Sunday, October 26, 2008

Virtually back to Iwo Jima

This past week Mike and I finally got back together for some gaming. My family schedule had rearranged a bit, so there were some delays after my business trip earlier this month.

We had also had a bit of a miscommunication on what we were doing Wednesday night. I thought we were playing Iwo Jima again (this time with the correct rules as opposed to how we botched it last time), and Mike thought we were doing a Vassal walkthrough. Given that the Iwo Jima Vassal module had been released earlier that day, we decided to combine the two. I'll talk about Vassal first, then Iwo Jima.

For those that don't know, Vassal is an aid for playing games online. Exactly what games you can play completely depends on people writing modules to support them. These generally can only be distributed with permission of the publisher as there's a need for copyrighted material to be included. Some companies, however, are extremely friendly to this sort of support, and may modules include the actual game art (in digital form, obviously) within the module. This comes as close as is possible to replicating the on-the-table experience on your monitor.

The level of detail included within a module is pretty much up to the module designer. Some (such as Afrika II) are very basic while others (Devils Cauldron, for example) provide so many aids and utilities, they actually improve the gaming experience. TDC's module, for example, allows you to do things such as display a leader's command range on the map, and highlight all units that are a member of the currently activated formation. Things you have to track manually when playing the physical game.

Vassal is one of a handful of gaming aids. Others include Cyberboard, Aide-de-Camp, ZunTzu, Wargameroom.com, and more that aren't coming to mind right now. To the best of my knowledge, Vassal is unique in that it combines two major features – it's written in Java so it works on any platform that supports Java, and it supports both live and play-by-email (PBeM) modes. The latest version (currently in beta – and the version we used last week) also imports Aide-de-camp modules. Vassal is available at Vassalengine.org. If you want the latest beta, click the forums link, then I believe the top forum area contains the link to the latest. Many modules are accessible from that website as well.

Mike had tried Vassal a while ago, but didn't enjoy the experience. At the time, the tools were relatively crude, and the smaller screen resolution gave him the feeling of looking at the game through a porthole. Not the best experience by any means.

Given the number of great longer games fighting for time and table space, PBeM is one of the ways to get these games played. Mike figured it was time to try it again, and wanted to walk through the system together so questions are more easily answered. I've been involved in email games quite a bit (including a handful of tournaments) so I was a natural to help him learn the system. The one thing I'd never done with Vassal, though, was play live – everything I'd done had been PBeM. So, it would be a learning experience for me as well.

The Iwo Jima Vassal module has a couple nice touches added to it. Concealed units appear about 50% translucent on the Japanese player's screen, and are (naturally) invisible to the American player. Moving a concealed unit using hidden movement also does not create a visible log entry. Finally, there's commands that reset all “fired” markers and return all American naval and air units to the support box. Nice time savers that we didn't actually notice until about halfway through. Also, each unit has a “lose one step” command that will move the unit to the eliminated box when it loses its last step.
In the actual game play, I decided to try a Japanese strategy I'd read on CSW and attempted to implement in our initial game. (And it would have worked better last time had we read up on the errata/clarifications.) Basically, don't directly contest the beaches – instead shell those areas mercilessly with all the artillery you can bring to bear. Ditto with the airfields. Fight for those, but shell them as well. As a result, I placed nothing on the beaches, but surrounded the beaches and airfields with artillery.

Mike started off with a very successful shelling of the landing beaches, and followed up with his invasion – I shelled and managed to keep beachhead markers off the map for most of the first three turns. After Mike's initial good results, his barrages started to tail off. In fact, he wasn't able to clear Mt. Siribachi until turn 7, the point at which we quit. The score at that point was something like 32-5 for the Japanese (40 is an auto-victory) and the Americans had no chance to come back.

There's errata on the game that says regardless of the terrain value of an area, getting a single artillery hit on an area is enough to remove Safe to Land and Beachhead markers from the board. Unless the US is able to clear the artillery from the adjacent areas, this is a rather easy target for the Japanese to reach. There are probably a number of ways for the Americans to combat this, but it seems to be a very tough go. Of course, the real thing was as well.

I want to give this game a few more chances – looking at the relative ease in which Safe to Land markers can be removed (and this is the primary way in which the US gets VPs) it looks to be slanted in the Japanese favor. It may simply come down to how effective the US artillery is in the first three turns. If the Japanese can simply have their artillery survive long enough, it becomes too hard for the US player to score enough points to catch up.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Over the web

One of the things that Eric and I have talked about for some time is playing games over Vassal. However, the limiting factor to this undertaking is that I've never used Vassal. I played around with it a little, but could never quite figure out what to do with it. So, our efforts this week were directed towards Eric teaching me Vassal, which, in the end, didn't take much time at all, as once you have someone to show you what to do, it really isn't that hard to figure out at all. We futzed around with Afrika II a little, as he showed me how to get modules, load them up, and get going with the various options. all pretty simple really.

With lots of time left in the evening, we decided to have another go at Iwo Jima. Over Vassal. This was a brand new module, only released that day, so it was great timing. It took a little bit to figure out what all the options did, so we got connected and familiarized and took off again, once more with Eric as the Japanese.

We started off with cloudy weather, so one US air unit is marked as Fired. Once again I pounded the beaches with my air and naval strength to great effect, but, once again there was nothing there. I moved ashore and tried to press inland a little, but received a bloody nose for my efforts. In the Japanese turn Eric barraged both beaches to remove beachhead markers.

Turn 2 sees more cloudy weather, as the Marines endeavor to stabilize their position. The barrages hit Mt. Suribachi and Tachiwa Point, attempting to remove his artillery that can hit the beaches, with moderate success. I attempt to move onto Tamana Hill, but again the reaction fire is very accurate. In Eric's turn his artillery have found the range onto Double Root beach as he score 5 hits in 5 dice, causing lots of casualties. However, his barrage onto Old Man beach whiffs, leaving the beachhead marker.

Turn 3, and more cloudy weather. A big air strike on Mt. Suribachi scores well and removes the artillery unit there, as well as hits on the other 2 units. The other strike on Motoyama Airfield also does well, but the caves take the brunt. I flood the beach with reinforcements, taking advantage of the beachhead marker. I try to move into Funami Dai, but the reaction fire is pretty devastating and I lose an armor unit. I also move into Motoyama Airfield, and don't suffer too greatly from the reaction fire. In the assaults, I score 1 net hit on Funami Dai, which forces one unit to retreat to Chidori Airfield, don't cause any damage on Motoyama Airfield. Other than successfully barraging both beaches for more losses, Eric doesn't do anything.

Turn 4, and some clear skies! The barrage on Motoyama Airfield causes 1 net hit, but the one on Funami Dai doesn't even cause enough damage to remove a cave (2 hits on 14 dice). The assault on Funami Dai goes well, and I take control. Eric successfully barrages all the beachheads and Funami Dai, the rotter, and then follows up by occupying Double Root Beach, the double rotter.

Turn 5, and back to cloudy weather. I barrage his units on Double Root Beach and Western Village into the eliminated box, while on the mega barrage on Ohsaka Hill I score 8 hits on 20 dice, removing another pesky artillery unit. I manage to get a unit onto Mt. Suribachi as his reaction fire misses, and also move onto Western Village to assault the mortar there, but miss totally. Eric's attacks on Mt. Suribachi kicks me out, but the one on Motoyama Airfield fails, and I score my first points of the game.

Turn 6, more cloudy weather. The mega barrage on Mt. Suribachi score 4 hits on 18 dice, so not much there. I save my big roll for Northern Airfield, scoring 4 hits on 6 dice, which are eaten up by the caves. I try to move into Tachiwa Point, but again the reaction fire is strong, and I retire out again. My assault on Western Coast scores 2 hits, and forces the mortar unit back another space. The Japanese barrages on Motoyama Airfield and Funami Dai again score hits, so no VPs for me. Eric has 31 at this point.

Turn 7, yet more cloudy weather, that's 6 out of 7 turns, when it's a 50/50 roll for clear weather. I hit Mt. Suribachi again with 20 points, and finally clear out his units. The barrage in Chindori Airfield misses, but I finally remove the mortar unit in Warbler Village. I'm now using '0' strength units to claim areas, because that's about all I have left. I also move units into Tachiwa Point and Chidori Airfield, and don't suffer too badly in the reaction fire, but my assaults don't do much. Eric barrages Motoyama Airfield. I roll 3 VPs for Mt. Suribachi, so I've now got 5 to Eric's 32.

At this point we have to stop, as Eric's battery is about to run out, but the game is effectively over anyway. Even scoring 10 points a turn I can't hit 40 by game end, and Eric is going to score big time for areas controlled at game end, for a convincing win.

Having such crappy weather certainly didn't help any, with 6 out of 7 rolls being cloudy (2-3, lose use of 1 air unit). I had 4 good barrage rolls, scoring 8 hits from 20 or so dice, but 3 of those were against areas with no units in them. Eric rolled decently, especially in the early part of the game, causing a lot of unit step losses, and that 5 hits from 5 dice on the second turn was especially brutal, taking out 5 steps. By the end of the game I had very few units left, and most of them were '0' strength.

And, incidentally, I did a quick analysis of the die rolls, and Eric made 107 die rolls, scoring hits on 42, a 39.3% rate, slightly higher than the expected value. I rolled 283, scoring hits on 98, for 34.6%, or just over average. Excluding my two initial barrages against the empty beaches, my figures are 82 from 239, or 32.9%, just below average.

Iwo Jima is a fun little game, a decent filler for an hour or two, and it's certainly a lot harder for the US player when you play by the correct rules, but that may just be due to playing wrong, as I'm tending to agree with the proposal that the US player needs to spend at least a turn or two just blasting things before attempting to land and do anything, otherwise the Japanese artillery just makes mincemeat of his forces. And with no beachheads that means no replacements, just to make it harder. No, a couple turns reducing likely artillery locations and Japanese marine units seems like the best plan. I'm sure it will see more play time to test that theory.

The Vassal session went well, although there were some issues with the module. However, these were limited to the controls for the US markers (beachheads, Safe to Land), which you were supposed to be able to activate by toggling the respective location, but they didn't work. No matter, you could just drag the markers from the control palette, so it wasn't a big issue. I'm not too fond of the log output, as looking back over it some of it is a bit cryptic, and it doesn't make mention of the placement or removal of markers.

Several years ago I played a game by one of the other game tools (Cyberboard I think, but it may have been ADC), and I wasn't too impressed by it. However, that was in the days of 1024*768, and I just couldn't get used to seeing so little of the map at any one time. On my MacBook Pro (1440*900) it was quite usable, although IJ doesn't have a large map, and when I stick it on the old 23" Cinema Display (1940*1200) it should be very usable. I'm planning on playing some more by Vassal, and have a couple of contacts already, even outside my regular band of gaming buddies.

Friday, October 3, 2008

But it looks great on the table...

There are those that will fondly look back on the days of Avalon Hill as the “golden age of wargaming.” To me, it's “golden” only if you consider golden anniversaries as celebrating something that happened a long time ago.

The real “golden age” of wargaming is now. The games being produced today have better production (okay, so they're not mounted maps...), better design, and a much wider experience in gameplay. No individual game is printed in the numbers Avalon Hill used to crank out in the day, but it wouldn't surprise me if the total number of games being produced isn't somewhere within at least hailing distance of what was being printed 30 years ago.

Preorder systems instituted by most companies insure that, for the most part, only the games people want are the ones that are printed. This has had an interesting side effect. The quality bar is much higher than it was long ago. “Substandard” games frequently either don't make the cut and are never produced, or they languish back in the queue as more popular games keep bumping them back. Many companies publish their rules in advance so prospective buyers have a good idea of how games will function and whether it's a game for them.

This has had the effect of making “wasted”gaming time a rarity. People are nearly always playing games they like as they knew in advance what the experience would probably be and shied away from games not up their alley.

This week's post is about the exception that proves the rule.

A few months ago, I got Warriors of God from MMP. This is (again) part of their IGS line of games that have been so successful. Titles such as A Victory Lost, Storm over Stalingrad, and Fire in the Sky have received numerous accolades and awards. I was particularly looking forward to this title as I don't believe there has ever been a game that attempts to cover the entire Hundred Years War.

It's a gorgeous production, and might be Mark Mahaffey's best map to date. The tiles (no, I'm not calling them counters – they're big and thick, so they're tiles) are beautiful and look good on the map. The rules are also very attractive, though I have issues with the font choice and layout in the combat examples.

There are two scenarios in the game – The Hundred Years War (1337-1453), and The Lion in Winter which covers the 1135-1258 time frame. In the first you get Jeanne d'Arc, in the 2nd you get Robin Hood.

WoG is another area-impulse game. The catch with this one is that, due to the incredible length of time the game covers (12 turns over 100 years), your leaders will die during the game while others come of age to replace them. Also, the number of impulses in a turn is random – you roll a contested d6 for initiative, and the winner gets the loser's die roll (+ 2 more) in actions. The loser gets one less. Leaders are rated for rank, bravery, and command. You get points for controlling areas, and killing or capturing leaders. Hitting 20 points give you an auto-victory, and it's a zero-sum thing. (There's just one VP scale, not two.)

I think that's enough background. Let's look at the turn sequence. I'm going to go into this in a rather large amount of detail because it is within the turn sequence that my issues with the game mostly lie.

Each turn has 11 phases. They are:
  1. Determine initiative
  2. Action impulses
  3. Resolve battles
  4. Determine area control
  5. Raise troops
  6. Deploy unassigned troops
  7. Exchange captured leaders
  8. Determine leader survival
  9. Place incoming leaders
  10. Dispose of leaderless troops
  11. Adjust score
Initiative I've covered. There are modifiers for having your king in your home area, or not having a king. (Only a 3-rank leader may be king.)

Now, here's where things start to get odd.

Then you do your impulses. On an impulse, you move a number of leaders from one area to any adjacent area. Only one may cross obstructed boundaries, two over clear, and three over rivers. (Yes, you can move more troops over a river than across clear ground.) One may cross a naval boundary, except the British may move two this way in the HYW scenario. The exception to this is what they call the “flypaper” rule. It's basically pinned leaders in the same area as enemy, with the addition that a control marker counts as a leader for this purpose only. Number of troops controlled by the leaders in these contested areas is irrelevant for this rule. If you move into an area containing enemy troops, you become the aggressor unless there's already an aggressor in that area.

After impulses are over, you fight battles in areas containing both sides' troops. If one side controls the area, he may offer siege. (In other words, hide in his castle.) In this era, sieges weren't reduced to science, and in many cases it's actually harder to successfully siege than it is to win a battle.

In a normal battle, the highest ranking leader on both sides is commander, and you generally roll his command rating (or number of troops in the ares whichever is less) in dice, needing 6s to hit. The number of dice can be increased if you have longbowmen around, and the to-hit roll can be reduced if you have better bravery than your opposing ranking leader. Each hit reduces the other side by a like number of strength points. (Except knights can absorb two hits.) You keep going until one side either retreats or is completely eliminated. The exception here is that if the aggressor scores zero hits on three consecutive rounds of combat the defender may eject them from the area. When you're rolling, say, four dice needing 6s, that's not uncommon.

After all the battles are complete, there are no areas left containing troops from both sides. Now you determine area control. If the area is controlled by your opponent, you reduce it to uncontrolled. If it's uncontrolled and not the home area of a leader inside, you must roll his rank or less to control it. As most leaders have a rank of 1 or 2, this is not easy. If it is the leader's home area, you get it automatically unless there's mercenaries around.

After that's resolved, you raise troops in areas you control. You get troops equal to the area rating (1 to 3). They're simply placed in the area. After this, you deploy them. Unassigned troops can move across adjacent areas you control to any leader that still has the capacity to control them. (Leaders can control three times their rank in troop strength – though few can bring that strength to bear in a battle.)

After all troops are raised and deployed, any captured leaders have equal ranks exchanged and the remainder score VPs for the capturer. (or, you can ransom them should you have controlled spaces to spare.)

Following this you roll for leader death. Leaders have a number on their counter indicating the turn in which they arrive. Subtract this from the current turn number and roll higher to have the leader survive. (This is actually displayed on a large, unnecessary, chart in the middle of the map.)

After some of your leaders die, and they will, you get to place new leaders. You get two per turn, and there will be at least two neutral leaders available for entry as well. (It's also possible that routed neutral leaders will come back for your opposition in this step.) If you place the leader in his home area, he gets his rank in troops. If not, he may claim any unassigned troops in the area he's placed.

You now dispose of leaderless troops. Finally, score victory points.

In my opinion, Warriors of God (as currently written) is fundamentally broken as a strategic game. As it currently stands, it's little better than Chutes & Ladders. Before I go into why, let's look at the distribution of ranks for the leaders (in the HYW scenario only:
  • French: 10 1s, 8 2s, 6 3s.
  • English: 14 1s, 4 2s, 6 3s.
  • Neutral: 24 1s, 24 2s.
First these are the rules involved in the problem:
  1. You may not transfer troops between leaders. Ever.
  2. Controlling areas is random and difficult. (At best, you have a 50% chance of controlling an non-home area.)
  3. Troops may only deploy through areas you control.
When you determine control, in nearly all cases you must roll the leaders rank or less. That means, averaging out all leaders, that you'll successfully control an area about 26% of the time. So, if you fan out four leaders trying to control space in completely uncontrolled areas, you'll get one of them on average. So, it's hard to create chains of controlled territory, making troop deployment difficult at best.

Let's couple that with leader death. Leaders have a 1-in-6 shot of dying the turn after they arrive, and only 28% will survive beyond their third turn. (This isn't even looking at those killed in combat. This is simply attrition.) It's entirely possible for a bad run of luck to wipe out 2/3 or more of the leaders you have in play. Since troops have already deployed, you're likely to have a large number of unassigned troops hanging around. When you place your new leaders (likely only three) you have to decide whether to reclaim existing troops, or place them in their homes to get new ones.

The chaos that's caused by this sequence of events is something you cannot plan for. The resulting board situation you may end up could be nothing like you had at the end of the impulses. It is exactly like Chutes & Ladders with some illusion of choice. You try to put yourself into a “good” position, but if have a run of bad luck, it doesn't matter. You could fail to control any of the four connected areas you were going for, and lose four of the six leaders you have in play. You then try to scramble with your new leaders and save what you can of the situation.

This isn't a strategy game. It's a luck fest. The combination of deploying raised troops through controlled spaces before leader death rules kick in means you cannot plan from turn to turn. This sequence of luck has a larger effect on the game than your action impulses, making your choices simply illusion.

I've seen it suggested that if the luck runs against you, the game's over quickly enough that you can play again and it likely won't happen. Chutes & Ladders works about the same. And my four year old gets bored by that one.

My response is, why would you want to? There's 12 turns in the game. It's highly likely that your position will be destroyed at least twice during the game, and with the difficulty of controlling space and getting troops to new leaders, recovery is nearly impossible. It's no consolation to know that it will happen to your opponent, too. It actually makes the game LESS fun.

You might be able to fix the game. I'd start by trying two things: make it so troops can deploy through controlled spaces AND uncontrolled spaces you occupy. And I'd have troops deploy twice – once before leader death, then any orphaned troops can deploy again after. But I'm not spending the time figuring out if that will work. I've got far better ways to spend my time than fix someone else's design.

This game is getting great response on BGG, and is currently ranked as the #32 wargame, but I'm simply incredulous by this response. It's an utter luck fest that takes about 2 hours longer than it should. There's no way you can make any sort of long-term plan as you WILL be shut down by the system and will be lucky to recover. Age of Imperialism got destroyed by people when it came out for similar problems – why should Warriors of God get a good response? It's baffling.

I was predisposed to liking this game. It's a theme I enjoy, it's playable in an evening, it's gorgeous, and it's coming from a line of games that have been excellent to this point. But, simply put, Warriors of God is a horrible strategy game.

And, I'm not even going into the way the rulebook was written. Jon, I give you credit for warning me – if I didn't like the rulebook for Devil's Cauldron, I probably should avoid Warriors of God. At least TDC is a mostly good wargame. Warriors of God, however is decidedly not. Had MMP followed the GMT example and published the rules before release, I would have saved my money and angst. I've actually already sold my copy, so I've at least recovered part of that.

But I want those 2.5 hours back.

Broken warriors

Back to Eric's choice, and sticking with the area movement theme of the past couple sessions he chose Warriors of God, a recent game from MMP on the Hundred Years War between France and England, and another in their (increasingly mis-named) International Gaming Series.

The game is up to the usual MMP production standards, which means good. Colorful components, nice big counters/tiles, good map. We did have a problem with figuring out where one unit went (Navarre) as the banner symbol on the counter doesn't match that on the map, unlike all the other counters, but that was it. The rules are fairly strait-forward, the only area of confusion was in the description of sieges, and it was mostly in the terminology used. I'd lose the quips, jokes, and smart-alec comments from the rules, however.

Play-wise, players first roll for initiative, with the winner taking the first and last impulse, the number of impulses being the loser's roll +2. (Each player is +1 on their roll if their king is in their home country.) Players then take impulses in turn, each impulse allowing the movement of one or more leaders (with their attached troops) to an adjacent area, one over an obstructed border, two over a clear, or three over a river.

At the end of movement battles are fought in contested areas. Each player chooses their leader to fight the battle, and gets a number of dice up to the lesser of the leader's command rating or the number of troop points, plus the same again for longbow troops. This gives the English an advantage, as the French don't have longbow men. This means that for the same 3-strength leaders, an English army with 3 longbow men will roll 6 dice to 3 for the French. The defender has the option of fighting the battle as a siege if they control the area. Any 6 rolled is a hit (with the difference between the two leaders' bravery rating added as a modifier), which removes a troop point or a leader. The non-aggressor has first option to retreat after each round (any retreating army being subject to a free attack at +1), otherwise the battle continues to the next round.

After this you determine the control of areas. Leaders in their home area automatically succeed (if they don't have any mercenaries), otherwise they have to roll their rank or less (1-3). Controlled areas raise new troops, depending on their area value (1-3), and these troops may be deployed through controlled areas. Special troops, knights (absorb 2 battle hits), longbow men, and gunners (used in sieges), may be swapped for regular troops, 1 for 1.

Then the fun begins, as each player rolls for each leader on the board to determine if they die and get removed. The turn of entry it requires a 1, next turn 1-2, next turn 1-3, etc. New leaders may be placed on the board, either in their home or a controlled area, and may take over troops left by dead leaders, and any troops without leaders are removed.

Our playing was another of those unsatisfying games. You know, the one where absolutely nothing goes right for one player, and everything goes right for the other. The game was over as an automatic win by the end of turn 7. The unusual thing was that it was Eric on the receiving end this time. He didn't roll a single area control hit, and his combat dice sucked, as well as his leaders dieing off at ridiculous rates. I rolled '1' after '1' for my area control, buckets of '6's in my combat, and most of my leaders were being carted around in wheelchairs by the time they snuffed it, they were so old.

What's even more odd is that things started out normally enough. Well, normally enough when I'm playing, as Eric had ~5VP lead by the end of turn 3. Whilst this was, in large part, due to his better play, the previous turn did see all but 1 or 2 of my leaders die after I went on a '1' rolling spree (rolling 4 of them in 6 rolls), and Eric had won initiative in the first 5 game turns, despite me having a +1 modifier in three of those turns, so he'd had 5 extra impulses to play with.

At that point the game turned around, and within 4 turns I had the 30VPs for an AV, which happens pretty quickly when you control 12 VPs/turn, and have several killed/captured leaders which each score 1VP. In the one turn Eric lost all 3 leaders that he'd built a decent enclave in southern France with, allowing me to walk in take control quickly. He similarly lost control of another 3VP area in the north, and each battle went my way, losing him more leaders to death or capture. Of course, each of these controlled areas allowed me to raise more troops, and my leader rolls meant I could claim control of more areas. I spiraled up, Eric spiraled down, game over.

I had been warned beforehand that this was a game I wouldn't like. The random wackiness of the leader death is just the sort of mechanism that I dislike. Whilst I wouldn't quite say it's the worst game I've played, I certainly wouldn't be too interested in playing it again. It's very tactical, you have to work with what you've got, as you don't know what's going to be available to work with next turn. This makes it hard to build any sort of strategy, as that requires that you have a plan and it's hard to plan around wacky leader death rolls. Some would say that's part of the excitement of the game, and that it's the same for both players, but the same could be said of LCR.

I don't consider WoG to be a strategy game, as the only real strategy you can have is to roll better dice than your opponent. This is by far the weakest MMP/IGS game I've played. I would put it in the same bucket as GMT's Wellington, not to be taken at all seriously, and just treated as a wacky dice-fest. I didn't hate it, but I can't see me playing it again as there are just so many better games I'd rather play. And I certainly wouldn't consider buying it.

The only thing going for it was that it played relatively quickly. We were finished by 2130, having started setting up around 1900 and taking a quick jaunt through the rules to confirm understanding. I noticed on BGG that one person said that it took them 5-6 hours to play, so I'm at a loss to understand how they could take so long. Having said that, I'd still rather play Iwo Jima - RAtM twice in the same time.