Panzer Grenadier - Finally On The Table

I'll admit it - I have serious issues with Avalanche Press' games. Their rules are sloppy and subject to frequent new editions with major rules changes, they seem more interested in putting out quantity than quality, both in scenarios for their PG and GWaS/SWWaS games and in actual gameplay for games like Red Vengeance, and they act like the company will fold if they allow people to play their games online. I find that hard to believe, seeing the quantity of different titles that flow from them and the frequent sales they put on. 

I own a lot of their games, regardless. Some, like GWaS/SWWaS I have tried and run into too many rules problems (both lack of rules and poorly worded rules), and won't buy into those systems anymore. Panzer Grenadier was one of their early titles, and I bought games in all three (!) of the different rules editions they put out - the original game, marred by a boneheaded idea that you could easily measure if a piece of terrain took up 10% of a hex, Afrika Korps in 2nd ed which had it's own problems. I'd given up completely on the series until third edition came out, and I picked up the Eastern Front reprint of the original game to see if it had improved. I was impressed by a better (but still incredibly thick) ruleset, especially wrt how leaders were treated, and what seemed to be better scenario design. 

In fact, I was enamored of the system that I bought several other of the games and expansions, especially when they had sales. I now own Airborne, Road to Berlin, Battle of the Bulge, Afrika Corps, Eastern Front, Desert Rats (all boxed games that stand on their own), and the expansions Blue Division, Red Warriors, Sinister Forces, Arctic Front, Iron Curtain, Edelweiss, and South Africa's War. That's a lot of games, counters, and maps. I figure there are something like 400 scenarios all told in that mix, which I will clearly never play. 

And, until last night, I had not. Oh, I'd pulled out the game, set it up, and run through a few turns here and there, but the rules have enough hidden rules that it's hard for one person to learn the game. For example, if a demoralized unit fails it's recovery roll and flees, a leader in the original hex can flee with it. And this rule is buried as an exception in an unrelated rule. Meanwhile, you are told what units you can activate in a turn at least five or six times - the identical rule, over and over. And it happens throughout the rules. A clean ruleset would take up, in my estimation, about 8 pages of dense text, maybe 12 with illustrated examples. So learning this game on your own can be a bit of a chore.

Making matters worse, you can't play the game online, at least not in the modern sense. Because of opportunity fire, you really can't play the game by sending your move as a file and using a dice server to generate the random parts. VASSAL would be ideal for the game, but Avalanche is so paranoid about it's intellectual property that it won't allow any modules to be distributed. As such, I can't play this game remotely. Which is incredibly stupid because the game takes a long time to play anything but the simplest scenarios. I'm fairly certain I'd play this game regularly if there was a remote play option, but there isn't and so I think I'm not going to buy any more PG product until there is an option to do so. I've got plenty of game already that isn't getting played. 

That said, Eric and I have moaned about not having opponents for the game (largely because of the above reasons) in our group, and decided to pull it out and give it a try last night. This was the first face-to-face third edition game for both of us, although he'd played second edition some time ago. He chose the Los Tigres! scenario (#11) from the Blue Division expansion, partly because you got to have Spanish Fascists in 1942 Russia, but also because this was the first appearance of the PzKwVIe, also known as the Tiger tank. The model had horrible problems with maintenance and upkeep, was slow slow slow, and was only produced in limited numbers, but it had an 88mm cannon that was taken from the FLaK gun that did such an incredible job in an anti-tank role, and was perhaps the most feared land weapon on the WWII battlefield outside of heavy artillery. 

The scenario has the Spanish units (and their lone Tiger unit) trying to mop up a pocket of Russian soldiers holed up in a town. The Russians are in dire straits - most of their units are reduced, and thus have low morale, and the handful of guns they have are not up to the task of taking out the Tiger without some serious luck. I think the heavy artillery they have could *maybe* cause some damage on an 11 or 12 on 2d6 *if* the Tiger was adjacent and hadn't moved that turn. An unlikely situation, seeing as the guns have no way to move once they are placed and the Tiger has no reason to assault a city, where the guns are likely to be located. As such, it falls to close assault tactics to take out the Tiger. 

Which we *almost* got to but not quite. While we only finished about 10 turns out of the 28 the scenario runs for, I figure we got about half way in over three hours, much of that time spent on setup (30 minutes) and rules lookups (another 15-20 minutes). The Spanish, coming from two directions, were knocking on the door of the one-hex town, and being held off to some extent from the other town, with a pair of units and a leader ready to assault the Tiger which had foolishly parked next to a woods hex. I'd had surprising luck with my two laughingly designated "anti-tank" guns, which didn't have enough firepower to damage the Tiger if you were able to *combine* them, much less on their own, but they did a bang-up job popping away with their measly 2-firepower attacks on infantry units. Had we continued the game, it would have been interesting, but to be brutally honest PG scenarios are about history and not about a balanced gaming experience, so I'm pretty sure I would have eventually have been wiped off of the map given another 10 turns, although I might have taken quite a few Spaniards with me. 

Here's the thing - I really like this game. We spent a lot of time early on figuring odds of a result, and there are four different combat tables to get to know, each with different rules. Anti-armor fire uses a differential system, and only single units can fire. Direct fire goes against specific hexes, and can take advantage of firegroups if you have leaders around. Bombardment is particularly deadly, but is harder to get firegroups set up, but can also be done indirectly. Assault requires leaders, no disruptions or demoralizations in the attacking units, everyone is involved, and you have to first get up close and personal. There's also opportunity fire, which is great for direct fire but not so good with anti-armor, and it can only affect a single unit at a time. Every type has it's own table, which used specific firepower totals and column shifts to get a result, and even then the most likely roll (a 7) will result in no success at all - the real wins are when you roll at the end of the bell curve, either side! 

As such, you spend a lot of time looking at the tables early on to figure out how many factors to throw at a given target, and whether to wait until they're one hex closer so you don't get the negative column shift. Even crap weapons can get lucky, though (see my success with the AT gun in an IG role), so nothing is certain. Except the odds of nailing that freakin' Tiger. As the game went on, we got so we knew the columns and shifts and combat got really fast (at least until you got a result, then much morale rolling was done). Because the game plays very interactively, even more so than Combat Commander, you have almost no downtime and both sides are actively involved even in a defensive role. 

The night just flew by, and I was disappointed that we were going to have to stop the game - I really wanted to see how the literary elements would have played out. I felt like this was Combat Commander for control freaks - while your combat and morale rolls are a very strong luck element, there isn't the craziness and random events going on like there is in CC - no blazes showing up in a critical hex, or crappy smoke when you needed the good stuff. You can shoot indirect arty all the way across the board at very specific spots with no checking to make sure it lands where you thought it would (although there are friendly fire rules). This is a God's-eye view game, just the way American wargamers like it. You know *right* where those Tiger tanks are. It won't help, but you know where they are. And, like Combat Commander, a lot of the scenarios aren't going to seem terribly balanced, but also like that game, balance isn't really the point. The point is to get a good feel for history and the issues the commanders faced and how the various weapons systems work together to be effective. And, of course, to tell a story through the game. 

I'm going to work to get this title on the table more, although it will likely be solitaire (the fog of war rules that can end a turn prematurely help considerably in this regard) or occasionally with Eric, who lives a bit more than two gallons of gas away as a round trip. Funny how that's a measure of distance for me now. I won't buy any more of the expansions or games, though, until Avalanche starts making it easy for me to play anyone anywhere instead of forcing me to stick with local opponents. 

And here's a thought on that. Avalanche should take a very hard look at the Days of Wonder model. Provide a proprietary online system that people can either subscribe to, or get a certain number of months access to when they buy the game, enabled by a password. A big box will get you two or three months. An expansion will get you one. The junkies will buy every game that comes out. Make it web-based so that people can't steal it and so it would be platform independent (because the only thing that would piss me off *more* would be to shut out the Mac folks needlessly). Alternately, when you subscribe, you get access to that game's scenarios for life. The initial investment in software would be a bit high, but you'd sell more games and wouldn't even need AI, just a solid interface that worked like you needed it to. Avalanche would control their IP, we'd have the opportunity to play the game remotely. There would be maintenance costs, sure, but eventually you might even be able to sell *just* the online access - no printing costs, distribution, or other costs involved. 

I mean, I like having the physical game as much as the next guy, and in fact with wargames that may be one of the primary reasons I have the game, but as I get older and even *my* closet starts to burst at the seams, maybe it's time to rethink the hobby and how we access it. List prices for wargames are going to start to break the $100 point on a regular basis in the not too distant future (the monsters and small press games already do), and if you can sell the online game for $50 I think there's a successful business model here. 

Avalanche, I hope you're listening. Because there's a good game here that gets overlooked because of your paranoia. I say, keep the paranoia but provide us with a way to play online. I think you'll come out ahead. 

MobileMe - DOA

Our WBC West group has been using a .mac Group to communicate since March of this year. I wanted (and pushed for) .mac because the ads on Yahoo Groups make it difficult to read email messages on an iPhone. From the start, .mac was a bit of a mess - very little configurability, massive problems with getting people included in the group (including a very small link you had to hunt for if you didn't want to pay for the service), and a weak interface for anyone who has used a computer in the last year. It was clearly aimed at novice users. 

Apple recently decided to change the service's name to MobileMe, with the intent that it would support the iPhone/iTouch. That's great, but it's not what I signed up for. So when Chuck told me he was having trouble getting access to our webpage, I took a look and was completely unable to get to it as well. Every time I clicked on something that was supposed to tell me what was happening, I got sent to a migration webpage that linked back to itself. Hunting through the forums on the Apple website finally explained that Groups were being phased out - no new groups, and apparently little or no support for what was there. 

At that point, I decided to pull the plug on the operation. We're going to standard e-mail rather than use any group (the micro-con is only a few weeks away), and I've asked Apple to refund a proportional amount of the membership fee. They basically took away the *only* feature I used and expected me to jump up and down at what sure looks like an entirely new feature set. 

Apple has struggled with online paid services. Those of you who used Macs back in the 90's may remember eWorld, their disastrous attempt at copying AOL, and I've been unimpressed with the .mac service from the start (I had a sub for a year once before, but let it drop because they took so long to update iWeb to a functional state). The Apple Music Store is largely a good service, although it can be a bit of a chore to find things from time to time, but then again you don't pay to access it, just to purchase things. With .mac, you paid for access. And now, I have no access to what I wanted to use it for. 

This will be my last paid online service that I buy from Apple in any event. It's unfortunate that my platform of choice is only available from them, and while I'm very likely to stick with them it's also very likely that I will not feel the slightest guilt in warning people off from MobileMe. I predict that within a year, MobileMe will have gone under and Apple will abandon any value-added strategy for the iPhone. The simple fact is that they have failed this test twice in the past and will fail this one as well. 

I expect that they are getting a lot of angry .mac users at this point, but I will fill you in on my experiences with their support people and whether or not I get a refund, much less the $60 I'm asking for back out of my $99 investment that I got a bit more than 4 months out of. 

Apple, please make this right for your customers. It's bad enough that Obama voted to let the telecoms off the hook. Make this right.

Warriors of God - Initial Thoughts

If you're a wargamer, tell me if this happens to you: A new game magically appears on your doorstep (or jumps into your car when you drive by your FLGS), you punch, clip, and bag the counters, you read the rules, you set it up... and then you put it away and maybe - maybe - pull it out and look at it once or twice in the next five years. 

I have a lot of games like that.

It seems that if the game doesn't inspire anyone else in my group to play, it's not going to see much in the way of even solitaire table time. Part of the problem is that I don't seem to be able to split my personality as well as I once did, even now that I have dedicated gaming space where multiple games can be left set up and ready for play. I've been blessed with such a wealth of good opponents (on many levels) that the manufactured solitaire experience just doesn't do that much for me. Now, the solitaire experience is about learning a ruleset in preparation for face-to-face or online play rather than for the experience of just playing. 

I *knew* I shouldn't have gotten into MMORPGs. 

Recently, I got MMPs new International Gamers' Series title, Warriors of God through pre-order. Funny thing about preorders, at least for me. I rarely have the faintest idea of what the game will be like, as I tend to order almost anything that isn't American Civil War or Napoleonics. I do, however, applaud bringing games from other countries (although so far the I in IGS seems to stand for "Japan"), and I don't have any games on the Hundred Years War (although there's little in the way of designer notes or historical information other than what's in the actual game, and that's not much more than a list of leaders). 

So it was that I was surprised that this was a very low density and complexity game, albeit with what seemed like an awful lot of sequencing. Huge counters (1"!), a very nice and readable map, and rules that should have dialed back the background hues about six points. Adam Starkweather, bless his soul, writes rules like Richard Berg, full of cute asides that are funny once that show off how clever and smart he is. I'm sure he is clever and smart, I just don't see what place that sort of casual reference has in a set of rules. 

Once you get past a combat sequence that literally takes 25% of the rules to get through, however, and start to understand how the various subsystems all work together, there's a very intriguing game here. The battle system is actually very simple - you add up all of the combat units on a side, compare to the battle rating of the leading commander (based on rank), then roll a number of dice based on which of those two numbers is smaller. Sixes hit, unless your leader has a better Bravery rating than the other leader, in which case you can add the difference to every die. For example, a 3 bravery rating facing a 2 on the other side would hit on fives or sixes, while the 2 would just hit on sixes. There are some other elements in sieges and using longbow troops (what would Agincourt be without longbows?), but that's it. 

Even the rest of the turn, heavily sequenced, isn't that tough. Most of it has to do with raising troops, checking to see if your leaders have died yet, and springing your leaders from prison if they had been captured. Victory points are based on control of areas, which is non-trivial if you aren't in your home area - just having troops somewhere doesn't cut it. 

Throw in that a leader can die on any game turn, turning what looked like a very good bet into a lot of trouble, and there's a game here that has a lot of chaos to manage. Which, I suppose, is pretty darned true to the period. 

I've been playing the Lion in Winter scenario, which is the same length of time and the same rules but just a different set of leaders, and I'm really enjoying it. Part of that is the chaos of never knowing who is going to deploy where until you know who has died of an icky venereal disease or stubbed their toe and got blood poisoning. That makes for a very dynamic game that some in my gaming group would call "dice fest" and "broken", but I consider it to make the solitaire experience very good and a challenge for the players in a ftf game to call "chaos management". 

The really critical thing I've found is area control. It's hard to take control of an area that your leader doesn't call home (there are shield and flag heralds on all counters and all spaces - if they match, you more or less automatically take control of it if you're there at the right phase). To remove a control marker during movement, you need to have more leaders in the area than your opponent, and the marker counts as a leader in that case. Removal in the Control phase is a little easier, although if you have mercs in your force or if the area isn't your home area it's at best a 50-50 proposition, and that's rare. However, most of your VP come from area control, you can only reposition troops outside of movement (which is important because they are only raised in areas you control as well) by moving them through controlled areas. Control, much more than active force, is huge in this game, and like War at Sea, tends to snowball - you don't compute VP anew from turn to turn, it's added on to what your current position is. 

The game moves right along. There are some critical decision points, mostly where and when to move your armies and how to get the maximum use out of the troops you raise, as well as where to place your leaders, but it's a very low number. I'd compare the decision points with those in Hannibal, perhaps even a little less so. What I find particularly interesting is how the chaos can change the board situation militarily, but might take a few turns to turn around from a VP production standpoint. I've had turns where not a single leader croaked, and other turns where the board was suddenly nearly vacant. Both sides will add three leaders per turn, so you're never completely screwed, and control of an area will prevent your opponent from sliding in and stealing combat units (a common occurrence when you first learn the game, and another reason why area control is so critical to success). Still, if you're the kind of person who is under the mistaken impression that this is the sort of game where you might as well roll a die and see who won, it's not a game for you. 

I've only gotten half way into the LiW scenario so far, but that was only about an hour to do so after an abortive learning pass, and I'd imagine that you could get through a full game in two hours without too much trouble once you were familiar with the system and the subtleties. In fact, I consider this to be a light enough game that I'm hoping to get it on the table as an evening game at WBC West in another month or so. 

One last item that I find particular interesting: Combat can go on for multiple rounds, and indeed if you have a couple of lightly reinforced leaders and each of you are rolling two or three dice at matched Bravery, it can take a while to attrit one force or the other. However, there's a very interesting mechanism that takes care of this to some extent and discourages the modern version of Kingmaker's old "Scrope attack". When you move into an uncontested area with enemy units, you become the aggressor and get an appropriate marker. If, as aggressor, you are unable to come up with a single hit in three rounds, your opponent can force you to retreat in disgrace, disallowing you from taking control of an area with that leader in the later part of the turn, and they get a free shot at you. It's optional, so if they have an overwhelming force they can choose to instead keep taking shots at you, but in general you are encouraged to go in with the big boys if area control is on your mind. 

While it's not going to be a game for everyone, this is not only a good gateway game for Euro players but also a pretty good short game for grognards as well. The choices between using your leaders for combat vs area control, and the risky aspect of taking control outside of very limited circumstances, make for some interesting strategic decisions. I also like that you basically get two games for the price of one (plus, of course, Jeanne d'Arc with her own special rule, not to mention Robin Hood who shows up in Lion). 

Now if we could just get Adam to tone down the rules and make a few cleaner component choices. Dude, hire a technical writer to edit. Lord knows Devil's Cauldron would have been a much better game had you done so. Otherwise, this is a very strong series and I thank Adam for his work in getting these games out to the West.

 

The Road To Legend, Chapter 1.3 and Onward

We met with a slightly smaller (but very enthusiastic) group for the third installment of The Road To Legend, with Ken, Ben, and Laurent steering the heroes through their final level of the first dungeon in Starfall Forest. When we last left our heroes, they were surrounded by a pretty big bunch of critters, including two hellhounds and a master giant with an extra 20 wounds and an extra armor. And a tendency to throw really big boulders around. 

It took exactly one turn for them to dispatch the hellhounds (drat) and another to finish off the skeletons, leaving only the giant to take abuse for several turns. Not long enough, however, for him to survive long enough to clear the Overlord deck a second time and give me extra CP. We finished the dungeon (and the first week - yay!) with the heroes at 21CP and the Overlord at 11. What I'd forgotten is that the Overlord tends to catch up a bit as the turns go on, as the heroes aren't always in a dungeon every week. 

In fact, the heroes spent the next week traveling back to Tamalir, where they got to do a little shopping, and spent the next turn healing up. That was a good choice, because it was clear that Sir Alric Farrow was on his way to besiege the Orc Market, and they needed to get the Enchanted Boat purchase just to be able to go after him as the only way you can get to the Orc Market is by boat. This also limited their ability to gain skills or extra power dice, although it also forces me to try to bring in my other Farrow lieutenants while I can still get their cost bonuses (they are cheaper XP-wise if I bring them in with other Farrows on the board). I was saving up for a Beasts upgrade, but think perhaps the lieutenants are a better idea for now. 

The one drawback is that they were forced to travel on Medium and Hard paths to get to the Orc Market, so they ran into their first outdoor encounter on the way. The party was ambushed by a Master Ferrox along with his tribe and a military advisor Naga, but the party got lucky and drew the Secure Glade as the area, which meant that you subtracted two from wounds generated which severely limited the Ferroxes special Bleed and Leech abilities. Laurent's character Tahlia took a little bleed damage, but only five or so total hits before they managed to clear out the encounter for a paltry 300GP. 

At this point, the party decided that since they had arrived at a dungeon, and since they were going to need to get a little money anyway, that they would enter the dungeon, so our next session will start at that point. After that, they go to the Orc Market, where they can apparently sneak into the besieged city and heal up before taking on Alric and his goons. I suspect they'll make fairly short work of him, but with two more lieutenants running around and chewing up the various cities, it may be hard for them to cover all of those bases. 

We also got our first Rumor, which the party wisely placed just south of the Orc Market, allowing them to continue through and grab the extra award after they finish with Alric. Of course, at the rate we're going, that will be in about three months, so I don't know that they will necessarily remember what the rumor was. Something about getting an extra treasure card every time they went to market, so pretty worthwhile.

Everyone seemed to really like the character development part, but what was particularly cool was deciding whether to go after Alric or let him burn down the Orc Market. They seemed to find a pretty good balance, although by my count, they will have to spend one week traveling to the city, another week training, and one more week fighting Alric. By then, I'll have both his wife and brother out there (5XP for the brother, not sure what the discount is for the wife but it will be doubled because I'll have two other Farrows on the board by then. She costs 11, so at worst the discount will be four. That's exactly twelve XP total for both, so in two more weeks I'll have three lieutenants on the map making the heroes chase after them! Woohoo! 

I love being the Overlord. There's a lot of downtime for me, but it lets me get down with my inner Bad Self. Plus, as host, I'm pretty likely to be the one consistent element from session to session, so the Overlord is a natural choice for me. Since I also put the game away, there are no secret elements that I have to avoid looking at (as there would be were I a hero player). 

I'm happy to say that the game worked just as well with three hero players as with five or four. Everyone really liked the added dimensions of the game, and it's almost too bad that the base game takes so much of the play time to get through. My estimate is about two hours per dungeon level, so a seven - eight hour session is just about right for a complete dungeon, an encounter or two, and the leveling (encounters seem to take about an hour). We can't really do that, so it will take about three regular sessions to accomplish the same thing (as it did in the last three sessions, in fact). 

We ended up with 35CP by the time we finished, and it's likely we'll each gain about the same amount in the next dungeon (21/14 - I'm hoping to get through the Overlord deck a little quicker this time). I also learned that I get to choose different Treachery cards every time we play! Also, there are a few Overlord improvements that allow you to remove cards from my deck to make things a little faster. I won't get those this turn, but I'll be able to get them in the future. Now I'll have to decide between lieutenants and a smaller deck...

Thanks to Ken, Laurent, and Ben for coming and playing. At the end of the evening, Ben asked if it was 9:30, but it was actually an hour later. That's the sign of a good game, to my mind, time just flies and you've been so immersed that it's over before you know it. 

Our next RtL session will be Tuesday, August 5th. I may start the game a little earlier (6:30pm) in order to get two dungeon levels done instead of one and a half. At least I can have the dungeons pre-set in terms of critters selected and map pieces sorted, which always helps. The encounters aren't so bad, as there aren't that many outdoor tiles, but the dungeon tiles and critters are many and varied, and they take about ten minutes to collect and set up (including the various special pieces on the board). 

Smorgasbord

 It's been a little while since I've put in an entry, mostly because we were in Sunriver with my extended family. Not a lot of gaming other than a few Cheeky Monkey games with my grand-niece (who did a good job of getting the monkey trading rules for a six-year-old) and three hilarious games of Times Up! with the adults. I ended up giving my copies of Cheeky and Pickomino to my niece as she seemed to like them a lot. Oh, and I also played Mario Party 8 with her as well. I'll turn her into a gamer yet.

I've also been working on learning OCS in preparation for our WBC West micro con in mid-August. I have to say that I'm finding the rules amazingly transparent, although I haven't gotten to the supply part yet. I've gotten the Mareth Line scenario in the Tunisia game set up, which uses a small portion of the map but relatively high counter density, which should give me a good sense of how the game works. So far, I'm impressed and will give more info once Mike and I have played it at the con. 

I'm also trying out Warriors of God, Adam Starkweather's ultra-light wargame on the Hundred Year's War (as well as a Lion in Winter scenario). The rules are very simple in general, and the game flows very quickly. There are a lot of things to consider, and the chaos that is the leader death rule will drive Mike nuts. Still, this is a winner, and one I'm looking forward to trying out. I strongly recommend playing a couple of turns for practice so that you can see how control of a given area is critical to raising troops, and how difficult it is to actually raise said troops. This game may have a higher depth of play/elegance of rules ratio than Combat Commander, although clearly not as flexible in terms of variety of scenarios. 

I also need to start getting my Burning Blue and Asia Engulfed rules read (or re-read). I plan to try the solitaire scenario that's available online for BB, and will have to simply try out the extended example of play in AE and carry it forward. These and OCS are my "new" games to play at WBC West, and I find that my brain does much better if I've done my homework ahead of time. Having to learn a game, both rules and situation, is extremely draining and to do it day after day simply shows just how old I am now.

Finally, and most importantly, I had the most satisfying session of World of Warcraft I've ever had. Better than dinging 70. Better than getting my Flying Machine. Better than running my first instance with a good guild. It was going online to look for clam meat off the coast of Desolace and having my daughter, who has started playing again, whisper me. That was why I started playing the game, wanting to have a connection with her while she was living in Las Vegas, and while it's taken 16 months to get to this point (we will be actually gaming together in the near future), none of that matters. I've always maintained that it's not so much what you play but who you play with, and last night brought that home to a degree I can't put into words. Of course, she's in town now (as is her SO, who is even bringing his level 70 over so Leo will finally have someone to play with), but every minute I spend with her is time I will never consider as having been wasted. 

There's a lot of gaming coming up in the next couple of weeks, so look forward to me making up for a dry stretch. Right now, I'm going to do my Wii workout. This balance board has been the best console-related purchase I've ever made, even my wife plays Wii now because of it. Amazing.