State of Play: Six months in…

  

 

This marks my fiftieth post for A Fast Game…, and the six-month anniversary since I began blogging again after a rather extended hiatus. What started as an attempt to hold myself accountable to a self-set 6x6 challenge – six hereto unplayed games played six times each – has grown into something I didn’t anticipate.

Source: Wikipedia Commons

In the beginning, my intention was to write up a post or two a week, describing my 6x6 games and whatever else I’d been playing, then writing up a more in-depth review of a game after I’d played it six times. That was it.

Maybe two months into writing it, the blog began to change direction. I had ideas about wargames, things that had been bubbling way in the back of my head for a while, and suddenly I had an outlet. I’ve become more serious about what I post, and am more conscious of posting at least twice a week, and more often when time permits. Blogging has become a wargaming-adjacent hobby

Now I’ve posted nine reviews – easily the most popular component of the blog – and six “Stripped Down for Parts” unboxings, the second most popular addition. I write these State of Play pieces at least weekly, mostly to capture my thoughts regarding what I’ve played that week as a mnemonic device. Barely anyone reads them, but that doesn’t worry me; I really write these for myself, and writing them as a play-journal has encouraged me to branch out into further reviews and the unboxing photo-essays. I know some of the folks from Wednesday group read the occasional one, usually when pictures are involved. This is primarily a board wargaming blog, but if the opportunity arises, I’m happy write about a minis game, mostly to show off the hardware (B owns some truly spectacular miniatures).

I have a dozen or so more reviews I want to write up just as soon as I’ve played through the games a few more times; seven Charles S. Roberts Award winners and nominees, and a handful of other noteworthy games, and well as the remaining five 6x6 games I haven’t yet considered. I don’t believe in reviewing a game on a single run-though where I can. I take the Women’s Weekly Test Kitchen approach to reviewing; cooks in the test kitchen would bake a new recipe it at least three times to be sure it would provide the same result every time. I want to give a game a couple of goes before I’m willing to pass judgement on it.

I don’t want to commit myself to a schedule, but I’ve made a broad list of the games I’d like to get to reviewing in the next six or so months. I’ll be giving priority to the 6x6 and CSR Award recipients and nominees, but I’ll pepper these with games I think deserve some attention. I’ll still do the Stripped Down for Parts posts sometimes, and I’m looking forward to presenting some designer interviews in the not-too-distant future as well.

Six months ago, when I started this project, I wondered if I’d have the time and the impetus to keep it up more than a few months. Even though my 6x6 goal is flagging a little, A Fast Game has grown into something separate from that. I’m looking forward to a busy next six months.

_________________

Review prospectus

What follows is a list of the games I have short-listed for review. I’m hoping to get to all of these in the next six or so months, with Stripped Down for Parts treatments for the pretty ones. No promises, but it there's something in particular you'd like to see reviewed, mention it in the comments.

6x6 games for review

This War Without an Enemy (designer: Scott H. Moore)

French and Indian War, 1757-1759 (designers: Mike and Grant Wylie)

Napoleon 1806 (designer: Denis Sauvage)

Great War Commander (designers: Roger Nord and Pascal Toupy)

Brief Border Wars (designer: Brian Train)

 

Charles S. Roberts Award winners and nominees

Skies Above Britain (designers: Jerry White and Gina Willis)

Flashpoint: South China Sea (designer: Harold Buchanan)

2 Minutes to Midnight (designer: Stuart Tonge)

Fire & Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683 (designer: Robert DeLeskie)

Almoravid: Reconquista and Riposte in Spain,1085-1086 (designer: Volko Ruhnke)

Undaunted: Stalingrad (designers: David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin)

Into the Woods: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862 (designer: Richard Whitaker)

CSR Award-related reviews already posted:

 - Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! (designer: Paolo Mori)

 - 414BC: Siege of Syracuse (designer: Maurice Suckling)

 - 1569: Siege of Malta (designer: Dan Fournie)

 - Plains Indian Wars (designer: John Poniske)

 

Other games earmarked for review

1759: Siege of Quebec, 2nd Edition (designers: Grant and Mike Wylie)

The Late Unpleasantness: Two Campaigns for Richmond (designer: Steven Ruwe)

Undaunted: Battle of Britain (designers: David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin)

A Glorious Chance: the Naval Struggle for Lake Ontario during the War of 1812 (designer: Gina Willis)

Salerno ’43 (designer: Mark Simonitch)

Banish the Snakes: A Game of St. Patrick in Ireland (designers: Kevin McPartland and Jerry Shiles)

The Barracks Emperors (designers: Wray Farrell and Brad Johnson)

Task Force: Carrier Battles in the Pacific (designer: Ginichiro Suzuki)

Plantagenet: Cousins’ War for England, 1459–1485 (designer: Francisco Gradaille)

Brothers at War: 1862 (designer: Christopher Moeller)

Barbarians at the Gates (designer: Kris Van Beurden)

 

Stripped down for parts: The Late Unpleasantness: Two Campaigns for Richmond

 

The Late Unpleasantness: Two Campaigns to take Richmond (Compass Games, 2019) is a two-game package that models the Union’s two attempts to seize the industrial powerhouse of Richmond in the Confederate heartland. In Gates of Richmond, one player controls the Union forces under George McClellan, whose efforts floundered against Robert E. Lee’s numerically inferior forces, now remembered as the Seven Days’ Battles. If It Takes All Summer picks up the story two years later, Ulysses S Grant’s overland drive southward in 1864, and incorporates the Wilderness and Cold Harbor in the overall action.

The Late Unpleasantness is not a new release, but I was fortunate to land a copy (I believe it’s still in print, but these things can be hard to find in Australia), and I thought it was only fair to share it with those of my readers who like this sort of thing.

The movement in The Late Unpleasantness is point to point, the scale in individual divisions. The difficulty is rated at 4 out of 10, and the solitaire suitability as 5 out of 10 (there is some hidden information regarding unit strengths and dummy units). 

The rules for the two games are printed in a single rulebook (for a total 36 pages in length, including front and back copies of the counter sheets, the actual rules for each game run to around ten pages, with another four pages for the scenario details).). The first half covers Gates of Richmond, and from the staples in the centre start the rules for If It Takes All Summer. While there are some variations between the game to reflect the two very different situations, the bulk of the rules are identical – the two games play out in the same manner – and reading through the whole book you will notice the high level of redundancy. Personally, I’m okay with this; I think it makes sense to duplicate the basics so you only have to read one or the other half of the book to get down to playing straight away.

The rules are very straight-forward; there aren’t many surprises here, but the game specific rules should make for a very different experience from one game to the next without too high a learning load. An experienced wargamer would be able to pop the counters, run through the rules once and be playing inside of an hour. The only thig that might slow that progress is the popping the counters part, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The maps for the two games are more functional than artistic, but they get the job done. They each incorporate space for a turn track and to accommodate the deck of cards for the game, which make for a smaller game footprint. I can appreciate that not everyone likes point-to-point movement for wargames. I think that, at a divisional scale and given the territory covered, the decision to use point to point movement makes perfect sense in this instance.

Each location on the two maps corresponds with a town or landmark extant at the time, so the links between these correspond to the roads that divisional forces would have had to use simply to get form one battle to the next.

Terrain is reduced to the colour of the location point – white for clear, blue of a river or bridge point, and so on. Supply points for the two sides are marked by a coloured circle with a flag and a supply symbol (split white/black circle). Other terrains are singular to the battle in question, and are identified on that game’s PAC.

Each map is 34” by 22” with a portrait orientation. Neither is particularly sophisticated, so there are only a few terrain modifiers to consider when moving troops (such as river crossings). In short, the map isn’t going to get in the way of the action, except in ways that it will. Point-to-point maps tend to have natural choke-points, which often only come to light after a game or two. I don’t see this as a design flaw; it can make for some interesting challenges.

There are two counter-sheets. Each has one set of unit counters (both sides), as well as markers specific to that game. A lot of the counters are administrative markers (strength point trackers, out-of-supply markers, etc.), and these are spread over the two counter sheets. The counters are printed on reasonably good (white-core) card-stock, but the die-cutting has left them a little difficult to punch. I’d recommend using a craft knife on the linkages to ensure the counters don’t get too frayed at the joining corners. This is the one thing that might slow you down from jumping straight into a game.

The counters are 7/8”, big and readable. The unit pieces are named for their commanders and are readable, with clear numbers, and well laid out. The officers’ portraits are a little tiny, but do add some verisimilitude to the overall appearance of the counters. Being divisional level, the counter density for the game will be low, and there are no stacking restrictions (except in regard to supply wagons).

Troop strength is tracked two ways; number counters that sit beneath the unit counter can be used to indicate the current strength (the markers are numbered like strength points in block wargames, and you simply rotate the chit to indicate the current strength as it takes hits, with the current number meeting the top edge of the unit). There is also a Unit Strength Tracking chart (one each for Union and Confederate forces, double-sided for the two battles) for an at-a-glance summary of the state of the player’s forces. Apart from the component listing, the rules don’t seem to refer to the Strength Tracking sheets again, but their use seems fairly self-evident as a mnemonic device for the players.

The Players’ Aid Cards are printed on a reasonable weight of cardstock, with two for each game (one for each player). The front of each card presents a brief sequence of play, movement allowances for units, a Recon Table, the Combat Results Table and a list of modifiers, and an Effects Table for the situations peculiar to the game; the Magruder Effect (Richmond Works) for Gates of Richmond, Wilderness/Totopotomoy Effects for IITAS. The reverse side of the PACs each have a detailed Combat Sequence run-through, and a Terrain Key, listing DRMs where appropriate.

The two games in The Late Unpleasantness are card-assisted games. Each comes with its own deck for use by both sides in the battle. The cards are illustrated with portraits of the major figures from the battles and pictures from the era, and themed to events or happenings from the battles. They’re printed on good cardstock, but I’d recommend sleeving them nonetheless.

Each player starts with a hand of eight cards, and each one draws two cards in the Events phase of the round, with the Union player drawing first (ten-card ceiling; players discard cards rather than taking less on their turn). The cards can be played at any time during the round, except during continuing combat – yes, combat can go longer than the initial altercation. The cards are pretty self-explanatory regarding how and when to play, and some are down-right amusing. Some cards are suitable only for use by the Union or Confederate player, but if discarded, your opponent may play a card that allows them to rifle through the discards and take a card of their choosing, so be careful. None of the cards are game killers, but the right +2 DRM at the right time could shift the balance at a crucial point.

I truly cannot wait to try out The Late Unpleasantness. I was planning on waiting for a break in someone’s schedule to first play it with another human, but I think I’m going to have to roll it out sometime this week and play it two-handed. I’m a sucker for an ACW game and this it just too much of a temptation.

Review: Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes!

  

 

Charles S. Roberts Award nominee: Best Ancients Wargame

I like a big game as much as the next grognard. Counting factors, trying to find those last two strength points that will nudge your attack up for a 2:1 to a 3:1 on the CRT. What’s not to like. But not every game has to be an epic. Realistically, who has the time to devote to a twelve- or fifteen-hour game, or the space to leave it se up in safely from small children and cats? What if I told you there is a game that will, well, kind of scratch that grand-strategic itch, but you’ll be done with un under half-an-hour? Okay, maybe that’s over-egging it, but Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! (PSC Games, 2022), does deliver a really satisfying game experience on a really small board,and in less time that it will take to set up a session of The Russian Campaign (Fifth Edition, GMT Games, 2023). And for stakes, the fate of the whole Roman Empire is in the balance!

Caesar! is a very fast-playing game with a very small foot-print and astonishingly simple rules. Don’t be put off by these traits; for a game of its size, it packs a punch. Caesar! has become my go-to filler game. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Appearance

I wrote a Stripped Down for Parts presentation of Caesar! when I first nabbed it, so I won’t spend a lot of time rehashing what I’ve already said (you can find my unboxing here). Suffice it to say, this is a beautifully presented little game, with clear, easy-to-comprehend rules, a nice choice of colour-palette, and good-quality components. My only gripe is the black print on the rather dark-hued Influence tokens can be a little hard to read if I’m not wearing my reading glasses (eight or nine years after my first prescription lenses and I still forget to put them on). This is a minor thing and barely worth mentioning, and says more about me than about the game.

 

Play

Caesar! sets up very quickly. You randomly place reward tokens on the circular spaces in each province of the Roman Empire on the map-board, reserving one of the Senate tokens for Roma. The players play either Caesar (Red) or Pompey (Blue), and take turns drawing Influence tokens from a bag (each player starts with only two tokens available at any one time), matching the type of Influence to the requirement on the board (there are a couple of Wild tokens – marked with laurel wreaths, that can be placed on any symbol). Provinces have three to six Influence spaces on their shared borders. When a province is closed (the last free influence space is filled), the player to place the last token takes the Province Bonus token for that province and enacts it immediately. Province Bonus tokens grant various advantages to the receiving player:

- the Tactics token (scroll) allows you to immediately take another turn;

- the Wealth token (amphora) gives you an extra Influence disc draw (so you’ll have three to choose form on your turn instead of two);

- the Might token (crossed spears) lets you choose one of your opponent’s Influence tokens, and flip it over (flipped Influence tokens score 0/0 influence;

- the Senate token (columned building) is the golden ring: it allows you to place extra Control markers under them (applying your controlling influence directly to the Senate), thereby helping you to burn though your Control markers ever more quickly.

If the player manages to close two provinces with a single placement, they get both Province Bonus tokens. Then each player’s total influence applied to that province (the number on the half of the token facing that province) is totalled, and the highest scoring player gets to place one of their Control markers in that province, claiming it for their faction. The game ends when the last province is claimed, or when a player runs out of their Control markers. The game ends when one of the other player places their last Control marker. With that, they win.

The PSC Games edition of Caesar! comes with the two mini-expansions and a dedicated solo kit. To be honest, I haven’t tried playing with either of the expansions; so far I’ve found the base components make for a compelling enough game. That said, the expansions won’t shake the game up too much, and will add an extra “gotcha” element to the play, for folk who like that sort of thing.

The solitaire game pits you, the player (playing either Caesar or Pompey, your choice) against Auto-Crassus, the third member of the Triumvirate. A simple schedule of preference for Auto-Crassus’s actions keeps the game moving apace. Auto-Crassus has three difficulty settings. My pride won’t let me play against the bot below the normal rating, and it may be dumb luck, but I’ve yet to beat Auto-Crassus at (literally) his own game. Maybe next time.

 

Appraisal

Caesar! was designed by Paolo Mori, the creator of Blitzkrieg! World War 2 in 20 Minutes! a brilliant little game for the end of the session, or to take with you on holidays. At rthe risk of  repeating myself, this is a fast and fun game, and it’s seriously giving Odin’s Ravens (Osprey Games, 2016) a run for its money as my preferred two-player filler game. The fact that it made the short-list for Best Ancients Wargame category in the Charles S. Roberts Awards is testament to the fact that other people like it too.

 

 

State of Play: AK-47 Republic (miniatures game)

   

 

Wednesday saw two teams duke it out for the soul of the (imaginary) central African nation of the United Socialist Peoples Democratic Republic of Zogtu. D, dictatorial president of the republic, and his strong-man head of the military, H, brought their forces to bear on the rag-tag rebel militia of the Marxist front to free the Republic of Zogtu from the clutches of its corrupt president, led by K, with me in the role of military advisor, with the view of installing our own Soviet-sympathising People’s President. B adjudicated he game from the sidelines.

AK-47 Republic (Second Edition; Peter Pig, 2006; originally RFCM, 1997) is an interesting rules-set. Much of the set-up is randomised, all the way down to the name (and flag) of the contested region. There are three qualities of troops; Professional/Elite, Regular (ordinary soldiers), and Militia. During set-up, a series of rolls on various tables can see your best unit downgraded a rank, one of your militia units get some extra training or some better vehicles, or in our case, some extra materiel support after a face-to-face with Leonid Brezhnev and the Politburo (two T-34s and a couple of transports for extra militia).

At the start the two sides take turns rolling to see how many units begin on the board. Both sides started with three units each. As the attackers, K and I chose three locations on the board to be worth 30, 20 or 10 victory points to whoever held them; the locations are known to the defenders, but not the points-value of each. We chose the provincial capital (the cluster of buildings featured in some of the photos), the hill overlooking the capital, and the elephant sanctuary at the other end of the table. This was the ten-pointer; we had no intention of contesting this target, concentrating on the Capital and the overlooking hill, but succeeded in getting D to tie up one of his units – a rather large militia force – there for the entire game. D and H had professional troops which they used to occupy the city, and a Cobra helicopter (lend-lease from the CIA, no doubt).

No elephants were harmed in the making of this civil war.

We fielded some regulars (mercenaries from a neighbouring country) and a pair of T-55s, and a Hi-24 gunship. In one of the quirks of the game, D got to roll to influence one of our units, he succeeded, and downgraded our Hind pilot form Elite to Regular (we’d already had a Regular infantry formation downgraded to a militia group). We were starting on the back foot, and things quickly got worse.

In the first round, our helicopters faced off. The Hi-24 fired at and missed the Cobra, which returned fire (exchanges are assumed to occur simultaneously, so a blown-up tank will still get one last round off if it hasn’t already fired that turn), taking down our chopper. Meanwhile K positioned our T-55s on the hill, and brought our infantry up to assault the capital. The second turn began badly, with the Cobra talking out one of the T-55s. But in one of those reversals of fortune with which AK-47 is replete, the second T-55 fired on the Cobra with its heavy machine gun, and managed to bring it down. This balanced the books for a short while. The troops in the city managed to keep ours at bay and whittled down their number, but our vehicle-based guns managed to take out their recoilless rifles (which presented the biggest threat to our transport). That surviving T-55 did stout work, surviving several attempts to remove it from the game, and picking off more than its share of enemy threats. But, alas, the Fates are fickle, and it was not to be our day of triumph.

Around the fifth turn, each team managed to bring on reinforcements. We had the two T-34s gifted to us to support our struggle by the Supreme Soviet, along with a couple of troop transports. The Government forces had one last unit of Regulars with a couple of 25-pounder anti-tank guns, relics from the Second World War. Accompanying these troops was none other than the dictatorial President, ostensibly leading from the front, but, in fact, well-placed to make a dash to the airport with a couple of suitcases full of Swiss francs if it all went pear-shaped.

Call Tech-support! (the Technicals didn't actually feature in
this exchange, but I couldn't resist the joke,)

We redoubled our efforts on taking the city, causing heavy losses on their fanatical troops. At the same time, the fresh Government troops managed to (eventually) get into position and unlimber their AT pieces. After some poor shooting by K and me, the 25-pounders made short work of our remaining tanks, but in the end, it came down to morale checks. The Government units kept their cohesion, but seeing their armour support smashed, our brave militia lost heart and melted away, (hopefully) to fight another day.

 

 

Review: Plains Indian Wars

 
 

Charles S. Roberts Award winner: Best Early Modern Wargame

At the end of the American Civil War, the drive west began in earnest. For decades, white people had set out into Indian territory to carve out a new life for themselves and their families, or to carve gold or silver out of the mountain-sides, or to find some promised land. Many died, and many of those were killed by native Americans who saw this intrusion as a threat to their way of life. After the Civil War, a confluence of events “back East” – social, political, and economic – opened the floodgates to tens of thousands, then soon after hundreds of thousands of people, each looking for opportunity and prosperity in the untamed West. And many Indian communities were summarily wiped out by settlers or government forces in retribution for individual attacks, or simply to remove a potential threat.  As big as the frontier was, it proved too small for white settlers and native tribes to coexist. The rest, as they say, is history.

Plains Indian Wars (GMT Games, 2022) is a high-level simulation of the interactions between the US Government, white settlers, and the resident Plains Indian peoples – the Apache, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Cheyanne, Comanche, Hidatsa, Kiowa, and Mandan nations – in a period of massive Western expansion, driven in a large part by the creation of the Trans-Continental Railroad by the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroad Companies. In a way, the creation of the railroad spelt the end of the indigenous way of life more completely than any other single factor; Plains people lived nomadically, following the massive bison herds’ seasonal migrations. Where the railroad track had been laid, the buffalo would not cross it; their roaming lands were permanently bisected.

 
Appearance
From the start, let me say that the whole game looks great. Terry Leeds was responsible for the board and the general art contribution to the game, and he has managed to create a game with simple components The game is played on a map representing the hereto “unsettled” territories of the United States of America, roughly from St Louis in the east to the Rocky Mountain range in the west, with slender portions of the Canada to the North and Mexico to the south. This map is divided into territories for movement and scoring purposes.

State of play at the bottom of the fifth (round).

The map feels like a period representation of the region; not a Corps of Army Engineers survey map, but like a massive painting commissioned by the directors of a railroad interest to place in their boardroom. The board accommodates nearly the whole game and its components, which is always as triumph of design. The game uses wooden cubes of various colours to denote the various factions’ forces, as well as the railroad (which has a dedicated track printed on the map) and the Wagon Trains (which traverse various historical trails, also incorporated into the map). The cubes are matched by wooden discs that are drawn from a bag at random for activation of each faction of game function.

Each player faction has their own set of fifteen tarot-sized cards, a mixture of Action and Event cards. These are beautifully presented, with many featuring period illustrations. The cards each relate to significant individuals, historic events and social phenomena from the period of the great westward migration, and each includes a short descriptive passage.

The Union Pacific forges westward.

Play
Plains Indian Wars supports two to four players; for a four-player game, each player controls one player faction – North or South Plains Tribes (NPT, SPT), The US Cavalry (which also controls the Enemy Tribes) or the Settlers (who also operate the proscribed functions of the Wagon Trains and the Railroad). For a two-player game, one player will control the NPT and SPT, while the other player handles all the government and settler functions. A three-player game is an option, but I’d advise having one player handle both Plains tribe factions and the other players each play the US Cavalry and the Settlers respectively for reasons that will become apparent.

The game is made up of an indeterminate number of rounds, with turn order dictated by the random draw of a coloured marker matching that faction or function. On their turn, a faction will play two of the cards from their three-card hand, one Action and one Event (if the player only has Event cards in their hand, they play one Event as an Action, as per instructions in the rulebook; if they only hold actions, they only play a single action). When the Railroad (black) or Wagon Train (white) markers are drawn, the Settler player places the railroad cubes or moves the Wagon Train cubes along their chosen trails respectively. When the Enemy Tribes (purple) marker comes out, the Cavalry player places a new Enemy Indian cube on a controlled territory and may move a group to instigate a fight with the Plains tribes. (This is why it could get boring, if two players with Plains tribe factions were only responding to one marker draw each and the third (government) was handling the other five.)

The combat system in Plains Indian Wars is simple and elegant, and deftly captures much of the nature of these conflicts. Each faction has its own specialised conflict dice, with hit and treaty markings, as well as blank faces. The two involved factions each roll dice; one if a single block is present, two for multiples. For each Hit face, an antagonist’s block is removed. Blank faces allow that many blocks to escape to an adjoining territory. If both factions roll Treaty-faces (but only if both sides roll such), any hits are ignored and the conflict is ceased in that territory – peace has broken out between the warring factions. No one retreats and no further conflict can be instigated in that territory for the remainder of that round.

The game can end in a couple of ways. If a faction deck plays its last card on their turn, the round is played to its conclusion, then scoring takes place. Or in the case of the Intercontinental railroad being completed on an activation, the game terminates with the last activation of that round. As an automatised game function, the Settler faction has some control over the building of the railroad; when the railroad marker is drawn, up to three blocks are place at each rail-head, so long as the territory adjacent to the rails is populated by Settlers; no settler blocks in attendance, no railroad.

At its heart, Plains Indian Wars is an area control game. A significant portion of each faction’s Victory points come from who holds what ground. The onus is somewhat on the Plains tribes to maintain as much of their territory as they can in the face of the encroaching settlers, and to take and hold as many of the Enemy Tribes (Purple bordered) territories as they can; the Plains tribes don’t gain points for these, but they will be penalised if they don’t hold a majority of the enemy territories in their respective regions. The Plains Tribes also gain points if the railroad remains uncompleted at the end of the final turn, and for each Wagon Train block eliminated (these blocks go onto the Planes tribes’ scoring track. The US players gain points collectively for the territories held and the Wagons that make it to the Rocky Mountains, as well as the completion of the railroad.

Slow going for the Central Pacific Railroad

Historically, the best the Plains people could do was a strategy of hit and run attacks on vulnerable targets, while harassing the US Cavalry forces sent against them, avoiding larger-scale conflicts where they could. As a Plains tribe player, you must do your best to hold back the tide of settlers pushing into your lands with a strike and evade strategy, all the while taking on the Enemy tribes in their home territories, and preventing as many Wagon Trains from completing their journey as you can. As the government and the migrating settlers, your job is to push the Indians further to the south and north, claim lands in the name of Manifest Destiny, and get the Intercontinental Railroad built. That last part requires Settlers to be present all the way along the path on which the railroad is being built, and fending off attacks from hostile Indians; no easy task, but nothing worth a damn ever is.

 
Appraisal
I’ve been meaning to write up a review of Plains Indian Wars since I started this blog. Personally, this was one of my favourite games from last year, though it has proven to be somewhat divisive among the people I’ve played it with. After playing the game, hard-bitten grognards have expressed their sense of sadness over the tragic inevitability of the fate of the Plains Indians. I found it hard to separate the action in the game from the history It simulates; every Indian victory was pyrrhic and short lived. Any tribal leader who actually managed through armed resistance to draw a new treaty or concession from the government would nearly always live to see that agreement rescinded within a generation or – more likely – within a decade. But, for me at least, one of this takes away from the challenge presented in the game or the pleasure in the playing of it.

Overall, the game runs smoothly, and once everyone understands what they are trying to achieve, in moves along at a brisk pace (individual moments of analysis paralysis notwithstanding). The US players have more board-time than the Plains tribe players, an artifact of the additional functions of the Wagon Trains and the Railroad falling to the Settlers player, and the activities of the Enemy tribes to the Cavalry player, the random turn-order helps keep everyone engaged in the game. Even with all a table of newbies, I’ve found each game I’ve played or adjudicated to finish within two hours. Plains Indian Wars does not outstay its welcome. 

An outbreak of peace.

For such a seemingly one-sided conflict, Plains Indian Wars is remarkably well-balanced. I’ve played the game seven or eight times now, and no faction or side seems to have a clear advantage. While chance plays a part, both in the drawing of counters for turn-order and the caprices of the dice-rolls, a sensible new player will have a good chance of keeping up with or outstripping more experienced players.

Some have criticised PIW as being too much a Eurogame. I can’t see it myself. The underlying system is similar to Academy Games’ Birth of America series, 1812: The Invasion of Canada (2012), 1775: Rebellion (2013), and 1754: Conquest – The French and Indian War (2017). Having never played any of these, I can’t really speak to how PIW compares with them. I would say though that Plains Indian Wars is a reasonably accurate, if abstracted, representation of a significant conflict in North American history. I get that some people may find it difficult to make the leap from counters with numerical values to blocks with no clear value of strength or effectiveness, but what makes a wargame isn’t the accuracy of the order of battle, but the designer’s intent; the way the rules work and the elements of the game interact can transform a game into a simulation of a historical event or process. All the elements of Plains Indian Wars work together to create a bird’s eye view of this period of history in all its tragic glory.

Three made it; many didn't.

Designer John Poniske is no stranger to difficult or sensitive subjects in his games. His published games include Amigos and Insurrectos: The Philippine Insurrection,1899-1902 (Battles magazine #11, 2016), Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars, 1845-1872 (Legion Wargames, 2018), Bleeding Kansas (Decision Games, 2019), and Wolfe Tone Rebellion (Compass Games, 2023). Poniske is a retired History and Journalism teacher, and the fundamental drive to educate as well as challenge and entertain comes through in all his games. My only disappointment with Plains Indian Wars was the lack of any historical essay or designer’s notes. I’ve read fairly extensively about the period for a separate, so I have some understanding of the historical background. There are short notes on the cards, offering some historical context regarding the events and personalities represented, but after the embarrassment of resources provided with Ball’s Bluff (Legion Wargames, 2015), the absence of any elucidating material with PIW was felt.

Plains Indian Wars recently won the Charles S. Roberts Award for Best Early Modern Wargame, voted best in a field that included The Red Burnoose (Hit ‘Em With a Shoe Games, 2022) and Votes for Women (Fort Circle Games, 2022). While I might have issues with the title of the category, the win is a Best Among Equals kind of deal.

* I should note that PIW comes with a separate set of solo rules, developed by Etienne Michot, which offer different models of solitaire play for playing either the Plains tribes or the US government / settlers, with variations of play. I haven’t tried these out yet – the games I’ve played solo I have played out four-handed to familiarise myself with the game with the aim of teaching others. I have read though the solo rules, and, when I’ve had the chance to play thought them a couple of times, I’ll give a report on how well they play.
 

 

State of Play: a few quiet weeks ahead, and the CSR winners announced!

 

 

Not much to report on the practical gaming front at the moment. No Monday games for a couple of weeks and the Wednesday group has returned to RPGs for the foreseeable. I’ll be trying to get couple of solo games in until regular programming resumes.

In other news, the Charles S. Roberts Awards winners have just been announced about twelve hours ago (at time of writing). Congratulations to the winners and to the nominees; 2022 was a really good year for wargames, and just gaining a nomination for a category is a tough gig, given the quality of games generally out there these days. You can find the full listing of the winners and nominees in their respective categories here.

Discounting the magazines and expansions for existing games, there are 58 titles represented among the fifteen game-oriented categories. Going over the lists. I realised that I own nine of these titles (and one of the expansions, but that’s a different story for another time). I’ve written reviews of two of the games (414BC: Siege of Syracuse and 1565: Siege of Malta), and shared some impressions on another three (Caesar!, Fire & Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683, and Plains Indian Wars). I’m also actively seeking out another six games, with fourteen more again on my wish-list.

Since I can’t seem to make much progress on my 6x6 list for a while, I’m going to turn my attention to some of the Charles S. Roberts Awards winners and nominees. I don’t think I’ll get through all the games I own from the list, but there are a couple I’ve been meaning to write up already, and haven’t had the time. Suddenly, I don’t have that excuse to hide behind. I’ll start with those I already own, and add to the list as I secure others. I can’t guarantee a close schedule for these reviews; I will knock them out as quickly as I can replay them and gather my thoughts, then get them down on proverbial paper. I promise I will try to present something thoughtful, readable, and at least mildly diverting. With pictures.

 

  

Stripped down for parts: The Chase of the Bismarck

 

Vuca Simulations have gained a reputation for producing games of exceptional quality in regard to both in components and play. Many of their games, such as Task Force: Carrier Battles in the Pacific (Vuca Simulations, 2023), and Traces of War (Vuca, 2023), have been reprints of classic Japanese games from the eighties and nineties that have never had the exposure in the West that they deserved. But Vuca isn’t simply a European language reprint company. In-house developed games like 1914: Nach Paris (Vuca, 2022), Operation Theseus: Gazala 1942 (Vuca, 2022), and Donnerschlag: Escape from Stalingrad (Vuca, 2022), and have been gaining plaudits from reviewers and players across the hobby.

The Chase of the Bismarck: Operation Rheinübung 1941 (Vuca, 2022), designed by Jack Greene and is another original publication by Vuca, is a simulation of the Kriegsmarine’s attempt to disrupt shipping to the United Kingdom with surface taskforces headed by the battleship Bismarck. This is a big production; a two-board game incorporating a novel hidden movement, search and discovery system, with a separate battle board for the almost inevitable confrontation between capital ships. I scored a copy of The Chase for the Bismarck and Task Force (you can get a look inside the Task Force box here). This is something I’ve been meaning to get to since getting the game. There is a lot packed into this box, let’s dive right in.

The components

The cover-art style will be familiar with anyone who has had experience with Vuca games. Personally, I like the spare, almost lino-cut quality. It’s a severe look that declares right off the bat that this is a serious game, not for the faint of heart.

The rulebook is a little confronting with its white-on-black cover, until you open it. The interior is lush, full colour, with lots of illustrative explanations, and all printed on good paper stock. It has obviously been put together with a view to assisting rather than challenging the new player, easing them the concepts of the game. The Rulebook runs to 28 pages, but only eighteen of these are actual rules. These are clearly written and laid out, in a sequence that makes sense. 

Sample page from the Rulebook. Helpfully illustrated.

I always enjoy reading historical and designer notes, especially for situations that I am less versed in. Jack Greene provides a short (single page) but very informative Designer’s Notes essay, which Patrick Gerhardt adding some further notes, and a bibliography for those of us who like to dig into the history behind the game. This is followed by a thorough Glossary of terms used in the game (another two pages), some size-comparison charts of the ships involved, and silhouettes of the planes used in search and interception role by both sides. This sort of thing, I think, is always a nice addition, and adds to the sense of history being played out on the boards in front of you.

The Allied Operational Tracking board.

The game features two near-identical maps, one each for the British and the German player. These are the Operational Tracking boards and they are used to accurately track the location and movement of your assets in play, and to make educated guesses and record provisional and confirmed contacts with the enemy. The maps are on good board-stock and, while monochromatic, are nonetheless very attractive, with the feel of actual navigation charts.

Der deutsche Operational Tracking board

The scale of the board is about 74 nautical miles (137 km) to a hex, so acquiring a sighting of an enemy ship is no guarantee of being able to find it when your ship gets there. The map detail is very close, but in a nice touch, the Kriegsmarine board features German names for all identified positions and locations on the map, with the British Navy map reflecting the English names. Each board also features tracks and other graphical aids to assist with play.

A top-right panel comparison.

The boards are each screened from the opposing player’s view with by identical, rather high screens. On the player-facing side of the screen is a wealth of useful information and tables, including a detailed turn sequence, as well as concealing your assets’ locations and dispositions.

Screen (above) and Tactical Battle board.

The majority of the play-time of The Chase of the Bismarck will be spent for the Allied player on the cat-and-mouse search for the Kriegsmarine Kampfgruppe (if the mouse was a 41,000 long ton-displacement battleship bristling with armaments) and the German player's search for shipping convoys to target. Actual confrontations play out on the Tactical Battle board, which is actually two slim ladder-maps, mounted on the same weight board as the tactical maps, designed to be placed together to form essentially a measurable distance between the antagonists, and allow a simple, representation of their disposition (broadside or end-on). The distance is broken up into a series of sea-zones to regulate combat distances (establishing range for for gun and torpedo attacks between ships).

Player Aid Card (front and back).

German set-up card.

Allied set-up card.

The game includes two matching Player Aid cards, which pick up much of the detail not presented on the board screens, and a set up card each for the German and Allied players. Each player also has his own set-up card for the game. These are all printed on the same thicker cardstock used for the counters.

Six counter sheets, all pre-rounded and easy-punch (apologies for the glare).

This is a game with lots of counters (582, in fact). The good news is, like the PACs and the Set-Up cards, the counters are (to these old, squinty eyes) perfectly readable. The come in three sizes. The majority of the counters are informational markers (search or ship status). It’s worth noting here that you’ll need a couple of opaque cups for drawing evasion markers (for when you’ve been spotted), and damage types (for when you take a hit). I like this two-factor randomness in both cases; the skill of the observer or the hand guiding the gun accounts for some measure of success, but the chit-pull for the success of an evasion manoeuvre or the dumb luck of where that successful hit connected captures some of the vicissitudes of war.

British ship tokens, small ship markers (orange) and various markers.

There are also markers to designate search and interceptor aircraft (either land- or carrier-based), Milchkühe (Milk cows; the tankers used by the Kriegsmarine to refuel their vessels), and Task Force markers to reduce the number of tokens needed on the board. Most of the counters are 15mm in size (a touch under 9/16”).

Bismarck? Fount it!

The ship counters for use on the Tactical Battle board are gorgeous; at 45mm long, a little shy of two full inches, with a 15mm beam, and sporting a quite detailed birds-eye view of the individual ships or destroyer flotillas represented.

There are also quite small (12mm) counters representing. indicating individual ships, one for each of the individual ships represented in the game. These are presumably for marking Which ships are in which task force on the Operational Tracking board, or to account for ships not assigned to a task force. (I’m taking a leap here because I’m still working through the rules myself).

Ship cards (bundled), red and blue wooden cubes,
and six (count 'em) d10s.

Each capital ship has its own representative card for recording damage, fuel expenditure and the general disposition of the ship. Smaller ships (destroyers, etc.) share a card between two, to minimise the space requirement.

Damage and Fuel use are recorded on tracks on a card with the use of wooden cube markers (the game includes 100 of these, in red and blue). These are placed on tracks on the ship status cards singly to indicate that function’s current level. Cardboard markers are used to indicate specific conditions, such as propeller, rudder, or radar damage.

One thing I found disappointing with this game was the misrepresentation on the box back of the number of dice included in the game. The box declares two ten-sided dice are included with the game. Imagine my surprise when, upon opening the box, I was confronted with no less than six ten-siders; three in black and three in red. In Vuca’s defence, I would point out that this is the only mistake I have come across in my exhaustive look at the materials included, but I will say that I hope it doesn’t indicate the company's adopting a more cavalier attitude toward meeting the customer’s expectations. 

I am, however, happy to note that I managed to fit the superior number of dice into the box provided.

Chase of the Bismarck footprint

The Set-up

That covers the contents. I’ll admit, when I first opened the box, I was a little overwhelmed. This is a lot of game. What’s more, when set up, Chase of the Bismarck has a big footprint. I wouldn’t normally indulge in a set-up, preferring to depict the components and make some helpful comments, but Chase fort the Bismarck deserves an exception to this.

 

Long Battle Board - short battles.

This is not a game for the faint-hearted, but at the same time you shouldn’t let the sheer size and scope of it put you off. But you will need some table real-estate to accommodate Bismarck. There is a lot going on, but it’s manageable, and Greene and Gebhardt have done a lot of work aimed at smoothing your entry into the game.

My wife and I live in an apartment that is probably a tad smaller than would be ideal. We do however have a nice, big eight-seater, Tasmanian oak dining table. This is where the magic happens. Our dining table is 2,400mm by 1,200mm (pretty damn close to exactly 8’ by 4’). I did a practice set-up of Chase of the Bismarck just to make sure the two stations (German and Allied) and the Tactical Battle board would fit. It does, just, but it does take up about three fifths of the dining table (not a game I’ll be able to leave set up overnight).

Kriegsmarine tactical station (note the ship cards to the left).

Still, I regret nothing. This is a really beautiful game; every detail has been considered and refined. The production value is top-notch (as one would expect form Vuca Simulations), and just taking out the components, examining and shooting them for this essay, I got a sense of the narrative of the game unfolding. I know how wishy-washy that sounds, but it’s the best way I can think of to describe it. I saw Sink the Bismarck with Kenneth Moore when I was barely in double-digits, and I have a vague sense of how the story played out, but just looking at the Operations maps lends a sense of the enormity of the task before both the British and the German forces. 

This is going to be one hell of a game.