OGRE/GEV: Originally separately released as snap-case games by Steve Jackson Games, speaking of…
Car Wars
Illuminati
But hey, I’m still on pocket-sized games. Heritage had an entire little division devoted to these “pocket games”. Five bucks. And for that you got:
Demon Lords, which was designed by Arnold Hendrick. Absolutely 4x on a board style game. Five bucks.
Dragon Rage: a fantastic, asymmetrical boardgame in which one player is the dragon attacking a castle and wreaking havoc and collecting hoard…and the other is the castle, fighting back, trying to survive and hold onto as much gold as possible.
But now for a couple of “WarGames” that are kind of…just strategy games that happen to be about war?
Caesar at Alesia is an old AH game from the 1970s. It is super asymmetrical; the Romans are trying to siege down Alesia against the Gauls who are inside the siege…but also OUTSIDE the siege, trying to break it. It does my favorite gaming thing ever: it never really feels like it’s snowballing to a conclusion. A game of Caesar can go crazily back and forth with neither side necessarily doomed until fairly close to the end of the game. Another thing: fairly simple design. This isn’t too tough a game to grasp, and lends itself to frequent replays.
South Mountain an almost forgotten title from a long-lost publisher (West End Games). If I told you that South Mountain was a game about a fairly small and very obscure Civil War battle, you’d probably think you’ve got this one pegged, right? Wrong. The game mechanics aren’t really difficult at all. Almost chess-like. And again, asymetrical sides. The really interesting thing this game does is with the game board. It should be EASY for the Union side to push the tiny rebel forces off the mountain but…the terrain and movement rules make this game constantly interesting. It ends up being a game where the Confederate side tries to continually harass and prevent the Union side from concentrating enough force to get the high ground. The Union is trying to do just that, and then they can start to sweep the rebels out from around them. Another game where there’s no snowball effect. Up until fairly close to the end – and often even after one of the game’s big win points – Union getting the high ground – it still feels like things aren’t settled for either side.
Circus Maximus: It’s a racing game. But you can try to destroy the other cars, kill the drivers, etc. A tighter, more streamlined design that Car Wars, Circus Maximus’s simple but outstanding rules set was so good that the guy who designed the video game Qvadriga that came out a few years ago just copied it lock, stock and barrel. Which is fine!
Wooden Ships & Iron Men: another destroy the ships kind of game, it’s been cool to see videogames from Pirates! to a bunch of Assassin’s Creed iterations essentially copy its rock/paper/scissors mechanic of shot, grape shot, chain shot, and double shot. Takes a while to teach the wind rules to new players, but once you’ve done that it’s a blast.
French Foreign Legion: a terrific little game from what is hands-down my favorite game company of the 1980s, Yaquinto Games. This was one of their “album games”, which meant the game was literally packaged like a record album. Another asymmetric that feels like a really good tower defense game before people knew what tower defense games were. If you played the French Foreign Legion side, your guys could level up in a way during game play if they survived during the fort siege.
A couple of games with SUPER interesting mechanics that may not be everyone’s cup of tea:
Ace of Aces series: If you’re looking for epic-length narrative, campaigns, what-have-you…keep looking. If you’re looking for “Let’s have a shitload of fun playing a game that will end in 15-30 minutes”, Ace of Aces is just bloody brilliant. You get a book, I get a book, depending on the planes we’ve chosen. We call out our maneuvers, go to a new page in the book, and then look to see how our planes are positioned. We do that maneuvering to try to get in position to shoot. There are variants where you can roll dice on the shooting, I think, but the purest way to play has no such die-rolling at all. It’s pure out-maneuver and shoot down your opponent gameplay. The same company has a Wild West shootout game, and another company used a similar design for a dungeon-crawly style fight game.
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: My copy of this came in a rubber-coated brown binder, with lots of pullouts and useful other stuff. Just a great detective game that’s playable solo or with a group of friends. I think the current game being sold (and expanded upon) is essentially this exact game and design, just with some upgraded components.
