Pearl Harbor Day

When I was a child, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a fresh memory for the adults in my life, so it hardly needed special reminders that it was an important day. But today, 68 years later, one can sense that the event is fading into history, as all events do. Americans today have a new nationally traumatic shock foremost in the minds. Our world is a far different one than 1941. Japan is an ally, China a competitor, our biggest international threat a religiously based fanaticism, instead of the political fanatics of the 30s and 40s. So today it is appropriate to take a moment to specially mark this event, despite the amount of new history that's been added to the annals of America in the meantime.

Despite its importance, the Pearl Harbor attack hasn't been the subject of many games. Some strategic-level Pacific wargames do start off with the attack on Pearl Harbor (Victory in the Pacific) while others just assume it's results (Pacific Victory) or give you a choice of starting conditions (Asia Engulfed).

As far as depicting the actual attack goes, there are few. Zero! from the Down in Flames series, has a solitaire scenario about the attack (the map is shown above). The Avalanche Press game Midway also depicts the attack explicitly, and it may be the most comprehensive treatment of the battle in wargame form. It has a battle scenario (No. 1) showing the air raid itself where the Axis player controls two separate attacking waves of planes and the American player the defending ships. While not described as a solitaire scenario, it really plays like one. But the game also provides an operational scenario (No. 5) that gives the U.S. player a much more active role.

That operational scenario starts with the Japanese surprise air raid, but illustrates the risks the Japanese might have faced if they continued to hang around Hawaii making follow-on attacks. While having a powerful air arm in its four fleet carriers, the Japanese strike force doesn't have a strong escort, with just two battleships, two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser and 8 destroyers. Even after a successful air raid, the American Pacific Fleet is likely to have a mobile battleship or two as well as up to eight heavy and light cruisers and a couple of dozen destroyers to sortie for retaliation. Already at sea are two U.S.carrier task forces, each with a fleet carrier, three heavy cruisers and 5 or 9 destroyers. Two other American heavy cruisers with escorts are also at sea sea Hawaii. Sticking around could have been risky.

Of course, the biggest risk of an attack on Pearl Harbor seems to have been missed by Japanese planners -- that the Americans would be so enraged by the attack that they would not stop until they had achieved total victory. One really wonders if the Japanese might not have been better off awaiting the American fleet on their side of the Pacific, especially given their advantage in carrier doctrine.

Bananagrams Game of the Year? Or Tuf-Abet Re-imagined?

Certainly Bananagrams is the closest thing to a popular fad "board" game to come out in a few years.

There's an interesting Boston Globe profile of the game and it's Rhode Island designer here.

I got to try it recently and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Like many truly classic ideas, it's so simple you have to wonder why nobody came up with the idea before. The basic idea behind the game is to form crossword-style anagrams based on speed, rather than maximized points as per the game Scrabble.

It's really pretty clever and a lot of fun. It comes in a banana-shaped pouch and has144 plastic letter tiles. Player's start with a specified number of tiles and try to use them all to form words, crossword style. The first player who does says "peel" which forces everybody to draw a new tile. Players continue, and every time a player succeeds in using all the tiles they call out "peel" again until there are fewer tiles left than players in the game. Whichever player succeeds in using all his tiles at that point calls out "bananas" and wins.

This reminds a lot of the old Avalon Hill game Tuf-Abet. In that game players rolled dice with letters on their faces. Each player had his own set of 20 cubes of different colors. They used the letters to form crossword-style letter groups. The first player who used all (or most) of his cubes said "Tuf" which started a 3-minute timer where the other players tried to outdo the first player in how many cuibes they used. If someone did then they said "Tuffer" and started a 2-minute timer where everybody tried again to outdo the others. A third round and any subsequent "Tuffest" rounds are 1-minute long. Play continues until somebody uses all their cubes. The winner is determined by a point scoring system that rewards being the first declarer, the final declarer and the number of cubes used, with a bonus for words over 5 letters long.

Interestingly, game documentation included in my copy of Tuf-Abet from 1969 indicates that a patent was applied for. If a patent was ever granted, it is long since expired, as patents are only good for 20 years or less. The Banagram site makes no patent claims, only copyright. The Boston Globe article and the Banagram Web site both mention Scrabble as an inspiration and have no mention of tuf-abet but the designer is certainly old enough to have come across Tuf-Abet in his lifetime, so I wonder if the resemblance between the two games is entirely coincidental.

There don't seem to be any intellectual property problems. As I noted, any patent is long-since expired and there seem to be no copyright or trademark issues either. What is fascinating is how two rather similar games have had such a different reception. Tuf-Abet was never a big breakway hit for Avalon Hill, although it seems to have been a steady seller. Bananagrams is Game of the Year. Bananagrams has a very clever marketing hook, while effective marketing always seemed to be a weakness for the old AH. Tuf-Abet's scoring system and multi-round format is a little more intricate than Bananagrams, but it's still not very complicated by either 1969 or contemporary standards. Perhaps, if Hasbro still has the rights from its AH acquisition, we might see a reprint of the game, given the success of Bananagrams.

I've always liked Tuf-Abet, although I haven't had much success in getting people to play it over the years. While there are similarities, I do think Bananagrams is the better implementation of the idea. By dispensing with any kind of scoring system and going with a simple win-lose game condition the newer game is probably more accessible for a mass market that considers games like Monopoly, Scrabble and Risk as pretty complicated.

Retiring from Geek of the Week

I'm in my last few minutes as BoardGame Geek's Geek of the Week, but just as they say, "The King is dead, long live the King!" the next Geek of the Week is ready to go, Debbie Ohi, better known as InkyGirl, who drew this nice picture of me:

It was a lot of fun being Geek of the Week.

Martian Fluxx -- a Creepy version of the game!

Martian Fluxx contents

Copyright Looney Labs

I'm a serious fan of wargames and simulations, but I also have a definite weakness for silly multiplayer card games and there are few sillier, but great multiplayer, games than the Fluxx series of games from Looney Labs.


The fundamental structure for all versions of Fluxx is extremely simple. You deal out three cards to each player and they start laying by following the Basic Rules: Draw a card and then play a card (following the instructions on that card, if any).


The key cards in Fluxx are New Rules, marked in yellow, that change or add to the Basic Rules. They may change how many cards, you draw or play introduce new rules such as a limit on how many cards you can have in your hand. New rules take effect immediately, so if you play a Play 3 card as your first play you can now play 2 more cards from your hand. These might include Action cards, marked in blue, which allow you to perform the action listed on the card such as draw more cards or trade hands with an opponent.


At the start of the game you don't even know what you have to do to win. You find out when someone plays a Goal card, marked in red, which might say that whoever had 10 cards in their hand wins. Most, however, center on having certain Keepers, marked in green, the fourth type of card in the game, played on the table in front of you.

Zombie Fluxx introduced a new type of card called the Creeper, marked in black, which is basically an anti-keeper. If you have a Creeper in play in front of you you can't win, even if you otherwise meet the conditions of the Goal currently in play. Unlike most other cards, if you have a Creeper you must put it in play instantly in front of you. It's not all bad news, though, because occasionally a Goal may actually require a certain Creeper to win. The Creeper idea has been popular and shown up in every version of Fluxx published since Zombie Fluxx came out and was even retrofitted back to the basic Fluxx game when its 4th Edition came out, so it can be considered a core element of the game

Martian Fluxx brings the role of the Creepers to a whole new level. In previous versions Creepers were pretty uncommon -- just four cards in Fluxx and seven cards in Monty Python Fluxx, for example. But Martian Fluxx has 14 Creepers, most of which are Pathetic Humans. Yes, in Martian Fluxx the players are the Martians, out to invade the earth with flying saucers, ray guns, mother ships and abduction chambers, with just the Pathetic Humans, their Army and the Germs standing in the way. There's even a small chance the humans will win. One of the cards is an Anti-Goal card called Retreat and if its stiff conditions are met the Invasion is called off the Martians retreat in defeat!

It's all good fun and demonstrates the flexibility of the Fluxx game engine, which seems adaptable to any theme so long as there's some silliness involved.

Like all versions of Fluxx the game is very easy to teach (although so chaotic that some folks will need a game or two to wrap their minds around it), very quick (half an hour or less), and very scalable (the box says up to 6, but I've managed 7 OK). It's one of the very few games that someone can join in-progress (just deal them 3 cards and they are in).

While all Fluxx-series games have the same art on the back, and could theoretically be mixed together, the trend with the latest themed versions has been to discourage that. Martian Fluxx explicitly says that the theme of Martian invasion doesn't fit in well with the other themes, and shouldn't be mixed with other decks.

I haven't played every version of Fluxx (others are Eco-Fluxx and Zombie Fluxx), but every version I've played has been a hoot, so it's highly recommended.

Axis & Allies Game Day and Meetup

We will be having an Axis & Allies game day and Meetup at the Arkham Asylum's new store location here in Norwich at 276 West Main St. on Dec. 12 starting at noon.

We will have at least the following Axis & Allies series games available for play: Anniversary. 1942, Europe, Battle of the Bulge, D-Day and Guadalcanal. We will also have Axis & Allies miniatures and War at Sea naval miniatures.

Interesting link on game knock-offs

This blogger reports on a trip in China that brought him to a warehouse full of high-quality copies of "German" games, which is interesting in light of the whole Games Workshop intellectual property brouhaha we saw on Boardgame Geek last week.

The blogger wonders if the move to save a buck by sending production to China didn't have the unintended consequence of making it easier for the counterfeiters to do the deed by providing expertise.

Knowledge is a funny thing. In one sense it's priceless but time-consuming and hard to get. so countries and communities can make quite a success of themselves by exploiting an edge in knowledge. Think of Swiss watches and Silicon Valley, for example, which are based on a concentration of knowledge. But on the other hand knowledge, unlike other resources, is not fixed in space or time and it's possible to spread it. During the Industrial Revolution the British tried very hard to prevent the spread of their techniques, but factory workers and managers with British experience still managed to make their way to America and elsewhere and bring their knowledge with them.

Chinese products today have many quality control issues, which is to be expected given the societal limitations of China -- right now. But I'm old enough to remember when Made in Japan once signaled that aproduct was cheap and ill-made. Now Made in Japan means Lexus. Long after the contract for making the high-quality product has ended the knowledge of how to meet those standards wil remain and sooner or later entrepreneurs will act. China, unlike Japan, but like the United States, is big enough all-by-itself to form a complete market for any good or service. I would imagine that the numbers of players of Settlers of Catan in China is extremely tiny as a percentage of the population -- but with a billion potential customers you don't need much of a percentage to have a worthwhile market for a product.

Plausible war? Red Dragon Rising

Speculative wargames have been a staple since SPI published Red Star/White Star, and in particular speculation about how a possible confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact as so fertile a topic for wargame designers that games on that topic were virtually a hobby within the hobby and contemporary combat generally ranked among the top two or three most popular wargame topics in SPI polls for years.

Of course that confrontation never came to be and the bottom sort of dropped out of the genre after the Fall of Communism in 1989. Oh sure, there's still an occasional game published on the topic, but it's dropped down somewhere between the Spanish-American War and the War of Austrian Succession in wargamer interest.

Even during the heyday of NATO-Warsaw Pact interest there were a few other stabs at treating other prospective wars -- and some of those even happened. The SPI game Sinai was famously redesigned in 1973 just before publication to account for the actual October War.

Still, I think it's fair to say that most of the major conflicts of the Cold War era that actually broke out were unanticipated by wargame designers. And who could blame them? There's a considerable amount of implausibility of Britain and Argentina coming to blows, Iraq invading Iran or even the Soviets invading Afghanistan. Implicit in making the case for a plausible future-history wargame is making a case that one side or the other has something to gain. The unpleasant outcome for the aggressor in those three wars suggest it really wasn't a good idea. (Yes, I am aware that Iraq supposedly "won" it's war with Iran, but I don't think there's any doubt it was a very hollow victory).

The post-Berlin Wall world has seen a steadily decreasing number of international state-on-state conflicts of the sort wargames handle best and wargamers find interesting. Most conflicts these days are low-level guerilla wars, insurgencies and terror campaigns.

Advances in printing technology have made it possible to rush into print with a wargame if there's sufficient lead-time in the crisis. Both the first Gulf War and the more recent Iraq War saw pre-conflict wargames hit the market, but they were hardly great examples of prognostication. The very title of Back to Iraq (which appeared in various editions in Command and then Strategy & Tactics magazine suggests how predictable the occurrence of that war would be. But even the Iraq War games that did appear missed the real nature of the war that would be fought -- stopping after a month or so of fighting in the belief that the issue would be decided. We now know that the "Mission Accomplished" moment was really just the beginning of the story. And I don't think anybody designed a wargame involving an American intervention in Afghanistan beforehand.

So how many plausible situations exist for a major state-to-state war in the current international climate? In the post-Cold War world there were brief fads of looking at potential wars between the United States and Japan, some kind of resurrected Russian state or even the "World" banding together to take down the remaining superpower USA. All of these had more of the aura of some kind of "Sci Fi" treatment than an examination of a real possibility.

There seem to be five possible international flash points that could boil over into some sort of major state-on-state war. Some of these have had wargames designed about them, a few have not.

1. Korea -- For more than 50 years the threat of war has hung over the Korean peninsula, but despite the weird reclusive nature of the North Korean regime, the chances of war breaking out there seem to recede each year. The fact is that any chance the North Koreas had of overrunning the South dissipated years ago -- a fact that even a madman can see. There have been a few of wargames looking at this, including some in detail -- but the last one was almost a decade ago.

2. Israel -- Another area that has seen more than a half-century of conflict and will undoubtedly see more, but not state-on-state. There gulf in military might between the Palestinians and the Israelis resembles late Nineteenth Century colonial warfare. No one has bothered to design a game on this topic.

3. Iran -- Possibly the single most likely war -- with both Israel and the United States has plausible foes to Iran, and yet no one has tried to design a wargame on how this could play out. Is it too politically fraught, hard to research or what?

4. Pakistan -- This resembles a NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation in miniature -- two large, conventional armies with nuclear weapons facing off along a long border in a shallow theater. There were a couple of wargames on the topic around the beginning of the decade but nothing recently. The chances of this one happening seem to have receded for the moment, but it wouldn't take a lot for it to come to a boil again.

5. China -- This one has caught the fancy of recent designers for some reason. Red Dragon Rising was a big hit in S&T magazine and even had some expansion counters in a recent issue. The last issue of Command Magazine featured a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. And Taiwan remains a potential flash point, but like many of the other long-simmering conflicts around the world, the passage of time seems to be lessening the chances of war. The potential costs are high and the stakes seem relatively low, especially because everyone concerned seems to have an interest in kicking the ball down the field.

Most of the anticipated conflicts seem unlikely to erupt into anything wargame-worthy. Are there any out-of-left field Falklands War situations out there?

There don't seem to be many candidates. Neither North America nor Western Europe seem to have any. The EU integration of economies and distaste for military spending make a state-on-state war unthinkable in Western Europe (which is an astounding break with the past, BTW).

Hardly any African states have the wherewithal to consider meaningful state-on-state fighting. South America has some countries with the potential for military power, but a lack of state-vs.-state disputes that anybody would want to fight over, the antics of Venezuela notwithstanding.

That leaves Asia and the Middle East where most of the potential wars have already been discussed. Could Thailand and Burma battle? What about Russian and the Ukraine? Australia and New Zealand? Well, I guess the last one would be quite a stretch. The Russia-Ukraine possibility was been touched on in one game, but that's it.

Of course, the lack of suitable topics for plausible future wars is not a bad thing. And our forbears have provided us with no shortage of historical wars to refight, so this is no crisis.

Austerlitz +204

Scenario set-up from Napoleon's Battles Module Two
copyright 1994, The Avalon Hill Game Co.

Despite the fact that a half-dozen or so of my favorite games are set in the Napoleonic era, I'm not really a Napoleonics fan. It's juts that the man is just about unavoidable if you're going to be an avid wargamer or serious student of history. He may have been a man of short stature, but he strides like a colossus through European History. Few individuals have had such an outsize influence in history that an entire era is named after them. His Maxims have been studied by aspiring generals since the 1820s and the attempt to understand and communicate his genius inspired two of the most influential treatises on military strategy ever written, The Art of War by Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini, and On War, by Carl von Clausewitz.

Napoleon personally commanded on at least 65 battlefields from Montenotte on Apr. 12, 1796 to Waterloo on June 18, 1815, but he reportedly considered the Battle of Austerlitz, fought on Dec. 2, 1805, as his masterpiece. It was definitely a battle won by superior generalship. Napoleon set a trap for his opponents and they walked right into it, allowing him to wreck a great army.

Yet it was not, despite its cleverness and lopsided casualty count, a decisive battle. As a matter of fact, Austerlitz merely inaugurated an intense period of fighting that lasted four more years and involved a dozen more battles including Jena, Eylau, Freidland, Aspern-Essling and Wagram.

And despite its lopsided outcome, that outcome was hardly a foregone conclusion. While the French Army was at its peak of effectiveness, having undergone intensive training for the planned invasion of Britain, was buoyed by a victory at Ulm and fresh from several years of peace, it was outnumbered by a substantial amount. And while the Allies were hobbled by antiquated organizations and a confused command structure, they had good troops on the field.

So the situation is perfect for a good wargame -- two evenly matched, but not identical, armies, facing each other on the field of battle.

Map detail from Austerlitz, Battle of Three Emperors
copyright 1973 Simulations Publications, Inc.

As I said, I'm not a big Napoleonics fan, despite appearances. There have been many good Austerlitz games published, but I only have a few. Austerlitz is a scenario in the Napoleon's Battles miniatures game system, but its not a scenario I've ever played. I have played the old SPI quad game Austerlitz -- Battle of Three Emperors, but that's merely because it's one of the games offered on Hexwar.com. The game is your typical quad game, which mean that it's not much of a simulation, really, but it is a pretty decent hex-and-counter wargame from that era. It's one of the more popular games offered on Hexwar and is reasonable well-balanced.

Map detail from Napoleon's Triumph
copyright 2006 Simmons Games

My third Austerlitz title is Napoleon's Triumph by Bowen Simmons, which I definitely bought based on the reputation of the designer. I was extremely impressed by his Bonaparte at Marengo game and I knew that the NT game system was inspired by the earlier game. It's not accurate to describe the two as being in the same system, as there are bigger differences between them than there are between, for example, the SPI quad games on Marengo and Austerlitz. It's an interesting bit of trivia that Marengo was the last battle Napoleon fought as General Bonaparte and Austerlitz was the first full-scale field battle he fought as Emperor-- and it was fought on the anniversary of his ascension to the throne.

Napoleon's Triumph is my current top wargame, even though I haven't played it anywhere near enough times to suit me. As important as I believe theme to be in wargames, I'm primarily a fan of NT for it's virtues as a game. A legitimate criticism of Bonaparte of Marengo is that it's a bit stereotyped in play and isn't good at replicating the historical battle. Napoleon's Triumph, on the other hand, manages to be much more free-wheeling while at the same time holding out the real possibility of replicating the general course of the battle.

It's also, of course, a handsomely produced game, but the best feature is the game play. Having the game has prompted me to look more closely at the Battle of Austerlitz, which I think is the hallmark of a good wargame -- it inspires a deeper appreciation of history.

Lessons Learned from the Games Workshop/BoardGame Geek controversy

I think there are three different, but related, aspects of this whole brouhaha on Boardgame Geek that everybody can take away as lessons learned if they choose -- although some may not.

The first is Games Workshop's aggressive defense of its intellectual property. I was unaware of the Warhammer/World of Warcraft connection and I can understand how GW may feel quite burned by that experience. I think they were within their legal rights on 90% of what they claim, although on some specific points their IP policies make claims unsupported by the actual state of the law. The reality is that those assertions will probably stand until they tangle with someone with the economic resource sand interests to contest it. On the other hand, there's serious grounds for doubting the wisdom of their approach. Making a significant portion of your most dedicated fans angry with you seems like a very bad business idea. While most of GW's customers are not on BGG or members of GW fan sites, those who are tend to be the opinion leaders in their groups and probably have an influence outside of mere numbers,

The second lesson is BGG's response to GW's demands. Here I think there are some legitimate ground for criticizing some details of how BGG responded, but BGG's overall response was a prudent one given the magnitude of the legal threat and the relative peripheral nature of the possible benefit. Games Workshop is just one company whose products are on the site and it doesn't make sense to risk all the other valuable content here related to more consumer-friendly companies for the sake of the products of a company that doesn't appreciate the free advertising. BGG is a growing site and becoming the premiere game-related site in the world devoted to all games. GW benefits more from BGG than BGG needs GW. It's unfortunate that the controversy broke out while Aldie was unavailable to address it quickly, but it appears to me that BGG is taking lessons learned from the experience and implementing policies and procedures that will reduce future problems.

The third lesson is for us, the users of BGG. One thing many of us could do a better job of is respecting the legitimate intellectual property rights of game publishers. I see an awful lot of stuff posted on BGG that really is egregious copyright and trademark infringement. We have open advocacy by some of making your own copies of games so you don't have to buy it We have users scanning high-resolution images of the complete components of some games. In many cases users are posting clearly derivative works without bothering to ask permission (which many companies would probably grant -- see the nice alternative map available as a download for Bonaparte at Marengo. For example, I often like to post examples of components when I am writing a game review. I am always careful never to scan in complete copies of the component in question -- a part of a map, a few examples of the counters, an extract of a play aid, one or two cards. This is fair use. Scanning in all 108 cards at full-size for a card game is not. Lastly, fans of a game should realize that the content they generate (let's say a really nice, upgraded player aid with snazzy logos and photos of miniatures) may not be theirs, even if they did a lot of work on it. Spend your effort on companies that appreciate and encourage that kind of work. Don't waste your time supporting a company that doesn't.

A Wargamer's review of Small World

Some special tokens: Dragon, Hero, Halfling Holes-in-the-Ground.

Small World is the wildly popular fantasy conquest game designed by Philippe Keyaerts and published by Days of Wonder.

There's quite a bit of divergence of opinion on whether Small World and similar conquest games such as Risk, History of the World, Britannia or Small World's predecessor Vinci ,are properly termed "wargames." They're certainly not "simulations" in any real sense of that term, but it's hard for me to see how any game whose theme involves conquering territory and exterminating the inhabitants isn't a wargame of some sort. In any case, these sort of games definitely come out of the wargame hobby and are often played by wargamers.

In Small World's case, the potentially grim theme is lightened up considerably by a number of aspects of the game. One is the fantasy setting itself, which, like a cartoon, removes some of the emotional impact that would otherwise accrue to the theme. Many of the "races" in the game are not human and some, like the skeletons and ghouls, are arguably not even alive. Also contributing to the light-hearted nature of the game are the various special powers, which include some that are rather non-violent (Diplomat, Merchant), amusing (Alchemist, Stout) or neutral (Hill, Flying) alongside the more brutal (Beserk, Pillaging). Finally, and probably most importantly, the brilliant illustration by Miguel Coimbra creates a light tone that permeates the entire game's presentation. It's one thing to have Commando Skeletons, Forest Elves, or Seafaring Amazons in a game, but Commando Skeletons wearing Cowboy hats, Forest Elves smelling flowers or Seafaring Amazons attired in little more than makeup and some strategically-placed leaves is another thing entirely.

Like all Days of Wonder products, the physical presentation of the game is first-rate and quite opulent compared to the typical wargame. There are two full-color, double-sided and lavish;y illustrated maps, all the various counters and chits are thick, colorful and durable. The rule sand play aids are printed on slick, high-quality paper and there are plenty to go around. All are packed snugly inside a box with an insert carefully designed to hold and organize all the components . Indeed, the tray holding the race tokens is a little too precisely engineered -- it can be hard to pull out the tokens you need.

Map detail from the 2-player map

Special notice is due of the maps. There are four provided, which one is used depends on the number of players -- 2, 3, 4 or 5. This makes the game very scalable within its range of players without changing the character of the game or using large swaths of unused map space on the table.

The game play is very straightforward. At the start of a player's turn, if he or she doesn't already have a race. they select a race and special power from among a column of race/special power combos. They can pick the top one in the column for free, or pay one gold coin each for every race they skip, placing the coin atop the skipped race. This allows players to exercise some strategy in the selection of the race while providing an incentive to eventually pick one of the less-favored combos because of the bonus in gold coins they accumulate.

Victory coins: Reverse; Obverse 10, 5, 3 and 1

This brings up an important point -- how to win. While the game seems to be about conquest, it's really about accumulating gold coins. Although called "Victory Coins," experienced wargamers will recognize these are just victory points in the form of money -- as there are no economic or trade aspects in the game. There are various ways to get Victory Coins, but the basic and fundamental method is by occupying territory at a base of 1 coin per space.

An Active Special Power/Race combo - Hill Amazons and token

The player collects the number of tokens granted by the special power/race combo and then conquers territories. For example, the Hill Amazons combo gives 6 tokens for the Amazons and 4 for the Hill special power, for a total of 10. The Amazons get four extra tokens for use when attacking, only, that can't be used to occupy territories . The Hill Special Power also gives a bonus of one Victory Coin for each Hill territory occupied. The basic combat mechanic is majority rules. So long as the attacking force outnumbers the defending tokens by 2, the attacker wins. Some combos enhance the attackers or reduce the winning margin but in every case the attacker needs at least one token to capture an area. The defenders count the number of defending tokens, which can include race tokens, mountain tokens or tokens for defensive positions such as forts, bivouacs or troll lairs. Often the active race will end up without enough tokens to win automatically and for their last conquest the attackers can roll a special die which adds 0, 1, 2 or 3 to the attackers notional strength. Three faces on the die are blank, and one each bear 1, 2 or 3 pips, so success is far from guaranteed.

After conquests the player score victory coins for the regions occupied and any special conditions they have met.

A Declined Race - Skeletons and token, Note that most special powers are lost when a race declines.

Instead of conquering territory a player can decline their race, which is one of the key mechanics of the game. On the turn they decline their race the player can do no actions and just collects victory points for the areas they already occupy. In every occupied area they flip one race token over to its "decline: side and remove any extras. The area will defend with just the one token from that point. But as long as the player's declined races are on the map, the player continues to score victory coins for the areas they occupied. Deciding when to decline a race is one of the major strategic decisions of the game. And this is another wargame-like aspect of the game, because there is a lot of strategy involved in the game. Which territories to conquer, who to take them from and when to decline your races are all vitally important.

Typically a player will go through at least two and probably three races over the course of a game. Timing them properly will often mean the difference between being competitive or not.

The game scales well from 2-5 players, but like many multiplayer games it really shines when you have at least four involved. There's enough strategy involved to keep players engrossed in the action, but not so much that players are deterred from table chatter. Turns move right along and the game box promise of finishing in 40-80 minutes will be kept.

Can it be recommended for wargamers? I think so, so long as your sole reason fo playing isn't recreating history or analyzing military events. Small World is, by no stretch of the imagination, a simulation. But is it a lot of fun. There's every indication it will be played for a long time to come. The ever-changing combos, the different maps and the inherent dynamics of multiplayer interactions will mean that there's a lot of replay value.

The game also can serve as a true gateway game with your non-wargaming friends and family. The box rates the game at 8 and over and so it's a good dad's game for cuiltivating budding gamers.

Winter War began 70 years ago today

On Nov. 30, 1939, Soviet troops crossed the border into Finland, beginning an unusual war that pitted small Finland against huge Russia.

I think something often overlooked about the Winter War was the overall context in which it occurred. It's easy to forget now, but 1939 was a year of extraordinary turmoil. The Spanish Civil War ended in January. Japan seized Hainan Island in February, Germany occupied the rump of Czechoslovakia in March, Italy occupied Albania in April and Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, starting World War II -- although in the fall of 1939 it was a Phony War confined to Europe and the high seas and not yet a world war.

So Finland's War with Russia was waged in a very tense international environment. It was co-existent with World War II, but not really a part of it. And even the later "Continuation War" waged in conjunction with the German Barbarossa campaign, was carefully separated from it. Finland was a co-belligerent, but not an ally, of Germany. The United States never did declare war on Finland, and Finnish restraint paid off when the tide turned against the Axis. Finland was the only Axis ally bordering the Soviets Union with was not occupied after the war.

I don't have a large collection of games on the Winter War, but one of my long-term favorites is the Strategy & Tactics game by that name, which I've even played this year. One of the TCS games, A Frozen Hell, depicts a battle from the war and several of my scenario-based wargames include episodes from the war, including Axis & Allies miniatures, Down in Flames and Memoir '44. I also have the GURPS WWII: Frozen Hell module from Steve Jackson Games which is full of interesting data about the war, even though I'm not an active player of thr GURPS RPG.

One aspect of the Winter War that's notable is the moral ambiguity surrounding it. On the one hand, the Finns were supported by Nazi Germany as well as the Western Allies, yet on the other they were opposed by the Soviets, who would be allied with the West against the Germans less than two years later. But the Finns were defending themselves against aggression, so Western and American sympathy was with them and their cooperation with the Germans was excused.

Lost Worlds -- quick thoughts

Lost Worlds has been around for a very, very long time. The first books, designed by Alfred Leonardi, were published by Nova Games Designs back in 1983. So I'm definitely a Johnny-come-lately to this party. And it's funny, because I was an early fan of their other combat book game, Ace of Aces, which came out in 1980. It says more about where my interests were at the time. I was moving into a much more exclusively wargame diet around then, after having dabbled a bit in fantasy RPGs.

So it was only a year or so ago that I decided to buy a couple of Lost Worlds Books, prompted by the appearance of hobby stalwart Lou Zocchi as a character in one of the books!

For those unfamiliar with them, the combat books are a patented game play mechanic hat involves two books, one for each player, that have pictures of the opposing player's character/aircraft/dragon as viewed from the player's perspective. Players select a move and through the interaction of a key and their opponents selection end up on new pages that reflect the results of their mutual move. It's really quite clever.

The Lost Worlds books are the fantasy individual combat game using this system, and dozens of books have been published over the years by various publishers that are fully compatible with each other. There's even a Japanese Anime version.

I finally got to play a few rounds over the last few weeks, as Young General and I took a break from BattleLore. The game is easy enough that a 10-year-old can handle it fine, but there are enough decisions to make that it's satisfying no matter what your age. We're both still getting the hang of it, but our contests have been remarkable even, with nearly a 50-50 split. The game is a nice filler that plays quickly. Few battle last more than 15 minutes or so, although I expect they'll last a little longer as we get more practiced at it. Some of out fights have ended very fast.

My only regret is that it took me so long to get around to the game.

Geek of the Week

Yours truly is deeply humbled to be Geek of the Week over at Boardgame Geek. The thread is here, for anyone interested.

To anyone coming here from BGG and browsing the blog for the first time, welcome. Please feel free to comment or follow and thanks for spending some time here.

No Games Workshop IP material on this site!

I count myself fortunate that I've never been a fan of Games Workshop's products, because it appears to have saved me from a lot of grief.

GW has long had a reputation for being, let's say, ornery in its dealings with many folks, including online and brick retailers, but this latest offensive against everyone and anyone posting any material remotely related to their products seems very ill-advised.

I noticed some moths ago that GW was taking a hard line against eBay sellers who attempted to use images of GW products in their ads. Now they've acted against fan sites and Boardgame Geek file posters.

It makes no sense to me to be rude to your biggest fans -- they can always spend their time and dollars elsewhere.

The last time I remember a Big Boy in the hobby acting this badly was TSR and we can see where they are today ... .

BattleLore session report:: Assaulting the Tourelles

Young General and the Old Warrior reached the end of their march through the basic BattleLore scenario book during the Friday After Thanksgiving Day Off From School.

Interestingly, this scenario is a fantastical re-imagining of the battle outside Orleans on October 12, 1428 between the French led by Jean de Dunois (The Bastard of Orleans) and Joan of Arc and the British under the Earl of Salisbury. While the general setup and situation resembles the historical fight, there were no actual goblins, dwarves or giant spiders on the field historically.

In this case, however, the scenario introduces the final bit of the basic game system, the Landmarks that can be associated with different Loremasters. The French side automatically gets a Stronghold (a keep, essentially), while other Landmarks are available if the players' war council include Level 3 Loremasters.



Young General took the English side. He was required to spend 1 level of war council on the Giant Spider, and added 1 level to his Commander to entitle himself to a 5-card hand of Command cards. He spent 3 levels to buy himself a Level 3 Cleric. His Cleric's Healing pool was placed in a hex next to the 2-hex woods in his Center section. Overall I though this was a good selection on his part.

I opted to stick with the 1 Level Commander required under the scenario rules (a choice I regretted) and bought a 2-level Cleric and a Level 3 Rogue. I placed the Rogue's Den between the wood and the hill on the border between my Left and Center sections. While I didn't regret the Rogue, I think i would have been better off making the Commander a Level 2 and the Cleric a Level 1.

The Battle itself was our usual mutual slugfest. Both of us are getting more comfortable with the Lore rules and, while Young General seems to have a knack for collecting Lore, he's losing his aversion to spending it and both of us played quite a few Lore cards. Most were useful, but none had a dramatic effect on the course of things. Command card play was likewise undramatic, as most of the action was fought in the center -- indecisively.

Young General was initially reluctant to make a bid for the Stronghold, but by mid-game he had strong effort going that was being countered with difficulty. The Ramparts failed one French archer unit miserably as it died in one-turn under a card-enhanced attack by a English heavy infantry unit, but the English were not able to follow it up.

Meanwhile the dwarves, as usual, were pretty tough in the center, although they also lost heavily. As usual the weak link in the line was the Goblinoids, and a late game offensive on the left flank was able to eliminate all three Goblin units, resulting in a 6-4 victory for the French. Curiously the Young General never saw fit to use the Giant Spider. He also never got around to using the Healing Pool. I did use the Rogie's Den to send a light infantry unit deep behind his lines, but it had little effect as it turns out. The French Stronghold was never attacked.

So far, after having played all 10 scenarios Young General and Old Warrior are beginning to appreciate the potential for Lore cards. nearly every Lore card played seemed to be worthwhile. Among the non-human races the dwarves seem always useful to have, while the goblins are almost always a weak point in the line. The only creature we've used so far is the Giant Spider, which seems to be a useful piece, but one that must be used carefully.

We're still in the early stages of using War Councils and Loremasters. I'm still going to experiment a little with different configurations, but my inclination is to favor beefing up the Commander in order to have a good hand of Command Cards and concentrating on one Good high-level Loremaster instead of having multiple low-ranking ones.

As usual it was a good and entertaining fight. Next up will be the Goblin Skirmisher expansion.

Axis & Allies Miniatures - Vickers Machine-Gun Team

I'll be posting, on an occasional basis, musings about particular pieces in the Axis & Allies series of miniatures.

The Vickers Machine Gun was a very reliable, although heavy, water-cooled medium machine gun that served throughout both World Wars in various Commonwealth armies. The piece is collector No. 15/48 from the Base Set and No. 7/60 from the 1939-45 set. The model is one of the better weapon sculpts, showing details such as the cloth ammo belt clearly. The figure appears to represent one machine gun team, which comprised a gunner and loader, as shown on the model, plus an additional half dozen ammo and equipment bearers.

Base set figure

Stats:
Rarity: Uncommon
Speed: 1
Defense: 4
Cost: 8
Attacks vs troops at short-medium-long ranges: 9 - 8 - 6
Attacks vs vehicles at short-medium-long ranges: 3 - 3 - 2
Special abilities: Double Shot -- This unit can make two attacks in your assault phase. When making a defensive-fire attack, this unit makes two attack rolls against the unit that provoked the attack.
Historical text: The Vickers used in WW II, essentially the same weapon that the British Army used in WW I, was a water-colled .303-caliber gun with a repuation for reliability.

Vickers machine-guns of 2nd Middlesex Regiment, 3rd Division, fire in support of troops crossing the Maas-Schelde Canal, 20 September 1944. The gunners are firing at long-range targets, as shown by the extreme elevation of the barrels.

The unit in history: The Vickers machine gun was developed from the earlier Maxim machine guns in the late Nineteenth Century. Vickers lightened the gun and improved it and it was in service in time for World War I, where it earned a reputation for extreme reliability. A water-filled jacket aroudn the barrel absorbed heat and transferred the steam via a hose to a condenser. The water could then be recycled back to the jacket. The weight of the water and the system made the weapon somewhat less portabel than similar air-cooled weapons, but the water-cooled system enabled the Vickers to maintain a very high rate of fire.

1939-45 set figure

The unit in the game: For a long time this was the only Allied machine gun unit available in the game, so it saw a lot of action on the table, although it's a fairly middling unit stat-wise. Many early scenarios used it as a stand-in for other Allied nation's machineguns. The double-shot special ability is useful and the unit can exert firepower out to 8 hexes, so it can dominate an evenue of approach fairly well. Even at long range it has about a 4 in 10 chance of affecting a targeted common infantry unit in the open. It's anti-vehicle ability is slight, but lightly armored and unarmored vehicles are in some danger if fire upon.

The Games Workshop storm

I've been pointing out for months how ornery Games Workshop has been in their quest to zealously protect their Intellectual Property -- to the point where they prohibit eBay sellers from using images of Games Workshop products they are selling.

But they did themselves one better this week by sending a cease and desist letter to BoardgameGeek that has prompted BGG to remove vast swaths of user-generated fan content from BGG sites related to Games Workshop games and BGG plans to block any future file submissions for those games.

This has provoked an uproar rarely seen on BGG. Here's just one forum on the topic. Hey, everybody understands the need to protect IP, but there are smart ways and dumb ways to do it, and GW seems to be going on the dumb side. Most fan content helps build interest and enthusiasm for something and most game companies have seen the wisdom of encouraging it, stepping in only when someone really gets out of hand.

In this case the GW demand and BGG's response to it seem to have been more like a bomb than surgery, to the point where material that couldn't be considered to be infringement and material that GW doesn't even own the rights for have been trashed.

Now, I've never been a big fan of Games Workshop. Few of their themes grabbed me and I soon heard enough about their business practices to know that I didn't want to be associated with them. While I do primarily select my business on practical considerations such as cost. convenience and the like, there's usually enough choice available that I don't have to spend money with businesses whose practices I despise.

And when it comes to games, there's far more good stuff available than I'll ever have time or money for, so there's no reason to send any of it to ornery folks like Games Workshop.

More Games Workshop jerkiness

Evidently Games Workshop is insisting that any user-generated play aids on Boardgame Geek be removed. This Geeklist documents it.

They are such tools. I'm glad I never got into any of their games.

Cemetery Hill -- Review and strategy

Cemetery Hill, the Blue & Gray quad game treatment of the Battle of Gettysburg, originally published in 1975 by SPI and republished 20 years later by Decision Games in a revised edition in 1995, had long had a reputation as one of the least successful of the series.

Units from both editions, Decision Games (1995) on top, SPI (1975) below,
Union left, Rebel right.
The Union forces are an infantry division, and cavalry and artillery brigades. The Rebel units are the two counters comprising Heth's division and F. Lee's brigade on its "ineffective" side.

Unlike all the other Blue & Gray games, which are at the brigade level, Cemetery Hill is at the division level. This was due to the particular production restrictions of the Quad game format, which allowed for no more than 100 counters. Gettysburg was simply too big a battle to fit using brigades, so the scale was bumped up to division level -- at least for the Union side. The problem with division-level Gettysburg games is that the Confederates didn't have many divisions on the field -- just 9 total -- which really doesn't give them enough maneuver units. The Rebel divisions were generally very large anyway, with 4 or five brigades except for Pickett, who had just 3 present. In contrast all the federal divisions had just 2 or 3 brigades. So in Cemetery Hill the Rebel divisions all get two counters.

Still, doubling or tripling the scale of the game units changes the character of the game considerably compared to the other quad, especially because the stacking limit was not adjusted accordingly, so some very high-factor stacks are possible. In addition there is a lot of terrain that doubles and even triples combat factors, so some hexes can have some pretty impressive totals.

Gettysburg is a very difficult battle to simulate, especially for a simple wargame, although that hasn't stopped many from trying, ever since first history-based wargame, Avalon Hill's Gettysburg. The basic problem with simulating Gettysburg is that the battle was characterized by periods of very intense fighting separated by long periods of inactivity. There were many reasons for this, but they mostly revolved around command and control issues that simple games usually pass over, so most simpler Gettysburg games see a lot more continuous action than the historical battle. Cemetery Hill is no exception.

While limited as a simulation, Cemetery Hill is not a bad game, providing some interesting choices for the game player -- although it is a bit harder for the Rebels.

The game begins at a later point than most Gettysburg games, in the afternoon just before Ewell's attack on the U.S. Eleventh Corps that sent the federal line reeling back to Cemetery Hill. The key for CSA success is to recognize that your side is winning the race to the battlefield -- but will eventually be outnumbered. Relentless aggression is your only hope to prevail. With some luck and skillful play the Confederates can rock the Union army back on its heels and never give it a chance to recover.

Conversely, the Union player is trying to buy time and avoid losing too many units in the early going. Patience will pay off for the federal side. There will be plenty of time to inflict losses on the Confederate side once the whole Union hosts gathers. The victory point awards favor the Union, with each eliminated US factor worth 2 VPs to the CSA and each eliminated Confederate worth 3 to the Union side, so the Union can "Exchange" its way to victory.Map detail from the The SPI edition showing Gettysburg and Seminary Ridge

There are some differences between the original SPI edition and the Decision Games version. As was depressingly common with its re-issued SPI games, Decision Games introduced some errors in the reprint as well as making some changes.

From a rules standpoint, the biggest difference between the two games is the Attacker Effectiveness rule, which is optional in the original SPI version and a standard rule in the Decision Games version. Oddly, the Attacker Effectiveness rule was first introduced in Cemetery Hill, but many players believe it shouldn't be used in Cemetery Hill because it works against the Confederates too much.

My experience is that the Confederates can succeed using the AE rule at about the same rate as they do without it, so I think the pro-Union bias has more to do with the victory conditions and the general game situation. Indeed, I think the Confederate side is the more challenging side to play in all Gettysburg games. While the attacker effectiveness rule does hinder the attacker in some ways, it can also be exploited. Unlike all the other Blue & Gray games there is a high proportion of night turns (when ineffective attackers recover) to day turns. The game begins with 1 and half turns of activity, then a night turn; then four turns of daylight followed by night, then four more turns of daylight and one of night, ending with two turns of daylight. So ineffective units will have up to three opportunities to come back. In all other Blue & Gray games there's at most one chance to come back, and there are many more daylight runs on both sides of the night turn if it exists.

One critical errata to incorporate to make this true, however, is to treat Turn 3 as a Night turn in the Decision Games edition. It's a night turn in the SPI edition and there's no reason to think that it's any different in the DG edition.

There are also some map changes between the SPI version and the Decision Games version. The DG edition adds a new terrain type, "broken," to signify the terrain that triples defenders. The SPI edition rather clumsily simply printed right on the map the words "Defender TRIPLED in this hex" on the affected hexes (Cemetery Hill, Culp's Hill, Wolf Hill, Little Round Top and Round Top). This doesn't change play, but is more aesthetic. The DG edition also prints the setup locations of the starting units on the map, which is an aid to set-up.

The DG edition also opens up the map a little on Seminary Ridge and Powers Hill by changing some hexes from Forest-Rough to simply Rough. This reduces the movement cost of the hexes from 6 movement points to 3. The affected hexes are 0908, 0409, 0410, 0901, 0902 and 1516.

The DG also has some other mistakes on the map, one minor and two major. The minor error is that the Roman numerals on two XI Corps units are transposed. The first major error is that the Union 1st Division, III Corps unit is left off the map. As this is a 19-factor unit, the Union will definitely miss it, so be sure to place it in hex 0423. The other major error is that hex 2112 is not indicated as a Union reinforcement hex, which it is.

Detail of the Decision Games map showing the Gettysburg vicinity

Hexwar.com uses the DG map for its presentation of the game, although it offers the option to play without the Attacker Effectiveness rule as a "Classic" edition of Blue & Gray. This is not an exact replica of the SPI version, though, because it uses the revised DG map.

The other differences between the two editions are cosmetic. The DG map uses superior graphics and the DG edition uses troop icons instead of the anachronistic NATO-style units symbols used in the SPI edition.

The DG edition includes three optional rules -- Strategic Movement, Cavalry Movement and Cavalry Retreat -- that should not be used in Cemetery Hill as they will throw off the game balance significantly. All favor the Union player.

I have a slight preference for the DG edition, as I like the Attacker Effectiveness rule, but I play the game both ways on Hexwar.com and own both the DG version and the SPI version as afolio game.

Chattanooga -- an atypical ACW battle

Panoramic view of the battlefield looking east past Lookout Mountain

Today is the 146th anniversary of the Battle of Lookout Mountain, the first day of fighting during the Battle of Chattanooga.

Chattanooga an odd duck by Civil War standards. it feel less like the usual Napoleonic style set piece battle seen so often in that war and more like a 20th Century battle. For one thing it was very terrain-centric. It involved a series of engagements and much of the real decision-making seems to have devolved on rather lower-level commanders. Indeed, reading Grant's account of the fight, one definitely gets a sense that he didn't have a tight rein on what was happening.

The battle

It's not a real popular topic for wargames, but it's not ignored. The old SPI quad game, which I've played quite a bit on Hexwar, does a reasonable job of depicting the fight despite it's ancient design techniques. Like many SPI Blue & Gray quads, the design limits the number of pieces the Union player can move each turn -- a crude but effective way of depicting command control problems without a lot of rules.

Hexwar map

Most historical accounts seem to paint a picture of an inevitable Union triumph, but it surely didn't seem that way to those present. I think Grant was confident, but then confidence was probably his defining trait. Despite the fact the federals had elements of three different armies on the field and outnumbered Bragg's troops, the Confederates did have a significant advantage in terrain.

Hexwar units

Aggressive CSA play, combined with a little luck, can see the Federal command restrictions become a game-losing liability, so it's an interesting contest. The game isn't enough of a simulation to be confident it paints an accurate picture of the relative chances of the two sides, but I think it may come surprisingly close to the mark.