stop/drive through and wave to King Julie.
Each player plays in turn, none of this weenie "player in first goes first" stuff like in Formula De. You run three laps, get points for your placement, then flip the map over and do it again. If you're really good, you'll play the two tracks again, except going in the opposite direction. Winner is the one with the most points at game end. We didn't really keep track, although Zach and Liz both did well in both races as I remember. One other note - you have a fixed deck to work from, and if you constantly take the outer tracks you won't have enough points to even finish the race!
So how was it? Make no mistake, this is a very light game and one that hard-core gamers may not like. However, the game plays very quickly, and while you may not have quite as many decision points as you might like, there is still a lot of tension both in seeing if the guy right before you will cut you off or if you'll draw a high card that you need to get where you want to go for next turn. While it's more of a ride than a game, it's a pretty good ride. Also, the components are very nice (Carey used the term "over-produced - I'm afraid my rules screw up may have permanently ruined this game for him) - two nice tracks and very detailed chariots. Kind of a big box for what it is, but that's nothing new these days. Perhaps a very good 6 person filler.
We all broke up about the same time, so we mixed up our personnel. Alex, Carey, and Matt brought out Battlelore on the counter, while Ian, Jim, Liz, and I gave Aquedukt a shot. This game has gotten some mixed reviews on the 'Geek, but Matthew Baldwin gave it high praise in a Gift Guide he did (this is the guy who does Defective Yet, one of the best generally-gaming-themed blogs out there). Matt, if you're ever trapped overnight in Portland, give me a call and I'll put you up. I quite liked the game, although I can see why some might really dislike it.
In the game, you play real estate developers who are speculating on services becoming available for a given plot of land. Except it's in Rome. If your land doesn't have a water supply (directly next to a canal or one away from a double canal), you stand a chance of losing your permit. The canals remind me of the streetcars in Big City, and in fact quite a bit about this game reminds me of a very light version of Big City, but I think that's a good thing. The board is a big grid divided into regions with between 4 and 6 squares in each, 20 regions in all.
During your turn, you can do one of three things. First, you can place a spring on the map, anywhere as long as it's five or more intersections (traced orthagonally) from any other spring. Springs are good because they are the sources for canals. Second, you can place up to two canals on the borders between squares. Each spring can have two canals "springing" from it, the canals can't branch, and they can't intersect with another canal from another spring (I don't recall rules about "bowties" as in Wildlife Expedition, so we banned these as well). You can double them up, but only starting from the spring so that all upstream canals are doubled before any downstream ones are.
Finally, you can place up to three house tiles, and this is clearly where gamers might disagree about how good a game this is. You roll a 20 sided die, and then place any one of your house tiles in that space. The house tiles range from one to four in value, and the only rule is that if a space already has access to water you must play your lowest remaining value house in that space. There is no requirement to play in a watered space, but if you do it must be your worst. Also, if by placing a house tile you take the last space in a region, all houses that are not watered are removed and put back in the box. You may choose not to place a house after seeing your roll, but you forfeit any of your remaining rolls for the turn.
This leads to interesting strategies. In our game, I tried to use my one value house tiles to force others out of the game, and also to up my minimum house tile value for when I could play next to a canal. If you have the chance to play a tile so that a future (and doable) double canal could feed it, that's a great time to play one of your four tiles, then double the canal before you lose it to overbuilding. Clearly, the fact that you are rolling a die is what makes people dislike this game, but I don't think it's that much different to Acquire or Big City or Chinatown, and in fact it evens up the odds so that just because someone can build in a specific space doesn't lock you out. The fact that you might lose a four value house tile to overbuilding adds tension to the game, so I'm all for it.
The game ends when all 36 canals have been built and everyone has had an equal number of turns. In our game, Jim finished off the canals, but since he'd gone first, everyone else got to play the lottery - since there are no more canals, you are reduced to rolling the die three times and see if you get lucky. Liz and Ian did, I didn't, and so Ian won with 21, Liz with 20, me with 17, Jim with 15. It's a little hard to parse the board, to be honest, so it may be worthwhile to make up a scoring track to keep track of who has what points - had we been doing this, I think Jim would not have placed the final canals but instead played the lottery until someone else did. Regardless, this is a small nit in what is a very quick and fun three or four player game.
Jim and Ian took off at this point, and KC, Rita, Tim, Zach, and Mike were playing Alhambra in the other room, so Liz and I pulled out Balloon Cup, the much denigrated (by the Point2Point guys, anyway) Kosmos small-box game. I'd never actually finished a game, and I knew it was quick (Liz claimed she was ready to leave once Alex finished Battlelore), so out it came.
One thing I love about LIz, she has a very good competitive streak. Alex's game ended, I was trying to say goodnight to everyone who was leaving, and Liz kept herding me back to the game to finish. It was a nail-biter in some respects. I had a couple of locks on 3 and 4 cube areas, but couldn't draw any gray cards (Liz was hording them), and for a while it looked like anyone's game. However, I was able to take a critical 2 race that gave me two trophies, and had drawn a gray card that gave me the third a round later. As advertised, a quick and light game, but with decent tension that would be great for kids and anyone who's manliness isn't threatened by the word "Balloon".
Thanks to everyone who came, welcome to Ian, and I hope that Zach had a good enough time to come back on a regular basis (and that his class schedule allows for it). Merry Whatever to all!
Doug
Who was there? Me, Matt, Mike, Carey, Alex, Liz, soon-to-be-official new guy Ian, hopefully-new-guy Zach, Tim, KC, Rita, and Jim. Yikes. A whole lot of gaming going on, no question. I can't really keep track of what goes on in the extra sessions, but I will mention them when I can remember them.
Six of us started out in the dining room playing Ave Caesar. True to form, I immediately screwed up a rule that cost Carey dearly in the first race. I'd hate to think I got a game right the first time (although I did pretty well in Aquedukt later on). This is a reprint of an old title where you are a chariot racer in a Circus Maximus. Each player in turn plays from a three card hand, which in turn is drawn from your player deck. All of the decks are identical, and as far as I can tell without a closer look there are four each of 1's, 2's, etc up to 6's. The game is very simple - you play a card, move your chariot that many spaces, then draw another card from your deck. The track has lots of bottlenecks where only a single racer can stop, along with lots of curves where being on the inside track will move you along faster. You also need to be sure to stop by the pit stop/drive through and wave to King Julie.
Each player plays in turn, none of this weenie "player in first goes first" stuff like in Formula De. You run three laps, get points for your placement, then flip the map over and do it again. If you're really good, you'll play the two tracks again, except going in the opposite direction. Winner is the one with the most points at game end. We didn't really keep track, although Zach and Liz both did well in both races as I remember. One other note - you have a fixed deck to work from, and if you constantly take the outer tracks you won't have enough points to even finish the race!
So how was it? Make no mistake, this is a very light game and one that hard-core gamers may not like. However, the game plays very quickly, and while you may not have quite as many decision points as you might like, there is still a lot of tension both in seeing if the guy right before you will cut you off or if you'll draw a high card that you need to get where you want to go for next turn. While it's more of a ride than a game, it's a pretty good ride. Also, the components are very nice (Carey used the term "over-produced - I'm afraid my rules screw up may have permanently ruined this game for him) - two nice tracks and very detailed chariots. Kind of a big box for what it is, but that's nothing new these days. Perhaps a very good 6 person filler.
We all broke up about the same time, so we mixed up our personnel. Alex, Carey, and Matt brought out Battlelore on the counter, while Ian, Jim, Liz, and I gave Aquedukt a shot. This game has gotten some mixed reviews on the 'Geek, but Matthew Baldwin gave it high praise in a Gift Guide he did (this is the guy who does Defective Yet, one of the best generally-gaming-themed blogs out there). Matt, if you're ever trapped overnight in Portland, give me a call and I'll put you up. I quite liked the game, although I can see why some might really dislike it.
In the game, you play real estate developers who are speculating on services becoming available for a given plot of land. Except it's in Rome. If your land doesn't have a water supply (directly next to a canal or one away from a double canal), you stand a chance of losing your permit. The canals remind me of the streetcars in Big City, and in fact quite a bit about this game reminds me of a very light version of Big City, but I think that's a good thing. The board is a big grid divided into regions with between 4 and 6 squares in each, 20 regions in all.
During your turn, you can do one of three things. First, you can place a spring on the map, anywhere as long as it's five or more intersections (traced orthagonally) from any other spring. Springs are good because they are the sources for canals. Second, you can place up to two canals on the borders between squares. Each spring can have two canals "springing" from it, the canals can't branch, and they can't intersect with another canal from another spring (I don't recall rules about "bowties" as in Wildlife Expedition, so we banned these as well). You can double them up, but only starting from the spring so that all upstream canals are doubled before any downstream ones are.
Finally, you can place up to three house tiles, and this is clearly where gamers might disagree about how good a game this is. You roll a 20 sided die, and then place any one of your house tiles in that space. The house tiles range from one to four in value, and the only rule is that if a space already has access to water you must play your lowest remaining value house in that space. There is no requirement to play in a watered space, but if you do it must be your worst. Also, if by placing a house tile you take the last space in a region, all houses that are not watered are removed and put back in the box. You may choose not to place a house after seeing your roll, but you forfeit any of your remaining rolls for the turn.
This leads to interesting strategies. In our game, I tried to use my one value house tiles to force others out of the game, and also to up my minimum house tile value for when I could play next to a canal. If you have the chance to play a tile so that a future (and doable) double canal could feed it, that's a great time to play one of your four tiles, then double the canal before you lose it to overbuilding. Clearly, the fact that you are rolling a die is what makes people dislike this game, but I don't think it's that much different to Acquire or Big City or Chinatown, and in fact it evens up the odds so that just because someone can build in a specific space doesn't lock you out. The fact that you might lose a four value house tile to overbuilding adds tension to the game, so I'm all for it.
The game ends when all 36 canals have been built and everyone has had an equal number of turns. In our game, Jim finished off the canals, but since he'd gone first, everyone else got to play the lottery - since there are no more canals, you are reduced to rolling the die three times and see if you get lucky. Liz and Ian did, I didn't, and so Ian won with 21, Liz with 20, me with 17, Jim with 15. It's a little hard to parse the board, to be honest, so it may be worthwhile to make up a scoring track to keep track of who has what points - had we been doing this, I think Jim would not have placed the final canals but instead played the lottery until someone else did. Regardless, this is a small nit in what is a very quick and fun three or four player game.
Jim and Ian took off at this point, and KC, Rita, Tim, Zach, and Mike were playing Alhambra in the other room, so Liz and I pulled out Balloon Cup, the much denigrated (by the Point2Point guys, anyway) Kosmos small-box game. I'd never actually finished a game, and I knew it was quick (Liz claimed she was ready to leave once Alex finished Battlelore), so out it came.
One thing I love about LIz, she has a very good competitive streak. Alex's game ended, I was trying to say goodnight to everyone who was leaving, and Liz kept herding me back to the game to finish. It was a nail-biter in some respects. I had a couple of locks on 3 and 4 cube areas, but couldn't draw any gray cards (Liz was hording them), and for a while it looked like anyone's game. However, I was able to take a critical 2 race that gave me two trophies, and had drawn a gray card that gave me the third a round later. As advertised, a quick and light game, but with decent tension that would be great for kids and anyone who's manliness isn't threatened by the word "Balloon".
Thanks to everyone who came, welcome to Ian, and I hope that Zach had a good enough time to come back on a regular basis (and that his class schedule allows for it). Merry Whatever to all!
Doug
Monday, December 18, 2006
Computer Formula De
Formula De was one of my early eurogame purchases, and I own almost all of the tracks (which makes it second only in total monetary investment to ASL, which I have yet to play). The game definitely has it's problems, perhaps one of the greatest being downtime. Still, I love the game, and if it wasn't so difficult to keep track of how many times each car has spent in a multi-turn corner, I'd probably pull it out for solitaire more often.
So, when I discovered that not only was there a freeware version of the game (I think it's freeware, see below) through a link on the 'Geek, but also that it was natively supported on Macs, I downloaded it almost immediately, along with every track I could find. I've played maybe 10 races now, and as you'd expect, have formed an opinion...
o Free is a great price.
o Support for Mac and Linux is awesome. Merci, mon amis!
o The game has all of it's advanced rules: weather, crap on the track, pit stops that can be slow or fast (which I don't think is an official rule, at least in my version), all sorts of things. Even qualifying laps!
o The feel is really great - no more counting spaces, no more waiting for others to count spaces. You put your pointer over the die you want to roll, and the game shows you exactly what spaces you can move to within that range and which ones are more perilous than others. A three lap race with ten cars takes about 20 minutes, compared with close to three hours for a board race. This makes the game much more playable.
Now for the knocks...
o The entire game is in French. Not really a knock, just a problem for a stupid American like me whose idea of a foreign language is Taco Bell. As such, I have no idea whether or not I should be paying them money for this.
o The extra tracks took several trys to download, and I finally gave up and did them individually other than via the "big package" load. So far as I can tell, every track that was released up to 32 is in the set, maybe a few more. I was never familiar with the track names, just the locations on the American covers, so I can't really tell easily. That's great, but every file I downloaded came with a dozen folders, only one of which had the actual track. Given that the download came over as "Formula De 17", it took a little while to find and extract them all, more than it took to run a couple of races. Hey, it's free.
o I am starting to get the idea that the AI compensates for any weaknesses by weighting the humans die rolls toward the low end, or maybe even cheating. If there is a number I do *not* want to roll, I consistently roll it, even if there is only a 1-in-12 chance or lower of hitting it. This is a game of playing the odds, and while I think I'm not bad at that sort of thing, I'm clearly hitting a bad streak with this game. I sure hope so, because this is a game where a cheating AI will get real old real fast.
o This is a bloody game. I've seen cars get knocked out of the game within a couple of turns of the start. Sometimes two or three cars out of ten. When I've done well, I've been the only car left on the road. For 3-lap races, I consistently finish in the last surviving car position, which is usually first through third. I can't imagine this is part of the normal design, this is not a game where getting knocked out in the first ten minutes of play for a three-lap race would attract players. While it has only happened to me once, it was because I failed to notice that the corner required two stops until after I'd rolled the dice.
Otherwise, I'm delighted to have found a way to play this game solitaire where I don't get burned out on counting spaces and using ten dice to remember which cars have stopped twice on a corner. And it's very fast.
The site also includes a play-by-internet section, but I can't figure out whether I need to pay money to do this or something else. You can easily hot-seat the game, although that would obviously make it somewhat slower.
Oh, I forgot the coolest part - after a race, you get a movie of the cars moving around the track. Slower gears move the cars more slowly, it really creates a very nice summary of the game.
I'm too damned lazy to remember how to insert a link, so you'll just have to copy and paste this one below to find the game...
http://formulede.online.free.fr/downloadFD.php
So, when I discovered that not only was there a freeware version of the game (I think it's freeware, see below) through a link on the 'Geek, but also that it was natively supported on Macs, I downloaded it almost immediately, along with every track I could find. I've played maybe 10 races now, and as you'd expect, have formed an opinion...
o Free is a great price.
o Support for Mac and Linux is awesome. Merci, mon amis!
o The game has all of it's advanced rules: weather, crap on the track, pit stops that can be slow or fast (which I don't think is an official rule, at least in my version), all sorts of things. Even qualifying laps!
o The feel is really great - no more counting spaces, no more waiting for others to count spaces. You put your pointer over the die you want to roll, and the game shows you exactly what spaces you can move to within that range and which ones are more perilous than others. A three lap race with ten cars takes about 20 minutes, compared with close to three hours for a board race. This makes the game much more playable.
Now for the knocks...
o The entire game is in French. Not really a knock, just a problem for a stupid American like me whose idea of a foreign language is Taco Bell. As such, I have no idea whether or not I should be paying them money for this.
o The extra tracks took several trys to download, and I finally gave up and did them individually other than via the "big package" load. So far as I can tell, every track that was released up to 32 is in the set, maybe a few more. I was never familiar with the track names, just the locations on the American covers, so I can't really tell easily. That's great, but every file I downloaded came with a dozen folders, only one of which had the actual track. Given that the download came over as "Formula De 17", it took a little while to find and extract them all, more than it took to run a couple of races. Hey, it's free.
o I am starting to get the idea that the AI compensates for any weaknesses by weighting the humans die rolls toward the low end, or maybe even cheating. If there is a number I do *not* want to roll, I consistently roll it, even if there is only a 1-in-12 chance or lower of hitting it. This is a game of playing the odds, and while I think I'm not bad at that sort of thing, I'm clearly hitting a bad streak with this game. I sure hope so, because this is a game where a cheating AI will get real old real fast.
o This is a bloody game. I've seen cars get knocked out of the game within a couple of turns of the start. Sometimes two or three cars out of ten. When I've done well, I've been the only car left on the road. For 3-lap races, I consistently finish in the last surviving car position, which is usually first through third. I can't imagine this is part of the normal design, this is not a game where getting knocked out in the first ten minutes of play for a three-lap race would attract players. While it has only happened to me once, it was because I failed to notice that the corner required two stops until after I'd rolled the dice.
Otherwise, I'm delighted to have found a way to play this game solitaire where I don't get burned out on counting spaces and using ten dice to remember which cars have stopped twice on a corner. And it's very fast.
The site also includes a play-by-internet section, but I can't figure out whether I need to pay money to do this or something else. You can easily hot-seat the game, although that would obviously make it somewhat slower.
Oh, I forgot the coolest part - after a race, you get a movie of the cars moving around the track. Slower gears move the cars more slowly, it really creates a very nice summary of the game.
I'm too damned lazy to remember how to insert a link, so you'll just have to copy and paste this one below to find the game...
http://formulede.online.free.fr/downloadFD.php
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