Eagles striking

My choice again, and for this week I proposed the recent Academy Games release, Strike of the Eagle. This covers the struggle between the Polish and the Soviets in 1920, although strictly speaking the term 'Soviet' didn't come into existence until 1922. I had played this recently with another gaming friend, and I thought that Eric would enjoy it.

SotE is, at heart, a block game in the Columbia tradition, played over a very good looking point-to-point mounted map, split into two fronts, north and south. The strengths (from 1-4 Strength Points - SPs) and types (Infantry, Cavalry or Leader) of the blocks are hidden, and they are rotated to reflect losses and/or additions. Unlike most block games, however, combat losses are not dictated by dice, but on a flat table, which dictates the losses inflicted for a particular attacking strength. All well and good, and pretty standard so far, but SotE adds 2 mechanisms.

The first is the orders mechanism used in A Game of Thrones. Each player has a number of order tokens that are used to command the armies, placing two orders per front. These include orders to move, defend, recover (steps), use rail, etc., and they are placed face-down, which provides an additional level to the fog-of-war aspect. You can see that orders have been placed on a group of blocks, but you have no idea whether they have been ordered to advance, defend, or fall back. Orders are revealed in a specific sequence, with the player with initiative deciding who plays first when revealing orders of a each type.

The second mechanism is the addition of cards, and it's a card supported game, rather than a card driven game (CDG). Each card has several potential uses, and as in most CDGs, can only be used for one of them. They can be used to increase the number of orders that can be placed on a front, in battle resolution as a combat modifier, to gain reinforcement points, or for the text on the card. This last can be either a historical event, a battle event, or a reaction card, which can be played at the times specified on the card for the defined effects (e.g. place additional orders, switching orders, prevent execution of enemy orders, etc.). Of course, the best cards are strong in all three options.

Each game turn has a card draw phase (draw 6, discard down to a maximum of 7), 5 Operations Phases (where the meat of the game is played), then a Reinforcement Phase. The Operations Phase is:

• Initial Card Play: each player may play a card on each front, starting with the non-initiative player for the northern front, initiative player north, then the same for the southern front; in the same sequence any played cards are revealed and the player states how they are being used, either for the Historical Event (after which the card is removed), to increase the number of orders for that front; or for reinforcement cubes, to add SPs at the end of the turn
• Order Placement: starting with the northern front again, the player with initiative declares who will place the first order, then they alternate until the full complement of order tokens determined from the previous step have been placed; then the same is done with the southern front
• Order Execution: Order tokens are resolved in the following sequence, with the northern front again being done first, then the southern front:
  • Forced March: initiative player decides who goes first; blocks move one extra space, but fight at half strength (round down); orders are either 'To' or 'Out'; the former is placed on the target are, and any blocks within range may move to that area; the latter is placed on the area with the blocks to be moved, and they may be moved to different areas
  • Recon: initiative player decides who goes first; if this is placed on an enemy-occupied area then the blocks have to be shown
  • Move: initiative player decides who goes first; blocks move 1 space for infantry, or two spaces for cavalry; once again, there are 'To' and 'Out' orders
  • Withdraw: initiative player decides who goes first; units in a battle area may move out of the battle area, but lose 1SP; cavalry may ignore the loss if only attacked by infantry
  • Battles: battles are executed from smallest to largest, treating both fronts together; starting with the attacker each player may play a battle event card, then chooses whether to play a combat modifier card from hand, for a +1 value, or to draw from the deck; blocks and cards are revealed, each side calculates total strength and compares this to the loss chart to determine the number of SP losses caused; steps are lost, step by step from the strongest block at that moment, the loser determined, and retreats and advances performed; adjustments to the initiative and VP tracks are then made, and you continue to the next battle
  • Reorganize: initiative player decides who goes first; one block in the area marked with this order may gain 1SP
  • Rail Transport: initiative player decides who goes first; up to 4 blocks in the area may move up to 8 areas following rail lines; blocks may be moved to different areas
• Supply: Blocks in areas that cannot trace a supply line to a Key City now lose 1SP per block; units that lose their last SP are removed, and 1VP is awarded to the opposing player; OoS blocks can only use Move Out, Withdraw, or Defend orders
• Victory Points: the VP track is adjusted for changes of ownership of Key Cities

OK, I've glossed over a few bits of chrome, e.g. Fortifications and Garrisons, but that's about all you need to know to get started. SotE is that simple it's brilliant. A wonderful amalgam of mechanisms that leave you with deliciously angst-filled decisions to make. Fog-of-war on top of fog-of-war. What are those blocks in that area? A couple of weak brigades or are they full strength divisions? What order has been placed on them? Are they defending or planning to advance? What if they're cavalry and Force March, how far can they reach, especially knowing that there's a Reaction Event card that allows cavalry to move through enemy blocks? Should I use this card for the powerful Historical Event, or keep it for more orders? Or for the high combat modifier? Delicious, delicious, delicious. Eric and I played through the first 2 scenarios in one evening, then for our upcoming full day of gaming chose to play the full campaign, it excited us that much.

Now, if I could stop there, this would win game of the year, decade, and century, and could be my first '10' on BGG, it's that good. However, I can't because the rules are just plain goddamn awful. Atrocious. Ridiculously bad. More holes than a holey thing. SotE suffers from, to paraphrase Mr. Ballmer, "Development, Development, Development". Or, rather, the lack of it. This game is 2-3 months short in it's development, suffering from an obvious lack of play-testing, editing, and even rudimentary proof reading.

When I first looked at SotE, I got as far as the first actual rule, discounting the component descriptions, setup, and overviews, before I found that the example of play contradicted the actual rule. That gave me cause for concern, and it got worse. Confusing terminology; terms used to mean different things in different places; examples that don't agree with rules; play-aids that don't agree with rules; game situations that aren't covered. Not just in the rules, but in the cards as well. When I first played SotE we spent about half our afternoon wrangling over possible meanings of the rules, and what to do in situations that weren't covered. When I played Eric we found even more situations that had us scratching our heads. At least by this time a lot of questions had been answered on BGG and in the FAQ/Errata. However, on one BGG thread the Academy representative admitted that he hadn't decided what the rule should be yet. WTF? You've published the game and you still don't know what the rule should be?

Eric opined that the problem is that the rules were written to fit in the available 8 pages, but I'm not sure that I agree. In my view the biggest problem is that the verbiage is just plain bad, and a good editor would solve most of the issues by being consistent in term usage and clearer in the prose, and still fit within the 8 pages. The second big issue is that more (and better) play testing was required, especially blind play-testing, to find those areas that weren't covered adequately. (Heck, even I could see major rules omissions just from reading them, without even having to play it.) Again, judicious word choice and phrasing would have addressed the issues identified, without taking up copious amounts of extra space.

So, after SotE, and the preceding Conflict of Heroes farce (where the game rules had a major makeover from the first game to the second, substantially changing the game play), I now would not buy another game from Academy Games that hadn't hit at least a second edition. I'm done with buying games where I have to throw the rule book out and print a set of rules that could, and should, have been done right the first time. Chad Jensen, with his exemplary Combat Commander ruleset, has shown it can be done. It takes a commitment to doing it right, and not just pushing the product out the door.

The big question is whether these are the worst rules ever? We've excoriated Prussia's Defiant Stand from Worthington Games, Fury in the East from MMP, and The Devil's Cauldron, also from MMP, in the past, but in my view, SotE takes the prize. Mostly, however, that's because I really, really, like this game (just in case it wasn't clear by now), and it's frustrating as all get out to see it substantially reduced by a shoddy job in the final stretch to publication.

Overall verdict: go play this game; just don't buy it until the second edition hits the streets.

Oh, and in our game Eric's Poles resigned when it was clear after 4 turns that the Soviets were going to win an automatic win. But that's not important right now.

Resisting Combat Commander

After a long period of time when we were playing long games that weren't really conducive to blogging, we've decided to get back to shorter stuff and resuscitating the blog. There's been a lot of OCS played this year, in fact we've played pretty much nothing else for most of this year, most recently play testing a new, smaller OCS game on Operation Exporter. That's been an interesting experience, one I'm prepared to take on again, and I hope that our input was useful.

With a plethora of choices available, Eric wanted to try the latest release in the long (and getting longer) list of titles in the Combat Commander franchise, CC: Resistance (BGG entry), from GMT. Previous readers of this blog will already know that this is a game that I have a love/hate relationship with. I kinda love it, I think it comes closest of all the tactical games I've played in portraying the chaos of combat, but it just hates me back. Outrageous things happen in a lot of the games, and I'm (mostly) on the receiving end. In fact Chuck has now referred to it as 'Mike's ugly girlfriend' game (in homage to 'Chuck's ugly girlfriend', a reference to Twilight Struggle), and he refuses to play it with me any more, on the grounds that just too much outrageous wackiness happens, and it's no fun to play. And yet I keep coming back to it.

So, what's new in this incarnation?

• Partians have their own deck, which has only 36 cards, rather than 72, so time triggers happen quickly
• When discarding, the Partisan player has to discard his entire hand
• Partisan leaders don't have a leadership range, but can command all units within LoS
• Partisan units can grow a step in size with Muster orders - from a 2-man Crew to a 6-man Gang; however, the Fire strength + Movement Points always total 7, so as it gets larger, with more Fire strength, it gets less mobile
• Reinforcements appear by use of the Infiltrate order, which costs 0-3 VPs to play, and are placed on the Time Track rather than directly on the map; so the partisan player doesn't know when they will appear
• Reinforcements are decided by a draw from the Force Deck, which gives two options on the reinforcements; so the partisan player doesn't know what will appear
• Reinforcements appear at a Sighting marker, and each time a Random Hex draw is made, a Sighting marker must be moved to, or adjacent to, the random hex; so the partisan player doesn't know where they will appear
• When a Partisan unit is eliminated by a second break, a card is drawn from the Force Deck; if the unit symbol at the bottom of the card is a smaller force than unit on the map, the unit on the map is replaced, still broken, by the smaller unit, and no VP is lost; if not, it is removed to the VP track, for the loss of 1VP, regardless of the unit

As might be expected from GMT, production is good. Maps, counters, rule book, all look very professionally done, and up to the expected standard. The one omission, that I found to be annoying, is that there is no summary card included for the new Partisan deck, so you have to memorize the distribution of the cards - Orders, Actions.

What must also be mentioned is that CC:R continues the CC tradition of having the tightest set of rules of any game I have played. I have yet to encounter any game situation or question that isn't clearly covered in the ruleset. Given some of the rules abominations we've had the privilege to encounter (yes, Prussia's Defiant Stand, I'm looking at you), this is little short of remarkable.

In our game Eric had chosen scenario #72, and I was randomly assigned the Resistance. I'd only had the chance to briefly flick over the rules, and that bit me in the first card draw, as I discarded my hand of 2 Recover cards, a Command Confusion, and an Infiltrate-0. I drew an Infiltrate-2 card, then decided to check on the rule retail, to find that the card I'd just discarded would have given me reinforcements for a 0VP cost. Oops.

There were a lot of pot shots in the early game, to no effect, and it took half way through my deck before I found a Move order, having previously found a single Advance order, so I was very slow to get moving towards the VP objectives. In the meantime, Eric had been moving forward, and had occupied 2 of the 3 objectives. With his lead units.

I eventually managed to grind him down, timed a couple of reinforcements (playing an Infiltrate order with only a few cards left in my draw pile, so I knew when/where they would appear), and at the high point I had control of all 5 objectives on the map, due to Infiltrating into his back field, with 11VPs in my favor. Then, as might be expected, it all went south.

I missed the draw for ending the game in turn 7 (requiring a 6 or less, I didn't think it was worth the Initiative card), and then we traded rolls at the end of turn 8 as the Initiative card went back and forth several times before Eric drew two cards higher than 7 in a row. Drat. From there he used his big group to take back one objective, killed a few units in Melee, and then managed to rout a unit off the map. (It had missed 4-5 Recover attempts, needing 6-7, and drew 9, 9, and 11 in his Rout attempts. Pfft.

With hands full of Command confusion, Artillery Denied, and Infiltrate cards, I couldn't find a way to get the single VP required, and the game ended at the end of turn 9 on the first draw.

Other points of note: I managed to get 3 '10' strength Fire attacks in the game, and rolled 4, 4, and 5; I used both Molotovs, 12 strength attacks, and they both failed; Eric got a reinforcement, choosing the IG, which then fired at range 4, drawing snake-eys to miss, jam, and then was removed on a subsequent Random Hex roll.

That's probably the closest CC game I've had, I think. Whilst it's easy to view the failure to Recover that unit, and the Rout draws, as the game loser, failing to recognize that the Partisan units don't want to go toe-to-toe with the German units was the real game-losing mistake. I should have been pulling back away from him, in order to not give him the Melee attempt. Ho hum, lesson learned.

We missed the rule that the Partisans only spend 1 MP per hex, which would have helped me a fair bit, and that eliminated Partisan units are removed from the game, not that it had any impact. And I didn't grok the Partisan Leader LoS command rule for some reason. It's pretty clear in the rulebook, I just couldn't get it into my thick head. So I wasn't making the best possible use of my Move/Advance cards.

Overall, an excellent expansion. With the Force Deck and Infiltrate mechanism, the Partisan player doesn't know what he's going to have to play with, and that seems realistic.

So, if you like CC, you'll totally groove on this latest addition to the family.

Washington wins his war - again

As promised last week, on the table this time was Washington's War (BGG entry) from GMT, a remake of the old Avalon Hill game, We The People (BGG entry). I'd never played the original before, but had played WW once with Chris B, but it was far enough back that I don't recall a huge deal about it. I think I played the Americans, and I recorded that Chris won, but that's about it.

Looking at the game itself first, like C&C:Nappy from last week, it's a great production. A sumptuous hard board worthy of any Euro game, a good deck of cards and some colorful pieces. There are two sets of counters provided for the generals - large ones that fit in the provided stands, and smaller ones like more traditional war-game counters. More pieces for the combat strength points (CUs) and double sided Political Control (PC) markers. There are also some area control markers, some of which were printed with the same nationality on both sides of the counter, which means that you can't correctly mark control of the areas if one side gets more than 8 areas. Replacement counters were provided in their magazine, C3i, but they're of the smaller 1/2" size. OK, that's a minor issue, but still a trifle annoying. All well and good so far, then, but how does it play?

Let's start with a brief overview of the basic mechanisms for those of you unfamiliar with this CDG. The map features 14 Areas (the 13 Colonies plus Canada), with each area containing a number of Spaces. These Spaces are connected by lines which allow movement between the Spaces. There are three types of cards; Event cards; Battle cards; and Operation Cards (Ops), which have a number from 1-3. Each player is dealt a hand of 7 at the start of each game turn, and they take turns to play an Ops or Event card, with the American player deciding who plays first (unless the British player has a Campaign Event card, and chooses to reveal it). In CDG terms it's closer to Unhappy King Charles (BGG entry) than WW2: Barbarossa to Berlin (BGG entry), where the cards have both Ops and Events, and you choose to use one or the other.

An Event card allows the player to take a special action as detailed on the cards, which may allow the placement or removal of one or more Political Control (PC) markers, or other special event to occur, including activating multiple generals in a play (Campaign). These are separated by nationality, and getting a hand of your opponent's event cards is not good as they can only be used for very limited actions.

An Ops card allows you to do one of several things; place PC markers; take reinforcements; or move a general/army. The first are used to take control of Spaces, with each of the 13 Colonies (plus Canada) having a varying number of Spaces. The player with the most controlled Spaces has control of the Colony. What's interesting here is that the placement rules are asymmetrical, with the British player needing to place PC markers adjacent to an existing PC, but the American player can place them in any empty Space. Both players may place a PC marker in a Space occupied by a friendly army, removing any opposing PC marker.

Reinforcements are also asymmetrical. The British player gets a varying number of CUs by game turn (listed on the game turn track, e.g. 3 in GT1, 8 in GT2, 1 in GT3), but they are placed in a Reinforcement box, and once during the game turn may move any number of CUs from the box to a port, along with a general. Do do this, however, the player must play an Ops card of any value. The American player, however, can receive reinforcements up to twice per turn, again paying an Ops card to do so, but receives CUs to the value of the Ops card each time, and they can be placed in any single space not containing a British playing piece. A general may also be placed at the same time.

Finally, the Ops card may be used to activate a general, but the Ops card value must be equal to or higher than the general's Strategy Rating. Most of the American generals have a value of 1, so any Ops card can be used, but most of the British generals have a 3 rating so they are harder to get moving.

Battles are fairly abstracted, and occur when an army moves into the Space occupied by an opposing army. The Americans may attempt to intercept a British army moving into an adjacent Space, as well as evade combat, at the cost of retreating and giving up the Space. If a battle does occur, each side calculates their strength - the number of CUs, plus modifiers for control of the Colony (militia), if it's a port Space (for the British player - British Navy intervention), British regulars, and play of a Battle card - which gives a +2. There is also a modifier for the Battle Rating of the general (which are from 1-6), but the actual rating may be either full or half, depending on a die roll for that battle (1-3 = half; 4-6=full), but may never be more than the number of CUs in the army. To this total is added a d6 die roll for each side, and the player with the higher grand total wins the battle. The loser of the battle has to retreat one space, and loses a variable number of CUs (1-3=1; 4-5=2; 6=3), and the winner may lose a CU based on the Agility Rating of the opposing general and a die roll (AR3:1-4; AR2:1-3; AR1:1-2). Battles are the biggest change from the original version of the game, which used battle cards in the same manner as Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage (BGG entry).

The end of each turn has a supply/attrition phase, where isolated PC markers are removed, each British army north of the wintering line loses half its CUs if not in a wintering space, and all American armies lose a CU (except for any army with Washington). The French may also come in on the side of the Americans.

The game ends at the end of the ninth turn (1783), unless a special Event card is played, which makes the game end earlier, representing the fall of the British government. There are 5 such cards in the game, and they have to be played as events, they may not be discarded, and they cause the game to end either in 1779, 1780, 1781, 1782, or 1783, i.e the game may be as short as 5 turns or run as long as the full 9 turns. Having a majority of the spaces in a Colony gives the player control of the Colony, and the winner is the player with control of the most Colonies.

In our game my opening hand consisted of 2 2Ops cards, a 1Ops card, a British Event card, 2 American Event cards, and an American Battle card. Not exactly a great starting hand. Eric opened by using Washington to attack my single general on the map, Howe. With both armies having 5CUs, he gained the advantage with a full Battle Rating to my half, and the die rolls gave him the battle win. To exacerbate the result, my roll caused 2CU losses, but despite facing Howe's 3 Agility Rating he did not suffer any CU losses.

This gave me 3 problems; Howe is now in a non-wintering space, so will suffer attrition in the winter; as Howe has a Strategy Rating of 3, I have no Ops cards to activate him with; and I'm at risk from Washington attacking again and totally eliminating Howe. If I reinforce Howe with my 3CUs available in the reinforcement box I'll probably persuade Washington not to attack, but I'm going to lose half of them to winter attrition. In the end I choose to place PC markers in the south, taking away the American control. We jockey back and fore for control for the rest of the turn, and I use the 1Ops card to bring in an army in the south, and I lose 1CU from Howe from attrition in the wintering phase.

The second turn sees the British get 8CUs in reinforcements, and with a pair of 3Ops cards in hand I use my one reinforcement action to boost Howe with a 1Ops card. I then try to hunt down an American army, but he successfully evades (required 1-4 on d6). At this point I make a really stupid mistake, using my other 3Ops card to place PC markers, forgetting that Howe is still on a non-wintering space, so he loses another 2CUs to attrition at the end of the turn.

In the third turn Eric chooses to move first before I can get Howe out of harm's way, and pounds him good. I place a new army in New York Colony to try to cause a diversion, but Eric isn't falling for it, and over the two actions Howe's lost his army and is removed from the board. He then moves to block my army I just placed, while I can to little but place PC markers and actually gain control of a couple more Colonies. We'd missed placing the extra cards (the Declaration of Independence and Benjamin Franklin) into the deck on the second turn so shuffled them at the start of this turn, and Eric immediately draws both of them. The former allows him to place a PC marker in each Colony, swinging the balance to him. (I think that put it at 7-6 Colonies in his favor.), and the latter moves the French intervention marker 4 spaces up the track. (There are 10 spaces on the track, and it moves forward for each battle won by the Americans.) With all the battles I'd lost this was enough to have French intervention at the end of the turn.

However, I also had drawn one of the Special Event cards that indicates the fall of the British government in 1780, which shortens the game by 3 turns. Even worse, Eric had drawn the card that ends the game in 1779, meaning that the game will end in the earliest possible turn and there are only 2 more turns to play, unless another Special Event card is drawn.

The fourth turn sees me draw another four American Event Cards, a 3Ops, a 2Ops, and a 1Ops card, and I know the game is over for me, barring some sort of miracle. That ain't happening as Eric draws a full hand of Ops cards, and his armies go a-hunting. With the board almost full of PC markers, and with the limitations on the placement of PC markers for the British, the Event cards are useless to me, and I have to watch as Eric takes control of Colony after Colony. Indeed, even my last 2Ops card is played as a discard, as I am unable to do anything with it.

At the start of the final turn Eric is up 9-4 on Colonies, with one undecided, and way more CUs on the board. Neither of us draws any Special Event cards, and although I gain a Colony in the North, I lose the one in the south when Eric pounds my army there in a continual wave of attacks, as although I win the first battle (the first time in the game) we both lose a single CU. He also takes the undecided Colony to run out a solid 10-4 winner.

Here's the ending position:



We only missed two things in our game:

• two extra Event cards are added to the deck at the start of the second turn - we added them at the start of the third turn
  
• the British CU in the NW of the map isn't on a wintering space, and should have been rolling for attrition each turn
  

However, I missed several rules that might have helped me:

• after playing a Battle card you draw a replacement (I missed that only once, but it meant that Eric had 2 plays at the end of the second turn when I had no cards in hand)
  
• you can play an opponent's Event card in a battle for a +1 modifier, but don't draw a replacement card (this would have helped me in the first two turns)
  
• there are overruns of weak forces - I left 1CU in the north, thinking that it would block him, but needed more, which I did have available
  
• you can create a queue of Ops card play to activate a general - this would have allowed me to activate Howe in the first turn, although I'm not sure what I could have done with him that was useful, and it uses up 2 actions
  
• discarding an Event Card allows the removal of an American PC marker adjacent to a British PC marker (I would have expected this to be included in the list of available 'PC Actions' for discarding an opponent's Event card)
  
• ports are considered adjacent to each other for the British player - this means that all my discards for no use could have been used to place British PC markers, and, when combined with the above, to remove American PC markers
  

Pretty much everything in the game went wrong for me. From the die rolls to the card draws. Going back and looking at the deck, there are 12 Event cards each, 4 British Battle cards to 5 American, 2 Mandatory Events, 5 game end Special Events, and 4 Campaign Event cards (3 Minor, 1 Major), leaving 66 Ops cards (22 of each value). From my draws, I think this one is another statistical outlier, so I'm not going to hold too much over it.

WW is certainly at the simpler end of the CDG scale in my view. Unlike Twilight Struggle (BGG entry) or Labyrinth (BGG entry), there is less in the cards themselves, and you don't need to be aware of potential 'killer' combos, it's more in the Ops.

I really enjoy playing this one, as I do Unhappy King Charles, and all the CDGs, really. It's certainly a very interesting game, and I like the options available, the jockeying for position of the PC markers, the maneuvering of the armies. Every card play feels important.

Another great point is the game length. We finished in just around 2 hours, but really only played half a game, so it could run up to ~4 hours, likely less, but it easily plays in an evening. Knowing the rules better, I'd really like to take another swing at it. If you're thinking of trying a CDG I think this is a great starting choice.

Next up, after a week's break, is Fury in the East (BGG entry) from MMP, a one-map WW2 East Front game that gets gets good buzz. I'm looking forward to that one.

Valley Forge wasn't needed this time

Most categories of wargames can point to a single game that started them off. For block wargames, for example, you can point to either L'attaque or Napoleon as being the starting points. For hex-n-counter, many point to Tactics as the originator.

For card-driven wargames, there's a clear start: We the People. Published by Avalon Hill in 1994, Mark Herman's design paved new ground for what was possible in a wargame. Looking back on it now, it is still the simplest game in the genre (maybe... 1960's rather simple as well) and holds up pretty well given how different it was at the time.

That said, availability of We the People is a bit lacking. Herman had wanted to reprint it. As Hasbro now owns the rights, it appears the negotiations weren't going well. So, Herman re-designed it as Washington's War. He tweaked a few things (not many) from the original to the new release. Here's the differences:

• Battle cards are gone. You used to play cards from your hand to resolve battles. That mechanic – which I hated – is now gone in favor of a contested die roll with modifiers.


• You can now discard opponent events during a battle for a modifier.


• If your opponent plays one of your events for any purpose other than discarding, you can swap an Ops card for it to play the event later in the turn.


• An overrun rule was added that keeps 1-strength armies from being an overly strong blockade.

And that's really about it. If you know how to play We the People, you know how to play this. A quick run-through on the rules should be all you need. That said, I'd only played WtP a couple times, and not for many years.

Things to watch for if you're playing for the first time:

• Take care about winter quarters


• Watch for political isolation


• The Brits get a LOT of positive combat modifiers

I randomly drew the Americans, and off we went.

Early in the first turn, Mike attacked Washington's forces with Howe, trying to take advantage of those early British modifiers. Combat in the late 18th century was a bit of an unknown affair. You never knew how well your forces (or commander) for that matter would perform. To sort of simulate this, one of the first things you do is roll for commander effectiveness. It's a 50/50 roll that if you fail cuts your commander's rating in half. Mike failed his roll on this first attack while I passed mine. This effectively eliminated the British DRM advantage and made the combat essentially a toss up. I won it, forced him to retreat, then pressed the advantage before he could reinforce.

From that point forward in the game, I held a military advantage. My cards matched well with what I was trying to do, Mike's did not. I think I only drew three British events the entire game, Mike had four American events in a single turn.

Mike did a pretty good job early on forcing the political control. I think he had 8 colonies at one point. Turned out after the fact he really didn't have much of a choice due to his card draws. Turns 3 and 4 saw me methodically reducing that advantage.

Between winning battles and events (including getting Benjamin Franklin into play pretty early on) I was able to get the French into the conflict in the fourth turn (1778).

We drew a 1779 “Government Falls” card in the second turn or so, and the way I was able to keep Mike on his heels meant the French helped lay the coup-de-grace early that year. When we hit the end of 1779, I think I had 9 colonies, Mike had 4 (including Canada), and one was drawn. It was a pretty significant victory for the Americans.

I had evicted Mike from the South, and he didn't have much left in the way of forces in the North. Even without a government falls card, it was going to be very hard for him to recover.

My thoughts on the game?

Production quality is good. Mounted board, thick cards, attractive (standard GMT) counters. It played very cleanly. We only had a few questions, and they were all handled by the rulebook. The game doesn't break any new ground, really, but it wasn't meant to. It was meant to be a refresh of a game that broke a whole lot of ground when it came out. And it does that very well.

Recommendation?

If you're looking for a good, simple 2-hour CDG, this is it. It is the wargaming equivalent of an appetizer, though, so if you're looking for something a bit more substantial, you might want to temper your expectations. But appetizers are usually pretty tasty, and this is as well. It's one I'm happy to have in my library.

We're taking the week between Christmas and New Years off as I've got family coming to town. Our next game up will be Fury in the East from the MMP 2010 Operations Special Issue. More East Front goodness.

We're not dead yet

Well, after a rather extended hiatus, we're baaaaaaaack!

It wasn't really a hiatus, as such, just that our plan didn't really work out as we'd thought it would. Our OCS Korea game has been going on for most of this year, with (mostly) regular weekly sessions, and we were both taking notes and pics, but we just never got around to writing anything up. Partly that was down to our schedules, but at least on my part there was a certain amount of lethargy and disinclination to actually say much. It's hard to give insights into your thoughts and plans when your opponent is reading.

Anyway, we discussed where to go from here, and the idea of quietly closing the blog was quickly voted down on a 2-0 count. We agreed that the blog works best when we're playing shorter games, and that's what we're going to get back to. Moving forward, we'll get back to focussing on games in the 1-2 session length (i.e. 3-6 hours), unless we can find time for a longer session. That means shorter war-games (hex/counter, block, and CDGs), and (probably) more 18xx. Sounds like a plan, and I'm certainly very comfortable with that mix.

So, the first topic (and, in fact, the above conversation took place while we were playing) is the new GMT release Command & Colors: Napoleonics (BGG entry), the latest in the Commands and Colors series. This game covers the battles in the Peninsular War, featuring the British, French and Portuguese, and a single scenario featuring a small segment of the Waterloo battle. An expansion for the Spanish is currently on the P500 list, and tentatively scheduled for an August production slot. I'd expect to see more expansions for the Prussians and Russians, as well as lots more scenarios covering those armies, as well as some sort of 'Epic Napoleonics' rules/expansion. Sigh, more money sucked from my wallet.

The production is just as you'd expect for a C&C game from GMT; lots of wood blocks; colorful stickers; mounted map; good player aids; all in a bullet-proof box. In other words, up to their recent production standards, which have certainly taken a step up in quality.

I'm not going to go through the whole ruleset, but here, in my view, are the major differences from C&C:A (and others):

• Unit losses: the number of dice used when attacking is based on 1 die per block in the attacking unit
  
• Unit/Nationality distinction: various units get extra dice in combat depending on their unit type or National characteristics; e.g. Light/Rifle units gain a die in ranged combat; British line foot units gain a die in ranged combat if they do not move, and French line foot units gain a die in melee combat
  
• Terrain: unlike the Ancients battlefields, we now have terrain to deal with, more akin to the Battle Cry and Memoir '44 battlefield
  
• Objectives: just like in M'44
  
• Square formation: infantry can form square in the face of cavalry assault
  

Of these, the first is the biggest change, in my view, and one that has been a bug-bear for quite a few C&C players, or potential players. Now those 1-block units are really fragile and mostly useless, and have to be withdrawn from harm's way. The unit/nationality distinctions are an interesting change, and allow for some variation in the way you use your force, with both the composition and side impacting your strategy/tactics.

OK, terrain really isn't a change, per se, but it's just that there is some, often a lot, unlike most of the C&C:A scenarios, where I've seen pool tables with more features. Some of the terrain features are also classed as objective hexes, in the same way that M'44 has. This was, in my view, one of the biggest issues with BC, as often there was no incentive to move forward and get shot at, as the other player would get the first shot due to the move/no fire rules. (In C&C:N you can move and half-fire.) So, that provides an incentive to do something.

C&C:N wouldn't truly represent Napoleonic warfare without allowing foot units to use square formation, and the implementation is interesting. As part of the cavalry melee procedure the infantry unit has the choice to enter square, but to do so, the player has to give up a command card (and you must have more than 2 in hand), which is placed on a holding display, reducing his hand size and, hence, tactical flexibility. Furthermore, the card is chosen at random from your hand. To quote the Guinness advert, 'Brilliant!' With some good cards in your hand, you now have a tough choice to make. Protect your unit, or potentially give up the ability to carry out your plans. Of course, all those that hate the C&C abstraction style will have more reason to hate on the system, spluttering about lack of control, etc. I think it's a stroke of genius!

We played the first two scenarios, both from the battle of Rolica, with me drawing the French each time. The first saw me move to a quick 4-banner position (with 5 required to win) as the dice gods favored me with an embarrassment of dicey riches, seeing me score 4 hits out of my first 5 rolls on his Light Infantry unit. (With 5 blocks and a 1-die bonus they can be pretty lethal, so that turned the good fortune into great fortune.) However, I thought to dash forward with a good card to claim my winning banner, but an untimely flag result on the first combat took his unit out of range of my second unit, allowing Eric to isolate them and bring it back to 4-3, before I did manage to claim that winning banner.

The second scenario, later in the same battle as the French were pushed back, once again saw me with the French. The sides are almost identical, with the Allied forces gaining an extra leader. What makes the scenario interesting is that the terrain provides for only 4 axes of advance for the Allies, with prohibited terrain funneling the attacks. The French, meanwhile, are sitting on a ridge of hills, which reduces incoming ranged fire by 1 die. So, restricted advance options for the Aliies, and a strong defensive position for the French, quite a puzzle. To make it even worse, most of the Allied artillery (which doesn't lose a die for firing into hills) is still stuck at the base line.

Sounds easy for the French player, but my sole artillery unit ran out of ammunition (an early card play by Eric) and returned to my base line. The issue was where to place it, as I was unsure of where Eric's main thrust was going to come, and although my hand had some really interesting cards, I had few section movement cards. In the end I chose to concentrate on the Portuguese on my left flank, but also drew a card that allowed me to redeploy a unit by 4 hexes, so my artillery was able to reduce the Portuguese threat, then move to the center to counter the advance in the center and on the other flank. I had one opportunity for using square, but with a hand of great cards I had to decline, as I had plans, which all worked as I ran out a comfortable winner.

A tough scenario for the Allies, in my view, but Eric felt that he played it wrongly in not bringing up his artillery first and using them to reduce my units. That would have given me a tough choice on whether to hold or force the action. The French bonus die on melee means that closing the action is of use, but is it worth leaving the hills? I'd like to get this scenario back to the table, and try it from the Allied side.

Here's the ending position, which shows the terrain:



(The 2 units at bottom left are Portuguese, one with a leader.)

OK, so what are my thoughts on C&C:N after my first play? As you've probably surmised by now, I really liked this one. I found it more interesting than C&C:A, which was partly due to the terrain providing a more interesting battlefield. However, the bigger factor was unit/nationality characteristics, and how to leverage them in my favor. I know it probably sounds like cult of the new, but so far this is my favorite C&C game. The mix of terrain, characteristics, everything. A great balance, and the continuing development of the C&C system is very evident. In play, I think C&C:N also flows better much better than BC, and has more tactical choices than C&C:A. The choices are tougher, as witnessed by several times in our games, as Eric or I had to take a moment to weigh our options and consider the potential implications. Yes, this will definitely see more table time.

For next time, Eric has requested GMT's Washington's War (BGG entry), the remake of We The People and the first of the CDGs. I've played it once before, so I'm looking forward to getting a second chance to try it. Beyond that, I'm thinking of Fury In The East (BGG Entry), one of the games that came in the MMP Operations Special Edition #3 magazine. But who knows, there are so many good choices out there.

PDS - take 2

One of the things Eric and I wanted to target was going back to games we'd previously played and giving them a second go. So far, due to so many great games that we wanted to play being published, we haven't been able to do this, but with the delays in starting our OCS Korea game we had a few weeks to fill in. And so we decided to get Prussia's Defiant Stand (BGG entry) from Worthington Games back on the table. In our previous playing (Eric's take, my take) we had a rule or two wrong, suffered badly from the DSDF, but generally really liked the game, despite some of the most atrocious rules ever.

This time around we kept the same sides, Eric as Frederick and the Prussians, myself as the coalition (Austria, France, and Russia/Sweden). In fact the game opened the same as our previous affair, with Frederick marching on Dresden. This time around we played that all face-up blocks on the battle board were 'engaged' and eligible to take hits, rather than hits having to be taken in the block class (Leaders, Infantry, Cavalry). The rules clearly states that any 'engaged' block is eligible to take hits, in fact it's in bold, but never identifies what is an engaged block. Anyway, Eric takes Dresden without too much trouble, while I play a waiting game, building up Austrian strength. 3VPs to the Prussians.

In the second year, the French and Russian arrive in turn 3, immediately pressing forward. The Russians besiege Konigsberg, the Swedes take Stettin. The French have advanced up to Dresden, and with an Austrian force and the aid of a card that allows two armies to both take part in the first round (normally one would be a reserve, joining in during the second round) I pound his forces into submission, but take a lot of losses in the process.

Meanwhile the Russians have captured Konigsberg, and start to move forward. I attempt a forced march, but roll 4 '1's in 6 attempts, and lose 4 steps. Not trying that again. The Austrians now push forward, and besiege Breslau. This is where we make our only real rules gaffe, and miss that both Breslau and Cosel are now out of supply, and should be losing steps.

Eric attempts to extricate his force in Cosel by attacking into Breslau, but against a stronger force he comes off the worse and only the leader makes it back to Gloggen.

I push the Russian Cossacks forward, and they capture the weakly defended Gloggen, but a large fight for it develops, as Eric counter-attacks, and I try to reinforce. Eric comes off the better this time and retains Gloggen, but Breslau falls to siege.

Going into 1760, we're both fairly weak, the victory track is at 4VPs in my favor, having just earned 6VPs at the end of 1759. Eric has some work to do to regain some VPs or he will lose at the end of the year, as 10VPs is a game-ending decisive victory condition. (You earn VPs at the end of each year for the enemy cities you hold.) However, it's now 2230, and we have to call it a night. It's going to be tough for the Prussians to come back from this one. Even if they capture a 3 VP city back, it just postpones the loss by one turn. But without Frederick, and generally weak on troops, it's going to be a hard fight just to survive this turn, and we agree that an Allied win is the most likely outcome.

OK, so after a second play, has anything changed? Not really, it's still a very engaging game. Good length, interesting choices, good mechanisms. A proper set of rules would go a long way to making this game more acceptable, as they are really bad, even in the 2ed. Some other gaming friends tried this with the 1ed rules, gave up on it, and won't try the game again. I feel that's their loss, but it's only a small one, as there are so many great games out there that they won't suffer from a lack of games to play.

And that's where I think that Worthington (and they're not alone in this regard) have kinda shot themselves in the foot. They've produced a fine little game that deserves to see some table time, but the rules were so bad that people won't play it. Why fight through the ruleset to find out whether the game is worth playing when there are many other games in the queue all shouting 'Play me!'?

I can see this game being great for a Sunriver WBC-W bash.

My only concerns are in play balance, as I felt I had a relatively easy time of it. Then again, that card that allowed me to bring in my two major forces in the attack on Dresden was major, as it allowed me to take out a strong force and Frederick. After that, building up and attacking to Breslau made that and Cosel out of supply, and it seemed like an easy win. Knowing that, the Prussian player may need to withdraw out of Cosel, or be a bit more aggressive in defending Breslau.

All it shows is that even after a second play we still need to get it back on the table again. And I'm pretty sure it will make it, despite those rules.

New Combat Commander, same old story

Eric arrived for our latest session and we headed out to the garage to get started on the Sicily game, which we set up after our España 1936 game in our previous session. We both looked at each other, and both expressed an interest in playing something else. It had been a long week for both of us, and I was coming off a cold, and we both felt mentally unprepared for OCS. So we headed back in for something lighter. After throwing around a few options, Eric wanted to try the Pathfinder campaign from C3i #22, so we set up the first scenario, which features the American airdrop on St. Mere Eglise. I'd been playing the Axis in pretty much every game we'd played recently, so asked to play the Americans, and Eric accepted.

The Germans have just a few units on the board, and the Americans land by random draw to simulate the airdrop. About half of my guys ended up along the 'B' hex-column, 2 units adjacent to his guys (and automatically broken), and one on the opposite of the map in each corner. The biggest issue was that 2 of my 3 leaders were at opposite corners of the map, and not near anyone. In the end they played no part in the action at all. The two broken guys were taken out pretty quickly by Eric's fire, although not before I'd drawn a hero event and so just gave him even more points..

My biggest problem was finding cards that allowed me to move, and I seemed to spend half my time discarding cards. I was making reasonable progress, having captured two of the three objectives, when it came down to the usual critical bit of action. At this point we'd pretty much traded casualties, he having removed all the units that landed close as I couldn't find move cards to get them away nor recover cards, and me from assaulting his units in melee. I advanced into his hex holding 2 ambush cars, and generated a +4 attack. He drew a 9, and I calculated the options. He was at +5, so all I needed was a 6 for the clear win, as that would put him over his surrender level. A 5 would have us both killed, but I would be short of my surrender level by 1, so would still win. Hmmm, I need a 5. I decided to use the initiative whereupon he drew an 8. OK, I still need only a 4. And drew a 3.

At this point I have little option but to try another advance and melee as I have little chance of taking him out with a fire (I have no MGs, and only a small mortar). However, once again it takes me forever to find movement cards and he gets the required ambush cards to kill my remaining unit for the surrender win.

Once again I manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with a freaky card draw. Just like a lot of my CC games. This has got so monotonous that I have now placed CC onto my 'Will not play' list and I'm planning to sell my CC games.

This game did bring up one weakness in the CC system, however, one that I'd never really thought about before. The card decks are tuned for a set of tactics, and if you don't have the force that matches those tactics, then you're going to have problems. Take the American deck. In most of the scenarios the Americans (at least all the regular scenarios that I've played) are dripping with support weapons, and the deck provides tactics that match. Lots of fire, break (or kill) the enemy, then maneuver. Take away the support weapons and you're left with a hand that's heavy on fire cards that you can't really use. (A 6 fire attack against a regular 7 morale unit, in terrain, isn't going to see a lot of success. Add in a leader on defense and it gets even harder. And any number of Sustained Fire cards won't help you when you've no MGs.)

I'm not sure how this impacts other nations/scenarios, and it may be a feature of the Americans only (I think the Germans, at least, are rather more balanced on the card distribution), or even just this scenario. The American player here needs to maneuver, to get troops together to build fire teams to provide some mediocre attack fires. But the tactics forced on him by the card distribution prevents that.

One of my other gaming colleagues is only so-so on CC because he feels that it comes down to ambush and advance cards, and this game highlighted that. With no real way to generate high firepower attacks the only real way to remove the defenders and gain the VP objectives is through melee. Then the game comes down to who can draw the advance and ambush cards. And get the better draws in the melee itself. I was lucky in that I drew advance and ambush cards together twice, but I couldn't draw the movement cards to make use of the advance before Eric had time to discard through his deck and also get ambush cards. As far as I can recall, this is the first CC game I've played where the game ended with the surrender criteria being met, rather than the sudden death.

Over the years I've pretty much had a hate-hate relationship with CC in all its forms, and this game was the final nail in the coffin. Too many games have been little or no fun, with random blow-outs to one side or the other. And I've been on both sides, but mostly the receiving side. I may keep CC:Pacific (I think it's the best of the bunch) but the rest are going on the block. The tactical limitations of the pre-determined deck introduce a restriction that I'm not prepared to deal with. Well, that and the game just hates me.

We fully plan on getting back to Sicily for the next session.

Some Spanish game

With the exception of Guadalajara (the SCS title, and that's the only reason I own it), I own no games on the Spanish Civil War, and there's a reason for that: I have exactly zero interest in that period. I know some of the vague history of it, but, to paraphrase, quite frankly, I don't give a damn. So, when Eric wanted to try España 1936, a game on the Spanish Civil War, as an interlude between TME and completing OCS Sicily, I wasn't enthused but was willing to give it a go. I could have put out a veto, but I could tell he was quite keen to try it.

A point-to-point, card assisted, Euro-style wargame, it looked fairly simple from a brief reading of the rules. There is also an advanced naval expansion, but we were going to play the base game. I was, however, somewhat concerned to find that of the 11 pages of forum threads on BGG, 6 were related to rules questions, and the FAQ appeared to be longer than the original rules. Turns out that most of this is due to the naval rules, which have enough holes to sink a battleship. (Ha ha, geddit? Naval, holes, battleship? Oh, never mind.)

The structure is pretty simple. The Nationalist player moves ground units and allocates air units to areas, then the Republican player does the same. This sequence is important, because units in a contested area can only move to an adjacent area, and that area has to be friendly controlled, so the Nationalist player can force the action somewhat. After that both players allocate leader units to areas, alternating placements, with the Nationalist player going first. Now combat is fought, area by area, again alternating with the Nationalist player choosing the first area. (I don't think this is a big deal, as areas don't impact other areas. There could be some supply impact, but as you can trace through a contested area even that's not a big deal.) After that comes the events phase where the players alternate playing cards for events, and finally area control is determined, and, on alternate turns, replacements are added to the map.

The cards are used in two ways. First, is for events, which are mostly for adding more ground, support, or air units to your army. A couple of cards for each player add a leader or remove an opposing leader, or add extra replacements.

The second way they can be used in the combat phase. Here they can be used as a bonus for yourself, or as a penalty for your opponent, either by adding/subtracting dice or applying positive/negative modifiers. Of course, the best event cards have the best combat modifiers, just to make the decisions that more

Talking of combat, it's pretty simple. The active player selects one of his generals to activate. This general can either go inactive, or start a combat, in which case the units in the area are moved to the battle display. Each combat round the attacking player selects one attacking and one defending ground unit, and then players may assign support units, attacking player selecting first, and the activated general has to be declared as a support unit in the first round of combat.

Each ground unit allows you to roll a number of dice in a combat round depending on its step strength (1, 2, 3 or 5), air units adding more dice, and armor and leader units (support units) also add die modifiers. Some ground units have modifiers built in (militia have a -1 and elite units +1). Combat is simultaneous, hits are scored on a 5 or 6, only affect the ground units committed to that round of combat, and each hit is a step loss. If the there are multiple ground units defending, then multiple rounds of combat will be required to clear the area.

Units (either ground or support) may only be used once, so you must have multiple ground units in an area to have multiple rounds of combat in an area. There is some cat and mouse on when to apply support units where there could be multiple rounds of combat.

All fairly simple, but with a fair amount of flexibility. For some reason it took me a while to get my head around that you could have multiple combat rounds without a leader for each round. (In fact you may only assign one leader per area.)

Winning the game is done in one of 3 ways. A sudden death win ends the game, either by one side controlling more than 7 Objective Cities (the ones with a yellow background) or by forcing the other side down to an area of fewer than 8 contiguous controlled or contest areas. If none of this has happened by the end of the 10th turn, then the Republican player wins if he has 3 or more Objective Cities. (Or is that 4? Whatever, you get the point.)

Enough on the mechanisms, how did our game pan out? Eric took the Republicans, and I opened by contesting Oviedo and Bilbao, and moving around the southern coast, aiming to get to Murcia. The former didn't go too well, but the latter succeeded. Eric pushed at Toledo, and managed to get a result. However, in the event card phase I removed one of his leaders, being fortunate to draw that in the first deal. This would leaver Eric with only two leaders to my five for most of the game, as I transferred two leaders from Africa, and played a card in turn 2 to add a leader to my pool. Here's the situation at the end of turn 1 (except that we missed the movement from Africa until after the pic was taken):



Turn 2 saw me sweep around the coast, contesting Murcia, as planned, and continuing to press Oviedo. My attack at Murcia didn't go too well, but Eric managed to grab Bilbao, so swapping cities for the same result in cities controlled/contested. End of turn 2:



Turn 3 saw my recently arrived Italians sweep up to Toledo, but despite lots of dice and modifiers I was unable to take the city. However, I was able to clear Murcia and Salamanca for a swing of 2 cities in my favor, although I did lose Zaragoza. This also allowed me to use 5 replacement points, adding several new units. I was starting to see my plan forming. End of turn 3:



Turn 4 saw Eric come storming back to Murcia, driving me out in one turn, while I switched focus to the north coast, finally clearing Oviedo, and capturing Bilbao. End of turn 4:



Turn 5, and I continued my push along the north coast, contesting Zaragoza, as well as diving back in Murcia. I managed to win back Toledo to give me 7 cities, and by playing an event card for replacements, I added 10 steps to my forces.



Turn 6, and I completed my plan, capturing Huerca and Guadalajara. This divided him into two distinct groups of areas, and with neither being greater than 7 contiguous areas I'd achieved the win. It came down to almost the final roll in Huerca, but if I didn't get it in turn 6, I was sure to do so in turn 7, as I had cards that gave me extra armies, and with the first move I would have been able to grab control on the extra areas required and pin him down so he couldn't take them back. We didn't bother doing the final few combats, as they were moot at that point.



From the first few turns played I realized that it was quite hard to capture 8 cities, as the other player just needs to get a unit in there to contest it. So I was planning on splitting his areas down the middle, whilst still contesting cities and appearing to be attempting to control them. In the end, his attempts to capture back Murcia was just what I wanted to see, as it really was unimportant, occupying the majority of his forces and generals. In the end game I sacrificed a couple of units just to make his areas contested, so he couldn't move out, so ensuring that I would retain control of the vital areas, especially Albacete which I see as a very critical area.

I had been browsing the BGG entry before Eric arrived, and there was a fair bit of discussion there about how hard it was to play the Republicans, with several players indicating Nationalist winds around turn 5/6. And so it was in our game. It looks like the Republicans are really up against it. Even the designer was saying that the Republican player has to play well, and it will take several games to learn how to do it best. The problem is a familiar one (and is similar to Twilight Struggle) - will the game get enough outings to allow for that experience? Ultimately, my answer has to be 'No'.

Whilst it's not a bad game, it suffers from being at too high a level. Almost everything is abstracted out, and, in the end, it felt almost like a pasted on theme of a typical Euro, and didn't feel especially like Spain in 1936. Change some of the icons and it could have been War of the Ring. This is a common issue with Euro-style games. (However, I suppose you could say that of a lot of games.) Sure, there was some challenge in the initial few turns, trying to figure it out, but after about turn 2-3 I felt I was getting further and further ahead, and Eric was in a downward spiral. I think the initial card deal was strongly in my favor, and with 5 leaders to 2 I was always able to force the action where I wanted. (Perhaps it's unfair to judge the game on our skewed experience.)

That said, those first few turns were pretty entertaining, although with the luck of the dice and the draw of the cards, I'm not entirely sure that what the player does has a huge bearing on the game. Contesting areas is pretty easy, so getting 8 Objective Cities is a challenge. Being able to plan where to attack, knowing the cards/events in hand you can do a certain amount of planning.

Overall, not one I'll be adding to my game shelf, and I'm not sure it will even see more play. Yes, it's a decent length for an evening game (we finished in 3 hours, easy), but unless you're playing regularly and figure out how to play the Republicans, you know you're in for a tick in the 'L' column. I think it needs some sort of bidding mechanism to balance it out, or playing two games back to back, to make it worthwhile. If Eric were to propose this again in 6 months time, I'd probably ask for something else (Storm Over Stalingrad and Iwo Jima: Rage Against the Marines are likely candidates), unless we had the time to play two games, in which case we'd probably be playing something else in the first place.

Talk about damning with faint praise.

Sand in the toes

Another session, and another game off the burn-down list. This time it was the turn of Shifting Sands, the CDG from MMP of the campaign in North Africa. Whilst I've been aware of this one for some time, it's only recently that it's jumped onto my 'to buy' list as my interest in CDGs in general (and the desert campaign, as a lesser factor) has ramped up.

Having played a little of WWII: Barbarossa to Berlin, Shifting Sands was very familiar, and the mechanisms were mostly in my head. There are lots of special rules that allows for a fair amount of chrome relevant to the theater and its special circumstances and situations, but I never felt overwhelmed at any point.

In our game I played the Allies, and pressed forward smartly. An early play of Poor Morale was useful, although I was very short of Reinforcement cards. By the time the Germans entered, I had captured Tobruk, and was clearing out East Africa after a slow start. I was fortunate to get a couple of good results when the Axis attacked towards Tobruk, repulsing both attacks with even results, although I was down a column in each combat.

In 1941, Tobruk fell to a large Axis attacking force, as my spoiling attack failed, despite a +2 drm. After that the front went quiet, as I was able to move a couple of divisions around from the empty East Africa. Eric did make one attempt on my line, advancing Italian units adjacent in two spaces, but I was able to remove both of them in my turn with Crusader, leaving him no platform to attack.

1942 saw the Torch, Patton, and Vulcan cards all come into my hand on the first turn. With another couple of Torch-specific cards being dealt in the next turn, I went into the Spring 1942 turn with only a few usable cards. Fortunately I was able to hold on to my existing position, and Summer 1942 saw the Americans land in Tunisia. Throughout the year I was running close to the limit of VPs for an automatic Axis victory, but Eric was never able to grab that all-important final VP space.

From this point on I pretty much focused on Tunisia, ignoring the rest of the map unless I had spare operations points I couldn't use in Tunisia. I drove towards Tripoli with infantry and armored divisions, and towards Tunis on two axes with both US and British divisions. However, while the former was successful, Eric mounted a spirited defense of Tunis, shuffling units in from Libya with a succession of well co-ordinated card plays. Combined with a seemingly endless supply of combat cards, some good rolls on his part, and some weak die rolling on my part, I was unable to winkle him out. This despite several attacks, and also a combined attack rolling on the max. column.

Two card plays into the Winter 1943 (and penultimate) turn things were looking bleak for me, as he'd managed to break the US assault into Tunis, and forced me out of Tripoli by abandoning the Libyan/Egptian front and transferring pretty much every available German unit to Tunisia. It was at this point that the game became a total bogey, as Eric spotted that the whole of his Libyan/Egyptian front was unable to trace supply, and should have been removed from the game at the end of the Fall 1942 turn.

This had come about because I'd taken Tripoli, and he'd stripped his line so bare of units (moving some to Tunis and the others towards Tripoli) that I was able to advance and isolate Tobruk in the Fall 1942 turn. This left Benghazi as the only remaining port, and it's not a supply source for the Axis. Of course, if Eric had been aware of this I'm sure he would have put more effort into either defending Tripoli in the first place, or ensuring a line to Tobruk was maintained, preventing me from putting his units out of supply. The other side is that if he had done that, then he possibly wouldn't have had the units to defend Tunis so successfully, and would have ended up losing that instead.

Anyway, we back-tracked to the start of the Winter 1943 turn as best we could, and then re-dealt. (As we'd each played two cards plus combat cards we knew half the cards in each others' hands.) Now that I had no pressure from the east, I was able to release the armored division from the defense of Tripoli to aid in the attack on Tunis, and with the rolls finally swinging in my favor (or even just matching the percentages) I was able to grind him down and take Tunis for the automatic victory. (It requires owning both Tunis and Tripoli.)

OK, the end left a rather tainted victory in my lap, but overall I really enjoyed the game. It went back and fore a bit, and there were lots of areas to be considered. The game mechanisms introduce just the right balance between complexity and chrome, and the variations in the deal of the cards ensures good replayability.

I can see there are a few critical factors. When Torch comes out is the biggest; if it's into 1943 before the Allied player gets to play it, then that could be a game killer for them. Still, I'd look forward to playing this one again.

Miles and Miles of Sand and Khaki

The last couple weeks, Mike and I have been playing Shifting Sands. This is a CDG published a few years back by MMP. Mike had never played, and I'd only played a couple times in a PBeM tournament, but had never played face to face. I'd also never played the Axis, so this was a fresh experience for both of us.

Shifting Sands covers WWII in North Africa, but also includes the fighting in the East Africa and Middle East theatres as well. These two areas are ignored in nearly every other North Africa game, but here you must balance your efforts to handle these fronts. The game runs the entire cycle of the North African war from the Italian declaration of war against the British through Operation Torch to the final departure of the Axis from Tunisia in mid-1943.

The game itself is on the simpler end of the CDG spectrum, but there's a fair number of exceptions, mostly involving where reinforcements can appear. It is directly derived from Paths of Glory. It uses three decks of cards per side (though these are 1940, 1941, and 1942 decks and their appearance is turn-based and not tied to a side's progress in the game) and it has both Large and Small combat units. (Divisions and Battlegroups in this game.) Each turn you get six action rounds, though you get increasingly more cards each year to reflect the growing commitment to the theatre. As in Paths of Glory, there's also a rather involved inter-dependency in card play. Many cards are prerequisites for others, and there's a whole side-track of cards played in the effort to take Malta. Knowing what cards are coming when, and what you need to play first, is an important skill in the game.

As this was my first time playing the Axis, I decided to focus on the things that had always given me problems when playing the Allies. Be a pest in East Africa, threaten things in the Middle East, and be opportunistically aggressive in Libya. Then, just hope you've got enough to slow down the Allies when Torch is launched and the Americans arrive.

The game starts with the Axis having 10VP, and the primary mode for the VP track going up and down are key cities being taken. The Allies have to get the score down to 4 by the end to win, or take Tripoli. (Or both Tripoli AND Tunis if it's after Torch being played.) The Axis are trying to get the score up to 14 at the end of a turn, or take Alexandria, Port Said, and the Suez.

During our game, I quickly got the score up to the 12-13 range, but I could never quite do enough to get it higher. Mike was being effective with Malta Convoys (cards that cut the Axis hand size way down) and as a result I was drawing very poor hands. I hardly got a chance to use Rommel in combat at all as we had built up a rather static front in Libya with a no-mans land between. If I crept up to set up an attack, he'd beat back before I could attack. And, as time was mostly on my side, I was content to let that happen. My goal at this point was to create speed bumps in his attempt to get to Tripoli, and hope I was able to fend off the Americans once Torch arrived.

Once we got into 1942, Mike was holding 4 or 5 cards between turns. I surmised he'd drawn Torch early (it can't be played until the 3rd 1942 turn even though you might draw it right off in 1942) and was getting things set up. I was attempting to answer while not compromising my defense in Libya. Hard to do when you can't move anything west of Tripoli until after Torch is played.

At this point, Mike did what I expected in Summer '42. He played Torch, Patton, and Vulcan (the two most important post-Torch cards) in quick succession. This put all the Americans in full supply making his attacks far cheaper. He pushed hard down to Tripoli, and took it in the Fall of '42. I was trying to answer from Tunis to cut off his supply, but couldn't make any significant headway.

It was here that our game got off the rails. I had forgotten that I can't trace supply from Bengazi, and Mike had cut off Tobruk from the rest of my forces. As he now had Tripoli, this meant ALL my units in Libya outside of Tobruk were eliminated during the Attrition phase of the Fall '42 turn for being out of supply. Remembering this would have radically changed how I managed the 2nd half of the Fall '42 turn, but I had certainly goofed. I noticed this a couple action rounds into the next turn, and we backtracked to restart that turn. This eliminated any threat on Mike from the East, as I was going to be able to retake Tripoli rather easily (and likely win the game) had I kept those units, and he was able to just grind down the forces I had in Tunis and Bizerte. I held on as long as I could as Mike wasn't going to be able to win via VP – he had to take Tunis. Eventually, he did in Winter '43 as the last Axis unit on the continent fell.

One of the keys to doing well as the Allies in this game is getting Torch out as soon as possible, and with him being able to follow up immediately with Patton and Vulcan it was a tall order for the Axis to hang on.

The game moves rather quickly, once you get into the flow. There's 13 or 14 turns, and they usually take 20-30 minutes each. It's probably a 6 hour game once you are comfortable with it, unless an auto-victory short circuits things. A very manageable length for a game that covers the entire North African conflict.

We did play with two minor rule changes that were instituted for the first PBeM tournament: Rommel's card gives OPs when you play the event, and Malta is not worth any VPs for either side. In the rules as written, winning Malta is worth 1 VP for the Allies and 2 VP for the Axis. A rather large swing given the threshold for winning is 4/5 VP, and was a source of complaints against the game when it was first released.

The modified rules removed the VP bonus and kept the other effects in place. (This has since been modified again to giving 1VP to the Axis for conquering Malta and none to the Allies. I believe this has found the correct balance given the stats that have come out of the tournament games.)

I'm a big fan of this game. Given that the desert war is also my favorite WWII theatre, I'm probably a tad biased towards liking the game anyway, but I've always had fun with it. I think the rules tweaks they've published since release have tuned the game up nicely. Recommended.

Charles Triumphant

My choice this week, and I wanted to get Unhappy King Charles back to the table. I quite enjoyed our last playing, and wanted to see how this game developed all the way through.

We've pretty much covered how the game works last time we played, so I'll just get into the gory details. I thought it would be good to take the same side we had before, and knowing now that the game is more about area control than battles, we both adjusted our play accordingly. So, I took up the Royalist mantle, and Mike played the rebellion-fostering dissidents.

The first play of the game set the tone. Hotham's Plot. Remove up to two cards from the Parliamentarian hand. This removed Mike's ability to have an Ace in the Hole card after the first turn and removed a moderately powerful card from his hand, if I remember properly. I was able to sock away a Major Campaign card after the first turn as Mike raised the standard late making it not as useful on the first turn. It certainly came in handy later.

The Early War went slightly in Royalist favor, as it tends to go. I was doing well in the South, kept Mike out of the North, and even started making slight incursions into the East. (Getting Newark in my favor was a big deal on that note.) As we moved into the Mid War, however, things started going haywire. I had a stretch of three or so turns where I simply couldn't draw operations cards to save my skin. I was getting good cards, regardless. One of the four Alt-Hist cards that made the deck fell into my hands: The King Abandons the Bishops. This removes the Covanenters from the game, and completely removed any pressure on the North. This let me concentrate on the Midlands and South, and even continue making forays East. Also, on one early turn I drew four events – two of them being important Parliamentarian events: one that remove cards from the Royalist hand, and one that draws two extra cards.

After this point while my card draws hadn't really changed (they stayed relatively good), Mike's started getting worse. Even after the New Model Army made it out, he couldn't get enough operations cards to activate Cromwell with any sort of consistency. I had pulled a couple subordinates under King Charles, and managed to keep that force essentially the strongest in the game. Most of the battles in the game went against Mike, and while there was certainly some bad die rolling, a lot of his losses game from the fact I was, generally, stronger than him when we fought. I was mindful of the cost battles can exact, but when you have the advantage and the means, it makes sense to press it.

We called it after then penultimate turn. We did deal out the last hand, and it confirmed that Mike wasn't going to have a chance to turn the game. He controlled the south and seven of the nine production areas giving him 9 points with 12 needed for victory. I was likely to take back at least two or three of those production areas, and he was not going to be able to do much about it. A resounding Royalist success.

I'm always one to give criticism when poor rulebooks appear. Let me give some kudos here – the book is well organized, and we've run into exactly one situation that wasn't covered. And it's enough of an edge case that the question hasn't been publicly answered to this point. (The rules cover what happens when you run out of cards in the Mid-war deck while dealing out hands at the start of a turn. It doesn't cover what happens when the deck runs out on the last card you're supposed to deal. The designer is tracking down what you're supposed to do.)

This one's a keeper. If you're a fan of card-driven wargames (or have been curious what they're about) I can recommend this as possibly the best entry-level CDG currently in print. Just don't go of fighting at every opportunity – your losses aren't replaceable. Go for control, and fight when you think you have the advantage. It pays off.

UKC meets DSDF

Eric's choice again, and he wanted to revisit Unhappy King Charles (BGG entry). Once more I had Parliament and he had the Royalists, but this was a totally different game to the previous one (his take, my take). Essentially, he had a great start, I came back a little in the middle, then the dice and cards conspired against me in the last few turns to make it a walkover.

The great start for the Royalists mostly revolved around three things. First he drew and played Hotham's Plot in the first turn. This takes two cards from the Parliament hand, which means two things. First, obviously, I got fewer cards to play that turn. Secondly, and more importantly, it meant that I couldn't keep a card 'in the hole', where he could, reducing my operational flexibility.

The second thing, and driving on from the last point, he drew the Major Campaign card in the first (perhaps second?) turn, and was able to put it 'in the hole' until he had a good time to use it. While I did draw the Minor Campaign card early, with no ability to save it, I had to play it that turn.

The third thing was the early die rolls went Eric's way at the critical moments. I missed a 50/50 evasion, then rolled low to his high in the resulting battle, giving him the Major Victory, so I lost my entire force, and he gained yet another card.

After the first couple of turns, the South was on the edge of tipping to the Royalists, the North was already a Royalist bastion with Lord Fairfax holding on by his fingertips. The middle part of the game saw me recover the South and make some inroads into moving north. However, in this time the Royalists totally controlled the North and most of the Midlands, even pushing into the East. Even so, I didn't think the game was totally out of reach. The Scots Covenanters were due to arrive and they would start to put pressure on from the north.

The final part of the game saw my position totally disintegrate as I missed battle roll, after evasion roll, after interception roll, drew a whole bunch of 1 Ops cards and saw Eric draw all 3 of the Alt-Hist cards that came out, including the card that removed all the Scots from the game, drawing it the turn after they arrived. In the meantime, his battles went well, Prince Maurice made all 4 50/50 evasion rolls in a row to avoid the Lord General and the far superior New Model Army, converting spaces all the way. We quit prior to going into the last turn, as it was clear there was no way I was going to pull back the position with only 4 brigades (strength 7) on the map to his 7-8 (strength ~13).

However, whilst all that was somewhat (OK, a lot) frustrating (especially Eric making the 4 evasions, while I missed my 2 50/50 rolls) I don't think I played all that well. Too often I saw better plays after I'd done something, or options too late to do anything about it. Not seeing the consequences of plays or game situations. None of that is any fault of the game, all my own work.

I still really like UKC, and want to play more. The presentation is fabby. The rules are tight (although we did manage to find 1 situation that wasn't covered). The game-play feels like a good simulation of the ECW. Lots of choices to make, bags of replayability. Yep, I definitely want to play this some more, and I have a long way to go before I can say I've learned the game and could consider myself even a mediocre player.

The same goes for the rest of the CDG-style (and I'll ignore the distinction as to exactly whether UKC is a CDG) - I enjoy playing them, I just really, really suck at them. But I want to get better, so I'll keep playing.

My choice for the next week, and after some thought I'm going to settle on Shifting Sands, another CDG, and one I've been interested in for a while. Let's get a-punchin' and a-clippin'!

CC hits the beach

Eric's choice this time, so we moved from the fields of England to the Pacific islands, and rolled forward 300 years, as we got the newly released Combat Commander: Pacific (BGG entry)from GMT onto the table. This sees some changes to the base CC rules, as well as some special rules for the Pacific. The major changes are:

• Stacking. Previously there was a hard limit of 7 figures in a single hex, but this is changed so that a player may have more figures in a hex. However, any hex with more than 7 figures stacked in it has a -1 cover modifier for each figure beyond 7. Seemingly drawn straight from Fields of Fire, I like this rule.
  
• Artillery. The artillery Request/Denied order have been replaced with more generic Asset Request/Denied orders. Requests allow you to obtain artillery or aircraft missions, fire for effect, or repair broken weapons. Denied orders allow you to screw with the other player, breaking his weapons or radios. Again, a neat change that fits, and seems to be well thought out.
  
• Exiting. Units that exit the map no longer score points based on their casualty value, but on the value of the location where they exit. In fact they can only exit off these locations, rather than anywhere on the map edge.
  
• Scout. Kinda like a hero, except that he is used to direct mortar fire when activated.
  
• Melee. Now fought at the start of the Allied player's turn, rather than immediately. Allows the Japanese player an extra draw. Also introduces the Bayonets action, which adds two to the melee strength.
  
• Elimination. In a Fire, if the attack strength is more than twice the defense strength, then the defender is eliminated. This makes fire groups even more useful, and building mega fire groups of death (tm) real useful. Especially when the defender is overstacked.
  
• Reconnoiter. A new order, it allows the player to look at the top card in his fate deck, and then either leave it there, put it in the discard pile, or into his hand.
  
• Recover. Replaced by the Revive order, this gives you a number of points (1-5), shown at the top of the card. Each point may be used to remove a suppressed marker or rally one unit, which is now automatic. The Rout order has also been removed.
  
• Road. Roads now are 1/2MP, but only if there is no enemy LoS to the hex. The -1 cover is also dropped.
  

There are a number of smaller changes, impacting when weapons may be transferred, changes in the Actions and Events (some of which are just modifications of previous items), and such. Overall, I like the changes to the game. Mostly evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the stacking change is the biggest impact item, I think.

With this being a Pacific theater game, there are, not surprisingly, a number of rules to handle the Japanese. Major ones include:

• Infiltration. An order, it allows the Japanese player to remove units from the map to be brought on later at Sighting marker locations. These are set up at start, and then moved each time a random hex is revealed (e.g. for a Sniper).
  
• Banzai. A new posture, this allows the use of the Charge order, where all units that have not been activated can be activated for movement. Before that, all now activated units lose any suppressed marker, and rally. Downside is that all remaining unactivated defenders are activated for fire.
  
• Caves. New type of fortification, with limited LoS rules
  

These add some interesting flavor to the game for the Japanese player. (And his opponent, I guess!) However, we chose scenario 3, which Eric had read was one of the best CC scenarios, ever, and has the Japanese attacking at Guadalcanal, early in the war, and didn't feature Infiltration or Caves, but they are in a Banzai posture, so Charge orders were available. In a random draw, I got to play the Japanese. This scenario has the Japanese attacking over a river, attempting to take the VP hexes.

Eric set up an MMG in the middle, protecting VP hex #5 (worth 5VPs), along with a squad and weapons team. His howitzer was set up in VP hex #4 (worth 4VPs), along with a team, leader and squad. His HMG, weapon team, and a squad was in VP hex #1 (1VP), which had a good LoS to the beach hexes. His remaining squad was set up on his right, in the jungle, by itself.

I grouped my 'A' squads to the left, and in the middle, along with one of the good leaders each. The 'B' and SNLF squads were spread out in between and to the right, with the weaker leaders. My plan was to use the strength on the left against his lone unit, and mainly threaten in the middle, to see how it went. I started out slowly, taking my first three hands (of only 3 cards) and discarding them, looking for some way to move. In the meantime his howitzer is taking pot shots, to no effect.

Eventually I got moving, as I found Charge, Move, and Advance cards, all in short order. I managed to get up to the river, and across, but by this time we've had 4 'Time' events already, we're half way through the game, and I haven't even got to contact yet. On the good side, Eric tries for some artillery, but gets denied, and his MMG in the middle breaks.

Another Advance (the Japanese have 10 in the deck) and Charge gets me onto the far side of the river, and yet another Charge lets me advance onto the wire. Oh, I forgot to mention the wire. It's all over the American side. It's here that things start to go pear shaped, as his HMG, squads and leaders start to take a toll at the closer range. Still, my left flank is in good shape, and starts kicking the stuffing out of the American units, although his reinforcing garrison squads keep breaking down into teams, which makes them harder to kill. (Elite teams have higher morale than the garrison squads.) In the middle I finally get to contact, but my advance to melee in #5 goes Eric's way, when the even attack draws weak. All I needed was an even draw!

However, Time is down to the penultimate turn, I've already used the Initiative twice to reject a Time trigger, and it's getting close. I managed to assault #4, set up for an assault on #5, and even draw the required Advance card. However, it's not to be as Eric draws a Time trigger in his Fire, and with the Initiative card in his possession I can't get the double draw of '8'+ to keep the game going. Even though the score was 19VPs in his favor, it was a lot closer than that as I would have swung back 12 of those points in the next turn, just from the cards in hand.

This was one of the more enjoyable CC games I've played, as nothing too outrageously wacky went on. One or two small things, like Eric breaking his MMG in the middle early on; my 7-8 sniper attempts all drawing '7'+ (except for 1 '5'), when I needed low numbers (the numbering only goes up to '10'); Eric's gun managing to miss almost everything it aimed at, including a Fire at range 3, but at least the snake-eyes draw was also a Time trigger. Fairly minor. The critical factor was all the Time triggers early in the game, taking away half the game before I'd got sploshing through the river onto the far bank. It was a disappointment not to get to try some of the other Pacific rules, but that just means we'll have to get it back onto the table again. Bummer.

The changes to the system all made sense and worked well. I especially like the change to the stacking. However, the biggest disappointment in CC:P was the handling of the Banzai/Charge. My perception of a Banzai charge is a whole bunch of guys screaming and charging until they get to grips with the enemy and a big fight develops, with fists and rifle butts swinging. OK, maybe a Hollywood type perception, but that's what I understand it to be. And that's not what the game delivers.

The nature of the card plays means that the Charge order has you move your guys for one turn. And then they stop, piddle around, maybe Fire a little, whatever. At some later stage they may take it up again, or they may not. And that just doesn't seem right. There needs to be some sort of mechanism to allow them to carry the charge on, to keep going until they meet the enemy. Maybe it's my perceptions on the whole Banzai Charge that needs adjusting, I'm not sure, but at the moment it feels more like a 'Line Advance' card from C&C:A than a Banzai Charge.

Which is a shame, because the rest of the game is tight. The Japanese deck feels good. The new Events, Actions and mechanisms make for a better game than CC:E and CC:M, and I'm hoping that a lot of these changes make it into the v2.0 rules for the older games, and they have redone card decks, although that's unlikely.

I'm looking forward to playing more of the scenarios, especially any with Infiltration, but that whole Banzai thing is going to bug me.

Less than satisfied King Charles

After all the shenanigans of the holiday period it was time to get back to some serious gaming fun, and our collective choice for first game of the year was Unhappy King Charles (BGG entry), the new release from GMT. Regular readers will maybe be aware that I spent 20 years in the Sealed Knot, the largest English civil War re-enactment society in the UK, so I have a great affinity for all things ECW. When I saw UKC on the GMT P500 list I was straight there with credit card in hand. That was some time ago, as there was a long time between UKC making its number and actually seeing release, finally hitting the mat in December last year. This was good timing, as I'm currently planning to hit CDGs hard this year. I've played Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage and Barbarossa to Berlin, and although I've enjoyed them, I am seriously bad at them.

On reading the rules it seemed that this CDG was simpler than others I'd looked at, in that, unlike most CDGs, each card is only used for one purpose. Each card in UKC is either an operation (of 1, 2 or 3 points) or an event. As an operation it's pretty much the same as all other CDGs, the value of the card has to be equal to or higher than the general's rating for him (and his army) to be activated, or it can be used to place control markers on the board. However, the events are where all the flavor is, and there are lots of those, divided into Royalist and Parliament events, divided into Early, Mid, and Late war decks. There are also 3 Mandatory cards that are added at specific times, and each player has 2 cards (worth 1 and 2 Ops) added to their hand each turn.

Battles occur when two armies end in the same space (it's a point-to-point movement system), either through movement or interception. The defending army may attempt to evade, may disperse prior to combat, or fight, where the value of all brigades, the general's rating, any tactic card, and a single d6 are combined. Scores are compared, and the loser retreats and loses a number of brigades, and the winner may gain a card if the win was considered Major or Decisive. Pretty simple. Some areas are considered fortresses, which have to be captured by siege. Victory is measured, for the Parliament player, by forcing Charles to surrender at battle. If that doesn't happen then control of areas determines victory.

In our game I drew the Parliament, and drew the Mandatory card 'Raise the Standard'. I decided to hold onto this until my last play of the round, as we both jockeyed for position, placing control markers. In the second round we started in earnest, and had an indecisive battle in the north, both losing our veteran brigade. I'd been focussing in the south, and when Eric besieged Plymouth with Hopton I reinforced Bedford and then used an event to transfer another brigade from Essex, and attacked. In the battle I also played a tactics card, and achieved a major victory, the first (and, I believe, only) one of the game. I followed up with another attack, which forced Eric to disband Hopton's army, rather than face surrender, and I converted pretty much the whole of the South to Parliament. After this Waller started moving north, besieging Reading successfully. In the north things weren't going so well, but my aim was to steadily move my line north, so I wasn't too concerned as the battles were never decisive, so I only lost a brigade here and there.

Eric reinforced Oxford, and moved Rupert to support. However, the Mid-War cards saw me draw the first of the 'Alt-History' cards introduced to the deck, and Lord Wilmot's Plot converted Oxford to the Parliament cause, dispersing the Royalist army. This also allowed Essex to gather forces from Bedford and attack Rupert, and another Combat card for that battle I was able to gain the upper hand, as I chased Rupert back towards the Welsh border with him evading battle. Eventually he missed one, and he was also forced to disperse, leaving the southern Midlands under Parliamentary control.

By this time the second of the Mandatory cards had been played, and the Scots had started moving south, and had besieged Newcastle. However, this was a slow process as I used my big 3 Ops cards to get rid of Rupert, but got there eventually. They sat there as a threat, but no more, as I didn't draw any more big cards. Eric pushed in the North, but just couldn't gain a solid win, and the desertion rules saw his forces largely damaged as I was able to lose brigades from several armies, but his were more focussed.

In the early part of the Late War he pressed forward from Wales with Maurice, but the New Model Army appeared and Lord General Fairfax chased him back, and pressed into Wales, capturing Cardiff, and a part of Wales. This allowed the conversion of several other spaces in the Midlands, and it became controlled by Parliament.

And this was where we had to stop, 4 turns from the end. Parliament was marginally in control of the Midlands at the end of the turn, with the East and South being solidly for Parliament, but the start of the turn and removal of control markers for being isolated meant the Midlands were likely to also become solidly Parliamentarian. With the Royalists getting squeezed from the south and north I was confident of a win, even if I didn't force Charles to surrender.

We botched up a couple of rules, mostly that you can only recruit a single brigade in a region. I forget what the other one was. In any case, that's our fault, as the rules were quite clearly explained.

We played for around 4 hours, getting through 7 of the 11 turns, but that included a lot of rule confirming and discussions in the early part, as we got to grips with how it works. With more playings under the belt I think this should be doable in a 4 hour session, so a good length. With the variations in the way cards come out of the deck, and the 'Alt History' cards, only 4 of 12 are used each game, there appears to be a lot of re-playability. The game is certainly good to look at, with map and counters well done. I especially liked the pictures of the painted miniatures on the brigade counters, although they could have been larger, and would have looked great on 3/4" counters. The cards are also nice, but felt a little thin, although card sleeves make that a moot point. The rules were very straight forward in play and we didn't find any areas that weren't covered well or cases that were hard to find.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one, and it gave a good feel for the sweep of the ECW. However, that doesn't mean that I didn't find it hard to play, but that's just me and CDGs, and part of the reason I want to play more CDGs this year. Then again, that's part of the attraction of this style of game - so many things you want to do, and limited resources to do them with. Especially when you've got to figure out the list of things you need to do in the first place. Let's hope it gets back to the table soon.