GMT hit by hackers

Very odd situation. GMT reports it was the target of a denial of service attack.

Component durability -- boxes

Boxes are historically the weakest component for game durability -- even considering that they get the most abuse.

Until fairly recently, game manufacturers almost invariably designed boxes primarily for their marketing suitability. And you still see the effects of this focus with the kind of family games you'll see in a discount store. Large flat boxes with garish print and flimsy construction may be OK for a game of Monopoly, Sorry or Barbie Fashion Show that's fated to end up in pieces before the week is out, but it's very frustrating for serious adult gamers who expect to get years of play out of their games. I used to hate the old Avalon Hill flat boxes. They just didn't hold up to much Geek carry at all. Invariably you ended up with split ends and if you tried stacking them more than a couple high you ended up with crushed boxes. If anything the old SPI plastic flat boxes were worse. The plastic would crack, the cardboard back would come off the tray part. Just awful.

On the other hand the Avalon Hill bookcase game format and the similar Bookshelf games from 3M were great -- especially when sleeved. I have some of those games that are more than 40 years old and still intact. While AH was in business I would sometimes order replacement boxes, although I rarely ahd to do so with bookcase boxes. On the other hand my Midway box is the third one (and it's fallen apart now).

One of the salutary effects of the German game influx has been to improve the overall quality of game boxes. Even back in the 1980s when I was stationed in Germany I was struck by how much better quality the German game components were. The boxes were much sturdier as a rule.

These days, while a few wargame makers still publish boxes that won't hold up to well, the majority seem to have realized that wargames have a long life-span and the box needs to be designed accordingly. Outstanding among the publishers is GMT with its heavy duty game boxes -- I like to call them the "armored box." These seem like they'll last many a trip to cons and game buddy houses. The squarish box design used by a lot of companies now such as Hasbro, Flying Frog, Fantasy Flight, Days of Wonder and others also seems pretty durable and stackable.

I broke down and got it

Yeah, I'm weak.

Commands & Colors: Napoleonics arrives -- let the stickering begin!

I'll give GMT credit, once they make the game available they don't make you wait for it.

This is in contrast to Days of Wonder, which made me watch the agonizing progress of my order of Memoir '44/Samll World expansions across the country via FedEx ground, I'm not sure it was doing me a favor. It sat in Connecticut for about three days. I think FedEx deliberately holds onto stuff so it doesn't arrive before its scheduled delivery time.

In any case, GMT e-mailed me that my CCN was shipped and bang! There is was on my doorstep.

It will take me longer to apply all the sticers than it took to ship it!

With a week of vacation ahead I hope to get in a session or two.

Ignorance

So the Providence Journal provides a forum for more ignorance about wargames as some Native American leaders are quoted criticizing the upcoming King Phillip's War wargame. From the context it's quite evident that none of them have a clue what a historical wargame might be and apparently imagine it must be something like a King Phillip's War Monopoly or CandyLand, which would indeed be trivializing. Nearly all of their criticisms would basically mean you couldn't to a wargame on any topic at all -- or at least none involving history or any tie to existing groups. Interestingly, some of the criticism seems to assume that the Indians are destined to lose. One ignoramus says that it's apparently still OK to kill Indians -- obviously ignorant that the carnage goes both ways. Indeed, one assumes that the premise of the game is that the Indians might very well have won. It was, as a matter of fact, probably the only occasion when the Indians might have driven off the English through force of arms. As valiant and understandable their later resistance might have been, all later the later Indian wars were, essentially futile. During King Phillip's War. on the other hand, the English colonists did not have an overwhelming advantage in numbers nor in technology. There's a legitimate what-if involved in this campaign and it appears to be an excellent and long-overlooked topic for a wargame.

Head-to-head competition

One of the interesting phenomenon seen in wargaming is the creation of directly competing designs -- games that depict the same topic, at the same scale, with similar complexity levels and pricing. This is something seen much less often in euro games. For example, the publication of Pandemic didn't inspire other companies to come out with their own plaque-fighting games. But there's no shortage of strategic level Eastern Front games, regimental Battle of the Bulge Games, World War II carrier battle games, platoon-level combat games, etc. This dates back to the early rivalry between Avalon Hill and SPI where both companies seemed to enjoy matching each other's titles. Often they would come out close enough that there could be dueling reviews, for example, SPI's Descent on Crete and AH' Air Assault on Crete were both reviewed in the same issue of F&M.

So it's interesting to see that GMT and Worthington Games will each be coming out with similar Napoleonic battle wargames this year. The GMT game will be Commands & Colors: Napoleonics based, naturally, on the Commands & Colors system that gave us Battle Cry, Memoir '44, Battlelore and C&C: Ancients. Worthington's game will be Napoleon's War: The Hundred Days, based on their popular Wars for America series, seen most recently in Hold the Line.

The game systems are similar in scale and style, while differing just enough in important details that one can't be seen as a clone of the other. Up until now the two systems have avoided covering the same topic. Borg's games have run a wide gamut, from ancient warfare, fantasy battles, the Civil War and World War II. Worthington's comparable games have been much more limited in scope, being focuses on the small wars of North America between 1758 and 1815 so far.

So the upcoming games represent the first head-to-head direct competition between the two game systems, which may present fans of both with some interesting choices. Should they buy both? Would owning both be redundant?

The Worthington title may be the first one out the gate, as it's been offered for pre-order with the promise of production with the next 3-4 months. C&C:Napoleonics has also just been offered on the GMT pre-order list but there are several games ahead of it in the pipeline, so I don't expect to see it until summer.

Worthington is going with plastic figures, which has generally been a popular choice, although the figures do not appear to be nationality authentic in uniform details, being merely color-coded for side. The first set has blue French, Red Anglo-allied and Grey Prussians.

C&C:N will likely uses wooden blocks with stickers, similar to C&C:A. This will allow the use of authentic uniform illustrations and the wooden blocks have also been well-received in the past.

It's not clear how the other components will stack up. Both companies have produced some very nice stuff lately, so it's hard top give the edge to one or the other at this point.

I plan to get the first one of each line, but I doubt I can afford to maintain a steady stream of purchases for both. My inclination is towards C&C:N, largely because I expect it to be wildly popular and therefore easy to get on the table. But I'm willing to give the Worthington games title a shot, especially because the initial game covers the Waterloo campaign. After that it will be time to choose.

Interesting imminent game release from Worthington Games

Worthington Games has a list of upcoming games available for pre-release sale prices on their Website, among them are this interesting one based on their popular Hold the Line system.

I've enjoyed that game systema lot and it makes an interesting contrast to the Commands & Colors: Napoleonics game due out soon from GMT.

The Worthington Games title will use plastic miniatures, shown above, for the battles in the Waterloo campaign. They are generic (as far as uniforms go) and will differ among the nationalities based on color (Red for Anglo-Allied, grey for Prussian and Blue for French), being similar to the approach used in Battle Cry and Memoir '44. The GMT game will presumably use wooden blocks, just as Commands & Colors: Ancients did, which will probably use stickers with the proper historical uniforms as well as block color to show the armies.

The Worthington series uses Command Action Points to limit how many units can be ordered, but players have wide lattitude on which units to order. In the C&C system cards not only limit how many units can get orders, but which ones. Both are good systems.

Ask And Ye Shall Receive

Even as I typed the words in my pervious post grousing about having to wait for my pre-orders there was a Priority Mail box sitting on my table at home from GMT Games with my copy of 1805: Sea of Glory. As promised, here's my out-of-the box impressions.

First off the box is the standard GMT Bookcase size, the exact same size as Flying Colors with very similar colors, too. They will look nice next to each other. No complaints there.

Inside the box there's a pretty standard GMT-style rule book. This is already online at their site, so there were no surprises there. The game does appear to be a little more complex than I was expecting. It's definitely a full-fledged hard-core wargame that takes account of a myriad of factors and definitely not a euro-style wargame.

I had mixed feelings about the map. It's very nice looking, almost worth framing, but it's paper, so I was a little disappointed on that score, having gotten used to the cardstock maps in many GMT games. Being a paper map I do have some concerns about durability. Definitely worth playing under glass. It appears functional but I reserve judgement on that until I play it.

There are two counter sheets and indeed, while it will be perceived as being a block game, the vast majority of playing pieces are cardboard counters. And the majority of those are ships and admirals, with various game markers and chits for sundry purposes. All are attractively done, although not out of the ordinary for GMT.

The key component of the game are the fleet blocks. This was a little puzzling, however. It appears that a late decision was made to go with bigger blocks, because the rule book shows the small blocks we have seen used for infantry units in the Commands & Colors: Ancients series, and the stickers are sized for that size of block -- but the game came with the larger blocks that have been used for cavalry units in C&C:A. This poses a small problem because the larger block really don't quite fit in the hexes on the playing board, which may create some confusion about the location of the block and also make it hard to have multiple blocks in the same spot. I can only surmise that the larger blocks were substituted for ease of handling. The blocks with stickers affixed (I'm lousy at doing that, BTW) are shown at right. From top to bottom are a French "Fog of War" (dummy) block, a British frigate, A Spanish fleet, a British fleet and a French fleet. The numbers and letters on the blocks refer to the fleet's destination -- in other words there is a form of plotted movement, but rather painlessly handled.

The game also contains a couple of fleet and port displays, which is where the composition of the fleets is tracked. The ship counters, with a handful of exceptions, don 't appear on the map.

There are also two different player charts with various table needed for play. In an apparent error the box says there are four charts, but posting on Boardgame Geek indicate everyone is getting just two so I assume the box is in error.

Finally there are five dice and the usual allotment of small plastic baggies that GMT thoughtfully provides.

I'll save any remarks about game play for later once I have had a chance to play it, but overall it looks pretty good out of the box.

Which Borg not to resist

Star Trek's Borg famous claim "resistance is futile," and I think the same is probably true for wargame designer Richard Borg's creations. I know I haven't been able to resist buying anything related to his Commands & Colors system. I'm not alone in the collective, either, as Borg's designs are among the most popular wargames ever published.

Still, sometimes you have to choose and prospective purchasers may wonder which is the best choice for them. Each game has its vehement fans, but here is what I believe is a fairly objective rundown of their strengths and weaknesses.

Really, they are close enough in quality and game play (with the possible exception of Battle Cry) that I think the main consideration should be which theme a player finds the most interesting. pick that first.

From purely a game play perspective they each have strengths and weaknesses.

Battle Cry (American Civil War) is the weakest of the lot, simply because it was the first, and the subsequent designs have all refined the concept. If Battle Cry had expansions like the others I'm sure it would have kept up, but it's a one-off design.

Command & Colors: Ancients (Ancient battles of the Classical Era) matches its era well and is probably the most tactically intricate because of all the different troop types, which often have fairly subtle differences between them. Terrain plays a smaller role in this game than the others as ancient armies tended to fight on the flattest and clearest terrain available.

BattleLore (fantasy but also historical medieval) is similar to C&C:A, especially when played with the Medieval Rules. Adding Lore adds some interesting new twists to the game system. The fantasy aspects of the game are not overpowering and it is still an army-level game and not a sort of role-playing experience.

Memoir '44 (World War II) is a lot more about terrain and combined arms effects. The interaction between the units is more subtle than it is in C&C:A because of the long ranges involved. Just because units are not near each other doesn't mean they don't affect each other. And the air pack adds a new dimension of course. There's more variety in the scenarios compared to the other games, which are almost all line-them-up-and-fight battles, with a few notable exceptions.

You may also want to consider how they are marketed.

Battle Cry (Hasbro/Avalon Hill) is a single, self-contained game, but it's out of print.

BattleLore (originally Days of Wonder, now Fantasy Flight Games) and Memoir '44 (Days of Wonder) each start with a self-contained base game that you can add to as finances and interests allow, although that may change for BattleLore as it is moving to a new publisher. While some of the expansions require parts from other expansions there are always scenarios that require nothing more than the base game and that particular expansion to play.

C&A:A (GMT Games) has a self-contained starter and then each of the expansions is a major purchase as well. These expansion tend to build on each other, so I would say this series is something you'd want to commit to in a serious way to get the most out of it.

C&C Ancients: The hoplon box

There have been many laudable influences on wargaming from eurogames, among them shorter playing times, a move towards more elegant rules and an overall improvement in graphics.

Pulling out my copy of Command and Colors: Ancients, however, reminds me another one: better game boxes.

I've been a wargamer for almost 40 years now, and played games in general for almost 50. (I'm pretty sure I started with Milton Bradley's Go to the Head of the Class). And one consistent problem with games published by American publishers over those decades was flimsy boxes. It was also something I noticed back in the 1980s when I spent some time in Germany while in the Army. This was before the rise of the Eurogame, but Germans have always been big game fans and companies such as Ravensburger were publishing nice versions of traditional games, and these came in nice sturdy boxes.

The tradition of flimsy boxes pioneered by the lies of Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers was taken up by Avalon Hill, which wanted nothing more than to be considered a serious game company. The classic Avalon Hill box was a "flat box" similar in dimensions to its MB and Parker contemporaries. There was at least one edition of Stalingrad that came in an oversized flat box in a bid for more attention on store shelves.

This brings up the central contradiction in game box design between the interest of the publisher and the interests of the player. For the publisher, the success of the game box is measured by its success in selling the game. For this purpose the flat box is ideal, especially a lightly constructed one. It's big, has a lot of room for attention-grabbing art and for lots of informative ad copy describing all the game's features in nice big type. Being light it's easy to pick up from the shelf and spin around in the consumer's hands while the potential purchaser soaks up the add copy and the pretty pictures.

The player, however, wants a box that will hold all the game's components after the game has been assembled for play, will stand up to being carried around and won't take up an unnecessary amount of storage space in the home.

Until fairly recently, the publisher's interests tended to prevail over the players. Except for the 3M-introduced Bookcase game box (later adopted by Avalon Hill for some, but not all its games) and the corrugated box and sleeve used by Columbia Games and a few others, most wargame publishers, like most American game publishers in general, stuck to flimsy boxes. In some cases the boxes were exceptionally light and would fall apart almost immediately, but every flat box design is a problem for players. They don't hold up well to being transported, they won't fit well on most common bookshelves and sometimes they won't even hold all the game parts.

I, for one, always liked the AH bookcase boxes the best. They held up well to the wear and tear of life. I have more than a half dozen of the 3M games in their original boxes. Over the years I've rarely had to replace any bookcase boxes. On the other hand, I regularly found it necessary to replace flat boxes. I'm on my second Afrika Corps box and my third Midway box. although now, of course, they can't be replaced except by cannibalising from eBay purchases.

One of the first thing I noticed about the eurogames, in contrast is that they almost always come in a nice compact and sturdy box. The Euro-ized edition of A House Divided, for example, while in very large box, is also in a very tough box. Evidently Euro game publishers are more interested in building up goodwill among customers and a reputation for quality than short-term gains from quick sales.

The Columbia-style boxes have their advantages, although the sleeves tend to rip, so I considers it somewhat inferior to bookcase and euro-style boxes, although much better than any others.

So I was pleased to see that GMT has, at least for Commands & Colors: Ancients, gone with a very sturdy box. This was somewhat of a surprise, because GMT isn't averse to going flimsier. While some of their games are in bookcase style boxes they also have used flat box designs.

Some other American game makers are following the Euro lead. The newest games from Worthington are definitively Euro-standard and even many recent Hasbro games are in a more compact and player-friendly square box that takes up less space and is sturdier, although this isn't universal. The Axis & Allies games, in particular, still have too much air in them.

I hope that GMT goes C&C-style for more new titles, along with other gamemakers. I'm tired of split ends.

Europe Engulfed: Does it make the most use of the blocks?

There are three main ways of depicting military units is wargames these days: Figures, blocks and counters.

Figures have the advantage of being fun the handle and attractive, but can't convey much game-related information, This means they have to either be supplemented by data cards or limited to game systems that don't get into too much detail. They're also expensive to produce. Counters are the other extreme. They're the cheapest and least attractive (although some games do an awful lot with them) but can be filled with all sorts of game information.

Blocks form a middle ground. They're attractive, can carry a lot of game information and are not as expensive as figures.

They also have a couple of additional advantages. When placed on edge they provide an elegant way to handle reductions in strength and also provide some fog of war.

Columbia's games, for example, make use of all three of the main features of blocks. The games are attractive, always use step reduction and always use fog of war. While wooden blocks have gained some popularity recently, many of the other company's games don't really use all the features.

For example, Simmons Games' titles use the Fog of War and attractiveness of blocks, but not the step reduction feature,using unit substitution instead.

Some of Worthington Games' offerings are Columbia style (like Forged in Glory) but others just use the wood to make sturdier and prettier counters (Like For Honor And Glory).

At GMT, likewise, wooden blocks aren't really used to full effect. In C&C: Ancients they're merely less expensive substitutes for figures, having no FOW or step reduction role at all. But even in Europe Engulfed, their primary role seem to be making the product appear spiffier and providing an easier way to handle step reduction (4 steps per unit) than counters (two-steps) would provide.

It appears that Fog of War is also present, but it seems to me to play a very minor role in the game system, especially compared to the typical Columbia design. Bluff and deception usually plays a vital role in Columbia Games titles, with it mattering a lot what a specific block's identity is.

In EE, in contrast, the key battles usually involve so many pieces that their specific identities and qualities are much less important. There are relatively few regions and important battles will tend to involve dozens of pieces. There are important system advantages for having units at full strength, so it seems there's less scope for deception operations. Is it a realistic tactic to bluff strength by having an area held with a large number of weak units,for example? Or is it an invitation to disaster?