HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Happy Halloween!

Here be dragons

My eldest daughter is sending me a copy of this abstract strategy game called Dragon face that she thought I'd like.

And while the game doesn't contain dragons (the name apparently refers to the art on the "emperor" piece), it did get me thinking about how much of a fan of dragons I am. There may be no easier way to get me to cough up a few bucks than to make sure your game design includes a few dragons! And I'm not even that much of a fantasy gamer, really, but I have a soft spot for dragons.

There are, of course, dragons prominently featured in all the Dungeons and Dragons branded games and I have dragons in D&D Miniatures, D&D Conquest of Nerath, D&D Castle Ravenloft, D&D The Legend of Drizzt, D&D The Wrath of Ashardalon (Arshadalon is the dragon) and the Heroscape system D&D Underdark game. And there are dragon in the main Heroscape game, too. I have a drake among my Lost Worlds books and there are dragons scattered among the various Magic: The Gathering decks, but I also got the duel deck that features dragons vs. knights. There are dragons in Dreamblade, Wizard Kings and Small World. Most of my dragons are the western concept ones (with wings) but I do have a couple of really handsome painted Chinese style one for Arcane Legions. The game is middling but the dragons look great. I even have a ship named Dragon in Axis & Allies War at Sea! That is, however, actually named after the type of mounted soldier called a dragoon in English.

Still, few things will spice up things than a large, awesome dragon. In some games, such as Small World, the dragons are just bit players, but they have a more properly dragon-like prominence in Conquest of Nerath and the other D&D games and I always try to get one in my army when I'm playing Wizard Kings. Oddly enough, the one fantasy game where dragons don't play much of a role is the War of the Ring. While Smaug famously was central in The Hobbit, Tolkien didn't depict any dragons taking part in the Lord of the Ring events (although the Fell beasts were somewhat draco-like) which is one small disappointment I had with the work. There's no indication in Tolkien that dragons were extinct or that Smaug was the last one, but it appears they stood aloof from the contest. Still, it would have been nice to have one make a cameo!

Test of Fire -- a review and recommendation

Test of Fire is one of the more delightful little games to come around in the last few years.

Designed by the notable Martin Wallace, probably best known to Geekdom for Liberte, Brass and Steam, Test of Fire is an elegant, entertaining and economical wargame depicting the first major battle of the American Civil War -- The Battle of First Bull Run (Or First Manassas) in 1861. This is billed as being the first in a series of 150th Anniversary Civil War games to come out over the next few years.

This is not Wallace's first foray into wargames, he's published a few others over the past few years -- each showing a fresh approach that eschews many wargame conventions while still delivering historically satisfying and challenging games. Compared to Waterloo, Gettysburg or a Few Acres of Snow, Test of Fire is much simpler, with a near-Zen like paucity of rules. Only the barest essential needed to make the game work are included, and it's quite likely this review will be longer than the game rules!

When teaching the game I normally start by explaining the victory conditions. Like many euro games, there are multiple ways to win in Test of Fire. The most direct is to capture the enemy base. If the federals take Manassas Junction they win, if the Rebels grab Centerville they win. This is an instantaneous and decisive victory, but prudent play should preclude this path. (Not everyone plays prudently, though, and I have won that way!)

The second way to win is possibly the most controversial, as it is a little bit on the dicey side. Each side has a deck of action cards that include some called "Rout" which give the player an opportunity for an instant win by taking two D6 rolling them -- if the total is equal to or less than the number of enemy units eliminated at that point the enemy army routs and you win! Naturally there's no chance of winning this way until at least 2 enemy units are destroyed but the chances of winning escalate rapidly with each additional casualty. There will be many that don't like this sort of victory condition -- but in it's favor is the inconvenient fact that this is exactly what happened! Test of Fire is not the first game on this battle to resort to this sort of mechanic. In the Decision Games Blue & Gray quad version, for example, there is a victory roll each turn that is also based on lost and disrupted units.

The final, and standard way of winning is based on the Union progress in capturing significant territory on the Rebel side of the river. While there's no turn track, there is a time limit. When one player's deck of action cards runs out, the next time they are forced to draw a card the game ends at the completion of the Rebel turn. At that point the status of three starred locations on the rebel side of the board are checked, if the Federals control at least 2 of three three, they win, otherwise the CSA wins.

The components are top-notch, euro style and seem to be a good value for the $29 MSRP. There's sturdy box, a full-color mounted map board depicting the Bull Run area divided into areas, thick counters in blue and gray for the respective armies, a ford marker, a couple of card board command cards for each army, 12 dice in blue and gray, two decks of cards and a full-color 16-page rule book with examples of play and historical notes. The Union army is the larger, with 29 infantry units, two artillery units and a leader while the opposing Confederates have 24 infantry units, two artillery units and one (or optionally two) leaders.

A player's turn starts by rolling dice -- four for the Union, three for the Confederates -- and sorting them according to the command card. For every 1 rolled, the player can draw a card from their deck. For every 2 or 3 rolled they can conduct one artillery fire. For every 4 or 5 they can make one move and for every 6 they have a choice between drawing a card, firing an artillery unit in the same are as a leader or conducting a move in the same area as a leader. Players can execute the dice moves and play any suitable cards in any order and a big part of the game is the proper sequencing of actions.

Artillery fire consists of rolling one die looking for a 5 or a 6 to hit. If a hit is scored, a subsequent roll determines the effect. A 6 damages a unit, flipping a full-strength infantry unit to its reduced side or eliminating a reduced unit. Otherwise the targeted player has to retreat a unit from the area.

Regular infantry combat is a function of movement. Each move order can move 1-3 units into an adjacent area, depending on the boundary crossed. The default is 2 units, with woods and portions of the river reducing it to 1 and roads increasing it to 3 units. At a few spots the crossing value is 0 and so the river is impassible. At other spots the boundary is marked 2/1, meaning two units can cross if the opposite bank is unoccupied by the enemy, otherwise just 1 unit can cross per move.

While moving into an enemy-occupied area will trigger combat, it does not trigger it immediately, so the moving player has an opportunity to reinforce an attack or even launch multiple waves of attackers. -- Civil War style. For an example, if a player had three moves available, they could use them to move two units into an adjacent space with one move, then move two more units in with a second move and then fight a battle at that point. If repulsed they could use the third move to send in two more units (or the same units from the first wave if they survived) and fight a second battle.

Infantry combat is more deadly than artillery fire. each defending infantry unit gets to roll two dice (whether at full strength or reduced, to a maximum of 6 dice) with every 5 or 6 resulting in a hit (or a 4-6 if defending a hill area). For every hit rolled a subsequent roll is made for effect, with a 4-6 causing damage while a 1-3 forces a retreat. As with artillery fire, the owning player apportions the damage and retreats. Combat is just one round, and if the attacker fails to clear the area of defenders, then the attacker retreats. Leaders and artillery units retreat if left alone in an area with enemy infantry.

A key element of the design are the action decks, which are asymmetrical. Both decks contain some of the same cards, although often in different proportions -- and the Federal Deck is larger than the CSA deck, 29 to 26. All cars can be played at any time appropriate for their effects and take effect immediately.

Both armies have the previously mentioned Rout cards (3 for the USA, 4 for the CSA) which allow for a roll to win if 2 or more enemy units have been eliminated. Both also have Move cards, which allow for a free bonus Move under the same rules as die-ordered move. The USA deck has more of these (6) than the CSA (I2) as befits their role as the aggressor. Each side can enhance the fire of its artillery by playing an Artillery card (6 Union, 3 Confederate) which allows an extra die when making an artillery shot. The effects of hits can be enhanced by playing Retreat cards (4 Union, 3 Rebel) to force a retreating unit to retreat an extra area. Conversely a Hold card (2 USA, 5 CSA) can be played to cancel a retreat. Both sides can play a Lost Orders card (3 each) to cancel one order die result, which can be very powerful at the right moment. Both sides also have access to some cards that affect an infantry battle. A Friendly Fire card (1 each) causes an player to roll one to-hit die against his own unit during a battle, while Firepower cards (3 each) give an extra die in battle (to the usual maximum of 6, total).

Each army also has a few unique cards. For the Confederate side, these come in the form of two Cavalry cards that give a free 3-die or 5-die attack agansit a Union-occupied area south of Bull Run. For the Union side the unique card is a Ford, whoich allows the Union player to place the ford marker on any one river boundary, increasing its crossing allowance by 1. So this powerful card can make an impassible 0 area into a 1, boost a 1 to a 2 or a 2/1 to a 3/1.

Players can have no more than 5 cards in their hand at the end of their turn, discouraging card hoarding.

Both sides have a wide range of strategies to follow, despite the fixed historical set up, which encouarges a Union flanking attack, but does not require it. Indeed, if the Union commits too much to the flanking attack, they may find it stalling well short of victory as the Confederates mass against it. The Union player is better off posing credible threats all along Bull Run in order to keep the defenders spread out.

The nature of the game turns, with short impulses of movement and combat passing back and forth between the players provides something close to the illusion of simultaneous movement without the usual headaches of a simove system. Players act in turn, but it's very hard to stael a march on the enemy that they can't react to.

The game is rated at 45 minutes, which seems very accurate for experienced player, but even newbies can be taught the game from scratch and see it finished in less than 90 minutes, tops.

And it's a very fun system, highly interactive and full of strategic choices. The Rout mechanic may bother some, but it seems reasonable given the history and it provides some entertaining tension while rewarding aggressive play. The short playing time means that even if a Rout card "robs" you of a victory, there's time for an immediate rematch.

Overall, this is one of the best introductory level wargames to come along in a long time and it looks to be an instant classic. Recommended.

Some other new stuff come in

A few other new arrivals of note:

Victoria Cross II (shown above). This is a redo of the venerable (and inaugural) Worthington Games title. Major difference sin presentation include an overhead view of the Rorke's Drifty battlefield (instead of the perspective view used before ) and cardboard counters in place of the wood block. sticker combo of the earlier version. Major content differences include the addition of the complete Battle of Isandlwana as wella s the original battle of Rorke's Drift. I played the Isandlwana battle and got crushed as the British! Very historical, I'll need further plays to assess whether the British have a decent chance or I just played very badly the first time!

Napoleon's War II: The Gates of Moscow. Been awaiting this one and I expect to try it it next week. No surprises in the presentation.

Got some custom dice for Twilight Struggle and for Labyrinth. No special reason aside from the fact that they look cool.

Two cases of War at Sea's newest expansion, Surface Action. This was a very successful case purchase, as I got all 16 rares between the two cases. Some intersting models and intersting additions to the game system. The game badly needs some additional "official" scenarios that will play off some of the new special abilities and units. Right now the Standard dueling force scenario is really the only one well supported. THe Convoy scenario is still broken and virtaully unwinnable for the convoy player. Fixing that scenario and adding one for amphibious landings would be a big boost.

New Stuff! Some handsome arrivals.

As usual, good stuff seems to come in bunches. Today Fortune & Glory: The Cliffhanger Game arrived at the local game shop and Star Trek: Fleet Captains showed up on the porch, courtesy of the Post Office.

My first impression of both games was "wow." They're both really great looking.

I've seen a number of complaints on BoardGame Geek about the Star Trek game, which seem to fall into tow general categories -- broken ship models and cheap components for the price. As far as the first, I didn't have much of a problem. Just two ships were broken, and each was easily repaired with a dab of super glue. As far as value goes, it seemed to be around what I expect a $100 game to contain. It may be that I'm just used to the somewhat inflated prices of wargames compared to euro games, but the game contains a large full-color mounted board, 24 clix-based detailed starship models, a bag full of die-cut counters, a thick stack of map tiles (thin, but easy to shuffle because of that), full-color rulebook and a couple hundred linen playing cards in several decks. There's a well-designed insert that holds everything and a huge box. About the only thing that's clearly cheese are the two dice included in the game, which are some of the sorriest little dice I've ever seen in a board game. Those will have to be replaced.

Fortune & Glory has few complaints about component quality as far as I can see. Like other Flying Frog games it's full of neat stuff -- lots of cards, mounted board, fistfuls of miniature figures, counters,etc. There have been a few complaints about the kind of game it is, and those have, i think, more validity in that you definitely have to understand that this is a very heavy themed Ameritrash game, not a euro. There's very high random element in the game, players will sometimes find themselves in a tough spot through no fault of their own and there's little variety in moves. Again, as a wargamer, I'm kind of inured to the Fates and I enjoy games with strong narratives, so Fly Frog's games are just my cup of tea. For those born and raised on Knizia euros, Fortune & Glory may well seem like a chaotic mess that too often fails to reward good play. Point taken, but I don't really care. The game's got Nazis! Mobsters and a freakin' Zeppelin! Yeah. About the only thing that concerns me about getting this on the table more often is that it's clearly a longer-playing game that the other Flying Frog games with a listed playing time of 90-180 minutes. It's been my experience that games can easily take twice the listed time with rookies, so that takes it out of the random game night appearance and means it will be better as the featured game for a planned game day.

Jena revisited -- a battle anniversary session report

Battle of Jena set up

Any day now I expect to get the new game in Worthington's Napoleon's War series, but they've already posted the rules online so I thought I'd take advantage of today's 205th anniversary of the Battle of Jena to see how the changes in the rules affect things.

There are a number of changes and clarifications in the rules listed on the last page of the new rule book, which I appreciate. In most cases the changes are fairly minor or make thing more clear.

One very significant change, however, reduces infantry;s long-range firepower and this had an immediately noticeable affect on today's game. As originally published, Infantry units rolled 3 dice at a range of 1 or 2 hexes, hitting on a 6. Shock Combat increased the effectiveness of infantry to hitting on a 5 or 6 when adjacent, but at a cost of 2 action points instead of the 1 AP cost of regular fire. What this tended to do was encourage infantry units to hang around at 2 hex range and shoot at each other and only risk Shock Combat when a particular position really needed to be taken. This wasn't really very authentic for combat using smoothbore muskets.

Now infantry firing at a range of 2 hexes only rolls ONE die instead of 3, making a long-range firefight a pretty inefficient way to kill units (just one D6 roll for every AP expended, a profligate expenditure of a valuable resource that tends to be in short supply in the game. This encourages infantry to close in and also reduces the risk of the approach march as well.

Heavy combat in the center as the Prussian Guard (black) challenges the French Guard (white) and line (blue) as the rest of the Prussian Army (grey) looks on.

In our replay of Jena we saw this, as both sides brought their infantry in close. My French ended up prevailing because of the fragility of the 2-figure Prussian Line Infantry, but the Prussian Guard (represented by the black figures) was able to go into the teeth of the French position, and while surrounded by French Guard (white figures) and line troops (blue figures) and live long-enough to fight it's way out again.

Overall, the rule change seems to be an improvement, and I'm looking forward to trying some of the new battles.

10 worst games of all time

Reader Rose King lists 10 real howlers here. It's hard to argue that any of them are good games, that's for sure. I remember Dr. Ruth's Game of Good Sex -- published by a wargame company, no less! Really odd.

Time flies!

I haven't had a chance to do much blogging these past couple of weeks, but it's not because I haven't had some game-related news to report.

I just took over the New London County Board Games meetup up after the original organizer had to step down.

You can check it out here

I've schedule a meetup for next week for Settlers of Catan and on Oct. 22 we will be playing Axis & Allies 1940 Global.

Speaking of Axis & Allies, we're just a week away from getting a couple of cases of the new Surface Action set. more on that later.

Some other notable recent acquisitions include Test of Fire and the new edition of Crusader Rex.

Looks like a second Campaign Book is on the way for Memoir '44!

Days of Wonder's site has a link to order a new campaign book. It says there are 11 different campaigns involved, which is similar tot he number that were in the first campaign book. There's no mention of any "Grand Campaign" rules however and the breadth of campaigns mentioned int he write-up would seem to preclude the kind of links seen in the first book.

This looks like a nice product and it's definitely on my list.

Polarizing

Test of Fire -- action around Henry House Hill

It's not just politics that seem to be becoming more polarized -- my tastes in games are going in two different directions as well.

As I get older I find I'm appreciating games on the far ends of the realism/playability spectrum and losing interest in the much that's in the middle.

On the one hand, I'm really enjoying games such as Test of Fire. It is, by no stretch, a simulation. But it does manage to capture the overall flavor of the Battle of First Bull Run with an elegantly spare set of rules -- practically a Japanese rock garden as far as wargame rules go -- that's also a lot of fun and extremely quick to play (45 minutes to an hour).

And on the other hand, when I really want to understand the "what-ifs" of History I find myself drawn to games such as Command at Sea or Persian Incursion.

The problem is that medium complexity wargames no longer hit a "sweet spot" for me. They're generally too lengthy and work-intensive and yet I've lost faith that the work leads to a significantly more accurate simulation. Some of the newer designs I've come across sometimes seem to do things differently simply for the sake of doing things differently. And some design abstractions seem to be inadequately justified to me. I'm often left wondering why things are done a certain way and the designer doesn't enlighten. There are exceptions, of course, but that's the trend I'm seeing. Now there's no question that a game like Harpoon 4 is a lot of work, but at the end of the day you see what the work is for and its explicit nature makes it easy for you to modify as you see fit. As soon as the designer starts abstracting things, a certain opaqueness descends on the design. Even if you tiker with it, you can't be sure you're having the desired effect on realism. If you add an artillery unit that's missing from the OB are you really making the game more realistic. Maybe the designer already factored it into the strength of another unit -- or maybe you're over-estimating the effect of the unit and the designer was justified in leaving it out.

On the other end, a game like Test of Fire isn't about that sort of thing anyway. It's about providing an entertaining game narrative that captures the overall flavor of the battle without worrying overmuch about any details. And it only takes an hour.

This is too cool

About 50 or so re-enactors gathered to commemorate the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon this week.

2011 is, of course the actual 2,500th year since the battle of 490 BC because there's no "Year Zero" in the calendar system we use.

I didn't have the ability to travel to Greece this year, but I did commemorate the anniversary a few weeks ago with an Epic game of Marathon using Commands & Colors -- which the Greeks won, although perhaps not quite so decisively has they did historically.

Test of Fire -- testing, testing

It's ideal when you can open a box with a game that came in the mail and less than 24 hours later see it hit the table, but that happy circumstance came about with Mayfair's new Test of Fire.

Originally this was supposed to some out in time for the 150th anniversary of the battle, but, as such things tend to do in the wargame hobby, the release date slipped a bit and ity just arrived in September. Well, at least it's still the 150th anniversary year.

Test of Fire is an introductory historical wargame by noted euro game designer Martin Wallace. While not his first historical wargame, Wallace is definitely much better known as a euro designer and he's been careful to state that his wargames are not simulations in any way. I think he's being a little too humble, though, because no introductory warggame is going to manage to be much of a simulation and Wallace's games so far have shown a reasonable level of historical fidelity considering their scope. I think they compare very favorably to more traditional wargames. About the only thing Wallace designs definitely avoid it's being tied down to any particular unit or time scale. While units are differentiated by type, as appropriate, they're not labeled in any way. So, while we know that the Red Elite Federal unit in Gdettysburg is the "Iron Brigade," the figure doesn't say that.

Likewise in Test of Fire we don't see any unit identifications. The vast bulk of both armies is formed of infantry units, which seem to represent about 1,000 troops. Each army has two artillery units, which seem to represent nothing more than an aggregatuon of firepower in a sectoir. Both armies historically divided their artillery units up into a number of separate batteries. Each army has a commanding general (or, optionally, two commanding generals for the CSA). The presence of Stuart's cavalry is represented by a card ad the federal horsemen present are ignored altogether.

The mounted mapbaord is divided into areas representing the battlefield at Bull Run. Some area boundaries are marked with a number that shows how many units can be moved acroiss the boundary at once, with the default for unmarked ares being 2. Roads allow 3 units, woods just one. Along the river the values range from 0 to 2.

In addition to their on-board troops, each side has access to its own deck of cards which provide various bonuses and special events.

Game play is straightforward. Each player in his turn rolls a number of D6 (4 for the Union, 3 for the CSA) with the die results controlling which actions the player can take. For every 1 rolled the player can draw a card. For every 2 or 3 rolled an artillery unit can fire at an adjacent area with a 5 or 6 being a "hit." A subsequent roll determines the effect, with a 6 causing damage to a unit while a 1-5 forces a unit to retreat. For every 4 or 5 rolled a player can move one group of units from one area to an adjacent area, subject to the boundary limits. Finally, a 6 allows a player a choice between firing an artillery unit with a general, condcuting a move with units in the same are as a general or drawing a card.

Combat is also very simple and straightforward. Units use move actions to enter an enemy occupied area. As the timing of actions is under player control, more than one move action can be taken before a battle is fought. Infantry units roll 2 dice per unit involved, up to a maximum of 6 dice worth, with the defender firing first. Eacgh 5 or 6 is a hit (4-6 if defending a hill) with a subsequent roll resolving the hit effect: 1-3 is a retreat, 4-6 is damage. Damage flips an infanrty unit or destorys an alaready flipped unit. Artillery and leaders don't take direct part in the combat and have to retreat if left alone in the space with an enemy infantry unit. The attackers has one round of combat to clear the defenders from the space, otherwise the attacking units retreat.

Victory is assessed several possible ways. Most basically, if a side captures the enemy home base (Centerville or Manassas) then it wins, but barring very reckless play this shouldn't happen. When the cards run out, the next time a card would ahve to be drawn then the game ends on the completion of the Confederate turn. If the federals have two of the three starred areas on the Rebel side of Bull Run, then they win, otherwise the Confederates prevail. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, each side has a number of "Rout" cards they can play. each entitles the player to roll 2D6 and if the total is equal two or less than the number of enemy infantry units lost then that side wins. This obviously makes the game potentially very dicey, with a sudden death victory possible as soon as 2 enemy units are lost.

About the most that can be said for this is that's basically what happened historically, and a similar idea is seen in the Decision Games Blue & Gray First Bull Run quad. The game moves very fast, so there will generally be time to pick up and start again if a quick end happens.

The basic situation is familiar, the federal army is heavily weighted to its right flank as it prepares to march around the flank of the rebel army, which is, in turn, strongest on its own right.

Our first game took a bit over an hour, which seems good for a virgin out-of-the-box play. I can see experienced payers cooking through the game in the advertised 45 minutes easy.

Like all of Wallace's wargames, Test of Fire manages to skin the cat in a very different way from the traditional hex-and-counter game while being at least as historical and fun. The situation's historical constraints make this less wide-open than most euros, of course, but players do seem to have several viable approaches besides the strict historical plans.

The MSRP is under $30 so overall I'd rate this as a good value.

Opening Salvos preview -- 8 ships revealed!!

USS Montana

Rich Baker's blog revealed 8 sip images with data cards that will likely be the 8 ships in his Opening Salvos for Set VI -- and an interesting bunch it is, too.

The big boys are the USS Montana, weighing in at 80 points with absolutely monstrous stats and a new version of the Yamato.

For cruisers we have the Sheffield from the Bismarck hunt and an Italian fast light cruiser.

For carriers we have the Japanese Taiho, which was expected and the British Eagle, which was not.

And for support units there's a common LST and a German minesweeper! All good stuff.

Brazil in World War II

It's not well-known, but Brazilian troops saw ground combat in Europe in World War II. As a matter of fact, the Italian campaign was the first in history to include troops from every inhabited continent -- with North American, South American, African, Asian and ANZAC troops as well as Europeans taking part.

Back in the 1980s my first contribution to Strategy & Tactics magaizne was an article about "The Other BEF," referring to the Brazilian Expeditionary Force that fought in Italy. Now, it wasn't exactly a secret to wargamers that Brazil fought in Italy -- there's a counter for the Brazilian Division in Anzio -- but I think my article was the first one in a wargaming publication to go into any detail about it.

My main source was the account of the division's operation written by its commander, a copy of which was in the library of the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill where I was student at the time. I supplemented the account with some American sources as well, especially the IV Corps report. These were what I had available at the time, which was, naturally, less than satisfying.

So I was intrigued when I saw that Osprey was publishing a book on the topic by Brazilian authors which could take advantage of Brazilian accounts. I was relieved to find that my account was correct in general, although I naturally didn't have much of the unit-level detail and battle accounts that the Osprey book features.

The Brazilian's biggest contribution to the war effort was making it's geographical position available to the Allies for air ferry missions to Africa and anti-submarine work against U-boats. It took a lot of time to ready the Brazilian Division for ground combat given the lack of domestic military equipment and experience. Still, the Brazilains arrived at an opportune time for the Italian front, as troop shortages had become acute in that secondary theater. (To the point that a neighboring unit was Task Force 45, a brigade-sized group of anti-aircraft artillerymen pressed into service as infantry!)

The Brazilians had hard-won experience against German troops over the winter but played major role in the final breakout and pursuit across Northern Italy that resulted in the first mass capitulation of Axis troops in Europe. In addition to the Brazilian Division, that country also contributed a squadron of fighter pilots that also served in Italy as well as some support formations.

It's an interesting story and I'm glad it's been told.

Gale Force Nine license for Axis & Allies products lapsed.

I don't know if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I didn't see it at first glance: Gale Force Nine reports that there license for Axis & Allies products has lapsed so they can no longer produce or sell those items.

this means that the vinyl War at Sea map, the tokens and the stands for the ships are all gone. I liked the map, especially, and I'm sorry that's gone. I used the tokens for both AAM and WAS but I believe Litko has tokens that are usable substitutes. I never tried the stands.

Weather effects

As we start to batten down the hatches in preparation for the arrival of Mean Irene, it prmpted some pondering on the effect of weather in wargame -- or more precisely, the effect of extreme weather.

For the most part, until fairly recently in history, any sort of severe weather pretty much brought a halt to military proceedings. It was challenging enough to feed, clothe and move troops during normal times in the ancient era and most of the black powder era, without trying to do it in bad weather. The cases of major battles or campaign fought in extreme weather conditions or notable in part because they were so rare -- such as Washington's crossing of the Delaware.

Often bad weather caused battles to be postponed or even canceled. This all began to change as the Industrial Revolution gained steam and it became easier to supply armies and the general wealth increased. Railroads and steamships reduced the impact of bad weather on movements and fighting through poor campaign seasons and in the face of bad weatehr became more common.

By the 20th century warfare had reached the point where ideas such as "winter quarters" were obsolete and fighting continued year round through the seasons. It also expanded geographically into cold weather climates, jungles and deserts and other extreme locales.

One offshoot of this evolution is that modern-era wargames often have to take weather into account -- whereas it's an exceptional thing in ancient and black powder era games. But there's bad weather and then there's bad weather, and when we are talking about monstrous storms such as Irene, then there's no question of trying to represent tactical combat -- fighting would be impossible. But the time scale covered by most larger scale operational and strategic games doesn't lend itself to dealing with transient events such as hurricanes. A strategic level wargame depicting the entire US east Coast would probably involve turns covering a week or a month or more, whereas the entire hurricane event will be over in a week.

Here and there a game will through in a severe weather rule (Columbia Game's Pacific Victory and typhoons, for example) but generally it's ignored unless it's part of a larger climate. This does mean tha some historically significant storm events (such as the storm that aborted the probable Battle of Newport in the American Revolution) can't get an adequate representation.

Some new design techniques such as card-driven games may provide a way around that, though.

Hauled out an old-timer today

Yes, I hauled out one of my all-time favorite game -- a set of miniatures rules from the 1980s called The Complete Brigadier.

Covering the heart of the black power era, from 1680 to 1880, The Complete Brigadier is a very tactical game ruthlessly focus on the perspective of a brigade-level commander.

My miniatures for this set of rules are from Flaying Pan & Blanket Amalgamated, 20 mm scale American Revolution figures. It just so happened that a couple of decades ago I often had staff duty officer while stationed in Germany. And because we were a nuclear-capable missile unit, we had secret message traffic all night long, so the SDO could not nap. As a consequence I had quite a bit of time on mu hands on a weekly basis and I used it to paint up a few hundred figures. I haven't had that kind of time since.

I won't say that they are well-painted, but they;re passable for wargame purposes.

I like the rules because they're very straightforward and while reasonably complex, they are intuitive. The rules concentrate on formations and orders and are deterministic when it comes to fireing and melee. There are enough modifiers that the outcome of combats is not overly predictable.

I ran a demo of the game at the local game shop today. I commanded a British force comprised of two regular foot battalions, a small converged grenadier battalion, an even smaller squadron of dragoons, a full-sized artillery battery and some Indians. Deployed off to one flank across a stream were three large battalions of Hessians, but unknown to the American player this was just a distraction force. The Hessians didn't know the stream was fordable and would therefore not take part in the attack.

The American player -- experienced with board games and Magic: The Gathering but not historical miniatures -- had a force comprised of a battalion of Continetnal Line, a battalion of militia, small battalions of light infantry and riflemen, a troop of dragoons and a small artillery battery. His missionw as to defend the hill, specifically the mansion near the top.

Because the opposing player was a newbie, a treated this as demo game, without a focus on victory for one side or the other. That said, it was an interesting and well-fought battle.

The Americans basically deployed in two lines of units -- with the first line made up of the militia, the Continentals and the light infantry, while the dragoons, rifles and artillery formed the second line.

For my part I placed the Indians on the far left, with an eye towards having them sweep on a wide flanking move though some woods. On the right I placed the lights and the dragoons, whose mission was to fix the Americans in front of them. In a compact mass in the center I placed the grenadiers and foot, with the artillery lined up in column on the road. I hoped to outflank the main American line with fire support form the guns.

The battle more or less followed the plan, with the inevitable adjustments due to the enemy's vote. On the right the lights advanced into firing range of both the American light infantry and the rifles while the dragoons attracted the attention of the gunners. There ensued a long exchange of fire that the lights and dragoons eventually lost. The good news is that this tied up half the American force for most of the battle, but the bad news was that it was costly.

The American player was not content to passively accept the attack and moved the Continentals and the dragoon troop up to meet the main British attack. The dragoons and the light infantry were pushed back by the advancing British foot units and as the game ended due to time on Turn 10 the British grenadiers and the Buffs were about to take the house. The American dragoons with the rebel general attached were last seen sabering the fleeing remnants of the other British foot unit but were out of the battle. Likewise the Continentals could not resist the opportunity to charge the British guns just as they were about to unlimber -- chasing them back and eventually capturing the whole lot. This also, however, removed the only regular formed Ameircan unit fromt he critical point.

Left holding the bag were the hapless militia, who were hit on both flanks. On one side was the Buffs, while on the other side were the Indians, who had completed their sweeping move and were now in the American rear area. The militia dissolved in a quick rout.

Overall, with two turns left, the Americans had no formed troops left in position to contest the objective, but the game ended due to time before the final moves could be made.

Still, it was a hard-fought battle, with the British side suffering more heavily. Of the American units the Continentals, the light infantry and the artillery were all unscathed., while the rifles had 9 of 12 left and the dragoons 5 of 6 figures left. Only the militia unit was completely destroyed.

On the British side, in contrast, the light infantry, dragoons on one foot unit had all routed off the field and the artillery battery were prisoners! The grenadiers had 10of 12 left while the Buffs had 22 of 24 figures left. Only the Indians had avoided loss.

Perhaps I was too hard on Archibald

My first impression of the Archibald, the human cannonball hero in Invasion From Outr Space was that he was a hard hero to use effectively. His talent of "Fire Me!" would likely see him stuck in the middle of a bunch of angry Martians every time it was used and he'd die a quick death without accomplishing much.

Well, he proved me wrong Friday at a game session of the Central Connecticut Wargamers.

We were playing a four-player scenario of Abduction. Two opposing players handled the Martians, while Mark Kalina had Angelica the bearded lady and R.J. Flanagan, the ringmaster. I started with Lucrezia the contortionist and Cassidy the trick shooter.

The first half of the game went passably well for the heroes, as the novice Martian players had some trouble marshaling their resources effectively and the initial board configuration was favorable to the heroes with four of the six allies in a clump on the Ferris Wheel/Trapeze Tent board. The Purple Martian player also had early bad luck in getting his troops beamed down.

Eventually the Martians started to get their act together and the heroes became hard-pressed. Bosley the elephant and Jimmy the stable boy were off by themselves and picked off by the Martians, although Cassidy did pick off a few Martians headed for Jimmy. Soon it became clear that the Heroes had to concentrate their forces to protect the clump, though, as the Martians gathered a large force, including the Zard beast, nearby.

Despite some heroism that saw Lucrezia defeat the Zard Beast in hand-to-hand combat and blast a full back of Martians with a bomb, overwhelming Martian numbers finally told. A Saucer blast took out poor Cassidy. While this brought in Jo Jo, the dancing bear was too far away to be an immediate help. And immediate help was what the Heroes needed as Lucrezia finally fell to an assault by a full Martian pack led by the newly arrived Martian Leader. The full back was stacked with two of the remaining allies (the twins and Doc Mesmer) and was just two squares (one move by the Martian Leader pack) from a saucer. Neither Angelica nor RJ was in a position to intervene. It was basically game over on the next Martian move barring some amazing turn of luck -- as the Martian players noted gloatingly.

Well, that amazing luck arrived in the form of Archibald, who arrived nearby. He rolled just enough to movement to make it to the cannon that's next tot he trapeze tent, climbed in and fired himself through the tent (oh, and that part of it was on fire) to land on top of the Martian leader's pack. Bam! All three regular Martians were killed and the Leader was wounded -- and Archibald promptly boxed him into oblivion as well. RJ and Angelica also had good turns knocking off Martians and suddenly the worm had turned.

The Martian regrouped and brought in a new wave and redirected their efforts against the Ferris Wheel, where Texas Jack and the Fuji Merman were hiding out. JoJo came to the rescue here, battling back the Martians, for a few turns. Angelica and RJ, who were guarding the twins and Mesmer, were trapped by fire covering both exits of the Trapeze Tent at a critical moment, and suddenly it looked like Jo Jo was about to be overwhelmed by a new Martian Leader-led full pack. Archibald rolled up a Power Token and dashed to another nearby cannon. Again he fired himself through the Ferris Wheel and right into the Martian Leader's pack. Bam! Three dead regular Martians and a wounded Martian Leader were the result. And once again Archibald boxed the dazed Martian Leader out!

Now time was running out for the Martians -- with just a couple of turns left they couldn't abduct allies in time so they had to concentrate on killing heroes instead. Poor Archibald's number came up and the big galoot of a Hero fell in a barrage of ray gun fire. Hannah the fire breather rushed onto the scene, but she was on the other side of the board and there simply wasn't time for her to reach the action.

It came down to a final turn's assault on Jo Jo, the dancing bear, by five Martians, including a full pack in the bear's square. The ray gun blasts left Jo Jo hanging on by a thread -- one more wound and the Martians would win! In a card-enhanced 4-die to 2-die fight JoJo rolled a 6 and with the bear's talent and a power token to boost it to a seven and the game was saved. (In the Hero turn JoJo would simply step back out of range so there wouldn't be a fight in the Hero turn.)

While they didn't survive, Lucrezia and, especially, Archibald were clearly the heroes of the fight. Archibald took out two Martian leaders and two full packs and several other Martians as well. Lucrezia killed the Zard beast and a full pack as well as a couple of other stray Martians. Cassidy did quite a bit of damage before she fell as well, taking out pairs of Martians three or four times. Jo Jo was also devastating. Angelica was effective when she finally got into the fight, but she had a lot of low movement rolls. RJ Flanagan did his thing, although he's not much of a fighter. Hannah is normally a powerful Hero, but she showed up on the next-to-last turn this time and played no part in the outcome.

Everyone agreed that it was a highly entertaining story -- and that the Martians had the game in the bag until Archibald's timely appearance and amazing heroics. It was very B-movie cinematic.

No new OGRE until at least (?!) 2012

1977 OGRE

Wow, this news from Steve Jackson is a real bummer.

Jackson:

I haven't done a good enough job recently of communicating the status of Ogre 6th Edition. The status is: Still planned, still the super-fancy as per the prototypes you can see on that page (and which I expect will show up in the display case at PAX in a couple of weeks) . . .

And definitely still not on track for 2011. I warned everyone in May that it might not happen in 2011, and now I can say it definitely won't. I knew that at the end of June, before I took July off, and I should have shared.

He goes on to note that he gets more mail about this project than any other one -- to say this is highly anticipated would be an understatement.

An undercurrent to Jackson's announced plans is a hint that this may be the last edition of Ogre, ever. The base game has been out of print for a very long time despite a high level of demand, so clearly demand is not the only factor at play here.

I wonder if there isn;t some emotional attachment involved as well. Ogre was Jackson's first design -- and it was/is a big hit. It started out as a very inexpensive, bare-bones wargame and it looks like it may go out in a super deluxe version that could fairly be described as a collector's edition. It's supposed to include most of the content from GEV and Shcokwave as well, which pretty much guarantees there will not be any expansion of follow-up products. He said that there will be just the one print run and he'll let the after market fight over it from then on.

Cute cooperative game -- Forbidden Island

Tried out a recent cooperative game called Forbidden Island at the local game shop and liked it enough that I brought it home, where it proved to be a hit with the kids as well.

The basic idea is a party of advaneturers searching for clues on a slowly sinking island that will lead them to four treasures -- which they have to find and take off the island.

The components in the Gamewright edition are nice. Everything comes in a tin with a well-designed plastic insert, There's a small, full-color rule book, a cardboard water level tarck with a plastic slider, six wooden pawns to represent the adventurers, four failry large palstic miniatures representing the four treasures, 24 double-sided cardboard tiles to represent the island and a deck of 58 cards. 24 of those are "flood cards" one for each isand tile adn six are character cards, one for each pawn. the remaining 28 cards make up the treasure deck.

The game starts by randomly laying out the island tiles in 6 rows of 2, 4, 6, 6, 4 and 2 tiles each, forming a rough diamond shape. Players randomly pick a character from the six available, each of which has a special ability and a specific starting tile.

Six cards from the flood deck are selected, flipping the named tiles to their flooded tile. If a flooded tile gets flooded again, it "sinks into the abyss" and is removed from the game, along with it's card.

On a player's turn he can take three actions with his pawn. The available options are to move to an adjacent tile, but not diagonally, to "shore up" and adjacent tile by flipping a flooded tile back to its dry side, give a treasure card to anotehr player on the same tile or "capture a Treasure" by turning in four cards that match the treasure on one of two tiles that bear the image of that treasure. Players can repeat the same action, so a player could move three tiles, flip three tiles or trade three cards or any combination of those.

After a player has completed all actions he draws two cards from the treasure deck. Most of these are simple treasure cards, five for each treasure figurine. They have no game effect aside from needing to discard four of them while on an appropriate tile to claim the treasure. There are two helpful treasure cards -- sandbags, which allow the flipping of a flooded tile anywhere on the board without costing an action and Helicopter Lift, which allows moving any or all pawns from one tile to any other tile. You also need a Helicopter Lift at the end of the game to win. After gathering all four figurines, the explorers much gather at the helicopter landing zone called tile (Fool's Landing) and leave via the play of a Helicopter Lift card. There are also three Water Rises cards, which move the water mater up one tick on the meter.

Complicating this is the last part of a player's turn, where he draws Flood Cards to see which tiles get flipped or sink into the abyss. The number of cards drawn depends on the current state of the water meter, but ranges from 2 to 5 per player turn. As a tile that gets flipped twice disappears the island can rapidly turn into a tough place to move around. No dawdling!

The difficulty level of the game is adjusted by changing the starting level of the water meter. At Novice or Normal levels the Flood Card draw starts at 2, while at the Elite and Legendary levels it starts at 3.

The two plays today were at Novice Level and the players won each time, but they caught some lucky breaks in the set up and I can see how it would get tougher at the more difficult levels.

Playing time is rated at about 30 minutes and that seems about right, which probably puts it in the category of a supplementary game for a night's entertainment, rather than the main course. It also works a s a kid's game.

It's a good value for the money as well. I paid just $20 for my copy at the game store and I've seen it online for less.