Hah, the 1998 article stated that “historical board games are fading”. In 2018 there are more historical board games being made than I’ve ever seen before. Fact. The market has surely changed, and maybe it doesn’t outlast my own generation by a long margin, but there’s clearly no dearth of new wargames pouring into the niche market that it is.
Did you sell it to Sheldon from Big Bang Theory? :) Did anyone see the recent episode of BBT where Sheldon pulls out the CNA game and sets the maps up across the entire living room floor, assigns everyone to a role, then, to their chagrin, rolls the dice, looks up tables, etc. for each turn? (He tells Penny to roll for the weather; she says it’s the desert, it’s hot, he rolls the dice a couple of times, looks up things in two tables, then says, “Yes, it is Hot.”)
My wife looked at me when he had the game spread across the room and she said “That’s not a real game, is it?” I said, yep. Her next words “And you own it, I assume?” I just smiled…
Except for Guadalcanal and possibly New Guinea, all American ground campaigns were fait accompli, with the only variables being how long is it going to take and how much blood will it cost? Doesn’t seem very compelling to me.
That was a wonderful post, thanks!
I missed this discussion as I was busy playing Desert War, @Spock . I have managed to play through the whole tutorial scenario and gathered enough notes and screenshots to make an AARs. I am now approx halfway playing the Bir-el-Gubi scenario, which has more maneuver.
So far I can say:
- The AI is not inert and likes doing spoiling attacks. It is based on dynamic scripts and it is as good as robust is the plan the scenario designer comes up with. Which requires that 1) knows the rules and their implications when it comes to conceptualise campaign plans, 2) can grok the scenario construction toolkit user interface to translate plans into scripts and 3) he is good into reading the relations between time, space and opposing forces. On the few examples of play I have seen, John Duquette (bcgames) has done a pretty good job.
- The WEGO chaos is very enjoyable, there’s no perfect turn. Something always goes awry.
- Even the static tutorial scenario has ample space of maneuvering, attacks from the march and other fun things. There the Axis is the obvious punching ball, but I think it could make a good challenge for a human player to extend resistance as long as possible.
The game is good but I am having some vexing graphical issues I am still trying to get on top of.
True enough, but then, no one goes out to fight a balanced battle. Everyone tries to rig it so that they have the upper hand. Look how hard it is to make balanced games for most campaigns. Designers have to bend over backwards to give the French in 1940 a shot, or the Germans in the Ardennes. Hell, you can argue that everything after Stalingrad in the east is just a long bloody mop-up. But I do think that because of the scope and scale of some of the ground actions in the ETO, it’s easier to make things seem more balanced.
I’d hazard that there was more of a chance of a true failure at someplace like Guadalcanal or Tarawa or maybe even Iwo than there was at Normandy, but the ETO stuff has a lot more chrome and a wider ambit, so it looks more open.
Thanks for your post, Miquel. You and Brooski are both tempting me. I’m going out of town this week, so it’ll have to wait a few days, but the WEGO thing is a big attraction.
As @TheWombat says, post-Stalingrad ETO sometimes can seem the same way. But putting that aside, in some ways I prefer the Pacific theater because of its unique logistical challenges and the overriding importance of naval/air combat. Plus I find the most “balanced” period of the war, the 1942-43 fight for the Solomons and New Guinea, interesting and exotic. Sea planes taking off from south-seas lagoons; coastwatchers; engineers building and repairing dusty airstrips; subs vs DDs; PT boats; and, of course, aircraft carriers. Who doesn’t like aircraft carriers? :)
Yeah, because it’s less popular as a subject for history fans and gamers alike, the Pacific War gets overlooked in a lot of ways. I agree that those early months from Pearl Harbor through the victory on Guadalcanal are pretty hairy in terms of the US having a real threat to deal with on a strategic scale, and thus are really interesting.
After that, it’s technically interesting in terms of naval, amphibious, and air stuff–and particularly submarines, where the US sub campaign is oddly under-appreciated–but there’s no doubt at all the Japanese dream of empire is dead.
And it’s not just that the Americans (or Japanese early in the war) had overwhelming force. It’s that all the important decisions were made before the battle started: which island to attack, which troops to send, which beaches to land on, where the defender builds his fortifications.
In my admittedly limited experience, I’ve found that the best wargames are about operations like Market Garden where the plan goes awry and commanders have to improvise over the course of the battle.
That’s a good gaming subject, yeah, lots of good games centered on those battles. It also depends on the scope and scale, too. A tactical/grand tactical game will always have more room for variation that is reasonable that a higher-level game, where the strategic realities make the game situations untenable.
Matrix has an Easter sale on everything but the latest titles from now until April 3rd: http://www.matrixgames.com/news/2563/Happy.Easter.Sale
Hmm… latest titles only thing I’d probably be interested in.
Well maybe you’ll find something at the Paradox Easter Sale: https://www.paradoxplaza.com/on-sale/?utm_source=crm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=papl_plaza_2018328_easa
Actually, there is one relatively new title on sale at Matrix that I’m interested in: Wars of Succession.
So White Dogs Games have just recently released Albuera 1811. It looks like it uses the same game system as Rachel Simmons’ Napoleon’s Triumph but with dice for combat resolution. I haven’t tried any game system like Napoleon’s Triumph because it costs like north of $150 excluding shipping, so yeah, I’m wondering what’s the verdict of this game over here?
Anyway, I’ll get Albuera 1811 since the cost is only 1/4 of Napoleon’s Triumph and I want to experience how it plays like.
Oh man. Napoleon’s Triumph is my favorite game ever, no joke. I hope Albuera is good!
Nice! Could you tell me about Napoleon’s Triumph to other Napoleonic games?
I can’t tell you about NT versus other Napoleonics, because the other Napoleonics I’ve played are operational or strategical, and NP (which I got when it was in print) is tactical.
What I can tell you is that it is my favorite game that I don’t get to play. Which is a pity because at its heart it’s an amazingly beautiful game with not very complicated rules that does a great job at suggesting Napoleonics tactics.
But for all their beauty the rules are disastrously explained. That makes it very hard to explain to more casual gamers, while the way they are detached from the rules of pretty much any other wargame out there, makes grognards bounce off it many times. The combat system is genious (diceless, bluff based) but it requires both players to understand the consequences of their actions. It does feel like poker (which is aprópiate to the thinking at the time) and everything evolves in a satisfactory manner with little to no rule overhead (once you grok the combat) and reasonably fast.
Play aids on bgg greatly help with all this and make the game easier to teach, but I burnt my potential playing partner on it too early.
Albuera looks cool, but without access to the rules, I think it’s going to resemble NT only in aesthetics and the area style movement. It has counters for stuff NT does not try to model at all (squares, for example), the approaches are not marked with symbols giving modifiers (NT map is wonderful in how it gives you all the info without ambiguity) and first and foremost, if the combat system uses dies, it’s going to be as far from NT as a combat system can be. So I would be wary of saying it uses the same system. Maybe it takes some inspiration by it, but that’s all…
But it does look cool and could be a great game even if not really using the same system. I’m adding it to my wishlist.
Also, if you want to try NT, the prequel is getting republished (and fixed with NT’s full system) probably this year. Should be affordable.
Thanks Juan for your input! Speaking of Napoleonic operational/strategic wargames, do you have any recommendations for that time period? I was looking at GMT’s Napoleonic War and Hexasim’s Napoleon against Europe but both have underwhelming reviews from what I’ve seen. On the other hand, I have great things about AH’s Napoleon: The Waterloo Campaign 1815 though it’s a very old design.
Age of Napoleon is fantastic, with manageable rules and shortish play-time (4hours or less for the full war). Getting a reprint soon, so it might be wise to wait (I don’t know if it will come out this year or be one of those reprints that take 4-5 years to materialize).
I hate Napoleon’s Triumph and Napoleon at Marengo for the one reason: deterministic combat. Apart from that, it’s a great idea. But the combat system completely ruins it for me.