Review: WWII Commander, Volume I: Battle of the Bulge

 

 

 

The best thing about having a blog that nearly nobody reads is you can be as self-indulgent as all get-out. Yes, there will be a review of WWII Commander, Vol. 1: Battle of the Bulge (Compass Games, 2020) coming shortly, but you’ll have to wade through a sappy trip down memory lane first. Or, alternatively, you could just skip down to the Appearance heading in bold for the meat and potatoes.

John Butterfield was probably the first game designer to achieve name recognition for me (actually, maybe third, after Redmond Simonsen and Marc Miller). When I was about fourteen, I discovered all the possibilities of boardgames, when friend introduced me to a cavernous store tucked away behind a cinema complex, down an alleyway, up a rickety wooden staircase, and at the end of an unmarked passageway, called Simulations. This was my entry into a greater world.

Simulations sold all kinds of games. Here began my life-long appreciation of Traveller (GDW, 1977), back in the days of the little black books, and other RPGs like Boot Hill (TSR, 1979) and DragonQuest (SPI, 1980). They had a couple of tables set up for games in-store, and gondola stands full of D&D material and display cases with chess sets and jigsaws, but the back walls were lined with shelves, and the shelves were lined with wargames. Lots of SPI, Avalon Hill, Yaquinto, GDW titles and others, all beckoning. But I was a kid and broke; I couldn’t afford fancy boxed games.

What I could afford was the magazines, and some of the magazines came with games. To be honest, while I was interested in the historical wargames, I was also an avid science fiction reader, and it was SPI’s Ares magazine that drew me into the hobby first. And the second issue I bought – after issue 3, Barbarian Kings (SPI, 1980) – was issue 2, The Wreck of the B.S.M. Pandora (SPI, 1980). This was a Jim Dunnigan design which I enjoyed a lot, but the following year, Ares issue 6 came with a prequel game, Voyage of the B.S.M. Pandora (SPI 1981), designed by none other than John Butterfield. Really loved that game! Played it to death; I had to tape the two halves of the map back together after the fold-hinge finally gave out. Not that long ago, in a fit of nostalgia, I nearly forked out an irresponsible amount of money for a second-hand copy mere weeks before GMT announced the inclusion of Away Team on their P500 list (click on this link to see the order page). But that’s a story for another time.

Which is all to say, Mr Butterfield designs fine, memorable games. The kind of games that stay with you after they’ve been reboxed and put back on the shelf. I don’t think I’m an obsessive an obsessive – I only own four or five – but like good bourbon, I’ve never met a John Butterfield game I didn’t like.

Set up for a two-handed solo game. Note the Orders of Battle and the slightly smaller
than average board (three-panels wide, or 22" by 25½").

Appearance

As I understand it, WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge (hereafter referred to as WWIIC:BtoB) started its life as a computer game. I can’t speak to that; From what I’ve read elsewhere, while it had its critics, lots of people enjoyed it, and it was quite popular for a computer wargame.

Everything about WWIIC:BotB is rendered in a very limited colour palette (something it shares with other Bulge games). It’s an area movement game, and so the board is divided up into chunks of forest green, snowy white and sleety grey. The Allied and German units are similarly coloured in the familiar greens and greys (khaki for the British, but they only come on late in the game). But in spite of this, the board is a work of functional art. There is no waste here; the map represents the battle space well, creating a puzzle of roads and rivers, forests and clearings. Some of the chrome-y aspects of the game-play add to this puzzle-iness, but the game is never reduced to a puzzle. This is definitely a war-game, high level and streamlined to allow a faster play, but full of torturously difficult decision points at every impulse. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I tried a preservation defence here against the Germans, retreating in the first
 two days when I could, but still took a pounding early on. The black cubes
 are used to mark those units which have already activated
that day/turn. These are removed in housekeeping.

Aside from the Orders of Battle and the charts on the Player’s Aid Cards, everything is available on the board. There is a turn-track (turns are marked daily from December 16^th to 28^th plus a space for the German free activations prior to turn one), an impulse track for each side’s area activations, a casualty track at each end of the map, and three space pre-start German impulse mini-track. I’ll circle back to this soon.

I can appreciate the reasons why some people don’t like area movement in wargames (especially in World War Two situations). To be honest, I didn’t jump at WWIIC:BotB when it first hit the shelves for that very reason. It took a while, but I came around to trying the game, and I’m glad I did. I think the area movement makes perfect sense of the scale of the game (mostly divisions, some armies and a scattering of reduced formations). The battle space was constrained to the Ardennes region, and the fighting was close and brutal. This is something else I’ll come back to.

Big, readable counters! The number on the left is the starting dice for attack/
defence, the one on the right are the result-or-lower number for a hit. The plus
sign on the 116th Panzer means these guys are particularly aggressive and
get an extra die when attacking (defence is rolled on the straight number)..

The counters are large (2cm, or ⅘ inch), pre-rounded and nicely illustrated. The leg units are a simple soldier silhouette, while the motorised units are represented by their chief vehicle; Shermans and some Greyhounds for the Allies, Panzers and half-tracks for the Germans. Each unit is also identified by its designation and its divisional decal (tiny, but clearly visible on one corner of the counter). I really appreciate this kind of detail given to the game components.

The game also comes with two sets of wooden components; larger grey disc emblazoned with a white cross are used to mark German control of areas (unmarked areas are under Allied control), while the little black cubes are placed on top of unit markers after they have been activated for the day by movement or participation in combat. This can be handy in the confusion of battle.

A unit is out of supply when it can't trace a clear road through friendly-controlled areas
to a supply point (the the Germans, five points on the eastern map-edge, for the Allies,
just about any other road leading off the map). If these guys can hold out until the 23rd,
supplies can be air-dropped to them and they won't suffer step-attrition.

Play

The Rules for WWIIC:BotB are simple and very easy to pick up. So simple to learn that it’s become one of my go-to games for introducing new people to board wargaming. Movement values don’t appear on the counters. They don’t have to; there are a handful of movement conventions that carry across both sides with just a couple of exceptions. The turns are broken down into a series of impulses, which go back and forth, starting with the Germans. In an impulse, an area is selected for activation, and all the friendly units in that area may be activated. Foot (infantry) units may move from the area they are currently in into an adjoining area; motor units move like this, but if their movement follows the road network they can move two areas. Also, German motorised units and all allied unit may participate in “strategic movement,” moving up to three areas along roads so long as they don’t start, finish, or pass through a non-friendly controlled area.

All units have to stop in an area already occupied by an enemy unit, and once there neither side’s units can leave the area except by retreating after combat. If one side’s units are destroyed or retreat out of the contested area, the remaining side gains or regains control of the area. Area control is important for supply tracing, which we’ll come back to.

Sample page from the rulebook, showing illustrated examples of movement.
The rules a simple, clear, and don't get in the way of the game, once you
get to know all the exceptions.

Combat is performed with a handful of dice, aiming for target numbers of lower. Combat occurs after all movement in an impulse, when a unit moves into an enemy-occupied area, or when a unit or units already in a contested area are activated to fight.

Two numbers, in some cases three, are printed on the counters, the large number on the bottom-left represents the combat strength of the unit. This is the number of dice that unit will get to roll in combat. This number also represents the unit’s steps, the number of hits it can sustain before it is destroyed. The smaller number (or numbers) are the highest number required to score a hit (you want to roll low on your hit dice). This is the number in the black diamond, usually a 3 for leg units or a 4 for armour. Some units have a second number in a red diamond; these are elite armoured units, and they have a higher chance to hit against other mechanised units. The dice used are d10s, with the 0-face treated as a zero (no hit).

The overall number of dice can be adjusted by different factors; terrain advantages the defender and may shave as many as three dice off the attacker’s roll, while, for the German player, attacking an allied formation that happens to be within artillery range (noted on the board by a howitzer silhouette) adds another die to the mix. A hit can be shaken off by one or all of the defenders retreating to a friendly controlled space (the attacker doesn’t get the option to retreat), but just the one. Combat can be brutal, and while reinforcements start to trickle in at around the fifth turn, they are restricted to one or two steps per turn.

WWIIC:BotB is a game of constraints. Area movement means somewhat restricted movement, especially factoring in the three friendly-unit limit per area. There are lots of junctions to move from area to area, but roads are quicker, except only one unit can cross a bridge in an activation. Then there is the need to secure supply lines. The Germans need to make inroads quickly in the first two or three days (turns) of the game. From December 19 (turn 4) the German units have to check supply. The Allies have to do this from turn 1, but they have many more options for supply sources than the Germans, who need to trace a supply route – a clear road running entirely through German-controlled areas – back to the Eastern edge of the map. From here on, things only get harder for the aggressors.

That's not to say everything is going smoothly for the Allies. Before the action, the Ardennes region was seen by the allies as a backwater of the Western Front. Nobody in command through the Germans would try anything there, so it was treated as a quiet place where units that had taken severe punishment in the previous months could be parked to recover and rebuild their strength. These units, some down to 40% strength or less were the first to be engaged by the advancing Wehrmacht forces. At the beginning of the game, the German side gets three free impulses. Only leg units can be activated, but the German player gets a bonus die on each attack (during both the surprise round and the first turn) along with their Artillery bonus. With good planning and some lucky rolls, this can put the German player in the catbird seat for the coming offensive. 

German Surprise Turn track. I really love the graphic details incorporated into the game,
like the calendar and clock-face on the Day (turn) and Time (impulse) markers. 

On December 21, the German fuel shortages begin. This is one of the things I love about this game. Fuel shortages hampered everything the German army did at this stage o the war, but it was a particular issue for the Ardennes offensive, combined with the issues of supply-line integrity, traffic jams on the narrow forest roadways, and a handful of other logistical issues. At this scale, how do you effectively reflect these issues without adding another four or five pages of rules? Mr Butterfield’s solution is elegant in its simplicity. The game includes three yellow “Fuel Shortage” counters. At the beginning of the sixth turn, and every turn thereafter, the Allied player places these fuel shortage markers three motorised German units, at which time, the German player may remove two of them. The unit with the remaining fuel shortage marker doesn’t get to activate for that entire turn. Bad for the Germans, you say? It gets worse; in the last three turns, from December 26, the allied player places the three markers, but the German player only gets to remove one of them. This one simple rule captures a crucial element of the battle, imposing a significant constraint on play, while maintaining a level of player agency. Simply put, it’s brilliant.

The numbers marked in areas are modifiers for the number of dice an attack can bring
 to bear. In the instance of two numbers, the one in a square applies to the force which
has control of the area (the assumption being that the town is being held as a strongpoint),
while the terrain modifier is used for counter attacked against the invader (triangles for
rough ground, diamonds for dense forest).

Every second day from December 20, a sudden-death victory is possible by either side if the German Victory Point level is either higher than the German threshold indicated on the turn track, or lower than the Allied threshold. Neither is likely; most games will play out to the full thirteen turns, but it can get tantalisingly close to one or the other threshold sometimes.

I would call WWIIC:BotB an operational game that plays like a tactical game. Control of the road-junctions (like the five-way intersection at Bastogne) is crucial for both sides. Tactical advantages – the German player's initial advantages in pre-start attacks and artillery barrages, the opportunities for improved defences provided by terrain and river crossings for the Allies – must be subordinate to the side's operational goals. To win on the game's historical metrics, the German player has to not only punch a hole through steadily improving Allied defences, but also maintain an uninterrupted supply corridor to their spearhead. I've never attempted to get an early win on the Victory Point thresholds playing either side, but there might be something to a German strategy of reaping Victory Point-valued locations and targeting VP-yielding units like the 82^nd and 101^st Airborne, or conversely, having the Allies try to sneak in behind the German lines to liberate towns like St Vith and Bastogne to whittle away the German's points advantage. 

WWIIC:BotB is designed very much as a two-player game. Having said that, I played it two handed solitaire the first couple of times to get my head around the rules before I introduced anyone else to the game, but I’ve since played it more than a few times on my own because it’s such a challenging and rewarding experience.

Maintaining control of key intersections is crucial for maintenance of supply, while rivers
 can act as a defensive balk against massed attacking forces.

Appraisal

For a relatively simple game with a single objective for each side – for the Germans, achieve the victory conditions; for the Allies, thwart those efforts to whatever extent they can manage – the game proves to be eminently replayable. In all the times I’ve played WWIIC: BotB, two handed and against another player, I not yet seen a German victory. But in at least two-thirds of those games the Germans could still snatch a win from the jaws of defeat right up to the last handful of impulses.

It would be diminishing to insist WWIIC:BotB is a puzzle game. To a degree, every Bulge game is a puzzle game – how do we get an armoured division or two across the Meuse, intact and in supply, without the other guy noticing until it’s too late for him to do anything about it. Better to think of Bulge games – including this one – first as wargames, but with a more strenuously puzzle-y aspect to them than most. Brute force isn’t going to cut it alone, but it may be the single most important factor on the table. The hammer is the puzzle; where to apply it how much of it to save for the dash to the finish line. WWIIC: BotB brings this to the for in ways other Bulge games might obscure in the back and forth of combat. Its approach to the situation it models is reductive, dealing with division-sized elements on an area movement map and with limits on the numbers of friendly units allowed in a single area, but in that distillation comes a deeper appreciation of the situation, and of the difficulties stacked against both SHAEF and the OKW, and the leaders of both sides on the ground.

I don’t know if I can say this is my absolute favourite Bulge game. There are a lot of them out there, and I haven’t played all that many of them. Just last year. the late Dean Essig revisited the battle with Ardennes II (Multi-Man Publishing, 2023). Another Joh Butterfield design, Enemy Action: Ardennes (Compass Games, 2015), a solitaire game that can also be played two-player, and Danny Parker’s The Last Gamble (Compass Games, ~2024), due for release this year, and Mark Simonitch’s Ardennes ’44 (GMT Games, 2003) is on GMT’s preorder list for its fourth printing. For a fast-playing, single map Bulge game, I think it’s probably neck-and-neck with Dan Fournie’s 1944: Battle of the Bulge (Worthington Publishing, 2020), and might just pip it at the post for the smaller footprint and comparative ease of set-up. I can say without reservation that I’m certain this is a game that will be making it to the table for years to come, and in the mean time, I’m really looking forward to seeing the series continued with Volume II: Market Garden, and any further volumes Mr Butterfield cares to design.

 

   

State of Play: A Peninsula Confrontation – Lasalle Second Edition (28mm miniatures)

 

 

Spanish troops advancing.

Last week the stars aligned, and B and I both had a clear day to put in a game. B was hosting a minis game that evening and asked if I’d mind doing a test run. Lately we've been playing in the era of the Italian Wars using the Never Mind the Billhooks (Wargames Illustrated, 2022) rules. When I learned it was to be a Napoleonics game using Sam Mustafa’s Lasalle, Second Edition (Sam Mustafa Publishing, 2021) rules, how could I refuse?

My host had set up two forces of roughly equal point values – B hosts our Wednesday night game which takes in wargames and RPGs, but his first love is miniatures, with a particular emphasis on 28mm Napoleonic minis. These are always stunning on the table and a joy to push around.

Through what in the courtroom would be referred to as an “illegal lottery” - in this case the roll of a die rather than a coin flip – we established that B would play the French (with a brigade of Italian conscripts and Irish volunteers), and I would play the Anglo-Spanish Alliance forces. The set-up was a simple “capture the flag” affair, with two locations – a village and a hill – roughly on the centre-line of the play area, worth a victory point each, and in the event of a tie, the first side to reach breaking point would see the other victorious.

The field of battle (typically, the British have to fight with the sun in their eyes).

I really like playing with the Lasalle rules. They quite straight-forward, play very smoothly and have some neat contrasts to other Napoleonic minis systems. Lasalle adheres closely to its own internal logic. Commands fall into two categories, Global and Force. Force commands apply to a single unit, where Global orders apply to everything applicable; a Bombard order, for example, allows you to fire all your cannons, regardless of their Force affiliations.

Each side has a base number of Momentum Points – in this case, six for the French commander and five for the Alliance, and at the beginning of each turn each rolls a d3 for extra impulses that turn, if their Commander is located at their headquarters. The commander can also be attached to a force to perform specific tasks or add a bonus to a decisive dice-roll (like Wellington seemingly being everywhere at once, and just when he was needed most), but that’s probably not something you need to do in the first round or two.

British headquarters.

You spend one or two Momentum Points for each activation; a straight command – for example, Movement (Force) will cost 1MP, but if there’s a complication involved (moving through terrain or into a town), that adds another MP to the order cost. When you may only have six or seven MPs for the round, you have to consider everything you hope to achieve in that turn, which forces you to look ahead to the next turn or two. The constraints of MP spending are offset a little by the allocation of “global” orders for Bombard and Change Formation; for the cost of a single MP, the player can reconfigure some or all of their Forces from one attitude to another (e.g., changing an Infantry unit from March to Line), or command all their unlimbered cannon to fire in unison, even at disparate targets.

We took turns placing out units before the engagement began. B placed first, setting his misfit force (the Italians and Irish regiments) to make for the village (to the Anglo-Spanish left). I was already of a mind to try to get the Spanish to the village first and give them an anchor. I’ve played the Spanish before in multi-player games. Historically they were quite variable in quality on any given day, and because the Spanish, Like the British tended to draw their commanders from the ruling class rather than promoting from the ranks, their leadership tended to run from questionable to abysmal. In instances in the Peninsula campaign, the Spanish showed extraordinary bravery and ferocity in combat, but they tended to be unreliable, and that is reflected in the way they present in Lasalle. The main contest was always going to be between the French and British infantry, and this would take place at the hill, to the British right. This left each side’s Cavalry, which was generally placed in the centre, taunting each other.

Devastating fire from the French Grand Battery.

The Spanish had one battery of cannon which I’d placed covering the road running passed the town to discourage the French cavalry from advancing too hastily, while the British corps had its own artillery, which I set limbered and able to move up with the Foot. B had the advantage in cannon, with a French battery attached to the French Foot and another of horse attached to his Cavalry - these he formed into a Grand Battery, at the other end of the road – and a third battery supporting the Italians. Still, if my Spanish could make it to the town before B’s Italians, I may have a chance of holding it.

B had one more advantage at the table. My reputation for rolling badly in minis games is the stuff of legends, and this game would prove to be exceptional in this regard.

I moved first, and tried to get my Spanish to the town, but fell short by some inches. B was able to make the town and set one regiment of Italians inside its precinct, with another lined up beside. One point down.

Having occupied the town, the Italians rain hellfire down on the hapless Spanish.

The British made it to the hill with their guns in tow. A global order set them and the Spanish into line. A barrage from the French cannon began the process of thinning out my Cavalry and Spanish foot before a shot had been fired. The French were slower getting to the hill as they maintained a column formation (in view of charging the British). The redcoats mounted the hill in two ranks, which was a gamble; If stretched out to three, they would be able to bring mor fire to bear on the enemy, but their left most regiment would have been a ripe target for the French cannon.

Having secured the hill, the British troops prepare to see off the Frenchies.

One thing that sets Lasalle apart is the way hits are handled. Hits taken by a unit are called disruption points. There are nifty generic cards available via the downloads page on  Sam Mustafa's website (Sam sells all his own games here as well) which you can fill in for each unit and keep track of their status off-board, but B uses a white die to record the current level. As an activation, you can attempt to rally off the disruption taken by a Force by rolling one die for each point accrued, usually rolling fours or higher for success. The danger is that each unsuccessful save-roll becomes a permanent disruption point. These will downgrade the unit’s effectiveness in combat and make them more likely to break on a check.

I also like how fire-orders are handled in Lasalle. Generally, a unit can fire once in a turn. When the turn is over, the smoke comes off (cotton-wool indicating that unit has fired), and the unit is assumed reloaded and ready for the next round. Generally, a Force will be comprised of four or so Regiments (each comprised of four bases of four figures each, with one base holding the Regimental Colours). In line formation, in most cases, the two outer bases will roll one dice each for musketry, while the two inner blocks will roll two each, for a total of six rolls, with potential hits for fours up. Each hit is than rerolled for confirmation. If these are also fours or higher, the target unit takes a disruption point.

The advancing French cavalry spells the end of the Spanish adventure.

Each unit has a unique characteristic or two to add historical colour while adhering to the overall simplicity of the game. The French line troops are best at getting in close and charging the enemy. The British line infantry’s fire discipline was superior to any other European army, while the French were better in close-quarters action. A charge by a French foot division would be devastating, but they would have to pass through withering musket fire first. Having taken the hill, it was the British troops’ job to hold it. The superior British shooting (drilled into the troops through sharp practice) is reflected in their rolling eight dice instead of six in a volley.

With the approach of the French, I forewent the extra MP roll and placed my commander with the British line. This allowed me to give them a special order to get off a volley at the incoming assailants before the round began, putting a little more hurt on the French line. This, and the subsequent show of musketry by my brave boys (in spite of my less than stellar dice-rolling) saw the French off to regroup. This they subsequently did, shaking off nearly all the disruption I’d saddled them with. Now they were angry and ready for revenge.

Not all can be blamed on bad dice rolls.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, things were not going so well. The French cavalry had made its move, splitting into two squadrons. One attacked first the ineffectual Spanish canon, driving them off in short order, then cut through the right-most regiment of the Spanish Foot like a hot knife through butter. I’d already lost the left-most Spanish regiment to hot action from the Irish and their supporting cannon. My pummelled cavalry attacked the second French squadron, only to be decimated for their trouble. My position overall had become untenable.

In the end, we called the game before the inevitable conclusion. With half my cavalry gone and the Spanish on the verge of a rout, my British infantry – having preserved the regimental honour by holding the hill under a pressing attack by French regulars – withdrew from the field in good order, their retreat screened by my surviving hussars (those remaining Spaniards could take care of themselves; frankly I’m surprised they didn’t just turn around at the beginning of the battle and loot our own baggage train). The day rightfully belonged to the French. There would, of course, be other days.

 

By the Numbers: Collection analysis and classification by divers methodologies – Part I

  

Note: I started writing this with the best of intentions to keep it short and breezy. I don’t do short and breezy. Rather than try to edit it down, I’ve split it into two halves. Part II should appear within a week. If self-indulgent nerdery is your thing, read on.

 

Back in December, I posted quick and dirty analysis of my own game collection by publisher. I don’ think there were too many surprises for me there; GMT Games had the strongest representation by a half-dozen furlongs. Worthington Publishing came second, which also didn't surprise me. But that analysis didn’t tell the whole story. I’d left all expansions out of the count. I only counted stand-alone games and the first games in series (so, no Panzer or Commands and Colours expansions, though I did individually count all games with shared rules-sets, like the Great Sieges series from Worthington, and both Par le feu, le fer et la Foi and The Fate of Reiters (Hexasim, 2014, 2019).

I recently revised my game listings. This was prompted partly by my selling or giving away a number of games before and just after Christmas. None of these were wargames, but they were listed on my BGG collection list, and now they’re not (my goal is to get the “family” game collection down to about thirty games, mostly to make more room for the other kind).

Looking back on it, I think there is probably more value in considering everything that takes up valuable space in storage around the apartment so in this revised collection consideration, I’ve incorporated all the individually titled expansions and supplements. I should also point out I’ve only included true “expansions” in this count, not items like mounted boards.

Since December, the collection has also grown by maybe two-dozen titles. I have no idea how this could have happened, but there it is. So, without further ado, may I present a series of graphical expressions of my complete wargame collection (as of 14 April. 2024*).

With the inclusion of expansions, GMT Games, already the biggest chunk of my collection, plumped out an extra 2% or so to 46% of my collection, exactly 100 titles (for now, at least). It’s all those Commands and Colors series expansions, as well as Panzer, MBT, and Combat Commander: Europe.  And Tank Duel. It’s a curious thing about wargame expansions – not just GMT, but across the board. In the case of non-wargames (Euros seem to be the worst for it), there seems to be an obsession with upscaling aspects of the game in expansions to make things more overpowered, then introducing other expansions to balance out the newly-introduced imbalance from the earlier expansion with more overpowered parts, or pimping up the components so the game looks better on the table. Either way, the original charm and/or playability of the game is often lost. 

Coming from a heritage of carboard counters from Avalon Hill, GDW, and SPI, I’m not that invested in how a game looks set up. Unless an expansion is offering either a solo-mode or a fifth-player option (preferably both), I really don’t have much time for them. Wargame expansions tend not to change the game, but merely make the original game more extensively playable, through the introduction of new historical situations (Commands and Colors: Ancients), new historical foes (C&C: Napoleonics), or new scenarios and maps (Combat Commander, Panzer).

I’ve also picked up some pre-loved GMT games since the previous post; Wellington (GMT Games, 2005 - unpunched!), and No Retreat! the Russian Front (GMT, 2011). I had pre-ordered the new printing of No Retreat! RF on GMT’s P500 list, but the new one is a straight reprint, and the price was too good to pass up. I still have an order in for No Retreat! The North African Front (GMT, 2013), as this is a new edition – I didn’t want to get the older version (also for sale) only to have to purchase the update kit later in the year.

Worthington Publishing still holds second place at 12% (this is a little surprising to me, since I’ve been doubling down on Compass Games purchases of late), though, to be fair, I’ve lumped a couple of early Worthington Games titles – Richard Berg’s Turning Point (Worthington Games, 2009), and Boots on the Ground (Worthington Games, 2010) – under Worthington Publishing for convenience’s sake. By this count, I own twenty-five separate Worthington games, and the McClellanMoves extension for Grant’s Gamble: The Wilderness Campaign of 1864 (Worthington Publishing, 2016). I’m an unapologetic fan of Worthington. I teach games to new people from time to time, and I’ve found Worthington games to me among the easiest to teach to somebody who has never played a wargame, especially when trying to convey a concept like point-to-point movement or lines of supply. They are also the most reliable company for game duration. If the back of the box says, “Victory within 90 minutes,” you can set your watch by that.

Compass Games is third by representation with 20 titles. I think in the last six or so months alone I’ve bought six or seven Compass titles, most recently The Lamps Are Going Out: World War I (Compass Games, 2016), and Wagram, 1809 (Compass Games, 2019), from Paper Wars, issue 93 (I’ve shot the picks for an unboxing of Lamps, but I may not get to it for aa few weeks yet). Compass has published some of my favourite games, like Dawn’s Early Light: The War of1812 (Compass, 2020), and Brothers at War: 1862 (Compass, 2022). Like Worthington, they can generally be relied on for good components and solid games. I’ve heard complaints about a couple of their games, but in my experience, I haven’t experienced a problem.

The next three publishers are very close together: Flying Pig Games – 6% (14 titles), Legion Wargames – 5% (10), and Osprey – 4% (8). More than half of the Flying Pig count are expansions, but their games are solid and a lot of fun (hence the devotion to expansion acquisition). I think I only bought my first Legion game less than three years ago.

Legion specialises in subjects that tend not make it into games all that often. Three or the reviews I posted last year were for Legion games, and I’m going to try to work through the rest of them over the next eighteen months or so.

I actually have more Osprey games and expansions than this. I didn’t count the three supplements I have for Force on Force (a great modern tactical miniatures game – yes, I do own some minis), and I have a couple of non-wargame games that I couldn’t in good conscience include in the count, like Martin Wallace’s London (Osprey Games, 2017).

An honourable mention should go to the French Contingent – Hexasim, Shakos, Nuts! Publishing, Companion Games and, Fellowship of Simulations, which are represented by twelve titles between them. The French make damn fine, thoughtful, and innovative games, and I expect I’ll be adding to this count before the year is out.

Next, I thought it would be interesting to see where my interests lay historically-speaking. I started to do this using the data from my previous list, but I went too far down the rabbit hole, parsing “Ancients” into about four categories and the medieval period into two, then three. This time I’ve settled on using the current Charles S. Roberts Awards categories (as much as the Gunpowder/Industrial conglomeration vexes me).

I’m not too surprised to find the biggest segment of my collection is devoted to games dealing with or set during the Second World War. Collectively, these come to 35%, with 75 titles (a lot of the expansions live here). I suspect 35% may well be a little shy of the average, but I’m a magpie when it comes to history – it’s all so distracting.

There are a total of 32 games (15% of the collection) falling into the grab-bag of Gunpowder/Industrial – I swear that sounds like how you’d describe an album by Postmodern Jukebox doing sassy Crime and the City Solution covers. Gunpowder/Industrial covers a period from around 1500 to around 1936 that isn’t captured by the Napoleonic, American Civil War, or World War I categories, so there’s a lot of room for diversity there. This count includes a mixed bag, from the Musket and Pike Dual Pack (GMT Games, 2022) to Mar Rojo (Spania Games, 2021). 

Modern (13% - 28 titles in all) is a little tougher; it covers anything from post World War II to now, that actually happened. Brief Border Wars (Compass Games, 2019), and Tonkin: The First Indochina War (Legion Wargames, 2012) land here, Assault (GDW, 1983) and MBT aren’t supposed to because the Cold War never went that drastically Hot (I’ve put them under Modern regardless, along with Armageddon War (Flying Pig Games, 2018); they’re all tactical level, so what’s the harm?).

Napoleonic is next, at 11% (23 titles). It’s not all about Commands and Colors, I swear. I have two volumes of Didier Rouy’s Vive l’Empereur! series, Trois Batailles en Allemagne (Legion Wargames, 2020) and Quatre Batailles enEspagne (Legion, 2015). In the shadow of La Bataille and the Library of Napoleonic Battles, Vive l’Empereur! and Hexasim’s Eagles of France series get a little starved of oxygen. I want to devote some column space to the Vive l’Empereur! series here in the future.

I’ve also had a lot of fun with (and derived a lot of content from) Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2017), the first volume in the Conquerors series from Shakos. Napoléon 1806 covers the frenetic weeks of the Napoleon’s Prussian campaign of 1806. It was on my 6x6 list in 2023, though the review didn’t make it to A Fast Game until early this year, and I’m very keen to move on to Napoléon 1807 (Shakos, 2020) this year. I also managed to secure a copy of Napoléon 1815 (Shakos, 2022), Which was nominated for a Charles S. Roberts Award last year, fittingly enough, in the Napoleonics category. I believe all three are still available from the publisher, and there have been rumours of new volumes, extending the Conquerors series into the Roman era and the late nineteenth century with Napoléon 1870 (Napoleon III).

I hope it never comes to this, but if I had to pick just one period to game for the rest of my days, it would almost certainly be the Napoleonic era. It’s just so rich in gameable situations, which I suppose translates to it being so tragic a period of human history.

Ancients-representative or -themed games make up 8% of the collection, eighteen games in all. Nearly a third of those slots are taken up by Commands and Colors: Ancients (GMT Games, 2006) and its expansions. In fact, thirteen of these are GMT titles (a couple of these are expansions, besides the C&C Ancients titles). There are a couple of games in this category of, shall we say, questionable wargame credentials. I have no qualms over submitting that Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD (GMT Games, 2017) belongs in the category of wargames, though I can understand the objections of those who do. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I can hold such certainty with The Barracks Emperors (GMT Games, 2023). It’s definitely a game with a strong military/historical theme, and it looks gorgeous on the table. To my mind, that’s enough to warrant inclusion here.

The case for inclusion is weaker for two other games, Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! (PSC, 2022 – you can read my review here) and Agamemnon (Osprey Games, 2016). At first blush, Caesar! is an area control game with a nifty mechanisms and frustratingly tight competition. It’s definitely an aggressively opposed player game. It won’t tick everyone’s boxes for what constitutes a wargame, but it lives up to it’s title on both counts; it is strongly themed and manages to convey on a very small board the desperation of Caesar and Pompey vying for rule of the empire, and it’s over in twenty minutes.

Agamemnon is more like a fever dream of a mourning Achilles after the death of Patroclus. It’s such an abstract game that it the one I probably feel least comfortable about inclusion on the list. The conceit of the game is two warrior leaders trying to tie together the longest thread in a labyrinthine city before Atropos ends their collective existence. Some would write it off as a simple worker placement game, but that would diminish the brilliance of the balance and play of the game. I’ve spent some time with Agamemnon, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what it has going on. Wargame? Not conventionally, but it gets to the nub of Homeric conflict; the understanding that you are mortal, and that you must strive to succeed in the face of your own mortality.

The World War I, ACW, and Medieval categories all come in at around 6% (fourteen, thirteen and twelve games respectively). I’m a little surprised that games representing the American Civil War only came to 6% of my collection, thirteen titles in all. This has been a burgeoning area of interest for me. My first ACW wargames were the original Blue and Gray series titles from Worthington, Grant's Gamble: Wilderness Campaign of 1864, Lee's Invincibles: Gettysburg Campaign of 1863, and Jackson & Sheridan: The Valley Campaigns (Worthington Publishing, 2016), point to point movement block games with every simple rules that still manage to convey a lot of period and battle-doctrine flavour.

I’ve recently acquired a couple of Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) series games, Death Valley: Battle for the Shenandoah (GMT Games, 2019) and Into the Woods: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862 (GMT, 2022). The series has a reputation for difficulty. I don’t know how much of this was earned and how much is hyperbole. While not quite a closed book – I’ve started picking at the series rules; they don’t seem that scary – there is a lot going on in these games, and considering my current tentative play schedule, I really don’t know when I’ll get any of it to the table. I bought Death Valley second hand and the previous owner had it clipped and sorted into trays, so I’ll probably start there. I may still get to it this year, but I don’t feel like I can make myself any promises.

In breaking the collection down by CSR categories, I made a subtraction and an addition. I rolled the Hypothetical games into the Modern category, because it didn’t make sense to give so few games their own category. Then I hypocritically created a brand-new category to squeeze in a couple of games and an expansion. My Speculative category covers science fiction and fantasy games, of which I’ve only included two, SpaceCorp: 2025-3000AD (GMT, 2018), and the oldest game I still own from my earliest days as a wargamer, The Sword and the Stars (SPI, 1981). I’m stretching it a bit to even have SpaceCorp on the list, given it’s not strictly a wargame. Especially when I kept another game off the list – Small Star Empires (Archona Games, 2016) – because it didn’t seem wargame-y enough to be on the list (it is a game of exploration and fighty-fighty conflict, and quite novel mechanically that plays quickly with a small footprint – right in my wheelhouse – so really it should be on the list; if I do a future breakdown, I’ll put it on).In truth, SpaceCorp is here because John Butterfield is one of my favourite game designers, and in the end it’s my list so I can put what I like on it.

That's it for now. The next post should be a little shorter, a lot more analytical, and a lot less self-indulgent. We'll get to the heart of why my collection looks the way it does. It might be fun.

 

* This list is already slightly out of date, as the evening before writing this up, I pulled the trigger on Herman Luttman’s A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days at Gettysburg, Second Edition (Third Printing) (Flying Pig Games, 2022). After this, I probably won’t be buying anything else for a few months.

 

Review: Hold the Line: The American Civil War

  

Recently I’ve been on something of an American Civil War kick in my gaming. This is mostly due to the recent release of Mark Hermans’s Rebel Fury (GMT Games, 2024) and the extra attention I've been giving Brothers at War, 1862 (Compass Games, 2022) of late. Both are remarkable games. and each rewards the time spent with them immensely.

All of this has got me harking back to my earliest ACW gaming experiences, the Blue and Gray series (Worthington Publishing, 2016), and Hold the Line: the American Civil War (Worthington Publishing, 2019), both released by Worthington. I backed this on Kickstarter when it was put up – I think my order was in the high double digits – and we played the hell out of this when it arrived. I’ll say up front; I love this game. It’s not a nuanced simulation of famous SCW battles, but it’s a relatively fast playing game that offers a pleasant and satisfying ACW-flavoured experience. Just as there’s room for both Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul (GMT Games, 2020) and Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! (PSC, 2022), I’ve got space for in my collection for both the The U.S. Civil War (GMT Games, 2015), and this.

First, though, something of a confession. Hold the Line: the American Civil War has been out of print for at least a couple of years now, and the good folks at Worthington Publishing tend not to republish older titles, preferring to forge ahead with new games (though there have been exceptions to this). Reviewing an out-of-print game is something of a guilty pleasure, but at the same time it might encourage others who have a copy sitting on their shelf unplayed to dust it off and give it another play (or even to sell it on and let someone else enjoy what it has to offer).

 

Terrain lay-out for the Shiloh scenario. Just right of centre are the Peach Orchid,
Bloody Pond and the Hornet's Nest clustered together; centre-left, Shiloh Church.

Appearance

Anyone familiar with Worthington’s earlier Hold the Line games will recognise the essential configuration immediately. The mounted board is a blank hex-field, ## long by ## deep. The hexes are on the large side as they have to accommodate three or four blocks (multiple counters in the earliest iterations of the ruleset, Hold the Line (Worthington Games, 2008) and Hold the Line: Frederick’s War (Worthington Games, 2013).

Anyone with a general interest in historical wargaming will be struck by the similarities between Hold the Line: TACW and the Commands and Colors family. I’m addressing this here because the similarities are mostly cosmetic. Both games use a blank, oversized hex-grid board with interchangeable terrain tiles that overlay some of the hexes in a given scenario to better approximate the historical battlespace. The two games also use blocks (so far as I’m aware, Hold the Line: TACW is the only game in the family that does; the early iterations used counters, while the re-implementation of the Hold the Line: the American Revolution (Worthington, 2016) game and its French and Indian War (Worthington, 2016) expansion featured uniform miniatures, much like its spiritual second-cousins, Battle Cry (Avalon Hill, 1999) and Memoir’44 (Days of Wonder, 2004).

Union Infantry and Artillery with their Commanding Officer, setting up a
delaying action in defence of Pittsburg Landing (Victory Point location). 

The blocks bring several qualities to the game experience. My first experience of a game that used stickered wooden blocks was Commands and Colors: Ancients (GMT Games, 2006) at a friend’s place. My first thought was, “This is like a poor man’s miniatures.” I still think of block games like this in those terms. I don’t mean it in a negative way, either; I’ve played a lot of miniatures games, and marvelled at how good they look on the table, but there’s no getting around the fact that they are expensive, time-consuming to prepare, and space-hogs for storage. Wooden blocks are durable, presentable (the colours and illustrations pop on a game-board) and they’re a lot easier to stow away than lead figurines when you’re done with them. And they offer the a similar tactility and verisimilitude in play; I’d argue as a player you get a greater sense of loss and growing desperation removing a block from a unit on the board that you do flipping a counter to drop a step. In short, the blocks were a solid choice for Hold the Line: TACW.

The art on the block stickers is simple but attractive and effective, the blocks themselves easily identified by their colour. There are only a handful of unit types in the game; Infantry (four blocks) Cavalry (two blocks), Artillery (two blocks), Leaders, and, for the Union, Gunboats (a single block each). What differentiates the infantry, cavalry and artillery units is the presence of a single “flag” block in the unit. Flag blocks identify (to the owning player only, at least until they get into combat) the morale rating of the unit with a coloured bar at the bottom; green for untested (“green”) troops, black for battle-tested troops, and gold for the exemplary fighters (like Gibbon’s Iron Brigade, though the scenarios don’t get down to this kind of granularity). The morale rating affects the chance of a unit having to retreat after combat (using a special die).

The terrain tiles are one of the most beautiful features of the game. Well, most of them. Unlike Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) or Horse and Musket (Hollandspiele, 2017), which both take a bird’s-eye view of the terrain, the tiles in Hold the Line TACW are drawn at an elevate viewing angle which adds a certain charm to the groves. ploughed fields, towns and churches, and even the swamps. Sunken roads and rivers are still presented straight-down, which is makes sense, design-wise and removes any potential confusion, but the rest are a nice ascetic touch.

 

Starting set-up for the Shiloh scenario. On the edges are the Union Reinforcements,
river edge in turn 5, top edge in turn twelve. If the Confederates haven't taken
Pittsburg Landing by turn eleven, they're in for a tough time of it.

Play

Hold the Line: TACW is a fairly fast-playing game mechanically; players take turns taking actions until both have passed, then you being a new round. Sounds simple, right? What can slow it down is the choice of actions, coupled with the fact that you can never do everything you want to do.

The central functional aspect of Hold the Line: TACW is the allocation of Action Points. Action Points (AP) are the currency you spend to do things in the game; moving a unit or engaging the enemy in combat comes at a cost. Your AP allocation is a limited resource, and it’s partially randomised. Each scenario will tell you how many base AP you get each turn as the Union or CSA, usually ranging from three to five points, and more often than not, weighted slightly in favour of one or the other side.

Units are represented by blocks with a picture of their type on each, with one block carrying the flag, and identifying the unit’s morale strength. Infantry units are comprised of four blocks, cavalry and artillery two blocks each, and Leaders, of course, a single block. The Union also has gunboats in some scenarios; these are a represented by a single block.

The play is IGO-UGO; the players take turns – initiative holder first – rolling for their additional AP, then spend those points to move they units or to engage them in combat, or as many as they wish before passing to the next player. Most units move or engage in ranged combat for one AP (unlike C&C, a unit can engage in ranged combat with an adjacent enemy unit, and there are reasons this may be desirable). Cavalry units can move and fire for the cost of a single AP, but not the other way around. If a unit is already adjacent to an enemy, they can engage in close combat for a cost of two AP.

In both Ranged and Close Combat, only the attacker rolls for damage. In if the defender in Close Combat, receives a hit, they roll a special die for a retreat; the Retreat die has three green spots, two black and one gold, so untried units have a 50% chance of being forced to retreat, veteran units about 33% and elite units around 17%.

Some terrain features, like hills, woods and towns will give the defender a bump one level up in their morale for retreat rolls, e.g., green will roll as black if defending from a sunken road. If they stand their ground, they will get the opportunity to give back in kind I their next activation. Combat in Hold the Line: TACW can be bloody, especially in close combat, where rolls hit on a 4-6. Each hit in combat removes a block; this is representative of the loss of cohesion under fire - the number of rice rolled for the attacking unit remains the same.

The game comes with twelve scenarios, with some famous actions represented, like First Bull Run, Antietam, and Chickamauga. The scenarios are turn-limited, with a set of victory conditions for one side, while the opposition may have a target VP number, or can simply run down the clock on the aggressors. The longest games run to 20 turns, but a victory for one or the other side can often be attained before that. Looking at the available forces alone, some of the scenarios can appear somewhat unbalanced, but that hasn’t been my experience in play.

CSA forces preparing to advance on the Union screening positions.
Infantry units can move through or share a space with friendly Artillery.

Appraisal

Hold the Line: TACW is a relatively straight-forward and accessible game (the rules are articulately covered in just seven pages) that accomplishes what sets out to do. Using simple components and easy-to-grasp rules, it offers a way for novice players to tackle some of the pivotal battles of the American Civil War in a manageable and engrossing. It requires about as much mental effort as a Command and Colors game, but instead of the frustration of not being able to do exactly what you want because of a deficiency of the necessary cards in your hand, the frustration comes from the limited number of AP available each turn. Even if you add five or six points from a good roll, you’re unlikely to order every available unit or set up the perfect play for your next round. This would probably annoy the very same people who don’t like C&C, and for pretty much the same reason; the game mechanics portray the same battlefield confusion and the limits of command in control in nineteenth-century conflicts that discrete hand-sizes do in a CDG like Commands and Colors: Napoleonics.

In some measure, it’s more freeing as a player because it forces you to make provisional plans two or three rounds ahead, albeit without the security of knowing what resources you’ll have available over those future turns. It makes play incredibly dynamic, and it keeps both players fully engaged and on their toes.

While I don’t think it’s likely to happen at this stage, I’d really like to see a reprint of Hold the Line: TACW. It’s a shrewd, engrossing game, simple yet satisfyingly frustrative, that can play out very differently with successive plays. It brings a lot of Civil War flavour to the table in a fast-playing, intellectually and tactilely satisfying package. If you haven’t played it and you ever get the opportunity, please try it out.