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- Napoleon at Waterloo
Very introductory wargame given away by SPI with new subscriptions to
their magazine Strategy & Tactics. Units are army, cavalry
or artillery rated only for movement and strength. Zones of control are
semi-rigid and active. Not a bad introduction to the hobby as it is simple,
fast and fairly balanced.
- Naval War
Card game about sinking World War II enemy ships. Cards from all
nations are randomly distributed to all players so there is no strong
adherence to theme. Is actually mostly a translation of
Nuclear War to a World War II naval setting.
Later release Atlantic Storm is another way of doing a similar
thing with trick-taking. Naval War tends to degenerate
into a luck-of-the-draw and popularity contest without use of two
vitally-important variant rules: night actions and partnership.
[Take That! Card Games]
- Necromancer
Magazine wargame in a fantasy setting in which two magic wielders raise forces
from the dead to fight one another over three "jewels of power"
in a many-leveled misty land. The chief innovations are that players may
convert enemy troops to their own side and that the more units controlled, the
weaker each one becomes. Unit types are similar to those of
Sorcerer
with Zombies heavy and slow, Wraiths fast and weak and Skeletons
moderate with bows and arrows. Jewels have a large possible
variety of effects which are only determined when in the actual hands of the
necromancer. Several optional rules keep the play fresh as well.
This absorbing system is very expandable for more players
simply by photocopying counters and re-coloring.
- Nuclear War
Satirical card game about major nuclear conflagration which owes a lot to
Touring.
What would seem
to be a no-win subject actually makes for a blackly humorous experience
as players used secrets, propaganda and nuclear missiles to gradually
reduce their opponents' populations, leading to the famous phrase, "Do you
have change for twenty-five million people?"
As players get to make a "final strike" when their last population is
destroyed, it often happens that no one wins. If a player happens to
hold a one hundred megaton bomb, he can even try to destroy the world.
Anti-missiles actually borrow from the rules of Mah Jongg they
cause that player to be the one to take the next turn.
Perhaps of less poignancy
now that the Cold War has ended, but still a fast and fun silly experience.
[Take That! Card Games]
[Flying Buffalo[
[Rules]
- Nuclear War: Nuclear Escalation
Expansion kit updated flavor for the newer technologies of the 1980's
including cruise missiles, MX missiles, spies,
space platforms and killer satellites.
In general worthwhile because more options make things less certain.
Can also be played standalone, although less successfully as there
are fewer cards. Six blank cards came with the set and for these
I designed six variant cards which
were published in Space Gamer magazine, issue no. 74.
[Flying Buffalo]
- Nuclear War: Nuclear Proliferation
Second expansion adds countries with special powers, which are a bit
unbalanced and not all that interesting. But the rest of the modernizing
additions such as SCUD missiles, atomic cannon, stealth bombers and fighters,
submarines, Patriot anti-missiles, saboteurs and other cards are well
worth it. After this there were also individual cards sold, later on
grouped into booster packs.
[Flying Buffalo]
- O -
- Ogre
Wargame based on the science fiction story "Bolo" by Keith Laumer
(who is better known for his "Retief" series). One of the first
and still best micro-games games playable in a half hour or so,
but still containing interesting strategic and tactical decisions
for both sides, even if inside a chaotic environment of dice rolling.
Probably there are not enough dice rolls to avoid the vagaries of
the dice here, but it remains an excellent introductory wargame.
Later followed on by GEV.
[Steve Jackson Games]
- One World: One World
Two player wargame (microgame) set in a wholly-invented mythological or
fantasy world. Actually works almost like an abstract as each
player has pieces of three types, each of which move in a different way.
Combat was handled via the rock-scissors-paper technique.
An amusing romp with more playability than one would first imagine.
- One World: Annihilator
The same package also includes Annihilator,
a two-player science fiction wargame in which an enormous invading robot
ship immune to energy and solid weapons must be boarded and disable from within
by space marines. Very light and subject to luck of the dice.
More adaptable than most to solitaire play.
- One World, The
Wargame about an obscure topic, battles of pre-Columbian Aztecs,
has some interesting ideas but does not really work heavy modification.
[more]
[variant]
- Origins: How We Became Human
This one is not easy to write, especially having had a hand
helping to develop it for a while. But mine was not the main
hand and not all ended up the way I wanted so there should be
at least some kind of balance in my perspective. First, let's
entice with the novelties.
In how many games can you refer to an opponent as a
Neanderthal and be correct?
In how many can you enslave another player? Or force another
to enslave you?
How many games have the kind of breadth that goes from the
development of speech centers in the brain to the atomic bomb?
This one presents human progress as a synthesis of brain evolution,
resource exploitation (taking after
Guns, Germs and Steel)
and ideas. It is
a game of efficiencies with considerable luck. On a hex map of the
world play begins with each player a minor tribe, one of
Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon, Peking Man, Archaic Humans or the
recently-discovered Homo floresiensis. This may be giving a bit too
much credence to the multi-regional theory of human origins,
but works well for a five-player game. In later eras,
Cro-Magnon is considered to have "won" and player divisions
automagically alter to become races and then nationalities as
the three eras of play proceed. Player activities are governed
by two tracks: Innovation and Population. As these tracks are
cleared by removing cubes from them to the board or brain,
players receive more and more action points. Initially the
primary actions are to draw cards and move. Later, other
activities such as domestication (à la
Jared Diamond),
resource exploitation and attacks come to the fore. The first
two depend on the roll of the die to a great extent and thus
can be cruel, though some cards help by providing die
modifiers. Combat is part of the game, but normally should be
limited to a small, sharp attack if players are aiming to win.
One of the best things players can do is play cards that gain
them elders. Not only does this clear the Innovation track and
thus afford a wide array of possible Innovation actions, but
it provides the ability to bid on Public, we could call them
civilization or achievement, cards. Available in three areas
– information, culture and administration – not only
do they provide most of the victory points, they also
confer some side advantage or disadvantage or both. Administration
cards provide an interesting example. Each turn the player
needs to perform a die roll to see whether his civilization
has collapsed. The fewer cubes he has on his Population track,
the more likely this is, but the player's best administration
card modifies the die roll to make it less likely. So this
is good, usually. But the inventor also presents the theory
that before a civilization can make progress into the new era,
it first must fail. So at a certain point the player actually
wants to fail this roll and if he has too much administration
it can be difficult. By the way, each player has a different
set of victory conditions, i.e. wants to collect just two
types of cards. But as in
Aquarius,
one action is to exchange victory conditions with someone
else, which can be cancelled at some cost by the intended
victim.
In terms of design, most great games have at least one
innovation not really seen in games before. Here we can count
at least three: (1) forces travel along hex lines and fully
occupy the three hexes around the intersection on which they
stand; (2) technology transfer occurs by one player picking up
a card from another's discard pile – very easy and
intuitive; and (3) gaining ability places something called
Elders into a pool which, when spent, are not removed, but
just go into the expended state from which they may be reset
and spent again and again – a nice representation of the
idea of capacity.
At the same time there are aspects of the game that will
irritate those sufficiently sensitive to problems of the
kind. Some are caused by attempts to bring out as much of the
theme as possible. Weather changes occur by die roll and can
severely cramp the range and options of some positions, which
may find their players with not much to do for rather long
periods of time. There are also going to be a few too many
niggly details for some, like remembering which tracks cubes
go to and come from and other matters, enough to inspire me to
create a
help sheet
to be used in addition to the one already in the game. Then
too, the discard pile system means that memory is a useful
skill which can be irritating to some. There are game flow
issues. Card draws are at the
start of the turn rather than the end, which can slow down
play. The design correctly diagnoses the potential for a runaway
winner, but solves it not by helping out those in the back,
but by creating an intentional bottleneck, that is the wait for
the very-hard-to-achieve energy level 2, which is the only way
to reach Era III. Of course this is a solution, but it's a blunt
force instrument that just makes everyone wait. The biggest
omission, however, is that there is not enough strategic variation.
Winning is a matter of playing in one kind of way, constantly
improving the Innovation track, having Elders to bid with and
progressing as fast as possible. There is no room here for an
idea such as a military victory or other kind of strategic
path. In fact, even attempting such is a major disaster as the
player who constantly fights finds himself with almost no actions and
little ability to climb out of the hole he has dug for
himself. Not only that, he puts his attackee(s) into the same
hole and, as cards are coming out at a slower than usual rate,
delays the progress of play for everyone. On the plus side,
however, this is an excellent treatment of theme. Some of its
bases are controversial, but they're often fascinating
nonetheless, such as Jaynes' theory of the
bicameral mind.
Each of the cards is labeled and illustrated with some
milestone in the human march to Progress. The
rulebook and backs of pages contain considerable background
information (in English only, while the rules themselves are in
both English and German, which is confusing at first, but
eventually assimilable).
Furthermore, the latest research and findings are often
included, such as the
recent discovery of settlements now lying beneath the North Sea.
The Diamond thesis that describes
how Eurasia had the best plants and animals while other
continents did not is somewhat departed from because otherwise
it would hardly be a balanced game. Good plants and animals are
found throughout the world.
Perhaps the single most interesting feature is one I
discovered by accident and I doubt was put in intentionally,
but comes out naturally from the research. Players often neglect
climate changes alter that the map by colonizing
areas they are not allowed to enter. To correct this tendency
I started placing translucent chips over the spaces which could
not be entered. Together these chips created lines which completely
isolate certain map areas. Sub-saharan Africa was one; the East
Asian heartland another; the rest of Eurasia a third. The
interesting bit is that this completely dovetails with what
some Berkeley anthropologists theorize must have happened in the
ancient human past: human groups cut off from one another, reduced to
smaller groups that were unable to interbreed. According to them,
anyone looking for an explanation of why there are races, and what
races are, need look no further. It's rather amazing to have this
elucidated by a game. In terms of production, having been
produced by the German printer Ludofact, this effort is head and
shoulders above anything to previously appear from
Sierra Madre Games.
True, the box is too large, but that does leave
room for expansion kits, even other Sierra Madre Games games. The
map looks good for the most part, although the use of a
saturated red over saturated blue causes the "color
vibration", used to great effect in ancient Etruscan tombs,
but somewhat jarring here. The overall footprint is also large as
besides the board, a player needs a personal display and also a
help sheet. It all just barely fits on a large table. I find
it useful to also add clear chips to remember the starting
points for the tracks and as mentioned above, for the map.
To wrap up, this is certainly not for everyone. It probably
needs more than two players to be good and at least three
hours as well. It has a few too many rules to be other than a
game for gamers. Although aiming for the German-style, it ends
up more a hybrid. Its fans will be those having patience, open
minds and above all an interest in its theme. Still, it's not
difficult in the
Chess
sense, just a bit complicated.
[summary]
Strategy: Low; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
Philip Eklund; 2007; Sierra Madre Games; 2-5
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