State of play: Commands and Colors: Ancients (Himera, 480BC)

 

Game at T’s place this week, and the second C&C:A Greece and the Eastern Kingdoms scenario, Himera – 480BC was set up and ready to go. I settled down for a defensive action, playing the Carthaginians under Hamilcar (obviously not Hannibal’s brother, Hamilcar – an earlier namesake), while T took the role of the treacherous Syracusan force.

T opened with a strong offense on both sides of the battlefield, but couldn’t get his cavalry up as quickly as detailed inn the historical note (I was hopeful this would be the case as I had one of the “Cavalry Charge” cards in my opening hand). Given what cards I’d received I had to maintain a defensive posture right through the game, only getting my chariots up near the end. For several rounds we sat a five-all, the sixth banner eluding both of us. Too many of T’s attacks on both flanks broke against my rampart fortifications, denying him what should have been a swift victory. Still, he had managed to breach my defensive line on my left and all hope seemed lost. 

At the last, my reduced heavy chariots were able to eliminate T’s retreating medium infantry for a win that could have easily gone in favour of the Syracusans.

It's these knife-edge games that are the most satisfying. Final score: Carthage 6 banners to Syracuse’s 5.

Review: Skyhawk: Rolling Thunder 1966

 

When I was a kid, I was into planes and flying. I would pour over the few books I owned on the subject, and borrow what others I could find from the library. To be honest, the fighters of the Second World War held my attention, but if it flew, I had a keen interest. Of the “modern” era jets, probably the one I liked the most was the McDonald Douglas A4 Skyhawk, purely for the ascetics of the design. It was compact and versatile. It couldn’t break the sound-barrier, but it could carry a ridiculous weight of munitions and make it look easy. It had sleek lines, with a bit of a hump behind the cockpit that on another plane might have made it look ungainly, but on the Skyhawk it looked right. This isn’t the sole reason I’ve been looking forward to the release of Skyhawk: Rolling Thunder, 1966 (Legion Wargames; designers Steve Dixon and Bob Best, 2022), but if I'm honest, it was probably a contributing factor.

Skyhawk is actually my first solo flight game. It’s only in the last two years or so that I’ve been taking my first tentative steps into the world of solitaire wargaming. I own a handful now, but I couldn’t call myself an expert, much less a veteran. As such, this review may lack some of the depth of a seasoned player, but I’ll try to do the game justice.

Appearance

Skyhawk is an attractive game. The box-art is evocative, the mounted 11”x17” board, while schematic in nature, captures the flavour of the game with a military map of the region as its backdrop. The templates for the mission load and recording damage to your plane are simple illustrations that do the job without fuss. The player’s aids and other records sheets are well laid out and very easy to use. The rules, as well, are very clear and easy to follow. There is sometimes in picking up a new game in an established oeuvre that some short-hand or jargon exclusive to that game-style can creep in and become a potential roadblock for unfamiliar players. This isn’t the case here; the rules are clear and erudite, with good examples and a healthy bit of redundancy. Overall, the presentation is elegant and functional.

Play

Skyhawk is what I’d call a procedural game. The style of play should be familiar to anybody who has played a solo mission-oriented game like Gregory Smith’s The Hunters (GMT, 2013) and its siblings, or Dixon’s own Target for Today / Target for Tonight (Legion, 2017 / 2020). The game allows you to conduct a single mission, or in the case of a campaign, a sequence of bombing missions over several weeks or months, over North Vietnam. The mission is chosen for you randomly by rolling on a rather extensive table of actual missions flown by the US Navy pilots participating in Operation Rolling Thunder. You have control over your load-out (different munitions being more or less appropriate for various types of mission), but, as was the case historically, you may be restricted in this by unavailability of some munitions, or even by political interference.

As you resolve your mission, you move your plane counter through a path of locations on the map, representing mid-flight refuelling, avoiding or taking damage from ground and air defences, making your run at the target – this can even be done several times if you’re feeling lucky – then the return trip to the carrier and (hopefully) landing.

From take off to landing, your mission is resolved by a combination of player decisions and rolls on a whole manual of tables. On the face of it, this sounds dry and tedious, and I know that this style of game isn’t for everyone. But the combination of the mission playing out on the board and the measured randomness introduced by the tables creates a tense narrative for the player from before you’ve even taken off. The game provides a multitude of decision points for the player; you’ve not just along for the story – every choice you make will have an impact on the unfolding mission. Success is measured by the effectiveness of your bombing mission and other factors, like whether you bring your bird back in one piece. Rules for bailing out over land and water, rescue and capture are included for a more complete mission experience.

The game offers two shorter campaigns – a month over August and September, 1966 (up to sixteen missions), or from late October to the end of that year (maximum 34 missions), or you can combine the two for a full tour of duty. Optional rules also allow for running a whole four-plane flight each mission, although, with the exponential increase in bookkeeping involved, I think I’m happy to stick to a single plane. On that though, while there is a certain amount of record-keeping involved in Skyhawk (or any game of this style), it isn’t an arduous thing. Your load-out is handled with counters on a plane template, there is a table for keeping notes of your missions, and damage collected during each foray is marked on a separate template (copies of which are, of course, provided with the game, but if your like me and want to keep your components pristine, all the records sheets are available for download (PDF) from the Legion Games website (https://www.legionwargames.com/legion_SKY_GS.html).

Appraisal

I really like Skyhawk. As I mentioned earlier, I know this kind of game isn’t for everyone, but they know who they are and if you’ve read this far, you’re probably not them. This game provides such a rich narrative experience. I found myself getting emotionally invested in the outcome of each stage of the game, and it richly rewards this kind of investment; I was genuinely worried whether I was going to make it back to the carrier on “bingo fuel” after taking a second run at the target on my third mission. I really appreciate how the game doesn't have to remain set up between missions to play through a campaign, with everything logged and reset for a new mission, although you may want to complete any repairs and pilot recovery details before packing up, so you can go straight into your next mission when you can break the game out again.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, this is my first seat-of-your-pants flying game, so I can’t really compare apples with apples, but if you want to take the plunge and try this type of solo game, I think Skyhawk would be a good starting place.

State of Play: Undaunted: Normandy (1/6)

 

Last night I introduced T to Undaunted: Normandy (Osprey Games, 2019), and in doing so I feel like I was also being introduced to it. I’ve Had the follow-up game, Undaunted: North Africa (Osprey, 2020) for about a year, have threatened to pull it out among company, but so far have only played it two-handed a couple of times, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Undaunted: North Africa plays at a different scale to Undaunted: Normandy; in North Africa, the markers represent individual soldiers and specialists, whereas the markers in the West European theatre game represent mostly rifle squads and weapons teams. I begged off getting Normandy when it first came out, in spite of the positive reviews I read, but after playing North Africa, I was intrigued. Before Christmas last year, I found a copy of Undaunted: Reinforcements (Osprey, 2021) for a good price and that sinched the deal for me. Normandy arrived about a week after the Reinforcements did.

Before last night I’d only got Normandy to the table once, a couple of days earlier, to get a feel for it and to remind myself of how the mechanics worked. The basics are the same in the two games, although I was surprised to see some combatants get more cards to draw from the pool than others, but this makes sense; the scout has a maximum of three cards available, whereas the Riflemen have five cards, which makes sense, being of a squad rather combat than a single soldier). Scouting, movement and combat all worked the same, and the early scenarios are capture-the-flag operations, so it’s an easy enough game to digest.

I’m not the best at explaining games. One of my gaming buddies, B, is a teacher, and he prefers to dive in and explain what each player’s options are as they become available. When I was explaining the game to T, I don’t think I detailed the objective clearly enough. The first scenario, Le Reye, is won by the first side to control areas with objective markers to adding up to five points, or “pin” the opposing side’s riflemen (remove both squads from the board). The Germans start with an advantage of a three-point objective marker on their starting position, though they must leave its relative safety to secure the remaining points to win.

T played the Germans. I wasn’t going to go easy on him, but I wanted T to win this first game, because most people have a more positive reaction to a new game if they at least feel like they could have won. Having retained the home tile, T quickly moved to scout and get a rifleman unit to a two-point objective tile (the farmhouse). Then he spent his next couple of commands for that squad trying to shoot my units rather than taking control of the tile and winning the game.

A long time ago I made a choice not to persist in pointing out missed opportunities to T. We have played a lot of games over the years, and when he’s assimilated a new game, T is a solid opponent. Not last night, though. After the third missed opportunity to seize victory, I managed to get a rifleman to his home tile and took control of his three secured points. I felt a little bad doing it, but it should help him keep in mind the objective when we go on to scenario 2.

State of Play: Commands and Colors: Ancients (Marathon, 490BC)

 

A slight change of plan last night. T was going to come over to my place for your next run at Napoleon 1806, but the intrusion of Life Outside Games intervened, so I went to his place instead for a game of Commands and Colors: Ancients (GMT, 2006). We’ve played a lot of C&C: Napoleonics (GMT, 2010) over a lot of years, but Not nearly as much of C&C: Ancients, even though we both have the base game and several supplements. And everything we have played up to now has been Romans vs the rest of the world (or each other). T has been listening to a podcast about the Peloponnesian War of late, and we have never played a scenario from the first expansion, Greece and the Eastern Kingdoms (GMT, 2006), so a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like a good time to break it out. Which we did, only to find that, in all the time it has sat on the shelf in T’s study, he has never got around to stickering-up the blocks. So that’s how we spent that night.

Last night was our first actual game using the expansion, so we started with the first scenario in the set, the battle of Marathon, 490BC. Remarkably, the card distribution led to my Greek heavy infantry being placed to turn both flanks of the Persian forces, after taking a hammering in my centre, with the result of a Greek win (six victory banners to the Persians four).

It’s a testament to the adaptability of the C&C system and the thought and research that has gone into the scenario design that, using virtually the same components as the base game (new block tokens, but essentially the same types of units), the experience of fighting as Greeks against Persians feels subtly different to fighting with Roman forces. I can’t quite put my finger on it; I suspect it may take a few more scenarios to tease it out.

Persian commander T considers his options just before the hammer-fall (C&C:A-G&EK, Marathon, BC490.

The fresh contenders; or Churchill’s replacement

As mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been wanting to swap out Churchill from my original 6x6 list of games for 2023. I was excited at the prospect of a game-related challenge, and have been keen to get Churchill to the table since my P500 copy of the latest print run arrived. I knew it was a three player, but that it can be played as a two player with a Stalin-bot, but from earlier experience with under-player-ing Versailles 1919 (GMT, 2020), I really think I owe it to the game to have a three-player experience.

So, having decided to put aside Churchill for now, I needed to come up with a suitable replacement for that slot in my 6x6 endeavour. Going through my shelves, I picked out a stack of possible candidates. After some consideration of my shelves, I managed to whittle the list down to four likely contenders which, I am embarrassed to say, I still haven’t got around to playing for one reason or another. These are:

• Richard III: the Wars of the Roses (Columbia Games, 2009)
• Undaunted: Normandy (Osprey Games, 2019)
• Colonial Twilight: The French-Algerian War, 1954-62 (GMT, 2017)
• Verdun1916: Steel Inferno (Fellowship of Simulations, 2020)

The oldest of these, in terms of ownership, is Colonial Twilight. I bought it during GMT’s 2021 Summer Sale (along with a truckload of other games), and was very excited about it when it arrived. I read the rules, flattened out the mounted board under some other weighty game-boxes, set the game up and played through handful of turns, two-handed. By the end of that I felt like I was getting the game. I was impressed by the new mechanics for this first two-player COIN game and the simple actions - complex ramifications nature of the play. It was an elegant game and I couldn’t wait to play it with an opponent.

And then I didn’t. Looking back, I don’t know what pushed it off my radar; it may have been another game I was even more eager to try out, or it might have been some aspect of my Life Outside Games that fought for my attention. I would have put away Colonial Twilight with the best of intentions of pulling it out again soon and getting back to it, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The problem with Colonial Twilight is the fact that is breaks one of the informal guidelines I set myself for the 6x6 challenge; it would be a second game designed by Brian Train, who is responsible for Brief Border Wars and the upcoming Brief Border Wars 2 (Compass Games, slated for release this year). Brian’s games are always interesting and challenging, but it would feel wrong to privilege one designer over all the others whose work I really like and respect. If I do this again next year, though, I think I have my first pick.

Richard III is a classic Columbia Games block game. They make a lot, and by all reports, nearly all are at least very good, and some are exceptional (Crusader Rex (2005) gets mentioned a lot around the forums). This would be an easy choice is I didn’t already have three block games (This War Without an Enemy, The French and Indian War, and Napoleon 1806) on my list already. I’ll still try to introduce T to the joys of Columbia’s block game style sometime soon, but It’s not going on the list.

Verdun 1916, while technically a block game (it uses rectangular wooden pieces to represent formations and thinner, matchstick-sized ones for trenches), the style of play is so radically different from anything else I possess that I would be happy to pick it. There are two things that are stopping me from going with Verdun for my 6x6 challenge; firstly, I’ve tried to select games from different conflicts. World War I is already represented by Hexasim’s Great War Commander.

Which brings me to my second reason for its exclusion. Three of the five remaining games on the list are from French publishers – Nuts!, Shakos, and Hexasim. This shouldn’t be at all surprising; companies all across Europe are producing excellent, thoughtful, and challenging games. In good conscience, wanting Great War Commander on the list precluded me adding The Fate of the Reiters (Hexasim, 2019). Nonetheless, I hope to get in a few games of Verdun sometime this year, and report back accordingly.

It would seem that the last man standing will be Undaunted: Normandy. This is a fairly recent acquisition, having arrived a little before Christmas. I’ve owned Undaunted: North Africa (Osprey, 2020) for maybe a year, and have managed to get it to the table – at least for two-handed solo play – several times.

When U:N first arrived on the scene, I was sceptical. I owned a handful of Osprey games and loved all of them.  But it seemed to me, on the face of it to be too much of a crossover game, a self-conscious attempt to make a wargame that would appeal to non-wargamers to “trick” them into wargaming. When U:NA came out, I was a little more familiar with the work of co-designer David Thompson, and, having only recently read Gavin Mortimer’s The Men Who Made the SAS (Little, Brown; 2016), I was intrigued by the historical background of the game, and – frankly- it was pretty good value for money.

Reader, I bought it. And it’s a purchase I haven’t had cause to regret. I was really surprised to see how well the deckbuilding mechanics worked in the context of the game. It’s definitely at the “game” end of the game-simulation continuum, but it’s a lot of fun, and, as rules familiarity increases, quite a fast-moving game, but it still offers challenges and decision-points enough to feel like a satisfying and worthwhile experience.

As I understand it, the scale of Undaunted: Normandy differs from U:NA – the units are squads and support weapon teams rather than individual combatants, and vehicles were only introduced to the game in the second offering (although, I believe, vehicle options for U:N scenarios feature in the Undaunted: Reinforcements (Osprey, 2021) deep box).

I think Undaunted: Normandy will also be the right level of complexity for my primary opponent, T. T is by no means stupid – he’s a senior medical specialist – but he has a serious job that comes with equally serious responsibilities, and as such, has a limited capacity for processing new information, like game rules. After a couple of plays he’s usually picked up the basics, and after half-a-dozen or so games he’s usually giving me a run for my money (we're pretty evenly matched at all of the games we're most familiar with), but as we catch up at best once a week, a lot of table time will be spent in revision for the first few runs at a new rules-set.

But for now, we will be concentrating on Napoleon 1806.  This week we’ll be graduating to the Rules for the Conscript. I think I’ve assimilated the extra rules and am ready to make six or seven mistakes in the first half-hour of play, but that’s how we learn, right?

State of play: Napoleon 1806 (2/6)

So, Monday night T and I played Napoleon 1806 for the second time, still using the quick-start rules, with T again playing the French and me the Prussians. The result was still inconclusive, so a technical win for the Prussians. The French forces managed to take Leipzig by turn five and might have taken Erfurt in the same round if it hadn't been for a really lucky draw on the part of the defenders that managed to throw back the attack.

I also realised that we'd been misrepresenting the points value of taking a target town. I must have skimmed over it, but successfully taking a flagged town wins the attacker a four-point shift (we'd been playing it as one point). Moreover, if a side retains three of the four target towns at the end of a round, that side gains an extra point-shift. Neither of these would have changed the result of Monday's game, but it may have made T more willing to act recklessly to try to gain the extra points in combat to nudge the score-tracker closer to zero.

We've agreed to play Napoleon 1806 again next week, introducing the other Conscript rules (notably, having a three-card hand each round to use for the events). We've both got a good grip on the movement and combat, and, as the Prussians, I'm beginning to understand the importance of choke-points on the map to at least slow down the French movement. The Prussians are underpowered compared to the French, both in unit capacities and sheer hitting power; this is clear looking at the dice - optional but included - which are representative of the "hit" ratios in each deck (the French hit harder and dispense casualties more often). 

Another rule we've been overlooking is the loss of a card in combat when a formation's exhaustion reaches five or more, although, thinking back over both games so far, I don't think there would have been a situation in which that would have influenced the outcome; both sides have been quite cautious over accruing exhaustion points.

Even with the rules oversights and cautious play thus far, it's clear that this is a system that has a lot to offer in terms of a worthwhile challenge, numerous decision-points in each round, and (importantly) replayability. I find myself looking forward to next week's bout.

Haiku update: Clash of Cultures - Monumental Edition

 

Played Clash of Cultures -

Babylonians wiped out;

Well and truly Rome(d).