State of Play: With The Hammer: play vs. playtest

  

 

This is kind of a part two to my earlier post about Ray Weiss’s With The Hammer (Conflict Simulations Ltd, ~2025), a game about the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany in the 1520s. The game is currently under development and playtesting simultaneously; thing tend to move quickly at CSL.

I’ve played through a couple of iterations of the game over a few weeks, alone and with my brother-in-law, T. I’m not aware of a single game that deals with this particular moment of history. Ed Beach’s Here I Stand (GMT Games, 2006) covers the period but doesn’t detail this situation (though, to be honest, I’ve only played the game once; there may be an event card representing the Peasants’ Revolt, but I don’t recall it coming up in play).

Playtesting is a tricky thing, and I’m not sure I’m all that good at it. I do think I’m getting better at is, because I’ve participated in maybe half a dozen tabletop playtests (role-playing games as well as wargames), but I’m always a little hesitant in suggesting ways to improve a game, coming to it cold. I’ve never designed a boardgame*, so I’m kind of in awe of those who have or repeatedly do. Thankfully, I’m just one of a small team playtesting With The Hammer. I like to thin we all bring something different to the table.

The Noble player starts with just one Army on the board, by turn four, all three are
available. They need supplies to move though, and requisitioning those supplies
locally depletes the resources of the town (the red triangle markers at Hersfeld
and Bildhausen).

The main purpose of playtesting is to pull at the seams of a new game and see if the stitches give. It takes a special mindset. People talk about trying to break the game, but that’s not quite right. If a game is worth its salt, it should stand up to some rigour by the time it gets to the playtest stage. A play-tester shouldn’t set out to be a jerk about it (I suppose the ones who do tend not to get invited back). If you go into a game, any game, with the mindset of trying to prove it doesn’t work or that it’s somehow broken, you’ll end up finding problems that aren’t there, then doubling down on that take.

Early playtesting can bring its own difficulties. The environment is dynamic, and the game you’re presented with initially may not be the same game once you get down to it. This is doubly true in a case like this. WTH was a quite different game to what it is now compared to when I signed up for playtesting. Some of that has come from developer Fred Serval. Like the introduction of the random event cards, but some of it is inherent in Mr Weiss’s design process (I think Ray’s design philosophy might be “Move fast and break things,” but for some games, CSL has the shortest concept-to-product-release duration I’ve ever seen in this industry). A lot of the changes are cosmetically functional – some extra information has been incorporated into the map to facilitate and streamline play, so the final map will look a little different to what you see in the accompanying photos. Some are structural; the Noble Armies’ Strength Points were originally factors of 10, but this was subsequently changed to a base 12 (a number the Persians believed to be magical, for its properties of retaining whole numbers when divided by two, three, four or six). This makes much more sense, of course – less arithmetic involved in working out ratios for the CRT – but it was a significant and crucial change to how the game functioned.

The WTH PAC. Facebook got to see this before us play-testers did.
Looks good, though.

When trying out a new game, my first instinct is to see how the designer is trying to simulate the situation portrayed, how they’ve gone about it, and how well the game does that, which is maybe a part of the playtesting process, but not the fundamental part. This is more a criterion against which a new game can be measured. Dynamic play is of course important. Play balance is something I don’t get as hung up on as some. I’m happy when success is measured by whether the losing side managed greater gains or avoided such losses as the historical outcome, and I’ve complained here before about some people’s insistence that every game has to offer each side a perfectly equal chance of success. Historically, it’s often the uneven matches that are the most interesting. I honestly wonder if Bulge games keep these folks up at night. But I digress.

I’m more comfortable correcting grammar or suggesting changes to rules as they are written. A big chunk of my working life has been spent editing other people’s work, so I feel much more confident throwing my weight around on that front. There is, if not an absolute right and wrong way, at least a better way to state a rule or case, but basic communication principles are often overlooked in wargame production. I’m more cautious about suggesting changes to elements of a game I’m just starting out with. Once I’ve taken a game out for a spin a couple of times, I’ll be more ready to comment on it.

Our Peasant heroes tooling up for a fight. On their turn, Peasant leaders can try to
convince Peasant Bands to join them, While the Nobles can try to talk them into
disbanding on their turn.

An artefact of playtesting a game is I’ll often get a lot more enjoyment out of it than if I came to it off the shelf. I think this is because I’m much more engaged with the game. Nearly all playtest games I play on my own, to better understand how the mechanisms work. I’m lucky to have a gaming buddy who is willing to indulge me introducing new games with left-field subjects neither of us have come across before. These games let me seethe game working in a less clinical environment, and to just enjoy the ride. This can offer insights as well, a second pair of eyes that doesn’t come with the baggage of a close reading of the rules and evaluation of the CRT. And it’s fun.

For all my concerns, playtesting for CSL is a good fit for me. Doing this kind of work is a little like being a Baker Street Irregular, with Mr Weiss cast as Holmes. You make your small contribution to the whole. and you’re rewarded with genuine appreciation. This isn’t always the case. One time – I’m not going to say who – there was an element in a game that didn’t make sense to me as it was written up; the clause seemed to counter itself over a couple of sentences. I brought it up with the designer, who told me (a little peevishly) that it was clearly set out if I only read it properly. And it was. Right there, in the next iteration of the rules.

Unaffiliated landsknects show up in Frontenhausen (top middle). At the start of every
other turn, an unaffiliated band may appear at one of the towns on the map.
Either side an try to convince them to join or disband (leave the area).

This isn’t quite the post I set out to write. I intended to write more about the game at hand than, but I’ve ended up exorcising all my process anxieties. I will say that, for all its historical obscurity, With The Hammer is a tight little game that should appeal to a lot of people who wouldn’t normally be drawn to wargames. It’s mechanically interesting but thematically stronger than your average Eurogame. And it’s an important, neglected episode from the past that deserves a broader audience.

I’m planning to write at least one more post about playing With The Hammer. Because I’ve been involved with the playtesting I wouldn’t feel right about reviewing the game when it comes out, but this will be kind of a (p)review if you like. Talking about how the game works and how it plays out. I want to have one or two more games against a human opponent before I tackle that.

This was my first opposed game with my regular partner in crime, T. We started late
and he was hammered, so we pulled up stumps early (end of Turn 6), but it was
looking like a Peasant victory was on the cards.

 

* I do have about 35,000 words of an Apocalypse Engine-inspired Western RPG – a love letter to the Gary Cooper and James Stewart movies I grew up watching – tucked away in a drawer that I pull out a tinker with sometimes. But at this point I have no viable boardgame prototypes. If that ever changes, you’ll be the first to know.

 

Stripped Down for Parts: Waterloo, 1815: Fallen Eagles II

 

 

 

Walter Vejdovsky’s Eagles of France rules first appeared in Waterloo,1815: Fallen Eagles (Hexasim, 2015), a game released in time for the 200^th anniversary of the climactic battle. Since this release, we’ve seen Austerlitz 1805: Rising Eagles (Hexasim, 2016), Ligny 1815: Last Eagles (Hexasim, 2017), and Quatre Bras 1815: Last Eagles (Hexasim, 2019). The last two games can be combined into a single campaign game of the altercations immediately preceding the Battle of Waterloo (or la bataille de Mont Saint-Jean, depending on who you ask).

A couple of years ago, Hexasim released a second edition of the first game in the series, named (in line with long wargaming convention and tradition) Waterloo 1815: Fallen Eagles II (Hexasim, 2022[ hereon in I’ll just refer to the game as Fallen Eagles II). Through a confluence of means (some available credit in my PayPal account) and opportunity (a still shrink-wrapped copy available at an online second-hand dealer), I have now come into possession of this edition, my first Eagles of France game. Here is a look at what’s gone into this game, with a few comments of my own.

The cover illustration for the second edition revives the portrait from the first (with a slightly higher colour), of a solder of the Imperial Guard (the Old Guard, or grognards, were the only soldiers in the Grand armée granted permission to wear facial hair). The box is self is on the lighter side – closer to MMP card weight than GMT boxes – but is still sturdy, firm in coupling with the base, and does its job admirably. All in all, the presentation is enticing, but still gives the impression of a serious wargame.

The box back teases at what is to come inside. It presents the full Mont-Saint-Jean map with a row of sample counters of leaders and units above and below the map at roughly actual scale. The description details that this is the is the second edition of Waterloo, 1815, mentioning the improvements to the game – better representation of the geography of the battlefield (the landscape has been radically altered in the last 200 or so years), and the revised and more accurate Order of Battle for this edition. The blurb is prefixed with a British flag, indicating that this is an English-language edition of the game. Unlike some European publishers, Hexasim produces games in single language options, which can be frustrating when the English version has sold out, but I’m not going to criticise their business model as it obviously works for them.

Interestingly, Hexasim rates the game’s difficulty as 4-5 out of 9, something you don’t often see, but I think here it’s to denote the escalation in the in complexity from the first scenario – the French assault on Chateau d’Hougoumont – to fourth and main scenario, the Battle of Mont-Saint-Jean.

Unusually, no age-appropriate advice is offered here. From what I’ve seen of the game and rules, I think the standard fourteen years, or an engaged thirteen-year-old, should be able to handle the game, if not immediately grasp the tactical nuances. But I’ve always believed the best way to learn a game is to lose to a more experienced player a couple of times.

Fallen Eagles II comes with two booklets, an Eagles of Frace series rulebook, and a game-specific playbook. These are printed on a nice low-gloss paper-stock, in a pleasant font slightly smaller than I would have preferred - about nine-point – bit still comfortable to read without reaching for my glasses.

The Rulebook is 24 pages in length. One page is given over to a full cover, featuring an etching entitled Napoleon invading Poland, 1806 (alas, I haven’t been able to track down the artist, but the work looks broadly cotemporaneous with the event depicted). Most of a page is given over to a thorough Table of Contents. The essential rules are covered across nineteen helpfully illustrated pages, with the last couple of pages detailing the Special Rules (those not directly involving setting orders, movement or combat; Morale, Special Events resulting from combat, Leaser casualties, changing weather conditions, Fog of War (limited inspection of your opponent’s stacks, and Reinforcements are all covered in this section. These aren’t “optional rules”, per se, but You could play an initial game or two setting aside some or all of them, especially with the shorter scenarios, if you wanted to concentrate on getting the core rules squared away first.

The Eagles of France series has been in print for going on a decade. The current iteration is version 2.3, dated October 2022 – and with four titles released (well, I’d say five, as this second edition of Fallen Eagles, with its redrafted maps and revised Orders of Battle, surely warrants its own place), a lot of teething problems will have been ironed out with successive titles.

The Playbook also comes in at 24 pages. It too has a full-page cover. I’m okay with this, but I understand why some might prefer to have a Table of Contents (the Playbook doesn’t have one).

A single column on the first page covers the exclusive rules for Fallen Eagles II. The next three and a half pages detail the four scenarios. The Eagles of France games use a small deck of cards in a fairly novel way. I’ll come back to the tactical cards, but I’ll mention here that two pages are devoted to the Alternate History cards. These are essentially optional rules cards, six in all, to mix up the scenarios from their historical parameters (like the No Rain! card, that allows for an earlier starting time – chosen randomly – to the main battle, but also an earlier arrival of Blücher’s Russian reinforcements).

The remainder of the Playbook presents a four-page Example of Play (really a couple of contrived situations, but quite useful in demonstrating how the rules interact), Two pages of Designer’s Notes, another two of Player’s Notes, and a short but intriguing Bibliography of resources consulted in the preparation of this edition.

Player Aid Cards (and there are a few of them)

Player Aid Cards, front (Fire Table) and back (Melee Table).
A player's best friend in combat.

All of the Player Aid cards are printed on the same weight card with a light satin finish that minimises reflection under overhead lights. The primary cards are a pair of battle PACs, featuring the necessary tables and modifiers for Fire combat on one side and Melee combat on the reverse. It’s a small thing, but I’m always a little disappointed when a game only features a single combat resolution PAC to be shared between the players. These cards are both readable and easy to navigate. The information isn’t as all crowded, but it well laid out and, on the Fire Table side, incorporates a Random Special Events table, triggered by a roll of two on the Fire Table or by an even-numbered result on the Melee Table.

The Unit Identification Chart and Turn Track (my one point of consternation in
an otherwise brilliant package),

A turn in the Eagles of France system is one hour in length. While the turns on the universal Turn Track begin at 6:00am, the earliest scenario durations begin at 11:00am, when the historical Battle of Waterloo began. This was because heavy rain on the 17^th had left the roads impassable for cannon; Napoleon delayed his manoeuvres to allow the paths time to firm up enough to draw up his artillery. The extended turn track length is all to do with the

Terrain Effects Chart. There are two of these. No, really.

Which brings me to one of the few complaints I have about the game so far in my exploration. Fallen Eagles II features two Terrain Effects Charts. These are arguably as integral to the experience as the combat PACs in a game so focussed manoeuvre, but the decision was made to print one of these on the verso of the universal Turn Track. It’s a small thing, but for the sake of one more sheet of cardstock, we would have had a more perfect game.

The remaining TEC is provided on the verso of a Unit Identification Chart. This takes the unit information spelt out early in the rulebook covering the unit counters and lays it all out – slightly enlarged – in a useful infographic format that, until I get used to identifying the seven separate unit nationalities making up the Belle Alliance, will get a lot of use at the table.

As mentioned above, the game comes with two Terrain Effects Charts, but one is effectively unavailable for at least the grand scenario; one may be able to manage tracking a three or four turn scenario by other means. I don’t expect a better result would have been to print them on the back of Order of Battle charts; the Hougoumont scenario map is to be found on the back of the French OoB for the la bataille de Mont-Saint-Jean (the French name for the Battle of Waterloo, because... well, they're French), which does make sense as, if playing one, you will have no need for the other.

D'Erlon's Assault and Plancenoit Order of Battle cards.

Mont-Saint-Jean scenario -   Allied Order of Battle cards.

Mont-Saint-Jean scenario - French Order of Battle card.

Each scenario has its own Order of Battle set up card or cards, except for the Hougoumont scenario, which is small enough in scope and forces to incorporate the OoB into the board graphics. The OoB cards are useful in laying out all the units before positioning them on the board. These are provided for scenarios 2-4; Scenarios 2 and 3, D’Arlon’s Assault and Plancenoit respectively, each have a single sheet accommodating both sides’ forces, while the Mont-Saint-Jean scenario has three; two for la Belle Alliance and one for the French. It might feel like double-handling to lay out your units on the OoB card, only to move them when sorted to the playing area, but I think it saves time to pre-sort them, and it will guarantee that no units are truant from the battle when you need them most.

D'Erlon's Assault and Plancenoit Set-up maps.

Mont-Saint-Jean Set-up map (verso of the D'Erlon/Plancenoit map).

The combined Set-Up guide is a bi-fold PAC that offers a formation set-up guide (in miniature) for the Mont-Saint-Jean scenario outside of the fold, across both panels, and the D’Erlon and Plancenoit scenarios inside of the fold, one panel each. I personally would have reversed this; if the two smaller scenarios were demonstrated on the outside, the card would only have to have been opened for the one scenario for which it must be laid open anyway, but that’s a minor quibble and no indictment on the game. These set-up maps indicate which areas a given scenario’s starting elements should start in. Some latitude is offered to the players within these areas for the placement of individual units.

Order Boards, one for each player. This is where your plans
first make contact with the enemy.

At the beginning of the game the formations available to each side are given orders by their commander (that side’s player), and at the start of subsequent turns these orders may be changed or discharged and fresh orders given. These are plotted out on the Orders Chart. If a formation is given and order to go to a certain location, it must use its activation to make its way to that location. If it’s given a Defence Order, it will take a defensive stance until ordered otherwise. Much of war is about scarcity of resources, and this is no exception. Each scenario will dictate how many or few orders may be changed in a single turn. Sometimes a formation may have to continue to move to a location that’s no longer tenable or remain in a defensive posture when they would be of more use harassing the enemy’s flank because of poor communications. It’s a nice touch.

Maps

Scenario 1: Hougoumont map. This looks like an excellent introduction to the system,
or a good fast-playing scenario if you’re short on time and/or space.

Scenario 2: D’Erlon’s Assault map.

Scenario 3: Plancenoit map (verso to D’Erlon’s Assault).

It’s the maps where the graphic beauty of the game really stands out. They are a nearly a water-colour wash of greens, with subtle but distinct changes for differences in elevation, steep inclines and various trees and foliage. Woods, hedge hex-sides, orchids, gardens and even tree-lined roads are rendered beautifully, as are gradual and steep slopes, sunken roads, roads trails and villages. The blending shades of green set off the vibrant counters to best effect.

Scenario 4: Mont-Saint-Jean map. Apologies for the glare.
For scale, the table the map is laying on is near to exactly four feet wide..

The main scenario is played out on a two-sheet play-area (joining at a long edge with about a ½ inch overlap) that takes in all the important territory at a scale of round 200 and something metres per hex. The series hex-scale varies from 200-250 metres short angle diameter (perpendicularly from side to side); given the turns are one hour in duration, the variation in distance is of less consequence than, say the Vive l’Empereur rules, where turns cover twenty minutes of game time).

For paper maps, the two sheets making up the Mont-Saint-Jean battlefield lay remarkably flat right out of the box with just a little smoothing out. Nonetheless, I think I would still use plexi over the sheets, j

Counters

Counter Sheets 1 and 2. 

Counter sheets 3 and 4 and mini-counter sheet 5. The more observant may notice
sheet 3 is actually upside down. It was late, and these were the last components shot.
I'll try to do better next time.

The Eagles of France counters are clearly contenders – to my mind at least – the nicest-looking counters of any game at this scale (to be fair, I haven’t got my hands on a copy of Battles of Napoleon: Volume I – Eylau 1807 (Sound of Drums, 2024) yet, so there’s that). They are pre-rounded and nice to punch out, with very good registration. For the amount of information crammed into each counter, they are surprisingly readable.

Some of the information conveyed is chromatic’ the unit counters are split into three bands. The thinner top band offers the unit’s name against a coloured band which representing the formation to which the unit belongs, while the middle band’s colour denotes the formation’s nationality. I know this isn’t unique – other games use coloured stripes to denote formations at a glance – but to my mind, the Eagles of France counters do it best, with a clear diversity of colours and a thin dividing line between the sections to present the information more clearly.

The top segment offers the name of the unit, while the centre section presents the formation name (left), a NATO symbol (everything in the game is infantry, cavalry, heavy cavalry – denoted by bi-coloured symbol sections – or artillery), and the formation’s brigade or division designation (right). The bottom section is always presented in a pleasant ecru, and presents the functional information for the unit, with Unit Size (in lieu of a Strength rating), its Quality Factor (analogous to a Morale rating), and Movement points. Nearly all infantry units are rated 4, while most Light infantry get an extra movement point. Most cavalry units get 8 movement points, horse artillery get 6 while foot artillery come in at 3 points (those cannons are heavy).

While we’re talking about movement, I like how the Eagles of France rules handle road movement. Instead of tying it to a unit’s movement factor – say, half movement rounding down or an extra half point movement for movement on roads and one third on trails, Mr Vejdovsky has adopted a simple one size fits all; if all movement in a turn is conducted on a path, the unit can move an extra two hexes, regardless of terrain; no accounting necessary.

Formation leader’s counters have less factors, but are presented in the same fashion as their subordinate units. Along with the name of their formation, they include an Initiative Factor (bottom left) and a Leadership Factor. The overall leaders are backed with a solid national colour; these are not tied to any formation. All the leader counters also incorporate a tiny portrait of the man in question, which I think is a nice touch.

Fallen Eagles II comes with four sheets of counters, plus a two-row sheetlet holding dome extras. The counters are pre-rounded easy-punch chits mounted on white-core card stock, and are about 5/8” in size. It’s worth mentioning that four replacement counters for the Quatre-Bras game are included here.

The rest

Box, dice and a slim deck of very nice cards. 

As mentioned earlier, Fallen Eagles II comes with a slim deck of cards comprised of twelve Tactics Cards and six Alternative History Cards. I’ve already addressed the Alternate History cards, so I’ll go into a little more detail about the Tactics cards here.

At the beginning of the game, the Tactics cards are laid out for view of both players. Then, starting with the French player, each take turns taking one of the cards until all have been collected. At the beginning of each turn the two sides have the option (again, starting with the French player) to pay a card whose effects will have play for that round.

The Alternative History cards, bring some variation in the pattern of the scenarios. These are of course optional but will increase the replayability of the scenarios by shifting the parameters of the historical situation; for example, bringing forward the starting time of the battle of Waterloo by two, three or more hours/turns, but also bringing forward the arrival time of Blucher’s forces. I’ve never been as interested in “what if” historical games, and I think I’d be happy to play the unadulterated historical for some time, but it’s nice to know they’re there.

The game also comes with two dice. They are of a nice weight and quite serviceable. I’ve never been one to insist on special embossed dice or such, so I think they’re fine. I’m sure they will betray me  at a crucial moment their own time.

---------

I’ve been coveting the Eagles of France games since before the announcement of the Fallen Eagles reprint. Nobody would be surprised to hear that the experience of ging through Fallen Eagles II and familiarising myself with the rules and components has merely fanned my desire to grab the others in the series. Austerlitz, which had also be long out of print, has also been reprinted just recently, and there is a rumour that another venerable French game manufacturer, Fellowship of Simulations, will produce the next volume in the series, covering the major battles of Napoleon's 1812 campaign. One can only hope.

 

State of Play: With The Hammer – building a playtest set

 

 

 

I read once that Jad Fair from the band Half-Japanese never tunes his guitar before
going on stage, saying it's more rock-n-roll that way. I guess this is an analogue to my
approach to this kind of stuff. The map is a print out from an Officeworks photocopy/
printer (on an 80gsm A3 sheet), the Peasent Band tiles are knock-off Scrabble
pieces, the counters are hand laminated and the meeple are refugees from a
game I literally stripped down for parts (Romolo o Remo (Giochix.it, 2013). 

It’s a failing on my part that I struggle with some technologies, sometimes. I’ve tinkered with VASSAL at different times in the past (maybe I need to go back to Ardwulf’s primer video for a refresher), and while I’ve downloaded Tabletop Simulator (TTS), I’m pretty sure I’ve never been able to get anything to work on the damn thing. I have, this year, finally tried out Rally the Troops (this is a boon for anyone who can't make a face to face game, and something I'm new to but keen to explore further; a big shout-out and thank you to T2 and M from the Adelaide Wargamers FB group for the platform tutelage and lessons in humility). This is a platform I’m comfortable with because it’s been built by people who play physical wargames, to best mimic that experience in an online environment. But I’m not here to talk about all that today – I’ll circle back to RTT in a future post.

As I mentioned in my last post, I put up my hand to playtest Ray Weiss’s new title, With The Hammer: Thomas Müntzer & the German Peasant War in Thuringia (Conflict Simulations Ltd, ~2025 - this is a link to the pre-order page; WTH doesn't have a BGG entry yet). With the Hammer isn’t exactly component-poor, but looking at the manifest, I thought it was a project I could tackle.

Let me say up front, I don’t relish this kind of stuff. I ‘ve never put together a print-and-play game, and I’m simply not equipped to mount and cut oodles of counters.

Playtesting is a different thing. It’s a chance to give something back to the hobby that has helped keep me sane through some tough times, so I’m willing to put some extra effort in.

Building the perfect beast

When released,  With The Hammer will have a 22”by 17” map, a Noble Board, sixteen cards (twelve poker-sized, four tarot-sized), a set of pawns and discs for the four Peasant leaders (in four different colours), three red blocks representing the Noble armies, nine woodgrain discs for the Peasant Bands (with stickers to apply to the Noble Army blocks and Peasant Band discs), and a half-sheet of counters.

After getting a set of the print files from Mr Weiss, a visit to Officeworks secured colour copies of everything I needed (well two trips, since the first batch didn’t include the Peasant Bands). The map was easy – 22” by 17” is close enough to an A3 sheet. The Noble board is used to mark the activities of the three noble armies. For a playtest set, an A4 sheet of paper would suffice.

Now, I don’t think of myself as a hoarder, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to toss unused or superfluous game parts. I have stitching boxes full of spare blocks from Commands and Colors, and Columbia and Worthington block games. No discs though. No matter. I used three Columbia blocks (from Richard III (Columba Games, 2009) and Athens and Sparta (Columbia Games, 2007); Columbia tend to use the same colour shades for all their block games).

Noble Army blocks (at full strength) on the (untrimmed) Noble Board;
trimming build-time by not trimming.

Speaking of trimming, the Noble Army blocks were re-laminated (rather untidily, I'll
admit) after a change to their Strength matrix. Still, they'll do the job.

For the Peasant Bands, I tried to get some one-inch wooden discs from a couple of different craft shops; I’ve seen these before, though they’re probably closer to 3/4”, but would have been fine for my purposes.

Peasant Army tiles and "blanks" (in the actual game these will be round and
much nicer-looking.

Such was not to be. It may be because so much of the space is currently devoted to Christmas-themed products, but nowhere had the discs I wanted. So, I improvised. Some crafty folks use Scrabble (Unknown, 1948) letters to craft plaques with affirmations and such. You can buy bags of about a hundred tiles on eBay and AliExpress, but one store had a bag of about thirty oddly shaped and slightly thinner than regulation, but there would be big enough to do the job (and have some left over for the loose component-hoarding boxes).

Leftover blanks (or potential new game pieces).

The card images and the Noble Army labels came as picture files. I’ve had some practice with this over the years in both my work- and hobby-lives; I copy-pasted the images one by one into a Word document, reducing the images individually to the required size using the ruler at the top of the screen, then placing them together on pages to reduce the amount of printing required. I managed to get the whole lot down to about six A4 sheets for the components and one A3 for the map, about $4.00 in printing total.

The Event Card deck. These came up much nicer than the ones I made up
for The Great Northern War playtest.

The twelve random event cards printed, hand-cut to size, front-and-back, and sleeved them with slightly narrower bridge-sized cards to give them some stability. The four tarot-sized cards I also cut out by hand (I really need to get myself a little paper trimmer for this kind of thing), bought a fifty-pack of tarot sleeves, and stiffened them with cards “borrowed’ from my 7^th Sea RPG Sorte Deck (essentially a game world-themed tarot deck, with really nice cards). As these are never turned over, I didn’t bother with backs.

The starter team for my first game. The four tarot-sized sleeves were the most expensive
component in the whole project (they only come in packets of fifty). 

The most labour-intensive part of the it was the counters. The printed game will likely have seventy or so counters and markers, including supply markers, conversion markers for the locations the Peasant leaders have successfully brought into the fold, and a draw pool of Freelancers, unaffiliated Miners and Landsknecht units, as well as the usual Turn and VP counters and such.

My makeshift counters, not pretty but they'll do the job. From top row, left to right:
Turn marker (well, d'uh), Victory Point marker (VPs are tracked on a pendulum
track), Heldrungen Siege Rating marker. Second row: Supply markers (1 point/
2 point), Depleted and Exhausted Locale markers. Third row: Propaganda
marker, Freelancer markers (Landsknects and Miners).

As I said, I’m not kitted out to mount and cut sheets of counters, but I did have a baggie of 5/8^th unprinted counters left over from another game (I’m not certain, but I think they may have been from Devil Dogs: Belleau Wood 1918 (Worthington Publishing, 2019) – I remember there being a lot of left over counters from punching that puppy). The next stage involved hand-cutting (I really need that trimmer) the fronts and the majority of the backs of seventy counters, then pasting the cut-outs on the front and back of these counters. I took a guess at the excess counters I used, and it worked out; it turned out there were about eighty-four in the bag. At least they were pre-rounded. This I did by picking up the cut-out face for application, placing it on the end of a glue stick, then rubbing it over the end like a pool cue-tip until it was well coated, then applying it to the counter (checking first it was the right way up for the reverse images) and sliding it around until it was square. About 120 times. I stumbled across this technique while prepping a playtest set for The Great Northern War (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2024); it’s a little more labour-intensive, but I haven’t had any curling or delaminating on any of the counters. With the trimming it took maybe an hour and a half.

Starting set-up (the Artillery-Point marker should be on the General track,
but otherwise good to go).

So now I have a complete game. Nearly. The rules are being adjusted, and some of the components have changed (the steps for the Noble Armies, for example began as 2.5 through 10, but now are a less math-challenging 3 through 12). Actual play has been held up with the personal matter I alluded to in my last post, and the fact that my regular partner in crime tested positive for COVID last week and has been in exile at one end of his house. When I have a couple of games under my belt I’ll report in again, but it looks like a promising game, both a diversion and an education.

 

  

State of Play: a personal note (nothing to see here; or, file under “Excuses and Complaints”)

 

 

Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel holding a strategy meeting with his divisional comanders.

Regular readers will have noticed these last few months, since around June, a tapering off of content. Where I was regularly posting two to three times a week, lately I’ve barely struggled to release one post a week. I’ve alluded to personal issues as well as outside pressures, but I feel like I owe more to the folks who regularly show up for their dose of gaming news, thrilling unboxings, and half-baked opinions.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on a playtesting project recently for Conflict Simulations Ltd, or CSL (Afrika Army Korps (Conflict Simulations Ltd, ~2025), which I wrote about back in August). This has taken an an inordinate amount of time, with a couple of false starts and hiccups. I think this will be winding up soon, and I should have a follow-up post to the aforementioned in the next few weeks.

With The Hammer, coming soon from CSL. Cover design and
game artwork by Ilya Kudriashov

This has been a serious commitment on my part, not just in time but also in bandwidth. I’ve been doing a lot of historical research into the African theatre, and I’ve found myself devoting a lot of thought to the game when I’m not actually engaged with it physically. This has all been at the expense of appending time on new games and on writing about those games (I don’t want to over-egg my participation in the project, I’m just a play-tester, but I do take it seriously and try to contribute where I can). I had told myself that I would back away from playtesting for a bit and concentrate on the blog. Then last week, Ray Weiss from CSL put out a call for play-testers for With the Hammer, a game he was working on celebrating the 500^th anniversary of the Great Peasants’ Revolt in Germany (this will be Ray’s second game concerning the subject but will likely be available first). The play isn’t as complex at Afrika Army Korps – the game should play out in under ninety minutes – and I’m fascinated by the asymmetric aspect of the conflict, so I’ve put my hand up for that as well. This should take a lot less time (there are more folks working on this one). It’s an intriguing game and I’ll be sure to post some pics and thoughts in due course.

From a recent CSL newsletter.

On a personal note, my wife’s mother is not expected to be with us much longer. This is the family issue that has been taking up some of my time. Jess's mum has a brain tumour; she’s managed to outlive her initial six-week prognosis by more than three years with a positive response to early treatment and irrepressible joie de vivre, and most of that time has been pretty much on her own terms. But the last few months have been very hard on her, and that inevitibly takes a toll on those around her. I've been a part of the family for twenty-five years; we've always got along well, and I already miss her.

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So, where does this leave A Fast Game? Going forward, I’ll be trying to quarantine more time for writing (and playing games I’m not actively playtesting). The Acquisitions department has been profligate lately, due to the sale of some old RPG materials that have been taking up space, and so I now have a backlog of games that deserve unboxing posts. I’ve been sitting on A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg (Flying Pig Games, 2022) I’m starting to wonder if I’ll end up doing a double header with The Rock of Chicamauga (Flying Pig Games, ~2025). Normally I like to break up the unboxings with other posts, but between now and Christmas, that will probably be what you see the most of, including a couple of absolute gems. I also have a couple of reviews I’d like to finish before Christmas, but I make no promises at this point.

Lastly, a little rant (this is the complaint of the title). I’ve been eagerly awaiting delivery of a game (that’s not like you, Jon, I hear you say). It was another CSL game; Imperial Bayonets: Solferino, 1859: For Liberty and Lombardy (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2024), the follow-up to Mr Weiss’s Imperial Bayonets: We Were Not Cowards: Sedan, 1870 (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2020), which I still need to write about. For Liberty and Lombardy covers several battles in the Wars of Italian Unification, a subject of particular interest to me, and I was eagerly awaiting its arrival.

That was until I checked the tracking details, and found out that the package had already been delivered a couple of weeks earlier – slid under our gate and well into the courtyard, as the driver’s photograph indicated – and somebody had come along after and stolen said package from this “secure” place. This was the first time we’ve lost a package to porch piracy, and we’ve had boxes of wine left at our door when we’ve been out. I get it, it’s the price of doing business in Kansas. What burns me up the most is whoever took it probably just binned it when they found it wasn’t electronics or whatever the hell else people get shipped to their door.

I’ve been fuming about this for a week, but I’m trying to let it go. It’s not like I haven’t got enough to keep me busy for a while.

If there’s a message in this, it’s this: use your time wisely. Make time for family and friends, and find ways to let them know they’re important to you without getting weird about it or making them uncomfortable. And try to not tie your happiness to things, but to experiences and time shared. Here the rant endeth.