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?