Battle of the Bulge themed expansion planned for Memoir '44

Most Memoir '44 expansion have come in one of two formats: a large white envelope with a paper map sheet and attached small set of vehicles or a small box with rules and extra figures/tiles. Most of the recent ones have been of the former type, so it was a pleasant suprise to see that the next Memoir '44 expansion will be of the meatier second style. In this case it's also suable with the regular sized maps AND with the larger Breakthrough Maps.

The main feature, besides scenarios, are a new set of Command Cards specificaly designed for use with the deeper Breakthrough Maps. I haven't had chance to try one of those yet, but it's high on my to-do list.

Sgt. Rock Our Army at War one-shot

I'm not a big comic book person, Sure, I pick up an issue now and then that catches my eye, but about the only genre I get on a regular basis are the rare war comics -- specifically war comics based on actual events, although I won't turn my nose up at well-done fantasy elements. I like The Haunted Tank, for example.

Sometimes these are good, such as the recent Lost Battalion series, sometimes they're just fair, like the newest Haunted Tank One Shot that came out this month. But every so often there's one that's really exceptional like this month's Our Army at War Featuring Sgt. Rock. Like the Lost Battalion series, Sgt. Rock isn't really the star or focus of this book, just an entry point. No, the focus of the story is on two American soldiers -- separated by two generations in time but sharing a hauntingly similar narrative. One goes to war because of Dec. 7, 141, the other because of Sept. 11, 2001, but the story of each is told with a interwoven parallel narrative that's been used in comics before, but very well here. I don't want to give any part of the story away, but let me say that the overall effect is amazingly powerful for a tale told in just 20 illustrated pages.

Here's a link to a review by a comic book reviewer who helps palce the book in context.

Out of the box impressions of King Philip's War

King Philip's War would normally be an unremarkable wargame covering a little-known subject with a straightforward simple design.

But a story in the Providence Journal a few months back that highlighted the fact that a game on the topic was going to be published and spiced up with questions from a reporter to various tribal figures in the Rhode Island area that seemed designed to provoke reaction made this game stand out a bit from the crowd. Because, while the war it depicts happened a very long time ago -- 435 years to be exact -- feelings about it still run a bit raw among descendants of the Native Americans who were on the losing side of the conflict.

This is natural, of course. It was a brutal and sad war, even by the standards of the time. Only a generation earlier Europe had been ravaged by the 30 Years War, for example. Indeed, the more genteel style of warfare that would come about in the 1700s was largely in reaction to the excesses of war in the 1600s.

King Philip's War is interesting, because it probably represents the one time that the balance of power between the English colonists and Native Americans was close enough that there was an actual possibility of a strategic defeat for the British. Unfortunately for the Indians, they had only a dim sense of what was at stake and disunity reigned. Indeed, a signficant factor in the ventual Engish victory were Indians who took their side in the conflict. Even among the tribes that rose against the English there was division, and many individuals tried to stay neutral or aided the British, King Philip, himself, was fated to die at the hand of an Indian ally of the English.

The game is, by the designer's admission, not meant to be an exhaustive detailed simulation of the conflict but an easy to play wargame that highlights some aspects of the war. The factors emphasized by the game include its fluid, no-front-line nature, the fractiousness among the Indians, the unpreparedness of the English, the greater resources of the British, the large distances involved and the volatile nature of the fighting which involved militais on one side and tribal warriors on the other.

Component-wise it's a fairly typical MMP offering, with a large, full-color heavy paper map, two color player aid cards, a rulebook, also in full color and one counter sheet with large counters. There are three dice includes, two standard D6 one in green and one in red and a special custom "Event" die which adds potential random events to each combat.

I won't venture much comment on how it plays as yet, having just one solitaire session, but it solitaires pretty well and plays fast. It should be easy to play within a typical evening's time.

As far as the controversy goes, there's nothing remotely controversial about the game content aside from the same objections one could levy against any wargame. The Indian side is treated with respect and the sanguinary nature of the conflict well exposed. And I think it provides a valuable reminder that this nearly forgotten war happened.

Victory at Sea session -- 1940 battlecruiser clash

The first encounter of battlewagons in World War II came on April 9, 1940, during the initial stages of the Norway campaign. Shortly before 4 a.m. the HMS Renown (6x 15-inch guns) ran into the German Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, (9 x 11-inch guns each) in bad weather off the Norwegian coast.

This encounter is one of the given scenarios in Mongoose Publishing's Victory at Sea simple naval miniatures battle rules. With just three ships it seemed like a good introduction to the game to bring to the local game shop, where Game Store Tony is always willing to try out something new.

The initial setup given in the rulebook is shown below and right off the bat I saw I'd have to make at east one adjustment and rule that despite the bad weather the radar-less HMS Renown could still see the German ships at Extreme Range. I felt this change was justified by the historical fact that the Renown opened the action by firing on the Germans first and by the game consideration that strictly following the rule would make the scenario unplayable as the British ship would never be able to fire if the Germans followed a strategy of running away.

With that change, we started playing. I took the HMS Renown while Game Store Tony commanded the Gneisenau and another store denizen took the Scharnhorst. One reason why Game Store Tony is always a tough opponent is that he has a very commendable focus of the victory Conditions. While many players would be sore tempted to turn the two German capital ships towards the Renown and force a showdown, Tony noted that he could also win by withdrawing off the left map edge. He, as squadron commander, ordered that both ships should turn hard port and make for the board edge and stuck to that plan despite events that might have shaken the resolve of others.
The course of the battle therefore followed a more or less historical result. The leading Scharnhorst turned to port and made a beeline for the edge, using Flank Speed often, unmolested by the Renown. The Scharnhorst's return fire was negligible. The Flank Speed threw off its aim and it had just one turret to bear and so hits were few and those few failed to penetrate the armor of the Renown. So the battle was really a duel between the Renown and the Gneisenau.
That duel for a while looked to go against the German ship. While most of the time the Renown had only four guns bearing, the range was long and bad weather all hindered the British chances of hitting, those 15-inch shells that did hit were quite damaging and a couple of critical hits reduced the German ship's speed dangerously. Meanwhile the German return fire was spare and did little damage when they did hit home. In total the Renown took four points of damage, or just over 10%. In contrast the Gneisenau limped off with 14 points of hull damage and 23 dead crew factors for damage levels of 40% and 33% respectively, as well as 33% off its maximum speed. But the Gneisenau did limp off the map and escape, and so the Germans won the scenario. This was mostly due to successful damage control by the Gneisenau's crew, which was able to restore enough lost sped to make it off the map before the ship took a crippling level of damage.

Everyone enjoyed the scenario and it only too about an hour to play
This battle also appears as a scenario in Atlantic Navies, the Command at Sea series game from Clash of Arms and it's interesting to compare this game's more detailed treatment with the Victory at Sea scenario. Here's the initial situation according to Atlantic Navies:

The first thing to note is that the historical British force also included a bunch of destroyers. The very bad weather precluded them from taking a meaningful part in the battle, however, so ignoring them seems to be a reasonable design decision.

On the other hand the initial configuration of the capital ship's is also radically different between the two. Given its attention to detail, Atlantic Navies seems to be the more reliable source and the initial deployment shown even matches the VaS scenario description better because it notes that "During a break in the weather, the (German) battlecruisers were sighted by HMS Renown, which closed the range and opened fire as soon as she was able." This sequence of events isn't really possible with the VaS as written while it does match the Atlantic Navies setup (which includes a rule that visibility is one table better to the East (in the direction of the German ships) which accounts for the Renown sighting the Germans first. Note also that Atlantic Navies has the two forces on reciprocal courses while the VaS scenario shows them on parallel courses.

The point of this is that scenario designers for simpler wargames have to play close attention to the scenario parameters in order to avoid the blunder where a scenario becomes unplayable as written. Whereas a detailed game like Atlantic Navies can expect that its internal procedures will account for the important factors that affected a battle and it will wpork out naturally a simpler game such as Victory at Sea doesn't have that back up. Unless a sceanrio special rule is used the British fleet can't enagge the German fleet before it escapes. In addition, the scenrio seems to have satrted the two fleets much too far apart, which again defeats the scenario's design.

While a veteran gamer can be expected to make the adjustments required, the idea of a simpler wargame is to be accessible to new and inexperienced players who may be thrown for loop when confronted by a flawed scenario, so for this reason I don't think the presentation of this scenario was successful. A btter setup would be for the two German ships to be setup reversed, heading toward sthe "bottom" of the sceanrio map and the distance between them and the Renown should be reduced to the maximum sighting range of 30 inches and should start with the British attack phase. (In other words, both sides have already moved for the turn and the British won the inititative. The Germans, being surprised, don't get a shot.). Thes mininal changes would bring the scenario closer to the actual event.

Taking care of customers

This is what I call taking care of customers. This new expansion is going to include a tray for holding all the game's expansions.

Bad journalism

It appears that a British newspaper mixed up Days of Wonder's Small World with a similarly named online game that's linke do a case of parental neglect in England.

Days of Wonder is issuea press release ont he controversy, although it's unclear whether the newspaper had responded or issued a correction yet.

This is the kind of thing that unfortunately seems to happen all to often when newspapers delve into any kind of specialist area. Too many journalists are not cautious enough when the report on topics they don't know well and are not wary of what they don't know they don't know.

Thinking about the unthinkable -- Persian Incursion

Clash of Arms has announced palns for a Harpoon 4 based module called Persian Incursion which will explore the military, political and other aspects of a potental Israeli strike on Iran to destroy its alleged nuclear weapons program.

An overview of the project was presented at Historicon.

This sort of "what-if" was pretty popular duringt he Cold War era but there haven't been too many since then, despite the fact the U.S. has been involved in quite a few conflictssince 1989. This product promises to be a provocative look at the issue and may even get some mainstream media attention once it appears.

Heroscape's new direction

The Heroscape game seems headed in a new direction now, for good or ill.

The "classic" game was notable for its eclectic mix of combatants. The "battle of all time" would draw on warriors from just about any heroic genre -- Westerns, sword-and-sorcery, World War II, Rome, gothic, spies, etc. One of the first things I heard about the game was that it had, among the combatants, an orc riding a dinosaur! You have to be a hard hearted realist not to think that's really cool at some level.

This "world," involving five (later six) warring Kyrie lords was enough to take the game through 10 "waves" of 4-pack expansions, pluse several large pack terrain expansions and two master sets. Aside from a short-lived and noatbly unsuccessful foray into the super hero genere, this was Heroscape.

The newest Dungeons & Dragons themed master set, however, definitely alters the trajectory of the game into a much more fantasy-oriented direction. And I'm unsure whether this is a positive move, because to me it seems potentially limiting. There are now two full 4-set "waves" of D&D based squads and heroes so I think we can judge where D&D is taking the game.

The good news is that the D&D stuff is fully compatible in tone and detail with the classic game, unlike the Marvel Superhero stuff. A few new and interesting twists ahve been added to the system ("shadow" terrain, "uncommon" heroes and treasure glyphs).

The main concern is whether the game will become too tied to D&D and too fantasy-oriented. Can D&D maintain player interest over the long haul? Especially considering that there's already a D&D miniatures game out there AND that D&D, itself, in the latest version, become much more of a skirmish-type game. If you're going to go adventuring, wouldn't D&D make more sense than Heroscape?

So far there's no indication the D&D theme has hurt Heroscape, and there's been no official announcement that there won't be any more classic Heroscape, so it may be that this is just a short-lived diversion to take advantage of cross promotion with D&D and saving on production costs by reusing DDM molds. I do hope that this isn't a permanent change in the game.

No talent pimping of Napoleon's War

Napoleon's War: The 100 Days is the latest interation of the same game system seen in Hold the Line, and before that Clach for a Continent and For Honor and Glory. Many players of those earlier games had already converted the games to a figure-based approach, so it wasn't surprising that Worthington Games would take the plunge with NW and make it official.

Overall the presentation is nice, but I felt that they stopped a little short of making the most of the visual potential figures provide. Specifically, there were still quite a few cardboard counters cluttering the map. This didn't bother me over much, although I thought the counters were more functional than attractive.

So when I found out that the figures used in NW were the same ones used in Viktory II, and that more figures could be ordered, I decided this provided a chance to banish cardboard from the map.

The first thing to go would be the Dutch-Belgian counters, to be replaced with orange infantry figures. I decided to get some black figures to use for the Brunswickers as well. The Brunswickers were famous for their all-black uniforms.

Using counters for the horse artillery was unacceptably lame, but the Viktory pieces come in just three varieties: infantry, cavalry and artillery, so there remained the problem of differentiating the horse guns from the rest. Horse artillery units often used bronze guns instead of iron because bronze was lighter, so I painted a few guns with bronze. I also ordered some extra French in order to be able to field the Guard and Heavy Cavalry units. These were marked with some red paint to set them apart from their ordinary colleagues, red being a color often used to show elite troops in Napoleonic era games. This posed a problem for marking the British Heavy cavalry for the Waterloo scenario, of course. I decided to borrow the solution used by System 7 Napoleonics, which used white to replace a color whenever there would be a case of the same color being used on top of itself.

I also wanted to replace the cardboard commanders. It turns out that Litko offers a set of 20 customized plastic counters that come in a variety of shapes and colors and can hold up to 12 characters of text. I chose a flag-shaped plastic marker and suitable colors for the four nations represented: blue French, red British, grey Prussian and orange Dutch. Each counter includes the leader's bonus (+1 to +3) and name, although I had to cheat a little with Wellington's long name and he became "The Duke." There are a total of 13 leaders between the scenarios (Ney, Wellington and Napoleon appear twice each, while Blucher is in three!) so I filled out the remainder of the 20 with other markers for rifles, lights, CAPs and turn.

Finally I orderd some D3 dice from Chessex. One was included in Hold the Line and I was a little disppointed to see Napoleon's War go back to a D6 roll divided by 2. I don't care for unnecessary mental computations. I just want to roll a 1, 2 or 3, darn it.

Overall I like the effect, although I missed the skirmishers, which still require cardboard chits.

Here is the cardboardless Waterloo scenario set up with orange DB infantry, Litko leaders, and painted Guard infantry and Heavy Cavalry.

Charles S. Roberts

Charles S. Roberts, founder of the modern wargame hobby, has dies at age 80, according to an obituary in the Baltimore Sun.

Interestingly, the Sun obituary barely mentions Roberts' association with wargaming and in th portion that does it makes a factual error, claiming that he sold Avalon Hill to Parker Brothers in the 1960s. Actually, of course, as is widely known, Mr. Roberts sold Avalon Hill to one of his creditors, Monarch Printing, which formed Monarch Avalon. Many years later, long after Mr. Robets' time that company was sold to Hasbro, which also owns Parker Brothers, which possibly accounts for the writer's confusion, although as far as I know Avalon Hill and Parker Brothers brands have never been associated under the Hasbro banner.

The bulk of the obituary talks about Mr. Roberts in the context of his expertise on the history of railroads.Evidently he made quite a name for himself in that field. As there are more railroad buffs than wargamers, this is a defensible editorial choice, I suppose.

Still, for wargamers, Mr. Roberts holds a special place, as he was the first to conceive of creating civilian board wargames based on the actual capabilities of military units (in Tactics and Tactics II) and crucially, based on historical battles (Gettysburg, D-Day, Waterloo and Midway). The authenticity of his wargames was naturally a bit crude, given their unprecedented nature and the milited sources available, but even this was a bit of a blessing, as correcting the errors of his games is what inspired other players to satrt designing their new and improved versions of history's greatest battles and created a hobby.

While Mr. Roberts will, of course, be missed most by his family and those friends who knew him personally, he also will be mourned by many who never eben played one on his games, but have enjoyed years of enjoyment from taking part in the hobby he made possible.

Global 1940 greatness

Photo courtesy Glen Cote

Wow. Exhausting.
Playing the global combined Axis & Allies 1940 is definitely the absolute ultimate Axis & Allies experience. We played at Arkham Asylum in Norwich, Conn. While people drifted in and out, at least seven different people got to play at least part of the game.

Everyone had a fantastic time. most of the players were new, but everyone enjoyed themselves, the game got a lot of attention and we had a lot of people express an interest in taking part next time -- which we've already tentatively scheduled for Oct. 2 & 3rd. Yes, TWO days, because it's obvious this is a Looong game. We almost finished 4 turns. (All that was left was the U.S., who probably was going to have rebuilding turn due to a disaster I'll mention below, China, which had a single piece left (the Flying Tiger) and France (two pieces left, one infatry in Africa and a destroyer far from the action.

Like many A&A games featuring mostly inexperienced players there was all sorts of craziness. The Germans were able to grab Britain after decimating the British fleet, although the blundered a bit by leaving Berlin open for a sneak Russian seaborne invasion. Still, the Russian definitely weren't going to keep Berlin (although they were getting quite an infusion of IPCs). The Allies however, were not going to get London back anytime soon, as the Italian (!) navy and air force finished off the rest of the British Atlantic Navy, massacring an American convoy they were protecting. Five US transports and 10 ground units were lost.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific things were going less well for the Japanese, who were a little behind schedule on grabbing territory. On the other hand, all the navies had taken heavy losses so things were not poised to change quickly. The one bright spot for the allies was in China, where the Japanese were thin on the ground and a large British/Anzac army was starting a counteroffensive.

Overall I think the Axis had a slight edge when we finished. The U.S. had been knocked back on their heels, the British and French capitals were captured and the Chinese were dciemated. Only the Anzacs were basically untouched, but there aren't many of them. The biggest question would have been how well the Russians would be able to exploit their windfall -- they had 145 IPC to spend!

For the Axis, Italy was in excellent shape, while the Germans were ready to face the Russians and take Berlin back. Meanwhile the Japanese were facing a challenge holding onto China, but were not in too bad shape for the short term in ocean areas, although the long-term outlook was questionable.

Overall the grander scale of the 1940 game seem to upset some tried and true A&A strategies and the tactical game is more intricate because of the addtional units (mech infantry, tac bombers) and the additional spaces. Everyone agreed that the strategic situation is fascinating.

I expect the next game will play quite differently. For one thing, the coup de main that took London and Berlin won't be easily repeated a gainst more experienced players.

Overall it was a great time and hopefully next time we'll be able to make greater progress. I think the Axis were ahead, but it's my opinion that you can't really judge an A&A game based on the first couple of turns because the Allies have great recuperative powers. In this game the Next Soviet build was going to be 145 and the next US build was going to be almost 90, so depending on how wisely they built the story for turns 5 or 6 might be quite different.

Axis & Allies Europe 1940 peering onto the box

Picked up my copy of Axis & Allies Europe 1940 today in preparation for this weekend's grand Global 1940 game.

No big surprises, component wise. Everything's pretty much the standard established by the A&A Pacific 1940, A&A 50 and A&A 1942. It's clearly going to be massive however. I can't wait to see all four maps laid out.

Of real interest are the political rules, including neutrals, and R&D. Altogether it looks to me that this package brings Axis & Allies to a whole new level. This is not your father's A&A by any means.

For one thing, I suspect that the massive scale of this game will work against the "perfect planitis" that seems to afflict the A&A games. With nine playable powers and twice as many spaces as any previous version of the game, I don't think players will find it easy to come up with "fool-proof" strategies.

The Russo-Japanese dynamic is especially interesting in this game and may affect the heretofore common Japanese Asia First strategy. The Soviets start the game at peace and are restricted in their ability to start fighting in Europe -- but they have a free hand against Japan, should they choose to play it, and fairly substantial forces in the East. The Japanese certainly have an incentive to reach an understanding with the Soviets that doesn't involve a march through China on the way to Moscow. Likewise the Russians have reason to avoid a war with Japan that may bleed off precious resources needed to hold off the Germans.

More than earlier versions of the game there's scope for diplomacy, even between enemies.

Next Axis & Allies miniatures set due in October

Looks like the Counter Offensive set is on track for release in October. This will concentrate on the middle part of the war. Among the 14 countries appearing are Yugoslavia, New Zealand and Hungary. I expect there will be U.S. units this time (the Early War set was the only one that had NO American units in it.)

Battle of the Eastern Solomons -- 1942

Today is the anniverasry of the first day of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the third in the series of carrier battles of 1942 between U.S. and Japanese forces.

Not as well known as the Coral Sea or Midway, it's an interesting battle to wargame because the two sides were pretty evenly matched. Usually counted an American victory, it had little long-term effect but it did continue the process of wearing down the Japanese Navy's elite pre-war cadre of pilots.

One notable image is this one capturing the moment of explosion of a Japanese bomb hit on the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Saturday is Global A&A in Norwich

Just mentioning for those who might be interested that we have a massive game of Axis & Allies Global 1940 (Pacific and Europe 1940 combined planned for Saturday here in Norwich at Arkham Asylum on West Main Street starting at noon.

The game is so massive that I doubt we will get to finish it, but we will make the old college try at least.

News on the next set of War at Sea minis

From Rich Baker's blog we learn:

Time for a War at Sea update. I had a chance to talk War at Sea with several of our devoted fans at GenCon, and it was really great to see the enthusiasm the game still generates. Of course, I shared a few tidbits of information about what’s coming next. We’re on target for a December release of Axis & Allies Naval Miniatures V, as in “V for victory” or just set 5. This makes two AANM sets in 2010, which is very exciting stuff. I’m starting to see a handful of final units crossing my desk as we’re moving into our collation checks. Mons Johnson, who’s doing the checks, says this is the best-looking AANM set so far. Some of the Set V units I mentioned at the show include the Sovyetskiy Soyuz, the Kaga, the Chitose, the Atlantis, the Il-2 Sturmovik, the Blyskawica, a Baltimore-class cruiser, and a pre-Fletcher US destroyer. Now that I’ve had a chance to look over my set list again, I’ll go ahead and add some clarification. The Baltimore-class is USS Quincy (CA 71), and the older US destroyer is USS Bagley (DD 386).

Overall, set V has a strong Baltic theme, with a lot of love for the Russians and the first appearance of the Poles as a navy. Sovyetskiy Soyuz is something of a hypothetical unit, in that it was never finished and didn’t see any action. The hull was about 75% complete when work was stopped late in 1940; she was likely a couple of years from completion in the best of circumstances. If Sovyetskiy Soyuz had been finished, she would have been a 70,000-ton behemoth comparable to Yamato, Montana, or the German H.39 design. Her appearance in AANM provides the Russians with a first-rate battleship that can take a ton of punishment, but doesn’t have quite the firepower it should. The Sturmovik gives the Russians a good attack plane noted for using skip-bombing tactics against naval targets, much like the B-25s in the South Pacific. For the Japanese, Kaga is one more piece of progress toward finishing the Kido Butai, the First Air Fleet of the Imperial Navy. Chitose represents the first appearance of a seaplane tender; it’s a beautiful model, and it has some very interesting mechanics with inherent air squadrons. The German Atlantis is also a new type of unit—a disguised commerce raider with some unique mechanics that let her skulk around the edges of the battle without being caught. The model also stands in for a German merchant ship if you want one for a scenario.

VJ-Day and the aftermath of war

Today is often considered VJ-Day because it was the day in 1945 that the Japanese surrender was announced, although Sept. 2 was the actual surrender date.

Postwar Cold War strategy required a fairly rapid rehabiliation of Japan, and Gen. Douglas McCarthur found it expedient to take a lenient attitude towards Japanese officials as he rebuilt Japan as a modern democratic state -- successfully.

Still, it's worth remembering that the Japanese World War II record was dismal as far as conduct towards civilians and prisoners were concerned. The record of wartime atrocities is large, but what's not well-known is that the atrocities didn't even end on VJ-Day. Sadly more than 100 POWs were executed AFTER VJ-Day, evidently in an attempt to preclude war crimes prosecutions by eliminating witnesses. The effort failed, as apparently the murders were not comprehensive enough to succeed and a number of Japanese officers were hanged.

No matter how much I learn about World War II there are always surprises as my studies continue.

Long overdue Settlers of Catan experience

Boy, talk about being late to the party.

I first became aware of Settlers of Catan not long after it first came to American shores in the mid 1990s, but somehow I contrived to miss out on the initial wave of popularity. I think I was still too focused on wargames at the time. It wasn't really until I came across Boradgame Geek and then the Meetup groups that I realized how much wider the adult gaming interest was.

In any case, I took advantage of a rare Thursday night off to join a local Meetup gamer group. Like most Meetup gamers, the majority of this group are very casual gamers with little exposure to even the eurogames (let alone something like a wargame. One fellow mentioned how he had played a wargame once -- it was Risk).

Still, the Meetup hostess had promised a Settlers game would be available and I wanted to finally play it. And there's something to be said for not being dropped into a group of experienced Settlers players for your first game. I was familiar with the rules, having studied my own copy, but there are subtle points to the game you're not likely to discover without playing a little.

We had one fellow who had played the game a few times, as had the hostess. I had read the rules and the other three players were newbies. One was the Risk player, one fellow had played a few euros it appears and the last gentleman wasn't used to playing anything other than traditional Ameritrash games like Monopoly.

It was an interesting game, and I felt pretty good about where I ended up, in third place with 7 VPs. The Risk guy actually won it going away, scoring 10 while the experienced fellow was second with 8. The other three players were far behind, with Hostess at 4 (she had the Longest Road), and the two new fellows with 3 each.

I suspect the game may work better with four players than with the 6 players we had using the 5-6 player expansion. Even with the bigger map the board seemed a little too crowded and there was a little too much down time. I think the 4-player version may be better on both counts.

Our game was also a bit on the long side, which is probably attributable to the number of new players we had.

I'm looking forward to trying it again.

Battle of Rhode Island -- 1778

Historians have to build readable narratives. It's their craft to tell a story about the past. But actual events and life are seldom so neat that they naturally form a single strand of narrative -- there are usually eddies, backstories and side trips.

For example, most naratives of the the American Revolution follow Washington's army up through the Battle of Monmouth and then turn to the Southern campaigns that eventually led to Yorktown, with just a passing reference to events up north in the meantime.

This often means that the fairly substantial Battle of Rhode Island of late August, 1778, doesn't even get mentioned. It's true that the battle ended up having no decisive impact on events, but that's largely because of an inopportune storm that scattered the British and French fleets just as they were about to fight a potentially decisive naval battle. Had the French won the effects of Yorktown might have been achieved four years early, because a large British army might have been trapped at Newport, R.I. and captured. Instead, with both fleets badly damaged the British army was able to turn the tables on its erstwhile besiegers and launch a counteroffensive that nearly bagged a substantial American army.

On Aug. 28 and Aug. 29 the Americans fought a rearguard action to cover their escape that was notable in part for the participation of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, which was a rare all-black regiment in American service (most Continental regiments, especially those from northern colonies, were integrated).

The British, recognizing they had escaped a close call, eventually pulled out of Newport and consolidated their troops in New York and the war went on four more years.

So far as I know the land battles which actually occurred have never been depicted in a wargame, but the naval battle which did NOT happen appears in both Close Action and Flying Colors as a "what-if."

Axis & Allies 1942 newbie strangeness

As a warm-up for a planned global 1940 Axis & Allies game later in the month I organized a play session of the regular Axis & Allies 1942 game at the Arkham Asylum Saturday. Due to a homeowner emergency situation involving a well the game got off to a late start, which was too bad because everyone was having a good time. One player (me, had played this version before and was the game owner. One other player had played an older version some years ago, and the other three players were completely new to the game, although they were pretty experienced Magic players and so were not complete gaming newbies.

Players were allowed to pick their countries, so one new guy took Germany, while his partner as Japan was the fellow who had played an earlier version of the game. Russia and Britain were also new players while I took the USA.

This probably wasn't the best allocation of players, but I was afraid of dominating the action if I took Germany and one of the new players really wanted to play that country, so I went along. Unfortunately for the Axis cause the German player was no where nearly aggressive enough with that country during his first couple of turns and despite a little advice from me and more for Game Store Tony (who had played earlier versions extensively) Germany simply didn't do enough damage to either England or Russia in the early going. This might not have mattered too much as the British player was also pretty passive and ended up handing over Britain to another player around the fourth turn. But the Russian player, while also a new player, understood that the most important thing he could do was build as much infantry every turn as he could afford. He combined that with a judicious sense of when he should counterattack with the end result that he not only withstood the German offensive but was soon counterattacking through German territory.

Meanwhile the Japanese were making some hay in the Pacific, China and in the Pacific portion of Russia but his overall progress was too slow to help his German ally. He had a bad habit of leaving his transports unescorted (despite being reminded of the danger) and also tended to operate his fleets in small packets that the US player was able to overwhelm in detail. The Japanese player was much more comfortable with the land campaign against China.

The US committed enough force in the Pacific to keep the Japanese occupied but put most effort into Europe, sending bombers to England that soon inflicted maximum damage on Germany's factory and launched Operation Torch to start clearing out Africa and wipe out the German Med fleet. The British were able to win a somewhat risky landing in France that recaptured Paris. The Germans had too little force to rake back Paris while defending Rome against the US force in Africa and Berlin against the approaching Russians.

The game was called on account of time, with the Allies ahead with 7 Victory Cities to the Axis 5, although as mentioned the Axis were in imminent danger of losing two more victory cites while there were no Allied victory cities in real danger, so everyone agreed the game seemed to have reached a decisive result. Losing and winning players all said they enjoyed the game and several said they were now planning to take part in the grand global game we have planned for the end of the month. That will involved playing a combined A&A: Pacific 1940 and the brand-new A&A: Europe 1940 game.