Wargames As Educational Component

There's no question for me that the most compelling iPad app for me (besides GoodReader for rules PDFs and Netflix for, well, Netflix) recently has been Ascension, the excellent implementation of Justin Gary's excellent deckbuilding game. What has been a little surprising for me is how effectively I think that this game could be included in a class on critical thinking, probably at the early secondary school level (in the US, this is right about the time the kids are 12-13 years old). I'll write more on that later, but for now I'll limit my comments as to how that's gotten me thinking about a lot of things educational, one of them being wargames.

Wargamers like to think that they learn a lot about history from playing these games, but I think that's not quite accurate. I've seen more than one posting online from people who state that the game itself isn't going to give you nearly enough information about a conflict so that you have any greater idea of what caused it, what went on off the battlefield, or what factors not present in the game led to the historical outcome. For anything dating before the 19th Century, getting an accurate and unbiased account of the action is problematic, and anything prior to the 18th Century is largely guesswork (these dates are intended to be very general). I met a man from Turkey once who told me that the problem with getting good information about that country's statistics from the Great War are not due to poor recordkeeping but rather because there is too *much* information poorly organized. Which sounds like good recording and poor keeping, but there you go.

In other words, there is a lot going on that isn't on the board. Considering the amount of information and research about the Order of Battle (OoB) that goes into a game to make it historically correct, that's pretty amazing. Certainly the various mechanisms can be enlightening (usually at the tactical level - see Fields of Fire for an excellent primer on the challenges of getting a group of people to perform acts that go directly against their sense of self-preservation), but in the end there isn't much that you learn about combat itself from rolling dice or moving cardboard squares.

It's arguable that the point of the game, aside from recreation, is to collect research on the OoB, the area, the situation, and the design process, and put it into a form that allows accessibility. I've never been a gear head when it comes to military matters - I can't tell you the variants of the US Sherman tank (although I *could* go to Patton's Best and get some sense of the variants), so the OoB has never really interested me. Whether a particular MG battalion actually saw action in the Caucasus in 1942 is not why I play games.

As for the situation, that is much better explained through textual description, which is often included in the Designer's Notes. These may also, along with the Developer's Notes, give some insight into wargame design, which I *do* find interesting, but at the same time I think few wargamers are in the hobby because they are interested in design and the challenges it brings, which are very different from the historical nature of the game. To be honest, that's why I became interested in wargames and how I became interested in military history, but I think for most people the initial appeal is exactly the opposite. In any case, even with a card driven game that includes more information about the surrounding geopolitical situation, or games with an economy (which tend to take the history even farther afield), you are given a very brief taste of the situation at best.

So what is left, aside from learning that the road network or lack thereof played a huge role in the Battle of the Bulge? In all cases, a student (whether in a formal setting or just learning for it's own sake) is not going to get more than a very introductory education from most wargames.

Most of the comments I've seen think that the main educational value of wargames is that the designer *has* done research and thus is able (hopefully) to provide a good bibliograpy that can point people to various points where they can actually learn something in something approaching "depth". If it's a particularly good bibliography, it will be annotated so that people understand the pluses and minuses of a given text, as well as it's scope. Anyone who has done serious research understands this (as well as understanding that on just about any topic there is more information out there than is possible to list, much less digest, much less assess).

While I obviously appreciate the bibliography, at the same time I think that wargames provide one thing that you cannot get from a text or the rules or anything else about the game - they can teach you about how geography and topography affect history, and how that affects the movement and combat effectiveness of armies (or soldiers, if we're at that level). In other words, it's about the maps and how the units move along them.

For those of us who haven't been in the military, or even for some who have, it's easy to think that here you have the German Army, there you have Paris, and a lot of open ground between them. What you don't understand is that in 1914, the infrastructure is such that there are challenges in even aspect of the operation and that they are largely dictated by the land itself. Watching the Schlieffen Plan evolve on a map of Western Europe is by far a stronger learning experience than looking at a few static maps in a textbook. You see just how tenuous the logistical "tail" running through the Ardennes forest was, how many things had to go right in order for the operation to be successful.

Nothing I've ever seen other than animation, and usually it's a cursory treatment, goes into great depth on how a battle evolves over the ground and how that ground affects that evolution. This, to my mind, is where the wargame is most valuable to the student of history. To this day I find myself looking for good maps in a military history book and finding them almost universally lacking. Even atlases of military history fall short in comparison. But having a wargame set up in a classroom that slowly demonstrates how the battle or war plays out over time gives the student a chance to absorb the conflict in a way that text and maps just can't.

What a good designer will also demonstrate is how hard it was to communicate with an advancing army when there was no effective wireless communications. When air recon was in it's infancy. When there were no mobile operations other than cavalry. How critical a logistical buildup was - amassing all of that artillery and, equally important, all of those shells. In WW2, also the fuel.

The problem is that few who play wargames want to be logistics officers. Moving a bunch of crates from point A to point B is for those "weenie" Eurogamers (and I am one of them), something less interesting than the action of running an offensive with tank spearheads with breakthroughs and encirclements and surrendering enemy troops. Most wargames do have supply rules and a nod to this issue, but in general it's largely abstracted out quite a bit. Those wargames that *do* try to create realistic situations are labeled as "scripted" or "chrome heavy" and largely dismissed. In the end, wargamers want tension and the ebb and flow of armies but beyond that it's about gaming more than simulating. Even with ASL, which arguably has the most detailed OoB in the hobby, the idea is about shooting shells more than can you get your soldiers to fire in the first place (I'm talking pre-breaking here, before anyone even *starts* shooting) and it certainly isn't about getting them to *stop* shooting, which is apparently also a bit of a trick in the real world.

There are wargames that do these other things, and they are typically well regarded. Those are important lessons to learn if you want to understand military history. However, for most of the hobby, it's about the game or about the OoB and the "real" learning comes from the bibliography and the dynamic elements of the game. Were I trying to teach history using wargames, that would be the role I'd see them playing in the classroom - how we got from point A to point B (literally) and why it went that way instead of over here. That's true at almost any level of warfare, from the tactical to the grand strategic. It's a valuable tool that you can't find anywhere else.

Goodbye To The Geek

No, not *me*. Silly.

I'm not sure exactly why I seem to spark so much "controversy" over at BoardGame Geek, but I do. It seems I can't put anything up without someone taking offense or massively misreading my motives or making a stupid suggestion then complaining about me calling it "random" (instead of just "dumb") and then taking me to task for my word choice.

I think the thing that drove me the craziest was Mr. Skeletor, responding to a question about what I doing wrong in a Mansions of Madness scenario as the keeper, suggesting that it was just a case of me being a sore loser. This from the guy who, when he reached the same point I did with BGG, asking to have all of his postings and files removed. Hilariously, another poster on the same question was harsh enough that someone else mailed me privately to say that he was "just like that" and really not a bad guy. When other people feel they have to apologize for you (people that I am extremely unlikely to ever meet) I know that we're pretty far off the ranch.

And then there's the outright crazy people. Mr. Crazy Steel Wolves Guy, I'm talking to you. After the third private mail where he told me my motivations for every word I used in suggesting that the game was going to be a much more pleasant experience in VASSAL, I asked him not to contact me again, and he didn't.

I did, however, take a great deal of pride in being called a "Review Nazi" by a guy who didn't seem to understand that Castle Ravenloft is at it's heart a solitaire game and thus must have a balance of randomness (to keep it from being a puzzle) but still reward good play (to keep it from being a ride). He never did get the concept, but being told I was a Nazi for suggesting that his opinion was not as fully baked as he likes to think did give me quite a good laugh. He didn't get Godwin's Law, either.

I'm very sorry, but I am not interested in spending two paragraphs couching every possible point I make as a) valuing your opinion, b) giving my gaming resume to "allow" me to comment, c) valuing your opinion, d) reminding you that you are entitled to your opinion and no one can take it away from you. Oh, and valuing your opinion. That should all be implicit.

As an engineer who has spent some time in academia, it's clear to me that the rigors of debate and critical thinking are simply beyond the capacity for the majority of people involved in the site. That's a shame, as I think I've contributed some value. But when I point out that the GMT version of No Retreat includes a free download of the solitaire package from the VPG site and a way to use the cards without needing to actually cut them out, only to have someone suggest that you could just as easily pay for the "finished" kit (which, actually, you already have purchased) and then repeatedly complain that I called their suggestion "random" without a *single* word discussing why their idea is better, I know it's time for me to find another way to spend my alone time than continually unsubscribing from threads.

I'm also amazed as some of the reasoning that goes on. One guy said he thought that Quarriors deserved exceptional levels of hate (Qhate, as he put it) because (in a nutshell) he saw a lot of people playing and enjoying it. Really, how do you deal with morons like that? You can't argue with them. You can't even have a discussion with them. They. Don't. Make. Sense.

So I'm done posting. Which is a shame. I like posting. I'll probably do more of it here now, which is nice except for the occasional marketeer who puts up a link to their site (I take those down as soon as I hear about them). I'll still use the 'Geek for reference, but even a simple question turns into a shouting match and it's just not good for my hypertension.

So, to all of the wonderful people on the Geek who made my time there so pleasant, a hearty Spock You. May your children turn out to be miscreants, may you enjoy your small and angry little lives, may you enjoy couching every barb in "It sounds like you..." style writing rather than just saying "You're an idiot." Which I cannot say on the 'Geek because, you know, it might hurt someone's feelings.

Really, I don't know what I was expecting. It's the Internet. No crazy here.

So now, it's just reading the BGG news and seeing if someone has already been roundly criticized for asking a question about a game. To everyone who has been damned decent on the site and thanked me for my efforts (and there are a few), Thank You and You're Welcome. I really do like facilitating gaming and people's enjoyment of it, but the confrontational people have simply driven me away.

Unlike Mr. Skeletor, I will not be taking down every file or comment I ever posted. Maybe you'll find something interesting.

I will also continue to contribute to their fund drives. The site does play a useful role. The forums, however, are no longer part of the "fun" for me.

I'd also like to thank Octavian, the main admin, for his work. When I got flagged for telling someone they were an angry person (saying "you seem like an angry person - OK), he was great about firmly telling me the rules, which I understand, and also for saying that my particular transgression was about as mild as he sees. I stand by my theory that online forums are promoting passive-aggressive behavior, but I understand the need to draw a line somewhere. Matt, you do good work and I thank you again for your time and effort on the behalf of the community. I really don't see how you do it.

Now to see how long I can actually keep away...

Mark O. Hatfield, RIP

I think that a lot of my worldview was set at a fairly young age. Traveling with my parents to visit my sister in the small Andean town of Popayan, Columbia, where her husband was doing post-grad work (or possibly grant work, I was only 9 at the time) in anthropology - getting to go to and meet people from both the barrio and the landowners was a gift I didn't appreciate for a very long time.

However, there was another event that I'd completely forgotten about until this very morning, when I opened up the paper and saw that perhaps the greatest statesperson Oregon has ever produced, Mark O. Hatfield, died. He was respected by politicians on both sides of the aisle, and had a reputation for being the cleanest politician in Washington.

When I was young, my family attended a small Presbyterian church. This was a pretty liberal church - not a lot of talk of Hell and damnation, not a lot of focus on getting punished for doing wrong, much more focus on just doing the right thing. I know that a few of you who know me personally are going to be amazed that I went to church at *all*, but it's true. Didn't stick much - by the time I was 13 or 14 I was doing my own passive resistance movement when it came to Sunday mornings by simply refusing to get out of bed. My mother finally gave up.

One Sunday we were fortunate enough to have Senator Hatfield give the sermon at our church. The subject of the sermon was one that literally changed my view of the world. Back in the late 60's and very early 70's, especially in my little corner of suburban Portland, things were pretty homogenous and stable, at least in terms of what the neighbors were aware of. I definitely believed in God at the time, and was under the impression that as the best and richest country in the world that America was definitely favored by God.

That wasn't the sermon Senator Hatfield gave us. He told us that we were *not* the new Israel, that we were *not* favored by God. We were a good country trying to do the right thing, but we were just as much the children of God as anyone else on the planet, no matter what their faith or worldview. Understand that I was probably about 11 years old, so to have an adult tell me that we were, in essence, just getting along like everyone else was a real shock in some ways, although it wasn't until much later that I really started to understand what a shift in my thinking that was. My parents were still perfect, remember, at that age. Teachers were always right. There were a few kids at school who acted out, but in general things were pretty much Leave It To Beaver in my neighborhood.

And there was nothing special about us except the fact that we were human.

Over the course of my life, I've tried to understand as many sides of an issue as I could. Recent experience has taught me that there are a lot of people, perhaps a majority of people, who are about as interested in that idea as of eating dirt. I trust my leaders so much as they earn that trust, which is increasingly smaller every year at most levels of government. I believe that if the world is good, it's because we make it good, not because some higher power's idea of good is at work. Most of all, I try very hard to avoid acting like a spoiled brat with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement when things aren't going the way I'd like them to. OK, I have my moments, but I like to think there are relatively few of them.

All of these things I can trace back to a lot of things, including some good role modeling by my parents and family and some very good friends growing up, but I can also trace my these things to one famous man speaking in my church and laying the foundations for responsible adulthood in my mind.

Senator Hatfield was not well the final years of his life, and he died in Bethesda, MD, far from his home. I think that's a shame for a man who left such an indelible stamp on the state he called home.

My thoughts are with the Hatfield family tonight, but Mark lived a good life, doing good things. He was a model that many if not all of our "statespeople" today could learn a lot from - work with your opponent, get to know them and their point of view, find compromises that achieve your goals as well as the goals of your opponents. We don't have to all join hands and sing Kum Ba Yah, but we also don't have to call each other vermin and Nazi with such gusto and with so little provocation.

Thank you, Senator Hatfield. You probably had no idea you had such an effect on a young boy sitting in that little church, and there's no question that what you said that day also had a big effect on me not being actively religious (and certainly not Christian by most people's standards, although I'm always astonished at how bigoted some Christians are against other people who wear the same label), which is probably not what the pastor at my church had in mind. That said, you made me a better person with more perspective, and I hope that you, sir, are in a better place. One where we can solve problems without the main idea being winning the next election or meeting this month's financial projections. We miss you.

Epic CC:P

There's no question that I'm a fan of Chad Jensen's Combat Commander series, and no question that I think that while the Europe/Med games are excellent, the Pacific game refines the system to a point where it's hard to find fault. That's not to say that many don't like the "randomness" of having to draw certain types of cards to produce certain types of actions, and for those who want every possible weapon system available during the period there will always be some issues, but for the rest of us it's a hoot *and* a holler.

Matt R and I just finished up our two part game, the scenario Blind Man's Bluff (M5, I believe) from the recently released New Guinea battlepack. I had looked for a scenario with a little meat to it, meaning a decent number of units, something that wouldn't necessarily just entail an attacker and defender, and this one seemed to fit the bill nicely. It also featured CW forces, a side I hadn't seen a lot of in the games I've played. The game took two of our Fourth Monday sessions, with the first session actually taking place on a Third Monday because of vacations.

Here's the lowdown: My Indian units were pinned down on the Japanese side of the board at the base of a ridge, with a large and dangerous Japanese force shooting at them from the top of the ridge. Meanwhile, a relief force made up of ANZAC troops was massing on my side of the board, while a fairly large Japanese screening force was between me and relieving the Indians. In some ways, it's like two scenarios in one. I was in an Attack posture with four Orders per turn at Line quality, while Matt's Japanese were in Recon posture (so more cards but no ability to play Defensive cards and no bonus VP per time trigger) posture with three Orders per turn at Line quality. The Japanese had plenty of mortars of the Light and Medium kind, as well as a few LMGs, while my force had mostly LMGs and a single HMG (which is perhaps the least effective HMG in the game, at least in the Pacific). In general, the Japanese are better troops, being mostly Div A and all with boxed FP.

It's hard to root the Japanese out of a fixed position because they tend to be pretty good at Melee, and they have the advantage of being able to react to any Advances their opponents make into their hexes. They had a lot of good leaders, while mine were all pretty average. Making things more interesting was the ridge running the length of the map (longways, from my end to the Japanese end), with the main Japanese forces all positioned along the top. Fortunately, however, no caves. Those things suck if you aren't Japanese.

My plan was to flank the screening force on both sides to force Matt to have to divide up his force to both sides of the ridge, then come at him from three sides. My pinned force was going to just need to survive. I'll note that there are no points for exiting the map, and that there are no specific VP for saving the pinned force, you are just trying to kill the other side and take whatever VP you get for the secret objectives you each pull at game start. These ended up being fairly small (1VP for Obj5 and Obj2, which offset) and were made public through events fairly early in the game. I did get one last objective later in the game, but since it was secret right up to the end I'll do the same for you, dear reader.

Things started off slowly for the CW, and Matt put my forces under some withering firepower on the first evenings session. The result was that I lost my best leader almost immediately, then lost the one on my left flank shortly thereafter, due to melee (I think). With this many units, it is very hard to do anything without having leadership to make them efficient (imagine a six unit force that you want to move - it takes six Move cards to do without a leader!) I also began to see a lot of attrition with the pinned Indians, and they eventually lost half of their number by the end of that first session. Oh, and my HMG broke early. However, I was having some success on the right flank, and managed to get a leader, team with an LMG, and an ANZAC squad up onto the ridge into a foxhole. I also had a radio that could call in some arty, although it was not as high a caliber as I'd have liked.

Meanwhile, Matt had pulled a weaker leader back to Obj5 just to keep me honest, but he had a very strong leader in a forward position on the ridge. However, both of us were pretty banged up, especially the Japanese, with more than half of his units broken and/or suppressed. When we took the break, I was sitting on three Revive cards that would "fix" almost all of my units, but Matt had a 13 VP lead on me and with only two leaders (only one of which was useful) I was in some trouble.

We met again last night to finish the game, and in three hours we did so. That's right, this game took over six hours to play to completion, and I'll just mention that about 60% of our Time Triggers were caused by the decks running out. That tends to make for a long game, but we tend to play at a fairly casual pace so I'd expect this scenario to still take a good four hours with very brisk play assuming this sort of time trigger tempo.

Once my units were feeling a lot better, I started focusing on trying to eliminate as many of his broken units as I could, while he focused on trying to wipe out my lone remaining assault leader. In fact, he was able to do so when a light mortar (that's right, a light mortar, the most useless weapon in the game for everything but laying smoke) managed to break said leader right before a high value direct fire attack eliminated him. I was fairly sure this was game over for the CW forces, but in CC you never know who will win until the game is over so I soldiered on. I'll also note that while I'd just fixed my HMG, Matt broke it again almost immediately.

Meanwhile, the Emperor's Hero, Mifune, was having a fine old time popping out of spider holes. He'd already pulled this trick during the first session, although IIRC he was not particularly effective in doing any damage to the pinned force he showed up next to. The second time, he popped up on what was my left flank, taking out an ANZAC squad in the process in Melee (he has no range). The third time, he popped up again near the Indians, and this time he, with the help of a Div B unit, managed to eliminate my third Indian unit, a lone squad.

Heroes come in all colors and creeds, however, and in our game that was proven true when Winslow made an appearance with my forward units on the right flank, just in time to make that an effective fighting force again. I'd been able to do a little fighting with my recently re-fixed HMG, but 7 FP just wasn't enough to make hay with.

Meanwhile, the time triggers were coming fast, and we approached our first sudden death roll. I'd finally started to do some damage (although my air support ended up not being effective - always exciting to get one of those aircraft on the board) to his broken units before Matt finally started getting Revive cards, and the VP total was slowly but surely working it's way over to my side of the board. It was on one of his attacks on my forward right flank stack that I got a battlefield promotion event that gave me Pvt White (or whatever his name is) who is a pretty decent leader, if a little fragile. I got Winslow out of the hex shortly thereafter to allow me to get the full benefit of the foxhole, so now I had two stacks in play on that flank. When I got reinforcements on an event shortly thereafter, things were looking very good and I just needed to get that last seven points, excepting whatever the secret objective I had was.

Meanwhile, the time triggers kept coming, and suddenly we were making Sudden Death rolls. The first one went high (needed to be less than 8), and I was sure the second was going to bite me as well even though I had the Initiative on both rolls. It too went high, but with the SD marker on 10 my luck was coming close to running out.

As it turned out, that secret objective was going to get Matt two more points (Obj 4, right in the midst of his pinning force) and I wasn't going to get that far. So it was that I managed to advance into a hex with a broken Div A unit that I killed even with Matt's three (!) Bayonet cards. Now it was down to five points, and Matt sent in his last big forward stack, the one with the 2 leader, to take on my forces with their 2 leader in melee. He had a four point advantage after we both played Ambush cards, but I had saved my own Bayonets as well, albeit just one card. I had the Initiative, but two points is a big gap to leap in this game. Matt drew a 6, and so it was that I needed an 8 or higher just to kill his guys (although an 8 would have given us a wash in terms of points). I drew a 10, as it was, and suddenly I was up three points, leaving me one VP slop in case he took out a team before the game ended.

As it was, the game ended almost immediately with a card-based time trigger that, sure enough, came in below 10, and the blokes had pulled it off. Interestingly, had Matt chosen *not* to come after me, he probably would have won the game, assuming the time trigger fired off at the same time. I would have needed another Advance card to press the issue, and to be fair I would have been digging for Bayonets and Ambushes every turn, all the time worrying if those Indians would hold out a little longer. However, I could see him making the attack given that he had what was a four point advantage going in and an Ambush card. Had I not had the Bayonets, he would almost certainly have won, so no bust on him for the choice.

Did I mention that the scenario is rarely over until it's over? This one literally came down to the last couple of turns and in dramatic fashion. No question I got very lucky with my last two Melee attempts, not to mention those two SD rolls that gave me just enough time to pull the game out.

Oh, did I mention the jungle caught on fire too? And that Matt got an SNLF unit to infiltrate to my backfield? And the divebomber that didn't? This game is like a movie, nearly every time.

It was an epic game, the sort that makes me want to pull it out again and play *today*. Having this on an iPad or other tablet device would be *awesome*, and it's exactly the right size map so that it would work. I know GMT is looking seriously at porting some of it's games to tablet devices, and this would be a no brainer for both e-play and pass-n-play modes. And with an effective AI... Hoo mama.

Thanks Matt for the excellent company and for being an excellent opponent both during the game and in defeat. Sometimes I feel like I've earned a win, and this time, despite some luck at the end, this was one of those times.

Recent Euros I've Been Playing

After the blitz of gaming that was Sunriver for Alex and I, things have slowed down quite a bit. Well, except when it comes to iAscension, which could just as easily be called iCrack. Except a lot cheaper. I estimate I've played about 100 games of this marvelous iPad app, as well as on the iPhone when I've been stuck at the doctor's office. I'm ready for the expansion to find it's way to the app, but particularly I'd love to see achievements and the ability to interact with others in online games (although I just finished an online game that took about a week, and I can say that this game does *not* shine in that situation). I know that the iOS5 update coming in the fall is supposed to coincide with some GameCenter buffs, so hopefully that will help.

Which is not to say that I haven't been gaming, oh no. I've gotten to try out three new games, one of which is an expansion, and I'll almost certainly try out the new Thunderstone expansion solitaire very shortly. Here's my take on these "new to me" games...

7 Wonders: Leaders

I was a little nervous about this elegant game getting an extra mechanism bolted onto it, but actually it turns a game that was fairly tactical into something a little more strategic. Leaders are cards that aren't part of the regular drill but instead let you toss in special mutant powers each era. The cards each give some sort of benefit in points or abilities at a coinage cost. You go through a short draft process at the start to distribute them, with four cards in your hand at the start of the game once you're done. You have the option to buy one leader at the start of each era, and that leader's ability, if persistent, stays in play through the entire game. The abilities I had in my game gave you a one resource discount on blue card purchases, a one time 6 dollar payout (Croesus, hilarious), and two different science cards (tablet and gear).

I based my choices on my wonder, which was the one that gave you a choice of science icons for the second stage. That locked me into a science strategy, or at least the strong possibility of going hard for science, which I did. I ended up with five tablets at the end, which was sadly not enough for me to win but enough to be a strong contender. In general, the wonders give you a fairly good idea of a possible strategy for the game, but you can pick different ones based on your leaders, and even keep a certain amount of flexibility if you choose for a multi-pronged approach.

I don't recommend using these with new players, as the core iconography is going to overwhelm them anyway, but I felt the leader cards gave the game additional heft at a very low cost in terms of complexity and additional time. The core game retains it's charm (largely because of it's brevity). While I only have the one game under my belt, I was impressed enough to buy the expansion and I'll include it in games with experienced players.

Space Hulk: Death Angel 

I'm no fan of Games Workshop. They have a terrible reputation with third-party websites and retailers and like to rejigger their minis games on what seems to be a weekly basis to drive additional sales. Still, I admit a certain sick fascination with the dystopian future presented in their Warhammer 40k line. I do own some minis left over from a brief flirtation with clinical depression/OCD in the mid-90's, but now I limit myself to the occasional game such as Space Hulk and, of course, Dark Angel.

Dark Angel is a cooperative card game that is, for all practical purposes, Space Hulk Lite. The situation is the same (you are a bunch of heavily armored and armed Space Marines, although curiously not Dark Angel Space Marines, or even that chapter's Terminators - forgive me if I'm screwing up the mythology here, I'm going off of a rapidly degrading memory), and you are in a Space Hulk (abandoned space ship) that has been overrun with Genestealers (and I have *never* been able to figure out what genes they are stealing - I think they *implant* their own genetic code, which is a different thing altogether) that are bringing down property values in the neighborhood. Plus if the ship ever crashed on a planet and anything aboard survived, then there would be a problem.

So you and your friends (or just you, as the game is built to play solitaire with few if any changes) are tasked with going in and kicking some Genestealer butt. The bad news is that your butt is almost certainly going to get come kickage as well. This game is brutal.

Each player takes a combat team of two SMs in preconfigured packages. Your team has three action cards that you use to determine what you'll be up to this turn, and each SM has a range that it can shoot at stuff. Your SM also has a facing, which frankly is what turns this from a pretty dull shoot and pray game into a tense and interesting affair. You can't "activate" terrain or shoot at Genestealers unless you are facing them (there are only two directions, but those suckers are *fast*), and you can't change facing unless you move. Which means you aren't shooting.

The turn is pretty simple - pick what your SMs are up to this turn (one choice for both SMs), do it, have GS's mess with you, and draw an event that has a better than even chance of ruining your day. Your choices are to Support (give someone a Support token that can be used to reroll a combat roll when that SM is facing what's attacking it), Move + Activate (change position in the formation of SMs, change facing, and activate terrain if possible), or Attack (pretty self-explanatory). You can't do the same action with the same combat team in two consecutive turns, so no one just sits on overwatch (my term) for the entire game. Each card has a different special action that you can take in addition to the basic action, depending on which team you are playing, such as a skull result from a GS attack changing the result to a miss. Events will do random wackiness plus also add GS's to the formation as well as move some of them around on occasion.

The game runs on a timer created by location cards you travel through and "blip" piles for each side of the formation, set by the location card you are currently at. Locations are semi-randomized depending upon the number of players, and you never know what's around the corner. They also determine the terrain card placement among the formation. Event cards will determine GS placement, all coming from the blip piles, among the terrain cards, with the location determining how many. When you run out of GS's from a given blip pile, you "travel" to the next location at the end of that segment (almost always after the Event segment, but not always, which will reconfigure the terrain (if not the GS's in the formation) and some random wackiness will ensue. The final location tells you what you need to do to win the game.

The combat die has six sides, with numbers ranging from 0-5, with an additional skull icon on the middle four numbers 1-4. Combat is pretty simple - if you are attacking, you want to roll a skull to kill a GS (assuming your special mutant Attack card power doesn't override that). If you are defending, you want to roll a number higher than the number of GS's in the swarm you are facing to force a miss, otherwise it's sayonara Space Marine. If you have a support token on that SM and are facing your attacker, you can use it to force a reroll (same with attacks), but make no mistake - this is an unforgiving atmosphere and it is not hard to lose your squad *really* fast.

In fact, it is very possible to lose your entire combat team on the first turn if things go horribly wrong. Even facing a Swarm of One (tm), you have a 1-in-3 chance of getting tapped for that particular SM. In my solitaire game, I managed to do this on the first four combat rolls I made for the GS's, including one that was a reroll. If you are the kind of person that dice hate, this may not be a game for you as the chances of quick death are pretty high.

Four turns in, I was thinking this was a game that was fairly broken based on my death rate of one SM/turn, but I realized that this is part of the design. You are *supposed* to lose SMs at a prodigious rate! Unfortunately, that means that usually someone's combat team is gone pretty quickly, so I'm thinking that while six people might be kind of fun at the same time it will probably also mean someone is out of the game fairly fast. Fortunately, with fewer players you get multiple teams and thus stay involved through the entire game. Certainly you do playing solitaire.

That said, I was averaging about two rounds per location card, and made it to the final location with two SMs left, both from different teams. Really important that you consider *trying* to do this by how you place your SMs in your formation when being attacked by GS's, as if you have only one team left they both have to do the same action and that never works out. One was purple flamethrower guy, who takes out multiple GS's when he Attacks, but it didn't help. I had three or four GS's per swarm (one on each side of the formation) and both SMs were gone in the next turn.

Not a result that was surprising, however. I've heard it's a tough game to win, although less so solitaire because there's no arguing about how to proceed with the mission. Also, I'd randomly selected three teams of the six so I have no idea about how well they worked together.

In the end, I really enjoyed this as a solitaire title, and it would make a fun filler, especially at Sunriver in the late evening. If you can get past the "lose half of your team on a single roll" factor, I think this is a pretty cool little game. Certainly small enough to take with you on a trip, it's the same box size as Red November.

One caveat - the rules are supposed to be atrocious, and in fact I did not find them that way. Yes, things are scattered all over the place, but if you walk through the sequence of play all is pretty clear. What was *not* clear was that things go on one side or the other. Terrain cards are placed based on which side of the location card their icon is on. GS's go to the side with the terrain card. I was surprised that this wasn't mentioned more clearly, as this sort of thing is a little unusual as far as strategy games and Euros go. That said, I didn't think the rules were nearly as bad as many had made them out to be, and in fact the BGG "Things You'll Screw Up" thread applied to me in exactly one case out of 20. Not to say these are great rules, just not Satan personified as some might have you believe.

Spectral Rails

Last game in my wrapup. This one I've actually played twice now. It's a bit of a bear to explain, but I find it to be a surprisingly deep game given it's generally simple mechanisms. The theme is based on trying to take spirits from one ghost town to another so that they can rest in peace. Why one ghost town is better than another is beyond me, but that's your job.

At it's heart, the game is a simple pick up and deliver your load train game but with a few neat twists. The first is that you power your train with Ether cards, of which everyone has an identical deck. The cards range in value from 1-4, with most of your cards being lower valued. You use the same cards to bid to see who goes first in each turn. To make things more complex, the cards are played in order (a point the rulebook makes about 50 times) and you only get them back a handful at a time, and in First In First Out order (a "queue" for those of you familiar with data structures in computer science).

A turn consists of three phases that feel like they were taken directly from Martin Wallace's spare room. You begin by bidding to see who will be the Spirit Leader (really), using the cards to bid. Losers in the process get to take back a card, but the rest stay *in order* (as the rulebook reminds us regularly) in front of you. This Spirit Leader also gets to choose who will *be* the new Spirit Leader and thus go first in the Movement round.

The middle part of the turn consists of repeated Movement phases, which you do until people have spent their limit in Ether cards (13 points) and used their two Coins, or passed. Once everyone passes, you go to a Replenishment phase where you get half the cards in front of you rounded down, taking them from the least recently used cards, and you get your Coins back. Then you go back to bidding for a new round.

Once the three Train Wreck tokens have been taken from the board (which happens when someone enters that particular ghost town), you finish the turn and move on to the second round which looks a lot like the first but has some scoring complexities and a new set of Train Wreck tokens. In practice, a round will consist of one or two turns, and you need to be aware of the possibility of the round or game ending.

The really critical part is the movement phase, and it's best to start with how much it costs to move. Your train has a Ether Trail it leaves behind it as it moves, which looks a lot like track in any other train game. The twist here is that you cannot move over a line that has your Ether Trail on it during that particular phase, even if you pick it up, but everyone else can move along it for free. If you move along track that is open, it costs one point per Ether Trail laid down. You can move along both other people's Ether Trails as well as open track in the same turn.

Here's how it works. First, you may pick up one spirit in the ghost town you are currently in, assuming you are. Next, you choose Ether cards to play of some point value, which go down in your queue in front of you. Next, you see if you have enough Ether Trail markers in your pool, which should not be the case after the first few movement phases. If not, you pick up segments on the board that are not connected to your train directly, and if they are all connected directly, you pick up any of them, based on the number you played with the cards. Note that you don't necessarily need to *play* them all, it's based on what cards you played. Next, you move as outlined above, remembering that you can't move over segments you removed your own Trails from. It is very possible to have multiple colors of Ether Trail going between cities - this is not like Ticket to Ride where one person owns a route, nor like Union Pacific where one segment gives you access. You do not need to stop in ghost towns, but it's usually a good idea to. As you move your train, you lay down Ether Trails along the open segments you've moved through. When you finish moving, if you are in a ghost town you can drop off passengers for that town at that time in any number. Note that you *never* drop off passengers unless they are in their town, so don't pick up just anybody. Also, having more than three passengers on your train requires you to burn one Ether card that counts against your 13 point per movement phase limit, so saving a 1 card for this purpose is not a terrible idea.

If you do not spend cards, whether you actually create more Ether Trails or not, you have to burn one of your two Coins. You can use this to sit in a town if you want for a turn without spending Ether cards so that you can pick up the second ghost, or just to see what the other ghost engineers are doing. You only have two per turn, but you get them back during Replenishment.

Depending upon if there are three or four players, there are five or six states in play, each of which has three towns. In the first round, each city starts with up to two spirits in it, but any spirits that start in their own town are removed from the game. In the second round, which has lighter backgrounds on the spirit markers, there is only one per town. That means each town has at the most three spirits that want to go there.

Points are given out at the end of the game as follows: Round 1 ghosts delivered in Round 1 and Round 2 ghosts delivered in Round 2 each are worth one point. Round 1 ghosts delivered in Round 2 are worth two points, so there's some reason to carry a few over. If you have a set of one ghost from each state, that set is worth five or six points. If you have a set of one ghost from each of the three towns in a state, that set is worth three points. If you have multiple sets, each is worth the bonus. Finally, any ghosts still on your train at game end are mad as hell and they're worth -1 point. Tie goes to whoever has the most Ether cards or points on those cards or some nonsense.

As you can see, this is a difficult game to explain well, but once you've played it becomes much clearer. The game requires planning but also flexibility. Trying to collect sets is smart, but so is exploiting your opponents' Ether Trails. Figuring out how you want to proceed and dealing with the other players not cooperating is where the fun is in this game.

I will also note that the rules are pretty clear, but very verbose (like me) and with a lot of "flavor" in them that I found a little grinding the further along I got. However, everything you know is in there if you don't mind someone standing over your shoulder and reminding you not to mess with your queue every paragraph or two.

Components are great, although there is one icon on the map for placing second round Train Wreck markers that shouldn't be there. Easy mnemonic is to remember that the two sets each form a triangle, and both triangles form a six-pointed star. I'd have preferred a different way of tracking points, too, one that would allow me to keep track of sets *and* which round the  Round 1 ghosts had been delivered.

Which makes me wonder why a Round 1 marker would be happier taking longer to get to it's final resting place, but really mad if it didn't make it at all. There I go again trying to rationalize theme.

Fortunately, the game itself is really pretty cool. Play time takes about 75 minutes with experienced players, perhaps less. 'Splainin' time takes about 20 minutes, though - if you followed my explanation above you are smarter than I am. There's a lot of "new" ground in how this game works.

That said, I really like this game. It's got a lot of nice new twists on what is becoming a fairly tired genre of train games, and even though the Old West is my least favorite setting, I really enjoyed trying to parse what my best move was to set me up for the next turn, as well as the various screwage opportunities present. Seeing how the board evolves is always a lot of fun, and it goes from being pretty cohesive early to Ejaculating Skittles by the end. I am very interested to try with three, although I suspect four is the sweet spot (and perhaps the game's biggest shortcoming).

And that, as they say, is that. I'm also looking forward to giving the new Junta game a try in the near future, but not this week.