Command and Colors: Napoleonics Scenaro THE BATTLE OF CASTALLA

Image via Wikipedia

Here is another one of my fan made scenarios for Command and Colors: Napoleonics.  This one focuses on the Battle of Castalla, late in the Peninsular War.   Marshal Suchet is endangering Wellington’s line of march by threatening to join up with other French armies in the Peninsula.  Wellington had to find a way to keep the Marshal busy, and succeeds with a polyglot command of Sicilians, British, and Spanish troops under the overall command of General Murray.

Castalla mapImage via Wikipedia

Related articles

• Scenario Card for Castalla download
• Map Graphic (PNG Image)
• Command and Colors Napoleonics Support website (misternizz.wordpress.com)
• Command and Colors Napoleonics Scenario: The Bridge at Almarez (misternizz.wordpress.com)

Command and Colors Napoleonics Scenario: The Bridge at Almarez

What, another free Command and Colors: Napoleonics Scenario so soon?

In honor of discovering http://www.ccnapoleonics.net, I dusted off a Command and Colors: Napoleonics  scenario I had tested a while back and took another look at it.  This was not created using the Vassal tool that is used on the CCNapoleonics portal, instead it was created entirely with other open source tools: Hexographer, using their free online Java version of their map builder, and Open Office for the text.  This scenario was based upon an article from The Napoleon Series.

The Bridge at Almaraz is a good old fashioned raid with a deadline.  The British start on the map on one side of it and have to negotiate the terrain and hostile French forces that could delay them in their rear at Castle Mirabete.  Their task is to clear Forts Ragusa and Napoleon to blow a bridge across the Tagus.  If they can accomplish this, the two French armies in Portugal will face serious delay in combining against Wellington.

Map for "The Bridge at Almaraz"

Related Material

• Command and Colors Napoleonics Support website (misternizz.wordpress.com)
• Scenario Card for The Bridge at Almaraz
• Larger Map Graphic File

GMT Games has created a fun game with a lot of tinkering potential in Command and Colors: Napoleonics. I hope you enjoy this tinkering.

Lightning Review: LOOT AND SCOOT by Victory Point Games

A new series of short reviews of IOS/Android game apps, produced using my Ipad2 and coming in at five minutes or less per review.

This was a LR of LOOT AND SCOOT, by Victory Point Games.  Loot and Scoot started life as a paper and cardboard game and was recently ported to both Android and IOS (Ipad) platforms as a game app.  My experience is entirely with the Ipad version, though I’m certain the Android game wouldn’t play any differently.  Loot and Scoot can be summarized as a fun little rolling dice and luck-pressing game with a heavy fantasy dungeon crawl theme.

Production note: I apologize for the audio cutoff at the end there, I was just saying “Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy Loot and Scoot”.

Sniff.. so long, Steve. Image via Wikipedia

Related articles

• A Victory Point Games Christmas from Christian Lindke’s Cinerati (cinerati.blogspot.com)
• Best iOS App for Christmas (insideview.ie)
• Lightning Review: CELTIC HEROES for the Ipad (misternizz.wordpress.com)
• Lightning Review: Hero Academy for IoS (misternizz.wordpress.com)

2011 Nigel Clarke Invitational Christmas Game

I honestly thought I was boned, trying to get to the annual Nigel Clarke game.  This is the Christmas event my gaming group, the TNGG people, throw pretty close to the end of the year.   The last few years have featured a re-themed CIRCUS MAGICUS race (“Circus Santicus”), and as far back as 2005 I even put one on, THE DARK SECRET OF SANTA TOWN.   End of the year games tend to be pretty goofy, high concept, low on rules and universally about Winter or Christmas.  Hosting duties this year were assumed by Steve Gibson, an old hand at the Christmas game.   Steve’s offering this year was Christmas zombies. Steve runs a lot of Zombie games, using the Ares Fantasy rules.

Reinforcements

that’s a whole lot of zombies.

Ares Rulebook

We’ve played in Steve’s zombie games before and they usually are modern affairs set in a universe somewhat similar to Resident Evil.  Not this time!  This game was the Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge.  Small units from both the German and American armies blunder into a terror greater than any horror of war they could possibly imagine in the midst of a driving snow storm.

The Map

American and German troops start the game on the move– the Americans have two halftracks, one of which is disabled, the other has run out of gas and ammunition (a common theme in the Ardennes). The Germans also have a halftrack, which is on fumes.  There are three German units, all squad sized.  One enters from the top right corner of the map above, and ends up beset by a zombie horde.  Another is in the half track.  Another is taking refuge in building 1.  Most Americans ended up in buildings 2 or 3.  I ended up making a beeline for 2, then changing my mind when it became clear that zombies were present, so I made for the much smaller and more open building 4.   I entered from the bottom left corner.

Inistial move, my corner of the board

The rules were ARES Fantasy combat miniatures rules with some zombie detection and generation rules influenced by ALL THINGS ZOMBIE. I’ve played it before, and found the basic framework easy enough to understand, except for combat, which I had to watch carefully to grasp. I arrived late, so missed the initial couple of turns, but Steve graciously made a space for me in the game. Alas, my force wasn’t exactly a group of hard chargers. They were a small headquarters division, green soldiers except for the veteran sergeant I had along with us.

My Jeep only made it so far.

And they drove in directly from the Southeast Corner, as mentioned.

not exactly GI Joes

My guys were HQ soldiers, not exactly G.I. Joes. I had two green rifle squad guys and an experienced Sergeant with a Thompson SMG.  Fortunately I was entering the map with the only vehicle with sufficient gas in it.  My first encounter was with an advancing horde of reinforcing zombies, so I had to find shelter, fast.  The primary victory condition for any side was surviving through the upcoming snowstorm, which made the combat conditions less than optimal.

Grenade City!

The battle was brief actually.  There were more shots fired between Americans and Germans than humans and zombies.  Both German units in contact with the Americans were what I would characterize as “Grenade Happy”, tossing potato mashers at the Americans all willy-nilly.  This did a number on the Americans, but also did a fine job of attracting more zombies, much to everyone’s chagrin.

Bunkering down as best I could

I got my little HQ team to Building 4, where we prepared to climb up the stairs, barricade ourselves in on top of the stairs and be besieged by a ravening horde all evening, all the while trying to deal with staying alive in a blizzard when half the building is gone.  Other forces on the table were retreating to the safety of the houses, except for the German halftrack (which was highly zombie resistant) and the German squad in the upper right corner, which got surrounded and wiped out. See below for their fate.

So long, Germans!

The other American Squads eventually clustered in Building 2, which had the best shelter available and fewer entrances for zombies to assail.  They had the best shot at surviving the night.

Non Motorized Germans bunkering in

The other Germans, above, managed to make it building 1, and probably had a decent shot of surviving.

German Half Track winner

The halftrack, as seen above, was last seen exiting the area with every ounce of horsepower they could muster, followed by a giant horde of slaverng goons. I guess they might be “the winner”, but I suspect the ‘track only got a mile or so before running out of gas completely and being beset on all sides by the undead.

Simple concept, simple enough rules, great presentation. The Christmas theme was terrific, maybe the best yet. Hats off to Steve Gibson (and children) for putting this one on.

Chris Gibson sums it up like this: zombieswantbrainsforxmas.mp3

And Merry Christmas, Nigel!

Imagine a miniatures army in 1 to 1 scale…

You can’t. Of course we scale up so that multiple individuals are represented on, say a scale of ten figures a man up to fifty, a hundred or even a few hundred men per figure. There aren’t that many figures, that much time or that much table space, in the world. Is there?

Of course, you knew I was setting you up to contradict myself. Yes, someone out there has made a 1 to 1 scale army, using old Airfix plastic model soldiers of Wellington’s entire army during the Peninsular War in the early 19th century.  That’s two and a half DIVISIONS in a 1 figure to 1 man scale.   All I can say is that he had a lot of time and a lot of skill.  What he doesn’t have, as you can see, is a lot of room to maneuver this grand army of his.  Unless he plays a game in a nearby airport terminal.   Now, of course, he’ll have to paint a similar French force.  Oy.

Imagine the YEARS that went into this effort, even with crappy paint jobs.

Walt and the very cold and wet FALL-IN! 2011

Friday!

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Yay! I woke up, lept out of my feetie pajamas and bound about the house to get ready for FALL IN!, the Autumn historical miniatures convention run by HMGS (the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society). I actually had a plan, positioning stuff for quick launch the night before. For some reason, nothing works on time when you are going to a convention. It’s like I automatically find some way to FALL IN to a temporal distortion field. In this instance, it was news that snow was expected in the Lancaster PA area, where we were holding the con. So that means.. switching cars to a 4WD, driving to Drey’s school, tapping on the window to get the key, driving all the way back, gassing up the car, packing all my stuff OUT of the van INTO the 4WD.. and..

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! We’re off at last!

Planned departure: 0900 / Actual departure, closer to 1100

Driving up was non-eventful. I went up 15 to 30 to York/Lancaster, like I always do. No stops, and it took about 2.5 hours. This put me at the convention at a point where there wasn’t any staff working at all. That’s right, the staff room was closed mid-day. Why? Because they couldn’t find anyone to work staff! Being hungry, I went to Panera. Even thought it has NOTHING to do with a convention, I had a moment of Zen on the way back. Hot air balloons. Two of them, quietly gliding over the cobalt grey country sky.

(I couldn’t zoom in to them, they were far too high)

When I got back from Panera there were people in the staff room after a while. It wasn’t my intention to work staff for this convention, but Jon Paul gave me those puppy dawg eyes and I had to say yes. So don’t let anyone tell you that we work just for the free hotel room, cuz mine was already paid for by me. I signed up for a shift on Saturday, pretty much killing my schedule that I had posted on before, but that was okay by me.

Our crack reg office staff. This was almost all of them since so few volunteered to help this time.

As it was, I had already missed out on two or three “must-see” games anyway. HOWEVER! I did manage to sleeze my way into a fantastic game of CANVAS EAGLES Friday evening.

Unfortunately, SLIDE.COM is going out of business. So my old standby for making viewable slideshows has vanished. However, if you this link below you will see a slideshow of:

Click me! for slideshow

BLAZING ZEPPELINS!

You may want to “Reverse Order” this (bottom left) to view in sequence

This was a great event for me. Canvas Eagles is essentially an open source replacement for the older GDW boardgame BLUE MAX. I had never played CE before but had played plenty of games of the older Blue Max game, and the mechanics are very similar– your plane is capable of a range of maneuvers that execute on a hex map, and both sides plot and execute them simultaneously. It’s kind of like the old ACE OF ACES system but in 3D. I had a great time. Since the convention was somewhat under-attended to begin with, the GM was looking for players. He had planned for four zeppelins and only one was on the board, with only one French fighter attacking it. The fighter had done some damage, so I came in on the next turn with a Pfalz fighter. I maneuvered around the zepp to get a tailing condition on the Frenchie, then he pulled a wrong move by accident turning AWAY from the Zeppelin, and then when I sped up to catch him, BANG! ZIP!! I overshot him and got shot to pieces. I went into a spin, everything looked dire. I then recovered and tried to line up on Monsieur Froggie again but by that time German victory conditions had been met– the German zepp was off the board. This was played with impressive huge zeppelin models and 1:72 scale aircraft models. Not exactly to scale but that really doesn’t matter– the concept was conveyed in a visual and exciting fashion. I had to thank the GM for the effort he put into the game– the logistical tale for putting one of those games on must be impressive (See the pictures above to get an idea of what I’m talking about).

I would have stayed for a bit and played again after we achieved victory, but had a pounding sinus headache and I really just wanted to take a few advil. Of course, going anywhere in a convention and not meeting people is pretty much impossible (at least for HMGS cons) so I did spend an hour or two at the bar on the way out. Great evening of gaming..

Saturday!

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Saturday dawned with rainy slush pelting down. I quickly popped over to Target and picked up some boots (not to be profligate, I needed new ones) a snow shovel and a window brush., then got to the Host in time for the snow to start falling in earnest.

And falling…

and falling…

And fallllling.

I’ll miss slide.com, they made convention reports easy.

I did a pass-through of the Flea before taking post on station in registration, thanks to Jon Paul’s encouragement. This was a great idea, as I found a guy selling his old 1:1200 Richard Houston/Lyzard’s Grin era per-dreadnought Austrian and Italian ships for The Battle of Lissa. This was a hell of a find, I got most of the Austrian fleet for half price. Thanks, flea market!

The world won’t end quite yet, it still hasn’t sold.

I worked my shift with no big worries. By Saturday mid day there just weren’t many people coming to this convention. The combination of the date (Halloween) and the snow drove away a lot of visitors that were sitting on a fence about making a day trip. We had a few die-hards.

I revisited the Vendor Hall in earnest after my shift to get a little shopping in. I ended up buying enough 1:1200 ships to fill out the Battle of Lissa Austrian fleet from Outland Games of Ohio (the nearest online vendor carrying this line that I could find is Great Endeavors). I also bought a few more Italians and will probably finish out the line once I’m done with all those Austrians. I also bought some bases for the ships, the new Warhammer historical GLADIATOR book, a couple of magazines and some fascinating 1:600 scaled ACW Artillery men (single stands) from a Polish company. My plan is to paint these up as ships’ crew on open cockpit Uncharted Seas hulls.

Unfortunately some vendors I was looking for did not show up– I was looking for Splintered Light and Brookhurst Hobbies. The Vendors were thin on the ground and the hall was relatively unpopulated for HMGS show. I attribute it to the bad weekend and the weather. Likewise the vendors that did show were not full up– the War Store is a must-see for me and they had very little Uncharted Seas and Dystopian Wars items. Sigh. In any event I was happy with what I purchased (in particular, the new gladiator rules from WH, they look very thorough and interesting.. and I have tons of 54mm glads painted up already).

I did see some interesting pieces from Tony Reidy’s old company, Wargames Factory: some pre-painted, pre-assembled figures called “Leviathans” or perhaps “Monsters in the Sky”. They were introduced at GENCON and were there for demo purposes only– apparently they are part of a larger boardgame that is imminent. These look very intriguing, like Aeronef on Steroids.

If anyone out there knows anything about this range, I’m interested. Please comment on this blog post.

FALL-IN! is not a convention for making big new product line announcements, and to be honest, I didn’t notice many new things, other than the Pumpkin demon and the Corn God from Acheson creations (below). There was a lot of onesies and twosies and cool lines that I like that got updated but I didn’t really go crazy over anything. Of note was a major presence from Architectural Creations, Barb’s Bunker of old, who are really pushing for a convention presence. Their trench lines were things of beauty, but I couldn’t afford them.

Things I was contemplating, but decided against buying this time around: Another War Rocket fleet and some British Landing parties for my cutting out party game that I have in mind to do. The latter choice was one of those last minute decisions– I’m going to have to make a major investment in some scenery to make a port and possibly even a 28mm scale ship, so this isn’t a game I can get off without paying the piper for. I guess I’m being naturally cautious in times of economic turmoil. I normally buy an Ironclad or two from Toby but I’m a little backed up on them at the moment and need to paint my way out of the queue.

To summarize my shopping experience.. not as much as at the other two cons, but I am very happy with what I did get. I’m liking the Gladiator rules quite a bit and of course I’m somewhat goofily pleased that I managed to get most of the Battle of Lissa so cheaply.

Games around the convention:

(I loved this one.. the figures in the center were exquisitely painted, and they stayed stationery throughout the game, while the terrain pieces moved down the board to signify that the figures in the center were moving.. in this case, retreating from Moscow in 1812)

Uncle Moe’s Santa and Zombies game…

Dave Kujit’s “HOTT in the Cold” game.

Flames of War in the Desert

Starjammers!

Breaking the line at the Coronels

A very colorful medieval era game

Saturday NIGHT, I weaseled my way into Rick Stakes’ large scale Pirates versus Spanish Convoy game (S-256). You may recall I played in one of these at HISTORICON, I had such a good time I came back again. I like Rick’s work on his ships (with one or two exceptions they are all handmade), I like his rules and I like the way he runs events with lots of people in them. Each player ran an individual ship. As a latecomer I didn’t have first choice and got “The Hawk” pirate ship. There’s forty plus pictures in this slide show (link below) and I do not have the time to caption every one, so have a look now…

Click on Rick Stakes Handsome Visage

S-256: Pirate Raid on Spanish Convoy game GM: Rick Stakes

Rules were written by Mr. Stakes, and they were reasonably clear and made sense, reminding me strongly of the old WS&IM board game. Game In a nutshell: The pirate fleet was allowed to set up anywhere on the board. Three of the pirates, including my HAWK ship in red, set up BEHIND the Spanish convoy as they came on the board. We sailed in on them at the end of the first turn and my Hawk got too close. We were roughly handled on the starboard side, but that is the price one pays for the weather gauge sometimes. A pirate ship doesn’t have the strength to sail in and go yardarm to yardarm.. I learned the hard way that the optimal strategy was to shoot at the rigging, not the hull, and to say off a distance. The Spanish fleet sailed up the starboard side of the battle, clustering together and ramming each other at one point. This proved difficult for the ships on the port side of the cluster, which bore the brunt of pirate damage. There was actually a Spanish ship that didn’t even fire the entire game on the starboard side! The Spaniards handled their ships well and supported each other in crucial moments. The pirates did not do as well, and were pretty much all over the place. The pattern of the battle for me was: Sail in close, fire off popguns. Kill a few spaniards and bring down some rigging. Get shot up pretty bad. Sail out, turn around, and sail back to repeat. I’m happy to say I didn’t sink but one of my piratical brethren did. We also captured a Spanish Felucca– which made us think that we held victory, but Mr. Stakes graciously awarded a narrow Spanish victory, due to the fact that there wasn’t a lot of pirate tonnage in the water to oppose Spanish progress. We all thanked Mr. Stakes and asked him to run it again at Cold Wars.

Later on, I did the typical for a Saturday, visiting the standard hangouts, the lobby bar, and hung out for a while. Thence to look for some guys from the TNGG group to play boardgames with, but alas they were already gone.

Sunday!

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I didn’t even hit the flea market Sunday which was disappointing.. time does fly. I visited the Dealer’s room one more time, and packed my bags to say farewell..

And off across the might Susquehanna and home!

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General observations: attendance… was what it was. I’m reminded of the great snow of 2007. You can’t fight weather and rumors of weather. You just shrug and soldier on as best you can. Needless to say, I was able to park in FRONT of the hotel almost every day for the entire convention, and I think you get my drift about what attendance was like. I think this is the last year we are scheduling FALL-IN! for Halloween, so maybe it will pick up next year. Extras: I did the Guidebook App again this year and it ended up looking good despite very late support from Events. If I left out something near and dear to you, I apologize. It’s only an effort as good as the data that drives it, and I received what I received 10 PM Sunday night and had it done by 240 in the morning the next day. The data needed to be vetted better than it did. Considering all that, it STILL was a useful product, and I ended up using it constantly. In fact, I have yet to open up a FALL-IN! 2011 program book. Facilities: The Host is a shabby as ever, but the staff supported us well and rose to the occasion as they usually do. No complaints. Weather: turned out to be a non-event for the most part. When I park my car at a HMGS convention in the morning, I really DON’T WANT TO LEAVE for the entire day. Everything I want to do I can accomplish on premises. So having a surprise blizzard didn’t faze anyone. To quote Bob Leibl in the bar: “Oh dear. I’m trapped, trapped I say, in a place with adequate food and drink, all my friends and toys to play with all weekend. What shall I do, woe is me..” (picture the heavy sarcasm). So, in summary, I had a great time, with a few fits and starts here and there that tried to be flies in the ointment but couldn’t manage it. Congratulations to Andy and his tiny crew of volunteers for pulling off another great convention, and I hope he enjoys an honorable retirement.

Games: You can’t put the Genie back in the bottle

As far as boardgames are concerned, I grew up in a different era– an era of fewer publishers, offering in the aggregate maybe the same amount of games that get published today, but from a narrower range of publishers that often focused on the same subject matter.  Publishers tend to operate with a clustering approach towards markets, this is a phenomenon observed in more than one consumer product.  For instance, how many police procedural shows date back to the phenomenally successful HILL STREET BLUES and (more recently) the CSI collective series?  How many superhero movies have you seen in the past ten years after Spider-Man took off?  Repetition happens in every market, and gaming is definitely one of them.

Arguably the Avalon Hill Game Company started commercial wargaming in 1954 with the publication of Tactics, but the hobby didn’t really flourish until the late 70s and early 80s in my opinion, when we were seeing real giants of the genre being published– the Longest Day, Squad Leader, Up Front, etc. etc.  Likewise, a smaller company, TSR, had been publishing miniature wargame rules since the early 70s, took a gamble on a fantasy supplement to a medieval miniatures rule set called Chainmail, which begat a little game with tremendous implications, Dungeons and Dragons.  All this happened in the late 70s to early 80s, and the impact of it all was an explosion of novelty– new games, new ideas, new publications, new art– really, a whole new hobby.  As a teenager and young man, I ate this stuff up with a spoon.   The early 80s was a colorful era for gaming.   If giants didn’t exactly walk the earth, certainly an interesting cast of characters did– people like Gygax, Arneson, the Blume Brothers, Jim Dunnigan, Richard Berg, Lou Zocchi, Duke Siegfried and a host of other entrepreneurs, designers and  publishers trying to make a nickel and a dime on this explosively growing hobby.  They had one huge advantage that publishers of today do not:

It was all new back then.

Nowadays a publisher has two hurdles to overcome to make it in the publishing world.  The expectations of a newer generation who asks for everything bigger, brighter, newer and more distracting, and the heavy weight of a hobby that is no longer new and no longer as novel as it once was.   When you have 30 YEARS worth of published board wargames on a subject as eponymous as warfare in the Eastern Front of World War II, I fail to see how publishers think we will get excited about the latest (annual) published board wargame on the Eastern Front of World War II.  And yet, there they are, year after year, decade after decade now, games on the same subject with only a few acknowledged innovations in mechanics.

I don’t want to convey the wrong message here.  Games being made today are extremely impressive.  I had Tanga.com ship me a newer version of a game I adored when I was younger, Down in Flames (originally by GMT, now by DVG).  I played the earlier version constantly– forced it on my friends, they loved it and bought some of it too.. I don’t know what happened with this game and my expectations.  I think it was when the cards stopped being published in four color and started being published in full color.. around the time of ZERO! (by GMT, earlier version of DiF).  I just didn’t play that version that much, and the follow up Corsairs and Hellcats, went through the same flurry of enthusiasm only to be shelved forever.  Why is that?

Simple.  You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

I’m beginning to notice a law of diminishing returns for games that are based on well-trodden themes or reprints from my nostalgic past.  I’m not getting nearly as much enjoyment out of them.  Simply put, you can’t go home again.  You can’t make the idea of a game you’ve already played 20 years ago new again, no matter how hard you try.  Games are different.  And YOU are different.  You have those years of experience behind you that colors all those purchasing decisions.  And playing decisions.  I recall another favorite.. the old plastic box Illuminati games by Steve Jackson Games.  We played the hell out of that when I was a youngster.  So much so that the boxes wore out and the cheap components got worn to nubbins.  So when SJG released ILLUMINATI DELUXE, with color cards and money on poker chips, sometime in the 90s, I snapped it up.  We played it a few times, but the game was starting to age badly.  I bought the EVEN MORE deluxe version, sometime in the early 2000s, and guess what, I’ve yet to crack it open.  It’s not as fast as I remember it being, and the jokes have all been told once before.  Either Illuminati has aged badly, or I have.

This past year, as recounted in an earlier post, has really been a banner year for me in terms of purchases.  I have bought more games this year than in the last 7 years (mostly because of Tanga.com and few good preorder deals).  And again, to be brutally honest, I’m slow to play them all.  That’s a huge stack growing down there in the basement, and I’m starting to reign this nonsense in a bit.  Because I suspect I won’t play them all, and some day, sadly, I’ll consign them to a flea market table or re-gift a few of them.  But I’m fighting it.. I’m fighting it hard.  Wish me well.

It’s hard to shake that feeling of “been there, done that” after you have been around a hobby ALL of your adult life.  New games and new mechanics definitely show up now and then and they create a craze that is big, big big for a while, like DOMINION and card drafting games (this just didn’t grab me) or STONE AGE and worker placement games (still fun– see my earlier Alien Frontiers review, but for how long?) or NAPOLEON and block wargames, or PATHS OF GLORY and card-driven, area-movement wargames (rapidly showing its age after 15 years).

I guess, like every other aspect of a consumer culture, games customers need THEIR ration of newer, bigger, faster and more colorful to make the industry work.  Me, I’d just like to put the genie back in the bottle and enjoy games like I did when I was 20 years old.

Soviet Dawn (State of Siege Series) reviewed.

Image via Wikipedia

States of Siege: SOVIET DAWN

I’ve played a few of the States of Siege games created by Darren Leviloff and expanded by other designers from Victory Point Games, and by and large, I find them to be interesting and entertaining, but not really classic wargames.  Victory Point Games’ description of States of Siege games tend to bear his opinion out, as they refer to them as “storytelling games“.  Indeed, I suspect that might be the best descriptor for a solitaire game that really doesn’t feature combat in a classic board wargaming sense.  In almost every game in the series, the player is assigned a central position on a map, there are many tracks leading into that position with markers on them of some sort, and the game consists of playing event cards that move the markers– usually referred to as “Fronts” backwards and forwards on the track until they reach the center, or the game ends, or some other more obscure victory condition is met.   As a game, State of Siege games are only slightly above the level of Candyland in terms of mechanics.  As a storytelling/alternative history generator/teaching “experience”, State of Siege games can be quite entertaining, especially for a player that is somewhat versed in the game’s putative subject matter.    In my experience, I have not really enjoyed State of Siege games beyond the first couple of plays, because I find the gameplay is so simplistic it hardly matters what the outcome is.  If victory is avoiding “fronts” attacking the central position, well, it will happen or it won’t; it all depends on what cards are available when and how well you play them.

At least, that was my conclusion after five plays of my first purchase, the Israeli War of Independence.  After which, I put the game on a shelf and haven’t played it since.

I’ve played a few others since then, but have held off on actually buying any more, having arrived at the conclusion that the games’ basic mechanic was almost cookie-cutter in simplicity and I wasn’t going to bother with other games in a series that that didn’t appear to have a lot of strategic depth to it.   This was before the release of Soviet Dawn.  Soviet Dawn is a State of Siege game that covers a favorite historical period for me, the Russian Revolution, ensuing Civil War, Intervention, and Russo-Polish War, roughly from 1919 to 1922.

This is a time period that I have always maintained a high level of interest in.  A state of chaos had descended on Eastern Europe in the wake of World War One.  The old empires had fallen or were in the process of rapid collapse, and in their place arose the fringe element.  It was an interesting time, in the Chinese sense of the term, and perhaps no one place was more interesting than Russia in the wake of World War I, which experienced in rapid succession: the Abdication of the Czar, the collapse of the Eastern Front (and a separate peace with the Germans), the Provisional Government, the Russian Revolution, and the inevitable civil war between so-called “White” conservatives and Red Communists (with a heavy levy of nationalists, anarchists and foreign intervention to make the conflict interesting).   Surprisingly, for such a tiny game, much of that history is reflected in the design of Soviet Dawn– not as an order of battle and certainly not as part of the game mechanics, which are somewhat generic, but as part of the historical event cards that regulate the advance of “fronts” on all sides of Moscow during the conflict.  Darin Leviloff’s research was up to speed for SOVIET DAWN, and every conceivable event you can think of is reflected in the historical events.  The Event Deck has three “epochs” which change game play to a small extent– Twilight, Darkness and Dawn.  These equate to “Early War” “Mid War” and “Late War” for practical purposes.  Epoch phase deck are played sequentially and are “set off” by trigger cards– if you draw a trigger card, it triggers incorporating the next Epoch into the earlier deck, shuffling the larger deck and drawing from it.  In this manner the game does follow, more or less, the course of history without worrying about bothersome details like dates having to follow each other in a rigid timeline.  As in all STATE OF SIEGE games, the cards will activate 1 or 2 “front” pieces that will advance along a track unless the player intercedes in some fashion.  And like all STATE OF SIEGE games, if one of those fronts makes it to “home” (Moscow), the player must hang it up and try again.

If that was all there was to SOVIET DAWN, I wouldn’t be incredibly enthusiastic about it.  After all, the tactical options are almost meaningless.  There’s only such much enthusiasm I can muster for “if-I-roll-six-on-1D6-I-save-the-motherland” style mechanics.  However, Mr. Leviloff has added some very nice chrome to the design which I hadn’t noticed in other games– like the ability to enhance the Soviet military position by adding optional support units like the Red Army Tank Corps, the dreaded Cheka, or armored trains.  These in addition to the great historical text on the cards, gives this design the unique immersive flavor it so badly needs to be something other than just another STATE OF SIEGE game.

Add on top of that the political index, which rises and lowers through the play of specially marked event cards, is yet another way to win or lose the game.  I am enjoying that aspect of the game tremendously, as it adds to the historical flavor and makes it less of a stand up wargame.

In conclusion, SOVIET DAWN is a good, solid design about the emergence of the Soviet State.  The design will not surprise you unduly if you have played other STATES OF SIEGE games.  However, unlike other titles in the series I think this one might have the most replayability so far, due to the distinct historical flavor that Mr. Leviloff has added in.  SOVIET DAWN is one of my better Victory Point Game purchases, and it will get played again, if not exactly constantly, by this correspondent.  The contents are a very colorful map, 9 paged rulebook, front piece art, small die-cut counter sheet of about 20 counters and a series of thick cards made from card stock with what appears to be inkjet labels glued on top.  If you want to keep your game for a longer period before it dissolves from the oil in your fingertips, it is highly advisable to pick up some small, cheap card sleeves. The production values on this design struck me as being particularly good– colorful and very thematic in that grand deco art scheme that reminds one of Soviet propaganda from the period.   I am very enthusiastic about the publisher, Victory Point Games, as they seem to have single-handedly brought back the concept of the small, easy to afford microgame.  I’m a big fan of that notion in an era of 100 dollar boardgames that I may, or may NOT like.

SOVIET DAWN can be ordered on the Victory Point Games website, and costs 22.95.  There is an expansion for this game which offers a few more cards and counters, but I want to “play the game out” before buying an expansion, so I can’t comment on it.

Point to Point Interview with Your Humble Narrator and Bob Giglio at Historicon 2011

HISTORICON 2011 was fortunate to have some podcasters present for our recent show.  I am very interested in encouraging more podcasters to show up and cover HMGS shows (not just on the East Coast, but all over the country if possible).  I love podcasts and follow many gaming podcasts.  Unfortunately there are not many podcasts that focus on miniature and tabletop gaming.  The ones that nominally do focus solely on tabletop games do seem to specialize on specific game rules and miniature lines (e.g., Warhammer, Flames of War).  This is not a universal statement– the D6 Generation has great coverage of tabletop games, I also like Meeples and Miniatures and some others that have lots of miniatures content.  Compared to the number of podcasts on board wargaming or roleplaying, however, there are not many of them.  If someone wants to work on a generalized podcast on Tabletop wargaming that covers the waterfront from fantasy to historicals, I’d listen to that in a heartbeat.  Just sayin’.

I volunteered to call a few podcasts that I thought might be a natural fit with a HMGS show’s clientele; Jason from Point to Point was kind enough to take me up at my offer. I like Point to Point quite a bit; this is a serious and thoughtful podcast on one my favorite hobbies, board wargaming.

Full Audio on this Point to Point Episode:

The Historicon coverage of this episode starts around 1:10, I am interviewed starting at 1:11 (roughly).

Some points of clarification: I was speaking off the cuff with very little prep for this interview, so to clarify a flub or two I made–

1) I mention I collect and paint “Uncharted Waters” by Spartan Games. It’s not Uncharted Waters, it’s Uncharted Seas.
2) The Too Fat Lardies product I was trying to cite was not “Valor and Resolution”, it is Triumph of the Will. Sorry.
3) I believe the first publisher of Brother versus Brother was H.G. Walls. I also like Johnny Reb III.
4) During the “Ten Questions” segment, I accidentally referred to Dan Verssen of DVG Games, as “Bob Verssen”. Sorry, Dan!
5) As of today, there has not been an official announcement about the HISTORICON venue for 2012.
6) The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart is not really a retelling of Grimm’s Fairy tales, I was babbling. It’s about a couple of medieval thugs.
7) A Zed and Two Noughts by Peter Greenaway was not from the early 90s, but made in 1985.

Jason comments in an earlier segment where he was responding to a listener that wrote in that he has problems with the inaccuracies of measurement in tabletop wargaming– by this I mean his statement that he’d “take hexes or points on a map any day” over a miniatures style game. Presumably the “fuzziness” of the movement and picking up figures and placing them on the table again leads to ambiguities and arguments. I’m not sure what players Jason has been playing with, or what kind of tensions are present in his gaming experience, but I’ve never really experienced “arguments” over that issue. If anything, Miniatures is ALL ABOUT measuring specific angles, distances and such. That’s why we have all those tape measures. No worries, just mentioning a counterpoint.

In closing, I’m very happy Jason came up to cover HISTORICON and I hope he comes back to future HMGS shows. The footage was good and he covered the topic very well. We’d love to have him back!

Historicon, Third Day, Fourth Day and Home

Continuing my saga at HISTORICON 2011.  Friday I got up, worked out and did the early shift at the Front Desk.

This ominous flyer (below) was all over the convention (including the urinals); We’re at a pretty bad state of affairs when we have to advertise for a director of our showcase convention at the convention itself.. yikes! Want to estimate how many times people asked me to do it?

And to think; we used to compete for the job.

No Historicon Director, no Venue selected.. dark tidings indeed.

Still quite brisk!

HMGS President Eric Shanholtz mere moments before telling me that we MAY have a new HISTORICON director. Yay!

Front Desk, JP in charge

I have no idea what the convention attendance numbers were, but I hear they were pretty good– certainly from my perspective, it was brisk work and there never was a slack period in the line that I could see.

On Friday, I had the pleasure of hosting Jason from Jason and Scott’s POINT TO POINT podcast.  This is primarily a board wargaming podcast but it does focus on conflict simulations.  As a major point of doing the promotions thing is to get our message out to people who may not yet have heard it but might be pre-disposed to, I thought forming alliances with podcasts that focused on gaming were a good place to start.  Jason interviewed Bob Giglio and (oddly enough) myself.  I am not by any means a promotions or outreach person, but I have volunteered to help with donkey labor on Social Media style promotion and technologies to A) help improve the cons and B) help promote the cons.  I had some success with the GUIDEBOOK APP thing and hope we can expand this– one commonality we seem to share is that most of us (not all, of course, but most) have cell phones.  If the phones are smart enough to host the program book (via Guidebook) then I’m willing to be there’s other places we can go with this technology that will prove useful in the months ahead.  One thing I’d like to try is to set up a Photobucket or Twitpic (Both Photobucket and Twitpic have  assisting “Smart apps” that plays on smartphones, for instance) that everyone attending the convention would have access to so we could all upload phone pictures of games and events en masse.  Sharing out a gallery out to the whole wide world like that would be simple as pie and easy for just about anyone who wants to take the time to actually do it.

Of course, the big topic being discussed EVERYWHERE… which should be a surprise to NO ONE.. was “Where is Historicon going to be in 2012?” Going in to and coming out of the convention, nobody had much of an idea, not even the Board of Directors. For everyone who asked me, saying that I was usually “In the know”.. trust me, I’m not.  I didn’t even attend the membership meeting Friday night. What had been narrowed down as a list of suspects, however, were these:

1. Fredericksburg VA Expo Center
2. Hampton Roads VA Convention Center
3. York PA Expo Center
4. Another year at Valley Forge PA Convention Center (at a reduced footprint and reduced facility cost)

Of these, Fredericksburg appears to be the top contender at the moment– I’m not thrilled about it because this choice is literally in my back yard, and I like to get away for the weekend.  However, maybe it will attract more people– I don’t want to go all Panzeri on the issue and assume that a bunch of rosey-eyed projections are actual fact, but the Fredericksburg Convention Center is located near major metropolitan airports, train stations and traffic corridors.  I know the Hampton Facility has a good physical footprint and is close to hotels, the beach, and a lot of history, but I didn’t hear from a single person North of Pennsylvania that liked the Hampton choice all weekend (concerns cited: traffic on 64, length of the drive, reluctance of people far away to attend).  I’m also not at all crazy about York.  I haven’t been to any event there but I hear this is a giant empty box, like the Timonium Fairgrounds were back in the day.

There was a big kerfluffle on Friday when some of the so called Flea Marketeers were evicted from the Flea Market.  This is an old story that we have been flapped our gums about countless times– an individual with lots of brand new unboxed product.. still in shrink wrap, claiming to be a casual collector unloading his collection.  Ahem.  I really don’t think so.  It’s a pity this kind of stuff goes on, because it makes it tough for the people who are honestly following the rules.  I had a long talk with Jay Hadley on Friday, and he suggested– get rid of the flea market for the first few days and then just have it for free on Sunday, one table per badge ONLY (to dissuade certain people who try to spread out over six tables on the last day).  It’s not a bad idea– you might attract genuine flea market people and certainly the vendors will be happier.

 For a slideshow of regular old convention fun and mayhem click here:   

There’s a lot of people stressing over where the event is going to be and whom is going to be the sacrificial lamb to be the director. All I know is that the show WILL go on, and SOMEONE is going to run it. The vast majority of people attending could give a rat’s ass about the politics behind HISTORICON and HMGS and who’s doing what to who.. they just want:

• Three shows a year
• To Get AWAY from home for a long weekend
• To see old comrades they only see three times a year
• To Eat Food
• To Buy Stuff
• To Play Games
• To Drink Beer (if that’s your partiality)
• To Tell Stories

All well and good.  Unfortunately one thing that ISN’T on most people’s list is:

• To Volunteer to Make Things Happen without being reimbursed or expecting a freebie, so everyone can expect the bullet items listed above will happen.

Eh, that’s the age old problem, isn’t it… it just seems pretty acute these days.  As my friend, the irascible Otto Schmidt puts it, “it’s not the profit and loss that will kill HMGS.. it’s the lack of people who step up to actually work on solutions to problems”

Hi Hi

Anyway, I got in a fun game run by Howard Whitehouse (Slides to follow) called Paris and Nicole’s tropical vacation.  Imagine JUNTA transposed with THE SIMPLE LIFE, and you’ve pretty much nailed it on the head.  I liked it, but not as much as other games Howard has run in the past.  The reason is that he ran it on the “common scenery” table donated to the convention by Miniature Building Authority.  This was quite impressive and I really enjoyed the setup, which was lush, but Howards’ game lacked the personal touches one can expect by him bringing personalized terrain pieces by the trunkloads.  Still, we had a great time and all the usual suspects were there.

Paris and Nicole’s Tropical Vacation SLIDESHOW

Saturday’s game was literally a blast.  I wanted to get into “Mimsy and Peachy versus the Nazi War Machine”, run by a friend, Jeff Wasileski (who was Paris to my Nicole in the Howard game, above).  Alas, I couldn’t find it or my second runner up,  S-127 – Skyrunners: 2nd HISTORICON Race Day easily, and my first choice– S-640 – 55 Days at Peking: The Defence and the Rescue (run by old friends Cleo and Bob Leibel) was all filled up.  BUT RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO PEKING… giant ships!  I hadn’t seen this in the PEL.  With a combination of Guile and free beer, I weaseled my way into this great game, the highlight of Saturday for me– S-278 – Pirate raid on the Spanish Main, run by Rick Stakes.  It was GREAT!!! I will be seeking this one out at FALL IN.

CRASH! BOOM! CONFUSION TO PIRATES!

For a Slide Show and picture directory of the Sailing Ship game click this web button: 

I finished out with a Spanish Victory (decisive victory) even though my ship was blown up pretty bad on the starboard. This would have been the perfect gaming experience if.. ahem… certain rules weenies weren’t so interested in trying adjudicate other people’s moves and tactics in the GM’s place. I got a little tired of hearing “You can’t DO that!” from a certain party and actually got a little fed up with the person who shall remain nameless– and snapped.. “Great! Well, why don’t you move my ship for me, then…” and “I’m done listening to you.. i’m listening to HIM (pointing to the GM).” Pretty severe reaction for me, but I was mystified why he was getting so upset. Water under the bridge of course, but I was amazed at how annoying it got.

Spent the rest of the evening playing Roadkill rally with my NOVAG friends, we had to call it early as we were still awake at 3AM).

For a slideshow of the Road Rally game, press the button:

Road Kill Rally is a great new-ish game from Z-Man games that will be fun if your gaming group has a sense of humor and isn’t easily offended. You score points by shooting other cars and running over pedestrians.. Very DEATH RACE 2000 (the first movie, not the second). Steve Gibson was heard to mutter “I’m going to hell for this one..” as he gleefully ran over some boy scouts with his race car, the Purple Death Machine.

Sunday morning was typical.. Sunday morning.   I wanted to do something unusual for once and play a Sunday game– PURSUIT OF THE GOEBEN, in this instance, based on the ancient S&T game.  Alas, I couldn’t find it easily and my baser instincts took over– I did a last frenetic once over of the dealer’s area and took off for home.

Conclusion: A great convention– a great swan song for the Giglio team, which I was pleased to be a part of, in a small way.  I played in some great games, I bought absolutely NOTHING from the flea market, but found some excellent 1:600 Hammering Iron ironclads from Larry at Brookhurst Hobbies.  I got Fields of Glory Rennaissance rules, some Against the Odds and British magazines, not much in the way of regular figures.  Not my most productive shopping experiences but I don’t care.  I had a great time.  Thanks very much to Bob and his senior staff for all they have done over the years.  Another great HISTORICON.

Poor soul. He was just overwrought..

AH General Contest 104 (Vol 18, Issue 4) GLADIATOR

It’s been a while since we had one of these, let’s go back to yesteryear with another GENERAL Contest question. This one is focusing on the game GLADIATOR by Avalon Hill and Battleline.

Submit your answer in comments. Note: I have a large archive of General issues in PDF, but it doesn’t seem like they ever printed the answers to these things, so your answer may be as good as any.

Two new RED wargames, solitaire. RED POPPIES and RED BARON

I tried to catch the Kingstowne Strategy Brigades‘ monthly meetup at the Kingstown Center for Active Adults in Alexandria, VA. The Kingstown Center is a pretty nice setup, with several large round tables and a few smaller square ones designed to play games on. Someone in the Northern Virginia Boardgames Meetup is a member there so makes the community center available once a month.

Having arrived mid-day, The gaming groups were pretty deeply involved in what they were playing when I got there– playing HERE I STAND and the most recent AXIS AND ALLIES.

Here I Stand

Axis and Allies

The Kingstown bunch seems to be a pretty intense group– they weren’t stopping to acknowledge anything but the game. All players were committed to playing Axis and Allies and Here I Stand, and didn’t even look up. That’s what you get for showing up late, I guess. So I shrugged and went over to a table and set up RED POPPIES for a solitaire play, then RED BARON after that.

Both games are published by Worthington. Red Poppies is new to me, though it was published in 2010. It was on my radar screen when it was first published, but I held off on buying it until a recent fortuitous Ebay purchase sent it my way. Red Baron is very new, having been released as a sort of freebie add-on to the recent release of GUNS OF AUGUST as part of the pre-order deal. Guns of August looks promising, so I preordered it and both games just showed up last week.

These are both low-complexity wargames, more or less. I prefer lower level tactical games, and World War One over World War Two. When I read that Red Poppies was a game of Regimental Level conflict with company sized maneuver elements, I wanted to get a copy of it. My last WWI game experience playing close to this scale was Clash of Arms LANDSHIPS, which I enjoyed. Component wise, the bits are lovely– far better than my first take from pictures on Boardgamegeek. The maps are all single foldouts on heavy cardboard, with cardboard charts, scenario cards and large chunky counters. One generally doesn’t associate a modular tactical wargame along the lines of SQUAD LEADER in World War One– one usually thinks of WWI as trench warfare, static lines, grand strategy games like the original GUNS OF AUGUST. Red Poppies is a game of companies and platoons. Scenarios include German, French, Belgian, and British forces, with battles spanning the entire conflict on the western front. I ran the introductory scenario from the game and played about three turns.

Red Poppies Scenario One.

Worthington Games has a series of videos on their Facebook page on Setup, Pulverizing Barrage, and Mining. They are using exactly the same scenario I played as an introduction to Red Poppies.

The rules are pretty short, and one might find that to be a good thing in a tactical game. Still, I found the rulebook pretty confusing. The rules lacked critical examples, particular in the basic fire combat sequence, how to move into a hex and engage in melee (and the defensive fire sequence). The game sequence is essentially Initiative, Command Couplets, then Administration. Initiative is a simple dice roll off, with the difference between the two being the amound of command couplets done per turn. My GUESS, is that a command couplet works like this– “the side with the most initiative performs an action, then the next guy, for as many times as the difference between initiative rolls”. I’m guessing because I couldn’t find any definition of what the command couplet is or exactly what is supposed to happen. Still, I muddled through, bombarding the British trenches as the Germans and pulverizing, then storming the German trenches as the British. I managed to dislodge some Germans and achieve at least a partial victory by occupying victory hexes. Then I packed it up and tried RED BARON.

Red Baron Game

Red Baron a game that is simple and clear, and almost abstract. The game moves generic fighters, bombers and balloons around based on a set of maneuver cards. These are kind of like WINGS OF WAR maneuver cards, only far more linear (it’s a square grid after all). Each card has a different maneuver for Fighter, Bomber and Balloon. The result is a sort of abstracted minuet of air combat and maneuvering. Combat is simple.. chit drawing combat chits from a cup randomly for the most part. The game resolves quickly and is quite simple to grasp. A very good game to introduce to non-gamers or kids.

So, in the end the Meetup was not time wasted for me– I got to solitaire some games and try out some recent purchases.

Sword of Rome night

Sword of Rome

I dropped by Steve’s place, who was hosting for a game of Sword of Rome after his gang set up their GENCON events online. This is a game of the early days of Rome when the Republic was emerging from being a city state to being a regional power trying to gain control of the Italian peninsula.

I played the Greek Colonies in Italy, Steve the Roman player, Andrew the Gauls, Jim the Etruscans and Samnites combined.  The Carthaginian player was run by card events by everyone except me (I was too close).

The last time I played this game was when it was in the playtest stage at one of the Word Boardgame Championships up in the Baltimore area. It was a slightly different game back then– if I am remembering it correctly, the Samnites and the Etruscans were separate powers in those days. Maybe.  I played the Samnites back then, and didn’t win.. the Roman player is too close and too powerful for the Samnites and their inherent ability to move over mountains easily is not enough of a bonus, in my opinion, for them to gain ascendancy.

The game began with a round of fortunate alliances for the Greeks.  I allied with the Samnites (my neighbors to the North) and the Romans allied with me.  The Gauls allied with the Romans and the Etruscans allied with the Romans as well.  This left the door open for the Gauls to fight the Etruscans, but not the Romans.  The Etruscans could fight the Gauls, but not the Romans.  The Romans could fight the Samnites, but not the Etruscans or Greeks.  The Greeks could fight the Gauls or the Carthaginians.  That suited me just fine.   I could work on some housekeeping (wiping out two thorns in my side– the two independent towns inside my lines that could influence cities to revolt), and bump up the cities loyalty factor.

I moved on the two independents, moving troops out of Syracuse to fight inside the mainland.  Didn’t succeed in the first try.  Meanwhile the Romans moved on the Samnites and the Gauls moved on the Etruscans, in a big long raiding party. I bolstered the TransAlpine Gauls a little, just in case.  Then Jim activated them as a counterbalance against the Gauls, who decided they were going to besiege one of the Etruscan cities.  The Gauls aren’t good at siege work, and it took them five phases to knock it down.  The Romans kept doing what they do best, building walled cities, from which they can reinforce the next turn, and building MORE cities, etc.

The game came to a head on turn 4, when Andrew had a “move neutral power” card in play.  His only option was Carthage, which he activated to move his largest army at Lillybaem in Sicily to attack my depleted armies in Syracuse.   I retreated my tiny garrison into the walls, and moved my larger force to relieve the siege at once.  They got there in time– through playing a couple of really expensive (one shot) cards I won the battle (odds were even up, just slightly to my advantage– I had to play a reroll card to win a storms at sea card to prevent retreat by sea by the Carthaginians).  The retreat back to Carthage was expensive for them, losing 3.  I attacked back immediately and levied a siege on Lillybeum.  We wiped out the Carthaginians on Sicily and at that point, invading Africa was looking possible, but I didn’t have the cards.

Up North, the Samnites were almost wiped out, but bounced back and attacked the Romans hard, only one city away from Rome.  The Gauls finally captured the town they were after, after expending many cards to do so.  At this point, Steve’s dad dropped by and we had to call the game.  I was the official winner after my Carthaginian victory, but the next turn would have been telling for me.  The Romans would be able to reinforce at a brutal rate that I would not be able to keep up with, and I doubt I would have retained a lead more than one turn.  Still, a victory is a victory..

Here’s a slideshow.

Direct URL for Facebook Users

I enjoyed it. I’m not sure what changes have been made since I last played, but overall I think they made the game very enjoyable and unique. Each power has a different approach to victory and a different strategy. The Roman is a builder. The Etruscan/Samnite uses a combination of movement and building to counter the Romans. The Greek is a naval power, Carthaginians even more so. I was glad I had a chance to play.

Waving Hands spell gestures, now on ArtsCow

Waving Hands in 3D is a project of mine where I will be adapting the old Waving Hands spell system of hand gestures to a Magical Arena game using miniatures (54mm). Spells are cast using a series of simple hand gestures in combination to create different effects. The game becomes an interesting guessing game as several spells start off with the same sequence of hand gestures– is that a Charm Person or Summon Hydra?, that kind of thing. My version will add movement and combat to a limited degree. One of the ways I was considering keeping track of what gestures were being cast was to use a specialty deck of cards. I used to find making specialty cards to be a bit of a chore. You print on business card stock, then either laminate or put in card protectors. Fun, but cumbersome. Someone recently introduced me to ARTSCOW, a company that takes a lot of labor out of the equation by printing and laminating specialty cards for you. So I created a series of card decks for the Waving Hands in Three Dimensions project, using public domain clipart. If you have an interest in getting a deck, here’s one here:

http://www.artscow.com/gallery/playing-cards/wavinghands-df9dq1w9ss5j

ArtsCow WH Deck, by me

The resulting deck prints out 54 cards with backs. I’ll put up pictures of the final product. If you are interested in running Waving Hands in 3D, you may want to get a copy– it’s only 9.99 a deck. And no, I don’t get paid.

Assorted hand gesture cards for building spells with: (S)nap, (W)ave, and (P)alm

At last, an Ipad wargame, of sorts, from a wargame company.

Slitherine Ltd. is a company that transcends media stereotypes.  A publisher of Wargame rules (actual printed ones and scenario books), Computer programs, Console games and interactive history presentation, Slitherine has a pretty diverse portfolio.  I was primarily aware of their work with Osprey Publishing in designing the FIELD OF GLORY ancient wargame rules and some of the ancients-themed computer wargames they publish through MATRIX ONLINE.  Well, now it turns out that Slitherine is catching on to the Ipad market. Slitherine has a game or two branded with the History Channel, and apparently there’s one called EGYPT: Engineering an Empire.  Their plan is to bring this game to the Ipad:

The iPad version of HISTORY™ Egypt Engineering an Empire allows players to build their own empire from its foundations to the height of its power. Acting as the leader of a territory from the Egyptian Empire, players manage all aspects of its rise, from economic growth to political power, the development of armies, and expansion into other regions by war and diplomacy.

Empires are controlled from three main views: the Campaign Map shows the entire game world, including mountains, forests, coastlines, oceans, rivers, cites, and armies. The City Map gives players an overview of the structure and role of a city within the empire, and provides a basis for economic decisions. The Battle Map is to be used when diplomacy has run its course or when a city is being attacked, resulting in turn-based combat.

The game is graphically rich with fast paced addictive gameplay. It is ideal for newcomers to the turn based strategy game genre.

(source: Slitherine website)

Now, this isn’t a classic wargame in the SSI or GMT mode, but it does punch a few buttons for me, namely:

• Army management with more than 25 unit types to recruit
• Each nation has its own unique units and buildings
• 9 historic campaigns with each with different objectives
• Diplomacy, wars, peace and tributes: use your skills to fight your enemies or make other countries your friends

Again, their words, not mine.  It looks like more of a builder game than anything, but I can live with that.. Here’s the screenshots:

Battle Shot

City Builder Shot

Another Battle

it looks like a Diplomacy Screen Shot

I’m not sure it will be entirely my cup of tea, but for 4.99, heck, I’d definitely give it the benefit of the doubt. Looks like a whole lot of game for that amount of money.