State of Play: Commands & Colors: Napoleonics – Talavera (French attack on British) - 28 July 1809

 

 

After an enforced break of a month, T and I caught up on Tuesday for our (ir)regular Monday Game. Meeting at his place, T set up an old favourite (no doubt with images of Sharpe’s Eagle running through his head); the Talavera scenario from the Commands & Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) core set. He must have been feeling nostalgic, using the original blue-reverse card-deck that came with the core game.

Playing the Talavera scenario is like catching up with an old friend. Conservatively, I’d guess we’ve played it at least eight or nine times over the years, probably closer to fourteen or fifteen. For the first several years we would play each scenario twice, swapping sides the following week, and we must have played the core set through at least four or five times over the years, and in recent years it’s been a go-to game for a palette cleanser.

T set up the game, and mistakenly gave the British Rifle Light an extra block
(bringing their starting strength to four). This was corrected before the
first card play (but not before I’d taken some photos.

T – playing the French – opened with some chess movement, just getting some units off the back line. The French need to advance to engage. There’s no reward for the British to come down off the long range of high ground with its incumbent melee bonus in defence; better to let the French come into range. I adjusted units on my thin flanks to offer better firing options on my Right and to get the cavalry forward on the Left, to give it a few more options.

End of turn two: action without resolve.

Attack the French did, securing a Victory Banner in turn three and two more in the fourth turn. This along with some thinning of my infantry though accurate canon-fire; even at extended range, nearly every shot cost the British a block. With turn four, the French infantry began to reach the range of the British muskets. At the end of turn two I managed a to hit a couple of T’s infantry for a Line block and two Light infantry, but I wouldn’t seize my first French Banner until turn five. I was beginning to despair of my chances. T was due for a win, and C&C Napoleonics is in his wheelhouse.

As it turned out, T gained his full measure of success in those early rounds. Due to the initial set-up, the British are strongest in the Center (albeit with a solid anchor on their Right with a pummelling Light Regiment, and Rifle Light and Foot Artillery for extended range fire). Consecutive Assault Center orders in the fourth and fifth turns withered the first French press and earned me my first Victory Banner.

Scores even - around turn six.

T's dice luck was spent on securing his second and third banners, rolling enough hits to take out a full Line infantry unit and a Light Cavalry squadron in single rolls (this was the source of my despair. After this, his attacks were nibbling, taking blocks but never whole units. For my part, I had to make two or three attacks on every unit I eventually broke; the French fought valiantly, giving nearly as well as they received.

The final disposition of the forces. Remarkably, no Leaders were harmed in the making
of this battle (though not for want of trying).

In the end, the match ran to ten full turns, with the British securing their seventh and last Victory point in the final action of a hard-fought final round. T took the loss stoically, but it was plain to me and the attendant cats that he felt robbed after such a strong opening. I think outside influences that have interrupted out schedule lately are beginning to settle, so he’ll have another opportunity to hand me my hat next week, all things being equal.

British Orders over ten consecutive rounds. I hoped to show the French orders as well,
but T had already shuffled them back into the deck in disgust.

 

 

By the Numbers: Collection-to-Play ratio revisited

 

Action atop Ball's Bluff, for no particular reason except I was reading about the battle
the other day and it put me in mind of John Poniske's game. 

At the end of November, 2023, I posted my first By the Numbers category post, on the subject of my game collection to games played ratio. A Fast Game, in a convoluted way, grew out of a desire to play more games, and in particular the games I already owned, so the better part of a year into the blog, I wanted to see how I was doing. This month marks the second anniversary of that post, so I thought it might be edifying/sobering to revisit the subject.

Before I began writing A Fast Game - maybe fifteen or so months earlier - I’d prepared an inventory of all my game titles (wargames, family games, party games – the works). This would have probably been around the end of 2021. That list came to around about 190 titles; I think I was including all of the expansion material I that count as well, so all the Commands and Colors boxes, all the expansions for the Flying Pig games, the whole kit. At that time, I checked off all the games I’d managed to get to the table at least once, and the count came to around 22%. When I extracted the core (stand-alone) wargames from the bigger set – 117 in all – that plaid quotient rose to a shade under 25%. As an example of what I mean by core game, when I made this list, I already owned here Band of Brothers games, Screaming Eagles (Worthington Publishing, 2011), Ghost Panzer (Worthington Publishing, 2013) and Texas Arrows (Worthington Publishing, 2016). Screaming Eagles and Ghost Panzer can be played on their own, both are self-contained games using thew same mechanics Texas Arrows isn’t labelled an expansion, but it does rely on components from Screaming Eagles to play, so that one didn’t make the count. That’s when I started thinking that I really needed to start playing more wargames to justify buying more wargames, and about when I started mixing it up with my brother-in-law, T for Monday Night gaming fare.

When I tallied my games-to-games-played ratio for the first post two years ago, I had 162 core wargames. Of those 162 games, I had at that time played fifty-seven. This translated to 35.3%, a definite improvement. Which brings us to the current situation.

I’ve only started keeping a register of new (and new-to-me) games since the beginning of this year – twenty-nine thus far (thirty if you count a practically new copy of Charioteer (GMT Games, 2022), but that doesn’t make it to the “Wargame” list; I'm a sucker for a good racing-game). Between the first audit and this, the collection has grown by seventy titles, so I can extrapolate that in the thirteen months from late-November ’23 to December ’24 I gathered another forty-one titles. Put like that, it seems like a lot, not quite one a week, but not so far off. Actually, I can shave two off the count: I didn’t include two Academy Games titles on the Games list - Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! – Russia 1941-42 (Academy Games, 2008) and Storms of Steel! – Kursk 1943 (Academy Games, 2009) - because I’d intended to sell them. (I also still have Price of Honour – Poland 1939 (Academy Games, 2010), but that’s not a stand-alone).

I’ll admit I was a little nervous preparing this post. 2025 hasn’t felt like a stellar year for trying new games. My seeming inability to satisfactorily complete my Ten Wargames Challenge list is disappointing to say the least. But apparently, I must be doing something right. As of a couple of days ago, I own 232 core wargames (the full count, including expansions and supplementary packets comes to 285 titles). I’m pleased (and more than a little relieved) to report that I have played 92 of these. The definition of “played” here has always been reasonably flexible; in most cases it constitutes at least one full game or scenario, sometimes against an opponent but more often double handed in the case of two-player games. In some cases, I have counted a game that has ended prematurely, but had exhibited a likely outcome of victory for one or the other side.

The takeaway is that my collection-to-played ratio has risen a little to 39.7%. This is a much better result than I had hoped. This has been a dry year for gaming generally for me; I had a stronger gaming year in 2024, but I’ve managed some in-roads into the collection, even as it’s been expanding (he says as if the collection is doing it all on its own). So, generally good news, but I still have a lot of games I’ve yet to get to the table, or to punch, clip and sort, for that matter.

There’s more to report from the current audit. I’ll do a breakdown of the collection by various methodologies in a week or so, and I’ll break down the year in gaming in late December like I did last year. And if you’ve made it this far, thank you for putting up with my self-indulgent meandering. There is some more edifying and entertaining stuff on its way.

 

 

The Endorsement: Worthington’s Pacific Theatre

  

 

The Old School Wargames arm of Worthington Publishing currently has a Kickstarter campaign running for three games in the company’s Travel Games line. I’ve made no apologies for being a fan of Worthington’s output generally in the past; they generally produce really nicely put together games on the rules-lighter side, and that play in between one and three hours, which suits my personal gaming circumstances. Their travel games stick to Worthington’s lane, except they are smaller (about the size of a big pencil case), and tend to play out in a shorter time frame.

Full disclosure: I don’t own any of Worthington’s travel games, and I haven’t had the opportunity to try any out, either (I’ll come back to this). I haven’t promoted their Kickstarter campaigns in the past, but this is a special case. 

Task Force templates for Midway Solitaire. Photos are taken from the KS campaign page.

The current campaign offers three titles covering different aspects of the war in the Pacific; Midway Solitaire (a new title, not to be confused with the solitaire Battle of Midway game released in World at War magazine (Decision Games) in 2017 and repackaged as Midway Solitaire Deluxe in 2021),  a reprint of one of their first travel games, Pacific War 1942 (Worthington Publishing, 2024),and a refashioned Tarawa 1943 (Worthington Publishing, 2021). 

Anyone who has been reading A Fast Game from the start will know that Tarawa 1943 is one of my all-time favourite fast-playing solo games. It’s been out of print for a while, the Worthington folks are innovators, reimagining this classic block game as a small, travel-friendly game with a smaller footprint with cardstock components replacing the blocks, but maintaining the depth and intensity of the original game. 

The refashioned Tarawa 1943 map. Neoprene maps are available for all three games
as add-ons, if that's your thing.

Tarawa is the only one I can speak to personally. There is a wealth of content available on YouTube regarding Pacific War 1942 – a quick search brought up play-throughs by Zilla Blitz and the Player’s Aid, as well as a short review by Grant from TPA. But I can wholeheartedly endorse Tarawa 1943. 

You don’t have to buy all three games – there are options for backing just one or two if you prefer, though shipping overseas favours multiple purchases. At time of posting there is about sixteen days remaining on the campaign, so check it out.

Stripped Down for Parts: World War 1 Dual Pack: 1914 Glory’s End / When Eagles Fight

  

 

 

Like a lot of wargamers, the Great War held little interest for me when I took my first steps into the hobby. It’s probably fair to say that the hobby didn’t take a big interest in World War I either, until it had partaken of the then more recent Second World War, and the perennial favourites of the Age of Napoleon and the American Civil War.

In the last five or so years, I’ve developed an interest in World War I games (more than a decade longer than that if you count my deep obsession with Wings of Glory (Ares Games, 2012) when it was still called Wings of War (Nexus Editrice, 2004). I own maybe half a dozen games covering the either aspects of the war or the whole European theatre, and I’ve just started reading Barbera Tuchman’s The Guns of August, so it seemed like a good time to take a look at this recent acquisition, a hitherto unpunched copy of 1914: Glory's End / When Eagles Fight (GMT Games, 2014).

The two games featured in originally appeared roughly a year apart in Command magazine (When Eagles Fight in 1993, and 1914: Glory’s End in 1994). These were well received, and the rerelease of the two games as a boxed set for the centennial year of the beginning of the Great War made for a popular release.

At the moment of annihilation. Twenty years later, photographer Robert Capa
would capture a similar moment during the Spanish Civil War
in his famous photograph, The Fallen Man.

The cover illustration presents a young French soldier at the moment of his death, an allegory for the nation’s dual loss of youth and innocence It was by French artist Léon Réni-Mel, who is better known as a late Impressionist painter, but created a fairly substantial body of military art. Réni-Mel also served as an infantryman in the French army and painted this watercolour sometime during the Great War, and it was donated to the Musée de l'Armée – probably by the artist, and first exhibited in 1918. It remains a part of the museum’s collection to this day.

The work is referenced by a couple of varying titles, but the intended title is most likely Fantassin français chargeant des positions allemandes (French infantryman charging German positions). It was dedicated by the artist to his comrades-at-arms who killed or wounded during the First Battle of the Marne.

Mind the gap: box technology has come a long way in the last ten years.

The box-back is set out in the classic GMT style of the time, with cut-outs featuring the two game maps and some sample counters (a little larger than actual size), with a two-paragraph description of the background and parameters of each game; it’s worth mentioning here that while both games primarily field units at the corps level, the two games play over different periods of the war: Glory’s End covers only the first three months of campaigning on the Western Front (the time before the theatre settled into an entrenched meat-grind), but When Eagles Fight covers the whole term of the Eastern Front conflict.

The Difficulty-meter puts the games at a 4 out of 9 (the low end of Medium) and the solitaire suitability at 7 out of 9. Looking over the rules, I don’t think there’s going to be anything terribly fiddly to deal with, and I think the higher solitaire rating fits the game as well. I’ll probably be taking these out for a turn on my own before I get to play them with an opponent, so I’ll get to test that hypothesis.

Glory's End Rulebook. The World War 1 logo was a branding motif that
carried through several GMT titles.

Each game comes with its own rulebook. These are printed on matte paper (this feels like about 90 gsm) and are full-colour throughout, though not profusely illustrated; don’t expect graphic-rich examples of play here.

GE rulebook sample page. Clear and readable. No index,
but at twenty pages you barely need one.

The Glory’s End rulebook runs to twenty pages, of which the first four pages are given over to a cover page (incorporating a Table of Contents), a brief Introduction, and an explanation of the game’s components and abbreviations used in the rules. The Core Rules take up just twelve pages, and the last three pages cover the optional Dummy Counters rule, the Battle of the Marne mini-scenario (more on this later) and the short “historical” scenario covering just the first month of the war on the Western Front (ten turns), with a Turn Sequence Outline helpfully printed on the back cover page. The rules look pretty straight forward and understandable for anyone with some experience with operational level hex and counter wargames.

Glory's End map-sheet. It will be flatter under a sheet of plexi.

The two maps strike a good balance between playable area and useful charts and tracks. I prefer game boards that at least build Action or Resource Point tracks into the play surface, as this means less time spent away from the actual board. This is, of course not always achievable, but here it works nicely. The map is situated in the middle of the sheet, an imperfect square taking in Belgium, Luxembourg, northern France and potions of Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. National boundaries are marked with a dashed red line along hex borders, so no arguing between players over “accidental” invasions of neutral countries. The Turn Record Track and dual-purpose Victory Points and Replacement Track are located on the western end of the map, while the Terrain Effects Chart, Combat Results Table (duplicated to face each player, and the Siege Gun Table (German player side only) are placed along the Eastern edge of the map-sheet. Three-quarter inch hexes accommodate the 5/8^th counters comfortably (I will be clipping the counters before I get the game to the table anyway).

The map itself is clear and easy to read, with forest, mountains major and minor rivers and major towns/cities clearly indicated, and the scale is nine miles to a hex. It’s a boon to have the TEC printed on the map for ease of checking movement and combat effects on the fly, though these usually become second nature after three or four turns. There is enough territory covered to meet the historical parameters of the Western Front’s opening months without feeling confined; this is the stage of the war when the Front was dynamic and subject to fairly rapid change, before any illusions of a quick victory for either side gave way to the molasses-creep of a static frontline.

The Marne Mini-Map, for those times when you want a little less gratuitous bloodshed.

Also included is a Marne Mini-Map. This is printed on the same weight cardstock as the Player Aids (which we will get to shortly). The map is a letter-sized (roughly 11 ½” by 8 ½”) and is provided for the smallest scenario in the game (just five turns). The map is an abstract of the larger campaign map, covering from Paris on the western edge to about fifteen miles short of Verdun (just off-map). Both the primary map-sheet and the Marne mini-map are scaled at 9½ miles to a hex.

The Marne map allows players to play out just the First Battle of the Marne without having to resort to the full map. This scenario should be a great introductory game, as nearly all the rules for the full game are still at play here, but the space and time requirement has been truncated to a manageable level – the battle game should be playable on a school night.

Interestingly, this seems to be a battle of particular interest to the designer, Ted Raicer. His earlier Western Front game, Grand Illusion: Mirage of Glory, 1914 (GMT Games, 2004) also includes a First Battle of the Marne scenario, though this is played over a restricted number of hexes on the game’s map-sheet.

Glory's End counter-sheets.

The counters for both games are ⅝” and clearly presented with big numerals in bold, rolling serif font and slightly smaller NATO symbols, making them quite readable, even without reading glasses. Set up is eased with a tiny four-digit hex-number on the top-left corner of the unit counters that begin the game on the map, or a shorter number for the unit’s entry turn (if you’re like me, you’ll almost certainly need your reading glasses for the location or turn numbers, set at about two-point).

There are a few issues with counter registration. I’m quick to point out this doesn’t affect the units; in both games some of the administrative markers are vertically unaligned, not to the point of being unplayable, by any means. I’m not angry; I’m just disappointed. (Though, to be fair, it really hasn’t been that long that we’ve seen consistently good counter registration from most publishers – how quickly we forget).

The units run from one-step to four steps, the three- and four-step units having two counters. Higher step units are marked with a small number in a coloured circle left of the NATO symbol. There is nothing provided to help manage the multi-counter units or those that enter play in later turns, but as one might expect, fans have stepped up with organisation mats for each game downloadable from the Files section of the Boardgamegeek game page (link from the title above).

Glory's End PAC.

The Players’ Aid cards (PACs) for both games are printed on a decent weight of cardstock and are duplicate pairs for each of the games. The Glory’s End PAC is single-sided, and features the Combat Results Table and the Siege Gun Table (a belt-and-braces approach given this information’s availability on the map-sheet), as well as the Victory Point values of various locations for each side.

Roster sheets are used in the free set-up scenario (no peeking during set-up, please).

Glory’s End also comes with a Roster Sheet Pad. This is for the use of players choosing the Free Set Up Scenario, rather than the historical set-up. The guidelines for the free set up advise one player, then the other to set up their units’ free placement starting positions and then record each unit and its placement hex-number on a piece of paper (each while the other is looking away). I haven’t counted off the number of sheets, but it feels like abo fifteen or so with a light cardboard backing.

The I get the impression that the pad may have been a lasty minute addition and the rules were never updated to mention it. It would speed up the process somewhat, as it lists the antagonists’ forces, grouped by formation, with a space to write down the hex-location. I’m broadly less interested in counterfactual games, but this could be an interesting exercise, though I’ll probably need to play with the historical placement for or five times, before I’d be tempted to try something different.

WEF rulebook.

Like its sister game, the rulebook for When Eagles fight runs to 20 pages, and follows roughly the same format. The actual rules run to about twelve pages, with the last two internal pages given over to two scenario variations, “Russian Plan 19” and “Schlieffen East Variant,” Players’ and Designer’s notes, and a perfunctory Turn Sequence on the back cover. Again, this has been addressed on BGG with a player-created Extended Sequence of Play prepared by Gary (Ardwulf) Mengle, from when he did a multi-part play-through on his YouTube channel.

When Eagles Fight map.

The map for When Eagles fight is printed on the verso of the Glory’s End map, and benefits from the same style of treatment. At 24 miles to a hex, the scale of the map is larger, befitting the sprawling range of the conflict. Again, the CRT is built right into the play area, along with a Random Events Table (German side), Ammunition Shortage Table (Russian side), Strategic Movement constraints table (both), and a shared Accumulated Replacements track, as well as a Terrain Effects Chart and, at the other end of the map, the Turn Track, which incorporates information like Victory Check turns. The turns in WEF are one to two months (over the months of November through April, covering winter and the spring thaw, or Rasputitsa, the turns cover two months each).

WEF Counter-sheets. I do like a low-density game.

As previously mentioned, the counters are five-eighths of an inch and quite readable. WEF has just one and a half sheets of counters, The same stipulation applies for the poor registration on the lowest rows of the counter-sheets, but the units are all quite fine. I’ve been punching out and clipping the counters, starting with the When Eagles Fight sheets while I write this post. The cardstock is a tad thinner than what you mostly get from a GMT game these days, and they’ve been a joy to clip – no careful easing the counters into the slot so you accidently delaminate them (this has happened once or twice – these days I test-clip the corners of each sheet before I embark on the actual counters).

When Eagles Fight PAC.

The PAC for When Eagles Fight is arguably more useful than its Glory’s End counterpart. It’s double-sided, with the charts and tables on the front and a list of initialled Random Events (that correspond to the red lettered chits on the left side of the full counter-sheet)., explaining the game effects and clauses for each random event. The Tables replicate those found on the map-sheet, but the CRT here includes all the relevant modifier notes left off the map table.

Box, dice and baggies.

I’m always a little surprised when an unpunched second-hand game crosses my path, but really surprised when it still has all its bits. I don’t resent replacing a pair of dice or something – this comes under the heading of general wear and tear – but Glory’s End/When Eagles fight still had its dice (in their own zip-loc baggie), and its original roll of storage bags. This is a rare find, and it makes me wonder if the previous owner did anything more with the game than tear the shrink off and have a gander at the components.

 

 

Historical note: Napoleon’s beleaguered retreat from Russia, 1812

 

Marshal Ney supporting the Rear Guards during the retreat from Moscow
(Adolphe Yvon, 1856).

 

This is something new for A Fast Game but let’s see where it goes. I’m a magpie for interesting informational titbits, especially at the juncture of history and science. Every so often I’ll stumble across something that may be of, and this seemed like something others may also find interesting, and this is a case in point.

We’ve all heard of Napoleon’s fateful march into Russia and an encroaching winter, and the subsequent retreat of the Emperor and his Grand Armée deeper into the winter, resulting in the loss of roughly 300,000 soldiers (as well as unnumbered camp-followers, horses and livestock). While fatigue, starvation, and continual harassment by Cossack bands all contributed to the numbers of dead left behind, the single largest killer was disease. This has been well established for some time, but in the absence of conclusive evidence, there have been competing theories as to what disease was responsible.

A recent study published just a few days ago in Current Biology, has provided some clarity on this matter. A study of DNA extracted from the intact teeth from the remains of thirteen fallen French soldiers located in a mass grave near Vilnius, Lithuania, has offered the first direct proof of the offending microbe.

I’m not going to spoil the surprise here; you'll have to read it yourself. If you’re medically minded, you may enjoy wading into the research via the above link to the paper. I’m no biologist; if you’re like me, go read this brilliantly brief and  accesible summary of the research by Becky Ferreira from her weekly email newsletter, The Abstract. Ms Ferreira has a talent for making the esoteric both fathomable and engaging for someone without much of a science background.

 

 

Blog note: Something of a milestone

 

Earlier today, A Fast Game reached a significant milestone. Sometime after midday local time, the blog reached 50,000 views. It’s currently a week shy of its two-year, nine-month anniversary (I began the project on January 31, 2023, posting my first entry that day after spending the previous fortnight before that writing or sketching out the first half-dozen posts).

Over the last two and three-quarter years, I’ve written a variety of subjects related to specific wargames or wargaming in general. In that time, I’ve posted 220 pieces and I usually have at least three in various states of incompletion at any given moment. I used to post reviews and some unboxings to one or another relevant group on Facebook, but I haven’t bothered with that in some time (though I still link AARs of games from my Ten Wargame Challenge to idjester’s Facebook group). I usually don’t go out of my way to promote A Fast Game; the folks at GMT Games are gracious enough to link reviews and unboxing posts to the product pages, but most publishers are only interested in YouTube content, which is fair enough because, as Carboard Commander mentioned in a recent livestream, nobody reads blogs anymore.

One of the things I'm working on at the moment is an unboxing of this two-game pack,
so of course I'm going to spend a couple of paragraphs on the significance
of the cover illustration.

Except apparently, they do. Or maybe I have a core fan-base of twenty-or-so loyal folks who have each visited the blog 2,500 times. Honestly, I don’t know. A Fast Game isn’t monetised, so I don’t have access to the super-duper analytics tools that I would otherwise be able to use, just raw numbers and a national breakdown that’s pointless when maybe 80% of readers are using VPN software (apparently, we’re big in Mexico).

I don’t have sponsorship arrangements with any store or publisher. I don’t seek out or accept free review copies. I’ve paid for every game that has appeared on the blog (often bought second-hand, but I’m always up-front about that). I only write about the games I have either really enjoyed or that do something worth mentioning, and probably really well. And I try to write about games the way I want to write about them, highlighting the things that interest me. I was never certain there would be an audience for the kind of things I post, but apparently there is. To the tune of 50,000 views in less than three years.

So, to my readers – both the regulars, the less-frequent visitors, and the newcomers – I want to say a most sincere thank you. When I started A Fast Game and I was only hitting a hundred views every other month or so, I decided I was going to keep writing so long as I was enjoying the process. Being a bit of a data-wonk, numbers like this give me an endorphin hit, but it’s still true, and I'm still enjoying it.

In the time I’ve been writing A Fast Game, the one thing that gave me the biggest thrill was when I was researching the feature on publishers’ attitudes to wargame awards; a designer/publisher who had a couple of games about the French and Indian War under his belt wrote me to complain that I’d cost him money – he’d been reading through the blog, and my review of 1759: Siege of Quebec (Worthington Games, 2022) made him go and order a copy. 

For me, that alone is enough of an endorsement to keep talking up games I think are worth the trouble. Writers have to write, but it’s always nice to think we're writing for an audience.

 

 

Stripped Down for Parts: Monty’s Gamble: Market Garden

 

 

 

I have a couple of Mike Rinella’s area impulse games (Last Battle: Ia Shima, 1945 (Take Aim Designs/Revolution Games, 2015) and Return to the Rock: Corregidor, 1945 (Take Aim Designs/Revolution Games, 2020); unboxing posts here and here respectively), both of which are fun to play, but quite brief; not unsatisfyingly so, but I’ve been curious as to how a larger game would play out. So, when a second-hand, unpunched copy of Monty’s Gamble: Market Garden (Multi-Man Publishing. 2019) came up one of the usual channels, I jumped on it.

Since then, it’s languished on my TBP stack for a few months while I’ve been distracted with other things. Since then, I’ve received and played WWII Commander: Vol. 2 - Market Garden (Compass Games, 2025 – here’s an unboxing and short AAR), and I thought it’s about time I showed Monty’s Gamble some joy.

The thing you don’t notice straight away is this is actually the Second Edition of Monty’s Gamble. The First Edition was also published by MMP, back in 2003. The thing is, there’s nothing on the box-cover to indicate the Second Edition IS a second edition.

The cover illustration, a montage of images from the period, all in line with the Market Garden theme, differentiates the second edition from the first, which features a peculiar portrait of a British paratrooper that looks like a lifeless mannequin. The box cover of the first edition was described by one BGG user as Paras in the uncanny valley.* The second edition cover is a vast improvement.

Box back.

The top of the box-back offers a teaser of the map (the region around Arnhem) and the counters, all at roughly true size. The blurb leads with the game being “a reprint of MMP’s highly acclaimed game of Operation Market Garden […],” and a short historical backgrounder for the uninitiated. We eventually learn (In the third paragraph) that this is an updated version of the original printed game, and now includes Fortress Holland, 1940, which was originally featured (counters and a rulebook) in Operations Special Issue #2. That’s right, with Second ed. Monty’s Gamble, you’re actually getting two games.

The game’s Complexity is rated Medium in MMP’s truncated three-tier rating scheme, and the Solitaire suitability is marked as High. This feels right from what I’ve seen so far. No indication on how long a game should take to play out; I guess I’m just going to have to find that out for myself. Also, no indication of age suitability, but I suppose the usual catch-all of “14+” would probably apply here as well.

Rulebook. 

Coming from Mr Rinella’s zip-loc bag games with their short but thorough rules, parred down to the very specific subject at hand, the 44-page book that comes with the second edition was a little daunting at first blush, but you shouldn’t be deterred by this. The rules for Monty’s Gamble only take up twenty-five well-spaced and illustrated pages.. Another six are devoted to some very well illustrated examples of play, while the last nine pages offer alternative rules for a second game, Fortress Holland, 1940.

Rulebook sample page: Example of Play and the Fortress Holland
bonus game rules. The rulebook is colour throughout.

The remaining pages are given over to the cover and a detailed Contents page. The rules are set out well, in dual columns, set in a nice readable Garamond-style font. A cursory read-through hasn’t raised any flags for difficulty understanding the concepts at play, but the proof will, of course, be in the play. Attention is given over to supply issues for both the Allies and Germans, which is how the situation should be approached. I’ve liked Mr Rinella’s rules in the past; they tend toward clarity and concision in the couple of other games of his I have played, and I don’t anticipate any departure from the standard here.

The map.

The map is a single, sightly oversized sheet (38 ½” by 24 ¼”, even though the back-of-the-box inventory states a standard 34” by 22”) covering the theatre of battle from Hoeze in the south the Heeve in the north. As previously mentioned the game is an area movement/control model, with a scale of roughly 1½ miles to a map inch, and is the work of noted wargame artist and designer, Nicolas Eskubi. The map art looks almost like a satellite representation of the terrain, overlaid with road and rail paths, bridges, and towns, along with white chalk-line markings separating the landscape into controllable areas for the regulation of movement and measuring of success. Each area of the map is bound by the white markings or by watercourses where the white boundaries meet rivers or canals.

Map detail: Nijmegen and environs.

Historically, the action of Operations Market and Garden took place in a long salient corridor along a highway dubbed the Club Route by the planners, with American, British, and Polish paratroopers dropping in to secure a series of key bridges, and the British XXX Armoured Corps rushing to secure a line of supply and relieve the beleaguered paras. The map reflects this, with the playable area running diagonally across the map-sheet, flanked at diagonally opposite corners by crucial charts and record tracks.

Map detail: the Allied Tracking corner.

I like a game that manages to fit the tracking needs for play actually on the board; this saves a lot of time otherwise spent rifling through PACs or (the horror) the rulebook, thereby breaking the cadence of play. Here the Axis player tracks the Game Turn and Impulse quotas, as well as their own Air Interdiction and Construction capabilities, while the Allied player tracks Supply and Victory Points, and their Bombardment and Drop Supply capabilities and availability of Assault Boats for river crossing. Each side can also access some crucial tables (Bridge Seizure/Bridge Demolition, Bombardment resolution and Attrition Points), and a mnemonic key for Isolation rolls, another key characteristic of the action around the operation.

My only gripe with the map is the folding; it’s folded into four sections length-wise (three folds) and three width-wise (two folds). I understand the necessity for this – with the extra couple of inches width and length a standard eight-section fold wouldn’t allow the map to fit into the box. The extra fold peaks will necessitate the use of a plexi-glass sheet, which I do have, but at 36” by 24” (poster size), it isn’t going to completely cover the map, which will annoy me more than it reasonably should. I’ll try to not take it out on the game when I come to review it.

Counter sheets 1&3.

Counter sheets 2&4.

Monty’s Gamble comes with four counter sheets of 5/8” counters on white-core cardstock; two full sheets, one half sheet and one quarter-ish sheet. The counters aren’t chunky, but they’re thick enough to not be awkward to play with on the map. The counters needed for the Market Garden are to be found on the two full-sized sprues, and nearly all the counters for the Fortress Holland game are provided on the two cut-down counter-sheets. Nearly half of the counters across the two games are administrative or mnemonic markers for recording area control and unit status, along with the expected Turn and VP markers and such.

The unit counters are clearly readable, in keeping with MPP’s good work in this regard. They are comprise of the somewhat standard mix of NATO symbols for leg units with armour represented by a silhouette of most prevalent vehicle type in the unit. These are predominantly battalion- and regiment-sized units, though some brigades and even divisions are represented. Personally, I don’t mind all NATO symbols, but I don’t begrudge others their tanks if it helps create a more immersive play experience. 

German Set-up and Reinforcement sheets.

Each side gets two light cardstock sheets. The German player has a Set-Up card and a Reinforcement card. By dint of having fewer units on the board at the outset, the German Set-up card also features a Sequence of Play, as well as a list of optional unit directives for the Airborne Landing Phase, and priorities for retreat of units (these apply to both sides).

Allied Set-up and Reinforcement sheets.

The Allied player receives an Allied Set-Up and D-Day Sequence of Play card and an Allied Reinforcements card. The D-Day Sequence of Play is a simple three-phase process with another couple of lines outlining some limitations to the Allied actions in this part of the turn. A little of the play is scripted in the initial turn; paratrooper units can choose to attempt to seize their target bridge, but they are then Spent for the turn, which will have ramifications in any ensuing combat, while the Allied player must conduct an Assault action with at least one armoured Guards unit from among their initial XXX Corps land units in the opening turn.

Box and dice, with a friendly packing note from the folks at MMP.

The box is roughly standard size and 1½" deep. The construction card is on the lighter side, but perfectly adequate for the contents, which don’t add up to too much weight. The game come with four six-sided dice – two red and two white. The rules advise the white dice are for German use, and the red for the Allies. Combat rolls are simultaneous, and the rules recommend both players make their rolls into the same receptacle, and stipulate that if a die lands outside the tray, only that die is re-rolled (something that some folks apparently take issue – or liberties – with). The dice will be familiar to anyone who has purchased or played MMP games in the past. They are a little smaller than I prefer, but are perfectly suitable for the task.

 

 

* Replying to the comment on BGG, Mr Rinella was quick to mention he did not sign off on the original cover design.