Wargame Review

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SPQR: Deluxe Edition by Mark Herman and Richard Berg

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SPQR: Deluxe Edition by Mark Herman and Richard Berg

I am a massive fan of Richard Berg’s Men of Iron system, but I bounced off Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) pretty hard. This meant that I approached SPQR, the second volume in the Great Battles of History series, with both excitement and trepidation. Men of Iron and GBACW were originated by Berg, while in contrast Great Battles of History started as a Mark Herman design before it became a collaboration in subsequent volumes. I want to recognize that up front, because in this review I will probably be talking a lot about Richard Berg because it is his hex and counter designs that I am more familiar with – I know Herman’s card driven games better than his traditional hex and counter designs.

There is no denying the legacy of GBoH, I can see its legacy in many of the games I have played, including Men of Iron and Ben Hull’s Musket and Pike, and tracing that lineage as I was playing it was really interesting. This is a system with an impressive legacy to go with its significant heft in terms of scope and rules weight, I can see why it has more than a dozen volumes and a significant fanbase. In my case, I had an interesting time playing SPQR and I’m glad I’ve tried it, both for its influence on later designs and for aspects where I think it is still superior to those games, but at the end of the day I don’t think SPQR is a game for me. In this post I hope to explain what clicked with me and why ultimately I decided to pack it back into the box and pass it on to someone else.

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Korea: The Mobile War by Jim Dunnigan

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Korea: The Mobile War by Jim Dunnigan

First on my docket for operational games on the Korean War is the original, Jim Dunnigan’s design from 1971. This doesn’t seem to be a particularly beloved title these days, based on BGG ratings and anecdotal evidence I’ve gathered on social media, but as the first game on the topic (as far as I’m aware) and one that was published within twenty years of the war’s end, I couldn’t help but want to try it. I can’t say that my experience was comprehensive, I played the opening scenario and just dabbled with the system, but I have some initial thoughts just from pushing counters around for a few hours.

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Tanto Monta: A Story of Disappointment

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Tanto Monta: A Story of Disappointment

I think it is safe to say that Tanto Monta: The Rise of Ferdinand and Isabella by designer Carlos Diaz Narvaez was my most anticipated game of the year. I adore Here I Stand, and Tanto Monta took that core system and applied it to the years right before Here I Stand begins, which includes the Italian Wars, a topic I am fascinated by. It also decreased the player count from six to four. Getting six people together who are all willing to spend a day playing through the Protestant Reformation is probably the single greatest barrier to playing Here I Stand, so this was really promising. The back of the box promised the same complexity as Here I Stand and a play time of 3-7 hours, which we should always take with a grain of salt but still it looked good for this being an excellent way to get a dose of more Here I Stand more often. It also came out at the perfect time – my copy arrived just in time for a gathering of myself and my fellow We Intend to Move on Your Works partners in crime. The four of us convened in Pierre’s house for me to teach them all Tanto Monta, expecting a day of epic gaming with great friends. To quote a somewhat infamous review of Virgin Queen: it was a fucking disaster.

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We Intend to Move on Your Works Episode 6: Longstreet Attacks

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Apologies for the delay - we started playing Longstreet Attacks back in July to mark the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, which is why this game breaks our chronology, but the game took longer than expected and then the editing took even longer than that. Thankfully this episode is a good one, so hopefully that makes up for the delay, and we aim to have the next one with you much sooner!

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Grand Havoc by Jeff Grossman

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Grand Havoc by Jeff Grossman

Blind Swords is quickly climbing the ranks to be among my favorite hex and counter systems. The chaos of the chit draw, the unpredictability of the CRTs, the manageable footprint, and the elegant presentation from Revolution Games have all wormed their way into my heart. Longstreet Attacks showed me the potential of the system, but in a form that didn’t totally agree with me. The Day Was Ours showed me that it could do approach to battle and the chaos of First Bull Run. After playing that I was pretty sure that I would prefer Blind Swords as a single counter sheet experience – low counter density leaving me plenty of room to explore the map. It was with some trepidation that I punched the two counter sheets of Jeff Grossman’s Grand Havoc. Would this cement my love for Blind Swords, or would it be another Longstreet Attacks, an almost hit that doesn’t quite land? I’m delighted to report that it was the former – Grand Havoc delivers a larger scale Blind Swords experience and seems to resolve pretty much all my misgivings about Longstreet Attacks. This is a great game, and I’m excited to talk about why.

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Agincourt: The Triumph of Archery over Armor by Jim Dunnigan

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Agincourt: The Triumph of Archery over Armor by Jim Dunnigan

When I read the subtitle “The Triumph of Archery over Armor” I knew I had to play this game. That sentence is like red to my bullish need to overshare the history of archery with anyone and everyone. That it was also a classic game from Jim Dunnigan, published by SPI, and thus a piece of gaming history made it all the more interesting. Luckily, I was able to secure an in-shrink copy from avid collector and all-around good guy Nils Johansson. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this game, I had never played a Dunnigan or SPI game before, and I was pleased to find some very intriguing design ideas in this box.

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The Worthington Civil War Brigade Battle Series

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The Worthington Civil War Brigade Battle Series

Worthington Publishing’s Civil War Brigade Battle Series by designer Grant Wylie is a rules light hex and counter system on, you guessed it, American Civil War battles at the brigade scale. It also should not be confused with The Civil War Brigade Series (CWBS) from The Gamers, which is also a brigade level hex and counter system but is far more complex and also much older, with its first published entry from 1988 as opposed to Worthington’s system which began in 2019. It’s a little confusing. Worthington’s system currently spans four games, three by Grant Wylie and published by Worthington and one game by Pascal Toupy and published in French wargame magazine Vae Victis. There are already plans for quite a few more entries as well. These are rules light games, the system rules are eight pages long with each game adding at most one page of extra game specific rules on top of that. They also generally play in two to four hours. These are fun games for fans of hex and counter Civil War gaming and are also a great entry point into hex and counter gaming for anyone who has always wanted to try them but has been hesitant to do so. They are probably not going to blow your mind, these aren’t radical designs the likes of which you’ve never seen before, but I’ve had a lot of fun playing them and if simple hex and counter is your cup of tea then I think you’ll enjoy them too. But you probably didn’t come here for the tl;dr, you came here for some nitty gritty detail, so lets get to it!

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A Tale of Two Crécy

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A Tale of Two Crécy

Crécy is a battle I am both fascinated by and terrified of. I have read so much about this battle, and yet I still feel like I have only the most tenuous grasp on what happened that day in Ponthieu. It is one of the most famous and best recorded medieval battles, but the abundance of sources has produced such a confusing mess of contradiction and myth that untangling it could be the work of a lifetime. Many historians have offered their opinions on what happened, but there is still significant disagreement on elements of the chronology, the array of both armies, and even the battle’s location. Still, for all the hair pulling that thinking about Crécy causes me, I can’t help but be fascinated by it and the attempt to understand what happened at what might be the Hundred Years War’s most important battle (potentially rivaled only by Poitiers a decade later, really). If the English lost Crécy it is likely that they would not have been able to afford to keep the war going, but their dramatic victory, while it yielded only moderate success in its immediate aftermath, did much to sustain the war and encouraged Edward III to continue pursuing his claim to the French throne. With that fascination in mind, I decided to play a couple of games on Crécy that I had sitting on my shelf. Below are my general thoughts on both. As a note, I’m going to try and keep this brief because my options are really to skip over this topic lightly or to lose myself to it for months, and as much fun as the latter could be I simply haven’t the time.

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Review - The Day Was Ours by Matt Ward

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Review - The Day Was Ours by Matt Ward

When I was initially looking for more Blind Swords games to try, I passed over The Day Was Ours because I thought that I had no need for another game on First Bull Run since I own and love Rick Britton’s Manassas. This was doubly true when I considered that The Day Was Ours didn’t even promise a faster playtime; I can only manage so many 5+ hour games in my life. That changed on a recent trip across the Atlantic to visit my parents. I was looking for a game I could possibly play with my dad, and I realized that Blind Swords was a good option because it would fit easily in a corner of the house, and I already knew how to play it so we could set up and get playing quickly. I also wanted to pick a topic my father already knew reasonably well, and First Bull Run fit that bill admirably. I’m glad I did because I was really impressed with The Day Was Ours. I am not without some reservations, but overall, I had a great time and I think I will manage to find room on my shelves for another First Bull Run game after all. Who knows, this may even be the beginning of an obsession.

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Review - In Magnificent Style by Hermann Luttmann

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Review - In Magnificent Style by Hermann Luttmann

The (hopefully) final entry in my Confederate Solitaire Tirlogy is a classic game from Hermann Luttmann, a name familiar to anyone with an interest in games on the American Civil War. Originally released by Victory Point Games, In Magnificent Style received a deluxe reprint from Worthington a few years ago. This is one of two solitaire games on Pickett’s Charge, where the player tries to outperform Pickett, Pettigrew, and Trimble in their disastrous assault on the Union position on the third day of Gettysburg. I don’t really want to bury the lede, I think this is a gross subject for a game. Despite that, I had quite a lot of fun playing In Magnificent Style – stripped of its topic this is a very enjoyable light solitaire game, but that theme severely degrades my ability to enjoy playing it. Before we get to the heavy stuff, though, let’s talk a little about the game’s mechanisms and why it’s fun!

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Review - Longstreet Attacks by Hermann Luttmann

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Review - Longstreet Attacks by Hermann Luttmann

Few names loom larger in the, for lack of a better word, wargame-ology of current American Civil War games than Hermann Luttmann. A Most Fearful Sacrifice, his enormous game on the full battle of Gettysburg, has won countless awards and is easily among the most talked about games of 2022. Before that he was widely known for his Blind Swords system, which includes several battles from the Franco-Prussian War but is dominated by American Civil War games. Seeing as I am currently undertaking a tour of ACW designs it was inevitable that I would play a few Luttmann designs. As my entry point into the ludography of Luttmann I selected Longstreet Attacks. This wasn’t because I thought it to be the best entry into the system, many people have said it is not, but rather a choice based on the game’s subject. I wanted to play something Gettysburg to mark the 160th anniversary back in July and I thought playing a game about the second day on the 2nd of July would be appropriate. I managed to approximately time the beginning of my game with the timing of the famous attack, but the actual playing of the game took a fair bit longer than Longstreet’s disastrous assault did. I also think the figure of Longstreet and his position in the Lost Cause myth is an interesting one, and something that is very germane to my project.

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Review - Men of Iron by Richard Berg

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Review - Men of Iron by Richard Berg

I have written and thought more about Richard Berg’s Men of Iron than I have any other wargame I’ve ever played. The Men of Iron tri-pack was the game that brought me fully into wargaming. It was my first hex and counter game. While not my most played game if individual plays are measured, in terms of hours invested it almost certainly is. I have a relationship with this game series is what I’m saying. When I first bought that tri-pack I didn’t have any plans to write a review of the games therein. I’ve documented many of my individual plays of certain battles and that was my plan to continue going forward – not writing up literally every play but certainly every scenario that I thought I had something to say about. However, as I play more Men of Iron, I keep thinking about what I love about the system and what frustrates me about it, and I’m increasingly tempted towards making my own version of Men of Iron. That has nudged my thoughts more in the direction of what I think is the appeal of the system and what its failings are, and at a certain point that’s basically just a review so I thought I’d put that down on a page, and once I’ve done that I might as well share them with the world.

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Review - Andean Abyss by Volko Runke

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Review - Andean Abyss by Volko Runke

It happened! COIN came to the internet’s best online wargame platform, Rally the Troops, in the form of the series originator Andean Abyss. In many ways this is the obvious choice for Rally the Troops, it’s both a great place for those interested in learning the system and out of print with little promise of a reprint soon, so not in direct competition with sales. It also offered me the first time to try and dive deep into a COIN game and see how I feel about the system after repeated plays. The requirement to get four players and dedicate most of a day has made consistent plays of COIN games a challenge. I have dabbled with solitaire play, and enjoyed that, but I’m terrible at flow-charts and multi-hand solitaire is a very different kind of experience. So, I’ve been logging many, but not an insane number, of Andean Abyss plays over the past month or so, what have I learned?

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Review - Here I Stand by Ed Beach

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Review - Here I Stand by Ed Beach

I first played Here I Stand five years ago at a time when I was far less familiar with wargames. In fact I had recently purged my small game collection of every wargame I owned but Here I Stand because I had given up on finding time and people to play them with. Despite this, in 2018 I made the effort of gathering six of my friends and spending the entire day playing Here I Stand. It was amazing. It took us over eight hours. In the end I emerged victorious as the French, securing an instant victory moments before the Ottomans won on VPs earned mostly through piracy. I spent the next 24 hours buzzing with excitement and exhaustion after that phenomenal day of gaming. I had to get it back to the table, I needed that experience again. Finally, a child, a pandemic, and five years later I managed to play it again and let me tell you, it was just as good the second time!

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Review - Seven Pines or Fair Oaks by Amabel Holland

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Review - Seven Pines or Fair Oaks by Amabel Holland

My ongoing exploration of American Civil War games brought me back to hex and counter after a run of operational games and I was pretty excited to be here. I love operational games, but there is something just so satisfying about a tactical hex and counter game even as someone who generally doesn’t find battles to be the most interesting lens through which to view military history. I was also excited to be playing another Amabel Holland game. She is always an interesting designer even as I’ve not always loved her games. However, I adored Great Heathen Army, so more hex and counter from her was clearly something to look forward to.

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Half of a Review of The Late Unpleasantness by Steve Ruwe

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Half of a Review of The Late Unpleasantness by Steve Ruwe

I want to open with two confessions straight out of the gate. The first is that I have only played half of Steve Ruwe’s The Late Unpleasantness: Two Campaigns to Take Richmond. As the sub-title implies, there are two games in this box and I have only played one of them. The two campaigns are If It Takes All Summer, on Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign, and The Gates of Richmond, on the Seven Days Battles in 1862. I have only played the latter, but I feel like my experience with it is sufficient to review that part of the game even if this is not a review of the whole box. My second confession is this: I didn’t really enjoy The Gates of Richmond. Usually games I don’t enjoy I don’t write about, because expressing my lack of enjoyment isn’t very much fun for me and this blog is first and foremost a hobby. However, in this case I had what I felt were sufficient thoughts on the game and its representation of history that it would be worth writing about it, even if in the end I don’t think the game itself is very interesting to play.

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Review - 1914: Nach Paris

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Review - 1914: Nach Paris

I played 1914 Nach Paris in something of a frenzy over the month of March and early April. Finishing a game one evening, setting up the next scenario and playing that the following night. It dominated my little gaming corner, pushing everything else to the edges. Night after night I struggled to learn to swim in this complex operational hex and counter game about the opening weeks of the Western Front of World War I, designed by Bertrand Munier and published by Vuca Simulations. That I played this so many times should give some indication about how much I’ve enjoyed my time with 1914: Nach Paris but this is a huge box and there’s a lot to unpack, both literally and in terms of the experience it offers. I hope you’ll bear with me for what will prove to be a meandering review through the pre-trench warfare of 1914 Northern France.

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Review - Nevsky by Volko Ruhnke

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Review - Nevsky by Volko Ruhnke

I must confess to feeling some trepidation when I wrote in my review of Almoravid that while I liked Levy and Campaign’s Iberian excursion, for me the original Baltic flavour was superior. You see, at time of writing I had just wrapped up several months of playing Almoravid and I hadn’t so much as opened Nevsky in weeks let alone played it. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was viewing my experiences with rose tinted glasses. After all, I’d only played a few games of Nevsky, all of them solitaire, and hadn’t even written a review of the game. I was thus very excited when news came out that Rally the Troops would be adding Nevsky as the site’s next game. Now I could finally give it the thorough exploration it warranted and determine with certainty whether the sentiments I felt so keenly after playing Almoravid were still true months later. I’m happy to report that they are! While I do have some quibbles with Nevsky, which we’ll get to, I’ve fallen in love with it all over again and found new depths to its design that I hadn’t appreciated before.