Spotlight on Games
>
1001 Nights of Military Gaming
- A -
- Ace of Aces
Quick, two-player book war game in which players take on the role
of World War I fighter plane pilots trying to shoot one another
down. In an ingenious system, each player has at every point of a
picture of how things would look from the cockpit and then gets
to choose from a wide variety of maneuvers with which to outwit
his opponent. This used to be a great game to play while waiting
in the registration line at the Origins game convention. The
game spawned quite a few more games by the same publisher.
In the World War I category, other aircraft were presented
in Powerhouse, Flying Machines and Balloon
Buster. The series also moved outside of the first world
war with Wingleader, Jet Eagles and even further
afield with Bounty Hunter (Old West gunfighters),
Dragonriders of Pern,
Star Wars Starfighter and
perhaps the most popular of all of them, the fantasy character
combat game
Lost Worlds.
Titles which were planned, but never published include
Patrol, Ground Target, Wingleader: Bomber, Two Seaters.
[Balloon Aviation Games]
- African Kingdoms
Simple war game for two or four in partnership by small publisher
DPO, Inc. Regions of Africa are depicted on a four-color,
mounted map with a double track below. Also included are twelve
pawns in four colors with chips to match. Setup is fixed with
each player setting up pawns with chips in a similarly-colored
kingdom. The chips represent resources and never move. All of the
pawns can move one space each turn, plus one can move two spaces,
this being shown by flipping over a card. The maximum number
of friendly pawns which can be collected in an area is three.
After moves comes combat in the regions occupied by opposing
pieces. This is merely a matter of both sides rolling a die and
adding to it the number of pieces that they have. For one combat
per turn, again indicated by a card, the attacker receives +1
(for archers). Ties go to the defender. Any defeated chips
are claimed by the winner while defeated pawns retreat, unless
having no retreat or beaten by a differential of five or more,
in which case they are destroyed instead. Destroyed pieces are
placed on the victory track below and when the winner reaches
eight, the game is over. There are some strategy and tactics to
consider, but they are easily swamped by the randomness of the
dice. Presentation is utilitarian and the idea of partnership
completely pointless as both partners move and fight at the
same time. May be useful for introducing war game concepts,
but nothing more.
- After the Flood
This is sort of a resource development plus conflict game set in
ancient Sumeria and curiously requiring exactly three players.
Just why this limitation exists is mysterious as it doesn't feel
intrinsically necessary (for a counterexample cf.
The End of the Triumverate).
Is it too uncharitable to ask whether this was the only number
for which the design worked? Three is also the number of
phases in a turn, though not officially so –
ATF's chief innovation. Where normally there would be a
"place cities" phase followed by an "acquire goods" phase and
this followed by a combat phase, here one can perform these in
any order desired. The way it works out is that usually
actions occur in the above order, but sometimes it's a useful
surprise to alter it. It also gives a significance to timing
– an early finish to acquisition permits grabbing the
best army and even interfering with opponent acquisitions, which
depend on meeple placement. Those allocated to grain and
textile boxes provide the corresponding commodities, though
based not directly on the number placed, but on their ranking.
Then various board spaces around Sumeria are used to upgrade
these to six other commodities, which are useful primarily for
buying the urban status symbols that provide more victory
points than anything else, and secondarily for enhancing
armies and buying a better place in the turn order. Conquest
begins after a player has claimed one of the three armies on
offer for the turn, by virtue of a meeple in its start area.
Armies have fixed sizes which the player can pay to increase.
Their campaign consists of expansion into one new area each
sub-turn, the chief goal being to control areas and sometimes
to destroy enemy cities. Destroying an opposing army depends
on rolling two dice above four if one's army ranking is
superior, or above six otherwise. Army ranking is something
one can improve by spending at army creation time – a
good reason to act last. In this two- to three-hour affair
there are five game turns, the even-numbered ones featuring near
complete removal of one's meeples (armies are always all
removed at the end of a turn), meaning there is little context
saved between turns. Probably the reason for this is simply to
avoid requiring too many bits, but it certainly doesn't favor
long-range planning. There is also a "Tool Makers" box which borrows
an idea from
Origins: How We Became Human
in that meeples here are not expended, but simply toggle between the
used and unused states. A similar box labeled "Scribes" permits
transferring meeples to new locations, including resetting them
if to either of the above two boxes, permitting tricky tactics.
The box artwork is as impressive as ever
for this publisher, as is the map, though it's odd that in the
land of the Tigris and Euphrates that the rivers are not
depicted. There are gaps in the communication design. Not only
does the text on the island appear to contradict the rules,
but small text is buried in many provinces, making it nearly
impossible to read and yet still detracting from the aesthetic
design. It's as if the goal was the best of both worlds and
the result, the worst. The trade table is so opaque that a
better one is presented here;
using it, certain realities such as the value of trading textiles
for gold and tools for lapis leap out where they were obscure
before. There is also an odd "tools for metal" trade that does
no good and probably wouldn't be in the game at all had a
clearer table been present. The meeples – in purple, orange
and green – look
something like heads and shoulders while the solders are
rather larger and mean to represent a spear carrier with a
large, rectangular shield. Unfortunately, the wooden pieces
can't show the spear and so they end up looking like
backpackers, or astronauts. Thematically, the whole thing,
perhaps a result of over-development, seems to lose most of
the reality. Players represent Sumerian tyrants, but also
foreign invaders who take over their own city-states. They
send out traders who also recruit armies. They build cities
for free and if they wish, destroy them and rebuild again.
Supposedly one of the design goals was to avoid the petty
diplomacy problems inherent in the tripartite situation, but
it hardly does so. The best strategy is to be trailing in
points so that the two leaders go after one another. If one is
unable to catch up, it's entirely possible to become kingmaker.
It is true that probably no one will be
completely wiped out and chances are all will be in contention
to the end. Considering that going a-conquering is probably the
highlight, it's surprising to see this published under the
Treefrog rather than the Warfrog label. Was this intended as
a Treefrog from the start or originally as a plastic pieces
game? If the latter, despite its faults, it would actually be
superior to most of that ilk. But it's difficult to see who
will be attracted to a plastic pieces game without the
plastic.
Martin Wallace;
Treefrog; 2008; 3
Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 5
- After the Holocaust
War game depicting a United States sometime following a
limited nuclear war. Industrial production is considerably
reduced and the nation fractured into four: East, Midwest,
South and West. The four sides are uneven, the Midwest having
greater resources (but three neighbors), the South greater
military ability, etc. Features considerable recordkeeping
reminiscent of annual tax forms. The emphasis of the game is
on managing the economies which are all very precarious. War
is a lose-lose proposition. Overall probably too few strategic
options to maintain much interest unless considerable variants
are introduced.
- Age of Exploration
War game about the 15th-century European expeditions to and
explorations of the Americas. Very much an experience game
in which players try to survive amidst extremely straitened
conditions. Mostly a game of competing solitaire efforts.
Once one has managed to accomplish the major obstacles in
the game, e.g. conquering the Aztecs, does not cry out to
be played again, largely because of lack of interesting
strategic decisionmaking. Graphics remind more of the
1990's than the 1490's.
- Age of Mythology
The topic is a purported war between ancient Egyptians, Greeks and
Scandinavians and their associated mythical beasts, though not the
strangely absent gods. There is no common board, but each player
has an individualized mat on which to place resource-generating
tiles and buildings. A common Explore action permits each player
to draft new terrain while a common Gather action produces
resources so long as the supply lasts. Resources in excess
of storage capacity are lost at the end of the turn. Sound a
little like Puerto
Rico so far? Now we diverge, for alongside all this is
an involved system of recruiting and fighting armies. These
activities, as well as building construction, are conducted
individually, each player dipping into a unique supply. Combat
uses a Rock-Paper-Scissors approach to assign advantages
and then lots of dice to resolve. To the winners go the spoils,
one of terrain theft, goods pilfering or building destruction.
Victory is earned by point acquisition as each turn players
allocate a single point to one of Most Buildings, Largest Army,
Wonder or Battle. All but the last are awarded at the end of
play while Battle points go to the next player to win one. (This
mechanism could be fascinating if points were assigned instead
as a side effect of what players were doing elsewhere.) A large
number of plastic pieces in a wide variety of shapes are provided
– minotaurs, manticores and anything similar you can imagine –
and these reveal the game's essence, i.e. plastic combat. The
pieces fight one-by-one until all are dead and often there are
ties so it has to be done all over again while the uninvolved wait
... and wait. But the worst is yet to come. The serial, guessing
nature of combat makes results very random which really calls
into question all the strategic play around it. It's like plot
in a porn movie – just postponing the "good part". A further
problem is the imbalance that develops from being ganged up on
with no structural mechanism to keep a trailing player's chances
viable. Defenses such as the Wall and Tower quickly become
useless so the best such a player can do is recruit more army,
but not quickly enough to catch up before being bashed and losing
something else important. There is no approach that works without
a victorious army and once you lose that it's four plus hours of
waiting before it ends. There's also a lot of randomness in the
special cards which are poorly balanced and worse, shared between
players in a full playing. Thematic matters are not very well
handled either. Beyond the gallivanting gods and teleporting
terrain, just where are these armies supposed to be meeting
anyway? Why do monsters want to help the mortals that usually
they're eating? By rights the players ought to be in charge of
the monsters of others' mythologies. Battle has no historical
sense – there is no point to leading with light or fast forces
for example and a lot of pieces have nonsensical advantages only
there for type balancing purposes. A degree of overanalysis
as well as kingmaking can crop up in the end game as a result
of the open victory points. There are communication design
issues. Building costs are listed in one place and functions
in another. No markers are provided to track the current age.
Some pieces, e.g. Greek archers and hoplites, are too similar
in profile. Worst of all, the units summary that every player
wants to see at the same time is only printed on one double-sided
sheet. Player screens for secret deployments are really needed
as well. Players looking for Puerto Rico with combat
need to keep looking. Those wanting a combat system with fancy
plastic pieces should just draft an army, play out the battles and
throw away all the window dressing. If, nevertheless, you still
intend to try this, at least speed up matters by providing about
twenty-five dice and plenty of rolling space so that players in
combat don't wait on one another.
- Age of Renaissance
War game for up to six set in the Renaissance era. A bit reminiscent of
Civilization,
it is much less convincing as history.
The perspective is extremely fuzzy as sometimes
the player acts like a country and at other times like a trading
company.
The competition for spaces doesn't make sense as combat, nor does it
make sense as commercial activity. Beyond the theming, there are more
problems in terms of ambiguous rules, a strange sequence of play that
makes things unintuitive and a Crusades card which often has
an unbalancing effect on play.
Games of the Italian Renaissance]
- Air Baron
Game about controlling American jet aircraft routes. Much of the game
is about luck of the dice and psychological positioning.
- Air Force
Tactical war game about World War II aircraft in conflict over Europe.
The system works fairly well for small numbers of aircraft and I am
unaware of any attempts to better it with newer systems, apart from
those which actually use miniature aircraft.
(Since I wrote the above, someone has written in to recommend
Fighting Wings by Clash of Arms.)
Although there are rules for a player's pilot improving ability
through experience, it does not really begin to describe an
entire larger campaign or do much to allow players to place
battles in a wider context. Followed by Dauntless which
expands the same system to the war in the Pacific.
- Air War
War game about air combat in the early jet age, in particular the Korea
and Vietnam eras. Each turn
represents one second of real time which is rather ironic in that just
doing something as simple as flying across the map seems to
take forever.
A good simulation of the era for air tactics fanatics only. Curiously,
supplementing the game's aircraft types with more modern models is not
really of much interest as computers, radar and guided missiles have
taken over so very much of the human element in air combat.
The first paragraph of the rules to that one was a real
grabber. If I can recall:
There are 2 ways of evaluating
complexity to a game. One is the difficulty in understanding
how the rules work. The other is in the strategy of trying
to play the game. As an example,
Chess
would be about a 4 in the first, but a 10 in the second. You can consider
Air War to be a 9 out of 10 on both scales.
- Alaric the Goth
Light war game about the invasions of Rome by the Goths.
A bit too abstracted to be truly interesting. Companion to
Attila the Hun.
- Anno 1452
Austrian (Piatnik) game about crowning the Holy Roman Emperor is more
involved and has a more war gamesque feel than most German games.
Has many textual cards which can be problematic for
players without benefit of German. Only the advanced version with
its negotiation and alliance features is really recommended as the basic
game does not provide the players with enough ability to catch up to a
leader. With the above caveats in mind, a very interesting and flavorful
longer game.
[FAQ]
[game tracks chart]
- Antike
Empire-building game for up to six that wants to
recreate the classic
Civilization as a
two-hour affair – you know, for those who don't want to
marry a game, but just have a quick fling. Time-wise the folk
at Eggert-Spiele have done it, but oh what was lost on the road
to this particular Damascus. Entirely gone are so many of the
thematic elements that made Tresham's game great, including city
sites, differing land capacities, interrelationships between
technology cards, etc. Card trading is gone as well. What we do
have is an area map of the Western Mediterranean (the Eastern
is on the reverse) with evenly spaced land and water areas
– look closely to see that it's actually a distorted hex
grid. Each area contains a city site that produces a commodity
in one of the three kinds: marble, iron or gold. These are not
clumped so that, say, one part of the world has a majority of
the gold, but instead are evenly distributed across the map. All
three materials are needed to make a city, but each also has
a particular use, to wit: gold – advances, iron –
armies/fleets, marble – temples (production triplers).
Player sides are named (Phoenicians, Persians, etc.) and given
starting areas, but have
no other differentiation.
Instead this is provided by the players as they decide
which type of production center to build a temple on
and what to buy. There are some choices here: build up
all production first and spread out later or spread out
first and build up later, but it's not clear that they
don't amount to the same thing. Or rather, it depends on
whether you can do what you plan without being attacked
by others. It is possible to play the entire game without
attacking, but this is probably unlikely. Still, it is a
logistical game at heart, even if a step down from the
company's prior
Neuland.
Something of that games' "action circle" returns here as the "rondel",
the most innovative feature. Now the pieces of the circle
each hold a label that dictate which action a player may
perform on that turn, choices being things like "produce
marble", "recruit soldiers", "move units", etc. The trick
is that one's next choice is free if it is within the
next three, but costs a resource if more than that. One's
natural next choice is always at the opposite side of the
circle, i.e. more than three away, so one has the choice
to pay and do the obvious thing right away or wait and
begin a second interleaving activity. The second option
is usually preferable, but imminent other player
activities, such as technology cards running out or
a large army build-up, make that subject to change.
Victory is based on acquisition of a sufficient number
of personality cards, which serve no other purpose. Most
of these are given for positive activities, e.g.
building a multiple of 5 cities or 3 temples, occupying
a multiple of 7 sea zones, etc., but one is for enemy
temple destruction. The cost, however, to destroy a
temple is quite high – a large number of attacking forces
will be lost – probably leaving the attacker vulnerable
somewhere, so kingmaking should be kept to a minimum.
Loss of a single temple might not even be very serious in
the second half of the game either, although several
would. Overall, matters work all right, but end up
being more a logistical challenge akin to
Neuland
than a
Civilization.
Those who want historical theme will mostly be disappointed.
Tacticians will find average scope for their talents. Like
Civilization,
this may actually be several different games depending on the
number of players and more tests will be needed to figure
this out. I wonder how long it will be before folks buy
two sets and try putting the two board sides together for
one enormous variant.
[Periodic Table of Board Games]
[Inventor's Comments]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: High
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Armor at Kursk (Prochorovka)
War game (microgame) depicting the single largest tank battle in
history, 1943
in Prochorovka, Russia. It is an extremely unusual situation as the
battlefield is divided lengthwise into three very separate sections
by a river and an 18-foot high railroad embankment. Thus players are
essentially conducting three separate battles simultaneously. Rules
are quite straighforward without any zones of control and the game plays quickly.
The first edition was called Prochorovka and the second, which
added errata and designer's notes, Armor at Kursk.
Rather satisfying introductory effort, especially for tank fans.
- Assassin
Game about assassins moving about Europe to execute contracts seems
to get a lot of bad press, some of it undeserved. It is not a very good
game, but neither is it as bad a game as its detractors would have one
believe. It seems everyone loves to hate some game or another and this
one seems to have attracted much of this residue. With a
variant to smoothen card play,
it is actually not half bad.
Designer Chris Baylis was unhappy about the Avalon Hill
modifications and has made his
original rules available on the web as well.
- Asteroid Zero-Four
Tactical science fiction war game (microgame).
With a Cold War mindset, the United States
and Soviet Union hasve each occupied a rock in the Asteroid Belt
and are intent
on lobbing ICBM's at one another. Mutual destruction is certainly
assured, the
only question being which is destroyed less in what is essentially
a staid,
targeting game.
- Atlantic Storm
Trick-taking card game translated to a World War II setting
where each card is qualified both for a side and a ship or
submarine, etc.
As a thematic game it makes little sense since players use cards from
both the Axis and Allied sides (as did Naval War). As
a trick-taking
game it isn't particularly playable either as hands are not all
dealt out
in advance, but instead players get only five cards and then
replenish one
each turn. This not only leads to a lot of busywork and downtime
in drawing and studying
cards, but kills virtually any planning. There is even a special feature
whereby certain craft are vulnerable to certain other craft,
but the game's
draw-and-replenish routine kills its own feature as there is almost no
possibility of it actually happening. If one wants a trick-taking game,
there are many that are much better than this.
- Attack of the Mutants
Grade B horror/science fiction movie parody set in a college,
for 2 players. This was the title of two different games by
the same publisher.
This entry describes the introductory version.
Mutants, some radioactive, invade the campus
of Central State Tech, represented by 25 rooms, defended
by robots and 4 humans trying to finish an experiment to
escape by warping to an alternate earth. If the mutants
reach the control room in 10 turns they win. Interesting
atmosphere but very little decisionmaking.
- Attila the Hun
Light war game about the invasions of Rome by the Huns.
A bit too abstracted to be truly interesting. Companion to
Alaric the Goth.
- Awful Green Things from Outer Space, The
War game inspired by the outer space horror movie Alien.
Very humorous art and situation make for a romp of a game, although
the crew are virtually doomed if unable to find an effective
area weapon.
An amusing coda describing what happens to the crew if they successfully
escape is pods is not included in all editions.
Tom Wham
- Axis and Allies
Simplistic war game of World War II on a global scale at a very macro
level. The Nova edition was later dumbed-down in a Milton Bradley GameMaster
series edition for the plastic pieces crowd. Introductory at best.
- Azteca
War game on Aztec tribes given the European light treatment
(published by Tilsit Editions) lasts about two hours or so and
offers plenty of opportunity for diplomacy and sudden strikes.
The war game elements are softened by a large number of event
cards, hidden victory totals, simple combat, random cup draws
for army movements and an uncertain game ending. Components are
very numerous and look nice, particularly the game box and four
pyramid tokens. Certainly a far more colorful and atmospheric
treatment of the pre-Columbian Aztecs than
The One World,
the sole previous effort
on this topic. A concern is whether the red and yellow sides are at
a disadvantage due to their central positions, but more
plays of this multifarious offering are necessary to make a final
determination. In some circles, it may be a concern that it is easy
for players to accidentally (or dishonestly!)
give themselves more victory points than they
actually deserve. Rules questions are discussed on this
consimworld.com board.
[rules translation]
[play outline translation]
[cards translation]
On to B
- Main
Please forward any comments and additions for this site to
Rick Heli.